Tag: boundary waters

The Orcs Of Congress

jono55

A preface to this post. One of my personal mythic/reality/dreaming/challenging places is the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. One puts a canoe in the water, steps into it and away from the land, and all is changed. You are on your own, responsible for your own life in a way that is restorative to the worn and tattered thing that urban living makes of your soul. If something breaks … there is no one to fix it but you. I have been lucky enough to visit this beautiful area more than thirty times. It is as close as I have ever gotten to the numinous.

So I am definitely taking this next affront personally. The Republicans just voted to overturn a ban on mining near the Boundary Waters. It’s another one of those billionaires versus the public good scenarios. This time it’s a Chilean conglomerate whose operation would threaten this area, whose beauty I frequently exploit to brighten the pages of this often colorless and meandering blog.

So this is a kind of particular mine that is a copper sulfide mine, and what happens is copper sulfur rock is brought up to the surface, hundreds and hundreds of millions of tons of it. And when sulfur is exposed to air and oxygen – oxygen and water, which we have a lot of in northern Minnesota, it basically turns into sulfuric acid, and then it flows into the watershed. This mine is literally a mile or so from water that drains directly into the Boundary Waters and then into Voyageurs National Park.

NPR All Things Considered: Newly approved mining in Minnesota may threaten waterways of a beloved nature preserve

I will repeat a challenge here that I made more than a year ago. When was the last time anyone heard or read about a mining company who did not damage the environment no matter what they might have said in order to be permitted to do their work? Basically it is a sad but oft repeated story, trite in its details. Rape and run. Do the damage and then let the people try to get satisfaction in order to repair the harm.

This next paragraph is for those who have read (or seen the movies) of the Lord of the Rings saga. In my view the Republicans have made themselves into Orcs wearing tailored suits. Manifestations of the worst of human impulses, seemingly no longer capable of doing anything resembling good works.

Too strong a statement, you say? Too melodramatic? Just answer this question: where is your data? I certainly have mine in abundance. Like I said at the beginning, this is personal for me. In this instance it is the GOP taking the baby out of the rear-facing car seat and tying it to the front bumper. Little good can come from such a maneuver.

******

Her Love Was Meant For Me, by Richard Thompson

******

******

All of the trails on the South Rim of the Black Canyon National Park are now open to hikers. We are cautioned not to leave the paths and tramp around on what has always been a fragile landscape and is now even more so as it is attempting to recover from last year’s fire. No problem for us. We’ve always respected those rules. If the large numbers of human visitors were allowed to roam everywhere they wanted to it wouldn’t take long for a great deal of the beauty of those trails to vanish underfoot. This trail system is moderately strenuous for us in a few places, but overall is just a great workout in a dramatic setting. We are eager to add those hikes to our attempts at maintaining something like fitness.

Really, when I hit the pillow at night I can almost hear my aerobic capacity falling away. There is nothing for me to gain by avoiding exercise but to acquire more than a passing resemblance to Jabba the Hutt.

.

Speaking of his Abominable Huttness, I remember what a large deal it was when the first Star Wars film was released. Among the hordes that went to see it were son Jonnie and I. I think we went three times, and the following Christmas there were several Star Wars gifts with his name on them. It was a moment for him. One of Jonnie’s traits was that when he liked something, he dove in headfirst. Star Wars, the Lord of the Rings books, and the rock groups Kiss and Led Zeppelin were all recipients of his interest and devotion. If he was a fan of something you did, he bought all your stuff.

Jabba was one of the major heavies in that first movie, where his nasty physical appearance and poor personal hygiene were contrasted with Princess Leia’s lightly-clad attractiveness in several scenes.

.

***

Buckle up and get ready for a two-minute assault on your memory. The unforgettable theme music.

******

Someone came to the White House Correspondents Dinner last evening and fired shots, killing no one. He has been apprehended. As of this morning we don’t actually know who might have been his target, at such a dinner there are so many who have that potential. It could have been Cluck, a member of his cabinet, or a reporter who incensed the assailant for reasons obvious or obscure.

Deciding to go up against the Secret Service at a black tie event is not the hallmark of a mentally stable person. Perhaps he was sticking his head out of the metaphoric window, as Howard Beale suggests in the video below, and it didn’t make any difference to him who he killed or injured. Just to do something … . The world we occupy today tends to bring out the crazy in a person.

