Are we creating a new normal for summer?

If I'm correctly reading the year-to-date precipitation chart for Wild River State Park, we're about 3 or 4 inches below normal YTD, and May and June look pretty dry. A graph of normal highs, lows and precipitation for June can be found at this link. We're doing our best to not completely avoid outside chores, but are limiting work times until 10 or 11 am. Then it's inside to the air conditioning for the hottest parts of the day. If you had asked me before this week, I would have told you there's no such thing as summer cabin fever, but now I think I have a case most every afternoon.

red admiral a.k.a. white admiral butterfly

Photo by J. Harrington

Butterflies have started to appear from time to time and place to place. One, a white or red-spotted admiral, stopped at the bird bath to grab a quick drink. Another admiral, or, perhaps the same one, has been hanging around the flower garden in front of the house. Every once in awhile what looks like a monarch flits from flower to flower. We've not yet started to check milkweed for eggs or caterpillars. There's also been a hatch of some sort of vicious biting flies, possibly deer, but not horse, nor black as far as I can tell, that took a couple of chunks out of my bare arm this morning and then, after I put on a shirt with  built-in bug repellant, spent time chewing on the sleeve cuff.

Did you ever read about Tom Sawyer Whitewashing the Fence? I'm trying to work some of Tom's psychology on myself, to convince me that doing yard chores is actually fun and yields a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment when the day's to do list is done. On a good day it works. Days when the bugs and the heat and the humidity are all up there make it more challenging. At least as more of the grass gets cut, the number of ticks the dogs bring into the house, or we go and collect on our own, seem to be diminishing. It's going to be interesting to see if the remainder of summer continues to be as atypical, and in which ways, or if we get a July and August that are cooler and wetter than normal to compensate.

The Butterfly’s Dream

By Hannah F. Gould

A tulip, just opened, had offered to hold 

   A butterfly, gaudy and gay; 

And, rocked in a cradle of crimson and gold, 

   The careless young slumberer lay. 

For the butterfly slept, as such thoughtless ones will, 

   At ease, and reclining on flowers, 

If ever they study, ’t is how they may kill 

   The best of their mid-summer hours. 

And the butterfly dreamed, as is often the case 

   With indolent lovers of change, 

Who, keeping the body at ease in its place, 

   Give fancy permission to range. 

He dreamed that he saw, what he could but despise, 

   The swarm from a neighbouring hive; 

Which, having come out for their winter supplies, 

   Had made the whole garden alive. 

He looked with disgust, as the proud often do, 

   On the diligent movements of those, 

Who, keeping both present and future in view, 

   Improve every hour as it goes. 

As the brisk little alchymists passed to and fro, 

   With anger the butterfly swelled; 

And called them mechanics – a rabble too low 

   To come near the station he held. 

‘Away from my presence!’ said he, in his sleep, 

   ‘Ye humbled plebeians! nor dare 

Come here with your colorless winglets to sweep 

   The king of this brilliant parterre!’ 

He thought, at these words, that together they flew, 

   And, facing about, made a stand; 

And then, to a terrible army they grew, 

   And fenced him on every hand. 

Like hosts of huge giants, his numberless foes 

   Seemed spreading to measureless size: 

Their wings with a mighty expansion arose, 

   And stretched like a veil o’er the skies. 

Their eyes seemed like little volcanoes, for fire,—   

   Their hum, to a cannon-peal grown,— 

Farina to bullets was rolled in their ire, 

   And, he thought, hurled at him and his throne. 

He tried to cry quarter! his voice would not sound, 

   His head ached – his throne reeled and fell; 

His enemy cheered, as he came to the ground, 

   And cried, ‘King Papilio, farewell!’ 

His fall chased the vision – the sleeper awoke, 

   The wonderful dream to expound; 

The lightning’s bright flash from the thunder-cloud broke, 

   And hail-stones were rattling around. 

He’d slumbered so long, that now, over his head, 

   The tempest’s artillery rolled; 

The tulip was shattered – the whirl-blast had fled, 

   And borne off its crimson and gold. 

