Monthly Archives: October 2020

Commentary on Religion, Family, Friends, Great Wheel, Holidays, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

We are the people of Holiseason!

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Samain and the Full, Blue Moon of Radical Change

Saturday gratefuls: Dr. Eigner. Undetectable PSA. The Great Wheel. Taoism. All us pagans. Samain. The fallow season. Holiseason. Darkness. A return, however brief, to time sanity. The big snow that tamped down the Cameron and East Troublesome fires. The American Way. The American Dream.

Samain. Again. The Celtic New Year. The Great Wheel turned now for a full orbit around the sun since last Samain. Though I embraced the Jewish New Year in September, 5781, as a way out of 2020, it never seemed to stick. That is, 2020 kept crashing back over the dike of even as ancient a tradition as that one. Gonna try again.

The Celtic New Year puts the beginning of a new year at the beginning of the fallow time. Samain in ancient Gaelic means Summer’s End. In the most ancient Celtic calendar that we have, the Celts recognized two seasons. Beltane, now on May 1st, marked the season of fertility, growth, harvest. Samain, now on October 31st, is the final harvest holiday. The growing season finished villages prepared for the difficult time of year to come, a cold time when people lived off their stores. Interesting to me that the Celts chose such a time for their New Year.

The veil thins during this time, the veil between this world and the Other World. The Other World is the land of Faery, the land of the Gods, the land of the dead. The thinned veil meant ancestors could cross back into this world, as could the Faery folk. Since the Faery folks sometimes kidnapped children and ancestors could be ornery, it was a scary transition from growing season to the fallow time.

Contracts ended or began during the Samain market week as they did for each of the Celtic holidays: Beltane, Lughnasa, Samain, and Imbolc. Always a festive time of year Samain like the others, saw trading and feasting, late night dancing around bonfires, visiting family. The Celts also celebrated the two equinoxes and the two solstices: Ostara, Midsommar, Mabon, and Yule with market weeks.

Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophist, and radical thinker of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, says Michaelmas, the Saint Day for the Archangel Michael, September 29th, is the “springtime of the soul.” Along with the Jewish New Year which always falls near the same time, we’re encouraged to go deep into our selves. I marry this idea to the increasing darkness, the gradual lengthening of the night that began at Midsommar and reaches its maximum at Yule, on the Winter Solstice. Samain invites us to not only go inside, but to also open ourselves to that Other World, the Unseen One, that lies just out of sight. Might be a multiverse, might be a dimension not understood by science or reason.

The Great Wheel teaches us about the link between our inner journey and the seasonal changes. The seasonal changes themselves can teach us about the world beyond our lived reality. We can avert our attention from the screens and pages and indoor rooms of our lives and take our attention out of doors. We can wonder what lies beyond that mountain, beneath that lake.

It teaches us Covid too shall end. And, makes us aware as well, that it will both end and return again. Though I hope we don’t have to have another Trump. Please. Don’t make authoritarianism and rampant stupidity laced into cupidity a renewing moment. Please.

Holiseason begins now. The term is not mine-I found it in the Oxford English Dictionary-but I apply it to the time between today, Samain, and January 6th, the Epiphany, the day after the Twelve Days of Christmas.  Holiseason includes so many, many holidays: Samain, Thanksgiving, Divali, Hanukah, Advent, Posada, Winter Solstice, Yule, New Years Day, Boxing Day, Kwanza. Add ones that you know.

We bathe ourselves in light and darkness, spend time with family, often giving them gifts. Holiseason is a time to sing songs, make the tables groan with food, decorate the house, the city, the nation, hug friends and family, acknowledge all the ancient spiritual trails we follow,  cue ourselves in to the soul’s journey, move deep into the caverns of our own inner life.

