CHAPTER TWO: We Know What's Best

continued from March 14, 2005

Rank weeds, that every art and care defy,

Reign o'er the land, and rob the blighted rye.

George Crabbe 1754-1832

"It has come to our attention," the letter from the city began. "You need to mow your backyard." Enclosed were a picture of our unmowed grass and a copy of the pertinent city ordinance. The regulation said the grass could not be more than 12-inches high and it defined weeds as anything that was "generally recognized as wild or undesirable plants."

If we did not take care of this matter we could be subject to the "appropriate legal remedy." We had ten days to contact the city if we disagreed with the violation notice. The letter was signed by the Neighborhood Service Specialist--II.

Our first reaction was that the complaint was plainly absurd. What neighbor or neighbors would make such a frivolous complaint? Any halfway-enlightened community would of course understand natural landscaping and the utilization of native plants. We merely had to explain all of this to the city. Of course we'd also be willing to talk to any of the neighbors, once we found out who complained.

We knew these archaic weed laws were being overturned all over the country. They were being buried on weighty constitutional grounds--like free speech and freedom of religion. We'd be able to put this matter to rest once we explained our position.

We have a half-acre of land. The portion of our property that generated the complaint was approximately a tenth of an acre, in the back of the house--which could not be seen from the street--and did not abut any of the neighbor's property. The section of our property we were turning into a natural garden was clearly delineated by a border. Could any reasonable person fail to see what we were doing? We clearly had common sense on our side. Didn't we?

We wrote to the Neighborhood Service Specialist ... Two. Reasonable people can work things out I was certain. All this was included in our letter. Then we waited.

About 100,000 years ago we arrived. That is Homo sapiens, whom we think of as modern humans, appeared. It's unlikely we'd have much in common with our kin, but we would have recognized them as relatives.

Between 50,000 to 100,000 years ago language developed, a huge evolutionary step that set us apart from other species. Disputes still rage as to why or how language came about and whether or not there was an obvious evolutionary advantage. But regardless, we were talking to each other, gossiping, telling secrets, and passing along information to one another.

Another 10,000 to 20,000 years went by and we began colonizing the planet. Now we were building boats and moving to previously uninhabited regions, to the undoubted regret of many other species.

As hunter-gathers we traveled in groups of various sizes, learned to work together when hunting large animals, and through trial and error discovered which plants were edible. Anthropologists and paleontologists tell us that we humans now began our first tentative steps in considering "what it's all about."

Things were beginnings to look pretty good for humans. The planet got a little warmer and the ice started receding. But then quite unexpectedly, perhaps in only a few decades, we were hit by another ice age, some 13,000 years ago. This lasted, according to climate experts, for more than a 1,000 years. Then it swung back again, without a lot of advance notice. It does give one pause, especially when some critics of global warming say any climate change will be slow enough to adapt to. Are you sure about that?

Finally, some 9,000 to 11,000 years ago, another momentous change occurred; we humans settled down and started gardening. Our young couple can now make their historic appearance.

Thorat and Merka possess above-average ambition, curiosity, and intelligence. They'll be part of a profound change in human history--the domestication of wild plants and animals, leading to permanent agricultural settlements, and ultimately culture and "truth."

The Fertile Crescent was the region where plant domestication most likely started. Parts of present-day Israel, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, and Iraq would have been included in this area. Thorat and Merka were born somewhere in southern Iraq.

Our two young ancestors had managed to avoid any serious illness, disease, broken bones, or getting clubbed over the head. Thorat was handsome and broad-shouldered, nearly five-foot tall, an excellent hunter, and well liked by the small village where he lived.

Merka was a woman--if truth be told--the young men of the village dreamed about. She was, however, far too serious-minded for most of them. Today we might call it a gift or natural ability, but Merka possessed an almost uncanny power from an early age to identify edible plants and accumulate knowledge of the plant life around her. In fact she had been "experimenting" with several plants in a small garden beside her parent's hut. She also happened to mention to a close girl friend that she thought Thorat would make an ideal mate.

