• History Changes the Past

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    35  bar steady 30.04 2mph WSW dewpoint 26 Spring

                  Waning Gibbous Moon of Winds

    History changes the past.  Comic books were bad, bad, bad when I was a kid.  I knew this because my mother told me so.  I could read Tarzan and a couple of others I can’t recall, but never Batman, Superman, or any of the darker comic fare.  Like many kids I hid the Superman and others inside my stacks of Tarzans.  Also, like many in those days, when Marvel comics came out I was a teen-ager and Mom was no longer a taste-maker in my world.  The Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, the Silver Surfer and my personal favorite, Dr. Strange became staples in my library alongside War and Peace, Crime and Punishment.

    Only in the past couple of months have I learned why comics were bad.  Fredric Wertham, a German born immigrant and psychiatrist, saw Superman and the superhero ilk as sub rosa evocations of the Übermensch, Nietzsche’s man who transcended morality and who Nazi’s believed justified their crimes. 

    Well, all I can say is, that Fredric must not have read a Superman comic.  Superman fought for Truth, Justice and the American Way.  Any kid who watched the TV program could tell you that.  Batman was too troubled to be an ubermensch or an undermensch. 

    This history has changed my past.  I always thought it was just a pacifist quirk of Mom’s that she restricted my comic reading, after all I learned from her to carry bugs outside in a kleenex and liberate them.  But no, it was another parenting influence, like Dr. Spock, only this one was a psychiatrist who probably believed Freud had it right after all.  It helps me see Mom as a parent, a person searching for advice on how to raise her children, how to keep them from harmful influences. 

    Boy, when I think of the fifties I realize how few really harmful influences seemed available, at least in Alexandria, Indiana.  No  rap.  Few drugs.  They weren’t on our radar.  An STD might have been an additive for gasoline.

    I began watching horror and science fiction movies as soon as I could scrape $.25 together to spend on my own.  I don’t know why Mom never stopped me from seeing those.  Or, maybe I didn’t tell her.  I can’t recall and she died when I was 17 so I never got a chance to ask her.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Memories 📎and tagged

  • Good To Hear Positive Comments

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    29  bar steep rise 30.04 0mph SSW dewpoint 23  Spring

                 Waxing Gibbous Moon of Winds

    Walked outside today, no ice on the driveway, sun in the sky.  Felt healthy and limber.  Good.  Ready to be out there.

    In these caesuras between one bout of intense concentration and the next I tend to clear out my in basket.  So, I gathered beneficiary forms to complete the living trust work Kate and I did last fall.  I filled in all the upcoming dates on my calendar including Kate’s CME trip to San Francisco and her trip to Denver hoping it will be during the time of Gabriel’s birth.  Filed the property tax papers.  Things like that.

    While working on the hydroponics, I remarked to Kate that I can see Asperger’s Syndrome as a magnified version of the typical male.  When I want to get something done, I like to stay with it, put my energy and focus in one place.  One aspect of Asperger’s is the tendency to become absorbed in one thing to the exclusion of others.  I get it.

    I had a few days of nice compliments about my work from the China tour on Saturday to the Groveland presentation.  A friend called me a polymath and for a generalist like me that’s a high compliment.  Another, who comes from a long line of farmers, a really long line–over 4,000 years worth–liked my project for the Woolly Mammoth year.  It’s good to hear positive comments, but so easy to get sidetracked by them, too.  These days I’m much better at hearing them and saying thank you.

    Time for sleep.  Good night.


    📂This entry was posted in General

  • Airlines Not Required to Provide Food, Water, Clean Toilets or Fresh Air

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    42 bar steep rise 29.71 1mph WNW dewpoint 28  Spring

               Waxing Gibbous Moon of Winds

    We soaked the rock wool seed pellets in 5.0 ph water.  This will neutralize the natural high alkalinity of the rock wool. Tomorrow I’ll sow seeds from a lettuce mixture we got at Seed Saver’s Exchange.  Tomorrow, too, the tomato seeds will got in the peat pots.  Action on the indoor garden and some (the tomato seeds) on the outdoor garden proceeds apace.

