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  • Kate on the mend

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                         Waxing Dark Moon

    The Vikings took the pressure off themselves today by losing to Pittsburgh.  A lot of things could be said about the game, but in the end they lost.  It was a great game, one I enjoyed watching anyhow.  OK, I will say one thing.  That tripping penalty that called the touchdown back in the 4th quarter stank.  It was a game changer in a bad way for us.

    Kate’s recovery, slow, but regular, gains strength each day. She went downstairs and up again tonight.  The incentive was big, seeing Ruth and Gabe on Skype, but the trip had a confidence building aspect, too.

    Rigel and Vega have calmed down with the cooler weather.  Calmed down in a relative sense.  They still clang and bang, heavy with tooth and claw, but escaping seems to have become less a priority since the electric fence.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Dogs Family Sport 📎and tagged

  • Fall Clean-up

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                                         Waxing Blood Moon

    Out in the garden this morning taking down plants that have finished their labors.  Large cruciform vegetable plants grew from the seeds I started inside, but they never developed any fruits.  They’re in the compost now.  All the tomato vines save one have come down.  The last tomato harvest went inside today, too.  A few straggling yellow and orange tomatoes and a cluster of green tomatoes for a last fried green tomatoes.

    A new crop of lettuce, beets and beans are well underway, lending an air of spring to the dying garden.  While examiningdieback091 carrots I have in the ground awaiting the frost, I discovered golden raspberries large as my thumb.  A real treat at this late stage in the year.  They await the vanilla ice cream I’m going to buy when I go to the grocery store.

    The 49 degree weather made doing these choirs a pleasure.  Odd as it may seem, I like the fall clean-up part of gardening as well as I do any other part, perhaps a little bit more.  Most of these plants I started as seeds in February, March or April and they have matured under my care, borne their fruits and run through their life cycle.  From some of them I have collected seeds to plant for next year.  The clean up then represents a completion that goes one step beyond the harvest.  It honors these living entities by caring for their spent forms in the most full way possible:  helping them return their remaining nutrients back to the soil.  I want no less for myself.

    Got a new toaster and a new ladder in the mail yesterday from Amazon.  Boy, shopping has changed.  I rarely go to a big box store anymore, once in a while to Best Buy to check out DVD’s or for some computer accessory.  I still go to hardware stores and grocery stores, the things you need weekly or right now or fresh, but everything else I buy online.

    The bee guy, Mark Nordeen, had to cancel again today.  His wife, Kate’s colleague, got kicked in the head by her brand new black mare.  E.R. and a concussion later she’s home off work.  Guess I’m gonna have to figure out how to over winter my bees all by myself.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees Garden GeekWorld Great Wheel Great Work permaculture 📎and tagged

  • Went Down the Sunday Throat

    Posted on by Charles 3 Comments

    Beltane Waning Dyan Moon

    Amtrak Cardinal north of Renessalear, Indiana 8 am

    Kate and I woke up at 4:30 this morning, showered and finished packing. We headed around the corner to the train station. As we got there at 5:15 or so, the station master had just begun to announce boarding. We walked up the double staircase. The door to our car opened right at the top of the stairs. We went up three steps, went forward as the car attendant asked and sat down. Less than 10 minutes after leaving our hotel room, we were in our seats and ready togo. Try that at the airport.

    We had a discussion of Hoosier phrases with Diane yesterday. When somebody chokes, we would say the food “went down the Sunday throat.” We also ate supper, not dinner. I referred to one of my aunts as being “a caution,” a phrase the others had not heard.

    As the train now heads north, I find, as I always do, that I’m glad. The north refreshes me, invigorates. Mostly, it is home. Indiana is where I’m from and a place that holds the precious memories of childhood, but it is no longer home, except in the sense of that familiar place where I grew up.

    We ate breakfast today with a former Marine corps A6 Intruder pilot and his wife, a librarian. He was not a person I would have chosen for conversation and that made this another wonderful moment. We found both him and his wife delightful company. He expressed a keen interest in the Kindle. They are on their way from Lynchburg, Virginia (they are Episcopalian) to California where his lt col son will hand over command to another officer.

    The pace of the train, the sound of its whistle, plaintive and sometimes forlorn and the comfort of the seats combine with good company and friendy attendants to make the trip a joy.

