It’s the stupid system, stupid!!!

I’ve been fussing and fuming for the past few hours because I couldn’t get at the part of the Blogger software that lets me create this page. The pages already published were still there, but only visible through a browser. And now, with neither rhyme nor reason, I'm back. This strikes me as one more example of technology becoming more and more embedded in our lives, while growing less secure and/or reliable. But then many of the non-digital services in our lives are becoming less secure and/or reliable. Health systems, especially those for rural and/or females are one example. Police systems are another. Education and media, particularly ads and headlines/leads, appear to be doing a good job of dumbing down the general population. I mean, who needs fact checkers or copy editors these days? We no longer seem focused on whether something is right, only if it’s legal. [The Blogger software disappeared again for hours before I could get this posted.]

where is the bluebird of happiness these days?

Photo by J. Harrington

Have you seen the report(s) that hackers, purportedly from or in China, have infiltrated the software that runs our basic infrastructure systems? Unless you’re a practicing Luddite, you no doubt have been exposed to mis- and disinformation via the internet and/or email etc. Have you received advisories, particularly from a health care provider’s system, that your personal information may have been captured by hackers and your identity may be at risk? Before we get around to more screwing up with artificial intelligence, let’s apply some human intelligence to securing our information and communication systems.

In fact, it seems to me it’s way past time to forego the basic premise of perpetual growth on a finite planet and creating ever richer trillionaires while regular folks starve and live on or in the streets. It’s clear that many more folks need to be reminded of guidance provided by one of our founding fathers:

“The government you elect is the government you deserve.”  ― Thomas Jefferson

Now, in anticipation of Monday’s celebration of Earth Day, here’s today’s poem. If there’s no posting tomorrow, it’s likely due to another Blogger software technical failure. But it is worth every penny I pay for it.

An Earth Song 

Langston Hughes
1901 – 1967

It's an earth song,—
And I've been waiting long for an earth song. 
It's a spring song,—
And I've been waiting long for a spring song. 
    Strong as the shoots of a new plant 
    Strong as the bursting of new buds
    Strong as the coming of the first child from its mother's womb. 
It's an earth song, 
A body song, 
A spring song, 
I have been waiting long for this spring song. 

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What purpose, then, is served?

This morning, as I drove out of the drive,  I looked across the road to see fields of purple lovegrass, covered in dew, made glowing white by the rising sun. It was indeed awesomely beautiful, triggering remembrances of some of the old descriptions of heaven. Sometimes beauty can bring us to a state of awe, enthralled, bedazzled, mesmerized. I recommend trying to begin and end your day with such an experience. It’s a far better beginning than by reading the  morning paper, which may contain such items as finding that the third degree murder conviction of Mohamed Noor has been overturned by  the Minnesota Supreme Court. According to the Star Tribune:

The court's unanimous ruling written by Chief Justice Lorie Gildea focused on the mental state necessary for the legal standard of a "depraved mind," defined as a "generalized indifference to human life."

The state's highest court said such a state cannot exist when a defendant's conduct is aimed at a particular person. The ruling affirmed what Noor's lawyers have claimed since trial — that third-degree murder didn't apply because his actions were focused on a single person.

Alpha Stock Images - http://alphastockimages.com/

The Minnesota Statute is two paragraphs long. The second makes sense. The purpose of the first paragraph is, in my humble opinion, obscured in incomprehensible language. The individual words might make sense, but not when strung together. Here’s the paragraph:

(a) Whoever, without intent to effect the death of any person, causes the death of another by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life, is guilty of murder in the third degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 25 years.

Perhaps it’s because my college degree is in English, and I am not a lawyer, that I am deeply troubled by, to the point of not being able to assign a meaning to, the phrases "by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life,...”

According to one law firm’s web site, "Examples of depraved mind murder include violently driving an automobile ², the accidental discharge of a gun during a fight³, and Mohammed Noor’s widely publicized charge of shooting a woman while on duty as a police officer.”

Now that the Minnesota Supreme Court has eliminated the third example, I continue to struggle with the question of what does it mean to be violently driving an automobile (is that reckless driving?) and how does one accidentally discharge a gun during a fight? What if one’s opponent causes the discharge? Was it a depraved mind that brought a gun to where  there might be a fight? What is an example of a “generalized indifference to human life?” Is that like weapons of mass destruction that no one can find?

I’ve known many lawyers over the years and often been fascinated by their ability to split hairs at the subatomic scale. As far as I’m concerned, Minnesota’s use of the phrases “evincing a depraved mind” and “act eminently dangerous to others” belong with Schrödinger's cat and not in the realm of jurisprudence. Let’s not even get started on how, per the second paragraph, there’s supposed to be any sort of equivalency between sentenced to "not more than 25 years [in prison] or to payment of a fine of not more than $40,000, or both.”

