Winter New (Valentine) Moon
What Time Is It?
Winter New (Valentine) Moon
Something’s happening here. I attended a meeting last night of Organizing for Action-Conifer. This group has gone from 20 to 180 in four weeks and that in the rural mountains of southwestern Jefferson and eastern Park County. Resist was a big word for the night. Many of the women had on their pussy hats from either the Washington March, five women, or the Denver March, most of the rest with a few men.
We broke up to form issue working groups: ACA repeal, women’s health, immigration, climate change, marginalized groups, Jefferson County issues, Park County issues and redistricting/midterm elections. Though climate change is very important to me, I sat with the Jefferson County folks. Why? Because I believe the Republicans, especially the Tea Party and the Koch brothers, stole several steps on progressives by focusing on local and state elections. This move, very successful, allowed them to control state legislatures and often governorships, which in turn gave them power over redistricting.
The whole moment gave me a boost although my days of late night political strategy sessions are past. By 8:30 p.m. I’d begun to yawn, feel heavy since I’m usually in bed by that time. (and up at 4:30 a.m. to milk the cows. well, no. to feed the dogs) These kind of meeting times are necessary though since most folks work during the day.
So I’ve found some allies who live nearby. We’re already making phone calls, writing letters, visiting legislators at the state and federal levels, marching, planning for a sustainable group and getting focused on issues. I’m still waiting to see what Beth Evergreen creates. Something, I hope; but if not, OFA-Conifer is already at work.
Love Is Still Its Heart
Winter New (Valentine) Moon
I turn 70 next month. Not a particularly notable achievement since the silver tsunami includes millions doing the same thing this year, but, hey; it’s my only chance to hit three score and ten. Kate’s been there ahead of me and knows the territory, so have many friends. Thus, the Valentine moon.
The old man on Shadow Mountain, that’ll be me after Valentine’s Day. One piece of gathered wisdom from the time so far: life is still precious, love is still its heart.
Down Goes the Sun
Winter Cold Moon
The end of the day here on Shadow Mountain. The sun, disappearing behind Black Mountain, lights up a few narrow cumulus clouds while light leaves the land around our home.
My energy has begun to return to normal. It has taken this long, 8 weeks; but, I’m finally back to writing Superior Wolf and plan to get to the Latin soon. Those two plus writing this blog are my work right now.
The Beth Evergreen community has begun to feel like home, more so for Kate, I think, but somewhat for me, too. I imagine that feeling will deepen over time.
Tomorrow night I’m going to the Conifer Community Church for a meeting of Organizing for Action-Conifer. This will be my first meeting, perhaps their fourth or fifth. I’m looking forward to meeting like minded folk, allies in what will be a long pull.
No longer the first thing I think about. Yeah.
Winter Cold Moon
A knee note. The last few visits of physical therapy are near. They’re working with me now on post p.t. workouts. Specifically, how I can avoid damaging my knee while strengthening my legs. Pretty much common sense. No deep squats, no torquing the knee, no exercises that weaken the back in anyway. Core work.
I felt silly asking about this today, but I did. How do I build back my cardio? I asked because I’d begun to get back to it, then pushed myself too fast and began to resist doing it at all. Slowly. That’s the ticket. First, 3 days a week. Then, either add a day at the same pace or increase by 10/20%. Oh. I was going for six days a week and kicking the time up five minutes at a whack. No wonder I was resisting.
Overall, the knee is great. Hardly any pain. I often forget now that I had the work done. Well, often might be a stretch, but I do have times when I forget. And that’s a good thing.
The War on Truth
Winter Cold Moon
Humor = Truth
Winter Cold Moon
Train Wreck
Winter Cold Moon
Imagine a long train, 130 hopper cars filled with Wyoming’s Powder Basin coal, moving at 50 mph with roughly 19,000 tons total weight. Imagine Washington DC as its terminus. We’re in the observation room of the Washington Monument, watching this train come into town. In slow motion it hits the Capital, plowing right through and heading on down Pennsylvania Avenue taking out other government office buildings and finally spending the last of its considerable energy demolishing the White House and the Executive Office Building.
This is, I’m sure, a conservative fantasy, one being enacted now in the Oval Office. The orange old man with the wondrous toupee has, with Executive Orders, supported the Keystone and DAPL pipelines, begun the rending of the ACA, will soon appropriate money for the great wall of fear and has eroded abortion protections. He has also gagged several government agencies and his nominee for Secretary of State has effectively threatened war with China. He’s not even been in office a week. That train will get a chance to leave town, pick up speed and return to get other cabinet buildings and pick off a few journalists and protesters.
The Best. The Biggest. The Most.
Winter Cold Moon
My Latin teacher, Greg Membrez, found this hilarious video from the Netherlands.
Multitudes
Winter Cold Moon
In the Nix (see post below) the author Nathan Hill takes a side excursion into the difficult, thorny problem of the self. The idea he presents helped me, gave me a middle ground beyond the no-self notions of the Buddha and several contemporary psychologists and philosophers and the Western view of one true self.
The dialectic between no-self and one true self has always found me much closer to the one true self pole. It’s the one that I accept intuitively. In fact, it was the unquestioned truth until mid-college, so unquestioned that any other idea seemed literally absurd.
“Oh, that’s her true self.” We might say this when we see someone angry, apparently peeling back the onion, layers of false selves, to reveal the enduring self located, well, somewhere; or, when some other extreme behavior allows us, or so we think, to peer into the interior of another. This is the radical western reductionist view of the self, perhaps linked to the notion of soul, the essence of a person.
The Buddhist notion, which I don’t pretend to understand well, posits no I, no we, only a consciousness that responds to whatever shows up in the present moment, our self a narrative, a story we tell ourselves, but having no “real” existence.
In Hill’s notion there is a third, perhaps a middle way, between these two poles. A character says, oh, her true self has been hidden by false selves. No, Hill’s other character says, not by a false self but by another of her true selves. Ah. Not split personality or multiple personality, not that idea, rather the idea that we each have more than one “true” self.
This makes so much sense to me. The self that writes this blog is the writing me, the self that wants somehow to turn my inside out so others can see in. I have a husband self who acts in relation to Kate and to the history of relationships I’ve had. There is a grandparent self brought into existence by Ruth and Gabe. A Woolly self. A friend self, perhaps as many friend selves as I have friends. There is an art lover self, a physical self focused on the body, a reading self, too, who willingly opens all these selves to influence by another. Each of these true selves, and many others, have their own history, their own agenda. You might call these selves the specific wanderer on each of my several ancientrails.
Given the quote above from Whitman, I’ll call this the Whitman theory of self. It is, for now, the one to which I adhere.