To digress for a minute, Thorat and Merka nor anyone else in the village likely woke up one day and decided the life of the hunter-gatherer was limiting and agricultural development was the way to go. Like so many changes throughout history, many factors can come into play which cause people to act differently. As Jared Diamond points out in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, agriculture started in the Fertile Crescent because it was here that the earliest plant domestication took place.

All our crops came originally from wild plants. Thorat and Merka were fortunate in that they lived in an area possessing the perfect weather, where winters were mild and wet and summers were hot and dry. It was also in this part of the world where cereal crops, like wheat and barley, were abundant in the wild and proved to be the easiest to domesticate.

It's also thought that wild game became increasingly scarce in the Fertile Crescent, making the existence of the hunter-gatherer more precarious and less appealing. It is quite possible, as Diamond and others believe, that the beginnings of the first garden came about when hunter-gatherers began plantings a few crops as a way of insuring that some food would be available if game became unavailable. Obviously someone was now thinking beyond the next day or the next week, or for that matter just picking up and moving to another location.

It had taken longer than most because Thorat was naturally shy, but he eventually approached the hut of Merka's parents. He asked if he might visit their daughter from time to time. Merka's father was a decent man but no fool. He had no doubt that Thorat would probably be a good relation, and was likely one of the few men who could deal with his strong-willed daughter. He had, however, observed how Merka's garden was growing and that many of the villagers were coming to her for advice about planting crops.

Only the week before, when the moon was half-full, he negotiated with another villager for some baskets. All he had to give were some chickpeas--which he had plenty of--in order to obtain six sturdy baskets. All in all he thought he'd gotten the better of the deal. But what might happen if his daughter went off with this Thorat? He and his wife were getting older; they had seen close to thirty full seasons. His wife had lost most of her teeth and had a bad back. He could barely lift his right arm above his shoulder and the sharp pains in his stomach were occurring more frequently.

But Merka's mother knew how much her daughter liked Thorat, and she also knew Merka had to start making children soon. After all, Merka had seen nearly fourteen full seasons. Time was running out. Within two weeks Thorat and Merka were together.

Within a year Merka's garden had become the biggest and most productive in the village, and their community had now grown to nearly 200 people. Women were having more children because they didn't have to travel, and there had been a surplus of food for the past three seasons. Thorat and Merka worked full-time in their garden and three other persons worked part-time. In return these three individuals received a portion of the crops.

They started trading with people in a nearby village. There was even talk among some of the most influential members of the community that they should inquire about the other village's success in raising sheep, one of the first animals to be domesticated some 8,000 years ago.

Merka's garden contained all of the earliest legumes such as peas, lentils, and chickpeas. And only recently she had started growing muskmelon. Thorat decided to expand the cultivation of emmer wheat and barley in another area. Five more people arrived to work part-time, in exchange for a share of the crop. And they continued to experiment.

to be continued....

A Man Called Pelagius

Fifteen-hundred years ago, what came to be known as the "Pelagian Controversy," raged on for seventeen years. Its eventual outcome has had an impact on our contemporary world. The notorious pedophilia scandal that has shaken the Catholic Church is merely an obvious example, in my opinion.

While some theologians have called the "controversy" a struggle for the soul of the church, it seems to me to have been principally a battle between human freedom and despotism. Freedom lost, and we can still see the results almost 2,000 years later.

Except perhaps for some theologians and historians specializing in this area, Pelagius is part of a little known historical episode, full of turgid, theological minutiae, but of more than passing significance.

He was most likely born somewhere in Great Britain, then part of the Roman Empire. He was a monk and not a member of the official Catholic clergy. He was educated, fluent in Greek, and spent most of his adult life in Italy and north Africa.

Pelagius first makes an appearance in 411 or 412. We know this primarily because of one man, Aurelius Augustinus: His position in western civilization is enormous, and some historians consider him as important as Plato and Aristotle, in terms of the intellectual development of the west.

He was best known as Saint Augustine, one of the pillars of the Roman Catholic Church. Augustinus was born in the year 354 in Tagaste, Numidia, which is now Souk-Ahras, Algeria. He became the Bishop of Hippo in north Africa.

At this time many of the doctrines and the rituals of the Christian church had not been firmly established. Arguments and debates were spirited and sometimes physically dangerous. This was especially true in places like Numidia and some of the eastern provinces. Christianity in these areas was much harsher, and never stressed love and mercy.

Hardly any of Pelagius' writings or those of his followers exist. But there are some. On the other hand, the theological views and justifications of Augustine--a prolific writer--have been carefully preserved over the centuries. His two most famous works are the Confessions and The City of God. If history is written by the winners, then Augustine's victory was certainly decisive.

Pelagius and Augustine may have met at least one time at a conference in Carthage, probably around 412. Augustine was at this point the Bishop of Hippo, a staunch defender of the established order, and had recently succeeded in getting the Vatican to declare another Christian sect ( the Donatists ) a heresy, meaning it was now a crime against the state. Pelagius' theology was decidedly different, and his views were spreading throughout north Africa. It wasn't long before Augustine went after Pelagius for heresy.

During Augustine's battle against the Donatists, his views of humankind had become far more dark and pessimistic. He was now talking about the impossibility of life without sin, that humanity couldn't escape from this "original" sin, and the curse of concupiscence.

It inevitably led to a vision that nothing makes much difference in this life, judgment would come in the next life, and the church and the clergy were absolutely essential to explain the "truth."

Pelagius, by contrast, believed humans could freely choose good or evil, and were responsible for those choices. He denied that man was tainted by original sin or predestined to eternal damnation. Pelagius declared that humankind was capable of obtaining the lofty ideals of virtue. And, unlike Augustine, Pelagius considered sexuality normal, very much part of being human, and not sinful.

The struggle between Pelagius and Augustine continued for several years, with each side presenting its case to church officials and the Pope. But in 418, Augustine was again successful and the Vatican declared Pelagianism a heresy. The Pelagians fought on for another ten or eleven years, now led by the exiled bishop Julian of Eclanum, but they too were ultimately defeated. By the beginning of the seventh century all traces of Pelagianism had vanished throughout what had been the old Roman Empire.

For someone living in a developed nation in the twenty-first century, it's virtually impossible to comprehend the mind of a person dwelling in the early fifth century.

Yet, as I learned more about Pelagius and Augustine, and the times in which they lived, I found it impossible not to think about suicide bombers, martydom, and religious fascism in our present century. Would those in the Middle East today more readily understand someone like the third century Christian writer Tertullian, who said, "Happy is the man whom God has devoured. The blood of Christians is seed!"

What if Pelagius had succeeded? Would there have been the Inquisition, virulent anti-Semitism, religious superstition and intolerance? Would the Reformation have taken place? Would we have had the Crusades? And would our attitudes regarding human sexuality and the role of women been any different?

I for one believe it was civilization's loss when Pelagianism was defeated. Augustine said human nature was enslaved by sin. Pelagius said we humans possessed a will to choose the good. Augustine believed nature was only human nature. Pelagius declared nature to exist in the broadest sense; it was everywhere. Tragically, the good guys lost.

CHAPTER ONE: Turning on the Light

continued from March 10, 2005

June 6, 1944 may not be the most important date in Bayeux history, but 1066. This was the year the Battle of Hastings took place. William, the Duke of Normandy, crossed the English Channel with his army, landed in England, and defeated Harold the Saxon king in the town of Hastings. This was the last time England was successfully invaded.

One of the most striking tapestries ever made is the famous 230-foot long Bayeux Tapestry, a terrific work of political and cultural propaganda that historians believe probably hung at one time from the nave of Bayeux Cathedral, but is now housed elsewhere.

This tapestry is an embroidered frieze, which illustrates in graphic detail the bloody battle, with dead soldiers, horses, and dismembered limbs everywhere. Of course, as the Normans were the ones who made the tapestry, they're portrayed as the "good guys." The Normans are clean-shaven and the Saxons look as though they haven't shaved nor had a hot meal in weeks. But as these Normans were the victors, they got to decide the "truth."

