Tag Archives: Sierra Club

Cinema and Television, Great Work, Politics

Chicken Wings, Legislators and a Wolfman

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Lughnasa                                        Waxing Artemis Moon

More napping.  Still getting the body back to its old form.  Maybe tomorrow.

Into the Sierra Club for the Legislative Awards.  It was the first time these awards have happened.  Justin’s idea and a good one.  Speeches, good strokes.

Ran into Randy Neprash.  From days gone by.  He was part of Phoenix Builders who worked with the West Bank Community Development Corporation.  I remembered him, he didn’t remember me.  He’s now doing some multi-city storm water drainage project as a civil engineer.  I knew him from somewhere else, too, but it didn’t come to me.

Back home after picking up fried chicken wings from the Wing’s Joint.  It used to be on Nicollet, a ways past Lake Street.  How it ended up in Blaine in a strip mall, I haven’t figured out, but I’m glad its there.  Best wings in town.

Watching the Wolfman with Benecio Del Toro spent the first half of the movie–what I’ve seen so far–trying to capture the heaviness, grief-stricken weariness and stolidity of Lon Chaney.  He’s just not Chaney.  Anthony Hopkins is, as one reviewer said, Anthony Hopkins.  It’s easy to see where they were heading with this.  The set, the costumes, the whole ambiance is right, but the story is draggy, too complex, too frilly.  With Hopkins and Del Toro there are enough acting chops here to produce a good film, but it likes a great story line.  Too bad.

Art and Culture, Humanities, Humor, Politics

Spotlight Turned Off

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Summer                                                    Waning Grandchildren Moon

Thank god, I’m done with the spotlight.  Please never again.  Interrupting people on their journey through the museum, a private journey done under their guidance, is intrusive, invasive.

I had two folks on the Anishinabe to Zapotec Tour, Carl and Carol.  When I said, I’ll bet you’ve got jokes on that over the years, Carl said, nope. We haven’t been together that long.  We wandered in the galleries looking at the kachina, the house screen, the Bella Coola frontlet, the transformation mask, the Nayarit house and the Valdivian owl.  I told them the story of turtle, loon, beaver and muskrat, the pointed out the turtle sign on the Lakota fancy dress.  It was a good tour, engaged and interested.

Spoke with Margaret afterward.  She got me up to date on Sierra Club work and sent me a quick note with a timeline for the legcom process.  I’m also to call CURA and Macalester seeking interns.

Finally got over to Big Brain comics and picked three issues of the Good Minnesotan, a comic done by an MIA guard and her husband. The guy behind the counter shaved his beard and looks like a slightly pudgy groucho marx.  A lot like a slightly pudgy groucho marx.

Cinema and Television, Family, Politics

Leafy Streets, Expensive Cars

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Summer                                      Waning Grandchildren Moon

Kate and I drove 20+ miles to the Edina part of Hopkins, directly across from Blake school’s driveway.  This is the home of former State Senator Steve Kelley, also a former candidate for governor.  This was a Sierra Club fund-raiser.  We listened to speeches, talked to friends, ducked out and then drove past her old home on Highwood Drive in Edina.  This part of Edina has lots of mature trees, leafy and atmospheric, homes with long driveways and expensive cars, landscaping that looks natural, yet manicured.  Her old home had received a new story, slightly curving windows and wooden garage doors.  It was strange to think of her living there, it seems so far from our life here in Andover.

We enjoyed being out together on a fine summer evening.  Cirrus clouds curled and twisted into mare’s tails as the sun set over South Dakota.  We crossed the Mississippi on highway 610 and we were back in the northern ‘burbs.

When I asked Kate why you would send a kid to Blake instead of Breck, she said, “Legacy, maybe.”  I thought, demographics and met geography.  She added, “Some people get their undies in a bunch if you send your kid to the wrong private school.”  It’s hard to be upper class.  So many rules.

Since I have Netflix and it doesn’t cost more to get anything, I watched the first Twilight movie.  The guy looks like a schlub to me, shows you what I know it comes to pretty boys.  The girl, Kristen Stewart, has charm, but is unconventional in her attractiveness.  The plot line weaves teen angst into a bit of supernatural and the favorite theme about vampires since Anne Rice:  the misunderstood, empathic vampire.  True Blood, the Vampire Diaries, Twilight and even the Gates have the vampire who wants to fit in and be friends with their food.  I’m sure ‘ol Vlad is spinning on his home turf inside the coffin.

The movie as a whole is weak, but since my standards for supernatural fare have a lot of flex, I watched it to the end.  Not worth it.

Aging, Family, Health, Humanities, Minnesota, Woolly Mammoths

Kate is Home.

