STEAM not STEM

There’s enough stupidity and related activity going on in the world so, today we’re going to be short and sweet and positive. As we hope you know, STEM is an abbreviation for Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics. All fine and generally benevolent sectors, necessary in many ways, but not sufficient. However, if we add Arts (and Humanities), STEM becomes STEAM and, as the old saying goes, then we’re cooking!

art & science combined

Photo by J. Harrington

Unfortunately, that brings me to an embarrassing confession. Until moments ago, I was unaware that October is National Arts and Humanities Month. Admittedly, today is only October 2, but, if mainstream media covered the announcement, I missed it. (If they didn’t cover the announcement, they shouldn’t be considered MSM.) One major reason I can’t and won’t support STEM by itself is that we currently have much more of the science and technology etc. needed to respond to climate breakdown than we’re using. That’s where the Arts (and Humanities) come in, to motivate the political will and create the concurrence needed to use what we have and create whatever else we need before it’s too late.

If that line of reasoning resonates at all with you, you want to take a look at:

• Americans for the Arts Action Fund, and
• The Democracy Collaborative

That’s it, execpt for today’s poem.

Alone

Maya Angelou     1928 – 2014

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can’t use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

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A passion for poetry

 As I was rereading the first chapter of Joy Harjo’s Catching the Light this morning, my day was brightened by  this paragraph:

The traditional ways and rituals of all of Earth’s peoples are kept in containers of poetry, song, and story. It is how we know who we are, where we are coming from and who we are becoming.

Those thoughts became a great lead-in to an article in today’s Daily Yonder which we’re republishing below. Those who would ban books be damned!! They  would keep us from knowing  who we are.

A ‘Little Town Poets Society,’ and the Woman Behind It

by Presley West, The Daily Yonder
May 24, 2023

Growing up in Scott County, Tennessee, Cheyanne Leonardo's passion for poetry and the arts made her feel like a bit of an outsider.

"It's hard growing up and feeling different, feeling like no one is interested in the same things as you are … I definitely felt like a weirdo. But I kind of liked it, in a way, and I tried to make it my super power."

Community members gather for a Little Town Poets Society meeting.
(Photo courtesy of Cheyanne Leonardo)

 

"Little Town Poet" Cheyanne Leonardo.
(Photo courtesy of Leonardo)

Today, her poetry – and gift for sharing it with others – has become just that. In the past three years, Cheyanne has published three poetry collections, cultivated a thriving group of local poets, launched a local poetry anthology that's received more than 100 submissions, and assumed a leadership role in a recently formed nonprofit working to advance arts in the community.

Though she is now doing what she considers her life's work, it happened by accident.

Only three years ago, Cheyanne was living in Stuttgart, Germany, at the tail end of a decade-long odyssey of boarding school, graduate school, traveling, and living abroad, which she started when she first left home at fourteen. Fluent in French and German after extensive travel in Europe and a graduate degree in modern language and literature, she taught English for two years before the Covid pandemic hit Germany. In the face of so much uncertainty, homesickness — and a chance at a love she’d left behind — brought her home.

"If I'm perfectly honest, the reason that I came home was because I'm a romantic. I was waiting for the right time to be with someone here in our hometown," she said. "When I was faced with the possibility of the imminent death of all my loved ones, I thought, okay."

So she moved home, rented a small apartment behind her old childhood dance studio, and began working as a barista. She wrote poems to process her feelings about her time abroad, her journey home, and everything in between. Those poems eventually became the foundation for her debut poetry collection, More Than Metaphor, published in the summer of 2021.

Birth of the Little Town Poets Society

What began as a personal exploration of her feelings became a way to connect with her community more deeply than she ever had before. Surprised by how much people connected with her work, and humbled by the encouragement she received from friends, family, and strangers while selling her work at the coffee shop, she decided to start a free weekly poetry class.

"So, I am starting a club. And everyone is invited," she wrote on Facebook. "The LITTLE TOWN POETS SOCIETY will be a place for YOU – to join me in creating poetry and art of your very own."

Little Town Poets Society meetings, like the one pictured above,
started as weekly free poetry classes taught by Leonardo.

Despite early fears that no one would show up or care, eleven people – ranging from teens to seniors in their seventies – showed up to Little Town Poets Society's first meeting at the coffee shop. And they've continued to show up since, sharing their work, forming unexpected friendships, and opening up about their feelings.

