Thud!
From a high limb a young chipmunk survives a fall onto a spongy, recently rain soaked ground; stunned, pause, frenetic is his retreat.
Blocking, he staggers away opposite to my curiosities of astronomy, at least those being read as a Sunday morning distraction.
What dogs eat first,
soft, rich, and savory
like ice cream, easy
What dogs eat second,
hard, stale, crunchy
which requires work
Puppies are no different
shuffling money, they negotiate balance, me, you, me and on they go, five pushing music, guitars prominent, keys particularly mellow, waiting for harmonica
In their fear, the insecure thump their chests announcing security.
Common denominators suggest shared responsibility, but imbalance evidences prejudice.
In the need for support, development, and inspiration, negligence is insisted.
Breathless and dismantled, integrity and tenacity remain.
As executive, projects are shepherded and without agenda, as a fan he wishes for your great journey, selfless. http://bit.ly/1Etfdyp
Fri, Jan 30, 7:49 pm: Where to meet/when?
Fri, Jan 30, 9:32 pm: Not sure about crossing the river heading toward Dave’s.
Fri, Jan 30, 9:42 pm: OK, should I go there now?
Fri, Jan 30, 9:59 pm: When you like.
Sat, Jan 31, 1:17 am: What time did you drop me off ?
Sat, Jan 31, 2:42 am: About 12:20
Where did 30 minutes go?
A fight through the bluster, an anticipated showcase of good work, solid design, accumulating experiences cordial in nature, an announcement of trust on a belief of respect, asked, and answered honestly. Will the deconstruction plateau?
I started a fire this morning when coffee was on, at day’s end the fire still burns, my thoughts of you, like the orange hot embers, enduring and perpetual.
Travels many
Early chill subsided
Year retreats
Frozen Red glistens
Finding balance on glare ice
Climate change is a fact1, the inefficiently captured work of combusted fossil fuels among the most notable culprits.
Personal transportation, seemingly a right, has petroleum consumption at a sustained high2, with each mile driven adding carbon to an atmosphere3 that we breathe and that protects all of humanity from the destructive rays of our Sun.
Continued burning of fossils mined from the Earth without balance is unthinkable; the lake is not infinitely big, releasing your tired oil directly into the creek had to stop.
Getting to a point of balance on consumption (emissions) and need is daunting, and that effort will extend beyond any of our lifetimes, 100, 200 years forward.
Coal-fired electricity generation has become an easy blame4, with the individual’s automobiles tertiary, in part due to scale: a very large power plant versus my single automobile – a discarded watch battery ending up in a landfill certainly can’t be the problem, can it?
American’s inabilities with conceiving scale and utilizing mathematics renders hindered understandings of the reality of the situation.5 Instead we let the effects of a heated atmosphere creep up on us exponentially when only to discover an irreversible cascade that will gut biologies, and economies. Yet Mother Nature will survive, she does not require the foolhardy to propagate.
And you and I need transportation, we need electricity, we need heat, and appreciate air conditioning, but can we strike that balance with less emotional fear?
Coal in North Dakota is a vital part of the electricity generation picture that should continue as we develop reliable and efficient technologies as alternatives.
Coal in North Dakota is working hard to improve on the processes of efficient combustion and transmission of electricity, and there is no better demonstration in the Nation than at the Great River Energy Coal Creek Station at Falkirk, ND.
Since inception, Great River Energy has led by example in design, in efficiency, in cleanliness, in transmission, in reclamation, with worker excellence, safety, and stewardship.6
As mankind works together to avoid the irreversible, hold captive not the producers of electricity who respond to need and opportunity, challenge instead the consumers who remain ignorant to individual significance to the problem and the resourcefulness to conserve.
Insist on investments in technologies that harness renewable energies, in solar and wind, power storage, even sequestration: could incentivizing the creation of massive oak plantations7 contribute to that balance? And do we need government to force our hand?
Only as alternatives come into fruition will the debate be tempered, rendering tertiary the necessity of the burning of fossil fuels.
References:
A Rose is a Rose
A Flower, with Colour
Appealing in Smell
A Body Slim and Beautiful
To what shall I call you — A Name?
But why so much time spent to be as a flower
Petals flourishing for such a short time.
How long shall a blossom blossom?
