As time and the seasons turn

Welcome to June, the month of and for:

• whitetail fawns
• Canada goose goslings
• wildflowers
• thunderstorms
• Summer solstice
• father's day
• fill in your favorite June events.

wildflowers surround a fawn and doe

Photo by J. Harrington

We're still hoping to get a three sisters garden planted this month. The tiller is off at the small engine doctor to see if they can get it to run. We may not get it back until some time next week. We'll see how things turn out over the Summer and Fall growing seasons. If I look at it as a learning experience then the prospect of being rewarded with a bountiful harvest as a reward for our work becomes less important. After all, I spend time fishing and hunting without needing to kill fish or game as a reward. (In view of my success rate over the years, that's just as well.) If you can't quite grasp what I'm talking about, let me refer you to sone of Gene Hill's writings. He captures much of my meaning in this excerpt:

Remember when time was cheap? The songs we sang about it told us that we had time on our hands, that time stood still, that tomorrow would be time enough. And now we find it was not. Suddenly times to come have become times past, and we must hoard it and spend it cautiously as the tag ends of a small inheritance . . . which is what it really was all along—except no one told us.

next year's geese are this year's goslings

Photo by J. Harrington

You've probably read about and seen reports on the now worldwide protests against the Minneapolis police role in the death of George Floyd. I've no idea what songs or singers accompany any of the protestors. I do hope they have music as meaningful to their times and places as much of the folk music I grew up with was, and is, to me. One of the better examples, of many, was created by Pete Seeger from passages in the Bible’s Book of Ecclesiastes for “Turn! Turn! Turn!”

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, a time to reap that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to gain that which is to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time of love, and a time of hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

I sincerely hope that the turning of Spring into Summer, as May has turned into June, brings us times to embrace each other and the changes our country needs; a time of peace so that we may chose wisely and well come November; a time to heal between now and November; a time to rededicate ourselves to the purpose of this country's democracy in which all are created and treated equal. Let's let a young Mr. Seeger and Ms. Collins help us regain some perspective on where we are and where we're trying to get to (and how time can seem never-ending, never-changing).

At the Justice Department November 15, 1969

By Denise Levertov

Brown gas-fog, white

beneath the street lamps.

Cut off on three sides, all space filled

with our bodies.

       Bodies that stumble

in brown airlessness, whitened

in light, a mildew glare,

       that stumble

hand in hand, blinded, retching.

Wanting it, wanting

to be here, the body believing it’s

dying in its nausea, my head

clear in its despair, a kind of joy,

knowing this is by no means death,

is trivial, an incident, a

fragile instant.    Wanting it, wanting

          with all my hunger this anguish,

          this knowing in the body

the grim odds we’re

up against, wanting it real.

Up that bank where gas

curled in the ivy, dragging each other

up, strangers, brothers

and sisters.    Nothing

will do but

to taste the bitter

taste. No life

other, apart from.

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