’Tis the chill out time of year

According to my copy of the Minnesota Weatherguide Calendar, a normal low temperature of 32℉ doesn’t occur locally until early November. However, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources tells us there’s a 90% probability of reaching that low temperature by October 14. The same DNR data set points to a 10% probability of freezing by September 20. So, we are now officially in the time of year to stay alert for frost or freeze warnings.

low probability late September freeze

Photo by J. Harrington

We’ve not yet turned on the heater in the bird bath, although on September 29, 2018, we had an overnight freeze that lasted long enough to coat the water in that bird bath with skim ice. Since it’s currently 82℉, and yesterday’s high temperatures were in the mid-80’s, this writing about freezing temperatures feels kind of silly, unless one has lived in the North Country for awhile. This is a time of year when we’re flipping the house’s thermostat between AC and heat day-by-day.

Our food intake is slowly shifting from Summer’s salads and sandwiches to Autumn’s soups, stews and chili. Bread baking is occurring more frequently, and ice cream cones will probably be phased out of desert rotation over the next several weeks. I suppose I could live somewhere that doesn’t enjoy four seasons, I just don’t want to. [I reserve the right to revise this assessment come February.]

Thinking of Frost

Major Jackson - 1968-

I thought by now my reverence would have waned,
matured to the tempered silence of the bookish or revealed 
how blasé I’ve grown with age, but the unrestrained
joy I feel when a black skein of geese voyages like a dropped 
string from God, slowly shifting and soaring, when the decayed 
apples of an orchard amass beneath its trees like Eve’s
first party, when driving and the road Vanna-Whites its crops
of corn whose stalks will soon give way to a harvester’s blade
and turn the land to a man’s unruly face, makes me believe
I will never soothe the pagan in me, nor exhibit the propriety
of the polite. After a few moons, I’m loud this time of year,
unseemly as a chevron of honking. I’m fire in the leaves,
obstreperous as a New England farmer. I see fear
in the eyes of his children. They walk home from school,
as evening falls like an advancing trickle of bats, the sky
pungent as bounty in chimney smoke. I read the scowl
below the smiles of parents at my son’s soccer game, their agitation,
the figure of wind yellow leaves make of quaking aspens.

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September’s penultimate day

It feels as though I turned my head for just a moment and September was gone. It has been a busy month, filled with Labor Day, a Son-In-Law’s birthday, a Granddaughter’s first birthday, and the start of Autumn’s Community Supported Agriculture shares weekly pickup. And now, Friday will be October 1.

Local leaf color is closer to 25% than to 50%, but it continues to progress nicely. Oaks are showing color more slowly than maples, but that’s typical of almost every autumn. The ridges along the St. Croix near Taylors Falls are still predominantly green, or at least they were Monday morning as we drove through.

Today on twitter I came across a line from a poem, actually, the whole poem [see below]. I’m tempted to have one particular line tattooed onto the back of my left arm, just up from my wrist. “Write poetry instead of doomscrolling.” If I don’t manage to tear myself away from doomscrolling over the current COVID-19 and Build Back Better crises currently underway, I may never. I’ve fallen away from my poetry writing over the past couple of years, as I have also fallen away from my fishing. In the process, I’ve accomplished little good and made myself less happy. I remember the old joke about the fellow who was pounding his head on a brick wall because it felt so good when he stopped. My turn to exercise self-care.

Time -- poem by R' Rachel Barenblat

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We are all on this together

These days, many in the environmental movement point out “There is no Planet B!” I prefer to look at it from the perspective that the Earth we’re inhabiting is our Planet B. It’s our only option for the foreseeable future. The way we treat the resources on which our very existence depends makes our Linnaean nomenclature highly questionable. Homo sapiens translates to wise or knowledgeable human. Since the beginning of the Anthropocene, perhaps earlier, the "wise or knowledgeable" categorization has become more and more a misnomer.

I’m old enough to remember (vaguely) life before the initial publication of the Whole Earth Catalogue in 1968. Stewart Brand, the creator, stated the magazine’s purpose with the phrase “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.” Looking at our “progress” since then, I’d say we’ve become too much like the Greek and Roman gods, perpetually at war with and pranking one another. The collateral damage has become unacceptable. Mount Olympus is still in Greece, but its continued existence as the home of the gods is questionable. We, as gods in the Anthropocene, face our own existential crises, in part, it looks  like, due to greed; in part due to an increasing inability to trust each other (see yesterday’s posting); and in part due to an apparently insatiable desire for “more and  better” material goods in the lives of many of those participating in the “developed world economies.”

Paul Hawken’s Regeneration follows on his edition of Drawdown. It describes how to end the climate crisis in one generation. What it does not address explicitly, as far as I’ve read, is the necessity of regenerating trust to accompany truth, reverence, respect and compassion. I’m also looking for examples of tolerance to accompany how we stitch together broken strands. Hawken’s model is appealing and offers a framework for success. It’s necessary, but doesn’t specifically include all the pieces to the puzzle which we must solve within the next few decades. The paragraph that follows below concludes Hawken’s introduction to his latest work. It’s the supplemental clue we promised yesterday.

