In service to the Serviceberry

Last Spring, about the time our pear tree was in bloom, I finally stumbled onto a local source of serviceberry bushes, of a species noted for producing good fruit, Saskatoon serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia). I drove to northern Dakota county and bought two at Gertens. Some time thereafter, I managed to plant them in accord with the directions. Several weeks later, despite watering them regularly between rainy spells, both bushes were leafless and dead. Rabbits? Deer? Pocket gophers? I wasn't sure but I was unhappy since the bushes were, to my mind, expensive plus the physical cost of planting them. I was slightly consoled by remembering the story by one of the Aldo Leopold kids about planting, and replanting, hundreds or thousands of conifers on their sand county farm.

pear tree in bloom, May 2025

Photo by J. Harrington

I spent bits and pieces of the Summer mumbling and grumbling about Amelanchier failures until the Better Half got tired of listening to me and called Gertens to confirm that my bushes were covered by a warranty. I could get replacements if I showed up with a receipt and photos of the dead bushes. Several weeks after getting the confirmation, I did so and the replacement process actually went better than I expected. It was smooth and pleasant.

Today's plantings added the prompt installation of wire cage protectors and the addition of bark mulch around the outside of each cage. The serviceberry bushes are supposed to show their own white flowers about the time the pear tree does, but won't grow nearly as tall. Now that the replacement planting is done, I'm now typing up this posting and will then keep my fingers and toes crossed that these bushes make it through the Autumn and Winter and Spring etc. Stay tuned and, if you haven't read Robin Wall Kimmerer's latest book, The Serviceberry, here's the original essay as a sample. It's the one that started me on this adventure.

Tobacco Origin Story, Because Tobacco Was a Gift Intended to Walk Alongside Us to the Stars

By Joy Harjo

From a story of how the tobacco plant came to our people, told to me by my cousin George Coser Jr.

It was way back, before there was a way back

When time threaded earth and sky.

Children were conceived, were born, grew, and walked tall

In what we now call a day.

There must have been two suns, a bright moon, somehow

We had more light than now, sheen

Of falling in love playing about Earth’s body

In a wild flicker which lit

Us up. We who were this planet and yearned for touch.

Every planted thought grew plant

Ladders to the stars, way back, before there was

No way back, Miss Mary Mack.

We used to sing along the buttons of her

Dress. Our babies are always

Our babies. Even back then when time waved through

The corn. We knew our plants like

Relatives. Their stories were our stories, there

Were songs for everything — I

Should say “are” songs for every transformation

They link between way back and

Now, the forever now, a time when a young

Mvskoke man and woman

Walked through the shimmer of the early evening.

They had become as one song.

They lay down when it was dark. I can hear their

Intimate low-voice talking.

How they tease one another with such gut love.

Earth makes a bed, with pillow

Mounds. And it is there as the night insects sing

They conceived their first child. They

Will look back as they walk East toward the sunrise.

The raw stalks of beginning

Will drink the light, root deeply dark into earth.

In the tracks of their loving

The plant-child emerges, first the seed head, then

Leafy, long male body and the white female

Flowers of tobacco, or

Hece, as the people called it when it called

To them. Come here. We were brought

To you from those who love you. We will help you.

And that’s how it began, way

Back, when we knew how to hear the songs of plants

And could sing back, like now

On paper, with marks like bird feet, but where are

Our ears? They have grown to fit

Around earbuds, to hear music made for cold

Cash, like our beloved smoke-

Making threaded with addiction and dead words.

Sing this song back to me, girl.

In the moonlight, tobacco plant had silver

Moon buttons all up her back.

We’re getting dressed to go plant new songs with words.

Our sun is dimming faster.

Mvto hece, mvto hvse, mvto e — 

Kanvchaga, mvto ah

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Merry Christmas!

 From time to time I mention that I’m proud to “be of Irish extraction.” Here’s one reason why:

The Littlest Christmas Tree

By Amy Peterson

The littlest Christmas tree
lived in a meadow of green
among a family
of tall evergreens.
He learned how to whisper
the evergreen song
with the slightest of wind
that came gently along.

He watched as the birds
made a home out of twigs
and couldn’t wait till
he, too, was big.
For all of the trees
offered a home,
the maple, the pine, and the oak,
who’s so strong.

