Category Archives: Art and Culture

Aging, Art and Culture, Weather +Climate

All Miked Up

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Beltane                                 Waxing Planting Moon

I completed my last tours for three weeks this afternoon.  This was an Elderhostel group, now called Exploritas for some reason.  They fitted me up with a microphone and transmitter; I tuned to channel E and began the tours.  As a hearing impaired person, I know how valuable these things can be, especially if there is any echo or other transient noise.

The Asia tours went well with lots of questions, interest and stickiness in that some folks kept with me to one more set of objects after the tour had already gone over 20 minutes.  The second, a treasures of European art, felt less vibrant, but it was at 1:00 pm, after lunch and 3 hours into the groups stay at the museum.  I know I collapsed when I got home, tired from all the time on my feet.  My suspicion is that they were also tired.

Kate takes off on Tuesday for San Francisco, so I’ve planned a couple of weeks close to home.

Looks we may get some free irrigation, cloud style, not piped.  I’m in favor.

I’m awake now, my nap was deep.  Onto the treadmill.

Aging, Art and Culture, GeekWorld, Weather +Climate

Hostel Elders

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Beltane                                  Waxing Planting Moon

Two tours today with an elderhost group from Portland, Oregon.  The first involves the Asian collection, the second highlights of European art.   I enjoy Asian tours since I have spent a lot of time with the collection, Asian history and literature.  I also enjoy the freedom of selecting objects for a highlights tour, which can include objects that seem interesting at that time.

My brand new router acted up yesterday and I lost my internet connection.  Minny, an Indian young woman working at 8:30 pm her time, walked me through how to resolve the issue.  Took the usual hour or so after calling Comcast, eliminating the modem or their servers as the problem.  They connected me to Netgear.  It was, as far as tech service goes, a quite reasonable process.

Looks like we’re about to have hot, muggy weather.  That’s the good part about living in Minnesota, without leaving home we can visit several different climates over the course of the year.  This week we will imitate the muggy south.

Art and Culture, Poetry

The world still smells of lilacs

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Beltane                             Waxing Planting Moon

from a difficult time in my life:lilacs-10340

The world still smells of lilacs

A star rises from my heart

Into the dark, dark sky.

You and I.

As other celestial objects

Wheel and slowly turn

The star shines.  An urn

Reflects the star light,

It contains the dust

what remains of us.

The star o’er sheep once played

A hope that grew

From a babe into

A savior, a christ,

A man who loved and died.

It watches as we are tried

In the crucible of time

And found wanton.

Left for abandon.

Oh, well.  I loved you once.

The star traverses the sky

Watching, as we die

The death of personal crucifixion

A penalty which seems too harsh.

Yet, a bird sings on the marsh.

The sun rises rosy-fingered,

Eggs are hatching.

Gates are latching.

The world still smells of lilacs

Aging, Art and Culture, Bees, Friends, Great Work, Health, Humanities, Woolly Mammoths, Writing

When Do Many Avocations Become a Vocation?

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Beltane                                       Waning Flower Moon

Beekeeping, it seems to me, must always fall under the avocational** rather than hobby* definition, because it engages one’s time in a manner similar to an occupation, only perhaps not in as time intensive a way.  Under the latter definition I have an avocational interest in gardening, writing, art, religion, politics and now Latin.
Add them all together, as I do in my life, and the result is a vocation composed of many parts integrated through my particular participation in them.

I like the idea of a hobby as an Old World falcon, that is, engaging the world with grace and speed, stooping now and then to pluck a prize from the earth below then returning to some nest high and remote to enjoy it.

Whoa.  Worked out last night at the new, amped up level, after advice given to me by an exercise physiologist.  My polar tech watch which monitors my heart rate began to fade so I didn’t have a reliable way of checking my heart rate.   Guess I overworked myself because when I finished dizziness hit me and nausea soon followed.  Kate was home last night so she took care of me, eventually giving me a tab of my anti-nausea med.  That calmed things down, but didn’t put me right.  So I went to bed early.  Even this morning my stomach was sore, like someone had removed it and wrung it out like a dish rag.  Kate says I may have too little fluid during the day yesterday combined with salty foods.  Combined with the more vigorous workout it upset my body’s homeostasis.  It put me temporarily in the same place as the benign positional vertigo.  No fun.  No fun at all.

Lunch today with Paul Strickland.  He still doesn’t know for sure why his hemoglobin levels dropped so far.  He had a five-hour iron infusion last week and his color is better as are other symptoms.  We talked about his and Sarah’s place in Maine which has the possibility of a large LNG port being created nearby.  This is Eastport, Maine, roughly, and borders Canada, so the Canadian government has a voice as well as environmental groups.  Sounds horrific, an example of big corporate power taking on a relatively weak local government.  Bastards.

More sleep after.  I have returned to near normal but I’m going to skip the workout tonight just to be sure.

I have never sought nor do I plan to seek retirement though most folks would call me retired and I so call myself at times in order to give folks a handle easily understood.

