Back to the Future, again?

It's been so cold for so long even the dogs have cabin fever. They clamor to go out but as soon as we're outside in -10℉ to -20℉ temperatures and/or windchills, they decide they made a mistake and want to go back inside, forgetting about why they wanted out in the first place. I'm sympathetic but so far each dog has refused offers to be trained to use the inside toilet. They claim their legs aren't long enough. Spring seems like a lonnngg way off this week.

Are we confusing knowledge with wisdom?

Photo by J. Harrington

The days are noticeably longer than they were at the solstice four and a half weeks ago. It's the lag between day length and temperatures that's the problem here in the North Country. But then we're living in times when it snows in Florida so is the concept of "normal" even relevant? Not if we look at Washington, D.C. and the stories coming from there.

It was Buckminster Fuller who told us years ago: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” I've been thinking about that as the current regime, still supported by 30% to 40% of the population, continues to attack the rule of law and disregard our Constitution. The checks and balances envisioned by the Founders aren't. And it's not just for US that democracy is eroding.

Several years ago the Center for American Progress issued a report on Why the World’s Democracies Need a Global Kleptocracy Initiative. There appears to have been as much progress on that front as there has been resolving climate change. And yet we see more and more folks supporting Sarah Kendzior's assessment that "the US is a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government". It becomes more apparent by the day that we need a new model for our country. Maybe we need to mirror some of the thinking the Founders considered when declaring independence and drafting a constitution. They, in part, reflected practices from Native American culture. We could try a variation.

Have you heard oof the Seven Grandfather Teachings?

"The Seven Grandfather Teachings have always been a part of the Native American culture. Their roots date back to the beginning of time. These teachings impact our surroundings, along with providing guidance toward our actions to one another." They are: Love, Respect, Bravery, Truth, Honesty, Humility, and Wisdom.

When was the last time you heard our political leaders talk about these qualities as part of our political process, the American Dream, or the Good Life? To borrow from a popular movie, could it be time for US to go Back to the Future?

What I Keep

Linda Hogan 

Once we had mountains
and you took them down.

It was enchanted before,
with the song of golden winds
of pollens from flowers
you also removed, as if it were the gold
you searched for. We gave you our labor.
We gave you our food, our sleeping mats.
You slept a year before we sent you away
with burning arrows and your fat ran across earth.

You took the plants on ships
away from our beautiful woods
from the forest,
you took them back to strange lands
already destroyed.
Then you needed our lands,
our labor,
and more of you
always arriving,
until you took our homes
while we still lived inside them.
You took the birds, the rookeries of beautiful waters,
feathers for hats
made from animals of this land
and all the time you lost,
so much even
a young woman had to lead the way
for your fame.

You need us now,
so I give to you
my knowledge, my mind, my stone soup.
But to myself, for myself
I keep my soul.
Our gods, your people
will never take.

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Winter didn't wait for the solstice

Today it's time to say good-bye to November, since tomorrow we welcome the arrival of December. Signs of Thanksgiving past arrive later today in the form of hot turkey sandwiches for tonight's dinner, while the Christmas season arrived earlier this week in the form of snowflake lights and wreathes adorning the house and reflecting in the snow from the two separate storms we had this last week. In fact, another snow shower has started since I began writing this post. Sometimes we get too much of a good thing.

Christmas cheer comes in many shapes and sizes

Photo by J. Harrington

Juncos are back at the feeder, probably for the rest of winter. There's a pair of cardinals that occasionally arrive at the feeder just as dark is setting in. Maybe, if we ever shake the chronic cloud cover, they'll show up during the day to bring bright Christmas color to the woods. Male cardinals agains a snowy background are about as cheery as winter woods get, it seems to me.

The Better Half [BH] and I have yet to select a home grown Christmas tree from the woods around the house. The aforementioned snow storms required enough snow blowing and shoveling to preempt woods wandering. I'll try a reconnoiter tomorrow and see if I can spot some candidates for the BH's approval. We've been cutting our own, on our own, for several years now and it's become a fun tradition.

Another holiday season tradition around here, blooming amaryllis, was renewed today when the BH put three separate, newly arrived, bulbs into three planters on the south-facing window sill. I''ll be curious to see how long it takes them to blossom. I should have paid more attention in years past.

This is supposed to be a season of peace to men of good will and / or peace, good will toward men. Holding aside the archaic, sexist phrasing, peace and good will seem sparse this year. Perhaps, if each of us tries, just a little bit harder, as Janis used to urge us, we can make this season a pleaasant memory for many more of both young and old than would otherwise be the case. It's worth a try, don't you think?

Since this is the last day of Native American Heritage Month, let's have Joy Harjo help us welcome winter and December.

 

Grace

Joy Harjo   1951 –

                                    For Darlene Wind and James Welch

I think of Wind and her wild ways the year we had nothing to lose and lost it anyway in the cursed country of the fox. We still talk about that winter, how the cold froze imaginary buffalo on the stuffed horizon of snowbanks. The haunting voices of the starved and mutilated broke fences, crashed our thermostat dreams, and we couldn't stand it one more time. So once again we lost a winter in stubborn memory, walked through cheap apartment walls, skated through fields of ghosts into a town that never wanted us, in the epic search for grace. 

