Ban hate, not books

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

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

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

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

This Morning I Pray for My Enemies

by Joy Harjo

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

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January thaw for Christmas?

Winter Solstice arrived at 3:20 am Saturday, local time. The dogs and I were there to greet the arrival of the season as we walked down the driveway so they could “take care of business” and I could enjoy a cup of coffee when we returned to the house. I think all three of us are looking  forward to longer, warmer days ahead. But first we’ll enjoy the Yule season and an early January thaw that starts on Christmas and is forecast to continue until 2025. Mother Nature’s Christmas presence?

We wish everyone, or at least the “good guys,” peace and joy now and through the coming year. I’d love to see everyone read, reread, and take to heart, the messages in The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. It seems to me that could make for a year-round Christmas spirit without the cold and snow and commercialism.

my favorite Christmas tree ornament

Photo by J. Harrington

SiSi, my aging yellow lab rescue dog, and I got an early present. Last week she could barely walk, her hips hurt so much. It seemed to come on suddenly. The Daughter Person offered some pain pills one of their dogs didn’t need. That, followed by a call to our vet for a regular prescription, has SiSi walking about as well as I do these days. We are both very grateful for the assistance and the outcome.

As I’m sure you realize, today, December 23, is the Eve of Christmas Eve. We are now at “C” minus two and counting. We’re a day late with this posting ‘cuz we got busy with seasonal stuff yesterday and forgot to take pen/keyboard in hand until we were already sleepy-headed in bed last night. We’ll do our best to be more timely next Sunday.

For the Children

by Gary Snyder

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

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

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

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

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It’s BLOOMing Father’s Day

This year Father’s Day coincides with Bloomsday which, according to The Writer’s Almanac:

... James Joyce fans all over the world are celebrating. It commemorates the day on which the events of his novel Ulysses take place. Joyce chose June 16th, 1904, for the setting because it was the day of his first date with Nora Barnacle, his future wife. Even after the novel's success, Joyce himself did not call June 16th "Bloomsday." Nor did he really celebrate the day, though publisher Sylvia Beach organized a celebratory Parisian luncheon on June 16th, 1929 — years before the book was legal in the English-speaking world.

Much as I identify with my Irish heritage, today honoring my father, and all fathers, takes precedence. I do my best and hope my shoulders are broad and strong enough to do for my children and grandchild what my father did for me: teach me to care about and for others, and to think for myself. Today’s poem says it even better. If we’re not here to take care of each other and, especially, our children, why are we here?

Shoulders

Naomi Shihab Nye
1952 – 

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

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For Father’s Day, a wish and an assessment

more rain is needed to make a rainbow

Photo by J. Harrington

Wishing you a Happy Father's Day. Mine, so far, has been joyful, but also, essentially, rainless. So that we may all get to enjoy and share many more Father's Days with each other, let's remember and follow this guidance:

Shoulders

Naomi Shihab Nye

1952 – 

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

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A memory trigger

There’s clusters of orange day lilies growing along roadsides all over our county, at least the parts I drive most often. The other afternoon I noticed one cluster that suddenly put me in mind of some of the lyrics of one of my all time most favorite songs ever, Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne. If you’re not familiar with it, or Cohen’s other work, you’re missing something truly wonderful.

They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever...

Photo by J. Harrington

Tomorrow I plan to share a picture of a haloed pine tree, taken shortly after one of our recent downpours. For today, enjoy what you can, when you can, with whom you can. Be kind when you can, to whom you can, including yourself.

Suzanne

by Leonard Cohen

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she's half crazy
But that's why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her

That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you've always been her lover

And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you've touched her perfect body with your mind

And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said, "All the men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"

But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone

And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you'll trust him
For he's touched your perfect body with his mind

Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbor
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers

There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever while Suzanne holds the mirror

And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that you can trust her
For she's touched your perfect body with her mind

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Voting isn’t enough

 These days I have a tendency to fuss and fume about the state of the world. I’ve noticed I’m not the only one. An assessment of actions and inactions indicates we have reasons aplenty to be perturbed, although I’m finding more indications that we may be overreacting and things aren’t quite as doomy and gloomy as we portray. It’s just that many of US don’t have it as good as we used to.

