Ovid and Me

Spring                                                               Waning Bloodroot Moon

The Latin work has gone past difficult learning, though there is still that, too, into a different, almost ecstatic place.  Reading the words of another language and making sense, poetry, from them still seems magical to me.  I’m really doing it.  The closest analogy is my first set of glasses that corrected my far vision.  All of a sudden I saw individual stars in the sky.  william-turner-ancient-italy-ovid-banishedThe moment was extraordinary.  What had been a fuzzy, blurred night sky became black velvet set with bright points of light.

Now it appears I will finish Diana and Actaeon before the Titian show closes on May 1st and I might make my way through Diana and Callisto, too.  I’m enjoying translating the different stories, so I think I’ll move on to Medea, Pentheus and other discrete stories rather than try the full frontal assault I had planned, start with Book I, verse 1 and soldier through to the last verse of Book XVI.

Another idea that seems possible now is to investigate the Latin texts behind other objects in the museum:  Theseus and the Centaur at the Lapith wedding,  Ganymede and the Eagle,  Lucretia,  Germanicus.  I’m sure there are other objects that have particular Latin texts behind them.  I have no particular reason for doing this except to deepen my knowledge of mythology and of the specific objects in our collection with Latin connections.

Taking up a new intellectual challenge later in life is not only possible, it’s exhilarating.

I Want To Like Nuclear Power

Spring                                                                                    Waning Bloodroot Moon

Japan.  Nuclear power.  Climate change.  Not a pretty picture.  I don’t know about others, but I want to like nuclear power.  Its non-carbon emitting energy production has a potential role in staving off the worst effects of global warming.  However.  With no place to store the waste permanently, the waste gets stored temporarily near the reactor in which it was used.  This seems safe.  Look at Prairie Island.  After all these years, still no trouble.  Then again.  How many years do we have to have in a row with no trouble?  25,000 or so, I believe.  That’s a long run.

That’s not all.  Situations develop, human error, mechanical failure, maintenance scrimping, natural disasters with unforseen confluences, say an F5 tornado and a once in a century flood.  Could happen over the span of over 25,000 years.  Probably will.  Three Mile Island and Chernobyl had become objects in the rear view mirror, errors, mistakes, but over with.  Until Fukushima.

Now, suddenly, they begin to look links in a chain, a nuclear chain.  Remember Godzilla?  Them?  The 50 Foot Woman?  Radiation.  Now there’s radioactive iodine in the sea.  I want to like nuclear power, but I’m having a hard time.  The stakes of mistakes seem too high.  At least for now.

Wish somebody would get a good fusion reactor goin’.

Bee Diary March 26, 2011

Spring                                               Waning Bloodroot Moon

All three colonies are dead.  I rechecked them last weekend.  I have ordered three packages of bees, the larger 3 pounds boxes, that will arrive in early April, perhaps April 9th.  Hiving 500honey-extraction_0231the new packages takes place as soon as possible after I pick up the bees from Nature’s Nectary outside Stillwater.  They may wait a day, but not more.

I’m weighing whether to take the route of several beekeepers I know who buy new packages each season and harvest all the honey that’s made, rather than trying to overwinter the colonies.  If I do decide to go that route, we’ll have to sell the honey to recoup the costs, perhaps show a little profit.

There are arguments for and against this method.  Obviously it gives the bees only a season of a life, that’s a definite mark against it.  On the other hand, if colonies die anyhow, then there’s really no change except the certainty of their death.

This does allow harvesting the maximum from a colony’s first year, which would have added about 100 pounds of honey last year, or maybe 12 gallons to the five we collected.  On the other hand, it doesn’t allow for maximum production because an over-wintered colony produces more, since it already has its stores and will proceed to fill honey supers right away.

Another positive would be holding diseases down since they would have not have the overwintered, weakened condition that allows some diseases to take hold.

As I write this, I can see the argument for only one season of the bees.  Still not sure which say I’ll swing.

This will be the third season at Artemis Hives and I have a few new management ideas in addition to the one I’m considering above.  Instead  of a third hive box, I will use two honey supers instead.  This gives the same volume as a hive box, but in lighter by half units.  This will also make retrieving all the the honey easier if I decide to go with one season only for all 400_honey-extraction_0225the colonies.  I’m also going to check out better ways to have a bee proof environment in which to extract honey.  It was pretty bad last year.

In spite of the cold weather projected now through June according to Paul Douglas, we will hive the bees in early April and begin to plant cold weather crops as soon as the soil becomes friable.  Early April through early October is a major season here at Artemis Gardens and Hives.

At the end of it Kate and I will pack our bags and sail away to South America.  We’ll greet October 28th, 2011 somewhere in Ecuador.  That’s the time the world changes according to one understanding of the Mayan calendar.