Are you a Solutionary?

I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t feel to me like next week should be the 4th of July, but here we are. One week from today is Independence Day! Tonight is the first presidential (presumed) candidate debate of this election season, at 8 pm our local (Central Daylight) time. I’m leaning toward the idea that it will make US think of one of Shakespeare’s plays. I would be delighted to be proven wrong.

On a brighter, more positive note, this morning I came across a refreshing source for optimism. The founder of the Institute for Humane Education, Zoe Weil, has a recently published book, The Solutionary Way. It ticks almost all of the checkboxes on my list for systems solutions, plus it covers most of the substantive sectors we need to be concerned with. The author and her approach are one of the more encouraging prospects I’ve seen in a long time.

Trout in the Classroom aquarium

Photo by J. Harrington

In another aspect related to education, I may be reengaging in Minnesota Trout Unlimited’s Trout in the Classroom [TIC] activities. For one class years ago I did a quick summary of the history of fly fishing for trout. Today I started to refresh and update my knowledge of the program by looking at the Minnesota and National web sections on TIC. I don’t really believe in coincidences, and the fact that this morning, as I was in a doom and gloom mode, two emails showed up related to The World Becomes What We Teach and shattered my dark ceiling can’t be coincidental.

There are lots of good, helpful, folks doing lots of positive work to make this world a much better place. They all too often get thirty seconds of human interest air time rather than being acknowledged as resources that can help US address many of the issues troubling US. Imagine if the evening news content didn’t emphasize “If it bleeds, it leads.” It could be time for US to adopt the line from Network: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more!”

A House Called Tomorrow

Alberto Ríos
1952 – 

You are not fifteen, or twelve, or seventeen—
You are a hundred wild centuries

And fifteen, bringing with you
In every breath and in every step

Everyone who has come before you,
All the yous that you have been,

The mothers of your mother,
The fathers of your father.

If someone in your family tree was trouble,
A hundred were not:

The bad do not win—not finally,
No matter how loud they are.

We simply would not be here
If that were so.

You are made, fundamentally, from the good.
With this knowledge, you never march alone.

You are the breaking news of the century.
You are the good who has come forward

Through it all, even if so many days
Feel otherwise.  But think:

When you as a child learned to speak,
It’s not that you didn’t know words—

It’s that, from the centuries, you knew so many,
And it’s hard to choose the words that will be your own.

From those centuries we human beings bring with us
The simple solutions and songs,

The river bridges and star charts and song harmonies
All in service to a simple idea:

That we can make a house called tomorrow.
What we bring, finally, into the new day, every day,

Is ourselves.  And that’s all we need
To start.  That’s everything we require to keep going. 

Look back only for as long as you must,
Then go forward into the history you will make.

Be good, then better.  Write books.  Cure disease.
Make us proud.  Make yourself proud.

And those who came before you?  When you hear thunder,
Hear it as their applause.

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What’s normal for me and mine?

I thought any remaining snow would have been erased by recent warm temperatures and rain, and I was wrong. There are still scattered patches of snow along the roads and in shaded areas of fields. The few piles on our property disappeared sometime over the weekend. The “wet spot” in our back yard is actually showing a little water. Spring conditions are approximating something like normal.

we don’t have this much water this year

Photo by J. Harrington

We’re well beyond the main path of the eclipse, and the sky is covered with a thick layer of clouds. No mid-afternoon darkness for us, nor have we seen any fundamentalists floating skyward in the Rapture. Again, an approximation of “normal.”

During a visit this morning to our favorite local book store, the Better Half and I each picked up some more reading material. That’s also as normal for us. If I keep away from politics and international affairs, what can pass for normal sometimes prevails. I think a message is lurking in there, somewhere.

Last Friday’s newsletter from Trout Unlimited [TU] reminded me of something that’s far from normal. The basic legislation governing mining in the US “was passed when Ulysses S. Grant was president in 1872.” TU, among others, is supporting revisions. Did you know that:

Unlike every other commodity produced from our public lands, there is no royalty or tax on rare earth elements, critical minerals, and luxury items such as gold and silver. 

By contrast, since 1977, coal mining has provided over $11 billion from a tax on each ton of produced coal. That funding is used to clean up abandoned coal mines across Appalachia and parts of the western United States.

You might want to read the whole TU article and think about contacting your members of congress to see if they support an update and, if not, why not. One of the basic principles of environmental management is supposed to be the “Polluter pays.” (Don’t talk to me about agriculture, please.)

