• Tag Archives Jon
  • Fall

    Lughnasa                              Waning Green Corn Moon

    Even though summer seems to have arrived, or returned this week, I can already feel social rhythms beginning to change.  Fall has begun to peek up over the calendar.  Ads for school supplies have begun to appear.  I remember getting a  mimeographed sheet (remember mimeographs?) in elementary school of the things we would need:  lined paper, #2 lead pencils, paste, a paint set.  Those are the things that remain in my memory.

    They achieved totemic value for me.  These simple items carried the promise of learning, of new areas to explore, a new year away from home and in the company of other kids, at least for most of the day during the week.  Mom and I would go to Danner’s or Murphy’s 5 and 10 cent stores.  To this day I love going into office supply stores.  They bring back that anticipation and wonder.

    Many of our vegetables have matured and others are well on their way, the harvest season has begun as the celebration of Lughnasa marks.  The angle of the sun has begun to change and the days have continued to grow shorter since the Summer Solstice.  At the Autumn Equinox we will be halfway between the Summer Solstice and the Winter Solstice.

    Jon and Jen have started their new school years, back with the elementary school kids in Aurora, Colorado.  There’s news in their family, too.  Jon has partial shoulder replacement surgery this Wednesday, still fixing a skiing injury now three years old.

    Gabe has had 13 bleeds in the recent past, including a spontaneous bleed on his back and a swollen hand.  In trying to get factor into him he has suffered many sticks.  He has small veins.  He will get an internal port on August 27th so he can  receive factor infusions prophylactically instead of acutely.  This should give him a normal childhood and relieve the anxiety for Jon and Jen.  There is, though, one potential problem.  It is possible the body will develop antibodies against the factor.  That would make things tougher.  A balancing act.

    Kate’s going out there on Wednesday and will stay through Saturday.  We go see a neuro-surgeon tomorrow morning, still trying to track down more effective treatments.  She’s done very well with this degenerative disc disease, but it has not been easy.  She’s tough.


  • Waving As They Left

    Summer                        Waning  Summer Moon

    Duffel bags and cloth grocery bags went into the plastic Yakima carrier on top of the Colorado state car, the Subaru.  Ruth got in her car seat with the two spongy plastic balls Grandma bought her.  Gabe crawled through the morning grass and got some cutting on his Gap jeans and his pale blue shirt the color of his eyes.  Herschel came out, bounded up in the front with Ruth, then went, reluctantly to his place in the rear where he has a small fan to keep him cool.  Finally, Mom and Dad got in the front seat and the Olson family headed out for points west.

    Grandma and I stood, waving as they left.  We were sad to see them go.    Jon will have surgery on his shoulder on August 12th, surgery made necessary by his joint crushing fall now over two years ago.  Jen starts her work in a new school at the end of this month and she’s excited about that.  Ruth and Gabe will continue to head across to Marcella’s, or Humphrey’s as Ruth calls her long time day care provider.

    We’ll seem them again sometime in the fall; I may go out for a visit after Jon’s surgery to help out for a bit.  It still feels a bit odd to be the Grandparent, the one visited by the kids after a long drive away from home.  Odd, but good.

    Last night I scored a minor geek triumph.  My photoshop elements ceased functioning a good while ago, over three weeks.  This is a program I use a lot.  I got so frustrated with it that I took it to the Geek Squad.  They fixed my disappearing optical drives, sold me two more gigs of RAM but said pass on a photoshop fix.

    The guy suggested a repair install or a remove and reinstall.  I did both.  No joy.  I went through all the diagnostics I know the machine has available.  None there either.  Finally, late last night I went back to the chat rooms and found, on an Adobe forum, a possible fix.  I tried it.  Damn.  It worked!  Satisfaction.  Felt pretty damned good.

    Installing the two gigs of RAM was the first time in my long experience using computers that I had cracked the shell and done any work inside.  It took a bit of time and care, but, by god, I got them in and now this computer has three gigs of RAM.   More satisfaction.


  • You And Grandpop Are In My Heart.

    Summer                         Full Summer Moon

    Jon finished building and insulating a wall dividing our furnace room.  Behind this wall will go the produce which can keep over the winter:  potatoes, squash, onions, garlic, carrots, turnips and parsnips.  It will be our green grocer when the weather tips away from the summer solstice toward the winter one and beyond it.  In addition we will have canned tomatoes and greens, pickles, canned gazpacho, dried beans and canned beans, grape jelly and maybe currant.

    Jon has done a lot of construction for us, utilizing skills he learned while working for a remodeler after he finished Augsburg.  He built the garden shed near the house, put together the playhouse for grandkids, built the platform I work on in the computer room (where I am right now), a five stall dog enclosure in the garage as well as shelving on the walls.  He’s a talented guy, an artist, a teacher, a father and an expert extreme skier.

