Monthly Archives: March 2012

General

Celebrations

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Imbolc                                        Woodpecker Moon

Got to thinking today about the different times we celebrate.  Secular holidays like 4th of July and Labor Day.  Religious holidays like Hanuka, Christmas, Ramadan, Holi.  And personal holidays like birthdays and anniversaries.
Thought about birthdays.  We do not choose to be born.  As Martin Heidegger says, we are thrown in to the world: parents, family, era, genetic inheritance.  So the birthday celebrates that moment when we officially began the ancientrail of life, situated between its dark, wet beginnings and its unknown end.  Still, it’s a random event, a chance meeting of a particular sperm and a particular egg on a particular day.

An event preceded by also unique events where two people literally penetrate the usual shell between humans and become intimate, then in that intimacy become sexual.  And even then, it’s the sexual experience over time, months maybe, maybe years that allows the random act of creation to occur.

Our anniversaries, especially wedding anniversaries, though, are quite different.  They celebrate choices we made, two people choosing each other as life partners.  So, not random, we are not, at least in Western culture, thrown into marriage.  Yes, of course, the odds of this person meeting that one are large, but obviously not insurmountable.

Tonight, when Kate and I sit down at D’Amico Kitchen for our 22nd anniversary dinner, we celebrate an intentional coming together.  One we’ve enjoyed every day of those 22 years.  Worth celebrating.

Art and Culture, Sport, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Woollies On the Move

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Imbolc                                                    Woodpecker Moon

My first Sports Show tour tomorrow.  1 pm.  This show, as one docent friend said, is “a different animal.”  It attracts a sporting audience for sure, whether it attracts the arts audience is not so clear.  At least those are the reports I’ve been getting from docents who’ve toured it already.

I’m prepared, but in some ways I expect to wing it, since a sports focused group would be very different from an arts focused group.  I look forward to either one.  I like this show, as I’ve said before, so I’m interested to see how it works with museum goers.

Wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine.  Only they’re not wedding bells, they’re post-retirement living arrangements.  Woolly Jim Johnson headed west to the plains of South Dakota several years ago.  He comes to the retreats and at least one meeting each year.

Woolly Paul Strickland and his wife Sarah, friends of mine for over 30 years, have decided to shift their home to their property in Maine, close to the Bay of Fundy.  Woolly Charlie Haislet will begin to split his time between St. Paul (a new condo) and his cabin in Wisconsin.  Paul says he’ll be back for retreats, and I imagine he will, but all these moves will change the character of our group.

Probably the more amazing story is that we’ve stayed essentially stable for 25 years.  None of these moves were unexpected, and for those making them, they signal an accomplishment.  More third phase stuff at work.

Garden

Uh-oh

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Imbolc                                       Woodpecker Moon

A chain saw morning.  Certain trees, elm and oak in particular, have windows of time when pruning does not expose them to disease:  dutch elm disease and oak wilt.  One of those windows is late winter, a window the weather gods seem determined to close early this year.

We had some pruning on what I think of as the three sisters, three oaks growing close together on the northern edge of our garden, and on the lone young elm that resides just inside the garden fence, also on the northerly side.

Chain saws do not like old gas, gas over 30 days in the tank, so each time I use the chain saw we have to get fresh gas, toss some two-cycle oil in it, then cranker’up.  Kate got me a gallon yesterday afternoon while she was out.  I adulterated it this morning, poured the old gas out of the chainsaw, filled it with fresh gas/oil.  It needed bar and chain oil, too, a gunky, thick oil that lubricates the chain and the bar around which it spins.  Added that.

In the oak’s case I had to use a ladder, not a real wise idea with a chain saw, but in true stupid home owner fashion, I went ahead anyhow.  On my behalf I am very careful with the chain saw and felt this was a risk I could handle.  Worked out ok.

The elm did not require the ladder.

The limbs and branches are down.  At some future point I’ll limb them and cut them up for brush or firewood, probably firewood since we purchased a steel fire pit at the end of last summer and have yet to install it.

Politics

What? Rush Out of Line?

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Imbolc                                                  Woodpecker Moon

Gosh, Rush Limbaugh out of line?  How could that happen?  Limbaugh got in his black SUV and ran it hard into a microphone after traversing a long Los Angeles freeway hunched down in the backseat.

Men behaving badly when it comes to women.  The line is long, too long and keeps getting longer.

Now, his advertisers have begun to jump ship.  Gee, OJ’s sponsors and Tiger’s did the same.  So, what do we conclude?  That your boy, he’s your boy as long as you write the checks, does wonders for you up until some he commits some nakedly stupid or even evil act.

What about the day before that?  What about the under the table, boys will boys, backslapping that’s a good one kind of attitude before we had the dirty parts hung out on the backyard clothes line for all to see.

Whoever you are, you advertisers, your money props up, even in part creates, these public idols whose private idylls at some point bleed over into the public, then OMG!  If only we had known.  No, if only you had admitted what you already knew.

It is no wonder that public discourse has such a foul and unsavory reputation.  Political discourse has become a parody of talk radio, which, if you think about it…ah, hell, no.  Why would you think about it?

All this stuff is so simple-minded, so agitprop, so predictable and would be sad if it wasn’t so egregious and so damaging to the body politic.

Money, sex, violence, media, cupidity and stupidity.  A plague on all their houses.

Aging, Cooking, Family, Health, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Saturday

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Imbolc                                   Woodpecker Moon

Did my workout last night so I have Saturday and Sunday free.  Feels very luxurious.  This short burst workout economizes time while maximizing result.  What a deal.

We had our business meeting.  Still tinkering with the budget.  We’ve got the large outline and the big expenses well in hand, now we’re looking at other areas where we spend less per transaction, where the patterns are not yet obvious.  Kate’s learning Excel and grumbling all the way about it, but I can tell she’s proud of her progress.

Kate made pumpernickel bread.  It has molasses, espresso and chocolate among other things.  Who knew?  A moist tasty bread.

I’m feeling good about the start on reimagining.  I want to get a little looser, more free-form with the words and their implications.  Over time certain things will begin to clump together.  Right now, this writing aims toward a presentation on April 1st at Groveland UU.  It is also the first essay of maybe 10-12 that will constitute Reimagining.  At least as I imagine it now.  Ha, ha.

Off to the grocery store.  Using that former exercise time for the common good.