Earth IS Planet B!

Yesterday was another Minnesota first for us. We participated in a walking subcaucus. We understand and agree with the principle involved, although the process felt pretty silly. As we recall, the major winners were Rebecca Otto for Governor, Leah Phifer for Congress, and a pleasantly large contingent against copper-sulfate mining. Several times during the event we were reminded of Will Rogers' observation "I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat."

As a reward for spending a warm, sunny St. Patrick's Day doing our civic-political duty, today we have been rewarded with overcast skies and slightly cooler temperatures. No good deed goes unpunished in today's world.

still snow covered

Photo by J. Harrington

Local signs of Spring encroaching on our countryside are still sparse. However, in honor of the Northern Hemisphere's Vernal Equinox arriving this week, we're setting a goal of getting 2018 fishing licenses for ourselves and the Better Half, plus a new state park sticker for our Jeep. We'll see how close we come to reaching what should be simple, personal goals this week. Maybe we could start a winning streak?

but melting

Photo by J. Harrington

If so, another goal we'd like to see achieved is more than personal, it's social and political and environmental and cultural and.... We'd like to see the Democratic Party contravene Rogers' observation and collectively pay a lot more attention to an idea called "Donut Economics." The following quote from the linked interview with Kate Raworth, its originator, helps explain why:

I believe we need economies driven by two design features. One, economies should be distributive by design, which means that value created is shared far more equitably with all those how helped to create it. Think of an employee owned company, which that value is shared amongst all the employees who helped do the work instead of siphoned off to distant and fickle shareholders. So we need economies that are distributive by design but also regenerative by design so that instead of using up earth’s materials and resources, we can use them again and again and again and work with the cycles of life, rather than cut against them.

As we see it, addressing the distributive question of economics should go a long way to minimizing both the rich-poor split and the urban-rural split, since geographically there seems to be a growing overlap in those geo-demographic splits. Somehow, years ago, Will Rogers foresaw recent (2008 and 2016) events that Congress seems committed to repeating:

This election was lost four and five and six years ago not this year. They dident start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the dryest little spot. But he dident know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.

Economy

Sandra Beasley

After you’ve surrendered to pillows 
and I, that second whiskey, 
on the way to bed I trace my fingers 
over a thermostat we dare not turn up.
You have stolen what we call the green thing—
too thick to be a blanket, too soft to be a rug—
turned away, mid-dream. Yet your legs
still reach for my legs, folding them quick 
to your accumulated heat.
                              These days
only a word can earn overtime. 
Economy: once a net, now a handful of holes. 
Economy: what a man moves with 
when, even in sleep, he is trying to save 
all there is left to save. 

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