Tag Archives: Kate

Aging, Bees, Family, Humanities

Bees, Latin and Learning

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Beltane                                       Waning Planting Moon

A sleepy, rainy day.  After a very busy Monday, I settled into the Latin and finished off chapter 18 in Wheelock.  It took most of the day with a couple of instances (well, maybe more than a couple) of head scratching and paging back and forth to find out what I was not understanding.

Kate and I have settled into our familiar and comfortable routines.  She went out today to have her nails done while I labored in the scriptorium.

Tonight is the Minnesota Hobby Beekeepers Association meeting at Borlaug Hall.  I feel both mildly competent and wildly confused with both the beekeeping and the Latin.  I’ve now overwintered a package of bees, made a divide into parent and child colonies and hived a package of bees by myself.  The smoker stays lit for the duration of my work in the bee yard and I have not repeated my various stings event.

Yet.  When I pulled the frames from the parent colony and moved one to the package colony and one to the divide, I felt very unsure of what I had done.  Still am.  I look at the frames and I can tell the pollen filled cells from the honey filled cells.  I know what larvae look like and I can identify a drone cell and its unique domed structure.  Queen or swarm cells are also apparent to me.  Even so, I cannot tell healthy frames from troubled ones.

I get addled about what I’m doing because of the bees buzzing around and forget what I’ve done like I did yesterday with the reverse of the parent colony.  I have no clue about what to do with the honey the bees are making, I’m just imagining that I’ll learn about that in time to do it.

In the Latin I miss obvious things and pick up on some obscure ones like word meanings, verb forms and case endings for nouns and adjectives.  I have two index cards filled with words, mostly adverbs and conjunctions, that I can’t remember.   I puzzle over a translation, no luck, no luck, no luck, then a bright light.  Ah ha.

Learning has this daunting vulnerability to it.  Without placing yourself in a situation where you don’t know what you’re your doing, you cannot learn.  It keeps a guy humble that’s for sure.

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Family

Love’s Fatal Flaw

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Beltane                                            Waning Planting Moon

When I punched Delta 2406 into Google, it delivered a website called Flight Status.  On Flight Status I could watch the progress of Kate’s flight from San Francisco as she moved across Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota and into Minnesota.  I looked over at the computer occasionally as I worked in Chapter 18 of Wheelock:  passive voice and the ablative of agent.  It seemed natural to me to go from ancient Rome to a computer tracing the flight path of a jet traveling 595 mph.

The term soulmate may not make sense to me metaphysically and I am an existentialist at heart–we die alone, we live alone–however I know my life is not complete without Kate.  Over time and with much love our lives have intertwined, her presence, her physical presence is important to me and to my well-being.

I’m a little afraid to admit that, in part to myself.  What if she dies?  Well, she will.  And so will I.  Also, I don’t want to seem so needy that I require another person to complete myself.  And I don’t.  Yet Kate makes the house full.  Talking and crying with her about Emma made the whole sad thing real and bearable.

Here is the paradox of love.  To love we need to be vulnerable, to open ourselves and let another person assume a critical and necessary place in our life, yet life itself has an end.  In this sense, I suppose, each love is a tragedy, that is, it has a literally fatal flaw.

She’s back and I’m glad.

Bees, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality

Tincture of Time

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Beltane                                     Waning Planting Moon

Bee work inside.  Kate finished several honey supers and three hive boxes plus frames before she left.  I didn’t know how many I would need in her absence.  All but one of the honey supers now have foundations.  I ran out of foundations and will have to order more.  All the hive box frames have foundations and I have added one new hive box and two honey supers in the time she’s been gone.  This Monday I may have to add one more hive box.

Feeling better now, tincture of time as Kate likes to say.

All the dogs are in bed and I’m headed up to read some more in the Three Kingdoms.  Night.

Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Garden

Flat

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Beltane                                         Waning Planting Moon

Leeks and potatoes both need mounding around their growing plants, the potatoes to have more underground room in which to develop their tubers and the leeks to blanch the lower part of the stalk into the familiar white of the leek you see in the grocery store.  Did that.  At the same time I planted bush beans between the rows of the potatoes.  They help ward off bugs and provide something to eat.  A good deal.

Feeling flat today.  Negative.  Grief, probably.  I know I want Kate home.  I want to share the home here again.  She’s been gone almost two weeks.

You ever have that moment where you realize things have slowed down, inside?  Movement becomes a tad   more sluggish, thought a bit more difficult, like slogging through a marshland.  Sighing.  That’s me.  Overcast weather gets some credit, too.  Multiple vectors today, arrows pointing down.

Art and Culture, Family, Friends, Politics

Japanese Armor and Flights West

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Beltane                           Waxing Planting Moon

Up early.  For me.  7 am.  Had to get Kate to the bank and to the airport by ten.  We made it.  Her plane took off at 11:45, (turned out to be 1:15 pm instead) so Delta promised.  I haven’t heard from her yet, but I imagine she’s there and in her hotel and asleep.

