Tree113008
Tonight was the first accumulating snowfall of the year, although it had changed to rain by the time the pic was taken. Last year it snowed Dec 1st and we had snow on the ground until May.
The household had a heated dispute over who had the privelege of going out barefoot for the pic. I'll let you guess who won. ;)
Tonight I read "The Good Life of Helen K. Nearing" by Margaret O. Killinger, 2007.
Helen and her husband Scott were pioneer back-to-the landers. I have read several of their books and also articles in "The Mother Earth News." I saw this headlined as a new book at the local library and snatched it up as something that might be interesting.
And it was. This is a biography of Helen Nearing, from her teen years until her death in 1995. Throughout the book I found ringing similarities between myself and Helen; and also my friend K and "Boss" from the farm. Perhaps Boss is most like Helen with her Northern European background and stronger work ethic. K and I are more like the lost hippies that Helen scorned as visitors.
However, a closer look shows that Helen shared a lot of those traits in her own youth. It was only when Scott came into her life that she developed strong political opinions and a good work ethic. Scott was also strongly influenced by Helen, which he is quoted as saying in his last years. It is clear that together they literally moved mountains.
I found it enriching and encouraging to find that what I deem to be my more eccentric tendencies were echoed in such an esteemed woman, and a relief that a woman could possibly be even more eccentric than myself.
Yesterday I read "The Time Machine" by HG Wells, 1895 (my copy a 1964 reprint snagged for .25 at the library used book shelf)
I either read the book or watched the movie-possibly both, as a pre-teen, so my mind needed some refreshing. Actually, an episode of "Big Bang Theory" featured the time machine, and it was really funny as usual. So, when I saw the book I grabbed it. I wanted to find out more about the subterranean-dwelling flesh-eating Morelocks and etheral, gentle Eloi. I know I either read the book or saw the movie because I remember the last part of the book.
I won't tell anymore about it -you'll have to go read, or re-read it, for yourself. It's a quick read, and still good after 113 years.
Last night after dark I was in the kitchen fixing supper when suddenly there was a commotion at the window.
Two of the more adept moth-catching cats were at immediate alert, leaping to the window for a closer look. But it was no moth.
A tiny black-capped chickadee, the Maine state bird, was knocking and fluttering at the pane, leaping off the sill and trying to gain entry through the glass.
Our outdoor cat had slipped out at nightfall, so the situation became one of emergency level before the huntress on the outside of the house caught a feathery supper.
Quickly, without pausing to put anything on my bare feet, I charged out the door and around the dark side of the house. I cupped my hands and gathered the alarmed bird into my hands. Trying to think on my bare feet, so to speak, and seeing the cats staring through the window, I wondered what to do with the refugee.
I decided to put it in a tree on the other corner of the house-an evergreen hemlock with branches low enough for me to reach. By the time I came around the corner (mere seconds)the Willow had come out onto the back deck in her bare feet to see what was going on. I told her I was going to put the bird in the tree, and gave her a glimpse of its tiny black head at the top of my hands.
The bird tried to peck me-its diminutive size lending no force to the action. I reached up into the branches and carefully offered the bird the perch.
Either it was unacceptable, or the bird was in a panic, as it flew erratically to a second story branch on a beech outside my bedroom window. I was relieved that it did not return to the window.
The weather was freezing drizzle and the perch was well exposed to the elements. The chicadee did not look pleased. Willow commented that it looked about to vomit.
Another check a few minutes later showed that the bird had gone.
We checked all the windows and no sign of it.
The best I could surmise was that something had startled the bird out of its snug roost. Chickadees prefer to sleep in small cavities, and it is possible that the flying squirrels had frightened it out into the dark. Disoriented, the bird headed for the light at the windows.
Half asleep and in the dim light, it had trouble flying up to the branch, but hopefully after a few moments surveying things from the higher perch it got its bearing and found a safer place to sleep.
We just started putting seed out for the chickadee flock, which they dicovered on Thanksgiving. Willow has been trying to befriend them, and she insists that the bird was "Beauty", the one who trusts her.
Well, we hope that "Beauty" weathered the cold ice fog night in one piece, and finds a safer roost tonight.
Thanksgiving eve-just the three of us and a pile of food for tomorrow. (see my other blog if you're wondering what we're eating)
This blog has seemed so gloomy lately! So here's a cheery little poem.
Merry Autumn
It's all a farce,—these tales they tell
About the breezes sighing,
And moans astir o'er field and dell,
Because the year is dying.
Such principles are most absurd,—
I care not who first taught 'em;
There's nothing known to beast or bird
To make a solemn autumn.
In solemn times, when grief holds sway
With countenance distressing,
You'll note the more of black and gray
Will then be used in dressing.
Now purple tints are all around;
The sky is blue and mellow;
And e'en the grasses turn the ground
From modest green to yellow.
The seed burs all with laughter crack
On featherweed and jimson;
And leaves that should be dressed in black
Are all decked out in crimson.
A butterfly goes winging by;
A singing bird comes after;
And Nature, all from earth to sky,
Is bubbling o'er with laughter.
The ripples wimple on the rills,
Like sparkling little lasses;
The sunlight runs along the hills,
And laughs among the grasses.
The earth is just so full of fun
It really can't contain it;
And streams of mirth so freely run
The heavens seem to rain it.
Don't talk to me of solemn days
In autumn's time of splendor,
Because the sun shows fewer rays,
And these grow slant and slender.
Why, it's the climax of the year,—
The highest time of living!—
Till naturally its bursting cheer
Just melts into thanksgiving.
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Dr. James E. Hansen
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20081121_Obama.pdf
Here's an excerpt from Dr. Hansen's latest posting:
"...Tax and 100% dividend. A “carbon tax with 100 percent dividend” is required for
reversing the growth of atmospheric CO2. The tax, applied to oil, gas and coal at the mine or
port of entry, is the fairest and most effective way to reduce emissions and transition to the
post fossil fuel era. It would assure that unconventional fossil fuels, such as tar shale and tar
sands, stay in the ground, unless an economic method of capturing the CO2 is developed.
The entire tax should be returned to the public, equal shares on a per capita basis (half
shares for children up to a maximum of two child-shares per family), deposited monthly in
bank accounts. No bureaucracy is needed.
A tax should be called a tax. The public can understand this and will accept a tax if it is
clearly explained and if 100 percent of the money is returned to the public. Not one dime
should go to Washington for politicians to pick winners. No lobbyists need be employed.
The public will take steps to reduce their emissions because they will continually be
reminded of the matter by the monthly dividend and by rising fossil fuel costs. It must be
clearly explained to the public that the tax rate will continue to increase in the future.
When fuel prices decline, the tax should increase, to retain the incentive for transitioning
to the post-fossil-fuel-era. The effect of reduced fossil fuel demand will be lower fossil fuel
prices, making the tax a larger and larger portion of energy costs (for fossil fuels only). Thus
the country will stop hemorrhaging its wealth to oil-producing states.
Tax and dividend is progressive. A person with several large cars and a large house will
have a tax greatly exceeding the dividend. A family reducing its carbon footprint to less than
average will make money. Everyone will have an incentive to reduce their carbon footprint.
The dividend will stimulate the economy, spur innovation, and provide money that allows
people to purchase low carbon products.
A carbon tax is honest, clear and effective. It will increase energy prices, but low and
middle income people, especially, will find ways to reduce carbon emissions so as to come
out ahead. The rate of infrastructure replacement, thus economic activity, can be modulated
by how fast the carbon tax rate increases. Effects will permeate society. Food requiring lots
of carbon emissions to produce and transport will become more expensive and vice versa,
encouraging support of nearby farms as opposed to imports from half way around the world.
Beware of alternative approaches, such as ‘percent emission reduction goals’ and ‘cap
and trade’. These are subterfuges designed to allow business-as-usual to continue, under a
pretense of action, a greenwashing. Hordes of lobbyists will argue for these approaches,
which assure their continued employment. The ineffectiveness of ‘goals’ and ‘caps’ is made
blatantly obvious by the fact that the countries promoting them are planning to build more
coal-fired power plants.
If the United States accedes to the ineffectual ‘goals’ and ‘caps’ approach, in effect
continuation of the Kyoto Protocol approach, it will practically guarantee disastrous climate
change. Instead it should persuasively argue that other countries also adopt tax and dividend.
The countries agreeing to this approach will also agree that imports from a country that does
not apply a comparable carbon tax will be taxed at the port of entry. That tax, which should
be added to the public’s dividend, will be a strong incentive for all countries to participate..."
http://www.efn.org/~valdas/baranauskas.html
Poem by Antanas Baranauskas
(1835 – 1902)
THE ANYKŠČIAI GROVE
Stump-littered hillocks, desolate and bare,
Can anyone believe you once were fair?
Where are your former charms? Where did they go?
Where is your humming when the wind would blow
And toss the white-wood foliage to and fro
And rock your pines, as centuries ago?
Where are your birds and nestlings to be found
Whose chirping such contentment spread all round?
