Monthly Archives: January 2010

Family

The Horse

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Winter                   New Moon (cold M00n)

At breakfast this morning I sat two tables away from Miss Rodeo Wisconsin.  I know this because she had a big sash on that said so.  She looked like a wholesome gal and a good choice.

I’m not at the Doubletree.  Instead, I learned my reservation was for the Courtyard Marriot.  I did this back in August of aught 9 so the details had become fuzzy.  Oh, well.  I gotta get on the road more.

The love of small children is a gift freely given, honoring this gift may be the prime directive of adulthood.  Ruthie, after an initial hesitance, was glad Granpop had come.  She spent a good bit of time running, then jumping on me, sometimes asking me to close my eyes.  Then she jumped as a surprise.

She also showed a me a move she learned at dance class.  This consists of a left hand on hip, the right raised in the air and loping around the house like that.  When asked what it was called, she said, “Horse.”

It’s always fun to catch up on grandkids and their parents.

Gabe has a few words now, one of which sounds a lot like granpop.  or, maybe, blastoff.  or, maybe bad dog.  something like that.

The stone porch Jon and Jen created looks spiffy, too.  I hadn’t seen it.

Stock show later today.

Family

With the Grandkids

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Winter                  New Moon (cold moon)

Ruth hid under a blanket when I came in the door.  Gabe smiled.  Jon and Jen were busy making empanadas.

While they cooked, Ruth and I played picnic.  Picnic involves Ruth bringing increasingly larger numbers of blankets, toys, books to a central area, then throwing a pillow or two in the pile.

Ruth loved the purse her Minnesota Grandma made for her and Gabe seemed excited by his wall hanging of the planets.

Jon and Jen got some good news about Gabe’s health.  A potential problem, an inhibitor to the clotting factor he takes by injection every other day, proved a lab error.

Two young kids.  Lots of energy. Lots.  We’ve made plans for the stock show tomorrow, Sunday and Monday.  Chuck-e-Cheese on Wednesday.

Lots of together time.  Good.

Travel

In Denver

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Winter                          New Moon (cold moon)

4 am came surprisingly early.  A bit bleary eyed I walked down the driveway, too steep apparently for the super shuttle.  As the next hour and a half passed, the driver treated me to a dark and winding tour of the northern and northwestern suburbs as we picked up two other early fliers.  I got to be first!

Checking in and security were fine, almost like days of yore, back when I enjoyed flying.  Over the last few years, especially in airports, I have had occasion to use my anthropological training.  The dark suited male with colorful tie and dress shirt has the tendency to act out dominance behavior.  These latter day masters of the universe strut and fret and have their day upon the stage and then blessedly fade away.

When I worked for the church, I used to fly a lot and I remember the sense of self-importance the whole airport, travel to different cities, meetings with folks in hotel conference rooms gave me.  It was an illusion of course, but like most illusions almost impossible to stumble onto when you’re in the midst of it.

When I got to the hotel, I discovered I was at the wrong one, so I had to drive a bit further.  Geez.  This  is the second time I’ve screwed up hotel reservations here.

Anyhow a nice desk clerk, a woman from spain, got me into a room right away, around 11:00-11:30 so I could take a nap.  Which I needed.]

Got up and have spent an hour so writing on the new novel.  Jen just called, so I’m going over there soon.

The Stock Show folks are every where with livestock trailers, fifth wheelers, cowboy hats and at least one pair of lizard skin cowboy boots.  Leather accessories with silver decor also seem popular.

Friends, Travel

Going Wild Hog

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Winter                                   New Moon

Sheepshead tonight.  Better cards so I ended up in positive territory.  Felt good.

I get up at 4 am to take the super shuttle to the airport tomorrow morning.  Yikes.

Ancientrails will be on the road for the next six day, reporting from the Stapleton Doubletree on the very northern outskirts of Denver Colorado.  Look for regular information about cows, cowboys, cattle, horses and things Western.

Yee Hah.

