Evolution or Revolution?

The snow is melting!!! It will take a few days to get gone. Fortunately, we’re in for a string of 40+℉ all week. Can you tell that I’m not one of those who has to have their ice house removed by a week from tomorrow? I have two objectives for next week: 1) finish organizing the tax information, and 2) get much of the dog droppings cleaned up as melting continues. If I succeed at both, I’ll reward myself with a trip to one of the local fly-fishing shops.

February hoar frost on the trees

Photo by J. Harrington

The dogs are much happier now that the temperatures have gone to positive numbers. The warmer, moister, air seems to hold more enticing aromas (smells if you’re a dog) so they enjoy that too. We’ve come into hoar frost and rime ice season. If we get some it’ll be beautiful, as usual. Soon the song birds will be singing their spring songs and tom turkeys will be gobbling to impress hens.

I’m rarely sorry to see February go. In Minnesota, winter is usually three or four weeks longer than I’d like. I’m crossing my fingers that this spring may actually be like a springtime, instead of just a jumbled-up change from winter to summer. Next month we’ll get this year’s fishing licenses and start planning some trips. The older I get, especially since last November, the more I’m taking to heart John Voellker’s Testament of a Fisherman.

I’m also looking forward to digging out one of the presents I got last Christmas and doing more local exploring based on Angie Hong’s Exploring the St. Croix River Valley. The best part of the year is ahead of us and we need to enjoy as much of it as we can.

We’ll close out Black History Month this year and respond to a wannabe king with an all too fitting

Declaration 

Tracy K. Smith
1972 – 

He has 

              sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people



He has plundered our—



                                             ravaged our—



                                                                   destroyed the lives of our—



taking away our­—



                                 abolishing our most valuable—



and altering fundamentally the Forms of our—



In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for

Redress in the most humble terms:

                                                                Our repeated 

Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.



We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration

and settlement here.



                                    —taken Captive



                                                              on the high Seas



                                                                                             to bear—

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Feeding body and soul

I have a loaf of sourdough in the oven. The dough was much tackier (sticky) than I anticipated. Once I had shaped the boule and put it in the ‘fridge to proof, I went online to see what I might learn about why my dough was sticky and what I might do about it. I ended up at a web site I haven’t visited for months. If you’re interested in baking artisan bread, I suggest you spend some time visiting The Fresh Loaf, A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts. Another site I find helpful and interesting is Emilie Raffa’s The Clever Carrot, Sourdough tips, videos & recipes. Now that we’ve taken care of feeding the body....

early Spring, wood ducks

Photo by J. Harrington

We are lucky to live someplace that varies from pretty to beautiful to stunning. We’re in the Minnesota watershed of the wild and scenic St. Croix River. Several years ago, Craig Blacklock published a book of his photographs of the St. Croix and Namekagon. The photo gallery from the book is now online for all to see. Although not every part of our neighborhood is as gorgeous as the pictures, it’s helpful to be reminded from time to time that we should be more attentive to our surroundings. We might be missing much of the beauty that surrounds us.

The peace of wild things

by Wendell Berry

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the Night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the Peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

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for International Women’s Day: St. Croix Women Poets of Place

Today is International Women’s Day. By a fortuitous circumstance, there is a significant overlap between today’s celebration and the participants in next month’s NEA Big Read in the St. Croix Valley.

First, the author of the Big Read’s book, An American Sunrise, is Joy Harjo.

Second, “This year’s NEA Big Read in the St. Croix Valley programming will feature a touring exhibit of poetry and fiber art by Minnesota Poet Laureate and quilt artist Gwen Westerman.” 

Third, three of the local Poets of Place affiliated with this year’s Big Read are women. The ArtSpace web site didn’t include links to any individual Poets of Place so we spent a little time this morning poking about the corners of the interwebs. (We’ll get to the two men Poets of Place one day soon.)

• Heidi Barr


• Rosetta Peters


• River Urke

We look forward to reading some of the works of these local artists and to becoming more involved in local arts-related activities in the weeks ahead, even though we hope, by next month, to be sorely tempted to spend all our time outdoors in warm, sunny weather. No doubt there’ll be the occasional rainy day mixed in.

