Stop the bleeding!!!

Welcome to Sun Day! There's an (in)famous quote about news: "If it bleeds, it leads." Doom-scrolling social media, reading the US edition of The Guardian, and watching tv news leaves too many of US with the impression that everything's coming apart or, as Yeats tells US "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;"

Blue Marble, our only home
Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

I've never, to my knowledge, been accused of being a Pollyanna, but I confess that  my sense of doom and gloom has been overdeveloped recently. There's more good and interesting work being accomplished these days than is readily conveyed in Mainstream Media (MSM). I reached this conclusion earlier today when I came across the Climate Action Now website. Check it out, we'll wait.

My email inbox and snail mail box are daily filled with pleas / please to help fund this or that effort to save the world, or at least bits and pieces thereof. The aggregate effect, too often, leaves me with the impression that almost any donation is part of a largely hopeless effort to shovel s_ _ t against the t_ _ e. What is missing from most of the requests is a positive vision of what's to be accomplished. Overturning Citizens United or presidential immunity would be the restoration of a former (imperfect) status quo instead of a positive step forward such as mandating pubic only funding for campaigns or prohibiting anyone convicted of a felony (misdemeanor?) from serving as president, VP, or in the cabinet.

Before starting today's posting, I tumbled into the Sun Day announcement as I was trying to decide if I wanted to reread James Lovelock's Gaia. While skimming through inline reviews, I found Book review – On Gaia: A Critical Investigation of the Relationship between Life and Earth. That in turn led me eventually to BECOMING EARTH, HOW OUR PLANET CAME TO LIFE, which I intend to order from my regular, local, independent bookstore and read instead of rereading Gaia. I wish I had known about evolutionary biology when I was in college but then it might not have been much more than a hypothesis back in those days.

Let's see if these days we can do more and better and prove Yeats a pessimist now that we're almost through the first quarter of the twenty-first century and still have no home but planet Earth.

The Second Coming

By William Butler Yeats

 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Time for the Industrial Revolution to end?

Lots of traffic today. At midday, much of it looked to be headed North on I-35. We were headed South,  into the cities and decided we’d come home using blue highways. By the time we’d done our business and started back home, the temperature had reached 90℉ and it was obvious we weren’t the only ones avoiding the traffic on the interstates.

We’re now anticipating a quiet holiday weekend, getting together with family to reminisce about a long time friend who walked on several months ago. Since I originally met him through work, it feels like something that fits on this Labor Day weekend.

Today ended the kind of week after which I’d like to abandon news and social media. But then the stupid, dangerous, wrong-headed things would keep happening and I wouldn’t know about it until I had to deal with the consequences. On the other hand, I can’t do much, or figure out what to do, about most of the news stories and idiocy I read or read about. All too often I’d like to be able to vote with my feet/communicator and transmit “Beam me up, Scotty.There’s no intelligent life down here.”

Now we know that there is intelligent life down here. Some of it is even human. But has the balance shifted too far the other way? There’s an article in yesterday’s Star Tribune, California's ban on gas-powered cars worries Minnesota's corn and soybean farmers. Now corn and beans used to produce biofuels aren’t “feeding the world.” That makes me wonder why the growers should enjoy exemptions from regulations that other industrial feedstock producers must meet, such as not polluting the water.

should corn be grown for ethanol?

Photo by J. Harrington

I also wonder how, in a world that is more and more skeptical about science and what we mean by truth, as compared to “alternative facts,” we’re supposed to reach decisions about who and what is right, and what we should do, short of actual civil war after civil war. 

Historians, at least some of them, tell us that the Industrial Revolution began with the Enclosure Acts in England, forcing people off the land, out of the countryside and into cities where they became the labor force. Continuing to industrialize agriculture through ethanol and confined animal feeding operations and increasing the size of farms while substituting machinery for labor is continuing the Industrial Revolution. Take a balanced look at the actual quality of life we experience, and the growing number of systemic existential issues we face and decide if we want to keep heading in the same direction.

This Online Shopping Habit Is Sympathetic Magick

By Caroline Crew

Sweater buttoning down the back, dark flower crown, velvet

laced boots—so full of content.

