Going...going...gone

Good Shepherd Church- Artichoke, MN
I have only lived here three years and the loss of farmsteads, churches, historic mainstreet anchor buildings in our little area is a heartache. I can only imagine what is like if you've lived here your whole life and even have generational memories.

Change. Loss. No rational hope for rebuilding.
Take a look at that picture of the Good Shepherd Church-- about 10 miles out my backdoor. A lovely country church--with a congregation that endured for over 125 years. This month the church was picked up and moved away to a more populated area. Many people are happy that the building will be saved and used-- and not collapse over the years from the lack of people/use that keeps buildings alive. But it leaves another gap in the landscape. A gap where a beautiful and inspiring landmark stood as a testament to what, in my opinion, is a hallmark of our culture. That we can work together to build and sustain a place to nurture the human spirit.

Likewise, we once built monuments to business and industry. Businessmen invested in the permanence of a brick building on mainstreet. You have to believe in the future to build a brick building. I'm sorry to say that we may not even have the skilled labor, the noble stonemasons, who could even build those same buildings today. And so the two buildings that burnt to the ground on mainstreet Ortonville this month represent a loss that will never be replaced. Maybe a pole barn would go up in their place-- but the resources, skill, and belief in the future that it takes to build a landmark are not there.

Once these buildings are gone, they are gone forever.
There is a building in Clinton- a tall, two-story yellow brick building- that lives in my dreams. It lives as a completely restored dry goods, gardening, book store, coffee shop. Upstairs is a sunlit, elegant, comfortable living area -- our winter home so that the kids can go to school through the blizzards that isolate us on the prairie. I buy lottery tickets because they are my only hopes to achieving that dream. This venture is not a money maker, but a labor of love. Love and hope.
But the hope that I'll win the lottery before the building is razed is running low. The front page of Thursday's Northern Star newspaper included the city council's recommendation to raze the building because the bricks are beginning to fall and are a hazard. A race against time- will Kathy get enough money for a roof and a brick repair before the building collapses or is razed?
Last Monday, my program at the U co-hosted a talk with Nicole Foss, of Automatic Earth fame. I spent time with her following the seminar's gloomy description of what faces us in the future (economic, energy, and resource collapse). She whispered to me "You're in the right place. It will come back. It will be the soul and center of what is good, right and whole in the future." Ok- she didn't say that, but she did.
If we can just keep it together until the collapse. Until the pendulum swings back. Hope clings eternal.



Historic buildings lost Oct. 2010 in Ortonville, MN

Loyalty--Thy Name is Sunny

It's been a year now since we found Sunny and her little pup Lucky starving and nearly dead at an abandoned farmstead near our place. Lucky didn't make it through the winter- even with all the love and attention of three doting children and the vet care we could give him. Poor little pup just couldn't recover from whatever journey had brought them to our home.

Sunny responded to Mike with the most fawning, obsessive love I've ever seen in any living creature. Mike was the one who found and rescued them and one cannot underestimate the gratitude of a mother towards those who offer care to their young in need. She shadows every footstep that Mike makes and when he drives the tractor she maddeningly stays as close as possible to the tractor door- looking up at Mike even as he drives up and down long fields. Makes for a worn out dog some days. Yesterday, Sunny braved flying logs as we built up the wood pile for winter. "Move ya dumb dog!" But that might mean not being as close as possible to Mike. Loyalty- thy name is Sunny.

Pheasant season opened at 9 am yesterday- the first hunting season we've had with Sunny. She's everything a good yellow lab could be- ahead flushing out birds, obedient, and eager- so I hear.

She is also a great daily lesson in remembering that really good things sometimes come to us unexpectedly. I would say that Sunny came to us unbidden- but I realize that in our hearts we wanted and were waiting for her. A happy one-year anniversary to celebrate.

The Botany of Desire

What did corn do to merit so much care, attention, and expansion to so many acres of farmland around the world? One could say that corn has us by the short hairs. You, we, I (are) am servants to corn.

What if we are really like the bees- what if plants manipulate us to work for them the way flowers get bees to due their work for them (pollinating)? This is not my idea, but rather Michael Pollen's from his book The Botany of Desire. I remember the first time I heard this idea- then bought and read the book. I was pregnant with one of my four babes and jumped into this theory like a deep pool of crystal clear water. I completely take on new ideas- no barriers, no filters- to see how they fit and feel. If it's not want I want after a bit, I step up out of the water and dry myself off and wait for the next exhilarating feeling of being immersed in another paradigm breaking concept.

So play with me here. What if corn seduced us to put all this care, concern, effort, and time into propagating it around the world? Corn caught us the way a flower "catches" a bee. We are just a tool of corn to keep it going generation after generation.

Think about it. Men gather to advance corn's agenda - local chapters of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association are meeting somewhere tonight. Imagine organizing around a plant, meeting and figuring out how to keep your plant at the top of the heap. Who's the real winner? Well if you are in the corn family, I guess that would be the corn plant.

I've figured out how to grind corn in my flour mill. Corn bread for dinner tonight folks. We'll take that corn right in- no middle man like a corn fed feedlot steer or the ethanol in my tank to go to town for groceries. Grown, ground, consumed- in the quiet privacy of my home--mmmmm.
All hail King Corn.