Next November 5 has the possibility of telling the world a lot about the character of the American people. Barring the unforeseen, a growing challenge these days, the choice will be between a sitting president with a demonstrable track record and a convicted felon not noted for his truth-telling. In the world I grew up in, it shouldn’t even be close. If it is close, people should remember that "It was Joseph de Maistre who wrote in 1811 "Every nation gets the government it deserves.”” It may be difficult to claim we are a nation governed of, by, and for the people if we allow a felonious, autocratic, would-be dictator to get elected by those who deserve such.
Many these days choose to blame tRUMP for many things wrong with the country. I believe that’s misplacing blame that should be borne by those who voted for him in 2016. Although, if we were to do a root cause analysis, blame should lie with the Democratic and Republican parties who chose the candidates for president in 2016.
Perhaps the real issue is that we have, after almost 250 years, come to take democracy for granted. Perhaps we have compromised our way into something less than mediocrity. According to an assessment by US News, the US ranks 23rd in Quality of Life, although we’re ranked higher in other categories. Might it be time for US to figure out what we really want to be when we grow up?
We need significant improvements in our education and heath care systems. The urban-rural divide needs, at a minimum, better bridges. We also must find a way to make any major political party more democratic and less under the control of an oligarchy if we want a democracy worthy of the name.
The first ice cream (Java chunk) cones (waffle) of the season were consumed here last night. That means summer has officially begun in our household. We only jumped the gun on meteorological summer by a couple or three days. As I’m sure you know, that starts on June 1.
A tray of wild bergamot seeds is sitting on the deck in overcast sunlight. I haven’t decided yet whether to put it out on a rainy day but I’m hoping the sun’s warmth will encourage a higher rate of germination than was attained in our first efforts this year. Meanwhile, I’m caught between the recommendations of several on-line guidelines to plant the corn in three sisters garden on a leveled mound and a lack of quick and easy ways to create such mounds. Plus, there’s the question of where to create such mounds if I could. We’ll see if I get inspired to actually tackle that fantasy instead of just dreaming about it.
a field of beardtongue (Penstemon grandiflorus) in bloom
I bet you've heard about Parkinson’s law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Around here we’re thinking Parkinson was an optimist. It seems like work, especially outdoor chores, expands to exceed the time available for its completion, and the weather rarely cooperates. There’s a couple of brush piles I’d like to get reduced to ashes but we’ve gone from drought to rainy to windy to rainy etc. Today is definitely too windy and if the wind weren’t blowing or lightning flashing, I’d want to go fly-fishing, not stand around and watch flames die down. I think the only solution is to relax and assume everything will get done in good time, or not. At least I don’t have a home owners association fussing at me, and the Better Half is pretty understanding about limitations and priorities.
Locally, columbines are blooming and penstemon has just started to flower. Over the next month or two we may begin to see whitetail fawns and turkey poults. We’ve already observed Canada goose goslings and sandhill crane colts. Witnessing the births of the next generation(s) of a species is always heartening.
Bad things are going to happen. Your tomatoes will grow a fungus and your cat will get run over. Someone will leave the bag with the ice cream melting in the car and throw your blue cashmere sweater in the drier. Your husband will sleep with a girl your daughter’s age, her breasts spilling out of her blouse. Or your wife will remember she’s a lesbian and leave you for the woman next door. The other cat— the one you never really liked—will contract a disease that requires you to pry open its feverish mouth every four hours. Your parents will die. No matter how many vitamins you take, how much Pilates, you’ll lose your keys, your hair and your memory. If your daughter doesn’t plug her heart into every live socket she passes, you’ll come home to find your son has emptied the refrigerator, dragged it to the curb, and called the used appliance store for a pick up—drug money. There’s a Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger. When she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine and climbs half way down. But there’s also a tiger below. And two mice—one white, one black—scurry out and begin to gnaw at the vine. At this point she notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice. She looks up, down, at the mice. Then she eats the strawberry. So here’s the view, the breeze, the pulse in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you’ll get fat, slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel and crack your hip. You’ll be lonely. Oh taste how sweet and tart the red juice is, how the tiny seeds crunch between your teeth.
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind
to each other while you can.
Normally, this would have been posted before now, during the afternoon of May 29, 2024 but, as all too often occurs, our internet service provider, frontier, has delivered an outage instead of its usaul less than broadband speeds. The county has had several task forces exploring broadband service, but, as near as l can tell, nothing substantive has come of it. We’re in an exurban area that’s not dense enough development to make service profitable for cable etc.
