Category Archives: Great Work

Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Politics

The Tragic Sense of Life

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51  bar falls 29.82 4mph SSE dewpoint 28 Spring

               Waxing Gibbous Moon of  Growing

“To fall into a habit is to begin to cease to be.” – Miguel de Unamuno

Unamuno has slipped from awareness, it seems, but this Spanish existentialist, poet and author speaks truth even when it is uneasy and unpleasant.  Here’s some brief information about him:

Spanish philosopher. In Del sentimento trágico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos {at Amazon.com} (The Tragic Sense of Life) (1913) {at Amazon.com}, Unamuno described human existence as torn between the irrational hope for immortality and the rational expectation of death. Since faith can never outweigh reason, Unamuno supposed, the best we can achieve is a life of authentic struggle with the human predicament.

Recommended Reading: Miguel De Unamuno, Three Exemplary Novels, tr. by Angel Flores (Grove, 1987) {at Amazon.com}; Victor Ouimette, Reason Aflame: Unamuno and the Heroic Will (Yale, 1986) {at Amazon.com}; and Gemma Roberts, Unamuno: afinidades y coincidencias kierkegaardianas (Colorado, 1986) {at Amazon.com}.

The house party for the Power 2 Change campaign had three attendees:  Frank Broderick, Bill Sutherland, and Ann, a former school teacher.  Jessica, a Sierra Club worker, attended to explain the campaign.  She fell into a trap the young activist often does, asking too little of her audience.  She kept referring to the things that were easy:  talk to a friend, sign the petition, read the literature, volunteer at the Sierra Club for a phone bank.  George Bush made the same disastrous mistake after 9/11.  He reassured us and asked to go shopping.  That’ll show’em.

People want to sacrifice, to do the difficult thing.  Why?  Because when we sacrifice, or do something that stretches us, we become engaged.  We know in our gut; this is important.  If it’s not important or significant, don’t bother me with it.  If it is important, figure out a way I can take action.  Help me find others, then assist us in getting our handles on the levers of power.  That’s the way change happens. 

As often happens to me, as I write this, especially with Unamuno dangling just above these words, the pointed finger takes on an impossible curve and aims straight at my chest.  I know in my gut that climate change and the energy issues are important, perhaps the important issues of my generation and certainly ones in which we are culpable and therefore responsible.  So, in addition to the work I need to do on other writing projects and at the MIA, I need to pick up this challenge, too, as I agreed to do last September in Iowa.  I’ve done too little and I can do more. 

Kate’s snacks and party layout, on the other hand, were delicious and beautiful.

Great Work, Politics, Weather +Climate

Megafarm Hydroponics

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54 bar steep fall 30.20 0mph SSE  dewpoint 18  Spring

               First Quarter Moon of Growing

A 28 degree spread between 8:00 AM and right now.  We still have patches of snow, but they lie now mostly in the shade or north facing slopes.  The tulips, daffodils and iris should continue their growth.  The magnolia buds look pregnant.  Some of the garlic has broken the surface, about 7 bulbs.  It’s starting.

The generator now sits on its little pad on the west wall of our garage.  The electrician has been here all day.  He cut into the garage wall with a reciprocating saw to splice the transfer switch into our electrical panel.  This transfer switch plus a sensing device discovers a power outage, waits a beat or two to be sure the electricity is really off, then turns the generator on and transfers itself as the power source for the house.  When the power comes back on, it senses that, too, then transfers the generator off-line and runs it a bit longer to cool it down and allow it to shut down smoothly. 

It’s not ready to go, yet, however.  The next step is to run the gas line from the new gas meter (not installed yet) up through the garage ceiling and down to the generator’s fuel intake.  The next step after that is–pay for it.

The Megafarm hydroponics (the second and larger plastic tub) has begun to function, too.  I filled the reservoir with seven gallons of nutrient solution, smoothed out a kink in the tubing connecting the pump.  It needs to get set on a two hour cycle soon, but right now, I’m filling the growing bed and shutting the pump off by hand.  It has a few lettuce plants and three tomato plants.  This is all still experimental, but it feels like we’re headed in the right direction with it.