Something that’s probably missing from any mining revisions is any reference to the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA). That’s a major oversight in my opinion. See what you think.

It seems our world has gotten too complex and contentious for us to get away with simply voting for our party’s candidate and forgetting about politics. As long as we don’t get too carried away, that’s probably good for US. To paraphrase an old title, “No One is an Island.”

No Man Is An Island

John Donne 1572 (London) – 1631 (London)

---

---

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee. 

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Whose fault is it?

If we assume the Guardian reported this correctly, someone in a position of responsibility in the Democratic Party was/is asleep at the switch: Biden could be left off general election ballot in Ohio, Republican official warns.

how much nitrogen do row crops need?

Photo by J. Harrington

If we assume the Star-Tribune reported this correctly, person or persons in Minnesota’s governments have been asleep at the switch: '50 years of promises, all of them broken': Southeast Minnesotans worry over state water pollution response, although that same article notes:

Wotzka owns about 10 acres in Weaver in Wabasha County, a mile or so from the Mississippi River. He and his wife grow crops on about a half-acre and keep a fruit orchard on another 7 acres. After eliminating the use of commercial fertilizer, Wotzka said, their water nitrate levels fell from 6 or 7 milligrams per liter when they bought the property in 1997 to about 1 milligram per liter today.

He said Minnesota is too quick to blame nitrate issues on old wells built before federal pollution regulations were enacted. Instead, Wotzka said, the state must focus more on addressing water sources.

"If we start cleaning up the aquifers through changing the land-use practices, the first water that's going to be impacted is the shallowest water and that's where the old wells are," he said. "We don't have an old well problem; we have a contaminated aquifer problem."

And then there’s the issue of Congress’ repeated failure to unequivocally define “waters of the United States”: 

On September 8, 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps) published a revised definition of “waters of the United States” or WOTUS. 88 FR 61964. To conform with the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Sackett v. EPA, 143 S. Ct. 1322 (2023) ruling, the agencies made various changes including the removal of the “significant nexus” standard and amending the definition of “adjacent.” The new rule went into effect September 8, 2023. Because the revision was required to make the Rule comply with the Sackett decision, no notice and opportunity for public comment was necessary.

If we persist in relying on laws to govern increasing amounts of the behavior of real and legal persons, we need to increase the rate at which full legal coverage of all systems' components is rapidly attained or significantly slow socio-economic and technical change.

Or, we could start electing more competent, less obnoxious legislators and judges, but that would require a more competent, less obnoxious electorate, but that would require significant improvements in our education system and less book burning and home schooling and parents who want kids to grow up “just like them.”

Meanwhile, greenhouse gases keep increasing. Weather becomes more volatile. The 6th extinction continues. The 1% and their corporations keep most of us at each other’s throats while we blame each other and the “gummint” for our problems. Is this really the best we can do?

Failures in Infinitives

By Bernadette Mayer

why am i doing this? Failure

to keep my work in order so as

to be able to find things

to paint the house

to earn enough money to live on

to reorganize the house so as

to be able to paint the house &

to be able to find things and

earn enough money so as

to be able to put books together

to publish works and books

to have time

to answer mail & phone calls

to wash the windows

to make the kitchen better to work in

to have the money to buy a simple radio

to listen to while working in the kitchen

to know enough to do grownups work in the world

to transcend my attitude

to an enforced poverty

to be able to expect my checks

to arrive on time in the mail

to not always expect that they will not

to forget my mother's attitudes on humility or

to continue

to assume them without suffering

to forget how my mother taunted my father

about money, my sister about i cant say it

failure to forget mother and father enough

to be older, to forget them

to forget my obsessive uncle

to remember them some other way

to remember their bigotry accurately

to cease to dream about lions which always is

to dream about them, I put my hand in the lion's mouth

to assuage its anger, this is not a failure

to notice that's how they were; failure

to repot the plants

to be neat

to create & maintain clear surfaces

to let a couch or a chair be a place for sitting down

and not a table

to let a table be a place for eating & not a desk

to listen to more popular music

to learn the lyrics

to not need money so as

to be able to write all the time

to not have to pay rent, con ed or telephone bills

to forget parents' and uncle's early deaths so as

to be free of expecting care; failure

to love objects

to find them valuable in any way; failure

to preserve objects

to buy them and

to now let them fall by the wayside; failure

to think of poems as objects

to think of the body as an object; failure

to believe; failure

to know nothing; failure

to know everything; failure

to remember how to spell failure; failure

to believe the dictionary & that there is anything

to teach; failure

to teach properly; failure

to believe in teaching

to just think that everybody knows everything

which is not my failure; I know everyone does; failure

to see not everyone believes this knowing and

to think we cannot last till the success of knowing

to wash all the dishes only takes ten minutes

to write a thousand poems in an hour

to do an epic, open the unwashed window

to let in you know who and

to spirit thoughts and poems away from concerns

to just let us know, we will

to paint your ceilings & walls for free

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Why the kids aren’t alright

 From today’s US edition of The Guardian:

