Faith and Spirituality, Jefferson County, Mountains

Mountains and Menorahs

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                                  New (Winter) Moon

A public menorah lighting at the Lake House in Evergreen tonight. Kate and I are going. There’s also a latke cook-off and I look forward to helping assess the entrants. Evergreen is a downhill ride, 7,200 feet to our 8,800. We take county 78, which starts out at county 73 as Shadow Mountain Drive, changes, very near our house to Black Mountain Drive, and then, 2 miles further down mountain toward Evergreen, becomes Brook Forest Drive. It’s a curvy, forested, rocky road with the Arapaho National Forest on both sides for much of the way.

A joy of mountain living is that the quotidian can be extraordinary. On these drives we often encounter mule deer, elk, occasionally fox. Kate saw what must have been a mountain lion, long and catlike, slink away from the road. In the spring snow melt fills Shadow Creek, Deer Creek, Cub Creek with water churning and roiling. As the snow melt wanes, these same creeks become lazy wandering streams and must, in drier years, lose their water altogether at some point.

The flora, seemingly sparse in that only two species of tree, lodgepole and aspen, live in any numbers at our altitude, changes once in the fall to a minimalist palette of gold and green. Once the golden aspen leaves become skirts, the trunks of these trees become bony fingers, white and twisted. In the spring the green leaves return and the mountain views become more uniform for a time.

Black Mountain, Shadow Mountain, Conifer Mountain and all the others around our neighborhood change, too. The flora goes up and down them, different with the seasons, but on display in often vertiginous falls and in huge rock gardens where outcroppings are bare but surrounded by trees. At night the mountain sides light up with homes also up and down, a sort of external dwarfheim, often invisible in the day. Precipitation, especially snow, alters the mountains immediately, sometimes obscuring them, most often painting white over their peaks and valleys.

We have found a new place to live, our mountain home. It suits us now.

GeekWorld, Great Work, Jefferson County, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

2015 Home Project Year

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                                          Thanksgiving Moon

A father and son team came over Monday morning to do a site survey. Their task is to create a reliable internet connection between the modem and the garage. Might be wi-fi. Might be hardwired. Hardwired is the preference and that’s what they’ll work on first. Hopefully they can make all the ethernet jacks live at the same time. That would make positioning things in the future much more flexible. They’ll be back next Monday to work.

The kitchen remodel is on hiatus right now, waiting on the countertop’s creation and the arrival of various doors and a large cabinet injured in the first shipment. Kate’s got great ideas for color once the remodel is done. Slowly, slowly.

20151119_134627_001The December 29th date for switching on the solar panels has me a bit twitchy. The new rule promulgated by IREA (Intermountain Rural Electric Association) goes into effect on January 1st. It makes demand charges for peak load times, evenings here, so high that the result is solar panel investments will not pay out. IREA needs to install our net meter before January 1st for us to be grandfathered in under the old rules, rules that allow our solar investment to go positive in about 12 years. Having the same people in charge of installing our net meter who benefit if it’s done late doesn’t seem like the best thing, but it’s the way it is. And the 29th. So close.

Back to the fire mitigation today. I have some free time and warm weather has melted snow cover from downed trees I need to limb. This is an all winter project, taking advantage of various windows of acceptable weather conditions.

grandpop 300We’ve had a long string of projects this year. Makes sense since we’ve moved into a new house.  After 20 years in Andover we’d adapted 153rd Avenue to our peculiar needs and values. Now in some sense we’re starting over. Each step, the bookshelves in the loft, the generator install, the new gas lines, the new boiler, the new stickley table, sealcoating the driveway, fire mitigation work, solar panels, the new bed and tempurpedic mattress, the kitchen remodel and now the loft internet connection have met some priority or another.

A few, the generator, gas lines and boiler, were driven by necessity. The seal coating was timely. The bookshelves, the kitchen remodel and the solar panels on the other hand are projects designed to make our home more responsive to our values. The new bed and mattress made sense given aging bones and joints. The fire mitigation is necessary, but also enjoyable, something I can do.

We are in these ways becoming native to this place, learning its contours and possibilities and just as important, it’s limitations. Home. Black Mountain Drive. On Shadow Mountain.

 

Asia, Colorado, Cooking, Friends, Woolly Mammoths

Bloody Marys at Breakfast

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                                         Thanksgiving Moon

Into Denver in the morning today. Unusual for us since our city excursions are usually in the evening.

We went to Lucile’s, Denver for breakfast. I mentioned Lucile’s, Littleton a short while back. The Denver site, at Alameda and Logan, is hip. Full at 8:30 am with whip thin Coloradans, men and women, young families and a few older guys sitting at the bar eating scrambled eggs and drinking Bloody Marys.

