Art and Culture, Humanities, Weather +Climate

Goddess of Rivers and Streams

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Spring                                                 New (Flower) Moon

Oh, what a beautiful morning.  69 degrees.  Sunny.  Greening.  Daffodils waving in the breeze.  The smell of moist earth as soon as you walk out the door.  As metaphor, This is the day that the Lord has made works well for me.

Which reminds me.  I have a pension with the Presbyterian church.  I’ve not claimed it yet, won’t for at least a couple of years, maybe more, but still I want the info.  Went on the website and it wouldn’t let me on.  Sent two e-mails.  No reply.  Called this morning and the first one hung up just as a person came on the line.  Gosh.  Maybe they don’t like me since I quit?  Turns out that’s partly true.  According to the person on the phone inactive, terminated folks like me can’t access our information on the web because there are too many of us.  An interesting factoid.  Turns out they’ll answer any questions by phone.  I hate the phone.

Decided on objects for my spanish arts tour.  I start in the arts of the americas where I have chosen a very nice statue of CHALCHIUHTLICUE, goddess of rivers and streams, wife of Tlaloc, the rain god and patroness of women in childbirth and the gold objects from Mesoamerica.  Reading about her and Mexica (Aztec/Nahuatl) gods and goddesses got me interested again in the whole pantheon and the elaborate system of sacrifices that made their faith tradition go.  With these two objects we’ll discuss the cultural traditions the Spanish wiped out, then we’ll head over to Goya’s wonderful Dr. Arrieta, my favorite piece in the museum right now.  From there in to Africa and the Goya inspired Sleep of Reason by Nigerian expat, Yinka Shonibare and after that up the stairs to another personal favorite, Morales’ Man of Sorrows.  El Greco follows and after that onto surrealism with Dali and perhaps a stop at the most famous Spanish artist of all, Picasso.  Should be fun.

Did some more Sententiae Antiquae, ancient sentences.  You know, one of those days.

Oh, one other very cool thing.  I figured out how to stream Netflix onto the TV threw Kate’s Wii.

Art and Culture, Garden, Humanities

Art. Right Now.

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Spring                                                    New (Flower) Moon

More rain.  Not much, but some, enough to keep the ground moist.  The greenness factor has sky-rocketed in the last 24 hours.  Grass.  Shrubs.  Trees. They join the early perennials in optical song.  A joy and a miracle.

Walk through today–not tomorrow as I thought–of Until Now, the new contemporary art show at the MIA.  Whoa.  This is a good show.  In 8 galleries it gives an overview of major contemporary art movements like pop art, identity art, art triggered by globalization, art created with media including digital projection as well as two amazing video works.  I want to review this exhibition as soon as I complete my research.  We’re lucky to have Liz Armstrong.  (photo by Robert Polidori is in the show.)

Upcoming.  A piece on why the decline in teaching positions and majors in the humanities may not be a bad thing.   It may force those of us outside the academy to remind ourselves of historical models like the Chinese literati and the Renaissance humanists, amateurs who nonetheless kept the literary and artistic culture through individual efforts.

Art and Culture, Cooking, Humanities

A lot today

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Spring                                  Awakening Moon

Rain last night.  Thanks to all you who offered a faith tradition appropriate rain whatever.  It worked!  That means the onion sets I planted have a nice present in their new home and the garlic and parsnip received encouragement.

Since it was a wet, cool morning, I did just what I said I would, sat in my study and worked on Chapter 12 of Wheelock, the Perfect Active System for all conjugations.  Better than it sounds.

At 11:30 I drove into the art institute for a walk through of the ArtRemix exhibit.  More later when I’m not tired and I’ve had a chance to process what I’ve learned.

Back home to Andover, in bed, slept for an hour, then back in the truck with Kate and out to the last of Brenda Langston’s course on healthy eating, healthy living.  Good stuff.

Dreams, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Humanities

Pushing Ambition

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Spring                                           Awakening Moon

Some Latin sentences translated.  Met Ryan, whose going to cut our grass and manage some general lawn work under Kate’s tutelage.  Learned from Kate that all school after high school is college.  Ryan plans to go to a trade school to become an electrician or a lineman.  I’m glad.  We’ve pushed so many kids into college with that old, it takes a college degree to get ahead and look at the earning differences for college graduates.  In fact, college and graduate school has things to offer to only a small percentage of the population, far fewer than the number who attend.  Most of them would be happier and better served learning how to be electricians or lineman or mechanics or illustrators or chef’s or small business owners.