“I hate being little,”
the little tree said,
“I can’t even turn colors
like the maple turns red.
I can’t help the animals
like the mighty old oak.
He shelters them all
in his wide mighty cloak.”

The older tree said,
“Why, little tree, you don’t know?
The story of a mighty king
from the land with no snow?”
Little tree questioned,
“A land with no snow?”
“Yes!” said old tree,
“A very old story,
from so long ago.”

“A star appeared,
giving great light
over a manger
on long winter’s night.
A baby was born,
a king of all kings,
and with him comes love
over all things.”

“He lived in a country
all covered in sand,
and laid down his life
to save all of man.”

Little tree thought of the gift
given by him,
then the big tree said with the
happiest grin,
“We’re not just trees,
but a reminder of that day.
There’s a much bigger part
of a role that we play!”

“For on Christmas Eve,
my life I’ll lay down,
in exchange for a happier,
loving ground.
And as I stand dying,
they’ll adorn me in trim.
This all will be done
in memory of him.”

“Among a warm fire,
with family and friends,
in the sweet songs of Christmas,
I’ll find my great end.
Then ever so gently,
He’ll come down to see
and take me to heaven,
Jesus and me.”

“So you see, little tree,
we are not like the oak
who shelters all things
beneath his great cloak.
Nor are we like the maple
in fall,
whose colors leave many
standing in awe.”

“The gift that we give
is ourselves, limb for limb,
the greatest of honor,
in memory of him.”

The little tree bowed
his head down and cried
and thought of the king
who willingly died.
For what kind of gift
can anyone give than to lay down your life
when you wanted to live?

A swelling of pride
came over the tree.
Can all of this happen
Because of just me?
Can I really bring honor?
By adorning a home?
By reminding mankind
that he’s never alone?

With this thought, little tree
began singing with glee.
Happy and proud
to be a true Christmas tree.

You can still hear them singing
even the smallest in height,
singing of Christmas
and that one holy night.

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Seasoned giving, this hard thing

Here in Minnesota, today is “Give to the Max Day.” My email inbox and our snail mail box have been getting loaded with notices about how much we can help everyone and everything by donating early or today. I’ve contributed to a few organizations and rejected more opportunities than I’ve supported. Many requests don’t do a good job of explaining what the organization actually accomplishes. That’s unfortunate. I realize that we’re better off than many and feel an obligation to help, but I also feel an obligation to be responsible in my giving.

At one point I must have supported an organization that sold my name and email address because I’m getting requests from folks i’d never consider giving a donation and, as I get more and more of them, I become more critical in my screening of all potential contributions. That’s not really how I like to enter the giving season. Of course, I also fail to understand why “moderate” Republicans and all Democrats haven’t made it clear to the dozen or two radical Republicans that they’ll never get any support because they’re making everyone look bad.

what are you hoping for under the tree?

Photo by J. Harrington

On a brighter note, I’m thankful we’ll get through the holidays before the country faces the next government shutdown crisis. I’m thankful things aren’t worse than they are. I’m looking forward to being thankful that governments throughout the world have become more responsible, less warmongerish, and more focused on addressing climate change and loss of biodiversity. (It doesn’t cost any more to wish big than small.) The package I’m looking for is me, happy and healthy; plus the same for those in my family, my friends, my home state, my country, and my (our) world. We can do it if we all try. Just ask Carrie Newcomer.

You Can Do This Hard Thing

by Carrie Newcomer

There at the table

With my head in my hands

A column of numbers

I just did not understand

You said “Add these together

Carry the two, now you."

You can do this hard thing

You can do this hard thing

It′s not easy I know but

I believe that it's so

You can do this hard thing

At a cold winter station

Breathing into our gloves

It would change me forever

Leaving for God knows what

You carried my bags

You said "I′ll wait for you"

You can do this hard thing

You can do this hard thing

It's not easy I know but

I believe that it's so

You can do this hard thing

Late at night I called

And you answered the phone

The worst it had happened

And I did not want to be alone

You quietly listened

You said “We′ll see this thru"

You can do this hard thing

You can do this hard thing

It′s not easy I know but

I believe that it's so

You can do this hard thing

Here we stand breathless

And pressed in hard times

Hearts hung like laundry

On backyard clothes lines

Impossible just takes

A little more time

From the muddy ground

Comes a green volunteer

In a place we thought

Barren new life appears

Morning will come whistling

Some comforting tune for you

You can do this hard thing

You can do this hard thing

It′s not easy I know but

I believe that it's so

You can do this hard thing

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Planning will never replace dumb luck

Our Air Quality Alert is still with us. I believe it’s the same one that was initially supposed to end last night about 7 pm. Meanwhile, cumulous clouds pile up every afternoon, do their best to become storm clouds, fail, or succeed somewhere nearby, and leave us muttering about cloudy skies and continuing drought. I think we’re close to three inches below normal precipitation so far this month. Maybe this afternoon, or tonight, or tomorrow, or next week sometime, we’ll finally get some rain? [For the record, the preceding paragraph is somewhere between an observation and a complaint, an observelaint?]

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now... J. Mitchell

Photo by J. Harrington

Due to the air quality (or lack thereof), I’ve been pretty much staying inside this morning and reading about reciprocity and gifts in traditional ecological knowledge, at the moment in the form of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s essay on Mishkos Kenomagwen, the Lessons of Grass, in which she tells a version of the story of the Women Who Fell from the Sky. That caused me to remember that Joy Harjo has a volume by that title, so I went to see if I have a copy. The answer is not yet. As I was looking online to refresh my memory on what the cover looks like, I also discovered Harjo has a recently published illustrated volume of her poem Remember. The latter looks as though it would almost perfectly complement the book our granddaughter gave me for Father’s Day this year [see this June 19 posting]. Since I also received a gift card at one of my favorite book stores on Father’s Day, I intend to reciprocate by using it to get a copy of both Remember and Woman to share with that same granddaughter. See how sometimes it just all comes together?

I think we may have also begun a positive feedback loop with the assembly of the two bookshelves our son gave me for Father’s Day. Beginning to turn stacks of books into semi-organized collections feels rewarding enough that we’ll do some more of it the next time we get a rainy day that’s too stormy and full of lightening to stand in a river waving a graphite stick. We may well salvage most of this summer if we keep this going with the flow attitude.

Remember

Joy Harjo     1951 – 

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

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In anticipation! and welcome!

With less than a week left in April, I'd say it's officially "late April." According  to Minnesota Seasons, that means we can anticipate the arrival of male ruby-throated hummingbirds anytime soon. As much as I love the arrival of waterfowl and wading birds such as Canada geese and sandhill cranes, I am constantly delighted and amazed by the arrival of tiny sparks of life embodied in hummingbirds.

male ruby-throated hummingbird, mid-May

Photo by J. Harrington

If we get a  foot or so of snow anytime over the next couple of weeks, feel free to blame me and the hummingbirds for  our  optimism. I filled and hung a couple of feeders, based largely on the report of a hummingbird having been sighted today at Maiden Rock, WI.

Journey North web site

It'll probably be a week or two, or more, before a grape jelly feeder goes up for Baltimore orioles, but it's really encouraging to feel that we're coming into Spring instead of just out of Winter. Turning that corner at the end of this years Earth Week, more of us may be able to admit that some things in this world simply arrive as gifts and our responsibility is to pay attention and enjoy them and be thankful that they're sharing their lives with ours.

Think about this for a moment: in a universe whose very existence some find improbable, during a span of time beyond my comprehension, an improbable life such as mine, or yours, crosses that of an even less probable hummingbird so sometimes both arrive together in the same place and the same time in an impossibly huge universe is miraculous, isn't it? Looking at the size and duration of the universe, what's the probability of you or I seeing a hummingbird within arm's reach? But it happens. It's a gift from the universe to us.

“Hummingbirds”

by Mary Oliver

The female, and two chicks,

each no bigger than my thumb,

scattered,

shimmering

in their pale-green dresses;

then they rose, tiny fireworks,

into the leaves

and hovered;

then they sat down,

each one with dainty, charcoal feet –

each one on a slender branch –

and looked at me.

I had meant no harm,

I had simply

climbed the tree

for something to do

on a summer day,

not knowing they were there,

ready to burst the ledges

of their mossy nest

and to fly, for the first time,

in their sea-green helmets,

with brisk, metallic tails –

each tulled wing,

with every dollop of flight,

drawing a perfect wheel

across the air.

