Country chores

With excellent assistance from the Better Half  [BH], the mums are now planted along the north side of the  drive. Some time in the  next few days, I’ll wander off and see if I can find a couple of aster plants.

asters, still on the “To Do” list

Photo by J. Harrington

Once the mums were in the  ground, the BH watered them and I proceeded, on my own, to pick up the trash along our stretch of country road, much of the litter had blown out the top hatch of one or more of the solid waste collection trucks that service the township. After that, I burned the latest batch of broken, dead branches brought down by recent storms. In that process, the sand burs and grasses previously mowed from along the road were consumed by fire (in the fire pit).

Tidying the place up has been aided and abetted by members of the local deer herd, one or more of whom have been consuming  the bur oak acorns that were dropping onto the drive. This morning we caught a glimpse of one of the guilty parties, or an accomplice, in the field behind the house. Life around here would be vastly improved if whitetail deer added poison ivy to their favorite foods list.

All in all, I’ve reached a point where my middle-class upbringing, focused as it was on neat and orderly, is slowly yielding to a countrified emphasis on ecological function. Instead of cleaning all the oak leaf and pine needle mix before planting  the mums, I left the mix there as mulch. There’s plenty of other places around the property I can gather leaves to feed brown material into the compost.

That’s it for now. Although not technically a chore, I baked another loaf of artisan sourdough bread this morning. For the first time ever, I think, the Better Half told me a loaf of my bread needed more salt. I’m going to go taste it for myself now. We’ll be back tomorrow, dog willing and the river don’t rise too much.

Mowing

By Robert Wrigley

Sleepy and suburban at dusk,

I learn again the yard’s

geometry, edging around the garden

and the weedy knots of flowers, circling

trees and shrubs, giving

a wide berth to the berry patch,

heavy and sprawled out of its bounds.

Shoving such a machine

around a fairway of dandelions,

it is easy to feel absurd.

The average lawn, left alone

one hundred years, could become

a hardwood forest. An admirable project.

Still I carry on, following week on week

the same mowing pattern, cutting edges,

almost sprinting the last narrow swaths.

And tonight, as I mow over

the bushels of fallen peaches,

sending pits soaring over the neighbors’ fences,

seems hardly any different.

But on one crooked march I walk

across the thin hidden hole

to a yellowjacket hive. The blade pulls

them up from their deep sweet chamber

just as my bare legs go by.

A bee lands heavily,

all blunder and revenge, and the sting

is a quick embrace and release,

like the dared kid’s run and touch

of a blind man. I’m blind now

with the shock and pain of it,

howling in a sprint toward the house,

the mower flopped on its side, wild blade loose

in the darkening air.

                                 Later,

the motor sputtered quiet, starved by tilt,

I’m back in the twilight,

a half-dozen stings packed in wet tobacco,

carrying a can of gasoline, a five-foot torch.

The destruction is easy: shove can

slow to entranceway lip, pull

back and light torch, use torch

to tip can. One low whump and it’s over.

A few flaming drones flutter out and fall.

Stragglers, late returners, cruise

wide circles around the ruins.

In the cool September night they fly

or die. In the morning I finish my chores.

All the way to winter the blackened hole

remains. On Christmas Eve a light

late snow covers it and all

the lawn’s other imperfections: crabgrass

hummocks, high maple roots,

the mushroom-laden fairy ring that defies

obliteration and appears every spring

more visible than ever. Standing

in the window, the scent

of pine powerful around me,

the snap of wood undoing itself in the stove,

I wonder at this thin and cold

camouflage, falling,

gradually falling over what has gone

and grown before. And I hear

that other rattle and report, that engine

driven by another fire. I think of a gold

that is sweet and unguent, a gold

that is a blaze of years behind me.

I hear wind in its regular passes

blowing across the roof,

feel in my legs a minute and icy tingling,

as though I have stood too long

in one place or made again another wrong step,

as though the present itself

were a kind of memory, coiled, waiting,

dying to be seen from tomorrow.

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For every complex problem, a simple solution?

I absolutely agree that we are in the midst of a worldwide climate crisis. I don’t agree that the major solution to that crisis is to either “leave it in the ground” or “end the fossil fuel industry,” because neither of those approaches speaks to what else has to be done to reach drawdown on greenhouse gas emissions. Either of those approaches means we’ll stop being bad at some things, but not enough things to re-solve our climate problem. If we end the ff industry, does that include capping the wells that are currently leaking methane? Perhaps, but not necessarily.

We need to transition not only our energy system(s), we also need to substantially modify or replace just about every system on which the current global economy depends. If you think that’s a radical statement, take a look at Project Drawdown’s Framework for Climate Solutions. We can “leave it in the ground” without addressing many of the sources of greenhouse gasses [GHG] and leaving it in the ground certainly doesn’t do much to support sinks of GHGs.

emissions sources and natural sinks

If you’re at all willing to consider the third action area, improve society, you probably should take a look at the ideas behind doughnut economics. Think of it as the societal equivalent of walking and chewing gum concurrently.