Earth: our “Planet B”
Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

This is a watershed moment in history. The heating planet is our commons. It holds us all. To address and reverse the climate crisis requires connection and reciprocity. It calls for moving out of our comfort zones to find a depth of courage we may never have known. It doesn’t mean being right in a way that makes others wrong; it means listening intently and respectfully, stitching together the broken strands that separate us from life and one another. It means neither hope nor despair; it is action that is courageous and fearless. We have created an astonishing moment of truth. The climate crisis is not a science problem. The ultimate power to change the world does not reside in technologies. It relies on reverence, respect, and compassion—for ourselves, for all people, and for all life. This is regeneration.

the earth is a living thing

Lucille Clifton - 1936-2010

is a black shambling bear
ruffling its wild back and tossing
mountains into the sea

is a black hawk circling 
the burying ground circling the bones
picked clean and discarded

is a fish black blind in the belly of water
is a diamond blind in the black belly of coal

is a black and living thing 
is a favorite child
of the universe
feel her rolling her hand
in its kinky hair

feel her brushing it clean

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To trust, or not to trust, that is the question

Each  of the four sections below has been taken from today’s US version of The Guardian. See if  you can connect the dots embedded in each section.

dots to be connected or trial balloons?

Photo by J. Harrington

How the US vaccine effort derailed and why we shouldn’t be surprised

“So much of the whole issue of social determinants of health and the US ‘health disadvantage’ is rooted in a lack of trust and a lack of trustworthiness in many parts of our society,” said Laudan Y Aron, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute’s health policy center.

Cop26 climate talks will not fulfil aims of Paris agreement, key players warn 

A US official told the Guardian countries must still aim as high as possible on emissions cuts: “We are going to try to achieve [the emissions cuts necessary]. No one in the administration wants to admit defeat before we have made the maximum effort. You should set an ambitious agenda and may have to, in the end, take baby steps but you should plan for long strides. We are taking long strides.”

Judge rules in Wisconsin teen’s favor after sheriff threatened jail over Covid post 

The teen, Amyiah Cohoon, and her parents sued the sheriff’s department after a deputy threatened to arrest family members if Amyiah did not delete an Instagram post which described her experiences when possibly infected by Covid-19. She was 16 at the time.

Food myths busted: dairy, salt and steak may be good for you after all 

Government-led lack of trust in the healthfulness of whole foods in their natural forms encouraged us to buy foods that have been physically and chemically modified, such as salt-reduced cheese and skimmed milk, supposedly to make them healthier for us.

No, we’re not going to explain how to connect the dots. Just trust us, the answers are obvious. Return tomorrow and we’ll share another clue in the form of a paragraph from Paul Hawken’s Regeneration.

 

On Teaching the Young

By Yvor Winters

The young are quick of speech.

Grown middle-aged, I teach

Corrosion and distrust,

Exacting what I must.

A poem is what stands

When imperceptive hands,

Feeling, have gone astray.

It is what one should say.

Few minds will come to this.

The poet’s only bliss

Is in cold certitude—

Laurel, archaic, rude.

 

If you don’t know a wildflower's name, aster!

There are, according to Minnesota Wildflowers, some nineteen varieties of asters in Minnesota. About half of those are listed as being found in Chisago County. Most of them are listed as blooming in late summer through mid-autumn and many of them are happier in moist soils. Those of us living at the eastern edge of the Anoka sand plain, right on the border between USDA hardiness zones 4a and 4b, have more places with well-drained, sandy soils than with moisture. We’ve found five aster species that look promising. Since the local roadsides have what appear to be sky-blue asters growing, we’re planning on getting half a dozen or so to plant on the slope or hilltop behind the house. It’s unclear so far if we’re doing a fall 2021 or a spring 2022 planting. We need to try a new approach since the New England asters we’ve planted out front each of the past three years have failed to survive the winter. Wish us luck, please.

Sky-blue Aster (Symphyotrichum oolentangiense)

Photo by J. Harrington

Symphyotrichum oolentangiense (Sky-blue Aster)	part shade, sun; dry sandy or rocky soil; prairies, savannas, open woods, woodland edges
Symphyotrichum ciliolatum (Lindley's Aster)	part shade, sun; open woods, woodland edges, fields, roadsides
Symphyotrichum laeve (Smooth Blue Aster)	sun; dry; fields, prairies, open woods
Symphyotrichum sericeum (Silky Aster)	part shade, sun; dry sandy or rocky soil; prairies, outcrops, open woods, dunes, barrens
Symphyotrichum urophyllum (Arrowleaf Aster)	part shade, sun; dry to average sandy or rocky soil; open woods, woodland edges, savanna, glades, grassy railroads, bluffs

(Please forgive us for the pun in the title, we couldn't resist.)

The Flower Press

By Chelsea Woodard

It was the sort of thing given to little girls:

sturdy and small, round edged, wooden and light.

I stalked the pasture’s rough and waist-high grass

for worthy specimens: the belle amid the mass,

the star shaming the clouds of slighter,

ordinary blooms. The asters curled

inside my sweat-damp palms, as if in sleep. Crushed

in the parlor’s stifling heat, I pried

each shrinking petal back, and turned the screws.

But flowers bear no ugly bruise,

and even now fall from the brittle page, dried

prettily, plucked from memory’s hush.

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Today’s at least a twofer

Today is National Public Lands Day. It’s also National Hunting and Fishing Day. We were pleased to see that the White House Proclamation [check prior link] directly links the two days.

