Abundance and Reciprocity

Summer's midpoint is about a month away, on August 7, unless, like many of the Celts, we recognize only two seasons, in which case Summer solstice was also midsummer, half way between the two equinoxes. Since Minnesota is (in)famous for its two seasons of either winter or road work, I'm not sure where that leaves us. Each, in its own way, is exceptionally irritating and this road work season's trials and tribulations are compounded by roads being buckled by well above (historic) normal temperatures. At least we've not (yet) reached the level of flash flooding Texas is experiencing these days.

butterfly weed in bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

Locally, butterfly weed has started to bloom. Roadsides are also brightened by black-eyed Susans and what I think is bird's-foot trefoil. Many Eastern-tailed blue butterflies have been flitting around the driveway. Yard work is getting done in bits and pieces and short bursts in between downpours and unworkable levels of heat and humidity. Storms keep bringing down more branches, and an occasional tree, which have to get cleaned up before the mowing can occur. 

I suspect lots of folks in Gaza and Ukraine would be only too happy to trade problems with me, even if I add in a raccoon that twice yesterday tried to feed from the bird feeder and mention that it looks like deer, rabbits, or somethings, have managed to do in the serviceberry bushes I planted a couple of weeks ago. Maybe they'll recover. We'll wait and see (with extremely lowered expectations).

One of the bigger concerns I have these days is that we're living in a time of sliding baselines in environmental, societal and political sectors. I'm too often hearing in my head the line from Me and Bobby McGee "freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose." Is a freedom with nothing left to lose what we really want as a country? Or, do we need to include responsibility to balance our freedom? Have you read Robin Wall Kimmerer's The Serviceberry? It offers a helpful and healthy alternative to our current situation.

Solstice

by Jane Hirshfield

The Earth today tilts one way, then another.

And yes, though all things change,
this night again will watch its fireflies,
then go in to a bed with sheets,
to lights, a beloved.

To running water cold and hot.

Take nothing for granted,
you who were also opulent, a stung cosmos.

Birds sang, frogs sang, their sufficient unto.
The late-night rain-bringing thunder.

And if days grew ordinarily shorter,
the dark’s mirror lengthened,

and one’s gain was not the other lessened.

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

It’s “Brave New World” time

The world that is being created around us is less and less one that I want to support or participate in. I won’t be presumptuous enough to claim I understand how the indigenous folks felt when the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, but I can definitely relate to how humans felt after they encountered the Borgs. “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.” Seems to reflect the perspective of our new AI wannabe overlords. 

What used to be Twitter [now “X”] is reported to be removing the ability to block accounts. That, plus an insistence that I provide a phone number to authenticate my account were the last two straws. If you’re interested, I can now be found at https://mstdn.party/@JohnHthePoet. 

I had been planning on acquiring a new Apple laptop. The odds keep increasing that I may bite the bullet and try a Linux version instead. The family gave me a new iPhone for my birthday, to work with my new hearing aids. I’m finding the “new and improved” iOS software to be more intrusive than I prefer. I’ve always believed that technology makes a good servant but a poor master. The AI Borgmeisters don’t see it that way, as long as they think they’re the masters.

books, and books, of poetry

Photo by J. Harrington

Fortunately, as Paul Simon once wrote in I Am a Rock:

I have my books

And my poetry to protect me

Much of the poetry that protects me these days was written by Joy Harjo. Many of the books were written by Ursula K. Le Guin. I recently started reading, for the first time, Always Coming Home. I’m looking forward to comparing her style in that novel with that of Debra Magpie Earling in her The Lost Journals of Sacajewea.

I lived a rich, full, less stressful life before there was an internet and hundreds (thousands?) of companies trying to turn me into a product as they competed for my attention in this new economy. I think it’s past time to return to a world that has neither the time, interest, or need for a metaverse. Just the verse part will suit me fine.

X Minus X

By Kenneth Fearing

Even when your friend, the radio, is still; even when her dream, the magazine, is finished; even when his life, the ticker, is silent; even when their destiny, the boulevard, is bare;

And after that paradise, the dance-hall, is closed; after that theater, the clinic, is dark,

Still there will be your desire, and hers, and his hopes and theirs,

Your laughter, their laughter,

Your curse and his curse, her reward and their reward, their dismay and his dismay and her dismay and yours—

Even when your enemy, the collector, is dead; even when your counsellor, the salesman, is sleeping; even when your sweetheart, the movie queen, has spoken; even when your friend, the magnate, is gone.

