It's the season of thunderstorms, heat and humidity. Butterfly weed is in bloom. Day lilies have started to come into flower, something like a couple of weeks later than I remember from years past. Sheep sorrel has added a reddish tinge to some road sides and disturbed fields. June is about to become July. Days are already about two minutes shorter than a week ago at the solstice. We've started to enjoy this year's occasional sightings of turkey poults and whitetail fawns.
Last week we ordered something unusual, buckthorn honey. It's the first time I recall seeing any beneficial use from this invasive species. There's also a relatively recent report that fungus / fungi can help provide biological control of buckthorn. It seems to me such an approach would be far preferable to the use of chemical herbicides. Finding or creating additional beneficial uses might also lead to better management decisions. I'm far from an expert, but it seems a goal of eradication of buckthorn in Minnesota may be an unrealistic goal.
I was pleased to read that Minnesota's environmental perspective(?) is becoming more holistic. We no longer have "rough [trash] fish" in this state. Even the much maligned carp is now a “regulated invasive species.”
The adjustments to how we practice environmental stewardship are, I believe, critically important because our planetary environment currently is changing at rates faster than historic evolution reflects. We are also a much more significant factor in creating planetary changes than ever before. It's past time we learned how to do it right.
On the top of Mount Pisgah, on the western slope of the Mayacamas, there’s a madrone tree that’s half-burned from the fires, half-alive from nature’s need to propagate. One side of her is black ash and at her root is what looks like a cavity that was hollowed out by flame. On the other side, silvery green broadleaf shoots ascend toward the winter light and her bark is a cross between a bay horse and a chestnut horse, red and velvety like the animal’s neck she resembles. I have been staring at the tree for a long time now. I am reminded of the righteousness I had before the scorch of time. I miss who I was. I miss who we all were, before we were this: half alive to the brightening sky, half dead already. I place my hand on the unscarred bark that is cool and unsullied, and because I cannot apologize to the tree, to my own self I say, I am sorry. I am sorry I have been so reckless with your life.
********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind
to each other while you can.
Some leaf bud scales have dropped. Our day lilies are a couple of inches tall. A few flowers have appeared in the front flower bed. Hints of leaves-to-be have appeared on the lilac bushes. Spring is getting sprung. This morning, in the dark early, we got about an inch of snow. Friday the wind chill was in the low teens. Such is Spring in our North Country.
The local high temperature forecast for Earth Day is 85℉, which will be about 40 ℉ higher than this weekend's highs. Clearly, the flora and fauna of our North Country have to be highly adaptable, resilient and regenerative. That includes us Homo saps. We'll head north or south, east or west, depending on the extant of the glacial and oceanic coverage, as the climate responds to our abuse of Earth's gifts.
If I had one wish that the Earth Fairies could grant me for Earth Day this year, it would be that everyone, everywhere, read, remember, adopt the philosophy and follow the guidance of Braiding Sweetgrass and The Serviceberry. My intent to celebrate Earth Day is to get out to somewhere near the St. Croix River, park my butt, be quiet, and pay attention to my surroundings. I'll hope to experience some awe and remember to feel gratitude for living in a basically beautiful region that I keep taking for granted because it's there every day.
May you enjoy the week and make every day an Earth Day.
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.
Yesterday was a Red Flag day and not just because it was Mother's Day! Low humidity, winds gusting into the low thirties mph, plus no precipitation for a week or so raised the grass fire danger over much of the state. We get this morning off and the Red Flag returns at noon for the afternoon and evening. Please keep your fingers crossed that all those exposed to danger and destruction stay safe. These days that includes about all of US and most other Earthlings, doesn't it?
Have you noticed that many librarians are moving 1984 and Brave New World from the fiction to the nonfiction section? That's disheartening, to put it mildly. Although the term Anthropocene has been rejected as a new geological epoch, I think there's a more hopeful future for the term and those living during it. It will become known as the period in which humans finally became wise enough to stop destroying the life support systems of their home planet. This assessment is based on a growing number of books that flag intelligent and successful environmental restoration movements growing world-wide. Here's a few titles for your consideration:
I'm rereading the third title, almost finished each of the first two, and looking forward to getting a copy of the fourth next month as a gift. To paraphrase from the opening of the original Star Wars crawl: "A long time ago inon a galaxyplanet far, far away [in time]...." the First People(s) believed Earth a sacred part of the Great Mystery. If you're old enough, you'll recognize where we borrowed this from: "Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear."
