Prepping for Un-Thanksgiving

Family get-together (all 5 grandkids included) Sunday in Fox Point. Sort of a pre-T'Gving party, but with no turkey allowed. And that puts me in the enviable position of getting to provide some alternative viande, and that gives me the opportunity to see if I can meet the high BBQ brisket bar Bri has established. (I am following his direction, but brisket prep is a delicate, day-long operation with much room for error.) So, the flat has been rubbed with a fabulous rub and is now chilling in the fridge. The Big Green Egg has been appropriately rigged, and loaded with hardwood charcoal. Pecan chips are soaking in the sink.

The only complicaton—snow. Winter storm warning in effect, with 6 to 10 predicted. It took repeated attempts, separated by many hours, to get the cranky snow-blower to start, but eventually, in a vast cloud of blue smoke, it sprang to life. Then, a few minutes later, when visibility was finally returning, neighbor Bill came over to tell me that when he tried starting up his machine yesterday the only result was a puddle of gasoline on the garage floor. Bill is an early riser, and a dedicated snow blower, so our trusty old machine is now in his garage; and I know that when I hear it roar by tomorow morning it wil be time go get up.

Aye, there's the rub. 

And here we have the brisket meister (on the left) issuing instructions, while the rooftop farmer (on the right) is sampling local foodstuff. 

Growing Power

While Mimi took Will to school at the Schlitz Audubon Center,  Ab and I went to Growing Power, the world renowned urban farm (which turned out to be) on the outskirts of Milwaukee (although we always thought it was somewhere in the inner city). I have been thinking about this place for decades. I've heard the founder, Will Allen, speak at conferences. And I've always meant to visit.

Today Ab and I did. 

In brief, it was interesting, but far, far, far, from what I was expecting—actually, something of a shabby reality check (which from time to time is probably a good thing).  The photos below are of the exterior, but it is only fair to say that most of the operation occurs in half a dozen decrepit greenhouses that Allen purchased long ago, and at other parcels of land located out in farm country.

Snarly wind and steadily dropping temperatures. Snow in the forecast.  

Puddles Everywhere

Lots and lots of rain, resulting in puddles. 

And here is homeroom at Will's preschool. A change of clothes was necessary before heading into the classroom. Meanwhile, Katy is writing a book titled, "The Boy Who Turned Into a Dog." 

Day of Rain...

...causing forced idleness, some arm-chair reading, a trip to the coffee shop, computer work, and short dog-walks.

A fat ribbon of rain (as seen on on radar) has been streaming northward, from Rockport to Sault Ste. Marie, all day, just barely inching westward. Although it looks like the heaviest dumps have been in the St. Louis area, we are getting significant moisture, which is good for the Canada hemlock planted in the way-back a few years ago. I had pretty much given up on the tree, but am now delighted to see it staging a strong comeback.

Puddle at base of birch.  

Nervous on the Prairie

Pax is still under the influence of the Blackhaws football game— very ambivalent about what is normally his favorite thing, walking in the prairie. He must still be hearing echos of touchdown canon fire. 

It seems I've always been a commoner, that is a person who believes in the concept and in the actuality of various commons.

In France, all along the foothills of the Jura Mountains (to the west of Geneva, Switzerland) each lovely little farm has a right to a certain amount of wood (timber, firewood) from the forest up above.

On Turtle Island (North America pre-Columbus) almost everything was held in common, and private property seemed incomprehensible.

Then in 1968 Garrett Hardin wrote the influential essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons," in which he argued that a commons will never work because individuals acting rationally in their own self interest will always try to take more than their fair share, more than is sustainable, and the commons will be destroyed.

Luckily, Elinor Ostrom came to the rescue and proved that a commons does not always end in tragedy. Ostrom, professor at University of Indiana and long time Manitoulin summer resident, won a Nobel prize researching and demonstrating how commons around the world, like those in the Jura foothills, can prosper over millennia. The secret, she discovered, is local control—the people who actually live near and use the commons, common as they might be, developing and implementing their own system of management.

Of course, I think of the Great Lakes as a commons, as, of course, they are. And there is a movement now afoot to create a hiking trail around all five of them—exclusive, lakeside gated communities be dammed.

What I marvel about, given the extreme privatization ethic in the United States, are two amazing national lakeshores: Apostle Islands National Lakeshore and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. How these two amazing commons places came into being is an amazing story (featuring Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson, I might add).

