Happy Father's Day / Welcome Summertime

Today's title is only valid in the northern hemisphere. But you knew that, right? South of the equator they're starting winter. Since Minnesota is (in)famous for its two seasons of winter or road construction, I think we should again follow the old Celtic practice of dividing the year into only two seasons, summer or winter. As climate breakdown continues, spring and autumn are becoming more challenging to relate to as distinct seasons. We could help solve that by turning the solstices into midsummer or midwinter between each of the equinoxes.

goose and goslings celebrating Father's Day

Photo by J. Harrington

I do hope that all who celebrate Father's Day today enjoy warm wishes, wonderful company, and good to great weather. To those who get to share the day in person with Dad, enjoy! For those who must depend on memories, may they all be happy ones! I am a son whose father has walked on and am now both a father and grandfather, but still my father's son. Such relationships have brought much joy and satisfaction into my life.

I'm beginning to suspect this summer's weather is going to remain in a roller coaster pattern with excess amounts of cloudiness, wind and temperature swings. At least it provides lots of excuses for not cutting the grass. We did manage to celebrate the solstice with a seasonal fire in the fire pit that disposed of the latest batch of branches downed by the aforementioned weather.

My claim to being "of Irish extraction" explains my poem choice for this posting.

Digging

By Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb   

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   

My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   

Bends low, comes up twenty years away   

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

********************************************

Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.

Please be kind to each other while you can.

This weekend, do you know where your memories are?

It's Memorial Day Weekend. The remembrance boards for my father and father-in-law are hung. Today is also Bob Dylan's 85th birthday. Here's a link to his Nobel Prize section. Dylan was highly motivated by the works of Woody Guthrie, who was noted for being, among other things, strongly anti fascist, for example, in this song he wrote: Tear the Fascists Down. I started to fuss about "where's our Woody Guthrie?" when I remembered the recent work of Bruce Springsteen: Streets of Minneapolis... not precisely on target, but close enough to satisfy me and shut down my fussing.

In memory of my father and father-in law

Photo by J. Harrington

As I think about it, these days we're still fighting much the same battles, against the same kinds of ideologies and idiots, that Guthrie and Dylan were singing about and my father and father-in-law fought against in WW II; and the North fought the South about in our "Civil War." Pete Seeger has observed the dismaying circularity of these battles in his hauntingly beautiful Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

I grew up during the Cold War period when "duck and cover" was supposed to protect US school kids from nuclear blasts. These days, in this country, we lose more kids to mass shootings than we've lost to nuclear weapons, at least as of the moment I'm writing this. If so many of US want to return to an era past, perhaps we could consider returning to the days of Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society. In fact, such an effort might even help unite the Democratic Party and provide respite to a perpetual rehash of what went wrong during 2024, demonstrating for the rest of US that, indeed, some wars don't have to be fought.

Masters of War

Written by: Bob Dylan

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearned
But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand o’er your grave
’Til I’m sure that you’re dead          

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

Happy Mother's Day

May all Mothers and families enjoy a peaceful day full of warm memories. May we all wish for many happy returns of the day. May this May avoid any more Maydays of the alarming type.

female bluebird perched on bare branch

Photo by J. Harrington

Over the past few days we've approached full leaf out on most of the area's trees. Rose-breasted grosbeaks, a male Baltimore oriole, and some kind of hummingbird have arrived at the feeders. A bluebird was flitting around the back yard yesterday. The two serviceberry bushes planted last Summer in the field behind the house are in bloom, as is the pear tree. Pocket gophers are creating an unacceptable number of mounds. We'll plan on using a drag harrow on the field next week and then set traps if fresh mounds show up.

Local roadsides and woods are showing more trees and bushes with white flowers than I ever recall seeing. The Better Half suggests concurrent blooming, rather than being spread over several week makes it seem like there's more flowering. Could our anomalous weather pattern roller coaster temperatures account for the compression?

Farmers have many of the local fields prepared for planting. We're holding off on hanging baskets and planting some annuals until frost advisories drop out of weather forecasts. Maybe another week or ten days will do it. All in all this Spring is shaping up to be about as good as this season usually gets hhere in the North Country. It is a noteworthy improvement over the preceding season and mostly avoids the humidity that's no doubt coming.

The Raincoat

Ada Limón
1976 –

When the doctor suggested surgery
and a brace for all my youngest years,
my parents scrambled to take me
to massage therapy, deep tissue work,
osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine
unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,
and move more in a body unclouded
by pain. My mom would tell me to sing
songs to her the whole forty-five minute
drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-
five minutes back from physical therapy.
She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered
by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,
because I thought she liked it. I never
asked her what she gave up to drive me,
or how her day was before this chore. Today,
at her age, I was driving myself home from yet
another spine appointment, singing along
to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,
and I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet.

