What purpose, then, is served?

This morning, as I drove out of the drive,  I looked across the road to see fields of purple lovegrass, covered in dew, made glowing white by the rising sun. It was indeed awesomely beautiful, triggering remembrances of some of the old descriptions of heaven. Sometimes beauty can bring us to a state of awe, enthralled, bedazzled, mesmerized. I recommend trying to begin and end your day with such an experience. It’s a far better beginning than by reading the  morning paper, which may contain such items as finding that the third degree murder conviction of Mohamed Noor has been overturned by  the Minnesota Supreme Court. According to the Star Tribune:

The court's unanimous ruling written by Chief Justice Lorie Gildea focused on the mental state necessary for the legal standard of a "depraved mind," defined as a "generalized indifference to human life."

The state's highest court said such a state cannot exist when a defendant's conduct is aimed at a particular person. The ruling affirmed what Noor's lawyers have claimed since trial — that third-degree murder didn't apply because his actions were focused on a single person.

Alpha Stock Images - http://alphastockimages.com/

The Minnesota Statute is two paragraphs long. The second makes sense. The purpose of the first paragraph is, in my humble opinion, obscured in incomprehensible language. The individual words might make sense, but not when strung together. Here’s the paragraph:

(a) Whoever, without intent to effect the death of any person, causes the death of another by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life, is guilty of murder in the third degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 25 years.

Perhaps it’s because my college degree is in English, and I am not a lawyer, that I am deeply troubled by, to the point of not being able to assign a meaning to, the phrases "by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life,...”

According to one law firm’s web site, "Examples of depraved mind murder include violently driving an automobile ², the accidental discharge of a gun during a fight³, and Mohammed Noor’s widely publicized charge of shooting a woman while on duty as a police officer.”

Now that the Minnesota Supreme Court has eliminated the third example, I continue to struggle with the question of what does it mean to be violently driving an automobile (is that reckless driving?) and how does one accidentally discharge a gun during a fight? What if one’s opponent causes the discharge? Was it a depraved mind that brought a gun to where  there might be a fight? What is an example of a “generalized indifference to human life?” Is that like weapons of mass destruction that no one can find?

I’ve known many lawyers over the years and often been fascinated by their ability to split hairs at the subatomic scale. As far as I’m concerned, Minnesota’s use of the phrases “evincing a depraved mind” and “act eminently dangerous to others” belong with Schrödinger's cat and not in the realm of jurisprudence. Let’s not even get started on how, per the second paragraph, there’s supposed to be any sort of equivalency between sentenced to "not more than 25 years [in prison] or to payment of a fine of not more than $40,000, or both.”

The Murder of William Remington

By Howard Nemerov

It is true, that even in the best-run state

Such things will happen; it is true,

What’s done is done. The law, whereby we hate

Our hatred, sees no fire in the flue

But by the smoke, and not for thought alone

It punishes, but for the thing that’s done.

And yet there is the horror of the fact,

Though we knew not the man. To die in jail,

To be beaten to death, to know the act

Of personal fury before the eyes can fail

And the man die against the cold last wall

Of the lonely world—and neither is that all:

There is the terror too of each man’s thought,

That knows not, but must quietly suspect

His neighbor, friend, or self of being taught

To take an attitude merely correct;

Being frightened of his own cold image in

The glass of government, and his own sin,

Frightened lest senate house and prison wall

Be quarried of one stone, lest righteous and high

Look faintly smiling down and seem to call

A crime the welcome chance of liberty,

And any man an outlaw who aggrieves

The patriotism of a pair of thieves.

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Watch for spots before your eyes

Yesterday morning, as we neared the pick-up location for our Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] share, I noticed movement on the right-hand side of the road ahead and slowed down. As we approached, a spotted fawn looked toward us, lifted its head, looked ahead, across the road, and scampered in front of the jeep. We stopped and waited for it to cross the road and enter the woods. It did and we proceeded.

August: spotted fawn time

Photo by J. Harrington

Not two hundred yards beyond the fawn, a buck, its antlers in velvet, bounded across the road and into the woods. We saw no sign of a doe, which is unusual with a fawn out wandering around. Another hundred yards or so and we rolled into the drive of the CSA pick-up barn. No harm, no foul.

We collected our share box, put the contents in the jeep, and started the return trip. At about the same place we saw the fawn enter the woods earlier, we noticed it had returned and was lurking behind a roadside bush. Driving slowly, we eased past the fawn and then picked up some speed, but not too much. A mile or so down the road, as we approached a sweeping left hand turn on the gravel road, I noticed a whitetail doe standing at attention in the ditch on the passenger side of the jeep. I doubly slowed, once for the turn and once for the doe, just in case she did something foolish like dash in front of the jeep just as we were about to pass her. Fortunately, she stayed in the ditch until we got close and then bolted into the woods on her side of the road.