A petal fall?
Peering across an evening sky,
Chifon and Blue,
I seek, but it answers not,
Or could it be because I rely only on the obvious senses?
As Light Fades to Dark
Anxiety Quickens
My Flower is Wilting
But…That’s OK
In Memory of:
Cecilia Geraldine DeMuth
Born in Louisville, Ky on January 9, 1942, Died May 27, 1994
Talking to Anita in Fargo’s airport, Cousin Jeff and Kathleen at his side, Anna riding up the elevator at the hospital talking to him, taking notes that he is alright, best thing that ever happened to him is to see mom again.
DeMUTH, DENNIS WADE, 50, of Louisville, passed away unexpectedly Saturday, July 19, 2013.
09 Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife.
19 Better to live in a desert than with a quarrelsome and nagging wife.
If reality comes into conflict with your beliefs the only rational choice is to modify your beliefs more in keeping with reality. Husker Du
On Monday morning, the winds up here were howling. The power went out briefly, knocking out the computer before checking the weather, so I just took a shower and drove to work. My car, restored to pre-recall status started as it should. Driving through the neighborhood, sheltered by the houses and a few trees wasn’t bad, but once past the new hockey arena, three blocks away, the road surrounded by farm fields allowed the Northwest Winds free rein to blow snow that at times totally engulfed the car. I crept along slowly, intermittently seeing the yellow stripes in the middle of the road. The car wandered quite a bit fighting the strong cross wind with a blind driver. I was beginning to wonder if I would even see the intersection 1 sectional mile away where I was to turn left.
Eventually, the pavement markers “YIELD AHEAD” and the actual signs on the side of the road appeared out of the white on white world, but shortly after the turn, I hit a drift which completely hung my wheels up off the pavement. And the cell phone was left at home. Luckily, the winter survival gear was in the trunk, so I grabbed the parka and gantlets along with the shovel and scouted my options leaving my car idling and flashing uselessly in the total white-out. Several more drifts were ahead, so continuing on to campus was impossible. Going back was the only option. There was a portion of the road behind me which had been drifted clear where I could turn around to head home. I just had to shovel out ten feet or so to get clear.
By now, I was already freezing, so I got into my car to warm up and change into a dry hat. The raging wind and drifting snow had already coated the inside of my car even though the driver side door was in the lee. When I stepped out again, the wind immediately ripped open my parka hood and it flapped uselessly as I worked to free my car from the side of the road. At times, the wind nearly ripped the shovel from my hands. The ground blizzard was so strong, that my lungs were at times inadequate sucking against he wind induced vacuum. The Bernoulli effect wrought real was making this misadventure feel like an assault on Everest. What if a truck or a plow comes along while I am stranded in the middle of the road? It seemed rather silly to even be out risking life and limb: I could walk to campus and abandon the car. But I would not abandon the car unless the drift defeated me.
It took three shifts of shoveling the dense drift and warming up inside until the car would back up. The rear window defrost had lost the battle with the wind and melting interior snow so I was driving blind in more ways than one. I had to shovel out of one more small drift in my two point turn around zone before I got the car headed back home again.
It was absolutely amazing how the wind carried snow crashed in waves over the car, much like surf from the ocean. I was all over the road seeing glimpses of the center road stripe to the left and then to the right of my car. sometimes at rather rakish angles. My tires warned me on hitting the edge of the road a couple of times, helping keep us out of the ditch. I made it home, but it was one hairy five mile round trip.
When I got home, the campus had been prudently closed. Heck even the Highways around here were closed and the radio man said plows had been pulled from the interstate between Grand Forks and the border with Canada. Dave wrote me about the remote campus emergency text sign-up. I am now connected to that network.
Lessons learned: Dave’s 30 MPH wind limit is to be prudently respected up here in the high plains. Get a battery powered radio in case the power goes out again. Remember to grab the propane campstove for the worst case scenario. Keep the survival gear in the car, not the trunk. Winter is serious up here. THIS BEEN A WARNING. THIS IS ONLY A WARNING.
If I had believed in Karma as anything but a scam to keep the peasants in their miserable place, my misadventure could have been thought as payback for all the trash talking I had made against the SUV. No telling if that combination of bald tires and higher ground clearance would have made much better progress against those drifts. No matter what abomination you might be driving, you still cannot see anything in the waves of white-out. Lucky for me, I was the only idiot out on the road outside my neighborhood.
