Monthly Archives: August 2020

Aging, Cinema and Television, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Friends, GeekWorld, Health, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Zoombies

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Lughnasa and the Labor Day Moon

Monday gratefuls: Rigel’s appetite. Kep’s centeredness. Our home. Kate feeling better last night. Chicken and blueberries and asparagus and beets. Our front, cleaner, more natural after the stump grinding. The night sky, visible now at 5 a.m. 36 degrees this morning.

Cold here overnight. Down to 36. Refreshing, invigorating. Up early, 4:30 a.m. with enough sleep. I go to bed early, around 8 p.m. The night Sky. Don’t see it much when I get up later, around 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. though that’s changing as the Great Wheel turns toward the vernal equinox.

Kate had a hard day yesterday with shortness of breath and not feeling well. I moved a TV into the bedroom. She can watch NCIS and Blue Bloods while resting. She feels better lying down. Our agreement is that the TV goes off when I come to bed. This is a change from her last year and a half when she read through books in a day or two, filling shelves of books she had read.

Rigel’s appetite, boosted by the prednisone she’s on for fever control, is good. She’s gradually returning to her old habits, a couple of cups of dry food with some wet food mixed in. Since her time in the hospital, she’s eaten a lot of canned food. It all has to be single protein, rabbit. That makes it expensive, three to four dollars a can. And she’s a big dog.

Zoombies. Don’t know why I haven’t seen this word yet, but it’s my neologism now. This is the zoombie apocalypse, characterized by so many seen but not felt. I don’t find that zoom eats my brain, but I do know it can cause a deadening if done too much. Many working at home have overloaded.

Yesterday the old zoombies met for what Paul calls our church. The topic was staying healthy as we age. A table with four legs: diet & exercise, relationships, sleep, and regular medical care. Couldn’t remember medical care as the fourth leg so I added curiosity. That works, too. So, five legs.

What we’re trying to do is lengthen healthspan, that period of life where you can do what you want to do with minimal interference from frailty or disease. As we age, so many of us experience dire insults that don’t kill us, but do render us weaker, less able to engage in our lives as we used to know them.

Ideas from the zoombie session: exercise bands, going to the club, cleanses of various sorts, walking, physical labor, interval training, workouts from a trainer, staying in touch with loved ones, with friends, with dogs.

I mentioned curiosity because it acknowledges mystery, wonder, and an openness to the future without trying to control it.

Here’s to your health, your loved ones health. May you live long and prosper.

Art and Culture, Beyond the Boundaries, Memories, Minnesota, Myth and Story, Shadow Mountain, Travel, US History, World History

Still alive in my heart

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Lughnasa and the Labor Day Moon

Sunday gratefuls: The Ancient friends. Health. Healthspan. Working out. Cool weather. Low humidity and dewpoint. Extreme fire weather. Rain yesterday and Friday. Stress.

Drifting to sleep, roaming places that reached into my heart. In no particular order:

Delos, the small Greek island where Apollo and Artemis were born

Delphi, home to the Delphic Oracle in the Temple of Apollo

Ephesus, the most complete Roman city I’ve seen. Near Patmos. The grave of John the Evangelist is there. Maybe.

The Chilean Fjords. 120 miles of islands, ocean, and glaciers.

Ushuaia. The furthest south city in the Americas.

Angkor Wat, temples of the Khmer devi-rajas, God-Kings.

The Maglev train in Korea

The Forbidden City and the Great Wall

Pompeii

The Uffizi

The Sistine Chapel

Inverness, Scotland

St. Deniol’s Residential library

Winifred’s Holy Well

Cahokia

Chaco

Lake Superior

Northern Minnesota

Shadow Mountain and its neighbors

Manhattan

The Cloisters

Bangkok’s China Town and its night restaurants on the sidewalks

Minneapolis and St. Paul

The Panama Canal

Oaxaca

Mexico City: the zocalo and Garibaldi Square and Xochimilco and the Anthropology Museum

Merida

General

Just Say No

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Lughnasa and the Labor Day Moon

Friday gratefuls: Vampire Kate. Four new teeth for her. Rigel’s good appetite this morning. 2020, year of tragedy and transformation. Cooling down of our days. The blood red sun. Again. The zombie GOP, haunting itself. Annie. That very cute chocolate lab pup that Brenton White gets in 9 days.

