Short-term vs. long-term gain (2/17/2021)

This past week we had an impeachment trial of the inciting chief also known as the ex-president. There were a lot of GOP senators (and house members before them) who acquitted him. Not necessarily because he was not guilty for inciting a riot or worse an insurrection, but because of some bizarre technicality. At least that is the way they saw it. It seems that this might be for their short-term gain, avoiding pissing off the weirdo, very vocal tRump supporters, the Q-anon, proud boys, neo-Nazis, oath-keepers, and alike. However, will it help them, their party, or the country in the long run? I doubt it. Yes, the seven senators that voted to convict are getting crap at home, and so is Liz Cheney, but they had character, they called it out the way it was. These folks that voted to acquit will always be known, branded, for what they did, as spineless, characterless cowards who threw away the constitution and became complicit to a murder, invertebrate republicans. They threw away potential long-term gain for some short-term political gain. Will it be worth it? We’ll see!

I stole this one from a friend's post on Facebook.  I have no idea where she got it.  If it is copy righted let me know and I will give credit for it for sue, but this really shows what I mean.

And here I promised I would try to stay away from politics in the new year. Wow that did not last very long, did it? “Short-term vs. long-term gain.” It applies to daily life; in all decision, we make. What triggered that thought? It was partially the decision by the GOP senators, but I was reminded for a large part by a bonsai video blog (vlog) that I follow. All these events brought me back to my teaching, my motivation, and my graduate studies, which all have to do with long-term gain and where I am right now. Not that it always worked out, but I am in a good place.

I have been watching a vlog by Nigel Saunders called “the Bonsai Zone.” Nigel does clip and growth bonsai, meaning he hardly ever wires his trees. He has two famous sayings: “Here I go,” and “It does not look like much right now, but in ten or fifteen years from now it will look great.” Nigel looks long-term ; everything he does is for long-term gain. I figure that Nigel may be my age, or at most maybe 10 or so years younger. But he is definitely no spring chicken, he is retired, and his optimism and outlook for the future has no boundaries. I love his enthusiasm, his sometimes-non-conformity, and pure fun he has in all thing’s life. I see that a lot with Bonsai guys. Peter Chan from Herons Bonsai in England who is in his 80s is the same. It must have to do something with trees or plants. It sustains these professionals and gives them a long-term vision, a will to live, to plan for a future, far away.

I nurse some tropical trees right next to my teleworking station.  Note the grow light that I have above my trees.  I ordered it after Nigel got the same one from a fan and unpacked it on his show and liked it.  He still has it behind him on almost every video he shoots this season.  In addition I think it helps me with my seasonal affected disorder (if I have that). 

During my classroom teaching and in particular when I teach my “Plants for Erosion and Sediment Control and Stormwater Professionals” class, I tell folks why I am a plant biologist instead of an animal or other type of biologist. One of the major reasons, I explain, is that if we animals do not like what nature throws at us, we can go inside, or in case of (real?) animals we can crawl under a rock, migrate, hibernate, you name it. Conversely, a plant just must stand there and take it all in, have a strategy to survive or die.

I graduated with a specialty in plant physiological ecology. This study explains why and how a plant reacts and deals with its environment. I particularly liked what was called stress physiology. I guess that this is probably why I like growing bonsai so much; you are stressing your plants somewhat, to develop a miniature version of the real tree.

I tell my students and I know that I have mentioned it once or twice here in my blog, biologists would make great economist. During my bachelor’s studies, my highest grades were in economics. Why is that you may ask. As Darwin put it, the natural world is all about “Survival of the fittest” or as I like to call it parsimony, or how to do things the most efficient. How do you achieve that? Mostly by thinking ahead, long range. If you do not, someone is going to outcompete you and you will be evolutionary history. Surprise, surprise, plants, in particular, are really good at this. Us animals, and yes, I count humans as animals, are more opportunistic and more reactionary. They can shoot from the hip, be more impulsive and think more short term.

Both behaviors have their advantage. Slow and steady has worked really well in the plant kingdom. Some plants are still here since the beginning of evolutionary time, many are not. I actually work with a few in my collection, like the dawn redwood and the gingko biloba. Animals have evolved. Maybe except for roaches and horseshoe crabs there are not many species that we know of who have outlived evolutionary time.

This all may change with climate change. We know that animals can move with the shifting climates, while many plants cannot and either must adapt, evolve, or simply die (become extinct). Many researchers are speculating about what will happen to ecosystems that are on the margins. For us stress physiologists it is an exciting time. It is a shame that I choose a different path in my career some 30 years ago, and am out of the loop. But so be it. My choice was short-term (financial) gain over the long-term intellectual. As I mentioned we all come to forks in the road of life and at times we must choose, not knowing whether deciding for short-term gain is better than choosing a path that may deliver long-term gain but is difficult to envision at the time. I choose mine, and I’m OK with it. I wonder if those politicians will be.

