• Category Archives Travel

  • Braised Shortribs

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    27  75%  24%  0mph SSW bar30.02 rises wihdchill27  Imbolc

                   Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

    Made braised shortribs in the slowcooker this  morning.  They should be done soon.  Not our usual fare these days, but we plan to eat a small meal from them and take the rest to the neighbors I spoke about yesterday.

    Began sorting out packing chores for Dwellin in the Wood and Hawaii.  Kate will take clothes and a few other items for me; I will take the computer, DVD player, meds, books and files to read on the plane.  Not quite finished, but I’ve chosen my bag and have much of it done.

    Tomorrow I’m going to head over to REI and by a pair walking shoes designed for back country trails.  Then, later in the day, along with 1 billion people or so, I plan to watch the superbowl.  I’ll work on my hour long presentation for the retreat during the timeouts and commercials.


    General Travel 📎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

  • Security as the Museum’s Id

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    25  66%  20%  0mph  SSW bar29.90  windchill24  Winter

                 Waning Gibbous Winter Moon

    At the MIA I picked up my old security badge with the grinning face and a patch of remnant frontal hair which looked like a soft, brown green at the 1st hole.  This earned me admission to the basement, the haunt of the security guards.  I went in the basement to get my picture taken because the badges are, after all, a security concern, relegated to the basement, or id level of the museum.  This is the instinctive, protective part of the museum’s body; it strikes without forethought to protect art, then vitrines, cases and stands.  In a pinch they will protect people, too, but mostly it’s about the art.   Makes sense.  After all, the guy didn’t come in and sit on a patron; no, he chose the $500,000 Ming dynasty chair. (Now worth $750,000 after renovation)

    Anyhow, I went down the stairs.  On the left was the guards lounge with the artistic funky furniture and guard art on the wall.  On the right was the photo shop.  On the wall next to its door was an old museum sign in bronze, perhaps 3 feet high and 18 inches wide.  It gave the hours and days of the museum.  So, the basement is also where old signage goes to live after its working life is over.

    Once inside, more guard art on the walls, there were those little light reflecting umbrellas that photographers use, plus a tilted white board at desk level in front of the stool.  Pauline? had a Canon SLR digital on a tripod.  She took three shots:  I smiled broadly, quirkily, and deadpan. 

    “I’ll leave it to you to choose the most winning one,” I said and left the basement.

     Back here at home I’ve also begun my attempt to learn Chinese characters on my own, with the aid of softwared I bought a while back.  Over the  years I’ve tried to learn Welsh, Spanish, German and Greek.  I have some Latin and some French.  Languages are not my long suit, but I keep sticking my head back in the stocks every few years.   Part of me is ashamed I’ve never learned another language.  No, make that all of me.  Very ethnocentric and gauche American.


    Art and Culture General Travel 📎and tagged

  • A Retreat, Then An Advance

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    19  82%  21%  omph ENE bar29.90  windchill19  Winter

                 Waning Gibbous Winter Moon

    A DVR.  Hadn’t planned on getting one, but the hdmi connection with the TV demanded it over the HD converter box alone.  Surprise.  I like it.  Already I’ve taped two movies, Cronicas and Killer of Sheep.  When I’m watching a movie, I prefer to start at the beginning and the start times of movies often don’t conform to my schedule.  In the past I would check the replay schedules and try to find a time that worked or I’d skip it.  Now I can press the record button and the DVR records the movie and I can replay when I wish.  Kate’s also used it to tape a TPT series, Jewish Americans.  Guess you never know.

    No more tours until March.  I have ten days before I go to Dwelling in the Woods, days I’ll use to finish the garden planning, edit my sermon for Groveland and produce a 1-page Transcendentalism for Brights, work on my new novel and a short story.  Also, I’ll do the various pre-trip preparations like stopping the newspaper, the mail, reserving a ride on the Airport Shuttle, packing. 

    Also have to plan a one-hour presentation to the brothers, something I want to share with them, a passion or a part of my life right now.  Could be anything.  We switched to this format last year and we liked it.  The way we’d done it before involved a focus on a theme and a common thread in what we presented:  Fathers, Mothers, Death, Myth.  Last year we had a theme, Darkness, but the suggestion was to present the theme in a creative manner.  I chose a ritual of darkness which involved reading poetry excerpts (Dover Beach, The Night by Rilke, Stopping by the Woods on A Snowy Evening that sort) and, in a room lit only with candles, extinguishing a candle with each reading.   This year, don’t know yet.