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

Restoring the middle class to what?

We are currently in the Red Zone of an Air Quality Alert. The Alert continues through 6 am Friday. This, and conditions like it, make me fuss and fret and fume about the kind of world my almost three year old granddaughter will inherit. Meanwhile, much of mainstream media and social media is agog over the federal indictment of a former president who should never have been nominated, let alone elected.

Current air quality conditions 6/14/23 ~4:30 pm

Locally, we’re back in a moderate drought. I’m glad I’m not a local farmer with corn in the field. Of course, if much of that corn is being raised as a feedstock for biofuels or animal feed, any sympathy I have is sorely tested. There’s a new farm bill being drafted. Any bets on whether it will have air or water quality mandates as prerequisites for any kind of federal subsidies?

President Biden and the Democrats are touting their successes at restoring the middle class and growing the economy. Have they done anything to educate the American public about the fact that we’re living on borrowed time (see preceding two paragraphs)? If politics is always a short term game won by pandering to US voters, where and when does a long game of preserving and restoring our home planet come into play? As those older and wiser than I have noted, “There are no jobs on a dead planet!” Meanwhile, The Guardian informs US that Shell drops target to cut oil production as CEO aims for higher profits.

I would suggest those of US with descendants, or who hope to have some, consider a flat out revolution that results in the only corporate entities allowed to exist have to be:

• certified B corps  
• fair trade certified
• compatible and consistent with Patagonia’s Supply Chain Environmental Responsibility Program
• if an extractive industry, a member of an operating in accord with the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance standards and audits.

What would you add to this list? The pieces of the puzzle of creating a sustainable world are here, we need to make sure those we elect and buy from support a thriving future for US. We’re not there yet, in part because we waste way too much time on trivia.

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

Never too old to learn to be grateful

 N. Scott Momaday has a new book that will be released or published on Tuesday, May 3: Dream Drawings, Configurations of a Timeless Kind. It’s on order and should be delivered in about a week. That will give me a decent opportunity to get several other recently acquired books read before the pile grows much higher. Part of my “problem” is that I keep rereading books I’ve already read as new material reminds me of certain passages or themes. There may not be a grand synthesis of knowledge and wisdom, but that’s not likely to keep me from trying to conjure one. It all goes back to learning that Joni Mitchell was accurate and truthful when she wrote:

We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

much of May, Earth showers us with beauty

Photo by J. Harrington

Even if we’re not living in the original garden of Eden, during much of May Earth showers the North Country with many kinds of beauty. Too often, I’ve found myself taking it for granted. That lack of gratitude was disrupted the first time I read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. That’s also when I learned that my basic understanding of reciprocity, which I took to mean the biblical “an eye for an eye” was wrong. Gratitude, properly understood, is more like the golden rule. In fact, to welcome May properly, and help celebrate Beltane, I want to quote extensively from a Kimmerer essay on reciprocity.

Reciprocity—returning the gift—is not just good manners; it is how the biophysical world works. Balance in ecological systems arises from negative feedback loops, from cycles of giving and taking. Reciprocity among parts of the living Earth produces equilibrium, in which life as we know it can flourish. When the gift is in motion, it can last forever. Positive feedback loops, in which interactions spur one another away from balance, produce radical change, often to a point of no return.

How can we reciprocate the gifts of the Earth?

1. We must recognize ourselves as only one member of the great democracy of species and understand that we, like every other successful organism, must play by the rules that govern ecosystem function. The laws of thermodynamics have not been suspended on our behalf. Unlimited growth is not possible. In a finite world, we cannot relentlessly take without replenishment.
2. Long before the descent of humans, a solar economy of plants created a living world from inanimate materials, constantly regenerating life through networks of reciprocity. Industrial economies are hell-bent on reversing that process, converting the gloriously animate to cold dead products with stunning efficiency. Our paths on the Earth are shaped by what we love the most. We participate in economies that appear to love profits for a few members of one species more than a good green world for all. We have a choice to invest our love otherwise. We must align our economies with ecological principles and human integrity.
3. Ecological restoration is an act of reciprocity and the Earth asks us to turn our gifts to healing the damage we have done. The Earth-shaping prowess that we thoughtlessly use to sicken the land can be used to heal it. It is not just the land that is broken, but our relationship with land. We can be medicine for the Earth, partners in renewal.
4. Reciprocity is rooted in the understanding that we are not alone, that the Earth is populated by non-human persons, wise and inventive beings deserving of our respect. We tolerate governance that grants legal personhood and free speech to corporations but denies that respect to voiceless salamanders and sugar maples. The Earth asks that we be their voice. Indigenous-led movements across the world are conferring legal personhood on rivers and mountains. The Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth has been presented to the United Nations. I think the Earth is asking for our vote.