Winter is here (02/03/2021)

Winter has come to our corner of the world.  Not like the rest of the East Coast where they got up to 2 feet of snow yesterday and today.  We just got flurries and cold wind.  Of course it was on the day of the great rodent weather prognosticator, the wood chucks.  Strangely enough we all know that the astral spring is March 21, which is about 6 weeks from now; in other words it would make sense that it will stay somewhat cold for the next foreseeable few weeks.

I took this picture late last week after our first decent snowfall in a few years.  Decent means one or two inches.  The wind came up and blew some of the snow off the tree limbs and it was just beautiful and magical.

Teleworking is still interesting during these cold days.  My wife works down stairs, and I am sorry (for her) to say that the heat rises so she is cold and I am pretty comfortable up here in my perch.  We tend the run the wood stove only in the evening since it is in our library or what we call the stove room.  That room is the furthest removed from where my wife works, so it would have little or no effect on her warmth.  Moreover she would need to keep the darn thing loaded with wood.

Walking the dogs is fun now.  Jake the old guy loves this weather.  While he was on death's door a year ago and was given only a few days or weeks to live (read this post of last year), he is holding on, now a year later.  He absolutely loves this cold weather and actually is frisky.  He wants to join us on our lunch time walks and is genuinely disappointed when he has to go on a smaller walk in the morning before work.  He is just very slow.

I don't mind being slow when going out back into the woods.  I still like it when nature comes over me and when I have a chance to enjoy the sights, smells and sounds of the woods.  It never gets old, no matter what the weather is.  Right now, it is very wet out there and we are avoiding it somewhat; however, on the weekends you can find us somewhere in the woods.  I cannot believe there is anyone who can live without seeing or experiencing nature.  It is so darn important to get out there folks, there is beauty everywhere.

One more photo from our winter hike a few days ago.  Our favorite pond.  It has not been cold enough for it to freeze over.

Reading that post I wrote about Jake, now almost a year ago, I am not depressed.  Maybe it is because I have a powerful grow light next to me that helps with my little tropical bonsai trees that are next to me on my desk.  Maybe it is because of the change to a more emphatic political climate; although there are still a lot of nut cases out there.  But I try not to let it bother me right now; I have more work to do than I had in the past few months.  This, as the saying goes, should "keep me out of trouble".   As long as I can get out into the woods.  I have plans to get a few airlayers from a beech this spring.  Stay tuned.

I am a tree hugger (1/23/2021)

Of all the environmental news and stories that came out last year there was one that has stayed with me. Regular readers know that I am a huge student and lover of trees. OK, you can even call me a tree hugger! When I walk in the woods there is nothing better than petting the occasional tree with my bare hands, or just laying my hands on the trunk and enjoying my connection with the wood, the tree, and by way of its vascular and root system with the earth; the entire world around me. 

In winter, I enjoy looking up in the canopy of trees and look at the branching.  This helps me in my studies for the development of my bonsai, but also just the enjoyment of the simple beauty and majesty. 

But that is not necessarily what I want to write about today. In the department that we work, we have bi-monthly climate change webinars, and sometime mid-2020 we had a talk by Dr. Jeremy Hoffman climatologist from the Virginia Science Museum in Richmond about how urban treescapes modified the urban climate. More specifically, he had studied how city sections where minorities live had fewer trees and parks then Caucasian neighborhoods. These African American neighborhoods were much warmer during the summer which resulted in heat related 911 (or emergency/ambulance) calls. Now here I was looking at the year end review in the New York Times and they showed to 10 most important articles of 2020 and there it was, an article on this specific research. Here is the link to this article. They did another article about it earlier.

While I promised not to bother you all about politics in my blogs as much as I have done in the past 4 years, the issue in Richmond and many other large cities goes back many years. It is known as environmental justice. Environmental justice is very closely aligned with racism and economic justice, where the poor and minorities were delt the short end of the stick. They lived closer to the pollution generating area; the areas that were cheaper to live in; across the tracks as it is called. They could not afford high rent, health care, the electricity to cool or heat their homes. There you have it, heat related illnesses because of the lack of trees in the summer, including asthma because trees also scrub the air.

It still amazes me to see in this neighborhood where I live, how eager newcomers are to cut the trees in their yards around their homes (even today I could hear the whining of the chainsaws), in the pursuit of, I am not sure what. More sun, the perfect lawn, more exposure and heat in the summer, more wind, and even lower temperatures in winter? Yes, having a yard full of trees is a pain. We have a lot of leaves in fall and no sun any longer for a decent vegetable garden, and my bonsais. I previously wrote about my gripe over the eagerness that some of the folks here have about leaf disposal and tree killing. 

