Yearly Archives: 2014

Woolly Mammoths

#26 (or so)

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Beltane                                                              Emergence Moon

 

Tomorrow through Sunday the Woolly Mammoths will tramp through the village of Frontenac. Our 26th retreat happens at Villa Maria Retreat Center. The theme, as I’ve noted before is, What is your walk? This is vague. Yes, but it allows a good bit of filling in with whatever makes sense to the individual.

We plan to take some hikes. Perhaps do the labyrinth. We may discuss our walk. Or we may not. On Friday night the herd will wander into Red Wing for dining at the St. James Hotel.

The last time we were at Villa Maria it was a very cold January weekend, a weekend that had a lunar eclipse. Many of us went outside on the retreat center’s grounds, found an open area and watched as the blood moon developed.

We used to structure our retreats with great care, making sure that each of us had plenty of time to present and get feedback. Over the last few years the structure has tended to fall away in favor of a more relaxed time together.

 

 

General
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Beltane                                                            Emergence Moon

Not a lot to say right now. Feeling written out or repetitive. So, shhh. for now.

Humor

CONOP 8888

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Beltane                                                             Emergence Moon

OK. Here’s what puts Minnesota Whackos in perspective. An actual plan, created in 2009, by our army, to deal with a zombie threat and to preserve non-zombie life. Let it be known right here that I’m relieved. I thought John LaDue, Byron White and the corpse containing RV, with the late addition of the anti-neighbor Zumberge family (see earlier posts if these names are new to you.) had established Minnesota as the current reigning whacko champ.

But, no. The army is there to create a national whacko moment far exceeding our home grown ones, even though our whackos are above average. Seriously. below from The Situation Report: 

“”…As its authors note in the document’s ‘disclaimer section,’ ‘this plan was not actually designed as a joke.’ Military planners assigned to the U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska during 2009 and 2010 looked for a creative way to devise a planning document to protect citizens in the event of an attack of any kind. The officers used zombies as their muse. “Planners … realized that training examples for plans must accommodate the political fallout that occurs if the general public mistakenly believes that a fictional training scenario is actually a real plan,” the authors wrote, adding: ‘Rather than risk such an outcome by teaching our augmentees using the fictional ‘Tunisia’ or ‘Nigeria’ scenarios used at [Joint Combined Warfighting School], we elected to use a completely-impossible scenario that could never be mistaken for a real plan.”

 

“… Under ‘Zombie Threat Summary,’ the plan highlights the different kinds of zombie adversaries one might find in such an attack. They include not only vegetarian zombies (‘zombie life forms originating from any cause but pose no direct threat to humans because they only eat plant life’); evil magic zombies (‘EMZs are zombie life forms created via some form of occult experimentation in what might otherwise be referred to as ‘evil magic’); and also chicken zombies.”

 

‘Although it sounds ridiculous, this is actually the only proven class of zombie that actually exists,’ the plan states. So-called ‘CZs’ occur when old hens that can no longer lay eggs are euthanized by farmers with carbon monoxide, buried, and then claw their way back to the surface. ‘CZs are simply terrifying to behold and are likely only to make people become vegetarians in protest to animal cruelty,’ according to CONOP

Colorado, Feelings

Wrenched

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Beltane                                                                    Emergence Moon

The more I consider this, something to keep me alert and awake (he said sardonically.), I think the move is causing my insomnia. It’s not whether to move or not, that’s settled and I feel good about it. No, it’s the interim period, the appearance of staying in place as things were when in fact things have changed dramatically.

Projecting this activity and that into the future, in a new home. Wondering about how to deal with all of our stuff. Remembering moves past and how unpleasant they were. Then heading over to the Colorado Real Estate site to run through my list of zip codes, trolling for places. Looking up places to see horse racing.  Jazz clubs and festivals.

I’m constantly taking myself out of the now and putting myself into a future moment. In some ways this is inescapable since good planning requires it, but I’ve got to work through a way of keeping my attention in the here and now. Not sure how to do that right now since all the various aspects of a move act like a wiggly tooth waiting to come out.

Feelings
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Beltane                                                                 Emergence Moon

Once again, early morning. Up since 3:30. Not worried, just not sleeping. Lying there as the moonlight streamed in the window, turning to this familiar posture, then that. Mind chugging along, chewing on something which, even at this point closest to it, I can’t recall.

