All the Me, Me, Me! is killing US!!!

SCOTUS recently announced that it’s legitimate for cities to fine and incarcerate homeless people who have nowhere to sleep. It appears the GOP is hell-bent to nominate an adjudicated rapist and convicted felon as their presidential candidate. Several members of SCOTUS were, at best, misleading in their testimony to US Senators. We now appear to be living in a combination patriarchy, oligarchy, corporatocracy, inside a sham democracy. And the colonists just had to focus on King George III ! We have to deal with a free press that puts clicks and ads ahead of emphasizing the truth, even during a “presidential debate.” The America I grew up in would not knowingly elect a sociopathetic prevaricating misogynist as its leader. What happened to US?

In the last Civil War, geographically the conflict broke down to the North against the South. This time it’s likely to be a lot more messy with quite a bit of neighbor against neighbor. Is this really the best we can do after some 250 years of trying? Somewhere in my college sociology courses I seem to remember that a group lacking external enemies often turns on itself. That seems to fit US only too well these days.

I find comparable fault with both major political parties, focused more on winning than governing. Corporations who act as though profits and dividends are the cause of success rather than the result of successfully producing items of value. Anyone looking forward to flying in a Boeing product these days? Has Microsoft become an enemy of the state by failing to provide secure software to the government? Have ordinary folks like you and I decided we can “go it alone” better than we can live responsibly and cooperatively in a community? (Home owners associations don’t count.)

When was the last time any of US or our current or potential leaders looked at a book such as Anna Bernasek’s The Economics of Integrity? As I find more and more these days, a Native American has some worthwhile guidance to offer.

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

By Joy Harjo

I am the holy being of my mother's prayer and my father's song

                                              —Norman Patrick Brown, Dineh Poet and Speaker

1. SET CONFLICT RESOLUTION GROUND RULES:

Recognize whose lands these are on which we stand.
Ask the deer, turtle, and the crane.
Make sure the spirits of these lands are respected and treated with goodwill.
The land is a being who remembers everything.
You will have to answer to your children, and their children, and theirs—
The red shimmer of remembering will compel you up the night to walk the perimeter of truth for understanding.
As I brushed my hair over the hotel sink to get ready I heard:
By listening we will understand who we are in this holy realm of words.
Do not parade, pleased with yourself.
You must speak in the language of justice.


2. USE EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS THAT DISPLAY AND ENHANCE MUTUAL TRUST AND RESPECT:

If you sign this paper we will become brothers. We will no longer fight. We will give you this land and these waters "as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers run."

The lands and waters they gave us did not belong to them to give. Under false pretenses we signed. After drugging by drink, we signed. With a mass of gunpower pointed at us, we signed. With a flotilla of war ships at our shores, we signed. We are still signing. We have found no peace in this act of signing.

A casino was raised up over the gravesite of our ancestors. Our own distant cousins pulled up the bones of grandparents, parents, and grandchildren from their last sleeping place. They had forgotten how to be human beings. Restless winds emerged from the earth when the graves were open and the winds went looking for justice.

If you raise this white flag of peace, we will honor it.

At Sand Creek several hundred women, children, and men were slaughtered in an unspeakable massacre, after a white flag was raised. The American soldiers trampled the white flag in the blood of the peacemakers.

There is a suicide epidemic among native children. It is triple the rate of the rest of America. "It feels like wartime," said a child welfare worker in South Dakota.

If you send your children to our schools we will train them to get along in this changing world. We will educate them.

We had no choice. They took our children. Some ran away and froze to death. If they were found they were dragged back to the school and punished. They cut their hair, took away their language, until they became as strangers to themselves even as they became strangers to us.

If you sign this paper we will become brothers. We will no longer fight. We will give you this land and these waters in exchange "as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers run."

Put your hand on this bible, this blade, this pen, this oil derrick, this gun and you will gain trust and respect with us. Now we can speak together as one.

We say, put down your papers, your tools of coercion, your false promises, your posture of superiority and sit with us before the fire. We will share food, songs, and stories. We will gather beneath starlight and dance, and rise together at sunrise.

The sun rose over the Potomac this morning, over the city surrounding the white house.
It blazed scarlet, a fire opening truth.
White House, or Chogo Hvtke, means the house of the peacekeeper, the keepers of justice.
We have crossed this river to speak to the white leader for peace many times
Since these settlers first arrived in our territory and made this their place of governance.
These streets are our old trails, curved to fit around trees.
 

3. GIVE CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK:

We speak together with this trade language of English. This trade language enables us to speak across many language boundaries. These languages have given us the poets:

Ortiz, Silko, Momaday, Alexie, Diaz, Bird, Woody, Kane, Bitsui, Long Soldier, White, Erdrich, Tapahonso, Howe, Louis, Brings Plenty, okpik, Hill, Wood, Maracle, Cisneros, Trask, Hogan, Dunn, Welch, Gould...

The 1957 Chevy is unbeatable in style. My broken-down one-eyed Ford will have to do. It holds everyone: Grandma and grandpa, aunties and uncles, the children and the babies, and all my boyfriends. That's what she said, anyway, as she drove off for the Forty-Nine with all of us in that shimmying wreck.