"More than once, a grown man has cried at Poets Society, which I feel is progress," she said.

The group has been transformative for Whitney Swain. "The little community that [Cheyanne] has created has opened a world of possibilities that I didn't know would exist for me," said Whitney, who is studying to become a licensed counselor. "She gave me space to find an artistic voice that I did not know I had."

A discussion at the Little Town Poets Society.

Weeks after launching Little Town Poets Society in the fall of 2022, a couple of friends and family approached Cheyanne with an idea to start a nonprofit arts organization, a moment she remembers as a "sign that everything was moving in the right direction." 

 

 

 

 

Friends made through the Little Town Poets Society.
(Photos courtesy of Leonardo)

"When I started out, I was kind of hoping it would evolve into something like that."

Today, she serves as Director of Literary Arts for that nonprofit — the Appalachian Society of the Arts — which recently hosted its first fundraiser for a Budding Artist scholarship fund and is planning free and low-cost classes in music, photography, acting, and crafting.

Supporting access to the arts and emerging artists from Scott County has been incredibly meaningful for Cheyanne. "I was dissuaded from pursuing [the arts] for so long because they're “not valuable.” And that's the exact thing I'm trying to break — this notion that it's not helpful or doesn't contribute. Because [with] what I've done in the last two years with poetry alone, I've seen more of a positive impact in terms of other people's lives and the world, that I've been able to do, than anything else ever."

The Hometown Poems Project

Her current project, "Hometown Poems," is an example of that. It’s a local anthology she created for residents of Scott, McCreary, and surrounding counties that will benefit the Appalachian Society of the Arts. She’s received poetry, photo, and drawing submissions from over 100 residents. "The youngest person who submitted is four years old, and the oldest is in his 80s. So we've got the whole range of life," she said.

She’s also writing, with her current work focused on spirituality. "I'm always a romantic. So there's always love in there as well," she said. "But I like the idea that everybody has a little piece of the divine in them, whatever their name for that is. And for me, poetry is what gets me in touch with it."

Personally, Cheyanne is living happily with her partner — the one who inspired her journey home — and their dog and cat. She quit her barista job to write poetry full time and has wholeheartedly embraced her identity as a Little Town Poet. "I hope to continue representing rural places, especially in Appalachia, and inspiring people to represent themselves.”

While she hasn't ruled out a future odyssey — “there's part of me that still fantasizes about running away and being alive somewhere else." — she's putting down roots for now.

"I really like being here right now … growing up, I felt like, kind of an outcast. So all of a sudden, it's like I'm really active in the community, and I like it. I feel like I'm making a difference, and that is what matters to me."

---

This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Make STEM STEAM

There are still a few widely scattered patches of snow remaining after a couple of days in the 80s.We are now into RED FLAG brushfire season plus flood warnings along some rivers. The rain and snow showers expected this weekend will help the former but not the latter. Meanwhile, after a record-setting winter’s snowfall, we’ve set several new daily high temperature records for the Twin Cities area this week. This is what happens when you don’t have an ocean nearby to temper wild weather swings.

haven’t yet seen a local red-winged blackbird

Photo by J. Harrington

I’m pondering why there seems to have been limited effort so far exploring the concept of bioregionalism in the upper Midwest. At least there’s little I can find on line about bioregionalism for Minnesota, Wisconsin, the St. Croix river and watershed, etc. I’m becoming more and more interested in learning about any potential relationship(s) between bioregional and traditional ecological knowledge. I’m also back to exploring questions around the concept of cultural appropriation. All of the preceding is because I am delighted by A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia and look forward to reading Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry. 

All of the preceding is due to recent discoveries of online literary field guide type resources and a desire to find a useful model for organizing them. I’m convinced we must include the Arts as part of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math or we are likely to find ourselves in a position similar to the person whose only tool was a hammer. Consequently, every problem or opportunity looked like a nail. Plus, we’ve taken reductionist thinking beyond reasonable limits and need to put time and effort and resources into synthesizing new and improved world views. Perhaps it’s literally time to go “back to the future.”

