1968: deja vu all over again?*

FIRST: We WIN!    Then: we FIGHT!

Of the Democrats (Senior and Junior) that have called for President Biden to step down, or aside, as a candidate for this years election, have any of them suggested a stronger standard bearer? I suppose not, since there’s plenty of time [36 days] between now and the start of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 19. How hard could it be to pull together a majority of delegates from a coherent, well structured, tightly organized political party like the Democrats. After all, a similar approach worked in France for Macron, didn’t it?

Then, after having won the nomination at the convention, there’s a whole additional 75 days, approximately two and a half months, to convince a heavily fractured electorate to vote for a Johnny or Hilary come lately, because all the alternatives to President Biden are so well know and liked. Right?

I wonder how many of the Democratic leadership are old enough to remember the debacle that was the 1968 Democratic National Convention? Follow the link if you need a refresher. This year is beginning to look disturbingly similar. In 1968 the Democrats performed so well that they put Richard Nixon in the White House. I’ve stopped making any contributions to Democratic candidates this year until and unless the party strongly coheres behind the best available option to beat the orange turd and his hurd of MAGAts. Remember, there’s always the 25th Amendment once Biden wins. Republicans aren’t ever likely to try something like that.

* apologies to Yogi Berra for the plagiarism. AI made me do it!

The Soul of Spain With McAlmon and Bird the Publishers

By Ernest M. Hemingway

In the rain in the rain in the rain in the rain in Spain. 

Does it rain in Spain? 

Oh yes my dear on the contrary and there are no bull fights. 

The dancers dance in long white pants 

It isn’t right to yence your aunts 

Come Uncle, let’s go home. 

Home is where the heart is, home is where the fart is. 

Come let us fart in the home. 

There is no art in a fart. 

Still a fart may not be artless. 

Let us fart an artless fart in the home. 

Democracy. 

Democracy. 

Bill says democracy must go. 

Go democracy. 

Go 

Go 

Go 

Bill’s father would never knowingly sit down at table with a Democrat. 

Now Bill says democracy must go. 

Go on democracy. 

Democracy is the shit. 

Relativity is the shit. 

Dictators are the shit. 

Menken is the shit. 

Waldo Frank is the shit. 

The Broom is the shit. 

Dada is the shit. 

Dempsey is the shit. 

This is not a complete list. 

They say Ezra is the shit. 

But Ezra is nice. 

Come let us build a monument to Ezra. 

Good a very nice monument. 

You did that nicely 

Can you do another? 

Let me try and do one. 

Let us all try and do one. 

Let the little girl over there on the corner try and do one. 

Come on little girl. 

Do one for Ezra. 

Good. 

You have all been successful children. 

Now let us clean the mess up. 

The Dial does a monument to Proust. 

We have done a monument to Ezra. 

A monument is a monument. 

After all it is the spirit of the thing that counts.

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Today’s actions make tomorrow’s memorials

For a holiday weekend that represents the unofficial beginning of summer, we're “enjoying” another gray, showery, cloudy, dreary day. At least next month is normally the wettest month of the year around these parts. I know, it could be worse. We could live in Gaza or the Ukraine or Sudan. By this time next year maybe we’ll think we are living in a war torn country if MAGAt threats come to pass.

let’s not turn cloudy skies into dark days

Photo by J. Harrington

I’m pondering what those, like my father and father-in-law, who fought in World War II to protect and secure our freedoms, would think of what we’ve done with and to the country they left US. I suspect my father would be a little bit ashamed and embarrassed and fearing that he’d maybe been played for a sucker. I doubt very much he would have relied on the  “leadership” of a con man, one a presiding judge has found civilly adjudicated of having committed rape. One also charged with numerous felonious actions against US while claiming to ”Make America Great Again.” The country my father fought for may have its warts, but is worth improving more than destroying.

On this Memorial Day weekend, I ask you to tap into your memories and remember what was great about your childhood. Did all your friends and neighbors share what you felt was great? Did anyone try to stop you from enjoying learning? [I remember that certain movies were banned but don’t recall book banning or burning as has happened recently. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention.] Anyhow, please think about whether, if everyone enjoyed the things that made your childhood best, would that help make America great? What would a great America look like to you? What kind of America would be important enough to you to defend in a world war? Remember that many citizens strongly opposed the Viet Nam war, just as many oppose the current support for Israel’s attack on Palestinians.

