Aging, Dogs, Great Work, Politics
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Yesterday and today were full of new information, new faces.  Both days challenged my capacity to sit in one place for a long time.  The 40+ Aeron chairs in the Minnesota Foundation’s board room made finding a good chair easy and did make the day more bearable than the plastic backed metal chairs in the Northstar Ballroom.  Both days were long and challenging mentally.  A good thing.  But tiring.

Tomorrow Kate and I go see our financial planners, I call it visiting our money.  We want to discuss how they will generate cash for our payouts and have them run them run our projections using a 4% drawdown rather than the 4.6/4.7% they used.  This will give us a new and hopefully longer time horizon before our money runs out, but it will also shrink the amount of money available each year.  This is a trade-off than another consultant, Ruth Hayden, says is necessary since we’re all living longer.

Unless you are very wealthy, living large and living longer are incompatible.  That’s not to say we will, in any wise, be hurting in retirement; it does mean the cruises, trips to Hawaii and expensive purchases will have to be truncated.  Bearable.  Our life does not revolve around luxury.

The solution to our fence jumpers, according to Junior Lehman, the breeder and caretaker for a large pack of hounds, is an electrified fence.  I thought this was most likely the cheapest and easiest solution, but until I heard from somebody with some experience I didn’t want to spend money on it.  Now it will be off to Fleet Farm and hopefully we can begin letting Rigel and Vega outside again to romp and play, develop as dogs.

Great Work, Minnesota, Politics

Give Me a Good Balance Sheet

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Back from a day of hard rock mining,  a lot of rock and little roll.  One of the criticisms of the environmental movement focuses on its obsession with chemistry, geology, climatology and animal living conditions to the exclusion of human concerns.   The session today on Polymet Mining’s proposal to put a copper mine near Minnesota’s Iron Range proved the point, though it would also have applied to the industry representatives who were there as well.

This was a day of law, FeS2 and FeOS2.  A cascade of copper, nickel, palladium and platinum tinkled onto the audience.  This fight, and it is a fight, has clear sides and the sides have been at it long enough that they know each other by first names and recall each others data from meetings in the past.

Not the cozy day, though, that might seem natural in a Minnesota nice crowd like the one gathered at the Northstar Ballroom in the St. Paul Campus Student Center.

The information presented today may have been old news to many in the room, but it was new to me.  This is a complex issue for several reasons, the chemical reactions that lead to sulfuric acid in the groundwater being the cause celebre, but far from the only one.  There is, too, the tendency of mining companies to exhaust a resource, close the mine and go bankrupt after loading the assets onto another corporate entity.  The tax payers get stuck with the clean up bill.

In addition the cyclical nature of metal prices accentuates the boom and bust nature of resource frontiers, giving the employment situation a roller coaster ride of high times segueing into desperation.

In the end the information that impressed me the most came from a Montana economist named Thomas Powers.  He made the point first about benefits always being trotted out and high-fived while the costs associated with mining get set off to the side.  I came away convinced that if we could get a decent balance sheet for the life cycle of the Polymet plant, public costs and public benefits, that we would have a compelling argument for stopping this mine.

Just another day in the education of a neophyte environmentalist.  But a good one.

Minnesota, Our Land and Home, Politics

Hard Rock Mining and Minnesota

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Up for a bit then out of the house to chase down the wandering puppies.  Again.  Sigh.  This is a problem still in search of a solution.  Harnesses help but the one who needs them most, Rigel, slips out of hers with the ease of a banana escaping its peel.  We have other solutions on tap:  fence, microchip, tags, better harnesses, conversations with our vet and the breeder, but until we come up with something that works we have to alternate them inside and out.  That’s a pain and still requires surveillance.  Oh, well.  We wanted puppies.

Today is a forum on non-ferrous mining in Minnesota.  In other parts of the country like Colorado, Montana and Nevada for example it’s called hard-rock mining.  The degradation caused by this mining includes sulfuric acid drainage into the watershed along with heavy metals.  There is no need to wonder about the devastation caused by this kind of mining.  All you have to do is visit sites in Colorado and Montana.  The question now is whether this kind of mining can be made safe and is the risk to Minnesota waters worth testing such a claim.

This issue has a lot of complicated vectors:  geological, industrial, metallurgical, chemical, hydrological, environmental, political and economic.  My learning curve about it is still pretty steep so I’m looking forward to this forum as a place to advance my knowledge.

Politics

Politics in Minnesota

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I’ve now done a good bit of reading for the lay of the land meeting today at the Minneapolis Foundation. Sponsored by the Minnesota Environmental Partnership it will, as I said the other day, try to establish the real world contours influencing the legislature this year.  Politics In Minnesota (their page handicapping the 2010 Governor’s race) is a great resource for up to the minute inside political news.  It has a free newsletter distributed daily and a pay subscription to a weekly digest that goes deeper and does analysis.

There are also twitter aggregators and blog aggregators for Minnesota politics.  I’ll post links to them later in case you have an interest.

Should be a fun day, except I’ll miss my nap.

Cooking, Garden, permaculture, Sport

Harvest and Preservation

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It changed.  The game.  After half-time most of the time, I expected to see showed up.  How about that 64 yard run by Peterson?  Wow.  Still, it concerned me that we didn’t get more pressure on Brady Quinn.  I’m looking forward to the analysis.

Kate has made grape juice, a lot, from the grapes I picked this morning.  Next is jelly.  I have a role in the preservation process this week.  We discovered last year that gazpacho is a perfect canned soup.  When chilled, it tastes like it was made that day.  A great treat in the middle of winter, a summer vegetable soup.

