mumpsimusthought

A Warm Opportunity

2006-12-13T07:57:00.000-08:00

Adapted from article first printed in Kansas City Star, entitled "Improving Our Climate is Our Responsibility."

We can hope the Democrats will do better now that they control Congress. But have we learned nothing these past several years? To relinquish our responsibility as participating citizens invites catastrophe, regardless of which political party controls Congress or the White House.

The last six years, certainly at the national level, have been largely a failure as far as climate change and the creation of an energy policy are concerned.

Global warming is now before the U.S. Supreme Court: Twelve states are suing the Environmental Protection Agency for not doing what these states think it should be doing, namely, establishing limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are emitted by new cars.

The EPA claims it has no authority to set any limits. Congress cannot avoid taking up this issue soon.

What the Supreme Court ultimately ends up deciding could influence decisions as far away as China and India, where one-third of the world's population lives, and where an environmental disaster is now unfolding.

This is about much more than what gases flow out of tailpipes or even the definition of global warming itself. It does, however, have a lot to to with how we might imagine our country 10 years from now, possibly 50 years from now, as well as the kind of planet we might like to live on.

The global warming debate has shifted on many levels. Even critics within the fossil fuel industry are acknowledging the possibility that global warming is real, well, sort of. There are still those who say climate change is cyclical; it's just getting a little warmer right now, that it's all perfectly "normal."

Others say we really don't know to what extent humans are contributing to global warming ... therefore, we need to study it a bit longer. We don't want to make any hasty decisions.

At the same time, there are climate experts who now believe it's already too late to stop or even slow down the warming process. We'd better learn to adapt to it; we'd better develop some drought-resistant corn, these scientists are telling us. And we'd better accept the idea that our planet may not be able to support six billion humans. Perhaps in the not to distant future we may only be able to see Miami Beach through a glass bottom boat, if ocean levels rise too much.

A few scientists have suggested such things as putting giant sun deflectors around the planet or shooting massive amounts of sulfur particles into the atmosphere to cool down the planet. Some of these projections and theoretical scenarios are genuinely unpleasant.

The not-so-simple fact is that we don't exactly know what will happen to the climate 50 years from now, let alone 100 years. It would be nice if nothing bad ever happens. I have two granddaughters who will likely be around for most of the 21st century.

In the meantime, an opportunity does present itself here in our own backyard. Kansas City has established a Climate Protection Planning Process, along with 250 other cities throughout the United States. A steering committee will make recommendations to the mayor and the City Council sometime in March or April, regarding energy use, transportation needs and overall environmental direction.

The next public meeting is Dec. 21. We can choose to make a difference. We can decide to have our voices heard. We can actually participate.

Margaret Mead, the famous anthropologist, once said, "Never doubt that a small group of people can change the world. It is the only thing that ever has." Peace.

Howdy Doody's Environment

2006-05-13T10:31:00.000-07:00

Adapted from article first printed in Kansas City Star, 5/13/06, entitled "Would Howdy Doody Recognize Our Planet?"

It's Howdy Doody time in America.

Howdy, the television star of the 1950s "Howdy Doody Show," was a marionette with a perpetual grin on his wooden face. It was television in its early days, silly, inane, and loved by adults as well as children. Unfortunately, we can't live in Doodyville.

Environmental deterioration in all its complexities is the colossal monster in the room. It is a heartland problem. It is a global problem. The beast is not Iraq, immigration, port security, outsourcing, high deficits ... or rising gas prices.

Water is a good place to begin. The hottest year on record was 2005. In Somalia, millions of people are surviving on the equivalent of three glasses of water per day for drinking, washing and cooking. In many cases, children have had to drink their own urine.

In Missouri, droughts struck in 2002 and 2003, affecting livestock farmers, as well as hurting important cash crops such as soybeans. Might it be worse the next time?

The U.S. Geological Survey reported recently that all the rivers and streams it surveyed in the U.S. between 1992 and 2001 contained pesticides.

About 12 percent of Kansas' total surface waters are damaged according to the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University.

A public interest group has stated that between July 2003 and December 2004 more than 500 facilities in Missouri and Kansas exceeded Clean Water Act standards at least once because of assorted pollutants, including oil, grease, nitrogen, ammonia and fecal matter, in fishable and swimmable waterways.

Large factory farms in parts of Missouri have contributed to serious water pollution due to increased nutrients and bacteria (as well as dead zones along the Gulf Coast). Worldwide, agriculture is probably the biggest threat to the planet's freshwater resources.

In Kansas about half of original wetland acreage has been drained for agriculture or development. A loss of wetlands worsens flooding, endangers drinking water and could hasten the arrival of bird flu. Wetland loss in Missouri is about 80 percent.

Missouri ranks high in the nation for cancers caused by industrial pollution. A recent study at the University of Southern California found that high ozone levels might be connected to lower sperm production. Those bad ozone days will be with us shortly.

Do you have children or grandchildren? It's expected that 9 billion humans will inhabit the planet by 2050. Conversely, the Environmental Defense Fund estimates that between 15 percent and 37 percent of plant and animal species could be destroyed worldwide by 2050, including species in Kansas and Missouri.

Clearly the hysteria over such things as gay marriage seems to resonate in this part of the country. But issues like this do serve a purpose--they easily divert the electorate's attention away from serious matters, such as taking responsibility for our environmental well-being, as well as electing competent representatives.

Sadly, Kansas and "intelligent" design go together like a horse and carriage. But not to be outdone, a measure before the Missouri legislature promoted constitutional amendments on Christianity and "tablets" on public property. Poor women are apparently not going to get access to any family-planning assistance in the Show Me State, and the word "contraception" may soon be whispered only in Missouri darkness. Benightedness has come to be a social virtue.

At the national level the four senators representing Missouri and Kansas are environmentally oblivious--putting it kindly. Over the years they've opposed, among other things, improved fuel efficiency standards for vehicles. They have consistently rubber-stamped the usual subsidies to the fossil-fuel industry, applauded the idea of using taxpayer money to cut logging roads through our national parks, and stood by as President Bush and friends pushed to weaken air and water quality standards.

Anyone interested might look into the servile attention that Senator Kit Bond of Missouri has devoted to Briggs & Stratton, a manufacturer of lawn mower engines, a significant source of air pollution. It's in the public record.

But we still have choices. It begins in November. No longer can we afford more string-puppets from Doodyville.

Keeping Our Republic

2006-03-04T09:12:00.000-08:00

Adapted from article first printed in Kansas City Star, 3/4/06, and entitled "Has U.S. really changed much since 1800s?"

He's quoted from one end of the political spectrum to the other. But few Americans have likely heard of him. His views are used to support a variety of positions regarding the judicial system, the press, class structure, racism, money, and the role of government.

Alexis de Tocqueville, after more than 150 years, remains one of the most perceptive observers of America and its people. This French aristocrat traveled through the United States in the 1830s. He later wrote Democracy in America, a two-volume study of Americans and their political institutions.

In 2006 the political party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt (the Republicans) has morphed into something quite extraordinary, it seems to me. In the process of "transforming" itself, it now runs an American government that is arguably the most incompetent and corrupt in more than 75 years. Is it merely God punishing the United States for its sins, as at least one television evangelist has offered? I think not. It's far less ethereal.

In the 1830s de Tocqueville saw a contradiction in America. He believed a power of the majority was needed to maintain democracy, but at the same time he worried that a "tyranny" of this same majority could also destroy democracy.

This paradox he suggested could survive by maintaining a carefully constructed system of checks and balances, which we learned in school--or should have--meant our three separate but equal branches of government. Still, de Tocqueville warned, "even then the tyranny of the majority may not be unavoidable."

Today, two of de Tocqueville's observations seem to me to be especially thought provoking, keeping in mind they were made when our country was less than 50 years old. He observed that Americans had a "common knowledge" about public affairs. In other words they were astute, involved in public life, and politically aware. This quality he believed was essential for a working democratic system.

The second observation, perhaps more curious, was that de Tocqueville wondered about what he thought might be the tyranny of opinion. He said he could not think of another country with "less independence of mind and true freedom of discussion" than America. He believed that democracy could very easily have a leveling or flattening effect on intellectual and individualistic distinctions.

What might de Tocqueville have to say about America today? Would he think of us as politically astute? Would he be impressed by our civic gravitas and our involvement in public life? Is it possible, however, that de Tocqueville would view us as gleefully ignorant, intellectually shallow, and easily manipulated? We'll never know of course.

Are we today, as de Tocqueville once observed long ago, a country with less independence of mind and true freedom of discussion? Do we not have an abundance of "discussions" today? After all, we have thousands of newspapers and magazines; we have dozens of television news channels providing us with endless arguments and debates.

But is it possible that we Americans have created one of the most successful illusions that any society has ever devised? Do well-coifed info-entertainers on television actually tell us anything we haven't heard numerous times in one form or another. Does the endless supply of the same talking heads, which appear on one channel after another, really give us a fresh perspective about much of anything, regardless of whether or not they call themselves liberal or conservative? Do the majority of the mainstream newspapers ever step beyond the same, safe, smug orthodoxy?

Is it conceivable that de Tocqueville would say that we are today merrily indifferent to any new ideas ... merely frightened of them ... or possibly unaware of them? We'll never know of course.

John Adams, one of our Founding Fathers, said, "Gentlemen, you have a republic if you can keep it." To me it remains in doubt whether we can.

More ominous are the words of Patrick Henry: "The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be secure, when the transactions of their rulers [representatives] may be concealed from them."

America is now becoming, and we all should be extremely worried about what it may ultimately become.

Musings of a Member by Thoral Ibn Said

2006-02-16T10:01:00.000-08:00

Elephants Redux

Professor Ivan Kurtz of Moscow University, a respected mibo-ethnologist, recently presented a novel hypothesis regarding the future of our species. His published paper entitled "The General De-Evolvement of Homo Sapiens" will be presented to the National Academy of Science in November.

The late Stephen J. Gould, the well-known evolutionary biologist, said in his book A Full House that we humans are here by the "luck of the draw." For Gould, it has nothing to do with any grand design or evolutionary mechanism. Evolution has been full of "fits and starts," frequently leading to evolutionary dead ends.

Gould believed it was pure arrogance on our part to think that evolution has traveled in a steady, predictable direction toward human life. And, if it could be done all over again, it's unlikely the universe would come up with anything remotely resembling us.

In Professor Kurtz' view, Homo sapiens may in fact be reaching some sort of evolutionary "brick wall." His paper also suggests that the speed at which we humans could be arriving at this dead end might be increasing by a factor of two every 24 months!

While it would be impossible here to cover all of Kurtz' paradigm, a brief review of his two principle concepts are worth mentioning. The first he calls the survival/fear constraint. Kurtz believes all living organisms, including something as supposedly "simple" as bacteria, create a kind of knowledge log, which acts as an internal gyroscope, keeping the organism's survival instincts focused.

Professor Kurtz has developed a numbering system from one to ten. Number one represents a species that possesses total fear of almost everything. Number 10 represents a species that lacks essentially all fear. It can be assumed in Kurtz' model that no species is a perfect 1 or 10, as that would make its survival virtually impossible.

Predators in general cluster closer to 10 because they are hunters and, if not completely carnivorous, will eat meat from time to time. For example, Kurtz assigns the number 8.6 to a lion and an 8.0 to a cheetah. The cheetah gets a lower number than a lion because of a weaker jaw and a "kill" rate of only one in five attempts, a lower percentage than a lion.

An elephant, on the other hand, is assigned a number 6 because it is not carnivorous and has a highly developed sense of group responsibility to its own immediate herd and its species. In general, species that fall in the middle of the scale are more willing to integrate into their environment.

In Kurtz' classification scheme, only humans go above 8.9. As well, unlike any other species, they fall into a range of between 9.0 and 9.5. Without going into lengthy detail, the broad factors the professor uses for assigning numbers for humans include population expansion and habitat destruction; environmental degradation attributable to humans; species cooperation; and human belief systems.

Professor Kurtz has concluded that Homo sapiens have a low fear threshold because of a poorly developed internal gyroscope. According to Kurtz, because of the primitive alarm mechanism of humans, our survival as a species is uncertain.

Of particular interest is the possibility we may be actually reverting or "retreating" back to a state we had passed through at least 40,000 years ago. If this hypothesis proves to be true, it would make our species truly unique.

But an even more astonishing possibility may be presenting itself, at the same time, according to the professor. The reason Kurtz has used a range of numbers for humans is because he is strongly suggesting the possibility--admittedly tenuous right now--that we could be at the beginning stages of creating a new species, one that is related to us.

In a worldwide population of 6.5 billion people, the professor estimates, using his classification model, that possibly from one to two million individuals are consistently exhibiting a more highly developed internal gyroscope, thus the reason for a number in the range of 9.0.