Digging

By Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb   

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   

My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   

Bends low, comes up twenty years away   

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

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Bitter cold is not cool

 Sometime, recently I believe, someone snuck a bookstore into Center City, Twinflower Books. We’ll plan on stopping by and taking a peek one day soon. Several years ago there was a bookstore in Lindstrom that’s been gone for some time. I never could figure out how they expected to stay in business, open weekdays from 9 to 5 as I remember, in a community with a large pre-pandemic contingent of commuters to “The  Cities.”

The folks at Franconia sculpture had a book club years ago. Among other things, it made evident that, even within one county, travel distances could be too long to make in person meetings effective, especially during the winter season. But, it was fun while it lasted.

it was colder 4 years ago

Photo by J. Harrington

We’ve almost made it through January. The next week may be the toughest one of the winter. The Midwest Regional Climate Center has the current [and projected] Twin Cities winter rated at severe. I’m not only not going to argue, I feel validated about all the grumping I’ve been doing, although I don’t think their index includes percent cloud cover.

We’ll get a different perspective this coming Thursday when we watch to see if Phil sees his shadow. Later, as the snow eventually melts, the back yard gopher mounds left by Phil’s nephew, will no doubt  reappear as a topic about which I grump and mutter. Stay tuned.

On this day, in 1939, William Butler Yeats, a magnificent poet, died. Today’s poems is in his memory and honor, and to remind us neither winter nor youth  lasts forever.

The Song of Wandering Aengus

By William Butler Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And someone called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

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Going local more

The wind is scouring some of the snow off the roof. There are brief patches of blue sky and glimpses of sunlight. A week from today we should begin to return to seasonable temperatures. I get my new glasses tomorrow. The Better Half returned from a morning excursion with a bundle of forsythia stems that will soon bloom. This time the township snow plow didn’t knock the mail box off its post. Things are looking at least mildly hopeful, plus:

My email inbox brought a review of a book by a local author 👆that looks interesting. That author has a second book coming out early next month that looks at least as interesting as the one in the review I read. Then I discovered the author’s publisher has multiple books of poetry that I want to check out. The odds are better than even I won’t run out of things to read before the geese return this spring and I begin to spend more time outside.

Meanwhile, as the wind howls and the snow flies, I’ve been reading The Systems View of Life. It’s giving me hope for our future in part because it describes a prior transformative world view, from organic to mechanistic. The view is now being replaced by a systems view. When I remember reading about the difficulties and challenges Da Vinci, Galileo, Copernicus and others encountered convincing the powers that be of their times that the universe is not earth centric, I have at least a little more tolerance for the effort to convince current powers that be that neither is our earth homocentric nor inexhaustible.

Earth, You Have Returned to Me

By Elaine Equi

Can you imagine waking up

every morning on a different planet,

each with its own gravity?

Slogging, wobbling,

wavering. Atilt

and out-of-sync

with all that moves

and doesn’t.

Through years of trial

and mostly error

did I study this unsteady way — 

changing pills, adjusting the dosage,

never settling.

A long time we were separate,

O Earth,

but now you have returned to me.

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Starter, dough, half-baked, done

A cloudy, dreary day offers a wonderful opportunity to distract myself from gloom and doom by messing with the resurrected sourdough starter and mixing some dough for baking bread tomorrow. Some time back I read something about naming one’s starter, sort of like it's a pet. I’m seriously considering naming mine Lazarus, considering the number of times it’s been brought back from the (near) dead.

home-made starter looking happy

Photo by J. Harrington

The Daughter Person has challenged me to craft gnome bread for this Christmas season. I’m currently contemplating the pros and cons of acquiring an oval dutch oven or an oval baking cloche or simply replacing a baking stone that got broken some months back. The cloche I really like is out of the question because it weighs 22 pounds and that’s gross overkill for my needs and abilities. Anyhow, the challenge now has me engaged, which is much better for me than sitting, sulking, and stewing over the state of the world. Instead, I’m reading and learning from Sourdough by Science. I much  prefer to have at least a slight understanding of why I should do certain things a certain way and that’s a good part of what I’m gaining. Also, it turns out that although I’ve been doing many of the basic steps in the correct sequence and using correct procedures, I’m now learning what those steps are actually called. That’s progress!

