We're all in/on this together

The world is full of good, or at least better, news, but we won't find it in main stream media's "if it bleeds, it leads" coverage. Try looking in books. I'm just finishing What If We Get It Right, Visions of Climate Futures. It's leaving me feeling encouraged despite yesterday's political assassination and shootings, allegedly by a christian nationalist right-wing police imitator.

For a recent birthday, I received a copy of Robert Macfarlane's Is a River Alive? Reading is underway and, so far, it's as good as I hoped it could be. If Ecuador can incorporate the rights of nature in its constitution, why not US?

Blue Marble
Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

There's a couple or three old sayings you should be aware of: as a recovering planner, I learned quite well that "more of the same never solved a problem." That fits rather well, I think, with “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” And let's not forget, now that we find ourselves at the bottom of a deep hole, to stop digging.

When I was growing up, the future was presented as something objective out there that, over time, we entered. During the past few years I've learned that the future is actually like a garden. It's something we ourselves grow. If we do a good job and work together, we'll have stores to get US through the winter and early spring. If not, we're in serious, perhaps deadly, trouble. Too many of US seem too think going it alone is the solution. Survival and thriving are shared results unless you're the Donner party.

We have become hyper-individualistic to the point of selfdestruction. Let me share an example from the past week or so that, I think, helps make my case. My email inbox has been repeatedly filled by conservation organizations asking me to "Take Action" to change or eliminate one provision or another off the Reconciliation bill in the Senate. None of the requests suggested killing the whole damn POS. I responded that I would ask the members of Congress representing me to Kill the Bill, but not individual provisions. I remain deeply disappointed that there isn't a coalition of conservation interests working to totally defeat the House's crappy work.

Without

Joy Harjo    1951 –

 

The world will keep trudging through time without us

When we lift from the story contest to fly home

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

Of grief and heartbreak

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

And know why half the world fights righteously for greedy masters 

And the other half is nailing it all back together

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

Human industry—

Maybe then, beloved rascal

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

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

Watch hyenas drink rain, and laugh.

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

Some ways to wisdom

The Better Half and I spent much of the afternoon listening to a wise and interesting white man, Kent Nerburn, talk about the wisdom of Native Americans. Nerburn has written a number of books on the theme of his talk and he read excerpts from several, plus answered questions and spoke a bit from his own notes. The presentation took place in an art gallery in Sandstone, about an hour’s drive north of our place. The trip home was disrupted by a several mile long traffic backup north of Hinckley and another one near the Pine / Chisago county boundary on I-35. If it’s not winter blizzards messing up Minnesota’s roads, it’s summer road work making drivers harried.

Thinking about Nerburn’s comments while sitting in the southbound backup pretty much convinced me, not that I needed much, that Native Americans have more sustainable and resilient cultures than ours. Plus, ours is headed in the wrong direction. We have much too much emphasis on individuals and not enough on community; we place waayyy too much value on money and not enough on intangible values like friendship and kindness; we confuse religion with spiritual. Over the past several decades, I’ve noticed increasing awareness of, and acceptance of, Native American culture. More is needed. I hope we become wise enough to include many indigenous teachings in our children’s education. Whether he intended to or not, I believe President Biden reflected honor on the role of elders in a healthy culture when he decided to not campaign for the nomination and became a potential elder advisor to the next president. We need more of that kind of thinking and doing.

sometimes an owl symbolizes wisdom

Photo by J. Harrington

If you’re interested in learning more about how Native American and Western Judeo-Christian perspectives can complement each other, try reading any of these:

• Gathering Moss, Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Medicine Wheel for the Planet, Dr. Jennifer Grenz
• The Seven Generations and The Seven Grandfather Teachings, James Vukelich Kaagegaabaw
• The above linked list of books by Kent Nerburn
• Almost any Joy Harjo poem such as this

For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet 

Joy Harjo
1951 – 

Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that bottle of pop.

Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control.

Open the door, then close it behind you.

Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel the earth gathering essences of plants to clean.

Give it back with gratitude.

If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and back.

Acknowledge this earth who has cared for you since you were a dream planting itself precisely within your parents’ desire.

Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the guardians who have known you before time, who will be there after time. They sit before the fire that has been there without time.

Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.

Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people who accompany you.
Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought down upon them.

Don’t worry.
The heart knows the way though there may be high-rises, interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars, and those who will despise you because they despise themselves.

The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few years, a hundred, a thousand or even more.

Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the thieves of time.

Do not hold regrets.

When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed.

You must clean yourself with cedar, sage, or other healing plant.

Cut the ties you have to failure and shame.

Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction.

Ask for forgiveness.

Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.

Call your spirit back. It may be caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.

You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.

Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.

Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.

Your spirit will need to sleep awhile after it is bathed and given clean clothes.

Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no place else to go.

Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.

Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark. 

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

Ironic? You bet!

One of the folx down the road is a tRUMP supporter. In fact, there’s many of them in the county in which we live. The one I’m writing about however, has a sign in from of his house that claims: “Gun owners for Trump!,” or words to that effect. Maybe I’ll try to take a picture the next time I drive past if the sign is still there. Since the candidate was grazed by a bullet yesterday, and several folx are dead and others critically wounded according to the news, I wonder if the Trumpster MAGAt has a sense of irony. Even more, I wonder if the candidate does, but suspect not.

will we be the phoenix or the ash pile of democracy?

Photo by J. Harrington

Those of you who read this with any regularity have probably noticed I’ve ben on a kick lately, citing old sayings and quotations. The current opportunity offers too much to pass by. Heres a few that come to mind:

• Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas
• Known by the company you keep
• Give as good as you get (or vice versa)
• What goes around, comes around (or vice versa)
• and the ever infamous Live by the sword, ...

If I left out any you think belong on the list, please note them in the comments.

Last nights thunderstorms awakened my dog and made her quite anxious, so of course she looked to me for reassurance at about 12:45 am. I gave here a couple anxiety calming treats and had her lie down while I rubbed under her chin. (She doesn’t like me to pet the top of her head.) After a while, the rain, lightning and thunder faded away and SiSi and I faded back to sleep. I figure SiSi’s about as likely to grow out of thunderstorm anxiety as most politicians are likely to grow into authenticity, integrity and transparency. Both of which are more likely to occur than for me to get to vote for the candidate [AOC] I’d really like to see as POTUS so I’ll just try to make the most of the world I’ve got to live in. Good luck to US all. We’ll need it if we continue to act as though we’ll settle any more by a next civil war than we did by the last one.

America

By Tony Hoagland

Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud   

Says that America is for him a maximum-security prison

Whose walls are made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes   

Where you can’t tell the show from the commercials,

And as I consider how to express how full of shit I think he is,   

He says that even when he’s driving to the mall in his Isuzu

Trooper with a gang of his friends, letting rap music pour over them   

Like a boiling Jacuzzi full of ballpeen hammers, even then he feels

Buried alive, captured and suffocated in the folds   

Of the thick satin quilt of America

And I wonder if this is a legitimate category of pain,   

or whether he is just spin doctoring a better grade,

And then I remember that when I stabbed my father in the dream last night,   

It was not blood but money

That gushed out of him, bright green hundred-dollar bills   

Spilling from his wounds, and—this is the weird part—,

He gasped “Thank god—those Ben Franklins were   

Clogging up my heart—

And so I perish happily,

Freed from that which kept me from my liberty”—

Which was when I knew it was a dream, since my dad   

Would never speak in rhymed couplets,

And I look at the student with his acne and cell phone and phony ghetto clothes

And I think, “I am asleep in America too,

And I don’t know how to wake myself either,”

And I remember what Marx said near the end of his life:

“I was listening to the cries of the past,

When I should have been listening to the cries of the future.”

But how could he have imagined 100 channels of 24-hour cable

Or what kind of nightmare it might be

When each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you

And you are floating in your pleasure boat upon this river

Even while others are drowning underneath you

And you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters

And yet it seems to be your own hand

Which turns the volume higher?

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

If at first, ....

I remember reading, some years ago, about an old lady who claimed "I don't vote. It just encourages them.” While her attitude is certainly understandable, it isn’t productive. There are beneficial responses to the current conditions we face. Some of them can be found here:

• Institute for Local Self-Reliance [ILSR]


• The Bioneers


• Institute for Humane Education


• Indigenous Ecology Lab


• Citizen Connect

There are other organizations also focused on healing rather than hatred; collaboration instead of division; and creation rather than destruction. Follow one or all of the above links as you keep in mind that “more of the same never solved a problem” and that “insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.” Also, from my Boston boyhood: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

what may emerge from behind our clouds?

Photo by J. Harrington

Just as nature abhors a monoculture, we have brought to a logical extreme two party democracy, oligarchical capitalistic monopoly and neoliberalism. I’m not sure whether to be encouraged that we are not alone in suffering outrageous stupidity and shortsightedness from our institutions and those who would lead US. Britain has gone through Brexit. France and others are seeing the rising of the Right. Contentiousness is growing. All that’s missing so far is the spaceship full of aliens, scheduled to arrive this Thursday.

There are no kings in America 

Aileen Cassinetto

we are not that kind of country.

We are sanctuary for the hungry,

the homeless, the huddled,

held together by an idea

our immigrant fathers believed in.

Rendered, it meant independence.

Pursued, it kindled war, ordinance,

a fighting chance. Forty thousand

musket balls, by themselves, did not

shape the boundaries on which we

map our days. To draw our borders,

we needed more than firecakes.

More than a pound of meat

with bone and gristle,

or salt fish and a gill of peas.

We needed the faith and grit of people

who were not yet Americans.

To be an American is to

recognize the sacrifice

of the widow and the orphan;

it is to understand the weft of tent

cities expecting caravans,

and the heft of a child in a camp

not meant for children, or sitting

before a judge awaiting judgement.

What do we say to the native

whose lands we now inhabit?

What do we say to our immigrant

fathers who held certain truths

to be self-evident?

Do we now still pledge to each

other our lives, our fortunes,

our sacred honor.

There are no kings in America.

Only gilded men we can topple

again and again.

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

All Hands: On Deck or Be Decked

1. Please find me in contempt of the Roberts’ SCOTUS.
2. Also, dismayed by POTUS performance at the recent “debate.”
3. Disgusted that our political parties have put our democracy in this position and condition.
4. Frustrated by the lack of a clear course of action to make things better.
5. Absolutely refusing to throw up (my hands) in despair.

Where does that leave US?

1. Make sure you’re registered to vote and mark November 5 on your calendar.
2. If you haven’t yet, please read Sarah Kendzior’s Hiding in Plain Sight and The View from Flyover Country.
3. Also read Heather Cox Richardson’s Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America and subscribe (free or paid) to her Letters from an American.
4. Remember that it won’t be enough for Democrats to have a trifecta if they don’t make necessary systemic changes to our systems of governance. The operative phrase is “No more Mr./Ms./Whatever Nice Guy/Gal/Other"
5. If you’re not worn out by the preceding, take a look at the idea of being a Solutionary and see if you can get your local school and government to include it.
6. Remember Kris Kristofferson’s great lyrics:

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose
 Nothin' ain't worth nothin' but it's free"

If you have additional suggestions on how we can and should fix our longstanding governance problems, please feel free to leave a message.

Freedom

By Jill McDonough

I talk to the students in jail about freedom, how in America

we obsess over it, write it over flags on T-shirts, spread

it around under eagles. It has something to do with guns

and fireworks, Harley-Davidsons, New Hampshire, living free

until you’re dead. I tell the students I think the people

fetishizing freedom don’t mean it. That they really mean

look over here, away from all the slavery

we did, away from all the jail! I tell them they

are the experts, ask them to write what freedom means:

privacy is freedom and if  you feel held back, afraid

to do something, you’re not completely free.   No fear

of  loss. No fear of  hunger, no fear of  pain.   A body

to call my own, a voice driven by my own mind.

The security of a dry, warm place to sleep.   To own

my own time left here.   Being able to hold my son

at night.   Showering in private.   Freedom to me

is having the choice to walk away from a fight. Freedom

a work in progress. Everyday freedom, the real work for us all.

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

All the Me, Me, Me! is killing US!!!

SCOTUS recently announced that it’s legitimate for cities to fine and incarcerate homeless people who have nowhere to sleep. It appears the GOP is hell-bent to nominate an adjudicated rapist and convicted felon as their presidential candidate. Several members of SCOTUS were, at best, misleading in their testimony to US Senators. We now appear to be living in a combination patriarchy, oligarchy, corporatocracy, inside a sham democracy. And the colonists just had to focus on King George III ! We have to deal with a free press that puts clicks and ads ahead of emphasizing the truth, even during a “presidential debate.” The America I grew up in would not knowingly elect a sociopathetic prevaricating misogynist as its leader. What happened to US?

In the last Civil War, geographically the conflict broke down to the North against the South. This time it’s likely to be a lot more messy with quite a bit of neighbor against neighbor. Is this really the best we can do after some 250 years of trying? Somewhere in my college sociology courses I seem to remember that a group lacking external enemies often turns on itself. That seems to fit US only too well these days.

I find comparable fault with both major political parties, focused more on winning than governing. Corporations who act as though profits and dividends are the cause of success rather than the result of successfully producing items of value. Anyone looking forward to flying in a Boeing product these days? Has Microsoft become an enemy of the state by failing to provide secure software to the government? Have ordinary folks like you and I decided we can “go it alone” better than we can live responsibly and cooperatively in a community? (Home owners associations don’t count.)

When was the last time any of US or our current or potential leaders looked at a book such as Anna Bernasek’s The Economics of Integrity? As I find more and more these days, a Native American has some worthwhile guidance to offer.

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

By Joy Harjo

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

                                              —Norman Patrick Brown, Dineh Poet and Speaker

1. SET CONFLICT RESOLUTION GROUND RULES:

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. GIVE CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK:

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

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

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

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

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


4. REDUCE DEFENSIVENESS AND BREAK THE DEFENSIVENESS CHAIN:

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

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

There was no  "I"  or "you."

There was us; there was "we."

There we were as if we were the music.

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

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

This is about getting to know each other.

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


5. ELIMINATE NEGATIVE ATTITUDES DURING CONFLICT:

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

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

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

He hears the death song of his approaching prey:

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


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

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

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

Ain’t gonna study war no more?

At least we’re not in a tent somewhere camping. Another rainy day in Minnesota is doing wonders for the plants and mosquitos but not so much for many mammals. During one dog walk today, I had seven mosquitos simultaneously on the back of my left hand. I did a variant on the tale of the Brave Little Tailor and killed Seven with One Blow. Don’t both to ask if I felt guilty. If the dragonflies had been doing their jobs and feeding their faces, I wouldn’t have had that opportunity.

four-spotted skimmer dragonfly resting

Photo by J. Harrington

At least there’s several stacks of good books to read or reread and that’s what I’m doing when not out walking the dogs and getting bit by bugs. I just hope none of the mosquitos are carrying H5N1 virus nor anything like it. Part of my childhood occurred before the polio vaccine was approved. I had hoped that pandemics were behind US thanks to Dr. Salk. But then the number of those who don’t believe in vaccinations or science grew and grew. In case you’re among those who do believe in science, here’s a decent resource on herd immunity. That brings us to what I’d like to ponder about today, on the day we remember and memorialize those who served the whole country and are no longer with US.

What if science invented a vaccine that prevented war and supported peace. Would we allow people to claim “It’s against my religion” and not get vaccinated? Is there a herd immunity that prevents war? The question becomes more important when a candidate for president in the upcoming election claims there will be some sort of bloodbath if he loses. Would it be appropriate to require all candidates and appointees to public office to get such a vaccine if it existed? What about requiring it for any who serve in the United Nations? Would getting such a vaccine be equivalent to unilateral disarmament?

I don’t know the answers to the questions I’ve raised. I raise them because, with the growing levels of fractiousness and frictions in this country, and the increasing availability of artificial intelligence without agreed upon parameters for how it may be used and by whom for what, we as a society and a country and a collection of communities are going to be facing issues as complex as those mentioned above and we are not in a good position to develop answers, let alone agreement on them. I hope we’re not headed to even more heartbreaking Memorial Days ahead, when we may look back on a day like today as one of the good old days.

Day Beginning with Seeing the International Space Station and a Full Moon Over the Gulf of Mexico and All Its Invisible Fishes

Jane Hirshfield
1953 – 

None of this had to happen.
Not Florida. Not the ibis’s beak. Not water.
Not the horseshoe crab’s empty body and not the living starfish.
Evolution might have turned left at the corner and gone down another street entirely.
The asteroid might have missed.
The seams of limestone need not have been susceptible to sand and mangroves.
The radio might have found a different music.
The hips of one man and the hips of another might have stood beside
each other on a bus in Aleppo and recognized themselves as long-lost brothers.
The key could have broken off in the lock and the nail-can refused its lid.
I might have been the fish the brown pelican swallowed.
You might have been the way the moon kept not setting long after we thought it would,
long after the sun was catching inside the low wave curls coming in
at a certain angle. The light might not have been eaten again by its moving.
If the unbearable were not weightless we might yet buckle under the grief
of what hasn’t changed yet. Across the world a man pulls a woman from the water
from which the leapt-from overfilled boat has entirely vanished.
From the water pulls one child, another. Both are living and both will continue to live.
This did not have to happen. No part of this had to happen.

—2016

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

A touch of sanity?

Back in the days when I was in school learning Latin, dei in that language translated into “of god” in English. I suspect it’s coincidental that in contemporary society, DEI stands for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion. As I look at much of my email in-basket these days, I wonder if the basic concept would be substantially improved if it were broadened to include the urban / rural split. Here’s one example from the Rural Assembly:

Rural health disparities 

Access to quality healthcare is a fundamental right that every citizen deserves. However, individuals living in rural areas often face significant challenges in obtaining the healthcare they need. 

I doubt it would come as a surprise to anyone, urban or rural or any other demographic category, to be informed that our whole health system is broken and looking only at an urban / rural disparity could be counterproductive since it doesn’t encompass the whole system that requires changing. Similar observations could be made about our agricultural system, our education system, our economy, our government and especially, our tax system. WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER!!!! Those who have US at each other’s throats benefit by keeping US divided. To a great extent, we should paraphrase a key concept from a prior presidential election: “It’s the system, stupid!!”

time for the dawn of a new day?

Photo by J. Harrington

There’s another old saying we would be wise to remember, as expressed in Latin: Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat (literally: Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first deprives of reason). Popularly stated in English as “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.” That suggests we might want to tone down getting mad at each other to solve some of our common problems, like being taken to the cleaners by the top 1% and corporations who fail to pay their fair share of taxes.

Instead of trying to solve problems with the blunt instrument of law, perhaps we could try a combination of communication, cooperation, common sense, and shunning (boycott) or avoiding who and what we disagree with, instead of relying on judges, juries, lawyers, cops and politicians.

Do not be ashamed

by Wendell Berry

You will be walking some night
in the comfortable dark of your yard
and suddenly a great light will shine
round about you, and behind you
will be a wall you never saw before.
It will be clear to you suddenly
that you were about to escape,
and that you are guilty: you misread
the complex instructions, you are not
a member, you lost your card
or never had one. And you will know
that they have been there all along,
their eyes on your letters and books,
their hands in your pockets,
their ears wired to your bed.
Though you have done nothing shameful,
they will want you to be ashamed.
They will want you to kneel and weep
and say you should have been like them.
And once you say you are ashamed,
reading the page they hold out to you,
then such light as you have made
in your history will leave you.
They will no longer need to pursue you.
You will pursue them, begging forgiveness.
They will not forgive you.
There is no power against them.
It is only candor that is aloof from them,
only an inward clarity, unashamed,
that they cannot reach. Be ready.
When their light has picked you out
and their questions are asked, say to them:
"I am not ashamed." A sure horizon
will come around you. The heron will begin
his evening flight from the hilltop.

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

Is an anti-rescue curmudgeon all wet?

There’s lots of open water showing on local lakes and ponds. The Minnesota legislature is considering a bill to reimburse counties for “ice rescues.” Apparently counties are already reimbursed for surface water rescues. The article troubles me the same way that seeing boaters act stupidly on the Atlantic Ocean used to trouble my friends and I. Since it was, and probably still is, possible to take a small craft handling and seamanship course, we argued that completion of that course should be required to enable anyone to purchase a marine radio that could be used to summon the Coast Guard if one got in trouble on the water.

An outdoor writer I read years ago, possibly John Gierach, proposed in a story that “wilderness” trailheads should have signs posted to the effect that visitors were informed “You’re on your own if you get in trouble! Don’t expect rescues beyond this point.” Not doing so seems to violate the very concept of wilderness, and could do wonders for reducing competition for permits for the BWCA.

should lakes like this be declared “wilderness?"

Photo by J. Harrington

Contemporary societies are doing a horrendously bad job of managing our commons of air, water, land and culture. In part because we allow distortions such as obscuring the distinctions between human beings and legal persons. Otherwise, corporations, which could in theory be eternal, should be faced with the prospect of a death penalty if convicted of ecocide or equally horrendous, but all too common, behavior.

In order to instill more respect for informed and appropriate behavior, why not declare all the water bodies in central and northern Minnesota as wilderness areas. No rescues permitted. If resorts want to support untrained and uninformed folks venturing forth, let those resorts provide the rescue teams and reflect the costs in their rates, providing a discount for a stay that doesn’t trigger a rescue effort.

Come wilderness into our homes

By Daniela Danz
Translated by Monika Cassel

break the windows come

with your roots and your worms

spread yourself over our wishes

our waste-sorting systems our protheses

and outstanding payments

cover us with your rustling greenery

and your spores cover us that we may

become green: green and reverent

green and manifestly green and replaceable

come weather with your storms

and sweep the slates off the roofs come

with snow and hail smash

through the collective sleep

we are all enjoying in our beds

our worn rationalizations come ice

and form glaciers over the shadow banks

and our drive for liquidity

come through the cracks under the doors

you desert with your sands fill

our desolation up until it forms into a solid mass

rise up over the search-and-rescue teams

and our growth compulsion trickle into

the control panels of the missiles

and the missile defense systems into

the think tanks and the hearts of internet trolls

just leave the hedgehogs with their

snuffling so that it may calm us

come rising sea levels

up over our shorelines both the developed

and the undeveloped the homey

lowland areas wash

jellyfish into our soup bowls

and ramshorn snails into our hair

as we swim in each other’s direction panicked

with our yearning for one another

because almost nothing is left because it’s all gone

and thoroughly soaked through with regrets

finger-pointing and tranquilizers

come earthquakes shatter the apartments

which we built on the foundations

of how we always did everything

come tremors fill the mine shafts

the end of work and

the literature of redemption bury anger

and affection and all manner of added values

swallow up the memories come tremors

hurry so that the bedrock covers us

so we are covered with water desert weather

and over everything that which covers all the wilderness

Translated from the German

Notes:

Read the German-language original, “Komm Wildnis in unsere Häuser,” and the translator’s note by Monika Cassel.

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

Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge?