This would be no place to be without blues, jazz—Thank you/mvto to the Africans, the Europeans sitting in, especially Adolphe Sax with his saxophones... Don't forget that at the center is the Mvskoke ceremonial circles. We know how to swing. We keep the heartbeat of the earth in our stomp dance feet.

You might try dancing theory with a bustle, or a jingle dress, or with turtles strapped around your legs. You might try wearing colonization like a heavy gold chain around a pimp's neck.


4. REDUCE DEFENSIVENESS AND BREAK THE DEFENSIVENESS CHAIN:

I could hear the light beings as they entered every cell. Every cell is a house of the god of light, they said. I could hear the spirits who love us stomp dancing. They were dancing as if they were here, and then another level of here, and then another, until the whole earth and sky was dancing.

We are here dancing, they said. There was no there.

There was no  "I"  or "you."

There was us; there was "we."

There we were as if we were the music.

You cannot legislate music to lockstep nor can you legislate the spirit of the music to stop at political boundaries—

—Or poetry, or art, or anything that is of value or matters in this world, and the next worlds.

This is about getting to know each other.

We will wind up back at the blues standing on the edge of the flatted fifth about to jump into a fierce understanding together.


5. ELIMINATE NEGATIVE ATTITUDES DURING CONFLICT:

A panther poised in the cypress tree about to jump is a panther poised in a cypress tree about to jump.

The panther is a poem of fire green eyes and a heart charged by four winds of four directions.

The panther hears everything in the dark: the unspoken tears of a few hundred human years, storms that will break what has broken his world, a bluebird swaying on a branch a few miles away.

He hears the death song of his approaching prey:

I will always love you, sunrise.
I belong to the black cat with fire green eyes.
There, in the cypress tree near the morning star.


6. AND, USE WHAT YOU LEARN TO RESOLVE YOUR OWN CONFLICTS AND TO MEDIATE OTHERS' CONFLICTS:

When we made it back home, back over those curved roads
that wind through the city of peace, we stopped at the
doorway of dusk as it opened to our homelands.
We gave thanks for the story, for all parts of the story
because it was by the light of those challenges we knew
ourselves—
We asked for forgiveness.
We laid down our burdens next to each other.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

We need a better system

Today’s posting is going to be short and not so sweet. Sorry!

Many pundits are commenting on the problems associated with the recent SCOTUS decision resulting in the demise of the Chevron deference. I would note that the Chevron deference has been in place for 40 years during which time the definition of Waters of the United States has been kicked from pillar to post and up and down many stairs in Washington, D.C.’s august buildings, without resolution. Meanwhile, our sources of “clean” water continue to be diminished as the effects of climate weirding continue to disrupt historic hydrologic cycles. Legal decisions, whether from legislative bodies and/or courts, with or without experts, have real world consequences, as does any lack of wisdom in such decisions. Perhaps it’s time to reflect on Shakespeare’s assessment:

Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Is it possible that we have corrupted our application of some of the fundamental premises of federalism as practiced by the Iroquois? As things stand today, I can see fatal flaws in decisions by all three sectors and at the federal, state and local levels. Should we see what ChatGPT has to say? Are algorithms the equivalent of consensus? When does SCOTUS have to have a supermajority, like the Senate to overcome a filibuster?

My Wisdom

By Naomi Shihab Nye

When people have a lot

they want more

 

When people have nothing

they will happily share it

 

*

 

Some people say

never getting your way

builds character

By now our character must be

deep and wide as a continent

Africa, Australia

giant cascade of stars

spilling over our huge night

 

*

 

Where did the power go?

Did it enjoy its break?

Is power exhausted?

What is real power?

Who really has power?

Did the generator break?

Do we imagine silence

more powerful because

it might contain everything?

Quiet always lives

inside noise.

But does it get much done?

 

*

 

Silence waits

for truth to break it

 

*

 

Calendars can weep too

They want us to have better days

 

*

 

Welcome to every minute

Feel lucky you’re still in it

 

*

 

No bird builds a wall

 

*

 

Sky purse

     jingling

           change

 

*

 

Won’t give up

our hopes

            for anything!

 

*

 

Not your fault

You didn’t make the world

 

*

 

How dare this go on and on?

cried the person who believed in praying

God willing     God willing        God willing

There were others who prayed

   to ruins & stumps

 

*

 

Open palms

     hold more

 

*

 

Refuse to give

   mistakes

      too much power

 

 

*

Annoying person?

Person who told me to stay home

and do what other girls do?

If you disappeared

I still might miss you

 

*

 

Babies want to help us

They laugh

for no reason

 

*

 

Pay close attention to

a drop of water

on the kitchen table

 

*

 

You cannot say one word about religion

and exclude Ahmad

We’re now the National Lampoon of politics

It was many years ago (1973) that the National Lampoon used the famous demand on the cover. These days, it seems to me that both political parties are using a similar demand to get support from their base (how appropriate a term) and to use it as a fundraising tool, through fear of the opposition’s accession to power. Is it time to call these bluffs? Why don’t we, the voters and taxpayers, demand that political campaigns be publicly funded with spending caps for each type of position? We end up paying for it one way or another so let’s demand more and better transparency and accountability. Maybe in the process we can also kill Citizens’ United. That’s all for today. I’m still fed up from last night’s “debate.”

