Each Little World

Christmas in Wisconsin 2011

What kind of gifts do you give friends and family in this year of living strangely in Fitzwalkerstan? Top of the list for most of my friends would be to get the required number of signatures to recall Gov. Walker. But I'm thinking a bit smaller in this instance. There's the whole buy local initiative, of course. But what about gifts that capture this moment in time, that celebrate it, link it to our past and future? There are a lot of potential possibilites out there, some obvious and others less so. Here are my suggestions:

Union Town by Tom Morello / The Night Watchman: This CD features 8 union songs; the last one on the disc was recorded live in Madison last February. The disc itself carries an image of the crowds in the Capitol Rotunda and the inside of the jacket shows one of the rallies here. In addition to the music, I like this CD (versus Morello's World Wide Rebel Songs, for instance) because it's inexpensive and has just enough music to get you fired up. Under $10.

We Are Wisconsin: The Wisconsin Uprising in the Words of Activists, Writers and Everyday Wisconsinites Who Made it Happen: Edited by Erica Sagrans. $18 paperback or you can download a PDF. The strenght of this book is that it contains the first writings, essays and blog posts coming out of public resistance to Governor Walker last winter. Farmers, politicians, students and citizens make their voices heard. First-person history in a convenient package.

 

Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams: This anthology of poetry and essays — edited and with an introduction by M.L. Liebler — is an amazing and inspiring collection and includes titles both familiar and unknown. The voices range from Ed Sanders of The Fugs to Jack White of the White Stripes; from Walt Whitman to John Sayles to Michael Moore; Amiri Baraka to Dan Berrigan to Li-Young Lee. Coffee House Press, Minneapolis. This is strong stuff and not intended for Tea-Partiers. 

Where We Worked: A Celebration of America's Workers and the Nation They Built: By Jack Larkin. This is the story of the 99%, our grandparents and theirs — all the citizens who built the mills and factories and dams and farms. While the book tells our history and our stories, it is the photos (from the Library of Congress) that speak most powerfully across time and generations. Most Americans today would be hard-pressed not to be able to find images that show the jobs members of their family have done. There's a whole section on coal mining, for example, with a number of pictures of breaker boys — the job my paternal grandfather had as a 10-year-old in Pennsylvania. Lyons Press, $40.00. 

Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues: By Bill Moyers. I picked up this hardcover book by Moyers at A Room of One's Own after the first day of the Democracy Convention in Madison last summer. Came home, sat down and began to devour it. Moyers, as usual, finds those people who speak most clearly and eloquently about the issues of the day: from poetry to poverty, gay marriage to plutocracy. This book will give you Progressive talking points and an endless list of books you want to read by the people Moyers interviews. 

Cut From Plain Cloth: The 2011 Wisconsin Workers Protests: By Dennis Weidemann. This hardcover book about the Wisconsin uprising has 150 photos and personal stories that exemplify the diversity and intimacy of this movement. I recognized old friends and new in its pages. Different enough from We Are Wisconsin that you could own both without too much overlap.

  

And, of course, you could make a donation to United Wisconsin (to Recall Scott Walker) in the name of a friend or family member as their gift this year! 

NOTE: All of these books and the CD are also available through the South Central Library System in Wisconsin.

Basho's radish

When the winter chrysanthemums go,

there's nothing to write about 

    but radishes.

— Matsuo Basho, translated by Robert Haas

 

SHE SAID: Yes, this is a radish! According to "Wikipedia: Black Spanish or Black Spanish Round occur in both round and elongated forms, and are sometimes simply called the black radish or known by the French name Gros Noir d'Hiver. It dates in Europe to 1548, and was a common garden variety in England and France during the early 19th century." This one's about the size of a clementine. Mark bought it specifically to photograph it rather than eat it. 

A poem for the people

Not only is April my birthday month but it's Poetry Month, too. This one's for you Wisconsin. 

The Low Road

 

What can they do 
to you? Whatever they want.
. . . How can you stop 
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can 
take what revenge you can 
but they roll over you.

But two people fighting 
back to back can cut through 
a mob, a snake-dancing file 
can break a cordon, an army 
can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other 
sane, can give support, conviction, 
love, massage, hope, sex. 
Three people are a delegation, 
a committee, a wedge. With four 
you can play bridge and start 
an organisation. With six 
you can rent a whole house, 
eat pie for dinner with no 
seconds, and hold a fund raising party. 
A dozen make a demonstration. 
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter; 
ten thousand, power and your own paper; 
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.

It goes on one at a time, 
it starts when you care 
to act, it starts when you do 
it again after they said no, 
it starts when you say We 
and know who you mean, and each 
day you mean one more.

— Marge Piercy

Thanks Under The Maple Canopy for alerting me to this poem.

Mending wall

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun...."

 HE SAID:

For ten years now the cycles of freeze and thaw have been doing their worst to the little wall by the garage. It was the first of several walls I built in our garden and clearly the worst. In order to plant behind it I back-filled with soil. Soil holds moisture. That's good for plants but ruinous to walls. The saturated soil swells when it freezes and pushes against the stones. For ten years the wall settled back to some degree as the soil thawed, but never completely. Year after year the bow and tilt of the stacked stones increased until this spring gravity settled matters.

And so this weekend, with Robert Frost in my thoughts, I'll start to rebuild my wall with the fervent hope that this time it will stand as long as I do.

