Yearly Archives: 2014

Family, Holidays, Politics

The Capital Grille

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Samain                                                                          Moving Moon

The Capital Grille. Aptly named. Could have been (maybe really is) the Capitalism Grille. Dark wood, leather, buck heads with santa hats, clocks telling the time in London, Chicago, Tokyo and somewhere else. Faux paintings of dead white guys like Hubert Humphrey, Harold Stassen (for party balance) and, oddly, one of a Hormel guy who invented a meat refrigeration unit. A large bronze eagle swoops down, behind and through its wings the kitchen is just visible. The bison head, so dark against the wood as to be invisible, surprised Kate when she noticed it, then Anne and me when she pointed it out.

The menu presents mostly steak done in various ways. I had a pepper steak, Anne a Gorgonzola and truffle topped filet, Kate scallops. It was, in its way, a fun place to have a Thanksgiving dinner. The food was good and the people watching excellent.

While we ate our rare (cool center), medium rare (warm center) steaks, thick cuts of dry aged beef and seared scallops, we tried to parse out the table across the way, three tables put together. It could have been a Mafia family. Men came forward and kissed the cheek of an older man at the head of the table. One woman, sheathed in black and affluence, older had her husband carrying a brightly colored tote. She reached in and pulled out a center piece with faux gold apples and ivy, flowers. It had small, battery operated flames for the candles. Another woman brought a potted plant. These were set in the center of the table. When their plates came, they had all ordered the turkey dinner.

A curiosity was the youngish blond on the arm of an older man. She had no ring and ran her hand across his back as she sipped red wine from a large balloon glass. What was their relationship? A date? An escort? Made me wonder.

Why were we all here instead of at home with a football game on in the background? (not the Rose Bowl. I know now. That’s New Years. So take back my male creds.) Had others had their families dwindle in number until cooking at home just didn’t make sense? (our case) Perhaps others were tired of turkey? Or, perhaps others didn’t have time for a full meal at home.

Whatever it was, we filled this hall, a celebration of wealth earned the old fashion way, through stock dividends, ate our steaks and our turkey and scallops in sight of each other, but still separated. I wonder what we were thankful for?

 

 

Colorado, Faith and Spirituality, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., The Move, The West

Hmmm.

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Samain                                                                             Moving Moon

Here is an interesting conundrum. Should I let my Colorado self emerge out of the casual interactions inherent in moving to a new location: talking to mechanics, visiting the grocery store, dining at the 285 cafe? Or, should I try to shape it, finding like minded folks through obvious clusterings such Sierra Club, the Denver Art Museum, the Democratic party? Sure, it will be a bit of both, I know, but where I should place my emphasis?

As I have been discussing the move, I’ve emphasized the loss of the Woollies, my docent friends, the sheepshead guys and the thick web of history here after 40 plus years. One straight line of thinking is to investigate the sociology of Denver for nodes of persons whom I might meet with similar tastes and interests. That’s why I’ve mentioned politics and the Sierra Club as likely sources for new friends.

And yet. Another part of me, reinforced by some reading in Kierkegaard and an article by a professor on why he has left politics behind (politics or productivity in his mind), have given me pause. Not to mention the onrushing reality of the move. No, I don’t have to make a decision soon, or ever for that matter, but I want to.

Why? Because I don’t want to create a sticky fly trap for my self. I don’t want to make commitments in order to meet people that will result in my needing to pull back later. Right now I’m thinking that politics, though a strong and thrumming wire wound throughout my life, is just such a fly trap. As would be volunteering at one of the museums. Long drives. Winter weather. I dropped both Sierra Club and the MIA for those reasons and, to underscore the professor’s logic, to enable my productivity.

A Colorado, a mountain, a western, a grandpop self will come into being if I live my life, flowing from here to there as events take me. I want the productivity that I find so dependent on having my own time and my own space. Guess that’s my answer for right now.

 

Faith and Spirituality, Holidays, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Thanksgiving Morning

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Samain                                                                  Moving Moon

A holiday morning. This one with no pans clanking, oven sending out aromas. Not even the Macy’s parade. I never did connect our HD Comcast service. The HD delivers the basic cable channels we pay for to keep down the cost of the broadband. No Rosebowl later in the day either.

