Aging

Young Man

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Lughnasa                                New Moon (Harvest M00n)

Oil change today for the Celica, now at 255,000 miles and still nimble.  Then a drive up to Elk River to buy straw.

The guy who runs Martie’s Feed and Seed is about my height, 5’7″, wears a ball cap like I do.  I have maybe 15 years or so on him.  As I went up to the counter, he said, “What can I do for you, young man?”  Again, this young man.  I seem to have reached a point where people find me in need of assurance that they still count me among the able, which, of course, in the perverse way of such assurances, does the opposite.

The mirror shows a gray haired, gray bearded guy with significant balding and some wrinkles.  The Keatons, my mom’s side of the family, age early in the face and I’m no exception.  This is another of those invisible border lines, reinforced by multiple responses.  Soon, I’ll start thinking of myself as a “young man,” that is, an old man in need of a jocular boost from those in the know.

Dogs

The Girls After Their Operations

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Lughnasa                         Waning Green Corn Moon

We move into the new moon tomorrow, the moon that will see us well into September, the harvest moon.

Rigel and Vega do not feel good.  They have lain around ever since returning from the vet and their surgery.  When I came downstairs, they lay together, Vega’s head on Rigel’s chest.  Littermates hang together throughout life; Hilo and Kona still  sleep together and cuddle, 8 years after leaving mom behind.

I guessed Vega’s weight to be  90 lbs and she weighed out at 86.5.  I guessed Rigel at 73 and she came back 74.5.

Political agony has not ended with the demise of the Bush administration.  Now we begin to see why the left has not trusted the Democratic party for years.  Even with solid majorities in both houses division between fiscally liberal and fiscally conservative Democrats make passage of health care reform of any meaningful kind unlikely.

Dogs, Politics

Free kittens. Spaded.

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Lughnasa                    Waning Green Corn Moon

Rigel and Vega have returned home, a bit foggy and uncertain.  Spayed now, they have to be on home rest for the next 10 days.  Somehow I don’t think we’ll make that.

Kate and I saw a cute poster on the bulletin board posted in the airlock going out of the Festival Grocery.  Done in crayon it said, “Free kittens.  Spaded.”

These lectures on the cycles of American political thought I’m listening to right now have prompted a considerable amount of noodling, most of  it focused right now on the central paradox of our democracy.  A solution borne of the Enlightenment, our government and in particular our Constitution and Bill of Rights makes a lot effort to protect the individual and that crucial virtue which ensures individualism, liberty.

The paradox at the core of our nation is this:  government exists to co-ordinate and organize a community, yet its chief underlying value is individualism.  Thus, the purpose of government, focused on community, stands over against the individual it exists to preserve.  This paradox, unresolvable, lies at the fulcrum of so many of our political disagreements.  I’m not any further along with this right now, but its on my mind.

Aging, Family

Happy Birthday, Kate

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Lughnasa                            Waning Green Corn Moon

Kate turns 65.  Once in our culture this birthday was as important as 21.  It meant the date when retirement began for most workers.  Now it is another birthday since the retirement date has been sliding gradually forward as one of the “fixes” for social security.  Kate and I both have a social security retirement date of 66.  Those born after 1960 have a retirement date of 67.  The consensus of things I’ve read suggest that age will have to get pushed to 70 in any new fix.

It still seems like a milestone of sorts, halfway between 60 and the three score and ten of a good life in the Jewish tradition.  Wonder if they’ve upped the age, maybe to three score and fifteen?  I read a great sermon on aging by a rabbi.  He is 92 or so.  When asked how he felt about having lived so long, he said, “Surprised.”

It will be good when Kate comes home for good.  Her back needs the rest and her heart can use the freedom.  We have a life here that is full and complete, one that needs the both of us with our increasing gardens alongside our creative and volunteer work.  She’s worked hard all her life and earned good money, so our retirement will be fine from a financial perspective.

Early on when she told me how money she made, my mouth dropped open.  It didn’t occur to me that people I knew might make that much.  Now I know she’s on the low end for docs, but it’s still a lot, plenty.   I said then and believe now that taking care of children is a morally unambiguous way to earn a living, one of the few I know.  So there are no regrets with her level of income for either of us.

Her gifts are much larger than that however.  She’s kind, generous, imaginative and patient.  She’s a great cook, a highly skilled seamstress and quilter and has a green thumb.  I’m lucky to have found her in this big world.

