Kate Has Other Things To Do

January 21, 2011 Charles 1 Comment

Winter Full Moon of the Cold Month -18 outside right now

Woolly Mammoths on parade. The herd came to the event last night. Docents came, too. Tom and Allison and Kathleen and Wendy and Joy and Carreen and Grace and Jean-Ann 6702011-01-20_0607 and Paul. Paula came. John Pastorius came. Suwy came, not once, but twice, at the beginning and at the end. From Shoreview. Before and after work. Kate’s nail lady and hair dresser came. The Perlichs came, Lydia and Pam. Greg and Ana came. Nurses and docs and lab techs from the Coon Rapids Clinic came. Jane and Dobbie West. Around 100 over the evening. Lois and Hank came. Jettie Ann, Jean Ann, Mingjen and a couple of other CIF folks came. There was even a woman who wandered in, not sure what was going on. Once she realized it was a retirement party she went to the gift shop and bought Kate a small beaded purse that matched her jacket.

We gave away fabric bowls, a pillow, a purse and a pint of Artemis Honey. Conversation ebbed and flowed. Servers passed sparkling cider and champagne, appertifs, too. One, a Kobe beef with shrimp in truffle aioli sauce got rave reviews. The Turtle Island String Quartet played through the speakers and the buffet always had a few folks at the counter.

Some wandered off into the museum and came back. Many had not been to the museum before. Many had. Kate wanted the event to provide closure. She said it did.

Then we loaded up the truck and drove home, the temperature dropping degree by degree to -13 as we got home.

Art and Culture, Humanities, Weather +Climate

Pale Shadows

January 20, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Full Moon of the Cold Month

“Even the smallest victory is never to be taken for granted. Each victory must be applauded, because it is so easy not to battle at all, to just accept and call that acceptance inevitable.” – Audre Lorde

This full moon, out in a cloudless night sky, cast long shadows onto the snow, pale threads of maple trees, birch, oak, lying dark amidst the luminous reflections. These midwinter full moons have an especially lonely feel, as if the world they illuminate were devoid of animal life and the plants, all the plants have stopped growing, resting now, unconscious perhaps, perhaps unaware of the moon at all, only dumb branches and trunks casting shades of themselves into this quiet world.

There are days, nights, too, when I feel as if the full moons of these midwinter months inhabit my mind, where my thoughts can only produce pale shadows of themselves, the shades of ideas, not the full, living, breathing concept, but one quiet, moonlit and small.

Tour this morning with Hamline philosophy of art students, seniors. It was all right. We traveled with the expressionists while they rejected impressionism and the camera, used colors and shape and line and flatness instead, pushing inside, painting the heart and the mind, regions not accessible to the senses or photographic techniques. The kids themselves, all seniors, seemed a bit dull to me, misshapen and doughy, indifferent to their own learning. This saddened me, made me wonder what’s happening on college campuses these days. Is life so barren? To be sure there were the two girls, young women, who gamely noticed Matisse’s color scheme, Rouault’s thick shapes, the flatness of Bacon’s canvas. Perhaps it was the formal analytical method that we used, a nod to the class. It was a substantive tour, but it seemed uninspired and uninspiring.

Commentary on Religion, Commentary on the news, Politics

Free Speech and Fast Saints

January 19, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waxing Moon of the Cold Month

Cameras and inks and papers, oh, my! Then, new glasses and seven bags of groceries. We’ve been gone and the larder was bare of important items like milk, turkey slices for the dogs, veggies and fruit, bread and bagels. Now it’s not bare.

JPII is on a fast-track for sainthood. Just like today. Fast foods and fast saints. Just can’t wait, can we?

JPII’s successor, the German Shepherd, has taken on major moral issues recently, like, the right name for your kid. No weird ones. He’s also cranked up the heat, already at record highs set by JPII, on theologians teaching at Catholic schools, gays at mass and those pesky liberation theologians. Whoever said the divine right of kings is dead? It lives on in its last bastion, Vatican City. (pic. Yikes!)

