Art and Culture, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Sport

Dogfood, O.D. and Football

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Fall                                                    Waning Blood Moon

He loaded 10 bags of 40 pound dogfood and the straw boss said, well bless my soul.  This is what Tennessee Ernie Ford would have sung if he’d been with me on my trip to Costco this morning.  I like to make fewer trips when I run errands so this time I stocked up on dogfood.

The nice lady that counts the objects against your receipt took a look at my cart and my gray hair, “Do you need some help?”   Nope, I could handle it just fine.  A few years back I used to resent this kind of heavy lifting, in particular rock salt for the water softener and dogfood.  Now I look on it as an opportunity to tone up the muscles.  It’s part of my resistance work out for the day.

I shifted today from the garden to the desk, spending a couple of hours puzzling over how to organize a conversation for a congregation that wants to consider its future.  This is very different work from harvesting potatoes or planting garlic.  Not finished yet.  It has to set a bit.  Percolate, as Kate likes to say.

In addition I have to put together an Asian tour for next Friday.  At the same time I’ll design a Southeast and South Asian tour since I’ll be able to use some similar objects.  That’ll be tomorrow morning.

The Vikes play the Rams  tomorrow.  The Rams now have the longest losing streak of any NFL team.  Detroit won last week and lifted that burden from their franchise.  No team in the NFL is a push over because the NFL has only elite athletes, some a bit more elite than others, some a bit younger, others more experienced.  The combination means that on any given sunday (yes, there was a movie.) any one team can beat another.  I hope the Vikes win convincingly and shore up their pass defense while getting Adrian a 100+ yard day.

After the Rams, the Vikings play the Ravens at home, then go on the road for the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers.  That will be a tough stretch.  If they do well in those three games, they will move up in the power rankings.

Weather +Climate

Like A Snowball Rolling Down Hill

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Fall                                       Waning Blood Moon

The change of seasons has picked up some momentum in the past couple of days with two hard freezes in a row, then snow last night.  We’re not in late fall yet, that won’t come until November, so we could still have Indian summer, but for now, we’ve moved into meteorlogical simulacrum of early November.

It changes the feeling here.  Jackets come out, gloves go on, stocking caps replace billed caps.  There is, too, the phenomenon I used to notice most at Macalester College when I  lived in St. Paul.  One day with below freezing temps and certain Mac students would walk the streets in heavy down coats, hoods up, scarfs around the neck and insulated mittens.  Often, they would have special winter boots.  These were the wealthy kids from points south whose parents grew worried when they realized their darling would have to bear a Minnesota winter.   Freshman to a person, I’m a sure.

As for myself, I love to have on warm clothing when it’s cold outside.  The air braces me, kick starts the mental engines.  The combination of a warm torso and a cold face is a pleasure others–those outside the cold belt–would have a hard time understanding.

The snow blower got its mechanical freak on in May so it’s ready.  The furnace went on here today, set at 59.  We’ve had almost three weeks with no heating and no cooling.

Art and Culture, Garden

The Louvre

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Fall                                          Waning Blood Moon

Yesterday was politics. Today is the Louvre.  I was a late addition to the Louvre exhibition touring list and the training is today.  This exhibition focuses on the question of the masterpiece.  It includes a Vermeer, amazing when you consider there are only 36 Vermeer’s in the world.  9 of them are in New York City on Museum row and the rest in Europe.

We had a hard frost last night with several hours below 28 degrees.  That pretty much knocks out blooms and most plants.

The longer hours yesterday in the city made me a bit weary, so I’m heading in today with less than a clear head.  We’ll see about the learning capacity when I get there.

Garden, Great Wheel, permaculture

A Satisfied Mind

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Fall                                              Waning Blood Moon

Yesterday I dug potatoes.  It was the first time I’d done that save for a few new potatoes I dug during the growing season.  It was wonderful.  You loosen the soil with a spading fork then dig around hunting for buried treasure.  Each time I came up with a potato I felt great.

A garden combines several satisfactions.  The first is co-creative as you care for the soil and the seeds, then the plants as they mature.  As with the bees, it is a mutual endeavor, the gardener and the plant world.  The garden itself yields wildgrapes09intellectual puzzle after intellectual puzzle.  What’s going on with that plant?  How do I improve the soil?  How do I keep the dogs out? (ooops. sorry.)  Solving those puzzles is part of the fun.

