Beltane                                                                 Summer Moon

The quiet has descended. Night falls here with few sounds other than insects and animals.

During the day nature’s biplanes, the dragonflies, swarmed, flying their graceful, darting paths through the air. I love dragonflies, they’re beautiful and a wonder of nature, but seeing them means only one thing. Mosquitoes. One of the less alluring parts of living in the humid east.

There is in each of these realizations, dragonflies = mosquitoes, for instance, a hint of knowledge that will be past. In the arid west mosquitoes and dragonflies are not part of summer. Though lack of water and intense heat are. I’m collecting these upper Midwestern home truths, ones that I’ve often ignored, as I compare daily life here with what I imagine daily life will be like later. There.

Some day, either at this computer in this study or at this computer in my new study further west, I plan to sit down and try to pick out as much of this subtle cultural knowledge as I can. Duncan, Oklahoma, by way of stories of my parents will be my first stop, then Oklahoma at large, Indiana, followed by Wisconsin and Minnesota. What are the kind of things that we know that go unremarked because they are so ordinary, so commonplace? These are the real markers of our culture.

Beltane                                                                 Summer Moon

The clan convened north of 694 for the first time on a restaurant meeting night. I used a line in my e-mail inviting folks to Taste of Thailand on University mentioning the pick-up line. Nope, not a northern burbs e-harmony.com, rather an observation Kate and I made shortly after moving up here 20 years ago that there were more pick-ups on the road than sedans.

Tom, Bill, Frank, Warren and I dined in a quiet restaurant, spring rolls, papaya salad and fried bananas on my check. The conversation moved around, sometimes lighting on our move to Colorado, other times on general aging issues, then the recovery of our two o.r. patients, Frank and Tom, bits on Memorial Day and what serving our country means, Warren and Sheryl’s move from house 1 to house 2 and on the creek that’s ten feet high and risin’ out in the western burbs. Apparently Lake Minnetonka is at an all time high, breaching retaining walls and resulting in no wake zones that have slowed boat traffic on the Lake to almost nothing.

Since the drive only took 20 minutes, it felt like I was cheating, not putting in my usual degree of effort.

Beltane                                                                  Summer Moon

SortTossPack folks came out. Lot of good energy, ideas. They have a consignment store and will help us sell our higher value items for a split fee. Split fee is fine with us, get the stuff out and bring some cash in. We’re not sellers of things. They also have a truck that can help us move larger items to places for donation or to their store for sale. Movers and packers, too.

We’ll start opening up some holes in the house where we can begin to store items packed ahead of time. (the consignment store used by the SortTossPack folks.)

This is, as they say, gettin’ real.