From now until about Thanksgiving you should expect deer to, as Harry Potter fans would say, "apparate" in front of you, often at a distance too short to enable avoiding a serious collision. For the sake of the deer, especially cute, young, fawns, and your sheet metal and air bags and passengers, reducing your travel speed to something well this side of sane would be a good idea. Spots in front of your eyes are much easier to deal with at a reasonable distance.

Here, now, gone

Bob Hicok

We’re standing in the road
looking at a dead fawn. His truck facing town,
mine headed toward home. It appears to be sleeping
on the double yellow, curled as if in tall grass
or on a down comforter in a video someone has posted
on YouTube about her pet deer. No sign of collision
or gunshot, garroting, heart attack: nothing but spots,
cuteness. The name on his door means he works
on the natural gas pipeline that’ll run
from West Virginia to North Carolina.
The company that pays him has a reputation for ruin
worse than syphilis. Employees have been told
to stay away from locals. They stick to a hotel
near the freeway with a decor I’d call modern roach,
drink there, hone boredom, look at stars.
We both crouch to make sure the fawn is dead.
“What the fuck,” he says, staring at the desert
of my face, where there’s no rain or hope,
only cactus, as I search the dry lake-bed of his.
He looks back at the fawn, brings his hands together
as if waiting for a Communion host,
makes a scooping motion with his hands,
then slides his eyes to the side of the road:
I’m being asked to help save a dead fawn
from the bonus carnage of traffic, the shredding
that suggests life isn’t just delicate
but deserves to be erased.
We are the briefest couple
joined by common cause, move the fawn
and stand briefly as men who have respected loss
for sentimental reasons. Then nod, become ghosts
of a moment we are the custodians of, holders
of the unholdable, wind telling the story of itself
to itself.

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Winter words

Early this morning, while reading "Winter--the ultimate test" in Janine Benyus' Northwoods Wildlife, I encountered a couple of word that I didn't recognize. One was a word for "snow that collects on trees;" the other, a word for "snow on ground." I was taken aback, since I grew up in New England where snow is about as common, if not as deep, as it is in the North Country where I've lived for the past several decades.

which words would you use to describe this Winter scene?

Photo by J. Harrington

Later, I undertook what I anticipated would be a simple internet search for the words in question. The search wasn't simple, but, through persistence (the Better Half calls it stubbornness), was eventually successful. I eventually found this web site and the two listed terms:

Eskimo and Northern Indian Snow Terms

api: snow on ground 

qali: snow that collects on trees 

In the process of unsuccessfully following links, I came across what I thought should be a productive source for the words being sought. But, the

Glossary of Snow, Ice, and Permafrost Terms

Encyclopedia Arctica Volume 1: Geology and Allied Subjects

included neither "api" not "qali," although the Encyclopedia does include a "Volume 8: ANTHROPOLOGY AND ARCHEOLOGY," that lists information on many peoples indigenous to the arctic, but, apparently, not their languages.

At this point, I'd established a pattern of idling time wandering around the internet playing with words, so it was serendipitous that I then came across a brainpickings posting about Nobel Laureate

Toni Morrison on the Power of Language

In it, Morrison writes

The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers. Although its poise is sometimes in displacing experience it is not a substitute for it. It arcs toward the place where meaning may lie.

We wonder how long and deep Winter would have to be in our North Country before we would find the words "api" and "qali" beneficial to our "ability to limn the actual,...." This pondering was compounded by our realization that each single word required a multi-word phrase in English to translate it.

Serendipity struck again as we then tumbled onto David Shariatmadari's

Why We Love Untranslatable Words

In which he notes:

The concept of “untranslatable words” preserves the idea that the world can never be fully mapped out and expunged of mystery.

That concept may help explain how it is that I then came upon today's brainpickings posting, entitled

What You Need to Be Warm: Neil Gaiman Reads His Humanistic Poem for Refugees, Composed from a Thousand Definitions of Warmth from Around the World

Were you aware that the World might contain "a Thousand Definitions of Warmth?" Frankly, despite my aversion to cold and ice and snow, that thought had never occurred to me. But then I never contemplated living on a world ravaged by war, poverty, and displacement of people by catastrophes attributable to our broken climate. Clearly, no matter the language in question, "the world can never be fully mapped out and expunged of mystery."

I hope you've enjoyed our Alice-In-Wonderland-like journey through the Wonderful World of Winter

Words

Dana Gioia - 1950-

The world does not need words. It articulates itself 
in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path 
are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being. 
The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken.

And one word transforms it into something less or other--
illicit, chaste, perfunctory, conjugal, covert.
Even calling it a kiss betrays the fluster of hands 
glancing the skin or gripping a shoulder, the slow 
arching of neck or knee, the silent touching of tongues.

Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot 
name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica. 
To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper--
metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa 
carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.

The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds, 
painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving 
each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it. 
The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always-- 
greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.

