and related ramblings of a cloud dweller
20,239 words v1.1
I've done it again. This one is another out-of-control-ramble. If you care to undertake it (I cannot imagine why you would, but hope you do), then maybe you'd prefer to download it and print it out? If so, it is here: Download KillingPrometheus.pdf (3956.8K) |
Bristlecone Pine
Flickr Photo originally Uploaded on 27 September 2006
By Christmas w/a K
Prometheus was the name1 of the oldest living tree ever discovered. It was a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva). It was at least 5000 years old and one of three closely related species of bristlecone pine:
- Rocky Mountains Bristlecone Pine Pinus aristata (Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona)
- Great Basin Bristlecone Pine Pinus longaeva (Utah, Nevada and eastern (California)
- Foxtail Pine Pinus balfouriana (California)
They are all magnificent... and all flourish where almost nothing else will grow. From these places, they watch millennia pass. And then we find them.
Mighty Prometheus grew at the tree line near Wheeler Peak in the area that, since 1986, has been the Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada. But Prometheus never knew the protection of the park. Prometheus was felled in 1964 by a graduate student and U.S. Forest Service personnel.[i]
It is a sickening tale of humanity and hubris. I can't bear to tell it all even if I knew how, but maybe I will tell enough.
We happened upon the oldest living thing in the world. And then we immediately killed it.
So it is with our kind.
It seems about right.
Sometimes it is hard to look my dogs in the eyes. Thankfully, they love me anyway.
Amborella trichopoda | What Kind of Old is Old? | A Dearth of Foresight | The Genius of Edmind Schulman | Hubris, Destruction, Loss and Regret on the Road to Thebes | A Deadline, a Broken Tool, a Momentary Loss of Vision and a Bad Decision | Prometheus, Ignorance and General Sadness |
| Further Reading | Notes | Sources |
| Post Script |
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Amborella
Flickr Photo originally Uploaded on 25 April 2007
By patriarch38
I'm been chewing on a little essay about mighty Prometheus for a good while, ever since I read an unrelated post over at Pam's Tales from the Microbial Lab. Her post was "an abominable mystery." It is a good read. The title comes from a Charles Darwin cite:
"Darwin referred to this sudden appearance of flowering plants in the fossil record as the "abominable mystery.""
When and how and why and where did flowering plants begin? Good questions. Pam's thoughts (as usual) set my mind a tumbling.
Apparently, regardless of when and why the first flowers bloomed, in the beginning there was Amborella trichopoda. "DNA evidence consistently indicate[s] that it is "sister" to all other living flowering plants."[ii]
In other words, it is probably the most primitive of all living flowering plants: the oldest branch on the tree of flowers.2 A time machine. Sort of.
They grow in New Caledonia. My immediate reaction was that I wanted to go touch one in the wild, before they are gone.3 You see, we are killing them too. "Individuals of this species in the wild are being reduced by overgrazing and habitat destruction."[iii] But of course.
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Goffin Cockatoo at 1 month old
Goffin's Cockatoo (Cacatua goffiniana)
Flickr Photo originally Uploaded on 19 December 2005
By nybird
Amborella trichopoda is an old species (the only surviving species in the genus). But many of the specimens are actually very young... seedlings even. So this set me to thinking about old-ness. What does it mean to be an old thing?
And off we go...
There is a great Wikipedia list of long living organisms that, almost inadvertently, deals with my questions. The list details two very interesting categories4 before getting to individual specimens.
Colombian Amber with Insects
Flickr Photo Uploaded on 19 July 2007
By schwigorphotos
The first category is "coaxed into activity after stasis." These things are old. One of the examples given is the notion of finding bacterial endospores in salt or amber (or something) and then "coaxing" them back to an "active metabolism" millions of years later... or finding an ancient (and extinct) seed (a palm from Masada) and planting it thousands of years later. Interesting.
Posidonia oceanica
Flickr Photo Uploaded on 7 August 2006
By ŽakQ100
The second group consists of some rather curious and very old "Clonal Colonies." For instance, there is a "huge colony of the sea grass Posidonia oceanica in the Mediterranean Sea" that could be up to 100,000 years old.[iv]
None of the individual members of the colony are anywhere near that old... that is to say that none of the sea grass plants are particularly old at all. But the "underwater meadow" has been growing there for a long, long while... and the plants growing there today are genetic clones of those which grew there 100,000 years ago... when homo sapiens first happened upon the middle east ... when Europe was frozen solid... and when the first dogs came to live with people.
That's old too.
There is also mention of Pando... the giganto-normous Quaking Aspen Colony. Very interesting.
Clonal Colonies. They beg questions as to the very definition of life because they are, effectively, immortal. Not like us.
"While colonial animals can have their immortality, solitary individuals are doomed to die."[v]
That is, except for one immortal species of jellyfish, but that is another story.5
Harriet
Harriet, a Galápagos tortoise collected by Charles Darwin (maybe)
Flickr Photo Uploaded on 18 January 2006
By JasMus
And then there are individual plant and animal specimens that happen to be very old... the long lived things.
Prometheus was the oldest of these, and should be living still.
But Prometheus is dead.
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Prometheus
Flickr Photo Uploaded on 5 December 2007
By SkagitLily
When I first heard the story of the Prometheus tree, I was young. And I was outraged. I remember asking my father to "do something about it." What did I want done? I have no idea. I'm certain it was unreasonable and ill considered. I was angry. And somehow "embarrassed."
Now I am older. Prometheus is not.
I am still embarrassed by the flaws of humanity (mostly my very own). But I am no longer angry with Donald Currey and Jeffrey Ward (and a few others) for slaying Prometheus. I'm not certain what I feel. I feel something.
Currey, the "grad student" who "sectioned" the tree, went on to (by all accounts) live a good life, to be a good person, and to serve as a good teacher. This is not the tale of an evil man. Not at all.
And he is dead now too.
Ward, the U.S. Forestry Service-man who helped Currey with the blades, was almost certainly no villainous creature either. But I know nothing at all about him, except that he was included in Currey's "paper" about the tree (in the "acknowledgements" section).
These were just people like all of us, neither all-good nor all-bad. They simply exercised terrible judgment. They made a mistake. Hubris.
And so the oldest part of us was killed.
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Prometheus was a Titan (in Greek mythology) who stole fire from Zeus6 and gave it to human beings. He actually stole it back for humanity. Zeus had taken it away. Of course, Zeus got angry7 and had Prometheus chained to a rock where his liver was eaten by vulture. Every day. (Zeus made the liver grow back.) This went on for an age. Eventually Heracles / Hercules came along, killed vulture and freed Prometheus.
Of course, this story is truly ancient (though probably nowhere near the antiquity of the felled tree) and so many versions exist.
Aeschylus. Aesop. Plato. Sappho. Many revisited and reworked the tale. Even now. (I cannot think of Prometheus without summoning Ayn Rand's John Gaunt (Atlas Shrugged). But that is for another essay.)
I mention the ancient tale because of a common folk etymology of "Prometheus" (Προμηθεύς). The word is said to indicate "forethought" or "preparation."8
Prometheus
pro (before) + manthano (learn)
It is "before-learning." The learning we do, before we learn. Planning. Forethought.
And I hang my head when I consider how and why the ancient tree came to its end. No forethought.
It is a shameful tale.
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A Brief History of Time
Flickr Photo Originally Uploaded on 16 July 2007
By TW Collins
"First we must go back to 1932 when Edmund Schulman began his career in dendrochronology as an assistant to A.E. Douglass of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona. Schulman had a background in astronomy and, like his mentor, he related cosmic events to the science of tree-ring dating. For the next 20 years he conducted climatic research throughout the western states. At that time our records of climatic conditions in western America were relatively short, with sensitive tree-ring records showing only a few centuries. Schulman thought it imperative that he/science push the chronology further into the past."[vi]
Prometheus was always there of course, with his brethren, enduring millennia of the roughest sorts of conditions. Always. The story of civilization can be told in its lifetime. But simply hadn't found it yet.
"For eons the bristlecones (Pinus longaeva & aristata) have flourished atop the arid mountains of the Great Basin, from Colorado to California, enduring extreme hardships and silently adjusting to their environment. Their exquisite beauty was known to few. Their great age was known to none not until 1953."[vii]
It was Schulman who showed us all.
"During the years 1939-1953 Schulman's focus was on conifers in the lower forest zones, the habitat of the piñon and Douglas-fir. The longer records of the Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum)23 were not used because of the semi-humid region they grow in. Then he learned that certain species of trees in the upper-forest zones, growing under stressful conditions, showed sensitive records of drought in their growth-ring sequences, much more so than the rings of trees living in lower zones that can be unreliable due to ground water, etc. The short, distorted and dwarfed trees of the upper treelines were now his focus. He discovered a Douglas-fir 600 yrs. old in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, an 800 year old bristlecone on Mt. Evans in Nevada, and a piñon pine of 975 yrs. in Utah. With all this data, a picture of the past climatic events began to emerge."[viii]
He climbed higher, to the upper limit of green life on earth.
"In 1953, Schulman was working with his colleague Frits W. Went of Cal Tech... [sic]...they made a detour to the White Mountains acting on a rumor that old trees existed there. Knowing such hearsay seldom proved to be true, the trip up the mountain was made anyway, and became fateful. Here they found a multiple-stemmed bristlecone fully 36 feet in circumference that had been named "Patriarch" by a local rancher. But after taking samples, they found it to be only 1500 years old with typical ring growth of the upper treeline. But at this point they knew that the bristlecones were better recorders of drought conditions than the limber pines. Even more exciting were the old[er] trees found nearby on even drier sites. The return home was filled with excitement for next year's field trip."[ix]
And the rest is history. He found scores of ancient trees, all over the area. Many were greater than 4000 years old. It was Schulman who "found" mighty Methuselah "at least 4,600 years, he reckoned, [sic] [and it] still could bear cones and reproduce. Its name came from the eighth ancestor9 in the Book of Genesis, grandfather of Noah, who lived to be 969 years old."[x]
He mapped the trees and documented his work. And he left them living.
Using an increment borer at a Woodland Advisor class
Flickr Photo Originally Uploaded on 10 December 2007
By esagor
"The work involved twisting a Swedish increment borer into the trunk to secure quarter-inch cores, a technique which does not endanger the tree's life. Since as many as a hundred annual rings were found crowded into one inch, the cores had to be studied under magnification."[xi]
This is particularly interesting to me.
"Wood doesn't have to be alive to be drilled and dated, so long as it isn't rotted, and bristlecone, loaded with pitch and tight-grown, almost never seems to rot, dead or alive."10
The Schulman papers11 are still the definitive works on the ancient Bristlecones..
Schulman was the man.
"Schulman was known to be awed by these [ancient Bristlecone pine] trees, often speaking with amazement about their ability to live so long with so little. He wrote: "The capacity of these trees to live so fantastically long may, when we come to understand it fully, perhaps serve as a guidepost on the road to understanding of longevity in general." [sic] Edmund Schulman died shortly before his article was published, struck down by a heart attack at age 49. That same year the U.S. Forest Service established the 28,000-acre Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, naming a very special area, Schulman Memorial Grove, in honor of his contribution to the world."[xii]
I think I would like to sit in the Schulman Grove before my time comes. Perhaps I will. This summer maybe, if this summer there is.
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sweet child of mine
wonderful hubris
I don't know this child or photographer but I love this photo. You see, even though the mirror and the muscles tell me otherwise, at 40 years old this is STILL how I feel inside!
Flickr Photo Originally Uploaded on 18 March 2005
By speerfish
Hubris, Destruction, Loss and Regret on the Road to Thebes: The Story of Humanity
Hubris.
I fear that the pain or angst or humiliation or whatever it is I feel about the killing of Prometheus is not so much that Prometheus was slain, but something else. Maybe shame! And this realization sickens me further. You see, to me, it seems completely within the order of things. This is what we do! This is what we always have done! This is what we are. I fear there is no getting around it.
And that realization is worse than anything.
This is what we are, but it is not what we have to be! We are not destined for the road to Thebes, but we will travel it if we are not careful.
I am thinking of the warnings of Sophocles in his tale of young Oedipus. Oedipus Rex. Oedipus the King.
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The story goes that King Laius and Queen Jocasta (of Thebes) learned from an oracle that Laius was destined to be killed by the hands of his own son.
It was "destined" to be. The gods had ordained it so.
