Monthly Archives: July 2016

Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work, Jefferson County, Mountains, Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History

Mutual Homicide

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Summer                                                                         Park County Fair Moon

Up here on Mt. Ararat, aka Shadow Mountain, our small ark has come to rest. Or at least so it seems at times. The rising waters of hate, fear, violence, guns, neglect lap, muddy and turgid, not far below. We keep sending the dove of peace out from the ship. It quickly returns, finding nowhere to rest in a world rent by pain. Doves can read the headlines.

Under the headlines a friend faces death from lung cancer. Jon and Jen fight. The wildfire season is underway on the Front Range, a Russian roulette moment until the rains return. The Trumpet blasts ignorance and xenophobia.

Yet. The lodgepoles blanketed us with their yellow pollen. I watched bees, native and honey, crawl in and out of pale blue Penstemon. Stacked and neatly trimmed lenticular clouds form over Black Mountain, Mt. Evans. Cub Creek and Bear Creek and Deer Creek carry water stored higher in the mountains by late winter snows, feeding trout and willows along the way to the Gulf of Mexico. The mule deer and elk come to our yard for grass and other small plants, show up on Black Mountain Drive as we drive home from dinner. A great horned owl flies above the pines, hunting for prey.

All this human turmoil happens as the Great Wheel turns, as it turned long before humans emerged from the evolutionary struggle and as it will turn long after our mean spirit has scrubbed us from the planet. We may live on beyond this wonder, this earth, but our fate here seems one of mutual homicide. Could we only take the lesson of the Great Wheel and learn to live with our kind as part of rather than against each other and the natural world.

 

 

 

Politics, US History, World History

#InterestingTimes

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Summer                                                                        Park County Fair Moon

Nice. Phillip Castile. Dallas. And that’s just the last couple of weeks.

Russ Douthat, a NYT conservative columnist, and a co-author have an article in today’s paper about curing Trumpism. It identifies a core problem in the Republican party. The party has, for several decades now, been a party of two parts: the establishment elite and working class whites. Trump has limned that division and created an internal revolution between these two very different constituencies.

“Some of these concerns (of the white working class) are rooted in racial anxiety, and an older generation’s inevitable fear of change. But many of them are rooted in basic human vulnerability — a very personal exposure to stagnant wages, family breakdown, military quagmires (America’s wars are disproportionately fought by volunteers from downscale Red America) and a social crisis of opioid abuse and suicide that hardly anyone in Washington or New York noticed until recently.” Douthat, NYT, 7/15/2016

Brexit. Greece. Refugees and immigrants. The impossible dilemma that the bloody marriage of oil and Islam has bequeathed on the world. And that’s just Europe and the Middle East. Consider, too, the rise of China and the recent decision of the UN panel against China’s claims about the South China Sea. Of course there is, too, the region of the Great Game, that mysterious hidden world (to the West) of the ‘stans, armed conflict going back hundreds of years.

People who feel history no longer listens to their voice become dangerous. Most people do not want power or great wealth or globe spanning influence, most people want food for themselves and their families, a roof, water, gainful work and some time to enjoy life. In each of the trouble areas of the world whole groups, classes of people, cry out. They are not fed, clothed, housed, watered, working. And joy is difficult to find. Imagine the family gathered for a meager meal, the kids running around as children do. As grandparents, you look at the children and see their future. Bleak.

Think of China, Vietnam, India, Nigeria, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, México. Whole populations want to matter, feel as if current history has promise, yet are uncertain of its arrival. The world is a dynamic place, shifting and changing always. Even the great civilizations like Egypt, China, Greece, Rome, Persia rose and fell. Our times are not different in kind, only in the details.

Politics is the way humans sort out their communal conflicts. U.S. politics are in a fundamental reordering right now, but the primary point, here, as elsewhere on mother earth, is to treat each other well. When we don’t, murders and wars and the collapse of nations can follow.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Friends, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Fraught

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Summer                                                        Park County Fair Moon

rudbeckia ReynoldsFeeling the pressure of the divorce. So many tensors pulling this way and that. Jon and his understandable anxiety about his immediate and near term future. Kate’s tough position as mother, mother-in-law and grandma. Court hearings with deep consequences. The fate of Ruth and Gabe as their mother and father fight over them. The friable nature of our extended family as it goes through a wrenching alteration, one with permanent implications. Trying to stay centered and available. All difficult.

This is life at its most fraught, perhaps the only analogue being serious illness or an unexpected financial crisis. All of us become frayed, our best persons fighting to remain present, but often submerged in our collective anxiety. A good time for Mussar, the Jewish spiritual practice Kate and I have taken up through Congregation Beth Evergreen.