The Murder of William Remington

By Howard Nemerov

It is true, that even in the best-run state

Such things will happen; it is true,

What’s done is done. The law, whereby we hate

Our hatred, sees no fire in the flue

But by the smoke, and not for thought alone

It punishes, but for the thing that’s done.

And yet there is the horror of the fact,

Though we knew not the man. To die in jail,

To be beaten to death, to know the act

Of personal fury before the eyes can fail

And the man die against the cold last wall

Of the lonely world—and neither is that all:

There is the terror too of each man’s thought,

That knows not, but must quietly suspect

His neighbor, friend, or self of being taught

To take an attitude merely correct;

Being frightened of his own cold image in

The glass of government, and his own sin,

Frightened lest senate house and prison wall

Be quarried of one stone, lest righteous and high

Look faintly smiling down and seem to call

A crime the welcome chance of liberty,

And any man an outlaw who aggrieves

The patriotism of a pair of thieves.

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Time to make DINOs really extinct

The executive branch of Minnesota's government has approved an amended permit allowing massive water withdrawals to support the construction of Enbridge's Line 3 pipeline. Minnesota's governor has written  (Tweeted) something to the effect that "any pipeline through treaty lands is a non-starter with me." The campaign to help Minnesota's governor get reelected in 2022 keeps sending me emails requesting donations. My response: Any administration that allows Minnesota's environment and treaty lands to be impaired in support of an unneeded tar sands pipeline is a non-starter for my money.

local Democratic caucus, 2018

Photo by J. Harrington

The Democratic National Committee has done much to keep real progressives like AOC and other members of "The Squad" from getting elected and/or re-elected. My snail mail and email inbox keep filling up with requests from the DNC, or prominent Democrats on its behalf, to contribute to increasing the Democratic majority. I'm more interested in increasing the progressive majority since I believe that DINOs like Manchin and Sinema are placeholders at best. The Democratic administration in our nation's capital seems to support Enbridge's Line 3, despite campaign promises to tackle climate change. Although I may well vote a democratic ticket in November 2022, I'm likely to send contributions only to progressive candidates who honor their promises and/or help fund primary challenges to the regressive members of the party.

As I see it, we are all faced with enough critical issues that helping support a too little, too late political party is not in our interest or that of our descendants. Republicans are, and have been for quite some time, an unmitigated disaster for all except themselves and the 1%. Going back at least as far as Clinton and NAFTA, the best I can hope for from democrats is a mitigated disaster. I'm tired of being limited to chosing the lessor of two evils.

The Age of Dinosaurs

By James Scruton

There are, of course, theories 

about the wide-eyed, drop-jawed 

fascination children have for them, 

about how, before he's learned 

his own phone number or address, 

a five-year-old can carry 

like a few small stones 

the Latin tonnage of those names, 

the prefixes and preferences 

for leaf or meat. 

My son recites the syllables 

I stumble over now, 

sets up figures as I did 

years ago in his prehistory. 

Here is the green ski slope 

of a brontosaur's back, 

there a triceratops in full 

gladiator gear. From the arm 

of a chair a pterodactyl 

surveys the dark primeval carpet. 

Each has disappeared from time 

to time, excavated finally 

from beneath a cabinet 

or the sofa cushions, only 

to be buried again among its kind 

in the deep toy chest, 

the closed lid snug as earth. 

The next time they're brought out 

to roam the living room 

another bone's been found 

somewhere, a tooth or fragment 

of an eggshell dusted off, 

brushing away some long-held notion 

about their life-span 

or intelligence, warm blood 

or cold. On the floor 

they face off as if debating 

the latest find, what part 

of which one of them 

has been discovered this time. 

Or else they stand abreast 

in one long row, side 

by scaly side, waiting to fall 

like dominoes, my son's 

tossed tennis ball a neon yellow 

asteroid, his shadow a dark cloud 

when he stands, his fervor for them 

cooling so slowly he can't feel it— 

the speed of glaciers, maybe, 

how one age slides into the next.

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Time for a democratic initiative

There's a loaf of artisan sourdough bread that just came out of the oven. Other than waiting for the rise to occur, bread baking is not a passive activity. It's know as "shaping a loaf," right? The starter has to be active, correct? Keeping and improving a democracy is like that. You don't get the results you want if you're always reacting (correcting problems) rather than acting (deciding on ingredients, assembling, baking, etc.)

Democrats, the political party kind, have been doing too much reacting to the initiatives of tRUMP and the Republican Party, rather than setting their own course of action and executing on it. Now seems to me to be the time to reverse roles.

We don't need the United States Postal Service to successfully flush tRUMP and the GOP out on a tidal wave of Blue Votes. Each state has its own voting procedures as, I believe, each county does. Our county has a web page that explains how to successfully request and return an absentee ballot without relying on the US mail. Here's the options they list. Your county should have something similar. DO NOT, PLEASE, USE THE  MAIL IT option!

