Charlottesville (3/30/2015) ... or about man's dominion over nature.

Monday included another afternoon road trip, this time to Charlottesville for a class I'll be teaching tomorrow.   It was a strange day that started out with a migraine and I was dragging.   Waiting for ever thing to settle down and the pain killer to work, I picked up a book that I've been working through on environmental justice (see the tab on my blog about books I've been reading for the title).  I am reading this book because of an interest I have in how to sell conservation in particular to people who are more cavalier about environmental protection.   I am very passionate when I teach and hopefully I can convert one or two persons and make them respect and protect the natural environment, but I am still frustrated that some people still don't get it.

Reading the book I hit the point on the so called idea that man has been given dominance over the natural environment by our Christian god (Genesis 1:26).  Being a Pantheist, I believe in the Devine in everything and in humans being part of it and not in charge of it.  But, I have often wondered how this thing about human dominion all got started, in particular since that attitude could be so destructive to the environment.  The authors of the chapter I was reading credits John Locke (1623-1704) for this notion, but reading a biography of Locke, it seems that he built on the philosophy of Francis Bacon, who interpreted the bible in such a way.  Granted this was all thought up in the 17th century and we did not know about photosynthesis,  evolution and other great scientific discoveries.

Locke had some other  interesting ideas.  He believed that "Land that is left wholly to Nature, that hath no improvement of Pasturage, Tillage, or Planting is called, as indeed it is, waste, and we shall find the benefit of it amount to little more than nothing"  (Locke 1694, Second Treatise, Sec. 42-43).  In other words, nature itself was worthless and had no function.  Not the brightest idea, but on the other hand, Locke did have some great ideas on religion (tolerance) and private property, and some of his ideas were championed in the Americas.   It seems that Thomas Jefferson was a reader of Locke; and wow, here I find myself in Charlottesville the home of Jefferson.

Locke calculated that improved land derives 99 to 99.9 percent of its value from cultivation rather than from the land itself.  This philosophy still permeates part of our economic system and explains our relationship with nature and public land.

With this notion we are ignoring that:

1. Nature's inherent value apart from human utility,
2. Nature has a psycho-spiritual value,
3. Nature's ability to create (wildlife, natural resources but also oxygen, clean water),  
4. Humans are part of nature.

One of Locke's ideas was about waste.  He be lived that no one should enmass more property than he needed.  Man should not waste land and what he grows from the land; otherwise he had to share is excesses.  So Locke was a property guy who had somewhat socialistic tendencies before socialism was invented.  The biographer tells us that this notion was easily abandoned by Locke's followers with the invention of money.  Now the excess crops, milk or meat could be sold and would not go to waste (the birth of capitalism).

The photo below was taken at Monticello.   I got there 45 minutes before closing and the ticket police would not allow me to go for a short walk in the woods without paying.   Like I would be able to make it all the way up to the mansion in that time and take the free tour.  Oh well.  At least I got to look at the green roof above the gift store.  It is amazing how at least part of our society is finally understanding that Locke was just a reflection of the level of science at time he lived, and that nature has a function and value.  I think it would have been something Thomas Jefferson would have embraced; however, he would probably have grown crops on the roof.

Virginia Native Plants (3/27/2015)

I am completing the development of a class that will be titled "Plants for Erosion and Sediment Control & Stormwater Management".  I will start teaching this class next week and am looking forward to it.  Hopefully it will not bomb; from what I hear in the field, everybody is looking forward to it.  I have a huge responsibility resting on my shoulders.

In the process of doing research for this topic I ran into now three reference guides that I thought were very good:

1. A native plant guide for Virginia's Eastern Shore (click here)
2. A native plant guide for Virginia's Northern Neck (click here)
3. A native plant guide for northern Virginia (click here and you'll find it on this page)

All are really good and a lot of fun to browse through,  Yes my course will deal with native plants and alien invaders (as in plants).  The department I work in is spearheading the effort in creating these guides, and word is that the Hampton Roads will be next, maybe divided into the south side and north side.  

This division into the north and south side is so indicative of what is going on in our area politically and socially.  Everyone wants to make this the greater Hampton Roads area but the darn Hampton Roads and the tunnels divide us and it is hard not to see that as a barrier between us and them (who ever us and them are).  Oh well.

