• Lashed to the Mast

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    31  91%  29%  omph WSW bar29.75 rises windchill31  Winter

                                 New Moon

    There is something seductive about the large screen TV experience, seductive in an Ulysses lashed to the mast sense.  The visual image is close to movies in a theatre, though not the same.  Hard to describe, but it makes me want to keep watching.  I don’t like this part of it and will have to pay attention so I don’t fade into the couch and become one with the fabric.

    On the other hand the picture is fantastic.  The set has so many different bells and whistles that it can accomodate different formats with ease and its easy to use.   Well, sort of easy.  I’ve still got the manual to read.  RTFM as my cello playing significant other in law likes to say.  The HD DVD player upconverts and it does make non-HD DVD’s look great, not HD great, but crisp and clear.  Since DVD’s are my main interest in the large screen, not sports (though I do watch football if the Vikings co-operate and win games), this set will take my interest in cinema to a different level.

    I’ve gone down two belt notches since the middle of December when Kate and I started Nutrisystem.  I’m already scanning for maintenance after we finish with it at the end of January.  At the end of twenty-eight days I’ll get on the scale and take my blood glucose.  I expect both will show positive trends.  It’s the blood glucose level I really want to manage; so if it’s down, it will be a great reinforcer for maintaining a lower weight.

    The New Year has begun well: some weight loss, workouts going well, writing in the AM underway with a good story happening, the new TV, the video calls with the kids and plenty of snow.  That last, unfortunately, has melted some over the last couple of days.  I hope we get some more snow soon. 

     Asia tour work tomorrow, finish the speaker setup, work some more on the Gunflint Faeries.  Good night and good luck.

                           -30-


    📂This entry was posted in GeekWorld General 📎and tagged

  • The Fun in Making Things Work

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    32  91%  30%  omph bar29.72 steep rise windchill32  Ephiphany

                                  New Moon

    Long ago in a lifetime faraway I learned mechanical projects and I don’t go together well.  Connecting the $#%!~& speakers has me mumbling to myself, but I have made headway.  It’s straight forward intellectually but when the finger meets the wire to connect the speakers to the receiver, not a pretty picture.  Feels my fingers become non-opposable thumbs.  But just think of the satisfaction I’ll feel when I’m done.

    Just got off the video phone (skype) with Ruth, Jon and Jen and +.  Thursday is ultrasound day when we find out if the Olson line will continue with a male heir or whether we have to start saving for another dowry. 

    I’ve seen a man on the moon, picture phones, video on telephones and computers at home far more powerful than the room-sized behemoths of yesteryear.  Clones, cell phones, test tube babies.  Geez.  Seems like immortality is not too much to ask.


    📂This entry was posted in Family GeekWorld 📎and tagged

  • One Good Ear, Five Speakers and A Subwoofer Later

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    39  78%  29%  0mph WSW  bar 29.60 steep rise  windchill39  Epiphany

                                        New Moon

    Worked some more this morning on Faeries on the Gunflint Trail.  This story has legs. 

    After the morning writing session, I set out on a quest to finish the installation of the 50″ Panasonic which now sits astride our Stickley coffee table turned TV stand like a colossus.  Speaker stands.  As I passed the $400 mark in post-purchase expenditures (a few really expensive cables, some new DVD’s and these damned speaker stands), I realized I hadn’t thought through this purchase quite as well as I thought as I had.

    Best Buy (near by) have speaker stands?  Oh, yes.  Stands that fit my speakers?  Oh, no.  So, instead of working on my Taste of Asia tour for next Friday, the little red car headed across country to the Maple Grove temple to I just gotta have it now and turned in at the now familiar Ultimate Electronics store.  Clutching my tiny satellite speaker I walked in and a few minutes later walked back out with the four omni-post speaker stands.

    Back home.  All the while listening to the adventures of poor Charlotte Simmons as she matriculates to Dupont University.  She’s sure out of her element in the co-ed dorm.