Frontier has estimated it may take up to 8 hours to restore DSL and our land line phone. These days the land line is only good for scammers and political funding seekers, and our Republican congressman who invites us to virtual town hall meetings.
Our electricity service has been interrupted a couple of times in the past few months, with no forewarning. I believe one of Xcel’s techs cut an old phone line when he installed one of our new “smart” meters. No one bothered to mention the cut line to us as the techs left after their visits.
I believe the smart meters are being installed because our Public Utilities Commission mandated (or “suggested”) it. It’s not at all clear that they’ll benefit us as consumers. But then we live in an age when elected officials and regulatory agencies seem much more sensitive to corporate profits and providing agricultural subsidies than meeting the needs of John and Suzie Q. Citizen. Might that explain why an orange POS like tRUMP has any appeal at all these days? We get a choice of not the lessor of two evils but neither is a proverbial knight in shining armor.
Well, I’ve vented enough steam about today’s frustrations, although I didn’t mention the mosquitos. I’ll copy and paste and post this when, and if?, the string joining our two tin cans gets tied back together.
[Service restored around 8 pm, word has it someone cut a fiber cable.]
Recently, tomorrow’s planned activity was going to be spraying Roundup on the poison ivy that’s growing along the wood’s edge on the hill behind the house. After reading a suggestion that Roundup kills ivy best if applied in early summer, I’m contemplating deferring spraying for at least a week. Meteorological summer begins Saturday, June 1. That’s also the last day of our community supported agriculture [CSA] farm’s spring greens season. Summer CSA shares start on June 15, and summer solstice is less than a week later on Thursday, June 20. All of which suggests to me that the week before Father’s Day might be a better time for ivy spraying, if we get some dry days. There’s plenty of other activities that need my attention between now and then.
I’m working at adjusting my approach to life so I don’t constantly bounce from one perceived critical deadline to another. As Lao Tzu tells us “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” Another wise soul, Heidi Barr, shares insights with us at her newsletter, Ordinary Collisions. Today’s issue, Signal Fires & Dark Times, Collisions of Declining Baselines, struck me as being particularly relevant to the times we living through. You might want to follow the link and take a peek. I’m becoming convinced that my “natural response” to much of what’s going on in the world could well be counterproductive. Reading Barr and others like her helps me reground myself so I can try to accomplish something worthwhile and not just complain about all that’s wrong. Who knows, someday I may even manage to get my stacks of books organized.
To return to the question of when summer begins, today I bought ice cream to make ice cream cones. Once I’ve eaten the first cone of the season, summer has officially started in our house, at least for me. Will I eat a cone tonight? Check back tomorrow to find out.
I am Ebenezer Bleezer, I run BLEEZER’S ICE CREAM STORE, there are flavors in my freezer you have never seen before, twenty-eight divine creations too delicious to resist, why not do yourself a favor, try the flavors on my list:
At least we’re not in a tent somewhere camping. Another rainy day in Minnesota is doing wonders for the plants and mosquitos but not so much for many mammals. During one dog walk today, I had seven mosquitos simultaneously on the back of my left hand. I did a variant on the tale of the Brave Little Tailor and killed Seven with One Blow. Don’t both to ask if I felt guilty. If the dragonflies had been doing their jobs and feeding their faces, I wouldn’t have had that opportunity.
At least there’s several stacks of good books to read or reread and that’s what I’m doing when not out walking the dogs and getting bit by bugs. I just hope none of the mosquitos are carrying H5N1 virus nor anything like it. Part of my childhood occurred before the polio vaccine was approved. I had hoped that pandemics were behind US thanks to Dr. Salk. But then the number of those who don’t believe in vaccinations or science grew and grew. In case you’re among those who do believe in science, here’s a decent resource on herd immunity. That brings us to what I’d like to ponder about today, on the day we remember and memorialize those who served the whole country and are no longer with US.
What if science invented a vaccine that prevented war and supported peace. Would we allow people to claim “It’s against my religion” and not get vaccinated? Is there a herd immunity that prevents war? The question becomes more important when a candidate for president in the upcoming election claims there will be some sort of bloodbath if he loses. Would it be appropriate to require all candidates and appointees to public office to get such a vaccine if it existed? What about requiring it for any who serve in the United Nations? Would getting such a vaccine be equivalent to unilateral disarmament?
