Welcome, February!

Yesterday was the Feast of Imbolc. It was also the first day of Black History Month. Today, on Groundhog Day, Punxsutawney Phil is reported to have seen his shadow, which means six weeks more of winter. That brings us to mid-March, several weeks after the March 1 beginning of meteorological spring and about a week before the spring equinox, the start of astronomical spring. However, according to NOAA, Phil has a history of not being very accurate with his forecasts.

If you’re reading this, it’s a good indication you made it through January with us. This morning, for the first time this year, I heard the spring song of a chickadee. The little snow we got yesterday and last night is melting. More flakes are forecast for tonight and tomorrow morning, followed by daytime highs in the upper teens and low twenties for at least a week or so. Normal highs this week should be in the mid-twenties, so Phil looks to be on target for the first week of February.

Valentine's Day hearts and candy

Photo by J. Harrington

Valentine’s Day will be a week from Friday. Last night we helped the Daughter Person and Son-In-Law, and many of their friends, celebrate the 20th anniversary of their first date. Several of the folks whose blogs I follow are focusing this month on the need to love the world and all our neighbors, both human and more than. I find that I can love much of the world but have severe difficulty with creatures like viruses that make folks sick or worse. I have similar issues with many people who seem to have been placed here primarily to cause suffering and/or serve as a bad example. Neither do I believe in unilateral disarmament. I suspect sainthood isn’t in my future.

In light of events of the past couple of weeks, and those anticipated for the foreseeable future, I can think of no better way to begin celebrating Black History Month than with this poem of Langston Hughes:

Let America Be America Again 

by Langston Hughes 

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

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

We’ve been here before

I admit that I don’t remember the 1964 political conventions and presidential campaigns very clearly, but a quick search on the internet gives me a sense of, as Yogi Berra put it: “It’s deja vu all over again!” At the time, Goldwater was probably considered as radical as the likely Republican nominee for 2024, although without the foreign baggage. Lyndon Johnson (D) defeated Goldwater (R) by a landslide. As I recall, neither candidate was particularly well liked. Seem familiar? Let’s work like hell and hope that the presidential electoral pattern of 1964 repeats itself this year.

The 1964 elections were overshadowed by the assassination of President John F. (Jack) Kennedy in 1963. When he was campaigning for the presidency, there was concern that, as a Catholic, he would be unduly influenced by the Pope. Those concerns were much less well founded than current concerns about the excessive influence of foreign oligarchs on one of the likely candidates this year. (If I have to spell out which one, you should do more homework before November.)

Are you ready to Vote?

Photo by J. Harrington

Frankly, I believe that our divisions have much more to do with our economics than our politics, if we can try to separate the two. It was another Kennedy, who was assassinated while a candidate for the presidency, who described what I now believe is the source of many, probably most, of our conflicts. Bobby Kennedy, in his Remarks at the University of Kansas, March 18, 1968, noted:

And this is one of the great tasks of leadership for us, as individuals and citizens this year.  But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all.  Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.  Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.  It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them.  It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.  It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities.  It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.  Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.  It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.  It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.  And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

We’ve not yet erased material poverty but, between now and November, please ask yourself which candidate is more likely to help US “confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - “ and which is more likely to pour salt into our festering wounds.

Becoming Seventy

By Joy Harjo

Knoxville, December 27, 2016, for Marilyn Kallet’s 70th birthday.
This poem was constructed to carry any memory you want to hold close.

We
 

arrived
 

when the days
 

grew legs of night.
 

Chocolates were offered.
 

We ate latkes for hours
 

to celebrate light and friends.
 

We will keep going despite dark
 

or a madman in a white house dream.
 

Let’s talk about something else said the dog
 

who begs faithfully at the door of goodwill:
 

a biscuit will do, a voice of reason, meat sticks — 
 

I dreamed all of this I told her, you, me, and Paris — 
 

it was impossible to make it through the tragedy
 

without poetry. What are we without winds becoming words?
 

Becoming old children born to children born to sing us into
 

love. Another level of love, beyond the neighbor’s holiday light
 

display proclaiming goodwill to all men who have lost their way in the dark
 

as they tried to find the car door, the bottle hidden behind the seat, reason
 

to keep on going past all the times they failed at sharing love, love. It’s weak they think — 
 

or some romantic bullshit, a movie set propped up behind on slats, said the wizard
 

of junk understanding who pretends to be the wise all-knowing dog behind a cheap fan.
 

