Season's greetings to you and blessings upon you!

It's Thanksgiving week. Around here we are starting the week with well above average temperatures and look like we're going to have snow cover for Thanksgiving. The thirty-day forecast suggests that snow cover may last until January thaw or what passes for spring in our North Country. That's why we're behind schedule posting this. Yesterday was committed to changing the oil and checking out the snow blower (and cleaning up most of the mess I made in the garage) as well as cleaning up more fallen leaves plus the dead plants from the front porch planters that will soon (before the soil freezes) hold Christmas angels and greenery. By Thanksgiving, the "back yard" may look like this:

November usually brings a "dusting" of snow

Photo by J. Harrington

We've already started shopping for Christmas presents and received our first "holiday greetings" card. The weekend after Thanksgiving is traditionally when we put up lights. A pair of poinsettias is perched on the piano already. My long-standing dedication to deferring all Christmas activities until after Thanksgiving is being eroded by retail temptation, especially since the family is going to do our best to honor the Black Friday / Cyber Monday boycott from Thanksgiving until December 2, shopping only local and with cash (if stores still accept that😉).

We Ain't Buying It

Today we're planning on changing the oil in the tractor without increasing the mess in the garage, we hope. Then we get to mostly sit and watch what Mother Nature delivers late Tuesday and early Wednesday. We promise not to complain at all if the storm misses us entirely. That would give us something else to be grateful for come Thursday.

Many decades ago we lived a little north of the former Plimouth Plantation. It looks as though they've been increasing recognition of Wampanoag contributions to the first celebration since I moved to Minnesota. I'm please to see that during this Native American Heritage month. Check out Plimoth Patuxet this week but first, enjoy Joy Harjo's Thanksgiving poem:

Perhaps the World Ends Here

By Joy Harjo 

 

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.

Listening for the land to speak

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

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

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

early November North Country snow [2013]

Photo by J. Harrington

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

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

Map

Linda Hogan

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

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

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

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Approaching Samhain

This Friday morning past, the wind was finally calm after a hard frost night. I watched the maple trees in front of the house drop leaves like oversized snow flakes. Soon, what passes for our front lawn was colored yellow. Today we mulched the lawn's leaves. Yesterday and today we had collected windrows of leaves along the south side of the driveway and dumped several garden cart loads at the wood's edge behind the house. Most of the oak leaves are still hanging on. Autumn is my favorite season except for leaf fall.

While emptying one cart load of fallen leaves, I tripped over what at first I thought was a dead branch that turned out to be a mouse-eaten four-point antler, shed from a white-tail buck that would have been an eight-pointer. First time in my life I've come across an antler shed. It's now a keepsake.

may only friendly spirits visit you

Photo by J. Harrington

From what I've noticed during my recent drives, all of the soy beans and most of the corn has been harvested. Fields and treetops are looking more and more bare by the day. As we approach Samhain at month's end we recognize we're entering the dark half of the year. The cycle continues through the Circle of the Year. I was contemplating some of those kinds of thoughts and accompanying feelings when my Jeep's music system started playing Joni Mitchell's fantastic song The Circle Game. All the thoughts and feelings mixed together were enhanced because our granddaughter had recently celebrated her fifth birthday.

It seems to me that we would do well to live so that we are more aware of the passing seasons and what's seasonal. Such an adjustment might help us to more readily live in the moment. Ms. Mitchell captured the essence of that in her song Big Yellow Taxi. "Don't it always seem to go / That you don't know what you've got / Till it's gone...."

You''re right, I've stayed away from politics and world events in this posting. remember the old advice about not saying anything if you can't say something good? Now is the time for me to share below these much better than good lyrics and thoughts from Ms. Mitchell and wish US all a Happy Halloween and Blessed Samhain.

The Circle Game

by Joni Mitchell

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star

Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like when you're older must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels thru the town
And they tell him take your time it won't be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There'll be new dreams maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

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Please be kind to each other while you can.

