“Need to know” basis

I did succeed in making yesterday a #TweetlessTuesday. It actually felt good. Except for the agitation surrounding additional indictments of The Former Guy [TFG], I would have probably felt better still if I had stayed away from online news outlets. The ratio of depressing and/or frightening news stories to happy or good news must be st least 9 or 10 to 1. One of our local tv stations has provided a clue to responding to the relentless deluge of conspiracy, theories and actions. They have a segment each morning about 4 Things You Need to Know. After watching carefully for several mornings, I decided they were wrong. I didn’t need to know most of what they were pitching. I think I’ll take a similar approach to other online news reporting.

When I first began to contemplate the idea of “need to know” it brought me face to face with the question of how it applies to this blog. My answer is that rarely am I posting about what you need to know, but I hope we often (sometimes?) bring items you may want to know.

lower St. Croix River

Photo by J. Harrington

Today I’m back to looking at bioregions and their potential roles in creating a sustainable, regenerative future. We live in the St. Croix River watershed, a tributary to the Mississippi River watershed and close to the edge of the Great Lakes watershed. Water, watersheds and related factors will become more and more significant as world temperatures increase and geohydrologic cycles become disrupted. (Colorado River ring a bell?)

At the moment, the water quality in several Minnesota water bodies is threatened by nonferrous mining. The state Supreme Court just “suspended a key permit for the NorthMet copper-nickel mine in northern Minnesota on Wednesday, ruling that state regulators failed to fully consider the threat to water quality posed by the mine.” I would argue that in an increasingly water-stressed world, protecting the quality of the water we have is a top priority, followed by restoring the quality of water that fails to meer designated use standards. If our existing governmental structures were as committed to addressing climate breakdown as they claim, there should never have been a permit that "failed to fully consider the threat to water quality posed by the mine.”

All told, these days I’m returning more and more to many of my first loves: English, poetry, environment, nature, ethics, pllace. Ian McHarg, in Design with Nature, offers the right concepts. He just doesn’t take them far enough, but then he didn’t write it in our times.

Wanting Sumptuous Heavens

By Robert Bly

No one grumbles among the oyster clans,

And lobsters play their bone guitars all summer.

Only we, with our opposable thumbs, want

Heaven to be, and God to come, again.

There is no end to our grumbling; we want

Comfortable earth and sumptuous Heaven.

But the heron standing on one leg in the bog

Drinks his dark rum all day, and is content.

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Tomorrow is T Day!

At  the moment, I’m giving thanks that the snowblower started and ran and that I managed to change the oil in it without turning the garage into a (bigger) disaster. A cautionary note that I wish I had known about  years ago: some folks are selling stuff that’s not really well designed. My snowblower has two dipsticks but no drain pipe from the crankcase. One of the dipsticks is located right under the exhaust and muffler, presenting a wonderful opportunity to burn one’s hand if not very careful. I’m very grateful I bought other brands of snowblowers before the current one and won’t be foolish enough  to buy anything like it without  checking the details first. The manual doesn’t even list how much oil the crankcase holds. I’m grateful I could find that information on the internet.

some years November 23rd’s like this

Photo by J. Harrington

Things like the preceding make me grateful there are lots of capable folks working on helping design and create an economy that doesn’t depend on perpetual growth to be sustainable, because perpetual growth on a finite planet isn’t sustainable. I’m increasingly grateful that more and more of us are learning  that. There are no jobs on a dead planet.

I really enjoyed the Buffy Sainte-Marie documentary on PBS last night. Including some shots of Joni Mitchell was icing on the cake. I’m grateful to have lived at the same time as each of those wonderful artists and many others I’ve grown up with.

Yesterday the eye doctor gave me a relatively clean bill of health for an old fart (me, not the eye doctor), for which I’m grateful, although  the dilation eye drops hadn’t completely worn off by the time the B S-M documentary started so watching it was a little blurry at times. Today we’re enjoying another spell of blue skies, sunshine and above freezing temperatures. I have few doubts that, had I not checked out the snow blower today, T day would bring an Alberta clipper or an outright blizzard. Don’t bother to thank me, it was my (almost) pleasure.

