Monthly Archives: December 2010

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Literature, Myth and Story

Hermes

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Samhain                                   Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

In my session with my Latin tutor today, Greg told me I’d made good progress.  For the first 4 verses or so, he had no corrections at all.  I’m learning something.

What I’m learning now, peeling back this onion one more layer is this:  figuring out the exact or closest to exact english that conforms to the Latin often fails to  make much sense.  There is a leap, a vault between the world of Ovid and his language and the third millennium English speaking world in which I live.  I’ve always suspected/known this and part of my purpose in setting out on this journey is to learn about that leap. More.  To investigate that process in a specific text that matters to me and to my understanding of the world.  Metamorphosis is such a text.

So, I learn the Latin, grammar and vocabulary.  Then, I apply what I’ve learned to the Latin text.  After I’ve done that, I can begin the task of translation.  It is, I suppose, exegesis and hermeneutics, my old friends from seminary classes on the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.  Each lesson I take another step on this journey.

Faith and Spirituality

Where Does the Path Go?

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Samhain                                                                  Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

“I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.” – Rosalia de Castro

Don’t know who Ms. Castro is, but we see life through the same lens.

Art and Culture, Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Humanities, Myth and Story, Politics

Day by Day

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Samhain                                                           Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

Thursday is art day; Friday is Latin day.  Today Greg and I will go over my (rough) translation of verses 36-48 of Book I of Ovid’s Metamorphosis.  Though slow going, I get a thrill each time I crack a phrase, write it down and it makes sense.  Even if Greg later points out I’m wrong.   I have a lot of opportunity for improvement and that makes the learning worthwhile.  Saturday is errand day and around the house work day.  Sunday, again, is Latin.  Monday is business meeting and Woolly day.  This leaves me Tuesday and Wednesday as buffer days.  So far, this schedule seems to work pretty well for me, though my lackluster performance yesterday made me wonder a bit.

(this graphic illustrates the verses I’ve translated for today.)

On the climate change front.  The world has begun to lurch forward on two aspects of climate change:  reduction of carbon emissions and adaptation.  In the more radical wing of the environmental movement adaptation or mitigation has been capitulation, something to avoid since it muddies the gravity of the problem we face.  A tipping point may be at hand.  Folks have begun to put forth adaptation in the context of realizing the global warming train has not only left the station, but is well on its way.  A certain, not insubstantial amount of warming is now inevitable, perhaps as much 2 degrees, possibly more.   Given that, mitigating projects that can help soften the damage, are not only a good idea, but necessary.  If proposed in the context of inevitable warming, mitigation projects can also underscore the need to take dramatic steps now to prevent more warming.  I’m hopeful we’ll see progress out of Cancun.

My comments above do fly in the face of polling numbers that suggest climate change has receded in the public’s mind, especially as the economic crisis has shoved personal financial peril forward.  Understandable, but not good.  My hunch about a tipping point comes more from the gradual roll out of an increasing consensus about the science.  We’ll see.

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Humanities

Unthawed.

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Samhain                                           Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

So beautiful.  The moon floats above our cottonwood trees, a thin sickle, its horns pointing to the east.  I’ve never seen any art object that can compare to the sleek curves and understated lighting of a sickle moon.

When I ran out of sleep a couple of days ago, up for a while in the morning,  I set up today.  After my two tours at the MIA, I’m worn out, tired, a bit dejected.  Losing sleep fiddles with my emotional monitor, I become more sensitive, less able to assess accurately how I’m feeling or doing.

The Thaw exhibition has proved a puzzle for me.  I don’t seem too good at touring it and I can’t quite figure out why.  I base this on the flatness of all three tour’s responses to my guiding them, a flatness that is out of character for most of my tours.  I love this show and the objects in it.  They fascinate me and they shine with a fierce enthusiasm, witness to the powerful visions of people who live close to the land.  But somehow what I’m doing doesn’t convey my excitement.  I may approach this show too analytically, too much absorbed in the art historical arguments about native masterpieces and how to view native art.  Maybe.  I just don’t know.

