66\u00a0 bar steady 30.06\u00a0 1mph NE dew-point 48\u00a0 sunrise 6:09 sunset 8:27\u00a0 Lughnasa<\/p>\n
First Quarter of the Corn Moon\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 moonrise 1533\u00a0 moonset 2334<\/p>\n
We will never be an advanced civilization as long as rain showers can delay the launching of a space rocket.\u00a0 George Carlin, RIP<\/p>\n
The drum tower in Beijing.\u00a0 Anyone who’s gone on the one week quickie tour of Beijing and environs has at least had a chance to climb it.\u00a0 As early as the Han dynasty (206bce to 220ace), these towers used drums and bells to mark dawn and dusk. Kate and I climbed the drum tower when we visited Beijing in 1999. (I think it was 1999.)\u00a0 I recall it as a dusty place with open areas used for storage, like an old barn.\u00a0 Three stories high it had a commanding view of a market and one of the old style Beijing neighborhoods.\u00a0 We were there at the end of December and the drum tower was cold in the way only bare, featureless spaces can be cold.\u00a0 A sort of existential chill.\u00a0 Maybe Kate didn’t go up, I do not remember now.<\/p>\n
The death of Todd Bachmann, CEO of the premier garden center corporation in the Twin Cities, shocked me.\u00a0 Many of our plants started their life at Bachmann’s.\u00a0 Long ago in another life I was in a year long class with a Bachmann who had chosen the Lutheran ministry.\u00a0 Then, too, there is the somehow stronger link with the site itself.<\/p>\n
So often when events happen abroad, they happen in a place that is at best abstract:\u00a0 Darfur, say, or Baghdad, Ossetia, even Jerusalem.\u00a0 Once you have been there, walked those streets, seen the heaped up spices and vegetables in the market near the drum tower, then what happened is no longer abstract or far-away because the context is available to your own sensorium.\u00a0 My feet recall the climb in the cold December weather.\u00a0 My eyes recall the sights of the market and the small shops.<\/p>\n
A strange sense of lassitude has come over me today.\u00a0 On Sunday I do not work out, so there is a feeling of expansiveness, but also relaxation, a similarity to the sabbath.\u00a0 The weather is perfect, moderate, sunny, low dew-point.\u00a0 A great day to work outside, but digging out the firepit seems to have used up that motor for right now.\u00a0 Even so, I’ll probably pick up the spade and spading fork and begin removing day lilies to new locations.<\/p>\n
This is a task that has a window, a window created by the ideal time to transplant iris, August.\u00a0 In this way my time must conform to the garden.\u00a0 It is a happy bondage, though, and one to which I willingly submit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
66\u00a0 bar steady 30.06\u00a0 1mph NE dew-point 48\u00a0 sunrise 6:09 sunset 8:27\u00a0 Lughnasa First Quarter of the Corn Moon\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 moonrise 1533\u00a0 moonset 2334 We will never be an advanced civilization as long as rain showers can delay the launching of a space rocket.\u00a0 George Carlin, RIP The drum tower in Beijing.\u00a0 Anyone who’s gone on … Continue reading An Existential Chill<\/span>