It’s in the plan for the new world straining to break through the floor of this one, said the Angel of
 

All-That-You-Know-and-Forgot-and-Will-Find, as she flutters the edge of your mind when you try to

 

sing the blues to the future of everything that might happen and will. All the losses come tumbling
 

down, down, down at three in the morning as do all the shouldn’t-haves or should-haves. It doesn’t matter, girl —
 

I’ll be here to pick you up, said Memory, in her red shoes, and the dress that showed off brown legs. When you met
 

him at the age you have always loved, hair perfect with a little wave, and that shine in your skin from believing what was
 

impossible was possible, you were not afraid. You stood up in love in a French story and there fell ever
 

a light rain as you crossed the Seine to meet him for café in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. You wrote a poem beneath the tender
 

skin from your ribs to your hip bone, in the slender then, and you are still writing that song to convince the sweetness of every
 

bit of straggling moonlight, star and sunlight to become words in your mouth, in your kiss — that kiss that will never die, you will all
 

ways fall in love. It doesn’t matter how old, how many days, hours, or memories, we can fall in love over and over
 

again. The Seine or Tennessee or any river with a soul knows the depths descending when it comes to seeing the sun or moon stare
 

back, without shame, remorse, or guilt. This is what I remember she told her husband when they bedded down that night in the house that would begin
 

marriage. That house was built of twenty-four doves, rugs from India, cooking recipes from seven generations of mothers and their sisters,
 

and wave upon wave of tears, and the concrete of resolution for the steps that continue all the way to the heavens, past guardian dogs, dog
 

after dog to protect. They are humble earth angels, and the rowdiest, even nasty. You try and lick yourself like that, imagine. And the Old
 

Woman laughed as she slipped off her cheap shoes and parked them under the bed that lies at the center of the garden of good and evil. She’d seen it all. Done it
 

more than once. Tonight, she just wanted a good sleep, and picked up the book of poetry by her bed, which was over a journal she kept when her mother was dying.
 

These words from May Sarton she kept in the fourth room of her heart, “Love, come upon him warily and deep / For if he startle first it were as well / to bind a fox’s
 

throat with a gold bell /As hold him when it is his will to leap.” And she considered that every line of a poem was a lead line into the spirit world to capture a
 

bit of memory, pieces of gold confetti, a kind of celebration. We all want to be remembered, even memory, even the way the light came in the kitchen
 

window, when her mother turned up the dial on that cool mist color 
of a radio, when memory crossed the path of longing and took 
mother’s arm and she put down her apron
 

said, “I don’t mind if I do,” and they danced, you watching, as you began your own cache of remembering. Already you had stored the taste of mother as milk, father as a labor
 

of sweat and love, and night as a lonely boat of stars that took you into who you were before you slid through the hips of the story. There are no words when you cross the
 

gate of forbidden waters, or is it a sheer scarf of the finest silk, or is it something else that causes you to forget. Nothing is ever forgotten says the god of remembering
 

who protects the heartbeat of every little cell of knowing from the Antarctic to the soft spot at the top of this planetary baby. Oh baby, come here, let me tell you the story
 

of the party you will never forget, no matter where you go, where you are, or where you will be when you cross the line and say, no more. No more greedy kings, no more disappointments, no more orphans,
 

or thefts of souls or lands, no more killing for the sport of killing. No more, no more, except more of the story so I will understand exactly what I am doing here, and why, she said to the fox
 

guardian who took her arm to help her cross the road that was given to the care of Natives who made sure the earth spirits were fed with songs, and the other things they loved to eat. They like sweets, cookies, and flowers.
 

It was getting late and the fox guardian picked up her books as she hurried through the streets of strife. But it wasn’t getting late. There was no late, only a plate of tamales on the counter waiting to be
 

or not to be. At this age, said the fox, we are closer to the not to be, which is the to be in the fields of sweet grasses. Wherever you are, enjoy the evening, how the sun walks the horizon before cross
 

sing over to be, and we then exist under the realm of the moon. There’s where fears slay us, in the dark of the howling mind. We all battle. Befriend them, the moon said as a crab skittered under her skirt, her daughter in
 

the high chair, waiting for cereal and toast. What a girl she turned out to be, a willow tree, a blessing to the winds, to her family. There she is married, and we start the story all over again, said her father
 

in a toast to the happiness of who we are and who we are becoming as Change in a new model sedan whips it down the freeway toward the generations that follow, one after another in the original
 

lands of the Mvskoke who are still here. Nobody goes anywhere though we are always leaving and returning. It’s a ceremony. Sunrise occurs everywhere, in lizard time, human time, or a fern uncurling time. We
 

instinctually reach for light food, we digest it, make love, art or 
trouble of it. The sun crowns us at noon. The whole earth is a queen. Then there are always goodbyes. At sunset say goodbye to hurt, to suffering, to the pain you caused others,
 

or yourself. Goodbye, goodbye, to Carrie Fisher, the Star Wars phenomenon, and George Michael, the singer. They were planets in our emotional universe. Some of my memories are opened by the image of love on screen in an
 

imagined future, or broken open when the sax solo of “Careless Whisper” blows through the communal heart. Yes, there’s a cosmic consciousness. Jung named it but it was there long before named by Vedic and Mvskoke scientists. And, there is
 