Like Coyote, like Rabbit, we could not contain our terror and clowned our way through a season of false midnights. We had to swallow that town with laughter, so it would go down easy as honey. And one morning as the sun struggled to break ice, and our dreams had found us with coffee and pancakes in a truck stop along Highway 80, we found grace.

I could say grace was a woman with time on her hands, or a white buffalo escaped from memory. But in that dingy light it was a promise of balance. We once again understood the talk of animals, and spring was lean and hungry with the hope of children and corn. 

I would like to say, with grace, we picked ourselves up and walked into the spring thaw. We didn't; the next season was worse. You went home to Leech Lake to work with the tribe and I went south. And, Wind, I am still crazy. I know there is something larger than the memory of a dispossessed people. We have seen it. 

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November's heritage: memories and memorials

It was fifty years ago tomorrow that the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior. Gordon Lightfoot memorialized the tragedy with his song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Please pause for a moment of silence after following the link and listening to him perform. Then check some interesting background to the song.

Minnesota's Split Rock Lighthouse on Lake Superior

Photo by J. Harrington

Locally, on November 10 the Split Rock Lighthouse and the Minnesota Historical Society will host a memorial to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Fitzgerald's sinking, as has been done for the past four decades or so.

Our area's firearm’s deer season opened yesterday with colder temperatures than we’ve seen so far this season. Warmer days are forecast for later in the week. One of the reasons I was more of a grouse and waterfowl hunter than a whitetail seeker is that I can't manage to sit still enough to blend into the landscape when experiencing the frequently cold temperatures we get during deer season in the North Country. Plus, when I tried deer hunting back in New England, before moving to Minnesota, I did it with a mixed group of bow hunters and bird hunters. It rarely failed that the bird hunters spooked deer and the bow hunters watched grouse strutting around their stands.

UPDATE: Local ponds are forming ice cover. First snow of the season is falling as graupel and forming snow snakes along the roads.

Since November is Native American Heritage month, as well as the season for early gales on Superior, and since Lightfoot referred to Superior by her Ojibwe/Anishinaabe name, Gitche Gumee, it seems fitting to close today with a Kimberly Blaeser poem. Water, in Great Lakes and elsewhere, has long been a source of both life and death.

Wellspring: Words from Water

A White Earth childhood water rich and money poor.
Vaporous being transformed in cycles—
the alluvial stories pulled from Minnesota lakes
harvested like white fish, like manoomin,
like old prophecies of seed growing on water.
Legends of Anishinaabeg spirit beings:
cloud bearer Thunderbird who brings us rain,
winter windigo like Ice Woman, or Mishibizhii
who roars with spit and hiss of rapids—
great underwater panther, you copper us
to these tributaries of balance. Rills. A cosmology
of nibi.  We believe our bodies thirst. Our earth.
One element. Aniibiishaaboo. Tea brown
wealth. Like maple sap. Amber. The liquid eye of moon.
Now she turns tide, and each wedded being gyrates
to the sound, its river body curving.
We, women of ageless waters, endure;
like each flower drinks from night,
holds dew. Our bodies a libretto,
saturated, an aquifer—we speak words
from ancient water.

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Listening for the land to speak

The November section of our Minnesota Weatherguide Calendar and Almanac has a timely epigram from Linda Hogan:

There is a way that nature
speaks, that land speaks.
Most of the time we are 
simply not patient enough,
quiet enough, to pay
attention to the story.

November is Native American Heritage month but, with the federal government shut down since the beginning of October, most .gov websites haven't been updated. November is also the month when the North Country begins to accelerate its slide from autumn into winter. As I was poking about the corners of the internet yesterday, looking for some North Country phenology material, I came across the University of Minnesota's Center for Community-Engaged Learning's Sites of Resistance and Resilience in the Twin Cities on the UMN's Season Watch Resources page. The fortuitous discoveries above remind me of the old dictum: "No amount of planning will ever replace dumb luck."

early November North Country snow [2013]

Photo by J. Harrington

Winter, among those who live close to nature and her seasons, is often a time for quiet hunkering down and storytelling. We're headed in that direction. Summer's ants are disappearing and winter's mice are looking for warm places to nest. If this year is near typical, our "permanent" snow cover will begin about a week before Thanksgiving. If you haven't yet come across a copy of National Geographic's 1621 A New Look at Thanksgiving, I suggest you try to order a copy from Birchbark Books. I'm going to start this year's (re)reading later today.

Harvested cornfields are being gleaned by growing flocks of swans and Canada geese. A few of those waterfowl may winter over on the St. Croix river near Hudson WI. Most will migrate south as open water grows ice cover and harvested fields are covered by more and more snow. Since we lack a snow bird's cottage in the warm south, we'll practice a lethargic, hibernation-approximating existence, as much as we can get away with, until the seasons change again and spring returns.