Gratitude is our first, but not our only gift. We are storytellers, music makers, devisers of ingenious machines, healers, scientists, and lovers of an Earth who asks that we give our own unique gifts on behalf of life.

Let us live in a way that Earth will be grateful for us.

As I’ve become more involved in sustainable development and resilient living, or vice versa, I’ve come to believe more and more that many Native Americans have philosophies and world views that are more aligned with the values I now hold dear than I can find in neoliberal capitalism or anything like it. That brings us back to my looking forward to the arrival of Dream Drawings and sometime soon rereading Braiding Sweetgrass again.

Worms

By Carl Dennis

Aren't you glad at least that the earthworms  

Under the grass are ignorant, as they eat the earth,  

Of the good they confer on us, that their silence  

Isn't a silent reproof for our bad manners,  

Our never casting earthward a crumb of thanks  

For their keeping the soil from packing so tight  

That no root, however determined, could pierce it?  

Imagine if they suspected how much we owe them,  

How the weight of our debt would crush us  

Even if they enjoyed keeping the grass alive,  

The garden flowers and vegetables, the clover,  

And wanted nothing that we could give them,  

Not even the merest nod of acknowledgment.  

A debt to angels would be easy in comparison,  

Bright, weightless creatures of cloud, who serve  

An even brighter and lighter master.  

Lucky for us they don't know what they're doing,  

These puny anonymous creatures of dark and damp  

Who eat simply to live, with no more sense of mission  

Than nature feels in providing for our survival.  

Better save our gratitude for a friend  

Who gives us more than we can give in return  

And never hints she's waiting for reciprocity.  

"If I had nickel, I'd give it to you,"  

The lover says, who, having nothing available  

In the solid, indicative world, scrapes up  

A coin or two in the world of the subjunctive.  

"A nickel with a hole drilled in the top  

So you can fasten it to your bracelet, a charm  

To protect you against your enemies."  

For his sake, she'd wear it, not for her own,  

So he might believe she's safe as she saunters  

Home across the field at night, the moon above her,  

Below her the loam, compressed by the soles of her loafers,  

And the tunneling earthworms, tireless, silent,  

As they persist, oblivious, in their service.

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

To trust, or not to trust, that is the question

Each  of the four sections below has been taken from today’s US version of The Guardian. See if  you can connect the dots embedded in each section.

dots to be connected or trial balloons?

Photo by J. Harrington

How the US vaccine effort derailed and why we shouldn’t be surprised

“So much of the whole issue of social determinants of health and the US ‘health disadvantage’ is rooted in a lack of trust and a lack of trustworthiness in many parts of our society,” said Laudan Y Aron, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute’s health policy center.

Cop26 climate talks will not fulfil aims of Paris agreement, key players warn 

A US official told the Guardian countries must still aim as high as possible on emissions cuts: “We are going to try to achieve [the emissions cuts necessary]. No one in the administration wants to admit defeat before we have made the maximum effort. You should set an ambitious agenda and may have to, in the end, take baby steps but you should plan for long strides. We are taking long strides.”

Judge rules in Wisconsin teen’s favor after sheriff threatened jail over Covid post 

The teen, Amyiah Cohoon, and her parents sued the sheriff’s department after a deputy threatened to arrest family members if Amyiah did not delete an Instagram post which described her experiences when possibly infected by Covid-19. She was 16 at the time.

Food myths busted: dairy, salt and steak may be good for you after all 

Government-led lack of trust in the healthfulness of whole foods in their natural forms encouraged us to buy foods that have been physically and chemically modified, such as salt-reduced cheese and skimmed milk, supposedly to make them healthier for us.

No, we’re not going to explain how to connect the dots. Just trust us, the answers are obvious. Return tomorrow and we’ll share another clue in the form of a paragraph from Paul Hawken’s Regeneration.

 

On Teaching the Young

By Yvor Winters

The young are quick of speech.

Grown middle-aged, I teach

Corrosion and distrust,

Exacting what I must.