Dining this afternoon at the Capital Grille. Our last Thanksgiving here and we’re sharing it with Anne, Kate’s sister. A cold day, appropriate for the final major holiday of our Minnesota lives.

Holiseason hits its full stride with Thanksgiving. After this the holidays keep coming, up to and through Epiphany on January 6th. So many of them focus on getting.  The twin oxen of capitalism and marketing, goaded as they pull the treasure carts of mercantilism, strain to drag us off center in our lives. That’s why Thanksgiving and its focus on gratitude is so important for us right now.

But. Black Friday. Bleeding into Thanksgiving evening. Bah. Humbug. Marley’s ghost drags his chains around in delight.

As the lights go up, the songs come on the radio, I love the focus on illumination. Enlightenment, you might say, is the reason for the season.

And yet. I find myself, to quote Robert Frost, “one acquainted with the night.” This is the season of darkness, the approach to the longest night of the year. The dark is fertile, a place of creativity and the nurturing of life before it emerges into the day. Here in Andover and also on Black Mountain Drive the night brings with it silence, a quiet similar to holiday mornings, like the one around me now. I love the blackness and the light. Blessed be.

Colorado, Holidays, The Move

Snow Globe Snow

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Samain                                                                       Moving Moon

A gentle snow falling, what Kate calls snow globe snow. It comes just in time to cover up the partly melted and sad looking snow cover, freshening it up for the holiday. Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving.

This will be a quiet Thanksgiving for us. Dinner at 4:oo pm at the Capitol Grille with Anne. Then home.

Today will see a bit more packing. That closet under the stairs, gathering up this and that left over from other packing moments. Then, a holiday. The long weekend should tidy up the last of our effort. The Bagster goes out on Sunday, clearing out space in the garage. Two weeks from Monday the A1 folks come to pack the garage and the kitchen plus whatever else we’ve not finished.

Colorado, Garden, Great Wheel, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., The Move

Weather Station Clean Up Day

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Samain                                                                    Moving Moon

Took my weather station apart today and cleaned it up. There’s another Davis weather station not very far from our new house and it posts on Weatherunderground as Black Mtn/Shadow Mtn. Once I get mine setup I’m going to go back to posting my weather, too. I moved the display panel away from my broadband hookup into a room where I only use wi-fi here and could no longer post.

The study is done for now. So is the garden study. It was the one with all the files. Tomorrow I’m going to head into the closet under the stairs and the built-in cabinets down here in the basement. That will represent the last of the packing until December 15th or so, moving week. Then, all the computer stuff, all the monitors, this tower, keyboards, mice, cables, power surge strips. Into boxes. Another box for desk supplies, Latin books, remaining stuff.

Next week I plan to go through all of the manuals we have and organize them. I’m also going to work on information about the house itself (where the gfi’s are, filters, that sort of thing) and put together a handbook for the various gardens and the orchard. The new folks will do whatever they want of course, that’s how transfer of property rights work, but I want them to know how and why we did what we did.

There will be a bit in there, too, about cohabitation with the pileated woodpeckers, great horned owl, the moles and the voles and the mice. Those land beavers and whistle pigs. The occasional snapping turtle, small green frogs, salamanders, newts and garter snakes. The odd opossum and raccoon, of course, as well. Chipmunks, squirrels, turkeys and deer. Crows and nuthatches. Chickadees. Hummingbirds. The whole blooming buzzing menagerie.

Music, Politics, US History

Strange Fruit

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Samain                                                                           Moving Moon

Ferguson. A situation where any decision would have been met with anger and disappointment. I don’t pretend to know the facts well enough to evaluate the grand jury’s decision. It is clear however that the black community, after a recent string of publicized police related deaths, will question the conclusions.

Look at this from the perspective of Ferguson’s black community. An unarmed teen-ager is shot down in the street by a white police officer. The government and most of the police force is white. There have been high visibility instances this year of other police related killings of black people. Too, this sort of violence, violence sanctioned by those in power is not a new thing, not at all.

Considering the inherent violence in the enslavement, sale and servitude of Africans early in our history, a violence only ended by a great spasm of violence, and even then not truly ended but substituted for by Jim Crow laws, the Klan and structural racism, it is important to understand that the situation looks very different from within the black community. The assumption there is not on behalf of the police, or the benevolence of the government, rather it is fed by what Billie Holliday called Strange fruit. And understandably so from my vantage point.

