Category Archives: Great Work

Coronavirus, Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Health, Judaism, Mountains, permaculture, Plants, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Tarot

Land, Sea, and Sky

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Yule and the Moon of the New Year

Where’s the Webb? 99.79% to L2 at 8 am MST. 1900 miles to go. Mission Day 30. Speed now: 450 mph.

Next

“L2 Insertion Burn

Mid Course Correction Burn (MCC2) – Begins L2 Insertion

Nominal Event Time: Updated: Launch + 30 days

Status: Schedule and Post MCC2 Coverage

Activities to plan and execute MCC2 – the insertion burn for Webb’s L2 orbit. MCC2 corrects any residual trajectory errors and adjusts the final L2 orbit.

The James Webb Space Telescope is launched on a direct path to an orbit around the second Sun-Earth Lagrange Point (L2), but it needs to make its own mid-course thrust correction maneuvers to get there. This is by design, because if Webb gets too much thrust from the Ariane rocket, it can’t turn around to thrust back toward Earth because that would directly expose its telescope optics and structure to the Sun, overheating them and aborting the science mission before it can even begin. Therefore, Webb gets an intentional slight under-burn from the Ariane and uses its own small thrusters and on-board propellant to make up the difference.

There are three mid-course correction (MCC) maneuvers: MCC-1a, MCC-1b, and MCC-2. This final burn, MCC-2, which inserts Webb into its L2 halo orbit.” NASA.

 

Monday gratefuls: Marina Harris and her cleaning crew. Alan’s recovery from Covid. His role in the Colorado Ballet. The Ancient Brothers Ode to Joy this morning. Ali Baba’s gyros. Cancer. Prostate and otherwise. Rigel and her meds. January. Winter in its fullness in Minnesota. Colorado has cold December and snowy February, March, April.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Love

Tarot: will require its own post.

 

This damned event keeps getting new legs, fresh legs. In history the U.S. response to Covid will confound future generations. Why didn’t they take it seriously? Even after so many dead. So many hospitalized. So many left with lingering troubles.

Not to mention of course the number of the unmasked, unvaccinated who want to take over the government. I’ve become news shy. Like many of you, I know. Who wants to read about the brutal murder of Caesar or the Beer Hall Putsch? That is dangerous, of course. It is the uninformed and the passive who underwrite with their absence the fevered path of the few.

There is a small herd of Mule Deer Does who’ve been coming up the utility easement to eat needles off slash Derek dumped there. When they’re here, the scene becomes instant backwoods. An over the river and through the woods tableau. They’re here right now. The Buck, an eight-pointer, was here this morning. Neither Kep nor Rigel paid attention. Just as well. A chance encounter between a Dog and a Buck can result in injury or death for the doggy.

Kep noticed them. He walked through Snow, looked. Gave a short yip and came toward the house. The Deer munched Pine Needles, secure on the other side of our fence. Kep came in.

Rigel has begun to hesitate to walk up the five stairs to the kitchen level. She’s fallen, slid several times and she has the new meds on board. They’re supposed to help, but it appears to me that they’re making her feel strange. Doesn’t help confidence.

With Rigel’s legs and arthritis and spinal owies becoming more evident. With Kep’s nose undergoing x-rays and possible biopsy on Tuesday it looks like my companions may have rough water ahead. Since they are my grief counselors, sleeping partners, and the biggest part of my interaction with the living world, their troubles are very much my troubles. I’m not getting ahead of anything. Just aware that they, like Kate, like me, are mortal creatures. Like Abraham Lincoln.

Simcah Torah, Congregation Beth Evergreen. 2021

Thinking about donating money. What it means. How I decide. Most of my donations go to Congregation Beth Evergreen. There I’m saying yes to community, yes to friends, yes to thousands of years of history, yes to a religious culture cultivated by this unusual gathering. I don’t feel like I’m supporting the church. I’m supporting the chemistry of a place that accepts me and loves me as I am.

Otherwise I give a bit here, a bit there. Some to Dog shelters, some to performing arts organizations, some to politicians and some to political organizations.

Deciding that next year and thereafter I’m going to focus my giving beyond CBE in a different way. My largest non-CBE donation was to the Land Institute where Wes Jackson and his crew push toward perennial Crops and no-till agriculture. I’m gonna lean toward these radical solution organizations, ones working with the Soil, with Plants, with agriculture. I value the courage it takes to stand against farming practices that seem so entrenched as to be unmovable. And I value the creative thinking that the Wendell Berry’s, the Mary Oliver’s, the Aldo Leopold’s, the Thomas Berry’s, the Wes Jackson’s represent.

