Splashy Spring

Nature has put on quite a show this spring. She seems to be exuberantly flaunting her jewels. With extravagant displays of blossoms from apples, pears, cherries, lilacs, acacias, chives, caraganas, honeysuckles in our neck of the woods, all that we have been missing are the bees to pollinate them. We’ve never seen the locust trees blooming like this, suffusing the air with their glorious sweet scent. Some bumblebees have been doing the business, but wild bees have been very scarce. Can’t wait to see if they are around for buckwheat flowers when they come in a few weeks. They are traditionally all over them. We wait to hear from local beekeepers how their honeybees survived the winter.

Spring has been long and gentle, with intermittent rain and heat. The garden and fields seem to have responded to the moderation favourably. With the recent heavy two-inch rainfall, we look forward to some prolonged heat for crops to put on a growth spurt. At our farm, garlic, greens, beets, carrots are ready to roll in the fields, as are basils, tomatoes, hot peppers in the greenhouses.

Mad As Hell!

Peter Finch as newsreader Howard Beale in the movie Network, for which he won a posthumous Best Actor Oscar

Like many of my gender, I used to be an angry young man. In my more mellow middle years, I am generally not an angry man anymore. I find contentment and fulfillment in my personal life, my relationship with family and community, my readings, musings, listenings and explorings, my doings growing and selling organic food.

However, when I read of the increasing corporate and government control of things dear to me – food, liberty, nature, health, peace and quiet, income, due process, human rights – it becomes easy to slip back into a bewildered quiet rage and shake my head at the folly and meanness of those that lead so many into fear, depression, anxiety, panic, resignation, complicity. On the food front alone, our leaders turn a blind eye to enormous threats to our welfare: GMOs whose effects on human health have not been independently assessed receive easy approval of infiltration into the foodchain; wild salmon populations are jeopardized by lack of monitoring and regulation of fish farms; confined factory farming continues unchecked; corporations like Monsanto are granted immunity from prosecution; bees continue to be killed off by neonicotinoids and other pesticides; glyphosate and other chemicals, toxins and heavy metals continue to work their way into the water supply creating severe health hazards for humans, amphibians, birds, wildlife…

It becomes easy to sympathize with the television newscaster Howard Beale in the film Network, played by my namesake Peter Finch as he loses it:

I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s no one anywhere that seems to know what to do with us. Now into it. We know the air is unfit to breathe, our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad. Worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in a house as slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller and all we say is, “Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster, and TV, and my steel belted radials and I won’t say anything.” Well I’m not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad. I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot. I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crying in the streets. All I know is first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, “I’m a human being. God Dammit, my life has value.” So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out, and yell, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” I want you to get up right now. Get up. Go to your windows, open your windows, and stick your head out, and yell, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Things have got to change my friends. You’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

Icestorm renders us powerless

Nature can pack a pretty wild punch in her weather delivery systems. Friday’s icestorm here was a case in point. The soft fizz of freezing rain falling and collecting on the damp vegetation was relentless all day. It was an eerily beautiful, somewhat surreal, sight. The forecasted rise in temperature that was meant to melt the ice accretion did not materialize, and the ice steadily thickened on trees, branches, twigs, and grasses. Many of each collapsed under the weight and pressure, sometimes like the firing of a gun as a huge limb snapped off and the ice cascaded to the ground. Budding branches at the apex were most exposed as treetops took a radical haircut. 

The dull grey of the day contrasted with the sharpness and clarity of the ice. With electric power cut off, contact with the outside world was over the airwaves of the car radio, so we took to the road, gasping at the widespread devastation. By no means universal, certain trees were particularly badly affected – wispy poplars, willows and silver birch which snapped into unruly pieces; and soft pine and cedar which often lay prone or uprooted. Power lines were coated in ice an inch or more thick. Icicles dangled from them in a sagging ribbon. Stunned residents scratched their heads at the sight of shattered old maples and spread-eagled shrubbery. Chainsaws cleared roads and paths, and the loud whine of generators filled the still air. Hydro reported that power would be out for a day or more. The outage for us lasted in fact three days, with power restored over candlelit dinner entertaining friends. In the meantime, no flushing of toilets, no showering, no refrigeration, no music or news. However, we could crank up telephone land line, woodstove heat, buckets of water from our full dug well, cooking on the gas-stove, boiling of water for tea and coffee, lots of strategically-placed beeswax candles, flashlights….

 

By the third day, we recognize our fragility and dependency on the power grid and wish for self-sufficiency from the type of residential-scale wind and solar-generated power that dinner guests Kevin and Jack enjoy. Extreme weather events such as this are a stark reminder that we are all live just a few days away from extreme discomfort and deprivation. Ah well, back to our smug complacency with restored power as today brings sunshine and temperatures in the mid-teens Celsius (mid-twenties in the balmy hoophouses where green shoots take on a growth spurt, oblivious to the commotion outside). My tractor has shed its icy mantle and will soon be called in to action. Spring is surely on its way now.

