Monthly Archives: January 2015

Art and Culture, Colorado, Family, Health

Can You See Me Now?

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Winter                                                                                  Settling Moon II

No post yesterday! Uncommon. Got too wrapped up in doing stuff.

First instance. Drove over to Conifer III (we have three retail areas, this is the one furthest south on 285, but closest to our house) to see an eye doc about my glaucoma. Due to a screw-up (mine) with the prescription I’d been out of my eye drops for a couple of weeks and, not wanting to go blind, got an appointment. Jennifer Kiernan, doctor of optometry, is a late 30’s woman with a common sense approach.

We discussed the fact that my pressures, 15 and 16, were normal without the drops. She looked at my retinal nerve, “Hmm. Suspicious.” She says the  current move is toward no drops, using a very tiny stent to drain the pressure. “But, medicare will only pay for it when it’s done in combination with cataract surgery. Let’s see how bad your cataracts are.” Not too bad, as it turned out. “Let’s keep you off the drops, see you in a month.” Sounded good to me.

Back at home Kate and I came up to the loft and entered her drugs in medicare.gov. This was in preparation for our appointment at 3:30 with John Downing and Larry Seligman. We needed advice about the maze of plans. Larry recommended the very plan that we had considered on the medicare site, so we signed up. Here’s the good news. $0 premium. Weird, I know, but there you are. Larry said it was a very popular plan, no complaints, and it looked like a good fit. Besides, it’s only until 2016 under any circumstances. We needed to get this done because our U-Care coverage expired January 31st.

After that we asked Ophelia (our Garmin) how to get to the exhibition space where Jon had five works on display. This is the annual show for Aurora art school teachers and is held just off Colfax Ave on Florence, deep in the heart of Latino Denver. Jon, Jen, Barb (Jen’s mother), Gabe, Ruth, Kate and I were there. The whole family. That felt good.

Back home. With no thought for a post. I guess that’s probably a good thing.

Great Wheel, Great Work, World History

Non-Fiction

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Winter                                                                                    Settling Moon II

My reading goes in spurts of enthusiasm. Right now I’m reading non-fiction, not my normal choice. Ever since the Weekly Reader tests in elementary school, I’ve tended to prefer fiction. In late High School, during and just after college, the books I chose chained together as I would read one author, say Herman Hesse, and wonder about influences on them. Hesse led me to Romain Rolland. Kafka to Borge. Thomas Mann to Goethe.

Last week though, as I unearthed books from their cardboard sleep, Rick Bass’s the Lost Grizzlies of Colorado showed up in my hand. Bought a long time ago I’d never gotten around to reading it, but, hey, I’m living in Colorado. Bass is a wonderful writer, clear prose, intimate, knowledgeable and in love with the natural world. In this book he recounts a several trips he took with Doug Peacock, a friend of Edward Abbey’s, in the San Juan Mountains Wilderness in southern Colorado.

Peacock is a noted grizzly expert and believed there was a remnant tribe of grizzlies in the San Juans who had survived all attempts to wipe them out. The trips into the San Juans, the planning and their results make for exciting reading if you’re a wilderness or nature lover. A direct outgrowth of those trips was the Round River Conservation Project, named after a river in Aldo Leopold’s classic, A Sand County Almanac.

Ever since the Woolly meeting where Mario Odegard rhapsodized about podcasts I’ve taken to listening to them as I set up my loft. (which still has a long way to go) Listening to Science Friday a short teaser for the Science Friday Book Club came on. They were promoting the next book, to be shared on February 6th, The Lost City of Z. That one I had, too. Like Grizzlies I’d bought it a while back and passed it up, probably in favor of some new detective novel.

So, I dug around on my Kindle and found it. Took me two days to read. The Lost City of Z tells the story of Lt. Colonel Percival Harrison Fawcett, probably the most famous Victorian explorer you’ve never heard of, and a contemporary expedition to solve the mystery of his disappearance in the Amazon in 1925. The book is being made into a movie to be released this year.

