Category Archives: Great Work

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work

The Afterlife

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Lughnasa                                Waxing Blood Moon

The energizer box, a low impedance model, has a connection to the rope.  There is not enough high capacity underground wire left to do the grounds so I’ll stop by Fleet Farm on my way to Wayzata tonight.  The Woolly meeting convenes on the grounds of the old Cenacle retreat center, now an addiction treatment center.

Tomorrow morning we’ll power up and see if the damn thing works.  My best guess right now is that it will.  Then we wait for word from Rigel that it has begun to serve its intended function.

Warren has posed a question about the afterlife for tonight’s Woolly meeting.  What do we believe about it?

A few years ago I used this  analogy for the question of the afterlife.  It still expresses what I feel.

Think of the universe as a great tapestry woven from the life and death of stars, the solar winds, the orbits of planets and the emergence of life, especially on the planet we know intimately.  Our life, lived as best we can, blinks on at some point in this tapestry and adds color, texture, intensity and vitality to the design.  This tapestry never loses anything and it extends as far as the Great Wall of Reality extends.  Without your life the tapestry would be a poorer, less beautiful creation.

This is my Credo:
From the very stuff of this cosmos we were made.

Each life is a unique, energetic organization of this stuff.

Human life is neither less nor more unique than any other, with one exception (maybe):  consciousness.

Each of us has a Self into which we try to live.  The Self pulls us and prods us to be who we are.

You are a special and important contribution to the story of the Universe, so you must live as who you are.  If you live as you believe others would have you be, then the world loses your unique and precious story.

Economic justice is a means of assuring each persons chance to be who they are.  Therefore, political action in support of economic equity is important to the universal story.

We need the world of plants and animals, oceans and sky far, far more than they need us.  So, work to protect them, and you will protect your loved ones.

The human family and friends we love and support in this life will, in all likelihood, be our primary legacy.

An open heart and an open mind keeps the Self fresh, defeats stagnation, and assures a vital life at any age.

Learning from our gardens, our children, our friends, our spouses or partners, and from the collected wisdom of others connects us to the past and links us to the future.

Art, children, dogs, jazz, and travel have the capacity to jolt us into new perspectives.

Aging, Dogs, Great Work, Politics
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Lughnasa                                       Waning Harvest Moon

Yesterday and today were full of new information, new faces.  Both days challenged my capacity to sit in one place for a long time.  The 40+ Aeron chairs in the Minnesota Foundation’s board room made finding a good chair easy and did make the day more bearable than the plastic backed metal chairs in the Northstar Ballroom.  Both days were long and challenging mentally.  A good thing.  But tiring.

Tomorrow Kate and I go see our financial planners, I call it visiting our money.  We want to discuss how they will generate cash for our payouts and have them run them run our projections using a 4% drawdown rather than the 4.6/4.7% they used.  This will give us a new and hopefully longer time horizon before our money runs out, but it will also shrink the amount of money available each year.  This is a trade-off than another consultant, Ruth Hayden, says is necessary since we’re all living longer.

Unless you are very wealthy, living large and living longer are incompatible.  That’s not to say we will, in any wise, be hurting in retirement; it does mean the cruises, trips to Hawaii and expensive purchases will have to be truncated.  Bearable.  Our life does not revolve around luxury.

The solution to our fence jumpers, according to Junior Lehman, the breeder and caretaker for a large pack of hounds, is an electrified fence.  I thought this was most likely the cheapest and easiest solution, but until I heard from somebody with some experience I didn’t want to spend money on it.  Now it will be off to Fleet Farm and hopefully we can begin letting Rigel and Vega outside again to romp and play, develop as dogs.

Great Work, Minnesota, Politics

Give Me a Good Balance Sheet

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Lughnasa                                    Waning Harvest Moon

Back from a day of hard rock mining,  a lot of rock and little roll.  One of the criticisms of the environmental movement focuses on its obsession with chemistry, geology, climatology and animal living conditions to the exclusion of human concerns.   The session today on Polymet Mining’s proposal to put a copper mine near Minnesota’s Iron Range proved the point, though it would also have applied to the industry representatives who were there as well.