Where are your living creatures large and small,
The burrows and the lairs that housed them all?
All, all has gone: in the deserted plain
A few disfigured pines alone remain.
With needle, cone and twig the earth is strewn –
A barren waste the sun bakes hard in June,
A sight the soul views with as much distress
As ruined palaces rank weeds possess,
Or heaps of rubble where a town once teemed,
Or bone-dry moss where marshland softly gleamed.
Once walking here you found your eyes would ache:
The forest would your soul so merry make,
Your heart so glad you wondered in surprise:
Where am I – in a wood or Paradise?
All that surrounds you with such beauty glows!
With every scent the forest woos your nose
And lively sounds you hear in every part.
You sense a deep calm soothing to the heart.
What scents abound! Pine resin fills the air.
The scent of flowers gentle breezes bear.
In clearings white-red clover, camomile
And thyme with fragrance rare your nose beguile.
The presence of an anthill you can tell.
Leaf, needle, pine-cone have a different smell
Each time you pass. A breeze however slight
Will bring new scents each time for your delight.
Here's aromatic cranberry and moss.
Here orchard-blossom scents you come across.
The forest like a living creature breathes:
The nearby field and meadowland it wreathes
In fragrance, while among its pines in turn
The scents of field and meadow you discern.
All mingle in the air, so thick they come
Your nose cannot distinguish every one.
It is as if wood, meadow, field combine
Their richest scents to make a perfume fine
Which to God's glory they are offering
As they together sigh, rejoice and sing.
Their voices weave a hymn of many parts
To touch with perfect harmony our hearts.
How fine are forest sounds, not only scents!
The forest hums, resounds with eloquence,
While midnight brings a silence that is so
Profound you hear each leaf and flower grow,
Hear tree to tree in gentle whispers call,
Each star through heaven move, each dewdrop fall.
The heart is hushed. Such peace reigns everywhere
The soul soars heavenward in quiet prayer.
But when the new day dawns with gleaming brow
And blades of grass, dew-laden, earthward bow
The forest wakens, night-time silence flees
And day again resumes its melodies.
That rustle? It's a leaf the breeze has stirred
Or, stirring in its nest, a waking bird.
That crackling? It's a homebound wolf who, loath
To hunt by day, breaks through the undergrowth.
A captured duck the fox bears to his lair,
A badger scurries from his burrow there,
A roe bounds past, a squirrel neatly takes
A flying leap onto a bough that shakes,
A stoat or marten rummages about…
The forest creatures are all up and out.
There was a time, a time when beauteous calm
The forest breathed, our hearts to soothe and charm.
For Lithuanians relish calm and ease
As lush grass relishes a gentle breeze
That stirs dark ripples as it passes by:
We often weep in woods, not knowing why.
For it is there we feel a pain is eased,
The heart soothed and anxiety appeased;
Warm tears born of a sentiment unique
Come rolling then like pearl dew down the cheek.
Long afterwards our lungs breathe the forest air,
Our breast as gently stirs as pines do there.
Such deep tranquillity pervades the soul
It bows as wheatears do when ripe and whole.
This is the source from which our tears and sighs,
Our solace and our poetry arise.
Now all has gone… In the deserted plain
A few disfigured pines alone remain.
Our folk have always lived at one with trees
And know few closer lifelong friends than these.
With windfalls only would they heat their hut,
Plait doors from branches, no boards would they cut
And no ax to a trunk they ever laid
Unless the tree already was decayed.
In turn the forest soothed and gave delight,
Loved Lithuania's folk with all its might.
It clothed and fed them, sheltered them as well,
To bar the way to enemies it fell,
In evil days – a refuge from our foes,
In time of grief – a place of sweet repose,
In happy days its charms it would unfold,
At all times granting blessings manifold.
Then hard times came. Of hunger people died,
Made bark soup, baked their bread with moss inside.
Such starving folk who hardly eat at all
In time of plague like trees will reel and fall.
The forest pitied them, dew tears it shed
And wet its crowns in grey clouds overhead.
"My starving brothers all!" it cried. "Fight back!
A blessing on the hand that wields an ax!"
They wept, did those who first a few trees felled.
Their children groaned – the ax salvation spelled.
Their children's children sighed, cut more trees down.
Their great-grandchildren carted logs to town
And when to market forty loads they sent
Rejoiced, assured of one day's nourishment.
With timber so abundant prices fell.
They sold until there was not much to sell.
Whatever money they received they drank
And into ways of dissolution sank.
