Lugnasa Hiroshima Moon
A tour with a home school group that accreted more folks as we moved along, even though we went from gallery 3 to gallery 2 then to 1. These tours have been fun, audiences appreciative. Glad I got the chance to do it.
Monthly Archives: August 2012
Grrr. Ruffff.
Lugnasa Hiroshima Moon
The Hiroshima Moon has begun to fade. Next up will be the Garlic Planting Moon. The Hiroshima Moon made me aware, the whole month, of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The insanity of nuclear weapons. Then, the insanity of using them. Then, the insanity of stockpiling them. Now, the proliferation of nuclear states. I think I’ll keep the Hiroshima Moon in my naming list, just for the reminder. Never forget.
Vega and Rigel have a new hobby, digging under the orchard fence. There are now six such attempts, two have achieved break through. At one point this kind of thing amused me. Me against the dog. Human mind against canine. Now it frustrates me. A lot.
These two, sisters never separated since birth, act in unison. Rigel digs, then she rests and Vega digs. A hundred pound plus dog can move a hell of a lot of sand. A lot. Grrrr. Ruffff.
A Peat Bog
Lugnasa Hiroshima Moon
This has been a down August for me. Still slogging through molasses. Only bursts of energy, clarity. Don’t like it. Doesn’t seem to be much I can do about it. One foot in front of the other.
Worked all morning on Missing. Right now I’m summarizing chapters, creating character bios and defining scenes. The result will be an outline with chapter summaries and a read through, quick, yes, but still a read through. Once the read through is done and all chapters summarized, I’ll be ready to start working on Loki’s Children.
When that comes, my days will be Missing revision, writing Loki’s children, translating Latin and the occasional tour. Hoping that I will get assigned to the terracotta warrior show since I’m prepared already for Qin Shi Huang-Di and the rise of the Qin dynasty.
Right now all this sounds too much, but a hold over from the days of salaried work is a good work ethic once I’m clear on where I’m going. That means I’ll keep going.
The bees. Dejected, yes. Defeated, no. Last year I decided I would buy packages, build up the colonies and take the honey they produced, all of it, including their winter stores, then start over again the next year. This was partly a response to difficulty over-wintering bees, partly to mite loads. Fail.
So. I have to look at this a first year project, in which case I have one colony, the aggressive one, that will have plenty of honey and brood for the upcoming winter. The other, the less active one, had, today, brood. Surprise! They must have swarmed earlier and created a new queen. Not sure right now how to encourage them through the winter, but I’ll find out. If the strong colony produces any extra honey, I’ll give it to the weak one.
These Strange Times
Lugnasa Hiroshima Moon
Pope’s butler accused of theft. Wait. The pope has a butler? Shootings yesterday at Texas A&M. The Sikh Temple in Wisconsin last week. Aurora the 20th of July. Can anyone else hear a tear in the moral fabric of the universe?
Not to mention that yesterday the stock market was down because of news from Asia. Asia? What happened to the euro? It’s true that bad news always happens and good news is not, usually, news at all. Still.
Let’s throw in the news from Europe’s Cryosat that the polar ice has begun to retreat
(at) a loss of 900 cubic kilometers of ice in the last year. That’s 50 percent more than computer models predicted would melt.
A lack of ice is good news for shipping, and oil and gas exploration, but dark ocean water warms the air above more than reflective ice, a “positive feedback” that accelerates warming. Research suggests the Arctic is warming 2-4 times faster than the rest of the Northern Hemisphere. So what? This warming is nudging the jet stream north, to the tune of 1 mile a year, 18 feet/day. (paul douglas weatherblog)
Predictions of the end times have a 100% failure rating (so far), so I’m not going there, but bizarre times? Yes.
Of all of these, the news I understand least are the three shootings. Like the man here who killed his three daughters, there may be a psychological explanation. Certainly there is a psychological explanation. Has to be. But explanation does not serve. Tracing the inner path to these crimes leaves us with the crime in the end.
I’d like to know, if anybody does know, the incidence of these or similar crimes in other cultures. Are we truly aberrant or is it a statistical phenomenon, a law of large numbers reality?
Of all these, the news that worries me the most comes from the cryosat satellite. This summer was miserable for us and horrific for much of the country. In this case I understand the cause. I drive one. So do you. I use electricity. So do you. We have treated global warming as a topic for next year. For the next generation. Guess what?
It is next year. And we’re the next generation.
The Beach-Volleyball Olympics
Lugnasa Hiroshima Moon
The beach-volleyball Olympics. That’s how I’ll the remember games of the last Olympiad. Seemed like every time Kate or I turned on the TV, which we rarely do these days, to watch, there was Kerri and Mitzi. Wearing bikinis. Battling other well-toned women from various places: China, Australia, Italy.
Then there was the closing day. What was the lead off memory piece? Beach volleyball. And a lot of it.
Not sure, but the amount of skin might have had something to do with it? Also not sure, had I ever watched a complete beach volleyball match before? Yes, they were good. Yes, it was athletic and tiring. But beach volleyball and BMX racing? Guess the young, male watcher must be sought after.
I liked Usain and his bow and arrow impressions. Michael Phelps, collecting himself from a loss right out of the blocks. Boudina coming back from 18th to win gold. OK, I didn’t watch that because diving, as I said before, doesn’t grab me, but still.
Having the US, plucky little country, come out with more medals that great big rising superpower, China, did tickle my nationalistic pride. Maybe a bit too much though our scattershot funding model does pale beside the state run models of China and Russia.