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Icing called

We made a couple of interesting and frustrating discoveries at midday today. Here's the background: the thaw left the drive covered in melting snow and puddles. Today's dropping temperatures froze everything that hadn't run off into the ditches or down to the pond behind the house. The drive is a large, smooth, sheet of ice. Both the Better Half and yr obt svt wear Yak Tracks for just these circumstances. The dogs, with four paws and nails on each one, are still resisting learning to walk at heel. So, we wanted to spread some sand (heaven forbid we should apply salt) to provide an enhanced traction for dog walkers.

a driveway covered in ice

Photo by J. Harrington

The first thing we learned is that someone put away the grass seed spreader, which we were going to use to scatter sand, in such a way that the crank handle that drives the spreader didn't turn. That "tool" is now in the trash because we tried to "fix" it using brute force and broke the handle off. Only slightly deterred, but cursing loudly, we dug out the fertilizer spreader, filled its hopper with sand, and proceeded down the drive to create a sand path. That selfsame ice which prompted the urge to spread sand gave no traction to the wheels that drive the spreader full of sand. We did leave a couple of narrow streaks of sand, better than nothing, but we're back to a baseline of knowing how to handle snow and most cold, but being largely thwarted by the rain/ice pattern we're seeing more of.

with but a narrow path of sand

Photo by J. Harrington

If putting on, and fastening, wading boots with studs or cleats on the bottom weren't so much work, we'd use this as a perfect excuse to upgrade our wading equipment but we rarely want to be out in the Winter as much time as we spend wading a stream so we won't lie to ourselves (this week). Then again, patagonia has some expensive river crampons that we could go talk to a salesperson about.

It's supposed to warm up again next weekend. That might help solve our near term problem. Plus, we need to write ourselves a note that, when we get the drive redone, it needs to be graded not only front to back, but also side to side. Then, we hope, the uphill side would be clear and dry as January thaws or March-April "normal" weather presents us with slippery slop covering most of the drive.

January

Betty Adcock

Dusk and snow this hour 
in argument have settled 
nothing. Light persists, 
and darkness. If a star 
shines now, that shine is 
swallowed and given back 
doubled, grounded bright. 
The timid angels flailed 
by passing children lift 
in a whitening wind 
toward night. What plays 
beyond the window plays 
as water might, all parts 
making cold digress. 
Beneath iced bush and eave, 
the small banked fires of birds 
at rest lend absences 
to seeming absence. Truth 
is, nothing at all is missing. 
Wind hisses and one shadow 
sways where a window’s lampglow 
has added something. The rest 
is dark and light together tolled 
against the boundary-riven 
houses. Against our lives, 
the stunning wholeness of the world.

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Seamus Heaney tells us "Don't be afraid"

This morning we read a warm, lengthy and caring portrait of Seamus Heaney, 1995 Nobel Laureate, Irish poet and family man. It was in the US edition of The Guardian, titled Seamus Heaney’s family on life with the great poet: ‘He was always just Dad at home'. If you follow the link and read the piece you'll find the origin of today's title. We find it fitting because it bridges, at least in our mind and heart, the history of Ireland's "troubles" with the troubles we're going through in our country these days.

darkened cobbles in a brook bed

Photo by J. Harrington

As we tried to read the photo of Heaney's handwritten original "Trout," we decided to see if a more legible version was available online. That lead us to a resource, previously undiscovered, Connecting with Seamus Heaney, an exploration of the style, content and composition of many of Heaney's poems. We're at least doubly delighted because of the mention of Heaney's writing about rivers and that the "Connecting" resource "is written so as to be accessible to students whose first language may not be English." That offers a bridge to events happening today throughout our country - protesting the treatment, especially the separation of families, of immigrants seeking asylum from the dangers of living in their countries of origin. It also mirrors, a bit, the unfriendly relations between the English and the Irish over an extended period.

Fortunately, the poems included in "Connecting" include Heaney's Anahorish, which we first encountered in The River's Voice anthology. We'll read the "Connecting" material carefully to better understand what Heaney is saying in that poem, something that eluded us in our first (and second) readings. This experience has definitely been an example of the old saying that "the joy is in the journey, not the destination." If we exchanged Heaney's "place of clear water" to a "place of salt water," we might well be describing our own boyhood.

Anahorish 

Seamus Heaney

My 'place of clear water,'
the first hill in the world
where springs washed into
the shiny grass

and darkened cobbles
in the bed of the lane.
Anahorish, soft gradient
of consonant, vowel-meadow,

after-image of lamps
swung through the yards
on winter evenings.
With pails and barrows

those mound-dwellers
go waist-deep in mist
to break the light ice
at wells and dunghills. 

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#WorldRefugeeDay: karma, anyone?

