Monthly Archives: November 2010

Commentary on the news, Friends, Great Wheel, Myth and Story, Woolly Mammoths

Nick

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Samhain                                       Waning Thanksgiving Moon

The Nick Caspers murder trial will not happen.  Nick decided to plead guilty to Felony A Murder, a charge that gives a chance at parole, as opposed to the Felony AA that he faced at trial.  That one carried life without parole.

As Woolly Paul Strickland said, we all have done things in our lives for which we were not brought to account, not so for Nick.  I share with Paul a hope that the judge will be merciful in his sentencing.  The extraordinary impact an event like a drunken fight in a small North Dakota town can have on individuals and families near and far makes me aware of the lives impacted by each person involved in our criminal justice system, victims and perpetrators alike.  On TV the criminal is often a bad person and the prosecution and the victims good people; in life, the shades of gray cover the just and the unjust.

Nick enters the darkest part of this long and unfinished journey in December.  There is, of course, the irony of his situation counterpoised to the holiday lights and Santa Claus and families gathered in churches singing Christmas carols.  Not so ironic, and perhaps more helpful, is the season seen from the perspective of the Great Wheel.  In December the earth reaches the point in its orbit, the Winter Solstice, when the darkness that has gathered strength ever since the Summer Solstice reaches its zenith on the longest night of the year.

The Great Wheel teaches us that the descent into darkness is never the whole story.  In fact, it shows us that even the darkest night bears within it the seeds of increasing light, an increasing light that will lead, in time, to a new growing season.  Owning the descent for what it is, a trip down into the underworld, but a descent that has a path leading back to the surface world, is a strong narrative for Nick and his next few weeks and months.

Mikki and Pete, Nick’s adoptive parents, Nick, Jim and all the South Dakota folks:  we’re with you as you make this journey.  You don’t have to go it alone.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate, World History

Emergence

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Samhain                                       Waning Thanksgiving Moon

One of those days.  Snow brought our first drive way clearing by John Sutton, but not until both Kate and I had left.  I did the sidewalk.

The drive into the Sierra Club took about 15 minutes longer than usual, but I made it to the first interview on time.  I spent the next 3 hours with Michelle and Margaret as I will tomorrow, interviewing candidates for the Sierra Club policy position.  One candidate referred to us as the big boys at the State Capitol.  Hitch up those britches and let’s get to work.

On the way in and back I’m listening, as I mentioned yesterday, to lectures on Big History.  A topic important to Big History and important to me is the quality of emergence, a key mark of complexity, the theme that holds all the various epochs since the big bang together.  Emergence refers to qualities that become evident only after two or more other elements combine in some patterned way.  The easy example is hydrogen and oxygen.  Examine the two of them separately and you would not come up with the emergent proper that comes when you combine two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom in a certain way.  Water.  Another, more complex example, is a human.  The individual constituents of the body, chemically, do not suggest the possibility of life if combined.

Emergence fascinates me because it is used by a few thinkers to reimagine the sacred.  I’m not sure the exact line of thought but it has my attention right now.

Then, when I got home, to a plowed driveway, I slipped and slid my car into a snowbank, a snowbank we had paid John Sutton to create.  This entailed a trip to the hardware store for granite grit, a session with Warren, my neighbor, who came to my aid with a tow rope, then scattering grit on the slope of our driveway.  Then, finally, I could get the car in the garage.  Minnesota is a place where sometimes getting the car in the garage at night is an accomplishment.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Humanities, World History

Big History

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Samhain                                                         Waning Thanksgiving Moon

The temperature has stayed above freezing so we’re having a significant rain event, but little snow.  I found a snow removal guy yesterday.  Prices varied wildly from $25 a time to $50.  All the same snow.  Not sure what the deal is.  We went with $25.

The Medtronic event went by rapidly with only one hour available for folks to mill around and look.  As often happens, though, we docents had the same hour when the guests arrived, had cocktails and mingled.  As with any group, they checked in with each other, took the temperature of the room and few wandered.  With the exception of CEO Bill Hawkins who remembered the singularity of the T’ang Dynasty blue horse ming ch’i (spirit object).   We discussed it and the meaning of tomb objects in general.  Other than a brief conversation about Ming dynasty blue and white ceramics, that was my evening.

On the way in I started a fascinating new lecture series from the Teaching Company called Big History.  This takes history’s starting point as the big bang and moves in increments from there:  birth of suns, creation of elements, creation of earth and the solar system, the origin of life, humans, agriculture, the modern revolution.  The guy who’s teaching this course happens to be the guy who conceived of Big History as a discipline, basing it, as I suspected on Braudel’s notion of the longue duree, seeing history from longer and longer durations of time.

Tomorrow and Wednesday will consist largely of interviews at the Sierra Club.  We’re hiring a policy staff person.

