Monthly Archives: August 2014

The Move

Nocturne

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Lughnasa                                                               College Moon

Didn’t quite finish, perhaps the equivalent of one full bookshelf left. Ran out of boxes. Again. This week though. Then onto files and office supplies.

Again the night is quiet here. A distinguishing characteristic of this property is quiet after about 9 pm. A quality difficult to package, to sell as an amenity, but for this introvert, one of the key charms.

(Edwin Howland Blashfield (1848-1936) – Spring scattering stars)

The dogs are asleep. Kate’s asleep. Most of the books have gone into seclusion for the winter. This is a more minimalist version of the study, the basement than existed at the beginning of summer. It feels good.

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Lugnasa                                                                            College Moon

That handyman? Follow up. A spiral c.t. An appendix in trouble. Laproscopic removal. Overnight stay. Breakfast in the hospital and a visit from the surgeon. Back home. Doing fine. Good outcome.

Art and Culture, Humanities, Letters, The Move, Third Phase

A Little Bit Crazy

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Lughnasa                                                                    College Moon

Mircea Eliade’s journals. Abraham Maslow’s journals. A biography of Dickens. A West Point set of maps for modern warfare. An atlas. Then, two. Three. Several Alan Moore graphic novels: V for Vendetta, the Watchman, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Jung’s Red Book. Some egyptology texts. Cardboard mouths consuming my library, eating the books one at a time.

Tried listening to other sorts of music but outlaw country suits my packing mood. Gotta be a little bit crazy to sort through a collection gathered over a lifetime, especially crazy to jettison some of it. Outlaw country is a little bit crazy and not demanding on the listener.

As I pack, I fantasize about what I will do with this one, and that one, and those once they reappear, undigested by the cardboard. I’ll finally sit down and just read this one. Learn more about Alan Watts and Nikola Tesla. Tracking down changing national borders and following them backwards through time. Working to solidify my understanding of Egypt’s influence on the Minoans and the Greeks. All those projects, large and small. Touching these tools, not different really from hammer and screwdriver, ripsaw and router. Makes me ache to use them.   (David Roberts)

Humanities, Literature, Travel, World History

A Death in Brazil

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Lughnasa                                                                   College Moon

7th and 16th in GDP. 5th and 4th in population. 5th and 15th in geographic size. What are Brazil and Indonesia? I know little about either one. Trying to plug that gap at least a little I just finished a remarkable book called, A Death in Brazil, by Peter Robb.

(farofa fried cassava (manioc) flour)

It’s a strange book structurally and in terms of genre, impressionistic in its use of anecdotes sprinkled through research on Brazilian colonization, slavery, key literary figures and recent political ethos (through 2003).  It is a Conradian evoking of the steamy foreign with strange, slightly distant figures acting and reacting in ways both understandable and despicable, and repetitive.

Yet, it is also a travel book, apparently recounting the author’s journey’s in Brazil, particularly in the northeastern coastal city of Recife. These passages go into detail about native Brazilian foods like farofa and moqueca de camarão (left).

Robb’s through line is about the first democratically elected president of Brazil, Fernando Collor and his money man, PC Farias. He recounts Collor rise to power in the small, poor state of Alagoas and PC’s role as his money man. Lula, the union organizer and presidential hopeful for the Worker’s Union Party, is the contrast to Collor, a man of the people rather than a man of the monied elite.

The book weaves in the work of Machado de Assis, Gilberto Freyre, and Euclides da Cunha, using these literary figures as lenses for viewing Brazilian society. It’s a clever deployment of literature because it illuminates the socio-political landscape of Brazil while focusing on Brazilian literary classics.

When finished, I had at least an outline of Brazilian history from the time of Portuguese colonization through 2003, an introduction to the slave trade and its unusually cruel instance in Brazil (the largest total number of slaves ever in the Western hemisphere and Brazil did not end slavery until 1888.), the political dynamic between the huge rural regions and the populous cities like Rio and Sao Paulo and an update of Brazilian political processes in the first decade of the new millennium.

Well worth reading.

Anybody know a similar book about Indonesia?