Map

Linda Hogan

This is the world
so vast and lonely
without end, with mountains
named for men
who brought hunger
from other lands,
and fear
of the thick, dark forest of trees
that held each other up,
knowing fire dreamed of swallowing them
and spoke an older tongue,
and the tongue of the nation of wolves
was the wind around them.
Even ice was not silent.
It cried its broken self
back to warmth.
But they called it
ice, wolf, forest of sticks,
as if words would make it something
they could hold in gloved hands,
open, plot a way
and follow.

This is the map of the forsaken world.
This is the world without end
where forests have been cut away from their trees.
These are the lines wolf could not pass over.
This is what I know from science:
that a grain of dust dwells at the center
of every flake of snow,
that ice can have its way with land,
that wolves live inside a circle
of their own beginning.
This is what I know from blood:
the first language is not our own.

There are names each thing has for itself,
and beneath us the other order already moves.
It is burning.
It is dreaming.
It is waking up.

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Ban hate, not books

This week, Oct 5 - 11, is Banned Books Week. Please try to read at least one from the lists of thousands of books banned during the past year. Remember, an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. Keep your mind busy by reading. Disobey Big Brother and The Party!

If you think you don't have enough time and/or money to tackle a whole banned book, you can at least take a crack at following this link and reading: Why Intolerance and Extremism Happen (and how to protect democracy in a divided world). I haven't quite finished it yet, but I'm pretty sure you'll find it worth your time.

After today, actual temperatures should approach a more seasonable level than the windy mid- to upper- 80s we've been experiencing, at least most places other than Washington, D.C., where folks are busy exhaling hot air and blaming someone else rather than actually solving problems for anyone other than pedophiles or the top 1% of wealth holders.

According to the Minnesota DNR, locally we should experience peak leaf color about the end of the week, so next weekend would be a good time to put down the banned book you've been reading and got for a walk or drive and do some leaf peeping. While you're doing that, you might want to think about how Joy Harjo has managed to not get any of her books banned.

This Morning I Pray for My Enemies

by Joy Harjo

And whom do I call my enemy?
An enemy must be worthy of engagement.
I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking.
It’s the heart that asks the question, not my furious mind.
The heart is the smaller cousin of the sun.
It sees and knows everything.
It hears the gnashing even as it hears the blessing.
The door to the mind should only open from the heart.
An enemy who gets in, risks the danger of becoming a friend.

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In service to the Serviceberry

Last Spring, about the time our pear tree was in bloom, I finally stumbled onto a local source of serviceberry bushes, of a species noted for producing good fruit, Saskatoon serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia). I drove to northern Dakota county and bought two at Gertens. Some time thereafter, I managed to plant them in accord with the directions. Several weeks later, despite watering them regularly between rainy spells, both bushes were leafless and dead. Rabbits? Deer? Pocket gophers? I wasn't sure but I was unhappy since the bushes were, to my mind, expensive plus the physical cost of planting them. I was slightly consoled by remembering the story by one of the Aldo Leopold kids about planting, and replanting, hundreds or thousands of conifers on their sand county farm.

pear tree in bloom, May 2025

Photo by J. Harrington

I spent bits and pieces of the Summer mumbling and grumbling about Amelanchier failures until the Better Half got tired of listening to me and called Gertens to confirm that my bushes were covered by a warranty. I could get replacements if I showed up with a receipt and photos of the dead bushes. Several weeks after getting the confirmation, I did so and the replacement process actually went better than I expected. It was smooth and pleasant.

Today's plantings added the prompt installation of wire cage protectors and the addition of bark mulch around the outside of each cage. The serviceberry bushes are supposed to show their own white flowers about the time the pear tree does, but won't grow nearly as tall. Now that the replacement planting is done, I'm now typing up this posting and will then keep my fingers and toes crossed that these bushes make it through the Autumn and Winter and Spring etc. Stay tuned and, if you haven't read Robin Wall Kimmerer's latest book, The Serviceberry, here's the original essay as a sample. It's the one that started me on this adventure.

Tobacco Origin Story, Because Tobacco Was a Gift Intended to Walk Alongside Us to the Stars

By Joy Harjo

From a story of how the tobacco plant came to our people, told to me by my cousin George Coser Jr.

It was way back, before there was a way back

When time threaded earth and sky.

Children were conceived, were born, grew, and walked tall

In what we now call a day.

There must have been two suns, a bright moon, somehow

We had more light than now, sheen

Of falling in love playing about Earth’s body

In a wild flicker which lit

Us up. We who were this planet and yearned for touch.

Every planted thought grew plant

Ladders to the stars, way back, before there was

No way back, Miss Mary Mack.

We used to sing along the buttons of her

Dress. Our babies are always

Our babies. Even back then when time waved through

The corn. We knew our plants like

Relatives. Their stories were our stories, there

Were songs for everything — I

Should say “are” songs for every transformation

They link between way back and

Now, the forever now, a time when a young

Mvskoke man and woman

Walked through the shimmer of the early evening.

They had become as one song.

They lay down when it was dark. I can hear their

Intimate low-voice talking.

How they tease one another with such gut love.

Earth makes a bed, with pillow

Mounds. And it is there as the night insects sing

They conceived their first child. They

Will look back as they walk East toward the sunrise.

