Noticing Nature at St. John's UCC on Madeline Island

(Originally published in October, 2019, as "Getting to Know Joe Scarry"  in the newsletter of St. John's UCC on Madeline Island, The Lighthouse.)

The wetland area in front of St. John's.

I enjoyed many beautiful late-summer days on the grounds around the parsonage and church, clearing brush and becoming familiar with the flora and fauna. I find the marsh between the parking lot and the lake to be especially interesting: the ebbing and flowing of the water there seems to encourage a fascinating variety of wildflowers and other plants. I have had many conversations with passersby about the things growing there. The conversations about just one type of flower -- tansy, those bright yellow wildflowers that look like little buttons -- could provide the material for a whole separate article!

Tansy

During my days living in Chicago, I volunteered with a stewardship group that looked after a bird sanctuary on a section of the beach near Montrose Harbor. We were led buy a tremendously knowledgeable, and uniquely sensitive, naturalist named Leslie Borns. Our particular responsibility was an area of "pan dune" which, because of the specific geography and hydrology of the area, supported a variety of wildflowers that appeared in few other places in the region. It was also home to many birds, and (I have learned) this past season has even been host to a nesting pair of piping plovers.

Cattails

I think my Chicago experience makes me look at the St. John's lakefront marsh and think, "There is a lot happening here; I should look closer."

One thing I've noticed this summer around St. John's is the variety of birds. Here's what I've written down since June: yellow-headed blackbird, cedar waxwing, American redstart, yellow warbler, Swainson's thrush, pileated woodpecker, and sharp-shinned hawk. This is, of course, in addition to the complement we have been observing since spring arrived: chickadee, red-winged blackbird, grackle, starling, goldfinch, blue jay, woodpeckers (downy and hairy), northern flicker, dark-eyed junco, northern shrike, mourning dove, purple finch, pine siskin, sparrows (white-crowned, chipping), brown thrasher, brown-headed cowbird, Baltimore oriole, hummingbird, rose-breasted grosbeak, and others.

Smartweed

Just this past week, a major report was released reminding us that there have been huge reductions in the numbers of many bird species in North America, and that those that have been reduced the most depend on the kind of habitats that people tend to fail to retain and protect. (See "Decline of the North American avifauna," Science, 19 Sept 2019.) One interesting finding is that the greatest decreases have been related to grasslands and boreal forest species; wetland species are actually doing slightly better than in the past.

Yellow-headed blackbird

This fall, Pastor Rachel is talking about "call." As I look at the natural areas surrounding St. John's, I wonder . . . . For sure, I think God wants me to notice them, to pay attention. And . . . is there a "call" in there somewhere? I also wonder: if there's a "call," is there also a "commandment"?

Sumac

I not sure where these wonderings will take me. But I'm confident that the months ahead will be filled with even more amazing things to notice here.

Happy Spring! (Take a peek at this . . . . )

DC eagles and their new pair: "DC2" and "DC3"

In less than an hour, I'll set off for church, and I'll call my sister on the way.

She will say, "Have you looked at the eagle cam yet?"

She will be referring, of course, to the camera in DC that allows all of us to follow the progress of a pair of bald eagle eggs that are hatching.

That is, unless she's already off bird-watching at Mt. Auburn Cemetery . . . .

Mt. Auburn Cemetery

I can still remember the precise spot on which I was standing in spring, 1979, when I said to my friend Julie, "Whatcha doin'?" and she said, "I'm going bird watching in Mt. Auburn Cemetery."

At the time, I wasn't cool enough to know that bird watching is cool, and Mt. Auburn Cemetery is one of the most beautiful settings in the country.  (Over the course of the past 35+ years I've gradually gotten hip.)

Since 1979, Julie's devoted her efforts to observing, caring for, and depicting birds and other creatures, and she's published a lot of books of her art. Her newest book -- just in time for the first day of spring, 2016 -- is Baby Birds: An Artist Looks into the Nest. (See "Baby birds in all their beauty" in the Boston Globe.)

Happy Spring!

(If anyone's looking for me, I'll be at Mt. Auburn, watching birds . . . . )


Related posts

One of the really interesting things about looking at how Rachel Carson used her writing to wake the world up -- particularly with her prophetic Silent Spring -- is that we can then go back to some of the earliest parts of the Bible and see them as living and urgent. And reading Silent Spring as well as Biblical stories like the account of The Flood points to the urgency of changes that need to be made here and now in the way we all live our lives.