But we are a hubristic species and have no need of destiny when it does not suit our desired ends. I am the same. A hundred fold. And so are you.
Do not go gentle into that good night!12
This is what we are and honor. And so is easy to suppose that Prometheus never stood a chance against the likes of us, but to do so would betray a want of hope... and I live in a cloud of hope.
So what do Laius and Jocasta do? They seek to outsmart destiny of course!
Jocasta ties their baby son's feet with rope and gives it to a servant, ordering the boy killed. It was clearly a case of self-defense. But the hubristic never seem to learn! The baby was rescued and named Oedipus
Oedipus, from oidan "to swell" + pous (gen. podos) "foot."
"Swollen Foot".
Many years later, a proud and angry young man adrift in a riptide of his own fortune, Oedipus was on the road to Thebes when he came upon King Laius. Not knowing one another (of course) they argued and then fought over the right-of-way. And Oedipus killed Laius.
Oedipus killed his father over... nothing! Hubris.
Laius never planned for that! Hubris.
And there you have it. Hubris everywhere.
Of course the tale spins even farther out of control, but all one need do is travel to Nevada and look at Prometheus' stump to see that this too is the way of the world.
Things spin out control.
"In its modern usage, hubris denotes overconfident pride and arrogance; it is often associated with a lack of knowledge, interest in, and exploration of history, combined with a lack of humility."[xiii]
This is the verbatim story of the killing of Prometheus. You'll see.
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But hear me now: I do not visit oracles for direction! I do not subscribe to destiny or immutable futures. I live in the past and so know that I have free will. If we are undone, we do not need the gods to do it for us. We are apt enough ourselves! And further, we destroy each other! But we need not. We have choices! And I live in a cloud of hope.
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Chain Saw
Flickr Photo Originally Uploaded on 19 July 2006
By whitenviro
A Deadline, a Broken Tool, a Momentary Loss of Vision and a Bad Decision
By all accounts, Donald Rusk Currey was a good man. If only he was not, this would be an easy story to tell. A book. A movie even. A blockbuster! People would pay to wag their fingers him. (It is always more pleasant to blame others for failings we ourselves possess. There is no pleasure in introspection. Believe me, I know.)
But Currey was a good man. And he (and some others) killed Prometheus.
The photo of the stump, several inches (feet?) up (by TW Collins - A Brief History of Time) had a spectacular caption:
"Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking." ~ Stephen William Hawking
Maybe.13 It certainly applies here.
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"In 1963 and 1964, Currey was a young geography researcher drawing National Science Foundation summer fellowships. He was making research forays in the vicinity of Wheeler Peak in the Snake Range, now part of Great Basin National Park, and looking for evidence of ancient glacier movements among the jumbles of avalanche-strewn debris and twisted old trees of far eastern Nevada. [sic] By late summer 1964, Currey was well-known to the Forest Service staff at the old Lehman Caves National Monument four miles west of a gnarly old 300-acre stand of bristlecone pines, which Currey had spotted at the 9,500-foot elevation on up to 11,000. More dead than alive, such trees claw at high rocks where not much else will grow, and seem to manage for centuries. Currey found no signs that the Wheeler Peak stand had been studied before."[xiv]
Of course, he was wrong, and he was acting alone.
This is the whole talking and not-talking thing.
Catastrophe.
"The oldest of Schulman's trees had been alive at least 4,600 years, he reckoned. Other old bristlecone might be around elsewhere in the Great Basin, although the oldest were thought to be those found farther West. In 1964, Currey was zeroing in on trees that seemed to be nearly as old as their California relatives. One in particular, which he called WPN-114, seemed to be very old indeed."[xv]
Currey was curious. And we need our scientists to be curious.
"He made at least four holes in [Prometheus] with the longest increment borer he could get, 28 inches long, but could not get a clear reading. He broke two of the tools getting samples."[xvi]
And here we run into problems.
In 1963 and 1964, Currey was the recipient of a National Science Foundation Summer Fellowship. At the time his tools broke his fellowship time was running out. He needed to wrap things up before his fellowship expired. He needed to get back to school and write a paper. He needed to matriculate, and he had a deadline. As so Prometheus had a death warrant.
This is the kind of thing that we do all the time. Artificial deadlines and imagined pressures. In many ways, this is the story of my life. Sadly, I regularly advice my teams at the office that "a good idea ON TIME is better than a great idea TOO LATE." I have also been known to say "Do SOMETHING even if it is wrong." Mea Culpa, but I'll continue to do it, I'm certain. Even artificial deadlines have weight.
It is true.
I cannot be too hard on Currey for doing as I do. Perhaps it is self-loathing I feel.
"The size of a bristlecone pine is no reliable indicator of age, but if a tree is extraordinarily old its trunk has generally been eroded - sculptured - by windblown ice crystal and sand and is bare of bark except for a strip up the leeward side, connecting with the persistant foliage."[xvii]
Currey knew this tree he'd "found" was very old. Amazingly old. Excitingly old. But how old precisely? Scientists need to know such things. And so, his coring tools broken, Donald Rusk Currey decided to solve his problem another way.
"As excitement built [sic] he sought permission to chain-saw the tree - and incredibly, obtained it..."[xix]
And this is where the wheels come off the wagon. It was a bonfire of ill-conceived good-intentions. The proper course of action would have been for everyone to take a deep breath. But we do not breath when we see achievement in our futures, although I've come to wonder what achievement actually is. (I have no idea.)
"[Currey] asked Donald E. Cox, district Forest Service ranger in the area from 1959-67, for permission to cut down the bristlecone in order to examine the whole trunk in cross-section. Permission was granted."[xx]
Here again, it would be wonderful to have someone to vilify. And it would be comfortable to blame Cox. But Cox was not a bad man either. He was not even a bad forester. This whole story is a tragic painting of grey.
Decades later, when asked, Currey recalled that "Cox "went mildly ballistic'' one day, when he was told that some Boy Scouts had been chopping down aspen -- trees maybe 100 years old."[xxi] Cox was not a bad man.
"I knew that to be scientifically accurate in determining the age of a massive tree, it was necessary to have a cross-section under a microscope, and that coring alone was not acceptable," Cox recalled in a 1996 memo14 he wrote to correct "the many rumors" about Currey's research project."[xxii]
"Cox recalled how he sought approval from his supervisors, who advised him to take a look at the tree Currey wanted to cut before allowing it chain-sawed. "I reported this tree was like many others and was not the type that the public would visit," Cox wrote in his memo. "I felt that this tree's best purpose would be to serve scientific and educational programs."[xxiii]
This is not an evil intention. We use this kind of logic all the time.
"Cox got the go-ahead on behalf of Currey. He assigned a Forest Service crew and packhorses to go out with the young researcher to bring back the object of study. Photographs at the scene,38 taken by chief park naturalist Keith A. Trexler, show Currey astride a dead limb, living foliage just behind him."[xxix]
"After sectioning the trunk at a conveinient level more than eight feet above the original base, [Currey] counted under low-power magnification 4,844 annual rings. The oldest living thing had been killed..."[xxx]
Of course that quote from Lambert, while accurate, paints a rather dramatic picture. One imagines a scholar with a looking glass amongst sawdust-covered lumbermen. I further imagine a singular wonderful-terrible moment when the reality of the act sunk in.
But that isn't the way it happened. Lambert isn't inaccurate, he's just heartbroken.
"[Currey] hauled one of the four-inch slabs back to his motel room in Baker. Working in the sunlight outside, he spent a week with a 20-power magnifying lens and fine sandpaper, trying to coax out the grain so he could count the annual growth rings. It took a week of counting. He got to 4,844."
"Currey knew he was looking at a section a few feet above ground level, which meant he was missing the earliest growth rings, laid down about the same time human settlement began at the site of present-day Athens, and when the Bronze Age civilization of the Minoans was flourishing on Crete."
"So he came up with a safe estimate: This tree, Prometheus, or WPN-114, was at least 4,900 years old."[xxxi]
Of course, the tree was older than even this. Older than old.
There is no emotion whatsoever in Currey's subsequent paper.15 The paper is cold. Maybe all scientific papers are this cold.16 I don't know. It is certainly chilling. To me. Maybe it was cold to him as well. But maybe it is perfectly normal. I'll not add unneeded drama.
See for yourself, it is very brief:
D. R. Currey. An ancient bristlecone pine stand in eastern Nevada. Ecology, volume 46, pages 564-566. (1965) Download Curry-Pines.pdf (1265.8K)
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Bristlecone's Windy Struggles
Flickr Photo Originally Uploaded on 15 May 2006
By Rocky Pix
Prometheus, Ignorance and General Sadness
I will leave the story of Prometheus here. The tree is gone. The dénouement holds no interest for me. I do not have the heart for it. For me, the story ends when the chain cut the thin ribbon of bark.
Apologies for my meanderings. I've run long and longer.
I am not a sentimental tree lover. I love wood too. And I have killed plenty while learning nothing from the acts. But for reasons I cannot make clear even to myself, I have, for years, wanted to write my thoughts about this tree.
I cannot craft a narrative that does it justice.
The story is larger than even this. There are theories of curses. There is plenty of human death too. Ugliness abounds with good intentions. I simply cannot tell the whole tale. But some of what was in me is out now. You may have it.
Maybe I have told enough to honor the felled Prometheus. Maybe that is a ridiculous notion. Maybe those of you who read this may feel something too.
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It was another Prometheus who gave fire (back) to man. But his gift was not knowledge. And of course, we do not know so much.
We do not know the age of every tree. We may have already killed an older tree without even caring to care about it. We've denuded continents after all. We will denude more.
Even today someone might find some tree somewhere older and still living. It may even be a bristlecone.
It will happen. This is the way of things.
And when it does, it will make this particular tale somehow less. It just will. But it won't change things for me.
I wonder: is Prometheus more important than any other tree? What about the Sri Maha Bodhi - the Sacred Fig tree in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka - said to be a sapling from the historical Bodhi tree under which the Buddha became enlightened? It was planted in 288 BC and is the oldest living human-planted tree in the world with a known planting date.
And more to the point: is Prometheus more important than my beautiful old black dog, trusted and loving and failing before my eyes even now? Rage, rage against the dying of the light!12 Damn it all!
But there are plenty of beautiful old dogs.
Thank God for them.
Perhaps none of it matters. Perhaps I am perceiving this thing all-wrong. And I live in a cloud of hope. I will think about it.
But I have decided something definitively, just now so very late at night as I rest and ponder this little task, now done.
I will go to these Bristlecones soon in the springtime, if springtime there is. I want to breathe the air they make before my time comes to breathe no more, like Prometheus.
Maybe you will go too? I hope so, because despite everything, this is a wonderful life and anything is possible. I know it.
It is so.
And also know that just because we are inclined to behave one way does not mean we cannot learn to behave better! I think we will, in time, because I live in a cloud of hope.
- Web: Staying Alive: High in California's White Mountains grows the oldest living creature ever found
- Blog: Rachel Sussman's Unbelievably Interesting Blog/Art Project The Oldest Living Things In The World WOW! (Her goal is "to track the development of my interdisciplinary project "the oldest living things in the world." i'm researching, working with biologists, and traveling around the world to photograph living organisms, aged 2000 years old and older.")
- Book: Great Basin Drama: The Story of a National Park by Darwin Lambert
- Download: "Martyr for a Species (pdf 4.75MB)" by Darwin Lambert, Audubon, May - June 1968 (It is a very rough copy and the best I could get my hands on. By uploading here I am almost certainly violating laws (and most certainly violating my own code of ethics), but it seems like the right thing to do, somehow. I'll not tell you how I got my hands on it... and I modified it a bit to disguise the copy and protect that person. THANK YOU to the person who helped me to get this! You know who you are! I hope I have not betrayed a trust! I live in a cloud of hope!)
- LATE ADDITION Web: Oldest Living Tree Tells All by by Michael P. Cohen (This essay originally appeared in Michael P. Cohen's book A Garden of Bristlecones: Tales of Change in the Great Basin (University of Nevada Press, 1998), and then was reprinted in Terra Nova: Nature & Culture, Vol. 3, No. 2.) Having completed this meandering thing (essay? confession?), I was checking a few facts and found it. I wish I'd found it a week ago. It is a must read on the subject. In fact, my first reaction was to scrap what I've done here and start over. There is so much more to tell. But alas, I must get this out of my short focus for now. I suspect I will never stop learning things about Prometheus.