a cosmic hearteousness — for the heart is the higher mind and nothing can be forgotten there, no ever or ever. How do I sing this so 
I don’t forget? Ask the poets. Each word is a box that can be opened or closed. Then a train of words, phrases
 

garnered by music and the need for rhythm to organize chaos. Like right here, now, in this poem is the transition phase. I remembered it while giving birth, summer sun bearing down on the city melting asphalt but there we were, my daughter
 

and I, at the door between worlds. I was happier than ever before to welcome her, happiness was the path she chose to enter, and 
I couldn’t push yet, not yet, and then there appeared a pool of the 
bluest water. We waited there for a breath
 

to catch up, and then it did, and she took it that girl who was beautiful beyond dolphin dreaming, and we made it, we did, to the other side of suffering. This is the story our mothers tell but we couldn’t hear it in our ears stuffed with Barbie advertising,
 

with our mothers’ own loathing set in place by patriarchal scripture, the smothering rules to stop insurrection by domesticated slaves, or wives. It hurt everybody. The fathers cannot know what they are feeling in such a spiritual backwash. Worship
 

boxes set into place by the need for money and power will not beget freedom. Only warships. For freedom, freedom, oh freedom sang the slaves, the oar rhythm of the blues lifting up the spirits of peoples whose bodies were worn out, or destroyed by a man’s slash,
 

hit of greed. This is our memory too, said America. Heredity is a field of blood, celebration, and forgetfulness. Don’t take on more than you can carry, said the eagle to his twin sons, fighting each other in the sky over a fox, dangling between
 

them. It’s that time of the year, when we eat tamales and latkes. We light candles, fires to make the way for a newborn child, for fresh 
understanding. Demons will try to make houses out of jealousy, anger, 
pride, greed, or more destructive material. They place them in a
 

part of the body that will hold them: liver, heart, knee, or brain. So, my friend, let’s let that go, for joy, for chocolates made of ashes, mangos, grapefruit, or chili from Oaxaca, for sparkling wine from Spain, for these children who show up in our dreams and want to live at any cost because
 

we are here to feed them joy. Your soul is so finely woven the silkworms went on strike, said the mulberry tree. We all have mulberry trees in the memory yard. They hold the place for skinned knees earned by small braveries, cousins you love who are gone, a father cutting a

watermelon in the summer on the porch, and a mother so in love that her heart breaks — it will never be the same, yet all memory bends to fit. The heart has uncountable rooms. We turn to leave here, and so will the hedgehog who makes a home next to that porch. We become birds, poems.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.

A Valentine’s gift

A Valentine’s Day indulgence

Photo by J. Harrington

Happy Valentine’s Day (and Ash Wednesday) for those who observe. Recently, we tumbled onto something that has us in thralls of exploration. We share it here in honor of Valentine’s Day and the need for many more of US to love the Earth. We hope you enjoy it a much as we are.

Writing the Land is a collaborative outreach and fundraising project for land protection organizations. Through our anthologies, poets help raise awareness of the importance for land conservation.

I only wish it also referenced the importance of water protection. What happens on the land doesn’t stay on the land. 

A Line-storm Song

Robert Frost
1874 – 1963

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift,  
  The road is forlorn all day,  
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,  
  And the hoof-prints vanish away.  
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
  Expend their bloom in vain.  
Come over the hills and far with me,  
  And be my love in the rain.  

The birds have less to say for themselves  
  In the wood-world’s torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves,  
  Although they are no less there:  
All song of the woods is crushed like some  
  Wild, easily shattered rose.  
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,
  Where the boughs rain when it blows.  

There is the gale to urge behind  
  And bruit our singing down,  
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind  
  From which to gather your gown.     
What matter if we go clear to the west,  
  And come not through dry-shod?  
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast  
  The rain-fresh goldenrod.  

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells    
  But it seems like the sea’s return  
To the ancient lands where it left the shells  
  Before the age of the fern;  
And it seems like the time when after doubt  
  Our love came back amain.       
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout  
  And be my love in the rain.

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Watch out for “Free Lunch” speeches

 Way back in the days, there was a tv program called “Welcome Back, Kotter.” Among other characters was a greaser named Vinnie Barbarino who was known for, among other things, exclaiming “I am so confused!” That’s how I’m feeling today. Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading too much.

If, as some write, we can’t love what we don’t know, does that mean we have to know the whole Earth to love it? If, as some write, we can’t love what we don’t understand, must we “understand” the whole Earth to love it? Must we love the whole Earth to respect and honor her [Mother Earth]? I ask these questions because it daily becomes more clear to me that there’s more and more I don’t know, let alone understand, about our home planet and yet I’d like to believe I love Earth. At least I want to see a prompt cessation of the destruction of the Earth’s systems on which we all depend for oxygen to breathe, water to drink, and food to eat. I know, I left out shelter and I shouldn’t have. We depend on Earth as our home and for our homes. As long as any damage was in the back yard of someone else [NIMBY], we often failed to be concerned. As we’ve discovered in some detail over the past several decades, the Earth is essentially a closed system. Energy from the sun enters and provides energy to Earth’s systems, especially photosynthesis, and we rarely send an interstellar vehicle out, but that’s about it. We are living on a very large recycling system, more and more of us are living on it each year and we’ve been profligate and dissolute in our use of the resoures available.

was it “progress” to pave this?

Photo by J. Harrington

Now, here’s an even more tricky part. Each year we learn that the system is actually a bunch of interrelated systems, all and each of which affect the others and we don’t really know which are the more or less critical ones. As Aldo Leopold wisely noted: “To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.” I’m afraid we’re not doing very well with that either. As those living in Florida have recently learned only too well, with Mother Nature, we can pay her now or we can pay her later, but pay her we will. That brings us back to yesterday’s posting about an Honorable Harvest and, more generally, about Native American perspectives about living sustainably. I’m not sure how well we can adjust or adapt our economic systems to fit Native American principles, but it’s worked fairly well with our Constitution, much of which we “borrowed” from the Iroquois.

Over the next five weeks or so, many candidates will make promises to US. As we consider those promises, we should also consider what keeping those promises will cost US, because the candidates will not be writing personal checks to cover their promises. Even the politician I admire more than any other these days, AOC, admits that she and her staff depend on dollars provided by her supporters to accomplish much  of the good they do. Plus there’s the good accomplished through legislation and concepts such as the Green New Deal.

One of the reasons I’m waxing philosophical these days is we have, in too many past elections, allowed ourselves to be pandered to and conned that way. If we really believe that government is the way we can get a free lunch by beggaring our neighbor, then we deserve what we get, we’ll just end up paying for it later, or our kids will. Is that the kind of parent we want to be?

Once the World Was Perfect

By Joy Harjo

Once the world was perfect, and we were happy in that world.

Then we took it for granted.

Discontent began a small rumble in the earthly mind.

Then Doubt pushed through with its spiked head.

And once Doubt ruptured the web,

All manner of demon thoughts

Jumped through—

We destroyed the world we had been given

For inspiration, for life—

Each stone of jealousy, each stone

Of fear, greed, envy, and hatred, put out the light.

No one was without a stone in his or her hand.

There we were,

Right back where we had started.

We were bumping into each other

In the dark.

And now we had no place to live, since we didn't know

How to live with each other.

Then one of the stumbling ones took pity on another

And shared a blanket.

A spark of kindness made a light.

The light made an opening in the darkness.

Everyone worked together to make a ladder.

A Wind Clan person climbed out first into the next world,

And then the other clans, the children of those clans, their children,

And their children, all the way through time—

To now, into this morning light to you.

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What’s in a life?

Today is the last day of our 36th year of marriage, Tomorrow, we celebrate our 37th anniversary. I suspect it will be a quiet celebration. We’ll have dinner with the Daughter Person, Son-In-Law and Granddaughter and be grateful for the good time and wonderful company.

Irish soda bread

Photo by J. Harrington

Since I lost track of a package of Irish soda bread last March, I’ll bake a loaf for breakfast tomorrow, with hopes that it will continue to bring us the “luck o’ the Irish.” What else we may do during the day will depend, in large part, on the weather, especially temperatures and precipitation.

It’s not often I acknowledge that anything turns out better than I expected. Much of that has to do with my refusal to lower my expectations despite an obvious, and continuing, inability to modify the world to suit my taste. I hereby acknowledge that the past 36 years have been better than expected and much of that is despite my meddling. Fortunately, every once in awhile I have a moment of lucidity that enables me to realize just how lucky I am. Today’s posting is evidence of one such moment. May each and everyone of you reading this be as fortunate.

Anniversary

By Cecilia Woloch

Didn’t I stand there once,

white-knuckled, gripping the just-lit taper,

swearing I’d never go back?

And hadn’t you kissed the rain from my mouth?

And weren’t we gentle and awed and afraid,

knowing we’d stepped from the room of desire

into the further room of love?

And wasn’t it sacred, the sweetness

we licked from each other’s hands?

And were we not lovely, then, were we not

as lovely as thunder, and damp grass, and flame?

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On Valentine’s Day

The township showed its love for us by plowing clear last night’s snow at about 4 this morning. The Better Half and I exchanged Valentines (surprisingly complimentary) during our first cups of coffee.

