A Valentine’s gift

A Valentine’s Day indulgence

Photo by J. Harrington

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

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

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

A Line-storm Song

Robert Frost
1874 – 1963

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

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

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

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

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on the eve of All Hallow’s Eve

We’ve reached the time of year when there are more leaves on the ground than on the trees. There are more leaves than water in the bird bath. Leaves, like Halloween spirits, daily fly through the air. The moon is, technically speaking, past full, but not so’s you’d really notice. There’s snow in the overnight forecast, with a prospect that it will have melted before Trick of Treaters start their rounds. Tomorrow’s the big night and the Better Half has a Treat bowl ready in the front hall and, as usual, has masterfully carved a Jack O’Lantern. (I reserve my fine motor skills for things like tying dry flies to tippets.)

leaves aren’t all that flies through the night air

Photo by J. Harrington

Come Wednesday, November brings Native American Heritage Month, so we’ll be touching on that theme off and on. Explore Minnesota has a web section on the state’s Native American heritage. I’m assuming the Governor will again issue a proclamation on November 1. In the interim, feel free to read up on land acknowledgements.

We’ve noted elsewhere in these postings that, as near as I can tell, we live very close to what was once a boundary or buffer region between the territories of the Dakota and Ojibwe peoples. I’m still looking for resources that may help me better understand the history of the land on which we’re living.

Samhain

By Annie Finch

(The Celtic Halloween)

In the season leaves should love,

since it gives them leave to move

through the wind, towards the ground

they were watching while they hung,

legend says there is a seam

stitching darkness like a name.

Now when dying grasses veil

earth from the sky in one last pale

wave, as autumn dies to bring

winter back, and then the spring,

we who die ourselves can peel

back another kind of veil

that hangs among us like thick smoke.

Tonight at last I feel it shake.

I feel the nights stretching away

thousands long behind the days

till they reach the darkness where

all of me is ancestor.

I move my hand and feel a touch

move with me, and when I brush

my own mind across another,

I am with my mother's mother.

Sure as footsteps in my waiting

self, I find her, and she brings

arms that carry answers for me,

intimate, a waiting bounty.

"Carry me." She leaves this trail

through a shudder of the veil,

and leaves, like amber where she stays,

a gift for her perpetual gaze.

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A hint of decolonization

In [partial] preparation for observance of spring equinox, today I bought a couple of pots of oxalis plants. The green is a nice contrast to the snow outside. It’s improbable we’ll be able too enjoy a fire in the fire pit come equinox, but I’ve reached the point where, living in the North Country, I need to do more to honor the arrival of spring, longer days, sunny skies(?), returning migrants and open, flowing waters.

oxalis, shamrock

Photo by J. Harrington

Tomorrow, at least for a little while, will include flowing water as rain, which will then become ice. Every year spring arrives on stutter steps, some years more quickly than others, but rarely, if ever, smoothly. I may manage to avoid, or at least minimize, complaining about setbacks and focus on improvements in the weather rather than what we’ve experienced the past few weeks and anticipate over the next few days.

Since I’m tired of writing about our local weather, I’m going to share something I found online this morning. For background, I need to tell you that for several years I’ve been pondering similarities between Native American and Irish experiences under British colonialism. Today I learned I’m not the only one who thinks about such topics. The On Being Project has an interview with Margaret Noodin that includes these observations:

Noodin: Yes. Now, I knew that. I taught the Irish lit. class, last semester, which I sometimes get to do. And my friend Bairbre here, who runs our Celtic Studies center, we had some comparisons in language. And we, of course, are very biased, but we felt that Ojibwe and Irish were perhaps the most musical and lovely languages that there are. [laughs]

Ó Tuama: That’s just plain fact, Margaret. That’s not bias at all. [laughs]

Noodin: I would agree. Absolutely, right? [laughs] But we wonder too, sometimes — we joke — we’ve joked for many years, within my family, and it’s not just us. So you have a confluence of history. You have people located in a similar space on the globe and really defined in ways by where the land meets the water. So, whether you are a diaspora centered around this inland sea or whether you are an island within a sea, a lot of your metaphors are similar in the fact that you’re in this northern region. You have a seasonal similarity.

But we have things like Paisake, little beings that have red hair that potentially cause disturbances or teach people lessons. And there are so many ways where, when you get to know cultures and you can make comparison between stories, you can absolutely see that the option is either to believe that they really exist and they’re all over, in every culture, in different ways, or to somehow think that people really connected sometime, long ago; but that’s probably the least likely. I think that people have a need to understand and describe the world through describing both the real and the imagined, sometimes.

The preceding gives us an opportunity to share one of Margaret Noodin’s et. al. wonderful poems and to confess that we’ve not read as much of her work as we would like and hope to.

Meshkadoonaawaa Ikidowinan: Exchanging Words

By Kimberly Blaeser, Molly McGlennen, and Margaret Noodin

baazhigwaadiziwin—persistence

Ningii-bazhinemin, we have barely escaped

nightly, a threshold looms in the cold.

Again, we sing ourselves strong—

Anishinaabikwewag, women of history and persistence.

Observe: constellations have long illuminated patterns,

relentless stories, adizookanag,

of who we might be, noongom aawiiyaang

gemaa waa-aawiiyang, or become.

Across skies trace belonging, ezhi-dibendagoziyang

in the land of wiindigoo-cannibals, awaken the crumbling spirit.

Become swirling light, motion—where Bagonegiizhig

still lives. This ancient portal a promise.

Become the shadow others expect—aagawaatesen

hiding in significance. Like stars, anangoog, excluded.

Anyone could read this.

No matter this bitter

winter, still.

wiingashk—sweetgrass

How she stitched the rim, gashkigwaadan.

Leaf blades and needle fingers circled,

smallest curve, waaganagamod, of song—

endless like the scent.

Held, there are, atenoon, some parts

one cannot see—

but she knows, gikendaang, what they hold.

Words from bogs and marshes.

Heaven fits neatly, mii gwayak, under

the snug lid, shut tight as lips

long used to gaadood, keeping secrets

of grandmothers and crane companions.

Notes:

The authors write about the collaborative process behind this piece here. 

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A lovely day here on Turtle Island

Why did the turtle cross the road?    To lay her eggs!

This may be the week that rewards us for living here the other 51. [I hope I haven’t jinxed us.] The weather is a delight. The air is full of dragonflies feeding on the swarms of mosquitos. Yesterday a painted turtle visited the front yard. We have no idea whether it’s still hunkered under the front stoop, where she was last seen disappearing.

This morning I noticed the beardtongue buds are beginning to turn into flowers. Also this morning I noticed a different painted turtle crossing a gravel road a couple of miles from the house. She hunkered at the road’s edge as I drove past slowly in the Jeep. Columbine flowers are blooming in scattered sites around the yard.

painted turtle crossing gravel road

Photo by J. Harrington

My presumption is that each of the turtles I saw is a female on an egg-laying mission. It is that time of year. As we noted the other day about whitetail fawns, it’s heartening to see reproductive success being sought or delivered as the countryside greens up.

local turtle crossing sign

Photo by J. Harrington

All of this reminds me of what’s probably my all time favorite origin story. It’s embedded in an essay by Robin Wall Kimmerer in emergence magazine. The title is Ancient Green: Moss, Climate, and Deep Time. It’s worth your time to read if you want to know about Turtle Island.

Ode to Langston

By Dawn Quigley

Langston, we too, sing  Turtle Island.

We are the 574 Nations.

They want to hide us

In the past tense,

Yet we love,

And dream,

And are still here.

Today, now,

We are at the oval table

As our women lead.

Nobody can ever

Say to us,

“Natives lived, Natives ate, drank, led.”

We are present tense.

Because,

They will know what we’ve always known

And be humbled—

We, too, sing  Turtle Island.

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It’s a time of year to acknowledge...

This morning’s southerly breeze is clearing lots of leaves from some trees. Others remain full of chlorophyl, staying green and holding fast. If the weather forecast holds, temperatures will drop to more seasonal levels during the upcoming week. It’s getting to be the time of year when mice, and spiders and crickets move into warmer places, like our houses.

a range of pre-abscission colors

Photo by J. Harrington

Somehow, a cricket snuck into the living room and early this morning was chirruping away, sounding very much like a smoke or carbon monoxide alarm. It stopped when I turned on a light. We’ve captured and released outside, away from the house, several “barn” spiders during the last week or ten days. A few mice have been caught in the traps in the garage. Next week it will be time to put fresh mouse repellant in the tractor dashboard.

