• Tag Archives Bill

  • Read the Writing on the Wall

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    68  bar rises 29.89  omph NW  dew-point 64  sunrise 6:03 sunset 8:35  Lughnasa

    Waxing Crescent of the Corn Moon

    Another Monday on the treadmill.  In Victorian England they used the treadmill as a punishment in the gaol.  Now I pay big bucks for one so I can do it voluntarily.  How times change.

    Woollies tonight at the Black Forest.  Frank, Bill, Mark, Scott and me.  We discussed the peculiar propensity for conservatives to shut off their otherwise keen intellects when it comes to political matters.  Bill thinks it’s because they have propensity to believe authority.  Maybe so, but they pick the authority that agrees with their bias.  The part that bothers me about most of the conservative rant is their unwillingness to think critically, to evaluate evidence on its merit, rather than its fit with the ideological spin of the moment.

    Mark’s stepson, Christopher, took him to a legal tagging wall.  It’s at Intermedia Arts on Lyndale near 28th Street.  The police have set up this free wall, supposedly the only one in the US (a tagger on an expensive bike with a thick chain worn across his upper body like the sacred thread of the Brahmin told us this.).  Taggers can sign up for a large chunk of the wall.  They then have the right to put an approved design (no porn, that kinda thing) for a month.  Christophers says at night there might be 200-300 people there watching the taggers work on the wall.  There were none at 7:30 PM when four old men stood around trying to read the writing on the wall.

    I took Frank home.  We need to get together again for lunch.  Soon.


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  • A Houseless Life

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    72  bar rises 29.73  0mph WNW dew-point 62    Summer, pleasant

    Waxing Crescent of the Thunder Moon

    “It is not how old you are, but how you are old.” – Jules Renard

    Elizabeth Odegard has West Nile virus.  She’s lethargic, stays in bed.  Not much to do, but support your body and wait it out.  Mark thinks she may have gotten it in Thailand when they stayed on a houseboat.  Mark has the most unusual current lifestyle among the Woollies.  He and Elizabeth, then real estate agents, sold his house in Marine of St. Croix, pooled their retirement funds and began living a houseless life.

    He often refers to himself as homeless, but what he actually is houseless.   His home is the Twin Cities and he’s rooted here.  He and Elizabeth went to Hawai’i three years ago and got the Cambridge certification in teaching English as a second language.  With that credential and a cash flow generated from investments (managed by Scott Simpson) they have moved from spot to spot:  Buenos Aires, Peru, Shanghai, Bangkok sprinkled with returns home.  Here they housesit for folks they know.

    They leave for France later on this summer, where they will spend time with Mark’s brother and his family before heading off Morocco or Turkey or Chile.  Sometimes they work, sometimes one does and the other doesn’t.  It’s been all ESL.  Mark worked on a healthy sexuality exhibit in Thailand, for example.  They ponder a commitment in Japan, where the English language jobs require a year contract.  Most of their stints have been four months or less.

    We talk about travel often at the Woollies.  We are a well-traveled group.  Paul and Sarah made a round the world trip early in their marriage.  Paul jets off to Africa, Syria and Cuba now and then.  Frank is in Ireland right now for the eight or ninth time.  Bill spent over a year in Japan building a nuclear power plant.  Tom travels the US every week.  Charlie Haislet and Barbara cruise in Europe, go to Africa now and again.  Stefan has been many places.

    Last night Stefan talked about a childhood trip to Egypt.  “It made me want to be an architect.  Karnak.  With those great pillars shaved back and sloping upward.  And the details on the gate.”

    We are atypical as a group in so many ways:  level of education, diversity of employment, life paths dominated by values, intimacy among men that has lasted over two decades.  Our level of income is high.  We lead lives of privilege in the most powerful country the world has ever seen.


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