Monthly Archives: January 2011

Art and Culture, Humanities, Myth and Story, Retirement

Deeper Into The Text

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Winter                                                                 Waning Moon of the Cold Month

We woke up to a new snow, sparkly and still coming down like flour from a flour sifter, gentle but persistent.  These kind of snows freshen up the scenery, cover up the dirty layers with fresh white linens.

Business meeting.  We’re still feeling our way into retirement finances.  Not doing too bad, but we’re both a bit edgy since its new.  We’re fine, but until we have experience under our belts we’ll have some doubts.  Irrational.  Yes.  Ignorable?  No.

Finished my English to Latin today and am now about to embark on a new adventure.  I’m going to work on the Ovid behind the two Titian paintings in the new MIA exhibit that reference the Metamorphosis:  Diana and Acteon in book 3:138-255 and Diana and Callisto Book 2:401-503.  This means I’m jumping over the intro for now and going straight into the text about the changes.  Since these paintings will be here a while, they will add some energy to my work.  Should be fun.

GeekWorld

The Color Printer Scam

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Winter                                                      Waning Moon of the Cold Month

BF Skinner’s definition of creativity?  Noticing that the chicken is an eggs’ way of making more eggs.   This quip came to mind when I took my Canon pixma printer into the shop for repair.  The guy said, truthfully, too, that it may well cost more to fix it than to buy a new one.  Why?  Because a printer is just an ink maker’s way of making you buy more ink.  Color printers have low prices so folks will snap them up, take them home and print lots of color stuff, or, alternatively, print black and white stuff while the pricey color inks go dry anyhow.  I have an HP Laserjet 4m that handles all of my black and white printing, the toner, while not cheap, lasts 5-6,000 pages and I bought this HP in 1992 or so.  It’s one of the few things I own that is older than the Celica.  Gnashing of teeth on the pixma.

Scurried over to the grocery store for that stuff I forgot yesterday, then back home for lunch.

Now I’m going to pick up the Titian catalog, read some there, and spend time in Wheelock chapter 26, comparatives.  After that, the treadmill.

General, Great Wheel, US History, World History

The Weekend Cometh

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Winter                                                           Waning Moon of the Cold Month

Imbolc, in the belly, comes next week, February 1st.  It is the celebration of the quickening of the ewe’s and the freshening of their milk, providing a much needed respite from winter stores among the ancient Celts.  More significant to me it is also the celebration of the triple goddess, Bridgit, goddess of hearth, smithy and poetry.  Look for more information on the 1st day of February.

Today is a doing, outside and out in the world errand day.  Weekends still inhabit the same free, but free to do domestic things that they have for all my life.  Strange that the rhythms have not changed for me, but they have not.  I did get groceries yesterday and today will do some makeup chores and other thises and thates.

The unrest in the Middle East shows the threadbare nature of the Realist school of diplomacy.  In this approach, think Kissinger among others, the best you can hope for in enemy territory is a regime you can influence.  Realism gave us the Shah of Iran.  Saddam Hussein.  A stubbornly prickly Israel.  Mubarak in Egypt.  The Saud’s in Saudi Arabia.  It also prompted us to side the with the corrupt regime of southern Vietnam against the communist north.  This is a bankrupt policy stance and nothing shows it so as the fervor for democracy or at least different tyrants in the Middle East this week.  We end up on the side of the brutal, the crazy and the meglomaniacal.

No tyrants for me today.  JIF peanut butter, ranch dressing and grapefruit.  Forgot’em last night night.  And fixing that damned printer.

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Woolly Mammoths

Next Week

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Winter                                                                      Waning Moon of the Cold Month

With the Latin tutoring session behind me and Chapter 26 coming up, I downloaded a commentary on Caesar’s Gallic Wars with Latin text.  I’m gonna have a shot at it for a while.

Started my Titian research last week by reading the Grove entry on Titian and checking out other websites and the Met’s timelines.  Printed out some stuff.  Next I’m going to read the catalog to get an overview of the show and to get images of each object in a file so I can reference them as I work.

Also trying to decide what to do for the Woolly retreat.  One thought is to share my work on Ovid.  Still, it’s pretty inelegant, representing as those first 60 or so verses do the earliest of my work both in learning the language and then attempting translation.  Another is to talk about Big History but that seems pedantic.  I’ve thought about reading the first pages of Missing, just to see what folks think, but it’s low brow compared to the stuff most Woollies read.  Gotta decide sometime soon since the retreat starts on February 3rd.  I head out right after the Titian lecture.