(See Looking at Rachel Carson (at St. Luke's "School for Prophets") )






Chicago has a tremendous head start in being a place that is inspired by the beauty all around us to do the difficult things that are needed. And Chicago is so beautiful all summer long, there's no reason to leave the city. Think of all the carbon emissions save on car and jet travel!

(See "One Word: Wildflowers" on Zero Carbon Chicago)

I love to walk around North Pond here in Chicago and notice the asters as September stretches into October. They make me think of my mom . . . .

(See Asters for Eva )

Taiwan Through "City of Sadness"

City of Sadness

The films of Hou Hsiao-hsien ("HHH") came after my time in Taiwan, but for me they are a happy addition to my attempts to understand the place.

I've seen City of Sadness many times without putting into words just what is so breathtaking about it.  Last night I saw it again at DOC Films at the University of Chicago, and this time I decided to get to the bottom of it. (Note: three related films show at DOC in the next several days: Good Men, Good Women on Nov 11 at 7 pm; Flowers of Shanghai on Nov 18 at 7 pm; and HHH: A Portrait of Hou Hsiao-Hsien on Nov 21 at 7 pm; see the DOC schedule.)

Taiwan Nature

Photo of Keelung from Adrian Ling blog echoes shots in
City of Sadness

I tend to think of HHH films as being about personal experience, and culture, and City of Sadness is particularly about history. But this time, as I watched it, I realized that more than anything else, these films convey the unmistakable message that Taiwan is a place were Nature reigns.

In interspersed shots reminiscent of Ozu, HHH reminds us again and again that, no matter how big the historical forces that are bearing down on the characters, their physical environment is itself a massive fact.


A Place Apart

I certainly enjoyed the way City of Sadness portrayed Taiwan as a place apart. This feels particularly true at the end of WWII, as Japan leaves Taiwan and the Mainlanders come to take control.  One of the characters says, "Ho pitiful we are on this island: first the Japanese, then the Mainlanders . . . ."

During the time I lived in Taiwan, the "party line" provided that nothing good could be said about Japan or Japanese culture, particularly as it related to the period of Japanese control over Taiwan.  City of Sadness makes it clear that the story is a little more complicated than that.  It clearly shows the friendship between the Lins and the family of the Japanese teacher. More than anything, the way Hinomi interacts with Shizuko -- language, manners -- shows how much Japanese culture was an integral part of the lives of many people at the time.

The sit-down

More than anything, it is dialect that sets Taiwan apart in City of Sadness. I don't speak Taiwan dialect, but just listening to the speech of the characters in the film takes me back to my time there. There is one wonderful scene, in particular, that illustrates the separation brought about by dialect. Wen-heung is having a "sit-down" with the guys from Shanghai, to try to make a deal to get his brother Wen-leung released from police custody.  The dealings need to be translated through several different dialects, and, together with the conventions and indirection required for proper negotiations, it brings about explosive results. (It is reminiscent of the central action in one of my favorite short stories, "Sayonara Zaijian," which involves translation back and forth between Japanese and Chinese.


Primitive Rebels

I have a very strong impression of Taiwan as a place where order is respected, but also as a place where the government is taken with a grain of salt.

Hou Hsiao-hsien and Li Tianlu on location for City of Sadness
(See Kinoimages blog)

There is one moment in City of Sadness that I particularly love: the police (i.e. the Mainlander government) comes to the house to arrest Wen-heung on charges of "collaboration," and his father (played by the redoubtable Li Tian-lu) has to thread the needle to suggest just where the family stands -- and how it's not possible that they are "collaborators."  He says, "We've always been gangsters [liumang] -- for the good of the whole district -- so the Japanese didn't take advantage of us."

(It made me think of a book I read in college -- Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries -- by Eric Hobsbawm, one of the big thinkers on European social history.)

This view of "gangsterhood" surely ennobles the many fight scenes in the film -- as when Ah-Ga goes after the guys from Shanghai with a short sword. Scenes worthy of Kurosawa.

And more . . . 

I could go on and on about City of Sadness: about everything from the sound of slippers scraping across the floor to the history of the 228 incident that the film illuminates; about the similarities between Wen-ching, who could hear until he was 8, and Oskar in The Tin Drum, who stopped growing when he was 6 (i.e. when the war started); about the funeral scene, and the wedding scene; about the pitch-perfect soundtrack.

But most of all, I'm looking forward to seeing the other films in the trilogy -- The Puppetmaster and Good Men, Good Women -- and connecting the dots.


More about Taipei c. 1979 . . . .


Related posts

I often refer to how important the films of Iran have been in helping me open my mind to the possibilities of a peaceful relationship with that country.  I have been fortunate to be able to go see some of the best films from Iran every year at the wonderful Siskel Film Center in downtown Chicago. The will be another Festival of Films From Iran showing there in February, 2014.

