Monthly Archives: July 2014

Aging, Dreams, Faith and Spirituality, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Nocturne

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Summer                                                            New (Lughnasa) Moon

It’s not a new idea, I know, but tonight I’m feeling the truth of each day as a microcosm of a life. We wake to begin our day from a state of unconsciousness, born anew into a world that has no mark on it. Our life goes on with or with out loved ones, with or with out work, with or with out health, just as a new born babies must.

It’s that element of being thrown into the world (I love this idea of Heidegger’s.) that gets repeated each day. The wonder and the vibrancy of life comes from just that unpredictability. What will this day bring? What will this life bring?

As the day goes on, our efforts are strong and effective or not, are loving and compassionate or not, are creative and exciting or not. And as night falls, our body grows weary and demands sleep.

Just as it will do one day for the last time. And on that day, it will have been a day just like any other. Except, as far as we know, we’ll not be thrown into this world again. Mayhap another. Or not.

It is now the end of this day, of this smaller life, this 26th of July in the year 2014 by Western reckoning. My body needs to rest. And so I shall. Good night.

Colorado, The Move

Money, Money, Money

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Summer                                                        New (Lughnasa) Moon

Kate and I went to Keys for breakfast this morning, had our business meeting there. We’ve started tallying the cost of moving, that is, the cost of those things we’ll pay related to getting to Colorado. There’s some yard work, some handyman work, some painting, moving itself of course, but inside that is the cost of moving and storing items during staging the house.

We’ll have art service professionals build wooden crates for the large Jeremiah Miller paintings we own. Each one is 67″ by 68″ with no glass to protect the painting. There’ll be the cost of specialty boxes for the electronics, the other art we have framed and any other items too fragile to trust to the moving company.

There will be, of course, costs associated with buying and selling houses, but that should get covered in the transactions themselves. Then there will be setting up house related expenses in Colorado. Painting, building this or that, fencing, raised beds, that sort of thing.

It will be expensive to move even if we do well on the sale of the house and I’m guessing that we will. Not a surprise. Just important to get all the costs at least estimated so we don’t have any big unexpected costs.

 

General

A Top, Full of Spin

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Summer                                                          New (Lughnasa) Moon

My own workout schedule has gotten results. It lowers my resting heart rate, increases the speed at which my heart rate drops after I complete exercising and I’m physically stronger. My stamina, though, does not seem as good as it used to be, partly due to aging, of course, but also, I think, due to my decrease in longer, slower aerobics.

The body slows down, develops creaks here and there, is slower to recover. We’re like a top that starts out full of spin and, as it loses momentum, starts to wobble, then finally falls to the ground still. This is not a gloomy observation; it’s just fact. Life is no less full and exciting during the time of the wobble as it was at the time of full spin. This might come as a surprise to those still there, but vitality and enthusiasm are not physical, but spiritual. They are, that is, matters of the will and the heart, not the body.

Look at Stephen Hawking, for example. He’s an extreme example of what every person in the third phase knows. The body wears down, becomes less able, yes. But that does not mean that the mind, the heart, the drive, the passion has to go with it.

The finish line model of retirement, golf and eat until you die, suggests otherwise, but it was never an accurate portrayal of human life. It was about defining life as either working or not working. Life is so much more than that, both during the years of regular employment and those that come after, in the third phase.

So, I’ll stay on the treadmill, not to defy aging, because that’s impossible; but, rather, to get the most from it. So far that seems to be working.

 

Memories

You Can’t Go Home Again

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Summer                                                            New (Lughnasa) Moon

In the spirit of Heraclitus and Thomas Wolfe:

Clarification on hometown lost. It was I who lost the Alexandria I described. I lost it and so did many of those who lived there when I did, but those who live there today, who have chosen it as their home or remained through the changes I describe, may have a different view. They may not view it as lost, but as home.

GeekWorld, Great Work, Weather +Climate

Mudslides, sinkholes and…craters?