As I think back to when I first began baking bread, I kept trying things until I found a pattern that worked and produced bread that I liked the taste of. Then I became hesitant to stray too far from that pattern, which eventually left me in a somewhat boring rut. I’m going to work hard at avoiding a repetition of that pattern and, it seems, a good way to do so it to get a better handle on the basics so I can learn from whatever mistakes I make, rather than being limited to saying “I have no idea what went wrong!” I bet such an approach could improve our lives, if only we could identify what the basics of a happy life are.

Inside

By Linda Hogan

How something is made flesh

no one can say. The buffalo soup

becomes a woman

who sings every day to her horses

or summons another to her private body

saying come, touch, this is how

it begins, the path of a newly born

who, salvaged from other lives and worlds,

will grow to become a woman, a man,

with a heart that never rests,

and the gathered berries,

the wild grapes

enter the body,

human wine

which can love,

where nothing created is wasted;

the swallowed grain

takes you through the dreams

of another night,

the deer meat becomes hands

strong enough to work.

 

But I love most

the white-haired creature

eating green leaves;

the sun shines there

swallowed, showing in her face

taking in all the light,

 

and in the end

when the shadow from the ground

enters the body and remains,

in the end, you might say,

This is myself

still unknown, still a mystery.

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A day to honor All Our Relations

October is National Arts & Humanities Month.

Today is Indigenous Peoples Day. According to the White  House Proclamation:

For centuries, Indigenous Peoples were forcibly removed from ancestral lands, displaced, assimilated, and banned from worshiping or performing many sacred ceremonies.  Yet today, they remain some of our greatest environmental stewards.  They maintain strong religious beliefs that still feed the soul of our Nation.  And they have chosen to serve in the United States Armed Forces at a higher rate than any other group.  Native peoples challenge us to confront our past and do better, and their contributions to scholarship, law, the arts, public service, and more continue to guide us forward.

In honoring all of the above, we call your attention to the Native American Poetry and Culture page at the Poetry Foundation’s web site: “A selection of poets, poems, and articles exploring the Native American experience.” 

All My Relations Arts

Photo by J. Harrington

We also want to share that a Native American, and former three term poet laureate of the United States from 2019 to 2022, has recently had published a book, Catching the Light, that has brought me more reading pleasure than almost anything I’ve read for years. Thank you, Joy Harjo!

Recognition is also due to Minnesota’s current Poet Laureate, Gwen Westerman, the first indigenous person to hold that title.

Since we are now less than a month from election day, today’s poem seems entirely fitting.

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

By Joy Harjo

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

                                                      —Norman Patrick Brown, Dineh Poet and Speaker

1. SET CONFLICT RESOLUTION GROUND RULES:

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. GIVE CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK:

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

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

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

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

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


4. REDUCE DEFENSIVENESS AND BREAK THE DEFENSIVENESS CHAIN:

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

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

There was no  "I"  or "you."

There was us; there was "we."

There we were as if we were the music.

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

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

This is about getting to know each other.

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


5. ELIMINATE NEGATIVE ATTITUDES DURING CONFLICT:

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

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

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

He hears the death song of his approaching prey:

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


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

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

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Turning a new leaf into October!

Welcome to October and Happy International Coffee Day! Today is also the 98th birthday of former President Jimmy Carter. We wish him many happy returns of the day.

oak leaves in October

Photo by J. Harrington

Oak leaves are just beginning to show color, more subdued than the maples, or, if you prefer, less flamboyant. The bur oak dropped acorns about a month ago. We’ve seen no acorns on other  oaks this year. Roadside asters are still in flower, although with fewer blooms than mid-month last.

Yesterday we got all wound up thinking about an honorable harvest and missed sharing our share of the weekly Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] share we picked up. [Remember that the Honorable Harvest includes sharing.] Here’s what was in our box:

• BROCCOLI SIDE SHOOTS
• CAULIFLOWER OR EGGPLANT
• GREEN ONIONS
• KABOCHA SQUASH
• LETTUCE
• RAINBOW CHARD; and,
• TOMATOES

We got cauliflower instead of eggplant but it was purple cauliflower, which I don’t recall ever seeing before. The tomatoes are the last for this season. Another sign that summer is truly gone for the year. Soon even the local Drive In restaurant will be closed for the winter so last night we enjoyed dinners from there. As we were driving home, we got to watch a flight of eight or ten geese traverse the cloudy sky. That helped make my day.

