Monthly Archives: January 2014

GeekWorld

Adrift Somewhere in Colorado

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Winter                                                               Seed Catalog Moon

Expensive mistakes.  My phone, adrift somewhere in Colorado, not answering calls has moved beyond my reach.  Of course, Verizon was happy to replace it, demanding only a blood price and a new 2 year contract.  This phone contract business is great if you’re the phone company, for everyone else (most of us) not so much.

They did have a four propeller, camera equipped drone though, controllable from the phone. Would be fun.  But, I think for me, it would be a like a Christmas present of days gone by.  Used a lot for a while, then not at all.  Shaun Chenoweth, our Verizon salesperson, said realtors use them to show roofs and farmers use them to manage their land.  Both uses make sense to me.  Could help us find lost dogs but we have homebound canines at this point.  Still.

A smart phone is a great companion, especially once you have some reading material on it. That’s a generational attitude, I know.  All others have music.  Check e-mail.  Send texts. Take photographs.  Keep up with my Instapaper reading.  Keep notes.  Look up saved information in my Evernote account.  Even read a book if I want to.  Find the weather now and the forecasts.  Get warned about heavy weather.  A lot of work for one handheld gadget.  But wait.  There’s more.  You know, Internet, voice activated search, the flashlight, that chess platform, the calendar.  And on and on.

So, the phone is dead; long live the new phone.

Family

Bonded, Dutiful

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Winter                                                             Seed Catalog Moon

Kate and I talked about Denver, about the grandkids, about dogs, about our home here. 1000IMAG0466 We’ve decided, for now, to remain here.  When we’re down to one dog and/or, have smaller dogs, we might consider a move.  If we end up in a situation where we have to vacate this house for physical reasons, we might consider a move.

We also discussed ways we can be more actively engaged in our grandchildren’s lives over  a distance.  In the past we’ve said we want to see them at least four times a year for a week or so at a time.  The Stock Show, their birthdays, which, thankfully, are close together, a time in the summer and a time during Holiseason, Thanksgiving or Hanukkah for example.  We’ve done regular skype times, but those grew pro forma, too routine; so we need to come up with ways to communicate with them regularly, but in different ways.

As a man of German cultural influence (though with considerable Celtic influence, too), there is a strong sense of duty when it comes to family and it got triggered this last visit to 1000IMAG0475Colorado.  These kids are not just Jon and Jen’s responsibility, but mine, too.  Kate’s, too. While the American mobility patterns of the last few decades have separated us physically, the bonds are no less strong and no less real.

It’s up to Kate and me to figure how to remain in Gabe and Ruth’s life.  We’re not alone in this, I know.  Again, any thoughts from any of you out there will be appreciated.

 

Health

Muscle Confusion

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Winter                                                             Seed Catalog Moon

Started a new exercise program, P90X.  The X stands for xtreme and the dialogue of personal trainer Tony Horton is just that.  Xtreme in a weird way.  Self-congratulatory and self-denigrating.  A jarring mixture.

(That’s Tony in panels 1 and 3)

That aside, I believe this program will energize my workouts which had gotten stale.  P90X is a 90 day package of alternating resistance and cardio workouts, each one taking around an hour.  The first one, chest and back, which was tonight pushed me, but in a good way.  Tony’s big thing (yes, Tony and I are on a first name basis already) is muscle confusion.  That is, he works muscle groups from several different angles.

It is true that repetitive workouts begin to lose their punch because your body adapts to them and doesn’t work as hard.  I want to avoid muscle loss associated with aging, to get stronger so that the outdoor work I do is less tiring, and to give myself the advantage that regular, intense exercise has to offer.  I’ve been doing the first and the last with a self-designed program, but I wasn’t progressing.  We’ll see if this program will produce different results.

Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

Sprinting

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Winter                                                             Seed Catalog Moon

Huh.  “90, no more like 95%, right.”  Greg said this during my sight reading this morning.  “You’ve jumped several levels since our last session.” I’d felt it over the last few weeks of translating, a more than gradual emergence of learning, not like moving up a plateau, more like sprinting past a plateau or two.  This is an overnight sensation it’s taken me four years to reach.  I’m grateful for it.

