Samhain Waxing Wolf Moon
Long day at the museum. Two tours, 2 hours apart. Just got home. Today was just ok. Nothing amazing, just solid trooping through the masterpieces and their attendant objects.
It was good to see fellow docents, chat. Other docents are mentors, but not me. I imagine the museum did not want me representing the docent corps to junior docents. Wise choice from their perspective.
Tired.
Samhain New (Wolf) Moon
Woollies tonight at Scott’s. The usual delicious food by Yin and Moon in the Simpson Museum of Chinese and Buddhist antiquities complemented an evening spent in a decisive rejection of a non-judgmental life-style. While we appreciated the sense behind Scott’s exercise, the bulk of us (Tom, Frank, Mark, Bill and me) felt judging is a human activity and one we cannot eliminate, but for which we must take responsibility.
In other news Scott’s daughter is at this moment in hot water, that is a birthing tub, ready to deliver her child into a watery realm. Paul and Sarah sold their house and have leased a duplex in Kenwood. Mark and Elizabeth will spend January, February and part of March in Puerto Vallarte, though Mark has an expense paid flight to Bangkok in February for the opening of his sex and the single teen exhibit there. Tom and Roxann leave soon for twelve days in Hawai’i where they will stay in the Inn at Mama’s Fish House on Maui’s North Shore. Paul flies soon to Melbourne to deliver a lecture at the World Parliament of Religions, Strangers into Neighbors. The rest of us will be at home for the holidays.
Samhain New (Wolf) Moon
Kate and I had our business meeting. It involved the always fun annual chore of signing up for benefits with Allina. This is probably the last time we’ll need to do it. Even though it’s an overly complex task, it does have significant repercussions throughout the year, so it pays to do it thoughtfully.
After the meeting we began our first (of what we intend to be continuing) weekly menu planning. This week I chose a red beet soup and a white bean and winter squash soup. Kate picked a vegetarian slow cooker recipe and the brisket. Tomorrow we’ll make a grocery list and I’ll go buy the ingredients, then we’ll cook together for a day or half a day. The grocery list will include fruits, one serving a meal, and ingredients for tabouli, which we both enjoy. I’ll make the soups and Kate will cook the meat and slow cooker meals. We’ll add in salad and fruit along the way.
Kate’s recovery seems to have stalled and I don’t know what to make of it. I’m glad we have an appointment with Dr. Schwender on Thursday morning. I’m feeling a need–and so is she–for some reassurance about the healing process and the eventual outcome.
Now, I have to make up for the lost hour of sleep last night while I completed my trip through hell.
Samhain New (Wolf) Moon
How about them Vikings? For the first time in a long time I can say that without irony. We finally have a team that has an offense and a defense plus good special teams play. Whaddya know.
A nice sun shiny day and I spent it inside watching football and doing a few other things before the game. So it goes.
Peterson had a great game in spite of a botched reverse to Percy Harvin and having the ball punched out on a play where he would almost certainly have had another touch down. Harvin had another play where he took a big hit, bounced off and extended the play. Favre threw accurately and safely. The defense, for the most part, played tight. Again, at the beginning of the third quarter there was a lapse. Don’t know what that was about.
Samhain Waning Dark Moon
After a month or so of quiescence Sierra Club has begun to pick up steam. A contract lobbyist has come on board, schedules for meetings need to get drawn up and specific plans for our legislative work moved forward. It has worked well to have some downtime on the Sierra Club front since I needed to get studied up for the Louvre show. I still have pages to go before I sleep as far as the Louvre is concerned, but I can do a tour without tripping over my feet. That’s a relief.
My two favorite works in the show are the Messerschmidt head and the Lorenzo Lotto painting of Christ carrying his cross. Next after them are the La Tour and the Vermeer, then the Barye. On another scale I also love the cylinder seals and the vase carved with only stone tools.
Samhain Waning Dark Moon
Another quiet day. Business meeting in the morning with Kate followed by lunch and a nap. Workout. Later tonight a meeting with the Wetlands committee of the Sierra Club. A gorgeous day.