October is National Arts & Humanities Month (NAHM). Here’s the Presidential Proclamation. We’ll see what we can manage to share on that theme. One point is that we’ve signed up for an online nature nonfiction writing series that runs this month on Wednesdays. Among other benefits, it brings me into contact with writers I might not otherwise encounter and causes me to actually think about my writing.

October

By Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,

Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;

Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,

Should waste them all.

The crows above the forest call;

Tomorrow they may form and go.

O hushed October morning mild,

Begin the hours of this day slow.

Make the day seem to us less brief.

Hearts not averse to being beguiled,

Beguile us in the way you know.

Release one leaf at break of day;

At noon release another leaf;

One from our trees, one far away.

Retard the sun with gentle mist;

Enchant the land with amethyst.

Slow, slow!

For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,

Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,

Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—

For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

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My Labor Day discovery

 I came across this a day or two ago and saved it for today. The parallelism between labor and management as democrats and republicans is frustrating, to say the best. Perhaps artisanal coops are the way to a sustainable future, especially if they encourage more tolerance among all of us'ns.

The Artisanal Economies Project

my very own artisanal sourdough bread

Photo by J. Harrington

If “it” requires large corporations to produce, we probably don’t need it and don’t actually benefit from “it”. Here’s my examples from Slashdot as of but moments ago.

LG is Bringing NFTs To Its Smart TVs

Islamic State Turns To NFTs To Spread Terror Message

As Popeye used to say “That’s all I can stands, ‘cuz I can’t stands no more.”

Have a Happy Labor Day and Illegitimi non carborundum. Remember corporations are only legal persons, not real people. That makes them subhuman.

 

Labor Day

By Rodney Koeneke

So I say to my friend at the day job

“We are bored sometimes, and scented like realtors

but if everyone’s equally disconsolate

under labor’s gooey caul

then nuance can be stitched more vividly

to secrets lodged inside of everyone

until it becomes your own country

with highways that carry you silently past the jetty

which, from their heavy drinking, the case managers come out to

failing to be stable and badly attempting to sing”

We’re pushing our barques past the mansions

as I say this, near the dwellings of persons

whose lives have no mooring

outside the slow fact of our passing—

huddled arrogantly under their air-conditioning

they want us to be users

moved by advertisers

enticing the constituency

to join them and sit there and weep

But we’re too busy pulling

toward centers where workers assemble.

While time for them is a melody

played at long intervals across condominiums

we who are the power

know our systems so much better

now come to this hour outside it

now give it new form on guitar 

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Valentine's minus 5

As we get nearer Valentine’s Day in mid-February, more signs of spring are appearing. Yesterday, wild turkey tracks were found all along a stretch of the road bordering our property. The birds are getting active in anticipation of the upcoming breeding season while seeking previously untapped food supplies.

Meanwhile, more and more raptors are visible perched on the lamps along the local interstate. Signs those birds are heading north again?

Today’s weather feels much like mid-March, a hint of coming attractions, including thaws and melting.

"And our hearts, once all together beaten,
Now all together beat."

Photo by J. Harrington

Since February is not only the month of Valentine’s Day, but also Black History Month, today we’ll note we’re reading, and enjoying, Amanda Gorman’s recently published volume, Call Us What We Carry. A day or two ago we were particularly taken by the following lines from “Every Day We Are Learning":

Just like a skill or any art,
We cannot possess hope without practicing it.

A poem she recently released, that I don’t think is included in Call Us..., strikes me as being very much in alignment with the themes of Valentine’s Day. What do you think?

New Day's Lyric

by Amanda Gorman

May this be the day
We come together.
Mourning, we come to mend,
Withered, we come to weather,
Torn, we come to tend,
Battered, we come to better.
Tethered by this year of yearning,
We are learning
That though we weren’t ready for this,
We have been readied by it.
We steadily vow that no matter
How we are weighed down,
We must always pave a way forward.

This hope is our door, our portal.
Even if we never get back to normal,
Someday we can venture beyond it,
To leave the known and take the first steps.
So let us not return to what was normal,
But reach toward what is next.

What was cursed, we will cure.
What was plagued, we will prove pure.
Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree,
Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee,
Where we weren’t aware, we’re now awake;
Those moments we missed
Are now these moments we make,
The moments we meet,
And our hearts, once all together beaten,
Now all together beat.

Come, look up with kindness yet,
For even solace can be sourced from sorrow.
We remember, not just for the sake of yesterday,
But to take on tomorrow.