Return the ballot on or before Election Day. Delivery options are:

• Mail it in the provided pre-paid envelope. The ballot MUST arrive by 8pm the day of the Election. [strikethrough added by blogger]
• Deliver it in-person to the ... County Auditor-Treasurer’s Office by 3:00pm the day of the Election.
• Have someone else return your ballot by 3:00pm on Election Day. This person cannot deliver more than three ballots.
• You MAY NOT deliver or use your absentee ballot at the polling place on Election Day

Instead of spending as much time and energy as they have chastising the tRUMP regime and the USPS for making it difficult to impossible to vote by mail this election, why don't the Democrats, progressives, liberals and anyone who actually gives a damn about democracy in these United States make sure that all potential voters know how to vote absentee without depending on an increasingly unreliable USPS. Remember the old saying about "First we win the battle, then we fight over how we divide the spoils?" Democrats and other democracy lovers could also organize volunteers to collect and return ballots consistent with state and county requirements. That would help those who have neither time nor transportation to deliver their own ballots.

[UPDATE: RULES FOR

Early voting by state

I've already suggested something like the paragraph above to someone I know who's involved in the local Democratic establishment. I'm posting it here in hopes that it makes sense and others will shake their local Democratic party trees to get people to realize this isn't the time to stick to many principles or chains of command as much as it is to make sure there's a Blue Tsunami. The Republicans need to be beaten so badly that they'll be licking their wounds for the next dozen or so presidential elections.

One Vote

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

            ^{After reading a letter from his mother, Harry T. Burn cast the deciding vote to ratify the 19th amendment of the U.S. Constitution}

My parents are from countries
where mangoes grow wild and bold
and eagles cry the sky in arcs and dips.
America loved this bird too and made

it clutch olives and arrows. Some think
if an eaglet falls, the mother will swoop
down to catch it. It won’t. The eagle must fly
on its own accord by first testing the air-slide

over each pinfeather. Even in a letter of wind,
a mother holds so much power. After the pipping
of the egg, after the branching—an eagle is on
its own. Must make the choice on its own

no matter what its been taught. Some forget
that pound for pound, eagle feathers are stronger
than an airplane wing. And even one letter, one
vote can make the difference for every bright thing.

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Don't forget to give a Christmas present to yourself

Thanks to the time of year and the weather patterns, I've begun rereading a couple of books of poetry that involve Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison. Kooser wrote Winter Morning Walks: one hundred postcards to Jim Harrison during the last years of the last millennium. Kooser and Harrison collaborated on Braided Creek, A Conversation in Poetry, during the early years of the current millennium. The poems in the latter aren't identified by poet. I have long admired and enjoyed the poems of each writer, and continue in my efforts to discover more details of the long-standing friendship between two poets who seem to me to be very different people, except they both love the Midwest and both are writers.

Next year I intend to once again risk paving part of a road to hell, with my good intentions to return to poetry writing. Kooser put his aside for several months after he'd been diagnosed with cancer, and then began sending postcards to Harrison. I hope to avoid anything as traumatic, but want to slow down and pay more attention to the details in my life, especially as the world around us gets more crazy, at least leading up to early November.

My suggestion: give yourself a Christmas present that lasts all year. Set aside time each and every day for meditation and meaningful reading. Try to stretch you attention span. I know I've shortened mine by spending too much time on the internets and social media. No matter how easy and addictive it may be, we don't have to do things that are unhealthy for our minds, bodies and emotions. In fact, it seems to me that learning to treat ourselves to health is part of the message of the birth and rebirth we celebrate at this time of year.

from “Braided Creek”

How one old tire leans up against
another, the breath gone out of both.

Old friend,
perhaps we work too hard
at being remembered.

Which way will the creek
run when time ends?
Don’t ask me until
this wine bottle is empty.

While my bowl is still half full,
you can eat out of it too,
and when it is empty,
just bury it out in the flowers.

All those years
I had in my pocket.
I spent them,
nickel-and-dime.

Each clock tick falls
like a raindrop,
right through the floor
as if it were nothing.

In the morning light,
the doorknob, cold with dew.

The Pilot razor-point pen is my
compass, watch, and soul chaser.
Thousands of miles of black squiggles.

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Are you really successful?

The last chapter in Terry Tempest Williams [TTW] new book, Erosion - Essays of Undoing, begins with a wonderful quotation from David Orr. I'm seriously considering making it the basis for a personal manifesto on living my life as sustainably as possible.

“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.”

is this a successful sunrise? how would we know?

Photo by J. Harrington

For a moment, let's hold off on the "need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind" and give some thought to "successful." Bob Dylan helps identify some aspects worthy of our consideration when he wrote Love Minus Zero/No Limit:

My love she speaks softly
She knows there’s no success like failure
And that failure’s no success at all

Years before Dylan wrote those zen-like, taoistic lines, a definition of "success," attributed to Emerson, although that's disputed by some, is this:

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child,
a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

Center for Book Arts window: does it tell a story?

