September 17, 2015 - Something From Nothing

The rocky shore is loaded with piles and piles of seaweed, slimy plants that grow in the sea.  They’re very different from land plants.  For one thing, they don’t have any roots.  Some of them can cling to rocks with “holdfasts,” but those aren’t roots.  A seaweed can just float wherever it wants to, and its nutrients are all around it in the ocean itself.  They don’t need tough and woody stems because the water supports them and keeps them buoyant.  Many of them have little balloon-like sacs that fill with gas to further support them.

Slimy and rubbery seaweed, the source of all life.

Seaweeds are so alien as compared to land plants, and yet the sea is where the action first really began for the land plants.  Sea plants were the first to begin using photosynthesis, in which the chloroplasts capture the sun’s energy and store it.  The eerie part is that these chloroplasts (you know them by their bright green chlorophyll color) were once separate bacteria that were taken in by an early sea cell.  The cell gave a bacterium a safe and nurturing place to live, and the bacterium in turn gave the cell sugars and the sun’s stored energy.  Eventually, chloroplasts became part of sea plants, but they still have their own DNA.  They can’t be made by the plant themselves but must be inherited from each chloroplast daughter cell during cell division.

It is chloroplasts, these ancient cyanobacteria, that have made it possible to transfer the sun’s energy to all living creatures on the planet.  That’s right.  We owe our lives, it seems, to chloroplasts, which are also known as “autotrophs.”  An autotroph produces food (fats, proteins, carbohydrates) from its surroundings, i.e., the sun or different chemical reactions, but it doesn’t need any living source of energy to do this.  It sort of creates something from nothing.  It takes inorganic material or electromagnetic energy and turns it into something that can sustain life.

I don’t mean to sound too bookwormish here, but the idea fascinates me.  Chloroplast is of Greek origin:  chloros meaning green, and plastes meaning “the one who forms.”  Can you get anymore esoteric than that?  And that’s the legacy that seaweed gave to our land plants.  The land plants feed us and the animals, and the animals in turn also feed us.  None of it would be possible without the chloroplast, without that one seaweed cell that swallowed up a chloroplast and made a relationship with it, allowing it to safely flourish.

Bacteria are the true creators and destroyers on this planet.  They form everything, and then they break it down and reform it again.  It’s rather humbling to know that you’re just part of a gigantic bacterial cycle.  People will come and go, but the cycle remains.  Who gets the last laugh?

September 16, 2015 - In The Shade

Under the shade of the trees, I can feel the woods breathing all around me.  The trees and shrubs, the moss and ground cover, and the hidden animals--all of them are breathing.  Sometimes it sounds like one synchronized breath, in and out, in and out.  The slight breeze brings the scent of hidden life.

Looking out from the shade of the woods.

As soon as I step out of the woods into sunlight, the temperature rises dramatically.  The cool moisture I felt on my skin only moments earlier is gone, and I can’t hear the breathing anymore.  Now it’s a different kind of life, the kind that thrives in the sun and heat.  Now there’s a circulating and penetrating fire baking the skin.  The insects here are louder, and their sounds have a higher frequency.  The plant life is rougher, drier, and sharper.  Things seem to move quicker, and the sweet scent has all but disappeared.

Is it any wonder that I spend my time in the shade of the woods?  Back into the woods, a net of moisture immediately drops upon me.  The temperature falls dramatically.  The air is sweetly scented, and the insects hum deeper.  There is a sense of things hiding and watching, not in a malevolent way but just in a curious way.  There is time to pause and relax in the woods.  And the synchronized breath begins again.

September 15, 2015 - In Praise of Corn

I think corn has gotten a very unfair reputation in our society, much maligned and terribly misunderstood.  Yes, it’s true that a great deal of it is now genetically modified, and it’s also true that animals can be made too fat on it or it can be wastefully used to produce ethanol for cars, but the corn plant itself is a truly amazing and mystical plant that is bound inextricably to humans forever.  Now that the corn fields are ripening here in Maine, it’s a pleasure to walk by them and see the burgeoning stalks fat with ears of corn.

The King of the field.

Corn, or “maize” as it is known in many countries, is an ancient grain plant.  Native people in Central America domesticated corn in prehistoric times.  What is meant by “domesticate” is to tame it or cultivate it for human use.  Maize used to be really tiny, and each plant only bore one tiny cob.  People began selecting the better ones and growing them larger and larger until not only were the ears much larger, but each plant itself could produce at least a few cobs.

