Illegitimi non carborundum

As this is written, we are less than twelve hours from having survived the meteorological winter of 2021 -- 2022. I think we'll make it!! Then we can March right into Spring! [heh, heh!]

Irish soda bread

Photo by J. Harrington

Now that we’re entering March, it’s time to begin baking Irish soda bread. We’ll do a loaf this week or early next and then another before we get to St. Patrick’s Day.

Today’s title seems to fit the increasing turmoil in the world. It’s been getting me down and then there’s the recent release of IPCC report: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. I find it, at least the Summary Report for Policymakers, to be fundamentally incomprehensible. I believe I’m qualified to make such an assessment since, at one time in my career, a part of my job responsibility was to prepare an occasional “one pager for the governor.” If I had tried using language such as that coming from the Working Groups, I would have been unemployed in a hurry. I know of no policymaker who would try to understand what’s being asserted in the report as written. The Guardian’s article today, IPCC issues ‘bleakest warning yet’ on impacts of climate breakdown, should receive a creative nonfiction award for its interpretation of the IPCC report.

If we combine the IPCC writing, or even The Guardian’s version, with the finding that "According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of U.S. adults 16-74 years old - about 130 million people - lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.” it’s no wonder we’re not doing nearly enough to respond to the increasingly dire climate assessments.

On the other hand, a possible beneficial outcome of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could be an accelerated effort by the European Union to wean themselves of fossil fuels from Russia, a major source. Plus, if we get really lucky, real Americans, actual patriots, will be disgusted enough by the many Republicans supporting Putin over Biden that there may be a real Blue Wave come November, enough to neutralize DINOs like Manchin and Sinema with real, progressive Democrats not bought and paid for by corporations. Let’s cross our fingers and "Illegitimi non carborundum.”

Dear March—Come in—(1320)

Emily Dickinson - 1830-1886

Dear March—Come in—
How glad I am—
I hoped for you before—
Put down your Hat—
You must have walked—
How out of Breath you are—
Dear March, how are you, and the Rest—
Did you leave Nature well—
Oh March, Come right upstairs with me—
I have so much to tell—

I got your Letter, and the Birds—
The Maples never knew that you were coming—
I declare - how Red their Faces grew—
But March, forgive me—
And all those Hills you left for me to Hue—
There was no Purple suitable—
You took it all with you—

Who knocks? That April—
Lock the Door—
I will not be pursued—
He stayed away a Year to call
When I am occupied—
But trifles look so trivial 
As soon as you have come

That blame is just as dear as Praise
And Praise as mere as Blame—

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As the seasons turn...

Tomorrow is the last day of the meteorological winter of 2021-2022. Yesterday and today the high temperatures reached above freezing! We have [almost] survived another Minnesota winter. Soon we can look forward to once again eating at the Taylors Falls Drive-In!

But first we have to clean up winter’s accumulated detritus, mostly dead branches and dog droppings. I think it’s going to be a project to be picked at rather than a concentrated effort. It will feel good to make even a little progress rather than losing ground daily. [No, branches didn’t fall every day, but dogs were walked daily.]

caddis over tricos

Photo by J. Harrington

A small but enjoyable progress that did occur over the winter is I became more comfortable with my collection of trout flies. I’d been putting too much thought into trying to organize them by the species and time of year hatching occurs. From much of the reading I’ve done this winter, match the hatch can be a significant challenge, but there  are lots of times when successful fishing doesn’t depend on a major hatch. I’ll pay more attention to hatch matching after I’ve spent more time on and in the waters this year and have actually observed a hatch to match. Tricos in mid to late summer is all I’ve ever noticed, probably because I don’t spend enough time fishing!

The Song of Wandering Aengus

W. B. Yeats - 1865-1939

I went out to the hazel wood,   
Because a fire was in my head,   
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,   
And hooked a berry to a thread;   
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,   
I dropped the berry in a stream   
And caught a little silver trout.   

When I had laid it on the floor   
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,   
And someone called me by my name:   
It had become a glimmering girl   
With apple blossom in her hair   
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.   

Though I am old with wandering   
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,   
I will find out where she has gone,   
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,   
And pluck till time and times are done,   
The silver apples of the moon,   
The golden apples of the sun.

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A Big Read is coming up

 I first read Joy Harjo’s An American Sunrise in 2019. By April of this year I’ll have reread it because it’s the NEA Big Read in the St. Croix Valley. I believe I’ve read, at least once, most of what Harjo has written, She is one of my favorite poets / writers and I’m looking forward to participating in whatever events get programmed.