All Life Is Sacred

This past Sunday I gave a talk-cum-reading on my experiences as an organic grower of food. It was delivered to an audience of some fifty or so First Unitarian Church attendees in Toronto as part of a discussion on “Why Consumers Are Choosing Organics”. I was one of four speakers, the others being Sarah Dobec of The Big Carrot, Jodi Koberinski of the Organic Council of Ontario, and Tanmayo Krupanszky of the Toronto chapter of Canadian Organic Growers.

I really am unaccustomed to public speaking. Only truly at both my dear parents’ passings have I bellied up to do so, then too addressing mostly churchgoers. It is a measure of my passion for organics and the engagement of the public that I chose to take up Unitarian Allen Goldfeder’s invitation to speak at this event. I get nervous, would be more comfortable just reading from a prepared text, but – in the interest of conveying passion – prefer to talk directly to the audience whilst reading. This doesn’t come easy, especially when having to consider the proximity of the microphone and the steady drying up of the mouth. I am not a ready talker, preferring to read, listen, write, and inwardly mull.

Back in my comfort zone of the greenhouse this morning, fork turning over the moist thawing soil and extracting stubborn grasses around the perimeter prior to planting, insightful thoughts come to me. I confess to not being a churchgoer. However, there is something about the questing goodly spirit of those with faith that do worship regularly at the house of God that I admire. Tanmayo related her talk on organics to Love, Faith, and Hope, in turn. Nobody can argue with the value of these virtues.

I do find myself in life always casting around and digging for truth and meaning. I generally find it in honesty, ethical conduct, love, respect, and acting on these principles. In her primeval essence, it is Nature that is my guide. Some thirty years ago, Gundi and I were married by a lovely man called Dr. Dixon. At the time, he was a retired professor of biology at the University of Guelph and a Unitarian minister happy to come out to where we chose to wed. I always remember him saying that he believed that “Human Life is Sacred” and revered him for this. Over the years, it has become apparent to me that all natural life is sacred, in that we need to sustain living populations in all their wondrous diversity.

We, as humans, share this miracle of Life, this Planet with multitudes of other species, other beings that are alive for a short time on this Earth, just as we are. In the twinkling of an eye we are conceived, live our lives inhaling the swirling dynamic forces that have evolved here, then we evaporate into the afterlife, whose nature is full of promise, an unknown quantity, or an eternal void, depending on our faith. Whether we believe in one God, many Gods, or no god at all, it seems to me that our duty while we are alive in the here and now is to respect, honour, and love our earthly home and those we co-exist with, be they animal, vegetable, or mineral. Nature in whatever form will surely inhabit this planet long after our own species has driven itself also to the brink of extinction, and maybe beyond. 

Address to the Soul in the Yellow Wind

This mutated sunflower was found in Manno cho Kagawa prefecture. Kagawa is in Shikoku, Japan.

Iori Mochizuki is a brave man who posts constant updates about the Fukushima disaster at his blog http://fukushima-diary.com/

This post of his, penned on this very day, the second anniversary of “311”, touched me deeply.

As technology made our lives easier and easier, we abandoned our gift called intelligence. We were merely waiting for the spoon to feed us like unthinking reed.

Like they built pyramid or the tower of Babel, we built the huge kettle with Pluto inside.

Delphic oracle revived in the crystal boxes to tell us what to believe and stop us thinking.

We were banned from doubting and doubters were regarded as heresy.

When the mountain became valley, the bottom of ocean reached the sun, the wall of water swallowed our dreams.

Old kettles – the symbol of fake god- were smashed into pieces. We saw Pluto rising in the mushroom cloud.

Haves were afraid of losing all the have-nots. With the pieces of broken kettles, they built the church to keep have-nots inside. Stained glasses are made of notes, the cross is made of bones. It’s a floating cottage on the black river.

They swore they would never open their eyes to God so they won’t have to see Pluto anymore. They poured wax into their own ears.

Pluto is not outside of the church anymore. It’s in our shoes, in our pocket, in our breath and in our blood.

The letter from our parents to our children were rewritten illegibly, our sons and daughters read the “heaven” as “hades”.

Haves are building the army of have-nots and had Delphic oracle tell them to see the enemy with the closed eyes. You hear the choir counting our bodies and tell us where our enemy is.

On the day of the yellow wind, the offered flowers to the lost souls have 3 heads but the blind never see it. The offered water is burning. Breads are glowing blue. The voice of lost souls can never be heard by the waxed ears.

When they notice they killed all the Ichthys, they hear the sound of military boots coming to them.

We Are All One

As discovered on the Google+ profile page of my sister-in-law Heidi Grenda, https://plus.google.com/111392956603917877025/posts.

Heidi creates wonderful recycled art in Managua, Nicaragua, where she has happily lived for many years.  

This incredible short film shares an indigenous Native American prophecy that links all of life and the future of our planet. 

Narration is in English, subtitles in Spanish.

A Poem for the Marcellus

By Sandra Steingraber

From the Huffington Post, full article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sandra-steingraber/marcellus-shale_b_1428030.html

In praise of unfractured rock.

Everywhere is holy. - Allen Ginsberg, "Footnote to Howl," Howl, and Other Poems

In honor of both National Poetry Month and Earth Day - and with thanks to the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, who continues to inspire me - I offer below a love song to the bedrock: the methane-suffused shale that geologists call the Marcellus, which now lies in the crosshairs of the oil and gas industry.

