Monthly Archives: February 2014

Faith and Spirituality, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

ruthless honesty, a modest bravery and unrelenting persistence

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                                            Valentine Moon

“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”    Rumi

This is life’s biggest challenge, paring away the expectations of parents, teachers and friends, paring away the influence of expectations garnered from others who seem successful.  Why is this life’s biggest challenge?  Because no matter how strong or how sensible expectations of you are, they mean nothing next to the unfolding seed that is your life. Your life.

You are unique, the only constellation of stardust ever created that has your particular biology and your personal history.  Even if you shape yourself in dutiful obedience to an outsiders expectations, even if when you do so, you find yourself successful according to some criteria or another, you will have robbed the earth and humankind because you will have hidden the gifts that only you have to offer.

We are so good at hiding our own, powerful self in the cloaks of profession, of achievement, of fame, of obedience, of dogma and ideology that we often hide it from ourselves.  Learning who you are and what you are is so easily enmeshed in the web your life weaves; whole schools of philosophy have been devoted to the inscription over the doorway to the Delphic oracle:  Know thyself.

Memento Mori mosaic from excavations in the convent of San Gregorio, Via Appia, Rome, Italy. The Greek motto gnōthi sauton (know thyself, nosce te ipsum) combines with the image to convey the famous warning: Respice post te; hominem te esse memento; memento mori. (Look behind; remember that you are mortal; remember death.)

There is no easy formula for taking on this task of paring away, of pruning the branches of your life so that only the strong, self-defining trunk and its branches remain.  It requires at least, a ruthless honesty, a modest bravery and unrelenting persistence.  The honesty is, I think, self-explanatory.  Acting on the learning that honesty brings requires bravery and the action of unfolding your own myth takes a lifetime.

But what a journey.

 

Dogs, Family, Minnesota

Careening Out of February

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                            Valentine Moon

The dogs were quiet this morning.  I slept in until 8:30.  When I came out to the kitchen, 2011 09 04_1258750they looked up at me, happy to see me and I let them outside.  Gertie, our self-anointed early morning canine agitator, was quiet this morning.  Why?  No idea.  She has slept in her crate the last two nights rather than in our bedroom.  Maybe that explains some of it. Whatever it was, I’d like to see it again tomorrow.

(Gertie’s got her head out the furthest.)

After the worst snow event since the 1991 Halloween blizzard, we’re settling into another week of polar vortex style cold.  Looks like we’re going to slide out of February on a Red Bull crashed-ice course.

Over the last day or so the snow lining the branches of the shrubs and trees has begun to melt in the now much warmer sun, more light on less square feet of earth.  As it melts, though, it freezes back because the air temperature around it is still way below freezing. This has created some beautiful instances of clear ice topped snow, as if many of the snow-covered branches have sprouted diamond tiaras.  Now presenting, Miss Euonymus.  And for Miss Congeniality, the entrant from the oak hill, Miss Dogwood.

Kate’s going to stay at the quilt retreat an extra night so she can watch the Winter Olympics’ closing ceremonies.  I’ll go get her tomorrow morning, after the roads have cleared.  I’ve sat out the entire storm, taking Kate up to Rogers late morning on Thursday, then sitting right here, where I plan to stay until I leave to get her tomorrow.

Health

Owee

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                                 Valentine Moon

Back on the treadmill.  No, I haven’t started going off to work again.  I mean, I’m back on the treadmill.  In what I consider an ironic situation my right pectoral is so painful I can’t do the P90X workouts.  Why ironic?  Because in the fall that injured it, I landed on my back. Must have really torqued that left arm, which I’m pretty sure hit first and absorbed most of the fall.  Why didn’t that hurt my left pectoral?  I have no idea.

Sent a note to my doc telling her that this is two weeks past the event and the pain interferes with my workouts and general getting around.  Maybe I’ll head back to Dave, the bicycling Lancastershire man who helped me get past my shoulder pain last fall.  I’m going to let Corrie decide.

I don’t mind the treadmill since I watch movies and TV while I’m doing it, but about a year ago I decided I wanted a more robust workout, one that included resistance work, too.  I developed my own, which seemed to plateau.

Then Kate saw an article for P90X and I did the fitness test for it.  And passed.  Barely. It’s fun and I was just beginning to learn the moves of the various workouts, showing some progress, when I fell off the door jamb.

Garden, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

Winter Time Archaeology

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                                   Valentine Moon

Finished first draft of my query letter.  It includes a synopsis of Missing, about 1,500 IMAG0365words, and the first five pages.  Missing itself, after revision 5.5, is at 103,000 or so.  I want to get some feedback on the query letter, then start sending it out to agents.  My plan is to get it out to 10 agents before I leave for Tucson and other points south west.

(June 5th, 2013)

That took the morning.  Tomorrow I’m putting together our seed and plant orders, calculating the kinds of nitrogen they will need based on the bed sizes for specific vegetables and getting an order for the nitrogen off to Luke Lemmer in Plato, Minnesota.  This is in plenty of time since our vegetable beds, raised about 18 inches off the ground, are invisible now.  It would require winter time archaeology to find them.

The Vegetable Garden
The Vegetable Garden

This is part of why I like four distinct seasons.   Planning a garden while 3 feet of snow lie in our yard and the temperature is in the teens headed toward the teens below makes the full cycle of life an experience rather than abstraction.