The Pine Gulch Fire on the Western Slope has become the largest fire Colorado’s ever had. It surpassed the 2002 Hayman fire last night. A long drought, climate change, reduced snow pack = bad times for the Rockies and the rest of the West.

Wrapping himself in flags, multiple flags, Trump stood at the White House, the White House!, and spoke to the Republican virtual convention. Uncle Sam wept. Lady Liberty, too. Blind Justice. His carnival show of an administration has barkers, thrill rides, and rigged games, but only one ringmaster, a clown.

This is a dangerous moment. Between now and November 3rd the United States is in as much peril, more, than even war time. We may see more teenagers, or adults with teenage executive function, “deciding to keep order.” as Tucker Carlson said of Kyle Rittenhouse, the Kenosha shooter. We will see attacks on Kamala Harris, on BLM, on the very notion of national responsibility for the poor, the elderly, the immigrant.

Trump is right on this score. The nature of this country is in play. If you want to ignore climate change, eliminate any form of national health insurance, sanction racism, empower police to be even more violent, seal our borders, and go even further down the path of pariah nationhood, he’s your man.

Just say no.

Commentary on the news, Great Work, Myth and Story, Politics, Third Phase, US History

A Second Act

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Lughnasa and the Labor Day Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Kate. Amber. Rigel. Kep. Cool morning. The Pandemic. Trump. BLM. Prostate cancer. Lung disease. Sjogren’s. CBE. Mussar. Tara. Electric cars. The dying of the extractive fossil fuel industries. Climate change. The Book of Revelation.

Predicting the end of the world is a parlor game played by intellectuals and cranks. It never fails to terrify, alarm, or make someone laugh. Think of all the cartoons with the bearded man and the sign: The End is Near.

Apocalypse. It’s hard to put the word aside these days: Murder Hornets, Covid, Trump, Climate Change (remember climate change?), that asteroid, Hurricane Laura. It has me checking the clouds for a guy in a flowing robe and an angry tilt to his eyebrows.

Remember 2012? Y2K? The first models of what the Coronavirus might do? Evangelicals support Israel because they think it will encourage the second coming. No, really.

Instead, I hear T.S. Eliot, “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.” Our sense of drama wants, needs a bang, but I’d say the most likely scenario for the end of humanity comes after centuries of an Earth made too hot for us by our own actions. A self-destructive species, us Humans.

You’ll probably not guess where I’m going with this. It means to me that our nation will survive the Donald, will take him, the pandemic, even the Asteroid and murder Hornets, and recreate ourselves.

There may be no second acts in America, but I believe there will be a second act for America. The last four years, colored even darker by the “if it were fiction, it wouldn’t be believable.” nature of the last few months, have had certain oddly positive effects.

The racist (and, classcist) strands in our history have been written clearly in blood and anger. Black Lives Matter and its counter protesters in the alt-right have put on a medieval morality play in cities across the country. See Kenosha. Portland. Minneapolis. The reactions of police and the denizens of the right-wing demimonde have clarified what’s at stake for our nations future. I believe we will see positive policy changes in cities and in our nation, especially after the election.

The orange excrescence has performed a similar service for the small d democrats here. Who are, I believe, most of us on the left and right. We now know how important not only the constitutional nature of our government is, but the norms and traditions it has developed over 200 years of history as well.

That’s why I’m seeing a sign on a Brookforest yard that reads: I’m a Republican, but I’m no Fool: Vote Biden. That’s why all those national security folks have gone on record as supporting Trump. Even George Bush. George Will. Many other prominent members of what used to be the GOP.

We will have an opportunity, if we choose to take it, to reimagine this nation. Our founding documents and our founders will play a strange role in this reimagining.