So this year. CBE and those working on long-term, universally applicable solutions to systemic problems in agriculture and protection of our World: Land, Sea, and Sky.

Dogs, Family, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Great Work, Holidays, Memories, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Sierra Club, Weather +Climate

Radical, man

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Samain and the Holiseason Moon

Black Mountain

Monday gratefuls: Rigel. Her head on my pillow most of the night. Kep, so happy to get up. Orion of the morning. Skeletal Aspens. Lodgepoles waiting with spring loaded Branches. For Snow. Shadow Mountain. Solid Rock beneath my house, my feet. Black Mountain. Which tucks in the Sun.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mitzvah

Tarot: See notes from my hexagram spread next post

 

Holiseason. A primer. I discovered holimonth 15 years ago. That was December with its abundance of holidays. Then I extended the idea to holiseason. (discovered later that this was a word anyhow. But, hey.) Holiseason by my reckoning runs from Samain on October 31st to the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6th. [A Kate aside here. She left Sunday School for good when one of her teachers, 4th or 5th grade, kept pronouncing the holiday epi-fanny.]

Holiseason contains multiple holidays, many of the holidays of light like Divali, Christmas, Hannukah. Thanksgiving. Posada. Advent. Kwanza. Winter Solstice. Gregorian New Year. Dia de los muertos. All Saints. And, of course, Samain. It’s my favorite time of the year. Lots to celebrate.

Reflecting on my radical career. One thing in particular. A long time ago, either 1975 or 1980, I attended a conference. Liberation Theology in the Americas. There were two and I can’t recall which one I attended. Cornel West. Harvey Cox. Lettie Russel. My roommate was a priest from Guatemala. Lots of impassioned speeches. Marxist analysis. Great meal conversations. Bus tours by a Detroit Socialist party that had made some political progress.

At the time I thought the conference was important for the clergy and theologians. Only later did I realize that the most radical moment came from a member of the Iroquois Confederacy, a medicine man in a 700 year lineage of medicine men.

At the end of the conference he performed a ritual typical of the Confederacy, planting a pine tree as a sign of peace. In the original rituals tomahawks and bows and arrows and knives would have been placed into the hole, covered in soil, the tree planted on top of them.

Afterward, and this part of the story I’ve told many times, he gave a long prayer. I listened carefully. You can read it below.*

When he finished, I went up to him and asked, “I noticed you didn’t mention the two-leggeds.” Oh, he said. Yes. The people are the most fragile of all. We need all the other spiritual forces healthy if we are to survive. So we pray for them. If they are well, so are we.

That was the radical moment at this most radical of all theological gatherings. I see it now. I carried on with work for economic justice: affordable housing, supporting unions, worker owned cooperative businesses like food co-ops and grocery stores and drug stores. Restaurants. Direct financial aid to the unemployed seeking work. Until.

Kate and I attended a Physicians for Social Responsibility conference in Iowa City. On climate change. This was in the mid-1990’s. A national conference they had now well-known figures in the climate change movement presenting. Each day we would go back to our hotel and express wonder that this science was not public. And, it wasn’t then. At least not enough for anyone to notice.

No habitable planet. No need for justice. I decided then that the remainder of my political work would be on climate change. And so it was. But, I could have made the same realization back in 1975 or 1980. Had I listened to the Iroquois medicine man.

 

 

 

 

  •   Reimagining Faith: Tree of Peace

Spring                                                              Bee Hiving Moon

The essence of the Peacemaker legend follows as told by Mohawk chief Jake Swamp at the planting of a Tree of Peace in Philadelphia in 1986. “In the beginning, when our Creator made humans, everything needed to survive was provided. Our Creator asked only one thing: Never forget to appreciate the gifts of Mother Earth. Our people were instructed how to be grateful and how to survive. But during a dark age in our history 1000 years ago, humans no longer listened to the original instructions. Our Creator became sad, because there was so much crime, dishonesty, injustice and war. So Creator sent a Peacemaker with a message to be righteous and just, and make a good future for our children seven generations to come. He called all warring people together and told them as long as there was killing there would be no peace of mind. There must be a concerted effort by humans for peace to prevail. Through logic, reasoning and spiritual means, he inspired the warriors to bury their weapons and planted atop a sacred Tree of Peace”

It is said that the Tree of Peace given by the Peacemaker symbolizes the Great Law of Peace. The symbol is a great white pine, and it is said to shelter all nations who commit themselves to Peace. Beneath the tree are buried the weapons of war of the original five nations. Above the tree is an eagle that sees far. Also, four long roots stretch out in the four sacred directions, and they are called the white roots of peace. The Peacemaker invited any man or nation desiring to commit to the Great Law of Peace to trace the roots to their source, and take refuge beneath the Tree of Peace. The Peacemaker’s teachings stressed the power of reason to assure righteousness, justice and health. Faithkeeper Oren Lyons, an Onondaga, states that the Great Law of Peace includes freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right of women to participate in government.

