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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