A poem is what stands

When imperceptive hands,

Feeling, have gone astray.

It is what one should say.

Few minds will come to this.

The poet’s only bliss

Is in cold certitude—

Laurel, archaic, rude.

 

On the reciprocity of gratitude

Today is the first full day of autumn 2021. I’m working hard at adjusting my attitude from being resentful of having autumn chores to do to one of gratitude for the wonderful weather and beautiful locale that can benefit from my efforts. This is part of a change that comes, not from practicing what I preach, but from practicing what I read. In this case, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s profound writings about reciprocity.

autumn beauty, a gift of the earth

Photo by J. Harrington

How can we reciprocate the gifts of the Earth?

1. We must recognize ourselves as only one member of the great democracy of species and understand that we, like every other successful organism, must play by the rules that govern ecosystem function. The laws of thermodynamics have not been suspended on our behalf. Unlimited growth is not possible. In a finite world, we cannot relentlessly take without replenishment. 
2. Long before the descent of humans, a solar economy of plants created a living world from inanimate materials, constantly regenerating life through networks of reciprocity. Industrial economies are hell-bent on reversing that process, converting the gloriously animate to cold dead products with stunning efficiency. Our paths on the Earth are shaped by what we love the most. We participate in economies that appear to love profits for a few members of one species more than a good green world for all. We have a choice to invest our love otherwise. We must align our economies with ecological principles and human integrity.
3. Ecological restoration is an act of reciprocity and the Earth asks us to turn our gifts to healing the damage we have done. The Earth-shaping prowess that we thoughtlessly use to sicken the land can be used to heal it. It is not just the land that is broken, but our relationship with land. We can be medicine for the Earth, partners in renewal.
4. Reciprocity is rooted in the understanding that we are not alone, that the Earth is populated by non-human persons, wise and inventive beings deserving of our respect. We tolerate governance that grants legal personhood and free speech to corporations but denies that respect to voiceless salamanders and sugar maples. The Earth asks that we be their voice. Indigenous-led movements across the world are conferring legal personhood on rivers and mountains. The Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth has been presented to the United Nations. I think the Earth is asking for our vote.

Gratitude is our first, but not our only gift. We are storytellers, music makers, devisers of ingenious machines, healers, scientists, and lovers of an Earth who asks that we give our own unique gifts on behalf of life.

 Let us live in a way that Earth will be grateful for us.

Earlier this morning I read some local suggestions on how to help prep wildlife-friendly fall gardens. After reading the first couple of sentences, I new it was written by someone with whom I have much in common.

There are two kinds of Minnesotans: people whose favorite season is autumn, and people who are wrong.

 As soon as I’ve finished posting this, I’ll go start the tractor and mow/mulch the back yard for the penultimate(?) time this year. Once more in mid to later October might do it. If so, I’ll be grateful.

Worms

By Carl Dennis

Aren't you glad at least that the earthworms  

Under the grass are ignorant, as they eat the earth,  

Of the good they confer on us, that their silence  

Isn't a silent reproof for our bad manners,  

Our never casting earthward a crumb of thanks  

For their keeping the soil from packing so tight  

That no root, however determined, could pierce it?  

Imagine if they suspected how much we owe them,  

How the weight of our debt would crush us  

Even if they enjoyed keeping the grass alive,  

The garden flowers and vegetables, the clover,  

And wanted nothing that we could give them,  

Not even the merest nod of acknowledgment.  

A debt to angels would be easy in comparison,  

Bright, weightless creatures of cloud, who serve  

An even brighter and lighter master.  

Lucky for us they don't know what they're doing,  

These puny anonymous creatures of dark and damp  

Who eat simply to live, with no more sense of mission  

Than nature feels in providing for our survival.  

Better save our gratitude for a friend  

Who gives us more than we can give in return  

And never hints she's waiting for reciprocity.  

"If I had nickel, I'd give it to you,"  

The lover says, who, having nothing available  

In the solid, indicative world, scrapes up  

A coin or two in the world of the subjunctive.  

"A nickel with a hole drilled in the top  

So you can fasten it to your bracelet, a charm  

To protect you against your enemies."  

For his sake, she'd wear it, not for her own,  

So he might believe she's safe as she saunters  

Home across the field at night, the moon above her,  

Below her the loam, compressed by the soles of her loafers,  

And the tunneling earthworms, tireless, silent,  

As they persist, oblivious, in their service.

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

This may go into your permanent record.

