Category Archives: Politics

Family, Great Work, Politics

Barking Dogs

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Summer                     Waxing Green Corn Moon

Oh, oh.  The neighbor called and said our dogs barked constantly from 3pm to 7pm.  He’s home all the time now with his m.s.  I empathize with him about barking dogs, even my own, because they drive me nuts, too.  I doubt they barked the whole time, but it did probably seem like it.  Have to manage them for noise again.  That means keeping the two mouthy whippets, Hilo and Emma, inside more.  They won’t mind that a bit.

On a sad note tonight was Max’s last night.  Tom said today that he and Roxanne had an appointment with the vet tonight.  Max was a sweet dog, a wounded soul from his previous owner, but with more depth of character because of it.  I’ll miss him.

Worked out and then went into the meeting of the Clean Energy and Renewable Energy Committee.  The first hour of the meeting was a presentation by Steve Taff, an ag economist/environmental economist, on low carbon fuel standards.  He advocates keeping the focus on reducing carbon build up rather than on the policy tool.

Another important part of his presentation involved the complexity of the various policy areas:  low carbon fuel standards, CAFE standards and cap and trade.  The tendency, he says, is to consider only one policy area at a time and to ignore the total field of policy initiatives.  Keeping the whole field in mind is key to the eventual development of effective green house gas reductions.

Over the upcoming weeks I’ll unpack some of this jargon.

The committee understood the need for taking the initiative with developing legislative priorities.  Makes my work easier.

Politics

My Congressional Representative Working For the 6th District

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Summer                    Waxing Green Corn Moon

“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.” – Jonathan Swift

OK.  I suffered through Jesse Ventura as my governor and Rod Grams as my Senator, but what did I do oh Lord to deserve this congresswoman?

Bachman blocks resolution declaring Hawaii to be Obama’s birthplace

“Today, Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) introduced a resolution commemorating the 50th anniversary of Hawaii’s statehood. The resolution also proclaims the state as President Obama’s birthplace, a point the Plum Line’s Greg Sargent noted may “put House GOPers who are flirting with birtherism in a jam.” This afternoon on the House floor, Abercrombie spoke of his measure and specifically noted that Obama had been born in Hawaii. “It’s also going to be the birthday in a week or so of President Obama, born in Kapiolani hospital just down the road from where I lived,” he said. Just as the presiding chair of the House, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), was about to declare the resolution passed by voice vote, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) stood and objected:

BACHMANN: Mr. Speaker? I object to the vote on the grounds that a quorum is not present and make a point of order that a quorum is not present. […]”

My favorite comment on this report:

noseeum says:

I want to see Bachman and Palin in a cage match for the Re-nut-ican nomination.
July 27th, 2009 at 5:53 pm

Art and Culture, Family, Politics, Weather +Climate

A Good Day

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Summer                         Waxing Green Corn Moon

A good day to work outside.  Still gotta fix the netaphim since other matters interfered the last couple of days.  Lots of weeding to do.  Even in a drought our watering supports the weeds just as it does the vegetables and flowers.

The Minneapolis Art Institute balanced its books.  That’s a good thing.  Those who work and volunteer there know the last year saw colleagues cut from the work force and strain was present.

Sierra Club legislative work is in a quiet spot right now.  The legislative agenda setting process kicks into high gear next month, then moves like a freight train rolling down hill right through May of 2010.  The work requires attention and building of new relationships.  That all takes time.

solomonThe kids have a new puppy, Solomon, continuing the theme of traditional Jewish names for the German short-hair in the house.

It’s funny the way camera angles often emphasize the head.  This shot looks like Solomon has the head for making wise judgments put on the body of a Chihuahua.

Herschel, Solomon’s elder, has cancer and is not expected to live much longer.

The Star-Trib weatherblog has gotten less attention than it deserves this last month and a half.  Three blogs  Sierra Club, weather and Ancientrails proved too demanding.  Even two can be a lot.  Giving up the Sierra Club blog made sense when the Legislative Committee Chair position came along.

Family, Politics

Vega. Still.

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Summer                             Waxing Green Corn Moon

Vega the wonder dog continues to add mischief and joy to our lives.  She climbed up on the kitchen table after treats we foolishly left there.  Yesterday she took the door-stop we use to lock our sliding door at night and happily chewed on it.  Yesterday, after the mulberry tree went down, Vega picked up the downed branches, chewed them and distributed them widely.

All this and still no ring.