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Summer                                            Waning Strawberry Moon

Kate is home.  She looks amazing, walking without the characteristic roll she had developed while favoring her right hip.  We went to Lucias, site of our first date, and ate at their outdoor tables.  Kate savored the wind, the freedom and “being on this side of the windows.”  Doc Heller says 2 to 2 1/2 weeks and she should be able to walk without the walker.

While we had a snack at Lucias, a stead stream of young singles and young couples with children came by, strolling in their neighborhood.  I realized I seldom see this many young adults.  The MIA docents are an older crowds, the Woollies, too; only the Sierra Club, of the groups I see with any regularity has a mix of youth and older adults.

One of the younger  couples that came by was a young man in scruffy jeans like I wore at his age and a woman in a print dress, black hair done up in tufts, Goth  eye shadow and lip stick, smoking a cigarette and wearing Doc Martens.  She was not happy with the parking ticket the laid back parking meter attendant had given her only a few minutes before.

Here’s another sign of the shift I’ve made from city boy to exurban man.  The traffic, the crowds, the heat, the buildings felt too close, too vibrant, more energy than I could inhale.  I look forward to breaking free of the urban heat island, the jockeying for position.   Never used to feel that way.  Now I like our little patch of land, the quiet here, our dogs.

Dogs, Politics

Friday, Friday

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Beltane                                         New Moon (Hungry Ghost)

Errands this morning to the pharmacy, Office Max and Pet Smart.  Our Vega loves her toys and is a strong vegaoutsidefencechewer.  Even buying the ones rated For Power Chewers she eventually gnaws the damned things apart.  But she has such joy with them.  Throwing them in the air, carrying them from place to place, sleeping with them.

(Vega east of eden)

Back home for a Sierra Club call about some structural changes in the Chapter’s legislative process, then a nap.  If I were more energetic today, I’d put in some time weeding, but I’m not feelin’ it.

The nurse’s strike did not impact Urgent Care last night, but even if it had, this house supports the nurses.

Politics

A Year in Legislative Politics Comes to an End

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Beltane                               Waxing Planting Moon

Into the city for the last 2010 session meeting of the Sierra Club’s legislative committee.  The meeting itself, face to face for the first time since January (we met over the phone every week until tonight), produced thoughtful evaluation of both the process and the content of our work.  As Justin said, it was a year that exceeded expectations (low), but could not be counted a good year.  In terms of two major defensive issues:  the nuclear and coal moratoriums, we maintained the status quo, which was a more difficult task by far than it sounds.

After the meeting at the Sierra Club offices, we adjourned to the Blue Nile for an outdoor dinner and conversation that last until 9:45.  We got to do the kind of casual conversation that is so necessary for team building, for trust, for understanding each other.  I hope we will be able to keep the same team together next session.

Politics causes a sneer to come to many lips, but I have always seen it as an honorable and necessary method for mediating differences in a large community.  As the art of the possible, politics always bears the suspicion of values besmirched, ideals sold out, but in fact it is a way, a peaceable way of getting the thing done that can get done.   It involves not the selling out of values or ideals, but the real price both pay for a collision with the reality of the moment.

Dogs, Family, Humanities, Politics

In 80 Degree Weather You’d Do It, Too. If you fit.

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Beltane                              Waxing Planting Moon

Vega the wonder dog continues a puppy habit.vegainwater Even though she’s quite a bit bigger now she can make herself small enough to fit in the rubber water bowl.  This means that when I fill it up, it soon empties.  I have to go buy a smaller bowl, one she can’t use for cooling off.

In other dog related news I bought two sprinkler heads to replace the ones purloined by either Vega or Rigel.  They have a high degree of energy and intelligence.  That makes them inquisitive and with dogs this size that means destructive.

I spent the morning on Ovid, translating verses of the Metamorphoses, 11-15.  This is a slow process for me because I have to look up each word, discern which of the possible words it probably is, determine its possible declension or conjugation, then go back and try to put all this together in an intelligible English line.  Latin poetic conventions make this difficult since words that below together are sometime split apart by as much as a verse.  Also, Ovid, like Shakespeare loved neologisms so sometimes the word he’s used is the only time it was ever used in Latin.

Don’t get the wrong impression though.  When I finished this morning, I whistled and sang, a sure sign I feel good about what I’ve just done.   It’s a fascinating process for me.

Kate has a big month taking shape.  She leaves on Tuesday for San Francisco and two continuing medical education conferences which will take until June 6th.  On June 30th she has hip surgery.  She needs the surgery, her hip is painful for her and painful for me to watch.

The violence in Bangkok continues and some of it happens right outside my brother’s soi, a sort of side street with no exit that is peculiar to Bangkok’s urban design.

Final Sierra Club legislative meeting for the 2010 session tonight.  There will probably be work upcoming related to next year’s session, but for the near term future, that work will come to a close.  No more weekly meetings.  Happy hour after this meeting.

Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Health, Politics

Living and Dying

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Spring                                                    Full Flower Moon

Death comes calling whenever it wants,  not worrying about the season or the weather or the inclinations of the living.  Kate’s colleague, Dick, suffering from multiple myeloma has gone on hospice care after two years of often brutal treatment regimens.  Bill Schmidt’s brother, who has prostate cancer, also chose hospice care recently to ease the pain of complications.

Tonight I was on my first Political Committee call of the year, a Sierra Club committee that deals in endorsements and retail politics.  The dogs were making noise so I quick ran upstairs to shoo them inside.  Emma didn’t come inside.  She lay under the cedar tree.  I’ve watched a lot of dogs die over the last 20 years and when I went to her side, she looked up at me, but had the stare that looks beyond, out a thousand yards, or is it infinity?  Her body was cold and she did not rise.

Vega, the big puppy, came outside and poked at Emma with her paw, sat down and nuzzled her.  Vega loves Emma, has since she was a little puppy.  I called Kate to let her know I thought Emma was dying.  Emma’s fourteen, our oldest dog right now, and our oldest dog ever with the possible exception of Iris.  At fourteen her time is near, perhaps it will come yet tonight.  Right now she’s on the couch, wrapped in a blue blanket, her head on her favorite pillow.

She seems a bit more alert now and Kate says her heartbeat is regular.  She may have had an arrhythmia and converted it, that is, brought herself back into normal rhythm.  Hard to say.  As Kate said, she appears to have the dwindles.

When I compared the call, about politics, and Emma lying outside, I realized Emma was more important to me than the call, so I stayed with her awhile, brought her inside and made her comfortable on the couch.  Then I returned to the call.

Aging, Bees, Family, Politics

Cyber Demons At Play

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Spring                                         Waxing Flower Moon

Parts of my website have disappeared over the last couple of weeks or so.  All of the liberal faith parent page got eaten by cyber demons, some I may have called myself.  The handy moon widget I had right next to the latest blog entry also went missing.  I have been unable to restore either one though I have not made a concerted effort.

Sunny but cool today.  Closer to normal.  Tomorrow is Gabe’s second birthday and Grandma flies out on Friday to celebrate.  Grandma levitates literally and figuratively when she has a chance to see the grandkids.

She had a hip injection yesterday and though the full benefit of it has not yet appeared, she got enough relief to convince her and the doctor who manages her pain that a hip procedure would help a lot.  That’s good news.  She’s also exploring a more rare procedure in which the bursa over her left hip would be removed.  No consensus on that one yet.

I’m about to leave for the city to have a meeting with Margaret Levin and Justin Fay, evaluating this year’s legislative work and getting ready for next year.  Gotta pick up my sunglasses at the UofM (I left’em at Brenda’s class last Tuesday.), buy some mochi for the grandkids and pick up some leeks.  Legcom call tonight.  Busy beaver for a few days here.

My hand has deflated and has returned mostly to normal.  Not quite, but almost.  That’s good because I get a package of bees this Saturday and I may have to start this whole process over again.

Bees, Great Work, Travel

Mid-Session, Mid-March

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Imbolc                                           Waxing Awakening Moon

A sunny, bright day, but cooler.  44 right now.  Temps will trend downward over the next week toward more normal March weather.  This week we’ve melted all of our snow away, unusual.

Put in a large order at Mann’s bee supplies for deep hive boxes, honey supers, frames and foundations, hive tools, feeders and pollen patty mix.  Kate’s taken over the woodenware phase of the process, agreeing to put stuff together as it comes.  This is great for me since handling such matters tends toward large amounts of frustration and blue language.

Spent yesterday AM doing travel arrangements for Kate’s trip to Denver (car) and her trip to San Francisco (air), writing our CPA, signing up for a healthy eating class from Brenda Langston and moving money around.  A fussy, businessy day with our business meeting in the AM.

The mid-session for the Sierra Club Legislative Committee finds us fighting defense on the Nuclear Moratorium and the Polymet Mining proposal, pushing a few bills, but, for the most part, working in the trenches.  An old flame of mine, now a tax staffer for the Minnesota Senate used to say “No one’s wallet or rights are safe while the legislature is in session.”  That emphasizes the need for constant surveillance as bills go into committees, especially after Friday, the 2nd deadline which winnows legislation down further.  As bills miss deadlines, authors begin to look for creative ways of pushing their legislation like getting it added to omnibus bills or arranging for amendments once a bill is on the floor of either house.

Today is a day for Liberal II:  Liberalism-the present (and, I think, the future since I have no slot this year to finish a trilogy.)  Research all day.  Writing starting over the weekend perhaps.  So I’d best get to it.  Later.