• Tag Archives tours

  • Long Day

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    22  bar steep fall 29.71  1mph SSW  windchill  22   Samhain

    First Quarter Moon of Long Nights

    Two tours.  2nd graders.  Fun, but not as much fun as the dual language immersion kids.  A home-schooling group.  Some of the boys looked like they might go all Columbine except they had no school.  Could not get them to talk.  The moms, however, enjoyed the tour.

    A long day, from 9am-3pm, long for a home boy like me anyhow.  I took an Alleve before I went and that seems to have worked well.

    Tomorrow Sierra Club anti-racism training.  Now it’s about the inner work, the soul work of organizing.  Hmmm.  We’ll see.  The budget numbers for the state will make the next session pretty interesting.


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

  • Practical Paranoia

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    20  bar falls 30.52  1mph ESE  windchill 19  Samhain

    Last Quarter of the Dark Moon

    Second graders from a dual-language immersion school trailed after me through the museum.  We went up on the elevator, always a hit and proceeded once on the third floor to Tanguy.   Sophia, or was it Sarah, said, “It looks like the artist created a bunch of shapes so we could figure out what was there.”  Reasonable working definition of surrealism.

    At Ensor’s Intrigue we found a face on the painting that I’d never noticed, a face in the lower right hand corner.  Here the kids expressed concern about the baby slipping, “She’s not holding the baby very well, and the other people are yelling at her.”  Since this was a Spanish immersion school and since it was mid-November, the somewhat festive atmosphere and skeletons lead to a consensus:  Day of the Dead.

    At Dr. Arrieta, Jared, a small Mexican boy who spoke no English proudly read out the Spanish language inscription.  In this case the group decided Goya was a woman who looked old because she had gray hair and wrinkles.  At they didn’t say, really old.

    We were done after three pieces, but Kyle noticed Theseus and the Centaur, so we looked at it.  Camryn, who requires hearing augmentation (I wore a receiver/transmitter so she could hear me.), made this observation, “He’s trying to kill him because humans are not supposed to have horses legs.”

    As I left, Virylena, a sweet faced Mayan girl, said, “Wait. We don’t know the way out.”

    The teacher, however, assured her that she knew the way out.

    paranoia400.gifAfter the tour I waited in the coffee shop for Mike Elko.   He had an exhibit in the Minnesota Artists Exhibition space a month or so ago.  I bought a digital print of one of his pieces.

    We talked art for a while. He believes prints, and art in general, should be simple to read and grasp.  His work all has humor in it.  He showed Careen Heegard and me some pieces from an upcoming show at the HighPoint Print co-op.  He has taken pictures from old school dictionaries, like a bantam rooster and put a saddle on the rooster, complete with a child in riding gear ready to mount.

    I’m tempted to hang a sign under this piece once I get it framed that will read:  Never Again.  This period in our political history and in particular this aspect of it, the demagogic fear mongering, has weakened our democracy and attenuated our freedoms.


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

  • Love and Politics

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Another busy week.  Guess it’s a good thing we’re headed to Colorado on Saturday.  Time for a rest.

    Yesterday I worked outside all morning, then took a nap, worked out and went to the Woollys at Paul’s house.  We talked about love.  Love was central to each of our lives and, we all agreed, to the Woolly’s.  Scott talked about the tough, tough time financial planners had in the last month and how it had been very difficult for him personally.  Stefan spoke of his children and the active love a houseful of teens requires.  Frank feels bringing novelty to people’s often boring lives is a way to show love.  Bill read poetry.  Love, marriage (31 years), fear and family dominated Paul’s presentation.  My stuff you read yesterday.

    This morning I worked on material for the Sierra Club’s Ex-Com, it’s local (Minnesota) board of directors.  I have to present a report on the candidates whose races we chose for targeted effort.  That’s tonight at 7:30pm.

    This afternoon the Africa checkout tour tomorrow morning at 9:30 requires my attention.  Then, phone-calling at the Sierra Club tomorrow night.  After that I can return to work outside until we leave on Saturday.


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

  • Reading the OED

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    90  bar steady 29.83  0mph NNW dew-point 59  sunrise 6:18  sunset 8:14  Lughnasa

    Full Corn Moon  moon rise 2053  moonset  0816

    The salmon is in the house.  So is the shrimp.  And ice.  Plus beer, NA, diet pop and bottled water (for entertaining purposes only).  We have the leaves in the dining room table, the first time since we bought the table a year ago.  It’s long.  Really long.  Kate has the triangle of refrigerator, sink, stove cordoned off and wants no helpers in there.  I don’t think anybody will fight her for the privilege.

    Who said late August had no heat.  Not this guy.  With 90 and dewpoint at 59 outside dining stretches the Minnesota tolerance limits.  Good thing we have air conditioning and tables inside, too.

    Got an Amazon order.  A couple of things that look fun.  Reading the OED, a guy who read the entire OED in one year.   Also, the Landmark Herodotus, an annotated version of the Histories.  There’s something about history and  historiography that fascinates me.

    My first two tours of the new academic year have come in over the transom.  4th graders from Lakeville who want to see things Made In America and an MIA patron who wants a tour with an emphasis on Korea.  Be good to strap back into the harness and pull a wagon or two.