Then, with a series of jerks,

they paused in front of me

and, dark-eyed, stared –

as though I were a flower –

and then,

like three tosses of silvery water,

they were gone.

Alone,

in the crown of the tree,

I went to China,

I went to Prague;

I died, and was born in the spring;

I found you, and loved you, again.

Later the darkness fell

and the solid moon

like a white pond rose.

But I wasn’t in any hurry.

Likely I visted all

the shimmering, heart-stabbing

questions without answers

before I climbed down.

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To be opened on Christmas Eve

One of the ways I find poetry most full of life is that, as often as not, poets surprise me with their poems. I've enjoyed many Christmases in my life. I've also read many of Mary Oliver's poems. Until this Christmas Eve, I hadn't unwrapped The Gift or her Christmas Poem. Many families enjoy a tradition of opening one gift on Christmas Eve. It's in that spirit we share today's posting.

a star shone and angels watched

Photo by J. Harrington

May your Christmas Eve be full of love and warmth. May you always find room at the inn. May the days ahead be better for you, and to you, than those you've left behind. May Christmas angels and shepherds watch over you year round and may we all finally learn to listen to Wise Men, whether or not they come bearing gifts.

no room at the inn

Photo by J. Harrington

Christmas Poem

by:  Mary Oliver

Says a country legend told every year:
Go to the barn on Christmas Eve and see
what the creatures do as that long night tips over.
Down on their knees they will go, the fire
of an old memory whistling through their minds!

[So] I went. Wrapped to my eyes against the cold
I creaked back the barn door and peered in.
From town the church bells spilled their midnight music,
and the beasts listened –
yet they lay in their stalls like stone.

Oh the heretics!
Not to remember Bethlehem,
or the star as bright as a sun,
or the child born on a bed of straw!
To know only of the dissolving Now!

Still they drowsed on –
citizens of the pure, the physical world,
they loomed in the dark: powerful
of body, peaceful of mind,
innocent of history.

Brothers! I whispered. It is Christmas!
And you are no heretics, but a miracle,
immaculate still as when you thundered forth
on the morning of creation!
As for Bethlehem, that blazing star

still sailed the dark, but only looked for me.
Caught in its light, listening again to its story,
I curled against some sleepy beast, who nuzzled
my hair as though I were a child, and warmed me
the best it could all night.

The Gift 

By Mary Oliver

Be still, my soul, and steadfast.
Earth and heaven both are still watching
though time is draining from the clock
and your walk, that was confident and quick,
has become slow.

So, be slow if you must, but let
the heart still play its true part.
Love still as once you loved, deeply
and without patience. Let God and the world
know you are grateful. That the gift has been given.

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Thank you Sierra Club, from Becky

A few days ago, the Jeep was parked in the lot of a big box grocery store. Its owner was inside getting a prescription filled and replenishing the family’s supply of water softener salt. The store is located in a Northeastern Metro area that is not among the most liberal locations in the Twin Cities. In fact, liberals are a minority in this neck of the woods. 

Among a multitude of bumper stickers on the back of the Jeep is one the Sierra Club sent. It reads "Make America Green Again." That sticker's been on the Jeep since about 2016. That slogan, and some similar sentiments on other bumper stickers, may have irritated more than one local pickup driver who seemed determined to demonstrate that real men drive pickups and drive fast. Being old enough to remember the consternation about “real men don’t eat quiche,” while also being a quiche eater, it was easy to be 1000% behind a response that went “real men eat whatever they want,” or words to that effect.

some notes bring joy

Photo by J. Harrington

All of this has been a long-winded prelude to sharing a story that made the day. The bumper sticker described above triggered the placement of a note under the Jeep’s driver side windshield wiper. That note turned out to be a pleasant surprise. It read:

Loved your 

“Make America 

Green Again” 

Bumper Sticker

🙂

Becky

I've never met Becky, although the Better Half did, since she returned to the Jeep before I finished my errands. It is all too rare an occasion when expressing a preference prompts a positive response from someone else. Is that because we have become too focused on our differences instead of what we have in common? Becky, and her note, have created a synergistic feedback. I will now be more open to telling others when I agree and will look more carefully for opportunities to pay positivity forward. That may not solve the world’s problems but it will undoubtedly make me happier. That’s a good enough place to start. In fact, I seem to recall a management technique that involved wandering around and catching people doing something right. It works with puppies, too. What more can we ask?

