Monthly Archives: May 2008

Great Work, Politics

Port-A-Potties A’Plenty

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58  bar falls 29.65  4mph N  Dew-point 27  Beltane, cool

                       Full Hare Moon

Those tiny baby bunnies born under the Hare moon gotta shiver in their bunny nests.  This has been a cold spring.

Went to the State Capitol grounds for 2 hours of volunteer work for the Vote Yes campaign.  We’re pushing a constitutional amendment to dedicate funds for clean water in lakes, rivers and streams.  There is also a dedicated funding stream for the arts.

For a major sesqui-centennial event, this was kept secret.  Who knew about it?  Hardly anyone apparently.   They had port-a-potties for a large crowd, but they all had green on the go in tab.  # of porta potties is a good estimator for how many folks event organizers anticipated.  It was a cool, blustery day.  The crowd seemed hurried and the tents poorly organized.  Not an up day.

Kate made Omaha Steak Company steaks for supper, a gift from Annie.   Mashed potatoes, corn on the cob and a tenderloin–a regular heartland meal.  That is, its destination was heartland via my circulatory system.  If God hadn’t meant us to eat meat, why would she have made it so good?

Our Land and Home

Big Brown, Pulling Away

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56  bar falls 29.73 4mph dew-point 29   Beltane, sunny and cool

                                Full Hare Moon

Cut down three blooming buckthorns before they could fruit.  This radically changes the seed distribution pattern. My goal is to get to each one just before it blooms and whack it down, paint it with brush-b-gone and monitor the site for the next 3-4 years.  Also finally cut down the rather large green ash that had long prevented the truck gate from opening all the way.  The tree came down more easily than I had imagined.  It had grown into the chain link and I thought I might only be able to cut part way through the base due to the imbedded chain link.  Not so.  It cracked and split, after I used the steel wedge to free my stuck chainsaw, leaving a clean stump inside the fence line and a fallen tree outside.  Progress.

Kate, meanwhile, has taken the pruning charge seriously. She’s whacked, sawed, pulled, torn and lopped limbs and canes off Amur maples, red twig and grey ossier dogwood.  When she gets going, get outta the way.  An impressive pile of branches have mounted over the fence line. They need to go to the Habitat for Furry Animals site.

A glorious Sunday. 

Watched Big Brown win Pimlico yesterday afternoon.  Amazing.  On the outside, running third at the final turn, I saw the jockey loose the reins a bit.  It was a signal for a downshift, then accleration that took him past the others by the beginning of the straightaway.  As Big Brown pulled away, the jockey rose up in the saddle and checked between his legs to see the rest of the field.  They were way behind.  Fun to watch run.

Art and Culture, Garden, Writing

More Homes for the Small and Furry

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51  bar steady  29.75 3mph N dew-point 31  Beltane, Sunny and cool

                                    Full Hare Moon 

“I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing everything.” – Vladimir Nabokov

Amen to that.

Another cool day.  Great gardening weather, not so great growing weather.  The cool temps have  kept germination slow, my carrots have not emerged at all and only a few stray beet and lettuce seeds have begun to push through, at least at close of growing day yesterday. 

We will see today.  Sometimes seeds all sprout at once, sometimes not at all.  Germination percentages vary with weather, timing of planting, quality of seed and amount of moisture.  We’ll get something.  We do not watch the soil with the same eagerness as pioneers, for example, whose lives may have depended on germination.  I can only imagine that then the progress of the seed received an attention bordering on pleading and prayer.

We have the grandkids playhouse in the truck, three very large boxes of a put-it-together by the numbers building we bought at Costco.  Today’s task is to unload it and cover it with a tarp until we can level the area now cleared by the Steve and Aimee’s assistance yesterday.  After that we move brush onto yet more homes for the small and furry.  Not sure what after that.

I’m signing out for the summer from the MIA.   In September 2006 I began the second year of the docent education process.  In summer 2007 I signed up for the Made in Scandinavia painting exhibition.  After labor day the school year touring got going.  I had a month off in February for Hawai’i, but other than nothing longer than a week since 2006.  It’s time for a break.  Besides, I need to get back to work on that novel.  And a children’s book or two, too.

