We are in the afternoon of the last day of May for this year. A summer weather pattern, with scattered popcorn thunder showers and isolated storms, continues. We’ve received no rain to speak of, then again, we’ve experienced no severe weather, yet.
I’m finding it difficult to concentrate with the House vote on the debt limit still pending. Both the President and the House Speaker claim to be confident of passage. That leaves me in a “what could possibly go wrong?” mode / mood.
Although there’s still about three weeks until Summer Solstice, we can confirm that, once again, Minnesota has produced a crappy spring, the best part of which was its brevity. The extended forecast is dominated by temperatures in the upper 80’s. In my book, spring temperatures are under 80. The June outlook is for above normal temperatures and equal chances for above or below normal precipitation. The issue of the Nature Conservancy magazine that arrived yesterday notes that “Minnesota is one of the fastest warming states—“ although, as far as I know, everyone can still get homeowners insurance, unlike California. Meanwhile, Congress does battle over the debt limit and plays other political games. We need to find a way to take politics out of politics. Perhaps a constitutional amendment requiring potential candidates to have an IQ that exceeds shirt sleeve length or chest size?
I don’t think it’s the hots and homidities that’s got me grumpier than usual. More likely I’m fed up with paying taxes that pay the salaries of those who, on their best day, with both hands, couldn't find their what’sis.
Tomorrow is the beginning of a new month. I hope to begin it with a new, more positive attitude, at least until I’ve read the morning paper.
It probably started in a whisper, a murmur, a low tone hardly caught by the papers, a sticker, a poster, a brick wall with slogans in fresh, black paint because it probably started with a shove, some bluster, a gunshot, crushed fingers, it probably started with a speech that caught the right ears on an otherwise happy day, yellow flowers in a wooden stand on the sidewalk, red apples, radio trying hard to smooth out the mood, kid hurrying past, thinking, God, he’s shouting about me, pulls his hat low, it probably started with another man drunk on swagger, it probably started with a small crowd coaxing exciting lies, it probably started with a neighborhood’s head bowed as the drone grows each day (though they’ll claim it came in a quick, monstrous surprise).
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind
to each other while you can.
Czeslaw Milosz is a Nobel Laureate in Literature (1980). I’m rereading one of his works, Road-side Dog, and quite enjoying it. Some weeks ago, I effusively shared with the Better Half [BH] some of the pieces in that volume. Subsequently, BH presented me with two other volumes of Milosz’ poetry: New and Collected Poems 1931 -- 2001, and Selected and Last Poems 1931 -- 2004. I’ve but briefly glanced at the former and am about halfway through the latter. Much to my dismay and frustration, I’ve thought I understood and enjoyed no more than two or three poems of what I’ve read thus far. I find the experience somewhat comparable to partially assembling a jigsaw puzzle without benefit of the box top and with perhaps a third or half of the pieces missing.
Milosz isn’t the only poet I’ve found challenging in recent days. I’ve previously read, thought I understood, and enjoyed several of Kathleen Jamie’s works such as Sightlines and The Overhaul. On that basis, for Christmas last year I asked either Santa or BH for a copy of Jamie’s Selected Poems. In the last day or so I read the first three or four poems in that volume and have no concept of what she’s writing about there. Perhaps the difference is European rather than American frames of reference and context. I wouldn’t blame you if you were thinking perhaps it’s the reader rather than the poet that’s lacking. I admit to that possibility but would point out this extract from a Poetry Foundation discussion:
Many of the translators’ notes in this issue refer to the difficulty of translation, and many refer in one way or another to Robert Frost’s view that “poetry is what is lost in translation.” Reading Aleksandar Hemon’s translator’s note, are you inclined to agree or disagree with Frost? How does the language that we speak affect our understanding of ourselves?