Kate has prepared snacks and drinks for the meeting tonight.  All I have to do is meet and greet.  Should be fun.

Great Work, Politics, Weather +Climate

Oh, How the Activist Has Fallen

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30  bar steady  30.31 0mph N dewpoint 21 Spring

                      First Quarter Moon of Growing

A crisp morning, 26 as I went out for the paper, and, if we can believe the meteorologist, the day will end with the temperature in the high 50’s, headed toward 70 or close to it in the remainder of the week.  This spring has been so reticent, almost shy, that it may once again run from its aging parent, winter.  I hope not.  I’m ready for the joys and tasks, often the same at this time of year, of the growing season.

This evening I have a Sierra Club gathering at the house, a brief one hour meeting to hear about the legislative agenda and an opportunity to sign a petition.  Oh, how the activist has fallen.  In my former life I sneered at petitions and resolutions, both tools of liberals to give the appearance of doing something while risking nothing.  Now I host gatherings for signing one.  My hope is that it will lead to more direct political engagement further on down the line.

An electrician is here, prepping our electrical service for installation of our Kohler 12W generator.  It will run off the natural gas piped to our house by Centerpoint, eliminating the gasoline conundrums (going bad and service stations not working in a power outage) and the necessity of a propane tank.  I’m still not sure this is not a sledge hammer for a mosquito, but the first significant outage we have will prove me wrong.  Since that could happen any time, I guess the pro-argument is sound, especially since Kate has started making lots of money in her new work at Urgent Care. 

Art and Culture, Garden, Great Work, Weather +Climate

The Hydroponics Are On

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34  bar rises 29.50 3mph NNW dewpoint 31  Spring

               First Quarter Moon of Growing

The calendar says spring; the snow says not yet.  It’s all moisture, though, and if it doesn’t run away to rivers and streams, some of this goes to recharge ground water and aquifers.  A good thing whether it comes chilled or just wet.

Last night it looked the drive in to the MIA this morning would be a nightmare.  Predictions of 1 foot snow depths and high winds could have lead to blizzard conditions.  The temperatures never dropped far enough.  So, instead of a foot of snow we got about 3 inches of slush, suitable for snow cones if not so oil impregnated.  The drive in was uneventful.

Sachei Makabe brought her kids from Robbinsdale.  Marilyn Smith and I divided them up and took them through Weber.  Each one of the Japanese language classes I’ve taken through have been attentive, observant and interested.  Can’t ask for more than that.  The diversity in the classes surprise me.  There seem to be far more Asian, Latino and African American students than Caucasian.  This speaks well for the schools and the students but only reinforces the dismal record us white folks have with learning a second language.  I’m one of those who never learned.  Shame on me.

Came home.  Kate had a great lunch made with fish, green beans and acorn squash.  I added a salad. 

After the nap I got out the books and handouts for the hydroponics and got started.  The meter I got a couple of weeks ago I handed over to Kate because it required precision and a chemistry background, neither one of which characterizes me.  It will help us quickly diagnose problems and repair them.  It measures ph, temperature and conductivity.  All of these measures have to do with the uptake of nutrients, though I don’t understand the relationships by any means at this point.

The lettuce seedlings that I started a few weeks ago have started to push roots through the rock wool medium.  This signals the time to transplant them to the hydroponics.  Each planter in the smaller hydroponic system (We have two.) has round lava rocks which hold moisture, but do not interfere with the plants root system reaching the nutrient bath in the reservoir below the planters.  It took 3 gallons of nutrient solution to fill the reservoir to the 2 1/2″ depth recommended.

The nutrient goes into the reservoir through the planters.  This charges the lava rocks.  Then I got a pair of forceps (Adson’s, Kate says.) and plucked the rock well medium out of the seedling beds one at a time.  With a soup ladel I scooped lava rocks out and let them sit in the left over nutrient solution while I positioned the small cube of rock wool and its single lettuce plant.  When I had it where I wanted, one per planter, I scooped the lava rocks around the cube.  Planted.  It’s a strange process compared to gardening directly in mother earth, but it’s fun, too.