This tree had split in two exposing this inner wood.  It shows that vascular system that connects the upper part of the tree (and me when I touch the tree) with the earth.  I just love the vein pattern.

But even planting a young tree or a smaller species in place of the old majestic one they just nuked really does not help. A lawn or a young, small tree are so much less efficient in fixing carbon out of the air and thus reducing CO2 than large mature trees. In addition, my bike and car both have a temperature gauge on them, and we can see the difference when we go from our yard down to the primary school less than a mile away, which has absolutely no tree around it. In summer, the temperatures are easily 5 or more degrees higher than in my wooded front yard. In winter, when the thermometer reads 32 degrees (or freezing), the windshields of my cars may not need scraping while the neighbor’s cars are frosted over.

Concluding trees are not only good for the soul, but they also help in moderating the microclimate around your home, they are good for the climate as a whole, and they provide great habitat for all kinds of critters, be it up there or in the fallen leaves. In other words, become a tree hugger.

The end of an error? (1/21/2021)

 Well, we finally got rid of the red faced dictator today (this was written yesterday).  It felt good.  We celebrated with binge watching, champagne, and pizza.  The little dictator snuck out off town like a defeated looser.  Good riddance and let the healing begin.

Us toasting to the swearing in of the new president.  Folks have asked me what happened to my mask.  I had just given the champagne glasses to the wife and her father and returned to put the bottle in the fridge.  On my way back from the fridge I had take a sip when my wife asked me to come over for a selfie.  I forgot to pull my mask back up.  Sorry no overt message here!  (Photo by my wife).

Yes, I understand that these are no healing words that I just typed.  I am sorry, I should be kinder.  I promise that I will, start trying in my next post, or just a little later in this one.  But it feels so good to get rid of this liar, this narcissist, this con-man; I can go on.  It is just such a shame that there are still so many people that believe him and blindly follow him.  I was listening to a podcast from the New York Times yesterday called "the Daily" where they talked about the Trump followers and what they think and would do now.  In interviews some mentioned succession.  Others mentioned that when they saw strangers they now wondered whether they were Republican or Democrats.  Truthfully, I have wondered that sometimes as well, especially at the beginning of COVID when you saw people without face masks.  I wrote about it here, although that was more about their preexisting conditions.

So yes I sincerely hope we can, as Biden put it, start living like neighbors and not like enemies or adversaries.  Neighbors can have their differences but can talk it out and come to a compromise. 

Well, where to go from here.  I promise that in future my blogs will return to "normal" or to what I have always intended for this blog: a reflection of me; my travels (through the state) when that starts again; my photography (I will soon be getting a new Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, which should be loads of fun ... a 160 MP camera); my bonsai, my love of nature and the environment; and finally my love of teaching and training.  I will most likely sprinkle an occasional gripe about politics in there, especially when it impacts these loves or other personal things, but I promise I will try to get of my political soap box.  

But damn, that champagne tasted good. 

Are we living on a movie set? (1/17/2021)

Oh wow, 2021 is starting out with a bang. Here I thought it could not get worse. We are setting record after record CORONA virus cases and deaths, and we are coming off a week where we had a coup attempt. tRump is quickly becoming the mass-murdering chief! The proud boys, skin heads, neo-Nazis, Q-anons, and other right wingnuts attacked the capitol in Washington DC to stop the certification of the election. As my wife commented on the 6th: “It feels like we are living in a movie.”

I am going to make this short, but I am just hoping that this week’s events will be peaceful and that we can get rid of this failure of a president, this demagogue, who somehow has been able to convince somewhere around 30% of the people that he is the next coming of whatever, the chosen one. I am still amazed how he was able to convince these folks he was special, instead of a charlatan. But then Hitler was able to do the same. 

I just watched a video where Arnold Schwarzenegger, the ex-governor of California and body builder, former citizen of Austria, compared it to Crystal Nacht in Germany. As he mentioned that night in 1937 the German “Proud Boys” rioted and broke a lot of windows in Jewish establishments in Germany. This was really the start of Hitlers fascist reign. Something to be proud of, eh boys? 

All I know is that we live in anxious times. There is a large group of people that are hell bend on stopping the change in leadership of our country. They have been whipped up by the current occupant of the White House and his cronies. I just hope that the next few weeks, or four years will be uneventful. All I can do is blog, express my feelings, and when it gets too much, I go out into the woods to destress and forest bathe. The other thing I can do is work for what I believe, just like what those violent folks are doing; however, I will be doing it in a peaceful way for democracy, social, economic, racial and gender equality. I will be doing that through my blog, by the way I live and through my church: the UU.

I took this photograph a few days ago at my favorite pond behind my home during a lunch-time walk.  Nice to be out and take in nature, meditate and relax!

"Please give me the SERENITY to accept the things I cannot change, the COURAGE to change the things I can and the WISDOM to know the difference!"