    I’m off to sweep the patio and arrange furniture.


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

  • The Hydroponics Are On

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    34  bar rises 29.50 3mph NNW dewpoint 31  Spring

                   First Quarter Moon of Growing

    The calendar says spring; the snow says not yet.  It’s all moisture, though, and if it doesn’t run away to rivers and streams, some of this goes to recharge ground water and aquifers.  A good thing whether it comes chilled or just wet.

    Last night it looked the drive in to the MIA this morning would be a nightmare.  Predictions of 1 foot snow depths and high winds could have lead to blizzard conditions.  The temperatures never dropped far enough.  So, instead of a foot of snow we got about 3 inches of slush, suitable for snow cones if not so oil impregnated.  The drive in was uneventful.

    Sachei Makabe brought her kids from Robbinsdale.  Marilyn Smith and I divided them up and took them through Weber.  Each one of the Japanese language classes I’ve taken through have been attentive, observant and interested.  Can’t ask for more than that.  The diversity in the classes surprise me.  There seem to be far more Asian, Latino and African American students than Caucasian.  This speaks well for the schools and the students but only reinforces the dismal record us white folks have with learning a second language.  I’m one of those who never learned.  Shame on me.

    Came home.  Kate had a great lunch made with fish, green beans and acorn squash.  I added a salad. 

    After the nap I got out the books and handouts for the hydroponics and got started.  The meter I got a couple of weeks ago I handed over to Kate because it required precision and a chemistry background, neither one of which characterizes me.  It will help us quickly diagnose problems and repair them.  It measures ph, temperature and conductivity.  All of these measures have to do with the uptake of nutrients, though I don’t understand the relationships by any means at this point.

    The lettuce seedlings that I started a few weeks ago have started to push roots through the rock wool medium.  This signals the time to transplant them to the hydroponics.  Each planter in the smaller hydroponic system (We have two.) has round lava rocks which hold moisture, but do not interfere with the plants root system reaching the nutrient bath in the reservoir below the planters.  It took 3 gallons of nutrient solution to fill the reservoir to the 2 1/2″ depth recommended.

    The nutrient goes into the reservoir through the planters.  This charges the lava rocks.  Then I got a pair of forceps (Adson’s, Kate says.) and plucked the rock well medium out of the seedling beds one at a time.  With a soup ladel I scooped lava rocks out and let them sit in the left over nutrient solution while I positioned the small cube of rock wool and its single lettuce plant.  When I had it where I wanted, one per planter, I scooped the lava rocks around the cube.  Planted.  It’s a strange process compared to gardening directly in mother earth, but it’s fun, too.

    After the nutrient solution was in the reservoir, a plastic tub in essence, I plugged the pump into the black tubing that leads inside the reservoir to a plastic tube with two airstones.  Airstones are permeable and the bubbling of oxygen through them creates a nutrient rich mist that reaches the bottom of the planters.  The roots of the lettuce seedlings will head down, through the lava rock to the mist.

    With the small pump sighing the only thing left was to switch on the Halide light.  It’s a big thing, 250 watts, with a ballast that feels like a large rock  in weight.  It now glows about 22 inches above the seedlings.   The distance is necessary while the seedlings are still  young and fragile.  After they become well rooted and mature, I’ll move the lamp down to 6 to 12 inches above them.  It will be on roughly 16 hours a day.

    We’ve begun.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Garden Great Work Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • Doing Those Things I Would Not Do And Vice Versa

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    58  bar steep fall 29.69 1mph S dewpoint 34 Spring

        Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

    “Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.” – Lucius Annaeus Seneca

    I’ve had two instances of this this week and I seem to have trouble learning the lesson.  On Wednesday AM Heather, who manages the corral in the museum’s lobby, demanded my presence and Grace Googins.  We were needed immediately, at 9:50 AM, to greet our 10:00 tours.  When we showed up a bit later than she liked, she was rude and insistent that “a memo had gone out.”  Later, I confronted her, told her I did not like her attitude.  She had an attitude and her facts were wrong.  Our tour group, it turned out, didn’t show up until 10:10 AM.  She apologized later, but I was still angry.  My reaction to her injured me, a lesson I recognize from years of being angry at my father.  Still, not a lesson I’ve learned.  Such confrontations weigh on me.  I need to learn a new style.

    This morning I had a chance to indicate I’d learned a lesson.  Michelle Byfield-Stead was the lead docent for a tour I had agreed to do as a sub for Careen Heegard.  This was the third time I had Michelle as a lead docent.  Each time she has called at the last minute, last night it was late in the evening, and had this excuse or another.  I have never had a tour with her where she was prompt.  This is disrespectful and downright annoying.

    So, I could have gone in this morning and assertively explained to her my problem.  Instead, I only saw her in a group and I was rude.  Again, not a positive response.  I was downright passive aggressive.  Geez.  I know better than this, but somehow, every once in a while, especially if I’m really irked, I act out.  Not always, but sometimes. 

    Still niggling at me even now.  Sigh.   I expect better of myself, but like Paul, find myself doing those I would not do and not doing those things I would.