The opening ceremony. It was the best I’ve ever seen. It renewed a serious case of Anglophilia and reminded me that I’ve spent a good bit of the last ten years gazing east, reading Chinese books, getting educated about Asian art, traveling in Southeast Asia. Might be time to revisit Dickens, the Pre-Raphs, English history.
There is a bit of push-back in me though; it comes from the genetic Celt within and the miserable track-record (sorry about that one) the English have with Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Mann, even old Cornwall. Even so, their xenophobia does not need to blind me to their culture achievements. A renewal of that will probably be the lasting impact of this Olympics for me.
Ancient Dead-End Trails
Lugnasa Hiroshima Moon
AM working on the novel. Revision. Not back into the swing of it quite yet. Got tired, 
sleepy. Had to get outside and take a walk. Signs of lack of focus. (and, yes, melancholy, too)
That will pass. My groove will come, sliding into place and I’ll get back to regular long sessions. Have to since I also have that second novel, Loki’s Children, to write. There is, too, that new project, The Protectors. Tempting to set aside the revision, the second novel and work on that one.
But I’m trying to step up here, close the deal. Going on to a new work before finishing an old one has much allure. The new. The unknown. No risk since I won’t have to sell Missing. All roads I’ve traveled before, ancient dead-end trails I’m not gonna take this time.
A Theory
Lugnasa Hiroshima Moon
I have a theory, at least part of a theory, about melancholy. As it applies to me. It has two parts at least. The first is that there is a dark river, my own Styx or Cocytus, that flows through my soul. It’s headwaters are back in the distant, psychic past, perhaps my mother’s early death, perhaps even my childhood bout with polio. Both shocks to the inner cathedral, perhaps cracking its dome? This river, often underground, below consciousness, surfaces occasionally and interrupts daily life, flooding it with the blackness of those times.
The second may seem odd. A movement toward creativity. That is, when I decide–conscious choice–to get to work at my writing, with the intention of staying at it for a long period of time,like writing a novel, there is a turn inward and downward, a sort of deflection of energy from the outer world into the place–you know it if you’ve been there–where the ideas live.
Somewhere in here, too, is the question of succeed or fail, achieve or fail; a question I addressed a while back in the post, there is only make. This tension may get reinforcement from the second part of the theory. That is, as I move into writing, my succeed or fail flag gets raised and along with it a flag that reads danger ahead. Be cautious!
As I said, too, a while back, I’m at a point where the reasons are less important than the reality. A reality that I know includes a gradual climb back up, up to the place where I know there is only make. The place where that dark river disappears again underground and where the creative work is underway. A place I look forward to tonight.
Homemade Chicken Pot Pie
Lugnasa Hiroshima Moon
Not only did it not make it to 80 today, the temps didn’t make 70 either. Ah.
Spent the morning making four chicken, leek and vegetable pies. Used our leeks and carrots, our thyme and tarragon and dried garlic. Something very satisfying about cooking with vegetables grown at home.
This is a lengthy process since it involves sauteing vegetables, cooking a whole chicken with celery, carrots, garlic and green onions. 12 cups of water plus corn. That takes about an hour, cleaning the leeks takes a while, then boiling them in salted water. Dug a few new potatoes yesterday and added them to the leeks, just for something different.
After the chicken cooks, it comes out of the pot for cooling while the leeks and the potatoes go into the liquid for a gentle warming. Shredded chicken gets placed in pie shells with crusts, then vegetables ladled over the chicken, mounded in the center.
Butter and flour for a (roue-unintentional humor here. I meant) roux to thicken the broth a cup and a half at a time. The thickened broth goes in the pies, four of them. A frozen pie dough gets flattened with the rolling pin, then draped over the pies. Vents are cut.
The oven, preheated to 425, receives all four pies. 15 minutes, then down to 350, cook for another 20 minutes. Done.
Wrapped in aluminum foil three of these pies go in the freezer for mid-winter meals. The fourth will get reheated for supper tonight.
We have enough leeks to do this several times over. Next time a bigger chicken, free range, more leeks and some additional vegetables. Not sure what quite yet. That awaits the next time.
Each cooking session differs from the last in some way or another.
Lugnasa Hiroshima Moon
The Spring Dumbledor
An August Midnight
by Thomas Hardy
I
A shaded lamp and a waving blind,
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:
On this scene enter—winged, horned, and spined—
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;
While ‘mid my page there idly stands
A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands…
II
Thus meet we five, in this still place,
At this point of time, at this point in space.
—My guests besmear my new-penned line,
Or bang at the lamp and fall supine.
“God’s humblest, they!” I muse. Yet why?
They know Earth-secrets that know not I.
This and That
Lugnasa Hiroshima Moon
Brother Mark is on the Greyhound headed to Lansing, Michigan. He got a bank account setup, got a new passport and attempted to get a driver’s license. Maybe next time on that one.
Watched a bit of the Olympics last night, but diving just doesn’t do it for me. Looks like the Chinese are pretty good at it though. Also watched about five minutes of the Viking’s game. Enough for me.
Filled out a survey that included the following question. I’m in the next to last age category! OMG.
What is your age?
This is a very interesting idea:
“For the Greek, Hemeroscopium is the place where the sun sets. An allusion to a place that exists only in our mind, in our senses, that is ever-changing and mutable, but is nonetheless real. It is delimited by the references of the horizon, by the physical limits, defined by light, and it happens in time.”