January 21, 2026: "Postscript," Cold, "There Are No Flowers in Minneapolis"

I truly appreciate all the people who responded to my last post.  It's easy to feel isolated right now.  You're never sure where people are politically or what subject is "safe."  It's exhausting.  So all the messages I received (both on this blog and privately) have made me feel less alone.

I am going to try to balance the good and the bad in my posts this year.  Believe it or not, there's still a lot of beauty in the world.  (It's just difficult to see it through all the teargas.  Sorry, not sorry.)  For example, I'm currently sitting in my new office at the library, looking out at Lake Superior from my window.  The lake is gray and cold-looking, the shoreline fringed with ice and snow.  It's austere and lovely, like a stern grandfather who always has a butterscotch in his pocket for you.  The world is full of wonder.

Marie Howe reflects on how we've treated the world . . . 

Postscript

by: Marie Howe

What we did to the earth, we did to our daughters

one after the other.

What we did to the trees we did to our elders

stacked in their wheelchairs by the lunchroom door.

What we did to our daughters, we did to our sons

calling out for their mothers.

What we did to the trees, what we did to the earth

we did to our sons, to our daughters.

What we did to the cow, to the pig, to the lamb,

we did to the earth, butchered and milked it.

Few of us knew what the bird calls meant

or what the fires were saying.

We took of earth and took and took, and the earth

seemed not to mind,

until one of our daughters shouted:  It was right

in front of you, right in front of your eyes

and you didn't see.

The air turned red.  The ocean grew teeth.

Yes, humankind has fucked up this planet greatly.  Howe is right about that.  We have taken and taken and taken, without considering the cost of each taken.  Hence, Deepwater Horizon and Exxon Valdez and Chernobyl.  The air is turning red, and the oceans do bite.

At the moment, my little corner of the Upper Peninsula is cold, and it's going to get colder and colder.  By Friday, windchills will hit -30 and -40 degrees Fahrenheit.  Those kinds of temperatures seem vindictive, like the earth is getting even with us for being such terrible stewards of its resources.  

But there was warmth and joy in my life this evening.  I hosted a concert at the library featuring two lovely musicians—the Seth Brown Duo.  The music lifted my spirits and reminded me that there are still good people in the world, despite the violence and outright cruelty occurring in the streets and neighborhoods of Minneapolis and St. Paul.  It’s very easy to lose sight of beauty and joy these days.

Tonight, I am grateful for music and friends.  Yes, the United States is a big ol’ dumpster fire at the moment, but change is coming.  It’s inevitable.  And, for 60 minutes tonight, I forgot to be frightened or pissed off.  Instead, I sang “Don’t Worry Be Happy” and “Imagine.”

Maybe John Lennon got it right—no heaven, no hell, just a world living as one.  We all need to be dreamers.

Saint Marty wrote a poem tonight about happiness.

There Are No Flowers in Minneapolis

by:  Martin Achatz

No fresh daisies push through

cracks in sidewalks, no plumes

of lilac dust the air.  Geraniums

stay hidden behind locked

doors, refuse to open, bloom.

Even florists hide their silken

arrays in basements, secret back

rooms, Anne Frank orchids that dream

of riding on young girls’ wrists

and sparrow chests for junior prom.

Even the morning glory avoids

the rising sun, hides its face

from anyone who wants to pluck

it before smiles start to blossom.

December 3, 2024: "Osprey," Splintered the Clouds, Wonder and Astonishment

I saw something beautiful this morning.  After several days of gray skies and heavy snow, the clouds opened up, and the sun splintered the clouds with light.  

Billy Collins goes birdwatching . . . 

Osprey

by: Billy Collins

Oh, large brown, thickly feathered creature
with a distinctive white head,
you, perched on the top branch
of a tree near the lake shore,

as soon as I guide this boat back to the dock
and walk up the grassy path to the house,
before I unzip my windbreaker
and lift the binoculars from around my neck,

before I wash the gasoline from my hands,
before I tell anyone I'm back,
and before I hang the ignition key on its nail,
or pour myself a drink—

I'm thinking a vodka soda with lemon—
I will look you up in my
illustrated guide to North American birds
and I promise I will learn what you are called.

