Monthly Archives: April 2014

Anoka County, Art and Culture

Crawling

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Spring                                                        Bee Hiving Moon

What a day.  Sunshine, blue skies, warm temperature.  A perfect day to take in the North Studio Crawl.  Or so you’d think.  Kate and I went to a garden art studio, a metal worker, a glass blower with jewelry, a potters and woodworker with jewelry and finally a blacksmith. We made the final three stops last year, but the first two were new for us.

We bought something at each place: gifts for the grandkids, a ceramic container for tea, a greenman in concrete, an interesting toad stool, a metal turtle, a necklace and a metal treble clef that functions as a dinner bell.  Not a high aesthetic piece among them, but pleasing to us and we support local artists.

The most gratifying part of the day is seeing actively creative people who live here in Anoka County.  Down many streets and roads and lanes there are folks working with glass, clay, wood, metal, photography, paints, even concrete in interesting ways.  And these are just the ones who sign up to be part of the two day event.  Who knows how many others are here?  Kate and I are.  She in her sewing room, me at the computer.  Lydia, our neighbor across the street makes shirts, bustiers and angel wings which she sells largely on the Renaissance Fair circuit.  We discussed being a stop next year.  There were no textile artists this year and I’m thinking about making chapbooks.

I said so you’d think because some of the artists said traffic had been slower this year.  In spite of, or because of, the beautiful day.

 

Commentary on Religion, Family, Memories, Sport

A Secular Sabbath

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Spring                                                                Bee Hiving Moon

Sundays have a certain slowness to them, as if time itself moves languidly, the urgency of the workweek drained out.  Of course, that’s an inversion of the real phenomena which happens not on Sunday but in the mind when it finds itself in a Sunday way.

Back when I was a small town boy, Sunday meant shining my father’s shoes in the morning before church.  While complaining about it.  I mean, thirty-five cents for dipping my hands in black shoe polish?  Then, off to Sunday School with one teacher or another followed by the Sunday service sitting in the family pew (not reserved, but held for us anyhow by long tradition) under the watchful eye of Jesus praying, his hands on a large boulder, in the Garden of Gethsemane.  This was stage right from the pulpit on the west side of the sanctuary.

Afterward, at least for a long time, we would often get in the family sedan, Mary and I in the back, mom and dad up front, and drive over to Elwood (our most bitter athletic rivals, but that didn’t matter to mom and dad) and go to Mangas’ cafeteria.  It had those tubular rails with an upraised one at the back to hold your formica tray as you passed by the offerings in small dishes.  I remember most the swiss steak, which I loved, and mashed potatoes with butter pooling yellow in the middle.

We would eat, then go home where the rest of the day disappears from memory.

Later, as a city rat, church was a work related experience since my city time is almost exactly coterminous with seminary and my career as a minister.  So, I would head off to work on Sunday morning, usually in this church or that since I worked for the Presbytery (a geographical jurisdiction) and when I finished, again Sunday afternoon sort of disappears from memory.

As an exurbanite, I fell into the Sunday afternoon NFL maw for several years, but as of late the Viking’s have cured me of that experience.  That means now Sundays have neither church nor the cafeteria nor football and what is left is the residue of passivity Sunday represented in its small town and football eras.  No wonder my inner world moves more slowly on Sundays.

It’s my secular sabbath.  And I think that’s a good thing.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, Travel, US History

A Firefly Lit Lane

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Spring                                                         Bee Hiving Moon

Down the well this morning, tapping into the underground stream.  Still searching for an image.  Something to coalesce the third lifetime, the third phase of this body/mind’s adventure here on earth.

One came to me.  Suddenly.  But it feels apt.  I’ll have to let it set for awhile.  Work with it itself in the imagery extension section of the workbook, but it feels pretty good.

The image is of a lane headed back into a woods where the lane continues but with tree branches creating a leafy roof over it.  The time is late twilight, the season late summer.  The air is cool but humid.  And the lane, where it enters the woods, is lit by thousands of fireflies, blinking on and off, shifting locations, providing a weak but real luminescence so I can follow the path into the woods.  Because the fireflies are spread out along the path’s length, they also give the lane a feel of depth, as if it proceeds quite a long way into the woods.