At 6:00 pm I’m going to my first meeting of the Minnesota Hobby Beekeeper’s Association. It raises an interesting question for me about the difference between a hobby and an avocation.

The first two definitions here are of the word hobby:

*1. Etymology: Middle English hoby, from Anglo-French hobel, hobé
Date: 15th century

: a small Old World falcon (Falco subbuteo) that is dark blue above and white below with dark streaking on the breast

2. Etymology: short for hobbyhorse
Date: 1816
This one comes from an entry on avocation:

: a pursuit outside one’s regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation

** Etymology: Latin avocation-, avocatio, from avocare to call away, from ab- + vocare to call, from voc-, vox voice — more at voice
Date: circa 1617   : a subordinate occupation pursued in addition to one’s vocation especially for enjoyment
Art and Culture, Family, Great Work, Politics

A Gray Monday

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Beltane                                Waning Flower Moon

Business meeting.  Over to a flooring store to schedule the replacement of carpet in the small bedroom that will become Kate’s long-arm quilting room.  Lunch at Chili’s where the music was so loud I could barely hear myself think, literally.  When my one ear gets crammed full of noise, I find processing  thought difficult. Would be a good hell for me.  Lots of interesting conversation happening next to a loud waterfall.

Grocery store, too.  I’ve done regular, that is weekly, grocery shopping since seminary days when I used to cook for the whole floor of students.  Most of the time I’ve enjoyed it, something about being able to make choices and the diversity of a supermarket.  These days though I’ve begun to find it a nuisance, a repetitive task with little to commend it.  Maybe that will change, or perhaps I’ll be able to reframe it.

How bout that world out there, eh?  Oil pumping into the Gulf where it has begun to tar birds, clog up the wetlands and ruin shrimping and oyster farming.  Volcanoes in Iceland wrecking havoc with airplanes.  Snow in Minnesota in May.  A frost, too.  Gov. Pawlenty’s cruel cuts in the state’s budget overturned by our Supreme Court–with two weeks left in the legislative session.  Big fun at the capitol.  Enough snow on the East Coast over the last winter to confuse the debate in the Senate over a climate bill.   Not to mention the usual run of human misery and suffering.

I’m impressed right now with a political approach that takes into account particulars, that is individual suffering, the Gulf shrimp, the passengers and airlines troubled by the Icelandic ash plumes while acknowledging the need for universal abstractions like equality, justice, human rights.  I’m impressed with this approach because it doesn’t exist.   More on this at another point.

Art and Culture, Family, Health, Humanities, Letters

Transformations

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Beltane                                       Waning Flower Moon

A calmer day today.  After the bee work I planted bok choy and monkshood, finished raking the potato patch level, dead-headed tulips and daffodils.  A productive day.  The stuff I protected last night survived the frost well, though some of the coleus got nipped a bit the night before and I forgot three coleus plants in the park.  They don’t look great, but I think they’ll survive.

I said the other chapter 14 in Wheelock was half way through the book.  Not quite.  Chapter 20 is halfway.  It’s still a steep learning curve and that’s what I like.  Even the 9 verses of the Metamorphoses I’ve translated have already given me a deeper appreciation for the whole project Ovid set himself.  He correlates the painful and often vindictive transformations he records in the book with the kind of transformations the Gods have made to the whole of creation.  A dark thesis.

Kate’s hip is giving her fits.  I’m really glad she has the surgery scheduled for June 30th.  Won’t come too soon.

Art and Culture, Bees, Garden

The Garden, The Bees, And Touring

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Beltane                                            Waning Flower Moon

After closer checking, all of the vegetables I’ve already planted can stand a light frost, most even a heavier one.  So, no worries there.  The herbs will require a blanky tomorrow night, as will the coleus Kate planted in the front.  Otherwise, we’ll be fine.  A few flowers will die, but that doesn’t kill the plant.  This is, again, a way that the world outside my door keeps my attention.

I will delay planting the potato/bush bean combination bed until this cold snap passes and the tomatoes and peppers haven’t come yet.  Oops.  I did, though, plant one potato670050210pepper plant come to think of it.  It will need a cover.  (the potato bed after soil amendment)

The Minnesota Hobby Bee Keepers Association does educational evenings once a month and allows new beekeepers to interact with veterans.  I plan to start attending on Tuesday night.  They will be discussing colony division, not discussing only, but also dividing a colony at the UofM’s on bee yard at the intersection of Larpentur and Cleveland.  We have to take our bee suits so we can watch up close.  I need a mentor, perhaps I’ll find one there.

The first tour of the day today, a group from St. Paul Central organized by Vitris Lanier, never showed up.  They never called.  Weird.  My second tour, my first ArtRemix tour, had eleven young women and a teacher.  These were students for whom the world of art was foreign territory, at least at first.  As the tour went on though, their curiosity got the better of them and they wanted to see how the Wu family reception hall was reassembled and what was in the Scholar’s study, then the garden.  We went upstairs to the Salon and Shonibare’s dress, then onto the dec arts gallery at their insistence.  All in all these kids developed an interest in what was in the museum and I went along to help them explore.  A successful tour, though it had little to do with ArtRemix.