The Doughnut consists of two concentric rings: a social foundation, to ensure that no one is left falling short on life’s essentials, and an ecological ceiling, to ensure that humanity does not collectively overshoot the planetary boundaries that protect Earth's life-supporting systems. Between these two sets of boundaries lies a doughnut-shaped space that is both ecologically safe and socially just: a space in which humanity can thrive.

Two other resource frameworks that are helpful in beginning to understand the challenges facing US are the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and the World Resources Institute’s State of Climate Action.

If today’s title seems familiar, that’s because it’s a derivation of something H. L. Mencken wrote about one hundred years ago that’s since appeared in a variety of forms: "there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” Leave it or end it seem like that kind of solution to our climate crises.

I knew something was wrong

By Dorothea Grossman

I knew something was wrong 

the day I tried to pick up a 

small piece of sunlight 

and it slithered through my fingers, 

not wanting to take shape. 

Everything else stayed the same—

the chairs and the carpet 

and all the corners 

where the waiting continued.

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Summer into Autumn #phenology

Hummingbirds are still around, but it’s been a week or two (or more) since we’ve noticed rose-breasted grosbeaks at the feeders. Pocket gopher(s) are back making mounds of dirt on the slope behind  and opposite the house. Our compost tumbler isn’t composting as quickly or as well as I’d like so today I read more about making compost in a tumbler. Then I went and collected dirt from the new gopher mounds to add to the compost tumbler. That’s the first time in a quarter century I’ve found any real use for a pocket gopher. Tomorrow, weather permitting, I’ll again look for a main tunnel in which  to set a trap and then drag a harrow over the remaining mounds.

hummingbird at window feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

From what I read this morning, our compost needs to be fed more leaves. That now has me considering a leaf shredder to complement the mulching kit on the tractor’s mowing deck, or, I may try mowing some of last year’s leaves and pine needles into the bagging mower and adding a bag or so to the compost. The rest we’ll just haul away and dump in the woods or see if it’s possible to kill some poison ivy by dumping leaf mulch on it, maybe  after we spray it first. This week’s objective is to get our annual autumn chrysanthemums planted (and maybe  some asters).

driveway chrysanthemums

Photo by J. Harrington

It’s astounding how much more ambitious I feel and act come autumn’s breezes and cooler temperatures. Meteorological autumn starts three days from now. As a treat, if you’re not familiar with  George Winston’s music, try a listen to his album titled Autumn in the Internet Archive. It’s uplifting. Isn’t that something we all could use more of these days?

To Autumn

William Blake - 1757-1827

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained
With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit
Beneath my shady roof; there thou mayst rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,
And all the daughters of the year shall dance!
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

"The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clust'ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
And feather'd clouds strew flowers round her head.

"The spirits of the air live on the smells
Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round
The gardens, or sits singing in the trees."
Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat;
Then rose, girded himself, and o'er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.

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Raptor migration #phenology

Have you visited Hawk Ridge in Duluth? If not, the next couple of months is usually a peak time if you’re interested in foliage viewing  and hawk migration. This year maybe not so much, depending on the wind direction and smoke plumes from the wildfires scattered over northern Minnesota.

I’ve no idea whether the smoke may affect the migration of the raptors that usually pass over Hawk Ridge. The internet and search engines yielded this assessment of the effects of smoke on raptors, but nothing on migration disruption. The Audubon Society has an assessment of how wildfires affect birds. If there’s still smoke plumes in northern Minnesota, it would be wise to protect your own lungs and wait until 2022 when we hope conditions will improve.

Taking an optimistic view that the wildfires soon will be contained and the smoke will dissipate, here’s a timeline we photographed several years ago at Hawk Ridge.

Hawk Ridge primary migration timing

Photo by J. Harrington

The current count for this year has been dominated by songbirds and nighthawks, although some raptors have been seen. If you follow the link on the raptor count, and check last year’s dates, you might be able to get a sense of when the  migration peaked.

Evening Hawk

By Robert Penn Warren

From plane of light to plane, wings dipping through 

Geometries and orchids that the sunset builds, 

Out of the peak's black angularity of shadow, riding 

The last tumultuous avalanche of 

Light above pines and the guttural gorge, 

The hawk comes. 

His wing 

Scythes down another day, his motion 

Is that of the honed steel-edge, we hear 

The crashless fall of stalks of Time. 

The head of each stalk is heavy with the gold of our error. 

Look! Look! he is climbing the last light 

Who knows neither Time nor error, and under 

Whose eye, unforgiving, the world, unforgiven, swings 

Into shadow. 