Another possibility is to share the research process on Titian, let them see what it takes to learn enough to tour a special exhibit.

I just had another idea as I wrote this:  do an exegetical piece on Jacob at the Jabbok Ford.  About dreams, struggling with the angel of our better selves.  Hmmm.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Letters, Memories

Externally, We Swim In the Same Ocean, but…

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Winter                                              Waning Moon of the Cold Month

“Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment and learn again to exercise his will — his personal responsibility.” – Albert Schweitzer

Schweitzer was a favorite of both my mother and my father, his “reverence for life” must have rung loudly in the ear of the WWII generation.  I find his Christianity, though unorthodox, still too orthodox for me these days.  This quote seems to lean against the interrelatedness voiced by MLK and quoted here recently and put that inflection point back on the individual.  In most ways I agree with it from  a personal perspective, a focus on the existential predicament decided by emphasizing personal choice rather than the web of influences from genes and nurture.

As I’ve reflected on the notion of interrelatedness over the last month or so, and commented on it by using the idea of inflection, that is a mental tick by the perspective most important at the moment, this dialectical, tension of opposites approach, seems more and more sound to me.  What I mean is that, yes, we are in this together and that, yes, the fate of even the most vulnerable and neglected bears on our own, while at the same, yes, we live alone and will die alone, never really bridging the gap between our interior and that of the Other.  Externally we swim in the same waters as one larger organism, a sort of super-0rganism, while internally, we paddle alone in our single kayak traversing the vast expanse of the inner world.

On a less abstruse note, well, a bit less abstruse anyhow, I did very well on my Latin session today.  I’ve decided it takes me 4-6 hours to get through a Wheelock chapter and the particular grammatical points presented there, along with exercises.  Greg said that was about right.  So, I might as well lean into it and learn it right the first time.  Then, he says I have to read, read, read.  I’m thinking about picking up some Caesar and maybe some Tacitus since they write in prose and that’s easier than the convoluted word order of poets like Ovid and Virgil.  I’m sticking with Ovid as my Northstar in all this, but reading some stuff where I’m not stumbling over words and phrases lines apart that belong together might be fun.

Aging, Family, Retirement, Travel

A Decent Insurance Sales Agent

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Winter                                                       Waning Moon of the Cold Month

Kathryn Kiegler has restored, no, wait that’s too strong, has challenged my opinion about insurance sales folk.  She gave us good advice, walked us through the labyrinth that is Medicare and the various parts attached to it A, B, C, and D, then helped us evaluate a plan best suited to Kate’s needs.  She was clear, patient, gave us the time we needed.  Great person to work with.

We did hit one weird snag.  Kate had not gotten her part B card, nor her letter telling her she had been enrolled.  Without this letter or the card Kate couldn’t sign up for Medicare advantage at all.  Kathryn called Social Security, finally, after a really long and tedious animated voice, a real human came on the line.  Kathryn explained Kate’s need for the letter, the woman agreed to fax it and all seemed in order.  Except.  By the time we were ready to leave, no fax.  None of us wanted to wait the 10-12 minutes to go through the animated phone information.

What to do?  Kathryn recommended going to the Social Security and getting the letter in person.  Not a bad solution since the SSA office is on Chicago Avenue and 18th, not all that far from Kathryn’s office near Westminster Church downtown.  So, we drove over there.  Kate went in while I waited outside.  I’m not real patient with bureaucracy.  When she returned a bit later, letter in hand, she told me why we had received no fax.  “The man told me the Social Security Administration never faxes anything with a social security number on it.”

Hmmm.  Have you ever read Kafka?  Can you imagine, say, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles choosing to never fax something with a license plate number on it?  Yes, of course. Identity theft. I know.  Seems that such intelligent folks could have figured out a solution.  One idea.  When faxing a document to the person whose social security number is involved?  Leave it off and let them fill it in on the other end.

The really good news in this is that our budget for Kate’s insurance costs was about double the cost we’ll pay.  That probably means the same will hold true for me.  That will remove several thousand dollars a year from our expenses, maybe a bit more.  Where was that cruise brochure?  Maybe we could afford that round the world jet junket?  Nah, even at $65,000 that sounded like a cheesy deal.  The Amazon River?  Egypt?  Possible.  Maybe possible.

Aging, Family, Retirement

Finishing the Puzzle–Not Quite Done. But Close.