    The library provided a couple of books on DVD for Kate and her drive to Nevada, Iowa over the weekend.  She’s doing a sort of homecoming/reunion thing.  Meanwhile I’ll celebrate Chinese New Year’s in Lauderdale.

    The beat goes on.

    In the ongoing journal of outrage at the way things are, this from today’s newswire: 

    A federal appeals court has rejected a law requiring airlines to provide food, water, clean toilets and fresh air to passengers trapped in a plane delayed on the ground.

    The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that New York’s new state law interferes with federal law governing the price, route or service of an air carrier. It was the first law in the nation of its kind.

    The appeals court said the new law was laudable but only the federal government has the authority to enact such a regulation.

    The law was challenged before the appeals court by the Air Transport Association of America, the industry trade group representing leading U.S. airlines.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Garden Politics Travel 📎and tagged

  • Dying For a Newspaper

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    40  bar rises 29.60 3mph W dewpoint 30  Spring

              Waxing Gibbous Moon of Winds

    So, this guy goes out to get his newspaper and slips on the ice.  If you read my obituary early, it may start with the line, Died for His Morning Paper.  After some initial conflict in our relationship–I wanted to be in the city and Andover was stubborn about remaining in the exurbs–I have come to love our land.  All of it.  Except.  The driveway.

    It slopes.  Most days in most years this is no big deal.  I drive a car up it and down it.  If it snows, I get out the snowblower and remove it.  On occasion, usually in March or April, snow melt or rain freezes on the sidewalk and on the slope of the driveway creating a downright dangerous condition.  Even more dangerous of course because I encounter it before I’m awake.  Kate often gets the newspaper, but she seems to handle the slope better, or at least, doesn’t talk about her slips. (She’s a Norwegian. Stoic.)

    Case in point.  This morning.  I put on my Acorn slippers with their padded plastic soles and went out the front door, down the front steps and onto my @##!  Aside from my dignity, which I have little of in the morning anyhow, nothing serious damaged, but I did go back inside and announce that the paper would be retrieved when “conditions warranted.”

    Since Kate was stuck reading Parenting magazine, one of the many free magazine subscriptions she gets just being an MD, I listened to the first few groans, smirks and cries of disbelief at the bad advice, about Parenting, of all things.  This made me head for the downstairs and the plastic bucket in which I deposited my Yak-Traks last years.

    Yak-Traks are a fraidy cats dream.  They slip over your boot or tennis shoe and put coiled metal in contact with the ice rather than your slippery soul.  They worked great.  I spread salt on the bad places, got the Tribune, came inside and promptly, you guessed, had a near miss slipping on our tile floor.  Turns out the Yak-Traks create instability on solid surfaces.  Sigh.


    📂This entry was posted in General

  • Rock Wool Seed Blankies

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    36  bar steep fall 29.84 1mph SSE  Dewpoint 26  Spring

                    Waxing Gibbous Moon of Winds

    Ah.  Hands back in the soil, thinking and doing with plants.  We bought two stems of yellow Plumeria when we were in Hawai’i and I potted them today.  Just the act of finding a pot, putting in some potting soil and adding water immersed my soul deep in the earth. 

    The hydroponics setup is underway, too.  Seeds don’t grow well in hydroponic growing mediums, so there’s a prior step that involves starting seedlings in small rock wool blankies, then transplanting them, blankie and all, into the large pebble-sized lava rock medium.  

    A seedling needs a couple of critical tools to grow inside.  The first is a warming coil to make sure the temperature underneath the seed pack does not get below 60 degrees or so.  We have those, four of them.  The second is a grow light.  We have those, too. Two of them. 

