Category Archives: Great Work

Great Work, Politics, Weather +Climate

High Temps and Legislative Sausage

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Spring               Waning Seed Moon

The weather has a run of above average high temperatures, 9-10 degrees warmer through Friday.   Saturday, according to NOAA the temperatures will fall back to average at a 58 predicted high.

Those of us who garden also watch the lows closely at this time of year and we will be well above freezing for the remainder of the week.  There is a chance for below freezing temperatures on Sunday night (30).

We have no rain in the forecast until Saturday and Sunday, then only a chance of showers.  We need moisture, according to the Star-Tribune this morning this was our 10th dry day in a row.  Those of us with irrigation systems have not started them.

Thanks to the wonders of cyberspace I’m writing this and listening to the House Finance Committee hearing that will take up the omnibus environment bill.  I just listened to the House Ways and Means Committee pass the House version of the omnibus energy bill.  Right now the parents of the missing St. Thomas student speak before the Finance Committee because of a quick bill put together by compassionate conservative Marty Siefert.

Friends, Great Work, Health, Woolly Mammoths

Feelin’ Glum

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Spring              Full Seed Moon

Today was the second organ day in a row.  Yesterday, eyes.  Today, skin.  Tomorrow, ears.  Doing fine on all counts so far.  Even so, I find visits to the doctor a bit stressful.  The waiting room.  The waiting for the doctor.  Their evaluation/assessment.  I have a good relationship with all of my doctors and intend to keep it that way.  Bill Schmidt and I had lunch today and I told him I view doctors as health consultants.  I’m responsible for my health, but they help me stay healthy and intervene if something gets out of whack.

After seeing Dr. Pakzad I came home and had a sit down with Kate.  I’ve been feeling glum, an unusual state for this time of year and unusual in intensity for me over the last couple of years.  It’s a little difficult to sort things out.  In part the Sierra Club work may be more of a challenge than I anticipated.  In part I found myself counting up all the little insults that make me realize my age, no, not really my age, but my sense of competence.  Do I have it anymore?  A tough question to answer from the inside and one always colored by mood.

Kate thinks that may be the wrong question.  I’ve prodded her several times over the last year about retirement and whether she’s ready for it.  She turned the question around on me, “I wonder you’re ready for retirement?  To let go of the need to have to have it?”

Hmmm.  Projection isn’t just a machine in a movie theater.  She may well be right.  Pondering this pushed me to wonder about the last regression I had where I got credentialed for the UU ministry.  I did that during a time when I was down about the writing.  But, John Desteian said, in a regression, you always go back to pick up something left behind, or unresolved.  Stuff to bounce around.  Enough for a coup contrecoup injury.

Good lunch with Bill Schmidt.  We covered a lot of ground from genetic modification of seeds and nuclear energy to motorcycles and dealing with difficult personalities.  I came away still opposed to nuclear energy, but willing to hear arguments about how to handle the waste.

Great Work, Politics

A Good Lesson In Humility

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Spring           Waxing Seed Moon

I’ve been working with the Sierra Club for a while now and I’m constantly amazed at how much more these folks know about politics than I do.  I’ve begun to realize that I never shepherded legislation though the legislative process or worked on the ground in a modern political campaign.  I’m a rabble rouser, an agitator, a motivator and an organizer, but political process has never been my strength.  And all along I thought it was.

So the uphill curve has found me panting along behind, running hard to keep up.  At times, like tonight, I’ve felt out of my depth, just not up to the task.  In fact I’ve taken the risk, jumped in and tried to stay afloat.  I’ve not got the total package going on as yet, but I can get there.  A good lesson in humility.

Tonight will be the last night of meds, the penicillin will run out Friday at noon and I believe the infection will be on its last legs, even if they could take awhile to go down.  Yeah.

Lunch tomorrow with Bill Schmidt, talking nuclear power.

Great Work, Health, Politics

They’ll Need a Resurrection. But, They Won’t Get One.

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Spring         Waxing Seed Moon

For the first time since last Thursday, I feel like working out.  When I tried before, each step on the treadmill transmitted up to and resonated in my jaw.  I no longer look like a chipmunk although I can tell the infection is still there, though now it is like a folded section of cloth about 8 inches long as opposed to the walnuts in the cheek look of before.

The pain has throttled way back, too.  I hadn’t popped any Alleve today at all until about a half an hour ago, but I decided that before I went back on the treadmill I wanted a little cushion.

All this is because we went after the infection in the first place so this was the hard part of getting to a healthier state.  I look forward to that moment, though I’ve appreciated the intimacy with my bodies defenses that I’ve had over the last four days.   When my body and the penicillin worked hard on the infected bone, it took my attention away from the outer world.  I got sleepy and in fact slept a lot.  My energy level was low so I laid around, not exerting myself much.  It’s good to know my bodies still enough punch to fight back hard.  Even if it means some discomfort.

My thinking has been a little fuzzy too so if there’s anything strange in the last few posts chalk up to distraction by infection.

The legislature will go away on Easter break and will come back needing a resurrection.  They won’t get one.  The budget deficit will not go away and all the federal stimulus dollars don’t patch the holes in our revenue stream versus our expenses.  Something has to be done and the legislature and the governor are the ones we elected to do it.

The outlook for significant environmental legislation has gotten mushed up in all this fiscal dithering, but I think we’ll still see some important bills:  green jobs, sensible communities, maybe something on clean cars and atv’s.  It ain’t over till its over and that date is in May, not April.

Great Work, Politics, Weather +Climate

Wonky Politics

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Spring              Waxing Seed Moon

Kate left home to visit a snow storm.  4-6 inches falls in Denver right now.  Tomorrow will be a good day for a ski oriented family to have a birthday.