Obama has fallen from grace a bit, his poll numbers have gone down.  This makes sense and shows a president of color, or the eventual first woman president, will have to perform.  That is as it should be.  No one gets a pass when the health of the nation is on the line, no matter what.  Does this mean Obama has failed to live up to expectations?  Yes, but the expectations represented the type of governance no person can achieve.  Now we have to learn how to adjust our understanding of who he is and what he can accomplish.  Just like we’ve had to do with every president of every era.

Tomorrow more work outside.

Bees, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, permaculture, Politics

In the Garden

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Summer                        New Moon

A.T. used the chainsaw this morning.  He cut out a mulberry tree growing in an unwanted (eastern) location.  A.T. feels manly after he uses the chainsaw.

Kate and A.T. harvested peas, greens, beets and turnips, too.  A.T. planted beans as a cover crop among the onions, where the garlic came out.  A.T. plans a much larger garlic crop for next year.  He has 9 or so large bulbs set aside for planting and set in an order for several new varieties.  At the SSE (Seed Saver’s Exchange) conference over the weekend a speaker suggested planting the garlic earlier, even in August.  A.T. asked SSE if he could get his garlic earlier than the September 7-9 ship date.  Nope.  Not to  worry, he’ll plant his own in mid-August and check the crops against each other next June.

This whole gardening process now begins to blur the line between horticulture and agriculture.  With crops meant for immediate consumption, but others for storage:  potatoes, turnips, carrots, squash, beans, garlic, onions, greens and peas, plus the eventual fruit yields, our garden has become a substantial part of our lives.  Substantial in the transubstantiation notion loved by Catholics.  We eat of the body of our garden and our orchard and in our bodies it becomes use, transfigured from plant to human.  A sacred event.  Substantial in the way it requires the use of our bodies to realize its harvest.  Substantial in the political sense since it cuts down trips by car, makes our place better than we found it and keeps us close to our mother.

The bees have added another dimension.  An interdependent, co-creative collaborative effort.

Faith and Spirituality, Politics, Woolly Mammoths

No Ring. Yet.

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Summer                            Sliver of the Waning Summer Moon

Inquiring minds want to know.  No, Antra, no joy yet.  There are still a few possibilities but the weekend trip and a busy day has not left me time to go check.  We have approximately an acre and a half fenced and 2/3rds of that is woods, so we may never find it.

Woolly’s tonight.  We discussed Good and Evil in our own lives.  Tom Crane showed a wonderful documentary about a French region focused on Champion sur Lignon.  The people in this whole region hid Jews during WWII.  In interviews with them after the fact they implied that they just did it.   It was a very moving story.  It hit me especially since they were Huguenots, the group to which John Know belonged.  Their position relative to helping the Jews I recognized from work within the Reformed tradition.  Then, too, clergy played a direct role in the attitudes that led to their extraordinary, yet very ordinary actions.

Great Work, permaculture, Politics

A Meeting

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Summer                             Waning Summer Moon

Today I went over to the Westside (St. Paul) to Neighborhood House for a meeting.  In days now long past I use to go there quite bit when Eustolio Benavides was its director.   We worked on a few projects together.  He got bounced out, I think, but nobody I talked to remembered him.

This meeting was an initial one to get the legislative agenda setting process underway for the collaborative structure, Minnesota Environmental Partnership.  The Sierra Club is a member and as the new legislative committee chair I attended.  I haven’t been in a large room filled with people like this in quite a while.  I knew only Dan Andreson, now the lobbyist for Clean Water Action and my immediate predecessor as chair of the LegCom as the Sierra Club names its legislative committee.

Since the players are new to me, the individuals new to me and the politics of the environmental organizational community still pretty opaque to me, I just sat there, took notes and listened.

The meeting finished at 4:30 p.m., putting me right in the middle of the evening rush so I drove up to Saji Ya on Grand Avenue and had some chirsahi as the highways untangled themselves.

In the old days I used to say, “Another day, another meeting.”  Now they’re a bit unusual.  I don’t dislike meetings.  A lot of folks I know profess a dislike for them, but I consider them one way of getting work done.   This one was the start of a long process.

Art and Culture, Garden, permaculture, Politics

My life, now

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Summer                                  Waning Summer Moon

Vega the wonder dog has:  shredded the netaphim irrigation,  chewed up a length of high quality hose, swallowed my wedding ring, peed on the bench cushion Kate made and, most recently, peed on our oriental carpet.  As a result we have:  put up a split rail fence, done loads of laundry and taken the oriental in to the rug laundry.

On the upside, she’s irrepressible, enthusiastic and downright funny.  Her sister Rigel, a sweet girl and a lover, seems bland in comparison, but they have the same parents.