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From Gary Snyder:

The commons is the contract a people make with their local natural system. The word has an instructive history: it is formed of ko, "together," with (Greek) moin, "held in common."... The root comes into Latin as munus, "service performed for the community" and hence "municipality."

The commons is a curious and elegant social institution within which human beings once lived free political lives while weaving through natural systems. The commons is a level of organization of human society that includes the nonhuman. The level above the local commons is the bioregion. Understanding the commons and its role within the larger regional culture is one more step toward integrating ecology with economy.

The Leaves Have Left

Are ye the ghosts of fallen leaves, O flakes of snow, for which, through naked trees, the winds a-mourning go? 

The three big white oaks and the two big green ashes in the back yard create a lot of leaf litter. Piles and piles of it, and as the back yard is enclosed on all sides by shrubbery or evergreens, the piles pile up. Past years it has been a fun ritual to rake evrything in to huge piles and then load up the trailer (Sue stomping) to deliver multiiple loads to the city compost site. This year, us being one arm short, we hired help, and mission accomplished. Now, everything is ready for snow (as long is it comes before the ice freezes).

A beautiful 65 degrees today, so talk of winter seems premature. I find myself constantly wondering if we will actually have winter this year, and will it be harsh like the past two, or not, and when it will start, if it does? Bri reminded me that last year we were iceboating on Lac LaBelle over Thanksgiving. 

Fifty-seven to Six

Breakfast this morning with the Nies clan at Amalia's in O'Wock. What with syrup and hot sauce and jelly and toast  and pretend coffee it was one crowded table. But also one fun time. We (Bri primarily) even turned a sour and crabby waitress into a bubbling fountain of friendliness.

After that we went to the Imaginatioin Station playgound, where it was wet, still a bit frosty, and a bit stinky because the breeze was wafting our way from he sewerage treatment plant. But, even so, it too was one fun time. 

Later this afternoon, back in Whitewater, we took Pax for his (routine) walk in the Prairie, but that turned out to be a bad idea because the UWW Warhawk football game was still in progress. It was the Warhawks against the Purple Martins, and, redicuously, every time the Warhawks scored a touchdown a cannon volley erupted.

Poor Pax. He prefers a score of three to nothing. 

A Fire in the Stove

Bright and cold, with the wind slowly diminishing.  A cheery fire in the breezeway stove as afternoon quickly  faded into night.

Some of yesterday's wind damage. 

⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄⁄ 

The most I can do is strive toward a different kind of conscience, listen to an older and more tested wisdom, participate minimally in a sysem that debases its own sustaining environment, work toward a different future, and hope that someday all wil be pardoned. 

—Richard Nelson

Cold and Windy

The front finally came through last night—first a squall line with a wind wall and lots of cloud to ground lightening. From first crash of thunder in the west to last rumble in the east no more than 10 minutes, but enought to send Pax to the basement. Then a lull of about 20 minutes, followed by the main storm of wind and rain.

The first squall was enought to shatter two old and moribund sugar maples in the park. And this evening it is still blowing to beat the band. I should have taken the camera and gone over to Saugatuck to see the towering seas.

The hardest thing of all is to see what is really there.

--J.A.Baker

Waiting for Some Weather

Forecast for thunderstorms, rain, followed by wind. Wind warning in effect. So all day checking the sky but finding nothing but blue. However, this evening the wind is picking up and the barometer is dropping, and we coud be in for one of those storied "gales of November" like the one that took down the Edmund Fitzgerald. 

And, here, a selection from a group of poems printd in the Guardian as part of their series on climate change: 

Still Life With Sea Pinks and High Tide 

Maura Dooley

Thrift grows tenacious at the tide’s reach.

What is that reach when the water
is rising, rising?

Our melting, shifting, liquid world won’t wait
for manifesto or mandate, each
warning a reckoning.

Ice in our gin or vodka chirrups and squeaks
dissolving in the hot, still air
of talking, talking.

........

Reading a book called Rainwater Catchment Systems. It's a bit dry.  

A Fine Tuesday in November

Once again frosty in the morning but bright and warm in the afternoon.  Great walking weather, though after the big loop I arrived home sweaty.

Note Mr. Squirrel.  