As I said, when I’m worn out, like today, the negatives surface with ease and have more endurance, that may be an aspect of this problem, but it’s not all of it.  Perhaps I need to reconstruct my tour on different grounds, use different objects.  Maybe I need to develop actual questions for each object, something I resist doing because I prize the conversational atmosphere, just folks walking through the gallery sharing what we see and what we know.  That usually works well for me.  Not this time.

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality

Touring the Thaw

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Samhain                                                      Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

Working with the Thaw collection today, two tours.  As I’ve gone back over my notes, the collection becomes alive again, a collection of masterpiece art made by native American artists, women and men, in many materials from all the regions of North America save Mexico.  The Tsimishian raven frontlet is still my favorite, a compact work, well-carved with abalone inlay.  It features, probably, Raven Who Owns The Sun; the image of raven enhanced with an abalone sun that, when struck with light, flares back the rays of our home star.

The Yupik mask, too, with its feathery margin, fox teeth and diving seals, conveys the power necessary to hunt in the frozen world of the Arctic.  In order both to survive the hunt and bring back food essential for life shamanic prayer and ritual added itself to the hunter’s knowledge and weaponry, giving as much of an edge as possible to the Yupik hunter.

Though the phrase is from a current photography show, I would call the Thaw collection an embarrassment of riches.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work, Holidays, Humanities

Winter’s Loon

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Samhain                                       Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

It’s the best time of the year.  Ring a ling, ring a ling, ring a ling.  Yes, because the woods are lovely, dark and deep.  And because we have promises to keep.  It’s the best time of the year.

I’m no Christmas curmudgeon.  The lights and the cheeriness lift my spirits, too.  Yet it is not the lights toward which I drift, drawn in Frost’s New England sleigh pulled by a draft horse black as the snow falling is white.  I wander toward the woods, the dark and the deep.  In there, amongst the trees, far from city lights lies the reason for the season for me.

Each night for the last week or so I’ve heard my favorite sound of the season, the hooting of a great gray owl which lives in our woods.  I’ve never seen this bird and this may will be the child of the one I heard years ago.  The bass voice declares a confidence in the dark and the cold, an embrace.  The rhythm and the solitariness of the sound captures the winter dark as a loon’s cry distills the summer sun setting on a northern lake.

This is the carol for which my heart yearns; strange, in its way, since the great gray is the apex predator in our world, excepting, of course, the humans.

So, as you drink your Christmas cheer, crack the window a bit, listen. You might hear the voice of the woods, lovely, dark and deep.

Commentary on the news, GeekWorld, Humanities, Myth and Story

Sticking It To The Man

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Samhain                                                 Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

File under sticking it to the man:  Wikileaks.  File under government mad, pouts, hunts down bad man and charges him with anything they can find.  Come on, guys. I’m no Rand Paulite and even I can see big government blaming somebody, anybody else for the mud in their own eye.  Let Assange go and quit acting like spoiled children.  Transparency is a good thing.   Even if it forces short term changes.  Face up to it and move on.

File in the already fat folder:  Science fiction comes true.  A private corporation put a capsule into space and brought it back to earth safely.  Well, to ocean.  Scenes from 2001 floated before me with weightless passengers on a Pan-Am flight drinking Coca-Cola served by in-flight attendants dressed like Twiggy.

Finished up verse 46 of the Metamorphosis.  If I did my arithmetic right, I am now one third of one thousandth of the way toward my goal.  Of course, this probably inflates the quality of my early attempts which a more adept me will have to redo.  Even so.

Commentary on the news, Great Work, Humanities, Politics

Emmer concedes governor’s race to Dayton

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Samhain                                          Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

Back up at 8 am for an 8:30 conference call with the Minnesota Environmental Partnership.  This concerned information we may use when defending against roll backs to current environmental policy.  The sound quality was poor, but the information, presented in power point slides via a webinar website, had a lot of good data.  I can’t discuss it, but it was far from discouraging.

