Yearly Archives: 2014

Family, Garden, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

A Family Effort

Leave a comment

Fall                                                                                Falling Leaves Moon

IMAG0651Now all but the leeks and egg plants and peppers are done. The egg plants and peppers are trying to get one egg plant (in the case of the egg plant) and a few peppers (in the instance of the peppers) finished before the killing frost. They might make it, maybe not. The leeks I decided to leave in until the day of the chicken leek pie baking, probably Thursday.

Anne and Kate worked hard all day, trimming up the perennial beds and finally weeding the vegetable beds. I can throw down the broadcast tomorrow.

In the mid-40’s all day the weather was perfect. My gardens would look wonderful if vegetables grew well in the 40’s and 50’s. Working outside in those temperatures energizes me. Even though I’m tired now, I feel good about the day. If I’d worked the same length of time in even the mid-70’s with high humidity, I’d not gotten half as much done. I’m a northern guy.

Kate and I look forward to telling our new Colorado neighbors that we came to the Rockies for the milder winters.

Dogs, Garden

Fall Clean Up

Leave a comment

Fall                                                                                Falling Leaves Moon

Raspberries ripe, canes bending. Last of the collard greens, the sweet inner leaves. A few beets, a few carrots. With the exception of the raspberries and the leeks the garden is now harvested. Our final harvest almost complete.

IMAG0686

Built a fire, burning whole logs about 2.5 feet long and thick as a tree trunk. Wrangled the bent up aluminum siding away from the honey house. Rigel went through it on her way to the wee rabbits who live under the honey house.

(Rigel, happy after another task completed.)

Anne took down the electric fence, put up to deter Rigel. Tomorrow Dehn’s landscaping will fill in the holes Rigel began, then manipulated her sister to help go deeper. A lot of this work comes down to the eagerness with which Rigel applies herself to what she sees as her doggy duty. Find things underground. Jump the fence in pursuit of prey. Move anything else that gets in the way. You have to admire her doggedness. Ha. But the results? Not so much.

A perfect cool blue day.

Garden, Great Wheel, Our Land and Home, Science

Blood Moon Risin’

Leave a comment

Fall                                                                                   Falling Leaves Moon

 

Add blood moon to the adjectives in front of the Falling Leaves Moon for October 8. These lunar eclipses reflect light from sunrise and sunset giving the moon a russet color. Blends in well with the changing leaves. On my weather station I notice a small symbol I’ve not seen for awhile. A snowflake. Means it could snow.

We’re going to make use of the cooler weather with a work outside day today and perhaps a couple of other days this week. First task, start a fire in the firepit so the laborers can warm themselves. Then, the harvest. After that move old aluminum siding to the garage for recycling. Yes, this is stoop labor.

Gotta get out there.

Colorado, The Move

For Whom the Bell Curves (i found this phrase at a website of the same name.)

Leave a comment

Fall                                                                                    Falling Leaves Moon

A bit more cleaning up, decluttering, then a walk through to agree on work we’re going to do tomorrow when Kate’s sister Anne comes up.  This is outside work, harvesting the last of the vegetables, cleaning up the beds and putting down the broadcast fertilizer. There’s pruning and hose retrieving, wheel barrows and garden art to come in for the move.

Dehn’s landscaping comes on Monday at 8 a.m. to do front yard work. This is for curb appeal for the most part.

Then on Wednesday the realtor’s and the stager come. Once we settle on what we need to do inside, we’ll figure out when to do it, probably as late as possible, then find someone.

We’re definitely on the downward slope of the curve, but even as we near the bottom there are still many tasks that remain. It’s important now to recall all we’ve done to get to this point. And how daunting the move would look if we had done nothing.

This illustration shows the true nature of the task. The darker orange curve represents packing, arranging details like a second mortgage and movers, all those things that are Minnesota focused and aimed at getting our portable items from here to Colorado. That’s the curve on which we’ve reached the downward slope.

The lighter orange curve represents finding a new home in Colorado, moving in, getting our life altogether shifted from Minnesota to Colorado: buying, updating and moving into a new home, health insurance, driver’s license, estate plan plus all the smaller things like identifying a car dealership, a pharmacy, a grocery store, utilities. On that curve we’ve barely begun to climb the upward slope.

My guess is that the time it takes to extricate ourselves from Andover will match the amount of time it will take us to get the new life begun. How long it will take to have a new, Colorado life? Years, I imagine.

