On the eve of a new year

This year, and a few preceding it, remind me of the opening of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

That assessment then makes me thing of the proverb “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” That prompts me to remember some of my Christmas presents, literary postcards that came from the Book Elves via the Better Half, or vice versa.

tomorrow brings the dawn of a new year

Photo by J. Harrington

I’ve not read much of Tolstoy so I was pleased to read his observation, printed on a card, that “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing themselves.” It seems to me to nicely complement the card with the quotation from T. S. Eliot that “And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” [If interested, check here.]

Several times over the decade I’ve been posting here I’ve mentioned the poem Desiderata. To see how often, and in what contexts, follow this link. I can think of no better way to close out this year than to hope and pray that Desiderata is true for each of us.

Remember

Joy Harjo - 1951-

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star's stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother's, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

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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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Heading South so soon? #phenology

For the past week or two, I've been refilling the oriole / hummingbird nectar feeder, hanging from the deck railing, with sugar water every day or every other day. There's been up to a half  dozen ruby-throated hummingbirds at a time trying to guzzle it down plus, I think, an occasional young of the year oriole and several downy woodpeckers helping out. So far today I've noticed only a few hummingbirds at that feeder. Have some of the adults decided to head for warmer climes? Audubon Guides notes that:

As early as July, ruby-throated hummingbirds start accumulating fat.  According to Cornell’s The Birds of North America Online, a ruby-throated hummingbird’s body weight can double in just seven to ten days.  Research has shown that the average amount of weight gained by hummingbirds prior to migration is sufficient to fuel a 500-mile flight – a necessity if they choose to cross the Gulf of Mexico.  For those who wonder if leaving their hummingbird feeders up late into the fall might delay the birds’ departure, fear not.  The hummingbirds visiting feeders in the fall are probably migrants, not residents, and will help, not hinder, their migration.

female ruby-throated hummingbird

Photo by J. Harrington

The Journey North web site has announced this week that Fall Migration Season is Underway! I've noticed a male or two this week so, if the local birds are leaving, it's just begun yesterday or today. Comparing the size of a hummingbird with the distance of their journey leaves me just as astounded, perhaps more so, that the migrations of monarch butterflies. Butterflies migrate using different generations to run legs of a relay migration. Hummingbirds do it in one generation; the youngsters have never done it before; and both parents leave ahead of the young'uns. How does that work?

Hummingbird Abecedarian

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Arriving with throats like nipped roses, like a tiny
bloom fastened to each neck, nothing else
cuts the air quite like this thrum to make the small
dog at my feet whine and yelp. So we wait—no
excitement pinned to the sky so needled and our days open
full of rain for weeks. Nothing yet from the ground speaks
green except weeds. But soon you see a familiar shadow
hovering where the glass feeders you brought
inside used to hang because the ice might shatter the pollen
junk and leaf bits collected after this windiest,wildest of winters.
Kin across the ocean surely felt this little jump of blood, this
little heartbeat, perhaps brushed across my grandmother’s
mostly grey braid snaked down her brown
neck and back across the Indian and the widest part of the Pacific
ocean, across the Mississippi, and back underneath my
patio. I’ve lost track of the times I’ve been silent in my lungs,
quiet as a salamander. Those times I wanted to decipher the mutter
rolled off a stranger’s full and beautiful lips. I only knew they
spoke in Malayalam—my father’s language—and how
terrific it’d sound if I could make my own slow mouth
ululate like that in utter sorrow or joy. I’m certain I’d be
voracious with each light and peppered syllable
winged back to me in the form of this sort of faith, a gift like
xenia offered to me. And now I must give it back to this tiny bird, its
yield far greener and greater than I could ever repay—a light like
zirconia—hoping for something so simple and sweet to sip.

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Thoughts on Valentine's Day

Sorry, no hearts and flowers today. This Valentine's Day it seems particularly appropriate to share Carl Sagan's iconic Pale Blue Dot monologue, especially since NASA has recently updated (reprocessed) the original Voyager 1 photograph. For now, this pale blue dot is all we have. We need to take better care of it. That means we need to do better caring for each other. We're all in, and on, this together. It's past time we Get Together.