Thanks

By W. S. Merwin

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you

we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings

we are running out of the glass rooms

with our mouths full of food to look at the sky

and say thank you

we are standing by the water thanking it

standing by the windows looking out

in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging

after funerals we are saying thank you

after the news of the dead

whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you

in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators

remembering wars and the police at the door

and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you

in the banks we are saying thank you

in the faces of the officials and the rich

and of all who will never change

we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us

taking our feelings we are saying thank you

with the forests falling faster than the minutes

of our lives we are saying thank you

with the words going out like cells of a brain

with the cities growing over us

we are saying thank you faster and faster

with nobody listening we are saying thank you

thank you we are saying and waving

dark though it is

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A Merry Christmas message!

From the biblical stories of the birth of Christ we read:

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.
— Luke 2:1–5

Matthew 2:16

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.

According to the bible, at the time of the birth of Christ the world was run by despots. How much have times changed? There are still despots and despot-wannabes. And it came to pass last July that a non-biblical perspective about the current Herod-like regime in Washington, D.C. was written by Rebecca Solnit and published in The Guardian:

We have talked about resistance a great deal these past 18 months or so, but I want to talk about opposition for a moment. You oppose a regime by standing up to it, but also by being its opposite. For this regime that means being compassionate and inclusive where they are vicious and exclusionary. It means being committed to precision and accuracy when they are sloppy with the truth and the facts or at war with them. It means preserving memory, both of how things are changing in the present, and the longterm memory of how many people before us have opposed and resisted and won, of this country’s histories of both heroes and of racism from the anti-Chinese riots of the nineteenth century to the mobs of Klansmen in the twentieth. The United States has an abundance of those heroes in the past and some in the present. John Lewis, who is one of those heroes, said recently “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

a path is made by walking

Photo by J. Harrington

We think we see much similarity between our current situation and the regime under which Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem. We also see, unsurprisingly, comparable similarity in the messages preached by Jesus Christ millennia ago and that from John Lewis via Rebecca Solnit six months ago. Each would tell us today:

Merry Christmas! Be of Good Cheer! Be Hopeful! A New Year is coming!

Christmas

By Bill Manhire

Evening: the nervous suburbs levitate.

Height does us no harm, now we are high above the mineral pools,

above the flash hotel whose only use is treachery.

Someone knocks on a door and you crouch behind the bed.

Down in the bar, the small girls toast their parents,

the brother breaks a large bone for its marrow.

I’m thinking of a challenge for us all. The star in the sky

has traveled all the way from home. Now follow that!

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For a "perfect" holiday

As far back as we can remember, we've tended toward being a perfectionist. (We suspect the Better Half might claim we've succeeded in our tendency.) Age has crept up on us, so we're considering the disadvantages and limitations of seeking perfection in a world that often seems to be able to barely function. ("Doctor, it hurts when I bang my head like this." "Don't bang your head like that.") Today, in what we can only conclude is an early Christmas present, we found (actually, it found us) and read A Thanksgiving Meditation in the Face of a Changing Climate. We can honestly, and ruefully, say we've never been aware of much of what's in the meditation, to our detriment. Here's a few choice excerpts:

• The Universe is not perfect, and that’s why you exist. 


• Every single speck of light you’ve ever seen in the nighttime sky is evidence of the Universe’s flaws.


• Everything you’ve ever eaten or drunk, every move you’ve ever made, every beautiful thing you’ve ever seen is because of a mediocre star in an unexceptional galaxy.


• There have been five mass extinctions. You are living through the sixth. You helped cause it, which means you have the power to stop it. You are not an asteroid or a volcano.

the beauty of imperfection

Photo by J. Harrington

Each of the children we share with the Better Half  was born during the Christmas season. Our son was actually born on Christmas day. With the exception of those two Christmas presences, reading the "Thanksgiving Meditation" this morning may have been the best and most appropriate Christmas present we've ever received. It certainly helps us enjoy the fact that we exist to enjoy the season and share it with loved ones and friends. If you haven't already, please go back and click on the link and read the mediation. If you have read it, it probably wouldn't hurt to read it again.

a star or a snowflake?

