Monthly Archives: May 2011

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Wheel, Great Work

Real Religion

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Beltane                                                     Waxing Last Frost Moon

“The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men – from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

Especially true if you insert mother earth for mothers and nature for women, viz.  The real religion of the world comes from nature much more than from men-from mother earth most of all, who carries the key to our souls in her bosom.

I am just back from seeing Leslie give her final presentation at Groveland.  Ran into Bill Mate.  He’s been doing work for the Methodist Church in New Orleans.  Sounded fun.

Wow.  No nap yesterday plus 5 hours driving, then up early for going into St. Paul to see Leslie.  Got hit by a sudden need to lie down and sleep.  Did so.  Better now, less foggy.

When I got back, Kate was in the front, raking and planting, earth mother to mother earth.  I made pizza, then crashed.  Still waking up.

Light rain, warm.  80’s in the forecast.  Spring, it seems, may have finally arrived, well after it has come and gone as a Celtic season.

Family, Great Work, Politics, Writing

The Great Lake

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Beltane                                                  Waxing Last Frost Moon

Have you ever had a love affair that ebbed and flowed like embers in a fire wavering between bursting into flame and dying out?  I have.  Today I visited that other lover in my life, Lake Superior.  A bookshelf full of books rest in a room not ten feet from here, each one of them related to Lake Superior in some way.  An entire file drawer of a vertical file drawer contains carefully organized files, each an eco-region in the area around Lake Superior and its watershed.  In another spot sit the maps, some USGS, some others representing the land around the Lake.  There are, too, files of notes from two circle route trips I took, each time stopping in various county historical societies:  Ontanogon, Marquette, Thunder Bay to pursue research about this phenomenon less than 2 and half  hours from my front door.

My brother Mark and I drove up there.  He wandered Park Point and hiked all the way up Lake Street to the top, turning then for a magnificent view of the lake.  While he discovered Duluth, I attended a conference on Sulfide Mining on the Mesabi Range.  This was a large group, 70 plus folks, gathered to hear experts discuss various aspects of sulfide mining’s impact on the waters of three watersheds and the communities of people, trees and wildlife that would share the land with this toxic producing form of mining.

It was one of those clear northern spring days.  The sun flashed off the lake, bouncing off the crests of waves made by lakers going in and out of the Duluth Harbor.  The temperature was cool by the lake, warmer up the slope of the hillside where St. Scholastica sits; it’s fortress like main building dominating the surrounding the area.

The drive was long and the stay short, a combination I try to avoid, though this is my second time recently.  The drive out to Lincoln, Nebraska to get the dogs was also a long drive, short stay, quick turn around.

Not sure where Lake Superior and I stand.  The old spark was there as we crested the hill and looked out over the St. Louis River toward Superior, Wisconsin and the lake spread out below us.  My research, though, sits unused, as it has for several years.  What’s the status of this relationship?  Not sure.

Humanities

Sickle Moon

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Beltane                                                     Waxing Last Frost Moon

That last frost sickle moon hung in the western sky as I drove home from sheepshead last night.  The sickle’s always seem to have somebody sitting on them when I look up.  An old woman with a conical hat and a skirt filled with stars.  A boy dangling his legs.  Or, as in one meditative state long ago, Moses on one side and Jesus on the other.  These moons are pregnant with possibility, with the dreams and the hopes littering our lives, just waiting for fullness.  It will swell, grow fat.  May your dreams.

Those card gods that have been so good to me over the last few months abandoned me last night.  In the first four hands I didn’t have enough total trump to pick up the blind and play.  A night of 7’s, 8’s, 9’s and the occasional 10.  Two decent hands the whole the night.  As Ovid points out over and over, the gods are fickle.

Today Latin.  I’m down to line 228 on the Diana and Actaeon story.  I still need to watch those words separated from each other but with the same endings.  I also need to watch the situation which Greg, my tutor, analogized to fixing a car and having a part or two left out.  I translate sentences and from time to time I have a word or two left over.  Hmmm.

