Monthly Archives: August 2008

General

The Tragic Element in Sports

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70  bar steady  29.83  0mph NE dew-point 61  sunrise 6:18 sunset 8:16  Lughnasa

Full Corn Moon

There are times when the Olympics seem to drone on and on.  Especially gymnastics.  It’s hard to remember that the individuals have spent at least four years, in many cases more, preparing for these few seconds.

There was another addition to the age revolution.  A Russian gymnast performing for the German national team, 33, won a silver medal.  Something’s going on here.

Sport and sports develop a strange, distorted look from a distance.  Let me show you what I mean.  26 miles.  Get there as fast as you can following the path we lay out.  Grab the other person, twist them.  Stay inside the circle at all times.  Do this over and over.  We’ll decide whether you did it well.  Jump in the water.  Swim with your arms sweeping forward, together, over and over, for two lengths of the pool.  Touch the pad at the end.  Run down this path.  Dive forward onto your hands, then leap onto this.  Twist or turn in the air.  Land.  Again, we give you points.  Take this heavy metal ball.  Stand here.  However you can, throw it as far you can within this area.  Oh, don’t step outside the circle.

Pull back another level.  At age 11 a coach spots a young boy with an unusual physique and dedication.  A swimmer.  Another, with fast twitch muscles predominant.  A Jamaican.  Run.  Run.  Run.  100 meters.  An Ethiopian.  Run. Run. Run. 26 miles.  Slow twitch.

Sport finds human beings who excel in a particular physical activity, then polishes them for a chance to perform against others of similar excellence, all to see who is best.  I know this competition gets a lot of ink as a salutary, wonderful concept that “brings out the best in our young people.”  Isn’t it the opposite?  Doesn’t it lead to a focus on the short term.  On winning at all costs.  Is it any surprise that doping and cheating of many kinds follows this kind of ethos like a bad scent follows a skunk?

Sport itself, the kinesthetic intelligence at work, has obvious beauty and requires, like art, years of discipline and study. The competitive aspect of sports, which I enjoy, has a certain doomed inevitability.  I don’t know whether the culture of sport has a way of being that would not force competitors, at least some competitors, to choose shortcuts.  I don’t think so and that leads to this element of the tragic, especially in an Olympic setting where the tone matters so much.

Just thinking out loud.  This just is, it seems to me.

Garden

Garden Work

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Pruning, dead-heading, weeding.  Cleaning the detritus out of the garden, gathering new beans and tomatoes.  Changing flags.  Even though mid-August the sun beat down, fierce still.

As I moved along, the plants reminded me, planted by my hand or Kate’s, remembering those days banging the new young plants out of pots, trowel in the soil.  The soil itself amended many times, now loamy and sandy, a good  home for flowers, friable.

A little financial work.  A nap with Hilo. 

Kate’s come home.  Bye.

Faith and Spirituality

On Seeking Happiness

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 74  bar steady 29.94 ompn SE dew-point 62  sunrise 6:17  sunset  8:16  Lughnasa

Full Corn Moon

“Men who seek happiness are like drunkards who can never find their house but are sure that they have one.” – Voltaire

In Los Angeles Story, Steve Martin has one of the great opening moments in cinema.  He drives into a planned community, tie undone and looking exhausted after a long work day.  In his hand the garage remote points at house after house, all the same, on and on and on, all gray, all with the same front porch, the same roofline, the same front yard and driveway.

Contrary to the positive psychology movement I agree with Voltaire that happiness, if it comes, arrives in moments and as the adjunct of other activity, never as a realized objective.  Happiness as a pursuit has a futile, desparate air, intimating that life without it has less, is less.  I don’t believe that.  Think of Viktor Frankl, creater of logotherapy, who maintained a sense of purpose while in the concentration camps.  Or, Anne Frank, hidden, yet living.  Imagine those times in your life when happiness has eluded you, were those times less worthwhile than those when happiness came easily?

To seek happiness demeans the reality and integrity of the total human experience.  If it comes, let it come.  If it does not, we live on anyway.

Outside work today so I need to get going.  See you soon.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel

Athletic Pinnacles, All On A Friday Night

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69  bar steady  29.96  0mph NE  dew-point 64  sunrise 6:17  sunset 8:17  Lughnasa

Full Corn Moon

The Japanese have tea parties.  They sit on special decks built for one purpose.  Their artists have perfected its illustration.  The moon.  Moon viewing.  We have the same moon, but our utilitarian perceptual field notes the brightness.  Or, the sentimental connections of blue moons or harvest moons or over the moon, but we do not honor the moon sui generis.  If you have time the next night or two, take a moment, maybe more.  Look at this silvered neighbor, our closest ally, a chunk of earth separated now from home by 250,000 miles.  Full moons and crescent moons spark the fire in my heart, wonder.

