The nature of things

This morning I got slapped up alongside my head, but in a good way. The credit union that issues one of my credit cards ran into an issue, or two, and a number of their Visa cards were declined in a number of locations. Mine was declined at a Holiday gas station, thrice. This did not put me in a happy mood, but I wasn't desperate for gas so I moved on to pick up our Community Supported Agriculture share. The farm's manager pulled in as I was parking and we chatted briefly. She expressed sympathy for my frustration and asked if I had enough gas and/or money. All of a sudden, I felt like a cared for member of a community. These days that's all too rare a feeling, at least for me. I hadn't really expected that degree of kindness and I suspect that says more about me and my attitude these days than I'm comfortable with. Would I have offered assistance to someone I was only casually acquainted with? I've become more accustomed to dealing with a world in which businesses claim to be all about the customer but limit real concerns to "we apologize for any convenience." So, in addition to considering looking for a better credit union, I need to make some major adjustments in my attitude and expectations.

skunk cabbage along country road

Photo by J. Harrington

Next point: You may have read that nature can help us heal. Based on this morning's events, I can vouch for it. I took a scenic, gravel road, route as I headed away from the farm. The leaves are now about the size of a mouses ear. Since I'd brought my camera along, I pointed the Jeep toward the township road ditch surrounded by skunk cabbage and marsh marigolds, pulled over, and took some pictures. Farther down the road we took a peek at this spring's crop of lambs and beyond them watched a rooster pheasant scurry into the roadside weeds. All of a sudden I was less perturbed about gas, credit cards and the general state of the world and its faulty technology. I hope I've learned a lesson, that less time should be spent finding what's wrong with the world and more time spent enjoying what's right. That probably means lots less time spent on social media.

marsh marigold and skunk cabbage

Photo by J. Harrington

To a Marsh Hawk in Spring

By Henry David Thoreau

There is health in thy gray wing, 

Health of nature’s furnishing. 

Say, thou modern-winged antique, 

Was thy mistress ever sick? 

In each heaving of thy wing 

Thou dost health and leisure bring, 

Thou dost waive disease and pain 

And resume new life again.

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Tree of Life, oaks #phenology

The oak trees leaf buds are swollen and beginning to open. No sightings so far of ruby-throated hummingbirds or Baltimore orioles. Black-capped chickadees have been enjoying tasting the grape jelly in the oriole feeder. Dandelion flowers are appearing in increasing abundance. Tomorrow is the last day of April. Saturday is Beltane, the start of the last month of meteorological spring, and about half-way through astronomical spring.

oak tree leaf buds opening

Photo by J. Harrington

Today, for the first time this season, I wore my Celtic Tree of Life t-shirt. I'll wear it, or something comparable, again tomorrow in honor of Arbor Day. The signs are looking good for starting this year's clean-up of dead branches and fallen leaves. Cold, damp, rainy cloudy weather could not induce me to exercise any ambition or enthusiasm. Sunny, even partly cloudy, warmer weather will do it. We'll even see if we can fit in a small bonfire on Beltane's eve.

Celtic Tree of Life

The Oak

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

 

. . . It is the last survivor of a race
Strong in their forest-pride when I was young.
I can remember when, for miles around,
In place of those smooth meadows and corn-fields,
There stood ten thousand tall and stately trees,
Such as had braved the winds of March, the bolt
Sent by the summer lightning, and the snow
Heaping for weeks their boughs. Even in the depth
Of hot July the glades were cool; the grass,
Yellow and parched elsewhere, grew long and fresh,
Shading wild strawberries and violets,
Or the lark's nest; and overhead the dove
Had her lone dwelling, paying for her home
With melancholy songs; and scarce a beech
Was there without a honeysuckle linked
Around, with its red tendrils and pink flowers;
Or girdled by a brier-rose, whose buds
Yield fragrant harvest for the honey-bee
There dwelt the last red deer, those antler’d kings . . .
But this is as dream,—the plough has pass’d
Where the stag bounded, and the day has looked
On the green twilight of the forest-trees.
This oak has no companion! . . . . 

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PolyMet NorthMet permit fails to hold water

The Minnesota Supreme Court decision was announced this morning. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources must conduct a contested case hearing on the permit per the opinion issued.

