Friends, Politics, Woolly Mammoths

Love and Politics

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Another busy week.  Guess it’s a good thing we’re headed to Colorado on Saturday.  Time for a rest.

Yesterday I worked outside all morning, then took a nap, worked out and went to the Woollys at Paul’s house.  We talked about love.  Love was central to each of our lives and, we all agreed, to the Woolly’s.  Scott talked about the tough, tough time financial planners had in the last month and how it had been very difficult for him personally.  Stefan spoke of his children and the active love a houseful of teens requires.  Frank feels bringing novelty to people’s often boring lives is a way to show love.  Bill read poetry.  Love, marriage (31 years), fear and family dominated Paul’s presentation.  My stuff you read yesterday.

This morning I worked on material for the Sierra Club’s Ex-Com, it’s local (Minnesota) board of directors.  I have to present a report on the candidates whose races we chose for targeted effort.  That’s tonight at 7:30pm.

This afternoon the Africa checkout tour tomorrow morning at 9:30 requires my attention.  Then, phone-calling at the Sierra Club tomorrow night.  After that I can return to work outside until we leave on Saturday.

Family, Our Land and Home

A Good Shed, Cleaned

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You know that garden shed that appeared in some of the orchard pictures?  Jon built it for us quite a while back and a good shed it is.

Like most sheds and their smaller inside counterparts, closets, the stuff fairy goes around sprinkling this and that until one day, ten years later, you discover a no longer usable space.  In and out of the shed for the last couple of years I have thought, clean this up.

So, this morning I did.  I hauled out old garden implements, discovered a big pipe wrench nearly dissolved by oxidation, pitched various sorts of garden detritus and opened up a large space in the shed.  I needed to store the six bales of hay I bought last Saturday.  Room to spare.

My right hand has a large bruise where the IV went in for my anesthetics last Wednesday.  As I look at it, it reminds me of hospital patients I visited during my days in the active ministry, especially older patients whose skin seemed to take a bruise and keep it awhile.

Garden

Over the Back Fence

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Truck unloaded, then filled up with 6 bales of straw.  All the outside plants inside.  The morning.  Along with a few miscellaneous things:  watering the orchard, deconstructing a run of fence, talking with the neighbors over the back fence.

Now.  A nap.

Garden, Literature

Quack Will Inherit the Earth

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42  bar steady 30.28  0mph WNW  windchill 42  Autumn

Waxing Gibbous Blood Moon

That damned quack.  It has begun to overtake our new plantings.  So, purity to the wind.  If it warms up to 60 degrees, we’ll hit it with Roundup.  Then again.  And, probably, given the tenacious qualities of quack grass, again quackgrass_rhizome2300.jpgnext spring.

Over the years I have become a grudging fan of these hardy herbaceous plants, the weeds.  Without sophisticated gardening intervention they thrive; in fact, they often thrive in spite of it.   They are true survivors and give succor to anyone worried about humankind’s ultimate effect on the planet.

Herbicide us.  Nuke us.  Poison Gas.  Plague.  Quack grass and creeping charlie will soldier on.  I have not yet read The World Without Us but if it’s honest, it will tell the tale of a world dominated by weeds.  Only they will not be weeds anymore, since a weed is a plant out of place.  No, The World Without Us will be quack world, dandelion heaven, creeping charlie nirvana.  Long may they reign.

Until then, however, I want to get the damned stuff out of my young orchard.

Right now I have no Sierra Club responsibilities, except my last rounds of stranger phone calls ever.  I have no tours for which I have to prepare.  My sermons have left the computer and entered the world.  So for the next week or so I can devote myself to finishing up gardening chores, cleaning up my spaces infected with piles and perhaps catching up on a bit of reading.