I am minutes away from putting this thing up on the web. This thing has me flumoxed. I am thinking and rethinking Michael Cohen's The Oldest Living Tree Tells All essay. Cohen's is a beautifully sensitive and comprehesive thing.
I feel it would be irresponsible of me to fail to add one final bit of information, so eloquently phrased by Cohen:
"...this short tale of an old tree dispatched—which is now an old story—has many versions. I cross-date five predominant chronologies, joined at their source like five needles bound in a fascicle, but diverging toward their ends: (1) Curry recounted a passive narrative for a scientific journal, of the tree as WPN-114, numbered and measured specimen; (2) Darwin Lambert, with other advocates of a Great Basin National Park, knew this tree by the name of Prometheus, and he wrote of it for Audubon as the “oldest inhabitant of the Earth,” martyred for its species; (3) Keith Trexler, the chief naturalist at Lehman Caves National Monument, just down the hill, witnessed the event, which he considered unnecessary, and his story dramatizes a conflict between federal agencies; (4) Galen Rowell’s version of the story for The Sierra Club Bulletin indicts the collusion of scientists and the Forest Service; (5) Charles Hitch, President Emeritus of the University of California, attempted to respond to Rowell’s attacks by recounting a story of justifiable error and defending the free inquiry of scientists."
"These five stories, bound together at a single event, diverge from their common source and fall into pieces which have to be put together, like the sections of WPN-114 Currey wished to study."
"And there are pieces one does not know how to use..."
Indeed.
I hope I am not subtracting from the world here with silly thoughts of Sophocles and Shakespeare and such. If I am I'll take this down. Let me know.
Sadly, I have screwed up my note ordering. Somewhere. Damnation. One tries to create beauty and winds up making a mess. Such is the human condition! I will work on this but I can't say when. I have to get this off my mind awhile. Everything should work it is just a little odd. |
[1] I think of the name of the tree, Prometheus, and my thoughts drift to Juliet Capulet lamenting that Romeo is named Montague... the name of her family's enemy.
"'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;--
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man.
O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd..."
Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2) William Shakespeare17
So Prometheus would, were he not Prometheus call'd.
In fact, "Prometheus" is really more of a "nickname" that came about in a very interesting way.
Enter Adolph Murie.
The Murie family was (and still is) an important American family of naturalists. Their accomplishments in protecting the land are enormous. Adolph was an ecologist and spent a great deal of his life in Alaska (was a major promoter of the Denali National Park / Mount McKinley National Park). He was a legendary guy (and his wife was rather amazing too (and his older brother too (and his wife))).
Anyway, Adolph wrote many, many things but is probably best known for two works:
- The
Wolves of Mount McKinley (1944 - the very first scientific treatise on the species and the first professional photographer to extensively document the wolf in the wild. This was almost 20 years before Farley Mowat published Never Cry Wolf.)18
- The Grizzly's of Mount McKinley (Murie's observations from 1922 to the 1960s)
He also did some early work with Coyotes in Yellowstone.
It seems that in the 50's, Murie came down to Nevada - to Wheeler Peak - to experience the Bristlecones. This is quite a place.
Wheeler Peak, Great Basin National Park
UP THERE! Prometheus grew up there!
Flickr Photo Originally Uploaded by Further to Fly
On March 25, 2007
"Biologist-ecologist Adolph Murie, following his investigation in 1958, wrote in a report recommending that a national park be established: "A day among the bristlecones is an unforgettable experience. Their weird, hobgoblin shapes with arms reaching and turning at all angles, like the illustrations in the Wizard of Oz, give one the feeling of being in a strange world. Each tree is a character to meet.""[xxxii]
Each tree is a character to meet.
"In the spirit of Murie's reaction, we began naming the most distinctive personalities -- "Buddha," "Socrates," "Cliff-clinger.""[xxxiii]
Storm King. Methuselah.
Prometheus.
Methuselah still stands and is now, perhaps, the oldest living tree around. (Knowing humanity as I have come to, I am delighted to report Methuselah's exact location is now secret and guarded. Thankfully.)
"What name could capture the essence of a tree which started life when the Sphinx was created at the dawn of civilization, which was a vigorous giant in the heyday of Greece, which was showing signs of age at the time of Christ, yet which lived on into the 1960's only to be destroyed by modern man?"[xxxiv]
Prometheus actually started life well before the Sphinx came to be, being hundreds of years old already at that time. Prometheus was a living thing that reached back before the beginning and would be alive today still... a life the span of the whole of civilization itself.
And we took a chainsaw to it.
It just breaks my heart and I can't fully understand why. And I cannot keep my mind there.
-
...that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet...
The young man who happened upon Prometheus (and then felled him) had a different name for the ancient tree: WPN-114. Prometheus was the 114th tree he sampled in White Pine county. Nevada. White Pine Nevada.
WPN-114.
Maybe Shakespeare was wrong.
WPN-114: not a living thing at all, just a datapoint.
Just like me I suppose.
The researcher described the once living Prometheus in a 2-page "paper" which was the "fruit" of this "discovery."
"This tree, WPN-114, grew at an altitude of 10,750 ft, on the gently sloping crest of a massive lateral moraine of Pleistocene age. The site was relatively stable during the lifetime of the tree, the only appreciable change being accumulation of avalanche-transported debris so that the present ground surface is about 2 ft above the original base of the tree. WPN-114 had a dead crown 17 ft high, a living shoot 11 ft high, and a 252 inch circumference 18 inches above the ground."
Imagine that! 10,750 ft up, covered by avalanche transported debris, 21 feet around.
The name of the researcher is not important. I use the term "we" and not "he." After all, when a cohort of fire ants attacks me, I rage not at the soldier ants but at the whole mound! Fair is fair.
Whatever.
- Back to Text[2] The oldest branch on the tree of flowers. I just love these tree metaphors. They are everywhere.
Family relationships are described as family trees. This is the big one. This is the idea that permeates all the others. We can understand that our brothers and sisters are branches from our parent's limb, and their children branches from their own. We understand that the Prometheus tree was a thing that describes us! As it grows 5000 years, so can we.
In different ways.
Our lives are short. But we are all a part of something much larger.
What is further interesting to me is that this metaphor comes to us from that magnificent tome which gives us so much of our historical, linguistic and cultural context:.
"The image of the [family] tree probably originated with one in medieval art of the Tree of Jesse, used to illustrate the Genealogy of Christ in terms of a prophecy of Isaiah (Isaiah, 11, 1)."[xxxv]
The Isaiah passage goes like this in some versions:
"And there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a twig shall grow forth out of his roots."[xxxvi]
"And there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots..."[xxxvii]
Stumps and Branches and Twigs and Roots. Trees.
My garden is never far away, even if my "family" might be. I live in a cloud of hope.
"The oldest complete Jesse Tree window is in Chartres Cathedral, 1145"
"Possibly the first non-Biblical use, and the first to show full family relationships rather than a purely patrilineal scheme, was several family trees of the classical gods in Boccaccio's Genealogia deorum gentilium (On the Genealogy of the Gods of the Gentiles), whose first version dates to 1360. From the earliest manuscript copies the trees are included, and they were probably part of the original work."[xxxviii]
The tree branches over a great deal more than humanity.
The evolutionary relation of things is described in a Phylogenic Tree of Life, for which we can thank Charles Darwin and the The Origin of Species (for the "tree metaphor" that is).
The "Tree Structure" itself would be worthy of an essay all it's own... a fascination to me. B-trees, Dancing trees, Tree (data structure), Tree (graph theory), Tree (set theory), Tree (descriptive set theory). On and on.
Even my beloved language grows on trees it seems... the tree of language... the Stammbaum... the Stem Tree.
August Schleicher invented a system of language classification arranging groups of related languages "genealogically."
"His model, the Stammbaumtheorie (family-tree theory), was a major development in the study of Indo-European languages."[xxxix]
A Particularly Lovely Stammbaum to my Eyes
You should read about Schleicher. Interesting guy. He came before Darwin and said many of the same things. (Check out the MultiTree Project too, Cool!)
These trees are all over us.
Trees of trees.
Prometheus.
With one-hundred thousand words I could not even begin to express my feelings about what we did to this tree. - Back to Text
[3] I want to see the Amborella in the forest. Certainly. Of course I do. But the idea of going to a French South Pacific island isn't entirely without appeal for other reasons. Thoughts of thongs and breasts and skin and perspiration creep into the periphery of my consciousness (if they ever truly leave). I must apologize because it is unseemly, I know. But my thoughts are not particularly lascivious. And I cannot believe that such thoughts are wrong! Besides, it simply cannot be helped.
And why fight it?
After all, the story of flowering plants is - first, last and only - a story of sex.
"Before flowers, the Earth was covered with green plants like ferns, pines, and the now-extinct seed ferns. Their reproduction was relatively slow and inefficient. Pollination was mostly carried out by the wind."
"Eventually, the fossil record shows that flowering plants came to dominate the globe. They, clearly, were the winning evolutionary strategy."[xl]
[4] Categories and classes of old things: I can't help myself. I think in categories and classes of things. They help me to understand the world around me. And not just me. I'm considering my old companions Aristotle and Linnæus, the kings of categories. And not just them. Think about Set Theory, a foundation of mathematics. Categories. Classes. Sets. This is the only way I know to observe.19
I would like to be in the category that Linnæus called a "methodist." (This is not to be confused with what John Wesley might have called a "Methodist.") I borrow the term from one of Linnæus' very early works, from before the first edition of the magnificent Systema Naturæ wherein my Swedish pal began classifying everything in nature (and more). I'm referring to the Bibliotheca Botanica wherein Linnæus "classified" all the preceding botanical writers and publications known to him.
How did he classify them? He did so based upon "classification."
I'm not kidding. He divided them into methodists (authors and works concerned with the principles of botanical classification) and collectors (authors and works concerned with botanical descriptions but not concerned with their relationships to each other).
Deus creavit, Linnaeus disposuit
Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, the French "physician, botanist, and traveler," was an important methodist. I mention de Tournefort here for three reasons:
- I believe there would not have been a Linnæus if there had not first been a de Tournefort.
- De Tournefort was the teacher of the fascinating Charles Plumier - who I have tarried near before (Frangipani, Plumeria, Lonely Hearts Posts and New Books to Read!).
- De Tournefort was the guy who applied the Latin word for apple as the name for the apple/crabapple genus: Malus. Simply put, I have always loved that juicy bit of poetry.
Malus. It is a one-word poem.
Crab apples
Flickr Photo Uploaded on 26 February 2006
By Annie is back
To designate the Genus of apples as Malus is spectacular to me. Of course, the Romans did it first, but it was not official scientific language until De Tournefort.
Language touches everything.
Again, it goes back to that great old manual of western culture, specifically: Genesis
"And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. (3:6) And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. (3:7)" - King James Bible
And so Adam and Eve ate the apple.20
Malus. Malice. It is the same word.
There is no getting around the connation. Connotation hell, it is a denotation! Malus is all things bad.
Think about some of the more famous Latin aphorisms:
- "Homo praesumitur bonus donec probetur malus" (One is innocent until proven guilty.) Malus = Guilty
- "Cave cibum, valde malus est." (Beware the food, it is bad.) Malus = Bad
- "Malum quidem nullum esse sine aliquo bono." (There is, to be sure, no evil without something good. - Pliny the Elder)21 Malum = Evil
- "Magnum malum" (a great evil)
- "Cave canem, te necet lingendo." (Beware of the dog, he may lick you to death.) Malus isn't even in that one. I just slipped it in to see if you were paying attention. For fun. 'Cause that is the way I am. Dogs are always welcome in my mind.
-
Malice. Guilt. Badness. Evil. Adam, Eve and The Apple. Malus.
Only a fool would deny that language is a carrier of culture. Our words are delicious.
This association is somehow very beautiful to me. I don't fully understand why. Evil is not beautiful, I wouldn't think. The fall of man is not good news, is it? But to call an apple "Malus" is to proclaim that we are connected to Eden.
And maybe we are. Who is to say? It is a nice thought - Back to Text
[5] This is a direct quote from Wikipedia: list of long living organisms:
"The jellyfish species Turritopsis nutricula is capable of cycling from a mature adult stage to an immature polyp stage, and back again, indefinitely. This means there is no theoretical limit to its life span, although no single specimen has been observed for any extended period and it is impossible to estimate the age of a specimen."
Imagine that? Immortality. (Though, dear reader, do not doubt for even a moment that we can kill it too... and most probably will.)