An almost full moon peeked through a cloud-scudded sky. Snow crunched and squeaked underfoot as we walked the dogs in the dark before dawn. Tomorrow’s high temperature is forecast to be near twice today’s. That’s almost heart-warming. Real spring flowers would be even better. They’ll come in time.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Photo by J. Harrington

My reading of Nikki Giovanni’s poem sees interwoven themes we need more of in these times: love of and for Earth, another, and one’s own self. May those fill today, and the balance of your life, with warmth and love.

Resignation

Nikki Giovanni - 1943-

I love you
            because the Earth turns round the sun
            because the North wind blows north
                 sometimes
            because the Pope is Catholic
                 and most Rabbis Jewish
            because the winters flow into springs
                 and the air clears after a storm
            because only my love for you
                 despite the charms of gravity
                 keeps me from falling off this Earth
                 into another dimension
I love you
            because it is the natural order of things

I love you
            like the habit I picked up in college
                 of sleeping through lectures
                 or saying I’m sorry
                 when I get stopped for speeding
            because I drink a glass of water
                 in the morning
                 and chain-smoke cigarettes
                 all through the day
            because I take my coffee Black
                 and my milk with chocolate
            because you keep my feet warm
                 though my life a mess
I love you
            because I don’t want it
                 any other way

I am helpless
            in my love for you
It makes me so happy
            to hear you call my name
I am amazed you can resist
            locking me in an echo chamber
            where your voice reverberates
            through the four walls
            sending me into spasmatic ecstasy
I love you
            because it’s been so good
            for so long
            that if I didn’t love you
            I’d have to be born again
            and that is not a theological statement
I am pitiful in my love for you

The Dells tell me Love
            is so simple
            the thought though of you
            sends indescribably delicious multitudinous
            thrills throughout and through-in my body
I love you
            because no two snowflakes are alike
            and it is possible
            if you stand tippy-toe
            to walk between the raindrops
I love you
            because I am afraid of the dark
                 and can’t sleep in the light
            because I rub my eyes
                 when I wake up in the morning
                 and find you there
            because you with all your magic powers were
                 determined that
I should love you
            because there was nothing for you but that
I would love you

I love you
            because you made me
                 want to love you
            more than I love my privacy
                 my freedom          my commitments
                      and responsibilities
I love you ’cause I changed my life
            to love you
            because you saw me one Friday
                 afternoon and decided that I would
love you
I love you I love you I love you

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Valentine's minus 6

Signs of spring arrived yesterday, but they’re forced. A bunch (2 bundles) of forsythia stems arrived and have now been trimmed and placed in vases to bloom early.

forced forsythia with pussy willow stems

Photo by J. Harrington

Today, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day (mid-March), a package of Irish Soda Bread mix and a small bag of Irish flour arrived. We won’t be forcing the bread to bake early, although we might try an experiment with the flour before we get into March.

There’s at least one errand I’d like to finish in time to include it in the Valentine’s celebration, but our schedules have developed an unfortunate habit of getting disrupted over the past week or ten days. Meanwhile, we’ll just luxuriate in the brief warm spell we’re enjoying. It makes the prospect of real spring and warm weather seem like an actual possibility someday after Valentine’s and, probably, St. Patrick’s Days.

Next month we’ll be baking soda bread and enjoying a different bunch of blooming stems. For now we’ll munch our way through the Valentine’s candy centerpiece, going slowly enough that it will still appear respectable on the Fourteenth.

Forced Bloom

David Baker - 1954-

1.

Such pleasure one needs to make for oneself. 
She has snipped the paltry forsythia 
to force the bloom, has cut each stem on 
the slant and sprinkled brown sugar in a vase, 
so the wintered reeds will take their water. 
It hurts her to do this but she does it. 
When are we most ourselves, and when the least? 
Last night, the man in the recessed doorway, 
homeless or searching for something, or sought—
all he needed was one hand and quiet. 
The city around him was one small room. 
He leaned into the dark portal, gray 
shade in a door, a shadow of himself. 
His eyes were closed. His rhythm became him. 
So we have shut our eyes, as dead or as 
other, and held the thought of another 
whose pleasure is need, face over a face ... 

2. 

It hurts her to use her hands, to hold 
a cup or bud or touch a thing. The doctors 
have turned her burning hands in their hands. 
The tests have shown a problem, but no cause, 
a neuropathology of mere touch. 
We have all made love in the dark, small room 
of such need, without shame, to our comfort, 
our compulsion. I know I have. She has. 
We have held or helped each other, sometimes 
watching from the doorway of a warm house 
where candletips of new growth light the walls, 
the city in likeness beyond, our hands 
on the swollen damp branch or bud or cup. 
Sometimes we are most ourselves when we are 
least, or hurt, or lost, face over a face—. 
You have, too. It's your secret, your delight. 
You smell the wild scent all day on your hand. 