Samhain Waning Dark Moon
The Neverending Story: Rigel and the Fences. Now after all the digging spots she has used have been blocked, after all the beds in which she dug and chewed up irrigation line have been fenced, after the chain link fence she climbed has an electrical fence to defend it, after the truck gate has been chained, blocked with granite and secured with a metal fencing post, I have put up the last of a run of plastic coated wire over the top of the split rail covered with green mesh. The intent is to keep Rigel from climbing back into the orchard which she has done with impunity since we fenced her out of it. Her move.
A slow day today, the rhythm of Sunday afternoon, a late lunch, reading a new book, watching a bit of a game about which I cared little, all followed by a nap. This evening was more of the same, a sweet languor. I watched a bit of the Cowboys and Eagles game, but wasn’t really into it. The Place of Execution, an English mystery on public television, ended tonight. Like I said, a slow day.
Samhain Waning Dark Moon
Kate rested today and has gained back much of the psychic ground she gave up a couple of days ago. This up and down cycle comes with the territory.
Tonight she comforted Jon and Jen. Little Gabe pulled a scary stunt, not uncommon, but terrifying. While crying, he held his breath, turned blue and began to have small tremors. Kate says it happens sometimes between 18 months and 3 years, not much beyond 5. It’s good to have Grandma the pediatrician around for those scary moments.
Samhain Waning Dark Moon
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
It never occurred to me just how much Emerson and Brad Childress have in common. The Vikings are always getting ready for this Sunday, not thinking about last Sunday or the Sunday after this one. This is the only game that counts right now. This one. Quarterbacks especially, but all others, too, must have short memories so bad plays won’t affect their next play. Which is the only play that counts. Of course, encephalopathy from hitting large, fast moving objects also helps.
Perhaps Eckhart Tolle has an NFL consulting career ahead of him and a new book: This Game is the Only Game-Play Here Now.
Scientists Dissect Coworker To Find Out More About Scientists Fri, Nov 06 2009 This important segment and the following article: Timeless Masterpiece Liked are on the Onion website.
Samhain Waning Dark Moon
Welcome to another sunny, warm November day. These are days I’ve come to expect from October, but, as Paul Douglas often says, nature tries to balance, so here we are close to Armistice Day with a 60 degree and bright day about to unfold. That means time to finish what I hope will be the last Rigel barrier of the season, extending a wire across the top of our wooden orchard fencing to make it really, really hard for her to get a purchase.
Kate’s lying low for the next few days, taking care of that not yet healed back. A wise decision on her part. She’s most at risk just as she begins to feel better, chasing down dogs, picking up the mail down our sloped driveway, loading and unloading the dishwasher, making Danish pancakes. These are all part of the routine of a normal life, not important, perhaps even a bit annoying on a daily basis, until you cannot do them at all, then they loom large as important, even critical parts of identity.
A shout out here to Vicki Nowicki. I met Vicki at the annual Seed Saver’s Exchange conference in July. I ate dinner with Vicki and her husband. We talked about permaculture, Celtic holidays, the odditys of American landscape preferences and the importance of becoming native to a place. Vicki told me she’d won a Garden Crusader award from Gardener’s Supply Company. The notice came today in a e-mail from them. I’ve excerpted a bit from the interview with her.
When we spoke, and as I read this, I found myself speaking when she talked. We were in synch. She also has a Liberty Garden project that I admire.
2009 Garden Crusader Vicki Nowicki
Vicki’s life work has been to help people slow down, learn about the land they live on and take better care of it. “What I’ve been trying to do for 30 years is to glorify the place where you live,” she said. “I want to use food gardens to nail people down to their place. A garden helps to reveal the nature of your site and bonds you to the land,” she said. “When you have a garden instead of a lawn, you are now producing something, not just consuming at the maw.”
Liberty Gardens
Her newest project pulls together everything she knows and believes about gardening. It is a website called libertygardens.com. The site will include tutorials and garden journals and will be a resource for anyone interested in gardening.
Here is how she describes it:
“It’s for the 21st century and it’s about growing food at home in order to make it a home. Our lives will change and our world will change when we start to plant food gardens at home. It’s a simple act that each person can choose to do at any time without a new law being passed, or a feasibility study being run or a stimulus package being doled out. But talk about a shovel-ready project! If our land is worth caring about and if our families are worth caring about, we can each choose to create the food supply that we have been asking for. We have the liberty to choose what to grow and how to grow it. People have always done it.”
And with Vicki Nowicki’s help, more and more people will be joining in, and doing it too.