MamaStories

Thanks to Moonmeadow Farm, this is Wendell Berry’s poem “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” from his book The Country of Marriage (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973). I hope it’s ok to reproduce it here… 

Oh but be fearless!

 So:

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry (my hero)

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

                 ~

There is so much in this poem, I won’t even try to write about it, as yet. I’ve only just discovered it, let me read a couple of hundred times first, soak it up… rest my head in its lap.

A while ago I was given a review copy of Home Ground, Language for an American Landscape. Barry Lopez, the editor, set 45 writers to writing over 850 new definitions for the terms Americans use to describe their land.

What a book! It has revived my love-affair - lately somewhat neglected -with America and American nature writers, from Rick Bass to NathanielHawthorne, from Mary Oliver to Walt Whitman, from Wendell Berry to Bill McKibben to, of course, Henry David Thoreau.

I wrote a review for Suite1o1.com that explains why I think the book is so succesful and necessary.

From this:

To this:

In just a week! 

I’ve already said it a couple of times: it’s Fall. Then I had to swallow my words when the next day it was steaming hot. Here, in Boston, near the end of October!

But now I think I can with (weatherish) certainty say that it is, this time, now, finally Fall. Hooray!

But oh shucks, we’ll miss most of the season. Next week we’re off for three weeks, to warmer climes (Singapore and Calcutta, India). By the time we return, it will already be winter around here. Though I might have to swallow those words as well…

This is a closer shot of the felt flower on Amie’s hat. Isn’t it gorgeous! My sister bought the hat for her for last winter, when it was too big. Now it is just right.

Amie and Baba at the Park 

Yesterday morning was blustery and a little cloudy, but sunny and quite balmy. The three of us went to the Larz Anderson Park, where Amie ran and ran, up and down the hill, in a field of leaves and dandelions, hemmed in by trees changed to all kinds of colors.

Was she tired afterwards! 

On our way home we drove past a huge yard sale for a neighborhood school’s extended day program. It was very child-oriented, with heaps of children’s clothes, piles of books, and boxes and boxes of toys. Amie was very happy to delay her nap for an hour.

We bought mainly books, and small plastic bags stuffed with Schleich animals, and two Groovy Girls dolls. Don’t ask me which ones: they’re hard to identify without their clothes on! When we pointed them out to her, Amie piped: “O!” Sold. We also bought a $100 bike trailer for $30! Now I have to get a bike too, and we’re off on adventure at no cost to the earth!

One of the books I found was Donald Hall’s Ox-Cart Man. I came home and read it cover to cover. The book’s subject matter fits exactly the other books we’ve been reading, about nature and the turning of the seasons, the joy and worth of manual labor, and family life. I’ve always been a fan of Hall’s brand of “American poetry”. And the illustrations by Barbara Cooney are gorgeous in the “American folk” approach…

To offset the “American” aspect, I also got Laurent de Brunhoff’s Babar Learns to Cook. I love how Babar, the King of the Elephants, does all these domestic things. And how the elephant kids are up to all kinds of mischief all the time. {UPDATE: We now actually read the Babar book and I have to put this straight: Babar doesn’t cook at all! His wife, Celeste does… Sigh.}

Last but not least, while I had eyes only for the books, DH scored this set of handpainted porcelains cups (4), saucers (8), coffeepot (1) and milk pitcher (1). We’re not thrifters - don’t have the time, the money, the room - but when it comes to delicate porcelain cups and saucers… and then it was a pity to break up the set, which only cost us $8!

Amie and Baba at Walden Pond (click on My Flickr to the right for more)

• The Pond

All three of us went to Walden Pond today (Amie no longer calls it “Walrus Pond”). It was 83 degrees F, that’s 28 degrees C! We had not expected it, so we were rather overdressed (long pants).

The pondwater was warm enough for Amie, who has been suffering from a cold, to go in whole. This time we did take care to take her shoes off first thing - but we were too late with the shirt. Her diaper swelled up like a balloon half her weight, but she was unperturbed. She floated and splashed and drank the pondwater (we asked her not to, but what can you do?).

We collected stones and leaves and dirt.

Walden Pond in summer can get very crowded, but as you can see from the photo, today was fine, surprisingly for such a hot Saturday on a long weekend. There were mostly families with children, many of them as unprepared for a swim as we were but goin’ in anyway. It felt rather neighborly.

