• Tag Archives Kate

  • 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.


    📂This entry was posted in Family 📎and tagged

  • The Mobius Strip of Consciousness

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    -10  48%  18%  2mph WWS bar30.16 rises windchill-12  Winter

                 Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

    Ordered a teaching company course on the brain.  I hope this will jump start a dive into the small library of neuroscience books I’ve purchase over the last few years.  The whole brain/mind debate fascinates me, as did the physiology of the brain, that is, just what is in the brain and what function does it have?  Another question of deep interest to me is the gathering and processing of sensory data.  How does it happen?  What does it mean for our connection to the apparent world beyond our senses?  (a philosophical question)

    The most important question is that of the mind.  Is it a function of the brain only?  Or, does the mind arise as a thing sui generis?  A small group of thinkers on this problem call themselves the Mysterians.  They believe the problem can never be solved.  Since the brain/mind question involves a human organ and the defining human quality investigating themselves, it may be an endless loop, a mobius strip of a problem with no clear beginning and no clear end.

    Kate has long ago burnt out on the corporate medical context in which she practices.  It’s attention to insurance codes and revenue capture.  It’s attention to happy talk and consumer satisfaction.  It’s routinization and cook-booking of medical practice.  The speed-ups which demand 5-6 patients an hour with no distinction for the levels of complexity.  The random and chaotic applications of accounting esoterics to physician compensation and benefits.  And on and on. 

    She wants to retire.  I look forward to her retirement, too.


    📂This entry was posted in Family GeekWorld 📎and tagged

  • Time Slows, Becomes Sacred

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    25  93%  26%  0mph  NNW bar 30.05 steady  windchill25  Yuletide

                            The Full Cold Moon

    Go now, Christ’s Mass has ended.  This day devoted, on the one hand, to the infant who would become a world changer, and, on the other, to a joyful orgy of celebration, much like the Roman Saturnalia, comes to an end in 45 minutes.  It came and went without the usual hullabaloo here and that seemed to keep the whole season leading up to today calmer, less stressful, especially for Kate.  A good thing.

    I have felt few tugs of nostalgia for a tree, presents, even the gathering of family which I now associate with birthdays and trips to Colorado and Thanksgiving more than with Christmas.  This all helps me refocus on the Yuletide and, now, on the Useless Days at the end of the year.

    Time continues to go slow, snow comes down, as it has all day; and, the long dark has 3 more days yet to run before the sun once again stays a bit longer, headed toward spring and the glories of summer.

    Kate and Anne and I ate dinner at Sofitel.

                    kate-and-anne-and-me600.jpg

    It was a pleasant way to spend a holiday meal.  It also meant Anne had to drive only half as far as when she comes to our house.   The top Kate wore came from Singapore via my sister Mary.  Mary’s hard at work right now putting together the literature review on her doctoral dissertation.  Not big fun, but necessary.


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality 📎and tagged