For the past year or two, I’ve found myself drawn more and more to poems about rural living, nature, hunting, fishing and foraging by North American poets, both indigenous and other. I have my eye on a recently published volume by a poet new to me although I’m familiar with some of her prose. I’m encouraged because her volume is reviewed in the most recent issue of TROUT magazine and it’s been blurbed by a different poet whose work I’m already looking forward to reading. I’m going to take an easy out and provide a link to the publisher’s web page on her book: How You Walk Alone in the Dark.
Now, the secret hidden in the preceding is that I will be checking into each of those who blurbed Dark to see if any of their works look interesting and appealing enough to get my hands on. It won’t take me forever to finish Jamie and Milosz and my reading diet requires variety.
Where would you go if you could go anywhere. That’s what people ask. From the time we’re born, desperate to get away like a coyote in a trap. And I’ve never known what to say until just now after the rain’s stopped, just before dark, just before I knead tortilla dough with the hands I use to braid my mother’s hair down her back to childhood— do I know the answer— and it’s up the mountain to where the ravens are cawing. Because it’s never not something: a bear, a turkey, a body cached by a lion. They’re better than a bloodhound for a missing person and if you’re looking for a reason, they have it. Tucked in tailfeathers; held in beaks like splintered bone that rain down ash when they speak. I’ll bring my mother with me, walking over the ridge to find them. There she’ll remember where she’s gone and how to get back home.
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind
to each other while you can.
My mother, sisters, and I were fortunate. Her husband, our father, returned alive from his service in WWII and, some years later, the Korean “Police Action.” Many others, from those armed conflicts and the wars that preceded and followed them, lost husbands, fathers, brothers, friends who were defending their country. Memorial Day is the day we have chosen to publicly remember and honor them.
Today’s Star Tribune has reprinted an editorial from 1946 that points out how we can most effectively honor our war dead not only today but year round. A history professor at Boston College, Heather Cox Richardson, in her Letters from an American, poignantly describes the significance of the premature loss of so many through the remembrance of one.
One of the ways I’ve tried to honor and remember those in my immediate and extended family who have served the country is by helping to support an organization called Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing. They are “dedicated to the physical and emotional rehabilitation of disabled active military service personnel and disabled veterans through fly fishing and associated activities including education and outings.” I can’t be sure, but I think my Dad would approve. To the best of my knowledge, he never owned a boat but he seemed to enjoy the few times we managed to go fishing together in mine. That’s something else I think about on Memorial Day.
Here in the North Country, we have definitely left Spring behind and entered Summer mode. Temperatures over 80; thunderstorms in the forecast Tuesday through Friday; and it’s still almost a month until Summer solstice. One of my favorite singers, Janice Joplin, had a great hit with a song titled Get It While You Can. The lyrics and the attitude Janis lived seem at least as needed today as they were when she recorded them five decades plus ago.
I was doing a few outside chores this afternoon and the bugs and the heat were wearing on my nerves. It turned out that, if I shifted my attention to the beauty of different flowers that were blooming around me, and kept my eyes open so that I could, and did, see the first monarch butterfly of the season, the bugs and the heat were less troublesome than if I continued to focus only on the annoyances and excluded the good parts of the day. Don’t tell our dogs, but I think I’m picking up this attitude adjustment from them. They’re always ready to enjoy food, or a walk, even if they just had a tick pulled from an ear.
We’ll spend part of tomorrow fondly remembering and reminiscing about my father and father-in-law and their service in the armed forces during the last century. It’s sad that the war to end all wars wasn’t; that the Civil War continues to be fought in a very uncivil manner; and that the freedoms the Second World War was fought to protect are threatened in our country by the same kind of attitudes that helped the Nazis gain power. We’ll also celebrate the fact that we will officially be beyond the threat of frost season after tomorrow.
May we all have a holiday full of better memories.