The second principle is called the revelatory/egoism constraint. Simply stated, the essence of human character is a profound belief in magic, which can be interpreted as a deep-seated need for spirits and gods. It is virtually impossible for our species to see things as they are and not as they believe.

But what Professor Kurtz is suggesting, is that a new species could be in the incipient stages of branching off from Homo sapiens; this new species is more willing to accept things as they actually are!

The revelatory/egoism constraint says that humans have a near pathological confusion between self and other. In other species this separation occurs at least by the time of puberty. At birth all species make no real distinction between self and other--or between wanting and getting--but they eventually outgrow this egocentric confusion. Not so for humankind.

Kurtz maintains that while "words" certainly influence behavior or can direct people to particular courses of action, words themselves possess no power whatsoever. Rational or objective thinking can only take place when humans are able to grasp the subjective nature of thinking. Thought has no "actual" power. You may hear voices emanating from the ether late at night, but whether or not those voices exist in the external world is another matter. (As an aside, Kurtz claims that the United States--among all developed nations--is currently showing the steepest negative rise in the revelatory/egoism constraint paradigm.)

Allison Harper's book Public Buffoonery, Welfare Capitalism, and the Political process in America offers both an amusing and a serious commentary on the changing American politician and revelatory decision-making. It is worth reading, especially in light of professor Kurtz' contentions.

Finally, in an interview in Rypin, Poland two months ago, an American reporter with the Fox News Network, asked Professor Kurtz what one piece of advice he'd give to humankind. The quiet, soft-spoken professor hesitated for just a moment and then said to the young blonde reporter, "Look for a pink elephant at dawn." Before the confused reporter could ask for clarification, Professor Kurtz hobbled up the steps of the zeppelin EMU and disappeared.

Musings of a Member by Kerchief Davroten

2006-02-11T08:30:00.000-08:00

Bits & Pieces of the 1920s

We still remain fascinated with the 1920s, the decade from 1920 to 1930. The Jazz Age, The Roaring Twenties, the era that produced bathtub gin, gangsters and flappers, the age that brought us both larger-than-life heroes and villains. The period begins with women getting the right to vote and a social experiment called Prohibition. It ends with the crash of financial markets and the beginning of a worldwide Depression, leading us eventually to the most devastating war in human history. All this was the 1920s.

Let's Ankle Sheba

They're all desperadoes, those kids, all of them with any life in their veins; the girls as well as the boys; maybe more than the boys. Warner Fabian

The 1920s was the first decade in American history to define a "youth" culture, with its own distinct style and language, separate and apart from the older generation, but ultimately exerting considerable influence upon it. A sampling of this new vocabulary listed below contains many of the words that are still in use today.

ankle: to walk
bearcat: a "hot" or passionate girl
coffee varnish: illicit liquor often poisonous
dewdropper: young male who doesn't have a job and sleeps all day
Ethel: an effeminate male
floorflusher: an avid dancer
gams: legs
hooch: booze
iron one's shoelaces: to go to the restroom
jack: money
mooch: to leave
nookie: sex
ofay: a black expression for whites
petting pantry: movie theater
razz: making fun of
sheba: one's girlfriend
torpedo: hitman or thug

and some more...

blind pig---------------------- lower class establishment where drinks were cheap, but possibly made from liquor that might blind or even kill you.

It------------------------------a word coined to define a woman who had animal magnetism or strong sexual attractiveness.

________________________

Some very old English words

pudibund: modest, bashful, prudish
clyster: an enema, using warm water or gruel
kintra-cooser: a human stallion; has his way with rural girls
burke: to kill, to murder, secretly and without noise
________________________

A conundrum is an amusing comparison between things quite unlike; the answer is frequently made out by a play upon words.

a. Why is a lazy man like a magician? Answer: He works by spells.
b. What fish has its eyes nearest together? Answer: ?
c. Why is hope like a decayed cheese? Answer: ?
d. Why is a politician like a stray dog? Answer: ?
[answers next time]
_________________________

Any suggestions, thoughts or ideas?

CHAPTER THREE: Louis XIV Knows Weeds

2005-12-22T11:13:00.000-08:00

continued from 11/21/05

At the core of the Greek viewpoint rested a passionate conviction in the worth and importance of man as an individual. He was to be valued for his own sake, not merely as a tool for some all-powerful entity. While sculpture in China in fifth century B.C. commonly depicted animals, hardly ever was a human form created. In Greece in the fifth century B.C. what was most commonly represented was a supremely confident human.

Deductive reasoning developed in Greece near the end of the seventh century B.C. In the sixth century a number of schools were established that were neither religious institutions nor government controlled. Wealthy merchants likely started them. Both within and outside these schools debate, argument, persuasion, and competition were highly valued by the Greeks. This, it seems to me, encouraged, developed and laid a foundation for what we call today scientific inquiry. Was this occurring anywhere else in the known world at the time? Possibly, but I don't believe to the extent that it was transforming the Greek world.

The Greeks, from the very beginning, thought the universe was ultimately understandable, and science was about how things worked. It was less to do, for example, with what heaven (the stars) wished for and more to do with the mechanics of the stars--how it worked.

The West by the seventeenth century relied increasingly on inductive reasoning, that is obtaining data, making measurements, and then stating certain assumptions. In other words, reasoning from the particular to the general, the opposite of deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning had been used by many non-western societies for centuries, but now in Europe the inductive reasoning process in science was becoming firmly established and would be a central part of the scientific method. The consequences of all this would become apparent to westerner and non-westerner alike within a hundred years.

Science remains both foreign and strange to most people in the world today, not only in the developing world but in countries like the United States as well. I think it's because science is first of all difficult and second because subjectivity is not part of its method, contrary to what a few people inside science might desire and what a lot of people outside science want and believe. While there have been periodic "moments" when science was encouraged and praised, throughout most of human history it has "hung" by a thread. It still does, in the United States as much as anywhere else.

If you consider some of the world's best-known spiritual leaders, for example Buddha, Muhammad, and Jesus, their teachings and beliefs are based on personal visions. The starting point of these beliefs is "supernatural." But it is not just the numerous prophets from antiquity. Carlos Castaneda, a New Age superstar in the 1970s, had revelations while sitting with his mentor Don Juan in the Mexican desert, consuming peyote cactus and other hallucinogenic drugs. Castaneda claimed he talked to the animals and sometimes became a crow--literally.

In 1972 UCLA awarded Castaneda a doctorate in anthropology. His books were immensely popular, several of which I read and enjoyed. He died in 1998. Kathryn Lindskoog in her book Fakes, Frauds, and Other Malarky said, "The next time you come close to a crow, try calling out 'Hello, Carlos!' If you are high enough on peyote, you might hear the bird answer." A harsh criticism perhaps, but it's hard to disagree with the proposition that the number and variety of religions and beliefs are only limited by human imagination.

Science believes that knowledge (according to most scientists) can only be determined from objective investigation and is--most importantly--accessible to all. The one thing that science can not do is promise personal salvation or eternal life, the concern that has preoccupied most of us for at least the last 20,000 years.

Those men in the eighteenth century, who wore stockings, wigs, and placed a pinch of snuff on the back of their hands, often seemed like vacuous dandies, without an substance whatsoever. Many were. The women with the elaborate coiffures, pale skin, and beauty mark on their cheek may have appeared as beautiful creatures with not a serious thought in their heads. This was certainly true of some.

But the eighteenth century was about much more than elaborate dance steps and endless balls. It was also a period of remarkable intellectual activity, curiosity, a time of optimism and hope, where so many of the best and the brightest believed that the world could be improved by human effort and good will.

The weed made a dramatic re-emergence in the eighteenth century, thanks to the "power" of nature. The pastoral movie sets so popular among Europeans, especially the English gentry, provided new opportunities for the weed. While still not especially welcomed near the house, the weed was frequently encouraged among the rustic landscape away from the house. For that matter it was positively desired if it enhanced the natural setting.

Travel was one of the numerous opportunities available to the weed in the eighteenth century. Other parts of the world were being discovered, and immigration to places like America and Australia increased significantly. Plants, no less than humans, are keenly interested in survival, propagation, and moving to new places. And like humans, the effects of travel are salutary for some and bring misery to others. Some prosper and some do not.

Advances in botany and horticulture created new opportunities, including the possibility that some plants, which were once classified as weeds, would now be welcomed into the community of plants. There were reasons for optimism in the eighteenth century

But, as we learn in the next chapter, progress is not always positive for the weed or humans for that matter. New technologies and new ideologies threaten the very existence of many plants. And finally, a new set of Truths arises.
to be continued....

CHAPTER THREE: Louis XIV Knows Weeds

2005-11-21T12:32:00.000-08:00

continued from 11/06/05

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto speaks of the "retreat from truth" that unfolds in the eighteenth century. Certainly many conservatives in the United States today rail against what they call the cult of relativism. Other critics have referred to the "totalitarian tendencies lurking in the Enlightenment." Of course the established order in the eighteenth century also leveled harsh criticism against the philosophes as well.

The philosophes, a French word but used to refer to all the European intellectuals who called for a "new" perception, wanted to shake up society. They declared that science was the way to understand the natural world; man did not need paternal authority or control. It was time they declared that humanity think for itself. They advocated freedom of speech, the press, and above all, personal liberty. They pushed for judicial and prison reform. Their dislike of organized religion ranged from mocking amusement to outright loathing. This was the intellectual stew of the eighteenth century, which set in motion the ideas, the political beliefs, and the actions of the nineteenth and twenty century.

Fernandez-Armesto cites Rene Descartes, although living in the seventeenth century, as the likely starting point for the mortal wounding of truth. Descartes of I think, therefore I am fame unintentionally, according to Armesto, ended up not locating truth but creating a sort of religion of the individual.

From there, the philosophers of the eighteenth century proved the existence of themselves and little more. This worked well enough for a while, i.e. striving toward perfection and progress and pursuing happiness, but it came to a bloody and violent end in the streets of Paris during the French revolution, and made it virtually impossible for the United States to remain aloof from the outside world.

The views of Felipe Fernandez-Armesto and others can be debated and discussed among historians, philosophers, and anyone interested in ideas, but one point he makes is worth keeping in mind for later on: It is that without some notion of truth people are more easily responsive and likely accepting of lies.

Science was placed on a pedestal in the eighteenth century by many of its most enthusiastic supporters; unfairly as they eventually discovered. But for a short while it was probably one of the most open and receptive periods in history for scientific endeavors.

If we consider the inventions related to agriculture alone, the list is impressive. In addition to Jethro Tull's seed drilling machine, mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, there was beet sugar extraction, the threshing machine, the cotton gin, the winnowing machine, and the steam pump.

In 1749 David Hartley published Observations on Man, His frame, His Duty, and His Expectations. This was the beginning of modern psychology. Names like Voltaire, Hume, Adam Smith, Montesquieu appeared in this century, contributing to the modern beginnings of sociology, economics, political philosophy, and social criticism. And of course there was Jeremy Bentham, the founder of Utilitarianism.

The greatest good for the greatest number ended up being the common motto of Utilitarianism, a movement that captures the spirit of the eighteenth century as well as any other. Bentham was interested in the perfectibility of both man and society, but he had little interest in vague ideas or concepts that seemed to arrive from nowhere. He was never a big supporter of Rousseau. His accomplishments are too many to list here, but through his efforts improvements were made in the prison system, the legal system (getting rid of usury laws and imprisonment for debt), public health, education and others.

Science meant freeing the mind from what was thought of as religious superstition. The view from the pulpit, divine inspiration, revelation, the "truth" of the book were now placed separate and apart from what was referred to as science. The response that "God works in mysterious ways" was simply not enough. This is not to suggest that all people who believed in science in the eighteenth century were also atheists or agnostics, only that they were untroubled about keeping the two kingdoms separate.

Although part of the late seventeenth century, a man like Isaac Newton was the personification of what a scientist was supposed to be about. (Newton was also devoutly religious and a believer in alchemy.) It was Newton who said the universe could be understood by careful analysis, observation and, most importantly, through mathematics. There was a certain logic therefore that Deism would establish itself and become popular among many of the educated in both Europe and America.

Deism was a religious philosophy; it accepted God as the creator of a remarkable universe, who set the workings of earth in motion like a "clockmaker," to use a common metaphor of the period. Religious truth could be discovered by the powers of reason many deists believed. The deists tended to downplay the "miracles" in the bible as well as literal interpretations. Both Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin subscribed to the ideas of the deists.