Lucky for me, I survived to be part of the winning team ($400 prize money/5) in the Campus Energy Challenge. My team mates were rock stars. Knocking off all but one team before I even had to answer a question. But that quarter final match came down to the fifth question, tied 2-2, I took the buzzer button and faced off against one of theres. “Multiple choice question: Geothermal heat drives its energy from: A) The earth’s therm . . .” BZZZZT! The mc called on me: “A) The earths thermal energy!” Easy. The final round for $400, the kids answered their questions before the multiple choices were offered, not even waiting to hear if the correct answers were in the A, B, C, or D slots. We won 3-0! Woo-Hoo. Pictures were taken, handshakes and hugs exchanged and more importantly, I have connected with some of my students.
Writings by Jim Farrell
on plane from kci seeing family was helpful at getting beyond the record flood and I return to the clay dike that was the core of the protection for our river home, and the the city followed through with sand bag removals estimated at four thousand.
the flood story is on that may be best recorded in word and captured as an incredible and tenacious problem solving exercise keying on available resources and this preparation both physically and mentally
no war is fought alone – any three of the front line paced forward held strong and with persistence were indispensable with every twenty four hour block that slowly passed us by as the living room fire burned continuous along the remaining pet, thumper, knighted as the flood kitty, kindled the spirit that would soon prove powerful
early on impromptu design work required peeling ice and snow to expose an opportunity for a sound bed to lay the imagined protection of clay
a small crew was summoned to chip and shovel ice as some pessimism stirred on the clays arrival
as bags became available a line went down at points of first exposure near noon some eight days before the catastrophe would strike
simultaneously mr clay showed up and bobcats peeled back frozen grass and top soil but a day would pass before the actual material would begin to be laid on the skinned earth
from the road first the birm was build spanning it’s own extension into the yard both south and north lines where the connecting span was to be the last component to the forty one foot barrier
upon completion it’s breadth was impressive yet predictions stirred that forty two was likely forty three possible and forty four was not out of the question / a day maybe two was required before additional reaction was possible as the city reeled in fear of the worst and additional material was limited with any height coming from bags not clay
the long sleepless night allowed for the possibility for some additional clay as the core was running a two foot high dike topside on the main road.
Excerpted from iPod (8Gb) 3677 days ago
Been thinking about you, our last encounter, the heavens, the sun, the histories of human condition, it’s evolution, anarchy, revolt, the constraints of participating in mainstream thought, culture and society, adventure, consolidation of possessions, dissipation of life, the density of the Winter past and the freedoms that Spring promise.
Together we share, Friends are we
Together we’ll know Life Happily
Forever our lives shall depend on the other
Forever we’ll see the marvelous Lover
Laughing and Dancing
Singing and Glowing
Happiness, is Life Knowing,
Love is at the Center of our Smiles
— David DeMuth – 1983
Post rush hour rains soak the busy causeway outside the third level flat I occupy at 13th & Marshall, Northeast Minneapolis. As most are performing their daily efficiency exercises, acquiring monies and prestige for attainments of attempted happiness, I on the contrary, sit content most days scribing, painting or just creating; surviving off an inheritence wisely invested.
Fortunatly the demise of winter approaches but the spring rains make no hint of closure nor do my seasonal desire for coffee. Dressed in typical drobe, jeans and lambs wool, dawning a scarf and rain coat, I drift down the stairs of this old stone building in which I reside. Stopping to check my box, I query, “No mail, that’s peculiar”, and speculate that yesterday must of been some sort of holiday. After all, these days it is a rarity when the mail box is empty given that the post office has been allowing extremely good deals to those advertising in bulk; no doubt an attempt to stave the threatening effects of the Internet invasion. Regardless, all profile propaganda are immediately discarded in the nearby rubbish receptacle. I lock the empty box, withdraw the key, and walk out into the wet tuesday morning.
Ambling across the lawn, I jump across a partially pitted and marshy sidewalk, and splash into a murky leaf laden orifice but rebound quickly, avoiding slipping in a wet slime, and land firmly on a large protuberance at the base of a tall oak tree that extends from between the sidewalk and the rue. A cabbie nestled nearby queries. Ignoring his gesture, I continue, as the rains continue to quench and moan.