It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness. With sadness there is something to rub against, a wound to tend with lotion and cloth. When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up, something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats. It doesn’t need you to hold it down. It doesn’t need anything. Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing, and disappears when it wants to. You are happy either way. Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house and now live over a quarry of noise and dust cannot make you unhappy. Everything has a life of its own, it too could wake up filled with possibilities of coffee cake and ripe peaches, and love even the floor which needs to be swept, the soiled linens and scratched records . . .
Since there is no place large enough to contain so much happiness, you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you into everything you touch. You are not responsible. You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it, and in that way, be known.
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind
to each other while you can.
Hordes of dragonflies have finally hatched. We look forward to their decimation of the swarms of mosquitos that have been harassing us for more than a week now. It seems to me that Minnesota has only two seasons: not winter and road construction, but frostbite and bugbite. I believe you read that here first.
We’re in the midst of a beautiful holiday weekend with warm temperatures, sunny skies and enough of a breeze to minimize the clouds of flying insects that would otherwise be an annoyance. In fact, when we picked up this weeks Community Supported Agriculture share this morning, it didn’t take long for the Jeep to fill with skeeters as the Better Half [BH] worked with the rear hatch up dividing the veggies between those for us and those for the Daughter Person [DP] and her family. (There’s no way I’d try to eat half a share each week, with the BH eating the other half, so we split with the DP. I barely survive eating a quarter share of veggies each week. I’m a huMAN, not a rabbit nor a goat.) Here’s what was in this week’s box:
Magenta lettuce
Tokyo bekanna Greens
Spinach
Mixed greens
On the drive through the country to pick up the greens, mixed and unmixed, we saw several whitetail deer and a tom turkey with his harem of hens. I’m not sure why the hens weren’t nesting. In the same general area yesterday, we saw either a large coyote or a small wolf. We’re at the southern fringe of wolf range in Minnesota, and coyotes are almost common. I’m just not familiar enough with sightings to be sure of the identity of a single animal. I have a similar problem with crows and ravens.
A few yard chores got tackled today before the temp climbed too much. We’ll probably do a few more tomorrow but, even for us old, retired folks, it is a holiday weekend so we’ll do our best to relax and enjoy as much of it as we can.
As noted numerous times in prior postings, we live on the eastern edge of the Anoka Sand Plain. This morning plants that survive on our sandy, well drained soils are beginning to come into flower. We saw hoary puccoon and think we saw spiderwort (we didn’t walk close enough to get a good look).
For good measure we’ll add this picture of the dame’s rocket we were going to post yesterday when blogger and Google were harassing us about not uploading pictures unless we allowed them to track us through cookies here.
It was a strange day because we also encountered a similar message and needed to re-log-into Skype. I have no idea what was going on on or around the internets. The world in which I try to function has become dysfunctional enough that I’m now determined to become more mellow, even if it kills me. (In case any of you are familiar with the serenity prayer, an executive summary of that prayer is "screw it!” or a four letter version of that verb. We expect to be muttering it more frequently this summer.)
The cavalry, in the form of dragonflies, has arrived. Unfortunately, the cavalry has not yet engaged the swarms of the enemy mosquitos, so I did something that, as a card carrying sustainable, organic, environmentalist I don’t think I should have. I bought and used a spray can of insecticide for mosquitos. Apparently, from the microscopic directions on the can, it’s safe to use if you can hold it one county away from where you’re standing while you spray, or something like that. There are unconscionable numbers of biters gathered in the ell between the back of the garage and the house. That’s where I sprayed today in an effort to thin out the population so I don’t need to attire myself in armor every time I want to get at the backyard hose.
I realize that dragonflies and birds and bats and heaven knows what else feeds on mosquitos. If they had fed more and sooner I could have save almost $5.00. All too often, I lack the patience to let Mother Nature take her course. So be it. I am an imperfect creature living on an imperfect planet. I wonder if the mosquito spray contains PFAS or PFOS. If not, it’s probably one of the few things these days that doesn’t.