Calm. Just. Awake.

These times puzzle me with their resistance to solution.

Weather +Climate

10 Feet High and Risin’

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Beltane                                                                 Emergence Moon

“A large section of the mighty West Antarctica ice sheet has begun falling apart and its continued melting now appears to be unstoppable…If the findings hold up, they suggest that the melting could destabilize neighboring parts of the ice sheet and a rise in sea level of 10 feet or more may be unavoidable in coming centuries.” NYT

(see this website for a clickable version of the map to the right. It shows, in gray and orange here, states affected at that level of sea rise.)

“WASHINGTON — The accelerating rate of climate change poses a severe risk to national security and acts as a catalyst for global political conflict, a report published Tuesday by a leading government-funded military research organization concluded.”  NYT 

I see these things. I know the road ahead and it is difficult. Yet, there are Ruth and Gabe. And your grandchildren, too. Then, the children they too will have. And imagine the world in which they will have to live.

All this demands a piece of me for as long as I’m able. Some of us have to lean on the horn until folks start coming out of the building to see what’s going on.

Colorado, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Not tavering, not at all, just westing

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Beltane                                                        Emergence Moon

In moving myself toward the way of this retreat, I have consulted a two-volume work I bought a year ago and have not used with any intent, the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. It was difficult to learn how to use it, at least for me, and it took me a good while to get my bearings, but I finally found a section that had some rich associations with What is your walk?

A listing under the more general category of travel contains words related to travel in a specific direction.

Here is a complete listing of words, in historical order, that have meant or mean travel in a specific direction in English: begang OE. lode OE-1400. way OE. one’s way c 1205. trade c1375-1564. course c1380. trace 1400-1768. raik c1400-1425. race c1400-c1480. track 1570. voye 1578. tract 1616-1865. career 1642-1651. gate 1735. line of march 1835.

Under this listing then comes other phrases or words with a direct relation to travel in a specific direction. Where there is more than one word, they are listed in historical order, though I chose not to put in dates. (too fussy)

1. aim

2. compass course

3. easting, northing, westing, southing. (naut.)

4. counter-course

5. collision course

6. stepping

7. round, beat, route

8. rithryne (OE) straight/right

9. zigzagerry, tack, zig-zagging, darning

10. compass, circuit, circumference, compassing, ymbangt (OE), circuiteer

11. ascent, slope, breasting.

12. descent

13. deviation from straight course: aeflast (OE), ymbswaepe (OE), turn, wrying, circumference, extravagancy, extravagation, outstepping, deviation, detour, left. digression.

14. straying/going astray: gedwolfaer (OE), stray, vagation, out-way going, gate will, will gate,  straying, tavering, estraying, wandering. strayer, stray, straggler, strayling. missing. disorientation. bewildering. estray.

(Albert Bierstadt – Estes Park, Colorado, Whyte’s Lake)

 

 

 

Faith and Spirituality, Feelings

Sunrise

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Beltane                                                                          Emergence Moon

Been on the slow boat these last few days, walking with that peculiar slightly stoved-in upper body typical of lower back pain sufferers world-wide. I’m not a fan of those days when my mind’s not sharp, whether the cause is melancholy or percocet or persistent pain.

Thankfully that fuzziness has lifted and clarity has begun to blow through the temporary cob-webs. As that happens, I’m reminded of a possible utility for melancholy and, perhaps, pain’s distraction, too. That is, melancholy often occurs when life has shoveled in more data, more choice points, just more. The trigger may seem to be an experience, emotional distress, or a recurrent worry, but in fact the trigger may be more like a thresh-hold device. In this understanding your mind has more to process than it can handle. It could be that a major creative project has been bubbling along below consciousness and as it surfaces overwhelms the mind.

So melancholy and perhaps physical pain can put the brakes on more data, more ideas, more experiences as the mind catches up, sorts, makes decisions. This doesn’t change the unpleasant affect of melancholy or the sleeplessness and anxiety it can produce on its own, but it can help us understand why such a phenomenon has persisted in the human animal.

Sometimes, when I’m most on my mental game (not often in this case), I can sense the onset of melancholy and sometimes (even fewer instances), then I can dredge up what has occupied me below the surface. When this has happened, I find melancholy a rich time, even as it puts out the drag chute and stops consciousness from rushing forward, ahead of itself.