The airport always makes me laugh.  The alert level remains at orange.  Does anybody recall what that means?  I don’t.  Also, the sign suggests, report suspicious activity.  Call 911.  Irony aside, I wonder how many calls they get?  After, of course, you screen  out the people who call all the time.  Not that threats are not real, and certainly not that they should be taken lightly, rather the government that gives the same message over and over and over and over while nothing happens begins to look silly, out of touch.  They need to do something different.

Since I live up north, I rarely have the opportunity (challenge) to drive on Hwy 62, but I took it into the Museum.  Boy.  What a ride.  The new ramp that carries west bound 62 traffic onto Hwy 35 sweeps up in a broad, elegant curve.  At its apex, the view offered of downtown Minneapolis has a picture postcard look.  A great way to introduce newcomers to the city.

George Hisaeda, Consul General of Japan at Chicago, offered commendation to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts for its dedication to Japanese arts, and the acquisition of an important suit of armor.  I went to this hoping to hear the lecture by Matthew Welch that I missed earlier.  The Consul General offered kudos to the MIA for its fine presentation of Japanese culture and arts.  He also commended Matthew Welch on his remarkable work building the collection since 1990.

After the Consul’s presentation, Matthew gave an abbreviated version of his explanation of the armor.  Tom Byfield, my seat mate, wrote notes in spite of the dark.  I hope my eyes improve enough to work as well as his do.  In fact, I hope they improve, very unlikely.

After the armor conversation, we had a meeting of the docent discussion group or whatever it is and decided on events for the summer:  a tour on music by Merritt, a public arts tour in July and a photography event with the curator of photography in August.

Back home for a nap.  This cold I’ve got, the first I can remember in 2+ years, made me very tired, so I slept soundly.  Worked out.  Had a political committee meeting with the Sierra Club.  I serve on this one as a non-voting member.  Works out well since I can use the phone.

Talked to Kate whose flight was delayed an hour and a half here and the baggage was delayed an hour in San Francisco.  She got assistance at both airports though and reported a tiring journey, but a successful one.  As only a meeting of physicians can do, registration for her conference is at 6:30 a.m. tomorrow morning.  Perhaps, it is just occurred to me, based on peoples time zone habits.

Over and out.

Bees, Family, Humanities, Travel

Staying Inside

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Beltane                        Waxing Planting Moon

Heat exhaustion put an end to my outside work today, so I came in and did Latin.  I’m done with ch. 16 in Wheelock, so I can move on to Ovid.

Kate got her nails done, did some laundry and has organized her packing.  We’ll leave around 9 for the airport.  After I drop  her off, it’s over to the MIA for a lecture on Japanese Samurai Armor and lunch with the docent discussion group folks.

Dogs, Family, Humanities, Politics

In 80 Degree Weather You’d Do It, Too. If you fit.

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Beltane                              Waxing Planting Moon

Vega the wonder dog continues a puppy habit.vegainwater Even though she’s quite a bit bigger now she can make herself small enough to fit in the rubber water bowl.  This means that when I fill it up, it soon empties.  I have to go buy a smaller bowl, one she can’t use for cooling off.

In other dog related news I bought two sprinkler heads to replace the ones purloined by either Vega or Rigel.  They have a high degree of energy and intelligence.  That makes them inquisitive and with dogs this size that means destructive.

I spent the morning on Ovid, translating verses of the Metamorphoses, 11-15.  This is a slow process for me because I have to look up each word, discern which of the possible words it probably is, determine its possible declension or conjugation, then go back and try to put all this together in an intelligible English line.  Latin poetic conventions make this difficult since words that below together are sometime split apart by as much as a verse.  Also, Ovid, like Shakespeare loved neologisms so sometimes the word he’s used is the only time it was ever used in Latin.

Don’t get the wrong impression though.  When I finished this morning, I whistled and sang, a sure sign I feel good about what I’ve just done.   It’s a fascinating process for me.

Kate has a big month taking shape.  She leaves on Tuesday for San Francisco and two continuing medical education conferences which will take until June 6th.  On June 30th she has hip surgery.  She needs the surgery, her hip is painful for her and painful for me to watch.

The violence in Bangkok continues and some of it happens right outside my brother’s soi, a sort of side street with no exit that is peculiar to Bangkok’s urban design.

Final Sierra Club legislative meeting for the 2010 session tonight.  There will probably be work upcoming related to next year’s session, but for the near term future, that work will come to a close.  No more weekly meetings.  Happy hour after this meeting.

Bees, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work

Bee Diary: May 16, 2010

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Beltane                                                     Waxing Planting Moon

The bee project here has two active workers, a woodenware maker and a bee keeper.  Kate has put together 7 honey supers and 70 frames plus four, and counting, hive 05-15-10_bees_woodenware1colony31boxes and 26 frames.  Without her patient and careful craftswomanship, the hives would not exist.  I’m just no good at the fine, repetitive tasks involved in woodworking, but she is.  She brings an artisan’s hand to her work.  As a result we have beautiful hives.