If it’s not clear from the preceding paragraphs, I have a(nother) case of the grumpys. Yet another one of my idols has been found to have clay feet. Yankee magazine this morning shared an email with a recipe for grilled swordfish. I still remember from way back when that swordfish was one of the first species to earn a consumption advisory due to high levels of mercury. It’s still in that class according to the EPA and FDA. That suggests to me, in the strongest possible terms, that Yankee magazine shouldn’t be promoting the consumption of swordfish even if it means the end of New England’s entire fishing fleet. [To demonstrate, I deliberately avoided linking to the article I’m objecting to.]
In another New England related matter, today is Ralph Waldo Emerson’s birthday. According to The writer’s Almanac:
In his book Nature (1836), Emerson first introduced the concept of Transcendentalism — the idea that spiritual truth could be gained by intuition rather than by established doctrine or text — and he would become a leader of that movement. He was a popular public speaker, and gave more than 1,500 speeches in his lifetime.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
Much of today’s world seems to be engulfed in a battle between those who would have us be ourselves and those who would only have us be like them. Another source of the grumpys for me.
NO PHOTOS TODAY BECAUSE GOOGLE INSISTS ON TRACKING ME IF I UPLOAD JPEGS FROM MY COMPUTER. THIS MAY BE A SIGN TO SHUT DOWN THIS BLOG.
However, the dame’s rockets are beginning to bloom; weekend weather is supposed to be mostly warm [hot?] and sunny; and I need to dig out my copy of Emerson’s “Essential Writings.” The last time I opened that book I couldn’t figure out how folks would live long enough to read them all, let alone how Emerson wrote all that in one lifetime.
Day Beginning with Seeing the International Space Station and a Full Moon Over the Gulf of Mexico and All Its Invisible Fishes
None of this had to happen. Not Florida. Not the ibis’s beak. Not water. Not the horseshoe crab’s empty body and not the living starfish. Evolution might have turned left at the corner and gone down another street entirely. The asteroid might have missed. The seams of limestone need not have been susceptible to sand and mangroves. The radio might have found a different music. The hips of one man and the hips of another might have stood beside each other on a bus in Aleppo and recognized themselves as long-lost brothers. The key could have broken off in the lock and the nail-can refused its lid. I might have been the fish the brown pelican swallowed. You might have been the way the moon kept not setting long after we thought it would, long after the sun was catching inside the low wave curls coming in at a certain angle. The light might not have been eaten again by its moving. If the unbearable were not weightless we might yet buckle under the grief of what hasn’t changed yet. Across the world a man pulls a woman from the water from which the leapt-from overfilled boat has entirely vanished. From the water pulls one child, another. Both are living and both will continue to live. This did not have to happen. No part of this had to happen.
—2016
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind
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As I was rereading the first chapter of Joy Harjo’s Catching the Light this morning, my day was brightened by this paragraph:
The traditional ways and rituals of all of Earth’s peoples are kept in containers of poetry, song, and story. It is how we know who we are, where we are coming from and who we are becoming.
Those thoughts became a great lead-in to an article in today’s Daily Yonder which we’re republishing below. Those who would ban books be damned!! They would keep us from knowing who we are.
A ‘Little Town Poets Society,’ and the Woman Behind It
by Presley West, The Daily Yonder May 24, 2023
Growing up in Scott County, Tennessee, Cheyanne Leonardo's passion for poetry and the arts made her feel like a bit of an outsider.
"It's hard growing up and feeling different, feeling like no one is interested in the same things as you are … I definitely felt like a weirdo. But I kind of liked it, in a way, and I tried to make it my super power."
Community members gather for a Little Town Poets Society meeting. (Photo courtesy of Cheyanne Leonardo)
"Little Town Poet" Cheyanne Leonardo. (Photo courtesy of Leonardo)
Today, her poetry – and gift for sharing it with others – has become just that. In the past three years, Cheyanne has published three poetry collections, cultivated a thriving group of local poets, launched a local poetry anthology that's received more than 100 submissions, and assumed a leadership role in a recently formed nonprofit working to advance arts in the community.