The late nineteenth century retreated from a lot of the curiosity and the interst expressed in the eighteenth century about other cultures and civilizations. The West developed a general belief that the rest of the world had contributed virtually nothing to scientific knowledge and was incapable of conducting scientific research, at least by the standards thought acceptable in Europe and America. It was the "uniqueness" of ancient Greece that made the West "superior" claimed these same people--and made science possible.

Today, it sometimes seems that the pendulum may have swung back to another extreme. I recall reading somewhere, for example, that Greece had supposedly "stolen" Egypt's culture! Did the Egyptians have it hidden in a pyramid? Idiocy is idiocy is idiocy.

The West should be forever grateful that during Europe's Dark Age the Arabs preserved the ideas and discoveries of antiquity and went beyond many of them. The Chinese invented, among other things, the magnetic compass, gunpowder, as well as paper and printmaking. The Indians may have had a good idea that the orbit of planets was elliptical possibly a thousand years before Kepler. Perhaps even more significant the Indians might be the ones who discovered zero, no minor achievement in human history. The Mayans in Central America had a sophisticated understanding of the movement of the stars and the planets. And Babylon had some remarkable mathematical achievements long before the Greeks contributed anything. There are numerous examples throughout history.

The science writer Dick Teresi has stated that discovery, investigation, and science were occurring in a number of countries well before Greece ever appeared on the scene; it continued well after classical civilization collapsed in the West in the fifth century A.D. He also believes that science is still science, regardless of the motivations or reasons for pursuing it. In this he is responding to those western critics who say non-western science was not "pure." While much of science was pursued for religious purposes or to assure an emperor or a pharaoh that all was right with his or her place in the universe, it still resulted in some remarkable discoveries and achievements.

However, what happened in Europe, and America, in the eighteenth century was--if not unique--extraordinary, in my opinion. What the West did have was an idea, which they could call upon. This was an underpinning that allowed science to move ahead and withstand assault from those who regarded it with unmistakable hostility. And this idea, as far as I can tell, came from only one country, Greece. Whether or not you choose to call Greece part of the West, a Mediterranean culture, or place it in the North Africa sphere, it is where something quite unusual occurred.
to be continued....

CHAPTER THREE: Louis XIV Knows Weeds

2005-11-06T13:42:00.000-08:00

continued from 10/11/05

Any discussion of the eighteenth century should probably include something about the "con." While a connection between it and our search for the weed might seem tenuous, it does I think set the stage for a later century, where the relationship becomes clearly more obvious. And, many of the eighteenth century scams have a very modern look to them.

Nothing like "peer review" had been established. Some informal academic associations were forming and a few amateur scientists published monographs regarding their experiments and conclusions. But all of this was in its early stages. A gifted huckster with a silver tongue could always find the gullible, especially when the public was now being asked to re-examine old concepts and new ideas.

In England a Mary Tofts, even fooling the royal physician, convinced a significant number of her countrymen that she could give birth to rabbits. She was eventually found out when someone caught a servant buying the animals at the market. Shakespeare forgeries were also common; a William Ireland convinced a number of experts for some time that he'd found an unpublished Shakespeare manuscript entitled Vortigern and Rowena. The fact was that Ireland, the son of a bookseller, had written the manuscript himself.

The "science" of physiognomy appeared in the eighteenth century. The discoverer, Johann Lavater, claimed that by studying the outer appearance of all living things, you could know its character. For example, an elephant has an excellent memory because of its broad forehead. He went so far as to suggest that the judicial system could be dispensed with in most cases because once you knew the rules of physiognomy, you'd be able to tell if a person was capable of committing the crime.

Two major investment frauds thought up by several "astute" businessmen were committed during this time. One was called the South Sea Bubble and the other the Mississippi Bubble. It reminds me of the Enron-off-book-partnership-stock option-con-cum-derivative-whatever. Two companies were set up, one to trade with Spanish America and one to exploit the riches of Louisiana. Stocks were issued, backed by the government, and investors were told an incredible return was a sure thing. But there was no happy ending; the ventures collapsed, investors ended up with worthless stock, and the economy of France nearly collapsed.

Only imagination limited the variety of the cons. Miraculous drug cures abounded, magnetism that could cure impotence (along with sniffing some substance and watching erotic dances), and of course the age-old remedies that could turn back the clock of time. Some things never change. But what price progress?

To many in the eighteenth century it must have seemed that the world was getting smaller almost daily. Europeans were learning about other countries and cultures. With each new discovery of the world around them, Europe demanded more and more information.

The last time I was in Oregon I visited the Chinese gardens in downtown Portland, in the center of the city's Chinese neighborhood. It is an oasis of contemplation in the midst of a vibrant northwestern city. Portland's sister city is Suzhou, and designers and artisans from that city worked with Americans in the garden's construction, which began in 1999.

As the brochure states, the garden is to be thought of as a "Chinese landscape painting ... slowly unfolding to reveal its layered beauty of both nature and culture." And it's true. There is the balance one associates in the West with the Chinese culture, reflected in the garden's winding walkways, the different ponds, the pavilion, as well as the lounge house where you can go to have tea, play a musical instrument, or just sit. Among the plants in the garden are a variety of bamboo, water lilies, orchards, and perennials of different kinds. Yes, there is harmony and tranquility within a limited space. But I personally would rather wander through a tall grass prairie any day.

The interest in landscape themes that developed among Europeans in the eighteenth century had been common in Chinese literature and poetry for hundreds of years and later in Japan as well. The sounds of running water, the contour of rocks, and the spiritual enthusiasm for nature that the English, especially, raved about was an essential part of the Chinese culture, going back more than 2,500 years. But there was a profound underlying difference between the Chinese culture and the West.

We'll be looking at this when we visit antiquity, but suffice it to say that whereas many Europeans in the eighteenth century wanted to, once again, find the connection between humanity and nature, the Chinese (as well as the Japanese) never broke the original link. The eastern Daoist and Shinto belief always emphasized the ideal--of what we often hear in the West today--living in spiritual harmony with nature.
to be continued....

CHAPTER THREE: Louis XIV Knows Weeds

2005-10-11T10:21:00.000-07:00

continued from 9/15/05

Rococo has been called the final stage of Baroque. It began in France around 1700 and was more playful and less serious than Louis' Baroque austerity. It was noted for its delicate details, graceful curves and what I've always associated with the rococo style, those fat little cherubs painted on ceilings and gold statues in foyers with vapid expressions on their faces. Rococo was "an art of small courts," according to Kenneth Clark. "An art of elegance rather than greatness, an art in which religious motives were treated with grace and sentiment rather than solemn conviction."

Garden design also changed, in part to reflect the natural view that developed in the eighteenth century, and also because the "infinite" had become too costly and too impersonal. The garden, once again, set boundaries and became a place for contemplation. Caves and grottos were popular, especially with the French and the Italians. In England, gardens were designed to replicate rustic and pastoral scenes. With the less serious mood of rococo and the popularity of naturalistic themes, "diversity" became more acceptable ... well, as compared with the previous period. Grass did not necessarily have to be always the same height and spontaneity was tolerated in terms of the kind and variety of plants that would be allowed to appear. Artificiality and contrivance, nevertheless, did not vanish.

The appearance of the natural was what was important. Marie Antoinette was fond of dressing up and playing a dairymaid in the gardens of Versailles in the late eighteenth century and probably thought she demonstrated true understanding of her subjects. But what we most remember about Ms. Antoinette is not her milking the cows from time to time, but the remark about her subjects "eating cake." Her head soon "rolled" along with the hundreds of others.

The word "happiness" is heard often in the eighteenth century. Less anyone think it means merely the idle rich playing hide-and-go-seek on the country estate, Thomas Jefferson thought it sufficiently important to be included in the Declaration of Independence in 1776: and the Purfuit of Happinefs. Happiness became a desirable aim in the eighteenth century. Joy, love, and pleasure on a smaller and more intimate scale were not only acceptable but encouraged after the cold, imperial austerity of Louis XIV.

One of my favorite art and cultural styles is chinoiserie, a near obsession in the eighteenth century. It took Europe by storm and eventually reached the United States. The idealized view of nature that arose was frequently linked, as has been said, with the "superiority" of other cultures outside of Europe. The Chinese culture was one deemed better by many Europeans.

Missionaries in the seventeenth century were sending reports to Europe about the ancient Chinese culture, which seemed so incredibly exotic and mysterious to the intellectuals and aristocrats of Europe. It wasn't long before Chinese furniture, clothing, porcelain, parasols and numerous other items appeared in the houses and chateaus throughout Europe. It was only a matter of time before operas and plays with Chinese themes appeared, then Chinese philosophy. And of course the Chinese garden. Chinoiserie, however, was much more than a temporary European fad in the eighteenth and nineteenth century with things Chinese.

Over the centuries Chinese caravans had traveled throughout the various regions selling their wares and often dropping shards of broken dishes and vases along the way. Other cultures discovered these Chinese goods, learned the techniques, frequently improved upon them, and often enough sold them back to the Chinese.

What came to be called chinoiserie included not only a Chinese bronze statute from the fifth century B.C., but a thirteenth century brass canteen from Syria, a silver plate from Persia in the third century A.D., and an elaborate ewer from Korea in the twelfth century. Chinoiserie was all of the above and more. All of this eventually appeared in Europe and made the Europeans keenly aware of a world beyond theirs.

At the same time not all the interest was in only one direction--going to Europe. The Chinese Emperor Quin Long had a Jesuit priest and his colleagues construct a collection of Sino-European style buildings, along with a maze and a water clock in his Garden of Perfect Brightness, which was part of the summer palace. The fountains were operated by hydraulic machinery. Unfortunately, what must have been an extraordinary garden landscape was destroyed some seventy years later by French and British military forces.

A popular movie made in the mid-60s and based on Henry Fielding's novel was Tom Jones. The film captures exceedingly well the life of eighteenth century England; especially that unique class called the English gentry. Within the film's farce and comedy a telling visual and intellectual picture of the century emerges.

While the Baroque and rococo style were found in England, especially among London's elite, it did not exert the same influence as it did in the rest of Europe. For the increasingly powerful Whig aristocracy, whose social life resided primarily outside of the cities, these "foreign" styles smacked too much of monarchy and absolutism. The English gentry were interested in increasing the power and influence of parliamentary government, not imitating European royalty.

Along with fox hunting, hypocrisy, and hackneyed religious expression, the idyllic, pastoral landscape setting was highly desired among English country estates, portrayed so well in Tom Jones. In one scene Tom Jones, played by the actor Albert Finney, strolls over a wooden bridge where he finds his true love Miss. Sophie Weston, the daughter of a local squire, holding a birdcage that contains a thrush. The setting is perfect: The bridge spans a pond where swans are swimming. In the background are numerous wildflowers, trees, and bushes. Weeds are most definitely flourishing among this lush vegetation. And if you look closely you can almost make out a tiny cottage or perhaps a gazebo on the far side of the pond. Everything is meant to appear natural and unplanned. Absolutely the right place to set up your easel and finish that landscape you've been working on for the past several weeks, before heading back to the main house for a sumptuous meal. Of course I'd also include my favorite dog sitting at my feet.

This was also the time of the gifted amateur, the individual who might pursue architecture, astronomy, chemistry, engineering, geology or horticulture. Think of the Renaissance man revisited in the eighteenth century; think of Thomas Jefferson at home designing the University of Virginia.

In terms of gardening and landscaping, the English were continually tinkering and experimenting, be it in hydraulics, water technology, and terracing or mineral and plant collection. They picked up the Italian interest in grotto design and turned it into a mania. On many a country estate the squire, or his wife, would insist on some kind of cave, natural or manmade, occasionally with artificial ruins nearby, or real ones if the estate owner was lucky enough to have some Roman remains on his property or a collapsed medieval monastery. It was here in the cave where a young man could profess his undying love to the woman who'd captured his heart. As we will find out, the cave or grotto goes way back into antiquity.
to be continued....

CHAPTER THREE: Louis XIV Knows Weeds

2005-09-15T13:02:00.000-07:00

continued from 8/30/2005

The end of the seventeenth century was the time when Europeans in large numbers began arriving in North America and drew this continent into Europe's uproar and excitement. Native Americans had been living in America thousands of years before the European settlers arrived and had obviously been altering the landscape in various ways. We know now that different Indian tribes were planting gardens, growing crops, cutting down trees, and on occasion deliberately burning grassland. Plants had been adapting and changing long before they greeted the newcomers from Europe. But the arrival of Europeans sped up a number of changes and introduced new plants that had not been present before.

The first colonists who arrived in America in the seventeenth century found mostly annual grasses, not the pasture grasses that were in Europe. The native grasses were far less nutritious, and many of the farm animals starved to death in the early years. Different types of European grass slowly replaced the native grasses.