We conclude that the court of appeals adopted an incorrect legal standard to evaluate the DNR’s decision to deny the petitions for a contested case hearing. By disregarding the DNR’s discretion, the court of appeals erred in its interpretation of Minn. Stat. § 93.483, subd. 3(a) (2020). Under a substantial-evidence standard, we conclude that a contested case hearing is required on the effectiveness  of the proposed bentonite amendment for PolyMet’s proposed tailings basin. Regarding the other factual issues raised in respondents’ petitions, however, we conclude that the DNR did not abuse its discretion in denying the petitions for a contested case hearing because substantial evidence supports  those decisions. We further conclude that the court of appeals was correct in reversing the decision to grant the permit to mine because the DNR erred by issuing the permit without an appropriate fixed term. Finally, we conclude that the court of appeals erred in reversing the two dam-safety permits. Accordingly, we affirm in part and reverse in part the decision of the court of appeals and remand to the  DNR to conduct the contested case hearing  required by this decision and, thereafter, to determine and fix the appropriate definite term for the permit to mine as necessary.4

The entire decision can be found here. We've not yet read it in its entirety. We suggest you do so if you're interested in Minnesota's mining rules and how they're applied to nonferrous mines. As we've read so far, it appears the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources was given a few more opportunities to continue digging the hole they've already put themselves in.

The Decision

By Jane Hirshfield

There is a moment before a shape

hardens, a color sets.

Before the fixative or heat of   kiln.

The letter might still be taken

from the mailbox.

The hand held back by the elbow,

the word kept between the larynx pulse   

and the amplifying drum-skin of the room’s air.

The thorax of an ant is not as narrow.

The green coat on old copper weighs more.   

Yet something slips through it —

looks around,

sets out in the new direction, for other lands.

Not into exile, not into hope. Simply changed.

As a sandy track-rut changes when called a Silk Road:

it cannot be after turned back from.

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Too little? Too late? Too bad?

Today we're going to begin with a request to turn on your imagination full power. The poem we're sharing was written more than two centuries ago, before neoliberalism, before global capitalism, before space flight, before the invention of the internet and social media platforms and cell phones. 

In the time since the poem was written, humans have triggered climate breakdown; a sixth extinction; worldwide pandemics which, fortunately, haven't yet approached mortality levels comparable to the Black Death; and the pollution and/or destruction and/or disruption of much of the natural systems on which all life on earth depends.

Thus far humanity and its global leaders are failing miserably to meet the greenhouse gas reduction targets set in 2015; failing to share essential resources to bring the pandemic under control; failing to institute adequate safeguards on mining and agriculture to enable critical, essential, supplies to be safely delivered in adequate quantities. increasingly failing to teach tolerance and critical thinking to those in school; and providing, misguidedly, too much emphasis on individual freedom and not enough on each individual's responsibility to family and community and home planet.

So, to accompany the words of an exceptional poet of two centuries back, we think it might help to add the words of a contemporary young woman, Greta Thunberg, in her recent testimony before US Congress:

The gap between what we are doing and what actually needs to be done in order to stay below the 1.5 degrees Celsius targets is widening by the second. And the simple fact, an uncomfortable fact is that if we are to live up to our promises and commitments in the Paris Agreement, we have to end fossil fuel subsidies, stop new exploration and extraction, completely divest from fossil fuels, and keep the carbon in the ground now. Especially the US taking into account the fact that it is the biggest emitter in history.

In your now warmed up imaginations, what do you imagine Wordsworth would write these days?

 

The World Is Too Much With Us

By William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

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She's just my dog, SiSi

It doesn't seem as though it's been eight years since SiSi came to live with us in what we hope is her forever home. Last week of April in 2013 are when I took the first pictures of her and that's what the eight years is based on. She was already about a year old when she came to live with us. She's a "rescue dog" and has done a great job rescuing us, including the Better Half's dog, Franco, from taking our brief existence too seriously. SiSi is always ready to play, unless we're in the midst of a thunder storm.

SiSi -- first portrait

Photo by J. Harrington

She appears to be predominantly yellow lab, crossed with one of the ground-trailing breeds based on the amount of time she spends with her nose to the ground. She's also the only dog I know, or know of, that growls or grumbles with pleasure when being petted but also makes it clear where she doesn't want you to rub her the wrong way in the wrong place.