Photo by J. Harrington

On a related note, this morning the Better Half sent us a link to 2018 Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar. If we understand the Meditation, the photos show us evidence of an imperfect universe. We're not sure how perfection could improve on what's in the pictures. What do you think?

For the Children

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

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Listen! Don't give up Hope!

Studs Terkel, a great listener, wrote the book Hope Dies Last when he was in his early 90s. Rebecca Solnit's second edition of Hope in the Dark was published a few years ago. Particularly since November 2016, we've become more reliant on these works to temper our increasing cynicism. Solnit's observation, that

“The grounds for hope are in the shadows, in the people who are inventing the world while no one looks, who themselves don’t know yet whether they will have any effect…”

was affirmed by a personal experience these past few days, when a plant we were convinced was dead, displayed a bloom in the shadows of fallen leaves.

an aster bloom from a "dead"plant

Photo by J. Harrington

A day or two ago, we happened to glance at the leaves accumulating near the end or our drive. Peeking out from under a handful of oak and wild grape leaves was the purple and yellow flower of a New England aster. A little more than a year ago, we planted a couple of aster plants on the West side of the road at the South side of the drive. Come May of this year, we had what looked like two very dead plants. No sign of green whatsoever. They stayed that way through June, July and August.

Perhaps it's been the spell of abnormally(?) wet weather we've had during most of September and October, that same spell we've muttered about and cursed, that brought out the Lazarus genes in the aster. We'll never know, but we do know this: the reappearance of life from the dead plants has kicked our cynicism in the butt with a vengeance. For that, we are very grateful. As Terkel tells us

'Hope has never trickled down,' writes Terkel. 'It has always sprung up' - and he gets his title from Jessie de la Cruz, a founder member of the farmers union, who insisted: 'If you lose hope, you lose everything.'

Our hopes have definitely "sprung up" with the emergence of a beautiful blossom from a "dead plant." We wish you comparable sources of hope in your lives. We also hope you reinforce your hopes by voting on or before November 6, 2018, especially if you vote for politicians who've demonstrated their listening skills more than their promises of painless solutions. You know who we mean.

The Hope I Know

By Thomas Centolella

doesn’t come with feathers.

It lives in flip-flops and, in cold weather,

a hooded sweatshirt, like a heavyweight

in training, or a monk who has taken

a half-hearted vow of perseverance.

It only has half a heart, the hope I know.

The other half it flings to every stalking hurt.

It wears a poker face, quietly reciting

the laws of probability, and gladly

takes a back seat to faith and love,

it’s that many times removed

from when it had youth on its side

and beauty. Half the world wishes

to stay as it is, half to become

whatever it can dream,

while the hope I know struggles

to keep its eyes open and its mind

from combing an unpeopled beach.

Congregations sway and croon,

constituents vote across their party line,

rescue parties wait for a break

in the weather. And who goes to sleep

with a prayer on the lips or half a smile

knows some kind of hope.

Though not the hope I know,

which slinks from dream to dream

without ID or ally, traveling best at night,

keeping to the back roads and the shadows,

approaching the radiant city

without ever quite arriving.

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Wild and Scenic: Golden!

This year is the 50th Anniversary of the establishment of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act and the designation of the Namekagon and St. Croix Rivers as the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway. One of many wonderful aspects of where we live is that we're on the western edge of the St. Croix watershed. Our property is a couple of miles downstream of the Sunrise River, a tributary of the St. Croix.

Wild and Scenic 50th Logo

Several years ago we started a writing and photography project focused on the Scenic St. Croix. We never finished that project. This year it's time to take another crack at it. We're going to share some of the resources we've discovered in the interval.

Recently we've been trying to find any existing anthologies of river poetry. We've only found one that we're sure of, The River's Voice: An Anthology of Poetry. From the reading that we've done over the past few years, we think there's numerous other poems that warrant inclusion or a separate volume. We're going to see how far we can get toward an augmented anthology without actually trying to get permissions and get anything (re)published. At least, that's the plan for now.

canoeing on the St. Croix

Photo by J. Harrington

Craig Blacklock has crafted a series of photographs of the St. Croix and Namekagon, accompanied by an essay written by Walter Mondale and published as The Enduring Gift. There's an unrelated Wild and Scenic Rivers web site that has a compilation of river quotes that we will soon start wading through.

