Daily Archives: July 20, 2013

Dreams

Morpheus

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Summer                                                                Moon of the First Harvests

Today started out busy, but turned slow.  I stayed up last night until almost 1 a.m. finishing a novel I had started only the day before.  Not a usual thing, but it hooked me.  Since I woke up around 7:00 and tried going back to sleep until 8:00 when I gave up and got up, I spent the day with that loggy feeling, not quite there.

(Thee I invoke, blest power of Oneiroi (Dreams) divine, messengers of future fates, swift wings are thine. Great source of oracles to human kind, when stealing soft, and whispering to the mind, through sleep’s sweet silence, and the gloom of night, thy power awakes the intellectual sight; to silent souls the will of heaven relates, and silently reveals their future fates.  Orphic Hymn 86 to the Oneiroi)

My nap helped a bit but it was the usual length so I still had sleep deprivation and after I got up I was still foggy.  So at 5:00 I took another nap.  Better now, and believe I’ll sleep the normal time tonight.

Having been a poor sleeper, bothered with both insomnia and difficulty getting to sleep, I’ve worked hard to get my sleeping routine into one where I can get adequate rest.  I stopped reading in bed.  That helped a lot.  I read before I go to bed now, though that can present its own problems as last night shows.

I try to go to bed around the same time every night, usually 11:30 and get up around the same time, usually between 7:30 and 8:00.  Sometimes, like tomorrow I’ll get up at 7:00 because I have spraying to do or because I have an early skype time with my brother and sister, early for me, that is, but otherwise I’m pretty regular.

 

 

 

Woolly Mammoths

Aw, Mom

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Summer                                                           Moon of the First Harvests

Friend and polar plunger Tom Crane took this on his recent trip to Svalbard, Norway.

(I did crop his original to fit Ancientrails.)

Our Land and Home

Chain Saw and Ax

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Summer                                                         Moon of the First Harvests

Chain saw and ax.  The ash is a prolific tree, much like the black locust, spreading itself with some vigor.  Two especially large young ash had grown up in the area where we originally planted prairie grass.  I cut one down today using the felling ax and the other, too close to the chain link fence for my skill level with the ax, I cut down using the chain saw.  The chain saw also took out saplings grown close to the fence.  Now the orchard will have the benefit of the sunlight previously blocked by these trees.

These ash were on the west side of the house, which creates an additional problem since derechoes and tornadoes come out of the northwest.  In a nasty storm they could be blown into our garage.  They needed to go.

Over the next few weeks, picking up the pace as fall arrives I’m going to continue clearing the forest and stacking up firewood for our bonfires.

Having the time without the guilt for these chores has me leaning toward setting aside Latin for the growing season, later April through late September.  This is, oddly, the old schedule which most public schools still follow, letting the kids out for farm and other agriculture work that 99.9% no longer have to do.

Poetry, US History

Technology

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Summer                                                                  Moon of the First Harvests

What’s the railroad to me?

What’s the railroad to me?

I never go to see

Where it ends.

It fills a few hollows,

And makes banks for the swallows,

It sets the sand a-blowing,

And the blackberries a-growing.

 

About This Poem

Henry David Thoreau was cautious about the effect of technological progress on mankind, feeling that it often could be a distraction from the inner life. In his book Walden he famously writes, “We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.”
Aging, Third Phase

Third Phase Cinema

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Summer                                                                  Moon of the First Harvests

As the third phase filter got added to my lens, certain books, art works and movies began to pop up, unbidden.  They had been there all along of course, but now I see certain works as pertaining to this new moment of my life.

To Wit.  Wit, the long decline and death of the professor of English literature starring Emma Thompson raises many quality of life issues for chronically or terminally ill people and couches them in the poetic context of the metaphysical poet John Donne.  Definitely worth seeing.

Last night Kate and I watched Buena Vista Social Club.  It’s a 1998 documentary so you’ve probably seen it, heard the album and moved on, but from a third phase perspective it’s worth another look.  Ry Cooder, American guitarist and champion of American roots music as well as traditional music from another the world, went to Cuba in 1997 to record Cuban music.  When he got there, the folks who had agreed to play either couldn’t come (West Africans) or couldn’t be found.  So he began asking around and found musicians, many associated with the Buena Vista Social Club which closed in 1944.

The musicians he found were legends of the Cuban music scene who had passed into obscurity.  The group, which called itself the Buena Vista Social Club, put out the best selling album of the same name and toured, playing the Netherlands and Carnegie Hall.  Here’s the third phase connection.  Many of these resurrected musicians were in their 80’s and 90’s.  They had, most of them, given up music for one reason or another, i.e. too little money, arthritis, boredom.

Brought together they reignited in each other the passion, love and craft they shared, making music.  It is a remarkable story of gifts found, nurtured and revived, just as it is a story of men and women found, nurtured and revived.  What can we do, I found myself asking, to retain the gifts, the passion, the loves we have so they vitalize and revitalize us as we grow into the further reaches of the third phase?