Then, too, the garden has an aesthetic.  Flowers add color, but so does the blue green kale and the purple and green of the egg plant.  The beauty has a seasonal dimension, too, as the wonder of germination gives way to maturation.  Each plants fruits then add yet another layer:  tomatoes in red, yellow, orange and white, potatoes white and covered with soil, purple and white egg plants, beans with purple and yellow pods, graceful carrot and parsnip fronds.

Toward the end of the growing season those vegetables planted for storage and preservation then come into the house for canning, freezing and drying.  As the snow storms come, they will fill in for the fresh vegetables eaten straight from the garden.

The act of harvesting is so primal I wouldn’t doubt our response to it swims in our genes.  Carry in a wicker basket filled with ripe tomatoes, squash, cucumber, carrots, beans, egg plant, greens and the planning and digging and nurturing all makes sense.  In a physical, basic way.

Eating of course is the satisfaction most apparent and is nothing to disregard, but it comes late in the process.

For those of us who find decay a fascinating part of the natural process there is another satisfaction.  The reduction of the plant bodies themselves to compost returns nutrients to the soil and completes the cycle.

There is too one last satisfaction.  As the snow swirls outside and the temperatures are far, far below survivability for any vegetable, I can plan next year’s garden with colorful seed catalogs.   This includes the February and March and April sowing of seeds for plants to transplant into that very garden.

So, take that Rolling Stones, I got my satisfaction.

Dogs, Garden, permaculture, Writing

Gnashing of Teeth

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Fall                                    Waning Blood Moon

Back to the gnashing of teeth.  When I went out to plant the garlic this morning, I discovered Vega and Rigel had decided to become gardeners, too.  They dug up beds, they dug up around beds.  They moved a lot of soil, none of it in a constructive manner.

This almost made me cry.  After some unpleasant words and gestures, a bit of stomping around, I called Dan the fence guy and said, “Dan, I need another fence.”  When he finishes, this yard will have more fence than many cattle ranches.  It will take days just to walk the fence line.  And this all inside an acre and a half.

Anyhow, I planted the garlic, covered them with six inches of straw and protected them with left over chain link fence.  Later in the day I mulched the parsnips, which will over winter along with the garlic, and the carrots.  I’m going to try storing them in the ground with a heavy mulch to protect them.  In theory, then, I can go out in the middle of winter and harvest fresh carrots.

The potato harvest is now in, too.  I dug up the Viking Purples (no kidding) and the rest of the white potatoes, washed them off and left them in a large plastic boxes to cure.  They stay at room temperature for two weeks, then downstairs to the coolest storage we have.  That’s outside the house at the bottom of the basement stairs, but still inside the garage.

Got some nice feedback today on my organization skills for the Sierra Club and on my writing from a fellow Docent.  Also, a good nap.  That all helped.

Big dogs bring big problems and big rewards.  Can’t get one without the other.

Garden

Garden

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Fall                            Waning Blood Moon

Planting and harvesting today.  Potatoes come out, garlic goes in.  I know, I’ve been meaning to get to that garlic for some time.  Today, though, it will happen.  This is the right time according to most things I’ve read though I wanted to try a different method this year, but didn’t get to it.

Conference call at 11:00 so out the door and outside right now.

Aging, Family, GeekWorld

Understanding the Anxious Mind

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Fall                                     Waning Blood Moon

Finally, a city criteria list worth paying attention to:  The Daily Beast has ranked America’s Smartest Cities.  The Twin Cities come in 4th after, in order, Raleigh-Durham, San Francisco and Boston.  Denver is 5th.  Las Vegas and Fresno, California bring up the rear at 54th and 55th.  It’s an interesting read.

Kate’s surgery happens on October 19th and the surgeon requires that she stop taking her nsaid.  That means she has less pain control on board so her pain level has begun to ramp up.  This is only the first day without it.  Ouch.  We’ve also begun to reconnoiter what changes we’ll have to make in the house for her recovery period.  Move a comfy chair in front of the TV in place of the couch.  Things like that.thedress625

Kate’s sewing a lot.  She’s finished a butterfly costume complete with antennas and wings as well as a purple jumper for granddaughter Ruth.  She wants to get all this stuff done before she’s post-op.

