Monthly Archives: July 2012

General
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Summer                                 Hiroshima Moon

 

A little bleery eyed this a.m.  Don’t know how frequent business travelers do it.  Strange beds, overly large portions.  Not very romantic.

Sometime after noon Jon, Ruth and I plan a trip to the Colorado History Museum.  It’s one of my favorite places here in Denver, a museum rich in geologic, demographic and historical information about this square state.  There’s also a lot of material culture from native people to mining, frontier and contemporary culture.

I’m a sucker for museums anyhow, and this is a good one.

 

Aging, Family

Sleepless in Denver

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Summer                                      Hiroshima Moon

Everybody came over here to the hotel and we jumped in the pool.  First time I’ve been in the water in several years.  I haven’t missed it.

Is there anything better than a six year old granddaughter running down the hall yelling, Grandpop, and jumping into your arms?

Gabe, four year old grandson, coming from the opposite direction, also yelled Granpop, but kept running right past me to his mom.

Later on we ate at a Denver Bucca’s.  Another good day.

Not finding sleep easy tonight. Pillow’s don’t work well and the cooling, while not broken, is not up (or down) to my usual standards.  That is, Kate’s.

Tomorrow the Olson family heads out for an 8 a.m. bris.  The mohel could not make another time.  Since this rite of passage, circumcision, occurs 8 days after birth, it doesn’t leave a lot of room for negotiation.

I plan to eat breakfast, then write.

General

One Way of Seeing

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Summer                                    Hiroshima Moon

Kate and I talked about the Aurora shootings.  I mentioned the unease here with the wildfires,  a shooting two weeks ago of a Denver policewoman at an outdoor jazz concert and the everpresent Columbine massacre as background.

My street corner philosophical analysis was this.  Colorado is where, today, the West meets contemporary civilization.  It is an uneasy coming together.  Each January, when I come out for the National Western Stock Show, Colorado fills up cowboy pickups, men and women in Stetson’s, wide belt buckles and cowboy boots.

It’s a rural, rancher culture with traditions rooted in the 19th century.  They come here, to the city, together, see many of their own and feel comfortable for a time, the two weeks or so of the Stock Show.

It’s also a violent, one man against the markets and the elements and the wolves and the Indians, culture.  The NRA and its insistent drumbeat for gun rights can be seen as an extension of this culture and a reinforcement of it.

Where urban culture and rural culture meet, especially rural Western culture, the thin veneer of civilization can easily strip away.  Yes, this was an urban California gunman, but here, in Colorado, our overall cultural superego is conflicted.  That leaves space for someone with errant thoughts, just enough space, for them to choose action over anger.

There’s one final thought here.  With the Giffords instance in Arizona, the Aurora tragedy and several other spree shootings, I would like to know where all these stalwart citizens packing heat* with their concealed carry licenses were?  As far as I know, no one has ever fired a return shot.

“*(the aurora gunman) bought four guns and 6,000 rounds of ammunition, Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said…

In May, he began buying guns and apparently stocking up on the body armor that police said he wore during the shooting: a ballistic helmet and vest, ballistic leggings, throat and groin protector, a gas mask and black tactical gloves.”

7/21/2012 online.

Cinema and Television

At Night

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Summer                              New (Hiroshima) Moon

Let the kids and the grandkids decompress from grandpop’s visit.  We wore ourselves out riding the train, eating pizza, driving a long ways.

I took the night off and saw a movie.  Dark Knight Rises.  Weird, I know.  The 6:05 time though.  Not the late one.

The Harkins Theaters are a multi-plex (what’s the plex mean?) not far from the hotel.  I settled into a seat, the theatre was not crowded.  As the previews began to roll, I looked around, imagining a similar scene, only the night before, only a suburb away.  Gas rolling in.  A masked gunman shooting.

As the movie started, a strange thing happened.  A man in a dark shirt walked in, looked around, went to the back of the theatre, pressed the exit door open, light spilled in from the outside.  He pulled it shut, turned around and walked out.  Gave me a moment.

After the movie, around 9:00 pm, this is a long one, I went over to a yogurt shop and had a dish of cookies and cream, sitting outside in a cool Colorado night.  No bugs.

There are odd reverberations in the movie given the Aurora event.  In it a man with a mask-like device over his face locks people in a room and shoots at them with an automatic weapon.

Commentary on the news, Family, Travel

arriving only as one has to go

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Summer                                      New (Hiroshima) Moon

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” – Anatole France

Visiting grandchildren, Ruth and Gabe, and their parents, Jon and Jen, underline the truth of this France quote.  To leave the days of kindergarten and pre-school, to venture off even to elementary school puts us in another world than the one left behind.  Anyone who has ever become a senior in high school or college can attest to the bitter-sweet feeling of arriving only as one has to go.  Sort of like becoming a senior citizen.

Jon and Jen were shaken by the news from Aurora this morning.  The shooter lived three blocks from Montview Elementary where Jon teaches still and Jen used to teach.  They do not know yet if friends or students or former students got shot or killed, but they know it’s not only possible, but likely.

Let this serve as a reminder to us.  Often we read of these acts and shake our head.  How could he?  Then, have a cup of coffee, a final bite of bagel and get ready for the rest of the day.  But, in each of these, someone’s friend has died.  Someone’s brother or sister.  Someone’s son or daughter.  These are people loved and loving, this morning’s news for a brief window, but dead forever.