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Summer                                                               New (Lughnasa) Moon

 

Russian scientists say they believe a 60-meter (66-yard) wide crater discovered recently in far northern Siberia could be the result of changing temperatures in the region.  Andrei Plekhanov, a senior researcher at the Scientific Research Center of the Arctic, told the AP Thursday that the crater was mostly likely the result of a “build-up of excessive pressure” underground due to rising temperatures in the region.

Plekhanov on Wednesday traveled to the crater, some 30 kilometers (18.64 miles) from the Bovanenkovo gas field in the far northern Yamal peninsula. He said 80 percent of the crater appeared to be made up of ice and that there were no traces of an explosion, eliminating the possibility that a meteorite had struck the region.

Read more : http://www.geologypage.com/2014/07/66-yard-crater-appears-in-far-northern.html#ixzz38V5KlWeU
Follow us: @geologypage on Twitter | geology.page on Facebook

 

Cooking, Garden, Latin, Science, Translating Metamorphoses

Matters Thorny

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Summer                                                              New (Lughnasa) Moon

croppedIMAG0360Kate destemmed and clipped the wispy end off all the gooseberries I picked. Gooseberries are just this side of not being worth the effort. She put them in a bowl with our blueberries, mixed them and made tarts. Tasty. We also had green beans and carrots tonight, one day out of the garden. With fish.

The Latin I reviewed over the last couple of days continues to come more easily. Incremental jumps, consolidation of past learning and, by now, long practice have combined to push me forward. Kate reminded me (I’d forgotten.) that I started on this because I doubted I could learn a foreign language. But, I wanted to try.

I’ve felt for many years the same way about calculus and step by slow step I’m learning pre-calculus through the Khan Academy. Somewhere back in my education, maybe junior high or so, I got into the habit of racing through exams, wanting to finish well ahead of everybody else and have the rest of the time to myself. As I work on these math problems, I find that same self-pressure, a hurry-up attitude has not left me. It gets in my way. I make bone head mistakes, having to take more time going back over what I’ve done. So, I’m slowing down. Making sure.

Why am I doing this? I enjoy challenging myself, pushing myself into strange places, foreign lands. Latin was a foreign country four years ago, though I’m now a resident alien. Calculus continues to be a faraway land, but I’ve found a path and I’m on it. These are different ways of looking at the world, different perspectives. With Latin I’m going deep into an ancient culture and the deeper I go the more mysterious it becomes. I imagine calculus will prove the same.

Cooking, Garden

I Sprayed In The Garden Alone

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Summer                                                              Most Heat Moon

As the Most Heat Moon gives way to the Lughnasa Moon, gardening takes more time. Today I picked gooseberries, a thorny fruit, willing to rip and tear any who venture near. Got enough for a full basket and didn’t end up wounded.

This was also a spray morning. One goes on the plants throwing out seeds in various fleshy carriers like tomatoes, egg plants, cucumbers, beans, peppers, as well as those concentrating on root growth like onions, garlic, carrots and beets. The other is for those plants spreading their leaves like chard and collard greens, various herbs.

Today was also a drench day, a concentrated solution that goes on the soil, not on the plant, and raises the level of molecular interactions in the soil that create plant growth. Drenching is a bit messy since I’m using an old Miraclegro feeder that has seen far better days. It leaks and sprays, soaking my shoes and pants. Time for a new one.

Kate has the pressure cooker out, shades of the 1950’s, having discovered that low acid vegetables like beets and carrots require the higher 240 degrees a pressure cooker can reach.

Forgot to mention that my energy level has returned to normal, perhaps normal plus a bit, after the long two weeks with guests, then Kate gone, then more guests. I’m glad because it restored my sense that I can care for a garden, a vegetable garden, about the size of ours, especially if that’s the primary outdoor work I have to do. That and the bees.