But with this “taming” of maize came a reliance of the plant on people.  Just as billions of people depend on maize for food, maize depends on people to remain king of the field.  Maize doesn’t do well without humans manually shucking and thereby releasing the seeds as well as planting them in huge fields.  Maize plants also need one another to survive.  The ear cannot fill with juicy kernels unless the tassels release a lot of pollen that lands on the silk.  If no pollen lands on the silk, or not enough pollen lands on it, the ear does not fill out with kernels.  So a large field of nothing but corn guarantees you big fat ears that are completely full with kernels.  And this requires people to selectively plant and care for the maize.

Without maize, we wouldn’t be where we are today.  Maize has fed much of the world for thousands of years, both people and animals.  The sweet corn we eat is just one variety that, while delicious, doesn’t keep well.  It’s the field corn varieties that produce hard kernels which are ground into flour and cornmeal and are also fed to animals along with the silage during the winter.  It’s a misconception to think that animals just sit there eating nothing but corn kernels.  On most family farms in Maine, the animals eat grass in the warm weather and corn and its silage along with hay in the winter.  Not every community depends on a feedlot system.

So when I bite into the sweet and juicy kernels of corn or bake bread from the cornmeal, I know that I am participating in a ritual that is thousands and thousands of years old.  I know that this plant almost single-handedly brought humans intact out of prehistoric times into the modern era.  I know that I am consuming a reliable plant and so are the animals around me, which also feed me.  Yes, I eat organic non-GMO when I can, but I do eat corn a lot and I suffer no guilt from it.  I suggest you do the same.

September 14, 2015 - At The Day's End

AT THE DAY'S END

At the day’s end

when the water grows still

and the magic mirror appears,

look for me.

I’ll be standing beside you,

a reflection of your thoughts

like gossamer clouds

shimmering in the water.

I’ll be waiting for you,

to wave once again

and blow a kiss,

until the wind picks up

and I have to return

to the boneyard of tomorrow.

 

The magic mirror.

September 13, 2015 - The Dark Days

Living at the shore is a double-edged sword.  On sunny, fair days the view goes on for miles and miles.  The gulls are happy, the fish are swimming, and the humans are boating and playing in the sand.  The scent in the air is fresh and clean and beautiful.  If you go to the shore on a pretty day, no matter what was bringing you down, you believe you can conquer it.

When everything looks like everything else.

But woe to you if you go to the shore on a dark and stormy day.  Oh, the electricity in the air can be exciting . . . for a while.  But then the gray sets in.  And the wind.  And you can’t really see anything.  And everything seems monotone and lost.  If you’re just visiting, you can drive away, but if you live there, you’re stuck.  There are only so many times you can go for a ride.  Eventually, you have to learn to live with the dark.

It starts to eat away at you.  You try not to look at it.  You try to focus on other things.  You close your windows and doors, turn on the lights, blare some music.  But it doesn’t work.  The dark seeps in.  It slips under the doors and through the tiny cracks in your house.  Like a mist, it settles in, seeking you out with gray fingers.  It swirls around you and enters your mind, your heart, your soul.

The dark demands to be recognized.  If you live on the shore, you cannot pick and choose just the beautiful days.  You have to accept the dark days, too, the days where the gulls lie low.  You have to accept the days that bring you to the edge of your sanity and suck all the happiness out of your soul.  It’s almost like a punishment for the beautiful days.

But the dark days make you more honest.  They force you to acknowledge that nothing is perfect--not the weather, not nature, not you.  All things are flawed, and the dark days make you look at the flawed things face on.  The dark days won’t let you walk away.  They won’t let you ignore things.  They won’t let you pretend or put on airs.  They force your heart and soul open, and even though it hurts to look at the darkness inside, it is far better than fooling yourself with the idea of perfection.  In the end, truth is better than glamor.

September 12, 2015 - Deer Path

With relief I returned to the forest today.  The heat has finally abated, and the bugs are much more manageable.  I sorely missed my walks, but I could only bear a few sporadic jaunts in the woods here and there over the last month before being driven out by the bugs or heat.  Even under tree cover, which is always cooler, it has been very hot.  The change has finally come, though.