I watched three Olympic events tonight and each one in its way affected me.  The Romanian woman, Constantina Tomescu-Dita, ran away from the field at the ten mile mark.  She ran away, ran away, ran away home in an inspiring individual effort.  At 38 she was the second oldest contestant in the field.  I got caught up in her bravery, her grit and finally her perseverance.  When she ran into the bird’s nest stadium, I cheered along with everyone else.

Michael Phelp’s 8th gold medal.  It was no gimme with a strong Australian team and a scrappy Japanese team right on the heels of the US, but Jason Lezk swam another anchor lap with great energy.  He’s 32.  Do you see a theme here?  Dana Torres, US silver medalist in the 50 metre dash (swim), is 41.  Phelp’s is in his prime and has done something no other Olympic athlete has ever done.  8 gold medals.  In one Olympic.  Some say it may never be done again.  Maybe not.  Maybe so.  What ever happens, nothing will ever detract from the disciplined, humble swimmer from Maryland.

Ussain Bolt ran a 9.69 100 metre dash.  He did it with ease and elegance.  He, on the other hand, is 21.  This was his first Olympics. He was so far ahead of the field that he thumped his chest and opened his arms palm up to the crowd–while he headed toward the finish line, speeding up.

3 riveting athletic feats.  Makes you proud to be a human being.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work

Corn Mother

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82  bar falls 30.06 2mph N dew-point 65  sunrise 6:16  sunset8:17 Lughnasa

Full Corn Moon

This comes from wise woman Susan Weed and her website.

Her presentation of Lammas (Lughnasa) and especially her explanation of the link to the Eleusinian mysteries gives me chills.  Why?  Because I have corn growing in the garden right now.  Lughnasa is in essence a celebration, as I said in my post on the Great Wheel page, of the neolithic revolution, a celebration then, of wise women, since most archaeologists agree that women began the practice of horticulture.  It is also, and this is what gives me chills, a celebration of the corn that grows now here in Andover in 2008.  As the neo-pagans say, Blessed be.

                     punksilk2.jpg

Lammas, or “Loaf Mass,” is the Feast of the First Harvest, the Feast of Bread. This Holy Day honors the women who created agriculture and bred the crops we cultivate, especially the grains, or corn. In the British Isles, celebrants make corn dollies from the last of the newly-harvested wheat. The corn dolly holds the energy of the grain Goddess and, when placed above the door or the mantle, will bring good luck to the household all year.

When we think of corn, we think of succulent cobs of crisp, sweet, buttery yellow or white kernels: immature Zea mays, Indian corn. You know, corn. As in sweet corn, popcorn, blue corn, decorative corn, corn bread and corn chowder. Corn!

But, did you ever wonder why it’s corn? “Korn” is an old Greek word for “grain.” Wheat and oats, barley and even rice, are korn. This usage is preserved in the song “John Barleycorn must die.” When Europeans crossed the Atlantic and were introduced to the beautiful grain the Native Americans grew, they, of course, called it “corn.” And nowadays we think of corn as only that, but corn is Kore (pronounced “core-a”), the Great Mother of us all.

Her name, in its many forms — Ker, Car, Q’re, Kher, Kirn, Kern, Ceres, Core, Kore, Kaur, Kauri, Kali — is the oldest of all Goddess names. From it we derive the English words corn, kernel, carnal, core, and cardiac. “Kern” is Ancient Greek for “sacred womb-vase in which grain is reborn.”

The Goddess of Grain is the mother of civilization, of cultivation, of endless fertility and fecundity. To the Romans she was Ceres, whose name becomes “cereal.” To the Greeks, she was Kore, the daughter, and Demeter (de/dea/goddess, meter/mater/mother) as well. To the peoples of the Americas, she is Corn Mother, she-who-gave-herself-that-the-People-may-live. She is one of the three sister crops: corn, beans and squash. In the British Isles she was celebrated almost to the present day as “Cerealia, the source of all food.”

Honoring grain as the staff of our life dates at least as far back as Ancient Greece. Nearly four thousand years ago, the Eleusinian mysteries, which were regarded as ancient mysteries even then, centered on the sacred corn and the story of Demeter and her daughter Kore or Persephone. Initiates, after many days of ceremony, were at last shown the great mystery: an ear of Korn. Korn dies and is reborn, traditionally after being buried for three days. Corn and grain are magic. The one becomes many. That which dies is reborn.