The whole Gifford/Tucson shooting controversy. We have rule of law and one of those rules is no prior restraint. This means that we cannot stop someone from committing a crime until they’ve actually committed it. This gives us big trouble with at least two categories of persons: pedophiles and psychotics, especially paranoid psychotics. We know the probability of their offending is high, but until they act out there’s nothing we can do. Anyone who has dealt with the seriously mentally ill knows the difficult line walked in their care and treatment, a line between limiting freedoms and giving the individual a realistic chance at living in community.

Does this mean that the gaseous explosions protected as free speech had no affect on Loughner? I doubt it. Some peoples minds are more porous than others, more open to outside influence. It’s not hard to imagine a scenario in which a paranoid psychotic decides that Rush Limbaugh actually knows what he’s talking about, that Sarah Palin is a respectable political figure. O.K. Maybe only a paranoid psychotic would think either of those things, but it only confirms my point. His actions did not exist in a vacuum. Neither did lynchings in the rural south nor do gay hate crimes in many (most?) parts of our country.

Can we or should we stop Limbaugh, George Beck, Sarah Palin, the tea party gas bags from using inflammatory rhetoric? Regrettably, no. Part of the idea of free speech is that discerning citizens will tell the demagogue from the statesman, the propagandist from a public servant. It does appear that discernment may well be at an all time low in the current US, but it’s not the first time. Those of us with other views must speak, too. And act.

Aging, Art and Culture, Family, GeekWorld, Retirement

Expressionists

January 19, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Full Moon of the Cold Month

A cold stretch coming up. The night of Kate’s retirement party predicted to be -22 with a high of 3 during the day. I have disposable cameras to buy, chipboard for small signs and a couple of things to print out. That last may be a problem. My HP laserjet printer, one I’ve had since the late 90’s, you know, back in the last century, seems unwilling to accept a new toner cartridge. I’ve changed these out many times over the last 10-12 years, so this is a puzzle. My other printer, a Canon color printer, is also down right now. I’m going to take a stab at solving those while I’m out buying cameras and chipboard.

I’ve got my tour for tomorrow morning patched together. We’ll start with Monet, the impressionist Haystack, to ground our further adventures in expressionism. Where the plein air impressionists wanted to show just what their senses saw, color as created by light bouncing off of objects and received by painterly retinas, the expressionists gave up the senses to the camera and tried to depict that cavern measureless to man, the human mind and human feeling. Using the formal aspects of painting in new and unusual ways, color, bright color, chosen for its expressive nature rather than its sensory veracity, flowing lines not always stopping at the borders of one object, compositions set flat against the canvas, shoved up toward the front with all the Renaissance experiments in perspective abandoned, the expressionists wanted to evoke feeling and the swirling inner life of the individual.

Some of my favorite pieces in the museum are in our expressionist collection: Beckmann’s Blind Man’s Buff, Kandinsky’s Study for Improvisation V and the Egon Schiele painting to the right.

Well, back to the tour work.

General

Lot Going On

January 18, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waxing Moon of the Cold Month

Boy. A busy day. Business meeting where we looked over our expenses from Denver and checked again on our budgeting for the retirement season of our lives. Looks good. We also noted those little odds and ends that need to get handled before a big party. Almost done. Checked our calendars. And that was done.

I’ve begun to look into an expressionist tour and focusing on formalism and contextualism. A fun task, but will require some heavy lifting. Decided I couldn’t get any Latin done this week, so put off till next Friday restarting my search for a translation of Ovid’s work.

This and that, bits and pieces. Back to the treadmill. Finished the 4th part of the War in the Pacific, an HBO special on this aspect of WWII about which I know very little.

Now. Tired.

Aging, Art and Culture, Commentary on the news, Memories, Politics, Retirement, Travel, US History

MLK

January 17, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waxing Moon of the Cold Month

“Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience.” – Eleanor Hibbert

Ms. Hibbert, whoever she is, has it right; just the way life is. And, by the way, I’ve had my share of experience.

Slept in my own bed last night. Ahh.

