Nature, Culture, and Two Friends Talking

Kim and Jim with artist and friend Lad Hanka, Kalamazoo, May 26 2015. (Photo by Susan Andress)

May 26, 2015. With some 110 people in the audience at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, we delivered our first readings from the just-printed book of essays, poems and collaborations Nature, Culture, and Two Friends Talking.  Part of the draw was our longtime friend, Ladislav Hanka, a regionally known artist whose work is exhibited and sold for its complex and creative depictions of the natural and human world.  In this instance, we read “From Darkness, Light”, wherein an ecologist (Kim) and poet (Jim) discuss, via email, the intimations of beauty and ecology in Lad’s work.

After the reading, the audience asked a couple of questions.  One struck us in particular:  What can one do to counteract the natural reaction of feelings of depression and despair in the face of so much bad news about the environment and people’s role in that damage?

Jim answered first.  He pointed out that the history of the planet is punctuated by catastrophic changes, and if we have caused this one, it doesn’t mean we’re not part of nature–we are a product of the ever-unfolding processes in the natural world.  In other words, our effects are part of the whole.  At the same time, Jim remarked, it is useful to remember that Earth will abide, as it has for billions of years despite catastrophe, with or without people.  We shouldn’t fret for the Earth itself.

Lad followed with an expression of hope through his art—by making art, he brings all his thoughts about the problems and solutions to the nature-culture divide into view.  And that is satisfying and perhaps helpful.  At least it keeps him occupied with what can only be described as a type of crusade of problem-solving through artistic output. Lad also said one should get out into nature and be in the present with it, rather than just think about it.

Kim wrapped up by saying there are signs that some things are changing—though perhaps not fast enough for some—and changing for the better. Many in the younger generation are aware and understanding of the need for change, while some in our generation and older are working on the change itself—finding economically viable ways of shifting the cultural-technical-economic bubble we have created for ourselves (created presumably to insulate ourselves from nature’s caprices and catastrophes)—to a new state of collaboration with nature.

Later, as we signed books, a woman came up to Kim and said, “I used to worry a lot about all of this, mostly because I felt so powerless.  Then I heard someone on the radio talking about how he coped:  by constantly reminding himself to set an achievable goal and stay the course.  That’s how you do it—just give yourself a task that you can do…something that fixes the problem—and don’t stop.”

To that we would say, that’s all anybody can do.  – Kim & Jim

Lilac (Syringa vulgaris) in full bloom. When buds are tightly closed, they are dark purple; when flowers open, they are lighter purple. The first warbler wave happens just as flowers open.

May 15, 2015.  After storms last night, a second wave of tropical birds dropped in on St. Paul.  Tailwinds from the southeast that came along with the low pressure system gave them the extra nudge that makes the journey less strenuous.  I knew that birds from Nicaragua, Columbia, and like tropical places would be here today because all signs pointed to it.  Oak leaves were 3-4 inches long, lilacs in full bloom, and a storm had just passed.  And the next morning, I heard “neotropical migrants” practicing territorial songs in my back yard.  The first warbler wave of the year was May 8, after the previous storm system passed through.  Warblers—brightly-colored insect-eating birds—aren’t the only group coming in from tropical America.  Flycatchers, vireos and thrushes make the same thousands-of-miles trek.

In this latest batch were Nashville warblers—bright yellow below with a bluish-gray head—red-eyed vireos singing “here I am, in this tree, way up high, look at me”—and my favorite, the Swainson’s thrush.  In early evening this thrush pipes an unearthly double-voiced tune in the midst of garages, alley pavement, and garbage cans.  Eternal beauty and bland functionality here in the same place.  Listen to the warbler, vireo and thrush at the Cornell Ornithology Lab website:

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Nashville_Warbler/sounds; http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Red-eyed_Vireo/sounds; http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Swainsons_Thrush/sounds

For the next couple of weeks, I’ll enjoy along with my coffee an unusual chorus.  By early June the migrants will be away on their nests in forest, scrub and taiga around here and as far north as Hudson’s Bay…while we city folk will have to content ourselves with cardinals, downy woodpeckers, house finches, and the ever-chatty English sparrow.  For now, though, it’s a big spring party after every storm. – Kim

White and black rhinos at the National Natural History Museum, Paris (Photo K. Chapman)

April 25, 2015.  The news last week that the last few northern African white rhinos depend on round-the-clock armed guards to prevent death by poaching, struck a nerve. It’s about time, but at the same time, it’s more of the same. The rise of middle classes in Asian countries, where ground rhino horn powder is valued for its health effects, is the chief culprit. People have more money, and demand is up for expensive, once out-of-reach luxuries. Making this worse is war, insurgency, political turmoil, and poverty—African governments struggle to pay the guards enough to keep them from becoming poachers themselves, or simply to have guards at all in the national parks where most of the continent’s megafauna hang out. And who can blame the nascent middle class for aspiring to something better—such as better health—despite Western medicine’s view that it’s all quackery.

African megafauna, several on the path to extinction in the wild, walk the grand hall at the National Museum of Natural History, Paris (Photo K. Chapman)

Also on the shopping list are other megafaunal species we know and love—tigers, leopards, elephants, bear—and those we love less, like sharks. Tiger penis is highly valued to improve male virility, and bear gall bladder bile, it is said, will cure liver ailments. Shark fin soup is a delicacy. A jaguar throw rug is just cool. These species and hundreds of others hold special powers for consumers somewhere in the world. Progress is being made, though. In 2014 the Chinese government made it illegal to sell or possess parts or all of endangered animals. And another species of rhino—the black—has come back from the brink thanks to heroic work of conservation agencies and governments in southern Africa.

This leaves us with an interesting dilemma. In our own back yard we basically ate up all the passenger pigeons, once the most abundant bird on earth. The last one, Martha, died in a zoo on September 1, 1914. I saw a stuffed one once, ensconced in a glass box at Harvard’s Natural History Museum. Hundreds of species have gone the way of the passenger pigeon since Europe began exporting its civilization across the planet, circa 1500 AD—eaten, used for medicine or decoration, pushed out of habitat, and so on. It’s not just modern people, either. Before that, the Paleolithic hunters—19,000 years ago in North America, 30,000 or so years ago in Australia, for instance—gobbled up wild biomass and changed the habitat such that hundreds of other amazing creatures winked out—camels and giant sloths in Nebraska, for example. There’s a good long tradition of people being the agent of species rearrangement on the globe. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_extinct_animals.) Lest we think this is ancient history, the Dusky Seaside Sparrow was declared extinct in 1990, brought there to a large degree by our nation’s space program at Cape Canaveral, where most of the birds lived —yes, to put a man on the moon we drove an organism to extinction. Strange but true.

Stuffed passenger pigeons nest in a wax bur oak in a diorama at the Bell Natural History Museum, Minneapolis. The nest and egg are said to be the last ones found in the wild. (Photo R. Chin)

Back to the dilemma…by nature we seek to increase ourselves and make ourselves comfortable. We are now quite plentiful on the planet—7.3 billion of us—and overall the standard of living is rising. In our quest, other species have given way and will continue to do so. The heroic achievements of conservation biologists and protective agencies—think of the 10-foot wing-spanned California condor rescued from oblivion, bred, and recently sent back to the wild—are merely fingers in the dike, given predictions of 8 to 11 billion humans 35 years hence. Only a scant few are aware that we are in the midst of—causing, in fact—the sixth great planetary extinction event. We are now a force as global as meteor strikes and volcanic eruptions. For most, this is hard to imagine, and even harder to believe. For others the fate of the white rhino drives the point home and engenders outrage or despair.

More useful than outrage or despair is to change behavior. That is the hardest thing of all because we are bound up in a cultural-economic-technological web that is designed to extract the most from nature. The point of view that underlies how we relate to and use nature is out of date. Consuming or converting nature for our ends was once necessary for survival, but is now possibly working against our survival, or at least our enjoyment of life. That is the crux of the matter—even though our extinction is unlikely with so many adaptable, clever humans—to preserve for ourselves an interesting, pleasant planet, our point of view must change. That will take years…because it happens one person at a time. – Kim

Statue “Honor The Earth” Dedicated in Memory of Vic Ormsby At Winona State on Arbor Day 2015