This is not a mind birthed image, but a memory.  I saw this lane and these fireflies several years ago during a trip to New Harmony, Indiana.  I’ve written here about New Harmony before, but just as a reminder, it was founded by the Rappites who created a very successful religious community there in the mid-19th century.  Much of New Harmony’s built environment has its roots it that era.

When they moved to Old Economy Village in Pennsylvania, the Welsh industrialist Robert Owen bought the whole town for his utopian community, a quasi-socialist endeavor.  He brought with him from Britain a number of scientists and engineers committed to his scheme on a ship dubbed the Boatload of Knowledge.  The community didn’t last long, but the U.S. Geological Survey among other things grew out of the efforts of the people who came to New Harmony.

Since that time, New Harmony has continued to have a religious and intellectual bent.  In fact, as I looked down the lane into the firefly lit woods, on my left was an open air Episcopal Church designed by famed architect, Philip Johnson and on my right was a small garden marked by tiny drumlins planted with firs and dotted with boulders carved with quotes by Paul Tillich, the Protestant theologian, whose tomb lies there, too, in Paul Tillich Park.

In fact, this aerial photograph shows the spot where I stood between the open air church on the left and Paul Tillich Park on the right, looking north down the lane into what at night was a tree lined bower over an ancientrail leading into an infinite distance.  This feels like a perfect third phase image.

Commentary on the news, Memories, Minnesota, Politics, Third Phase

20-20-20

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Spring                                                        Bee Hiving Moon

Continuing the city theme from the post below.  I live in the exurbs now, just two or three miles or so north of us corn fields begin and our development is a small cul de sac of homes that jut out into a working truck garden.  The MUSA line, the intended sprawl container of the Met Council, runs a mile south of us.  Beyond it a city cannot extend sewer connections.  That’s why we have a septic system and our own well.

But before I lived in the city.  First Minneapolis, then St. Paul.  In fact, over dinner with Kate, I realized I spent roughly 20 years in a small town, 20 years in the city and now have spent 20 years in the exurbs.  Those 20 years in the city were where I found my milieux.  The mix it up, bare knuckle politics of neighborhood economic development, labor organizing and straight political work appealed to my middle adult need for agency.Irvine Park

The varieties of problems, the mix of people, the different communities, the history  rushing into the present all exhilarated me.  In the city years I wanted, needed to make change, get things done, improve life.  And through fortunate relationships with many active folks I had a chance to participate in some interesting and worthwhile projects.

In the exurban years I’ve retreated, pulled back into my own work, writing, learning, gardening, sharing life with Kate and the dogs.  It was time to do that, to pull back.  That’s even more clear these days.

Here’s an example.  A number of young activists, the age of my city years, especially environmentally focused activists lobby for urban density.  They want to tear down parts of old neighborhoods and build apartment buildings.  These are the same folks who advocate for bicyclists, mass transit and against urban sprawl.  They look at the city and say the way to stop sprawl is to keep people in the center city.  How do you do that?  Build up.

In my years in the city we stopped apartment buildings, advocated neighborhood level 400_late summer 2010_0182decision making and tried to make communities stronger through increasing economic development.  These are different times and I understand the arguments of those who want denser urban areas.  Not only do I understand them, but I agree with them.  But fulfilling those policies often means riding over the protests of folks in the neighborhood.

This is one of those instances where momentum and the needs of the time have shifted thinking.  I can approve from afar, but I wouldn’t be able to wade into the politics.  I’d be too conflicted.  In that situation it’s best I’m removed from the scene.  Out here tending our garden.

General

In Search of Wild Seaweed

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Spring                                                           Bee Hiving Moon

Off to United Noodles in search of the wild dried seaweed.  Kate wants to make seaweed salad so we drove into the oriental grocery in the Twin Cities, United Noodles near Coastal Seafood, and scoured the aisles for the right kind of seaweed.  I also picked up some off the shelf tea.  I plan to compare its quality to that I buy from the more expensive places.  It’s a good deal cheaper at United Noodle.

After our Asian immersion, we went to the Blue Nile, the Ethiopian joint just off Franklin in Seward.  The music mix caught both our ears.  The bartender brings in his ipod, loaded with his own playlist and plugs into the restaurant’s sound system.  Very cool.