If there were a red flag warning for families, we’d have one on our flagpole right now.

Yet. The immersion in each others lives at increased intensity also has positive implications. We get to know each other better, perhaps most possible when the day-to-day gets set aside and we become more vulnerable, more accessible. If we listen to our inner life, we have a chance, too, to learn more about ourselves.

A friend going through a difficult period refers to it as graduate school for self-awareness, for learning what truly matters. Yes.

Health
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Summer                                                               Park County Fair Moon

PSA test today. The first one after my one year surgery anniversary. This has become routine, though not without its still high stakes character. As Kate often says, the more tests that are done, the more likely irregularities are to show up.

 

Commentary on the news, Politics, US History

A Poisonous Vine

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Summer                                                                    Park County Fair Moon

Some pundits are asking, “Is this 1968?” Luckily, I can answer that question. No!

Easy way to tell? It’s 2016. That’s almost 50 years since Bobby and Martin were killed. A lot of conservatism under the bridge since then. Nixon and Reagan and G. and G.W. Even, it could be argued, Bill C. That river of economic purity and social reaction, never clear, has rendered public conversation opaque. Barack Obama had the misfortune of serving his two terms with largely Republican Congresses. This forced him, somewhat like Bill Clinton, to govern with a millstone.

That millstone, a public weight pressed from the grit of ground up Tea Partiers, Moral Majoritarians, the Christian Right, rebel flag wavers and just plain angry old white folks, is now slung around the American electorate as a whole. And it’s pulling us down, making us read each new Trumpet blast with slackjawed despair. This may be the moment that the millstone finally proves too heavy and sinks us all.

Or, it could change the balance of power in Congress. May that be so.

This time, this 2016 time, this third millennium time, has come after the old days have passed away. The second millennium, a thousand years of Western history, has been written and shelved.

The connection between the times is the unsolved problem of what some call America’s original sin. Our racist history, born in the middle passage, and steadied by the demise of reconstruction, will not disappear. There is no “color-blind” world waiting on the other side of the Edmund Pettus bridge. My own sense is that our original sin was capitalism, the economic system that made cheap, cheap labor appear desirable. In slavery we bound racism and capitalism together, a poisonous vine connecting 2016 to 1968 to the Klan governors and senators, to Jim Crow and the Civil war, to the 3/5ths compromise.

Each time we try to pull ourselves away from that history just grasping the kudzu of capitalist reinforced racism sickens us as a nation. Why? Because we try to fix issues rooted in white racism without fixing economic injustice rooted in American capitalism. This original sin demands a redemptive price no politician will ever be willing to pay. Salvation in this instance is an illusion until we can find a way to uproot both of these evils.

 

 

Family, Humanities, Our Land and Home, Politics

Law

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Summer                                                                 Park County Fair Moon

enver Court House Lobby
Denver Courthouse Lobby

All day yesterday two young men from Timberline Custom Painting power washed our two decks, the shed and the garage. They now look clean and bare, ready for the clear stain. The low humidity up here dries wood out, can crack and split it, so wood siding demands care just like a painted surface.

We got the bid back for the bathroom. Ouch. Need to get other bids, other ideas because the one we talked about with Bear Creek Design is more than it makes sense to spend. Part of the process.

The divorce and legal matters continue to roil up family life. Lawyers and courts and judges, decrees and orders. External power, again the state’s coercive authority, enters intimate areas, areas usually outside the pale of government interference. The capacity of the law to circumscribe behavior is chilling, inexorable when it comes down on you or ones you love. Yet, necessary. Common life, especially in a democracy, occurs among individuals with widely varying goals, ethical assumptions and moral positions. Conflict is inevitable and at times the conflict demands mediation, even arrest and imprisonment.

The law, made in assemblies of elected officials, too often reflects the biases and values of a majority, giving bare attention or actual suppression to those less well represented. Think sodomy laws, restrictive abortion regulations, voting measures like reading tests and i.d.’s, Native American reservations. The law is about power and like all things related to power subject to corruption.

 

Great Work, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Red Flag Warning

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Summer                                                                     Park County Fair Moon

 

A red flag warning means that critical fire weather conditions
are either occurring now... .or will shortly. A combination of
strong winds... low relative humidity... and warm temperatures can
contribute to extreme fire behavior.

red flag warningAll that fire mitigation work makes sense when the weather services throw up a red flag warning as they have yesterday and today. Those of us who live up here know this is a price for living in the mountains, but that fact doesn’t mean we want to pay it. The dilemma is that we live in a desirable area, so folks from all over come up here to play, to be in the mountain wildernesses, to do research, to hang out, camp. The visitors are not as attuned to the dangers here, so that s’more or that can of beans or heating the water for coffee seems innocent. And it is, until it isn’t. One spark.

misty morning May 31

Jefferson County fire fighters closed westbound I-70 and Colorado 470 east (which connects to our nearest highway, 285) due to a grass fire on Hogback Ridge. Yesterday a truck lost some trash which flew in the air, contacted power lines, burst into flames and fell to the ground. So freak accidents, careless tourists or locals ignoring reality put us at risk.