 

 

 

Colorado, Our Land and Home, The Move

Surreal

Leave a comment

Fall                                                                                  Falling Leaves Moon

Kate said this morning that she had surreal moments with the move. Me, too. We both work along, packing, getting other matters taken care of but the move itself feels unreal, as if a mirage. Why did I pack all of my books in boxes? Why did she clear out the guest room, let all the bedroom furniture be carted away? We’re going to do all this and still be living here.

The present, with its weight of 20 years, has far more heft than an imagined place in the mountains, far across the plains. Impossible to see, even in the mind’s eye. So there is only this illusion, this planned, hoped for thing over against the 20 winters, the 20 growing seasons, the 20 birthdays and anniversaries. Against the bringing in of groceries, of feeding the dogs, of doing laundry and writing novels. All here. In this place. Where we still are.

Though I’ve said before that the move makes me feel both here and there, here has more power, the now has more power, than the not yet, the there. Which is good. I want to be here until I’m not, just as I want to live until I die.

Yet we have to have the not yet to pull us forward, to give meaning to those stacks of boxes, the plastic bins, the discarded furniture, all the work we’re having done. Without the not yet our actions, though still surreal, would also be mad. Just as without death, it seems to me, life would lose its uniqueness and become merely being.

We cannot outwait the move. That is, we cannot do nothing and expect to end up living in Colorado next year. No, we have to take action now, find our Conestoga, pack up the hoop skirts, the anvil and plow. Get the oxen ready.

And so we are. But I imagine those pioneers probably looked at the wagon and felt as we do. We’re still here in Pennsylvania or Ohio or Virginia and though we’ve got our goods packed and ready to load, we remain here. As we always have. And always will.

Until wood on wood begins to creak and cry out, until the whip cracks over broad shoulders and with a lurch the wagon is no longer still, until then, we live here.

 

Latin, Memories, Myth and Story, Translating De Bello Gallico, Translating Metamorphoses, World History

Regret, like resistance to the Borg, is futile. In all ways but one.

Leave a comment

Fall                                                                                Falling Leaves Moon

Not sure why, but today I told Greg, my Latin tutor, why I was doing this. Or, maybe I’ve told him before and don’t remember, but I don’t think so. (Of course, by definition, how would I know?)

The story begins with my traipsing off to college, already doubting my Christian faith for a number of reasons, not the least of which was what I perceived as a holding back by my native Methodism of (to me at that point) elegant proofs for the existence of God. I got them from the local Catholic priest. I didn’t know that he re-iterating Aquinas.

It was not far into my first history of philosophy class that we dismantled each one, piece by piece. Oh. My.

Philosophy set my mind on fire week after week. I signed up for Logic in the second semester and the second history of philosophy segment. Even though I left Wabash I had already earned half a philosophy major’s worth of credits in my freshman year.

All this excitement led me quickly to the conclusion that I wanted to be able to read German, so I could pursue Kant, Hegel and Heidegger in their native language. So, I signed up for German, too. From my point of view it was a disaster. I struggled in every aspect of it and was faced with getting a D at the end of the second semester. That was not going to happen, so I dropped it.

A youthful decision, one I regret. It took me 45 years to get back to a language; but, I decided I wanted to challenge myself, see if my conclusion, defensively drawn in 1966, that I could not learn a language, was in fact true. It was not true.

Now I have a deeper regret, that I didn’t pursue German further and that I didn’t do Latin and Greek while in college, too. The classics and art history seem to be my natural intellectual terrain, but I never took a course in either one. Regrets are pointless, of course, the retrospective both wallowing in a past now gone and not retrievable, but I believe there is one good thing about them.

They can be a goad to action now, or future action. That is, we don’t have to repeat the actions we regret. We can change our life’s trajectory. So, I intend to spend the third phase of my life, as long as body and mind hold together, pursuing the classics and art history, doing as much writing about both as I can.

 

Weather +Climate

Pluviophile

Leave a comment

Fall                                                                           Falling Leaves Moon

Pluviophile. Apparently a neologism first appearing on Facebook. Language refuses to stay within its banks, just ask those folks who police French. I saw the word for the first time today in a newspaper headline.

There was an article the other day about scientists who researched Yelp restaurant reviews (I know, scientists and Yelp don’t seem to belong in the same sentence.) and discovered they could be used to predict the weather. Or, at least to describe the weather on the day the reviewer ate in the restaurant. Turns out that over 70% of positive reviews came during sunny days and a similar percentage the other way on rainy, gloomy days.