By comparison, I was thinking about my parents this morning. They got married during WWII, while my father was serving in the Air Corp. I was born before the war had quite ended. After the war, things were settling down and improving but, not more than half a decade or so later, my father was called back to active duty because of the United Nations “police action” in Korea. That hardly seemed fair, in the broader sense, especially when I remember that the action was intended to stop communist aggression. The same thing we fought against again decades later in Viet Nam. Isn’t that a significant part of what’s now occurring in the Ukraine?

My parents, however, didn’t have the swords of climate breakdown or biodiversity loss hanging over their heads, at least they didn’t know about it in those days.

I’m not suggesting the recent SCOTUS reduction of human rights isn’t exceedingly important, I am thinking that this nation, and the human race, have a long history that’s captured in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, where “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” In contrast, Martin Luther King, Jr., told US that “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” Before that, Frederick Douglass noted “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” 

July morning, storms ahead

Photo by J. Harrington

I’ve been encouraged recently by a couple of things. An organization to which I’ve long belonged, Trout Unlimited (TU), formed a partnership with Back Country Hunters and Anglers. Each organization asked its members to join the other and they’ve been collaborating on several events and issues since then. [This reminds me that I still need to complete my membership application to BHA.]

TU is also becoming more active in responding to the challenges a warming world and more volatile weather bring to cold water fisheries. There’s a section on their web site devoted to climate change: Working to help trout, salmon and our communities weather climate change. Notice that the focus isn’t just the fisheries resource, but includes affected communities.

So, I’ve a few of suggestions:

• Be hopeful. Growing numbers of folks are working to make things better.
• Don’t focus just on the politics. Find an organization of two that does work you admire and find relevant to issues that concern you. Work through and with that organization to increase your leverage.
• Don’t confuse the idea you can be anything that you want with the idea you can be everything that you want. Even if any of us really had it all, where would we keep it and how often would we enjoy it?
• Vote the individual candidate, not the party. (Check Douglass’ quote above.)

"Anthem"

Leonard Cohen

The birds they sang 
At the break of day 
Start again 
I heard them say 
Don't dwell on what 
Has passed away 
Or what is yet to be. 
Ah the wars they will 
Be fought again 
The holy dove 
She will be caught again 
Bought and sold 
And bought again 
The dove is never free. 

Ring the bells that still can ring 
Forget your perfect offering 
There is a crack a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in. 

We asked for signs 
The signs were sent: 
The birth betrayed 
The marriage spent 
Yeah the widowhood 
Of every government
Signs for all to see. 

I can run no more 
With that lawless crowd 
While the killers in high places 
Say their prayers out loud. 
But they've summoned, they've summoned up 
A thundercloud 
They're gonna hear from me. 

Ring ring ring ring ring 

Ring the bells that still can ring 
Forget your perfect offering 
There is a crack a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in 

You can add up the parts 
But you won't have the sum 
You can strike up the march, 
There is no drum 
Every heart, every heart 
To love will come 
But like a refugee. 

Ring the bells that still can ring 
Forget your perfect offering 
There is a crack, a crack in everything 
That's how the light gets in. 

Ring the bells that still can ring 
Forget your perfect offering 
There is a crack, a crack in everything 
That's how the light gets in. 
That's how the light gets in. 
That's how the light gets in.

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Valentine's minus 4

Red, in different shades, is the color for Valentine’s Day. That means on or before the fourteenth of this month we’ll start looking at the local clusters of dogwood to see if the colors of their stems have brightened yet. I bet we can find a few more vases and places to set them if we collect some dogwood stems to help brighten the rooms and hasten the feeling of spring’s arrival.

red osier dogwood in February

Photo by J. Harrington

Red, again in different shades for arteries (bright) or veins (dark), is a color that comes into view or to mind all too often in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric.

Citizen came out in October 2014. In the first printing, according to a Graywolf publicist, Page 134 read:

November 23, 2012 / In Memory of Jordan Russell Davis  

That was the date the black 17-year-old was gunned down in Jacksonville, Florida.

The next page, 135, was headed:

February 15, 2014 / The Justice System

That was the date the prosecution of Davis’ shooter, Michael Dunn, ended in a mistrial. (Dunn was later convicted, in October, of first-degree murder.)

