Graduating

One of our nieces recently graduated from college here in Iowa City, and has gotten an internship at the university. The lease on the apartment she’s been in for the past four years is up today (to renew it she would have had to have done it last January when she had no idea what she would be doing or where at this time; that’s just the way things are in Iowa City for students and renting), and her new apartment (she fortunately was able to find one) doesn’t open until Monday. So we offered to store as much of her stuff as she needed for the next few days in our house. Her parents drove their van to town and helped her with the move. They made four trips in the van, unloading a mattress and bedspring, couch, chair, coffee table, TV, and sundry other small furniture. They also left town with a van and a car both full of cloths and incidentals. In all, it was pretty impressive. As they were leaving, I told my niece that when I left college, I did so by myself and had packed everything I owned in a 1959 VW Beetle.

I didn’t mean that at all as criticism. It was more a personal reflection, another of those oh-land-oh-goshen-how-things-have-changed-in-40-years moments. I have those more and more these days. In truth, it was probably envy as much as anything else; if only I could have lived my undergraduate days in that relative luxury. But it probably would have been a distraction for me. As if I needed any more distractions as a student. No doubt I was better served by my Spartan survival (at least as I look back on it over the decades), just as my niece has been well-served by her means. We all graduate as we can, as we do, and we all graduate many times over in our lives.

A Summer's Lunch

Probably not a better summer’s lunch than freshly picked tomato, cucumber, and basil, still warm from the garden, drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and sprinkled with ground pepper and salt.

Dysfunctional Democracy

Our current stalemate in the debt ceiling / deficit mess (embarrassment) comes down to two systemic problems:

1. For the past 30-40 years our two political parties (why there should be only two parties is an adjacent systemic problem) have moved from each having basically three wings – conservative, moderate, and liberal (albeit to differing degrees) – to the Republicans having only two wings – a large conservative and a meager moderate – and the Democrats having their own two wings – a large moderate and a meager liberal. Where once there was a possibility of cross-party consensus on any given issue, almost every issue now is dominated by a clear and virtually full partisan divide, conservatives (Republicans) versus moderates (Democrats). So when neither party controls both houses of Congress and the Presidency, nothing but shit can result.

2. The fundamental underpinning of our democracy is deliberation, debate, and compromise. But in the current situation (see #1) there are a significant number of Republicans who follow the commands of Rush Limbaugh and refuse to compromise (let alone deliberate or debate) on the canard of “principle.” (Shouldn’t democratic compromise be a primary principle to hold, even above ideological principle?) More important, the notion of deliberation, debate, and compromise rests on an agreed upon goal. And in the current economic fiasco each side is pursuing a different goal: The Democrats are seeking to raise the debt ceiling; maintain the safety nets of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; cut spending; and begin to reform the tax structure and cut the deficit. The Republicans are seeking to shrink the government to nonexistence (“Starve the Beast” as they like to say), radically cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; cut education, health care, and social services; and maintain tax cuts and loopholes for the (especially very) wealthy. Compromise requires first agreement on what the mutual goal of action should be. And right now we just don’t have that agreement.

So that’s where we are. It’s not a pretty sight. And I can’t imagine it getting any better any time soon. The consolation of the cynic and pessimist is that they are most often rewarded by being correct. It’s not much, but it’s something.

Water Hyacinth

The water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) in our pond is in full bloom. This plant invites a love-hate relationship. Its beauty exists even before it blooms in its lush, broad, oval, polished, deep green leaves. But when it blooms for a few days in the mid-summer heat it pushes the beauty up a few levels with its spike of delicate, lavender flowers, perfectly complimenting the green of its own foliage as well as any other that happens to be surrounding, a Monetesque scene. However, it’s also one of the most invasive of plants, probably the most invasive of water plants, doubling in area every two weeks, sending out shoots that form additional plants that in turn send out shoots that form more plants and so on until they take over the surface of a pond. Several days ago I went out to thin the hyacinth, as I already have done a couple of times this season. But I saw that most all of the plants had flower stalks with buds soon to open, so I decided to let them show their stuff for the few days they bloom. When they’re spent, I’ll quietly thin them out, hoping they won’t notice, as I dump them into the compost pile to rot with the garden weeds and kitchen waste, a summer microcosm of the life cycle we are all a part of.

Walking

When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us if we walked only in a garden or a mall? . . .

Nowadays almost all man’s improvements, so called, as the building of houses, and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap. . . .

I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of miles, commencing at my own door, without going by any house, without crossing a road except where the fox and the mink do: first along by the river, and then the brook, and then the meadow and the wood-side. There are square miles in my vicinity which have no inhabitant. . . .

Henry David Thoreau
“Walking” (1862)

When I walk, I naturally go down the street, east, crossing numerous other streets, some with lights or signs where I have to pause or stop, all with cars, all with houses and stores and schools, no fields or woods, all tame and cheap. I can easily walk three or four miles. I can’t imagine ten or more at any one time. I do cross a stream, two or three times, though on a sidewalk over the stream which you can’t see or hear unless you cross to a railing where it runs beneath. There are nothing but inhabitants along my walk – no fox or mink, but birds and squirrels and cats and dogs and children walking or riding bikes to school and their parents driving in cars to work, retirees tending their gardens or mowing their lawns. Henry David and I are 150 years apart, eons, light years – meadows and woods. I listen to his essay and a distant past on my iPod:

The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no house is visible, with all the glory and splendor that it lavishes on cities, and perchance as it has never set before,—where there is but a solitary marsh-hawk to have his wings gilded by it, or only a musquash looks out from his cabin, and there is some little black-veined brook in the midst of the marsh, just beginning to meander, winding slowly round a decaying stump. We walked in so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and leaves, so softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it. The west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening.

Northern Light Overlook Trail

The North Shore Hiking Guide describes it as “Difficult but short.” A more accurate description of the Northern Light Overlook Trail off the Gunflint Trail north of Grand Marais would be “Difficult, almost vertical, one-half-mile climb that seems infinite, over exposed roots, sharp rocks, large outcroppings, moss and mud. The breeze will disappear soon after you leave the parking lot and begin the climb through the woods. A variety of bugs will welcome you, keep you constant company, and suck your blood. Take water so you can at least feel like you’re doing something to survive. Also take identification, just in case. If you think the trek up is tough, be prepared for the lack of sure footing on the way down. Note that you’re the only one on the trail. There’s a reason for this.”

But the guide does get one thing right: “Outstanding vistas in several directions above Northern Light Lake.”