bird bath: September surprise
Photo by J. Harrington
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If you've looked around our state, you may have noticed that we include portions of a number of different ecoregions, depending on who's providing the framework. Each of those regions is inhabited by a wide variety of flora and fauna and has significant weather and climate variations. As I was taught after I moved here, that variety is part of the state's strength. If one sector of our economy is down, a different sector in a different part of the state helps hold things together. There's the logging economy and the mining economy and the farming economy and the urban economy and.... Like a healthy ecosystem, we depend on a variety of actors and activities to help meet our needs for clean air, clean water, shelter and healthy food.
Audubon Center of the North Woods
Photo by J. Harrington
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And yet, as I've noticed over the past decade or so, Minnesotans seem to be getting less and less tolerant of each other, to the significant detriment of all us who live, work and play here. In fact, it seems to me we've become about as intolerant of each other as our neighboring Wisconsinites are reported to be. I spent a fair portion of the morning looking at summaries and reviews of Katherine Cramer's The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker. I suppose I'll now have to actually read the book because there's a lot to unpack in it and referring to the source is always advisable. One of my major take-aways though is that the growing fracture between urban and rural perspectives isn't helping any of us. In fact, I was prompted to dig out a book I haven't read for decades, The Intellectual Versus the City. I wondered if the rural folks described by Cramer as resenting the "urban elites" realized that the city has a number of urban detractors also. But, we now live in a world where, for the first time in the history of humans, the majority of us live in an urban area. Much of the world we've created depends on the availability of either a labor force (urban) or natural resources (rural).
Healthy ecosystems derive from interdependence. So do healthy economies and cultures. Much as I dislike cliches, I'm going to close today with one from Minnesota's former Senator, Paul Wellstone. I believe this is true as much as I believe anything: "We all do better when we all do better." I wish more of our politicians believed that. We have an opportunity to do something about it in about 60 days. Do we favor division or distribution? The choice is ours.
Digging
Between my finger and my thumbThe squat pen rests; snug as a gun.Under my window, a clean rasping soundWhen the spade sinks into gravelly ground:My father, digging. I look downTill his straining rump among the flowerbedsBends low, comes up twenty years awayStooping in rhythm through potato drillsWhere he was digging.The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaftAgainst the inside knee was levered firmly.He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deepTo scatter new potatoes that we picked,Loving their cool hardness in our hands.By God, the old man could handle a spade.Just like his old man.My grandfather cut more turf in a dayThan any other man on Toner’s bog.Once I carried him milk in a bottleCorked sloppily with paper. He straightened upTo drink it, then fell to right awayNicking and slicing neatly, heaving sodsOver his shoulder, going down and downFor the good turf. Digging.The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slapOf soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edgeThrough living roots awaken in my head.But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.Between my finger and my thumbThe squat pen rests.I’ll dig with it.
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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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