The story beneath the story is one of academic hubris, the limits of human perseverance and the unlimited power of obsession. The academic hubris occurs in a narrative about the Amazon’s inability to support complex human civilizations, only now being challenged in a way that Fawcett clearly foresaw through his own amateur research in the 1920’s. Fawcett’s legendary ability to find his way through the “green hell” of the Amazon and accomplish complicated surveying and natural observation tasks set for him underscores the mystery of his disappearance with his 21 year old son, Jack, on the last expedition. Obsession applies not only to Fawcett and the many who got caught up in the excitement of Z and tried to find Fawcett, but to the author of this book, David Grann, and his attempt to get closure on Fawcett’s story.

It’s non-fiction right now, then. After finishing the Lost City of Z I’ve started Moon, by Bernd Brunner.

Politics

Choice

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Winter                                                                                  Settling Moon II

Got 7 or 8 inches of snow last night, so Eduardo and I waved at each other over our snow-blowers this morning. This is fluffy powder, though the snow coming down in Denver yesterday was heavy and wet.

We went in to transfer Kate’s driver’s license to Colorado and pick-up some area rugs. The  stop at the driver’s license bureau took 2 hours and 15 minutes. Afterwards we hunted for a place for lunch. We decided, with little knowledge, on Twin Peaks.

(I’m pretty sure this was the young woman at the host’s desk. This image comes from their web page.)

Here’s their description of themselves:

“Here at Twin Peaks, we offer everything you crave and more. Hearty made-from-scratch comfort food, draft beer served at a teeth-chattering 29 degrees and all the best sports in town shown on high-definition flat screens. All of this is served by our friendly and attentive Twin Peaks Girls, offering their signature “Girl Next Door” charisma and playful personalities to ensure that your adventure starts at the Peaks.”

And another description from google, which is to the point: “Sports-bar chain where scantily clad waitresses serve American comfort food in lodgelike surrounds.”

Kate was the only woman customer in the place and there were a lot of other customers. This occasioned a long discussion between us about feminism, the kind she and I matured with, and third wave feminism which has an emphasis on women owning their sexuality.

Were these young women here by choice? Or, by financial need? Probably both. Pride in their appearance might have influenced some young women to choose waitressing here, clad in clothes for the beach, while it snowed heavily outside. Others might have needed work to pay the rent, feed their family, or pay tuition.

Even the young women who chose to be there because they were proud of their bodies might have emphasized that part of themselves at the expense of other, more future oriented aspects. Kate pointed this out and I agreed. I brought up the idea that feminism means women can make stupid decisions, too. Yes, Kate agreed.

We both laughed when I remembered the In Defense of Alcohol line written in marker on a dollar bill and attached to the wall of Little Bear, the blues club in Evergreen. “In defense of alcohol,” the writer said, “I’ve done seriously stupid things when I’m sober, too.”

Colorado, Minnesota, Mountains, The West, Weather +Climate

Ordinary Things

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Winter                                                                            Settling II Moon

Exactly a month has passed since we got here. A lot of ordinary things have happened: boxes opened, license plates changed and driver’s licenses as well, found a vet, a place to do our business meetings, grocery store and pharmacies, furniture assembled. That sort of thing.

Each one of these and others like them have begun to layer over our Minnesota identities, helped us reorient to Colorado, to the mountains, to our new home. Like those Russian nesting dolls, we will not so much replace the Minnesota identity as overlay it with a new one, pushing the Indiana and Iowa, Wisconsin and Texas identities further down in our psyches. In that sense we are hyphenated so I am an Okie-Hoosier-Badger-Gopher-Coloradan while Kate is a Gopher-Iowa-Texas-Gopher-Coloradan.

Taking Gabe to the National Western Stock Show yesterday (Ruth got sick.) was a not so ordinary part of this process. Though I’ve taken the grandkids to the Stock Show for several years this was the first time I went as a Coloradan and Westerner. When the Westernaires, a precision and trick riding group from Jefferson County, rode out during the rodeo, we cheered. These were the home county kids.

