back to the future? again?

The field behind the house is full of Spotted Horsemint, with scatterings of black-eyed Susans and a few compass plants. Purple Lovegrass provides a colorful, mist-like understory, if prairie-like fields can have an understory. Our wet spring seems to have prompted an abundance of late Summer natural beauty for this last week of August.

a cluster of Black-eyed Susan flowers

Photo by J. Harrington

Speaking of late Summer, the weather has taken a definite autumnal turn. Highs are forecast to be in the 70s all week with lows feeling as cool as forties and fifties, thanks to freshened breezes and last night's (early this morning's?) cold front that came through. Good weather for getting caught up on some yard chores that've been deferred due to heat, humidity or thunderstorms.

The elderberry bush in the wet spot behind the house has numerous clusters of berries replacing its midsummer blooms. Our lilac bushes have a few small clumps of flowers that feel out-of-season. We think there's at least one rough(?) blazing star in bloom in a spot not visible from the house. Learning to appreciate little things and natural beauty around us is taking some effort but is worth it, especially during these days when there's so much ugliness in our world. 

From time to time I find myself drifting back to the 1960s and 70s when some of my close friends were semi-hippie, back-to-the-land types. My iPhone has lots of folk music from those days, copied from my CDs. So many of Bob Dylan's lyrics seem prescient and traumatically relevant to today's situations. Or, to quote a refrain from one of Pete Seeger's classics: "When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?" Money isn't speech. Corporations aren't people any more than artificial intellligence is. We are all in this together and all of US need to learn to act that way, as of yesterday.

Back Up Quick They’re Hippies

By Lani O'Hanlon

 

That was the year we drove

into the commune in Cornwall.

“Jesus Jim,” mam said,

“back up quick they’re hippies.”

Through the car window,

tents, row after row, flaps open,

long-haired men and women

curled around each other like babies

and the babies themselves

wandered naked across the grass.

I reached for the handle, ready, almost,

to open the door, drop out and away

from my sister’s aggressive thighs,

Daddy’s slapping hands.

Back home in the Dandelion Market

I unlearnt the steps my mother taught,

bought a headband, an afghan coat,

a fringed skirt — leather skin.

Barefoot on common grass I lay down with kin.

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

Big yellow taxi

Effective tomorrow, our days will be 20 minutes shorter than they were on the Solstice and daylight will continue to shrink until we reach and pass the Winter Solstice. Have you noticed the loss? For many, probably most of US, natural cycles are largely incidental to the significant aspects of our lives, especially if we work a 9 to 5, 5 day a week job. Joni Mitchell wrote and performs a song (Big Yellow Taxi) prescient for these times. It includes the refrain:

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot 

storm clouds on the horizon

Photo by J. Harrington

I've been retired for some years now and have tried to become more aware of and sensitive to seasonal changes, but I don't get out fishing and hunting as much as I used to, am not really a gardener nor a forager, and am only indirectly dependent on nature for many of life's necessities. Yes, this weekend's Canadian wildfire smoke is a threat to breathing fresh air but it should be gone by tomorrow and, other than staying inside, there's not much I can do about it. We depend on our private well for drinking, cooking, and bathing water and have it tested a couple of times a year for hardness. We had a comprehensive test some years ago and there's no obvious local source of nitrates nor are there babies in the house anymore so we rarely follow the Health Department's testing recommendations.

In our county, we get siren alarms when there are severe thunderstorms. The house is outside the current 100 year flood plain. I'm not sure when, how or if climate breakdown will prompt a redelineation or the identification of a 500- or 1000-year flood plain. We lack the Texas' Hill Country's history of flash flooding so ....

Much of the preceding has been prompted by the July 4th disaster in Texas and my growing concern about the continuing lack of effective response to the IPCC warnings about continued emission of greenhouse gases and the effects on our weather/climate. In my opinion, recent actions by Congress and the current regime smack of malfeasance in light of the risks and threats to the safety and security of the country's population and future. Have we all become Texans in spirit?

Let Them Not Say

by Jane Hirshfield

Let them not say: we did not see it.
We saw.

Let them not say: we did not hear it.
We heard.

Let them not say: they did not taste it.
We ate, we trembled.

Let them not say: it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands.

Let them not say: they did nothing.
We did not-enough.

Let them say, as they must say something:

A kerosene beauty.
It burned.

Let them say we warmed ourselves by it,
read by its light, praised,
and it burned.

—2014

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

All the Me, Me, Me! is killing US!!!

SCOTUS recently announced that it’s legitimate for cities to fine and incarcerate homeless people who have nowhere to sleep. It appears the GOP is hell-bent to nominate an adjudicated rapist and convicted felon as their presidential candidate. Several members of SCOTUS were, at best, misleading in their testimony to US Senators. We now appear to be living in a combination patriarchy, oligarchy, corporatocracy, inside a sham democracy. And the colonists just had to focus on King George III ! We have to deal with a free press that puts clicks and ads ahead of emphasizing the truth, even during a “presidential debate.” The America I grew up in would not knowingly elect a sociopathetic prevaricating misogynist as its leader. What happened to US?