The raw stalks of beginning

Will drink the light, root deeply dark into earth.

In the tracks of their loving

The plant-child emerges, first the seed head, then

Leafy, long male body and the white female

Flowers of tobacco, or

Hece, as the people called it when it called

To them. Come here. We were brought

To you from those who love you. We will help you.

And that’s how it began, way

Back, when we knew how to hear the songs of plants

And could sing back, like now

On paper, with marks like bird feet, but where are

Our ears? They have grown to fit

Around earbuds, to hear music made for cold

Cash, like our beloved smoke-

Making threaded with addiction and dead words.

Sing this song back to me, girl.

In the moonlight, tobacco plant had silver

Moon buttons all up her back.

We’re getting dressed to go plant new songs with words.

Our sun is dimming faster.

Mvto hece, mvto hvse, mvto e — 

Kanvchaga, mvto ah

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Seven questions could determine our future

Last week we got glimpses of several different whitetail bucks growing antlers in velvet. Birds have begun to flock along telephone wires. Sumac bushes are showing fruit clusters and their leaves have begun to show red instead of green. Monday night the pre-midnight sky was almost constantly full of thunderstorm lightning for a couple of hours. Wildfire smoke continues to drift south from Canada. About the only thing worse than this Summer’s weather has been state, national, and international politics.

early August, sumac color change

Photo by J. Harrington

Minnesota has a couple of special elections coming up for state senate seats and one for a house seat. Next year the state and country engage in midterm elections. Although Joy Harjo’s poem, as written, is directed at candidates, I believe it would serve US better if every voter read and memorized, or at least copied, the poem, and personally asked the questions of each and every candidate seeking donations and / or votes. From An American Sunrise:

For Those Who Would Govern

First question: Can you first govern yourself?

Second question: What is the state of your own household?

Third question: Do you have a proven record of community service and compassionate acts?

Fourth question: Do you know the history and laws of your principalities?

Fifth question: Do you follow sound principles? Look for fresh vision to lift all the inhabitants of the land, including animals, plants, elements, all who share this earth?

Sixth question: Are you owned by lawyers, bankers, insurance agents, lobbyists, or other politicians, anyone else who would unfairly profit by your decisions?

Seventh question: Do you have authority by the original keepers of the lands, those who obey natural law and are in the service of the lands on which you stand?

(In my opinion, the required, correct answers to questions 1, 3, 4, and 5 is YES; to 2 should be at least “manageable;” to 6, NO; and to 7, it depends.)

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March into June during May

A recent spell of days with temperatures rising to the upper 80’s to low 90’s, plus sunny weather, was broken by a series of thunderstorms, leaving us with days full of wet, windy, cloudy, much cooler weather with temperatures reaching only the upper 50’s to mid-60’s. I took advantage of the cooler, wetter, weather to plant a pair of Serviceberry bushes in the back yard. My inspiration derived from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, Serviceberry, as well as Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s theory of water. Plus, I planted the “shadbushes" in memory of the shad fishing I used to do long ago during May in Massachusetts and in memory of a long-time friend who walked on several years ago, after he followed a career in public service with a stint at the nursery where I bought the Amelanchier “Standing Ovation” cultivars.

The contrary mixed-up months' weather has hindered spring yard cleanup. Winter storms brought down more dead branches, as usual, and a couple of sickly trees. Before the wood gets gathered up, I want to reduce existing brush piles to ashes. Too much wind or too wet wood has been the case for the past month or so. Maybe next week? I’m trying to react to all of this piling on with a “learn to live with Nature” philosophy, but some days that’s a real struggle.

back yard lilac bush in bloom, last year

Photo by J. Harrington

The lilac bushes in front of the house have finally bloomed, about a week behind those south of us in the Twin Cities urban heat island. The bush in the back yard is just beginning to bloom. Seeing and smelling lilacs in bloom takes me back to grammar school and the yearly period just before summer vacation. The nuns prohibited lilac bouquets in classrooms because, they claimed, it made us students sleepy headed. I could never notice a difference in my friends or myself between lilac time and the rest of the year. Although, when weather approaches normal patterns, May, with or without lilac flowers, is often a sleepy-headed month as we gradually warm up and ease into summer’s “lazy, hazy, crazy days.”

Sprig of Lilac

Hyam Plutzik
1911 – 1962

Their heads grown weary under the weight of Time—
These few hours on the hither side of silence—
The lilac sprigs bend on the bough to perish.

Though each for its own sake is beautiful,
In each is the greater, the remembered beauty.
Each is exemplar of its ancestors.

Within the flower of the present, uneasy in the wind,
Are the forms of those of the years behind the door.
Their faint aroma touches the edge of the mind.

And the living and the past give to one another.
There is no door between them.  They pass freely
Out of themselves; becoming one another.

I see the lilac sprigs bending and withering.
Each year like Adonis they pass through the dumb-show of death,
Waxing and waning on the tree in the brain of a man.

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Back to the future?