American society pushes ambition like a street dealer pushes smack or ecstasy.  And in practically the same terms.  It will make you high, happy, socially attractive, better off than you are now.  That ambition in turn pushes kids out of high school onto college campuses in ridiculously huge numbers.  Much better to have a society where the mark of a good education is a successful fit between student and education, student and job.

Again, dark.  Hope rain will fall.  Soon.  We need it.  I’m worn out.  Good night.

Aging, Dogs, Family, Garden

Buried

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Spring                                      Awakening Moon

Business meeting mornings always kick up stuff to do.  Sometimes it’s an odd collection.  This morning is a good example.  I saw an article about VO2 testing and decided to make an appointment. I go on April 20th at 2pm.  We agreed to at least register for cremation services so I printed out two forms.  In tandem with that I decided to look at columbariums in the interest of having a place for descendants to visit.  Yikes!  They’re expensive.  Real expensive.  In the 5,000 to 11,000 range.  Much more than a grave.  Then there was the person who might be able to help us think through our medicare options.  Out until April 19th.  Kate wanted me to look up information about the Segway so I did that.  I needed to see if the guy from whom I ordered bees cashed our check.  He did.  That means I’ll get some bees on April 24th.  Ordering the insect shapes bundt pan from Solutions, Inc. and getting a frittata recipe from Williams-Sonoma.  That sort of stuff.

We also discussed Kate’s possible hip replacement, as in when to do it if the minimally invasive guy says it would work for her.  We had a moment of silence for the money we thought had and now know we don’t, then moved on past it.

After the nap I worked out in the garden, repairing damage created by Rigel and Vega last fall.  I found residual anger, sadness, frustration not far below the surface as I tried to recreate the beautiful work Ecological Gardens had done just a month or so before all the digging.  It’s not hard work physically, but I’m finding it hard emotionally.  I love the dogs and I love the garden.  When the two conflict, it leaves me in a very unpleasant place.  We did put up the fence that should preclude any further damage.

At the moment I have Wheelock open on my desk, blank file cards ready and a yellow pad for the translation work that will follow.  Last week I found a notebook to contain my translation of Ovid and notes I make as I go along.  It’s ready, too.  Valete!

Garden, Humanities

A Symphony

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Spring                                     Awakening Moon

So.  The planting season has begun.  I placed green onion sets in the ground and will place larger sets for storage onions later today.  Cleaning out the area, replacing some boards, planning.

When I came inside my fingernails had soil underneath them once again.  This is the 16th growing season of working with the soil and plants here on our property.  It makes me glad to have a productive activity as the temperature outside grows more human tolerable.  It makes me feel good to have the daffodils up and the tulips coming and the iris and lilies and liguria and Siberian iris and the martagons, the hemerocallis, the wisteria, bug bane, hosta and ferns, clematis all waiting for the conductor to cue their entrance music.

The magnolia tree has been a white flame, a presto prelude, at the edge of our tiered perennial garden for the last week or so.  It burns so bright, then fades out just as the garden c0mes fully to life.

Earth’s symphonic work in shades of green and vivid color has begun and the curtain will not fall until late in the autumn.  Sit back and enjoy the show.

Aging, Humanities, Memories, Writing

Scribo, ergo sum.

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Spring                                           Awakening Moon

An outside day today.  Planting onions, garden planning and repair.  I’m itchy to get back to learning more Latin and translating the Metamorphoses, but the rhythm of nature waits for no one.

Writing is always an exercise in self-disclosure, no matter what kind of writing you do.  The subjects you pick, the ones you don’t, the style you use, the one you avoid, the words you choose, the ones you don’t know all reveal inner workings most folks prefer to keep to themselves.  Even with my modest public writing–this blog, sermons, the Sierra Club Blog last year for example, I’ve gotten the occasional emotional jolt that comes when the inside becomes the outside.

If you click on the comments about John Lampl, you’ll see an example of what I mean.  This comment came right out of left field, a comment about a post I’d written a year and a half ago about events in my life that happened, let’s see now, 36 years ago.  36 years.  What’s amazing about that is the rocket ride back to feelings of the past, that particular past, I went on when I read the post.

To gauge the difficulties of those years is like comparing a Caterpillar 73f to a Tonka Truck.  Today is a Tonka Truck life in terms of angst.  Those days I bled angst from every pore.  I married a wonderful young woman, Judy Merritt, at the height of the sixties, 1969.  We got married on an Indian mound in Anderson, Indiana, received two pounds of marijuana as a wedding present and recessed to I’m So Glad by the Cream.  Butterflies landed on my shoulder.  Really.  Five years later my alcoholism had grown worse–ironically during my time in seminary–and I pushed Judy away.  No wonder Johnnie was there to catch her.

