Yearly Archives: 2009

Aging, GeekWorld

The Weekend

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Spring               Waning Seed Moon

Another weekend come and gone.  A fellow Woolly, I think, told me that retired folks he knows still view the weekends as special, different from the weekdays.  I sure do.  Weekends have more latitude, more stretch and give, where weekdays still bring for me an expectation of things accomplished, deeds done, seriousness of intent at least entertained.

This one had some of that flavor, some not.

The not came partly in reference to this computer, the older Dell, not the new Gateway.  My disc drives have dropped off the cyber map.  When called upon, they sit there, quiet.  Non-violent resistance.  Nothing.  I’ve tried many, many things to convince them to come home and go back to work, but nothing appeals to them as yet.

If I need to, I’ll shift my images to the Gateway and use it to burn cds and print color images, reserve this one for writing and the laser jet.  I’m not going to give up quite yet, I want to search a few more tech sites, see if I can come up with something.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Hydroponics

Let Our Revels Now Begin

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Spring         Waning Seed Moon

We are far enough into spring that its first full moon, the Seed Moon, has begun to wane.  The snow is gone and even though the land here is dry bulbs have begun to break the earth with the tips of their small green spears.  The daylilies, those hardy, reproductively agile flowers are already up six inches or so (hmmm, time for the cygon on the irises).

I pulled up stakes but we’re not moving.  Nope, each year these stakes get taken up when the last snows of the season, at least any that will last, are behind us.  They are three feet high, sharpened on end and painted a fluorescent orange on the other.  Put in the ground after Halloween (for obvious, trick related reasons) they guide snow-plowing crews away from the edges of our yard.  This preserves lawn and sprinkler heads.  Out in Rocky Mountain National Park their equivalent is a seven foot or so sapling lashed to mile marker or outside lane marker.

We have our peculiar seasonal rituals.  Next comes the removal of the snow blower to the machine shed and the draining of its gasoline tank.   In its place comes the riding mower, ready for another season of grass beheading.  Somewhere in here the cold weather plants get started outside, tomato plants inside.  Windows get washed and gutters cleaned. We like to give ourselves a fresh face for nature’s season of abundance.  We will put the spiritual asceticism of winter behind us, ready now to revel in green, fresh fruits and vegetables, warm breezes.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health

Two Colorful People Together

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Spring                  Full Seed Moon

Yes, we need no appraisal, we need no appraisal today.  Our bank, Wells Fargo, decided we do not need an appraisal to refinance our loan.  Something about our loan balance, equity and that it would be a roll-over instead of a brand new loan.  OK.  That means we can refinance sometime next week.  A good thing.

The last week and a half, since the root canal, has had dealing with the infected jaw, then one organ after another taking up my mornings.  All important to my long term health, but it has left me tired and with a sense of little accomplished.

This need to accomplish, to achieve continues as a backdrop.  Kate says when she retires she’s ready to rest on her laurels, sit back and reflect on her life.  “We can just be two colorful people together,” she said.  I’m not sure I can give up the hope of something over the horizon, a realization, a book, a political action a defining event for this stage of my life.  If not, I may find the last two decades or so of life a struggle. Or, I suppose, they might be very productive.

Drifting right now.  The melancholy at bay, but not too far away, ready to bring a tear or a heaviness to my now.  Feels empty.

Family, Memories, Weather +Climate

The Post Office Was Gone

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Spring                Full Seed Moon

The folks at the Strib have asked those of us who blog for their weatherwatchers page to write up a storm story or two, a reminder of the forces of nature coming at us in the next few months.  As I’ve thought about this task, my own patronizing wonderment at folks who live on fault lines, in the path of hurricanes, or build homes in fire prone forest areas came to mind.

So, I’m going to start with a proper dose of humility, admitting that I, too, live in a place where nature can play havoc and let loose the dogs of war from time to time, yet I stay where I am.   After all we frequently get those 20 below zero or worse bouts of cold weather, often driven further down the temperature scale by high winds.  In the summer tornadoes and hail storms pound our area, so much so that we have a new roof and new siding after a bout with hail and tornadoes touched down within two miles of  our home, pretty damned close if you ask me.  That’s not to mention the weather that can and has punched us up the worst:  derechos.  These straight line winds reach speeds in excess of 58 mph.