Long now, 

The last thrush is still, the last bat 

Now cruises in his sharp hieroglyphics. His wisdom 

Is ancient, too, and immense. The star 

Is steady, like Plato, over the mountain. 

If there were no wind we might, we think, hear 

The earth grind on its axis, or history 

Drip in darkness like a leaking pipe in the cellar.

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My mistake, please don’t repeat it

About five years ago I bought a book and began to read it. For reasons I don’t remember, I got part way into it and put it aside. As I look about the world’s crises, it’s clear I probably should have kept reading. The book’s title? The War On Science, by Shawn Otto. The linked title will take you to a review published in Scientific American, from which  we extracted these paragraphs:

Otto grounds his inquiry into current antiscience attitudes by examining their cultural and intellectual roots in, among other things, the anti-Darwinist reaction of the 19th century, the wholesale retreat by many scientists from civic discourse after World War II and the postmodernist movement of the late 20th century.

At times, Otto seems to be criticizing everyone—from academics to industrialists to journalists to politicians. But, despite cogently eviscerating the ultraliberal anti-vaccine element and the “brutal, blame-the-victim aspect of New Age thinking,” he reserves his greatest ire for the “antiscience of those on the right—a coalition of fundamentalist churches and corporations largely in the resource extraction, petrochemical and agrochemical industries.” Their effort, Otto writes, “has far more dangerous public policy implications because it is about forestalling policy based on evidence to protect destructive business models.”

 There are several subtitles on the book’s cover

• Who’s Waging It


• Why It Matters


• What We Can Do About It

It’s the last item that is of particular interest to me. In the five or six years since Milkweed Editions published the book, the country has elected a charlatan as president and suffered more than 650,000 deaths during and due to a pandemic that’s continuing as this is being typed. I’ve been pondering for some time how we can deal with  the next pandemic, or its ilk, if we still have up to one third of the country refusing vaccination and politicians too afraid of civil unrest or losing the the next election to make vaccination mandatory. Democracy requires an informed electorate. We seem to be heading in the wrong direction on that issue and need to make addressing that a much greater priority. Who knows, if more people were informed about the options for responding appropriately to our climate crisis we might even make some timely progress there.

I’m going to correct my mistake and start again reading The War On Science this afternoon. I suggest you give some careful consideration to seeing if your library, your independent bookstore, or Milkweed Editions has a copy for you.

Science

By Alison Hawthorne Deming

Then it was the future, though what’s arrived   

isn’t what we had in mind, all chrome and   

cybernetics, when we set up exhibits

in the cafeteria for the judges

to review what we’d made of our hypotheses.

The class skeptic (he later refused to sign   

anyone’s yearbook, calling it a sentimental   

degradation of language) chloroformed mice,   

weighing the bodies before and after

to catch the weight of the soul,

wanting to prove the invisible

real as a bagful of nails. A girl

who knew it all made cookies from euglena,

a one-celled compromise between animal and plant,   

she had cultured in a flask.

We’re smart enough, she concluded,

to survive our mistakes, showing photos of farmland,   

poisoned, gouged, eroded. No one believed

he really had built it when a kid no one knew   

showed up with an atom smasher, confirming that

the tiniest particles could be changed   

into something even harder to break.

And one whose mother had cancer (hard to admit now,   

it was me) distilled the tar of cigarettes   

to paint it on the backs of shaven mice.

She wanted to know what it took,

a little vial of sure malignancy,

to prove a daily intake smaller

than a single aspirin could finish

something as large as a life. I thought of this

because, today, the dusky seaside sparrow

became extinct. It may never be as famous

as the pterodactyl or the dodo,

but the last one died today, a resident

of Walt Disney World where now its tissue samples

lie frozen, in case someday we learn to clone

one from a few cells. Like those instant dinosaurs

that come in a gelatin capsule—just add water   

and they inflate. One other thing this

brings to mind. The euglena girl won first prize

both for science and, I think, in retrospect, for hope.

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Let today go to the dogs! #NationalDogDay

 The fact that today is Inter/National Dog Day  means it’s going to the dogs for much better reasons than most days. We’re currently sharing our home and our lives with a couple of rescue dogs. The Better Half has Franco, a border collie crossbreed and I’ve got SiSi, a yellow Lab cross. Before they rescued us there was a long string of black Labrador retrievers, preceded by a Brittany Spaniel, and before him a beagle and several childhood mutts. There have been some periods in my life when I was without a canine companion but they’ve been relatively brief and far between, thank dog!

Franco, part border collie, all dog

Photo by J. Harrington

I know of no one who has better captured and described the relationship between humans and their best friends than Gene Hill. If you haven’t read his writings on dogs, you should look for a copy of

• Tears and Laughter


• Sunlight and Shadows


• A Listening Walk...


