A circle game?

Much of the local field corn is now harvested. Many of the local trees are bare of leaves, except for the oaks which  will be shedding leaves until bud burst next Spring starts a new cycle. I hope to finish raking, hauling and mulching this coming week, maybe even by mid-week Veterans' Day on the 11th.

are we at the dawn of a new era?

Photo by J. Harrington

Election Day brought most of the results I hoped for. Now we need leadership that believes accountability involves more than strongly worded letters and private meetings with oligarchs and wannabes. Do you think the Alaska and Mississippi senatorial elections will be resolved before the 2028 presidential elections? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we had more elected folks (and political parties) who put governance ahead of politics?

Once upon a time, before Citizens United, and maybe even pre- pre-C.U., I used to be able to feel comfortable voting for a candidate and letting it go at that. My mail box and email inbox weren't daily filling with requests (demands) that I contact my members of Congress to get them to vote for or against various bills. The concept of representative democracy has been severely complicated by the question of who (not what) is to be represented. Corporations are legal persons. I'm surprised that the Supreme Court that determined money is analogous to speech didn't also decide to award non-natural legal persons a right to vote! This should get really interesting as real persons and voters begin pushing harder for Green Amendments establishing the Rights of Nature. I believe we are now living in one of those "interesting times" that have been referred to as a curse.

Meanwhile, it's finally stopped raining. Temperatures are running slightly above seasonal "normals." The upcoming week brings a holiday and we're in the first weekend of local deer hunting season with firearms. We experiennced the first hard frost of the season this past Friday and there's no sign yet of the northern waterfowl migration. If I were younger and still an active waterfowler, I suspect I'd be mightily agitated and disappointed. Climate channge strikes again?

For Calling The Spirit Back From Wandering The Earth In Its Human Feet

by Joy Harjo

Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that

bottle of pop.

Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control.

Open the door, then close it behind you.

Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel

the earth gathering essences of plants to clean.

Give back with gratitude.

If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and

back.

Acknowledge this earth who has cared for you since you were

a dream planting itself precisely within your parents’ desire.

Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the

guardians who have known you before time,

who will be there after time.

They sit before the fire that has been there without time.

Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.

Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people

who accompany you.

Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought

down upon them.

Don’t worry.

The heart knows the way though there may be high-rises,

interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars, and

those who will despise you because they despise themselves.

The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few

years, a hundred, a thousand or even more.

Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and

leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the

thieves of time.

Do not hold regrets.

When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning

by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed.

You must clean yourself with cedar, sage, or other healing plant.

Cut the ties you have to failure and shame.

Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction.

Ask for forgiveness.

Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.

Call yourself back. You will find yourself caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.

You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.

Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.

Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It will return

in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be

happy to be found after being lost for so long.

Your spirit will need to sleep awhile after it is bathed and

given clean clothes.

Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who

loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no

place else to go.

Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.

Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark.

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Once burned, twice shy?

Local soy bean fields are (all?) harvested. Field corn harvest is underway. Autumn colors have emerged on just about all of the oak leaves in the neighborhood. Samhain / Halloween arrives in a week, although temperatures the past few days have been reaching the low to mid 70s, 15 to 20℉ above average for this time of year. I'm not used to breaking into a sweat while cleaning up leaf fall.

local field corn harvest

Photo by J. Harrington

Not that I've paid close attention, but political ads seem way too abundant and more full of tricks than treats. Wouldn't it be nice to live somewhere, some time, in which politicians told us lots more about why they deserve our votes rather than why their opponent(s) don't? Are politics really supposed to be a zero sum game? Why not focus on how to attain what's best for the country and its people? How can we get more politicians trained in multi-solving instead of mudslinging?

The Better Half [BH] and I spent a some time Saturday afternoon at a Halloween party hosted at the stables where Daughter Person boards her horse and BH, Daughter, and Granddaughter go riding. There were noticeably more young ’uns than us oldsters, as it should be around Halloween and some other holidays. Everyone seemed to have a good time and the horses enjoyed the extra company, but 73℉ just didn’t feel right for a Minnesota Halloween party. Today we're back to cloudy skies and seasonable temperatures. We may not see another 70℉ until next Spring.