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

January brings too much ICE

I have a technical issue for your consideration this week. It has to do with equipment for Constitutional Observers. (If you missed the news, Minnesota is now the base for almost 2,500 ICE and Border Patrol enforcers.) To be most useful, Observer digital recordings should identify both the location where and the date and time when recorded. As far as I know, my iPhone captures both items automatically. My non-phone digital cameras record the date and time but not the location. Cautionary guidance suggests leaving cell phones at home if at a protest so the federal government can't track you to your home or work place. So the question becomes, how to best incorporate accurate locational information into digital videos or photos? I don't have a good answer at the moment. Please feel free to offer suggestions in the comments.

January brings snow jobs and ICE coverups

Photo by J. Harrington

Please, if you haven't already, mark your calendar for the Free America Walkout on January 20, a week from this coming Tuesday. According to the 50501 web site:

A walkout is a form of nonviolent noncooperation. That sounds academic, but the idea is that modern power depends on people showing up, complying, producing, and buying as if everything is fine. Noncooperation is what it looks like when people stop doing that together, on purpose, without violence.

 Because the Better Half and I are aware that our adult son is deeply concerned about what's been going on, and going wrong, in the world and this country, and not just because several of the regime's attacks may affect and reduce the supports he relies on as a person with disabilities, I started to look for ways he might be able to participate in the Walkout from his wheelchair. In the process of poking around the internet, I came across a book that may be relevant to him. Here's a link to the Kirkus review of Disability Visibility, Alice Wong, editor. It may be relevant to some of you in these troubled times since "The editor notes that, according to the most recent U.S. census, 20% of citizens in the country live with a disability."

Our troubled times are making me think about the history I learned in school about the capitalists siccing their hired guns (Pinkertons) on union organizers, much like ICE attacks on the persons in Minnesota and the rest of US. That made me think of today's "poem," the lyrics of a song by Pete Seeger, who's been known to speak truth to power a number of times.

Which Side Are You On 

[Verse 1]
Come all of you good workers
Good news to you I'll tell
Of how the good ol' union
Has come in here to dwell

[Chorus]
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

[Verse 2]
My daddy was a miner
And I'm a miner's son
And I'll stick with the union
'Til every battle's won

[Chorus]
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

[Verse 3]
They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there
You'll either be a union man
Or a thug for J. H. Blair

See upcoming rock shows

Get tickets for your favorite artists

[Chorus]
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

[Verse 4]
Oh, workers can you stand it?
Oh, tell me how you can
Will you be a lousy scab
Or will you be a man?

[Chorus]
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

[Verse 5]
Don't scab for the bosses
Don't listen to their lies
Us poor folks haven't got a chance
Unless we organize

[Chorus]
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

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

Christmas horsing around!

As the Better Half and I approached the tack barn this morning at dawn, the temperature (not the windchill) varied from -21℉ to -23 ℉. It was cold! The Daughter Person's horse needed feeding and the horse's owner was otherwise occupied tending to her daughter, our granddaughter, ill with a cold. A similar routine had occurred twice Saturday, driving to the barn in my Jeep to feed the horse, but the cold hadn't been quite as ferocious. Of possible interest: the horse's name is Quinn and, triggered by the temperatures, I was starting to remember some of the lyrics to Dylan's Quinn the Eskimo. (I wonder if we could get Dylan's "Mighty Quinn" to visit the White House and Congress. Click link, see first verse.)

our Quinn: the horse, not an Eskimo

Photo by J. Harrington

Anyhow, the forecast is that Tuesday's temperature should reach 43℉, a more than 60℉ shift in about half a week. That's insane, but I'm looking forward to an early January thaw after which temperatures for the rest of the month may mostly be more reasonable and seasonable, in the 20's above zero range. Don't forget to celebrate Winter Solstice a week from today!

Much to the joy of my taste buds, and the dismay of my blood sugar, we have entered Christmas cookie season. Daughter person will be dropping off some frosted cookies later today and the Better Half has promised to bake some raspberry jam thumbprint cookies soon. I will do my best to pace myself rather than pig out. I don't want Santa to put me on the naughty list and deliver coal in my stocking, increasing my carbon footprint. I wonder if the IPCC, or anyone, has talked to the jolly old elf about a fossil fuel phaseout? Maybe instead of coal, he could leave naughty kids sand to pound?

This year's Christmas tree has remained upright for the past week, for which we are grateful. It's now decorated but I've not had an opportune time to take pictures.. Maybe this coming week. The outside lighting is delightful and cheery. I've already received an early present, an indoor lavender plant that is now living in a South-facing window well. It gives me something to enjoy from now until Spring green-up. Being "of Irish descent," I do prefer green to white and the color lavender, I think, looks better against a green instead of a white background.

Now, in alignment with today's posting and the season, please enjoy this poem:

Let’s just put it this way: They didn’t start calling him “Jolly” Old St. Nicholas until after he got the reindeer.