Midst other signs of approaching mid-October, tomorrow is Indigenous Peoples’ Day. President Biden is the first American president to issue a proclamation recognizing it. Minnesota did so last year. For those interested in pre-colonial indigenous nation territories, there’s an online resource that’s quite helpful, especially as a first step in crafting a territory acknowledgement.

We are very fortunate that Minnesota’s recently appointed poet laureate, Gwen Westerman, has written a poem that can help us properly celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

Dakota Homecoming

By Gwen Nell Westerman

We are so honored that

              you are here, they said.

We know that this is

             your homeland, they said.

The admission price

             is five dollars, they said.

Here is your button

             for the event, they said.

It means so much to us that

             you are here, they said.

We want to write

             an apology letter, they said.

Tell us what to say.

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It's Earth Overshoot Day, 2020!!!

“All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively the land.” The Land Ethic, A Sand County Almanac.

1972 was the year the Clean Water Act amendments became law. In anticipation of their enactment, Massachusetts had been engaged in a pilot study with the USACE looking at how areawide water quality management plans, as called for by Section 208 of that act, could appropriately be implemented. The United States has yet to meet the water quality goals called for in the act, despite massive expenditures of public dollars to collect and treat urban and industrial wastewater. Little has been done to address agricultural water pollution. Neither has much been done to respond to the issues and challenges identified in the 1972 report: Limits To Growth.

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

Although I once debated, on MIT radio, Dennis Meadows, one of authors of that report, it would be presumptuous of me to attempt to summarize the report here, Instead, I offer the following excerpts from: The History of The Limits to Growth

A pioneering report, The Limits to Growth, published in 1972, marked a turning point in thinking about the environment, selling some 30 million copies in 30 languages.¹ The two-year study behind the report took place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the request of the Club of Rome, an international group of distinguished business people, state officials, and scientists founded by Aurelio Peccei, a former Fiat executive and president of Olivetti.

What have Western societies been doing in the thirty-five years since the appearance of LtG and similar warnings from the same period?^17,18 When it comes to taking serious action, little has been done to reach a sustainable form of development, with the exception of some modest technical adjustments. On the other factors, such as population, consumption, and production, the political steps taken have generally been in the opposite direction from sustainability, and they have more than offset any benefits of technical progress. The result is that global environmental pressure, as for example indicated by humanity’s ecological footprint,¹⁹ is today much worse. And there are few signs of significant action toward changing this trend.

A sustainable future is not a matter of technology alone, partly because of the rebound effect.³³ It must build on new ways to live and organize societies, for instance recognizing that today “corporations have even less incentive than individuals to keep the Commons in order; in fact they have a (legal) clear line of responsibility to their shareholders alone and have continuously resisted government and international efforts to regulate the Commons.”³⁴ This is referring to G. Hardin’s classical paper on the problems of sharing the limited capacity of the Commons.³⁵ Elinor Ostrom won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics for her analysis of economic governance, and especially of the commons, that understands this conundrum. She shared the prize with Oliver A. Williamson, who was lauded for his analysis of economic governance, especially in regard to the boundaries of the modern corporation.³⁶ Both study how individuals can work together and share scarce resources, an ethos shared by the authors of LtG.³⁷

So, here we are on Earth Overshoot Day, 2020. We are living in a world faced with

• climate breakdown, and all that brings with it
• a sixth extinction, and breakdown of the ecosystems on which we depend for clean air and water
• a pandemic disrupting global economies, with the prospect of more pandemics on the horizon
• no quick solutions in sight to any of the above
• several long-standing democracies faced with economic and/or civic collapse

It looks more and more as if Western knowledge and economics alone isn't sufficient to motivate us to change our ways enough to save ourselves from each other. It's encouraging that some communities are adapting Doughnut Economics to a local scale. Personally, I believe we'd all be better off, as, certainly, would any descendants we have, if we also adopted and adapted to Traditional Ecological Knowledge.

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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November: Native American Heritage Month. Time for Thanksgiving

Welcome to November, the month of Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Month. The Academy of American Poets has compiled a wonderful listing of "poems, essays, books, and more by and about Native American poets." If there are any teachers reading this, the Academy has also included several lesson plans and related materials. (Would those lesson plans also work for parents? Take a look, try one and see. It has to be better than the traditional distorted stories of the first Thanksgiving.) Now is also an appropriate moment to remind or inform you of an online resource that identifies territories, languages and treaties related to Native Land particularly in North America. It can be useful in identifying whose homeland you're occupying if you do a Land Acknowledgement. Much of Minnesota has been and is home of the Anishinabewaki ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᐗᑭ or the Santee and Dakota.

Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ (All Are Related) 

Photo by J. Harrington

Now that November is officially underway, we can theoretically prune and trim our oak trees without exposing them to oak wilt disease. It's also prime time to notice all the still green buckthorn understory while driving around. With all the reservoirs of buckthorn available for reseeding throughout the area, it becomes challenging to stay motivated to control that invasive on our property. On the other hand, it's unattractive and limits the growth of indigenous plants so we'll keep picking away at it. If only pocket gophers would eat the roots of buckthorn, or deer consume its foliage and twigs... but then that wouldn't be this imperfect world we live in, would it? Since buckthorn is a relatively recent arrival turned into an invasive species, it's doubtful there are traditional Native American practices for managing it although the use of "controlled burns," similar to the way prairies were kept open by Native Americans, is noted by one of Minnesota's conservation agencies.

MIIGWECH = thanks BII IZHAAYAN for coming(?)

Photo by J. Harrington

This month, weather permitting, might be a prime time to visit at least one of the places, other than a reservation or a casino, that honors Minnesota's Native American heritage. There's:

• The Goose Garden (near Sandstone)


• The Mille Lacs Trading Post


• The American Indian Cultural Corridor in Minneapolis

And, without leaving your chair, you can explore the bdote Memory Map. No doubt there are others we haven't mentioned or discovered yet. We look forward to learning more about this country's heritage.

Once the World Was Perfect

Joy Harjo - 1951-

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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Ways to honor #IndigenousPeoplesDay 2019

Let me begin by thanking Orion magazine for the inspiration on how I might honor this day. On this day their web site features only stories that celebrate indigenous artists and writers. We did something similar celebrating Native American and indigenous resources we're familiar with. To begin, if you're in or near The Cities, check out

• The American Indian Cultural Corridor along Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis





American Indian Cultural Corridor banners


Photo by J. Harrington




• Visit Birchbark Books


• Plan a visit to the Mille Lacs Indian Museum and Trading Post


• Spend some time at the web sites of The Healing Place Collaborative and the


• bdote memory map


• Check the List of place names of Native American origin in the United States


• Search the interactive, online map of native territories, languages and treaties


• Get ready for Native American Heritage Month in November, and


• Acknowledge indigenous territory

a gallery of American Indian art

Photo by J. Harrington

Apprenticed to Justice

Kimberly Blaeser

The weight of ashes
from burned-out camps.
Lodges smoulder in fire,
animal hides wither
their mythic images shrinking
pulling in on themselves,
all incinerated
fragments
of breath bone and basket
rest heavy
sink deep
like wintering frogs.
And no dustbowl wind
can lift
this history
of loss.

Now fertilized by generations—
ashes upon ashes,
this old earth erupts.
Medicine voices rise like mists
white buffalo memories
teeth marks on birch bark
forgotten forms
tremble into wholeness.

And the grey weathered stumps,
trees and treaties
cut down
trampled for wealth.
Flat Potlatch plateaus
of ghost forests
raked by bears
soften rot inward
until tiny arrows of green
sprout
rise erect
rootfed
from each crumbling center.

Some will never laugh
as easily.
Will hide knives
silver as fish in their boots,
hoard names
as if they could be stolen
as easily as land,
will paper their walls
with maps and broken promises,
scar their flesh
with this badge
heavy as ashes.

And this is a poem
for those
apprenticed
from birth.
In the womb
of your mother nation
heartbeats
sound like drums
drums like thunder
thunder like twelve thousand
walking
then ten thousand
then eight
walking away
from stolen homes
from burned out camps
from relatives fallen
as they walked
then crawled
then fell.

This is the woodpecker sound
of an old retreat.
It becomes an echo.
an accounting
to be reconciled.
This is the sound
of trees falling in the woods
when they are heard,
of red nations falling
when they are remembered.
This is the sound
we hear
when fist meets flesh
when bullets pop against chests
when memories rattle hollow in stomachs.

And we turn this sound
over and over again
until it becomes
fertile ground
from which we will build
new nations
upon the ashes of our ancestors.
Until it becomes
the rattle of a new revolution
these fingers
drumming on keys.

