Summer's here! #phenology

I remember my mother, or was it my grandmother, describing some awkward youngsters as being "all knees and elbows." The young fawn we saw yesterday reminded us of that, but it was also "all legs and mouth." S/he had managed to get away from mom long and far enough to come and explore the edge of our backyard. When the doe stepped out from the woods edge, we could almost hear the fawn bleating "Honest, mom, I wasn't doing anything," as the young'un slunk back to the doe and started to nurse. Scenes like that, and the pair of swans we saw flying over a local marsh a day or two ago give us some hope for the present. We're still holding our breath about the future, but then, there really is only "Now," true?

mid-June fawn--how quickly they grow!

Photo by J. Harrington

Today is the bicentennial of Walt Whitman's birthday. We confess that we've had a copy of his Leaves of Grass stacked in our "to be read" pile for some time now. In honor of this auspicious event, we've started reading it and will commit to finishing it some time over the this Summer, we should live so long. That will fill one of many gaps in our education and further motivate us to read more of Emerson, one of Whitman's early supporters.

As you know, tomorrow is the beginning of meteorological Summer. Mother Nature is acknowledging that with today's temperatures in the mid-80's. We were outside cutting some grass and doing a few other chores and managed to pick up several ticks, another sign of the season. The first bumblebee of the season appears this week, as have the flower buds on the lilies of the valley. The poison ivy we sprayed with herbicide yesterday is looking might sickly today, so that's encouraging. Next week's weather is supposed to cool off a little. Frankly, we much prefer mid-70's to today's heat, so we'll defer any strenuous outside efforts until after the weekend. May Mother Nature bless each of us with a Summer full of wonderful memories.

For You O Democracy

By Walt Whitman

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,

I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon, 

I will make divine magnetic lands, 

                   With the love of comrades, 

                      With the life-long love of comrades. 

I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies, 

I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks, 

                   By the love of comrades, 

                      By the manly love of comrades. 

For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme! 

For you, for you I am trilling these songs.

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A Green New Deal for Rural America from the Democrats?

Meteorlogically speaking, tomorrow is the last day of this year's Spring. The weather forecast of sunny and warm days seems to support meteorological Summer's arrival on June 1. None too soon we say. Maybe we'll see enough sunshine during the next couple of weeks for some fields to dry out and let farmers finish planting so that the regime in Washington can further screw up markets and cause farmers to become practicing socialists to stay in business.

We want to acknowledge that we did see a concept that we really like. It was Tweeted by Sarah Smarsh, author of Heartland, which we're slowly reading. She tweeted it yesterday, although we didn't see it until today:

One answer to ignorant question re: rural America "why don't they just leave": Every small owner that goes under is chance for Big Oil/Ag/etc to grab land & exploit it. We should be diversifying landowners, guarding public land & helping rural Americans be STEWARDS. #GreenNewDeal

Senator Markey's version of the Green New Deal Resolution has a couple of sections that speak specifically to helping rural Americans be STEWARDS. Here's one element:

If the rest of rural America is anything like our county, many, perhaps most, of the renewable energy jobs will occur in rural America, at least those associated with wind and solar energy for the foreseeable future.

Although we've been perturbed by the lack of Democratic leadership support for the Green New Deal, it occurs to us that Speaker Pelosi may be following a strategy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Here's how it's described in the Huffington Post:

FDR once met with a group of activists who sought his support for bold legislation. He listened to their arguments for some time and then said, “You’ve convinced me. Now go out and make me do it.”  

Even in the middle of the Depression, Roosevelt understood that the more effectively people created a sense of urgency and crisis, the easier it would be for him to push for progressive legislation — what we now call the New Deal. FDR used his bully pulpit, including radio addresses, to educate Americans about the problems the nation faced, to explain why the country needed bold action to address the crisis, and to urge them to make their voices heard. 

The Farm on the Great Plain

By William E. Stafford

A telephone line goes cold;

birds tread it wherever it goes.

A farm back of a great plain

tugs an end of the line.

I call that farm every year,

ringing it, listening, still;

no one is home at the farm,

the line gives only a hum.

Some year I will ring the line

on a night at last the right one,

and with an eye tapered for braille

from the phone on the wall

I will see the tenant who waits—

the last one left at the place;

through the dark my braille eye

will lovingly touch his face.

“Hello, is Mother at home?”

No one is home today.

“But Father—he should be there.”

No one—no one is here.

“But you—are you the one . . . ?”

Then the line will be gone

because both ends will be home:

no space, no birds, no farm.

My self will be the plain,

wise as winter is gray,

pure as cold posts go

pacing toward what I know.

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Managing terrestrial invasives

May will soon end for this year. It looks to make it into the record books for how wet it's been. We haven't sprayed the poison ivy yet out of concern herbicide sprayed would be washed off promptly after application. Maybe next week?

Slowly, very slowly, we're learning more about Minnesota's invasive species and noxious weeds. There are four classes of noxious weeds in Minnesota, according to this MNDoT reference:

• Prohibited: Eradicate (14 species)


• Prohibited: Control (9 species)


• Restricted Noxious Weeds (12 species)


• Specially Regulated (5 species)

To our knowledge, our property is host to one or two restricted weeds (common and/or glossy buckthorn) and one special regulation weed (poison ivy).  The answer to our fuming earlier about why MNDNR doesn't control the buckthorn on their property is provided by the definition:

"Restricted noxious weeds are plants that are widely distributed in Minnesota and are detrimental to human or animal health, the environment, public roads, crops, livestock or other property, but whose only feasible means of control is to prevent their spread by prohibiting the importation, sale, and transportation of their propagating parts in the state..."

 Poison ivy, on the other hand, "Must be eradicated or controlled for public safety along rights-of-ways, trails, public accesses, business properties open to the public or on parts of lands where public access for business or commerce is granted...". Unfortunately, this definition begs the question of whether a property owner or the township is responsible for such eradication or control within the roadway easement where the township controls weeds by mowing only the shoulder and not the entire ditch.

orange hawkweed(?) at St. Croix State Park: invasive but not noxious?

Photo by J. Harrington

The comparison between jumbled, garbled, poorly crafted noxious weed management guidance and definitions and today's press conference by Special Counsel Mueller is not lost on us. A number of state agencies, rules and laws provide guidance and requirements intended to craft an approach to minimize damage done by noxious weeds. In too many instances, it's unclear which party is responsible for undertaking eradication or control. Since it appears that a foreign-controlled, invasive species may have taken control of the presidency of the US, it's unclear which party is now responsible (Congress through impeachment or the electorate through an election two years from now) and how to require the responsible party to take responsible action. We seem unwilling and unable to control foreign invasive species in this country at a time when we are facing increasing types and degrees of threats to our very existence. It's almost like our brains have been affected by the consumption of too much weed. Perhaps that explains how MNDNR classifies orange hawkweed as "invasive" (Invasive species are species that are not native to Minnesota and cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health.) but MNDoT doesn't list it as noxious. Should we ask Congress or the Minnesota Legislature to sort this out?

Meanwhile, we're still looking for help with the identification of these thorny plants growing in the ditch between the road and our property.

what is it? invasive? noxious? indigenous?

Photo by J. Harrington

The World Is a Beautiful Place

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The world is a beautiful place
            to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
   not always being
     so very much fun
 if you don't mind a touch of hell
    now and then
 just when everything is fine
    because even in heaven
  they don't sing
    all the time

 The world is a beautiful place
     to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
      all the time
  or maybe only starving
     some of the time
 which isn't half bad
    if it isn't you

 Oh the world is a beautiful place
      to be born into
  if you don't much mind
     a few dead minds
   in the higher places
      or a bomb or two
    now and then
      in your upturned faces
 or such other improprieties
     as our Name Brand society
   is prey to
    with its men of distinction
  and its men of extinction
     and its priests
   and other patrolmen

     and its various segregations
 and congressional investigations
     and other constipations
  that our fool flesh
     is heir to

 Yes the world is the best place of all
     for a lot of such things as
  making the fun scene
     and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
 and singing low songs and having inspirations
      and walking around
      looking at everything
            and smelling flowers
       and goosing statues
   and even thinking
     and kissing people and
              making babies and wearing pants
              and waving hats and
        dancing
         and going swimming in rivers
  on picnics
   in the middle of the summer
 and just generally
    'living it up'
      Yes
 but then right in the middle of it
     comes the smiling

    mortician

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World-class mining regulations? Really?

One mine could pollute Lake Superior. Another could pollute the Boundary Waters. Does Minnesota have a justifiable way to say one is more or less worthy of protection? How could the state better address whether the degree of protection required should be the same for each mine and water body?Before you try to answer, there are a couple of fairly recent quotations about Minnesota's mining regulations / rules we'd like you to think about. The first is from a MinnPost article on why the legislature, and the Department of Natural Resources, are so hesitant to make any modifications to the state's requirements for permitting mines, especially copper-nickel mines.

does the Boundary Waters deserve more protection?

Photo by J. Harrington

Landwehr told MinnPost last month that while state pollution and permitting standards are strong, they aren’t tough enough for Twin Metals, which is located in the BWCA’s watershed. He described the permitting as “very prescriptive” and said the Boundary Waters campaign might propose changes to the process next year after building “a grassroots support base.”

Richards, the current DNR official, said “Minnesota’s environmental review and permitting laws provide for a comprehensive and rigorous review of any proposed mining project” that is “supported by an extraordinary level of scientific analysis of each specific proposal.”

does a Lake Superior deserve more protection?

Photo by J. Harrington

Landwehr, in a prior MinnPost article about Minnesota's mine permitting:

Well, I think the permitting process is rigorous. I think the standards are higher in Minnesota than they are elsewhere. That does not mean “no degradation.” And that’s the important distinction I want to make as we’re talking about the Boundary Waters. The state standards actually anticipate some degradation. So for instance, a (wild rice) sulfate standardof 10 parts per million, it’s not zero parts per million. It’s 10 parts per million. So if you’re putting it into an environment that’s ambient at zero, you are agreeing to degradation. But that’s what the state law permits. And so yes, I believe, relative to others states, Minnesota has got some of the most rigorous and comprehensive, environmental laws. That doesn’t mean that the project has no impact.

And the other thing I’d point out is that the state permitting process … relates to environmental impact. So it doesn’t look at economic, it doesn’t look at cultural, it doesn’t look at quality of life. It’s a very narrow prescriptive. It doesn’t look at health. You know, there was a lot of debate about “should we do a health impact analysis in this project?” That’s not what the law provides for; it provides just for an environmental review. And so I would assert that’s not the full range of issues that ought to be considered when you’re looking at something that’s so existentially different from what you’ve got in the environment up in the Boundary Waters. 

We have, over the years, expressed our reservations about whether Minnesota's mining regulations are sufficient to protect our environment. The former commissioner of MNDNR expressed similar concerns after he accepted employment to help protect the Boundary Waters from copper-nickel mining and its effects. What he hadn't done, while serving as commissioner, is suggest a solution.

Minnesota needn't, by itself, create its own new set of rules on mining. It might, however, want to consider taking the lead in convening a national or international conference to examine if the laws and regulations at the federal level and in the various states that permit mining consistently meet currently meet international best practices. After all, mining is a significant part of the global economy. We suspect, as you might have guessed, there's room for improvement in Minnesota's approach. We'll write about why we have those suspicions in future postings. For now, we're aware of several proposed mines that could use the best possible regulatory framework, if they're permitted to operate at all. They include:

• PolyMet and any expansion
• Twin Metals and any related mining activity
• Pebble Mine (Alaska)
• Black Butte (Montana)

We're unaware that there's a responsible basis in Minnesota for currently declaring an area off limits to mining, but know there's an international approach on how to do so. We're also tired and frustrated at watching the amount of effort that has been expended battling, site by site, issue by issue, court case by court case, the inadequacy of how mining activity is governed in the US, especially in Minnesota, while the international mining community continues to prepare and slowly implement procedures and requirements that would, if followed, help mining make a more significant contribution to sustainable development. Do we think that could happen overnight? No. Do we believe it could be accomplished with zero mistakes or mishaps? No. But, we ask, if the best time to improve mining regulations and governance was 20 years ago, when's the second best time?

Childhood

By Margaret Walker

When I was a child I knew red miners

dressed raggedly and wearing carbide lamps.

I saw them come down red hills to their camps

dyed with red dust from old Ishkooda mines.

Night after night I met them on the roads,

or on the streets in town I caught their glance;

the swing of dinner buckets in their hands,

and grumbling undermining all their words.

I also lived in low cotton country

where moonlight hovered over ripe haystacks,

or stumps of trees, and croppers’ rotting shacks

with famine, terror, flood, and plague near by;

where sentiment and hatred still held sway

and only bitter land was washed away.

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Memorial Day, 2019

My father, and my mother's brother, and my father-in-law, are part of The Greatest Generation. Each served in World War II (the last time a US Congress actually declared war). Their respective families were fortunate to have each of these members of our armed forces return home. We wonder, more and more often these days, what they would think of the country they had been willing to sacrifice their lives for.

when will the country soar like its symbol?

Photo by J. Harrington

During the last presidential election, more than 62 million voters cast their ballots for a clearly unqualified candidate who, since that election, sounds more and more like a nazi leader the Greatest Generation fought to protect our country against. Pundits are now questioning how long until we are engaged in our next civil war. Elections are being unduly influenced by global corporations (Citizens' United) and foreign governments (Mueller Report). One party in Congress aids and abets such behavior. The other articulates "tsk, tsks" and "yadda, yadda, yaddas," but does little more.

Meanwhile, the only world we know, the one on which we depend for our very lives, is coming unraveled and becoming dysfunctional because of capitalism and the need for profits derived from perpetual growth. From what I know of my father, my uncle, and my father-in-law, I'm pretty sure each and every one of them, and all the members of the Greatest Generation, who fought to make the world safe for democracy, would be ashamed of us, and rightly so. On this, and too many past Memorial Days, we have forgotten who we are, where we've come from, and how many have made the ultimate sacrifice just so that we could help create and, so far, fail to correct, the mess our country is in. I believe, and hope, that "we're better than this." Now I'd like to see us demonstrate it.

Memorial Day

By Michael Anania

It is easily forgotten, year to

year, exactly where the plot is,

though the place is entirely familiar—

a willow tree by a curving roadway

sweeping black asphalt with tender leaves;

damp grass strewn with flower boxes,

canvas chairs, darkskinned old ladies

circling in draped black crepe family stones,

fingers cramped red at the knuckles, discolored

nails, fresh soil for new plants, old rosaries;

such fingers kneading the damp earth gently down

on new roots, black humus caught in grey hair

brushed back, and the single waterfaucet,

birdlike upon its grey pipe stem,

a stream opening at its foot.

We know the stories that are told,

by starts and stops, by bent men at strange joy

regarding the precise enactments of their own

gesturing. And among the women there will be

a naming of families, a counting off, an ordering.

The morning may be brilliant; the season

is one of brilliances—sunlight through

the fountained willow behind us, its splayed

shadow spreading westward, our shadows westward,

irregular across damp grass, the close-set stones.

It may be that since our walk there is faltering,

moving in careful steps around snow-on-the-mountain,

bluebells and zebragrass toward that place

between the willow and the waterfaucet, the way

is lost, that we have no practiced step there,

and walking, our own sway and balance, fails us.

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A morning's magic moments

Most days early morning dog walks come closer to being a daily chore than a climb through a wardrobe door to Narnia. This morning wasn't one of those walks. The air was humid and the fields were cloaked in mist. Something had walked along the road and left an intriguing trail that SiSi was determined to follow. The sky was magically clear and highlighted with a few puffy clouds, a half moon and a morning star. As we approached the entrance to our fields, I noticed some movement in the neighbor's fields across the road and several hundred yards South of us. One whitetail doe stepped out of the mist to the edge of the road, noticed the dog and I walking slowly in her direction, raised her flag and scampered across the road and into the pine plantation on the West side of the road.

magical morning mist

Photo by J. Harrington

Hanging back, where the mist was denser, were three other whitetails. A second deer walked out of the fog, stopped on the road, and stared at the dog and I. The dog was patiently attending to what we had walked to take care of and I was standing stock still with my hands in my jacket pockets. In effect, the dog and I had become statues. After watching us for a few moments, the second deer startled across the road, Whatever we were, she wanted no part of us.

While the third deer decided to quickly follow the second across the road and into the pines, the fourth was slowly, very slowly, approaching the dog and I, still trying to decide what we were and if we were a threat. She would take a step or two, stop, stare, snort or stamp a hoof, and watch for a moment, then repeat the procedure. Within a brief time, she had come about halfway toward us from where she had started. The dog and I were still being still. Suddenly, the doe looked off to her right, our left. I glanced toward where she had looked to see a  flock of Canada geese, 7 or 8 of them flying in a checkmark (✔) at about treetop height toward the West, over the fields headed for the waters in the Carlos Avery pools. When we looked back, the fourth deer had disappeared, as if by magic.

the magic of new life

Photo by J. Harrington

If every morning were as full of magic as today, would we then come to take magic for granted? Being human, we fear the answer is "quite possibly." If magical moments happened more often, but not necessarily all the time, would we be happier? Definitely. In fact, we've reached a point where we've come to believe that sunny days, as few and far between as they've been this Spring (and last Winter) contain magic in and of themselves. May we all find more magic in our lives. In fact, with just a little luck, we hope to see the magic of whitetail fawns appearing in our fields sometime soon. This is about the time of year when does drop (give birth to) their fawns. Late next month to mid-July is when they may start to appear.

The Place I Want to Get Back To

The place I want to get back to
is where
in the pinewoods
in the moments between
the darkness
and first light
two deer
came walking down the hill
and when they saw me
they said to each other, okay,
this one is okay,
let’s see who she is
and why she is sitting
on the ground like that,
so quiet, as if
asleep, or in a dream,
but, anyway, harmless;
and so they came
on their slender legs
and gazed upon me
not unlike the way
I go out to the dunes and look
and look and look
into the faces of the flowers;
and then one of them leaned forward
and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life
bring to me that could exceed
that brief moment?
For twenty years
I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
Such gifts, bestowed,
can’t be repeated.
If you want to talk about this
come to visit. I live in the house
near the corner, which I have named
Gratitude.

Mary Oliver

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"Failure is not an option," better legislating is required.

The 2019 Minnesota legislative session, and the special session needed because the #mnleg couldn't finish its work within the constitutional deadline, is now history. Unfortunately, at a time when the effects of climate breakdown are becoming more and more apparent, the session(s) response to a climate emergency ended as, according to MinnPost,

‘An absolute failure’: Why the Legislature’s energy and climate budget does a whole lot of nothing

 If you're old enough, or enough of a movie buff, you may remember the wonderful quote from the 1995 movie, Apollo 13, "Failure is not an option." The same is true of our need to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and incorporate energy efficiency as expediently and safely as possible. Minnesotans should be ashamed of this recent legislative failure. Too many opportunities will get missed with essentially no time to make up for those misses. We're facing a deadline of 2030, 11 years away.

solar panels, organic farm, Northern Minnesota

Photo by J. Harrington

If you were ever a child, if you have a child or children, if you hope to have a child or children, if you care about any child or children, DO NOT LET THOSE WHO CLAIM TO REPRESENT US FAIL US THIS WAY! If we want to be able to honestly claim "we're better than this," we need to demonstrate it.

We, as citizens, residents, inhabitants, occupants, and/or voters in Minnesota have a chance to further convince our elected "leaders" of the absolute necessity to fix their failure as soon as possible. A call for a global strike on September 20, 2019, has been issued. We've received reports that a group called Minnesotans for a Livable Planet are organizing Community Summits on September 22, 2019 to coincide with a United Nations Summit in New York City on September 23, 2019.

solar powered business, Ely, Minnesota

Photo by J. Harrington

We plan to be involved with other Minnesotans in the strike and the summits. The county in which we live has had solar farms erupting like mushrooms after a wet Spring. Many of them could be improved and economically enhanced by incorporating pollinator-friendly plantings under the solar panels, providing an economic boost to farmers and rural Minnesota. We are rapidly entering an age in which we need to design and develop not one-fers, but two-fers, three-fers, and more-fers. There's more than enough work to be done. Please consider joining us.

My Century

Alan Feldman

The year I was born the atomic bomb went off.
Here I’d just begun, and someone
found the switch to turn off the world.

In the furnace-light, in the central solar fire
of that heat lamp, the future got very finite,
and it was possible to imagine time-travelers

failing to arrive, because there was no time
to arrive in. Inside the clock in the hall
heavy brass cylinders descended.

Tick-tock, the chimes changed their tune
one phrase at a time. The bomb became
a film star, its glamorous globe of smoke

searing the faces of men in beach chairs.
Someone threw up every day at school.
No time to worry about collective death,

when life itself was permeated by ordeals.
And so we grew up accepting things.
In bio we learned there were particles

cruising through us like whales through archipelagoes,
and in civics that if Hitler had gotten the bomb
he’d have used it on the inferior races,

and all this time love was etching its scars
on our skins like maps. The heavens
remained pure, except for little white slits

on the perfect blue skin that planes cut
in the icy upper air, like needles sewing.
From one, a tiny seed might fall

that would make a sun on earth.
And so the century passed, with me still in it,
books waiting on the shelves to become cinders,

what we felt locked up inside, waiting to be read,
down the long corridor of time. I was born
the year the bomb exploded. Twice

whole cities were charred like cities in the Bible,
but we didn’t look back. We went on thinking
we could go on, our shapes the same,

darkened now against a background lit by fire.
Forgive me for doubting you’re there,
Citizens, on your holodecks with earth wallpaper—

a shadow-toned ancestor with poorly pressed pants,
protected like a child from knowing the future.

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Shady invaders #phenology

Our local temperature is in the mid-50s. Skies are cloudy all day. This is far from ideal weather at the start of Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial beginning of Summer. Still, it's a marked improvement over the conditions only four months ago when the outside temperature was about 80℉ less than it is today. The "outside" reading in the picture below is the temperature, not the wind chill, of -31℉ at about 7:15 am on January 31.

Minnesota Winter temperatures

Photo by J. Harrington

It's entirely possible, maybe even probable, that in 6 or 8 weeks or so, we'll be complaining about heat and humidity, or, the continuation of cool, cloudy weather. We repeat here what we've said and written a number of times already: Minnesota would be a much more pleasant place to live if our average temperatures and precipitation amounts weren't comprised of such extremes.

Because we have a habit of reading more than is good for us, and character flaws that tend toward lots of worry and fretting, this week we've started to wonder about the relationship between a broken climate and invasive species. Our position is that we've earned our right to fret because we've been pulling buckthorn for the past three years while we've not seen Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MNDNR) do aught but encourage others to "manage" buckthorn on their own property. We'd be less Eeyore-ish if MNDNR would walk their talk.

most of this buckthorn understory is gone now

Photo by J. Harrington

It appears that buckthorn isn't the only invasive plant that tends to outcompete native plants. Nature's Notebook, brought to us by the USA National Phenology Network, has some interesting and informative information on invasive shrubs, those Shady Invaders. They didn't include buckthorn as one of the invasive species studied, but buckthorn shares a trait known as "Extended Leaf Phenology (ELP), and allows these early-leafing invaders to take advantage of the greater amount of light reaching the forest floor in early spring." Since Minnesota's Winters are reported to be warming more than our Summers, those concerned with invasive species should note that "Given predictions of warmer spring temperatures across the East due to climate change, we could see an increased advantage of invasive species across latitudes in the future."

All of the preceding has us contemplating if we humans have yet developed a sufficiently holistic perspective to exercise healthy stewardship of the environment on which we depend, or if we will spend much of a prematurely shortened existence swatting at symptoms of fractured biodiversity as if they were mosquitos. Remember John Muir's observation: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."

Extinction

by Jackie Kay

We closed the borders, folks, we nailed it.
No trees, no plants, no immigrants.
No foreign nurses, no Doctors; we smashed it.
We took control of our affairs. No fresh air.
No birds, no bees, no HIV, no Poles, no pollen.
No pandas, no polar bears, no ice, no dice.
No rainforests, no foraging, no France.
No frogs, no golden toads, no Harlequins.
No Greens, no Brussels, no vegetarians, no lesbians.
No carbon curbed emissions, no Co2 questions.
No lions, no tigers, no bears. No BBC picked audience.
No loony lefties, please. No politically correct classes.
No classes. No Guardian readers. No readers.
No emus, no EUs, no Eco warriors, no Euros,
No rhinos, no zebras, no burnt bras, no elephants.
We shut it down! No immigrants, no immigrants.
No sniveling-recycling-global-warming nutters.
Little man, little woman, the world is a dangerous place.
Now, pour me a pint, dear. Get out of my fracking face.

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#phenology, for the birds?

We are rapidly approaching the dates in late May after which, in prior years, we have no photos of scarlet tanagers. Will this year be different?

late May, male scarlet tanager

Photo by J. Harrington

According to Audubon, our location in East Central Minnesota is well within the common breeding area for this species, but they seem to disappear from our environs near the end of May. The male's colors are brilliant enough that I doubt we'd fail to notice them if they were still around. Perhaps we've been insufficiently tempted to get a picture or two later in the Summer, thinking we already have some. This year we're putting ourselves on notice to watch, keep a camera handy, and take pictures if the tanagers and orioles are at the feeders in June, July and August.

Although we've seen numerous forsythia and lilac bushes in beautiful bloom this month, none of ours have shown any flowers. We're not sure if it's going to turn out to be a delayed blossoming or if this year is a loss for our bushes. Again, we'll have to wait and see. Perhaps the cooler, wetter weather this Spring has excessively affected our local microclimate. Aldo Leopold has written, in A Sand County Almanac,

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”

We believe that each year there are fewer of us with an ecological education that live alone, but there are not yet enough of us to convince each community it needs to engage in more and more healthy behavior to provide any sort of future for our children by allow earth to heal its wounds, with our help. Learning to pay attention, we think, comes prior to and is a precondition for learning to think like a mountain.

The Scarlet Tanager

By Richard Hunt

ALL through the silent summer day

He sings “Ke-i, ke-o, ke-ay”—

A rich wild strain that sounds to me

Like bugle-notes of anarchy.

O black and burning scarlet one,        5

You flare and flicker, like the sun

Against the black void’s freezing breath:

Like life triumphant over death.

I see you burning in a tree;

From tree to tree you flame and wave:        10

You wave the blood of liberty

Against the black shroud of the brave.

You flare and flare, you call and call,

Amid the dim leaves’ emerald shade.

Your note’s a love-note after all!        15

Of love your scarlet flame is made!

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How to salvage a soggy Summer

Summer solstice is about a month away. This year's weather has us wondering if we'll have enough dry wood for a Solstice fire, emphasis on the dry. After last night's winds, the drive and yard are again full of dead oak branches, none of them particularly dry. Weather forecasters are warning us the entire Summer may be cool and wet. We will have to bring about a major attitude adjustment, as well as break out our foul weather gear.

On the bright side, wet ground will make it easier to pull the smaller buckthorn bushes. On the darker side, frequent rains will severely hinder our planned attacks on the poison ivy that's now emerging. Thank heavens we're coming to rely more and more on certain lyrics by Leonard Cohen and a quotation of Samuel Beckett's.

• Cohen (from Anthem)
  
  Ring the bells that still can ring
  Forget your perfect offering
  There is a crack in everything
  That's how the light gets in 


• Beckett (from Worstword Ho)
  
  Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

If the reports of the IPCC and the UN are to be believed, and we think they are, weather, politics, economies and many factors in contemporary life are likely to get worse before they may get better. We've read too much of Rebecca Solnit to allow ourselves the luxury of despair. It took the Irish how long before they got the colonizers most of the way out of Ireland? Native Americans and other indigenous peoples have been resisting colonizers for how many hundreds of years? It is time for us to transform the values on which we base our judgements. We kind of like the way Banksy has phrased it for the Extinction Rebellion folks:

London Extinction Rebellion mural is a Banksy, says expert 

Perhaps because we're the product of a classical education, we're familiar with the (mock) Latin saying "Illegitimi non carborundum," but we much prefer Kris Kristofferson's version.

[UPDATE: we stumbled into this quote that, we think, nicely fits today's theme:

“Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try. For one thing we know beyond all doubt: Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, ‘It can’t be done.’”
               ~~Eleanor Roosevelt, Voice of America, November 11, 1951]

You Must

Jon Andersen

You must have a hope
that will let you stomp and sing
at any cold dawn.
You must not wait
to love the student who loves you
and would like to kill you.
You must read the story again
and again to the child
who receives you with a bovine stare.
You must get up
every day to punch in
not dreaming on transcendence,
not desiring new heroes or gods,
not looking the other way,
but looking for the other way
and ready to talk to everyone on the line.
You must not wait
for official approval
nor general consensus
to rage.  You must
come again to kneel
in shiny, rock-strewn soil
not to pray, but to plant.
Yes, even now
as ice caps melt and black top
goes soft in the sun
you must prepare for the harvest.

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Sunrise, Sunset

Do you remember the lyrics from the song in Fiddler on the Roof, especially the refrain?

Sunrise, sunset

Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly fly the years

One season following another

Laden with happiness and tears

This morning and yesterday we started our day watching spectacular, sky-searing sunrises while walking one of our dogs. Today, while we were sipping our first post-walk cup of coffee, a ghostlike hummingbird visited the window-mounted nectar feeder in our office. The barely visible gray-tone flutters startled us because, for no particularly good reason, we didn't think hummingbirds fed before full daylight. At least that's the only time we've seen them at feeders prior to today.

late July sunrise, DSLR

Photo by J. Harrington

Unfortunately, once again we were frustrated by the apparent inability of our smartphone camera to capture deep fire colors from dawns like today's, about the shade of candy on this color thesaurus, or the bright band near the middle of the picture above, without washing them out. According to at least some folks, "The problem is that the auto white balance of digital cameras will typically try to cancel out any shift in color temperature, with the aim of producing results that are more neutral. As a result, the AWB setting can leech all the orange light out of sunset and sunrise shots, giving rise to insipid, neutral images as a result." (Problem #8) We'll see what happens after we spend some time reviewing iPhone camera tips and tricks, and maybe try a third-party camera app. Or, we could remember to take our DSLR for early morning walks in late Spring and early Summer, although we've had similar issues with that camera. Time to learn more about how to use a DSLR? Isn't technology wonderful, the way it "just works?" Conversely, we'd like it if our DSLR included GPS info the way our smartphone does.

mid-May sunrise, iPhone 6

Photo by J. Harrington

As happens all too often with us, and, we suspect, many others, we spend time fiddling around with alternative technologies rather than settling down and mastering any one. We noticed that our artisan sourdough improved markedly the more we studied and practiced baking bread. Our fly casting improves the more we practice. But, with a camera or a computer, we expect to be able to pick it up and have it read our mind. When will we act on the recognition that spending $$ on a hobby is not a valuable substitute for spending time engaged in that same hobby? What else might this apply to?

An American Sunrise

By Joy Harjo

We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves. We

were surfacing the edge of our ancestors’ fights, and ready to strike.

It was difficult to lose days in the Indian bar if you were straight.

Easy if you played pool and drank to remember to forget. We

made plans to be professional — and did. And some of us could sing

so we drummed a fire-lit pathway up to those starry stars. Sin

was invented by the Christians, as was the Devil, we sang. We

were the heathens, but needed to be saved from them — thin

chance. We knew we were all related in this story, a little gin

will clarify the dark and make us all feel like dancing. We

had something to do with the origins of blues and jazz

I argued with a Pueblo as I filled the jukebox with dimes in June,

forty years later and we still want justice. We are still America. We

know the rumors of our demise. We spit them out. They die

soon.

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#NationalRescueDogDay

Much of the following was originally posted a year ago, when we first became aware of #NationalRescueDogDay. Around our house, every day is rescue dog day. The Better Half has hers; we have ours; and the Daughter Person brought one of her own back from an internship (hers, not the dog's) in North Carolina several years ago.

There may be something special about May because, according to our photo archives, the Better Half was rescued by Franco in mid-May seven eight years ago.

Franco arrives at his "forever" home

Photo by J. Harrington

We were rescued by SiSi just before the beginning of May five six years ago

SiSi observing the human she rescued

Photo by J. Harrington

The Daughter Person was rescued by her whippet/beagle(?) cross later in the Summer, so the May rescue rule doesn't seem hard and fast. We've no pictures of her rescuer to post.

Here's a link to how you can help even if you aren't ready to be rescued by a dog yourself. If, like us, you really are a dog person, we highly recommend trying to find a copy of one of Gene Hill's books go "dog stories" (Tears and Laughter, Sunlight and Shadows and A Listening Walk... and Other Stories). If you need a little motivation, here's a sampling of his quotes about dogs.

Mary Oliver also understands about the special relationship between people and dogs. Here's an example from her book of Dog Songs.

LUKE

I had a dog
  who loved flowers.
    Briskly she went
        through the fields, 

yet paused
  for the honeysuckle
    or the rose,
        her dark head 

and her wet nose
  touching
    the face
         of every one 

with its petals
  of silk,
    with its fragrance
         rising 

into the air
  where the bees,
    their bodies
        heavy with pollen, 

hovered—
  and easily
     she adored
        every blossom, 

not in the serious,
  careful way
    that we choose
        this blossom or that blossom— 

the way we praise or don’t praise—
  the way we love
     or don’t love—
        but the way 

we long to be—
  that happy
    in the heaven of earth—
        that wild, that loving.

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A May day / night dilemma #phenology

The Twin Cities National Weather Service has issued a frost advisory for much of Minnesota. For our county it runs from 1 AM to 8 AM tomorrow. They report the current temperature as 36℉. The weather app on my smartphone(?) forecasts overnight temperatures not dropping below 34℉. Of course, that same app informs us it's currently snowing when a glance out the window reveals rain sprinkles (that turned into snow flakes as we wrote this). So, the dilemma is: do we attempt to protect a bunch of newly planted flowers from a potentially non-existent frost by covering them and, if so, what to use for a cover.

rarely do May thunderstorms bring snow

Photo by J. Harrington

Other years when we've had mid- to late-May frost advisories, they've mostly occurred when we had clear, calm nights. With rain and / or snow in the forecast for the afternoon and evening, the bed sheets we've used in the past for frost protection are likely to get soaked through and, come morning, possibly turned into sheets of ice. We have some tarps sitting around the garage we could try, but they're likely to be too heavy to lay on the new plantlings and may crush them. Plus, they might not stay put if wind gusts do indeed reach 30 mph tonight. Local trillium have just come into bloom. What will they look like tomorrow?

are trillium frost proof?

Photo by J. Harrington

Frosted or crushed is sort of a plant's equivalent of "which eye do you want the sharp stick in?," also know as a Hobson's choice. An alternative would be to ignore the advisory, cross our fingers and hope that Mother Nature shows some pity. Then again, since we're now watching snow flakes, maybe the smartphone(?) should be listened to. Spring in the North Country isn't just a challenge. It's a mixed bag of challenges that makes life interesting, unless you're a plant or an orphan fledgling. The goslings we saw earlier today will no doubt be hunkered under mom to stay warm and dry tonight. In case you're interested, the "normal" high and low for today are 70℉ and 50℉. Tomorrow's normal low is the same and the normal high is 71℉. If you'll pardon a short posting today, I think I'll go dust off the snow shovel, just in case. All in all, we'd prefer a seasonal thunderstorm rather than a late season snow and frost attack.

Misreading Housman

By Linda Pastan

On this first day of spring, snow

covers the fruit trees, mingling improbably   

with the new blossoms like identical twins   

brought up in different hemispheres.   

It is not what Housman meant

when he wrote of the cherry

hung with snow, though he also knew   

how death can mistake the seasons,   

and if he made it all sound pretty,   

that was our misreading

in those high school classrooms

where, drunk on boredom, we had to recite   

his poems. Now the weather is always looming

in the background, trying to become more   

than merely scenery, and though today   

it is telling us something

we don't want to hear, it is all

so unpredictable, so out of control

that we might as well be children again,   

hearing the voices of thunder

like baritone uncles shouting

in the next room as we try to sleep,   

or hearing the silence of snow falling   

soft as a coverlet, even in springtime   

whispering: relax, there is nothing   

you can possibly do about any of this.

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Where are Turtle Island's turtles this May? #phenology?

our township probably needs more signs like this

Photo by J. Harrington

To many Native Americans and First Nations people North America is known as Turtle Island. We live in an area, once inhabited by the Dakota and the Anishinaabe, that has many wetlands and water bodies. Many years during May we see, at various times, a number of turtles crossing local roads as they go to lay their eggs. This year we've seen none.

Blanding's turtle crossing our formerly gravel road

Photo by J. Harrington

In part, we're wondering if some part of the turtles' life cycle is occurring later this month, along with many other Spring events. Or, is the lack of sightings due, in part, to our recently blacktopped township road?

snapping turtle crossing a paved road

Photo by J. Harrington

Blanding's turtles, which we've seen nearby a number of times in years past, typically nests in June, according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. A similar pattern is followed by snapping turtles. Blanding's, snapping and painted are the three turtle species we've seen crossing roads, but there are many more species native to Minnesota.

painted turtle crossing our formerly gravel road

Photo by J. Harrington

Turtle Island is also the title of Gary Snyder's Pulitzer Prize-winning book of poems but, as far as we can recall, there's no poem in it mentioning a turtle. Snyder's homage to Turtle Island in a poem comes in a different volume (Axe Handles) with the poem:

For All

Gary Snyder

Ah to be alive
on a mid-September morn
fording a stream
barefoot, pants rolled up,
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in the shallows,
northern rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,
smell of sun on gravel.

I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.

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