Photo by J. Harrington

I have long enjoyed and admired the writings of both Dylan and Emerson. Each of them seems to find success to be more, much more, in line with David Orr's caution than with our contemporary, conventional "wisdom."

Now, it's time we can focus on the need, for "more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers." Peacemaking is far from my forte, although I've been known to fumble and stumble my way through some peacemaking efforts. My relationship with healers ended, much to my mother's dismay, when I transferred from pre-med as a major to English. I seem to be most comfortable in the humanities and at the time I was in college there was little, if any, though of exposing would be doctors to poetry. Restoration is part of what I helped work on before I became a recovering planner. Brownfields, industrial building reuse, historic preservation were all elements of my yearly activities. These days I find restorative agriculture to be a fascinating topic. I have long been a lover of my wife, my family, various dogs, wild lands, rivers, the Atlantic Ocean, and their respective inhabitants. That leaves storytelling. I'm a better reader than writer but I work on the latter and include storytelling as an aspiration. By my reckoning, in terms identified by Emerson, within the perspective of Dylan's love, I believe I've been successful and the Mr. Orr, while clearly correct about the majority's definition, needs to recognize there is, and has been for some time, a well thought out minority report.

Each of us must decide whether we will define success by transactions or relations. We've created some horrendous ruts by walking the middle of the road between those two kinds of relationships we can have with the world. It's time, and then some, to ponder the questions Mary Oliver poses to us, the last one being the most important. But you knew that.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

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Noticing ups and downs and arounds

So far today we've noticed three things that seem unusual, although it may just be that what we've seen is normal and we simply haven't noticed them before.

this is where we're used to seeing blue jays

Photo by J. Harrington

First, a blue jay has been trying to feed at the suet feeder. Usually we seem them feeding on the ground under the sunflower seed feeders, especially the one in front of the house. The folks at Cornell's all about birds tell us that blue jays are omnivores, so that would include suet. The fact that we've only seen them feeding n the ground or at a tray feeder before is what threw us off.

Second, we briefly got to watch a red squirrel about half the size of a gray squirrel chase the gray out of the red squirrel's "territory?" It reminded us of some of the scenes from the old silent movies with Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, the Keystone Cops, or Laurel and Hardy. In what may or may not be a related matter, one or more critters has eaten the faces our of our jack-o'lanterns. We suspect small rodents (red squirrel?) since there's been no gnawing on the jack-o'lantern tops or on the uncarved pumpkins, as has happened when the local deer herd stops by for a snack.

only those at the top remain

Photo by J. Harrington

Third, many of the trees in our aspen patch have lost their leaves except those near the very top. We've no idea if this is or isn't normal but we don't remember noticing such a pattern before. That may be attributable to prior year's attention failure or a memory failure or both.

That's been the height of excitement around here today and we won't mind at all if it stays that way. A quiet period before Thanksgiving  and again before Christmas is a pleasant variant on holiday excitement. In a comparable vein, today's warmer weather might not have felt as nice if we hadn't had an unseasonable cold snap already.

Today is also "Give to the Max Day" in Minnesota. Our email inbox is full of reminders, as is our Twitter timeline. This year we're not going to play. We've been making some sustaining donations all year to a couple of the non-profits we support, and responded to a number of other pleas, including memberships and special projects, from other non-profits, mostly environmental. We got annoyed last year by the "increase donation to cover processing fees" and the fact that the donation system occasionally got overloaded. This year our giving will be more mindful and intentional and done some other day. Our rationale is described in this paragraph and the one preceding. We're grateful we're able to make the donations we do.

When Giving Is All We Have 

Alberto Ríos, 1952

                                              One river gives
                                              Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.

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Poetry saving America Day 19 #NationalPoetryMonth

This, the eighteenth in Tony Hoagland's list of Twenty Poems That Could Save America, is a poem we have studied in several classes over the years. We have yet to "enjoy" this poem, unlike many of the other works we read. It is uncomfortably real in the dilemma it portrays: no really good choice, only better or worse options. [Sidebar confession: until we started this piece, we've always pictured this poem being set in the Winter. That can't be correct. Does in North America drop their fawns in late May or June. We think it was "the dark" that threw us off. Metaphorical, perhaps?]

whitetail deer doe, sans fawn(?)

Photo by J. Harrington

The events described in the poem seem to us to raise a number of questions we Americans often try to avoid answering:

• Why us?
• Why here and now?
• Can't we let someone else handle this?

Implied in Hoagland's choice of this poem, we believe, is a perspective that we Americans must improve our ability to make better ethical decisions. To do so, we must more honestly and openly engage with each other, remembering to "not let the perfect become the enemy of the good."

poetry teaches the ethical nature of choice
To visualize this poetry-enriched near-future, please imagine that somewhere in the echoey, high-ceilinged meeting rooms of our nation’s Capitol, a congressional committee is in session. It is midsummer in Washington, D.C., and a pitcher of water is on the table, beads of condensation on its side; the ice has melted. A difficult bill is also on the table, one in which the exigencies of the political present must be weighed against the needs of the future — say, for example, that the subsidized production of corn for ethanol might be given priority over other alternatives to gasoline. Too many Midwestern farmers have become dependent on these subsidies. But if policy is changed now, they will suffer.