Irish soda bread

Photo by J. Harrington

On the home front, we baked a loaf of Irish soda bread this morning and will bake a loaf of artisan sourdough bread with Irish flour this afternoon. St. Patrick’s Day is little more than a week away. But now, back to an extraordinary woman and today’s poem.

Still I Rise

Maya Angelou - 1928-2014

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

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A Big Read is coming up

 I first read Joy Harjo’s An American Sunrise in 2019. By April of this year I’ll have reread it because it’s the NEA Big Read in the St. Croix Valley. I believe I’ve read, at least once, most of what Harjo has written, She is one of my favorite poets / writers and I’m looking forward to participating in whatever events get programmed.

An American Sunrise cover

The fact that one or more of the events involves a handful of local poets of place also pleases me no end. This has the potential to be one of the better Aprils in the fifty of so years I’ve lived in Minnesota. It will be even better if by April 1 the ground is bare of snow and no April blizzards occur during the month.

The Better Half and I are going to try a new local restaurant’s fare this evening, as a take-out order. The Daughter Person and Son-In-Law have recommended it a couple of times so it would probably be impolite to continue to resist sampling. We’ll share the name and our assessment if, and only if, it turns out we agree with the recommendations. If we don’t like it we can let it die the death of a thousand silences. My parents phrased that “If you can’t say anything good about it, don’t say anything at all.” Might'nt social media be a better place to hang out if more folks followed that dictum?

In recognition of events occurring in the Ukraine as this is being written, today’s poem, from An American Sunrise, is:

How to Write a Poem in a Time of War

Joy Harjo - 1951-

You can’t begin just anywhere. It’s a wreck.

                                                                             Shrapnel and the eye

Of a house, a row of houses. There’s a rat scrambling

From light with fleshy trash in its mouth. A baby strapped

to its mother’s back, cut loose.
                                                                       Soldiers crawl the city,

the river, the town, the village,

                                the bedroom, our kitchen. They eat everything.
Or burn it.

They kill what they cannot take. They rape. What they cannot kill
                                                                                        they take.

Rumors fall like rain.

                                   Like bombs.

Like mother and father tears

swallowed for restless peace.

Like sunset slanting toward a moonless midnight.

Like a train blown free of its destination.                      Like a seed

fallen where

there is no chance of trees          or anyplace       for birds to live.

No, start here.                    Deer peer from the edge of the woods.

                                                         We used to see woodpeckers

The size of the sun, and were greeted

by chickadees with their good morning songs.

We’d started to cook outside, slippery with dew and laughter,

                                    ah those smoky sweet sunrises.

We tried to pretend war wasn’t going to happen.

Though they began building their houses all around us

                                         and demanding 
more.

They started teaching our children their god’s story,

A story in which we’d always be slaves.

No. Not here.

You can’t begin here.

This is memory shredded because it is impossible to hold with words,

even poetry.

These memories were left here with the trees:

The torn pocket of your daughter’s hand-sewn dress,

the sash, the lace.

The baby’s delicately beaded moccasin still connected to the foot,

A young man’s note of promise to his beloved—
 

No! This is not the best place to begin.

Everyone was asleep, despite the distant bombs.

                                        Terror had become the familiar stranger.

Our beloved twin girls curled up in their nightgowns,

                                                                 next to their father and me.

If we begin here, none of us will make it to the end

Of the poem.

Someone has to make it out alive, sang a grandfather

to his grandson, his granddaughter,

as he blew his most powerful song into the hearts of the children.

There it would be hidden from the soldiers,

Who would take them miles, rivers, mountains

                                     from the navel cord place of the origin story.

He knew one day, far day, the grandchildren would return, 


generations later over slick highways, constructed over old trails

Through walls of laws meant to hamper or destroy, over stones

bearing libraries of the winds.

He sang us back

to our home place from which we were stolen

in these smoky green hills.