’T is said, for the fall and the pelting, combined 

   With suppressed ebullitions of pride, 

This vain son of summer no balsam could find, 

   But he crept under covert and died.

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Hot enough to...

On our very own home front, there's been limited action at the bird feeders this week. Time for nesting, incubating and/or feeding nestlings? No signs of any scarlet tanagers yet. This year we also appear to be missing any bluebirds. Tree swallows(?) are using one of the bluebird houses and the other is sitting empty. That's a disappointment. A male cardinal, rose-breasted grosbeak, and a red-bellied woodpecker of unidentified sex were at the feeder late yesterday. (I need to remember to look for a red crown to id the male.) Today we saw the first chickadee in a week or two at the birdbath. Are birds affected by heat as much as humans are? Audubon notes that "Spring heat waves endanger young birds in the nest."

Heat waves also endanger humans who lack the sense or opportunity to avoid getting overheated by working outside when the temperatures exceed what's been considered normal. Although I enjoy reading, June's temperatures have had me inside, sitting and reading much more than I prefer at this time of year, when the normal temperatures are supposed to be about 20 degrees cooler than they've been. I wonder how the corn, that was two to six inches tall a week or ten days ago, is faring under this hot spell.

will the heat wave stunt the corn?

Photo by J. Harrington

I also wonder if we'll see (m)any more stories about how climate breakdown is causing Minnesota's winters to warm faster than our summers. I believe we're headed to some sort of record-breaking June heatwave of nine or more days at or above 90℉. Meanwhile, Minnesota Republicans in the legislature are threatening the possibility of a state government shutdown because they object to the Clean Car rules. They're also focusing on breaking parts of the government that appear to be functioning quite well, such as the Minnesota Historical Society. One occasionally speculates whether the Republicans are trying to bring the equivalent of Sharia law to US. One also gets angered by unwarranted, obstructionist actions that endanger the health, life and safety of the rest of US. Neither COVID-19 not climate breakdown is a hoax, despite what self-serving charlatans, witches and warlocks would have US believe.

Heat

H. D. - 1886-1961

O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air—
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat—
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.

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"Failure is not an option," better legislating is required.

The 2019 Minnesota legislative session, and the special session needed because the #mnleg couldn't finish its work within the constitutional deadline, is now history. Unfortunately, at a time when the effects of climate breakdown are becoming more and more apparent, the session(s) response to a climate emergency ended as, according to MinnPost,

‘An absolute failure’: Why the Legislature’s energy and climate budget does a whole lot of nothing

 If you're old enough, or enough of a movie buff, you may remember the wonderful quote from the 1995 movie, Apollo 13, "Failure is not an option." The same is true of our need to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and incorporate energy efficiency as expediently and safely as possible. Minnesotans should be ashamed of this recent legislative failure. Too many opportunities will get missed with essentially no time to make up for those misses. We're facing a deadline of 2030, 11 years away.

solar panels, organic farm, Northern Minnesota

Photo by J. Harrington

If you were ever a child, if you have a child or children, if you hope to have a child or children, if you care about any child or children, DO NOT LET THOSE WHO CLAIM TO REPRESENT US FAIL US THIS WAY! If we want to be able to honestly claim "we're better than this," we need to demonstrate it.

We, as citizens, residents, inhabitants, occupants, and/or voters in Minnesota have a chance to further convince our elected "leaders" of the absolute necessity to fix their failure as soon as possible. A call for a global strike on September 20, 2019, has been issued. We've received reports that a group called Minnesotans for a Livable Planet are organizing Community Summits on September 22, 2019 to coincide with a United Nations Summit in New York City on September 23, 2019.

solar powered business, Ely, Minnesota

Photo by J. Harrington

We plan to be involved with other Minnesotans in the strike and the summits. The county in which we live has had solar farms erupting like mushrooms after a wet Spring. Many of them could be improved and economically enhanced by incorporating pollinator-friendly plantings under the solar panels, providing an economic boost to farmers and rural Minnesota. We are rapidly entering an age in which we need to design and develop not one-fers, but two-fers, three-fers, and more-fers. There's more than enough work to be done. Please consider joining us.

