Family, Weather +Climate

Rain? In January?

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Winter                                               Waxing Cold Moon

These are the ten coldest days of the year on average.  And we have rain.  Whass’ up?

A full day back from the Mile High City, where it was spring, and I return to sloppy, icy gunk.  This is the stuff I moved out of Indiana to avoid.  I like winter when it’s winter.  I like fall when it’s fall.  Spring and summer I’m not fussy about, let’em come however the winds dictate, but winter and fall, my two favorite seasons, I prefer as I imagine them.  Rain in the third week of January is not as I imagine it.  But, of course, the weather gods do not listen to me, or to you for that matter, so we have to just shut up and take it.  I guess.

(Freyr:  Norse god of fertility and weather)

I mentioned Ruth several times over the last week.  Here is a picture of her at the rodeo:

ruthrodeo

Mostly back home now, better rested and ready to write and watch the Vikings on Sunday night.

Art and Culture, Family, Travel

Leaving Denver

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Winter                          Waxing Cold Moon

The decompression has begun.  My suitcase awaits only my dopp kit to be ready to go.  A shower, final packing and I’ll be ready.  Ready, that is, to drop off the rental car before noon then spend three hours at the Denver Airport before my 3:00 pm flight back to the Twin Cities.  When I arrrive around 5:45, I’ll still have one more leg to go:  Super Shuttle, in a ride on which I will be the last one delivered home.  All in all it will probably be between 7 and 8 hours before I get home after leaving the hotel.

I’m reading a book called Stealing the Mona Lisa, discussing it comes next, at a gathering of docents, dining at the Namaste Restaurant.  I would describe it as a difficult book, written by a psychoanalyst for whom style seems an afterthought and clarity a bother.  Having said that though, it is a profound book, digging deep into the meaning of art and, surprisingly, into the meaning of art’s absence.

Why I mention it this morning is an aha from the section I read over breakfast.  In describing psychoanalytical attitudes toward drives the author, Darian Leader, makes clear that sublimation is NOT a replacement for the act of sex, fucking as he so baldly puts it, rather it is an expression of the individuals need to fulfill the same desire as sex fulfills, that is, in Freudian terms, a return to the pleasure of direct bodily manipulation, pleasures lost as we adapt to cultural definitions of who and what we are.

Also, and most interesting to me, for Lacan, drives are an attempt to get to the state Freud describes as pleasuring the body, but Lacan describes as The Thing, a vast emptiness that exists just outside our capacity to reach.  Therefore our drives are attempts not to fill this emptiness, but to reach it, to find it, to discover what was lost when we became creatures of culture.

Lacan’s emphasis on emptiness as the defining state for our humanness, and as a state forever beyond our reach, yet felt and desired in every moment, struck me as a link to both existentialism on the one hand and Taoism on the other.

In existentialism we admit the reality of this emptiness, admit it’s definition of life as meaningless, then proceed to construct our life both in spite of and because of this emptiness.

In Taoism, we recognize the creation of the universe to have come from emptiness, the Tao, and we also recognize it as a vivifying impulse behind each moment.  It may be that Lacan’s more tortured and dark view of emptiness as The Thing exactly misses Taoism’s great point about emptiness as the very reason for a door, a cup, a vase.

There is, too, one other important thread that I don’t find so far in the book and that the is the realm of rationalist philosophy.  In this idea we construct our reality through sensory data, but our sensory data is not reality in the same way that a map is not the territory.  This means, according to Kant, that we can never know reality, the ding an siche, the thing-in-itself.  Sounds pretty Lacanian to me.

Family

One last hug, Granpop!

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Winter                               Waxing Cold Moon

Ruthie ran down the drive and said, “One last hug, Granpop!”  We had come back from an evening at the childhood sensation, Chuck E. Cheese.  I hugged Jon and Jen, kissed Gabe, under a crescent moon and took for the Marriot for one last night in Colorado.

Chuck E. Cheese, for those uninitiated, is a bunch of booths spread out among many games of chance and skill.  All the games take one token, available with purchase of the meal.  The food is unremarkable, but the music is loud, the place safe–it has rules against gang colors, signs, weapons (which made me wonder)–and there’s a video camera where your kid can go and perform, broadcast on in-house closed circuit TV’s.  Ruth performed.