A pluviophile, a person who finds peace and contentment in a rainy day, might skew these statistics a bit. It describes me. Rainy days find me energized and ready to go. Ditto cloudy, cold, stormy. That’s not to say that sunshine sets upsets me. It doesn’t. I just have a polyphilia for weather.

Here’s another one I discovered, too.

Art and Culture, Asia, Politics

How’d You Do?

Leave a comment

Fall                                                                                 Falling Leaves Moon

One other thing on Joshua Wong, buried deep in the particulars. As a high schooler about to graduate, he had to take exams for entrance to college. Ever since the Song Dynasty high stakes tests have determined social mobility and status for those not lucky enough to be aristocrats or, in the current version, of the Chinese Community party cadres.

Every one in Honk Kong wanted to know about his scores and he had to go on television to answer questions about them. Turns out he’s a middle of the score card kid. Not a future Mandarin or literati, nor a future member of the party. I don’t know this for sure, but I imagine those folks who were so interested in his scores were disappointed.

I hope Wong strikes a blow here not only for democratic freedoms, but for a society in which gifts like leadership, courage, and tenacity count as much as academic test scores.

Asia, Colorado, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Politics, US History, World History

Obey

Leave a comment

Fall                                                                                      Falling Leaves Moon

 

Students in Jefferson County, Colorado and Hong Kong reacted strongly against authoritarian regimes that would limit the teaching of history and studies focused on the homeland. This is no accident. Children and teens are acutely aware of the BS factor in adult pronouncements. They learn some of that at home no doubt, matching parents words with their deeds, but school authorities often say one thing and do another. Kids always notice. Sometimes, like reasonable human beings, they dismiss it, probably saying something like, adults will be adults, but sometimes they notice a danger to their future, perhaps even to the adult’s future.

Especially when governments, the schoolboard in the instance of Jefferson County and Beijing in the instance of Hong Kong, try to shape teaching to conform to their own ends. In Jefferson County the schoolboard wanted a more “patriotic” curriculum that emphasized the values of free enterprise and loyalty. They also wanted a curriculum that downplayed the role of protest and other civil disobedience in the shaping of American history. In Hong Kong the movement led by Joshua Wong wanted public decision making in who would be chief executive of Hong Kong. They also opposed a moral and national educational program* that had critics among Hong Kong teachers, just like Jefferson County.

Children know that their birthright is a world in which they have a voice, in which their decisions and choices matter, in which the information on which they make those choices is as unbiased as possible. In particular they oppose bias by so called “authorities.” Why? Because children instinctively know that authority shapes reality for its own purposes.

As we grow older, we become that authority. If we are wise and can remember our own youth, we will listen to the voice of the young when they say, “I’m calling bullshit on that.”

 

*”The “China Model National Conditions Teaching Manual”, published by the National Education Services Centre under government fundings, was found to be biased towards the Communist Party of China and the so-called “China model“. The teaching manual called the Communist Party an “advanced, selfless and united ruling group” (進步、無私與團結的執政集團), while denouncing Democratic and Republican Parties of the United States as a “fierce inter-party rivalry [that] makes the people suffer”” analysis by teachers, from Wikipedia

Asia, Politics

Joshua Wong

Leave a comment

Fall                                                                                           Falling Leaves Moon

 

Here is my new hero. He’s 17 and got his political activist credentials at 15 when he opposed the adoption in Hong Kong of a “patriotic” curriculum. His name is Joshua Wong and his efforts, which have led to the huge protests reported in the media recently, are a larger scale example of the same kind of energy seen in Jefferson County, Colorado that I reported on this week.

Joshua quotes the movie “V for Vendetta” saying: “The people should not be afraid of the government, the government should be afraid of the people.” He’s 17 and looks younger. But this kid has courage. It was his call to occupy the Civic Square, just as a democracy movement action had begun to weaken, that resulted in his arrest, then the flooding into the streets of many other Hong Kong citizens.

Saul Alinsky said, “The action is in the reaction.” How right he is. This is a perfect example.

There is some deep part of me that is moved by the bravery and leadership of individuals against overwhelming odds, and moved profoundly. A swell begins in the chest and moves up through the heart and into the eyes, bringing tears. It is a mixture of pride, anger, fear and wonder. And underneath it all beats solid resolve. If I were in Hong Kong, I would stand with Joshua. If I were in Jefferson County, I would stand with the students there.

Make no mistake. Joshua Wong is Chinese, facing down the Chinese government. He does not want to be an American, to have our history or even our institutions. He wants the chance to participate in his, to be a Chinese citizen actively supporting his country. If we can’t support that, then our experiment here counts for nothing.