Hunting and fishing also play a large role in funding conservation efforts, for example through fishing licenses and Duck Stamps — works of art that for nearly a century have helped protect habitats for birds and other wildlife. 

According to the federal Fish and Wildlife Service:

Funds from an 11 percent excise tax on sporting arms and ammunition [Internal Revenue Code of 1954, sec. 4161(b)] are appropriated to the Secretary of the Interior and apportioned to States on a formula basis for paying up to 75 percent of the cost approved projects. Project activities include acquisition and improvement of wildlife habitat, introduction of wildlife into suitable habitat, research into wildlife problems, surveys and inventories of wildlife problems, acquisition and development of access facilities for public use, and hunter education programs, including construction and operation of public target ranges.

Public Law 91-503, approved October 23, 1970, (84 Stat. 1097) added provisions for the deposit of the 10 percent tax on pistols and revolvers, one-half of which may be used by the States for hunter safety programs. This amendment also provided for development of comprehensive fish and wildlife management plans as an optional means for participating in the program, and changed the maximum limit from $10,000 to one-half percent for Puerto Rico and to one-sixth percent for the Virgin Islands and Guam.

On October 25, 1972, the Act was further amended by P.L. 92-558 (86 Stat. 1172) to add provisions for the deposit of the 11-percent excise tax on bows, arrows, and their parts and accessories for use in wildlife projects or hunter safety programs.

Driftless Area Red Cabin Site

Photo by J. Harrington

Many Minnesotans, especially from the Twin Cities area, fish for trout in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois. Federal funds help support habitat projects such as at the Red Cabin Site. In fact, the kinds of efforts that  have been going on in the Driftless Area have helped to shape Trout Unlimited’s updated strategic plan. Those who hunt and fish have long been willing to contribute to the preservation and restoration of the habitat, on both public and private lands, needed to support fish and wildlife and nongame populations such as pollinators and  songbirds.

Birds Again

Jim Harrison - 1937-2016

A secret came a week ago though I already
knew it just beyond the bruised lips of consciousness.
The very alive souls of thirty-five hundred dead birds
are harbored in my body. It’s not uncomfortable.
I’m only temporary habitat for these not-quite-
weightless creatures. I offered a wordless invitation
and now they’re roosting within me, recalling
how I had watched them at night
in fall and spring passing across earth moons,
little clouds of black confetti, chattering and singing
on their way north or south. Now in my dreams
I see from the air the rumpled green and beige,
the watery face of earth as if they’re carrying
me rather than me carrying them. Next winter
I’ll release them near the estuary west of Alvarado
and south of Veracruz. I can see them perching
on undiscovered Olmec heads. We’ll say goodbye
and I’ll return my dreams to earth.

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A good news day this month

Today’s posting will be short and sweet. There’s some good news to report for a change.

• Paul Hawken’s Regeneration has been released and I’ve already got my copy.


• The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, at the direction of the Minnesota Supreme Court, has initiated a contested case hearing on PolyMet’s Permit to Mine. We’ll follow up on this next week we hope.


• Trout Week begins tomorrow


• Orion magazine has an article on Rewilding the Elwha River: Ten Years Later


• While pulling into the drive today, I noticed a small flock of turkeys standing in the  middle of the road.


• The kernza pancake and waffle mix arrived in the mail. We’ll try it next week.

autumn’s beauty is still developing

Photo by J. Harrington

On a much more personal and pragmatic level, the self-tapping screw that somehow became embedded in the Jeep’s left rear tire has been removed and the hole repaired. All seems well.

Autumn

Elizabeth Drew Stoddard

No melancholy days are these!
     Not where the maple changing stands,
Not in the shade of fluttering oaks,
            Nor in the bands

Of twisting vines and sturdy shrubs,
     Scarlet and yellow, green and brown,
Falling, or swinging on their stalks,
            Is Sorrow’s crown.

The sparkling fields of dewy grass,
     Woodpaths and roadsides decked with flowers,
Starred asters and the goldenrod,
            Date Autumn’s hours.

The shining banks of snowy clouds,
     Steadfast in the aerial blue,
The silent, shimmering, silver sea,
            To Joy are true.

My spirit in this happy air
     Can thus embrace the dying year,
And with it wrap me in a shroud
            As bright and clear!

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On the reciprocity of gratitude

Today is the first full day of autumn 2021. I’m working hard at adjusting my attitude from being resentful of having autumn chores to do to one of gratitude for the wonderful weather and beautiful locale that can benefit from my efforts. This is part of a change that comes, not from practicing what I preach, but from practicing what I read. In this case, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s profound writings about reciprocity.

autumn beauty, a gift of the earth

Photo by J. Harrington

How can we reciprocate the gifts of the Earth?