                                                 Right to save for later. Right

to leave to rot. In the plug hole so much debris not living

it’s ritual potential.

                        My phone is a radio this morning, telling me

the witch is a threat because her ethics are her own. 

                                                       Whose hair still writhing.

                                                       Where do I purchase an ethic.

I have this arsenal of ethanol, excellent selfie lighting

and stomped-in elegance; this arsenic of aspiration.

Pinterest boards of visions, mystic as plastic cutlery. Imitation

is categorized as primitive magic

                                               but I just Googled

“Kim Kardashian dress size,” the sum of sophisticated

machine and mass production—machinating the myth

that poison is a woman’s art. The body with arsenic rejects:

vomit, blood vomit, hair loss. It was beautiful,

                                                                      the palette

of rich green lushing the wall, the fondant layers of Victorian

dresses dyed with arsenic. Died for the love of it,

misnomered bitten by witch fever. I’m trying not to say dressed to kill.

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

Lent Township’s Spring surprise!

In the midst of the first full day of spring in the northern hemisphere in 2022, local skies are overcast. We may, or may not, reach or exceed 60℉ today. [Update: we didn’t.] Snow is in the forecast for Wednesday. Pretty typical for North Country springtime.

Last night the air rang with the call of a sandhill crane as s/he flew over the house at dusk. More and more Canada geese are arriving in anticipation of open water. Muskrat mounds for nesting are being claimed. A few swans are also somewhere in the neighborhood. Snow cover is about 80%%-90% gone from open areas, less so in the shaded woods.

mushrooms: like voters, kept in the dark and covered in manure

Photo by J. Harrington

This evening we’re planning to attend a meeting of Township residents asking questions about the merger with the City of Stacy proposed by the township board at the annual meeting earlier this month. Since much of what  we’ve read leads us to believe that many township residents don’t know what such a merger may mean, or even that it’s been proposed, it should be interesting.

Much of the eastern portions of the township are separated from the City of Stacy by an expanse of Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area. How could it every be cost effective for the city to provide municipal services such as water and sewer to those residing on the eastern edge of the WMA? The township already has a joint fire department with  the city. The entire concept doesn’t seem to be well thought out. There’s a related series of questions regarding whether the county’s southern portion will actually be a growth area if gas reaches $6 or $7 a gallon before electric vehicles have largely replaced the current vehicle fleet.

Stay tuned for further developments, but, if you ever want to feel like you’re not living in a democracy, where your vote is not worth much, buy property in a township that’s considering the board knows best what’s good for the residents and will tell them when it’s ready.

What Things Want

Robert Bly - 1926-2021

You have to let things
Occupy their own space.
This room is small,
But the green settee

Likes to be here.
The big marsh reeds,
Crowding out the slough,
Find the world good.

You have to let things
Be as they are.
Who knows which of us
Deserves the world more?

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

Going local?

I just read a Tweet to the effect that Target has placed its products on Instagram Checkout (whatever that is). While we were out this morning doing essential errands I saw an electric sign at the  credit union that people can deposit their checks via a mobile app. (Some of the essential errands involved depositing checks, plus getting some cash.) I started pondering about  the longer term implications of moving as much of our lives into the  online universe as we're proceeding to do. If banks need fewer, or none, branch offices; if big box stores all move online; what happens to the local property tax base? Will there be a retail version of Rust Belt cities?

storefront window at the Open Book building

Photo by J. Harrington

I've long been an advocate of shopping local. Even after an annoying sequence of events today, I'm still of that mind, but more open to a "Both,  And" approach. Our local poison ivy vines are emerging with vigor. Spraying them with ordinary grass killer seems to be equivalent to offering them Gatorade instead of the infamous Jamestown kool aid. Of two local hardware stores, one local farm and garden shop, and two nearby big box chain outlets, only one had in stock the product I wanted and even that was a second choice option. No one had what I really wanted in the container I wanted it in. Even Amazon noted that they'd send me an email if it came back in stock. So, I came as close as I could to buying local but was forced into a big box to do so. Every place I checked in person had multiple types and brands of grass killer still sitting on their shelves, but not poison ivy killer in the size and disposal option I wanted. Most web sites offered an order online deliver to store or home with various wait times and / or delivery fees or both. So, if commerce is becoming e-commerce, how is one to chose one web site over another? Will local stores adjust to not being overstocked in popular items while providing little, if any, shelf space to occasional sales items? Is the (first) world going to become more complex but no more rewarding? I know that, for me, shopping has rarely been a desirable recreational activity. As the world adjusts to the implications of COVID-19 and its successors, will it become even less so?

Fortunately, the local veterinarian practice seems to have adapted to social distancing reasonably  well. Make an appointment, pull into the parking lot, text them and their staff comes and takes your dog(s) in and does what's needed. The number to text is on signs at the head of each parking space. If today hadn't been as warm (our first 80℉ of the year) and humid, it would all have worked just fine. Next time we'll know enough to wait outside the Jeep with the dogs.

Stores

By David Huddle

Fifteen I got a job at Leggett's, stock 

boy, fifty cents an hour. Moved up—I come 

from that kind of people—to toys at Christmas,

then Menswear and finally Shoes. 

                                                  Quit to go 

to college, never worked retail again, but 

I still really like stores, savor merchandise 

neatly stacked on tables, sweaters wanting

my gliding palm as I walk by, mannequins 

weirdly sexy behind big glass windows, 

shoes shiny and just waiting for the right feet. 

So why in my seventies do Target, Lowes,

and Home Depot spin me dizzy and lost, 

wanting my mother to find me, wipe my eyes,

hold my hand all the way out to the car?

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

Public? Private? Partnerships?

It’s a dreary, snowy day. I’m not sure when this will get posted because there’s an “area network problem” affecting our DSL. Would that we had an option instead of Frontier! Lousy, unreliable service and no credit on the bill for times when there’s no internet connection of speed is half of what it’s supposed to be. [Internet service was returned about 3 pm. It disappeared about 9 am.]

Time to repeat, multiple times, the Serenity Prayer:

G*d, grant me the serenity
to accept things I cannot change
courage to change the things I can
and the wisdom to know the difference.

It’s that last part that usually trips me up. I hope your day is going better.

This morning, before our internet connection disappeared, I was looking at some analysis on what led to PG&E’s system problems that triggered wide-spread power shut off for multiple counties on the West Coast. That has to be even worse, in some ways, than Xcel Energies’ natural gas supply problems last Winter during the Polar Vortex. I haven’t looked to see what kind of bonuses Xcel executives may have collected during the last year or so.

As far as I can see, we the people have failed miserably in creating a more perfect Union. In fact, unions have become almost nonexistent. We are often pandered to enough that we vote for politicians who are more dedicated to representing the interests of corporations that fund PACs, that fund campaigns, rather than demanding politicians who represent ordinary people. Yes, I am bothered by the campaign rally that occurred yesterday at the Target Center. I fail entirely to understand how anyone who isn’t already collecting grift can support an incompetent buffoon because he manages to “shake things up.”

Gaylord Nelson: "...sacrifice something today for future generations..."

Photo by J. Harrington

The politicians might not be as much of a problem if they would focus on politics, laws and policy and leave bureaucrat regulators to regulate. Several folks have suggested a solution to the PG&E issue of funding dividends and bonuses instead of system maintenance would be to place the grid under public ownership. That’s how we ended up with grossly underfunded infrastructure for roads, airports, public transportation and situations like the lead in the water supply in Flint, MI. We still are missing a long term, safe nuclear waste storage facility. I bet you can come up with your own samples of infrastructure problems attributable to political and/or regulatory mismanagement. What’s the model number of the Boeing jet that’s been grounded for how long because there was inadequate oversight of its design and construction? Our governments have been failing us too often in too many ways.

would more decentralization of power generation help?

Photo by J. Harrington

And now, at a world class scale, governments are failing to adequately respond to the climate we’ve broken. Insufficient emphasis is being given to correcting the problems and adapting to the consequences already occurring. It’s not as if there isn’t already a compendium of solutions (drawdown.org). It’s not as if an obvious place to begin is to STOP SUBSIDIZING FOSSIL FUELS! In 2016 because too many neoliberals stayed home and too many deplorable voted, we ended up with the regime currently wielding a wrecking ball in Washington, D.C.

How is it some governments are trustworthy and others, not so much?

Photo by J. Harrington

Is it becoming clear why I’m hesitant to believe that public ownership and / or management of our electric grid is any kind of solution. As I recall, at one time the internet was entirely under the control of the government, and commercial use was prohibited. Would that, had it continued, have avoided the problems of mis and disinformation that is reported to have affected the 2016 presidential election? We’ll never know.

Several groups of folks are thinking about and working on what they think are better ways for us to try to govern ourselves. We’ll share some thoughts on those efforts in the upcoming days, sort of like early Christmas presents, or, at least, some things to be thankful for. Even with all my gloom and doom, parts of what’s left of our world are still beautiful and it’s not hopeless just yet.

2008, XII

Wendell Berry - 1934-

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…
Hosea 4:6

We forget the land we stand on
and live from. We set ourselves
free in an economy founded
on nothing, on greed verified
by fantasy, on which we entirely
depend.  We depend on fire
that consumes the world without
lighting it.  To this dark blaze
driving the inert metal
of our most high desire
we offer our land as fuel,
thus offering ourselves at last
to be burned. This is our riddle
to which the answer is a life
that none of us has lived.

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

Getting the state squared away

As we've noted numerous times elsewhere on this blog, we were raised in New England, mostly in and around Boston, Massachusetts. Among the many things for which Boston is famous or infamous are the street layouts that wander like cow paths. Sections, section line roads and 36 mile square townships were not part of our New England heritage. Minnesota, on the other hand, was surveyed in accord with the Land Ordinance Act of 1785.

The Public Land Survey System is coordinate-based, with all distances and bearings made from north-south running meridians and east-west base lines. The largest subdivision of land is the Public Land Survey Township (as opposed to political township), and measures six miles square. Each township is comprised of 36 sections, and each section has an area of one square mile (640 acres).

Over the weekend, we started reading Creating Minnesota,  which we originally picked up a year or two ago in Ely at Piragis. The approach and writing are enjoyable, but we were somewhat taken aback when we read, in the first chapter,

The Land ordinance of 1785 established a system for surveying and dividing the United States into six-mile squares, counted westward from a point on the Ohio/Pennsylvania border. Subsequent land-law refinements divided those squares into thirty-six one-mile square sections, then each of those into four 640-acre quarter sections, ...

We're in complete agreement down to that last phrase. A one mile square section is 640 acres. We're not sure whether the concept got lost in editing or the arithmetic wasn't crossed checked by a copy-editor at the Minnesota Historical Society Press, the publisher, but we hope, and expect, to find no more such anomalies in the book. How this one slipped through is beyond us, or maybe the description and arithmetic are fine and we need a remedial reading course? In any case, we're looking forward to learning more about the history of our adopted state and region of the country.

With no segue whatsoever, we'll note that this morning's cool pre-sunrise temperature was very much to our liking, much more so than the flocks of mosquitos that descended on us as, later, we did some maintenance on our utility trailer at mid-day. We had, incorrectly and foolhardily, anticipated that today's breeze would protect us. We subsequently discovered that one of our mosquito-repellant shirts needs a repellant refresh since the mosquitos seem to lick the material before trying to puncture it and me to get their drop of blood. Winter and road repair; polar vortex and legions of bugs. Our Minnesota really needs more than two seasons.

THE SURVEYOR

"Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set." 
---Proverbs 22:28

He thrives on patterns,
    his marks and monuments
    transform a wilderness
    and by his carefully tagged
    and numbered squares,
    neat roads, correction lines
    and small cadastral lots
    he clothes in certainty,
    in geometrical designs,
    man's ancient rights.

He scans the skies,
    reading some far-off star
    by which he plots
    meridians and makes his maps,
    stitching a new-found world
    into a patchwork quilt,
    a net of metes and bounds,
    so lands may know their own
    and live in peace.