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Winter                                                              Waning Moon of the Cold Month

One more piece of the retirement puzzle should get put in place today, Medicaid part D for Kate.  We’re visiting an adviser recommended by both Ruth Hayden and RJ Devick  to help us sort through the overwhelming number of choices.

Since last year we’ve added social security for both of us, withdrawals from the IRA, my pension, long term care insurance, Kate’s medicare, added funds to our cash savings and trimmed our budget some.  Now we just have to live a few months into this way of getting our cash together and see how it works.  Don’t anticipate any big problems.

Seems like the most difficult part of all this is the setting up, making choices phase.  After that, barring disaster, things look reasonably smooth for us.  That way, we can just go back to life as we live it day to day.  Because we’ve done so much planning for such a long while now, the transition seems to have been easy, but, of course, it wasn’t.  Lots of legwork, phone calls, penciled in budgets, head scratching over rules and options.    Worth it  though.

Art and Culture, Humanities, Weather +Climate

Those Italians: Titian and Rome

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Winter                                                      Waning Moon of the Cold Month

Gosh, we’re losing our mojo here, 21 degrees now and freezing tomorrow.  This is the third week of January, the coldest week of the year.

Don’t know whether it’s my aging brain or the difficulty of the material, but I’ve spent some prime time on infinitives and indirect statements, while still trying to get the participles straight.  It’s fun and it’s getting me where I want to go, but I feel slow, web-footed at times.  On the other hand I am on Chapter 25, only 17 more to go.  After that, hey, only a few thousand more verses to go and I’ll have one book translated.

A bit more on the Latin tomorrow, then I’m diving into Titian material.  I’ve already finished the Grove Dictionary of Art entry on him, wandered around a few websites, but I’m looking to get medieval all over him, or Renaissance, rather.  The Renaissance and its step child, the enlightenment, are two favorite areas of study for me, so I look forward to leaning into the Titian material.

Well, yeah.  I do have to get groceries, too.  Always some fussy thing like getting fed.

Retirement, Travel

Dreaming of the Far Away

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Winter                                                  Waning Moon of the Cold Month

With Kate now retired, life has taken on a different, more relaxed rhythm.  She’s not hurrying to get ready for work, nor is she coming home tired, neck, back and hip on fire.  We don’t have that churn created by the world of busy, earn, comply, obey.  Both of us have an easier day, though we’re not quite used to what to do with evenings yet since that was her work time and my workout, end the day time.  We’ll get a new flow, one that will change with the seasons as the garden and the bees begin to demand more and more time, then subside as fall ushers in another round of senescence and transitions back to the cold, fallow months.

Travel is the one real potential budget wrecker we have.  I had some misspent time this afternoon looking at the National Geographic Expeditions catalog.  Gee, for only $65,000 a person you can fly around the world, stopping in exotic places along the way, staying in 5-star hotels including the Raffles Hotel D’Angkor in Siem Reap. I know that place, $500 a night and a hell of a good afternoon tea.  My $35 a night place was just fine, thank you.  Cheaper food, too.  That Amazon River cruise looked

Have to sign off now for the Legislative Committee conference call.

Cooking, Health

A Simple Plan

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Winter                                                    Waning Moon of the Cold Month

Chili smells have begun to fall down the stairs and enter my study.  Smells pretty good, especially after  a workout on the treadmill. I’ve up the difficulty by two incline levels over the last week or so and it feels good.  Need to find a personal trainer who can get both Kate and me jump started on a new resistance program.

Also, in dietary news.  I have the found the secret to a healthy weight:  eat less food.  No kidding.  I know.  Obvious, right?  Here’s what I’ve done:  first, I imagined the portion I would cr400_late-summer-2010_0200eat for a meal and cut it in half.  Surprisingly, not a hard thing to do.  Still satisfying.  second, I decided that I had to have a vegetable serving and a fruit serving at every meal.  Again, obvious.  You’re probably already doing it, but I’ve slouched along on the fruit/veggie thing.  Now, each meal.   third, I stopped eating while watching TV.  This is an important change for me because it led to a lot of mindless eating.  Now if I want a snack while watching TV I have to turn off the TV, go make something and eat it in the kitchen at the table.

Oddly enough, this relatively simple minded plan has worked.  I’ve dropped ten pounds + since beginning it.  The good news is that there’s nothing I’ll ever need to stop and it allows me to eat what I want, just less of it.  And, actually, this is something, too, it makes it possible to have two really good meals out of what would have been one and done.  I love that.