Cinema and Television, Family

It Will End as a Novel Ends

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55  bar steep rise 0mph E dew-point 39  Beltane

           Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

Kate cleared a bunch of dogwood canes, pulled up weeds, pruned out a juniper (yesterday), deadheaded the daffodils and generally worked herself into a stupor. (In Norwegian, this is a good thing.)  She’s been on vacation this week and has enjoyed herself immensely planting, pruning, carrying.  (Again, in Norwegian, this constitutes a vacation.)  I admire and appreciate her doggedness, but it doesn’t count as a vacation attitude in my Celtic/Germanic perspective.   Whatever turns your crank.

Battlestar Galactica is the most nuanced and unpredictable show on television, bar none.  It is a good science fiction novel brought to the screen and that is so rare as to be a marvel, a marvel that continues week after week.  There no good guys and bad guys, no bad robots and good robots.  No, there are humans and robots who, in some situations, act for the common good and, in other situations, act out of selfish or malicious motives. 

The Science Fiction channel will finish the Battlestar Galactica series this season, but it will not tail off into the land of unfinished television shows. It will end as a novel ends, with an ending that ties together various plotlines and provides a final surprise and aha.  How do I know?  Because that’s how good writing works, and this is good writing.  I would like to see this as a precedent for TV shows where the story has a trajectory, a climax and a denouement, not the eternal extension of the storyline in a cynical attempt to exploit viewer interest for every last drop of advertiser revenue.  Viewers will return if the fiction has characters with complex lives, difficult hurdles to overcome and a convincing fate.

More work outside tomorrow.  This may be the last big push for a while since Kate goes back to work on Tuesday and I have MIA and a docent class luncheon on Monday with Woolly’s in the evening.

Our Land and Home

Three Oak and One Elm Bite the Dust

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72  bar steady 29.56 4mph WSW dew-point 27  Beltane, cloudy

                     Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

The younger folks, Steve and Aimee, worked the whole morning on the buckthorn.  I worked nearby on a 14 year old project, thinning the woods.  When we first moved to Andover, I had a state forester come out and advise me on how to manage our woods for wildlife.  His major advised involved taking out trees growing too close to each other, opening up the understory and getting rid of the buckthorn.  He also suggested creating brushpiles because small critters love brushpiles for home building.

I’ve made some progress against the demon buckthorn and we’ve created many brushpiles over the years.  The thinning of the woods, though, has taken a back seat to gardening, creating beds, planting, nurturing.  Last year I began to thin, starting in the northwest corner of our property.  I cleared it of buckthorn and black locust, cut out some other understory and now have it 3/4’s cleared.  I also began, again last fall, to develop midden heap park.  First I cleared out a whole variety of a plant life that had grown up on our compost pile.  Then I cut down and debarked three diseased elms.  I also removed buckthorn, cutting down the larger ones to 2′ stumps (which Steve and Aimee pulled today).  In addition I began removing, thinning trees.

Today three oak and one elm bit the dust.  Literally.  After limbing them, I cut them up into smaller sections–log sized–and lugged them onto a pile.  I slept well during my nap.

Our Land and Home

The Weed Wrench, a Well Traveled Tool

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67  bar steep fall 29.59 2mph W dew-point 32

          Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

“O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes!” – William Shakespeare

The origin of schadenfreude.  A malicious satisfaction obtained from the misfortunes of others.  When happiness turns about for others, then we discover this difficult side of our Self, the corollary to Shakespeare’s observation.

Steve and Aimee came over today.  They wanted to thank us for the loan of the weed wrench.  They returned the favor by showing us their moves for the morning, wrenching out buckthorn after buckthorn in the area where we have a fire-pit and midden heap park under construction.  They also cleared out the area where we will put in Ruth and Gabe’s playhouse.

Bright, good work ethic, a pleasure.  

Now for a nap.

Art and Culture, Family

Sayonara, Weber Collection

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79!  bar steep fall  29.62 5mph WSW dewpoint 35  Beltane, sunny

                       Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

The final Weber tours.  A Japanese language class from Kennedy HS in Bloomington and a small group of stunned ladies of a certain age.  Neither tour was a flop, neither an engaging and vital time.  The Kennedy group had a few kids that were present the whole way, interest.  One young lady took out a notebook and started writing.  The second seemed timid, afraid to respond to inquiry, interested but reticent. 