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

  • Fireman’s Robes and an Ugly Bureaucrat

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    42  bar falls 2mph SSE dewpoint 26 Spring

              Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

    Two tours today, both Weber, but very different.  The first was a Shakopee Japanese language group who had some very sharp kids.  They were with Hotei, the Moon, the calligraphy, the tea ceremony, Genji, the Bull and the fireman’s robes.  The second group was from a city recreational center.  There were 11 kids.  They started out a bit disinterested, but I began with Shokei, the ugly man denied a job as a Chinese bureaucrat after passing the exam.  They liked that story and the fact that he rode a tiger.  They also liked the rice planting and harvesting screen, the rabbit looking at the moon, the tea bowls, the black bull and the cranes.  The fireman’s robes are a great hit with kids of all ages.  We ended by looking at Mickey Mouse on the kimono.  Good groups, engaged and interested.  Fun.


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

  • What Do the Shang Kuei and the Zhou Kuei Have In Common?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    39  bar falls 30.21 7mph NNE dewpoint 14

               Full Moon of Winds

    Warren Wolfe handed out a sheet at the Woolly retreat, a project development sheet that involves identifying a project or activity that compels us in some way.  I missed his presentation since I left early for Hawai’i, so I have to fill it out now.  The answer that keeps coming up for me is the permaculture work Kate and I plan here. 

    The whole notion of working with our land so that it grows healthier and we gain more foodstuffs from it attracts me, as I’ve said earlier.  With Warren’s notion I can keep this work both before a group who can help me with my accountability and have a built in audience, too.  I’m writing about it here to let those of who read this know.  You can enter my circle of accountability, too, if you wish.

    As the notion becomes clearer, I write here, on the Permaculture page, what exactly we intend to do for this year.  I don’t know enough quite yet to put down objectives, but I imagine they will mostly be preparatory.  There are projects from last year that will get finished anyhow like the firepit and converting most of the raised beds to vegetables.  There are two that will get some work done on them this year, but will probably not finish:  the grandkids playhouse in the woods and the root cellar.  The Permaculture work is in addition to these already planned projects.  

    Still deep in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, trying to decide how to present a large collection of bronze vessels that can be daunting for first-time viewers.  I’ve made a couple of decisions.  We’ll start in the Neolithic ceramics, the 1st case in the ceramics gallery and move to the Bronze Age ceramic case before we head over to the Bronze gallery.  This will place the development of bronze squarely in the material culture roots from which it sprang.  It will also show the mutual interaction between bronze vessel design and ceramics.  Bronze imitates ceramics at first, then, later ceramics imitate bronze. 

    The Shang and the Zhou get equal treatment in my mind so far, but I haven’t selected actual objects.  The Shang kuei and hu, the Pillsbury owl (tsun), the ritual bell, the ting all seem likely to make the cut.  But, we’ll see.  Many more pages to read and objects to see.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Great Work Our Land and Home Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • Tea Master for a Day

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    46  bar falls 29.96 3mph NNW dewpoint 25

              Waxing Gibbous Moon of Winds

    Last night the moon of winds cast shadows on our yard, elongated dogwoods, thick oak trunks and thin lines of multiple raspberry canes.  This point in the seasonal change is delicate.  Thin ice forms a lattice over the snow while tiny drops of water gather along the roof line ready to plummet the final distance to the earth.  Snow and grass play encirclement with grass spreading outward from trees and shrubs while the snow holds its own over the lawn, the hills and prairie grass.  Here there daubs of photosynthetic green have begun to appear.  Rosemary beneath the steps.  Tufts of grass up close to the house.  It is a gradual change for the moment, but soon the earth will leap and shout, fly flags of bright colors and clothe itself again in verdant splendor.

    Tour today with students, 6th graders, from a Muslim school in Fridley.  As near as I could tell, the kids were mostly Somalia, all born here, but there parents emigrated.  I had the boys, David Fortney had the girls.  We circled each other for half an hour in the Islamic gallery as these children drank in the physical objects of their cultures, linking themselves to the Seljuk Turks, the Safavid Persians and the Mughals of India.  After half an hour we went into the Weber Collection (Japanese traveling exhibition).  I asked them to become tea masters selecting objects for a tea ceremony for persons unfamiliar with Japanese art.

    We saw Hotei reach for the moon and a Zen monk’s ordination festival.  We learned wabi from the Negoro ware with its faded red lacquer, worn and used; we learned sabi from the tea wares, especially the lumpy and imperfect mizusashi.  I read them a Daoist poem and its conversion into a Buddhist poem by the extraction of only one line, spun downward in a flowing cursive script.  Time went fast and at the end they picked objects for their tea ceremony:  8 Views of Xiao and Xiang, the delicate miniature Song dynasty-like landscape, the Negoro spoon, the tea caddy with a silk cover, Oribe teaware and a few dishes for tea food.  Then we were done.

    Afterward I copied and copied and copied, even to the end of the toner cartridge, material on Chinese bronzes.  I have a tour on Saturday that will focus only on our Chinese bronzes.  I chose them because I wanted to go deeper into the world of early Chinese dynasties like the Shang and the Chou and the Han.


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