But for the second printing, which went to press on Sept. 24, 2014, Rankine chose to add another name to Page 134’s written monument—that of Ferguson’s Michael Brown. The new edition read:

November 23, 2012 / In Memory of Jordan Russell Davis

August 9, 2014 / In Memory of Michael Brown

Now, the third printing, from Nov. 20, 2014, shows the most powerful change yet. The phrase “In Memory Of” repeats down the side of Page 134, with the names of victims arrayed to the right: Jordan Russell Davis, Eric Garner, John Crawford, and Michael Brown. Blank spaces next to the remaining “In Memories” suggest that more black men will eventually join the ranks of those already fallen.

As we approach Valentine’s Day almost a decade after the third printing, it’s more than disheartening to think how much longer, with how many more names, could be added to pages 134 and following. [My copy of Citizen has a list that stops at the name Sandra Bland, “a 28-year-old African-American woman who was found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas, on July 13, 2015, three days after being arrested during a traffic stop.”]

I’d love to listen to, or read a transcript of, a conversation between Amanda Gorman, talking about Call Us What We Carry and Claudia Rankine, discussing Citizen and whether the former contradicts or complements the latter.

To return to a Valentine’s theme, “Only love can break a heart, only love can mend it again.”

from Citizen, VI [I knew whatever was in front of me was happening]

Claudia Rankine

I knew whatever was in front of me was happening and then the police vehicle came to a screeching halt in front of me like they were setting up a blockade. Everywhere were flashes, a siren sounding and a stretched-out roar. Get on the ground. Get on the ground now. Then I just knew.

And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.

 

I left my client's house knowing I would be pulled over. I knew. I just knew. I opened my briefcase on the passenger seat, just so they could see. Yes officer rolled around on my tongue, which grew out of a bell that could never ring because its emergency was a tolling I was meant to swallow.

In a landscape drawn from an ocean bed, you can't drive yourself sane—so angry you are crying. You can't drive yourself sane. This motion wears a guy out. Our motion is wearing you out and still you are not that guy.

 

//

 

Then flashes, a siren, a stretched-out roar—and you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.

Get on the ground. Get on the ground now. I must have been speeding. No, you weren't speeding. I wasn't speeding? You didn't do anything wrong. Then why are you pulling me over? Why am I pulled over? Put your hands where they can be seen. Put your hands in the air. Put your hands up.

Then you are stretched out on the hood. Then cuffed. Get on the ground now.

 

//

 

Each time it begins in the same way, it doesn't begin the same way, each time it begins it's the same. Flashes, a siren, the stretched-out roar—

Maybe because home was a hood the officer could not afford, not that a reason was needed, I was pulled out of my vehicle a block from my door, handcuffed and pushed into the police vehicle's backseat, the officer's knee pressing into my collarbone, the officer's warm breath vacating a face creased into the smile of its own private joke.

Each time it begins in the same way, it doesn't begin the same way, each time it begins it's the same.

Go ahead hit me motherfucker fled my lips and the officer did not need to hit me, the officer did not need anything from me except the look on my face on the drive across town. You can't drive yourself sane. You are not insane. Our motion is wearing you out. You are not the guy.

 

//

 

This is what it looks like. You know this is wrong. This is not what it looks like. You need to be quiet. This is wrong. You need to close your mouth now. This is what it looks like. Why are you talking if you haven't done anything wrong?

And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.

 

//

 

In a landscape drawn from an ocean bed, you can't drive yourself sane—so angry you can't drive yourself sane.

The charge the officer decided on was exhibition of speed. I was told, after the fingerprinting, to stand naked. I stood naked. It was only then I was instructed to dress, to leave, to walk all those miles back home.

And still you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.

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A thinking community? Yes!!!

 Cloudy, dreary, snowing. Bitter cold through New Years weekend. These are indeed the darkest days of the year, both literally and psychologically. And the pundits tell us the new year will bring lots of uncertainty. All of which, plus spending too much time on social media, has me wondering about taking  the shifting baseline syndrome from ecology, applying it to the natural, cultural, social and political worlds (economic fits in there somewhere) and working on restoration sociology or anthropology.

Aldo Leopold refers to a “thinking community” as he writes about a land ethic.

Leopold recognized that his dream of a widely accepted and implemented set of values based on caring – for people, for land, and for all the connections between them – would have to “evolve… in the minds of a thinking community.”

“It evolves in the minds of a thinking community."

