• Tag Archives Packers
  • A Good Day

    Samhain                                     Full Dark Moon

    Rigel and Vega spent much of the day defending us from visiting neighborhood dogs.  Of course, thanks to our record setting fence-lines no battle could be joined, but jaw-boning was much in evidence.  This evening they came in, flopped down on the couch and went to sleep.  That is except for the show on birth and babies in the animal kingdom.  Rigel turned her head toward the TV and watched a mule-deer born, penguins enfolding their single chicks and musk-ox turn to face down the white wolves of the Arctic.  Would loved to have been inside her head.

    Kate worked outside today, weeding the blue-berry patches and other parts of the orchard.  The good news is the clover has become established and has choked out the weeds.  The bad news is that the clover threatens to choke out the blue-berries.  Sigh.  She is only two weeks out from her procedure tomorrow.  Amazing.

    Our defended (defenced?) vegetable garden can now be worked without fear that a Rigel or a Vega will come along later and try to emulate any digging I might have done.  Their work is not up to my exacting standards.  The last greens came out today with the exception of some Swiss Chard that still has vitality.  All that’s left in the garden now are strawberry plants, asparagus, garlic, parsnip and carrots.  The first two are perennials, the latter three crops from this year that can stay in the ground for a while, carrots, or need to over winter, the parsnip and garlic.

    I couldn’t bring myself to patch the damage from the dogs.  It is quite extensive and I find myself reactive when I work on it.  It will keep until next spring.

    Then of course there was the Vikings-Packer game.  Our defense had a bit of a let down late in the third quarter and the first part of the fourth, but they played brilliantly otherwise.  So did Favre.  At one point a Packer named Jennings fell on the Viking sideline very near Favre.  Favre’s concern and his action, bending down to see how Jenning’s was, moved me.  He seems to genuinely care for his team mates both current and former.  He also plays like a little boy, jumping and waving his arms, picking up players who’ve just scored a touchdown.

    After the game he had an interview in which he spoke warmly of the Packers and the fans there.  It was a mature and sensitive moment.

    It’s fun to see him play as a Viking.  Didn’t think I’d feel that way, but I do.


  • The First Time in the History of the World

    Fall                                     Full Blood Moon

    Appropriate that this Vikings-Packer game will be played under a full blood moon.   If one could, in some fantastic realm, collate all the words written and spoken, each image reproduced either moving or still that focused on just this game, you would have a tome and a webpage of impenetrable length and size, compared, that is, to the time an individual would take to parse it all.

    Then place the weight of this event, referred to by an announcer tonight as the “first time in the history of the world,” against the weight of the slightest child in Darfur, the gradual build up of gases in the atmosphere, the plight of any American citizen without health insurance and the game deflates to the size, perhaps, of a football.  Which is where it belongs.

    All that said, I will be on the couch watching it and not out stopping starvation in Bangladesh, working on the Sierra Club’s upcoming legislative priorities or pressing my congress people for a decent deal on health care.  No, I will take part in an even more ancient human activity, competition between rival clans, competition engaged by the healthiest and the stoutest of each side.  Tonight it will be the Cheesehead versus the Viking.  In all fairness, now, in a battle between a piece of cheese and a valiant Scandinavian pillager, who would you picke?