(See A Force for Peace: Getting to Know Iran Through Film)

HHH's soulmate on the Mainland?  Jia Zhangke, of course!


(See Long Life, Connected Lives)

In Taiwan, HHH is to film as Huang Chunming is to literature.  Take, for instance, the story, set in a fishing town on the east coast of Taiwan, about a prostitute who determines to have a baby, and so selects as the father a likely candidate from among her customers (most of whom are workers in the local fishing fleet), gets pregnant, and heads back to the tiny town in which she was born, in order to have the baby.

(See Days for Looking at the Sea )



More related links

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/sep/19/taiwan-master-timekeeper-hou-hsiao-hsien/ 

Looking at Rachel Carson (at St. Luke's "School for Prophets")

Yesterday we were studying Rachel Carson at St. Luke's.

All summer long, we have been looking at the Old Testament prophets. It seemed like a good time to look at a modern prophet.

One of the really interesting outcomes of the discussion was that, after seeing how Rachel Carson used her writing to wake the world up with the prophetic Silent Spring, we were able to go back to some of the earliest parts of the Bible and see them as living and urgent.

Another interesting outcome is that both our readings of passages from Silent Spring and of stories like the one about The Flood pointed to the urgency of changes that need to be made here and now in the way we all live our lives.

Yet another was the fact that, even when a prophet is a genius like Rachel Carson, s/he always seems to have others contributing to the effort: a "school of prophets." We concluded that it really does take a village to raise a prophet!

I'll be writing more about Rachel Carson. For now, here are some notes for other prophet studiers.


RACHEL CARSON (1907-1964)

Pennsylvania College for Women, Pittsburgh (Chatham College); Johns Hopkins

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

1937 - "Undersea," The Atlantic
1941 - Under the Sea Wind
1951 - The Sea Around Us
1953 - The Edge of the Sea
1962 - Silent Spring


Prophetic voices (Rachel Carson)

from Silent Spring: Chapter 1 "A Fable for Tomorrow"

"There was once a town n the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings . . .

"Then a strange blight crept over the area . . .

". . . new kinds of sickness . . . unexplained deaths . . . .

"There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example -- where had they gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. . . . It was a spring without voices.

"On the farms the hens brooded, but no chicks hatched.

"The apple trees were coming into bloom but no bees droned among the blossoms . . . .

"The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegation as though swept by fire.

"Even the streams were lifeless. Anglers no longer visited them, for all the fish had died." (Silent Spring, p. 2-3)

Prophetic voices (Others)

Genesis 6:9-8:22 (verse 6:21 "And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, domestic animals, wild animals, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all human beings; everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died.")

Exodus 7:14-12-32 ( verse 7:21-22 "[all the water in the river was turned into blook,] and the fish in the river died. The river stank so that the Egyptians could not drink its water, and there was blood throughout the whole land of Egypt." etc. )

Isaiah 24:1-23 (verse 24:4-5 "The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers; the heavens languish together with the earth. The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants . . . . " )

Jeremiah 4:23-28 (verse 4 "I looked, and lo, there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled.")

Jeremiah 14:1-12 (verse 14:3 "Her nobles send their servants for water; they come to the cisterns, they find no water, they return with their vessels empty. They are ashamed and dismayed and cover their heads.")


A synthesizing vision

"This town does not actually exist, but it might easily have a thousand counterparts in America or elsewhere in the world. I know of no community that has experienced all the misfortunes I describe. Yet every one of these disasters has actually happened somewhere, and many real communities have already suffered a substantial number of them." (Silent Spring, p. 3)

"This is an era of specialists, each of whom sees his own problem and is unaware of or intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits." (Silent Spring, p. 13)


The community

(Chapters: Surface Waters and Underground Seas; Realms of the Soil; Earth's Green Mantle)

"One of the most sinister features of DDT and related chemicals is the way they are passed on from one organism to another through all the links of the food chains." (Silent Spring, p. 12)

"For each of us, as for the robin in Michigan or the salmon in the Miramichi, this is a problem of ecology, or interrelationshps, of interdependence." (Silent Spring, p. 189)


From what does the problem originate?

(Chapters: Elixirs of Death; Indiscriminately from the Skies; Beyond the Dreams of the Borgias)

"No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves." (Silent Spring, p. 3)

". . . no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper. The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance . . . ." (Silent Spring, p. 297)

"Gardening is now firmly linked with the super poisons. Every hardware store, garden-supply shop, and supermarket has rows of insecticides for every conceivable horticultural situation. Those who fail to make wide use of this array of lethal sprays and dusts are by implication remiss, for almost every newspaper's garden page and the majority of the gardening magazines take their use for granted." (Silent Spring, p. 176)


What Is the solution?