Now... I have been told on several occasions that I am capable of cycling between a mature adult to an immature polyp and back again. Do you suppose this means... ?
Nevermind.
Biological Immortality is a concept I will have to look more deeply into... not because I have any great desire to live forever (it sometimes feels that I already have) but just because I want to know.
It strikes me that, (biologically and ecologically anyway), there are compelling reasons for death. Most everything dies. This is way the machine is built. Immortality is contrary to the rules. Death is what we do. It is merely terribly sad.
Dogs bark. Flowers bloom. Immortality is not part of this.
Jacques Cousteau said it best. "Death," Cousteau states, "is fundamental to evolution," and "evolution is fundamental to survival."[xli]
Death is life.
This is very comforting to me, and calls to mind verses from that most lovely of the old books... the one that some attribute to Solomon: Ecclesiastes. I think about these words often, especially in my garden (Ecclesiastes and My Marigolds ) but sometimes when looking at other gardens. For example, I cannot read about Christopher's stone walls (Outside Clyde) without thinking of Ecclesiastes 3:5.
There is just so much wisdom in it:
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 Jewish Publication Society Tanakh
"1To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:2A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; 3A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; 4A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 5A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 6A time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; 7A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 8A time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace."
- a time to mourn, and a time to dance - wow
[6]There is a great company that provides interesting lectures on a myriad of subjects. They are DVD lectures. The Teaching Company. I could not recommend their products more enthusiastically. I have many of their courses. Maybe dozens. I don't know.22
There is one course that springs to mind when I think about Zeus, and it is not a Mythology course. I'm thinking of Dr. Seth Lerer's course on The History of the English Language. Seth Lerer is the Avalon Foundation Professor in Humanities and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Stanford University. His course is fantastic. 36 lectures. 30 minutes each.
If I remember correctly, in an off-hand way he said something to the effect that the word "Zeus" was actually pronounced "Zdeus" in ancient Greek... the Zd was a phoneme lost to us.
So this starts to rings bells. Just look at that word... as pronounced.
Zdeus -- King of the Gods, Father of Many
Fast-forward a bit, to Rome. Zeus becomes Jupiter, the patron deity of the Roman state. But more importantly, not only are Zeus and Jupiter the same character, they are the same word!
Jupiter is just a compound word for Zeus + Pater (father).
Jupiter -- Zeus the Father
So this opens everything up, no?
Jupiter was the father of Mars the grandfather of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome.
Now... we all know what Deus is (French: Dieu, Spanish: Dios, Italian: Dio):
Deus -- God the Father, God the King
Zdeus.
Deus.
There is nothing new. These words knock me over. It is like I'm chit-chatting with Socrates.
It gets even better.
Let's go back to Jupiter a moment.
from Wikipedia: Jupiter
"linguistic studies identify his name as deriving from the Indo-European compound * dyēus- pəter- ("O Father God"), the Indo-European deity from whom also derive the Germanic *Tiwaz (from whose name comes the word Tuesday), the Greek Zeus, and the Vedic equivalent, Dyaus Pita. The name of the god was also [sic] the original namesake of Latin forms of the weekday known in English as Thursday but originally called Iovis Dies in Latin, giving rise to jeudi in French, jueves in Castilian, giovedì in Italian and dijous in Catalan."[xviii]
Prometheus. Zeus. It is all still here with us.
Gosh. - Back to Text
[7] Zeus wasn't just angry with Prometheus. He was angry with "man" as well. So, as a "punishment" he sent the first "woman." Pandora.
Ouch!
In Hesiod's Theogony (lines 590-93):
"From [Pandora] is the race of women and female kind: of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who live amongst mortal men to their great trouble, no helpmeets in hateful poverty, but only in wealth."[xlii]
Yeow!
"Deadly race and tribe." Seems a little rough.
I'll admit that ladies can be troublesome from time to time. Who can't? I'll even confess that I know several ladies who are a good deal more than troublesome. This, in no way, diminishes their beauty or wonder. It merely diminishes my interest.
But "deadly"? That's rough stuff.
This brings to mind the works of a much later poet and a previous posting here: Innocue vivito numen adest.
I'm thinking of the greatest (perhaps) of the Roman poets: Publius Ovidius Naso. Today, we call him Ovid.
Ovid wrote licentious poems of love and sex.
You should read some of his stuff.
Ovid's Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love) is a particularly delightful thing. It is "a series of three books [sic]. Written in verse, their guiding theme is the art of seduction. The first two, written for men about 1 BC to AD 1, deal with 'winning women's hearts' and 'keeping the loved one', respectively. The third, addressed to women telling them how to best attract men, was written somewhat later."[xliii]
But the Hesiod poetry made me think of this particular bit of Ovid's Ars Amatoria:
"’Tis well that the gods should exist and well that we should believe in them. Let us bring offerings of wine and frankincense to their immemorial altars. They are not sunk in indolent repose and slothful ease. Live then in innocence, for the gods are omnipresent. Fulfill the trust that has been reposed in you; observe the precepts of religion; have nought to do with fraud; stain not your hands with blood. If you are wise, practice deceit on women alone, for that you may do with impunity; but in all other matters let your word be your bond. Deceive them that are deceivers; women for the most part are a perfidious race; let them fall into the snares which they themselves have prepared."
The red letters denote the phrasing (and source) of Linnæus' motto: Innocue vivito numen adest. The blue is the relevant part.
-
I'm not suggesting that I believe this to be true. I'm just stringing thought to thought - "upon the velvet sinking... linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking..." - except I'm not thinking about a Raven. I'm actually chuckling at the perspective. Ah... the enduring myth of the she-devil. Funny. Some things never change. - Back to Text
[8] The whole Prometheus "forethought" thing is very nice. It just doesn't happen to be true. Sorry.
"In truth, the name comes from the same PIE word that produces the Vedic pra math, which means, "to steal." This verb produces pramathyu-s, "thief", whence "Prometheus." The Vedic myth of fire's theft by Mataricvan [in the Rig Veda] is an analog to the account found in Greek myth. To these etymological cognates we may add pramantha, the tool used to create fire."[xliv]
Turns out, Prometheus is a Sanskrit tale. Who would have guessed it? - Back to Text
[9] To me, the important thing about the name "Methuselah" is not that the original Methuselah lived a long time (like the Methuselah Tree) but something else entirely. I should note that this is my little projection. I do not think that the original namers of the bristlecone trees cared about the semantics to the extent that I seem too. (It is a cross I bear.)
"According to the Bible, [Methuselah] reached the age of 969 years. (Genesis 5:27)"[xlv]
That seems like a long time. But ALL of the antediluvian Patriarchs (the heads of the first ten generations of people as the story goes) lived a long time. Methuselah lived the longest (except for maybe Enoch who never died and so, is, theoretically still alive). Methuselah was of the eighth generation and is a metaphor for long life.
Now, I'm not preaching. I'm not even concerned if the story is true or not. My interest (here) is that the story exists... and what a tale it is!
Seven of the ten topped 900 years, and Mahalalel almost made it!
The story gets better. We are told (in Genesis 5) how old many of the Patriarchs were when they become fathers! For example:
"And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, and after his image; and called his name Seth: (5:3) And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters: (5:4) And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died. (5:5)" King James Bible24
It goes on like that.
Here are the heads of the first ten generations... with their ages... and the age when they sired the next patriarch.
Patriarchs |
Age |
Age when siring next Patriarch |
Adam |
930 |
130 |
Seth |
912 |
105 |
905 |
90 |
|
910 |
70 |
|
Mahalalel |
895 |
65 |
962 |
162 |
|
Enoch |
365 |
65 |
Methuselah |
969 |
187 |
777 |
182 |
|
Noah |
950 |
502 |
Source: Facts and Figures: Timeline of the Patriarchs
Again, I'm not preaching. I don't preach. And besides, I have no intention of sharing my spiritual beliefs here. In fact, the Genesis 5 numbers may be mistranslated, but if they were it happened a long time ago. These great numbers are part of our lore... of our cultural inheritance. I love the huge numbers.
So I think about this:
Patriarch |
Age when siring next Patriarch |
Adam |
130 |
Seth |
105 |
Enosh |
90 |
Kenan |
70 |
Mahalalel |
65 |
Jared |
162 |
65 (when Methuselah was born) |
|
TOTAL YEARS: |
687 years later |
Consider that Methuselah was born when Adam (who lived to 930) was 687. Adam was still alive. Also, consider that Methuselah died the year of the Noachian deluge. Noah's flood.
The Deluge, by Michelangelo
"This makes Methuselah the human link between Adam and Noah." [xlvi]
Exactly.25 But more than this...
Now, again, I'm not preaching. I'm not even concerned if the story is true or not. My point is that Methuselah is a bridging idea. Methuselah is a continuous link.
The idea of Methuselah is, to me, an idea of a single life that connects the beginning of the world to the end of that world... which is EXACTLY what the Prometheus Tree was: a single life that connected the beginning of civilization to... uh...
Nevermind.
We killed it. - Back to Text
[10] The decay thing is interesting to me. Fortunately, the Bristlecone wood is too brittle for lumber purposes[xlvii] else there would be NO Bristlecones at all, because the wood doesn't rot. As in, never it seems. Fallen samples have been found intact and unrotted 2000 years later.[xlviii]
I found an interesting and simple site dedicated to Forest Pathology to try to get a handle what decay actually is. Turns out, it is almost exclusively a fungal thing. "There are other kinds of deterioration, by insects, marine animals, UV, but this is not decay, nor is it quantitatively as important as decay."[xlix] So, from this I deduce that the Bristlecones are resistant to fungi.
No rot over thousands of years. Imagine that! And imagine what it means!
"By supplementing records from living trees with those from long-dead trees, C. W. Ferguson, continuing the program of the Laboratory of tree-Ring Research at Tuscon, has reached back to 5150 B.C., thus establishing a continuous bristlecone pine chronology covering just over 7,100 years. More recently, analysis of a small piece of dead wood indicates an age of about 9000 years..."[l]
This is a continuous meteorological and environmental record. Amazing really.
"Enough dead specimens have been found by now to make a complete overlapping chronology dating back 11,000 years, unbroken but for a stubborn mystery sliver of perhaps 500 years."[li]
That 500-year gap must be driving scientists positively mad. I can just imagine a group of dendrochonologists: the lab director, the post-docs, the PhD candidates... "How do we solve for those missing 500 years?" Can't you just see those discussions and trials?
I have no doubt that this will be overcome too. These bristlecones. Amazing. They are growing almanacs of civilization!
And THIS means that the fallen fragments are important! Everything must be protected. We might want to put one of these beautiful twigs on our coffee tables (I know I do), but doing so destroys the almanac... so I won't.
Interesting.
I'd never really thought about such things before.
"Dr Ferguson [sic] said [in a telephone interview that] wood on the ground was even more valuable to science at present than the living trees."[lii]
[11] The Schulman Papers:
Schulman, E. 1958. Bristlecone pine, oldest known living thing. National Geographic Magazine 113: 355-372 (This is not really a "Scientific Paper")
Schulman, E., and C.W. Ferguson. 1956. Appendix C in E. Schulman, Dendroclimatic changes in semiarid America. University of Arizona Press, Tuscon, Arizona. Pp 136-138
[12] DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas - the Mad Welshman who died of drink the very year Edmund Schulman started looking higher up the mountains.
Exquisitely Beautiful Hubris.
Dylan Thomas. And I think I'll pour myself another nip. - Back to Text
[13] I am suspicious of pithy statements such as:
"Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking." ~ Stephen William Hawking
In fairness, one must give Hawking the benefit of the doubt. He deserves it. I sit here typing with a cocktail, voluntarily impaired and still not near Hawking's equal. So it is.
But the statement is certainly pithy.
I... uh... have to wonder what a list of mankind's greatest achievements even looks like. Is it science? Art? Technology? Philosophy/Theology? War?
Maybe it is simply architecture?
Agriculture?
I have no idea. Any ideas? Anyone?
Maybe literature?
I don't know.
I had a pasta thing once that should probably be on the list. Spicy. Conchiglie alla Sarda at Chicago's Topo Gigio. According to the menu (here) it is "Seashell Pasta in a Tomato-Cream Sauce with Ground Sausage, Peas and Pecorino Cheese" but that doesn't do it justice. There is some kind of magic in this Conchiglie. Something about the sausage gets into the sauce and creates a fiery explosion of irrationality. Stupidity seems wonderful. Marriages seem functional. The greatest of financial follies seem reasonable. Betrayal becomes a misdemeanor, part of life. And then there is sleep.