We heed this old spirit,
In a new day’s lyric,
In our hearts, we hear it:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
Be bold, sang Time this year,
Be bold, sang Time,
For when you honor yesterday,
Tomorrow ye will find.
Know what we’ve fought
Need not be forgot nor for none.
It defines us, binds us as one,
Come over, join this day just begun.
For wherever we come together,
We will forever overcome.

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For your weekend enjoyment

Many years ago, the Better Half discovered, I believe on a public broadcasting radio station, a singer-songwriter named Carrie Newcomer. This was, as I remember, back in the days when the Daughter Person was attending college, which gave the Better Half and I an opportunity to enjoy Ms. Newcomer in performance at a near campus coffee house in St. Paul. She was a delight. We have remained fans over the years and have watched her talents find additional outlets, such as several volumes of poetry which accompany her three most recent albums.

Today’s posting is going on about Carrie Newcomer because her writing offers a down-to-earth sanity  that is sadly lacking in too many other parts of contemporary life. Just the other day I bought her most recent CD and book of poems, entitled Until Now (↑). There’s a release tour that follows the album and book, with a Minneapolis date in a few weeks:

Nov 7 Sun 

Cedar Cultural Center @ 7:30pm 

Minneapolis, MN, United States

If you’re brave enough to attend live performances these days, you should definitely consider getting tickets. As noted on the web page for Until Now, 

“We have all lived through a time of great unraveling,” Newcomer says. “Yet, with great disruption comes a possibility for change. We can’t just be healed; we must be transformed.” In her songs and poems, Newcomer tells the universal human story of loss, resiliency, spiritual connection, and hope with the grace, compassion, and humor that characterizes her work....

If you, as a number of us have, are searching for an optimistic response and ways to adjust or adapt to  these trying times in which we live, consider becoming familiar with the perspectives offered by Newcomer, and her friend and mentor, Parker J. Palmer, as an antidote to the pervasive gloom, doom and madness instilled by the multitude of crises we face.

Making Sense

Finding what makes sense 

In senseless times 

Takes grounding

Sometimes quite literally 

In the two inches of humus 

Faithful recreating itself

Every hundred years.

It takes steadying oneself 

Upon shale and clay and solid rock

Swearing allegiance to an ageless aquifer 

Betting on all the still hidden springs. 

You can believe in a tree, 

With its broad-leafed perspective, 

Dedicated to breathing in, and then out, 

Reaching down, and then up,  

Drinking in a goodness above and below 

It’s splayed and mossy feet. 

You can trust a tree’s careful 

and drawn out way of speaking. 

One thoughtful sentence, covering the span of many seasons.  

A tree doesn’t hurry, it doesn’t lie,

 It knows how to stand true to itself 

Unselfconscious of its beauty and scars,

 And all the physical signs of where 

and when It needed to bend,

Rather than break.

A tree stands solitary and yet in deepest communion,

For in the gathering of the many, 

There is comfort and courage, 

Perseverance and protection, 

From the storms that howl down from predictable

 Or unexplainable directions.    

In a senseless time 

Hold close to what never stopped 

Making sense.

Like love

Like trees

Like how a seed becomes a branch

And compost becomes seedlings again.

Like the scent at the very top of an infant’s head

Because there is nothing more right than that. Nothing. 

It is all still happening 

Even now.

Even now.

By Carrie Newcomer 2020

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The value of beauty

At least today the weather is a delight although, as usual, I could do with a gentler breeze, unless, of course, I’m trying to burn some of our dead, broken branches in the fire pit. Then a stronger breeze from a consistent direction is helpful. There I go again, reducing nature to its utility function.

Perhaps I’m just displaying my crass, self-centered side, but it seems to me that trying to value, in non-economic terms, the multiple values of nature, including other people, makes more sense than reducing ecosystem services to a dollar value. Where’s the dollar value of beauty? Seeing something beautiful, such as a flock of swans emerging from a cloud-filled sky, makes me feel good, makes me happy. I don’t have to put a dollar value on it. In fact, “paying" for beauty in terms other than time, effort, and attention, might well diminish its value to me.

Recently, I’ve been reading a book by Jackie Morris, The Quiet Music of Gently Falling Snow. It’s one of a number of books she’s written and / or illustrated, including several done to illustrate Robert MacFarlane’s writing, including The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. Each, and work based on them, have had a magical, transformative affect on me and many others.

The pleasure I’ve derived from reading those  books and ...Falling Snow is far greater than their purchase price. Meanwhile, back in the world that could use more magic these days, Morris’ web site shares a current posting about a different kind of purchase price, that for housing and the problems gentrification can create for artists in rural locations. (I suspect many of us are more familiar with the issues associated with urban gentrification.) The entire question of attaining any sort of balance between urban and rural, rich and un-rich, tinkers, tailors, soldiers and spies, seems to become more complex by the day. What ecosystem services do humans provide that there should be so many of us, and why do we keep reproducing at a rate that can’t be sustained? See what the past 50 years look like:

Project Drawdown: Setting the stage

In America, we often teach  children that they can grow up to be anything they want. Now, perhaps it’s time to teach them that they can’t grow up to be everything they want. Maybe, actually, we need to begin by teaching that to the  adults. We’re all in this together, like it or not.

The Lost Words Blessing

Composer & Copyright

Original song by Julie Fowlis, Karine Polwart, Seckou Keita, Kris Drever, Rachel Newton, Beth Porter, Jim Molyneux, Kerry Andrew.

Enter the wild with care, my love
And speak the things you see
Let new names take and root and thrive and grow
And even as you travel far from heather, crag and river
May you like the little fisher, set the stream alight with glitter
May you enter now as otter without falter into water

Look to the sky with care, my love
And speak the things you see
Let new names take and root and thrive and grow
And even as you journey on past dying stars exploding
Like the gilded one in flight, leave your little gifts of light
And in the dead of night my darling,
find the gleaming eye of starling
Like the little aviator, sing your heart to all dark matter

Walk through the world with care, my love
And sing the things you see
Let new names take and root and thrive and grow
And even as you stumble through machair sands eroding
Let the fern unfurl your grieving, let the heron still your breathing
Let the selkie swim you deeper, oh my little silver-seeker
Even as the hour grows bleaker, be the singer and the speaker
And in city and in forest, let the larks become your chorus
And when every hope is gone, let the raven call you home

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On losses and gains

We were saddened today to note the death of Peter Ostroushko. We once saw him perform live at the University of Minnesota Morris campus during a multi-day Symposium on Small Towns we attended back around 2004. If we remember correctly, one of the songs he sang was Dylan's Girl from the North Country. His rendition was / is among our favorite covers of that beautiful song. We also thoroughly enjoy his soundtrack for Minnesota--A History of the Land. He will be missed. Several of his albums are available through Red House Records, if you're interested.

On a brighter note, have you begun to feel any symptoms of Spring fever yet? We're enjoying a string of sunny, warmer than average days that almost compensates for the recent polar vortex visit. One of the tantalizing questions is whether Spring will actually arrive early or if we're just being set up to be dumped on by a series of March/April/May blizzards. If memory serves, July is the only month in which it hasn't snowed in Minnesota. Then again, we're now at the time of year when the average daily high temperature is 32℉. Better yet, effective tomorrow, the normal high temperature is above freezing.

There's no sign yet of open water. We'll start checking the Sunrise River pools more regularly now, in anticipation of arriving geese, ducks, swans and sandhill cranes. Who knows, we may stand a chance of enjoying an actual Spring that lasts for weeks instead of days and a melt season that doesn't yield Spring floods. That kind of return to normalcy would be a wonderful respite from the past four years.

Music

By Juhan Liiv
Translated from the Estonian by H.L. Hix & Jüri Talvet

It must be somewhere, the original harmony,

somewhere in great nature, hidden.

Is it in the furious infinite,

in distant stars’ orbits,

is it in the sun’s scorn,

in a tiny flower, in treegossip,

in heartmusic’s mothersong

or in tears?

It must be somewhere, immortality,

somewhere the original harmony must be found:

how else could it infuse

the human soul,

that music?