Politics

By William Meredith

Tonight Hazard’s father and stepmother are having

jazz for McGovern. In the old game-room

the old liberals listen as the quintet builds

crazy houses out of skin and brass, crumbling

the house of decorum, everybody likes that.

For decades they have paid for the refurbishing

of America and they have not got their money’s worth.

Now they listen, hopeful,

to the hard rock for McGovern.

The ceiling in this palace needs fixing,

the chalky blue paint is like an old heaven

but there are holes and flaking.

They had movies here when grandpa was solvent.

Hazard desires his wife, the way people

on the trains to the death camps were seized

by irrational lust. She is the youngest woman

in the room, he would like to be in bed

with her now, he would like to be president.

He has not been to his studio

in four days, he asks the bartender,

a college boy with a ponytail, for more gin.

He stands in the doorway. Forsythia and lilac

have overgrown the porch, there is the rich

smell of wood-rot. What twenty years will do

to untended shrubbery and America and Hazard.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Are you a Solutionary?

I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t feel to me like next week should be the 4th of July, but here we are. One week from today is Independence Day! Tonight is the first presidential (presumed) candidate debate of this election season, at 8 pm our local (Central Daylight) time. I’m leaning toward the idea that it will make US think of one of Shakespeare’s plays. I would be delighted to be proven wrong.

On a brighter, more positive note, this morning I came across a refreshing source for optimism. The founder of the Institute for Humane Education, Zoe Weil, has a recently published book, The Solutionary Way. It ticks almost all of the checkboxes on my list for systems solutions, plus it covers most of the substantive sectors we need to be concerned with. The author and her approach are one of the more encouraging prospects I’ve seen in a long time.

Trout in the Classroom aquarium

Photo by J. Harrington

In another aspect related to education, I may be reengaging in Minnesota Trout Unlimited’s Trout in the Classroom [TIC] activities. For one class years ago I did a quick summary of the history of fly fishing for trout. Today I started to refresh and update my knowledge of the program by looking at the Minnesota and National web sections on TIC. I don’t really believe in coincidences, and the fact that this morning, as I was in a doom and gloom mode, two emails showed up related to The World Becomes What We Teach and shattered my dark ceiling can’t be coincidental.

There are lots of good, helpful, folks doing lots of positive work to make this world a much better place. They all too often get thirty seconds of human interest air time rather than being acknowledged as resources that can help US address many of the issues troubling US. Imagine if the evening news content didn’t emphasize “If it bleeds, it leads.” It could be time for US to adopt the line from Network: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more!”

A House Called Tomorrow

Alberto Ríos
1952 – 

You are not fifteen, or twelve, or seventeen—
You are a hundred wild centuries

And fifteen, bringing with you
In every breath and in every step

Everyone who has come before you,
All the yous that you have been,

The mothers of your mother,
The fathers of your father.

If someone in your family tree was trouble,
A hundred were not:

The bad do not win—not finally,
No matter how loud they are.

We simply would not be here
If that were so.

You are made, fundamentally, from the good.
With this knowledge, you never march alone.

You are the breaking news of the century.
You are the good who has come forward

Through it all, even if so many days
Feel otherwise.  But think:

When you as a child learned to speak,
It’s not that you didn’t know words—

It’s that, from the centuries, you knew so many,
And it’s hard to choose the words that will be your own.

From those centuries we human beings bring with us
The simple solutions and songs,

The river bridges and star charts and song harmonies
All in service to a simple idea:

That we can make a house called tomorrow.
What we bring, finally, into the new day, every day,

Is ourselves.  And that’s all we need
To start.  That’s everything we require to keep going. 

Look back only for as long as you must,
Then go forward into the history you will make.

Be good, then better.  Write books.  Cure disease.
Make us proud.  Make yourself proud.

And those who came before you?  When you hear thunder,
Hear it as their applause.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

June showers bring summer flowers

I was distressed that the city’s ditch mower had knocked out every milkweed plant growing between our driveway and the field entrance on our property, until this morning when I noticed how many milkweed plants are growing in the field behind the house. Rarely have we seen many milkweed plants growing in those fields, but this year’s rains have been far more than normal. Will that bring pollinators back to our property? We’ll see. Once again our pear tree, which was covered with blooms earlier this spring, has no fruit that I can see. I believe it’s due to a lack of pollinators but it could also be that there’s nothing to cross pollinate with, or both. Anyhow, our fields are full of rarely seen wildflowers and that pleases me more than the rainy, cloudy days have annoyed me.

back yard pear tree in bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

The blossoms on the elderberry bush are looking much more abundant than usual. If any pollinators arrive in time, we could have a bumper crop of elderberries. Again, we’ll see. As we move into a less rainy pattern, I have to keep reminding myself that living here and managing the property is a life style, not a series of chores to get done. I “decided” toward the end of winter that I was going to take a more relaxed, less middle-class suburbanite approach to yard work. We can add one more to the list of easier said than done. Can you say OCD-type symptoms?