Much of next week will be devoted to managing fallen leaves and trying to get organized for Winter and whatever the election results may bring. Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American today reminds US that, about 100 years ago, we went through a similar con job of "let's run the country like a business." It's unfortunate to tragic that our social and cultural memories don't serve US better. Maybe this time when I put my hand on a hot stove it won't badly burn me? Don't forget to VOTE!

October

Evalyn Callahan Shaw

October is the month that seems 
All woven with midsummer dreams;  
She brings for us the golden days 
That fill the air with smoky haze,  
She brings for us the lisping breeze 
And wakes the gossips in the trees,  
Who whisper near the vacant nest  
Forsaken by its feathered guest.  
Now half the birds forget to sing,  
And half of them have taken wing,  
Before their pathway shall be lost 
Beneath the gossamer of frost.  
Zigzag across the yellow sky,  
They rustle here and flutter there,  
Until the boughs hang chill and bare,  
What joy for us—what happiness  
Shall cheer the day the night shall bless?  
’Tis hallowe’en, the very last  
Shall keep for us remembrance fast,  
When every child shall duck the head 
To find the precious pippin red. 

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Season for keeping promises

I voted on Friday, October 16; participated in the local No Kings - Vote Early rally on Saturday; and today reached the limit of letting MAGAts and their Kommandant live in my head, rent free or not. I'm working on minimizing social media and news reading time henceforth. If civil war breaks out on or shortly after November 3, I'll probably get a call or an email. Could it be coincidence, and what kind, that Election Day next month occurs immediately after the Day of the Dead? Meanwhile, I want to do as little as possible to aid and abet any support of tech oligarchs and their autocrat associates.

what do you need to be ready to vote?

Photo by J. Harrington

We're at peak leaf color but the winds of the past few days have prompted peak leaf fall. Mid-week temperatures are forecast to return into the low 70s. Normal highs for this time of year are in the mid 50s, although "normal" seems on its way to being pronounced archaic. Meanwhile we all get to ponder what a super El Niño may ring to the middle of the country over the next several months. Do these tense, pensive, times warrant the creation of a new term: tensive?

On the brighter side, convincing myself that cleaning up fallen leaves and pulling past bloom golden rod is earth care and not just middle class yard work has helped me enjoy time spent outside this past week. (One aspiration I've never aspired to is having a perfect lawn.) Meanwhile, the local wild turkey flocks and gray squirrel population are making progress cleaning up the fallen acorns. With luck, we'll get early holiday presents as the votes are tallied, the goblins and trolls will soon leave the country and we'll all have lots to be thankful for come November 26.

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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Time to Welcome October

For quite a few years now, we've planted half a dozen chrysanthemums along the northern edge of the driveway. This year, for the first time, as much as I can recall, someone's been eating the flowers, mostly the bright yellow ones. A quick internet search suggests that deer, rabbits, and / or squirrels are the most likely culprits. I don't see any hoof prints, so I'm guessing one or both of the latter two but have no more evidence to consider, although a number of flowers continue to lie on the ground around many of the plants.

wedding decoration pumpkins

Photo by J. Harrington

Archery season for deer is now open so there's a number of vehicles wandering the neighborhood and parking in the road ditches. Some of them may be hunting squirrels or rabbits instead of whitetails. That would explain the gun shots I've been hearing while walking Harry the beagle, who is sometimes gun (shot) shy.

Leaf color continues to develop and has been joined by a noticeable increase in leaf drop this past week. Time to start mulch-mowing and blowing so there's not a thick cover when snowfall starts. I'm working on convincing myself that I'm caring for the earth and not just wasting my time. Wish me luck. At least with the drought, grass mowing hasn't been needed nearly as often as during a "normal" summer.

Eleven years ago we were in the midst of preparations for a back yard wedding of the Daughter Person to our soon-to-be Son-In-Law. Leaf colors that year were more fully developed than now. Meanwhile, this year it's time to go pumpkin shopping and check out the snow blower for the season that comes after autumn.

Finally, please be sure to VOTE EARLY, VOTE BLUE [but don't vote often]. Our democracy (and our sanity) depends on you, and me, and each of US!