Yes, begin here.

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Twosday before Thanksgiving

Once again the people, the marriage, and the house, have survived the hanging of the outside Christmas lights. This year some gratuitous yard work was accomplished concurrently. In the process, we noted that at least one string of lights needs replacement for next year. Somehow there are a couple of dead spots along the string, in between sections nicely lit. I remember the strings where, if one bulb was burnt out, the whole string was dead, and others where only one bulb wouldn’t light but the rest of the string was fine, but never before extended sections that were dead while the rest of the string lit. For this year, what we have will do. Maybe we’ll watch for post-Christmas sales.

soon the house will look something like this

Photo by J. Harrington

Thanks to the Better Half going above and beyond, many of the dead branches brought down by this week’s winds are picked up, stacked and ready to be fed into the burn pit if the weather ever cooperates. Meanwhile, the birds (goldfinches, chickadees, nuthatches, and woodpeckers) and squirrels (gray and red) are pouring into the feeders as if it were time for free Thanksgiving dinner. This morning’s moon was still visible and high in the sky at 9’ish. We had to abandon leaf blowing because today’s wind was largely  blowing in a direction opposite where we were trying to blow the leaves. Maybe tomorrow prevailing winds will be more favorable.

post-Halloween pumpkins nibbled on by ....?

Photo by J. Harrington

The Halloween pumpkins have been hauled up the hill to the vicinity of the pear tree and left for deer and/or whoever else may be desperate enough to eat them. Every year the pumpkins do seem to disappear over the winter before the pear tree is in bloom the following spring. Some years the deer, or rabbits, or .... don’t wait for us to dispose of pumpkins before they start nibbling on them.

All told it’s been a mostly productive day, enough so that we will remember to be grateful on Thursday for the  fact that we live in beautiful country even if leaves fall from the oaks for six or seven months of the year. We still need to take a trip to say Hi! to the St. Croix river. We’ve not visited her enough this year, but  remain grateful we live in the watershed.

Thanksgiving

By Ella Wheeler Wilcox

We walk on starry fields of white
And do not see the daisies;
For blessings common in our sight
We rarely offer praises.
We sigh for some supreme delight
To crown our lives with splendor,
And quite ignore our daily store
Of pleasures sweet and tender.

Our cares are bold and push their way
Upon our thought and feeling.
They hang about us all the day,
Our time from pleasure stealing.
So unobtrusive many a joy
We pass by and forget it,
But worry strives to own our lives
And conquers if we let it.

There's not a day in all the year
But holds some hidden pleasure,
And looking back, joys oft appear
To brim the past's wide measure.
But blessings are like friends, I hold,
Who love and labor near us.
We ought to raise our notes of praise
While living hearts can hear us.

Full many a blessing wears the guise
Of worry or of trouble.
Farseeing is the soul and wise
Who knows the mask is double.
But he who has the faith and strength
To thank his God for sorrow
Has found a joy without alloy
To gladden every morrow.

We ought to make the moments notes
Of happy, glad Thanksgiving;
The hours and days a silent phrase
Of music we are living.
And so the theme should swell and grow
As weeks and months pass o'er us,
And rise sublime at this good time,
A grand Thanksgiving chorus. 

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It's National Rivers Month!

Once again the temperature has reached 90℉ and, today, kept climbing. We have more of this in store for the next several days. That makes it entirely appropriate to note that June is National Rivers Month. We're settling for relaxing in our air conditioned abode. Late next week it's supposed to br a bit cooler, or we can try getting up and out early in the day, and we'll go take a look at our local wild and scenic river, the St, Croix. We recently learned that the Saint Croix River Association, of which we're members, has changed its name to the Wild Rivers Conservancy of the St. Croix and Namekagon. On the one hand, that name doesn't exactly flow off the tongue, nor are we convinced it's as informative as the organization's former name. On the other hand, the river hasn't changed and there are other, more significant issues about which we can, and do, get readily perturbed, for example, the proposed swine Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation [CAFO] in the river's watershed. It looks suspiciously like the state of Wisconsin is engaging in a race to the bottom with the state of Iowa to see who can have the least stringent environmental regulations, forgetting or ignoring that it is much, much easier to pollute a river than to clean it up.

will hog manure improve this river?