In the last Civil War, geographically the conflict broke down to the North against the South. This time it’s likely to be a lot more messy with quite a bit of neighbor against neighbor. Is this really the best we can do after some 250 years of trying? Somewhere in my college sociology courses I seem to remember that a group lacking external enemies often turns on itself. That seems to fit US only too well these days.

I find comparable fault with both major political parties, focused more on winning than governing. Corporations who act as though profits and dividends are the cause of success rather than the result of successfully producing items of value. Anyone looking forward to flying in a Boeing product these days? Has Microsoft become an enemy of the state by failing to provide secure software to the government? Have ordinary folks like you and I decided we can “go it alone” better than we can live responsibly and cooperatively in a community? (Home owners associations don’t count.)

When was the last time any of US or our current or potential leaders looked at a book such as Anna Bernasek’s The Economics of Integrity? As I find more and more these days, a Native American has some worthwhile guidance to offer.

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

By Joy Harjo

I am the holy being of my mother's prayer and my father's song

                                              —Norman Patrick Brown, Dineh Poet and Speaker

1. SET CONFLICT RESOLUTION GROUND RULES:

Recognize whose lands these are on which we stand.
Ask the deer, turtle, and the crane.
Make sure the spirits of these lands are respected and treated with goodwill.
The land is a being who remembers everything.
You will have to answer to your children, and their children, and theirs—
The red shimmer of remembering will compel you up the night to walk the perimeter of truth for understanding.
As I brushed my hair over the hotel sink to get ready I heard:
By listening we will understand who we are in this holy realm of words.
Do not parade, pleased with yourself.
You must speak in the language of justice.


2. USE EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS THAT DISPLAY AND ENHANCE MUTUAL TRUST AND RESPECT:

If you sign this paper we will become brothers. We will no longer fight. We will give you this land and these waters "as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers run."

The lands and waters they gave us did not belong to them to give. Under false pretenses we signed. After drugging by drink, we signed. With a mass of gunpower pointed at us, we signed. With a flotilla of war ships at our shores, we signed. We are still signing. We have found no peace in this act of signing.

A casino was raised up over the gravesite of our ancestors. Our own distant cousins pulled up the bones of grandparents, parents, and grandchildren from their last sleeping place. They had forgotten how to be human beings. Restless winds emerged from the earth when the graves were open and the winds went looking for justice.

If you raise this white flag of peace, we will honor it.

At Sand Creek several hundred women, children, and men were slaughtered in an unspeakable massacre, after a white flag was raised. The American soldiers trampled the white flag in the blood of the peacemakers.

There is a suicide epidemic among native children. It is triple the rate of the rest of America. "It feels like wartime," said a child welfare worker in South Dakota.

If you send your children to our schools we will train them to get along in this changing world. We will educate them.

We had no choice. They took our children. Some ran away and froze to death. If they were found they were dragged back to the school and punished. They cut their hair, took away their language, until they became as strangers to themselves even as they became strangers to us.

If you sign this paper we will become brothers. We will no longer fight. We will give you this land and these waters in exchange "as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers run."

Put your hand on this bible, this blade, this pen, this oil derrick, this gun and you will gain trust and respect with us. Now we can speak together as one.

We say, put down your papers, your tools of coercion, your false promises, your posture of superiority and sit with us before the fire. We will share food, songs, and stories. We will gather beneath starlight and dance, and rise together at sunrise.

The sun rose over the Potomac this morning, over the city surrounding the white house.
It blazed scarlet, a fire opening truth.
White House, or Chogo Hvtke, means the house of the peacekeeper, the keepers of justice.
We have crossed this river to speak to the white leader for peace many times
Since these settlers first arrived in our territory and made this their place of governance.
These streets are our old trails, curved to fit around trees.
 

3. GIVE CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK:

We speak together with this trade language of English. This trade language enables us to speak across many language boundaries. These languages have given us the poets:

Ortiz, Silko, Momaday, Alexie, Diaz, Bird, Woody, Kane, Bitsui, Long Soldier, White, Erdrich, Tapahonso, Howe, Louis, Brings Plenty, okpik, Hill, Wood, Maracle, Cisneros, Trask, Hogan, Dunn, Welch, Gould...

The 1957 Chevy is unbeatable in style. My broken-down one-eyed Ford will have to do. It holds everyone: Grandma and grandpa, aunties and uncles, the children and the babies, and all my boyfriends. That's what she said, anyway, as she drove off for the Forty-Nine with all of us in that shimmying wreck.

This would be no place to be without blues, jazz—Thank you/mvto to the Africans, the Europeans sitting in, especially Adolphe Sax with his saxophones... Don't forget that at the center is the Mvskoke ceremonial circles. We know how to swing. We keep the heartbeat of the earth in our stomp dance feet.

You might try dancing theory with a bustle, or a jingle dress, or with turtles strapped around your legs. You might try wearing colonization like a heavy gold chain around a pimp's neck.