Vote

by Nikki Giovanni

It’s not a hug
Nor mistletoe at Christmas

It’s not a colored egg
At Easter
Nor a bunny hopping
Across the meadow

It’s a Vote

Saying you are
A citizen

Though it sometimes
Is chocolate
Or sometimes vanilla
It can be a female
Or a male
It is right
Or left
I can agree
Or disagree but
And this is an important but
I am a citizen

I should be able
To vote from prison
I should be able
To vote from the battlefield
I should be able
To vote when I get a driver’s license
I should be able
To vote when I can purchase a gun
I must be able
To vote
If I’m in the hospital
If I’m in the old folks’ home
If I’m needing a ride
To the Polling Place

I am a citizen

I must be able to vote

Folks were lynched
Folks were shot
Folks’ communities were gerrymandered
Folks who believed
In the Constitution were lied to
Burned out
Bought and sold
Because they agreed
All Men Were Created Equal

Folks vote to make us free

It’s not cookies
Nor cake
But it is the icing
That is so sweet

Good for the Folks
Good for Us

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Au revoir Summer

Local leaf color is coming on. The hummingbirds seem to have disappeared around the middle of last week. Waterfowl are taking training flights, building muscles for the trip South. Daytime temperatures have dropped to the low 70's and upper 60's. Autumn equinox occurs this Tuesday at 7:05 pm CDT. Rumor has it that peak Autumn [Out 'em] this year will occur on November 3, shortly after Samhain. We hope that day or two separation will give any evil spirits time to return to their lairs and not haunt voters.

Ruby Meadowhawk dragonfly (Sympetrum rubicundulum)

Photo by J. Harrington

We've seen few dragonflies and no tree frogs so far this September. I suspect that has a lot to do with are area continuing to be in a severe drought location. This year the county is well below its 30 year average precipitation. I continue to wonder if the anticipated super El Nino will break the drought.

For reasons I don't even want to try to understand, Blogger's no longer correctly, automatically, updating the most recent posting for the blog listing on the right-hand side of this page. Another success from AI? I'm debating if this annoyance is sufficient reason to move the blog to another platform, stop blogging, or, instead, just ignore the flaw. Wouldn't it be nice if tech giants made sure everything worked before imposing updated versions on users. I'm tired of feeling used by technology. Local gas stations are now trying to induce users to provide their phone numbers in return for a discounted per gallon price. Blue votes on November 3 probably offer a better ROI with possibly fewer scams and less spam.

Song for Autumn

by Mary Oliver

Don’t you imagine the leaves dream now
how comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of the air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees, especially those with
mossy hollows, are beginning to look for

the fires that will come—six, a dozen—to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
stiffens and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its long blue shadows. The wind wags
its many tails. And in the evening
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

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Will it be a beautiful Autumn for US?

If you're looking forward to spending a $5,000 check from the White House on this year's Christmas presents, you might want to reconsider. Political realists tell me they expect to receive their checks a week or so after all the unredacted Epstein files have been released.

"mums" the word for autumn plantings

Photo by J. Harrington

Back in the real world, this past week the Better Half and I planted half a dozen mums along the driveway in what's become an annual seasonal event recognizing a transition from Summer to Autumn. Today's weather feels much less like Summer than did yesterday's. On the other hand, the local hummingbirds are still coming to the feeders, so they've not yet migrated. I'm curious to see if I'll have to refill the feeders next weekend or if today is the last time for this year.

Almost 71% of the state is experiencing some degree of drought. The nearby St. Croix river flows have been hovering just above the bottom ten (lowest) flow levels. Various regions throughout the state are beginning to show leaf colors. For the first time in months, I've been comfortable wearing a chamois shirt inside the house all day. If we get the wet winter we need, I hope it comes early as rain and not as heavy wet snow mid- or late winter.

As we slide into Autumn, let's cross our fingers and work our butts off to do all we can to have lots to be thankful for three weeks after election day. Please be sure to:

• Make sure you're registered to vote
• Vote early
• Encourage your neighbors, friends and families to vote
• Pray for US

         Ghazal: America the Beautiful

Alicia Ostriker
1937 –

Do you remember our earnestness our sincerity
in first grade when we learned to sing America

The Beautiful along with the Star-Spangled Banner
and say the Pledge of Allegiance to America

We put our hands over our first grade hearts
we felt proud to be citizens of America

I said One Nation Invisible until corrected
maybe I was right about America

School days school days dear old Golden Rule Days
when we learned how to behave in America

What to wear, how to smoke, how to despise our parents
who didn’t understand us or America

Only later learning the Banner and the Beautiful
live on opposite sides of the street in America

Only later discovering the Nation is divisible
by money by power by color by gender by sex America