Photo by J. Harrington

Green River

by William Cullen Bryant

When breezes are soft and skies are fair,
I steal an hour from study and care,
And hie me away to the woodland scene,
Where wanders the stream with waters of green,
As if the bright fringe of herbs on its brink
Had given their stain to the wave they drink;
And they, whose meadows it murmurs through,
Have named the stream from its own fair hue.

Yet pure its waters--its shallows are bright
With coloured pebbles and sparkles of light,
And clear the depths where its eddies play,
And dimples deepen and whirl away,
And the plane-tree's speckled arms o'ershoot
The swifter current that mines its root,
Through whose shifting leaves, as you walk the hill,
The quivering glimmer of sun and rill
With a sudden flash on the eye is thrown,
Like the ray that streams from the diamond stone.
Oh, loveliest there the spring days come,
With blossoms, and birds, and wild bees' hum;
The flowers of summer are fairest there,
And freshest the breath of the summer air;
And sweetest the golden autumn day
In silence and sunshine glides away.

Yet fair as thou art, thou shunnest to glide,
Beautiful stream! by the village side;
But windest away from haunts of men,
To quiet valley and shaded glen;
And forest, and meadow, and slope of hill,
Around thee, are lonely, lovely, and still.
Lonely--save when, by thy rippling tides,
From thicket to thicket the angler glides;
Or the simpler comes with basket and book,
For herbs of power on thy banks to look;
Or haply, some idle dreamer, like me,
To wander, and muse, and gaze on thee.
Still--save the chirp of birds that feed
On the river cherry and seedy reed,
And thy own wild music gushing out
With mellow murmur and fairy shout,
From dawn to the blush of another day,
Like traveller singing along his way.

That fairy music I never hear,
Nor gaze on those waters so green and clear,
And mark them winding away from sight,
Darkened with shade or flashing with light,
While o'er them the vine to its thicket clings,
And the zephyr stoops to freshen his wings,
But I wish that fate had left me free
To wander these quiet haunts with thee,
Till the eating cares of earth should depart,
And the peace of the scene pass into my heart;
And I envy thy stream, as it glides along,
Through its beautiful banks in a trance of song.

Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men,
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen,
And mingle among the jostling crowd,
Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud--
I often come to this quiet place,
To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face,
And gaze upon thee in silent dream,
For in thy lonely and lovely stream
An image of that calm life appears
That won my heart in my greener years. 

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A "winter"(?) surprise

Today we followed through on our plan to take a drive to Franconia and see what the St. Croix river is up to. Actually, in reality, the phrase is what the river is down to. Water levels looked to be down several feet from Summer flows. The river is all open water, with a scattering of ice floes floating downstream. So far, no real surprises. What we weren't expecting, in the least, were the four, that's right, four, vehicles and boat trailers parked at the launch area. We know, it was 48℉ while we were there. The sun is shining and the sky is blue and most of us are suffering varying degrees of COVID fatigue. But, four boats, on the St. Croix, in Minnesota, on December 9? Really? Or, maybe we've just gotten old and wimpy but December boating is unusual bordering on weird.

recently launched amid scattered ice floes on December 9

Photo by J. Harrington

three of the four boat trailers at the launch area

Photo by J. Harrington

The village of houses and cabins is pretty much the same as the last time we visited, except that a person or persons unknown have beautified the bridge railings with seasonal greenery and lights. It might be worth a trip back some evening soon to see them when they're at an advantage and not in bright sunshine. 

a seasonally decorated bridge

Photo by J. Harrington

So, we've confirmed that both the Sunrise and St. Croix rivers are open water; local lakes are covered in sheet ice; the lake ice is too thin for skating etc., and the river water is just fine for boating. This year continues its list of aberrant events and conditions. Maybe we've moved beyond a "new normal" to a "new abnormal." Is Rod Serling directing next year too?