Yes. Conchiglie alla Sarda must be on Hawking's list.
Also, I have to believe that raising happy, productive, honorable and kind children is big on that list. It must be.
And then there is the United States Navy.
Mankind's greatest achievements? Could it possibly be a dam? Or a simultaneous orgasm? Or maybe just fire.
Bottom line, I have no idea.
Talking? Who am I to disagree with Stephen Hawking? The man knows things. I am a shrub. Maybe a Viburnum. Maybe one of Ötzi's arrows. I am not Prometheus. I am something else. We are, each of us, the dribble of water that undermines mountain ranges. Insignificant but everything.
The grand canyon.
Let us dribble carefully!
Please understand that these are not unremarkable things to be, and perhaps enough. Who is to say? How is one to know? This is my concern. I am expected to be something. I expect it of myself. How does one know what something is? My father, a bonfire of light and warmth to me, is unconcerned. When he talks, he talks of integrity and honor... of keeping our feet on the ground... of contentment and not consumption.
And sometimes he speaks of dogs.
THAT is it.
EUREKA!
Someone ought to get Hawking some dogs. No talking required. I'll throw in a couple of hundred. Anyone know Dr. Steve? Let us get it done.
Hubris. - Back to Text
[14] The quote reads: "Cox recalled in a 1996 memo he wrote to correct "the many rumors" about Currey's research project." I'd love to get a copy of that memo. I have no idea how to do so. Does anyone have any ideas? - Back to Text
[15] The subtleties of the world are a source of unending fascination for me. We have invented ways of living and behaving which are extraordinarily complex. The way we speak. The things we do. Everything communicates something if one knows what to watch for.
I don't always know what communicates. But I realize that I give information away all the time without knowing exactly how. Everyone does. It is part of the fabric of culture. Maybe this is one of the reasons I write these essays the way I do. This is relaxation. I can't guard too much here and still enjoy it. And so I don't. I fear I am a bit ribald and tedious at times, but so be it. Maybe that is what I am? Hopefully these are not too-terrible offenses.
Everything communicates... even the names on scientific papers.
I've recently learned about something in biology (particularly) called "The Principal Investigator System." The person who opened my eyes to this knows who he or she is. (Thank you.) It has to do with the collaborative nature of science. (Or rather, that science should be collaborative. The idea, among other things, is not to have individuals walking through ancient forests with chainsaws unless other individuals know about it. It is probably a good thing.)
"The design of an experiment, the interpretation of the results, and formal reporting of these results in a scientific paper often involve the contributions of many people. All you need do is take a look at any recent scientific journal and note the lack of single-author papers."[liii]
There should be at least two names on any paper: the names of the scientists / students who "did the work" and the name of the Principal Investigator or PI. The PI is a sort of quality assurance person... like the head of the lab or program. The PI system assures that the science is good.
I think.
The order of the names tell us something too. Who is who. What is what.
I'm not really sure of what. I'm not in that club.
Currey's paper is a single-author paper.
To one versed in "The Principal Investigator System" the immediate question upon seeing a single name might be something like "Why?" Or more likely, "What went wrong there?" "I wonder why the PI backed away?"
Isn't that interesting? It is a little code.
Currey was working through a summer fellowship. Almost certainly there was a mentor of some sort. But that name is not listed. The oh-so-subtle question is "What gives?" There is almost certainly a story there. It may be a benign story. I assert nothing nefarious. (I've already said that Currey was a good guy.) My point is actually less about Currey than about the nuances of communication.
Little codes everywhere.
Blue Rutabaga.26
But I think I may make up a second name to attach to these essays just so I don't freak out any scientists. Sadly, the name Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. is already taken. I'll chew on this awhile and let you know. - Back to Text
[16] I have been told by a practicing scientist that all scientific papers are cold, as Currey's is. I will not cite the source. Google being what it is, I will not mix up a legitimate academic practitioner (who told me things conversationally) with this blog. These people live and die by the things to which their names are attached. That is the game. I get it. These essays - mine - are the works of an un-credentialed person. I make no apologies for my station in life, it is a good one I suppose. But that station is neither "scientist" nor "journalist." It is more like "Casual Hero."
(Give me a moment please to enjoy my own "mystique" (if only it were true... but I live in a cloud of hope).
Thank you. I want to get to the bottom of this "scientific paper" thing. The Department of Biology at George Mason University has, what is to me, an interesting guide online: A Guide to Writing in the Biological Sciences: The Scientific Paper. The first sentence is as follows:
"A well-written scientific paper explains the scientist's motivation for doing an experiment, the experimental design and execution, and the meaning of the results."
The first sentence. I should note that I do not know if George Mason University's Biology Department is particularly good or bad and so I cannot evaluate the credibility of the guide. Sadly, perhaps, I evaluate the reputation of Colleges and Universities based upon my own Four-Point Criteria. It is honest, if rather pathetic:
Criterion One: Did I apply to this College or University? If so, was I accepted?
The way this works is thusly: If an institution rejected me, I think higher of that institution. If I was accepted at a College or University, I think less of that institution. If I was offered a scholarship of any kind I think much less of that institution. It is a Groucho Marx mentality. "I would not join any club that would have someone like me for a member." Though, of course, I have. (See what you are dealing with here?)
There is one noteworthy exception to this criterion, it is: If I attended an institution, I believe it to be the greatest, most sacred and holy place around.
I realize that this may not make sense to some. But it does to me.
Criterion Two: If a college or institution was an alma mater of any of my skippers from the United States Navy, then it must be a truly fine and wonderful place.
Again, maybe this does not make sense to some. It does to me. Fortunately, this second criterion invariably supports the first. So... it is... sort of like... proven.
Criterion Three: If Thomas Jefferson was involved, the school has to be good.
It might not be true, but this is way I feel. This opens up several options.
Criterion Four: If I dated, or had sex with, a woman and she dug me totally, then her alma mater(s) necessarily have to be good ones.
This might seem a contradiction to the First Criterion but it is not. You see, the first criterion is a reflection of what I am (something I am not terribly impressed with), while this fourth criterion is a reflection of what I could be/have been in great moments (something attached to hope, of which I have plenty)! The converse of this rule is also true. When there is overlap, I always go with the memory of the woman who dug me the most... as far as I choose to recall. This criterion supercedes all others.
Iowa State is very high on the list. Hollins College (it is, apparently, a University nowadays) is also an excellent place. Texas A&M is very low. But this could change. I have hope aplenty and I'm not dead yet!
Addendum to Criterion Four: If the sex or total digging-of-me happened on campus or on any affiliated property, the school is a guaranteed shoe-in for my own league of excellence.
Hollins College and Iowa State. Again. Georgetown. Skidmore. The University of Texas. Southern Methodist. Truly excellent institutions all. Clearly. Undeniably.
All other institutions stand equal in my ignorance. The Sorbonne? I suspect it is good but I just don't know. Maybe someone will dig me in Paris someday. I live in a cloud of hope! Je suis un crapaud!
But I do not know George Mason University and I cannot attach positive or negative credibility to the guide.
Maybe "motivation" is important. Maybe Currey's paper does, in fact, explain his motivation. It certainly doesn't sell it. And I don't see it. Read the short paper. It is very strange to me. Maybe I am wrong.
What do you think? - Back to Text
[17] It is worth mentioning here that Romeo and Juliet is not... well... entirely original.
"When Shakespeare sat down to write Romeo and Juliet around 1596, he wasn't starting from scratch. While he was working, Shakespeare was looking at a copy of a wordy 3,020-line narrative poem by Arthur Brooke titled "The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet." First published in 1562, "Romeus and Juliet" was well-known in England by the 1590s, and there's no doubt that the playwright kept a copy by his side when he dramatized the story of Verona's ill-fated lovers."[liv]
Actually, the tale is much older is than that. But no matter, the contributions of Shakespeare are vast and influence the way we think and speak today (in English). I am a big fan of the guy. I'm just a little amused at the modification of "Romeus" to "Romeo." It is, to my ears, a change from Roman Latin to "Modern" Italian. THAT is interesting to me. Shakespeare had to make his story fit what an Elizabethan era audience might think of Italy!
And he did more. He made the tale eternal.
"Shakespeare saw in Brooke's rambling poem the potential for a play teeming with passion and conflict; but turning Brooke's poetry into compelling drama required extraordinary transformation and invention. "Pedestrian," "prolix," "leaden," "inert," and "wearisome" are just a few of the words literary critics have used to describe Brooke's work. J.J. Munro, in his introduction to a 1908 edition of "Romeus and Juliet," offered this comparison of the source material and the play: "Brooke's story meanders on like a listless stream in a strange and impossible land; Shakspere's [sic] sweeps on like a broad and rushing river, singing and foaming, flashing in sunlight and darkening in cloud, carrying all things irresistibly to where it plunges over the precipice into a waste of waters below.""[lv]
Singing and foaming, flashing in sunlight and darkening in cloud, carrying all things irresistibly...
Sweet. Exactly how I feel. Had to mention it.
And now, back to the show! - Back to Text
[18] In the course of looking more deeply into Farley Moway - a controversial character - (Murie led to Mowat led to... you get the idea) I came across an interesting essay which is probably apropos of nothing at all. The fact that it has nothing to do with anything is not a problem for me. There is only now and everything has to do with it!
I think.
I want to share what I found:
"The Concept of Beastliness: Philosophy, Ethics and Animal Behaviour" by Mary Midgley
Philosophy, Vol. 48, No. 184 (Apr., 1973), pp. 111-135
Here's a little quote from the beginning (page 111):
"Thirty years ago, we used to accept Marx and Freud together, and then wonder, like the chameleon on the tartan,27 why life was so confusing. Today [1973] there is similar trouble over the question of whether there is, or is not, something called Human Nature."
WOWZA.
Human Nature and the Concept of "Beastliness." Mowray and Murie are mentioned (Wolves).
But I believe the supposition is backwards.
Would a dog or a wolf kill Prometheus for no other reason than curiousity?
No.
Only man.
"Beastliness" is a complement we do not deserve. - Back to Text
[19] Part of the time anyway, the part with other people in it, I live in a world where very bright people choose not to think too deeply. Ideas must generally exist in pithy forms or not at all. There are (thankfully) a few exceptions. I'm describing my professional life of course;28 there is nothing "pithy" in my personal life. This blog is just a small snapshot of the superfluous and nonsensical run-on sentence that I have become.
Ug.
As a general rule, everyone knows that it is always safer to play the idiot. Office conversations (conversations for money) are almost invariably about out-dumbing the next guy... although the exceptions are always delightful.
Recently, during a pith-filled discussion of perception being reality and an engineering problem, a colleague (the lead engineer) suggested that everyone in the room ought to be especially nice to him because if perception is indeed reality, he was perfectly willing to perceive an entirely new one. He suggested that the big question we ought to ponder is whom he should allow to continue to "have existed."
Sweeeeet. Now that is the way I like to get zinged.
And I actually think he's right.29
Perception may, in fact, be reality. Many cognitive psychologists believe, that "as we move about in the world, we create a model of how the world works."[lvi],
"We sense the objective world, but our sensations map to percepts, and these percepts are provisional, in the same sense that scientific hypotheses are provisional (cf. in the scientific method). As we acquire new information, our percepts shift, thus solidifying the idea that perception is a matter of belief."[lvii]
Reality is provisional. I buy that.
But it isn't just psychologists who are in this. John von Neumann, "one of the foremost mathematicians of the 20th century"[lviii] "proved" that consciousness determines reality (though I can't understand the argument fully (no big surprise there)).
And then, of course, we have the Observer Effect wherein observing a thing changes the thing. And if this is true, then our perceptions literally change reality. If we look, reality is one way. If we don't look, reality is another.30
Just so you know, these days I am not looking. - Back to Text
[20] Of course, the passage doesn't say that Adam and Eve ate an apple.
Not at all.
No one knows what they ate.
There is a very good (and none too preachy in my opinion) essay on the Tree of Knowledge that examines this reality. Not an apple. Not even forbidden fruit.
We can't even claim that "apple" isn't mentioned because the bible doesn't specifically mention apples at all. It does mention them. Specifically. Apples are all over the bible. Many times. And you know what? Usually (if not always) the mention of an apple is a positive thing.