We comprehend it now this land is two lands
one triumphant bully one still hopeful America

Imagining amber waves of grain blowing in the wind
purple mountains and no homeless in America

Sometimes I still put my hand tenderly on my heart
somehow or other still carried away by America

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It's Autumn reigns time

Despite Friday's scattered rain, we remain in severe drought. That may have started to trigger stress related color change in local trees, or the change could just be because it's that time of year. I've no idea how we might sort out correlation from causation on stress versus less daylight for photosynthesis. Minnesota's actual leaf color progression, starting Tuesday, can be found here.

maple trees displaying early leaf color

Photo by J. Harrington

Hummingbirds continue to show up at the sugar water feeders. Increasing numbers of sandhill cranes and Canada geese are gleaning harvested fields. Whitetail deer coats are trading summer reds for winter grays. The number of birds perched on telephone wires keeps growing, then the flocks will migrate as they get an Urge for Going [Tom Rush cover]. With any luck, we could be about to enjoy eight, ten, or twelve weeks of energetic preparations for winter, leading to an extended period of rest, recuperation, and storytelling until the cycle begins again with the coming of springtime next year, bringing the return of migrants and new growth.

Some of us are hoping we get enough precipitation to break the drought while it's still warm enough to fall as rain. The anticipated "super" El Nino may lead to a milder, wetter winter, or not. As with the upcoming midterm elections, we'll hope for the best, and do what we can to bring such about, while realizing what we think may be best may not put US in the majority. Meanwhile, we're going to do our best to enjoy as much as we can of our favoritest upcoming season.

Poem Beginning with a Line from It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Maggie Smith

Just look—nothing but sincerity 

as far as the eye can see—

the way the changed leaves,

flapping their yellow underbellies

in the wind, glitter. The tree

looks sequined wherever

the sun touches. Does anyone

not see it? Driving by a field

of spray-painted sheep, I think

the world is not all changed.

The air still ruffles wool

the way a mother’s hand

busies itself lovingly in the hair

of her small boy. The sun

lifts itself up, grows heavy

treading there, then lets itself

off the hook. Just look at it

leaving—the sky a tigereye

banded five kinds of gold

and bronze—and the sequin tree

shaking its spangles like a girl

on the high school drill team,

nothing but sincerity. It glitters

whether we’re looking or not.

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Is zero some enough?

Labor Day, the unofficial end of Summer, is two weeks away. The Autumn Equinox officially ends Summer in the northern hemisphere exactly one month from today. This morning's predawn temperatures had a tinge of Autumn. Purple Love Grass (Eragrostis spectabilis) is shedding its tumbleseed spikelets. Who was it that wrote "parting is such sweet sorrow"? The season of growing is evolving into the harvest season.

purple love grass (Eragrostis spectabilis)

Photo by J. Harrington

Midterm elections are 72 days from now. Some of US are doubtful even a blue tsunami will actually settle much of anything but find hope in the growing pushback against (Disney and ABC sue FCC over license renewals) and resistance to the current powers that be in D.C. We do seem to be in the midst of the apocryphal Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times." I hesitate to suggest widespread boredom might be preferable but .... Or, perhaps we'll actually luck out and get an early Christmas present of a return to a democracy based on the rule of law instead of a wannabe dictator's whims and wishes. 

If you're up for it, here's a mind game to try: Think about the size and complexity of the universe. There's an estimated 2 trillion (with a "t")+ galaxies that we know of. There's black holes, dark matter, dark energy, and whatever else we haven't discovered or hypothesized about, plus the observable universe. So, the question for this game is: "Is the universe a zero sum game?" My answer is "How would we know?" For similar reasons, you might ask yourself why are we functioning in a system that allows limited numbers of billionaires or trillionaires but practically limitless numbers of starving, homeless adults and children. We discover the laws of the universe. On earth, we create the laws of society. Can't we do better?