The tray of bergamot seedlings continues to look happy. Some day soon the Better Half and I will sketch out where we want to plant them but that’s a challenge for another day especially since the guides I’ve seen suggest planting them 18 inches apart and we have almost three dozen “cubes" of seedlings in the tray. This is beginning to remind me of the story of The Man Who Planted Trees.

Come slowly – Eden! (205)

By Emily Dickinson

Come slowly – Eden!

Lips unused to Thee –

Bashful – sip thy Jessamines –

As the fainting Bee –

Reaching late his flower,

Round her chamber hums –

Counts his nectars –

Enters – and is lost in Balms.

 

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

When will we ever learn?*

Many decades ago, when I was in college, a sociology professor teaching one of the courses I took noted that technology changes much faster than the ability of humans to adapt to those changes. It seems to me the times we are living in confirm the validity of that sociological assessment, scaled almost to global dimensions. I also remember, from somewhere or other, encountering the concept of running faster (and faster) to remain in place. Does that feel about right to you?

how vulnerable is our infrastructure?

Photo by J. Harrington

We arrived home yesterday evening after visiting the Daughter Person, Son-In-Law, and Granddaughter, to discover there had been a power outage (the garage door was unresponsive to the remote opener signal) plus our internet service was down. The power had been restored just before we returned home and our internet connection was restored mid-morning today. This all makes me wonder if electric and internet service are so essential to contemporary life, and getting made more so by the powers that be, why they aren’t made more reliable. Both the power and the Frontier phone and DSL have been down a couple of times in the past month or so. All of this reminds me of yet another saying from my younger days: “We have created a world with no one in charge.” If internet service is important enough to be subsidized as infrastructure and for those with limited incomes, why isn’t it important enough to be better regulated by local, state and/or federal government entities?

If child care costs and availability have become essential to support our labor force, why not extend and expand child care services as part of the school systems. Isn’t economy of scale supposed too be one of the benefits of a capitalist-industrial economy? At least so far, I’ve not seen any proposals to outsource child care overseas to take advantage of lower labor rates.

Forgive me (or don’t) for yet another rant. Today is George Orwell’s birthday and, it appears to me, we’ve been busy creating a society that incorporates the worst aspects of both Animal Farm and 1984. Someone seems to have failed to realize both books were intended as fiction, not as operating manuals.

*with apologies to Pete Seeger and Where have all the flowers gone?

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry


Original Language English

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 millennium. 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.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

We’re in summer mode!

Today I think I discovered we have some yellow butterfly weed growing on the rise behind the house. As far as I know, all the butterfly weed I’ve seen previously was orange. I was today year’s old when I learned there is a yellow butterfly weed (or I may have it confused with hoary puccoon). Two of the regular, orange, butterfly weed plants appear to have survived the winter and are now blooming. Almost all the poison ivy I sprayed a week or ten days ago is looking very sickly. Once we get a cooler, drier spell, I’ll spray some that I seem to have missed or that grew since I sprayed.

Butterfly-weed (Asclepias tuberosa)

Photo by J. Harrington

Now that we’re living in a city (Chisago), that was annexed from the township (Lent) we used to live in, the city started mowing roadsides today in our area. (It’s not legal before August first outside a city.) Most of the township merged with Stacy and even though we ended up in Chisago, our mailing address remained in Stacy. Go figure!

Anyhow, today is the day I trimmed around our mail box, because the city skipped mowing close to it. Getting the weed whacker started in the heat and humidity was a treat, but once started it worked fine. (Another reason to convert to all electric yard tools.) I’ll whack around some flower beds tomorrow and the day after, if it’s not raining. All the rain that’s fallen the past several weeks has the Anoka Sand Plain section behind our house bursting with wildflowers. I don’t recall it ever looking so pretty in the quarter century we’ve been here.

Since I wore myself out with unaccustomed yard work this morning, I’m signing off until tomorrow. It’ll take awhile for me to get acclimated to the heat and “homditty.”

Wildflowers

By Reginald Gibbons

Coleridge carefully wrote down a whole page

of them, all beginning with the letter b.

Guidebooks preserve our knowledge

of their hues and shapes, their breeding.

Many poems have made delicate word-chimes—

like wind-chimes not for wind but for the breath of man—

out of their lovely names.

At the edge of the prairie in a cabin

when thunder comes closer to thump the roof hard

a few of them—in a corner, brittle in a dry jar

where a woman’s thoughtful hand left them to fade—

seem to blow with the announcing winds outside

as the rain begins to fall on all their supple kin

of all colors, under a sky of one color, or none.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Time to stop clowning around

June is almost gone, taking the first half of 2024 with her. My favorite season, autumn, lies ahead. I need to work harder to keep politics from spoiling what should be the better half of the year. (It would be the best half but it doesn’t include spring’s snow melt, Father’s Day, nor my birthday.) My inbox keeps refilling with messages from democrats informing me that the world will end if tRUMP and the GOP win in November. I don’t necessarily disagree with them but would much prefer to learn what wonderful things will happen to make the world a better place if democrats prevail. I’m not holding my breath.

