Yearly Archives: 2014

Travel

Da Fish Shack

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Imbolc                                                           Valentine Moon

On the north shore of Kaua’i there is a small cabin, no air conditioning, set right on the beach.  The shore is outside.  It’s called Da Fish Shack.  If you go there, you’ll find entries in its book from two Woolly Mammoths, Mark Odegard and me.  Mark’s are beautiful images drawn in his immediately recognizable style, mine carved in my cursive, also, unfortunately, immediately recognizable.

(Na Pali coast)

It’s a treasure at $90 a day (now $99, I discovered.), a place to sink into the island and the ocean.  Today it is on my mind.  Instead of looking at the weather console reading -17 earlier this morning, I could look out on just another day in paradise.  The Pacific would be there, waters and weather streaming down from Alaska and the Bering Sea, but tempered by the more southerly ocean. Not far away lies Hanalei and the Na’pali coastline.  The Limahuli gardens, too.

The pace is slow.  from a February 26th, 2008 entry:  “4:45PM 75.  Cloudy.  Ocean breeze.  Languid is the word.  Da Fish Shack has a languid atmosphere right now; I feel enervated by the languidness of it all.  Or something.”

 

Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Enough. Almost.

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Imbolc                                                                          Valentine Moon

Reimagining my faith, as I understand now, lies in the synthesis of the work here on the vegetable garden, the orchard, the flowers, the woods, the bees and the Great Work.  The work set out by Thomas Berry in his book of that name.  The great work for our generation is to create a sustainable path for human presence on the planet.  The carbon loading information alone makes this both true and necessary.

Placing my faith in the praxis of work at home and in the political world means it is incarnational and immanent in nature, key for me.  Incarnational means the sacred has no meaning apart from the corporal, the material world. Immanent means it is not about the transcendent, but about the here and now.

And that’s enough.  Almost.  There are though the mystical, the emotional aspects of the life of faith.  They were once deeply important for me.  And I miss them.  Liturgical music, contemplative prayer, the sense of mystery and profound depth.  Not transcendence, never a God or a power above, but the calm strength of the Ave Maria or a session of lectio divina or a quiet meditation sinking into the inner chapel.  The emotional resonance of these familiar, ancient practices still speak to my soul, but the metaphysical structure which validated them has crumbled and fallen away.

(Thomas Cole, Expulsion From the Garden)

Just noting this, not sure what to do with it, as I have not been for the last 20 some years. Perhaps a new path will open for me that includes these things.  Or, perhaps I will have to create one of my own.  Might be part of the task of reimagining faith.

 

Holidays, Memories, Myth and Story

Heart Shaped Cakes

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Imbolc                                                                  Valentine Moon

Back in the far away long ago my mother used to bake heart shaped cakes, devil’s food, for my birthday.  This Valentine holiday birthday has always been one of the semi-secret joys of my life.  I get to celebrate my annual pilgrimage, my odometer turns over, on a day now celebrated for love; special enough to remember, not so special that it overpowers my birthday, like I always imagine Christmas would or July 4th.

It did make those elementary school rituals, often laden with important messages not quite understood, hoped for, but more often missed than received, even more fraught.

Now that I know it’s the mid-day of the ides of February, 13-15th, and that Lupercalia followed it in Roman times, it makes this whole approaching time more special.  February was the Roman December, the last month of the year and the ides, those mid-month days sacred to Jupiter, usually had festivals and celebrations.  On this last month of the Roman year the Romans took care to purify themselves and offer sacrifices to absolve themselves of whatever needed to be left behind in the old year.

We could approach Valentine’s Day as a day for clearing up any uncertainties or unpleasantnesses built up over the previous year.  Seek a way to resolve them, then go out for a meal to seal them off, leave them behind.

Politics
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Imbolc                                                        Valentine Moon

“Consider these facts from a highly intelligent forthcoming book, War Front to Store Front, by Paul Brinkley: In 2009, Afghanistan had a nominal GDP of $10 billion. Of that number, 60% was foreign aid. The cultivation of poppy and the production and export of raw heroin–all of which is informal and underground–accounted for 30%. That leaves 10%, or $1 billion, of self-sustaining, legitimate economic activity. During the same year, the U.S. military spent $4 billion per month to protect a country with a real annual economic output of $1 billion.””  Foreign Policy, Situation Report for 2/10/2014

Family, Travel

Minnesota RV and Camper Show

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Imbolc                                                            Valentine Moon

America.  You know you’re in the land of the free and the home of the credit card when you pay to get into a place so you can convince yourself to buy something pretty expensive.  That’s what Kate and I did today.  We went to the Minnesota RV and Camper Show at the Minneapolis Coliseum.

(class A)

We’ve gone on several memorable RV trips, all earlier in our marriage and both enjoy the road.  Kate in particular prefers modes of transportation that involve packing and unpacking least.  RV’s and cruise ships match up well.  Take the stuff out of the suitcases once, then pack it up to go home.  Bliss, as far as Kate’s concerned.  It’s not as important to me, but I see the advantage.