April 24, 2015. Okay: so today, a solution. Build soil! We just dedicated a lovely statue on WSU’s campus. Artist Lynette Power has made a bronze tribute to Vic Ormsby, a lifelong advocate of soil conservation and the “Aldo Leopold” of Winona County. The statue is called “Honor the Earth.” That’s it above…and then take a look at http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/04/24/solution-climate-change-right-under-our-feet. If we want to have a future we need to be sequestering carbon, not just massively excreting it. Let’s do that nature’s way: put it into the structure of plants, then let plants put it in the ground. We need to reverse the direction of carbon, from into the atmosphere, to into the ground. Happy Arbor Day! – Jim

The Mississippi River above the Ford Dam in early autumn (Photo by K. Chapman)

April 15, 2015. Driving to Northfield a couple weeks ago via the old Robert’s Trail—now MN Hwy 3—I cross a few small streams, one being the Vermillion River. I had studied this river—pushing that definition a bit, for in places it is about wide enough to jump across. It is a renowned brown trout fishery despite its urban and rural setting, thanks to loads of chilly water dumped into it hourly from buried seams of glacial gravel and fractured limestone. On my way to Northfield, where Jesse James and the Younger brothers robbed a bank in 1876—one of their most miserable of ventures as they were violently expelled by the citizens—I saw the vertical black earth banks of this remarkable little river. At that moment, several recent news items came into focus. Item 1: Governor Dayton proposes 50-foot wide strips of filtering vegetation on both sides of most Minnesota streams. Item 2: Minnesota Pollution Control Agency says just a few of southwest Minnesota’s streams can be fished or swum in. Item 3: The Des Moines Water Works is suing three agricultural counties for discharging into the Raccoon River nitrogen-saturated water via ditches and tile lines. Water high in nitrogen hurts people, especially babies, and it costs the Water Works several thousand dollars each day to filter out the nitrogen fertilizer applied to crops upstream and washed downstream to the drinking water supply for half a million Iowans.

These things aren’t a local problem—I grew up seeing it in Detroit area streams, and in subsequent travels across the mid-continent, and can only conclude it is a common one. Do farmers owe people who want to swim or fish in streams, which in the Eastern U.S. by law belong to everyone, payment to use these waters to dispose of a byproduct of agricultural production? Or do anglers and swimmers owe farmers the cost of keeping nitrogen on their fields and out of streams?

…still a long ways to go in this conversation, with some experiments out there—such as nutrient trading, modeled after the successful sulfur dioxide trading that cleaned up our cities’ air in the 1990s. For the moment, however, society has not cottoned on to the idea that rivers should not run chocolate after rains or algae-green the rest of the time. And that, sadly, means regulations, which are usually a more expensive way to go.

By the way, Abraham Lincoln died 150 years ago today, which has little to do with water quality but a lot to do with hatred of righteous change. – Kim

Moon over Iowa (Photo by K. Chapman)

April 3, 2015.  Tonight is a waxing gibbous moon.  The spring moon is for lovers, though an April moon is a bit chilly yet here in Minnesota.  Here is a moon poem:

Just Ask

Ask the moon if she means to be
this full of second-hand light,
ask her if she’s more silver than the original,
ask her how her scars become a face.
Ask her if she needs someone to talk to
and, is that why she loves a lake?
The stars are hidden when the moon comes out:
it’s natural to simplify from sky to sparrow,
it’s natural to trade April for a leaf.
In every conversation, just one word
may be important: the pliant tip
of meaning rises above the heavy surface.
Love is the abstraction, not your lips.

– Jim

Tundra swans passing by a wind farm, Huron County, Michigan (Photo by K. Clark)

April 1, 2015.  Last night around 3 am, with the window cracked for the early spring air, we heard the calling swans–whistling swans once, now named tundra swans for their breeding grounds. Mysterious moment–they, lofted high above the glowing metropolis midway in their trek from Chesapeake Bay to the frozen shore of the Arctic Ocean, and we, tucked into a civilized bed in a boxed room in a densified urban realm.  The wild meets the utterly tamed several hundred feet overhead, and two people are happy for it.  Why?  Let’s leave that for the anthropologists and psychologists and, in the meantime, simply muse about the beauty of it all as we drift back into sleep.  – Kim

March 23, 2015.  With ten fresh inches of snow last night, after a nearly snowless winter, this came in a flash….

