Winter Garden Planning Moon
Found these on the old Pollster.com, now HuffPost/Pollster. As a texter might say, WTF?
Monthly Archives: January 2012
The Wise Old Wood Gods Laugh
Winter Garden Planning Moon
Tom Crane sent out an e-mail that contained many different photographs of paths and trails.
Then Bill Schmidt sent out this poem. I love it. Not always great prosody, but the concept? Wow. Read all the way to the last stanza. It’s worth it.
by Sam Walter Foss 
(a new hampshire librarian)
(NH 1858-1911)
The Calf-Path
One day, through the primeval wood,
A calf walked home, as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.
Since then three hundred years have fled,
And, I infer, the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.
The trail was taken up next day,
By a lone dog that passed that way.
And then a wise bell-wether sheep,
Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep;
And drew the flock behind him too,
As good bell-wethers always do.
And from that day, o’er hill and glade.
Through those old woods a path was made.
And many men wound in and out,
And dodged, and turned, and bent about;
And uttered words of righteous wrath,
Because ’twas such a crooked path.
But still they followed – do not laugh –
The first migrations of that calf.
And through this winding wood-way stalked,
Because he wobbled when he walked.
This forest path became a lane,
that bent, and turned, and turned again.
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load,
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half,
They trod the footsteps of that calf.
The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street;
And this, before men were aware,
A city’s crowded thoroughfare;
And soon the central street was this,
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half,
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.
Each day a hundred thousand rout,
Followed the zigzag calf about;
And o’er his crooked journey went,
The traffic of a continent.
A Hundred thousand men were led,
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way,
And lost one hundred years a day;
For thus such reverence is lent,
To well established precedent.
A moral lesson this might teach,
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind,
Along the calf-paths of the mind;
And work away from sun to sun,
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move.
But how the wise old wood gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf!
Ah! many things this tale might teach –
But I am not ordained to preach.
Ancor Impari
Winter Garden Planning Moon
When I started futzing around with photoshop after my class, around 11:00 pm, I discovered it wouldn’t work. Kept crashing whenever I opened a picture. Hate it when that happens to a multi-hundred dollar piece of software.
So. On the internet with searches like: CS 5 extended crashes on startup. As usual, I was not the first person to encounter this problem. After several fits and starts, staying away from the registry I might add, I turned off openGL, whatever that is, something to do with 3D, and everything calmed down. That didn’t leave me, however, with much time to work, so I did the trick with the black and white plus color and quit. This morning I futzed around a bit more, not too remarkable, but here it is anyhow. to the left, photoshopped. below original. Besides cropping I messed around with hue, saturation and light levels.
Experiments in Photoshop
Winter New Garden Planning Moon
Sure enough. Order forms for the 2012 bees came in the mail today. Order will go out tomorrow.
Went to my first session of Photoshop I tonight. Champlain High School. See first rough effort here. Boy did I need help. Began to make sense right away as the guy showed us various tools, options to use, but I could make no progress on my own. Another session next week, then Photoshop II in February. Finally, I’ll get to use the power of this software I bought last September.
Garden Planning Moon moon photograph from erinfrost.com.
Under the Garden Planning Moon
Winter New (Garden Planning) Moon
In the next couple of weeks I’ll order two packages of bees, 2#, to install in mid-April. Two hives produce plenty of honey for us and some to sell. I have no desire to create a bigger operation, but working with bees has its soothing aspects and its downright fascinating aspects.
Also, over the next couple of weeks Kate and I will sit down and plan our 2012 garden. We now have all the beds installed, the orchard has begun to produce, albeit still at modest levels and our perennial beds have taken more or less to running themselves with the occasional weeding foray and bulb planting episodes.
My short burst workouts, which include four sets of resistance work in between the all out sessions of 30 seconds and one minute, have begun to show results, so this summer I plan to have more muscle which makes gardening both easier and more fun.
We have a fire pit, dug out fully by Mark last summer with a large metal fire ring and cooking grates ready to be installed come spring. Once it’s in place we’ll have a nice area near the grandkids playhouse for twilight and nighttime fires, roasting marshmallows and wienies.
With Kate at home much more now, we’ll be able to take even better care of the yard. Wisely, Kate let the grass cutting go a couple of summers ago, enabling her to concentrate on weeding and pruning, tasks, for some inexplicable and yet joyous reason (from my perspective), she enjoys.
Pale King
Winter New (Garden Planning) Moon
Began reading Pale King last night. David Wallace’s last, unfinished work, his editor organized it with permission of Wallace’s widow. It’s the first work I’ve read of Wallace’s though not the first one I’ve bought. I also own Infinite Jest, his breakout book, but never started it. His prose is, well, wonderful.
Observations, close observations, fly so fast and thick it seems he could not have spent time writing for he must have spent his entire day with his eyes wide, notebook in hand, seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling.
This book has an improbable setting, the IRS in Peoria, Illinois, and will, I’m told, illuminate boredom. Though I’ve not read him before I’ll now read back into him. He was called the greatest mind of this generation of writers. I believe it.
The Past Is Never Dead
Winter First Moon of the New Year
Saw “Midnight in Paris.” Not much of a movie goer, I’m more of a movie bringer, so I tend to see things late. I don’t mind. Kate and I picked this one for our movie night on Friday.
The professor teaching a class in contemporary art theory at the Walker, I took this class back in, what, March, gushed about this movie. A post-modern film. A love letter to the past and present of Paris. A love story.
