• Category Archives Family

  • Natural Rhythms and Time

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    53  bar falls 30.03 omph W dewpoint 32 Spring

                Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

    Over to IHOP for some of that down home country fried food.  Always a treat.  Kate and I did our business meeting, deposited several thousand dollars in Wells Fargo and came back home.  Lois was here.  She commented on the amaryllis which have bloomed yet again for me.  I do nothing special to them except take them outside in the summer, then back inside in the winter.  At some point they decided its ready to bloom, so I put them in a window and water and feed them.

    I have no tours tomorrow and so have a good stretch with no art tour work.  I like that. 

    Went outside and looked at the trees.  Looks like at least five, two Norway Pines and two River Birch got trimmed back to the hose I used to protect them from sun scald.  Those rascally rabbits I presume.  In the other area, though, two white pines thrived during the winter, as did a Norway Pine, an oak and, I believe, a River Birch.  Feels good to see them growing.

    The garlic has begun to push through the soil, a bit pale under the mulch, but I removed it and they will green up fast.  Garlic are hardy plants that like a cold winter and they had one this year.  They come to maturity in June/July.  Drying, then using our own garlic will be a treat.

    Wandering around outside gets the horticulture sap rising.   I’m itchy to do stuff.

    Signed up for a Natural Rhythms and Time course at the Arboretum.  It’s a symposium put on by the University’s Institute for Advanced Studies, a real find.  If you live in the Twin Cities, I recommend getting on its mailing list.


    Faith and Spirituality Family Garden Our Land and Home Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • Leaving A Profession Well Engaged.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    28  bar steady 30.34 0mph SSW dewpoint 24 Spring

                 Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

    “If you’re strong enough, there are no precedents.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

    In spite of the perhaps down note I struck in Climbing the Wall yesterday, most of the time I realize that the decision I took when I met Kate, that is, to leave the ministry and concentrate on writing, took a kind of courage and strength many folks have, but never exercise.  At 40 years of age, to leave the comfort of a profession well engaged and one in which your prospects appear (at least to others) bright, is too much for most of us. 

    Without Kate I could not have pulled it off, but I did find this remarkable woman at just the right time.  She has supported me every step of the way, including times when I thought I was climbing the wrong wall again.  Between the two of us we have managed to defy acculturation with her earning the large salary and me at home.  Both of us have brought necessary and key gifts to our marriage, neither more valuable than the other, though, again, the what it means to be male messages of my childhood and those what it means to be female messages from hers could have created shocks too strong to overcome.

    It took strength on my part to pull away from the church, but it also took acceptance by Kate of an unusual, even aberrant path for me.  It took, in short, the strength of two of us.  As most of you who know me well know, this path has not been without difficulty, but it has been worth it.


    Faith and Spirituality Family 📎and tagged

  • A Parent’s Pain, A Young Man’s Journey

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    42  bar falls 30.04 2mph S dewpoint 20 Spring

    Last Quarter Moon of Winds

    Joseph called from OTS.  He sounded dispirited, demoralized.  Drill and military courtesy have tripped him up thus far.  His commander has talked about recycling him if he doesn’t improve.  He had strings on his uniform, two demerits.  Other things, two demerits.

    After he hung up, I went into a tail spin myself.  When I drove over to Lauderdale for the Chinese New Year’s celebration, I found I couldn’t listen to the lecture on the Ming Dynasty because the obvious dismay in Joseph’s voice distracted me.

    It reminds me, as I write this, of the first day of kindergarten.  I dropped him off and he began to cry, to run toward me as I turned to leave.  My instinct said turn around, scoop him up and take him home.  Try this next year.  Maybe.

    The pain, the deep heart pain, a parent feels when their child struggles has got to be the worst agony of all.  Joseph is so dear to me.  My instinct is to get in the car, drive down to Maxwell AFB and take him out to dinner.  Have a talk, cheer him up.  Nope.  This is a road he has chosen and one only he can negotiate.  If necessary, of course, I’ll be there if it doesn’t work out, but until then he walks on his own.

    I can, and will, write him letters and leave messages on his cell phone.  Kate and I will send him cookies, but the rest is up to him.