 

Colorado, The Move

Creating a Schooner from a Merchant Ship

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Lughnasa                                                                             College Moon

Heretical thought in my universe. Whew, all those books boxed up. Maybe I can just do without. Make them all red tape boxes. There’s a sense of liberation as the shelves empty and the areas around begin to breathe again, more space now, less like a scholar’s burrow. All my friends who’ve gone through this process, this decluttering have expressed similar feelings. Lifted off my back. Freer. Less weight. Less drag. Less. And in this case less is less, not more. Moving toward enough, away from trying to capture everything you like and hold it hostage at home.

Response to heresy. No, the time is not yet for jettisoning everything. This is not a sinking ship, nor is it a ship in trouble that needs to be lighter. This is a ship that will move more gracefully with less sail. That’s happening, has already happened.

There is another round to come, too. The third removal, after the move. The realization that this is not needed here, in the new place. Which will call out its own needs. Unknown now.

 

 

Colorado, The Move

Books. Most now in boxes.

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Lughnasa                                                                                     College Moon

The last bookcases. That’s where the packing has gone. Now China and Cambodia and the West and Emerson goes in boxes. Green tape boxes. More China, then onto the Celts and the Greeks, philosophy, American history, fairy tales.

Just moved the last gathering of liquor store boxes needed for books. Kate gets them, I unload them, then fill’em up, tape’m and stack’em. Objet d’art are on the now empty bookshelves in the larger basement area. Before Sort/Toss/Pack comes near the end of September, they’ll get sorted on a love it or leave it basis. Gotta cut them down, too.

We’re looking at the overall budget for the move now, preparing for a meeting with a financial consultant. Gonna take a dent out all round, but we’ll have plenty.

We’ve been fortunate, with Kate’s good earning capacity, and smart. We have enough and I couldn’t be more grateful for that. Still, you’d have to climb further up the wealth ladder to get to can-do-whatever-we-want.

 

 

Family, Health

911

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Lughnasa                                                              College Moon

911 call. Police. Then fire emergency. Then a fire truck. Finally, the last one to show up. The ambulance. Not often anymore Kate gets to showcase her sang froid during a crisis, but she did it today as the handyman working on the front porch suddenly threw up and became light headed.

Kate brought him something for his stomach and noticed a gray cast to his skin, sweat, too. Running down the diagnostic tree she settled on arrhythmia as most likely. She took his blood pressure with my blood pressure monitor and got very low numbers. That decided her on the 911 call.

He said he wanted to go home. Kate told the emts, hospital. He was taken to the E.R. Later his wife, Pam, called to say he had just gone into surgery for a ruptured appendix. Much better than the other possibilities.

 

 

Music, Politics

Music for Labor Day

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Lughnasa                                                                         College Moon

Well, now I know if anybody comes and tries to steal our front porch, Gertie will let us know. Dave Scott is here today doing outside maintenance aimed at getting the best price out of our house. He’s replacing the front porch, painting and spiffing it up generally. While he uses saws and drills, Gertie barks. Once in a while she’ll run to the door and growl. This means she’s running toward the danger she senses.

Most of the morning I packed maps, sorted file folders, got three more boxes of books packed. Two green, one red.

Still listening to outlaw country, thinking about it as a kind of working class male protest music. Take this job and shove it, by David Allen Cole is an example. The figure in the song fantasizes about losing his wife and going to his boss with the news. He’d tell the boss, he says, that’d he lost the reason he was working so the boss can take this job and shove it. Another song echoes a t-shirt I saw yesterday at the fair, Protect My Civil Rights, Gun Owners Alliance. In this the song the man flies two flags on his property: the red white and blue and the rattle snake with “Don’t Tread on Me.” Sums up his world, he says.

Those of us welcomed into the world of white male middle and upper middle class privilege at birth, especially those of us medicare card in the wallet types, have trouble appreciating the powerlessness experienced by those who struggle first to get a minimum wage job, then keep it. Success often means long hours in hot or dusty working conditions with little control over bathroom breaks, lunch times. Too, the work is repetitive and mind-killing. It’s no wonder that those trapped in such a work world often listen to outlaw country.

You might wonder, I suppose, why I like it. I gravitate toward those willing to stand up to the situation they find themselves in. It’s why I’ve done a lot of labor union politics over the years and why I still believe in the labor movement. Whenever the corporation has the capital and the power, the person working for wages (not talking here about white collar workers like doctors, lawyers, engineers, computer programmers, managers-though there are situations, doctors being a good one, where working conditions for even these highly educated folks are bad.) is at a distinct power disadvantage as long they remain unrepresented by a union.

