Monthly Archives: May 2012

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Retirement, Third Phase

A Third Phase Entry: Learning How to Die

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Beltane                                              New Garlic Moon

Whew.  Over to Riverfalls (east into Wisconsin, about an hour) for Warren’s father’s funeral.  Then, in rush hour, out to St. Louis Park for the Woolly meeting this month at the Woodfire Grill. (west of the Cities)  So much driving.

Funerals.  The wedding equivalent of our age range.  We meet friends there, catch up, honor the family and the final journey.  Then we go home, secretly glad we were attending another funeral, not being featured.

Though.  We agreed tonight, Mark, Scott, Bill, Frank and myself, that what we learn from Moon’s recent death, Warren’s father and mother, Sheryl’s father and mother, Bill and Regina’s confrontation with cancer, is how to die.  It is the end of this phase of life as surely as a degree ended the first phase, career and family the second.

It is this that changed at our retreat two weeks ago.  We acknowledge and are ready to learn how to die.  And how to live until we do.  It is a joy and a true blessing to have men ready to walk down this ancientrail together.  And to be one of them.

Garden

early season gardening

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Beltane                                               New Garlic Moon

Hilled the leeks, blanching up as far as possible on the stem creates the best tasting leeks.  Thinned beets and chard.  Checked the garlic.  Soon the scapes will come, curling back on themselves, ready to cut.  I plan to make a garlic scape and leek spaghetti when I harvest them.

This part of gardening is fun, helping the plants mature, watching them carefully as they grow from seed or bulb or crown or transplant into teenagers then young adults and finally become procreative, producing the parts that grace our table through the winter months.

The carrots show no interest in germination, slow pokes as always, needing a soil temp of 75 degrees, something we’ve not reached or at any rate not sustained.  Collard greens and pac choy have not germinated yet either.  The chard has begun to emerge and the onions, all of them, have substantial growth underway.

On the fruit side we’re beginning to see young, still green or white berries on the strawberry plants.

 

Garden, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

A Solid Day

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Beltane                                                   New Garlic Moon

Got outside a bit.  Ate lunch with Kate at that hotspot of haute cuisine, Applebys.  We got there just before the after church crowd.  Later on I transplanted a clump of hosta from its exposed location under the cedar I had to cut down (it split in a storm.) to a new location under our still  young bur oak out front.  Took me a bit longer than I planned because I forgot the correct placement of the spading forks to break up the heavily rooted clump.  Had to figure it out all over again.

(a Roman mosaic, ruins of Tomi in Constanta, Romania)

Rest of the day, Latin.  I made progress.  Am very close to the end of Pentheus and my goal is to finish it before I leave for Romania.  I think I’ll make it.  The translation comes much more easily now, a couple of years of hard work to get here though.  Still not facile, but much more so.

It does look like the Latin will help me in Romania with pronouncing Romanian.  There’s the oddities each language has, but the phonetics are very similar.

Travel

Happy Feet

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Beltane                                                     New Garlic Moon

In case you wondered, the header up now is a vertical slice of the Romanian flag.  The time till departure grows short and that tingle before a new, interesting trip has begun to make its way up and down my spine.

Kate and I know that our travel budget during retirement is anemic, not a good thing for us.  There are those trips to Denver, to Georgia, and vacation like journeys.

This morning in our business meeting we discussed ways of adding money to the travel line item and came up three or four different things we can do that will increase it, some additional money per month and adding certain larger cash amounts we might get from roll-over funds after she retires completely, plus a few thousand from the last days of her working life.

All the world is an interesting place as far as I’m concerned.

Family, Feelings, Weather +Climate

Rainy Weather

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Beltane                                                                New Garlic Moon

Rain.  Thanks, weather gods.  Lightning and thunder and high winds, they scare Rigel and Gertie.  Rigel tries to bark the thunder away.  Which, needless to say, increases the noise level some.  All the veggies got a good soaking, the orchard and the flowers.  Nice.

Kate said tonight that her first job was a great fit, wrapping presents at a gift shop.  She also said she thought medicine fit her, too.  I surprised myself then by saying, “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever had a job that fit me.  Not one.  Except maybe the last 20 years.”  Writing, being a husband and a father, gardener.  Sometimes I get exasperated with the boss, but that’s true in every work situation, right?  (just to be clear.  le boss est moi)

Kate thought I might have made a good journalist.  Maybe.  Hard to say.  Strange to look back over my life and realize I never worked (by that I mean, employed specifically for) at anything I really enjoyed.  I did a lot of things I considered important, good, worthwhile, but that’s not the same, is it?