As more ships arrived in the latter part of the seventeenth century, diverse kinds of grass and weeds arrived, dumped and discarded near the various ports. Virginia Scott Jenkins in her book The Lawn A History of an American Obsession mentions that in 1672 someone provided a list of European 'weeds' that were common in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The dandelion was one, having already "stowed away" aboard ship and prepared to make a new start in America.

By the eighteenth century June grass was a permanent resident in America and 200 years later would be our choice as possibly the most popular lawn grass, needing to be constantly protected from the weed. Its most common name today is Kentucky bluegrass. More and more of the native grasses disappeared, to be replaced by grasses from other regions in the world.

Weeds made themselves at home in their new land. Farmers that overgrazed or simply wore out their land found new residents appearing such as thistles, briars, and sour grass, as soon as the farmers deserted these old fields. Some pasture grasses would not grow in parts of the country where it was simply too hot or too dry. Grasses that would grow, like Bermuda grass, were considered weeds.

At the same time, European explorers were sending back to the Old World seeds and strange new plant specimens, such as poison ivy and the Venus flytrap. As well, wealthy Europeans were demanding exotic new items like tobacco, beans, squash, and corn from America.

America by the middle of the eighteenth century was growing in population and moving westward. Along the way they acquired new plants from Europe and Africa, as well as discovering ones native to North America. As more land came under cultivation and the popularity of the "parlor gardens" increased, the weed played an increasingly more important role. Americans were also beginning to hear about the "English" lawn.

The word "lawn" makes its first official appearance in America in the third decade of the eighteenth century. The lawn started in France and in England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. It referred to grass near the house ( house meaning palace or chateau ) that was mown--not by a lawnmower of course. A few wealthy Americans learned of these European lawns. In fact, some of the Founding Fathers like Washington and Jefferson began experimenting with lawns, following European guidelines. The Lawn, however, did not become a common word in America until after the Civil War.

Versailles has to be one of the grandest movie sets ever built. It certainly must have overwhelmed its daily visitors in the late seventeenth century, as they strolled through the palace and the hundreds of surrounding acres. Louis created an illusion that had hardly been seen since Rome was at its zenith.

The illusion was the domination of nature. The king was well aware that this so-called human domination of the natural world was not real, but like any astute, absolute dictator, he knew good theater was as important as a powerful military force in maintaining his control and influencing others. ( In the winter of 1999-2000 a freak storm caused havoc throughout Europe and in the process destroyed many of the trees and vegetation first planted at Versailles during Louis' reign.)

Through the discoveries of men like Copernicus ( the heliocentric universe ), Kepler ( the elliptical movement of planets ), Galileo ( inventor of the telescope ), and Descartes ( the originator of analytical geometry ), Louis had a scientific underpinning for his vision, as vast as the recently discovered universe.

Louis employed some extremely talented landscape designers and gardeners, who created a terrain that seemed to extend into infinity, blending in to the natural environment, but without any apparent limits whatsoever. And the truth is if you visit Versailles today and stand on the hill behind the palace and gaze off into the distance, you find yourself looking at an infinite horizon.

Of course it was only under an absolute monarch, assisted by a few brilliant financial talents in the early years of the monarchy, which allowed a Versailles to be built and maintained in the first place. Ultimately it would collapse under its own weight; it was, after all, an illusion.

Hundreds were employed to maintain this vision. Villages and fields were plowed under and peasants were forced to move. Canals were built, fountains constructed along with underground water systems, elaborate walkways assembled, and of course the gardens themselves, where the aristocracy played and performed literally and figuratively.

While there was an overall structure and organization to Versailles, its garden parts were varied and never the same. Some sections had elaborate fountains with numerous water jets, other areas were filled with statutes depicting mythological figures, and still other areas had geometrically arranged flower beds, trees, and hedges. Flowers were an important part of Versailles; Louis had a passionate interest in them, especially exotic plants and flowers such as Tuberoses. He employed several botanists at Versailles throughout his reign to conduct research as well as seek out new species.

The weed was not a welcomed visitor in the king's garden. Louis wanted to control nature, organize it, and keep it under his grip. The only spontaneity he desired was that which he approved of at any given time. The many workers in the gardens were kept busy making sure no uninvited guest arrived. The height of the grass was vigorously maintained, topiary design clearly defined. There was no margin for error. Every plant had to fit into the overall cosmology of the king's universe.

The ideas espoused at Versailles influenced garden design, plant science, as well as building construction for decades to come. But the scale that Louis XIV captured would not last. By the beginning of the eighteenth century it was already running out of steam. Today, you can still get the feel of the former grandeur of Versailles, but much has changed. It's simply too wasteful and expensive to maintain in the way it once was.

Some time ago I came across an article in the New York Times entitled "Big, Bigger, Biggest: The Supersize Suburb." The writer tells of some Washington, D.C. suburbs, where a number of homeowners want their property designed and landscaped so it will look huge. These owners apparently desire fewer trees and less vegetation in order, according to the writer, to impress "prospective admirers" driving by. In a few instances people are asking builders to create a hill on their property so the house can rest on top of it. Louis XIV would have understood completely the illusion.

By 1700 the economic power of France was in decline and Louis' army was about to suffer a series of military defeats. The Sun King would die in 1715.
to be continued....

CHAPTER THREE: Louis XIV Knows Weeds

2005-08-30T07:07:00.000-07:00

continued from 8/13/2005

Nature strides in confidently in the eighteenth century. Not a return to the life of the hunter-gatherer, but as an ideal, brought about certainly in part by the decline of organized religion. As one who enjoys hiking up a mountain, I was brought up short the first time I realized that throughout most of history mountains were merely a pain in the neck or a good place to hide from something or someone.

It was not until the eighteenth century that one began hearing frequent, rhapsodic references to mountains. "Pregnant with religion and poetry," the English poet Thomas Gray said about a mountain he'd visited in 1739. Many Europeans with the time and the money were now hiking and visiting natural settings throughout Europe. A few were traveling abroad.

Of course some, like the Marquis de Sade, thought the only thing nature did was to make life miserable for humankind. If asked, the peasants who worked in the fields all day for wealthy landowners would probably have agreed with de Sade. But in spite of the few detractors two certifiable giants of the eighteenth century pushed nature to new heights and insured its importance. One was Rousseau and the other was Goethe.

The ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau were often misunderstood, then and now. In basic terms he wanted to create a better society. His two most famous works are Emile and The Social Contract. The former is concerned with utopian education and the latter on a utopian society. Justice replaced instinct and man acquired a sense of morality, according to Rousseau, when he left a state-of-nature. He couldn't go back. While there had been certain advantages in nature, there were far more advantages outside of it. What was important was to strive toward that ideal. Rousseau believed the model society needed a credo that all its members could agree upon. All well and good; however, Rousseau went on to say that those that did not agree should be banished. His ideas were regularly interpreted by various individuals and groups to support their own purposes and ambitions.

The idea of the "noble savage" also became popular during this time. The supposed virtues of people like the Tahitians, the Chinese, and the American Indian--as well as the American colonist--were espoused throughout Europe. Many of the intellectuals believed these cultures lived in harmony with nature, unlike the Europeans. Others said Christian morality only resulted in crime and unhappiness.

While most of the supporters of these "natural" societies had not visited places like Tahiti, they could readily see what was happening in Europe. By the mid-1700s the Industrial Revolution was underway, at least in England. Those that had lost their land through the enclosure movement were crowding into the cities seeking any kind of work and living in incredible filth, squalor, and exploitation. That an idealized state of nature was attractive to so many people is not surprising.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, among his many achievements, was also an accomplished botanist, who had compiled numerous drawings of different plants. He believed all living things ( including plants ) were evolving to a more complex state; the important thing was not to interfere with this adaptation. While Goethe's ideas did not have a mass appeal, his beliefs became an important part of the intellectual ferment of the eighteenth century.

Rousseau, Goethe, and others placed nature, and its varied definitions, in the center of European thought. As Christianity lost much of its influence in a number of countries, it also saw its monopoly on Truth slipping away. Nature, encouraged by a number of sincere and highly articulate individuals, moved in quickly in an attempt to align truth with nature, making them inseparable.

In order to locate some of the ideas that blossomed in the eighteenth century, which in due course had an impact on our weed, we need to slip back into the previous century. As already mentioned, the seventeenth century was about a lot of things, but it was without a doubt the story of one person in particular: Louis XIV of France, the "Sun King."

Louis XIV became king in 1643. L'etat c'est moi, I am the state became the mantra of Louis' reign. He increased the power and the glory of the absolute monarchy to new heights, and French culture became the standard by which the rest of Europe measured itself. For perhaps forty or fifty years France was the most powerful military force in Europe. Louis also turned his father's hunting lodge, Versailles, into the spirit of the organized, authoritarian society, making it today one of the most popular--and crowded--tourist attractions in the world.

The Baroque style is a term used by art historians to denote a particular form that first developed in Italy near the end of the sixteenth century, but soon expanded to the rest of Europe and took on different shapes. Overall it tended to be a style that emphasized the ornate and elaborate, be it in architecture, in sculpture or in painting. In France it became known as "Baroque classicism," an expression of the king's absolutism. "Classical" is attached to Baroque during the reign of Louis XIV because of the comparison sometimes drawn between Louis' reign and classical antiquity in general. No one would ever accuse the "Sun King" of having a small ego.

The Louvre in Paris, one of the most famous museums in the world, exemplifies Louis' mindset. Work was begun on the unfinished building at the beginning of the king's reign. Before long it became obvious the building was to have an overall look of imperial Rome. The Louvre would be massive, austere, and radiating power, but it would also contain the Baroque style of curved walls, high domes and detailed carvings.

The place that puts its stamp on the age, however, was Versailles, that amazing monument to supreme human narcissism. It would eventually lead to a general weariness among Europeans, the near bankruptcy of France, and finally revolution a century later, carrying all of Europe along with it. But what a run while it lasted. Versailles was also where landscape design, gardens, and the search for weeds took a new path.
to be continued....

CHAPTER THREE: Louis XIV Knows Weeds

2005-08-13T12:46:00.000-07:00

continued from 7/29/05

And they think we're burning witches when we're only burning weeds.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton 1874-1936

Plants have tiny mouths. This was not an uncommon belief among many Europeans in the eighteenth century. Loose soil, according to some people, made it easier for the plants to eat the dirt. Jethro Tull, an Englishman who invented the seed drill and horse drawn hoes in the early eighteenth century, believed soil that was powdery or flaky would supply all the nutrients a plant required.

The eighteenth century in Europe never had the flamboyance or excitement of the seventeenth or nineteenth century--at least that's what I thought as a student. In the seventeenth century witches were being burned, the Turks threatened Vienna, Protestants and Catholics were slaughtering one another, and those Four Musketeers were foiling the nefarious plots of Cardinal Richelieu. The nineteenth century was about revolution, Percy Bysshe Shelly giving his life for the liberation of Greece from the evil Turks, and Beethoven composing a symphony in praise of Napoleon, before the little general turned out to be just another despot.

The eighteenth century, however, was not dull and stogy. It was known as the age of enlightenment and reason, but it was definitely not devoid of passion and ideals. The century set in motion many of the ideas and the foundations that are part of our lives today, not only in the West but also throughout the world--for better and perhaps for worse.

New discoveries occurred in steady succession. A Swedish doctor, Carl Linneaus, arranged plants into 24 categories and systematized them in elaborate detail, a Frenchman created a 44-volume Natural History, possibly the most widely read scientific work of the century. Tull's invention allowed the sowing of seeds in uniform rows, which now permitted weeding between the rows of seedlings during their growth. Yields improved dramatically. The selective breeding of livestock started in the early 1700s, and the methodical attempt to study and control pests was spreading throughout Europe.

Two other changes at the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century had a profound effect on agriculture and the lives of people. The first was the enclosure movement in England, which had started in the late seventeenth century. Hedges were now encircling more and more farmland. Before, land had been largely communal; everyone could graze their animals and raise crops on community land. But as new crops, new methods of breeding, and new cultivation techniques developed pressure grew to enclose the land, in order to improve both the yield and the quality, and insure better management. While the farming system was undoubtedly revolutionized, many people lost their land, became dispossessed, and had to find work in the cities.

With the spreading enclosure of land and the rising power of the landowners, the Norfolk Four-Course System was established. Throughout the Middle Ages and up to the late seventeenth century, fields lay fallow every three years; farmers slaughtered their farm animals in the fall because they had no forage crops to feed them in the winter. The Norfolk system changed all this.

The fallow year disappeared and fodder crops, such as cornstalks, hay, and straw, were fed to the animals. This produced a lot of manure and urine, enriching the soil and ultimately increasing the harvests. It was not long before these new methods and techniques spread to the rest of Europe.