SiSi "retreiving" soap bubbles

Photo by J. Harrington

When [we're resisting typing "and if"] we get warmer, dryer weather, it'll be time to pick up a new jar of bubble juice and let SiSi have some fun chasing bubbles around the back yard. Even though she's allegedly over 60 in dog years, she's still spry enough to enjoy fun and, heaven knows, we all could use more of that all too rare asset these days.

In SiSi's honor today we're going to share a poem by Gene Hill, one of our favorite outdoor writers, although we've taken the liberty of changing the gender in the original version to match SiSi's. May each of you have at least one pet in your life who brings as much joy into it as SiSi does to ours.

SiSi, she's just my dog

Photo by J. Harrington

She is my other eyes that can see above the clouds

She is my other ears that hear above the winds

She is the part of me that can reach out into the sea.

     She has told me a thousand times over that

     I am her reason for being;

     by the way she rests against my leg;

     by the way she thumps her tail at my smallest smile;

     by the way she shows her hurt when I leave

     without taking her. (I think it makes her sick with worry

     when she is not along to care for me)

     When I am wrong, she is delighted to forgive.

     When I am angry, she clowns to make me smile.

     When I am happy, she is joy unbounded. When I am a fool,

     she ignores it. When I succeed, she brags. Without her,

     I am only another man. With her, I am all-powerful.

     She is loyalty itself. She has taught me the meaning of devotion.

     With her, I know a secret comfort and a private peace.

     She has brought me understanding where before was ignorance.

     Her head on my knee can heal my human hurts.

     Her presence by my side is protection against my fears

     of dark and unknown things.

     She has promised to wait for me......whenever

     ......wherever -- in case I need her.

     And I expect I will -- as I always have.

     She is just my dog.


     


 By Gene Hill

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It's marsh marigold time

Last week, mid-week, we checked one of our favorite rural roadsides to see if marsh marigolds had started blooming yet. We've been checking this particular stretch of road once or twice a week since late March and last week were rewarded with  the sight of a number of marsh marigold plants coming into bloom.

marsh marigolds blooming in late April

Photo by J. Harrington

We've also noticed more turkeys disappearing into roadside brush in a variety of places in the area. They're out of winter roosts and moving around, or being moved around by turkey hunters. We've even had a few cleaning up under the sunflower chip feeder. All of Nature, except the weather, seems to realize it's Spring. More and more dandelions are popping up along the roadside ditches near the house. Day lilies seem to have undergone an arrested development phase since they don't appear to have grown much during the cold of this past week. We probably won't see their orange flowers until June, by which time we'll be in meteorological Summer.  That's about it for today. We have to spend the afternoon debating whether it's worth watching tonight's Oscars. Right now we're leaning more toward reading a good book.

Instructions on Not Giving Up

Ada Limón - 1976-

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

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Appointed boards don't need campaign contributions

Snow showers mixed with rain. 34℉. A not atypical Spring day in the North Country. I told myself that the earth and the plants and the flowing waters needed the moisture. As the Better Half and I drove around the county getting some errands done, we saw quite a few swans, some in the air, others attracted (decoyed?) into a field of corn stubble by several wind-blown, white plastic bags now caught on the stubble stalks. The joke about Minnesota having two seasons, winter and road construction, is losing its humor, or, maybe it's just me losing my sense of humor.

The Better Half is fixin' beef stew for supper which doesn't seem as if it should be seasonable less than a week before May 1. Once again the North Country is proving how correct Thomas Stearns was when he wrote that April is the cruelest month. At  least the legislative session is winding down. With lots of effort and good will and more common sense than has been common for some time, we may yet keep our North Country from becoming a Waste Land.

There's been lots written and spoken these past weeks about justice and juries and appeals to a "higher court." A jurist has complained about members of the legislative and executive branches showing insufficient respect for "the rule of law." And yet, laws and their rules are made and interpreted by human beings, including deeply flawed specimens of the race. Much of the rule of law in higher courts is based on the collective wisdom of judges reviewing the collective decision of a jury and the individual decisions of a judge. In the end, significant judicial decisions, and dissents, are written with rationales and justifications. Much of that is lacking in many legislative processes, although there are counter examples such as the history of the Environmental Policy Act. In Minnesota, it's relatively easy to find news coverage of the legislature's elimination of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's Citizen Board some years ago, but try to find a real legislative rationale other than "no longer needed."