The seed-idea underlying all Iroquois philosophy is that peace is the will of the Creator, and it is the ultimate spiritual goal and natural order of things. The prayer below comes from the people of the Iroquois Confederacy. The prayer is based on the tradition of interconnectedness that the Iroquois or Haudenosaunee possess. This prayer is said to be the backbone of the Iroquois culture. The prayer expresses the belief that rather than take the world for granted, it must be respected, and that we must thank all living things in order to align our minds with creation and the Creator. Usually, a faithkeeper is selected to share the prayer of thanksgiving at the opening and closing of social, government, and ceremonial events. The prayer is comprised of three levels:

 

Spiritual Forces on the Earth, Spiritual Forces in the Sky, Spiritual Forces beyond the Sky

The Spiritual Forces on the Earth are:
the People, our Mother Earth, the Waters, the Fish, the Grasses, the Plants,
our Sustenance, the Animals, the Trees, and the Birds.
Throughout the year we bring our minds together as one
We give thanks to one another
All year long she gives us all that we need

We give thanks to our Mother Earth
Everyday it quenches our thirst
We give thanks to the waters In winter it replenishes the lakes.
We give thanks to the waters

During the year they purify the lakes
We give thanks to the fish
When the wind turns warm a green blanket appears
We give thanks to the grasses
In early summer the flowers turn sweet
We give thanks to the medicinal plants
In early summer they help us survive
We give thanks to the food plants
In midsummer we dance for the green corn
We give thanks to our sustenance
In midsummer we dance for the red beans
We give thanks to our sustenance
During the winter their pelts warm the soul
We give thanks to the animal creatures
Since early times they have been our companions
We give thanks to the animal creatures
In early spring we are glad they reappear
We give thanks to the animal creatures
At one point in time it became a symbol of peace
We give thanks to the trees
At the end of spring the sap will flow
We give thanks to the trees
In early morning they carry messages
We give thanks to the birds
In times of danger he warns the people
We give thanks to the birds
In the summer they sing sweet songs

We give thanks to the birds Spiritual Forces in the Sky are:
the Four Winds, our Grandfather Thunder, our Elder Brother Sun, our Grandmother Moon, and the Stars
Throughout the seasons they refresh the air
We give thanks to the Four Winds
In early summer they bring the falling drops
We give thanks to our Grandfather Thunder
Every morning he brings light and warmth
We give thanks to our Elder Brother Sun
Every night she watches over the arrival of children
We give thanks to our Grandmother Moon
In the night their sparkle guides us home
We give thanks to the stars
The Highest Spiritual Forces beyond the Sky are: our Protectors, Handsome Lake, and the Creator
All the time they remind us how to live
We give thanks to our protectors
At one point in time he brought back the words of the Creator
We give thanks to Handsome Lake
Everyday we will share with one another all of these good things
We give thanks to the Creator.
– Prayer of Thanksgiving, Iroquois Confederacy

Family, Great Wheel, Great Work, Health, US History, Weather +Climate

Colorado Can Lead

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Ostara and the Ovid Moon of Metamorphoses

Wednesday gratefuls: Chipmunk wife. Snow. More. And, yet more. Vaccines. Diane and Mary. Formula 1. Netflix. Yin Yang Master. Biden at work. 45 in Florida, his natural habitat. The Woollies. Spring. The Great Wheel. Its turns. Celebrate.

Sparks of joy: Snow. Life itself.

 

The Snow coming down again. Like Minnesota rain, straight down in gentle punctuated lines. Sat watched it against the Lodgepoles yesterday afternoon. Their red Bark, their Branches beginning to droop, covered in Branch shaped dollops of white. The Japanese Ukiyo-e prints and some paintings often show Snow and Pine trees. This was the same. It was easy to imagine myself in the mountains of Akita Prefecture, Kep wandering around on genetic home territory.