"A word Fitly spoken is like Apples of Gold in Pictures in Silver." Proverbs 25:11
"Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love." Song of Solomon 5:22
And of course, there is the ubiquitous "Apple of the Eye" thing (Deuteronomy 32:9-10 RSV, Proverbs 7:1-3 RSV, Psalm 17:5-8 RSV, Lamentations 2:18 KJV) - but that is something else entirely.
Hmmmn.
It turns out that the fruit in question "was more likely apricots, pomegranates, or figs than apples. (Adam and Eve will use fig leaves to hide their nakedness)."[lix] Imagine that!
But apples get the bad rap. Malus. And so it is.
My old friend Linnæus knew that the apple was improperly maligned. Wait. Look at that! "Maligned."
Malign: "to speak harmful untruths about; speak evil of; slander; defame: to malign an honorable man..."[lx] To speak evil of. Malus! The apple!
A linguistic paradox! Maybe it is impossible to malign an apple? It would seem so. An apple is Malus and "maligned" comes from apple. Huh? I wonder what that means?
Where the hell was I?
Linnæus.
"When he had to choose a scientific name for the banana Linnæus recalled the old notion that the banana was the forbidden fruit of Paradise. In other words, it was a banana that Eve offered Adam in the garden of Eden! The scientific name is thus Musa paradisiaca."[lxi]
The banana.
Mmmmm, tasty!
A Sacred Monkey Eating Forbidden Fruit! ?
Flickr Photo Originally Uploaded on 10 June 2007
By bocavermelha-l.b.
Adam and Eve ate from the "banana tree" of knowledge? Maybe so! One can almost hear Linnæus chuckling in the term Paradisiaca. It is, however, tough to say with any certainty why Linnæus selected the word "Musa." It could be that "Musa" was the Arabic name. I don't know.
I was just reading something important about bananas but I can't quite place it. Maybe I was listening to something. Bananas.
-
WOW. I've derailed myself. AGAIN! I'm getting rather far from Prometheus. Apologies. Allow me to get back on track. - Back to Text
[21] "Malum quidem nullum esse sine aliquo bono."
"There is, to be sure, no evil without something good."
Pliny the Elder
Never were truer words uttered. Think about Prometheus. One tree was felled but now they are all protected. There is NO QUESTION that Currey's actions yeilded tremendous benefits.
Pliny knew things. - Back to Text
[22] Some time ago I was down with the flue and found myself staring at a television for what seemed like a hundred-million years. There were hundreds of channels of what I can only describe as an assault and battery on my senses. It was bad. And I realized that the privilege of having this tsunami of tripe rushing into my life was actually quite expensive... more than a dining minimum at a supper club.
I turned the TV off, called the cable company and told them to unhook me. No more.
Of course, there is no reliable free TV here and so I have nothing... except lectures and movies. All things considered it is a highly satisfactory situation. - Back to Text
[23] What little Texas boy30a who grew up in a beautiful land of low "mountain cedar" (Juniperus ashei) and gnarled "Texas Live Oaks" (Quercus fusiformis) did not dream of seeing and climbing a Sequoia? Certainly we all must have, I suppose, though I've never actually asked anyone. It is a presumed truth, and not to be questioned. It is, in me, what passes for dogma in my "religion" of the Hill Country.
Bristlecone pines I can understand. Seeing beauty in inhospitable places is what my eyes were grown to see. But a Sequoia Forest? What must that be? What is the ousia of that?
It is not for me to know.
Please understand that the lush green notion of a Sequoia Forest is about as exotic to me as Kubla Khan's Xanadu. If Samuel Taylor Coleridge had his opium-induced dream in South Central Texas and not a farmhouse near Exmoor, England, his poem would have been about Sequoias. And yet maybe it was!
"And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery."
One day I will write something about the Sequoias, I must. But I've never been. I've never seen them. Can you believe it? You see, I do not go to California unless I must. I've been of course. Dozens of times maybe. With one exception, they have all been quick trips into the cities and suburban enclaves. The exception was my brother's graduation from a Navy thing on Coronado Island, and that was a protracted family affair. A big, big wonderful time.
God love the United States Navy! God protect its men and women!
My own Navy years, years later, were Eastern years. I requested it to be so, and the needs of the Navy required it.
You see, I do not go to California, unless I must.
Intellectually and practically, I know that California is beautiful. There are good reasons why a continent full of people - a whole world full - stand in line to go there. My reasons, I suspect, are neither intellectual nor practical. We do things because of who we are.
My brother went West and made his fortune. Countless friends have gone West too. Again, fortunes made. My mother was from the West, and I have family all over "out there." But I do not "Go West" easily. It should be obvious enough by now to anyone who may care to look that I go the other way. The West is "new." And I live in history. I live in the past.
It is only because of my fidelity to a woman that I wound up here, which is nowhere at all. (It a beautiful and prosperous nowhere, but to me nowhere nonetheless. Somewhere neither East nor West and neither Old nor New. We leave our homes one morning and this is what happens... I think of the Chinese Romans: Lupins, Wolves, Chinese Romans, Peaches and the Unforgettable Cream. But of course, they went East!)
It is testament to the beauty and charm of Seattle that I am so in love with that place, because the idea of the Pacific Northwest is doubly strange to me. Triply. Stranger than strange... Seattle is unreal to me. Foreign.
I try to change, but change is hard.
-
When I began this little aside, I had notes before me. I was planning to exposit about the fascinating complexities of Sequoioideae, Sequoiadendron and Metasequoia. I wanted to explore the alerce millinarian, a South American sequoia relative thought to be 3622 years old. I even had some (I believed relevant) observations about Sequoia National Forest. The notes are still here.
But something else has happened, and I am in-tune with it. I do not understand, but it is nice to be in-tune.
I will put these notes away for now and beg your understanding. I will save them for another evening, if another evening there is. Forgive me. - Back to Text
[24] I know that the King James Bible is not universally accepted. It has problems. But I don't care. This is an English book created in the age of Shakespeare (just after). I just love it. Don't sue me. - Back to Text
[25] Methuselah is a human link between Adam and Noah. But unless my math is wrong, I think the same is also true of Lamech. But I don't know of any trees named "Lamech." Maybe I'll name one of mine. - Back to Text
[26] Blue Rutabaga is my little code. - Back to Text
[27] "like the chameleon on the tartan" - Bah... it is a perfectly beautiful phrase indicating a mistunderstanding of reality.
Veiled Chameleon v2
Flickr Photo Originally Uploaded on 17 October 2006
By YasminesDad
This notion implies that chameleons change color based upon their environment... rather, that chameleons "blend." While I just LOVE this taste of language imagery, it simply isn't true.
"Different chameleon species are able to change different colors which can include pink, blue, red, orange, green, black, brown and yellow."[lxii]
But the whole "tartan" thing implies blending in (or the difficulty of doing so on a tartan).
"Despite popular belief, chameleons cannot change color to their surroundings. Chameleons are naturally coloured for their surroundings as a camouflage. However, recent research has indicated that Chameleons may use colour changes as a method of communication, including to make themselves more attractive to potential mates."[lxiii]
"like the chameleon on the tartan" - Bah! - Back to Text
[28] I should state clearly here that, with only a very few exceptions, I have a tremendous respect for the professionals with whom I interact in my business incarnation. They are dedicated, talented, smart, energetic and clever. But my remarks above are not about respect. They are observations. People brag about what they don't know, what they don't read and what they don't think about.
It seems to have become preferable in my world to discuss pop stars, scandals, wrestling and episodic television than to discuss history, science, philosophy or arts and literature. It is merely undesirable to discuss ideas yet abhorrent to discuss the history of them. We learn things from this. For example, I have learned to never - EVER - mention the Hittites in public.
I simply do not understand this. It is utterly foreign to the game of life for which I was prepared as a boy.
I do not judge or condemn pop stars, scandals, wrestling and episodic television as uninteresting or unentertaining. Some of the antics out there are nothing if not interesting and entertaining! But it seems that judgment and condemnation come the other way.
I cannot find a place where I belong. I grow more certain with every day that I simply do not. So I build a private Digitalistan of my Berberine Thoughts in a strange land of ice and water. And it isn't so bad. It is quite nice really. - Back to Text
[29] If perception is reality then MY perception is MY reality. I have to wonder how and why I dreamed up this particular mess. Why would I imagine the killing of Prometheus? What kind of imagination is mine? Although I must confess, in many ways, it is a delightful mess: Breasts; Dogs; Music; Navels; Undulating Waves of Red Leaved Foliage...
Perilla frutescens 'Akashiso'
Flickr Photo Uploaded on September 23, 2007
By The County Clerk
Now if only I could effectively imagine something a little warmer! - Back to Text
[30] Contrary to the common misconception, the Observer Effect is not the same thing as Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Heisenberg's principle describes the relationship between Momentum and Position in quantum mechanics, which is a way of understanding quanta (radiation) and matter. The uncertainty principle is a mathematical equation.
And yes, the entirety of everything is pretty much composed of quanta and matter. But quantum mechanical equations don't readily translate to the "reality" you and I might perceive. Why not? No one is really sure. Remember, reality is provisional. (I think that provisional reality is a very cool concept. Of course, that opinion is provisional too I suppose.)
Erwin Schrödinger demonstrates the problem of quantum reality quite delightfully in his imaginary experiment: Schrödinger's cat.
Schrödinger's cat
Flickr
Photo Uploaded on 4 October 2007
By hatfieldnate
The experiment goes basically like this. Imagine a cat in a box. The cat cannot be observed. There is a device in the box that, based upon theories of quantum mechanics, has an EQUAL probability of killing the cat in one hour, or not harming it in any way.
Wait one hour (in your imagination).
What's in the box?
Now, the mathematical equations that "explain" quantum mechanics would tell us that the cat is 50% dead and 50% alive. But we know that when we open the box and "observe" the cat, it will be either 100% alive or 100% dead.
What gives?
This is actually quite a chewy little imaginary morsel on many levels.
Observation is a part of the quantum truth.
Bottom line: we need better equations.
Perhaps interestingly, Heisenberg himself used the Observer Effect to "explain" his equation. He talked about an imaginary microscope (Heisenberg's Microscope) through which one observed an electron. Of course, by "observing" the electron, a photon of light/energy would have to interact with the electron, thus changing it.31
Perception may really be reality. And again, if so, how could I have perceived the killing of Prometheus? What is wrong here? I mean, I'm trying to live in a cloud of hope!
I'm way off track. Way, way, way off track. Apologies. - Back to Text
[30a] Patricia Sharpe, of Texas Monthly Ranch, in article about the noxious "cedar" pollen, wrote the following:
"Physically and philosophically, cedar defines Central Texas. You can no more think of that terrain without cedar than without live oak or limestone. Sentimentalists would also insist that the resinous aroma of cedar-wood campfire on a starry autumn night is one of the things that makes life worth living."
That is gawd-dam-right and damn well wrote!
And of course, it isn't cedar at all but I don't care. - Back to Text
[31] Not only might perception be reality. Perception might also be what reality has been. Strap on your safety belts.
Portal of light
Flickr Photo Originally Uploaded on 1 April 2006
By Belltown
A number of years ago I read an article in some magazine (Scientific American, National Geographic, Science News, something) about a theory that made my head spin even though I could not (and do not) fully understand it. In fact, I had a very difficult time grasping any of it.
I've thought of this theory every single day since.
I can't remember the magazine. I can't remember the name of the theory. I can't remember the "famous scientist" who was working on it. All I remember is that the guy was old and remarked something like "this is the last thing I'll work on and I'll work on it, and only it, until the day I die."
I've been looking for that magazine for years. There was some yellow on the cover. Maybe. Damnation!
But the theory has to do with what "light" is... based upon how we perceive it. It goes something like this:
The very act of watching light determines what the fundamental reality of that light is. I won't spin off too far here (I hope) but it comes down to the nature of light.
We have to backtrack a bit.
Now, if we venture back to ancient times (my days in High School (the early 1980s)), young men and women were taught two inviolable laws:
- The Law of Conversation of Matter (the Lomonosov-Lavoisier law), which states (basically) that mass can neither be created nor destroyed although it may be rearranged.
- The Law of Conservation of Energy, which, pretty much, says the same thing about energy.
But... uh... this not so true.
It is very nice because it allows us to think in terms of two "categories" of things: energy and matter. Every "thing" is either energy OR matter. And since neither can be destroyed, it follows that energy and matter are different things.