In honor of what would be Carl Sagan's birthday, two quotes: 

 We inhabit a universe where atoms are made in the centers of stars; where each second a thousand suns are born; where life is sparked by sunlight and lightning in the airs and waters of youthful planets; where the raw material for biological evolution is sometimes made by the explosion of a star halfway across the Milky Way; where a thing as beautiful as a galaxy is formed a hundred billion times - a Cosmos of quasars and quarks, snowflakes and fireflies, where there may be black holes and other universes and extraterrestrial civilizations. How pallid by comparison are the pretensions of superstition and pseudoscience; how important it is for us to pursue and understand science, that characteristically human endeavor.

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 If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.

....................... 

Also today the 40th anniversary of the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald.  

Wings Above, Leaves Below

As I stepped outside this frosty morning I heard what sounded like some rather loud sawing. which, of course, I supposed, should be expected here in noisy village. But that is when expetations led me astray. By the time I got my head on straight all I saw was the tail end of five or six sandhills winging loudly out of sight just above the treetops.

On our morning wak through Starin Park Pax and I enountered the usual abundance of squirrels. Looking whichever way we might, we were never able to seen none, and a typical 360 revolution revealed at least half a dozen.  These are industrious beings, working from sunrise to sundown, hopping endlessly everywhere, crisscrossing every square inch of terriory, in their desire to be prepared for winter, I presume.

Then a bit farther along, we came across a flock of finches feeding on ash seeds, which is somehing I have never seen before. If the emerald ash borerer has not yet arrived, ash seeds, those the slender little winged lances, are innumerable. So it looks like these finches have an endless, moveable feast, at least for now. Another perfect day—frosty in the morning, but bright, and still, and almost warm in the afternoon. 

Rockport style green chili for dinner tonight.  

The Path

Books first, once the sandman had departed and we were all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, Then breakfast a the pancake house, followed by strenuous fun at Doctor's Park. And then the parents came home.

Hard frost overnight, followed by a beautiful late autumn day. 

From the book The Path by Chet Raymo:

In my daily rambles along the path, I have been inspired by a famous observer of the Irish landscape, the early-twentieth-century naturalist Robert Lloyd Praeger, who walked over all of Ireland "with reverent feet," he said, eschewing motor transport, "stopping often, watching closely, listening carefully." And although I have aspired to Praeger's pedal reverence, I know I have fallen short. Another thirty-seven years walking my path would not do it justice. The contemporary writer and cartographer Tim Robinson, another close observer of the Irish landscape, defines something he calls the "adequate step," a step worthy of the landscape it traverses. The adequate step takes note of geology, biology, myths, history, and politics, says Robinson in Stonesof Aran. It also includes the consciousness of the walker. And even all of that, he states, is not enough. No step, or series of steps, can ever be fully adequate. "To forget the dimensions of the step is to forgo our honor as human beings," he writes, "but an awareness of them equal to the involuted complexities under foot at any given moment would be a crushing backload to carry."

A crushing backload, indeed: fiddlehead ferns, downy woodpecker, pickerel, granite flake, Canada mayflower, moonrise, bluebirds, spring peepers, monarch butterflies, glacial scratches on bedrock, and, of course, the human history of my path, which in its transformations over the centuries encapsulates in many surprising ways the history of our nation and of our fickle love affair with the natural world. Step by step, year by year, the landscape I traversed became deeper, richer, more multidimensional, always overflowing the mind that sought to contain it. Ultimately, almost without my willing it, the path became more than a walk, more than an education, more than a life; it became thePath, a Tao (Way), a thread that ties one human life and the universe together.

A weed plucked at the side of the path might have found its way to the New World in a seventeenth-century sailing ship. Scratches on a rocky ledge evoke colossal mountain-building events on the other side of the world millions of years ago that modified the planet's climate and caused glaciers to creep across New England. The oxygen atoms I suck into my lungs were forged in stars that lived and died long before the Earth was born. It is something of a cliché to say that everything is connected to everything else, but when you know one place well — not just intellectually but with the deep-gut knowledge that enters through the soles of your feet — connections just keep popping up. A character in Anne Michaels's novel Fugitive Pieces says: "If you know one landscape well, you will look at all other landscapes differently. And if you learn to love one place, sometimes you can also learn to love another." Having learned to know and love my path in all of its local abundance, the light-years and the eons no longer seem quite so forbidding, tropical rain forests and droughty deserts seem not so far away. A minute lived attentively can contain a millennium; an adequate step can span the planet.

