Yearly Archives: 2016

Art and Culture, Family, Weather +Climate

Making Things

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Lugnasa                                                                      Superior Moon

As the weather cools down, the work level goes up for this former Minnesotan. One thing Kate and I have always agreed on is that cool is better than hot. How much cool, not always, but temps trending down, but not up? Delightful. And so it is here right now. 40 this morning at 7:00 am. Orion, too, rises with the morning sky, bringing with him the change toward fall.

Yesterday was busy. Writing: ancientrails, Superior Wolf, Reimagining Faith. Workout. Into Denver for Wednesday dinner and art with the grandkids. After eating at Minnesota’s own Famous Dave’s restaurant, we went back to Montview Elementary and made prints.

Here are a few photos of the experience.

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montview

jon's found objects
jon’s found objects
mointview gabe
Gabe inking up an object to print
Ruth printing her spoon
Ruth printing her spoon
Colorado, Family, Mountains, Park County

A Colorado Tuesday

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Lugnasa                                                             Superior Wolf Moon

shaggy sheepWent to the Shaggy Sheep yesterday, about 10 miles west of Bailey in Grant. One of the real joys of living up here is the chance to choose a place like this for our weekly business meeting. The drive through the Platte Canyon, starting in Bailey and continuing to the Kenosha pass about 20 miles west of the Shaggy Sheep is beautiful. Mountain meadows with horses and cattle. Old resorts like the Glen Isle. Rocky mountain sides covered with pines. The North Fork of the South Platte a constant running presence near Hwy 285. An Orvis recommended dude ranch. Santa Maria YMCA camp. Gravel roads snaking up into the mountains.

Also stopped by the Happy Camper on the way back to pick up some THC edibles. We now have to ring a doorbell to get inside. “To regulate the flow,” said a guy, maybe the owner sitting in the shop. He and a guy playing a guitar were lounging. Mine was the only car in the parking lot, so at that moment I represented the entire flow.

The young woman who helped me asked me if I had anything fun going on this Tuesday, “Buying dope,” I said. She smiled. “It’s a lot easier this way than when I was young,” I went on. She got a cute smile on her face, “Yeah, you don’t have to be so sneaky!”

A Colorado Monday.

Art and Culture, Friends, Minnesota, Woolly Mammoths

A Shadow Mountain Salute to Ode

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Lugnasa                                                                 Superior Wolf Moon

Proud of my buddy Mark Odegard who conceived of this project last year and saw it through to the opening Friday, August 19th.

At the Raymond Avenue Art Gallery in St. Paul until September 23rd.

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Mark Odegard lives in Minneapolis, received his BA at the University of Minnesota in sculpture. He also attended the LA Art Center to study design and typography. He volunteered for the Peace Corps in the Fiji Islands, creating museum exhibitions of traditional artifacts. He returned and became head of design at the Science Museum of Minnesota for 20 years. He was active in the American Institute of Graphic arts, served as president, and started Insights Lecture Series at the Walker Art Center. In the last 15 years he has worked in Asia at the National Science Museum of Thailand, taught art and design at Bemidji University, and worked as a lockman at Lock and Dam #1.​

Holidays

Time Like A (Slow) River

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Lugnasa                                                              Superior Wolf Moon

Dazzle Bar
Dazzle Bar

A Sunday. Took almost all day to get my 750 words. Slow, slow day. We got home late (for us) after Dazzle Jazz on Saturday. That in itself slows things down. But the slighter thicker movement of time on the Christian sabbath is the real culprit. The Sunday paper. The nothing special going on usual Sunday schedule. On the one hand fewer neighbors going to work and on the other more motorcyclists, bicyclists and campers. The occasional chainsaw rattling to life somewhere. Folks out in their yards doing this or that. Slow.