Today is the tour of the Target Corporation’s art collection with lunch at Masa before the tour. This one has been a bit problematic, partly because it came in when four other events also got organized. However, the day has come at last.

Today will be the first day at home, a regular work day, when Kate does not go into the Allina Medical Clinic Coon Rapids. She stayed up last night until 2:oo a.m. playing a word game on her Kindle. Freedom. A beautiful thing. This is also the week of her party, Coming of Age: The Art of Retirement. On Thursday, January 20th, from 5-9 p.m. we will celebrate Kate and her medical career, but, with more inflection, Kate and the next years of her life. If you read this, you’re invited to join us at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. No gifts, just you and yours.

It’s also Martin Luther King day today. My age cohort grew up during Dr. King’s rise to national prominence as the civil rights era took hold of the nation’s psyche. The civil rights movement represents the US at its best and its worst. Over the long haul since King’s leadership in 1955 the Montgomery Bus Boycott ignited by Rosa Parks to today cultural attitudes and practices have changed dramatically when it comes to people of color. One way to note this is to consider the relative reputations of Dr. King and two of his chief opponents: Lester Maddox and George Wallace.

Have we come all the way to a nation in which a person is judged “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character?” No. Are matters demonstrably better? Yes. Can we stop working on the pernicious effects of prejudice and racism? Of course not. Can we celebrate a better day? Yes, that’s what MLK day stands for.

All I’m saying is simply this, that all life is interrelated, that somehow we’re caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

This perspective of King’s has its roots in the radical theology of Henry Nelson Weiman. It was Weiman’s basic idea that god could only be found in relationship and, further, that god really was the mystical thread of connection between and among us all. A fine idea, though a bit of a category mistake in my opinion. Why call this mystical thread god? Why not the mystical thread or deep relationship or interrelatedness? In either form though it represents a distinct challenge both to American individualism and to the existentialist stance that I consider my own.

King and his intellectual mentor, Weiman, call to those of us who put our bold lettering under Individual to consider that there is an equally bold and distinct word, Related. Martin Buber would approve.

Aging, Family, Humanities, Travel

Family Time

January 15, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waxing Moon of the Cold Month

Kate sees this trip as vacation; I don’t. Family related travel, the bulk of what I do, has a different purpose and feel. It’s about relationships and the hard work necessary to maintain them. It has the flavor of duty, but duty in a positive, not an obligatory sense. The hard work has its pleasures, yes, lifting Ruth up in the air as she giggles, helping Gabe push his toys around on the floor, but it also has its rough edges. A relationship with a sister, troubled since birth, breaks bad in a new, more intense way after she becomes pregnant.

The parents of young children face a plethora of challenges, too, noise and activity levels after a hard day at work, insistent demands for attention, keeping the kids safe indoors and out, little time for themselves separately or together. None of this is new, this is the ancientrail of child-rearing, but it is one meant to happen in an extended family. In our case, as in so many, many others, children and grandchildren live in one state, grandparents, uncles and aunts live in another.

Continue reading Family Time →

Art and Culture, Family, Memories, US History

West Colfax and the Wild West

January 15, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waxing Moon of the Cold Month

Gabe and Ruth asked for us to come over tonight. We did. We went with Jon and Jen and Ruth and Gabe to an art teacher’s art show. It was in the ‘hood, just off west Colfax, the Latino part of that very long street, not too far from Montview, where Jon met Jen and where he still teaches.

Jon had a cell phone photograph in the show, one taken at table setting level during a Halloween wedding. The composition was clever and the cell phone grain gave the photograph a painterly feel. It was easily the best piece in the show, though I should say the competition was not strong save for a couple of potters and a cartoonist.

Along the way we passed a dulceria where they sell pinatas. It had pinatas hung from the ceiling and lots of brightly colored party favors. Snow White and Cinderella, in large cardboard movie style images, graced the front of the store. Down a bit further was a dress maker, dark on this Friday night with big girl dresses for Quinceañera. Ruth wanted Kate to make her a strapless one, but in the truth telling way she has, Kate said, “Not until you get boobies. You couldn’t hold the dress up.” “Well,” Ruth went on, “Maybe it could have sleeves.”

