Monthly Archives: March 2016

Asia, Dogs, Family, Health, Travel

Today

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Imbolc                                                                                        Valentine Moon

Tai chi finished up today. Just in time, I think I got it. Still plan to use the form I’ve learned as a mid-morning break from work. Gotta get it into my routine though. Not yet.

Vega continues to get better, move around more. She’s not drugged up and that helps a lot, but she’s also determined to get things back to normal. Her spirits are wonderful, tail thumping, her signature move.

Kate and I have sleep deprivation from the last week plus. Long nap this afternoon, more sleep tomorrow, too, I imagine.

Beginning to get an Asia focus, thinking about Korea, Singapore. Mary has found a place for us to stay at the Raffle’s Town Club. This is an offshoot of the larger, historic Raffles Hotel in downtown. The Town Club is close to her home.

 

Art and Culture, Colorado, Mountains, Park County, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Urban Art

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Imbolc                                                                              Valentine Moon

Cities. In 2008 a global threshold found over 50% of the population in cities, a percentage calculated to be 70% by 2050. Cities have many charms, their bulging populations are testimony to that. I found an artful charm in Denver last night.

The Rocky Mountain Land Library had a pop-up evening at the Denver Architectural Collaborative on Santa Fe. The Collaborative is in in the middle of the Santa Fe Drive Arts District which holds, on the first Friday of every month, a gallery crawl. Last night was the first Friday.

So, while discovering what the Library planned for its Hartsel location in South Park, I also had the opportunity to experience the first Friday event. While the Library’s exhibits, books and people were interesting, the galleries and people and food trucks were exciting. As often happens, the temperature in Denver was higher than ours at home, 57 degrees to 35, so the night was warm, filled with people wandering from gallery to gallery.

 

The district runs for five blocks or so. There are museums like the Museo de Las Americas and Denver University’s Center for the Visual Arts, many galleries with a wide range of art, artist’s studios, funky restaurants and best of all food trucks with a wide variety of fare. Last night there were gyros, wild game burgers and steaks, barbecue, Mexican among many others. The crowd was mostly young, the fabled millennials of Denver out on the prowl.

This place made me feel alive, at home.  These are my people and there are a lot of them.

Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

A Secular Saint

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Imbolc                                                                         Valentine Moon

Kepler, Gertie, Vega
Kepler, Gertie, Vega

Miss Vega has gotten friskier, happier. She’s receiving home injections of the antibiotic necessary to combat the rogue e-coli infection. We may be on the upward slope of recovery now.

Kepler went over to Bailey yesterday. Award Winning Pet Grooming defurs him. The owner, who has Ayn Rand quotes posted on the counter, said they’d had lots of dogs in with blown coats. We’ve had cold weather then unseasonably warm weather. Twice. Good for dog groomers.

Amanda, the groomer who cares for our dogs, and I got into a conversation about Vega and her amputation. She said dogs were amazing; they go on unfazed, living their life. We both remarked that dogs make us better humans. She then said, casually, something that revealed her to be a secular saint, at least in my non-dogmatic (haha, dogmatic!) canonization process.

After remarking about how they go on unfazed, Amanda said that she used to go to the local shelters and adopt old dogs so they wouldn’t have to die alone. The last one she adopted, a pit bull, had three legs. Not sure why she stopped, but that she did it at all, that she thought of it even, impressed me, made me think of the legions of kind persons out there.

Amanda will be in my gratefuls tonight.

General

Horror Non-Fiction

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Imbolc                                                                        Valentine Moon

 

So here it is: A billionaire who guarantees, guarantees, there is “no problem there.” A man whom his senatorial colleagues despise and describe as unlikeable. Or, a senator with the number one absentee record in his day job. These are the Republican front runners, the best of those challenged by the rigors of the “invisible primary” that selects candidates worthy of large donations. They are the best of those sorted out by the early voters in primaries in 15 states. 15. This contest is actually happening in the richest, most powerful nation the world has ever known. A beacon for democracy.

Gosh. Honestly. I mean…

 

Dogs, Health, Politics

Vega, Trump, Knee

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Imbolc                                                                          Valentine Moon

Vega’s culture for the source of an infection in her wound has given her what we hope is the last hurdle in her recovery from the amputation, an antibiotic resistant form of e-coli. It’s only sensitive to two rarely used antibiotics, one $400 for a tiny vial, the other one $40. Guess which one we chose.

She’s feeling much better and once this infection gets resolved and her wound closed, today for the wound, her path goes back to the original one with four weeks or so to stitches out.

The Donald is similar to this e-coli. He’s an establishment Republican resistant organism and the micro-biologists of the GOP strategists have not yet found the antibiotic that will work against him. Like such organisms in medicine he represents a genuine, serious threat to the well-being of the party. Super Tuesday seemed a good breeding ground for the infection as the lab reports came in from states in the south. At some point overwhelming sepsis may result and the host organism may succumb. More to come.

And, in personal organ recital news, my doc yesterday told me I had osteoarthritis in my left knee and “will probably require a new knee at some point.” I’m channeling my buddy Mark Odegard’s path. First prostate cancer, then a bum knee. Sigh. Anyhow a cortisone injection is in my immediate future since my kidney disease means no nsaids. I hope it works because I want to be mobile for the Asia trip next month. Full disclosure: the thought of a needle probing my knee scares me a bit.