Art and Culture, Colorado, The Move

The Final Movement

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Samain                                                                              New (Moving) Moon

Feels like the final movement of a symphony, with all the hurried action, lots of 16th and 32nd notes, winding up and up and up, then a pause, a slowing that lasts for awhile, a slowing that precedes the last dynamic moment. After that. Colorado.

Ah.

We’re in the slowing time right now. Almost all of the packing and preparation has been done. A few odd bits here and there. Those files which I may choose to resolve simply by moving them and sorting them out later. A few items, like cassette tapes, that have archival value, but less utility. The stuff in the bathrooms and the final items to leave before the van loaders arrive: computer, two printers, my latin books, the stuff still on the desk. There are as well some magazine stacks that will need to get sorted, but that’s quick.

There will not be much left for A1 to pack beyond the kitchen and the garage, which we’ve already asked them to do. Maybe some clothes. Some stash in Kate’s sewing room. But not much at all.

 

Colorado, The Move

And… One More!

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Samain                                                                 New (Moving) Moon

I found a seventh novel! The Wild Pair. Geez. Put that in with the partly done Jennie’s Dead and Superior Wolf. That’s nine novel ideas, seven taken at least through first draft, one, Missing, through many more than that. Two, really three with the second book in the Unmaking trilogy, with substantial work done on them. I have another one, The Protectors, that I’ve been pushing around for a year or so, probably more.

In other moving news we went through the clothes yet one more time. We took a major pass through them about a year ago. Yes sir, Yes sir, four bags full. Kate’s planning her trips to Goodwill as combination trips with her doctor’s appointments. Tomorrow’s rheumatology, so the Maple Grove goodwill gets our unwanted garments.

Kept the Sorel’s even though they’re a Minnesota footwear. Just doesn’t get as cold in Colorado. Kept the Wellies, too, even though wetlands are scarce. Maybe for a vacation? Found a pair of not too worn hiking boots. Didn’t even remember I had them. (Hmm. Do you see a theme here?) Good deal.

The study here is in minimalist mode with all the shelves bare and folded up, the books gone except for the Ovid and Caesar texts. File cabinet emptied. Stripped down. I’m not a minimalist sort of guy, but there is a certain energy in emptiness, a stream-lined grace.

 

 

Colorado, The Move

Dancing?

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Samain                                                                           New (Moving) Moon

The study will be finished this morning. Wow. Then I’ll sort files until Kate’s ready to take yet another pass through all of our clothes. After that, who knows? Dancing in the streets?

A month from now we should have been reunited with our stuff. That will mark the beginning of the next phase, moving in. To be followed by settling in. The UU ministry has an interesting term for a minister who has been hired by a church. They are considered settled. Settled will be the culmination of the move itself. Maybe a year from now? Hard to say.

Moving in, settling in and being settled operate on our time frame and have financial expectations that we can control. They will, in that sense, be less fraught. Of course, the sale of this house will be an issue, but it will happen.

So far the days around the purchase of Black Mountain Drive and the mortgage approval have been the most stressful. May it continue to be so.

 

Our Land and Home, The Move

Warmth.

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Samain                                                                      New (Moving) Moon

46 degrees. I’m going outside to take down the silt fence we used to keep the dogs out of the fire pit and the area near the house where they dug in the garden. Amazing warmth. But if I understand it right this will be the sort of winter that will be normal in Colorado only without the extreme cold for contrast. (though they did have some a week and a half ago)

Having work to do outside, though it became something of a burden in the last few years, does get me out of the house. I’m hoping in Colorado I use the lack of house related outdoor work to focus on hiking, foraging for wild food, getting familiar with mountains. That’s what I want to do.

Next weekend I will deploy a bagster, a large heavy duty tarplike container that can be filled with construction waste, throwaway junk from the house. In it will go the silt fence, the extra siding that Rigel tore up getting at the bunnies, old bird feeders, a certain amount of excess bee woodenware and anything else we don’t want to move to Colorado, but can’t give away or sell.

It never works as neatly as this picture however.