Photo by J. Harrington

I believe we need to focus on creating a thinking community as well as "simply caring: about people, about land, and about strengthening the relationships between them.” Much of the behavior we see, read about, and too often exhibit is based very little on either thinking or caring. We have become reactors (other-directed) rather than actors (inner-directed, check The Lonely Crowd).

Slowly, we are learning how to do restoration ecology more effectively. Perhaps that means we can actually (re)create a thinking community that honors a land ethic and will be better prepared to respond to whatever the James Webb Space Telescope will soon begin transmitting.

I think I’ve just added to my New Year’s wish list.

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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May your Christmas Eve be calm and bright

The insurance version of a Christmas amaryllis I bought a few weeks back is opening right on time. The blossoms are white instead of the typical red. Sometimes change is, or can be, good. May all that changes next year be for the good!

"She gave birth to her firstborn child, a son,
wrapped him snugly,
and laid him in a manger,..."

Photo by J. Harrington

Tomorrow our family celebrates Christmas in the morning and our oldest child’s birthday in the afternoon. We’re very grateful we can all get together and pray that no one is a carrier. Although this past year hasn’t been a disaster for us, it won’t take a heck of a lot for next year to be a big improvement. In fact our Christmas wish is that next year the Earth and her inhabitants have the food, water, shelter, and health they need plus family and friends with whom to share it. All except COVID-19 and its ilk. If I were the Grinch, I doubt I could make my heart big enough to be kind, or even accepting, of a pandemic-causing virus.

Christmas Trees

By Robert Frost

(A Christmas Circular Letter)

The city had withdrawn into itself

And left at last the country to the country;

When between whirls of snow not come to lie

And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove

A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,

Yet did in country fashion in that there

He sat and waited till he drew us out

A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.

He proved to be the city come again

To look for something it had left behind

And could not do without and keep its Christmas.

He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;

My woods—the young fir balsams like a place

Where houses all are churches and have spires.

I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.

I doubt if I was tempted for a moment

To sell them off their feet to go in cars

And leave the slope behind the house all bare,

Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.

I’d hate to have them know it if I was.

Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except

As others hold theirs or refuse for them,

Beyond the time of profitable growth,

The trial by market everything must come to.

I dallied so much with the thought of selling.

Then whether from mistaken courtesy

And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether

From hope of hearing good of what was mine, I said,

“There aren’t enough to be worth while.”

“I could soon tell how many they would cut,

You let me look them over.”

                                                     “You could look.

But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.”

Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close

That lop each other of boughs, but not a few

Quite solitary and having equal boughs

All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to,

Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,

With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.”

I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.

We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,

And came down on the north. He said, “A thousand.”

“A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?”

He felt some need of softening that to me:

“A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.”

Then I was certain I had never meant

To let him have them. Never show surprise!

But thirty dollars seemed so small beside

The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents

(For that was all they figured out apiece),

Three cents so small beside the dollar friends

I should be writing to within the hour

Would pay in cities for good trees like those,

Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools

Could hang enough on to pick off enough.

A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!

Worth three cents more to give away than sell,

As may be shown by a simple calculation.

Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.

I can’t help wishing I could send you one,

In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

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Let's give a damn

Today’s howling winds have stripped most of the remaining leaves from their holds on branches. Morning snow showers were followed by blue skies, sunshine, and a touch of the gales of November. One of the bird feeders, plus its hanger, were blown off the deck railing. Local weather mirrors the tempestuousness of current events?

late, late autumn swans

Photo by J. Harrington

Several swans were riding out today's blow on the open waters of the Sunrise River pools well north of county road 36 and south of county road 19. In years past, they’ve kept us company into early December if enough  water remained ice free. I believe the lyrics to the Twelve Days of Christmas include “seven swans a swimmin” but we now lean toward goose or ham at Christmas and turkey has long been traditional at Thanksgiving.

As we begin Thanksgiving week this year, we note with some irony that the day after Thanksgiving is both  Black Friday and Native American Heritage Day. We should, no doubt, have noted the juxtaposition before this but we’ve been more inclined to treat the Friday after Thanksgiving as “Buy Nothing Day.” One of our favorite companies, Patagonia, has a great ad for this year. [see below] They’ve also provided a fantastic theme for this holiday season Give a Damn. Take a look. You’ll be glad you did. But first, the ad:

now read this bottom up

About Standing (in Kinship)

By Kimberly Blaeser

We all have the same little bones in our foot

twenty-six with funny names like navicular.

