Category Archives: Family

Family, Weather +Climate

Hairdo By Tesla

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38  bar falls 30.02  7 mph N dewpoint 31 Spring?

              Waxing Crescent Moon of Winds

Snow.  Lotsa snow.  An inch an hour possible.  Winds gusting this morning up to 13 mph.  That ol’ Hawthorn giant has his sinewy grip on us  and won’t let go.  My hope is that it winds down before Saturday, since I’ve got to travel about 200 miles north to Bemidji.  When I signed up to speak there last September, I didn’t imagine I might face blizzard conditions on the 13th of April.  Northern living.

Just looked over pictures from Kate’s trip.  Here’s Ruth at her #2 birthday party.  Hairdo by Tesla.

                           ruth-and-hair330.jpg

Our family is complete again.  Kate’s home. The dogs are home. I’m home.  Feels good.    

Faith and Spirituality, Family, General

Masters of the Universe

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42  bar falls 30.14 6mph NNE dewpoint 31 Spring

               Waxing Crescent Moon of Growing

Some of this, some of that.  Reorganized a few books in the study.  Called the folks at NOW fitness to get a repair for the treadmill.  Surprise! It has a lifetime warranty.  Can you beat that?  I bought it 12 years ago and have used it 5-6 times a week since then.  Finished Spiderman III.  It got better at the end, but it was too adolsecent for my tastes in the middle, felt long.  Read about Cristina Sanchez, a late 1990’s matadora.  Looked her up on the Web.  She quit because of the sexism.  Can you imagine sexism in a bull-fighting culture?

Talked to Kate.  Talked to Vanguard folks who won’t accept my lawyers letter with a medallion signature.  They need yet more paper.  Geez.  Sorted through several tour related snafus.  A nap.  Now a workout.

Kate comes home tonight.  She went to the Asia Museum in San Francisco and on the way back (today) she encountered the heavily guarded Olympic torch and had to walk a whole block square to get back to her hotel.

Oh, I also took the treadmill controls apart myself and cleaned them, looked for jammed parts.  The rest of the assembly is electronics and didn’t look accessible to my limited knowledge.  That’s when I called the shop.

Tom Crane has the Woolly meeting in May.  He has asked us to think about mastery.  In particular he wondered if there was any special meaning behind references to Jesus as master.  I looked that up today and found, to my surprise, that each time you read master in the new testament, the word translated is the Greek word for teacher.  There’s a reason for this, but the dogs want to go out now.  Maybe I’ll get back to it later.

Family, Great Work, Woolly Mammoths

My Y Chromosome

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32  bar steep rise 30.08 1mh NNW dewpoint 27 Spring

              Waxing Crescent Moon of Growing

This  invitation is also for any of you read this blog and would like to come.   I’d love to see you.

Sierra Club Power 2 Change House Party Monday, April 14th 

 7:00-8:00PM

Hosted by Charles Buckman-Ellis 3122 153rd Ave. NW. Andover.Learn about the Power 2 Change campaign, an effort to educate the public about what is at stake in the 2008 elections. High gas prices and America‘s dependence on foreign oil have made energy one of the most pressing and important issues of this political season.  We face a crossroads, and we need to challenge all of our elected officials, including the next President, to provide the leadership we need to move America in a new direction on energy.  Between now and Earth Day on April 22nd, the Sierra Club is working to get the word out that we need leadership who will make the right choices.  Join us for refreshments, meet your neighbors and learn how you can take action.  RSVP to Margaret at 612-659-9124 ext. 306 or Margaret.levin@sierraclub.org Visit the web site to learn more about this important effort: http://www.sierraclub.org/power2change/minnesota/ 

Note: This is NOT a fundraiser.

 Come to the event if you can.  I’d love to see you.  (Anybody who reads this is welcome.)