General

Back At It

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Samhain                                            Waning Thanksgiving Moon

Over this last week I learned that my Latin chapters now require more time than I have in one week, so I’m going to shift my tutoring sessions from once a week to every other week.  That way I’ll be able to finish my chapter and get some Ovid done, too.  It’s the journey, not a date, that matters to me.  I want to learn Latin well enough from Wheelock and Greg to continue on translating Ovid with monthly or even less frequent sessions, perhaps later this year.

Interrupted sleep patterns and the holiday did throw me off.  I’ve not been exercising, post-extraction rules said not to early and I extended it as my jaw has taken longer to heal than I imagined, but I’m going to start back this week. I miss it.  After the first of the year, I’ll move back into resistance work at least 3 times a week, plus balance training.  That will get me back to where I was before the growing season began last year.

Had a revelation.  Weight loss as a goal has always frustrated me.  By that I mean I’ve not lost any appreciable weight for any reasonable period of time.  It dawned on me this morning that I can control what goes in even if the results are mercurial.  So, I plan to eat less of everything except vegetables and fruit.  I’ll the weight fall where it will.  I know, this isn’t rocket science or anything other than a big duh, way to state the obvious, but I haven’t thought it in those terms for me.  Dad always said weight loss was easy.  Push ups.  Push ups away from the table.

Refreshing my knowledge of the Ming and Qing dynasties, especially jade and ceramics, for a corporate event tonight.  One thing I relearned concerned nephrite and jadite.  The Chinese value both equally and call them both jade.  Nephrite comes in darker colors and has a soapy or waxy finish when buffed.  Jadite comes in lighter colors and becomes shiny, brilliant when buffed.  Also buffed up my knowledge of the T’ang dynasty and especially ming ch’i, or spirit objects, objects placed in tombs.  I’ve never spent much time learning about our sarcophagus, it comes form the Northern Wei Dynasty and has a unique spot in Chinese art history.  Not much landscape painting has survived from this time period, so the engraved landscapes on the sides of the sarcophagus are a valuable art historical reflection of that era’s painting style.

Got a note from Margaret Levin, executive director of the Sierra Club.  It’s nice to be appreciated.

Humor, Minnesota

You Know You’re a Minnesotan If: Jeff Foxworthy List

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Samhain                                                Waning Thanksgiving Moon

from friend, Tom Crane :

If you consider it a sport to gather your food by drilling through
18 inches of ice and sitting there all day hoping that the food will swim by,

If you’re proud that your state makes the national news 96 nights
each year because International Falls is the coldest spot in the nation,

If you have ever refused to buy something because it’s “too SPENDY” !

If your local Dairy Queen is closed from November through March,

If someone in a store offers you assistance, and they don’t work there,

If your dad’s suntan stops at a line curving around the middle of his forehead,

If you have worn shorts and a parka at the same time,

If your town has an equal number of bars and churches,

If you know how to say…Wayzata. ..Mahtomedi. .Cloquet. Edina ..and Shakopee,

If you think that ketchup is a little too spicy,

If vacation means going “up north” for the weekend,

If you measure distance in hours,

If you know several people, who have hit deer more than once,

If you often switch from “Heat” to “A/C” in the same day and back again,

If you can drive 65 mph through 2 feet of snow  during a raging blizzard without flinching,

If you see people wearing hunting clothes at social events,

If you install security lights on your house and garage and leave both unlocked,

If you think of the major food groups as beer, fish, and Venison,

If you carry jumper cables in your car, and your girlfriend knows how to use them,

If there are 7 empty cars running in the parking lot at Mill’s Fleet Farm at any given time,

If you design your kid’s Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit,

If driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow  !

If you know all 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, and of course, road construction,

If you can identify a southern or eastern accent,

If your idea of creative landscaping is a plastic deer next to your blue spruce,

If “Down South” to you means Iowa,                If you know “a brat” is something you eat,  &   If you find -10 degrees “a little chilly”,

If you actually understand these jokes, and you forward them to all your Minnesota friends !!

General

Northern Nights

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Samhain                                  Waning Thanksgiving Moon

The night is great.   Still.  When you’re up at 2 am, back to bed around 5 and up at 11:00, then a nap at 2:30, up at 3:45 and its dark by 4.   This is an almost northern night kind of schedule.  Feels weird.

Kate’s gone to Fat Quarter Quilting for a Quilting Guild meeting.  I don’t know if they have secret handshakes and pass along occult sewing tips or not, but I do know Kate enjoys going.