I don't know about you, but I think it'd be great if we all stopped trying to burn up our home planet and dedicated more to tending what's left and restoring what we've trashed. Otherwise, we won't be the ancestors our children and theirs needed.
On the top of Mount Pisgah, on the western slope of the Mayacamas, there’s a madrone tree that’s half-burned from the fires, half-alive from nature’s need to propagate. One side of her is black ash and at her root is what looks like a cavity that was hollowed out by flame. On the other side, silvery green broadleaf shoots ascend toward the winter light and her bark is a cross between a bay horse and a chestnut horse, red and velvety like the animal’s neck she resembles. I have been staring at the tree for a long time now. I am reminded of the righteousness I had before the scorch of time. I miss who I was. I miss who we all were, before we were this: half alive to the brightening sky, half dead already. I place my hand on the unscarred bark that is cool and unsullied, and because I cannot apologize to the tree, to my own self I say, I am sorry. I am sorry I have been so reckless with your life.
********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind
to each other while you can.
At least we’re not in a tent somewhere camping. Another rainy day in Minnesota is doing wonders for the plants and mosquitos but not so much for many mammals. During one dog walk today, I had seven mosquitos simultaneously on the back of my left hand. I did a variant on the tale of the Brave Little Tailor and killed Seven with One Blow. Don’t both to ask if I felt guilty. If the dragonflies had been doing their jobs and feeding their faces, I wouldn’t have had that opportunity.
At least there’s several stacks of good books to read or reread and that’s what I’m doing when not out walking the dogs and getting bit by bugs. I just hope none of the mosquitos are carrying H5N1 virus nor anything like it. Part of my childhood occurred before the polio vaccine was approved. I had hoped that pandemics were behind US thanks to Dr. Salk. But then the number of those who don’t believe in vaccinations or science grew and grew. In case you’re among those who do believe in science, here’s a decent resource on herd immunity. That brings us to what I’d like to ponder about today, on the day we remember and memorialize those who served the whole country and are no longer with US.
What if science invented a vaccine that prevented war and supported peace. Would we allow people to claim “It’s against my religion” and not get vaccinated? Is there a herd immunity that prevents war? The question becomes more important when a candidate for president in the upcoming election claims there will be some sort of bloodbath if he loses. Would it be appropriate to require all candidates and appointees to public office to get such a vaccine if it existed? What about requiring it for any who serve in the United Nations? Would getting such a vaccine be equivalent to unilateral disarmament?
I don’t know the answers to the questions I’ve raised. I raise them because, with the growing levels of fractiousness and frictions in this country, and the increasing availability of artificial intelligence without agreed upon parameters for how it may be used and by whom for what, we as a society and a country and a collection of communities are going to be facing issues as complex as those mentioned above and we are not in a good position to develop answers, let alone agreement on them. I hope we’re not headed to even more heartbreaking Memorial Days ahead, when we may look back on a day like today as one of the good old days.
Day Beginning with Seeing the International Space Station and a Full Moon Over the Gulf of Mexico and All Its Invisible Fishes
None of this had to happen. Not Florida. Not the ibis’s beak. Not water. Not the horseshoe crab’s empty body and not the living starfish. Evolution might have turned left at the corner and gone down another street entirely. The asteroid might have missed. The seams of limestone need not have been susceptible to sand and mangroves. The radio might have found a different music. The hips of one man and the hips of another might have stood beside each other on a bus in Aleppo and recognized themselves as long-lost brothers. The key could have broken off in the lock and the nail-can refused its lid. I might have been the fish the brown pelican swallowed. You might have been the way the moon kept not setting long after we thought it would, long after the sun was catching inside the low wave curls coming in at a certain angle. The light might not have been eaten again by its moving. If the unbearable were not weightless we might yet buckle under the grief of what hasn’t changed yet. Across the world a man pulls a woman from the water from which the leapt-from overfilled boat has entirely vanished. From the water pulls one child, another. Both are living and both will continue to live. This did not have to happen. No part of this had to happen.