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Where are Turtle Island's turtles this May? #phenology?

our township probably needs more signs like this

Photo by J. Harrington

To many Native Americans and First Nations people North America is known as Turtle Island. We live in an area, once inhabited by the Dakota and the Anishinaabe, that has many wetlands and water bodies. Many years during May we see, at various times, a number of turtles crossing local roads as they go to lay their eggs. This year we've seen none.

Blanding's turtle crossing our formerly gravel road

Photo by J. Harrington

In part, we're wondering if some part of the turtles' life cycle is occurring later this month, along with many other Spring events. Or, is the lack of sightings due, in part, to our recently blacktopped township road?

snapping turtle crossing a paved road

Photo by J. Harrington

Blanding's turtles, which we've seen nearby a number of times in years past, typically nests in June, according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. A similar pattern is followed by snapping turtles. Blanding's, snapping and painted are the three turtle species we've seen crossing roads, but there are many more species native to Minnesota.

painted turtle crossing our formerly gravel road

Photo by J. Harrington

Turtle Island is also the title of Gary Snyder's Pulitzer Prize-winning book of poems but, as far as we can recall, there's no poem in it mentioning a turtle. Snyder's homage to Turtle Island in a poem comes in a different volume (Axe Handles) with the poem:

For All

Gary Snyder

Ah to be alive
on a mid-September morn
fording a stream
barefoot, pants rolled up,
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in the shallows,
northern rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,
smell of sun on gravel.

I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.

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Magic water words

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
                      Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell

Governor Dayton has been holding a series of Town Hall Meetings around Minnesota to call attention to our water pollution problems. He's asking for suggestions on how we can make a 25% improvement in Minnesota's "water quality" by the year 2025. We have three suggestions that we'll make here. One, or perhaps two, we've referred to in prior postings, but we want to be unequivocal and explicit here. We think these suggestions are not only helpful, but essential, so we've included a bit of background and commentary to go with them.

Minnesota's waters flow to the Arctic, Atlantic and Gulf

Photo by J. Harrington

• First, mandate that the Minnesota Department of Transportation (for state roads) and each Minnesota county (for all other roads) install signs, where needed, identifying each watershed boundary and river being crossed by the road. In rural Minnesota we often see signs that say "Leaving So & So Soil and Water Conservation District," followed, a few hundred yards later by a sign that says "Entering So & So Soil and Water Conservation District." Each watershed needs similar identification, so folks will know who or what they're polluting when they throw empty cans, other litter, or cigarette butts from their vehicle windows. More hopefully, it will help us be aware of the beauty of the landscape and waterbody we're traversing. Many, but not all, river crossings are already identified. Few, if any, watershed boundary signs link landscapes to water bodies so folks know where they are in natural, bioregional instead of political boundary terms.






Sunrise River road crossing sign


Photo by J. Harrington



• Second, support creation of a Minnesota Waters' Lexicon of Water Words [MWLWW], including words old and contemporary, indigenous and immigrant, that refer to names and places, processes, persons and paraphernalia that give us a vocabulary we can use to talk about what makes our waters what they are. Take a look at this example using some English nature language that "highlight's what is being lost," or this one helps us talk about our food systems in sustainable terms.






• Next legislative session, undertake a major effort to complete full implementation of the Minnesota Water Sustainability Framework, first published in 2011. The Framework includes nicely organized table(s) of recommendations that can be used to keep track of progress.

[UPDATE: Submit your comments online if you wish at this link.]

Having spent much of our working life practicing and promoting water quality at a national, state, regional and local scale, starting with the development of pilot plans for managing water quality and land use relationships, we've been thinking about these issues for a long time. Then, a short while ago, we started to compile a list of "water words" from the wonderful Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, edited by Barry Lopez. More recently, we learned of the flap about the elimination of some nature words from the Oxford Junior Dictionary to "make room" for 21st century terms. People have long been fascinated by the potential power associated with naming (cf. Book of Genesis, 2:19), but are often dismayed by the complexity and bureaucratic terminology that has become a substitute for "ground truth" (liquid truth?) used by public agencies to describe Minnesota's waters and "stressors" that affect them. Here's an example from our own local watershed, the Sunrise River. We suppose a MWLWW will need to find a way to accommodate and translate such jargon (gorgon language?) into plain language. It will also need to look again at Thomas F. Waters two great books, The Streams and Rivers of Minnesota and Wildstream, A Natural History of the Free Flowing River. What else do you think needs to be included?

                     Eschatology of the Lexicon

By J. Allyn Rosser

They come down to us

rounding the corners of centuries

at an innocent jog, shedding letters

and most of the grand old meanings

to take on the sleek new hide

our day demands, a snappier

nap that can repel the stare

of a rather less tactful sun;

they come down to us com-

pounding, bounding in idiot

joy, they come with that trustful

tired old mutt look, that soft woof,

warm doggie sigh on the knee,

hoping for what? Some reason,

no doubt, to continue sounding.

Give me one good reason,

they come down to us saying,

as if we could have one without them.

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Sing a song of witness #NPM17 #phenology

Yesterday, driving west on Highway 95 from Taylors Falls toward North Branch, we saw a small roadside field of dandelions in bloom. They arrived about the same time last year, end of the third week, beginning of the last week of April. Later in the day, while doing Spring cleaning along our roadside ditches, I noticed two small dandelions bravely bringing bursts of yellow to a countryside turning more shades of pale greens and chartreuse than I can find names for.

witnessing a sign of Spring's rebirth

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning I felt overwhelmed in a very different way as I followed the 24th suggestion on how to celebrated National Poetry Month, to Watch or read Carolyn Forche’s talk “Not Persuasion, But Transport: The Poetry of Witness.” Her mention of at least two songs, Amazing Grace and the Star Spangled Banner, in the context of poetry of witness, made me think of a paragraph I read recently in Gary Snyder's The Real Work: Interviews & Talks, 1964-1979. There he's quoted as saying:

"For a book of formal poetry, Turtle Island sold quite a bit. Actually, Americans love poetry, pay huge sums of money for it, and listen to it constantly. Of course, I'm talking about song, because poetry is really song. Rock 'n' roll, ballad, and all other forms of song are really part of the sphere that, since ancient times, has been what poetry is. If you accept poetry as song, then there are plenty of songs already which are doing most of the work that poetry is supposed to do for people."

That, in turn, reminded me of songs such as Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan's I Pity the Poor Immigrant, and Woody Guthrie's Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (also known as "Deportee"). Poetry, especially poetry of witness, combined with music, can, perhaps, do more to soften a hard, human heart than even kittens or puppies. There is no doubt in my mind that we are living in days when we are in ever-growing need of hearts less hardened by exposure to

The Poem

Daniel Hoffman, 1923 - 2013

Arriving at last

It has stumbled across the harsh
Stones, the black marshes.

True to itself, by what craft
And strength it has, it has come
As a sole survivor returns

From the steep pass.
Carved on memory’s staff
The legend is nearly decipherable.
It has lived up to its vows

If it endures
The journey through the dark places
To bear witness,
Casting its message
In a sort of singing.

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A post-post-truth, post-normalized blog post

More than an hour ago (~2:00 pm), I was driving home after doing some errands. There, in the middle of a field, next to Old Highway 61, were a pair of whitetail does. They were in their somber Winter gray dun pelage, and seemed to be feeding on something or other. Or, they might just have been hanging out at the corner of a couple of deer trails hoping a handsome whitetail buck would wander by. Since hunting season is still winding down (I think archery and black powder seasons are still open), I was really surprised to see them out in the clear near mid-day. But then, this has been a year of surprises, hasn't it. I wouldn't be terribly shocked if many of us spent the better(?) part of the next four years scratching our heads and muttering something like "What 'n hell now?

whitetail doe at road's edge

Photo by J. Harrington

For the record, I don't accept the idea that we are in a "post-truth" phase or stage or age. In fact, I reject the concept that there is such a thing as post-truth. If there is the equivalent to being a Luddite on changes in the English language, sign me up. I don't intent to "normalize" the use of the non-word "normalize." I'm trying to figure out if being an equal opportunity anti-sexist, anti-Islamaphobe, anti-anti-Semite, anti-racist, anti-[fill in group discriminated against here] means that I'm actually a full-fledged, died-in-the-wool misanthrope. That wouldn't surprise me in the least. I've long had strong leanings in that direction. As a pleasant surprise, however, I did find some wonderful language earlier today, in a Tweet from @MiaMphotography. It was a brief quotation from one of my favorite misanthropes, Ed Abbey. A longer version below appears to be from the documentary A Voice in the Wilderness.