Bayeux Cathedral is neither as well known as Notre Dame nor as awe-inspiring as Chartres, but is nevertheless impressive. The cathedral was built originally in the squat, ponderous Romanesque style, emulating the traditional construction of Rome.

Inside the cathedral you feel you're in a place where perhaps new ideas will not be readily debated, but where conviction is clear and certain and, where I felt, the natural world was not far away. At night the tower was lit by floodlights, and standing by the front of the church, I sensed I was part of something very old and connected to an ancients world, far older than I could even begin to imagine at the time.



Plant society developed some 420 million years ago. To be precise, scientists have evidence of vascular plant fossils going that far back, meaning plants with tissues that can distribute water through their systems. This took place in land plants.

All this would have occurred near the end of what the geologists call the Silurian period. I suspect we humans would have had all the nature we could handle, had any of us been around during this time. It was probably pretty gloomy, all green, quiet, and mosses and ferns literally everywhere. No large animals crashed through the underbrush, but you might hear some insects buzzing, see some fish, and maybe catch a glimpse of a few turtles.

As most of us were taught in school, what caused this forest of green was a pigment called chlorophyll. The chlorophyll captured light energy from the sun, which is the fuel that got food manufacturing going--sugar, starch, and other carbohydrates. Simply put, without this process there would have been no fruits, no vegetables, no grains, no oxygen, no animals ... and no us.

For the next 290 million years or so things were relatively stable, predictable, and green in the plant community. It was a little less quiet with mammal numbers increasing, along with the size of some of them, but plants pretty much kept to themselves. But around 130 million years ago, at the end of the Jurassic period, the beginning of the Cretaceous period, something important took place. Flowers arrived in the plant community.

The flowering plant or angiosperm, as the botanists might refer to it, took over the plant world in a relatively short period of time. Today these flowering plants outnumber the ferns and cone bearing trees, which were around millions of years before any flower joined the community. The angiosperm number more than 200,000 species.

Angiosperm comes from the Greek word angeion and means "capsule" and "seed." All the flowering plants enclose their seeds in fruit. The fruit has hollow chambers (carpels) that protect the seeds. Think of mammals, where the young grow inside the mother.

Scientists today have come up with some basic classifications for the angiosperms: Magnoliids, which have, at least for the moment, 220 species and includes such plants as the avocado and black pepper; Monocots, which have about 65,000 species, and include all grasses like rice and wheat, certain flowers like orchids, and palm trees which are not made out of "true" wood; Eudicots have about 170,000 species. This group included plants like the oak and the blackberry, as well as many of the cone-bearing trees. Some paleobotanists think the earliest angiosperms might have been woody.

The flowering plant, unlike an animal, can't pick up and walk off to another location to set up a new community. They were stuck in one place, but had to insure that the species would spread to other areas and continue to expand and develop. This is where plant creativity demonstrated its ability.

Flowering plants going through the evolutionary "streets and alleys," finally got others to transport their genetic material to different locations. While these changes occurred over millions of years, the reproductive speed of many angiosperms probably made it easier for them to evolve faster than their competitors. Regardless, they came up with some remarkable ways of getting other species to help insure their survival.

Most flowers are hermaphroditic, meaning they have both male and female parts. It's more than likely that one of the principal reasons human agriculture developed in the Fertile Crescent first was the large percentage of edible hermaphroditic plants that were able to pollinate themselves, and thus make domestication of these plants--like wheat--easier for humans.

The fact of the matter is the plant doesn't leave much to chance: In addition to those plants that are hermaphroditic, there are plants that are both hermaphroditic but can sometimes cross-pollinate, and there are plants that have separate female and male parts that depend on another for pollination. Finally, there are plants, like the sweet potato, that reproduce without sex: The plant's root is able to make a carbon copy of the parent plant.

Pollen, the plant's genetic material, can be spread by the wind and end up on another compatible plant, but that's like keeping your fingers crossed and hoping for the best. The flowering plant kept evolving into "something" much more efficient, which would take us up to around 95 million years ago.

That something was the petal. This is what attracted the insects; depending on the particular insect, it might be lured by the petal's color, its shape, its smell, and or its taste. Botanists believe that 70 to 100 million years ago the number of flowering plants increased dramatically. The insect pollinators were attracted to these various petals, and the angiosperm's reproduction took off. In the process known as "coevolution," the insects got the nectar that tasted so good and the flower got pollen dispersal. The percentages were now in the plant's favor; the insect would deliver the pollen to a compatible flower.

Also not to be left out is the dinosaur. They munched on flowers that tasted good and delivered seed unwittingly to various locations through their digestive tract. Considering the size of some of the dinosaurs, they probably made some large deliveries. By the time the dinosaurs died out about 65 million years ago, the mammals were ready to take their place and coevolution continued with new variations and new methods. The flowering plant was now well established, with a thriving and influential society of its own. In the next chapter we humans arrive on the scene and that's when things become truly interesting.

The seed plants have created to a large extent life on earth as we humans know it. Soils, forests, and food are three of the most obvious results. Our clothing (fibers) came from flowering plants, and many of our drugs still do ... recreational and otherwise. Weeds have yet to be discovered, but with our raucous arrival, we soon hear the mumblings about "those" weeds. Who are they? Where do they live? Who do they think they are? Why can't they do what's best for the community? After all, it's ... so obvious. Isn't it?
end of Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE: Turning on the Light

continued from February 28, 2005

Chartres Cathedral is a supreme example of what's called the High Gothic style. Its construction was started in the twelfth century. Standings inside this church beside one of the massive stone pillars, I don't see how anyone could not be moved in some way, regardless of whether or not one is a Catholic or, for that matter, holds any traditional religious belief. The darkened interior, the stain glass windows, and the echo of footsteps on the stone floor made it easy for me to believe that I had been transported back in time. It seemed perfectly reasonable that I might pass a bishop on his way to see the king, or be surprised by a knight with a red cross on the front of his tunic, who had stepped out from the shadows.

Some historians consider Chartres a bridge between the ending of the "dark ages" and the reawakening of European civilization and culture after nearly 700 years. Certainly the pervasive and unchallenged influence of Augustine and Plato lessens, and the word "truth" picks up a few new definitions.

It was the philosopher Peter Abelard, of Heloise and Abelard fame, who said truth must be realized by evaluating all sides, and he was apparently pretty good at walking a fine, sometimes dangerous line, between church dogma and logic. More of Aristotle's work was recovered and translated in the twelfth and the thirteenth century and, as the historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto says, "Aristotle gradually recovered his pre-eminence."

While the twelfth century was still an "age of faith," it was rapidly becoming an age of "reason" as well. By the start of the thirteenth century the works of the Islamic scholar Averros was being read throughout Europe as well as many of the Jewish scholars. St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century wrote that the truths of faith and those of the senses were compatible and complementary, a momentous declaration at the time. A world of logic, of organization, and of classification was forming in the West. This was to have a weighty influence on our humble weed.

It was dark when we arrived at our hotel in the city of Bayeux that evening. Bayeux was the first city liberated after the allies landed in June 1944 and only six miles from the D-Day beaches. We ate dinner at a small restaurant with long wooden picnic tables, noted for its traditional Normandy cuisine. At our table was an American couple in their late seventies. The husband had been among the first wave to land on Omaha Beach on the sixth of June. They tried to return every few years his wife told us; it was important to both of them. The day, my son and I agreed back at the hotel, had been a good one.

The following morning we drove to Omaha Beach, where the German soldiers had put up the stiffest resistance. The D-Day beaches extend seventy-five miles along the Atlantic coast. Utah and Omaha Beach are where the Americans landed; Gold was where the British came ashore; both Canadian and British soldiers landed on Juno; Free French troops along with British soldiers came ashore on Sword.

