57 bar falls 29.59 0mpn N dew-point 56 Beltane, cloudy and misty
Waning Crescent of the Hare Moon
Just a quick reminder note that Ancientrails will go dark for almost a week during my Colorado trip. I head out in just a few minutes, once more down 35, then to 80 and finally to 70.
Look forward to connecting with you all when I get back. (BTW Almost 350 people a day check in on Ancientrails according to the last count.)
57 bar steep fall 29.94 7mph ENE dew-point 52 Beltane, cloudy and cool
Last Quarter of the Hare Moon
Can this possibly mean what it says? “While cities are hot spots for global warming, study finds people in them emit fewer gases.” Washington Post, 5/29/2008 In this same vein I watched part of a National Geographic Program on an outlaw biker gang, the Mongols. The narrator made this surprising statement, “Their lawlessness got out of hand.” Hmmm.
When I travel by car, I spend more time picking reading material, movies and audiobooks than I do clothing. This will not surprise some of you who know my fashion sense, late sixties college student unregenerate, yet it always surprises me.
Each trip has a theme. Don’t know when that started, but it helps me make decisions on the road and to deepen the experience. This trip to Denver, in addition to the obvious theme of tribal initiation (the bris), nature writing and trees will occupy my time. Not hard to figure out where this came from.
My first nights stay is at the Arbor Day Foundation in Nebraska City, Nebraska. I’m taking along a book I bought awhile back called Arboretum America. It tells the story of trees in the history of the US. Also a book of nature writing.
58 bar falls 30.01 0mph SW dew-point 52 Beltane, cloudy and cool
Last Quarter of the Hare Moon
RJ Devick has his offices at 169 and 394, a tall building, 20 stories, for the burbs. It has a glass curtain wall and looks like the generic office building. We go out to see RJ once a year. At those meetings we examine our portfolio and its performance–fine–any changes in our financial situation, all positive. More money in savings. Kate’s income stayed up rather than decline as we had imagined when she made the shift to managed care. Kate is within 2 years of retirement. 2 years.
These are years of change, not so much in the purpose of our lives, as in the external actions related to it. Kate will stop working at Allina, but will keep her license up and volunteer more. Her change is my change, of course, as the stay at home spouse. She will enter the homeworld full time and we will have to adjust to that. I don’t anticipate any major issues.
I leave tomorrow morning for Denver and since Kate uses the laptop for her work, I will not be posting for the next week. Look for a trip summary next Thursday or Friday.
54 bar falls 30.06 1mph NE dew-point 51 Beltane, cloudy and drizzly
Last Quarter of the Hare Moon
A change has begun to creep over the Woolly Mammoths. It is at least late fall for us. One of us had an episode of Bell’s Palsy over the weekend. He first thought, as I would have, stroke. The effects lingered into this week.
Late last night came news of a Woolly spouse. Cancer of the utereus. Adenocarcinoma. A hopeful prognosis if tests next week find it in an early stage. Even so.
Frank’s heart attack before he came to the Woolly’s and his bypass surgery after have kept medical issues in front of us, yes, but these are new. Fresh. Signals that we have begun to age. The fact is that such matters are no longer unusual in our period of life. While still not common, they will begin to pop with increasing incidence until, one by one, this herd of Woolly Mammoths and their spouses follow those of the Ice Age on that most ancient trail of all.
On a cloudy, cool day with a light rain falling this news could be depressing, but I find it just so. These matters are as key to our developmental age as were graduations in our 20’s and weddings in our late 20’s and early 30’s. Like those earlier rites of passage, the action is not in the event itself, but in our reaction to it over time. (to paraphrase Saul Alinsky)
I spent an hour and half outside today, planting and transplanting. Cloudy, cool, drizzly. Perfect for that work. Blue fescue, Maiden Grass, cucumbers, watermelon, squash and morning glories will each enjoy the rain on their first day in their new locations. The daylily transplant project was part of this and continues, in dribs and drabs, as it will until we finish it, probably some time in July.