“It’s like that William Stafford poem,” says one congressional aide. “What’s the title — the one about the deer?”

“Traveling through the Dark,” says a representative from Missouri. The poem begins:

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

“That’s the one,” says the aide. “Yeah, that scene where the guy has to decide whether to push the mother deer over the edge of the cliff to make the road safer — even though the deer is pregnant, with a fawn inside her.”

“To swerve might make more dead,” says someone else.

“Yes,” says the first legislator, “here we are, getting ready to choose some lives over others, to clear the road for traffic. Are we going to push the deer over the side of the highway?”

“When you put it like that,” says another, “I think we should wait.”

“That’s not deciding,” says a third congressman, “that’s procrastinating. I say we vote right now.”

Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;?
under the hood purred the steady engine.?
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;?
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all — my only swerving —,?
then pushed her over the edge into the river.

“Traveling through the Dark” is a well-known poem, but one with legs yet — it offers a lucid ethical dilemma that foregrounds the nature of moral choice.

Traveling through the Dark

By William E. Stafford

Traveling through the dark I found a deer

dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.

It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:

that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car   

and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;   

she had stiffened already, almost cold.

I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason—

her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,   

alive, still, never to be born.

Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;   

under the hood purred the steady engine.

I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;   

around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—,   

then pushed her over the edge into the river.

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Poetry saving America Day 7 #NationalPoetryMonth

Today we're back to a poem about which Tony Hoagland has written in Twenty Poems That Could Save America and spoken about in a Public Television interview. You'll have to draw your own conclusions about how this poem could help save America. Ours lean toward the idea that the current, long-standing, emphasis on pop culture, consumerism, materialism, neoliberalism and several other isms undermine and become the antithesis of respecting solitude and self-discovery. You can find more on that theme in Naomi Klein's No Logo and similar works.

does a solitary swan experience loneliness?

Photo by J. Harrington

POETRY RESPECTS SOLITUDE AND SELF-DISCOVERY

Here’s another scenario. A woman, recently divorced from her husband of twenty-five years (he fell in love with his yoga instructor). Living in the city where they shared a life together, she’s discovering what it’s like to be single at fifty. She has a busy professional life and can handle the daylight hours, but the nights are hard, and she’s decided she’d better stay away from wine in the evening. She believes she might be alone for the rest of her days.

One night on the train home, she remembers a poem from tenth grade called “Bamboo and a Bird.” When she gets back to her apartment, she looks it up on the Internet. It’s by Linda Gregg.

In the subway late at night.
Waiting for the downtown train
at Forty-Second Street.
Walking back and forth
on the platform.
Too tired to give money.
Staring at the magazine covers
in the kiosk. Someone passes me
from behind, wearing an orange vest
and dragging a black hose.
A car stops and the doors open.
All the faces are plain.
It makes me happy to be
among these people
who leave empty seats
between each other.

Reading the poem, the divorcée finds focus. “It reminded me,” she says to her friend the following week, “that there can be dignity in being alone. Remember the woman in the poem? She sees everything so clearly because she’s alone.”

“Yes,” says the friend. “She has this pride about being alone.”

“No, it’s not pride, exactly — she just sees what is in front of her. Because she’s tired. She can see because she’s exhausted and by herself. And even though those other people are maybe unhappy and poor, like her, she isn’t responsible for them. They don’t need to be changed. They can’t change. All of them, they just are what they are.”

“No shame, no pity.”

“It’s all right to be lonely, because everyone else is, too. There’s company in loneliness.” She pauses.

“It’s like existentialism with a hand warmer.”

“What about that guy in the poem, who goes past, pulling the hose? We could never figure that out in class. “

“I don’t know what that hose is about. Does everything have to represent something?”

Hoagland also discusses this poem in an interview on PBS with Jeffrey Brown, Here's that piece:

TONY HOAGLAND: ... I think it’s a wonderfully unpretentious, lucid capturing of a moment that we all can recognize. And there’s just a pleasure in recognition of the world that we live in. And then, also, there’s a feeling tone underneath it and there’s an intelligence which isn’t assertive, but which offers us the chance to hold that moment in our hands and say, ‘Look at this moment, how unusual it is that the poet says, ‘It makes me happy to be among these people who leave empty seats between each other.’ There’s ‘Too tired to give money.’ Those are not look at me moment. It’s not a poem that laments loneliness or tiredness or poverty. It says that there’s a secret pleasure in the individuality, in self-enclosure, and so that’s not a truth that is popularly represented. It’s sort of off the map. It doesn’t connect with any kind of utilitarian economic motive. It’s not something you can test for, but when it’s held up to us and we can examine it, we think, ‘Yes, it’s true. Loneliness is a strange kind of pleasure and I often take pleasure in it.’ 