However, as the world is, we got our things together and headed into the Rocky Mountains to the small, quaint former mining town of Georgestown, drove up a windy road and parked in the Georgetown Loop Railroad parking lot.

I picked up the reserved tickets and we rode this short rail line across a photogenic trestle bridge, up threw sweet smelling pines, beside rushing mountain streams.  Perhaps predictably the adults had a great time.  Gabe spent much of the ride with his fingers in his ears.  A steam whistle.  Ruth huddled next to me off and on.  She feared falling out of the train.  It has open to the air cars which offer an immersive ride, but do not provide the safety of windows and walls.

We had pizza at Beaujo’s in Idaho Springs afterward, a Colorado sacred spot for pizza lovers and I now know why.  Get there if you’re out here.  I had the sicilian.  Wonderful.

Commentary on the news, Family

In Colorado

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Summer                                    New (Hiroshima) Moon

Jon and Jen teach in the Aurora Public School system.  Their home and this hotel are on the northern edge of Denver which abuts Aurora.

As I ate breakfast this morning, the news flashed images from a shooting at a theatre.  12 dead.  64 injured.  I kept watching for a location but they never gave one.

Returned to the room, fired up the computer, headed over to Refdesk and, whoa.  Aurora, Colorado.  Right here.  Where we are.  If Ruth and Gabe were a bit older, it might have been a movie choice for us.  Unlikely we would have ended up in that theatre, but that it would have been possible?  Chilling.

My mind hopped, as I’m sure many others will, to Littleton, a southern suburb of Denver where the Columbine shootings occurred.

When you’re a predator, you go where the prey is.  Our dogs spend hours, sometimes whole days circling our far garden shed, digging, barking, trying to get at the rabbits and mice that use the space underneath it to breed.

If you’re a student predator, you go to a school.  If you’re adult, you might head to McDonald’s or to a workplace or to a crowded movie theatre.

The Dark Knight Rises.  The killer dressed in black, had a gas mask and came into the theatre in a cloud of smoke, a gas he dispersed.  Again, chilling.

 

Family

Finally, My Ballerina Dress Is Ready!

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Summer                                    New (Hiroshima) Moon

Kate.   This one’s for you.  Ruthie picked up the blue ballerina dress, held it in front of her, twirled and said, “Finally, my ballerina dress is ready.”  When I asked to take her picture with it, she said, “Nooooo.” and ran out of the room.  So, no pic, but one very happy little girl.

I do have pictures of the remodeling.  The master bedroom bath is impressive.

Jon barbecued chicken, romaine (very good, Jen saw it in Reader’s Digest) and put out beans and a four-bean salad.  Excellent.  Before dinner Ruthie and I painted.  We produced a collaborative work that will require small pictures of Ruth, Gabe, you and me.  It’s something.

Sollie is still ornery.  He recognized me, wiggling and leaning.

The landscaping is coming along well.  Jon’s got such a good eye and his plans make a lot of sense.

Gabe made a piece for me, too.  A black handprint.

This is a warm, creative family.  A pleasure to be with.

 

Art and Culture

Art for the Blind

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Summer                                                 New (Hiroshima) Moon

Today a large group of docents will give tours to an even larger group of kids from the Minnesota State Academy for the Blind.  Should be an interesting time, fun.  I’m using the Roman torso touch, verbal description of Doryphoros, rock garden of the scholar’s study touch, Bacchante and Satyr, the Kimbles, verbal description of St. Croix Gorge with the Cora, verbal description of Cream of Wheat posters, touch Stampede.

When I first lost hearing in my left ear, which happened suddenly over a period of six months when I was 39, I read a lot about deafness, not knowing whether the problem would over take my good right ear or not.  The reading surprised me in that most disabled people said they would rather lose their sight than their hearing.  Why?  Because hearing is the relational sense, it’s how you make and retain human relationships.

Sight, of course, is important, too, but it doesn’t have the level of isolation from the rest of the world as deafness.  Or so the reading I did suggested.

I can’t say.  But, I can say this.  When in a crowded, noisy room or near a source of noise like a waterfall or constant sound in that range, I tend to move toward the corners or leave. Again, why?  In a quiet room I can hear well enough; you would not notice I’m deaf in one ear; but, in those situations I can’t understand human speech.  When I try to, I have to make up what people have said, guessing from the bits that get through and the context.  I am, I have discovered, often wrong.

Weather +Climate

The Return of the Cool

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Summer                                                           New (Hiroshima) Moon

Cool, man.  And with it comes guilt, or, if not exactly guilt, at least a sense of urgency about things left undone because it was just too hot.  It’s techno-wimp to blame lackadaisical on the fallen machine, I know, but we did it anyway.  Now that the temperature is more congenial that old air-conditioned work ethic has begun to kick in again.

Not a bad thing, really.  Some down time is always good, but I’ll take mine without the heat and bad sleeping next time, please.

So, back to translating Ovid, learning about Rembrandt, reimagining faith and working on short stories.

 

Family, Weather +Climate

End of Days (hot days)

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Summer                                                             New (Hiroshima) Moon

Every saga has its end.  Ragnarok finished of the epic of the Norse Pantheon.  The apocalypse and the rapture close up time for Christians.  The Jews are still waiting for the Messiah.

Yes.  In fact air conditioner repairman has come, laid hands upon our unit (ha) and declared it ready again for service.  Even as I write this the air in the house has its humidity squeezed out and its temperature likewise sent off into the atmospheric collective.  We will soon be cool.

Hallelujah!

Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah