Whose fault is it?

If we assume the Guardian reported this correctly, someone in a position of responsibility in the Democratic Party was/is asleep at the switch: Biden could be left off general election ballot in Ohio, Republican official warns.

how much nitrogen do row crops need?

Photo by J. Harrington

If we assume the Star-Tribune reported this correctly, person or persons in Minnesota’s governments have been asleep at the switch: '50 years of promises, all of them broken': Southeast Minnesotans worry over state water pollution response, although that same article notes:

Wotzka owns about 10 acres in Weaver in Wabasha County, a mile or so from the Mississippi River. He and his wife grow crops on about a half-acre and keep a fruit orchard on another 7 acres. After eliminating the use of commercial fertilizer, Wotzka said, their water nitrate levels fell from 6 or 7 milligrams per liter when they bought the property in 1997 to about 1 milligram per liter today.

He said Minnesota is too quick to blame nitrate issues on old wells built before federal pollution regulations were enacted. Instead, Wotzka said, the state must focus more on addressing water sources.

"If we start cleaning up the aquifers through changing the land-use practices, the first water that's going to be impacted is the shallowest water and that's where the old wells are," he said. "We don't have an old well problem; we have a contaminated aquifer problem."

And then there’s the issue of Congress’ repeated failure to unequivocally define “waters of the United States”: 

On September 8, 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps) published a revised definition of “waters of the United States” or WOTUS. 88 FR 61964. To conform with the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Sackett v. EPA, 143 S. Ct. 1322 (2023) ruling, the agencies made various changes including the removal of the “significant nexus” standard and amending the definition of “adjacent.” The new rule went into effect September 8, 2023. Because the revision was required to make the Rule comply with the Sackett decision, no notice and opportunity for public comment was necessary.

If we persist in relying on laws to govern increasing amounts of the behavior of real and legal persons, we need to increase the rate at which full legal coverage of all systems' components is rapidly attained or significantly slow socio-economic and technical change.

Or, we could start electing more competent, less obnoxious legislators and judges, but that would require a more competent, less obnoxious electorate, but that would require significant improvements in our education system and less book burning and home schooling and parents who want kids to grow up “just like them.”

Meanwhile, greenhouse gases keep increasing. Weather becomes more volatile. The 6th extinction continues. The 1% and their corporations keep most of us at each other’s throats while we blame each other and the “gummint” for our problems. Is this really the best we can do?

Failures in Infinitives

By Bernadette Mayer

why am i doing this? Failure

to keep my work in order so as

to be able to find things

to paint the house

to earn enough money to live on

to reorganize the house so as

to be able to paint the house &

to be able to find things and

earn enough money so as

to be able to put books together

to publish works and books

to have time

to answer mail & phone calls

to wash the windows

to make the kitchen better to work in

to have the money to buy a simple radio

to listen to while working in the kitchen

to know enough to do grownups work in the world

to transcend my attitude

to an enforced poverty

to be able to expect my checks

to arrive on time in the mail

to not always expect that they will not

to forget my mother's attitudes on humility or

to continue

to assume them without suffering

to forget how my mother taunted my father

about money, my sister about i cant say it

failure to forget mother and father enough

to be older, to forget them

to forget my obsessive uncle

to remember them some other way

to remember their bigotry accurately

to cease to dream about lions which always is

to dream about them, I put my hand in the lion's mouth

to assuage its anger, this is not a failure

to notice that's how they were; failure

to repot the plants

to be neat

to create & maintain clear surfaces

to let a couch or a chair be a place for sitting down

and not a table

to let a table be a place for eating & not a desk

to listen to more popular music

to learn the lyrics

to not need money so as

to be able to write all the time

to not have to pay rent, con ed or telephone bills

to forget parents' and uncle's early deaths so as

to be free of expecting care; failure

to love objects

to find them valuable in any way; failure

to preserve objects

to buy them and

to now let them fall by the wayside; failure

to think of poems as objects

to think of the body as an object; failure

to believe; failure

to know nothing; failure

to know everything; failure

to remember how to spell failure; failure

to believe the dictionary & that there is anything

to teach; failure

to teach properly; failure

to believe in teaching

to just think that everybody knows everything

which is not my failure; I know everyone does; failure

to see not everyone believes this knowing and

to think we cannot last till the success of knowing

to wash all the dishes only takes ten minutes

to write a thousand poems in an hour

to do an epic, open the unwashed window

to let in you know who and

to spirit thoughts and poems away from concerns

to just let us know, we will

to paint your ceilings & walls for free

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Labor Day: Happy?

On this Labor Day, it seems fitting to remember one of Ursula Le Guin’s more insightful quotes from her 2014 National Book Award speech: “Capitalism[’s] power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.” Taking one day a year to honor workers is consistent with a system in which a handful of the highest paid CEOs make more than 300 times the salary of their typical employee. What’s one day out of 365?

One who helps me maintain some semblance of groundedness these days, Heather Cox Richardson, has provided an historical political perspective on Labor Day. You can find it at Letters from an American.

The preceding presents us with another opportunity to call (again) to your attention Ecocide – Kill The Corporation Before It Kills Us. A number of news articles have popped up the past few days about the economic and public health costs of invasive species, such as this one in The Guardian. Will the preventative regulations needed to control and eliminate the transport of invasive species survive corporate attacks and World Trade Organization review?

Labor Day parking lot: empty

Photo by J. Harrington

The divine right of kings was about power. So is capitalism. On this Labor Day we propose a return of Power to the People. Since those of us who are retired don’t get a day off work for holidays, we’re going to be brief and close with an up note. Go enjoy Folk Alley’s Essential Folk Songs for Labor Day, but first, read the poem.

Labor Day

By Joseph Millar

Even the bosses are sleeping late

in the dusty light of September.

The parking lot’s empty and no one cares.

No one unloads a ladder, steps on the gas

or starts up the big machines in the shop,

sanding and grinding, cutting and binding.

No one lays a flat bead of flux over a metal seam

or lowers the steel forks from a tailgate.

Shadows gather inside the sleeve

of the empty thermos beside the sink,

the bells go still by the channel buoy,

the wind lies down in the west,

the tuna boats rest on their tie-up lines

turning a little, this way and that.

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Liz is right!

Skies are cloudy. Ground level air is smokey. Reports are that 80 million Americans are under air quality  alerts. We’re included. If we get lucky, local rainstorms may help clear the air, at least briefly, without lightning strikes igniting local wild fires. Nevertheless, governments worldwide continue to be insufficiently responsive to climate breakdown and too many are allowed to claim it’s all a hoax.

Meanwhile, one of the challengers for the Democratic presidential nomination triggers this question: “At least 100 million people are eligible to run for US president. Why are we left with Robert F Kennedy Jr?” 

No voting for idiots

Photo by J. Harrington

Even the remotest prospect of a 2024 presidential election contest between RFK, Jr and the twice impeached orange imbecile is enough to turn my stomach. That would make “Dumb and Dumber” look like Nobel prize material. Meanwhile, I believe Liz Cheney has nailed it, according to the Washington Post: “Liz Cheney on what’s wrong with politics: ‘We’re electing idiots’” I did a quick scan of the piece and couldn’t find an explanation of why we’re doing that. I have my own suspicion that a good part of the issue is the lack of qualifications required for the job.

Candidates for president must:

•     Be a natural-born citizen of the United States
•     Be at least 35 years old
•     Have been a resident of the United States for 14 year

Ask any well-qualified Human Resources professional, or even Catbert, what they think of the list of minimum qualifications compared to the job responsibilities. A good way to stop electing idiots is to disqualify them from the job. That would be quicker and easier than providing the electorate with the amount and quality education necessary too keep voters from electing idiots.

Now for Instance the Idiot

David Meltzer
1937 – 2016

Now for instance the idiot
who watches through the slit eye
and tilted head

a mouth that smiles without a sense of humor
watch him watching you
and know that he sees you

without smiling

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Some perspectives for July 4th

At a time when SCOTUS has claimed that more than half of our citizens are less than equal or free, whose independence and freedom are left out of the perspectives below?

it’s more than flags and bunting

Photo by J. Harrington

The "Statue of Liberty" poem.

"The New Colossus" 

Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

One of Woody Guthrie’s great songs, including verses often left out.

This Land Is Your Land

Words and Music by Woody Guthrie

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters; 
This land was made for you and me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway 
I saw above me that endless skyway; 
I saw below me that golden valley; 
This land was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps 
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts; 
And all around me a voice was sounding;
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling, 
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling, 
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting: 
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing." 
But on the other side it didn't say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people, 
By the relief office I seen my people; 
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking 
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me, 
As I go walking that freedom highway; 
Nobody living can ever make me turn back 
This land was made for you and me.  

 Woody’s is not the only song with parts unsung.

A New National Anthem

Ada Limón - 1976-

The truth is, I’ve never cared for the National
Anthem. If you think about it, it’s not a good
song. Too high for most of us with “the rockets’
red glare” and then there are the bombs.
(Always, always there is war and bombs.)
Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw
even the tenacious high school band off key.
But the song didn’t mean anything, just a call
to the field, something to get through before
the pummeling of youth. And what of the stanzas
we never sing, the third that mentions “no refuge
could save the hireling and the slave”? Perhaps
the truth is that every song of this country
has an unsung third stanza, something brutal
snaking underneath us as we blindly sing
the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands
hoping our team wins. Don’t get me wrong, I do
like the flag, how it undulates in the wind
like water, elemental, and best when it’s humbled,
brought to its knees, clung to by someone who
has lost everything, when it’s not a weapon,
when it flickers, when it folds up so perfectly
you can keep it until it’s needed, until you can
love it again, until the song in your mouth feels
like sustenance, a song where the notes are sung
by even the ageless woods, the shortgrass plains,
the Red River Gorge, the fistful of land left
unpoisoned, that song that’s our birthright,
that’s sung in silence when it’s too hard to go on,
that sounds like someone’s rough fingers weaving
into another’s, that sounds like a match being lit
in an endless cave, the song that says my bones
are your bones, and your bones are my bones,
and isn’t that enough?

And for those who wonder about the unsung stanzas, here’s the entire lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner. Might the  lyrics, unsung, remind US of whose land this was before we took it. Perhaps they can remind US that we need to take our freedom and independence back from those who would reduce US again to no more than chattel. If there is to be American exceptionalism, there should be no exceptions to who’s included.

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End an era. Ratify the ERA!

We are down to (up to?) the last week of June. We celebrate Independence Day a week from tomorrow. I have concerns and reservations about how much celebration there will be and what it will be about this year. June gone and I’ve not wet a line yet this fishing season. Climate weirding can account for most of that. Throw in a 10% laziness factor and a few other obligations and there you have it. The good news is we’ve reached Trico season so I will, if at all possible, get out and get casting. The yard can go to weeds if necessary.

better bouquets than a lawn provides

Photo by J. Harrington

Speaking of the yard, the Better Half pointed out today that we have a butterfly weed in bloom. It’s probable that the bloom is part of the myriad of seeds we scattered last autumn. We’re looking forward to more blossoms of various species over the duration of the warmer months. Meanwhile, I continue to cut the grass in places we haven’t seeded recently. We are looking more country and less suburban by the year. Pollinators and the like should be pleased. My overdeveloped, middle-class sense of orderliness and neatness will eventually calm down, at least about not having well manicured Kentucky bluegrass to fawn over. 

Since I am the proverbial “old, white, codger,” I approach the following with some hesitation but I’ve been known most of my life as a pot-stirrer, so here I go again.