An American Sunrise cover

The fact that one or more of the events involves a handful of local poets of place also pleases me no end. This has the potential to be one of the better Aprils in the fifty of so years I’ve lived in Minnesota. It will be even better if by April 1 the ground is bare of snow and no April blizzards occur during the month.

The Better Half and I are going to try a new local restaurant’s fare this evening, as a take-out order. The Daughter Person and Son-In-Law have recommended it a couple of times so it would probably be impolite to continue to resist sampling. We’ll share the name and our assessment if, and only if, it turns out we agree with the recommendations. If we don’t like it we can let it die the death of a thousand silences. My parents phrased that “If you can’t say anything good about it, don’t say anything at all.” Might'nt social media be a better place to hang out if more folks followed that dictum?

In recognition of events occurring in the Ukraine as this is being written, today’s poem, from An American Sunrise, is:

How to Write a Poem in a Time of War

Joy Harjo - 1951-

You can’t begin just anywhere. It’s a wreck.

                                                                             Shrapnel and the eye

Of a house, a row of houses. There’s a rat scrambling

From light with fleshy trash in its mouth. A baby strapped

to its mother’s back, cut loose.
                                                                       Soldiers crawl the city,

the river, the town, the village,

                                the bedroom, our kitchen. They eat everything.
Or burn it.

They kill what they cannot take. They rape. What they cannot kill
                                                                                        they take.

Rumors fall like rain.

                                   Like bombs.

Like mother and father tears

swallowed for restless peace.

Like sunset slanting toward a moonless midnight.

Like a train blown free of its destination.                      Like a seed

fallen where

there is no chance of trees          or anyplace       for birds to live.

No, start here.                    Deer peer from the edge of the woods.

                                                         We used to see woodpeckers

The size of the sun, and were greeted

by chickadees with their good morning songs.

We’d started to cook outside, slippery with dew and laughter,

                                    ah those smoky sweet sunrises.

We tried to pretend war wasn’t going to happen.

Though they began building their houses all around us

                                         and demanding 
more.

They started teaching our children their god’s story,

A story in which we’d always be slaves.

No. Not here.

You can’t begin here.

This is memory shredded because it is impossible to hold with words,

even poetry.

These memories were left here with the trees:

The torn pocket of your daughter’s hand-sewn dress,

the sash, the lace.

The baby’s delicately beaded moccasin still connected to the foot,

A young man’s note of promise to his beloved—
 

No! This is not the best place to begin.

Everyone was asleep, despite the distant bombs.

                                        Terror had become the familiar stranger.

Our beloved twin girls curled up in their nightgowns,

                                                                 next to their father and me.

If we begin here, none of us will make it to the end

Of the poem.

Someone has to make it out alive, sang a grandfather

to his grandson, his granddaughter,

as he blew his most powerful song into the hearts of the children.

There it would be hidden from the soldiers,

Who would take them miles, rivers, mountains

                                     from the navel cord place of the origin story.

He knew one day, far day, the grandchildren would return, 


generations later over slick highways, constructed over old trails

Through walls of laws meant to hamper or destroy, over stones

bearing libraries of the winds.

He sang us back

to our home place from which we were stolen

in these smoky green hills.

Yes, begin here.

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Does a better world depend on good people?

The Better Half reports hearing chickadees' spring songs today. That's a hopeful sign. Tomorrow, and a number of days thereafter, the high daily temperatures are forecast to climb above freezing about every other day. I look forward to hearing the sounds of melting, dripping waters and seeing life return to bare branches that need greening.

springtime chickadee

Photo by J. Harrington

Back in the prior millennium, during my college days, I encountered the teachings and writings of several schools of psychology, including gestalt and humanistic. As I scan social media and news reports these days, it seems clear that many people aren’t familiar with, or have rejected, a fundamental perspective of Fritz Perls captured in the Gestalt prayer:

“I do my thing and you do your thing.

I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,

And you are not in this world to live up to mine.

You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.

If not, it can't be helped.”

 These days I suspect many might claim that the “prayer” is but a rationalization for a world view that justifies a colonial mindset. On the other hand, an alternative approach seemed to offer more.

Humanistic psychology helps the client gain the belief that all people are inherently good.^[2] It adopts a holistic approach to human existence and pays special attention to such phenomena as creativity, free will, and positive human potential. It encourages viewing ourselves as a "whole person" greater than the sum of our parts and encourages self exploration rather than the study of behavior in other people....

I suspect many of us would undoubtedly quibble with  the validity of the first sentence in the quotation immediately above. Personally, I can accept “many” or, on a good day, even “most,” but I’ve seen too much evidence to the contrary to believe that “all people are inherently good.” That brings us to one of the  reasons I can’t and won’t accept inherent goodness: the abuse of the attention economy today.

