Category Archives: Great Work

Great Work, US History

American Prairie Reserve and its conceptual partners

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Summer                                                             First Harvest Moon

Make no little plans.  Daniel Burnham

The American Prairie Reserve fits Burnham, a macro-thinking architect of Chicago.  This is a plan to knit together lands under public management by a private foundation’s purchase of lands from willing sellers.  The goal:  an intact grasslands eco-system, 3,000,000 acres in size, the size conservation biologists estimate is necessary to preserve what was once a dominant ecology in the middle and western U.S.

They’re well on their way as the maps below can show.

A similar idea that I recall from a NYT magazine article years ago is the Buffalo Commons. And the wikipedia information. Apparently it still has some life, too.  It was in part a response to the unsustainable agricultural practices in the mapped area.

And, there’s one I hadn’t heard about, the Western Wildway.  See maps below.

IMAGINE

a grassland reserve of THREE-MILLION acres – a wildlife spectacle that rivals the Serengeti and an AWE-INSPIRING place for you and your children to explore.

Imagine helping to
build a national treasure.

Two maps, the bottom map is current.

 

Great Work, Minnesota, Our Land and Home

Among the Buckthorn

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Summer                                            Solstice Moon

Cleared buckthorn, again, from the area around the grandkid’s playhouse and the fire pit, leaving in serviceberry and small ash trees. Rejuvenating the understory is difficult to impossible with buckthorn present since it chokes out most things shrub size and below.  In certain areas of our woods it’s a remediable problem, those areas not on the boundaries with the neighbors.

Sitting outside now in the evening, watching the fire, has me more tuned up to work in the woods, since up to this point the woods have been an amenity, but not a place where we spent much time or energy.  This kind of work is hard labor, perfect as an alternative to the computer, the mind, the writing.

A local guy, biologist Mark Davis of Macalester College, has a different take on invasive species like buckthorn:

“Davis…believes it’s time to raise the white flag against non-native species. Most non-native species, he said, are harmless—or even helpful.

In a letter published in the journal Nature this past June, Davis and 18 other ecologists argued that these destructive invasive species—or those non-native species that cause ecological or economic harm—are only a tiny subset of non-native species, and that this tiny fraction has basically given all new arrivals a bad name.”

As may be.  As may be.  But I still don’t like the way buckthorn crowds out the serviceberry, ninebark, dogwood, columbine, trillium and jack-in-the-pulpit.  Somehow it doesn’t seem to deter the poison ivy.  If it did, well…

Friends, Garden, Great Work, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

Svalbard

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Summer                                                                            Solstice Moon

Friend Tom Crane and his wife Roxann are going polar.  Not bi polar, but north polar, getting all the way to the 78th parallel.  Pretty damned far north when you consider the pole itself is 90 degrees north.  On a long list of populated areas by latitude there are only three closer to the north pole and I’m guessing they’re not the kind of places you’d go to get lost in.

(Svalbard in brown on a polar projection.)

Two years ago Kate and I visited Ushuaia, Argentina, the fin del mundo, as it bills itself.  It’s where expeditions for Antarctica set forth.  By contrast it is only at the 68th parallel, a full 10 degrees closer to the equator than Svalbard.

This is one lonely location, though it’s not as isolated, interestingly, as the Hawai’ian islands.  But, I’ll bet when you’re there, it feels more isolated.  Tom says he’s drawn to this trip by the very high caliber naturalists who are along to give lectures and guide.

Svalbard came to my attention, as perhaps to yours, not as a tourist destination for an Arctic experience, but as the home of the Svalbard Seed Vault.

(The entrance and the portion under glass were designed by Norwegian artist, Dyveke Sannes.)

What is it?  Here’s a quick explanation from their website:

“The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which is established in the permafrost in the mountains of Svalbard, is designed to store duplicates of seeds from seed collections around the globe. Many of these collections are in developing countries. If seeds are lost, e.g. as a result of natural disasters, war or simply a lack of resources, the seed collections may be reestablished using seeds from Svalbard.”

Here are two typically nordic answers as to why they chose this location, especially the last sentence of reason 2.

