Yearly Archives: 2009

Garden, Great Work, Holidays, permaculture, Politics

As American As …

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Summer                                   Waxing Summer Moon

As american as stock-car racing, country music, Walden Pond and the Beach Boys, another long hot summer is well under way.  The neighbors love fireworks and each fourth of July they show off the good stuff they’ve picked up.  Some of it is impressive for local effects.  Flowering showers with a boom at the end.  Fiery pinwheels with whistles.  Percussive blasts.

Rigel and Vega did not get as upset tonight as they did last night.  Reassurance and familiarity are a powerful antidote.

The harvest continues and picks up speed.  Tonight I made a dish with chard and beet greens, topped with baked beets in Balsamic vinegar.  There was, too, roasted turnips covered in olive oil, pepper and Kosher salt.  Potato crusted wild Cod finished the meal.

The Seed Saver’s Exchange calendar that hangs on our kitchen wall has this quote under July’s photograph of heirloom tomatoes, onions and bell peppers:  “When the harvest begins to flow is the gardener’s joy.”  It’s true.

Digging up turnips and beets, cleaning and cooking them feels so good when they’ve come direct from the garden.  Though there are political reasons for having one, ecological reasons  and aesthetic reasons, the real payoff from a garden is fresh food, grown in a manner you know and in a place with which you are familiar, even intimate.

There are certain activities that just seem congruent with life.  Among them are picking, cleaning and cooking your own vegetables.  When I dig up the turnips and the beets, I remember the day their seeds went into the ground, one at a time.  Their first shoots.  Their growth over time.  All part of my life and theirs.

Another tradition of the fourth at our house is a meal with dishes cooked from our own sources.  Hope yours went well, too.

Art and Culture, Family

Fences, Cards and Hunt

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Summer                    Waxing Summer Moon

Vega will find herself star-crossed in a couple of weeks.  We hired a fence-installer to put up a three rail split fence with a green mesh over the back to keep the pups out of the orchard.  When the pups are more mature, we can take down the green mesh and have a split rail fence.  We already have a couple of runs of split rail.  A good solution.

Tonight is sheepshead.  You may remember I did well the last time.  Tonight is a new night, new cards.  I’m glad I did as well as I did last time, especially considering the years of experience around the table.  Wonder how the cards will run tonight.

Still working the  Lady of Shallot.  This is one of three or four of Hunt’s paintings that I consider masterpieces:  Finding of the Savior, Bianca, Triumph of the Innocents.  At the moment I’m inclined to lift my tour theme from a monograph about the Lady of Shallot, “The Burden of Meaning.”  His work goes right to the bone, the skeleton the natural world as it is, the flesh, the symbolic overlay.  The Lady of Shallot satisfies me the most because it includes a wild emotional gesture with a cerebral message about art and authenticity.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Garden

The True Generational Transition

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Summer                   Waxing Summer Moon

Jon and Jen moved around the house this morning, packing and stowing, wiping Ruth’s tears–the wrong cap on her bubble bottle–and feeding a smiling Gabe.  It was the deliberate preparation of seasoned parents, checking this and that, getting ready.  As I watched, I realized this was the true generational transition.  The birth of grandchildren seems to represent the moment when the grandparent’s generation gets legs in time.  It’s not.  It comes when those children integrate into their family.  It comes when their parents take responsibility for them in a functioning, dynamic family.  It comes when tears are soothed, food comes to the table, when boundaries are set, when imagination is nurtured.  It comes when love creates a new family.   I saw all this over the last two days.

Jon put together Ruth’s playhouse.  We bought it a year and a half ago on sale at Costco.  It’s actually a utility shed, but a very cute one with windows and peaked roof.  We’re going to put white lights over the whole area and dress up the inside so other grandchildren can use it too.   Permaculture focuses not only on the plant life in an area, but on the human use of the land as well.  The playhouse adds generational nurturance to the built environment here.

Meanwhile the attacks on our new drip irrigation continue.  Vega seems to have taken a particular interest in where the netaphim should be.   She is not content with things as they are; rather, she sees things as she would like them to be and acts.  She apparently sees the netaphim with multiple holes, disconnected from its sources of water and distributed not where the plants are, but where she sees a better design.

Life has vibrancy here.  A good thing.

Great Work, Politics

A Promising Alliance

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Summer                     Waxing Summer Moon

A strange sensation today as I walked up the long flight of stairs at 2828 University Ave. SE.  Not deja vu exactly, I knew was this not a relived moment of my past, but a definite sense of having been here before, walking in to a strange room, meeting people, shaking hands, thinking further down the road.

It was the celebration of the Blue/Green Alliance’s opening its new offices.  The mayor’s of Minneapolis and St. Paul, RJ Rybak and Chris Coleman gave speeches, Ellen Anderson and Melissa Hortman were there along with others including Mark Andrews, former Hennepin County Commissioner.  There were labor leaders, leadership of the Sierra Club and a number of other folks whose personal and political lives pull them somehow into the orbit of labor and/or environmental politics.