Kate had rice pudding porridge with currants. I had red beans, poached eggs and cheese grits. We shared a side of collard greens and finished the meal off with beignets. Tasty.

After breakfast, we made our way through Denver, navigating north and east toward the old Stapleton airport. Jon and Jen live near there. We were bearing those Hanukkah gifts.

On the way home we made a complete circle, taking I-70 to Evergreen, then Brook Forest Drive to Black Mountain Drive and home. This particular route gives us a view of snow covered peaks to the west and lets us drive through more mountains on the way to our house.

Tonight we go to Domo’s, the rural Japanese cuisine restaurant Jon and Jen introduced me to long ago. Scott and Yin Simpson are in town and we’ll meet them there. Lot of driving.

 

Commentary on Religion, Holidays

8 Nights of Illumination

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                                        Thanksgiving Moon

Hanukkah begins tonight. Another Holiseason festival of light. We have several packages wrapped in the blue and silver colors of Hanukkah, dreidels and the Star of David scattered across them. They go to the grandkids this morning.

144 candles for the 8 day festival since each night a new candle is added and all are replaced. We have several menorahs ranging in design from very traditional to crystal and metal. Like many Jewish holidays this one is home based with a regular nightly ritual involving lighting the candles in the menorah and reciting certain prayers in Hebrew.

Kate and I plan to attend a public menorah lighting on December 10th in Evergreen. There is a latke cookoff as part of the ceremony. Latkes with sour cream are one of my favorite parts of Hanukkah.

We decided a while back that our Hanukkah gifts to each other are the solar panels and the remodeled kitchen.

So. Happy Hanukkah to one and all.

 

 

Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, US History, World History

Sad

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                                       Thanksgiving Moon

Routine disrupted. My loft computer is now downstairs where I can hook it up to the internet. On Monday I have a serious computer service company coming out to create a wi-fi or hardwire setup. Calmed down after I made a decision to get it done once, then forget about it. My problem is that I obsess about these things until they get taken care of. If I’m trying and failing to fix things, then I keep obsessing. Tiring.

Sad about guns, about the killing, about terrorism, about the obtuse beliefs of NRA fanatics, about climate change deniers, about the too slow pace of change toward a sustainable future. Angry, too. Yes, angry. In the past sadness and anger have pushed me into political work. Got started when I was a freshman in high school and found the school itself a barrier to learning.

Today, though, I find myself on the sidelines watching a circus where the acrobats miss the trapeze, where the fire eater gets consumed by his element, where the animals smash the cages and trample the crowd. The world has once again sunk into madness.

Yes, the world is always mad. War began thousands of years ago. Slavery, too. People without power did terrible, unthinkable things to break free. So, in a way, the diagnosis of madness, of chaos and insanity, is a tautology. The world is. The world is mad.

It’s also true that any one action, any one person, even any political movement has little chance of creating change systemic enough to bring sanity. Yet, as Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” It might be this action, this person, maybe you. It might be this political movement, this one you choose to support.

Where am I going here? What I want to say is that the only way to avoid despair is to choose to act in some way. I won’t be on the sidelines much longer, the projects of our making this home ours will finish and I’ll find somebody to team up with. Somebody to shake a fist with. To make what strangled sort of cry we can. Fatalism just doesn’t work for me. Might be about the third phase and our lives in it.

GeekWorld

Nutz

Leave a comment

Samhain                                               Thanksgiving Moon

Aaargghh. Internet. Wi-fi. Loft cyberspace not working. Not working. Makes me a little nutz.

Wondered why. Thought about it. The internet is my direct connection to friends and family, especially those now far away. When it’s down, I feel shorn, perhaps the electronic equivalent of unintentional banishment, exile.

Ever since the later 1980’s I’ve handled my own computer problems, sometimes with a boost from my friends, in particular cybermage Bill Schmidt. When I can’t fix a problem, it leaves me feeling defeated and sad. Where I was last night.

So. Had to face front. This one is beyond me. I’m going to call in a specialist to set up a wi-fi or internet link for the loft that works reliably. It’s too important to me. Working episodically seems the best I can produce on my own and it’s not good enough.

The wi-fi, hardwired links in the house work fine. It’s the physical separation between the house and the loft that creates the challenge. The previous owner had a solution that worked for him, but I don’t understand it.

Another project.

GeekWorld, Our Land and Home

Lotsa Likes

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                                       Thanksgiving Moon

Internet has the slows today. Yesterday, too. I know just how it feels. Though, the tempurpedic has reduced my morning stiffness and I do feel better rested. Still not fast. Not any more.