• Extreme heat summit to urge leaders to act on threat from rising temperatures


• ‘Everybody has a breaking point’: how the climate crisis affects our brains


• Sinking US cities increase risk of flooding from rising sea levels


• ‘Tone-deaf’ fossil gas growth in Europe is speeding climate crisis, say activists

COMBINED WITH

• Surge of new US-led oil and gas activity threatens to wreck Paris climate goals

'NUFF  SAID [almost]

Let Them Not Say

Jane Hirshfield
1953 – 

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

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

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

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

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

Let them say, as they must say something: 

A kerosene beauty.
It burned.

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

—2014

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Mine, all mine (almost)!

Last evening, for the first time in a long while, I saw a pair of cardinals visit the feeder on the back deck. After days of clouds and flocks of dark-eyed juncos, the splash of bright color was heart-warming. Maybe it’s worth encouraging freeloading squirrels by hanging the kind of feeder preferred by cardinals (and squirrels).

cardinal pair on snowy rail

Photo by J. Harrington

Despite below freezing temperatures today, there’s enough warmth in the sun to begin melting snow, especially where there’s a dark color (e..g., tree trunks and plowed roads) to absorb and concentrate that warmth. I’m hoping most of the ground will again be bare by Easter.

We now come to a sudden transition from observations about weather to touch on an economic and environment issue that is significant here in Minnesota's Congressional District 8: mining, in particular, iron mining. There are those who have asserted that Minnesota’s mining rules and regulations are among “the most stringent in the world,” or words to that effect. And yet, to the best of my knowledge, neither Minnesota nor the mining companies that operate here, are active participants in the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA), which has recently announced a webinar to review the results of audits of two iron mines in Africa. {The obvious question that occurs to me is, if Minnesota’s requirements are among the best, how would an IRMA audit of a Minnesota mine compare to those done in Africa?) Here’s an extract from an email I received yesterday:

First IRMA Audits of African Iron Ore Mines Released

Anglo American subsidiary Kumba Iron Ore's Kolomela, Sishen both achieve IRMA 75

Webinar to discuss the audits on 4 April

Today, March 27th, IRMA released independent audits of Kumba Iron Ore's Kolomela and Sishen (IRMA 75) iron ore mines in South Africa.  

IRMA 75 means the audit firm ERM-CVS verified that the operations met all critical requirements of the IRMA Standard, as well as at least 75% of the Standard’s criteria in each of the four areas: social responsibility, environmental responsibility, business integrity, and planning for positive legacies.

To learn more, join us April 4th for a webinar about the meaning of the audit results, and how the increased transparency an IRMA audit provides can be used by stakeholders to drive more responsible mining:

Many of Minnesota’s mining proponents are quick to point out that elsewhere in the world, mining doesn’t have to meet Minnesota’s standards. There’s often an uneasy silence about the recent court decisions about how the states’s regulatory agencies have enforced those standards (or not). Wouldn’t it make sense to require all mining operations in the state to participate in IRMA so we would be able to compare not just standards, but in the ground and in the community results?

Locally, MCEA is beginning to broach such questions with a special event on Monday, April 1, on

Global Mining Justice: Water, Climate, and Community Advocacy from Honduras to Minnesota

I hope you'll look into either or both of these events. As Carl Sandburg reminds us, mining is important.

IRON

By Carl Sandburg

GUNS,
Long, steel guns,
Pointed from the war ships
In the name of the war god.
Straight, shining, polished guns,
Clambered over with jackies in white blouses,
Glory of tan faces, tousled hair, white teeth,
Laughing lithe jackies in white blouses,
Sitting on the guns singing war songs, war chanties.

Shovels,
Broad, iron shovels,
Scooping out oblong vaults,
Loosening turf and leveling sod.

     I ask you
     To witness--
     The shovel is brother to the gun.