At the Retirement Home

Tony Barnstone

^{U.S. Soldier, 194th Armored Regiment, retired, Brainerd, Minnesota}

I’ve had both knees replaced. I’ve got a steel
pin in my hip. I don’t hear you so good,
but I’m not stupid, son. How would you feel,
surviving the Bataan Death March, no food
for days, no water, and the ones who fell
behind were bayoneted where they lay,
and now you’re marching off to death? Real hell
is not old age, though. No, taking away
the rights we died for, saying torture’s right,
that’s hell. Hand me the iron and those shirts,
would you? Thanks, son. As long as I have fight
in me I’ll love this country till it hurts.
And it does. This is worse than what I saw
overseas. Torture. In America.

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As life returns to the lands (and waters)

Yesterday evening we were visited by four whitetail deer in a far corner of the field behind the house. This morning the dogs and I did indeed walk to the pond north of the house. There we unintentionally flushed a pair of wood ducks from the open water. Midday today we noticed a small flock of turkeys pecking away in the same area the deer visited yesterday. Warmer weather and melting snows are bringing critters in search of food and nesting sites. Soon we can look for bud burst and nest building.

migrating wood ducks on a pond

Photo by J. Harrington

Are you familiar with the story of blind men describing an elephant? I’m at a point of thinking it applies to all our individual and collective attempts to understand and describe the reality of our existence and purpose on the earth in an expanding universe. It seems that a good part of the problems are captured in the saying about the devil is in the details. Plus, too many of us, too often, forget that there is more than one path through the woods. Not that I would ever be guilty of such parochialism!!!!

Tomorrow, for those who observe, is Easter Sunday. For all who follow the Gregorian Calendar, it’s the last day of March. Monday is April Fool’s Day and, purely coincidentally, the start of National Poetry Month. For many of us, the best times of the year lie ahead. We hope we all get to thoroughly enjoy them.

The Silent Singer

Len Roberts

The girls sang better than the boys, 
their voices reaching All the way to God, 
Sister Ann Zita insisted during those 
     practice sessions
when I was told to mouth do, re, mi,
     but to go no higher,
when I was told to stand in back 
    and form a perfect 0
        with my lips
although no word was ever to come out, 
the silent singer in that third-grade 
     class
during the Christmas Pageant and Easter 
     Week, the birth and death 
        of Christ lip-synched
            but unsung	
while my relatives, friends and parents
     praised my baritone,
     how low my voice was,
Balancing those higher, more childlike tones,
     my father said,
Adding depth, my mother said,
Thank God they had my huskiness to bring all
     that tinniness to earth,
     my great-aunt whispered,
so I believed for many years in miracles
     myself,
the words I'd never sung reaching their ears 
     in the perfect pitch, the perfect tone, 
while the others stuttered in their all-too-human
     voices to praise the Lord.

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The emergent imperative of now

 Eleven years ago today, our front yard looked like the picture below. The same spot today is under 6∓ inches of snow. On the brighter side, the Sunrise river is back to open water, a pair of Canada geese were resting on the water as I drove past earlier today. A day or so ago I noticed a pair of turkey vultures feeding on road kill on the shoulder / ditch. In less than a week, daily high  temperatures are supposed to reach  the mid 70s. Maybe by then the ice covering the driveway will finally be gone and sneaker time will be back.

fern fiddleheads emerging: April 6, 2012

Photo by J. Harrington

The snow melt that’s gone on already has the Sunrise rising over its banks. The marshes are now flooded and will be further submerged for some time. Then, as the blue of the waters declines, the greens of emerging leaves will burst their buds. Tracking the Status of Spring nationally shows a mixed bag with some areas much earlier and others later than usual.

For those who celebrate, Easter weekend begins tomorrow. Passover began at sundown yesterday. Beltane comes at the end of the month. In many ways, spring is bursting out all over. May we enjoy the pleasures and blessings of the season, share the warmth, and feel the stirrings of life reawakening.

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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Return of the driveway

This may be the week the ice finally melts off the driveway and the bare ground returns. That means I won’t have to change shoes every time I step out to walk the dogs or empty the trash. I have even less patience for putting a pair of yak trax on and taking them off every time I go out and come in than I do for changing shoes. Even my cold-weather-loving Better Half has had enough of winter by now.