Poem by Lorraine Jackson

cc/wickimedia commons

 

‘Twas the night before Christmas,

And all through the stable,

Poor Santa was fretting if his horses were able.

The toys were all ready

But the horses were not.

With his sleigh pullers ailing,

Santa was quite distraught.

All the IVs were hung

on the stall fronts with care,

some legs had been cold-hosed

‘til the vet could get there.

Poor Bella had rainrot

And Gordo had thrush

Jellybean pulled a muscle

When he spooked at a brush

Though sometimes dear Rhoda

Could be very sweet,

Christmas Eve she decided to go into heat.

Old Roger was moonblind,

And Jake was too green

Pete had colic or gas–

It remained to be seen.

Trouble was best,

But he has the Cushings.

If he they took him unclipped,

He’d look like a Wookie.

Santa sat on a bucket,

And looked down the barn row

Wondering how he would get to and fro.

The vet bills were growing

They’d make Mark Cuban balk.

Half his elves don’t make toys now,

Instead they hand walk.

As Santa sat moaning

He looked out on the snow.

And saw eight wild reindeer,

With nowhere to go.

“It just might be crazy,”

Said St. Nick full of bliss

“But eight crazy reindeer

Would be better than THIS!”

So that’s how the reindeer

Came to be Santa’s hitch,

And there’s never a colic

Nor a last minute glitch.

The horses retired

But they still hear the bells,

And each Christmas Eve

all their knees start to swell.

Merry Christmas!

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

Tis the season for ....

Yesterday the Better Half [BH] and I selected and cut down a youngish pine along the driveway for this year's home-grown Christmas tree. Getting it to balance in the tree stand was tricky because we hadn't noticed a crook in the trunk about half way up. The top half of the tree is slightly off center. We managed to fiddle with the tree stand a little and the tree stood tall all night. Today the lights went on. Other decorations are coming out and getting hung. Now I just need my mood to include more Christmassy spirits. Maybe if I keep away from the news until after the start of the New Year? Anyhow here's a picture of last year's home grown tree.

Home grown pine Christmas tree 2024

Photo by J. Harrington

Friday we helped the Daughter Person celebrate her birthday with lunch at a place in Stillwater called Brick and Bourbon. My cheeseburger was good and the BH raved about the meat loaf she ordered. Son-In-Law, Granddaughter and Granddaughter's "nanny" all had a good time and the place was festively decorated for the season. Snow showers during the day made the roads messy but driveable.

As this is being written, the temperature is in the single digits with a slight wind chill. That helps explain the diminished joy I'm feeling. Too damn cold. If you don't believe me, ask the dogs. They are not happy about their "walks."

Most of the Christmas shopping is done. There's still wrapping to be tended to and stockings on Christmas eve. Winter solstice happens in two weeks at 9:03 am. Days will start getting longer a week or ten days later. Then there's the two month lag before temperatures approach daytime averages above freezing. I suppose it would be curmudgeonly to ask for an early spring as a Christmas present.

More snow is in the forecast for the coming week. That makes Robert Frost's poem seem quite timely for this native New Englander transplanted to Minnesota decades ago.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Robert Frost  1874 – 1963

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

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

It's all a circle, game?

There appears to be a relative abundance of hummingbirds at the nectar feeders with some trying to scare others away. Parents trying to protect resources for their own fledglings? Each year about this time I see a similar pattern that's no where as obvious earlier in the summer. Meanwhile, more and more yellowjackets are showing up to feed on the sweetness and limited numbers are getting themselves trapped in the feeding reservoir and drowning. Based on relative size and numbers, I'm guessing that woodpeckers are the ones consuming most of the sugar water and I don't think hummingbirds can scare even downy woodpeckers in the least.

bur oak acorn

Photo by J. Harrington

Oak trees around the house have begun to drop acorns. Scattered leaf color is showing on some of the bushes and trees in the neighborhood. The flocks of birds lining up on the telephone and electric wires are getting longer and longer. We're more than halfway between Summer solstice and Autumn equinox. Days are noticeably shorter as sunrise arrives later. Seasons keep repeating their cycles. Before we know it, I'll be posting complaints about cold and ice and snow. But first, we get to experience harvest and migration and autumn seasons. Perhaps political sanity may return as temperatures drop, if we get really lucky.

Next weekend the Better Half and I celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary. I find it hard to believe anyone could have put up with me for that long. She's also doing a much better job tolerating the madness coming out of state and national capitols this year, possibly because she's had me to practice on for more than forty years.

Two

By Linda Hogan

 

The weight of a man on a woman

is like falling into the river without drowning.

 

Above, the world is burning and fighting.

Lost worlds flow through others.

 

But down here beneath water’s skin,

river floor, sand, everything

 

is floating, rocking.

Water falls through our hands as we fall through it.

 

And when a woman and a man come up from water

they stand at the elemental edge of difference.

 

Mirrored on water’s skin,

they are fired clay, water evaporating into air.

 

They are where water turns away from land

and goes back to enter a larger sea.

 

A man and a woman are like those rivers,

entering a larger sea

 

greater than the sum of all its parts.

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

Welcome, June

Last night, in honor of the summery weather and the turning of the month, we enjoyed slices of the first ice cream cake of the season. It hit the spot. Over the past couple of weeks we’ve been switching back and forth between turning on the heat and the air conditioning. The outside heat is back, accompanied by smoke streams from Canadian wildfires to our north.

The neighborhood deer have been nipping at my freshly planted, “deer resistant” serviceberry bushes. I suppose deer “resistance" is to deer proof as water resistant is to water proof in rain jackets. I have now sprayed the bushes with deer and rabbit repellant and hung a mesh bag of the Better Half’s hair clippings on each bush. One of these days I may remember to not believe everything I read or think.

Chalk-fronted Corporal (on left) Common Whitetail [female] (on right)

Photo by J. Harrington

Columbine are now blooming, joining hoary puccoon, lilacs, and wild strawberries. Dame’s rocket started flowering the past day or so. The cloud of lilac aroma in front of the house is heady and delightful. I’d spend more time standing around outside sniffing but the bugs are getting worse by the hour.

A few dragonflies are flitting about. The mole population seems worse than ever it’s been since we moved in. This week I’ll spray encroaching poison ivy if we get a dry spell with temperatures under 80℉. Thunderstorms are forecast tomorrow night after highs near or at 90℉. Dogs will probably need their THC treats.

We finally picked up this year’s fishing licenses and Wisconsin trout stamp. Minnesota doesn’t require a stamp for those over 65. No, I won’t mention how much over 65 I am but this isn’t the first year I didn’t need a Minnesota trout stamp. Now that we’ve made a little progress tidying the yard, if I don’t get out fishing this week, I will manage to do some practice casting in the back yard (he wrote hopefully). These are times to enjoy simple, basic pleasures.

Thankful for Now

BY TODD DAVIS

Walking the river back home at the end

of May, locust in bloom, an oriole flitting

through dusky crowns, and the early night sky

going peach, day's late glow the color of that fruit's

flesh, dribbling down over everything, christening

my sons, the two of them walking before me

after a day of fishing, one of them placing a hand

on the other's shoulder, pointing toward a planet

that's just appeared, or the swift movement

of that yellow and black bird disappearing

into the growing dark, and now the light, pink

as a crabapple's flower, and my legs tired

from wading the higher water, and the rocks

that keep turning over, nearly spilling me

into the river, but still thankful for now

when I have enough strength to stay

a few yards behind them, loving this time

of day that shows me the breadth

of their backs, their lean, strong legs

striding, how we all go on in this cold water,

heading home to the sound of the last few

trout splashing, as mayflies float

through the shadowed riffles.

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

January thaw for Christmas?

Winter Solstice arrived at 3:20 am Saturday, local time. The dogs and I were there to greet the arrival of the season as we walked down the driveway so they could “take care of business” and I could enjoy a cup of coffee when we returned to the house. I think all three of us are looking  forward to longer, warmer days ahead. But first we’ll enjoy the Yule season and an early January thaw that starts on Christmas and is forecast to continue until 2025. Mother Nature’s Christmas presence?

We wish everyone, or at least the “good guys,” peace and joy now and through the coming year. I’d love to see everyone read, reread, and take to heart, the messages in The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. It seems to me that could make for a year-round Christmas spirit without the cold and snow and commercialism.

my favorite Christmas tree ornament

Photo by J. Harrington

SiSi, my aging yellow lab rescue dog, and I got an early present. Last week she could barely walk, her hips hurt so much. It seemed to come on suddenly. The Daughter Person offered some pain pills one of their dogs didn’t need. That, followed by a call to our vet for a regular prescription, has SiSi walking about as well as I do these days. We are both very grateful for the assistance and the outcome.

As I’m sure you realize, today, December 23, is the Eve of Christmas Eve. We are now at “C” minus two and counting. We’re a day late with this posting ‘cuz we got busy with seasonal stuff yesterday and forgot to take pen/keyboard in hand until we were already sleepy-headed in bed last night. We’ll do our best to be more timely next Sunday.

For the Children

by Gary Snyder

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us,
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

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

Wishing you seasons full of happiness

Were it not for our persistently cloudy skies, about 3 am this morning we could have enjoyed seeing December's full moon, known as Little Spirit Moon by the Ojibwe and Shedding Horns Moon by the Lakota, according to my copy of the Minnesota Weather Guide calendar. The dogs and I were taking our early morning constitutional about that time. As Minnesota sports fans, we have lots of practice with the phrase “wait ’til next year.” This year we’re in a typical Minnesota pattern of really cold and sunny or warmer and cloudy and often snowy. Yesterday and today are like the latter.