Together they build something strong—

our foot arch a pyramid holding us up.

The bones don’t get casts when they break.

We tape them—one phalange to its neighbor for support.

(Other things like sorrow work that way, too—

find healing in the leaning, the closeness.)

Our feet have one quarter of all the bones in our body.

Maybe we should give more honor to feet

and to all those tiny but blessed cogs in the world—

communities, the forgotten architecture of friendship.

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For your weekend enjoyment

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

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

Nov 7 Sun 

Cedar Cultural Center @ 7:30pm 

Minneapolis, MN, United States

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

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

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

Making Sense

Finding what makes sense 

In senseless times 

Takes grounding

Sometimes quite literally 

In the two inches of humus 

Faithful recreating itself

Every hundred years.

It takes steadying oneself 

Upon shale and clay and solid rock

Swearing allegiance to an ageless aquifer 

Betting on all the still hidden springs. 

You can believe in a tree, 

With its broad-leafed perspective, 

Dedicated to breathing in, and then out, 

Reaching down, and then up,  

Drinking in a goodness above and below 

It’s splayed and mossy feet. 

You can trust a tree’s careful 

and drawn out way of speaking. 

One thoughtful sentence, covering the span of many seasons.  

A tree doesn’t hurry, it doesn’t lie,

 It knows how to stand true to itself 

Unselfconscious of its beauty and scars,

 And all the physical signs of where 

and when It needed to bend,

Rather than break.

A tree stands solitary and yet in deepest communion,

For in the gathering of the many, 

There is comfort and courage, 

Perseverance and protection, 

From the storms that howl down from predictable

 Or unexplainable directions.    

In a senseless time 

Hold close to what never stopped 

Making sense.

Like love

Like trees

Like how a seed becomes a branch

And compost becomes seedlings again.

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

Because there is nothing more right than that. Nothing. 

It is all still happening 

Even now.

Even now.

By Carrie Newcomer 2020

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Been there? Done that? A response to climate breakdown

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently released the latest in their series of reports on its assessment of climate change.

The report shows that emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are responsible for approximately 1.1°C of warming since 1850-1900, and finds that averaged over the next 20 years, global temperature is expected to reach or exceed 1.5°C of warming.

There are really few, if any, surprises in the report. In fact, the entire IPCC series has been foreshadowed by work done with support by the Club of Rome and first published in 1972, The Limits to Growth [available as download]. The report’s authors found that

The earth’s interlocking resources – the global system of nature in which we all live – probably cannot support present rates of economic and population growth much beyond the year 2100, if that long, even with advanced technology. In the summer of 1970, an international team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began a study of the implications of continued worldwide growth. They examined the five basic factors that determine and, in their interactions, ultimately limit growth on this planet-population increase, agricultural production, nonrenewable resource depletion, industrial output, and pollution generation. 

In 1992 there was an update to The Limits to Growth, titled, appropriately, Beyond the Limits to Growth. It reinforced, with some revisions, the original report’s conclusions:

1. Human use of many essential resources and generation of many kinds of pollutants have already surpassed rates that are physically sustainable. Without significant reductions in material and energy flows, there will be in the coming decades an uncontrolled decline in per capita food output, energy use, and industrial production.

2. This decline is not inevitable. To avoid it two changes are necessary. The first is a comprehensive revision of policies and practices that perpetuate growth in material consumption and in population. The second is a rapid, drastic increase in the efficiency with which materials and energy are used.

3. A sustainable society is still technically and economically possible. It could be much more desirable than a society that tries to solve its problems by constant expansion. The transition to a sustainable society requires a careful balance between long-term and short-term goals and an emphasis on sufficiency, equity, and quality of life rather than on quantity of output. It requires more than productivity and more than technology; it also requires maturity, compassion, and wisdom.

Twelve years later, in 2004, Chelsea Green Publishing Company published Limitsa to Growth: The Thirty Year Update. It included a chapter on “Tools for the Transition to Sustainability.” This latter piece has not been prominent in any of the IPCC’s work. The essence of Chapter 8 is available online at the Donella Meadow’s Project web site. One of the critical tools cited is a shared vision such as the following:

A sustainable world can never be fully realized until it is widely envi­sioned. The vision must be built up by many people before it is complete and compelling. As a way of encour­aging others to join in the process, we’ll list here some of what we see when we let ourselves imagine a sus­tainable society we would like to live in–as opposed to one we would be willing to settle for. This is by no means a definitive list. We include it here only to invite you to develop and enlarge it.