• Just Mutts

SiSi, part yellow Lab, all fun

Photo by J. Harrington

or almost any other of his books. Here’s a sample of some of his observations:

• “He is my other eyes that can see above the clouds; my other ears that hear above the winds. He is the part of me that can reach out into the sea. He has told me a thousand times over that I am his reason for being; by the way he rests against my leg; by the way he thumps his tail at my smallest smile; by the way he shows his hurt when I leave without taking him. (I think it makes him sick with worry when he is not along to care for me.) When I am wrong, he is delighted to forgive. When I am angry, he clowns to make me smile. When I am happy, he is joy unbounded. When I am a fool, he ignores it. When I succeed, he brags. Without him, I am only another man. With him, I am all-powerful. He is loyalty itself. He has taught me the meaning of devotion. With him, I know a secret comfort and a private peace. He has brought me understanding where before I was ignorant. His head on my knee can heal my human hurts. His presence by my side is protection against my fears of dark and unknown things. He has promised to wait for me... whenever... wherever - in case I need him. And I expect I will - as I always have. He is just my dog.”


• “Whoever said you can't buy Happiness forgot little puppies.”


• “If there is a place in heaven for Labrador Retrievers (and I trust there is or I won't go) it'll have to have a brook right smack in the middle - a brook with little thin shoals for wading and splashing; a brook with deep, still pools where they can throw themselves headlong from the bank; a brook with lots of small sticks floating that can be retrieved back to shore where they belong; a brook with muskrats and muskrat holes; a brook with green herons and wood ducks; a brook that is never twice the same with surprises that run and swim and fly; a brook that is cold enough to make the man with the dog run like the devil away from his shaking; a brook with a fine spot to get muddy and a sunny spot or two to get dry.” 

If you’re fortunate enough to share your life with a dog or two or more, be sure to celebrate today with them. Then, remember to celebrate every day you can share with them. If you’re not lucky enough to have a dog in your life, you have our sympathy and our fond wishes you can find a way to fill that empty hole, even if you don’t know it as such yet.

On the off chance that Gene Hill isn’t quite to your taste, or if you simply are looking for a different way to understand something about dogs, I suggest looking at Mary Oliver’s Dog Songs, such as

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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Woolly bear time? #phenology

First, we wish success to the folks demonstrating against Enbridge’s Line 3 and for wild rice, clean water and honoring treaty rights. If it were not for the fact that a Republican administration would be even worse, leaving progressives with few places to turn, we suspect the Democrats in the Minnesota governor’s mansion and the White House might be more receptive to honoring their pledges to treat our climate crisis as the priority it should be. It does, however, mean that many progressives might see it as I do and decide to vote for Democrats but let their corporate masters pay for Democratic political campaigns. What a sad commentary on a supposedly world-leading democracy. Enough! On to brighter topics.

woolly bear on patio screen

Photo by J. Harrington

We’ve reached that time of year when those of us in the North Country need to keep our eyes open for woolly bear caterpillars. They’re black at either end, sort of copperyish brown in the middle and about two inches long. This is when they begin to crawl along roads, sidewalks etc., looking for a place to spend the winter months in a pile of dead leaves or something  comparable. In case you’re interested, the woolly bear is the caterpillar of the Isabella tiger moth.

Yesterday we were blessed with rain. More, in the order of several inches, is forecast for tomorrow through  week’s end. It would have been more helpful during the growing season, but  we’ll take it and hope for a more balanced distribution next spring and summer.

Moths

By Jennifer O'Grady

Adrift in the liberating, late light

of August, delicate, frivolous,

they make their way to my front porch

and flutter near the glassed-in bulb,

translucent as a thought suddenly

wondered aloud, illumining the air

that's thick with honeysuckle and dusk.

You and I are doing our best

at conversation, keeping it light, steering clear

of what we'd like to say.

You leave, and the night becomes

cluttered with moths, some tattered,

their dumbly curious filaments

startling against my cheek. How quickly,

instinctively, I brush them away.

Dazed, they cling to the outer darkness

like pale reminders of ourselves.

Others seem to want so desperately

to get inside. Months later, I'll find

the woolens, snug in their resting places,

full of missing pieces.

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What problem would low-carbon fuel standards solve?

Way back in the last millennium, when I was in school, I was taught that “the proper definition of a problem is half the solution.” Based on something I read this morning, it appears that a number of our Minnesota legislators never took that lesson to heart.

In  today’s MinnPost, the following article caught my attention: 

Minnesota lawmakers look to low-carbon fuel standards as a way to address transportation emissions

Unlike the Clean Cars regulations — a controversial mandate from Gov. Tim Walz’s administration — the low-carbon fuel standard is noteworthy for its broader political support.