It’s been a good six days here.  Family requires time and this is probably minimal but it was important, for me and for them.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Work, Travel

Trappin’

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Winter                   Waxing Cold Moon

Got to the stock show at about 7:30 am today.  I was early enough that there was no one checking passes or tickets, exhibitioners had not yet come and there was only one place serving food.  And it hadn’t opened for business.

Reminded me of the trips I used to take to the Indiana State Fair with my mom.  We went by Greyhound Bus because Mom never learned to drive.  That’s strange, isn’t it?  Just resurfaced as I wrote this.  Because of the Greyhound schedule we would get to the State Fair before the crowds.  Clean up crews would still be sweeping up from the night before and stock exhibitors would be getting their animals ready.  It’s a good memory and one I was happy to revisit.

While I admired a badger pelt, the man who trapped it came out and we got to talking.  He explained a host of unintended consequences from such things as eliminating the spring bear hunt and limiting trappers in what they can do.

Colorado’s Dept. of  Wildlife now kills as nuisance bears the same number as bear hunting did.  When the bears were hunted, the populations stayed steady, but with no hunting pressure and the growth of outlying development, bear numbers have skyrocketed. According to this guy, who seemed very balanced. The result is bears forced to forage in urban areas or suburbs because the wild territories have dominant adult animals in them.

In addition, this guy, a trapper who lives in Summit County, where Breckenridge is, said when he began trapping there were few to no raccoons in the whole county because winter was cold and long, eliminating food sources for enough of the year that it was not good habitat for them. Summit raccoons are now abundant, “You should see a mid-winter Breck raccoon, lotsa fur and fat.”

He makes his living trapping nuisance animals, mostly wild animals living high off pet food, garbage dumps and even purposeful feeding.  Animals that, again according  to him, could still be managed by trapping as it was practiced.

I watched Simmental Cattle judging and a junior showmanship event for hogs.  As the place began to fill up, I packed up my purchases, boarded the bus and came back here for a nap.

Family

Young Family

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Winter                       Waxing Cold Moon

Next to last day in Denver.  Last night Jon and Jen and I went to Fogo de Chao, a Brazilian steakhouse.

They have two young kids, Gabe and Ruth.  Gabe got his hemophilia diagnosis not long after his birth a year and 8 months ago, so they have had to cope with it; never more so than in the middle of this year when he began experiencing spontaneous bleeds.  This meant a port and every other day infusions of clotting factor, given by Jon and Jen at home.  In addition, Jon’s shoulder, crushed in a skiing injury a few years ago, got worse and required shoulder replacement surgery.

This is a pretty high stress level for a young family and they have handled it with real grace.  Tensions, of course.  But they have remained positive and forward looking, not giving in to despair or hopelessness.

They have also raised Ruth into an exceptional three-year old, bright and funny and wise.  Gabe’s a happy boy and really beginning to move around now after a slow start.

They needed some adult time and we got it.  I told them how much I respected the way they had handled all they’ve had in their lives this past year.  Worth every penny.

Politics, Writing

Writing

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Winter                            Waxing Cold Moon

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.”   MLK

Today has been a rest day, at least from the grandkids.  Jon and Jen are back at work and I head over there at 5:00 for  our dinner out this evening.

I wrote all morning, pushing my draft further along.  It’s going well in a way that surprises me, flowing for the most part.  It makes me feel good, productive in a way other things don’t, even the garden and politics.  I suspect that’s because it is an act with little in t he way of intermediaries, at least in the creative phase and in that regards represents me most fully.

Of course, that’s also the frightening part, the exposure of the Self to others with no screens, no personas.

Sport

The Express

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Winter                                Waxing Cold Moon

Just watched The Express, the story of Ernie Davis, the first African-American Heisman Trophy winner.  It was heartfelt, but long.  The story though is compelling, a black athlete growing up as Martin Luther King became prominent, a young man finding his identity both as a man and as a football player.  It has a dark side, too.  His eventual diagnosis of leukemia, coming right on the heels of his signing with the Cleveland Browns.  He died the next year, 1963.

Family

I Want My Mommy.

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Winter                  Waxing Cold Moon

Ruth and I went to see the Superdogs.  This was our third day at the stockshow.  She surprised me several times.  The first time was on the sidewalk heading to the shuttle.