1. Svalbard, as Norwegian territory, enjoys security and political and social stability. Norway understands the importance of preserving Svalbard as an area of undisturbed nature, which is now an important research and reference area. The seed vault fits ideally into this concept.

2.  Svalbard has an isolated position far out in the ocean, between 74° and 81° N and only 1000 kilometres from the North Pole. The archipelago is characterised by an undisturbed nature. Permafrost provides stable storage conditions for seeds. Besides which there is little risk of local dispersion of seed.

 

 

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work, Third Phase

the moon

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Summer                                                                    Solstice Moon

The super moon has come and gone, the moon only its normal lunarity tonight.  Deciding that each moon at perigee is a super moon strains the adjective too far.  The marginally larger and closer moon would be truer.

The lead up to the super moon did reignite my never far dormant moon watching passion.  This Japanese ritual seems very well suited to life’s third phase.  Quiet, dignified, can be done without glasses at home.  No money changes hands.  A glass of tea, or a shot of single malt, a beer.  Some cheese and the moon beside us on the deck.

As our closest neighbor in the overwhelming emptiness that is our universe, the moon has a special place, a unique place in our lives.  It illumines the night, goes through its phases each lunar month, defining tides and creating romantic moments.

I’m finding it hard to describe why the moon fascinates me so much.  Not about astronomy.  Or moon walks.  Something about its floating, silvery presence.  A silent partner to the dark its moods changes with the seasons.  The floating harvest moon, round and large and orange differs from the white full moon that passes through the cold skies of the winter solstice time.  The moon of the summer can preside over long evenings outside, a dim lantern providing just the right amount of just the right kind of light.

It also figures in story and myth.  The goddess Diana and her crescent moon, which appears in so many portraits of the virgin mary, especially our Lady of Guadalupe.  Lon Chaney’s version of the Wolfman:  “Even a man who is pure at heart, and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.”

Not quite getting there and I’m tired.  Will try again soon.

Bees, Family, Feelings, Great Work

Bee Diary: The Ruth Entry

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Summer                                                                              Solstice Moon

Took grand-daughter Ruth with me on a hive inspection today.  I showed her how to fire up the smoker, use a hive tool, check for brood and move slowly when working with the bees.  She hung in there, saying a couple of times, “Now it’s making me really afraid.” but not moving away.  Gradually her fear receded.  Now she can back me up when I need help.

There’s something profound about sharing a passion with a grandchild, as Kate has done already with Ruth and sewing.  Whether they choose to pick it up or not, the indelible memories, for both Ruth and me in this instance, speak of today and tomorrow walking the ancientrail of life together.

Because, like most current beekeepers, I have 9 frames to a 10 frame hive box, the frames are easier to manage that way, the bees often fill up the empty space with comb and honey.  I harvested a lot of this today, so we have fresh comb honey, both comb and honey made in the last week.

 

Great Work, Sierra Club

No country or corporation has the right to pollute the air at the expense of Singaporeans’ health and wellbeing.

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Beltane                                                                                     Solstice Moon

Linking the story from Singapore to this article in the New York Review of Books,  Collapse and Crash, JUNE 20, 2013, Bill McKibben, gives me a chance to promote your reading of Bill McKibben’s fine review of a book by engineer Henry Petroski, To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure.

(our very own engineering failure)

Though the book sounds interesting in its own right, it preaches failure as the great teacher, it’s McKibben’s context for his review that made me really pay attention.  In it he observes that many failures, perhaps most engineering failures, result in serious questioning of existing standards and often their revision.

And that’s just the rub now.  Mother Earth no longer acts according to the rules of the Holocene, the period since the end of the last Ice Age.  Temperature has risen on average about 1 degree around the globe.  And will rise more.  One thing this does, McKibben points out, is add energy to meteorological phenomenon, producing more tornadoes, more severe thunderstorms and, take just these two, increases stress on buildings, dams, sewer systems, stresses that were previously adjudged to be 50 year or 100 year or 500 year events, now occurring much more frequently.

How do engineers design structures safely and, a critical point, economically in such a plastic environment?  Then, as McKibben also points out, those who travel with the engineers, bond agencies and insurance companies, face an uncertain and novel setting for their work, too.