In our opinion, what the legislature actually did with  the elimination of an independent citizens' board was contribute mightily to the successful regulatory capture of our "Pollution Control Agency" which ultimately resulted in the contentious "permitting" of projects such as NorthMet, many of whose permits are failing judicial review, followed by a report of the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Inspector General which found that:

[EPA] Region 5 did not address all CWA and NPDES regulations during its review of a draft NPDES permit for a mine and processing facilities to be built by PolyMet Mining Inc. along the St. Louis River in northeastern Minnesota. Despite its concerns about the NPDES permit, Region 5 did not provide written comments to Minnesota, contrary to the region’s standard operating procedures and per common EPA practice.In addition, Region 5 repeatedly declined to make a formal determination under CWA § 401(a)(2) regarding whether discharges from the PolyMet NorthMet project may impact the quality of waters within the jurisdiction of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, whose tribal lands are 125 miles downstream from the site of the PolyMet NorthMet project. The tribe was therefore unable to avail itself of the NPDES permit objection process set forth in CWA §401(a)(2).

For a state in which pro-mining politicians like to cite the "world class stringency" of its environmental regulations, one of the first things to do to make sure projects are approved speedily and efficiently is to eliminate the guard dogs at the chicken house, so to speak. Regulations that aren't followed aren't worth a damn except to CYA. For the next legislative election, citizens who care about the environment, and their children's health, would be well advised to make support for bringing back an independent Citizens Board to oversee the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency staff a critical criterion in choosing who to support for House and Senate races, even if you've never eaten Minnesota's official state grain, you might want to be able to safely drink the water, eat the fish and breathe the air. At least do it for the kids!

The Waste Carpet

By William Matthews

No day is right for the apocalypse,

if you ask a housewife in Talking

Rock, Georgia, or maybe Hop River,

Connecticut. She is opening a plastic bag.

A grotesque parody of the primeval muck

starts oozing out. And behold,

the plastic bag is magic;

there is no closing it. Soap

in unsoftened water, sewage, asbestos

coiled like vermicelli, Masonite shavings,

a liquefied lifetime subscription

to The New York Times delivered all at once.

Empty body stockings, limp, forlorn,

like collapsed lungs. A blithering slur

of face creams, an army of photocopies

travelling on its stomach of acronyms,

tooth paste tubes wrung rigid and dry.

Also, two hundred and one tons

of crumpled bumpers wrapped in insurance

claims, slag, coal dust, plastic trimmings,

industrial excrementa. Lake Erie is returning

our gifts.

       At first she thought she had won

something. Now it slithers through the house,

out windows, down the street, spreading

everywhere but heading, mostly, west.

Maybe heading is the wrong word,

implying shape and choice. It took

the shape of the landscape

it rippled across like the last blanket.

And it went west because the way lay open

once again: not the same fecund rug

the earth grew when white people scraped

their first paths to the Pacific

across the waves of the inland grasses.

Outside Ravenswood, West Virginia,

abandoned cars shine in the sun

like beetlebacks. The ore it took

to make the iron it took to make the steel

it took to make the cars, that ore

would remember the glaciers if it could.

Now comes another grinding, but not—

thanks to our new techniques—so slow.

The amiable cars wait stilly in their pasture.

Three Edsels forage in the southeast corner

like bishops of a ruined church.

There are Fords and Dodges, a Mercury

on blocks, four Darts and a Pierce Arrow,

a choir of silenced Chevrolets.

And, showing their lapsed trademarks

and proud grilles to a new westward

expansion, two Hudsons, a LaSalle

and a DeSoto.

       I was hoping to describe

the colors of this industrial autumn—

rust, a faded purple like the dusty

skin of a Concord grape, flaking moss-

green paint with primer peeking

blandly through, the garish macho reds

insurance companies punish, the greys

(opaque) and silvers (bright), the snob colors

(e.g. British Racing Green), the two-tone

combinations time will spurn like roadkill

(1957: pink and grey), cornflower

blue, naval blue, royal blue, stark blue, true

blue, the blacker blue the diver sees

beneath him when he plumbs thirty feet—

but now they are all covered,

rolling and churning in the last

accident, like bubbles in lava.