Yesterday was a Red Flag day and not just because it was Mother's Day! Low humidity, winds gusting into the low thirties mph, plus no precipitation for a week or so raised the grass fire danger over much of the state. We get this morning off and the Red Flag returns at noon for the afternoon and evening. Please keep your fingers crossed that all those exposed to danger and destruction stay safe. These days that includes about all of US and most other Earthlings, doesn't it?

brush fire: not all burns are controlled

Photo by J. Harrington

Have you noticed that many librarians are moving 1984 and Brave New World from the fiction to the nonfiction section? That's disheartening, to put it mildly. Although the term Anthropocene has been rejected as a new geological epoch, I think there's a more hopeful future for the term and those living during it. It will become known as the period in which humans finally became wise enough to stop destroying the life support systems of their home planet. This assessment is based on a growing number of books that flag intelligent and successful environmental restoration movements growing world-wide. Here's a few titles for your consideration:

• What if We Get It Right?, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
• Carbon, Paul Hawken
• Hydrate the Earth, Ananda Fitzsimmons, and
• Is a River Alive?, Robert Macfarlane

I'm rereading the third title, almost finished each of the first two, and looking forward to getting a copy of the fourth next month as a gift. To paraphrase from the opening of the original Star Wars crawl: "A long time ago in on a galaxy planet far, far away [in time]...." the First People(s) believed Earth a sacred part of the Great Mystery. If you're old enough, you'll recognize where we borrowed this from: "Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear."

I don't know about you, but I think it'd be great if we all stopped trying to burn up our home planet and dedicated more to tending what's left and restoring what we've trashed. Otherwise, we won't be the ancestors our children and theirs needed.

        Salvage

Ada Limón
1976 –

On the top of Mount Pisgah, on the western
slope of the Mayacamas, there’s a madrone
tree that’s half-burned from the fires, half-alive
from nature’s need to propagate. One side
of her is black ash and at her root is what
looks like a cavity that was hollowed out
by flame. On the other side, silvery green
broadleaf shoots ascend toward the winter
light and her bark is a cross between a bay
horse and a chestnut horse, red and velvety
like the animal’s neck she resembles. I have
been staring at the tree for a long time now.
I am reminded of the righteousness I had
before the scorch of time. I miss who I was.
I miss who we all were, before we were this: half
alive to the brightening sky, half dead already.
I place my hand on the unscarred bark that is cool
and unsullied, and because I cannot apologize
to the tree, to my own self I say, I am sorry.
I am sorry I have been so reckless with your life.

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As we approach a time of resurrection

We’re close to mid-April this Palm Sunday. Here in the North Country, April is a time of snow showers and wild flowers. Wild turkeys begin mating rituals. Song birds return. Pregnant whitetail does will be dropping fawns in a month or two. Plant life (re)emerges from its winter retreat. Lakes and ponds lose their ice cover and some of us begin to lose our cabin fever as we wander about noticing Spring’s buds and blooms and growing warmth and open waters.

SiSi the yellow lab in her new home

Photo by J. Harrington

It was twelve years ago this month that SiSi came to live with us. She was between one and two when she arrived as a "rescue." We have had many happy times since she came and she has definitely done a good job of rescuing me. I'm glad we get to enjoy another Spring together, even though the Better Half has already found the first tick of the season on her.

April is also National Poetry Month. As part of my celebration, I bought a copy of Heidi Barr’s latest book of poems, Church of Shadow and Light, at a local independent book store, Scout & Morgan. As soon as I finish posting this, I'm going to start reading some of those poems as a reward for beginning Spring chores today. The back blade came off the tractor; both the front and back hoses got hooked up and water turned on; pounds of winter's mud got rinsed off the Jeep. It feels really good to be out and about doing something other than blowing snow, although we didn't have much of that to do this past winter.

Ever since last November, I've grown more and more concerned about the direction the returning administration has been trying to drag US and about the limited resistance expressed by those who are intended to serve as checks and balances to unbalanced behavior. Our current situation makes me think off how Native Americans have felt about the trail of broken treaties left behind by US. Maybe we'll respond to the stresses we're experiencing by realizing that we've allowed our spirits to be broken by relying on transactions instead of engaging in relationships. Perhaps we can learn what to do if we read and remember this poem.

For Calling The Spirit Back From Wandering The Earth In Its Human Feet

by Joy Harjo

Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that
bottle of pop.

Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control.

Open the door, then close it behind you.

Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel
the earth gathering essences of plants to clean.

Give back with gratitude.

If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and
back.

Acknowledge this earth who has cared for you since you were
a dream planting itself precisely within your parents’ desire.

Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the
guardians who have known you before time,
who will be there after time.
They sit before the fire that has been there without time.

Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.

Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people
who accompany you.
Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought
down upon them.

Don’t worry.
The heart knows the way though there may be high-rises,
interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars, and
those who will despise you because they despise themselves.

The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few
years, a hundred, a thousand or even more.

Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and
leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the
thieves of time.

Do not hold regrets.

When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning
by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed.

You must clean yourself with cedar, sage, or other healing plant.

Cut the ties you have to failure and shame.

Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction.

Ask for forgiveness.

Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.

Call yourself back. You will find yourself caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.

You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.
Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.

Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It will return
in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be
happy to be found after being lost for so long.

Your spirit will need to sleep awhile after it is bathed and
given clean clothes.

Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who
loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no
place else to go.

Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.

Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.

C’mon Spring!

For many, tomorrow, January 6, is the feast of the Epiphany. That’s when our Christmas decorations will start to come down for another year. It’ll feel like a long time until we celebrate Valentine’s Day next month. At least many of us will be able to  have some fun organizing to file taxes in April (he typed snarkily). Looking at what is claimed to be “normal” high and low temperatures in our area, we’ll begin to thaw near the end of the third week or start of the fourth in February. Then it’s only another month until Spring Equinox (March  20).

say "good-bye" Christmas

Photo by J. Harrington

If you got the impression I don’t like winter, you’re perceptive. We’ve been experiencing a polar vortex with windchills persisting below zero. At least (for now) the freezing rain, ice and snow are occurring well south of us. On the brighter side, there’s a forced bulb garden and another plant growing towards blooming, bringing spring early to our indoors. Plus I have a stack of books I’m enjoying reading and a list of those to be published this year that I’m looking forward to. We’ll try to avoid being overly grumpy despite the season, the weather and the incoming administration. I’ve noticed that all I accomplish by getting upset at others’ (or my own) incompetence is getting upset and being unhappy. It’s a habit I’m trying to break.

Thanks largely, but not entirely, to the vagaries of the weather, I’ve missed fly fishing the past couple of seasons. We plan on making a mighty effort to do better this year. (See above re: not getting upset as often.) Furthermore, some of my recent readings note that Native Americans focus on storytelling during the winter. Storytelling and reading are a lot alike, but I need to forego doomscrollling, news about the inauguration and the incoming administration, and focus on phenology, fly-fishing and successful responses to our climate and related environmental crises. These might be considered New Year’s Resolutions, but I made a new year's resolution decades ago to never make another and I haven’t yet broken that one.

Here’s a fine way to ground ourselves for what lies ahead:

Remember

Joy Harjo
1951 – 

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

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Wishing you seasons full of happiness

Were it not for our persistently cloudy skies, about 3 am this morning we could have enjoyed seeing December's full moon, known as Little Spirit Moon by the Ojibwe and Shedding Horns Moon by the Lakota, according to my copy of the Minnesota Weather Guide calendar. The dogs and I were taking our early morning constitutional about that time. As Minnesota sports fans, we have lots of practice with the phrase “wait ’til next year.” This year we’re in a typical Minnesota pattern of really cold and sunny or warmer and cloudy and often snowy. Yesterday and today are like the latter.

Proof that it’s been cold can be seen on local lakes where portable ice fishing houses are popping up like woodland mushrooms in a wet spring. While doing seasonal errands, we noticed the houses on not just one, several local lakes. I’ve tried ice fishing years ago. I’m too restless to sit still in an ice house or on a deer stand for the amount of time required for success.

Christmas thumbprint cookies: bet you can’t eat just one!

Photo by J. Harrington

Slowly we’re making progress with Christmas shopping. The Better Half [BBH] just finished baking Christmas cookies, including lots of raspberry thumbprints and lemon bars(?) for me. Plus I still have more than a dozen white chocolate, cranberry scoop cookies from Taste of Scandinavia. My holiday wealth isn’t measured in gold!

On our way to the barn yesterday, to visit and feed the Daughter Person’s horse, the BH and I spotted a flock of three to four dozen turkeys in a field along the way. I don’t recall ever seeing that many in one place before. They were foraging during our drizzle/ snow showers and had disappeared by the time we were returning home.

It’s now less than a week until Winter Solstice (locally 3:20 am CST). At the moment we’re in that shoulder season between the start of meteorological winter and the solstice. I’ve already reached a point at which I’m looking forward to Christmas and to days starting to lengthen just before then.

Happiness

Jane Kenyon
1947 – 1995

There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
       It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

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A bag mixed with gratitude

In my younger days, a mixed bag might have meant returning from an afternoon’s hunt with a rabbit, a squirrel or two, and maybe a grouse or a woodcock. These days it’s more likely to refer to counting my/our blessings as well as those things that aren’t going the way we think they should, such as November 5’s outcome.

One of my favorite local writers has an interesting piece that’s worth the time to read and then to think about this Thanksgiving week and for the rest of the season (no, not autumn, the “holiday season”). Speaking strictly for myself, I have a tendency to take the good stuff for granted, as my due, and complain about both the other, and about wanting more and/or better. At least these days I’m more aware of such tendencies and am working toward reducing my malcontentedness. Here’s a link to Heidi Barr’s perspective on Gratitude practice.

Gratitude is also a theme in a book I’ve been reading for the past week or so. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s THE SERVICEBERRY Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. An abbreviated version of the book can be found here in Emergence magazine.

As you no doubt already know, November is Native American Heritage Month and November 29 this year is Native American Heritage Day. Some argue that honoring Native Americans on the day after Thanksgiving is disrespectful or, at best, in poor taste. My preferred perspective on the subject is well covered by a Native American poet and former Poet Laureate of the United States, Joy Harjo. Please pay particular attention to the second line.