If you open yourself to its richness, holiseason will alert you to the fullest potential in yourself and those you love. It will remind you that the whole globe seeks for wisdom, for love, for light. Traditions come alive in song, in movies, in books. Poetry. We need not despair, even with Trump, even with Covid, even with hurricanes and wildfires. We are the people of the Holiseason. Joyous. Alert. Loving. Singing. Diving deep into our own souls to turn them inside out and know others through them. Blessed be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Commentary on the news, Family, Health, Memories, Politics, US History

1968 – 2020

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Fall and the Moon of Radical Change

Friday gratefuls: Kate’s good week. Rigel’s returned appetite. Her getting on the bed last night, a bit wobbly, but there. Kep. So dignified and attentive. The sweetness of our life together. The approaching election. Ahi tuna from Tony’s. Pickup from Safeway. Covid, still changing our culture, our lives, our visions of the future. Climate change and those who work to limit and mitigate it. The Sun.

Kate’s had a week of no nausea, no appointments. A wonder. And, wonderfull. We’ve pushed into new territory, goaded from behind by Covid and being together. A greater appreciation for each other, for our, as Jim Harrison’s poem says, “…life of dogs and children and the far wide country
out by rivers, rumpled by mountains.” Carpe Diem. Thanks, Tom.

Brother Mark asked me to think about now and 1968. “Have the changes of 2020 been different from 1968?” It’s an interesting question. Both, I believe are capstones of an era. 1968 found many of us who were young throwing off the post-WW II culture of conformity, working and not thinking, easy racism and easy wars. Sex was not forbidden. Make love not war was more than just a slogan. It was a lifestyle. We were angry young folks, too. The war. The draft. In loco parentis. (look it up) We found protesting the war both necessary and liberating. See Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 on Netflix.

2020. Protests now seem to come in two flavors: Black Lives Matter and their allies, Proud Boys, the Klan, and their allies. There was some pushback in the 60’s from blue collar workers and straight parents, but for the most part the protests were anti-war in nature though the civil rights movement still had some energy after a hard, but productive first few years of the 60’s. A major difference now is that the alt-right impulses of the 60’s, and they were there, were seen as fringe and cuckoo. Now, with the agitator in chief the fringe has cover in the Whitehouse. That makes them think they are less fringy now. They’re wrong.

I have a lot of other thoughts and I know this is cursory, but I want to post it today. Get back on the board.

 

 

 

Art and Culture

Art: A Post About Grief

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Fall and the Moon of Radical Change

Thursday gratefuls: Kevin at Ionos. Both hands. Keyboards. Learned fingers. This blog. Kate. Our talk yesterday morning. Her bandages and her 02 concentrator going back home. Kep, the sweet boy. Rigel, the yipper. Orion and Venus. Follow the arc to Arcturus. The Big Dipper, follow the pointer stars to Polaris. Bright Sirius. The steady polls. The coming change. May it be radical, thorough, and lasting.

It’s good to be back. Solving the security feature, see the https/ at our url now, either created or coincided with another, bigger problem. Using up more space than my account at my webhost allows. Various attempts by myself and Kevin at Ionos were unsuccessful. Until yesterday afternoon. Sigh. Anyhow, we should be good. I realized over the dark period that I’ve been writing Ancientrails for 15 years, an anniversary that fell in February just when Gertie was dying and Covid had begun to make itself known. Distracted.

Anyhow, here’s a post I wrote in Word, then I’m going to do another for today. So, two posts today.

 

Art. A sad story. Ancient friend Paul Strickland named beauty as the theme for our Sunday morning. Mark Odegard included elegance, grace, and fully realized potential in his definition. Bill talked about the beauty of the human face. Tom showed a favorite piece of art, a swirly sand sculpture with gold on the inside. Paul surprised even himself I think by talking about a beautiful death. His hospice client since January died the day before.

“Truth is beauty, beauty truth, that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.” Keats, Ode to a Grecian Urn. Where I began.

We often go to the visual when we think of beauty and  the visual artist, the designer among us, Mark, was the most clear about it. The rest of us went in varied directions but I underlined, first, the beauty of knowledge, of theorems, of proofs, of science, mathematics. Truth is beauty.