We have misinformation, often due to incompetence, disinformation, usually due to malicious intentions, both of which bring a signal to noise ratio to the point of being largely useless and contribute mightily to confirmation bias on either or all sides of an issue. If we are to have a future, we can and must do better. “How?” becomes a key question. See if this possibility is of interest:

In a world of too many options and too little time, our obvious choice is to just ignore the ordinary stuff. Marketing guru Seth Godin spells out why, when it comes to getting our attention, bad or bizarre ideas are more successful than boring ones.

If so, watch his TED Talk here: How to get your ideas to spread [there’s also a transcript if you’d rather read.] I need to spend time rewatching and rereading this and a few more of Godin’s presentations and see if they help me understand, accept and learn how to respond to the fact that Republicans seem to be winning a war of ideas that I would expect Democrats to prevail in. Or is grasping power only about power and not about ideas?

Ideas

By Kathryn Starbuck

I was the lonely one in whom   

they swarmed in the millions.   

I was their creature and I   

was grateful. I could sleep   

when I wanted.   

I lived a divided   

existence in sleepdreams   

that lit up a silence as dreadful   

as that of the moon. I have   

an overly-precise recall of   

those solitary years before   

I opened the curtain and drew   

upon a universe of want that made   

me so strong I could crack   

spines of books with one hand.

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On the state of the world

There are days, sometimes days on end, when it’s difficult to accept the first sentence of the last stanza of Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata: “And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” This is one of those days, embedded in one of those times. Of course, that assessment presumes I know how things should be compared to how they are. I don’t know. I only know how, with my limited knowledge and perspective, I think they should be, or, more precisely, how I would like them to be.

Waaayy back in my younger days, the guys I hung around with frequently argued about whether it was better, once you got into a fight and were winning, to try to beat the hell out of your opponent so they never wanted to mess with you again, or, to instead give your opponent a sporting opportunity too say “enough,” and perhaps win a friend rather than a perpetual enemy. I believe those arguments are continuing to this day because, in part, those outcomes depend as much on your opponent’s world view as on yours. Neville Chamberlain or Winston Churchill?

happiness is a friend who loves you

Photo by J. Harrington

One of the reasons Desiderata is such worthwhile guidance is that it focuses on helping us attain an all too rare condition in the world these days, happiness, or the striving to attain it. So, for today’s posting the key concept is found in these questions: Do you know what it is that really makes you happy? How did you learn that?

Something I first read many years ago relates to happiness in a different way, especiallly for those of us who have a tendency to focus primarily on goals. 

“Happiness is to be found along the way, not at the end of the road, for then the journey is over and it is too late. Today, this hour, this minute is the day, the hour, the minute for each of us to sense the fact that life is good, with all of its trials and troubles, and perhaps more interesting because of them.”

― Robert Updegraff 

Happiness

By Jane Kenyon

There’s just no accounting for happiness,

or the way it turns up like a prodigal

who comes back to the dust at your feet

having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?

You make a feast in honor of what

was lost, and take from its place the finest

garment, which you saved for an occasion

you could not imagine, and you weep night and day

to know that you were not abandoned,

that happiness saved its most extreme form

for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never

knew about, who flies a single-engine plane

onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes

into town, and inquires at every door

until he finds you asleep midafternoon

as you so often are during the unmerciful

hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.

It comes to the woman sweeping the street

with a birch broom, to the child

whose mother has passed out from drink.

It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing

a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,

and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots

in the night.

                     It even comes to the boulder

in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,

to rain falling on the open sea, 

to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

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Rescue dogs on the job!

Many of the forsythia stems in our two vases have leafed out. Seeing fresh, new green is encouraging, since I just finished clearing four or five inches of snow from the drive. If it really does warm up next week, I want to help Mother Nature as much as I can to move through the icy driveway phase. Other accomplishments for today include ordering new glasses, dropping off the tax organizer and documents with our tax preparer, and reading to our granddaughter for awhile. A day full of more accomplishments than many this winter.

Maybe the fact that I was too busy in the real world to spend time on social media helps explain the fact that I’m in a better mood than I have been for weeks. Maybe the promise of warmer weather and a spring thaw has a lot to do with it. Maybe the fact that I’m beginning to reengage with a conservation organization I’ve belonged to for decades is a contributor. It’s been a pleasant change from the business as usual mode of the past few months.

friends: SiSi (left), Harry (right)

Photo by J. Harrington

I would be remiss if I failed to acknowledge that our two rescue dogs, I belong to SiSi on the left, Harry on the right owns the Better Half, bring a little aggravation and a lot of joy into our lives. They’re no doubt looking forward to once again having a chance to play in their run without getting frostbitten paws. I would also be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge how rejuvenating it is to visit a person a little less than 18 months old who finds joy in exploring and testing everything about her. She’s a classic example of zen mind, beginner’s mind, not so full of everything there’s no room to learn more. A model I should take to heart more.