I met Michael Porter, a guy from Macalester who runs their intern program.  I shook hands with Mark and saw Margaret Levin, executive director of the Sierra Club and Joshua Low who has done great work as the Green part of the Blue/Green Alliance.

Crowded rooms make hearing a difficult task for me, so I look to get away when I can, but it felt familiar to be there, getting ready for something months away, the second session of the 2009-2010 legislature.

This particular group and what they represent give me real hope in a couple of different directions.  Labor unions have had a tough go of it over the last twenty years or so and this represents a new and promising direction.  David Foster, the executive director of the Blue/Green Alliance, put it this way in a speech in Germany recently:  I want every job to be a green job and I want every green job to be a union job.  Sounds right to me.  Second, the environmental movement has often looked away from the difficult politics of economic justice, yet no lasting change in environmental policy will take place if those in the lower income sectors of our economy have to bear the brunt of it.

Aging

A Pain in the Neck (and the Lower Back)

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Summer                         Waxing Summer Moon

Up to Elk River with Kate to see Dr. Bewin, a pm&r doc (physical medicine and rehabilitation).  He’s a tall, fit man with gray hair and a reserved manner.  His demeanor in the office was professional, taking careful notes and putting Kate through a series of movements to discern the current state of her pain and its sources.

In the end his news was sobering, that is, he said no surgeon will touch her back, “Just too complicated.”  That means more physical therapy and possible injections, but no long term fix.  Her neck, a somewhat less complicated area (but still her neck), might still respond to surgical procedure.  We’ll check that out in a month or so with a couple of neuro-surgeons.

She’s dealt with this ongoing problem since our honeymoon, when she carried two liters of water in her backpack and felt some pain the following day.  This degenerative disc disease did not start then, but its appearance in our lives did.  Now here we are, 20 years later, still deciding, still treating.

Kate’s ability to endure and to endure and get significant work accomplished staggers me.  It has its limits.  The combination of neck and lower back challenges even Kate’s Norwegian toughness.  I believe her conditions will ameliorate somewhat with retirement when she has more control over her movements on any given day.

Art and Culture, Politics

Al Franken wins election to the US Senate.

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Summer                          Waxing Summer Moon

Al Franken wins election to the US Senate.  Boy, these election returns took a really, really long time to come in.  The election was in November of last year and today is the last day of June.  We have gone through Samhain, Winter, Imbolc, Spring, Beltane and into Summer while waiting on this decision.  Finally.

He was not my favorite, his politics and his manner jarring to me.  Norm Coleman was certainly not my favorite.  Still, Franken is a Democrat and he will caucus with the Democrats.  He may have provided the necessary vote to pass cap and trade.

I went into the museum today for a confab with other docents touring the pre-Raph show.  So much there, so much.  Only scratched the surface have I.  Not yet ready me.  But soon.

Aging, Family, Woolly Mammoths

The Grandchildren Are In The House

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Summer                                      Waxing Summer Moon

Grandpas Bill Schmidt, Scott Simpson and Frank Broderick (Woolly Mammoths all) prepared me for the wonder of grandchildren.  They were spot on.  Ruth came in last night and said, “Hi, Grandpop!”  She had me at coming through the door.  Gabe got transferred from Dad to me soon after Jon came in the house.  Gabe looked up and gave me one of his trademark smiles, Happy to see you Grandpop.  That’s what I heard, though Gabe’s 1 year plus mouth formed no words.

Herschel, their 6 year old German Shorthair, recently diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma, bounded in as if he had no stinking terminal illness.  He proceeded to pick up a small Ruthie sandal and run from one end of the house to the other with it in  his mouth.  This is Herschel’s way of signaling anxiety.

The Olsons stopped to see the Johnsons in Nevada, Iowa.  Zelma Johnson, Jon’s grandma, still lives in this small Iowa town where Kate and her sisters grew up.  Due to estrangement from David, Jon’s father, Jon had not seen his grandma in a long time.  Jen got to meet Zelma and Zelma got to meet her great-grandchildren, Gabe and Ruth.  David and Kate were high school sweethearts.

Kate got two cloth bags full of kiddy stuff at the dollar store.  Ruth opened her hers and took out each item and showed it to me, exclaiming happily as only small children can.  Retaining the  young child’s sense of of awe and wonder at simple things is a goal worth keeping at the forefront of our maturity.  Who needs a Lexus when she has a bubble maker?  Who needs a fancy house when there’s plenty of chalk to draw on the sidewalk?  Who needs fine clothes when a small electric fan with lights can entrance you?

These visits, back and forth, them here, us there are critical to family cohesion.  They are why I still travel to Indiana and Texas for family reunions.  As Grandpa Frank put it, “You don’t have a family if you never see each other.”  True.

