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  • Back on Central Standard Time

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    23  bar falls 29.90 2mph  NNE windchill21

         Last Quarter of the Snow Moon

    Gonna get the weather changed back to Andover tomorrow.  Still a little fuzzy.  I stayed up all day to reset my biological clock and it feels like its worked.   I’ll be ready for bed around my usual time.

    This was 6:30PM on Hawai’ian Standard Time.  Time to hunt for dinner and begin to wind down from a day of hiking or visiting gardens or beach combing.  It’s always strange, at least to me, that when we return from a place like Hawai’i that it continues, in the same rhythms, after we leave. 

    Most of the year I don’t hold the distinct memories of two places in my mind as I do right after I return from vacation, but for now and the next few weeks Hawai’i will be as clear as if it were a short drive away.  This is partly a function of jet travel.  We walk down a jet way on Kauai, wander around a few mostly similar airports, walk down a couple more jetways, then we’re home again.  No landscape passes by as we travel.  There are only vague indications of cultural change.  OK, the banks of slot machines in the Las Vegas airport were not subtle, but you know what I mean.  No changes in cuisine, no different towns, license plates, grocery stores, just the world air travel culture and its modest inflections as we pass from one gate to another.

    Getting to bed time here on good ol’ CST.


    Memories Our Land and Home Travel 📎and tagged

  • Contentment? Really?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    And, once again, Sunny, Blue, Clear, Gentle Breezes.

    “The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.” – Blaise Pascal

    A strange feeling crept up on me this morning.  Contentment.  This is not a feeling with which I have much acquaintance, so when he comes along, it is notable.  The Pascal quote is perfect here.  Reason still finds ambitions or reasons for ambitions, reason still finds competition or reasons for competition, reason finds problems to solve or reason to solve problems, but the heart, my heart, my Valentine heart says, enough.  Enough.  And, good enough.

    In that spirit I spent two hours this morning wandering around, sitting down for a while and writing poetry, then over to a sunglass shop to buy a case for my sunglasses to replace the one lost in transit.  Strolling away from Whaler’s Village, I headed toward the surfers portion of Ka’anapali to watch.

    Several years ago Kate and I were in Mexico City in September.  I went to the bullfight.  It was an odd experience, but the thing I want to draw attention to here is that September is when the novice bull-fighters try to prove their skill so they can move up in the ranks, to the better fights later in the season.   Watching the surfers here, on the west side of Maui, means watching the novice surfers trying to catch waves, stay on their boards, ready themselves for the 15-20 foot waves now crashing against the northern shore.

    One young woman, on a blue surfboard with a white strip near the tip, tried, then tried again, and once again mounted a wave, only, each time, to have the board flop out from underneath her.  I came to admire her tenacity.  No sulking.  No quitting.  She’ll make it someday soon, I’m sure.

    Now I’m back in the hotel, during what would be nap time at home and feeling just a wee bit tired.  Hope I’m not getting sick.  That would be a bummer.


    Memories Travel 📎and tagged

  • Cisco Kid, Ramar of the Jungle and Sargent Preston of the Yukon

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    22  71%  26%  3mph N bar29.99 falls windchill19 Imbolc

                   Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

     A late night.  Every time I stay up late watching election returns, as I have tonight, I recall the Stevenson/Eisenhower race.  Dad and I sat up until 3 in the morning watching election returns.  It was a magical time for me.  I got to stay up late; Dad stayed up with me.  We shared an interest in the political realm, even though I was only 5 years old.  You may think that’s odd, but at the age of 6 I proved the point.

    Mr. Gross had picked me up at church to drive me to a meeting with some friends.  As we drove out in the country, he asked me, “Charlie, are you a Democrat or a Republican?”  I said, “Democrat.”  He said, “Well, I don’t allow Democrats to ride in my car.” 

    “Stop the car, Mr. Gross,” I said, “I’ll get out and walk.”     

    We had one of the first televisions in our little Indiana town because Bob Feemster, a Wall Street Journal executive who own the Times-Tribune, the paper my Dad edited, thought the newspaper editor needed to keep up with the new technology.