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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Illegitimi non carborundum*

Hints of gold are arriving amongst the greens of roadside grasses. Splashes and tints of tan can be seen in the verdant treetops. We're about a third of the way through August. Rumor has it that grammar school students have started to announce, with dismay: "Summer's almost over! Soon we'll be back in school!!" I'm discounting a number of reports about adults responding "Yes!!!" Even in this day and age I'm not ready to believe in that level of cruelty.

wild turkeys walking through August-ripe grasses

Photo by J. Harrington

About 3 am we were awakened by a round of thunder and lightning, and rain, that had been forecast for several hours later. It's been cloudy much of the day. Temperatures have pretty much dropped out of the nineties, for which we are thankful. In the midst of the current and continuing national and international madness, I'm really looking forward to Autumn's arrival, followed by the mid-term elections. Will the fractured and fragmented Democrats unite enough to oust the party of pedophile protecting Republicans? Will POtuS find a way to successfully disrupt the election outcome? If so, how will the country respond? The United States is emulating that old joke: "I'm not the man (country) I used to be; never was." If only we had no where to go but up. Do you think we've hit bottom yet? Are enough voters fed up with an international crime syndicate masquerading as a government? How bad and wide-spread do the wildfires and droughts have to get?

Meanwhile as I rearrange the deck chairs on our Titanic, I've been fly-fishing several weeks in a row now. That's an improvement over the past few years. All I've caught so far is one bush on a misplaced backcast, but that's better than staying home, not catching anything, and then bitching about not going fishing because it's too windy wet, etc. A similar perspective might be beneficial come voting time. I don't like being faced with an option of choosing the lesser of two options, but would like it even less if the greater clown won by one vote because I stayed home. Meanwhile, we'll probably wear out the tv's mute button due to political ads during the next couple of months. Maybe if we're good little girls and boys, by Christmas this will all be over until 2028 at least!

*  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegitimi_non_carborundum

Good Bones

Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

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As Summer slowly slides south

Neighborhood sumac is starting to show red leaves among the green. Goldenrod is blooming. Whitetail bucks are in velvet. Early this morning (pre day-break) held a delightfully coolish hint of September. Yesterday was Lughnasadh. Summer's slide into Autumn has started. Let's enjoy the ride.

which goldenrod species is this?

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning I discovered the there's about a dozen and a half varieties/species of goldenrod in Minnesota. Most of them are native to our county. I have, thus far, failed miserably in identifying the species in the photo above. There's lots of them growing on our property. My preliminary guess is Canada goldenrod (Solidago canadensis). Your thoughts?

Thanks to the initiative, invitations and considerations of the Son-In-Law, I've been fishing twice this past week. That would be twice as often as I have during the past couple of years except that twice zero is zero. It felt good to get out and again play with some of my toys, despite an uncooperative breeze and a river full of kayak and canoe flotillas several occupants of which seemed to think we fly-fishers might be having as much, or maybe more, fun.

We are now less than two weeks from Minnesota's primary election and less than 100 days from the national midterm elections. Be sure to vote, preferably blue in the primary, definitely so in the general. We've had more than enough of the inmates running the asylum.

Three Songs at the End of Summer

Jane Kenyon
1947 – 1995

A second crop of hay lies cut   
and turned. Five gleaming crows   
search and peck between the rows.
They make a low, companionable squawk,   
and like midwives and undertakers   
possess a weird authority.

Crickets leap from the stubble,   
parting before me like the Red Sea.   
The garden sprawls and spoils.

Across the lake the campers have learned   
to water-ski. They have, or they haven’t.   
Sounds of the instructor’s megaphone   
suffuse the hazy air. “Relax! Relax!”

Cloud shadows rush over drying hay,   
fences, dusty lane, and railroad ravine.   
The first yellowing fronds of goldenrod   
brighten the margins of the woods.

Schoolbooks, carpools, pleated skirts;   
water, silver-still, and a vee of geese.

*

The cicada’s dry monotony breaks   
over me. The days are bright   
and free, bright and free.

Then why did I cry today   
for an hour, with my whole   
body, the way babies cry?

*

A white, indifferent morning sky,   
and a crow, hectoring from its nest   
high in the hemlock, a nest as big   
as a laundry basket....
                                    In my childhood   
I stood under a dripping oak,
while autumnal fog eddied around my feet,   
waiting for the school bus
with a dread that took my breath away.

The damp dirt road gave off   
this same complex organic scent.

I had the new books—words, numbers,   
and operations with numbers I did not   
comprehend—and crayons, unspoiled   
by use, in a blue canvas satchel
with red leather straps.

Spruce, inadequate, and alien   
I stood at the side of the road.   
It was the only life I had.

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Peak Summer perspectives

In our northern hemisphere, this coming Saturday, August 1, Lughnasadh is celebrated among the Celts and Irish Gaelic. Locally, row crop harvest will start in a couple of months and fruit and vegetable harvest has been underway for a couple of months. Somewhere close to or on August 7 we'll reach the midpoint between between Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox. This sure seems like peak Summer and the weather concurs. Right now the temperature is in the mid 90's (℉) and the humidity makes it feel like 113℉. At least the wildfire smoke has eased away for now.

field corn not yet  ready for harvest

Photo by J. Harrington

The limited cool down forecast for the next ten days may be enough for those Minnesotans who vote in person on August 11 to get over being hot under the collar. Early voters, not so much. Those who pay close attention to the state of the world, the country, the state, and/or the 99% are unlikely to cool down regardless of the weather. I'm reminded of the key theme from Dr. Seuss' The Lorax: "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It's not." I'm here to say it's well past time we all stop voting for Once-lers while we still have a habitable planet to protect! I wonder if we could send all of the 1% to colonize the "Red Planet." (Am I the only one who sees real irony in that?)

At some point we seem to have allowed those who are supposed to represent US to act as though the words accommodate, tolerate, cooperate, and compromise are each spelled with only four letters and aren't to be used in polite political company. winner take all is the antithesis of a democracy, just as is the short-sightedness of not thinking beyond this quarter's profits. How can we be sure to vote only for those who realize we, and our descendants, are all in this for the long term? Your thoughts?

Ghazal: America the Beautiful

Alicia Ostriker

1937 –

Do you remember our earnestness our sincerity
in first grade when we learned to sing America

The Beautiful along with the Star-Spangled Banner
and say the Pledge of Allegiance to America

We put our hands over our first grade hearts
we felt proud to be citizens of America

I said One Nation Invisible until corrected
maybe I was right about America

School days school days dear old Golden Rule Days
when we learned how to behave in America

What to wear, how to smoke, how to despise our parents
who didn’t understand us or America

Only later learning the Banner and the Beautiful
live on opposite sides of the street in America

Only later discovering the Nation is divisible
by money by power by color by gender by sex America

We comprehend it now this land is two lands
one triumphant bully one still hopeful America

Imagining amber waves of grain blowing in the wind
purple mountains and no homeless in America

Sometimes I still put my hand tenderly on my heart
somehow or other still carried away by America

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Reaping what we sow time?

Much of the local field corn has tasseled. Late yesterday we noticed a whitetail buck in velvet. This year's fawns seem to be everywhere. Wild turkey poults? Not so much. Heat, humidity, and fine particulates from northern wild fires in Minnesota and Canada have dominated the weather recently and look like they'll come and go for the rest of the season. Does anyone know of a place where it's October-like year round?

whitetail doe with two fawns

Photo by J. Harrington

At least July is more than half gone and "normal" maximum temperatures would begin to decline late this coming week, on Friday the 24th. I'm not sure what that may portend in reality, since so little is normal these days. I am sure that we'll find a way to celebrate Lughnasadh in about two weeks, on August 1. If nothing else, it will start a countdown to the Autumn Equinox which will then bring US closer to National Election Day on November 3. Some of US are hoping there's meaningful symbolism with the Day of the Dead immediately preceding Election Day. No doubt the other side is wishing for the same thing, but in their favor. Can't we find a way to make politics win-win instead of zero sum?

The Guardian recently published an article about the increase in political violence worldwide. It attributes much of the cause to political rhetoric increasingly demonizing the opposition spouted by the same politicians who deplore actual violence against politicians. Does anyone else see a classic case of "Do as I say, not as I do"? Political types claiming to be Christian might want to recall the dictum "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Perhaps, since we're approaching the harvest season, recalling Galatians 6:7-9 would be better: ".... for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

A Quest for Universal Suffrage

Kimberly Blaeser

I.

Suffrage:

In late middle English

intercessory prayers,

a series of petitions.

Not the right—but the hope.

 

Universal:

applicable to all cases—

except those marginalized

and unnamed.

A belief, but not a fact.

 

II.

In the trombone slide of history

I hear the suffer in suffragette

the uni uni uni in universal—

each excluded ikwe: women

from five hundred tribal nations

mindimooyenh or matriarchs

of ancient flourishing cultures

still disenfranchised by race,

still holding our world together

in the dusky and lawless violence

manifest in colonial america.

 

Twenty-six million american women

at last granted the right to vote.

Oh, marginal notes in the sweet anthem

of equality, Indigenous non-citizens

turn to the older congress of the sun

seek in the assembled stories of sky

a steady enlightenment—natural laws

(the mathematics of bending trees,

sistering of nutrients—maizebeanssquash,

or wintering wisdom of animal relatives)

each seasonal chorus colored with resilience—

earth voices rising in sacred dream songs.

 

Even now listen, put on the moon-scored

shell of turtle, wear this ancient armour

of belonging. In the spiral of survivance

again harvest the amber sap of trees

follow the scattered path of manoomin

the wild and good seed that grows on water.

Oh water, oh rice, oh women of birch dreams

and baskets, gather. Here reap and reseed

raise brown hands trembling holy with endurance.

Now bead land knowledge into muklaks

sign with the treaty X of exclusion.

Kiss with fingers and lips the inherited

woodland flutes and breathy cedar songs.

Say yea, eya, and yes. Here and here cast

your tended nets—oh suffered and sweetly mended

nets of abundance. This year and each to follow

choose, not by paper but by pathway, a legacy:

woman’s work—our ageless ballad of continuance.

 

Copyright © 2020 Kimberly Blaeser. This poem was co-commissioned by the Academy of American Poets and the New York Philharmonic as part of the Project 19 initiative.

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Then and now, what's the difference?

Choice more than Chance

Photo by J. Harrington

The Martin Niemöller quote below is reported to be a version he used after the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.

First, they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And by then there was no one left to speak out for me

The annotated version below has been updated with references to the contemporary United States. Please draw your own conclusions.

First Now, they came come for the Communists [https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-team-tests-anti-communist-message-midterms-rhetoric-intensifies-2026-07-08/]
And I did not speak out because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Democratic Socialists
And I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
[union membership now ~50% of 1983's]
And I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews Palestinians
And I did not speak out because I was not a Jew Palestinian 

Then they came for me
And by then there was no one left to speak out for me

If I were female, the last phrase would refer to me and SCOTUS' 2022 decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade.

Please consider printing today's posting and taping it on your refrigerator until after November's elections. Let's hope we can settle this with ballots, not bullets.

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.

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Another "Bridge too far" (for now)

Please don't misunderstand. I believe aspirational goals are valuable; more so when they're acknowledged as such. But, in my opinion, when the context for, and complexity of, attaining an aspirational goal isn't made evident, the effort can, and too often may, become a source of misinformation or even disinformation.

I was around when President Kennedy announced in 1962 a goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Many of my aspirations have been shaped by the picture of our blue marble, Earth, taken by the Apollo 17 crew.

our "Blue Marble"
Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

That image brought home just how rare and complex life on our home planet is. And, we didn't, and won't, get from earth to the moon, or to Mars, on an actual bridge. So, we need to be sensitive to what, and how much, we can bring with us or ship ahead if we''re going to survive in / on extraterrestrial environments. The research undertaken so far is interesting.

Eight go mad in Arizona: how a lockdown experiment went horribly wrong

Such constraints don't appear evident in the efforts of the world's first trillionaire to promote a scheme that would probably be highly profitable for one or more of his companies.

SpaceX Mars colonization program

This wouldn't trouble me as much were it not for reports about who has been funding much of the corporate development (and salvaging) of those companies.

Today a Welfare Trillionaire Is Born

President Kennedy's brother, Bobby, was also a politician. In remarks at the University of Kansas, on March 18, 1968, he noted:

..."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."

 In my opinion, we have much more significant efforts to invest in than space colonization and Artificial Intelligence. It is well past time for US to invest in making an escape to Planet B (as if there were such) unnecessary by practicing stewardship of earth and to put more resources into developing, protecting, and using human intelligence.

Kennedy spoke about an "other America." We need, as a priority, to create one America much closer to our long-standing aspirations of freedom, equality, and justice for all.

You Could Never Take a Car to Greenland

by Maggie Smith

my daughter says. Unless the car could float.
Unless by car you mean boat. Unless the ocean
turned to ice and promised not to crack.
Unless Greenland floated over here,
having lifted its anchor. Unless we could row
our country there. Our whole continent
would have to come along, wouldn’t it? Unless
we cut ourselves free. What kind of saw
could we use for that? What kind of oars
could deliver one country to another?
She asks, Why is Greenland called Greenland
if it’s not green? Why is Iceland called
Iceland if it’s greener than Greenland?
Unless it’s a trick, a lie: the name Greenland
is an ad for Greenland. Who would go
promised nothing but ice? Who would cut
her home to pieces and row away for that?