Welcome to autumn, meteorologically speaking. As far back as I can remember it’s been my favorite season, despite summer’s freedoms being replaced by a return to school. Even that brought the return of school friends barely, if at all, seen for months. Of course, all of this was decades before the complications of schooling during a pandemic like the COVID-19 virus compounded by wildfires, droughts and other concurrent indicators of our climate crises. I’m old enough that I was attending school before the polio vaccine was approved for use. I don’t remember if I received a shot of the Salk vaccine or the orally administered Sabin version, although the latter seems likely since I have vague recollections of summers full of concerns about becoming crippled or ending up in an iron lung. A face mask is far less limiting to my current freedom than experiencing intubation during an ICU stay.

preview of coming attractions: autumn leaves

Photo by J. Harrington

Despite my memory lapses, the reading I’ve been doing recently makes it clear that those opposing vaccination are but the latest incarnations of a tribe that’s been around most likely since the development  of vaccines. And long before that, remember the Salem witch trials? There’s a long and unfortunate history of people being irrational and unreasonable, and wrong, ever since there were people, or at least records about people.

I recently got a booster shot, not for COVID-19 but for tetanus. Why? Because my primary care physicial knows I occasionally play in the dirt and that’s where the bacteria live. Somehow I had acquired the misinformation that tetanus was caused by getting cut by a rusty piece of metal. I had also lost track of getting a prior tetanus booster a decade earlier.

I doubt if I could find a paper trail of which shots I’ve received or when I received them, although I do have a copy of my baptismal certificate, and there’s a bunch of other information scattered about in other  paper files around the house, but organized? complete? not so much. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a copy of my  permanent record? Have you seen  yours?

When the Virus Comes

Angelo Geter

When the virus comes,
Talking heads on television screens
will tell you to abandon ship.  
To drown yourself in a sea of isolation.  
Submerge homes in lysol wipes and hand sanitizer.
Engulf body in face mask and plastic glove
until it becomes second nature.

They will tell you to turn your kitchen into a panic room,
basement into fallout shelter.
Instruct you to grab everything you can,
while you still can.
They will say
the shelves at the stores are empty,
and not realize they are also talking about you.

They will preach from the gospel of quarantine.
Shout parables of
“Thou Shalt wash thine hands.”
“For God so loved the world
he socially distanced himself
from the very people he wanted to save.”
It will make you wonder how a hero
or a government
Can rescue someone they can’t even touch.

When the virus comes,
you will kiss your lover like it’s the last time,
because maybe it is.
You will dance on timelines
like decades are stuck on the balls of your feet.
Sing like a quartet is trapped in your throat.
Laugh like this is the last time you know what joy feels like,
because maybe it is.

And today that will be more than enough. 

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

The resilience of nature

This afternoon we enjoyed a very pleasant surprise. After spending time during  the past couple of weeks wondering why we hadn't seen any swamp milkweed flowers, we looked out toward the wet spot in the back yard and noticed a small splotch of pink. A closer look through binoculars confirmed that, indeed, at least one bloom of swamp milkweed had emerged. Several other plants, such as blazing star, do seem to have vanished and it's questionable if the bee balm we transplanted a week or so ago will make it to the end of summer, let alone through the winter.

swamp milkweed in bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

Last winter's weather and this summer's drought look as though they've done in the last apple tree planted on the top of the slope across the back yard. Later today, or tomorrow, air quality advisories permitting, we'll wander up that slope and take a closer look. We may even haul a bucket of water for the apple sapling and the bee balm. [The air quality for the  past few days has limited our out outdoor exposure, let alone exertion.] Having faith that watering might help is better than prematurely conducting a memorial service, at least it will us feel better.

The longer we live in the country, the more we're learning that working with nature is much more  complicated than creating a monoculture in which we try to make nature work for us. We have a number of dead oaks with equally dead branches. Some creatures, like woodpeckers, make use of the dead trees by excavating nesting sites. We'd just as soon get the trees cut down and be done with picking up dead branches and worrying if the  tree will break anything when it eventually collapses, but then the woodpeckers we enjoy seeing at the feeders and suet wouldn't live around here. So far, none of the brochures on "healthy woodlands" have been all that helpful. Leaving snags "unless they pose a danger to humans" presumes a branch won't fall while I'm wandering under it or that I'll hear the cracking sound in time to scurry or that I'll stay out from under any dead tree branches. When I'm wandering in our, or any, woods, I'm usually looking ahead or down, not up at dead branches. That's just one example of how we often end up quite uncertain about an appropriate course of action. But, it all takes on a whole different complexion if we consider the whole thing a learning process with a goal of discovering how to live with an alive woodlot and fields and wet spot, instead of solving any number of discrete problems. That calls for a substantial attitude adjustment on our part. Nature will just continue to do what she's evolved to do and adjust to the new climate we've imposed on her. Our resilience will come with an adjusted attitude.