Autumn, weather or not

Recently I've found myself wondering where's the liberal, progressive, Democrat equivalent to Project 2025. Eventually I realized Will Rogers anticipated the question and provided an answer many decades ago when he noted "I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat." He also shared a number of other still trenchant observations that indicate how unfortunately little our politics and culture have changed over time.

Yesterday the Better Half and I joined several hundred others in downtown Lindstrom, MN to protest in favor of "NO KINGS" for US. The weather and passers-by were both generally supportive although there were several pickup drivers wearing red caps and raising middle fingers to demonstrate they're among the fat, dumb, and sappy locals.

October brings peak color to the neighborhood

Photo by J. Harrington

So far this Autumn we’ve seen one woolly worm that was predominantly red and, a week or so later, another mostly black. Given the way we’ve had well above average temperatures this fall, it’s hard to guess whether La Nina or global warming (or something else) will dominate weather patterns this winter. Meanwhile, we’re at or neat peak color this weekend and the wind for several days has been doing its best to spread the vibrant colors in the trees onto the ground.

Halloween is rapidly approaching. I bought three pumpkins this past week, although the flower pots they usually stand in are still full of living plants. No killing frosts yet. Will we see one by month’s end? Hard to say this year. At least so far neither deer nor rabbits have nibbled on the pumpkins. I’m grateful for that.

October

Paul Laurence Dunbar
1872 – 1906

October is the treasurer of the year,
    And all the months pay bounty to her store;
The fields and orchards still their tribute bear,
    And fill her brimming coffers more and more
But she, with youthful lavishness,
    Spends all her wealth in gaudy dress,
And decks herself in garments bold
    Of scarlet, purple, red, and gold.

She heedeth not how swift the hours fly,
    But smiles and sings her happy life along;
She only sees above a shining sky;
    She only hears the breezes’ voice in song.
Her garments trail the woodlands through,
    And gather pearls of early dew
That sparkle, till the roguish Sun
    Creeps up and steals them every one.

But what cares she that jewels should be lost,
    When all of Nature’s bounteous wealth is hers?
Though princely fortunes may have been their cost,
    Not one regret her calm demeanor stirs.
Whole-hearted, happy, careless, free,
    She lives her life out joyously,
Nor cares when Frost stalks o’er her way
    And turns her auburn locks to gray.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.

Ban hate, not books

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

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

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

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

This Morning I Pray for My Enemies

by Joy Harjo

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

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

Autumn, approaching

I missed posting yesterday. The day was devoted to celebrating the birthday of a certain 5 year old granddaughter and I obviously failed to plan ahead and post on Saturday in anticipation. The celebration(s) was / were successful and everyone enjoyed the party, presents and cake, especially the guest of honor.

Over the past week or ten days I’ve noticed half-a-dozen or so new dandelion flowers along our roadway and three or four (common?) lilac bushes in bloom in the area. This is not the Minnesota I moved to about fifty years ago.

a hint of color tints nearby trees

Photo by J. Harrington

As we enter October in a day or so, temperatures are forecast to exceed 80℉ and approach ninety℉ by Friday.The regular waterfowl season opened Saturday last to weather too warm to get serious about duck hunting. Local leaf color looks to be about 5% so far, maples showing best. The bur oak at the end of our drive is dropping leaves faster than changing color.

Someone (deer?) knocked over and off the wire protector cage from one of the replacement serviceberry bushes. Neither bush is showing any color yet but at least they’ve lived longer than last spring’s plantings. Our fingers remain crossed these bushes will make it through the winter and beyond.

And Now It’s September,

By Barbara Crooker

 

and the garden diminishes: cucumber leaves rumpled

and rusty, zucchini felled by borers, tomatoes sparse

on the vines. But out in the perennial beds, there’s one last

blast of color: ignitions of goldenrod, flamboyant

asters, spiraling mums, all those flashy spikes waving

in the wind, conducting summer’s final notes.