America, I Sing Back

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke - 1958-

for Phil Young, my father, Robert Hedge Coke, Whitman, and Hughes

America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.
Sing back the moment you cherished breath.
Sing you home into yourself and back to reason.

Oh, before America began to sing, I sung her to sleep,
held her cradleboard, wept her into day.
My song gave her creation, prepared her delivery,
held her severed cord beautifully beaded.

My song helped her stand, held her hand for first steps,

nourished her very being, fed her, placed her three sisters strong.
My song comforted her as she battled my reason

broke my long held footing sure, as any child might do.

Lo, as she pushed herself away, forced me to remove myself,
as I cried this country, my song grew roses in each tear’s fall.

My blood veined rivers, painted pipestone quarries
circled canyons, while she made herself maiden fine.

Oh, but here I am, here I am, here, I remain high on each and every peak,
carefully rumbling her great underbelly, prepared to pour forth singing—

and sing again I will, as I have always done.

Never silenced unless in the company of strangers, singing

the stoic face, polite repose, polite, while dancing deep inside, polite
Mother of her world. Sister of myself.

When my song sings aloud again. When I call her back to cradle.
Call her to peer into waters, to behold herself in dark and light,

day and night, call her to sing along, call her to mature, to envision—

Then, she will make herself over. My song will make it so

When she grows far past her self-considered purpose,
I will sing her back, sing her back. I will sing. Oh, I will—I do.

America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.

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A different kind of gas lighting

I hope I haven’t jinxed us. Today I finally pulled the winter floor mats from the jeep and rinsed the salt, sand and grit off of them. Some time over the summer they’ll get a thorough cleaning. Meanwhile the summer mats have been pulled from storage and are on their way to the front floor hooks that hold them in place. This may be the weekend in which we shut down the snow blower for the summer season. We’ll test it again come September or October.

winter’s salt streaks on the jeep’s hood

Photo by J. Harrington

I’ve been thinking about, fantasizing actually, what life might be like if all my tools and toys were electric instead of internal combustion powered. The chain saw and micro tiller are each two stroke powered so I have to keep looking up the proper oil/gas ratio. Neither has a very large gas tank so I have to keep a supply of gas stabilizer around and remember to use it. Of course, every once in awhile I forget and that means the tool gets a trip to the shop to get cleaned and tuned so it will start again.

At the moment, I have a battery powered leaf blower and pole chain saw. Recharging batteries is much easier and less complicated than keeping two or four stroke gas engines running properly. If I’m not dealing with gas / oil mixtures, I have to remember to do at least an annual oil change in the snow blower and push mower and tractor. None of this is terribly difficult but it is more work than changing a battery and placing one in the charger.

Have any of you read or seen descriptions of how life might be better and/or simpler with a low carbon life? I’m just beginning to think about the details. I know that the information technology I’ve come to rely on, computers, cell phones, all the chips and software in the jeep, often seem to be more trouble than it’s worth. I still miss the CD player we used to be able to order in our vehicles. Too often my cell phone play list and my jeep sound system end up speaking different languages or not talking to each other at all.

Meanwhile, corporations like Apple and John Deere present major obstacles to the right to repair effort. This presents another front on the make it simpler, easy to operate and repair. Much of the contemporary complexity we’re faced with looks to me like it’s as much to increase corporate profits as to provide a better product.

I know, I’m once again sounding like a pro-luddite, or maybe like Wendell Berry. There’s a lot to be said for either or both.