This was a day of law, FeS2 and FeOS2.  A cascade of copper, nickel, palladium and platinum tinkled onto the audience.  This fight, and it is a fight, has clear sides and the sides have been at it long enough that they know each other by first names and recall each others data from meetings in the past.

Not the cozy day, though, that might seem natural in a Minnesota nice crowd like the one gathered at the Northstar Ballroom in the St. Paul Campus Student Center.

The information presented today may have been old news to many in the room, but it was new to me.  This is a complex issue for several reasons, the chemical reactions that lead to sulfuric acid in the groundwater being the cause celebre, but far from the only one.  There is, too, the tendency of mining companies to exhaust a resource, close the mine and go bankrupt after loading the assets onto another corporate entity.  The tax payers get stuck with the clean up bill.

In addition the cyclical nature of metal prices accentuates the boom and bust nature of resource frontiers, giving the employment situation a roller coaster ride of high times segueing into desperation.

In the end the information that impressed me the most came from a Montana economist named Thomas Powers.  He made the point first about benefits always being trotted out and high-fived while the costs associated with mining get set off to the side.  I came away convinced that if we could get a decent balance sheet for the life cycle of the Polymet plant, public costs and public benefits, that we would have a compelling argument for stopping this mine.

Just another day in the education of a neophyte environmentalist.  But a good one.

Great Work, Politics, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

A Yellow Moon

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Lughnasa                        Waxing Green Corn Moon

A yellowed moon hung in the sky tonight, almost full.  It made the drive back in from Minneapolis a delight as it sailed in and out of view.

In tonight for the Land Use and Transportation Committee meeting.  What a dynamic group!  They are still fighting the Stillwater Bridge issue after all these years.  They also have transit oriented development on their agenda as well as a new issue called Complete Streets.  In essence Complete Streets wants street planning to have all users in mind (pedestrians, bicyclists, cars and the handicapped in particular)

A crisp meeting that ran on time.

Thunder has begun to roll in so I’m going to have shut down soon.  After the Sierra Club meeting, I drove over to the Black Forest where the Woolly’s first monday meeting had just begun to wind down.  I saw Mark and Frank and Stefan before they left.  Warren and Scott stayed and we talked about Moon, Scott’s 95 year old Cantonese mother-in-law who lives with them.  She’s having a show of her calligraphy and painting at the Marsh.  It goes up on August 16th.  There will also be a book of her work available at the show.  Amazing.

China tour tomorrow for 7-8th graders.  I added a tour this Friday of Chilean students connected with St. Johns who want a tour of American art.

Family, Great Work, Politics

Barking Dogs

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Summer                     Waxing Green Corn Moon

Oh, oh.  The neighbor called and said our dogs barked constantly from 3pm to 7pm.  He’s home all the time now with his m.s.  I empathize with him about barking dogs, even my own, because they drive me nuts, too.  I doubt they barked the whole time, but it did probably seem like it.  Have to manage them for noise again.  That means keeping the two mouthy whippets, Hilo and Emma, inside more.  They won’t mind that a bit.

On a sad note tonight was Max’s last night.  Tom said today that he and Roxanne had an appointment with the vet tonight.  Max was a sweet dog, a wounded soul from his previous owner, but with more depth of character because of it.  I’ll miss him.

Worked out and then went into the meeting of the Clean Energy and Renewable Energy Committee.  The first hour of the meeting was a presentation by Steve Taff, an ag economist/environmental economist, on low carbon fuel standards.  He advocates keeping the focus on reducing carbon build up rather than on the policy tool.

Another important part of his presentation involved the complexity of the various policy areas:  low carbon fuel standards, CAFE standards and cap and trade.  The tendency, he says, is to consider only one policy area at a time and to ignore the total field of policy initiatives.  Keeping the whole field in mind is key to the eventual development of effective green house gas reductions.

Over the upcoming weeks I’ll unpack some of this jargon.

The committee understood the need for taking the initiative with developing legislative priorities.  Makes my work easier.