                                        -- DON W. THOMSON

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

Rural's not what it used to be

Today we got out and did some seasonal errands. It gave us an opportunity to drive around the St. Croix Valley through some really pretty country. Much of the area around us is scattered farms, fields, woodlots, some lakes and a moderate sized river, with a handful of towns and small cities dotting the countryside and a couple of state parks and one very large wildlife management area at the eastern and western edges of our extended neighborhood. There's just enough touches of New England colonial architecture in places like Franconia and Taylors Falls to trigger some homesickness. If you had asked us a decade or so ago, we would have claimed that we're living in moderately typical exurban to rural Minnesota. Not so these days.

The county in which we live has solar farms popping up like mushrooms in a wet Spring. On a typical drive we'll see at least half a dozen to a dozen, sometimes more. Some are moderate size. Others seem quite large. The township is revising its solar provisions in the zoning ordinance but we're not familiar with the details. We do feel as though we're living in the midst of a conversion to a carbon neutral economy.

solar farm awaiting photovoltaic panels

Photo by J. Harrington

Another, more recent, development also has us wondering if where we live is at all typical of rural Minnesota in the 21st century. Minnesota has lot's of Lutherans and other protestants along with some Catholics. We knew there have been a couple of zen buddhist centers in the Twin Cities. Now we have a Burmese Buddhist monastery and temple just down the road apiece. We took the picture below earlier today. As far as we can tell, the building's profile is unique in the area.

local Buddhist temple and monastery under construction

Photo by J. Harrington

The Unknown Citizen

W. H. Auden, 1907- 1973

(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
   saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content 
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace:  when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
   generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
   education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

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

Speak now, or forever hold your head!

This morning we headed off to do some errands. Just down the road a single coyote dash across about 50 yards or so in front of us. Native Americans know the coyote as a trickster, or a helper, or a creator. Since we're a little familiar with the myths surrounding coyote, we were promptly reminded that tomorrow night is precinct caucus. Time for "crafty intelligence, stealth, and voracious appetite."

Here's an up-to-date version of 

How to caucus in Minnesota

The linked page in turn contains a link to the Minnesota Secretary of State's web site, where you can find the location of your caucus if you don't already know.

What we haven't yet found is a cheat sheet summarizing each candidate's position on a number of key issues, copper-sulfate mining and single payer health insurance being to we find of particular interest. Some candidates have noted that the governor should be sure that the laws are followed and any permit that's issued for a copper-sulfate mine must be rigorously enforced. (Some of us are familiar with the lack of enforcement activities by some of our regulatory agencies when it comes to taconite and related mining activities.)

We understand the problems political candidates face with the need to not offend too many people in order to get elected in the first place. We also think that the pablum and pandering that passes for political discourse has become a large part of our national, state and local governance problem. Since we're going to be at our local Roads and Bridges committee meeting this evening, infrastructure offers a classic example. For some time now the US has been getting grades of D or less  on its infrastructure maintenance and development. Two people were killed recently in a train crash that's been described as avoidable. Minnesota hasn't increased its gas tax, or provided a meaningful alternative funding source for transportation, especially roads, for years. Meanwhile, our township has board members who think the solution is to pave every gravel road but haven't shown any analysis of what that would, or could, do to future budgets. Strong Towns keeps pointing out its concerns that we can't afford the roads we have. Meanwhile, we'd be happy if we could find some clear, definitive criteria for when a rural road should, or should not, be paved.

should this be paved? when? why?

Photo by J. Harrington

Absent any rational approach to managing where and how we live and get around, we strongly recommend participating in local government and attendance at precinct caucuses. It's barely better than undergoing root canal, but it seems to be all we have if we hope to maintain the facade we're at least nominally a democracy.

                     Developing the Land

By Stephen Behrendt

For six nights now the cries have sounded in the pasture:

coyote voices fluting across the greening rise to the east

where the deer have almost ceased to pass

now that the developers have carved up yet another section,

filled another space with spars and studs, concrete, runoff.

Five years ago you saw two spotted fawns rise

for the first time from brome where brick mailboxes will stand;

only three years past came great horned owls

who raised two squeaking, downy owlets

that perished in the traffic, skimming too low across the road

behind some swift, more fortunate cottontail.