At the risk of being unduly and prematurely optimistic, I’m going to start planning on spending time outside to check for signs of impending spring, over and above being able to walk on the driveway without slip-sliding away. Waterfowl should begin to arrive in numbers as open water appears and snow disappears. Several years ago, Greta Kaul at MinnPost published a delightful piece on Minnesota’s Spring phenology accompanied by her own drawings. I need to recheck my listings of which trout flies are likely to be hatching after the Spring runoff has headed down local streams toward the Gulf. I may also be able to check for emergent skunk cabbage and British soldier lichen by week’s end.

British soldier lichen (red spots)

Photo by J. Harrington

If you didn’t already know that April is National Poetry Month, you read it here first. Our current Poet Laureate is Ada Limón. Her current book is The Hurting Kind, in which there are four sections, each named after a season. The first season is Spring and the first poem in that season is today’s poem. May each of us find more delight this season than we have reason to expect.

Give Me This

Ada Limón - 1976-

I thought it was the neighbor’s cat back
to clean the clock of the fledgling robins low
in their nest stuck in the dense hedge by the house
but what came was much stranger, a liquidity
moving all muscle and bristle. A groundhog
slippery and waddle thieving my tomatoes still
green in the morning’s shade. I watched her
munch and stand on her haunches taking such
pleasure in the watery bites. Why am I not allowed
delight? A stranger writes to request my thoughts
on suffering. Barbed wire pulled out of the mouth,
as if demanding that I kneel to the trap of coiled
spikes used in warfare and fencing. Instead,
I watch the groundhog closer and a sound escapes
me, a small spasm of joy I did not imagine
when I woke. She is a funny creature and earnest,
and she is doing what she can to survive.

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“The path is made by walking"

 A couple of days ago I again started reading Thoreau’s Walking. (I prefer his content to his writing style.) While sitting in the dentist’s waiting area yesterday, I made it as far as a section that I found extremely helpful, especially in today’s world.

...Politics is but a narrow field, and that still narrower highway yonder leads to it. I sometimes direct the traveler thither. If you would go to the political world, follow the great road, follow that market-man, keep his dust in your eyes, and it willl lead you straight to it; for it, too, has its place merely, and does not occupy all space. I pass from it as from a bean field into the forest, and it is forgotten....

will you follow a path or make your own?

Photo by J. Harrington

Even though, in some sense, everything is political, between spam and robot calls and social media and news, I often feel enveloped by politics and I don’t like it. Plus, there doesn’t seem to be much of a break between election seasons any more. To accompany Meadows’ Dancing with Systems [see yesterday’s posting], I need to learn from Henry David how to walk away from politics by spending more time physically walking. Does such a course have any appeal to you?

True confession: this was written minutes after installing a couple of yard signs for local candidates for Congress and the Minnesota House. “Do as I post, not as I do”?

Walking on Tiptoe

By Ted Kooser

Long ago we quit lifting our heels

like the others—horse, dog, and tiger—

though we thrill to their speed

as they flee. Even the mouse

bearing the great weight of a nugget

of dog food is enviably graceful.

There is little spring to our walk,

we are so burdened with responsibility,

all of the disciplinary actions

that have fallen to us, the punishments,

the killings, and all with our feet

bound stiff in the skins of the conquered.

But sometimes, in the early hours,

we can feel what it must have been like

to be one of them, up on our toes,

stealing past doors where others are sleeping,

and suddenly able to see in the dark.

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Raising puppies or children helps to properly (re)train grownups

One of my all time favorite authors, Gene Hill, has a great quotation that goes “Whoever said you can't buy Happiness forgot little puppies.” I was reminded of that this morning when a young golden retriever pup came boundcing (that’s a cross between a bound and a bounce) over to say Hi! and welcome me to the John Deere shop where I had gone to get an oil filter for our subcompact tractor. My mood improved about 500% after returning the greeting. The innocence and exuberance of most pups is a marked improvement over the mood of many adult humans these days. It’s only been within the past few months that I’ve come across the phrase “doom scrolling” and, he admitted ashamedly, caught myself doing it.