4. REDUCE DEFENSIVENESS AND BREAK THE DEFENSIVENESS CHAIN:

I could hear the light beings as they entered every cell. Every cell is a house of the god of light, they said. I could hear the spirits who love us stomp dancing. They were dancing as if they were here, and then another level of here, and then another, until the whole earth and sky was dancing.

We are here dancing, they said. There was no there.

There was no  "I"  or "you."

There was us; there was "we."

There we were as if we were the music.

You cannot legislate music to lockstep nor can you legislate the spirit of the music to stop at political boundaries—

—Or poetry, or art, or anything that is of value or matters in this world, and the next worlds.

This is about getting to know each other.

We will wind up back at the blues standing on the edge of the flatted fifth about to jump into a fierce understanding together.


5. ELIMINATE NEGATIVE ATTITUDES DURING CONFLICT:

A panther poised in the cypress tree about to jump is a panther poised in a cypress tree about to jump.

The panther is a poem of fire green eyes and a heart charged by four winds of four directions.

The panther hears everything in the dark: the unspoken tears of a few hundred human years, storms that will break what has broken his world, a bluebird swaying on a branch a few miles away.

He hears the death song of his approaching prey:

I will always love you, sunrise.
I belong to the black cat with fire green eyes.
There, in the cypress tree near the morning star.


6. AND, USE WHAT YOU LEARN TO RESOLVE YOUR OWN CONFLICTS AND TO MEDIATE OTHERS' CONFLICTS:

When we made it back home, back over those curved roads
that wind through the city of peace, we stopped at the
doorway of dusk as it opened to our homelands.
We gave thanks for the story, for all parts of the story
because it was by the light of those challenges we knew
ourselves—
We asked for forgiveness.
We laid down our burdens next to each other.

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

Does this ring a bell?

Our phone company (Frontier) is also our dsl internet provider that never attains broadband speeds. Fortunately, we also have cell phones. When we must provide a phone number to someone we do business with, we use the land line number. These days we’re getting lots of calls that we intentionally don’t answer since we don’t recognize the numbers, then they don’t leave a message. It’s annoying but better than listening to spammers, political spiels,, etc.

We’ve signed up for eliminating robocalls and things like that. I seem to remember politicians exempt themselves from legislation regarding telecommunications. That’s annoying. The purpose of democracy is not supposed to be to annoy potential voters or donors, is it? Any yet, in our “attention economy,” that’s what lots of politicians and political parties are doing, at least in our house.

thinking of cutting the wire?

Photo by J. Harrington

The good news is that my cell phone (an iPhone) has a setting so that all incoming calls from numbers not already in my contacts list go directly to voice mail without ringing and annoying me. Unsolicited text messages of a political nature promptly get the “Report Junk and Delete” button pushed. These two features give me at least a sense of control, unlike incoming calls in the landline. So... Here’s my idea:

Let’s start a movement to get legislation that mandates the “go to voice mail” equivalent for both landlines and text messaging. If a number isn’t already in our contacts list, it won’t ring and interrupt us. If we really want to hear from the Democrats, Republicans, MAGAts, or whoever, we can add their number to contacts. Businesses with commercial accounts could have an opt out provision so they can accommodate new potential customers but the rest of us, real more than just legal persons, have one less aggravation to deal with on a daily basis. What do you think? I like this concept so well that if someone like tRump promised to make it happen, I’d even consider supporting them. Does that give you a sense of how annoyed I am?

I am the coward who did not pick up the phone

by Laura Kasischke

I am the coward who did not pick up the phone, so as never to know. So many clocks and yardsticks dumped into an ocean.

I am the ox which drew the cart full of urgent messages straight into the river, emerging none the wiser on the opposite side, never looking back at all those floating envelopes and postcards, the wet ashes of some loved one's screams.

How was I to know?

I am the warrior who killed the sparrow with a cannon. I am the guardian who led the child by the hand into the cloud, and emerged holding only an empty glove. Oh —

the digital ringing of it. The string of a kite of it, which I let go of. Oh, the commotion in the attic of it — in the front yard, in the back yard, in the driveway — all of which I heard nothing of, because I am the one who closed the windows and said, This has nothing to do with us .

In fact, I am the one singing this so loudly I cannot hear you even now.

(Mama, what's happening outside? Honey, is that the phone?)

I am the one who sings, The bones and shells of us .

The organic broth of us .

The zen gong of us .

Oblivious, oblivious, oblivious .

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

Sorcerer’s apprentice opens Pandora’s box

Yesterday the Better Half and I drove past one of the local sugarbushes. She noticed they had their sap collection tubing strung. A little farther down the road, as we crossed the St. Croix river, she spotted a fisherman, in a boat, on the open water of the river. This is not usual for early February in the North Country.

Today, as we drove home from a mid-morning visit to the Daughter Person, Son-In-Law and Granddaughter, in 28℉ temperatures, with cloud covered skies, we noticed the dusting of snow on the road edges was melting. Neither of us has the slightest idea how to explain that, since the overnight temperatures had stayed well below freezing and there had been no noticeable sunshine all morning.

phone lines: threads by which we hang?