I don’t know the answers to the questions I’ve raised. I raise them because, with the growing levels of fractiousness and frictions in this country, and the increasing availability of artificial intelligence without agreed upon parameters for how it may be used and by whom for what, we as a society and a country and a collection of communities are going to be facing issues as complex as those mentioned above and we are not in a good position to develop answers, let alone agreement on them. I hope we’re not headed to even more heartbreaking Memorial Days ahead, when we may look back on a day like today as one of the good old days.
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
to each other while you can.
For a holiday weekend that represents the unofficial beginning of summer, we're “enjoying” another gray, showery, cloudy, dreary day. At least next month is normally the wettest month of the year around these parts. I know, it could be worse. We could live in Gaza or the Ukraine or Sudan. By this time next year maybe we’ll think we are living in a war torn country if MAGAt threats come to pass.
I’m pondering what those, like my father and father-in-law, who fought in World War II to protect and secure our freedoms, would think of what we’ve done with and to the country they left US. I suspect my father would be a little bit ashamed and embarrassed and fearing that he’d maybe been played for a sucker. I doubt very much he would have relied on the “leadership” of a con man, one a presiding judge has found civilly adjudicated of having committed rape. One also charged with numerous felonious actions against US while claiming to ”Make America Great Again.” The country my father fought for may have its warts, but is worth improving more than destroying.
On this Memorial Day weekend, I ask you to tap into your memories and remember what was great about your childhood. Did all your friends and neighbors share what you felt was great? Did anyone try to stop you from enjoying learning? [I remember that certain movies were banned but don’t recall book banning or burning as has happened recently. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention.] Anyhow, please think about whether, if everyone enjoyed the things that made your childhood best, would that help make America great? What would a great America look like to you? What kind of America would be important enough to you to defend in a world war? Remember that many citizens strongly opposed the Viet Nam war, just as many oppose the current support for Israel’s attack on Palestinians.
U.S. Soldier, 194th Armored Regiment, retired, Brainerd, Minnesota
I’ve had both knees replaced. I’ve got a steel pin in my hip. I don’t hear you so good, but I’m not stupid, son. How would you feel, surviving the Bataan Death March, no food for days, no water, and the ones who fell behind were bayoneted where they lay, and now you’re marching off to death? Real hell is not old age, though. No, taking away the rights we died for, saying torture’s right, that’s hell. Hand me the iron and those shirts, would you? Thanks, son. As long as I have fight in me I’ll love this country till it hurts. And it does. This is worse than what I saw overseas. Torture. In America.
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind
to each other while you can.
Bird feeders are back up. Birds are temporarily boycotting because we had the feeders down for a couple of days to discourage the peregrine falcon that was checking out the place.
The morning’s drive to pick up this week’s community supported agriculture [CSA] share was basically uneventful. Sightings included one whitetail deer, several pair of sandhill cranes, and multiple songbirds. Goat’s beard has started to bloom. The CSA share box included:
BROCCOLI RABE
BABY KALE SALAD MIX
RADISHES
GREEN INCISED AND MAGENTA LETTUCEs, and
ENCORE LETTUCE MIX
I've been getting more and more frustrated with myself about the amount of time I spend doom scrolling social media while accomplishing little more than making snarky comments. Then I took a look at one of today’s emails and realized I’m already doing things to help make the world a better place. Voting is very important, but there’s lots more we can do the rest of the year. Here’s a list, via AFSC, of ways you might want to consider for yourself and your familly:
De-commodify what you can. Not everything has to be subject to money. Experiment with formal or informal mutual aid practices. These can include bartering; sharing time, resources, and skills; and receiving help yourself.
Consider self-provisioning. Are there things you can do, make, or grow for yourself and others? Possibilities include arts and crafts, music, gardening, preserving food, making bever-ages, raising chickens, do-it-yourself projects, and knitting.
Think about where your money goes. Consider moving it from big predatory financial banks to credit unions or locally owned financial institutions. When possible, spend yours on locally and sustainably produced goods and services and fair-trade items. Buy from worker-friendly businesses.
Support cooperative or alternative enterprises—or consider starting one. Community land trusts and similar efforts can be a way to preserve affordable housing and even support the local production of basic needs.
Research more possibilities. There are a huge number of resources and organizations that can help you learn more and find a niche to support this growing movement. Check out the websites of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network and RIPESS, the Intercontinental Social Solidarity Economy Network.