Aging, Bees, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, permaculture, Woolly Mammoths

Becoming Native To This Place

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Summer                        Waxing Green Corn Moon

westorchard709

The next meeting of the Woolly Mammoths will be here in Andover.  That means it’s theme and subject matter time.  The theme will be, Becoming Native to this Place, the title of a book by Wes Jackson of the Land Institute.  The subject matter will focus on the gardens, permaculture and the local food (slow food) movement.

At the Seed Savers Exchange conference held two weekends ago in Decorah, Iowa a commercial grower told of his change to the local foods idea.  A grower of greenhouse foods for various distributors who took his foods far from northern Iowa, he recounted attending a meeting sponsored by folks whose agenda was local foods.  They showed that, due to commodity based agriculture, northern Iowa was a net importer of food.  That astounded him.  He switched his focus then to growing vegetables for local consumers, working on niche markets like institutions, restaurants and grocery stores in the northern Iowa area.

He didn’t mention Michael Pollan by name but the subject matter was similar to Pollan’s recent work, In Defense of Food.  The Woollys have read the Omnivore’s Dilemma and the Botany of Desire.  We’ve also looked at the notion of Homecoming and the Great Work by Thomas Berry.  This August meeting, only 17 days after Lughnasa, the first fruits festival of the Celtic calendar, will celebrate the Woolly’s interests in home, food and continuity.    southgarden709400

Continuity?  Yes.  The Woollys have a 20+ year record of perseverance with each other and, by implication, an interest in this place we have  chosen to call home for those same number of years.

To the Woollys who read this:

Please choose one of the books or websites indicated and take a look.  While looking pick out two things:  what surprised you?  what would you like to know more about?   If you want, also look for something that seems off or misguided to you.

Family, Garden, Great Work, Health, permaculture

Dinner Straight From the Plant

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Summer                        Waxing Green Corn Moon

Dinner with vegetables straight from the garden is a treat and can be a surprise.  It was tonight.  We had potatoes, new potatoes-709042potatoes, dug just before cooking.  They had a distinct flavor, a nutty earthy  tone unfamiliar from the long since harvested potatoes typical of both home and restaurant cooking.  This meal included our garlic, our kale and chard, the potatoes garnished with our flat parsley and a bowl of sugar snap peas as an appetizer.

Digging potatoes involved a spading fork to loosen the soil, then searching around under the earth for these lumpy  treasures.  They grow well in the sandy soil here in Andover.

(pic:  potatoes before harvest)

Kate takes off for the Grand Teton’s tomorrow, a CME conference.  BJ is also out there, playing in the Grand Teton music festival as she has for the last several years.  The Tetons have an incredible beauty, the American Alps, a very young mountain range.  She’s back on Wednesday, then we go to see a micro-surgeon who has perfected the technique for cervical vertebrae.  He’ll evaluate Kate’s candidacy for that surgery.

Lots of weeding today and more tomorrow.  A normal task in late July, early August.

Garden, Great Work, permaculture

Laborers for the Great Work

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Summer                            Waning Summer Moon

There was a pagan feel to the gathering at Seed Savers Exchange.  Ironic, since Luther College in nearby Decorah represents a conservative brand of Lutheranism.  There was at least one obvious symbol, a man wore a t-shirt with a Wiccan theme, but the more pervasive and more subtle expression came through in conversations like the one I had with Virginia Nowicki, soon to be Gardener’s Supply Catalogue official national garden crusader.

“In the garden we feel a connection to the divine, the sacred,” she said while we ate organically raised chicken and pork, kohlrabi salad, heirloom green beans and mashed potatoes.  “We feel authentic.”

“Yes,”  her husband said, “We belong to that land.  It’s our home.  We feel like we’re just one of the animals that live there.”

Virginia will begin promoting Liberty Gardens in a couple of weeks on a website she’s producing and through  the network of those connected to Gardener’s Supply.

Virginia and Bob live in Downer’s Grove, Illinois.  Their home serves as a demonstration site during Permaculture Design classes.  They moved in thirty years ago.

“When the city inspector came, he asked when the lawn would come.” Bob said.  “I told him we weren’t planning on a yard.  He seemed taken aback.”