• Sustainability, efficiency, sufficiency, equity, beauty, and community as the highest social values.
• Material sufficiency and security for all. Therefore, by individual choice as well as communal norms, low birth rates and stable populations.
• Work that dignifies people instead of demeaning them. Some way of providing incentives for people to give their best to society and to be rewarded for doing so, while ensuring that everyone will be provided for sufficiently under any circumstances.
• Leaders who are honest, respectful, intelligent, humble, and more inter­ested in doing their jobs than in keeping their jobs, more inrerested in serving society than in winning elections.
• An economy that is a means, not an end, one that serves the welfare of the environment, rather than vice versa.
• Efficient, renewable energy systems.
• Efficient, closed-loop materials systems.
• Technical design that reduces emis­sions and waste to a minimum, and social agreement not to produce emissions or waste that technology and nature can’t handle.
• Regenerative agriculture that builds soils, uses natural mechanisms to restore nutrients and control pests, and produces abundant, un­contaminated food.
• The preservation of ecosystems in their variety, with human cultures liv­ing in harmony with those ecosys­tems; therefore, high diversity of both nature and culture, and human appre­ciation for that diversity.
• Flexibility, innovation (social as well as technical), and intellectual chal­lenge. A flourishing of science, a con­tinuous enlargement of human knowledge.
• Greater understanding of whole systems as an essential part of each person’s education.
• Decentralization of economic power, political influence, and scien­tific expertise.
• Political structures that permit a balance between short-term and long-term considerations; some way of exerting political pressure now on behalf of our grandchildren.
• High-level skills on the part of citi­zens and governments in the arts of nonviolent conflict resolution.
• Media that reflect the world’s diver­sity and at the same time unite cultures with relevant, accurate, timely, unbiased, and intelligent information, presented in its historic and whole­ system context.
• Reasons for living and for thinking well of ourselves that do not involve the accumulation of material things.

The challenges we face are not new, although the need for promptly implementing successful solutions grows more urgent by the day. Many wise and intelligent people have been trying to get our attention for generations. Slowly, they’ve been succeeding. There are many who are creating the alternatives we need to today’s mainstream systems. In future postings, we’ll devote more space to sharing those we know about. For example, most of today’s posting is based on the work of Donella Meadows, being continued posthumously at The Donella Meadow’s Project. So, in addition to a poem today, we close with one of her observations.

A History of Kindness

By Linda Hogan

When a child becomes an animal in clouds
changing forms to other creatures,
our grief becomes a kindness to the sky.

When the hay is baled and you worry
if a mouse or snake was inside,
that is a gentleness.

When the horses are fed and all that's left is a withered apple
for a woman to eat, and she is grateful
for the life of all things and so feeds it to the horse,
that is a good heart.

When you are gentle to the s kin of others,
touching them softly, speaking with gentle words
that is compassion.

When there is agreement among those
who might have argued instead,
it is a gift to all.

When skin is the first organ to form in the body of a woman,
skin, the largest organ we have,
that is a mother's first protection.

If you still love the invisible place where a child once stood,
the heart recalling her long dark legs, her soft wind-blown hair,
that is the spaciousness of memory.

And when you pick up the old woman on the worn road
to help her home and you see that she has nothing, 
you give the food you have.

You give the only can of coffee, then start her woodstove
you leave your coat behind on purpose.
What else would a real human do?

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On Mother's Day eve

At least we haven't yet planted any wildflower seed mixes. We've had reason to cover the annual plantings the past few nights, although no signs of what we used to call a "hard frost," and we hope it stays that way. Life can be hazardous for tender plants and tender critters, but eaglets, and other chicks have mothers to sit on them and keep from freezing. Plants are pretty much on their own and water doesn't lose enough heat to create problems for fish. It's not clear if a "hard freeze" has a negative effect on the occupants of vernal pools, either eggs or adults.

a dandelion for mom

Photo by J. Harrington

Meanwhile, it looks like we have a couple of female ruby-throated hummingbirds planning on nesting somewhere around the house. One has been arriving at the rear deck feeder and another at the front window-mounted feeder. Still no signs of Baltimore orioles. Maybe next week?