Aging, Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, GeekWorld

Every Life Is A Universe

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Beltane                                      Waning Flower Moon

As you can tell, cybermage Bill Schmidt has contributed again to this blog.  He set me up on WordPress and has updated this software from time to time, including the new photograph.  The old one has only been retired, not eliminated.  We would like to find a couple of more photographs I could rotate over the course of year, perhaps a seasonal array.  Thanks again, Bill.

In the docent lounge today I saw Wendy talking with Linda.  This was a moment to remind us that we can never tell what lurks in the life of people we see casually from a distance.  These two women talking, not remarkable.  A woman recently treated for breast cancer and another whose son recently died of an overdose of oxycontin talking, more remarkable.  It took my breath away.

I’ve spoken with both of them over the last few weeks and I can only say that the resilient and yet unblinking attitude they both have is a testament to the human spirit.  We never know the full story of those we meet, even those closest to us, because the inner life exists encased in an impenetrable place, the mind and heart of another.   Still, we do get clues, signals from the interior and they often come in moments of tragedy.

(Pissaro:  Conversation)

One of the truest things I have ever read is that each death is an apocalypse for an entire universe dies each time a human dies.  This makes these encounters with it more telling, for the stakes are so high.  So, the next time you see two people engaged in casual conversation, pause a moment to celebrate this oh so simple, oh so magnificent act.

Art and Culture, Friends, Health

Marx and Global Art

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Beltane                                              Waning Flower Moon

I checked and rechecked my Latin today and still had a couple mistakes; but, mostly it was much improved over last week’s work.  Greg and I also made our way through 4 more verses of the Metamorphoses; if I count right that leaves only 14, 991 or so to go.  That was the morning.

When I finished, Kate put a blue sack in my hand and I headed off to the MIA.  The sack had a grilled cheese sandwich, a banana, mochi, pickles and a diet rootbeer.  I polished that off on the way while listening to a very interesting lecture on Marx’ theory of alienation.  When I’ve had a chance to absorb it a bit more, I’ll write about it here.

At the museum I attended a lecture on contemporary art with an emphasis on its global expression.  The woman, Kristine Stiles, has impressive academic credentials and has compiled a key text for the study of contemporary art:  Theory and Documents of Contemporary Art.  She tried to stuff a consideration of Until Now and ArtRemix into an already existing lecture on her new book, World Trends in Global Art Since 1945.  It was too much.  She spoke fast, trying to finish, leaving little room for the audience to write or absorb.  Even so, there was a lot of interest and it will help frame tours of the Until Now exhibit when I have to begin.

(much of the contemporary art in Vietnam uses socialist realism, sometimes done on billboards, but also, sometimes using oil paints on silk.)

Spoke a moment with Wendy Depaolis who had surgery February 1st.  She looks great and credits her exercise and healthy eating.  Something’s working well for her.

Art and Culture, Family

A Man of Exile, A Poet of Human Dignity

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Beltane                                          Waning Flower Moon

The first hours of today I put together an ArtRemix public tour for this Friday.  The learning curve is still steep, but I’m beginning to get a feel for contemporary art.  The Until Now show has many fine pieces, but the ArtRemix showcases genuine leaders among contemporary artists:  Kehinde Wiley, Yinka Shonibare, Sharon Core, Meyer Waisman, Ai Weiwei, Nam Paik to name a few.  Getting my head and heart around this new work has been a lot of fun.

Kate and I had a business meeting, planning for her surgery and getting ready for her trip to San Francisco at the end of May.

After that I had a nap, then drove into the MIA for a lecture by Siah Armajani.  He’s a local artist, having lived here since the early 1960’s, but his reputation is global.  A former philosophy student and teacher as a well an artist and architect, he spoke today of his journey as an artist:  “From 1968 to 2000 my art was functional, available, public and open…It is best typified by the Whitney Bridge for the Walker Art Institute.  After 2000 my art became forward, closed, non-available and personal.”  Why?  He said that in the early years he tried to hid his emotions, feelings, his angst and political opinions.  He wanted to be anonymous.  After 2000 he wanted to show his feelings, his emotion, his political positions and his angst.  The work best typifying that stage of his work, in his opinion, is his piece in the Until Now show.  It is an homage to Giacometti and Theodore Adorno.  This is the last of this work, rooms, and he will begin soon to work on his next project, tombs.  (this work is similar in conception to his work in the Until Now show.)

He’s funny, brilliant, creative and a bit sad.  He wore a tweed jacket over a plain black shirt, black slacks.  I happened to park behind him and saw him get out of his black Audi sedan.  There’s more to say about him, but I’ll reserve that for later.

The gallery in which his installation sits has two other very powerful pieces.  One a video installation of women walking through a wall of water and the other a sort of reliquary to a living Indian poet, Gieve Patel.  Here’s the first line of a few printed out in this work:  We shall not find a tragic end beyond the mountains where the ancient gods are buried.  I believe that, too.