Had a weird cyberworld experience yesterday. I joined a facebook group called Creative Aging. I posted on it. So far I’m at 143 likes on my post and many replies, some from Australia and India, others from Evergreen and Bailey. This would be more remarkable, but I seem to have been the first male to post on this forum in quite a while. The number of folks living in the third phase grows daily and many, maybe most, have lots of energy for life.

Some of the new cabinets are in place. All the old cabinets went away yesterday afternoon. A nephew of Melanie and Kevin has just bought a new house. Feels good to know they’ll have a home in a new home. Mike Vanhee, the fence guy, comes by this morning to pick up the old fridge, dishwasher and metal bed frame.

Our solar panels passed their final inspection. Now the process moves to IREA, the local electrical co-op that has passed the draconian excess usage charges for new solar. Those new regulations don’t go into effect until January 1. If they get the net meter in before then, we’re under the old rules. That means our return on investment goes positive in year 12. If not. Well.

No snow in the forecast for the next ten days. I’m glad. I may be able to get back out and work on fire mitigation.

Our Land and Home

Making It Ours

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                                Thanksgiving Moon

20151128_071029Todd, Luis and Robert dismantled and stripped bare our kitchen. It looks naked, the old secrets of holes cut for pipes, tile stripped off its mastic, the entry points for gas and water laid bare. And smaller. For some reason it looks smaller to me that it did with the cabinets, sink, stove, refrigerator and dishwasher. Odd.

The wood cabinets, custom made of good quality, will go to Kevin and Melanie. Melanie cleans our house and Kevin will chip our slash, help me cut down tricky trees. The new cabinets are in boxes now, in the kitchen itself where Todd wanted them. The only portion of the old kitchen left is the refrigerator, plugged in but sitting in front of a window, awaiting our final cleanout.

Mike Vanhee, the guy who put up our fence about this time last year, will pick up the old fridge, the old dishwasher and our metal bed frame, the one Kate and I slept on for all the years of our marriage. Certain physical objects accrue affection, like the Velveteen Rabbit. They become a real part of our life, not merely chairs or cars or canoe paddles. Not that old bed frame, nor the remnants of the old kitchen. Just things. Going on now to live a recycled life, the thing equivalent of reincarnation. The karmic wheel of recycle, reuse. Moksha comes in the incinerator.

Today Todd and crew will start installing the new cabinets. On Thursday the countertop people come to make a template they will use to create our countertop out of recycled glass. We may have to get Herb back to move the gas for the stove over about 6 inches. It’s in the way of the stove fitting flush against the wall.

Meanwhile Kate and I have the microwave, coffee pot and toaster oven sitting on a towel on top of the coffee table. The silverware is on the table still in its plastic bins. Paper plates and bowls, too. Some fruit. We’re in a state of self-imposed domestic siege. Familiar. Seems like not so long ago that we did the same thing in Andover.

The new Tempurpedic mattress rests on the new Ikea king sized bed frame. We’ve had it for three nights now. The mattress came on Saturday just before we sat down for Thanksgiving dinner. Lots of newness. The mattress. Amazing. It caresses your body, a firm muscular caress that leaves you confident of your position. Still, it’s different from the old Sears mattress with the hyperbolic name. It was, according to the silky label, the Imperial Ultimate.

We’re making this place ours. Solar on the roof, a new kitchen, new bed, bookshelves in the loft, new boiler, generator installed as something old. The process is disruptive, but exciting, too. We’ll head into 2016 in a changed house.

 

Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Monday, Monday

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                                  Thanksgiving Moon

A midnight clear on a joyous night of old. The waning Thanksgiving moon has a huge moondog encircling much of the sky to the west. New snow, about five inches, so fresh white sparkling. Quiet. Wonderful.

Thanksgiving, our first here on Shadow Mountain, is behind us now. Memories have begun to accumulate, still fresh like the snow. That delayed kitchen remodel gets underway today. Over the last week we’ve been moving pots and pans, spices, plates and cups, flour and tea and coffee to temporary locations.  Todd and his crew will dismantle, then rebuild our cabinets, install a new fridge and dishwasher, a new countertop and sinks, build in some new cabinetry.

Our new refrigerator is in the garage and running, plugged into a wall socket. It will get the last of the old fridge’s contents today or tomorrow, depending on when those get removed. Logistics. The new cabinets come today and they have to go somewhere, probably the garage as well.

IMAG0769With the driveway covered again, I’ll have to blow it since we’ve got the kitchen crew plus the Jefferson county inspector for the final inspection on the solar panels both coming today.

We’ve also got a loan to close today. It will help us bridge the gap between paying the last payment for the solar panels and getting our tax credit money next year.

Hanukkah starts this Sunday as well. That means eight days of candles, prayers, grandchildren gifts. The high holy month will be well and truly underway.