Daily Archives: October 21, 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.