A person reported a neighbor yesterday for burning stumps. He puts charcoal on them, lights it up, then covers the stump with a metal can. He was indignant when asked to put them out. What could possibly go wrong? In another instance folks moved into a new development near Bailey and spent the 4th and this last weekend setting off fireworks in their driveways. Geez, guys.

And, as friend Tom Crane knows, there’s always the possibility of a propane explosion. Cheery thought.

Anyhow our weather is like a femme fatale: gorgeous, sensuous, potentially murderous.

Garden, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Plants

Among the Wild Flax

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Summer                                                                  Park County Fair Moon

wild flax
wild flax

Conifer is big and diverse. I drove 20 minutes from home this morning to Reynolds Park, a Jefferson County Open Space Park. It’s still in Conifer, nestled in a canyon, filled with Ponderosa pines, creeks, forested hills and plenty of montane ecosystem plants.

The Native Plant Master class held there ran from 8:30 to 12:30, a long time in the heat. At least for me. By the time the morning was over I was hurting. That arthritic knee, right hip and lower back crying out for surcease. No more plants, please! Lay us down, right now. Frustrating because the information in this class is germane to our home on Black Mountain Drive.

We found the Harebell, a wild geranium, three different grasses including Timothy and Broomtail, keyed out a Ponderosa and an Aspen and a Rocky Mountain Maple. There were two members of the Sunflower family: Rudbeckia-the black eyed daisy and a flower with multiple white petals whose name I can’t recall. A native bee crawled into a Penstemon, gracilis, getting pollen on its back in the process, nototribic. We visited a wild Flax with delicate blue flowers.

Two more classes yet to go. Right now, I’m looking forward to the information but not the wandering pedagogy.

Garden, Great Work, Jefferson County, Latin, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Plants, Science, Shadow Mountain, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Getting Back To Work

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Summer                                                                  Park County Fair Moon

ballgameSummer has come in full glory and I’m still not back to work. Getting frustrated with myself, need to get a discipline underway. Back to the work in the morning pattern that has seen me through several novels and lots of Ovid.

It is now a year and a day since my cancer surgery, a real spade turner in the soil of my psyche. Are my old goals still appropriate? Does the divorce and the engagement with Jon and the grandkids override them? Doesn’t feel that way. My ability to give correlates with the care I take of myself. Taking care of myself means continuing creative and scholarly tasks. That work plus exercise are central to my life and cannot be avoided without damaging my Self.

computerRight now the days float by. This meeting with Jon. That power washing of the solar array. Mow the fuel. Reorganize the loft. Work in the garage. Read the NYT. Keep up with the presidential campaign. All of these things are important, even necessary, but I’m doing them and not creating the daily discipline that longer projects require. I know how to do it. I have done it. But not now.

This morning I have my first class in a Native Plant class that focuses on the montane ecosystem, the one in which we live. It’s a start in the discipline. What I need is to protect my mornings again. Get up here in the loft, write a thousand words a day, translate at 5 verses of Ovid.

I need encouragement to get this routine started again.

Commentary on the news, Minnesota, Politics, US History

True That

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Summer                                                                    Park County Fair Moon

Imagine if you were African-American looking back at American history. First, enslavement and its horrors. Then, the Civil War. At last, free at last. But wait. Reconstruction torpedoed by Andrew Johnson, Jim Crow laws speed through the country, returning and enforcing segregation. Lynching and the Klan. The rise of the Klan in the 1920’s, then the Great Depression, falling, as these catastrophes do, harder on the poor, many African-American. The wars, in which African-American soldiers could die, but not lead. A shining moment, the time of Martin Luther King. Selma. Washington. Birmingham. The Civil Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act. Affirmative Action. Their gutting over the last few years. The steady pop, pop, pop of police shootings. Death and maiming.

How would you view our common culture? Would you feel safe? As I went about my Friday, whenever I saw an African-American in downtown Denver, I wondered what they were feeling in the aftermath of Falcon Heights, Minnesota and Dallas. There was a young African-American girl lying in a chalk outline of a human body, a protester in Minnesota. Her sign said, Will I be next? How do we unravel this knotted skein in the tapestry of our nation’s history?

Fixing climate change, a very difficult challenge, only makes sense if the world we save is one we all want for our home. If you want peace, work for justice. True that.