OK, time to get back to saving the world. It's always funny - in a heartbreakingly sad sort of way - that it's possible to be too busy to save the world. Business has been ridiculously good of late, which from a mundane perspective (paying the bills, feeding the children... the little things) is great, but has cut into my writing time.
Balance, Chris, balance.
I'm starting to read Gary Paul Nabhan's Coming Home to Eat, which chronicles the author's effort to spend a year eating only foods grown, fished or gathered within 200 miles of his Tucson home. The book holds a special interest for me, as a born-and-bred Minnesotan who lived in Tucson for three years and never was able to acclimate myself to desert life. Then again, within 200 miles of Tucson there's a lot more than desert. It's a matter of both altitude and attitude.
In one of those great coincidences you find every day if you're looking for them, after I picked up Nabhan's book at the library I was reading an article in Smithsonian magazine about the work of Joshua Tewksbury, who is doing fascinating research trying to determine why chiles are hot (other than the obvious reason of trying to embarrass Midwesterners at Tucson dinner parties)... and Gary Paul Nabhan is mentioned as a friend and collaborator of Tewksbury.
Me being (unfortunately) me, the first thing I did upon picking up the book was to turn to the index and look for passages about acorns. There is one listing, p141. I flipped to the page, eager for a story of an easy harvest, a season of nutritious meals, a parable for our times. Instead I read a story of... complete and total acorn crop failure.
Nabhan took a trip south of Tucson toward Nogales (thus going up in elevation) hoping for a harvest of acorns and chiltepines, the northernmost wild chili. But when he arrived he found that neither crop was ready to harvest. The chiltepines were still green and "not fiery enough for me," Nabhan writes (meaning they would probably set my tongue on fire) but there were no acorns to be seen. A late freeze and snowfall had caused a complete failure of the acorn crop that year.
For Nabhan the trip was not a total loss. On the way home he stopped and gathered a variety of wild greens. Upon arriving home he fixed a meal of grilled scallions and poblano chiles and hand washed greens heated in a sauce pan only long enough for them to wilt slightly. What follows is a brilliant piece of writing: "Their flavors were so fresh, so buzzed with their recent photosynthetic surge that my meal sizzled with sunshine. Within minutes of devouring them, I felt greener, as if I were on some folic acid high. I dreamed that night of having chlorophyll in my skin, as if I had become green as the Green Giant himself."
But, of course, we're not here to talk about greens, even when the writing is that good. We're here to talk about acorns as food, and in that context this passage in Nabhan's book is deeply troubling, especially when considered within the context of the question I have been asking: Why did mankind walk away from a life of acorn eating to take up the plowshare and grow grains?
This passage might give us a glimpse, at least, of how it might have happened in one place... and then another. A warm spring, causing the oaks to flower. A late frost. A freak snowstorm. The flowers are killed and the acorn crop is a total loss. Sure the locals were smart enough to have enough acorns stored up to survive a year without an acorn crop. But then it happened again, and maybe a third time. Running out of reserves for both people and livestock it is decided to plant some grain seeds next year as a back up plan, just in case. Then for a while there is both, grains and acorns. Archeological evidence suggests that in these cases people did the logical thing: fed the grain to their livestock and kept the acorns for themselves.
But from that point on, they were grain people. Tied to the land - to a particular piece of land to be defined as mine/not yours - to tend the crop. Building a new economy in which some control land and seed, and others must provide labor in exchange for a share of the harvest.
It didn't happen everywhere at once. Where it happened it was a gradual process spanning generations, so that no one even noticed a change was happening at all. It's interesting to speculate, as Michael Pollen does so eloquently, who was really using whom: Were humans using grains to gain control over land (and other humans) while (in theory) reducing risk of catastrophic food shortages, or were grains using humans to take over larger and larger portions of the Earth's surface and resources?
Just a glimpse. A complex puzzle. But in the answer the answer to my question of "Why?" is not nearly as important as the answer to the question: "How to we go back to a tree crop-based culture and economy?"
Friday, July 30, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Paradise Lost - Stupidity?
"Stupid is as stupid does"
~Forrest Gump's mother
"The stupidest man on Earth
is the man who thinks he's smarter
than everyone else"
~Anonymous*
I have been thinking a lot about stupidity. (I'm sorry, but I really like that sentence.)