Enlarged version of the new Pale Blue Dot release. (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.

    The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

Residence on Earth

By Arthur Sze

As we approached the front door, I noticed

grills on the windows, bullet pockmarks

in the wall; inside, a maid served us salad,

potato and cilantro soup—and I saw,

in the amphitheater above Medellín,

the stage where twenty-eight poets read;

clouds gathered; in the ensuing downpour,

I expected the five thousand people to rush out;

instead, a sea of umbrellas appeared,

and people swayed under them; when the readings

resumed, a poet stood, chanted in Vietnamese,

and when I stepped up to the podium,

two rivers flowed down the steps to the far right

and left; as I read our emotions resemble leaves

and alive to their shapes we are nourished, 

I understood how poets from all over the world

had come for peace, solidarity, justice—

and when my host, and reader of my poems

in Spanish, invited me into his home, I saw

one way to live during our residencia en la tierra.

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Happy New Year! May your daze be full of beauty!

New years come infrequently.

New decades even more so.

Each day, though, begins with a new morning.

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives...."

― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life 

Winter dawn

Photo by J. Harrington

Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

from Dream Work (1986) by Mary Oliver

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Happy Halloween! 🎃 👻 & Blessed Samhain! 🔥

We've lived in our house for something like a quarter century. In that time, we've not had a single child ring the bell and say "Trick or Treat!" Will tonight be the first? Perhaps not, since last Friday, several local community Main Streets held Trick or Treat events. That may, or may not, help explain a dearth of urchins ringing bells over the years. Another contributor may be the distances between houses in rural areas like ours, and the long driveways between the road and the doorbell in many places. Never mind the spirits from the other worlds wandering about.

ghouls? goblins? ghosts" witches?

Photo by J. Harrington

Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day are a period when many remember those relatives and friends who have passed on, crossed over, are no longer with us. I remember the phrase from more than one wake I attended, or eulogy I heard as a youth: "He (or She) was too good for this world." It was usually spoken by one of my relatives "of Irish descent," those of a second, third, or fourth generation rather than an original emigrant from "the old country."

"Many people lit bonfires to keep the evil spirits at bay."

Photo by J. Harrington

After living the better half of my life in the Midwest, far from my place of origin, I find I'm getting more and more interested in learning about the prior place of origin of many of my ancestors who came from Celtic stock. They might have remembered these days as the time to celebrate Samhain, which marks the beginning of the darker half of the year. (Until recently, I've always though of the year as being comprised of four seasons rather than two half.) I suspect living in a rural area, closer to and more aware of nature throughout the year, watching sun rise through the East windows and sun set through the West, has lead to the growth of my interest in trees, Druidry and respect for the powers of nature. In fact, as we experience, more and more, the effects of the climate we have broken, I wonder if more and more "modern people" will find themselves drawn to Druidry and paganism. Have you read Richard Powers' The Overstory?

St. Swithin's Chair

ST. SWITHIN'S CHAIR.


ON Hallowmas Eve, ere ye boune ye to rest,
Ever beware that your couch be bless'd;
Sign it with cross, and sain it with bead,
Sing the Ave, and say the Creed.

For on Hallowmas Eve the Night-Hag will ride,
And all her nine-fold sweeping on by her side,
Whether the wind sing lowly or loud,
Sailing through moonshine, or swathed in the cloud.

The Lady she sat in St. Swithin's Chair,
The dew of the night had damp'd her hair ;
Her cheek was pale....but resolved and high
Was the word of her lip and the glance of her eye-
She muttered the spell of St. Swithin bold,
When his naked foot traced the midnight wold,
When he stopt the Hag as she rode the night,
And bade her descend, and her promise plight.

He that dare sit on St. Swithin's Chair,
When the Night-Hag wings the troubled air,
Questions three, when he speaks the spell,
He may ask, and she must tell.

The Baron has been with King Robert his liege,
These three long years, in battle and siege ;
News there are none of his weal or his wo,
And fain the Lady his fate would know.