(ok.  I don’t actually know what this guy’s saying.  Anybody else?  Probably something scatological but it’s a cool graphic.  It could be, note the necking.)

I feel accomplished.  I can actually see a Charles Ellis translation of Ovid’s masterwork, the Metamorphoses, coming into existence. Wow. Give me the geezer high five folks.  It’s happenin’.

My next goal is to increase my speed.  I’d like to get to 12-15 verses an hour with the goal of doing around a 100 verses a week.  At that rate I could translate the typical Book, there are 15, in around two months to two and a half months.  The translation would not be polished, of course, but I’d be laying pipe at a credible rate.  Add in polishing and I could maybe finish in four years, perhaps a little more or a little less.  Probably less since presumably my facility would grow as I worked.

Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

4 Years In

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Winter                                                               Seed Catalog Moon

The Latin this morning.  Going over my translations, preparing for sight reading with Greg.  This means reading the Latin aloud, in the order in which I translate it, then translating.  Even with a word’s meaning written over it and the declensions and conjugations indicated below them (annotated by me), this is still a challenge, even after preparation.

(This is a fresco inspired by the passages I translated today.  Lycaon’s servant brings a platter of human meat to Jupiter.  This is the affront for which Jupiter will transform Lycaon into a wolf.)

Preparation essentially means going over the passages I’ll translate with Greg and translating them in my head, checking the translation I get with the translation I’ve written down earlier.  Because I’m translating faster now, we get through much less in a session than I translate, so I’m on verse 300 of Book I, but Greg and I are at verse 216.  This means I’m working with him on material I’ve translated often several weeks ago.  Verse 216, for example, is post-Thanksgiving work.  As a result, reconstructing my thinking then is sometimes difficult.

Today, though, for the first time, I found stuff I struggled with in that post-Thanksgiving translating coming more easily as I went back through it for review.  More easily is not the same as easily, but I’m getting better faster now.

Family, Great Work, Science, Sierra Club, Weather +Climate

Accentuating the Negative

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Winter                                                            Seed Catalog Moon

Again the even heat is so fine.  Makes this feel like a work space instead of a commandeered backroom.

Most of the time today reading materials for the Climate Change MOOC and then listening a set of lectures by Richard Somerville.  He’s a theoretical meteorologist which means that his work includes creating and running weather prediction and climate models.  He is understandable and dispassionate.  And all the more troubling for it.

(this “ski slope” graph shows the rates at which emissions have to reduce when peak CO2 emissions happen on three different dates, one already past.  And we’re currently accelerating. again, see Great Wheel for particulars.)

It’s bugging me right now that I’m putting up all this negative information on Great Wheel, but the terrain ahead of us has become clearer and clearer the further I go in this course. The world needs to act soon and the developed world needs to show leadership.  The EU has committed to emission goals that will meet the challenges and they have more people and a larger economy than we have.  We need to act.

Then, we have to figure out the issue of sustainable development in the developing world, especially China and India, but in Brazil and Russia, too, the BRIC countries.  And we really don’t have much time.  In order to avert literal disaster (see Great Wheel for particulars) emissions worldwide have to peak no later than 2020 and begin then a very sharp reduction.  By very sharp reduction I mean getting to a world with 80% less carbon emissions before 2050.  80%!!!!!!!!!!!

This, the Great Work of Thomas Berry’s work of the same name, is one on which we cannot fail.  If we do, we consign our grandchildren (Ruth and Gabe) and their children to a world of currently unimaginable extremes in sea level rise, temperature, significant rainfall events, coral bleaching, ocean acidification and probably an increased severity of hurricanes and typhoons.  You wouldn’t want to live in this world and your children’s children won’t want to either.

Family, Our Land and Home, Woolly Mammoths

Welcome Home

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Winter                                                                  Seed Catalog Moon

-20.  That should be cold enough.  Felt good to come downstairs to an evenly heated 69 rather than the previous starts at 59 or 58.  The barometers pointed straight up and already at 30.75.  That’s pretty high.  Means a big cold front is here and likely to hang around for a while.