    GeekWorld Travel Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • Traveling by Electron

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    32  60%  37%  4mph  windroseNNE  bar steady  dewpoint19  First Quarter of the Snow Moon      Holiseason

    Traveling is not the same in the age of the internet.  It’s way better.  We’re going to Hawai’i in February.  I’ve handled all of our arrangements over the internet, including dinner reservations on February 14th at Mama’s Fish House on Maui.  My 61st birthday.

    Mark Odegard, living in Shanghai, e-mailed me today and recommended a place to stay on Kauai, the Fish Shack, right on the ocean.  Just e-mailed them to see if it’s available for the time I’ll be on Kauai by myself.

    Now travelers abroad are not cutoff from their support networks or from ways of gaining information about the cities and countries through which they travel.  Both are as close as the nearest internet cafe or wireless connection if you have your own laptop along.

    Likewise, I’m in frequent contact with my sister in Singapore and my brother in Pnomh Penh.  By e-mail.  Also, any travel with an interest in my life can read this blog and find out a little bit about me and Minnesota.

    Off to the magical mythical tour.  Another form of travel. 


    Travel 📎and tagged

  • Reservation Frustration

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    51  41% 37%  1mph  windroseS  bar steep fall  dewpoint27  Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon   Ordinary Time

    Like most of you, I imagine, I have served as my own travel agent for quite a long while.  Sometimes that’s a good thing, more flexibility, choice; sometimes it’s a bad thing, frustration and headaches.  Getting this Hawai’i trip together for Kate may fall in the latter category.  In her case it means dealing with two providers of Continuuing Medical Education and their pecularities regarding travel and accomodations, then dealing with the pecularities of Allina’s CME regs.   After all that, I have to match my travel to hers, though I’ll leave later and return later.  It will come together.

    Along this line, I’ve become a fan of open table, the online reservation system.  Open table covers a lot of restaurants, all of them I’ve tried of late.  It allows you to check times and availability of reservations without being put on hold and spending a lot of time on the phone.

    Finished the business type stuff for this AM, now I’m headed outside to remove wood from our metal fence for recycling and to dig a fire pit.  Catch you later.


    Travel

  • Isolation, Volcanoes and Perfume

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    44  69%  40%  0mph windrose N  bar steep rise  Ordinary Time Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon 

    In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.
      – Andre Maurois

    Even though the trip is three months away, the travel bug has begun to gnaw at my attention, drawing me toward the Pacific and that peculiar place neither fully Asian nor fully Western nor fully Polynesian, Hawai’i. 

    When Kate first suggested going to Hawai’i back in 1992, I said no.  “There are a lot of places I want to see before beaches and surfboards.”

    She persuaded me. 

     The islands had me at the fragrance of wet soil, evident even when walking on the skyway from the plane to the terminal on Honolulu. It was so pungent, redolent of sailing ships and Buddhas, navigating by the waves and stars.  Then, the flowers and the perfume of gardenia and jasmine thick even at highway speeds.  Blues, so many blues, from cerulean to sky to turquoise.  Greens in even more shades.  Greens that climb the mountains, dive into the ocean, and all that wasted green on the golf courses.   Most powerful, and I do not sun bathe, the scent of coconut oil and warmed human flesh.  Whenever I smell coconut oil, I’m plunged back into the sweetness.

    Each time I’ve gone since that first trip I’ve had a theme, something I wanted to pursue in more depth.  One trip it was the isolation.  Look at the map.  Hawai’i is as far away from the continental experience as you can get on terra firma.  One evening I sat on the beach on Kauai, listening to the waves crash against the shore.  Brilliant pieces of glass sparkled in the black sky.  All at once the time between the waves became prominent, a silence, a caesura.  The isolation of the islands dwelt in that silence. 

    Another time I investigated volcanoes.  We stayed at Volcano House on the rim of Kilauea.  I spent a week hiking Kilauea and Mauna Loa.  We managed to be there during a six week cessation in an eruption which has been otherwise consistent since 1983 and which picked up the week after we left.  Even so, I hiked out on the lava field from the Puu ‘O ‘O eruptions.  Hiking on lava is difficult; it is sharp, jagged and unsmoothed by erosion.  When I got out of sight of the visitor area, which took over an hour, it was as if I had landed on an alien world.  There were no plants, no buildings, no roads, no signs of life.  All I could feel was the occasional heat from lava coursing through lava tubes beneath my feet.

    Not sure right now what I want to have for a focus, maybe just r&r.  Write, relax, hike, eat fish and papaya.  Something will probably come to me.


    Travel