Omaha Beach was deserted and windy as we walked along the water's edge on a beautiful October morning, at the end of the twentieth century. There was nothing visible on the horizon this day, but it wasn't difficult to imagine how the Germans might have felt when they first saw the appearance of the largest invasion fleet ever assembled. I had an uncle who landed on the beaches of Salerno in Italy and another uncle who was a medic on Guadalcanel in the Pacific. My mother told me many years before that they never once talked about their experience after they left basic training in 1942.

On a bluff just above Omaha Beach is the American Cemetery. France gave the United States free, permanent use of the 172-acre site, which is maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission. Many of us have seen pictures of the American Cemetery, but I think one has to stand silently among the precise rows of more than 9,000 radiant white marble crosses and Stars of David to begin to appreciate all that it represents. I think we both left this place with a different perspective about a lot of things.



The design of the American Cemetery has a connection to the first metropolitan rural cemetery, which appeared in France in 1803. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, a spirit of egalitarianism had swept over much of Europe. As well, a new republic was developing across the Atlantic Ocean in the United States.

Before the nineteenth century both Catholic and Calvinist believed that "original" sin and predestination proved that the mortal life was corrupt. It was after the "baseness" of mortality that humankind might--hardly guaranteed--join God. A permanent resting-place for the dearly departed was not a major concern.

Anyone who has ever visited an old New England cemetery that dates back to the seventeenth and eighteenth century can find gravestones tilted at various angles with the death mask carved into them. I remember the cemetery beside our house outside of Hartford, Connecticut where, on a crisp fall day, we'd frequently push my son's carriage. It was not a place you'd find green, manicured lawns or trimmed hedges, regardless of the time of year. Usually you would be greeted by thistles, uncut grass, and vines crawling up the front of these humorless tombstones. A Garden of Eden did not exist in the dour afterlife theology of these folks.

Even the planting of trees in cemeteries was often not allowed by these old puritans because it could encourage paganism, which they were certain lurked just below the surface of just about everyone. Most definitely they were not going to permit a carving depicting nature on tombstones. The desk mask was sufficient; it reminded one and all that wordly concerns were meaningless.

The new century, however, swept away many of the old views. Ecclesiastical authority was declining and the influence of the middle class gained strength. Romanticism and sentimentalism took hold, and the need to return to an idealized "nature" seized the imagination of the bourgeoisie. In the United States the philosophy of transcendentalism urged a "spiritual union" with nature.

At the same time, there was also an increasing awareness of health concerns, especially in the overcrowded cities. Churchyard cemeteries in urban areas were full. Bodies were being dug up so that new ones could be buried. On a hot summer day, it was not unusual for city residents to catch the "sweet" aroma of rotting flesh.

The custom of the ancient Greeks was now thought worth considering. By the fifth century B.C. Athens required all the dead to be buried outside city limits. Urns, altars, and sculptures became standard grave markers for the Greeks, and memorials were constructed to honor important Athenians.

Death was becoming secularized in the nineteenth century. That the individual should be given some dignity was a common theme; friends, family, and future generations should be able to pay their respects and honor those who passed away.

Cemeteries outside urban areas were to be centers of peace and tranquility. The old slab tombstones were either outlawed or fell out of favor and replaced by ornate monuments or at least gravestones that would be noticed.

The obelisk, which goes back to ancient Egypt as well as Greece and Rome, became a standard feature in many European and American cemeteries. Memorials were built to honor political and cultural heroes as well as prominent families. Trees were planted, hedges trimmed, flowerbeds maintained, and grass lawns expected. Landscaping was increasingly important, and uncut grass and unsightly "weeds"--or anything that did not fit within the design of the eternal resting-place--was vigorously guarded against.

You can wander through almost any cemetery in the United States and you'll find them remarkly similar in terms of landscape design, a design that first became popular 200 years ago. At the same time, many of the old urban churchyards were gradually turned into city parks. Here you'd be able to read or meditate on a park bench, and where once there was only dirt, now you'd find grass and sometimes flowers, nowadays usually without the Keep Off the Grass signs that once dotted public parks.
to be continued...