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Shades of gratitude

The other day we posted a complaint about our oak tree leaves that seem to fall from October through March into April. We were focused on the inconvenience that on the ground oak leaves may cause. If we shift our focus to the good those trees and their leaves do, they bring shades of green to Spring, shade from the sun in Summer, and sussurating sounds as they are caressed by warm breezes. Oaks also provide acorn forage that helps feed turkeys, deer, squirrels and other local wildlife. We have a burr oak at the end of our drive that exhibits character in abundance. We're grateful we've learned to not take it for granted.

trees that share their neighborhood with us

Photo by J. Harrington

We're also grateful we're learning how to shift and broaden our focus to see a multitude of perspectives on many subjects. Our life would be diminished were it not for creative folks such as writer Robert Macfarlane and painter Jackie Morris producing treats such as The Lost Spells, which includes this perspective on the oak and other trees.

OAK

Out on the hill, old Oak still stands:
stag-headed, fire-struck, bare-crowned,
stubbornly holding its ground.

Poplar is the whispering tree,
Rowan is the sheltering tree,
Willow is the weeping tree —
and Oak is the waiting tree.

Three hundred years to grow,
three hundred more to thrive,
three hundred years to die —
nine hundred years alive.

Then there are artists such as Katie Holten, who have created works such as The Irish Tree Alphabet. We've not yet played with this version of a tree alphabet, but we've read her book, About Trees, and enjoyed every page. We're full of gratitude that we share a world with so many close to us that are part of our lives, and others, more distant, whose talent and efforts bring joys to our life through their arts. If we limit our focus to what needs fixing, we may become depressed and despairing since there's plenty of room for improvement almost everywhere we look. If we work toward a more balanced focus, enjoying and supporting and sharing what's going well, in addition to objecting to what's not, we'll probably live a longer, happier and more beneficial life. That would be something for which we can give thanks, today, tomorrow and every day, even if we lived nine hundred years.

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May this be an election day we can celebrate later

It's almost 70℉ outside. As I stepped outside to empty some recycling my first thoughts were "we'll pay for this." That made me realize I'm almost a naturalized Minnesotan. Then it occurred to me, maybe we already have paid for this, with  the snow and the cold that's but recently moved on. Since I sincerely and deeply believe we'll see more snow before we reach next Spring, the morning was spent getting the snowblower running and changing its oil. Missions accomplished and with not a bit of frostbite. Keeping busy with time-consuming and irritating chores is a good way to keep from fretting about what's going on at the polls today.

we already paid for today's weather in late October

Photo by J. Harrington

I gave myself some early Christmas presents again this year. They both arrived yesterday, earlier than the package-tracking app had me anticipating. Over the years I've become a serious Joni Mitchell fan. Many of her songs are among my all-time favorites and she and I are about the same age so many of her songs are also included in the soundtrack of my life. I'm now the quite pleased owner of her book Morning Glory on the Vine, early songs and drawings and her recently released package of 5 CDs and a booklet, Joni Mitchell Archives – Vol.1: The Early Years (1963-1967). The early arrival is a more than fortuitous event since I've decided, if I don't like how the election turns out, to revert not to a second childhood but to a second (or third or fourth) young adulthood. Maybe I'd be happier if I decided to spend my remaining time as a folkie-hippie type. It's possible, even probable, that I drifted away prematurely form those threads as I aged. Come to think of it, becoming a grown up was never one of my major aspirations.

It's been a treat to listen to some of the earliest Joni, when she was still Anderson, singing traditional folk songs on the first CD. Tomorrow we'll listen to some of her initial recordings of some of her own work, like Urge for Going and Circle Game and several others I don't think I've ever heard. Her version of Molly Malone definitely triggered a flashback to my younger days and family gatherings on the Irish side of the family. My fingers are crossed that we have the luck o' the Irish at the polls and end up today with more to look forward to than back on.

Let America Be America Again

By Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

 

(America never was America to me.)

 

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

 

(It never was America to me.)

 

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

 

(There's never been equality for me,

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

 

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

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

 

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

 

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

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

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

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

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one's own greed!

 

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

 

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

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

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That's made America the land it has become.

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

In search of what I meant to be my home—

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

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

And torn from Black Africa's strand I came

To build a "homeland of the free."

 

The free?

 

Who said the free?  Not me?

Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we've dreamed

And all the songs we've sung

And all the hopes we've held

And all the flags we've hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay—

Except the dream that's almost dead today.

 

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

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

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

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

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

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

 

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—

The steel of freedom does not stain.

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

We must take back our land again,

America!

 

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath—

America will be!

 

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

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

We, the people, must redeem

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

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states—

And make America again!

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