Then. Spring snows. Not the harsh snows of December and January. Wet, yes, but coming as a confection rather than an invasion, even in the depths we’ve had over the last three weeks. It’s as if we’re being inundated by confectioner’s sugar, a big wire shaker somewhere overhead.

And, even better, as Kate just said: “I see Snow and I see no Fire.” May it be so. This helps. Better Spring moisture gives some protection during June, our month of greatest fire danger. Historically. In July the monsoons come and soak the afternoons. Though. Has not happened but once since we’ve been here.

Kate has swollen salivary glands. Chipmunk face. Or, mumps. But she’s not been anywhere to catch the mumps. She had mumps as a child, anyhow. Good thing we already have an appointment for her at 1:00 pm today. My annual physical follows. Good times at New West Physicians. Painful enough to require an Oxy. Unusual for Kate.

Boulder continues to be in the news. A Libertarian ethos reinforced by cowboy culture is in a scrum with the progressive politics of metropolitan Coloradans. Boulder is the epicenter of this Mountain state’s radical left, as Berkeley is to California. I don’t know if that has anything to do with the shooter’s motive, but even if not, it’s still a bloody metaphor for the tension.

I do think there are ways through this impasse. At least here. I’ll mention the primary one I see today. Coloradans are outdoor oriented. Even if you never get out to hike the trails, ski the runs, or camp in a Mountain Meadow, the Mountains loom in the background or foreground. The Skies turn blue and the Sun shines in that bright, cheerful Colorado way. We all care about the wildlife, the rugged valleys, most of which we will never see.

Rancher culture in particular loves the land, too. The way forward that I see presses this love of the outdoors, of the wild things that live here, into a compact for a Colorado future both wild and free. The drivers for this compact will include a need for better water policy, climate change, changes in the nature of agriculture, especially toward regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture has a foot hold in the Flint Hills of Kansas. What they do there can work here.

This idea and its friends excite me, make me want to get into the mix. Colorado can lead the nation I think just because of the conflict and tension. Use the power and energy it generates to forge a covenant between metro and rural.

Commentary on the news, Denver, Great Work, Politics, US History

Convict Him

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Imbolc and the waning crescent of the Wolf Moon

Tuesday grateful: Dr. Leigh Thompson. Zoom. Mary and Diane. Winds auguring change in the weather. Blue Skies and Sun. Safeway pickup. Chili for the snow coming. Melons to cut up. Kate, always Kate. Impeached. Now convict. Go Senate. Vote to shame.

Sparks of joy: The thought of Puppies. Maybe a Puppy here? The brilliant Sun. Walking upstairs each morning to my library and writing studio. Remembering Gertie this morning with Kate. The trial in the Senate.

So obstructionist Senator Mitch McConnell thinks Marjorie Taylor Greene is a cancer on GOP country? Well, I say they’re both diseases that might well prove fatal to our democracy. If not, and I certainly hope not, it won’t be because they failed to take extremist stands when it served them well. Both of them. This is a splendid example of cancer calling the cancer cancer. A metastasized plague on both of their houses.

It ain’t over by a long shot. Imagine all those always Trumpers ought there right now. They’re adding extra flags to their pickups, buying up guns and ammo, donning camo and getting ready to join their friends at your state house. Well-armed militias my ass. These are armed gangs, thugs, waiting for a leader, 45 or someone else, to loose them on their enemies: libtards, Black and Brown and Red and Yellow, all those rainbow folks, politicians.

Oh, wait. 45 did that, didn’t he? That’s what this trial is about in the Senate. Incitement to insurrection. Right. I saw the movie. If they did that, stormed the U.S. Capitol in the name of Gadsen flag patriotism and Confederate Battle Flag dreams, sure seems like they’ll be willing to head into Denver, Sacramento, Indianapolis, Lansing (again).

No, even organized they’re not strong enough or smart enough to fight the U.S. military, but they don’t have to be. All guerillas everywhere know how to carry the fight in asymmetrical warfare. Hell, a lot of those AK47 carrying lunatics probably learned from the Vietcong when they were in ‘Nam. Can you spell irony?

These are our homegrown Al Qaeda’s, Hezbollah’s, ISIS’s. No, not Muslim. Oh, hell no. No rag head holy book for these geniuses. No, they follow the much more holy Q-anon script. Or the rantings of Rush Limbaugh or Alex Jones. If it looks like a cult, and quacks like a cult…

This is a long term problem. It’s not one that can be solved by executive order or Federal legislation. Good criminal investigations could cripple the Far Right, though.