Would it be helpful to screen candidates for the upcoming primary and general elections for their position on both pro-choice and seeing the Equal Rights Amendment finally ratified? Although I am not a lawyer, I can’t help but wonder if the recent SCOTUS decision would have been preempted had the ERA been ratified. There’s a web site that offers what appears to be resources and coherent strategies for moving ahead on that front. Now, if ever, it might be possible to build enough pressure to get it done. In case you’re wondering, I make this suggestion not as an alternative to getting Congress to enact viable and helpful responses to SCOTUS’ recent decision, but as a “both and” approach.

I also offer, for your consideration, some additional context for the current state of affairs. Donella Meadows, long one of my heroes, published several columns on RvW, contraception, and related matters. You may find it worthwhile to read them.

What are we Really Fighting About?

He Who Frames the Question Determines the Answer

Preparing for the Birth Summit

And, for a slightly different perspective, try

The Anti-Suffragists

By Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman

Fashionable women in luxurious homes, 

With men to feed them, clothe them, pay their bills, 

Bow, doff the hat, and fetch the handkerchief; 

Hostess or guest, and always so supplied 

With graceful deference and courtesy; 

Surrounded by their servants, horses, dogs, —  

These tell us they have all the rights they want. 

Successful women who have won their way 

Alone, with strength of their unaided arm, 

Or helped by friends, or softly climbing up 

By the sweet aid of ‘woman’s influence’; 

Successful any way, and caring naught 

For any other woman’s unsuccess, —  

These tell us they have all the rights they want. 

Religious women of the feebler sort, —  

Not the religion of a righteous world, 

A free, enlightened, upward-reaching world, 

But the religion that considers life 

As something to back out of! — whose ideal 

Is to renounce, submit, and sacrifice, 

Counting on being patted on the head 

And given a high chair when they get to heaven, — 

These tell us they have all the rights they want. 

Ignorant women — college-bred sometimes, 

But ignorant of life’s realities 

And principles of righteous government, 

And how the privileges they enjoy 

Were won with blood and tears by those before —  

Those they condemn, whose ways they now oppose; 

Saying, ‘Why not let well enough alone? 

Our world is very pleasant as it is,’ —  

These tell us they have all the rights they want. 

And selfish women, — pigs in petticoats, — 

Rich, poor, wise, unwise, top or bottom round, 

But all sublimely innocent of thought, 

And guiltless of ambition, save the one 

Deep, voiceless aspiration — to be fed! 

These have no use for rights or duties more. 

Duties today are more than they can meet, 

And law insures their right to clothes and food, —  

These tell us they have all the rights they want. 

And, more’s the pity, some good women, too; 

Good conscientious women, with ideas; 

Who think — or think they think — that woman’s cause 

Is best advanced by letting it alone; 

That she somehow is not a human thing, 

And not to be helped on by human means, 

Just added to humanity — an ‘L’ — 

A wing, a branch, an extra, not mankind, —  

These tell us they have all the rights they want. 

And out of these has come a monstrous thing, 

A strange, down-sucking whirlpool of disgrace, 

Women uniting against womanhood, 

And using that great name to hide their sin! 

Vain are their words as that old king’s command 

Who set his will against the rising tide. 

But who shall measure the historic shame 

Of these poor traitors — traitors are they all — 

To great Democracy and Womanhood!

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Process and product

I recently had a birthday. My son gave me a book, Wild River, Poetry and Prose by Warren Winders. I had asked for it based on a review in this past Spring's issue of TROUT magazine. Much of the prose occurs around places that once were my home waters, Indian Head and North Rivers and Cape Cod Bay.

northern Minnesota trout stream

Photo by J. Harrington

Something I read yesterday in the prose section reminded me of wisdom I once knew but had subsequently let slip into my pile of unknown knowns. One can catch fish using nets, weirs, hook and line or by dropping sticks of dynamite, fuse lit, into the water. If the purpose is to feed a mess of mouths, nets or dynamite might be the quickest or most effective process. Why, then, would anyone use a hook and line, or, more exotically, a bamboo rod and a tuft of hair and feathers wound on a hook. Winders gives a nice insight and answer in the following paragraph in his piece about restoring the  Quashnet River:

For years I wondered why most of the work on the Quashnet was done by hand. Environmental journalist, and author of the book "Alewife," Doug Watts, recently recalled working on the Quashnet restoration this way: "Joe [Bergin] and Fran Smith's vision for fixing  the Quashnet, foot by miserable foot, made me drive an hour from Easton for several weekends to do pure, rotten drudge work (cutting button brush) when I was in high school." It has taken me awhile, but now I think I understand Fran's reasoning - if engineers and bulldozers do the work, our relationship with the stream becomes less physical and more abstract, and a cycle is broken. Doug Watts' "rotten drudge work" is the palliative by immersion that the river can give us in return."

As I've been thinking and ranting about what's gone wrong and how did the country end up with the events of January 6, 2021, it occurs to me that our politics, and our culture, have become too focused on winning rather than governing. When "the Founders" drafted the Constitution, they included some faulty concepts, but "the ends justify the means" wasn't one of them, at least as I read the document. Exceptionalism isn't an entitlement program. We have come to take too much for granted and the adjustments needed, the "rotten drudge work" we are faced with must necessarily be done by US if we want the palliative immersion that democracy can give US in return.

Joy in the Woods

By Claude McKay

There is joy in the woods just now,

       The leaves are whispers of song,

And the birds make mirth on the bough

       And music the whole day long,

And God! to dwell in the town

       In these springlike summer days,

On my brow an unfading frown

       And hate in my heart always—

A machine out of gear, aye, tired,

Yet forced to go on—for I’m hired.

Just forced to go on through fear,

       For every day I must eat

And find ugly clothes to wear,

       And bad shoes to hurt my feet

And a shelter for work-drugged sleep!

       A mere drudge! but what can one do?

A man that’s a man cannot weep!

       Suicide? A quitter? Oh, no!

But a slave should never grow tired,

Whom the masters have kindly hired.

But oh! for the woods, the flowers

       Of natural, sweet perfume,

The heartening, summer showers

       And the smiling shrubs in bloom,

Dust-free, dew-tinted at morn,

       The fresh and life-giving air,

The billowing waves of corn

       And the birds’ notes rich and clear:—

For a man-machine toil-tired

May crave beauty too—though he’s hired.

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On Flag Day

‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.’ 

Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start: ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.’ But let it be considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self-interest.

 

The Short, Fraught History of the ‘Thin Blue Line’ American Flag 

thin blue line flag

Trigger Guard

Joanna Fuhrman

Everyone I ever loved is standing 
on a platform with a gun. 

In the cartoon version, a flag pops 
with the word 'bang.' 

In the soap opera version, 
my face turns the color of merlot. 

In the haiku version, 
metal gleams in the narrow shadow.

In the Republican version, 
two guns wrap themselves in a single flag.

In the Langpo version.
idolatry yips yaps paradigm the. 

In my diary version,
I wonder why everyone hates me.

In the indie film version,  
a gun flickers over a mumbled tune.

In the Chekhov version, 
(well, you already know.) 

In the 10 o'clock news version,
the crisis in violence is rising.

In the action film version,
a shot means profits are rolling.

In the catalog version,
the smoke's hue is a burnished moss. 

In the teen movie version,
a nerdy gun removes her glasses.

In the lucid dream version,
I kiss a muzzle and it blossoms.

In the music video version,
a gun turns into a mouth.

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Too little? Too late? Too bad?

Today we're going to begin with a request to turn on your imagination full power. The poem we're sharing was written more than two centuries ago, before neoliberalism, before global capitalism, before space flight, before the invention of the internet and social media platforms and cell phones. 

In the time since the poem was written, humans have triggered climate breakdown; a sixth extinction; worldwide pandemics which, fortunately, haven't yet approached mortality levels comparable to the Black Death; and the pollution and/or destruction and/or disruption of much of the natural systems on which all life on earth depends.