While there, watching the Sudanese and Ethiopian men at the bar, the lesbian couples coming in and the young hip couples, bearded men and booted ladies, I remembered why I love cities.  There’s this constant frisson, a meeting between and among opposites and strangers and art and food, in places where everyone has a spot.  This energy lifts me up, makes me happy.  It’s the same lift I got from Chaco Canyon, the Saguaro cacti, and being on the road.

As much as I love our home and our property, the blandness, the sameness, the white-breadedness of the exurbs grates on me, wearing me down with its homogeneity. I need difference.  Gonna get into the city at night more.

 

Third Phase

back in the groove

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Spring                                                                 Bee Hiving Moon

New initiatives since the Workshop.  Meditation twice a day.  Using the journal regularly. Watching and taking notes on the art history courses I’ve purchased from the Teaching Company.  Revising short stories.  Currently working on Artemis in Minnesota.  Already back into the Latin, aiming for a translation schedule before Beltane. Regular visits to the Walker, MIA, Russian Museum, galleries.  Starting this coming Thursday.

The image for my third life, or third phase.  Certainly the triskelion as symbol of life’s three phases, but the specific one for the new era.  Not sure. Journal work ahead on this one.  An image will help define this time, help me focus and vet activities.

Garden, Our Land and Home, Travel

Returning to Normal

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Spring                                                          Bee Hiving Moon

Finally beginning to settle back into home life.  Exercise back on track, though not quite up to pre-trip standards, but close enough.  It will get there.  Concentrating on Latin and then Kate’s pacemaker maintenance on Thursday kept me from getting back into my usual rhythm, but I did get substantial work done in Ovid.

We had our business meeting this morning and our finances are on track, as they have been, but it’s nice to see they are still after a long trip.  Travel is the budget buster in our house and we have to keep close watch over it.

So, a couple of deep breaths, the weekend and back to it.  Then we leave on the 23rd for Gabe’s birthday weekend.  Kate and I are going together, driving this time.  As I said the other day, I’m hopeful the soil will be workable enough to plant the cool weather crops before we go.

 

General

A Year Without Bees

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Spring                                                        Bee Hiving Moon

This will be the first year in the last 5 or 6 without bees.  Just weren’t gonna work this year.  A case of bad timing.  I remember last year when I got the package, the colony that outperformed every other colony I’ve had three times over.

Kate was in Denver celebrating the grandkid’s birthdays.  I had thrown my back out moving a heavy hive box, Kona’s cancerous tumor had gotten infected and she was near death, plus the new bees arrived.  It was a cold, wet spring, just like this one and I drove out to Stillwater, picked up the bees, then stopped by John Desteian’s, my long time analyst.

The combination of back pain, Kona’s trip to the emergency vet (always very expensive), having to hive the new package in dismal weather and Kate far away had sent me into a tailspin.  I needed help and John is my backstop.

And I got it from him.  He turned me toward the numinous and Heidegger.  That got me away from my funk and I got up the next morning, hived the new package and got Kona over to her regular vet for a follow-up visit.

It was not a great time period.  Now I’m retreating from bee-keeping this year, so I can visit Gabe at his birthday party.  It’s also a good year for a rest, a halt.  We have a lot of honey, well over 70 pounds. We’ll focus our outdoor energy on the flowers, the vegetables and the orchard.

General
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Spring                                                      Bee Hiving Moon

The way it goes here.  Record snowfall yesterday, spring next week.  It does look like the Mother Earth_r1weather map has decided to relent, give us some good news about the coming growing season.  I want to get in the garden before we leave for Gabe’s birthday the last week of April, plant those cool season crops.  Won’t happen unless the snow melts first.

 

Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

The Sound of Silence

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Spring                                                       Bee Hiving Moon

An unusual time with my Latin tutor, Greg, this morning.  I started translating, that is, I read the Latin which I had annotated, pronouncing the Latin words in the order in which I would translate them, then gave my translation into English.  Nothing.  I went a little further, still nothing.  The silence unnerved me.  “Greg,” I said, “Are you there?”  Oh, yes. Just listening.  Usually, Greg would say something like, well, let’s look at this, what about here?  That would signal, in his gentle way, that I had gone astray somewhere.

Today I read through over ten verses in a row, translating as I went and he said nothing. When we were finished, after he had explained the one place I faltered, a tricky part of Latin grammar and only at the very end, he said, “The best yet.  You’ve really got it.”

His silence meant assent.  I was doing fine and just needed to keep going.

Wow.  That felt good.