What do solitude and self-discovery make you think about? As alluded to in Hoagland's comments, they seem to be avoided by many Americans these days. And yet, one of America's great philosophers has this to say about solitude:

“I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.” ~Henry David Thoreau

Aldo Leopold notes, in the April section of A Sand County Almanac:

There are degrees and kinds of solitude. … I know of no solitude so secure as one guarded by a spring flood; nor do the geese, who have seen more kinds and degrees of aloneness than I have. 

To the extent Bamboo and a Bird encourages us to not simply hide in a crowd, to the extent we learn solitary pleasures, Linda Gregg's poem could well be one that could help save America. Didn't the United States begin with a Declaration of Independence?

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It's now been 5 years +/-

Our first posting here was November 5, 2012. We missed a few days in 2013, due to an injury. Taking that into account, we've now been posting daily for five solid years, longer than some jobs we held when we were much younger.

each day dawns bright, whether cloud-covered or not

Photo by J. Harrington

During these five years, we've garnered more than 200,000 page views. That's more than 40,000 a year, about 3,500 a month and around 100 a day. Thank you, whoever you are.

We've had readers, or at least page visitors, from these countries:

• United States, 
• Italy,
• Canada,
• France,
• Ukraine,
• Poland,
• Germany,
• South Korea,
• Brazil, and the
• United Kingdom.

Every day, for 5 years, we've found something worth writing about, and a poem to match the day's theme or topic. We hope that settles any concerns about how relevant poetry may be to daily life.

During the past five years we've moved from a hard line "polluter pays" principle to a broader recognition that it may be necessary and beneficial to make public investments to protect our common natural resources and our common heritage.

We've learned that daily writing is good for us. We pay more attention to the world around us and are more thoughtful, much of the time, in our responses to that world and its inhabitants. We've judged that readers prefer nature to policy, positive postings to bitching and moaning and, on a few rare occasions, have even been told our postings have been helpful.

While we've been adding to this blog daily, our poetry has been neglected. We're going to see if we can find a better (more satisfying to us) balance. Our daily posts may suffer from time to time, but if we find days when we're not writing at all, we will return to a daily post regime, not as punishment but as a reinvigorated routine.

a new day is born

Photo by J. Harrington

When we first started, we wrote about our hopes for a brighter day after the 2012 election. Those hopes were fulfilled, but only partially. Each brighter day can never be permanent, although another thing that we've learned is that each day offers a possibility for making the world, and ourselves, a little better. It's simply up to us to actualize that possibility each and every day. Those lessons came via Abraham Maslow and Rebecca Solnit and Maria Popova and my mom.

                     Not Writing

By Anne Boyer

When I am not writing I am not writing a novel called 1994  about a young

woman  in  an  office park  in a  provincial town who has a job  cutting  and

pasting time. I am not writing a novel called Nero about the world's richest

art star in space.  I am not writing  a book  called Kansas City Spleen.  I am

not writing a sequel to Kansas City Spleen called Bitch's Maldoror. I am not

writing  a  book of  political  philosophy called Questions for Poets. I am not

writing a scandalous memoir.  I am not writing a pathetic memoir. I am not

writing  a  memoir  about  poetry  or  love.  I am not writing a memoir about

poverty,  debt  collection,  or  bankruptcy.  I   am  not  writing   about family

court.  I am not writing a memoir because memoirs are for property owners

and not  writing a memoir about  prohibitions of memoirs.

When  I am not writing a memoir  I am also not writing any kind of  poetry,

not  prose  poems  contemporary   or  otherwise,  not  poems made  of frag-

ments,  not tightened and  compressed poems, not loosened and  conversa-

tional poems, not conceptual  poems, not virtuosic poems employing many

different  types of  euphonious devices, not poems with epiphanies and not

poems  without,  not  documentary  poems about recent political moments,

not  poems  heavy with allusions to critical theory and popular song.

I am not writing "Leaving the Atocha Station" by Anne Boyer and certain-

ly  not  writing  "Nadja"  by  Anne Boyer though would like to write "Debt"

by  Anne Boyer  though  am  not  writing  also  "The  German Ideology" by

Anne  Boyer  and not writing a screenplay called "Sparticists."

I am not writing an account of myself more miserable than Rousseau.

I am not writing an account of myself more innocent than Blake.

I am not writing epic poetry although I like what Milton said about lyric

poets drinking wine while epic poets should drink water from a  wooden

bowl. I would like to drink wine from a wooden  bowl  or to drink  water

from an emptied bottle of wine.

I am not writing a book about shopping, which is a woman shopping.

I am not  writing  accounts  of  dreams,  not  my own or anyone else's.