But it was one grand change that would put its stamp firmly on the West in the eighteenth century. This change was secularization. Religion, up until this time, had been central to European civilization; it permeated everything. Religion ceased to have the same influence in the eighteenth century. Not that religious life and thought disappeared, but it receded to the margins.

The wars and upheaval that dominated the seventeenth century lessened in the eighteenth. This relative peace gave people--at least the wealthy and the educated--the opportunity to pursue scientific endeavors, consider new ideas, and travel. Other societies were discovered that were as "advanced" as Europe. Perhaps Christianity did not have the market on religious truth; doubt was cast on many of the old assumptions. The Christian doctrine of man's "unworthiness" was--if not discarded completely--locked away in the closet, as the citizens of Europe and the colonists in America embarked on new frontiers, both literally and figuratively.

In the eighteenth century the French salon established itself as one of the most influential institutions in Europe. It was also a place where women exerted considerable influence over the politics and the culture of the period. In addition to being places of intrigue and secret rendezvous, the salon was also where a few brilliant minds could meet others with the same brilliance. What kept these salons from becoming repositories of pompous hot air, according to Sir Kenneth Clark, was that the French upper classes were not "oppressively" rich.

A degree of wealth is needed for a civilization to progress Clark believed, but he thought massive wealth was harmful to most civilizations. He suggested that perhaps "splendor is dehumanizing," and we humans need some sense of limitation. One can agree or disagree with Clark's musings, but I can't help but think of our own "masters" of the universe in the 90s and the pathetic corporate criminals currently being led off in handcuffs. Will any new ideas result from all of these excesses? I think there are reasons to have serious doubts at this point in our history.

On Thomas Jefferson's tomb is inscribed the following: Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia. Nothing is written about his being the third president of the United States. But the inscription does say a great deal about Jefferson's ardent belief in clearly defined human rights (while not forgetting the institution of slavery ), that the state has no business in proselytizing religious views, and an educated citizenry is necessary for a democratic society to succeed. Jefferson was very much a man of the Enlightenment and of reason.
to be continued....

CHAPTER TWO: We Know What's Best

2005-07-29T13:50:00.000-07:00

continued from 5/26/05

While Crug's position in the community had increased dramatically and was noticeable to everyone, something else was occurring, which was not so obvious, intentional or readily apparent, but would nevertheless have a profound impact on the development of Truth, not only in the community but throughout the Fertile Crescent. Merka was acquiring an almost mystical influence in her village as well as in the smaller nearby community because of her plant knowledge. Merka had reached a point in her life, now that her children no longer needed her attention, where she could devote all her time to the "study" of her green neighbors.

Animism, a belief that spirits inhabit all things, be they animate or inanimate objects, dominated the lives of our ancient ancestors. We had rituals, incantations, and amulets to make sure we stayed on the good side of the omnipresent supernatural powers. Animism still exists in parts of the world today.

There are an estimated 45,000 Indians who live in the remote Sierra Nevada de Santa Maria region of Colombia. Sadly, their world is now being invaded by the various factions fighting one another in the continuous Colombian civil war. The "modern" world has little regard for the culture and way of life of these Indians.

The Indians that live in this region believe their mountain to be the "central" part of the world and they are the true guardians of the planet. The outsiders or Younger Brothers, as the Indians refer to these invaders, are believed to be, because of their ignorance, a threat to Earth.

One of the responses is to summon the various Indian priests throughout the region for a spiritual session. The priests will hold natural materials such as cotton fibers and bark for hours at a time and "direct" thoughts and prayers into them. When they believe the objects are filled with assorted thoughts, the priests will then present them as offerings to the mountain.

In the early 1980's, as a personnel director for a manufacturing plant in Miami, Florida, I had an experience which brought home to me that the spirit world could inhabit a modern city like Miami as much as a village in the jungles of Brazil. The majority of the employees who worked on the factory floor were immigrants from Central America and Haiti. One morning I learned that several employees refused to go near their machines because some dead chickens were found under two machines. It turns out that we had a Santeria priest working in our plant, who had been offended by some of his colleagues. He placed a curse on them. Santeria is well known in Cuba and is a mixture of Catholicism and African religions, possessing numerous rituals and incantations to deal with the multitude of spirits that dwell everywhere.

Even eight thousand years ago, however, it's unlikely that every belief was based solely on a "feeling" or purported revelation. Fruit falling from a tree was not automatically attributed to a supernatural entity; even then not everything was merely unexplained magic. People were capable of observing and making sense of things around them. Nineteenth century imperialism may have found comfort in attributing ignorance and superstition to everyone else, but ignorance, superstition, as well as objectivity can be found among all peoples.

Merka began giving names to her plants and was able to describe exactly what happened to them in their stages of growth. This was real power because she was, without realizing it, creating a plant "language." To many of her neighbors Merka "obviously" had mystical powers over plants because she knew their names. What might this mean?

The remaining building and the one most recently completed, on the other side of the storage shed, had been Crug's brainchild and perhaps his most cherished goal. He had convinced the Council nearly one full season before that it would be the most important structure in the community. The workmen were now putting the final touches on the monument out in front of the building. The first ziggurat in the Fertile Crescent would be completed in a matter of hours, in time for the ceremony scheduled on the next full moon in five days, on a warm June night somewhere in southern Iraq.

This would not be the grand monument that would dot the Mesopotamian landscape several thousand years later, but only a small, plain structure, made out of wood and stones, about six feet high. Nevertheless, its significance can not be underestimated. This monument would be perhaps the first visible reminder of the connection between the community and the all-encompassing spirit world. Crug told the villages that the phantoms he'd seen in the cave had commanded him to build the ziggurat.

The building behind the monument was the community temple, where villages could now come together to make offerings to the gods. Crug was the unanimous choice of the community to maintain the temple. On the night of the full moon, in a torchlight procession, he was appointed to the newly created position of "temple guardian." He would have three assistants. In addition, the Council agreed to provide two soldiers as permanent temple guards. But there was one thing Crug had not planned on.

Over the next two months an increasing number of villagers declared publicly that Merka should be made the temple priestess. After all, the villagers said, Merka had influence over those living things that were essential to the community's survival. She brought life. Crug couldn't fail but notice that his position might not be as secure as he once thought.

Merka was well aware there was a clamor for her to become a "priestess," but she was now fully engaged in her plant studies. She wanted to know why some plants prospered and others didn't. Why did certain insects and birds appear to be attracted to one plant and not another? What was the best time to harvest different cereal crops? And perhaps as important as anything else, Merka was not as ready as most to rip up or ignore those plants that did not seem to have an obvious use in the community. She was willing to observe and to study them.

What ultimately occurred in this community we'll never know. But we can speculate. Dissension increased in the village as the different factions jockeyed for influence, the various sides declaring they knew what was best. Crug's faction decided that more food should be set aside in the storage shed while the farmers, led by Thorat, declared "enough was enough." There was no good reason Thorat stated, especially when the food now in the shed was being passed out and given away for apparently no reason that was based on need. And in spite of Merka's declaration that she did not want to be the temple priestess, her supporters, more vociferous than ever, demanded that Crug and his followers make room for the one person who truly possessed magical gifts.

A short time after Thorat told the Council the farmers would not provide additional food for the storage shed, he was ambushed one morning while working alone in the fields. Crug and his supporters said marauding bandits had killed Thorat, but no proof of this was ever discovered. And then disaster struck the community.

After several full seasons of abundant harvests, locusts attacked the crops. Within three days the crops were destroyed as well as most of the food in the storage shed, which the locust had no trouble getting into. Crug blamed Merka. After all, if she was so powerful, how could she have let this happen? If they had listened to Crug this disaster would not have occurred, he told the villagers. Merka's eldest daughter remained in the community, but Merka, after being invited to live in the neighboring village, decided it would be best if she left.

Our imaginary community in Iraq may or may not have survived. What did survive, however, was Merka's knowledge, perhaps passed on to her children or other villages. And along with the beginnings of plant science and organized religion came the many versions of Truth. And while religion encouraged the belief that God and Truth were synonymous, Merka's interest in plants encouraged the idea that careful observation and patience were necessary if we were to understand that which gave us nourishment.

The weed made its first appearance some 10,000 years ago, give or take a millennium. As soon as agricultural communities developed and humankind began domesticating plants, it was just a matter of time before we were introduced to weeds. We can only guess about what plant might have achieved the distinction of becoming the "first" weed.

One of my favorites for the first weed team would certainly be the dandelion, that bright yellow flower whose seeds are spread by the wind. Ten thousand years later we're still chasing this flower across lawns, trying to eliminate it by tearing it out by the roots or overwhelming it with tons of weed killer.

Another plant that would likely make anyone's first team would be the cockle, a rose pink flower with black markings. The cockle enjoyed making an appearance in wheat and barley fields. The seeds of the cockle are poisonous if ground with flour. But the Romans eventually discovered a use for this plant.

The term "weed" has been a convenient name throughout history for any plant that someone didn't like, couldn't find a use for, or was unable to explain. There are nearly as many definitions of weeds as there are humans who claim they've uncovered one lurking in their field, garden or lawn. This is what makes the search so interesting and the journey well worth pursuing.

Probably now is as good a time as any to jump ahead some 7,000 years, in order to find out what some of the ancestors of Thorat and Merka might be up to. How far have we progressed? What has happened to our weed neighbors? We shall of course return to our murky past once again. There is still too much left unsaid.
to be continued....

Slick Out ( a short story )

2005-06-03T13:24:00.000-07:00

"Here they come. You ever notice how kids and bovines travel in herds?" These were the last words I heard him say. Twenty minutes later the state of Missouri executed Richard Adrian Marsh. At 12:01 a.m. on December 1, 1997 he was pronounced dead.

I met Richard Marsh when I was writing an article on the state's legal system for a Kansas City magazine. It had taken six months for him to agree to see me. What finally persuaded him was an article I'd written several years before while living in Florida.

He was born in Connecticut in 1955. He served in the Marines for three years and eventually ended up as a machinist in East Hartford, Connecticut, where he was eventually promoted to assistant shop foreman.

He told me he started dating this woman named Shelly. She had a "beautiful neck," he declared more than once. "Everything was pretty normal by regular standards. I might have been twenty-seven when it could have started ... gradual." The first time he said this to me his light gray eyes seemed to darken and match the color of his hair, and the lines at the corners of his narrow mouth became more pronounced.

The day before his thirtieth birthday he said he was driving to work at 6:30 in the morning, the traffic heavy as usual. Someone was right on his bumper, driving a "gas-guzzling-polluting pickup." He chuckled that first time he told me. He said he imagined stopping his car, pulling out a 357 Magnum from under the seat, getting out and blowing the front window of the truck away, and watching the driver's head explode. He yawned. "Perfectly normal fantasy." But then he told me he had his epiphany, a word he used often. He said a quiet revelation came over him; he'd decided that the stranger in the pickup truck would only live for a week more at the most. That was the beginning.

The "bumper humper," as he referred to him, was the first. He tore his stomach open with a kitchen knife. He remained "purely" calm for six months, and then it started again. Next was a vice-president of a bank with a chain, a wide receiver with an ice pick, a Lutheran minister with an ax, one limb at a time, an editor of a fashion magazine with a dull razor, and a Texas Congressman with a shotgun blast to the groin. "Ten years is not a bad run, especially when everything is trying to slick out."

The reason Richard Adrian Marsh agreed to see me was that he had read in this magazine article I wrote that I was a member of The Nature Conservancy, as was he. I mentioned in my story that I was concerned about the decreasing number of the gentle Manatee along the Florida coast due to careless boaters, dredgers and water polluters. Richard told me he was concerned about the Manatee as well.

CHAPTER TWO: We Know What's Best

2005-05-26T11:43:00.000-07:00

continued from 5/7/05

Life in general had been good to Thorat and Merka. They had four healthy and responsible children. The eldest son, now taller than his father, was thinking of joining the village militia. Merka and Thorat had some misgivings about this idea; they'd hoped he would take over the wheat and barley fields in a few years, but they believed their son had a right to choose his own way. The eldest daughter had her mother's instincts for plants and was assuming more and more responsibility for the gardens, allowing Merka to tend their experimental plot and advise the villagers.

Thorat had been a member of the Council of Ten for a short time, but left when he felt he could be more productive taking care of his fields. He was more interested in doing something rather than merely talking about it. He was also having some doubts about the growing influence of the Council in deciding what was "best" for the community, but he'd kept most of his feelings to himself. As one of the more influential and respected members of the community, he had originally supported Crug's proposal for the storage shed, but his misgivings increased as he saw the growing and arbitrary influence of a small handful of people, led by Crug.

