A gloomy pre-MLK Day Winter status report

We're in the midst of a January thaw, for which I'm grateful. We're also in the midst of cloudy skies that blot out the sun, for which I'm not grateful.

cloudy, overcast, gloomy sun

Photo by J. Harrington

We've made it past the Ides of January and have almost 30 minutes more daylight each day than we did at Winter Solstice.

We have slightly more than two months until Spring Equinox, which is a month before income taxes are due.

We celebrate the life and accomplishments of Martin Luther King, Jr. on Monday. [He was murdered (assassinated) on April 4, 1968, just two months (June 6, 1968) before Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated (murdered) and five years after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated (November 22, 1963). The '60s were not all a decade of peace and love.]

We now have a United States Senate in which two of the Senate's most outspoken foes of science and climate change responses are now in charge of the committees that oversee NASA (Sen. Cruz) and the Environment (Sen. Inhofe).

Native American Art Gallery, Minneapolis

Photo by J. Harrington

The Star Tribune has been publishing a four-part series on our exceptional neglect of Native American schools. As the series notes, those schools are both separate and unequal. That situation sets a frightening precedent for how we, as a country, as a people, are likely to respond to the fact that now almost 50% of the students in our public schools are low income. Even in Minnesota, where all of our students (and our scholastic racial disparities) are above average, more than a third of our students are low income. If we keep it up, our public schools can offer the same quality education we're providing to Native Americans. Businesses can claim they can't find qualified employees so they have to move even more jobs overseas and we may save a dollar three twenty nine in taxes. How farsighted of us. MLK, RFK and JFK would be so proud.

The Way In

By Linda Hogan 

Sometimes the way to milk and honey is through the body.

Sometimes the way in is a song.

But there are three ways in the world: dangerous, wounding,

and beauty.

To enter stone, be water.

To rise through hard earth, be plant

desiring sunlight, believing in water.

To enter fire, be dry.

To enter life, be food.

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

It's about interest in and on principle

Yesterday I checked out some of the St. Croix River access points and dropped by Wild River State Park. The only place I could see open water was at Taylors Falls just below the hydropower dam. At the Franconia Landing, some young fellows were heading out with what looked like portable fish houses. At Wild River I learned that swans hadn't been seen for a few days. Additional searching on the Internet helped confirm the lack of swan sightings. Since I was unsuccessful at getting some photos of swans this trip, I'll just have to keep trying. I'm delighted that trumpeter swans have been restored to Minnesota and the St. Croix Valley. They even summer in my "backyard."

trumpeter swans at Carlos Avery WMA

Photo by J. Harrington

Swan restoration is clearly a conservation success story, as is, we hope, the healing of the hole in the ozone layer. But, as My Minnesota posted yesterday, humans seem to be determined to play Russian roulette with the Earth's life support systems. At least that's the way global corporations behave as they extract Earth's resources to produce more stuff they need us to buy so they can make a profit. Since we can't, in the foreseeable future, move to an as yet unidentified Planet B, and we won't all fit on the International Space Station, maybe we should revise the way we do business here on Earth. That's what much of yesterday's posting was all about, and yesterday wasn't the first time the question of sustainable development has been written about on My Minnesota. This, in a round-a-bout way, brings us back to biomimicry. As Janine Benyus writes on page 7 of the paperback edition of her BIOMIMICRY book:

Nature runs on sunlight.

Nature uses only the energy it needs.

Nature fits form to function.

Nature recycles everything.

Nature rewards cooperation.

Nature banks on diversity.

Nature demands local expertise.

Nature curbs excesses from within.

Nature taps the power of limits.

running on sunlight

Photo by J. Harrington

If Minnesota had an economy powered by sunlight (wind and solar energy) and if our transportation system used only the energy it needed, we might not be facing the economic, political and related problems mentioned here yesterday. If we were more cooperative in our political endeavors, we might all be happier and better off and be able to lower taxes. My Minnesota has often posted in favor of the benefits of local food, a local economy, local expertise, becoming indigenous and native to a place. It could be argued that one of the problems greater Minnesota faces with its "workforce housing shortage" is that the "shortage" frequently occurs in a one industry or one company town. If the industry or the company has market problems, the jobs to repay the loans that bought the housing could disappear. Banks don't like that kind of risk and, as we are seeing with Essar and Minntac, maybe Minnesota should avoid the risk of picking winners and losers in international markets. Maybe Minnesota should bank on diversity more than monoculture, or duoculture when it comes to mining. The more I look around these days, the more I'm thinking that biomimicry offers a framework Minnesota could use to create its economy for the future. As Donella Meadows wrote in her brilliant and captivating Dancing With Systems "The future can’t be predicted, but it can be envisioned and brought lovingly into being." I truly believe that, if Minnesota relied much more on the tools and philosophy of biomimicry to manage present and future development opportunities, Minnesota could again be known as the state that works. We might even become known as the state where common sense is uncommonly common. Throughout billions of years of evolution, Nature has been using and refining the principles quoted above. You might say her approach has been successfully time tested. Maybe it's time we tried more of it. We might even like it.

A Pot of Red Lentils

By Peter Pereira

simmers on the kitchen stove.

All afternoon dense kernels

surrender to the fertile

juices, their tender bellies

swelling with delight.

In the yard we plant

rhubarb, cauliflower, and artichokes,

cupping wet earth over tubers,

our labor the germ

of later sustenance and renewal.

Across the field the sound of a baby crying

as we carry in the last carrots,

whorls of butter lettuce,

a basket of red potatoes.

I want to remember us this way—

late September sun streaming through

the window, bread loaves and golden

bunches of grapes on the table,

spoonfuls of hot soup rising

to our lips, filling us

with what endures.

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