It was on an August afternoon that you drove in,

curling down our long gravel drive past pasture and creek,

that you saw, flickering at the edge of your sight,

three mounted Indians, motionless in the paused breeze,

who vanished when you turned your head.

We have felt the presence on this land of others,

of some who paused here, some who passed, who have left

in the thick clay shards and splinters of themselves that we dig up,

turn up with spade and tine when we garden or bury our animals;

their voices whisper on moonless nights in the back pasture hollow

where the horses snort and nicker, wary with alarm.

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

Circling round a season winding down

In an effort to wrap up our Christmas shopping (ha!?), we traveled a large North-South loop through the Eastern edge of the Twin Cities metro area this morning. Among other things, it reminded us of how much we've come to enjoy living where we do. For the most part, the country around us is a mix of wood lots, small farms (plus the Kelley Land and Cattle Company), villages, small towns and moderate sized cities. And then there's Woodbury, what can we say?

this pair of bald eagles were perched on Kelley Land, Dec. 2015

Photo by J. Harrington

Traveling our loop, at one point we noticed a very large flock, or several smaller flocks,  of turkeys pecking and scratching through a corn field somewhere around Bayport or Lakeland. Later, we saw numbers of geese hanging sitting  and standing around what used to be open water on Lake Elmo. Alas, we also saw a small flock of crows feeding on a road-killed whitetail somewhere in Northern Washington County.

There are other noteworthy signs of the hardy, intrepid, foolish? wildlife that inhabit the region. Ice anglers, and their portable ice houses, have sprouted on several smaller lakes, including Moody Lake in Chisago Lake Township and Bone Lake in Scandia.

Sigurd is our symbol of a North Country Christmas spirit

Photo by J. Harrington

Some of the harvested corn fields were bi- and tri- and di-sected with deer tracks. Others were fringed by snowmobile tracks. A few cornfields haven't yet been harvested. Increasing snow cover and the forecast cold spell will, no doubt, cause some of the remaining waterfowl to move on further South as food and open water gradually disappear. Actually, more farm fields are disappearing, "permanently," as farms are sold and subdivided. We saw a fair amount of evidence of that kind of disappearance too. The housing market is obviously heating up despite the cooling weather.

Remember Joni Mitchell's haunting line from her [1969] song "Big Yellow Taxi?"

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone 

We find ourselves wondering if the illustrious and highly talented Ms. Mitchell had, perchance, read Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America [1967, written 1961] before she wrote "Taxi." As far as we know, Ms. Mitchell never produced an entire Christmas album, although she often provided us with the "fresh truth of children."

Noel

Anne Porter

When snow is shaken
From the balsam trees
And they’re cut down 
And brought into our houses 

When clustered sparks 
Of many-colored fire
Appear at night 
In ordinary windows 

We hear and sing
The customary carols 

They bring us ragged miracles
And hay and candles 
And flowering weeds of poetry
That are loved all the more
Because they are so common 

But there are carols
That carry phrases 
Of the haunting music
Of the other world 
A music wild and dangerous
As a prophet’s message 

Or the fresh truth of children
Who though they come to us
From our own bodies 
Are altogether new
With their small limbs
And birdlike voices 

They look at us
With their clear eyes 
And ask the piercing questions 
God alone can answer.

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

Freedom's just another...

The sun is shining, birds are singing, fawns are scampering, goslings are waddling. It's Summertime and, at least for the moment, the livin' is easy. It was a time, in many ways like the present, when I was in the audience at Janis Joplin's last concert, at Harvard Stadium. Of course, we didn't know at the time it was going to be her last concert. Probably just as well or the crowd would have been even bigger and more rowdy. Here's a link to her setlist that evening.

I mention that concert because it's again Summertime, almost 50 years later. When I was there, the Charles River Basin was infamous for its pollution. In 1972, the Federal Clean Water Act was passed by Congress and signed by the President. Now. many years later, Boston's (and Cambridge's) combined sewer overflows are much better managed, to the point that serious studies are underway to establish the feasibility of a swimming facility in the Basin. Before I left Boston for Minnesota, a standing joke was that, if one fell into the Charles, they'd have to rush you to the hospital for a tetanus shot.

