For those who cannot remember the past (11/09/2021)

This weekend I was reminded of the saying often attributed to the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I was being interviewed by a fairly close friend for her school project about my career in environmental sciences; how I got to where I am now. My friend is relatively young, I think in her mid to late thirties, and is trying to finish her college degree on-line. This was part of one of her final projects. I find her a go-getter, very intelligent and overall, a very nice gentle person. It was fun to be interviewed by her. This is in no way an editorial or a judgement on her.

There was one point; however, where she drew a blank. I mentioned Idi Amin and she had no idea who I was talking about. Maybe not surprising since he was a ruthless African dictator who ruled a relatively small country from approximately 1971 to 1979 (way before she was born). My wife and I lived in Uganda during that time and went through the bloody civil war that ousted Amin in 1979. Back then everybody talked about the “Conqueror of the British Empire” as he called himself. He even inspired two movies, one based on the raid of Entebbe where the Israeli commandos freed hostages from an airplane hostage taking; the other “The Last King of Scotland” was based on the first few years of Amin’s reign. It was after the Entebbe raid when my wife and I moved to Uganda to work at the leprosy center in Kumi.

My concern is not my friend or Amin, but I realized we have a collective amnesia with the past. Whether it is the climate, yes, we may make fun when grandpa talks about having to walk to school through three-foot-deep snow and other fairy tales. Or was there really a holocaust, a guy named Hitler who was a demagog, a landing on the moon? Before long we will forget we will forget we lost a war in Viet Nam or even Afghanistan. Did the US really support dictators in Central America? Never heard of a guy named Samosa. Let’s not talk about Gaddafi, Mugabe, Marcos, just to name a few. Then we should never mention how the CIA assisted in overthrowing governments like the one of Allende in Chile.

To me the worst of it all is the attempted overthrowing of the election on January 6, and let’s not talk about this weird idea of critical race theory that is floating around. We definitely do not want to teach our kids that it was their grandparents who were standing in front of the public schools and universities yelling and shouting the N-word and trying to prevent these institutions from integrating and allowing students of color a proper education. Let alone their grandparents were openly members of a group that were wearing hoods and burning crosses onto lawns of folks who were for the integration of society. No, we do not want our children to know that grandpa and grandma were these folks and that we, your parents, were raised by them to by like them and we (secretly?) hate minorities, as well.

This is what I realized this weekend! We live in such a sheltered U.S. centric society, where we do not learn about our past, let alone the global international past, or we purposely want to ignore it. We do not learn world history, or we purposely want to ignore it. Conversely, instead of ignoring it, we spin it to fit our narrative, with the result: a demagog and an aspiring dictator was able to get elected. He and his henchmen are still out there, and we must be careful. We need to study and learn from history in order not to repeat it!

This is one of my baby bonsai trees in its fall colors.  It is a forest planting of two dawn redwoods.  Dawn redwoods are among the oldest trees in existence.  Once thought to be extinct and only found in fossil records, a small forest of them was found in a valley in China and from there they concurred the world as horticultural specimens.  Obviously, this species would have a long memory and able to tell us a lot about world and human history.

Mushrooms (11/04/2021)

In our area autumn is a great time to walk in the woods and hunt for mushrooms. No, I don’t hunt for edible ones, my wife is way to skittish and we would meet an agonizing end to our lives munching on a poisonous fungal cap of some kind. However, this past week I have been laying on my stomach in the woods examining them and taking pictures.

Here I am laying on the ground in the woods examining a cluster of oyster mushrooms.  These are edible; although since these are mature (as big as my head), they are tough!

My view from below, the oyster mushroom.