The fuel standard bill introduced in Minnesota would require a 20 percent reduction in the “aggregate carbon intensity” of transportation fuel supplied to the state by the end of 2035. The intensity measure takes into account more than emissions from a tailpipe. Pollution from electricity generation for EVs, or producing crops for biofuels, is counted, for instance.

Some might be pleased that the legislature is endeavoring to be creative in its approach to transportation emissions. In fact, according to the article, some are. I believe the low-carbon fuel standards miss the point to an unacceptable degree. My belief is based on a review of work completed by Project Drawdown in Climate Solutions 101. Unit 3 of that package is “Reducing Sources.” Here’s the inventory they identify.

Project Drawdown’s Greenhouse Gas Sources

Let me call to your attention the fact that Transportation (teal), on a global basis, is a source of 14% of the greenhouse gases [GHGs]. Food, Agriculture, and Land Use (olive), the source of biofuels such as ethanol, accounts for 24% of GHGs. It seems to me that continued reliance on some of the  products of a greater source of GHGs to reduce a lessor source of GHGs has a distinct potential to be counterproductive. Project Drawdown also recommends a series of solutions for reducing GHGs from the Transportation sector.

Project Drawdown’s Transportation Solutions 

A careful review fails to find any reference to a low-carbon fuel standard. I wonder if anyone in the Minnesota Legislature has heard of Project Drawdown, let alone reviewed its problem definition and proposed solutions. I would concede I’m being nit-picky in this posting except that experts such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the World Resources Institute tell US that we’ve less than a decade to cut our GHG emissions in half. We can’t afford to be like the grasshopper that jumped halfway to the fence each hop. We’ll never get there and our descendants will, quite properly, curse US.

The Problem

By Jane Hirshfield

You are trying to solve a problem.

You’re almost certainly halfway done,

maybe more.

You take some salt, some alum,

and put it into the problem.

Its color goes from yellow to royal blue.

You tie a knot of royal blue into the problem,

as into a Peruvian quipu of colored string.

You enter the problem’s bodegas,

its flea markets, souks.

Amid the alleys of sponges and sweets,

of jewelry, spices, and hair combs,

you ponder which stall, which pumpkin or perfume, is yours.

You go inside the problem’s piano.

You choose three keys.

One surely must open the door of the problem,

if only you knew only this:

is the quandary edible or medical,

a problem of reason or grief?

It is looking back at you now

with the quizzical eyes of a young, bright dog.

Her whole body pitched for the fetch,

the dog wants to please.

If only she could ascertain which direction,

what object, which scent of riddle,

and if the problem is round or elliptical in its orbit,

and if it is measured in foot-pounds, memory, or meat.

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Tradeoffs for climate success

Many, most?, all? of the environmental groups in Minnesota are busy opposing a number of projects such as Enbridge's Line 3 and the proposed fracked gas NTEC plant. I consider opposition to each of those projects to come under the heading of “Keep It In The  Ground” actions consistent with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's reports that tell US that

Unless there are immediate, rapid, and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to 1.5°C will be beyond reach.

What the IPCC report fails to do is identify the actions needed to produce immediate, rapid, large-scale reductions in emissions. Presumably, under a supposed climate champion like Governor Walz, we could find a list of proposed actions and milestones that would get Minnesota back on track to meet the goals for emission reduction contained in 2007 legislation. After all, the Governor appointed a Climate Change Subcabinet to achieve that objective. Unfortunately, the Subcabinet’s first report to the Governor, back in December 2020, was the proverbial “all hat and no horse.” The reports lists activities of the subcabinet agencies and identifies actions and processes WITH NO MILESTONES OR  TARGETS TO SPEAK OF.

Climate Change 2021 The Physical Science Basis

The state of Minnesota is doing about as well addressing climate change as the country is withdrawing from Afghanistan. Perhaps the folks who planned the Afghanistan withdrawal are the same ones that have identified the country’s milestones and targets for meeting the 2015 Paris Agreement targets. Let me know if you locate a copy of our country’s climate change plan online. I’ve not been successful at finding that plan despite repeated searches. Perhaps my key words are incorrect.

The reason I’m ranting  about this today is because I believe that we’ll never get where we need to go if all we do is stop projects and #KeepItInTheGround. I’ve long been a believer that what isn’t measured isn’t managed, and even some of what is measured may not be managed. Perhaps more importantly, we need a twofold track so we can be seen completing necessary projects, attaining goals and milestones that clearly indicate we’re making progress and give US projects we can cheer and support. We have little, if any, of the latter as this is being written.

It can be done. The World Resources Institute makes this assertion:

To meet the Paris Agreement’s goals, the world must reach net-zero emissions by mid-century. To help get there, WRI provides decision-makers with a range of tools and guidelines to track and strengthen their climate actions.  