No more "same old, same old!!!"

Depending on whether you count from Memorial Day or Summer Solstice, Summer's arrival is a little late or a little early. In either case, that season's heat and humidity are now conspicuous by their presence. Those factors have recently been joined by several species of biting bugs, which removes, at least for me, any doubts about whether Spring has burst into Summer.

'tis "that" season again

Photo by J. Harrington

On the brighter side, we are now enjoying corn on the cob, ripe cherries, watermelon, peaches that need more ripening, and regular consumption of ice cream cones. I''m trying to (re)train myself to not let all that's wrong with the world keep me from enjoying some of what's right with it. Sometimes I do have to admit my perfectionist tendencies (me? 😉) can be counterproductive. Plus, I find we live in an increasingly annoying and inept society, thanks to technology misapplication and growing numbers of kleptocratic billionaires and wannabes. I have recently encountered some encouraging resources with worthwhile guidance on how to to turn today's deficits into tomorrow's opportunities. Please don't let the writings at the other end of the links below turn into TL;DR's.

• from The Guardian: The three things Democrats must do to regain rural America’s trust
• from Kosmos: Nate Hagens and the Work of Resilient Futures and,
• Bioregioning and Our Felt Sense of Place

I'm heartened to find intelligent folks are thinking seriously about what it will take to get US and the rest of the world out of the multiple predicaments (existential issues?) we face. I'm even more encouraged that some of them are citing one of my all time favorite poems. Enjoy!!

For the Children

by Gary Snyder

The rising hills, the slopes,

of statistics

lie before us,

the steep climb

of everything, going up,

up, as we all

go down.

In the next century

or the one beyond that,

they say,

are valleys, pastures,

we can meet there in peace

if we make it.

To climb these coming crests

one word to you, to

you and your children:

stay together

learn the flowers

go light 

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Looks like a long, hot summer ahead!

Last week we noticed many hay fields had had their first cutting. Several corn fields were showing emergence plus a few of inches of growth. A male scarlet tanager briefly visited the bird bath. I managed to run the mower over some of the back yard, after picking up most of the winter's deposit of dead branches and knocking down lots of pocket gopher mounds with the drag harrow. It wasn't quite a "no mow May" for us, but we came close.

male scarlet tanager next to bird bath

Photo by J. Harrington

The lilacs in front of the house are in fuller bloom than I recall in years prior. When I slow down enough to stand near them and take a deep breath, the fragrance is a treat. Summer solstice is three weeks from today, locally at 3:24 am CDT, but summer weather started here a week or ten days ago when daily high temperatures jumped from the mid-60's to the mid-80's and have pretty much stayed there. Plus, it's been very dry locally, with thunderstorms scattered around the state.

The fields behind the house have clusters of blue flax and hoary puccoon in bloom, plus a few other flowers I haven't identified. Last summer's two serviceberry bushes addition now have actual berries. It will be interesting later this summer to see what they taste like. I need to put larger enclosures around them to protect them from rabbits and whitetails. Speaking of deer, it's the season for new fawns. I've not seen any yet but the Better Half claims to have seen one during a trip to or from the barn to help with Daughter Person's horse.

Both political parties are lined up for strongly contested primaries come August, with the Democrats deciding between Craig and Flanagan for senate and the Republicans potentially deciding among several options as their gubernatorial candidate for the general election. Meanwhile the regime in D.C. is hell bent to undermine the integrity and validity of our electoral system. Sigh! It's likely to be a long, summer full of hot air and the best we can hope for is choosing least worst alternatives come November! Even a blue tidal wave is unlikely to clean up enough systemic political flotsam and jetsam to actually improve life for the average voter's family.

What Is June Anyway?

By David Budbill

 

After three weeks of hot weather and drought,

           we've had a week of cold and rain,

just the way it ought to be here in the north,

            in June, a fire going in the woodstove

all day long, so you can go outside in the cold

            and rain anytime and smell

the wood smoke in the air.

 

This is the way I love it. This is why

           I came here almost

fifty years ago. What is June anyway

          without cold and rain

and a fire going in the stove all day?

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