Monthly Archives: February 2009

Aging, GeekWorld, Politics

Liverish Lips, Gray Hair, Needs Naps, Vertiginous OMG!

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Imbolc      Waning Wild Moon

The stomach has begun to return to normal.  Vertigo much less.

Got some pictures back from the retreat and noticed that my lips have taken on that old man’s coloring, a sort of liverish brownish red.  Goes great with the gray hair.

Off to the capitol for a noon lunch with the Sierra Club lobbyist and the chair of the Legislative Committee.  We’ll discuss my role as the guy in charge of legislative communications.  I also plan to sit in on a committee hearing at 3pm if my need for a nap doesn’t over power me.  (Let’s see.  Liverish lips, gray hair, needs naps, vertiginous. OMG!)

Gonna take my new netbook with me and join the crowds of under 40’s I see with their laptops everywhere.  When I went to the Jasmine last night for the Woolly meeting, the evening dinner crowd had gathered in the booths at the Bad Waitress.  5 booths along the window out of six had couples with food and a laptop each.  Most had their laptops on and were busy doing something.

It reminded me of the Arlo and Janis cartoon a couple of weeks ago.  Arlo and Janis both have cellphones to their ears and their land line rings.  Arlo says, “This is ridiculous.”  Yep.

Aging, Friends, Woolly Mammoths

A Locked Car Mystery

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Imbolc    Waning Wild Moon

The Woolly’s met tonight at the Jasmine across from the Black Forest.  Food is noveau Vietnamese, French accents.  I had spring rolls and mangoes on sticky rice.  Just right.

Got to give everyone a head’s up on labyrinthitis.  Tom has a friend who visited him yesterday and may be dead from multiple myeloma in two months.  Whoa.  Paul and Sarah have purged their home, shined up and have neared the day of the first open house.  Changes.

Stefan locked the keys in his car while x-skiing at Hyland Park.  He asked a cop if he could help.  The cop said sure and gave Stefan a ride down.  When he got out to work on Stefan’s car, he inadvertently locked his keys inside as well as Stefan who was in the back seat.  In a police car.  A locksmith had to be called for both cars.

The trip in is always worth it, a chance to connect and renew the connection.  Got several happy birthdays.  Guys just don’t remember birthdays well.

Art and Culture, Weather +Climate, Writing

Life-Long Learning

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7oaks250Imbolc    Waning Wild Moon

My weatherblog has been up for almost a month now at the Star-Tribune Weatherwatchers site.  The weather has not been interesting.  It has been either really cold or not so cold.  Little snow.  No storms.  Some days gloomy, some days not.  It taxes me metaphorically to comment.  I never appreciated how difficult attending to relatively stable conditions could be.  It makes the whole concept of news make a lot more sense.

I began yesterday a protracted period of study.  I need to get up to speed on the Sierra Club’s issues for the blog.  I have a special tour for Annie to put together, a piece on textiles and crafts.  In order to learn more about the weather I’ve decided to devote the next two or three weeks to cloud research since the type of cloud helps make the blog more weather savvy.

After my wondrous sheepshead night last week, I’ve also decided to read my two sheepshead books and see if I can pick up some tips for my play.  A big one:  14 trump, not 13.

On March 15th I have a presentation I’ve titled American Identity in the Time of Obama.  Work to do on that one, too.

General

A 21st Century Family Circus

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Imbolc    Waning Wild Moon

Last week Frank and I headed for Blue Cloud Abbey on Thursday.  It is now the next Sunday.  That’s ten days.  It feels as if the time warped around me and a week somehow got lost in the process.  Learning how to cope with intermitent vertigo has absorbed a lot of physical and mental energy.

It does not surprise me now, or make do something drastic out of fear; but, it does distract me and drains energy.  I imagine that will lessen with experience.  At some point, it should recede completely.  I’ll be glad.

Our grand-daughter, Ruth, is three.  She asks her parents to talk to Minnesota Grandma then refuses to come to the computer.  A real 21st century family circus.  She’s a cutey, but she has a stubborn streak.  Yes, it’s part of being three, but it’s also part of being a Johnson.  Trust me on this one.

All this technology has changed our lives in ways subtle and obvious and has done so in a short period of time, less than 20 years:  cell phones, personal computers and the internet, applications to link us with loved ones faraway, even overseas.  I have a wireless weather station and a programmable treadmill.

Coming to consciousness after a subliminal ten days.  Bye for now.

General

Heart Block Quilt

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Imbolc          Waning Wild Moon

The retreat followed by the tilt-a-whirl put me way behind on my Sierra Club blogging and research. It took me all day yesterday to catch up.  It was weird because I found the scrolling lines of words on the computer screen necessitated my stopping for a moment every now and then.

Now I’m caught up, I have my new HP mini-computer, a netbook, to take the capitol and I’m raring to go.  Next week, live from the state capitol, Ancientrails and the Northstar Blog.

I’m still behind in some other ways but I’ll catch up over the weekend.  No big worries.

Kate and I got an A+ at our accountants, who says we have done a knock-out job on our money.  I think she’s right.

After that meeting we went over to Kate’s clinic.  There she presented the heart block quilt to her colleague, Dick Mestrich.  Each person in the room had received a blank heart on a quilt block, made by Kate.  They filled it with a personal message.  He has cancer and was visible moved during the presentation of the quilt.