I enjoy the freedoms of minimal ownership, in particular a void in owning an automobile and suppose ridding of my last was unnecessary but it needed more attention than could be mustered; relationships can benefit if maintenance can be minimized, but when interruptions or divergence of normal operation become frequent, one must consider the inevitable. Although the tires and brakes were in very good shape, the engine ran marginally, the body was completely rusted and only one door was reliable; and it happened to be the rear hatch. Besides, the public transporation system in this town was friendly enough and in a pinch, an offer by a neighbor to use her car prevailed, but a bicycle remains the preferred choice of navigation. Yet despite the rain, today, I do not mind walking.
The coffee salon I frequent is selectively urban filled by night, but conveniently, during the pre-lunch hours, it remains casually pleasant. The waif of espressos and fresh baguettes seem to continue to stir memories of a fabulous visit in the alps of France, near Grenoble, my first, some years earlier when traveling on “official” business while in graduate school at Minnesota. It was early in 1994 when pork barrel politics were blamed for the abrupt demise of the Texas super collider, an action that no doubt changed the complexion of Particle Physics, and assuredly the technological potentials of this society, and most directly the job market for young PhD’d physicists. But now, rather than fill my brain with the whir of particle interactions, I instead rely on the salon’s supply of Christian Science Monitors, all of which are speared by a long wooden dowels, presumably inhibiting theft, to occupy my morning rituals. On occasion I seek other sources for news but often find them to be distractingly tainted by the corporate worlds regenerative need to propagate biased attitudes, and whose advertising monies, no doubt by requisite, restrict any potential for an objective viewpoint.
The rain continues to sizzle on the galvanized metal flue that projects out of the red multi-coloured brick wall, extending from a cast iron wood stove sporting a chipped white porcelain pot filled with humidifying water. As the grinding of coffee beans and the associated aroma fill the air, the large window facing the street streaks with condensation, partially from the porcelain humidifier, and partially from the naturally humid environment offered by the saturating rains. Needless to say, the many hanging plants, ferns and fig trees thrived with exuberance as evidenced by the potency of the colour they possess. Winters are excruciatingly long in the northland, but this coffee salon, known as Twice Told, has manifested into an essential ingredient of my life’s recipes.
DMD, 1995Posted November 11, 1996 at The Electric Pen
The Rain comes down in sheets.
Saturation, once I supposed it would be a fine time to die in a shower. One did today, whilst another exploded. Powder keg.
During, I did not understand but it is pieced together now.
A girl, her mother, and her’s.
She is gone now. Burdens lifted, pain anguish, peace.
I will move to the North now, and grow cucumbers, maybe tomatoes. My mother is gone now. Oh my.
I am reminded of peering out a window on Rufer Avenue.
A man, fell to his death, whilst the sheets of rain continued to power down. How many stops did I resonate w/ another.
These times, when the pressure drops, my emotions are stirred. A pattern, water, saturation, moon, saturation.
Contentment when immersed
Surround me w/ your body
Cover me w/ your mind.
Together, we are poured into the chalice of life, to mix, and never separated.
Continue to be peaceful,
Strive to resonate,
Whom am I.
One who enjoys the resonance of the soul, or the driver of such.
Throw away the Past
live today
One day, oh absolutely,
One day
I will be gone.
6/2/90 – Ddm
Last touched: Thu. Dec. 28, 2017
But my love all gone
Where is she
She who
I’m all alone
Searching, deserving all
Again where?
Just over the Horizon
Chasing rainbows
or maybe just pots of gold
Blowing the chance
or maybe not
Joyously I continue on
Until I know
Love abounds
Ecstatic that I’m free
Now I can be.
Wavering in my mind
Happy to be divine
Eyes open
Ready to go
Ears listening
All’s gone
Ready: instead I sit
Evening approaches
You’re somewhere I’m not
Obviously respondant
Until it happens
I really wonder
Me & my house…
Insistant to be my own
Since only clouds cover
Scenery is dark
You and I
Ongoing ends
Until we meet again: Goodbye
From the Desk of DMDJr.
Sun. November 3, 1985 10:28 pm
Last touched: December 28, 2017