And now my Cincinnati—the hills

above the river, the lawn that drained

toward Ricwood Ave. like a small valley of uncles,

the sultry river musk that slid

like a compromising note through my bedroom window—

and indeed all Cincinnati seethes. The vats

at Proctor & Gamble cease their slick

congealing, and my beloved birthplace

is but another whorl of dirt.

Up north near Lebanon and Troy and Rosewood,

the corn I skulked in as a boy

lays back its ears like a shamed dog.

Hair along the sow’s spine rises.

The Holstein pivots his massive head

toward where the barn stood; the spreading stain

he sees is his new owner.

What we imagined was the fire-storm,

or, failing that, the glacier.

Or we hoped we’d get off easy,

losing only California.

With the seismologists and mystics

we say the last California ridge

crumble into the ocean.

And we were read with elegies:

O California, sportswear

and defense contracts, gasses that induce

deference, high school girls

with their own cars, we wanted

to love you without pain.

O California, when you were moored to us

like a vast splinter of melon,

like a huge and garish gondola,

then we were happier, although

we showed it by easy contempt.

But now you are lost at sea,

your cargo of mudslides and Chardonnays

lost, the prints of the old movies

lost, the thick unlighted candles of the redwoods

snuffed in advance. On the ocean floor

they lie like hands of a broken clock.

O California, here we come,

quoting Ecclesiastes,

ruinous with self-knowledge.

Meanwhile, because the muck won’t stop

for lamentation, Kansas succumbs.

Drawn down by anklets of DDT,

the jayhawk circles lower and lower

while the sludge moils and crests.

Now we are about to lose our voices

we remember that tomorrow is our echo.

O the old songs, the good days:

bad faith and civil disobedience,

sloppy scholarship and tooth decay.

Now the age of footnotes is ours.

Ibid, ibid, ibid, ibid, ibid.

While the rivers thickened and fish

rose like vomit, the students of water

stamped each fish with its death date.

Don’t let a chance like this go by,

they thought, though it went by

as everything went by—towers

of water flecked by a confetti

of topsoil, clucked tongues, smug

prayers. What we paid too much for

and too little attention to,

our very lives, all jumbled

now and far too big in aggregate

to understand or mourn, goes by,

and all our eloquence places its

weight on the spare word goodbye.

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Making plans

 Once again it's cloudy and cool. Yesterday may have been Spring in the North Country. There's snow in the forecast over the weekend, both days. What all too frequently happens is this kind of weather pattern staggers along until, suddenly, sometime in May or early June, daytime temperatures reach the mid 80's and it's Summer. Sigh : >( !

Amador Hill Farm and Orchard

Photo by J. Harrington

But, at least a week from today we again start our Spring Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] share at Women's Environmental Institute farm. Slowly but surely I'm learning to eat, and sometimes even like, my veggies, even greens. I think it's the software sector that started a saying about "eating your own dog food." Since we spend many minutes and  pixels posting about a local economy, bioregionalism, local foods and related matters, belonging to two food co-ops and various CSAs are among our ways of "walking the talk" or "eating the food." In fact, aided and abetted by the Daughter Person and Son-In-Law, we've even added buying non-CAFO pasture raised meat to our program. It's not entirely clear how much difference any of this makes except we know we're doing as little as possible to support an industrial agriculture system. In theory, if enough folks could and would do that, the big-ind-ag system, "get big or get out," should implode.

We hope you had a wonderful Earth Day yesterday and find ways to honor Gaia all year. Unfortunately, many of the messages in our in basket yesterday emphasized by folks wanted to stop more than what, and how, replacements to the current system are possible. Has anyone seen a report that describes how self-sufficient Minnesota is, or could be, at meeting its own food needs each year? I've been looking for such a report and haven't yet been successful. One of the nicest things about being a recovering planner is that I know that planning let's you make mistakes on paper (or in computers) instead of just testing on real people in the real world. Maybe Minnesota could and should bring back its Office of State Planning.

The Summer Day 

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean--

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life? 