Proof that it’s been cold can be seen on local lakes where portable ice fishing houses are popping up like woodland mushrooms in a wet spring. While doing seasonal errands, we noticed the houses on not just one, several local lakes. I’ve tried ice fishing years ago. I’m too restless to sit still in an ice house or on a deer stand for the amount of time required for success.

Christmas thumbprint cookies: bet you can’t eat just one!

Photo by J. Harrington

Slowly we’re making progress with Christmas shopping. The Better Half [BBH] just finished baking Christmas cookies, including lots of raspberry thumbprints and lemon bars(?) for me. Plus I still have more than a dozen white chocolate, cranberry scoop cookies from Taste of Scandinavia. My holiday wealth isn’t measured in gold!

On our way to the barn yesterday, to visit and feed the Daughter Person’s horse, the BH and I spotted a flock of three to four dozen turkeys in a field along the way. I don’t recall ever seeing that many in one place before. They were foraging during our drizzle/ snow showers and had disappeared by the time we were returning home.

It’s now less than a week until Winter Solstice (locally 3:20 am CST). At the moment we’re in that shoulder season between the start of meteorological winter and the solstice. I’ve already reached a point at which I’m looking forward to Christmas and to days starting to lengthen just before then.

Happiness

Jane Kenyon
1947 – 1995

There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
       It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

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

As days get shorter

 I found this on the internet the other day and wanted to share:

A Special Kind of Stupid

Slowly, very slowly, the Christmas decorations are coming together. Daughter Person's birthday has been successfully celebrated. She and her Spouse and Daughter are safely back from a brief Disneyland vacation. Now we all need to buckle down and get some Christmas shopping done, but first I have to drop the two remaining Halloween pumpkins under the pear tree on the ridge behind the  house so the local deer can enjoy them.

It's been a month since the election and I'm finally starting to shake off my funk. The warmer temperatures we've had the past few days has helped, I'm sure. A little lot more sunshine would be appreciated too. Today was cloudy, cool, and dreary, with some dank thrown in, but better than single digit temperatures and bellow zero wind chills.

I'm already working on some New Year's resolutions: one is to simplify and organize my  life as much  as possible; another is to have gratitude for the good things in my life instead of always looking for more and / or better. I've asked Santa for a mild winter and early spring but I'm not sure he can do much about either. Maybe I better  follow up with a request for some toy I can play with in the  house this winter.

The Power of Hope Today

Gabrielle Marshall

Today’s hope is a flickering candle that dwells in a snow-dusted window, 
circulating the prayers of Christmas mornings. 
Today’s hope is the crisp daffodil in colorless photos,
containing the soul of a small 
child,
who only wishes and knows of 
peace and love.
Today’s hope is the sparkling eyes that
truly believe in achieving
anything to reach unity.
Today’s hope is the palm to palm connection
bracing each other for the climb neither expected,
but couldn’t abandon.
Today’s hope is peering
beyond
the lingering barrier,
but still recognizing the diversity in ourselves.
Today’s hope has been dimmed and tossed recklessly,
but still generously stays with us,
for we cannot help but come back
like wide eyed children to candy.
We are said to be weak to rely on such strength,
but we are only believers.
That spark 
That gives science a baffled case
And oceans an infinite plane,
is the eagle that dips 
and soars
and fights,
which stands for
the hope of 
today. 

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

Approaching Samhain

Great clouds of leaves have floated away from their homes of origin. They now clutter the ground and complicate the last grass cutting of the past growing season. Bare branches begin to dominate country skylines. Halloween / Samhain arrives Thursday. Candles are lit at dinner time. Autumn is here and next weekend we begin to anticipate celebrating Thanksgiving in hope that “our fellow Americans(?)” will leave US something to celebrate after November 5.

All Hallow's Eve visitors

Photo by J. Harrington

Not only was Halloween itself more fun when I was a kid, I didn’t know enough in those days to worry about elections and outcomes. An example that getting older doesn’t always mean getting wiser? Anyhow, I’m anticipating that, again this year, we’ll have at least one Trick or Treater, our 4 year old granddaughter. I think she’s the only one that’s shown up in the 25+ years we’ve lived here. I’ll spend some time over the next few days debating whether to bring in our political signs for the haunted evening rather than leave them subject to pranks or vandalism.

Flocks of Canada geese and sandhill cranes are still to be seen in our local airways. So far there’s still plenty of food and open water so no reason for them to head south. The Son-In-Law has captured some pictures of a nice buck oor two on his trail cam. I tried deer hunting off and on over the years. I just don’t enjoy sitting that still for that long to get good at it. When I was younger, I’d rather bust brush for grouse or fiddle with decoys for ducks than sit in or on a deer stand. If I had had an enclosed stand, I’d probably been guilty of too much napping. This reminds me, after Samhain, I need to send Santa a letter asking for more accommodating weather next fly fishing season.

Samhain

By Annie Finch

(The Celtic Halloween)

In the season leaves should love,

since it gives them leave to move

through the wind, towards the ground

they were watching while they hung,

legend says there is a seam

stitching darkness like a name.

Now when dying grasses veil

earth from the sky in one last pale

wave, as autumn dies to bring

winter back, and then the spring,

we who die ourselves can peel

back another kind of veil

that hangs among us like thick smoke.

Tonight at last I feel it shake.

I feel the nights stretching away

thousands long behind the days

till they reach the darkness where

all of me is ancestor.

I move my hand and feel a touch

move with me, and when I brush

my own mind across another,

I am with my mother's mother.

Sure as footsteps in my waiting

self, I find her, and she brings

arms that carry answers for me,

intimate, a waiting bounty.

"Carry me." She leaves this trail

through a shudder of the veil,

and leaves, like amber where she stays,

a gift for her perpetual gaze.

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

The month peak color comes and goes

It looks like the weather may have finally turned the corner from Summer to Autumn, more than a month after the start of meteorological autumn and a couple of weeks after the equinox. Maple trees are showing more color. Pines are shedding their needles. Aspen and birch leaves are mostly gold. Seed heads from purple love grass are flying everywhere and the last few really windy days have turned a few trees almost leafless.

maples starting to show color

Photo by J. Harrington

Today we saw another wooly bear looking very much like the one we reported on last week, about four ginger bands in the middle and each end black. No frost yet locally. Most birds coming to the feeder are year round residents like woodpeckers, nuthatches, chickadees, cardinals and goldfinches. Every now and then a pair of bluejays stop by.

We’ve been going through an extended dry spell for the past month or so. Fire danger has been high enough that I’ve not even thought about torching the back yard brush pile. If it sits until spring, that’s no big deal although I would like to get it gone so we can replace it with more of the downed branches lying around. The electric weed whacker we recently acquired is helping to bring a modicum or orderliness to some of the overgrown areas around the place. That’s going to be a continuing project. We may see if the battery-powered chain saw diminishes the buckthorn that’s trying to overrun the woods.

All in all it’s been a mostly pleasant week up North here. We celebrated the Granddaughter’s fourth birthday and her parents tenth anniversary. No signs of Helene but we may well pay for it come blizzard season, or might climate change temper our upcoming winter? We’ll see.

Autumn's Gold

by George MacDonald

Along the tops of all the yellow trees,

The golden-yellow trees, the sunshine lies;

And where the leaves are gone, long rays surprise

Lone depths of thicket with their brightnesses;

And through the woods, all waste of many a breeze,

Cometh more joy of light for Poet's eyes—

Green fields lying yellow underneath the skies,

And shining houses and blue distances.

By the roadside, like rocks of golden ore

That make the western river-beds so bright,

The briar and the furze are all alight!

Perhaps the year will be so fair no more,

But now the fallen, falling leaves are gay,

And autumn old has shone into a Day! 

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

It’s woolly thinking time

Today is the penultimate day of September 2024. Haven’t seen a hummingbird at the feeder all week. Wasps and/or hornets are about everywhere, building nests and being annoying. Temperatures have been running close to 20 degrees above normal this week past but are expected to become seasonable, or close to it, come mid-week, early October. This in a state that decades ago became famous for a Halloween blizzard. This morning I found a woolly bear showing four bands of ginger, of 13(?) total bands. It’s an unrepresentative sample size, but it may portend a winter thats more wintery than usual. Meanwhile, there’s at least half a dozen lilac bushes in the neighborhood that are in bloom.

woolly bear says winter will be ???

Photo by J. Harrington

In a typical year, we’d be looking toward peak leaf color over the next couple of weeks. It’s been very slow developing this year. September has been more like July, plus we keep discovering more lilac bushes in bloom. Birds and butterflies seem to be moving south, but that must be due to day length more than our weather. Did I mention all the lilacs in bloom? In September?

We aided and abetted our Granddaughter and her friends and relations celebrate a 4 year old's birthday last week. I had forgotten that just opening presents is considered as much fun as playing with or trying on what’s getting unwrapped, especially if there’s a big pile of presents to be unwrapped before we get to the birthday cake. There was a strong horsey theme since a certain 4 year old has been taking, and enjoying, riding lessons these days.