1. We must recognize ourselves as only one member of the great democracy of species and understand that we, like every other successful organism, must play by the rules that govern ecosystem function. The laws of thermodynamics have not been suspended on our behalf. Unlimited growth is not possible. In a finite world, we cannot relentlessly take without replenishment. 
2. Long before the descent of humans, a solar economy of plants created a living world from inanimate materials, constantly regenerating life through networks of reciprocity. Industrial economies are hell-bent on reversing that process, converting the gloriously animate to cold dead products with stunning efficiency. Our paths on the Earth are shaped by what we love the most. We participate in economies that appear to love profits for a few members of one species more than a good green world for all. We have a choice to invest our love otherwise. We must align our economies with ecological principles and human integrity.
3. Ecological restoration is an act of reciprocity and the Earth asks us to turn our gifts to healing the damage we have done. The Earth-shaping prowess that we thoughtlessly use to sicken the land can be used to heal it. It is not just the land that is broken, but our relationship with land. We can be medicine for the Earth, partners in renewal.
4. Reciprocity is rooted in the understanding that we are not alone, that the Earth is populated by non-human persons, wise and inventive beings deserving of our respect. We tolerate governance that grants legal personhood and free speech to corporations but denies that respect to voiceless salamanders and sugar maples. The Earth asks that we be their voice. Indigenous-led movements across the world are conferring legal personhood on rivers and mountains. The Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth has been presented to the United Nations. I think the Earth is asking for our vote.

Gratitude is our first, but not our only gift. We are storytellers, music makers, devisers of ingenious machines, healers, scientists, and lovers of an Earth who asks that we give our own unique gifts on behalf of life.

 Let us live in a way that Earth will be grateful for us.

Earlier this morning I read some local suggestions on how to help prep wildlife-friendly fall gardens. After reading the first couple of sentences, I new it was written by someone with whom I have much in common.

There are two kinds of Minnesotans: people whose favorite season is autumn, and people who are wrong.

 As soon as I’ve finished posting this, I’ll go start the tractor and mow/mulch the back yard for the penultimate(?) time this year. Once more in mid to later October might do it. If so, I’ll be grateful.

Worms

By Carl Dennis

Aren't you glad at least that the earthworms  

Under the grass are ignorant, as they eat the earth,  

Of the good they confer on us, that their silence  

Isn't a silent reproof for our bad manners,  

Our never casting earthward a crumb of thanks  

For their keeping the soil from packing so tight  

That no root, however determined, could pierce it?  

Imagine if they suspected how much we owe them,  

How the weight of our debt would crush us  

Even if they enjoyed keeping the grass alive,  

The garden flowers and vegetables, the clover,  

And wanted nothing that we could give them,  

Not even the merest nod of acknowledgment.  

A debt to angels would be easy in comparison,  

Bright, weightless creatures of cloud, who serve  

An even brighter and lighter master.  

Lucky for us they don't know what they're doing,  

These puny anonymous creatures of dark and damp  

Who eat simply to live, with no more sense of mission  

Than nature feels in providing for our survival.  

Better save our gratitude for a friend  

Who gives us more than we can give in return  

And never hints she's waiting for reciprocity.  

"If I had nickel, I'd give it to you,"  

The lover says, who, having nothing available  

In the solid, indicative world, scrapes up  

A coin or two in the world of the subjunctive.  

"A nickel with a hole drilled in the top  

So you can fasten it to your bracelet, a charm  

To protect you against your enemies."  

For his sake, she'd wear it, not for her own,  

So he might believe she's safe as she saunters  

Home across the field at night, the moon above her,  

Below her the loam, compressed by the soles of her loafers,  

And the tunneling earthworms, tireless, silent,  

As they persist, oblivious, in their service.

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'Tis the season for turning over new leaf

I suspect that our compost tumbler isn’t creating sufficient heat, despite getting sunlight from late morning through the afternoon. The two chamber bin is sprouting seedlings on the side that’s currently being fed. The side that should be finishing still has corn husks in recognizable sheets. Normally, my reaction to such a situation would be to decide that home composting isn’t worth the bother, especially the part about reducing the sizes of the particles to be composted. These are not normal times and I think I’m about to exercise that aspect of my personality the Better Half refers to as stubborn and I call persistent. We are going to see if this old dog can learn the trick to successful composting.

black bear inspecting compost tumbler

Photo by J. Harrington

From the preliminary research I’ve done online, keeping chickens is one option to composting and I believe the Better Half would approve, right up until the time the local pack of coyotes, or one of the neighborhood bears, ate the flock. We’ve foregone the chickens solution for some time, but that was before the complexities of composting became clearer. The online directions for making compost seem so simple and straightforward. Of course, some of us never bother to read the details and figure out the proper ratio of browns to greens. Perhaps that’s a project for the next rainy day, making a cheat sheet and, maybe, ordering some compost starter?

Now that the pail for holding food scraps and coffee grounds is a size that better matches the opening on the compost tumbler, I spend less time avoiding the mess I used to make with an oversized bucket. This is all beginning to feel suspiciously like organic chemistry lab back when I was in college. Blindly  following instructions one didn’t really understand rarely made for a happy grade on lab work, and the text book and lab seemed to live in entirely separate universes.

Potato

Jane Kenyon - 1947-1995

In haste one evening while making dinner
I threw away a potato that was spoiled
on one end. The rest would have been

redeemable. In the yellow garbage pail
it became the consort of coffee grounds,
banana skins, carrot peelings.
I pitched it onto the compost
where steaming scraps and leaves
return, like bodies over time, to earth.

When I flipped the fetid layers with a hay
fork to air the pile, the potato turned up
unfailingly, as if to revile me—

looking plumper, firmer, resurrected
instead of disassembling. It seemed to grow
until I might have made shepherd’s pie
for a whole hamlet, people who pass the day
dropping trees, pumping gas, pinning
hand-me-down clothes on the line.

