Monthly Archives: April 2009

Family, Great Wheel, Health, Holidays

Beltane Has Begun

Leave a comment

Beltane                Waxing Flower Moon

As is the case with all Celtic holidays Beltane began at sundown.  Over the years that I have kept the Celtic calendar, now 14 years at least, Beltane signals a real shift from the getting going of spring to the active growth of summer.  Some years that’s more obvious than others and this year the change has been slower than the recent past, yet the emergence of the daffodils, tulips, garlic and the blooming of our magnolia all point toward summer.

Kate’s back from work with new rules for influenza A(H1N1) novel.  They had a sick hallway at the Coon Rapids clinic tonight and they were, again, swamped by persons concerned about the flu.  She said a case has been reported at HCMC.  Tomorrow, however, her attention moves from pandemic to garage sale, the sort of odd shifts we all make between our work and domestic lives.

Family, Health, Politics

Baby Plants, Nuclear Energy, and Influenza A(H1N1)

1 Comment

Spring                  Waxing Flower Moon

All my baby plants have moved from the nursery into big plant pots.  Now we have to wait until May 15, the average last frost date here, and all these babies can go outside into the garden.

The Minnesota House refused to repeal the moratorium on the construction of new nuclear plants citing waste storage and transportation as primary issues.

Kate’s off to the frontlines of the Swine flu (or, as it will be called from now on:   influenza A(H1N1) pandemic.  This has put some new energy into her practice as she approaches retirement, a real crisis which requires her medical skills.

If the pandemic moves to level 6, there will be a division between sick clinics and well clinics.  Doctors in the sick clinics will have to wear hazmat like protective gear when treating patients who have risk factors for the disease.

Asia, Cinema and Television, GeekWorld

Indian Princes and Japanese Peasants

Leave a comment

Spring               Waxing Flower Moon

Another computer problem averted by cyber wizard William Schmidt.  If you had tried to access the files from February 2005 to October 2007 in ancientrails, you would have been met with a not found error message.  An e-mail to Bill and he not only had the problem managed, but helped me relocate the files on my own computer.  I knew they were here somewhere.  Thanks again, techno-mage.

Morning workout, a bit of legislative blogging for the Sierra Club and lunch.   My movie of the moment for my workouts is the continuing saga, the Maharbarata.  I’m on disc 7 of a lot more.  Each disc has six episodes.  This is one long story.  It interweaves gods and humans, demi-gods and demons with the history of India, providing along the way morals and folkways.  Just today, for example, Dhorydan, a contested crown prince, got this wisdom from Bhisma, “No.  Just because you are elder does not mean you will become king.  In India merit is most important.”

Yesterday I finished an early Kurosawa film, The Hidden Fortress.  It featured a running gag with two peasants who act almost as clowns.  It was crisp, the copy, a Criterion Collection dvd, pops.  The story involves a period when Japan consisted of warring kingdoms.  A princess of a defeated people escapes with a loyal general.  Their adventures as they try to leave their home territory for shelter elsewhere constitute the movie.

Health, Weather +Climate

Kate’s Ready

Leave a comment

Spring            Waxing Flower Moon

Rain.  We had a red alert, a fire danger warning over the weekend, but now we’re soggy.  Soggy is better.

Kate came home with information from the Minnesota Department of Health on how to handle potential swine flu patients.  We’ve had no cases here yet, but the protocols for patients with high indices of suspicion are very clear.  It’s impressive.  The level of detail has been planned some time ago and gets implemented in a reasoned way in response to evidence, not panic.

Kate has a sense of eagerness about it all.  She likes the edgier aspects of medicine:  arrests, lacerations, dealing with a possible pandemic.  I’m glad it’s her doing it and not me.  I’d be edgy myself rather than professional.

Aging, Art and Culture, Garden

Morning Workout

Leave a comment

Spring                  Waxing Flower Moon

Shifting my workout to the AM.  The whole routine has gotten stale and needs shaking up.  Maybe when it gets a bit warmer I’ll take the aerobics outside.  I used to workokout outside all the time, even in the coldest part of winter, then on snowshoes.  Now I’m on the treadmill.

An Asmat tour today, filling in for Lila Aamodt.  Helping Kate with the garage sale, potting veggie transplants and planting legumes.  That’s the week this week.  Gardening stuff will occupy a lot of time between now and the vacation.

Art and Culture, Bees, Garden, Our Land and Home, permaculture, Travel

Getting the week started

Leave a comment

Spring                         Waxing Flower Moon

Business meeting this morning.  We decided to go ahead with a vegetable garden renovation planned by Ecological Gardens and to get the deck in on which we will build the playhouse for the grandkids.  That work will start soon. Exciting.

The bees spend these first days filling up cells with brood and honey made from the syrup mix.  I checked them yesterday and will now leave them alone until next Saturday.

Finished reservations for Hilton Head with the exception of the rental car.  That’s next.

Planting this week, too.  Today, though, is docent book club day.  Allison’s work on textiles.   Should be fun.

