Monthly Archives: March 2011

Aging, Family, Politics, Travel, World History, Writing

Path of Most Resistance

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Spring                                         Waning Bloodroot Moon

I have a new round of resistance work underway in addition to the Tai Chi.  This work I got from Brad at the Y.  It involves squatting on a balance board while doing curls, then shoulders followed by a second round, also squatting, focusing on the chest and triceps.  Every other day I do crunches, too.  That plus the aerobics and the Tai Chi, plus the Body Flow I attend with Kate should be quite enough for now.  My goal with the Tai Chi is to learn it well enough to practice it while on the cruise.

(in case you couldn’t tell, this is not me.)

As to the cruise, I’m buying books, reading, talking to friends who’ve been to various spots, trying to figure out the logistical possibilities for trips other than the usual shore excursions.  At Stefan’s suggestion I’m going to look into a day flight to one of the Galapagos Islands as well as the potential trip to Aerquipa.  Part of travel’s allure for me lies in this preparation, the ingestion of different places, cultures and histories, different natural and environmental histories, different literature and art.

Meanwhile we work at the legislature, the Sierra Club and the committee for which I am responsible, the folks keep coming to the MIA, the Woolly’s meet and talk, the Latin continues to flow and Kate and I learn more and more about retirement.  The novel?  Well…  Not so much right now.  You see, there’s the garden, too, and next will be the bees.

Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Politics, US History

Stay In It

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Spring                                                    Waning Bloodroot Moon

As winter loosens its grip on our state, the legislature begins to tighten theirs.  In the last half of the first session of the 2011-2012 legislature, budget bills dominate the news.  From my perspective as both a liberal and an environmentalist, the news is grim.  Environmental permitting, a public process designed to tease out and prevent negative impacts, has been weakened.  A bridge over the St. Croix, negotiated to a smaller, less intrusive version, has suddenly come back to life, bigger and more expensive than ever.  Up until the Japanese disaster, the nuclear moratorium in the state seemed headed for repeal.  Last night, in what must be one of the more peculiar–not to mention outrageous actions–an amendment passed attaching to an omnibus environmental budget bill a provision to fund state parks by cutting down black walnut trees in two of them, White River and Frontenac.   Let’s see, cutting down trees to save the state parks.  Like selling the children to support the family or auctioning off the planes to save the airlines.

Since the halcyon days of the 60’s, it’s been tough for those of us with liberal to radical political sympathies.  Victories have been few and defeats numerous.  It is possible to despair, to wonder if a sense of communal responsibility will ever again influence policy; but, it is in precisely these circumstances where those of us with a historical perspective and active engagement must not allow despair to over run our convictions.  To shuck off politics now is to insure that the field is left to those whose politics create the need for us.

No, as the conservative hand closes around the gavel in state after state and in Congress as well, those of us in the opposition must be more vigorous, more active, more vocal.

Aging, Humanities

Lost In Translation

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Spring                                                             Waning Bloodroot Moon

Just wanted to post a notice here that I have several verses of Ovid’s Metamorphosis translated, about a fourth of his version of Diana and Actaeon, the subject of one of Titian’s paintings at the MIA’s current exhibition.  This level of translation is a first pass, so is not meant to be in idiomatic English.  That’s a next step.  I’m excited that I’ve gotten this far.

The task of translation is far more complex than it appears, involving inevitable personal choices that reflect not the original work, but the mind and culture of the translator.  I suspected this, but now I know for sure.

This work has become a hobby for me, something I enjoy picking up in spare time, a jigsaw puzzle or a model.

Those of you who’ve mastered another language or languages, I’m getting to the place, at 64, where I may join you.  I have a lot of respect for any who have stuck the course with another language, we are so inept here in the US.  It’s been a fun ride so far.

Weather +Climate

Weather Complaint

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Spring(?)                                                    Waning Bloodroot Moon

Well.  About a foot of new snow.  A foot.  Heavy, heart attack snow, too.  It’s hard to imagine a less welcome weather pattern at this time, with the exception of a hard rain.  Oh, yeah, we had a hard rain most of yesterday.  Both of them up the ante for the flooding season and seem to put the growing season still further and further away.  These kind of complaints often come in Minnesota about this time, stimulated not so much by the fact of snow or the extension of winter weather, but from a calendar encouraged yearning for a new season, a different form of weather.  We temperate folks like our weather, all four seasons of it, but we want all four seasons.  You know, a cool clear fall, a cold snowy winter, a bright colorful spring and a hot productive summer.  If it appears the weather gods have forgotten a season and just might skip one, we can get cranky.

Kate came into my study this morning and said, with some surprise, “You’re putting something together!”  And she was right.  I ordered another editor’s desk from Levenger’s so I now have a continuous run of inclined desk space about three feet long.  When juggling books, note pads and more books, these inclined desks make work a lot easier.  Now I have enough space at the same height.

More Latin, translating the Metamorphoses, and later, the legcom call for the Sierra Club.

Aging, Great Work, Health, Politics, Weather +Climate, World History

Clean Teeth. Legislation. Western Civ.

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Spring                                                                       Waning Bloodroot Moon

Dangerous driving conditions tomorrow. Winter storm warning.  Who stole my spring?

Into the city twice today, once to get my teeth cleaned and a second time for a Sierra Club meeting on legislative basics.  The teeth cleaning, an every 6 months visit, has become routine by now.  Mary, the dental hygienist I saw today, complimented on my teeth-brushing.  That feels a bit to me like being told, good boy, you cleaned your plate.  Mary has a gentle way with her and worked hard to convince me to take extra good care of my teeth.  It’s important for overall health, especially as we age.

