Once burned, twice shy?

Local soy bean fields are (all?) harvested. Field corn harvest is underway. Autumn colors have emerged on just about all of the oak leaves in the neighborhood. Samhain / Halloween arrives in a week, although temperatures the past few days have been reaching the low to mid 70s, 15 to 20℉ above average for this time of year. I'm not used to breaking into a sweat while cleaning up leaf fall.

local field corn harvest

Photo by J. Harrington

Not that I've paid close attention, but political ads seem way too abundant and more full of tricks than treats. Wouldn't it be nice to live somewhere, some time, in which politicians told us lots more about why they deserve our votes rather than why their opponent(s) don't? Are politics really supposed to be a zero sum game? Why not focus on how to attain what's best for the country and its people? How can we get more politicians trained in multi-solving instead of mudslinging?

The Better Half [BH] and I spent a some time Saturday afternoon at a Halloween party hosted at the stables where Daughter Person boards her horse and BH, Daughter, and Granddaughter go riding. There were noticeably more young ’uns than us oldsters, as it should be around Halloween and some other holidays. Everyone seemed to have a good time and the horses enjoyed the extra company, but 73℉ just didn’t feel right for a Minnesota Halloween party. Today we're back to cloudy skies and seasonable temperatures. We may not see another 70℉ until next Spring.

Much of next week will be devoted to managing fallen leaves and trying to get organized for Winter and whatever the election results may bring. Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American today reminds US that, about 100 years ago, we went through a similar con job of "let's run the country like a business." It's unfortunate to tragic that our social and cultural memories don't serve US better. Maybe this time when I put my hand on a hot stove it won't badly burn me? Don't forget to VOTE!

October

Evalyn Callahan Shaw

October is the month that seems 
All woven with midsummer dreams;  
She brings for us the golden days 
That fill the air with smoky haze,  
She brings for us the lisping breeze 
And wakes the gossips in the trees,  
Who whisper near the vacant nest  
Forsaken by its feathered guest.  
Now half the birds forget to sing,  
And half of them have taken wing,  
Before their pathway shall be lost 
Beneath the gossamer of frost.  
Zigzag across the yellow sky,  
They rustle here and flutter there,  
Until the boughs hang chill and bare,  
What joy for us—what happiness  
Shall cheer the day the night shall bless?  
’Tis hallowe’en, the very last  
Shall keep for us remembrance fast,  
When every child shall duck the head 
To find the precious pippin red. 

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Season for keeping promises

I voted on Friday, October 16; participated in the local No Kings - Vote Early rally on Saturday; and today reached the limit of letting MAGAts and their Kommandant live in my head, rent free or not. I'm working on minimizing social media and news reading time henceforth. If civil war breaks out on or shortly after November 3, I'll probably get a call or an email. Could it be coincidence, and what kind, that Election Day next month occurs immediately after the Day of the Dead? Meanwhile, I want to do as little as possible to aid and abet any support of tech oligarchs and their autocrat associates.

what do you need to be ready to vote?

Photo by J. Harrington

We're at peak leaf color but the winds of the past few days have prompted peak leaf fall. Mid-week temperatures are forecast to return into the low 70s. Normal highs for this time of year are in the mid 50s, although "normal" seems on its way to being pronounced archaic. Meanwhile we all get to ponder what a super El Niño may ring to the middle of the country over the next several months. Do these tense, pensive, times warrant the creation of a new term: tensive?

On the brighter side, convincing myself that cleaning up fallen leaves and pulling past bloom golden rod is earth care and not just middle class yard work has helped me enjoy time spent outside this past week. (One aspiration I've never aspired to is having a perfect lawn.) Meanwhile, the local wild turkey flocks and gray squirrel population are making progress cleaning up the fallen acorns. With luck, we'll get early holiday presents as the votes are tallied, the goblins and trolls will soon leave the country and we'll all have lots to be thankful for come November 26.

Let America Be America Again

By Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

 

(America never was America to me.)

 

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

 

(It never was America to me.)

 

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

 

(There's never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

 

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

 

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

 

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one's own greed!

 

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

 

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That's made America the land it has become.

O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home—

For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,

And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa's strand I came

To build a "homeland of the free."

 

The free?

 

Who said the free?  Not me?

Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we've dreamed

And all the songs we've sung

And all the hopes we've held

And all the flags we've hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay—

Except the dream that's almost dead today.

 

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

 

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

 

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath—

America will be!

 

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states—

And make America again!