“The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.” ― Gaylord Nelson

Photo by J. Harrington

Most years I make a contribution to our local DFL senate district committee. This year I’m hesitating because of stuff like this: Environmental groups call for hearings over MPCA issues. Even with democrats controlling the executive and legislative branches, the environment, and therefore the public, keeps losing to “business" interests. As an aside, has anyone seen any studies about how much peoples’ health could improve, and health costs drop, if environmental regulations were rigorously enforced? Instead, we get reports such as: Research reveals toxic PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ accumulate in testes.

Does anyone really expect the presidential debate to engage in a substantive debate of significant issues? I think it would be a totally unexpected and therefore a very pleasant surprise. Speaking of presidents and debates, have we yet reached agreement on “what the meaning of is is?” My expectations for the debate between the sitting president and a convicted felon who once pretended to fill that office is about what I would expect of a debate between Buffalo Bob and Clarabell. I’ll probably watch some just to see if it’s as bad as I fear, but I doubt very much I’ll enjoy it and it certainly isn’t likely to affect my vote. Now I think it’s time to go listen to one of my favorite Judy Collins’ recordings, Stephen Sondheim's Send in the Clowns.

Send in the Clowns

Judy Collins version

Isn't it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground
You in mid-air
Where are the clowns?

Isn't it bliss?
Don't you approve?
One who keeps tearing around
One who can't move
Where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns

Just when I'd stopped opening doors
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours
Making my entrance again with my usual flair
Sure of my lines
No one is there

Don't you love farce?
My fault, I fear
I thought that you'd want what I want
Sorry, my dear
But where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns
Don't bother, they're here

Isn't it rich?
Isn't it queer
Losing my timing this late
In my career?

But where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns
Well, maybe next year...

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

the moon in June is the berries

Yesterday’s full moon, which was completely cloud covered around here, is called the Strawberry Moon by the Ojibwe and the Good Berries Moon by the Lakota. The community supported agriculture [CSA] share we picked up this morning included the season’s first container of strawberries. Coincidence? I think not!!

Strawberry moon of 2013

Photo by J. Harrington

Here’s a full list of this week’s CSA share:

• RHUBARB
• STRAWBERRIES
• ASPARAGUS
• GARLIC SCAPES, and
• LETTUCE

We almost collected a load of venison on the way to the farm. Just after we had rounded a sharp curve on a township gravel road, a couple of whitetail does came barreling out of the brush on the right-hand side of the road. Fortunately, the curve had caused us to slow enough that we could promptly brake and let the critters safely pass in front of the Jeep. In fact, there were surprising numbers of deer standing at or near the side of various roads this morning.

The day length today is 6 seconds shorter than yesterday, which was 1 second less than the solstice. It will take awhile before we really notice, but the days are getting shorter already. For those trapped under a heat dome, autumn probably can’t come soon enough. Some of us beleaguered by mosquitos and teeny little flies are already looking forward to the first frost. Plus, grocers this summer are selling peaches that look ripe but are firm as a rock and don’t soften sitting on the counter at home. Another case of mis- or dis-information?

I am pleased to announce that I baked a boule of high-hydration sourdough and it turned out to be one of the best loaves I’ve baked in a long time. If you’re looking for some good guidance on baking sourdough, let me recommend (again) Emilie Raffa’s Artisan Sourdough Made Simple.

Strawberrying

May Swenson
1913 – 1989

My hands are murder-red. Many a plump head
drops on the heap in the basket. Or, ripe
to bursting, they might be hearts, matching
the blackbird’s wing-fleck. Gripped to a reed
he shrieks his ko-ka-ree in the next field.
He’s left his peck in some juicy cheeks, when
at first blush and mostly white, they showed
streaks of sweetness to the marauder.

We’re picking near the shore, the morning
sunny, a slight wind moving rough-veined leaves
our hands rumple among. Fingers find by feel
the ready fruit in clusters. Here and there,
their squishy wounds . . . . Flesh was perfect
yesterday . . . . June was for gorging . . . .
sweet hearts young and firm before decay.

“Take only the biggest, and not too ripe,”
a mother calls to her girl and boy, barefoot
in the furrows. “Don’t step on any. Don’t
change rows. Don’t eat too many.” Mesmerized
by the largesse, the children squat and pull
and pick handfuls of rich scarlets, half
for the baskets, half for avid mouths.
Soon, whole faces are stained.

A crop this thick begs for plunder. Ripeness
wants to be ravished, as udders of cows when hard,
the blue-veined bags distended, ache to be stripped.
Hunkered in mud between the rows, sun burning
the backs of our necks, we grope for, and rip loose
soft nippled heads. If they bleed—too soft—
let them stay. Let them rot in the heat.