Back to my class.  I will let the readers know how it is going, these next two months of traveling will tell.  The photo below was taken two Sundays ago, and to me it is symbolic of a new beginning, a new class and more respect for nature in general and of native plants in particular.  Of course it was taken in Newport News Park just around sunrise.

Newport News Park (3/24/2015)

In his essays on conservation ethics Aldo Leopold wrote about how the removal of predators from the landscape was detrimental to nature.  The removal of the wolf in the western US by ranchers to protect their sheep eventually led to an explosion in the mule deer population and tremendous over grazing by the deer which resulted in a decreased food supply for the sheep and an eventual decline in income for the ranchers.  (Yes, I already wrote about this, but it is worth repeating.) It is amazing how interconnected our life is with the natural world.   It is even more amazing how humans now reached a stage where we can influence and alter the natural wold as opposed to the natural world impacting us.

I have seen this as well.  In the late 1990s, I conducted some research in Valley Forge National Park and noticed how small the deer were.  I am not sure if it was caused by malnutrition or whether evolution was at work here.  What I do know that the National Park is completely surrounded by residential areas, which have forced the deer into a smaller and smaller area to find their food.  Naturally,  they do browse in the neighborhoods, but it seems that they most likely consume native landscape plants while they leave a lot of the exotics alone.  With the lack of hunting and predators the deer population in the park must have exploded resulting in a lack of food.  Either the deer a scrawny because of that, but given enough time you can expect that there will be an evolutionary pressure for smaller deer that can survive and thrive on less food.  But mature deer in the park looked like they were miniaturized, or as I called them bonsai deer; mature deer stood two to three feet tall.

Zoom in on today's picture.  In my opinion we are creating a similar issue in Newport Nes Park as I encountered in Valley Forge.   We are allowing the deer population to increase without culling by predators or through hunting.  Deer have so overgrazed the park that most palatable plants have been pushed out.  In addition to the overgrazing the lack of forest management has resulted in a dense leaf bed through which very few plants can germinate.  As a result we have very little understory and the only plants that remain in the understory are unpalatable to the deer.  Deer are now invading our neighborhood.

That brings me to idyllic picture of a doe and her fawn.  It was around night fall and they were slowly migrating towards our yards for their evening meals.

Newport News Park (3/22/2015)

It is always absolutely wonderful to go for a walk in Newport News Park.  We drove to the entrance along Jefferson, and decided to take our regular walk backwards and visit the swamp to look for bird.  When were walking along the swamp we got the wild hair up our but to walk home from the park a walk that was approximately 5 miles.

The walk we took was fun.  We ran into all kinds of interesting things.  The following photos are just an example what we ran into: evidence abound about beaver activity.  The three photos below show the swamp that is partially dammed of by beavers.  I like the black and white picture a lot, but you can see the evidence of beaver in the foreground of the color picture.  Further along the trail you see the stumps of trees that look like sharpened pencils sticking out of the ground.  Again evidence of beavers handy work.  Park rangers are obviously trying to protect trees and there are a lot of trees that are wrapped with metal screening material; guess that beaver teeth don't like to gnaw on metal.  The last picture shows the lake that was obviously created by their activity.

The park is also the site of the struggle between the north and south during the civil war (and also the revolutionary war); and there is evidence of fortifications everywhere.  It is amazing to see all the trenches.  As one of the signs say, it must have been boring trying to defend the lines along the Warwick River.

After crossing into the National Park it was a scenic walk through the woods and we were finally able to cross the swamp to the union side where we were welcomed by an egret.

It was a pretty and also a pretty darn long hike, that we have done before by bike, but never by foot.  Worth the trouble.

Home baker (3/15/2015)

I’m a baker of bread.

Our whole wheat bread

Well you say that’s different, here the nomad talks about baking bread, and not his usual travel, observations of nature or even politics.  In addition doesn't the nomad have enough hobbies?  If you are a regular reader, you know I sail, bike, take photos, read, garden, love to cook, wood work (not lately), grow bonsai (although they have been neglected lately), and love my beers and wines.  In addition, I love to do a Sudoku so now and then as way of relaxing.  On top of that I have a full time job.  If I am not teaching he has a two and a half the three hour commute each day (an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half each way).  I might have mentioned that I love to lay brick and my wife and I have built all kinds of (good looking) structures in the yard (a shed and a wood shed).  I am getting tired from typing all this down for my blog (oops another hobby).  I guess this probably makes me mediocre in everything I do, or maybe not.