If you have an anxious bone in your body, well, better, if you have an anxiety prone amygdala, then reading this article might interest you:  The Anxious Mind.  It recounts the work of Jerome Kagan who established the genetic imprint on reactivity.  His work undergirded the notion of a fixed temperament.

As a high reactive myself, I found the notion of a genetic imprint for anxiety strangely liberating.  It made me feel that my state was not a character flaw, but part of the package.  The article makes all the nuancing you might want related to nurture, triggers and coping skills, but the clear fact remains that people like me are the way we are because we have a hypervigilant amygdala.

When I finish sermons a week ahead of time,  investigate the costs of medicare drug and health care plans now, a year or two early, and plan my tours at least a week in advance, I display a learned strategy for managing my anxiety.  That’s why I’m not good in a crisis or under a crushing deadline.  I need time to prepare, to think things through.  I bring sufficient pressure to bear on myself.  I don’t need external stimuli.

After I got done reading this article and realizing that I was on one end of the bell curve–again, I began to wonder–again–what it must be like to have a normal, stable reaction to the work, a calm feeling in the pit of your stomach instead of a roiling mess.

It also became clear to me that I had a trigger that moved my anxiety from genetic inheritance to personality dilemma.  When my mother died, I was 17 years old.  My brain had not finished maturing.  It took years for me to integrate the confusion and insecurity that her sudden death created.

Even though previous analysis has surfaced some of this before, this particular slant, a genetic proclivity, is new to me.  It helps.

Sport

The First Time in the History of the World

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Fall                                     Full Blood Moon

Appropriate that this Vikings-Packer game will be played under a full blood moon.   If one could, in some fantastic realm, collate all the words written and spoken, each image reproduced either moving or still that focused on just this game, you would have a tome and a webpage of impenetrable length and size, compared, that is, to the time an individual would take to parse it all.

Then place the weight of this event, referred to by an announcer tonight as the “first time in the history of the world,” against the weight of the slightest child in Darfur, the gradual build up of gases in the atmosphere, the plight of any American citizen without health insurance and the game deflates to the size, perhaps, of a football.  Which is where it belongs.

All that said, I will be on the couch watching it and not out stopping starvation in Bangladesh, working on the Sierra Club’s upcoming legislative priorities or pressing my congress people for a decent deal on health care.  No, I will take part in an even more ancient human activity, competition between rival clans, competition engaged by the healthiest and the stoutest of each side.  Tonight it will be the Cheesehead versus the Viking.  In all fairness, now, in a battle between a piece of cheese and a valiant Scandinavian pillager, who would you picke?

Art and Culture, Friends, Woolly Mammoths

Friends

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Fall                                            Full Blood Moon

“There is no need like the lack of a friend.”   Irish saying

How many sets of friends do you have?  Not an idle question since study after study shows friendship a vital element of health.  Friends become even more important as we age.  Here’s a couple of examples:  BBC, Science.

Today at noon a group of friends I still consider new, but whom I’ve actually known for almost 5 years, met for lunch at the Black Forest.  It was those from the Docent class of 2005.  We trained together for 2 years, meeting every Wednesday during the academic year for lectures and tour practice.  The education was fun, since I love learning new things, but over time I’ve found the relationships formed then the most important gift.

An introverted guy, I need these kind of stable groups.  I’m fortunate right now to have three groups in which I’ve made networks.  The Docent class of 2005 has, by now, blended into the docents of all classes, in particular for me, those who tour on Fridays, my tour day.  I see these folks at continuing education, on tours, in the docent discussion group and in these more casual events that happen from time to time.

The Sierra Club, the most recent of the three, taps into older networks for me, the DFL political world and the world of community activists, but has opened up a new one in those people whose primary activist commitment is the environment.  I enjoy being around the new generation of political activists, people in their 20’s and early 30’s.  They’re bright, practical, and seem to have a better balance in their lives than I did when I was engaged as intensively as they are.

The oldest network for me is the Woolly Mammoths.  With the Woolly’s I have 20+ years of twice monthly meetings, annual retreats and social occasions outside those events.  We know each other, each other’s story, our families.  We’ve had fights and reconciled, gone through life and death struggles and will go through more.  As a man, I feel so lucky to have this long term set of relationships in my life.