Aging, Art and Culture, Family, Garden, Weather +Climate

Here Comes The Sun

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Summer                                       Waning Strawberry Moon

After weeding Kate and I took off for lunch–at Benihanas, not nearly as good as our own, much closer, Osaka–and a visit to Lights on Broadway.  A bit of dithering about where the order was, where the paperwork was, who was on third and who was on second I picked up the track lighting fixtures that had fritzed out on us.  Nice to have light the full length of the kitchen table now.

Then, a nap.  A long nap.  Two hours.  I got up earlier than I wanted to this morning thanks to dogs barking.  Even earlier tomorrow.

After so many days of rain, a very soggy June, we have a run of yellow suns on all the weather forecast sites through Sunday.  Tonight the temperature should hit 46.  Good.

Kate has no anxiety about the procedure tomorrow.  She does, she says, “surgery well.”  I’d have to agree.  The back surgery was in January and that’s been behind us for several months.  I still want her out of the hospital as fast as possible since hospitals have a lot of iatrogenic disease and a lot of it is very intractable, super bugs, all studied up on the antibiotic armamentarium.

The perennial beds now look like a gardener lives here.  That feels better.

Spoke with a woman about a spirituality in art tour for July 8th.  It’ll be my first tour in a while.  Looking forward to it.

Aging, Family, Garden, permaculture, Weather +Climate

The Day Before

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Summer                                              Waning Strawberry Moon

A beautiful day.  64 degrees with a dew point of 41.  Got more weeding done.  Finished the second tier, went after some returnees on the first tier and got through much of  the third tier.

While doing this it occurred to me that gardening is the process of removing plants willing to grow where you are and replacing them with plants that don’t want to grow where you are. An odd task. Permaculture is an attempt to turn this process on its head and utilize plants that want to be where you are, grouped in companion plantings of plants that compliment and co-operate.  Makes sense if you think of it.

Kate’s out doing a bit of last minute gardening, too.  She straightened up her large table downstairs and I’ve printed a copy of her health care directive.  Throwing a bag together and taking two special showers to disinfect are the next big tasks.  Then, around 5:30 am or so tomorrow, we’ll take off for Fairview Hospital, the East Building.  We’ve discovered that Kate’s procedure is not until 8:00 a.m, so I’m going to get her settled, then go home.

Family, GeekWorld, Politics

Night Time, Summer in the Exurbs

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Summer                            Waning Strawberry Moon

Night.  A couple of nights ago I went down the driveway to the mailbox.  As I came back up, I looked up as I often do and saw an object scooting from SSE to NNW.  At first I thought it was a plane.  Without my glasses distance observing for me turns into a game of analyzing tantalizing bits of information rather than direct scrutiny.  As it came overhead though, I could see what I thought were lights were blurs owed to my faulty peepers.  No, it was a satellite.  It was bright and moving fast.

At heavens-above.com I tried to look it up, but the tables for satellite passes only look forward, not backward.  I don’t know what it was, but I know it was man-made.  Whether it was a communications satellite of the International Space Station, it’s still something up there because humans put it there.  An amazing and still almost science fiction notion to this boy of the 1950’s.  I remember Sputnik.  Well.

Kate’s a day away from her surgery.  The vicodin she has to take now makes her dull, “stupid” as she puts it.  She doesn’t like that feeling and looks forward to the time post-op when she can return to her NSAID.

Obama.  As a political leftist, I find things wrong with Obama’s record.  He supported off-shore drilling, he’s ramped up the war in Afghanistan and he’s accepted weakened regulatory legislation and weakened health-care legislation.   The Gulf oil disaster and McChrystal give an air of chaos to his administration, though neither one is his fault.  Here’s my prediction.  A year from now Obama will look very good in all the areas in which he looks very bad right now.  Her’s pulling troops out of Iraq as promised.  The economy will improve.  The public will get clear about the Obama administration’s role in the Gulf oil disaster to his credit and his firing of McChrystal will be seen as what it is, a necessary assertion of civilian authority.

He’s working as a politician, not an ideologue, a necessary ambit if he  wishes to govern, which he does.  Bush was a right wing ideologue and no matter how charming or gritty he appeared it was clear his decision making was in thrall to the neo-con view of the world.  Ideology puts blinkers on the best of us and Obama seems to govern without ideology, though he’s clearly a left-liberal.  Kudo’s to him.

Bees, Dogs, Garden

Pictures

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Summer                                                 Waning Strawberry Moon

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.
– Mark Russell

You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun.
– Al Capone

I didn’t know there was another theory about Saturn’s rings.

