Aging, Commentary on Religion, Friends, Humanities, Letters, Sport

AncientTrails Visits All Continents

Leave a comment

Samhain                                         Waning Wolf Moon

“Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me. It is an uncomfortable doctrine which the true ethics whisper into my ear. You are happy, they say; therefore you are called upon to give much.” – Albert Schweitzer

Schweitzer was a theologian with unusual views and a favorite of my Mom and Dad.   His “reverence for life” played an important part in their thinking about politics and the world.  Though I’ve never considered it before, I imagine his perspective had a role in shaping mine, too.  Reverence for life was a pre-abortion hoo-ha concept and not meant to be part of that debate.

Just reviewed Google Analytics for AncienTrails.  Thanks to the wonder of the internet (and google) this website has received visits from all 7 continents and 46 of the 50 states in the last month.  Only Nevada, North Dakota, Delaware and Connecticut recorded no hits from November 7th to December 5th.  I find this very strange, perhaps unexplainable, but somehow pleasing, too.  Anyhow, if you’re one of those readers from other parts of the world, please add a comment or two from time to time.  It would be fun to get a conversation going.

Kate and I just took the first two segments of the 55 Alive online driver safety course.  It reminds you that reaction time slows down as you age.   Drinking and driving?  No.  That prescription and non-prescription drugs affect our driving.  Mostly stuff you know, but good reminders so far.  Sobering statistics about driving after age 75, too.  Crashes and fatalities go up considerably with people in those age ranges having the same accident rate of drivers from 16-24 with more deaths.  Gotta factor that into retirement planning.

The Vikes vs. Cardinals game got moved to the higher ratings slot of Sunday night football.  That means the day time is more free than usual at this point on Sunday.

I visited Big Brain Comics yesterday and picked up two graphic novels, both, believe it or not, on advice from reviews in the New York Times.  Strike Force is an anti-war novel set in Iraq and LogiComix, very improbably, is a biography of Bertrand Russell and his work on the Principia Mathematica.  Last night Strike Force kept me up past midnight.

Politics, Weather +Climate

Winter

Leave a comment

Samhain                                   Waning Wolf Moon

A light dusting of snow has given snowy caps to the rocks in our boulder wall and covered the potting bench like Wondra shaken out to coat a chicken breast.  This amount of snow emphasizes late fall by highlighting downed leaves, their brown color emphasizing the not-yet-winter feel of this early December Saturday.

Coming at a lower angle from the sky,  pale sunlight does tell the tale of seasonal change, filtered through a milky haze, giving the morning a starkness seen through leafless trees and their bare branches.  The thermometer, too, suggests winter.  We hit a low this morning of 13 degrees and the temperature stands now at 10:20 a.m. is 20.   This is ten degrees below normal.

October was cooler than normal; we had our first significant fall then.  November was warmer than normal and we had only a tiny snow fall in a month in which we usually 9-10 inches.  December is now substantially cooler.  This qualifies as strange weather.

Both NOAA and Paul Douglas predict some snowfall early next week as a strong storm system passes through Iowa, southern Minnesota and into Wisconsin.  We could see amounts in the range of 1-2 inches over 3 days. We get a white Christmas 3 years out of 4.  I hope this is one of them.  A blanket of snow makes the season merrier.

Gotta go now because I have to prepare a 3-minute speech on fair trade for a fair-trade rally.  I’m representing the Sierra Club and emphasizing the need for environmental regulations to travel with worker’s rights protections–both here and abroad–as goods and services cross international borders.

Weather +Climate

Weather Week Ahead: Colder

Leave a comment

Samhain                                  Full Wolf Moon

A light dusting of snow this morning came on the heels of a drop in temperature.  We’re down to 21 right now with a low in the last 24 hours of 20.  According to NOAA and Paul Douglas, we have a bunch of cold air headed our way, air now sitting over the Canadian Prairie provinces.  The 24 hour night over the Arctic combines with the ice and snow covered terrain to produce very cold weather that then squeezes itself out to the south all around the Arctic perimeter.610tempnew

There is a teeny bit of snow in the forecast, flurries in the 20% probability range.

The drought conditions have not been updated since November 19th when Anoka County was in the moderately dry range.  The lack of appreciable snow so far can only intensify the drought.

The area with the B predicts below normal temperatures for the next 6-10 days.

The bees need me right now and the straw in the back of the truck.  Later on.

Aging, Dogs, Weather +Climate

Had a Wreck Lately?

Leave a comment

Samhain                            Waxing Wolf Moon

Well, Tiger Woods had a wreck.  Why?  What could have been going at 2:30 a.m. to cause him to drive into a fire hydrant near his home?  Why would I care?  Nobody but the insurance company cares when I have a wreck.  Not saying I have had one, though, and, also not saying what the circumstances were under which I may or may not have had a wreck.  Anybody want to interview me about the wreck I might have or might not have  had?  Didn’t think so.

Emma has come from the vets minus one hemangioma and much cleaner teeth.  Not a serious deal and our 78 year old dog (in human years) did not seem fazed at all.  She would not pee at the vets, but proceeded to do so as soon as we got home.  They were worried about this.  Emma has had a long life and it looks to extend a bit longer.  Good for her.

Colder weather coming.  Highs in mid-20’s, lows in the teens.  About time.  Now we need some snow.

