Art and Culture, Humanities, Weather +Climate

Those Italians: Titian and Rome

January 26, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waning Moon of the Cold Month

Gosh, we’re losing our mojo here, 21 degrees now and freezing tomorrow. This is the third week of January, the coldest week of the year.

Don’t know whether it’s my aging brain or the difficulty of the material, but I’ve spent some prime time on infinitives and indirect statements, while still trying to get the participles straight. It’s fun and it’s getting me where I want to go, but I feel slow, web-footed at times. On the other hand I am on Chapter 25, only 17 more to go. After that, hey, only a few thousand more verses to go and I’ll have one book translated.

A bit more on the Latin tomorrow, then I’m diving into Titian material. I’ve already finished the Grove Dictionary of Art entry on him, wandered around a few websites, but I’m looking to get medieval all over him, or Renaissance, rather. The Renaissance and its step child, the enlightenment, are two favorite areas of study for me, so I look forward to leaning into the Titian material.

Well, yeah. I do have to get groceries, too. Always some fussy thing like getting fed.

Retirement, Travel

Dreaming of the Far Away

January 26, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waning Moon of the Cold Month

With Kate now retired, life has taken on a different, more relaxed rhythm. She’s not hurrying to get ready for work, nor is she coming home tired, neck, back and hip on fire. We don’t have that churn created by the world of busy, earn, comply, obey. Both of us have an easier day, though we’re not quite used to what to do with evenings yet since that was her work time and my workout, end the day time. We’ll get a new flow, one that will change with the seasons as the garden and the bees begin to demand more and more time, then subside as fall ushers in another round of senescence and transitions back to the cold, fallow months.

Travel is the one real potential budget wrecker we have. I had some misspent time this afternoon looking at the National Geographic Expeditions catalog. Gee, for only $65,000 a person you can fly around the world, stopping in exotic places along the way, staying in 5-star hotels including the Raffles Hotel D’Angkor in Siem Reap. I know that place, $500 a night and a hell of a good afternoon tea. My $35 a night place was just fine, thank you. Cheaper food, too. That Amazon River cruise looked

Have to sign off now for the Legislative Committee conference call.

Cooking, Health

A Simple Plan

January 25, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waning Moon of the Cold Month

Chili smells have begun to fall down the stairs and enter my study. Smells pretty good, especially after a workout on the treadmill. I’ve up the difficulty by two incline levels over the last week or so and it feels good. Need to find a personal trainer who can get both Kate and me jump started on a new resistance program.

Also, in dietary news. I have the found the secret to a healthy weight: eat less food. No kidding. I know. Obvious, right? Here’s what I’ve done: first, I imagined the portion I would cr400_late-summer-2010_0200 eat for a meal and cut it in half. Surprisingly, not a hard thing to do. Still satisfying. second, I decided that I had to have a vegetable serving and a fruit serving at every meal. Again, obvious. You’re probably already doing it, but I’ve slouched along on the fruit/veggie thing. Now, each meal. third, I stopped eating while watching TV. This is an important change for me because it led to a lot of mindless eating. Now if I want a snack while watching TV I have to turn off the TV, go make something and eat it in the kitchen at the table.

Oddly enough, this relatively simple minded plan has worked. I’ve dropped ten pounds + since beginning it. The good news is that there’s nothing I’ll ever need to stop and it allows me to eat what I want, just less of it. And, actually, this is something, too, it makes it possible to have two really good meals out of what would have been one and done. I love that.

Commentary on the news, Health, Minnesota, Politics

The Moral Test of Government

January 25, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waning Moon of the Cold Month

“It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.” It is still said.
Hubert H. Humphrey

Ouch. Latin infinitives and indirect statements. I’m on Chapter 25 (of 42) of Wheelock now and the grammar and vocabulary isn’t getting easier, it’s getting harder. Suppose this should not be a surprise, but I kinda hoped… My mind has pressed out against my skull, then bounced back, a coup contracoup injury occasioned by working too damn hard. Ah, ok. I love it. Still, in spite of the strib this morning, this love does hurt. At least now.

The legislative grist mill has begun to grind and this time the sacks will be filled with coal dust as lives, especially lives of the most vulnerable, suffer hit after hit from the budget cutters. There was an NCIS Los Angeles (see, Latin and pop culture within two sentences of each other.) recently that I thought was corny, about a military number cruncher who wanted to make the numbers names. The plot was corny, but the point was not. Just as military numbers mean real people dead or maimed, so do the medicaid, general assistance, aid to the disabled and the elderly numbers mean real lives damaged, often beyond repair, because most of these folks are on the edge all the time. It takes the smallest thing to set them on the downward spiral.

GeekWorld, US History, Weather +Climate

The DOW Goes Up; The DOW Goes Down.