We go out to see RJ Devick, our financial planner/money manager, today. These situations become more and more pertinent as Kate nears retirment age and I enter that time when eligibility for both pension and social security are upon me. Considering these matters thoughtfully are also part of our development period. We are at the cusp of a major change in our lives.
60 bar falls 30.16 0mph NW dew-point 36 Beltane, twilight
Last Quarter of the Hare Moon
This story grabbed me. See below it to see why.
“MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) – A woman who spent nearly 60 years of her life in an iron lung after being diagnosed with polio as a child died Wednesday after a power failure shut down the machine that kept her breathing, her family said. Dianne Odell, 61, had been confined to the 7-foot-long machine since she was stricken by polio at 3 years old.
Family members were unable to get an emergency generator working for the iron lung after a power failure knocked out electricity to the Odell family’s residence near Jackson, about 80 miles northeast of Memphis, brother-in-law Will Beyer said.
“We did everything we could do but we couldn’t keep her breathing,” said Beyer, who was called to the home shortly after the power failed. “Dianne had gotten a lot weaker over the past several months and she just didn’t have the strength to keep going.”
Capt. Jerry Elston of the Madison County Sheriff’s Department said emergency crews were called to the scene, but could do little to help.
Odell was afflicted with “bulbo-spinal” polio three years before a polio vaccine was discovered and largely stopped the spread of the crippling childhood disease.”
I learned a couple of years ago that I spent some time in an iron lung during my episode with bulbar polio. It was a shock to me. Paralysis struck my left side and lasted for about a year. I recall one event in an emergency room or an operating room, lights above my body, people in white working on me. I saw all this from a spot up near the ceiling. I know this sounds weird, but the memory has permanent residence in me. The remarkable part is that no one from the family was in this room. Just me. And the medical team.
Seeing this story reminds me of all the others, like me, who were victims of the post-war polio epidemic. Most of us made it through with little physical aftermath, but some died. Some still wear braces. Some required breathing support of one kind or another for their entire life. It all seems so long ago, but this woman was exactly my age.
I wrote some today on Superior Wolf, about 1,500 words. Moving forward.
67 bar falls 30.34 1mph WSW dew-point 29 Beltane, sunny
Last Quarter Hare Moon
The piles are no more. One more phase’s detritus has gone into the trash bin or file folder or magazine holders. It feels good to have them gone, a relief. Financial information up to date. Philosophy News, SF Bulletin, Parabola, Scientific American and Wired are in places where I will read them now. Hmmm. Guess the upstairs on the kitchen table pile remains. Gotta work on that. But not now. It’s of more recent vintage.
Sleepy. Nap time. Then some outdoor work and some more writing on Superior Wolf. Had a good idea yesterday that I will implement today. It’s an old idea, in a way the first idea for this novel. It has energy. Which is good.
47 bar steep rise 30.04 6mph N dew-point 38 Beltane
Waning Gibbous Hare Moon
There are frost warnings not 75 miles north of us. Frost. On Memorial Day. OMG.
Kate came home after a busy holiday clinic, today and yesterday were both very busy. I cooked walleye, pasta with morels I found in our woods with a sauce Kate made earlier and asparagus. We ate it while watching Passage to India. This is an old movie, so you probably saw it long before I did, but it’s a stunner visually. David Lean and Merchant Ivory, goes without saying. The plot worked well in exposing the basic contradictions in the colonial exploitation of India by the British Raj. The major plot point, however, an incident in the caves of Marabara still eludes me.
It seems that Adela, played by Judy Davis, awakened to her sensuality while visiting a Hindu temple in ruins. It seems further that her on again/off again marriage to the City Magistrate created a level of cognitive dissonance with this awakened sensuality. It all came to a head when she fled a wonderful day organized by a Muslim doctor. She made an accusation of attempted rape, or, was manipulated into making one. Then she recanted. Puzzling.