"the Better Half’s" Franco as a young dog

Photo by J. Harrington

Our granddaughter, soon to turn one, does as well as a retriever pup in the joyousness department, both experiencing it and creating it for her parents, grandparents, uncle and about anyone lucky enough to be around her. (What? No, of course I’m not biased! The very idea!) Is it that puppies and toddlers still see most of the world and its inhabitants as interesting and friendly? Most of the dogs I’ve been lucky enough to have own me have kept that happy perspective for the whole times we shared, with occasional exceptions for things like thunderstorms.

“my" SiSi as a young dog

Photo by J. Harrington

Could it be that youngsters, whether canine or human, have more open, positive expectations because  they haven’t yet experienced the disappointments many of us go through as we grow to adulthood? Then there’s the whole positive reinforcement versus punishment corrections in training puppies and raising children. It’s been years but I still remember hearing about “spare the rod and spoil the child.” And  yet, every puppy or young dog I’ve brought home turned out to be eager to please and meet expectations if only I could be smart enough to convey those expectations in a way the dog could understand.

If Feeling Isn't In It

By John Brehm

You can take it away, as far as I'm concerned—I'd rather spend the afternoon with a nice dog. I'm not kidding. Dogs have what a lot of poems lack: excitements and responses, a sense of play the ability to impart warmth, elation . . . .  
                                                                                   Howard Moss

Dogs will also lick your face if you let them.

Their bodies will shiver with happiness.

A simple walk in the park is just about

the height of contentment for them, followed

by a bowl of food, a bowl of water,

a place to curl up and sleep. Someone

to scratch them where they can't reach

and smooth their foreheads and talk to them.

Dogs also have a natural dislike of mailmen

and other bringers of bad news and will

bite them on your behalf. Dogs can smell

fear and also love with perfect accuracy.

There is no use pretending with them.

Nor do they pretend. If a dog is happy

or sad or nervous or bored or ashamed

or sunk in contemplation, everybody knows it.

They make no secret of themselves.

You can even tell what they're dreaming about

by the way their legs jerk and try to run

on the slippery ground of sleep.

Nor are they given to pretentious self-importance.

They don't try to impress you with how serious

or sensitive they are. They just feel everything

full blast. Everything is off the charts

with them. More than once I've seen a dog

waiting for its owner outside a café

practically implode with worry. “Oh, God,

what if she doesn't come back this time?

What will I do? Who will take care of me?

I loved her so much and now she's gone

and I'm tied to a post surrounded by people

who don't look or smell or sound like her at all.”

And when she does come, what a flurry

of commotion, what a chorus of yelping

and cooing and leaps straight up into the air!

It's almost unbearable, this sudden

fullness after such total loss, to see

the world made whole again by a hand

on the shoulder and a voice like no other.

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Even snow clouds have silver linings

 We've been fussing and fuming about the recent extended snow showers. They are anomalous for this time of year. We're close to and will soon probably set a record for snowiest October in the Twin Cities. More snow is in the forecast for Sunday. Melting continues off and on so the total accumulation hasn't kept growing. It has made much  of the landscape very pretty, although it is disconcerting to see the leaves on the lilac and forsythia bushes covered in snow. Warmer temperatures are forecast to return around the beginning of November. We've now decided that the time and circumstances are appropriate, if not optimum, for practicing this advice from former president Theodore Roosevelt:

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

 

one of yesterday's snow showers

Photo by J. Harrington

We haven't (yet) been able to pin down the specific source of this quotation but that doesn't make it less valuable. In fact, thinking about Rachel Carson's delightful book The Sense of Wonder, it occurs to me that  experiencing wonder at our unusual spell of weather would be more consistent with maintaining a sense of wonder than the fussing at inconveniences and uncertainties we've been bemoaning. If everything is always consistent with our expectations, how can we then honor a vision like the following?

“A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full or wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantment of later year…the alienation from the sources of our strength.”

 

a lilac bush today

Photo by J. Harrington

Having read Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching" several times, we're going to focus on remembering: "Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished." We'll see if we can actually keep this in mind for at least the next few seasons, or the end of whatever this one is, whichever comes first.