    Most of the time I found the Cisco Kid, Ramar of the Jungle, Captain Midnight and Sargent Preston of the Yukon much more to my taste, but around elections, I watched right along with Dad.  Very soon after that I became a poll watcher, which meant I stationed myself at one of Alexandria’s precincts and when the vote count finished I called in the results to the paper. 

    Tonight I can’t tell what the numbers mean quite yet, though I did hear an amazing number if it’s true.  Hillary Clinton wins voters making 50,000 and below, while Obama wins with voters making more than 50,000.  If these are accurate numbers, it’s an interesting story and one to ponder.

    This is the best election I can remember, ever.  Issues.  Candidates.  Momentous decisions.  Perhaps a turning point in American history.  I hope.


    Memories Politics 📎and tagged

  • The Moratorium Years Didn’t Work Out so Well for Me

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    29  90%  26%  5mph NNE bara29.84  falls windchill25 Imbolc

                     Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

    In spite of the fact that this is Minnesota, how soon we forget, I had REI all to myself this morning.  Monday morning shoppers scared back into their easy chairs by, gasp, SNOW.  OK, I did think about turning around and heading back, then “I am a Minnesotan and I am not afraid,” soared through my mind and on I drove.  Slippin’ and slidin’ to the mall.  Just like when I was a kid and we had to walk four blocks all the way downtown to buy a pair of shoes.

    Anyhow, a helpful young lady, blond and cheerful, quite normal except for the hoop through the right nostril, which, I suppose, makes her normal in that world formerly inhabited by adults now over 60, guided me through the hiking/walking show selection process.  The first pair pretty much fit me, though they were a little snug.  Then, “Oh.  These are a women’s 8!”  Wouldn’t you know?  Still we did find an appropriately masculine pair of Keens, “They started out making water shoes so they know slick rock.”  One of the problems in hiking Hawai’i is water slicked rock;  I’ve learned this with bruised ankles more than once.

    Nearer to  home at the Anoka Co-op I went searching for Minnesota cheese (Bongards, in this case) and Minnesota bread (oddly, Holy Land Pocket Bread, made in Minneapolis) for my presentation at the Woolly retreat.  Then, sliding my way back home.

    All the while I listened to Tom Wolfe’s  I Am Charlotte Simmons.   Anyone who encountered college after academic stardom in a small-town high school, like me for instance, can identify all the over place with Charlotte Simmons, the little mountain girl from Sparta, North Carolina and a Presidential Scholarship.  Well, I never had a Presidential Scholarship, but there’s some connection, anyhow.  Wolfe has made a living out of closely observed novels of manners of our time, a sort of Dickensian project in hip, post-modern tongue in cheek prose.  This one may not be great literature, but it’s a great time-machine back to those magic years when everything seemed possible, if only you could figure anything out. 

    Those moratorium years didn’t work out so well for me.  Instead of sticking to my guns or buckling down with heroic intention fortified by small town common sense and parental support, I got drunk, wasted, started smoking and wandered without purpose for so many years I don’t even know when I stopped.  Sigh.  Oh, I did fine academically, but not as well as I might have without the marijuana and hash–yes, I inhaled–the LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, beer, 151 rum, cognac and single-malt scotch.  I floated out of college and stayed afloat all through seminary and well into my first years in the ministry. 

    Treatment.  Second divorce.  Flounder around.  Discover writing and Kate in the same year.  Now, in my final third of life, I’ve picked up steam and gotten the ole head and heart straightened out.  Thank Mother Earth.  Still, it is really better late than never.  I’m living proof.


    Memories Travel 📎and tagged

  • Bloggin with Palm Trees

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    18  89%  28%  0mph NNE  bar 30.12 steady windchill17  Imbolc

                  Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

    Opened up my e-mail program today and had 29 messages.  A big morning for me is 5 or 6.  What the hell? 

    Another lesson in the cyber world.  There are bots that crawl the web seeking out certain words or phrases, then link their source to another web page.  In some instances that’s google and can help others find your website if the title words you use resonate.  In most instances and certainly the most annoying instances the links go back to such intriguing locations as Addiction Levitra, Texas Facts Auto Insurance, Mexico Amoxil and HCL Dosing Tramadol.  Each one linked by some $%#@! algorithim to the words I had inadvertently used as the title for a post:  damn it!   A month or so ago I had a post that had the words body and flesh in it.  This was about the earth and her products.  You can imagine the links I got then.  Cyber world folks call these ping backs. 