This Morning I Pray for My Enemies

Joy Harjo
1951 – 

And whom do I call my enemy?
An enemy must be worthy of engagement.
I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking.
It’s the heart that asks the question, not my furious mind.
The heart is the smaller cousin of the sun.
It sees and knows everything.
It hears the gnashing even as it hears the blessing.
The door to the mind should only open from the heart.
An enemy who gets in, risks the danger of becoming a friend.

November may finally arrive

Our high temperature today was in the low 50s. That’s what’s forecast for tomorrow and Tuesday, then November actually arrives. Normal highs are about ten degrees less than today’s. Starting Wednesday, we’re looking at more seasonable temperatures, or less. It’s not just the precipitation that’s getting volatile.

Most of the leaves are down. Some of the yard is cleaned up. Today was the last day of firearms deer season in our neck of the woods. Last night after dark I was walking the dogs and we were almost run over by three whitetail does who ran out of our field entrance one at a time. The first two sailed over the split rail fence across the road. The third acted like she’d never seen a fence before until she looked at this one for a minute or so and then jumped over. My old lab took it all in stride. The beagle didn’t notice the first two deer but finally got a glimpse of the third one and responded with a “What was that?" spinning in circles. The three may, or may not, be the same three in the picture.

three whitetail does in field behind our house

Photo by J. Harrington

We recently stopped by one of our favorite, local, independent bookstores, which is conveniently located two doors down from one of the food coops of which we’re members. At the bookstore I picked up a replacement copy of Kent Nerburn’s wonderful Neither Wolf nor Dog. We gave away the first version we had and I wanted to reread it so now we have the 25th anniversary edition. If I had remembered we outplaced our copy, I would have bought a replacement when we went to hear Nerburn speak some weeks ago at an art gallery in Sandstone.

Tuesday I’m hoping to head for Birchbark Books to pick up a preordered copy of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry. I expect to find it verrryy interesting, as Arte Johnson used to say, to read about abundance and reciprocity weeks before a second Trump administration begins. I have major doubts that will do much to enhance abundance for ordinary folks and would truly like to see it experience reciprocity by having others treat it as it treats everyone else.

Next week we celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday, the 28th, and Native American Heritage Day on Friday the 29th. I hope we all will have something for which we want to give thanks and also will want to do something to honor the heritage to which we owe so much.

History

Linda Hogan

This is the word that is always bleeding.
You didn't think this
until your country changes and when it thunders
you search your own body
for a missing hand or leg.
In one country, there are no bodies shown,
lies are told
and they keep hidden the weeping children on dusty streets.

But I do remember once
a woman and a child in beautiful blue clothing
walking over a dune, spreading a green cloth,
drinking nectar with mint and laughing
beneath a sky of clouds from the river
near the true garden of Eden.
Now another country is breaking
this holy vessel
where stone has old stories
and the fire creates clarity in the eyes of a child
who will turn it to hate one day.

We are so used to it now,
this country where we do not love enough,
that country where they do not love enough,
and that.

We do not need a god by any name
nor do we need to fall to our knees or cover ourselves,
enter a church or a river,
only do we need to remember what we do
to one another, it is so fierce
what any of our fathers may do to a child
what any of our brothers or sisters do to nonbelievers,
how we try to discover who is guilty
by becoming guilty,
because history has continued
to open the veins of the world
more and more
always in its search
for something gold.

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Approaching Thanks! Giving?

Last night, for the first time in months, we had chili for dinner. It helped ease the dank and dreary weather we’ve been having and the even more dank and dreary results of Tuesdays elections. I suspect the deer hunters are wishing the showers, drizzle, and mist we’ve been living with would turn into tracking snow but, so far, the snow we got at the end of October is all that’s come and that melted before firearms season opened around here.

Nature's Halloween trick, now gone

Photo by J. Harrington

The tractor, lawn mower, and I have been struggling with an overload of wet leaves covering the lawns and driveway. Even the mulching deck on the tractor has been getting clogged with wet leaves and the bagging mower discharge chute keeps getting jammed. We’ll keep trying so that, come spring thaw, we’ll be in better shape for seeding and meanwhile, we hope to make the place less attractive to moles.

A major breakthrough appears to have been attained by blocking two gaps in the walls with coarse steel wool. The number of mice caught in traps has dropped remarkably since the illicit entrances were blocked.

Despite the trials and tribulations, we have a lot to be thankful for this year, as usual. I confess that I’ve caught myself focused too much on what’s wrong and not feeling and sharing enough gratitude for what’s still good in our lives. Robin Wall Kimmerer has a book that will be published in a little more than a week. I have preordered a copy and hope to have it read by Thanksgiving. If you’re interested, you can get more info here at Birchbark Books. Who knows, I may even start a gratitude journal. For Thanksgiving, I’m planning to read the version of the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address found here before we enjoy the meal.

Tomorrow is Veterans’ Day. We’ll be remembering those in our families who have served in the armed forces and have defended freedoms we may well have to fight to retain during the next several years. Let’s do our best to help ensure the wars fought by our troops to preserve democracy weren’t fought in vain. Let’s also honor Native American Heritage Month by remembering the guidance below as we grapple with the differences among US.