The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer

by Wendell Berry

I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my
inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission
to go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it.
I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts,
and tilled somewhat by incantation and by singing,
and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven's favor,
in spite of the best advice. If I have been caught
so often laughing at funerals, that was because
I knew the dead were already slipping away,
preparing a comeback, and can I help it?
And if at weddings I have gritted and gnashed
my teeth, it was because I knew where the bridegroom
had sunk his manhood, and knew it would not
be resurrected by a piece of cake. ‘Dance,’ they told me,
and I stood still, and while they stood
quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced.
‘Pray,’ they said, and I laughed, covering myself
in the earth's brightnesses, and then stole off gray
into the midst of a revel, and prayed like an orphan.
When they said, ‘I know my Redeemer liveth,’
I told them, ‘He's dead.’ And when they told me
‘God is dead,’ I answered, ‘He goes fishing every day
in the Kentucky River. I see Him often.’
When they asked me would I like to contribute
I said no, and when they had collected
more than they needed, I gave them as much as I had.
When they asked me to join them I wouldn't,
and then went off by myself and did more
than they would have asked. ‘Well, then,’ they said
‘go and organize the International Brotherhood
of Contraries,’ and I said, ‘Did you finish killing
everybody who was against peace?’ So be it.
Going against men, I have heard at times a deep harmony
thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what
I say I don't know. It is not the only or the easiest
way to come to the truth. It is one way.

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Time to check all systems

It’s been a strange twenty-four hours. Yesterday, as the downpour was ending, the power went out. Xcel had it restored about 4 p.m. Our phone and internet connection disappeared approximately the same time as the power. That didn’t get restored until eighteen or twenty hours after it went down. Midday today, while walking the dogs, we noticed what looked suspiciously like a dead whitetail at the end of a neighbor’s drive. Then, after we had come back into the house, begun to settle down, and finally got to turn to online activities, we noticed that the Better Half’s email application persisted in incorrectly autocorrecting the spelling of my last name. We think that’s finally been corrected by laying hands on the application's settings. In that process, we discovered the need for a universal, standardized, location for a save button on all computer applications.

more storm clouds ahead

Photo by J. Harrington

As we begin to adapt to climate breakdown and eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, I’ve spent some of the past day thinking about the reliability of the systems on which we’ve come to depend. The loss of power yesterday might have been mitigated if we had a generator, but only if we could still pump gas to keep a generator running during an extended power outage such as Superstorm Sandy’s. Much of the emphasis of responding to climate breakdown has been on the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Not enough, in our opinion, has been stressed about increasing the reliability of our electrical system, nor about shifting to a more decentralized generation pattern and microgrids. If indeed we commit to no more burning of fossil fuels and become solely reliant on electricity, we’ll need to be much better at 100%+ uptime of the electrical system, particularly for hospitals and comparable institutions. Given last winter’s Texas breakdown, neither the public nor the private sectors seem capable of safely meeting our  needs.

Meanwhile, we have a political system, including SCOTUS, that does serve the short term needs of (s)elected officials and their corporate sugar-daddies much more so than the needs of present and future citizens of the country or the planet. About the only positive thing I can share regarding the Democratic party is that it’s not the Republicans. I look forward, with little expectation, to being able to post something more positive in the near future.

I’m coming to believe that the cumulative effects of user-unfriendly design of many of our systems, plus their growing lack of reliability, is contributing substantially to a society that, more and more, seems prepared to “go postal.” We certainly shouldn’t want to return to the kind of normal that brought us to this point. Nor do we think it acceptable to pay more for slower postal deliveries. Sigh!

The Promise We Live By

By Simon J. Ortiz

On the West Coast, days of rainstorm wrestle

the Coast Range, their wet fury driven landward.

We never quite known what the sky promises,

and there is certain assurance in that fate.

It is for that we wait. We’ve already weathered

more than promises. They’ve passed us by.

So I’m not sure this morning when I step outside,

and suddenly it’s not winter anymore but some

warm mask that molds the contours of my face

with unbidden warmth. It’s almost unnatural

but I hope not, having already found reliable

the promise of loss. My expectation is unfulfilled.

Somewhere within the universe of the prairie hills

is a climate that is yet unnoticed, and from it

is welling a warm rupture of another sure season.

Believe it is not unusual, I urge myself

whose myths are always changing in the light.

So it’s this we arrive into daily, always

another season, warm or frigid, and it’s we

who wage weather within our furious spirits.

Tomorrow’s dawn is a promise that will fulfill.

Never mind if the sky does not quite agree.

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