A&C 7.24.2021 DONE

Garden Club extends thanks

To the Editor:
The Marshall Area Garden
Club wishes to acknowledge

those who helped to make

the 2021 “Welcome to My

Garden” tour a success.

Thank you, garden owners

for your hard work and avail-

ability: Amy and Vaughn

Frentz, Roger and Sue

Knafel, Doug Mead, Patrick

and Laurel Piotrowski, Coco

and John Sweezy, and Angie

Weatherly. We also want to

acknowledge John Hendler

and the ad-visor & chronicle

for the beautiful photos and

timely articles about Garden

Tour events. Thanks go to the

city of Marshall and the

Marshall Police Department

for their essential assistance

and TCF Bank for providing

their lawn for our use.

Our Vintage Garden

Market had a new location

this year, consequently, we

thank Janet Ostrum for her

coordination of the new

dynamics, and the Garden

Market vendors for seam-

lessly adapting. Thank you

volunteers for providing a

welcoming environment to

our guests and thank you,

guests for supporting the

tour. In particular, we wish to

express our gratitude to Carol

Riggs and Pam Munsie, the

Garden Tour chairs, for coor-

dinating the efforts of all

those mentioned above: our

thirtieth annual tour was well

run, and you did a marvelous

job.

Members of the Marshall

Area Garden Club, Inc.

Advice from a dead poet: ‘uncenter our minds from ourselves’

To the Editor:

On July 4, the skies across

the U.S. were ablaze with

spectacular fireworks as

dusk moved across our four

standard time zones. Glory

seemed to abound in each

new burst of color. Fireworks!

A temporary period of

respite, of relief, of being

entertained & distracted from

our fraught daily lives in a

time of unprecedented

change and instability

throughout much of the

world. People need comfort

and reassurance right now,

understandably. But a quick

fix? Something to give us a

false sense of normalcy?

Watching televised dis-

plays of big-city fireworks, I

couldn’t help noticing the

clouds of smoke each ejec-

tion left in its wake. Over the

evening the cumulating resi-

due created ominous-looking

vapors that hovered in the

sky, hugging the Washington

Monument in Washington,

D.C. and dwarfing New

York’s Statue of Liberty.

Where will this ghostly efflu-

ent end up? Darkening our

skies? Heating our planet

further? I wondered how

fireworks compare with the

harmful expulsion of gaso-

line fumes from travel over

the holiday. Trails of future

tears? Should the money

spent on fireworks or on air-

plane tickets and cross-coun-

try road trips have been spent

on more firefighters in

California? Or on some new

hopeful “green solution” to

climate change?

Recently I read an article

about Robinson Jeffers in the

September 2020 Harper’s

Magazine that its author Erik

Reece titled “Bright Power,

Dark Peace: Robinson Jeffers

and the Hope of Human

Extinction.” Shocking title!

From the rugged coastline of

Carmel, Calif. (where Jeffers

and his family’s stone house

stood on a barren bluff)

Jeffers wrote that the human

race was “a spreading fun-

gus...my own coast’s

obscene future.” Jeffers’

stone “Tor House” and his

“Hawk Tower”? Reece says

that today they almost disap-

pear behind multi-mil-

lion-dollar vacation homes,

etc.— built on land sold off

to pay inheritance taxes

when Jeffers died in 1962.

Do the new generations even

realize that Jeffers planted

the 2000 cypress & eucalyp-

tus saplings (not by machine,

but by hand) that now stand

towering above their homes?

A now little-read American

poet, Jeffers was a man who

hated the human inclination

to conquer nature and short-

sightedly prosper from its

plunder— prosper and con-

sequently over-procreate our

own kind at the expense of

all other living things and

their environments. Reece

claimed that though Jeffers

wasn’t a scientist, he was a

seer. “ He saw denial com-

ing more than 60 years ago

and knew that his warning

would fall on deaf ears, once

declaring: “...truly men hate

the truth.” But Jeffers’ poet-

ry, claimed Reece, “is as

relentless as the sea. What

he heard the waves saying

over and over was: You are

nothing. Your cities are noth-

ing. Your history is noth-

ing.”.

There are two approaches

to reality. To deny or to rec-

ognize it. Deep down are we

not feeling the first quakes

and the first grimaces of

what we have wrought? As

I write this letter, the western

U.S. is ablaze! By July 17,

fire had destroyed 67 homes

and 117 other structures. At

that time 70 fires were burn-

ing in the U.S. and 1 million

acres had already burned. By

July 20, the number of fires

had jumped to 85. And it’s

early in the year for the fire

season. The fire in Klamath

County in Oregon burned

more than 241,000 acres, an

area larger than New York

City, and is growing. Death

Valley in California hit the

highest daily average tem-

perature ever recorded (

degrees F.). July 9, 2021,

was this desert valley’s hot-

test day (130 degrees F.)