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On seasonal success[ion]

Tomorrow is Indigenous Peoples Day. Depending on where you are, it may, or may not, be celebrated as such. I don't think there's mail delivery tomorrow, but don't take my word for it, check here. Personally, I'm looking forward to a notable drop in temperatures, since yesterday and today we've been experiencing highs in the mid-80's. Tomorrow is forecast to be about 15℉ cooler, but with scattered thunderstorms. The latter means I may, or may not, try to catch up on leaf picking-upping.

local maple trees, mid-October color

Photo by J. Harrington

Yesterday, to honor Banned Books Week, I renewed my library card and borrowing privileges at two nearby libraries, each a member of a different system. One of them had available a copy of a book I've been wanting to read for several weeks, Living Resistance, by Kaitlin B. Curtice. I'd recently finished enjoying reading Everything Is a Story by the same author and had been putting off buying a copy due to my continuing stacks of unread books. Based on reading the first few chapters of Living, I suspect it will go on my Christmas list for a reread this winter.

Things are busying up as we head toward the holiday season. Next week we pay the second half of this year's property taxes early in the week and head back to the same county building late in the week to VOTE EARLY, before we join a NO KINGS DAY protest next Saturday, the 17th. Then it's on to Samhain/Halloween; Native American Heritage month in November, Thanksgiving and come December, some family birthdays and Christmas. Amidst the frivolity, we need to sign up for and complete a half day safe driver refresher course for our auto insurance discount.

I don't know how you're viewing the state of the world these days, but I've developed some real questions about the path(s) we're on. Do we really need more data centers? Is Artificial Intelligence a real net benefit? Why haven't we accomplished more to meet climate change adaptation and reduction goals? Should we be satisfied that "Nearly half of adults, 47%, read below a 6th-grade level." 

Kaitlin B. Curtice has an online journal. When I subscribed, I got a link to a pdf of several of her poems, from which I've borrowed the one below. As a society and/or culture, it seems to me that we aren't doing all that well with the way we've approached "success" in our country (and elsewhere). Here's a healthier perspective, I believe.

Success.
They tell us how it’s supposed to be—
success is earned,
learned,
fought for,
worth dying for,
success is a thing that you’ll
climb every mountain
to achieve.
But I think there’s a gentler way.
What if success, for you, for me,
is simply learning to be—
to be with ourselves,
to be with the quiet,
to be with Earth, our Mother,
to be when the noise is loud,
to be when the hustle is demanding,
to be when we “should” be going.
Success isn’t a thing to earn or achieve
but a letting go
so that we get to the right stuff,
the good stuff,
the stuff of magic and love
in the end.
Success to them is an unattainable dream. Success for us, right now, is this moment’s breath and every little sliver of sacredness that follows.

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Banning books: a snow job?

Leaf color is increasing in patches and splotches. (I should spend more time just sitting and watching the leaves change color.) Conifer needles started dropping all over the driveway a few days ago. Most of this years goldenrods have been pulled from in front of the lilac bushes. Autumn is settling in for her seasonal visit.

October 14 snow

Photo by J. Harrington

As far as I can tell, we've not yet had our first local frost, although we have had several advisories. Some years we get our first touch of snow by mid-month. With a super El Nińo pending, I expect we won't see a repeat of the Halloween blizzard of 1991, but I've also learned to Never Say Never.

I'm planning on voting around the end of next week or early the following, depending, in part, on whether Saturday voting is a local option. Plus, the local chapter of Indivisible is holding a NO KINGS- VOTE EARLY rally on Saturday, October 17. I hope and plan to be in attendance, weather and health permitting. (Flu season has started, right?)

Today is the beginning of Banned Books Week. That means it's time for a trip to our friendly, local, independent book store, while wearing my ACLU banned books club sweatshirt. I'm down to no more than a couple of dozen new, unread books stacked on the book cases, so I can at least look for additions before Christmas arrives.

Snow in October

Alice Dunbar-Nelson
1875 – 1935

Today I saw a thing of arresting poignant beauty:

A strong young tree, brave in its Autumn finery

Of scarlet and burnt umber and flame yellow,

Bending beneath a weight of early snow,

Which sheathed the north side of its slender trunk,

And spread a heavy white chilly afghan

Over its crested leaves.

Yet they thrust through, defiant, glowing,

Claiming the right to live another fortnight,

Clamoring that Indian Summer had not come,

Crying “Cheat! Cheat!” because Winter had stretched

Long chill fingers into brown, streaming hair

Of fleeing October.

The film of snow shrouded the proud redness of the tree,

As premature grief grays the strong head

Of a virile, red-haired man.

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