Yearly Archives: 2012

Art and Culture, Retirement

65 Ahead

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Winter                 First Moon of the Winter Solstice

In February I will turn 65.  And I’m happy to do it.  Not that I have much choice in the matter.  What I mean is that I like this time of life and anticipate with pleasure the next decade or two or three.

This transition has already begun to cause changes.  Once back from our cruise in late November, I realized I needed to step back from the Sierra Club and focus on home, family and my work.

Home and family have obvious content, kids and grandkids, wife, gardens, bees.  Remaining active and engaged with all of them.  Not that I haven’t but recognizing that the grandparent and long married aspects of those relationships alter past patterns and demand new ones.  Just what those are will become evident as I live into them over the next few years.

My work has three ongoing facets:  a series of novels set in the Tailte mythos, reimagining faith and translating Ovid’s Metamorphoses.  To this last I have added creation of commentary similar to Pharr’s for Vergil.

The portion of my life dedicated to art will also to need to change, but I have not yet paid attention to it.  At a DAM site, the Palette Restaurant, Kate and I discussed how my relationship with art could transform.

Art could become a larger part of my writing, using techniques or artists in my fiction.  Just how, undetermined right now.

Reimagining faith has as its long term hope the redefining of our relationship with nature.  One way of rethinking, or seeing anew, our current relationship with the world we live is to investigate how artists portray nature across cultures.

A third way of integrating art in a different way might involve selecting a research project focused on an artist, a movement, a period, a culture.  This might have some written work as a component or end product.

In service of all three I could begin taking art history courses.

A significant thread of all these changes is a pulling back or away from the world, shedding responsibility to others or for others and concentrating life more at home.  This feels age appropriate and is a definite inner drive for me right now.

Art and Culture, Travel

Pacific Northwest On the Front Range

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Winter                    First Moon of the New Year

The Denver Art Museum (DAM as it describes itself) has a wonderful Pacific Northwest gallery.  Undergoing reinstallation when Kate and I visited the museum last year, I saw its bones and wanted to see what I though was a new gallery.  Turns out it’s an old gallery newly installed with several new works added.

There are two sets of two large story poles (totem poles) which have hung between them on a braided rope a puppet by Richard Hunt, creator of the MIA’s raven/sisuitil transformation mask.  A wall between them has many masks, some from the late 19th century, but many from latter decades of the 20th.

A bear clan living space partition is huge and has the usual womb located space for the chief to enter through wearing and carrying clan regalia.  The collection also includes several bent wood boxes and two story poles from the 19th century, weathered and furrowed, haunting in their quiet presence.

If you’re ever in Denver, this is a real treat.

The new DAM buildings, I’m afraid, are not so fine.  Now three years or so old, they include many dark areas with little natural light, oddly shaped galleries that draw attention to themselve rather than the art.

Family, Retirement, Travel

Free Time

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Winter                    First Moon of the New Year

The grandkids are back in school today;  Jon and Jen back in their classrooms, so we’re on free time.  I want to go to the Denver Art Museum and see a Pacific Northwest exhibit they were installing last time I was there.

Due to Kate’s impending retirement this may be the last time we travel out here together for a while.  Too expensive to board all the dogs.  While we won’t be on a fixed income, it will be less plastic than during Kate’s employment years.  Unless, of course, I finally push a novel over the transom.  Then we could a little extra cash.

Limitations are part of life so I don’t find that prospect daunting, only something new to take into account.

That’s all from the Mile High City for today.

Family, Travel

Jumping Horses

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Winter                            First Moon of the New Year

Sometimes you do something for one reason and have an unexpected outcome.  Tonight was like that for me.

The Great Western Stock Show, Colorado’s winter State Fair-like celebration of things Western, has become my time to visit with the grandkids.  I take the kids to a couple of shows, walk through the exhibition hall with them and get down into the stock barns, too.

This afternoon at 5 we boarded a shuttle here at the Best Western, making it out to the show around 5:15.  Gabe had his picture taken on a Clydesdale.  3 year old Gabe and this giant horse made quite the shot.  Very big horse, very small Gabe.