In 2000 I became a guide at the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts. Guides got training for specific galleries. My first one was Latin America, I think. Then, Native America. South and Southeast Asia. In 2005 a new docent class. I was in it. All those years the MIA offered continuing education for guides and docents on Monday mornings.

We would come into the quiet museum, closed to the public on Monday’s, and listen to art historians talk about painting, sculpture, Asian art. Perhaps a curator talking about a new exhibit they planned. Or, a rearranging of the galleries in their field. Trends in art, both older and contemporary. It was wonderful. I sucked in the knowledge, filling up two five-inch-thick notebooks with sketches and notes, quotes, my own ideas. A joyous time.

But not even the best part of Mondays. The best part came after the continuing education was done. The museum allowed us to stay in the galleries if we wanted, wandering from here to there in the long rooms filled with Renaissance paintings, or Impressionists. Van Gogh. Beckman. Copley. Homer. Goya.

No one from the public. A few museum staff cleaning objects, hanging or installing new works. Otherwise. Quiet. Peaceful.

The Asian galleries drew me, a long-time fascination with the art and cultures of Asia getting fed. The Japanese tea sets, a Buddha sculpture, the Ferragana stallions in metal. Song dynasty ceramics and paintings. The lonely Taoist scholar resting by a giant waterfall.

Goya. His Dr. Arrieta. Ghosts from his past lingering in the background as he sank, exhausted from illness into the arms of his physician. Rembrandt. The Lucretia. Her blouse stained by blood from the knife of her suicide.

The wonderful colors and fanciful shapes of the Kandinsky. That haunting Francis Bacon of a pope with his mouth wide, wide open.

So much. So much. I could, and often did, stay for hours, alone.

In writing this I realize how lucky I was. Those days are with me still. But. That is not what I communicated on Sunday morning. Paul said, “You seemed to feel a longing, a yearning…”

That shocked me a little. Grief, someone suggested. Yes, it is true. I have been unable to find in my life since then, since the museum changed the day of the continuing education, since I quit in 2012, no longer willing to make the winter drive in from Andover, a way to be intimate with art.

A great sadness. I have tried various things. I look at art on the internet and good images are easy to find. I read art books, ones I bought over those years. I paint myself, in oils and in sumi-e. The quiet, the prayerful, the devotional relationship I had with objects at the MIA? No. Not available anymore.

Grief is the price of love. I grieve my lost mother, seventeen dogs, Kate’s shattered health, and, yes, I grieve those moments, those hours. Still. Probably always.

 

 

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Family, Great Wheel, Holidays, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Weather +Climate

Oh, I See

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Fall and the Moon of Radical Change

Sunday gratefuls: Snow. 8 degrees. More Snow, more Cold drooping down from the north, screaming in later from the west. Rigel and Kep. Kate. Our dialogue about doing things together. A warmer day yesterday. Happy Camper. Safeway. Ruby.

A light Snow, crystalline, falls outside. The temperature has dropped to 6 degrees. We are in a belt, once again, that could get up to 12-14 inches. Any amount of Snow and cold comes as a relief, not only here on Shadow Mountain, but also for those affected by the East Troublesome Fire and the Cameron Fire, well north of us, up in the Rocky Mountain National Park part of the state. I hope it’s enough to douse them, or at least bring them under control.

My favorite coffee mug has the Polar Express on it. I got it when Kate and I took then 7 year old grandson Gabe to an evening on board a Christmas train. He remarked, “We don’t celebrate this!” and huffed at the whole production. I got mad. Couldn’t he back off and enjoy the elves coming through with hot chocolate? Nope.

Gabe is not an observant Jew, even now several years later at the age of 12. But, he held fast that night. I admire it. I can say that now, but then, I thought, you ungrateful little killjoy!

You see this coming, right? What was really going on there? I loved Christmas. I loved the Polar Express. I did not associate it with Christianity by that point, but Gabe certainly did. Christmas is the great temptation for Hanukkah kids. Partly why Jewish children do so well at Hanukkah these days in terms of presents. Look! We have 8 days, they only have one night.