“How strange and wonderful is our home, our earth, with its swirling vaporous atmosphere, its flowing and frozen liquids, its trembling plants, its creeping, crawling, climbing creatures, the croaking things with wings that hang on rocks and soar through fog, the furry grass, the scaly seas. To see our world as a space traveler might see it, for the first time, through Venusian eyes or Martian antennae, how utterly rich and wild it would seem, how far beyond the power of the craziest, spaced-out, acid-headed imagination, even a god’s, even God’s, to conjure up from nothing. Yet some among us have the nerve, the insolence, the brass, the gall to whine about the limitations of our earthbound fate and yearn for some more perfect world beyond the sky. We are none of us good enough for the sweet earth we have, and yet we dream of heaven.”

Abbey's words reflect much the same sentiment as Robert Travers' Testament of a Fisherman. For the sake of my sanity, I'm planning on spending lots of time during the next few years reading much more of Ed Abbey and David Brower and Robert Travers and Leslie Marmon Silko and others of their ilk. We have let the barbarians through the gates and the genie out of the bottle. Damage containment is needed. One of Abbey's best poems offers some more:

Benedicto: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous,

leading to the most amazing view.

May your rivers flow without end,

meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells,

past temples and castles and poets' towers

into a dark primeval forest

where tigers belch and monkeys howl,

through miasmal and mysterious swamps

and down into a desert of red rock,

and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm

where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs,

where deer walk across the white sand beaches,

where storms come and go

as lightning clangs upon the high crags,

where something strange and more beautiful

and more full of wonder than

your deepest dreams waits for you--

beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.

                                  Edward Abbey

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Fortunate sons (and daughters)

This Thanksgiving many of us will enjoy family gatherings around tables weighed down with lots of food. Some of us won't be that lucky because we're alone and/or poor. Too many of the poor and lonely did nothing more to deserve that fate than to be unlucky, born in the wrong place or the wrong time or both. On the other hand, too many of us with better fortunes think it's more important to err on the side of safety rather than compassion. We need to better remember our history. I'm not writing about Columbus here, but about the "Pilgrims." You know, those who came here seeking freedom to practice their religion free from persecution because they were "different."

wild turkey, almost America's symbol

Photo by J. Harrington

Too many of them, and those who followed, rewarded the welcome offered by North America's indigenous inhabitants, a welcome which we celebrate this Thursday, with fraud, genocide and attempts at enforced assimilation. If the Borg had existed in those days, they could have served as role models for many American settlers and the policies of the US government. Someone (George Santayana) much wiser than I once wrote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." If Native Americans had responded to Pilgrims as too many of our politicians believe we want them to respond to today's "Pilgrims" from Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, I doubt hardly any of us would be looking forward to this Thursday's celebrations. Perhaps, instead, having been born ourselves in Syria, or Iraq, or Afganistan, because that's where our parents, and their parents and ... were born, we'd find ourselves on the outside trying to get in.

Back in the days when I was younger and sure I knew everything worth knowing, I heard a American folk singer named Baez sing a Phil Ochs written song titled There but for Fortune. I remember those lyrics (and that voice) when I encounter, from the safety of my home in rural Minnesota, reports of terrorism in Paris and Mali, and, closer to home, reports of protests in Minneapolis over the police killing of an unarmed black man. I can do nothing about having been born a "Fortunate Son" because none of us have any choice or control over the circumstances of our birth. I have, fortunately for me, lots that I can do to support increased social and environmental justice in the U.S.A and especially in my adopted home of Minnesota. That's something I'll be grateful for this Thursday. How about you?

Bless Their Hearts

By Richard Newman 

At Steak ‘n Shake I learned that if you add

“Bless their hearts” after their names, you can say

whatever you want about them and it’s OK.

My son, bless his heart, is an idiot,

she said. He rents storage space for his kids’

toys—they’re only one and three years old!

I said, my father, bless his heart, has turned

into a sentimental old fool. He gets

weepy when he hears my daughter’s greeting

on our voice mail. Before our Steakburgers came

someone else blessed her office mate’s heart,

then, as an afterthought, the jealous hearts

of the entire anthropology department.

We bestowed blessings on many a heart

that day. I even blessed my ex-wife’s heart.

Our waiter, bless his heart, would not be getting

much tip, for which, no doubt, he’d bless our hearts.

In a week it would be Thanksgiving,

and we would each sit with our respective

families, counting our blessings and blessing

the hearts of family members as only family

does best. Oh, bless us all, yes, bless us, please

bless us and bless our crummy little hearts.

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