Monthly Archives: July 2009

Art and Culture, Family

Fences, Cards and Hunt

Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment

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)

Leave a comment

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.