Poets are always on the lookout for wonder and astonishment, be it an osprey or snail or marshmallow or sunrise.  If wonder and astonishment are in short supply, then it's the poet's job to hunt them down, wherever they can be found.

As the faithful disciples of this blog (and there are at least two) know, I've been more than a little preoccupied with darkness since Thanksgiving night.  Not by choice, mind you.  Nobody would volunteer to be sad all day and night.  To wake up at 2 a.m. and cry for an hour or so.  

So, this morning, I watched the sun rise over Lake Superior after I dropped my son off at school and my wife at work.  I do this frequently at the library, since I have access to the roof of the building.  In the spring and autumn, it's a glorious way to start a day.  It allows light into the deepest corners of the heart.  In the winter, it's a different experience.  Still beautiful, but coupled with an aching cold.  

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I was able to embrace beauty today, despite freezing my ass off.  Unlike Collins, I didn't need to look up the name of anything.  No osprey to identify.  It was just me.  The cold.  The lake.  And the sun.  

For those few, brief, shining moments, Saint Marty was flooded with wonder.

January 18: Warmth from the Moon, Poet of the Week, Terry Godbey, "Every Stolen Breath"

I look to the sky.  What do I know of deep space with its red giants and white dwarfs?  I think of our own solar system, of the five mute moons of Uranus--Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, Oberon, Miranda--spinning in their fixed sleep of thralldom.  These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits.  At last I look to the moon; it hangs fixed and full in the east, enormously scrubbed and simple.  Our own hometown ultima moon.  It must have been a wonderful sight from there, when the olive continents cracked and spread, and the white ice rolled down and up like a window blind.  My eyes feel cold when I blink; this is enough of a walk tonight.  I lack the apparatus to feel a warmth that few have felt--but it's there.  According to Arthur Koestler, Kepler felt the focused warmth when he was experimenting on something entirely different, using concave mirrors, Kepler wrote, "I was engaged in other experiments with mirrors, without thinking of the warmth; I involuntarily turned around to see whether somebody was breathing on my hand."  It was warmth from the moon.

Dillard is cold.  Winter cold.  The grass is brittle.  Branches are frozen.  There's ice, frozen clay, and moonlight.  Lots of moonlight, the "lustre of elf-light."  Dream-like and iced.  She searches for warmth, finds it in the most unlikely of places.  Deep space, with its red giants and white dwarfs and mute moons.  She finds it in reflection, in lunar glow.

Sorry to wax so poetic this late at night.  I have had a rather long, eventful day.  The good news:  my broken tooth is no longer broken.  The bad news:  it took an hour-and-a-half in a dentist chair, several shots in the mouth, and a lot of drilling.  I am now on an antibiotic (my tooth broke below the gum line and got infected).  On top of all that, it's damn cold out.  Below-zero, cancel-school cold.

Yes, my kids went to school this morning, but the snow didn't crunch under my boots when I started my car to drive them to the bus stop.  The snow snapped, like pieces of Styrofoam.  And, tonight, the sky is cloudless, and the mercury slowly heading south again.  The moon is shedding no warmth on the Upper Peninsula.

Yes, I am writing a blog post about the weather and warmth and the moon.  Dillard somehow connects these disparate subjects, gives them weight and meaning.  I appreciate writers who do this--make connections between things that seem connectionless.

The Poet of the Week is Terry Godbey, a fantastic poet who has the gift of making connections.  Yes, she has been awarded this title before.  However, this evening I was paging through Godbey's collection, Hold Still, and I came across the poem below which makes connections that speak to me this evening.  Between illness and healing.  Pain and the heart.  Son and mother.  Grandfather and moon.

Saint Marty is feeling lycanthropic tonight.  He needs to howl a little.