The Well Rising

By William E. Stafford

The well rising without sound,

the spring on a hillside,

the plowshare brimming through deep ground

everywhere in the field—

The sharp swallows in their swerve

flaring and hesitating

hunting for the final curve

coming closer and closer—

The swallow heart from wingbeat to wingbeat

counseling decision, decision:

thunderous examples. I place my feet

with care in such a world.

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

Time to make DINOs really extinct

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

local Democratic caucus, 2018

Photo by J. Harrington

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

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

The Age of Dinosaurs

By James Scruton

There are, of course, theories 

about the wide-eyed, drop-jawed 

fascination children have for them, 

about how, before he's learned 

his own phone number or address, 

a five-year-old can carry 

like a few small stones 

the Latin tonnage of those names, 

the prefixes and preferences 

for leaf or meat. 

My son recites the syllables 

I stumble over now, 

sets up figures as I did 

years ago in his prehistory. 

Here is the green ski slope 

of a brontosaur's back, 

there a triceratops in full 

gladiator gear. From the arm 

of a chair a pterodactyl 

surveys the dark primeval carpet. 

Each has disappeared from time 

to time, excavated finally 

from beneath a cabinet 

or the sofa cushions, only 

to be buried again among its kind 

in the deep toy chest, 

the closed lid snug as earth. 

The next time they're brought out 

to roam the living room 

another bone's been found 

somewhere, a tooth or fragment 

of an eggshell dusted off, 

brushing away some long-held notion 

about their life-span 

or intelligence, warm blood 

or cold. On the floor 

they face off as if debating 

the latest find, what part 

of which one of them 

has been discovered this time. 

Or else they stand abreast 

in one long row, side 

by scaly side, waiting to fall 

like dominoes, my son's 

tossed tennis ball a neon yellow 

asteroid, his shadow a dark cloud 

when he stands, his fervor for them 

cooling so slowly he can't feel it— 

the speed of glaciers, maybe, 

how one age slides into the next.

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

Process and product

I recently had a birthday. My son gave me a book, Wild River, Poetry and Prose by Warren Winders. I had asked for it based on a review in this past Spring's issue of TROUT magazine. Much of the prose occurs around places that once were my home waters, Indian Head and North Rivers and Cape Cod Bay.

northern Minnesota trout stream

Photo by J. Harrington

Something I read yesterday in the prose section reminded me of wisdom I once knew but had subsequently let slip into my pile of unknown knowns. One can catch fish using nets, weirs, hook and line or by dropping sticks of dynamite, fuse lit, into the water. If the purpose is to feed a mess of mouths, nets or dynamite might be the quickest or most effective process. Why, then, would anyone use a hook and line, or, more exotically, a bamboo rod and a tuft of hair and feathers wound on a hook. Winders gives a nice insight and answer in the following paragraph in his piece about restoring the  Quashnet River:

For years I wondered why most of the work on the Quashnet was done by hand. Environmental journalist, and author of the book "Alewife," Doug Watts, recently recalled working on the Quashnet restoration this way: "Joe [Bergin] and Fran Smith's vision for fixing  the Quashnet, foot by miserable foot, made me drive an hour from Easton for several weekends to do pure, rotten drudge work (cutting button brush) when I was in high school." It has taken me awhile, but now I think I understand Fran's reasoning - if engineers and bulldozers do the work, our relationship with the stream becomes less physical and more abstract, and a cycle is broken. Doug Watts' "rotten drudge work" is the palliative by immersion that the river can give us in return."

As I've been thinking and ranting about what's gone wrong and how did the country end up with the events of January 6, 2021, it occurs to me that our politics, and our culture, have become too focused on winning rather than governing. When "the Founders" drafted the Constitution, they included some faulty concepts, but "the ends justify the means" wasn't one of them, at least as I read the document. Exceptionalism isn't an entitlement program. We have come to take too much for granted and the adjustments needed, the "rotten drudge work" we are faced with must necessarily be done by US if we want the palliative immersion that democracy can give US in return.

Joy in the Woods

By Claude McKay

There is joy in the woods just now,

       The leaves are whispers of song,

And the birds make mirth on the bough

       And music the whole day long,

And God! to dwell in the town

       In these springlike summer days,

On my brow an unfading frown

       And hate in my heart always—

A machine out of gear, aye, tired,

Yet forced to go on—for I’m hired.

Just forced to go on through fear,

       For every day I must eat

And find ugly clothes to wear,

       And bad shoes to hurt my feet

And a shelter for work-drugged sleep!

       A mere drudge! but what can one do?

A man that’s a man cannot weep!

       Suicide? A quitter? Oh, no!

But a slave should never grow tired,

Whom the masters have kindly hired.

But oh! for the woods, the flowers

       Of natural, sweet perfume,

The heartening, summer showers

       And the smiling shrubs in bloom,

Dust-free, dew-tinted at morn,

       The fresh and life-giving air,

The billowing waves of corn

       And the birds’ notes rich and clear:—

For a man-machine toil-tired

May crave beauty too—though he’s hired.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.

It's Native American Heritage Day

Today is Native American Heritage Day. In lieu of a normal posting, we ask that you follow the link below and read Sara Sinclair's entire article titled:

Indian country showed up to beat Trump. How can you show up for Indian country?

We are going to Buy Nothing today and are going to #OptOutside and try to follow 

have you visited the American Indian Cultural Corridor?

Photo by J. Harrington

 

A Map to the Next World

By Joy Harjo 

     for Desiray Kierra Chee

In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map for

those who would climb through the hole in the sky.

My only tools were the desires of humans as they emerged

from the killing fields, from the bedrooms and the kitchens.

For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.

The map must be of sand and can’t be read by ordinary light. It

must carry fire to the next tribal town, for renewal of spirit.

In the legend are instructions on the language of the land, how it

was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.

Take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls, the

altars of money. They best describe the detour from grace.

Keep track of the errors of our forgetfulness; the fog steals our

children while we sleep.

Flowers of rage spring up in the depression. Monsters are born

there of nuclear anger.

Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears to

disappear.

We no longer know the names of the birds here, how to speak to

them by their personal names.

Once we knew everything in this lush promise.

What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the

map. Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us, leav-

ing a trail of paper diapers, needles, and wasted blood.

An imperfect map will have to do, little one.

The place of entry is the sea of your mother’s blood, your father’s

small death as he longs to know himself in another.

There is no exit.

The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine—a

spiral on the road of knowledge.

You will travel through the membrane of death, smell cooking

from the encampment where our relatives make a feast of fresh

deer meat and corn soup, in the Milky Way.

They have never left us; we abandoned them for science.

And when you take your next breath as we enter the fifth world

there will be no X, no guidebook with words you can carry.

You will have to navigate by your mother’s voice, renew the song

she is singing.

Fresh courage glimmers from planets.

And lights the map printed with the blood of history, a map you

will have to know by your intention, by the language of suns.

When you emerge note the tracks of the monster slayers where they

entered the cities of artificial light and killed what was killing us.

You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contain the ladder.

A white deer will greet you when the last human climbs from the

destruction.

Remember the hole of shame marking the act of abandoning our

tribal grounds.

We were never perfect.

Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was

once a star and made the same mistakes as humans.

We might make them again, she said.

Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.

You must make your own map.

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Memories on Memorial Day 2020

On this Memorial Day, we remember with gratitude the lives and sacrifices made by our predecessors so that a bigoted mad man, and his allies, would be stopped from their attempt at world domination, and the slaughter of innocents reduced if not eliminated. In our immediate family [the Better Half and I], heartfelt thanks goes to two fathers [hers and mine], one who served at sea [hers] and the other in the air [mine], plus an uncle [mine] who served on the ground.

