Can we afford to not care about everyone?

The remaining snow cover is shrinking into smaller, more widely scattered patches. Unless we get a significant renewal it'll be gone within the week, except for the huge mounds in parking lots etc. Other years we've been visited by purple finches by now. Still no signs of them at the feeders. Neither have we yet seen any red-winged blackbirds. We have, however, stumbled onto an interesting phenology site for our neighbor to the East. The Wisconsin Green Schools Network has an Environmental Education for Kids site with a March Phenology page that shows a large flock of male red-wings and the observation that they return in late February and early March. We're aware that just because we haven't seen any doesn't mean they've not returned. We'll keep our eyes and ears open.

where are this year's purple finches?

Photo by J. Harrington

The COVID 19 pandemic has raised several issues that contribute to a long-standing rural-urban divide that should be or more concern, I believe. At the moment, rural communities are strongly recommending vacationers and second home owners stay away. Rural areas have heightened vulnerabilities during this pandemic. Limited health care systems infrastructure among them.

The W.F. Schumacher Center for a New Economics has, for many years, been hosting annual lectures exploring how "small is beautiful" applies to today's issues. Vermont is building a new economy through the vision and actions of Vermonters for a New Economy, building on efforts initiated through the Donella Meadows Project. Minnesota's farming, mining economies may be exposing the state's populations to pollution-based health risks while the tourism sector contributes to the spread of exogenous diseases. Are we overdue for thinking about how the next Seven Generations will live and make a living?

we should soon see male red-winged blackbirds

Photo by J. Harrington

If, as some now argue, habitat destruction is a significant and growing factor in the "direct and indirect spread of zoonotic diseases," might we not be advised to reconsider our rural development strategies? Or, would we prefer to deal with something like the COVID 19 pandemic or the spread of Lyme disease on a more regular basis?

One of the lessons being realized as we respond to the current pandemic was nicely described by Donella Meadows in her paper on Dancing with Systems. One of the steps in the dance is to

12. EXPAND THE BOUNDARY OF CARING.

“Living successfully in a world of complex systems means expanding not only time horizons and thought horizons; above all it means expanding the horizons of caring. There are moral reasons for doing that, of course. And if moral arguments are not sufficient, systems thinking provides the practical reasons to back up the moral ones. The real system is interconnected. No part of the human race is separate either from other human beings or from the global ecosystem. It will not be possible in this integrated world for your heart to succeed if your lungs fail, or for your company to succeed if your workers fail, or for the rich in Los Angeles to succeed if the poor in Los Angeles fail, or for Europe to succeed if Africa fails, or for the global economy to succeed if the global environ­ment fails.

“As with everything else about systems, most people already know the intercon­nections that make moral and practical rules turn out to be the same rules. They just have to bring themselves to believe what they know.”

The Paper Boy

By Thomas R. Smith

My route lassos the outskirts, 

the reclusive, the elderly, the rural— 

the poor who clan in their tarpaper 

islands, the old ginseng hunter

Albert Harm, who strings the "crow's

foot" to dry over his wood stove. 

Shy eyes of fenced-in horses 

follow me down the rutted dirt road. 

At dusk, I pedal past white birches, 

breathe the smoke of spring chimneys, 

my heart working uphill toward someone 

hungry for word from the world. 

I am Mercury, bearing news, my wings

a single-speed maroon Schwinn bike.

I sear my bright path through the twilight 

to the sick, the housebound, the lonely. 

Messages delivered, wire basket empty, 

I part the blue darkness toward supper, 

confident I've earned this day's appetite, 

stronger knowing I'll be needed tomorrow.

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