Whenever Kate comes home and I’m watching a football game or a basketball game, she’ll say, “Aha. Caught you with your Y chromosome in action.”  Doesn’t happen often, but had she not been in San Francisco, she could have found me watching the last half and the overtime of the Kansas/Memphis game of the NCAA finals. Whoa.  What a game! Kansas, down by 9 with 2:12 left to play and down by 3 with less 2.0 seconds left to play. Chalmers hits the three.  Tie.  In overtime Kansas takes advantage of a missing big man (Dorsey) and goes on to win pulling away.   

That wasn’t all though.  Tonight was also Woolly night at the Istanbul.  This is a y-chromosome only club.  We talked about Rome, about China-Tibet, Danish desserts and Pawlenty’s veto of the Central Corridor light rail.  Stefan and Bill celebrated birthdays.  A guy’s night out. 

Talked to Kate when I got home.  She’d called the home phone, left a message and said she forgot I was the Woolly’s and that she’d call tomorrow.  I picked up the cell phone, called her cell phone.  She answered.  I said, “I just called to tell you we’re old farts.”  “Why?”  “Because I could have had my phone turned on and you could have called me at the Istanbul.”  “You called me on the cell phone just to see if I’d answer?”  “Yeah.  If you hadn’t, that would have meant we were O.F.’s for sure.” 

Mailed another package to the serviceman in my life.  Still strange.

.

Cinema and Television, Family, Garden, Travel

Really Creepy Vampires

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42 bar rises 29.73 0mph W  dewpoint 28 Spring

         Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

OK.  I’m taking off my hair shirt and hanging up my cilici.

Today is Ruth’s second birthday.  Ruth is our first granddaughter.  The thought of another life, connected to your own, just starting out, makes the world seem a more congenial and more precious place.  Her blue eyes, mischievous quality and alertness augur an interesting and bright future.  She feeds the dogs, carrying their bowls with that peculiar toddler rolling gate.  She also crawls in the dog crate and closes the door to go night/night. (She’s just pretending.)  Jon and Jen are good parents, another fact that makes the world more congenial and more precious.

A quiet evening after the workout.  Started watching 30 Days of Night.  Vampires attack Point Barrow, Alaska just after it heads into 30 days with no sun.  One of the vampires says, “We should have come here a long time ago.”  A bit of Draculian humor.  A good movie so far.  Great production values, interesting actors and really creepy vampires.

Kate leaves tomorrow morning at 6:15 AM (with me as taxi driver) for Denver to celebrate Ruth’s birthday, then onto San Francisco for a family practice CME.  I plan to do some garden work tomorrow, like put down weed preventer and remove some mulch, maybe rake a bit.  It’s still too early to do much, but I’ll be able to get started.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Garden, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

Natural Rhythms and Time

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53  bar falls 30.03 omph W dewpoint 32 Spring

            Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

Over to IHOP for some of that down home country fried food.  Always a treat.  Kate and I did our business meeting, deposited several thousand dollars in Wells Fargo and came back home.  Lois was here.  She commented on the amaryllis which have bloomed yet again for me.  I do nothing special to them except take them outside in the summer, then back inside in the winter.  At some point they decided its ready to bloom, so I put them in a window and water and feed them.

I have no tours tomorrow and so have a good stretch with no art tour work.  I like that. 

Went outside and looked at the trees.  Looks like at least five, two Norway Pines and two River Birch got trimmed back to the hose I used to protect them from sun scald.  Those rascally rabbits I presume.  In the other area, though, two white pines thrived during the winter, as did a Norway Pine, an oak and, I believe, a River Birch.  Feels good to see them growing.

The garlic has begun to push through the soil, a bit pale under the mulch, but I removed it and they will green up fast.  Garlic are hardy plants that like a cold winter and they had one this year.  They come to maturity in June/July.  Drying, then using our own garlic will be a treat.

Wandering around outside gets the horticulture sap rising.   I’m itchy to do stuff.

Signed up for a Natural Rhythms and Time course at the Arboretum.  It’s a symposium put on by the University’s Institute for Advanced Studies, a real find.  If you live in the Twin Cities, I recommend getting on its mailing list.