Wonder and Joy 

Robinson Jeffers - 1887-1961

The things that one grows tired of—O, be sure
They are only foolish artificial things!
Can a bird ever tire of having wings?
And I, so long as life and sense endure,
(Or brief be they!) shall nevermore inure
My heart to the recurrence of the springs,
Of gray dawns, the gracious evenings,
The infinite wheeling stars. A wonder pure
Must ever well within me to behold
Venus decline; or great Orion, whose belt
Is studded with three nails of burning gold,
Ascend the winter heaven. Who never felt
This wondering joy may yet be good or great:
But envy him not: he is not fortunate.

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"Minnesota Nice" fails!

This is not, as I remember, the kind of Minnesota I moved to almost half a century ago. In fact, this is a Minnesota to which I wouldn't consider moving today, if I weren't already here. All of the following articles are from today's Star-Tribune:

• COVID-19 surveys halted in Minnesota amid racism, intimidation  

UPDATE: Eitzen mayor disputes claims COVID-19 testers were confronted by armed man

•  Minnesota downgraded to 'uncontrolled' COVID-19 spread 

•  Charges: Woman assaulted Alpha News journalist during Minneapolis protest 

•  What would Minnesota Republicans do differently than Walz on COVID-19?

The world, including the State of Minnesota, is facing too many critical issues for everyone to not be pulling in the same direction. Not that I expect everyone to agree on what to do, but the difficulties of getting compromises worked out is reminiscent of the stupidity, during the Viet Nam war, of the amount of time and energy expended debating the size, shapes and arrangements of the tables at which peace would be negotiated. Meanwhile, people were killing each other for lack of any sort of consensus. Sort of like the world is currently doing with COVID-19 and climate weirding and loss of biodiversity. Some places and some people are pulling their weight, but not enough of either to make the kind of differences we all need. Perhaps too many think we are like the phoenix and look for enough ashes for us to arise. It's not a wager I'd want to take.

must ashes precede renewal?

Photo by J. Harrington

When They Die We Change Our Minds About Them

Jennifer Michael Hecht

When they die we change our minds 
about them. While they live we see 
the plenty hard they’re trying,
to be a star, or nice, or wise, 
and so we do not quite believe them. 

When they die, suddenly they are 
what they claimed. Turns out, 
that’s what one of those looks like. 

The cold war over manner of manly 
or mission is over. Same person, 
same facts and acts, just now 
a quiet brain stem. We no longer 
begrudge his or her stupid luck.

When they die we change our minds 
about them. I will try to believe 
while you yet breathe.

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Where have all our communities gone?

Last year, or the one before, I read Elizabeth Rush's Rising, Dispatches from the New American Shore. Today's warnings and evacuation notices for Hurricane Laura (now Category 4 and 18 - 20 foot storm surge) reminded me of a "blurb" by Elizabeth Kolbert for Rising "Sea level rise is not some distant problem in a distant place...." Although we have no seas to rise, Minnesota is struggling with major questions and projects that will reduce, or increase, green house gases and further, or help abate, climate breakdown's effects.

 

Prior to reading Rising, I had read Strangers in Their Own Land - Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild, much of which is focused on the Lake Charles area in Louisiana, near the current bullseye for Hurricane Laura. More recently, I've (belatedly) read the first section of James McPhee's The Control of Nature, which relates the efforts of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and others, to keep the mouth of the Mississippi River from moving itself several hundred miles West of its current location. Earlier today I skimmed through a piece about "the pivotal life and work of Rachel Carson, the author of the 1962 book Silent Spring." I found it telling and disheartening to read, again, how

The chemical industry and its powerful allies in government set out to destroy Carson, often insinuating that she was a Communist. Her book, published as Soviet ships sailed toward Cuba with ballistic cargo, sought to weaken American productivity, they said. The nightmare might be Americans waiting in bread lines like the Soviets.

Here we are, 60 some odd years later, and what's happening in response to climate breakdown, a response to COVID-19, election tampering and a variety of other significant, critical, perhaps existential issues, hearkens back to the response of "chemical industry and its powerful allies in government." Do you wear a mask when in public and indoors these days?

This November, and following, we must, unequivocally and for the foreseeable future, repudiate misinformation, disinformation, self-serving and hateful ideologies in all their forms. We need to consider, reconsider, and create answers to this question:

HOW DO WE CREATE COMMUNITIES TO WHICH ALL OF US CAN BELONG?