• Then we met Henry

On our way back to the parking lot we visited the replica of Henry David Thoreau’s house. When we arrived the door was open but Amie wouldn’t go in. The bed, with its messed-up brown blanket, scared her a bit. She said:

“I want to see Henry!”

A young couple who were also looking in through the doorway laughed and the girl pointed at her boyfriend, saying:

“There’s Henry!”

The young man took up the role with ease and gave us a tour of his house: the three chairs, the fireplace, the table and the bed.

Amie stared.

And she stared. Was it because he didn’t at all look like the bear in D.B. Johnson’s books? Or did she stare so because she has a sense of Thoreau’s stature, or of the fact that he’s the past and, actually, quite dead…

Who knows what goes on in that little head of hers. More than we give her credit for, I’m sure!

Henry David Thoreau

(July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862)

We love Thoreau around here.  Ever since our visit to Walden Pond, Amie often asks to be read her books about “Henry David Thoro-ow”. We have several children’s books about Henry, but the core of our collection is the series written and illustrated by D.B. Johnson:

1. Henry Hikes to Fitchburg
2. Henry Climbs a Mountain
3. Henry Builds a Cabin
4. Henry Works

We love these so much, I wrote a raving review about them for Suite101.com. Go have a look-see!

I asked Amie to paint Walden Pond and this is the result. Again, Im not sure if this is a painting of the thing or a spelling of the word (she seems to conflate the two), but it sure is a nice work of art!

Check out Rebecca’s kids’ artworks at Irish Sally Garden!

Oh, and I’ve ordered:

1. Teach Your Own: the John Holt Book of Homeschooling. I’m very curious!
2. The Creative Family: How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections, by Amanda Soule and her family, from SouleMama (it’s not out yet; I preordered).
3. Henry Climbs a Mountain, by D.B. Johnson: we love the Henry books, and I plan to write a Suite101.com review about them soon.

• The Sam and Stella Books

We love Marie-Louise Gay’s Sam and Stella books. Amie loves the repeated “Stellaaaaaaa!” or “Saaaaaam!” exclamations, Stella’s red hair, and Sam’s funny dog, Fred.

And, o yes, the stories - always surprising, uplifting and subtly wise - and the illustrations - delightful watercolors and pencil works of art (colorful, but easy on the eye) of adorable characters and settings.

Oh, and those settings! Stella and Sam venture mostly outside, into nature. There Sam asks and Stella answers, to the best of her capabilities, which are extensive, especially in the area of imagination.

- “Stella, can dogs read?” asked Sam

- “Yes,” said Stella. “But they need glasses.”

Even when they’re inside, they are getting ready to go out, or the outside is subtly present.

• What are you doing, Sam?

In ”What are you doing, Sam?”, Stella keeps an eye on her little brother’s increasingly alarming indoor activities - that is, alarming for us, reading parents: the kids don’t worry, since there are no parents, not even a hint of them, in the Sam and Stella books.

Stella is more occupied with studying leaves and trees. My favorite illustration shows her sitting at a desk strewn with paints, tape, brushes and inks, leaves taped onto paper, and a jar with a ladybug. She is painting a tree on the right page in abook - on the left page there are notes.

Stella is my kind of girl! And the place where she lives - the rooms, the house, the natural worLd outside - is my kind of place!

The window behind her reveals that it is raining. Brown leaves are falling to the ground. It is Fall and the feeling that has been growing throughout the book - of homeliness, warmth and safety - magisterially comes together.

In the next illustration, Sam is also painting (on the wall!): in his painting the sun shines brightly, and the grass and trees are green.

In fact, I am so enamored with these books that I went ahead and wrote them up in an article on Suite1o1! Be sure to have a read!

We were all set for a relaxed weekend, when at 10 in the morning our place was suddenly bombarded by a deafening noise: our upstairs neighbor was having her floors sanded - without warning to us. Well… It was still going on when time Amie’s naptime came around, so we had to flee, and after trying to get her to nap in the stroller - that’s not going to happen anymore! - we got in the car and drove to Walden Pond.

We spent two wonderful hours there. Amie loved it, picking up stones and sand and throwing them into the water, and before I knew it, getting in up to her ankles, shoes and socks and sleeves and all! 

I stripped us of socks and shoes, rolled up the trouser legs, and we made sand clouds by wiggling our toes, stomping our feet. Threw rocks of course, and stuck twigs into the loose sand. Admired little stone houses built by previous visitors to the small beach. We admired the sunshine on the waves, got dizzy looking at them - Amie kept saying: “I’m going! I’m going now!” - and once or twice nearly fell in.  And made waves.