On both trips listened to another lecture series, this one on Western Civilization, part II.  It focuses on the 500+ years in which modernism arose.  This is ground I’ve been over from several perspectives over the years, but each time it gets a bit clearer and the puzzle pieces seem to fit together better.  Modernism and the Enlightenment are key to understanding our current political, cultural, social and economic conditions, so it’s hard to become over educated about them.  What I enjoy now is finding connections between, say, Chinese history and Western.

I’m on lecture 9 already.  Just finished the Reformation, ground I know pretty well, but it never hurts to hear it put in the larger socio-political context.

The economic and environmental situation we find ourselves in now can be traced back to this period, both the good and the bad.  More later.  I’m tired.

Aging, Humanities, Travel, Woolly Mammoths

The OWM

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Spring                                                    Waning Bloodroot Moon

The Order of Woolly Mammoths, or OWM, the sacred sound that created the world, met tonight at Frank’s for our annual corned beef and cabbage feed.  Bill Schmidt gave us an insiders perspective on the nuclear crisis, explaining the safeguards in place and said, with some emotion, that if called and if he could contribute, he would go.  It gave me a personal connection to the brave, even heroic effort that engineers and other workers at the Fukushima facility have already offered and confirmed what I suspected.  These are men and women who have a wartime level commitment to their jobs, knowing that if doing them costs their lives; it’s a sacrifice both necessary and worthwhile.  They deserve our deepest admiration and respect as humans tested in a type of cauldron most of us will never, thankfully, see.

Tom, a new grandfather-to-be, asked for advice, stories, thoughts from current Woolly grandfathers.  He has chosen to devote his meeting, our next one, to the topic.  Gray heads discussing gray-headdom.

Stefan and I discussed a possible visit to Aerquipa when our cruise hits Peru.  It would involve a plane flight from Lima of about an hour and a half.  I want to make it work, seeing Lonnie and her folks at work, visiting someone I know.  Some planning to be done.

These men, this crowd of silverbacks, men I knew when our hair had color are a central part of my life.  It was good, as it always is.

Aging, Asia, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Retirement

Mind/Body

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Spring                                                                Waning Bloodroot Moon

The yard!  The yard!  If Tattoo had been here this winter, he’d have gotten pretty excited about this dreary muddy mess now more visible than not.  The mountain of snow over which I could not see as I degaraged my Celica has melted to foothill levels, allowing me sights not seen for two + months.  Yippee.

Business meeting this morning and we acknowledged both the new tax burden and our wisdom in saving adequately to deal with it.  This transition year into the retired life has had surprises, mostly pleasant ones, but this one caught us up short, at least at first.  We have enough money to pay the taxes and still go on with our cruise.  I’m glad because I’ve already got that Panama hat picked out.

I’ve entered a new phase of physical activity, one with not only aerobic and resistance work, but also with body movement exercise like the Tai Chi and the Body Flow class at the Y.  It feels different, maybe better.  The better aspect comes with the more body friendly Tai Chi, yoga and pilates.  Aerobic and resistance are necessary to retain muscle mass and heart/circulatory system health, but the others work the body in a way designed to calm, loosen, stretch.  The Tai Chi, too, has a strong element, as does yoga, of the Eastern mystical.  Yoga as taught here has lost much of that, but the Tai Chi world remains rooted in the ancient Taoist traditions of China.

Aging, Art and Culture, Asia, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Humanities, World History

Welcome Home, Tai Chi

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Spring                                                   Waning Bloodroot Moon

Once in a while something comes into my life and it feels like a part of me already, as if a missing piece had come back home.  Meeting Kate was like that for me.  My split-off.  When the Wednesday classes for the two-year docent program began, art history came home.  When I found a Jungian analyst over 25 years ago, my Self began to return.  Last night I attended my first Tai Chi class.  Another wandering aspect of myself has joined the others at the hearthside.

When my hands floated up last night into the second position, I felt an energy pushing away from my body, just I felt it collecting as I pulled my elbows in and those same hands back toward my body.  A sense of inner peace, momentary, but real, emerged.  My first class, but not my last.

It may be true as an article in the Star-Tribune this morning claimed, that memory takes longer to cement as we grow older, may be, but for me, I hold out for variability, that some things to take longer to seat, yes; but others, because they’re compelling or because they’re split-offs that have found their back to the homestead, just rejoin as if they’d never left.

I’m going to confess something here.  There’s a part of me, a looky-loo part, that hopes disasters will go all the way like the earthquake and the tsunami in Japan or the financial crisis or the riots sweeping the Middle East.  A part of me wants to see what a nuclear meltdown would entail.  What if that chief villain of high tech actually happened?  What would the consequences be?  Really?  This is not at all a desire to see more disasters or worse catastrophes, rather it is a sort of morbid curiosity, a curiosity about extremes.  What if a volcano like Mt. Rainier or Mt. Fuji erupt at full force?  What if the sea levels do rise by 2 feet or more?  This is the immoderate part of me, that aspect that wants thing to extend to their logical conclusion.

I wouldn’t feel embarrassed about this at all if there wasn’t the possibility, the great likelihood, of serious injury and death to people and eco-systems.  So, I feel embarrassed, but still interested.

Faith and Spirituality

Public Speaking

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Spring                                               Full Bloodroot Moon

Redefining the Sacred is now available.  The discussion around it was solid, engaged, intelligent.  It felt good in delivery.  I enjoy public speaking engagements.  I’m mostly down to Groveland, now, but I’d like to do some more.  Not a lot, but some.  Have to think about how to make that possible.

Kate and I tried, without success, to eat at Saji-ya and then the Heartland Restaurant, both not open until the evening.  We finally settled on Osaka.  Udon for me, tempura for Kate.  Now, a nap.