Monthly Archives: November 2009

Aging, Dogs, Weather +Climate

Had a Wreck Lately?

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Samhain                            Waxing Wolf Moon

Well, Tiger Woods had a wreck.  Why?  What could have been going at 2:30 a.m. to cause him to drive into a fire hydrant near his home?  Why would I care?  Nobody but the insurance company cares when I have a wreck.  Not saying I have had one, though, and, also not saying what the circumstances were under which I may or may not have had a wreck.  Anybody want to interview me about the wreck I might have or might not have  had?  Didn’t think so.

Emma has come from the vets minus one hemangioma and much cleaner teeth.  Not a serious deal and our 78 year old dog (in human years) did not seem fazed at all.  She would not pee at the vets, but proceeded to do so as soon as we got home.  They were worried about this.  Emma has had a long life and it looks to extend a bit longer.  Good for her.

Colder weather coming.  Highs in mid-20’s, lows in the teens.  About time.  Now we need some snow.

Art and Culture, Family, Holidays, Politics, Writing

Ordinary Time

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Samhain                                      Waxing Wolf Moon

Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin to attend February Tea Party Convention.  That should be fun.  Seeing these two damsels of the right dancing to the tune of the real wierdos would be entertaining for anyone interested in politics.  I’d watch a 2-minute video just to see them on stage together.  They could discuss hair and glasses and kissing GW.

Mary left this morning on the 7:38 Northstar headed for the airport.  The strange action of the international date line has her leaving on Monday and arriving home on Wednesday, coming here she left on Tuesday around 6 a.m. and got here Tuesday at 11:00 a.m., something like that.  Both ways the flight involves 21-24 hours.  And I find daylight savings time confusing.  Under any circumstances the air temperature will double when she gets home, perhaps a bit more.

Ordinary time has slipped back into the house for the moment with family gone and the leftovers much reduced.  I worked on MIA business a bit this morning and will spend some time today getting the Sierra Club legislative committee focused for a December meeting.

After that I can continue my declutter campaign.  It goes pretty well.  My study has remained clear and I’ve removed several things from it, some in anticipation of the arrival of my Anthro computer desk.  On it will go the Gateway I bought in the summer.  I plan to use it only for art history research and creative writing.

Family, Sport

Another Quiet Pleasant Valley Sunday

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Samhain                                   Waxing Wolf Moon

Da Vikes!  Again.  36-10 over da Bears.  The game had little drama, but a good spread of offensive plays, defensive plays and solid special teams play.  There was a series of downs in the red-zone where penalties created a one-step forward, two-step backward that didn’t look good.  There was, too, a 77 runback by Johnny Knox, but the Bear retreated gradually from there to go away with only a field goal.

Mary has done some laundry, a task she does not do open as evidenced by her admission that she first tried to start with the dryer.  She heads back tomorrow after a short trip here.  It’s been good to have her here, a quiet time, a wind down from the four years of dissertation work.

Family, Holidays

Mary and Joseph (but, no Jesus)

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Samhain                        Waxing Wolf Moon                 Thanksgiving

Joseph and Mary are here.  Mary came in to the train station in Anoka.  It was a very East Coast scene with folks waiting for others in the parking lot, a mist shrouding the street lights.  Joseph’s flight experienced a delay at Milwaukee and didn’t get in until 9:35 p.m.

Let the cooking begin.

Humanities

The Thinker. The Box.

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Samhain                          Waxing Wolf Moon                          Holiseason

It’s easy to get stuck in the way we approach problems and problem solving.  That famous box we all want to think outside of only illustrates the consensus that most of would not know the box we were in if we saw it.  The web offers several different ways to jar our thinking out of its rut and onto new superhighways.

In this post I want to point you toward five websites that I’ve come across in the last year that have jarred me out of old patterns and presented new, surprising paradigms.

Grain

The new concept for me:  agro-imperialism.

GRAIN is a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.

VerticalFarm

New concept:  just as it seems, vertical farms for urban areas and other sites.

Bio-Physical Economics

New concept for me:    ” the vision of the Earth as a thermodynamically closed and nonmaterially growing system, with the human economy as a subsystem of the global ecosystem. This implies that there are limits to biophysical throughput of resources from the ecosystem, through the economic subsystem, and back to the ecosystem as wastes. ”

Mega-Regions

Not as new idea for me, but expressed in an up-to-date form, mega-regions notes that various areas of the US are joined by geography and economics into areas larger than states.  This has implications for many of the important policy matters facing us today.