I chanced upon a deer path as I was walking.  Have you ever seen one?  They are usually very much thinner than a human path, but there is clearly a path laid out.  The trampled ground is not quite as flat as in a human path either, but again, it is clearly noticeable.  There are usually small tree branches or bush twigs in the way here and there, which would be annoying and would be cleared for a human path, but which the deer don’t mind at all.  I usually just keep on walking when I come to a deer path, but today I decided to follow it to see where it led.

The end of the path?

It twisted and turned a bit in a very inhuman-like way.  Though human forest paths turn here and there, they seem to do it in a different way than the deer paths.  Humans take the easiest terrain; the deer don’t always do so.  So the first thing I noticed was that I was walking in a way I wouldn’t ordinarily walk.  It just somehow felt different.  I was taking the path that made the most sense to the deer, and I discovered that they think very differently from us.  They’re clearly not in a rush, and clear roads and paths mean nothing to them. 

In some areas the path seemed more trampled than others, and in other areas I almost lost it once or twice but was able to pick it up again.  Alas, I could not use my nose to help me out, which is a severe handicap on a deer path.  They would know it blindfolded just by the scent.  I had to rely on my eyes, which are inferior as compared to the sense of smell that a deer has.  Eventually, the path seemed to stop or perhaps lightly bear this way or that.  I wasn’t sure.  I decided to go no further.

And what did I find at the end of the path?  Nothing, of course.  At least nothing that a human might understand.  There was a beautiful tree growing sideways for a bit and then upward, and it was covered in a brilliant green moss, but I doubt that was the goal for the deer.  That was a reward for me but certainly not for the deer.  In any event, this doesn’t mean that the path didn’t lead anywhere or that there wasn’t great treasure at the end of it.  In fact, I’m certain it did lead to great treasure, beauty, and comfort.  But it was not for human eyes, which were all I had with me at the time.

September 11, 2015 - Just One Candle

The sky is starting to look a lot more ominous, too.  Have you noticed?  It’s as though the dying reeds have given it the confidence to stand back up and challenge anyone in its path.  These aren’t the puffy gray clouds of summer storms that come and go in a few minutes on a warm breeze.  These are the beginning of the brooding clouds of the dark months.  These are the clouds that blot out all light, making the sun a distant memory, if that.

The dark clouds have returned.

When they come in, they usually bring the clouds of emotions with them.  The two often go hand in hand.  As the darkness settles over the land, it also settles over your mind.  Have you felt it?  It creeps over you, enshrouds you, and at last overwhelms you, pressing you down into the now gray Earth.  The distant memory of the sun is vital at this time, but whenever you attempt to bring it up, the clouds will double their attack.

Because they know what light can do, and they are hoping you do not.

So we have a little trick we play.  We light a candle.  Just one candle will do, although you can light as many as you like.  Often, however, I find that one candle seems to be more effective than many.  The reason for this is that it is just one constant, steady, tiny yet invincible, little light.  It’s not the glare of a light bulb or the glow of a computer screen.  It’s the one thing the darkness hates most of all:  a tiny spark.  That one little light will glow in your eyes, in your heart, and in your mind.  All the storm clouds in the world can’t put it out.

But they will try.

September 10, 2015 - Tired Meadow

The meadow flowers are winding down for the year, but they don’t know it yet.  They keep trying to put forth bloom after tired bloom.  The grasses are noticeably dying back, and it makes the flowers look more brilliant because they’re no longer hidden in the deep grass anymore.  But no matter how bravely they put forth flowers, we all know it’s not spring anymore.  It’s almost not summer anymore either.

The brilliant tickseed.

The deep maroon center of the tickseed tells a story of a brilliant sun slowly blotted out of the sky, day by day growing a bit weaker.  The impossibly brilliant yellow is taken over by the deep and lusty maroon of fall, and the darkness in the center tells a morbid tale of what’s to come after that.  In the meantime, though, the sun is putting up quite a fight, and so is the tickseed.

Another week or so will see these flowers all gone as if they never existed.  Their secret seeds are already scattered to the winds, so they do not care if they die because they know they are immortal.  Will the sun scatter hidden seeds as well so that it, too, might return?  The twinkling brilliance of ice in the winter shelters that secret.