The trash is collected and waiting to get picked up tomorrow. Regenerated whole wheat sourdough flour is rising to get baked tomorrow. Earlier today I tumbled onto a couple of books that may be worth reading: The Sum of Us, by Heather McGhee, and The Persuaders by Anand Giridharadas. Each offers a different perspective on why and how to reduce the destructive divisions that are hindering US. I’m increasingly concerned that our fixation on perpetual growth at all costs may cost US the life support systems on which we depend.

One of the basic issues is whether the world is configured on a zero sum premise, which is inconsistent with my understanding of the world as a complex, adaptive, synergistic system in which the whole is more than the sum of its parts. But then I also remain puzzled by why there aren’t more learning organizations in the world, including our own “education system.”

one left or only one produced?

Photo by J. Harrington

On a brighter note, it is encouraging to keep discovering there are many smart people working on how to solve the world’s problems.. Many of them are involved in and/or engaged with various complex, adaptive systems and learning organizations. Some, like the author of The Persuaders, are even trying to teach us how to most effectively communicate with those who don’t see things our way. I suspect we’re far enough away from a monocultural society or world that we won’t have to be concerned about lack of diversity unless we’re talking about biodiversity.

I hope this has provided food for thought and soul without triggering migraines.

Gather

Rose McLarney

Some springs, apples bloom too soon.
The trees have grown here for a hundred years, and are still quick
to trust that the frost has finished. Some springs,
pink petals turn black. Those summers, the orchards are empty
and quiet. No reason for the bees to come. 

Other summers, red apples beat hearty in the trees, golden apples
glow in sheer skin. Their weight breaks branches,
the ground rolls with apples, and you fall in fruit. 

You could say, I have been foolish. You could say, I have been fooled.
You could say, Some years, there are apples. 

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

Rights of Nature :: Rites of Spring

This morning I discovered an encouraging resource at Wikipedia on the Rights of Nature. I was poking around following up on yesterday’s posting. There’s been more activity, for longer, than I realized. I’m going to do more reading to catch up.

Meanwhile, while discussing the Wiki contents with the Better Half, she raised a question that bears watching and thinking about. The early emergence of insect pests this year reinforces her point. When we refer to rights of nature, where and how do we draw the bounds of the system(s) we’re referring to? Do we intend to grant the right of existence to mosquitoes and ticks, recognizing that they become food stock for other creatures? What about viruses such as COVID-19 and its variants? I’ve not read enough to have a clue how one would include or exclude rights for such beings.

does the moon have rights?

Photo by J. Harrington

To further complicate ponderings on this theme, I note that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, states, in part, as the first right “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Did this phrasing intentionally preclude those not yet born from human rights? How does that reconcile with the recent judicial decisions on the unborn? Can it be reconciled?

I’m vacillating between thinking we have a Gordian knot and a large can of worms here. I’m not even sure we have sufficiently clear terms and meanings to be sure where and about what we could agree to disagree. I’ll continue to plod about this thicket and report back from time to time. In the interim, I’ve no idea how we stay out of trouble. It used to be one had only to avoid discussing religion and politics.

Human Knowledge

By Robert Wrigley

About the only thing I thought I knew

was that nothing I’d ever know would do

any good. Sunrise, say, or that the part

of the horse’s hoof that most resembles

a human palm is called the frog;

certain chords on the guitar of no mercantile use;

the abstruse circuitry of an envelope

quatrain; even the meaning of horripilation.

 

Sometimes on a flatland mound the ancients had made,

I took heart in the pointlessness of stars

and lay there until my teeth chattered.

I earned my last Boy Scout merit badge

building a birdhouse out of license plates

manufactured by felons in the big house.

No more paramilitary organizations for me,

I said, ten years before I was drafted.

 

I had skills. Sure-footedness and slick

fielding. Eventually I would learn to unhook

a bra one-handed, practicing on my friend,

his sister's worn over his T-shirt (I took

my turns too). One Easter Sunday I hid

through the church service among the pipes

of the organ and still did not have faith,

although my ears rang until Monday.

 

I began to know that little worth knowing

was knowable and faith was delusion.

I began to believe I believed in believing

nothing I was supposed to believe in,

except the stars, which, like me,

were not significant, except for their light,

meaning I loved them for their pointlessness.

I believed I owned them somehow.

 

A C major 7th chord was beautiful and almost rare.

The horse I loved foundered and had to be

put down. The middle rhyme in an envelope

quatrain was not imprisoned if it was right.

In cold air a nipple horripilates

and rises, the sun comes up and up and up,

a star that bakes the eggs

in a Boy Scout license plate birdhouse.

 

God was in music and music was God.

A drill sergeant seized me by my dog tag

chain and threatened to beat me

to a pile of bloody guts for the peace sign

I’d chiseled in the first of my two tags,

the one he said they’d leave in my mouth

before they zipped the body bag closed.

Yet one more thing I’d come to know.