• Climate Watch promotes transparency and accountability by providing governments with credible and consistent data on national emissions and future climate commitments, as well as enabling countries to analyze and compare targets to enhance their own efforts to combat climate change. 
• Greenhouse Gas Protocol provides accountability standards, tools, guidance frameworks and online training to help corporations, cities and others measure and reduce emissions.
• Through partnerships like the Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT), we integrate guidance, capacity-building and knowledge sharing in tools to help countries assess the impacts of their policies and actions. 
• The “State of Climate Action” report details the latest research and data to show how much nations must accelerate climate action across sectors to come to grips with the climate crisis. 

Perhaps it’s time for Governor Walz and President Biden to contact WRI, or else promote more and better accountability among the leaders in their individual administrations. We, and our descendants, deserve no less. We can’t afford to let meeting climate goals become another Afghanistan or Bay of Pigs. Failure is not an option.

Truth Serum

By Naomi Shihab Nye

We made it from the ground-up corn in the old back pasture.

Pinched a scent of night jasmine billowing off the fence,   

popped it right in.

That frog song wanting nothing but echo?   

We used that.

Stirred it widely. Noticed the clouds while stirring.

Called upon our ancient great aunts and their long slow eyes   

of summer. Dropped in their names.   

Added a mint leaf now and then   

to hearten the broth. Added a note of cheer and worry.   

Orange butterfly between the claps of thunder?   

Perfect. And once we had it,

had smelled and tasted the fragrant syrup,   

placing the pan on a back burner for keeping,   

the sorrow lifted in small ways.

We boiled down the lies in another pan till they disappeared.

We washed that pan.

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A question of values

We are beginning the last full week of August. The Minnesota State Fair begins in a few days. Summer of 2021 is effectively behind US. School begins in a few weeks. The Delta variant of COVID-19 has brought  about a fourth wave or surge. There are reports that Minnesota have no fully staffed medical/surgical or ICU beds available. School districts and parents are battling over mask mandates and in person versus distance learning. Water levels in many rivers and lakes are approaching record level lows. Wildfires are consuming square miles of our forestlands. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area is closed for the first time in 45 years. Parts of Tennessee recently received seventeen inches of rain. New York City experienced record rainfall from tropical storm/hurricane Henri.

Meanwhile political leaders such as Minnesota’s Governor Walz and President Biden promise much but do little to provide meaningful responses to our climate crises. Does anyone see anything wrong with this picture? Is it a portrait of the kind of world in which you want to live, let alone raise a family? So what’s the alternative? Yes, there is one, it’s based on honesty, integrity, successful business models and acumen and, as the old saying goes, “walking the talk.” The business is Patagonia, purveyor of sustainable outdoor clothing and gear.

What prompted today’s mention is the fact that the company has  recently refused to continue supplying their products to their largest customer in the Jackson Hole region of Wyoming, because of a fundraiser one of the resort owners “...co-hosted on Aug. 5 that featured former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)...”

abandoned home: to be torched, disassembled, or restored?

Photo by J. Harrington

Talk about putting your money where your values are! I’m proud to acknowledge that I’ve been a customer for a number or years and will go out of my way in the future to get my needs met with their products. Wouldn’t the world be a much better place if all companies and governments acted in consort with Patagonia’s values? Soon such integrity and orientation may be a necessity to be in business at all.

A Story

Philip Levine - 1928-2015

Everyone loves a story. Let's begin with a house.
We can fill it with careful rooms and fill the rooms
with things—tables, chairs, cupboards, drawers
closed to hide tiny beds where children once slept
or big drawers that yawn open to reveal
precisely folded garments washed half to death,
unsoiled, stale, and waiting to be worn out.
There must be a kitchen, and the kitchen
must have a stove, perhaps a big iron one
with a fat black pipe that vanishes into the ceiling
to reach the sky and exhale its smells and collusions.
This was the center of whatever family life
was here, this and the sink gone yellow
around the drain where the water, dirty or pure, 
ran off with no explanation, somehow like the point
of this, the story we promised and may yet deliver.
Make no mistake, a family was here. You see
the path worn into the linoleum where the wood,
gray and certainly pine, shows through.
Father stood there in the middle of his life
to call to the heavens he imagined above the roof
must surely be listening. When no one answered
you can see where his heel came down again
and again, even though he'd been taught
never to demand. Not that life was especially cruel;
they had well water they pumped at first,
a stove that gave heat, a mother who stood
at the sink at all hours and gazed longingly
to where the woods once held the voices
of small bears—themselves a family—and the songs
of birds long fled once the deep woods surrendered
one tree at a time after the workmen arrived
with jugs of hot coffee. The worn spot on the sill
is where Mother rested her head when no one saw,
those two stained ridges were handholds
she relied on; they never let her down.
Where is she now? You think you have a right
to know everything? The children tiny enough
to inhabit cupboards, large enough to have rooms
of their own and to abandon them, the father
with his right hand raised against the sky?
If those questions are too personal, then tell us,
where are the woods? They had to have been
because the continent was clothed in trees.
We all read that in school and knew it to be true.
Yet all we see are houses, rows and rows
of houses as far as sight, and where sight vanishes
into nothing, into the new world no one has seen,
there has to be more than dust, wind-borne particles
of burning earth, the earth we lost, and nothing else.