Winter Journal: The Sky Is the Lost Orpheum

By Emily Wilson

The shelter of it carved, caved

Across the river, the park and the little Ferris wheel

       closed down

The great oaks emptying, russet, gusseted

the hovering slant light leaking from the outer edge

       of cloud bed

leads and shawls pulled forth

Thy synchrony of the lost elements recovered

the shivering water surfaces, planar unmeldings, remeldings,

       riverine alchemies, unlocketed selves

now the reemergence, the sun pouring global gold

       uptilted, gobleted, incanted

Am I not as God made me but stranger?

Made stranger still by what I have seen

at this hour of earth untended, unministered—

light caught up in the river’s grooved tread

That sun more like a mass grope out of emptiness

       and the black river weeds before it, torn and trained,

       rocketed and stark and stuck-to

The tall shadow of the willow grows forth

And the spare stems of the grasses and the rods of the mullein

And these are the stations of this river

The houses and the boats and the parked cars

The growing wedge the ducks make moving forward, the shape

       of the element there among the weeds that jut forward,

the mass of the willows growing deeper in green and sundering

The backfall of sun going downward

The surface of the river coming clear of its own admixture

The ducks moving over like slow planes in formation,

       barely seen needles hauling white threads,

       secretly heeding

The fish in my skin relinquishes

Will I know then what I have become?

The river darkens from its end of trees closing in

There is the sun and this deep depression

Exiting as viewed in this river

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Got Big? Get Out!

We live near the southern end of Minnesota's Eighth Congressional District. According to the 2017 Census of Agriculture, there were 10,004 farms totaling 2,030,003 acres for an average farm size of 203 acres. The net cash farm income was $187,823,000, which averages slightly less than $20,000 per farm. Only 1% of the farms were organic and only 9% sold directly to consumers. The former is comparable with the sate average while the latter is almost double the state average. And yet, we hear or read infrequently about farming activity, or its importance, in this Congressional District, especially when compared to mining. Does farming also have to become an extractive industry for us to pay attention? Has it reached that level already?

hay and pastures are a significant land use

Photo by J. Harrington

We just came across some tables providing agricultural census data by watershed, including a data set for the St. Croix, covering both the Minnesota and Wisconsin sides. Of note, there are only about 6,000 farms in the St. Croix watershed, compared to the 10,000 in MNCD8. Comparisons may well be challenging except on the basis of percentages or relative amount. For example, the 1% of the watershed cropland in no till is comparable to the 1% of the CD farms that were organic. We'll be spending time trying to decide how much of the data results in useful information to support the importance of local food systems.

abandoned homestead on a working farm

Photo by J. Harrington

We're starting to poke around the Census of Agriculture because we have a growing suspicion that in terms of daily life and politics, food is going to become a significant issue. It's past time to repudiate Secretary Butz' advice. Our too big industrial agriculture system is failing us.

“The Man Born to Farming”

by Wendell Berry

The grower of trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,
whose hands reach into the ground and sprout,
to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death
yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down
in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.
His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.
What miraculous seed has he swallowed
that the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth
like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water
descending in the dark?

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Celebrate Women's History Month, Vote tomorrow!

An overnight refreeze made the driveway treacherous walking this morning. We (SiSi and I) navigated the slipping and sliding successfully, albeit with cursing and muttering on my part.  The road and the shoulder are clear and dry, so once we've left the driveway behind, yak trax are counterproductive. Maybe Santa will bring me a flame thrower for Christmas this year. All we need is a path a couple of feet wide free of ice.

Our objective for the day, other than not slipping and falling and breaking something, has been attained. New fishing licenses for both Minnesota and Wisconsin are now in the possession of the two anglers in this household. Next on the Agenda is a new state park sticker for the Jeep's windshield.

two bald eagles perched at Kelley Land and Cattle Co.