The gestalt of being at the Stock Show was different, too. Before I would look at the rhinestone jeans, the oversized belt buckles, Stetson hats and cowboy boots as evidence of a different tribe, one that lived far from my Scandinavian minimalist home in Minnesota. Now I have to take them as my neighbors, my fellow Coloradans. That means I have to place myself among them, rather than apart from them. The difference may seem subtle, but in sizing up this new, outer layer of the nesting doll that I am, it makes a big difference.

Another gestalt that has a lot psychic friction is geological. Mountains not lakes, pines not deciduous, arid not wet, high not flat, thin dry air not moist heavy air. These are not subtle dialectics that gradually make themselves felt, but insistent, body changing realities that affect daily life. All this frisson enlivens me, makes me wake up to my world. It makes the change worthwhile.

Colorado

Milestone

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book shelfWinter                                                                        Settling Moon

Milestone yesterday. All books unpacked. All my novel manuscripts, research files, other files are still in banker’s boxes, but they are all near the horizontal file cabinet where the research files will live when I get to that task. The novel manuscripts will remain in their banker’s boxes. An easy filing system for bulky material.

 

Colorado, Dogs, Family, Mountains, Our Land and Home

Early On

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Winter                                                                                    Settling Moon

A few photographs

IMAG0897 IMAG0906 IMAG0923_BURST002 1419364036295 1419364035669 1419364037138 1419364036149

 

9358 Black Mountain Drive

Both shots from the small porch off my loft show Black Mountain in the background

I included the disabled parking sign to prove that even the disabled are more fit in Colorado.

Jon and Ruth (with yellow avalanche shovel) came over to push snow the night before the van arrived.

The dogs were still wary when I took these shots: Gertie, Rigel, Kepler, Vega. Well, maybe not Vega.

Colorado, Weather +Climate

Slowly, slowly

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Winter                                                                                 Settling Moon

IMAG0902The wall space necessary for rebuilding the IKEA bookshelves is free. Almost all of the books are deboxed. (well. deplane, detrain) Slowly, slowly. But steadily.

(the loft before any unpacking had begun)

The temperature here, right now, is 56. 56! Apparently not unusual for this period of January it collides directly with my pulling inward as the third week of January approaches. That’s the coldest week of the year on average in Minnesota and often means well below zero readings. And here we are with even the ice preserved by the shade of a lodgepole pine grove melting. In spite of the Minnesota we-will-not-be-stopped-by-the-cold attitude, forty years of fortitude lifted to a civic virtue, this feels pretty good.

from another point of view
from another point of view

Less than 10 book boxes remain, but they will wait until the ones I’ve emptied have been flattened and the bookshelves are up. Then, only then, can I begin the process of creating a library especially for my current projects. The classics and their supporting literature will get their own area, so will all of my art books, poetry, books related to Colorado and the West. Once those areas are in place, then the remainder of the books will find homes: Asia, Islam, travel, depth psychology, the Renaissance, Modernism, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, history, Celtic studies, Scandinavian studies, Lake Superior, environmental matters and others.

Colorado

A Pile of Cardboard Measures Progress

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Winter                                                                             Settling Moon

IMAG0927_BURST002The changes keep coming. Today the Colorado plates go on the Rav4. They complement the Colorado Driver’s license already in my wallet. The boxes have begun to diminish in number as the pile outside, Kate’s measure of our progress grows. We use the window as a cardboard portal, opening it and shoving emptied, flattened boxes through it.

In the loft perhaps 80% of the book boxes are empty, flattened and downstairs. They are not on the pile shown here.

Certain rhythms have reasserted themselves. The dogs are in their crates now over night. With the exception, usually, of Kepler. Kate and I watch an episode of Midsomer Murders before she goes to bed. We’re in the 14th of 15 seasons. Our business meetings continue, before they were at Key’s on University in Spring Lake Park, now they’re at the Wildwood Cafe in Evergreen.