After a dinner of polish, briskets and chicken nuggets we wandered the merchandise and exhibition halls, seeing John Deere implements, cattle chutes, Western clothing, candy, baby chicks, several cages filled with chickens, a bee exhibit (I chatted with some Colorado bee keepers) and bought Ruth a lavender cowgirl hat.

Before going to the main event, we wandered through the horse barns, stopping to communicate with a few.  On the wall opposite the last of the horse stalls were some larger stalls.  In two of them  were Texas Longhorn cattle.  One came out of the stall while we watched, he had to angle his head to maneuver those huge horns through a three foot + opening.

Then we went to the event center for the Grand Prix, a $40,000 steeple chase, which pitted 27 horses and several riders against an 80 second clock and a series of jumps designed by the top steeple chase course designer in the US.

I’d never seen horse jumping live.  It amazed me.  These huge animals and their relatively small riders approached jumps of various heights, widths and construction.  One had water and another had a brick wall, both difficult for horses to cross.

The horse would gather itself in stride, then leap, stretching out those four legs, legs meant to have contact with the earth and follow their momentum across the obstacles.  This is an act of courage, skill, athleticism and beauty.  On the part of both rider and horse.

I would do this again.   Never occurred to me I might like it.

 

 

Family, Travel

The Triangle Hotel

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Winter                        First Moon of the New Year

Worked this morning on the novel.  Finally finished editing all the stuff I’d written before and got back to actual writing.  A bit of stop and go, flushing out the pipes, reorienting the fiction side of my brain, but a page or two got put into bytes before lunch time.

Kate was over at Jon and Jen’s helping Ruthie clean her room.  Lunch at the Renaissance Hotel, a ziggurat inside with open balconies narrowing as they get toward the top.  Plants dangle from a few planters, the paint is an egg shell gold.

Gabe and Ruth refer to the Renaissance as the triangle hotel, a landmark visible when returning from Ruth’s gymnastic practice.

In the gift shop you can buy Stetsons, belt buckles, items carved from deer antlers and many accessories decorated with large flared crosses, studded with rhinestones.  This is Great Western Stock Show memorabilia and disappears when the horse and cattle trailers pull out headed for Wyoming, Montana or Texas.

Faith and Spirituality, Travel

Jon and the Big Picture

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Winter                              First Moon of the New Year

Jon and I went to the Yak and Yeti, a Nepalese place in Denver.  We had the buffet, talked of politics and generations, family and China.  Jon’s a bright, well-informed, guy whose political views have nuances.

He’s worried, for example, about a currency collapse if the dollar is no longer the world reserve bank note.  I haven’t followed the argument closely, but from what I know of it, it imagines a scene in which China pulls back from the dollar, suddenly giving the privileges of the reserve to some other lucky money.

Here’s my two cents.  As the world’s largest economy, it is in no one’s self interest to torpedo the US markets, especially for China.  The interlocking nature of trade reduces the likelihood of hostilities, whether fiscal or military.

Britain, bestride the world at the end of the not so long ago 19th century, made a shift of the nature Jon anticipates, falling to second rate power status.  Yet Britain and the British have survived.

We will not suffer the same fate.  At worst, and I imagine, at best, too, we will be demoted from hegemon to co-hegemon.  China and the US, perhaps eventually India, will share responsibility for word leadership.  That’s bad for America 1ster’s but good for a world that can benefit from dilution of power in any one country’s hands.

Then we got in the rental Nissan, navigated through the blinking lights of Denver, the front range at our back and went back to  Pontiac Street.

Family, Travel

Shopping in the Physical Universe Is So Last Millennium

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Winter                                       First Moon of the New Year

Off to Joann Fabrics with Ruth.  Kate and Ruth found fabric to make several dresses, some for Ruth and some for Elizabeth, her American Girl doll.  Granpop went off into the wilds of mall land, proving to himself once again that shopping in the physical universe is so last millennium.

Searching in real time for objects that can be in one of several locations takes a lot of time and, as happened to me this morning, is not always successful.  I did get a new battery for my watch…something that has to be done in the physical world since I don’t remove my own watch backs, though I could I suppose.

Finding a camera strap and a lens cap for my camera proved impossible in the amount of time I had.  Best Buy had neither one, but I did pick up some double A batteries.  The Wolf Camera, supposed to solve my remaining problem acted like the ivory pileated woodpecker.  It just wouldn’t appear.