******

Shoot Out The Lights, by Richard Thompson

******

Cry Havoc!

jono55

Let’s face it, folks. Elon and his junior partner Donald are no friends of America. What they are doing is what an invading army does when it takes over a country. Dismantling the government, then installing their toadies and sycophants into the spaces left behind after firing the people who knew what they were doing.

It’s hard to tell which one of these evil twins is the poorest example of a leader. They treat a great nation as a corporate raider would treat a chain of hardware stores they were taking over, blowing it up and then pretending they know how to put it back together.

Hubris describes a personality quality of extreme or excessive pride or dangerous overconfidence and complacency, often in combination with (or synonymous with) arrogance. The term arrogance comes from the Latin adrogare, meaning “to feel that one has a right to demand certain attitudes and behaviors from other people”. To arrogate means “to claim or seize without justification… To make undue claims to having”, or “to claim or seize without right… to ascribe or attribute without reason”.

Wikipedia

They couldn’t pull this off without the help of the Republicans in Congress. That batch of quislings must share the blame for every part of the ugly mess being created daily.

******

******

Robin and I have slipped into a new pattern, at least for us. When we got together 33 years ago, both of us were coming off of unpleasant divorces (are there pleasant ones?).

One of the great attractions of a new relationship is that you have no mutual baggage. Every conversation is brand new, a fresh and exciting exploration of the other person. Our recent pasts were still so heavily filled with events involving our former marriages that neither one of us wanted to spend much time in those neighborhoods. So we didn’t.

Time flew and there were new memories being created almost faster than we could catalog them. But time eventually slows down, and now we are exploring parts of our histories before we met, one tidbit at a time. This son or daughter did this, when I was ten I did that … some of you may know how that drill goes.

But it has been really interesting to learn so many new/old things about someone I’ve been living with for quite a while now. Today we talked about lean times in our families of origin when bread and butter with sugar on it was supper.

A small thing. Not remembered as a hardship. Just two a decade and hundreds of miles apart who eventually would have a conversation at a supper table and realize yet one more thing they had in common.

Perhaps a photo of these nutritional victims would be in order here.

******

In a recent post I spoke lightly about mounting the barricades if the need for revolution ever came. I may have been boasting. It’s a common practice of mine, as you may have noticed if you’ve been regular readers. Perhaps better to think of it as a metaphor.

These days if one puts up a barricade they will soon have a bulldozer in front of them and a drone behind, neither machine caring much about a man’s cause or well-being.

But there was a time when pure valor went a long way … this song from Les Miserables is of that time and is my favorite from the film.

******

Today’s header photograph is labeled simply “Boundary Waters.” It’s been a while since I explained what that meant, so indulge me for a moment.

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BW) is in northern Minnesota, and for many decades has for me been a place of beauty, mystery, and almost mythological significance. It is a million acres of forest, water, and rock. The only watercraft allowed within its boundaries are those that one paddles, primarily canoes with a few kayaks thrown in.

The BWCAW extends nearly 150 miles along the International Boundary, adjacent to Canada’s Quetico and La Verendrye Provincial Parks, is bordered on the west by Voyageurs National Park, and by Grand Portage National Monument to the east. The BWCAW contains over 1,200 miles of canoe routes, 12 hiking trails and 2,000 designated campsites. 

U.S. Forest Service

I have visited the “BW” more than fifty times. Some of those trips only involved driving to the town of Ely MN for a touristy visit, some to rent a lake cabin on its periphery for a few days, but most of them were to take a canoe along with a bit of camping gear and push off from an entry point to enter one of the few places left in the US where industrial life is shut out.

What to find there? Well, solitude, natural beauty, aching muscles, loons and their library of calls, occasional bears and wolves, rocks under your camping pad, blisters, and spiritual renewal. That’s just to start with. I used to go twice a year, but the Rockies are a long way from the BW, and the last time now was six years ago, when Robin and I took grandson Aiden for his first trip in. The header photo was taken when Robin and I visited in 2011, and was marked by very warm days, grand scenery, and occasional attacks by hordes of particularly bloodthirsty mosquitoes.

It’s a piece of America that requires something of the visitor, but is worth the effort ten times over.

******