Today is World Refugee Day. The country that is now known as United States of America was founded primarily by religious refugees. But you knew that, right? It just slipped your mind recently. Yet, this year, the regime currently governing the United States is, in our opinion, violating most of the ideals which the founders of this country honored in its establishment through, among other things, it's shameful treatment of refugees, especially vulnerable children. Many of us who were once proud to be Americans feel shamed and dishonored.

A former candidate, who lost the most recent presidential election by 3 million or so popular votes, won sufficient electoral college votes to become "president" and now has created and instituted a "zero tolerance" policy against many less fortunate than he or almost all of us are -- those who are seeking asylum in this country. Think about that for a moment. As we write this, that individual is visiting Duluth, a port of entry to this country. If he hadn't been born here, would we admit him, now that he's been accused of crimes against humanity?

Duluth, MN: a port of entry to the United States

Photo by J. Harrington

The last time we checked, we could find no evidence that any of us chose to be born. We had absolutely no choice of who our parents would be, what their circumstances would be, whether they would be rich or poor, what color their skin would be, what their religions were or of which nation they were citizens. These are all what we consider accidents of birth. Being born into this universe is a complete and total crap shoot.

Most parents want what's best for their children. Many want something better for their children than what they had growing up. It's considered "progress." Yet, among christians, there's the question "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" [Mark 8:36] Are we not close to that tipping point as a country, or have we already crossed it?

The universe in which we live is not a zero sum game, no matter how many folks may think it is. Nature not only abhors a vacuum, she does not support monocultures, except those artificially created by humans or those that support little life. Before we turned the prairie into row crops, the mixture of plants and animals was exuberant. Once we turned forests into lumber and ship's masts, we created  pine plantations, similar to row crops. Look at what's left of natural areas. Do you see single plants dominating?

Here's our view of a bottom line:

• We are all members of the human race.


• We are all citizens of planet earth


• We need to outgrow our overdeveloped sense of tribalism


• We share this world with a multitude of other species, on whom we depend for the foundations of life, clean air, clean water, healthy soil


• For the foreseeable future, there is no Planet B.


• We are failing, miserably, our responsibilities to husband (in the agricultural sense) and steward our life support systems.


• Unless we are among the indigenous peoples who, as afar as we can tell, originally left Africa to inhabit North America, we must live in a way that makes us native to this place


• Those not native to a place deserve the opportunity to become naturalized


• We must find a way to create a shared vision of the kind of world and the kinds of life we want for humanity. This is our shared home


• We would do well to remember who it was that said “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
  

For the Children

Gary Snyder

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
The steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

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What's an acceptable degree of risk? #PolyMet

In case you missed the news, another tailings dam has failed. This one in Australia. There are two particularly relevant quotes from the linked story:

But National Secretary of the Australian Workers Union, Daniel Walton said that many of the workers on the site still don't feel safe given the recent earthquakes.

"A lot of workers are worried that the mine is not taking this activity seriously enough and they do have concerns about safety," he said.... 

In a statement, Newcrest said that safety was its highest priority as it worked to assess the impact of the wall break. 

“The Cadia tailings dams have been regularly inspected, reviewed and monitored; and have been fully certified to industry standards by independent third parties.

how valuable is this land and the waters that flow through it?

Photo by J. Harrington

Those statements read a lot like the mining jobs versus the environmental protection perspectives regarding the proposed PolyMet NorthMet project. Perhaps we've missed it but we don't recall any discussion about what potential for failure is acceptable. A place to start might be the Precautionary Principle.

   When evidence gives us good reason to believe that an activity, technology, or substance may be harmful, we should act to prevent harm. If we always wait for scientific certainty, people may suffer and die and the natural world may suffer irreversible damage.    

Q. How do we implement the precautionary principle? 

A.  The precautionary principle is most powerful when it serves as a guide to making wiser decisions in the face of uncertainty. Any action that contributes to preventing harm to humans and the environment, learning more about the consequences of actions, and acting appropriately is precautionary. 

Precaution does not work if it is only a last resort and results only in bans or moratoriums. It is best linked to these implementation methods:

• exploring alternatives to possibly harmful actions, especially “clean” technologies that eliminate waste and toxic substances;
• placing the burden of proof on proponents of an activity rather than on victims or potential victims of the activity;
• setting and working toward goals that protect health and the environment; and
• bringing democracy and transparency to decisions affecting health and the environment.

An alternative perspective might be to clarify the Degree of Risk we're willing to accept, along with the corresponding damage, to the likelihood of eventual failure. There has been some well regarded work on risk management frameworks in regard to climate change security. Perhaps that framework could be adapted for use with tailings dams.

The report proposes a Three-Tier “ABC” Framework for developing a risk management strategy and makes 10 recommendations for priority actions governments should take to begin implementing the framework.

Some of us remember the tragedy of the Challenger explosion and the subsequent report. Richard Feynman was a member of the Commission that prepared the report.