    Tomorrow lettuce seeds will go into the rock wool seed blankies and some herbs as well.  These are all heritage seeds Kate and I purchased at the Seed Saver’s Exchange outside Decorah, Iowa.  Potting soil will go in some small cubes made of molded peat moss.  In them will go a few heritage tomato seeds and anything else we need to have a jumpstart on for the garden. 

    The lettuce and herbs will make the transfer into the hydroponics.  We’ll learn how to work with the temps, timing of the nutrient solution flows, the nutrient solutions themselves while growing an easy crop.  The tomato seedlings and the other seedlings will get planted in the raised beds we’ve turned over from flowers to vegetables.

    There are still a few more tools we need like an electrical conductance meter, a turkey baster and an aquarium heater or two.  I’ll pick those up on Friday when I go in to do two Weber tours.

    This manual labor balances the intellectual work I do and I’m glad to be back at it.  From now until mid-October the garden and our land will take up more and more of my time and happily so.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden Great Work Our Land and Home 📎and tagged

  • Iraq A Successful Endeavor. Dick Cheney

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    This is just the first few paragraphs of Hiaasen’s article. He’s the funniest political columnist in the good ol’ USofA.  Click on his name if you want to read the rest.

      

    By CARL HIAASEN

    On the five-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, President Bush declared that the United States is on the way to winning the war.

    He made this stupefying pronouncement in the safe confines of the Pentagon, where it’s unacceptable to question the commander-in-chief, no matter how dense or self-deluded he might be.

    If Bush had dared to make the same speech in a public town hall, among civilians, the reception would have been chillier. According to almost every opinion poll, about two-thirds of all Americans now stand opposed to the war in Iraq.

    When reminded last week of this statistic, Vice President Dick Cheney responded: “So?”

    Bush sent Cheney to Baghdad to mark the dubious anniversary of their costly, misbegotten adventure. What better way to buoy the spirits of the 160,000 U.S. soldiers who are now stuck in Iraq — a surprise visit by The Man Who’s Never Been Right.

    True to form, the vice president repeated his dark assertion that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had close ties with al Qaeda, a claim discredited and rejected by every U.S. intelligence agency.

    Cheney also described the American effort to bring stability and democracy to Iraq as ”a successful endeavor.” Compared to what — the landing of the Hindenburg?


    📂This entry was posted in Politics 📎and tagged

  • This Just In! Minneapolis-St. Paul Fun Cities

    Posted on by Charles Comment

     Woolly Bill Schmidt found this.  What we knew all along.

    We’re Stunned! Most Fun U.S. City Is…It’s not New York, New Orleans, or even Las Vegas. The city where you’ll have the most fun is…Minneapolis.

    That’s the word from game maker Cranium, Inc., which commissioned Bert Sperling, who masterminded the ‘Best Places to Live’ feature for Money magazine, to rank 50 cities for their fun factor. This was determined by the city’s number of sports teams, restaurants, dance performances, toy stores, and the amount of the city’s budget that is spent on recreation, among other factors.

    And why did Minneapolis beat out cities known for the classic fun factors of sin and sun? According to Cranium, the goal was to find a city that is an ‘outrageously fun experience with something for everyone.’ Minneapolis won because it’s the home of Mary Tyler Moore, four professional sports teams, and the best mall in America. Minneapolis has more theaters than Boston, more parks than Denver, more golfers per capita than any other city in America, and with 10,000 lakes in the state, Minnesota, has more coastline than California, Florida, and Hawaii combined. It even has 15 dog parks. Woof! Cranium CEO Richard Tait said, ‘It’s almost a no-brainer’ to crown Minneapolis the Most Fun City.

    Perhaps even more startling than the fact that Minneapolis is No. 1 is that New Orleans is No. 50. Does that mean a trip to the Mall of America is more fun than Mardi Gras? You decide.