Sorry about all those sarcastic comments southern California, west coast of Florida, San Francisco.

I’ll write one story today and few others over the week.

The first storm memory I have comes not from Minnesota, nor from Indiana where I grew up, but from Oklahoma, where I was born and still have family.   In 1956 or 57 my parents sent by Greyhound bus from our home in Alexandria, Indiana to Mustang, Oklahoma, then a rural community a good ways from Oklahoma City.  My uncle Rheford had the post-office attached to the front of his house and served as the rural mail carrier for the Mustang area.

Uncle Rheford and Aunt Ruth had, as many Oklahoma homes still do, a storm cellar located in the back yard, a dug-out with a cement floor and heavy barn doors covering the entrance.  During calm weather, most of the time, the storm cellar serves as a root cellar and a place to store canned goods, so it always smelled of stored produce and damp earth.

A few nights after I’d arrived, around 3 in the morning my cousin Jane came into my room, shook me awake, “Come on, Charles Paul, we’ve got to go to the storm cellar.”  Her urgency and the hour got me up fast.  I followed her out into rain and wind, crossed the few feet from the back door to the storm cellar and hurried down the four or five steps into this small, artificial cave.  My Aunt Ruth and two other cousins were already down there and Uncle Rheford followed quick behind Jane and me.

Uncle Rheford closed the doors with a thud, threw a large cast-iron bolt to lock them and put a cross piece into two metal brackets made for that purpose.  He also grabbed a chain and passed it through two eye-bolts, big ones, sunk into either door.  The end of the chain went around and hooked into another bolt that was part of the cement floor.  A little too sleepy and a little too young to be awed by all this preparation I sat down on a bench near a basket of potatoes.

The wind came.  The tornado must have passed right over us or very close because those heavy barn doors bowed up, called from their position by the voice of the storm.  The chain thrummed tight and the air left the cellar.  Then, just as it had come, the wind passed on by, the doors slumped back to their usual shape, slack came into the chain and sweet air rushed back into the cellar and to our lungs.

I don’t recall now how long we were in the cellar, probably an hour or so, maybe more.  After we got out we came up to a wet, distressed scene with leaves, tree branches, parts of buildings and machinery scattered in the  lawn.  The big surprise though came when we looked around the house.  The post-office, basically a long addition to the side of the house that faced the road, was gone.  Disappeared.  The rest of the house was intact.

In the days that passed I saw straw driven into telephone poles and other flotsam thrown up on the shore of this small Oklahoma town.  From that day forward I have always heeded instructions to go to the basement, remembering that night in the storm cellar in Mustang, Oklahoma.

Health

Aurals

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Spring           Full Seed Moon

The audiologist works in a 17th floor suite in the Medical Arts Building.  Downtown Minneapolis spreads out toward the west and the smaller buildings look faraway.  Todd has very white teeth, a bright blue and white striped shirt, black  pants and shoes.  There is no one else in this oddly empty space.

After clucking a bit about my deaf ear and gathering some pertinent information, Todd took back to a small room within a room.  It has acoustical tile on the walls and ceiling, a small window through which I can see Todd and a chair for me.  Todd puts a red earphone on my right ear and a taupe earphone on my right ear with a careful, practiced movement.

“Click this if you hear a sound,” he says, handing me a small plastic device with a button.  Then he closes the thick door.  Oops.  A bit of claustrophobia.  I close my eyes.

Warbling sounds, the aural equivalent of sine curves ping out of the headset.  Then, spaces of time when I wonder if he’s not sending me anything or if I’ve lost whole chunks of hearing. Ah.  A sound.  Another.   Now a sonar like ping.  Then a washing noise with the warbling sounds fainter under it.  In giving myself over to the test I’ve forgotten my claustrophobia.

That was my right ear.  He then puts a static noise, like cellophane crumpling over and over, in my right ear so it won’t help out and give a false reading.  In my left ear, nothing.  Then, mild pain that I feel, but do not hear.  One or two low warbling sounds, faint and far away, but heard in my right ear in spite of the static.

“Let’s look at the results.”

As I thought, I’ve lost hearing in the high ranges in my good ear.  The sibilants are harder to distinguish in challenging environments, s, f, th.  Yes, I’ve noticed that.  In my left ear, “You have no functional hearing.”  Oddly, this pleases me.  I guess it confirms my reality, again.