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.

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Fall Back! fall down!

We  have definitely entered the darker half of the year here in the northern hemisphere. Daylight savings time ended yesterday. The results of tomorrow’s election will largely determine how deep and for how long the darkness may last. The current weather pattern of dank, cloudy, drizzly days, compounding a Halloween snowfall and windblown leafdrop, are, quite literally, putting a damper on what is usually one of my favorite times of year.

autumn leaves leaving

Photo by J. Harrington

Then again, I seem to have solved the problem of my boules of sourdough  bread coming out of the oven much darker than I prefer. I’m combining elements of two basic recipes, including lowering the oven temperature for the second half of the baking period, after attaining oven spring.

Halloween was brightened with a Trick or Treat visit  from our Granddaughter and her parents. She showed off one the the cutest costumes, it made her look as if she was riding  a dinosaur. The only thing that could have made it better would have been of the dinosaur were a dragon, but that’s mostly my bias for flying, fire-breathing, critters showing.

November, as I hope you know, is Native American Heritage Month. I intend to help celebrate by rereading parts of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass and getting a copy of her latest, The  Serviceberry. That will provide just the excuse I need for another trip to Louise Erdrich’s Birchbark Books. I truly believe we would be much closer to resolving the climate breakdown and loss of biodiversity catastrophes if more of US incorporated much more of the Native American relationship to nature.

Without 

Joy Harjo
1951 – 

The world will keep trudging through time without us

When we lift from the story contest to fly home

We will be as falling stars to those watching from the edge

Of grief and heartbreak

Maybe then we will see the design of the two-minded creature 

And know why half the world fights righteously for greedy masters 

And the other half is nailing it all back together

Through the smoke of cooking fires, lovers’ trysts, and endless 

Human industry—

Maybe then, beloved rascal

We will find each other again in the timeless weave of breathing

We will sit under the trees in the shadow of earth sorrows 

Watch hyenas drink rain, and laugh.

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On the eve of Indigenous Peoples’ Day

Last Friday I was doing some outside chores and, as I looked up from time to time, it seemed as if I could actually see colors changing in the maple leaves. We are rapidly approaching peak color and the area is looking mighty pretty.

St. Croix River Valley colors

Photo by J. Harrington

Today’s clouds and wind served as backdrop to flights of Canada geese and sandhill cranes either heading south or practicing for the trip. Another sign of autumn’s progress: increasing numbers of mice getting into the house and caught in traps. This past week we eliminated about a dozen and a half. I don’t remember ever, in 25+ years here, dealing with as many mice as this year. I’m not sure what happened over the spring and summer to produce such a bumper crop. It would be better for all concerned if they’d settle for outside nests and get fat on the acorns that have dropped everywhere.

Early voting has started. Election day is three weeks from Tuesday. Pundits torment US with their assessments of races depending on a handful or two of battleground states or congressional districts, all within a polling margin of error. If candidates were at all comparable in their capabilities and integrity and sanity, I’d be less troubled. Regardless of the election outcome, the fact that one of the major presidential candidates is a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist, among other unsavory attributes, seems to me disqualifying on its face, and yet....

At least we have three months with joyful holidays to celebrate. This month it’s Halloween and Samhain; next month it’s Thanksgiving; and, come December, Christmas. They’re all better if shared with family and kids and we’re lucky that way.

Tomorrow is Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Information about activities and resources in Minnesota can be found here. My personal celebration involves starting to read Louise Erdrich’s Original Fire, selected and new poems.

That Pull from the Left

By Louise Erdrich

Butch once remarked to me how sinister it was   

alone, after hours, in the dark of the shop

to find me there hunched over two weeks’ accounts   

probably smoked like a bacon from all those Pall-Malls.

Odd comfort when the light goes, the case lights left on   

and the rings of baloney, the herring, the parsley,   

arranged in the strict, familiar ways.

Whatever intactness holds animals up

has been carefully taken, what’s left are the parts.   

Just look in the cases, all counted and stacked.

Step-and-a-Half Waleski used to come to the shop

and ask for the cheap cut, she would thump, sniff, and finger.   

This one too old. This one here for my supper.   

Two days and you do notice change in the texture.

I have seen them the day before slaughter.

Knowing the outcome from the moment they enter   

the chute, the eye rolls, blood is smeared on the lintel.   

Mallet or bullet they lunge toward their darkness.

But something queer happens when the heart is delivered.   

When a child is born, sometimes the left hand is stronger.   

You can train it to fail, still the knowledge is there.   

That is the knowledge in the hand of a butcher

that adds to its weight. Otto Kröger could fell

a dray horse with one well-placed punch to the jaw,   

and yet it is well known how thorough he was.

He never sat down without washing his hands,   

and he was a maker, his sausage was echt

so that even Waleski had little complaint.   

Butch once remarked there was no one so deft   

as my Otto. So true, there is great tact involved   

in parting the flesh from the bones that it loves.

How we cling to the bones. Each joint is a web

of small tendons and fibers. He knew what I meant   

when I told him I felt something pull from the left,   

and how often it clouded the day before slaughter.

Something queer happens when the heart is delivered.

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