Urge for going

After dutifully changing the oil and filter in the tractor this morning, we're listening to the second CD in the Joni Mitchell Archives - Volume 1, the early years (1963 - 1967). It includes two versions of the Urge for Going. Listening to a composer performer her works in different ways, showing the development and growth of talent, is a real treat. As much as anything, we're blown away by her guitar playing, enough so we finally looked up what the hell an "open G tuning" is. We suppose now we'll have to see what that sounds like on our long neglected guitar.

we read much more than we practice guitar

Photo by J. Harrington

The fact that we avoided disasters during the oil change was one of this week's other treats. Yesterday's delivery of a box of books from England, a package we weren't expecting until near the end of the month, is another one. This is shaping up as one of the better weeks in quite awhile around here. That brings us right back to the Urge for going.

Today's high temperature is forecast to reach 78℉. All week we've enjoy temperatures about 30℉ warmer than normal for this time of year. Next Tuesday, four days away, the high is forecast to be in the low 40's, accompanied by snow. Weather whiplash is on the way again. We've already had a week of freezing and snow late last month. This morning we saw a hornet for the first time in weeks. Local ponds that had frozen over are now, again, all open water. Firearms deer season opens tomorrow without a trace of tracking snow in the local woods.

geese, no chevron, with an urge for going

Photo by J. Harrington

[UPDATE: Bumblebees are going extinct in a time of ‘climate chaos’]

Farmers have used this week's weather respite to harvest more fields that hadn't been touched prior to the cold, snow and freezing spell. Some waterfowl are still hanging around but, we suspect that, come next week, they'll have an urge for going. Weather volatility, political volatility, public health volatility, they all, individually or collectively, may leave many of us one day next week facing something like this:

Urge For Going

by Joni Mitchell

I awoke today and found 
the frost perched on the town
It hovered in a frozen sky 
then it gobbled summer down
When the sun turns traitor cold 
and all the trees are shivering in a naked row...

I get the urge for going
But I never seem to go

I get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
And summertime is falling down and winter is closing in

I had a man in summertime
He had summer-colored skin
And not another girl in town
My darling's heart could win
But when the leaves fell on the ground
And bully winds came around
and pushed them face down in the snow...
He got the urge for going
And I had to let him go

He got the urge for going
When the meadow grass was turning brown
And summertime was falling down and winter was closing in

Now the warriors of winter give a cold triumphant shout
And all that stays is dying all that lives is gettin' out
See the geese in chevron flight 
Flapping and racing on before the snow...
They've got the urge for going
And they've got the wings to go

They get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
And summertime is falling down and winter is closing in

I'll ply the fire with kindling now
I'll pull the blankets up to my chin
I'll lock the vagrant winter out
And I'll bolt my wandering in
I'd like to call back summertime
And have her stay for just another month or so...
But she's got the urge for going
So I guess she'll have to go

She gets the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
And all her empire's falling down
And winter's closing in.

And I get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
And summertime is Falling Down.

This lyric has been formatted exactly as Joni preferred it to appear (capitalization, punctuation, line breaks, changes in wording, etc). Joni collaborated with Lisa and John Sornberger by making these changes for presentation in their book, Gathered Light.

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

Time to trade in the outdated solutions.

How are you holding up under the uncertainty? Would it be nicer and better if we lived in a world where politics and government were less relevant? That's not a rhetorical question but neither is it one to which we can pretend we have an answer. We've read enough fantasy and science fiction to be able to envision both a utopian and a dystopian option. For the past four years, and, actually, lots longer than that, we've seen a drift towards more dystopian society for US.

We remember the hope we felt when Jack Kennedy was elected, and the despair at his assassination. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society didn't work out as well as many of us hoped it would. "The main goal was the total elimination of poverty and racial injustice." Despite progress under Johnson, many of us felt doubly and triply robbed by the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968 and Robert F. Kennedy shortly thereafter in June. 

time to shore up our foundations

Photo by J. Harrington

Skipping ahead, President William Jefferson Clinton brought US the North American Free Trade Agreement. Its ratification was hindered because it omitted serious consideration of labor and environmental issues until they were addressed in side agreements. President Barack Obama tried to bring us the Trans-Pacific Partnership despite the criticism and opposition of many liberals and progressives.

time to mend our fences

Photo by J. Harrington

A cursory review of the past couple of decades indicates that the two major political parties representing US have become, for the most part, more considerate of their corporate sponsors than of the constituents who vote for them. How else to account for the missing "public sector" option in the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Does it now seem more understandable how many could vote for Trump, even after the past four years and why there has been a decided lack of enthusiasm for the candidacy of Joe Biden?

There is much needed and necessary work ahead for the rest of US to return what has become a corporatocracy into some semblance of a democracy. Some concepts and guidance can be found in these resources:

• On the Appropriateness of Local Scale & the Importance of Place
• Organizing Bioregionally
• How do we create communities to which all of us can belong?

These aren't all that's available, but they, and Elinor Ostrom, and Wendell Berry and the Schumacher Lectures and Doughnut Economics are places to start. Just remember, it's up to US to create the future we want and need and we can't do it alone, plus, the problems will change as we work on them.

For You O Democracy

By Walt Whitman

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,

I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon, 

I will make divine magnetic lands, 

                   With the love of comrades, 

                      With the life-long love of comrades. 

I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies, 

I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks, 

                   By the love of comrades, 

                      By the manly love of comrades. 

For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme! 

For you, for you I am trilling these songs.

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