Naturalists, Meskwaki, and Murakami

Queen Anne's lace, an invasive plant from Europe.

On the Wednesday after the election, I was fortunate to have already planned to attend a conference for the Iowa Association of Naturalists. The Naturalists are a great group to hang with—In Iowa they are used to being undervalued by politicians but keep trying to make the world a better place. A lot of kids love them for the opportunity to be out of the classroom, learning about a frog by getting muddy while learning to catch one.

Accommodations for the IAN conference were at a hotel on the Meskwaki Settlement. An option for the afternoon of arrival was visiting the Meskwaki Cultural Center and Museum. Coming from Dubuque, I was familiar with the story of the early Europeans encountering the Meskwaki at their encampment along the Mississippi River, now the location of Dubuque’s sewage treatment plant. Julian Dubuque married the chief’s daughter and got the mining rights. He is now buried atop a bluff just downstream in the Mines of Spain State Recreation Area.

The Europeans remain. The Meskwaki do not.

But some Meskwaki returned, purchased land, and created the Meskwaki Settlement. Now their casino advertises the loosest slots in Iowa. There’s something ironically just about them using gambling to get back some of the wealth taken from them.

But most importantly, they persisted. Compared to what Native Americans have endured, I have no room to get upset about the outcome of an election.

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Around the same time, I was rereading a few Murakami books and looking forward to his The City and Its Uncertain Walls, now recently published. Murakami was rejected by Japan’s literary establishment but has seen his books translated into 50 languages. Now he is regularly considered for a Nobel Prize in Literature.

Despite an uphill battle, he kept writing. He says, “My books have been criticized so much over the years, I don’t pay much attention.”

And the criticism continues:

“Bad magical realism lacks both magic and realism, and The City and its Uncertain Walls should take its place alongside Coelho’s The Alchemist, Fowles’s The Magus, Gibran’s The Prophet and any number of other books that you can just about be forgiven for admiring as a teenager but which, to an adult reader, offer little more than embarrassment.”
Review in the Guardian, 10 Nov 2024.

Recently while driving through Wyoming, I and my wife listened to Jeremy Irons narrate The Alchemist—we nearly ran out of gas because time passed so quickly. I was embarrassed about the gas, not the book.

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In reading the above review of Murakami, I’m reminded of some of the critiques of Democrats after Trump was elected—arrogant and out of touch. Did the reviewer of Murakami’s book need to not only trash the book but also anyone who likes it? Is it not possible to despise Trump while liking some of his followers? Or at least showing some compassion?

Bret Stephens said, “The Democratic Party at its best stands for fairness and freedom. But the politics of today’s left is heavy on social engineering according to group identity. It also, increasingly, stands for the forcible imposition of bizarre cultural norms on hundreds of millions of Americans who want to live and let live but don’t like being told how to speak or what to think. Too many liberals forgot this, which explains how a figure like Trump, with his boisterous and transgressive disdain for liberal pieties, could be re-elected to the presidency.”

I’m also reminded of experiences at academic conferences—often parades of ego and one-upmanship. But, yes, those academics were once my tribe, and I have certainly demonstrated my share of arrogance.

Somehow the naturalists have mostly escaped arrogance. Part of the reason, no doubt, is the time they spend with nature. They see the slow changes, the beauty and the damage, and they choose their times and opportunities to make a difference.

They believe in the magical realism of nature. But they have few illusions about the uphill battles they face—you can’t make a baby in a month by getting nine women pregnant.

So the Naturalists, the Meskwaki, and Murakami all teach me to be a bit more humble, to take my own burrs a bit less seriously. But also to persist.

This Old House

The ceiling in the kitchen after removing the old track lighting.

This old house

has no standards,

no built-to codes,

no protection from

shocking yourself.

Nothing is quite square
nor level.

Wires are hidden,

connected to

unexpected circuits.

Not designed

nor planned,

but grown,

a random add-on,

a strange mutation.

The old track light rusted.

Dead beetles hid

behind the halogen bulbs

that warmed the kitchen.

It had to come down.

Track lights have four screws---

two to the junction box,

one at each end.

Almost as easy as

changing a bulb.

But there was no box.

No ground wire.

A hole in the dry wall,

hot wires poking through.

Better recheck the circuit.

The new LEDs

burn cool.

The fixture?

Clean for now.

That'll do

Beaverhead 2024

In July of 2024, my daughter ran the Beaverhead 100km race in Salmon, Idaho, over 50 miles of which followed the Continental Divide Trail (CDT).

 

I lace tight my Brooks Cascadia
before the 4:00 a.m. start.
8500 feet and then climbing.
Over 50 miles on the CDT.

Breath in, breath out.
I’m not alone.
I have friends/husband running nearby.
But not in my head.

Climbing.
Feeling good.
OMG, the skree field.
38-minute miles.

On the keen-edged CDT,
if I fall right,
my blood flows to the Pacific.
If left, the Gulf of Mexico.

Dark.
Still running.
Everything narrows
to the glow of my headlamp.

11:09 p.m., cross the line,
19+ hours.
With my husband and three friends,
Holding hands!

All Paws on Deck!

 My dog, Jaeger, is even more part of my day-to-day after traveling west and camping for a month.  Upon returning, I decided to invest in a sit-on-top kayak.  Being late in summer, kayaks were harder to find, and the shipping costs were prohibitive.  I ended up buying a display model at a big-box store.  They were nice about helping me load it on the rack on my CR-V.

First-mate Jaeger and his captain.

With my arthritic hip, getting in and out of our traditional kayaks is tough enough by myself, much less with a dog.  And if he were to tip us midstream, the only option would be to head for the bank and look for a flat spot.  But with a sit-on-top, I hope to get us back aboard.  Maybe. The odds are better.