“Well,” he asked, “how will you deal with the mud?  I can’t give you an occupancy permit until you do something about that.”

“Woodchips,”  Bob said.

“What?”

“Woodchips.  We’ll put down woodchips.”

“Oh, all right.  When the woodchips are down, I’ll sign your permit.”

“We put in eight inches of woodchips,” Virginia says, “eight inches.  We imagined where the paths would go, then put  trees and garden beds in the places that weren’t the path.”

There home is in the midst of Downer’s Grove.

There were many examples of this kind of extraordinary devotion to the land and to growing food in concert with the cycles of nature, rather than against them.

Another man from Champaign, Illinois told me he fed himself and his wife and his son, his wife and their three kids.  Deborah Madison, the vegetarian cookbook maven, signed her books.  She’s on the board of SSE.  Eliot Coleman, a man who bought land from Helen and Scott Nearing–Living the Good Life, has a success story of intensive gardening.  He times his four-season gardening in concert with the Celtic cross-quarter holidays.  Mike McGrath, former editor of Organic Gardening and host of a garden show on NPR, is a garden crusader himself.

Garden, Great Work, permaculture

A Seedy Weekend

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Summer                                    Waning Summer Moon (7% illuminated)

Ancientrails spent the weekend in the company of gardeners and small farmers.    They blur the line between horticulture and agriculture, not to mention the line between 2009 and 1969.  Seedsavers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa had their 29th summer conference.

This was the largest of their conferences to date with 400 +  attendees from all over the country.

Today we learned how to graft a bud from a scion onto a trunk of root stock and came home with a new apple tree.  We also learned about methods for extending the garlic harvest:  dry sliced garlic then use a cheap coffee grinder to create home made garlic powder and why we should eat 5 pansies a day:  ruthin.  A.T.  is a skeptic about medicinal claims so we’ll have to check the data.

Yesterday a lecture traced both garlic and carrots from their homelands in central Asia to their current locale  in our gardens.  Here’s an interesting piece of information.  Though garlic does sometime reproduce from seed in the wild, it never does in our gardens.  This means that garlic can be said to be cultivated but not domesticated.

A.T. toured the Seed Savers operation.  They offered back office tours during the conference.  We saw the room where 500 to 7oo hundred thousand seeds go from store room to seed packet–by hand.   A seed sorting machine is on the way that will automate this task. We also saw the seed sorting operation, the root cellar and the greenhouses where the preservation plants go to seed.

There are two different streams to the SSE operation:  commercial and  preservation.  They inter-relate though the commercial side supports the preservation side.  Preservation of heirloom varieties is a key mission of SSE so they have a huge seed vault, a regular germination rate check program for the vault and a regular grow out operation so the seed stock gets replenished on a rotating basis.

If  you love gardening, you would enjoy a trip to the Heritage Farm.

Great Work, permaculture, Politics

A Meeting

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Summer                             Waning Summer Moon

Today I went over to the Westside (St. Paul) to Neighborhood House for a meeting.  In days now long past I use to go there quite bit when Eustolio Benavides was its director.   We worked on a few projects together.  He got bounced out, I think, but nobody I talked to remembered him.

This meeting was an initial one to get the legislative agenda setting process underway for the collaborative structure, Minnesota Environmental Partnership.  The Sierra Club is a member and as the new legislative committee chair I attended.  I haven’t been in a large room filled with people like this in quite a while.  I knew only Dan Andreson, now the lobbyist for Clean Water Action and my immediate predecessor as chair of the LegCom as the Sierra Club names its legislative committee.

Since the players are new to me, the individuals new to me and the politics of the environmental organizational community still pretty opaque to me, I just sat there, took notes and listened.

The meeting finished at 4:30 p.m., putting me right in the middle of the evening rush so I drove up to Saji Ya on Grand Avenue and had some chirsahi as the highways untangled themselves.

In the old days I used to say, “Another day, another meeting.”  Now they’re a bit unusual.  I don’t dislike meetings.  A lot of folks I know profess a dislike for them, but I consider them one way of getting work done.   This one was the start of a long process.