What a lot of today’s posting amounts to is my recognition that learning to enjoy what I have is as important, perhaps more important, than working toward new, improved, bigger, better, more! I’ve recently been fretting about the dogs spending as much time sleeping as they do. Then I thought about the fact that their food and shelter is taken care of, and they’re learning how to play together without wrecking the house, so most boredom is self-inflicted. That helped me realize that spending less time sitting on my duff fussing about the state of the world would increase my chances to enjoy and work toward saving or improving those parts of that world that are important to me. Maybe after I’ve relearned this fact another couple of dozen times it will begin to sink in.

Yes! No!

by Mary Oliver

How necessary it is to have opinions! I think the spotted trout
lilies are satisfied, standing a few inches above the earth. I
think serenity is not something you just find in the world,
like a plum tree, holding up its white petals.

The violets, along the river, are opening their blue faces, like
small dark lanterns.

The green mosses, being so many, are as good as brawny.

How important it is to walk along, not in haste but slowly,
looking at everything and calling out

Yes! No! The

swan, for all his pomp, his robes of grass and petals, wants
only to be allowed to live on the nameless pond. The catbrier
is without fault. The water thrushes, down among the sloppy
rocks, are going crazy with happiness. Imagination is better
than a sharp instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless
and proper work.

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It’s 22222... and that means...

If you believe in numerology, there’s a significance to the repeating number of today’s date. For the cynics in the crowd, it’s an interesting question of how to apply an idea that everything will soon be okay to the situation in Ukraine, or in the US, or the UK, since okay would have very different meanings to different groups. No doubt there are numerous (see what we did there?) other situations in which an okay outcome would vary widely, perhaps even wildly.

Here in the North Country on 2/22/22, it’s cold (still) and snowing (again). Our antidote has been to slowly fill the living and dining rooms with an ever growing number of green and/or flowering plants. The Better Half has a birthday coming up and has requested a number of presents related to spring planting. It will require a major exertion of will power for some of us to purchase such presents, since we are coming to believe that spring may be canceled this year. We may be in for one of those years in which there’s six inches of snow on Monday one week and by Friday of the same week it’s 85℉ and stays in that vicinity for the next three or four months. (Yes, I am letting my streak of malcontentedness show.)

feeders during February snowfall

Photo by J. Harrington

Today’s snowfall has brought a multitude of birds, mostly goldfinches and chickadees, to the feeders. How long until spring migrants visit on their way further north? At the moment, things are feeling too much like the time loop in the movie Groundhog Day, with the weather roller coaster just repeating its trip up and down, around and around, again and again. It looks like our only hope for breaking our of the  pattern is patience. Eventually, warmer weather, in one form or another, will arrive. Right?... Right?

Work Without Hope

Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1772-1834

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair—   
The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing—   
And Winter, slumbering in the open air,   
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!   
And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,           
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.   

Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,   
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.   
Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,   
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!    
With lips unbrighten'd, wreathless brow, I stroll:   
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?   
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,   
And Hope without an object cannot live. 

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It’s President’s’ Day

Federal holiday? No mail delivery, I think. Stock market closed. Different states celebrating different versions of the day. Snow storm on the way unless the forecast itself is a snow job. We’ll know on Wednesday or Thursday. February ends one week from today! Spring, the meteorological version, begins eight days from today! Will someone please let Mother Nature know?

rustic, artisan, sourdough bread

Photo by J. Harrington

We’re please to report that the artisan, sourdough, Irish flour bread we messed up and then salvaged the other day turned out Okay. Not as good as our first loaf, but that’s understandable, since our first loaf was an experiment rather than a salvage effort. This morning we bought some more all purpose flour: King Arthur, organic. It was, as we say in Minnesota, pricey. Driving home I thought about the fact that I bake bread not to save money but to satisfy some sort of inner urge. The industrial product, exemplified by “wonderbread,” leaves me cold and hungry. It has about as much soul as it does nutrition. Artisan, rustic, usually sourdough, bread holds up to a great stew or soup in the winter. Industrial bread basically collapses when such a meal depends on it.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which the US is a signatory, proclaims in Article 25 that

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. 

I find it very unfortunate that nowhere in the entire declaration is there mention of the right to clean air, clean water, and an unpolluted, healthy environment. Should we try for an amendment, or do we need the likes of another Elinor and Franklin Delano Roosevelt before we attempt to rectify that oversight?

