Monthly Archives: October 2012

Faith and Spirituality

Who Are You?

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Fall                                                                             Fallowturn Moon

Review in the Strib this morning of a book of essays focused on identity.  What makes you you?  Just finished three weeks on the Odyssey and the Greeks were pretty clear about it: name, lineage, home, story.  So, Odysseus was of Laertes line, an Ithacan by birth and the Iliad in part and the Odyssey almost completely tells his story.  Know the content of the Odyssey combined with some of the Iliad and you will know who Odysseus is.

This image represents one way of thinking about it.  What would you have on your list?  Or, would it be an object, a painting, or a belief system.  What?

That would not hold for us, would it.  I’m Charlie, of the line of Curtis Ellis, originally of Oklahoma, later Indiana and for most of my life Minnesota.  What would constitute my story, I wonder?  That is, what parts of my life, strung together in a narrative could meaningful describe my life?

Of course, those are all aspects of my life, but are they constitutive of my identity?  A very interesting question to me, especially when you layer it within the broader question of American identity.  What is it?

Dogs

Dogs and Fences

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Fall                                                                           Fallowturn Moon

Looking out the kitchen window this morning after breakfast, watching the bees fly in and out of their hives, the fruit trees with most of their leaves still on.  And Vega wandering around sniffing the compost and the hay beside it.

(Vega in a non-digging moment, relaxing from the effort.)

Vega!  She’s not supposed to be in there.  Why?  She chews up the netaphim and digs big holes.  Vega and Rigel have systematically breached the fence that has kept them out for years.  Why now?  Who knows.  Instead of climbing over it, or trying to fit between the rails–closed off since its installation by green metal wire, they decided this year that maybe digging under it just might work.  They were right.

Up till now I’ve fixed each breach as it came, using various remedies that came to mind at the moment.  This morning I stripped out of all those, maybe 6, and laid down hardware cloth, weaving it to the green metal fencing with lengths of baling wire.  No bubble gum, but bailing wire is an all purpose, duct-tape like tool for outside repairs.

Putting in the lilies and iris has moved to this afternoon after the nap.  Toward which I am now headed.

Aging, Family, Garden, Health

Heavy Lifting

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Fall                                                                               Fallowturn Moon

Unanticipated consequences.  Kate’s upper body, shoulders and neck, screamed at her yesterday and are still doing it today.  Why?  She’s had to do all the (more or less) heavy lifting since my surgery.  One of my jobs in our marriage is to do the heavy lifting, literally. Now, I have my limits, too, of course, but they’re much higher than Kate’s.     Singapore

We’ve had to buy dogfood in 20 pound bags rather than 35 so I can carry it.  I made sure the water softener got it in, finally, before the surgery.  40 pounds per bag.  When Kate weeds, she takes the plant out roots, soil and all.  Puts them in plastic buckets.  They get heavy quick.  She had to empty her own this past month, using smaller buckets to empty the larger one.  I had the surgery in late September to be sure I could move honey supers if I needed to.  No need this year, unfortunately.

There’s also laundry and groceries.  Various items to take up and down stairs.  We’re done with our Excalibur (geesh) food dryer so it goes back in the basement.  Jars of canned tomatoes, peaches, apple butter go down, too.

Today I’m going to split a bag of composted manure in half so I can carry it down to the bed where I’m to plant the lilies and iris I have left to put in the ground.  I’ll be glad when this is done and I can get back to doing all these things plus my resistance work.  One more week.

Art and Culture, Myth and Story

Saturday

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Fall                                                                        Fallowturn Moon

A cold morning has given way to a beautiful fall day.  Clear, bright.  Still colored leaves on trees and bushes.