Light is energy. Carbon is matter.
Again, not so true.
Einstein wrecked that idea once and for all. Einstein's E=mc2 basically says that energy (E) and mass/matter (m) are the same thing. Energy = Matter (multiplied by square of the speed of light (c)). It is called the mass-energy equivalence formula. Yep.
So, at incredibly high speeds, we must talk about the Conservation of Mass-Energy.
The point is this: light and carbon are the same basic thing, Mass-Energy.
OK, let's go back further.
In the 1600s, René Descartes suggested that light was a wave... that it was not made of any "stuff" but was instead "a disturbance of the plenum, the continuous substance of which the universe was composed."[lxiv] It was not part of the plenum; it was a "disturbance."
At around the same time another French thinker, Pierre Gassendi, proposed that light was made of particles... you know... of stuff. It was made of matter-like bits.
These two fellows (and many others) were trying to explain diffraction, reflection and refraction. It is not so easy to explain all of these given the same set of assumptions.
It turns out that they are both right. And wrong.
Now we get to the big guy, Isaac Newton, who was interested in light and telescopes and such.32 Newton "studied Gassendi's work at an early age, and preferred his view to Descartes' theory of the plenum. He stated in his Hypothesis of Light of 1675 that light was composed of corpuscles (particles of matter) which were emitted in all directions from a source. One of Newton's arguments against the wave nature of light was that waves were known to bend around obstacles, while light traveled only in straight lines."[lxv]
So what is light? We aren't terribly sure. But apparently, light can either be particles (matter) or waves (photons/energy). Either/Or. Not both. Verrrry Strange.
Further, consider that particles and waves behave in different ways. We expect particle-light to do certain things and wave-light to do other things.
So... that is background.
Here we go...
Here's the question: what determines whether light is one or the other?
Answer: It depends who is looking! Or NOT looking.
We are back in the box with Schrödinger's cat.
Now, if you care, check out this two-page press release from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel: Quantum Theory Demonstrated: Observation Affects Reality. Scientists are playing with this idea and getting peculiar results.
The act of observing might very well determine the fundamental essence of what something is.
-
This is strange enough to be sure.
But I'll invite you to come all the way into the rabbit hole.
-
Come with me out to the edge of Orion's Arm33... to the edge of "our corner" of the Milky Way Galaxy34 ... to the Eskimo Nebula.
"Credit: Andrew Fruchter (STScI) et al., WFPC2, HST, NASA
Explanation: In 1787, astronomer William Herschel discovered the Eskimo Nebula. From the ground, NGC 2392 resembles a person's head surrounded by a parka hood. In 2000, the Hubble Space Telescope imaged the Eskimo Nebula. From space, the nebula displays gas clouds so complex they are not fully understood. The Eskimo Nebula is clearly a planetary nebula, and the gas seen above composed the outer layers of a Sun-like star only 10,000 years ago. The inner filaments visible above are being ejected by strong wind of particles from the central star. The outer disk contains unusual light-year long orange filaments. The Eskimo Nebula lies about 5000 light-years away and is visible with a small telescope in the constellation of Gemini."
Now get a load of THIS:
As mentioned earlier, we are learning that observations affects what light is or isn't. But this is not to say that light is normally one thing and when we look at it we change it. That would be almost easy to grasp. Almost. The light doesn't CHANGE. It simply IS one thing or another... depending upon our perceptions.
Now... a light-year is the distance light will travel in a vacuum in one year.35 The Eskimo Nebula is about 5000 light years away. So... when we see the light from the Eskimo Nebula we are actually seeing what happened 5000 years ago. We are seeing the past.
If we see a distant supernova explode, it is important to understand that it happened ages ago. It is probably already a nebula by now... but we won't see that for ages more.
So... let's think about the light from the Eskimo Nebula. It left its source about the time the Prometheus seed germinated. It has been rushing here ever since. If we observe it, we determine what it is (but we don't "change" it). Therefore, since this very light was "created" 5000 years ago, aren't our observations actually determining what it was?
I need another cocktail.
Could it be that everything is really just in my imagination?
Could I conceive of such a place? Could you? - Back to Text
[32] Isaac Newton was also an alchemist (a wonderful combination "of chemistry, metallurgy, physics, medicine, astrology, semiotics, mysticism, spiritualism, and art all as parts of one greater force").[xxiv] He lived and worked in some strange territory. But he was who he was. How could he live in a world like mine?
While he spent his time perceiving forces that cause Saturn and Jupiter to "speed up" as their orbits approach one another, I spend mine perceiving forests of foxglove. Two different realities.
But my point is this: not everything Newton believed has survived as being true. - Back to Text
[33] Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a rather lengthy thing about Egyptian Obelisks, Gardens and "Dogs" in the Sky. Like many aspects of myself, it is a bit "spread out" and not terribly well manicured. But I will say that it one of the essays here of which I am particularly proud.41 One of the central subjects of the essay is the cultural significance of the constellation with swordbelt: Orion. (Geez. Now that I look at it put that way... sounds kind of boring now. It seemed very exciting at the time.) Whatever.
The Orion nebula
Flickr Photo Originally Uploaded on 24 November 2006
By dgoodin
I am tempted to place some of that information here, but I won't. If you are interested you know where to go.
I will write that Orion is a particularly interesting constellation for several reasons... and in winter (northern hemisphere) it is visible in the evenings. Look for the three stars of the belt: Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka. These are Arabic derived words: the girdle, the string of pearls and the belt.
Imagine looking into the sky and seeing, of all things, a string of pears and a girdle.
Not to be too immodest, but this is one spectacular "reality" I seem to have made up. Pas de problème. - Back to Text
[34] I have always found it odd to come across discussions of the "visibility" of the Milky Way Galaxy from earth. After all, the Milky Way Galaxy is, quite obviously, where we are... so it is home. I believe, therefore, that when I look into the iridescent bell of a foxglove bloom, or into the infinity a lover's eye, or at the topography of a dog's paw, that I am, to my way of thinking, looking at part of the Milky Way Galaxy. I myself am just an infinitesimally small piece of it. I am but a part of it. It is all of me.
This is, of course, true enough.
But our galactic home is a disk... inconceivably vast in diameter and yet inconceivably thin, or so the scientists tell us.36
"The disk of the Milky Way galaxy is approximately 100,000 light years in diameter, and about 1,000 light years thick. It is estimated to contain at least 200 billion stars and possibly up to 400 billion stars..."[lxvi]
I cannot begin to process what 400 billion even means. And the shape? I need analogies.
In the Wikipedia: Milky Way entry, there is a basic comparision of size. It is an "if the diameter of the Milky Way Galaxy were reduced to 80 miles across" kind of thing. So, I've taken a little liberty with it and put it into some Texas context. So... if the galaxy were reduced to 80 miles across that would be about the distance from San Antonio to Austin. In that case, the thickness of the galactic disk would be .08 miles or about 422 feet. This "thickness" corresponds to a height about 110 feet taller than The University of Texas Tower in Austin (307 feet) but well short of the various observation decks in San Antonio's Tower of the Americas.
That's the entire Milky Way Galaxy. Thin.
But the analogy extends to our own Solar System, which would be a "mere 2 mm (0.08 inches) in width."[lxvii]
Our own planet? I have no idea, but I suspect that would be a small grain of gunpowder in a shotgun shell in the rear window of a pickup truck heading south on I-35 in dove season.[37]
The galaxy is thin... very, very thin (it is also, so the great minds say, vibrating like the head of a drum... I'm pretty sure I can feel it when I've had too much bourbon).
I mention this "thinness" because as we are "in" the thin disk, we can look into the heavens and see part of the disk OR look other directions and not see it at all... we can see "out." And this is where it gets interesting (to me). This is from whence the milk comes. You see, our view of our galaxy "divides the night sky into two roughly equal hemispheres."[lxviii] It is a milky white band of low surface brightness. The Milky Way.
360° Degree Panorama of the Galaxy
Image from Wikipedia Commons (Attribution-Share Alike 2.5)
Consider the ancients with bent necks... looking up. They may not have understood what they were seeing (just as we do not) but they assigned a meaning and word anyway (just as we still do). The word was "milk." And "[i]n Greek myth, the Milky Way was caused by milk spilt by Hera when suckled by Heracles."[lxix]
And nothing ever changes.
We speak of it in the same terms today... in more ways than you might guess.
You see, the Greek word for milk is γάλα or gala[lxx] (or galaga).
Imagine that!
From milk we get "galaxy."
-
Later, the Romans came with their sound shifts (chain shifts)...
Gala and galaktos (from a hypothetical *glact- ) became lactis
Again, Milk.
-
But now I invite you to journey with me briefly down the magnificent Roman Roads... the Via Appia ("The Appian Way") from Rome to Apulia (Puglia)... the Via Aurelia ("The Aurelian Way") from Rome to France... the Via Cassia (the "Cassian Way") from Rome to Tuscany... the Via Flaminia (the "Flaminian Way") from Rome to Ariminum... the Via Salaria (the "Salarian Way") from Rome to the Adriatic Sea (in the Marches)...
Finally I invite you to look up into the skies at the Roman Via Láctea: The Milky Way.
This kind of thing delights me!
la vía láctea
Flickr Photo Uploaded on 24 July 2007
By sanabria
Marvelous stuff, no?
It wasn't until my old friend Geoffrey Chaucer used it that the phrase existed in English[39], but the Romans set the table. Grazie!
The beginnings of human civilization are only one tree away... only a whisper... and we can still hear it!
This is just my western story of the milky heavens... the mythology of my kind. Others have their own equally magical lore. If you are interested, I direct you to a list of what various cultures call the milky firmament: List of names for the Milky Way. Each name is rich in its own galactic mythology. The Cherokee created a particularly delightful tale: Gili Ulisvsdanvyi "The Way the Dog Ran Away"![40]
I could furrow my way through myth and meaning all day long (and I may yet!), but I must get back to Prometheus... somehow.
(How did I get here?) - Back to Text
[35] A light year: The distance light will travel in one year... but what EXACTLY is a year? A variance of seconds is a long-way for light travel... and the year is very variable. The earth wobbles! This is a big topic. Maybe I'll come back and get into this. Maybe I'll do it some other time. Maybe I'll never get it done. The basic idea is this: we have no solid idea what a year is. It keeps changing. And it is almost wholly arbitrary. Really! But I need to get back to Prometheus. - Back to Text
[36] Sometimes when I read the quiet confident writings of a long dead scholar or poet - not the big thoughts, but the smaller asides that rest about them - I am struck by their confidence in the modernity of their own worldviews. Ovid, in his study of love (The Art of Love / Ars amatoria), mentions magic. Aristotle was absolutely confident that his Greek words/language represented some fundamental truth in things. John Parkinson had a vegetable lamb on the title page of his great botanical work: Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris. (I wrote a little about this before: John Parkinson's Pun.) Isaac Newton was an alchemist searching for the essence of life in a magically heavy gold.
Now, quite safely insulated by time, we dismiss these notions as nothing at all. But such thoughts are who those people were.
And this brings me... well... back to me.
I do not suggest that I belong in any pantheon of thinkers (and certainly not one which venerates the memories of Aristotle and Newton), but I am the one writing this endless tome and have just written: "our galactic home is a disk... inconceivably vast in diameter and yet inconceivably thin."
I think of Pliny the Elder and his "magic" when I type such things. As magic was part of his perception of the world, the shape of our home galaxy is a part of mine. And then I think that not too long ago we all believed that atoms were the fundamental building blocks of things. In fact, that is what the word means:
atom Greek ἄτομος or átomos meaning "the smallest indivisible particle of matter, i.e. something that cannot be divided"[lxxi]
But we now we know that this thinking isn't true either. Now we think of elementary particles like quarks, leptons, and gauge bosons.
This will change too. Give it time.
And so I confess that I am not terribly sure of the shape of The Milky Way Galaxy... but I am endlessly amused by the speculation. - Back to Text
[37] I do not enjoy hunting. I do not condemn it and I have done it. I am not beyond killing and bloodshed, but I take no joy in it. It is not a hobby for me. I simply choose not to kill anything for pleasure. But I will say that I've met very few clay pigeons I didn't want to shoot. I just love the sporting clays.
Shooting Sporting Clays
Flickr Photo Uploaded on 2 January 2008
By jmthompson2008
But it is deadly cold here now. Zero and less. Oh that I was in a civilized land where venturing out-of-doors didn't equate to certain death.