    Up from my nap I have renewed determination to wire up everything and those speakers pounding so I can hear the rain drops in the opening scene of the Bourne Identity which the installer yesterday assured me I could hear once I had the speakers set up.  I’m no audiophile, hell, I’m barely able to hear with one good ear and the high sounds going in that one, but those rain drops.  Soon.


    📂This entry was posted in GeekWorld 📎and tagged

  • And then I knew: earth is the “Blessed Sacrament,” and always has been.

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    28 93% 25% 0mph ESE bar 29.66 steady  windchill27  Yuletide

                Waning Crescent of the Cold Moon

    We have come to the Twelfth night of Yuletide.  Epiphany is tomorrow and tonight is the end of the Yuletide season.  Our neighbors, the Perlicks, are Orthodox Christians.  They celebrate Christmas according to the old liturgical calendar which put the nativity on the same day as the Epiphany.  We bought cheese, bread and wine for their Christmas gift today at the grocery store.

    Tips for the day

    Preparing for Twelfth Night: For generations, at least since medieval times, Epiphany has been the day the season of Christmas traditionally comes to an end. A final night of feasting and merriment, gift-giving in some cultures to echo the gift-giving of the Three Kings, plays and mummery that echoed ancient ways. Then the decorations come down and we set forth into the new year.

    And in a custom dating back to at least to the 12th century, and possibly as far back as Saturnalia, a King Cake is baked, containing a pea or a bean. This traditional continues in New Orleans with King Cakes baked from now through Mardi Gras (February 5 this year). Candlegrove contains one such recipe, here are others.

    Next year I want to be more intentional about two seasonal things:  celebrating Yule and sending holiday gifts in time for New Years.  Both will reduce stress and deepen the occasion for me.

    Here is an interesting paragraph from MythingLinks, by Kathleen Jenks.  It tells of her spiritual journey, which feels, and has felt for some time, a lot like my own.  The whole essay gives the context:  

    And then I knew: earth is the “Blessed Sacrament,” and always has been. When Jesus, born in Bethlehem (bet lehem, “house of bread”), later took bread from earth’s threshed grain and wine from earth’s fermented grapes, and said, “This is my body which will be broken for you…this is my blood which will be shed for you,” there was no transubstantiation after all. That would have been an unecessary extra step. I think he meant it literally. Like the ancient Egyptian male earth-god, Nun, I think Jesus was saying that he is earth, and all that comes from it — thus, the wheat, the grapes, the olives, the maples, the sparrows, the fishes are literally his body and blood. They are, and always have been, of the substance of the divine, manifesting some 2000 years ago on the temporal plane as a specific male, Jesus, who was Earth’s emanation, avatar, deva, or emissary, for only a few decades, but now, since he has been “transubstantiated” back into the earth which birthed him, earth has grown as anguished as he once was — torn, abused, polluted, ravaged, broken and bleeding-out at a perilous rate.


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality Great Wheel 📎and tagged

  • Are You a Green Knight?

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    22  86% 27% 0mph S  bar 29.72 falls windchill 22 Yuletide

                Waning Crescent of the Cold Moon

    This day has been a slow one for AncienTrails.  In the morning I’ve begun writing first, that is, working in this case on a short story, Faeries on the Gunflint Trail.   If I start here first, I waste some of my writing energy and I’m trying to steer the force of that back into the creative end of things.  So, I wrote until 10:30, then had to get ready to go into the museum.  Wore my blue corduroys, pants I haven’t been able to wear for at least 2 years.  Felt good.

    I also didn’t put out my Yuletide lore, so I’m going to continue a bit with the Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  The more I think about it, the more SGGK, as the folks who write about it abbreviate it, seems central for our time.  This happens with old texts because the rhythms and oscillations of the human community repeat themselves over time.