 

Commentary on Religion, World History

Haiti

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Winter                                 Waning Moon of Long Nights (New Moon tomorrow)

The day before the journey.  Not a big journey as things go, but a trip.  Ruthie and Gabe, Jon and Jen.  Family.  As we grow older, family tends to take more and more of our focus.  Why?  Because the work world fades away, home and its memories remain.  This is, I imagine, much as it always has been.  I recall a theory from evolutionary biology that says grandparents were a reason for population increases and longevity increases.  We were around for child care.

The usual before trip minutiae:  a stuck garage door, cardboard recycling, packing, picking up a connector to make a keyboard usable on the net book.  This and that.

The death toll in Haiti adds catastrophe to the already multiple problems of a failed state, a failed state within our sphere of influence.  See the Monroe Doctrine.  I’ve not followed Haiti closely so I don’t know the history, how things have become the way they are, but I do know that we have a moral responsibility as a neighbor.

Acts of God.  Bah, humbug.  These are acts of nature, just like the great Lisbon earthquake in the 18th century.  That one caused a great deal of consternation in various Christian communities.

“The 1755 Lisbon earthquake (see engraving) created a crisis of faith in Europe and beyond. The catastrophe occurred on a holy day and destroyed many of the city’s magnificent sanctuaries. The destruction caused many to renounce religion; others interpreted the event as a sign of God’s displeasure, thus a sign of His omnipotence. Enlightened souls who considered the world innately good took a jolt. Voltaire contemplated the implications. Immanuel Kant devoted several tracts to Lisbon and its consequences.”

To read acts of the natural world as anything but what they are is folly.  In Haiti’s case a strike-slip fault–the San Andreas is such a fault–stored up energy since, oddly, about the same time as the Lisbon event, and yesterday a tectonic shift sprung free.  A great analogy in the newspaper compared a strike-slip fault to a person moving a heavy piano.  They push and push and push, nothing happens.  Then, suddenly, the piano moves.  In this instance however the piano then falls on you.

It is peculiar that we blame God for acts of nature but won’t take responsibility for our own acts against nature, like climate change.

Art and Culture, Asia, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Politics

Art and Nature, the Nature of Art

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Winter                                          Waning Moon of Long Nights

In to the Sierra Club for a meeting about legislative work.  The scope of the Sierra Club’s work is impressive, including legislative work at each session of the Minnesota Legislature and scrutiny of the government’s stewardship of our natural resources in between them.  There is litigation work, the primary one right now being the Stillwater Bridge.  There is also the regular work of educating members, the working of the Issue Committees and regular outings.  Perhaps most important of all is the attention of thousands of members to both the particulars of environmental work in all parts of the state and to the developing field of issues, e.g. climate change, renewable energy, efficient public transportation, green planning, work with labor unions for Green Jobs, even climate mitigation strategies to help position Minnesota well when climate change happens.

After that I went over to the MIA to check on my mail box, nothing in it.  Good.  After I went in there I began to wander through the museum, as I used to do in the days before Collection in Focus, before Docent training, just wandering.  My first stop was the wonderful collection of Chinese paintings that have been up for a while.  Taking them in and meditating on Taoism as I looked, I began to muse about a work that might have the theme art and nature, the nature of art.  Some interesting ideas there.  My favorite collection remains the Japanese, and within it the works on paper:  ukyio-e especially.

It felt good to be in the museum without a task at hand, or a purpose, other than spending time with the objects.  I could do more of that.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Literature, Writing

Theodicy

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Winter                                      Waning Moon of Long Nights

Explanations of theodicy run aground on Haiti, just as they do on the Holocaust, Rawandi, Sudan.  When a nation as poor and crippled as Haiti gets hit with a major earthquake, how does one reconcile that with a loving and just God?  No intellectual fancy footwork can answer that question.

I’m reading a book sent to Kate by Jon, Children of Dust.  It’s a memoir of a young Punjabi who makes several circuits through various perspectives on Islam from conservative to fundamentalist to ethnic and, I understand, eventually out.  This is the second memoir I’ve read recently, the other being Escape, about the FLDS.

With this one I have doubts about the accuracy of it.  Memoirs are tricky at best, memory changes as we remember, in fact it changes before it becomes solid memory.  Eye witness accounts are, according to some criminologists, the most unreliable testimony.