Being with Warren and Sheryl at the Dakota, listening to local jazz musicians felt like a welcome home.  Out with Kate and good friends, in the city.  One of the things I’d miss if we left.

Even the punishment of the cold last night.  A signal that this winter would be winter.  No, not all of them have been that way recently, but at least this one is and the further you go from here south the less likely this kind of weather is.  Ever.

On the other hand there’s Gabe, “Grandpop, would you write about baby animals?”  Ruth, “Don’t go, Grandpop.  Don’t go.”

 

 

Art and Culture, Friends, Minnesota, Music, Third Phase

Jazz. Yeah.

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Winter                                                                Seed Catalog Moon

To the Dakota tonight with my sweetie.  Warren and Sheryl attended this KBEM event, too.  The featured performers Charmin and Shapira are an improbable match.  He, Shapira, looks like a televangelist who maybe slipped along the line, and plays the guitar at times like Jimmy Hendrix.  At other times like a piano.  He’s subtle and smooth.

Charmin could be a smaller Billy Holliday with a great range and soulful tone that comes out easily.  She sang standards, a nice piece by Thelonius Monk and another I imagine was part of Gershwin’s songbook.

They were backed up a trio with a tenor sax, bass and drums.  All of the musicians were excellent.  I have a special fondness for the dreamy riffs that come from the saxophone and this guy was good.

The Dakota is a local treasure, a Minnesota Treasure, like the Japanese National Treasure’s.  They put out quality food and music.

The wind, must have been 10 mph or so, blasted us as we left and the below or right at zero reading made for punishment.  Glad to get to the car.

 

Our Land and Home, Sport, Travel

Steady Heat Theory

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Winter                                                                 Seed Catalog Moon

The stove’s thermostat got fixed today.  Now I can maintain a constant temperature without the highs and lows of previous days.  One of those things I always meant to get around to and now is done.

Returning to normal life, the daily flow of dogs and learning and writing and exercise. 10002012 05 01_4113That’s good.  Over the last few years I’ve noticed a gradual resistance to travel, partly to air travel in particular, but also to leaving home and its comforts.  Once I get away a lot of the old buzz comes back and I enjoy the new place, the differences in culture and the natural world.  The beds are never as good away.

Not sure I said anything about the fact that the Bronco’s won their game on Sunday. There were a lot of people excited about it.  At the rodeo the announcer (the scumbag) asked several times, “Are there any Bronco fans in here!”  When I took the rental car back to Enterprise, one of the check-in people, maybe their supervisor was shaking an orange pom-pom to guide us.  He was very enthusiastic with it, even jumping and down a couple of times.

When I got out, he asked me if I liked the pom-pom.  I said something like, “Uhhh.”  It’s sort of a weird thing to do since folks returning rental cars are almost always going to be from somewhere else.  And they, like me I imagine, aren’t Bronco fans.

 

Travel

In A Zen Place At DIA

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Winter                                              Seed Catalog Moon

At DIA.  No, not dead in action, but Denver International Airport.  So is my cell-phone, unfortunately not with me.  How did I lose it?  No clue.  It’s like a disappearance, a disappeared cell-phone.  After just listening to one guy speak loudly on his, fo a long time, I can understand the motivation to steal them an destroy them.  But I want mine back.

I’ve also made a discovery today.  My flight out is at 3:44 pm. The Olsons are all back in school so I could have left earlier.  At first I bemoaned this lack of efficiency.  I’ve spent a traveling lifetime trying to shave hours, even minutes off connection times and getting in and out of places with just enough time.

Instead today I got up, ate a leisurely breakfast, packed, checked out, drove to the Enterprise rental car return around 11:15 am.  Got on the bus and made it to the airport around noon.  Got my boarding pass, navigated the walk bridge to Gate A security (much quicker), found the terminal associated with A34 and had lunch.  Then I lost my cell phone.

Here’s the learning.  I’ve not felt pressed, instead, even with the phone I’m relaxed.  Plenty of time.  So, in the future I will plan my travel for relaxed comings and goings, not the most efficient.  There’s no prize for most efficient traveler.  Is there?