(Chapters: The Other Road)

"In the words of Jean Rostand, "The obligation to endure gives us the right to know." (Silent Spring, p. 13)

"The choice, after all, is ours to make." (Silent Spring, p. 277)

Silent Spring: The aftermath

1969 - National Environmental Policy Act ( ... Clean Air Act ... Clean Water Act ... etc.)
1970 - Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
1972 - DDT largely banned


All references to Silent Spring are from the 2012 Mariner paperback edition. "Cattails" and “Michigan: Sky, Water, Land” photo courtesy Alanna Huck-Scarry


Related posts

Does "God" "care" that the ultimate outcome of the damage to the Earth's climate may lead to the end -- not of the Earth itself, nor of life on Earth, but of the existence of the human species on Earth?

(See Does "God" "care" about the climate crisis?)

I love to walk around North Pond here in Chicago and notice the asters as September stretches into October. They make me think of my mom . . . .

(See Asters for Eva )





It has been announced that China and the U.S. will hold a top leadership meeting at the beginning of June. If the past is any indication, we will get a lot of cautious, lukewarm pronouncements about cooperation that don't begin to address the reality. It's time for activists in the U.S. and China to join hands and start to militate for radical change. We need a zero-carbon USA and a zero-carbon China. Anything less is planetocide.

(See #chinaEARTHusa - Radical Change? or Planetocide? )

Asters for Eva

Asters

My mom passed away three years ago at this time.

I think of her when the asters start to come out.

I love to walk around North Pond here in Chicago and notice the asters as September stretches into October.

Asters are exuberantly showy - with lots of different types competing to outdo each other: "Look at me! Look how purple I am!" "No, me, look at me! I'm even more purple!"

I never thought of Mom as being "showy," and yet there's something about those shades of purple that remind me of how she used to dress for church on Sundays, and it makes me smile to associate her with asters.

Eva Scarry

And she could hold her own with any showy flowers!

Here's are some albums we put together with more of pictures of Mom and of her garden.

More wildflowers . . . . 

(Also ... check out Seamus Heaney reading this poem in memory of his mother ("When all the others were away at Mass.)


Related posts

Any day that starts with morning glories on Point Alanna is a good day!

(See Morning Glories on Point Alanna )










Each story in Taipei People is about a person who ended up in Taiwan after the war. More than anything, the story "Glory's by Blossom Bridge" is about the destiny of so many men who came from the mainland to Taiwan: ending up old and alone.

(See Taipei People: Thinking of Home )





Chicago has a tremendous head start in being a place that is inspired by the beauty all around us to do the difficult things that are needed. And Chicago is so beautiful all summer long, there's no reason to leave the city. Think of all the carbon emissions save on car and jet travel!

(See "One Word: Wildflowers" on Zero Carbon Chicago)




What I am wondering -- now that I've discovered the way Wang Wen-hsing holds up a mirror to me as much or more than he documents life in Taiwan -- is whether I am ready to bring more of these things about myself up to the surface.

(See Wang Wen-hsing and the Unspeakable: Changes in the Family )

Cottonwoods!

This past Saturday I was at Montrose Point doing dune stewardship with friends. As usual, I was combing the dunes for cottonwood saplings and trying to get them out, roots and all.

Cottonwood sapling

When I first heard about the "cottonwood pulling" task, I thought, "Hah! That'll never be me!"

Fast forward a few years, and I consider it a sacred responsibility to get out there and get those little buggers out of there . . . .

Montrose Dunes in Chicago

Whenever, I'm working on clearing cottonwoods, I think of the time Alanna was doing a summer project learning about trees. I made a special point of sending her a delicate little sapling with one of those impossibly long roots, together with a carefully-drawn explanation of how they serve to anchor the dune and create an environment in which a ridge can build up and more and more plants can take hold.

Dune formation

Hmmm . . . that reminds me . . . I need to be on the lookout for some more interesting stuff to send Alanna. :-)


More wildflowers . . . .


Related posts

Chicago has a tremendous head start in being a place that is inspired by the beauty all around us to do the difficult things that are needed. And Chicago is so beautiful all summer long, there's no reason to leave the city. Think of all the carbon emissions save on car and jet travel!

(See "One Word: Wildflowers" on Zero Carbon Chicago)




Any day that starts with morning glories on Point Alanna is a good day!