January 25, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waning Moon of the Cold Month

“I do not have what I own, nor do I have what I do. I only have what I am.” – D. Trinidad Hunt

Rising temperatures, even rising toward freezing, activate the doer in me. I want to get out and plant vegetables, check the bees, but that time is not yet, is still a long ways away, so I’ll focus on the hydroponics, Latin and Titian for awhile. Colder temps activate the thinker, the reader, the researcher and they still dominate. So, it’s to the books.

The DOW goes up; the Dow goes down. Life goes on; joy is found. All I have to say about the market.

I still have one printer in spasms. I’ve tried fixes from the manual–yes, I RTFM!–I’ve tried fixes from the internet. I’ve tried letting it rest and I’ve tried hitting with this and than for an hour at a time. Enough to make me sputter. Guess I’m gonna have to give and take the damn thing to a repair guy. The shame of it all. One other task defeated me, setting up a home wireless network. That required the GeekSquad. I like to DIY electronics. Not this time.

Aging, Asia, Politics, US History, World History

The Times They Are A Changin’ (Still)

January 24, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waning Moon of the Cold Month

Temps have come up. Near freezing on Thursday. Break out the beer cooler, the barbecue and the hot dogs. Time for a picnic Minnesota style.

Every once in a while I find myself driving in a part of the Cities I don’t know well. Tonight was one of those times. I needed to get the Urban League building at 2100 Plymouth. Looked straightforward on the map, but, as usual, I wanted to try something, so I got off at the Olson Highway exit. Hmm. A bridge too far. I had to wend my back north through side streets. Finally found it and made it to the meeting.

Senate District 58, Linda Higgins. The Sierra Club’s first in-district meeting with members and legislators. A good turnout and a lot of good dialogue, back and forth on environmental issues, peace and justice and taxes. Back in the car, back home.

How about that news that GM sold more cars in China last year than in the US? Whoa. Things change. Our time at the top of the heap alone has come to an end. I’m not with the dystopians who see us limping toward the next century, a much larger and sadder equivalent of Britain after the fall of empire. Neither am I nervous about China. Nothing in their 5,000 year history suggests to me that they will do anything more than shore up their borders and try to make as much money as possible while living interesting lives.

My own feeling? The world will be better served with two different, but equal powers. Will we stay there with China for the long haul? I don’t know. I don’t care. How we live our lives here has become interwoven with China as an economic power, yes; but, will the superbowl or the world series cease? No. High school proms and McDonalds? No. Car trips and love of our national parks? No. Our wobbly, creeky democracy? No.

Will the US change over the next 50 to 100 years. Of course. More Latinos. Greater ethnic diversity. More people in cities. Sure. Will this makes us less American? Nope. Will it change what it means to be an American? Maybe. But are we the same Americans as those in the first 13 states? I don’t think so. Different than Civil War America? In substantive ways, yes. So, it stands to reason that American will have a different flavor in 2111. Not only am I ok with that, I celebrate it and hope my grandchildren and their grandchildren help make it special.

Cinema and Television

The White Countess

January 23, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waning Moon of the Cold Month

We finished an old movie, one I picked up in the abandoned movies bin at the supermarket, you know, where the poor dvds have prices like $4.99 and 6.99, coming down from their new price highs, now served up like, well, like a basket of oranges or a box of cereal. Must feel bad.

Anyhow the White Countess languished there, so I picked it up, saw Ralph Fiennes and three Redgraves. Enough for me. We watched it over two nights. A Merchant-Ivory film its depiction of late 1930’s Shanghai was marvelous. Fiennes and the now deceased Natasha Richardson carried the main plot line. It was slow in the first hour + but I’m a sucker for costume dramas with period settings and nobody does them better than Merchant-Ivory. In the last hour or so, the film gained momentum. A tender moment between Fiennes and Richardson had electricity.

Fiennes played Mr. Jackson, an American diplomat, a prime mover in the failed League of Nations. Richardson was a displaced countess from Russia, an aristocratic survivor of the Bolshevik revolution reduced to working a dance hall to earn money for the rest of her family. Mr. Matsuda, Hiroyuki Sanada, is a Japanese zealot who becomes friends with Fiennes while discussing Mr. Jackson’s past working on a “broad canvas.” Fiennes says there is no longer a broad canvas and that his dream is to open a special bar.

He succeeds and hires the Countess as his hostess. They become close and slowly fall in love.

Mr. Matsuda has a reputation as the frontman for Japanese invasions.

He succeeds. The last scenes of the movie, played out against the backdrop of the Japanese invasion of Shanghai, show Matsuda on a balcony, his carefully tended hair disturbed slightly by a bomb blast as he surveys the invasion from a safe, high spot. Meanwhile, Mr. Jackson has given up the bar of his dreams to seek the white countess and her daughter. They meet and he leaves Shanghai with them for Macau.

As I see it, Mr. Jackson began his life working on a broad canvas, the League of Nations, but became disillusioned, an idealist still, but now, perhaps, realist, too. His bar, his dream, dies in the invasion. He is left then with only the smallest and most intimate canvas of all, love and family.

