• Tag Archives sheepshead

  • Worlds Opening Up

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                     Waning Wild Moon

    On the way into St. Paul tonight I listened to lectures on Epicureanism, Stoicism and Skepticism.  These were especially relevant and resonant for me since Latin is the native language of many who took them up, though their roots were in Greece.  They got me excited about reading Cicero and Polybius, maybe Marcus Aurelius in the original.  It was a fun intersection current learnings.

    Of course, in St. Paul, I play sheepshead with a group who have had varying relations with a Latinate institution, the Roman Catholic Church.  Mostly Jesuits, or ex-Jesuits rather, they have lived inside an institution directly influenced by the Latin language and Roman political culture.

    The  card gods smiled on me tonight, sending me several wonderful hands.  This does not always happen so it’s fun to play them when they come.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Commentary on Religion Faith and Spirituality Friends Humanities 📎and tagged

  • Vita brevis, ars longa

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                       Waning Wild Moon

    Sheepshead tonight.  We seem to pass around the points, playing as if each person should get a turn at the head of the list and everyone a turn in the barrel.  Always a good time.

    Tomorrow a public tour.  Stuff I enjoy.  Historical.  Highlights.  I’m still seeking a way to understand this world into which I emerged, a swimmer on the path to become a walker.  Objects, material objects, created by people with skilled hands, wild hearts and a need to create tell a part of the story.  They tell it from the inside out, the human experience filleted and boned, served up for others.  As I learn more, the ancientrail of the creator lays itself more and more open to me, oracle bones crackling in the fire, fish hooks made from bone, statues of bronze and brass, people molded from clay, ornaments from gold.  How do we wrap ourselves in the terrible passage of time, time that has seen the creators dead, dead long ago, gone, often, usually, nameless, yet the stuff they shaped continues on their journey, small capsules from the ancient past.

    We see it and walk past it, looking for the next best thing, passing by the cycladic figures, the woman of LaMouthe, the Greek vases, the section of wall from Ashur-bur-nipals splendid palace, walking on past them to see the show, the Louvre show or the modern galleries, some of the objects in those places made by people still alive, still breathing, their hands still working while the sculptor who shaped the rock into the plump representation of a woman does not.

    Museums are strange, often scary places if we look for the ghost, the hand behind the object, the living person with five fingers and a mother, creating with no thought that 15,000 years later–yes, 15,000 years later–we would pass by, maybe glance down, maybe not.  And what of 15,000 years from now?  17, 010 a.c.e.  Will someone walk past, glance down, wonder about who cared for this object, these objects, all those many years ago?


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

  • Bill Wins

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                              Waxing Blood Moon

    It was Bill’s night at sheepshead.  He came out the big winner.   I don’t feel bad.  I had some good hands, won some, lost some.  Had fun.

    Drive back I was on an entrance ramp to 35w coming off Hwy. 280.  It’s a two-lane that goes down to a one-lane.  Behind me two cars went into the last slot side by side.  They shot out once onto 35w.  The first past gave the other the finger.  Then, the other, tan car sped ahead, got in front of the other and slowed down.  What was notable about this?  Both women in their late twenties.


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

  • Soup

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                                          Waxing Blood Moon

    Various financial matters kept me inside till lunch when I took my best gal over to Osaka.  We ate a quiet lunch, both tired from the week.

    Back home I made a 4x serving of gazpacho which Kate will can tomorrow.  I take the recipe as a suggestion.  This time I added leeks, sweet corn and cilantro to the ingredients.  The garlic amount seemed modest to me so I doubled it.  A long time in one spot, but the pot has gone into the refrigerator to cool down.  A tasty soup.

    Tonight I play sheepshead with the Jesuits.  They’re smart guys and take the game seriously though we play for fun.  We’ll see how it goes tonight.


