• Tag Archives Clinton

  • Inaugration Day. Bright, Sunny. Cold

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter

    Waning Wolf Moon

    The day has begun well.  Sunshine comes from a sky with cirrus clouds, a nice break after the cloudy weather.

    Today Obama becomes the 44th president of the United States.  After our discussion last night at the Woollies, I realize I do run on a different political path than most.  The politics I care most about happen because citizens, folks like you and me, make them happen: neighborhood economic development, movement toward single payer health plans and initiatives that promote a sustainable human presence on mother earth.

    The players in Washington create the atomsphere in which local politics occur.  That is, a president like George Bush can make federal level policy and bureaucratic administration so obstructive that local politics become shoring up of dikes, attempts to stave off catastrophe in poor communities or in rivers and streams, woodlands and lakes.  In the best case a president like Obama can make local politics the art of adapting federal level initiatives to particular places, particular situations while continuing the local political level work that has no federal equivalent.

    Whether Obama can turn the great ship US Bureaucracy and Law very far from its collision course with the natural world remains to be seen.  Presidents don’t matter much to me unless, as in George W. Bush’s case and Ronald Reagan’s, they ignore science, shove aside the poor and pretend the rest of the world doesn’t matter.   Yes, they entangle us in wars and produce fiscal policy that either mainline’s greed or provides reasonable checks and balances, and, yes, these matters are of crucial importance to certain people in certain situations; but my day to day reality, the politics of economic justice and the politics of sound ecology, must go forward no matter what the national government does.

    So, I hope Obama will prove helpful in some way, but I’m not counting on it.  We still have to push the Clean Car initiatives and Mining without Harm.  Programs to help folks get back to work have to get money from somewhere.  Affordable housing has to get built.

    In my youth I believed, along with many of my contemporaries, that a mass movement could push the federal government into stopping a war, creating a just economic society and dismantling racial barriers.  Now I understand that it is much more important to keep on working at the local level, doing those things that are necessary to  move what can be moved.  Why?  Because anticipating the federal government will, with a single whoosh, solve a problem is like imagining Daddy can come and solve everyone of your problems.  Can Dad help?  Sure.  But only if you’re ready and able to receive help.  That’s the local politics.  And it goes on whether Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton is in office, Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter, and, yes, George W. Bush or Barack Obama.


    📂This entry was posted in Politics Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • Plants and a Particular Location + Gardener = Dialogue

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    40  bar falls 30.27  6mph  SSE  dewpoint 24  Spring

              Last Quarter Moon of Winds

    Ah.  Can you feel the sigh?  A weekend with no outside obligations at all.  I plan to do clean up, plant some more seeds, read, maybe watch a bit more of the NCAA.  How about that Davidson, huh?  Took out Wisconsin.  That’s a student body of 1,700 versus one of what, 30,000?  I will read chapter 3 in the Permaculture design book for sure, perhaps polish off a novel or two, maybe start writing one of my own.  I have an idea that’s been bouncing around for some time now.

    Tonight at 5PM I get to celebrate Chinese New Year again with the CIF guides.  I look forward to this each year, this one especially because I’ve done my homework on China and Japan over the last few months.  Saw MingJen, who organizes this event, on Wednesday at the Naomi Kawase film, The Mourning Forest.

    If you can, would you write Hillary and tell her to get out now?  We need a chance to even up with McCain and a bitter end to the Democratic primary race just lets him have the field to himself.  I don’t have anything against Hillary, in fact she and Obama are about a horse apiece politically, but Obama has won the field, has the delegates and deserves his chance.  Hillary will have another shot.  She’s established that a woman can run as a serious candidate, a remarkable and historic achievement in itself.  Nothing in the feminist revolution demands that women win all contests or get all the jobs. 

    Snow continues to retreat in our yard, but slowly.  As in years past, the Perlick’s grass is almost fully visible, while ours remains under 6-8 inches of snow.  They face south, we face north and that makes all the difference.  Spring comes to our property about a week later than theirs, weird as that is. 

    On Thursday I followed the dog tracks in the snow and went out to check on my trees planted last spring.  Some animal, either rabbits or deer, have eaten the tops of them down to the garden hose I put around them as protection from mice.  I didn’t think tall enough up the food chain.   These were the trees I planted nearest the area we call the park.  Further north, also on the eastern edge of our westernmost woods, another group of oaks, white pines and Norway pines look like they’ve done well over the winter. 

    This is the nature of gardening.  Try this and it works.  Try that and it doesn’t.  Listen.  Repeat what worked, change what didn’t.  Plants and a particular location engage the attentive gardener or horticulturist (as I’m beginning to think of myself) in a constant dialogue as shade patterns change, seasonal sun shifts become more understood, rain falls or does not fall and various cultivars and seeds prove well suited to the site or not.  This dialogue is multi-lingual as one party communicates in one language and the other has to translate, but it is true discourse as each can alter the others ideas.      


    📂This entry was posted in Friends Garden General Great Work Our Land and Home Politics 📎and tagged

  • Bared Roots and All

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    38  73% 23% 0mph SSW bar29.12 steady  windchill39  Winter

                           Last Quarter of the Winter Moon

    Think I lost a post somewhere in cyber space, one from this morning. 

    A miscellaneous day so far.  Kate and I decided on the kinds of vegetables we want to grow.  Next I’ll look at her choices for varieties and the seeds we bought at Seed Saver’s Exchange outside Decorah, Iowa.  With those in mind I’ll put together a planting plan which will include when to plant or start seeds indoors, companion plants, a plan for optimum soil rotation over the years and the amount of vegetables we plan to consume over the summer and fall, plus those we want to put away in the root cellar-to-be or through canning or freezing.  If I have to order some new seeds or plants, I’ll get those orders in early.  I’ll also put together a tree and shrub order for the bare root plants that the Anoka County Conservation folk sell in early May.

    Later I edited my sermon for March 23rd, a sort of where I am now in my own theological/ge-ological thinking.  Decided to wait until March to put together the one page digest on Transcendentalism so I’ll be familiar with it as the day arrives.

    Ordered some meds.  Lipitor this time.  Took a nap that included another dog filled dream. 

    I also finished all the material I printed out from the Real Politics website on the Democratic race.  It’s a real nubby matter right now with conflicting data, streaks rather than whole waves of momentum.  So far Clinton remains ahead in national polls, but the electorate is tricky when they sense someone fading in the stretch.  They’ll bale and move toward someone they believe can win.  How white men and Latinos vote may decide the race.

    Doesn’t seem like much, but it took all day.  time for a workout.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden Politics 📎and tagged