Mr. Matsuda, on the other hand, has achieved, for the moment, a master brush stroke on his broad canvas.

I think it deserved better than its 51% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

–

Bees, Garden

The Growing Season Begins. Now.

January 23, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waning Moon of the Cold Month -13 at 8 am today

Just slept 11 hours. After a two-hour nap. And ten hours the night before. My body is at work, fending off this chest cold I have. I feel pretty good right now, but I don’t think it’s quite done. Still, fluids, steam baths and rest. That’s the ticket.

Today I put some seeds in their places: leeks, lettuce and chard. The lettuce and chard, once they reach two leaves in size, will go up into the hydroponics for use now. The leeks will 06-05-10_leeksandpeas670 keep on growing, too, also up in the hydroponics once they become youngsters and not babies, but they will go in the ground outside as soon the ground can be worked. (I think. May be a bit later.) Over February, March and April other plants will follow the same process, growing up to two leaves, then getting transferred to the nutrient baths of the hydroponics. Each one, in its own time, will go outside to the waiting beds. They will augment the garlic, the strawberries, the raspberries, the asparagus already growing there.

This year our planting will be more informed by several years of growing vegetables together, Kate grew some before. We’ll plant what we need for canning, preserving in other ways like drying and freezing. We’ve eaten well from our gardens over the last few years, but not as well as we could. There’s always room for improvement.

One area for improvement is management of the orchard. That will occupy some serious thought in March and April. Fruits, especially trees, are different from vegetables, more vulnerable to insects and disease. We’ll see what there is to do.

This will be the first growing season with Kate home full-time, so we’ll test out how that works. Bound to help.

Then, too, in April, the bees begin to come out of their winter ball. I over-wintered three colonies though I’m unsure about their survival. I’d be surprised if all three pull through the 06-20-10_garden_6703 winter, but delighted. I’d understand if only two made it, but I’d be disappointed with one. I’ve got a long ways to go before I’m a good bee-keeper, but I have years to go before I sleep. Time enough.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Health, Retirement

Gospel

January 22, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waning Moon of the Cold Month 3 degrees

In all the hoopla and aftermath of the party I forgot to mention the gospel. The good news. The friend’s wife I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, the one diagnosed with cancer? She came to the party. Not only that she said her energy was better than it had been for a while. She looked good, too. Both she and her husband looked still vulnerable, the residue of concern, fear lingering. She has a hormone treatment, recommended by her oncologist, that may keep the cancer at bay. Not cure it, but keep it from getting a firm grasp on her.

As Leni said, another party goer that same night, about his throat cancer, “Well, you know, the goal now is to make cancer a chronic disease. Something you can manage.” He’s living proof, having survived in apparent good health for several years now. He and the friend’s wife were not alone, either. Hank, another party goer, has leukemia, a disease kept in check now for many years, so much so that it almost recedes into the background.

These are the three I know about. There were probably others. Cancer no longer has the skull and cross-bones attached to its every appearance. Think of it. Cancer is not a new disease. It killed people relentlessly in all centuries before the last one. Now, it begins to look, at least in many cases, like the caged tiger, pacing back and forth within its chemical compound, its lethality imprisoned, though not rendered harmless.

Kate has retired from the practice of medicine as others graduate each year to take up the responsibility, this tricky act we call healing. It has more parts than chemistry and technology and knives, we know this, yet those parts themselves, the fruits of engineering and science, have a great deal to offer. Perhaps this next century is the one where the enlightenment driven side of medicine will meet the ageless truths of the human spirit, joining together in a medicine, a healing for the whole person. It may be that the last years of the baby boom generation, now upon us, will provide the impetus for this fusion.

Aging, Family, Retirement

The Hereford Queen

January 21, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Full Moon of The Cold Month 0 degrees

Here’s a picture I took with my cell phone at the Great Western Stock Show. That’s the Hereford Queen in white, all white.

Confusing. Yesterday I had cold symptoms that I had to knock back for Kate’s party. Thank you Dayquil. Today most of the symptoms are gone except that nagging, worn out feeling, the sort you get when your body has other things to do than help you be alert.

Today marks the end of Kate’s second full work week of retirement, one in Colorado and one in Minnesota. We’re still sinking back into it, realizing the nuances. Probably won’t be clear for a year or two. We need a full garden and holiseason cycle, too.

This has been a cold winter already and it will get yet colder tonight, though not as cold as last night. A fire, a book, supper, TV and bed. That’ll put this cold back in the bottle.

This was a busy week with the Target tour on Monday, the Woolly Meeting at Scott’s in the evening of the same day, getting ready for the Legcom and holding the meeting, then the last minute prepping for Kate’s party, the Expressionist tour yesterday morning, then the party in the evening. That’s a lot for this guy in terms of outside obligations. Next week looks a bit more subdued, though Monday looks like a lot going on, again. This means I can get back in the Latin groove, push myself toward finishing Vanished. It’s a keeper and I’ve a good bit of it done already.