When, hidden away in a damp hollow under moldy
leaves, I come upon a clump of heart-shapes
once red, now spiderspit-gray, intact but empty,
still attached to their dead stems—
families smothered as at Pompeii—I rise
and stretch. I eat one more big ripe lopped
head. Red-handed, I leave the field.

br />
********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

It’s the stupid system, stupid

Where we live, today is the first full day of Summer. We’re expecting rain and/or thunderstorms all afternoon, which may, or may not, be part of a new normal. Flooding and road washouts are reported all around the state, but not a sign of a hurricane to be seen. It’s almost like the climate’s been broken, but I’m sure if that were the case, world leaders would all be doing everything possible to fix it. Right?

no rainbow without some rain

Photo by J. Harrington

Don’t mind me today. With all the real issues the world is facing, I’m disheartened to have read in The Guardian that Missouri attorney general to sue New York over Trump prosecutions. I mean really? Each time I think the world can’t get much crazier, I’m proven wrong! We’ve reached the point at which I’m desperately clinging to Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. What I’m unable to resolve is whether the level and types of human stupidity have increased markedly or the level of reporting of stupid acts and behaviors has increased markedly, or both. Perhaps it’s a consequence of all the microplastics and forever chemicals and whatever else our bodies are absorbing that don’t belong there.

It seems to me that being stupid is better than being evil since it doesn’t involve the perpetrator’s intentions. Also, it may be that we’re so stupid because we haven’t been around long enough to have learned any better. But that begs another very important question. Do you know what it is?

The Good God and the Evil God

By Kahlil Gibran

The Good God and the Evil God met on the mountain top.
 
The Good God said, “Good day to you, brother.”
 
The Evil God did not answer.
 
And the Good God said, “You are in a bad humour today.”
 
“Yes,” said the Evil God, “for of late I have been often mistaken for you, called by your name, and treated as if I were you, and it ill-pleases me.”
 
And the Good God said, “But I too have been mistaken for you and called by your name.”
 
The Evil God walked away cursing the stupidity of man.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

It’s Alban Hefin!

That’s what Druids call Summer Solstice, which occurs in our neck of the woods at 3:50 pm today. The persistent rainy days we’ve been experiencing, broken by cloudy days with less rain, make it hard to accept that this is the time of maximum light. We are about to enter the waning half of the year, as we in the Northern Hemisphere do every year after Alban Hefin. South of the equator, our wane is their gain.

magical summer sunrise in June

Photo by J. Harrington

I have discovered that an excess of books to read, coffee to drink, munchies to snack on and great company [Better Half and two dogs] to share the days with are insufficient respite to those of us who experience seasonal affective disorder during the shorter days of winter. Lack of sunlight in June isn’t much different than lack of sunlight in December or January, except that, so far, I’ve not had to shovel the precipitation.

I’m adjusting my focus to concentrating on surviving this dreary spell in hope and expectation that thriving may well follow, but not without survival. Meanwhile, the Better Half and Daughter Person are checking out several local riding instructors and stables. I’m starting to make a dent in (re)organizing my stacks of books into something more coherent. When the rains abate, I’ll be off to a local trout stream in an effort to thrive. Meanwhile, it looks like this isn’t going to be the year I try planting a three sisters garden. As Minnesota’s sports fans get to say all too often, “Maybe next year!!” In today’s poem, the late Jim Harrison has nicely captured the times we’re living in.

Solstice Litany

By Jim Harrison

      1

The Saturday morning meadowlark

came in from high up

with her song gliding into tall grass

still singing. How I'd like

to glide around singing in the summer

then to go south to where I already was

and find fields full of meadowlarks

in winter. But when walking my dog

I want four legs to keep up with her

as she thunders down the hill at top speed

then belly flops into the deep pond.

Lark or dog I crave the impossible.

I'm just human. All too human.

      2

I was nineteen and mentally

infirm when I saw the prophet Isaiah.

The hem of his robe was as wide

as the horizon and his trunk and face

were thousands of feet up in the air.

Maybe he appeared because I had read him

so much and opened too many ancient doors.

I was cooking my life in a cracked clay

pot that was leaking. I had found

secrets I didn't deserve to know.

When the battle for the mind is finally

over it's late June, green and raining.

      3

A violent windstorm the night before

the solstice. The house creaked and yawned.

I thought the morning might bring a bald earth,

bald as a man's bald head but not shiny.

But dawn was fine with a few downed trees,

the yellow rosebush splendidly intact.

The grass was all there dotted with Black

Angus cattle. The grass is indestructible

except to fire but now it's too green to burn.

What did the cattle do in this storm?

They stood with their butts toward the wind,

erect Buddhists waiting for nothing in particular.

I was in bed cringing at gusts,

imagining the contents of earth all blowing

north and piled up where the wind stopped,

the pile sky-high. No one can climb it.

A gopher comes out of a hole as if nothing happened.

 

      4

The sun should be a couple of million miles

closer today. It wouldn't hurt anything

and anyway this cold rainy June is hard

on me and the nesting birds. My own nest

is stupidly uncomfortable, the chair

of many years. The old windows don't keep

the weather out, the wet wind whipping

my hair. A very old robin drops dead

on the lawn, a first for me. Millions

of birds die but we never see it—they like

privacy in this holy, fatal moment or so

I think. We can't tell each other when we die.

Others must carry the message to and fro.

"He's gone," they'll say. While writing an average poem

destined to disappear among the millions of poems

written now by mortally average poets.

      5

Solstice at the cabin deep in the forest.

The full moon shines in the river, there are pale

green northern lights. A huge thunderstorm

comes slowly from the west. Lightning strikes

a nearby tamarack bursting into flame.