    I’m ignorant when it comes to military life, so I don’t know how much of this is the process of breaking down and building back up or how much of it is genuine peril that he won’t finish.  One thing I have learned about him though is this, when he sets his heart on something he has a dogged persistence that makes things happen.  So, based on his past behavior, I have confidence in him now.  The pain, though, is still hard.


    Faith and Spirituality Family 📎and tagged

  • Making Room for New Work

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    34  bar steady 30.10 3mph NNE dewpoint 10 Spring

                   Waning Gibbous Moon of Winds

    “Our power is in our ability to decide.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

    Since long ago college days, I have found primary life guidance from the existentalist perspective.  The existentialists believed, as do I, that we are responsible for our actions and always have a choice.  I know there are Buddhists and cognitive scientists who might differ with seeming clarity of the I in this case and, even, with the notion of free will it implies. Who knows? They may be right.  Until they convince me, (a circular notion if you think about it) I will continue to act as if I am acting.

    Kate and I had our business meeting at the IHOP nearby.  Gourmet breakfasts for seniors.  Omlettes and pancakes.  Yum.  After concluding that we’ve done well of late, except for that excess in Hawai’i, we drove to Wells Fargo Bank where I got a medallion seal on a letter to Vanguard adding Kate to my account and putting the assets of the account in our living trust.  We set up the trust last October and I’m glad we’ve both lived long enough to finish moving our assets into it.

    Ever since Monday I’ve been on a tear, getting this and that done.  Got a loan.  Got the beneficiary stuff completed.  Filed tax stuff.  Cleaned out my in-box.  Sent an e-mail to Headwaters Parish about my upcoming preaching assignment there on April 13th.  Set up the hydroponics and am into the third chapter of the large Permaculture Design book by Bill Molison.

    All this deck clearing provides, eventually, room for new work.  Perhaps a novel, certainly outdoor work later this month, more reading in Taoism and art history.  Whatever.


    Faith and Spirituality Family General 📎and tagged

  • History Changes the Past

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    35  bar steady 30.04 2mph WSW dewpoint 26 Spring

                  Waning Gibbous Moon of Winds

    History changes the past.  Comic books were bad, bad, bad when I was a kid.  I knew this because my mother told me so.  I could read Tarzan and a couple of others I can’t recall, but never Batman, Superman, or any of the darker comic fare.  Like many kids I hid the Superman and others inside my stacks of Tarzans.  Also, like many in those days, when Marvel comics came out I was a teen-ager and Mom was no longer a taste-maker in my world.  The Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, the Silver Surfer and my personal favorite, Dr. Strange became staples in my library alongside War and Peace, Crime and Punishment.

    Only in the past couple of months have I learned why comics were bad.  Fredric Wertham, a German born immigrant and psychiatrist, saw Superman and the superhero ilk as sub rosa evocations of the Übermensch, Nietzsche’s man who transcended morality and who Nazi’s believed justified their crimes. 

    Well, all I can say is, that Fredric must not have read a Superman comic.  Superman fought for Truth, Justice and the American Way.  Any kid who watched the TV program could tell you that.  Batman was too troubled to be an ubermensch or an undermensch. 

    This history has changed my past.  I always thought it was just a pacifist quirk of Mom’s that she restricted my comic reading, after all I learned from her to carry bugs outside in a kleenex and liberate them.  But no, it was another parenting influence, like Dr. Spock, only this one was a psychiatrist who probably believed Freud had it right after all.  It helps me see Mom as a parent, a person searching for advice on how to raise her children, how to keep them from harmful influences. 

    Boy, when I think of the fifties I realize how few really harmful influences seemed available, at least in Alexandria, Indiana.  No  rap.  Few drugs.  They weren’t on our radar.  An STD might have been an additive for gasoline.

    I began watching horror and science fiction movies as soon as I could scrape $.25 together to spend on my own.  I don’t know why Mom never stopped me from seeing those.  Or, maybe I didn’t tell her.  I can’t recall and she died when I was 17 so I never got a chance to ask her.


    Family Memories 📎and tagged

  • Airlines Not Required to Provide Food, Water, Clean Toilets or Fresh Air

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    42 bar steep rise 29.71 1mph WNW dewpoint 28  Spring

               Waxing Gibbous Moon of Winds

    We soaked the rock wool seed pellets in 5.0 ph water.  This will neutralize the natural high alkalinity of the rock wool. Tomorrow I’ll sow seeds from a lettuce mixture we got at Seed Saver’s Exchange.  Tomorrow, too, the tomato seeds will got in the peat pots.  Action on the indoor garden and some (the tomato seeds) on the outdoor garden proceeds apace.