Others have not. My treadmill and weights and pull-up bar are in the loft, but not yet ready because the most important component of my work-outs, the television, remains in the house. It’s too heavy for even Jon and me to move, a 50″ plasma, and will require some outside help to get up the stairs and into place on its stand. I know this seems like an odd reason, but I find weights and treadmill work boring. The TV distracts me while I do them. Of course, right now, during the acclimatizing process, a lot of the work we’ve been doing unpacking is also aerobic.

Kate’s not sewing yet. I’m not writing or doing Latin. Those rhythms will probably be the last to reassert themselves, evidence that settling in has moved beyond unpacking and shuffling stuff around. In their time.

Colorado, Mountains

Goin’ Down the Mountain

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Winter                                                                         Settling Moon

As we pulled out of our still early morning driveway, Black Mountain had already picked up the rising sun. Its trees, rocks and snow were lit with the onrushing day. We were off to Evergreen, back to the Wildflower Cafe whose cozy warmth and interesting menu charmed us a week ago.

We wound down Black Mountain Drive, through the Arapaho National Forest, past the trail-head for Upper Maxwell Falls and a trail head for Cub Creek. About two miles from home Black Mountain Drive changes names, becoming Brook Forest Drive. In the mountains after that change in name the homes become much more numerous and their asking prices much higher.

The road into Evergreen, like Black Mountain Drive/Brook Forest Drive, has rocky outcroppings that lean forward almost to the asphalt, pines growing out of narrow crevices and a small brook that shows up just before the beginning of the commercial district.

This is our regular business meeting day where we discuss finances, schedule, feelings. Right now we’re in another liminal space, not unlike the original move time. This one is between purchasing Black Mountain Drive and selling 153rd Ave in Andover. It comes with its own struggles, financial and emotional, as we pay two mortgages, two sets of utility bills and the various costs associated with moving in and with preparing a house for sale. The business meetings allow us to have conversations about all this before any one issue becomes a big deal. Very valuable.

 

Art and Culture, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Sport

The Dawn Wall of Human Insight

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Winter                                                      Settling Moon

 

The Dawn Wall climb completed by Kevin Jorgeson and Tommy Caldwell yesterday collided with some reading I’ve been doing in a book by Arthur Danto titled, What Is Art?

In a later chapter of the book Danto referenced this work by Piero della Francesca, painted in 1460, “The Resurrection.” I knew the painting so the image immediately floated into consciousness and attached itself to Caldwell and Jorgeson emerging at the top of the Dawn Wall, a climb realized by using only their hands and feet. Ropes attached to them were there only to prevent a fatal fall, otherwise this was a human powered, human body only effort.

In Francesca’s painting the human body has failed the guards placed at the tomb. They were there to prevent grave robbers from stealing Jesus’ body and declaring him resurrected. But they fell asleep. Even with the guards asleep it takes a supernatural force to circumvent the tomb.

This all occurs, as we can tell from the pale light creeping up over the hills on the painting’s horizon, at dawn. Countless are the number of sunrise services held to celebrate just this moment.

Coldwell and Jorgeson started at the base of El Capitan on its face that has greeted that same rising sun for aeons, at least 100 million years. Imagine their climb as the literal embodiment of the human spirit rising, on its own terms, to the top, to the summit, of this wall that celebrates the rising sun, the first time this wall has been climbed using hands and feet in 100 million years.

Now imagine El Capitan as the sheer rock face of our human attempt to understand this absurd world into which we were thrown at birth and let the summit represent adequate insight into that question, adequate to guide a life.  Supernatural metaphysics posited that we humans must hoist ourselves to the top using pitons and ropes supplied by the supernatural being of our choice. In this analogy Caldwell and Jorgeson represent the humanist, the pagan free-climbing the Dawn Wall of human insight, using only the tools granted to them at birth.

It was this notion that flashed across my mind when reading Danto and considering their feat. Their emergence at the summit of the Dawn Wall overlaid Francesca’s beautiful painting, putting these two climbers in the place of the risen Jesus while blinkered humanity lay asleep below or clung to the cliff tangled up in the ropes of Islam, Hinduism, Christianity.