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Autumn becomes palette-able

Our local trees are showing about 10% to 20% autumn colors, as is the situation in much of the state. Several of the local pumpkin patches were closed this morning, but one with enough sizes to meet my needs was open and had everything I was looking for except lower prices. My mother taught me, many, many, years ago, that “beggars can’t be choosers.” I needed 10 pumpkins, 2 largish, 2 mediumish, and 6 smallish (pie size). Once the 10 pumpkins were safely in a real shopping cart wagon, we remembered another mother-taught saying: “a fool and his gold are soon parted.” When I parted with my gold, I loaded the pumpkins into the back of the Jeep and headed north toward the home of the Daughter Person who had requested help assembling decorations for the house and a certain granddaughter’s first birthday party.

pumpkin field at a local farm

Photo by J. Harrington

Actually, shopping at Lendt’s Pumpkin Patch in nearby Wyoming was a pleasant experience, augmented by the pleasure of driving country roads through fields of corn and soy beans nearing harvest. Greens are diminishing. Tans and yellows and golden hues are becoming dominant, with accents of maroon and scarlet. At the risk of jinxing things, we’re pleased to report that, locally, autumn seems to be shaping up as one of the most normal aspects of the world at large these days. The levels of discontent seem to have reached a state in which, if everyone got their fondest wish, the air would be filled with complaints about how long it took to be granted. We’re overdue for spending less time watching screens while listening to screams of outrage from all points on the spectrum. Quite literally, the world would be a much better place if each and everyone of us would take a time out and take a hike! In fact, this is so important I may even take my own advice.

Poem Beginning with a Line from It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Maggie Smith

Just look—nothing but sincerity 
as far as the eye can see—
the way the changed leaves,

flapping their yellow underbellies
in the wind, glitter. The tree
looks sequined wherever

the sun touches. Does anyone
not see it? Driving by a field
of spray-painted sheep, I think

the world is not all changed.
The air still ruffles wool
the way a mother’s hand

busies itself lovingly in the hair
of her small boy. The sun
lifts itself up, grows heavy

treading there, then lets itself
off the hook. Just look at it
leaving—the sky a tigereye

banded five kinds of gold
and bronze—and the sequin tree
shaking its spangles like a girl

on the high school drill team,
nothing but sincerity. It glitters
whether we’re looking or not.

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Will we harvest what we’ve sown?

Today, at 6:56 pm local time, we will experience peak full moon for September. Some of us have no expectation of seeing it tonight, too much cloud cover. Perhaps tomorrow night will have to do. In case you’re wondering, the Ojibwe call this the Rice Moon while the Lakota refer to it as the Brown Leaves Moon. According to NASA,

As the full Moon closest to the autumnal equinox, this is the Harvest Moon, an old European name. The Oxford English Dictionary gives 1706 as the year of its first published use. Farmers sometimes need to work late by the light of the Moon for the harvest.

a September full moon

Photo by J. Harrington

I can understand, and make allowances for, people being more aberrant  around the time of the full moon, but for the past five or six years, at least, aberrant behavior seems to have been increasing daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. And more and more people seem willing to normalize aberrant actions. Meanwhile, the climate crises continues to get worse, as does the death count from COVID-19, and the decrease in biodiversity, and the increase in inequity, and...there’s apparently a long-standing failure to respond appropriately by government because...????

Have you seen mention of Gus Speth’s recent publication, They Knew?

A devastating, compelling account of the federal government's leading role in bringing about today's climate crisis.

In 2015, a group of twenty-one young people sued the federal government in Juliana v. United States for violating their constitutional rights by promoting climate catastrophe and thereby depriving them of life, liberty, and property without due process and equal protection of law. They Knew offers evidence supporting the children's claims, presenting a devastating and compelling account of the federal government's role in bringing about today's climate crisis. James Gustave Speth, tapped by the plaintiffs as one of twenty-one preeminent experts in their climate case, analyzes how administrations from Carter to Trump—despite having information about the impending climate crisis and the connection to fossil fuels—continued aggressive support of a fossil fuel based energy system.

Tomorrow Paul Hawken’s Regeneration is published. It follows his editing of the book Drawdown. I’ve read the latter and plan to read the former because 

This is a watershed moment in history where all of humanity has come together, whether we realize it or not. The heating planet is our commons. It holds us all. To address and reverse warming requires connection and reciprocity. It calls for moving out of our comfort zones to find a depth of courage we may have never known. It doesn’t mean being right in a way that makes others wrong; it means listening intently and respectfully, stitching together the broken strands that separate us from life and each other. It doesn’t mean hope or despair; it calls for action that is courageous and fearless. We have created an astonishing moment of truth. The climate crisis is not a science problem. It is a human problem. The ultimate power to change the world does not reside in technologies. It relies on reverence, respect, and compassion—for ourselves, all people, all life. This is regeneration.

I have reached a point at which I’m cynical and angry enough to have little confidence in most government and business entities. That basically leaves the option of thinking I can solve the world’s problems on my own, or try doing it with my fellow humans. I’m curious to see what Hawken has to offer. Reading Speth is most likely to just do bad things for and/or to my blood pressure. I’m tired of focusing so much on all that’s wrong and want to pay attention to how to make it all right!

The Harvest Moon

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - 1807-1882

It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes
  And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
  And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
  Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
  And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!
  Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,
  With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!
All things are symbols: the external shows
  Of Nature have their image in the mind,
  As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;
The song-birds leave us at the summer's close,
  Only the empty nests are left behind,
  And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.