 

He also said that Uncle Sam owned my ass,

no more true than my ownership

of the stars. I can play a C major 7th chord

in five or six places on the neck of a guitar.

A stabled horse’s frog degrades; a wild horse’s

becomes a callus, smooth as leather.

Stars are invisible in rainy weather,

something any fool knows, of course.

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

That’s Life? ... What’s Life?

Yesterday the high was over 50℉. Today there are snowflakes in the air. We’ve reached a point at which the weather makes as much sense as an Alabama Supreme Court decision or the reactions of a US Senator from that state. Perhaps it’s time we insist on a critical thinking skills test for those who seek appointed or elected public office.

In the interest of further identifying the contents of the can of worms the Alabama IVF decision has opened, consider these items:

• One aspect that has received limited coverage is the question of the legal definition of being alive. If one doesn’t meet a legal definition of being alive, how can wrongful death occur? As a resource, I suggest you take a look at The Systems View of Life, A Unifying Vision. Follow this link for an excerpt.


• When, and under what circumstances, does legal personhood occur? Corporations are legal persons but don’t seem to face a death penalty for the killings due to climate change or a multitude of pollutants or some reckless acts. Is there such a thing as the wrongful death of a corporate entity due to a hostile takeover? Should there be?


• Is there confusion over distinctions between “persons” and “people?” The Declaration of Independence uses the term people. An online search could not find the word “person” therein. Lincoln referred to "government of the people, by the people, for the people.” The Constitution begins “We the people....” and promptly references “Person” in Article 1, Section 2.

I don’t think we want to call for a constitutional convention and chance throwing out babies and bathwater, but a significant convening of lawyers, linguists, politicians, systems experts, and others who could help sort through the implications of the incremental battles that are currently being fought across our country might be beneficial, unless politicians and jurists and the ilk enjoy suffering and dying from self-inflicted wounds all while creating chaos for the rest of US.

Personal

By Tony Hoagland

Don’t take it personal, they said;

but I did, I took it all quite personal—

the breeze and the river and the color of the fields;

the price of grapefruit and stamps,

the wet hair of women in the rain—

And I cursed what hurt me

and I praised what gave me joy,

the most simple-minded of possible responses.

The government reminded me of my father,

with its deafness and its laws,

and the weather reminded me of my mom,

with her tropical squalls.

Enjoy it while you can, they said of Happiness

Think first, they said of Talk

Get over it, they said

at the School of Broken Hearts

but I couldn’t and I didn’t and I don’t

believe in the clean break;

I believe in the compound fracture

served with a sauce of dirty regret,

I believe in saying it all

and taking it all back

and saying it again for good measure

while the air fills up with I’m-Sorries

like wheeling birds

and the trees look seasick in the wind.

Oh life! Can you blame me

for making a scene?

You were that yellow caboose, the moon

disappearing over a ridge of cloud.

I was the dog, chained in some fool’s backyard;

barking and barking:

trying to convince everything else

to take it personal too.

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

Does this ring a bell?

Our phone company (Frontier) is also our dsl internet provider that never attains broadband speeds. Fortunately, we also have cell phones. When we must provide a phone number to someone we do business with, we use the land line number. These days we’re getting lots of calls that we intentionally don’t answer since we don’t recognize the numbers, then they don’t leave a message. It’s annoying but better than listening to spammers, political spiels,, etc.

We’ve signed up for eliminating robocalls and things like that. I seem to remember politicians exempt themselves from legislation regarding telecommunications. That’s annoying. The purpose of democracy is not supposed to be to annoy potential voters or donors, is it? Any yet, in our “attention economy,” that’s what lots of politicians and political parties are doing, at least in our house.

thinking of cutting the wire?

Photo by J. Harrington

The good news is that my cell phone (an iPhone) has a setting so that all incoming calls from numbers not already in my contacts list go directly to voice mail without ringing and annoying me. Unsolicited text messages of a political nature promptly get the “Report Junk and Delete” button pushed. These two features give me at least a sense of control, unlike incoming calls in the landline. So... Here’s my idea:

Let’s start a movement to get legislation that mandates the “go to voice mail” equivalent for both landlines and text messaging. If a number isn’t already in our contacts list, it won’t ring and interrupt us. If we really want to hear from the Democrats, Republicans, MAGAts, or whoever, we can add their number to contacts. Businesses with commercial accounts could have an opt out provision so they can accommodate new potential customers but the rest of us, real more than just legal persons, have one less aggravation to deal with on a daily basis. What do you think? I like this concept so well that if someone like tRump promised to make it happen, I’d even consider supporting them. Does that give you a sense of how annoyed I am?

I am the coward who did not pick up the phone

by Laura Kasischke

I am the coward who did not pick up the phone, so as never to know. So many clocks and yardsticks dumped into an ocean.