Whatever. - Back to Text
[38] I have searched high and low for Kieth Trexler's photographs of Prometheus being felled, but cannot find them. I am certain they are "out there" somewhere. I must not be searching "smart." I'll keep trying.
I'd thought, at first, the images from Michael Cohen's The Oldest Living Tree Tells All might be Trexler's. Cohen's is a beautifully sensitive and comprehesive essay. It somehow made sense to me that Cohen would have them. (I know that is not a reason, but that is how I am.)
I think I'm going to have to violate the quiet of my study (and the local libraries) and start calling people and institutions. For some reason I need to see these images. But my purpose here is not journalism and I will not allow myself to become confused. The story has been told and retold with passion and point-of-view. People have been angry. People have been attacked. Reputations have been damaged. I simply will not get into that. What I do here (and everywhere I hope) is not to hurt anyone. The tree is gone. Adding corpses to a grave accomplishes nothing. Most of the players are already gone too.
I hope I have not contributed to the negative here. If I have I'll take this down.
But I'd like to see the images. - Back to Text
[39] Ha! The Milky Way is white (whyt)!
"See yonder, lo, the Galaxyë
Which men clepeth the Milky Wey,
For hit is whyt."
- Geoffrey Chaucer The House of Fame, c. 1380.[lxxii]
[40] One more. I couldn't resist. The Cherokee and the Milky Way!
"A Cherokee folktale tells of a dog who stole some cornmeal and was chased away. He ran away to the north, spilling the cornmeal along the way. The Milky Way is thus called Gili Ulisvsdanvyi "The Way the Dog Ran Away""[lxxiii]
So simple.
A dog running away with cornmeal!!! These dogs...
I will look up and laugh tonight. Maybe the dog will come visit. I have treats! - Back to Text
[41] It is interesting to me to see the reactions I get (or don't get) from the different kinds of things I put here. The essays I am most proud of are invariably ignored or almost so (hits, comments, links). They are also invariably too long to read and seemingly unreadable. I get it.
I also see that the quick off-handed stuff gets the most attention. If I were interested in optimizing the traffic here I could certainly learn a few things from what I've seen and done.
I know that I run long, and I apologize. But I ask you to understand that it is the running that I'm doing. Every new essay changes me a little, regardless if it is read. I can actually feel my universe expanding evening after evening... and I know that it is actually shrinking. This is an interesting time, for certain.
It must be admitted plainly that somewhere deep in my insecure self (we all have one I suppose) I think it would be great to get millions of hits an hour and have the entire world glued to my every thought... to be the "center" of something. But these feelings are infrequent and pass quite quickly. I am coming to believe we are all centers of something, if we elect to be.
It should also be admitted that always wanted to be a "cool" guy. But, even though I live in a cloud of hope, I'm getting a little old to keep hoping for that to happen. Ha! I actually laughed OUT LOUD just now. THAT is how not-cool I am.
In the end, these essays are simply what I do. There is no reason. This is simply the world I choose to live in.
Finally, it is hard to escape my solitary reality. It is solitary. Sweet Jesus.
Perhaps that is why when the ever-interesting John B (of Blog Meridian) recently wrote a description of what I do here (The Ousia of Whales) I was pleased (of course) but I was also illuminated. (I should also mention, for those of you who may not know, that John goes on the most eclectic assortment of thematic benders... this one was part of his Moby Dick phase. I often wonder what is going on in his head day-to-day? It is impoosible to know.) Anyway, he wrote:
"Hank doesn't so much follow a train of thought as he casts a net and hauls up whatever he catches on the deck that is his blog and reveals connections between things/people/places you and I'd never known or even suspected existed."
It is an enormous complement of course. And I'd never thought about it that way. Also it somehow diminshed my solitude. Somehow. And finally, it gave me an idea!
See, I've been thinking about Michel de Montaigne lately. He was the guy credited with "inventing" the essay. When he was 39 years old he started writing what he eventually began to publish as Essais. It means, basically, 'to weigh' or 'to try' or 'to attempt.' Assay. Same thing. There is a good discussion of the etymology at Essay, I Say. The etymology describes what he was trying to do!
To attempt.
I like that.
Montaigne wrote his Essais for the rest of his life. A pleasant thought as well.
The few I have read (translated) are about the damnedest assortment of things.
Now, I do not suggest on any level that I am a Montaigne. I am not. But John has inspired me!
In thinking of John's "hauling in the nets" metaphor, I thought that I (yes like Montaigne) should borrow a word to describe what I am trying to do here.
To honor M. Montaigne, I've limited myself to la langue française.
I should mention that je ne parle pas français, but despite this "small difficulty" I believe I've found just the right word: pêché - fishing.
Now... it just so happens that (as I understand it) the French word for "fishing" is the same word for "sinning." Merveilleux!
Montaigne wrote his essais. I am going to try to spend the rest of my life writing my "pêchérs." I aspire to be a pêchérist! Indeed!
I live in a cloud of hope!
Thank you John. - Back to Text
[i] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Prometheus (tree) - Back to Text
[ii] SOURCE: The Floral Genome Project: Amborella - Back to Text
[iii] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Amborella trichopoda - Back to Text
[iv] SOURCE: Wikipedia: list of long living organisms - Back to Text
[v] SOURCE: Web Companion to Developmental Biology Eight Edition - Back to Text
[vi] SOURCE: Discovery by Dr. Edmund Schulman - Back to Text
[ix] SOURCE: Discovery by Dr. Edmund Schulman - Back to Text
[x] SOURCE: Staying Alive: High in California's White Mountains grows the oldest living creature ever found - Back to Text
[xi] SOURCE: "Martyr for a Species (pdf 4.75MB)" by Darwin Lambert, Audubon, May - June 1968 p 53 - Back to Text
[xiii] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Hubris - Back to Text
[xiv] SOURCE: Staying Alive: High in California's White Mountains grows the oldest living creature ever found - Back to Text
[xv] SOURCE: Staying Alive: High in California's White Mountains grows the oldest living creature ever found - Back to Text
[xvi] SOURCE: Staying Alive: High in California's White Mountains grows the oldest living creature ever found - Back to Text
[xvii] SOURCE: "Martyr for a Species (pdf 4.75MB)" by Darwin Lambert, Audubon, May - June 1968 p 50 - Back to Text
[xviii] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Jupiter - Back to Text
[xix] SOURCE: "Martyr for a Species (pdf 4.75MB)" by Darwin Lambert, Audubon, May - June 1968 p 54 - Back to Text
[xx] SOURCE: Staying Alive: High in California's White Mountains grows the oldest living creature ever found - Back to Text
[xxi] SOURCE: Staying Alive: High in California's White Mountains grows the oldest living creature ever found - Back to Text
[xxii] SOURCE: Staying Alive: High in California's White Mountains grows the oldest living creature ever found - Back to Text
[xxiii] SOURCE: Staying Alive: High in California's White Mountains grows the oldest living creature ever found - Back to Text
[xxiv] SOURCE Wikipedia: Alchemy - Back to Text
[xxix] SOURCE: Staying Alive: High in California's White Mountains grows the oldest living creature ever found - Back to Text
[xxx] SOURCE: "Martyr for a Species (pdf 4.75MB)" by Darwin Lambert, Audubon, May - June 1968 p 54 - Back to Text
[xxxi] SOURCE: Staying Alive: High in California's White Mountains grows the oldest living creature ever found - Back to Text
[xxxii] SOURCE: "Martyr for a Species (pdf 4.75MB)" by Darwin Lambert, Audubon, May - June 1968 p 53 - Back to Text
[xxxiii] SOURCE: "Martyr for a Species (pdf 4.75MB)" by Darwin Lambert, Audubon, May - June 1968 p 53 - Back to Text
[xxxiv] SOURCE: "Martyr for a Species (pdf 4.75MB)" by Darwin Lambert, Audubon, May - June 1968 p 53 - Back to Text
[xxxv] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Family Tree - Back to Text
[xxxvi] SOURCE: here - Back to Text
[xxxvii] SOURCE: here - Back to Text
[xxxviii] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Family Tree - Back to Text
[xxxix] SOURCE: Wikipedia: August Schleicher - Back to Text
[xli] SOURCE: Preface to Cousteau's book The Ocean World, as quoted in Wikipedia: Immortality - Back to Text
[xlii] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Prometheus - Back to Text
[xliii] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Ars Amatoria - Back to Text
[xliv] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Prometheus - Back to Text
[xlv] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Methuselah - Back to Text
[xlvi] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Methuselah - Back to Text
[xlvii] SOURCE: "Martyr for a Species (pdf 4.75MB)" by Darwin Lambert, Audubon, May - June 1968 p 53 - Back to Text
[xlviii] SOURCE: "Martyr for a Species (pdf 4.75MB)" by Darwin Lambert, Audubon, May - June 1968 p 53 - Back to Text
[xlix] SOURCE: Forest Pathology - Back to Text
[l] SOURCE: "Martyr for a Species (pdf 4.75MB)" by Darwin Lambert, Audubon, May - June 1968 p 54 - Back to Text
[li] SOURCE: Staying Alive: High in California's White Mountains grows the oldest living creature ever found - Back to Text
[lii] SOURCE: "Martyr for a Species (pdf 4.75MB)" by Darwin Lambert, Audubon, May - June 1968 p 55 - Back to Text
[liv] SOURCE: "How Romeus Became Romeo" A comparison of Arthur Brooke's "Romeus and Juliet" and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet by Ryan McKittrick - Back to Text
[lv] SOURCE: "How Romeus Became Romeo" A comparison of Arthur Brooke's "Romeus and Juliet" and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet by Ryan McKittrick - Back to Text
[lvi] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Perception: Perception and Reality - Back to Text
[lvii] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Perception: Perception and Reality - Back to Text
[lviii] SOURCE: Wikipedia: John von Neumann - Back to Text
[lx] SOURCE: "Malign." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 21 Feb. 2008 Dictionary.com Malign - Back to Text
[lxi] SOURCE: University of Upsalla: http://www.linnaeus.uu.se/online/life/6_3.html - Back to Text
[lxii] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Chameleon - Back to Text
[lxiii] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Chameleon - Back to Text
[lxiv] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Light - Back to Text
[lxv] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Light - Back to Text
[lxvi] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Milky Way - Back to Text
[lxvii] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Milky Way - Back to Text
[lxviii] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Milky Way - Back to Text
[lxix] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Milky Way - Back to Text
[lxx] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Milky Way - Back to Text
[lxxi] SOURCE: Wikipedia: Atom - Back to Text
[lxxii]SOURCE: Wikipedia: Milky Way - Back to Text
[lxxiii]SOURCE: Wikipedia: Milky Way Mythology: Mythology by Culture: Cherokee - Back to Text
Reminds me of an article about the golden spruce (Picea sitchensis 'Aurea.') from Queen Charlotte Islands. Unfortunately the online version of the New Yorker story is missing this lovely artists rendering of the Sitka spruce surrounded by its chlorophyll-rich brethren - it was a beautiful image.
Posted by: mp | February 26, 2008 at 12:15 PM
I really enjoyed this post (as I always do when reading your blog)...I'm quite certain that you have likely forgotten roughly 10x as many things as I have ever known. Regardless, I hope you DO make that trip...I can't wait to see the pictures!
Posted by: lisa | February 27, 2008 at 12:24 PM
Pam, Lisa and MP: I cannot shake this story from my head.
The Picea sitchensis 'Aurea' is interesting too. I'll write something on THAT soon.
Yes. I suspect the trees ough to be left alone. I will not touch them. But I will breathe their air.
And yes... language.
Posted by: The County Clerk | February 28, 2008 at 08:18 AM
Your telling of this tale sparked my interest and so I have been digging. Have you read Keith Trexler's Leman Caves:It's History From The Beginning Through 1965' or the Monthly report for September 1964 from Trexler to I think it was Robert Jacobson?
I have asked for help in the search from a friendly librarian that has found many great pieces in university and botanic or arboretum libraries. I will let you know if we come across the pictures taken of the cutting of Prometheus.
Posted by: Gloria | February 28, 2008 at 12:06 PM
www.uta.edu/biology/arnott/classnotes/5101/Bristlecone%20V.pdf
Pictures of Prometheus before being cut down.
Thanks for your writing, I enjoyed it.
Posted by: Brenda | May 29, 2009 at 02:19 PM