There is, too, an inescapable amount of self-absorption in writing.  I’ve kept journals for years, I have three bookshelves lined with them.  The last five years I’ve kept much of my journal-type writing on line in this blog and its Frontpage predecessor.

This post made me wonder why I do this.  Not from an, oh my god why did I ever do this perspective, but from a Why do I do this point of view.   The easiest and probably the truest explanation is that it is just what I do.  I write.  I write about politics, about fantasy worlds I create, about my life, about thinking through the liberal faith tradition, about art.  My dad wrote.  I write.

Scribo, ergo sum.

Bees, Garden, permaculture

Beesy Morning

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Spring                                         Awakening Moon

Checked on the bees today.  They needed syrup so I put in two pitchers full.  They also needed another pollen patty. The colony looks healthy.  Lots of bees hard at work.  No stings.  I have a few things to check on in terms of what I need to do now.

Got all the mechanical detritus out of the soon to be honey house.  Next is a good sweeping and a washing, then organizing a table and the rest of the equipment.

(honey bee head under an electron microscope)

General clean up.  Getting ready for spring, which has sprung on us with some surprise.  Bought the seeds for early stuff and I’ll plant the onions tomorrow morning after I plan the rest of the vegetable garden.

We need rain.  If it fits in your faith tradition, please do a rain dance for us up here in Andover.

Asia, Faith and Spirituality, World History

Night Casts Round A Cloak of Quiet

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Spring                                                  Awakening Moon

Night has fallen, the temperature, too and quiet dominates.  It is, as I have written here before, a meditative time, a free time, a time when the world is little with us and the mind can roam free over its own landscapes. The spinning of the planet then creates a certain amount of time in every 24, almost everywhere (with the polar exceptions), when we can all become hermits.  Yes, it’s harder in, say Manhattan or downtown Las Vegas, but even in these places where the bright lights and nocturnal activity pulse away, even there, the night is still a time of refuge for the soul, at least if we choose to take it.

I’ve begun watching another John Woo film, Red Cliff, which recounts the fall of the Han Dynasty in the early 3rd century A.C.E.  Red Cliff is a battle site, so recognized that it might be named Gettysburg or Bunker Hill or Pearl Harbor were it an American battle of equal renown.  Gradually Chinese film makers have begun to explore the long, long history of Chinese civilization and create films at least representative of key times in that history.

The Han Dynasty covers the same time period, roughly, as Rome immediately after Caesar, the time of the Emperors.  I find it interesting to keep these cross cultural time lines in mind, to know that as the battle of Red Cliff rages in China, the Emperor Diocletian has decided to sever the Roman Empire into its Eastern and Western halves.

Art and Culture, Garden, Myth and Story

Burn your bag, boy?

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Spring                                          Awakening Moon

Two stories from the world around us.

Michele Yates, a docent colleague, toured a group of second graders last week.  At the James Ensor expressionist piece, “Intrigue”, a little boy raised his hand, “Look, you can see the paint.  It’s still wet.”  Turns out this young art connoisseur believed we had a basement filled with producers of art, crankin’em out every so often for the delight of the viewing public.  A time when it would have been delightful to be inside his mind and see the imagined works underneath the museum.  I see trolls and gnomes and dwarfs hard at work.  How about you?

(Frejya and the dwarfs)

An l.e.d. sign for onion sets drew me off  Highway 35E and put to Beisswinger’s Hardware Store.  Beisswinger’s is a great old style hardware store with lots and lots of stuff cared for by employees who actually know how to use it all.  When I took my brown sacks of red, yellow and white onion sets inside, it occurred to me that I still need a fence tester for our electric fence; the high voltage pulse knocks out ordinary voltmeters.  I know.  I did it.

Anyhow, he’d never heard of one, but agreed to look it up.  Both of us were surprised when he found not one, but two.  On the way to the electric fence tester aisle, he started this story exactly like this:

“So, Charlie Brown and I were in New Hampshire on my uncle’s farm.  He’s an old guy, over 70, but wiry.  We’re going out hunting [I’m thinking this is a joke, so I’m preparing to laugh whether it’s funny or not.  He seems like a nice guy.] and the old man scrambles over an electric fence.  Charlie Brown steps over it, but gets a jolt.”  In his red Beisswinger store shirt, this guy seems believable.  He goes on,  “The old man hollers back over his shoulder, ‘Burn your bag, boy?”

I had students from Eau Claire and New York Mills today.  Both groups were fun, interested and engaged.