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On Earth Day, it's restoration time

It's fitting that this Earth Day the technician is coming to check our air conditioning and make sure it's efficient. It's also fitting that today is the day yard cleanup from last autumn's leaf drop and last winter's branch fall begins. Now, if only we can find an ecological method to eliminate all the damn moles and voles in our yard...anyone have gopher snakes they want to donate?

 Feeders for Baltimore orioles and ruby-throated hummingbirds have joined the sunflower chip feeders for all the other species and the free-riding squirrels. It's going to be fun watching to see how soon the colorful migrants arrive. Still no signs of bluebirds or swallows at the bird houses out back but we just decided it's finally safe to hook up a hose and turn on the outside faucet today. April is a very frustrating month in the North Country.

There's an encouraging amount of progress beginning to occur in responding to some of the Earth's crises we're creating. Today we hope it doesn't become a question of a response that's "too little, too late."

Now, on a brighter side, if ferns that emerge in the spring all curled up are called fiddleheads, does that make ferns that  have grown several inches "straight up" fiddlesticks?

are these fiddlesticks?

Photo by J. Harrington

After a year+ of COVID-19 and more than four years of an orange idiot in the White House, I have developed an angry attitude. In honor of this year's Earth Day, and its theme of restoration, I vow to do my best to follow our poet laureate's guidance (see below) from now until next Earth Day. That means I'll be restoring myself as I continue to work to restore our Earth. May your next year be restorative for you, those around you and the Earth on which we depend.

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

By Joy Harjo

I am the holy being of my mother's prayer and my father's song

                                                      —Norman Patrick Brown, Dineh Poet and Speaker

1. SET CONFLICT RESOLUTION GROUND RULES:

Recognize whose lands these are on which we stand.
Ask the deer, turtle, and the crane.
Make sure the spirits of these lands are respected and treated with goodwill.
The land is a being who remembers everything.
You will have to answer to your children, and their children, and theirs—
The red shimmer of remembering will compel you up the night to walk the perimeter of truth for understanding.
As I brushed my hair over the hotel sink to get ready I heard:
By listening we will understand who we are in this holy realm of words.
Do not parade, pleased with yourself.
You must speak in the language of justice.


2. USE EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS THAT DISPLAY AND ENHANCE MUTUAL TRUST AND RESPECT:

If you sign this paper we will become brothers. We will no longer fight. We will give you this land and these waters "as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers run."

The lands and waters they gave us did not belong to them to give. Under false pretenses we signed. After drugging by drink, we signed. With a mass of gunpower pointed at us, we signed. With a flotilla of war ships at our shores, we signed. We are still signing. We have found no peace in this act of signing.

A casino was raised up over the gravesite of our ancestors. Our own distant cousins pulled up the bones of grandparents, parents, and grandchildren from their last sleeping place. They had forgotten how to be human beings. Restless winds emerged from the earth when the graves were open and the winds went looking for justice.

If you raise this white flag of peace, we will honor it.

At Sand Creek several hundred women, children, and men were slaughtered in an unspeakable massacre, after a white flag was raised. The American soldiers trampled the white flag in the blood of the peacemakers.

There is a suicide epidemic among native children. It is triple the rate of the rest of America. "It feels like wartime," said a child welfare worker in South Dakota.

If you send your children to our schools we will train them to get along in this changing world. We will educate them.

We had no choice. They took our children. Some ran away and froze to death. If they were found they were dragged back to the school and punished. They cut their hair, took away their language, until they became as strangers to themselves even as they became strangers to us.

If you sign this paper we will become brothers. We will no longer fight. We will give you this land and these waters in exchange "as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers run."

Put your hand on this bible, this blade, this pen, this oil derrick, this gun and you will gain trust and respect with us. Now we can speak together as one.

We say, put down your papers, your tools of coercion, your false promises, your posture of superiority and sit with us before the fire. We will share food, songs, and stories. We will gather beneath starlight and dance, and rise together at sunrise.

The sun rose over the Potomac this morning, over the city surrounding the white house.
It blazed scarlet, a fire opening truth.
White House, or Chogo Hvtke, means the house of the peacekeeper, the keepers of justice.
We have crossed this river to speak to the white leader for peace many times
Since these settlers first arrived in our territory and made this their place of governance.
These streets are our old trails, curved to fit around trees.
 