—2016
********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind
to each other while you can.
One can but presume the same approach would apply to MAGA protests surrounding the 2024 election. Does anyone know if liberals have started organizing people’s posses yet? Can you tell my mood today?
Blue Marble Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring
I’m fed up with the malicious stupidity practiced by the human animal. Also from recent issues of The Guardian:
These articles can and should be stacked up against a definition of sustainability provided by Donella Meadows in February, 1995:
Humankind has the ability to achieve sustainable development — to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
In my own mind I supplement that official definition of sustainability with Herman Daly’s clear and undeniable explication of what it means in physical terms:
1. Renewable resources shall not be used faster than they can regenerate.
2. Pollution and wastes shall not be put into the environment faster than the environment can recycle them or render them harmless.
3. Nonrenewable resources shall not be used faster than renewable substitutes (used sustainably) can be develo ped.
By those conditions there’s not a nation, a company, a city, a farm, or a household on earth that is sustainable. Virtually every major fishery in the world violates condition 1. The world economy as a whole is violating condition 2 by putting out carbon dioxide 60-80% faster than the atmosphere can recycle it. But to make things worse, I would add two more sustainability conditions that I think are obvious.
4. The human population and the physical capital plant have to be kept at levels low enough to allow the first 3 conditions to be met.
5. The previous 4 conditions have to be met through processes that are democratic and equitable enough that people will stand for them.
Sustainability means all that to me and more, it means a complete vision of the world I want to work for and live in. It contains components of spirituality, of community, of decentralization, of a complete rethinking of the ways we use our time, define our jobs, and bestow power upon governments and corporations.
When was the last time you saw a news story addressing any of the five points? How about the “all that and more....?” Instead, we seem determined to keep rearranging the deck chairs as our only ship, spaceship Earth, continues to sink. Have I made it clear why my mood is what it is? One day very soon we’ll touch on what kinds of visions may help patch the leaks.
As I hope you know already, April is National Poetry Month. If you’re a repeated reader of this blog, you may have noted that I’m a trout fisher. That combination makes me absolutely delighted to share the following from the Minnesota Trout Unlimited monthly newsletter that arrived in my email inbox this morning:
The Last Cast It's National Poetry Month and we're looking for your favorite and original flyfishing poems to share! Submit yours here. Our longtime Trout Unlimited Minnesota print newsletter contributor Larry Gavin shared this recording of himself reading Vespers: Pine Creek with us. Enjoy!
I’ve been a member of TU for decades and consider the recognition of National Poetry Month by the state council of a national cold water conservation organization to be one of the healthier developments since the first Earth Day in 1970. Speaking of which, I hope you already have on your calendar that Earth Day is April 22. What are you planning to do to honor and celebrate it this year?
In addition to touting (no, I didn’t unintentionally drop the “r”) TU and Earth Day, as part of NPM I bring to your attention Larry Garvin’s A Fragile Shelter, a copy of which sits on one of my bookshelves. It was published locally by Red Dragonfly Press. Try it, you’ll like it, I bet. Here’s a sample of his work:
Today's posting will be short and sort'a sweet and sort'a not so. I’m wishing there was a more positive way to look at a couple of factors listed below, but so far I’ve not figured one out.
First, please consider the graphics at this link. (The planetary boundaries concept presents a set of nine planetary boundaries within which humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations to come.) If you understand the concept of a trends extended scenario, it’s fairly easy to see we’re headed in a very wrong direction.
Second, please realize that Limits to Growth was published fifty years ago last year. For the most part, it’s proven to be dismayingly accurate.
Third, last year the book Earth for All was published. An executive summary can be found here. It pretty much picks up where Limits left off. We have two choices as a species and are highly probable to not like the consequences, and may not survive, if we choose wrong and continue business as usual, (Paris Agreement ring a bell?).