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Autum preparations

There are wasps or hornets flitting about in the wind, looking for...? This is about the time of year when hornets(?) begin building a nest up in the rafters of the deck and near the peak of the roof. In a couple of weeks I’ll give the nests a shot of hornet / wasp killer. I’m thinking about cleaning off the gutters (they’re filled with a sponge-like material) but they’ll just recollect a layer of leaves and twigs before spring. Maybe if prime weather conditions occur at the same time my energy peaks I’ll get to it. It’s also the time of year when mice start looking for winter quarters. The traps in the garage caught one the other day. That means it’s time to put fresh mouse repellent in the tractor dashboard.

putting up winter’s hay

Photo by J. Harrington

The grass needs to be cut at least once more and maybe twice. I’m hoping the weather cooperates and we can torch the brush pile as an autumnal equinox bonfire. We’ve not seen any hummingbirds for a couple of days now, They may well be gone for the season. The township road crew recently installed a compacted sand and gravel wear edge on the chipsealed road and, in the process, mowed all the asters along the east edge of the roadway. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that the asters regrow next spring and bloom again next autumn.

It’s a little early for pumpkin sales but I’m shopping for some this week to help decorate for a party next weekend. That provides a wonderful excuse to climb into the Jeep and wander our local roads Tuesday or Wednesday. We’re seeing flocks and families of Canada geese and sandhill cranes crossing skies morning and evening on feeding flights. It’s too early for them to be migrating yet.

Neither corn nor soy bean fields are in full harvest mode yet in our area, although more and more large combines and other farm machines are clogging up roads and creating traffic hazards. It’s challenging enough coping with them on township and county roads, but encountering them on a two lane state highway where the speed limit is 60 mph and they're driving about 20 mph is just not right.

In Harvest

By Sophie Jewett

Mown meadows skirt the standing wheat;

I linger, for the hay is sweet,

New-cut and curing in the sun.

Like furrows, straight, the windrows run,

Fallen, gallant ranks that tossed and bent

When, yesterday, the west wind went

A-rioting through grass and grain.

To-day no least breath stirs the plain;

Only the hot air, quivering, yields

Illusive motion to the fields

Where not the slenderest tassel swings.

Across the wheat flash sky-blue wings;

A goldfinch dangles from a tall,

Full-flowered yellow mullein; all

The world seems turning blue and gold.

Unstartled, since, even from of old,

Beauty has brought keen sense of her,

I feel the withering grasses stir;

Along the edges of the wheat,

I hear the rustle of her feet:

And yet I know the whole sea lies,

And half the earth, between our eyes.

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This week: summer’s last hurrah?

In the midst of the last weekend of summer, 2021, we’re looking back at a season full of smoke and heat and rain and clouds. Wednesday will mark the beginning of full-fledged autumn, when astronomical autumn joins the meteorological season in progress. Our local Equinox falls at 2:21 pm CDT. The technician arrives on Monday to check the furnace for the heating season. Leaves are both changing colors and dropping from the trees. The drive is covered in acorns. Tomorrow the high temperature is forecast to approach 90℉. Tuesday and the rest of the week: mostly in the mid-60’s. Minnesota usually delivers a much better autumn than it does spring. We’re looking forward to enjoying our favorite season.

signs of the season: autumn leaves

Photo by J. Harrington

Our summer hasn’t been terrible, nor has it been great. It’s been, with the exception of watching a granddaughter grow from infant to toddler, largely boring, not counting the occasional severe thunderstorm or tornado warning. Minimizing exposure to COVID-19 explains much of what hasn’t happened. The aforementioned crappy weather of drought or downpour accounts for much of the rest of a personally sedentary season. Getting older and wiser, or more lazy, explains a lot of the rest. My tolerance for getting all sweaty has dropped a lot. We’ve not tried to play with the local trout because of their potential for heat stress and our aversion to very high water. We hope the turning of the seasons will bring better days.

Merry Autumn

Paul Laurence Dunbar - 1872-1906

It’s all a farce,—these tales they tell

     About the breezes sighing,

And moans astir o’er field and dell,

     Because the year is dying.

 

Such principles are most absurd,—

     I care not who first taught ’em;

There’s nothing known to beast or bird

     To make a solemn autumn.

 

In solemn times, when grief holds sway

     With countenance distressing,

You’ll note the more of black and gray

     Will then be used in dressing.

 

Now purple tints are all around;

     The sky is blue and mellow;

And e’en the grasses turn the ground

     From modest green to yellow.

 

The seed burrs all with laughter crack

     On featherweed and jimson;

And leaves that should be dressed in black

     Are all decked out in crimson.

 

A butterfly goes winging by;

     A singing bird comes after;

And Nature, all from earth to sky,

     Is bubbling o’er with laughter.

 

The ripples wimple on the rills,

     Like sparkling little lasses;

The sunlight runs along the hills,

     And laughs among the grasses.

 

The earth is just so full of fun

     It really can’t contain it;

And streams of mirth so freely run

     The heavens seem to rain it.

 

Don’t talk to me of solemn days

     In autumn’s time of splendor,

Because the sun shows fewer rays,

     And these grow slant and slender.

 

Why, it’s the climax of the year,—

     The highest time of living!—

Till naturally its bursting cheer

     Just melts into thanksgiving.