    📂This entry was posted in Cooking 📎and tagged

  • A Good Night at Cards

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                          Waxing Dyan Moon

    “After another night of losing sheepshead, it finally came to me.  These guys have been playing a lot longer than I have.  Bill since childhood.  Roy and Dick since high school and Ed since entering the Jesuits.  Now I view them as my mentors.  That way I can lose and learn, instead of just lose.”   from a May 7, 2009 post after I finished at the bottom again.

    Some nights the cards change and the tide flows with  you.  Last night I got great cards and did well.  Anything I’ve learned in this reprise of my brief sheepshead career in Appleton, Wisconsin, I’ve learned from these guys.

    Those cells I thought were queen cells were drone cells.  Drones have a life devoted to the vain pursuit of sex.  Sounds like the American teenager when I grew up.  Drones fly out and around, hoping to find a queen who needs him.  This is a very rare occurrence, so only the most fortunate of these bee princes ever become king for a day.

    Yesterday I planted squash, melons and beans, thinned the turnips and replanted carrots and beets.  The last time I dicentra09planted carrots and beets I didn’t water them in.  Probably should have.  The potatoes needed mounding and I discovered that the beets and turnips both benefit from mounding too.  If a portion of these tuberous vegetables stick up above ground, they turn green and inedible.

    The red car got expensive again and will get a bit more so.  This time it needed a new radiator and coolant flush, a flush of brake fluid and steering fluid, a new transmission gasket and a flush of the transmission fluid with new replacement fluids.  It probably also needs a new master brake cylinder, but I said no to that out of sticker shock.  After consulting the mechanic, I’m going to order the part and have it replaced.  Suddenly having no brakes is not a good thing.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees Friends permaculture 📎and tagged

  • Sheepshead Mentors

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                        Waxing Flower Moon

    After another night of losing sheepshead, it finally came to me.  These guys have been playing a lot longer than me.  Bill since childhood.  Roy and Dick since high school and Ed since entering the Jesuits.  Now I view them as my mentors.  That way I can lose and learn, instead of just lose.

    The flower moon is near full and so beautiful.  It overlooks all our seeds, our bees, our orchard.  The back deck may transform into a moon viewing platform since it has a nice view to the south and east where the full moons tend to linger.

    Paula Westmoreland came out today and we finalized plans for the garden transformation, the vegetable garden.  All the work will be done while I’m still in Panama City.  I’m excited to have more beds in which to plant vegetables and to have the vegetable garden have a more aesthetic feel.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden permaculture 📎and tagged

  • Ordinary Catastrophes

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring            New Moon (Seed Moon)

    My preparation for sheepshead foundered on two factors:  1.  I could not discipline myself to count points and keep track of trump.  I tended to lapse back into not counting.  2.  I had poor hands and bad luck in addition.  A tough combination to overcome.  Still, I can learn. I’m sure.

    Two tours tomorrow then over the weekend I will have time to work on setting up my new Gateway.  Must be the way guys used to feel when they went out to the garage to work on the car.

    Busy Busy Busy.  Not enough time to blog. Good tours today.  Interested kids and chaperons.  Ate lunch with three docent friends between tours.  One woman has a daughter on the east coast who just gave birth after a dangerous operation to remove a benign growth on her liver that could, the doctors felt, hemorrhage during the pregnancy.  Mother and baby are doing fine, but the birth, just this weekend was a long affair and left grandma tired.  This was in DC.  Meanwhile in LA a second daughter has begun another round of chemo to take down some metastases from the lung cancer she developed, at 31, last year.  She’s a non-smoker.

    Grandma seems exhausted, strong but emotionally wasted.

    Came home and took a two hour nap.  Now ready for the treadmill.


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

  • Life-Long Learning

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    7oaks250Imbolc    Waning Wild Moon

    My weatherblog has been up for almost a month now at the Star-Tribune Weatherwatchers site.  The weather has not been interesting.  It has been either really cold or not so cold.  Little snow.  No storms.  Some days gloomy, some days not.  It taxes me metaphorically to comment.  I never appreciated how difficult attending to relatively stable conditions could be.  It makes the whole concept of news make a lot more sense.

    I began yesterday a protracted period of study.  I need to get up to speed on the Sierra Club’s issues for the blog.  I have a special tour for Annie to put together, a piece on textiles and crafts.  In order to learn more about the weather I’ve decided to devote the next two or three weeks to cloud research since the type of cloud helps make the blog more weather savvy.

    After my wondrous sheepshead night last week, I’ve also decided to read my two sheepshead books and see if I can pick up some tips for my play.  A big one:  14 trump, not 13.

    On March 15th I have a presentation I’ve titled American Identity in the Time of Obama.  Work to do on that one, too.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Weather +Climate Writing 📎and tagged

  • Imagine Your Soul Traveling on a Lambent Beam

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    69  bar rises 29.85  0mph NE dew-point 68  Summer night with a full moon, steamy beautiful

    Full Thunder Moon

    Five of us sit down every 4 to 5 weeks or so and play sheepshead.  This is a game, as I’ve said before, peculiar to eastern Wisconsin and there among the German community where it is also known as schotskopf.  Sheepshead is the thin glue that gives us an excuse to sit together, laugh and be amused at the spectacle of ourselves.

    As I grow older, it is these close gatherings of friends that provide the social cohesion I need.  My needs may be less than most, but they are not non-existent.  These men, all save me variously Catholic, from not anymore to still engaged in the work, have wry, knowing attitudes toward life, attentive to the ridiculous and the tender.  I am more when I return than when I left.

    And something to be said for the moon.  A perfect circle, silvered white and suspended in the sky with stars and planets gathered round.  On the nights of the full moon the dark opens its arms to secret pacts, whispered love and the breath of Diana, huntress and defender of the forest.

    Take a moment and step outside, stand under the Full Thunder Moon and let it shine on you.  Imagine your soul traveling on a lambent beam to the moon and back, gazing down toward the spinning blue globe as you come home.  This dance of the planets and their satellites around the greater gravity of Sol creates and destroys.  Shiva Nataraja.

    Amen.


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality Friends Great Wheel 📎and tagged

  • I’m Not Sure I’m a Unitarian-Universalist. I Suppose That Removes All Doubt.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    43 bar steady 30.01 0mph NE dewpoint 36  Spring

                 Waxing Gibbous Moon of Growing

    At last.  A night where I was not the biggest loser at sheepshead.  Bill Schmidt and I tied for high for the evening.  I had great cards and some good luck, plus I’ve had a long lesson in sheepshead from masters.  It was fun to do well at last.  We’ll see if I’ve actually learned something as the games continue.

    Kate and I watched Mission to Mars, most of it.  A surprising, hopeful Mars film.  Many films about Mars end with everybody dying, but this one offered an improbable, but not impossible conceit about how life came to earth.  What?  You’ll have to catch it to find out.

    Tomorrow I have two tours, a Weber and a Concerning the Spiritual in Art, focused on non-Western religions.

    The presentation for Groveland took an odd, but interesting turn today as I got ready to get started.  I had decided to face head on the question of UU identity by talking about identity development from a psycho-religious perspective.  The idea was to offer resources Groveland could use to develop a UU identity.   When I began to write, I started with a couple of U-U jokes.  Then I remembered an old anthroplogy lesson about joking behavior.  Our jokes define the boundaries of our group; they are an important device through which we can know who is in our group and who is not.  I’ll explain this a bit more later, but the presentation should be a lot of fun.

    Due to various things I didn’t exercise from Saturday through Tuesday.  My back began to spasm and remind me one of the good reasons for all this time I spend with weights and flexibility work.  So, I got back to it yesterday.  Yesterday and today I did a particular series of movement exercises which go a long way toward a more limber me.  They worked.  All better now.


    📂This entry was posted in General 📎and tagged