Last week I was going to pick up the theme I have been wrestling with for some time: For millennia humankind lived a nearly Utopian life among food-bearing trees, both in creation myth and in reality. Biblical man was cast out of paradise by a fall from grace. Perhaps that is truly what happened. But my secular mind has been searching for a deeper answer to a question that is at once simple and endlessly complex: Why? Why did we did we stop living a life of leisure, happiness and peace harvesting & eating tree crops - which in many areas that meant primarily acorns - and switch to a life of toil and sweat producing and eating annual grain crops? (Incidentally, we made the same bone-headed decision on behalf of our livestock as well. Originally we both ate acorns. And when we started cultivating grains we actually first fed them to our livestock, keeping the acorns for ourselves. Only later did we decide to do battle with millions of square miles of the Earth’s surface to produce grains for us both.)
Various sources discuss overpopulation and competition for resources, overuse of the resource (the arboreal equivalent of the Pleistocene overkill theory), or, as William Bryant Logan convincingly argues in Oak: The Frame of Civilization, wanderlust and boredom.
Well, like I said I was getting ready last week to explore these theories when events conspired both to delay my writing but also to bring me face to face with an entirely new theory I hadn't considered: Stupidity. People can be remarkably, mind-blowingly stupid.
Let's first talk about the different kinds of stupidity, and then explore how these different flavors of stupidity might have caused us to leave our cushy happy life eating the fruits of the trees and spend our days instead in endless toil, at war with soil, and in love with oil (Nobel Prize for poetry here I come!). Much of what is viewed as "human nature" (oxymoron?) is meant to get us through the day and, more to the point, get us collectively and me individually regenerated in a new generation. Many of these same traits result in actions that are, over the passage of time, stupid, pointless and self-destructive.
1. Arrogance/hubris - Believing that you are smarter than everyone else, and smarter than nature.
2. Enviousness - Believing that the "other" is always "better" - it's better over there over that hill, the grass is always greener, etc.
3. Pride (variation on hubris) - Believing that others are lazy compared to you
4. Self-centered-ness - Believing that every idea you have is new and unique in the universe (instead of a repeat of ideas had millions of times before in minds brighter than yours)
5. Need for control - Believing that by controlling resources you can therefore control people, and their hopes, dreams and aspirations
OK, this is getting repetitive, but you get the point. Given all of these human failings, all of this collective stupidity, it was inevitable that we would leave our happy peaceful life among the trees and acorns to come down into the valley and pound on the soil. What is perhaps more remarkable is that there were any people who didn't give in to stupidity and who didn't leave the trees until forced to (the indigenous people of California, Oregon and parts of Washington for example). Would they have walked away from their life of happiness and plenty given enough time? I'd like to think not, but what I believe about human nature tells me they would have.
We are hard-wired to not just hang out, relax and let nature provide in the way it always has and always will. We need control. We need to feel like we are in control of our food supply. And a small number of us need to feel like we are in control of others. The easy abundance of an acorn-based society does not allow a small number of people to control resources in the way that a grain based culture does.
We need to do things differently than they were done before - or at least believe that we are doing things differently than before.
We seem to need to believe not only that we must do battle with the Earth for sustenance, but even more remarkably we seem to believe that we can win that battle. Duh.
I better stop now or this will never get posted. But we’ll keep exploring the question of Why? in future posts. It is no doubt a combination of things – overpopulation and overuse of resources in some areas, boredom and wanderlust in others, dispersal by war and force in others – but I now have no doubt that underpinning any and all of these is the simple, sadly inevitable and infinitely repeated – fact of human stupidity.
They say that the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. We need to collectively and individually realize how stupid we have been in walking away from tree crops in favor of grains. Only then can we begin to change and regain the paradise that we lost.
And most of all: Never, ever let stupidity get in the way of the life you’re intended to live.
Apropos nothing.
* OK, that wasn't anonymous. I'm the one who said that.
~Forrest Gump's mother
"The stupidest man on Earth
is the man who thinks he's smarter
than everyone else"
~Anonymous*
I have been thinking a lot about stupidity. (I'm sorry, but I really like that sentence.)
