The rain on the plains has become a pain

We are under the second tornado watch declared within the past week. Tornado watches induce a similar level of anxiety in me that thunderstorms and lightning do the dogs. I haven’t yet tried one of their calming hemp seed oil treats, but I’m getting tempted. (Even with a calming treat, my dog, SiSi, was extremely anxious again last night during the midnight storms.) I honestly don’t remember an extended period of weather like we’ve been having the past few weeks during the 50 of so years I’ve lived in this state. It’s almost like we’ve disrupted the climate. If only the climate scientists had warned US that something like this could happen. Oh, wait!!!

backyard Iris versicolor (Harlequin Blueflag)

Photo by J. Harrington

There is some good news from all the rain. We have half a dozen or so blueflag iris blooming in the wet spot in out back yard. Although I don’t have a positive id, I’m going with Iris versicolor (Harlequin Blueflag) since the distribution maps show it in our county and the alternate species isn’t. This is the first time in several years we’ve seen blueflag blooms in the wet spot and the wet “summer” seems to be the major variable. I’ll drop the quotes from the season after the 20th of this month. As I’mmm sure you know, we’re in that shoulder season when the meteorologists have claimed it’s summer but the astronomical calendar hasn’t changed.

I’ve not got a close enough look to be sure which, but either a purple finch or a house finch has been visiting the feeder the past few days. That’s a nice surprise. The dragon flies seem to have thinned out the mosquitos a bit and the winds help prevent them from being able to land on me. I think it may be a good thing that I’m getting better at finding silver linings to our plethora of clouds, but wish I didn’t have so many opportunities to practice silver mining.

Praying

by Mary Oliver

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

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

We need better constitutions and laws

There’s an article in the Minnesota Reformer claiming we need a full time legislature. As I read through it the other day, I couldn’t find a clear explanation of how going from part time to full time would improve the quality of laws or related decisions. Meanwhile, the Kansas Supreme Court has found the "state constitution does not provide the right to vote.” Finallly, although I wasn’t there at the time, I don’t recall reading that the framers of the US Constitution were under time pressures when they decided the qualifications to be president to be limited to the following:

Article II, Section 1, Clause 5:

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

I believe the requirements to purchase and/or carry a firearm are considerably more stringent. Look at the situation we’re currently facing: a convicted felon, on 34 counts, is the presumptive candidate for president, expected to represent one of our two major political parties. Felons aren’t allowed to vote, why should one be allowed to serve the highest office? Don’t we think more of our democracy, and ourselves, than that.

Hieracium aurantiacum (Orange Hawkweed) invasive species

Photo by J. Harrington

At the state level, I’ve been looking at Minnesota’s laws defining invasive species. Although I am not a lawyer, they seem vague enough to be found unconstitutional, See what you think:

• 2023 Minnesota Statutes
• AGRICULTURE
• Chapter 18
• Section 18.77

Subd. 17.    Invasive plant.

"Invasive plant" means a nonnative species whose introduction and establishment causes, or may cause, economic or environmental harm or harm to human health. 

  

• 2023 Minnesota Statutes
• CONSERVATION
• Chapter 84D
• Section 84D.01

Subd. 9a.    Invasive species.

"Invasive species" means a nonnative species that:

(1) causes or may cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health; or

(2) threatens or may threaten natural resources or the use of natural resources in the state. 

So far, I’ve not been able to find any description of a process or criteria to be followed in reaching a determination of the quantity and/or quality of “harm” that needs to be caused to the economy, human health or natural resources in the state for a terrestrial or aquatic species to be listed. 

The last time I checked, most educated, thinking people were familiar with and generally agreed with the  theory of evolution. That means ecosystems and their elements change over time. Then there’s the problem of human caused environmental pollution that’s causing massive amounts of economic and environmental and human health harm. I’m not holding my breath until the commissioner of agriculture or natural resources declares humans an invasive species but, if we look back far enough, I don’t think we fit the definition of native for this continent.