Though she is now doing what she considers her life's work, it happened by accident.
Only three years ago, Cheyanne was living in Stuttgart, Germany, at the tail end of a decade-long odyssey of boarding school, graduate school, traveling, and living abroad, which she started when she first left home at fourteen. Fluent in French and German after extensive travel in Europe and a graduate degree in modern language and literature, she taught English for two years before the Covid pandemic hit Germany. In the face of so much uncertainty, homesickness — and a chance at a love she’d left behind — brought her home.
"If I'm perfectly honest, the reason that I came home was because I'm a romantic. I was waiting for the right time to be with someone here in our hometown," she said. "When I was faced with the possibility of the imminent death of all my loved ones, I thought, okay."
So she moved home, rented a small apartment behind her old childhood dance studio, and began working as a barista. She wrote poems to process her feelings about her time abroad, her journey home, and everything in between. Those poems eventually became the foundation for her debut poetry collection, More Than Metaphor, published in the summer of 2021.
Birth of the Little Town Poets Society
What began as a personal exploration of her feelings became a way to connect with her community more deeply than she ever had before. Surprised by how much people connected with her work, and humbled by the encouragement she received from friends, family, and strangers while selling her work at the coffee shop, she decided to start a free weekly poetry class.
"So, I am starting a club. And everyone is invited," she wrote on Facebook. "The LITTLE TOWN POETS SOCIETY will be a place for YOU – to join me in creating poetry and art of your very own."
Little Town Poets Society meetings, like the one pictured above, started as weekly free poetry classes taught by Leonardo.
Despite early fears that no one would show up or care, eleven people – ranging from teens to seniors in their seventies – showed up to Little Town Poets Society's first meeting at the coffee shop. And they've continued to show up since, sharing their work, forming unexpected friendships, and opening up about their feelings.
"More than once, a grown man has cried at Poets Society, which I feel is progress," she said.
The group has been transformative for Whitney Swain. "The little community that [Cheyanne] has created has opened a world of possibilities that I didn't know would exist for me," said Whitney, who is studying to become a licensed counselor. "She gave me space to find an artistic voice that I did not know I had."
A discussion at the Little Town Poets Society.
Weeks after launching Little Town Poets Society in the fall of 2022, a couple of friends and family approached Cheyanne with an idea to start a nonprofit arts organization, a moment she remembers as a "sign that everything was moving in the right direction."
Friends made through the Little Town Poets Society. (Photos courtesy of Leonardo)
"When I started out, I was kind of hoping it would evolve into something like that."
Today, she serves as Director of Literary Arts for that nonprofit — the Appalachian Society of the Arts — which recently hosted its first fundraiser for a Budding Artist scholarship fund and is planning free and low-cost classes in music, photography, acting, and crafting.
Supporting access to the arts and emerging artists from Scott County has been incredibly meaningful for Cheyanne. "I was dissuaded from pursuing [the arts] for so long because they're “not valuable.” And that's the exact thing I'm trying to break — this notion that it's not helpful or doesn't contribute. Because [with] what I've done in the last two years with poetry alone, I've seen more of a positive impact in terms of other people's lives and the world, that I've been able to do, than anything else ever."
The Hometown Poems Project
Her current project, "Hometown Poems," is an example of that. It’s a local anthology she created for residents of Scott, McCreary, and surrounding counties that will benefit the Appalachian Society of the Arts. She’s received poetry, photo, and drawing submissions from over 100 residents. "The youngest person who submitted is four years old, and the oldest is in his 80s. So we've got the whole range of life," she said.
She’s also writing, with her current work focused on spirituality. "I'm always a romantic. So there's always love in there as well," she said. "But I like the idea that everybody has a little piece of the divine in them, whatever their name for that is. And for me, poetry is what gets me in touch with it."
