Monthly Archives: February 2014

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

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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.

Minnesota, Weather +Climate

Ice Cold. Superior.

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Imbolc                                                                Valentine Moon

from the Updraft Blog:  “Today’s MPR News weather spy Jay Austin is a professor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth and the Large Lakes Observatory. He sends along the news this morning that Lake Superior has completely frozen over, a month ahead of schedule for years when the big lake reaches complete ice cover.

Here’s the brief but attention getting email Jay sent my way this morning.”

Superior is completely ice covered

superior-Frozen nasa

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Retirement, Third Phase

Kick the Bucket List. Live As A Eudaimoniac.

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Imbolc                                                            Valentine Moon

Friend Tom Crane was talking about how the bucket list might be different.  “Imagine if your bucket list was things like looking in the eye and telling everyone you cared about that you loved them deeply and had for a long time.”

In my view you better have your bucket list imprinted in the daily way of things or it means little.  Why save up to the end things you can do today?

A bucket list is a close relative of the finish line model of retirement.  Wait until you no longer have work dragging you down, then do all the fun stuff.  Bucket list.  Wait until you know you’re going to die, then do all the fun stuff you didn’t have the courage to do before.

Tom’s idea is better.  Let’s consider those things that would make our life and the lives of those around us more rich, more peaceful, more fruitful.  Then, do them.

This, by the way, is the guiding notion of eudaimonia.  Here’s a repeat passage from a post last summer:

Composed of two Greek worlds, eu (good) and daimon (spirit) Aristotle and the Stoics after him promoted it as the end of human life. As such it has often been translated as happiness or welfare, but perhaps a better phrase is human flourishing.  Or, without getting fancy, why not good spirit?  Both have an active turn, taking us toward enrichment, fullness, striving within a humane ambit.

Now there you have an internal state worth cultivating.  It’s the difference between a noun and a gerund.

 

Art and Culture, Asia, Family, Friends, Holidays, Myth and Story, Retirement, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Ecce Homo

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Imbolc                                                             Valentine Moon

Scott got reservations at David Fong’s, a long time Chinese restaurant in Bloomington. David Fong, Yin’s brother, started a chow mein takeout on the same location about 50 years ago.  This was eating in a Chinese restaurant on Chinese New Year’s, not eating a New Year meal.  The food was very good, especially since Scott came complete with recommendations from Yin as to what we would like.  Handy.

Frank, Warren, Tom, Scott and I were there.  We shared our steak kow, mongolian beef, lo mein, honey crusted walnut shrimp, pot stickers and a crumbly chicken dish whose name I can’t recall.  You put the chicken in a lettuce leaf, sort of like a taco.  All of them were tasty.

We spent a lot of time talking about grandkids.  Scott and I had a similar experience of five-year old grand-daughters who decided we were not “real” grandpop’s because we were not the biological father of their parent.  As with Ruth, this has passed in Scott’s case, too.

Tom has set up an intriguing question for our February 17th meeting:   What does it mean to be a male in our culture?  He has also asked that we bring three images of men that will start off our conversation.  I’ve got a few posted here, but as I’ve gone hunting for images it made me wonder if there is a book called the male image in art.  Lots of such books for females, many of nudes, but of men?  A quick google search in the books section shows none.  Probably are some, but that they’re not obvious says something.

Another thought that occurred to me, and it relates to third phase life for men, is this, what is our image of a man at home?  That is, beyond the guy with the fly-rod, golf club, barca-lounger, or woodshop.  And these are based on the silly, even pernicious idea of third phase life for men as the replacement of work hours with a favorite leisure activity.

With no positive image of a man at home it’s difficult to understand how to be at home when one has left traditional work life behind.