I go into the cabin feeling unworthy.

At dawn the tree is still smoldering

in this place the gods touched earth.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Another aspect of equity

I bet you know that the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution are known as the Bill of Rights. It has an interesting and contentious history, as does the country. Did you know there’s also a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Some of the reading I’ve been doing recently made me wonder if there is any sort of declaration of human responsibility. It seems to me that the exercise of rights implies certain corresponding responsibilities, kind of like the golden rule. (I remember once upon a time learning of a version of the golden rule that ended “.... but do it first.”) So today I did an on line search for universal declaration of human responsibilities, not expecting to find much.

does a right to vote imply a responsibility to be informed?

Photo by J. Harrington

Indeed, I didn’t find much but did find a version of A Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities. That was encouraging, until I skimmed through it and then searched the page and found no mention of Earth or our environment. At best, I find this short-sighted. Fortunately there are a number of authors, indigenous to America, who have provided the basis for a necessary expansion of our (all humans) responsibilities to the environment of which we are a member and on which we depend for life-sustaining services and goods. One of the better examples that comes to mind is Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Honorable Harvest.

Another aspect of human responsibilities that I found conspicuous by its absence from the Declaration is the issue of decolonizing our society and economy and the integration, or at least acknowledgement, of indigenous and western knowledge and world views. We do seem to be making some progress on those fronts. I hope it won’t end up being a classic example of “too little, too late.”

Covalent Bonds

Gwen Westerman

we are
dream carriers
child bearers
those burdens borne
with hope
and intensity
under the gravity
of responsibility
history and
love
not guilt
love
and hope
for those who
will dream
and share
these burdens born
we do not give up
willingly
but attract and repel
balance and share
stronger
in that bond of
love

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

The rain on the plains has become a pain

We are under the second tornado watch declared within the past week. Tornado watches induce a similar level of anxiety in me that thunderstorms and lightning do the dogs. I haven’t yet tried one of their calming hemp seed oil treats, but I’m getting tempted. (Even with a calming treat, my dog, SiSi, was extremely anxious again last night during the midnight storms.) I honestly don’t remember an extended period of weather like we’ve been having the past few weeks during the 50 of so years I’ve lived in this state. It’s almost like we’ve disrupted the climate. If only the climate scientists had warned US that something like this could happen. Oh, wait!!!

backyard Iris versicolor (Harlequin Blueflag)

Photo by J. Harrington

There is some good news from all the rain. We have half a dozen or so blueflag iris blooming in the wet spot in out back yard. Although I don’t have a positive id, I’m going with Iris versicolor (Harlequin Blueflag) since the distribution maps show it in our county and the alternate species isn’t. This is the first time in several years we’ve seen blueflag blooms in the wet spot and the wet “summer” seems to be the major variable. I’ll drop the quotes from the season after the 20th of this month. As I’mmm sure you know, we’re in that shoulder season when the meteorologists have claimed it’s summer but the astronomical calendar hasn’t changed.

I’ve not got a close enough look to be sure which, but either a purple finch or a house finch has been visiting the feeder the past few days. That’s a nice surprise. The dragon flies seem to have thinned out the mosquitos a bit and the winds help prevent them from being able to land on me. I think it may be a good thing that I’m getting better at finding silver linings to our plethora of clouds, but wish I didn’t have so many opportunities to practice silver mining.

Praying

by Mary Oliver

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

The more things change ...

We (the family and I) enjoyed a wonderful Father’s Day yesterday. The Daughter Person wrote a great poem for me about me and her perspective on the job I did helping to raise her. (And here I thought I was the poet in the family.) The Better Half and I visited our son in his group home and, later, had dinner with the Daughter Person, Son-In-Law and Granddaughter. We would live in a better, happier world if everyone had a day as satisfying as mine was. If only we could shift some (most) of our rain storms to somewhere that needs rain more than we do! For today and at least part of tomorrow, many of the counties in Minnesota, including ours, are under a Flood Watch until at least late tomorrow. Sigh! That’s not going to help the fishability of nearby trout streams. Maybe if I explore near the headwaters?

storm clouds persist both literally and figuratively

Photo by J. Harrington

I don’t know about you, but I’ve reached the point where I’m vacillating wildly in my daily degree of support for any Democrat and/or all Democrats. Many times I figure the only good thing about them is that they’re not MAGAts. Other times it's more of “a pox on both their houses.” The world, or at least our part of it, was a better place when there was a fairness doctrine that could be enforced on tv and radio and before money became speech. Since I was active on the internet before commercial use was allowed, I can honestly claim that I liked that better in those days too. It’s not only that I’m tired of sorting mis and disinformation, several qualified observers I read have substantially different perspectives on whether our society is responding at all, or appropriately, to the threats we’re facing as a democracy and a country, let alone how to respond.

I’ve recently been waxing nostalgic which prompted me to do a quick search for today’s “poem.” Five or six decades isn’t a long time in evolutionary and geological terms, but I do find it frustrating that these lyrics, that I first heard in my much younger days, are as relevant today as they were then.