We’re just getting to the good part where Actaeon’s own dogs tear him to pieces.  That’ll teach him to to see naked goddesses.

Leslie and I had our next to last meeting and she encourage me to attend an event at UTS for those of us who have been mentors.  A tough sell, but I decided, for Leslie, that I would go.

Afterward had to drive back into Minneapolis because I forgot to pick up fliers for the mining conference I’m attending in Duluth tomorrow.

General

Sigh

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Beltane                                                                Waxing Last Frost Moon

Yes, I know it’s a two-hour parking zone.  No, I didn’t remember that after I realized I’d my second tour of the day was an hour later than I’d thought.  Result?  $42 fine.  Ouch.

Uncle.  I’ll park right next time.  I promise.

Kids from Orono today.  Good kids, attentive and ready to interact if a bit a reticent.  Went well.

Commentary on the news, Politics, US History

Nut Job Analysis

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Beltane                                                                           Waxing Last Frost Moon

The Arab Spring.  A nice metaphor.  I remember the Prague Spring.  I have faith in people’s movements when they come out of the genuine frustrations and pains of everyday living.  Ideology bends movements, often turns them into pretzels, twisted things that reflect the head rather than the heart, the so-called radical Islamists, the KKK, the Communist Party, the Kuomintang.  When people begin to move and rustle together, when they become willing to take charge of their own destiny rather than allow others to dictate it, then they become powerful, often unstoppable.  People’s movements topple dictators.  Egypt.  Tunisia.  Yemen.  Probably Libya.  Maybe Syria.  Possibly Saudi Arabia.

Even the Tea Party here has some of the ingredients of a people’s movement.  Only some because the underlying motive force is a crackpot brand of political thought made famous by the Impeach Earl Warren and U.S. out of the United Nations billboard folks, the John Birch Society.  I say crackpot in the unkindest way possible.  Robert Welch, a guy who made his fortune making candy, including the caramel on a stick, Papa Sucker, founded the John Birch Society in 1958.  He believed Dwight D. Eisenhower was a communist.

“In the 1960s, Welch began to believe that even the Communists were not the top level of his perceived conspiracy and began saying that Communism was just a front for a Master Conspiracy, which had roots in the Illuminati; the essay “The Truth in Time” is an example[1]. He referred to the Conspirators as “The Insiders,” seeing them mainly in internationalist financial and business families such as the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, and organizations such as the Bilderbergers, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission.”

With this sort of nut job analysis as its underpinnings, it’s no wonder the Tea Party hacks think Obama is a socialist, a Kenyan and a Muslim.  I’m waiting for a new round of billboards.

Two tours this morning focusing on Spanish/Latin American art.  I’m looking forward to them.

Dogs, Family, Friends

Good News, Good Art

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Beltane                                               New Last Frost Moon

Good news from the vet.  Vega’s kidneys are ok, so a round of doxycycline should set her right.  She’s so lovable, a goofy, intelligent, sweet animal, a joy to be around.

Then another death related incident.  A friend called for thoughts about a service he was conducting for a deceased friend.  This guy suffered from bi-polar disorder and was found two weeks ago in his house, a suicide.  He had killed himself in 2008.  Friends and relatives thought he was in Mexico.cropped3

Mark says he was a dog person in Bangkok and I can see that here.  He finds our dogs a real help, sort of a therapy pack.  That’s one reason we keep dogs, because their presence cheers up the house and adds loving beings to our day.  What’s not good about that?  Well, ok, there is that death thing, but that’s the price of love.

I wanted to show one more of Mark Odegard’s designs, all of them wonderful.  This one has its fans among my docent colleagues, too.