Photo by J. Harrington

We covered much of the Northern half of Washington County getting our licenses. On the way to Cabela's and back we saw one small flock of turkeys, plus a pair, or two single, bald eagles in a different location. Forty plus years ago, when I first moved to Minnesota, eagle sightings were rare. Now, at least in our general area, they're pretty common. Once we stopped poisoning raptors with DDT, and put some of them on the endangered species list, they recovered nicely, for the most part. Seeing eagles weekly, if not daily, makes me feel better about the part of the country in which I live. The number of urban eagle nests has been increasing for awhile and there have been recent reports of golden eagles in the  St. Croix valley. We'll remember to keep our eyes open and see if we can spot any of the latter as we head toward some of our favorite trout streams.

bald eagle perched near new St. Croix bridge at Stillwater

Photo by J. Harrington

We missed it yesterday so today we want to acknowledge that March is Women's History Month. Of the women poets with whom I'm familiar, and the  list is long and growing, Maya Angelou offers a poem I think is a great way to celebrate this second day of the month.

Still I Rise

Maya Angelou - 1928-2014

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.

Progress, like Spring, comes in stuttering steps

Your mileage may vary, but I'm pretty sure (and the Better Half is positive) I spend too much time and energy these days getting (and staying) upset and perturbed and agitated by one thing or another, mostly having to do with miscreants in power in Washington, D.C.; or the cold and snow and related miseries we're subjected to here in the North Country; or the short-sightedness and/or selfishness of too many people putting immediate gain ahead of long term survival. Fortunately, every once in awhile, I run into some better news that helps me regain a sense of balance and proportion. Yesterday and today that happened.

late Winter driveway

Photo by J. Harrington

Today I came across something I must have somehow missed the first time it went around. The St. Croix 360 blog pulled from its archives Getting to know St. Croix River country’s natural neighbors. The online app, iNaturalist, has the St. Croix watershed as a defined "place," with photo observations galore. I've had the iNaturalist app on my "smartphone" for a few years but hadn't done much with it. This discovery my be just the motivation needed to change that.

If you've followed these postings for awhile, you no doubt have noticed I've some firm and strong opinions about mining in Minnesota and rural development in general. Today I read a recent post by Aaron Brown, one of the more enlightened and rational commentators on the Iron Range, that educates the rest of us about The dueling realities of the Iron Range. It concludes:

No, we need not agree about mining policy or politics to make life here better, perhaps better than it’s ever been. But we must agree on reality. And the reality is we must diversify our economy and open the imaginary borders we draw between us and the rest of the world.

what do we need to have both?

Photo by J. Harrington

That seems to me (again, ymmv) to fit nicely with a recent Community Voices piece in MinnPost, written by three leaders in District #11 of the United Steelworkers union (USW). They opine that Minnesota should become the leader in responsible mining. You can guess how pleased I was to see and read that piece, since I've been advocating Minnesota should adopt something like the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance [IRMA] standards since back in 2014. The USW piece is the first I'm aware of to support a responsible ming strategy. I've no idea why.

Note to Reality

By Tony Hoagland

Without even knowing it, I have 

believed in you for a long time.

When I looked at my blood under a microscope

                I could see truth multiplying over and over.

—Not police sirens, nor history books, not stage-three lymphoma

                                                                                     persuaded me

but your honeycombs and beetles; the dry blond fascicles of grass 

                                                              thrust up above the January snow. 

Your postcards of Picasso and Matisse,

                                         from the museum series on European masters. 

When my friend died on the way to the hospital

                                           it was not his death that so amazed me

but that the driver of the cab 

                                              did not insist upon the fare.

Quotation marks: what should we put inside them? 

Shall I say “I”  “have been hurt” “by”  “you,”  you neglectful monster?

I speak now because experience has shown me

                                 that my mind will never be clear for long.

I am more thick-skinned and male, more selfish, jealous, and afraid

                                   than ever in my life.

“For my heart is tangled in thy nets;

                              my soul enmeshed in cataracts of time...”

The breeze so cool today, the sky smeared with bluish grays and whites.

The parade for the slain police officer

goes past the bakery

and the smell of fresh bread 

makes the mourners salivate against their will.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.