Ally, Ally Oxen Free

Rod McKuen

Time to let the rain fall without the help of man
Time to let the trees grow tall. God, if they only can
Time to let our children live in a land that's free
And ally, ally, ally, ally, oxen free

Time to blow the smoke away and look at the sky again
Time to let our friends know we'd like to begin again
Time to send a message across the land and sea
Ally, ally, ally, ally, oxen free

Strong and weak, mild and meek, no more hide and seek

Time to see the fairness of a children's game
Time for men to stop and learn to do the same
Time to make our minds up if the world at last will be
Ally, ally, ally, ally, oxen free
(Ally, ally, ally, ally, oxen free)
Ally, ally, ally, ally, oxen free
(Ally, ally, ally, ally, oxen free)

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

It’s BLOOMing Father’s Day

This year Father’s Day coincides with Bloomsday which, according to The Writer’s Almanac:

... James Joyce fans all over the world are celebrating. It commemorates the day on which the events of his novel Ulysses take place. Joyce chose June 16th, 1904, for the setting because it was the day of his first date with Nora Barnacle, his future wife. Even after the novel's success, Joyce himself did not call June 16th "Bloomsday." Nor did he really celebrate the day, though publisher Sylvia Beach organized a celebratory Parisian luncheon on June 16th, 1929 — years before the book was legal in the English-speaking world.

Much as I identify with my Irish heritage, today honoring my father, and all fathers, takes precedence. I do my best and hope my shoulders are broad and strong enough to do for my children and grandchild what my father did for me: teach me to care about and for others, and to think for myself. Today’s poem says it even better. If we’re not here to take care of each other and, especially, our children, why are we here?

Shoulders

Naomi Shihab Nye
1952 – 

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Recent sightings

On the way to pick up our box of community supported agriculture [CSA] shares this morning, there were several whitetail deer browsing along the side of the road, including one fork horn buck in velvet. Also sharing the road, ditches and adjoining fields were pheasants, turkeys, and a multitude of songbirds. Last night the Better Half and I sat patiently in the Jeep as a hen pheasant and more than a dozen chicks single filed across the road in front of us. There’s also been more than the usual number of cottontails and kits scampering along and across the road the past week or so.

In case it’s of interest, here’s what was in the CSA box this week:

• GREEN TOWERS ROMAINE
• KOHLRABI
• SPINACH
• BABY CARROTS
• MIXED RADISHES, and
• ARUGULA & CILANTRO BUNDLES

a woodcock enjoying the driveway puddle

Photo by J. Harrington

The thunderstorms earlier in the week refilled a puddle that lives in a low spot in our driveway. That puddle has recently been discovered by a handful of goldfinch males in bright yellow mating colors. Watching them thrash at water's edges and erupt into the trees has been an occasional source of beauty and pleasure. The same birds don’t seem particularly interested in the bird bath mounted on the deck railing, perhaps because it gets deeper too quickly?

The strangest sighting of the week came close to, in fact occurred inside, home. We’ve no idea where they came from, but yesterday I captured and released outside two bumblebees that were crawling sluggishly across the floor in the downstairs family room. Then, an hour or two later, I did the same thing with a third bee that was in almost the same spot as the first one. All I can say is “Go figure!”

While I have been writing this, rain has started falling again. It seems to be benefitting much of the local flora and fauna, particularly the non-human species. If I really wanted to live in this kind of climate, I would have moved to the northwest coast long ago. But, even such as I can only spend so much time sitting and reading. I’m looking forward to brighter days.

What Is June Anyway?

By David Budbill

After three weeks of hot weather and drought,

           we've had a week of cold and rain,

just the way it ought to be here in the north,

            in June, a fire going in the woodstove

all day long, so you can go outside in the cold

            and rain anytime and smell

the wood smoke in the air.

 

This is the way I love it. This is why

           I came here almost

fifty years ago. What is June anyway

          without cold and rain

and a fire going in the stove all day?

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Soggy is as soggy does

It’s wonderful that I have a stack of books to be read because we’re forecast to get almost an inch and a half of rain tomorrow and rain daily for at least the eight days following. This might explain the large wooden boat I saw one of the neighbors building in his side yard. There’s also been lots of animals walking by in pairs recently. I wonder if that could mean something.

a local trout stream in mid-June

Photo by J. Harrington

It looks like I may need to adjust my fishing plans if the local trout streams start flooding. Not much yard work will be doable. I may have to just relax, drink coffee, bake some more sourdough, and read. Could it be that Mother Nature is giving us an extended Father’s Day present? I wouldn’t want to seem ungrateful, so I may squeeze in a reconnoitering trip to personally assess the wadeability and fishability of my home waters. Remember, last year many of us we experiencing drought conditions.

Meanwhile, yesterday and today I managed to make a little progress in restoring the yard to almost manageable conditions. When, if?, the rain stops we’ll get caught up on mowing, leaf cleanup, and torching a burn pile or two. This year is providing lots of opportunities for me to practice shaking my obsessive-compulsive need to get it done, NOW! and to do better at going with the flow (heh, heh). Maybe some of you will get to enjoy a Father’s Day weekend that isn’t too soggy and can share with some of us what that’s like.

Instructions on Not Giving Up

Ada Limón
1976 – 

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.