Faith and Spirituality, Poetry

A Bit of Metaphysics for the Early Afternoon

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Lughnasa                                  Waning Harvest Moon

“There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval..” – George Santayana

Could have come from the mouth of a Mexica poet.  I can’t find the poem but I keep coming back in my thought to their metaphysics which makes life the puzzle and death the pregnant, vital reality.

In another view life is a momentary interlude between a sleep and a sleep.  This is a line from a poet who interested me a lot years back:  Charles Algernon Swinburne.  The line comes from his Atalanata in Calydon:

…In his heart is a blind desire,
In his eyes foreknowledge of death;
He weaves, and is clothed with derision;
Sows, and he shall not reap;
His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.

permaculture

Friday

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Lughnasa                                    Waning Harvest Moon

Paula Westmoreland came today for a walk through on the next to last phase of their work here.  This time we added a woodland edge to the woods visible from our kitchen table.  We also added shrubs and trees between ourselves and the Olsons, our line of site neighbors to the east.  It’s beginning to look like they will require watering.  Bummer.

The ten bales of hay I bought on Labor Day are now out of the truck.  Two of them will go as mulch for the new plantings in the prairie toward the Olsons.  8 will facilitate my attempt to recreate the compost pile.  It has been dismantled and spread out into a nice nest for two large sized puppies who will go nameless.

Kate’s home for the third straight day with what might be H1N1.  Whatever it is, it’s kicked her butt and it takes some doing to accomplish that.

Garden work is the order of the weekend.  That plus some more decluttering–the project that keeps on giving.

Dogs

De-fence

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OH, boy.   We let Vega and Rigel out this morning and Brad, the neighbor who returned Rigel yesterday, gave us a call about 15 minutes later, “I think they’re out again.”

Sure enough.  I drove over to Brad’s, got both of them in the red car and drove home.  They are not, it turns out, digging under the fence.  They jump over it!  This creates a really big problem.  We have an acre plus of fenced yard, most of it filled with trees.  We can’t watch our dogs on this sized property which is why we have de fence.

This could be a deal breaker for keeping Rigel and Vega.  We’re investigating several options, but the bottom line for us is that they have to have access to the whole backyard.  If not, they can’t be dogs in the way both they and we like, that is, free roaming, able to do what dogs do within the borders of our fence.  It’s a pretty generous space.

They are, however, coon hounds as well as irish wolfhounds.  Both have a strong prey instinct, but the coon hounds also have the instinct to follow and tree the prey.  Jumping tall buildings, or fences in this case, in pursuit of prey apparently comes with the breed.  We didn’t know this until now.  It just didn’t occur to us.  We focused on Wolfhoundness and neglected to consider the coon hound.  Our bad.

This saga is not over, but it is at a very frustrating impasse right now.

They are sweet, kind, lovable dogs just doing what comes naturally.  Not their fault.  If we keep them, we have to find a solution that lets them roam our yard and not the neighborhood.  Aaaarrrrgggghhhhh!

Aging, Garden, Health

Surgery and Rigel Back Home Pics

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Kate’s decided to have surgery.  A scheduler will call tomorrow or Monday to set up a date, probably mid-to-late October.  She’ll have 2 days in the hospital and 4-6 weeks of basic rest for recovery.  The surgeon believes this will alleviate up to 80% of her current lower back symptoms.  The neck will remain for now.

Kate used our dehydrator last night, drying roma tomatoes.  We’re experimenting right now, seeing what we like dried.  All part of the grow it, store it, eat it plan.

Rigel minutes after her return home.

rigelathome

Vega and Rigel, happy to be together again

rigelaround-vega

Vega has a swimming pool, but she likes the watering bowl, too.

vegainwater

Travel

An Interesting Comment on Travel Insurance

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Found this on the Economist website and thought it’s common sense made it worth sharing:

“maenad2 wrote:
September 3, 2009 14:13

There are three kinds of medical problems you may have while on holiday.

The first is a simple need for cheap stuff, such as antibiotics for an obvious infection. You pay for this yourself – either by buying an (expensive) policy which covers EVERYTHING, or by paying the costs directly.

The second is a mid-level problem, such as a broken wrist. Insurance to cover an accident like this is not expensive, but equally, you can risk not getting it: you don’t have to mortgage your home to pay medical costs if you have to.

The third is a serious problem, such as damaging your spine. In this case the insurance pays for itself, but these cases are very uncommon. Insurance companies very seldom have to pay out for major accidents.

