• Tag Archives Kate

  • Road Trip Grandma

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                                     Planting Moon

    MNDOT says the roads between here and Iowa are in good condition.  Much better than this morning.  Gertie and Rigel watched, worried as we packed Kate’s rental Nissan.  She got off after lunch out and a nap.

    No Quilt Museum this phase of the trip, she’ll drive into Iowa tonight as far as she can, then another day and another day and probably another day.  She may arrive earlier than she planned, but better before the birthday party than after.  Much better.

    On the home front I’m headed over to Arbor Lakes in Maple Grove tonight to see a cinema version of a Manet exhibition. I have no idea whether this will be any good. Here’s the details from the e-mail:

    Exhibition: Great Art on Screen – series begins this Thursday, April 11

    Exhibition is a new series capturing the world’s greatest art exhibitions and screening at a cinema near you.

    First in the series, Manet: Portraying Life takes viewers on a 90-minute virtual private tour of the career-encompassing collection of the works of Edouard Manet, currently on exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts with screenings from April 11. Two additional Exhibition events will follow including Munch with screenings from June 27 — a “once-in-a-lifetime” exhibition of the greatest number of Edvard Munch’s works ever, co-hosted by the National Museum and the Munch Museum in Oslo — and Vermeer with screenings from October 10 from the National Gallery, London where audiences will be given a unique perspective on the masterpieces of Johannes Vermeer. Go beyond the gallery to see exclusive behind-the-scenes footage on how an exhibition is created for public view. Hosted by art historian Tim Marlow, featuring special guests.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Dogs Family 📎and tagged

  • Going Out on the Town With My Sweetie

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                                        Bloodroot Moon

    Kate and I went to the Macy’s Flower Show.  The Dayton’s flower show.  Anyhow, I’d never been but going once came because we’ve agreed that each of us has one time during the month that we can schedule whatever we want.  And the other one has to go along.

    Last month we went to the Loring Pasta Bar to listen to Hot Club of France type jazz (Kate’s choice) and to the Cynthia Hopkin’s performance, This Clement World at the Walker.  In a rut already I’ve chosen another Walker performance, a jazz pianist and his ensemble late in the month.

    Kate felt we weren’t doing enough together, too much like adults engaged in parallel play.  She quilts; I write.  She was right.  It was a habit and we broke it.  I’m glad we did.

    The best part of today’s outing was the Smack Shack.  A food truck that turned in its wheels for brick and mortar the Smack Shack serves po’ boys and lobster boils.  We had the lobster boil complete with the bib, shell crackers and tiny forks.  I haven’t eaten lobster in a very long time and it was fun.

    Turned out it was the Twin’s first day-time game this year, so I had to park about 6 blocks, long blocks, away–it’s on 6th and Washington North.  That turned out to be a treat because I could take a survey of this rapidly changing part of the city.  Lofts, luxury apartments, redone warehouses, new apartment buildings, lots of restaurants, design stores, gutted buildings and construction zones.  A fun, energized area, an area that used to be fairly dull commercial.  Not too long ago.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Third Phase 📎and tagged

  • I Knew Her Right Away

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                                              Bloodroot Moon

    Home again, home again.  The dogs greeted me with unusual joy and vigor.  Vega spun round and Gertie jumped up, biting at me to come play.  Tumultuous.  And wonderful.

    Kate came into the Loon Cafe and picked me up from the Hiawatha light rail.  She had on blinking ear-rings.  The server at the cafe, before I arrived, had asked her, “Is that how your friend will recognize you?”  It was.  I knew her right away.

    She led us through the maze of parking spaces to the truck, not easy in the mammoth commuter ramps that collect cars from the western burbs.

    The trip home had no remarkable moments, a good thing for travel.  I did use, for the first time, a bar code boarding pass on my cell phone.  Felt very with it.  You all have probably done it for years, but it was amazing to me.