3. GIVE CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK:

We speak together with this trade language of English. This trade language enables us to speak across many language boundaries. These languages have given us the poets:

Ortiz, Silko, Momaday, Alexie, Diaz, Bird, Woody, Kane, Bitsui, Long Soldier, White, Erdrich, Tapahonso, Howe, Louis, Brings Plenty, okpik, Hill, Wood, Maracle, Cisneros, Trask, Hogan, Dunn, Welch, Gould...

The 1957 Chevy is unbeatable in style. My broken-down one-eyed Ford will have to do. It holds everyone: Grandma and grandpa, aunties and uncles, the children and the babies, and all my boyfriends. That's what she said, anyway, as she drove off for the Forty-Nine with all of us in that shimmying wreck.

This would be no place to be without blues, jazz—Thank you/mvto to the Africans, the Europeans sitting in, especially Adolphe Sax with his saxophones... Don't forget that at the center is the Mvskoke ceremonial circles. We know how to swing. We keep the heartbeat of the earth in our stomp dance feet.

You might try dancing theory with a bustle, or a jingle dress, or with turtles strapped around your legs. You might try wearing colonization like a heavy gold chain around a pimp's neck.


4. REDUCE DEFENSIVENESS AND BREAK THE DEFENSIVENESS CHAIN:

I could hear the light beings as they entered every cell. Every cell is a house of the god of light, they said. I could hear the spirits who love us stomp dancing. They were dancing as if they were here, and then another level of here, and then another, until the whole earth and sky was dancing.

We are here dancing, they said. There was no there.

There was no  "I"  or "you."

There was us; there was "we."

There we were as if we were the music.

You cannot legislate music to lockstep nor can you legislate the spirit of the music to stop at political boundaries—

—Or poetry, or art, or anything that is of value or matters in this world, and the next worlds.

This is about getting to know each other.

We will wind up back at the blues standing on the edge of the flatted fifth about to jump into a fierce understanding together.


5. ELIMINATE NEGATIVE ATTITUDES DURING CONFLICT:

A panther poised in the cypress tree about to jump is a panther poised in a cypress tree about to jump.

The panther is a poem of fire green eyes and a heart charged by four winds of four directions.

The panther hears everything in the dark: the unspoken tears of a few hundred human years, storms that will break what has broken his world, a bluebird swaying on a branch a few miles away.

He hears the death song of his approaching prey:

I will always love you, sunrise.
I belong to the black cat with fire green eyes.
There, in the cypress tree near the morning star.


6. AND, USE WHAT YOU LEARN TO RESOLVE YOUR OWN CONFLICTS AND TO MEDIATE OTHERS' CONFLICTS:

When we made it back home, back over those curved roads
that wind through the city of peace, we stopped at the
doorway of dusk as it opened to our homelands.
We gave thanks for the story, for all parts of the story
because it was by the light of those challenges we knew
ourselves—
We asked for forgiveness.
We laid down our burdens next to each other.

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Shall we celebrate Minnesota's Earth Day with a Doughnut?

As you know (we hope), tomorrow is Earth Day 2021. Minnesota's most recent environmental score card leaves a lot to be desired. (We're glad none of our report cards were this bad when we were in school.) But we want to offer a positive suggestion to the Walz administration, the one that isn't doing well on either climate or water. [We really would like to see the Walz administration be more successful, since the other party (GQP) is likely to offer an even worse track record. Just look at the Minnesota Senate.]

Here's our proposal: We recommend, in the strongest possible terms, that the Walz administration, through its Environmental Quality Board and its Department of Commerce and its Housing Agency, etc., announce that it is going to prepare Minnesota to join those leading communities that are adopting a Doughnut Economics Model to guide their decisions.

According to that hotbed of socialism😉, the World Economic Forum, doughnut economics is the new economic model that could help end inequality. Isn't inequality one of the major underlying factors contributing to racism, urban — rural splits, homelessness, and related issues?

As a starting point, we propose the Walz administration use this report as a template and prepare a similar status report on where Minnesota stands regarding its own doughnut measures. They could call it:

The State of the Doughnut in Minnesota

The "Doughnut" model

 

Or, we could continue with a model known as

Proprietary

By Randall Mann

In a precisely lighted room, the CFO speaks

of  start-to-start dependencies.