Don’t we need better laws to have better enforcement and attain the results we’d like? Do we really want to see a convicted felon in our highest office? Should our definitions of invasive species, and how they're applied, be more specific? How do we start to make that happen? We need to begin with better quality candidates and better defined issues!

Tomorrow I’ll share some questions I hope could help get a better handle on invasive species. Maybe we can work up to qualifications for president.

anti-immigration 

By Evie Shockley

the black people left, and took with them their furious

            hurricanes and their fire-breathing rap songs melting

the polar ice caps. they left behind the mining jobs,

           but took that nasty black lung disease and the insurance

regulations that loop around everything concerning

           health and care, giant holes of text that all the coverage

falls through. the brown people left, and took with

           them the pesticides collecting like a sheen on the skins

of fruit. they went packing, and packed off with them

           went all the miserable low-paying gigs, the pre-dawn

commutes, the children with expensive special needs

           and the hard-up public schools that tried to meet them.

the brown people left, railroaded into carting off those

           tests that keep your average bright young student outside

the leagues of ivy-lined classrooms, and also hauled off

           their concentrated campuses, their great expectations, their

invasive technology, and the outrageous pay gap between

           a company’s c.e.o. and its not-quite-full-time workers. they

took their fragile endangered pandas and species extinction

           and got the hell outta dodge. the black people left and took

hiv/aids, the rest of their plagues, and all that deviant

           sexuality with them. they took their beat-down matriarchies

and endless teen pregnancies, too. those monster-sized

           extended families, the brown people took those. the brown

people boxed up their turbans and suspicious sheet-like

           coverings, their terrifying gun violence, cluster bombs,

and drones, and took the whole bloody mess with them,

           they took war and religious brow-beating tucked under

their robes. they took theocracy and their cruel, unusual

           punishments right back where they came from. finally,

the white people left, as serenely unburdened as when

          they arrived, sailing off from plymouth rock with nothing

in their hands but a recipe for cranberry sauce, a bit

           of corn seed, and the dream of a better life. there were

only certain kinds of people here, after the exodus, left

           to wander the underdeveloped wilderness in search

of buffalo, tobacco, and potable water, following old

           migratory patterns that would have been better left alone.

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

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. 

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Isn’t MN as valuable as Montana?

Today’s posting will be short and, for me at least, sweet. I’ve been stewing (yes, me!) about this since I first read the announcement: ‘Gamechanger’: judge rules in favor of young activists in US climate trial. The decision was based, in large part, on provisions of the 1972 version of the Montana state constitution, as found in Part IX. ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES:

Protection And Improvement

Section 1. Protection and improvement. (1) The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.

(2) The legislature shall provide for the administration and enforcement of this duty.

(3) The legislature shall provide adequate remedies for the protection of the environmental life support system from degradation and provide adequate remedies to prevent unreasonable depletion and degradation of natural resources.

does this not warrant constitutional protection?

Photo by J. Harrington

The Sierra Club has made available on line an extensive background to the Held decision. You can read that here. However, what has me perturbed is the information in an article in Bloomberg Law that notes:

Green amendments provide an explicit and unmistakable mandate to protect environmental rights with the same legal vigor, guided by the same constitutional mandates, given our most highly regarded fundamental rights and freedoms, such as free speech, freedom of religion, property rights, and gun rights. The clarity of instruction provided by green amendments leaves little room for anti-environment activism in any branch of government.

Three states already provide this highest green amendment protection for environmental rights and natural resources: Pennsylvania, Montana, and, as of 2021, New York.

At this moment, constitutional green amendments that protect the rights of all people to a clean, safe, and healthy environment, are advancing in states across our nation. Among the states with active green amendment campaigns are Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New Mexico, New Jersey, and Washington.

Minnesota is not listed among those states that have adopted or are advancing constitutional rights to a clean and healthy environment. Why not?

Admittedly, Minnesota does have an Environmental Policy Act, which can be modified by the legislature. The environmental provisions in our constitution have to do with funding, not constitutional rights. They read as follows:

Sec. 14. Environment and natural resources fund.

A permanent environment and natural resources trust fund is established in the state treasury. Loans may be made of up to five percent of the principal of the fund for water system improvements as provided by law. The assets of the fund shall be appropriated by law for the public purpose of protection, conservation, preservation, and enhancement of the state's air, water, land, fish, wildlife, and other natural resources. The amount appropriated each year of a biennium, commencing on July 1 in each odd-numbered year and ending on and including June 30 in the next odd-numbered year, may be up to 5-1/2 percent of the market value of the fund on June 30 one year before the start of the biennium. Not less than 40 percent of the net proceeds from any state-operated lottery must be credited to the fund until the year 2025.

[Adopted, November 8, 1988; Amended, November 6, 1990; November 3, 1998]

Sec. 15. Outdoor heritage, clean water, parks and trails, and arts and cultural heritage; sales tax dedicated funds.

Beginning July 1, 2009, until June 30, 2034, the sales and use tax rate shall be increased by three-eighths of one percent on sales and uses taxable under the general state sales and use tax law. Receipts from the increase, plus penalties and interest and reduced by any refunds, are dedicated, for the benefit of Minnesotans, to the following funds: 33 percent of the receipts shall be deposited in the outdoor heritage fund and may be spent only to restore, protect, and enhance wetlands, prairies, forests, and habitat for fish, game, and wildlife; 33 percent of the receipts shall be deposited in the clean water fund and may be spent only to protect, enhance, and restore water quality in lakes, rivers, and streams and to protect groundwater from degradation, and at least five percent of the clean water fund must be spent only to protect drinking water sources; 14.25 percent of the receipts shall be deposited in the parks and trails fund and may be spent only to support parks and trails of regional or statewide significance; and 19.75 percent shall be deposited in the arts and cultural heritage fund and may be spent only for arts, arts education, and arts access and to preserve Minnesota's history and cultural heritage. An outdoor heritage fund; a parks and trails fund; a clean water fund and a sustainable drinking water account; and an arts and cultural heritage fund are created in the state treasury. The money dedicated under this section shall be appropriated by law. The dedicated money under this section must supplement traditional sources of funding for these purposes and may not be used as a substitute. Land acquired by fee with money deposited in the outdoor heritage fund under this section must be open to the public taking of fish and game during the open season unless otherwise provided by law. If the base of the sales and use tax is changed, the sales and use tax rate in this section may be proportionally adjusted by law to within one-thousandth of one percent in order to provide as close to the same amount of revenue as practicable for each fund as existed before the change to the sales and use tax.

[Adopted, November 4, 2008]

Now, I am not a lawyer, so you might want to check with your state representative or senator or the governor’s office because I would love to learn that I’m wrong about this, and that Minnesotans have as much of a constitutional right to a clean environment as the citizens of Montana, Pennsylvania and New York. In fact, wouldn’t such an amendment help keep the mining companies and their promoters in line when they apply for hard rock mining permits?

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.

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

“Need to know” basis

I did succeed in making yesterday a #TweetlessTuesday. It actually felt good. Except for the agitation surrounding additional indictments of The Former Guy [TFG], I would have probably felt better still if I had stayed away from online news outlets. The ratio of depressing and/or frightening news stories to happy or good news must be st least 9 or 10 to 1. One of our local tv stations has provided a clue to responding to the relentless deluge of conspiracy, theories and actions. They have a segment each morning about 4 Things You Need to Know. After watching carefully for several mornings, I decided they were wrong. I didn’t need to know most of what they were pitching. I think I’ll take a similar approach to other online news reporting.

When I first began to contemplate the idea of “need to know” it brought me face to face with the question of how it applies to this blog. My answer is that rarely am I posting about what you need to know, but I hope we often (sometimes?) bring items you may want to know.

lower St. Croix River

Photo by J. Harrington

Today I’m back to looking at bioregions and their potential roles in creating a sustainable, regenerative future. We live in the St. Croix River watershed, a tributary to the Mississippi River watershed and close to the edge of the Great Lakes watershed. Water, watersheds and related factors will become more and more significant as world temperatures increase and geohydrologic cycles become disrupted. (Colorado River ring a bell?)

At the moment, the water quality in several Minnesota water bodies is threatened by nonferrous mining. The state Supreme Court just “suspended a key permit for the NorthMet copper-nickel mine in northern Minnesota on Wednesday, ruling that state regulators failed to fully consider the threat to water quality posed by the mine.” I would argue that in an increasingly water-stressed world, protecting the quality of the water we have is a top priority, followed by restoring the quality of water that fails to meer designated use standards. If our existing governmental structures were as committed to addressing climate breakdown as they claim, there should never have been a permit that "failed to fully consider the threat to water quality posed by the mine.”

All told, these days I’m returning more and more to many of my first loves: English, poetry, environment, nature, ethics, pllace. Ian McHarg, in Design with Nature, offers the right concepts. He just doesn’t take them far enough, but then he didn’t write it in our times.

Wanting Sumptuous Heavens

By Robert Bly

No one grumbles among the oyster clans,

And lobsters play their bone guitars all summer.

Only we, with our opposable thumbs, want

Heaven to be, and God to come, again.

There is no end to our grumbling; we want

Comfortable earth and sumptuous Heaven.

But the heron standing on one leg in the bog

Drinks his dark rum all day, and is content.

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

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.

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

Mine, all mine

There’s an article in the Star Tribune that misses several significant points relative to its purported subject. The head states: Minnesota locked in global dilemma: More copper and nickel are needed, but mine development slow. That’s slightly off the mark, but not as misleading as the lede: “There's a not-in-my-backyard mentality surrounding new hardrock mine projects.” 

If the reporters had thought a bit, they might have noted that the global dilemma could have been avoided if the oil and gas industry had been honest and more forthcoming decades ago about the implications of consuming their products. Of course, the world leaders have been less than dynamic in responding to the scientific evidence and reports about the effects of greenhouse gasses and climate weirding. The real “not in my backyard” issue is global population growth accompanied by a capitalist economy dependent on quantitative rather than qualitative growth to provide return on investment.

There’s another aspect though that is more germane to Minnesota, and the rest of US. Some years ago the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA) was begun. It has now reached the point where their standards form the basis against which mining activities can be audited. According to the IRMA web site, none of the audits completed or underway at this writing is in Minnesota or the United States. This is perhaps not surprising since the  lack of systems planning we are pursuing results in a national approach of building renewable generating capacity far from the centers of consumption and lack the transmission capacity to get the product to market, so to speak. We’re as likely to insist mining projects in this country meet stringent international standards as we are to place lots more emphasis on roof-top solar and micro-grids. Either would seem to be a better approach but would upset some of the major players, no doubt.

mining leaves many scars on the earth

Photo by J. Harrington

Aaron Brown, someone much closer to the Iron Range mining issues than I, recently had this and more to say:

Since the dawn of capitalism on this continent, people of northern Minnesota contended with challenging economic conditions. This is true whether we live in Eveleth or Onigum. Up and down. Boom and bust. We share these experiences.

We should be rightly concerned that the powerful deem the people of northern Minnesota less valuable than the logs and ore that define our manufactured regional identity. When companies are denied logs and ore, the powerful speak out. When people are denied health care, affordable housing and dignity, the powerful suddenly show remarkable restraint of tongue and pen. 

Since the evidence is growing daily that the climate scientists who try to inform and warn us of what we’re doing to ourselves, actually, allowing the global corporations to do to us, are telling the truth, maybe it’s time to focus more on working together to bring the corporatocracy, including its political toadies, to heal and spend less energy pointing fingers at various elements of the people who do the work and/or suffer the most while the profits continue to accrue to the 1%.