Every Stolen Breath

by:  Terry Godbey

There is nothing left to believe in,
except illness.

Gasping, I must stop four times
to climb the stairs,
even with my son behind me,
pushing.

Oxygen is scarce
but not doctors--
I have six of them on speed dial.
They make me take deep breaths
in a glass booth,
wheeze on a treadmill,
describe my malfunction:

It's as if your heart
is inside a stone.

I can't say you won't have a heart attack,
but we have to take care
of your cancer first.

So I am cleared for lumpectomy,
handed a note that warns
of moderate risk of a cardiac event,
told to stay calm
and return for repairs.

When the chest pain fires up
that night, I refuse to call
an ambulance.
My son persuades me to stay awake,
afraid I'll slip away
in my sleep.,
The full moon rises
outside my window,
stays with me till dawn,
a kindly grandfather,
finally something benign.

Give it a minute . . . It's really funny!

September 30: Days Grew Shorter, Cold, Prayer for Winter

The autumn days grew shorter, Lurvy brought the squashes and pumpkins in from the garden and piled them on the barn floor, where they wouldn't get nipped on frosty nights.  The maples and birches turned bright colors and the wind shook them and they dropped their leaves one by one to the ground.  Under the wild apple trees in the pasture, the red little apples lay thick on the ground, and the sheep gnawed them and the geese gnawed them and foxes came into the night and sniffed them.  One evening, just before Christmas, snow began falling.  It covered house and barn and fields and woods.  Wilbur had never seen snow before.  When morning came he went out and plowed the drifts in his yard, for the fun of it.  Fern and Avery arrived, dragging a sled.  They coasted down the lane and out onto the frozen pond in the pasture.

It's a beautiful picture that E. B. White paints in the space of a few lines.  The book moves from autumn to Christmas in the space of eight gorgeous sentences.  Pumpkins and squashes and red little apples.  Snow and drifts and a frozen pond.  It's a time-lapse paragraph, like one of those films you saw in science class in high school.  The flower sprouts, grows, opens, waves frenetically for a few seconds, then curls, drops petals, and shrinks back into the earth.


Weather in the Upper Peninsula is like that, as well.  For example, this past Sunday was warm, almost humid, with lots of sun and temperatures near eighty degrees.  By Monday morning, rain and fog moved in, and the thermometer didn't climb too much above forty degrees.  Last night, I could almost taste winter in the air.  Time-lapse weather.

As I was waiting to pick up my son from religion class, I listened to a little conversation a man and woman were having about the coming winter.  She was complaining how cold it was, and he said something like, "Well, the Farmer's Almanac says this winter's going to be worse than last winter.  More snow.  Colder."

I couldn't listen much beyond that.  I began having visions of snow drifted up to the roof of my house and water lines freezing solid for months.  School children trapped at home because breathing outside is like swallowing icicles.  Last winter was bad.  Usually, I don't mind the gray and white of December through early March.  When that gray and white stretches into April and May, I begin to get a little anxious.

Last winter cost the communities of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan a lot of money.  In my home town, the streets are still cratered and unpaved in places, looking like bombed-out war zones.  I'm talking millions of dollars in damage from the cold and ice.  We've barely recovered, and already the cold weather is almost upon us again.

So, I have a little prayer for winter tonight.  I'm praying that it arrives late and leaves early, like a surprise visit from a irritating brother-in-law.  The quicker and shorter the visit, the better.  That's my hope.  Too many families lived without running water for weeks on my street last year.  I don't want to see people going through that again.  I don't want to go through it, myself.  So I'm removing the welcome mat from my front stoop.

When that irritating brother-in-law shows up with snow and ice and dark, Saint Marty's going to pretend he's not home.

Hoping it's wrong

January 28: It's Late, Crickets, Prayer of Change

It's late.  Almost 10 p.m.  My kids had another day off from school.  I had another day off from teaching.  In fact, aside from working at the medical office, I didn't do anything productive today.  I think it has something to do with the cold.  It made me want to grab a blanket, sit on the couch, eat enough junk food to feed a small African nation, and watch episodes of The Big Bang Theory.  Maybe I'm pregnant.