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Countdown to Valentine’s Day

One week from today we all, if we’re lucky, get to tell our loved ones how much we love them (and vice versa). It will also mean we’re halfway through February, which, I choose to believe, is Mother Nature’s way of telling me she loves me.

a Valentine centerpiece

Photo by J. Harrington

It probably doesn’t count as an early Valentine, despite the splash of bright red at the feeder, but the strategy we mentioned a week or so ago, of returning a tray feeder to service and see if that worked to entice cardinals back to the feeder, seems to be paying off. At least it did once, a couple of days ago, we had a male cardinal at the tray feeder in the middle of the afternoon.

As of this morning, we’ve officially entered our own version of the 2021 taxes season. I’ve got the income piece mostly organized. Tomorrow we’ll begin organizing the charitable deductions part. My target is to be able to deliver our completed tax organizer to our preparer on or around Valentine’s Day, as a way  of proving to myself how much I love me by getting it done and gone.

If You Feel Sorry 

By Ted Kooser

If you feel sorry for yourself
this Valentine's Day, think of
the dozens of little paper poppies
left in the box when the last
of the candy is gone, how they
must feel, dried out and brown
in their sad old heart-shaped box,
without so much as a single finger
to scrabble around in their
crinkled petals, not even
one pimpled nose to root and snort
through their delicate pot pourri.
So before you make too much
of being neglected, I want you
to think how they feel.

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Finding the silver linings

This afternoon’s sunlight and lack of a howling wind belong on my list of things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. In her great song, Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell sings a refrain  with an all too true question: 

Don't it always seem to go 
That you don't know what you've got 
Till it's gone ....

Until this year in particular, I’ve probably taken sunlight too much for granted, although each winter I complain about its lack. The Star Tribune had an article last March about our cloudier than usual weather. I’ve not been able to find anything that continues the trend analysis. Nevertheless, I’m trying to appreciate what  we are now enjoying rather than complaining about  what we’ve been missing. It’s part of my strategy to avoid coal in my stocking this year. That should help reduce my carbon footprint, right?

November overcast breaking up

Photo by J. Harrington

In the midst of writing this posting, the Better Half and I were invited to keep an eye on the  Granddaughter while Mom and Dad did the Christmas lights. The advantages of having an extended family that lives a short drive away! We’ve spent much  of  the afternoon reading, playing blocks, waving Hi! and taking a walk to look out the door and see what Mom and Dad are doing outside.

On our drive home yesterday, after picking up our dinner to go, we saw three separate houses with Christmas lights on. Like mushrooms after a wet spring, more and more decorations will pop up during the next week or so. None will be as bright, heartwarming nor as entertaining for us as a certain 1 year old we enjoy hanging  out with. May each of you have as much joy in your lives as we’ve found this  holiday season. With luck and love, we can make cloudiness just a passing  state of mind.

At Christmas

By Edgar Guest

A man is at his finest
     towards the finish of the year;
He is almost what he should be
     when the Christmas season is here;
Then he's thinking more of others
     than he's thought the months before,
And the laughter of his children
     is a joy worth toiling for.
He is less a selfish creature than
     at any other time;
When the Christmas spirit rules him
     he comes close to the sublime.

When it's Christmas man is bigger
     and is better in his part;
He is keener for the service
     that is prompted by the heart.
All the petty thoughts and narrow
     seem to vanish for awhile
And the true reward he's seeking
     is the glory of a smile.
Then for others he is toiling and
     somehow it seems to me
That at Christmas he is almost
     what God wanted him to be.

If I had to paint a picture of a man
     I think I'd wait
Till he'd fought his selfish battles
     and had put aside his hate.
I'd not catch him at his labors
     when his thoughts are all of pelf,
On the long days and the dreary
     when he's striving for himself.
I'd not take him when he's sneering,
     when he's scornful or depressed,
But I'd look for him at Christmas
     when he's shining at his best.

Man is ever in a struggle
     and he's oft misunderstood;
There are days the worst that's in him
     is the master of the good,
But at Christmas kindness rules him
     and he puts himself aside
And his petty hates are vanquished
     and his heart is opened wide.
Oh, I don't know how to say it,
     but somehow it seems to me
That at Christmas man is almost
     what God sent him here to be. 

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May you feel the warmth of love this Valentine's Day

We're seeing reports that new low temperature records are being set over much of the North Country. We hope all of you get enough love today to keep your hearts warm and pumping. Beginning tomorrow, temperatures are forecast to slloooowwwwly increase. (We won't say "get warm" until they actually get above freezing.)

may your day be full of sweetness, light and warmth

Photo by J. Harrington

Later today the Better Half gets her very own first shot of COVID vaccine. We've been starting to feel guilty about being the only one in the family selected in the Minnesota lottery for vulnerable / older folks. Now we get to hope we've recovered from any effects of our second shot in time to drive her to her second shot in a month. Stay tuned.

