Monthly Archives: August 2010

Garden

Clearing the Paths

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Lughnasa                                  Full Artemis Moon

Kate and I yanked up the carpet under the mulched paths in our orchard, cleaned it off and re-laid it after putting weed seed germination preventer and round-up on the green vegetation in the paths.  These are the only chemicals, with the exception of cygon on my iris, that I use in the garden.  No fertilizers, on pesticides and only these rare instances of herbicide use.  I also use herbicide to kill poison ivy and to prevent stumps from re-growing.  That’s it.

After clearing two paths out of four we went out for lunch, now the nap.  We need to clear one more path and we’ll be ready for the mulch tomorrow.  The other path, along the fence with the wild grapes has not had near as much weedy growth, so it can just take mulch as is.

Bees, Garden, Humanities, Politics, US History

That Mosque

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Lughnasa                                          Full Artemis Moon

Today the orchard, tomorrow…the vegetable patch and the orchard.  Kate and I will take up the carpet laid down for paths in the orchard (it keeps weeds down and mulch gets distributed over it), clean out the weeds that have infiltrated, lay the carpet back down and add any to spots that need it, preparing the whole for the wood chips delivered yesterday morning.  Tomorrow Kate will guide Ray, our lawn mowing Andover junior, while he covers the paths with wood chips.  Meanwhile I’ll mulch the areas in the vegetable garden that Kate and I cleared out over the last week.

Over the weekend we’ll put the honey extractor together  and try it out in advance of our first full day of honey extraction on Monday.  This should be entertaining.  Mark has shrunk our Artemis label by a third and modified the glasses based on his realization last Monday that the specs he’d designed didn’t quite match mine.  I already have the PDF from him with the new design and smaller labels.  He’s a pro.

OK.  I understand that some people on the right believe the mosque near the old World Trade Center is offensive.  They feel it pokes a finger in the eye of the whole country and especially those who lost relatives on 9/11.  Their line is, “Just because you have the right, doesn’t make it right.”  True enough.  Doesn’t make it wrong, either.  So the question comes to down message.  What message will a mosque near the ground zero send?

Will it communicate rank insensitivity and disregard for injured feelings?  Will it intentionally stir the pot of an already angry public?  Or.  Will it communicate, as I said before, that we know the difference between terrorists who use Islam as an ideological justification and those for whom Islam is a religion of moderation and peace?  Will it show that our First Amendment freedoms, those that developed in light of religious persecution in Europe, persecutions that, ironically, sent the first settlers to Massachusetts, apply today as they have for over 200 years?  I know which message I want to send.

Now, having said that, is there a way to ameliorate the inflamed feelings of those who have been led to see this as a provocation, an insult?  I don’t know, but I would hope there is.  Next year will see the tenth anniversary of the World Trade Center disaster, so some concern probably focuses on this upcoming date.  I wish there was a way to sit down and discuss this, acknowledging the feelings of betrayal, anger, incredulity, fear, grief, sharing our mutual dismay at the act and the struggle with the terrorists since then, while allowing the Muslims for whom this was an equal disaster and one compounded by rejection and xenophobic reactions to open up their feelings.

Or, is the gulf between the right and the left so vast that there is no bridge?  Are we so far apart in our partisan camps that dialogue is no longer possible?  If it’s true, and there are times over the last decade when I’ve felt it was, then our country will have succumbed to the terrorists after all because, as Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

I’m not trying to get to a kum by ya moment here.  I would relish, though, genuine conversation between citizens of differing views.  How can it happen?

Here’s an excerpt from a CBS report that gets to where I’d like to go:

Society|Thu, Aug. 26 2010 07:59 AM EDT
Some 9/11 Families Show Support for Mosque Near Ground Zero
By Nathan Black|Christian Post Reporter

A group of religious and civil rights groups and family members of 9/11 victims announced on Wednesday the formation of a new coalition in support of an Islamic community center and mosque near ground zero.

Calling themselves the New York Neighbors for American Values, the coalition stood near City Hall in lower Manhattan defending religious freedom and diversity.

“We share the pain … and yes, even the lingering fear caused by the September 11 attacks. But we unequivocally reject the political posturing, the fear mongering and the crude stereotyping that seek to demonize the project whose goal is to build bridges among the faiths,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

“We are committed to resisting the efforts to push Park51 out of downtown and we reject the refrain of ‘freedom of religion but not in my backyard,'” she added.

Talat Hamdani lost a 23-year-old son, a paramedic, in the 2001 terrorist attacks. But she said supporting the Islamic center and mosque “has nothing to do with religion. It has to do with standing up for our human rights, including freedom of religion,” as reported by The Associated Press.

Bees

Honey Equipment

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Lughnasa                                Full Artemis Moon

Artemis was goddess of bees, among other duties, so we celebrate her this month on honey extraction.  On that note the extractor stand, the electric motor and an electric uncapping knife came today, so we have the equipment we need.  Now we need to learn how to use it.  First thing is to wash it all, then put the extractor on the stand and motor on the extractor.  After that, start removing supers, brushing off bees and sticking those honey super frames in the extractor.  Hit spin and wait.