Our decision to keep multiple dogs has hampered our traveling by adding the cost of boarding.  Otherwise, we might have set out on a third phase wanderjahr, cruising the blue highways.

(class C)

The show has row after of fifth wheel trailers with pull-down picnic decks, slide-outs and fireplaces.  Yes, fireplaces.  The class C motorhomes, the cabforward and bedroom, kitchen, living area immediately behind, used to be somewhat affordable.  Now they’ve gone above $100,000, about what you would have paid for an A-class motorhome ten years ago.  Unless you have a very ample wallet, the design and craftsmanship on the lower and mid-range vehicles veers from cheesy to tinny.  $100,000 is a lot of money to pay for something with a door that flexes as you open it and stairs that wobble.

But Kate had seen something in the paper, something interesting.  Not cheap exactly, but approaching affordable.  The Vistabule teardrop trailer.  Made here in Minnesota by a man whose commitment to good work is evident, these units intrigue me.  A good way to see wilder places on the cheap without all the huffing and puffing of a pack.

Might be more on this later.

Health, Third Phase

Do No Harm

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Imbolc                                                              Valentine Moon

The first rule of fight club is don’t talk about fight club.  The first rule of working out at home is don’t hurt yourself.  Applying the sensible Hippocratic oath to yourself.  Oops.  Twice this week I’ve broken the first rule of working out at home.

First, I pulled a muscle in my right arm.  Owwee. But ice and rest and heat have pretty much brought it back.  Not fully, but on the road.  Then, this evening, I went for my first pull-up, two exercises into the P90X leg and back workout.  Ready to get started I reached up, pulled hard and the next thing I knew I was on my back, the back of my head (fortunately, the really hard part) had bounced off the concrete basement floor and I had road rash on my elbows.

Sorta backward when you hurt yourself when you’re working out to improve your fitness.

This required a concierge physician’s examination.  She shined a flashlight in my eyes, palpated my head and rib cage (it hurt for some reason).  She said nothing made her nervous. But. If anything tingles, or I’m confused or if I see lights when I turn my neck, wake her up.  Fortunately, she sleeps right next to me.  That’s not a problem.

So, I’m taking two days off and I’ll get back at it Monday.  But.  I’m buying, in fact I just ordered, a stud mounted pull up bar.  The one I have now attaches to the door jamb.  Or, should I say, was supposed to attach to the door jamb.

General
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Imbolc                                                           Valentine Moon

As regards ancientrails’ 9 year + run.  I want to acknowledge Bill Schmidt as an important resource in keeping the back office working.  He knows the code, both literally and figuratively.  When ancientrails hit its storage limit in August of 2013, he did a four day dive into the innards of the website and its host, solving what turned out to be a difficult problem.

And, you too, reader.  Seeing the counter hit upward of 2,000 unique visits a month, I know you’re out there, but I know only a few of you by name.  Thanks for listening.

Health, Writing

Now In Its Tenth Year

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Imbolc                                                                  Valentine Moon

Bit of a setback with P90X.  I pulled a muscle in my right forearm.  Have to go slower, avoid things that stress it.  But I’ve had injuries before and will again.  Time and ice.

Though I can’t get back into to the 2005 archives right now I think it was the 5th of February or so when I began this blog.  That would make this the early days of ancientrails’ 10th year.  Though you couldn’t know this from your vantage point, I have shelves of notebooks that I kept before these blogs.

Ancientrails does represent a continuation of that work, if not a direct one.  At one point I had a spiritual journal, a journal much like this blog and an art history journal. Ancientrails contains traces of all three with a twist in midair to account for the public nature of the blog.

Writing seems to be a necessary part of my life, not really an outlet, but a moment of creating something new.  I like Yeats on this:  creativity is the social act of a solitary person.  That’s the way ancientrails feels to me.  The Great Wheel blog is a different matter.  It wants to be the voice of a mythologist and an activist.  I’ll let it be what it wants.

Here we’ll have the usual mish-mash of things, stuff I’m interested in, stuff that frustrates me, stuff I’m learning, stuff I hope for, the lives of folks I know.  Now in its tenth year. How about that?

Family

Residents of North America Since 1717

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Imbolc                                                                  Valentine Moon

A woodprint of Richard Ellis’s grand-son Dimick, born in Ashfield, Massachusetts in 1776. Richard was the first Ellis settler of my line in the U.S. and a captain in the Revolutionary Army.  This print is on the flyleaf of a long, 272 page genealogical history of the Ellises descended through Richard.  He was born in Dublin, Ireland to Welsh parents and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 13 in 1717. (just got the link to this book, of which I have a copy, today.)

biographicalsket1888elli_0006

General
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Imbolc                                                                     Valentine Moon

Looked out the window toward the orchard.  Snow.  Snow on the bee hive.  Snow over the old wheelbarrow.  Snow over the hay bales and up the trunks of the trees.  Snow over the plant holder.  This last is around 2 feet high.  We have from 2 to three feet of snow depending on where you look.  The vegetable garden is a hobbit village after a blizzard.