If it appears I’m less than enthused about President’s’ Day, you’re perceptive. There have been, in my opinion, too many scoundrels and incompetents elected to that high office, including a disproportionate number during my lifetime (that’s correlation, not causation).

This morning I engaged in an interesting exchange with someone about the need for a government agency such as the Center for Disease Control to be obligated to share all information with a public that’s largely lacking the ability to, or interest in, applying critical thinking to such data. We, and the institutions we’ve created or permitted, are failing ourselves. Presidents who exercised real leadership wouldn’t let US do that to ourselves. We were reminded of our strenths as well as our failings at the inauguration of the 46th President, Joe Biden, when Amanda Gorman, the inaugural poet, read her poem The Hill We Climb.

When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade
We've braved the belly of the beast
We've learned that quiet isn't always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn’t always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we've weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished
We the successors of a country and a time
Where a skinny Black girl
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one
And yes we are far from polished
far from pristine
but that doesn’t mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect
We are striving to forge a union with purpose
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
but what stands before us
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another
We seek harm to none and harmony for all
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew
That even as we hurt, we hoped
That even as we tired, we tried
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious
Not because we will never again know defeat
but because we will never again sow division
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
And no one shall make them afraid
If we’re to live up to our own time
Then victory won’t lie in the blade
But in all the bridges we’ve made
That is the promised glade
The hill we climb
If only we dare
It's because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it’s the past we step into
and how we repair it
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy
And this effort very nearly succeeded
But while democracy can be periodically delayed
it can never be permanently defeated
In this truth
in this faith we trust
For while we have our eyes on the future
history has its eyes on us
This is the era of just redemption
We feared at its inception
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was
but move to what shall be
A country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce and free
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation
Our blunders become their burdens
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy
and change our children’s birthright
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west,
we will rise from the windswept northeast
where our forefathers first realized revolution
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,
we will rise from the sunbaked south
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover
and every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it

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A brief and very pleasant interlude

It’s like Mother Nature shuffled an April day into the February deck: sunshine, blue skies and temperatures above 40℉. Time to eat, drink, scrape, and be merry, for tomorrow we di...ve back into winter. Unseasonably cold temperatures and something like 9 or 10 inches of snow by Tuesday night. Sigh!

If we were enjoying normal temperatures, spring thaw would begin next weekend. The extended forecast doesn’t show anything approaching 30℉, let alone above freezing. In my younger days there was a hit song with the lyrics “you don’t really love me, you just keep me hanging on.” That describes pretty well my relationship with winter weather. Time to work on a breakup speech since a week from today is the penultimate day of meteorological winter.

Here in the North Country, we’re known for having had snow 11 months of the year, although not necessarily in the same year. I’m working on an attitude adjustment about how this winter will help me enjoy spring even more, although so far  this season, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources tells us that the winter severity index has been much less than the seven year moving average. Maybe I need to practice saying “Yes, but it’s a dry cold!”

early migrants return

Photo by J. Harrington

Next month  (a week away!) it’s definitely time to watch for the return of the geese, cranes and red-winged blackbirds. Ice and snow should turn to mud. Trickles will run into flowing water. We saw lots of snowmobiles on trailers headed south toward "The Cities” today. “Permanent” ice houses have to be removed in a couple of weeks in the southern 2/3 of the state and by March 21 up Nort’. The the real angling seasons can be looked forward to.

To One Coming North

By Claude McKay

At first you'll joy to see the playful snow, 

  Like white moths trembling on the tropic air, 

Or waters of the hills that softly flow 

  Gracefully falling down a shining stair.

 

And when the fields and streets are covered white 

  And the wind-worried void is chilly, raw, 

Or underneath a spell of heat and light 

  The cheerless frozen spots begin to thaw,

 

Like me you'll long for home, where birds' glad song 

  Means flowering lanes and leas and spaces dry, 

And tender thoughts and feelings fine and strong, 

  Beneath a vivid silver-flecked blue sky.

 

But oh! more than the changeless southern isles, 

  When Spring has shed upon the earth her charm, 

You'll love the Northland wreathed in golden smiles 

  By the miraculous sun turned glad and warm.

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Looking forward to warmer, better days

It’s probably cynical of me to think that a snowstorm forecast for Monday is very appropriate for President’s Day, right? What with 4 years of a Con man, followed by COVID for two years, rabid Conservatives trying to overthrow an election, banning books and voters, and now the prospect of Communists starting WW3 by invading Ukraine, I’ve reached my limit on putting up with crap that begins with C. Cynicism is my response to those C’s, plus the Corporatocracy that is now functioning as the  ruling class of what was once a democracy.