    Here are the top 50 fun cities, ranked from top to bottom:

    Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota
    Orange County, California
    San Jose, California
    Atlanta, Georgia
    Chicago, Illinois
    Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina
    Washington, DC
    Oakland, California
    Salt Lake City-Ogden, Utah
    Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, Washington
    Portland-Vancouver, Oregon-Washington
    San Francisco, California
    Baltimore, Maryland
    Milwaukee-Waukesha, Wisconsin
    Denver, Colorado
    Detroit, Michigan
    St. Louis, Missouri
    San Diego, California
    Indianapolis, Indiana
    Cincinnati, Ohio
    Columbus, Ohio
    Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
    Sacramento, California
    Nashville, Tennessee
    Las Vegas, Nevada
    Los Angeles-Long Beach, California
    Kansas City, Missouri-Kansas
    Nassau-Suffolk, New York
    Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, North Carolina
    Omaha, Nebraska
    Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News, Virginia
    Houston, Texas
    Cleveland-Lorain-Elyria, Ohio
    Dallas, Texas
    Memphis, Tennessee
    Orlando, Florida
    Louisville, Kentucky
    Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas
    Riverside-San Bernardino, California
    Greensboro-Winston-Salem-High Point, North Carolina
    New York, New York
    Boston, Massachusetts
    Hartford, Connecticut
    Austin-San Marcos, Texas
    Newark, Newark
    Miami, Florida
    Bergen-Passaic, Newark
    Fort Lauderdale, Florida
    Phoenix-Mesa, Arizona
    New Orleans, Louisiana


    📂This entry was posted in General

  • Cheesy Sci-Fi Movies

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    21  bar steady  1mph W dewpoint 15   Spring (yeah, right!)

                  Full Moon of Winds

    Spent this afternoon and evening watching NCAA basketball and movies.  Watched a medium bad Sci-Fi movie about a blackhole created in a lab in St. Louis.  It’s bad in part because of the acting.  Cheesy sci-fi movies only seem to have enough budget for one take.  It’s also bad because I read the hard sci-fi book from which the concept came and this movie bore no relationship to the very good book at all.  Which is a shame since that book had real science behind it and would have made a good movie.  This one had a beast that came out of the black hole and ate energy.  Hmmm.  So much wrong with that premise, you’d think I’d stop watching, but, no.  I have a low threshold for quality when I want entertainment.

    Been kicking around the idea, for a few years, of writing some original theology/atheology, a ge-ology, or something.  The woman who complimented my learning this morning, Lois Hamilton, got me thinking about all this again.  I’ve spent since 1965 getting seriously educated.  In a lot of fields.  I’ve had interesting real world experience in politics, the church, development and working with developmentally delayed adults.  I’ve traveled some, read a lot and learned a good deal about gardening and art.  Maybe I don’t need to anything, but I feel like a bad steward of the work I’ve done and the knowledge I’ve gained if I can’t set it down in some form for others.

    Not sure what I want to do, or if I want/need to do anything.  Just pondering, for now.


    📂This entry was posted in Cinema and Television Faith and Spirituality Memories 📎and tagged

  • The Movement Attacks the Establishment

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    27  bar rises 30.38  3mph WNW dewpoint 24  Spring

                   Full Moon of Winds 

    “If a man doesn’t delight in himself and the force in him and feel that he and it are wonders, how is all life to become important to him?” – Sherwood Anderson  (women, too.)

    A good quote for an Easter humanist.  This morning I go into Groveland UU (Unitarian-Universalist) where the conversation will focus either on transcendentalism or on my presentation, Thinking Like a Transcendentalist.  I say either because I’m going to give them a choice, listen to my prepared presentation or have a free form conversation about transcendentalism.

    Transcendentalism’s connection to UU history tore at the fabric of the Unitarian break with Christianity when it emerged.  Unitarian and Universalist problems with Christianity came from the Enlightenment push of reason against the Trinity on the one hand and Calvinist notions of original sin on the other.  This conflict resulted first in the fracture of New England Congregational churches into two camps, one orthodox Christian, the other newly Unitarian.  Around the same time Universalist churches popped up here and there with a message of universal salvation to counter the notion of total depravity offered by staunch Reformed church dogma.