Even then, we have to offer a better America to truly and finally counter them. We have to have a just America in which people of color no longer feel Derek Chauvin’s knee on their neck. We have to have a fair America where people of color, the rainbow folks, all left behind citizens have enough to eat, a place to sleep, health care, and the opportunity to not only train for a job but a job itself. In this America the silly buggers in red MAGA hats and American flag clothing will become irrelevant.

Defense and offense. Both will be necessary for years to come. We need to get on with it. Starting now.

Commentary on Religion, Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Feelings, Friends, Great Wheel, Great Work, Health, Holidays, News of the Strange, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History

Oh. We live in interesting times.

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Samain and the Moon of the New Year (and the great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter)

Saturday gratefuls: 32 days. 32! Nearly finished with the cds. A snowy, snow globe day. Rigel and Kep, our bed warmers. Kate. A wise woman. Smart, too. Vaccines. Coming to an arm near you. Soon. That light in the tunnel went up a bit in brightness. The star over Bethlehem explained? The Winter Solstice. Soon. Staycation.

 

Complex feelings. Friend Tom Crane talked a couple of days ago about the feelings that come up when considering climate change. Made me think about all of us right now. I’ve been labile this week, up and down. Unusual for me. If I get melancholy, I stay there a while. Up and bright? Ditto. But. Covid. Trump. Kate’s long illness. Climate change plus the long road ahead for our nation. Isolation from friends and loved ones.

Bet I’m not the only one experiencing complex emotions. Up. Vaccines. Down. 377,000 deaths. 250,000 + new cases a day. Up. 32 days! Down. Still 32 days left. Up. Renewable energy. Back into the Paris Accords. Down. Baked in heat. Record carbon emissions this year. Up. Jon and Ruth and Gabe on Google Meet. Down. Having to see them on Google Meet. Up. Many good days in a row for Kate. Down. Sudden fatigue yesterday. Up. Good days mean no nausea, no fatigue beyond the usual. Down. Stamina poor.

And these are the big drivers. Every day has mood changes. That unexpected money from the oil well! That crabby e-mail from a relative. Work or relationship stress. Kids. Dogs. Weather. Feelings of self-worth or self-worthlessness. Whatever triggers you. And we all have triggers.

Point. A complex web of stressors has us all dangling in our silken cocoons and each shake of the web warns us that the spider might be coming for her next meal. This is not normal. Where do we go? Out to eat? To a movie? Have friends over? A sabbath service? Take a vacation? Not for most of us. What’s the right metaphor? See-saw. Spider web. Thin ice with cracks. Fingernails on chalkboards. Whatever it is, this is a fraught time. An interesting time.

I’m giving myself permission to feel these movements, up and down, and to react to them. To not be hard on myself for not maintaining an up feeling in down times. Perhaps you need this permission, too.

Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Great Work, Health, Minnesota, Politics, US History, Weather +Climate, World History

Debates. From first principles.

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Samain and the Moon of the New Year (2021!)

Tuesday gratefuls: VRCC. Doggy care at a high level. Dr. Timian, Rigel’s doc when she was hospitalized. Rigel. Amber. And, Amber’s special bandages. Ruby and her heated seats. A now gone, happily, feeling of illness. Diane, from her sanctuary in San Francisco. The hermitage here on Shadow Mountain. Fresh Snow. A plowed driveway. Feelings, low, lower. Comfort in the loft. Games Kate and Charlie play. A raw version of life, hard and relentless. A joyful version: committed, cheerful, resilient. Fluctuating between them. 36 days.

 

When conservative columnists like George Will and Michael Gerson write provocative columns skewering Republicans and fellow conservatives (see this by Gerson, The moral hypocrisy of conservative leaders is stunning, as an example) and a politician like George Romney condemns the administration, next year’s trajectory becomes clearer. At its optimum liberals, radicals (I don’t like progressive. It hides.), and conservatives will all examine themselves beginning with first principles.

The conservatives, right now anyhow, seem to have the most honest dialogue started. May it continue. Liberals will have to admit that their “desire to govern” will gut meaningful change in at least three important areas: racial justice, radical police reform, and addressing economic inequities. Radicals will have to admit that their insistence in all or nothing too often, usually, results in nothing.

Of course, Covid must get our full attention until it abates, but that shouldn’t stop us from going into our respective camps and chewing the fat over a miserable four years of the American Experience. What about liberal leadership, policies, general stances, left the door open for a Trump? What needs refocusing? Especially following a decidedly liberal, world hailed Presidency, like Barack Obama’s.