The ornamental grasses have gone to seed, haloed

in the last light. Nights grow chilly, but the days

are still warm; I wear the sun like a shawl on my neck

and arms. Hundreds of blackbirds ribbon in, settle

in the trees, so many black leaves, then, just as suddenly,

they’re gone. This is autumn’s great Departure Gate,

and everyone, boarding passes in hand, waits

patiently in a long, long line.

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Sometimes, days just hummm!

Even though Minnesota has an early season for teal and geese, I don't (won't) hunt waterfowl when the temperature's in the 70's and 80's. It would feel so unright to not be freezing sensitive parts of my anatomy while in a duck or goose blind. The current forecast includes temperatures at or above 80℉ through mid-week. Archery deer season opened yesterday when the high reached 82℉. That's weather for standing in a trout stream, maybe even wet wading, rather than sitting and sweating on a deer stand. At least that's according to me but judging by the number of parked vehicles in the area, some folks see it otherwise.

female ruby-throated hummingbird at feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

Speaking of deer and warm weather, I'm please to note that the replacement serviceberry bushes are still showing green leaves inside their wire protective cages. Deer and/or rabbits and/or pocket gophers haven't yet done any obvious damage. Our fingers remain crossed but, to be honest, with the current state of the world, I feel a little like Merwin in the poem below. I heartily look forward to being proven wrong by events (or lack thereof).

Despite the return of summer after a recent cold front, I don't think I've seen a hummingbird at the feeder for a day or two now. It's about that time of year, for them to follow orioles south. UPDATE: as I was typing the previous sentence, a female ruby-throated hummingbird landed on the sugar water feeder. That pleases me almost as much as yesterday's discovery that we have some wild asters (perhaps silky asters) in bloom up on the slope behind the serviceberry bushes. I noticed them as I was watering the bushes.

Perhaps fall weather will arrive, and stay for a while, as we get to the autumn equinox a week from tomorrow, at 1:19 pm CDT. I've had enough of heat, humidity, and wildfire smoke for this year. Maybe cooler weather will also help cool some rhetoric and hot heads. That would be a help to avoid triggering the last day of the world.

Place

By W.S. Merwin

On the last day of the world
I would want to plant a tree

what for
not for the fruit

the tree that bears the fruit
is not the one that was planted

I want the tree that stands
in the earth for the first time

with the sun already
going down

and the water
touching its roots

in the earth full of the dead
and the clouds passing

one by one
over its leaves

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See sun's change

The pointillist leaf color changer is painting our North Woods. A few leaves here, a splotch there, first sumac, now maples, against back drop fields of goldenrod, ripening field corn, and soy beans. Tomorrow is the first day of meteorological Autumn. Even the weather is showing tinges of the changing season so today I finally did what should have been a Spring chore of washing the outside of some windows. Return of lower angle, late afternoon sun made the need obvious.

maple leaves trading chlorophyl for gold

Photo by J. Harrington

Hummingbirds are still coming to the sugar water feeders. I expect those birds to head south before autumn equinox (Alban Elfed to the Druids among us). Meanwhile, Minnesota's early season for teal and geese opens next Saturday, September 6th. I'm still contemplating whether to participate. It's been a few years since I've hunted waterfowl and I miss it but I'm also far out of practice. We'll see what the weather is looking like and how the chores are going.

Recently I stumbled onto a resource that looks like it may be increasingly helpful, the way things are going with the regime in Washington, D.C. In case you've been looking for something like The Anti-Autocracy Handbook: A Scholars’ Guide to Navigating Democratic Backsliding, click the link. A quick skim suggests it can be useful even to those who aren't scholars. If you scroll and click around a bit, you may well find some other helpful resources at the site. I'm getting more and more frustrated by the lack of really effective pushback at authoritarian Executive Orders combined with incompetence and malfeasance. American Democracy, even with all its flaws, deserves better protection and restoration than we're providing.