Mississippi River, Stone Arch Bridge

Photo by J. Harrington

Minnesota's Twin Cities resource, comparable to Boston's Charles River Basin, is the Mississippi River, which already has several beaches. Minneapolis is now looking at redevelopment of the Upper Harbor, without consideration of swimming. In light of the huge investment that's been made by the federal and state governments, plus the Metropolitan Area and the cities of Minneapolis, St. Paul and South St. Paul to control combined sewer overflows to the river and improve the quality of the wastewater discharge from the Metro Treatment Plant at Pig's Eye, I hope those planning for the river's use include more opportunities for recreation on and in the water.

We too often get locked into our thinking about natural resources. Lake Mille Lacs, long know for its walleye fishery, has recently been "ranked No. 1 bass lake in the nation." Will resorts continue to grasp at history or take advantage of future opportunities? Think about how polluted water throughout Minnesota's agricultural regions plays out with those who would consider moving there and starting a business. Is someone from Morris or Wilmar going to head to "The Cities" for swimming as well as shopping? Or, would the whole package work better if small town living were combined with a quality environment. If Boston, Minneapolis and St. Paul can clean up their historic messes and enjoy thriving economies in part because of the investments required, what does that tell those living in greater Minnesota about the value of water resources for more than growing corn and soybeans.

Mississippi River near Lake Pepin

Photo by J. Harrington

Let me bring this back to the music of my youth and another Joplin classic, perhaps my favorite, Me and Bobby Mcgee, with Kris Kristofferson's incomparable lyrics for July 4th, Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. Think about it, please.

A Nation’s Strength

William Ralph Emerson

What makes a nation’s pillars high
And its foundations strong?
What makes it mighty to defy
The foes that round it throng?

It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand
Go down in battle shock;
Its shafts are laid on sinking sand,
Not on abiding rock.

Is it the sword? Ask the red dust
Of empires passed away;
The blood has turned their stones to rust,
Their glory to decay.

And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown
Has seemed to nations sweet;
But God has struck its luster down
In ashes at his feet.

Not gold but only men can make
A people great and strong;
Men who for truth and honor’s sake
Stand fast and suffer long.

Brave men who work while others sleep,
Who dare while others fly...
They build a nation’s pillars deep
And lift them to the sky.

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

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. 

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

When do the Lynx get their own (new) arena?

If you read this blog with any regularity, you may have figured out that I'm not a huge sports fan. Very recently, however, several sports related events have occurred that overlap with some of the topics that interest me, topics like equity and development. First, let me congratulate the Lynx on their third championship in the past five years. Here's some background on how that compares:

• Minnesota Twins Season Histories
• Minnesota Vikings Season Histories
• Minnesota Wild Season Histories
• Minnesota Timberwolves Season Histories
• Minnesota Lynx Season Histories

World Championships

• Twins: two (1991, 1987)
• Vikings: zero for four
• Wild: zero for one
• Timberwolves: zero for one
• Lynx: three out of five

Minneapolis, home to the Twins, Vikings, Timberwolves and Lynx

Photo by J. Harrington

New Stadium / Arena

• Vikings: under construction
• Twins: 2010
• Wild: 2000
• Timberwolves: 1990
• Lynx: never

Far be it from me to suggest that professional sports are sexist to the point of being misogynistic (hah!) but with all the comparative losers on the men's teams, it seems that Title IX needs to be expanded to cover public financing / subsidies for stadia and arenas. [UPDATE: we should be able to do better than this for our only real winners!]

Tao in the Yankee Stadium Bleachers

By John Updike

Distance brings proportion. From here

the populated tiers

as much as players seem part of the show:

a constructed stage beast, three folds of Dante’s rose,

or a Chinese military hat

cunningly chased with bodies.

“Falling from his chariot, a drunk man is unhurt

because his soul is intact. Not knowing his fall,

he is unastonished, he is invulnerable.”

So, too, the “pure man”—“pure”

in the sense of undisturbed water.

“It is not necessary to seek out

a wasteland, swamp, or thicket.”