She shudders and stops as the charm she speaks
Is it the moody owl that shrieks ?
Or is it that sound, between laughter and scream,
The voice of the Demon who haunts the stream ?

The moan of the wind sunk silent and low,
And the roaring torrent has ceased to flow;
The calm was more dreadful than raging storm,
When the cold grey mist brought the ghastly form ! 

From "Waverly Poetry: being the poems scattered through the Waverly novels" by Sir Walter Scott.
Happy Halloween!

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Filling time

Sometimes, life's coincidences are a little scary. Late last week we lost a filling in one of our molars. Today, one of the most delightful days of Summer this year, we spent at the dentist. In fact, we were surprised she's even speaking to us, it's been so long since we last visited. During the four or five days between the loss of a filling and and the replacement / repair of that filling, we have been extremely grateful that we were not suffering an aching tooth due to the missing filling. (We haven't written about this before because we didn't want to jinx ourselves.)

As we were killing filling time before heading to the dentist this morning, we read a few more pages of one of our latest book acquisitions intended to lead to self-improvement. [see below] That's when we encountered ENJOYING YOUR NONTOOTHACHE.

Here's the critical excerpt, for those not currently suffering a toothache: "If my tooth hurt, this is exactly what I'd be wishing for. I'd believe that I would be so happy if only my tooth felt okay." The fact that we read exactly this page with precisely these words under our current circumstances suggests quite strongly to us that we had best give the reading of and exercises in the book our utmost attention. We, along with many of you we suspect, have been letting the times and the customs diminish our humanity and we don't like that. Time to do something about it, something like learning to be grateful for lots that we take for granted.

When we were older and knew everything we needed to know, like sometime last week, we might have needed to have the proverbial brick wall fall on us. But, as Dylan wrote in My Back Pages:

Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

The coincidence of enjoying a non-toothache experience that might well have been otherwise, and then reading we should learn to appreciate what is working and enjoyable in our lives is our metaphorical brick wall for this week. Let's now assume we succeed in attaining a necessary degree of youthfulness to enjoy as much as we can of each moment we have. That's when we turn to Dylan's wish from parents for their children. Imagine how much nicer the world would be and how much happier our lives would be if we could all remain

Forever Young

Written by: Bob Dylan

May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
May your song always be sung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

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Sandhills on the Sand Plain

Parts of yesterday and today have been devoted to Spring clean-up chores. We may need to research all the wonderful things tree leaves do for us, such as providing Summer shade and exhaling oxygen, and then compost or mulch, because we're annoyed at the scattered mess they make of lots of places where we don't want or need mulch or compost in the making.

The leaves along the drive are torn up in a number of places. We still haven't figured out if that's being done by deer, or squirrels, or both. It looks like someone's been trying to feed on what's left of last Autumn's chrysanthemums, and, maybe, pine cones and / or acorns. Although last year the acorn crop around here was poor.

sandhill cranes in flight

Photo by J. Harrington

Anyhow, one of the treats of putzing about outside while not running a noisy machine is that we've been able to hear the trumpeting calls of sandhill cranes. One day soon we need to see if we can further check the etymology of the word crane. We can't determine if it originated because humans craned their necks looking skyward for the creature making those sounds, or was it the other way around, cranes long necks became the source of humans craning their necks to gawk. It appears that the verb derives from the noun, but we're not sure.

sandhill cranes in Carlos Avery WMA marsh

Photo by J. Harrington

When we first moved into our current home, sandhill crane sightings were much rarer than they have been the past several years. The population has increased over the past 50 years or so and the east-central area of Minnesota is noted for its population of these magnificent birds. Hearing their calls, seeing them in flight, or feeding in the nearby marshes and fields is a worthwhile compensation for tolerating our North Country Winters while they enjoy warmer climes to which they've migrated.

The Sandhills 

The language of cranes

we once were told

is the wind. The wind

is their method,

their current, the translated story

of life they write across the sky.

