Yearly Archives: 2009

Art and Culture, Politics, Weather +Climate

The Moon of Winds Delivers

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Imbolc        New Moon (Moon of Winds)

The moon of winds has already begun to deliver.  We’ve had gusts up to 15 and average windspeeds of up to 5.6 mph.  All the air and clouds running before a snow storm coming to us from the west.

The legislative situation has begun to pick up speed.  I’m not sure what all the momentum will do when it hits the wall of the new revenue forecast, anticipated to raise our state deficit by some billions more.

Two China tours tomorrow.  I’m doing my 8 dynasties tour for these Chinese language students from Highland Park High School in St. Paul.

Off to Costco.  No, not again.  Never made it Tuesday.  Gotta go today.  The dogs need food.

General

Green Cemeteries and Cherry Red Sculpture

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Imbolc    New Moon  (Moon of Winds)

Somehow the coincidence of these two stories tickled me.

Cemeteries go eco-friendly
Seth Tupper The Daily Republic, Worthington Daily Globe
Published Monday, February 23, 2009
Most cemeteries can be described as green spaces, but some are going “green” in the ecological sense.
“Green burials,” which can lack embalming fluids, caskets, vaults and sometimes even markers, are gaining in popularity around the world.

The cherry takes a trip
by Euan Kerr, Minnesota Public Radio
February 23, 2009
A Twin Cities icon heads off on a restorative vacation today. The cherry from the Walker Art Center’s famed “Spoonbridge with Cherry” will be lifted off its mount in the Sculpture Garden and sent away to get a little work done.

General

One Place Above All Others

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Imbolc       New Moon   (Moon of Winds)

Kate’s making red velvet cupcakes for Anne’s birthday lunch tomorrow.  I finished cleaning out the hydroponics and will start later today planting huckleberry and mustard greens.  The leeks don’t have to go in the pot until next week or a bit after.

When the arugula, pepper and lettuce plants came out of the pots, they had the aroma of the fresh earth.  It reminded me that in all the jobs I’ve ever had there was one place I liked above all the others:  the produce locker at Cox’s supermarket.  The combined scents of apples, pineapples, lemons, lettuce, radishes, oranges, grapes and other fruits and vegetables smelled as close to heaven as I can imagine.   There were sweet notes, tangy notes, but most of all there was the odor of life, not the odor of sanctity, which is roses, but the vital perfume of the plant world.  The root systems of these spent plants had some of that quality.

So far today has been more manual labor than anything else.  I miss that and find it soothing.  Working with plants and the living earth has a powerful cleansing effect on me.

General

Gardening in February

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Imbolc      New Moon

Today will be a gardening day.  How?  I’m going to start seedlings for this year’s garden.  Leeks and a few others have to get a long head start here since our growing season, even in its climate-change boosted longer version, still does not have enough days for many, many tasty vegetables.  The hydroponics has to get cleaned out and spiffed up, too.

It may become a total transplant site until mid-May.

Also, BJ, Kate’s sister from New York comes in today and we’re going to eat supper with her.  That will be fun.

Kate’s neck has started giving her fits again, this time in spite of several different medical interventions including physical therapy, a TENS unit, a neck stretcher and nerve root injections.  This may be headed toward surgery.

GeekWorld

A Computer Mini

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Imbolc     Waning Wild Moon

I bought a netbook computer, an HP-mini.  It’s a small thing that fits in the bag I used as a daypack during my Southeast Asia trip.  This mini is the first portable computer I’ve had that really fits the name.

It comes with easy access to wireless networks and, best of all for me, has a keyboard 92% the same size as a normal keyboard.  As a touch typist since the age of seventeen, small keyboards screw up my rhythm and make the whole process uncomfortable.  This one works fine.

The 3-cell battery that comes with it has 3 hours worth of life to it, a fact I checked on Saturday at the museum.  I ran it the entire class without a plug-in.

This is a yippee moment for me, a way of staying connected without pulling my shoulder out of socket or feeling like a pack mule in service to my computer.

Art and Culture, Writing

I’m Baaaack!

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Imbolc      Waning Wild Moon

Gosh, my numbers have shrunk this last week.  I know I’ve neglected this space in an attempt to keep up with other blogging, like the Sierra Club and the Star Tribune weather site and I apologize.

Not to mention that I fell into a bit of a slump with the retreat followed by vertigo and a week of feeling sub-par after that.  No excuses, just the truth, Ruth.

This morning finds me once again alert and awake, feeling on top of my game.  ‘Bout time, if you asked me.

Today the textile tour for Anne will come together, aided in part by an insight I got yesterday at the research workshop.  I learned about the directories function on the MIA website.  It shows a complete list of objects on display by type, artist and location.  This makes it easy to plan a tour route knowing exactly what’s on exhibit.  No time wasting trying to figure it out.  The information is just there.

The On Dragon’s Wings tour for Friday will also get assembled today.  I have an 8 dynasties tour, an idea created by Bob Marshall.  In this tour I go through the Shang, Zhou, Han, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties using one object from each.  As Bob suggested, I try to select the finest example of the most well-developed art form in each of those dynasties.  That means starting with the bronze vessels of the Shang and Zhou, moving to a Han ceramic piece, perhaps then to a Tang three-color glaze, then either a Song dynasty landscape painting or a ceramic piece, for example.

I have dynastic maps and a precis’ of the dynasties character.  This allows for a quick over view of Chinese history and associating with each dynasty a particular art form, one that reached its height at some point during that dynastic period.

At 5 p.m. Kate and I will head out to Roseville for another Chinese New Year celebration with the Collection in Focus guides.  I look forward to this each year because it is often the only time I see some of my old colleagues from that program.

Art and Culture, World History

Learning, Always

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Imbolc      Waning Wild Moon

What a treat.  Janice Laurie, the MIA’s librarian, gave us a quick once over of the resources available in the library.  They have a JSTOR subscription, an Artfull Index subscription, plus several other expensive database collections available online in the library and through the computer in the docent lounge.  This makes me want to give up everything else and just dive into art history.  My first venture with it in depth will be the William Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite exhibit coming in June.

All the while the lectures about the Middle Ages, the High Middle Ages right now, keep me company as I shuttle back and forth.

The sun came out today and improved my mood quite a bit.  I shook myself a bit this morning and said Carlos, you can choose.  You can lean into the day instead of away from it.  Seemed to have some positive effect.

My small black notebook remained behind when I left the library this morning.  The librarian told the guard to look for the guy with the Harry Potter glasses.  Me.

Kate and Anne went to see the Lipizzaner stallions perform at the Target Center.  They had lunch at the Chambers Hotel before hand.  Meanwhile I learned about art history databases.  Different strokes…

General

Could Happen

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Imbolc   Waning Wild Moon

Snow fell in the night.  Long ago I read a sociologist who thought about winter.  He said a good snow fall wipes out boundaries, makes the world seem more connected, more fluid.  It makes me wish snow could fall in, say Iraq and Iran, all over, maybe pushing up into Afghanistan and over to the rest of the ‘stans, maybe a vasty storm covering all the world in snow evening the beaches of Florida, Hawaii, Phuket.  Then, maybe then, we could all see how much we are one, how much barriers we’ve installed are false.  How our lives gather together huddled on this one small rock hurtling through the vacuum of space faster than a speeding bullet.  Could happen.

Today I’m off to the museum again to learn about art historical research.  I can do it all right of course but I want to learn how to go deeper, dig more into the mountains rich with knowledge.