Photo by J. Harrington

Yesterday’s ultra-ultra-slow internet service has been restored to its usual less than broadband speeds, after only about 36 hours of effective outage. I suspect things will get worse before they get better. Why? Here’s some examples:

• Landline Phone Owners Are Protesting AT&T’s Plans to Drop Service


• Still love your landline? Phone service providers are getting closer to phasing it out


• Fiber cut along North Shore exposes vulnerabilities in tech-dependent world


• Chinese hackers infiltrated plane, train and water systems for five years, US says

We have created, and are becoming increasingly dependent on, systems that are insufficiently reliable relative to their criticality. Who in the US government is the systems agency responsible for thinking about the system of systems we depend on? It might be helpful to think about something more than short term self indulgence come next November.

The Battle of Silicon Valley at Daybreak

Alexandria Peary

In a countryside green as a dollar bill,
with the much handled commercial vegetation
from around mall parking lots or in freeway divides,
in a landscape where the wireless has been shut off,
emoji are at war. Emoji are at war
in the mural outside the employee cafeteria
for reading The Things They Carried or Yellow Birds
or The Red Badge of Courage: instead of eating,
emoji are at war.

Outfitted in a list supplied by Wikipedia,
(breastplates, gauntlets, steel collars, mail shirts,
vambrace, pouldron, bassinet, barbute, aventail),
chain armor from a 3-d printer for a smaller budget,
emoji are at war: Blushing Emoji, Frustrated, Weeping,
Smiling Emoji near the village firewall, 
& a thousand spears like toothpicks,
emoji are at war.

It’s like Where’s Waldo. It’s like Pac Man.
I spot with my little eye in the “watch-fires of a hundred
circling camps” two generals outside a recharging tent,
a tiny banner unfurling PRIVACY  *  NET NEUTRALITY  
* DEREGULATION. Sound of emoji blood 
as the Smiling Emoji advance, swallowing everything,
going postal, kamikaze, road rage, suicide bomber
“hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,”
sound of emoji blood.

A sword pierces Blushing Emoji #956, Pram’s son, 
below the groin, and “the dark came whirling down 
across his eyes”; a hurled spear is shot through the temple of 
Angry Emoji #23, only son of Matthew Thornton 
of Boston, and “the dark came swirling thick across his eyes,”
sound of emoji blood. Sound of Emoji blood as Weeping 
Emoji #3,418, daughter of the river god, a bullet 
plunging into her lung, lodges in the “mortal spot,”
scream fumes.

Outside the village firewall, internet access was slowing 
way, way down until the CEO who has her eye on Jim,
a Cubicle Emoji, petitions the Board of Directors
to rescue Jim from his jangling fate of war, seduces him, 
gives birth to a daughter ½ Hollywood, ½ New Jersey mortal, 
with a weak ankle…Emoji were at war.

                         The CAPS LOCK is on,
so this story ends at the door to the men’s restroom. 
For we have seen,

I have seen, you have seen, they have seen how emoji blood sounds
like a ring tone of a 50 gun salute in a thousand wavy ploughed
lines, lines, lines, lines where truth is marching on.

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

Death, taxes, and technology failures

Short posting today. Our internet service provider, Frontier, is having some sort of network problem that is delivering about .1Mbps [yes, that’s POINT ONE Mbps] to us and a good sized surrounding area. It’s been that way since late yesterday afternoon. Would that we could find a viable alternative ISP. Our credit union also had some IT issues this week that caused me to use an alternate mechanism to pay some bills. Why can’t technical types make sure everything works well before and after they add “improvements?” 

Back on the home front, there’s snow on the ground, again. Flurries off and on since this morning, early. It doesn’t make the countryside look a whole lot better, but it’a a change.

The Better Half and I are pulling together the info needed to fill out our tax organizer so we can deliver it to our tax preparer. It’s every bit as much fun as you might guess, even though we try to stay organized throughout the year. At least there’ll be some sense of accomplishment when the taxes are done and filed for another year. Again, the process of filing taxes is more complicated than should be necessary and that benefits few except the top 1% and those like them.

I hope this uploads some time in the next day or two.

I Am Waiting

By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am waiting for my case to come up   