Personally, Cheyanne is living happily with her partner — the one who inspired her journey home — and their dog and cat. She quit her barista job to write poetry full time and has wholeheartedly embraced her identity as a Little Town Poet. "I hope to continue representing rural places, especially in Appalachia, and inspiring people to represent themselves.”
While she hasn't ruled out a future odyssey — “there's part of me that still fantasizes about running away and being alive somewhere else." — she's putting down roots for now.
"I really like being here right now … growing up, I felt like, kind of an outcast. So all of a sudden, it's like I'm really active in the community, and I like it. I feel like I'm making a difference, and that is what matters to me."
This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind
to each other while you can.
Most of southern Minnesota is under an air quality alert for ozone this afternoon and evening. Since I’m a diligent environmentalist, I’lll follow the guidance and forego doing yard chores today. Tomorrow will be soon enough to collect more dead branches scattered about the yard. There’s no rain in the forecast for the next week or ten days, so open burning in the southern half of the state isn’t allowed yet. I wonder if spring burning restrictions will continue into summer this year. Perhaps Mother Nature is sending me a message that this would be a good time to go fishing.
While running an errand today I confirmed another absolute sign it’s summerish. The roads are full of triple- and quadruple-axle dump trucks and side-dumpers. Road construction season, Minnesota’s alternative to winter, is underway. Congestion and slowdowns, here we come.
Moments ago I learned from the Better Half that, among other things, we’re having strawberry pancakes for dinner tonight. I don’t recall ever having had strawberry pancakes. It will be, at a minimum, summery. And that’s as it should be since we are now less than a week from Memorial Day. In preparation, I should plan to give the Jeep it’s summer bath sometime this week.
We’re one week away from the unofficial start of summer. Next weekend is Memorial Day weekend. In stutter-steps the weather has become more summery. In another week or so we’ll be safe from frost for at least a couple or three months. Meanwhile, I continue to suffer from the delusion that I can, someday soon, get “caught up,” and then move into maintenance mode. Each time I come close, the seasons, and the seasonal chores, change and the changeover adds to the seasonal chores.
If I’m honest, the last time I really was caught up I was living by myself in a small three room apartment with my pickup and two boats, one for fishing, the other for clamming, parked in the yard. The yard was the landlord’s to mow. We were close to the Atlantic so there was rarely snow to shovel. In those days I didn’t even have a dog to care for. No wonder I had so much time to go hunting and fishing despite working a full time job.
I think I need to turn priorities topsy-turvy and treat fishing as if it were work and yard chores as something to be squeezed in between fishing excursions and reading episodes. Even if I fail, it seems like a challenge I need to try to rise to, except in winter. I don’t do ice fishing any more than I sit and watch the grass grow and, even though there are some streams open to trout fishing in the winter, I have a very strong aversion to frost bite.
can you tell a scarlet tanager from a rose-breasted grosbeak?
While waiting for the AC technician today I managed to get a few things done, including some outside chores before it got really warm. Once again I’m remembering that I’m seeking progress, not perfection. At least, that’s what I keep reminding myself. Meanwhile, scarlet tanagers remain conspicuous by their absence while grosbeaks are at the feeders in abundance.
Somewhat belatedly, it occurs to me that, if I reorganize my schedule so that I do the play (as a reward) first, I’ll be much less likely to end up so overheated and tired that I don’t feel like playing after the work is done. Yet another example of “we get too soon old and too late smart!” We won’t make that mistake again tomorrow.
The better news is that, while knocking down gopher mounds with the drag harrow, I saw a big bumblebee. Then, when I mentioned it to the Better Half, she shared that she’d seen several bumbles while watering out front. Put bumblebee sightings together with the dragonfly or two I saw while doing the mowing today and the efforts to live with nature may turn out to be worth it, although I’m not yet ready to put up with raising goats as an organic solution to the local buckthorn infestation.