Feynman's own investigation reveals a disconnect between NASA's engineers and executives that was far more striking than he expected. His interviews of NASA's high-ranking managers revealed startling misunderstandings of elementary concepts. One such concept was the determination of a safety factor.^[6]

What should be the safety factor for any given tailings dam, and how will we know when it's been provided? Is the size of the safety factor satisfactory in light of the value of the resources at risk? Has anyone found answers to those questions? Have they already been, as lawyers sometimes say, "asked and answered?" This article in the Pioneer Press would seem to indicate that they haven't.

                     Sorehead

By John Tranter

I was arrested because of that internal memo,

and ended up in a cell, then I was told to sit

with the police and the local bigwigs.

In the hushed and fast darkening room they said

someone—someone—had reduced the safety margin

on the airport risk factor, and I got the blame.

The sky that day was a pale, clear blue, but

that was happening outside, and far away.

The cop on duty would not open the tomb

of the deported—sorry, departed—and as usual

he had a story. Every movie, he said, depends

on a script, and the narrative grows out of

market research: a set of standard deviations. Art?

What would they know? Open the tomb, and let me in.

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Road improvements?

Last Summer the county was busy replacing a bridge on County Road 36 over the Sunrise River. This Summer a nice, new cement bridge deck contrasts with the blacktopped road and sometimes, especially on a very sunny day, creates optical illusions at the bridge, like it is "floating" or there's something standing in the roadway.

bridge construction bulleting board

Photo by J. Harrington

Before the bridge improvements, there actually were lots of Canada geese standing or sitting on or near the road. Most of the time drivers would slow down and drive around those who had encroached on the cartway. Occasionally, a car wouldn't slow or swerve enough and there'd be an explosion of feathers followed by a dead goose in the road. This year we've seen few geese on or near the road around the bridge. I'm not sure if the issue is that new and extended guardrails block the geese's lines of sight or that last Summer's construction activity caused avoidance of the commotion and next year the geese will be back loafing along the shoulder. It could be both, or neither.

Canada geese loafing along roadway

Photo by J. Harrington

I have mixed feelings about it all. I miss watching goslings grow. I don't miss seeing dead geese lying in the road. It's one thing if a recently departed goose represents a meal for a family, like a Christmas goose. I'm not even sure if any of the cadavers we've seen became food for foxes or coyotes that live around here.

So far this Summer we've seen fewer sandhill cranes, whitetail fawns, turkey poults and almost no snakes. I'm not sure if local populations are down or it's just coincidental or ...? It's also possible that we've just spent less time "looking," but that doesn't seem likely either. For now, let's file it all in the "Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved" file.

Prophecy

Dana Gioia, 1950

Sometimes a child will stare out of a window
for a moment or an hour—deciphering
the future from a dusky summer sky.

Does he imagine that some wisp of cloud
reveals the signature of things to come?
Or that the world’s a book we learn to translate?

And sometimes a girl stands naked by a mirror
imagining beauty in a stranger’s eyes
finding a place where fear leads to desire.

For what is prophecy but the first inkling
of what we ourselves must call into being?
The call need not be large. No voice in thunder.

It’s not so much what’s spoken as what’s heard—
and recognized, of course. The gift is listening
and hearing what is only meant for you.

Life has its mysteries, annunciations,
and some must wear a crown of thorns. I found
my Via Dolorosa in your love.

And sometimes we proceed by prophecy,
or not at all—even if only to know
what destiny requires us to renounce.

O Lord of indirection and ellipses,
ignore our prayers. Deliver us from distraction.
Slow our heartbeat to a cricket’s call.

In the green torpor of the afternoon,
bless us with ennui and quietude.
And grant us only what we fear, so that

Underneath the murmur of the wasp
we hear the dry grass bending in the wind
and the spider’s silken whisper from its web.

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Deer me #phenology

Many, many years ago, when I was first learning about hunting whitetail deer, my campmates taught me to always look toward the back edge of fields when looking for whitetails. That rule of thumb has, for the most part, served me well over the years, up to and including this morning. As I was driving away from the house to get the jeep serviced, I looked toward the back of our property and there was a whitetail doe, feeding on something. I couldn't tell if she had a fawn with her or not.

Several miles plus a right turn down the road, I saw another doe. This one wasn't at the back edge of a field, she was right beside the road and I didn't notice her until she raised her head as the front end of the jeep was about 50 feet from her. Fortunately for all concerned, she stayed in the grass and the jeep and I passed without incident. I certainly hope she didn't have a fawn with her.

whitetail doe and fawns, midSummer grasses

Photo by J. Harrington

As my pulse and blood pressure slowly returned to normal, I was very grateful that the doe hadn't performed one of the patented, harebrained stunts deer are known for and bolted directly into the side or in front of the jeep. I also started to wonder some more about the fussing I'd seen in social media a week or ten days or so ago, about farmers and/or MNDoT mowing roadsides before August 1, because numerous birds use roadside grasses as nesting cover. On the other hand, having lived in and around deer country for most of my adult life, I like it much more when I have an opportunity to hit the brakes when I see a deer. Twice I haven't and they've run into the side of the vehicle I was driving. Each time without apparent body damage to vehicle or deer. Once a doe bolted in front of me from some roadside trees, allowing me barely enough time to avoid a catastrophic encounter.