    In this case it may that our time is in the reverse situation from the SGGK.  In SGGK Christian civilization had begun to make inroads in European society, but a strong pagan faith lived on, especially in the rural areas.  Pagan=rural.  Today we have a post-Christian society, a world in which the Christian church, once dominant and interlaced with political power, has begun to weaken.  Thus, today the Green Knight might ride into a corporate boardroom, or up the Capital steps and into Congress.  The natural world has begun to move its tendrils into the corridors of power all around the world:  governments, corporations, political parties.  It will be difficult to find the Gawains, those willing to literally put their heads on the chopping block for Mother Earth, but they exist; they may display the same reluctance and fear. 

    Maybe, just maybe, we no longer have to rely on Morgan La Fey at Hautdesert’s castle.  The pagan spirit that loves the land first and places that loyalty above all others appears from time to time all over the globe.  We need not one Green Knight, but many, many willing to take the challenge to those who must take the primacy of Mother Earth as a serious, even deadly duty. 

    This is not as clear as I want it, but it’s late and I’m a bit fuzzy.  Still, it’s in the right area. 


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality 📎and tagged

  • The Learning Curve(s)

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    28  75% 25% 2mph SSE  bar 29.78 falls windchill 27 Yuletide

                Waning Crescent of the Cold Moon

    A day with two tours.  Nice kids from Island Elementary in Shoreview.  Once again my questions and preparation left me as I got on the floor.  Guess I’m gonna need to prepare cheat sheets for the questions–to review just before the tour.  I tend to remember the details about the piece, but not the questions I planned to ask. All part of the learning curve.

    Listening to Tom Wolfe’s new book, I Am Charlotte Simmons. It’s about college life today.  If it’s accurate, and I don’t have any reason to doubt it is, it must be an intimidating time to be a college student.  So much sex and pressure for grades.  Oh, wait.  Wasn’t that the same college I experienced?  All kidding aside the picture it presents is drastically different in some ways, yet so familiar in others.  I’m enjoying listening to it, but I liked the Alan Greenspan book, too.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture General 📎and tagged

  • Obama and Huckabee

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    16  85%  26%  omph S  bar 30.07 falls windchill 16  Yuletide

                   Waning Crescent of the Cold Moon

                             Iowa Caucus Night

    Oh, the political junkie in me is humming tonight.  Obama takes Iowa.  Huckabee takes Iowa.  Who knew all these folks wanted Iowa in the first place?  It would have been fun to be in Iowa tonight. 

    If you’ve never submitted yourself to the pleasures of an Iowa subcaucus evening, you haven’t lived politically.  The DFL here in Minnesota adopted the Iowa subcaucus process.  In three hotly contested elections I subcaucused in Minneapolis.  It’s sort of the political version of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.  How many gender neutral, pro-labor, anti-gun McCarthy voters are there?  If there are a few left over for a viable caucus, who can we cut a deal with to get  more for our issue?  It’s wild and if there are a lot of people it’s exciting.  Horse trading and dickering at a fast clip.

    It also makes tallying up winners an interesting process as Wolf Blitzer kept saying all evening.  In the end CNN counted the total of Iowa state delegates each candidate got, created percentages and called their winners.  The more sedate Iowa Republicans took straw votes and went home.  Much easier, but not nearly as much fun.

    What does this mean for the race as a whole?  Well, Hilary doesn’t look inevitable anymore.  Obama is far from having it locked it up, but, as a commentator on CNN said (not poor bewildered Wolf Blitzer), if he carries two predominantly white states, Iowa and New Hampshire, black voters will flock to him and quite possibly away from Hilary.  They won’t want to stand in the way of the first black president.  By February 5th, a quick time in politics, it may done since AL, AK, AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, GA, IL, MN, MO, NJ, NY, ND, OK, TN & UT primaries plus New Mexico, Idaho and Kansas Democratic primaries are on Tuesday, February 5th.

    That would mean the general election race would begin that night and last until November.  What does that mean for an election process usually compressed in the days following Labor Day?  Don’t know.  Anyhow, lots to keep us junkies up nights until then.


    📂This entry was posted in News of the Strange Politics 📎and tagged

  • Running Wires, Hooking This to That

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    18  82%  26%  omph S  bar 30.09 steady  windchill 18  Yuletide

                 Waning Crescent of the Cold Moon

    The writer’s strike has made TV watching more vacuous than ever, at least on the broadcast channels. 

