“Need to know” basis

I did succeed in making yesterday a #TweetlessTuesday. It actually felt good. Except for the agitation surrounding additional indictments of The Former Guy [TFG], I would have probably felt better still if I had stayed away from online news outlets. The ratio of depressing and/or frightening news stories to happy or good news must be st least 9 or 10 to 1. One of our local tv stations has provided a clue to responding to the relentless deluge of conspiracy, theories and actions. They have a segment each morning about 4 Things You Need to Know. After watching carefully for several mornings, I decided they were wrong. I didn’t need to know most of what they were pitching. I think I’ll take a similar approach to other online news reporting.

When I first began to contemplate the idea of “need to know” it brought me face to face with the question of how it applies to this blog. My answer is that rarely am I posting about what you need to know, but I hope we often (sometimes?) bring items you may want to know.

lower St. Croix River

Photo by J. Harrington

Today I’m back to looking at bioregions and their potential roles in creating a sustainable, regenerative future. We live in the St. Croix River watershed, a tributary to the Mississippi River watershed and close to the edge of the Great Lakes watershed. Water, watersheds and related factors will become more and more significant as world temperatures increase and geohydrologic cycles become disrupted. (Colorado River ring a bell?)

At the moment, the water quality in several Minnesota water bodies is threatened by nonferrous mining. The state Supreme Court just “suspended a key permit for the NorthMet copper-nickel mine in northern Minnesota on Wednesday, ruling that state regulators failed to fully consider the threat to water quality posed by the mine.” I would argue that in an increasingly water-stressed world, protecting the quality of the water we have is a top priority, followed by restoring the quality of water that fails to meer designated use standards. If our existing governmental structures were as committed to addressing climate breakdown as they claim, there should never have been a permit that "failed to fully consider the threat to water quality posed by the mine.”

All told, these days I’m returning more and more to many of my first loves: English, poetry, environment, nature, ethics, pllace. Ian McHarg, in Design with Nature, offers the right concepts. He just doesn’t take them far enough, but then he didn’t write it in our times.

Wanting Sumptuous Heavens

By Robert Bly

No one grumbles among the oyster clans,

And lobsters play their bone guitars all summer.

Only we, with our opposable thumbs, want

Heaven to be, and God to come, again.

There is no end to our grumbling; we want

Comfortable earth and sumptuous Heaven.

But the heron standing on one leg in the bog

Drinks his dark rum all day, and is content.

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