I am not writing historical re-enactments of any durational literature.

I am not writing anything that anyone  has requested of me or is  waiting

on,  not  a  poetics  essay  or any other sort of essay, not a  roundtable re-

sponse, not interview responses, not writing prompts for younger writers,

not my thoughts about critical theory or popular songs.

I am not writing a new constitution for the republic of no history.

I am not writing a will or a medical report.

I am  not  writing  Facebook status updates. I am not writing thank-you

notes or apologies. I am not writing conference papers. I am not writing

book reviews. I am not writing blurbs.

I  am not writing  about contemporary  art. I am  not writing  accounts of

my travels.  I am  not writing  reviews for  The New Inquiry and not writ-

ing pieces for Triple Canopy and not writing anything for Fence. I am not

writing a  daily  accounting  of my reading, activities, and ideas.   I am not

writing  science  fiction  novels  about  the  problem  of  the idea of the au-

tonomy  of  art  and  science  fiction  novels about the problem of a society

with  only  one  law  which  is  consent.  I am  not  writing stories based on

Nathaniel Hawthorne's unwritten story ideas. I am not writing online dat-

ing profiles.  I am not writing anonymous communiqués.  I am not writing

textbooks.

I am not writing a history of these times or of past times or of any future

times and not even the history of these visions which are with me all day

and all of the night.

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Rulin's for New Years

Depending on your definitions, the morning around here has been full of snow showers or flurries. I'm not sure what kind of clouds we're under and there's been fundamentally no accumulation = flurries, I guess. For most of my adult life, the week between Christmas and New Years has been a quiet time, a time to reflect on the year ending and contemplate the year upcoming.

I recall Woody Guthrie had a list of New Years Rulin's [transcription]. It's a great list to begin with.

Woody's Rulin's

Looking through it leads me to two conclusions. First, Concentrate on Fundamentals. Second, see, and appreciate, what's really there. In other words, for the next four years it will undoubtedly be wise to emphasize the basics of life, including having fun. For me that will include family, dogs, fly-fishing, rivers, writing, photography, reading and baking. Each of these will no doubt trigger added activities, for example, photography and/or fly-fishing will lead to travel and include rivers. It seems to me that time has come to look not so much at what we're doing but at the relationships supported by our activities. In particular, as a screening tool, I'm going to look toward achieving what I want much more than opposing what I don't want. I haven't the time or energy to stop everything I oppose. I can do a lot more to support what I want, but that means first I need to sort outwit it is I think I want. I think I'm making some progress on that and my own version of New Year's Rulin's. How about you? Don't forget to be careful what you wish for 'cuz you may get it. Right, Mr. Trump?

Burning the Old Year

By Naomi Shihab Nye

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.   

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,   

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,   

lists of vegetables, partial poems.   

Orange swirling flame of days,   

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,   

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.   

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,   

only the things I didn’t do   

crackle after the blazing dies. 

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On giving thanks and gratitude

monarch butterfly in a Minnesota driveway

Photo by J. Harrington

Today I'm grateful for the announcement that the first wave?, flock? flight? of monarch butterflies are arriving in Mexico (scroll down on the linked page). That helped me shake off the mood I've picked up from our gloomy, overcast, unseasonably warm weather. I'm not wishing for cold, just sunshine.

goldfinch and nuthatch at feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

The birds, chickadees, nuthatches, goldfinches and bluejays, have been piling in to the sunflower feeders as if they expected a major storm. The woodpeckers, red-bellied, downy and hairy, have discovered the suet I set out late last week. That seems to have gone onto whatever they have as a list of things for which they're grateful. Given their size overall, I suspect that birds have small hearts. I wonder if they manage to emulate Piglet.

“Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.”
– A.A. Milne in Winnie-the-Pooh

I won't even try to speak for anyone but myself on this, but I spend too much time and effort focused on what I don't have and how to get it, rather than on what I do have and how to enjoy it. It's past time for me to follow the advice of a fellow New Englander:

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph's phrasing isn't quite as memorable as Roger Miller's in the eponymous song

"Ya can't roller skate in a buffalo herd
But you can be happy if you've a mind to"

but they both get at pretty much the same thing. I find it much easier to be happy if I've a mind to appreciate what (and who) I have in my life.

There Is No Word

By Tony Hoagland 

There isn’t a word for walking out of the grocery store

with a gallon jug of milk in a plastic sack

that should have been bagged in double layers

—so that before you are even out the door

you feel the weight of the jug dragging

the bag down, stretching the thin

plastic handles longer and longer

and you know it’s only a matter of time until

bottom suddenly splits.