By the time I got back to Joann Fabrics, an hour plus later, Ruth and Kate had made it to the cash register.  They paid, we hopped in the car and went to Panda Express.  Big fun all round.

Weather +Climate, Writing

Yearning for True Winter

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Winter                   First Moon of the New Year

Cloudy with sun.  Another cheery day here in Denver.  At the moment though my heart yearns for the closed in, snowy gloom of a true northern mid-winter.

This is good weather for taking Ruth on a fabric shopping expedition and granpop will tag along to have lunch with grandma and granddaughter. I look forward to this and will enjoy it.  Probably quite a bit.

But.  It’s not the interior landscape brewed up by howling winds from the northwest, temperatures plunging far below zero and snow so thick going anywhere just can’t happen.

Those days find me in my Herman Miller chair, sandwiched between my desk with its two sloped editing and reading stands and my bookcase with reference materials for art history, philosophy, my current novel, the reimagining faith project and work with Latin.

A crackling fire burns in the green metal gas stove at one end of the small rectangle while my computer and printer punctuate the other.  There’s a tea kettle nearby for heating water to a precise temperature for brewing different kinds of tea.

Here, my body and mind have learned, work happens.  An odd sort of work, I admit.  Work of the heart and the mind, a wordsmithy, data and information in and paragraphs out.  No leather aprons or bulging biceps required.  Nimble fingers help.

Yes this sort of work happens in all seasons and in all manner of weather, but there is none more suitable than the quiet of a snow silenced, cloud darkened day.

The desire for this weather and this place comes, in part. from missing fall and returning to a weak, almost non-existent winter.  More than that though that yearning reflects a sense that I have identified my work, that I have it underway and I want to stay at it.

That is, however, my feeling this morning, here in the Best Western, before we connect up again with the grandkids.  When we do, this will be the best place to be.

 

 

 

Family, Travel

Zoo Interreptus

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Winter                            First Moon of the New Year

Gabe, Jen, Kate and I settled into the Nissan rental for our trip to the zoo.  We headed down the boulevarded Martin Luther King to Colorado, took a left, south, and followed the signs to the zoo, not far away, especially not far away compared to the zoo…

This entry was cut short by the call from Jen to go pick up Jon.  The zoo faded into the afternoon as Jen and I drove out Hwy 70 into the Rocky Mountains, crossed Loveland Pass and dropped down its far side to the Arapahoe Ski Area or A-Basin as skiers here call it.

The clouds had an unreal rose and gold tint and the mountains in front of them looked like a movie set.  We drove up Loveland Pass behind a gasoline tanker truck and descended in 2nd gear.

Denver traffic coming and going from the mountains during the snow months, especially on weekends, can resemble a good-old fashioned Chicago rush hour, but this particular evening the road had plenty of space.  Ruthie and I scooted home ahead of Jon and Jen.

On the way out I noticed several vehicles with Co-exist bumper stickers, a sure sign of paganism.  Made me feel good.

Kate says Jon’s head knock is a serious concussion, the kind that, if repeated, could result in brain trauma.  Nothing to play with.

Family, Travel

Family

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Winter                                      First Moon of the New Year

Got to drive into the mountains.  I hadn’t planned on it, but Jon fell today while skiing and bonked his head, didn’t feel good enough to drive home, so he called for support.  Jen and I drove out in the rental, then Jon and Jen drove back in their car and I brought Ruth home.

It had an oddly powerful effect on me, this drive.  It felt good to support family, very good, in a tangible hands on way.  Made me rethink our decision not to move out here.  A part of me wishes we could be here, be available for these kind of ordinary family incidents, a strong part.

The other part, the rooted emplaced part, says moving still makes no sense.  Selling the house in this market.  Leaving friends and health care providers behind.  Political connections.  The museums.  Our gardens, bees and the house we’ve adapted to our life.

These are difficult, no right answer dilemmas.  Wish we could be both places.  You know. They divide their life between Andover, Minnesota and the Rocky Mountains.  That sort of thing.  But, even though we have adequate funds for retirement, we don’t have enough to bi-locate.

I imagine we’ll stay where we are, not out of inertia, because it makes the most sense right now.