Out of synch.  That’s what I feel.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality

Up at the crack of 11

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Samhain                                          Waning Thanksgiving Moon

Up at the crack of 11.  Kate and I went down to Pappy’s cafe for breakfast/brunch.  Pappy’s has a blue collar clientele and we got there just as the post church crowd came in, folks wearing suits for one time in the week, women with that fancy bag and new sweater, everyone looking serious and relieved at the same time, serious that they’d done their duty, relieved that its was over for another week.  Faith is a complex network of acts and activities, some metaphysical and some purely physical.  Dressing up and showing others you both know how and can afford to falls on the physical side.  It reinforces, though, the critical importance of Sunday, of Christianity or Judaism or Islam.  That reinforcement continues in prayer, reading of holy books, considering religious prescriptions and proscriptions.  What we would call a closed hermeneutical circle, meaningful and profound from within, suspect and thin seen from without.

I’m about to head in for a nap, clear my thoughts with sleep.

Cinema and Television, Family, Health, Retirement

Up Again

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Samhain                                                  Waning Thanksgiving Moon

Here I am, at it again.  Don’t know why this damned tooth/jaw deal has interfered with my sleep this last two nights and not before, but there you are.

Got pretty serious there on the post below, so I’ll try to stay a bit lighter here in the dark.

Finished my Latin, english to Latin, yesterday, early, partly because I got up at 4 am or 5 or whatever.  Went back to bed at 9, got up at 11:30.  The whole day seemed off, sort of out of kilter.  Now I’m up again, an insomniac spurred on by the loss of wisdom.  Which, come to think of it, out to do it.

As Kate comes closer and closer to retirement, January 7th is her date, I can sense a change, a sort of gathering in, nesting beginning.  I just ordered a few books on movies, for example, thinking we might use our Netflix account to watch movies together one night a week, a date but at home.  We’ve also gotten Kate’s quilt operation set up in a sewing room, upstairs, her long arm quilter, downstairs where her sewing room used to be and her piecing table cum storage in the spot we once had a pool table.

We’ve spent a good bit of time, as I’m sure most do, on our retirement finances, a project not yet finished, with my pension numbers yet to come and Kate’s medicare part D, but we’ll finish before the end of December.

Given the adequate, but tight fit of our budget in the coming years, we’ll probably travel less, a thought that at one time would have jarred me, but that now I find manageable.  Short trips to visit family, perhaps longer ones up north or down to Chicago, not quite so far away, so much money.  We’ll save up for a trip or two to somewhere interesting:  Churchill, Ontario, the Southwest, but cruises and foreign travel will be difficult.

In the growing season, of course, we have the bees, the orchard, the vegetable gardens and the flower gardens that we care for together.  We’ll get into the city to the museums, theatre and music more than we have.

Mostly, though, we’ll enjoy each others company and live not a good deal differently from what we do right now.

Faith and Spirituality

A Few Notes

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Samhain                                             Waning Thanksgiving Moon

In no particular order, though there must be one, at some point, here a few notes I’ve taken from reading, living.

1.  Death happens.  To all of us.  Whether we fear it or welcome it.

therefore, it’s best to befriend death, to live with it as a counselor on your left shoulder, keeping you honest, authentic, true.

2.  Love beats everything else that comes before death.

therefore, it’s best to live a life loving as many and as much  you can.

3.  Certain things get in the way of love:

attachment to money, to particular things

a need for power

an unwillingness to be vulnerable

untrustworthy behavior

therefore,

it’s best to clean up your act.

4. Passion is the next best thing after love.

passion requires clarity about self

clarity about self requires self-knowledge

self-knowledge undergirds both passion and love and allows an unblinking relationship with death

5.  Therefore,

It’s best to get your butt to the Temple of Apollo,

Cross under the lintel with gnothi seauton written above it

And get to know who you are.  No, who you really are.

6.  When you know who you are, your passions become obvious.

7.  With passion your life before death has value, vigor, oomph.

8.  With passion love retains its edge, its ability to cut through any thing left and carve your true you out of it

9.  This all may be hard, but it doesn’t have to be.  You can do it.

Art and Culture, Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Writing

Night Talk

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Samhain                                   Waning Thanksgiving Moon

Though the pain has subsided, it still keeps me awake without medication.  So, I’m up at 6 am, a rarity for me these days.  When Kate shifts off regular work, no longer comes home around 10 pm, then I’ll go back to an earlier bed time and 6 might not be so unusual.

I understand the attraction of the night.  I feel it myself.  The quiet, the dark has a friendly feel to it, a time when the home becomes a hermitage or a studio or a writing garret, far off from the demands of mundane life.  Reading late has an appeal, the book, the words float up and occupy the whole, not reading anymore, but traveling along, carried on a river of narrative.  Writing has the same free, anchors away momentum.  The ship sails away from the dock, following the rhythm of an ocean current, one that runs just along the border between the conscious and unconscious realm, between the warmer, busier, lighter waters near the surface and the benthic deeps, unvisited, stygian, fecund, down there the ocean reaches its source, the collective unconscious, yet deeper and universally expansive, the holy well from which archetypes, genetic memory, forces creative enough to bring life itself into existence make their slow way.

Night talk.  Or, rather, very early morning talk.