    The transcendentalists were of the opinion that neither the U’s nor the U’s had gone far enough in their challenge to the prevailing religious and commercial establishment.   Terming this solid front of New England rectitude, the Establishment, was an Emersonian pun, in itself an affront to the (false) notion of permanence they claimed.  Against the establishment, Emerson and his merry band of pranksters, whom he called the Transcendentalist Movement, threw charge after charge.  

    Theodore Parker, abolitionist and minister of the 23rd Street Unitarian meeting, championed the new higher criticism of the bible just beginning to cross the Atlantic from its birthplace in Germany.  This criticism placed holy scripture under the light of reasoned analysis checking translation against ancient texts, investigating interpolations of meaning from biased authors, making clear the various contradictions and conundrums the texts created rather than “harmonizing” them as was the practice of the time.

    Got back from this around 1:30 PM.  They chose the conversation about Transcendentalism.  I gave an extemporaneous capsule of the intellectual history behind transcendentalism, its history and affect on the Unitarian church and its longer lasting affect on American philosophy (pragmatism) and American literature during which we discussed the impact of Emerson, Thoreau, Thedore Parker, Margaret Fuller and Orestes Brownson.

    Whitman and Emily Dickinson were our first poets, though far from the last, to observe Emerson’s idea that a poems content should determine its meter and that matter observed in daily life was appropriate for that content.  You can even see the transcendentalist affect in some one as far away from metaphysics as Hemingway, whose stark, realistic prose works hard to recreate the lived experience. 

    A primary aim of the Transcendentalists was to create and stimulate an American as opposed to a European literature and scholarship.  They succeeded with stunning results.


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

  • It Is a Privilege and an Honor

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    32  bar steady 30.37 0mph WNW dewpoint 28  Spring

                         Full Moon of Winds

    I got all didactic on the study of ancient bronzes post and it wasn’t where I wanted to go.  Let me try again.

    In one gallery at the Minneapolis Art Institute we have several high quality representatives of an art form that dominated Chinese material culture for 1,500 years.   Imagine if, say marble sculpture or fresco painting or mosaic had been the primary, to the exclusion of most other art forms, art of the West since 500 ACE.  That’s the length of time we’re discussing.  Or the period of time between the birth of Jesus and the colonization of the New World.  That’s a long time in people years.

    To see these objects is not only to see the aesthetic and technical prowess of  Shang and Zhou dynasty artisans; it is to see the actual object that they produced.  These very ku, kuei, jueh, ting, lei, tsun and fang i came into the existence through a complex network of Chinese people who lived over 3,500 years.   There were miners, transporters, smelters, mold makers, mold designers, foundry workers who cast the objects and broke them from their ceramic molds.  Other people sold and transported them after they were made and for years, centuries, even millennia in some cases these objects were either used in public ritual or stood by in a tomb ready to provide service in the afterlife.  Think of that. 

    Think of the journey that graceful jueh had to take both as a created work of art, then, after that, as an artifact of a long dead culture now thousands of miles from its point of origin.  That it survived all that is amazing, even if it is bronze.

    The conceptual world that brought this work into existence, a system of public cults around unseen gods and dead ancestors, a conceptual world had such a profound grip on the Chinese mentality that it stayed pretty much intact for the entire Shang dynasty, then only gradually lost its force in the later Western Zhou.  Those are powerful ideas.  Ideas can be more fragile than any ceramic; yet, these objects testify to the energizing and creative force these ideas carried, not just for a while but for hundreds of years.

    To put myself back in those times, to feel the ebb and flow of both the material culture and the beliefs that animated it, is to come alive to the human experience in a way I can’t in any other way.  It is a privilege and an honor to represent these objects and their world to the public. 


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture World History 📎and tagged