    It’s nice to use the full size key-board and not the 92%, slick metal keys of the netbook.  Having said that, the netbook has been the best single computer purchase I’ve ever made.  It goes everywhere with me when I travel.  It’s compact, picks up wi-fi with ease and has a 92% keyboard, which is why I bought it.  It’s allowed me to post on this blog from as far away as Cape Horn, south of Tierra del Fuego.

     


    📂This entry was posted in Dogs Family GeekWorld Third Phase Travel 📎and tagged

  • Erin Go Bar

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                              Bloodroot Moon

    St. Patrick’s day at Pappy’s Bar.  We went, stopping by for a brunch at Pappy’s, to get dogfood.  In Pappy’s the bartender had shamrock suspenders, a leprechaun hat with shamrocks and sunglasses, on top of the hat, clear with green lights blinking within the frame.  A waitress, a superannuated sort, had a tiny yellow hat with a green flower and a green t-shirt tuxedo, pressed out far enough in front to provide a handy cushion if she should tip over.

    At the end of the bar sat two young women, mid-twenties, sunglasses, eating eggs and sausage while tossing back Bloody Marys.  Next to us sat a younger couple, maybe early fifties, thin and fit looking.  She had on a Honolulu Harley-Davidson tee-shirt and a sad look, not sad today, necessarily, but a look that said life didn’t hold much sparkle for her.  He smiled, took a napkin and cleaned up the water after the bartender had wiped down the bar.  “It was wet,” he said.

    Kate ordered the senior special and I got cornbeef hash and eggs in honor of the traditional St. Patrick’s day meal.

    We took the last seats in the bar and there was quite a line waiting to eat in the restaurant portion.  This was at noon on Sunday.  A few folks had green tinted liquor drinks in highball glasses, but I saw no green beer.

    The sign read March 17, 1992.  We check I.D.  I was 45 in 1992.


    📂This entry was posted in Dogs Holidays 📎and tagged

  • And Jazz Saxophone after it all

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                              Valentine Moon

    Here we go.  A perfect day.  Revising Missing before 11:00 am.  A sentence from Ovid before lunch.  Nap.  Working with pre-Raphaelites until 4:00.  Some chess until 5.  Workout.  A movie with Kate.  As I said.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Cinema and Television Family Latin Translating Metamorphoses Writing 📎and tagged

  • Putting on the Moves

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                            Valentine Moon

    Well, got in my hour, actually 2, of chess.  Don’t know whether I want to play actual games. The lessons are brain twisters, requiring spatial thinking and logical thinking combined with strategic planning while executing tactical decisions.  A weird sort of fun.  Similar, in fact, to translating Latin.

    (Samuel Reshevsky, age 8, defeating several chess masters at once in France, 1920)

    Also translated my sentence in Ovid and got post cards out to the grandkids.  Kate made a great supper with a chipolte butter on chicken breasts, our carrots from last fall and salad.  The carrots have a bright color and a sweet, earthy flavor.

    Otherwise trucking along.


    📂This entry was posted in Cooking Family 📎and tagged

  • This, that

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                                        Valentine Moon

    The snow remains.  16 as I woke up this morning.  There will be no early spring this year.  And I’m grateful for that.  I’m not ready to get out and do serious gardening.  Not yet.  I’ve got books to write.  Latin to translate.  Rooms to clear before I sleep.

    A bit of pruning, yeh.  That’s the right stuff for this season.

    Went with Kate to her annual physical so we could then go on to Chanhassen and have lunch with Anne, her sister.  She turns 64 this year.

    A long day.  Chanhassen lies almost 45 minutes to the south though it’s well within the metro area.  We often drive distances within the metro that would have required real planning when I was a kid.  A difference in perception and habits.


    📂This entry was posted in Family 📎and tagged

  • the quiet american

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                                  Valentine Moon

    In the spirit of catching up on the films of the last few decades Kate and I watched the Quiet American, a 2002 adaptation of Graham Green’s 1955(!) novel.  It depicts, through the eyes of a British journalist, the early activity of the CIA in creating the South Vietnamese army and government.  Astoundingly prescient.