On the one hand, I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it would take for world powers to actually address existential issues since, excepting ozone, our track record isn’t great. On the other hand the future isn’t some thing that awaits US, it’s something each of US creates with every one of our daily actions, every single day. In that case, since next month there’s a major effort to get conversations going about how to create a worldwide sustainable economy, I’m going to participate in at least some of those conversations. The Hobson’s Choice is, if I don’t, I forfeit the future to those who fail to value it.
As I was rereading the first chapter of Joy Harjo’s Catching the Light this morning, my day was brightened by this paragraph:
The traditional ways and rituals of all of Earth’s peoples are kept in containers of poetry, song, and story. It is how we know who we are, where we are coming from and who we are becoming.
Those thoughts became a great lead-in to an article in today’s Daily Yonder which we’re republishing below. Those who would ban books be damned!! They would keep us from knowing who we are.
A ‘Little Town Poets Society,’ and the Woman Behind It
by Presley West, The Daily Yonder May 24, 2023
Growing up in Scott County, Tennessee, Cheyanne Leonardo's passion for poetry and the arts made her feel like a bit of an outsider.
"It's hard growing up and feeling different, feeling like no one is interested in the same things as you are … I definitely felt like a weirdo. But I kind of liked it, in a way, and I tried to make it my super power."
Community members gather for a Little Town Poets Society meeting. (Photo courtesy of Cheyanne Leonardo)
"Little Town Poet" Cheyanne Leonardo. (Photo courtesy of Leonardo)
Today, her poetry – and gift for sharing it with others – has become just that. In the past three years, Cheyanne has published three poetry collections, cultivated a thriving group of local poets, launched a local poetry anthology that's received more than 100 submissions, and assumed a leadership role in a recently formed nonprofit working to advance arts in the community.
Though she is now doing what she considers her life's work, it happened by accident.
Only three years ago, Cheyanne was living in Stuttgart, Germany, at the tail end of a decade-long odyssey of boarding school, graduate school, traveling, and living abroad, which she started when she first left home at fourteen. Fluent in French and German after extensive travel in Europe and a graduate degree in modern language and literature, she taught English for two years before the Covid pandemic hit Germany. In the face of so much uncertainty, homesickness — and a chance at a love she’d left behind — brought her home.
"If I'm perfectly honest, the reason that I came home was because I'm a romantic. I was waiting for the right time to be with someone here in our hometown," she said. "When I was faced with the possibility of the imminent death of all my loved ones, I thought, okay."
So she moved home, rented a small apartment behind her old childhood dance studio, and began working as a barista. She wrote poems to process her feelings about her time abroad, her journey home, and everything in between. Those poems eventually became the foundation for her debut poetry collection, More Than Metaphor, published in the summer of 2021.
Birth of the Little Town Poets Society
What began as a personal exploration of her feelings became a way to connect with her community more deeply than she ever had before. Surprised by how much people connected with her work, and humbled by the encouragement she received from friends, family, and strangers while selling her work at the coffee shop, she decided to start a free weekly poetry class.
"So, I am starting a club. And everyone is invited," she wrote on Facebook. "The LITTLE TOWN POETS SOCIETY will be a place for YOU – to join me in creating poetry and art of your very own."
Little Town Poets Society meetings, like the one pictured above, started as weekly free poetry classes taught by Leonardo.
Despite early fears that no one would show up or care, eleven people – ranging from teens to seniors in their seventies – showed up to Little Town Poets Society's first meeting at the coffee shop. And they've continued to show up since, sharing their work, forming unexpected friendships, and opening up about their feelings.
"More than once, a grown man has cried at Poets Society, which I feel is progress," she said.
The group has been transformative for Whitney Swain. "The little community that [Cheyanne] has created has opened a world of possibilities that I didn't know would exist for me," said Whitney, who is studying to become a licensed counselor. "She gave me space to find an artistic voice that I did not know I had."
A discussion at the Little Town Poets Society.
Weeks after launching Little Town Poets Society in the fall of 2022, a couple of friends and family approached Cheyanne with an idea to start a nonprofit arts organization, a moment she remembers as a "sign that everything was moving in the right direction."
Friends made through the Little Town Poets Society. (Photos courtesy of Leonardo)
"When I started out, I was kind of hoping it would evolve into something like that."
Today, she serves as Director of Literary Arts for that nonprofit — the Appalachian Society of the Arts — which recently hosted its first fundraiser for a Budding Artist scholarship fund and is planning free and low-cost classes in music, photography, acting, and crafting.
Supporting access to the arts and emerging artists from Scott County has been incredibly meaningful for Cheyanne. "I was dissuaded from pursuing [the arts] for so long because they're “not valuable.” And that's the exact thing I'm trying to break — this notion that it's not helpful or doesn't contribute. Because [with] what I've done in the last two years with poetry alone, I've seen more of a positive impact in terms of other people's lives and the world, that I've been able to do, than anything else ever."
The Hometown Poems Project
Her current project, "Hometown Poems," is an example of that. It’s a local anthology she created for residents of Scott, McCreary, and surrounding counties that will benefit the Appalachian Society of the Arts. She’s received poetry, photo, and drawing submissions from over 100 residents. "The youngest person who submitted is four years old, and the oldest is in his 80s. So we've got the whole range of life," she said.
She’s also writing, with her current work focused on spirituality. "I'm always a romantic. So there's always love in there as well," she said. "But I like the idea that everybody has a little piece of the divine in them, whatever their name for that is. And for me, poetry is what gets me in touch with it."
Personally, Cheyanne is living happily with her partner — the one who inspired her journey home — and their dog and cat. She quit her barista job to write poetry full time and has wholeheartedly embraced her identity as a Little Town Poet. "I hope to continue representing rural places, especially in Appalachia, and inspiring people to represent themselves.”
While she hasn't ruled out a future odyssey — “there's part of me that still fantasizes about running away and being alive somewhere else." — she's putting down roots for now.
"I really like being here right now … growing up, I felt like, kind of an outcast. So all of a sudden, it's like I'm really active in the community, and I like it. I feel like I'm making a difference, and that is what matters to me."
This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind
to each other while you can.
That’s our home planet pictured above. The only one we have. It’s also our “Planet B,” as in there is no place we can move to if we burn down our house. From Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, through the Silent Spring of Rachel Carson, to the multitude of reports from the IPCC on climate disruption, we have thus far failed to sufficiently respect and respond to the guidance of those who would lead us to a sustainable future.
One of the "rules of thumb” I learned long ago goes something like “the proper definition of a problem is half the solution..” I continue to fail to understand why we continue to fail to follow the precautionary principle or even acknowledge the truth of Pogo’s observation from years ago:
Did Pogo get it wrong? I don’t think so. Another old saying I remember my mother using to describe me is “too smart for his own good.” That may well be true of all of us who don’t have enough smarts to get out of our own way and to stop choosing to follow those who place their best individual interest ahead of our collective good. No, I’m not promoting Ayn Rand. Why is it, do you think, that more of us aren’t promoting Elinor Ostrum’s work about managing our commons?
Or, you could read Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. If you’ve read it once, reread it. If you want or need something with pictures, try Bimaadiziwin Nibi - Water is Life. Why? Look again at Earthrise. That gray, lifeless area at the picture’s lower section is the moon, which is lifeless as far as we’ve been able to .tell. It’s also pretty much waterless. Have you heard about desertification? Hard to picture after the local winter we’ve had but Minnesota (and California) are undergoing a really tough solution to their recent droughts. Our weather is getting more volatile as we disrupt our climate. Now, go back and reread the first paragraph in today’s posting. How soon do you think you could move to Mars? Does that really seem like a better idea than restoring Earth?
Remember the sky that you were born under, know each of the star’s stories. Remember the moon, know who she is. Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the strongest point of time. Remember sundown and the giving away to night. Remember your birth, how your mother struggled to give you form and breath. You are evidence of her life, and her mother’s, and hers. Remember your father. He is your life, also. Remember the earth whose skin you are: red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth brown earth, we are earth. Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them, listen to them. They are alive poems. Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the origin of this universe. Remember you are all people and all people are you. Remember you are this universe and this universe is you. Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you. Remember language comes from this. Remember the dance language is, that life is. Remember.