A possible identity for our hives has begun to take shape.  Artemis is one of the many bee goddesses, but she is a familiar name, at least to some, so Artemis Honey is a strong possible name.  A common offering to Artemis was honeycakes, so we might be:  Artemis Honey, The Honeycake Honey.  When we start getting enough honey to exceed our use, including gifts, then we’ll start selling at farmer’s markets.  We’ll need a name, a label, a brand.  We’ll include a  honeycake recipe with every container sold and Kate has agreed to bake up some honeycakes to use as samples at our stands.  Let us know what you think.

Checked the crops today and harvested parsnips.  One resisted leaving its happy home in the raised bed.  It came out well over a foot long.  Smelling the tiny roots off the parsnip just after pulling, amazing.  A sweet, earthy, pure scent.  Wish I could bottle it.

When I left the MIA on Friday, I noticed on my walk back to the car, a migration of caterpillars.  I believe they were swallowtail butterflies in there can’t fly yet stage.  All of them, scores if not hundreds, chose northeast as their route across the warm concrete sidewalks that run between the Children’s Theater and the MCAD campus.  At first I just noticed their numbers, then I saw their common journey.

Where I wondered, did they begin?  So, I followed them back, moving against the small, humping crowd until I found a crabapple tree along an MCAD sidewalk.  Looking up I noticed caterpillars soon to head north by northeast eating their way out to the end of small branches, then, as the branch bent under their weight, falling to the grass.  Why they decided on their direction, I have no idea.

Art and Culture, Friends, Health

Marx and Global Art

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Beltane                                              Waning Flower Moon

I checked and rechecked my Latin today and still had a couple mistakes; but, mostly it was much improved over last week’s work.  Greg and I also made our way through 4 more verses of the Metamorphoses; if I count right that leaves only 14, 991 or so to go.  That was the morning.

When I finished, Kate put a blue sack in my hand and I headed off to the MIA.  The sack had a grilled cheese sandwich, a banana, mochi, pickles and a diet rootbeer.  I polished that off on the way while listening to a very interesting lecture on Marx’ theory of alienation.  When I’ve had a chance to absorb it a bit more, I’ll write about it here.

At the museum I attended a lecture on contemporary art with an emphasis on its global expression.  The woman, Kristine Stiles, has impressive academic credentials and has compiled a key text for the study of contemporary art:  Theory and Documents of Contemporary Art.  She tried to stuff a consideration of Until Now and ArtRemix into an already existing lecture on her new book, World Trends in Global Art Since 1945.  It was too much.  She spoke fast, trying to finish, leaving little room for the audience to write or absorb.  Even so, there was a lot of interest and it will help frame tours of the Until Now exhibit when I have to begin.

(much of the contemporary art in Vietnam uses socialist realism, sometimes done on billboards, but also, sometimes using oil paints on silk.)

Spoke a moment with Wendy Depaolis who had surgery February 1st.  She looks great and credits her exercise and healthy eating.  Something’s working well for her.

Family, Health

One Hip Gal

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Beltane                                  Waning Flower Moon

Kate and I went into see Dr. Heller this morning in his offices at 7o1 25th St. next to the old St. Mary’s Hospital.  His P.A. came in with a small bag, about the size of a medium woman’s purse.  It was rectangular, had a zipper and was black.  He unzipped it and took out various pieces of metal and plastic.  In the correct combination these round and angular components will constitute a new hip for Kate on the right side.  He fitted them together explaining how they worked and the benefits of minimally invasive hip surgery.

Kate’s a candidate and has a procedure scheduled for June 30th.  We are both very happy.  In the traditional hip replacement surgery, about 98% of all of them, a the surgeon cuts a long slice along the hip down the thigh.  This goes through muscle.  It is the healing process for this injured muscle that creates a lot of the hassle post-op for hip replacements.  In minimally invasive they make two small incisions, 2 inches and 1.5 inches, and do the whole procedure through them, guided by x-ray.

These incisions go between muscles so there is no muscle healing required.  This means there are no restrictions–NO RESTRICTIONS–after going home.  The procedure takes an hour, two-three days in the hospital, then you walk out like the lame guy they lowered through the hole in the roof in the New Testament.  Only this procedure costs a lot more.

Dr. Heller looks to be late 40’s, early 50’s.  He’s fit, shaves his head and has a confident, upbeat manner.  He should.  He’s done 1020 of these operations and his recovery numbers in terms of negative sequelae are better than the national average.

This has a strangely ironic undertone for me since I spent the 80’s working with the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, the very one on which Heller’s office sits, first trying to stop Keith Heller from building 25,000 housing units there, then building neighborhood scale ones instead.