and I am waiting

for a rebirth of wonder

and I am waiting for someone

to really discover America

and wail

and I am waiting   

for the discovery

of a new symbolic western frontier   

and I am waiting   

for the American Eagle

to really spread its wings

and straighten up and fly right

and I am waiting

for the Age of Anxiety

to drop dead

and I am waiting

for the war to be fought

which will make the world safe

for anarchy

and I am waiting

for the final withering away

of all governments

and I am perpetually awaiting

a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Second Coming   

and I am waiting

for a religious revival

to sweep thru the state of Arizona   

and I am waiting

for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored   

and I am waiting

for them to prove

that God is really American

and I am waiting

to see God on television

piped onto church altars

if only they can find   

the right channel   

to tune in on

and I am waiting

for the Last Supper to be served again

with a strange new appetizer

and I am perpetually awaiting

a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called

and I am waiting

for the Salvation Army to take over

and I am waiting

for the meek to be blessed

and inherit the earth   

without taxes

and I am waiting

for forests and animals

to reclaim the earth as theirs

and I am waiting

for a way to be devised

to destroy all nationalisms

without killing anybody

and I am waiting

for linnets and planets to fall like rain

and I am waiting for lovers and weepers

to lie down together again

in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed   

and I am anxiously waiting

for the secret of eternal life to be discovered   

by an obscure general practitioner

and I am waiting

for the storms of life

to be over

and I am waiting

to set sail for happiness

and I am waiting

for a reconstructed Mayflower

to reach America

with its picture story and tv rights

sold in advance to the natives

and I am waiting

for the lost music to sound again

in the Lost Continent

in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day

that maketh all things clear

and I am awaiting retribution

for what America did   

to Tom Sawyer   

and I am waiting

for Alice in Wonderland

to retransmit to me

her total dream of innocence

and I am waiting

for Childe Roland to come

to the final darkest tower

and I am waiting   

for Aphrodite

to grow live arms

at a final disarmament conference

in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting

to get some intimations

of immortality

by recollecting my early childhood

and I am waiting

for the green mornings to come again   

youth’s dumb green fields come back again

and I am waiting

for some strains of unpremeditated art

to shake my typewriter

and I am waiting to write

the great indelible poem

and I am waiting

for the last long careless rapture

and I am perpetually waiting

for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn   

to catch each other up at last

and embrace

and I am awaiting   

perpetually and forever

a renaissance of wonder

What’s it worth to ‘ya?

The wind is up again. The driveway I had mostly cleared of fallen leaves, isn’t. Congress may keep funding the government a month or two at a time, or not. Things may or may not be about to get better. It’s getting harder to tell what better is or what we should settle for, or not.

Personally, I thing Joe Biden is older than ideal to serve a second term. However, he’s mostly done an above average job so far and is definitely better than any alternative I can readily name. William McDonough may have done US a disservice with his assessment that less bad isn’t the same as good. It’s accurate, but how often is it attainable? Sometimes it’s not feasible to get fiscal year appropriations passed, that’s not good but it is less bad than not funding agencies and requiring folks to work without getting paid in a timely fashion.

Many, many years ago, Steven Stills wrote a song, recorded by Buffalo Springfield in 1967, titled For What It’s Worth. It seems at least as relevant these days, perhaps more so, and it captures my current mood and assessment of the status of the world. That’s it for today. A protest song for a protest mood.

For What It's Worth

Buffalo Springfield [click to listen]

There's something happening here 
But what it is ain't exactly clear 
There's a man with a gun over there 
Telling me I got to beware

I think it's time we stop 
Children, what's that sound? 
Everybody look, what's going down?

There's battle lines being drawn 
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong 
Young people speaking their minds 
Getting so much resistance from behind

It's time we stop 
Hey, what's that sound? 
Everybody look, what's going down?

What a field day for the heat (Ooh ooh ooh) 
A thousand people in the street (Ooh ooh ooh) 
Singing songs and they carrying signs (Ooh ooh ooh) 
Mostly say, "Hooray for our side" (Ooh ooh ooh)

It's time we stop 
Hey, what's that sound? 
Everybody look, what's going down?

Paranoia strikes deep 
Into your life it will creep 
It starts when you're always afraid 
Step out of line, the men come and take you away

We better stop 
Hey, what's that sound? 
Everybody look, what's going down?

You better stop 
Hey, what's that sound? 
Everybody look, what's going down?

You better stop 
Now, what's that sound? 
Everybody look, what's going down?

You better stop 
Children, what's that sound? 
Everybody look, what's going down?

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

STEAM not STEM

There’s enough stupidity and related activity going on in the world so, today we’re going to be short and sweet and positive. As we hope you know, STEM is an abbreviation for Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics. All fine and generally benevolent sectors, necessary in many ways, but not sufficient. However, if we add Arts (and Humanities), STEM becomes STEAM and, as the old saying goes, then we’re cooking!

art & science combined

Photo by J. Harrington

Unfortunately, that brings me to an embarrassing confession. Until moments ago, I was unaware that October is National Arts and Humanities Month. Admittedly, today is only October 2, but, if mainstream media covered the announcement, I missed it. (If they didn’t cover the announcement, they shouldn’t be considered MSM.) One major reason I can’t and won’t support STEM by itself is that we currently have much more of the science and technology etc. needed to respond to climate breakdown than we’re using. That’s where the Arts (and Humanities) come in, to motivate the political will and create the concurrence needed to use what we have and create whatever else we need before it’s too late.

If that line of reasoning resonates at all with you, you want to take a look at:

• Americans for the Arts Action Fund, and
• The Democracy Collaborative

That’s it, execpt for today’s poem.

Alone

Maya Angelou     1928 – 2014

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can’t use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

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

The more things change ...