That 3/5th’s “compromise.” Sally Hemmings. All those George Washington owned slaves. The white, male, property owner requirement for voting. Not who we want or need to be anymore. Let them now live on as the sins of the fathers that were visited on our generation, but finally expiated.

I’ve taken mild liberties with the text, but this should serve as a template for the next four years:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men of us are created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men all men and women, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

We gray beards and gray heads have a role to play in this exciting time. Just what it is, I’m not sure, but it has something to do with insisting on our better natures. Will you join me as we search for Rumi’s field out beyond right and wrong?

Colorado, Denver, Family, Great Wheel, Great Work, Jefferson County, Minnesota, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Park County, Plants, Shadow Mountain, The Move, US History, Weather +Climate

Bloody Sun

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Lughnasa and the Labor Day Moon

Tuesday and Wednesday gratefuls: Kate’s DEXA scan for bone density. Ruby’s a.c. for the drive. Euphoria on HBO. Ruth’s new favorite show. Rigel’s improving appetite. Amber. Mountain Waste. The blood red morning Sun. Teenagers. The complexity of their lives, made even more complex by Covid. The orange excrescence and what he’s showing us about our country.

The dawn Sun here bleeds for the Fires burning through the West. The clouds show their concern with reflected color. Northern California and the Western Slope of Colorado are aflame. Their smoke and ash foul the Air we breath even up here on Shadow Mountain.

We live in the Arapaho National Forest, filled with Lodgepole Pine and Aspen stressed by drought, valley meadows with a summer’s growth of Grasses, also dry. The National Forest Service warning signs have pegged their highest mark, Extreme, for weeks now.

Western life. Punctuated by drought. Rejuvenated by Fire. Relieved by heavy Mountain Snows. For thousands of years. “Go, West, young man.” We did. But we white folk are not nomadic. We do not know where a village can be safe. We just build. Glass and steel. Hardie board and shingles. Permanent. As if there were no fire. No drought. These are strategies of the humid East, dangerous in the arid West.

As Greeley’s famous invitation flooded the West with people from the East, pushing out, slaughtering the people who knew how to move with the seasons, we made the same mistakes over and over. I’m living in one right now. It’s beautiful here on Shadow Mountain, but this house will burn. And that’s what Lodgepole Pine Forests do. They burn. All the Trees. Leaving fertile ground for a new Ecosystem.

Humans make mistakes. Often. And the consequences are sometimes horrific. Sometimes wonderful. Human life is one long unintentional adventure in empiricism. Oh, if we do that, this happens. Some of our mistakes lead us to lives otherwise impossible. Like our life here on Shadow Mountain.

Kate and I understand that we might be living here when the Forests catch Fire. That our home may be temporary. We choose to stay for the same reasons populations of us Eastern folk spotted all over the Mountains and Intramontane regions out here do. It’s beautiful and close to the Wild Life, a reminder of a world not controlled by humans.

Oh, yes, there’s a paradox. Live where it’s not safe. Why would we do that? We’re mistake makers, non-linear decision makers. We’re human.

Colorado, Cooking, Denver, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Health, Jefferson County, Memories, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History, Weather +Climate

Water

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Lughnasa and the Labor Day Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Jon, Ruth, Gabe. All here to celebrate Grandma’s birthday. The specific Animals that gave their lives for our meal: scallops and a tri-tip steak. The heat. When it leaves. Jon and Ruth’s happiness with the gift of Ivory. (our 2011 Rav4). Gabe’s “Air hug. I love you Grandpop.” Rigel at home. The chance to cook for a crowd. Kate. Always Kate.

Didn’t do much for Kate’s birthday on Tuesday. Lots of stuff going on before, that day, and after. But we hit it yesterday. Grandkids. Scallops. The gift of empanadas from Jon and the kids. Rigel up and about. When they left we both collapsed, as usual. A good exhaustion. Happy to see them come. Happy to see them go.

Record heat in Denver. Hot up here, too. Not by other spots standards, I know, but we’ve become acclimated to a cooler day.