 

Art and Culture, Family, Music

Family Time

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Lugnasa                                                                  Superior Wolf Moon

Gabe and Ruth were up here yesterday, bringing their peculiar brand of energy and enthusiasms. Gabe tried to go fishing for dogs again with a stick tied to twine. He found the pruners, wanting to cut a stick for a reason I couldn’t understand, but it was important to him. After laying the pruners down, and watching Rigel walk around him, this hemophiliac said, “Rigel’s really clever. She knows how to walk past sharp things.”

20160820_151257Ruth came up to the loft and ate a sandwich she made, “Two cheeses, four meats and dijonnaise!” When grandma asked her if she wanted to help make peach pickles, Ruth said, “Well, I know how to make pickles, but I don’t know how to peel peaches.” So she helped. She is a sponge, soaking up Kate’s sewing skills and cooking skills. Reading books from my library and ones she gets on her own. Learning printmaking techniques from her dad as she prepares her portfolio for DSA, Denver School of the Arts. 10.

Apres le grandkids Jon and Kate and I went into Dazzle Jazz in downtown Denver to hear Roberta Gambarini. She’s very skilled. This was the next to last event in Kate’s birthday month. She has a present coming on Monday from Jon.

20160820_175836

 

 

Family, Jefferson County, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Hail and Lightning

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Lugnasa                                                                          Superior Wolf Moon

37 this morning and small piles of hail still scattered around look like snow. Two solar panels have a blanket of hail still on them from yesterday afternoon. We had a gully washer with lightning that seemed right over our heads. Gertie and Rigel stayed close, real close. The rain was welcome.

A transmission line went down in the storm and our generator chugged to life, powering us for a couple of hours while IREA worked to get the power back on. Though it took me over a year, I’m glad we persevered and got the generator hooked up and working. No lights is one thing, no water is quite another.

Brother Mark has finished a year’s worth of teaching with one longish break. He has two weeks of training in Jubail, Saudi Arabia, then he’s off until November. As he put it, he’s heading “to the further East” for some r&r.

The grandkids are here today, but just for the day. Afterward, Jon, Kate and I are going into Dazzle Jazz to listen to Roberta Gambarini. We go in around 5:30 or 6:00 since seating is first come, first served for all 7:00 p.m. shows. They have an interesting menu so we eat before the performance. The jazz scene here is vibrant, lots of opportunity to see local and national performers.

 

 

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Jefferson County, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

A Ploy of the Devil?

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Lugnasa                                                                            Superior Wolf Moon

A taste of fall here. 42 degrees right now and cool weather tomorrow, too. A soaking rain yesterday.

Step-son Jon took Kate and me out to Carra Viejta, a Mexican spot just off 285 at Windy Point. Kate’s birthday. Good food and good company. Jon’s in much better spirits these days as the divorce moves closer to resolution.

20160714_143955Kate and I drove over to Congregation Beth Evergreen yesterday for another session of mussar, led by Rabbi Jamie Arnold. Over the last three weeks we’ve been discussing possible texts to use as the basis for study over the next year. One more this next Thursday. The three texts so far are: The Palm Tree of Deborah, the Way of the Tzaddikim and the Way of the Just. These are completely unfamiliar to me, which makes them interesting.

I get surprised occasionally. Jamie said yesterday, “We’ll have to see what our ancestors saw in these texts.” Not my ancestors. It’s interesting to be in but not of the conversation, I like it. Also, when the conversation turns toward G-d, I stop internally. I have to engage in a reconfiguration of the idea. What does G-d mean to the author here? Does the idea bring anything unique to the conversation or does it serve as a placeholder for something like: This is really important; or, take this seriously, dude; or, this is the best we could do in figuring out why should we believe this; or, this idea links us to all those in our 5,000 + year history who have believed this.

Emblem_of_the_Papacy_SE_svgMy impatience with religions of revelation has not waned. Revelation, word and practices with the imprimatur of divinity, has created so much bloodshed, so much cocksure wrongheadedness, so much diminution of the other that it seems like the opposite of what it claims to be. If there were a devil, it would be a clever ploy to create texts reputedly authored by God and spiked with so much absolutism that adherents to the texts would consider themselves an exclusively correct clan.