Not Christmas. Nope, Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel. Not Silent Night. No Christmas Tree. No Santa Claus. No The Night Before Christmas. A clear demarcation line between them and us. Kate and I that night were them. Gabe defended his faith and his culture. Again, good for him.

Fast forward to a Hanukkah at our house a year or so later. My knee replacement had just happened. I was home but medicated, morphine. Big pain.

As Ruth and Gabe went through the stack of presents on the coffee table, I was hit with a sudden wave of despair. What was I doing here? Why was I celebrating Hanukkah? I’m a Christmas guy. How did I let myself get into this?

The same kind of holiday dysphoria, I think, that Gabe experienced on the Polar Express. Huh. What goes around, comes around.

Since that moment, which passed as the morphine went away and the knee healed, I’ve realized the exasperated finger needed to point back at myself. Both incidents indicated a deep longing, a childhood longing, for a holiday I knew as mine.

I love Santa Claus, twinkling lights, hot chocolate, candy canes. And, yes, the Christmas Tree. I don’t love the hassle of the Christmas Tree or the materialistic orgy. No. That was easy to leave behind. What are the presents for anyhow? Proof of love? What kid needs that? Or, at least, what kid should need that?

The whole mishmash of mistaking parental love for the giving of gifts let me walk away from Christmas. Kate helped of course because she got tired of decorating MY Christmas Tree. Can’t blame her for that.

I don’t need the whole crass side of Christmas. Neither do you, I imagine. Maybe nobody does.

But. Boy, do I need the songs and the lights and all that stuff about Santa and the North Pole. And, the Tree. This year I’m going to pick a Lodgepole in our yard as my Christmas Tree. No, I’ll not cut it down. Maybe I’ll find a living Evergreen Tree to have inside, a small one.

Its that Evergreen connection that makes religious sense. Evergreen, a resurrected God. See? I’ll continue this, but I want to post now, so I can get breakfast before my time with the ancient ones.

Colorado, Commentary on the news, Dogs, Family, Great Wheel, Great Work, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The West, US History, Weather +Climate

Colorado

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Fall and the Moon of Radical Change

Thursday gratefuls: Kate’s stoma site looking good. Rigel off antibiotics. Her gut can relax. Rigel early in the morning, barking as loud as she can. Why? Oh, why. No idea. Mac and cheese with ham. Comfort food. The East Troublesome Fire. The Cameron Fire. The Calwood Fire. Reminding us that climate change is real and not tomorrow.

Wildfires are us. The West is burning. Precipitation blocked by warming oceans. Trees dried by low humidity, killed by pine bark Beetles. Grasses squeezed dry, lying ready for ignition. Rabbi Jamie’s home in Granby. The East Troublesome Fire. Evacuated. He posted pictures on Facebook. Scary.

Clouds this morning red from the Wildfire refracted Sun. We have moisture on the way. Hope it comes in time to wet down our Very High fire hazards. The National Forest Service closed the Arapho National Forest, the one in which we live, citing dry Trees and strained fire-fighting resources. This means no Denverites, no other out-of-towners at Lower and Upper Maxwell Falls. Well, it means there should be none.

Speaking of Colorado. Here’s a video from near Telluride.

Could have been worse. Think if the Jeep with the camera was a tiny bit further along on the trail. The woman who drove the falling Jeep is in a Grand Junction hospital with serious injuries. She bailed just before it went over.

Then, too. An election is coming. Like Winter. Did I say vote? Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote.

Aging, Colorado, Commentary on the news, Cooking, Coronavirus, Family, Feelings, Friends, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Science, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History

Fattening, Not Flattening

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Fall and the Moon of Radical Change

Wednesday gratefuls: New wheelchair. #19! Better comfort for Kate. Covid days and Covid nights. With the flu on its way. Hunker down, USA. A gift from Ancient One, Tom Crane. Safeway. Picking up groceries in my jammies. Cool weather ahead. And, snow! Drive down that fire danger. Yeah.

On the drive down the mountain to Safeway the Sun angle, the brown and gold Grasses, naked Aspen among the Lodgepole sent me back to trips to Aunt Marjorie’s house for Thanksgiving. Over the hills and through the woods.