Let them all die, then--the tickseed, the grasses, the sun.  Let them go back to wherever it is they came from in the first place.  As if we could stop them.  No, we will have to trust in the seeds again. 

September 9, 2015 - One-Room Schoolhouse

The old brick one-room schoolhouse in Dresden, Maine, dates back to 1816.  There, several generations of Maine children were educated.  Now it’s a small informal museum that still houses the old student desks with holes in the top for the inkwells.  The teacher’s desk is still there, too, and so is the old woodstove.  There are also other historical implements and photos of businesses and historical events in the area.

The teacher's desk.

I was especially drawn to the teacher’s desk.  There’s nothing fancy here, is there?  It actually looks a lot like an old table I used to use for sewing.  Minus the plastic pill bottle and the box of tissues placed on the desk, it looks very much as it did a couple of hundred years ago.  It was quite functional and all that a teacher needed.  There are no drawers on the desk, no foot rest, no cabinets attached.  There’s certainly nothing electrical on or near it.  It’s just a plain old desk where a figure of authority--real authority--sat and went about the business of educating children.

It was just one room, and so all children of all ages were taught together.  Different assignments were given to different group ages, and the older children sometimes helped out with the younger children.  They themselves had been helped by older children when they were young, and the responsibility was then passed on, and rightly so.  Somehow they all managed to learn how to read, write, do their math, and learn their history and science.  There were no “learning curves” back then.  If you passed, you passed.  If you failed, you failed.

The student's desk.

The children’s desks were smaller than the teacher’s desk and were all that they needed.  They were plain and simple and included no distractions.  There were no blaring fluorescent lights overhead because they used oil lamps for light.  There was no droning of electrical equipment and no computers with which to sneak on social media.  There was just learning because it was a school and that’s what schools were for.

My own grade school when I was young was not a one-room schoolhouse, but it was very small.  Each grade from kindergarten to eighth had its own room, for a total of nine rooms plus an office for the Principal and some large storage closets.  Each grade had 8-12 children in it, and we all stayed in the same room all day long and were taught every subject by the same teacher.  One of the teachers also doubled as the Principal.  There were nine teachers, one secretary, and one janitor, for a total of 11 employees.  That was quite a lot compared to the old one-room schoolhouses but nothing compared to the school empires that have been built today.

Somehow we all learned, and we learned well.  There were no computers and no calculators.  The books were very old, but they still worked.  In the very younger grades we used little slates with chalk to write on but then graduated to paper and pencil and, finally, pen.  School started at 7:30 or 8:00 a.m. in the morning and continued to 3:00 or 3:30 p.m. depending on the grade.  Meals were not served at school, but we did bring little lunch boxes with food.  If you lived close enough, you could walk home for lunch.

I look now at the enormous complexes that schools have become, and I just shake my head.  I point out to others how we all seemed to learn quite well with very little, and many people eagerly respond that there’s a lot more to learn these days than there used to be.  I guess some of that is true to an extent, such as advanced mathematics, computer science, etc., but the basic things--reading, writing, and arithmetic--are still the same.  Yet they all seem to be made so unnecessarily complicated.  And the teachers these days have had so much authority and autonomy removed from them as compared to teachers from the old days.  It must be very frustrating to be a teacher today, and I sincerely applaud anyone who can do it.  In the old days, a student didn’t cross a teacher and get away with it.  That’s how it should still be today, and there would be a lot more learning going on.

There’s a small sign near the door that says, “Rules for Teachers, 1872,” and it reads as follows:

1.  Teachers each day will fill lamps, trim the wicks and clean chimneys.

2.  Each morning teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day’s session.

3.  Make your pens carefully.  You may whittle nibs to the individual taste of the pupils.

4.  Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they attend church regularly.

5.  After ten hours in school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the Bible or any other good books.

6.  Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.

7.  Every teacher should lay aside from each pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society.

8.  Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty.

9.  The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week in his pay, providing the Board of Education approves.

Yes, things have certainly changed, some for the better and a great deal for the worse.  I don’t think I’d like to go back to such strict rules for teachers, but allowing them to actually teach might be a good thing.  Removing distractions and “study halls” would also be good.  Most importantly, enforcing rules for the students and insisting upon excellence would also be a step backward in the right direction.  But to do all of this, we would need to greatly simplify, and therein lies the doom of my plan.

The old woodstove.