Last week I was going to pick up the theme I have been wrestling with for some time: For millennia humankind lived a nearly Utopian life among food-bearing trees, both in creation myth and in reality. Biblical man was cast out of paradise by a fall from grace. Perhaps that is truly what happened. But my secular mind has been searching for a deeper answer to a question that is at once simple and endlessly complex: Why? Why did we did we stop living a life of leisure, happiness and peace harvesting & eating tree crops - which in many areas that meant primarily acorns - and switch to a life of toil and sweat producing and eating annual grain crops? (Incidentally, we made the same bone-headed decision on behalf of our livestock as well. Originally we both ate acorns. And when we started cultivating grains we actually first fed them to our livestock, keeping the acorns for ourselves. Only later did we decide to do battle with millions of square miles of the Earth’s surface to produce grains for us both.)
Various sources discuss overpopulation and competition for resources, overuse of the resource (the arboreal equivalent of the Pleistocene overkill theory), or, as William Bryant Logan convincingly argues in Oak: The Frame of Civilization, wanderlust and boredom.
Well, like I said I was getting ready last week to explore these theories when events conspired both to delay my writing but also to bring me face to face with an entirely new theory I hadn't considered: Stupidity. People can be remarkably, mind-blowingly stupid.
Let's first talk about the different kinds of stupidity, and then explore how these different flavors of stupidity might have caused us to leave our cushy happy life eating the fruits of the trees and spend our days instead in endless toil, at war with soil, and in love with oil (Nobel Prize for poetry here I come!). Much of what is viewed as "human nature" (oxymoron?) is meant to get us through the day and, more to the point, get us collectively and me individually regenerated in a new generation. Many of these same traits result in actions that are, over the passage of time, stupid, pointless and self-destructive.
1. Arrogance/hubris - Believing that you are smarter than everyone else, and smarter than nature.
2. Enviousness - Believing that the "other" is always "better" - it's better over there over that hill, the grass is always greener, etc.
3. Pride (variation on hubris) - Believing that others are lazy compared to you
4. Self-centered-ness - Believing that every idea you have is new and unique in the universe (instead of a repeat of ideas had millions of times before in minds brighter than yours)
5. Need for control - Believing that by controlling resources you can therefore control people, and their hopes, dreams and aspirations
OK, this is getting repetitive, but you get the point. Given all of these human failings, all of this collective stupidity, it was inevitable that we would leave our happy peaceful life among the trees and acorns to come down into the valley and pound on the soil. What is perhaps more remarkable is that there were any people who didn't give in to stupidity and who didn't leave the trees until forced to (the indigenous people of California, Oregon and parts of Washington for example). Would they have walked away from their life of happiness and plenty given enough time? I'd like to think not, but what I believe about human nature tells me they would have.
We are hard-wired to not just hang out, relax and let nature provide in the way it always has and always will. We need control. We need to feel like we are in control of our food supply. And a small number of us need to feel like we are in control of others. The easy abundance of an acorn-based society does not allow a small number of people to control resources in the way that a grain based culture does.
We need to do things differently than they were done before - or at least believe that we are doing things differently than before.
We seem to need to believe not only that we must do battle with the Earth for sustenance, but even more remarkably we seem to believe that we can win that battle. Duh.
I better stop now or this will never get posted. But we’ll keep exploring the question of Why? in future posts. It is no doubt a combination of things – overpopulation and overuse of resources in some areas, boredom and wanderlust in others, dispersal by war and force in others – but I now have no doubt that underpinning any and all of these is the simple, sadly inevitable and infinitely repeated – fact of human stupidity.
They say that the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. We need to collectively and individually realize how stupid we have been in walking away from tree crops in favor of grains. Only then can we begin to change and regain the paradise that we lost.
And most of all: Never, ever let stupidity get in the way of the life you’re intended to live.
Apropos nothing.
* OK, that wasn't anonymous. I'm the one who said that.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
California Dreamin'
I was just in California.
When not crusading to go "back to the future" and establish a modern balanoculture (culture of acorn eating) I sell horticultural and forestry growing supplies. Always have, always will. Coming up with ways to grow things better and help plants overcome the unique stresses they face in a modern world of uncertain climate, increased deer damage, and a plethora of exotic and invasive weeds and insects is what I do. It's in my blood.
The trip was fantastic in two respects. First it was a great reminder that even in these difficult times there is opportunity everywhere if you look hard enough (and many times even if you don't).
The second was to see the oak-dotted hillsides (with the grass dried to its summer golden brown) with new eyes, the eyes of a balanophage. It was in California among its many indigenous cultures that acorn eating survived the longest, well into the 20th century as common practice and to the present among those who are working so hard to preserve their traditional way of life.
I love the work I do in the vineyard & orchard industries, and the endless creativity and drive to do things better and more efficiently on the part of the farm managers I call on. But driving through California I see constant reminders that this industry is an artificial construct, the happy but temporary and ultimately unsustainable marriage of virtually unlimited sunlight and extremely limited irrigation. Turn off the water and within months you're back to desert with just the skeletons of grapevines or almond trees.
I see the fuel that goes into growing these crops, and the unbelievably hard work that it takes. I have immense respect for anyone who makes his or her living by growing crops.
But when I see the oaks on the hillsides of California I see both the past and what I hope will be the future. These oaks were actively tended by the Native Americans who relied on them for a large part of their diet, but since those oaks evolved to grow there they didn't require much work - just occasional burning to reduce competition and make acorns easier to gather come autumn. These oaks supported a very large population - a pre-European contact population that was, by all accounts, extremely healthy and well fed, and a population that could gather a huge percentage of its caloric and nutrients needs for the entire year in a few short weeks of work.
... and yet everyone I know in the horticulture industry works extremely hard and is constantly complaining that they never have enough time to do enough fishing or just plain relaxing.
The answer is right there, on those golden hillsides.
And if I could get me cell phone camera to talk to my email I'd have pictures to show you... I'll work on that tomorrow.
UPDATE: Here's one photo of an oak-dotted Central California hillside. Makes me hungry. Makes me long for a simpler life.
When not crusading to go "back to the future" and establish a modern balanoculture (culture of acorn eating) I sell horticultural and forestry growing supplies. Always have, always will. Coming up with ways to grow things better and help plants overcome the unique stresses they face in a modern world of uncertain climate, increased deer damage, and a plethora of exotic and invasive weeds and insects is what I do. It's in my blood.
The trip was fantastic in two respects. First it was a great reminder that even in these difficult times there is opportunity everywhere if you look hard enough (and many times even if you don't).
The second was to see the oak-dotted hillsides (with the grass dried to its summer golden brown) with new eyes, the eyes of a balanophage. It was in California among its many indigenous cultures that acorn eating survived the longest, well into the 20th century as common practice and to the present among those who are working so hard to preserve their traditional way of life.
I love the work I do in the vineyard & orchard industries, and the endless creativity and drive to do things better and more efficiently on the part of the farm managers I call on. But driving through California I see constant reminders that this industry is an artificial construct, the happy but temporary and ultimately unsustainable marriage of virtually unlimited sunlight and extremely limited irrigation. Turn off the water and within months you're back to desert with just the skeletons of grapevines or almond trees.
I see the fuel that goes into growing these crops, and the unbelievably hard work that it takes. I have immense respect for anyone who makes his or her living by growing crops.
But when I see the oaks on the hillsides of California I see both the past and what I hope will be the future. These oaks were actively tended by the Native Americans who relied on them for a large part of their diet, but since those oaks evolved to grow there they didn't require much work - just occasional burning to reduce competition and make acorns easier to gather come autumn. These oaks supported a very large population - a pre-European contact population that was, by all accounts, extremely healthy and well fed, and a population that could gather a huge percentage of its caloric and nutrients needs for the entire year in a few short weeks of work.
... and yet everyone I know in the horticulture industry works extremely hard and is constantly complaining that they never have enough time to do enough fishing or just plain relaxing.
The answer is right there, on those golden hillsides.
And if I could get me cell phone camera to talk to my email I'd have pictures to show you... I'll work on that tomorrow.
UPDATE: Here's one photo of an oak-dotted Central California hillside. Makes me hungry. Makes me long for a simpler life.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Oak Wilt Watch: So Far So Good
Quick update on the red oaks across the street that I have been concerned about: So far they look good, and it appears that the preventative fungicide injection done by S&S Tree Care is working.
Regular readers will remember that on May 22, 2009 - smack dab in the middle of the "danger zone" period for the spread of oak wilt - a hack fly-by-night "tree care" company pruned my neighbor's (a.k.a. nicest old lady in the world) gorgeous red oaks. I happened to be away at work that day and arrive home too late to stop the carnage.
As I feared, later in the summer one of those amazing trees, a 36" diameter beauty, succumbed to oak wilt. Unlike many fungal diseases oak wilt has a very inefficient method of spread from one area to another. In April, May and June spore mats - the reproductive phase of the disease - form on red oak trees that had been infected the previous year. These spore mats exude a sweet, fermenting smell that attracts an insect called the picnic beetle. The picnic beetles feed on the sweet exudate of the spore mat, and in the process fungal spores adhere to the insect. The the bug flies off in search of the next sweet, fermenting smell. It could be your potato salad at a family reunion, or it could be the sap flowing from a freshly wounded oak tree. If it's the latter, while feeding on the sap the fungal spores are spread to the new tree.
Like I said, very inefficient, very hit-or-miss. Were it not for unwitting homeowners and unscrupulous "tree care" companies the overall effect of oak wilt would be very limited.
However, once that one tree is infected with the fungus the disease now become deadly efficient in the way it spreads. First, it actually causes the tree to kill itself. Trees naturally for gums called tyloses to plug vascular (water and nutrient conducting) tissues containing a pathogen in an attempt to compartmentalize that pathogen and prevent its spread to other parts of tree. However, the oak wilt fungus spreads so quickly within the tree that very soon the tree plugs the vascular tissue around its entire circumference and literally starves or strangles itself to death in a futile attempt to block the spread of the fungus.
While spore mats form only on red oaks (red, black and northern pin), both red oaks and white oaks (including white, bur and swamp white) are susceptible. Once infected red oaks, as in the case of my neighbor's tree, can die in a matter of weeks. White oaks can survive for some years before finally succumbing to the disease.
Second, the fungus then exploits an amazing adaption of oaks: Oaks of like species for root grafts or unions with neighboring trees. Whether this is an amazing display or boreal socialism and an attempt to share the water and nutrients of a site to give its own species to spread and fill spaces that otherwise would not support oak growth, or an act of boreal parasitism enabling stronger individuals to rob the resources of surrounding trees, I'm not sure.
From the standpoint of the oak wilt fungus, however, what this adaptation does is provide a superhighway to spread to surrounding oak trees... in a hurry (I believe the rate of spread through the roots is about 20 feet per year).
So from that one hit-or-miss infection an entire stand of red oaks or northern pin oaks or bur oaks can be wiped out.
There are two ways to stop the root zone spread of oak wilt to adjacent trees: Use of a deep vibratory plow to mechanically sever the root grafts, and injection of adjacent trees. In my neighbor's case the proximity of sidewalks, driveway and underground cables made trenching impossible.
My neighbor's red oaks are part of a line of 12 red oaks that span 5 front yards; they must have been planted by the homeowners at the same time and in perfect alignment. They stand about 23 feet apart on average.
S&S Tree injected a total of 4 trees, the 2 adjacent trees on either side of the infected tree. Some of these were in neighbor's yards, and so their approval was needed. Thankfully the neighbors have been incredibly cooperative.
What a hassle! All because one company that happened to own a truck and a chain saw decided to make a few extra bucks (actually I saw the invoice and it was a lot more than a few extra bucks - what a rip off!) at the expense of a sweet old lady.
Thank goodness for highly qualified tree care companies (with no quotation marks around tree care) like S&S Tree Care. And thank goodness the adjacent trees look good and it appears the damage was limited to that single tree. As bad as that is, it could have been a whole lot worse.
Click to enlarge. One of the trees adjacent to the dead and removed tree: so far so good.
The ID tag left on an injected tree by S&S Tree Care. Great work guys! Thanks for your expertise, and thanks for your fast service late last summer!
Regular readers will remember that on May 22, 2009 - smack dab in the middle of the "danger zone" period for the spread of oak wilt - a hack fly-by-night "tree care" company pruned my neighbor's (a.k.a. nicest old lady in the world) gorgeous red oaks. I happened to be away at work that day and arrive home too late to stop the carnage.
As I feared, later in the summer one of those amazing trees, a 36" diameter beauty, succumbed to oak wilt. Unlike many fungal diseases oak wilt has a very inefficient method of spread from one area to another. In April, May and June spore mats - the reproductive phase of the disease - form on red oak trees that had been infected the previous year. These spore mats exude a sweet, fermenting smell that attracts an insect called the picnic beetle. The picnic beetles feed on the sweet exudate of the spore mat, and in the process fungal spores adhere to the insect. The the bug flies off in search of the next sweet, fermenting smell. It could be your potato salad at a family reunion, or it could be the sap flowing from a freshly wounded oak tree. If it's the latter, while feeding on the sap the fungal spores are spread to the new tree.
Like I said, very inefficient, very hit-or-miss. Were it not for unwitting homeowners and unscrupulous "tree care" companies the overall effect of oak wilt would be very limited.
However, once that one tree is infected with the fungus the disease now become deadly efficient in the way it spreads. First, it actually causes the tree to kill itself. Trees naturally for gums called tyloses to plug vascular (water and nutrient conducting) tissues containing a pathogen in an attempt to compartmentalize that pathogen and prevent its spread to other parts of tree. However, the oak wilt fungus spreads so quickly within the tree that very soon the tree plugs the vascular tissue around its entire circumference and literally starves or strangles itself to death in a futile attempt to block the spread of the fungus.
While spore mats form only on red oaks (red, black and northern pin), both red oaks and white oaks (including white, bur and swamp white) are susceptible. Once infected red oaks, as in the case of my neighbor's tree, can die in a matter of weeks. White oaks can survive for some years before finally succumbing to the disease.
Second, the fungus then exploits an amazing adaption of oaks: Oaks of like species for root grafts or unions with neighboring trees. Whether this is an amazing display or boreal socialism and an attempt to share the water and nutrients of a site to give its own species to spread and fill spaces that otherwise would not support oak growth, or an act of boreal parasitism enabling stronger individuals to rob the resources of surrounding trees, I'm not sure.
From the standpoint of the oak wilt fungus, however, what this adaptation does is provide a superhighway to spread to surrounding oak trees... in a hurry (I believe the rate of spread through the roots is about 20 feet per year).
So from that one hit-or-miss infection an entire stand of red oaks or northern pin oaks or bur oaks can be wiped out.
There are two ways to stop the root zone spread of oak wilt to adjacent trees: Use of a deep vibratory plow to mechanically sever the root grafts, and injection of adjacent trees. In my neighbor's case the proximity of sidewalks, driveway and underground cables made trenching impossible.
My neighbor's red oaks are part of a line of 12 red oaks that span 5 front yards; they must have been planted by the homeowners at the same time and in perfect alignment. They stand about 23 feet apart on average.
S&S Tree injected a total of 4 trees, the 2 adjacent trees on either side of the infected tree. Some of these were in neighbor's yards, and so their approval was needed. Thankfully the neighbors have been incredibly cooperative.
What a hassle! All because one company that happened to own a truck and a chain saw decided to make a few extra bucks (actually I saw the invoice and it was a lot more than a few extra bucks - what a rip off!) at the expense of a sweet old lady.
Thank goodness for highly qualified tree care companies (with no quotation marks around tree care) like S&S Tree Care. And thank goodness the adjacent trees look good and it appears the damage was limited to that single tree. As bad as that is, it could have been a whole lot worse.
Click to enlarge. One of the trees adjacent to the dead and removed tree: so far so good.
The ID tag left on an injected tree by S&S Tree Care. Great work guys! Thanks for your expertise, and thanks for your fast service late last summer!
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Eden Revisited
More from J. Russell Smith's brilliant essay "The Agriculture of the Garden of Eden..."
"Since we are all more or less lazy, and only some of us are religious, it is forsooth amazing that our efforts at being restored to Paradise have been limited so exclusively to the domain of religion. This is the more peculiar because the religion has to be taken on faith, while the agriculture of Paradise could be seen and felt and tasted, and that without labor. Even yet no one has striven to restore it for the relief of a weary world. It is high time the husbandman took up his Scripture."
Smith was an economic geographer, but you could be forgiven for thinking of him has an ecologist, a sociologist or even a theologian. His writings span all of these. (Which, come to think of it, is another reason why someone so brilliant become known only within small circles and has since been almost completely forgotten: People who are difficult to categorize seem to be easier to discount. Of course the other reason he is not more widely known is that he was decades ahead of his time in his thinking and writing.)
In the essay Smith goes on to describe Eden as Babylonian story, with Paradise being a date palm oasis in an otherwise blistering landscape. He laments, "How terrible was the expulsion! Within was shade, of which the scriptural writers speak so often and so appreciatively, because they had so little of it in their hot and arid landscape. Without, the shimmering heat, the withering sun, beating down... Into this they were driven to eat the herb of the field, which indeed they could not get without much sweat in their faces."
We humans, collectively, had paradise. We had a well-fed, peaceful, happy life among the trees, enjoying their shade, clothing and feeding ourselves with their bounty with little sweat and less toil.
What in God's name happened? It's a theme I keep coming back to, with no good answers.
Any thoughts?
I'll pick this theme up again tomorrow.
"Since we are all more or less lazy, and only some of us are religious, it is forsooth amazing that our efforts at being restored to Paradise have been limited so exclusively to the domain of religion. This is the more peculiar because the religion has to be taken on faith, while the agriculture of Paradise could be seen and felt and tasted, and that without labor. Even yet no one has striven to restore it for the relief of a weary world. It is high time the husbandman took up his Scripture."
Smith was an economic geographer, but you could be forgiven for thinking of him has an ecologist, a sociologist or even a theologian. His writings span all of these. (Which, come to think of it, is another reason why someone so brilliant become known only within small circles and has since been almost completely forgotten: People who are difficult to categorize seem to be easier to discount. Of course the other reason he is not more widely known is that he was decades ahead of his time in his thinking and writing.)
In the essay Smith goes on to describe Eden as Babylonian story, with Paradise being a date palm oasis in an otherwise blistering landscape. He laments, "How terrible was the expulsion! Within was shade, of which the scriptural writers speak so often and so appreciatively, because they had so little of it in their hot and arid landscape. Without, the shimmering heat, the withering sun, beating down... Into this they were driven to eat the herb of the field, which indeed they could not get without much sweat in their faces."
We humans, collectively, had paradise. We had a well-fed, peaceful, happy life among the trees, enjoying their shade, clothing and feeding ourselves with their bounty with little sweat and less toil.
What in God's name happened? It's a theme I keep coming back to, with no good answers.
Any thoughts?
I'll pick this theme up again tomorrow.
Acorn Bread Recipes
I'm deciding between two appealing recipes for acorn bread that I found online.
The first is this one: http://www.jackmtn.com/acornbread.html
Dan Fisher has a great introduction to and explanation of his acorn bread recipe, with some important quotes and points:
The first is this one: http://www.jackmtn.com/acornbread.html
Dan Fisher has a great introduction to and explanation of his acorn bread recipe, with some important quotes and points:
- "In some areas of the country, even in recent history, acorns were a staple food for native peoples. Over the course of history it has been estimated that many more millions of tons of acorns have been consumed by humans than wheat, rice, and other grains."
- "I used syrup from the trees in my woods instead of sugar. Not only do I enjoy the wild beauty and fiery colors of the maples and oaks that surround my farm, but I also savor the sweet acorn bread made from their nuts and sap. What better way is there to get to know the trees than to live under them and eat from their bounty?"
- Of the tannic acid-rich water created by boiling acorns prior to making flour Fisher says: "The solution is antiviral and antiseptic. It can be used as a skin wash for rashes, skin irritations, burns, poison ivy, cuts, etc. It can be gargled for sore throats or taken as a mild tea for diarrhea and dysentery, or used externally on hemorrhoids." (Blogger's note: Apparently it works on several uncomfortable/embarrassing conditions that contain extra r's.)
Here's another one: http://www.grouprecipes.com/21418/vintage-and-native-american-acorn-bread.html
I think I'm going to make this second one, in part because I have a limited quantity of acorn flour at the moment, and in part because it's less sweet and what I really want if more of a "bread bread" (if that makes any sense) than a "dessert" or sweet bread.
But I'll make both eventually.
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