Finally, for today, if I fail to scrape up the energy and enthusiasm to go out and play with one or two fly rods and straighten the memory coils from the lines, at least I have several handfuls of really good books to read, including Debra Magpie Earling’s The Lost Journals of Sacajewea. Relaxing and reading isn’t the worst way to spend a beautiful spring Sunday, but it would be better if I remembered the old saying “He who works and runs away, lives to play another day [especially if he’s old and retired]!!”
Some of the local fields are still being prepared for planting. Others have corn emerging already. Most of the trees have attained full leaf-out. The local river, the Sunrise, is back into its banks. With luck, we may get to enjoy a few days that approximate normalcy.
Many dead branches were collected from the yard today and burned in the burn pit. The CSA share was collected this morning, which is when we made the observations about farm field status. All in all, our plan for the weekend has worked so far. 🤞 Tomorrow is targeted for mowing and playing.
I’m looking forward to the arrival next week and thereafter of increasing numbers of dragonflies. The mosquitos took anything like fun out of today’s choring. Even while wearing a permethrin-sprayed light hoody, the bugs were often in and around my eyes. On the other hand, it did feel good to be outside and poking around without coming down with the chills.
We’re now about a month from summer solstice [Wednesday, June 21, 2023 at 9:57 am CDT]. Shortly thereafter days will again begin to shorten but for several months, we’ll enjoy summer weather before the temperatures begin to noticeably decrease. For now, it’s time to take pleasure in lilac season and crab apple blossoms.
It’s only ten days until Memorial Day and the high temperature today might reach 61. It’s my fault, I’m afraid. Earlier this week I packed away my winter weight pjs and jerseys and dug out summer t-shirts. Meanwhile, yesterday and today I’ve been comfortable in the house wearing a winter weight chamois shirt.
Tomorrow is pick up day for this week’s community supported agriculture share. This time we’re getting a box with:
Green Incise Lettuce
Tango lettuce
Arugula
Spinach
Komatsuna Greens
KOMATSUNA:a mild turnip grown almost exclusively in Japan, Taiwan and Korea, prior to its arrival in the U.S. It can be harvested at any stage to be used in salads, as braising greens, boiled or pickled. The flavor grows stronger as the plants mature.
I expect that, as usual, the Better Half [BH] will manage to do something healthy, creative and tasty with the vegetables. I’m eating more salads than I prefer, but that’s partly due to my limited preference (singular) in salad dressing. Maybe I need to try something other than caesar. After all, I don’t continue to reread the same book or replay the same song. [Don’t mention it out loud, but BH has actually done a couple of things with spinach that I almost liked.]
This weekend I plan to check out a one or two of my fly rods as a reward for getting some outside chores done. If my plan works, one day the branches on the ground will be picked up from two sections of the back yard and those two sections may get mowed with the push mower, all assuming the weather is cooperative. In that mix, I want to make sure to stretch a fly line or more to get the kinks out of lines that overwintered in tight coils on the reels. It will be interesting to see what Mother Nature and the Red Gods have to say about my plans. Remember, "The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men / Gang aft agley, ...” In fact, that’s worth sharing in its entirety.
There are more and more articles being published about our National Park System being over-visited, although that’s not the term used. Much of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness use is permit based and the number of permits is being cut. As the human population increases and the global economy depends on perpetual, capitalistic, growth, we are encountering more and more resource conflicts. We are failing more and more to adequately and appropriately respond to those conflicts.
A different example, not based on wilderness or wild lands and waters is occurring right in the Twin Cities. No parking? St. Paul considers banning idle trucks from city streets. It all to often seems that the child care shortage needed to free women to participate in the labor force can’t or won’t be economically resolvable. An increasing shortage of doctors is making it more and more challenging to schedule an appointment within a single lifetime. Efforts to control costs are resulting in overworked, understaffed nursing units.