[Update, just discovered despite its 1993 publication: 

From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation]

Perhaps the World Ends Here

by Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No Matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

…It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

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

the best is yet to come

Lots of purple loosestrife in bloom along roadside ditches, in highway medians, and local waterways. During a drive today we noticed several hawks perched on highway light poles. Migration time nearing? Meteorological autumn starts two weeks from tomorrow. With any kind of luck, the change of seasons will be accompanied by a major improvement in local weather, although most of the recent batches of thunderstorms passed to our south or farther to our north. Update: we've recently been put under a flash flood watch from 10 pm tonight through tomorrow morning.

maple leaves in color on a railing

Photo by J. Harrington

Isolated patches of leaf color, except for sumacs that have largely turned red(ish), are showing up in other trees in the area. Autumn Equinox occurs locally on Monday, September 22, 2025 at 1:19 pm CDT. As the effects of climate change grow stronger, I become more enthused about enjoying my favorite season, Autumn. Cooler temperatures, lower humidity, fishing, hunting, color change, harvest feasts are far more to my taste than sultry, humid, lightning-flashed days and nights. When I was younger and still living on the Massachusetts coast, the approaching time of year left me feeing like a kid in a candy store as striped bass and bluefish schooled up and headed south in coastal waters while inland and up country ruffed grouse season opened and preceded duck season.

Meanwhile, thanks to the weather (storms, smoke, heat, humidity) I'm still working on last Spring's yard cleanup. It's looking more and more like this year's leaves will be falling before I've finished cleaning up last year's. And furthermore, I don't really care. I'm back to finishing reading Jenny Odell's How to Do Nothing, Resisting the Attention Economy. Much to my pleasant surprise, she has incorporated bioregionalism as part of her strategy. [Here's an essay of hers on the topic.] I've been running hot and tepid about bioregionalism for some years now, I suspect because I've been approaching it more mechanically than organically. Time to practice the old zen approach: "fall down seven times, get up eight." 

Testimonial

By Rita Dove

 

Back when the earth was new

and heaven just a whisper,

back when the names of things

hadn't had time to stick;

back when the smallest breezes

melted summer into autumn,

when all the poplars quivered

sweetly in rank and file . . .

the world called, and I answered.

Each glance ignited to a gaze.

I caught my breath and called that life,

swooned between spoonfuls of lemon sorbet.

I was pirouette and flourish,

I was filigree and flame.

How could I count my blessings

when I didn't know their names?

Back when everything was still to come,

luck leaked out everywhere.

I gave my promise to the world,

and the world followed me here.

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A bag mixed with gratitude

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

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

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

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

This Morning I Pray for My Enemies

Joy Harjo
1951 – 

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

November may finally arrive

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

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

three whitetail does in field behind our house

Photo by J. Harrington

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

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

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

History

Linda Hogan

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

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

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

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

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Approaching Thanks! Giving?

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

Nature's Halloween trick, now gone

Photo by J. Harrington

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

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

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

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

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

by Joy Harjo

I am the holy being of my mother's prayer and my father's song
—Norman Patrick Brown, Dineh Poet and Speaker

1. SET CONFLICT RESOLUTION GROUND RULES:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. GIVE CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK:

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

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

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

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

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

4. REDUCE DEFENSIVENESS AND BREAK THE DEFENSIVENESS CHAIN:

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

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

There was no "I" or "you."

There was us; there was "we."

There we were as if we were the music.

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

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

This is about getting to know each other.

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

5. ELIMINATE NEGATIVE ATTITUDES DURING CONFLICT:

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

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

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

He hears the death song of his approaching prey:

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

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

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

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Fall Back! fall down!

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

autumn leaves leaving

Photo by J. Harrington

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

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

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

Without 

Joy Harjo
1951 – 

The world will keep trudging through time without us

When we lift from the story contest to fly home

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

Of grief and heartbreak

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

And know why half the world fights righteously for greedy masters 

And the other half is nailing it all back together

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

Human industry—

Maybe then, beloved rascal

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

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

Watch hyenas drink rain, and laugh.

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Approaching Samhain

Great clouds of leaves have floated away from their homes of origin. They now clutter the ground and complicate the last grass cutting of the past growing season. Bare branches begin to dominate country skylines. Halloween / Samhain arrives Thursday. Candles are lit at dinner time. Autumn is here and next weekend we begin to anticipate celebrating Thanksgiving in hope that “our fellow Americans(?)” will leave US something to celebrate after November 5.

All Hallow's Eve visitors

Photo by J. Harrington

Not only was Halloween itself more fun when I was a kid, I didn’t know enough in those days to worry about elections and outcomes. An example that getting older doesn’t always mean getting wiser? Anyhow, I’m anticipating that, again this year, we’ll have at least one Trick or Treater, our 4 year old granddaughter. I think she’s the only one that’s shown up in the 25+ years we’ve lived here. I’ll spend some time over the next few days debating whether to bring in our political signs for the haunted evening rather than leave them subject to pranks or vandalism.

Flocks of Canada geese and sandhill cranes are still to be seen in our local airways. So far there’s still plenty of food and open water so no reason for them to head south. The Son-In-Law has captured some pictures of a nice buck oor two on his trail cam. I tried deer hunting off and on over the years. I just don’t enjoy sitting that still for that long to get good at it. When I was younger, I’d rather bust brush for grouse or fiddle with decoys for ducks than sit in or on a deer stand. If I had had an enclosed stand, I’d probably been guilty of too much napping. This reminds me, after Samhain, I need to send Santa a letter asking for more accommodating weather next fly fishing season.

Samhain

By Annie Finch

(The Celtic Halloween)

In the season leaves should love,

since it gives them leave to move

through the wind, towards the ground

they were watching while they hung,

legend says there is a seam

stitching darkness like a name.

Now when dying grasses veil

earth from the sky in one last pale

wave, as autumn dies to bring

winter back, and then the spring,

we who die ourselves can peel

back another kind of veil

that hangs among us like thick smoke.

Tonight at last I feel it shake.

I feel the nights stretching away

thousands long behind the days

till they reach the darkness where

all of me is ancestor.

I move my hand and feel a touch

move with me, and when I brush

my own mind across another,

I am with my mother's mother.

Sure as footsteps in my waiting

self, I find her, and she brings

arms that carry answers for me,

intimate, a waiting bounty.

"Carry me." She leaves this trail

through a shudder of the veil,

and leaves, like amber where she stays,

a gift for her perpetual gaze.

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The autumn leaves drift by my window

The local leaves are just about at peak color, sliding past peak any day now as the colors drift down with the leaves. It sure is pretty around here for now. Yesterday I noticed a new dandelion blossom. Today there’s a small cluster of little white flowers. Garter snakes are out and about. I wish they’d feast on more of the mice that keep getting into the house. We must have trapped almost two dozen since last Sunday.

Autumn's silver and gold

Photo by J. Harrington

The Better Half, plus our son, plus me, have all voted early. I wonder how long post November 5 the suspense may continue and how long after that the prospect of violence may hang in the air. Meanwhile, critical global and national issues continue to fester instead of getting the attention deserved and needed. For example, a report issued this past week calls to our attention, inter alia, the following:

Most gravely, while itself a victim of climate change,

the degradation of freshwater ecosystems including

the loss of moisture in the soil has become a driver

of climate change and biodiversity loss. The result

is more frequent and increasingly severe droughts,

floods, heatwaves, and wildfires, playing out across

the globe. And a future of growing water scarcity,

with grave consequences for human security.

Nearly 3 billion people and more than half of the

world’s food production are now in areas where

total water storage is projected to decline.

We’ve seen examples of these issues with recent hurricanes and flooding in major parts of our country. Most Republicans I’ve read about claim climate change is some kind of scam. Of course many of them also continue to incorrectly refer to the 2020 election as “stolen.”