Thus far humanity and its global leaders are failing miserably to meet the greenhouse gas reduction targets set in 2015; failing to share essential resources to bring the pandemic under control; failing to institute adequate safeguards on mining and agriculture to enable critical, essential, supplies to be safely delivered in adequate quantities. increasingly failing to teach tolerance and critical thinking to those in school; and providing, misguidedly, too much emphasis on individual freedom and not enough on each individual's responsibility to family and community and home planet.

So, to accompany the words of an exceptional poet of two centuries back, we think it might help to add the words of a contemporary young woman, Greta Thunberg, in her recent testimony before US Congress:

The gap between what we are doing and what actually needs to be done in order to stay below the 1.5 degrees Celsius targets is widening by the second. And the simple fact, an uncomfortable fact is that if we are to live up to our promises and commitments in the Paris Agreement, we have to end fossil fuel subsidies, stop new exploration and extraction, completely divest from fossil fuels, and keep the carbon in the ground now. Especially the US taking into account the fact that it is the biggest emitter in history.

In your now warmed up imaginations, what do you imagine Wordsworth would write these days?

 

The World Is Too Much With Us

By William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

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Do not cast your bread before swine

Let's see if we can suggest an alternative approach to economics that gets government out of many of the  nitty gritty details of wealth distribution and yet creates a much improved framework for increasing economic, and perhaps environmental, equity in our beleaguered democracy.

US'ns should change our corporate tax structure, eliminate the vast majority of loopholes and subsidies, except for employee-owned B-Corps such as King Arthur Baking. This follows the premise of taxing what we want less of. Although  we have not researched the topic, we suspect that the wealth of many of the billionaires whose net worth has increased while the minimum wage has stayed stable is based on their stock holdings. It isn't all cash sitting around in a savings account. Taxing it to create a basis for redistribution puts politicians in the middle and makes working class folks (99% of us) dependent on politicians for things like the "relief/stimulous" funds amounts and distributions. There are few politicians I would trust very far to have my best interests at heart. How about you?

a boule of our own sourdough artisan bread

Photo by J. Harrington

If employees were the majority stock holders in a corporation, and that corporation were structured as a B-Corp, employee wealth would increase as the stock value rose. Instead of executives benefiting from stock buy-backs, employees would sell their stock holdings to other employees in a tax-advantaged transaction. The B-Corp. angle provides an alternative to the fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits for the shareholders and allows additional values to be incorporated into the company's priorities.

The preceding is just a bare outline and clearly needs lots of development and details worked out. However, it seems to offer an approach that addresses many of the issues we're facing these days and may even offer some opportunities to address the urban-rural divide. We want more folks to have what's known as "skin-in-the-game," don't we? Instead of putting the government in the middle of balancing our equity and equitable accounts, let's handle it ourselves through a number of smaller, more local businesses organized into regional networks instead of structured as oligarchs and mega corps.

We ended up wandering into this theme today because it's cold out and we're inside and King Arthur Baking sent us an email informing us that they're offering a series on Artisan Bread. Since we've been using their products for some years now, and fancy ourselves as an artisan bread baker, we'll be checking the series out, at least until mid-summer's heat shuts down the kitchen. We're also tired of reading about the Democrats, who supposedly represent the working class?, quibble about who gets how much relief/stimulus funding from the government.

Bread

By Richard Levine

Each night, in a space he’d make

between waking and purpose,

my grandfather donned his one

suit, in our still dark house, and drove

through Brooklyn’s deserted streets

following trolley tracks to the bakery.

There he’d change into white

linen work clothes and cap,

and in the absence of women,

his hands were both loving, well

into dawn and throughout the day—

kneading, rolling out, shaping

each astonishing moment

of yeasty predictability

in that windowless world lit

by slightly swaying naked bulbs,

where the shadows staggered, woozy

with the aromatic warmth of the work.

Then, the suit and drive, again.

