• Tag Archives Jim
  • Art and Friends

    Beltane                                                       Waning Garlic Moon

    Two meetings today.  The guides group met today to focus on continuing education.  A lot of very good ideas were thrown out and compiled.  Over the next week or so I’ll organize them and put together a mailing to go to our list, asking for more input.  After that, we will create a specific communication outlining possible avenues for dealing with the problem created by no longer having Monday’s available and declining attendance on Thursdays.  This may create a vehicle for organizing the three guide councils and for communicating our ideas further up the museum organizational chart.

    Morry was a gracious host in a lovely home.  He provided meat, cheese and crackers along with beverages while other folks brought desert.  The only oddity of the day was those chairs in the master bedroom.  Those of you who here there know what I mean.

    Woolly’s tonight.  Charlie H. has decided to retire and move out of the condo, up to the woods of Wisconsin.  Bill continued to express appreciation for his brother Pat in words and in deeds, a website and an upcoming service for Pat in Ankenny, Iowa.  Paul was back from his vision quest in the Santa Cruz mountains.  He reports that going without food for that length of time heightened his senses and made his dreams more vivid.  He wants to be a person of impeccable love and kindness, starting with himself.

    Jim was his usual bigger than life self.  He had an article in the South Dakota magazine along with several of his photographs.  He has a show opening soon in Aberdeen and has begun negotiating for one here, too, perhaps at MCAD.

    Mark’s knee has him in rehab and ahead of schedule, looking forward again.


  • An Expansiveness That Opens The Heart

    Imbolc                                                New (Bloodroot) Moon

    Immersed again in the history of ancient Rome, that interesting period when the Republic gives way to the reign of emperors, night has fallen, a clear night.  I’ve wanted a clear night because I want to see the stars here on the prairie, away from city lights.  That’s next.

    Brother Dusty (James) Johnson has lived out here under the big sky of South Dakota for several years now and fell in love with it.  I can see why.  There’s an expansiveness that opens the heart, yet somehow too points back to the very spot where  you stand, a sort of universal and a particular in one moment.

    In Andover due to tree cover our focus is resolute and local.  We see our yard, our neighbors, our woods, our gardens, our bees.  Out here you can see  your neighbor’s pasture, your neighbor’s cattle and their neighbors.  The weather doesn’t sneak up on you here, as it can in Andover, coming up over the woods to our west, it announces itself far in advance, scudding clouds, lightning, wind.  All out there.  There’s a frankness and an honesty in that.

    I only have two more writing days left, Sunday and Monday, but I’m very pleased with the amount of work I’ve gotten done.  In fact, as I hoped, this intense focus on Missing has let me see what I’ve been missing, this anchor to my day, the writing anchor.  I’ve let the ship slip its moorings and float away on the winds of Latin, art, politics, bees and gardening.  I need to bring this ship of daily writing back into harbor, keep it where its protected.

    It means, I know, a change in my schedule, an earlier rising and an earlier bedtime, but to be honest with who I am, I need to make the change.

    This has to be done while not losing the gains I’ve made in those other areas, that will be the trick.