See sun's change

The pointillist leaf color changer is painting our North Woods. A few leaves here, a splotch there, first sumac, now maples, against back drop fields of goldenrod, ripening field corn, and soy beans. Tomorrow is the first day of meteorological Autumn. Even the weather is showing tinges of the changing season so today I finally did what should have been a Spring chore of washing the outside of some windows. Return of lower angle, late afternoon sun made the need obvious.

maple leaves trading chlorophyl for gold

Photo by J. Harrington

Hummingbirds are still coming to the sugar water feeders. I expect those birds to head south before autumn equinox (Alban Elfed to the Druids among us). Meanwhile, Minnesota's early season for teal and geese opens next Saturday, September 6th. I'm still contemplating whether to participate. It's been a few years since I've hunted waterfowl and I miss it but I'm also far out of practice. We'll see what the weather is looking like and how the chores are going.

Recently I stumbled onto a resource that looks like it may be increasingly helpful, the way things are going with the regime in Washington, D.C. In case you've been looking for something like The Anti-Autocracy Handbook: A Scholars’ Guide to Navigating Democratic Backsliding, click the link. A quick skim suggests it can be useful even to those who aren't scholars. If you scroll and click around a bit, you may well find some other helpful resources at the site. I'm getting more and more frustrated by the lack of really effective pushback at authoritarian Executive Orders combined with incompetence and malfeasance. American Democracy, even with all its flaws, deserves better protection and restoration than we're providing.

[Update, just discovered despite its 1993 publication: 

From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation]

Perhaps the World Ends Here

by Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No Matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

…It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

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

back to the future? again?

The field behind the house is full of Spotted Horsemint, with scatterings of black-eyed Susans and a few compass plants. Purple Lovegrass provides a colorful, mist-like understory, if prairie-like fields can have an understory. Our wet spring seems to have prompted an abundance of late Summer natural beauty for this last week of August.

a cluster of Black-eyed Susan flowers

Photo by J. Harrington

Speaking of late Summer, the weather has taken a definite autumnal turn. Highs are forecast to be in the 70s all week with lows feeling as cool as forties and fifties, thanks to freshened breezes and last night's (early this morning's?) cold front that came through. Good weather for getting caught up on some yard chores that've been deferred due to heat, humidity or thunderstorms.

The elderberry bush in the wet spot behind the house has numerous clusters of berries replacing its midsummer blooms. Our lilac bushes have a few small clumps of flowers that feel out-of-season. We think there's at least one rough(?) blazing star in bloom in a spot not visible from the house. Learning to appreciate little things and natural beauty around us is taking some effort but is worth it, especially during these days when there's so much ugliness in our world. 

From time to time I find myself drifting back to the 1960s and 70s when some of my close friends were semi-hippie, back-to-the-land types. My iPhone has lots of folk music from those days, copied from my CDs. So many of Bob Dylan's lyrics seem prescient and traumatically relevant to today's situations. Or, to quote a refrain from one of Pete Seeger's classics: "When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?" Money isn't speech. Corporations aren't people any more than artificial intellligence is. We are all in this together and all of US need to learn to act that way, as of yesterday.

Back Up Quick They’re Hippies

By Lani O'Hanlon

 

That was the year we drove

into the commune in Cornwall.

“Jesus Jim,” mam said,

“back up quick they’re hippies.”

Through the car window,

tents, row after row, flaps open,

long-haired men and women

curled around each other like babies

and the babies themselves

wandered naked across the grass.

I reached for the handle, ready, almost,

to open the door, drop out and away

from my sister’s aggressive thighs,

Daddy’s slapping hands.

Back home in the Dandelion Market

I unlearnt the steps my mother taught,

bought a headband, an afghan coat,

a fringed skirt — leather skin.

Barefoot on common grass I lay down with kin.

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