We have two pieces of good news to share. In reverse chronological order they are:
- this morning's hellacious downpours missed us to the North by just a few miles.
- Yesterday afternoon we finally found a monarch caterpillar on one of our milkweed plants. (We just checked and it's not there today, although there's plenty of leaf left for chomping on.)
Flash flooding reported in east-central Minn. after 'incredible' rainstorm
Storm hurled as many as 1,500 lightning strikes in 15 minutes.
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| monarch caterpillar under milkweed leaf
Photo by J. Harrington
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| monarch caterpillar closeup
Photo by J. Harrington
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On a slightly less positive note, we don't do, and never have done, FaceBook, nor most other social media platforms. One exception, from before we retired, was LinkedIn. Another one was/is Twitter. We've not updated our LinkedIn profile nor used that platform for several years. Now we're starting to wonder if there's a twelve-step like "Twitter Anonymous" program. We know we just get upset when we follow a time-line but we keep doing it. Maybe if we muted all mentions of tRump, Republicans and GOP we wouldn't have to quit. (In full disclosure, we also have a Google+ account that we only use to share the contents of this blog, so we don't think that counts.)
Then again, our Google mail inbox is perpetually full these days of pleas to sign this or that petition or letter and, by the way, chip in some small amount to support future requests to sign other petitions and letters. We must have missed the amendment to our Constitution that says we are now a government of, by, and for the petitioners. As far as we can tell, boycotts affect corporations; large and frequent checks affect too many politicians these days; petitions? not so much affect or effect on anyone. (Is our cynicism showing?)
Have you ever got to watch, up close, a caterpillar become a butterfly? The caterpillar forms a chrysalis, completely melts down and reforms its atoms into a butterfly. What do you suppose it would take to turn our current caterpillar of a government into something like a beautiful monarch or swallowtail butterfly? In the process could we get rid of the ugly fictions that money is speech and corporations are people? Might we regain a modicum of respectability, honesty, civility and integrity? It may be true that "People get the government they deserve," but that doesn't seem to account for the extra thumbs (Putin's? Koch's? Comey's? DNC's, etc.) on the electoral scales and whatever effect they're continuing to have. It becomes increasingly clear as the current regime, which failed to win the popular vote, purports to govern, that our checks need some balances and our balances need to be checked.
This City
could use more seraphs.
Anything with wings, really—
a falcon, a swallowtail.
Ravenous for marvels, I slit open
a chrysalis. Inside,
no caterpillar mid-morph.
Only its ghost in a horror of cells.
I pinch the luminous mash
of imaginal discs
and shudder, imagining
the mechanics of disintegration.
The wormy larva—whole,
then whorled. A wonder
it did not die. Even now,
smeared against my skin, it beams
like the angel in the tomb
prepared to proclaim a rising.
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.
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