Different plants were springing up from the soil around the community, and Merka was kept busy identifying them. One day she discovered a plant with ribbon leaves that was long and a clear green color. The stalk was about six inches in height and had little white flowers. We can not be sure if Merka or any of her contemporaries learned its usefulness, but we know that four or five thousand years later it was well known that the bulb of this plant was valuable. After it was dried it could be eaten, and it proved to be a lifesaver during periods of famine. This plant was known as Dove's Dung.

Perhaps someone in Merka's community stumbled across what would prove to be one of the most sought after plants in human history, both a blessing and a curse to humankind. This plant grew up to a person's waist and had a beautiful flower that was white or lavender with a rich purple color at the base of its four petals. The plant came to be named Gall. Gall is the juice of the opium poppy.

Truth was about to make its first serious appearance in our community in southern Iraq. With the early beginnings of "rules and regulations," Crug may have understood intuitively that he could not always count on informal alliances to insure his permanent influence. In fairness to Crug he genuinely believed he knew what was best for the community, not unlike many of our contemporary world leaders, corporate CEO's and religious advisors. He had to still establish some legitimacy.

What motivated Crug? Possibly some inner voice spoke to him or he'd had a vision on a hot Thursday afternoon. Certainly one of the good things about a revelation is that you don't have to prove it, only convince others that you had one ... ideally one which shows the "correct" course of action for everyone else. We do, however, have some basic information, which may help us to understand what drove Crug.

Several years before, Crug and two of his companions, quite by accident, discovered the cave that had been part of the village's tradition for as long as anyone could remember. No one knew when or how the tradition got started, but it had been part of the village's cultural life seemingly forever.

Like the famous Chauvet Cave discovered in France in 1940, our cave in Iraq was covered with awe-inspiring wall paintings depicting bison and other large animals in various poises, giving us a shadowy inkling of Paleolithic man. The Chauvet Cave in France may be some 30,000 years old.

This cave had a powerful influence on Crug, who said later he'd felt the presence of the spirits. Crug's two companions readily confirmed that something had indeed happened in that cave, which frightened them a great deal. Crug told this story many times and perhaps without realizing it, added certain embellishments each time he recounted it.

The natural world elicited both awe and dread among our ancient ancestors and was never separate and apart from the daily lives of the people. The forces of light and dark, unseen spirits, and strange gods needed to be appeased constantly. It was essential that an equilibrium be maintained in the world if humankind hoped to have any chance of peace and tranquility. Crug, as well as most everyone else, believed this with all their heart.

At the same time, Crug was a practical man who measured success in concrete terms. His meeting with the nearby village, two years before, had been incredibly successful. He'd convinced the smaller community that a permanent trading arrangement would benefit both villages. Above all, the other village offered Crug's delegation ten sheep and one of their young sheepherder to watch over them for fourteen complete days, until an individual from Crug's community could be trained properly.

Both communities did benefit. The smaller village increased its agricultural production and the larger community developed a sizeable herd of sheep. Merka and Thorat also developed some friendships with several people from the other community, which proved to be important some time later.

Crug was now one of the two most important members of the Council of Ten. It was not uncommon to hear people in the village ask, "What does Crug believe?" It was Crug who got the community to support a permanent meetings place for the Council. On any given day now you could find villagers out in front of this building waiting to speak with one of the Council members--often with some token of thanks, such as a basket, jewelry, or sometimes food.
to be continued....

CHAPTER TWO: We Know What's Best

2005-05-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

continued from 4/12/05

Crug was a boyhood friend of Thorat. But unlike Thorat, Crug had been only an average hunter, lacking Thorat's physical strength and stamina. But as the community grew and got, well, just more complicated, the two primary talents that Crug possessed became very important. He had a way-with-words and, to use a modern term, possessed outstanding organizational skills. He would have likely been an ideal candidate on one of our "reality" television shows, desperate to become the "winner."

Crug was now the youngest member of the Council of Ten, a group of men who met informally about once every full moon to discuss community issues. They had no authority to set rules, but the village increasingly listened to what they had to say. Their ideas often made sense, and many of their suggestions improved life within the community. Crug, however, thought some changes needed to be made; he had a number of specific proposals to make to the Council.

Crug's first proposal was that the community ought to establish formal trade with the nearby village that was successfully raising sheep. This animal could be a dependable source of meat as well as clothing. An older member of the Council asked what would their community do if the other village was not interested in closer trade or wished to teach them the finer points of sheep raising.

Crug waited respectfully while two or three members discussed his proposal and then he said, "What is the Council's most important responsibility?"

"To give good advice is important," someone replied. Other members nodded in agreement.

"Yes, good advice is important," Crug agreed. He paused. "But what good is advice if there is no community to listen to it?"

An older man with a crooked leg, respected by everyone, squinted over at Crug. "What do you mean?"

"I think our most important responsibility is to make certain our village remains strong and continues to grow."

"Crug, you are telling us what we already know. We must always give good advice."

"Even if it's not listened to," another member said with a smile.

"Ah." Crug looked around the circle. "This is what I want to talk about. I have a plan, which will guarantee our community will prosper." He had their attention.

Crug proposed that the village establish a permanent group of hunters who would search for wild game throughout the season. After only a few minutes of discussion everyone agreed that this proposal made a lot of sense.

Crug's next proposal stirred some debate. He wanted the community to have a small--but permanent--militia to "protect" the village in case of attack. Crug pointed out that there had been two large roving bands of hunters sighted within the last twenty days. As their community prospered, Crug suggested, these bands might decide to take food from their community. In the end the Council reached a compromise. They'd establish a small contingent of soldiers to watch over the fields.

Crug next proposed that within five full days a delegation should go to the nearby village to discuss trade and sheep. He offered to lead the delegation, if the Council agreed. The Council concurred without hesitation.

Crug's final proposal caused the most debate and at times heated disagreements erupted. He wanted the community to build a storage shed for grain and vegetables. This would be by far the largest structure in their community. The purpose, as Crug explained, was to insure that sufficient food always be available; no one could know when a harvest might be bad. What if the farmers did something wrong? He reminded them what it was like when a number of their friends had starved to death, not that long ago.

No one could doubt Crug's persuasive ability or for that matter the logic behind his proposal. At the same time, several Council members knew instinctively that if they built this community food shed something would change in the village. Perhaps not for the best.

First of all the proposal would have to be brought before the entire community. Who was going to build the shed? Who would determine how much food would be placed in the shed? Who would decide who in the village needed what? These were a few of the questions that were debated.

By the time the meeting ended for the day, Crug believed that the community would eventually go in the direction he wanted. He knew he could count on at least five members of the Council for support. He also had some proposals he'd not brought up, but in time he would raise them as well.

Another two full seasons passed. Even to a casual observer the village looked different. There were more permanent structure, and in the center of the community was a large shed, by far the biggest building in the village. Beside this shed were two other structures completed only a short time before. In front of one of these smaller building something new was being constructed.

As well ... whereas two years before most everyone in the village dressed about the same, now there were distinct differences in attire. Several men in the community walked around with long wooden spears and had shields made from animal skins hanging over their shoulders. Other people, both men and women, wore colored beads around their necks, and a few had on strange looking headdresses of various sizes and shapes.

What had been happening of course over the past two years was "civilization." Crug was the primary instigator of these changes, but close to two-thirds of the community thought it was the right way to go. Crug, like any good politician, had built alliances and formed coalitions with different factions in the community. And left unspoken was the fact that the growing militia was siding with the group with the most influence--the one Crug was now leading. Of course Crug had been the person who'd proposed the militia two years before. On two occasions since then the soldiers had been used to drive off groups of hunters who threatened the community. Crug still had one final goal to achieve.
to be continued....

A Brief Visit to Ceuta ( a short story )

2005-04-23T11:28:00.000-07:00

Shortly before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, I first learned of Robert Barclay. I had been sorting through some of the personal effects of my beloved mother, who had died two weeks before of cancer. It was a journal I discovered among some papers tied together with string. Sandstone was decapitated in Ceuta in July sometime before evening prayers, the first line on the first page of the journal read. Sandstone? My father?

I was born in England in 1913. My father died in 1914, a month before the start of World War I. After my father's death my mother, who was an American, took me to the United States where I grew up. It was not until 1950 that I was able to begin my search.

The journal, which had become part of my late mother's personal effects, belonged to this Robert Barclay. As there were several notations about Algeciras, a city in southern Spain not far from the British colony of Gibraltar on the Mediterranean coast, my inquiries began there. To my surprise I located Robert Barclay within a few weeks. I immediately wrote a letter. Perhaps a month later I received a reply stating he would not be leaving. A strange response I thought at the time. Nevertheless, I made my arrangements and wrote back telling him when I would arrive.

I met Robert Barclay in an outdoor cafe on a warm, sunny day one late afternoon. I guessed him to be around sixty years old, with a face lined but gentle-hearted, and the darkest blue eyes I had ever seen. Barclay was an Englishman who had lived in Algeciras, I later learned, since 1921. The first time I met him, he wore a white rumpled suit and a straw hat. Standing beside his chair, he presented a tattered, painful dignity, like the rest of Europe in 1950 only beginning to recover from the nightmare of the Second World War.

He seemed almost shy when we introduced ourselves. "You have your father's hands," was the first thing he said to me.

"Did you also know my mother?" I said.

He grasped the back of the chair for a moment and then sat down. "Yes. I knew your mother." He gestured for me to sit. "I am truly sorry." He gazed at me for a moment. "May I call you Richard?"

"Of course."

"How did she die? Your mother wasn't old." I told him. He remained quiet for a minute or so and then said, "Are you married?"

"Separated. I appreciate you taking the time to see me," I said.

"No, no. You have traveled from America. It's the least I can do."

I took out the journal from the Pan American flight bag I'd been carrying and handed it to him. "This was yours I believe."

He place the journal on the table and ran his hand slowly across its faded and spotted green cover once or twice. He glanced over at me, a distant smile on his face. He looked back down at the book, opened it and thumbed slowly through its pages. I waited. A few minutes later he closed the journal and nudged it to my side of the table. "Thank you."

"Would you like to keep it while I'm here?" I said.

He shook his head slowly. "Were you in the war?"

"In the Pacific. You?"

"The war to end all wars as they once said. Until yours came along. I was with the British army, in the desert. Arabia and Damascus." He paused. "How long will you be here?"

"Only for the week."

"I see." He again paused. "You have your mother's eyes. Did you know that?"

"I think I noticed as I got older. How did you meet my mother and father?"

"Of course you want to know, everything. But I can not promise you resolution you see. It is not at all what you might think. Not like an American film."

"Mr. Barclay, I really don't think anything yet. Until I came across your journal, my father had always been a mystery to me. As close as my mother and I were, she never said that much about my father. I sensed that she loved him but after a while I stopped asking. I think there's more that she never told me. For whatever reason."

Again, I felt Robert Barclay watching me closely, studying me. "Why don't we go to me place. It's only three blocks away." I started to rise but Barclay held up his hand. "I was not there, in Ceuta, when it happened. Allegedly the window sill where the head had been placed was the bedroom where resided the mistress of the abode, half Moroccan and half Spanish, who was the madam of a notorious brothel. The two Arab boys who found him before six on Monday morning stated on the 'breath' of Allah that they were not the ones who placed the severed head on the window sill of this house, two blocks away from where your father's body was found. Elliot Sandstone, your father, was decapitated. Shall we go?"

I remained frozen in my chair, unable to move. Robert Barclay stood up, watching me with his piercing blue eyes. "Yes," I said finally.

Barclay lived on a narrow street above a small department store, in an area that had an obvious Arab flavor: The rich smells of nutmeg, rosemary, and saffron blended together with the faint aroma of cooked lamb somewhere nearby, a distinct mixture of the Mediterranean and Africa. We entered his flat which was dark and cool with high ceilings and a creaking wooden fan revolving slowly above our heads. The only light were the thin slivers that came through the closed wooden shutters and sparkled on the smooth wood floor. On one wall was a tapestry, difficult to make out in the dim light, but covering the entire wall. "Please, have a seat. Would you like some coffee?"

"Thank you." A minute later Barclay returned with two small cups. The coffee was sweet and syrupy.

"Have you ever been to North Africa, Richard?" I said I had not. "Your father was one of those Englishmen who loved the desert. That very peculiar trait certain Englishmen possess."

"Are you one of those Englishmen, Mr. Barclay?"

"No, not at all. I am like most of the Arabs. Given the choice, very brief, periodic visits would suffice." Barclay took a sip of coffee. "What do you know about Ceuta?"

"Until I saw the name in your journal, I had never heard of it."

"Ceuta was a Carthaginian settlement. Hannibal supposedly spent time there. Later, Rome built a colony in the area. Spain took it from the Moors in 1580. Ceuta is today a military and penal station governed by Spain, even though the enclave is within Morocco."