I was always impressed by mushrooms; I took a short course in mushroom growing in 1976 and got a certificate in it (official “mushroom grower”). From horse poop to your plate. It was part of my Agricultural Engineering degree. It was a week’s course and at the end you brought home a mushroom kit to grow them at home, under your bed. Boy, we feasted on mushrooms for months. I finally got rid of the textbook a few months ago.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s I had a post-doctoral job where I worked on mistletoe. Now mistletoe is not a mushroom, but as part of the job I assisted in teaching a class on parasitic plants, plant epiphytes and symbionts. Mistletoes being the parasites and mushrooms being symbionts. We were still starting to understand the whole mycorrhizal world of fungi, and after a stint in the mining industry I more or less left the field. I did a lot of ecosystem restoration, in particular wetland restoration but mycorrhizae were somewhat pushed back in my brain. Only when I started teaching and talking about stockpiling topsoil did it pop back up. Finally, the book “Finding the Mother Tree” by Suzanne Simard explained a lot of what had expired in the past 30 years in mycorrhizae research, and it only had gotten better. My appetite was awakened by the book called “Overstory” by Richard Powers, who has a character who is very loosely based on Suzanne Simard.

Mold, fungi are a powerful group of organisms in the world. They are the ultimate undertakers. It is amazing, over time they are able to break down everything that is organic. But then, at the same time it appears they form this almost neural underground network between plants that give forests almost a sense of intelligence. Trees seem to be able to communicate with each other, feed each other nutrients and water, by way of mycorrhizal fungi. These fungi have invaded the roots of the plants and thus connect one plant with another. There are two types ecto- and endo- mycorrhizae. If you are interested look up what the difference is. Maybe one of these days I’ll write more about that. However, today I want to write about mushrooms.

Because all those mushrooms we see pop up in the woods, in our lawn etc. are the fruiting bodies of the mycorrhizal fungi and some other fungi living in the soil. When the temperature, soil moisture and humidity are just rights, strands of fungi get together and decide it is time to procreate, make babies. That is what those mushrooms are all about. Just like under my bed. They bundle together, pop out of the ground, out of a log or whatever, and loo there is a mushroom. Mushrooms have gills and in those gills is where the babies are. Thousands if not millions of spores which get disseminated by the wind and when the land in the right spot, they become mold threads again and infect wood or tree and plant roots, helping the forest do its thing.

Some more photos that I took this past week in the woods.

Far too often when I walk my neighborhood and see sick or dying trees I wonder, has the homeowner been treating their lawns with fungicides and killing all the mycorrhizae in their yard, basically cutting their trees off from their peers? This of course can not be proven unless we dig the trees up. But this is why I do not use pesticides and fungicides in my yard. I want a healthy soil where I can and will allow that worldwide underground web to exist and allow those trees to communicate and help each other. Together they much more capable to fight drought, disease, insect attacks than alone and deprived of their mycorrhizal support network.

Musings on getting old (10/30/2021)

One thing I am starting to realize more and more is that the saying: “Old age is not for the faint of heart” or maybe the way Betty Davis put it: “Old age ain’t for sissies” is real. So here I was checking out at the pharmacy after buying medicine for our 15-year-old dog Jake, who is still on his last legs, when I got the call that my 94-years-old father-in-law had fallen for the umpteenth time and was on his way to the emergency room. This was all after complaining a day earlier on our daily walk that my back, hip and knees hurt and that I am getting slower.

Oh well, who am I to complain. My wife comes back from the emergency room with the story that the doctor there tells my father-in-law, that since he is close to the end he might as well enjoy what is left instead of trying to prolong it as much as possible with drugs that have side effects that make life miserable. The nurse tells him he looks great, and when he says: “hell no” she tells him: “you don’t get to see what I get to see here in the emergency room.” My wife and I came to the conclusion that when you suffer you become selfish, and you have it worse than everyone else in this world; and yes, so do I.

I have written a few posts about getting old or getting older. But never about one of my major complaints with age: peeing! When I was young, we had peeing contests, who could pee the furthest. Now, especially in the morning, you wake up and lay in bed and boy you have to go and it comes slowly and not much. But at least it takes the pressure off the bladder, and then after walking around for five or ten minutes, all the sudden it hits again, and finally there is release or is it relief? I wonder what it will be like 10 or maybe 20 years from now.

My symbol of being able to pee a good distance!