There is no single, unimpeachable word

for that vague sensation of something

moving away from you

as it exceeds its elastic capacity        

—which is too bad, because that is the word

I would like to use to describe standing on the street

chatting with an old friend

as the awareness grows in me that he is

no longer a friend, but only an acquaintance,

a person with whom I never made the effort—

until this moment, when as we say goodbye

I think we share a feeling of relief,  

a recognition that we have reached

the end of a pretense,   

though to tell the truth

what I already am thinking about

is my gratitude for language—

how it will stretch just so much and no farther;

how there are some holes it will not cover up;

how it will move, if not inside, then

around the circumference of almost anything—

how, over the years, it has given me

back all the hours and days, all the

plodding love and faith, all the

misunderstandings and secrets

I have willingly poured into it.

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Earth Day Milestones to celebrate?

Happy Earth Day. By now you've probably heard that President Obama has been reported to claim that Senator Warren is just plain wrong about the facts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Of course, as Huffington Post and others note, it's hard to be sure since the Obama administration has classified the the negotiations and related documents. As one who believes that the strategy to "Trust, but verify" was one of the few worthwhile things to come from the Reagan administration, I can only reply to President Obama "say what?"

prairie flowers at Wild River State Park

Photo by J. Harrington

I'm still disappointed that the Clinton administration brought us the North American Free Trade Agreement, which I continue to believe did major disservice to two of the democrat's longest-standing constituencies, environmentalists and labor unions. The "side agreements" on protecting the environment and labor rights seem to have substantially less effectiveness than the jurisdiction exercised by the World Trade Organization. Minnesota's Iron Range claims to be suffering from unfair trade practices in the international steel industry, compounded by claims that it takes too long and is too difficult to get redress from the damage of "steel dumping." I haven't yet seen an analysis that would support those assertions either, but Public Citizen has published a 20 years of NAFTA report, with data, that states

"The data show that NAFTA proponents’ projections of broad economic benefits from the deal have failed to materialize. Instead, millions have suffered job loss, wage stagnation, and economic instability from NAFTA. Scores of environmental, health and other public interest policies have been challenged. Consumer safeguards, including key food safety protections, have been rolled back...."

The Economics Policy Institute also has criticized NAFTA's "benefits." It's a contentious issue and one of my biggest critiques is that the basis on which the anticipated wins and losses for these kinds of agreements are rarely (never?) documented. To paraphrase Jerry Maguire, "show me the jobs." I don't expect any projections to be absolutely correct, but at least we could judge future realities against well-defined expectations and, perhaps, limit the debate to more productive lines. All of which brings us to one of my wishes for future Earth Days in Minnesota.

great blue heron at Carlos Avery WMA

Photo by J. Harrington

Once upon a time, Minnesota had a set of broadly agreed upon and formally adopted goals called "Minnesota Milestones." They were goals and indicators of progress, or lack thereof, toward attaining those goals. For this Earth Day and future ones, I'd like to see Minnesota bring back Milestones and measure how we're doing against them. Maybe it might help bring some modicum of civility to our political discourse. I don't know about you, but I'm fed up with bickering along the lines of "she said, he said" that are focused on scoring points, not progress. These are the Environmental goals (in bold) and indicators (numbered) in the last (1998) version of Milestones I could find:

Minnesotans will conserve natural resources to give future generations a healthy environment and a strong economy.
     55 Energy use per person
     56 Renewable energy sources
     57 Vehicle miles
     58 Air pollutants
     59 Water use
     60 Timber harvest
     61 Solid waste and recycling
     62 Toxic chemicals

Minnesotans will improve the quality of the air, water and earth.
     63 Urban air pollution
     64 Water quality in lakes and rivers
     65 Nitrate in ground water
     66 Erosion of cropland

Minnesotans will restore and maintain healthy ecosystems that support diverse plants and wildlife.
     67 Wildlife habitat
     68 Changes in land use

Minnesotans will have opportunities to enjoy the state’s natural resources.
     69 Parkland and open space
     70 Recreational trails

cottontail under bird feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

I think most of the goals and indicators would still be worth measuring today and into the future. I find it much easier to trust when it's also easier to verify. Don't you? Maybe next Earth Day we can celebrate the return of Minnesota's Milestones and some progress toward attaining them.

UPDATE: A major step in the right correct direction:
Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's DashBoard

Shall earth no more inspire thee

By Emily Brontë 

Shall earth no more inspire thee,

Thou lonely dreamer now?

Since passion may not fire thee

Shall Nature cease to bow?

Thy mind is ever moving

In regions dark to thee;

Recall its useless roving—

Come back and dwell with me.

I know my mountain breezes

Enchant and soothe thee still—

I know my sunshine pleases

Despite thy wayward will.

When day with evening blending

Sinks from the summer sky,

I’ve seen thy spirit bending

In fond idolatry.

I’ve watched thee every hour;

I know my mighty sway,

I know my magic power

To drive thy griefs away.

Few hearts to mortals given

On earth so wildly pine;

Yet none would ask a heaven

More like this earth than thine.

Then let my winds caress thee;

Thy comrade let me be—

Since nought beside can bless thee,

Return and dwell with me.