The United States is one country comprised of many people and cultures that are part of one world, the only home we have. We are living on our only available Planet B and, as Benjamin Franklin, one of the founders of the United States, pointed out: "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." These challenges are not new. They are interrelated. A wonderful folk singer captured them years ago in the lyrics below. We are long overdue for providing answers.

Where have all the flowers gone

Lyrics:  Pete Seeger

Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?

Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?

Where have all the flowers gone?

Young girls have picked them everyone

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the young girls gone, long time passing?

Where have all the young girls gone, long time ago?

Where have all the young girls gone?

Gone for husbands everyone

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the husbands gone, long time passing?

Where have all the husbands gone, long time ago?

Where have all the husbands gone?

Gone for soldiers everyone

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone, long time passing?

Where have all the soldiers gone, long time ago?

Where have all the soldiers gone?

Gone to graveyards, everyone

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the graveyards gone, long time passing?

Where have all the graveyards gone, long time ago?

Where have all the graveyards gone?

Gone to flowers, everyone

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Oh, when will they ever learn?

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A matter of perspective

In the midst of rereading Margaret Wheatley's Who Do We Choose To Be?, once again I've encountered numbers that my brain refuses to process:

In 2016, using new computational methods and new telescopes, the number of probable galaxies rose from 200 billion to 2 trillion, each of which would contain 100 billion stars.

Two trillion looks like this: 2,000,000,000,000 

One hundred billion looks like this: 100,000,000,000

Unless I've dropped a digit somewhere, that means there are (approximately) this many stars in the universe: 

200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.     

Is that number meaningful to you? I just can't process it into anything other than very, very MANY. It also makes me wonder about the significance of the historical friction between ecclesiastical authorities and Copernicus and Galileo.

we're all on this together

Why you may be wondering, am I belaboring this point? Because the current state of the world is making me crazy and I'm losing my sense of perspective. Fortunately, I've also recently had an opportunity to watch Carl Sagan's wonderful Pale Blue Dot video. Please, go watch it. I'll wait right here until you get back.

Keep in mind that the "Pale Blue Dot" photo was taken from just beyond Saturn, which is still in "our" solar system. Can you imagine what our "Blue Marble" (above) looks like from the edge of the universe? ... I thought so. Does that help put our current trials and tribulations into a different perspective? I hope so.

Included in the payload of the Voyager is a poem by Maya Angelou which also helps me keep things in perspective. It reawakens my awareness of

A BRAVE AND STARTLING TRUTH

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth 

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms 

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil 

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze 

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse 

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets 

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world 

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe 

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines 

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear 

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

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We're better than this, are we?

In the fields behind the house, purple love grass is ripening. Soon the seed heads will be getting blown across the fields, scattering seeds in early autumn. As of today, the election is 90 days away. We will be choosing not only a POTUS, but we will be making an informed statement about who we are as a people and to what we aspire. No longer will some of us be able to hide behind a nice-sounding but empty "we're better than this." On one hand, we can work to return to the kind of country that opens its arms and extends them to those who come here seeking a life better than they can achieve in their country of origin. The kind of country that once stood behind, and stood for, the description in today's edition of The Writer's Almanac:

Today in 1884, the cornerstone of the Statue of Liberty's pedestal was laid. One year prior, a fundraiser for the pedestal's construction solicited art and literary works for auction; 34-year-old Emma Lazarus donated a poem for the occasion, which she titled "The New Colossus."

Devoted to the plight of Jewish immigrants, Lazarus imagined that the statue would become a symbol of hope for all Ellis Island arrivals. She wrote her verse three years before the statue was completed, and only four years before her own death. The poem was essentially forgotten for 20 years, after which Lazarus' friends lobbied to have it emblazoned on a bronze plaque and hung in the museum inside the pedestal.

"The New Colossus"

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

In the alternative (on the other hand), we can continue as we have for the past three and three-quarter years. In that case, I suggest we disassemble the Statue of Liberty, remove the bronze plaque from the pedestal, and replace that plaque with one carrying a more appropriate poem by Yeats.

purple love grass ripening in August's sun

Photo by J. Harrington

The Second Coming

By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

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

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

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

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 

As the old saying goes, the choice is ours (in ninety days or less). It remains to be seen if enough of us really are "better than this" and choose to be lead by someone who aspires to be more than a "rough beast, its hour come round at last,..."