On Maui Mt. Haleakala rises high above the lower reaches of the island, an extinct volcano with a huge caldera. Tourists often visit Mt. Haleakala around 4 a.m. so they can see the sun rise over the eastern Pacific. The chill of the height and the early morning creates a cold fog that rolls in through a large gap in the caldera, the ocean breeze cooled into a cloud formation that obscures the volcanic cone and the caldera. Then, as the sun rises and heat begins to dissipate the fog, the down coats and sleeping bags draped over shoulders come off and Mt. Haleakala suddenly becomes visible.

So, this time, the sun has risen, the fog has begun to clear. Thanks be.

Health, Weather +Climate

Spring Holds Out For a Better Contract

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Beltane                                                                         Emergence Moon

Great line from Paul Huttner at MPR’s Updraft blog:  The season formerly known as spring… The plants in our vegetable garden really want to grow. I can tell. But the temperatures aren’t giving them much of a chance.

While at the Woolly retreat this weekend, the transplants from Seed Saver’s Exchange will probably come.  The timing is right; or, at least the timing should be right. But, we may have to shelter the plants awhile until the soil warms up a bit more.

Did my workout this evening, at least the high intensity aerobic part, and my back has calmed down. I’m glad this isn’t a week or week + long event.

Faith and Spirituality, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Walk

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Beltane                                                                     Emergence Moon

In preparation for What is your walk? A few items, resources for thinking.

Chaucer’s great work is a tale told by pilgrims, as is Pilgrim’s Progress. In Dante, Virgil and Dante walk first through the inferno, then the purgatorio, then paradiso. The Way of a Pilgrim is a classic of Russian Orthodox spirituality which focuses on a wandering starets who developed the Jesus prayer.

 

O.E.D.  walk

as v.

1. Walk. o.e. to roll, to toss. (obs.) m.e. to journey, move about on foot.

2. to go from place to place, to journey, to wander, to go (one’s way)

6. chiefly in religious use, after bible examples: to conduct oneself, to behave (ill or well, wisely or unwisely). sometimes with reference to path or way.

as n.

1. an act or spell of walking or going on foot from place to place

b. travel, wandering (obs)

6. relig. lang. manner of behavior, conduct of life

eytmology

walk (v.) Look up walk at Dictionary.com“travel on foot,” c.1200, a merger of two verbs, 1. Old English wealcan “to toss, roll, move round” (past tense weolc, past participle wealcen), and 2. wealcian “to roll up, curl,” from Proto-Germanic *welk- (cognates: Old Norse valka “to drag about,” Danish valke “to full” (cloth), Middle Dutch walken “to knead, press, full” (cloth), Old High German walchan “to knead,” German walken “to full”), perhaps ultimately from PIE root *wel- (3) “to turn, roll” (see volvox).

The shift in sense is perhaps from a colloquial use of the Old English word or via the sense of “to full cloth” (by treading on it), though this sense does not appear until after the change in meaning. In 13c. it is used of snakes and the passage of time, and in 15c. of wheeled carts. “Rarely is there so specific a word as NE walk, clearly distinguished from both go and run” [Buck]. Meaning “to go away” is recorded from mid-15c. Transitive meaning “to exercise a dog (or horse)” is from late 15c.; meaning “to escort (someone) in a walk” is from 1620s. Meaning “move (a heavy object) by turning and shoving it in a manner suggesting walking” is by 1890. To walk it off, of an injury, etc., is from 1741. Related: Walked; walking.walk (n.) Look up walk at Dictionary.comc.1200, “a tossing, rolling;” mid-13c., “an act of walking, a going on foot;” late 14c., “a stroll,” also “a path, a walkway;” from walk (v.). The meaning “broad path in a garden” is from 1530s. Meaning “particular manner of walking” is from 1650s. Meaning “manner of action, way of living” is from 1580s; hence walk of life (1733). Meaning “range or sphere of activity” is from 1759. Sports sense of “base on balls” is recorded from 1905; to win in a walk (1854) is from horse racing (see walk-over). As a type of sponsored group trek as a fund-raising event, by 1971 (walk-a-thon is from 1963)