You can’t see the Mountains from Denver. Jon. All this smoke and haze, heavy particulates has obscured us. We’re still here. The haze is here and the smell of smoke hangs in the Air like a harbinger. It’s bad further west, but the Wildfire threat is extreme here, too. Humidity at 16. The Ground Water evaporates. The stress on Trees and Grasses grows with the lack of precipitation. A grim reminder that we’re all part of this Ecosystem.

Ruth said that Animals from the Foothills are fleeing into metro Denver. People have been asked to leave water out for them. Can’t do it here. Habituation. Which kills Animals rather than helps them.

The arid West is not the humid East. The Mountains are not the Plains. Whether we realize it all the time or not, our lives have Water as a disruptive actor. The lack of it. Water from the Western Slope, for example, goes to Denver through huge tunnels and pipes. The southern burbs of Denver have depleted much of the Aquifer that sits beneath them. Long periods of dryness lead to extreme conditions for agriculture, Wildlife, and our Forests. The Colorado River Compact promises more Water to its downstream users like Las Vegas, Arizona, and Los Angeles than actually flows through it.

Diane, my San Francisco based cousin, told me about the book, Cadillac Desert, long ago. That piqued my interest in Water. I’ve been fascinated ever since. The way the Plains states like Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and even parts of Oklahoma and Texas have based their economies on the Ogallala Aquifer, an enormous reservoir of mostly ancient Water that underlies them. No Aquifer, no amber waves of Grain, no fruited Plains. The Great Lakes. Now, the Colorado River.

Consider the Water where you are. It is Life itself. Worthy of your attention.

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Health, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Home again, home again

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Lughnasa and the Labor Day Moon

Friday gratefuls: Rigel asleep on the floor, my side of the bed. Her bag of meds and the schedule laid out by Kate. Palisade Peaches and center cut pork chops. Easy Entree. Amber, again. Rain yesterday, good rain, during a red flag day. All the firefighters deployed to the Western Slope. The Pine Gulch Fire, now the 2nd largest in state history.

Rigel went outside yesterday when the neighbor dogs barked. She came up and down the short stairs between the first level and the second. She ate some canned food and took her first meds at home. As VRCC predicted, she was tired and spent most the time splayed out on the rug.

As was her occasional habit anyhow, she didn’t get up for breakfast. It’s five o’clock, Dad. I’ll feed her a bit later.

As we were going to sleep last night, Kate said, “It feels good to have the whole family back together.” It did. My mind didn’t have to wander all the way to Edgewood to Rigel’s kennel. I could reach down and pat her head. Which I did.

I sent Ruth a text with a short video of Rigel walking out of the VRCC. She is strong, Ruth said. Yes, I replied. Like you and your Grandma.

No matter what happens after this, yesterday was a good day.

Dogs, Feelings, Health

She’s Back.

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Lughnasa and the Labor Day Moon

Special afternoon edition. Rigel is home! We picked her up at 12:30. She came walking out, a small pink bandage on her left front leg, otherwise pretty normal. A bit tired from the constant bustle of doggy ICU.

We spent just the right amount of money on her. Which was enough to get her back home alive.

I was overcome with feelings of love and gratitude and relief, burying my face in Rigel’s as the vet tech said, “She’s a perfect girl.” An overused word, perfect. But apropos for Rigel. So many of our dogs, most of them, in equally serious situations died. She didn’t. Not today.

Cooking, Dogs, Dreams, Family, Feelings, Friends, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

When in need

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Lughnasa and the Labor Day Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Rigel’s strength. The docs at VRCC. Tara. Kate. Amber, two gratefuls for Amber. Wildfires. Extreme Fire Danger. Kep. Ruth. Kate’s sisters. Shadow Mountain. Black Mountain. The Arapaho National Forest. All the wild critters that live within it.

Rigel. Steroids bringing her fever down. Down into normal range. Seeing now if that can last. If so, she may come home today. If not today, tomorrow. She’s strong, otherwise healthy. Dr. Baylis, who diagnosed her allergy to chicken protein, said yesterday that a six week course of oral anti-biotics could find her back to normal. The stroke risk remains though I don’t know how to evaluate it. Guardedly optimistic.