Though the southern part of the state has blizzard warnings, we look mild here.  Saturday does not look quite as good as I thought it would for outdoor work.

I popped two alleve and the throbbing went down toward manageable levels.  A vicodin will get me to sleep.  Bearable now.

A week plus of little commitments stretches out ahead of me, so I plan to school myself on Sierra Club issues, especially safe mining and building sensible communities.  Environmental politics has a wonky aspect once you get past tree-spiking and waving signs.  A lot of science and complex theory behind much of the work makes even entry level understanding a challenge.

How have I continued to work without a detailed knowledge of the issues?  Well, two things.  One, I have a good, broad grasp of the issues, just not a detailed one.  Second, the politics have been what interested me initially and politics I understand.   The Sierra Club folks understand the legislative process much better than I do, but in politics I’m a quick study and I was not as far behind in understanding as I was on the issues.

Family, Great Work

The Decider

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Spring           New Moon (seed moon)

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Kate is a good decider(unlike the other Decider).  She makes a decision a second if necessary.  Somewhere along the line she and Teddy Roosevelt must have drunk the same water.  I’m a muller and wonderer.  It’s nice to have two different decision making styles at home because it allows a long view and a necessary, lets do it now attitude to reinforce each other.

Two iconoclasts have crossed my way of late.  Freeman Dyson is one.  He’s a really smart guy, a physicist and an employee of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton.  He’s written all sorts of stuff; I’ve read his essays, but none of his books.  He thinks global warming is real, but that the radical consequences predicted are not.  One telling aspect of his critique involves the notion of climate models.  He claims that assumptions used to build those systems are not accurate.  If the assumptions are no good, the model can not be.  I don’t know the science, but he’s a guy whose thought matters.

I’ve not changed my mind.  At least not yet.  But he has made me wary.

The second is a Patrick Moore, a founder of Green Peace and now, ironically, a supporter of nuclear power.  In an article published in 2006 he makes the argument about base-load generation that I mentioned a couple of days ago.  He seems to think nuclear is the only generative source with enough oomph to replace coal in the interim between now and an eventual switch to renewables.  I found his arguments less compelling.  He seems to think reprocessing is a reasonable solution to the waste problem, but a Scientific American I read this week points out many problems with reprocessing, not the least of which is that it produces plutonium, material useful in a bomb.

It’s good to have received wisdom challenged by reputable people, it sharpens the debate and makes everyone think more clearly.

Friends, Garden, Great Work, permaculture

Let The Grass Green And The Plants Grow

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Spring          New Moon

Lunch with Paul today at Origami.  When I lunch with friends, I find we often go back to the same place we first went, even after years and years.  I had lunch with an old friend last month and we returned to Gallery 8 at the Walker even though it had been seven or eight years since our last meal together.

Today and tomorrow I have tours to prepare, and I’d best get to them.  Nuclear hearing tonight at 6:30.  Lots of stuff happening right now.  I’m feeling a bit distracted, maybe over stimulated, but it won’t last.

I missed the thunder storm in this blog and the couple of days of rain, but when I woke up to snow this morning I had to get on and say, enough.  I mean, really.  OK, I know it’s not unusual, that March is a snowy month, that winter lingers, yes, but even so, enough.  Let the grass green and the plants grow.  Let some color appear.

A friend has decided to head to the Smoky Mountains next week to hike and see some green. I get it.

This is not cabin fever, I don’t have a longing to be somewhere else, somewhere warm; but, I do have a hankering for growth.

There, that’s off my chest.  On another, similar note, my seedlings have gone from the sprouting stage to the small leafy stage.  This is onion, kale, chard, eggplant, huckleberry, leeks, broccoli and cauliflower.  On Monday I put them all in separate peat and coca pots, getting my hands in the potting soil.  That took care of some of my green desire.

Garden, Great Work, Health, Hydroponics, permaculture

Under the Lights

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Spring            Waning Moon of Winds

The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. – Walt Whitman

Business meeting and plants this morning.  The business meeting went just fine, our financial management continues to work for us and not against us.  Wish I could say the same for the financial markets.  Sigh.  Decided to check.  Wish granted: Dow Leaps 497 Points on Treasury Plan.  Yeah.

My seedlings, grown over the last couple of weeks, sprouted roots which is the time to move them to their next medium, in this case soil in peat and coconut fiber pots with the exception of four chard and one mustard green that I put in lava rock and in the hydroponics.  The broccoli, egg plants, onions, leeks, mustard and collard greens, cauliflower and huckelberry now have soil around their sprouting medium.  They are all under the lights still.   Moving to larger size containers strained my space, though with some jiggering I got them all in new places and still under the lights.

Some of them have to move out soon to make way for the seedlings that need to get started on April 1st and April 15th.  Just when they were getting comfortable.  Hmmm.  I may have problems here.  Seems onions started by seed should not go outside until May.  This will definitely cramp the April batch of plants.

Art and Culture, Great Work, Hydroponics

Art and Seeds

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Spring            Waning Moon of Winds

A full day of art–WWII provenance research, the duties of a registrar and the example of the Tatra ending with a discussion of the book Loot.  Thought provoking, insider peaking and a pleasant way to spend part of a Saturday.

Bought coca pots for my transplants, the seedlings need more room since they are growing roots.  That has to happen tomorrow.  Also, Sierra club work tomorrow, too.  A new desktop, bought cheap, needs to get set up either tomorrow or Monday.

Lots of good stuff.

Great Work

Bees

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Spring Equinox           Waning Moon of Winds

Going over to Sedge Meadow Farms today to learn about  bee-keeping.  This is a farm run by a colleague of Kate’s and her husband.  Had some of their honey already.  Good.

After bee-keeping, in to the museum for a tour on war.