The weather's going to be changing tomorrow.  It will be a good twenty or thirty degrees warmer.  That means schools will reopen.  My daughter will have dance class.  I will have to teach.  Everything will return to restart.  Change.  E. B. White writes of change in Charlotte's Web:

The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever.  Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year--the days when summer is changing into fall--the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.

I know that life is about change.  Sometimes that change brings sadness.  Sometimes it brings joy.  I am not a big fan of change, as many of my constant readers know.  In the past, change hasn't been good to me.  I've been struggling over the last year because of change in my work situations.  Mental illness.  Addictions.  Marital strife.  All these changes have caused me a lot of problems.


But I've come through these changes.  Stronger.  Smarter.  Better.  I'm still not a fan of change.  However, I know I can't avoid it.  I won't embrace it, buy it a negligee, take it home, and ravish it until daylight.  But I also won't take it down a dark alley and pop a cap in its ass.  I will accept it.  Period.

Dear God of change,

I know everything happens for a reason.  I know that light comes with darkness.  Warm with cold.  Happiness with sadness.  You can't have one without the other.

This may come as a surprise, but I want to say thanks for the changes in my life.  If I'm in the middle of a difficulty, I know You're going to see me through.  And that's enough to keep me going.

One little request:  less challenge, more success.  Please.

Your loving servant,

Saint Marty

Food for thought for all my atheist readers.  Change is good.  Even changing your minds.

September 15: Shovelling Away, Facetious Snowball, Frost on the Pumpkin, New Cartoon

For, the people who were shovelling away on the house-tops were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball--better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest--laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it went wrong...

Yes, I chose a passage about snow this morning, even though "snow" is really a four-letter word in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at this time of year.  Every person who lives here knows it's coming, but we don't want to admit it.  In the passage above, people are celebrating, enjoying the white stuff.  Well, it's Christmas day in the book.  You're supposed to enjoy snow around Christmas.  In mid-September, summer isn't quite a distant memory for Yoopers yet.  We're not ready for the eight months of winter ahead.

However, this morning, there was frost on the pumpkin.  Literally.  The one pumpkin that is still clinging to life on my blighted pumpkin plant in the backyard was coated in a white rime.  I don't think it harmed it.  However, it no longer feels like summer to me.  I am dressed in layers today.  Long sleeve shirt underneath a tee shirt.  That's how we do it in the U. P.  If you don't dress in layers, you may be caught off guard by a stray blizzard or ice storm this time of year.  I don't think we have to worry about that eventuality quite yet, but the frost was a good reminder of where we live.

Today, the forecasters are predicting temperatures in the 70-degree range.  That's livable.  Nice, even.  It's when the temps don't get past 50 that I start worrying.  The teenagers are still wearing shorts right now, so I know I'm safe for a few more weeks.  Of course, teens are hearty folk.  They aren't affected by cold as much as their elders.

Saint Marty's furnace kicked in for the first time since May this a.m.  He wanted to lie in front of the vent and bake himself.

Confessions of Saint Marty

May 15: On the Road Again...

I am posting this morning before we leave the hotel.  We just finished breakfast.  Everyone is a little tired, a little cranky.  My sister has gotten on my nerves five times already this morning, and my daughter is complaining that she has a headache.  My son is currently screaming at the breakfast table behind me.  It's shaping up to be a great day.

The weather has turned.  When we got here, it was 80 degrees and humid.  It is currently around forty degrees, rainy, and windy.  It's freezing.

Well, it looks like my people a done with breakfast.  Time to pack up and check out.  At my wife's church, whenever anyone is going on a trip, the congregation prays for travelling mercies.  I think it's a Protestant tradition, but I really like it.  I can imagine Mary putting her hand on Jesus' head as He went out the door, praying for travelling mercies for Him.

Pray for travelling mercies for Saint Marty.

Here we go again!