Almost every Spring I’m surprised by how long it takes for the winter’s accumulation of snow to finally melt. The field behind the house is still mostly snow-covered. Bare ground is emerging and extending southward from the south-facing ridge along the northern edge of the field. The snow is also melting from the top down or bottom up, or both, but remains inches deep and more where it’s drifted or been blown or shoveled.
The ditches on the west side of the road are mostly clear of snow which remains covering the ground in the woods beyond the road and on the neighbor’s yard on the eastern edge of the road. If the heat wave(?) forecast for midweek doesn’t bring our spring thaw to an end, I’ll be here sputtering come Thursday or Friday. Otherwise, I’ll probably commenting that “It’s about time” we got to enjoy bare ground again.
Joni Mitchell has a several lines from the refrain of her great hit Big Yellow Taxi that go like this:
Don't it always seem to go That you don't know what you've got Till it's gone
I find myself wondering if that’s an evolutionary flaw in the human species and, if so, is it one that could be corrected through education or some form of behavioral conditioning. It would be quite unfortunate if we don’t know that we’re totally dependent on ecosystem services for our life support systems (clean air and water at a minimum and food that doesn’t poison us) until they’re gone because we’ve tipped the climate into a literal hell on earth; polluted all the potable water; and unraveled biodiversity into a human monoculture that’s then doomed.
April is Earth month. I don’t particularly care for this year’s theme (Invest in Our Planet) because it concedes too much to capitalism. (See Ecocide – Kill The Corporation Before It Kills Us). April 22 is Earth Day. I really wish we had many more politicians today like those who brought us the first Earth Day, such as Senator Gaylord Nelson and Congressman Pete McCloskey.
The ultimate test of man’s conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard. ~ Gaylord Nelson
Last night we had ten or twelve deer in the backyard. I believe that’s a record although I admit not staying awake nights to observe. We may be finished with below freezing temperatures until next autumn, but in the North Country, that’s not a safe bet even though an 80℉ high, or thereabouts, daytime temperature has crept into next week’s forecast. (If you can’t see all the deer, try clicking on the picture to enlarge it. ymmv)
We hope that, as the snow melts and things warm, and green, up, the deer will return to their usual browsing and leave our lilac and forsythia bushes alone. The Better Half believes that some of the horde are grazing on our feral oregano. Based on where they’ve been feeding the past few days, she’s probably correct.
Sunday marks a return of life and that’s about how I’m feeling at the moment. It’ll take a few days to shake of the rest of winter’s dreary, dead dregs, but we’re feeling more optimistic than we did at the beginning of the week, although for the time being that’s not really saying much.
In honor of Easter weekend, we want to share a couple of interesting online resources we found this morning:
The American Communities Project (an unprecedented growing attempt to understand the subtleties and complexities of the United States as the country reimagines its future and its place in the world)
Those three discoveries, along with some other happenings this week, are helping me to again believe that there may well be hope for US and the rest of the Earth’s inhabitants. That assessment seems timely.
Lent gathers up her cloak of sombre shading In her reluctant hands. Her beauty heightens, fairest in its fading, As pensively she stands Awaiting Easter’s benediction falling, Like silver stars at night, Before she can obey the summons calling Her to her upward flight, Awaiting Easter’s wings that she must borrow Ere she can hope to fly— Those glorious wings that we shall see to-morrow Against the far, blue sky. Has not the purple of her vesture’s lining Brought calm and rest to all? Has her dark robe had naught of golden shining Been naught but pleasure’s pall? Who knows? Perhaps when to the world returning In youth’s light joyousness, We’ll wear some rarer jewels we found burning In Lent’s black-bordered dress. So hand in hand with fitful March she lingers To beg the crowning grace Of lifting with her pure and holy fingers The veil from April’s face. Sweet, rosy April—laughing, sighing, waiting Until the gateway swings, And she and Lent can kiss between the grating Of Easter’s tissue wings. Too brief the bliss—the parting comes with sorrow. Good-bye dear Lent, good-bye! We’ll watch your fading wings outlined to-morrow Against the far blue sky.