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Why try? Why care?

One of my absolute favorite papers of all time is Donella Meadows Dancing With Systems. Yesterday, I was confronted with a need to follow the third practice described in that paper: "Expose your mental models to the open air."

Remember, always, that everything you know, and everything everyone knows, is only a model. Get your model out there where it can be shot at. Invite others to challenge your assumptions and add their own. Instead of becoming a champion for one possible explanation or hypothesis or model, collect as many as possible. Consider all of them plausible until you find some evidence that causes you to rule one out. That way you will be emotionally able to see the evidence that rules out an assumption with which you might have confused your own identity.

While reading an article in The Guardian, I was exposed to a mental model that was the antithesis of my long-time conscious knowledge or ptemise. I was taught and came to believe that “being smart,” using rationality, was an individual’s domain. The article, about smart books, asserts that’s not so.

The instrumentalisation of reason, in Horkheimer’s view, went hand in hand with society becoming ever more “irrational” in the true sense. “Nowhere does the union of progress and irrationality show up so clearly as in the continued existence of poverty and care and the fear of distress and dismal old age, and in the condition of brutal prisons and asylums in countries with highly developed industry,” he wrote. What this gestures at is what so few modern smart thinking books acknowledge: that rationality is not a private possession but a public institution. Reasoning is fundamentally social, one trivial proof of which is the fact that we all get most of our reliable knowledge about the world from authorities (scientific and otherwise) without doing our own personal experiments.

tools of a systems thinker

Please read the preceding sentence again. "Reasoning is fundamentally social, one trivial proof of which is the fact that we all get most of our reliable knowledge about the world from authorities (scientific and otherwise) without doing our own personal experiments.” Based on my personal experience, that’s true, with  a few exceptions such as fly-fishing or bread baking, and even there I’ve started from the knowledge of authorities before undertaking my own personal experiments.

Now, go back and reread the last two sentences in the mental models quotation: "Consider all of them plausible until you find some evidence that causes you to rule one out. That way you will be emotionally able to see the evidence that rules out an assumption with which you might have confused your own identity.” It’s the part about confusing  assumptions with identify that caught my eye. Many of those who refuse to accept science appear to be unwilling to expose their mental models to the examination of others, or even to look carefully themselves. As my lawyer friends might  claim, they “presume facts not in evidence.”

The practices listed in the systems dance have a practice that would seem to offer an approach to those who confuse their assumptions with their own identity. It’s this practice:

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, then 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 about the interconnections that make moral and practical rules turn out to be the same rules. They just have to bring themselves to believe that which they know.

Expanding my personal boundary of caring is all too often these days frustrating, annoying and unproductive. That doesn’t excuse me from continuing to try because the only way I can fail is to quit, because "No part of the human race is separate either from other human beings or from the global ecosystem.”

The Story of Ferdinand the Bull

By Matt Mason

Dad would come home after too long at work

and I’d sit on his lap to hear

the story of Ferdinand the Bull; every night,

me handing him the red book until I knew

every word, couldn’t read,

just recite along with drawings

of a gentle bull, frustrated matadors,

the all-important bee, and flowers—

flowers in meadows and flowers

thrown by the Spanish ladies.

Its lesson, really,

about not being what you’re born into

but what you’re born to be,

even if that means

not caring about the capes they wave in your face

or the spears they cut into your shoulders.

And Dad, wonderful Dad, came home

after too long at work

and read to me

the same story every night

until I knew every word, couldn’t read,

                                                                              just recite.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.

Poems for the early Anthropocene?

Since at least mid-2016, I’ve been finding it more and more difficult to make sense of almost anything, and I became increasingly sure the issue didn’t lie exclusively with me. Poems, classics such as Yeats’ The Second Coming and Wordsworth’s The World Is Too Much With Us, seemed to suit our current times too well.

One perspective that recurs in response to the increased dissension in our interrelations is that we don’t listen to or respond civilly to those whose perspective is moderately to radically different than ours. We’ve become entirely too tribal in much of Western “civilization." (There are those who assert the continuing problems in places like Afghanistan are attributable to cultures dominated by tribalism and warlords.)