That Al, what a kidder.

06-27-10_beekeeperastronautBeekeeper as Backyard Astronaut

06-27-10_smokerReady to add the third hive box to the package colony

06-27-10_package-colonyAfter the addition

06-27-10_inthehoneyhouseSupplies

06-27-10_hiloHilo

Garden, Weather +Climate

Weed

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Summer                                            Waning Strawberry Moon

Nice weather for weeding so I took the opportunity and finally got into the second and third tiers of our back perennial garden.  Out go the raspberry canes.  Out go the stinging nettles.  Out go the dogwood suckers.  Out go the switch grass and and other weedy plants.  In stays the poison ivy (one small plant) because I kill them.  Out goes the slumped daffodil stems.  I’m not finished, but it already looks a hell of a lot better.

Kate planted marigolds this morning in the kitchen garden and in long narrow window boxes.  This all nourished by last nights meal from the garden and the currant jam this morning.

Paul Douglas had a big happy sun on the forecast for today, but so far all I’ve seen is  clouds.  I’m glad.  It kept the air cool enough for a good session outside.

Aging, Art and Culture, World History

A Way of Keeping Aging in Perspective

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Summer                                      Waning Strawberry Moon

A week ago last Thursday I got my ticket in Roseville.  I want to pay it, but the damn thing still hasn’t shown up on line.   This is past ten days (usual maximum time for a ticket to get into the system).  Is this another revenue builder?  I get frustrated, forget about it and get picked up later for a bigger buck item?  I’m tempted to say yes, but that accords a degree of intentionality to our courts system that I doubt exists.  So I’ll wait.

“We Americans are the best informed people on earth as to the events of the last twenty-four hours; we are the not the best informed as the events of the last sixty centuries.”- Will Durant

Though I can’t say why I have had an abiding interest since junior high–yes, that’s what we called it back then–in the ancient past.  Anthropology/archaeology scratched that itch in college and even much of the work I did in seminary had ancient history as a living part of the discipline:  biblical studies, greek, hebrew, (full disclaimer:  I had the short course in both), early church history, even some of constructive theology.

Art history allows occasional forays into the arts of the ancients.  The bronze collection of the Shang and Zhou dynasties at the Institute is wonderful as is our small collection of Greek, Roman, Cycladian, Near Eastern and even Paleolithic art.  I’ve read with great interest many classics, in part because they give a picture of ancient cultures that it’s not possible to get any other way.

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, in spite of its provenance in the late 14th century, is about the much earlier Han dynasty and its demise around 220 a.d.  Celtic early history is seen through either the eyes of the Romans, the Catholic Church or the British, so it has filters put on by its detractors, yet the ancient Celts shine through anyhow.  Of course there’s the Odyssey, the Iliad and for me, as you know by now, Ovid’s Metamorphosis.

I loved the history of Egypt lectures from the teaching company as I did the history of China and the history of Rome.  You’d think with all this that I’d have some idea of what went on, but I don’t have much of a gestalt yet, not even after all this time.  My gestalt about the West has better form than mine of, say, China or India or Japan, but still, it’s pretty weak.

Cooking, Garden, Great Work

Making Jam, Eating Greens

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Summer                                     Full Strawberry Moon

Global warming, how fast can it happen?  I don’t know, but my lilies have begun to open 2-3 weeks ahead of time.  That’s a remarkable fact.  The garden overall seems about 206-28-10_earlylilies weeks ahead, at least that stuff that I got in the ground at temperature, but not date, appropriate times.  I know, this is weather and that’s climate, still, one measure of the advance of global warming is earlier springs, which bring earlier plant blooming cycles.  Of course, one year is not a trend.

Kate and I  made 10 jars of scarlet currant jam, putting them in a hot water bath for 5 minutes to decrease the air pressure inside and get that satisfying ping when the atmosphere, barometric pressure 29.57 right now, presses the lid tight and seals.

We had a mixed green salad with onions, all from the garden, plus a wonderful spicy peanut jasmine brown rice dish right off the brown rice package.  With the bees, the planting, the harvesting, the jelly making and the dinner this was a very local food type day.

Dogs, Garden

Another Northern Summer Day

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Summer                             Full Strawberry Moon

The full strawberry moon, evocative.  Our strawberries have wound down  for this season, but we enjoyed them while they ripened.  I had blueberries on cereal this morning, blueberries from our patch.  Finished the  planting for a third harvest:  beans, spinach, swiss chard, beets:  golden and detroit red and carrots.