Had a dream last night. A big brown dog bounded through the house. I turned to Kate and said, “Oh, you went in and picked up Rigel!” She’s in my heart. Forever.

Kate seems to have found her advocate about her feeding tube. Amber. Amber is physical therapist with a specialty in wound care. Since the feeding tube goes through the skin, it is a permanent wound. Healing it requires preventing fluids from leaking out onto Kate’s skin.

We’re now thinking that the tube, which was placed in a small part of her stomach left after bariatric surgery, may need to go where we originally thought it was going, into her jejunum. A J-tube. Would require surgery again. Grrr. But if that’s what it takes, we’ll go there.

Amber got the operative report yesterday and found a denser nutrient supplement for Kate’s feedings. That might help, too. It would supply more calories per unit and allow her to slow down the rate of feeding without making it take a really long time. That could help with the leakage.

We’re going back to see Amber today. Might have some news on this later.

Meanwhile my friend Tara has talked me through the recent disturbance in my psyche. She asked me how things were going on, I think, the same day that I told Kate I couldn’t clean the house and cook as much. I told Tara how things were right then. She offered to do many things, but the one I needed was to talk.

So we’ve met for an hour each week since. Three weeks. I calmed down after the first conversation. Over the course of our three talks I’ve come to realize that stuff here: Kate’s, Rigel’s, the house’s, The Denver Olson’s: Jon, Ruth, Gabe, occupy most of my free mental territory. That’s what I meant when I said I could no longer clean and cook as much. Or, rather, at that point stuff occupied more mental territory than I had free. My hard drive had crashed.

With Tara and the Ancient Friends and the Clan I’ve opened up some space and feel better now. Thanks to you all.

Cooking, Dogs, Family, Friends, Health, Judaism, Mussar, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Whole lotta billin’ goin’ on

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Lughnasa and the Labor Day Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Mussar MVP. Silence. Guarding speech. Ron. Susan. Jamie. Marilyn. Rich. Kate. Tara. Judy. Rigel’s temperature down to 102.1. Our emergency fund. Vanguard. Peak Windows. We can see clearly now. Kep keeping his humans safe. Clean gutters. Getting my password back for solar panel monitoring. Our mailbox with the door in the back. No more standing on the road to collect mail. Ruth and Gabe. Steven, the snail.

Rigel remains in the hospital with a guarded diagnosis. The iv antibiotics and steroids seem to be bringing her fever down, but the chances of a stroke remain, and will remain even if she survives this episode. This is due to what doctors charmingly call vegetation on her mitral valve. If this vegetation breaks loose, it could cause a pulmonary embolism or a stroke. Nothing to be done about that risk, either.

I go to sleep imagining myself with Rigel, testing a connection that is as strong as I’ve had with a dog. Rigel lies in her crate, feeling miserable, and I try to comfort her. Probably hooey, but it makes me feel better.

You never realize how dirty your windows are until you’ve had them professionally cleaned. They’re transparent! Peak Windows came yesterday to celebrate Kate’s birthday. Did a great job. Clean gutters, too, heading into ice dam season. Also recommended for fire mitigation. Pine needles in the gutter can catch fire.

The last week showed how bills can stack up all of a sudden. Rigel in the vet hospital. Kate’s dentures. And, yesterday, my long-term care insurance. Yike. Not to mention quarterly taxes due next month. We’ve got it, but not without some pain.

Kate turned 76 yesterday. A quiet birthday though we’re going to celebrate on Saturday with Jon and the grandkids. With phone calls, Peak Windows, and Rigel in the hospital, then MVP which goes late for us, her birthday wore her out.

Here’s an interesting note. I wrote a post on Nextdoor Shadow Mountain extolling Easy Entrees. Got lots of hits. And, this morning I found a private message from Laura, who apparently owns Easy Entrees. My post brought tears to her eyes, she said. And, she deposited one hundred dollars in my Easy Entree account. Wow. Thanks, Laura.