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On who "we" are

I hope this finds you and those around you healthy and virus-free. The next few months will prove to be challenging, at best. They will also provide us with a much clearer picture of just how unlevel the "playing field" in the  US, and the rest of the world, has become. Many of those with the fewest resources will suffer the greatest harm from the  COVID-19 virus and its economic impacts.

Here We Are      Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

An online article raises the question "What would happen if the world reacted to climate change like it’s reacting to the coronavirus?" At first I thought it might be satire, directed at US, since, in addition to a failing, uncoordinated, falsehood laden coronavirus response, we're also the country that's pulling out of the  Paris Agreement. But, as noted in the article:

“Climate change also affects the most vulnerable first and worst,” says Boeve. “So we see that pattern play out as well, and how this is unfolding and how the response is and is not responding to that inequity and impact.”

 Is it possible that the coronavirus emergency is yet another effort by mother nature to help us all to see that there is no Planet B; that we are all in this together; that we need to manage our commons for the sake of all of us, not just to increase the wealth of the 1% or the profits of corporate "persons" and the politicians they own? I'm not naive enough  to believe we can and will change quickly enough to avoid significant problems resulting from our broken climate. I am enough of an optimist to hope that we can, over time, change enough to learn to work together so we can first bring the coronavirus to heel and, in the process, notice that, as Senator Wellstone used to tell us "We all do better when we all do better." For that to work most effectively, we need to broaden our definition of "we," don't we?

A Brave and Startling Truth

by Maya Angelou

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet

Traveling through casual space

Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns

To a destination where all signs tell us

It is possible and imperative that we learn

A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it

To the day of peacemaking

When we release our fingers

From fists of hostility

And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it

When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate

And faces sooted with scorn and scrubbed clean

When battlefields and coliseum

No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters

Up with the bruised and bloody grass

To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches

The screaming racket in the temples have ceased

When the pennants are waving gaily

When the banners of the world tremble

Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it

When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders

And children dress their dolls in flags of truce

When land mines of death have been removed

And the aged can walk into evenings of peace

When religious ritual is not perfumed

By the incense of burning flesh

And childhood dreams are not kicked awake

By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it

Then we will confess that not the Pyramids

With their stones set in mysterious perfection

Nor the Gardens of Babylon

Hanging as eternal beauty

In our collective memory

Not the Grand Canyon

Kindled into delicious color

By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe

Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji

Stretching to the Rising Sun

Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,

Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores

These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it

We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe

Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger

Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace

We, this people on this mote of matter

In whose mouths abide cankerous words

Which challenge our very existence

Yet out of those same mouths

Come songs of such exquisite sweetness

That the heart falters in its labor

And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet

Whose hands can strike with such abandon

That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living

Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness

That the haughty neck is happy to bow

And the proud back is glad to bend

Out of such chaos, of such contradiction

We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it

We, this people, on this wayward, floating body

Created on this earth, of this earth

Have the power to fashion for this earth

A climate where every man and every woman

Can live freely without sanctimonious piety

Without crippling fear

When we come to it

We must confess that we are the possible

We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world

That is when, and only when

We come to it.

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for #InternationalWomensDay ♀

As I hope you already know, today is International Women's Day, a day on which, more than others, we pay attention to "Celebrate women's achievement. Raise awareness against bias. Take action for equality." In addition to my mother, grandmother, aunts, wife, and daughter, there have been several women who have made major beneficial contributions to my life. Those who have visited here a few times may have discovered that one of my favorite writers is Donella (Dana) Meadows. I first encountered her work in the 1970's when I read Limits to Growth. Her web site has a wonderfully expanded, full version on her paper on

PLACES TO INTERVENE IN A SYSTEM

(in increasing order of effectiveness)

12. Constants, parameters, numbers (such as subsidies, taxes, standards).
11. The sizes of buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their flows.
10. The structure of material stocks and flows (such as transport networks, population age structures).
9. The lengths of delays, relative to the rate of system change.
8. The strength of negative feedback loops, relative to the impacts they are trying to correct against.
7. The gain around driving positive feedback loops.
6. The structure of information flows (who does and does not have access to information).
5. The rules of the system (such as incentives, punishments, constraints).
4. The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure.
3. The goals of the system.
2. The mindset or paradigm out of which the system — its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters — arises.
1. The power to transcend paradigms.