It appears a large hatch of dragonflies is starting to feed on a disgustingly large hatch of mosquitos that occurred a week or ten days ago. This morning’s thunderstorms appear over and clouds are beginning to break up. One of the continuing questions these days, however, is whether appearances are deceiving. I think that question is related to the increasing difficulty of getting more than one person to agree about much of anything. Remember former President Clinton’s somewhat infamous quotation:
It depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is. If the – if he – if "is" means is and never has been that is not – that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement.
Having a lawyer split hairs is to be expected, but splitting curly hairs was never on my bingo card. The abuse of the English language and common sense has only gotten worse in recent decades. All the evidence I’ve read about indicates the 2020 election wasn’t stolen but that doesn’t seem to have quieted those who assert it was. Today’s SCOTUS may or may not be corrupt, but it is certainly worthy of contempt.
Recent news articles have tried to bring to our attention such issues as:
I've not seen much of a real push to eliminate single use plastics, nor PFAS, and the track record of our (failed) worldwide reduction of greenhouse gases is a disgrace for all to see. Is the term “wishful thinking” the one we’re looking for here?
I grew up with the idea that the current adult generation is supposed to provide their descendants a world in which that can at least survive and, preferably, thrive. That seems to have disappeared along with any concept of being guided by what’s right, not just what’s legal. The frictions of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War protests, and the environmental movement seem to be growing and spreading. I suppose one way to settle a fight is to ensure there’s nothing left worth fighting for. That seems the way we’re headed, again.
Yesterday we had an afternoon visit for at least half a hour from a male American kestrel. He spent much of that time perched on the post that had held a bluebird house until a bear smashed it last year or the one before. We brought the bird feeders in early and will leave them down for a couple of days. So far today no kestrels have been in evidence but there are a number of hungry and disgruntled songbirds and woodpeckers on the deck railing.
This morning we were greeted by bright yellow hoary puccoon and blue spiderwort blossoms on the hillside fields behind the house. An orange butterfly, monarch I think, was nectaring on the puccoon blooms.The flowers, and the butterfly, were observed as I transported garden carts full of leaves accumulated along the foundation on the north side of the house. The leaves were too many and too thick to try just mulching them with a mower. While hauling the leaves off to the wood’s edge, I noticed a distressing number of poison ivy sprouts that will get a dose of Roundup after tomorrow’s rain, or after Sunday’s. Sometimes the joys of country living are enough for me to almost consider moving to a highrise condo. [Not really]
I don’t think we’ve any serious plans for the holiday weekend. We’ll try to get some yard work done between rain showers / thunderstorms, drink coffee and read while it’s raining, and maybe squeeze in some practice with a fly rod when and if the sun shines, meanwhile, watching to be sure a kestrel hasn’t snuck back in for a free lunch at our feeders.
Black Phoebe
Highwayman of the air, coal-headed, darting
Plunderer of gnat hordes, lasso with beak –
"Surely, that fellow creature on the wing,"
The phoebe thinks, "should fly like this."
And loops
His flight path in a wiry noose, takes wing
Like a cast line and hits the living fly,
Ripping it from the fluid of its life.
Devereux Lagoon
Shiners leap ahead of diving cormorants
And killdeer cry, alarming one another.
In an egret's beak, the catch flashes like shook foil.
How well these field glasses scope out the place—
A kestrel sky, serrations of the Madres,
And sand flats darkened by a rare rain shower.
Such an odd peace, as creatures stalk each other
Dispatch from Devereux SloughFall, 2008
The gulls have no idea.
The distant bark of sea lions gives nothing away.
The white-tailed kite flutters and hunts.
The pelicans perform their sloppy angling.
The ironbark eucalyptus dwells in ignorance and beauty.
And the night herons brood in their heronry like yoga masters, each balanced on a twig.
The world has changed. The news will take some time to get here.
From the Garden Toad
A cri de coeur of mud, a heartfelt groan
Of deep damp, mother rainfall and her sire;
A plea from underground, from drooping shade,
From memories of sunlight and clear water;
Reproach of an old grandparent half-forgotten –
All in that voice, announcing a desire
To have sex under the giant philodendron.
Marine Layer
No one is out tonight, but just in case,
A tubaphone's deep echo, like a seine net,
Sweeps under darkness and pulls darkness in
The way a trellis shadow cages light.
To hear the foghorn is to hear your childhood,
If you were lucky to have lived near ocean,
Moving again into your neighborhood.
Overcast on Ellwood Mesa
Hawks like it. Wings cast no shadow, hovering,
And white crowned sparrows are easier to pick out
Among the foxtails, scurrying like mice.