I'm not sure what the answer is. Birds aren't necessarily more valuable than deer, and bird/vehicle encounters are, I think, less frequent and less damaging to vehicles than deer/car collisions. I suspect it's not possible to set mowers at about 18 inches, allowing ground cover for birds while making roadside deer more visible. That would make it too easy.

mowed roadsides improve visibility

Photo by J. Harrington

Outside cities it's currently legal to mow the first eight feet or shoulder at any time. Clearly, in my neighborhood, that first eight feet gets mowed very infrequently. I do have one somewhat strange neighbor who mows between the road and his fence, but not on the house side of the fence. I almost never see any deer in his yard at any time.

If any of you have come across what seems like a viable resolution to the conundrum of "to mow, or not to mow," please share it. As we, as a society, turn more roadsides and medians into habitat for pollinators, I'm getting more concerned about creating the unintended consequences of increased "collateral damage" resulting in a net loss of some kinds of non-pollinating wildlife that also lack the evolutionary background to avoid vehicles traveling at highway speeds. Back in the days when much of my leisure time was spent on the ocean in small craft, I was pretty rigorous about the rule of "a place for everything and everything in its place." But then there are neither roadsides nor ditches on the ocean.

Mowing

Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963

There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

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Our "brains, technology and regulations" aren't enough

I'm delighted to see Congresswoman McCollum is taking a leadership role in trying to protect some of Minnesota's most significant assets, and I'm not referring to minerals. She's introduced a bill "that would prohibit all future mining on federally managed lands in the Rainy River Watershed area up in northern Minnesota...." This has, somewhat naturally, upset the Congressman for Minnesota's Eighth District, where I reside and where much (all?) of the Rainy River watershed is located.. He is quoted as having said "The fact is, we have the brains, technology and regulations to both mine and protect the environment." I would probably be a little more in agreement with Congressman Nolan's assertion of "facts" if My Minnesota hadn't just yesterday listed a number of examples that, in my opinion, clearly demonstrate our collective failure to use whatever brains, technology and regulations we have, at least as far as protecting our environment goes. I for one don't want to wait until the St. Louis or Rainy Rivers reach the condition the Cuyahoga River was once in, then it caught fire, or the condition of Lake Superior when Reserve Mining used it as a dump. Using our brains strongly suggests ounces of prevention trump pounds of cure and years of litigation.

St. Louis River

Photo by J. Harrington

We've created a world in which "GOP lawmakers strip rail safety money from North Dakota budget: ‘Accidents are gonna happen’ anyway"; in which "we see that more than 4,100 lakes and stream sections across the state [Minnesota] – or more than 40 percent of the total – are classed as “impaired” because they fail to meet federal quality standards.

The major driver of these impairments is excessive inputs of nutrients, primarily phosphorus and nitrates from fertilizers, and the major source of those nutrients is row-crop agriculture. [emphasis added]

MinnPost    Courtesy of Deb Swackhamer

Farmers who say they want to be good stewards, but oppose buffers and other clean water requirements, or mining proponents who rail to protect diminishing sectors of northern Minnesota's economy while out of state executives in those same sectors draw outrageous salaries, strikes me as being situations with too small a fig leaf to cover a naked emperor (I think I just mixed my metaphors). If you've ever watched the movie Network, count me "mad as hell." Today's posting is my equivalent of opening a window and yelling. Today's poem describes too what may be loosed upon us if we unrealistically rely on our "brains, technology and regulations." Isn't that what those downstream of Mount Polley counted on? Aren't those what we hope will protect us from exploding, derailed oil tank cars coming from North Dakota through the midst of Minnesota's population centers?

The Second Coming

By William Butler Yeats 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 

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The Ghost of Christmas Future

I found what I think is some good news today. (I'm intentionally ignoring the hissy-fits in D.C. over the release of a 500 page Executive Summary of US conducted torture and coverup lies. It seems like the only appropriate response until we have a higher quality human race to work with.) Back to the good news, in Earth Journal, Ron Meador writes:

We're talking about rethinking the design and use of highway corridors and utility rights-of-way, of corporate campuses and croplands, of all manner of public lands and private lawns. All of these can be modified to restore healthy pollinator habitat, while returning significant human benefits as well. [emphasis added]

pollination in progress

Photo by J. Harrington

What Ron is writing about is restorative development. It's not enough to be less bad these days (see report reference above), we have to actually accomplish good in order to be truly sustainable. And, speaking of such, at the risk of putting a jinx on it (them?), there seems to be some potential for good being done at the climate change talks according to 350.org

Yes, world leaders really are discussing ending fossil fuels by mid-century. This is what our movement is capable of. Let's keep pushing. [Ending fossil fuels is less bad. Renewable energy is good.]

On a largely unrelated topic, except that it looks like it could be good news at a very personal scale, the pounding over (not in) my head as a new roof is constructed has been lessened today. As much as I'm grateful for the work they're doing, and the fact that I'm not out on a roof in this weather, living in the house since early yesterday has been what I imagine living in a coop with a bunch of the bird pictured below would be like. So, despite years of saying that a new roof on the house doesn't meet my definition of an appropriate Christmas present, the silence that goes with a new roof does qualify as a miraculous Christmas present. [UPDATE: Things just got a little more complicated. One of the crew came partway through the living room vaulted ceiling. More repairs needed.]

pileated woodpecker

Photo by J. Harrington

If the positive leaning news mentioned above continues and delivers a present of a much improved future for all on Earth, this may be one of the best Christmases ever, or at least so far.

Intimate Detail

By Heid E. Erdrich 

Late summer, late afternoon, my work

interrupted by bees who claim my tea,

even my pen looks flower-good to them.

I warn a delivery man that my bees,

who all summer have been tame as cows,

now grow frantic, aggressive, difficult to shoo

from the house. I blame the second blooms

come out in hot colors, defiant vibrancy—

unexpected from cottage cosmos, nicotianna,

and bean vine. But those bees know, I’m told

by the interested delivery man, they have only

so many days to go. He sighs at sweetness untasted.

Still warm in the day, we inspect the bees.

This kind stranger knows them in intimate detail.

He can name the ones I think of as shopping ladies.

Their fur coats ruffed up, yellow packages tucked

beneath their wings, so weighted with their finds

they ascend in slow circles, sometimes drop, while

other bees whirl madly, dance the blossoms, ravish

broadly so the whole bed bends and bounces alive.

He asks if I have kids, I say not yet. He has five,

all boys. He calls the honeybees his girls although

he tells me they’re ungendered workers

who never produce offspring. Some hour drops,

the bees shut off. In the long, cool slant of sun,

spent flowers fold into cups. He asks me if I’ve ever

seen a Solitary Bee where it sleeps. I say I’ve not.

The nearest bud’s a long-throated peach hollyhock.

He cradles it in his palm, holds it up so I spy

the intimacy of the sleeping bee. Little life safe in a petal,

little girl, your few furious buzzings as you stir

stay with me all winter, remind me of my work undone.

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Star light, star bright

Early this morning we had a waning crescent moon. Not much light but very attractive. Sometimes it's nice to be in the dark. We'll get to try something like "darkness at the break of noon" this Thursday with the partial solar eclipse at sunset. [I've probably been spending too much time listening to the CDs of Dylan's 30th Anniversary concert. He wrote lyrics for the ages, especially this one.]

After sunset, the sun also rises

Photo by J. Harrington

Speaking of stars, and don't forget, to the rest of the Milky Way our sun is just another star, there's a wonderful piece about Wendell Berry by Darby Minow Smith in Grist. Wendell, as always, just makes sense in such a way that I often am left starry-eyed and wonder why we don't all just do as he says. Especially when the alternatives frequently involve situations where utilities must innovate or go extinct, or efforts to resurrect a moribund nuclear energy sector. How quickly we seem to forget situations like Fukishima, and, please, don't give me any "can't happen here" nonsense. As soon as all the legislative bodies on earth have unanimously rescinded Murphy's Law, we can talk. Actually, I'll make it easier, as soon as Congress unanimously rescinds Murphy's Law we can talk.

The Sound of the Sun

By George Bradley 

It makes one all right, though you hadn’t thought of it,

A sound like the sound of the sky on fire, like Armageddon,   

Whistling and crackling, the explosions of sunlight booming   

As the huge mass of gas rages into the emptiness around it.

It isn’t a sound you are often aware of, though the light speeds   

To us in seconds, each dawn leaping easily across a chasm   

Of space that swallows the sound of that sphere, but   

If you listen closely some morning, when the sun swells   

Over the horizon and the world is still and still asleep,   

You might hear it, a faint noise so far inside your mind

That it must come from somewhere, from light rushing to darkness,   

Energy burning towards entropy, towards a peaceful solution,   

Burning brilliantly, spontaneously, in the middle of nowhere,   

And you, too, must make a sound that is somewhat like it,   

Though that, of course, you have no way of hearing at all. 

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Sustainable St. Croix,part of a continuing seriesNational Heritage Area or frac sand economy?