    The library provided a couple of books on DVD for Kate and her drive to Nevada, Iowa over the weekend.  She’s doing a sort of homecoming/reunion thing.  Meanwhile I’ll celebrate Chinese New Year’s in Lauderdale.

    The beat goes on.

    In the ongoing journal of outrage at the way things are, this from today’s newswire: 

    A federal appeals court has rejected a law requiring airlines to provide food, water, clean toilets and fresh air to passengers trapped in a plane delayed on the ground.

    The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that New York’s new state law interferes with federal law governing the price, route or service of an air carrier. It was the first law in the nation of its kind.

    The appeals court said the new law was laudable but only the federal government has the authority to enact such a regulation.

    The law was challenged before the appeals court by the Air Transport Association of America, the industry trade group representing leading U.S. airlines.


    Family Garden Politics Travel 📎and tagged

  • A Dull Gray Day

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    29 bar steep rise 29.87 0mph W windchill 29

          First Quarter Moon of Winds

    Got to thinking about dull gray days.  Aunt Roberta days, as we used to call them.  Aunt Roberta would always begin her correspondence with, “It’s a dull gray day.”  Aunt Roberta, like my Aunt Barbara and my Aunt Marjorie suffered from bi-polar disorder.  It hit me yesterday or the day before, the day it was dull and gray, that dull, gray days are March days.  They signal a change in the weather.  The upper atmosphere gets filled with water, clouds form.  Later in the month it will rain and not long after, with the snow gone and the ground beginning to thaw, the first green shoots will head toward daylight.  The dull, gray days of March are a sign of a change in the weather, a change for the better.

    Granted, the dull gray days of November presage the upcoming winter, but even in that instance the harvest has come in, the plants have died back and we’re ready for the white, fallow season.

    Each one of them Aunt Roberta in Arlington, Aunt Marjorie in Muncie and my Aunt Barbara, often confined to the State Hospital in Richmond, Indiana were important to me as I grew up.  Aunt Roberta raised 5 wonderful girls, all my first cousins and I visited them often when I was young.  Aunt Marjorie was a great cook and a long suffering wife, married to my Uncle Ike who was a gambler and a hustler, and a hell of a good guy.  Aunt Barbara gave my Bullfinch’s Mythology when I was young.  She was my Mom’s favorite, I think.

    These three women sisters, mothers and aunts affected in a positive way many lives.  Daughters and sons, nephews and nieces, sisters and husbands all benefitted from their love and direction.  No person is their diagnosis.  They are a person first and last. 

    Each one of them, in their own way, succumbed to bipolar disorder.  Aunt Barbara lived the end of her life in a world of illusion.  Aunt Marjorie starved herself to death and Aunt Roberta was in and out of Richmond, too, and finally faded away.

    I miss each one of them, as I miss my mom.   Yes, they are with me in spirit, but that isn’t the same as in person.  It just isn’t the same, yet it’s no less important.

    When the weather turns dull and gray I’ll think of Aunt Roberta and her sisters, but now with the knowledge that after the dull and the gray comes the green or the white.  Glory and peace.


    Family 📎and tagged

  • Serial Monogamy

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    14  bar steady  30.43  0mph S  windchill 14

       Waxing Crescent of the Moon of Winds

    Today is our 18th anniversary.  At the 15th we passed the total time I’d been married before, 5 to Judy and 10 to Raeone.  Now we’re pressing forward to the 23rd when Kate will pass her years married to David.  This is arithmetic that, it seems, our generation has to calculate more than any other.  It was turbulent times for marriage between 1969 and 1995 or so.  My impression is that divorce has declined in recent years, an impression buttressed by the Family Law Center on the internet.

    It’s an odd sensation to have practiced serial monogamy after learning about it in Anthropology in 1968.  Even stranger is the fact that this marriage seems to blot out the others as experiments, or missteps.  Kate and I have developed an intimacy and collegiality that I had hoped for before, but not found.   The level of joy and comfort that comes from having her in my life grows with each passing year. 