There is no point in buying the first type of insurance, because it costs as much as it is likely to pay. The second type is your call – if you are willing to risk a $5000 medical bill because you know you are a careful tourist, it can be a good idea to not pay for this insurance.

Everyone should have the third type of insurance. Insurance with a $5000 deductable can be as little as $10 a month. It won’t cover you if you break your leg, but it will cover you if you break your spine.

Unfortunately, many shoestring travellers don’t understand this. They either give their hard-earned cash to insurers, or they go without altogether – like poor old George.”   (George had a fall in India, became a quadriplegic. W/o insurance his tab for the hospital is $28,000 plus another $55,000 to get him back to Australia.)

General

In-Between

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No rain yet, but we could use some on our new plantings.  If it doesn’t rain, I’m going to have to schlep hoses out and water them that way, something I really don’t like to do.

Nothing on anybody’s docket today.  That means garden, decluttering, maybe some more research on liberalism.

Fills like we’re in a lull here, poised between summer and fall, ready to make a change, but not committed to it.

Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Our Land and Home, permaculture, Politics

Still No Rigel

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The second night with no Rigel.  I took fliers to filling stations, veterinary offices, grocery stores and the local humane society.  Tomorrow I plan to distribute a few more at baseball fields, the town rec center, those sorts of places.  After that, we call back to various places and wait.

The driveway has a nice fresh black coat on it; we have a woodland edge to balance our orchard and few trees planted out in the prairie grass.  My neighbor (not the suicidal one) came over and noted we’d planted a couple of hawthorns on his property.  He said he didn’t care and I said I didn’t either.  They’ll have the same affect there and at that point the properties run into each other on an open field.

Kate’s home.  She looks better, but still ragged.  We see the surgeon on Thursday morning.  Could be some big changes here after that.

The second in my series:  Liberalism in Our Time has gotten hold of me, it’s now the filter through which I read articles, think about politics and  our common life.  I just learned about a guy named Herbert Crowley today.  He was the architect (and an architect) of what some call the welfare state.  His thought has some interesting resonance for me, since I’m struggling in this series with my radical critique of liberal thought.  When I get to the Future of Liberalism, I’m going to have come down somewhere on that question, which I’ve  sort of neatly side-stepped so far.

Cooking, Dogs, permaculture

One of Those Days

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Lughnasa                       Waning Harvest Moon (visible in the western daytime sky)

Kate has begun the dreary process of checking with animal control, vets and the humane society.  At the same time she’s begun canning tomatoes, a task she finds soothing.  It’s a good thing since she has a cold and numerous pains throughout her body.  She prefers to keep going, get things done.  In the past I’ve tried to get her to relax, take it easy a bit, but just this year I realized this is part of her spirit, her who she is-ness.  Now I congratulate her.

Today is one of those days.  Rigel’s still missing.  The borderline asphalt company will show up sometime today to seal the driveway.  Paula and the Ecological gardens folks have begun installation of a woodland edge garden.  To put a nice bow on the day I have my semi-annual teeth cleaning at 11:00.  I moved the vehicles to the street, got the gate ready for Paula, then took off and bought 10 more bales of hay from Al Pearson.

Al’s a 70+ farmer who sells his bales right off highway 10.  He bales the hay and sells it retail.  We all win.  He’s a ramrod straight 6′ 1″ sturdy Scandinavian.  He told me, “We like our repeat customers.”

Dogs, Friends

Drama

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Rigel has not come home.  We don’t know where she is or how she is.  Her absence is palpable.  At night she sits on the couch with me, her head in my lap as I watch a few TV shows, wind down from the day.  She was not there tonight.

Our neighbor left in an ambulance again.  Another suicide attempt, this time with tylenol pm.  We cannot know the pain in another persons life, not even those close to us.  The barrier of flesh and mind holds us out, even when we try to overcome it.  This is the truth in solipsism.

There were two police cars, an ambulance and people going in and out of the house.  I watched for a while, behind a gauze curtain and felt like an Italian grandmother leaning out a window in a Boston neighborhood.  Drama, the kind that touches lives daily on every block in every city and town in the world, grabs us, makes us want to know how things come out.

Kate gave his wife a call and offered to be there for her.  She has a big heart and a generous spirit.

The longer Rigel is gone, the more a feeling of sadness creeps over me.  I don’t want to feel it.  It seems as if I do that I’ve given up on her and I haven’t, but now she’s gone at night.