    I have had three ping backs out of hundreds that I kept, that is didn’t delete as spam.  One came in from a website for the Teaching Company from whom I buy the occasional lecture course, another from the NFL website and a recent one from Paul Douglas, the WCCO weather guy and his Climate Change website.  It’s a good thing wordpress has a straightforward, if not quick, way of eliminating ping backs.

    In case you missed it–like you live in Singapore or Bangkok for instance–today is Super Bowl Sunday.  I tried to find out much beer we consume on Super Bowl Sunday but according to the Beer Institute (I know, but there really is one.) it’s not possible to track single day consumption.  A spokesman did say, “the Super Bowl is a good event in the ‘off season’ (cold months) to drive volume”

    Each year I wonder why I watch football, yet, somehow, I’ve developed an interest and now have enough years watching to have a sense of historical perspective.  That makes it, for me, much more interesting. So, yes, I’ll be there in my seat, though sans beer, sans snacks and sans favorite, though I lean toward the Giants just because they’re the underdogs.

     Allison wondered if I plan to blog while in Hawai’i.  Yep.  Like football I’ve developed an interest in blogging, though this interest predates my football jones by quite a few years.  I have three bookshelves of journals of various types and sizes.  I imagine this habit came with mother’s milk, or should I say father’s ink and lead.  Dad wrote a weekly column for the Alexandria Times-Tribune, Smalltown USA, for many, many years. 

    There is something about being able to read the breadcrumbs of your life, sprinkled out at various ages and stages.  In some instances it’s revelatory, in others it’s “Oh, my god.  What was I thinking?”  I suppose its a similar feeling artists get from paintings and sketches made over many years.  Or photo albums and all those home movies.


    GeekWorld Memories Travel 📎and tagged

  • Is It a Time to Advance or Retreat?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    27  66%  18%  1mph ENE bar29.95 falls windchill26  Imbolc

                Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

    A strange, sometimes troubling struggle has broken out in the responsible section of my Self.  The sometimes subtle, sometimes hammer blow obvious skirmishes have me puzzled about what actions to take, if any.  The formal study of Daoism I began a couple of weeks ago has begun to push me in a way that I hope will resolve this matter, or at least give me a way to handle it.

    The struggle is over politics.  As I’ve written elsewhere politics defined my life during my late teens, 20’s, 30’s and early 40’s.  That is to say, by my junior year in high school I was a political animal, a politician and an activist.  President of my high school class for my freshman, junior and senior years, a favorite teacher pushed the Little United Nations Assembly of Indiana to accept me as the presiding officer for the 1965 Little United Nations.  The year before I represented the Republic of Chad.  In the fall of 1965 we protested the CIA recruiters on the campus of Wabash and I never looked back. 

    Draft eligible and permanently active from that point forward I got involved in civil rights, student rights and anti-war politics. I was a student senator for three years at Ball State, then ran an unsuccessful campaign for president of the student body.  I helped organize and lead anti-draft and anti-war rallies, marches and teach-ins. 

    In seminary I pushed the seminary on anti-war politics, became an early feminist and began a ten year involvement with anti-racism training.

    While working at Community Involvement Programs as their janitor and weekend counselor, I lived in the Stevens Square Neighborhood.  There I got involved in neighborhood level politics, leading an effort to push General Mills out of the community and organizing the Stevens Square Neighborhood Association.  Made a lot of friends and few enemies.  It was fun.  This was the 1970’s. 

    In 1978 the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area hired me to work on the West Bank as a community minister.  I got involved in community based economic development, building affordable housing, organizing against unemployment and for broader community involvement in the management of philanthropy. 

    In 1984 I left the West Bank and took over urban missions for the Presbytery which expanded the arena of action.  In various ways I was still at it when I met Kate in 1988. 

    Over all this time I had a very active hand in DFL politics working at the precinct, congressional and state levels.  Then I left the Presbytery in  1991.  Not long after that Kate and I moved to Andover.

