The West, US History
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Yule                                                                          Stock Show Moon

hcn-masthead

The High Country News  is excellent progressive journalism about the West. I discovered it not long after moving to Colorado and read it cover to cover every time it comes. At HCN.org there is a link to a compilation of articles HCN has published over the years about the sagebrush rebellion.

I’m currently reading through those articles plus articles I’ve collected at various news outlets. The sagebrush rebellion, I’ve decided, is going to be my entré into the dynamics of the New West. As I read and learn, I plan to report here on my new, adopted region.

The West is simpler than the Midwest. Its regional status is newer, really only coming into its own in the mid to late 19th century as native peoples were pushed out and East coast railroad and mining magnates moved in. It is, too, a region built on exploitation, first of the native population, then of resources.

This point is interesting in regards to the sagebrush rebellion which has fixated on the government as the main tyrant. Any cursory reading of Western history would point to railroads and mining companies, then other East and Left coast financiers, corporate boards and offices located outside the region, as the true tyrants here. This is still the case in many ways .

The overlay from that relatively recent past makes Westerners sensitive to control of any kind that bypasses locals. The birdwatching militia occupying Malheur are a symptom of that acuity, acting on the feeling of outside interference, with no sense of nuance about either the history of government lands or the real villains who have their hands on the throat of the West.

More to come.

 

 

 

Memories, Minnesota, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

A Snowman Will Want to Be Inside

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Yule                                                                                      Stock Show Moon

You wanna find Stock Show weather? Go to Minnesota this weekend. Friend Tom Crane sent me a link to the Updraft blog of MPRNews. “Thought you might want to know what you’re missing,” he said.

Weather January 16, 17 2016

Paul Huttner, the meteorologist for the Updraft blog, repeated a Minnesota weather nostrum often used at times like these: “The only thing between Minnesota and the North Pole is a barbed wire fence.”

In Minnesota, not often, but often enough, you realized the weather could kill you. No winds necessary. This will be one of this times.

Colorado, at least for us so far, doesn’t produce weather like this. If you go higher in altitude, then yes, you can find extreme winter cold, but even at 8,800 feet nothing like this. Can’t say I miss that bitter cold. though looking out the window from a warm house, over a snowy frozen landscape has its charms.

Family, Health, Third Phase

.015

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Yule                                                                        Stock Show Moon

Tomorrow I have my third post-op appointment with my urologist. My new super sensitive PSA, done early this week, was .015. As I learned three months ago, when my PSA was the same, this is the equivalent of no prostate specific antigens, indicating that so far no stray prostate cells have found a home in my body far from their old place near my bladder. In essence this is a test for metastases and having it come back negative is a primary goal of any cancer treatment.

As I get further away from the surgery, the dramatic peak of cancer season, ordinary time makes a bid to return. In this case ordinary time is not the cessation of holiseason stimulated spirituality, but the relaxation of uncertainty and return to a less urgent awareness of mortality. There is though a deep impression left by the pressure of cancer season.

20150708_070336Cancer season began for me on April 14th, 2015 when Dr. Gidday noticed a suspicious hardness in my prostate, sufficient to make her refer me to Ted Eigner, the urologist. From April 14th until my surgery on July 8th and first super sensitive PSA the week of September 25th, cancer season pulsed with energy. It crackled with biopsy results, recommendations for treatment, visits to the this medical facility and that. The decisions made during cancer season were life-altering, even life determining.

There was anxiety and fear, of course, the presence of a fatal actor in my body was an unfamiliar and unpleasant experience. For the first time a part of my body was no longer onside with the goal of continuing the body’s existence. Betrayal. At its most intimate. But. There was also excitement. New information, new things to learn, to know. Things that had immediate relevance. Kate and I moved closer as we sorted through the maze of medicine, bureaucracy, treatment statistics and understanding my situation as well as we could.

Saigon Landing, EvergreenThen, with one three hour surgical procedure, it was over. Sort of. Cancer season trailed on to the first super sensitive PSA because until then even the clear, negative margins of the removed prostate and the positive eyeball analysis of Eigner during the procedure were not definitive. Some cancerous cells could have escaped. Though there is still some chance of metastases, nothing is 100% certain in these matters, with each clear PSA it becomes less likely.

Now I have to decide whether to emphasize cancer season, become a cancer survivor, or whether to let it bleed into the background, a highly charged moment with a successful outcome but with little relevance for daily life. So far I seem to be choosing the let it bleed into the background option, though this post is, I suppose, contra that.

That is, I want to live my life forward, not returning to and chewing over the undigested lumps of the past. Not yet background, no longer foreground, cancer season has a fading, but nonetheless potent presence still. It will be interesting to see where I am on July 8th of this year.

 

 

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Jefferson County, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain

Meet and Greet

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Yule                                                                                   Stock Show Moon

Kate’s at the Bailey Library, a sewing day from 9 to 3 with the Bailey Patchworkers. They make stone soup and work throughout, stopping only for a brief business meeting. Quilting and handwork have been Kate’s entré to local folk. She has been invited to join a needlework group, too. It meets next week. All part of settling in.

Even though we’ve had a bumpy road with many of our house related projects, it occurred to me that even a bumpy start still grounds us in the local culture. We’ve learned about the shortage of folks in the skilled trades, an apparent difference of work ethic between here and Minnesota and had to adjust our expectations about how long projects will take, to get started and to finish. There are local habits and customs, a mountain way of doing things, that we have had to adapt to.

