Ashes to ashes, snow to mud

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. It's also Ash Wednesday. The last time that happened was in 1945. The two dates also overlapped in 1923 and 1934 and will coincide again in 2024 and 2029, according to the UK Express. This timing sequence helps explain why I don't remember it ever happening before.

Valentine's Day, Ash Wednesday--is your heart in it?

Photo by J. Harrington

Since tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, today must be Shrove, or Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras). Although we haven't been particularly religious for years. this year we're seriously considering "giving up" Twitter, or politics, or both, for Lent, as a form of self-denial. In addition, we think for the next six or so weeks, we'll focus on the Spirituality of Fly Fishing and Poetry as a Spiritual Practice. Instead of just foregoing anything as a form of penance, we'll take a positive stance toward substituting spiritual growth for political grumblings. Maybe we'll even make time to finally read Pope Francis' encyclical LAUDATO SI’, on Care for Our Common Home.

For some time now we've been fussing and fuming about our perceived need for the Democrats to offer more than a "at least we're not as bad as the Republicans" strategy. We'd like to see a much more positive approach take the place of opposing the stupid, evil proposals and actions emanating from the GOP controlled White House and Congress. IN the interest of following Ghandi's advice to "be the change you want to see in the world," at least for this Lenten season we will be more positive about what we do want and how we think we might be able to get it. Based on our experience to date, that will require a certain amount of spiritual growth across the board. Wo knows, we may even experience the miracle of a return of warmth by the time Easter has arrived on April 1. For now, we'll leave that alone.

       Draw Near

        By Scott Cairns 

              προσέλθετε

For near is where you’ll meet what you have wandered

far to find. And near is where you’ll very likely see

how far the near obtains. In the dark katholikon

the lighted candles lent their gold to give the eye

a more than common sense of what lay flickering

just beyond the ken, and lent the mind a likely

swoon just shy of apprehension. It was then

that time’s neat artifice fell in and made for us

a figure for when time would slip free altogether.

I have no sense of what this means to you, so little

sense of what to make of it myself, save one lit glimpse

of how we live and move, a more expansive sense in Whom.

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

Their Salmon, Our Wild Rice?

Washington State has a recovery program for Pacific salmon. Salmon are an iconic species in Washington. Mendocino California has the Salmon Restoration Program. Oregon has the Wild Salmon Center. That's the source of this assessment:

Billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on salmon restoration efforts in the United States and Canada but few success stories have emerged. Some may yet succeed; it is still too early – only a few salmon generations’ worth of time – to discount them. But most salmon restoration efforts have failed so far because they were implemented only after salmon stocks reached low levels of abundance.

St. Louis River at Jay Cooke State Park

Photo by J. Harrington

The "Anishinaabeg have changed their management practices. The tribes routinely restore lake habitats and seed wild rice beds to ensure there is a harvest to be had the next year." That helps to protect what we currently have. It does not necessarily bring about restoration to areas where wild rice may once have been abundant but is no more. Wild rice is the official state grain of Minnesota. There is growing evidence that wild rice needs protection. A web site, Protect Our Manoomin, lists a Protect Our Manoomin Council. There are, as of this writing, more than 700 signatories to a petition to protect wild rice. We are not aware of major public relations or outreach campaigns to generate support for protecting what we have, let alone restoring what we've lost, although Winona LaDuke, of the White Earth Recovery Project, has written extensively about the significance of wild rice to her people. Is it not time to consider finding additional ways to enhance and expand the work already being done to protect and restore a Minnesota icon?

A delegation from Amnesty International is visiting Duluth today and tomorrow. Part of their agenda is to share the effects of the Mount Polley tailings dam failure and call attention to the fact that government regulators were ill prepared to protect citizens from such disasters. The wild rice that is slowly returning to the St. Louis River would be put at risk should the proposed PolyMet NorthMet project proceed as proposed. Minnesota can and should do better.

In honor of the time of year and today's theme, please enjoy both Original Local and today's poem:

                     Last Snow

By Heid E. Erdrich

Dumped wet and momentary on a dull ground

that’s been clear but clearly sleeping, for days.

Last snow melts as it falls, piles up slush, runs in first light

making a music in the streets we wish we could keep.

Last snow. That’s what we’ll think for weeks to come.

Close sun sets up a glare that smarts like a good cry.

We could head north and north and never let this season go.

Stubborn beast, the body reads the past in the change of light,

knows the blow of grief in the time of trees’ tight-fisted leaves.

Stubborn calendar of bone. Last snow. Now it must always be so.

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