Art and Culture, Family, Holidays, Politics, Writing

Ordinary Time

Leave a comment

Samhain                                      Waxing Wolf Moon

Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin to attend February Tea Party Convention.  That should be fun.  Seeing these two damsels of the right dancing to the tune of the real wierdos would be entertaining for anyone interested in politics.  I’d watch a 2-minute video just to see them on stage together.  They could discuss hair and glasses and kissing GW.

Mary left this morning on the 7:38 Northstar headed for the airport.  The strange action of the international date line has her leaving on Monday and arriving home on Wednesday, coming here she left on Tuesday around 6 a.m. and got here Tuesday at 11:00 a.m., something like that.  Both ways the flight involves 21-24 hours.  And I find daylight savings time confusing.  Under any circumstances the air temperature will double when she gets home, perhaps a bit more.

Ordinary time has slipped back into the house for the moment with family gone and the leftovers much reduced.  I worked on MIA business a bit this morning and will spend some time today getting the Sierra Club legislative committee focused for a December meeting.

After that I can continue my declutter campaign.  It goes pretty well.  My study has remained clear and I’ve removed several things from it, some in anticipation of the arrival of my Anthro computer desk.  On it will go the Gateway I bought in the summer.  I plan to use it only for art history research and creative writing.

Family, Sport

Another Quiet Pleasant Valley Sunday

Leave a comment

Samhain                                   Waxing Wolf Moon

Da Vikes!  Again.  36-10 over da Bears.  The game had little drama, but a good spread of offensive plays, defensive plays and solid special teams play.  There was a series of downs in the red-zone where penalties created a one-step forward, two-step backward that didn’t look good.  There was, too, a 77 runback by Johnny Knox, but the Bear retreated gradually from there to go away with only a field goal.

Mary has done some laundry, a task she does not do open as evidenced by her admission that she first tried to start with the dryer.  She heads back tomorrow after a short trip here.  It’s been good to have her here, a quiet time, a wind down from the four years of dissertation work.

Family, Holidays

Mary and Joseph (but, no Jesus)

Leave a comment

Samhain                        Waxing Wolf Moon                 Thanksgiving

Joseph and Mary are here.  Mary came in to the train station in Anoka.  It was a very East Coast scene with folks waiting for others in the parking lot, a mist shrouding the street lights.  Joseph’s flight experienced a delay at Milwaukee and didn’t get in until 9:35 p.m.

Let the cooking begin.

Humanities

The Thinker. The Box.

Leave a comment

Samhain                          Waxing Wolf Moon                          Holiseason

It’s easy to get stuck in the way we approach problems and problem solving.  That famous box we all want to think outside of only illustrates the consensus that most of would not know the box we were in if we saw it.  The web offers several different ways to jar our thinking out of its rut and onto new superhighways.

In this post I want to point you toward five websites that I’ve come across in the last year that have jarred me out of old patterns and presented new, surprising paradigms.

Grain

The new concept for me:  agro-imperialism.

GRAIN is a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.

VerticalFarm

New concept:  just as it seems, vertical farms for urban areas and other sites.

Bio-Physical Economics

New concept for me:    ” the vision of the Earth as a thermodynamically closed and nonmaterially growing system, with the human economy as a subsystem of the global ecosystem. This implies that there are limits to biophysical throughput of resources from the ecosystem, through the economic subsystem, and back to the ecosystem as wastes. ”

Mega-Regions

Not as new idea for me, but expressed in an up-to-date form, mega-regions notes that various areas of the US are joined by geography and economics into areas larger than states.  This has implications for many of the important policy matters facing us today.

TED

Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world.   Their tag-line says it.  These are video clips, none more than 15 minutes long by break through thinkers in multiple fields.  They come together at TED conferences and give these speeches, limited to 15 minutes to 6,000 or so fellow innovators.

Aging, Family, Friends, Great Work, Health, Politics

Gettin’ Ready

Leave a comment

Samhain                              Waxing Wolf Moon

Let the scramble for the unfinished and the not yet purchased begin.  Thanksgiving day is tomorrow.  We decided to purchase a turkey from Williams-Sonoma since we didn’t see ourselves doing the whole meal.  They gave us a call last night to tell us that the turkey will be delivered today.  Reassuring.

We go this morning to Kate’s physical medicine and rehab doc, Dr. Bewin.  He’s her medical home for the issues related to her back.  He’ll evaluate her pain management regimen and discuss the surgical results so far.  He’ll also weigh in on rehab, physical therapy.

Lois, our housecleaner is here today, doing that before holiday buffing up, though frankly with five dogs we don’t maintain an Architectural Digest home under the very best of circumstances, this even though Kate spends many happy hours watching HGTV.

The latest Wired has an article that gives a very gloomy outlook for global warming, using phrases like “we’re toast.”  It goes on to imagine the techno-geek fixes that we’ll come up with to save the day.

Ooohhh…the turkey has come, I think!

Dogs

Rigel and Vega. Persistence.

Leave a comment

Samhain                                        Waxing Wolf Moon

Rigel and Vega have remained outside in the woods tonight.  Kate and I got up with flashlights and went outside to find them.  They were back in the southeastern corner worrying something, growling and running around, back and forth, a lot of vigor and intention, little focus.  Vega came in for a bit, but she whined to go back outside and help her sister.  She’s out there now.

It’s a cool, rainy night and they’re out there committed to a coon-hound thing; stay with the animal until it’s caught or shot or escapes.  They’ll come back in the morning when they want breakfast.