    The visit has been filled with sweet moments, but tonight at the dinner table there was this exchange between Kate and Ruth (3):  I love you Ruthie, you are in my heart.  I love you, too, Grandma. You and Grandpop are in my heart.  That stopped the conversation for a minute.

    They leave tomorrow morning for a drive across the Great Plains, one I’ve made many times since Jon first moved to Colorado.  It is a long drive, but a good one.  We’ll miss them.


  • Zoos and Us

    Summer                              Full Summer Moon

    Zoos have their detractors, but to this guy they stir a sense of wonder.  Two star tortoises walked their sandy space at an elegant trot.  Made me wonder what speed seems like to a tortoise.  Were they flyin’?  Hey, dude, slow down.  Not sure, but when the tortoise in front slowed, the other, tail-gating so close that his head was under the rear of the others shell, would bite the leader on the right leg.  This always made the other guy surge ahead.

    Not far from these guys a lone komodo dragon hung behind a tree, his forked tongue flicking in and out, carrying scent inside to his olfactory sensors.  He looked ornery and ready to act on it.  Just beyond him otters slept next to each other, a couple belly up, legs splayed out, the picture of contentment.  Gibbons swung on their impossibly long limbs from branch to branch, occasionally letting out their ear piercing and maniacal cry.  Right next to them was a tree kangaroo.  You’ve never heard of them?  Neither had I, but there he was, up in the tree no less.

    On the Minnesota Trail the wolverines were active.  They dug in a hole with great vigor, one pacing in the stream while the other worked, then shifting places.

    Ruth and Gabe loved  the coral reef tank filled with all manner of fish in colors so exotic no painter could accurately depict them.  They would be called slaves to bright colors if they did.

    After lunch we went on a mono-rail ride.  That’s ok, a novelty, but better for the little ones than for me.

    Our last stop was the Grizzly Coast exhibit, a batch of animals native to the Kamchatka Peninsula.  The grizzly bears captivate every one.  One guy swam in the water, making a play for the salmon at the bottom of the pool, but not a  very serious play.  He had been fed earlier.  Just keeping his reflexes sharp.

    We were there right at four hours which wore Grandpa out.  Now a nap.


  • Under the Full Summer Moon

    Summer                               Full Summer Moon

    The extended family got in the car and drove to the Osaka this evening.  Ruth, three  years old, downs sushi without aid of soy sauce and extra wasabi.  Gabe distributes food put before him in an arc around his high chair, smiling and gracious the whole time.  Jon, Jen and I share a common liking for raw fish prepared by Japanese chefs.  Ruthie may be part of that, too, but I wonder what she’ll say when she discovers its raw fish.

    The big puppies are inside tonight.  Another test of their domestication.

    Tuesday night the trash goes out here and I took the large plastic container down to the end of the driveway.  As I did a whitetail deer, a doe, perked her ears up and looked right at me, about 150 feet away.  We both stood motionless, with the exception of her ears, for five or six minutes.  I looked at her, she looked at me.  It was a sweet, natural moment between two species that have thrived in the suburban environment.  She will, no doubt, try to gain nutrition from our vegetable and flower gardens, but, then, so do we.

    The domesticity of the setting does not change that she is a wild animal.  She comes and goes with no permission needed or given.  Her visibility has its limits, usually we see deer around dusk, as tonight, but they are always somewhere nearby, tucked into a grassy bed or browsing in a hidden meadow.  The same is true of the groundhog, the Great Horned Owl, the gray squirrel, red fox, rabbits, mice, snakes, salamanders and frogs. Without the wild animal we would have no other against which to measure the degrees of our taming.  We, too, were once wild.  Now we live our lives inside right angles, with imitation suns and recorded music.

    There are, though, those moments, like tonight, when the domestic and the wild come close, brush each other in passing.  We can stand for a bit, gazing into one another’s realm, but the moments are fleeting, tendrils of time like the high cirrus clouds.   We return to the house or the brush, relieved we had a place to go, a safe place, a familiar place.

    Some of the same occurs each night when we look at the moon or the distant stars.  They represent places that, until 1969, no human had ever reached, even now the numbers are tiny.  12 men have walked on the moon, all between 1969 and 1972.  The moon is a wilderness, as is the deep space that surrounds it.  Wilderness will tolerate a human presence, but only if we agree to limit ourselves.  If we do not, we can destroy the wildness and once gone it is difficult to retrieve.

    Except, there are times when we stand and look wilderness in the eye until it twitches its white tail and gracefully exits.


  • 123456789 Tomorrow

    Summer                           Full  Summer Moon

    Woolly Mammoth Tom Crane sent this interesting note:

    I’ve been alerted to an event that will take place later this week, something that happens once and only once over the course of history. Shortly after noon on July 8, comes the moment that can be called 12:34:56 7/8/9.

    Don’t forget.  A once in our calendar moment.

