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  • Friends

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                                            Full Blood Moon

    “There is no need like the lack of a friend.”   Irish saying

    How many sets of friends do you have?  Not an idle question since study after study shows friendship a vital element of health.  Friends become even more important as we age.  Here’s a couple of examples:  BBC, Science.

    Today at noon a group of friends I still consider new, but whom I’ve actually known for almost 5 years, met for lunch at the Black Forest.  It was those from the Docent class of 2005.  We trained together for 2 years, meeting every Wednesday during the academic year for lectures and tour practice.  The education was fun, since I love learning new things, but over time I’ve found the relationships formed then the most important gift.

    An introverted guy, I need these kind of stable groups.  I’m fortunate right now to have three groups in which I’ve made networks.  The Docent class of 2005 has, by now, blended into the docents of all classes, in particular for me, those who tour on Fridays, my tour day.  I see these folks at continuing education, on tours, in the docent discussion group and in these more casual events that happen from time to time.

    The Sierra Club, the most recent of the three, taps into older networks for me, the DFL political world and the world of community activists, but has opened up a new one in those people whose primary activist commitment is the environment.  I enjoy being around the new generation of political activists, people in their 20’s and early 30’s.  They’re bright, practical, and seem to have a better balance in their lives than I did when I was engaged as intensively as they are.

    The oldest network for me is the Woolly Mammoths.  With the Woolly’s I have 20+ years of twice monthly meetings, annual retreats and social occasions outside those events.  We know each other, each other’s story, our families.  We’ve had fights and reconciled, gone through life and death struggles and will go through more.  As a man, I feel so lucky to have this long term set of relationships in my life.


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  • The Quiet American

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    53  bar falls 29.88 4mph NE dewpoint 33 Beltane   sunny

                   First Quarter of the Hare Moon

             odebangkok400.jpg

                                      The Quiet American

    Here’s my buddy, Mark Odegard in Thailand.  I can’t tell if this is the palace grounds or not, but I do remember just this sign.  It made me stop and think, too.  He’s just finishing up a safe sex exhibit for UNESCO and says he has come to love Thailand. 

    Southeast Asia has a fascinating pull.  Mark and Mary succumbed to it years ago and have spent much of their adult lives there.  I’ve visited only once, but the memories are fresh and pull me back.  Part of the allure, of course, is the unfamiliar.  Southeast Asia as a place has figured little in American thought and history with the notable exception of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.  In those instances subjugation, not understanding was our goal, so the cultures and the people there remained opaque.

    Another part of the attraction is the sense of confidence in their culture that these small countries have.  Thailand has not been conquered since the Angkor days of Khmer invasions.  Cambodia, though pummeled and ruined by first the U.S., then the Khmer Rouge, has a sweet, ancient flavor that overcomes even those dismal moments.  Singapore is a confident, bustling country, Asia lite as my sister says.  Malaysia has an old culture, too, layered over now with Islam, but still retaining a rotating monarchy and other traditional customs.  Burma remains largely the old days when the flying fishes went to play in far off Mandalay.  It retains a more traditional cast because the ruling junta has placed an umbrella over the country, blocking out the light and keeping the people subservient.  Indonesia has a huge population and much diversity with its many islands, but its Indonesian reality seems strong to me.

    It is also cheap, easy for Americans to navigate financially and in that regard much more appealing than the Euro dominated Europe.

    Since I travel often to become a stranger, an outsider, a foreigner, Southeast Asia fulfilled my need at each stop, but each time in a different way:  food, ruins, people, cities, colors, art. 

    Someday I will return


    📂This entry was posted in Friends Travel Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • In Tutelage to My Self

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    41  bar steady  29.41 4mph dewpoint 39 Beltane

               Waning Crescent Moon of Growing

    Wet.  Cold.  Dreary.  An inside day.  I was gonna plant beets and carrots outside, but not today.  Maybe Sunday.

    Lunch with Tom Crane.  We discussed the meeting at his house where I serve as his assistant.  The topic is mastery.  The word poses some problems for me because it is difficult, if not impossible, to extricate it from its linkage to subordination.  The idea that lurks behind it, though, is strong.  Somewhere in the terms Zen master or Taoist sage or master gardener, even master craftsperson lies a life time of practice, the honing of a skill or a life way on the hard stone of experience. 

    We had an interesting conversation about who we had come across in our lives we would consider masters.  I’ll get back to you, but no one leapt to mind.  We also discussed the possibility of naming for others where we see mastery in them.  This gets around the culture bound reticence we upper-middle class Midwesterners have to tooting our own horn.

    I admitted that I had not allowed anyone to mentor me, nor had I been willing to be anyone’s disciple.  This is a weakness, I believe, borne of a need to figure things out for myself, to do things on my own.  Tom had the same experience, but for a different reason.  He was thrust into responsibility and expected to survive.  And he has.

    This is, in part at least, a vulnerability question.  Can I make myself vulnerable enough to another person to become their student, their disciple.  The result of not doing that is, as Tom and I admitted, a sense that we have never quite arrived, not quite done enough.  A niggle of uncertainty that has no reference within us which we can use to dislodge it.

    We also spoke a bit about being in tutelage to the Self.  I said I have been willing to trace my own journey by the vague outlines I feel in that part of me that participates in the greater universe, and which calls me forward to my own destiny.  As a Taoist, I would call that my attunement to the Movement of Heaven, the Tao.  A good lunch on a wet day.