Family, Garden, Great Work

A Pleasant and Substantial Path

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70  bar steady 30.13  0mpn SSE dew-point 62  sunrise 6:16 sunset 8:17  Lughnasa

Full Corn Moon  moonrise 2014    moonset  0554

“Mistakes are at the very base of human thought … feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not provided with the knack of being wrong, we could never get anything useful done.” – Lewis Thomas

Had to call the generator guys yesterday.  Our Kohler should exercise itself every two weeks, Tuesdays at 11:00 AM.  It has not done that since installation.  It works, we know that because it turned on during a power outage in June.  The exercise cycle, however, is how we know it works in between storms.   A fail safe.  They had a reason this time, like they had the last time.  This time use during an outage kicks it off the exercise cycle, “A problem Kohler refuses to recognize.”  The first time it was air in the gas line.  Maybe so both times, but I want it to do what we paid a hefty sum to do and that includes letting us know it works, all the time.  Otherwise, come an outage we may have no power and an expensive lump of metal and wires to help us enjoy the darkness and the heat.

Today and tomorrow and Monday are prep days for the herds migration out to our place.  Groceries.  Garden spruce up.  Hydroponics restart.  Decluttering the living room and kitchen.  That sort of thing.

Kate’s last two years of medicine are not the gentle glide down to a soft landing and out I wish they could be.  Her style of practice and the newer, corporate style do not mesh; the gears grind and jump.  It means she’s under pressure to see more patients, see more adults and smile doing it.  She needs a union, at best she will get out with her dignity intact.

We have, however, set ourselves on a pleasant and substantial path here at home.  We have expanded food production here this year and will expand again next year and possibly the year after that.  There are energy capture projects I have in mind and much more to learn from the disciplines of permaculture and horticulture.  She has her sewing and quilting; I have writing and politics.  Together, too, we have the kids, the grandkids and the dogs.  She will be here longer than she will be at work.

Friends, Garden

Men Always Need Help

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61  bar steady 30.14  0mph N dew-point 57  sunrise 6:16  sunset 8:19

Full Corn Moon  moonrise 2014    moonset  0554

Whoa.  Did you see the 7th gold medal race for Phelps?  His long, long arms came out of an arcing stroke, reached for the touch pad and, by .01 of a second, arrived ahead of the silver medalist.  To the naked eye it looked like Phelps did not make it.  A later interview with Mark Spitz, also winner of 7 gold medals, showed Phelps a humble and more realistic viewer of his own accomplishments than others.  Others wanted to make him the greatest Olympian; he said he was happy to be among the ones considered great, like Jesse Owens.  All this and modesty, too?  A great American to represent us in a country which understands the value of modesty.

With the Woollies here on Monday Kate and I have begun to get into preparation mode.  We don’t entertain often, hardly at all, but fortunately she’s an experienced suburbanite.  She can throw a party.  Best of all, she’s doing it on her birthday.  I’m lucky and the Woolly palate will be lucky.

The garden will get a spruce up.  I’ll dead-head all the day lilies and pull the obvious weeds if there are any.  The weeds growing up between the patio bricks will come out, too.  They could have come out a while ago, but we’ve had other matters.  The fire-pit can hold a fire, though its not pretty, nor finished, but the pit itself exists.  A bit of shuffling papers upstairs,  some art to the living room, turning furniture in a group friendly circle and we’ll be ready.  I’m looking forward to having the guys over and discussing what it means to be an America.

Kobe Bryant tonight on TV said he was proud to have USA on his team jersey. We’re the best, he said.  Not sure what that means, but that’s the question for Monday.

Apropos of none of the above is a story from the last Sierra Club political committee meeting.  We decided the three Minnesota house races we would target and a male committee member looked at the list after we’d congratulated ourselves on sorting out a complicated task, “Yeah, except we picked all the guys.”  There had been six races, three with men and three with women.

As his comment settled on the group, Katarina, the Sierra Club intern from Lentz, Germany looked up, smiled, and said, “That’s all right.  Men always need help anyway.”  Ooofff.

Faith and Spirituality, Literature, Writing

Dark Energy

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67  bar rises 30.17  0mph NNE dew-point 58  sunrises 6:15  sunset 8:19

Whole Corn Moon

“We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter, we stand by the old; reformers in the morning, conservers at night.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of the beauties of Emerson is his immersion in the rhythms of the natural world.   Any farmer, any gardener, even any denizen of the farmer’s markets has a visceral sense of the way human activity changes with the seasons, at least in temperate latitudes.  Once the growing season begins, and for a bit before it does, our attention begins to move outside.  At first we watch temperatures, frost dates and the warming of the soil.  Then, we begin to watch for plant emergence, the ephemerals.  Once spring is in full gear with last frost date past, the growing season begins in earnest.  This means we are outside, working.  In this work we express, as Emerson subtly suggests,  our confidence as changers of the world.  We plant corn here and corn grows.  We plant tulips there and color blossoms.