I have three areas where liberalism has failed. The lackluster and Republican conceived medical system fix, Obamacare, or the ACA, did not fix or even mend a broken system. Yes, it delivered health insurance to some folks who needed it, but that’s a very low bar when you consider the mess of the public/private chaos we insist on calling a system. If you’ve had any frequent dealings with it, you’ll know the financial, bureaucratic, and logical hurdles required to get care. Not smart enough to know if Medicare for All is the solution, but I know that whatever we do must look more like a National Health Service than a cafeteria of options whose costs and efficacy we can’t determine.

How do we keep the public safe? The whole public, not just middle and upper middle class white neighborhoods. (The upper classes build walls and hire their own private security.) This is a debate that must be radical in its starting point. Bracket police. What do complex urban societies need to investigate and prosecute crime? To stop criminal activity while it’s happening? To attend well to mental health crises and in-home medical emergencies? To keep buildings safe from fire? To manage traffic, large events, disasters? Let’s put all solutions on the table from crazy dreamy to harsh and pragmatic ones. We need to rethink community safety and how to achieve it.

Economic inequities. A Green New Deal? OK, by me. Job retraining. Earned income tax credits? Guaranteed annual income? Reparations. A truly progressive tax code. Tax the wealthy at a level closer to the 1950’s and 1960’s. Put in place a reasonable inheritance tax to ensure against aristocratic pretensions. Rethink the value of work and workers. Shore up the union movement. Give employers incentive to hire under and inexperienced workers. Perhaps their first year or half year of salary could be subsidized.

We must have these debates. Conservatives, liberals, and radicals must gather among themselves and debate them. There must be a public dialogue. I use the word must. Why? Because these are core issues which speak to the safety and security of all Americans.

Are there other important issues? Oh, yes. Climate change. Foreign policy. Infrastructure development. To name three. And, yes, debates about these must go forward, and quickly, too.

There is much democratic work to be done. And much tin-pot dictator work to be undone. I see Trump’s time in office as a cry for help from a country in which certain bedrock matters like health, safety, and work have all been damaged by years of neglect and false promises. Let’s pay attention. Let’s insure neglect and false promises are not part of agenda. Beginning now.

Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Great Wheel, Great Work, Holidays, Our Land and Home, Plants, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Holiday Spirit(s)

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Samain and the Moon of Thanksgiving

Friday gratefuls: Sleep. Cribbage. Kate, always Kate. Rigel, who kept me warm last night. Kep, just because. Nordic Advent calendar by Jacquie Lawson. Advent. The days of our lives. Covid. 46 days. Ruth. Gabe. Jon. Jon’s birthday on the 10th. 52. Hanukkah begins the same day. Santa Claus. Yule logs. Christmas trees. Lights. Ornaments. Holly and ivy. Christmas music. Corny and classical. This wonder-full time.

 

Bloomberg. The magazine. Peak Oil is Suddenly Upon Us. Yet another reason Covid is a blessing. If climate change matters to you, this article is a bit of good news. It features the conclusion that peak oil is behind us by British Petroleum, BP. May it be so. And may we push it along.

Feeling glum has passed. Still ready for that holiday spirit though. That pagan holiday spirit. After all: Evergreen tree, lights, drinking and feasting and gifting, mistletoe, holly and ivy, being with family and friends. None of that in the New Testament. Well, ok. Gifts. The three wise guys. Otherwise it’s Saturnalia and Northern European traditions. Gotta get those decorations.

Cribbage. Playing more of it now. Something Kate and I enjoy. Will try rummikub, too. Just got two two player games: The Twilight Struggle and the Duel. Two more in the mail. Expecting a good while still until the all clear, go breathe on your neighbors without killing them. Keep changing things up a bit.

Kakun thoughts. In conversation with Kate. Trust first. Two leggeds all equal. Life precious. Stay at it. Learn. Serve. Protect. Educate. Create. Work as part of nature, not on it or in spite of it. See. See. Hear. Hear. Clunky so far, but maybe it’ll get smoothed out. I do have a family crest, somewhere. Not sure if it has a motto or not. I’ll try to track it down.

No election fraud. Ballots cast included President and down ballot races. Republicans did ok on down ballot, but the Presidential race is suspect? Come on, guys and gals. Geez.