Says let me loop back with you.

Says please cascade as appropriate.

It’s that time of morning, so we all can smell

the doughnut factory. If scent were white

noise, doughnuts would be that scent.

The factory won’t sell at any price.

The building next to it burns the animals

we experiment on. I have worked

on a few preclinical reports in my time. 

The rhesus monkeys become

so desperate that they attempt suicide,

over and over again. I am legally obligated

to spare you the particulars.

How could things be any different?

Here many choice molecules have been born.

Here. This pill will dissolve like sugar.

Your last five months will be good ones.

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It's the system, stupid, or is it the stupid system?

Before there was the internets, before there was social media, was the world as crazy as it is these days and we just didn't know about it? Although I can't prove it, I'm dubious. The lines of fracture used to be more limited, I believe. During my younger days, there was the civil rights movement (1954 — 1968), followed by the anti-vietnam war movement (1964 — early 1970s), followed by the environmental movement (1970 — present).

Taking a look at today's headlines, it's clear none of these movements actually resolved the issues they were intended to address. It's also clear that there's been a lot of cross-linkages among once relatively disparate issues. Many, many years ago I was introduced to the concept of multi-objective multi-purpose optimization while developing plans to address land use and water quality issues. I wonder if either our legislators or our public sector executives are familiar with the process.

What we're seeing in the case of the Chauvin trial is an individual being tried. What we also need is the ability to put an entire law enforcement system on trial. Recently I've seen several references to not one bad apple but a bad barrel or a bad tree. That's a pretty clear description of a systemic problem.

William Beebe quotation, International Crane Foundation

Photo by J. Harrington

We have such systemic problems creating global weirding; abusive and racist policing; unhealthy food systems that create excess waste and fail to feed those who would benefit from discarded, but edible, food. We grow corn to produce ethanol and consume more energy than the process and product yields, or so I've read.

I'm pretty much reached my limit supporting dysfunctional systems that don't solve today's complex problems. If someone wants to call for a worldwide general strike, sign me up!

13 Questions for the Next Economy

Susan Briante

On the side of the road, white cardboard in the shape of a man,
     	     illegible script. A signpost with scrawl: Will pay cash for 
              diabetes strips.
 
A system under the system with its black box.                    	Disability hearing?
a billboard reads. Trouble with Social Security? Where does the riot begin?
 
Spark of dry grass, Russian thistle in flames, or butterflies bobbing
as if pulled by unseen strings            	  through the alleyway.
        	
My mother’s riot would have been peace. A bicycle wheel
              chained to a concrete planter. What metaphor
 
              can I use to describe the children sleeping in cages in 
                  detention
centers? Birds pushed fenceward by a breeze? A train of brake lights
 
extending? Mesquite pods mill under our feet
on a rainless sidewalk. What revolution            will my daughter feed?
 
A break-the-state twig-quick snap or a long divining       	    as if
for water? A cotton silence? A death?          	      Who will read this
 
in the next economy, the one that comes after the one that kills us?
What lessons will we take from the side of the road? A wooden crucifix,
 
a white bicycle, a pinwheel, a poem
waiting to be redacted:                         Which would you cross out?

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Earth, rise

Thursday of this week is Earth Day. It was first celebrated in 1970, largely through the instigation of Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. Senator Nelson was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his role as founder of Earth Day.

“The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.” — Gaylord Nelson

Photo by J. Harrington

Two years prior, during the Apollo 8 mission, Earthrise, the first photo of Earth rising over the moon's horizon, was taken. It clearly showed how alive, alone and potentially fragile our home planet looked against the blackness of space.

Earthrise, NASA

Although it would be too harsh a judgement to assert that Earth Day has been a failure, looking at the current status of climate weirding, multiple extinctions, continuing widespread pollution of our air and water, a global pandemic, growing inequality among nations and people, meaningless squabbling about who should do how much of what to save the planet, and the recent election of a totally unqualified individual as 45th POTUS, one might conclude that our consciences are failing the Nelson test. This week, this month, every week and every month, we must make every day an Earth Day or we will have no future generations with  words of thanks. They will justifiably be cursing us for our failures to provide them with a habitable home.

For the Children

by Gary Snyder

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us,
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

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