The opposing pitcher’s pertinent hesitations,

the sky, this meadow, Mantle’s thick baked neck,

the old men who in the changing rosters see

a personal mutability,

green slats, wet stone are all to me

as when an emperor commands

a performance with a gesture of his eyes.

“No king on his throne has the joy of the dead,”

the skull told Chuang-tzu.

The thought of death is peppermint to you

when games begin with patriotic song

and a democratic sun beats broadly down.

The Inner Journey seems unjudgeably long

when small boys purchase cups of ice

and, distant as a paradise,

experts, passionate and deft,

hold motionless while Berra flies to left.

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

How to share a vision

Last night, in preparation for tonight's super moon eclipse, I reread my crib sheet on how to photograph the moon. Then I took my camera and tried to follow the instructions. I had previously tried to get decent pictures of the moon and had a long string of failures. This time I was determined to succeed or know the specific reason why. It tuns out that one of my biggest sources of prior failures was skipping over some basic instructions on how to use my camera because "I didn't need to know that right then." I never went back to fill in the missing pieces of fundamental knowledge until yesterday. Here are the results (not perfect, but better than anything I'd previously accomplished):

"full" moon

Photo by J. Harrington

With that successful "planning" effort behind me, and the Pontiff's recent visit in mind, plus the adoption by the United Nations of "Sustainable Development Goals," I started thinking about Minnesota's current successes in sustainability, or lack thereof. Up north, mining and forestry are in serious doldrums and we're offering public subsidies that put more value in shareholders and executive pockets than jobs on Minnesota payrolls. On Minnesota's western and southern boundaries, bumper crops are likely to yield, at best, a break even year for agriculture. But, the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area is like The Little Engine That Could, pulling the state's economy ahead. Right? Yet we see more and more stories about racial inequity, economic disparity keeps growing and we can anticipate that it will be decades before water quality standards are met through the state, if they ever are. Then, to top all of that off, we have someone like K. Kersten offering commentary to the effect of About the Met Council's stamp on housing: Do we really want to live like this? and far-sighted leaders like Peter Bell quitting in a huff over a public citizen committee devoting too much time to naming rights for a Minneapolis Lake. (How much time do you suppose the Vikings deveoted to getting naming rights to their subsidized playground?) It all reminds me of the saying about "any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a real carpenter to build one" (Thank you Speaker Rayburn). At least we haven't yet seen a proposal to put them up for sale the way state parks in Wisconsin are headed under that state's anti-labor, anti-progress leadership.

Minnesota Design Team's "Shared Vision" graphic

Now other conservative crazies have forced a premature departure of the Speaker of the House, leaving the administration to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent. Let me make this as clear as I can. I believe that, in a democracy, the common good is more than the aggregation of what's good for each individual. The first Nobel Prize won by a women in Economics was awarded for creative thinking to that effect, about creating value with and managing the commons. I wonder if any of the members of the Citizens League Metropolitan Council Task Force are familiar with Elinore Ostrum's work (much of which is based on managing water supplies). I also wonder how many, if any, of those members have knowledge of or experience with integrative design and the story of place. I know Minnesota has talented design leaders, many of who have been involved with the Minnesota Design Team. Maybe that team could visit the Task Force and offer some suggestions based on their experience with multitudes of Minnesota communties facing issues similar to those faced by the Legislature, the Council, and the League's Task Force.

horse vision

Julian Talamantez Brolaski

clock reads 7 at all hours
juncos make selves known in the snow
this time dawdling
I write in horse, but I see in athabascan
when it’s time for elevensies, the clock reads 7
what telling fortune therewith
time is a thing that gets spent, like youth, $ and desire
n/t so lovely as a cardinal against the snow
or a tree w/ fruit on it
by the time I have ceased to write this
it will already be 7
adjourned to the park
n/thing will come of n/t
starfish creaked in the wood
lurid amulet    w/ a fish onnit
sign reads SEVEN all day & at all hours
the dogs curse each other from afar
in dog language
when did the word corrupt begin to take on a moral cast?
horses see in wide angle, and have a much wider periphery than humans,
but with a blind spot in the very center
so if you want to be sympathetic to a horse say sucks
about those blinders
or if you want to make fun of a horse, tell them
they can’t even see whats in front of their face

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