There’s not much new and exciting to report on today. Deer flies are becoming more numerous. We’ve responded by installing a new blue ball covered with sticky goo. The flies are attracted to the color and get caught in the sticky stuff. Last summer we end up with a blue ball encrusted with the blackish bodies of dead flies. Our dogs and our skins appreciated the results and we didn’t spray pesticides hell, west, and gone around the place. There’s already a couple of dozen flies stuck on the ball after a few hours.

would you expect this from a caterpillar?

Photo by J. Harrington

Earlier this year members of the younger generations of the family got together and gave me a new iPhone for my birthday. Since I had been using an iPhone 6, you have an idea of how much new technology I’m trying to adjust to. This morning I got my new hearing aids. My old ones had served for about a decade. The technology for hearing aids has gotten quite a bit more complicated over the past ten years. I’ve read that I can use my new iPhone to adjust my new hearing aids, once I find and learn how to download a couple of apps, and then learn how to use those apps. I’m wondering why I didn’t plan better and schedule these changes for the winter, when I’d be fine sitting in the house playing with new toys. Each of our offspring were born in December. I could have borrowed one of their birthdays last year.

Did I mention I’m (over)due for a new laptop computer. This is getting typed on a five or six year old MacBook Pro with a sticky keyboard and slightly erratic trackpad. I’m not sure if I should try to get the phone and hearing aids under control first or just immerse myself in updates and let the bytes fall where they may. I’ll decide as soon as I get used to how much noisier the world is this afternoon than it was this morning. At least we’re not living in Russia, or China, or Texas, where the technology is failing while the  heat, literal and figurative, increases. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go study a manual or two, or three, or....

Meditation 29

Philip Pain

How mutable is every thing that here
Below we do enjoy? with how much fear
And trouble are those gilded Vanities
Attended, that so captivate our eyes?
   Oh, who would trust this World, or prize what's in it,
   That gives, and takes, and changes in a minute?

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

Thank Mother Earth every day

This Sunday is Mother’s Day. It would be a wonderful time to thank Mother Earth for the gifts of clean air, clean water, food and shelter she provides us. April 22 was International Mother Earth Day. Rather than debate which is the real Mother’s Day for Earth, why not make a pinky promise to be thankful to Mother Earth every day and do something  each day to help restore her to health. If she’s not healthy, we won’t be for long. Can you spell COVID? How about Climate Disruption? Floods, droughts, dust storms and plagues have been increasing and we have done little to effectively respond. Instead, some of US elect those who waste time and resources debating the conditions under which we should pay our bills. Only deadbeat trash acts that way. I wonder what their mothers think of them. The rest of society calls such behavior extortion.

Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

It seems to be getting more difficult to find common ground these days. But we know that family support helps individuals survive, even thrive, just as community support helps families and individuals. I remember growing up with the idea that reciprocity meant something like “an eye for an eye;” or, “give as good as you get.” Rarely did I think of the Golden Rule except in the variant “Do unto others before they do unto you.” I did not learn any of that from my mother.

From a different woman, much later in my life, I learned a different perspective on reciprocity:

“Most people don’t really see plants or understand plants or what they give us,” Kimmerer explains, “so my act of reciprocity is, having been shown plants as gifts, as intelligences other than our own, as these amazing, creative beings – good lord, they can photosynthesise, that still blows my mind! – I want to help them become visible to people. People can’t understand the world as a gift unless someone shows them how it’s a gift.”

Even more recently, I’ve almost finished reading Finding the Mother Tree, about “how trees, living side by side for hundreds of years, have evolved, how they perceive one another, learn and adapt their behaviors, recognize neighbors, and remember the past; how they have agency about the future; elicit warnings and mount defenses, compete and cooperate with one another with sophistication, characteristics ascribed to human intelligence, traits that are the essence of civil societies – and at the center of it all, the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful forces that connect and sustain the others that surround them.” 

The longer humans are around, the more we learn that there are natural models from which we could learn how to get along better and live better lives, if only we finally get smart enough to listen to our mothers and say “Thanks, Mom.” 

Mother Earth: Her Whales 

Gary Snyder - 1930-

An owl winks in the shadows
A lizard lifts on tiptoe, breathing hard
Young male sparrow stretches up his neck,
                   big head, watching—

The grasses are working in the sun. Turn it green.
Turn it sweet. That we may eat.
Grow our meat.

Brazil says “sovereign use of Natural Resources”
Thirty thousand kinds of unknown plants.
The living actual people of the jungle
        sold and tortured—
And a robot in a suit who peddles a delusion called “Brazil”
        can speak for them?

        The whales turn and glisten, plunge
                and sound and rise again,
        Hanging over subtly darkening deeps
        Flowing like breathing planets
              in the sparkling whorls of
                     living light—

And Japan quibbles for words on
        what kinds of whales they can kill?
A once-great Buddhist nation
        dribbles methyl mercury
        like gonorrhea
                      in the sea.