There is, of course, the need all of us to be the heroes in our own story,  the need to smooth out the most raggedy parts of our performance as a human being.  There is a desire to be accepted that goes beyond this tendency to encourage putting the very best light on what we do.  In addition, the most memorable moments are emotionally  highly charged and therefore subject to distortion in the moment, much less over time.

And each of these can loop back on themselves to create another level of distortion.  That is, I admit my tendency to smooth out the raggedy parts so I show you raggedy parts.  In fact, I may make them grimmer than they were in order to convince you I’m honest, which I’m not.  Anyhow, the labyrinth here is difficult at best.

Children of Dust is worth a read, perhaps less as a memoir than as an impression of the complex lives Muslims live in contemporary world culture.  It succeeds brilliantly in doing that.

GeekWorld

The Ordinary Is Extraordinary

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Winter                            Waning Moon of Long Nights

I went on the great errand run this morning.  To the pharmacy for drugs.  To the jewelers for two watch batteries and to leave a pocket watch for repair.  Then over to the Spectacle Shoppe to have them repair the glasses that Vega bit.  Mildly unsatisfactory, but workable.  After that spectacle, all the way over to Lights on Broadway to buy unusually sized bulbs for this and that.  A completed circle then brought me back home.  Maybe 40 miles or so.  Strange.

There were the small oblong pills, tan in color, containing a chemical the somehow regulates the uptake of serotonin in my brain, a pill that I read recently doesn’t help me.  Not sure about that, so I’ll keep on taking them.  Tiny batteries, smaller than the nail on my little finger, power watches for years, a triumph of miniaturization; yet, the watch I sent off for repair, made a hundred years ago or so, works, as watches had for centuries by quick tweaks of the thumb and forefinger.  These glasses, plastic frames and round, cost almost as much as the lenses within them, lenses that correct my vision so I can read highway signs before I’m on top of them.  Then the small lamps that light my workspace, halogen bulbs, but special and difficult to find, fan lights also difficult to find.  These items replace the candles or gas light or kerosene lanterns of not that long ago.

The length of the journey seemed outsized to me until I began to realize the stunning technological distance each separate product represented.  That they are available to me in so small an ambit is the amazing thing.  That they are available at all depends on the brain and its mysterious companion, consciousness.  Every day is a wonder, even the mundane.

Dogs, Travel

Busy Day

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Winter                                Waning Moon of Long Nights

Final travel arrangements for Denver finished.  Car.  Shuttle reservation.

Business meeting this morning.  Money fine.  Next week for Kate planned. Looks good.

Slept badly last night, so a long and hard nap this afternoon.  Got up, wrote for two hours.  Worked out, watched a bit of TV.  Read.

Vega and Rigel killed a rabbit and a squirrel this morning.  Doggy pride in a kill matures them.  Vega guarded both critters with careful attentiveness.  Sitting in the path that led to the rabbit.  She needed no barking or growling.  Her presence was confident and brooked no intervention.  This from the dog who usually occupies low spot on the canine totem pole here.

Both Vega and Rigel went round with their tails held high, a bit of a swagger.  I’m a dog, yes I am, and I can’t help but being a dog.  Yup Yup.

When I come upstairs after exercise, Vega rolls over and thumps her tail.  She puts her paws around my neck, licks my hand and thumps her tail some more.

Sport

Vikes Still Alive

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Winter                      Waning Moon of Long Nights

It’s now week 2 of the NFL playoff season and the Vikes are still in it.  Of course, they backed into a bye for this weekend as number 2 seed in the NFC.  Next week we’ll play the Dallas Cowboys.  The Cowboys have had a hot quarterback, a surging defense and late season mo’.  We have one game momentum from thrashing the hapless second half of the season Giants.  I don’t know the teams at the matchup level, nor do I pretend to understand the fickle notion of momentum.  I know, in a game when we click on all cylinders, we can play with anybody.  I hope we have three such games left.

In this next week there is this and that to get done before I leave for Denver and the Great Western Stock Show.  This:  make supershuttle reservations and rent a car, that:  buy light bulbs, a surge protector, new watch batteries.  Get groceries and such squared away for Kate while I’m gone.  That kind of thing.