Sometime soon we’re going to start attending services at Beth Evergreen, a small Jewish reconstructionist congregation in Evergreen. They have a more relaxed worship schedule, none during the Christmas and New Year’s holiday time and when they are regular they alternate between Friday night and Saturday morning. I’m looking forward to an opportunity to meet folks.

 

 

Family, Health

Kate

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The stock show weather arrived. It’s 7 degrees here this morning.

Kate’s face has lost all of its puffiness and most of the bruising has receded. Now she’s working on hand physical therapy to complement her thumb surgery from September. She’s using a tennis ball I bought for shoulder/elbow exercises and I’m using her cervical traction device bought when her neck had begun to give her serious fits several years ago. Our aging bodies have similar needs, just at different times.

Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

The Flight of Medea

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Yule                                                                           New (Stock Show) Moon

Set the Cub Cadet on 6, its top speed, and rocketed through the fluffy snow on our driveway. Felt like cheating. It’s gonna stay cold so even the three or four inches we had would stick around a while, a la Minnesota. Better to whisk away to the sides, let the solar snow shovel do its work.

I’ve been working on Latin this morning, more of the comparison method, checking my English against Loeb’s, Penguin Prose and a translation by Charles Martin. My head begins to throb after about an hour. Snow blowing seems like an acceptable alternative.

Here’s a few verses as a sample. This is entirely my own translation.

Medea Flees or The Flight of Medea,  Metamorphoses, Book VII, 350-398

350b Had she not flown into the air on serpent’s wings

351b Would she not be taken for punishment?  She fled

352b above richly shaded Mt. Pelion, Chiron’s home, and

353b above Othrys in Thessaly, over the spot made known by the fate of ancient Cerambus.

354b He, raised into the air on wings here by work of the nymphs ,

355b  escaped, not overwhelmed by Deucalion’s flood

356b  when the burdened earth was being buried by the spreading sea.

357b  On her left she passed Aeolian Pitane

358b  And its great likeness of a dragon made of stone,

359b  And the grove of Idaeus, where the son of Bacchus stole a young bullock

360b  hidden by deceitful Bacchus under the likeness of a deer,

361b   She passed over Paris, the father of Corythi, buried under a small mound of sand,

362b  And over the fields Maera frightened by strange barking.

363b  She flew over the city of Eurypylus where the mothers of  Coa wore horns

364b  When the band of Hercules dispersed to Rhodes,

365b  dear to Phoebus Apollo, and Ialysos, home of the Telchines,

366b  the eyes of whom by beholding infected everyone,

367b  Jupiter, detesting them, plunged them under the sea to his brother, Poseidon.

 

368b  She then passed over the city walls of ancient Cartheia on the island Cea.

369b  where Alcidamas, her father, marveled that  the body of his daughter

370b  was born anew as a peaceful dove.

 

Poetry

There Will Be Stars

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There Will Be Stars

“There will be stars over the place forever;
Though the house we loved and the road we loved are lost,
Every time the earth circles her orbit
On the night the autumn equinox is crossed,
Two stars we knew, poised on the peak of midnight
Will reach their zenith; stillness will be deep;
There will be stars over the place forever,
There will be stars forever, while we sleep.”


By Sara Teasdale

Beyond the Boundaries, Faith and Spirituality, Original Relation, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

The Gate of Chan

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Yule                                                                            New (Stock Show) Moon

THE GATE OF CHAN

As a result of unwavering diligence you arrive at the gate of Chan. Before the gate stands a gatekeeper who says, “First you must put down your weapons.” Being determined to pass through the gate, you give it no second thought, so you drop all your defenses. After that the guard says, “Next you must take off all your clothes.” You think for a moment, and then you drop all your remaining attachments. Then the guard says, “Now you have to put aside your body.” You have been working hard for a long time so you decide that enlightenment is even worth dying for, so away goes the body. Finally, the guard says, “You still have your mind; that too must go. There can be nothing left of you when you enter.” Because you are determined to succeed, you agree to this final demand. The instant that you let go of your mind, the gate disappears. There was in fact no gate to pass through and nothing to enter.

–Song of Mind by Sheng Yen, pages 69–70
http://www.shambhala.com/song-of-mind.html

Aging, Beyond the Boundaries, Faith and Spirituality, Quotes, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, Travel

Live in the Whole Ocean

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Yule                                                                         New (Stock Show) Moon

 

 

“Kay Cottee AO is an Australian sailor, who was the first woman to perform a single-handed, non-stop and unassisted circumnavigation of the world. She performed this feat in 1988 in her 37 feet yacht Blackmores First Lady, taking 189 days.”    Wikipedia

When Jessica Watson, in 2009, set sail for her southern hemisphere circumnavigation of the world, she was 16. I don’t recall how, but I found her website on which she posted as she sailed alone in her boat, True Spirit. There was something about her, something fresh and brave, youth, yes, but something more, perhaps it was true spirit.

Since then, I subscribed to her facebook page so I can keep very loose tabs on her as she grows older. Just curious about how true spirit manages adulthood. Wonderfully, as it turns out. She’s inspirational to Australian girls, an advocate for sailing and a modest celebrity down under.

She posted this quote from her idol, Kay Cottee. She means us to take it, I think, as literally intended, a comment on the nature of voyages alone. It is, however, too, a way of understanding the ancientrail we call life.