Notices by Moira (moira@c.im), page 4

Lithuania hands over munitions to #Ukraine in latest aid delivery https://kyivindependent.com/lithuania-delivers-new-military-aid-to-ukraine/

Finland completely closes border with Russian again https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/12/15/7433294/ #Ukraine

EU agrees to 12th sanctions package against Russia https://kyivindependent.com/eu-agrees-to-12th-sanctions-package-against-russia/

Zelensky delivers speech in Norway’s parliament https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3799823-zelensky-delivers-speech-in-norways-parliament.html #Ukraine

Report: Russia has laundered $2.5 billion of African gold since February 2022 https://kyivindependent.com/report-russia-has-laundered-2-5-billion-of-african-gold-since-february-2022/ #Ukraine

They see insurrection and racketeering as their short road to power; holding millions of Urainians hostage is but a small part of the package in their eyes >>

Zelenskyy fails to sway Republicans on Ukraine aid https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/12/12/zelenskyy-fails-to-sway-republicans-on-ukraine-aid/ #Ukraine

Rhetorical rage has value for the rager in providing some catharsis but if we already know that politicians and captains of industry do what they do with little or no regard for whatever does not advance their, and their friends', power or wealth, the rage so expressed dissipates and no objective is acheived. Vote; help unions and cooperatives, run for something, serve on committees, plant something, and pick a drawdown strategy and get good at it. https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions

Saudi-led fight against COP28 deal shows ‘panic,’ German climate envoy says https://www.politico.eu/article/saudi-led-fight-against-cop28-deal-shows-panic-german-climate-envoy-says/

Ukraine's Main Cargo Crossing Point with Poland Reopens https://www.kyivpost.com/post/25331 #Ukraine

Hackers impersonated Ukrainian agencies in emails to Polish officials https://kyivindependent.com/hackers-impersonated-ukrainian-agencies-in-emails-to-polish-officials/ #Ukraine

Situation in Ukraine: ICC judges issue arrest warrants against Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova | International Criminal Court

https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-issue-arrest-warrants-against-vladimir-vladimirovich-putin-and #Ukraine

Russia maintains hope to fully occupy Ukraine – General Staff report https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/12/2/7431411/ #Ukraine

Technology wins war, so we have advantage – Ukraine's Defence Minister to IT coalition participants https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/11/29/7430888/ #Ukraine

₴60 million to be allocated to rebuild Chernihiv schools as part of DECIDE initiative https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3792635-60-million-to-be-allocated-to-rebuild-chernihiv-schools-as-part-of-decide-initiative.html #Ukraine

She has work to do, establishing
Her anchor threads, her frame threads,
Even her bridge thread and all her radii,

Hub to be ready by dawn, herself resting --
All-powerful, so far as any lacewing can
See. Seeking out the ripest berries, she

Works not to eat drupelets, but entirely to
Offer them as bait to fruit flies and their ilk.
Right away along comes another
Killer, a ladybird beetle, seeking the berries

Too, and for the same reason. He's caught,
Offers resistance, is overwhelmed, rolled up,

Done. Whatever comes in, if protein, her
Ovum will accept. Death it is brings life.

clearing the knotweed

Commonly, this is done with herbicide.
Leery of that, she tried a chain saw. That was
Easy enough, but made fumes and sets fire to
All the earth's air over time. Electric clippers
Ruled the roost awhile, but that, we know,
In the scheme of things is but a longer tailpipe,
Neither the labor direct nor personal. She's
Going to have to simplify further. She takes

The hand pruner with her to the patch. It means
Her time in blighted shade, bending, will be
Extended, reaching to each stem in turn,

Killing with a snip and twist, dragging four or five
Not so much weeds as small trees outward
Or upward from the dry wash, toward hot sun,
Toward the roasting garden, into the paths
Where they'll be tossed as instant mulch
Entreating the drought to respect their shade,
Entreating irrigation not to evaporate,
Dimming, in sacrifice, the roving eye of Death.

where are the potatoes

Where are the potatoes, she wondered, watching
Heat shimmer across her corn block, its leaves
Each rustling against other, turning brown.
Right here they were planted, next bed over,
Evenly spaced, in two long lines, eyes up

And covered in soft soil, mixed with compost --
Really exactly as she had done these fifty years.
Early next morning, she reached for her mason's hammer,

The experiment with the spud hook having failed, and
Heaving her old bones down onto her gardening stool
Exactly at the end of that mysterious weedy bed;

Pulled block after block of solid hexagonal clod
Over, busting up each as she went, feeling for
That coolness she knew as round starch balls
All her life she'd depended on. It's not
That she hadn't watered and weeded, no,
Or fought those gophers well, newly arrived.
Earth could not drink for once, it seemed.
Some spuds appeared. They were even

Smaller than those from last year. Some felt
Hollow. Some were cracked. Some were
Even green with poisons though they'd grown

Well deep enough never to have seen sun.
Oh, well, she thought, I'll take what I can get;
Now we'll have barley for every other soup, with
Dandelion to help stretch out my kale. This
Earth, she told herself, never did all,
Really even in days of rain. Barley I bought.
Ere I go forth from here as buried flesh or ash, I'll
Do as I have done: work with what is.