Love in a Time of Climate Change

By Craig Santos Perez

recycling Pablo Neruda's "Sonnet XVII"

I don't love you as if you were rare earth metals,

conflict diamonds, or reserves of crude oil that cause

war. I love you as one loves the most vulnerable

species: urgently, between the habitat and its loss.

I love you as one loves the last seed saved

within a vault, gestating the heritage of our roots,

and thanks to your body, the taste that ripens

from its fruit still lives sweetly on my tongue.

I love you without knowing how or when this world

will end. I love you organically, without pesticides.

I love you like this because we'll only survive

in the nitrogen rich compost of our embrace,

so close that your emissions of carbon are mine,

so close that your sea rises with my heat. 

********************************************
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.

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

Enjoy turtle crossing season

An unexpected touch of autumn has arrived, or, perhaps, spring’s cooler temperatures have returned briefly. It’s a treat, but disconcerting to be enjoying mid-60’s plus a breeze. Summer returns tomorrow and hangs around for awhile. The brief duration of our cool spell will minimize the likelihood I’ll be overcome by a wave of ambition. Warmer temperatures enhance my justification for conserving my energy.

Perhaps it was just coincidence, or maybe insects anticipated the cooler interlude, because last night I caught and transported a cricket from the downstairs floor and this morning did the same with not one, not two, but three smallish spiders in the kitchen sink. Each was scooped into a clear plastic cup and deposited outside. (I don’t do that with ants or ticks, however.) Crickets are supposed to bring good luck and I hope spiders will spin webs that will capture mosquitos and deer flies.

slow down (for turtles)

Photo by J. Harrington

The lack of rain means the grass hasn’t been growing which means I haven’t been mowing. Maybe I’ll get around to doing something more than watering plants this week, maybe not. It’s really nice to not have a home owners’ association or city code fussing about the condition of our “lawn.” My ambition seems to be inversely proportional to my age. If I’m going to work up the energy to do much of anything, it’s going to be to go fishing.

There’s a number of stories in today’s Star Tribune about labor shortages, population growth, decline and shifts, vacant offices in the suburbs. I remember the days when Minnesota had an office of state planning that could provide a coherent overview of trends and discontinuities. Of course, I also remember when Minnesota was more liberal and forward-looking than it is these days. I’m still very disappointed that the DFL didn’t restore the citizen board to the Pollution Control Agency nor did our outdated mining laws get a hearing. Furthermore, the state seems committed to the increasingly misguided concept of perpetual growth. I wonder of any of our environmental organizations will take a lead in getting the state, or some large cities, to take a hard look at Doughnut Economics or something like the Donella Meadows’ Vermont New Economy program. Speaking as a recovering planner, I long ago learned that “more of the same never solved a problem.”

This Morning I Could Do/A Thousand Things

By Robert Hedin

I could fix the leaky pipe

Under the sink, or wander over

And bother Jerry who’s lost

In the bog of his crankcase.

I could drive the half-mile down

To the local mall and browse

Through the bright stables

Of mowers, or maybe catch

The power-walkers puffing away

On their last laps. I could clean

The garage, weed the garden,

Or get out the shears and

Prune the rose bushes back.

Yes, a thousand things

This beautiful April morning. 

But I’ve decided to just lie

Here in this old hammock,

Rocking like a lazy metronome,

And wait for the day lilies

To open. The sun is barely

Over the trees, and already

The sprinklers are out,

Raining their immaculate

Bands of light over the lawns.