After the nutrient solution was in the reservoir, a plastic tub in essence, I plugged the pump into the black tubing that leads inside the reservoir to a plastic tube with two airstones.  Airstones are permeable and the bubbling of oxygen through them creates a nutrient rich mist that reaches the bottom of the planters.  The roots of the lettuce seedlings will head down, through the lava rock to the mist.

With the small pump sighing the only thing left was to switch on the Halide light.  It’s a big thing, 250 watts, with a ballast that feels like a large rock  in weight.  It now glows about 22 inches above the seedlings.   The distance is necessary while the seedlings are still  young and fragile.  After they become well rooted and mature, I’ll move the lamp down to 6 to 12 inches above them.  It will be on roughly 16 hours a day.

We’ve begun.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Work

Where Is The Life We Have Lost In The Living?

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34  bar rises 30.15 0mpn NNE dewpoint 28  Spring

            Waxing Crescent Moon of Growing

“Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” – T. S. Eliot

Eliot is fussy, conservative and pedantic; yet, he is also a beautiful poet and a trenchant critic.  I often wonder about the last two of his questions.  As an obsessive gatherer of knowledge and information, it often seems that knowledge gets swamped by information and facts. 

In case you wondered, like I just did, what knowledge means, I found this helpful:  “Knowledge is part of the hierarchy made up of data, information and knowledge. Data are raw facts. Information is data with context and perspective. Knowledge is information with guidance for action based upon insight and experience.”   And this, too, a pragmatic (philosophical) definition:  “the human capacity (both potential and actual) to take effective action in varied and uncertain situations.”  This, too:  “Knowledge is an appreciation of the possession of interconnected details which, in isolation, are of lesser value.”

As long we’re on this track, here are a few definitions of wisdom:  “is the ability to discern inner qualities and relationships; it is synonymous with insight, good sense, and sound judgment. It means to have “deep understanding”, “to have keen discernment”  I like this one, too:  “Knowledge with information so thoroughly assimilated as to have produced sagacity, judgment, and insight.”

The first one of his three questions is tougher.  The nesting nature of the wisdom/knowledge/information trio suggests that Eliot also sees this:  Life/living/wisdom/knowledge/information.   My impression, though, is that he sees Life/living as almost apposite and separate from the other two questions.  So, it might be that he suggests an analogous relationship, i.e. Life gets swallowed by the details of living in the same way wisdom can be consumed by knowledge and knowledge in turn overwhelmed by information. 

It is so often true.  The mundane, even profane (as opposed to sacred, not as in obscenity) aspects of our daily life can so focus our attention that we lose the joy, the delight afforded by this rare and precious gift of Life.  Let me give you an example.  On some days I go into the garden and my intent is to weed.  Or to prune. Or to plant or transplant.  If my task obscures the joy the garden itself brings into my life, if I find myself mumbling about the difficulty of getting rid of this particular kind of weed or the physical challenge of a difficult pruning, then I have lost the Life the garden can bring me in the details of gardening. 

So often delight gets pushed away by duty, joy by drudgery.  The invitation to be in the Eternal Now is the antidote.  If, in my weeding, I can appreciate the tenacity and strength of the weed, if I can experience just a tinge of regret for having to remove it, then I am in the moment, aware of the wonder of plant life rather than disgusted by the invader.  If pruning allows me a chance to notice the growth pattern of the shrub or tree, to wonder at the delicate reaching for air and light that branches are, then I can settle into the truth of the garden itself, become a part of its work.

Family, Great Work, Woolly Mammoths

My Y Chromosome

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32  bar steep rise 30.08 1mh NNW dewpoint 27 Spring

              Waxing Crescent Moon of Growing

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

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

 7:00-8:00PM

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

Note: This is NOT a fundraiser.

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

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

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

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

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

.