    Our HDTV will arrive on Saturday afternoon and I plan on spending a few fun hours running wires, hooking this to that and generally having a good time.  When its up and working, I’ll order HD TV from Comcast.  I admit it.  I’m excited.  Kate surprised me last week by suggesting I was something of a geek.  After some thought, I decided, well, compared to many my age, I suppose I am sort of geeky.  I read Wired Magazine and I’ve used computers since 1982, but I don’t program, which I consider sort of the dividing line between geek and techno-junky.  Still, if it’s electronic, I’m interested.

    Wrote 1400 words today, a new short story.  Did it mostly to kick off the rust and get back at it.  Not sure it’s gonna go anywhere.  May head off into new country tomorrow morning, though I have tours at 12:15 and 1:30.                     

    Not much going in the head tonight, focused on the Iowa process.  Way too early to know much.


    📂This entry was posted in GeekWorld

  • Tomorrow, In a Cornfield Near You

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    1 77%  22%  0mph WSW bar 30.73 falls  Yuletide

               Waning Crescent of the Cold Moon

    Today is the day I devote to marketing my work, an idea suggested by Scott Edelstein.  A day a month on it, then put it away, he said.  That way it has time set aside and does not weigh on the work.  I’ve done just that since September and I have finished all my short story edits.  Next month I will have some to submit.

    I heard from my brother, Mark, who told me a while ago he was afraid the political unrest in Thailand might set off violence.  He was right, as he says, regrettably.  

    United States democracy, and democracies in most of the developed world, are a reasoned trade-off between the power of violence and the assertion of authoritarian government.  The nation’s focus on Iowa tomorrow has such edge because the result in that agricultural state might change foreign and domestic policy in the world’s strongest economy backed up by the world’s most expensive military.   That is, we expect a peaceful transition of power between one government and the other, in fact, we insist upon it.  Not all countries can harbor such expectations.

    It is just this peaceful transition that Al Gore protected when he refused a public challenge to the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Florida voting discrepancies.   His graciousness was necessary, I think, in spite of the horrors that resulted directly from it.

    Some people call it the silly season.  Others turn off their TV sets and stop reading newspapers.  I call it the best show on earth with the exception of the greatest spectacle in racing, the Indianapolis 500.  A presidential election year.  What a year it is.  The first time in 80 years that no incumbent president or vice-president is on the ballot.  Think of that.  This is the first time in two generations, my whole life.

    The first chapter opens tomorrow in a corn field near you.


    📂This entry was posted in Politics 📎and tagged

  • One Day Down, 364 To Go

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    0  72% 23% 0mph WNW bar 30.64 steep rise  windchill -2  Yuletide  New Year’s Day

                                  Waning Crescent of the Cold Moon 

    A day almost gone in the New Year. 

    Kate and I now have a weekly Skype call with Jon and Jen and Ruth+.  + being the one who comes.  This is weird because it means we have a video phone call, our picture and voice shows up there and their picture and voice shows up here, all in real time…well, almost real time.  Ruth says, “All Right.”  “Ma.” (grandma)  No. (snow) Bye. and so on.  All delightful and all wonderful, as if done for the very first time ever in the history of child development.  She’s a cutie, a blond Jewish Norwegian who lives in Colorado.  The mixing pot stirs on.

    Worked out, watched a Japanese movie and an Arctic Tale and the Descent.  Three movies.  A holiday.  All pretty different.  Samurai and Shogun, sword and kimono.  A poignant tale of Arctic babies:  a walrus and two polar bears affected by the warming of the Arctic Ocean.  The Descent is a horror movie and a good one.  It left me squirming and wincing.   Made by the director of Dog Soldiers.

    The morning I spent exegeting, then interpreting Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  What a tale.  Important for our time, yet hundreds of years old.  

    Happy New Year.


    📂This entry was posted in Family General 📎and tagged