Imbolc Black Mountain Moon
Well: 86 year old gymnast!
Monthly Archives: March 2015
She Comes
Imbolc Black Mountain Moon
Birth of a queen bee: The Queen, The Queen
What’s For Supper?
Imbolc Black Mountain Moon
I can see Rigel doing this. (video of wolf catching salmon)
The Run Continues
Imbolc Black Mountain Moon
The Latin continues to come, if not easily, then with much less struggle. I no longer write down the words or possible translations, I simply type the translation I have completed. So, this is all mental work now. I do ten verses in less time than it took me to get through five. Not sure why this happened, but it’s clearly a culmination of some sort.
I can not yet read without Perseus or a dictionary because my vocabulary has distinct limits and I still stumble over case, declensions, verb conjugations. But, with the aid of Perseus I can read somewhat quickly now.
Still shaking my head. Huh. This is really happening.
The Week
Imbolc Black Mountain Moon
Neighbor to the east, Jude, has transferred to days after four years of working nights. This means that he now lets his two border collies out around 6. They bark, for some reason, without stopping until he leaves for work around 7. It makes the quiet of the early morning here less desirable, means I’ll have to adapt. Today I sorted and read e-mails.
Not sure what I’ll do over time.
A quiet week, but a busy weekend. On Friday I’ll attend the member preview of We (heart) the Rocky Mountain National Park exhibit at the Colorado History Museum. On Saturday Kate attends a mineralogy day sponsored by the Friends of the Colorado Geology Museum. It features lectures on gem coloration. Then on Sunday we go to the Curious Theater for a play that is the second of a trilogy, The Brother/Sister Plays, written by a student of August Wilson’s, Tarell Alvin McCraney. This one is In the Red and Brown Water. The first in the trilogy will play this summer and the third in the fall.
Buddy Bill Schmidt has fiddled with the fonts on Ancientrails. Thanks, Bill, I like the change. Anybody else have an opinion?
Ponderosa
Imbolc Black Mountain Moon
OK. About those lodgepole pines. Turns out they’re actually ponderosas. Ponderosas split at the top while lodgepoles go up straight like a lodgepole. So Black Mountain Drive is also Ponderosa. Cue the theme music. The bulk of the pine beetle infestation has been among lodgepole pines though Holly said yesterday that they have begun to jump to Ponderosas, too.
As Goya says in his etching, Anco impari. Still learning.
Different Place, New Rhythms
Imbolc Black Mountain Moon
We now know our neighbors across the street (Eduardo and Holly), next door to the east, (Jude), a door down and to the west across the street (Jim and Roberta), and behind us (Karen). Jon, Jen, Ruth and Gabe came out, too, to help us celebrate St. Patrick’s day. Ann Beck, the realtor who helped Kate find this house, came by later. With the exception of those times we had the annual Woolly meeting at our house in Andover, we rarely entertained. Kate’s birthdays and the occasional bonfire in our fire pit were about it.
Out here we’ve set a new lifestyle in motion, one more involved with the neighborhood. Thanks to Next Door Shadow Mountain, an online social network for our area, we’ve also communicated with Justin who lives somewhere nearby. He’s offered to mentor us in mountain gardening. He and his wife have an extensive garden.
Different place, new rhythms. As we age, it’s good to have folks around whom we know and who know us.
Kate’s initiated both of these events, so she deserves a big thanks. 
Eduardo is off to Kansas City for a week as plant manager for the uniform company he works for in Denver. He’s a second shift supervisor here. In K.C. he’ll be filling in for the top job.
Eduardo is from Tijuana originally and brought special candies from there.
Éirinn go Brách
Imbolc Black Mountain Moon
N.B. The “snakes” that Patrick ran out of Ireland were the Druids, priests of the Auld Celtic faith, so I’m celebrating Celtic heritage today, not Patrick. Though he did have the good sense, when returning to Rome after his missionary work in Ireland, to take several Irish Wolfhounds with him.
We’re getting ready for our second party in two months. That’s approximately two more than we hosted all last year. Today our neighbors Eduardo and Holly, Ann Beck (real estate agent) and Jon, Jen, Ruth and Gabe will eat corned beef, cabbage and other fixings with us.
This is a holiday I have celebrated at Frank (the Mic) Broderick’s for many years. It’s a Woolly traditional meal and the one tomorrow night will be the first one I’ve missed in a long time. Having a Celtic meal of our own might be the start of a new, Colorado tradition for us.
Just got done mopping the floor, after vacuuming. I can do this now with minimal huffing and puffing though there’s still a ways to go on being fully acclimatized. Kate’s got corned beef in the slow cooker, cabbage and potatoes ready to boil and a mango popover for dessert. I made an Irish soda bread yesterday that looks pretty good.
In a nod to the digital age I just retrieved my Pandora password from my password program on this computer. That way, I can go downstairs, enter it on our TV! (Roku) and provide some holiday appropriate music.
69 degrees here in Conifer, a sunny bright day for St. Patrick’s. Strange. And, when I just checked, I’m very surprised to see that in Andover it will be 71 today. Stranger yet.
Well
Imbolc Black Mountain Moon
Translated ten verses today in less than an hour, the time it has previously taken me to do five. Greg says often the work comes back stronger after some time off. Well, now I believe him.
Pole Vaulting
Imbolc Black Mountain Moon
Working on Latin today. A plateau pole-vaulted. For the first time, I worked from the text in Perseus alone, writing nothing down, looking up words in the usual click-on-the-word style with Perseus, but assembling the translation in my head, then typing it into my Evernote file for Medea and Aeson. This is the private equivalent of sight reading and I’m becoming facile at it, at least in Ovid.
If you were here in the room, I’d ask for a high five. This feels like a culmination, a passing through one of the key doors on my way to the amateur classicist tower. Still a good ways to climb, but I’m far beyond the half-way point. Amazing.
Another positive note. After each night’s sleep and each nap, I get a reading on my resting heart rate thanks to my Basis watch, my 2014 birthday present. Before leaving Minnesota I had my resting heart rate down to a 62-67 bpm average, leaning more toward 62. Which is pretty good for a guy in his late 60’s. After being without exercise for almost two months, I began again last month and my heart rate showed up in the 70-73 range and stubbornly stayed there. Just when I had begun to get frustrated with it, it began to drop. Now, I’m running 67.
Feels like a victory, especially at 8,800 feet.