Putting kids and families first

Can someone, anyone, explain any significant differences between child care. pre-K and kindergarten? The reason I ask is the Minnesota legislature is proposing to spend $500 million on child care subsidies. Meanwhile, as noted by MPR: Analysis: How Minnesota’s school funding leaves the most in-need districts behind. There’s also this recent report from MinnPost: Why $2B in new school funding is leaving Minnesota districts scrambling for cash. Just last session, the good news was: House passes massive K-12 education funding, policy package. That triggered the bad news: Districts worry about cost of new mandates [in the same bill].

“it takes a village to care for and educate a child” 

Photo by J. Harrington

There are continuing references to our school system, but many, especially in the legislature, seem determined to not treat it as a system. It’s largely like playing whack-a-mole. Recent reports raise significant questions about the advisability of providing public funds to charter schools. Rather than repeat that mistake, and rely on the private sector to provide child care, and subsidize that to make it more affordable, why not consider expanding the school system to incorporate childcare and, if it makes sense after a study of the system, make school a year round effort. Many parents have to work year round and need help with supervising children when school’s out. Staffing up for additional children during the summer isn’t likely to work well for a system that has staffing problems right now. Let’s look at better ways to support all Minnesota’s children, families and wage earners by building a real system to serve each and all of them.

Hills of Bureaucracy

Alexandria Peary

In the event
that the engagement 
shall be prevented
by reason of war, 
Act of God, strike, 
civic tumult, epidemic 
or any other cause 
beyond the control 
of either agreeing party, 
which is deemed 
to be “force majeure,” 
the agreed parties 
shall be respectively 
relieved of their obligations
contained herein and 
return to the rolling hills
of bureaucracy, 
a deep green field 
of barley, more hills 
with hay bales, no sky: 
an argyle of crops, 
following emergency exits  
and evacuation plans
to the long and winding 
road that leads
to your door.

That would be 15 A 
on the updated form,
the red door 
with a mat and rack 
for your shoes
of a cottage in the village.
Let the minutes state 
you’ve had a tiresome    
journey through various causes
on the lengthy lavender road
past blaze orange fields
that shall include revolutions,
riots, wars, acts of enemies, 
national state local 
emergency, strikes, 
floods, fires, epidemics, 
quarantine, embargoes, 
or unusually severe weather, 
and that we’re not responsible 
or liable for any loss 
or damage, for delays
in performance 
or failure to perform. 
The 10 point font path
has brought you to the Open Forum
on Comprehensive 
Internationalization, 
where the committee 
invites input from the whole
community about where
we are at and where 
we should go,             
which thatched houses   
for which gas stations
in the settlements of 
educational plans, mission 
statements, internal hiring.
The designated spokesperson 
from the institutional 
advancement office is explaining:
This is a plan for all 
of us. A family reunion 
hosted by Human Resources 
in partnership
with Business Intelligence, 
Focus on Core Academic Function, 
so the member
at the back of the conference room
knitting wooly yarn clouds 
as stress relief
should get a grip.
We’ve all stopped 
our planting in favor 
of administering to 
attend this conference 
on the administration of planting,
Cc: all: the assistant to, vice-, 
associate, interim, acting,
chief, head of, associate director. 
Staples for vineyards. 
Collated construction 
plans are in departmental 
mail boxes. Approving 
the minutes from yesterday,
let’s send the next presenter back 
like a salmon stunned w/ frustration
who weeps with frustration
into the whirling vortex 
of a policy about policy,
a few hay bales, 
shade trees for cattle
or the sub-committee to 
this committee,
though Party 1 is not a fish
but a person who must drive 
back in his rental Kia,
the application form 
was incomplete. 
Next order of business: 
those ornamental wild
grasses planted 
last year for the parade,
tall, on the highway divide
on Route 2 South, 
junction of JFK Boulevard
and South Main, 
a deathtrap or death wish?

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A modest proposal for improving our water quality

 It’s been 50 years since Congress passed and overrode a  presidential veto to enact into law the Clean Water Act Amendments of 1972. If one considers the current state of Minnesota’s waters, we have failed miserably in attaining one of the basic goals of that act, “as an interim goal and where possible, water quality that is both “fishable” and “swimmable” by mid-1983.” As of 2022, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has identified impaired (red, gold) waters as shown below.

Impaired Waters 2022

Lots has been learned about managing our common resource of water since the 1972 framework was enacted. In particular, the work of Elinor Ostrom has shown us how to avoid “The Tragedy of The Commons.” 

Ostrom identified eight "design principles" of stable local common pool resource management:^[38][39]

1. Clearly defined the group boundaries (and effective exclusion of external un-entitled parties) and the contents of the common pool resource;
2. The appropriation and provision of common resources that are adapted to local conditions;
3. Collective-choice arrangements that allow most resource appropriators to participate in the decision-making process;
4. Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators;
5. A scale of graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate community rules;
6. Mechanisms of conflict resolution that are cheap and of easy access;
7. Self-determination of the community recognized by higher-level authorities; and
8. In the case of larger common-pool resources, organization in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local CPRs at the base level.

A quick examination of Minnesota’s water management framework indicates that none of the design principles have been acknowledged, let alone followed. We have a fragmented non-system that is failing to protect a resource as essential to life as renewable energy.

As the effects of climate breakdown become more and more prevalent, precipitation is expected to become more variable and intense. Our current systems, both institutional and infrastructure, are far from optimum to respnd to such change. We suggest serious consideration be given to using Ostrum’s principles, at least on a pilot basis, foundational to managing water and land resources to minimize nonpoint source pollution in agricultural regions. All farms and farmers within a watershed would be held collectively responsible to meeting water quality standards within the watershed in order for any of the agricultural operations to be eligible for any federal or state agricultural subsidies, including crop insurance.

In a future posting we’ll share some examples of alternative approaches that have been or are being tried to help agricultural operations improve their environmental performance. For now, we speak as a recovering planner when we note the planning dictum that “more of the same never solved a problem.“

I Commit

By Matthew Zapruder

I commit to vote because

I'm pretty sure I grab

whatever I need from the world

and place it in my mind

which is getting incrementally

like the commons

undeniably more toxic and sad

yes I too walk around

considering my intractable problems

complaining it's too late

for more sonatas

everything is already too beautiful

music and anger won't save us

yet I commit to talking

earnestly with Sarah

about the school board

it will be night and we will be sitting

shoulder to shoulder 

at the old table we love

each holding a pencil

like grade school children left alone at last

then in the morning

before our son wakes

I commit to holding

this tiny bit of quicksilver

(quick in the sense of living

in its very molecular nature

it wants to usefully combine with yours)

in my palm and to walking

up to the blue mailbox

I pass most mornings

in that familiar silence

under those nameless little trees

when all things that surround me wait 

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Finding your foodshed

We're back from a pleasant and sunny but cold drive through west central Wisconsin farm country and lower North Woods. The freezer in our garage now has about 28 or 30 pounds of pork in it. It turns out that the farm where we purchased a "quarter hog" of pasture raised meat is near the northeast corner of the St. Croix Watershed. That's prompted me to think about having the watershed serve as a bioregional basis for explorations of our "foodshed." That immediately gets complicated by the fact that neither of the food coops we belong to are located in the watershed, although the CSA farm from which we've purchased shares this year is.

our local farmers market

Photo by J. Harrington

There are numerous reasons we're working to minimizing our support of the corporate-industrial-agriculture complex. One is to help support those who are working to restore heritage breeds. That broadens the gene pool and breed options available to farmers as they  cope with the  effects of our broken  climate. Another is that we're curious about the taste of non-standard fare. Yet another is that we believe a rural renaissance is more dependent on an increased number of smaller farms rather than larger tractors being operated by robots plowing, planting and harvesting larger and larger fields. Corporate persons have not been noteworthy in minimizing environmental or social harms. Although it currently seems beyond reach, I'd like my children to live on an earth less damaged and more restored than the one I grew up and old in. The more sustainable farming becomes, the more greenhouse gas emissions can be avoided and the more carbon can be sequestered. We really need a carbon neutral economy, including agriculture, by or before 2050.

our Community Supported Agriculture sheds

Photo by J. Harrington

During the past couple of years, I've become more and more curious about the argument between those who suggest that individual actions are unlikely to solve our climate problem, and those who tout individual actions as being essential contributors. We've become accustomed to lots of convenience and low cost in our food supply. That's led to more concentrated animal feeding operations [CAFOs] and overproduction in the dairy and other sectors. We need a better agricultural system from farm to fork it  seems to me. I'm not sure what that looks like so I'm going to look at and try some different approaches and see how much my real world experience is or is not reflected in media coverage as we move ahead. One small example: I've never really cared for sweet potatoes until last night. The Better Half carmelized some chunks and I actually liked them. I wouldn't know that today if I hadn't tried something new. Don't be a Mikey.

The Good Life

By Tracy K. Smith

When some people talk about money

They speak as if it were a mysterious lover

Who went out to buy milk and never

Came back, and it makes me nostalgic

For the years I lived on coffee and bread,

Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday

Like a woman journeying for water

From a village without a well, then living

One or two nights like everyone else

On roast chicken and red wine.

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#OneMinnesota needs board citizen advocates

The campaign theme of Governor Walz and Lt. Governor Flanagan was #OneMinnesota. It is now the guiding vision of their administration. We wish them great success and were pleased to see reports that the Minnesota legislature is moving toward helping our state's future success by reinstalling some of the fundamental building blocks Minnesota needs to bridge its growing divisions.

Once upon a time, no so very long ago, in a nearby state building, there was a Citizens' Board that governed the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. It last met in 2015, because the legislative session that year, in a fit of pique, eliminated the board. This session, the legislature has begun to rectify its misjudgment. If you're interested in more background about how and why the agency and its board were established, read Grant Merritt's Iron and Water. To gain insight into why the board was eliminated, and should be reestablished, read this article from MinnPost.

The Laurentian may no longer be Minnesota's most significant divide

Photo by J. Harrington

The point we want to focus on today is our hope that we are learning that how we make decisions can be, and often is, as important as the decisions themselves. Legislators are, in our opinion, too susceptible to lobbying by special interests that can also make noteworthy campaign contributions. Appointed citizen board members, not so much. Citizen boards offer another benefit that can be of immense benefit: they don't caucus by political party, so they can work hard to look at facts instead of ideology as they make their decisions.

With some members from rural Minnesota, and others from the major urban centers in the state, we would once again have dialogue that crosses an urban / rural divide. Then, professional staff can focus on fact-gathering and analyses, and board members can concentrate on the balancing act. We need much more of that kind of activity to restore a semblance of civility to our democracy. As we understand it, today a legislative committee in the Minnesota House approved a bill bringing back the MPCA Citizens' Board. We hope the entire legislature enacts the bill and Governor Walz signs it as furtherance of the #OneMinnesota vision. We need legitimate forums, other than predominantly political ones, in which we can discuss and try to resolve increasingly thorny issues with which our society and state will be faced. In fact, we'd really like to see the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources restructured and placed under the guidance of a citizens board. Democracy, to be healthy, depends on decentralized decision-making. Else we move toward a monarchy or a dictatorship. If you don't believe us, just ask Ed Abbey and the members of the Monkey Wrench Gang.

To the Oracle at Delphi

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 1919

Great Oracle, why are you staring at me,
do I baffle you, do I make you despair?
I, Americus, the American,
wrought from the dark in my mother long ago,
from the dark of ancient Europa--
Why are you staring at me now
in the dusk of our civilization--
Why are you staring at me
as if I were America itself
the new Empire
vaster than any in ancient days
with its electronic highways
carrying its corporate monoculture
around the world
And English the Latin of our days--

Great Oracle, sleeping through the centuries, 
Awaken now at last
And tell us how to save us from ourselves
and how to survive our own rulers 
who would make a plutocracy of our democracy 
in the Great Divide
between the rich and the poor
in whom Walt Whitman heard America singing

O long-silent Sybil, 
you of the winged dreams, 
Speak out from your temple of light 
as the serious constellations 
with Greek names
still stare down on us 
as a lighthouse moves its megaphone 
over the sea
Speak out and shine upon us 
the sea-light of Greece 
the diamond light of Greece

Far-seeing Sybil, forever hidden, 
Come out of your cave at last 
And speak to us in the poet’s voice 
the voice of the fourth person singular 
the voice of the inscrutable future 
the voice of the people mixed
with a wild soft laughter--
And give us new dreams to dream, 
Give us new myths to live by!

Read at Delphi, Greece, on March 21, 2001 at the UNESCO World Poetry Day

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Localiced (?)

Do you remember the story of Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates? Today, one could, without much exaggeration, substitute our local road for a frozen Dutch canal. Climate disruption appears to be delivering less snow and more freezing rain, or rain followed by freezing, than the historical norm. It was an annoyance for vehicles, but dangerous for walkers, when the ice was limited to the driveway. When ice covers the roads it's dangerous for man, woman, child and beast, mechanical or other.

As an antidote to the abysmal weather, we made some limited progress this morning in our continuing search of the meaning of "local." That helps account for the out of season picture of a local farmers market.

how far did the vegetables travel? how about the customers?

Photo by J. Harrington

Wikipedia's entry for Local food (an article with multiple issues) clearly and unequivocally states:

"No single definition of "local" or "local food systems" exists....Among the more widely circulated and popular defining parameters is the concept of food miles, which has been suggested for policy recommendations."^[7]The Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 includes a definition, with "locally" and "regionally" grouped together and defined as:

‘‘(I) the locality or region in which the final product is marketed, so that the total distance that the product is transported is less than 400 miles from the origin of the product; or

‘‘(II) the State in which the product is produced.

— H. R. 2419

"The concept of "local" is also seen in terms of ecology, where food production is considered from the perspective of a basic ecological unit defined by its climate, soil, watershed, speciesand local agrisystems, a unit also called an ecoregionor a food shed. Similar to watersheds, food sheds follow the process of where food comes from and where it ends up.^[8]  

We find that 400 miles seems excessive when compared with some of Christopher Alexander's concepts in A Pattern Language:

The region is made up of a hierarchy of social and political groups from the smallest and most local groups-- families, neighborhoods and work groups -- to the largest groups -- city councils, regional assemblies.

The Lexicon of Sustainability provides interesting insights into the meaning of "local."

Local   The principle that a given entity belongs or relates to a particular area.
- Jessica Prentice

Local   Food that was produced and distributed in one’s community.

Local   Local brings you back into a relationship with the source of your food, with the land, the animals, the plants, the farmers, and with each other.
– Douglas Gayeton, LOCAL: The New Face of Food and Farming in America

Local food system
A regional food system is one that supports long-term connections between farmers and consumers while meeting the economic, social, health and environmental needs of communities in a region. A food system includes everything associated with growing, processing, storing, distributing, transporting and selling food. A food system is local when it allows food producers and their customers to interact face-to-face; regional systems serve larger geographical areas, often within a state or metro area.
– Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Demand triggers Inspiration. Capability increases Capacity. Profit encourages Expansion. Then the cycle repeats. This is how local food systems are built.
– Douglas Gayeton, LOCAL: The New Face of Food and Farming in America

Local foodshed
A geographic area where food is grown and consumed; it also accounts for population density, land quality, and available distribution routes.
- John Lagier

Locavore
“Locus” (latin root for “local”) + “vorare” (latin root for “to devour”) = locavore
- Jessica Prentice 

The USDA also uses distances to help define food deserts, with different scales depending on whether the travel mode is walking (1 mile max.) or driving (20 miles max.).

We didn't expect this quest to be easy, but neither did we think it would be quite this complex. Then, again, the International Space Station is only about half of 400 miles above the earth, and that's certainly not considered local, is it?

Locals

By James Lasdun

They peopled landscapes casually like trees,

being there richly, never having gone there,

and whether clanning in cities or village-thin stands

were reticent as trees with those not born there,

and their fate, like trees, was seldom in their hands.

Others to them were always one of two

evils: the colonist or refugee.

They stared back, half disdaining us, half fearing;

inferring from our looks their destiny

as preservation or as clearing.

I envied them. To be local was to know

which team to support: the local team;

where to drop in for a pint with mates: the local;

best of all to feel by birthright welcome

anywhere; be everywhere a local...

Bedouin-Brython-Algonquins; always there

before you; the original prior claim

that made your being anywhere intrusive.

There, doubtless, in Eden before Adam

wiped them out and settled in with Eve.

Whether at home or away, whether kids

playing or saying what they wanted,

or adults chatting, waiting for a bus,

or, in their well-tended graves, the contented dead,

there were always locals, and they were never us.

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What world do we want?

Somewhere during the past several days, we came across a challenge to describe the world we want to live in. We've thought about that off and on since we read the challenge and have come to the conclusion that it's hard, despite having spent much of our working life doing just that kind of thing. Except, and it's a big except, when working, we often were critiquing someone else's proposal, or only dealing with a small segment of the world we live in. Here's the beginnings of what we've come up with so far:

what does the world you want look like? (image credit NASA)

• We want to see more, much more, emphasis on the creation of affordable local food systems.
• We hope to see many more wildflowers planted under the local solar gardens that are being built helter skelter around the county. Solar panels, by themselves, are not attractive. We'd also like to see more microgrids developed and linked.
• We would like to see the implementation of the solutions proposed in Project Drawdown, 100 solutions to reverse global warming.
• We'd like to see the restoration of democracy, elimination of gerrymandering and citizens united and the only politicians supported be those who focus on win-win solutions rather than treating politics as a zero sum game.
• Capitalism needs to be massively revised or eliminated so that we evolve to a circular economy consistent with the premises of donut economics.
• Governments should become grateful if the birth rate is less than replacement, since we now require more than one planet to meet the needs of existing populations.
• More and more people need to be educated about emergent, self-organizing, complex systems by teachers like Donella Meadows and Peter Senge.
• We'd like to live in a world that uses the best knowledge currently available in a more collaborative process. One example would be to see Minnesota develop its own version of Vermont's New Economy.
• Minnesota could also create public banks, true broadband statewide, and a single payer health system.
• Everyone should read, and enjoy, more poetry.
• Native American respect for Mother Earth and life based on reciprocity should become core values for all Americans.

There's obviously more that can be added to the list, For example, we should bring back the State Planning Agency and the Citizens Board that used to govern the Pollution Control Agency. Albert Einstein asserts that "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." Add to that R. Buckminster Fuller's observation that "We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody." I'd like to live in a world with everybody. How about you?

See what we mean about it's hard? This reminds us of the old saying about "Keep your eye on the ball, nose to the grindstone, shoulder to the wheel. Now, let's see you work from that position!"

A Song on the End of the World

By Czeslaw Milosz

Translated by Anthony Milosz

On the day the world ends

A bee circles a clover,

A fisherman mends a glimmering net.

Happy porpoises jump in the sea,

By the rainspout young sparrows are playing

And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

         

On the day the world ends

Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,

A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,

Vegetable peddlers shout in the street

And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,

The voice of a violin lasts in the air

And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder

Are disappointed.

And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps

Do not believe it is happening now.

As long as the sun and the moon are above,

As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,

As long as rosy infants are born

No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet

Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,

Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:

There will be no other end of the world,

There will be no other end of the world.

Warsaw, 1944

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Adapting to change?