What I really want for Christmas

Sun is shining; temperature's in the mid 30's; every so often a load of snow explodes off of an oak branch in the woods behind the house. Before I started this posting, I was struggling with my Christmas list. It was much easier when I was young to let Santa know what I wanted for Christmas. Since we never lived out in the real country, ponies stayed off the list but, over time, the puppy, the bicycle, the cowboy outfit, and other essentials showed up under the tree. One year there was even a Lionel train set which my Dad put together with only a modicum of swearing.

Not to rain on anyone's Christmas parade, but have you seen The Story of Stuff? I started with the original. A couple of things I saw online today put me in mind of all this. The first was "St. Croix River impairment underscores need for continued work."

Of the 30 major tributaries flowing to the St. Croix River, the seven which contribute the most phosphorus include the Apple, Snake, Willow, Kettle, Sunrise, Kinnickinnic, and Namekagon. Four of these enter the St. Croix River north of Taylor’s Falls.

As noted before in this blog, Yr. Obt. Svt. lives in the Sunrise watershed. We've also noted previously that, when Congress originally passed the Clean Water Act Amendments of 1972 (some 47 years ago), it adopted an interim goal that all the nation's waters were to be "fishable-swimmable" by 1983. We're not even close yet.

With that as background, how much credence should we give the international efforts to address greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation to climate breakdown? According to the consensus of climate scientists, we don't have 47 years to promise to "get to it tomorrow."

a home-grown white pine Christmas tree

Photo by J. Harrington

That brings me to the second thing I saw online. It's a statement attributed to Greta Thunberg, the teenage climate activist who just finished her second Atlantic ocean crossing in a small sailing craft.

"I am not traveling like this because I want everyone to do so," said Thunberg. "I'm doing this to sort of send the message that it is impossible to live sustainable today, and that needs to change. It needs to become much easier."

So, I'm convinced that, although we need to talk about how the people of the world will fix what we've broken, talk alone isn't going to cut it. What I'd like for Christmas is for Santa to whack all the naughty boys, girls and grups with a sock full of coal until each denier and nonparticipant agrees to pull their weight and stop being a free rider in the work needed to clean up our beautiful home, the only one we have. That won't exactly fit under our family's Christmas tree, but if each one of us did not a little, but a lot more, including doing a much better job with who we vote for, we may become ancestors whose descendants can have a white Christmas to enjoy 100 years from now.

100 years from now, will this be Home for Christmas?

We'll return to our regular programming tomorrow.

“Your Luck Is About To Change”

By Susan Elizabeth Howe

     (A fortune cookie)

Ominous inscrutable Chinese news 

to get just before Christmas, 

considering my reasonable health, 

marriage spicy as moo-goo-gai-pan, 

career running like a not-too-old Chevrolet. 

Not bad, considering what can go wrong: 

the bony finger of Uncle Sam 

might point out my husband, 

my own national guard, 

and set him in Afghanistan; 

my boss could take a personal interest; 

the pain in my left knee could spread to my right. 

Still, as the old year tips into the new, 

I insist on the infant hope, gooing and kicking 

his legs in the air. I won't give in 

to the dark, the sub-zero weather, the fog, 

or even the neighbors' Nativity. 

Their four-year-old has arranged 

his whole legion of dinosaurs 

so they, too, worship the child, 

joining the cow and sheep. Or else, 

ultimate mortals, they've come to eat 

ox and camel, Mary and Joseph, 

then savor the newborn babe.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.

Thankful for language(s)

This morning the perfect word to describe Minnesota's November weather magically appeared on the computer screen. The word in question "topped a poll to mark Book Week Scotland, led by the Scottish Book Trust." It's the Scottish word dreich. That word has now become one of my favorite words and even has a link to Minnesota since its etymology, according to Merriam-Webster, is "Middle English, of Scandinavian origin; akin to Old Norse drjūgr lasting."

dull and depressing dreich weather?

