• Tag Archives Minnesota
  • The Moral Arc

    Beltane                                                                    Early Growth Moon

    Gay marriage.  Yes.  That the vote to pass this measure in Minnesota might come two days after mother’s day.  Priceless.

    In the long, long exile of a left perspective from the American political scene, beginning somewhere around Nixon and only now gradually beginning to lift and even now sporadically and with drone inflected interludes of neo-con thinking, it was Martin Luther King’s prescient rhetorical flourish that sustained me:  “The moral arc of the universe may be long, but it bends toward justice.”

    And, I mean that.  When Reagan busted the air traffic controllers union, when he cut welfare programs and raised defense spending, when Bush I was elected and couldn’t recall what a grocery store scanner was for, when Clinton continued the dismantling of our welfare system and most dismally of all, when Bush II was elected by the Supreme Court, then reelected even after his fatal rhetorical flourishes, Axis of Evil and Mission Accomplished, even then I knew that history opens toward freedom and the breaking of tradition-forged chains and when that freedom comes and the chain’s links lie broken in the street, time does not revert.

    Now, marriage will become, here in Minnesota at least, an expression of love between two people willing to commit to each other in a long-term, legally binding relationship.  There is not now and there never has been any problem with that.  But often the obvious and political reality don’t match.  Ask the atmosphere.  Rending the disjunction between justice and social reality was the focus of King’s life, Ghandi’s too; it is our focus as well, those who would end economic discrimination, further women’s full integration into life at all levels and make the world’s borders as open as possible.

     


  • Minnesota: Where We Are

    Beltane                                   Waxing Strawberry Moon

    Had another bowl of strawberries fresh from the patch, grown under the Strawberry Moon.  There’s something special about food that comes from your own land, nurtured by your own hands, a something special beyond the nutritional and taste benefits.  It relates to be who you are because of where you are.  We’re a Seven Oaks family and you can’t be a Seven Oaks family if you live in Ohio.

    I had another frisson of this yesterday when I sat in the Minnesota Environmental Partnership offices and looked across the conference table to a black and white photograph of a boundary waters lake.  Since I shifted my political work to the environmental and away from the economic four years ago, I have sat in meeting after meeting (the unglamorous fact of political life) dedicated to making this state’s overall environment better in some way.  Seeing that photograph as we discussed initiatives for energy in Minnesota, the context for our work snapped into place.

    We’re talking about our home, this place, the place where we are who we are because we are here.  You could say a gestalt of the work gelled.

    Been a little down since yesterday’s stop by the policeman.  It embarrasses me, as it is supposed to do, and calls the rest of my life into question, which it is not.  Then, my Latin tutoring session today found me floundering, wondering where my mind had been when the rest of me engaged this week’s translation from English to Latin.  Mix it up with the fact that I missed my nap yesterday and my exercise.  Result:  glum. In spite of the sun.

    So. Exercise now.  It always makes me feel better.


  • Hard Rock Mining and Minnesota

    Lughnasa                            Waning Harvest Moon

    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.


  • Put on the Mad Bomber, Baby. It’s Cold Outside.

    -3  78%  27%  0mph WNW bar30.16  steady  windchill-3  Winter

                First Quarter of the Winter Moon

    “Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize, or accept another’s dogmatism.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

    La Ñina, el ñino’s cooler sister, has forced the jet stream to the south, leaving us without atomspheric protection from the frigid arctic air.  There is nothing but water and tundra between us and the North Pole, so when this happens our temperature plummets.  It was -9 at 7:00 AM this morning.  Though no one who doesn’t share our winter understands it, this is the weather that defines us as Minnesotans and most of us look forward to it.  It requires coping skills passed on from generation to generation and from natives to newcomers.  In the old days we brought our car batteries inside, bought engine block heaters.  Now we buy wicking thermal underwear, Mad Bomber hats, Sorel boots and put our cars in garages if we can.  When I moved to Minnesota in 1970, the seminary housing had electrical outlets in front of each parking spot in the student residence parking lot.  I thought, oh, my.

    The snow cover has faded, though it’s still there. If we don’t get more snow, I’m going to have to lay down straw in a few spots, though the areas I had concerns about, mostly the newly planted garlic bed, already have their mulch.