"And what was my father doing there?"

"I met your father in 1912. He was one of the bright young lights in the rather dull and unimaginative British Foreign office. Nearly ten years older than me, I was placed under his tutelage as I had just been accepted into the service. I eventually met your extraordinarily beautiful mother at a diplomatic function in London. The three of us became close friends.

"In 1913 your father was posted to Spain. He pulled some strings and managed to get me there as well, as a sort of junior-junior officer in the commercial section."

"In Madrid?" I said.

"Yes. Where our embassy was. From the first day he arrived in Spain, your father was constantly on the go, traveling around the country. He made a number of trips to Gibraltar. And perhaps other places."

"What exactly did my father do at the embassy?"

Robert Barclay smiled slightly. "He was in the political section."

"I see. Doing what?"

"The political section tended to be a catch all for all sorts of activities."

"I'm not sure I understand," I said.

Barclay shrugged. "Your father may have been with British intelligence."

"But you're not certain?"

"No."

"And my mother?"

"I'm not sure what she knew. But in 1913 Europe was backing into war. And no one could begin to imagine that the horror of the twentieth century would commence in 1914."

"Are you saying my father's death was connected to his work?"

"No. I don't believe so."

"Then..."

"When your father first graduated from the university he spent eight or nine months in Syria as well as North Africa on a archeological dig. The desert fascinated him from the very beginning. I think because he always saw it as both appearance and reality. It's difficult to tell you see..."

While not expressing my feelings to the man sitting in the chair across from me, I was beginnings to feel restless, sensing much more had not been stated. "Mr. Barclay, your portrait of my father certainly conjures up a rather romantic and mysterious figure. I would very much liked to have known him. My mother never mentioned any of this." I paused. "But his horrible death in Ceuta?"

"Yes." Robert Barclay gazed past my shoulder for a moment and then his attention returned to me. "Richard, do you believe in the spirit world?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Beyond what we can see, feel, understand sometimes. Outside what science and technology can tell us."

"Mr. Barclay--"

"Robert. Please."

"Robert. No, I have not thought about the, the spirit world whatsoever."

"I understand. Would you care for more coffee?" I shook my head. "Your father believed."

"In the spirit world?"

"Yes."

I cleared my throat. "How did you happen to give my mother your journal?"

"Let me show you something." Robert Barclay got out of his chair and opened the wooden shutters, which looked onto the street where we had walked down earlier. I squinted as the bright Mediterranean sun surged into the room and its warmth enveloped me immediately. "Look at the tapestry."

I stood. The bottom half of the tapestry was a cerulean blue. But, the color gradually changed as my eyes moved from the middle of the tapestry to the top. The blue darkened until, near the top of the tapestry, it became dusk-colored in a kind of half-light. A thin, delicately rolling line depicted the horizon. I stepped closer. A shadow near the right side of the tapestry, slightly above the horizon, was clearly noticeable, yet not definite and distinct. But to me it appeared to be the silhouette of a person. "It's almost hypnotic," I said. "Where did you get it?"

"From an Arab dealer in 1927."

"And there is a connection?"

He looked at me for an instant with an almost curious expression. "It seems to me each person has to decide for oneself." He paused. "I gave the journal to your mother in this very room, in 1928. After the two of us had returned from a brief visit to Ceuta." I now remembered my mother getting a telegram and going away suddenly when I was fifteen. I was sent off to stay with my grandparents until she returned.

Robert closed the shutters and the interior began to cool immediately. He sat down and I did the same. "Your father went to Ceuta once or twice in 1913, that I know of. He told me so."

"On embassy business?"

"Officially. But there were other reasons as well."

"And what were they?"

"Richard--by March of 1914, your father knew he was dying."

I sat up in my chair. "From what?"

"Doctors in London, where he returned for one month, told him they thought he had a brain tumor. Remember, this was 1914, not 1950. Your father declined any operation. He returned to Spain. And traveled even more, frequently with your mother. I learned of his condition one night while dining at their house. No one else knew how ill your father really was. But, he told me something else." Barclay became silent.

"Was my father in much discomfort?"

"He never talked about it, at least in my presence, but your dear mother told me sometime later that the last month was quite difficult."

"What did he tell you that evening?"

"That he had met the past in North Africa, in the desert outside of Ceuta."

"The past?"

"Soldiers from Carthage, Roman Legionnaires, Moors, and Spaniards. All who had occupied and lived in Ceuta at one time."

"Robert, you've lost me. My father saw, spoke to, to what? Ghosts? Spirits wandering around in the desert?" I got out of the chair, irritated with the direction of the conversation. "My father was a sick man at this point. Wasn't he ?" Barclay nodded. "Good lord. He was probably losing his mind." Robert remained silent in his chair. "And who killed him?"

"I don't know. I never considered it important I suppose."

I watched as my daughter, along with my eldest grandchild, drove away in the taxi. Their visits with me in Algeciras were always enjoyable, but had become more and more tiring for me each year; however, considering I had just turned eighty-six the day before, understandable. My daughter knew I would never return to the United States. After all, I had been living in Spain for the past twenty years, shortly after Robert died and I inherited his place. My oldest grandchild has expressed an interest in living here some day. We shall see.

I closed the wooden shutters and returned to the chair facing the tapestry. I noticed several shadows near the right side of the tapestry, slightly above the horizon, yet not definite and distinct. Beside me on the table next to my straw hat was the journal, which I picked up, letting my fingers rub across the worn green cover. In 1975 I traveled to Ceuta for a brief visit and went out to the desert one night. I understood then why my father loved it so much.

He was there, along with my beloved mother. And there were others as well.

CHAPTER TWO: We Know What's Best

2005-04-12T14:39:00.000-07:00

continued from March 30,2005

We owe a great deal to garbage and excrement. As settlements became permanent and grew larger we accumulated more garbage and more excrement and consequently more opportunity to observe.

While those ancient garbage sites didn't include plastic containers, beer cans, and magazines, we certainly threw away things like bones, both animal and human, along with skins of various kind, and unused plants. We probably also dropped plant seeds while dragging or carrying plants from one place to the other as well as to the village dump.

But it had to be excrement that gave us some of our best opportunities to observe plants. Undigested seeds were defecated and spat out. We know today that many plant seeds have to pass through an animal's digestive system before they germinate or take root; out of an animal's feces will spring many a plant. For example, an elephant, which spends at least six hours a day eating, will digest only about 40 percent of what it consumes. Many of the undigested seeds in the elephant's feces germinate into new plants as well as being a food source for many creatures, including insects like the dung beetle who burrow beneath the ground and aerate the soil. With ever increasing supplies of garbage and limitless excrement, our first crop breeding program, albeit unintentional, probably took place behind the "big rock" as well as in areas where animals congregated.

Merka had noticed when she was still a young girl how the wild pea exploded out of its pod and fell to the ground. This was the way the wild pea germinated. A few pods, however, didn't explode and they would eventually die. Curious, Merka brought back to her small garden some of these none-popping pods. She soon discovered that these pods were the ones that could be harvested for humans. This sort of discovery was being made in more than one location throughout the Fertile Crescent. The selection process was underway.

Wheat and barley were the earliest cereal crops to be domesticated because they produced large seeds which turned out to be edible for humans and which also could be stored for long periods of time. Someone sometime would have noticed that the wild wheat seeds at the top of the stalk dropped to the ground, where they would germinate. But also observed would have been the occasional mutant wheat where this did not happen; the seeds didn't drop to the ground. It would have been this mutation humans observed, brought home and planted, and which eventually became a major food source.

About this time Gaaa appeared around Thorat and Merka's hut, Gaaa being the name Thorat eventually gave to this particular wild cat, who had apparently decided to adopt Thorat and Merka. Archaeologists now believe this human-feline bonding may have started more than 9,000 years ago. As permanent village life developed and domesticated grain crops were stored, mice determined that a readily available food supply was worth a few risks. On the other hand, wild cats like Gaaa quickly learned where a plentiful supply of fresh meat could be found. Humans and cats benefited from this relationship.

One day it happened. It might have been late spring, early summer, but on this particular morning Merka, after calling out to her oldest daughter to fill the water bucket, strolled over to her garden and noticed something different growing there. She called out to Thorat who was about to check on his wheat and barley field. They both knelt down and studied the strange looking thing in the garden, which neither one had seen before, at least in their garden. A vine-like leaf was growing on a running stem along the ground. It had fruit that was firm and round and of a clear yellow color with green markings. How had it gotten there they wondered?

Of course these early gardens did not look like the small backyard plots one can often find in suburbia, where neat cultivated rows of tomatoes and corn, surrounded by a wire fence to keep out the rabbits and the squirrels. Nor had anything like a plow been invented yet. What happened was that the ground was scrapped by some sort of stick, the seeds dropped and covered with dirt. Everything would have been mixed together.

These early farmers--at first--did not realize that the seeds were now competing with one another in this new environment. Certain types of seeds were going to succeed and others would fail. Any number of factors would allow some seeds to win and others to lose. It might have been the size of the seed, the wetness of the soil, or maybe the dryness. Possibly the elevation could have been the difference or the amount of sun--or shade.

Just as we humans were adapting and changing in new environments, the plants also were changing, competing, and adapting. They too had every intention of surviving. The more the soil was turned over and exposed to the air and sun, the more likely that something new would make, often, an uninvited appearance. Over time astute observers like Merka and Thorat would notice under what conditions different plants changed.

As agricultural communities grew and the need for a permanent food supply became even more important, certain individuals acquired the "expertise." They were the ones who learned the best time to harvest a particular crop, identify harmful insects, follow weather patterns, and most important, begin the all important crop experimentation through trial and error. This would have a significant impact on our early communities.

But returning to Merka's garden, Thorat finally pulled up this new visitor by its roots. He smelled it, licked it with his tongue, and then tossed it aside. They forgot about it until three days later when Merka noticed that the same plant had reappeared, but this time it had brought along several companions. Then Merka saw something at the far end of the garden.

A new plant, but this one was big and it was already crowding out some of the lentils. That was serious. Everyone in this community could still remember what it was like to be hungry; they could all recall except for the very young when there wasn't enough food or wild game to hunt.

Time passed. The gardens continued to expand and the wheat and barley fields had an additional dozen part time workers. The community now contained more than 300 residents. Merka and Thorat had four children of their own, two boys and two girls. By now more time was spent picking out the unwanted plants from both the gardens and the wheat and barley fields.

While we can't be certain what the new plant was that Merka first discovered in her garden, by its description it could have been a wild gourd. The Egyptians knew about this plant at least three thousand years ago. It's mentioned in the Old Testament and, among its uses, the oil from the leaves were used for fuel for lamps.

It would have been unlikely that the people going about their daily lives in the Fertile Crescent would have realized they were once again in the center of an historic change. Such awareness usually occurs well after the fact. Perhaps a few people might have noticed that the actual number of full-time food producers had decreased, while the amount of food that was being harvested had grown dramatically. A couple who live not far from Thorat and Merka's hut had stopped tending their own small garden a year before. This happened because they'd become so busy making baskets of various sizes and utensils for pounding grain and cutting plants. Through exchanging these items with the farmers, these budding artisans acquired all the food they needed.
to be continued....

CHAPTER TWO: We Know What's Best

2005-03-30T13:34:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-19T11:49:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-14T06:06:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-10T13:56:00.000-08:00

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...

CHAPTER ONE: Turning on the Light

2005-02-28T08:47:00.000-08:00

continued from February 25, 2005

The tall grass prairie is the earth's most altered landscape. Before the arrival of Europeans, tall grass prairies extended as far south as Texas and extended north up through parts of Minnesota, North Dakota, and southern Canada. To the east they were found in northern Illinois and to the west in central Nebraska.

A never ending sea of grass is what greeted the character played by Kevin Costner in the movie Dances with Wolves when he reached the "frontier" in 1863, for hundreds of miles in any direction. In 1862 the U.S. Congress passed the Homestead Act. Anyone who was willing and able to farm the land would receive 160 acres. Slowly almost all of the prairie vanished under the farmer's plow. The planet's largest remaining tall grass prairie today is 20 million acres, covering parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri.

These tall grass prairies make up only a small portion of grasslands throughout the world. In the state of Kansas alone you'll find the tall grass in only the eastern part of the state; the mixed-grass prairie is found in central Kansas; the short grass area is in western Kansas and eastern Colorado. Moisture is everything for the grasslands. Rainfall becomes more abundant as you move from eastern Colorado to western Missouri.

While parts of eastern Europe, Asia, southern Africa, South America, and Australia also have some remaining tall grass fragments, what makes these areas in the United States different is the amount of big bluestem grass. Big bluestem has a flowering stalk that will sometimes rise to more than ten feet tall. After a frost the bluish to purplish stems will turn a reddish-copper color. Big bluestem is the signature grass of the tall grass prairies in the United States and what makes it unique.