Kate’s off to bed. I plan to finish Lush Life by Richard Price tonight. A wonderful novel in many ways, though it is so thick in its content that I become weary of it and need a rest. It is a tour de force of urban conflict, parsed out on the shockwaves of a brutal murder on the lower east side. If you want to read a genuine American voice on a quintessential American topic, I recommend it.
No writing by me yesterday or today on Superior Wolf. In a bit of a general funk, the dream surfacing some of it. Not sure where it’s going, doesn’t seem so oppressive tonight.
60 bar steep rise 29.80 3mph WNW dew-point 51 Beltane, cloudy
Waning Gibbous Hare Moon
This amazing shot shows Phoenix as its chute brakes entry velocity on its descent. A camera aboard the Mars Reconaissance Orbiter took the shot.
A muggy day, cool enough, but I’m tired. Wore myself out getting down on myself in my dreams. Need a nap. Things go better with sleep.
Amended soil around the one juniper stump I pulled and worked on a second one. No joy yet. I’ll get it, just takes patience.
66 bar falls 29.88 1mph W dew-point 43 Beltane, night
Waning Gibbous Hare Moon
Tomorrow: the 500. And a few hours after, Phoenix Lander arrives at its destination. The following information is from the NASA website about the lander.
“With three days and 3 million miles left to fly before arriving at Mars, NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft is on track for its destination in the Martian arctic.
The spacecraft is closing in on the scariest seven minutes of the mission.
On Sunday, shortly after the annual 500-mile race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Phoenix will be approaching Mars at about 12,750 miles per hour, a speed that could cover 500 miles in 2 minutes and 22 seconds. After it enters the top of the Martian atmosphere at that velocity, it must use superheated friction with the atmosphere, a strong parachute and a set of pulsing retrorockets to achieve a safe, three-legged standstill touchdown on the surface in just seven minutes.
The earliest possible time when mission controllers could get confirmation from Phoenix indicating it has survived landing will be at 4:53 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday (7:53 p.m. Eastern Time). Of 11 previous attempts that various nations have made to land spacecraft on Mars, only five have succeeded.”
Geez, 3 days and 3 million miles to go. That’s what I would call rapid transit. 1 million miles a day. At that speed, in 93 days, you’d be roasting at Club Sun. It’s taken Phoenix 10 months to reach Mars. 10 months.
So, automobile racing in the early afternoon, a Mars landing around 7:30PM. What more could a guy ask for on a holiday?
66 bar falls 30.06 6mph NE dew-point 38 Beltane, cloudy
Waning Gibbous Hare Moon
The grocery store on Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend, quiet. I suppose all those up norther’s have abandoned the first home for the second. Made for an easy trip through the check out lane. Though not purchasing much, I thought, I still rang up $155. Surprised me.
Some shrimp, a walleye fillet, milk, bread, snacks, some fruit (that $10 bag of cherries maybe not such a wise purchase), butter, turkey for the dogs. That’s about it. Combine that with the $42 it took me to fill up the Celica, around 11 gallons, and you can feel the pincers of rising commodity prices clamp down.
Kate and I can afford it, don’t get me wrong, but I’m thinking about the person who checked me out at Festival, who put the items in the bags, theWalmart employee, the person who works in the convenience store, janitors and other back of the shop employees we rarely see. Or, the unemployed. Or, the person whose income each month comes fixed by an annuity, social security, a meager pension. Consider a person making 30-40,000 dollars a year. With two or three kids. A mortgage and a commute. Thank you free market capitalism. Why did they get the boat with holes?
Planted a couple of ferns in the shade garden underneath the river birch, then went over to the second tier, where I began a shade garden 3 years ago. Gophers have eaten much of the hosta and the daylillies, survivors from my attempt to clear them out back then have overgrown a lot of the rest. I’ve decided to treat daylilies in this half moon shaped garden as weeds. I’m moving them to other places, places where their wonderfully dogged lifestyle will help us rather than get in the way. Any that grow from tubers left behind, though. Out they go.
Spent 45 or minutes or so writing on Superior Wolf, too. Keeps on coming.