Great Work, Our Land and Home

Is There Such A Thing As Good Sprawl?

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56  bar steep fall 29.97 1mph NNW Spring

         Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

More trees survived.  Two White Pines planted near the road have made it through their first winter as well.  I love seeing plants grow, but there is something different with trees.  They alter the landscape and create memories.  I suppose grass does, too, but not in a way that I like much.  Yards have not made sense to me for many years and I hope this year or the next might be the time when we finally rid ourselves of the damned thing and put in something more attuned to the land and to possible benefits to us.

Forgot to mention during that during our business meeting we have tentatively decided to go ahead on the generator.  As  climate change acclerates and more and more housing gets built up out here, our exposure to significant periods of power loss grows.  We’re trying to sequester certain large cash expenditures in these last years of Kate’s employment, so they will be out of the way after she retires.  We also have a car fund that will have enough money to purchase a hybrid the year she retires.  These are, in many ways, peace of mind issues, but no less important for that.

We got the annual notice from the vet about the dog’s physicals.  Something to look forward to.

At 3PM I’ll leave for the University to attend a lecture on sprawl by Robert Bruggeman.  I bought his book at the Walker last week.  Since I live in sprawl by almost any definition, I’m interested in understanding it better.  He has a different drummer approach, taking a historical look that emphasizes sprawl as a natural occurrence related to urban development.  This makes sense to me since I know the Minneapolis story includes “sprawl” that is now the neighborhood surrounding the Minneapolis Art Institute, Kenwood, and several of the neighborhoods south of the city along Chicago, Portland, Nicollet, Lyndale and other streets.  His question is how to separate “good” sprawl from “bad” sprawl.  More on this later.

Friends, Garden, General, Great Work, Our Land and Home, Politics

Plants and a Particular Location + Gardener = Dialogue

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40  bar falls 30.27  6mph  SSE  dewpoint 24  Spring

          Last Quarter Moon of Winds

Ah.  Can you feel the sigh?  A weekend with no outside obligations at all.  I plan to do clean up, plant some more seeds, read, maybe watch a bit more of the NCAA.  How about that Davidson, huh?  Took out Wisconsin.  That’s a student body of 1,700 versus one of what, 30,000?  I will read chapter 3 in the Permaculture design book for sure, perhaps polish off a novel or two, maybe start writing one of my own.  I have an idea that’s been bouncing around for some time now.

Tonight at 5PM I get to celebrate Chinese New Year again with the CIF guides.  I look forward to this each year, this one especially because I’ve done my homework on China and Japan over the last few months.  Saw MingJen, who organizes this event, on Wednesday at the Naomi Kawase film, The Mourning Forest.

If you can, would you write Hillary and tell her to get out now?  We need a chance to even up with McCain and a bitter end to the Democratic primary race just lets him have the field to himself.  I don’t have anything against Hillary, in fact she and Obama are about a horse apiece politically, but Obama has won the field, has the delegates and deserves his chance.  Hillary will have another shot.  She’s established that a woman can run as a serious candidate, a remarkable and historic achievement in itself.  Nothing in the feminist revolution demands that women win all contests or get all the jobs. 

Snow continues to retreat in our yard, but slowly.  As in years past, the Perlick’s grass is almost fully visible, while ours remains under 6-8 inches of snow.  They face south, we face north and that makes all the difference.  Spring comes to our property about a week later than theirs, weird as that is. 

On Thursday I followed the dog tracks in the snow and went out to check on my trees planted last spring.  Some animal, either rabbits or deer, have eaten the tops of them down to the garden hose I put around them as protection from mice.  I didn’t think tall enough up the food chain.   These were the trees I planted nearest the area we call the park.  Further north, also on the eastern edge of our westernmost woods, another group of oaks, white pines and Norway pines look like they’ve done well over the winter. 