We find ourselves pondering how, within the lifetime of some who served in WWII, we have drifted so far from the ideals we espoused prior to and during those years of devastating fighting:

In the face of obstacles - COURAGE

a careless word... A NEEDLESS LOSS

I'm not quite old enough to remember rationing and Victory Gardens, but I remember hearing about them. This Memorial Day much of what I'm hearing is about how inconvenient it is to wear a mask or keep out of crowds in order to help protect our own health and that of those more vulnerable. Almost half the population believes a "president" who lost the popular vote is doing a good job combatting a pandemic in which the US ranks #1 in virus-related deaths. That appears to indicate a massive failure in our public education system and a breakdown in what used to be more shared values about community and what it means. This is not a Memorial Day on which I can honorably honor the current state of the "leadership" of this country.

may this Memorial Day bring the dawn of a better era

Photo by J. Harrington

Perhaps it's a hopeful sign that, among my morning readings was the poem below. It captures my mixed feelings surprisingly well. Let's work hard so that, by Memorial Day 2021, we can remember how much better we're doing than we have for the past three+ years, so our ancestors haven't sacrificed in vain.

Thanks

W. S. Merwin - 1927-2019

Listen 
with the night falling we are saying thank you 
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings 
we are running out of the glass rooms 
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky 
and say thank you 
we are standing by the water thanking it 
standing by the windows looking out 
in our directions  

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging 
after funerals we are saying thank you 
after the news of the dead 
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you 

over telephones we are saying thank you 
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators 
remembering wars and the police at the door 
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you 
in the banks we are saying thank you 
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you 

with the animals dying around us 
our lost feelings we are saying thank you 
with the forests falling faster than the minutes 
of our lives we are saying thank you 
with the words going out like cells of a brain 
with the cities growing over us 
we are saying thank you faster and faster 
with nobody listening we are saying thank you 
we are saying thank you and waving 
dark though it is

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The wilderness and wildness of language

After participating in my first online book club meeting, I've come away with a mixed reaction. I found/find the technology (Zoom) distracting. It's rewarding and satisfying to share reactions with others about material you've all read, but the fact that there were more than 300 participants was overwhelming, even with the use of a number of smaller breakout rooms. Then again, my participation did trigger some thoughts and perspectives I probably wouldn't otherwise have had. So, like so many other things these days, it was rewarding if not entirely satisfying. The jury is still weighing the evidence on whether this form of "participation" is worth it or not.

what language to use to describe the edge of Minnesota's wilderness?

Photo by J. Harrington

The book being read and discussed is Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass:
Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Part of the intial discussion focused on the Grammar of Animacy. Although I agree with the concepts Kimmerer espouses, I'm finding it more than a little challenging getting comfortable with how to apply them and include them in my daily life and writing. It turns out I'm not the only one enjoying responding to such a challenge. Emily Stone has an enjoyable and informative column in the Duluth Reader about her efforts to use language that is respectful of its subject. I particularly enjoyed the passage she begins with:

“We no longer face a physical frontier, but a change in philosophy, a complete reversal of our attitude toward the earth that might open the door to a golden era far more resplendent than the old.” – Sigurd Olson, Reflections from the North Country

Although my college degree is in English, rarely have I considered the more technical implications of language. It may have been my growing awareness of the challenges of describing how humans and wilderness relate that prompted me to wonder about attitude and language. Gary Snyder explores the subject from a different angle in his The Practice of the Wild.

At the rate I'm going with finding books to reread, I not only have to hold off on buying new (unread) books, I'll need to live much longer to finish reading the stacks already accumulated. If that's my biggest problem this year I can't and won't complain.

Off the Trail

by Gary Snyder

for Carole

We are free to find our own way
Over rocks – through the trees –
Where there are no trails. The ridge and the forest
Present themselves to our eyes and feet
Which decide for themselves
In their old learned wisdom of doing
Where the wild will take us. We have
Been here before. It’s more intimate somehow
Than walking the paths that lay out some route
That you stick to,
All paths are possible, many will work,
Being blocked is its own kind of pleasure,
Getting through is a joy, the side-trips
And detours show down logs and flowers,
The deer paths straight up, the squirrel tracks
Across, the outcroppings lead us on over.
Resting on treetrunks,
Stepping out on the bedrock, angling and eyeing
Both making choices – now parting our ways –
And later rejoin; I’m right, you’re right,
We come out together. Mattake, “Pine Mushroom,”
Heaves at the base of a stump. The dense matted floor
Of Red Fir needles and twigs. This is wild!
We laugh, wild for sure,
Because no place is more than another,
All places total,
And our ankles, knees, shoulders &
Haunches know right where they are.
Recall how the Dao De
Jing puts it: the trail’s not the way.
No path will get you there, we’re off the trail,
You and I, and we chose it! Our trips out of doors
Through the years have been practice
For this ramble together,
Deep in the mountains
Side by side,
Over the rocks, through the trees.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.