    Since then my political work has shrunk to near nothing.  I send the occasional e-mail, make a phone call, show up (sometimes) at the precinct caucus, but I’m part of no ongoing, organized effort to make or change policy.  The whole climate change issue is fraught with political issues of real import, many of them.  I’m interested, especially in water related issues and Lake Superior.   Yet I do almost nothing.

    The 1960’s was a “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” era.  My political superego came into maturity in those times and this notion became a benchmark for my own assessment of responsible behavior. 

    Thus, the struggle.  I wonder, sometimes, where this guy went, this political guy. It’s like he crawled under a rock, but that’s not so.  No, this is a struggle that has moved back and forth in my mind since the move to Andover.

    Now the Daoist studies I’ve engaged propose a way of addressing it.  Daoism suggests that there are times to retreat and times to advance, times which call for more yang, times which call for more yin.  The wise man, Daoism says, adjusts his inner life to what it calls the temporary conditions, the way the Tao manifests itself.  This area of Daoist studies has my attention right now.  I’ll keep you informed because this struggle is not productive and it’s not over.

              


    Great Work Memories Politics 📎and tagged

  • Just Another Day in Paradise

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    12  73%  19%  0mph EEN bar30.06 falls windchill 11  Winter

                     Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

    “Paradise is here or nowhere: You must take your joy with you, or you will never find it.” – O.S. Marden

    Salient advice as Kate and I prepare for Hawai’i.  “Just another day in paradise,” is often heard when there, from tourists and locals alike.  There’s another one, too, “Lucky we live Hawai’i.”  Marden echoes Emerson, who said he didn’t need to go to Italy to see beauty, because he found beauty wherever he was.  

    “Wherever you go, there you are,” from the world of AA makes the same point.  We take our conclusions, biases, and perceptions with us wherever we go.

    A trap into which I have fallen in the past and no doubt will fall into again measures home against the temporary pleasure found in any distant destination, from Ely and Duluth to Kauai and Angkor Wat.  Home will always come out second best, because by definition it does not have what Ely does, ready access to the Boundary Waters Wilderness Area.  It does not have the perfect, year round temperature of Hawai’i, nor does it have the ocean.  It does not have the howler monkeys and ancient temples of Angkor.  The Napali Coast fires the imagination in a way different from the drive up Round Lake Boulevard.

    True.  All true.  Compare these far away places, however, to home from home.  Hawai’i does not have my friends.  Angkor does not have the Minneapolis Art Institute and my docent work.  Ely does not have easy access to theatres, orchestras and the Walker.  Kauai, though it is the garden isle, does not have the garden and grounds on which Kate and I have worked for over 14 years.  None of these places have our house, adapted to our creative work and the daily life we live.  Could these other places accrue amenities like these?  Friends, maybe, over years.  The peculiar blend of artistic life enjoyed here in the Twin Cities?  Probably not.  A house like ours?  Probably not.

    Also true.  All true.  Still, we also have, for balance, the testimony of Mark and Elizabeth, who cast off their worldly belongings (ok, they stored some of them.) to travel the globe.  So far they’ve hit Buenos Aires, Peru, Shanghai and head out next week for Bangkok.  Their home is where they are, though they return here episodically to unite with family and friends.

    I had a peripatetic 20’s and 30’s after 16 years in Alexandria, Indiana.  I lived in twelve different cities and rural areas until coming to the Twin Cities metro area.  Even after arriving in Minneapolis and St. Paul I lived in twelve different apartments and/or houses in both cities and two suburbs. 

    The 14 years in Andover has come close to setting a record for personal stability.   The minuses are written in the script of every foreign or domestic destination that has called to me.  They are also painted in lost opportunities to experience other cultures and locales. 

    The pluses though are profound.  Daily life has a routine that frees the mind for creative work.  I know the microclimates and the soil conditions of each inch of our 2.5 acres.  Our dogs and our children have lived their lives here, the dogs their whole lives, the children important parts.  Kate and I know each other as stewards of this land, this house and these memories.  Lucky we live Andover.


