It's November, be thankful

'Tis a weekend of Halloween and Samhain. Whether you consider it a trick or a treat, don't forget to turn your clocks back to standard time. With luck, skill, organization and numbers, on November 4 we'll also start to turn history back toward something more approaching standard. Speaking of history, November is National Native American Heritage Month.

no signs yet of the northern migration

Photo by J. Harrington

As of moments ago, the Minnesota Vikings undefeated streak ended with a loss to the Detroit Lions. Almost all Minnesota sports fans have become accustomed to treats and tricks and heartbreaks. 'nuff said.

In honor of Native American Heritage Month, the Better Half and I stopped by Birchbark books this afternoon. I followed in Oscar Wilde's footsteps ("I can resist everything except temptation.") and came away with three titles:

• WE ~ Layli Long Soldier 

• Kincentricity - Connecting to Nature with American Indian Food Traditions, ~  Enrique Salmon, and 

•  Living Resistance ~ Kaitlin Curtice

Even with a super El Niño this winter, I'm going to spend time inside, reading, drinking coffee with my feet up, and doing what I can to enjoy life. My current strategy is to eat more healthy and think more healthy to feel more healthy. I'm beginning to take quite seriously Dana Meadows observations in Dancing with Systems:

"People who are raised in the industrial world and who get enthused about systems thinking are likely to make a terrible mistake. They are likely to assume that here, in systems analysis, in interconnection and complication, in the power of the computer, here at last, is the key to prediction and control. This mistake is likely because the mindset of the industrial world assumes that there is a key to prediction and control."

Her identification of the type of terrible mistake, it seems to me, is even more applicable to those who would sell us Artificial Intelligence instead of offering us wisdom. That mistake is compounded by the buyers of AI systems. As Meadows further notes: "But self-organizing, nonlinear feedback systems are inherently unpredictable. They are not controllable. They are understandable only in the most general way. The goal of foreseeing the future exactly and preparing for it perfectly is unrealizable. The idea of making a complex system do just what you want it to do can be achieved only temporarily, at best...."

From much of the reading I've done in the last couple of decades, Native Americans in many?, most?, all? of their world views seem to have a much more realistic understanding of the natural systems on which we depend for the basics of life. We should, I believe, pay lots more attention to their perspectives.

Kaitlin Curtice

From Glory Happening 

God,
If there is some mysterious order of things that holds the world together,
we don’t really know about it.
What we know is what we see and feel and touch, what we partake of with the senses.
We know how to feed each other,
to take in beauty,
we share moments with created things,
to remember that we are tethered to each other
for a greater and deeper good,
for a true and lasting holiness.
This seems to be Kin-dom where Kin-dom can be understood in tiny bits and pieces,
tiny things that keep us longing for more of you.
Iw, amen.1

1. Poems have been edited since their original publication.

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Once burned, twice shy?

Local soy bean fields are (all?) harvested. Field corn harvest is underway. Autumn colors have emerged on just about all of the oak leaves in the neighborhood. Samhain / Halloween arrives in a week, although temperatures the past few days have been reaching the low to mid 70s, 15 to 20℉ above average for this time of year. I'm not used to breaking into a sweat while cleaning up leaf fall.

local field corn harvest

Photo by J. Harrington

Not that I've paid close attention, but political ads seem way too abundant and more full of tricks than treats. Wouldn't it be nice to live somewhere, some time, in which politicians told us lots more about why they deserve our votes rather than why their opponent(s) don't? Are politics really supposed to be a zero sum game? Why not focus on how to attain what's best for the country and its people? How can we get more politicians trained in multi-solving instead of mudslinging?

The Better Half [BH] and I spent a some time Saturday afternoon at a Halloween party hosted at the stables where Daughter Person boards her horse and BH, Daughter, and Granddaughter go riding. There were noticeably more young ’uns than us oldsters, as it should be around Halloween and some other holidays. Everyone seemed to have a good time and the horses enjoyed the extra company, but 73℉ just didn’t feel right for a Minnesota Halloween party. Today we're back to cloudy skies and seasonable temperatures. We may not see another 70℉ until next Spring.

Much of next week will be devoted to managing fallen leaves and trying to get organized for Winter and whatever the election results may bring. Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American today reminds US that, about 100 years ago, we went through a similar con job of "let's run the country like a business." It's unfortunate to tragic that our social and cultural memories don't serve US better. Maybe this time when I put my hand on a hot stove it won't badly burn me? Don't forget to VOTE!

October

Evalyn Callahan Shaw

October is the month that seems 
All woven with midsummer dreams;  
She brings for us the golden days 
That fill the air with smoky haze,  
She brings for us the lisping breeze 
And wakes the gossips in the trees,  
Who whisper near the vacant nest  
Forsaken by its feathered guest.  
Now half the birds forget to sing,  
And half of them have taken wing,  
Before their pathway shall be lost 
Beneath the gossamer of frost.  
Zigzag across the yellow sky,  
They rustle here and flutter there,  
Until the boughs hang chill and bare,  
What joy for us—what happiness  
Shall cheer the day the night shall bless?  
’Tis hallowe’en, the very last  
Shall keep for us remembrance fast,  
When every child shall duck the head 
To find the precious pippin red. 

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.