Photo by J. Harrington

There's a different word, a Welsh word from another part of the British Isles, that I fell in love with some time ago. That word, hiraeth, is of proto-Celtic derivation. It often describes my feelings for the Southern Massachusetts beaches of my (much) younger days. All of this has reminded me of a piece of doggerel I learned in high school, in the days I studied Latin and ancient Greek languages.

Latin's a dead language
Just as dead as it can be.
First it killed the Romans,
And now it's killing me.

I believe I've noticed that tv, "sound bites," the internet, and social media have all been contributing to a shortened attention span and a depleted vocabulary (mine). It is past time for moderation on social media and recommitment to enlarging my vocabulary, including noting new (or renewed) words and dedicating energy to using those words either here or in conversation. (Yelling curses at the dogs doesn't count.)

in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.

Photo by J. Harrington

As long as we're exploring a theme today related to variants on the English language, it's a great time to share with you another moderately recent discovery, a British web site known as Caught By the River. We've been enjoying it for several months now and have purchased, and enjoyed, both music and books we first discovered in their listings and reviews. Frankly, we'd love to see something similar for the St. Croix Valley. The St. Croix Splash provides a helpful listing of events, but lacks reviews and the original material often found on CBtR. For now, we'll just be thankful that there is the Splash and the additional events listed on the St. Croix 360 events page. Some years ago, the Franconia Sculpture Park sponsored and facilitated an arts-related book club that we really enjoyed. More please?

Eagle Poem

By Joy Harjo

To pray you open your whole self

To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon

To one whole voice that is you.

And know there is more

That you can’t see, can’t hear;

Can’t know except in moments

Steadily growing, and in languages

That aren’t always sound but other

Circles of motion.

Like eagle that Sunday morning

Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky

In wind, swept our hearts clean

With sacred wings.

We see you, see ourselves and know

That we must take the utmost care

And kindness in all things.

Breathe in, knowing we are made of

All this, and breathe, knowing

We are truly blessed because we

Were born, and die soon within a

True circle of motion,

Like eagle rounding out the morning

Inside us.

We pray that it will be done

In beauty.

In beauty.

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Some pleasant and artful surprises

Goldenrod blooms have arrived in more and more places. Might we enjoy a golden autumn? Art Reach St. Croix is helping to make it so with their Take Me to the River events. We found this year's schedule while reading a recent post on the East Metro Water blog. And if those activities aren't enough, there's the upcoming "Friday Night Writes" organized by the St. Croix River Association and St. Croix 360.

goldenrod blooming around the backyard wet spot

Photo by J. Harrington

A few of the "Take Me to the River" events may be concurrent with the September 20th Climate Strike -- Global Day of Action. So far, the closest local event we've found that's related to the Climate Strike is in St. Paul [follow the "Sept. 20" link above].

We confess to being at least mildly embarrassed that, until today, we had missed the "Take Me to the River" schedule and the Franconia Sculpture Park poetry installation described in the East Metro Water blog. Clearly we've been too focused on invasive species, climate breakdown, malfunctioning tractors, dysfunctional governance and other negative matters. We need to spend more time enjoying and posting about the positive aspects of life in the early decades of this 21st century.

One of those positive aspects that we have been enjoying is reading Joy Harjo's recently published An American Sunrise and celebrating her appointment as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. It seems highly likely to us that the world would be a better place, and we would enjoy life more if we learn to emulate Harjo's guidance and

Praise the Rain

BY JOY HARJO

Praise the rain; the seagull dive

The curl of plant, the raven talk—

Praise the hurt, the house slack

The stand of trees, the dignity—

Praise the dark, the moon cradle

The sky fall, the bear sleep—

Praise the mist, the warrior name

The earth eclipse, the fired leap—

Praise the backwards, upward sky

The baby cry, the spirit food—

Praise canoe, the fish rush

The hole for frog, the upside-down—

Praise the day, the cloud cup

The mind flat, forget it all—

Praise crazy. Praise sad.

Praise the path on which we're led.

Praise the roads on earth and water.

Praise the eater and the eaten.

Praise beginnings; praise the end.

Praise the song and praise the singer.

Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

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