Aging, Family, Memories

Grandchildren on the way

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Summer                  Waxing Summer Moon

Grandchildren.  Those living links to the future who know us and whom we know.  In my case Ruth and Gabe.  Three years old and one year old.  They are on their way here right now, probably someway in the Twin Cities.

Grandma Ellis, Jennie, was a school teacher.  I knew her a bit.  I liked her.  She understood young boys.  I have three memories associated with a visit I made to her house in Oklahoma City when I was 9 or 10.  In the first I took apart a clock Grandma no longer wanted.  She realized I wanted to know how it worked.  Later I tried to knock wasps out of the air with a bug bomb.  In my mind it was a dogfight, fighter to fighter.  If so, I got tagged and plummeted to earth with a huge swollen left hand.  The last memory involved a sinkhole that appeared in the alley behind grandma’s house.  It was big enough to hold a car.

What this means to me, these memories as central to my experience of my grandmother, involves the humility to realize my grandchildren may not remember me for who I am or what I have done, but for what happened when they visit.  Do I accept it and recognize the experience, validate it?  My grandma Ellis did.

I’ve written elsewhere about my namesake, grandpa Charlie Keaton.  He rode the rail at the Derby every year and loved horses and harness racing, too. Again, I remember him making syrup from water and sugar.  He also cooled his coffee in a saucer and drank from the saucer.  He wore green underwear with a flap in the back.  Those are my memories of grandpa.

Grandma Keaton, Mable, was a different story.  Either she suffered from bi-polar disorder like most of her children or she suffered some mental problem associated with child birth.  I remember her as a shuffling, almost mute older person.  Within in our family lore she famously fed a 13 year old growing boy half a weinie and two tablespoons of baked beans for lunch one summer during an extended visit.

Thus, my grandparent memories are thin soup, memory wise, though as the oldest in our family at least I have some memories where my brother and sister have few if any.

Family

Puppy Dog Tales and Grand Kids

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Summer                                  Waxing Summer Moon

Geez.  63 this morning.  I like it, but moving from peak BTU’s per square inch of flesh to late September makes the neck whiplash a bit.

The grandkids arrive today.  Sometime this afternoon or evening.  We’ve done the usual things:  wash the bed linen in the guest bedroom, clean out the detritus that gathers in an empty room, moved furniture, worked on stains in the carpet.  We’ve also made a modest start toward kid-proofing the house.  Gabe’s a little too young to need much and Ruth seems wise enough to not make us very concerned.

I’m glad to see them come, like the new puppies having Gabe and Ruth in the house will crank up the energy level and remind us of our embeddedness in the next generation.  Jon and Jen are good parents and fine friends so it’s a delight to see them come, too.

There is an inevitable upset with the arrival of guests.  Routines change.  More people need consideration when deciding on something.  This can, usually does, create some tension and anxiety on all parties.  It is, simply, part of living in community and as part of a family.  My introverted personality makes me especially prone and my anticipation about guests gets tamped down as a result.  An unfair and unnecessary experience, but I don’t seem able to shake it.

The next few days provide a learning opportunity for me.  I’ll report back here.

Cinema and Television

OMG!

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Summer                  Waxing Summer Moon

I’m a sucker for sci-fi catastrophe movies.  Well, ok, for a lot of other kinds of movies, too, but the sci-fi catastrophe so often get made for tv.   The scenario is pretty straightforward:  an unsolvable problem emerges much to the surprise of the scientific establishment.  A renegade scientist, long ago discredited and/or fired by the VERY AGENCY now wanting him or her back resists, then with reluctance agrees to try to save the world.  Once they’re back in the good graces of the system, that is, people have begun to listen to them, a military expert comes up with a solution to the problem–no matter what it is–that involves an atom bomb.  After much hooing and hahing, the chief decision maker decides against the renegade scientist becauses atom bombs always seem so damned convincing.

The bombs go out or in or over depending on the source of the problem:  the moon, the earth’s core, the magnetic field, an incoming asteroid or alien invader.  They fail.  The chief decision maker, chastened by experience returns humbly to the renegade asking again for their help.  Well, you see where this goes.  There are no On The Beach endings on TV, nor in a lot of movies either.

Tonight, in the strange way TV has of reshuffling actors, the old JAG leading man joined up with the female lead of a new show about lawyers, and built a machine that electro-hemishpherically supercharged the whizzidizigit, thereby expelling the brown star that had collided with the moon.  This, trumpets and then a sappy romantic flourish, saves the earth.  Again.

I know.  So why do I watch them?  Because I find the notion of uber competent scientists who have our back as compelling as the next guy.  THre’s always something to cheer for and a romance seen through to completion.  What’s not to like?  Oh, all right.  A decent script, maybe.  Often the technical affects are cheesy.  Sometimes, well, usually, the acting is atrocious.  Oh, hell, I don’t know why I watch’em.  I just do.

Reminds me of that song: I don’t know why I love you, I just do.