At our table, graced by a loaf

that steamed when we sliced it,

softened the butter and leavened

the very air we’d breathe,

he’d count us blessed.

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Fenced in, or out?

As this is being typed, we have a boule of artisan sourdough kerns bread beginning to bake. Soon the house will begin to smell wonderful. Later we'll have fresh bread to go with reheated homemade minestrone, compliments of the Better Half. Tomorrow and Friday we may, or may not, get 3 or 5 or 9 inches of snow. It would have been helpful if Mother Nature had delayed the storm until Friday, Saturday and Sunday, to dampen protests at our state capitol.

Has anyone really discovered what Trump supporters really want, other than being able to do whatever the hell they want and not face any consequences? Here's one example of what the Trump supporters in an author's family favor: Praise the Lord and pass the pipe bomb. Reading the article left me with the impression that the US is drifting dangerously close to its own version of sharia. We're old enough to remember the concerns expressed when Jack Kennedy ran for president, that he'd listen to the pope instead of following the Constitution. The more things change, the more they remain the same, sort of?

Other reports suggest that Trump voters feel marginalized, or those feeling marginalized tend to vote for Trump:

Populist messages, like “take back control” or “make America great again,” find a receptive audience among people who feel pushed to the sidelines of their national community and deprived of the respect accorded full members of it.

Part of the family heritage with which we most strongly identify stems from the side that felt most of the effects of the old "No Irish need apply" bias. We know of many groups that have been looked down on and, in turn, have looked down on others. For the most part, it rarely came to attempts to overthrow a government, although, again, the American Colonies and, later, Ireland rebelled. We are treading dangerous waters these days.

fenced in, or out

Photo by J. Harrington

Robert Frost has written a wonderful poem we've shared below. To paraphrase that poem a little, something there is that doesn't love a yoke, whether the yoke be made of culture, economics, or other forms of potential oppression. We're coming to the view that global corporate capitalism is playing for fools politicians and the 99% of us not in the most elite 1% class. There should be no such thing as "too big to fail." Giantism is characterized by excessive growth. If 99% of us all supported more equity and diversity, and less oppression in our politics, we'd be successful. Walls make poor tables for sharing.

Mending Wall

By Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

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We're better than this, are we?

In the fields behind the house, purple love grass is ripening. Soon the seed heads will be getting blown across the fields, scattering seeds in early autumn. As of today, the election is 90 days away. We will be choosing not only a POTUS, but we will be making an informed statement about who we are as a people and to what we aspire. No longer will some of us be able to hide behind a nice-sounding but empty "we're better than this." On one hand, we can work to return to the kind of country that opens its arms and extends them to those who come here seeking a life better than they can achieve in their country of origin. The kind of country that once stood behind, and stood for, the description in today's edition of The Writer's Almanac:

Today in 1884, the cornerstone of the Statue of Liberty's pedestal was laid. One year prior, a fundraiser for the pedestal's construction solicited art and literary works for auction; 34-year-old Emma Lazarus donated a poem for the occasion, which she titled "The New Colossus."

Devoted to the plight of Jewish immigrants, Lazarus imagined that the statue would become a symbol of hope for all Ellis Island arrivals. She wrote her verse three years before the statue was completed, and only four years before her own death. The poem was essentially forgotten for 20 years, after which Lazarus' friends lobbied to have it emblazoned on a bronze plaque and hung in the museum inside the pedestal.

"The New Colossus"

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

In the alternative (on the other hand), we can continue as we have for the past three and three-quarter years. In that case, I suggest we disassemble the Statue of Liberty, remove the bronze plaque from the pedestal, and replace that plaque with one carrying a more appropriate poem by Yeats.

purple love grass ripening in August's sun

Photo by J. Harrington

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? 

As the old saying goes, the choice is ours (in ninety days or less). It remains to be seen if enough of us really are "better than this" and choose to be lead by someone who aspires to be more than a "rough beast, its hour come round at last,..."