Pere David's Deer, the Elaphure,
Lived in the tule marshes of the Yellow River
Two thousand years ago—and lost its home to rice—
The forests of Lo-yang were logged and all the silt &
Sand flowed down, and gone, by 1200 AD—
Wild Geese hatched out in Siberia
        head south over basins of the Yang, the Huang,
        what we call “China”
On flyways they have used a million years.
Ah China, where are the tigers, the wild boars,
                   the monkeys,
                      like the snows of yesteryear
Gone in a mist, a flash, and the dry hard ground
Is parking space for fifty thousand trucks.
IS man most precious of all things?
—then let us love him, and his brothers, all those
Fading living beings—

North America, Turtle Island, taken by invaders
        who wage war around the world.
May ants, may abalone, otters, wolves and elk
Rise! and pull away their giving
        from the robot nations.

Solidarity. The People.
Standing Tree People!
Flying Bird People!
Swimming Sea People!
Four-legged, two-legged people!

How can the head-heavy power-hungry politic scientist
Government     two-world     Capitalist-Imperialist
Third-world     Communist      paper-shuffling male
             non-farmer     jet-set     bureaucrats
Speak for the green of the leaf? Speak for the soil?

(Ah Margaret Mead . . . do you sometimes dream of Samoa?)

The robots argue how to parcel out our Mother Earth
To last a little longer
                    like vultures flapping
Belching, gurgling,
                    near a dying doe.
“In yonder field a slain knight lies—
We'll fly to him and eat his eyes
                    with a down
         derry derry derry down down.”

             An Owl winks in the shadow
             A lizard lifts on tiptoe
                         breathing hard
             The whales turn and glisten
                         plunge and
             Sound, and rise again
             Flowing like breathing planets

             In the sparkling whorls

             Of living light.

                      Stockholm: Summer Solstice 40072

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

Holy isn’t just for Somedays

a preview of coming attractions

Photo by J. Harrington

I hope those who celebrate these holy days are appreciating the many meanings of Easter or Passover or Ramadan or.... May those who are blessed by the return of Spring enjoy a bountiful harvest come Autumn. In between, may we share in the growth of peace and harmony and diminishment of acrimony and anxiety. For the anglers among us, may we enjoy tight lines, the beauty of our surroundings, and the pleasure of whatever company we may have as we cast our lures upon the water. For writers and poets, may our words flow with the force and beauty of rivers. For those who would bring suffering and pain to others, may change or karma find them, and swiftly.

Resurrection

Alison Hawthorne Deming - 1945-

My friend a writer and scientist
has retreated to a monastery
where he has submitted himself
out of exhaustion to not knowing.
He’s been thinking about
the incarnation a.k.a. Big Bang
after hearing a monk’s teaching
that crucifixion was not the hard part
for Christ. Incarnation was.
How to squeeze all of that
all-of-that into a body. I woke
that Easter to think of the Yaqui
celebrations taking place in our city
the culminating ritual of the Gloria
when the disruptive spirits
with their clacking daggers and swords
are repelled from the sanctuary
by women and children
throwing cottonwood leaves and confetti
and then my mother rose
in me rose from the anguish
of her hospice bed a woman
who expected to direct all the action
complaining to her nurse
I’ve been here three days
and I’m not dead yet—not ready
at one hundred and two to give up
control even to giving up control.
I helped with the morphine clicker.
Peace peace peace the stilling
at her throat the hazel eye
become a glassy marble. Yet here she is
an Easter irreverent still rising
to dress in loud pastels
and turn me loose
in Connecticut woods to hunt
my basket of marshmallow eggs
jelly beans and chocolate rabbit
there fakeries of nature made vestal
incarnated in their nest of shiny manufactured grass.

for Gary Paul Nabhan 

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

Water is life!

There’s a “wet spot” at the foot of the slope in the yard behind the house. Most springs it looks something like the picture below. Notice there’s still snow cover but there’s also an obvious pool of water. So far this year there’s no sign of a pool developing. I think it has something to do with the extended drought Minnesota has been experiencing up until this winter.

backyard wet spot in late March

Photo by J. Harrington

The pool appears to be groundwater-based. I think the lack of surface water is because the groundwater had dropped a lot and not been replenished when winter set in. This morning the mud and puddles at the east end of the driveway were gone. Evaporation and/or seeping into the soil probably accounts for most of the disappearance. What little was left froze overnight. Midday today the mud and puddles are back. I’m not a hydrologist but I am suspicious that we won’t see our wet spot until the groundwater has been replenished in our neighborhood. Remember the old song about "Dem Bones" (also called "Dry Bones" and "Dem Dry Bones”)?

Verse 1
Toe bone connected to the foot bone
Foot bone connected to the heel bone
Heel bone connected to the ankle bone
Ankle bone connected to the leg bone
Leg bone connected to the knee bone
Knee bone connected to the thigh bone
Thigh bone connected to the hip bone
Hip bone connected to the back bone
Back bone connected to the shoulder bone
Shoulder bone connected to the neck bone
Neck bone connected to the head bone
Hear the word of the Lord.