(See Morning Glories on Point Alanna )
 









Wouldn't it be great if people came from places far and wide to learn about our Lake Michigan biomes in a jewel-like park right in downtown Chicago?

(See A Modest Proposal for Northerly Island: Illinois Microzones )

Morning Glories on Point Alanna

All summer long I run along the lakefront in Chicago. My turnaround point is Point Alanna. (OK, I call it Point Alanna; most people know it as the point at North Avenue Beach.)

Point Alanna is where I pause to look out across Lake Michigan and think of my daughter, Alanna, over on the other side. (I can often sense that she is picking up the thoughts I am sending her, and sending good thoughts back to me.)

The other thing I do at Point Alanna is marvel at the morning glories that grow in the dunes.

They remind me of the morning glories that used to grow on a trellis in front of my grandfather's house.

And day that starts with morning glories on Point Alanna is a good day!


Related posts

Cottonwoods! They serve to anchor the dune and create an environment in which a ridge can build up and more and more plants can take hold. (Good.) And then they take over everything. (Not so good.)

(See Cottonwoods!)

Some thoughts on the odds of holding back the ocean ... from an old New Jersey boy ....

(See NJ Sense and Wising Up to the Climate Crisis )

On Sky Sunday, I will also be thinking about the sky over Chicago — especially when that sky is filled with birds on their semi-annual migration. Or, to be more precise, I will be thinking about the treetops by the lakeside filled with migrating birds, seen against the background of the fall sky.

(See St. Luke's Messenger, "The Sky Over Our World: The Sky Over St. Luke’s … Chicago … Lake Michigan … the World"  )



Chicago has a tremendous head start in being a place that is inspired by the beauty all around us to do the difficult things that are needed. And Chicago is so beautiful all summer long, there's no reason to leave the city. Think of all the carbon emissions save on car and jet travel!

(See "One Word: Wildflowers" on Zero Carbon Chicago)




More wildflowers . . . .

NJ Sense & Wising Up to the Climate Crisis

This blog post is spurred by my comments about Mayor Bloomberg and his hopes for keeping the rising waters out of New York City.

This blog post isn't for the friends I grew up with in New Jersey, and those in Philadelphia that I spent a decade living and working with. You already know this.

This blog post is for the friends I've made in the last few decades, living in Chicago and traveling around the country. You may not know about New Jersey.

First of all: isn't it amazing that New Jersey really looks like New Jersey? Now that's a state with some shape to it . . . .

And of course, a lot of that shape is the part bordering the ocean, what we in New Jersey refer to as "the shore" (never "the beach").

Over the years, I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a lot of time at the part of the Jersey shore known as Long Beach Island. It is a barrier island, part of a string that runs up and down the U.S. East Coast. My kids still spend weeks there every summer, and wouldn't miss it for the world.

The shore is really just a narrow strip of sand -- in places just a few blocks wide -- separating the ocean from a bay.

One of the things that was most interesting to me, back when I used to go to the shore a lot, was the way people couldn't resist sinking a lot of money into building expensive houses there. A topic that was frequently discussed was that it was really expensive to insure those houses, because it seemed like it was just a matter of time until the ocean came along and reclaimed them. There was much talk of the kind of engineering (breakwaters, retaining walls, etc.) that might be deployed to keep the ocean at arms length. We frequently tsk-tsked over the fact that the island was, after all, nothing more than sand -- not very sturdy at all.

Every summer, when we were in Harvey Cedars, we would look at the pictures from the year that the hurricane sent the ocean pouring through across the island, uniting island and bay. (That was the Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962 -- the big storm before Hurricane Sandy.)

We also gave due respect to the dunes -- an area that was fenced off and allowed to grow organically, free from human meddling. We talked a lot about how fragile the dunes are, and how important it is to let them develop naturally.

So I wasn't surprised to discover books of Orrin H. Pilkey on barrier island ecology saying that the natural order of things -- a flexible boundary made of sand that can "roll with the punches" dealt out by the ocean and storms -- is actually a the best possible protection for the coastal area. However, it needs to be understood that the "barrier" succeeds by not being rigid, but by moving about as needed. Much of the human engineering done to "stabilize" the ecosystem with stone and cement is counterproductive.

That is why a lot of questions have arisen about the post-Sandy rebuilding of the Jersey shore.

And that is why I highlighted the expert's comment about Mayor Bloomberg's plan: "[E]veryone needs to understand that you can’t guarantee protection for infrastructure that is in vulnerable locations, no matter how much money you throw at the problem." It's time for us to talk about root causes: the climate crisis.