(February 21, 2014)

 

Family, Garden, Great Work, Health, Our Land and Home

A Letter To Saudi Arabia

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                               Valentine Moon

Brother Mark, within a hundred miles of the Rub al Kahli, the empty quarter, asked me about the winter and the garden.  Here’s my reply:

It has been our most severe winter since 1978-79, which was only 8 years after I moved up here.  We just got 10 inches of snow and the temperatures are headed back down.  It’s 2 right now and we have -15 for a low forecast this Thursday.  Snow in our front yard is as high as my hip.  The raised beds in the vegetable garden have disappeared.

All the dogs are good right now.  Gertie gets around much better since she had the surgical crimp removed from her left rear knee.

Kate’s away at quilting retreat with her sister Anne.  Just me, the dogs and lots of snow.

Last year I began using products from International Ag Labs and they increased our production even though I used them for only part of the season.  The broadcast fertilizer went down fall and this spring I add nitrogen.  There’s also a transplant formula to use when planting.  These products improved the microbial life in the soil and add minerals found missing through soil tests.  I tested the vegetable garden and the orchard last fall.

International Ag labs moves gardens and farms toward sustainable agriculture by creating healthy soil.  This has always made sense to me and I’m pleased to have found them.  Bill Schmidt found them.

Over this weekend I plan to place my seed and plant orders.  Once I’ve done that I can 10002010 09 25_0301order nitrogen in forms specific for specific plants.  This means I will no longer have to rotate my crops because I’m building soils designed optimally for each plant type.

Tomatoes, beets, cucumbers, melons, bush beans, sugar snap peas, leeks, greens, herbs and peppers.  The garlic’s already in the ground.  This fall I’ll plant scallions at the same time I plant garlic.

The orchard is part of the program this year.  That means I’ll be spraying the trees as well as the vegetables.  These are foliar feedings, not insecticides.  That’s a weekly, sometimes twice-weekly job. There, are, too soil drenches every other week.

Aren’t you glad you asked?

Garden, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

The Storm Has Passed

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                                   Valentine Moon

Daytime silence.  The snow is higher around our house, in our orchard and vegetable 1000IMAG0028garden than I can ever remember it.  The garden shed, the honey house, the grandkids playhouse have foot-thick contoured roofs, snow conforming to their shape.  In the orchard the currants are visible only at the tips and snow climbs the trunks of the cherry, the plum, the apple and pear trees.  The fruit tree limbs dangle heavily, weighted down by snow clinging to them.  Cedars, spruce and Norway pines all droop, heavy with captured snow.  This kind of snow can injury trees, split limbs, even kill younger or more fragile trees.

The result is a quality of quiet I associate only with late night.  A muffled experience with no mufflers, the kind of quiet where the sounds of your mind and your ear try to compensate with small murmurings, chirpings, light buzzing.  Like the house has been wrapped in cotton.

It leaves me in a pleasant torpor, a vague holiday or weekend feeling on a Friday afternoon, wanting hot chocolate and a log fire.  Some jazz, a good book.  Mostly it feels like night, as if candles would be good, too, except the windows are ablaze with albedo returned sunlight off the new snowcover.

 

Great Work, Politics, Sierra Club

A Snow Day

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                                    Valentine Moon

My first meeting with the America Votes’ folks canceled. All that snow.  There was an hour long presentation over the phone with accompanying slides on an Adobe platform, adobe.connect.  Polling data.  Very interesting and completely confidential.

The technology interested me. I listened to the presentation on my cell phone while the presenter clicked through a PowerPoint presentation, using small green arrows to indicate his focus.  There were 25 of us on the call and there were few questions.  Over the phone without video is a terrible way to have a meeting.  I should know.  I conducted them weekly during legislative sessions for three years for the Sierra Clubs Legislative committee.

(a screenshot of adobe connect)adobe.connect

Even so, like today, when participants are dispersed or the timing is inconvenient, then the phone allows everyone access to information and decision making.  That advantage makes the phone a reasonable alternative, if not a desirable one.

This meeting ended with a time for questions, but there were few.  Phones isolate us as much as they connect us.  We were each participants in a meeting for one.  Not much to discuss with yourself.

I look forward to meeting these folks in person in April.  I’ll be in Tucson during the March meeting.

Weather +Climate

Snow. Snow. Then, Some More Snow.

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                               Valentine Moon

The snow has come down steadily, earlier it reminded me of the whiteout we mushed 2 20 2014 snow storm.through in the Boundary Waters all those years ago.  We may not get a lot of snow compared to some places, but when we have a winter like this one, it’s all still on the ground.  After the storm, cold again.  Not the deep bone chillers, but cold.

Right now the projection is for around 12 inches.  That’s a lot of snow.  And it’s heavy.

I know it seems improbable but there is a climate change explanation for this winter.  As the polar ice melts in the Arctic, it changes the direction and intensity of the jet stream. The sag that has polar vortexed us for much of the winter might well be a direct result.

Tomorrow morning I have a meeting at 10 am in St. Paul.  We’ll see whether that’s possible.  I’m representing the Sierra Club, Margaret Levin in particular, at the America Votes monthly gathering.  This is an interesting group focused on building a progressive America.  Me, too.

Art and Culture, Family
Aside Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                                   Valentine Moon

Took Kate up to Rogers, the Hampton Inn there.  She’s in her room, napping as the snow falls.  Her sister, Annie, will be coming up later.  It’s a quilting retreat.  Which, literally, is what it is.  That is, the quilters come together, bring all their own stuff-sewing machines, stash, other projects, food-and sew on things they would do at home. It’s a group mentoring experience where problems get worked out, praise is given and a sense that you’re not in this quilting thing alone is nurtured.    (The Quilting Frolic 1813 John Lewis Krimmel)