    Next stop, the Metropolitan Lounge in Union Station, Chicago.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Travel 📎and tagged

  • Life Beyond the MUSA Line (and a bit of left wing political thought)

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                       Waning Flower Moon

    We live beyond the MUSA line.  Not very far beyond, it cuts Andover almost in half.  The Metropolitan Urban Services Area line establishes the land which must have city water and sewer. It snakes around the outline of the seven county metropolitan area, attempting to adjust the size and density of suburban development.  Planning officials created the MUSA line in the long ago as a tool to prevent urban sprawl.  It hasn’t worked.

    The house we purchased 15 years ago sits on a 2.5 acre lot and has its own sewer (septic) and water, a well.  This has happened all around the seven county metro area.  Larger size residential lots leapfrogged the MUSA line and went in with their own utilities.

    From the standpoint of personal independence I prefer our situation.

    At any rate this all means we have to manage our own septic system and our own well and water deliver system.  Today we had the septic system pumped out–every 2 years.  The guy who did it took off the manhole cover and checked the baffles. Who knew we had baffles?

    Anyhow this 15 year old system was made of concrete and the baffles had cracked and one had fallen off, so we had to replace them.  In order to do this the guys from Kothrade Sewer, Water and Excavation had to get down inside the tank.  Turns out this can kill you.  The fumes.  As I thought about it, I thought, gee, that makes sense.

    How would you like to make your living crawling around somebody’s septic system?  Me neither.  It cost $175 for protective gear to work in  a confined space, an OSHA requirement.  This is real danger, two guys in Minnesota in the last year after crawling down a thirty-foot deep manhole into a new system.  Curing concrete sucks up 02.  The first guy in passed out and died.  His buddy went down to see what was wrong.  He died, too.

    There aren’t many things worth dying for and our septic system is sure not one of them.


    📂This entry was posted in Our Land and Home Politics 📎and tagged

  • 60’s Ritual Taken Up By Gun Rights Crowd

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring            Waning Seed Moon

    OMG   The Tea Party at the Capitol.   Don’t know about you but watching so-called patriots straight arming their fists in the sky like the Black Panthers and the protesters at the Mexico Olympics created cognitive dissonance.  A speaker at the rally said, “Do we love our country or what?” then raised her fist high above her head.  The crowd roared.

    Personally, I choose “…or what.” in this context.  If love of country demands pulling back from rescuing the economy, taking care of the needs of fellow citizens and killing foreigners, then we have become not a country but a caricature of a country.

    We have had 8 years of this kind of chuckle headed, shut the brain off and leave me alone with my righteousness blather.  Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Pearl and other political refugees now await the judgment of history and it will not be kind.

    The morphing of political symbols is not new, of course.  The V finger peace sign beloved of my generation had its origin in the V for victory of Winston Churchill in WWII.  This appropriation of the rally style, signboards and pumped fists in the air by the right is not so much blasphemy as it is culture at work absorbing, adapting.

    Still, those of us marched and fought the Vietnam War and participated in the struggles for civil rights can be forgiven a twitch of the heart when seeing flag draped anti-socialists holding placards and chanting with their fingers closed in a fist above their head.  Just doesn’t seem, well, you know…right.


    📂This entry was posted in Politics 📎and tagged

  • Mystical Democracy

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc    Waning Wild Moon

    Legislative Reference Library

    Ate at the capitol cafeteria today for the first time in probably 15 years.  Met with Justin and Dan.  They both have the lobbying persona, happy positive upbeat.  Make only friends.  No enemies.  Why I’m not a lobbyist.

    Walking up the capitol steps today I had a physical sense of the collective power of Minnesota citizens.  It inhabits this building, especially during session.  We come, from whatever role or status, to seek the benefit of this power.  This was the first time I recall feeling this presence in such a palpable way.

    Democracy has its mystical side and on my way up the white granite steps it pressed inward, right to my heart. I do reverence here because  even wounded as it is by class democracy comes closest to the vox populi.

    Here in the library the maroon covered tables have five filled seats.  Only one man, a strange little bald guy in a tweed jacket and hair dyed an odd reddish color consults a book.  The rest of us, in this literary chapel, stare at computer screens.  The new reality.


    📂This entry was posted in General 📎and tagged