Picked up some squash today. Yum. Also, thought I indicated I wanted 5 tomatoes. Got five pounds instead. Chili tonight. Safety wise pickup is the gold standard. As it is in terms of limiting impulse purchases. However.

The third surge of the first wave has come up hard against the rocky shore of pandemic fatigue. We have fattened the curve, instead of flattening. And, we are at it again. This time though with a broader reach in regions. That dovetails with three accelerants: the seasonal flu, cold weather and more indoor gatherings, winter holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah.

By the time 2021 arrives two months plus a little from now we might be ready to skip ahead to 2022.

The fall after college, 1969, Judy and I moved to Appleton, Wisconsin. My bakery job had me up at 4 am as my first Wisconsin winter closed in. The owner, almost joyous for a Norwegian (I now know.), used to sing, “I’ve got my love to keep me warm.” Yeah. But, he was the boss, you know. I can still hear him. Seems like the perfect song now.

Or, this. The weather outside is frightful, the fire is so delightful, and since we’ve GOT NO PLACE TO GO, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! (caps mine, ya know.)

Did I forget to mention the election? An election is coming. Like winter. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote.

Local satellite gathers dust from meteor. The Lockheed-Martin works off Deer Creek Canyon Road celebrated as their designed and built OSIRIS-REX blew on asteroid Bennu and collected (they hope) dust in an extended ring.

There is a robust space industry in Colorado and it will get much bigger if Trump’s Space Force decides to permanently locate its headquarters here. It has a temporary headquarters in Virginia but there are already several sites here: Buckley AFB, Peterson AFB, Schriever AFB with 10 of its fifteen units in the state already.

Back to writing. Kate read the first half of Jennie’s Dead and her response to it jarred me back to the keyboard. I can’t exercise until next Monday so the time is easy to find. I feel good, like I know I should. Writing buoys me up.

Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Health, Humanities, Minnesota, Our Land and Home, Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History

Soul

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Fall and the Moon of Radical Change

Sunday gratefuls: Jon, Ruth, Gabe. Kate. Jon’s drawing for the gate at the bottom of the loft stairs. Ruth’s Apple fritters. Easy Entree’s beef stew. Borgen. Kate reading Jennie’s Dead, what’s written. The 8 point Buck in the back yard. Kep trying to decide what to do.

“When I think of soul of the nation,” Joy Harjo, the United States poet laureate and a Muscogee (Creek) Nation member, said, “I think of the process of becoming, and what it is we want to become. That is where it gets tricky, and that is where I think we have reached a stalemate right now. What do people want to become?” Elizabeth Dias, NYT, 10/18/2020, Biden and Trump Say They’re Fighting for America’s ‘Soul.’ What Does That Mean?

Highly recommended. Elizabeth Dias is smart and knows her soul history. Of all the wonderful reflections on what the soul of the country might mean, I found Joy Harjo’s the most cogent.

Our soul, our American soul, becomes knowable in the thousands of tiny decisions, and big ones, that we make every day. Where do we live? With whom do we live? What do we drive? What do we eat? For whom do we vote? Who deserves our attention?

It’s possible, in a country as affluent as ours, to get lost in the tiny decisions. Will we wear a mask? Whose mail do we read? Whose products do we buy? Where and how do we get our healthcare? These are all important questions in our daily lives, but we often forget that the aggregate of our choices has enormous consequences for our mutual well-being. If we don’t pay attention, we forget the other, imagine that our choices matter only to us, only to the ethical framework of our family, our work, our small community.

One way to infuse those tiny decisions with broader meaning is to become intentional about them. Remember think global, buy local? If you want peace, work for justice? Do I buy the gasoline powered car or do I buy the electrically powered car?

Our national soul gathers force, gathers power, gathers momentum for change in these choices. Easy to forget. And, I agree with Harjo that we’ve reached a stalemate of sorts now. Our attention has been distracted by 2020.