I am the ox which drew the cart full of urgent messages straight into the river, emerging none the wiser on the opposite side, never looking back at all those floating envelopes and postcards, the wet ashes of some loved one's screams.

How was I to know?

I am the warrior who killed the sparrow with a cannon. I am the guardian who led the child by the hand into the cloud, and emerged holding only an empty glove. Oh —

the digital ringing of it. The string of a kite of it, which I let go of. Oh, the commotion in the attic of it — in the front yard, in the back yard, in the driveway — all of which I heard nothing of, because I am the one who closed the windows and said, This has nothing to do with us .

In fact, I am the one singing this so loudly I cannot hear you even now.

(Mama, what's happening outside? Honey, is that the phone?)

I am the one who sings, The bones and shells of us .

The organic broth of us .

The zen gong of us .

Oblivious, oblivious, oblivious .

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

Serendipitous!

When the Daughter Person was in college, the Better Half and I would stop on occasion at a coffee shop know as the Ginko. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been in that neighborhood, so I don’t know if it’s still there. It’s where we first saw Carrie Newcomer perform live. If memory serves correctly, it may also have been where we “discovered” Krista Detor.

A little while ago I was reminded of that when I stumbled across the web site for The Ginko Prize, “... a major international award for ecopoetry ....” Before today I had been unaware of its existance. Since at least several regular readers here are fans of poetry, and others are environmentalists, and some are both, I’m sharing my discovery in hopes that it may be a previously undiscovered source of entertainment and education for those who partake.

In a similar vane (subconsciously I wanted to type “vain" there), I’ll share a link to the Alaskan Quarterly’s you tube channel and their presentation of:

Poet Jane Hirshfield, Stephanie Holthaus (Climate Action Advisor for The Nature Conservancy Alaska), Nancy Lord (Former Alaska Writer Laureate), and Marie Tozier (Iñupiaq poet) in conversation for "Ways of Knowing: Poetry, Science, and the Environment.”

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go explore some more of today’s discoveries. 

Perishable, It Said

By Jane Hirshfield

Perishable, it said on the plastic container,

and below, in different ink, 

the date to be used by, the last teaspoon consumed. 

I found myself looking:

now at the back of each hand,

now inside the knees,

now turning over each foot to look at the sole.

Then at the leaves of the young tomato plants, 

then at the arguing jays.

Under the wooden table and lifted stones, looking. 

Coffee cups, olives, cheeses, 

hunger, sorrow, fears—

these too would certainly vanish, without knowing when.

How suddenly then

the strange happiness took me,

like a man with strong hands and strong mouth,

inside that hour with its perishing perfumes and clashings.

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

What’s it worth to ‘ya?

The wind is up again. The driveway I had mostly cleared of fallen leaves, isn’t. Congress may keep funding the government a month or two at a time, or not. Things may or may not be about to get better. It’s getting harder to tell what better is or what we should settle for, or not.

Personally, I thing Joe Biden is older than ideal to serve a second term. However, he’s mostly done an above average job so far and is definitely better than any alternative I can readily name. William McDonough may have done US a disservice with his assessment that less bad isn’t the same as good. It’s accurate, but how often is it attainable? Sometimes it’s not feasible to get fiscal year appropriations passed, that’s not good but it is less bad than not funding agencies and requiring folks to work without getting paid in a timely fashion.

Many, many years ago, Steven Stills wrote a song, recorded by Buffalo Springfield in 1967, titled For What It’s Worth. It seems at least as relevant these days, perhaps more so, and it captures my current mood and assessment of the status of the world. That’s it for today. A protest song for a protest mood.

For What It's Worth

Buffalo Springfield [click to listen]

There's something happening here 
But what it is ain't exactly clear 
There's a man with a gun over there 
Telling me I got to beware

I think it's time we stop 
Children, what's that sound? 
Everybody look, what's going down?

There's battle lines being drawn 
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong 
Young people speaking their minds 
Getting so much resistance from behind

It's time we stop 
Hey, what's that sound? 
Everybody look, what's going down?

What a field day for the heat (Ooh ooh ooh) 
A thousand people in the street (Ooh ooh ooh) 
Singing songs and they carrying signs (Ooh ooh ooh) 
Mostly say, "Hooray for our side" (Ooh ooh ooh)

It's time we stop 
Hey, what's that sound? 
Everybody look, what's going down?

Paranoia strikes deep 
Into your life it will creep 
It starts when you're always afraid 
Step out of line, the men come and take you away

We better stop 
Hey, what's that sound? 
Everybody look, what's going down?

You better stop 
Hey, what's that sound? 
Everybody look, what's going down?

You better stop 
Now, what's that sound? 
Everybody look, what's going down?

You better stop 
Children, what's that sound? 
Everybody look, what's going down?

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