Here’s good news just posted at the Trib:  Emmer concedes governor’s race to Dayton.   A tip of the hat to the state Republicans.  They read the state right; we’re weary of recount wrangles.  Perhaps we can begin a more bi-partisan approach to Minnesota’s future.  I’d like to see it.  Bi-partisanship is good for environmental issues.

We will probably spend more time on administrative and rule-making work for the next two years than we have in the past. We being the Sierra Club and our allies.

In between I looked up Latin words in preparation for translating lines 40-45 of Book I, the Metamorphosis.  It’s something about water and the sky and sun, but I have yet to put it together.

Art and Culture, Asia

More Tales From the Art Crypt

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Samhain                                           Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

Fire extinguisher training.  All guards and registrar personnel get trained in the use of fire extinguishers.  Ken reports this is a lot of fun.  “They put pans of fire all over the room and you have to practice figuring out how to put them out.”  Waving a hand like a fire extinguisher, he went on, “See.  A double layered fire, you have to go up and down, starting at the bottom and moving across it.”  Imagine a spirited faux demonstration.  Then, one day there was a real fire.  “A contractor (notice who the bad guys are here) was smoking in the building.  Not supposed to.”  Wags finger. “Throws his cigarette in a wastebasket with…”  Wait for it.  “Sawdust in it and a fire started.”  His eyes light up, “We all jumped for it and Steve won.  He put it out.”

On a more serious note, Ken monitors scholars who want to use objects in our collection for research.  A recent example is a gentlemen who specializes in the study of Chinese Imperial silks, especially Imperial robes.  He used our collection to observe and make notes about the Chinese tendency to alter robes to fit new Imperial court members, rather than disposing of the old ones and making new.  One of our robe’s has, he pointed out, a Song dynasty fabric sewn in as part of alterations to its sleeves.  When robes would become too deteriorated to use, still usable sections would be cut out for use at a later time.

In enameled cabinets with glass windows in them, Ken opened one and pulled out a drawer.  It had a full silver setting, made by Tiffany, with hammered grips and small Japanese objects: pumpkins, turtles, grass affixed near the grip’s end.  I’m not a big silver service guy, but seeing this made me want to own one.  Just like that one.

The drawer below the Tiffany set, which held the serving utensils, there were spiral cuff-links and a tie tack made Alexander Calder.  Along side them were a pair of old eye glasses, some snips and other assorted oddments that might have rested on a table at Grandma’s garage sale.  Except these were really, really nice.

Art and Culture, Retirement

An Actual Art Emergency

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Samhain                                                     Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

One story from the MIA storage tour.  On a February morning, after days of below zero weather, the registrar for the permanent collection comes to work.  Blam!  Blam!  Blam!  Vibrations pound the main storage facility.  He hears clinking as Chinese ceramics move in their storage cabinets.  The phone.  “Tell them to stop!”  A burly contractor comes down, a scowl on his face, “Finally we’ve got warm enough weather to compact the soil.  We have to do it to protect the curtain wall of the Target Wing we’re building. What’s the problem?”

“Oh,”  the registrar says, “Let me show you.”  They walk over to the Chinese ceramics.  “That one, $750,000.  That one, $250,000.”   “Fine.  You have 45 minutes.”

The registrar calls all registration staff, “We have an actual art emergency.  Drop what you’re doing and come down here.”  45 minutes the T’ang, Song and Ming dynasty ceramics had a location safe from the pounding and the brutal world of building construction continued its work.

Yet one more meeting designed to get our retirement finances in order before Kate’s retirement.  We’ve got everything lined up, just need to cross ts and dot is.

A lot to it, but really a lot less than starting, say, a career.  An interesting comparison since the possible 25 to thirty years of life left is a good chunk of a career.  Now our career is to stay alive and not go broke.