Winter solitude

Winter solitude — 

In a world of one color

the sound of wind.

— Matsuo Basho,  translated by Robert Haas

    

 

 

 

Finale

 

Finale

Lone leaf

lingering on the branch

until a breeze sets it

fluttering,

flittering,

floating downward

onto a silvered sea of siblings.

All poised skyward —

Tracing their final flight from home to here.

    

This is one of my assignments from the Aboretum Corps of Discovery workshops, called "The Language of Landscape." I was given the word "fluttering" and had to use it in describing landscape. As with many of the class assignments, I used our garden as the inspirational landscape.

The beginning of autum

The beginning of autumn:

Sea and emerald paddy

Both the same green.

 

Poem by Matsuo Basho, translated by Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite

Wanted: watering cans

Ever since I published James Godsil's wonderful tomato poem last fall, I've been on the receiving end of his e-mails. They come fast and furious, filled with ideas and enthusiasm. Godsil's current project is Sweet Water Organics in Milwaukee, a group of urban fish farmers and veggie growers, whose aim is to revolutionize commercial food production. You can visually follow the Sweet Water story with Godsil's flickr set.

SWEET WATER ORGANICS PHOTO

Now Godsil wants your old watering can. Of course, it needs to be in working condition. In fact, Godsil sent out this poetic e-request for cans, along with suggested payment options. If I lived in Milwaukee, I'd take him up on his offer:

Deviations from perfection in the workmanship of contemporary hoses
As well as in the social practice of Sweet Water workers
Has given rise to a serious hose shortage and the notion that
Perhaps watering cans might be better for life's advance than hoses!

Anybody know somebody with spare hoses and watering cans
To trade for Sweet Water Basil, Tomatoes, Raspberries, or Compost?

Sweet Water Organics is actually an attempt to take Will Allen's methods to a commercial — rather than a non-profit — level. Allen has long labored in the service of urban agriculture in Milwaukee, believing that many of the health problems of the urban poor stem from the lack of food choices, especially fresh produce. 

The mission statement of Allen's organization — Growing Power, Inc. — says its role is "inspiring communities to build sustainable food systems that are equitable and ecologically sound, creating a just world, one food-secure community at a time." A great concept, but even better is the fact that Allen's talent and efforts were rewarded in 2008 with a MacArthur "genius" grant. 

Come hear Will Allen talk about Growing Power and more at 6 p.m. this Thursday, Sept. 17 at the Evjue Community Room at the Goodman Community Center, 149 Waubesa St., Madison. Allen's appearance is a warm-up for next month's Wisconsin Book Festival where another "farmer-hero," Wendell Berry, will be the keynote speaker on Sunday, Oct. 11. Both events are free. 

Sweet Water flickr set

Sweet Water sprouted at Will Allen's Growing Power. 

Who Loves the Rain

Who loves the rain

And loves his home, 

And looks on life with quiet eyes,

Him will I follow through the storm;

And at his hearth-fire keep me warm;

Nor hell nor heaven shall that soul surprise,

Who loves the rain,

And loves his home,

And looks on life with quiet eyes.

— by Frances Shaw

SHE SAID: Mr. Mark, I found the above poem and it made me think of you: Happy 21st Anniversary. Apparently, the traditional gift for this occasion is brass or nickel. I was thinking more along the lines of pottery or paintings — thus these images. Should we go shopping and buy ourselves a treat to celebrate and add our personal stimulus package to the economy at the same time?

Items pictured (from the top): A pair of tea bowls by Malcolm Greenwood, 2006. "Waves," a gouache by Kathleen Guthrie from Unsung Heroines gallery. A tall basin, made at Yixing, one of many pieces that survived the sinking of the Chinese ship, Desaru, off the coast of Malaysia in the 1840s. "Blue Rain" by Susan Shippey Borski at Roadside Scholar.

August, again ...

For the mind, by nature stagey, welds its frame

Tomb-like around each little world of a day.

We jump from picture to picture and cannot follow

the living curve that is breathlessly the same.

— Louis Mac Neice / 1907-1963

What little world?

EACH LITTLE WORLD that collides with mine:

The world of interiors and exteriors; bibliophiles; china and dishing; feasts and fests; food; flowers and gardens; material possessions and textile obsessions; worldly goods and bads.

Your worlds and mine.

Let the collision begin.

SHE SAID: The above poem and text were my very first blog post on August 24, 2008; one year ago today.

I began blogging because it seemed the natural progression for a print journalist in this changing media landscape. I knew that writing was something I wasn't ready to give up, even if my newspaper had given up on me. Over the years I'd written everything from book reviews to political opinion columns, along with a heavy dose of garden topics.

I've continued that mix here; again emphasizing gardening, when I realized it was garden bloggers who were leaving the most comments, who seemed to have collegial rather than competitive relationships with their fellow bloggers.

It's been a year of transition for me; and you and the blog have seen me through the rough spots.

When I began blogging last August, no one but my husband and a few friends were reading "Each Little World." Since then, I've met many of you in person and shared stories and thoughts via e-mail when commenting wasn't enough. It's been a year — not of collisions — but of meaningful collaborations.

The opening quoted text is the 2nd stanza of Louis Mac Neice's poem, "August," as it appears in A Little Treasury of Modern Poetry.