This is the month, and the weather, that makes Winter in Minnesota a month too long for me. Meteorological Spring starts on March 1, 22 days from now and, with the weather we're having this week, it will probably seem (at least to me) like 6 or 7 weeks between now and then. Walking the dogs in last night's wind and cold and snow, and today's wind and cold, was a real chore. I remember reading, I think it was last winter, Jerry Apps book, The Quiet Season: Remembering Country Winters. He describes living in a house without central heating; shoveling by hand (no snow blowers) paths from the house to the barn and out house and wood shed. It makes me think about how quickly we humans manage to turn things that started as conveniences, like indoor plumbing or central heating, into "necessities."

red squirrel after snow storm

Photo by J. Harrington

It's probably going to be necessary some time in the foreseeable future to change our house from forced hot air natural gas heat to something like electric baseboard heat, powered by solar and/or wind generation. Possibly, solar hot water might support hot water radiators, which, for me, would definitely be "back to the future." I grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, full of triple-deckers heated by coal-fired forced hot water heat, one for each floor. Going through almost a full circle in one lifetime is a lot of change in a fundamental system. We need to, I think, loosen up about what we consider essential and how we think essentials need to be delivered, wrote the man who's still muttering about the lack of CD players in contemporary automobiles.

February snow storm

Photo by J. Harrington

It's not just today's (and yesterday's) weather that has me thinking along these lines. The Duluth News Tribune has a story about a political push to get federal funds to help pay for the installation of sewers to serve development near Voyagers National Park. I don't have the details, but can think of three options that don't involve sewage collection and treatment as described in the article. A combination of mound systems, composting toilets and condeming development that can't be brought up to code might offer less expensive and environmentally more sound solutions than what seems to be proposed. I'm reminded of the following anecdote from Paul Hawken's Natural Capitalism (p 285-286).

"...Many Dayak villagers had malaria, and the World Health Organization has a solution that was simple and direct. Spraying DDT seemed to work: Mosquitoes died, and malaria declined. But then an expanding web of side effects (consequences you didn't think of," quips biologist Garrett Hardin "the existance of which you will deny as long as possible") started to appear. The roofs of peoples houses began to collapse, because the DDT had also killed tiny parasitic wasps that had previously controlled thatch-eating catapillars. The colonial government issued sheet-metal replacement roofs, but people couldn't sleep when tropical rains turned tin roofs into drums. Meanwhile, the DDT-poisoned bugs were being eaten by geckoes, which were eaten by cats. The DDT invisibly built up in the food chain and began to kill the cats. Without the cats, the rats multiplied. The World Health Organization, threatened by potential outbreaks of typhus and sylvatic plague, which it had itself created, was obliged to parachute fourteen thousand live cats into Borneo. Thus occurred Operation Cat Drop, one of the odder missions of the British Royal Air Force."

It doesn't take too much imagination to envision the possibility of a similar chain of events arising from the installation of sewers in an area that has other development limitations. The Twin Cities Metropolitan Council, for years and years, used access to the metropolitan sewer system as a development control. Massachusetts has been known to condemn, as unfit for human habitation, properties with failing septic systems that couldn't be fixed. It's not clear to me why there should be major public subsidies for what may well be private developments up north. I can easily see this as a mechanism to create the potential for additional development in the area, with, perhaps, not much more consideration for whether or not that's appropriate than the messes created by earlier efforts to bring settlers and farming to northern Minnesota, as described in North Shore.

History of sleep

By Rusty Morrison 

(a myth of consequences) 

The ivy across our back fence tangles gray

into a green evening light.

How a second emptiness

un-punctuates the first.

Disloyal,

we attempt to construct.

An ache will tighten

but not form.

Making impossible

even this upsurge of crows across our sightline.

The Mayans invented zero so as not to ignore even the gods

who wouldn't carry their burdens.

Too slippery as prayer, too effortless

as longing.

Our problem was preparation. Premeditation

neutered any rage potential.

Years later, the spine of our backyard

appears to have always been crooked.

White jasmine, dove-calm in the lattice, is not

a finely crafted lure.

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The Internet of Energy

About this time last year, we were in the midst of having a new roof, new windows, and siding installed. One of the purposes was to increase the house's energy efficiency. Although we're no where near passive house standards, we have made progress, at least as indicated by frost coverage on the windows when it's really cold.

North side sliding (old) window, heavily frosted

Photo by J. Harrington

North side casement (new) window (almost no) frost

Photo by J. Harrington

The top picture shows what the old (circa 1978) sliding window on the North side of the study looked like in January 2013. The bottom shows the same window opening with our new casement windows. That looks like a major improvement to me. So we retained most of the energy embodied in our house, increased the energy efficiency and, hopefully, made it more durable. In temperatures such as we've had the past few days, we can still feel cold air seeping in through the windows, but it used to be worse.

I think that's how we're going to get to a more sustainable world and levels of greenhouse gases we can live with. It's going to be a step-by-step, incremental process that probably won't get us there as soon as we need to, and will require some life style changes (I now wear sweaters and flannel shirts instead of turning up our 97% efficient natural furnace that replaced our old oil burner.) There are no silver bullets, but we can be more strategic in our choices. Here's a link to a carbon footprint calculator. I'm one of those folks who doubt that all of our individual actions together will solve the problems we face as a species, but that doesn't mean we get a pass either. Depending on which variation we're looking at, this nice summary comes either from Helen Keller (misattribution?) or Edward Everett Hale. We also need the Xcel Energy's of the world to start focusing more on managing the grid instead of building power plants. We need something like an internet of energy, with micro grids and co-generation in addition to renewable solar and wind.

I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

Gary Snyder tells us why this is important.

By Frazier Creek Falls

Gary Snyder

Standing up on lifted, folded rock
looking out and down—

The creek falls to a far valley.
hills beyond that
facing, half-forested, dry
—clear sky
strong wind in the
stiff glittering needle clusters
of the pine—their brown
round trunk bodies
straight, still;
rustling trembling limbs and twigs

listen.

This living flowing land
is all there is, forever

We are it
it sings through us—

We could live on this Earth
without clothes or tools!

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A way forward

Not quite nine years ago, on November 21, 2006, I had the genuine pleasure of spending almost two hours in the company of James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. I was driving him from his presentation in Mankato to the Minneapolis St. Paul airport. We discovered a shared interest in fly-fishing among other things. Much of his book is based on the premise of what happens after "peak oil" and the era of cheap fossil fuels. Not quite a decade later, we're looking at an upcoming international conference intended to help the world keep from exceeding a catastrophic rise in temperature. Meanwhile, global commodities like copper and steel are in "excessive" supply, California continues to suffer from unprecedented(?) drought, and increasing volatility and intensity in weather events are making global warming more real by the day.

volatile weather storm clouds

Photo by J. Harrington

If nothing else, Kunstler is thought-provoking and entertaining. I respectfully disagree with some of his underlying concepts and his tendency to describe an array of problems without suggesting solutions. When I asked him about that, he informed me that he thought that solutions should come from those who bring us New Urbanism. While I agree that NU has many positive attributes, it seems to miss some key points. Points that are also absent from Kunstler's "Long Emergency" and at least the first volume of his continuing novel series of a World Made by Hand. Neither of those works gives much play to renewable wind, solar and/or distributed generation of electricity.

We live in a pretty rural location. Our most obvious vulnerability is loss of electricity. Without it we have no furnace, refrigeration, or water supply. At the time Kunstler was writing 'Long Emergency," I know I didn't foresee how quickly solar photovoltaics would precipitously drop in cost. We don't yet have a grid that is managed for distributed generation, but, despite what I consider short-sighted utility opposition, are at least making minor progress in a positive direction. EVs can provide at least some onsite storage for electricity but we need to continue to develop better battery technology. My point is that much of what we rely on today needs to be transformed from models based on central generation with distribution to much more node and networked systems, like the Internet, sort of. We're making inroads on that with localized food systems but still have a ways to go. We also need to transform our production system. As my Better Half noted recently, part of the answer to that may be 3D printing.

storms come in many sizes and shapes

Photo by J. Harrington

I have major doubts and strong reservations that we can get where we need to be with continuing emphasis on globalization and trade agreements such as NAFTA and TPP. Global commodities continue to be too vulnerable to boom and bust business cycles. Only the top 1% or less benefit from a race to the bottom. As an alternative (or a complement) to Kunstler's entertaining gloom and doom (and most day's headlines these days), try Rebecca Solnit's Hope in the Dark, Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything and Fritjof Capra's The Web of Life. This approach would probably be a tough sell on the Iron Range, but we're no longer a frontier state. Haven't been for quite some time. We are living in a world in which limits are becoming increasingly obvious. We rely on each other more and more. Our interdependence is precisely why taconite plants and paper mills are shutting down. Others can produce basic commodities less expensively. Instead of reducing our environmental protections for greater trade, we should be insisting on higher standards elsewhere to create a level playing field that doesn't sicken the customers.

Cosmogony

By Caki Wilkinson 

A yarn ball and a hill   

maintain an equipoise until   

         their neatness starts to bore the gods   

                   of potential and energy   

         who hedge bets, reckoning the odds   

                   of when the rest will be   

set in motion, and who,   

first stumbling upon this clew,   

          constructed both the incline and   

                   the inclination to unwind.   

          Like most gods, though, they haven’t planned   

                   to stay; they mastermind   

the scheme, ex nihilio,   

then slip behind the shadow show   

          and designate an agent, chief   

                   remaker of their mischief made.   

          Each time, disguised, this leitmotif   

                   gets salvaged and replayed,   

a universe begins,   

for orogens and origins   

          suppose a Way Things Were before   

                   some volatile, untimely That—   

          sweetness perverted by the core   

                   or belfry by the bat,   

or here, a hilly green,   

whose still life, eerily serene,   

          completes their best contrivance yet:   

                   from high above, a williwaw,   

          a hiss, and then the silhouette   

                   of one terrific paw. 

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Please be kind to each other while you can.

How you live -- electricity

Today's bioregional quiz question presents, in a strange way, a challenge similar to trying to summarize our governor's environmental policy. Numerous factoids are available but don't seem to lend themselves to the generation of a coherent answer. Here's the "question:"

Trace the electrical energy in your home from source to outlet.

I really, really wish I could reply that we are "off the grid" with our own photovoltaic cells and some sort of electrical energy storage system. Unfortunately, that's not (yet) the case, so we need to look at "the grid," so to speak. Whenever I think of Minnesota's electric utilities the word balkanization leaps to mind. This map of service areas should give you a pretty good idea of why.

Minnesota's electric utility service areas

We're located in the pale blue area on the right side about 3/8" above and to the left of the word "Paul." The closeup below shows the local "turfs" involved in our immediate area. I assume, but can't document, that there are interconnections somewhere in these systems but maybe not. Our electric provider is Xcel energy (pale blue). By my count, there are also three other separate electric utilities serving the southern half of Chisago County.

Southern Chisago County electric utility service areas

I can trace our home's electrical energy from an outlet in the wall to the main electric panel in the house and from there underground to a connection to Xcel's overhead (distribution?) lines hung from "telephone" poles along our township road. That's where I lose any direct linkage to the source. Substations and transmission lines in our area are shown below.

Electric transmission lines and substations in Chisago County

The following extract from Wikipedia's page on Xcel Energy describes Xcel's generation facilities. Some are in Minnesota.

"Xcel Energy currently has 13 coal plants with a capacity of 7,697 MW. Seven of those plants are operated in Colorado.[12] Xcel is the largest producer of wind power in the US according to the American Wind Energy Association. Xcel Energy owns and operates three wind farms. In October 2011, Xcel Energy set a world record for electricity from wind power.[13]

"Xcel Energy generates over 500 megawatts of hydroelectric power from 27 plants in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Colorado. This accounts for more than four percent of their electricity generation. They also purchase large amounts of hydro-generated electricity from Manitoba Hydro.

"Biomass electricity comes from organic fuel sources. Xcel Energy has contracts for about 110 megawatts of electricity from biomass generators. Two in northern Minnesota are fueled by forest harvest residue, such as treetops and limbs. A third facility, brought on line in 2007 in western Minnesota, generates power using turkey litter.[14] ...

"...Xcel Energy owns and operates two nuclear power plants, Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant near Monticello, Minnesota, and Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant near Red Wing, Minnesota and stores the spent fuel from these nuclear plants on site in independent spent fuel storage installations. (ISFSIs)."

When (not if) we get to an electrical system that generates electricity in a much more decentralized pattern than we have now, something more like the Internet, electric networks and interconnections may have greater relevance to determining local bioregions. It's utility (intentional pun) as of today seems limited. That perspective is, of course, subject to change. I'm still working on developing a mental model of bioregions as nested places and areas and regions. I can't readily fit the existing fragmented and fractured service areas and interconnected grid into that model.

[UPDATE: My Better Half recently sent a link to the Washington Post's interesting infographics on electricity generation at US power plants. Late yesterday the Obama Administration released their Clean Power Plan with  fact sheets for states. This link's to Minnesota's.

You've Got to Start Somewhere

By Deborah Landau 

I had the idea of sitting still

while others rushed by.

I had the thought of a shop

that still sells records.

A letter in the mailbox.

The way that book felt in my hands.

I was always elsewhere.

How is it to have a body today,

to walk in this city, to run?

I wanted to eat an apple so precisely

the tree would make another

exactly like it, then lie

down uninterrupted

in the gadgetless grass.

I kept texting the precipice,

which kept not answering,

my phone auto-making

everything incorrect.

I had the idea. Put down the phone.

Earth, leaves, storm, water, vine.

The gorgeous art of breathing.

I had the idea — the hope

of friending you without electricity.

Of what could be made among the lampposts

with only our voices and hands.

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How you live -- hazwaste

Today's question started me wondering if we mightn't be better off mining our landfills and increasing our investments in recycling. Have you looked at any of the documentation for the proposed PolyMet NorthMet mining project? Have you noticed the ratio of waste to ore ("... the metal content is roughly .75%, combined , for copper, nickel, and various precious metals.")? We throw away and abandon too much, too quickly. I have doubts we can last until Star Trek technology saves us.

abandoned farm house

Photo by J. Harrington

What facilities in your area accept universal hazardous waste?

Chisago County lists Hazardous Waste Disposal Sites and the Items Accepted / Rejected at the County's household hazardous waste facility. The county's web page adds a very nice touch by providing information on where to dispose of items, such as ammunition and automotive batteries, not accepted at the facility. Of the four EPA-listed universal hazardous wastes, all are accepted at the county facility or listed in the county's information of disposal sites.

abandoned shed

Photo by J. Harrington

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, in partnership with metropolitan counties, provides for hazardous waste from commercial generators. The nested hazardous waste management framework, from federal, through state to county, seems to fit fairly well with the bioregional tenets for

Governance

• Bioregion governance is autonomous, democratic and employs culturally- sensitive participatory decision-making processes.


• Political and cultural legitimacy are measured by the degree to which a steward achieves social and ecological justice, and ecosystem-based sustainability.


• Intricate networks of federation will be woven on continental, hemispheric and global bases to ensure close association with governments, economic interests and cultural institutions in other bioregions.

The Waste Carpet

By William Matthews 

No day is right for the apocalypse,

if you ask a housewife in Talking

Rock, Georgia, or maybe Hop River,

Connecticut. She is opening a plastic bag.

A grotesque parody of the primeval muck

starts oozing out. And behold,

the plastic bag is magic;

there is no closing it. Soap

in unsoftened water, sewage, asbestos

coiled like vermicelli, Masonite shavings,

a liquefied lifetime subscription

to The New York Times delivered all at once.

Empty body stockings, limp, forlorn,

like collapsed lungs. A blithering slur   

of face creams, an army of photocopies   

travelling on its stomach of acronyms,   

tooth paste tubes wrung rigid and dry.   

Also, two hundred and one tons

of crumpled bumpers wrapped in insurance   

claims, slag, coal dust, plastic trimmings,   

industrial excrementa. Lake Erie is returning   

our gifts.

       At first she thought she had won   

something. Now it slithers through the house,   

out windows, down the street, spreading   

everywhere but heading, mostly, west.   

Maybe heading is the wrong word,

implying shape and choice. It took

the shape of the landscape

it rippled across like the last blanket.

And it went west because the way lay open   

once again: not the same fecund rug

the earth grew when white people scraped   

their first paths to the Pacific

across the waves of the inland grasses.

Outside Ravenswood, West Virginia,   

abandoned cars shine in the sun

like beetlebacks. The ore it took

to make the iron it took to make the steel   

it took to make the cars, that ore

would remember the glaciers if it could.   

Now comes another grinding, but not—

thanks to our new techniques—so slow.   

The amiable cars wait stilly in their pasture.   

Three Edsels forage in the southeast corner   

like bishops of a ruined church.

There are Fords and Dodges, a Mercury   

on blocks, four Darts and a Pierce Arrow,

a choir of silenced Chevrolets.

And, showing their lapsed trademarks   

and proud grilles to a new westward   

expansion, two Hudsons, a LaSalle

and a DeSoto.

       I was hoping to describe

the colors of this industrial autumn—

rust, a faded purple like the dusty

skin of a Concord grape, flaking moss-

green paint with primer peeking   

blandly through, the garish macho reds   

insurance companies punish, the greys   

(opaque) and silvers (bright), the snob colors   

(e.g. British Racing Green), the two-tone   

combinations time will spurn like roadkill

(1957: pink and grey), cornflower

blue, naval blue, royal blue, stark blue, true

blue, the blacker blue the diver sees

beneath him when he plumbs thirty feet—

but now they are all covered,

rolling and churning in the last

accident, like bubbles in lava.

And now my Cincinnati—the hills   

above the river, the lawn that drained

toward Ricwood Ave. like a small valley of uncles,

the sultry river musk that slid

like a compromising note through my bedroom window—

and indeed all Cincinnati seethes. The vats

at Proctor & Gamble cease their slick

congealing, and my beloved birthplace

is but another whorl of dirt.

Up north near Lebanon and Troy and Rosewood,

the corn I skulked in as a boy

lays back its ears like a shamed dog.   

Hair along the sow’s spine rises.

The Holstein pivots his massive head

toward where the barn stood; the spreading stain

he sees is his new owner.

What we imagined was the fire-storm,

or, failing that, the glacier.

Or we hoped we’d get off easy,

losing only California.

With the seismologists and mystics

we say the last California ridge

crumble into the ocean.

And we were read with elegies:

O California, sportswear

and defense contracts, gasses that induce

deference, high school girls

with their own cars, we wanted

to love you without pain.

O California, when you were moored to us

like a vast splinter of melon,

like a huge and garish gondola,

then we were happier, although

we showed it by easy contempt.

But now you are lost at sea,

your cargo of mudslides and Chardonnays

lost, the prints of the old movies

lost, the thick unlighted candles of the redwoods

snuffed in advance. On the ocean floor

they lie like hands of a broken clock.

O California, here we come,

quoting Ecclesiastes,

ruinous with self-knowledge.

Meanwhile, because the muck won’t stop

for lamentation, Kansas succumbs.

Drawn down by anklets of DDT,

the jayhawk circles lower and lower   

while the sludge moils and crests.

Now we are about to lose our voices

we remember that tomorrow is our echo.   

O the old songs, the good days:

bad faith and civil disobedience,

sloppy scholarship and tooth decay.   

Now the age of footnotes is ours.

Ibid, ibid, ibid, ibid, ibid.

While the rivers thickened and fish   

rose like vomit, the students of water   

stamped each fish with its death date.   

Don’t let a chance like this go by,   

they thought, though it went by   

as everything went by—towers   

of water flecked by a confetti   

of topsoil, clucked tongues, smug   

prayers. What we paid too much for   

and too little attention to,

our very lives, all jumbled

now and far too big in aggregate   

to understand or mourn, goes by,

and all our eloquence places its

weight on the spare word goodbye.

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