Why would a person do all this?  I really don’t know.  My mother always told me I know a little about a lot of things or as they say in the English language, that I was a Jack of All Trades but a Master of None.  Maybe it is escapism, attention deficit disorder, I don’t know; I think ADD was invented after I graduated from college.  I started to look up on Google the term "Jack of All Trades" and interestingly Wikipedia describes it as follows:

“Jack of all trades, Master of none” is a figure of speech used in reference to a person that is competent with many skills but is not outstanding in any particular one."

In his blog, David Mansaray laments that being competent inherently means that you have a certain level of mastery, so in a way the term is a contradiction in itself.  Yes, the blog by Mansaray is more than 4 years old I think, but it is still valid.  Sometimes I hear the words "Renaissance Person" which Wikipedia defines as:

"a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas"

Two fascinating concepts.

Oh well leave it to my mother to tell me which of the two I am.  But then I really do not think there is much difference between the two.  However, like Mansaray I strongly believe that it is important to be multifarious and I am not sure if society encourages this enough.  It seems we are more interested in specialists than in generalists.  I have this thirst to learn things, and I when I stop doing that, I'll stop living.  I still believe that my hands should be able to do what my eyes can see (maybe with the exception of buttoning the cover to the comforter in our bed).

Back to my bread making habit.  I really miss the European breads and the only bread that we find palatable at our house is one that we buy at Costco.  Lately we are seeing that even those loaves are slowly going down hill and that they have an overdose of salt in them.  This prompted me to revive one of the things I did when I was unemployed six years ago, and that is baking bread.  (Here is a previous post on bread baking).  It really is not that difficult, and I have started making a whole wheat bread that is healthy and has really none of the bad things in it like corn syrup, azodicarbonamide, and L-Cysteine.  These chemicals do not belong in bread!  Moreover, my bread has no white flower in it, albeit a little malt which I bought at a shop for beer brewers.

In addition to the brown bread, I make a (Dutch) currant bread, which is such a success that I currently get orders (from my father-in-law).

The results of a Saturday of baking

The nice thing about baking is that it is meditative, it taste good, it is healthy and you have plenty of time between the rising and baking to pursue your other interests and hobbies.  Even when traveling it is good to be home, stay active and have good bread.

Draper (3/4/2015)

On the road again! After a month and a half hiatus I am on the road teaching again. Actually two weeks ago it was Fairfax, but I really had not much to say. But it are days like today that I have to vent, after four to five hours in a car, listening to the radio. It is amazing what you get to hear while trying to stay entertained and allert while driving. I really needed to decompress in Draper and walk a piece of the New River Trail.

What got me upset? Don't get me wrong, I love the mountains of Virginia and the people that live here. Yes, the number of tea party license plates are higher here in them hills, but to each there own. What upset me was listening to the radio. There were programs that were all over the place. I understand religeous broadcasts and money shows etc, but some more conservative radio hosts were absolutely virulent and vitreous. Now I am from European stock, and my father spent time in a German concentration camp; and from what I understand from stories have heard and read, this is very remeniscant of what Germany went through. The hatred of liberals and the name calling was absolutely amazing. Hopefully only a small minority listen and or agree with these demagogues, but yes it is remeniscant of some of the Hitler news reals I have seen; although it is not anti Jewish, but anti Muslim and anti liberal. It was absolutely flabbergasting, and I needed to decompress; like showering after getting really dirty.

Walking the New River Trail I saw trees covered with lichen and it symbolizes my feelings after the name calling and hatred. I wrote about lichens in a previous post, but I need to bring it back.

While lichen may look like moss, they actually consists of two different lifeforms. They are algae that live on (together with) a fungus. These two lifeforms live in a symbiotic relationship (they scratch each other's back and don't live separately) something that these bizarre fashist radio hosts cannot do with people that don't agree with them or when they are Muslim. In addition to helping each other, lichen are also food to animals and the may protect trees and soil from temperature extremes.

We are such a self destructive species that hates and kills our own species, something that most other species do not do, let alone live in a truly symbiotic relationship with others. It really amazes me how much hate there is in this world.