On what I hope will be a brighter side, I’m volunteering as a participant in a fund-raising team working to restore and rehabilitate a local trout stream. In the process, I hope to dust off some long unused professional skills and use participation as an excuse to learn my way around some new fishing spots. All of which presumes that at some point this year weather will warm, flowers will bloom, and a fly cast upon the waters won’t bounce on the ice. We’ll see.

when forced, nature is more reliable than computers

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning was spent in a sense of deja vu, since it was largely devoted to downloading, installing, removing and reinstalling versions of software that offers a potentially viable alternative to MS’s Office. I’ve been testing it for a few months now. A couple of days ago I learned that exporting a file so a Windows excel users could review it resulted in a corrupted file according to the person I shared it with. Unfortunately, the most recent version that supposedly solved the corrupted fille export problem persisted in crashing every time I changed anything in the spreadsheet. Trying to install an intermeddiate version over the newer one made my Apple’s operating system very upset. We think we’ve now corrected enough that we have a functioning system but won’t know until we actually try to do some real work. It all reminds me of the days in the  last millennium when the hardware folks would claim a malfunction was a software problem and vice versa. The more things change, the more they remain the same?

Many of today’s headaches look and feel much like a continuation of yesterday’s issues. Does anyone know if it’s possible to manually move Mercury out of retrograde? At least the forsythia are continuing to bloom and leaf out in the dining room.

Antisocial Media

Jennifer Militello

It’s easier to computer than to crash. It’s easier
to computer than to hold a hand or knit
a winter together from headlights on the highway.

It’s easier to computer and be a hybrid and
cross from bowels and eardrums into hours
lit and roaring by like freight. The chapters

there can tell you an octopus has three hearts,
that snails breathe through their feet. It is easier
to have no arms or breath, to position through

colors and jumps shoreless as steam. No
surfaces. No verbs to be. No mussels
or bellows or congestion or caffeine.

No lens to focus, no Rome to burn. Who can
do when the roots are so untidy and
the branches rack like antlers against other

branches. It’s easier to computer than
to guess at a savior. Than to whisper slips
of information to the flesh. Let language construct

mere dewdrops of light. Let the circuitry
gauge the need and make it clean and make it
so heady it is erected, a remedy, in its ease.

There is no destination. No grave in place of a person
loved in the past, no identity classified, factual, no glass
to break open in the fisted hand, no cracked windshield,

no hurricane. Or there is, but it is closed inside its box
smaller than the box for roses, dead and moldered
by the time they reach the door, delivered only once.

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The day of the ground blizzards

The wind howled and more. The snow was scoured from the fields, turned and twisted and blown across the roads. We spent most of the day out driving around in some of the strongest winds I’ve felt in years. By the time we arrived home, the empty trash can had been blown across the road and the drive was littered with dead branches.

the wind filled the sky with snow and leaves

Photo by J. Harrington

It was a frustrating day trying to get shopping errands completed. The local Chuck and Don’s has again stopped carrying Canidae, our preferred brand of dog food and appears to have dropped the Dale Edgar supplement we give one of the dogs for her hips. Pet Smart had the dog food, but not the supplement. Then we tried to order dinner at the new Chipolte in Forest Lake. No go! They didn’t have crispy tacos for a taco salad the Better Half had been looking forward to. This came after four local Holliday stations failled to have functioning air hoses so I could tend to a low pressure in the Jeep’s right front tire. Maybe we’ve created a world too complicated for ordinary folks to keep up with? Maybe Mercury is in retrograde again. Some of each might help explain more of the world these days.

For example, this morning, before we went wind surfing in the Jeep, I was making up some more Irish flour dough. But I wasn’t sure we had enough  all purpose flour left so, instead of my usual sequence, I started with the ap flour. It wasn’t until hours later, when we got back home from the failed Chipolte run that I realized I had neglected to mix in the sourdough starter. I promptly took care of that oversight and worked starter into the dough. We’ll know sometime tomorrow if the dough was salvaged or savaged. So, we’ll file today under the heading of “it’s been one of those days so it won’t be hard for tomorrow to be better.”

After All

John Koethe - 1945-

“After all,” that too might be possible . . .
—John Ashbery

It isn’t too late, but for what I’m not sure.
Though I live for possibility, I loathe unbridled
Speculation, let alone those vague attempts
At self-exploration that become days wasted
Trying out the various modes of being:
The ecstatic mode, which celebrates the world, a high
That fades into an old idea; the contemplative,
Which says, So what? and leaves it there;
The skeptical, a way of being in the world
Without accepting it (whatever that might mean).
They’re all poses, adequate to different ends
And certain ages, none of them conclusive
Or sufficient to the day. I find myself surprised
By my indifference to what happens next:
You’d think that after almost seventy years of waiting
For the figure in the carpet to emerge I’d feel a sense of
Urgency about the future, rather than dismissing it
As another pretext for more idle speculation.
I’m happy, but I have a pessimistic cast of mind.
I like to generalize, but realize it’s pointless,
Since everything is there to see. I love remembering
For its own sake and the feel of passing time
It generates, which lends it meaning and endows it
With a private sense of purpose—as though every life
Were a long effort to salvage something of its past,
An effort bound to fail in the long run, though it comes
With a self-defeating guarantee: the evaporating
Air of recognition that lingers around a name
Or rises from a page from time to time; or the nothing
Waiting at the end of age; whichever comes last.