********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind
to each other while you can.
The melting from today’s warm temperatures was limited because there was no sun intensity. In fact, there was almost no sun at all. Township roads are really icy from the melt refreezing. But we’ll take it because it’s better than a polar vortex, right?
The dogs appreciate the warmer air and the melting because it’s less cold on their feet and the melt and moisture brings lots of different smells. My observation is that our two dogs would rather sniff than walk most of the time.
I’ve been reading and thinking about what’s going on in the world and what it may all lead to. One book is by Rob Hopkins, the fellow who started Transition Towns in England. It’s titled From What Is to What If. Some of the research he cites is even more concerning than a daily social media doom scroll and scan of each day’s headlines. The amount of time we’re spending looking at screens, and their content, is diminishing our attention spans and creative thinking capacity. Maybe AI will solve that?
Another book is The Systems View of Life, A Unifying Vision by Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi. It begins with a very helpful summary of scientific thinking starting about 1500. I suspect that the unifying vision part becomes a grand synthesis that pulls together and makes some sense of the disparate theories in the hard and soft sciences which have underlain world views for centuries. It makes me wonder if there’s any hope we’ll ever elect politicians with similar ambitions: synthesizing solutions rather than pursuing win-lose gambits.
That’s it for today. I’m trying to wean myself from spending too much time staring at a screen and haven’t yet considered drafting this with pen and paper before I type it up but that’s a possibility. Meanwhile, enjoy today’s poem.
Today’s (and yesterday’s) local weather will set a baseline for some of us that clearly demonstrates the validity of William McDonough’s assertion that “Here's where redesign begins in earnest, where we stop trying to be less bad and we start figuring out how to be good.” If it’s not clear to you, being less cold is not the same as being warm. The remainder of this week, temperatures will be less cold than yesterday and today, but won’t warm enough to begin to thaw, let alone hot enough to melt. I am so looking forward to warm weather instead of these dangerous, bad, cold below zero days. (I think the dogs agree with me although the Better Half is as strongly opposed to “too hot” as I am to “too cold.”) Meanwhile, in my olld home town of Boston, it’s currently in the mid 40s. I come by my intolerance honestly.
As we’ve noted elsewhere, our local temperatures normally get above freezing about the same time we reach eleven hours of daylight, during the last few days of February. Four weeks from now we should begin to enter mud season, except on our driveway, which probably will be thawing and melting for most of March. I’ll probably be grumping about the slippery ice covering the drive unless we get a major melt or I get creative with the tractor and the backblade. The dogs don’t seem to care much about ice or mud because neither freezes their paws the way this morning’s seven below did. I don’t seem to be able to convince them to spend less time sniffing when it gets this cold and we’ve tried and failed to get them to wear boots. C’mon Spring, hurry fast!
We may get some more really cold days before meteorological spring (March 1) or astronomical spring (March 20) arrive, but I’m going to proceed with the Celtic first celebration of spring on February 1 and 2, by honoring Imbolc.
Although we would think of Imbolc as being in the midst of Winter, it represents in fact the first of a trio of Spring celebrations, since it is the time of the first appearance of the snowdrop, and of the melting of the snows and the clearing of the debris of Winter. It is a time when we sense the first glimmer of Spring, and when the lambs are born. In the Druid tradition it is a gentle, beautiful festival in which the Mother Goddess is honoured with eight candles rising out of the water at the centre of the ceremonial circle.
As the dark, cold morning gives way to light, And the world shows its face dazzling in her nakedness, So the twigs and leaf-bare branches, Bow to the passing dance Of old Jack Frost. His crystal breath on the earth, And the corners of houses weep icicles of joy. But where is the Sun’s warmth? Where is life? A small flower, delicate and pure-white, Looks to the earth, As if talking to the waiting green, “Not yet,” it seems to whisper. “When I fall, then you can return.” And she nods her head, as the Lady passes by, Leaving more flowers in Her wake.
********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind
to each other while you can.