 

Memories
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OK.  On sentimentalism.  Here’s the distinction that just came to me after seeing a definition of nostalgia as a sentimental yearning for the happiness of another place or time. The sentimentality I have doesn’t include a yearning for the happiness of another place or time.  I just want to recall my past, since it is mine, not wallow in it.  Just sayin’.

Art and Culture

Grand Tours

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Beltane                                                                              Beltane Moon

Tour at 10:00 AM.  Sophomore honor students from Hastings, Minnesota.  We looked at sculpture by MCAD trained sculptor, John Flannagan.  A late Monet painted in his Japanese garden after his eyesight had begun to fail.  A late Matisse, Pensees, a pretty picture, not important in his oeuvre, but beautiful on its own.  We dissected Picasso’s Woman With Armchair, then looked at the painted puzzle by Magritte, investigated Henry Moore’s Warrior With Shield and talked about photorealism with Frank.

This was a smart, thoughtful group of teenagers.  They had fun, had ideas, were familiar with art.

At noon I had a group of 3rd graders from Fairmont Elementary.  The first three objects to which I took them, “We’ve already seen this.”  Hmmm.  This was an odd situation since the same group of kids had the same docents with the same tour theme.  So.

I noticed they had a laminated card with particular paintings they needed to check off.  “May I see that?”  We then went on a treasure hunt to find the remaining paintings or objects they hadn’t seen.  We had a good time, ending at the Wu Family Reception Hall.  Which, of course, they had already seen.  Sigh.

After that a fun continuing education with improv performers on temporary staff with the MIA.  They’re bringing improv techniques to many different aspects of the museum.  It was fun and reminded me that once I had been an actor.  And not a bad one.

 

General
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Beltane                                                              Beltane Moon

Getting to do things ticked off as my trip to Romania goes onto the one week mark tomorrow.  Made sure my debit card will work.  Got new PIN #.  Found a three-pronged plug and a step-down converter to take the Romanian 220 down to 110.  That means I can take my phone and my netbook with me.  I’m still not sure about how to handle the phone; that is, I don’t want an $8,000 bill when I get back thanks to data roaming charges.  Nothing I’ve read so far makes much sense to me.

Memories

Alonzo Stagg Stadium 1969

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Beltane                                                                 Beltane Moon

Working on tours today.  Discovered a sculpture by Henry Moore that I inhabited once, long ago, the year 1969.  Just south of Kenwood Avenue my then wife’s brother, Bob Merritt, lived in a large flat with other undergraduates attending the University of Chicago.

Kenwood marked the dividing line between Hyde Park, the upper middle class enclave gathered around the University and the South Side.  The South Side, known for gangs and poverty and community organizers began at their building.  So much so that one evening a gang of thieves with shotguns held all the students while they robbed the apartment.  Didn’t get much.  University students?  Geez.

As a guest, I joined in a big weekend party that had plenty of drugs, sex and rock and roll.  No sex for me.  Married.  But drugs?  Oh, yes, please.  Mescaline, cut at the time with strychnine for a faster rush.  We sat around on mattresses on the floor, classic college student high decor.  At one point I leaned against a bare wire and got an electric shock.

Oh. Boy.  That lit me up inside and out.

Later on we decided to get something to eat and went for a stroll around campus, near Billings Hospital.   Alonzo Stagg stadium where Enrico Fermi first split the atom.  Used to be right there.  Fermi and others under stadium.  Playing with an energy source known only to Shiva at that time.  In a container enclosed with regular bricks, if I recall correctly.

There, on the site of Fermi’s experiment sat this sculpture by Henry Moore.  Taken by the explanation of its purpose, I crawled up inside and sat there, mind altered by the mescaline molecules, imagining the splitting of the atom, down to a very fine detail.  I inhabited the split, a part of it, riding the cascading protons and neutrons and electrons.  I forgot about the food, about the evening.  I sat there for quite a while, back in Alonzo Stagg stadium, as Fermi worked his magic.

Later on I walked back to the flat.