Millions of years

they have blown here

on ancestral longing,

their wings of wide arrival,

necks long, legs stretched out

above strands of earth

where they arrive

with the shine of water,

stories, interminable

language of exchanges

descended from the sky

and then they stand,

earth made only of crane

from bank to bank of the river

as far as you can see

the ancient story made new.

        - Linda Hogan

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Having it all?

We initially had a different theme in mind for today's posting, until we read a certain poem this morning. Would that we had read it many, many years ago. But in those days, we probably weren't likely to benefit from it. We believe in the Tao Te Ching saying "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." It's taken us most of a lifetime to be ready to appreciate a poem like this. Mush of that lifetime was spent trying to "have it all." Hasn't that been "the American way?" We hope you find as much in this poem as we did. In fact, we hope you find even more. If one has all that this poem offers, one has a very, very rich life. That's the lesson this student learned this morning.

sunrise brought a morning full of beauty

Photo by J. Harrington

You Can’t Have It All

Barbara Ras

But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys
until you realize foam’s twin is blood.
You can have the skin at the center between a man’s legs,
so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind,
glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness,
never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who’ll tell you
all roads narrow at the border.
You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,
and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave
where your father wept openly. You can’t bring back the dead,
but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands
as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful
for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful
for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels
sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts,
for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream,
the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand.
You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed,
at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping
of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.
You can’t count on grace to pick you out of a crowd
but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump,
how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,
until you learn about love, about sweet surrender,
and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind
as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you,
you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond
of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas
your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.
There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother’s,
it will always whisper, you can’t have it all,
but there is this.

The source of this poem was "Tweeted" on Twitter by @brainpicker, the Twitter account of Maria Popova and her inestimable Brain Pickings web site/blog. If you're not familiar with her work, you're missing one of contemporary life's real pleasures.

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The day of emergence #phenology

This morning was THE DAY! The chrysalis split and a monarch emerged. The butterfly took several hours as its wings formed and hardened in the warm, humid air. As it moved about and repositioned its feet, first copper brownish and then clearer liquid dripped from the bottom of the split chrysalis.

almost ready to emerge

Photo by J. Harrington

just emerged

Photo by J. Harrington

wings still soft

Photo by J. Harrington

wings drying and firming

Photo by J. Harrington

chrysalis drippings

Photo by J. Harrington

As we stood (being eaten by teenie, tiny mosquitos) watching, we found ourselves wondering about the sensations a butterfly goes through as it morphs from a caterpillar to a winged creature. Do butterflies have any analog to human emotions? Does a monarch experience any fear or thrills as it releases hold on a firm footing and takes its first wingbeats through the air? We know a little about mamas infants and the suckling/nursing instinct. How does that compare with a butterfly's instinct to find nectar in flowers? There are no moms involved when butterflies emerge. Instant adulthood! The birth of a monarch is itself a poem. Always---

Remember

Joy Harjo, 1951

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

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

the missing chrysalis?

We found a chrysalis that may, or may not, belong to one of the monarch caterpillars that disappeared last week. We'd been cleaning the gutters on the front of the house and went to get the hose so we could flush where we'd cleaned. Lo and behold, attached to the bottom lip of one of the siding boards was a green chrysalis that we believe is a monarch butterfly in the making. We'll keep an eye on it but fear we may be on vacation next week about the time a butterfly would emerge.

looks like a monarch butterfly chrysalis

Photo by J. Harrington

Several of the milkweed plants in the field South of the house have been ravaged by tussock moth caterpillars. We also noticed within the past couple of days seed pods forming on some of the milkweed while others are still in flower. Milkweed pods and yesterday's temperatures in the sixties (actually in the fifties overnight) bring hints that Autumn isn't that far away.

That's about it for today. We're continuing to convince ourselves that it's worth the work to get rid of as much buckthorn as we can, although we're dubious it'll accomplish much since nearby DNR properties, plus private woodlands, will continue to offer a reservoir of seeds to get planted on our lands. Then again, we've developed a strong dislike for the plant so that's as good a reason as any, we suppose.