But hopefully I will keep my mind, if not for me, at least for my wife. I think it would be the hardest for a spouse to watch their husband or wife lose their mind to Alzheimer or some other form of dementia. My father-in-law went through that, and it devastated him. It was his second wife, and they were married only seven years or so. She was obviously not my wife’s mother. In other words, while it was terrible watching her and my father-in-law go through it, it would have been worse if it was your own mother, and you would have known her all your life instead of only about ten years. I hope I never do this to my wife and daughter.

Wow, I better quit. The past post was about politics in our county, this one is introspective. What a difference a few days make. But it is important to think about: quality of life, enjoy it while you still can, enjoy others. Especially when you are young; however, even this old guy or my 94-year-old father-in-law can and should fight depression and enjoy life to the fullest. We only have one life to live and after that? Who knows.

Our County Politics (10/28/2021)

OK gang, if you do not like my politics, or when I write about my political, educational and sociological opinions, now is your time to close or skip this post, because I have something on my mind that I need to vent.

So here I go!

On Sunday, our local newspaper published an article on how our county was worried about its tax base. We are having a lot of lots and buildings in our county that are vacant. Previously, I read an article how a large grocery chain (Kroger) relocated with the promise that they would like to attract some good business into their old, vacated store. But no, a church renovated it; result being, they were nonprofit and tax exempt. In other words, a loss of tax revenue to our county. This has been an epidemic in our very conservative county; empty store fronts or invading churches. Our county officials are truly worried about it, and I can understand why, loss of voters, salary cuts?

Now it gets better. Like every good conservative county in Virginia, we need to be against what they call critical race theory, evolution, global warming, and all those other science things. Let’s not talk about vaccinations. So, the county officials are introducing an ordinance outlawing all this “crap” in order to dumb down our schools and ignore (whitewash) history, science and social justice and what really happened in our country’s past. Slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation, it never happened! The Civil War was either just a little disagreement among friends or aggression from the northern states. Who cares if half the county will be underwater 100 years from now? As long as we make money now and cut taxes (get votes); we will not be alive, and our greatgrandchildren be damned!

Now I am not necessarily anti-religious as most of you know, but I do trend liberal. But these short-sighted folks do not understand that the wealthiest counties and cities have the best, most well-rounded education systems in the world, have a gig-economy, can bike or walk to their grocery stores that have a great supply of foods, and have great non-chain funky restaurants and coffee shops. Limiting education causes wealthy educated folk to migrate out of these localities, only to be replaced by less educated poorer folks that commute to work and to these nice areas. Not that this is bad, we need them too. However, this generally will lead to lower property values, dollar general stores and Wallmarts, a lower tax base and a slow economic spiral downwards towards a new status quo.

No, I am not elitist, racist or whatever, far from it. We need a combination of people, everybody has value, whether you are an airplane pilot, a university professor, a teacher, or a garbage man. However, I am just living in a county where I am observing something disturbing: the complete contempt for a well-rounded education. Folks appear anti-education and want to tell educators what to teach their children. If so, why don’t they educate their children themselves, homeschool your kids damn it?

But again, education brings wealth. So does a livable community, including parks, greenspace, sidewalks, bike paths, funky restaurants and coffee shops as opposed to chains, and maybe even some limited public transportation. That will bring in the young, affluent, tax paying folks, the gig-economy that will pay the salary of the county supervisors. Something our board of supervisors apparently refuse to see and acknowledge.

Yes, it is nice to live here and wake up and find something like this guy in your back or front yard.  Or maybe not.  It is difficult to grow a nice yard without building a fence, and that is just a metaphor for what is happening in society including here in this county.  The conservatives trying to keep the liberals out.  

Bonsai spirituality (10/14/2021)

A recent bonsai YouTube video that I watched was somewhat different. Peter Chan from Herrons Bonsai was interviewing an ex thug or reformed criminal about his path to bonsai and nature combined with it his straightening out, and finding of religion. Claud Jackson wrote a book about his journey: “From Guns to God.” While I am not going to discuss the book (I have not read it), religion (I am not particularly religious or believe in their or any god, regular readers know I am a Unitarian and more a pantheist), I do have a couple of issues I want to discuss here. This discussion just brought some of these thoughts to mind.

