earth, air, fire, water

My weekend contained all the elements of a springtime ritual.

I tore myself away from some overdue garden tasks late Saturday afternoon to drive a couple of hours north. Meaning I didn't get much of anything done at home: didn't mow, didn't prep beds, didn't build coldframes, didn't turn the compost, didn't remove the pile of trimmed branches. The morning rain gave way to a clear afternoon. Traffic was light, so I got to Northeast Swingstate University in good time and met my freshman roommate RF at the Days Inn.

It was so windy that most of the candles were blown out during the candlelight vigil, but at least it didn't rain. The group that gathered on the Commons was the usual mix of old and young faculty, staff, students, and former students. Afterward, we found a carry-out - he got Bud Lite and I got Heineken - and went back to the motel to catch up. His daughter, an elementary school principal, has a new job as director of curriculum in a neighboring school district; his son, a carpenter, has been building horse barns in Kentucky all winter. His sister is a retired school librarian; his brother is a high school teacher and coach; his nephew plays quarterback at Toledo. My son works in a bookstore and lives in New York; my daughter works in a bookstore and lives at home. We watch part of a remarkably bad "Diehard" movie and a hilariously campy black-and-white thriller about a crazed scientist who keeps his girlfriend's head alive in the laboratory after a fatal accident.

We met for breakfast, per the usual routine, and the fieldhand omelette at Mike's Place was excellent, as usual. The conversation turns to politics, as it always does, and we compare the positions, political skills, and electability of Obama and Hillary. We don't agree on everything. RF doesn't like cities, for example. We do agree on having low expectations of even an election as historic as the one upcoming. Things change incrementally if at all. This is not a revolution.

It was Sunday morning, so I decided to go to church, and the UU church on Gougler St. was easy to find, conveniently located across the street from a little park along the Cuyahoga River. Since I had some time, I took a walk from one end of the park to the other, sunned myself on the rocks beside the rapids, just like the turtles, and did a taiji form on a little observation deck the city was nice enough to provide.

The church itself, an little old red brick structure facing a main street, felt very welcoming. Some of the people there knew people at my church, so I felt at home away from home. It was a lay-led service, without the regular minister, and it was Beltane, so there were scads of flowers, big bowls of water, little stones, candles, and songs about fertility and the earth.

I made it back to campus in time for most of the afternoon program on a sunny hillside. A couple of student activists received scholarships for their efforts. They gave a plaque to a couple of professors who wrote a book together and have given support to the annual event. One of them was my political science professor, a young untenured instructor who played touch football (this was before the invention of flag football) with our dorm intramural team, but he is no spring chicken now.

William Kuntzler's daughter gave a speech about her late father's work. An ex-Marine gave a fiery speech about continuing to resist the war machine that kills its own young. I bought a new baseball cap at the student center bookstore and wore it home. I took route 3 instead of the interstate for variety, and it only took an extra half hour. After a quick bite to eat, I still had time for a good 90-minute bike ride down to Inniswood and up to Plumb Road and back before the sun went down, all of which made me feel more grounded, even though I still hadn't finished my chores.