What’s next? Locust? Volcanoes? Asteroids? No. What’s next is November 3rd. This is a big decision. But it will be our collective choices that make it. America will announce to the world the state of its soul’s health on November 3rd.

Is our soul just an enlarged continuation of the white male project? Or, do others have a voice? Do those who value community, diversity, globalism have the strength to redefine our soul. We will see.

General

Ready?

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Fall and the Moon of Radical Change

Saturday gratefuls: Voted. Voting. Democracy under threat. Polls. Nate Silver: Democrat chances of winning Senate have increased. Kate’s really good day yesterday. Her reading the first half of Jennie’s Dead. Down to 2 drops of yellow stuff in my right eye. Can start resistance work again after next week. Vision. Clarity. Not going blind.

Close. Covid’s getting close. Jacquie, our hair stylist and friend, called on Friday. We had appointments at 10:30. I’ve got Covid. Oh, s***. Kate said, What if our appointments had been Thursday? Yikes. A wake-up slap in case our attention had drifted. It has not.

We have entered double jeopardy for the Covid pandemic. Now, coming to a sneezer and cougher hopefully not near you: the Flu! Until late next Spring there are two viruses that seek lodging in your lungs.

How we play this Jeopardy round will make history. My guess? On the down side of good. Are you ready to die?! The key: don’t move on to Final Jeopardy.

A day without appointments. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow. And, the whole next week! Yes. New wheelchair comes Tuesday. Bought a good one. A taste of socialized medicine for us. We waited 5 weeks for a referral to a Medicare approved vendor. We called. We waited. We heard nothing. We called. Nothing. We were renting a wheelchair. Waiting. Hell with it.

We do have a choice, bureaucracy or capitalism. I still choose bureaucracy. If we all had to wait five weeks, well, that’d be ok. We’d know in advance. Expect it. This hybrid version those of us over 65 have has its merits, but it also has a lot of demerits. The biggest? The referral system.

Political observers, long time ones like myself, have a phobic response to polls this election cycle. Nate Silver, 538, whom I said before I trust, says that the polls in 2016 were not that far off. Within the margins of error. We ignore those margins at our peril. That’s the 2016 lesson. Not to ignore polls. Several polling companies made changes anyway to reduce complicating factors in 2016.

As I have reviewed what Silver says and read NYT and Washington Post articles about current polls, I believe not only is Trump headed for a loss, but the GOP, too. This could be their Whig moment.

Not so far away.

VOTE

Family, Garden, Great Wheel, Memories, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Nothing is lost.

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Cheaters. Again. Stephen King. The Institute. Dr. Gustave. Makeshift eye protector. PSA’s forever. The Wind. Golden Aspen. Blue Sky. Black Mountain. The loft. My library. This computer. Amber. Kate. Her Jevity.

The spirit of Fall has come into me, rests with me. The Trees of my inner Mountain have changed color, taken gusts of wind, and lost most of their leaves. The bare, fallow time Soul needs this transparency for its work.

Perhaps each fall I grieve the loss of those leaves, wish for a while longer with their food making, their feeding. Mom’s death in October, the 25th Mary writes, came amongst this seasonal loss. Added to it. The feelings around her death seem to reemerge eachFall, making my mood sad, reflective, inward. Melancholic.

Seasonal synchronicities reach deep, help us experience the Great Wheel as a reality in our life. As Mom’s death created this strong Fall resonance for me, I can walk my ancientrail of grief and death as Trees lose their leaves, Grasses brown, Meadows turn gold.

The experience though has more sides. The seasons are never just this or that. It is the Elk rut. The Mule Deer rut. The Black Bear’s final eating, hyperphagia, before hibernation. Roots store the sugars and proteins from a Summer’s sun and rain. The Mycological world begins absorbing and repurposing the fallen Leaves, the dead Animals, increasing the depth of duff and topsoil.

Life literally in the midst of death. Melancholy might be the Mycology of the soul. It grabs onto our fallen persons. The withered dream. The gathering dark. Changes them. Makes from them compost for the growth we need. Nothing is lost. Nothing.