Speak now, or forever hold your head!

This morning we headed off to do some errands. Just down the road a single coyote dash across about 50 yards or so in front of us. Native Americans know the coyote as a trickster, or a helper, or a creator. Since we're a little familiar with the myths surrounding coyote, we were promptly reminded that tomorrow night is precinct caucus. Time for "crafty intelligence, stealth, and voracious appetite."

Here's an up-to-date version of 

How to caucus in Minnesota

The linked page in turn contains a link to the Minnesota Secretary of State's web site, where you can find the location of your caucus if you don't already know.

What we haven't yet found is a cheat sheet summarizing each candidate's position on a number of key issues, copper-sulfate mining and single payer health insurance being to we find of particular interest. Some candidates have noted that the governor should be sure that the laws are followed and any permit that's issued for a copper-sulfate mine must be rigorously enforced. (Some of us are familiar with the lack of enforcement activities by some of our regulatory agencies when it comes to taconite and related mining activities.)

We understand the problems political candidates face with the need to not offend too many people in order to get elected in the first place. We also think that the pablum and pandering that passes for political discourse has become a large part of our national, state and local governance problem. Since we're going to be at our local Roads and Bridges committee meeting this evening, infrastructure offers a classic example. For some time now the US has been getting grades of D or less  on its infrastructure maintenance and development. Two people were killed recently in a train crash that's been described as avoidable. Minnesota hasn't increased its gas tax, or provided a meaningful alternative funding source for transportation, especially roads, for years. Meanwhile, our township has board members who think the solution is to pave every gravel road but haven't shown any analysis of what that would, or could, do to future budgets. Strong Towns keeps pointing out its concerns that we can't afford the roads we have. Meanwhile, we'd be happy if we could find some clear, definitive criteria for when a rural road should, or should not, be paved.

should this be paved? when? why?

Photo by J. Harrington

Absent any rational approach to managing where and how we live and get around, we strongly recommend participating in local government and attendance at precinct caucuses. It's barely better than undergoing root canal, but it seems to be all we have if we hope to maintain the facade we're at least nominally a democracy.

                     Developing the Land

By Stephen Behrendt

For six nights now the cries have sounded in the pasture:

coyote voices fluting across the greening rise to the east

where the deer have almost ceased to pass

now that the developers have carved up yet another section,

filled another space with spars and studs, concrete, runoff.

Five years ago you saw two spotted fawns rise

for the first time from brome where brick mailboxes will stand;

only three years past came great horned owls

who raised two squeaking, downy owlets

that perished in the traffic, skimming too low across the road

behind some swift, more fortunate cottontail.

It was on an August afternoon that you drove in,

curling down our long gravel drive past pasture and creek,

that you saw, flickering at the edge of your sight,

three mounted Indians, motionless in the paused breeze,

who vanished when you turned your head.

We have felt the presence on this land of others,

of some who paused here, some who passed, who have left

in the thick clay shards and splinters of themselves that we dig up,

turn up with spade and tine when we garden or bury our animals;

their voices whisper on moonless nights in the back pasture hollow

where the horses snort and nicker, wary with alarm.

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