Under the gray cloud cover, blue birds course
Like running water through the fennel stalks,
And the shrike, color of the sky, keeps watch
From the barbed wire of the startling green golf course.
September Song
Those phosphorescent shoulders of the night surf
Passing beneath the pier,
as we looked down,
Were an agitation in the falling water
Of creatures set to glowing,
all together,
By sudden apprehension, which we perceived
As incandescent wonder,
our eyes feasting,
Our hearts filled by the light of crashing down.
Shorebreak, 3 a.m.
At night the swell and crash, the swell and crash,
As waves rush forward, peak, and then collapse
Gasping and giving up a ghost of spray,
Sounds from a distance like a low-voiced hush.
Awake, alone, at the right hour to hear it,
That hush, for all the sleeplessness behind it,
Can lead one, walking wounded, back to sleep.
Sundowner
Waking at nightfall like the other monsters,
The vampire and the moonstruck wolfman, arson
Is hardly required to set your body burning,
Thirsting for dryness, dry brush, stucco houses.
Flame wind, ember wind, wind of moonlit smoke,
Rolling a fog of ash downhill to sea,
The sun's down is the harsh fur of your burning.
Surgeons
The egret is more patient than any watcher
And lances its incision when its stillness
Has made one look away.
Its anesthetic
Is stillness, and it numbs the water's skin.
The pelican takes a hatchet to the water,
The egret plies a scalpel.
They extract fish,
But one by smash and gulp, and one by stillness.
The Crystal ShipSands Beach, Goleta
The famous rock star thought up his famous rock song
While gazing out at the oil derrick offshore.
Lit up at night it might look, to stoned eyes,
Like a faceted galleon perfect for a song.
Tonight, as sunset gives off its green flash,
The derrick has that look.
And so does the oil barge
Docked to it, dead black, filling up with cargo.
To a Dead Sea Lion at Sands Beach
You had returned from dry land back to water,
Preferring it, and welcomed the new limbs,
Webbed to conceal your toe and finger bones.
You rolled along the surf, all memory
Of other motion swept back in your wake,
And ended here, among fly-buzzing kelp.
Sleek swimmer drowned,
and with your unwebbed bones.
Heaven
When we are reunited after death,
The owls will call among the eucalyptus,
The white tailed kite will arc across the mesa,
And sunset cast orange light from the Pacific
Against the golden bush and eucalyptus
Where flowers and fruit and seeds appear all seasons
And our paired silhouettes are waiting for us.
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind
to each other while you can.
Dame’s rocket is now blooming, as is our patch of lilies of the valley. Yesterdays rain has been followed by today’s gusty winds. This spring, much of May feels like March. Tomorrow, the techs show up to check out our air conditioning for the summer season. Meanwhile, no signs yet of scarlet tanagers nor indigo buntings. This may be a migration season without exotics.
I bet you know that this weekend is Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer, as compared to the summer solstice on June 20 this year or the beginning of meteorological summer on June 1. Got that straight? It would be nice if the weather settles down enough to make fly fishing a pleasant experience rather than a life threatening (lightning) excise in exasperation (wind).
Now that you’ve mentioned fly fishing, I’m considering replacing some of my “high modulus graphite” rods with new fashioned fiberglass. Yesterday I was reading about Have We Reached "Peak Fly Fishing"? (Or at least peak fly rod) and some related articles. In the process, I came across a mention of anglers, like me, who’ve developed a habit of overloading their graphite rods by one line weight to slow the casting action (e.g., use a 7 weight line on a rod designed for a 6 weight). What caught my eye was reference to making casting easier and less tiring. Some years ago, I tore up my right shoulder trying to tip up an outboard motor. I’m right handed so that’s my casting shoulder. Finding ways to enjoy casting without wearing out my shoulder has lots of appeal. I’ll start with my bamboo rod and play with a couple of line weights and see how that works and feels. At least I now have more insight into what I’m trying to accom[lish, and avoid, and how to try to do that. Next, I need mother nature to cooperate with some mild, sunny, basically calm weather. Of course, that will require freshening the permethrin on my bug shirts
As noted previously on these pages, we live at the easternmost edge of the well drained Anoka Sand Plain. We’re currently under a flood watch that’s been in place since yesterday and continues through late tonight. The Sunrise River pools and marshes have been as deep as I’ve seen them in all the time we’ve lived here and that was before the current storm pattern kicked in. On a brighter side, all the rain we’re getting is helping our plants to exuberantly burst into bloom and grow inches overnight. The lilac blossoms look absolutely giddy and the peony plants are about three times as big as they were a day or two ago. Unfortunately, all this wetness is keeping me from yard chores so I’m compensating by staying warm and dry, drinking coffee, and reading poetry because, in addition to the rain, strong winds and occasional lightning is keeping me from fly fishing. It’s heartbreaking, but I’ll manage.