There are options for me, but not really bang on good ones, at least not at the level of difficult I have now.  Maybe later.

Friends, Great Work, Health, Woolly Mammoths

Feelin’ Glum

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Spring              Full Seed Moon

Today was the second organ day in a row.  Yesterday, eyes.  Today, skin.  Tomorrow, ears.  Doing fine on all counts so far.  Even so, I find visits to the doctor a bit stressful.  The waiting room.  The waiting for the doctor.  Their evaluation/assessment.  I have a good relationship with all of my doctors and intend to keep it that way.  Bill Schmidt and I had lunch today and I told him I view doctors as health consultants.  I’m responsible for my health, but they help me stay healthy and intervene if something gets out of whack.

After seeing Dr. Pakzad I came home and had a sit down with Kate.  I’ve been feeling glum, an unusual state for this time of year and unusual in intensity for me over the last couple of years.  It’s a little difficult to sort things out.  In part the Sierra Club work may be more of a challenge than I anticipated.  In part I found myself counting up all the little insults that make me realize my age, no, not really my age, but my sense of competence.  Do I have it anymore?  A tough question to answer from the inside and one always colored by mood.

Kate thinks that may be the wrong question.  I’ve prodded her several times over the last year about retirement and whether she’s ready for it.  She turned the question around on me, “I wonder you’re ready for retirement?  To let go of the need to have to have it?”

Hmmm.  Projection isn’t just a machine in a movie theater.  She may well be right.  Pondering this pushed me to wonder about the last regression I had where I got credentialed for the UU ministry.  I did that during a time when I was down about the writing.  But, John Desteian said, in a regression, you always go back to pick up something left behind, or unresolved.  Stuff to bounce around.  Enough for a coup contrecoup injury.

Good lunch with Bill Schmidt.  We covered a lot of ground from genetic modification of seeds and nuclear energy to motorcycles and dealing with difficult personalities.  I came away still opposed to nuclear energy, but willing to hear arguments about how to handle the waste.

Great Work, Politics

A Good Lesson In Humility

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Spring           Waxing Seed Moon

I’ve been working with the Sierra Club for a while now and I’m constantly amazed at how much more these folks know about politics than I do.  I’ve begun to realize that I never shepherded legislation though the legislative process or worked on the ground in a modern political campaign.  I’m a rabble rouser, an agitator, a motivator and an organizer, but political process has never been my strength.  And all along I thought it was.

So the uphill curve has found me panting along behind, running hard to keep up.  At times, like tonight, I’ve felt out of my depth, just not up to the task.  In fact I’ve taken the risk, jumped in and tried to stay afloat.  I’ve not got the total package going on as yet, but I can get there.  A good lesson in humility.

Tonight will be the last night of meds, the penicillin will run out Friday at noon and I believe the infection will be on its last legs, even if they could take awhile to go down.  Yeah.

Lunch tomorrow with Bill Schmidt, talking nuclear power.

Health

Stars In My Eyes

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Spring                 Full Seed Moon

I have stars in my eyes.  Literally.  The opthamologist dilated them and I forgot to ask for the reversal drops.  I see little extra rays of light if I look at something bright.

My suspicious nerve has not changed, looks good.  Yeah.

Kate and I plan to try a new Vietnamese restaurant for lunch.  Sounds fun to me.  I always like dates with Kate.

The Dow continues to hop around, uncertain of this or that.  Investor psychology is the whole deal on Wall Street in spite of the fancy numbers and elaborate formulas, even those generated by theoretical physicists.  The  gyrations and chaos of the market make it more appealing to me than it would be otherwise.  I like its tendency to defy expectations.

If something as straightforward, relatively speaking, as the market confounds us, why do we expect life to come in a easy to understand form?  We have many more transmutations than the market.

Aging

80%

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Spring        Waxing Seed Moon

Whoa.  I’m 80% back to normal, which feels like double speed ahead compared to the slowed down, body working hard lethargy of the last four days.  To think I did that to myself intentionally.

When an illness or disease process begins to lift, the world becomes clearer and more hospitable, as if a dark mist you didn’t even notice has finally disappeared.

Tomorrow I get my glaucoma survelliance.  At least I’ll be able to stay awake.