Make it be a Good Day...

There was a guy I met about 30 or so years ago. He taught me something that I still remember, I just don't remember it often enough. Every morning that I ran into Dave or Dan or whatever his name was, he'd say as he was leaving "Make it be a Good Day, whether it wants to or not." I spent years trying to follow that advice, the wrong way. I'd try to change what I did, how I did it, lower my expectations and a whole string of other failed tactics. It finally occurred to me that "Dave" had found a nice and memorable way to paraphrase "Don't let the bastards get you down." On that note, let me say to each of you, for each and every day over at least the next four and a half years, "Make it be a Good Day, whether it wants to or not."

good day - sunrise

Photo by J. Harrington

One of the books I'm reading has started to describe the trade offs and complexity industrial scale farmers face in an effort to limit their negative environmental effects. Tilling has lots of downsides on soil health. No-till farming depends on herbicides and crop rotation and more knowledgeable management. If many of us are willing and able to pay more for organically raised fruits, vegetables and free range meat and eggs, why not for commodity crops raised according to some certified system? Does something like that fit under the rubric of Governor Dayton's water ethic? I would hope so. There are no simple solutions anymore. We've complicated all the problems, partly by developing reliance on too many sources of disinformation and simplistic solutions. Repeat after me: "Don't believe those who pander."

I doubt that the "culture wars" will ever be won. I doubt that good will ever permanently prevail over evil in this universe. (Read St. Augustine's Confessions.) Neither of those offer sufficient reason to loose hope. We still get to choose how we respond to the way life and others treat us. And if you think I'm writing all of this as much to convince myself as to offer hope and consolation to you readers, you're perceptive, astute and intelligent, to say nothing of being correct. Don't forget to make it be a good day.

Apology for Apostasy?

By Etheridge Knight

Soft songs, like birds, die in poison air

So my song cannot now be candy.

Anger rots the oak and elm; roses are rare,

Seldom seen through blind despair.

And my murmur cannot be heard

Above the din and damn. The night is full

Of buggers and bastards; no moon or stars

Light the sky. And my candy is deferred

Till peacetime, when my voice shall be light,

Like down, lilting in the air; then shall I

Sing of beaches, white in the magic sun,

And of moons and maidens at midnight.

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