Even Michigan has had some

serious flash flooding, and

the northeast U.S. has been

hit and victims disrupted

(some killed) by serious and

destructive downpours.

Still, it’s shocking to be

facing dire, probable apoca-

lyptic results from our

self-centered attitudes

brought about paradoxically

by our outward so-called

success; our “progress.” In

short, weather events will

sooner or later bring hunger

and thirst, displacement,

political turmoil, disease,

death and destruction to

many shores. Is this inevita-

ble? Climate experts, includ-

ing the long-time naturalist

Sir Richard Attenborough,

say that it’s too late to reverse

this process now. Were we to

unify and reduce our carbon

footprint? At the least we’d

be buying time, he says.

People ought to be demand-

ing this!

Human beings do have an

effect on global warming as

most of the scientists study-

ing it agree. It was reported

in The Week on July 24: “The

pandemic is sparing millions

of wild animals from dying

as roadkill as the number of

vehicles on the road has

plunged by as much as 70%

A report by the University of

California projected that as

many as 200 million of the 1

billion animals killed annual-

ly on roads could survive

because of the coronavirus.”

So, you see? Our behavior

matters!

In my opinion, it would be

good if the era to follow this

one could be named, and

appropriately named, The

Age of Atonement. I love the

following quote: “All of

man’s mistakes arise because

he imagines that he walks

upon a lifeless thing whereas

his footsteps imprint them-

selves in a flesh full of vital

power.” (A savvy quote by

Jean Giono, a Frenchman

born to a modest family in

the French Alps) who became

a raw and sensitive novelist

with a deep feeling for

nature. Dying in 1975, Giono

was the most realistic and the

sincerest of men. How he

would despair if he were

alive today! Or wouldn’t he?

For he’s the man who

wrote The Man Who Planted

Trees, an allegorical short

story about one shepherd’s

single-handed but successful

efforts to reforest a desolate

valley in the Alps. The sub-

title of the book is: Generosity

of Spirit as a Source of

Happiness. Isn’t it also a

source of hope? I know one

woman in Marshall who

plants milkweed plants to

attract monarch butterflies,

plucking the caterpillars off

and keeping them safe in a

mesh butterfly cage—until,

after the chrysalid stage they

emerge as butterflies and can

be let go safe and sound to

lay eggs for a new genera-

tion. Devotion to what

Jeffers would call “the beau-

ty of transhuman things.

Without which we are all

lost.”

Dee Nelson,

Marshall

Seeing is believing – visit the

Kalamazoo River in Marshall!

To the Editor:

If someone had asked me

in 2010 how I viewed

Enbridge after the oil release

in Marshall, I wouldn’t have

the same answer then as I

have today.

When the incident first

happened, I smelled the oil

and then I saw it. The

Kalamazoo River was virtu-

ally unrecognizable as the

place where I played as a

child, competed in canoe

races and proposed to my

wife. I never thought for a

minute that the company

could clean my river.

Today, I am grateful.

After 11 years of back and

forth, I have had the opportu-

nity to ask and have answered

most of my questions about

the release. I have asked the

tough questions, including

what lessons Enbridge

learned from the Marshall

incident.

The lessons from an inci-

dent that devastated our com-

munity and me also took a

toll on the company.

At every step, the compa-

ny shows it will do every-

thing not to experience

another incident like

Marshall.

I am proud that Enbridge

not only restored the

Kalamazoo River, but also

uses that incident to define

the way it chooses to act

now.

The questions I have asked

and the actions I personally

have seen totally satisfy me

that Enbridge is setting an

example that other compa-

nies would be hard pressed to

follow.

By taking responsibility

and honoring its commitment

to restore the river, Enbridge

has earned my trust. It

remains a welcome and big

part of our community, and

few are more surprised about

that than I am.

Jesse Jacox,

Marshall

Lori Sturdevant, REALTOR®

C: 269-579-

O: 269-789-

[email protected]

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Thank You

... from the family of

Doris A. Farmer

.

We would like to thank everyone who Prayed for Mom

and her family.

Craig Kempf Family Funeral Home, Harvester Flower

Shop, Marshall Nursing and Rehab, Grace Hospice, and

Pastor Jim Codde. Their collective help, made some-

thing very difficult much easier to deal with. A special

thank you to Noreen for all her care and love.

With much thanks,

The Family of Doris A. Farmer

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Call 269-781-5444 for

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