    Memories Our Land and Home Travel 📎and tagged

  • Blue Stretching Away and Away

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    -2  52%  21%  7mph WNW bar29.58 steady  windchill-9

                    Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

    I have passed into that curious liminal state before a longer trip.  The threads that hold me here release, one at a time.  Newspaper.  Mail.  Obligations at the Art Institute.  Dogs.  Obligations I can fulfill that will arise soon after I get back.  Notifying the neighbors.  The police.  Tickets.  Reservations.  Car rental.  Those are done or have a schedule.  At some point the attachment to this weather, this season, this place and its changes over the next four weeks will slip their knots and come unmoored.  

    There is not only release.  There is also memory and anticipation.  That first night in Hawai’i, spent, improbably, at the Hawai’i Prince Hotel in Honolulu due to a late arriving flight from the mainland.  The curious Japanese appointments in the room.  Looking out that first morning to Waikiki beach.  The blue stretching away and away while white rollers hit a sandy beach. The palm trees.  All so other to a transplanted northerner. 

    Exercise at 5AM, taking advantage of the cool before day break, walking on the wet beach sand, packed and unyielding.  Salt spray, ozone and suntan lotion, coconut oil still redolent from yesterday’s sun worshippers at their ritual obesiance.  Passing hotel after hotel, lounges closed, beach chairs chained together, patio cafe chairs turned up on their tables.  Onto to the common sidewalk, sweating.  The sun rays striking the apex of the sky long before light, as if Lady Liberty lifted her crown just behind the ancient volcanoes of Maui.  

    Hikes up Haleakala.  One night up there well before sunrise with crescent moon low in the sky, breaking clouds scudding over its face.  The cold.

    Dinners at Mama’s Fish House.  Ti leaves with rice and banana.  Fish caught that day, the fisherman’s name on the menu.  The windsurfers in their colorful rigs tempting fate on the sharp rocks.

    Two times, both on Kauai, where I’ll spend two weeks this trip.  On a trail in the Waimea Canyon State Park.  I followed a trail, noticed it thinned out and got narrow, but I felt I could handle it.  Then, the rock and sand giving way, my hand grappling with a root, below me a 900 foot drop to a rocky canyon floor.   It was not the trail.  I had missed it.

    The other time, on the Kalalau trail that winds along the Napali Coast.  Steep, rugged.  Up and down with slick rocks.  I explored a bit, going back up one canyon all the way to the wall, where the waterfall dropped from the canyon rim–the same distance I would have fallen–and splashed into a pool of water.  On the way back, I’d been on the trail 5 or 6 hours, I sat down, exhausted, drinking.  “Are you o.k.?” a kind woman asked, “I thought you might be having a heart attack.” 

    Papaya.  The sunrise and the sunset.  Gentle winds.  A temperature which fits the human body.  More, so many more.  

    All these memories begin to wend their way across the ocean, over the mountains and plains to ensare me as I sit here in the middle of the North American Continent waiting for the plane.


    Memories Travel 📎and tagged

  • The Scent of Spring

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    2  56%  22%  6mph W bar 29.54  steep rise windchill-5

                    Last Quarter of the Winter Moon

    Kate brought me a spray of yellow tulips two days ago.  They have opened now and have the scent of spring.

    We’re seeking another dog, looking at Irish Wolfhound and  Scottish Deerhound rescues on the internet.  We won’t do anything until we get back from Hawai’i, but both of us have a sense of incompleteness in our family without a big dog.  I would like a mix with a breed a bit more long lived, since we still grieve the loss of each one of our eight Wolfhounds.  Grief underlines the bond developed with these dogs and, in a paradox, draws us back towards them in direct proportion to our sorrow. 

    Getting ready.  I have the portable DVD player, which I’ve never used, plugged in and charging the battery.  I do have a fix it role, but it entails electronics, not internal combustion engines.  Those I manage through repair services, but often the electronic stuff I can fix myself.  Go figure.  A partial credential for Geekworld.

    Sat down the other day and read a Taoism lesson.  As I read, I realized a strange feeling had crept over me.  It was contentment.  In fact, I feel it now.  I had, for many years, a knot, a frissón of unease lodged in the lower left of my gut.  Even when I felt otherwise comfortable, a gut check would reveal a free floating angst speaking to me, soma telling psyche all is not yet right.  Right now, it’s gone.


    GeekWorld Memories Our Land and Home Travel 📎and tagged