Kate has been picking  currants like a woman possessed.  She has I don’t know how many and won’t rest until all five bushes are clean.  That’s a lot of currants.  Last year I couldn’t even spell currant and now I have more than I know what to do with.

The whole garden, including the bees, has proved a bit much this year.  The longer season didn’t help, it got stuff off to an early start, ahead of me.  Plugging away though.  I’ll probably get back to even about time to put the sucker to bed for the winter.

Hilo helped me plant, each hour with her more precious now that we know her days will wink out in the not too distant future.

Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Letters

Oh, You’re So Pragmatic.

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Summer                                    Full Strawberry Moon

“My experience is what I agree to attend to.” – William James

Pragmatism and pragmatists are an original American (US) contribution to the history of Western philosophy.  Since I can’t get my hands around it well, I’ll not try to explain it, though on its on my list.

But.  William James was among its founders and early proponents along with Charles Saunders Pierce and John Dewey.  He was also an early American psychologist as was Dewey.  So.  James is an important guy in philosophy, psychology and the psychology of religion, The Varieties of Religious Experience.

His quote above is disarmingly simple.  On the face of it you might say, well, yeah.  Whatever, old dude.  If you took that perspective, you probably skipped over two important words:  I agree.  Now, I’m not going to get into the free will debate, very complicated at this moment in cognitive science, so I interpret this as our attention will go where we intend for it to go.  It’s the intentional nature of the I agree that I want to lift out and underline.

Why?  It reminded me of a dilemma I spoke with Kate about just this week, “Kate, there are several things, for example, pragmatism, Taoism, aesthetics, the Enlightenment that I would like to explore in greater depth.  The problem is that to do it I have to have sit down time, lots of it, to read complicated material and absorb it.”

“Yes,” she said, “There are just aren’t enough hours in a day.”

Just so.  We have a limited amount of time, that’s a given, both day to day, and in this finite trip, life.  How I agree to direct my attention will determine the nature of my experience.  If I choose to garden, I will not be reading Dewey’s Reconstruction of Philosophy.  If I choose to do Latin and translate the Metamorphosis, I cannot, at the same time, read Chuang Tzu.  If I use time writing this blog, I cannot use the same time to write a novel.  And so on.  And on.

Just using those examples I have chosen to direct my experience toward the garden, the soil and complex interactions within them both.  I have chosen to fill some of my experience with Latin grammar and vocabulary and learning how to translate.  I choose to write this blog and so have the experience of an ongoing journal/diary/weblog.

Is there anything bad about these choices?  No, at least not in my opinion.  I do, though, have to reckon with what James identifies.  Each of those choices makes other choices if not impossible at least less likely, therefore directing my stream of attention and with it my experience in one direction and not another.

The point here is that you decide the type and quality of the experiences you have and those experience not only shape your life, they are your life.  So, choose well.  And know what your choices mean.

Bees, Dogs, Great Work, Health, Weather +Climate

Kidneys and Bee Stings

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Summer                                Full Strawberry Moon

The dew-point and the temperature are one, 67.  That means a cloud hangs not above us but around us.  It’s a drippy, soggy Saturday fit for neither garden work nor bees.  And I have work to do in both places.  There’s always Latin.

Hilo now takes naps with me every day and sits upstairs with me longer at night.  I want to have as much time with her as possible before her kidney disease takes over.  Kidney disease is strange.  As long as there is at least some kidney function, the disease doesn’t manifest itself much except in heavy drinking of water.  The creatinine level and other measures of kidney function reveal a different, starker picture.  They show the gradual, then exponential depletion of effective kidney reserves.  Once the body tips over into renal insufficiency, things can get bad quick.

As the universe would have it, at the same time Hilo had her labs confirming her problem, I had to go to the lab at Allina Coon Rapids to get my creatinine levels.  Witnessing the steady and relatively rapid deterioration in Hilo’s situation, I awaited my lab results with somewhat more intensity than I might have.

Mine remain unchanged from December and not appreciably different for several times in the past.  Looks ok for now.

After my thumb got all black and blue following my last sting, I began to investigate bee defensive behavior.  I learned a lot of interesting things, a few very practical that I hope I remember the next time.  It seems that when a bee stings it releases an alarm pheromone that attracts others to the location of the sting.  So.  I should scrape off the stinger (not pull it out because that causes the stinger to pump more venom into the wound), then smoke the area stung to mask the pheromone.  I also learned that the same alarm pheromone expresses when a bee gets crushed during hive inspections.  Of course I try to avoid this but it happens.  That situation, too, calls for smoke.  Last, and most obviously, if the bees are ornery on a particular day, put on gloves.  Oh, yeah.