Faith and Spirituality, Family

Leaving A Profession Well Engaged.

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28  bar steady 30.34 0mph SSW dewpoint 24 Spring

             Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

“If you’re strong enough, there are no precedents.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

In spite of the perhaps down note I struck in Climbing the Wall yesterday, most of the time I realize that the decision I took when I met Kate, that is, to leave the ministry and concentrate on writing, took a kind of courage and strength many folks have, but never exercise.  At 40 years of age, to leave the comfort of a profession well engaged and one in which your prospects appear (at least to others) bright, is too much for most of us. 

Without Kate I could not have pulled it off, but I did find this remarkable woman at just the right time.  She has supported me every step of the way, including times when I thought I was climbing the wrong wall again.  Between the two of us we have managed to defy acculturation with her earning the large salary and me at home.  Both of us have brought necessary and key gifts to our marriage, neither more valuable than the other, though, again, the what it means to be male messages of my childhood and those what it means to be female messages from hers could have created shocks too strong to overcome.

It took strength on my part to pull away from the church, but it also took acceptance by Kate of an unusual, even aberrant path for me.  It took, in short, the strength of two of us.  As most of you who know me well know, this path has not been without difficulty, but it has been worth it.

Faith and Spirituality, Family

A Parent’s Pain, A Young Man’s Journey

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42  bar falls 30.04 2mph S dewpoint 20 Spring

Last Quarter Moon of Winds

Joseph called from OTS.  He sounded dispirited, demoralized.  Drill and military courtesy have tripped him up thus far.  His commander has talked about recycling him if he doesn’t improve.  He had strings on his uniform, two demerits.  Other things, two demerits.

After he hung up, I went into a tail spin myself.  When I drove over to Lauderdale for the Chinese New Year’s celebration, I found I couldn’t listen to the lecture on the Ming Dynasty because the obvious dismay in Joseph’s voice distracted me.

It reminds me, as I write this, of the first day of kindergarten.  I dropped him off and he began to cry, to run toward me as I turned to leave.  My instinct said turn around, scoop him up and take him home.  Try this next year.  Maybe.

The pain, the deep heart pain, a parent feels when their child struggles has got to be the worst agony of all.  Joseph is so dear to me.  My instinct is to get in the car, drive down to Maxwell AFB and take him out to dinner.  Have a talk, cheer him up.  Nope.  This is a road he has chosen and one only he can negotiate.  If necessary, of course, I’ll be there if it doesn’t work out, but until then he walks on his own.

I can, and will, write him letters and leave messages on his cell phone.  Kate and I will send him cookies, but the rest is up to him.

I’m ignorant when it comes to military life, so I don’t know how much of this is the process of breaking down and building back up or how much of it is genuine peril that he won’t finish.  One thing I have learned about him though is this, when he sets his heart on something he has a dogged persistence that makes things happen.  So, based on his past behavior, I have confidence in him now.  The pain, though, is still hard.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, General

Making Room for New Work

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34  bar steady 30.10 3mph NNE dewpoint 10 Spring

               Waning Gibbous Moon of Winds

“Our power is in our ability to decide.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

Since long ago college days, I have found primary life guidance from the existentalist perspective.  The existentialists believed, as do I, that we are responsible for our actions and always have a choice.  I know there are Buddhists and cognitive scientists who might differ with seeming clarity of the I in this case and, even, with the notion of free will it implies. Who knows? They may be right.  Until they convince me, (a circular notion if you think about it) I will continue to act as if I am acting.

Kate and I had our business meeting at the IHOP nearby.  Gourmet breakfasts for seniors.  Omlettes and pancakes.  Yum.  After concluding that we’ve done well of late, except for that excess in Hawai’i, we drove to Wells Fargo Bank where I got a medallion seal on a letter to Vanguard adding Kate to my account and putting the assets of the account in our living trust.  We set up the trust last October and I’m glad we’ve both lived long enough to finish moving our assets into it.