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The end of June begins July

Today is the last Sunday in June 2020. July begins in a few days. Look for the [Ojibwe] full moon [Miin-giizis (Berry Moon)] next weekend on Independence Day. By then, we will have lost 7 minutes of daylight since the Summer solstice on June 21, but it still will be awhile until Jack Frost returns, although the prospect of a hard frost that thins out the deer flies and mosquitos has some real appeal.

oriole at grape feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning we enjoyed one of the occasional visits Baltimore orioles have recently been making to the grape feeder. Unfortunately, the grape jelly is also attracting increasing numbers of yellow jackets, so we're taking it down and putting it away until next Spring. The orioles will have to settle for sharing the nectar feeder with hummingbirds and woodpeckers.

early July milkweed blossoms

Photo by J. Harrington

Still no appearances of local whitetail fawns or wild turkey poults and very little of the milkweed is in bloom yet. There are noticeably fewer dragon flies. The back yard brush pile continues to regrow. The next Celtic / Druidic / Pagan festival is "Lughnasadh on August 1st, which marks the beginning of harvest time." It's funny how, when I was back in school, Summer seemed to last almost forever. These days it seems to be gone almost as soon as it arrives, except for those hot, humid spells that never seem to end.  Let's all see what we can do to have a safe, healthy, and happy Summer this year so we can celebrate with Blue fireworks on Independence day 2021.

Milkweed

Helen Hunt Jackson

O patient creature with a peasant face, 
Burnt by the summer sun, begrimed with stains, 
And standing humbly in the dingy lanes! 
There seems a mystery in thy work and place, 
Which crowns thee with significance and grace; 
Whose is the milk that fills thy faithful veins? 
What royal nursling comes at night and drains 
Unscorned the food of the plebeian race? 
By day I mark no living thing which rests 
On thee, save butterflies of gold and brown, 
Who turn from flowers that are more fair, more sweet, 
And, crowding eagerly, sink fluttering down, 
And hang, like jewels flashing in the heat, 
Upon thy splendid rounded purple breasts.

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Being "less bad" isn't good enough

Tree tops are tossing and turning under a stiff breeze. Local rainfall amounts have been minuscule, so far. Occasional patches of blue sky appear through breaks in scudding clouds. The temperature is in the mid-60's. Summer's (re)emergence is forecast for tomorrow through the weekend. The weather and the social fabric are displaying comparable instabilities. Would it be too much of a stretch to opine that each may be attributable to a clash of opposing masses, one of air the other of ideologies?

a "trout in the classroom" aquarium

Photo by J. Harrington

But there continues to be more sources of good news to be shared. Again today it's from the Trout Unlimited [TU] web site. They have some potentially valuable resources on their Anti-Racism and Equity Resources web page. I especially liked discovering The Sum of Us: A Progressive’s Style Guide. I intend to review it carefully and then remember to follow it, remembering also Yoda's quotation: "Do. Or do not. There is no try."

I'm particularly appreciative of the way TU has incorporated its Diversity and Inclusion resources into its broader conservation mission. Other organizations with which I've been volunteering seem to struggle to balance equity, diversity, and inclusion with the basic conservation mission that first attracted my attention. But perhaps I need an opportunity to practice patience.

So, despite COVID-19, institutional racism infesting police departments and other aspects of 21st century life in the US, failure to begin adequate responses to climate breakdown, the abominations in the White House and the U.S. Senate and other massive failures of contemporary leadership, there are bright stars in our dark skies. Many conservation organizations are rising to the new challenges. Increasing numbers of people are pushing back against the kind of conventional wisdom (Imperial Senate anyone?) that's brought us to our current state of affairs. There are additional resources that I wish more potential leaders were familiar with, including works by:

• Naomi Klein
• Rebecca Solnit
• Bill McKibben, and, especially,
• Margaret J. Wheatley

May the challenges we face, and the opportunities they offer, help each of our souls to grow deep, like a river.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

By Langston Hughes

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

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