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Prevention beats cleanup

Early this morning, or very late last night, the clouds and the bare, clustered tree branches provided a faint, ghostly portrait of the moon approaching full. According to this year’s Minnesota WeatherGuide Calendar, come Saturday the 24th, the full moon we’ll experience is an Ojibwe Sucker Fish Moon. also known as the Popping Trees Moon by the Lakota.

geese and swans on open water, late Feb. 2017

Photo by J. Harrington

On our way to deliver our "tax organizer, “ plus attachments, to our tax preparer, we glimpsed a pair of swans close to County Road 36 on the Sunrise River pools of Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area. The fact that there were no other waterfowl to be seen makes me think the ones we saw are overwintering somewhere nearby but also heightened my anticipation of spring migration.

Also this morning, we received a notice from the good folks at Water Legacy that comments are being solicited on Minnesota Pollution Control Agency PFAS Rulemaking. An extract from the notice notes:

Why Comment on PFAS Rulemaking?

Last year, the Minnesota Legislature passed a statute (Minn. Stat. § 116.943) that would prohibit PFAS in many types of products unless their use in those products was “currently unavoidable.” This was an important positive step to keep PFAS out of surface water and groundwater.

Now the MPCA is developing rules that will determine how the PFAS statute will be interpreted. The details will determine if Minnesota waters and human health are protected.

PFAS “forever chemicals” have a wide range of serious health consequences including cancers, liver damage, increased cholesterol and obesity, reduced immune response to fight infection, dangerous high blood pressure in pregnancy, reduced infant birth weight, and developmental delays in children

The MPCA will receive many comments from industries seeking less transparency and more exclusions to allow continued use of PFAS. Your comments will push back on the pressure from special interests.

You might want to read the whole thing and consider commenting. Something I’ve not seen mentioned yet, but is in an article in The Guardian today, is that 

Among the main sources of food contamination are tainted water, greaseproof food wrappers, some plastics, pesticides, or farms where PFAS-tainted sewage sludge is spread as fertilizer.

That’s all for now. Enjoy the thaw. 

[UPDATE: At least 60% of US population may face ‘forever chemicals’ in tap water, tests suggest]

The Commodity Sings to its Beloved

By Julien Poirier

I am here

for a very particular reason:

to buy a 6-pack of beer

and berries out of season

 

 

                    all for you, i did it all for you

 

 

I noticed an oil spill

on my drive past the bay,

emergency broadcast on the radio

—What do you have to say?

 

 

                    all for you, i did it all for you

 

 

You chopped down the plant

that used to grow my pants,

resurrected it in Indonesia

like a blow-up doll with amnesia

 

 

                    all for you, i did it all for you

 

 

Poor people once lived here

but you flooded the valley

with psilocybin carcinogens,

and forced the kids into shooting galleries

 

 

                    all for you, i did it all for you

 

 

You gave poor people jobs

then you forced them to act

like robots lining up

for a real live heart attack,

made them take apart their futures

then you sold the parts back,

repurposed the sutures

to close a robocaller’s rap

 

 

                    all for you, i did it all for you

 

 

You got children in slums

to make things that break,

your unspoken credo—

“If it lasts, it’s fake.”

 

 

But you were there first

when we were dying of thirst,

with a pint of chilled water

each, for me, my wife and two daughters,

 

 

and even a kewpie doll

and a tiny stuffed puppy

—for my wife some paper slippers,

for me, a stuffed yuppie

 

 

—You saw every decision

that I would make first,

and you did get there first

when we were dying of thirst

 

 

                    every decision

                    i make is part yours,

                    every step i take,

                    i take on your floor

 

 

You mangled my fingers,

polluted my streams,

screamed in my face,

closed deals over my dreams

 

                     all for you, i did it all for you

 

(and now it fades out,

 

                    “The Commodity Sings to its Beloved” song. 

They’ll say it was a good idea

done wrong

—“They should have got a bigger budget,

done it as a singalong.”) 

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A precautionary story

The only newspaper I read regularly these days is The Guardian’s US edition. Sometime in the past day or two, I’ve noticed a sudden increase in stories raising or reflecting concerns about technology and its effects on humanity. Here’s some examples:

• ‘There are no serious safeguards’: can 23andMe be trusted with our DNA?


• ‘Humanity’s remaining timeline? It looks more like five years than 50’: meet the neo-luddites warning of an AI apocalypse


• ‘I write all my poems with a quill by candlelight’: John Cooper Clarke on the joy of life without tech

I’m wondering if this is a brief editorial excursion or if it may become a longer-running feature. You’re probably not surprised to learn I hope the latter. It’s my observation that we are no more responsible with the development and application of technology than we are with our herbicides, pesticides, and politics. Once upon a time there was a policy to the effect that “the polluter pays.” Take a look at water quality in “farm country” and see how well we’ve followed that policy. More? How many abandoned mines are polluting water quality?

“The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today
for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.” ― Gaylord Nelson

Photo by J. Harrington

Over the past five to ten years, we’ve been notified a couple of times that our personal data has been hacked. Each time the weak link was one of our health service providers. You know, the folks that try to keep us safe by reminding us to wash our hands frequently don’t seem able to protect their information systems and our data from infectious intrusions.

Are you familiar with the precautionary principle? Have you ever considered how much better off we’d be if it had been applied more rigorously to information technology, or mining, or the fossil fuel industry? Isn’t it past time we ceased to enrich a few at the expense of the health and sanity of most of the rest of US?

The Story of Everything

Kealoha 

dad?
yes, my love
where do we come from?

and we come from all of this
this is a story about a time
a time of strange times
what happened during the Big Bang?
what came after our Sun and planets were created?
throughout the first nano nano nano milli centi second of this Universe
that’s when this story takes shape
in the valley of our birth place
and we cried out to the Universe that we were here
that we were here
and we were many
so many
trillions upon trillions upon trillions
so countless and beautiful

every atom of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorous that makes up our bodies was forged in stars
and as the world continued to change
we evolved our ways
we honor the ancestors and the elders
we pass on the knowledge from generation to generation

maybe we go cyborg
incorporating technology into our skin, bones, and brains
if we all had biological Bluetooth, USB, or WiFi, 
i could’ve just beamed this presentation to y’all
it’s hard work up here you know

there will be the pulling and pushing of emotions
there will be laughter, and tears, and everything in between

for all the racism and hatred that the color of our skin has produced through the history of
our humanity, and for all the conflict that exists even till this very day
it all comes down to vitamin D

if we held hands for a moment and listened
we could become the power of love
the power of unity
and the power of understanding

we gathered together as a community in peace
we showed the universe how great we could all be
if we just sat and listened to the music

if you happen to be down to help create a global self-sustaining reality,
imagine the impact we could have
because the moment we perfect this
the moment we get this
we all win
together
game on
because energy is the currency of the universe

tonight, I want you to think about your life
and go out there and live it

Hānau ka iʻa hānau ka Naiʻa i ke kai lā holo

this is our chance to write our own history
do we destroy ourselves?
or do we take care of ourselves
and give our species the best chance of making it to the future unscathed?

the time to listen to each other has just begun

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Should these times be more taxing?

It seems as though, once upon a time or so, I read that, if a society wants less of something, they should tax it. If there’s any truth to such guidance, I’m afraid I don’t understand why we haven’t decided to tax red meat. There was an article the other day that claims Eating red meat twice a week may increase type 2 diabetes risk, study finds. That comes on top of long standing knowledge that Livestock emissions – from manure and gastroenteric releases – account for roughly 32 per cent of human-caused methane emissions. None of which begins to address the surface and groundwater pollution from confined animal feedlot operations (CAFOs). Perhaps that old guidance was off target. After all, in the midst of increasing effects of climate breakdown, we continue to subsidize the fossil fuel industry.

Is there a beef with bison?

Photo by J. Harrington

But, let’s assume the idea of taxing what we want less of is true. That means we could, and should, impose more and more progressive taxes on:

• fossil fuels
• red meats
• pharmaceutical price gouging
• executive pay that exceeds some reasonable ratio to regular employee income
• disinformation distributors
• who or what else?

We raised a question about the country’s priorities the other day, when President Biden announced a request for $106bn aid to Congress for Israel, Ukraine and Gaza at the same time that Home health access for Minnesota seniors at risk as Medicare keeps cutting.

As long as I'm at it, what about the idea of taxing Artificial Intelligence that does anything except making current software bug-free, interoperable and unhackable. I’m tired of the amount of time I have to spend dealing with workarounds and/or responses to some programmers screwup.

All of which means we need to stop electing Republicans, who have clearly demonstrated that, even when they win by cheating, they’re incapable of governing or even carrying their own weight.

Ox Cart Man

Donald Hall     1928 – 2018

In October of the year,
he counts potatoes dug from the brown field,
counting the seed, counting
the cellar's portion out,
and bags the rest on the cart's floor.

He packs wool sheared in April, honey
in combs, linen, leather
tanned from deerhide,
and vinegar in a barrel
hoped by hand at the forge's fire.

He walks by his ox's head, ten days
to Portsmouth Market, and sells potatoes,
and the bag that carried potatoes,
flaxseed, birch brooms, maple sugar, goose
feathers, yarn.

When the cart is empty he sells the cart.
When the cart is sold he sells the ox,
harness and yoke, and walks
home, his pockets heavy
with the year's coin for salt and taxes,

and at home by fire's light in November cold
stitches new harness
for next year's ox in the barn,
and carves the yoke, and saws planks
building the cart again.

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Food: sovereignty?

Early this morning, but after the dogs’ walk, we had thunder and lightning that, over an hour or two, delivered about a quarter inch of much needed rain. Many trees are showing early color with greens turning into yellows. Lower leaves on a maple sapling in the back yard are turning red, but there’s no red on the throats of the hummingbirds we’ve seen the past few days. Only gray throats around the feeders is a sign the male ruby-throated birds have headed south. Females and youngsters will follow in a few weeks.

backyard: wild turkeys

Photo by J. Harrington

Much of our engagement with our place is either entertainment like watching birds at the feeders or wildlife crossing the yard, or chores like mowing the grass or trapping pocket gophers so their mounds don’t wreck the mower. When we first moved here, we tried planting a vegetable garden. Horseflies, deer flies, sandy soil and similar detractions deterred us from continuing that “hobby.” Our dependence on ecosystem services is indirect, tenuous, or both. Yes we need fresh air to breathe and clean water to drink. We have little, if any, control over significant destruction of forests in the Amazon or the North Woods. We have actively helped oppose hard rock mining in Minnesota, but that’s as much on principle as based on a direct relationship with the resources that would be affected. We don’t eat much wild rice nor vacation “up North” all that often.

On the other hand, we support local and regional food systems as much as we can. That also contributes to the local economy and helps protect local water quality. But, all in all, our dependence on “nature” while  as pervasive as it was for those who lived here prior to colonization is nowhere near as obvious. I’m rambling about this because I can’t figure out how we get substantially more people to understand and appreciate that we can’t afford to destroy our water supplies so that we can eat, harvest timber or mine metals. I’d happily rely on cast iron fry pans and griddles if we could get rid of PFAS. What I haven’t yet found is a rigorous and reliable way to organize my day to day life so that I can tread lightly. The building industry organized itself into the Green Building Council which brought about standardized criteria in the form of LEED ratings. Can someone work up a comparable set of LIFE ratings? Would enough folks bother to apply such criteria if they existed? Do we need an update to our Original Instructions? And how do we consumers get honest ESG ratings on the producers of our products? There’s lots of advice available, almost all too general or abstract to be applied by ordinary folks who have overly complicated lives to live.

Ledger

Jane Hirshfield
1953 – 

Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin is 3,592 measures.
A voice kept far from feeling is heard as measured.
What’s wanted in desperate times are desperate measures.
Pushkin’s unfinished Onegin: 5,446 lines.

No visible tears measure the pilot’s grief
as she Lidars the height of an island: five feet.
Fifty, its highest leaf.
She logs the years, the weathers, the tree has left.

A million fired-clay bones—animal, human—
set down in a field as protest
measure 400 yards long, 60 yards wide, weigh 112 tons.
The length and weight and silence of the bereft.

Bees do not question the sweetness of what sways beneath them.
One measure of distance is meters. Another is li.
Ten thousand li can be translated: “far.” 
For the exiled, home can be translated “then,” translated “scar.”

One liter
of Polish vodka holds twelve pounds of potatoes.
What we care about most, we call beyond measure.
What matters most, we say counts. Height now is treasure.

On this scale of one to ten, where is eleven?
Ask all you wish, no twenty-fifth hour will be given.
Measuring mounts—like some Western bar’s mounted elk head—
our cataloged vanishing unfinished heaven.

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Can capitalism evolve?

I’m not sure where this is going today. I’ve been thinking(?) about bioregionalism, habitats, ecosystems and climate change. Here’s a quote from a web site about bioregions:

Bioregions have two distinct elements: 

● SCIENTIFIC: defined by the physical landscape – geology, topology, hydrology, plate tectonics, geography, erosion, rainfall, soil type and variation – and the biological beings and ecosystems living with them, each distinct, each suited and evolved slightly differently. In this, we must ask – how is nature different in different areas, what natural diversity make these regions so different? and how does that impact what we should do?

● CULTURAL: the people and inhabitants living within the bioregion. The sum of our personal actions, and interpersonal relationships that make each area distinct – it is the food we grow, what we eat, our sports, music – the clothes we wear, our shared identity, our economy, governments and politics. In this, we must ask – how does where we live affect these things? What are things we can each do, that taken together, will see the world shift in healthier ways, and improve the well being of our communities and bioregion?

Precipitation patterns are changing. Climate is changing. Except for landslides etc., topography should remain about the same. Biodiversity is declining. People are being forced to migrate. Global food supplies are threatened and being diminished. Many of these factors are creating feedback loops. Meanwhile, most business thinking remains focused on this quarter's profits. When (if?) we think about it, we may realize many of the factors in each of the "two distinct elements" are changing, often with an unanticipated rapidity.

What has this to do with capitalism? Has capitalism not coevolved with the enormous growth of the human population? Does capitalism not try to maximize “externalities?” Is the Earth, except for sunlight  and minor space-related things, not a closed system? Where are the externalities in a closed system?

The natural systems of earth reuse most waste. The  economic systems (primarily capitalism) of earth reuse almost nothing except excuses? Is the root problem becoming clearer? How much wealth will the last person on earth hold? What will it buy them?

Katherine Hayhoe, a world famous climate scientist, tells us that “Our future is still in our hands.” Humans created economics and capitalism. Humans can change both. If capitalism doesn’t coevolve with  humans, it may become a casualty of climate change and human survival.

The “Change” in Climate Change

By Jacob Shores-Argüello

My cousin WhatsApps me from Costa Rica, fits the family

into the rectangle of video as they wave from the balcony.

He turns the phone, shows me a swirl of birds in the hurting sky.

But they are not birds. They are neighbor Tinoco’s roof tiles

flying in a storm’s rotary energy. My family is calling because

I’m in Oklahoma, which, to them, is synonym for tornado.

Te amo, I say as my cousin lowers the phone for our grandmother

to hear. She’s scared because she’s lived in the town for 80 years

and can’t recognize all these new skies. Because a year before,

a hurricane reaved its way across this country for the first time

in recorded history. Tornado or torbellino or something else,

I ask her about the valley’s strange wind. And she laughs, says

that she was calling to ask me the same thing. I don’t know why

I keep forgetting the change in climate change. My grandmother

sighs as the sky darkens to the color of rum. Why I still think

that we’ll have names for all the things that will come.

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Some errors of our era

We finally got lots of rain last night. The telltale puddle in the driveway was close to full this morning. Yesterday brought several severe storms to our north with winds and hail bringing down lots of leaves and some trees. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general has announced that “the era of global boiling has arrived.” Nevertheless the Biden administration has chosen to not (yet?) declare a climate emergency. Neither have I read that there are any pre-established triggers or criteria for such a declaration.

Meanwhile, closer to home, yet another aquifer puncture has been discovered along Enbridge's Line 3. I’ve not yet learned how all the fines in the world will actually restore the environment, sort of similar to how long it’s estimated to take for earth’s climate to begin to return to “normal” if we ever minimize greenhouse gas discharges. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is being sued to keep it from requiring approved manure management plans for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations [CAFOs]. In Minnesota, I wonder if there’s any state agency that does as much to support metals recycling as the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources does to support metals mining.

recycling before extraction

Photo by J. Harrington

Back when Manifest Destiny was aspirational, the colonizing powers gave away land to get the country “developed.” In 1972, the Clean Water Act Amendments updated and expanded the “Rivers and Harbors Act (1899), the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (1948), the Water Quality Act (1965), and the Refuse Act (1970)” Folks are still debating the interpretation and coverage of that legislation. There has been no comparable update to the Mining Act of 1872. We have long “settled” and colonized the country from coast to coast. We no longer need to promote extractive industries as an economic development strategy. Protecting and restoring clean air, water, food sovereignty and, probably, manufacturing are more critical priorities if we wish to have a survivable future, let alone a sustainable one.

There’s an old saying in the planning profession: “More of the same never solved a problem.” The same is true of law and politics. We can and must do better and stop the “same old, same old” solutions.

Value Added

By Stephen Sandy

No one knew what the stones like squatting frogs

signified. There they were, fuming in rows, out

of the ground; every critic had his explanation

or hers. But—we had to remember—they

 

came to nothing, every one; those large stones

out of the earth served the systems

of those who considered them, as explaining

something about the past it was important

 

for the explainer to explain. And yet

no one had any idea truly; there was no

basis in fact for any view of them, and

they remained like their origins—or like

 

smiling Olmec babies, sweet but ominous figures

come from the earth to reproach us, almost

cheerfully, for our ignorance—a mystery, just

as the probe of our feelings came up with nothing.