At one time, according to The Nature Conservancy, there may have been more than 700 plant species, 300 bird species, and 80 mammal species that called the grasslands home. Some 8,000 years ago nomadic groups of hunter-gathers likely traveled throughout the tall grass regions. The Pawnee may have been one of the first identifiable tribes in the central plains and lived there a thousand years ago. They established settlements, maintained gardens, and hunted the bison.

By some estimates nearly 30 million bison roamed throughout the entire Great Plains at the start of the Civil War in 1860. By the beginning of the twentieth century, only forty years later, there were less than 5,000 bison. More than a 120 years ago climate, fires ( natural and manmade ), and grazing bison still maintained a delicate natural balance on the prairie. But within a few years this balance had been overturned.

The ideal conditions that encouraged the development of tall grass prairies, such as rich soil and sufficient moisture, also led to its downfall. As the settlers arrived in the nineteenth century with their own culture and established homes and communities, these prairies were overwhelmed by the steel plow, turning over soil that had not been disturbed since the ice age.

But something is once again happening in the Great Plains today, possibly as momentous as what occurred a century before. A significant part of the region is losing population, as farmers and ranchers leave because it is becoming more and more difficult to earn a living and their children refuse to remain in rural communities. In some areas the census reports no more than six people per square mile, in line with the nineteenth century definition of "frontier"
territory.

At the same time, native prairie grasses and native buffalo are making a tentative comeback, along with something else. The 2000 U.S. census reported that, while half the counties in the great Plains were losing population, those counties that contain the region's Indian reservations were, in fact, growing in population.

The hard part does seem to be the looking or maybe the willingness to observe. My first visit to a tall grass prairie did make an impression upon me; I knew that at some level. What was here before? And while I still couldn't have called this part of the country home, it was no longer "unnatural." I had been living out here for three years. How time flies.

Did I want to spend a week in France with my son visiting the historical World War II battlefields in Normandy? It was my son's idea; he knew I'd always wanted to do that. My daughter-in-law, a travel agent, had some clients in Paris who wanted to thank her for the business. Who could refuse?

The first week in October of 1999, three months before the "end" of the world, we boarded an Air France flight to Paris, drank some wine, and watched a really bad movie.

What happened to Paris? I had last visited this incredible city in 1968. Charles DeGaulle was running the country and irritating NATO. Former members of the French resistance were still writing their memoirs. In fact, there were Frenchmen alive who remembered the "war to end all wars"--World war I. In 1914 Paris taxi cabs were commandeered to transport troops to the front to stop the "barbarous" Huns closing in on the city. The French knew that if Paris was captured the war was over.

In 1968 on the Left Bank, near the University of Sorbonne, U.S. Assassins was scribbled on walls everywhere, protesting the war in Viet Nam, while the dark eyes of Che Guevara on his pop-art poster followed you down the cobblestone streets. If you couldn't speak French, well, too bad. And the Parisians looked different in 1968 ... like Parisians.

But in October 1999? Everyone spoke "American," had a cell phone attached to his or her ear, discussed their stock options--and looked American. Globalization had arrived. Y-2K? C'est la vie. My son, who worked for Intel at the time, said January 1, 2000 would be no different from December 31, 1999, except for the date. The bubble didn't burst in 2000....

Almost as an afterthought we strolled into Notre Dame Cathedral the day before we were to leave Paris for the coast. My son wanted to see it. He didn't remember that his mother and I had taken him there thirty-one years before when he was three years old.

The construction of Notre Dame was begun in 1163 and dedicated to "Our Lady" the Virgin Mary. The late art historian Sir Kenneth Clark said Notre Dame Cathedral had "the most rigorously intellectual facade in the whole of Gothic art." Whether one agrees with this assessment or not, you can't but notice the carvings, which tell many of the traditional bible stories.

The one that caught my attention was the carving of God reminding Eve not to touch that fruit on the "tree of knowledge," which is in the center of the perfect garden--no weeds--and full of every plant and animal designed by God. But things did not go well in that perfect garden, as we well know.

Across the street from the massive emptiness where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood is St. Paul's Chapel. St. Paul's was completed in 1766, and is where George Washington worshipped on Inauguration Day, April 30, 1789. In a small graveyard, which is part of the church, there stood before 9/11, a 20-foot tall sycamore tree. The tree absorbed the full impact of a flying steel beam from one of the towers that day in September. All that remained after the impact was the tree stump. The last time I visited the site the stump had been removed in an attempt to preserve it. I think it's worth the effort.

We remained inside Notre Dame longer than we'd planned to. It was not especially crowded on that particular day. We observed a couple of tour groups, one from Germany and one from Japan, but mostly we just talked about a lot of things, something we had not done in some time.

I told him about my first visit to a tall grass prairie the year before. I mentioned that I had been back since then and had been reading a book on native plants of the region. He remarked that a neighbor had suggested some good plants to prevent soil erosion, which are native to the Northwest. Part of his backyard lies on a slope. We had never discussed plants before, but inside Notre Dame Cathedral seemed as good a place as any.

Before returning to the hotel we visited a memorial behind the church. Memorial de la Deportation is dedicated to the 200,000 French victims deported to the Nazi concentration camps. It was a jarring reminder of a far more recent history.

The following morning we left Paris in our rented Honda and made the required stop at Versailles, which I found--except for the gardens--no more interesting the second time I came to the home of Louis XIV. But as Versailles does play an important part in the search for weeds, we'll have to return at some point. We reached the city of Chartes in the early afternoon, which is home to what many people consider one of the most impressive cathedrals in the world.
to be continued....

Power to the Weed

2005-02-25T11:44:00.000-08:00

CHAPTER ONE: Turning on the Light

Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field

Genesis 3:18

If the Earth were the size of a pinhead, the known universe would still be 6 trillion miles across. Who can imagine 6 trillion miles? The astronomer Alan Dressler suggests that we express distances in terms of time using the speed of light. Our own solar system, for example, would then be "only" a few light-years across, and light from the Sun reaches us in just eight minutes.

If we were to use the same analogy for our interests in plants, the time would be less than a blink of an eye. It is, however, within that "blink" that the weed first appears and assumes such an important role in human history, and where our story is ultimately headed.

In parts of Germany today small baskets of wild strawberries are tied to the horns of cattle each spring as an offering to elves. The elves, supposedly fond of strawberries, will help bring healthy calves into the world as well as plenty of milk. A happy elf is definitely a helpful elf.

Earth Pledge, founded in 1991, has as a mission to increase "awareness about the environmental and social benefits of greening rooftops in New York City." The organization wants to encourage people to start gardens on the roofs of buildings; its purpose is to promote, among other things, locally grown foods and "cultural traditions."

While there are endless, sometimes heated, debates on exactly what should be included in any discussion of culture, there seems to be a general agreement that culture is learned. We all have a biological need to eat food, but not all of us want cereal and bananas for breakfast. That's culture.

The word "culture" comes from Latin and refers to cultivation of the soil as well as the refinement of people. If one cultivates, one is preparing the land for growing crops, for developing and improving crops, and "destroying" weeds. To cultivate friends is to develop and to nurture relationships.

Some 10,000 or 11,000 years ago humans began developing a serious interest in plants. Within a short time we were neighbors and like most long-term relationships, changes have occurred in numerous ways over the millenniums. What may be different today is that the "quality" of the plant-human relationship is likely to become more important. The six billion Homo-sapiens currently living on the "pinhead" in the universe are going to need a few good friends, not just acquaintances.

The "greening" of the roofs in New York City and the domestication of the strawberry plant during the Middle Ages represents an unbroken line that goes back thousands of years.

Too bland, too flat, too much religious fundamentalism--and of course no ocean. That was my first impression of Missouri when I moved here from South Florida in 1995. But I thought I could probably survive the experience for a year ... possibly two years if I had to. This admittedly narrow view of the "heartland" changed unexpectedly in 1998.

On a hot July day a friend of mine, a Kansan, his twenty-two year old son and I left Kansas City, heading to Boulder, Colorado, a ten-hour drive. We intended to spend a week doing some climbing in the Rockies.

Whereas eastern Kansas has rolling, undulating terrain, the farther west one gets the flatter it becomes. Soon the only sign of life that I noticed from Interstate 70 was a lot of cows, as far as you could see. I remarked that it must have been a miserable place in the winter a hundred years before--for the Plains Indians as well as for the settlers.

Many of the fence posts in western Kansas appeared to be made out of some unusual material. "What don't you see?" my friend said when I pointed it out. It took a moment before the obvious became apparent. There were no trees. The early settlers who wanted to fence in their land had to tie the barbed wire around posts made from limestone, plentiful in the area.

Climate to a farmer is of paramount importance. That may seem self-evident to almost everyone, but the fact is most of us in this country are not noticeably dependent on the weather for our survival, at least not yet. The principal "weather" question for the vast majority is whether or not we'll need to take an umbrella to work or will it be too hot to barbecue the steak outside. But it does ultimately matter to all of us.

In the summer of 2002 western Kansas suffered a disastrous drought. More than half of the farms in the state were threatened by a lack of rain that resulted in at least $270 million loss in the wheat harvest alone. Wheat also happens to be one of the first plant crops to be domesticated more than 8,000 years before in Southwest Asia. The real real concern to the Kansas farmer is not the one bad year, but the possibility of three or four bad years in a row without sufficient rain. During the Dust Bowl years of the 1930's, soil turned to fine powder. Wind-blown sand created dunes, sometimes 30 feet high. Dark dust clouds traveled all the way to the Atlantic coast. There are people out here who have personal memories of those days.

The vast emptiness, at least what seemed like emptiness to me at the time, was both hypnotic and strangely compelling, as we continued toward the foothills of the Rockies. Finally, reaching Boulder, I felt I had arrived somewhere familiar; there were mountains and trees, and I couldn't see a hundred miles in any direction.

The week in the Rockies was well worth the long drive. It brought back times when I hiked through the White Mountains of New Hampshire, climbed with my son in Oregon, or walked out the front door of my house in Quito, Ecuador, where I once lived. Quito, more than 8,000 feet above sea level, is surrounded by snow-capped mountains.

Hiking up a mountain, it seems to me, is one of those human activities you either like a lot or consider one of the dumbest things a person could do. But for me, climbing to the peak of a mountain has always been a humbling reminder of what incredible splendor nature offers.

By the time we left Colorado and entered Kansas again, I was anxious to get home. I dozed off and when I woke up we were no longer on the turnpike. "Got something you need to see," was my friend's only comment.

"Where are we?"

"Near Manhattan." Manhattan, Kansas is where Kansas State University is located, and where my friend's son was about to enter his senior year of college. We were now driving through the Kansas countryside on a two-lane road, occasionally passing a solitary car or a pickup truck.

We eventually turned onto a narrow dirt road, drove up a slight incline, then down, then back up again. For maybe another half-mile we continued on this road, until we neared a solitary oak tree, rounded a bend, and came to a halt. In front of me, extending tp the horizon, was the first tall grass prairie I had ever seen.

Birds of prey circled overhead in a cloudless, dark blue sky, eight-foot tall native grasses rippled in the breeze, and blue, purple, yellow wild flowers swept across an incredibly lush landscape. No, it was not like a sunset in the Caribbean or a fall day in New England, but in its

own unique way it was one of the most beautiful settings I've ever seen in my life. "We still in Kansas, Dorothy?" was the one thing I could think of to say.

I was now gawking at pure wildness. There was no order and no sign of human manipulation, at least the obvious kind. Michael Pollan refers to "Dionysian revelry" in his book The Botany of Desire. Wild, untamed, and natural is the only way to describe what I saw on that July day.

The scientist and conservationist Edward O. Wilson invented the term "biophilia" to describe the natural tendency of humans to be attracted to nature and to have a love or craving for it. It's supposedly instinctive. At the same time, the opposite tendency also exists, namely a little-bit-goes-a-long-way feeling: the spiders, the snakes, and all those mosquitoes, especially the ones that could be carrying malaria or West Nile virus. It may explain, in part, out inclination throughout human history to plan and to sanitize nature and to keep it within "acceptable" boundaries.

No doubt what I found so personally compelling that day in 1998, when I first saw that tall grass prairie, was the lack of order and control and above all, no one had "planted" a damn thing. Of course that likely says something about me. But much more about "natural" later.

While I didn't know it at the time, I was also staring at weeds--a lot of them. But back then I doubt I could have identified more than six or seven different plants in that prairie. The other problem was that there were no cultivated rows or flowerbeds; all those weeds were hidden, disguised, and blended into the environment. It was impossible to pick out the "foreign elements."

to be continued....