On the way to visit the Daughter Person, Son-In-Law, and Granddaughter yesterday evening, we noticed some pink wild geraniums where, in past years, we’ve seen only marsh marigolds growing along the township road ditch. In our own ditch, so far we’ve got only one milkweed plant growing amidst the mix. That’s not promising for attracting monarchs later this summer. We’ll cross our fingers that there are still some late emergers to show up. We’re still watching for swamp milkweed to bloom out around the wet spot behind the house.
I suspect that I end up saying something similar every year about this time, but the mosquitos are exceptionally thick and vicious this year. Where are the predatory birds, bats, and dragonflies when we need them? The dogs are managing to attract a few ticks. Does anyone know what feeds on ticks? Turkeys? Backyard chickens would probably be more trouble than they’re worth to minimize tick threats. Maybe if I didn’t feed the birds, they’d be more predatory but maybe seed feeders don’t also feed on bugs. There’s so much I don’t know about managing nature.
The other day I was fussing and fuming here about the Minnesota legislature, among other things. These recent articles (Chaotic end leaves Democratic Legislature with a few wins and Legislature adjourns with mega-omnibus, loud finger-pointing as DFL leaders shut down GOP delays to meet deadline) reinforce my negative assessment. We have reached a point at which scoring points is more important than solving problems. Politics is (pardon me) trumping governance. But, much of the issue stems from a process problem. Hence, my borrowing the *Jonathan Swift phrase for today’s title. Here’s my proposal to help the kids do a better job of playing together in the sand box we pay them to play in.
Let's create and get enacted a constitutional amendment that structures the legislative process to minimize the type of endings that have become all too typical. I presume you know that our legislature meets in biennial (2 year) sessions. The amendment would prohibit, except for emergencies, enacting laws the first year of a session. That year would be spent holding hearings, crafting language, outreaching to stakeholders, including taxpayers, and answering the question a former state senator used to ask in conference committees [at about 2 am]: “What’s the problem we’re here to solve?”
The second year of a session would be used to ensure the required processes and procedures are followed to preclude whatever got enacted being promptly declared invalid for some legal, technical rationale. In that vein, the last week of the session would be reserved for action only on revisor’s corrections to previously passed legislation. No last minute negotiating nor games played. That all has to get done in year one of the biennium.
If voters didn’t have such short memories, or paid more attention in the first place, we wouldn’t find that representatives and senators paid more attention to lobbyists than to constituents. We would then more regularly “Vote the rascals out!”
Does the proposal above seem like a concept worth developing to bring democracy back to our governance? Feel free to leave a comment.
I've read a couple of books by, and read a blog of Chris La Tray, mentioned below. I've read a number of works by two of Minnesota's Poet Laureates, Joyce Sutphen and Gwen Nell Westerman. I believe poetry can, and does, help bring folks together in a meaningful way and bridges differences among US. Perhaps you remember Minnesota’s US Senator, presidential candidate, and poet, Gene McCarthy? We could use more poet-lawmakers like him.
State Poet Laureates Write Rural Into Their Rhyme Schemes
by Pat Raia, The Daily Yonder May 15, 2024
Recently, Barbara Smith's son Jason was playing a game of pool with his buddies in Wyoming when he abruptly left the game to attend his mother's poetry reading.
“The other men came with him and they were surprised and I think happy to be there,” Smith recalls. “I don't think they had been at a poetry reading before.”
As Wyoming's poet laureate, it's Smith's mission to bring poetry to communities throughout the state, especially to those for whom poetry seems least accessible.
She thinks that's especially important in rural communities that want to preserve their collective past.
“I like to go into places in small communities such as libraries where people can come together and talk about their experiences, and I encourage them to write their experiences, and about finding a home here – to tell their story – the real history of America that can be written.”
