Yearly Archives: 2016

Colorado, Sport, Third Phase

Orange and Blue

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Yule                                                                                 Stock Show Moon

Orange and blue. Everywhere. The receptionists at Urology Associates on Friday. A couple at Tai Chi yesterday with Bronco’s sweatshirts and sweatpants. All Broncos all the time in the Denver Post and on Denver TV stations. This metro area is Bronconutso. For me it went, Vikings beat Packers. Yeah. Vikings lose to Seahawks. Packers win. Sigh. Packers lose. half hearted yeah. Now – nada. No colors for me. No excitement before the big game. Just NFLost.

A sunny but cool Sunday. Clear air. Sun dogs. Snow that could use some freshening. Very quiet, almost holiday quiet.

Kate and I drove over to Nono’s, one of several very good New Orleans style restaurants. I had the Ragin’ Cajun, grits and eggs. The place had pushed together tables, one with adults and the other with their kids. Noisy. Also why we never want to live in an age-segregated community. No vitality. Sun Zombie City.

 

 

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Eudaimoniac

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Yule                                                                          Stock Show Moon

Slowly. Slowly. Latin back with regular work. Learning the west by reading articles about the occupation at Malheur and its deep background. Just started Wallace Stegner’s “Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West.” Considering a book length writing project(s). Working more on Reimagining Faith, perhaps a new novel.

The fire mitigation awaits as a rhythm changer. Kate located a custom boot fitter. It happened to be next to Wooden Spools, a quilt shop. I plan to hike much more this year and when I’ve got a good sense of my boots, I may use these folks to put some orthotics in them. The workouts, both hi-intensity aerobics and regular physical therapy exercises, happen 4-5 times a week, enough for me. Now the Tai Chi.

This sort of mix, one with self-care and personal agency, is the platform for my life. Family and friends put it into the social context. Both are critical to my eudaimonia, my flourishing. Only when I’m flourishing am I able to be my best self for others, for political work.

 

 

Aging, Family, Health, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Tai Chi

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Yule                                                                             Stock Show Moon

Over to Conifer Physical Therapy this morning with Kate for an 8 week course, Tai Chi for folks with arthritis. Our mutual infirmity bringing us closer together. How special is aging? Kate did Tai Chi when she was in medical school. I learned about half of a full form maybe 3 years ago, so we’ve both got some muscle memory. It never hurts to have more than way of approaching something. My physical therapy exercises are keeping my back and my shoulder/elbow/neck calmed down. Tai Chi will reinforce that work.

 

We’ll meet some other folks, too. Should be fun.

Health

Ordinary Time

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Yule                                                                              Stock Show Moon

Amazing how ordinary a post-cancer operation visit can be. Of course, as long as the numbers stay good it will stay ordinary. That is the great gift of successful treatment, the opportunity to return to whatever life you had instead of checking out your will.

Anna Willis, a P.A., talks with ease about matters sexual, urinary. She’s a 30 something, maybe early 40’s, woman who dresses upscale and has a brusque, but not unpleasant professional manner. “Getting up 4 times at night? Oh, that’s too much. We’ll see if we can get that down.”

Mostly we focused on the .015 PSA. As good a number as possible, a royal flush of a lab result. The plan is to continue ultrasensitive tests every 3 months for 2 years, then every 6 months until year 5. “It’s about the same as breast cancer. the more time away from surgery with clean results, the better the odds. If you get past 5 years, the odds of recurrence are very, very low.”

Cancer season closed out as a time of high alertness in September with the first .015. The return to ordinary time will, I imagine, continue and become more solid if the tests keep sending me good news. Like having stood in the path of a fast moving train and having a good samaritan pull you out of the way just in time.

The West, US History
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Yule                                                                          Stock Show Moon

hcn-masthead

The High Country News  is excellent progressive journalism about the West. I discovered it not long after moving to Colorado and read it cover to cover every time it comes. At HCN.org there is a link to a compilation of articles HCN has published over the years about the sagebrush rebellion.

I’m currently reading through those articles plus articles I’ve collected at various news outlets. The sagebrush rebellion, I’ve decided, is going to be my entré into the dynamics of the New West. As I read and learn, I plan to report here on my new, adopted region.

The West is simpler than the Midwest. Its regional status is newer, really only coming into its own in the mid to late 19th century as native peoples were pushed out and East coast railroad and mining magnates moved in. It is, too, a region built on exploitation, first of the native population, then of resources.

This point is interesting in regards to the sagebrush rebellion which has fixated on the government as the main tyrant. Any cursory reading of Western history would point to railroads and mining companies, then other East and Left coast financiers, corporate boards and offices located outside the region, as the true tyrants here. This is still the case in many ways .

The overlay from that relatively recent past makes Westerners sensitive to control of any kind that bypasses locals. The birdwatching militia occupying Malheur are a symptom of that acuity, acting on the feeling of outside interference, with no sense of nuance about either the history of government lands or the real villains who have their hands on the throat of the West.