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Old errors in a new era? Enbridge fails again!

Is our environment comprised of more than just fungible goods?

What Are Fungible Goods?

Fungibles goods refer to securities, or other items, that are equivalent or consist of many identical parts such that, for practical purposes, they are interchangeable. Material items, securities, and other financial instruments may be considered fungible goods. If goods are sold by weight or number, then they are probably not fungible goods.

BLUE MARBLE
Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

Many humans have been working toward dominion over nature for thousands of years. It appears now that success has been achieved, but not in the way envisioned. Will the governments of the world succeed in abating atmospheric pollution soon enough to minimize climactic volatility and its consequences? That question, and some related law suits agains fossil fuel companies, makes me think we’ve approached the basics of business all wrong, just as we have attained dominion over nature all wrong. Here’s a current example from Minnesota.

DNR says Enbridge broke law, must pay over $3 million for construction mistake

The DNR says the company pierced an aquifer and endangered a unique wetland. 

From the article in the  Star  Tribune:

The DNR has ordered Enbridge to put $2.75 million into escrow for restoration and damage to the delicate wetland, known as a calcareous fen. The DNR's enforcement orders require Enbridge to pay $300,000 to mitigate the lost groundwater and $250,000 for long-term monitoring of the wetlands.

The state also fined Enbridge $20,000, the maximum allowed under state law. Enbridge does not have to pay the fine if it fixes the problem in the time allotted. Enbridge could get some of the $2.75 million in escrow back if remediation costs less, or it could end up paying more if the bill is higher. 

DNR has reportedly approved a remediation plan, but do we know, with any reasonable degree of certainty, that the rare calcareous fen can be protected and actually restored if necessary? The premise is that we know enough, and can accomplish enough, to fix what Enbridge broke. That  premise is questionable for several reasons. If the premise were entirely valid, we wouldn’t need the precautionary principle:

One of the primary foundations of the precautionary principle, and globally accepted definitions, results from the work of the Rio Conference, or "Earth Summit" in 1992. Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration notes:^[15][1]

In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.

— Rio Declaration, 1992

The principle does not appear to have been incorporated sufficiently into the permits issued by  the state  of Minnesota’s agencies that allowed Enbridge to construct Line 3. Deviations from approved construction plans were discovered only after the fact. There is no assurance that it will be possible to plug the acquifer and protect the fen.

These circumstances, and the threats associated with proposed hard rock mines in or near environmentally sensitive areas, strongly suggest Minnesota needs new parameters as part of its permitting conditions.

• There should be explicit acknowledgement that following a precautionary approach is a condition of the permits and a business’s social license in Minnesota.
• There should be recognition that imposing fines, often treated as a cost of doing business, is inadequate and insufficient as a deterrent to violating environmental requirements.
• Minnesota should only issue environmental permits to entities that are structured as certified “B” corporations, or equivalent.

Governments and businesses, be they local, national or international, have become entirely to cavalier about not letting environmental requirements prohibit making a profit. It is again time to remind those folks of Sam Rayburn’s observation that "Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.” The last time I checked, we were woefully short on carpenters able to build a new environment like a wild rice lake or a Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Will Minnesota ever require best practices be followed for its risky businesses?

Earth Day

By Jane Yolen

I am the Earth

And the Earth is me.

Each blade of grass,

Each honey tree,

Each bit of mud,

And stick and stone

Is blood and muscle,

Skin and bone.

And just as I

Need every bit

Of me to make

My body fit,

So Earth needs

Grass and stone and tree

And things that grow here

Naturally.

That’s why we

Celebrate this day.

That’s why across

The world we say:

As long as life,

As dear, as free,

I am the Earth

And the Earth is me. 

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Raising puppies or children helps to properly (re)train grownups

One of my all time favorite authors, Gene Hill, has a great quotation that goes “Whoever said you can't buy Happiness forgot little puppies.” I was reminded of that this morning when a young golden retriever pup came boundcing (that’s a cross between a bound and a bounce) over to say Hi! and welcome me to the John Deere shop where I had gone to get an oil filter for our subcompact tractor. My mood improved about 500% after returning the greeting. The innocence and exuberance of most pups is a marked improvement over the mood of many adult humans these days. It’s only been within the past few months that I’ve come across the phrase “doom scrolling” and, he admitted ashamedly, caught myself doing it.

"the Better Half’s" Franco as a young dog

Photo by J. Harrington

Our granddaughter, soon to turn one, does as well as a retriever pup in the joyousness department, both experiencing it and creating it for her parents, grandparents, uncle and about anyone lucky enough to be around her. (What? No, of course I’m not biased! The very idea!) Is it that puppies and toddlers still see most of the world and its inhabitants as interesting and friendly? Most of the dogs I’ve been lucky enough to have own me have kept that happy perspective for the whole times we shared, with occasional exceptions for things like thunderstorms.

“my" SiSi as a young dog

Photo by J. Harrington

Could it be that youngsters, whether canine or human, have more open, positive expectations because  they haven’t yet experienced the disappointments many of us go through as we grow to adulthood? Then there’s the whole positive reinforcement versus punishment corrections in training puppies and raising children. It’s been years but I still remember hearing about “spare the rod and spoil the child.” And  yet, every puppy or young dog I’ve brought home turned out to be eager to please and meet expectations if only I could be smart enough to convey those expectations in a way the dog could understand.

