Happy 2023, Happy Spring, Happy Cetus and more!

It has been a long time since our last update, so much to catch up on, so this will be a quick overview. More to come, hopefully, in the weeks to come.

Ok, we made it to the equinox, now the days are longer than the nights for the next half-year. We still have snow on the ground (of course). If you recall, we used to have an annual “ice classic” contest where our friends, both in real life, and on social media, would vote on what day the snow and ice would be completely melted on our property. The pandemic and changes in social media have put a hold on that tradition over the past couple of years. This year we will also forego the contest, mainly because our grounds are still a bit of a mess with construction debris from the last six months buried under the snow (more about that later). With that said, I expect that it will be mid-May, if not later, before the snow is completely gone. This is a mixed blessing, the end of winter, when it is not actively snowing, is perhaps the most beautiful time of year, especially with a clear sky at night when the Northern Lights are out on fully display. The road is as smooth as it ever gets, with a snow layer filling in all of the ruts and potholes, and with each day getting longer and warmer, it is hard not to feel more optimistic about the upcoming year.

So what have we been doing? I will start off with what we have not been doing. Sadly, I have not done much yet with my Theremin. I still enjoy playing around with it and have found a few teachers online whom I hope can get me over the initial hurdles inherent with learning any instrument. My main impediment is of course time and discipline. Also I did complete my first Pali course, it was great! Highly recommended, but I did not follow up with the second and third course (maybe in the future) due to the really BIG event!

For those who do not know, we welcomed our eighth, and final, new addition to our family last fall. Cetus Diogenes Bender. In case it is not obvious, we have a celestial naming scheme. Our kids first names are stars, constellations, or asterisms. And, of course, the names celestial objects themselves have stories and mythological references imbedded within. Cetus is the whale or, as we prefer, the sea monster. Although many people pronounce the initial sound of Cetus with an “S” or a “CH” sound, we pronounce it with a “K” as in the Classical Greek version on his name, κῆτος.

As for our children’s’ middle names, they are more variable: honoring either a family member, or a mathematician, philosopher, or scientist. For example, our seventh child, our daughter is Polaris Hypatia, named after one of the first, and most prominent, neoplatonic philosophers and mathematicians (Ὑπατία in Greek) who was sadly murdered by a mob of what we would now call fundamentalist Christians.

Because Cetus will be our last child, choosing an middle name was more difficult. My original suggestion was to name him after Dignāga, the Indian logician and philosopher of language. We went through several other options (I also suggested Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti) and eventually we landed on Diogenes (Διογένης in Greek) who was notable for a few things, one as a founder of the Cynical philosophical tradition in our Western culture (which has some similarities to the Madhyamika school of both Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti), and second for dying after eating raw octopus.

This provides a cautionary tale to avoid potentially dangerous scenarios for both Polaris and Cetus. Namely to avoid:

1. crowds of angry religious zealots
2. eating raw octopus

The other big event has been an on-going series of home improvement and construction projects starting last summer. The initial goal was to complete these (or at least the first phase) before Cetus was born. That did not happen, but at least an end (if not the end) is finally in sight. Much more later, but these include:

1. Building a new animal pen to house goats
2. Cleaning the garage (we still had boxes from our initial move 10 years ago)
3. Upgrade our off-grid electrical system (increase capacity and finally prepare for solar)
   • 9 kW diesel generator
   • 12-15 kW inverter / battery charger / solar charge controller
   • 38 kWh LiFePO4 battery bank
   • Upgrade home to 240 VAC split-phase power (aka, standard US power system)
4. Renovate Laundry Room (implied by the electrical upgrades)
5. Remodel Bathroom (required due to extensive water damage and laundry room renovation)
6. Garage renovations (required since batteries and inverter have moved to the garage

That update, or rather series of updates, is a much longer story that will be told over a series of blog posts that will include lessons-learned. Stay tuned!