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Cold enough for ya?

Once again we’re stuck with outside temperatures in single digits. I was complaining about how abnormal this cold is, until I looked at a photo from last year about this time (actually, February 15), where the outside temperature was -24℉ at about 5 am.

February cold

Photo by J. Harrington

Patience has never been one of my strong points, but this winter seems longer and more unrelenting than most. Minnesota rarely does a good job with spring and the climate scientists that warned us about global warming must not have spent a February in this state.

Now for the good news! The Better Half, on tasting yesterday’s Irish sourdough artisan bread, proclaimed the taste “wonderful!” So the new recipe is a winner and we’ll move on to trying a kernza / Irish flour combination next. That means we’ll get to have a legitimate reason to have the oven on which will help warm the rest of the upstairs. I need to be sure and remember winter’s cold temperatures if I ever get tempted to think about an outside wood-fired oven for baking. It won’t wok for me unless I can tend it while dog walking and even then...?

Another piece of good news, even more personal, is that the Valentine’s present the Better Half got me finally arrived yesterday. It was a totally unexpected surprise! For some years now I’ve been a fan of both Ted Kooser’s and Jim Harrison’s poetry, especially their Braided Creek, a Conversation in Poetry. I’ve also long been fascinated by the question of how they came to know each other and became friends. Well, it turns out that before Braided Creek was published, a limited edition chapbook of their poems was printed by Aralia Press under the title A Conversation, a copy of which was my Valentine’s present this year. I can now spend additional hours pondering which of them wrote which unattributed poem. As the poets note: “This little book is an assertion in favor  of poetry and against credentials.”

from “Braided Creek”

How one old tire leans up against
another, the breath gone out of both.

Old friend,
perhaps we work too hard
at being remembered.

Which way will the creek
run when time ends?
Don’t ask me until
this wine bottle is empty.

While my bowl is still half full,
you can eat out of it too,
and when it is empty,
just bury it out in the flowers.

All those years
I had in my pocket.
I spent them,
nickel-and-dime.

Each clock tick falls
like a raindrop,
right through the floor
as if it were nothing.

In the morning light,
the doorknob, cold with dew.

The Pilot razor-point pen is my
compass, watch, and soul chaser.
Thousands of miles of black squiggles.

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Is it spring yet?

For a brief moment this morning, I thought today’s full moon was the last full moon this winter. Then I realized the March full moon occurs prior to the vernal equinox. Then I remembered that close only counts in horseshoes. Spring’s arrival is beginning to look like the proverbial carrot suspended ahead of the donkey. At least we have the ever increasing in blooms and leaves forced forsythia stems to help us hang  in there.

Full moon: Suckerfish (Ojibwe) Popping Trees (Lakota)

Photo by J. Harrington

The bread with Irish flour has been baked and tasted. I really like it. We’ll see what the Better Half says later today. She’s currently off doing grandmotherly things. Her tasting is less biased than the baker’s so we’ll provide an update later today or tomorrow.

As we look about, it’s tough to decide which is the wilder roller coaster ride these days: the stock market or the daily temperatures. Tomorrow’s high temperature is forecast to be about one third today’s and Friday’s to be about 3.5 times tomorrow’s. Next week we’ll be lucky to reach half of a normal daily high (finally at freezing/thawing for a high). Market changes tend to be around 1% daily, so I guess the temperatures win for volatility.

As we are more than halfway through Black History Month and approaching the beginning of Women’s History Month and meteorological spring, today’s poem by a Black Woman seems to fit nicely.

BLK History Month

By Nikki Giovanni

If Black History Month is not

viable then wind does not

carry the seeds and drop them

on fertile ground

rain does not

dampen the land

and encourage the seeds

to root

sun does not

warm the earth

and kiss the seedlings

and tell them plain:

You’re As Good As Anybody Else

You’ve Got A Place Here, Too

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And after Valentine’s comes....

For those of you who can’t wait to see our new legislative and congressional districts, they’re here! For reasons neither understood, nor yet researched, our state senate district number changed from 32 to 28. It’s not clear whether the changes, which mostly appear to be minor, will advantage incumbents or challengers.