By way of prelude: The Marcellus Shale is the geological foundation of upstate New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. The namesake for this underground layer of rock is the village of Marcellus, New York. The village, in turn, is named for the ancient Roman general, Marcus Claudius Marcellus. Renowned for his cunning military strategies, General Marcellus ultimately perished on the battlefield, run through by a spear. Marcellus reappears as a character in Hamlet (where being run through is a not uncommon cause of death). In Shakespeare's telling, Marcellus is a career officer who utters the memorable line about Denmark.

Geologically speaking, the Marcellus Shale represents an ancient seafloor. The bubbles of natural gas trapped within it are the remains of marine organisms. The Marcellus also contains heavy metals, radioactive elements, sea salt, and carcinogenic vapors, including benzene. When the shale is run through - fractured, fracked - for natural gas extraction, these substances are liberated and brought to the earth's surface.

Carbon-rich geological formations are also living ecosystems. They are the home to relic organisms collectively called "deep life." Some of these microbes form complex colonies, sending nanowires out into the surrounding rock for purposes of electron transfer. Deep-life organisms are ubiquitous and almost certainly play a role in the Earth's carbon cycle. They may, in ways we do not yet understand, contribute to climate stability.

Living organisms also interfere with the flow of gas through pipelines. To prevent this biofouling, gas companies send powerful biocides into the shale, killing everything that inhabits it. The use of biocides, among other factors, makes fracking a highly toxic form of energy extraction.

As a biologist, I've written extensively about the toxicity of fracking. As a poet, I'm interested in it, too. I'm often asked what biology and poetry have in common. The answer for me is that both biology and poetry are about the mystery of being alive. But whereas biology wants to solve the mystery, poetry simply says, behold.

If you like this poem, take it with you. Read it aloud at public hearings, at rallies, in church. Perform it at Earth Day celebrations. Consider this as permission to reprint. Send copies to your elected officials. Set it to music. Add some images and make a video. Whatever we can do to express our belief that the integrity of life on the sunlit surface of this planet depends on the integrity of the bedrock beneath us, we must do. Now.

Marcellus

- for Allen Ginsberg, who reminded us that the worship of Moloch required the sacrifice of children.

I.

Marcellus below us. Marcellus below us. 
Marcellus, tell us, who are you? 
Older than fishes. Older than spinal cord and bone 
and the green day of trees. Older than pollen dust, 
than seeds. Bedrock of grief. 
Subterranean coral reef. Microbe and nanowire. 
Electrically conductive, hypersaline fire. 
Alive.

II.

Marcellus our cellar. Marcellus unlike us. 
Fissured and fossilled sarcophagus 
of sea lilies and squid, ego and id.
The whole periodic table in you. 
Uranium. Radium. Barium. Lead. 
Marcellus, home of the dead. 
Toluene. Mercury. Benzene. Brine. 
Arsenic. The River Styx. 
Five hundred million years thick.

In you Euridice.

Hades. Moloch. Charon's boat.
Hades. Moloch. Ransom note.

III.

Marcellus deserved the name given him 
who waged war and gained fame for the sacking 
of Syracuse, for the battle of Gaul, only to lose 
to the enemy at home. And fall. No exit plan.
Some say your success was embellished, 
General Marcellus, tell us: who called you 
Sword of Rome?

Saudi Arabia below our feet. A prolific monster 
says Wall Street. A sure thing. A shale play. 
Play. Play. Place your bet.

Marcellus: a minor character who guides 
Hamlet away from his father's ghost. 
What, has this thing appear'd again to-night?
Something is rotten in the state of. . . .
Here, sign this lease and let's make the most 
of it.

Enters now Marc Antony breaking bread 
with Bobby Kennedy. Jealous?

Et tu, Marcellus.

O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
that I am meek and gentle with these butchers.

IV.

Hades. Moloch. Charon's boat.
Hades. Moloch. Ransom note.

Marcellus, who are we? Drill. Syringe. 
Derrick. Vein. Two junkies argue how many
atoms of carbon dance on the head of a pin.

Marcellus, quick. Tell us. I hear the trucks. 
They're not far. The plan is reduce you to rubble.
There is no Hubble telescope for you. 
No 24-hour spill cam for us.

Are you a box inscribed with name Pandora? Or a 
scroll on which are written the names of us all?

V.

Holy the rock 
and the fissure, 
the salt and the diatom's fall. 
Holy the unfractured. 
Holy the wall 
between you 
and us, Marcellus. 
Holy the cave. 
Holy the soluble. 
Holy the hall. 
Holy the unmapped 
and abandoned 
well.

Hell.

I know you're down there.

Mom always said, 
don't blow up the basement.

Hades. Moloch. Charon's boat.
Hades. Moloch. Ransom note.

Let me love you 
from a long way up.
Holy the water. 
Holy the cup.

Sandra Steingraber is the author of Living Downstream, published in second edition by Merloyd Lawrence Books/Da Capo Press to coincide with the release of the documentary film adaptation.