Ever since Monday I’ve been on a tear, getting this and that done.  Got a loan.  Got the beneficiary stuff completed.  Filed tax stuff.  Cleaned out my in-box.  Sent an e-mail to Headwaters Parish about my upcoming preaching assignment there on April 13th.  Set up the hydroponics and am into the third chapter of the large Permaculture Design book by Bill Molison.

All this deck clearing provides, eventually, room for new work.  Perhaps a novel, certainly outdoor work later this month, more reading in Taoism and art history.  Whatever.

Family, Memories

History Changes the Past

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35  bar steady 30.04 2mph WSW dewpoint 26 Spring

              Waning Gibbous Moon of Winds

History changes the past.  Comic books were bad, bad, bad when I was a kid.  I knew this because my mother told me so.  I could read Tarzan and a couple of others I can’t recall, but never Batman, Superman, or any of the darker comic fare.  Like many kids I hid the Superman and others inside my stacks of Tarzans.  Also, like many in those days, when Marvel comics came out I was a teen-ager and Mom was no longer a taste-maker in my world.  The Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, the Silver Surfer and my personal favorite, Dr. Strange became staples in my library alongside War and Peace, Crime and Punishment.

Only in the past couple of months have I learned why comics were bad.  Fredric Wertham, a German born immigrant and psychiatrist, saw Superman and the superhero ilk as sub rosa evocations of the Übermensch, Nietzsche’s man who transcended morality and who Nazi’s believed justified their crimes. 

Well, all I can say is, that Fredric must not have read a Superman comic.  Superman fought for Truth, Justice and the American Way.  Any kid who watched the TV program could tell you that.  Batman was too troubled to be an ubermensch or an undermensch. 

This history has changed my past.  I always thought it was just a pacifist quirk of Mom’s that she restricted my comic reading, after all I learned from her to carry bugs outside in a kleenex and liberate them.  But no, it was another parenting influence, like Dr. Spock, only this one was a psychiatrist who probably believed Freud had it right after all.  It helps me see Mom as a parent, a person searching for advice on how to raise her children, how to keep them from harmful influences. 

Boy, when I think of the fifties I realize how few really harmful influences seemed available, at least in Alexandria, Indiana.  No  rap.  Few drugs.  They weren’t on our radar.  An STD might have been an additive for gasoline.

I began watching horror and science fiction movies as soon as I could scrape $.25 together to spend on my own.  I don’t know why Mom never stopped me from seeing those.  Or, maybe I didn’t tell her.  I can’t recall and she died when I was 17 so I never got a chance to ask her.

Family, Garden, Politics, Travel

Airlines Not Required to Provide Food, Water, Clean Toilets or Fresh Air

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42 bar steep rise 29.71 1mph WNW dewpoint 28  Spring

           Waxing Gibbous Moon of Winds

We soaked the rock wool seed pellets in 5.0 ph water.  This will neutralize the natural high alkalinity of the rock wool. Tomorrow I’ll sow seeds from a lettuce mixture we got at Seed Saver’s Exchange.  Tomorrow, too, the tomato seeds will got in the peat pots.  Action on the indoor garden and some (the tomato seeds) on the outdoor garden proceeds apace.

The library provided a couple of books on DVD for Kate and her drive to Nevada, Iowa over the weekend.  She’s doing a sort of homecoming/reunion thing.  Meanwhile I’ll celebrate Chinese New Year’s in Lauderdale.

The beat goes on.

In the ongoing journal of outrage at the way things are, this from today’s newswire: 

A federal appeals court has rejected a law requiring airlines to provide food, water, clean toilets and fresh air to passengers trapped in a plane delayed on the ground.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that New York’s new state law interferes with federal law governing the price, route or service of an air carrier. It was the first law in the nation of its kind.

The appeals court said the new law was laudable but only the federal government has the authority to enact such a regulation.

The law was challenged before the appeals court by the Air Transport Association of America, the industry trade group representing leading U.S. airlines.