Daily Archives: August 11, 2011

Aging, Humanities, Memories

See You In September

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Lughnasa                                                            Waxing Honey Extraction Moon

The end of the day.  The time when the season turns on a pivot toward fall and away from the Solstice.  My mood has shifted to melancholic.  Not sure why.  Maybe the end of the day, the time of year.  It is around this time in the year when I turn melancholy, a sort of seasonal affective disorder, perhaps more related, to the nearness of the school year.

No, not because of any negative associations with school.  No, maybe because I’m not going back to school.  Not anymore.  School was good to me.  I got lots of strokes from lots of folks, school was feel good time for me.  Yes, I had some troubles that happened during school, but they were extra curricular, the school part, that always grooved.

Well, not quite always.  That first year at Wabash I encountered German.  German and I did not get along.  I found myself near mid-semester and staring at a D.  A D!  I graduated at the top of my high school class.  I didn’t get D’s.  But I was about to get one.  So, I dropped it.  Not my finest hour academically, but it did save my bacon.  Why was I taking German?  I wanted to read philosophers in their own languages and German seemed like a good place to start.

Other than that first semester at Wabash, school was fun.  I enjoyed learning, studying, taking tests, writing papers.  Weird, huh?  Now when See You In September begins to play on the oldy stations, my nostalgia meter hits a high.

Hmmm.  Just occurred to me.  This may be the way successful athletes feel when the school year starts, in those day after their career has ended.  Those were the best years of my life.  That sort of feeling.

No.  That’s not it.  Those weren’t the best years of my life.  These are the best years. Right now.

It may explain why I keep throwing myself into things like the docent program, learning Latin, Tai Chi, always going for the burn that comes from conquering a learning curve.  That life long education idea really took hold in me.  I believe in it, body and soul.

Though I do, each year when the evening’s cool, the leaves begin to change and parents start packing their kids up to take them off to college, I wish, a part of me wishes, I could go along with them.

Here’s something a bit strange.  The song that always comes to mind for me at this time of year is See You In September by the Happenings.  Here’s a youtube version filmed on Lake Calhoun.

Travel

Please Let Me In

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Lughnasa                                                              Waxing Honey Extraction Moon

Mark went to a hospitality industry job fair in St. Louis Park.  I took him, then went on out to Minnetonka Travel in Wayzata.  I picked these folks almost at random to help with the cruise, but I gotta say, they’re pretty damn good.

Today we set up the processing for our Brazilian visas.  The visa process has taken almost the same effort as booking the entire cruise.  When I first learned that each visa would cost $160, I had sticker shock.  This was what we would have to pay to get off the ship in Rio and then take a taxi directly to the airport.  $320 for passage from one form of transportation to another.  Of course, this is not the intent of the Brazilians.  They just want reciprocity for the way the US treats their citizens coming here.

Still, for us, whose 37 day cruise ends in Rio, it creates this very expensive transfer with no additional benefit.  So, we changed our minds and added two days in Rio after our cruise.  At least we’ll see a little bit of Brazil for our money.

Our travel agent has been to Rio and says it’s a beautiful, vibrant city, but also very dangerous.  I’m a bit dubious about how others see foreign cities since I’ve been many places considered dangerous and never had a problem, even so it’s foolish to ignore advice from someone who’s been on the ground there.  She recommends staying in the Ipanema Beach area, a redolent name for this of who grew up in the 60’s.  We’ll go to Sugarloaf and a Mardi Gras themed evening.  Which, Lori, the travel agent, said, “All the men will enjoy.”

The visa is the last difficult piece of business necessary to make this cruise happen.  The rest, checking out clothes, buying new luggage, deciding what books to take along (on the Kindle) do not require new skills.

Aging, Garden, Politics, Retirement

The Continuing Storm

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Lughnasa                                                                Waxing Honey Extraction Moon

The stock market whips around like a Post Office flag in a dereccho.  Our politics flounder like a, well, like a flounder on dry land.  The Europe Union has big troubles with its southern extremities testing their dive reflexes.  Meanwhile I’m picking developing Colorado beetles off my potatoes.  These are gross looking things part way between larvae and bug, no hard carapace just beetle shaped red wiggly surface.  Uuucck.

Our money managers called us asking if we wanted to talk about the market.  No, I don’t.  We pay them to worry about this stuff for us and this is when they earn their money.  Either this is an anticipated correction or the beginning of the fiscal end.  If it’s the latter, I have my hobo shoes and a bindlestiff ready to go.

No matter the macro wheezing and moaning we go on about our life, cooking supper, pulling weeds, visiting the track.  I imagine it’s quite exciting to play on the fields of high finance or national politics, but these days I’ll settle for a ripe tomato, a few frames of honey to extract and a dog next to me on the couch.