We also several Guatemalan blue squash.  They run about a foot and a half long and 7-8 inches wide.  Heavy, too.  Taste good.   We still have parsnips (next year), turnips, carrots and potatoes in the ground, probably a beet or two hanging around, too.  Above ground we have lettuce, beans, greens and some more tomatoes.  Kate’s put up 36 quarts of tomatoes so far.

Kate also made use of our dehydrator.  Cucumber chips.  I know, but they taste wonderful.

There’s a lot of room for improvement in next year’s garden, but we feel good about the production this year.  Next year we should get more fruit from our orchard.

Garden, Sport

What Will They Do Next?

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It appears life as a Vikings fan will continue as a pilgrimage through a wasteland of frustration and dashed hopes.  In the first game of the season, at Cleveland, 4-12 or something like that last year, this supposedly Super-Bowl ready team is behind 13-10.  Behind.  Aaarrrrgggghhh.  Each pilgrimage must perforce visit the slough of despond before rising to the heights of the heavenly city (Miami this year) so we’re there early.

On a different note.  After getting groceries this morning, I picked grapes.  Kate makes a wonderful grape jelly from our wild grapes.  They grow all over the woods, but have chosen the six foot fence for a nice run.  As I had my small shears out, cutting the purple bunches from the vine, the Rosetti painting, the Girlhood of Mary Virgin came to mind.  In the background Mary’s father, Joachim, tends to a grapevine.

The harvest is a good time of year and I enjoy the wild harvest as well the domestic one.  This is hunter gatherer behavior, imprinted on us for millennia.  It satisfies a deep need.

General

An Early Morning

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Up since 4:00 am.  Why?  Not sure.  A lot of stuff to do today, a full day tomorrow.  Maybe.  Sleepy.

Could be the Vikings.  I mean, we have expectations this year.  Real ones.  Now we have to see how they look.

Off to the grocery store.

Politics

Impacts on 2010 Legislature. First Draft. Notes.

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Just a few notes so I don’t forget.

Context for this coming session of the legislature:

1.  2010 Governor’s race.

2. Deficit will become larger and impact state budgeting more.  Possibly drive tax increases.

3.  1&2 will make caucus politics chaotic.

4. Legacy $.  Could produce a they got there’s already attitude for env. issues

5. Employment picking up on the range.  Might take some pressure off the mining issue.

6.  Unemployment generally remains high.   Blue-Green Alliance has opportunity.

Bees, Family, permaculture, Politics

Water and Politics

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Kate took her ailing sewing machine up to St. Cloud.  She bought it there.  On the way home she brought maid-rites, a taste of Iowa burger.  Maid-rites have a crumbly hamburger instead of a patty, a little bit like sloppy joes without barbecue sauce.  Kate had not been far from home for several days with this illness.  She’s on the mend now.

The new plantings, shrubs and trees, need water these next few weeks, before it gets cold.  Their roots will uncurl and extend into the soil, go deeper and wider.  By next spring they should need no extra care.  That’s part of the idea behind permaculture, a maintenance free or low maintenance landscape.  Permaculture achieves this in several ways.  Plant guilds, plants that complement each other planted together, and plants native to the eco-system are two primary strategies for achieving this goal.  Productive plants, aided by plant guilds, and native to the region make them naturally disease resistant and adapted to the particular moisture and soil requirements of your site.

Even so, they still need to get established, just like all those college freshmen throughout the land, uprooted from home and having to become part of a new place.

All this meant really long hoses since we have now begun to plant beyond the range our irrigation system.  Since these plants won’t require additional water in the future, it doesn’t make sense to provide new irrigation.

A few limbs and one tree also had to come down to make sure some of the new plants thrive.

I checked the bees today, too.  Still little honey.  I’ve provided the hive and the bees have worked all season, so I’m not unhappy.  Even so, I hope next year I can get some honey.  Don’t know right now what I need to do differently, if anything.

A good part of the afternoon I’ve spent reading Politics In Minnesota weekly reports, a subscription service focused on the ins and outs of Minnesota politics, especially at the state level.  On Monday I’ll attend a Minnesota Environmental Partnership meeting that will try to assess the political context for environmental issues at the legislature next year.  I’m reading ahead.  The context is critical when considering electoral and legislative politics.  Not so much when pushing issue campaigns, at least not in the early stages.  To win, though, requires sensitivity to the political context in which the issue must be resolved.

Dogs, Family

Family

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Alert:  more dog stuff below.

These dogs.  They have a sense of playfulness,  athleticism and a joy in each others company.  And we’re ruining that right now.  We have them on leads because they jump the fence.  They get tangled up in them and have no fun outside,  inside they’re uncertain what all this means and they act unhappy.  Inside, too, their energy, unreleased from vigorous play (and, it must be pointed out, fence jumping) gets expressed.  This is two 75 pound + animals baring their teeth and jumping on each other.

We love it that our dogs have the run of the woods.  They have a shed to hunt under and one to sleep under.  They have woodpiles filled with critters that interest them.  There is a plastic swimming pool they can jump in when its hot and water to drink when they’re thirsty.  They organize themselves into a pack and enjoy each others company.  Being on leads cramps all that.

Right now we’re sad because we can’t figure out how to give these big puppies the freedom they need while keeping them safe and us out of trouble with the law.  A conundrum.  This situation exceeds our doggy knowledge by a lot.  We need help and we’re seeking it from the dog’s breeder, our vet and others who have coon hound experience.