While all of this, and more, are going on, those on the radical right are feeding more and more mis- and disinformation and conspiracy theories onto social medial platforms that have just been held unaccountable by SCOTUS because ....
I seriously doubt we can institute enough permitting systems covering enough resources to resolve the growing number of conflicts. Or, that we would be willing to pay for enough police to enforce the permits and enough courts and jails to punish or rehabilitate miscreants, all while Congress sets a national example of acting like potential deadbeats and failing to put the country ahead of party political power. (Could some parents volunteer to teach Speaker McCarthy how to manage members with a case of the terrible twos?)
One of the country’s founding politicians, B. Franklin, was prescient by several hundred years when he noted “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” How might we again learn to hang together? We could go fly fishing and follow these rules [longer version here]:
Fly anglers understand and obey laws and regulations associated with the fishery.
Fly anglers believe fly fishing is a privilege and a responsibility.
Fly anglers conserve fisheries by limiting their catch.
Fly anglers do not judge fellow anglers and treat them as they would expect to be treated.
Fly anglers respect the waters occupied by other anglers so that fish are not disturbed
When fishing from a watercraft, fly anglers do not crowd other anglers or craft or unnecessarily disturb the water.
Fly anglers respect other angling methods and promote this Code of Angling Ethics to all anglers.
If you prefer foraging to fishing, you could follow the guidance of an Honorable Harvest as described by Robin Wall Kimmerer:
The Honorable Harvest, a practice both ancient and urgent, applies to every exchange between people and the Earth. Its protocol is not written down, but if it were, it would look something like this:
Ask permission of the ones whose lives you seek. Abide by the answer.
Never take the first. Never take the last.
Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
Take only what you need and leave some for others.
Use everything that you take.
Take only that which is given to you.
Share it, as the Earth has shared with you.
Be grateful.
Reciprocate the gift.
Sustain the ones who sustain you, and the Earth will last forever.
There are other examples of values that encourage ethical behavior, Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic comes to mind. As the younger generation attempts to educate us on better ways to use personal pronouns, perhaps they could include more lessons on dropping me and mine and more on using us and ours. We really only have one sand box we need to learn to play nice on it together.
This year’s prairie plants have been planted, a couple of dozen or so. Tomorrow it’s forecast to rain so that should help. Now I need to get busy with pocket gopher and mole traps to help protect fresh new roots. In a couple of months I’ll take pictures of whatever survived, sooner if anyone starts to burst into blossoms before then.
While the Better Half was directing me on where to make holes for the plant plugs, I noticed several seedlings, I think oak, growing where the field is trying to return to forest. Closer to the top of the slope is a pine tree seedling, probably thanks to a squirrel planting a cone for winter food, and beyond that a cluster of juniper(?) or cedar surrounding a “mother” tree. We’ll talk and think over the summer about whether to let Mother Nature take her course.
Getting the planting done was the second highest point of the day so far. This morning we got a new door bell, wireless, to replace the one that came with the house. We think the wiring developed a short behind the cement board siding and rewiring would have been both expensive and potentially unproductive. The electrician thinks the wires got pinched behind the replacement siding and the short developed as the house has expanded and contracted with the changing seasons. In really cold weather, sometimes the bell would ring by itself and other times it would buzzzzz for awhile. The latter drove the dogs crazy, which made the dog owners crazy. We hope it’s all taken care of now. We’ll see come winter and no, I’m not looking forward to checking it out.
One of the authors I’ve been reading recently, Laurie Allmann, cited a line from one of my favorite poets, Wendell Berry, in the piece I read this morning. It fits so well that today I’m going to share the entire Wendell Berry poem after I pique your interest with the cite: Be joyful / though you have considered all the facts.
Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know. So, friends, every day do something that won't compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years.
Listen to carrion -- put your ear close, and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. So long as Women do not go cheap for power, please Women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields. Lie down in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn't go.
Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.
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to each other while you can.