So, we have two new machines here:  the long-arm quilter and the honey extractor.  Both of us will be on learning curves though I think the long-arm will have a steeper one.  It’s complex, the extract not so much.

Received, in addition  to bee related stuff, 9 cubic yards of wood chips.  They get distributed on Friday.

Kate made a tart last night out of the raspberries and some bay field blueberries.  Pretty damned good.

Bees, Garden

The Harvest Season

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Lughnasa                                               Full Artemis Moon

Ragged.  Bug-ridden.  Tired out.  The garden needs attention, too.  Stole this one from a Star-Trib column this morning.  It’s true, though, that the garden has begun to head toward the compost pile.  That’s what harvest means, the plants die or die back and we take the seed pods or roots or stalks and leaves.  This year the harvest will include honey.

The shiny stainless steel extractor, sans motor which is still on its way, now sits outside on our deck along with the plastic pail with its 200 micron filter and its 600 micron filter.  There is, too, a Rubbermaid commercial product which is an uncapping container over which we remove the covers on the honeycomb.  After uncapping, they go in the extractor.  After the extractor the honey gets filtered twice and then stored in a plastic pail while awaiting bottling.

Also getting a big load of mulch today, more for the orchard and the vegetable garden.

Art and Culture, Bees

A Full Artemis Moon

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Lughnasa                                       Full Artemis Moon

This morning I took a group of 15 Jesuits-to-be through the Matteo Ricci map exhibit.  They were a bright and curious group, joining the same order that deployed Ricci to China 330+ years ago.   The Jesuits were only a generation old at that point.  They were the most attentive group I took through, because, I imagine, they felt some personal stake, no matter how tenuous.  The Chinese Heritage Foundation displayed equal interest, but soon began exploring the map for themselves, reading the calligraphy.  This was an interesting exhibit and improved my knowledge of the Ming dynasty and the Jesuit order.

When I rolled those plastic trash bins out to the roadside tonight, the full Artemis moon had risen.  Full moons hang over the far eastern end of our street and it was beautiful, golden.  The air was cool, the sky a deep blue and this gold charm floated just above the trees.

Three boxes full of honey extracting equipment came just before I left for the city this morning.  Kate and I plan to open tomorrow morning, see what’s in them.  Two more boxes are on their way from another Dadant plant.  This means we’ll get the equipment set up before our date for extraction–August 30th.  Good thing.  All this equipment and it’s only used once a year for a brief time, but in that brief time it captures the results of a year’s worth of collaborative labor between beekeeper and bees.  Worth it.

Art and Culture, Friends, Minnesota, Politics

Strolling on the Mall

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Lughnasa                                           Full Artemis Moon

Downtown Minneapolis, along the Nicollet Mall, has a lot of art, as Glen Keitel showed a group of 15 or so this afternoon.  We started with shadow portraits made of loonbronze and cast into the sidewalk.  They were commemorations of various political struggles including the 1934 truckers strike, Nellie Stone Johnson’s political career and a moving tribute to a Dakota woman.  Across the street from them at Westminster Presbyterian a Paul Granlund cast three humans up and heavenward from geometric forms all cast in bronze.  We walked a long ways, over two hours, and the leg on which I ruptured my achilles took to aching.

A surprising number (to me) of restaurants downtown now have sidewalk dining and there were plenty of people out and about.  A fun afternoon.

There was, too, as there always is in a major downtown, desperate people pleading for attention, for money.  One woman stood with a sign that said she was 7 months pregnant; another man asked me to roll down my window on the way home.  A few sat heads down, clothes tattered, a look of dejection covering them in gloom.

There are now many theories about the mall, whether it was a good idea or whether it has stagnated downtown, taking the liveliness out of it.  Should we fix it by allowing cars?  Should we close it altogether?  What worried me was the number of businesses with store fronts, but no display windows and several buildings with papered over glass and graffiti.

It is city life, flux, humanity at its richest and most callous, humanity at its poorest and most demeaned, the impermanent made to seem solid and stable amidst the signs of constant change and the flow, always the flow, of paper and food and metal and goods, in and out, as the people flow too, making paths that do not last on streets that will not either.

Aging, Asia, Family

The Buddha

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Lughnasa                                   Full Artemis Moon

No.  Not that Buddha.  A small, bald, slightly pudgy baby Buddha.  That was what we called my sister when she was still an infant.  Mary had an inscrutable baldness going for her.  Now she lives in the land of the Buddha, the oldest Buddhism of all, Theravada, and has long since shed her Buddha appearance.  She’s traded the robes, or the diapers, of the Buddha for academic regalia, Indiana for Singapore, North America for Asia.

She’s been over there a while now, a long while, living a good part of her adult life on the Malay Peninsula, first in Kuala Lumpur and now in the Air Conditioned Nation of Singapore, a city state like days of old.

The life of an ex patriate had no texture, no reality for me until first Mary, then Mark ended up in Southeast Asia, both spending at least two decades there, plus a little.  That left me the only stay at home, still rooted in the Midwest.