Art and Culture, Asia, Bees, Commentary on the news, Friends, Garden, Politics, Woolly Mammoths

A Garden, Some Latin, Ai Weiwei

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Beltane                                                     New Last Frost Moon

The potatoes are in the ground.  The lettuce has two leaves, as does the spinach, a few beets have emerged.  The leeks look a bit droopy, but they’ll pick up.  The garlic is well over 6 inches now as it makes the final push for harvest in late June, early July.  None of the carrots have germinated yet and most of the beets have not either. The onion sets we planted havecropped-free-ai-weiwei mostly begun to show green.  The bees show up now around the property, working as we do, tending the plants in their own, intimate way.  The gooseberries we transplanted look very healthy.  The daffodils are a carpet of yellow and white.  A few scylla out front brighten up the walk with their blue.

Most of today went into Diana and Actaeon.  I’m down to verse 227, the finish line is 250.  I’m close and moving faster now than I was.  One of the things I’ve learned is that doing this at a pace which would allow you to complete a project in a reasonable time frame would require real skill.  I’m a hobby Ovidist, to be a Latin scholar would take decades.  Who knows though?  I might make it.  When I finish this first tale in the Metamorphosis, I’m going to have some kind of celebration.

Buddy Mark Odegard has come up with three remarkable designs for a Free Ai Weiwei t-shirt.   Here’s an example and the one most seem to prefer:

Aging, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Woolly Mammoths

Knocking on the Door

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Beltane                                                                             New Last Frost Moon

There are times and this is one of them, when death seems behind every door.  My friend Bill has learned that his wife’s cancer is stage 4.  A grave diagnosis with a grave prognosis.   American’s exult in the streets over the death of Osama Bin Laden.  A friend sent out a quote from Martin Luther King* that expressed my feelings.  Today Vega, one of our younger dogs, tested positive for Lyme’s disease.  Not a big deal, treatable, unless the kidney is involved.  Hers may be.  If it is?  Difficult to impossible to treat.

Since I started today already in somewhat of a funk, all this darkness hovering around has reinforced it, made the day two or three shades grayer.

Death does not surprise us.  It lurks beside us all our born days until the last one.  Its reality, its starkness, its finality, especially that last one, passing from the quick to the dead, still strike heavy hammer blows to the heart.

Death’s most severe wounds come from the source of our greatest joy, love.  Without love death counts only as an incident, something happening to someone else, an event of little consequence.  We know this each day we read the obituary pages.  Even the death of someone we have known, but not loved, does not shake us at our foundations.  When, however, death comes to call for one close and important in our lives, the very bound of love lacerates the heart, accelerates our fear, amplifies our sense of loss. Continue reading Knocking on the Door →

General

a this and that day

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Beltane                                                            New Last Frost Moon

Back to the this and that of life.  Sleepy this AM, so an early morning nap, then lunch with Leslie, but no Leslie.  She’s moving and forgot.  Then over to Carlson’s for an oil change in the Celica.  Back home, a bit of putzy stuff at home, then another nap.  See a theme here?

Sierra Club and MIA stuff.  Getting ready to leave again for the Red Stag and the Monday Woolly session.

A bit out of it today, a bit down.  Lingering effect of the tai chi episode, I imagine.  Like the flu, it will pass.

Commentary on the news, Politics, US History

Bin-Laden

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Beltane                                                          Sliver Bee Hiving Moon

Dead.  Bin-Laden dead.  The news says so.  Obama says so.  Can’t imagine it would be news offered unless compelling evidence existed to prove it.  News reports claim they have his body.  A feeling of relief, exhilaration.  Then, shame.  Shame at being glad anyone is dead.  Those feelings ten years ago this September still pulse in me, make me mad, make me want closure.  This is a closure of sorts, maybe of a major degree.

Of course, with all things political there is the action, Bin-Laden killed by US, then there will be the reaction.  Alinsky always said the action is in the reaction.  The question though always is, what will the reaction be?

I can imagine bluster, more direct attempts at terrorist acts.  I can picture rage and riots and attacks against US embassies and US corporation and individuals.  But I can also imagine this as a fever that, once run its course, may lead to a calmer, less polarized situation.  God, I hope so.

I’m a little surprised at the depth of my reaction to the news, though I imagine it links back directly to 9/11 and those feelings.