“My legs are asleep,”  she said.  Then she added, “Sometimes my legs wake up when I’m asleep.  They go to back to sleep when I wake up in the morning.”

On the bus to the stockshow, she looked out the window a long time. I thought she was enjoying the ride, but she said, “Granpop, I want my mommy.”  Her voice quavered.  Uh-oh.  We were almost there.  I offered to call Jen and did so, but the bout of homesickness passed.

At the superdog show,  about an hour + into it, she said, “Granpop, I don’t want to see this anymore.”  So we didn’t.

We also went in the stock barns and after getting a bit of a way in she said, “Let’s go back outside.  I don’t like the smell  in here.”

It’s easy to forget that young senses are so much skilled than ours, especially when ours are 62 plus years old and had to live through a bout of cigarette smoking to boot.

Just another day as Granpop.

Family, Sport

Another Warm January Day

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Winter                             Waxing Cold Moon

It’s 52 today here in Denver, sun shining, blue sky with a few cirrus clouds nearby and some cumulus off in the distance.  The Rockies have snow caps and grace the western horizon with a view that makes any nature lovers heart race.  This is a great state from an outdoors perspective.

Today Ruth and I hop on the shuttle and go to the stock show.  Again.  Third day in a row.  We’re gonna see the super dogs.

I read an ESPN article that analyzes New Orleans vs. the Vikes the same way I do.  We match up very well against them.  If our defense, especially Jared Allen and Ray Edwards throw Brees out of his rythm, and if Peterson can smash the Saints center, we should go on to the Super Bowl.  I believe those things will happen.

Family, Great Work, Myth and Story, Sport, Travel

Going Rodeoing

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Winter                              Waxing Cold Moon

The Rodeo!  Began with a bang.  Fireworks and laser lights.  The first event was bare back bronc riding.  These horses rear back, jump off, all four hooves off the ground, then plunge back to the sawdust.  It’s a brutal experience for a rider though the horses seem to enjoy it.

After this big men with horses went after one poor calf with ropes, hoping to stop it–the header–and bind the rear feet with a lasso, the footer. Must have been hard because most of the teams failed.

Somewhere in here Ruth said, “Granpop, this is fun!”

Next came the saddled bronc riding.  This was very similar to the first event only with saddles.  Punishing.

Then came a horse and rider against a calf.  The rider lasso’s the calf, hops off the horse and ties three of the calves feet together.  The horse pulls on the rope to keep the calf subdued.  This too proved difficult since most missed.

Barrel racing had barrels with Qwest painted on them.  I thought this was appropriate because the contestants had to run in circles to win.  Just like dealing with Qwest.  The barrel race horses were fun to watch because once they’re around a barrel, they really dig in an move.

The last event of the evening involved grown men attempting to stay on the backs of large bulls.  Just why they do this was not explained, but it takes the whole bronc riding thing and put a lot more weight behind it.  This too must be hard because only cowboy stayed on the bull the required amount of time.

There were some novelty events.  Mutton busting involved children from 5-7 trying to stay on sheep as they run around the arena.  Most fell off immediately, but one 7 year boy held on while his sheep ran all the way across the arena.

Another children focused event had 12 tweens, girls and boys.  12 calves were let loose and each kid that caught and subdued a calf would get a calf to raise and have an opportunity to show it at the next Western show.  In this instance all the kids received help from adults and all got a calf.

While I was in Mexico City in the late 90’s, I went to a bull-fight at the Plaza del Torres, the largest bullfighting arena in the world.  Though it was, in a sense, more violent than the rodeo, the bulls die, I liked it better.  It had a sense of ritual, of grace, even elegance while rodeo seems almost entirely brute force applied in difficult circumstances–riders on bucking horses or bulls, ropers chasing down and wrestling calves to the ground.

Maybe rodeo is too young as a sport to have much ritual, but to me, it lacked the gravitas of the bull ring.  Why does this matter? Well, again, to me, the rodeo seemed about imposing human will on animal nature with cattle ranching as the context.  Bull fighting, on the other hand, is a ritual involving life and death, even art.  It takes the bull and its death with great seriousness with the context of Celtic culture as the back drop.