The hydrologic cycle works pretty much that way except where we’ve made a mess of it. Atmospheric water falls as rain or snow, runs off or sinks in and what doesn’t re-evaporate flows eventually back into the oceans where the cycle restarts. The pollution we discharge into the air or local rivers gets conveyed to the ocean or precipitates from the atmosphere. Remember acid rain? It’s still falls and is now accompanied by PFAS. Except for sunlight, our Earth is pretty much a closed system. There is no “away.” 

Wind, Water, Stone

By Octavio Paz
Translated by Eliot Weinberger

for Roger Caillois

Water hollows stone,

wind scatters water,

stone stops the wind.

Water, wind, stone.

Wind carves stone,

stone's a cup of water,

water escapes and is wind.

Stone, wind, water.

Wind sings in its whirling,

water murmurs going by,

unmoving stone keeps still.

Wind, water, stone.

Each is another and no other:

crossing and vanishing

through their empty names:

water, stone, wind.

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

On the eve of a new year

This year, and a few preceding it, remind me of the opening of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

That assessment then makes me thing of the proverb “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” That prompts me to remember some of my Christmas presents, literary postcards that came from the Book Elves via the Better Half, or vice versa.

tomorrow brings the dawn of a new year

Photo by J. Harrington

I’ve not read much of Tolstoy so I was pleased to read his observation, printed on a card, that “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing themselves.” It seems to me to nicely complement the card with the quotation from T. S. Eliot that “And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” [If interested, check here.]

Several times over the decade I’ve been posting here I’ve mentioned the poem Desiderata. To see how often, and in what contexts, follow this link. I can think of no better way to close out this year than to hope and pray that Desiderata is true for each of us.

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.

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

In memory of ...

Too many lives have been prematurely ended. Too many wars have been fought, some declared, many not. Our politics are again (still?) matters of life and death. I would suggest, as strongly as possible, that, in memory of those who have given their all to defend our freedoms, and those who mourn because of freedoms abused, we are well past the time when we need to stress responsibility more than rights. Exercising the latter while evading the former is wrong and not how we should be, or wish to be, remembered.

rest in peace

Photo by J. Harrington

When I was young, I would join my family on Memorial Day at the cemetery in which some of our predecessors were buried. That place is now half a country away. I wonder, from time to time, if our restless, often relocating society is undermining our sense of responsibility to each other. If you don’t have relatives in a local cemetery, does that diminish a sense of belonging? Do family graves help nourish our roots?

In Flanders Fields

John McCrae - 1872-1918

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
    That mark our place; and in the sky
    The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
    Loved and were loved, and now we lie
        In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe: 
To you from failing hands we throw
    The torch; be yours to hold it high. 
    If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
        In Flanders fields.

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

Why don’t we have an Endangered Species Act for Rivers? Or, for US?

Today, American Rivers announced the Ten Most Endangered Rivers of 2022. The Mississippi River, our Mississippi River, is Number 6. Here’s the report on the Mississippi. The Friends of the Mississippi River have an Action Alert: Support the Mississippi River Restoration & Resilience Initiative (MRRRI). I look forward to a day when American Rivers can no longer find enough reasons or endangered rivers to publish their list. Until then, we should all do what we can to support those who are protecting our waters. [Full disclosure: I’m a supporter of American Rivers; a long-time member of Trout Unlimited; a volunteer helping raise funds for dam removal and river restoration on the Kinnickinnic River in western Wisconsin; etc.]

In accord with the Endangered Species Act (ESA),

The law requires federal agencies, in consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and/or the NOAA Fisheries Service, to ensure that actions they authorize, fund, or carry out are not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of any listed species or result in the destruction or adverse modification of designated critical habitat of such species. The law also prohibits any action that causes a "taking" of any listed species of endangered fish or wildlife. Likewise, import, export, interstate, and foreign commerce of listed species are all generally prohibited.

Something along those lines seems like just what we need to protect our rivers from our activities that endanger them. We have failed unconscionably in our efforts to meet the goals and objectives of the Clean Water Act Amendments of 1972. About half of our waters fail to meet required standards. In Minnesota, almost 90% of our waters are impaired with fish consumption advisories [p44].

Now that  we’re on the subject of endangered rivers and species, if I interpret the recent IPCC report correctly, we should seriously consider getting Homo sapiens declared an endangered species if we don’t change our ways and learn better how to manage public health and a transition away from fossil fuels. It’s unlikely we’ll be in good enough shape to do a 50 year report in 2072 if we don’t make massive cuts in greenhouse gases in the next few years.

Let Them Not Say

Jane Hirshfield - 1953-

Let them not say:   we did not see it.
We saw.

Let them not say:   we did not hear it.
We heard.

Let them not say:     they did not taste it.
We ate, we trembled.

Let them not say:   it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands.

Let them not say:     they did nothing.
We did not-enough.

Let them say, as they must say something: 

A kerosene beauty.
It burned.

Let them say we warmed ourselves by it,
read by its light, praised,
and it burned.

—2014

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