Then, when the all the plants save the ancient firs and pines have begun to die back and the vegetables have given their harvest, we turn back toward the inside, reading and crafts and puttering in the workshop perhaps, or focusing on our work for pay.  As the nights grow longer, as they do even now, we light our fires and gather in our modern caves, lights on against the dark.

Still, I part company with Emerson a bit at the end of this quote.  The night, as it grows longer and deeper, heading toward the winter solstice, the heart of mid-winter, encourages creativity.  The metaphor of the day goes from verdant field to fecund womb.  As we slow, pull in our senses and live more in our interior, seeds planted long ago begin to sprout.  The novel we muttered about while weeding the tomatoes begins to demand a place in our lives.  The child we wondered about in the spring begins to insist, pushing us toward family.  The painting influenced by the play of light on brown and withering plants takes on shape and color.

Hecate. Persephone. Jesus in the tomb.  Osiris scattered among the reeds.  The rebel angel in Pandemonium.  The shadow within our own psyche.  All these are night time, dark energy forces.  Their energy often sublimates when the external world draws us; but when winter or melancholy strikes,  they can draft upward, burst out into full awareness and with their explosive power drive us either toward self-destruction or acts of creation.

Politics

Is Obama the End of Black Politics?

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69  bar rises 30.00 0mph NE  dew-point 63  sunrise 6:15  sunset 8:20  Lughnasa

Waxing Gibbous Corn Moon   moonrise 1926  moonset 0334

A fascinating article in the NYT magazine, Is Barack Obama the end of black politics?

One of the more interesting ideas, which comes from the new generation of black leadership–more Obama than John Lewis–that an Obama presidency might find itself hampered when trying to deal with black issues.  How can you present your community as victimized if Michelle, Barrack and the kids are in the Whitehouse?  A speculation, in my opinion, that reveals the extreme naivete of American politics.

That there are issues in the train of identity politics goes without saying.  Women earn less than men.  Still.  Blacks still end up in jail disproportionately to whites.  Gays do not have the right to marry or have partner benefits.  All these are true.  But.  The big divider is not identity, not gender, race, or sex.

No.  It is, as it always has been, class.  While identity plays a role, class determines.  If you do not have adequate cash, you do not live in the good neighborhood where your kid goes to the good school, learns dominant class cultural mores.  This whole argument goes back to the rise of the new left.  The new left did not pick up socialism as its banner, but struck out for analysis of the “system.”  Was there an oppressive overclass that manipulated power to the disadvantage of the poor, women, blacks? Of course.  It was then as it is now the capitalist elite, the ruling class.

I know what you’re thinking.  This train left the station a long time ago and never arrived at its destination.  Look at Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, even the People’s Republic of China.  None of them are poster children for socialism.  Correct.  They illustrate the bankruptcy of Marxist-Leninism, a system in which even communism did not have a fair chance.

The failure of early 20th century Marxist-Leninism is not a critique of socialism.  It is a critique of a unique experiment in totalitarian government and a corrupted revolution.  Furthermore, it does not dismantle the critique of capitalism made by socialists.  It only highlights the genuine difficulty of changing the course of a behemoth long underway.

Obama does not need to deal with black or Latino issues.  He needs to deal with poverty.  We need a government which allows no child and no adult to go without housing, food or health care.  We need a political system which ensures the equal education of all its children and full employment for its adults.  As the rise of the black middle-class has shown, if the issue of poverty is dealt with the dynamics change forever.  Has this rise eliminated racism?  No.  Has Hilary Clinton’s run for the presidency eliminated sexism? No.  Will these pathologies of a traditional society still remain and need amelioration?  Yes.

Economic empowerment increases the capacity of these groups to fight for themselves and to find their natural allies in our political system.

So, no.  An Obama white house will not weaken the ability of advocates to make their case, because the first case to be made is against poverty, against class bias.

Garden, Politics

Making a Contribution

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74  bar steady  29.92 6mph NE  dew-point 63  sunrise 6:14 sunset 8:20

Waxing Gibbous Corn Moon   moonrise 1926  moonset 0334

When I was young, I used to read about the decline of Western civilization and I decided it was something I would like to make a contribution to.    George Carlin, RIP

Gathered up dried onions and put them in Clementine and old Amazon boxes.  Our crop now rests on two shelves of book-case in the utility room.  A cool morning and clouds made the harvest very present to me.  We gather inside the fruits the earth has given us.

The Arcosanti bell rings with its rich, deep tone in the winds occasioned by the shifts in barometric pressure.

Kate’s back to exercising.  Good to see.

Politics will, once again, absorb more and more of my time.  The web has many tools for the nascent citizen lobbyist.  I’ve located a few that are helpful.  This blog now has them added to the links.