This weekend I’m off to Decorah, Iowa for a conference at the Seed Saver’s Exchange farm.  There will be lots of information on organic farming/gardening, wagon rides, two speeches on heirloom vegetables, a presentation on Heritage Poultry and a barn dance.  There will be workshops on saving seeds, garlic, potatoes, hand-pollination and bud grafting.

This turn toward permaculture, horticulture, gardening was a gradual process.  It sort of snuck up on me as I dabbled in perennials on Edgcumbe in St. Paul, grew some vegetables, then did a bit more after we moved to Andover.  Later, I took a horticultural degree by mail from London University in Guelph, Ontario.  At some further point I began to read about permaculture, picked up Bill Mollison’s book and began to make contacts locally.

The real spur to push further on all this was a conference Kate and I attended in Iowa City three years ago now.  Run by Physician’s for Social Responsibility it convinced me that I needed to turn my activist attention toward environmental matters.

It took a while to get going but I got myself on the Sierra Club’s political committee last year in the summer, then followed up with work on the Club’s legislative committee this last session writing a blog.  Last September we hired ecological gardens to do a permaculture design for the whole property and made a push to get the orchard planted that fall so it would have the benefit of a full growing season this year.

This gives me work outside, in the political arena and, as a Docent, in aesthetic and intellectual realms.  A really good deal for me.  As always, thanks, Kate.

Garden, Great Work, Politics

Mulch

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Summer              Waxing Summer Moon

The six cubic yard of mulch pile has become several piles of mulch at strategic locations along the paths and beds of last year’s orchard installation.  Now it awaits distribution, looking like debris fields from some recent wooden mountain slide.  Mulch serves many purposes in the garden.  Winter mulch keeps the ground cold during spring’s heaves as the earth thaws and refreezes.  Summer mulch helps in weed suppression, keeps the ground cool to avoid plants getting overheated and helps hold moisture in the soil during hot weather.

Mulch in the orchard serves mainly to suppress weeds and to give a uniform look to the beds and paths, but it has one important purpose that Paula Westmoreland of Ecological Gardens taught me.  She says the breakdown of wood chips gives a different boost to soil chemistry, one more favorable to perennial plants while straw works better for annual plants like vegetables.  I don’t understand it, but she seemed very confident.

I drove into Panera’s in Northeast for a meeting with Dan Endreson, outgoing legislative committee chair of the Sierra Club and Margaret Levin, its executive director.  We went over the past patterns of developing agendas for the upcoming legislative session.  Dan made me a disc of all the documents that had been useful for him and the committee over the last four sessions while he’s been active.

It’s fun to get into a responsible role in an issue area I feel is important and in an aspect of the work that involves politics.  The future looks like lots of meetings, phone calls and work in or around the capitol.

The kids are on their way back here from a 4th of July spent in Chicago with Jen’s family.  Herschel will be happy to see his family again.

Garden, Great Work, Holidays, permaculture, Politics

As American As …

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Summer                                   Waxing Summer Moon

As american as stock-car racing, country music, Walden Pond and the Beach Boys, another long hot summer is well under way.  The neighbors love fireworks and each fourth of July they show off the good stuff they’ve picked up.  Some of it is impressive for local effects.  Flowering showers with a boom at the end.  Fiery pinwheels with whistles.  Percussive blasts.

Rigel and Vega did not get as upset tonight as they did last night.  Reassurance and familiarity are a powerful antidote.

The harvest continues and picks up speed.  Tonight I made a dish with chard and beet greens, topped with baked beets in Balsamic vinegar.  There was, too, roasted turnips covered in olive oil, pepper and Kosher salt.  Potato crusted wild Cod finished the meal.

The Seed Saver’s Exchange calendar that hangs on our kitchen wall has this quote under July’s photograph of heirloom tomatoes, onions and bell peppers:  “When the harvest begins to flow is the gardener’s joy.”  It’s true.

Digging up turnips and beets, cleaning and cooking them feels so good when they’ve come direct from the garden.  Though there are political reasons for having one, ecological reasons  and aesthetic reasons, the real payoff from a garden is fresh food, grown in a manner you know and in a place with which you are familiar, even intimate.

There are certain activities that just seem congruent with life.  Among them are picking, cleaning and cooking your own vegetables.  When I dig up the turnips and the beets, I remember the day their seeds went into the ground, one at a time.  Their first shoots.  Their growth over time.  All part of my life and theirs.

Another tradition of the fourth at our house is a meal with dishes cooked from our own sources.  Hope yours went well, too.