General

Good Night

Leave a comment

Spring            Waxing Flower Moon

Went on a mission today.  That’s Kate and mine’s language for a frustrating shopping experience focused on finding a particular thing.  Today I wanted inoculant for the peas and other legumes we’ll plant.  This inoculant, actually live bacteria, enables the peas to turn nitrogen back to the soil.  I mentioned it a few posts ago.

Many places don’t have it.  I didn’t phone ahead, so that’s on me, but I did locate packages of inoculant at the Green Barn, near Isanti.  Kate and I shop there often for the garden, but it’s a long way to go for just one thing.  So, I bought some onion sets, too.

Back home I made a batch of chicken noodle soup, moved furniture out to the garage for the great garage sale and read a graphic novel, a memoir of Yoshiro Tatsumi, a force in the world of manga and gekeiga.  I found the book uneven, but a fascinating glimpse into Japan as it has grown and changed over the last 70 years or so.

Bees, Cooking

Weekend

Leave a comment

Spring          Waxing Flower Moon

Our bees came here from California so I hope they don’t suffer too much climate shock as the temperatures fall this week.  Lows will hit 35 or so midweek.  Right now, in fact, the temperature is only 42 at 10 a.m.

I grilled a turkey tenderloin last night on our inside gas grill, cooked up some whole wheat pasta served with a red sauce and cut up some tomatos and the last of our onions for a salad.  Kate had a milder day at work and so did not come home in distress as she often does on Saturdays.  She works from 9-5 every other Saturday and the number of hours, plus a lot of bending and twisting to see into small persons ears and mouths, not to mention the occasional superstrong 18 month old can tweak her neck to a bad place.

No outside work today.  I plan to move stuff for the great garage sale coming up this weekend.

Bees, Great Work, permaculture

We Have 6,000 New Residents In Multi-Hive Housing

Leave a comment

Spring               New Moon (Flower)

The bees have come.  Mark Nordeen drove over today with our first packet of bees.  This is a picture of a bee package off the web.  The circle at the top contains a can of nutrient syrup for the bees while in transit.  The can comes out and the bees pour out of the opening into the hive, which has four middle frames removed.

Mark and I donned our bee suits (mine is borrowed from him), me for the first time.  He pulled the can out.  It had seepage on the bottom from three very tiny pricks in the bottom.

He then turned the box over the opening in the hive and shook the bees out of the box through the circle which held the can.  The bees poured out, most landing on the floor, then climbing up the frame of already built combs.  A few bees remained so he shook the box, spilling the rest out into the hive.

The queen comes in a smaller wooden box with a screen over one side.  Mark uses the direct release method, meaning he opened the small wooden box on the bottom of the hive and let the queen walk out.  Queen acceptance is the first critical move in the hive.  That seems to have happened.

We replaced the four frames and then put a patty of pollen replacement on top of the frames.  Pollen substitute comes as a soft material that looks much the inside of a fig newton bar.  Over the frames themselves and the pollen patty substitute went the hive cover, a particle board piece as big as the top of the hive with an ovoid slot in the middle.  Over this slot goes a plastic pail with sugar water.   The pail’s lid has a small screen, smaller than a quarter in the center.  The bees come up to this screen to feed until the plant world provides enough pollen for them to make their own food.

I was a little nervous before Mark came, excited, too.  The most unexpected part of the process for me was the sound.  The hum of the bees as they took up residence gave off a sense of vitality and unity.

Much more to learn, a years long course I believe.

Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Letters, Literature, Writing

The Titan

Leave a comment

Spring           New Moon (Flower)

Lost sleep night before last, got up early yesterday and had a long day at the museum.  I still feel loggy, not quite focused this morning.   This kind of dulled down makes everything just a bit more difficult like walking and thinking through a bog.

I’m nearing the end of Dreiser’s The Titan, the second book in his trilogy of desire.  I finished the Financier awhile ago.  The book jacket on my copy, a used $.75 paperback from long ago, describes this trilogy as the forerunner of the modern business novel.  That may be so but it’s like saying the Mona Lisa is the forerunner of female portaitature.  Perhaps true, or if not exactly true, then you can see the point, but the point pales in comparison to the work itself, so much more than just a portrait.

These three novels:  The Financier, The Titan and the Stoic give a thick description of life in fin de siecle Philadelphia and Chicago, valuable insights into life itself, not only business, which is merely the fictive vehicle for the life of Frank A. Cowperwood, aka Yerkes.  His life has appetites for money, yes, but more for power, and more than power for beauty and for a particular kind of woman.

Both the Titan and the Financier have eerily familiar scenes developed around financial panics, panics that bear striking resemblance to the one underway right now.  In fact, these books could, at one level, be read as cautionary tales about the dramatic affect personal ambition and animus can have in economic affairs.  In the same vein they give a privileged insight into the mental calculations of a monied set, how it comes to be the case that, “This is only business, nothing personal.”

They show the Faustian bargain successful men (and women) make as they scramble for this rung, Continue reading The Titan →