A Dandelion for My Mother

By Jean Nordhaus

How I loved those spiky suns,  

rooted stubborn as childhood  

in the grass, tough as the farmer’s  

big-headed children—the mats  

of yellow hair, the bowl-cut fringe.  

How sturdy they were and how  

slowly they turned themselves  

into galaxies, domes of ghost stars  

barely visible by day, pale  

cerebrums clinging to life  

on tough green stems.   Like you.  

Like you, in the end.   If you were here,  

I’d pluck this trembling globe to show  

how beautiful a thing can be  

a breath will tear away. 

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On giving thanks

 Doe to a worldwide pandemic, many today are more isolated than they would otherwise choose to be. Thanks to Carl Sagan, his wife Ann Druyan, and the folks at NASA, we can have a different perspective on isolation. Aren't we all isolated on the pale blue dot of earth?

Seen from about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles), Earth appears as a tiny dot within deep space: the blueish-white speck almost halfway up the brown band on the right.

The passengers on the Mayflower were largely isolated from all they had known in England and on the European continent when they disembarked to a world new to them. Yr. obt. svt. was born in Boston, raised in Massachusetts' South Shore and Cape Cod, and herewith shares some myths about today's holiday, published and sourced via the Cape Cod Times.

Pilgrim myths: Don’t believe everything your kindergarten teacher told you

A nation created, a nation diminished: Pilgrims’ arrival in Provincetown 400 years ago spawned a clash of cultures

We hope each and every one of you has a safe, happy, healthy, and caring holiday and lives to celebrate with loved ones again next year.

a sole Tom Turkey gobbles "Happy Thanksgiving"

Photo by J. Harrington

Thanksgiving

By Robert Nichols

Amazement fills my heart to-night, 

Amaze and awful fears; 

I am a ship that sees no light, 

But blindly onward steers. 

 

Flung toward heaven’s toppling rage, 

Sunk between steep and steep, 

A lost and wondrous fight I wage 

With the embattled deep. 

 

I neither know nor care at length 

Where drives the storm about; 

Only I summon all my strength 

And swear to ride it out. 

 

Yet give I thanks; despite these wars. 

My ship—though blindly blown, 

Long lost to sun or moon or stars— 

Still stands up alone. 

I need no trust in borrowed spars; 

My strength is yet my own.

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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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Antidote to antipathy

 Today's posting has no relationship whatsoever with the fact that today is Primary Election Day in Minnesota. It also has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that way too many of our politicians, and those who vote for them, have an extremely short timeframe through which they view their votes. In fact, it seems to us that many of them have a perspective that makes day traders look like they  have a long term view. Now that we have that out of the way...

did you vote?

Photo by J. Harrington

The Center for Humans and Nature has published a series of essays responding to the question: What kind of ancestor do you want to be? I've not yet read all the essays, but I have begun to think about what I see as a glaring distinction between contemporary time frames and the Seventh Generation philosophy as envisioned by the Haudenosaunee:

"The Peacemaker taught us about the Seven Generations. He said, when you sit in council for the welfare of the people, you must not think of yourself or of your family, not even of your generation. He said, make your decisions on behalf of the seven generations coming, so that they may enjoy what you have today."

Oren Lyons (Seneca)
Faithkeeper, Onondaga Nation

If we assume that each generation covers a time span of about twenty-five years, seven generations equals about 175 years. In a world that appears to be changing as rapidly as ours, making a decision that's that forward-looking is a real challenge, especially for a society that seems to have forgotten how to take into consideration the next generation as it decides who to choose as its leaders. As reminders, not for today, but for the general election on November 3, eighty-four days from now, please make a Spotify, or Apple Play or whatever playlist of these songs and think about whether the characteristics of those for whom you are voting will help protect the audience intended for the songs.

• The Unicorn - The Irish Rovers
• Forever Young - Bob Dylan
• The Circle Game - Tom Rush
• Puff the Magic Dragon - Peter, Paul and Mary
• Cat's in the Cradle - Harry Chapin 
• The Marvelous Toy - Tom Paxton

There's a few more that could be added here but half-a-dozen should be enough to get the basic message across. We can't very well decide, it seems to me, what kind of ancestor we want to be without seriously thinking about for whom we will be ancestors. What songs would you add to the list for your descendants? Share the titles in the comments and maybe they'll show up in an updated version of this post sometime before November 3.

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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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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