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Late June #phenology

Common milkweed is beginning to bloom. Black-eyed Susans have started to flower. Butterfly weed has erupted across one local hillside field. June is about to bust into July, so we could claim June is busting out all over, but we won’t.

meadow with black-eyed Susans

Photo by J. Harrington

It looks as though, at least temporarily, the smoke / PM 2.5 alerts have subsided. We may actually get to spend time outside and enjoy it if the mosquitos and deer flies aren’t too bad. Living in Minnesota and getting the equivalent of cabin fever [shack nasties] during the Summer is the pits.

We’ve lost about 3 minutes of daylight since the solstice. Have you noticed the difference? We’ll keep losing until we get to Winter Solstice, when the days will then begin to grow longer. Meanwhile, I’ve not really been able to get into a routine or a rhythm all year. Before that, COVID was responsible for many disruptions. Now, is it simply a post-pandemic adjustment period, plus the increasing effects of climate breakdown, or is something else at work? I don’t want to turn into a mindless automaton, but constantly adjusting to whatever’s next has become wearing. Plus, thanks mostly to the weather and climate-related disruptions, we’ve not yet wet a line this summer.

Back in the old days, if we threw out something that had gotten broken, or worn out, or used up, my mother and/or grandmother used to say “May all bad luck go with it.” June ends tomorrow. May all bad luck go with it.

June Sunset 

Sarojini Naidu
1879 – 1949

Here shall my heart find its haven of calm, 
By rush-fringed rivers and rain-fed streams 
That glimmer thro’ meadows of lily and palm. 
Here shall my soul find its true repose 
Under a sunset sky of dreams 
Diaphanous, amber and rose. 
The air is aglow with the glint and whirl 
Of swift wild wings in their homeward flight, 
Sapphire, emerald, topaz, and pearl. 
Afloat in the evening light. 

A brown quail cries from the tamarisk bushes, 
A bulbul calls from the cassia-plume, 
And thro’ the wet earth the gentian pushes 
Her spikes of silvery bloom. 
Where’er the foot of the bright shower passes 
Fragrant and fresh delights unfold; 
The wild fawns feed on the scented grasses, 
Wild bees on the cactus-gold. 

An ox-cart stumbles upon the rocks, 
And a wistful music pursues the breeze 
From a shepherd’s pipe as he gathers his flocks 
Under the pipal-trees. 
And a young Banjara driving her cattle 
Lifts up her voice as she glitters by 
In an ancient ballad of love and battle 
Set to the beat of a mystic tune, 
And the faint stars gleam in the eastern sky 
To herald a rising moon. 

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Planning will never replace dumb luck

Our Air Quality Alert is still with us. I believe it’s the same one that was initially supposed to end last night about 7 pm. Meanwhile, cumulous clouds pile up every afternoon, do their best to become storm clouds, fail, or succeed somewhere nearby, and leave us muttering about cloudy skies and continuing drought. I think we’re close to three inches below normal precipitation so far this month. Maybe this afternoon, or tonight, or tomorrow, or next week sometime, we’ll finally get some rain? [For the record, the preceding paragraph is somewhere between an observation and a complaint, an observelaint?]

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now... J. Mitchell

Photo by J. Harrington

Due to the air quality (or lack thereof), I’ve been pretty much staying inside this morning and reading about reciprocity and gifts in traditional ecological knowledge, at the moment in the form of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s essay on Mishkos Kenomagwen, the Lessons of Grass, in which she tells a version of the story of the Women Who Fell from the Sky. That caused me to remember that Joy Harjo has a volume by that title, so I went to see if I have a copy. The answer is not yet. As I was looking online to refresh my memory on what the cover looks like, I also discovered Harjo has a recently published illustrated volume of her poem Remember. The latter looks as though it would almost perfectly complement the book our granddaughter gave me for Father’s Day this year [see this June 19 posting]. Since I also received a gift card at one of my favorite book stores on Father’s Day, I intend to reciprocate by using it to get a copy of both Remember and Woman to share with that same granddaughter. See how sometimes it just all comes together?

I think we may have also begun a positive feedback loop with the assembly of the two bookshelves our son gave me for Father’s Day. Beginning to turn stacks of books into semi-organized collections feels rewarding enough that we’ll do some more of it the next time we get a rainy day that’s too stormy and full of lightening to stand in a river waving a graphite stick. We may well salvage most of this summer if we keep this going with the flow attitude.

Remember

Joy Harjo     1951 – 

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

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