    So, in the end, I’m not sorry I took so long to figure out who I was and what I needed in a relationship because it brought me to this wonderful woman in time, in time for a life together and in time to grow old together. 

    Looking forward to 18 more plus a few.


    Family 📎and tagged

  • Opah, Mahimahi, Ron Baton and Star Fruit

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Today Molokai, across the channel, stands clear and tall, well, sort of tall.  No clouds to shroud its ancient volcanoes.  The ocean is calm and no breeze stirs the palms.  Blue, blue, blue Hawai’i.

    As has happened 61 times for me, the planet has moved on in its orbit, past the spot that marks February 14th.   Today Kate and I bid aloha to Maui and aloha to Kauai.  I’ll write next from the Hyatt Resort on the south shore of Kauai.  On the 24th I’ll move to Da Fish Shack when Kate leaves for home; it’s on the north shore.

    Last night Kate and I made our way to Mama’s Fish House, where, to my surprise, they now recognize us as repeat customers.  I say made our way because Kate drove and I navigated using the %$@!! navigator in my phone.  Which got us thoroughly lost.  When I drive, my inner navigator works fine, I’ve found Mama’s several times, but as a passenger I got thrown off and relying on technology didn’t help.  Sigh.

    We did, however, make it.  It was Valentine’s Day so Mama’s had a full house.  The bay on which Mama’s sits is the best wind surfing in the world (or so they claim) and the waves and wind were monster yesterday.  Must of have been good.  We arrived after dark. We have seen the windsurfers, propelling themselves on surfboards fixed with sails, leaping from wave to wave.  Very balletic and colorful.

    Mama’s is a polished island wood structure with walls made of drift wood and flotsam, the occasional old door and whatever struck the owner’s whimsy.  Inside, it has rattan light shades and tables covered with blue cloth decorated with white ginger leaves.  They have expanded by 100% since I’ve been there, but managed to retain the intimate South Sea ambience.

    We had an Island meal of opah, mahimahi, lauau pork, seared banana, ron baton lychee nut, star fruit and a surprising fresh coconut.  Quite a birthday treat.  The waiter brought out my macadamia nut crisp with six candles, special ones Kate brought, the flames burned the color of the candle.   A happy birthday.

    On the way back we ran into a road construction project that cost us 30 minutes at a time when we were both pretty sleepy.  Not fun.  Looked to me like they were laying fiber optic cable.

    Final, and sad, note.  Maui has grown too much.  It is too crowded, too built up and  not as much fun.  The road construction was only the last inconvenience created by this development during our trip.  I will be glad to get to Kauai.

    Aloha.


    Family Great Work Travel 📎and tagged

  • Orientalists All Three

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Back from a workout.  Slower today.  As I went out on the lanai before I headed for my aerobics, I noticed a disturbance in the calm.  A rustle of waves preceded a fluke, it fanned in the air glistening with water, then followed the great body down.  A birthday wish from an ocean mammal to a land mammal.  Mahalo.

    As I walked along the ocean, I reflected a bit on the peculiar fate of my nuclear family.  Mom died early.  Dad lived several unhappy years in a marriage ill-fitted to both him and Rosemary.  Mary ended up first in Malyasia, then in Singapore, following her interest in linguistics.  Mark traveled the world from Vladivostok to Moscow, Moscow to Turkey, Turkey to Israel, then, by some route to Bangkok which he found just right.  They’ve both in Asia almost longer than I lived in Alexandria.  Though I’ve remained stateside, I have developed, quite independently of them, an interest in Asian art, cinema, literature and, of late, philosophy. 

    Then, too, there is love affair with the Islands.  What is it about our lives, childhoods in the most common of Midwestern smalltowns, parents with no interest as far as I know in anything Asian, that lead us, all three, by quite different routes to turn our faces east?  It would be easy to cite the ascendance of Asia in the last two decades as a magnetic influence, but in fact all three of us have had our interests prior to those decades.

    There is one thing common to all three of us, the wanderlust.  Mom was overseas during WW II and Dad found traveling significant for its own sake.  I suppose this gave us all a sense of rootlessness, or, at least, made it easy to detach ourselves from the familiar, and so opened us to the wide world.  What strange motion in the quantum sphere torqued our attention toward China, Singapore, Thailand, Japan I do not know.  But, it is a fact.


    Art and Culture Family Travel 📎and tagged