Part of our inspiration comes from an English web site we've discovered, Caught by the River. The English seem to have more excellent poets writing about their rivers than we former colonists have writing about ours. We've recently read Alice Oswald's A Sleepwalk on the Severn and Dart, each a book length work devoted to one river. On our side of "the big pond," we have Raymond Carver's outstanding The River and several of Jim Harrison's poems among other works. Then, there's Gary Snyder's incomparable Mountains and Rivers Without End, which includes several river-specific poems and, last but not least for now, there's the more expansive themes in River of Words: Youth Art and Poetry Inspired by the Natural World. We're not sure if any of you think you may need or want something like we're proposing to pull together, but the more we wrote today, the more we became sure we do.

The River

By Jim Harrison

Yes, we'll gather by the river,

the beautiful, the beautiful river.

They say it runs by the throne of God.

This is where God invented fish.

Wherever, but then God's throne is as wide

as the universe. If you're attentive you'll

see the throne's borders in the stars. We're on this side

and when you get to the other side we don't know

what will happen if anything. If nothing happens

we won't know it, I said once. Is that cynical?

No, nothing is nothing, not upsetting just

nothing. Then again maybe we'll be cast

at the speed of light through the universe

to God's throne. His hair is bounteous.

All the 5,000 birds on earth were created there.

The firstborn cranes, herons, hawks, at the back

so as not to frighten the little ones.

Even now they remember this divine habitat.

Shall we gather at the river, this beautiful river?

We'll sing with the warblers perched on his eyelashes.

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MERRY CHRISTMAS!

The context:

Original Caption Released with Image:

This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed 'Pale Blue Dot', is a part of the first ever 'portrait' of the solar system taken by Voyager 1. The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic. From Voyager's great distance Earth is a mere point of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. Coincidentally, Earth lies right in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the sun. This blown-up image of the Earth was taken through three color filters -- violet, blue and green -- and recombined to produce the color image. The background features in the image are artifacts resulting from the magnification.

Image Credit:

NASA/JPL

Image Addition Date:

1996-09-12

The consequence:

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

May your days be filled with the blessings of new beginnings, new perspectives, old traditions and a miracle or two!

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.

Photo by J. Harrington

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Accentuate the positive

We engaged in a bit of remedial education this morning, centered around the word reciprocity. We had come to believe that the word essentially means "tit for tat," or "quid pro quo," possibly because we were unduly influenced, years ago, when we took small boat and seamanship courses and learned about reciprocal bearings. (If going away from port due East, the reciprocal to return is due West.) It turns out that maybe we had oversimplified our definition just a teensy little bit. As with so many things these days, the meaning of a word seems to very much depend on context.

• social psychology says reciprocity means people should repay, in kind, what another person has provided for them
• cultural anthropology refers to a similar non-market exchange of goods or labour ranging from direct barter (immediate exchange) to forms of gift exchange where a return is eventually expected
• an extended essay on the Natural Model of Reciprocity notes that it is not, as we had thought from our exposure to reciprocal courses, inclusive of retributive justice
• balanced, positive and negative reciprocity are all needed to encompass the meanings we thought were included in the basic term "reciprocity"

To be candid, for years we hadn't thought much about the meaning of reciprocity, because "everybody knows" what it means. It means what we think it means. This works until someone who considers reciprocity only as positive or balanced reciprocity tries to communicate with someone familiar only with "an eye for an eye." That's not the same as how the earth provides us with fresh air to breathe and clean water to drink. How should we reciprocate with the earth?

Northern Minnesota lake

Photo by J. Harrington

Robin Wall Kimmerer, in her wonderful book Braiding Sweetgrass broadens our concept of reciprocity with her description of Honorable Harvest. Then, this week, as we worked on plans for the removal of poison ivy in a couple of limited areas behind the house, we again encountered the concept of a variation on reciprocity, the need to plant something to take the role the poison ivy was filling and to use the nutrients made available by the elimination of the ivy. It's not likely to be successful if we just eliminate what we don't want, we need to create what we do want. (Nature abhors a vacuum?)