Cinema and Television, Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Friends, Great Wheel, Great Work, Humor, Poetry, Third Phase, US History

Speak Across the Years

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Samain and the Thanksgiving Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: The Clan. Gathering in an hour. Tom and his gift book. His thinking of Ruth. The morning darkness lit by the Thanksgiving Moon. Orion and his great Dog pursuing the hunt toward Mt. Evans. 50 days until Trump leaves. Vaccines. The holidays of light. Needed to dispel the four years of ethical darkness. The gas heater here in the loft/studio. Emerson. Lao Tze. Camus. Hesse. Aldo Leopold. Wendell Berry. Wes Jackson. Thomas Berry. Rilke. Saints in my short, very short, tradition.

 

And your world, it’s rapidly changin’. Wow. Trump defeated. Vaccines looking good. Kate with almost a month of good days. Add your own spectacular news here.

However. Even rapid change is sometimes not enough. This month, this December, will require all the good feeling we can muster. For ourselves, those we love, those in our neighborhoods and communities. It will require all the festivals of lights we celebrate: Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza, New Year’s. It will require an extra effort to avoid a, “I’ll be dead by Christmas.” holiday season. Going home for Christmas may take on a new meaning unless we stay. at. home. wear. masks. distance ourselves from others. worship virtually. Flu. Covid. Cold. Holiday celebrations. = Potential disaster.

Why? Because the surge, that one where the Covid infections became a hockey stick graph like climate change? Is about to surge. According to the NYT this morning, all of California’s intensive care beds could be overwhelmed by mid-month. We’ve not seen the uptick from Thanksgiving travel. It’s coming. The same article says that we hit four million infections in November, more than double the previous record. 1.9 million. When? October. Both before the Thanksgiving holiday visits.

We’re in Monty Python’s Holy Grail. We can cross the bridge of death to a vaccine and Biden future but first we have to say just how fast the unladen swallow can fly. Or, Come up with capital of Assyria. If we’re wrong, well… I’ll give you a hint. Tell the gatekeeper that he needs to stay socially distanced, get his vaccine, cheer Biden at his inauguration (virtually), and, close the bridge, go home, and stay there.

Rereading some Camus. I’m mostly with him. His notion of the absurd. The universe rolls on with or without us. There is no meaning to life. In other words the universe does not have an Easter egg for us that, if only we look in unlikely places, will reveal itself, as in a computer game.

I part company with him on the notion that we cannot give meaning to our life. I believe we can give meaning to our own lives. We can choose, a critical idea in existentialism, to live for others, with others in spite of that ultimate absurdity of our situation.

Thanks to Tom for sending out this poem, Wendell Berry’s XI.

We can choose, as Wendell Berry asks us, to:

“Come,
willing to learn what this place,
like no other, will ask of you
and your children, if you mean
to stay. “This land responds
to good treatment…””  Wendell Berry, XI

He addresses this plea to these persons:

“The need comes on me now
to speak across the years
to those who finally will live here
after the present ruin…”

This is crossing another bridge of death, the one after Covid, the burning of our planet. I agree with Berry that there will be a life after we’ve ruined this one. It will be. So different. Not recognizable to us. Our grandchildren will know. And their children will know nothing else. Not that far away in human terms.

Go to a new tab, quick. Look up how fast an unladen swallow can fly. It just might save your life.

Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Friends, Great Work, Politics, Third Phase, US History

Happy and Pleased

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Samain and the Moon of Thanksgiving

Sunday gratefuls: Alan. Tom. The Ancient Ones. Honesty. Clarity. Friendship. Kep and Rigel keeping us warm over a cold night. When I woke up this morning, Kep’s head was next to mine. Orion and his great dog headed over Black Mountain to hunt. The great bear pointing to Polaris. The North. The West. Two directions I know personally, deeply. Adulting. The isolated Covid life. Buh bye orange one. Old friends, docent friends. Art. All of it. Ode’s. Jimmie’s. Rembrandt’s. Noguchi’s. (first thing that has impressed me about Melania.) Coltrane’s. Mozart’s. Nabokov’s. Tolstoy’s.

Resolved. Happily. Detriangulated. Whew. Being an adult can be so damned hard. Even at 73. Key? Trust. And, a helpful Kate.

I’m getting there. Trying to understand why 70,000,000 plus of my fellow citizens voted for he who shall not be named except in an indictment. Trying to understand what that means for the future of our nation. This week I’m going to start sorting through the tea leaves. 538. Politico. NYT. WP. Even Newsmax, the new go to conservative (wacko conservative) news site. Books like Upswing by Robert Putnam. Seeing what my conservative friends post on Facebook. Listening to the wind. Where will it go? This may be he who will not be named except in an indictment’s true wall. A wall dividing the American people rather than that other one stiff arming the poor and the suffering.

Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”:

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’”

A quick reference to this poem pointed out that what doesn’t like a wall is frost. Or, Frost. Or, me. Or, maybe, you.

It will be decades before these wounds can be mended. Like Frost’s neighbor there are so many of us who believe “Good fences make good neighbors.” So many who insist each time a fence or wall gets breached, we have to run, repair it, make it tight. Perhaps if we weren’t so quick to defend our field. Maybe this field we could let lay fallow for a few years. Let the wall stay down for awhile. Maybe it would stay down. We could walk back and forth, visit each other’s farms. Yards. Political parties. Find a way that supports the nation rather than our faction.

I say that, yes, and mean it. But, I also say, burn their house’s down, salt their fields, and deport all of them. We are none of us one thing.

Let’s tear that Blue wall down. Replace it with a renewed culture of protect and serve. Yes, really. That slogan’s good enough already. Let’s figure out how to implement it for real in our cities.

Raise the minimum raise. Put a wall between our fellow citizens and poverty. Yes, wall it right out of our country. We can use the stones from taking down these other walls. This will require rethinking capitalism. I’m a fan, as I’ve said before, of a mixed economy*. Read Scott Nearing’s Living the Good Life. The question is the mix. We’ve not got it right here. And, we need to.

We’ll build solar farms, windmills, geothermal sites. We’ll switch off the internal combustion engines and leave the oil in the ground. Change the offshore drilling platforms to research laboratories, small countries, hell, even hotels. We’ll use carbon capture technology to remove carbon from the atmosphere. We’ll stop putting up a carbon wall between ourselves and space. Cool ourselves down.

That South Dakota nurse. Did you read her story about dying patients who still don’t believe in Covid? Well, here’s the wall we need right now. A wall around each home until at least January 2nd. Get the holidays behind us before we get over our self-imposed or state-imposed lockdowns. Or, maybe a wall until the vaccines have been given at least to us old folks and medical personnel. Or, maybe until, this is the one that makes the most sense to me, we flatten the curve. We’ve never done it. We can do it. We need to do it.

So. Let’s build a few walls, tear down others. Get to the point where we don’t need them. Soonest. But, hard.

*A mixed economy is variously defined as an economic system blending elements of a market economy with elements of a planned economy, free markets with state interventionism, or private enterprise with public enterprise.[1][2][3][4] While there is no single definition of a mixed economy, one definition is about a mixture of markets with state interventionism, referring specifically to a capitalist market economy with strong regulatory oversight and extensive interventions into markets. Another is that of an active collaboration of capitalist and socialist visions.[5] Yet another definition is apolitical in nature, strictly referring to an economy containing a mixture of private enterprise with public enterprise.[6] Alternatively, a mixed economy can refer to a socialist economy that allows a substantial role for private enterprise and contracting within a dominant economic framework of public ownership. This can extend to a Soviet-type planned economy that has been reformed to incorporate a greater role for markets in the allocation of factors of production.[7] Wiki

Colorado, Commentary on the news, Dogs, Family, Great Wheel, Great Work, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The West, US History, Weather +Climate

Colorado

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Fall and the Moon of Radical Change

Thursday gratefuls: Kate’s stoma site looking good. Rigel off antibiotics. Her gut can relax. Rigel early in the morning, barking as loud as she can. Why? Oh, why. No idea. Mac and cheese with ham. Comfort food. The East Troublesome Fire. The Cameron Fire. The Calwood Fire. Reminding us that climate change is real and not tomorrow.

Wildfires are us. The West is burning. Precipitation blocked by warming oceans. Trees dried by low humidity, killed by pine bark Beetles. Grasses squeezed dry, lying ready for ignition. Rabbi Jamie’s home in Granby. The East Troublesome Fire. Evacuated. He posted pictures on Facebook. Scary.

Clouds this morning red from the Wildfire refracted Sun. We have moisture on the way. Hope it comes in time to wet down our Very High fire hazards. The National Forest Service closed the Arapho National Forest, the one in which we live, citing dry Trees and strained fire-fighting resources. This means no Denverites, no other out-of-towners at Lower and Upper Maxwell Falls. Well, it means there should be none.

Speaking of Colorado. Here’s a video from near Telluride.

Could have been worse. Think if the Jeep with the camera was a tiny bit further along on the trail. The woman who drove the falling Jeep is in a Grand Junction hospital with serious injuries. She bailed just before it went over.

Then, too. An election is coming. Like Winter. Did I say vote? Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote.