Monthly Archives: June 2014

Anoka County, Dogs, Friends, Minnesota

Nighttime Fireworks

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Beltane                                                                 Summer Moon

It’s night time in the exurbs. The full summer moon lights up the neighbors lighting up the sky. With fireworks. Yes, our neighbors have a fascination with fireworks, a fascination that seems to strike them most often around 10 pm. And no, I don’t know why.

We have two dogs with mild thunder phobias and the fireworks often set them whining. I don’t blame them. They make me whine, too. The dogs though can’t know that the neighbors are, for the most part, peaceable and friendly. The other part being the 10 pm fireworks, of course.

They seem to have gone silent. Nope. Another one. Gertie’s upset. The nights around the 4th and the night of the 4th itself are the worst.

Just let Gertie in the bedroom. That’s her safe place when there’s thunder or fireworks. Rigel’s ok if she’s with her sis, Vega. If not, she heads for the small hallway coming in from the garage. Enclosed and dark.

It would be nice to find a place without even these signs of human habitation. Out there. You know. Colorado.

Colorado, The Move

Red Tape.

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Beltane                                                                    Summer Moon

We have actual red tape. It goes on stuff that’s leaving the house before we do. Boxes, right now, of DVDs and books. Other things will follow. So in this case red tape means freeing up room for the green tape. That’s the stuff that will leave with us for Colorado. And the yellow tape means we’re not sure quite yet.

Surprised myself today when sorting DVDs at how many I want to keep. Probably not rational since most movies are available somewhere for streaming. Movies by favorite directors like Weir, Wender, Anderson, Bergman and movie houses like Hammer, classics from Criterion or other art house companies, plus the stuff of my youth like the Mummy, Frankenstein and Dracula are all in the green tape box. A weird comfort, as with many of my book categories, knowing I can reach for one whenever I need it.

There will be many decisions like these. We have asked the SortTossPack folks to come the last week of June to move things out of the garage, take the furniture to the consignment shop and a first load of books and dvds to half-price books.

 

Sport

World Cup

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Beltane                                                                    Summer Moon

The World Cup. Is the time when the rest of the world shows why their obsessions matter more than ours. Now that’s not hard to understand when our World Series goes global by having a left coast team play an east coast team. Or, when our Superbowl refers to a match among paid giants whose fight is not gladitorial only in that it is not to the death. At least not usually. It’s also easy to understand the attitude that soccer, played in outfits suitable for a day at the beach, has a more human tenor than one played in flannel or  hyper-padded spandex with gloves and helmets.

And, granted, in a more globalized economy, in a world with jet service to anywhere in less than a day, an event that includes 204 teams from six continents (presumably Antarctica is too chilly for shorts and polo shirts) has the right to call itself the World Cup.

Still. If I understand it right, soccer is hockey played on grass. Here’s my first hurdle. In spite of 40 years a Minnesotan, hockey has not become even a little interesting. I know. I know. A venial sin, but a sin nonetheless. However, if I don’t like it on ice, grass doesn’t make it better. Plus, what’s with the beach outfits? Are those really any costumes for grown millionaires to wear in public? At least basketball is played indoors. Or something.

Anyhow. I liked Brazil. I hope either Brazil or Argentina wins. Why? Because I’ve been there? Maybe. On the other hand, and I do know what this means, are you ready for some football?

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Beltane                                                             Summer Moon

A quote by Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset, passed on by Bill Schmidt, and to which I say amen.


Every life is a point of view directed upon the universe. Strictly speaking, what one life sees no other can. Every individual, whether person, nation or epoch, is an organ, for which there can be no substitute, constructed for the apprehension of truth…. Without the development, the perpetual change and the inexhaustible series of adventures which constitute life, the universe, or absolutely valid truth, would remain unknown…. [R]eality happens to be, like a landscape, possessed of an infinite number of perspectives, all equally veracious and authentic. The sole false perspective is that which claims to be the only one there is.

Art and Culture, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Phone Latin

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Beltane                                                                        Summer Moon

Greg and I have done phone Latin for over four years.  We just finished another go and he found the verses I found difficult challenging, too. That makes me feel ok. Like life, if I have a partner in my confusion, I’m fine. Then we can work on it together. And, if we don’t achieve clarity, we’re still together. Just confused together.

It is a weird thing to contemplate, this long term relationship, now in its fifth year during which Greg and I have seen each other twice, once when I met him at the UU church in Wayzata and a second time when he and Anna, his significant other, came to Kate’s retirement party at the MIA.

Conducting all these sessions over the phone has an anachronistic feel, yet for the study of a language, it has worked just fine. We have the internet in common, using Perseus as an interlocutor for definitions and usage. We met weekly for the first two and a half years, then we went to every two weeks, the schedule we follow now, though even that gets spread out some due to our mutual schedules.

This fall, the long term project can get underway at last.

Right now I’m working on the story of Apollo and Daphne, which Antonio del Pollaiolo has rendered here with Daphne beginning to sprout what will become the leaves of the laurel tree. Ironically, the laurel becomes the symbol of male athletic dominance.

 

 

Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Wanting to do better

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Beltane                                                                    Summer Moon

The last time Greg (Latin tutor) and I had a session I fumbled around, missing this nuance and that one. Determined to do better I dug into each word over the last couple of weeks, getting its exact declension or conjugation and meaning, noting that before I went on. Then I hit those five verses I mentioned before and felt I’d stumbled into a dark Latin basement. Unable to see I flailed around but even the commentaries, which usually unstick me, didn’t help.

We’ll see how things go today. I’m still hopeful that by fall I’ll be translating on my own, but those verses challenged that timeline.

Kate’s off to a quilt show in St. Cloud, so I have the dog watch to myself.

Friends

A Full Summer Moon

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Beltane                                                                      Summer Moon

A full summer moon hangs in the June sky giving a lustre of mid-day to the objects below. About a half-mile before the turn onto 153rd Ave. Round Lake reflects this moon, faint ripples on its surface made silver. The rains and the snowfall of this first half-year have filled it up. It’s been a welcome sight on return trips home for twenty years.

Tonight I came back from the monthly sheepshead game at Roy Wolf’s in St. Paul. Luck, lady luck, was with me tonight. A nod to Fortuna and her grace. This group of three ex-Jesuits, one aging peace activist and a former Protestant make an odd group in terms of faith journeys. Two of us have left the formal religious world behind some time ago while three work in it in hopes of reform.

The ostensible thing that keeps us meeting once a month lies in small pieces of pasteboard, some with pictures, some not. We distribute them to each other, try to discern something from the ones given to us and play this German peasant game with its odd rules (queens are high for one thing). The game gets us together, but the relationships keep us coming together to play the game.

 

Colorado, The Move

Editing

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Beltane                                                                     Summer Moon

Boxes have begun to pile up. Some with yellow tape. Not sure yet. Most right now with red tape. Sell. A few with green tape. Move. As the months progress the green boxes will out number the red ones as we “edit” our belongings. Edit is a real estate term for cleaning all the junk out of the house before you try to sell it.

We’ll have SortTossPack come the last week of June to help clear out the garage, take our bedroom furniture except for the bed, the furniture in the guest room, again with the exception of the bed. By then we’ll also have numerous boxes of books and curios, dvds and such. I’m hopeful sometime in that time frame the Vectra, the leg press, the long arm quilter and the riding lawnmower have gone on to other homes where they will be used.

We meet with the last realtor to interview next Tuesday, the day after we meet with our financial consultant. On Tuesday Anne, Kate’s sister, helped us begin what will be a larger editing of our landscape. Mostly pruning, but some new plantings as well. On that day, too, I cut away the yew over the boulder wall.

All this work, small chunks at a time, has taken the edge off the move for me, made it something now, rather than later. We are, so far, making the move a pleasant experience, one with enough time to accomplish. May it be so going forward, too.

 

Dogs, Family, Garden, Latin, The Move, Translating Metamorphoses

Spray, Translate, Box

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Beltane                                                          Summer Moon

Sprayed the orchard again. I’m going to have this down by the end of the season with two a weeks in the orchard and once a week in the veggie garden. The rain and the International Ag Labs program (+ plus Bill Schmidt’s super juice that I applied last fall) have combined to give much of our garden big boosts. The collard greens, egg plants, cucumbers, beans, sugar snap peas, chard, beets, garlic and carrots have all exceeded their usual growth by this time of year. The tomatoes and peppers have been slowed down by the cooler weather and we’ve lost one of each. The onions don’t look bad, but they don’t look great either.

Got back on that equus. The next few verses after those that threw me were also tricky, but with the commentary I got through them. That felt very good.

Kate came up with an excellent idea, pack two boxes a day. If we each do it, that’s 28 boxes a week. And, in just two decades at that rate we’ll be ready to go. No, much earlier than that. By next spring, lord willin and the creek don’t rise.

Today I boxed up DVDs and surprised myself by finding several that I want to take along. More, though, thank god, that I could let go.

Mission crew commander Buckman-Ellis tells me that it’s looking bad for Kep coming to join him in Korea. The housing situation there is dormitory style until the dorms fill up, then you can go off base and, presumably, have a dog. That is, however, if the dorms fill up.

Fine with us. Kep has fit in with the locals.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Woolly Mammoths

He did that on purpose

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Beltane                                                                      Summer Moon

Another word for your third phase consideration: purpose. People who have purpose do much better than those who don’t, especially in the third phase and in several senses.

“It’s a very robust predictor of health and wellness in old age,” said Patricia Boyle, a neuropsychologist at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center in Chicago.  NYT, Living on Purpose.

Lower rates of Alzheimer’s and mild cognitive impairment (by significant amounts, JAMA article) as well as lower rates of mortality were noticed in people with high purpose scores. Too, the protective powers of purpose seem unrelated to age. (SAGE publication on Purpose and Mortality.)

Purpose covers a wide range of matters. I looked it up in my favorite, the OED. Here’s a germane definition or two: 1. That which one sets before oneself as a thing to be obtained or done; the object which one has in view. And 3. The object for which anything is done or made, or for which it exists; the result or effect intended or sought; end, aim

When this article crossed my horizon, Frank Broderick and his mitzvahs came to mind. 81 years old, bad hip pain from lower back, Frank braved the surgery at some risk so he could keep on helping people. “I’d rather wear out than rust out.”

Among certain folks helping people defines life’s purpose. And it certainly can, Frank being a strong example of the type. But helping others is far from the only purpose that can invigorate the third phase. A friend makes art. They are books, visual memoirs. I don’t know if he would define them as a purpose for his life, but they seem to be. Another friend has built a company well-known for excellence. The work no longer stimulates him (and hasn’t for a long time), but helping the company make a graceful transition to a time after his leadership, that does. That’s a clear purpose. Another has organized a group to focus on maintaining a healthy sea shore in Maine. Yet another freely shares his expertise with the computer, with building websites while another continues a life-long passion for drumming. If I understand this literature correctly, each of these have a real and solid guard against the onset of dementia and the likelihood of a longer life.

Made me wonder about myself. What is my purpose? Well, you’re reading part of it. Yes, the written trail I’m leaving behind is part of what gets me up in the morning. So does working with the land and with plants. Working for a sustainable human path on this planet. Being a good husband, father, grandparent, friend. A reliable partner for the animals in my life. There’s that Latin work I’m doing, too. Art and art history are a passion. Novels, too. So, I feel like I have a reasonable seawall against dementia and at least a shot at a longer life. And that’s on purpose.