General

Done.

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Lughnasa                           Waning Green Corn Moon

The ice has gone into the dog’s watering bowl.  The beer is back in the fridge.  The remains of the meal have new temporary housing in glad plastic boxes and the last of the dishes feel the heat of the wash cycle right now.  Done, then, except for the memories and they are good ones.

Cooking, Family, permaculture, Woolly Mammoths

Kate the Cook

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Lughnasa                                  Waning Green Corn Moon

It was fun to see Kate get compliments on her cooking.  Her cooking skills are remarkable.  Her nutmeg sauce melts the heart of the largest Mammoth.  We had a ceremony, a brief one, in which Kate passed to me the new wedding ring she purchased for me in Jackson Hole.  We also acknowledged the reason for the ceremony, Vega.

Though we have not done our work here for a public or any public, it gratified us both to have genuine interest in our permaculture efforts.  Having said that I need to get and plant some fall crops right now.

Woolly Mammoths

The Herd Dispersed

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Lughnasa                                 Waning Green Corn Moon

The Woollies have come and gone.  Kate’s wonderful meal has begun to work the true miracle of transubstantiation, beets and potatoes and chicken become Bill, Frank, Charlie, Warren.  We did a tour of the orchard and the vegetable garden, talking along the way about permaculture.   The topic interested everyone.  It was fun to share the work Kate and I have been doing here with good friends.

Kate’s idea of giving the big dogs bones to occupy them worked well.

The dining room table had 9 people around it.  It felt like a family dinner.  We never moved from the table.

Jim Johnson showed up and brought his idea of selling lambs to individuals.

Now, tired.  Good night.

Cooking, Woolly Mammoths

Ready

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Lughnasa                             Waning Green Corn Moon

The table has its two extra leaves, making it big enough for 8 seated with space, 10 or so with a little up closeness thrown in for good measure.  There are daisies and marigolds in vases.  Our entire apple crop for this year–3–rest in a Japanese bowl.  The greens have been cut, washed and chiffonaded.  Kate has roasted the turnips and beets.  The chickens will go into a clay pot each and the potatoes will go onto boil.

Appetizers are ready and we’ll get the ice when Warren arrives to help.  The house got an extra cleaning today and the patio and deck have been swept.  We’re ready.

It’s fun to do this once in a while.  Gathering our own produce and preparing it made me feel like a small farmer.  It’s a good feeling.

The temperature will be moderate and the sky clear.  A perfect evening to consider local and sustainable agriculture, but even more a perfect evening to entertain friends.

Cooking, Family, Woolly Mammoths

Mammoths Trek North

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Lughnasa                          Waning Green Corn Moon

Today the Woolly Mammoths put themselves on the ancient trail to the north, a gathering of the herd happens here in Andover starting at 6:00 p.m. or so.  Kate has helped me with the meal the last two meetings, or, better, I have helped her help me.  The menu includes two brined and roasted free-range chickens.  It also includes potatoes from our garden with our parsley, roasted beets, turnips, and carrots, and possibly, tomato and onion salad from our garden.  I say possibly because three of our Cherokee Purples began to turn last Friday, all the rest of our tomato explosion are still green.  Kate will also make her signature dish, a rhubarb pudding.

I have to go out this morning and retrieve my new wedding ring from the jewelers so Vega, Kate, and I can have a small ceremony during the meeting blessing the new ring.  Then there’s a chain to get to keep Rigel out of the damned orchard.  Ice.  Bones to keep the big dogs happy during the meal.  The little things that have to get done before a large meal.

So, I’d better get to it.  Talk to you later.

Cooking, Sport, Woolly Mammoths

Debrine and Chill

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Lughnasa                                 Waning Green Corn Moon

Kate made banana bread and cut up vegetables.  I went to the grocery store and returned.  In the average year we may entertain non-family members once or at most twice, family sometimes 3 or 4 times.  We’re far away from the center of things here in Andover, true, but we’re not big entertainers or party goers in the first place.  Kate is comfortable cooking for guests while I’m not, so I’m glad to have her home.  We make a good team.

Tiger Woods is a competitive guy.  He chewed nails today when he made a couple of bad shots near the end of the PGA.  They ensured Ye Yang’s victory, the first Asian born PGA champion.  Tiger also said some bad words.

I have to go debrine the chickens and put them in gallon freezer bags with olive oil.  They’ll stay in the fridge over night.