TED

Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world.   Their tag-line says it.  These are video clips, none more than 15 minutes long by break through thinkers in multiple fields.  They come together at TED conferences and give these speeches, limited to 15 minutes to 6,000 or so fellow innovators.

Aging, Family, Friends, Great Work, Health, Politics

Gettin’ Ready

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Samhain                              Waxing Wolf Moon

Let the scramble for the unfinished and the not yet purchased begin.  Thanksgiving day is tomorrow.  We decided to purchase a turkey from Williams-Sonoma since we didn’t see ourselves doing the whole meal.  They gave us a call last night to tell us that the turkey will be delivered today.  Reassuring.

We go this morning to Kate’s physical medicine and rehab doc, Dr. Bewin.  He’s her medical home for the issues related to her back.  He’ll evaluate her pain management regimen and discuss the surgical results so far.  He’ll also weigh in on rehab, physical therapy.

Lois, our housecleaner is here today, doing that before holiday buffing up, though frankly with five dogs we don’t maintain an Architectural Digest home under the very best of circumstances, this even though Kate spends many happy hours watching HGTV.

The latest Wired has an article that gives a very gloomy outlook for global warming, using phrases like “we’re toast.”  It goes on to imagine the techno-geek fixes that we’ll come up with to save the day.

Ooohhh…the turkey has come, I think!

Dogs

Rigel and Vega. Persistence.

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Samhain                                        Waxing Wolf Moon

Rigel and Vega have remained outside in the woods tonight.  Kate and I got up with flashlights and went outside to find them.  They were back in the southeastern corner worrying something, growling and running around, back and forth, a lot of vigor and intention, little focus.  Vega came in for a bit, but she whined to go back outside and help her sister.  She’s out there now.

It’s a cool, rainy night and they’re out there committed to a coon-hound thing; stay with the animal until it’s caught or shot or escapes.  They’ll come back in the morning when they want breakfast.

Art and Culture

A Day at the Museum

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Samhain                                Waxing Wolf Moon

Long day at the museum.  Two tours, 2 hours apart.  Just got home.  Today was just ok.  Nothing amazing, just solid trooping through the masterpieces and their attendant objects.

It was good to see fellow docents, chat.  Other docents are mentors, but not me.  I imagine the museum did not want me representing the docent corps to junior docents.  Wise choice from their perspective.

Tired.

Friends, Woolly Mammoths

Woolly Mammoths Meet

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Samhain                                        New (Wolf) Moon

Woollies tonight at Scott’s.  The usual delicious food by Yin and Moon in the Simpson Museum of Chinese and Buddhist antiquities complemented an evening spent in a decisive rejection of a non-judgmental life-style.  While we appreciated the sense behind Scott’s exercise, the bulk of us (Tom, Frank, Mark, Bill and me) felt judging is a human activity and one we cannot eliminate, but for which we must take responsibility.

In other news Scott’s daughter is at this moment in hot water, that is a birthing tub, ready to deliver her child into a watery realm.  Paul and Sarah sold their house and have leased a duplex in Kenwood.  Mark and Elizabeth will spend January, February and part of March in Puerto Vallarte, though Mark has an expense paid flight to Bangkok in February for the opening of his sex and the single teen exhibit there.  Tom and Roxann leave soon for twelve days in Hawai’i where they will stay in the Inn at Mama’s Fish House on Maui’s North Shore.  Paul flies soon to Melbourne to deliver a lecture at the World Parliament of Religions, Strangers into Neighbors.  The rest of us will be at home for the holidays.

Aging, Cooking, Health

Aspects of Our Lives

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Samhain                           New (Wolf) Moon

Kate and I had our business meeting.  It involved the always fun annual chore of signing up for benefits with Allina.  This is probably the last time we’ll need to do it.  Even though it’s an overly complex task, it does have significant repercussions throughout the year, so it pays to do it thoughtfully.

After the meeting we began our first (of what we intend to be continuing) weekly menu planning.  This week I chose a red beet soup and a white bean and winter squash soup.  Kate picked a vegetarian slow cooker recipe and the brisket.  Tomorrow we’ll make a grocery list and I’ll go buy the ingredients, then we’ll cook together for a day or half a day.  The grocery list will include fruits, one serving a meal, and ingredients for tabouli, which we both enjoy.  I’ll make the soups and Kate will cook the meat and slow cooker meals.  We’ll add in salad and fruit along the way.

Kate’s recovery seems to have stalled and I don’t know what to make of it.  I’m glad we have an appointment with Dr. Schwender on Thursday morning.  I’m feeling a need–and so is she–for some reassurance about the healing process and the eventual outcome.

Now, I have to make up for the lost hour of sleep last night while I completed my trip through hell.