Yesterday was our maiden voyage with Jaeger as first mate.  We went to the A.Y. McDonald Park on the Mississippi River, put in, paddled around the marina near the Yardarm Riverfront Bar & Grill and out into the channel, then returned to the dock and practiced getting into and out of the kayak.  From my sit-on-top kayak to Jamie's regular kayak, Jaeger went back and forth, climbing out onto the dock and then into a kayak.  Success so far!

Jaeger with Jamie.

Not a Lost Generation

You are a lost generation.

from The Sun Also Rises

I’ve been gone for a month, camping out west, and staying less attuned to the news. At the time I left, Hemingway seemed like the appropriate author. If he was the poster-writer of the lost generation, then his worldview seemed to fit the era of the lost election. We seemed to be heading into a rerun of Trump versus Biden, with accompanying lack of enthusiasm and a drifting toward some inevitable ending that felt like the stagnant trench warfare of WWI.

And then Biden stepped aside.

I, too, retired this year, saying multiple times that part of good theater is knowing when to leave the stage. It was time to get out of the way and let younger colleagues move things in the direction they chose. I didn’t want to drift into the inevitable decline of cognitive skills, the tendency to say, “We tried something like that and it didn’t work,” and the going through the motions simply because they were familiar and relatively easy and paid decently.

So I cleaned out my office, said my goodbyes, and went camping.

But I expect it was a lot harder for Joe Biden to leave the stage. The fact that he chose to has my admiration. Whether you agree with his politics or not, many of us know how hard it is to get an aging parent to give up the car keys. Imagine trying to get them to give up the keys to the White House.

But giving up the keys is the right thing for a parent to do when their driving endangers themselves. And others. Biden’s clinging to his status as nominee clearly endangered his legacy and the well-being of many others. I convinced my mother to give up her car, in part by saying that my daughter, Ananda, would use it in college. Biden gave up his status as Democratic nominee for Kamala Harris.

During my trip west, I saw Ananda, who is still driving my mom’s now 22-year-old car, hoping to keep it going for another couple of years until  she finishes grad school. Ananda loves the old car, and it ties her to her heritage.

My mother wasn’t without regrets about giving up her car, even wanting to buy another despite being behind locked doors in a memory-care unit. I hope Joe won’t have regrets about his decision. I believe he has a history of trying to do the right thing. Like all of us, he isn’t perfect. You may not agree with many of his decisions. But I think most of you will agree about the importance of knowing when to leave the stage.

And when Joe and I have left the stage, a new act follows, more youthful, enthusiastic, creative, and joyful. Move over Hemingway—I want to believe that things are unfolding as they should. I recently reread Paulo Coehlo’s The Alchemist. As he says,

And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

A Pleasant Morning

The temperature is cool but not cold,

unusually pleasant for early June.

The world keeps getting hotter

as does the political rhetoric,

but this morning is perfect.

The two young border collies are resting  

after an intense bout of Frisbee catch-and-fetch.

One lies on the table

by the wide front window

undisturbed by squirrels on the bird feeder.

My wife and surrogate daughter still sleep.

I'll make their coffee soon.

I already had a cup

as I washed last night's dishes,

a clean start to the day.

Laus canis

 

Jaeger with a blue (Marian) halo.

I used to look kindly upon old men walking their dogs. Now I am they. I am recently retired, transitioning from students to a young dog. Already he has loosened my arthritic hip with countless episodes of Frisbee tossing and brightened my outlook with his pleasure at our daily dog walks.

Even the occasional bagging of a sidewalk turd is no source of irritation. No,the monstrous deposition becomes a symbol of my virtue, my belonging to a sacred society, as I stroll along with the bag displayed like a young acolyte processing with the monstrance.

We both are proud of our virtue.

The Interpretation of Art

I admit to having the maturity of an adolescent boy, but the University of Dubuque's sculpture outside its welcome center might make a more mature person giggle:

Sculpture abutting the Peter and Susan Smith Welcome Center at the University of Dubuque.

I thought of the inspiration of my scientific predecessors, such as Val Kilmer in Real Genius, and considered developing a new course, Boulder Balancing,  or a cross-listed course with music. Hard Rock for the Rock Hard.  But even if I could slip it past the administration, some parent would probably complain about their innocent college student child being exposed to such mind-expanding material.

Instead, I walked around the sculpture, admiring its form, photoing it from a low angle looking upward.  And suddenly I realized that I had totally misunderstood the sculpture.

This was no paean to a penis!

No, this was a statement about Mother Earth's crushing of male hubris:

A different angle dangles a different interpretation.

In geology classes, I have often talked about the death of the dinosaurs when a huge rock from space impacted Earth, killing of the dinosaurs, and  I was reminded of the words sung by The Police:

Walking in Your Footsteps

Fifty million years ago

You walked upon the planet so

Lord of all that you could see

Just a little bit like me

Walking in your footsteps

Walking in your footsteps

Walking in your footsteps

Walking in your footsteps

Hey Mr. Dinosaur

You really couldn't ask for more

You were God's favorite creature

But you didn't have a future

Walking in your footsteps

Walking in your footsteps

Walking in your footsteps

Walking in your footsteps

Hey mighty brontosaurus

Don't you have a lesson for us

You thought your rule would always last

There were no lessons in your past

You were built three stories high

They say you would not hurt a fly

If we explode the atom bomb

Would they say that we were dumb?

We're walking in your footsteps

Walking in your footsteps

Walking in your footsteps

Walking in your footsteps

They say the meek shall inherit the earth

They say the meek shall inherit the earth

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Gordon Matthew Sumner

Walking in Your Footsteps lyrics © Songs Of Universal Inc.