Today's issue of The Writer's Almanac has a not very Valentiney report about today being Carl Bernstein's birthday. (Since he was born in 1944, he is definitely more than the 74 year's listed in the Almanac. Probably a typo.) Since he was one half of the journalist team that broke "Watergate," we find the observation attributed to him quite relevant after yesterday's Senate vote that failed to convict our former (fake) president. You should go read the whole piece, but here's what we find to be the money quote:

In 1992, in a cover story for The New Republic, Carl Bernstein wrote:

“For, next to race, the story of the contemporary American media is the great uncovered story in America today. We need to start asking the same fundamental questions about the press that we do of the other powerful institutions in this society — about who is served, about standards, about self-interest and its eclipse of the public interest and the interest of truth. For the reality is that the media are probably the most powerful of all our institutions today; and they are squandering their power and ignoring their obligation. They — or more precisely, we — have abdicated our responsibility, and the consequence of our abdication is the spectacle, and the triumph, of the idiot culture.”

Had Mr. Bernstein not been so prescient nor accurate, this would have been a happier Valentine's Day for many of us. Transforming an "idiot culture" requires much more love, patience, forebearance, and other redeeming qualities than voting out one or several idiots. We have work to be done if we love this country  and its ideals.

Idiot Psalm 12

By Scott Cairns

A psalm of Isaak, amid uncommon darkness

O Being both far distant and most near,

             O Lover embracing all unlovable, O Tender

             Tether binding us together, and binding, yea

             and tenderly, Your Person to ourselves,

Being both beyond our ken, and kindred, One

             whose dire energies invest such clay as ours

             with patent animation, O Secret One secreting 

             life anew into our every tissue moribund,

             afresh unto our stale and stalling craft, 

grant in this obscurity a little light.

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On growing your own for Christmas

 Well, this year's Christmas tree is cut and up in the stand with lights on. Each year we cut one of the pines on our property it seems like this year's tree is even more of a Charlie Brown tree than the one from the year before. Most of the trees have come from a stand on the South  side of the drive, where they're crowded together, resulting in sparse branches. If we let them grow, they might become self thinning, but that would no doubt occur long after we've stop celebrating Christmas and peace on this earth.

a "Charlie Brown tree" for sure

Photo by J. Harrington

We pointed out, again, to the Better Half [BH] that the idea of cutting our own and using the "tree" stand she picked up at some rummage or yard sale is one of those Christmas traditions that's much better in the concept than in the reality. But then there's that Charlie Brown tree aspect. Today, after installing popsicle stick shims in the stand to help hold the tree upright, I declared that next year I'll be the one to pick out a tree. Let's hope it turns out better than this year's search for winterberry branches. The several stands that I know about were all bare and barren. BH saved the day by collecting some from a stand she had discovered. Maybe I should just make sure we measure the trunk diameter of the tree she selects next year. Anyhow, once again Christmas is coming to our home although COVID-19 is putting a bit of a damper on normal festivities, we're adapting and counting on an extra dose of Christmas spirits to help us through. The BH assures us that the tree will look much better when the decorations have "filled in" the bare spots.

We now have (electric) candles in the windows and a creche in the dining room. Decorations are finding their places on the piano, record cabinet, and other flat surfaces. Our Christmas lights, at least for this evening, will bring us cheer and merry merries. We may even see a few snow flurries drift out of our cloudy skies.

Christmas Trees

By Robert Frost

(A Christmas Circular Letter)

The city had withdrawn into itself

And left at last the country to the country;

When between whirls of snow not come to lie

And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove

A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,

Yet did in country fashion in that there

He sat and waited till he drew us out

A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.

He proved to be the city come again

To look for something it had left behind

And could not do without and keep its Christmas.

He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;

My woods—the young fir balsams like a place

Where houses all are churches and have spires.

I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.

I doubt if I was tempted for a moment

To sell them off their feet to go in cars

And leave the slope behind the house all bare,

Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.

I’d hate to have them know it if I was.

Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except

As others hold theirs or refuse for them,

Beyond the time of profitable growth,

The trial by market everything must come to.

I dallied so much with the thought of selling.

Then whether from mistaken courtesy

And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether

From hope of hearing good of what was mine, I said,

“There aren’t enough to be worth while.”

“I could soon tell how many they would cut,

You let me look them over.”

                                                     “You could look.

But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.”

Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close

That lop each other of boughs, but not a few

Quite solitary and having equal boughs

All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to,

Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,

With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.”

I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.

We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,

And came down on the north. He said, “A thousand.”

“A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?”

He felt some need of softening that to me:

“A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.”

Then I was certain I had never meant

To let him have them. Never show surprise!

But thirty dollars seemed so small beside

The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents

(For that was all they figured out apiece),

Three cents so small beside the dollar friends

I should be writing to within the hour

Would pay in cities for good trees like those,

Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools

Could hang enough on to pick off enough.