Little Summer Poem Touching The Subject Of Faith

by Mary Oliver

Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun's brass and even
into the moonlight, but I can't hear

anything, I can't see anything --
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green
stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening their damp pleats,

nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,

the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker --
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.

And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing --
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet --
all of it
happening
beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
is sure to be there.

In or out of season #phenology

Now that November is firmly ensconced, we can safely trim some branches from oak trees without worrying about exposing the tree to oak wilt transported by sap beetles. Plus, we've long ago developed the habit of spraying pruning sealer as soon as the cutting stops.

dead trees feed some and shelter others

Photo by J. Harrington

In A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold uses November to write about wood lot management and tree diseases:

"Soon after I bought the woods a decade ago, I realized that I had bought almost as many tree diseases as I had trees. My woodlot is riddled by all the ailments wood is heir to. I began to wish that Noah, when he loaded up the Ark, had left the tree diseases behind. But soon it became clear that these same diseases made my woodlot a mighty fortress, unequaled in the whole county."

It's evident to us that nature is an inspiring model for the circular economy we need to adopt. It's been said and written in many different ways that "there is no waste in nature." Old time New Englanders emphasized the need to "waste not, want not," "us it it up, wear it out." At this time of year, many migrant birds that took advantage of Summer's northern abundance travel great distances to find at least survival rations in Winter. Ojibwe lived a circular life, moving to different areas in a seasonal pattern.

November dawn highlights an oak tree

Photo by J. Harrington

It seems it's too easy to become separated, if not entirely divorced, from seasonal patterns. This is particularly true for those who work in offices and do essentially the same activities year round. We used to be most aware of Spring and Autumn because the bright sun, low in the sky at morning and evening commute times, was an annoyance. Winter often brought traffic jams and slippery, snow or ice covered roads. Summer sometimes delivered flooded roadways and traffic tie ups or detours.

As we approach Thanksgiving and then Christmas this year, with Winter Solstice in between, we're going to focus more on the linkage between what's going on inside the house with what's happening outside. For example, juncos are back but robins are gone. Bluejays and woodpeckers show up at the feeders more in these colder seasons. Ponds, lakes and rivers become ice covered. Soups and stews, and chili, will be served more frequently, at least until we've passed Spring Equinox. Much of the human race evolved in places that experience four seasons. What else do we lose if we lose the awareness of what we once depended on?

                     Seasonal

By Maggie Dietz

Summer-long the gulls’ old umbra cry

unraveled ease

but certain waves went by, then by.

The sky shook out the days.

The seabirds’ hunger rose in rings,

flung rock-clams to their shatterings,

raked gullets full, the bone-bills scraped.

High noon: oceans of time escaped.

                             *

All winter we slept benched together,

breakers, sleepdrunk children in a car

not conscious where they go.

We kneaded bread, kept out the weather,

while old suspicions huddled by the door,

mice in the snow.

                             *

In spring, the leaving bloomed—

oak leaf unfurled, a foot, resplendent

vigorous, aching to shake loose

but still dependent.

One morning moongreen loaves

rose into bones that rose to lift

our skin like sleeves,

our time together’s revenant.

                             *

Perennial fall, come cool the cliffs,

bring quiet, sulfur, early dark.

Represent as you must: dusk, dying, ends

and row us into winter’s water:

The body, wind-whipped, forms stiff peaks,

ice settles in the marrow bone.

At the chest, the live stone breaks against the beak,

beak breaks against stone.  

