Daily Archives: April 4, 2008

Cinema and Television, Family, Garden, Travel

Really Creepy Vampires

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42 bar rises 29.73 0mph W  dewpoint 28 Spring

         Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

OK.  I’m taking off my hair shirt and hanging up my cilici.

Today is Ruth’s second birthday.  Ruth is our first granddaughter.  The thought of another life, connected to your own, just starting out, makes the world seem a more congenial and more precious place.  Her blue eyes, mischievous quality and alertness augur an interesting and bright future.  She feeds the dogs, carrying their bowls with that peculiar toddler rolling gate.  She also crawls in the dog crate and closes the door to go night/night. (She’s just pretending.)  Jon and Jen are good parents, another fact that makes the world more congenial and more precious.

A quiet evening after the workout.  Started watching 30 Days of Night.  Vampires attack Point Barrow, Alaska just after it heads into 30 days with no sun.  One of the vampires says, “We should have come here a long time ago.”  A bit of Draculian humor.  A good movie so far.  Great production values, interesting actors and really creepy vampires.

Kate leaves tomorrow morning at 6:15 AM (with me as taxi driver) for Denver to celebrate Ruth’s birthday, then onto San Francisco for a family practice CME.  I plan to do some garden work tomorrow, like put down weed preventer and remove some mulch, maybe rake a bit.  It’s still too early to do much, but I’ll be able to get started.

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality

Doing Those Things I Would Not Do And Vice Versa

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58  bar steep fall 29.69 1mph S dewpoint 34 Spring

    Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

“Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.” – Lucius Annaeus Seneca

I’ve had two instances of this this week and I seem to have trouble learning the lesson.  On Wednesday AM Heather, who manages the corral in the museum’s lobby, demanded my presence and Grace Googins.  We were needed immediately, at 9:50 AM, to greet our 10:00 tours.  When we showed up a bit later than she liked, she was rude and insistent that “a memo had gone out.”  Later, I confronted her, told her I did not like her attitude.  She had an attitude and her facts were wrong.  Our tour group, it turned out, didn’t show up until 10:10 AM.  She apologized later, but I was still angry.  My reaction to her injured me, a lesson I recognize from years of being angry at my father.  Still, not a lesson I’ve learned.  Such confrontations weigh on me.  I need to learn a new style.

This morning I had a chance to indicate I’d learned a lesson.  Michelle Byfield-Stead was the lead docent for a tour I had agreed to do as a sub for Careen Heegard.  This was the third time I had Michelle as a lead docent.  Each time she has called at the last minute, last night it was late in the evening, and had this excuse or another.  I have never had a tour with her where she was prompt.  This is disrespectful and downright annoying.

So, I could have gone in this morning and assertively explained to her my problem.  Instead, I only saw her in a group and I was rude.  Again, not a positive response.  I was downright passive aggressive.  Geez.  I know better than this, but somehow, every once in a while, especially if I’m really irked, I act out.  Not always, but sometimes. 

Still niggling at me even now.  Sigh.   I expect better of myself, but like Paul, find myself doing those I would not do and not doing those things I would.

Art and Culture, World History

Something Famous, That They Might See in Books

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57  bar steep fall 29.82 3mph SSW Dewpoint 31 Spring

           Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

A highlights tour today with kids from Hudson.  We saw Frank, the Chuck Close portrait, then the Promenade of Euclid by Magritte.  After that the teacher wanted to see “something famous, that they might see in books.”  That’s ok, so I took them to see Van Gogh’s Olive Trees, Goya’s Dr. Arrieta and Rembrandt’s Lucretia.  They had a theme of westward expansion underway in class so I then took them over to the Minnesota gallery and we looked at first, the long rifles, then the painting of Ft. Snelling with the Lakota camped on the opposite shore of the Minnesota River.  The kids were there, engaged.  Fun.

On the way down and back I’ve continued listening to From Yao to Mao, the history of China.  I’m now on disc 17 of 18 and this is my second time through the series.  Mao has just begun to push for the peasant community in China as the vanguard of the revolution, replacing the urban worker, the industrial proletariat, whose communist members had been ousted in raids by the Nationalist Party and the tongs.  This will result in the long march and the eventual attrition of Mao’s forces by the thousands.  In this campaign Mao will create the modern guerilla war, sometimes called 4th generation warfare.

Our Land and Home

The Ex-Urb

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37  bar steady 29.89 0mph SSE dewpoint 34 Spring

           Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

Still absorbing the arguments from the Brueggman lecture on sprawl.  I want to write more when I’ve integrated his thoughts and decided fully how I feel about them. 

The exurban life, the one I’ve lived for the last 14 years, has some distinct pluses.  We have enough land that we can alter the landscape in positive ways.  We can contemplate, for example, adding ponds, a gravity driven stream, an orchard, changing out our lawn for prairie grass and wildflowers or fruit and nut trees, even vegetable gardens.  I don’t know how far we’ll go with all this, but the more I learn about permaculture, the more it makes sense, not only for us.

Also, the relatively isolated nature of our land, both in terms of our neighbors, who are least 2.5 acres away, and  our distance from the metro, over 30 miles, creates a sense of privacy that nurtures creative activity.  As an introvert, I have found this life a perfect fit.

Anyhow, gotta go.  Discovered late last night I do have a tour today.  See ya.