Outside dogmatic adherence to the idea of revelation most religious traditions have also devoted a lot of thought and practice to the question of the good life. How might we live? What are behaviors that respect all of G-d’s universe? How can we navigate the often muddy waters of our inner life? This is mussar. And kabbalah. And lectio divina. And the Way of the Pilgrim. And meditation. And the four noble truths. And the Tao Te Ching. These approaches to life as we live it here and now are among the great gifts of the world religions. They distill the wisdom of generations of sophisticated and nuanced thinkers, practitioners. It feels good to be learning another one.

 

Family, Holidays

Kate. Happy Birthday.

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Lugnasa                                                                     Superior Wolf Moon

Mother's Day

20160814_161327Life has odd turns, none for me odder than renewing my season subscription at the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in 1988 and finding my soul mate. As some of you know, we met there, dated for a couple of years, then got married in 1990.

We’ve traveled the world together, starting with Europe in March of 1990 as we followed spring north from Rome, all the way to Inverness, the capital of the Highlands in northern Scotland.

We’ve had three homes together, each one unique in its own way, but common in our commitment to make them places for family and for creativity.

Kate has been a nurse, a nurse anesthetist, a pediatrician and now a seamstress and quilter. She’s bright, obviously, completing the NYT crossword every morning, for example.

In our retirement we share a passion for dogs, gardening and bees, for jazz as well asIMAG0873 classical music. Kate cans, dries and freezes food. She’s a gourmet cook. Her grasp of numbers is impressive.

When Jon got married and had kids, part of our life turned toward the west, toward the mountains, toward Denver. That pull, grandkidtropic, eventually convinced us to leave over 40 years in Minnesota and move out here to Shadow Mountain. Now she’s grandma, enjoying the lives of Ruth and Gabe, teaching them what she knows, loving them.

Kate, the love of my life, the wife I needed but took some time to find, is 72 tomorrow. And living every day. Every day. Even the ones with staggering inertia.

 

 

Aging, Art and Culture, Family, Friends, Jefferson County, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths, Writing

Acts of Creation

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Lugnasa                                                       Superior Wolf Moon

20160808_151614_001Just to let you know that the Superior Wolf Moon daily reminder has been working. I’m over 17,000 words into this new novel. It feels like some of the best work I’ve done. Of course, I always think that at the beginning of a project.

Kate’s birthday is tomorrow. 72. She works as hard now as she did when I first met her though she may not be able to sustain the work as long as she could. Neither can I. She’s remarkable and I’ll have a birthday post for her later today.

On Friday, buddy Mark Odegard has his “Bridges of the Mississippi” opening. He’s been working for the last year or so on this wonderful print series. It’s a contemporary, jazzy look at these important connectors. We think of crossing the Mississippi every day as a non-event, usually. And that’s because of these bridges that he has memorialized. They’re the often ignored civil engineering projects that make the Twin Cities possible. He’s made a unique contribution to our seeing them, an artist’s true task, sharpening and nuancing our perceptions of the world around us.

On a similar note, Jon Olson, step-son and art teacher, has developed a unique print making style that utilizes found, crushed metal objects. He picks them up from the sides of highways and streets, brings them here or to his art classroom in Aurora, inks them up and runs them through a press. In this way he’s printing directly from the object, like Mark, sharpening and nuancing our perceptions of the world around us.

Family

Staggering Inertia

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Lughnasa                                                                             Superior Wolf Moon

20160813_154908Yesterday Kate told me, “I have staggering inertia.” A deft turn of phrase. The grandkids make our house lively, upend our daily routines and give us multiple opportunities to love them in the moment. They also tire out these two third-phasers-set phasers to stunned.

So, on the Monday after we both have staggering inertia. One of the nice aspects of retirement is the ability to take a day, or two, to recover from strenuous intergenerational activity.

Let’s hear it for staggering inertia. A very good thing in my opinion.