Filling In

Spending the night at Bywater Lane while the parents have the night out. 

Change for the Wetter

Some brief, heavey, horizontal rain ast night, and today, back to November—chilly, breezy, and gray, with only occaional flashes of sun. Perfect for walking, with sweatshirt and vest.

Afternoon ride to fill a jug at the flowing-well and then let Pax take a romp in the state forest at Whitewater Lake. 

Southerly

Big blow from the south—lots of leaves migrating north. Maybe, perhaps, the last of the weird warmth?

Sue once again down doing Jayne stuff, with me off to the annual visit wiith my cardiologist at Mercy in Janesville. Dr. V is a youngish, athletic bicyclist and motorcycle rider, and, strange to say, the father of five. The only thing is, he now has only one leg, the other having ben lost about a year ago in a motorcycle accident. He's a great guy.  Life can be rough, and I could tell he he working hard to deal with what happened. Makes me feel fortunate to have nothing more than rotator rehab to get through.

Hosta has-been. 

Endless Summer

Another beautiful day—perfect weather for waking to Ellie's school to (pick her up), and with Maddie for playing at the park, and with Beccca and Renee for going out to dinner.  

The continued warmth, however, is extennding tick season, and we have found four on Pax over the past two days. His treatments, which had been suspended, are reinstated.

The Upside of Global Warming

Another perfect day here. It may be getting too hot for human life in the Persian Gulf; and many of the the islands in the Pacific may be awash; but it's a delightful November in Wisconsin. After a long dog-walk we went grocery shopping at the Pig in Milton (just 15 minutes away). It's a pleasant, well stocked (has Ma Bench's herring) store, and cheaper than our former Whitewater Sentry, so it will likely be our goto grocery. But when we are feeling fancy, it will be the gigantic new Festival in Janesville, only ten minutes further on.

Neighbor Kathy's roses have no thought of blooming cessation.

Spectacular (Indian) Summer

Ever so beautiful.

Sycamore, the pterodactyl of trees.

Brief selection from: Payne Hollow by Harlan Hubbard

In winter, woodcutting; in summer, gardening. Our calendar is never so precisely divided, for cookwood must be rustled up in summer and the garden is a year-round concern.

All our living is regulated by the revolving seasons. They determine what we do, what we think and talk about, what we eat, the pattern of each day. Our house adjusts to the seasons, opening in the summer and closing against the winter's cold. The time of our getting up in the morning depends on when the sun rises. Who would want to lie abed in a summer dawn, when the air is filled with birdsong? On the other hand, there is not much use getting up in the dark, even during the shortest days of winter; yet I often do so, assisted in extending the day by a late-rising moon, which furnishes light enough for woodcutting, even when it shines through a layer of cloud. It is never so dark that my feet cannot find their way on known paths. Firewood or something is always waiting to be carried up the hill. I can grind flour by touch. A lantern provides enough light for many other jobs — threshing beans, cracking nuts, sharpening an axe. The hungry goats do not mind being waked up, fed and milked at an early hour. Writing goes well, close to a stove where a little fire burns; or I just sit there in that brief period of detachment between night and day, my thoughts following strange paths unknown to sleep or waking.

Sometimes the dark becomes wearisome, I feel my loneliness and look in vain for the faintest glow in the eastern sky or for a lighted window across the river. When at last the strengthening light brings release it seems to promise fair and untried fields of action. All too soon the colors of dawn fade and the familiar world reveals itself.

March, not January, is the two-faced month, for its weather can be that of winter or spring. In our calendar the balance swings from woodcutting to gardening in March. There come a few warm, balmy days when fires are allowed to die and a tantalizing smell of spring is in the air. I take a favorite hoe from its winter resting place and go down into what was last year's garden…

… The very beginning is perhaps the best part of a garden. Now the breeze feels as soft and sweet as it used to on the first spring day that I could go barefoot. The whistle of a cardinal comes from far off through the hazy air. The sun, riding higher in the sky, arouses not only the buds and seeds but also the dormant hopes of the gardener. The memory of past mistakes and failure has been washed out by winter rain. This year his garden will be the best ever.

Absoute Perfection

Not sure Novmberr days shoul be this nice, but will refrain from complaint. (Though we do need to start thinking about what it will take to make ice on the lakes.) Over to Madison to see Nik before she moves to her new house in St. Paul.