Speaking of that, I have a recommendation for those of you who like literature and mysteries:  The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, by Swedish author Steig Larson.  A smart mystery and an intriguing look into contemporary Swedish life.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Holidays

The Ancient Trail of Gratitude

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quick note:  Boy, the pace of life accelerated with the coming of autumn.  This last week it felt like I’d gone back to full-time employment.  I’m glad the week-end is here.

Mine is a small life, no encyclopedia entries or feistschrifts, no monuments.  Ordinary.  I’ve been lucky so far.  The major stumbles I made got turned around by mid-life.  Kate came along and made the journey forward companionable.  There are few friends, but good ones.  The things I do, I love.  Dig.  Plant.  Harvest.  Write.  Preach.  Tour.  Spend time with the kids and their kids.  Read.

Thanksgiving is not a one-day holiday, but, rather, a life way, the ancient trail of gratitude.

Family, Politics

Fiscal Policy

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Quick note.

We’ve decided to stay the course with our portfolio.   We have decided to cut spending and increase our cash holdings by putting most of Kate’s quarterly adjustments in savings.  This will all have the effect of letting us extend the time before we have to withdraw any money from our various retirement accounts.

The hope is that by that time the market will have recovered enough to cover our needs with Kate retired.  As is  so often the case, we’ll see.

Family, Great Wheel, Politics

Tonight I Was the Stranger

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A quick note.  Did phone calling for the Sierra Club tonight.  This represents both a signal of my commitment and a raging contradiction for me.  A phone call from a stranger, pitching something in which I have marginal to no interest or may find abhorrent irritates the hell out of me.  Tonight I was the stranger.

Some calls I made to other Sierra Club members who might volunteer to call swing voters.  The rest of the calls were persuasion calls to swing voters in a Minnesota House of Representatives district in the general area of Shoreview.  Most of these folks didn’t want to talk.  I’m not good at making nice with people who’d rather be left alone, since I’m such a person myself and respect the inclination.

Oh well, only one more night of calls.  The last phoning I’ll do will be on election day, get out the vote calls.  Those will be easy, straightforward.

I did say these calls were a signal of my commitment.  I felt a need to push myself out of my comfort zone.  These calls do it.   My relationship with mother earth makes it clear to me that irritating some people in order to create a more favorable climate for eco-friendly legislation is worth it.

Kate says she’s feeling sick.  She gets exposed to everything new.  Sometimes the new stuff slips by her otherwise amped up immune system.

Politics, Woolly Mammoths

Happy Either Way

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63  bar steady 29.96  1mph S  dew-point 55  sunrise 7:17  set  6:45

First Quarter of the Blood Moon  rise 2:49 pm  set 11:08 pm

The Woollies met tonight at the Red Stag Inn.   The financial crunch was a topic of conversation.  Scott talked about national currencies and local currencies as stable economies.  One of us couldn’t take the ride and sold out last week into treasury certificates.  Not me.

We had an interesting conversation of what would happen if things go from bad to worse.  We realized we could provide mutual aid.  Minnesota has a great tradition of co-operative ventures and I think our commonweal could make the shift to barebones style of living.  It wouldn’t be easy, but it might surprise us.

Perhaps I’m too easily lulled to sleep by the people who think they know something, but so far I have not thought about jumping off even our deck.  In fact, I will not.  The money does not matter to me.  Living with Kate I have had access to a far richer life-style, both financially and emotionally, than I ever imagined I could have.  I’ve lived with little and a lot.  I can do either one and be happy.

We’ll see.

General

Cool, Blue Sky, Sun, Falling Leaves

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55  bar falls 30.08  0mph NE  dew-point 30  sunrise 7:12 set 6:51

Waxing Crescent of the Blood Moon

A brilliant day.  One with all the wonderful marks of fall:  cool, blue sky, sun, falling leaves.  October is my favorite month.  Right now.

So the bail-out has passed.  The market continues to slump.

Sarah Palin, they say, is the GOP’s gal in 2012.  OMG

More bulbs in the ground.  Many hemerocallis lifted.  Next is the Friday night workout.