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

Eclipsing the eclipse

Minnesota: 100% cloud cover

The good news is we didn't travel 500 or 1,000 miles to have cloud cover obscure the eclipse. The bad news is cloud cover is obscuring our eclipse. It'll be interesting to see if the degree and type of darkness triggers any noticeable aberrant behavior among the local critters.

an August full moon

Photo by J. Harrington

We walked down the drive with a pair of eclipse glasses in hand. Trees surrounding the house interrupted a direct line of sight exposure to the sun. Through the clouds we could see a bright light, like the sun behind clouds. To protect our eyes, we put on the eclipse glasses, looked up, and saw --- nothing! It was as black as a coal bin at midnight or, for those of you who never had coal bins, as black as the inside of an upside-down oil barrel. The movies and television coverage of the eclipse are fascinating, but I think I'll wait to read the book. It is getting darker, about the way it would look if a thunderstorm were in the neighborhood.

wolf pup exploring

Photo by J. Harrington

Since we're not going to have any photos of the eclipse we can share, we want to offer something visual, more than just cloud cover. The first photo above is of the full moon from exactly two years ago today. The second is of a Wildlife Science Center wolf pup from a visit a little more than one year ago. The pup hadn't yet mastered howling at the moon but I bet it's doing better these days. It may even be howling at the eclipse, if the clouds ever break up.

A Solar Eclipse

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

In that great journey of the stars through space
     About the mighty, all-directing Sun,
     The pallid, faithful Moon, has been the one
Companion of the Earth. Her tender face,
Pale with the swift, keen purpose of that race,
     Which at Time’s natal hour was first begun,
     Shines ever on her lover as they run
And lights his orbit with her silvery smile.
Sometimes such passionate love doth in her rise,
     Down from her beaten path she softly slips,
And with her mantle veils the Sun’s bold eyes,
     Then in the gloaming finds her lover’s lips.
While far and near the men our world call wise
     See only that the Sun is in eclipse.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.

Comes the dawn

'Tis New Year's Eve, the sky is blue above Minnesota's cold air. We're ending the year with rare glimpses of sunshine. I'm going to take that as a good omen for the future, despite abundant evidence to the contrary. Years ago I made a New Years resolution to give up New Years resolutions. I've been successful at keeping that resolution until now. As I look at the world we've created for ourselves, or let others create for us, and at my relationship to it, I find lots of sources for dissatisfaction that lead me to the two related resolutions I'm adopting for 2017.

• I will learn to understand with my heart before my head.


• I will listen as hard as I can, just to understand.

A New Year begins with a new day

Photo by J. Harrington

I'm not sure how successful I'll be, or what related changes these resolutions may bring if I am successful keeping them, but they represent the best place I can figure out to start creating a world more like the one in which I want to live and have my children thrive. The thoughts I listed represent the way I'll begin a New Year.

To close out 2016, I want to thank all of you who've taken time to read these postings, and, even more so, those of you who've been kind enough to share your feelings and thoughts in the comments. I'd reply to comments more often, but I still haven't figured out how to do that on the Blogger software.

Paul Simon, years ago, warned us about the dangers on the path we've been following. Listen to his Hazy Shade of Winter and then, in April Come She Will, to what happens as we learn to first understand with our hearts. May Sarton similarly describes a hope-filled way to start our next New Year.

Wishing you the best for 2017, "Live life and thrive."

New Year Poem

by May Sarton

Let us step outside for a moment
As the sun breaks through clouds
And shines on wet new fallen snow,
And breathe the new air.
So much has died that had to die this year.

We are dying away from things.
It is a necessity—we have to do it
Or we shall be buried under the magazines,
The too many clothes, the too much food.
We have dragged it all around
Like dung beetles
Who drag piles of dung
Behind them on which to feed,
In which to lay their eggs.

Let us step outside for a moment
Among ocean, clouds, a white field,
Islands floating in the distance.
They have always been there.
But we have not been there.

We are going to drive slowly
And see the small poor farms,
The lovely shapes of leafless trees
Their shadows blue on the snow.
We are going to learn the sharp edge
Of perception after a day’s fast.

There is nothing to fear.
About this revolution…
Though it will change our minds.
Aggression, violence, machismo
Are fading from us
Like old photographs
Faintly ridiculous
(Did a man actually step like a goose
To instill fear?
Does a boy have to kill
To become a man?)

Already there are signs.
Young people plant gardens.
Fathers change their babies’ diapers
And are learning to cook.

Let us step outside for a moment.
It is all there
Only we have been slow to arrive
At a way of seeing it.
Unless the gentle inherit the earth
There will be no earth.

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