The weather was  glorious and the water warm from an entire summer. There were maybe thirty other visitors - a stark contrast to our last visit over a year ago, when we had to fight to find some towel space on the beach.

I picked up Amie and carried her on my hip almost halfway around the pond, telling her about Thoreau - we didn’t make it to the site of his cabin.  She may have understood something of it. It doesn’t matter. She came home and told her Baba: “I went to Walrus Pond!”

I felt pretty bad about the car drive. The question of whether a nap was worth it became useless as soon as it was clear that Amie wouldn’t even go to sleep in the car (she didn’t: she was a wild child by the time we got home!). Next time we’re taking more people along, and/or we’re getting there by alternative means.

• Complacency 

I probably shouldn’t have watched “Dimming the Sun” on NOVA/PBS yesterday. Did you see it?  I stumbled upon the last half hour of the program by accident and by the time it was over, all the old feelings of hopelessness, helplessness and inadequacy made their comeback. And of course, whenever they do that, they are worse than before, because I was yet again lulled into a false sense of security, yet again complacent.

When I went to bed, there was my Amie, sleeping so soundly and sweetly, with not a care in the world. I lay down next to her and wept, whispering empty”sorries”. I couldn’t bring myself to saying: “I’ll make it all better.”

• Dimming the Sun

So what was the program about?

It turns out that, since the seventies and eighties, when air polution in Europe and Northern America went virtually unchecked, said air polution  has been “dimming” the sun, that is, reflecting the sunlight back, in effect cooling the earth . Another contributor to this are contrails: the vapor trails left behind by high-flying aircraft.

This has veiled the actual degree of global warming, which, if we take the dimming into account, now seems much more advanced than we thought. Since the 1990s, Europe and Northern America have been cutting down on polution, which sounds like a good thing, for health reasons, obviously, but it is a double-edged sword: it opens the door to more global warming. And, as James Hansen put it:

In a way, it is unfortunate that the small particles were in the atmosphere because we would have realized much earlier that the…how strong the greenhouse effect is, and would have had more time to make the adjustments that are going to be necessary to slow down and eventually stop the growth of greenhouse gases.

• Ethiopia, 1984

The most gripping example of this dimming for me was the footage of the great draught and famine in the Sahel: Ethiopia, 1984.

For decades, the seasonal monsoons, which had kept the Sahel going - hanging on by its fingernails - stayed away. No one know why, but it now seems that it was due to that same polution by Europe and Northern America - which satellite pictures revealed reached deeply into the Sahel. These particles blocked the sun’s yearly warm-up of the oceans north of the equator. This in turn blocked the ocean from drawing the tropical rainbelt around the equator up north for a while. That meant that the land at that longitude was no longer getting its much needed monsoon.

The images of all those starving and dead children… They gripped us in the 80’s, and we all contributed to Aid. But I wonder: had we known, had it been pointed out to us, that it was we who were directly repsonsible for this, would we have changed our lifestyles?

• The End of the Trees and the Soil

The Sahel was an example of the consequences of dimming the sun in the past. The program of course also looked into the future. Today’s climate models predict a maximum warming of 5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, but this young climate scientist, Peter Cox, thinks it could very well rise by as much as 10 degrees Celsius, or 18 degrees Fahrenheit.

Within a matter of years, many plants would die. Also the trees. The soil would simply blow away… Just writing this down makes my head feel top-heavy! If you missed the show, see if they will rerun it in your region, or read the transcript: even without the images, it brings the message home.

• Children

The program ended with children - because they’re the future, you know. The climatologist, Peter Cox, was shown playing on a beach with his young son. But it wasn’t sentimental tear-jerking. When Cox took the last word, it sounded like an understatement (and this from the most pessimistic of global-warming scientists, and the father of a child who will live to see his predications come true):

One of the real driving forces is that you leave an environment that is comfortable for your children. And if we carry on going the way we’re going, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to leave an environment that’s much worse than the environment we lived in, and it will be down to what we did when we were using that environment, and that would be, tragic, really, if that happened.

It already is tragic, in my eyes. As you know, I am one of the pessimists about what will change - Hansen says we have a decade before we reach the point of no return.

That’s why I say “sorry” to Amie, but not “I’ll make it all better”. I’ll do my best, and every little bit counts, makes it a little bit better, I know, but in the end, I often despair whether it will be enough.

I don’t want to promise what I can’t deliver.