Earthrise, Planet B         credit: NASA

Questions I suspect many of US struggle with run something like “Why would we want to listen to anyone who’s so obviously wrong? Why can’t they be reasonable and do it our way?” My answer to such questions is to suggest the questioners go watch West Side Story. Remember the Sharks and the Jets? How about the lyrics:

When you're a Jet
You're a Jet all the way
From your first cigarette
To your last dyin' day

When you're a Jet
If the spit hits the fan
You got brothers around
You're a family man!

You're never alone
You're never disconnected!
You're home with your own:
When company's expected
You're well protected!

Not much room for compromise or accommodation when you’re a Jet, is there? Of course, before the internecine warfare on New York’s Upper West Side, and today’s Middle East conflicts, there was Verona and the Montague and Capulet families, households of sworn enemies, encapsulated by Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet.

Issues like our climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic make it abundantly clear, more and more each year, that our Earth is getting increasingly crowded. There are not currently sufficient developable resources available to support the world’s population at the living standards of those of US in the  “developed economies.” Our ecological footprints need to be made more equitable and brough into better balance with global resources. That can be accomplished peacefully or not. If it’s not accomplished at all, we will be  faced with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s worst case scenario. That’s what our descendants, and, possibly, US if we live long enough, are faced with unless we redevelop a degree of civility wherein we can at least talk to each other. But, as the climate change activists tell US, “we don’t have time.”

According to yet another classic poem, the specific issues we’re facing may be different, but one way to face them was identified around a century and a half ago. The proponent of a “stiff upper lip” has since been judged by many to be politically incorrect to a significant degree. Nevertheless, incorporation of the approach described below seems to offer a valid early step in a journey toward civility that we all sorely need to undertake. And yet, I do indeed have the temerity to suggest an improvement to this classic poem by a Nobel laureate. In the last line, I would insert two syllables and delete three others, so it reads:

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man Human, my child son!

Could it be that the human race is but one large tribe, inhabiting one home planet, with more in common than not? Perhaps, with edits such as above, we could be... 

 

If—

By Rudyard Kipling

     (‘Brother Square-Toes’—Rewards and Fairies)

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

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Adjusting, attitude?

Later today we'll pick up the penultimate share box of the summer Community Supported Agriculture season at Amador Farm. This morning I decided to make up sourdough for baking bread tomorrow.  Meanwhile, northern Minnesota is suffering several wildfires and much of the state is experiencing a drought the likes of which we’ve not had since 1988 or the Dust Bowl. (No, I’m not quite old enough to remember the latter.) I suspect I’m not the only one looking forward to putting summer, 2021 (Delta variant summer?) behind US.

pear tree leaves turning yellow

Photo by J. Harrington

The pear tree in the back yard has suddenly developed a case of yellow leafitis. Several branches in different locations have splotches  of yellow leaves. If  we were to guess, we’d attribute it to lack of water and heat stress, just like the maple leaves on the  trees in front of the house. On the other hand, the purple love grass and the sand burs seem to be invigorated by the continuing hot, dry weather but the storms of a week or ten days ago did strip all the berries from the elderberry bush.

For the first time in my life, I’ve been reading reports from avid trout anglers stating that they’ve not been going fishing for some  time because water temperatures have put enough stress on the fish that even catch and release might be more than a trout could survive. [Note to self: during the winter months research local smallmouth bass fishing.]

To effectively respond to the climate crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic and several other global issues that, unchecked, can be expected to be highly detrimental to the future of the human race, we need to remember three words: adjust, adapt, attitude. we’re facing the need to make lots of transformational changes and I suspect our attitudes may be the element most likely to present US with the biggest challenge.

The Properly Scholarly Attitude

By Adelaide Crapsey

The poet pursues his beautiful theme; 

The preacher his golden beatitude; 

And I run after a vanishing dream— 

The glittering, will-o’-the-wispish gleam 

Of the properly scholarly attitude— 

The highly desirable, the very advisable, 

The hardly acquirable, properly scholarly attitude. 

I envy the savage without any clothes, 

Who lives in a tropical latitude; 

It’s little of general culture he knows. 

But then he escapes the worrisome woes 

Of the properly scholarly attitude— 

The unceasingly sighed over, wept over, cried over, 

The futilely died over, properly scholarly attitude. 

I work and I work till I nearly am dead, 

And could say what the watchman said—that I could! 

But still, with a sigh and a shake of the head, 

“You don’t understand,” it is ruthlessly said, 

“The properly scholarly attitude— 

The aye to be sought for, wrought for and fought for, 

The ne’er to be caught for, properly scholarly attitude—” 

I really am sometimes tempted to say 

That it’s merely a glittering platitude; 

That people have just fallen into the way, 

When lacking a subject, to tell of the sway 

Of the properly scholarly attitude— 

The easily preachable, spread-eagle speechable, 

In practice unreachable, properly scholarly attitude.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.