Monthly Archives: August 2011

GeekWorld, Writing

Oh. The Report Is Due Tonight?

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Lughnasa                                                                Waxing Honey Extraction Moon

Ever go to a class, discover it was the last one and that your project report was due.  Right then?  Yup.  I did, tonight.  Fortunately no grades in this course.

Thanks to all the folks in History of Graphic Design at MCAD and instructor Nick Zdon.  I got some great ideas for redesigning ancientrails.  A strong idea was to move to a two or even one column design, a design that focuses on the content.  The second, my idea, is to use icons at the top as navigation tools to pages that feature different kinds of content. I may also use images even more, perhaps as central content and/or as lead-ins to written content available by click.

I’m hopeful these changes plus a conscious one on my part, that is, blogging only about one topic per entry, will allow you who read this to easily find what might interest you.

The changes will be slow in coming and may, probably will, change during implementation.  As always, your ideas are welcome.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Weather +Climate

A Season Bent Toward Darkness and Cold

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Lughnasa                                                                Waxing Honey Extraction Room

Since March I’ve driven home at 8 pm, each Sunday, from Tai Chi at the corner of Hennepin and Franklin.  As March receded and April arrived, then May and June, the evening drive had light, then light in abundance, with the sun setting well after I got home.  Now we are in Lughnasa, a full six weeks past the Summer Solstice.  This last Sunday night the sun had begun to fall behind the trees as I headed toward Highway 252.  The long downward slide toward the Winter Solstice is well underway, the days growing shorter and the nights longer.

This is my time, now, the season bent toward darkness and cold even while the heat of summer continues to swell the fruits of the garden.  I can already feel the movement inward and down, the contemplative months reaching out from the future, beckoning my soul.

Once the harvest begins in earnest, which it did here in July with the garlic crop, the gardening year moves toward senescence, ripening proceeds the coming of brown withered stalks and leaves turning already to dust.  Nature puts the bounty just before the fallow time.  It is the fallow time though, the time after the sensuality of seed fertility has yielded to summer and produced crops, crops that finish the plants purpose for that season at least, in many cases forever, that leaves room for the imagination, writing its dreams on stubbled fields, carving its fantasies in clouds pushed down from the north, opening the heart to its own rhythm.

(Allison found this Van Gogh drawing.  It even has the hint of melancholy the season brings in its train.)

Woolly Mammoths

Each Others Lives

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Lughnasa                                                                       Waxing Honey Extraction Moon

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” – Lao Tzu

Five men came together tonight at the Black Forest.  Brothers.  Men who have stood shoulder to shoulder for over twenty years, through marriage and divorce, through conflict and calm.  We sat outside, under a clear plastic roof that sprayed water on us while we talked when the wind blew up.  The usual conversation.  Mark’s knee.  Getting better.  Frank’s trip to Ireland.  Everyone had a great time.  Stefan’s sons.  My brother.  Bill and I talked computers, how to back up ancientrails, whether I might mine it for a book, or two.  How I might redesign it.

We went over each others lives, we know the history, the background, the context.  We listened and nodded, ate our polish sausages and sauerkraut or lentil and sausage soup, felt the late heat of a stormy day begin to creep out from under the clouds.

We see each other twice a month at least, sometimes more.  Always we stay alert to each other, exchanging e-mails, funny and serious.

I’m proud to call these men my friends.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Holidays, Myth and Story

Lughnasa 2011

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Lughnasa                                                          Waxing Honey Flow Moon

The third cross-quarter holiday in the Celtic calendar, Lughnasa follows Beltain and proceeds Samhain, thus it cuts the once much longer Beltain season, essentially the growing and harvesting season, in half.  It marks the first fruits of the harvest, a time of gathering in and being nourished by the summer’s heat, the plants’ flourishing.  Lughnasa apparently celebrates the god Lugh, a sun-god, though the relation between him and this festival is uncertain.  The Catholics honor this pagan tradition through the feastday, Lammas, when parishioners bring in bread from the first grains harvested.

In the old days these festivals lasted a week or more, with farmers coming into the village from the countryside or meeting at a customary spot to set up a market.  Feasting, drinking, games, searching for a mate or for work blended with the serious task of laying up sufficient stores to survive the winter, foreshadowed now by the earlier setting of the sun.

A remnant of these market fairs continues on in county fairs and state fairs where feasting, drinking, games, searching for a mate or work blends with honoring those who still provide our food.  Yes, we have the grocery store now and no we don’t wonder about surviving the winter, at least many of us don’t, but the old need to come together and crown a Princess Kay of the Milky Way, to sculpt her in butter lingers.

Lughnasa here at Artemis Hives will find the honey harvest joining the tomatoes, the potatoes, beets, carrots, beans and onions.  It also finds us reaping the harvest of new learning:  Latin, Tai Chi, quilting techniques, potting and celebrating family.  The dogs have become a calmer pack thanks to an investment of time over the last few months.  Mark has made some progress towards a job and a healthier future.

Celebrate your harvest, too.  Raise a glass of wine or water, eat a meal with friends and loved ones.  Wear a flower garland and go the state fair or the farmer’s market.  Why?  Because these are things we humans have done for centuries, for millennia, they keep us alive and healthy.

Asia, GeekWorld, Humanities, Weather +Climate

9 Pins

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Lughnasa                                                                                   Waxing Honey Extraction Moon

Woke up this first day of Lughnasa to Knickerbockers playing 9 pins and throwing strike after strike after strike.  A nap on a thundery summer day has a luxurious feel, velvet, cushy.  Gertie spent the nap at the foot of our bed.  Both she and Rigel have mild ceraunophobia, shrinking when the lightning tears a hole in the sky and air spills into the vacuum.

This morning I translated, sort of, an entire verse of Pentheus’ story.  When I say sort of, I mean I’m reasonably sure about the translation in terms of Latin grammar, but not sure what it means.  Greg will help me clear that up on Friday.  I’ve taken almost three weeks off and it showed.  The work went like slogging threw a marsh, progress, but with a lot of effort.

Speaking of effort, I’m now practicing Tai Chi with more regularity, something I’d also let slide over the last month or so.  Tai Chi requires muscle memory so the practitioner can concentrate on the form, then become relaxed, totally part of the movement.  Some parts have gotten laid down in my neuronal pathways, but, so too have some errors.  Sigh.  Yesterday’s practice, done in the same dance studio over the former Burch Pharmacy had characteristics of Birkam Yoga.  Hot and sweaty.

Got a call from Carlson Toyota this morning.  Our Rav4 will have to take a drive of 400 miles to get here, but it will be here tomorrow.  The color, white, and the interior, beige, were not what Kate wanted, but they were available.  The Tundra, Kate’s faithful companion for 11 years + will get sold to a scrapyard for $500.  An undignified end for such a good friend, like the glue factory.