We had our business meeting this morning.  I’ve spent most of the afternoon on my Mythology course and revising Missing.  Listened to two interesting lectures, one on Odysseus’ scar and one on Penelope’s dream.

image: “Ulysses Recognized by Euryclea,” Eustave Boulanger, 1849. Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts, Paris

 

Family, Retirement, Third Phase, Travel

A Year Ago

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Fall                                                                              Fallowturn Moon

 

Fall Waning Autumn Moon

58 nautical miles south of Ft. Lauderdale, headed for Cuba and the strait between Cuba and Hispanola. Today was a quiet, uneventful day thanks to the high winds, including tornadoes, that struck the Everglades…

The promenade deck, our deck, has had few people on it, so I did some exercise tonight. Tomorrow and the next day are at sea as we make our way 1200 miles south to Santa Marta, Colombia. Santa Marta made Wired magazine last month as the site of an international coffee tasting competition. It is where Simon Bolivar died and was buried. We’ll find out more about in a couple of days.

With Santa Marta the South American portion of our journey gets underway, not to end until we leave the Rio Airport the day before Thanksgiving.

Fall Waning Autumn Moon  October 20th  10 am

A warm morning, sitting on the deck chair, watching Cuba roll by to the south/ Clumps of trees, sandy beaches and a few antenna installations mark this place, a testimony ot the overhang of the cold war. If it were not communist, this ship would stop in Havanna. Odd and more alluring as a result, the island seems a forbidden oasis of, what? Egalitarian socialism? Since we’re passing along its length, it will be in view a good while.

We have come approximately 300 nautical miles from Ft. Lauderdale’s Port Everglade. The night, a calm one, unlike the night before, lent itself to a gentle rocking and good sleeping. I checked the national hurricane center and there are no storms of consequence in the western Caribbean Sea.

Cinema and Television, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Friday, Friday

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Fall                                                                    Fallowturn Moon

Sometimes Latin lessons leave me feeling further advanced, more knowledgeable, other times, like today they leave me with my brain tied in knots.  Tight knots.  I’m sure that means I’ve spent extra hard energy learning.  I keep telling myself.  Learned a new way to diagram sentences, using Noam Chomsky’s now passe transformational grammar.  I’m not sure why it’s passe, but it looks useful to me.

Keep reading.  That’s what Greg says.  It all becomes clearer if you keep reading.  I believe him; it’s worked that way for me so far.  It’s just that it’s harder stuff now that needs to become clearer.

I’m continuing to plug away at revising Missing.  As I go, things unravel and have to be rethreaded or dropped altogether.  Yesterday I cut the initial scene and it all flows much better in the first chapter now.  The story itself continues to emerge as I revise.  Funny, that’s what they say happens, but I’m experiencing it now.  So, if I can get that first chapter humming, then there’s the second one.  And so on.  BTW:  I’m a bit over half way through on the revision, but as I work sometimes I get lead to other parts of the book that need help.

Kate and I just watched 127 hours.  A gritty, intense movie made more so by its factual base.  When I lifted the DVD out of the player, I turned to Kate and said, “This is as close as I want to come to this experience.”  Since cutting the cable, we’ve watched more movies together.

Back on the treadmill today, cranking it up a bit, trying to shake off the detraining the last three weeks or so have accumulated.

Dogs, Our Land and Home

Just Like #24

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Fall                                                                           Fallowturn Moon

Got a little wound up yesterday about anti-science.  Nothing on the plate like that today.  Just rain, or at least, drizzle.  Cool.  Gray.

Got my ax, my felling ax.  Handmade.  Handforged and sharpened.  Hand turned handle.  A simple tool.  I like that.  The kind I can understand.  After next weekend, I can get at it, too.  I have lots of woods, lots of chances to perfect my technique while getting aerobic exercise and upper body resistance work.

Gertie.  Like Adrian  Peterson.  A torn ACL.  Yes, her  ruptured disk has healed under prednisone therapy, but on physical examination her knee joint moved more than it should.  Probably a small tear that became big.

Interestingly, our vet, Roger Barr, says they never see torn ACL’s in sight hounds, our usual breeds:  Whippets, Irish Wolfhounds, Salukis, Pharaoh Hounds.  Their ACL, he says, is like a cord.

Gertie, though, our adopted granddog, is a German Short Hair, a breed that apparently does not have a cord like ACL.  That means she needs surgery.  Ouch.  Kate’s right.  Gertie’s young.  She’ll get back 80-90% of her use of that leg and her atrophied muscle should, with rehab, regain some mass.  So, we combed our budget and came up with the money.  Not an insignificant amount.