As things go, however, I developed an ongoing interest in Asia art and from that Asian history and, in particular, Chinese philosophy, so we all share a common fascination with the Far East, though mine is more bookish and museum oriented while theirs is everyday life.

Mary has gone faraway and built a life in a land with lifeways and assumptions often very different from our own.  It’s an impressive achievement and as she nears her 58th birthday I wanted to acknowledge it.  Happy Birthday!  Dr. Sis.

Bees, Garden, Health

Domestic, Horticultural and Apicultural Matters

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Lughnasa                                Full Artemis Moon

Still waiting on the extracting equipment though I imagine it will arrive soon.  Then, setting up the honey house with the extractor and the capping knife and the capping container.  I’ll move some things around, get ready for winter storage of honey supers, put in a solid table for handling supers and frames and foundations.  It’ll be finished when I get the metal sign to hang over the door.

Today found me at Home Depot early picking up a filter for the humidifier attached to the furnace–didn’t know it had one till gas repairman pointed it out–and a refrigerator coil brush.   Turns out refrigerators work more efficiently if their coils get cleaned.  Who knew?  Up the road on Hghwy 10 I went to Anoka Feed and Seed to order another 8 cubic yards of wood chips.  The sky has that late summer blue.  Autumn does not show through the sky and the winds yet, but it will.  It’s already evident in dying plants and woolly caterpillars.

Back home I pulled some carrots, beets, chard and Kale.  I also dug for a couple of new potatoes, but I’m not finding as many potatoes as I found last year.  Hope I just haven’t gone deep enough.  That got my hands good and dirty.

This afternoon I plan to get back to the exercise routine which has seemed too strenuous for the last two weeks while I was sick.  Looking forward to returning to that habit.

Aging, Cooking, Dogs, Family, Health

Feeling Better. Me. Dwindling. Hilo.

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Lughnasa                                    Waxing Artemis Moon

Ah.  It seems the nasties have journeyed on to other warm bloody creatures, leaving me in peace for now.  I hope my body now recognizes and will fend off these creatures that live only to replicate and in so doing make us feel bad.  But they don’t care.

Groceries this morning.  Filled up the cart with fruit and vegetables and turkey burgers, soy milk and slim milk, Sharps and Diet Cherry Coke, a bit of feta cheese, some sliced turkey for the dogs, a few cheese curds, some peanut butter, oops, just realized I forgot the cereal, chicken breasts.  You know.  The stuff of daily eating.  It was church time while I shopped so I suppose we were all heathens in there, except for those righteous Catholics who went to Saturday night mass.  Grocery shopping has a soothing quality.  It combines shopping with a genuine need so the selection of items reflects not so much consumer driven behavior–though that does rear its head–as it does animal needs.

(The Mexicans do mercado better.)

Hilo has, as Kate says, the dwindles.  She’s becoming very thin and tentative.  We believe she’s lost the better part of her sight.  Last week she seemed frightened, wide-eyed and jittery; this week feels different.  Perhaps a resignation of sorts.  It’s sad to watch her fade away, but she still lives her life.  Napping with us this afternoon, going outside to wander around the yard.  Eating a bit now and then.  Live until you die.  That’s what I want for me and for her.

The sewing machine is on its movable platform, the wind-up reels for the cloth are in place, we attached a high-tech stitch regulator and a laser pointer to the apparatus that allows Kate to guide the needle.  Now it’s RTFM, a couple of extension cords and she’ll be ready to practice.  No more taking pieced work out for quilting, now it happens here, right in our lower level.

Asia, Bees, Cinema and Television, Weather +Climate

Departures

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Lughnasa                             Waxing Artemis Moon

Spoke with the folks at Dadant.  They found my order and have begun to ship the honey extractor and other parts of the Ranger extraction kit.  5 boxes from different locations.  Sounds like they’ll arrive before I have to pull the honey.

A wet, cooler morning with a hot day later and tomorrow to follow.  We continue on our stormy way.  Minnesota, that’s right, our Minnesota, leads the nation in tornadoes this year.  By a lot.  We have had 50 more than either Texas or Oklahoma.  Maybe tornado alley has found me and wants me back.  Paul Douglas says it’s due to a blocking slump in the jet stream that holds weather patterns here that would normally be further south.

Kate and I watched a Japanese movie the other night, “Departures.”  In it a young cellist gives up the cello after his orchestra dissolves.  He and his wife move back to his home in a small town by the ocean.  There he applies for a job listing seeking a person to help with departures.  A misprint.  It should have read departed.

I don’t know how common the rite of casketing is in Japan, but it involves, in essence, performance of what we consider an undertakers job (the cosmetic part, not the embalming which seems not to be part of the job) in front of the mourners.  The body is then placed in a coffin, also called encoffining, and transported to the crematorium where the equivalent of a graveside service occurs.  The whole process seems humane, accepting of death and the reality of grief.

As with most Japanese movies I’ve seen that have funerals, this one has a comedic side, too.

The movie pulls the heart, not in contrived ways, but in its honest depiction of difficult human moments, sensitively portrayed.  Highly recommended.  Available on Netflix.