My sense is that McKibben, a well known environmentalist, has begun to point out the real time effects of global warming, not just the overall, omg the ice is melting, but it will also cost us money and lives and create a unique, unknown future.

GeekWorld, Great Work

It’s the Bomb!

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Beltane                                                                           Solstice Moon

Friend and Woolly Tom Crane read my reference to the nuclear option (pulling pants down) in a previous post and reflected:  “Some folks in the fifties saw the results firsthand [of the nuclear option] and got up from the table saying “we just can’t do this, cause look what we are doing:  we could destroy the planet in just an hour or two!”

See this clip from a test of the first H-bomb.

He then went on to observe that we can’t go somewhere, say the Bikini Atoll of the Marshall Islands, and watch the degradation of the atmosphere by carbon pollution or the over fishing of the oceans or consumption of fresh water at a rate the skies cannot replenish.  If we could, he wondered, might we come to the same conclusion, that this, too, is madness?

And could we, also, become aware of our co-creative powers in that very destruction as we switch on the air conditioner, drive to the store for a loaf of bread or eat cod?  An intriguing and thoughtful idea.

Great Work

Beaver kills man in Belarus

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Beltane                                                                            Early Growth Moon

I read this breathless title and clicked through to see what was going on.  The article refers to it as one of several animal attacks turned deadly.

Posting this because it illustrates wrong use of language, you know, like War on Terror.  How much different would your reaction to this be if the article had this title:  Beaver defends self against human attack.

These paragraph are about three-quarters or more down in the article:

“The fisherman, who has not been named at the request of his family, was driving with friends toward the Shestakovskoye lake, west of the capital, Minsk, when he spotted the beaver along the side of the road and stopped the car. As he tried to grab the animal to have his picture taken, it bit him several times. One of the bites cut a major artery in his leg, according to Sulim.

The man’s friends were unable to stem the bleeding, and he was pronounced dead when he arrived at Sulim’s clinic in the village of Ostromechevo.

He is the only person known to have died from a beaver attack in Belarus.”

 

Garden, Great Work, Humanities, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Weather +Climate

Roots

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Beltane                                                                                  Early Growth Moon

“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.”
Simone Weil

 

 

Not surprising this is an unrecognized need because for most people for most of human history being other than rooted was not an option.  You were born within the sound of a church bell or a muezzin or a farm dinner bell and never got beyond them.

(Jean-Léon Gérôme. A Muezzin Calling from the Top of a Minaret the Faithful to Prayer (1879)

It is only as the world has begun to urbanize that we have had to consider our roots, or the lack of them.  In the US only 5% of the population lived in cities in 1800, but 50% did by 1920.  80% do now.  This trend is global.  In 2008 for the first time in history over 50% of the world’s population live in cities.  Interestingly one website on urbanization made this point, since no more than 100% of a population can live in cities, urbanization will come to a foreseeable end.

It is, though, this great hollowing of rural areas that underlines our need for roots just at the point when we realize we no longer have them.  Or, rather, it is this realization that makes the need for roots evident.

Let’s stick to the vegetative metaphor.  Roots say where we are planted, where we have pushed organs for receiving nourishment deep into the soil, even into the subsoil of the place where we live.  Yes, you might want to talk about relationships and regular shops and schools and sports teams, yes, those things are part of a broad understanding of the metaphor, but I’m wanting to stay closer to the plant.

(I worked in this factory when I was in high school, 1968.  Johns-Manville)

If we eat local food, our bodies themselves become literally one with the earth in a particular locale.  Knowing where we are, not only in terms of street names and legalities, but also in terms of trees, food crops, fish, game, local meats, birds, flowers, grasses, even the so-called weeds is also part of having roots.  Embracing the weather, the local changes, as in part defining who you are, that’s having roots.

It is, I think, these things that disorient us the most when we move away from our home.  We think it’s the people or the customs or the new boulevards and highways, but in a deeper place, in the place where you know you are, it’s the Indian paintbrush that no longer shows up, the alligator not waiting in the pond,  the summer that fades too soon or lasts too long, these things make us not only feel disconnected from the place where we are; they are in fact the evidence of our disconnection.

(fall harvest, 2011, Andover)

If we have roots, we usually don’t know it; if we’re missing them, well…