More to come.

 

 

 

Memories, Minnesota, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

A Snowman Will Want to Be Inside

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Yule                                                                                      Stock Show Moon

You wanna find Stock Show weather? Go to Minnesota this weekend. Friend Tom Crane sent me a link to the Updraft blog of MPRNews. “Thought you might want to know what you’re missing,” he said.

Weather January 16, 17 2016

Paul Huttner, the meteorologist for the Updraft blog, repeated a Minnesota weather nostrum often used at times like these: “The only thing between Minnesota and the North Pole is a barbed wire fence.”

In Minnesota, not often, but often enough, you realized the weather could kill you. No winds necessary. This will be one of this times.

Colorado, at least for us so far, doesn’t produce weather like this. If you go higher in altitude, then yes, you can find extreme winter cold, but even at 8,800 feet nothing like this. Can’t say I miss that bitter cold. though looking out the window from a warm house, over a snowy frozen landscape has its charms.

Family, Health, Third Phase

.015

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Yule                                                                        Stock Show Moon

Tomorrow I have my third post-op appointment with my urologist. My new super sensitive PSA, done early this week, was .015. As I learned three months ago, when my PSA was the same, this is the equivalent of no prostate specific antigens, indicating that so far no stray prostate cells have found a home in my body far from their old place near my bladder. In essence this is a test for metastases and having it come back negative is a primary goal of any cancer treatment.

As I get further away from the surgery, the dramatic peak of cancer season, ordinary time makes a bid to return. In this case ordinary time is not the cessation of holiseason stimulated spirituality, but the relaxation of uncertainty and return to a less urgent awareness of mortality. There is though a deep impression left by the pressure of cancer season.

20150708_070336Cancer season began for me on April 14th, 2015 when Dr. Gidday noticed a suspicious hardness in my prostate, sufficient to make her refer me to Ted Eigner, the urologist. From April 14th until my surgery on July 8th and first super sensitive PSA the week of September 25th, cancer season pulsed with energy. It crackled with biopsy results, recommendations for treatment, visits to the this medical facility and that. The decisions made during cancer season were life-altering, even life determining.

There was anxiety and fear, of course, the presence of a fatal actor in my body was an unfamiliar and unpleasant experience. For the first time a part of my body was no longer onside with the goal of continuing the body’s existence. Betrayal. At its most intimate. But. There was also excitement. New information, new things to learn, to know. Things that had immediate relevance. Kate and I moved closer as we sorted through the maze of medicine, bureaucracy, treatment statistics and understanding my situation as well as we could.

Saigon Landing, EvergreenThen, with one three hour surgical procedure, it was over. Sort of. Cancer season trailed on to the first super sensitive PSA because until then even the clear, negative margins of the removed prostate and the positive eyeball analysis of Eigner during the procedure were not definitive. Some cancerous cells could have escaped. Though there is still some chance of metastases, nothing is 100% certain in these matters, with each clear PSA it becomes less likely.

Now I have to decide whether to emphasize cancer season, become a cancer survivor, or whether to let it bleed into the background, a highly charged moment with a successful outcome but with little relevance for daily life. So far I seem to be choosing the let it bleed into the background option, though this post is, I suppose, contra that.

That is, I want to live my life forward, not returning to and chewing over the undigested lumps of the past. Not yet background, no longer foreground, cancer season has a fading, but nonetheless potent presence still. It will be interesting to see where I am on July 8th of this year.

 

 

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Jefferson County, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain

Meet and Greet

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Yule                                                                                   Stock Show Moon

Kate’s at the Bailey Library, a sewing day from 9 to 3 with the Bailey Patchworkers. They make stone soup and work throughout, stopping only for a brief business meeting. Quilting and handwork have been Kate’s entré to local folk. She has been invited to join a needlework group, too. It meets next week. All part of settling in.

Even though we’ve had a bumpy road with many of our house related projects, it occurred to me that even a bumpy start still grounds us in the local culture. We’ve learned about the shortage of folks in the skilled trades, an apparent difference of work ethic between here and Minnesota and had to adjust our expectations about how long projects will take, to get started and to finish. There are local habits and customs, a mountain way of doing things, that we have had to adapt to.

Sometime soon we’re going to start attending services at Beth Evergreen, a small Jewish reconstructionist congregation in Evergreen. They have a more relaxed worship schedule, none during the Christmas and New Year’s holiday time and when they are regular they alternate between Friday night and Saturday morning. I’m looking forward to an opportunity to meet folks.

 

 

Family, Health

Kate

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Yule                                                                              New (Stock Show) Moon

The stock show weather arrived. It’s 7 degrees here this morning.

Kate’s face has lost all of its puffiness and most of the bruising has receded. Now she’s working on hand physical therapy to complement her thumb surgery from September. She’s using a tennis ball I bought for shoulder/elbow exercises and I’m using her cervical traction device bought when her neck had begun to give her serious fits several years ago. Our aging bodies have similar needs, just at different times.