LATE SNOW

Some bumblebees overwinter.
On the first warm days

they’re on stage,
as big as your thumb—

nuzzling the tissue paper
of the iris,

bending the tulips’ hoop-
skirts.   But think of it:

all winter they sleep
under white fathoms.

Do they dream?
Wrapped in their cellophane wings,

each thorax the color of the sun
they’ll awaken to?  Do they dream

of fragrant work?
Iridescent tunnels

and pliant labyrinths?
Marauded liquor cabinets?

They’re fashioned to want;
that’s the circuit:

to wake with a thirst
puts the bee in become,

behave, belong.
I sympathize;

but don’t wake today, bees:
keep dreaming.  Today

the snow is fat moths,
ice and altar-cloth.

— Jim

Ducks on Backwaters, Saginaw Bay, Michigan (Photo Kim Chapman)

March 16, 2015.  After six days of plus 60 temperatures, the geese are stirring…along with many others, me included.  There they stand, a mom and dad goose, somehow highly encouraged to raise a family despite the ice they occupy until it melts.  Well, that’s not exactly right–small ponds sport a ring or perhaps patches of frigid water, and while I expect red-winged blackbirds or teal, a song sparrow or other evidence of the advancing front of bird lives, it is still mostly geese floating.  At least they are paired up, signalling a certain end to winter.  I think I saw this morning a little diver–bufflehead or goldeneye–winging it frantically over the commuter maelstrom where Cedar Avenue crosses the Minnesota River backwaters, but prudence kept my eyes mostly fixed on the jostling vehicles all around.  I know we’ve made progress in that the days of profligate taking of wildlife are distant history and that all now know the value of a wetland.  But of the teaming mass of humanity crossing that bridge daily encased in a couple tons of steel and plastic, who gives a thought, or recollects in a quiet moment, or perhaps reads once in a decade anything about how much farther we must go?  It is a tough message to broadcast widely and tougher yet to expect an effect these days–that something like a quarter to half of the species in major groups of organisms–mammals, birds, freshwater mussels, and so on–are not in the best shape as far as population size and amount of habitat go.  They aren’t endangered yet, and so become like any background piece…unnoticed until the music stops.  Transportation infrastructure, about which the Governor and legislature are tussling, is in a similar boat: pretty much asked to keep on working despite wear and tear until everyone realizes there’s a big problem.  Except that ducks and the uncommon wild things of the world don’t have the attention of every commuter traversing the Minnesota River marshes on a bridge which, if unattended, eventually must fall down. – Kim

Busy bees talking through dance at the hive (Photo by Shutterstock)

February 28, 2015.  I spent this past Saturday at a folding table at the Frozen River Film Festival here in Winona, trying to convince passers-by to sign a pledge that said they would leave their dandelions on their lawn this coming spring.  I was with the Winona Area Pollinators, a group trying to make our town more pollinator-friendly.  The idea was that by leaving dandelions you are preserving forage for bees at a time of year when there are few alternative foods.  In our current culture, dandelions are the equivalent of Hester Prynne’s “scarlet letter”—a reason for public shaming.  But in fact dandelions are useful and beautiful early flowers, and we dislike them because we’ve been conned by the chemical industry and our own idea of park-like beauty into thinking that our lawns need to be green deserts, grass monocultures which we police with poisons. In this we homeowners become industrial farmers in miniature. One of the reasons for bee colony collapse is that our agriculture has become a type of chemical warfare: as farmers push their acres to produce more and more corn and soybeans, they are using genetically modified plants designed to withstand herbicides.  The weeds and flowers that used to thrive in the hedgerows and ditches are either eliminated or made toxic (through inadvertent gene transfer of pesticide traits) to the bees that do the hard work of pollinating the world. Butterflies are suffering as well–you may have heard of the drastic collapse of the monarch population due to the absence of milkweed and possible effect of pesticides such as neonicotinoids. So save the dandelions, and feed the bees! And while you are at it, plant some milkweed for the monarchs. – Jim