A Latin tutoring session today.  Gotta go.

Commentary on Religion, Commentary on the news, GeekWorld, Humanities, Myth and Story, US History

It’s Science’s Fault

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Fall                                                                                     Fallowturn Moon

 

Here’s a “timeless principle” I found on Rep. Aikin’s website today:

Timeless Principles

George Washington

News image“I wish from my soul that the legislature of this State could see a policy of a gradual Abolition of Slavery.” (letter to Lawrence Lewis, August 4, 1797) — George Washington was the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army and the first President of the United States of America

I get the how.   But still I wonder about the anti-science perspective that gains traction in an age of vaccines, space flight, electric cars and digital communications.  After shock and awe, I wonder about the why of it.

Not how.  I know how:  1. Minds foreclosed by religious dogma, which BTW is different from theology which can admit searching and questioning.  Dogma are matters of certainty necessary to faith in a particular religious community. 2.  Minds wedded to an ideology that functions like a dogma.  Doctrinaire Marxists, objectivists and libertarians are examples here.

I’ve been thinking about the anti-science movement since the Sierra Club legislative awards ceremony on Tuesday.  You need go no further unfortunately than the House of Representative’s Committee on Science, Space and Technology to find it alive and voting.    NASA, the Department of Energy, EPA, ATSDR, NSF, FAA, NOAA, National Institute of Standards and Technology, FEMA, the U.S. Fire Administration, and United States Geological Survey all fall within the partial or total overview of this committee.

Our lady parts ambassador Todd Aikin sits on that committee. (see an example of his website below)  Also on the committee from a Georgia university town and a medical doctor: ATHENS, Ga. (AP) — Georgia Rep. Paul Broun said in videotaped remarks that evolution, embryology and the Big Bang theory are “lies straight from the pit of hell” meant to convince people that they do not need a savior.

An entry on the California Aggie blog adds this:  “Sitting with Akin on the affectionately-dubbed “Anti-Science Committee” is Paul Broun, (see above) a creationist who believes the Earth is 9,000 years old, Mo Brooks and Jim Sensenbrenner, both global-warming deniers, and Ralph Hall, who blocked a bill to fund science research by essentially forcing the opposing candidates to vote in favor of pornography.”

This last gem of a politician is, wait for it, the chair of the committee.  Chew on that one for awhile.

Continue reading It’s Science’s Fault →

Humanities, Latin

Aeneid

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Fall                                                             Fallowturn Moon

Knee deep in the Aeneid this morning.  So far I find Virgil more of a challenge than Ovid, but I suspect that’s because I’ve accustomed myself to Ovid’s style.  That means the translating goes more slowly.  Part of the reason lies in the very helpful text, a commentary well known among classicists as Pharr’s.

(Dido and Aeneas (detail), by Pierre-Narcisse Guerin (1774-1833)

He has vocabulary and textual comment all on the same page, a tiny bit of text, around 4 verses or so, then the words not on the common word list (a pullout at the back, which I tore out long ago and spread out above my work) and below that a verse by verse exegesis, focused largely on grammar, but throwing in the occasional bits of Virgil and classical studies lore.

In the grammatical explanations Pharr often refers to a grammatical appendix number 1 through 400+, covering both the common and the not so common permutations of Latin grammar.  Since I’m far from facile with the grammar, this means a fair amount of paging to the back, reading, figuring out how the reference relates to the text, then using it in my translation.

 

Garden, Myth and Story, Weather +Climate

This and that

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Fall                                                            Fallowturn Moon

Put my 500 word essay on a reducing diet and got it down to 350.

Spent much of the day trying–again–to reorganize my space so there’s room for all my books plus art plus travel souvenirs plus computers, desk and me.

Kate and I harvested greens today, the last of them, and Kate put up another large batch of low country greens.  We’ve got onions and tomatoes in the refrigerator plus carrots and leeks in the ground.

Looked out back today, south, up toward the poplars, the tallest trees on our property.  A big gust of wind blew threw them and a rain of yellow-orange leaves flew into the air.  As the air filled with dancing, falling leaves, a bird flew through them, headed west.  With the gray sky it was a perfect fall moment.