Next Monday is a federal holiday that started out as Washington’s birthday and has morphed over time and varies by state. Minnesota celebrates it as “Washington's and Lincoln's Birthday.” I have a high  degree of indifference since there  are almost as many presidents that  probably shouldn’t be honored [lookin’ at you, #45] as should be in addition to Washington and Lincoln [lookin’ at you JFK]. Instead of next Monday, our focus is now on St. Patrick’s Day, about a month away. Between now and then we’ll note the Better Half’s birthday, the start of daylight savings time, Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday and the dogs’ annual trip to the vet’s.

rustic artisan sourdough bread

Photo by J. Harrington

In anticipation of St. Patrick’s Day, we’re trying a new [for us] bread recipe. We’re blending Irish flour with our usual rustic sourdough makings, replacing 20% of the all purpose and bread flours with Irish flour. We’ll report back in a day or two about how it turned out and how we like it. We may then try a combination of kernza and Irish flours with the standard mix.

We’re heartened more and more as the  forsythia stems show more and more flowers and greening. It’s been a long, cold, too dreary, winter. It’s now less than two weeks until the start of meteorological spring, but we all know that seasons are organic, not mathematic nor mechanic. The longer it takes for real spring to arrive, the more we’ll [at least most of us] welcome her.

Bread

By Richard Levine

Each night, in a space he’d make

between waking and purpose,

my grandfather donned his one

suit, in our still dark house, and drove

through Brooklyn’s deserted streets

following trolley tracks to the bakery.

There he’d change into white

linen work clothes and cap,

and in the absence of women,

his hands were both loving, well

into dawn and throughout the day—

kneading, rolling out, shaping

each astonishing moment

of yeasty predictability

in that windowless world lit

by slightly swaying naked bulbs,

where the shadows staggered, woozy

with the aromatic warmth of the work.

Then, the suit and drive, again.

At our table, graced by a loaf

that steamed when we sliced it,

softened the butter and leavened

the very air we’d breathe,

he’d count us blessed.

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On Valentine’s Day

The township showed its love for us by plowing clear last night’s snow at about 4 this morning. The Better Half and I exchanged Valentines (surprisingly complimentary) during our first cups of coffee.

An almost full moon peeked through a cloud-scudded sky. Snow crunched and squeaked underfoot as we walked the dogs in the dark before dawn. Tomorrow’s high temperature is forecast to be near twice today’s. That’s almost heart-warming. Real spring flowers would be even better. They’ll come in time.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Photo by J. Harrington

My reading of Nikki Giovanni’s poem sees interwoven themes we need more of in these times: love of and for Earth, another, and one’s own self. May those fill today, and the balance of your life, with warmth and love.

Resignation

Nikki Giovanni - 1943-

I love you
            because the Earth turns round the sun
            because the North wind blows north
                 sometimes
            because the Pope is Catholic
                 and most Rabbis Jewish
            because the winters flow into springs
                 and the air clears after a storm
            because only my love for you
                 despite the charms of gravity
                 keeps me from falling off this Earth
                 into another dimension
I love you
            because it is the natural order of things

I love you
            like the habit I picked up in college
                 of sleeping through lectures
                 or saying I’m sorry
                 when I get stopped for speeding
            because I drink a glass of water
                 in the morning
                 and chain-smoke cigarettes
                 all through the day
            because I take my coffee Black
                 and my milk with chocolate
            because you keep my feet warm
                 though my life a mess
I love you
            because I don’t want it
                 any other way

I am helpless
            in my love for you
It makes me so happy
            to hear you call my name
I am amazed you can resist
            locking me in an echo chamber
            where your voice reverberates
            through the four walls
            sending me into spasmatic ecstasy
I love you
            because it’s been so good
            for so long
            that if I didn’t love you
            I’d have to be born again
            and that is not a theological statement
I am pitiful in my love for you

The Dells tell me Love
            is so simple
            the thought though of you
            sends indescribably delicious multitudinous
            thrills throughout and through-in my body
I love you
            because no two snowflakes are alike
            and it is possible
            if you stand tippy-toe
            to walk between the raindrops
I love you
            because I am afraid of the dark
                 and can’t sleep in the light
            because I rub my eyes
                 when I wake up in the morning
                 and find you there
            because you with all your magic powers were
                 determined that
I should love you
            because there was nothing for you but that
I would love you

I love you
            because you made me
                 want to love you
            more than I love my privacy
                 my freedom          my commitments
                      and responsibilities
I love you ’cause I changed my life
            to love you
            because you saw me one Friday
                 afternoon and decided that I would
love you
I love you I love you I love you

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