    Now that the mulch pile has been moved I can turn my attention to other garden tasks like weeding the clover, checking for new potatoes and looking at the garlic.  Weeding vegetables and perennial flowers.  Harvesting vegetables.  Thinking about how to fill in that spot in the year, late June, with flowering perennials next year.

    Jon has one more carpentry task.  We want him to wall in a portion of our utility room to create a cool storage area for fruits and vegetables, an inside root cellar.  I don’t think it will be too complicated for him.  He’s very skilled when it comes to handyman type work.  Thank God.

    One of these morning we’re going to the zoo to see the grizzly bears.  I love to go to the zoo but its so far from here in Andover, almost 50 miles.


  • Woollys, Grandkids

    Summer                     Waxing Summer Moon

    Tomorrow we get the full on Summer Moon.  We’ll have a warm, but not hot night with a brilliant satellite.  No good for astronomy, but great for moon viewing, a favorite activity among the Japanese.

    Woolly’s met tonight at the Black Forest.  Mark, Stefan, Bill, Tom, Frank and myself showed up.  Mark got the dam site job.  He reports next Monday morning to Lock and Dam #1, the first official lock on the Mississippi River.  The job runs until the river ices over and the barges cannot come.  Stefan’s been giving himself fits over his children.  A potential liability of parenthood.

    I showed off the Kindle.  I’m a fan.

    Jon, Jen, Ruth and Gabe are back from a weekend in Chicago.  There was a Bandel family reunion with rooms at the Doubletree and visits to Grandma and Grandpa, Ruth and Gabe’s great-grandparents.  They are back here for four days, then they strike out for home in Denver.


  • The Grandchildren Are In The House

    Summer                                      Waxing Summer Moon

    Grandpas Bill Schmidt, Scott Simpson and Frank Broderick (Woolly Mammoths all) prepared me for the wonder of grandchildren.  They were spot on.  Ruth came in last night and said, “Hi, Grandpop!”  She had me at coming through the door.  Gabe got transferred from Dad to me soon after Jon came in the house.  Gabe looked up and gave me one of his trademark smiles, Happy to see you Grandpop.  That’s what I heard, though Gabe’s 1 year plus mouth formed no words.

    Herschel, their 6 year old German Shorthair, recently diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma, bounded in as if he had no stinking terminal illness.  He proceeded to pick up a small Ruthie sandal and run from one end of the house to the other with it in  his mouth.  This is Herschel’s way of signaling anxiety.

    The Olsons stopped to see the Johnsons in Nevada, Iowa.  Zelma Johnson, Jon’s grandma, still lives in this small Iowa town where Kate and her sisters grew up.  Due to estrangement from David, Jon’s father, Jon had not seen his grandma in a long time.  Jen got to meet Zelma and Zelma got to meet her great-grandchildren, Gabe and Ruth.  David and Kate were high school sweethearts.

    Kate got two cloth bags full of kiddy stuff at the dollar store.  Ruth opened her hers and took out each item and showed it to me, exclaiming happily as only small children can.  Retaining the  young child’s sense of of awe and wonder at simple things is a goal worth keeping at the forefront of our maturity.  Who needs a Lexus when she has a bubble maker?  Who needs a fancy house when there’s plenty of chalk to draw on the sidewalk?  Who needs fine clothes when a small electric fan with lights can entrance you?

    These visits, back and forth, them here, us there are critical to family cohesion.  They are why I still travel to Indiana and Texas for family reunions.  As Grandpa Frank put it, “You don’t have a family if you never see each other.”  True.


  • Puppy Dog Tales and Grand Kids

    Summer                                  Waxing Summer Moon

    Geez.  63 this morning.  I like it, but moving from peak BTU’s per square inch of flesh to late September makes the neck whiplash a bit.

    The grandkids arrive today.  Sometime this afternoon or evening.  We’ve done the usual things:  wash the bed linen in the guest bedroom, clean out the detritus that gathers in an empty room, moved furniture, worked on stains in the carpet.  We’ve also made a modest start toward kid-proofing the house.  Gabe’s a little too young to need much and Ruth seems wise enough to not make us very concerned.

    I’m glad to see them come, like the new puppies having Gabe and Ruth in the house will crank up the energy level and remind us of our embeddedness in the next generation.  Jon and Jen are good parents and fine friends so it’s a delight to see them come, too.

    There is an inevitable upset with the arrival of guests.  Routines change.  More people need consideration when deciding on something.  This can, usually does, create some tension and anxiety on all parties.  It is, simply, part of living in community and as part of a family.  My introverted personality makes me especially prone and my anticipation about guests gets tamped down as a result.  An unfair and unnecessary experience, but I don’t seem able to shake it.

    The next few days provide a learning opportunity for me.  I’ll report back here.


  • A Good Shed, Cleaned

    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.