If Feeling Isn't In It

By John Brehm

You can take it away, as far as I'm concerned—I'd rather spend the afternoon with a nice dog. I'm not kidding. Dogs have what a lot of poems lack: excitements and responses, a sense of play the ability to impart warmth, elation . . . .  
                                                                                   Howard Moss

Dogs will also lick your face if you let them.

Their bodies will shiver with happiness.

A simple walk in the park is just about

the height of contentment for them, followed

by a bowl of food, a bowl of water,

a place to curl up and sleep. Someone

to scratch them where they can't reach

and smooth their foreheads and talk to them.

Dogs also have a natural dislike of mailmen

and other bringers of bad news and will

bite them on your behalf. Dogs can smell

fear and also love with perfect accuracy.

There is no use pretending with them.

Nor do they pretend. If a dog is happy

or sad or nervous or bored or ashamed

or sunk in contemplation, everybody knows it.

They make no secret of themselves.

You can even tell what they're dreaming about

by the way their legs jerk and try to run

on the slippery ground of sleep.

Nor are they given to pretentious self-importance.

They don't try to impress you with how serious

or sensitive they are. They just feel everything

full blast. Everything is off the charts

with them. More than once I've seen a dog

waiting for its owner outside a café

practically implode with worry. “Oh, God,

what if she doesn't come back this time?

What will I do? Who will take care of me?

I loved her so much and now she's gone

and I'm tied to a post surrounded by people

who don't look or smell or sound like her at all.”

And when she does come, what a flurry

of commotion, what a chorus of yelping

and cooing and leaps straight up into the air!

It's almost unbearable, this sudden

fullness after such total loss, to see

the world made whole again by a hand

on the shoulder and a voice like no other.

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What purpose, then, is served?

This morning, as I drove out of the drive,  I looked across the road to see fields of purple lovegrass, covered in dew, made glowing white by the rising sun. It was indeed awesomely beautiful, triggering remembrances of some of the old descriptions of heaven. Sometimes beauty can bring us to a state of awe, enthralled, bedazzled, mesmerized. I recommend trying to begin and end your day with such an experience. It’s a far better beginning than by reading the  morning paper, which may contain such items as finding that the third degree murder conviction of Mohamed Noor has been overturned by  the Minnesota Supreme Court. According to the Star Tribune:

The court's unanimous ruling written by Chief Justice Lorie Gildea focused on the mental state necessary for the legal standard of a "depraved mind," defined as a "generalized indifference to human life."

The state's highest court said such a state cannot exist when a defendant's conduct is aimed at a particular person. The ruling affirmed what Noor's lawyers have claimed since trial — that third-degree murder didn't apply because his actions were focused on a single person.

Alpha Stock Images - http://alphastockimages.com/

The Minnesota Statute is two paragraphs long. The second makes sense. The purpose of the first paragraph is, in my humble opinion, obscured in incomprehensible language. The individual words might make sense, but not when strung together. Here’s the paragraph:

(a) Whoever, without intent to effect the death of any person, causes the death of another by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life, is guilty of murder in the third degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 25 years.

Perhaps it’s because my college degree is in English, and I am not a lawyer, that I am deeply troubled by, to the point of not being able to assign a meaning to, the phrases "by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life,...”

According to one law firm’s web site, "Examples of depraved mind murder include violently driving an automobile ², the accidental discharge of a gun during a fight³, and Mohammed Noor’s widely publicized charge of shooting a woman while on duty as a police officer.”

Now that the Minnesota Supreme Court has eliminated the third example, I continue to struggle with the question of what does it mean to be violently driving an automobile (is that reckless driving?) and how does one accidentally discharge a gun during a fight? What if one’s opponent causes the discharge? Was it a depraved mind that brought a gun to where  there might be a fight? What is an example of a “generalized indifference to human life?” Is that like weapons of mass destruction that no one can find?

I’ve known many lawyers over the years and often been fascinated by their ability to split hairs at the subatomic scale. As far as I’m concerned, Minnesota’s use of the phrases “evincing a depraved mind” and “act eminently dangerous to others” belong with Schrödinger's cat and not in the realm of jurisprudence. Let’s not even get started on how, per the second paragraph, there’s supposed to be any sort of equivalency between sentenced to "not more than 25 years [in prison] or to payment of a fine of not more than $40,000, or both.”

The Murder of William Remington

By Howard Nemerov

It is true, that even in the best-run state

Such things will happen; it is true,

What’s done is done. The law, whereby we hate

Our hatred, sees no fire in the flue

But by the smoke, and not for thought alone

It punishes, but for the thing that’s done.

And yet there is the horror of the fact,

Though we knew not the man. To die in jail,

To be beaten to death, to know the act

Of personal fury before the eyes can fail

And the man die against the cold last wall

Of the lonely world—and neither is that all:

There is the terror too of each man’s thought,

That knows not, but must quietly suspect

His neighbor, friend, or self of being taught

To take an attitude merely correct;

Being frightened of his own cold image in

The glass of government, and his own sin,

Frightened lest senate house and prison wall

Be quarried of one stone, lest righteous and high

Look faintly smiling down and seem to call

A crime the welcome chance of liberty,

And any man an outlaw who aggrieves

The patriotism of a pair of thieves.

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