This is the nature of gardening.  Try this and it works.  Try that and it doesn’t.  Listen.  Repeat what worked, change what didn’t.  Plants and a particular location engage the attentive gardener or horticulturist (as I’m beginning to think of myself) in a constant dialogue as shade patterns change, seasonal sun shifts become more understood, rain falls or does not fall and various cultivars and seeds prove well suited to the site or not.  This dialogue is multi-lingual as one party communicates in one language and the other has to translate, but it is true discourse as each can alter the others ideas.      

Art and Culture, Garden, Great Work

An Everything-0-Meter

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43  bar falls 30.27 0mph SSW dewpoint 12 Spring

          Last Quarter Moon of Winds

Had a great time with the two Weber (Japanese special exhibit) tours.  Grace Googin was there for the first one and I had about 15 on the other tour.  Folks seemed to be into it and thanked me a lot after we were done.  This is the first tour in a long time where knowledge accumulated over time has begun to break through in the tours.  I know, for example, the linkage between Chan Buddhism from China and Zen in Japan.  Not like an expert of course, but certainly at a level that helps folks on the tours gain a deeper appreciation for both.

After the tour I drove over to Interior Gardens where I picked up an everything-o-meter that will make the hydroponic part of the work so easy it will almost grow by itself.  Well, not quite.  It measures electrical conductance, ph and temperature, all three important data points for the reservoir of nutrient solution.  Also picked up 100 more pellets for starting seedlings and three bottoms for the other flats.  We’re in day three of the sprouting process.  Sometime in the next week we should see some shoots.  Fun.

The woman at Interior Gardens I remembered because she had injured her leg in a running accident.  That was about ten months ago.  During surgery the orthopedist discovered that her cartilage had pulled a divot of bone out of the knee.  This made it difficult of reconnect everything and she’s still not fixed.  She’s a runner, too.  “Oh, well.  If they can’t fix it, I’ll get into biking!”  She has a cryogenic device she puts on it at night that takes the pain right away.

On the way home I was, unfortunately, really hungry–back to back tours with no food in the middle–so I (you might want to cover your eyes for this part.) stopped at McDonald’s and got a McFish, which, also unfortunately, I like.  By the time I got home I was sleepy, no nap, and feeling guilty.  Guilt won and I just finished 40 minutes of aerobic workout on the treadmill. 

Garden, Great Work, Our Land and Home

Rock Wool Seed Blankies

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36  bar steep fall 29.84 1mph SSE  Dewpoint 26  Spring

                Waxing Gibbous Moon of Winds

Ah.  Hands back in the soil, thinking and doing with plants.  We bought two stems of yellow Plumeria when we were in Hawai’i and I potted them today.  Just the act of finding a pot, putting in some potting soil and adding water immersed my soul deep in the earth. 

The hydroponics setup is underway, too.  Seeds don’t grow well in hydroponic growing mediums, so there’s a prior step that involves starting seedlings in small rock wool blankies, then transplanting them, blankie and all, into the large pebble-sized lava rock medium.  

A seedling needs a couple of critical tools to grow inside.  The first is a warming coil to make sure the temperature underneath the seed pack does not get below 60 degrees or so.  We have those, four of them.  The second is a grow light.  We have those, too. Two of them. 

Tomorrow lettuce seeds will go into the rock wool seed blankies and some herbs as well.  These are all heritage seeds Kate and I purchased at the Seed Saver’s Exchange outside Decorah, Iowa.  Potting soil will go in some small cubes made of molded peat moss.  In them will go a few heritage tomato seeds and anything else we need to have a jumpstart on for the garden. 

The lettuce and herbs will make the transfer into the hydroponics.  We’ll learn how to work with the temps, timing of the nutrient solution flows, the nutrient solutions themselves while growing an easy crop.  The tomato seedlings and the other seedlings will get planted in the raised beds we’ve turned over from flowers to vegetables.

There are still a few more tools we need like an electrical conductance meter, a turkey baster and an aquarium heater or two.  I’ll pick those up on Friday when I go in to do two Weber tours.

This manual labor balances the intellectual work I do and I’m glad to be back at it.  From now until mid-October the garden and our land will take up more and more of my time and happily so.