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality Friends Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • One Psychiatrist Says to Another

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    61 bar steep fall 29.73  6mph WSW dewpoint 33 Spring

                    Last Quarter Moon of Growing

    Some leaf curling and cupping on my lettuce and tomato.  Not sure if it’s a problem or not.  I can’t find any organisms.  No sign of mildew, virus, aphid, biting insects.  Still, it doesn’t look quite right to me.  Time will tell.

    Fed the dogs at 11:00AM and took off for the Walker to talk to Stefan.  He asked me to edit and comment on his poems. 

    I got there early and wandered through the Suburbs exhibit and the Richard Prince exhibit.  I’m not sure about Prince, as I know many others are not, but he has some funny jokes. 

    Two psychiatrists are at a bar together.  One psychiatrist says to the other, “I had dinner with my mother last night and I had a Freudian slip.”  The other psychiatrist raised an eyebrow.  “I said, ‘You ruined my life you fucking bitch!”

    Also, “You know what it means when you come home to a warm, loving embrace?  It means you’re in the wrong house.”

    These are on monochrome backgrounds, sort of pop artish.  Most of the other re-purposed photographs show an interesting angle on American culture.  I can imagine a curatorial meeting where having Richard Prince and the Suburban show together would add irony, creative tension.  I’m not so sure. I found the suburban show more provocative than the Prince.  It has an original take on a widely experienced phenomenon.  Prince recycles material from our magazines, our popular culture, but his work seems more cool, distant.  The suburban exhibition is lively, engaged with the subject either ironically or in a non-judgmental way.

    Stefan and I met in Gallery 8, the first place aside from United Theological Seminary I saw when I first came to the Twin Cities over 38 years ago.  Oddly, I had lunch with Lonnie, his wife, there many times when she and I used to keep up. 

    We talked about his poetry.  I took a slash and burn approach to editing this batch.  “I’m trying to find the line here, Stefan.  Like skiing.  I cut out everything that didn’t get me down the hill fast.”  I told him that was an idiosyncratic method and that he could do whatever he wanted with the feedback.  He gave me a few more so I guess it wasn’t too bad for him.


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

  • The Buddhist After-Life and the Killing Fields

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    25  93%  27%  omph NNW bar 29.77 windchill25  Winter

                      New Moon

    Had a summary of our gathering (Woollies) at the Istanbul Bistro, but lost in a multiple cascading of Internet Explorer browser pages.  Probably a sign I should go back to Firefox.  I used to use it, then I abandoned it, used it again, and abandoned it again.  Just like Darth Vader I keep coming back to the evil empire.

    Mark, Warren, Paul, Tom, Frank, Bill and Stefan showed up.  We spoke of politics and Rome, of Green Knights present and long dead. A brief comment was made about the Istanbul not being a sportsbar, a positive.  It’s quiet and it has a round table around which this latter day collection of Knights Errant can sit.  That does mean knights in error, doesn’t it?

    Mark has a gig in Bangkok designing teen sex exhibitions for Unesco/Thailand.  It’s a campaign to promote safe sex in a nation where AIDS among youngsters has become a problem again.  After that he will return to the US, then go back to Cambodia to construct an exhibit near the killing fields, one dealing with the Buddhist afterlife.  To continue the international theme Paul Strickland will host a trip to Syria in November and his organization will co-host a trip with the Hindu Temple of Maple Grove to Southern India.  Stefan chimed in with the fact that he’s taking his kids to Rome to visit a person he knows who works in the American Embassy there.  Makes for good dinner table conversation.  Those who’d been to Rome all agreed the most memorable moment was the first coffee. 

    We discussed the political scene.  All of us were happy with the real choices represented by the candidates.  Of course, SuperTuesday will eliminate any chance for us to pariticipate in candidate selection and after we will have 7 months of attack ads, but right now it is glorious.  Tom wondered if any of us had supported any candidates financially.  Frank said, yes, he and Mary had sent money to Obama.

    Warren reported good news about his mom and dad.    

     The retreat and a theme came up, but we put it off until Paul’s.  Mark will not attend since he’s got to be in Thailand the first week of February.  I’m leaving early for Hawai’i.  One of those years.

     Forgot to mention here I watched Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast the other night. It’s one of the Janus Films collection I got for my 60th birthday, 50 films from 50 years of their distribution of foreign films in the US.  This movie floats across the mind like a dream, a fairy tale given form and substance.  It’s images have remained with me.  It sat in my DVD player for a long time because I didn’t want to watch it; but, like each one of the films from the collection I’ve watched it had its own unique charm.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Politics Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • The Byte Master

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Bill Schmidt came over this afternoon and coached me in Word Press.  He did the heavy lifting when it came to shifting my website created in FrontPage to this new vehicle, Word Press.  I’m glad he made the change because I don’t understand what he did.

    Bill and I have spent 20 years plus in the same men’s group.  I’ve gone from from 40 to 60 over that time and Bill from 50 to 70.  That length of time together builds a lot of trust, much like a marriage.  He has the password to my site and continues to fiddle with some of the nuances.  Where did the navigation bars on the old site go, for example.

    He coached me in the original change when I put up AncientTrails for the first time.  I had a couple of months of enforced leisure then, thanks to surgical repair of my ruptured right Achilles tendon.  Thanks to his help then, I’ve picked up Word Press quicker.  Still a lot to learn, but that’s part of the fun of doing this. 

    Hope to see your comments here some time soon.


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