Politics, US History, Weather +Climate

Positive Signs

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Summer                                                             Most Heat Moon

Some positive signs. News about climate change has gone from whether to when, how much and what do we do. Though this is a fight that will require joint effort beyond anything I’ve seen short of a war, the U.S. can lead if it finds the will. A change in the public opinion atmosphere, in this case, may lead to a change in the less gaseous atmosphere.

Another. News reports have begun to notice inner city America. Again. Urban poverty became prevalent long before climate change arose. Roman and Chinese cities in ancient times already grappled with its problems. Over the course of my life urban issues have had their cycles, reaching a zenith during the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson and his Great Cities programs.

Today’s Star-Tribune has an article that grazes the issue written by Chicago Tribune conservative Steve Chapman who quotes Ta-Nehisi Coates of the Atlantic.  This link to the Atlantic collects several of Coates’ fine essays on urban America, particularly urban black America with a focus on Chicago. He’s making a case for reparations, that is, some form of restitution for all those effected by chattel slavery. Well worth reading.

Cities and their issues were the focus of my professional and political life. It’s heartening to me to see these matters beginning to take up space in various media. The amount of human heartache and the egregious loss of raw talent occasioned through urban poverty is stupefying.

May both climate change and urban poverty see more of our combined attention over the next few decades. They both need it. (Another bit on the intractability of urban poverty later.)

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work

Nocturne

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Summer                                                          Most Heat Moon

The increasing pace of the harvest is plant life telling us that the seasons that matter are cropped0017changing. What seems like the height of summer to us presages not more summer, but fall and the big harvests of September and October. That’s what the plants know and in their distinct and ancient language they’re reminding us the time to gather in foodstuffs is now. Right now.

Pressure cookers and canning kettles across the Midwest have begun to heat up, too. That’s another sign. 5 pints of carrots went into the jars today and beets go in tomorrow, green beans as well. In a less complex economy this work would decide whether some of us would live or die through the long winter. Even with our garden I’m grateful for grocery stores. We would have to devote so much more of our time and energy to growing food if it were not for them.

Still, it’s not bad to have a reminder that the complex market system that brings vegetablescroppedIMAG0327 and fruits and meats and processed foods of all kind into our grocery stores is just that, a human system. That means it can be disrupted by war, by natural disaster, by disease, by insects, by normal seasonal fluctuations in temperature and by climate change.

It feels good to have those chicken-leek pies in the freezer. Those red glass jars of pickled beets and the golden ones of carrots. The jarscroppedIMAG0347 of honey and pints of green beans, tomatoes and sauces. Frozen greens and peppers. Dried onions and garlic. Grape jam, currant and gooseberry pies. All the various herbs dried. And last year all the apples and cherries, plums and pears. Next year, probably, too, with the help of bees. (but we won’t be here, most likely, to make that happen.)

Garden, Our Land and Home

Gratitude

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Summer                                                                        Most Heat Moon

The mid-summer harvest has well begun with the first crop of beets now almost all picked,cropped1500IMAG0368 about a half of the first carrot crop and early green beans. The garlic, though late, is getting close and several of my onion stems were lying down yesterday, a sign they want to come out of the ground for drying.

I have a second crop of beets and carrots already on their way to maturity and a third planting in some places sporting two or three leaves. The tomatoes have begun to flesh out and I expect, with some heat, that we’ll begin to see ripe tomatoes in the next week. Kate picked a large batch of blueberries yesterday and I had some for breakfast this morning.

The fruit trees are disappointing. Almost no apples, cherries and no plums and very few pears. Kate may have the right croppedIMAG0360diagnosis (her real gift in the art of medicine). No bees. There are, as always, many many currants and our crop of gooseberries is as big as it’s ever been. I’m going to pick them tomorrow. We also have a sizable hazelnut crop this year.

As usual the garden’s bounty varies, but as far as the vegetables go, this is as good a year as I’ve seen in our 20 years here.

(gooseberries)