Kate has a wonderful, personal touch with folks and she knows how to use her sewing skills to make others smile.  A gift to the world.  Lucky I’m married to her.

Aging

Tilt-A-Whirl Day 3

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Imbolc     Full Wild Moon

69 computers missing from nuclear weapons lab
by JOAN LOWY, Associated Press Writer Joan Lowy, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 5 mins ago

Nothing classified.  So they said.  What else would you say?

I’m now in day 2 after the tilt-a-whirl.  After sleeping last night, I swayed and so did the room when I got up.  Stomach flipped and flopped a bit.  My nap went by the way so I would not have to lie down and get back up.  As the day wore on, I began to feel better and better.

Tomorrow we see one of our financial advisers.  Later, Kate will give a very sweet quilt she conceived and managed.  It’s full of hearts written with messages for Dick, a colleague struggling with multiple myeloma.

Now, back to sleep and to reset my labyrinth to its whirl position.  Sigh.

Aging

The Tilt-A-Whirl and the Labyrinth

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Imbolc    Full Wild Moon

When I woke up yesterday, my right eye began to jiggle back and forth.  The room began to sway.  OMG as the kid’s say.  I stumbled to the bathroom, hitting a painting on the wall.  My insides tried to come outside and a cold, clammy sweat broke out all over my body.  Yikes!

At first I thought.  Flu.  So I waited for everything to calm down.  Everything did not calm down.  That was I hollered for Kate.  “Kate!”

She came and took in what was going on.  “Smile for me.”  she said.  A peculiar response unless your spouse has a medical degree.  I smiled my most winning smile.  “That’s a test for stroke.”  Oh.  I passed.   Thank god.

“Where’s your blood pressure cuff?”  I keep one to take my pressure every now and then.  She got it.  122/62.  Strange for a guy with essential hypertension.  But good news to her.

She had me diagnosed.  Labyrinthitis.  A viral infection of the inner ear that plays havoc with balance.  Each time I moved my body put me into state I had experienced in full only once before.  That time came when I found myself in an airplane bathroom during  high turbulence.  The stewardesses though I was having a heart attack.  Hell, so did I.  But not Kate.  She got me a wheel chair, we got off the plane and waited until I calmed down.

This deal though did not allow the body to calm down.  I had one position that did not produce vertigo and nausea.  I stayed in for the whole day.

Kate got me some fancy anti-emetics that helped a lot.  She said it would lift in a day and it has.  I can move around now, but slowly.  And, oh, by the way she also said, “You can’t drive for six weeks.”  Six weeks!

Well, better grounded than dead, I always say.

One more piece:  the Jungian in me jumped at the chance to read the article on Jewish labyrinths in the new Parabola that came the same day.  More on that later.

Woolly Mammoths

Of Monks and Men and Woolly Mammoths, Too

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Imbolc   Waxing Wild Moon

Blue Cloud Abbey

We met with five monks:  Fathers Michael and Chris, Brothers Bob and Benet and Abbot Denis.   The conversation had a lot of heart, touching on why each of us belonged–and continued to belong–to our respective communities.

We discussed with them the creation of a rule, a Way of the Woolly Mammoth.  If done well and distributed widely, it might have an impact on those men who now live solitary male lives.  A solitary male life, we believe, is the norm.

As Father Michael suggested, the man who says his wife is his best friend puts a burden on the marriage relationship.  That is, in fact, a solitary male life with work and family being places where the man has definition by role:  husband, employee or owner, but has no place  as a man.   This may seem peculiar or idiosyncratic to our perspective, but we know the richness of having significant male relationships held together over time.

That richness informs the gender specific aspects of our life by giving back to those roles a renewed sense of what it is to be a man, a man in whole, in relationship with a woman or a business or another partner.  A renewed sense of what it means to be a father, grandfather, uncle or mentor also grows with organic vitality from this soil.

More on this later.

Woolly Mammoths

Tonight We Dance On The Prairie

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Imbolc     Waxing Wild Moon

Blue Cloud Abbey            Marvin, South Dakota

A group of about 30 Missouri Synod Lutheran church women have come for retreat.  Their energy differs from ours.   A lot.

Frank played a wonderful adagio movement by a Spanish composer named Rogdriguez.  A very moving piece.

We have a conversation started about a Woolly Way, a brief evocative expression of our Tao.   Our 20 + years together commend us by their evidence of stablity, intention, commitment.  We have never tried to spread or split ourselves, though we have taken on the occasional international associates.  We have two in St. Petersburg and one somewhere else I can’t recall right now.

Blue Cloud Abbey has a distinctive Plains Indian imprint.  The American Indian Cultural Resource center has a collection of Lakota beadwork, parfleching and quill work that contains several museum quality pieces.

The Wild Moon has grown fat, swelling almost full.  It colors the clouds and gives the night sky a romance.  Venus also hangs in the northern sky.   Here the sky runs on and on, the earth gives little obstacle to the eye.  The spirit takes a breath here, fills my lungs with the light of the Wild Moon.  Tonight we dance on the prairie, the wind in our hair and moonlight shining out through our eyes.