Much of the focus of liberals and progressives since November 8, 2016, has been on preventing "roll-backs" or other negative effects triggered by the election. It seems, based on much of what we think we know, that resistance may be necessary but is insufficient. We have to sort out what it is we do want to replace our political poison ivy. Being a smaller patch of ivy, being not as bad as poison ivy, aren't at all likely to create the culture, society or future we do want. Think of how many futures you's like to avoid could be created. Can you prevent them all without providing a better alternative? R. Buckminster Fuller offered us sound advice when he pointed out:

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

We need new models of our presidency and our congress. How are we going to create them? What must we change first?

This Morning I Pray for My Enemies

Joy Harjo, 1951

And whom do I call my enemy?
An enemy must be worthy of engagement.
I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking.
It’s the heart that asks the question, not my furious mind.
The heart is the smaller cousin of the sun.
It sees and knows everything.
It hears the gnashing even as it hears the blessing.
The door to the mind should only open from the heart.
An enemy who gets in, risks the danger of becoming a friend.

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In the Sunrise River, less bad ≠ good #phenology

I think the first time I encountered the concept that less bad did not equal good was when I read Cradle to Cradle. It struck much closer to home today as I climbed out of the Jeep into the warm sunshine and I realized that less cold is not the same as warm. In fact, this is the first day this year that our road has warmed enough to attract cold-blooded critters to it. Less bad vs. good, less cold vs. warm, can be dangerous territory for someone who has tendencies toward perfectionism, but, I think, it's territory worth exploring.

garter snake warming at roadside

Photo by J. Harrington

For example, there are, it seems to me, analogies to be found in the perspectives contained in such works as Lewis Hyde's The Gift: "every modern artist who has chosen to labor with a gift must sooner or later wonder how he or she is to survive in a society dominated by market exchange." Gaifts and markets are radically different. Hyde notes that "Many tribal groups circulate a large portion of their material wealth as gifts." Robin Wall Kimmerer, in her wonderful Braiding Sweetgrass, writes that "The earth has plenty and offers us abundance, spreading her gifts over the green: strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, cherries, currants—that we might fill our bowls. Niibin, we call summer in Potawatomi, 'the time of plenty,' and also time for our tribal gathering, for powwows and ceremony."

Sunrise River at East Viking Boulevard

Photo by J. Harrington

What can we offer the earth in return for her gifts to us? Do we (re)clean the air we use, or does earth do that for us? What about the water we depend on to grow our food and to drink? Even at our best, we rarely, if ever, return it as clean as we found it. Not only that, but we often fail to notice, or cannot tell, whether we have tarnished or degraded our clean water gifts. For instance, the Sunrise River, as it flows from Forest Lake to the St. Croix River, has several segments that don't meet water quality standards for recreational use. I doubt if they're posted with warning signs. One of the reports that the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has produced to identify water quality problems and propose solutions says little, if anything, about actual, as compared to prospective, human uses of the river for recreation in or on the water. I know of and have enjoyed many activities such as tubing, waterfowl hunting, fishing and boating/canoeing in various stretches of the Sunrise. I haven't encountered any warning signs. (Tomorrow or early next week I'll double check at some identified access points.)

As Summer, niibin, begins today, we might want to spend more time and energy looking into and at the quality of the waters we enjoy because, all too often, we can't really tell whether they're polluted or not just by looking at them. If we accept MPCA's schedule for attaining "swimmable" conditions in the Sunrise in 2044, we should also consider investing in some "posted" signs. Then, again, the Clean Water Act had the interim goal of attaining "fishable-swimmable" back in 1983, 34 years ago this year.

Each Moment a White Bull Steps Shining into the World

Jane Hirshfield, 1953

If the gods bring to you
a strange and frightening creature,
accept the gift
as if it were one you had chosen.

Say the accustomed prayers,
oil the hooves well,
caress the small ears with praise.

Have the new halter of woven silver
embedded with jewels.
Spare no expense, pay what is asked,
when a gift arrives from the sea.

Treat it as you yourself
would be treated,
brought speechless and naked
into the court of a king.

And when the request finally comes,
do not hesitate even an instant—

Stroke the white throat,
the heavy, trembling dewlaps
you’ve come to believe were yours,
and plunge in the knife.

Not once
did you enter the pasture
without pause,
without yourself trembling.
That you came to love it, that was the gift.

Let the envious gods take back what they can.

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