Even in a time when unions are in decline, their logic has never been stronger. Just witness the home-care health workers vote this week here in Minnesota. As a potential user of their services in the future, I want these folks well-paid and well-trained. That will only happen with a union.

So, happy labor day weekend.

 

Colorado, Memories, Minnesota, The Move

Ropes Slacken More

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Lughnasa                                                               College Moon

At the State Fair yesterday. Realized, as with the garden, how much my thoughts of next year and the year after were tied up in what I did today. I no longer went through the Agriculture building with a keen eye for new information, stuff I wouldn’t have found otherwise. Say, a new apple. Maybe a new way to compost or treat troublesome weeds. A different method for keeping bees healthy.

Also, that building where local groups like the Sierra Club present information, help you connect to networks in state. Didn’t even visit it.

That’s why, when Kate and I both realized we’d gone as far our legs were going to carry us, we hit the skyride for a trip over the fairgrounds and back to the express bus lot.

Still, there were memories there, of years volunteering at the DFL booth or the Sierra Club booth or, long ago, as a State Fair chaplain (mostly monitoring lost kids. though, come to think of it, I wonder how folks would feel about that these days?). Cheese curds. Foot long hot dogs. I can even remember drinking beer at the fair. That’s reaching pretty far back into my Minnesota past.

The sense of pulling back, pulling away, of not-quite any longer a full Minnesotan took something from the fair for me. It was not mine in the same sense it had been before. Not as much a shared experience, like the weather, that helps define Minnesota. Not shared fully because part of me has gone ahead to the mountains. To the Great Western National Stockshow.

The circus tent has considerable slack in the ropes. The rings and the bleachers have been packed. The moment when the elephants are called to strike the big tent? Not yet. Not for a while. But we don’t want to let them wander too far away. They will be needed.

Back to the packing. The end of book packing for right now (the bookshelf immediately beside the desk will remain loaded until this room has to be vacated for staging.) is in sight. Perhaps today. Then there are files and art objects, office supplies, novel manuscripts. Still a lot to do, but a lot less than existed three months ago.

Humanities, Memories

A Madras Sport Coat?

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Lughnasa                                                                College Moon

In 1965 Gentlemen’s Quarterly had an off to college issue for the young man. As a result, a navy blazer, charcoal slacks and several oxford cloth shirts ended up in my closet along with a madras sport coat. There was, too, an oxblood pair of casual dress shoes. None of this had been part of my wardrobe before.

It felt, what did it feel? How to describe it? It was costume for the new role, the away from home, out of town guy. Choosing this clothing was more important than the clothing itself. The act of shopping, getting measured and fitted, deciding on cuffs or no cuffs, stripes or no stripes and the radical choice of a madras sport coat. First. A sport coat! Second. Madras. Au courant.

This was about shedding the t-shirts, plaid shirts and cotton pants of high school, putting high school behind me, or, perhaps better, leaving the high school me behind. Wanting to. Needing to. This was a boy leaving home, wanting and needing to become a man. Whatever that meant.

It meant being ready. And of course I wasn’t. We never are when we make these transitions. Kate and I sat behind a young girl today, maybe 13. She had blond hair, neon sneakers, khaki shorts and a pair of fashion sunglasses. I watched her as she leveled her shoulders, threw out her chest just a little and ran her hand through her hair. All while looking bored. Or unsure. She was between being a girl and wanting desperately to be a woman, or at least an older girl.

That was me. Wanting desperately to be a man, at least a young man. Not. A. Boy. It was this navy blazered, charcoal slacked, blue oxford dress shirted, oxblood shoed young man who wanted a liberal arts education. He wasn’t sure quite what that was but he had come to believe that he needed one. That’s why he had chosen Wabash, a private liberal arts college. The emphasis at Wabash was not on vocational training but on learning, about developing the ability to think and becoming saturated with the Western intellectual tradition.

What happened to that young man and the need for navy blazers is another, more complicated story, but he never let go of liberal arts. Never. Not even now. It was the one aspect of that transition from boy to man, from secondary education to higher education, that did not get set aside or changed or abandoned.

And you know, I don’t recall ever wearing that madras sportcoat.