Another woman, whose work I must become more familiar with, is a Nobel Laureate who has researched and published on one of my favorite topics, our commons. Her book, Governing the Commons, The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, seems like a useful supplement to Meadows' dictums. I mention these two women in particular because of my belief that, for women to attain equity, the system must be changed and the system in question is one of the world's commons. Ostrum has proposed eight principles for managing the commons:

1. Boundaries of users and resource are clear
2. Congruence between benefits and costs
3. Users had procedures for making own rules
4. Regular monitoring of users and resource conditions
5. Graduated sanctions
6. Conflict resolution mechanisms
7. Minimal recognition of rights by government
8. Nested enterprises

The preceding eight principle and twelve places proposed by two women appear to offer a framework for changing the current system so that women share equity. However, I think it wise to conclude with another observation from Dana Meadows:

“An important function of almost every system is to ensure its own perpetuation.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

Although I've tried to avoid using it today, that quote brings us to one by Frederick Douglas that, I believe, must be taken into consideration to have an equitable system.

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

How to Triumph Like a Girl

Ada Limón - 1976-

I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let's be honest, I like
that they're ladies. As if this big
dangerous animal is also a part of me,
that somewhere inside the delicate
skin of my body, there pumps
an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.
Don't you want to believe it?
Don't you want to lift my shirt and see
the huge beating genius machine
that thinks, no, it knows,
it's going to come in first.

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A Christmas present of a New Year's exploration

One of the blogs listed on the right-hand side of this page is based at The Center for Humans and Nature. The Center also puts out a journal called Minding Nature. In the most recent issue, Fall 2019, Volume 12, Number 3, there's an announcement about a new project The Center is initiating, The Kinship Project. I've read the Gavin Van Horn article several times. It's giving me fits in, I think, the best possible way, but, for now, I'm reserving judgement.

I was a teenage when Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird was published. I may not have read it until I was in college. I do remember hearing a number of times variations on a quotation attributed to Mockingbird's author:

“You can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family, an' they're still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge 'em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don't.” 

some kin can be prickly, especially at Christmas

Photo by J. Harrington

In describing what The Kinship Project intends to accomplish, Gavin Van Horn writes:

No matter what expression of media is used for CHN’s Kinship Project, we anticipate stories that do the following: disrupt human chauvinism, counter and complicate narratives of human identity that are based on individualistic ideologies, and celebrate what it means to be human in relation to our fellow earthling kin. At a time when human fidelity with the natural world seems to be fraying, the Kinship Project will bring forward stories of solidarity, highlighting the deep interdependence that exists between humans and the more-than-human world. We will explore challenging questions, including how communities might fairly and effectively give voice to non-human beings and landscapes, and attend to the cosmologies, mythic narratives, and everyday practices that embrace a world of other-than-human persons as worthy of response and responsibility.

Native Americans have long depended on the kinship of a more-than-human world

Photo by J. Harrington

Based on my initial reactions and responses, after the aforementioned several readings of the article describing the project, CHN's Kinship Project has already attained in me several of its objectives. My mind and heart have been disrupted, my identity narrative complicated, and, in light of my long-standing observations about how poorly we humans treat many of our closest kin, I've been challenged to follow along and learn about how to improve my own response and responsibilities to other-than-human-persons that share the world I inhabit. Who knows, in the process I may even enhance my relationships with my human kin, close and extended. Care to join us? What better Christmas present could we hope for than a chance to build a better world for ourselves and our descendants?

Kinship

By Margarita Engle

Two sets

of family stories,

one long and detailed,

about many centuries

of island ancestors, all living

on the same tropical farm...

The other side of the family tells stories

that are brief and vague, about violence

in the Ukraine, which Dad's parents

had to flee forever, leaving all their

loved ones

behind.

They don't even know if anyone

survived.

When Mami tells her flowery tales of Cuba,

she fills the twining words with relatives.

But when I ask my

Ukrainian-Jewish-American grandma

about her childhood in a village

near snowy Kiev,

all she reveals is a single

memory

of ice-skating

on a frozen pond.

Apparently, the length

of a grown-up's

growing-up story

is determined

by the difference

between immigration

and escape.

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