Now I am a great fan of Peter’s videos and instruction, and while this video was not about trimming or working on plants, it was the second or third one that he has done on the connection between the mind (or soul) and our hobby. This one disappointed me a bit and that was because in my eyes, he did not go deep enough. Understandably so? Maybe, Claud is 6’8” and Peter is only 5’7”. Be your own judge and watch it yourself.

Many of you know, I am a naturalist, biologist, a person who strongly believes in forest bathing or Shinrin-yoku. I have written extensively about it and even presented a sermon in my church about it. I actually wrote a draft sermon that compared growing a bonsai to growing a church.  Being out in nature helps me meditate and so does working on my trees. During those times I just live in the moment and lose my perception of time and space. Being a biologist at times I cannot help trying to find a scientific explanation in my mind to the phenomenon that I am seeing or try to identify a plant or a fern that I stumble upon. But that is living in the moment and not thinking about the other things in life.

This was what was lacking in Peter’s interview with Claud in my eyes. They were dancing around the subject and never getting there. For someone who is studying to get ordained as a minister of the church of England I was disappointed by the lack of spirituality during the discussion.

Why the hell am I growing bonsai? It is something I have asked myself many times over the years. Is it a spiritual thing? Probably not; at least not when I started. I was just fascinated by the fact that you could make trees look so miniature. It all started with a visit to Longwood Gardens in late 1977. We were just married, and it was our first visit to the in-laws in Delaware. Longwood has a nice bonsai exhibit and I fell in love with the idea of growing miniature trees. I remember visiting the National Arboretum a few years later and that did it.

My spiritual journey with bonsai started a lot later. It was not until we settled here in Virginia (2000) that I was really bitten by the bug again. I started to take it serious again eight or so years ago. Yes, I had trees ever since we finally decided to “permanently” settle in the U.S. in 1986. As a good Dutchman we collected a few houseplants, and I befriended a guy who ran a nursery and off I went. I still have some of the trees I acquired at that time, although, as I mentioned in at least one of my posts, since I ignored them for some time on top of not knowing what to do with them, you would definitely not know that they are more than 30 years old. For one, I am not going to let you cut them and count their growth rings. However, they did not have YouTube at the time and the magazines and books did not push me hard enough to be that adventurous or extreme in cutting roots etc. Despite all that, I still love to tell visitors that these trees are older than or as old as my daughter.

Whether it is working with miniature nature or walking in big nature, I enjoy it and it all has become somewhat spiritual to me. Believe it or not, I talk to my trees; I tell them what I am going to do to them. Maybe I am going insane, and I am talking to myself, but it is a good way to remember things, thinking out loud. While pruning and discuss choices with myself, it is meditative.

It is not different when I walk in the woods. I love to linger, stop for a second, look at a trunk of a tree, touch it, feel it, see how the roots spread; take a picture of a mushroom, a sign of a symbiont, a perfect union. Now I need to start thinking about creating some bonsai forests. One of my favorite YouTubers Nigel Saunders from the Bonsai Zone is really into that, and he has some really cool forests or landscapes. He put in pathways and imagines people walking through the landscapes. I am still too timid to do something like that, although I have plans with a set of crab apples plants that I have.

Just a trunk of a dogwood tree that I walked by during a hike last weekend.  I love the bark of dogwoods and I am planning to dig up a seedling this winter and will try to grow one in a pot.  Wish me luck.

If you are just starting out on a bonsai journey, on a forest bathing journey, or even a spirituality journey, check these two bonsai guys out. Peter has at least two discussions on spirituality, while Nigel used to take you out on his walks and bike rides through the woods near his home. Nigel would explore trees and landscapes during outings but has not done this much lately. He has been way too busy building a greenhouse or his plant room. Explore my blog posts and check out the keywords root, nature, forest bathing, trees, bonsai, spirituality and alike. Come back, as I mentioned before, I will try to be less political and concentrate more on bonsai, and be more educational, environmental, and spiritual.