It looks like, with two minutes to go in today’s game and a nine point lead, the Vikings are going to beat Green Bay and start the season 4 and 0. Our football fan son will be gleeful. I’m still touchy having rooted for a team that’s lost the Superbowl four times. (Final today: Vikings 31 Green Bay 29)

I’ve been working, without as much success as I’d like, at letting go of expectations and living in the moment. With the weather changes and the constant revisions in technology and business practices, that seems wise but requires the retraining of a lifetime’s conditioning. I have a book on order that should arrive this coming week, written by Jenny Odell, titled How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. I’d been toying with reading it and, in one of the reviews I read, saw the mention of bioregionalism. I was hooked and look forward to reading about the combination.

The Woolly Bear

Along a silvan lane, you spy a critter
creeping with a mission, a woolly bear
fattened on autumn flora. So you crouch,
noting her triple stripes: the middle ginger,
each end as black as space. Her destination
is some unnoticed nook, a sanctuary
to settle in, greet the fangs of frost,
then freeze, wait winter out—lingering, lost
in dreams of summer, milkweed, huckleberry.
Though she’s in danger of obliteration
by wheel or boot, your fingers now unhinge her.
She bends into a ball of steel. No “ouch”
from bristles on your palm as you prepare
to toss her lightly to the forest litter.

She flies in a parabola, and lands
in leaves. Though she has vanished, both your hands
hold myriad tiny hairs, a souvenir
scattered like petals. When this hemisphere
turns warm again, she’ll waken, thaw, and feast
on shrubs and weeds (the bitterer the better)
then, by some wondrous conjuring, released
from larval life. At length she will appear
a moth with coral wings — they’ll bravely bear
her through a night of bats or headlight glare,
be pulverized like paper in a shredder,
or briefly flare in a world that will forget her.

by Martin J. Elster

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

Happy Autumnal Equinox and Alban Elfed

As of 7:43 this morning, local time, we are into full autumn, if not fully into autumn. The equinox has occurred but the season has not matured. Leaf color is still less than 10%. Some monarch butterflies have fluttered by. Flickers are flittering through the backyard. Strangely, several lilac bushes in the neighborhood have produced a second bloom recently. Meanwhile, the size of sandhill crane flocks has grown and Canada geese are doing training flights. We even saw a woolly bear caterpillar this week past.

just a hint of color in the trees

Photo by J. Harrington

No sign yet of the first frost or the first snowflake in our neck of the woods. Either could arrive any day now. The local crew of hummingbirds seems to have headed south. We’ll leave the feeders up for another week or two in case northern migrants stop by. I think, and hope, high temperatures will now stay seasonably less than 80℉ at least until next April.

As we enter the darker seasons, many of US hope that will only be literal and not figurative. The latter depending on the results of the upcoming presidential election. In our funkier moods, we wonder how many days of relative peace and quiet we’ll get before campaigns for the mid-term elections start up.

Archery deer season opened the beginning of last week Friday brought a handful of thunderstorms, complete with boomings, lightning flashes, and downpours. Will that be the last until next year, or might we experience thundersnows? Stay tuned.

Something we couldn’t share before this because it might have spoiled a birthday surprise was one of this month’s high points. For his birthday, we got the Son-in-Law an Early Lessons print from the BobWhite Studio. The Studio is located not far from our home so we made arrangements to take a peek prior to completing the purchase. In the process, we enjoyed a nice visit with Bob and his charming wife, Lisa. The story behind the print as a gift is that it depicts a man, presumably a Dad, standing behind / beside a girl holding a fly rod. The Son-In-Law has been taking his almost four-year-old daughter fishing quite a bit this summer. She’s a bit young for a fly rod, but, as most Minnesota sports fans have learned to say, “maybe next year.”

Poem Beginning with a Line from It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Maggie Smith

Just look—nothing but sincerity 
as far as the eye can see—
the way the changed leaves,

flapping their yellow underbellies
in the wind, glitter. The tree
looks sequined wherever

the sun touches. Does anyone
not see it? Driving by a field
of spray-painted sheep, I think

the world is not all changed.
The air still ruffles wool
the way a mother’s hand

busies itself lovingly in the hair
of her small boy. The sun
lifts itself up, grows heavy

treading there, then lets itself
off the hook. Just look at it
leaving—the sky a tigereye

banded five kinds of gold
and bronze—and the sequin tree
shaking its spangles like a girl

on the high school drill team,
nothing but sincerity. It glitters
whether we’re looking or not.

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

It’s not all bad this autumn

In several ways, this has been literally a shitty week My dog SiSi has had diarrhea for the past few days and, since we’re getting the septic tank pumped out soon, I had to locate and dig out the pumping port. Ah, the joys of country living! I won’t trouble you with a list of all the recent political stunts that fit the theme.