A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!

Worth three cents more to give away than sell,

As may be shown by a simple calculation.

Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.

I can’t help wishing I could send you one,

In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

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More signs of Spring #phenology

I am remiss by a couple of days reporting that a couple of branches on the forsythia in the back yard have blossoms. That bush gets way more sun than the ones in front which are partially shaded by a tall pine and have started leaf out but no flowers yet.

In another sign of the season, outside window washing started today. The upstairs (deck) and downstairs (screen porch / patio) walkout doors got the proverbial "lick and a promise" today. That activity was prompted by the dogs rediscovering how transparent the screen door is as they crashed through it to chase a squirrel that was on the deck starting to nibble on the leaves of the healthiest of the beach plum plants. Both dogs have been sent  to their rooms for a time out while walkout windows were washed and reinstallation of the screen door was accomplished. The reinstallation was significantly aided and abetted by my Better Half. I was too busy looking for the temper I had lost to be well focused on the details of putting the screen (and my equanimity) back on track.

SiSi at 1, seven  years ago

Photo by J. Harrington

One of the house-wreckers, my SiSi, had been celebrating her seventh anniversary living with us just prior to the screen door event. This after she had spent  the morning trying to hide in the pocket of my jeans. I had forgotten just how skittish she is around thunder. She finally decided that hiding in the corner behind me in my reading chair was her best option. Obviously, she had fully recovered her "playfulness" by the time she spotted the squirrel on the deck but failed to notice the screen door between her and the squirrel.

SiSi when not eating, chasing squirrels, or hiding from thunder

Photo by J. Harrington

If you have a dog, or have had a dog, or some day hope to have a dog, you will probably enjoy Mary Oliver's Dog Songs volume and, for some of the best writing ever about dogs and the people they own, take a look at any of Gene Hill's dog stories, for example Tears and Laughter. That pretty well covers what SiSi and I and our Better Half have been through today. Be well, stay healthy, enjoy Spring!

The Power of the Dog

Rudyard Kipling - 1865-1936

There is sorrow enough in the natural way

From men and women to fill our day;

And when we are certain of sorrow in store,

Why do we always arrange for more?

Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware

Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy

Love unflinching that cannot lie—

Perfect passion and worship fed

By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.

Nevertheless it is hardly fair

To risk your heart for a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits

Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,

And the vet’s unspoken prescription runs

To lethal chambers or loaded guns,

Then you will find—it’s your own affair—

But… you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear.

When the body that lived at your single will,

With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!).

When the spirit that answered your every mood

Is gone—wherever it goes—for good,

You will discover how much you care,

And will give your heart to a dog to tear.

We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way,

When it comes to burying Christian clay.

Our loves are not given, but only lent,

At compound interest of cent per cent.

Though it is not always the case, I believe,

That the longer we’ve kept ’em, the more do we grieve:

For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,

A short-time loan is as bad as a long—

So why in—Heaven (before we are there)

Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

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#NationalRescueDogDay

Much of the following was originally posted a year ago, when we first became aware of #NationalRescueDogDay. Around our house, every day is rescue dog day. The Better Half has hers; we have ours; and the Daughter Person brought one of her own back from an internship (hers, not the dog's) in North Carolina several years ago.

There may be something special about May because, according to our photo archives, the Better Half was rescued by Franco in mid-May seven eight years ago.

Franco arrives at his "forever" home

Photo by J. Harrington

We were rescued by SiSi just before the beginning of May five six years ago

SiSi observing the human she rescued

Photo by J. Harrington

The Daughter Person was rescued by her whippet/beagle(?) cross later in the Summer, so the May rescue rule doesn't seem hard and fast. We've no pictures of her rescuer to post.

Here's a link to how you can help even if you aren't ready to be rescued by a dog yourself. If, like us, you really are a dog person, we highly recommend trying to find a copy of one of Gene Hill's books go "dog stories" (Tears and Laughter, Sunlight and Shadows and A Listening Walk... and Other Stories). If you need a little motivation, here's a sampling of his quotes about dogs.

Mary Oliver also understands about the special relationship between people and dogs. Here's an example from her book of Dog Songs.

LUKE

I had a dog
  who loved flowers.
    Briskly she went
        through the fields, 

yet paused
  for the honeysuckle
    or the rose,
        her dark head 

and her wet nose
  touching
    the face
         of every one 

with its petals
  of silk,
    with its fragrance
         rising 

into the air
  where the bees,
    their bodies
        heavy with pollen, 

hovered—
  and easily
     she adored
        every blossom, 

not in the serious,
  careful way
    that we choose
        this blossom or that blossom— 

the way we praise or don’t praise—
  the way we love
     or don’t love—
        but the way 

we long to be—
  that happy
    in the heaven of earth—
        that wild, that loving.

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