At the end a woman told me she’d seen a Bhutan exhibit in Honolulu.  “The objects came with five Buddhist monks.  They came to bless the statues with water each morning.  Since in Buhtan, they received this sprinkling directly, but were in cases like this,”  she indicated the Nara Buddha at the beginning of the show, “they had, oh, I don’t know, a tupperware container,”  she spread her hands out and formed a large sloppy rectangle, “It had water.  Then they had a mirror.  They got the objects reflection in the mirror and sprinkled that.”

Sayonara, Weber collection and bon voyage.

I have a long stretch of days with little planned.  No docent classes, no tours, no preaching, no social engagements.  The right time to garden and to write.

Jon called while I was writing this.  They want to have the bris on June 2nd or 3rd.  Could I come?  I’m there.  I’m excited to see Gabe and Ruth, to see Jon’s garden and Jen with her new brood.

On to the treadmill.  I try not to remember this, but apparently in Victorian jails, prisoner powered treadmills were a form of human as donkey labor.  I’m not sure but that may be where the term comes from in the first place.

Friends, Literature, Writing

Current Literature

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59  bar steady  29.90  0mpn WSW dewpoint 44  Beltane

            Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

A mediocre night at sheepshead, but we had a lot of laughs anyhow.  Bill Schmidt cleaned up the nickels tonight.

While driving back and forth I finished I Am Charlotte Simons, a 2004 Tom Wolfe novel.  It’s reviews are all over the map and I can see why.  On the one hand it is an arresting look at college life in the Ivy league.  On the other hand the characters never reached very deep into my soul.  It was long and brimming with detail, a novel of manners of a sort.  I’m glad I “read” it. (Listened to it.)  Don’t know if I would have finished it as a read.

Another writer who has my complete attention right now is Richard Price, author of Clockers and Lush Life.  I finished Clockers a few weeks ago and bought Lush Life last week.  I’m part way into it.  This guy writes dialogue with an ear like no body I’ve read before.   In Clockers he channels inner city drug dealers and homicide detectives with equal credulity.  Lush Life continues this same kind of street savvy attention to speech and mores, this time on the Lower East Side in New York.  Clockers was set in New Jersey. 

Both of these guys, in different ways, reach into a segment of American life only a few of us witness.  Of the two, Price’s work has the ring of authenticity while Wolfe’s is satirical and just a bit off key.  Still, I enjoy both authors and am glad to have them on the scene.

I returned, last night and today, to a novel I’ve fooled around with since 2001, Superior Wolf.  It has possibilities. 

Travel

Road Trip

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71  bar falls 29,90 0mph W dewpoint 35  Beltane, sunny

                   Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

A day with no garden work for me.  This 61 year old body needed some downtime.  Some movement exercises, 40 minutes on the treadmill and I’m good.

Kate planted annuals and has ideas for grass and petunias that sound good.  I have to amend the soil first.

Tonight is Sheepshead.  We’ll see how I do this time.

Kate and I have discussed the possibility of having Ruth come here for a week or so this summer. We’d like to get her started on regular visits to Grandma and Grandpas. 

The trip to Alabama has begun to take shape.  Looks like I’ll leave around June 14, stay in Selma for three nights–16-18, then I may head on out to Denver, crossing the deep south the whole way.  I haven’t seen Natchez or New Orleans since Katrina.  Road trip.  Road trip. 

Our Land and Home, Writing

I Think That I Shall Never See

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71  bar steady  30.00  1mph SSW dewoint 35  Beltane

            Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

A morning at the Rum River Tree Farm.  Kate and I went wandering among the trees up for adoption.  We looked at fruit trees for our orchard apple, plum, pear and cherry.  We also looked at some willows, Niobe for example, with a wonderful yellow gold bark.  Great accent trees.  The larch look great, too.  Both of these require a wet environment, so we might have to change our irrigation system around a bit.

River Birch clumps go for around $260.  I figure 3 or four would transform the lower part of our front yard into a shady grove.  One or two other trees, running up the slope, would follow the elevation.  Kate wants lanes of grass among the trees.  I want more trees, so I imagine we can come to a compromise.

We also will buy some tree lilacs, trees for our grandkids, planted in their honor.  All of this comes from the permaculture thinking.  I’ve added some to that page if you follow that part at all.

Now it’s 72 degrees outside.  This means it might be a good day for morels.  It also means some of those seeds we sowed will begun to germinate, some more of them, I should say.

Spent an hour last night editing Superior Wolf.  It’s a keeper, needs expansion, filling out and elimination of one whole story line, but it’s a good one.  So’s Jennie’s Dead.