On the bright side, our son, a Vikings fan, is quite happy that they’re well ahead of the NY Giants at the beginning of the fourth quarter of today’s first game of the regular season. The Daughter Person is enjoying a weekend visit from a friend who was the maid of honor at Daughter’s wedding a decade ago. Granddaughter is excited about an upcoming fourth birthday and her weekly horseback riding lessons. Most to all of us have been enjoying the drop in temperatures and humidity that occurred this week. I’ve been pleased with autumn’s other encroachments such as increasing color in some trees and bushes,, although the temperature drop has lead to increased time for the sourdough’s bulk rise due to house temperatures several degrees less than 70℉. Plus, the Better Half informs me there are pears on the pear tree this year. Maybe some neighbors will come and help themselves.

a pair of whitetail deer at our pear tree

Photo by J. Harrington

Our community supported agriculture autumn shares started yesterday. The farm hasn’t yet sent a list of what’s in the box this week, or, they sent an email and I inadvertently lost it. If a list is found, we’ll add it next posting.

The latest issue of TROUT magazine arrived yesterday and included an announcement that one of the staff had won the 2024 Colorado Book Award for Poetry. You might want to check out Erin Block’s writing online and How You Walk Alone in the Dark at Middle Creek Publishing. Here’s a sample from an alternate source:

Swallows

Just before the storm moves in, violet-green 
swallows fly overhead. 
I thought they were mayflies,
like what trout eyes see, looking up 
from a plunge pool.
Like a hermit thrush being my mother’s voice 
before dawn. 
With nothing to measure against,
how do you size something up.
This is chasing a horizon.
This is looking valley to valley from a ridgeline 
saying, it’s not all that far. 
Saying, sure, we can get there by dark. 

(Published in The Dodge, Spring 2024 issue.) 

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

Summer into Autumn

It’s been an interesting week. Today is the last Sunday of Summer, meteorologically apeaking. Meteorologists begin Falling into Autumn on September 1. With luck, today’s Heat Advisory and tomorrow’s Excessive Heat Warning will end Summer’s heat and humidity attacks.

On Wednesday, we enjoyed a visit to our backyard by four sandhill cranes, two adults and two grown colts it looked like. They pecked their way around the yard and the wet spot behind the house. I can only hope they nailed a few moles and/or voles. As the cranes moved toward the North, a small flock of wild turkey hens entered from the South. Everyone pretty much ignored each other and kept their distance. Would that we humans were better at such behavior.

[ONCE AGAIN BLOGGER IS MALFUNCTIONING FOR ADDING AN IMAGE!!!]

Echinocystis lobata (Wild Cucumber)

Photo by J. Harrington

Midweek, I discovered, and removed, a red squirrel’s nest from the deck rafters. I spotted it while checking to see if the bat I had chased out of the house Wednesday morning early had tried to settle under the deck. No signs of the bat, and I set a live trap for the squirrel. A couple of days later, s/he was caught and transported several miles away and released into a new home territory, we hope.

Why are oak leaves and snowflakes alike in Minnesota? There’s only on month of the year in which Minnesota hasn’t recorded a snowfall and, I suspect, there’s but one, maybe two, months when oak trees aren’t shedding their leaves. They’ve started coming down this week, again. Tamaracks are turning golden, wild cucumber is blossoming. More trees are showing more colors.

Our son has had successful surgery on his broken arm. Daughter Person took possession of a new, to her, horse on Thursday. That pleases the daylights out of her. There seems to be something in the air, again, that has the dogs licking their paws, and me blowing my nose. Summer has just about worn out its welcome as our state fair begins.

I’m guessing you’ve heard by now that our Governor, Tim Walz, is the Democratic candidate for Vice President, with Kamala Harris nominated for President. We have an opportunity to do much worse. I truly hope we don’t take it, not so much for my sake as for the lives of our children and grandchildren unto the seventh generation. VOTE BLUE! please.

Autumn

Alice Cary
1820 – 1871

Shorter and shorter now the twilight clips
   The days, as though the sunset gates they crowd,
And Summer from her golden collar slips
   And strays through stubble-fields, and moans aloud,

Save when by fits the warmer air deceives,
   And, stealing hopeful to some sheltered bower,
She lies on pillows of the yellow leaves,
   And tries the old tunes over for an hour.

The wind, whose tender whisper in the May
   Set all the young blooms listening through th’ grove,
Sits rustling in the faded boughs to-day
   And makes his cold and unsuccessful love.

The rose has taken off her tire of red—
   The mullein-stalk its yellow stars have lost,
And the proud meadow-pink hangs down her head
   Against earth’s chilly bosom, witched with frost.

The robin, that was busy all the June,
   Before the sun had kissed the topmost bough,
Catching our hearts up in his golden tune,
   Has given place to the brown cricket now.

The very cock crows lonesomely at morn—
   Each flag and fern the shrinking stream divides—
Uneasy cattle low, and lambs forlorn
   Creep to their strawy sheds with nettled sides.

Shut up the door: who loves me must not look
   Upon the withered world, but haste to bring
His lighted candle, and his story-book,
   And live with me the poetry of Spring.

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