She stands in wet and likes it; drips rolling
around the brim of her split-bamboo conical
hat to fall on thirsting clay. Here's

weather at last, there having been sun,
sun, sun, a lip-cracking and tree-splitting
dry, since the vernal equinox. Nothing

had been vernal about it, and her land
knew so. The very fir limbs sulked;
willows on creek banks browned up and died;

birds fell everlastingly silent, dropping
on needle-sharp tufts of what had been haymow
beneath their perches in rattling cedars;

fish sought pools deeper than any there were,
crowding in together, fin by fin,
gulping and grunting, then rolling over

to bump along hot, slimed rocks and lodge
somewhere, stinking. Her crops had miniaturized,
flavorful but insufficient to pay her labor;

She'd lost heart and let vining morning glories
into her cracked farm at last. And now here
comes weather. Not enough to top off the well,

maybe, and certainly not enough to start the creek.
But here she stops, catching chill -- watching
a goldfinch settle on fence wire with a twist

of foraged thistledown. It drops the meal,
opens its beak, cranes skyward. And now it sings.

these are highlands

These are highlands, in a region of highlands, so
not especially notable. It takes a long
time to get there, though the graveled road

is short enough; park and walk -- not far,
but bring a lunch and water. Sign in; it's wilderness
according to the kiosk and its map.

Immediately you have shade. These are
Douglas fir, mountain hemlock, perhaps
some red cedar. Beneath, on both sides the trail,

a scattering of vine maple, ocean spray,
rhododendron, and, in the draws, willow.
Sometimes bear grass is in flower;

not this year. As late season turns, first
vanilla leaf, then devil's club, then red
huckleberry, then the blue, will shade through

gold to sienna to cranberry: cool nights.
Kinnickinnick under foot will be your sign
you are straying; do not lose the path.

Along the way are springs, but they are dry;
near them are holes of mountain beaver,
a town like that of prairie dogs. You will

not see them; they go abroad at night.
Admire twinflowers and trilliums, though
they are past bloom. So it is as well

with gooseberry and false Solomon's seal --
they are tired now, and long for snow.
As your path turns upon itself and climbs

rocks and trees will change to andesite
and alpine fir; soil to red dust, shrubs
to ceanothus. Now you discover that view

eyes come here to see; a mountainscape
of scree and scarp and what remains of ice,
not far away as the crows fly, yet leaning

over miles of air, blue with smoke and firs.
You may eat, and drink your water, leaving some
for your return. Wait here for me a bit

while I go to see a stone nearby
where both my parents' ashes lie at rest.

w e w e n t t o s e e t h e p l a c e

in Walterville.
Before we had even seen the house, the neighbor,
a man of some seventy years, bent with woods work,

stopped to chat. "The house isn't much, but the soil
is good. Oh, it has some Scotch broom, I know,
on the pasture, but you can get ahead of that

if you keep after it. I helped the last folks with their fence,
but they wanted the gate right here, where the tractor
couldn't get in. They'd no sense."

We asked why no fence between his place
and "ours." "Oh, I don't need a fence.
Don't want your apples, and you're welcome to mine."

The sort of thing we'd hoped. We walked over
the pasture till we reached the incense cedars,
each one five feet thick, and found a hanging

branch worn smooth by generations of children's swinging.
Good, and the valley here was wide,
with mountains stretching east and west,

and sunshine access on short winter days.
But the house wouldn't do; bedrooms dark
and tiny, with telltale smell throughout

of dry rot underneath. Desire for land
sets one dreaming. One acre, three acres--
not enough to farm, but who can farm

with these prices? It becomes a privilege
just to set out onions, and a cow
is not mere luxury, but even a kind of madness

to consider. We have cross fenced
our high-taxed valleys so that to walk straight
for five minutes can't be done, and all

the while buying our produce from five hundred
miles away, where the tractors have as many
wheels as your freeway rig. I want to put

my hands into the ground and make it yield
enough to make my children grow, and not
grow poor in the process. We drove home,

and quarreled along the way about land,
as people do who have gone to see
not only what they could not have afforded,

but ought not to have desired. The ducks
were glad to see us; she watered them, and I
fed tomatoes, and we kissed and made up,

and lay awake in our small suburban house
beneath the wheeling moon and stars. Why is it,
I wondered then and wonder now, that no one

ever seems to know when they have enough?
When sleep came, there was a vivid dream.
I met again the old man with no fence,

and saw him pointing to the earth. "This
was river bottom in here not too long ago,"
I heard him say. "When we drilled down forty

feet, we hit a driftwood tree, even though
the river now is half a mile away." He opened up
the earth somehow, and showed me the tree,

still caught amid smooth and rounded stones
deep beneath the topsoil, which now I saw
was dark and rich, as he had said it was.

I reached to touch the soil, and awoke.
The northbound train was rumbling by the house,
carrying produce from industrial farms,

and I was drenched in sweat, and found the moon
had drifted far across the window to the west.