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

Another mixed bag

Local farms are in the midst of a first cutting of hay. Round bales are popping up everywhere except corn or soybean fields or where the cut hay is still drying in the field. I should have guessed that this spell of rainless weather would benefit someone doing something. Someday soon I expect to get my schedule and calendar clear enough to actually go stand in a river and wave a stick. Meanwhile, there’s decent, if overly dry, weather to enjoy and various flowers coming into bloom and a couple of dogs that provide entertaining distractions plus restorative affection. 

hay baling time

Photo by J. Harrington

We’re in an interlude between spring greens and peak summer seasons at our community supported agriculture farm. Their summer season doesn’t begin until early July. There’s a recent article in The Guardian on eating local food that begins with an assessment of food miles before it gets around to looking at the idea that local foods are an alternative to industrial farming and confined animal feed operations (CAFOs). My quick read of that article helped me remember how easy it is these days to focus on a less significant aspect of an issue and how little attention gets paid to answering the question “What’s the problem we’re trying to solve?” While I was putzing on a different project this morning, I did some quick research on logic models and wish we could make their use mandatory for all legislative efforts.

The Guardian has done a much better piece of journalism in its coverage today of Kate Raworth and her Doughnut Economics. I managed to get about 80% of the way through my copy of the book before I got distracted. After skimming the Guardian’s piece I dug out the abandoned book and will now recommence reading it. Doughnut Economics and the Doughnut Economics Action Lab [DEAL] got me thinking about yesterday’s posting here and has me wondering what the reaction in Minnesota’s mining regulatory agencies would be if Glencore (not currently, as far as I can tell, a member of IRMA) and the PolyMet folks proposed to develop their mine project in full compliance with all the guidance and audits and procedures the good folks at the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance have created and used that effort to prototype new Minnesota laws and regulations for mining. Of course, that idea may make so much sense it would never be implemented, unlike Doughnut Economics and its Action Lab. Just sayin’.

Emergency Haying

Hayden Carruth

Coming home with the last load I ride standing
on the wagon tongue, behind the tractor
in hot exhaust, lank with sweat,

my arms strung
awkwardly along the hayrack, cruciform.
Almost 500 bales we’ve put up

this afternoon, Marshall and I.
And of course I think of another who hung
like this on another cross. My hands are torn

by baling twine, not nails, and my side is pierced
by my ulcer, not a lance. The acid in my throat
is only hayseed. Yet exhaustion and the way

my body hands from twisted shoulders, suspended
on two points of pain in the rising
monoxide, recall that greater suffering.

Well, I change grip and the image
fades. It’s been an unlucky summer. Heavy rains
brought on the grass tremendously, a monster crop,

but wet, always wet. Haying was long delayed.
Now is our last chance to bring in
the winter’s feed, and Marshall needs help.

We mow, rake, bale, and draw the bales
to the barn, these late, half-green,
improperly cured bales; some weigh 150 pounds

or more, yet must be lugged by the twine
across the field, tossed on the load, and then
at the barn unloaded on the conveyor

and distributed in the loft. I help—
I, the desk-servant, word-worker—
and hold up my end pretty well too; but God,

the close of day, how I fall down then. My hands
are sore, they flinch when I light my pipe.
I think of those who have done slave labor,

less able and less well prepared than I.
Rose Marie in the rye fields of Saxony,
her father in the camps of Moldavia

and the Crimea, all clerks and housekeepers
herded to the gaunt fields of torture. Hands
too bloodied cannot bear

even the touch of air, even
the touch of love. I have a friend
whose grandmother cut cane with a machete

and cut and cut, until one day
she snicked her hand off and took it
and threw it grandly at the sky. Now

in September our New England mountains
under a clear sky for which we’re thankful at last
begin to glow, maples, beeches, birches

in their first color. I look
beyond our famous hayfields to our famous hills,
to the notch where the sunset is beginning,

then in the other direction, eastward,
where a full new-risen moon like a pale
medallion hangs in a lavender cloud

beyond the barn. My eyes
sting with sweat and loveliness. And who
is the Christ now, who

if not I? It must be so. My strength
is legion. And I stand up high
on the wagon tongue in my whole bones to say

woe to you, watch out
you sons of bitches who would drive men and women
to the fields where they can only die.

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