She was right. This is a wonderful film, a film that challenges our notions of chronos, that says, up front, that the past is never dead; it’s not even past, it’s right here with us. A Faulkner quote from Requiem for a Nun.
Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams play an engaged couple with very different priorities. Hers is to live the rich life with a successful Hollywood screenwriter (Faulkner was one.) and his is to find a garret in Paris and write his novel about a man who owns a nostalgia shop.
A gateway opens to his golden era, the Twenties, when a fancy car from that era stops near him, just after midnight, its passengers hailing him. He get in and discovers he’s riding with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda. Along the way he meets Hemingway and Picasso and Gertrude Stein.
Later, another gateway opens for Owen and Adriana, mistress to Picasso, Hemingway and Braque. This takes them to Adriana’s golden era, the Belle Epoch. There she meets Gauguin, Lautrec and Degas. She decides to stay behind.
Like Murakami’s 1Q84 I’m not sure if this is a great movie, but it might be. It will need more time, more exposure.
It’s lightness almost allows the more profound aspects of its structure to slip away in a froth of Hollywood champagne bubbles. The easy transit between Paris now and Paris then, given physical content, a sense of this is now actuality, occults the truth behind a glittering persona.
Any of us who read seriously, who attend to cinema for more than diversion, who haunt the hallways of museums the world over, who wander ancient ruins or immerse ourselves in ancient languages or religions, who visit places like civil war battlefields or the Hudson Valley looking for the painters inspired by it or any well preserved neighborhood in any major city, those of us to take politics seriously know the truth of Faulkner’s observation.
When wandering the ruins of Angkor in Cambodia, the Khmer kings live again, their great monuments speaking their story in the language of stone and symbol. Walk the streets of Ephesus in Turkey. You stroll with the Romans who lived there. Head over to the amphitheatre where Paul spoke to the Ephesians. He’s still there.
Have you read War and Peace? Then you’ve danced in 19th century Russia. Steppenwolf? You’ve been to the magic theatre. Magic Mountain. The life of a tuberculosis sanatorium. Great Gatsby? American Tragedy? Romance of the Three Kingdoms? You fought in the wars at the end of the Han Dynasty. Monkeys Journey to the West? A trek to India from the heart of Buddhist China.
When I translate Ovid, I encounter him. Words he wrote, arranged, gave meaning and sense and poetics. He is there on the page and I converse with him.
Walk the halls of any art museum and have an encounter. Let’s say Rembrandt’s Lucretia at the MIA. She cries in front of you, her heart broken and her spirit damaged beyond repair. She bleeds, clutches the rope with her left hand. All while remaining regal, somewhat aloof. At this painting you stand in the room with her, at the end of the Roman monarchy occasioned by her grief and her violation while you also stand in Rembrandt’s studio, applying the last bit of paint, perhaps some varnish. Remarkable, wouldn’t you say?
Speaking of Oscillations
Winter First Moon of the New Year
Gingrich wins. Romney won. Santorum won. The longer and more divisive the Republican primary season, the better. Let them shred each other. It could give Obama a chance he may not deserve, but one I hope he gets.
On the other hand. A sharply divided and ideologically splintered opposition can make governing a real headache, especially if the Republicans retain control of the House and take the Senate. This latter is possible, with seven Democratic seats up and only two Republican.
The partisan in me wants to watch the Republicans blow themselves up, weaken their party back to the special interest group it used to be, but I know that’s not a good way forward for our country. We need two parties, a more conservative, fiscally conscious and moderately bellicose one and one dedicated to justice, economic and social. These are two legitimate strains of thought when it comes to understanding and creating policy for our country. The best governance comes from these two impulses fighting it out in an atmosphere of mutual respect.
Given my druthers we would move toward the democratic socialism of Europe, covering health care, creating affordable housing, solid support and aid for those who cannot find work, seeing that everyone gets as much education as they can tolerate, and providing solid retirement benefits.
Martin Luther King said it best: “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
I believed that in 1964 and I believe it today. We must keep working, not become faint-hearted or victims of despair. Just when greed seems to have gained the high ground, just when hatred seems stronger than love, just when the 1% seem to obscure the 99, just then will the high ground transform to common ground, love embrace hatred and the 99% become seen and heard and felt.
What? No TV?
Winter First Moon of the New Year
Business meeting this morning. Some drastic pruning budget wise to squeeze our spending into line with our post-retirement income. Example: dropped cable tv. I know. It feels almost unamerican. My mom and dad raised me to watch at least three to four hours of television a night and I feel like I’m letting them down. Not to mention CBS, NBC and ABC.
The impetus for this came after the trip to South America. We watched no TV over the cruise and when we got back I settled in with a good book in the evening. We still have a blu-ray player, Netflix and I just signed us up for Hulu Plus, so we’re not leaving the big box behind in toto, just the absurdly expensive piped in Comcast version.
The internet connection? Well, we kept that. There’s TV and then, there’s the internet. No comparison. We’re not totally TV broadcastless as it turns out. To keep our lower rate for the internet I agreed to a $12 a month “antenna” service from Comcast. With the broadband the total was lower than internet alone. You get a discount on the broadband if you have any other services. Weird, huh?
None of this feels draconian, just adjusting things to keep pace with changing reality.
We’ve also decided that with Kate retired we can go with one car. We’ve done that for a couple of months anyhow since the Celica blew a tire. Again. I’ve decided to let it set until warmer weather. I’m gonna give it away. It’s been a great car and we didn’t make it to 300,000 miles together, but it still feels like time to let go. I’ve driven it since September of 1994.