After the opening, Kate and I took off on our own to give the family a chance to decompress from a full week of grandparents. Tomorrow I’ll see Ruth at her gymnastics, then around 2 pm we’ll board the shuttle for National Grand Western Stock Show. This will be my second time and I look forward to it.

It’s an event similar to the state fair, but limited only to farm and ranch related vendors and activities. Rodeos, judging of champion bulls, pigs, sheep, the Wild West Show we’ll see tomorrow at 4 and barrel races make up the bulk of the events outside of the ranch related wheeling and dealing.

A lot of that goes on in hotel restaurants and bars far from the Stock show grounds. Men in cowboy hats, blue jeans and vests gather around shots of Jack Daniels and beer chasers, talk cattle and land. It all gives January Denver a distinctly Western tone.

It also helps me define myself as a Midwesterner. We’re agricultural, yes, but we’re row crops and feedlots, 4-H and county fairs, small acreages and farmers. The West has ranches and cattle herds, oil and open land, brands and rodeos. Yes, you could point to many similarities, but the differences are what strike me, making me realize I know very little about the West, in our past or in our present.

Aging, Family, Politics

Retired at Last

January 12, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waxing Moon of the Cold Month

Kate’s sewing on the machine she keeps here at Jon and Jen’s. We retrieved it last night and brought it back to the hotel room. The room supplies an ironing board and iron, with her cutting mats and rotary cutters–and those $23 to transport scissors–she’s in her favorite place, sewing. She said yesterday that her retirement couldn’t really start until she could start sewing. Well, it’s officially started now.

The Sierra Club legcom meeting is at 5 pm tonight, so I spent an hour organizing material for the agenda and sending it out. That’s finished. Good thing Jon asked last night what time the meeting was. I said, “5 pm.” “Oh, so at 4 pm our time?” “Huh? 4? Yikes.” I would have missed it for sure. Not used to this jetset lifestyle.

Once again breakfast has cowboy hats and bluejeans. One young boy, maybe 14, wore a t-shirt that read: “Nothing’s more important than beating that COW COLLEGE on the other side of the state.” Coach Bear Bryant A clutch of young girls came up around his table where he sat with three slightly older boys.

Then began the mock teasing, playful hits, frowns and cagey responses. One blond headed girl leaned over a boy with a RockStar hat, whispered in his ear, then went across the room and got him a cup of coffee. They were prodigies among children.

Tonight I plan to take Jon and Jen out to a country Japanese restaurant called Domo. Sounds interesting.

Aging, Family, Travel

The Cheeky Monk and The Irish Snug

January 11, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waxing Moon of the Cold Month

And so it is. The cold month I mean. -7 last night here in Denver. Not Minnesota cold, but still, it counts. The snow though has mostly disappeared from the city streets and will be all gone by the weekend when highs in the 40’s hit the high plateau.

Kate and I went to the REI flagship store yesterday, a large brick building that used to be a tramway (don’t know what that is) now stuffed with ice axes, mountaineer boots and more fleece than you shake a sheep at. It has a very Colorado feel with many young, hyper fit folks looking for the right gear for climbing a 14’er and then skiing back down.

Denver has a young persons feel with many interesting bars like the Cheeky Monk and the Irish Snug. Gastro pubs. Kate and I stopped for lunch at the Cheeky Monk, a woody homage to some form of Belgian culture with Belgian waffles on offer as a dessert item. Kate had a beer sampler that included Stone’s Lucky Bastard and Avey’s Czar. Potent stuff. More so than Kate anticipated.

We’ve both eaten a bit too much fried and fatty with corresponding complaints from our digestive systems. You’d think at our age…

In spite of its proximity to the mountains, the Rockies loom on the western horizon, Denver is a flat city, very Midwestern in that way.

Since this is the time period of the Great Western Stock Show the restaurants have many cowboy hats, cowboy boots and the occasional sequined Rodeo Queen. It all gives Denver that Western feel that it sometimes lacks in the summer.

OK. Off to the Denver Mint.