And so no forest did our fathers find,
Yet found they were like brothers of one mind
To save land for the trees for which they pined,
So sorely bitter tears would their eyes blind
On viewing stumps: for Lithuanian souls
Whom forest beauty nurtures and consoles
In treeless bleak expanses run to seed,
They wither and expire in sorest need.
Our treeless generation from old songs
Learns forest lore and for a forest longs.
Our folksong from a love of trees has grown
And all the songs were to our fathers known.
So now a pinewood patiently they reared
And in their loving labors persevered.
They raised a handsome pine grove, dense as reeds.
The young at heart and children were well pleased.
Such care of their new grove did people take
No twig, however tiny, would they break.
Anyksciai town rejoiced – the trees looked good –
And people went elsewhere for firewood.
Then came a forester who toured the site,
Dug ditches, posted watchmen day and night,
Barred grazing, mushroom picking... He seemed strict
But on the sly sold wood and mushrooms picked.
He lied to his superiors; when folk
Complained he punched them and their teeth he broke.
He rooted pinetrees up year after year
And soon there was again a wasteland here…
Bare hills with stumps are all that now remain,
For which we weep and sing our sad refrain.
Unfinished is my lay: such pain at heart
Lies heavy on the soul and makes it smart.
That force which gnawed the forest for so long
Assailing heart and soul… curtails my song.
Anykščiai, 1859
Translated by Peter Tempest
Antanas Baranauskas wrote The Anykščiai Grove at just 24 years old when he was a theology student. It is considered his major poetic work, and is celebrated for its rich, distinctive Lithuanian. Later in his life, Baranauskas became a pioneer in the study of Lithuanian grammar. Towards the end of his life, he was named Bishop of Seinai. Contemporary Lithuanian poet Sigitas Geda said this about the poem: "I can honestly say that there is nothing remotely similar to The Anykščiai Grove. It is so important to the Lithuanian national psyche because it captures the Lithuanian soul: the catastrophe and the pain of a soul, the tragedy of losing paradise forever. So, I'd say we must perceive Baranauskas' poem as the highest note of the Lithuanian soul. We speak of it in these terms, it may appear foolish to those who have lost their understanding of soul, of nature, of the universe. But a person who does not understand the earth, the oceans and the trees is a barbarian." The Anykščiai Grove was written between 1858-1859, when Lithuania was facing harsh Czarist repression. The poem, considered among the most influential works of Lithuanian literature, is not merely a celebration of forest. It also was written as a metaphor for a vanquished, moribund Lithuania, which was once a great regional power but whose fate under Russia at the time looked bleak, indeed. The poem also captures the passion for forests and trees that runs Baltic-wide.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=US+cow+rendering+rules&btnG=Google+Search
A new law passed in the US requires animal rendering plants to remove brain and spinal tissue from animals prior to rendering.
Watchers and readers of "All Creatures Great and Small" will recall the knacker buying dead animals off of farmers. In more recent times in this country, farmers have to pay the company to collect the dead animals.
The rendering company then cooks the animal down and separates the result into different parts-protein, fat, etc, and then markets the by-products. The by-products are used in animal feed (although US regulation prohibits rendered cow from going into cattle feed as a current mad cow preventative_) the protein can still go into pet food and other livestock feed-chickens, pig, etc.
The trick with mad cow is that it is a prion, and is not destroyed by heat. So, if a chicken were to be fed protein contaminated with mad cow, and then the resulting litter-yes, that's right, some cows are fed chicken excrement-the prion could find its way back to the cow.
Years ago a Countryside magazine contributor pointed out that sheep should not have their feed measured with the same container as the dog-because scrapie, the sheep version of mad cow, could be passed through the residue in the container.
The by-products of rendered dead cows are also used in cosmetics including, but not limited to, toothpaste and lotions for human use.
The new regulations are to ensure that any possibly contaminated tissue (brain and spinal tissue) are removed from the carcass before rendering.
Well, that's good. The news is reporting that farmers are going to see an increase in costs of dead animal removal, as rendering plants pass those costs of precaution to the farmer. Many farmers might decide to compost, bury, or drag into the back 40, those dead cows, instead of rendering them.
In the meantime, since I know firsthand that composting and burying is an adequate solution, I am more concerned about the fact that I have been letting my kids handle the dog, cat, and chicken food as part of their daily chores. As a precaution, I am now handling the pet feed-much to my childrens horror after I relayed the story and the reason why I have now taken over those duties. Now I just need to scrape(pardon the pun) up the funds to buy some galvanized cans to get the feed out of the house-since I am worried that the dust might be carrying mad cow prions.
Hopefully not for long, with the new regulations...