    Raised many different feelings.  Yearning for Southeast Asia, a wonderful, yet strangely far away part of the world.  A place I feel intimately tied to through my sister and brother’s long tenancy there and my 2004 visit.  Disgust at the role of the American government in its most banal anti-communist clothing.  Memories of the 60’s as the dark fruit of the 1950’s seeds began to ripen, then rot.  Kate’s distaste for war.  “Killing doesn’t solve anything.”

    A period for my generation that defined us as young adults.  Either for or against, little middle ground.  Those division persist among us.  Even in my high school class there are only a few of us who were anti-war.  The rest, the blue collar middle-class of those days, patriotic in a militaristic, flag-waving way.  Long ago but not far away.


    📂This entry was posted in Cinema and Television Family Politics Travel 📎and tagged

  • Wow. You’re Really Old Grandma

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                               Valentine Moon

    Over half done with the move.  I can feel the new shape already fitting round my shoulders as I work.  Volumes ready to hand.  Ideas jumping from one to another with just a scan.  A good feeling.

    A bit achy but that seems to come with the 66th birthday.  Talked to grandson Gabe, 4 and  1/2 tonight.  He asked Kate how old she was.  68, she said.  Wow.  That’s really old Grandma.  Oh, yeah.  From the mouth’s of babes.

    (Old Man with Beard, Rembrandt)

    How old?  So old that we’re going to a meeting tomorrow to talk with a women who is, as her book title says, New at Being Old.  Us, too.  This is a Woolly Mammoth gathering and we’re all of a certain age.  Just which we’re not certain, but a certain age of that we’re sure.

    When it comes to life, though, I feel gathered, present, neither old nor young, just here, ready to go, still.  Epictetus had a depressing way to think of it:   “You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.”  Still, the soul or the self continues to grow and mature as the mansion begins to sag at the corners, a window or two popping out, new paint needed on the doors, tuck pointing here and there.

    So, I feel as engaged, if not more, with my life and work as I have ever.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Art and Culture Family Third Phase 📎and tagged

  • The Life Ahead

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                                Valentine Moon

    So.  66.  Tomorrow.  How that long-haired, green book bag carrying, dope smoking political radical could be turning 66 is, I admit, a puzzle.  Yes, he looks a bit different in the mirror.  Well, ok, quite a bit different.  Instead of long hair, little hair.  Instead of the book bag, a kindle.  Not smoking at all.  Hmmm, still a radical though.  Guess the other stuff is detritus of past fashion.

    After passing the last great social milestone before the final one, that is, signing up for Medicare, my life has taken on a new cast.  I’ve written about it here, a change that came gradually but with a strange persistence.  That new cast has home, writing, Latin and friends as its core.  It entails reduced traveling into the city, a much lower profile in terms of volunteer work in either politics or the arts.  A word that sums it for me is, quieter.

    Quieter does not mean less energetic or engaged, rather it signals a shift in focus toward quieter pursuits:  more reading, more writing, more scholarship, more time with domestic life.  Unlike the pope I do not intend to give up my beloved theological writing. (Kate believes he’s suffering from dementia.)  I intend rather a full-on pursuit of the writing life, novels and short stories, a text on Reimagining Faith.  This full-on pursuit means active and vigorous attention to marketing.

    The primary age related driver in this change is greater awareness of a compressed time horizon, not any infirmity.  How many healthy years will I have?  Unknown, though I do actively care for myself.  Still, the years will not be kind, no matter what I do.  So, I had best get my licks in now, while I can still work at my optimum.

    So, the man turning 66 has a different life ahead of him than did the man turning 65.   An exciting and challenging life.

     


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Dreams Family Garden Latin Our Land and Home Third Phase Translating Metamorphoses Writing 📎and tagged