Wyoming Poet Laureate Barbara Smith. (Photo provided)
Appointed last October by an Executive Order from Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon, Smith is one of 46 state poet laureates, or State Poets, throughout the U.S. who are appointed according to legislative directive. In most cases, including Wyoming, the state's Arts and Humanities Council collects nominations from the public, then makes recommendations for gubernatorial appointment. Most serve two-year terms though some serve longer. All serve at the pleasure of the Governor.
While most state poet laureates conduct occasion-specific readings of their work at special sessions of the State Legislature, appear at literary festivals, lead poetry workshops, and write poems for commemorative and other special events around the state, each poet laureate creates his or her own agenda after accepting the appointment.
For Nebraska State Poet Matt Mason, that means traveling to schools all over the state demonstrating that students – and their teachers – can be poets, too.
“I visit the largest schools in the state and the smallest rural ones, too and the kids and their teachers can't imagine writing their own poetry, so I tell them that if they write a poem and put it in a drawer then go back five years later, if they have the same feeling (when the wrote it), then they have done it,” says Mason who was appointed to his position in 2019 by then Governor John Ricketts. “In rural communities especially I want to get people to see that poetry and the rest of the arts are normal.”
In fact that's the mission of many poet laureates from largely rural states, even though these states have oft-unrecognized rich literary histories.
Nebraska Poet Laureate Matt Mason. (Photo provided)
According to Erika Hamilton, Ph.D. director of literary programs for the nonprofit organization Humanities Nebraska, Nebraska has been naming State Poets since 1921. Two years later, Oklahoma became the seventh state to name a poet laureate.
More recently, Wyoming's first poet laureate was named in January 1981, and Montana appointed its first poet laureate in 2005.
A rural poet laureate is fundamental to reminding residents of rural communities of the culture that they share, says Rachel Clifton, executive director of the Wyoming Arts Council.
“For example, Wyoming is the least populated state in the country but we have a lot of shared experiences,” Clifton says. “Putting [rural communities] in forefront gives [those experiences] a different lens and understanding.”
That's why Oklahoma poet laureate Jay Snider makes sure that every one of his presentations includes a history lesson, too.
For the past 20 years, Snider has been writing and publicly reading what he calls “Cowboy Poetry,” rhymed and metered ballads that men driving cattle on the Chisholm Trail from Texas through the Oklahoma Territory to Kansas would recite to the herd.
Oklahoma Poet Laureate Jay Snider. (Photo provided)
“On the cattle drives they learned that the cattle would settle down if they sang or recited poetry because the last thing you wanted was a stampede,” Snyder explains. “They wrote about their work, their horses, the cattle and ranching – about their lives – and that's what I've been going to schools and museums to encourage kids to do – it’s all about the stories.”
In Montana, poet laureate Chris La Tray travels the state's vast distances sharing stories and poetry with students elementary school through college, groups of adults, and seniors. His poetry addresses issues of cultural identity, nature, and what the future looks like in Montana.
“I may be in front of an audience for an hour and only read three poems [because] it's about storytelling,” says La Tray, who is a member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. “Ultimately a poet's job is to speak truth to power.”
According to Smith, that's especially important in rural areas of Wyoming where communities grapple with recent attention from outsiders that will almost certainly bring change.
Montana Poet Laureate Chris La Tray. (Photo provided)
Among them are Bill Gates, who plans to build the Terra-Power Natrium nuclear power plant in Wyoming's high desert region, and folks relocating to rural communities from the well-heeled Jackson Hole area of the state.
“People from Jackson Hole to are looking to buy up traditional ranches there, and build gated communities – so it gets expensive for the people who are living there, also people will be moving in the area to build and support the plant all with the expected impact on the cost of real estate,” Smith says of her home state. “My mission is to engage people (in the desert and elsewhere) to explore what's happening in their communities by means of poetry.”
Meanwhile, Jay Snider believes that promoting poetry and encouraging young poets is crucial no matter where people live.
“I still write cowboy poetry, but I've read and studied classical poetry as well,” Snider says.”I want to bring that to the forefront too, because if we don't keep that alive we're going to lose the whole genre in one generation.”
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.
Early this morning we enjoyed some mild thunder and lightning as thundershowers rolled through. Later, we watched a wild tom turkey displaying for a sole hen in the backyard. She didn’t seem interested, but maybe she just thought the field was too open to engage in intimacies. In any case, after ten minutes or so, the hen wandered into the woods, followed by a somewhat distraught tom. I’m guessing that at this time of year, most of the hens are incubating eggs and the mating season is winding down.