My Century

Alan Feldman

The year I was born the atomic bomb went off.
Here I’d just begun, and someone
found the switch to turn off the world.

In the furnace-light, in the central solar fire
of that heat lamp, the future got very finite,
and it was possible to imagine time-travelers

failing to arrive, because there was no time
to arrive in. Inside the clock in the hall
heavy brass cylinders descended.

Tick-tock, the chimes changed their tune
one phrase at a time. The bomb became
a film star, its glamorous globe of smoke

searing the faces of men in beach chairs.
Someone threw up every day at school.
No time to worry about collective death,

when life itself was permeated by ordeals.
And so we grew up accepting things.
In bio we learned there were particles

cruising through us like whales through archipelagoes,
and in civics that if Hitler had gotten the bomb
he’d have used it on the inferior races,

and all this time love was etching its scars
on our skins like maps. The heavens
remained pure, except for little white slits

on the perfect blue skin that planes cut
in the icy upper air, like needles sewing.
From one, a tiny seed might fall

that would make a sun on earth.
And so the century passed, with me still in it,
books waiting on the shelves to become cinders,

what we felt locked up inside, waiting to be read,
down the long corridor of time. I was born
the year the bomb exploded. Twice

whole cities were charred like cities in the Bible,
but we didn’t look back. We went on thinking
we could go on, our shapes the same,

darkened now against a background lit by fire.
Forgive me for doubting you’re there,
Citizens, on your holodecks with earth wallpaper—

a shadow-toned ancestor with poorly pressed pants,
protected like a child from knowing the future.

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How to salvage a soggy Summer

Summer solstice is about a month away. This year's weather has us wondering if we'll have enough dry wood for a Solstice fire, emphasis on the dry. After last night's winds, the drive and yard are again full of dead oak branches, none of them particularly dry. Weather forecasters are warning us the entire Summer may be cool and wet. We will have to bring about a major attitude adjustment, as well as break out our foul weather gear.

On the bright side, wet ground will make it easier to pull the smaller buckthorn bushes. On the darker side, frequent rains will severely hinder our planned attacks on the poison ivy that's now emerging. Thank heavens we're coming to rely more and more on certain lyrics by Leonard Cohen and a quotation of Samuel Beckett's.

• Cohen (from Anthem)
  
  Ring the bells that still can ring
  Forget your perfect offering
  There is a crack in everything
  That's how the light gets in 


• Beckett (from Worstword Ho)
  
  Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

If the reports of the IPCC and the UN are to be believed, and we think they are, weather, politics, economies and many factors in contemporary life are likely to get worse before they may get better. We've read too much of Rebecca Solnit to allow ourselves the luxury of despair. It took the Irish how long before they got the colonizers most of the way out of Ireland? Native Americans and other indigenous peoples have been resisting colonizers for how many hundreds of years? It is time for us to transform the values on which we base our judgements. We kind of like the way Banksy has phrased it for the Extinction Rebellion folks:

London Extinction Rebellion mural is a Banksy, says expert 

Perhaps because we're the product of a classical education, we're familiar with the (mock) Latin saying "Illegitimi non carborundum," but we much prefer Kris Kristofferson's version.

[UPDATE: we stumbled into this quote that, we think, nicely fits today's theme:

“Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try. For one thing we know beyond all doubt: Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, ‘It can’t be done.’”
               ~~Eleanor Roosevelt, Voice of America, November 11, 1951]

You Must

Jon Andersen

You must have a hope
that will let you stomp and sing
at any cold dawn.
You must not wait
to love the student who loves you
and would like to kill you.
You must read the story again
and again to the child
who receives you with a bovine stare.
You must get up
every day to punch in
not dreaming on transcendence,
not desiring new heroes or gods,
not looking the other way,
but looking for the other way
and ready to talk to everyone on the line.
You must not wait
for official approval
nor general consensus
to rage.  You must
come again to kneel
in shiny, rock-strewn soil
not to pray, but to plant.
Yes, even now
as ice caps melt and black top
goes soft in the sun
you must prepare for the harvest.

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