Once I overcame my fear of the strange, bright light in the sky today, I noticed that the hill out back is covered in colors. There's lots and lots of some white wildflower I'll need to go and identify (I've been told it's boneset but I don't think the pictures of boneset match what's in the field. I think it's hoary alyssum.), increasing amounts of hairy vetch (purple), and an abundance of hoary puccoon plants (yellow). The flowers, the sunshine, and the fact that our basement isn't flooded have combined to put me in a good mood, and to extend my deepest sympathy to many of my fellow Minnesotans.

goslings and goose                             © harrington

This little flock, and a couple more like them, are another reason to be happy today. If they aren't the cutest, they're in the top five or so (along with puppies, kittens, ducklings, and, if your name is Hagrid, baby dragons).

On a much less cheerful note, the frac sand facility proposed for North Branch, that we were informed a while ago was not going to proceed, is apparently back in play. We have a number of concerns about this project, if what we've read is basically accurate. First, we're not sure MoveOn petitions are the most effective way to address this kind of problem, but they may be the best available to concerned citizens until the upcoming election. Second, the concept, reported in the June 12 linked story ("back in play") of looking at a "bypass" around downtown Taylors Falls, strikes us as being just short of a fantasy or a fairy tale. Third, we hope the folks in the Valley, on both sides of the River, begin to think about is how well the advantages of a National Heritage Area designation, currently being explored, might be offset by additional development of heavy industry with traffic needs that conflict with tourist traffic.

St. Croix Falls and Taylors Falls            © harrington

We also wonder if the National Park Service might have concerns about a bypass around Taylors Falls or about augmenting the capacity of the current bridge, since it's not clear that the design of that facility is based on the amount of heavy truck traffic that includes frac sand. All of this is coming along at a time when legislatures at the state and federal level are reluctant to provide the funds needed for currently committed and programmed projects. We have few doubts we'll be revisiting this issue again and again. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, please note that Jeff Daniel Marion could easily have been writing about the St. Croix River. Maybe he was.

Playing to the River

By Jeff Daniel Marion 

She stands by the riverbank, 

notes from her bagpipes lapping

across to us as we wait

for the traffic light to change.

She does not know we hear—

she is playing to the river,

a song for the water, the flow

of an unknown melody to the rocky

bluffs beyond, for the mist

that was this morning, shroud

of past lives: fishermen

and riverboat gamblers, tugboat captains

and log raftsmen, pioneer and native

slipping through the eddies of time.

She plays for them all, both dirge

and surging hymn, for what has passed

and is passing as we slip

into the currents of traffic,

the changed light bearing us away.

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"We've got it covered?"

Do you recall seeing anything in the Twin Cities' news media about the opposition to Enbridge's "Alberta Clipper" pipeline? A search of the Star Tribune's web site yields articles about Minnesota's Public Utilities Commission deliberations, and about the "environmental opposition" from the Sierra Club and MN350. What seems to be missing, at least I couldn't find reference to it, including doing a search on "enbridge horseback protest" is any mention of the protest ride organized by the Native American environmental organization, Honor the Earth. What I find most strange about the lack of coverage is that the protest was noted in newspapers throughout the northern part of Minnesota. It was even picked up by a couple of national blogs, Huffington Post and TreeHugger.

The slippery slope of lack of coverage?        © harrington

Lest you think I'm singling out the Star Tribune, I'll report here that I neither could I find a word about the protest on MinnPost, although Twin Cities Daily Planet did have a couple of opinion columns and MinnPost reported, back in 2010, that Enbridge has pipelines in Minnesota and an Enbridge line in Michigan sprang a notable leak. Compound what I see as a lack of coverage with recent stories about how devastating the Exxon Valdez oil spill has been and still is 25 years after it occurred. Then multiply that by the 40,000 plus or minus public comments on the SDEIS for the proposed PolyMet NorthMet mining project (which was well covered in the Star Tribune), and I have to wonder if a pipeline would have to run under the Vikings stadium or Target Field before local news outlets would say boo. Minnesota is one state, isn't it? Aren't we all in this together? That's not a conclusion I'd draw from reading or watching the local news. Maybe that's why months ago I started reading The Guardian to find out what's happening in the good old U.S. of A. As William Carlos Williams has noted “It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.” David Tucker helps us understand a "slow news day."

Lost our way?   © harrington

Today’s News

By David Tucker 

A slow news day, but I did like the obit about the butcher   

who kept the same store for fifty years.   People remembered   

when his street was sweetly roaring, aproned   

with flower stalls and fish stands.   

The stock market wandered, spooked by presidential winks,   

by micro-winds and the shadows of earnings.   News was stationed   

around the horizon, ready as summer clouds to thunder--   

but it moved off and we covered the committee meeting   

at the back of the statehouse, sat around on our desks,   

then went home early.   The birds were still singing,   

the sun just going down.   Working these long hours,   

you forget how beautiful the early evening can be,   

the big houses like ships turning into the night,   

their rooms piled high with silence.

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