Once the back yard performance ended, we headed off to the farm to pick up this week’s community supported agriculture [CSA] share. It includes:
ARUGULA
MESCLUN
SPRING "SPACE” SPINACH
SIMPSON OR PIRAT LETTUCE, and
CHIVES
One of the high points of my week is the drive to the CSA farm through the countryside of the St. Croix River valley, noting changes in the season’s displays. This year some farmer’s are either planting very late or leaving what looks like an unusual number of fields fallow. Other fields, that got corn planted early(?), are showing emergent corn plants already.
Now it’s time for me to go and refresh the planting trays and try again to successfully germinate some bergamot seeds. Cross your fingers for us, please.
Not the bottle Not the burn on the lips lit throat glow Not even wild really but a small-town bird whose burgundy throat shimmers like nothing ever A huge bird impressive who lurches and stalks me window to window in this desert retreat What does he want? Clearly he is lonely pecks his reflection and speaks to it in a low gubble (not gobble) gubbles so tenderly Soon as I think of him his eye hits on me We have watched each other for days His shifting colors fascinate me his territorial strut But it is his bald and blue-red head his old man habits and gait that move me If I even think of him I taste whiskey Drunk on solitude I’d talk to anybody I try his language on my lips His keen response burns like shame
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind
to each other while you can.
It’s been a productive day. The Better Half and I acquired resident (MN) fishing licenses to go with yesterday’s acquisition of non-resident (WI) licenses. Now we need to get out and get our money’s worth by going fishing. We (I) also confirmed sightings of trilliums in bloom and Canada goose goslings along the roadside near the Carlos Avery Sunrise River pools. For reasons that aren’t clear, someone had decided to brush out the understory where the trilliums grow and wiped out many wildflowers in the process. Sigh!
This morning I noticed a ruby-throated hummingbird checking the outside of a window where we had a feeder last year. I’ll mount and fill one over the weekend. We seem to have distinct front hummers and back hummers who are dedicated to chasing each other away from feeders. There’s also a pair of Baltimore orioles enjoying the grape jelly feeder when it’s not occupied by male rose-breasted grosbeaks.
At the risk of jinxing us, this may be the one year in 10 or 25 that Minnesota experiences actual Spring-like weather. It’s been a mild roller coaster warm-up with some rain. The first plantings of bergamot seeds failed. A weekend’s task is to replant and hope the late May weather is more conducive, due to more warmth, to successful germination and growth.
Without your showers, I breed no flowers, Each field a barren waste appears; If you don't weep, my blossoms sleep, They take such pleasures in your tears.
As your decay made room for May, So I must part with all that’s mine: My balmy breeze, my blooming trees To torrid suns their sweets resign!
O’er April dead, my shades I spread: To her I owe my dress so gay— Of daughters three, it falls on me To close our triumphs on one day:
Thus, to repose, all Nature goes; Month after month must find its doom: Time on the wing, May ends the Spring, And Summer dances on her tomb!
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind
to each other while you can.
The Minnesota legislative session is almost over for the year. By the time we’ve figured out what they’ve done to us, they’ll be back at it again next year. If legislatures were comparable to corporations, many would drive their states into bankruptcy, as Congress continually tries to do when the Republicans are in charge. Would it be possible to only vote for those, in whatever party, who have education, training and experience in win-win negotiating? Politics, in a democracy, should not be a zero sum game.
If we consider the world as a model, nature creates synergistic benefits from the multitudes of different species and ecosystems. Why is it that we can’t manage our elected officials so that they do much better than we’ve been experiencing? Is it that we’re too tolerant of our officials' failures? Too accepting of results that benefit the 1% at the expense of the rest of US? This country was founded in rebellion against a government that treated colonies as an extraction zone. Aren’t we experiencing something similar with a system in which corporations and billionaires pay effective tax rates lower than most of US? Meanwhile, corporations continue to use our commons as a dumping ground for their toxic wastes, making more of US sicker while they profit and our health care system is breaking down. How many more years will we continue to allow political factions to kick down the road cans such as the definition of Waters Of The United States (WOTUS)? It’s all one interconnected water system!!!
Senator Sanders of Vermont has a piece in The Guardian that’s worth reading: We’re in a pivotal moment in American history. We cannot retreat. The late Senator Wellstone of Minnesota had a slogan that: “We all do better when we all do better.” That reflects the qualities I’m espousing we look for in candidates. Ask yourself how many successful marriages are based on a zero sum, I win, you lose, relationship. Then ask yourself why we can’t do better next November than repeat past mistakes.