Things got more than a little hectic around the homestead this week, especially today. The Better Half noticed one of the kitchen cabinets needs major repairs. An electrical circuit that, about this time last year,, started tripping the breaker for no reason that we or the electrician could figure out, is doing it again this year. My theory is that mice in the garage are biting into a hot wire because the breaker can be reset after a few hours. Anyhow, I’m tuckered so this posting is short and as sweet as I can make it. More next week.

Neighbors in October

By David Baker

All afternoon his tractor pulls a flat wagon

with bales to the barn, then back to the waiting

chopped field. It trails a feather of smoke.

Down the block we bend with the season:

shoes to polish for a big game,

storm windows to batten or patch.

And how like a field is the whole sky now

that the maples have shed their leaves, too.

It makes us believers—stationed in groups,

leaning on rakes, looking into space. We rub blisters

over billows of leaf smoke. Or stand alone,

bagging gold for the cold days to come.

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On the eve of Indigenous Peoples’ Day

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

St. Croix River Valley colors

Photo by J. Harrington

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

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

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

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

That Pull from the Left

By Louise Erdrich

Butch once remarked to me how sinister it was   

alone, after hours, in the dark of the shop

to find me there hunched over two weeks’ accounts   

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

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

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

arranged in the strict, familiar ways.

Whatever intactness holds animals up

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

Just look in the cases, all counted and stacked.

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

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

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

Two days and you do notice change in the texture.

I have seen them the day before slaughter.

Knowing the outcome from the moment they enter   

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

Mallet or bullet they lunge toward their darkness.

But something queer happens when the heart is delivered.   

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

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

That is the knowledge in the hand of a butcher

that adds to its weight. Otto Kröger could fell

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

and yet it is well known how thorough he was.

He never sat down without washing his hands,   

and he was a maker, his sausage was echt

so that even Waleski had little complaint.   

Butch once remarked there was no one so deft   

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

in parting the flesh from the bones that it loves.

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

of small tendons and fibers. He knew what I meant   

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

and how often it clouded the day before slaughter.

Something queer happens when the heart is delivered.

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The month peak color comes and goes

It looks like the weather may have finally turned the corner from Summer to Autumn, more than a month after the start of meteorological autumn and a couple of weeks after the equinox. Maple trees are showing more color. Pines are shedding their needles. Aspen and birch leaves are mostly gold. Seed heads from purple love grass are flying everywhere and the last few really windy days have turned a few trees almost leafless.

maples starting to show color

Photo by J. Harrington

Today we saw another wooly bear looking very much like the one we reported on last week, about four ginger bands in the middle and each end black. No frost yet locally. Most birds coming to the feeder are year round residents like woodpeckers, nuthatches, chickadees, cardinals and goldfinches. Every now and then a pair of bluejays stop by.

We’ve been going through an extended dry spell for the past month or so. Fire danger has been high enough that I’ve not even thought about torching the back yard brush pile. If it sits until spring, that’s no big deal although I would like to get it gone so we can replace it with more of the downed branches lying around. The electric weed whacker we recently acquired is helping to bring a modicum or orderliness to some of the overgrown areas around the place. That’s going to be a continuing project. We may see if the battery-powered chain saw diminishes the buckthorn that’s trying to overrun the woods.

All in all it’s been a mostly pleasant week up North here. We celebrated the Granddaughter’s fourth birthday and her parents tenth anniversary. No signs of Helene but we may well pay for it come blizzard season, or might climate change temper our upcoming winter? We’ll see.

Autumn's Gold

by George MacDonald

Along the tops of all the yellow trees,

The golden-yellow trees, the sunshine lies;

And where the leaves are gone, long rays surprise

Lone depths of thicket with their brightnesses;

And through the woods, all waste of many a breeze,

Cometh more joy of light for Poet's eyes—

Green fields lying yellow underneath the skies,

And shining houses and blue distances.

By the roadside, like rocks of golden ore

That make the western river-beds so bright,

The briar and the furze are all alight!

Perhaps the year will be so fair no more,

But now the fallen, falling leaves are gay,

And autumn old has shone into a Day! 

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