Yale University Press recently published an interesting little book by Stephen Miller entitled Conversation, a History of a Declining Art . It starts with a brief discussion of Job and with Plato’s Symposium and proceeds through late antiquity, post-revolutionary Europe, and early America until it arrives at modern times.
It seems there is much to be gained from open polite conversation. Much of our rude and unhappy world could be improved with a bit more of the civility that polished discourse provides. There is a lot in the book to take seriously, and to be enjoyed.
Unfortunately Miller’s book doesn’t end very optimistically. Not only is our civility less than it should be, but we are more and more occupied with gadgets that have effectively reduced whatever time we did take to converse. This trend doesn’t seem to be improving our prospects for improved civility.
Of course, not everybody is up to the high conversational standards that Miller writes about. This seems to have always been the case. Most of us, to be perfectly frank, just don’t have the candlepower of a Samuel Johnson, an Edmund Burke, or a Benjamin Franklin – all paragons in the art of conversation. But this doesn’t mean that we are incapable of enjoying it at all. Neither does it mean that witty and civil conversation is the loftiest goal of language.
There is, after all, one kind of conversation that Miller doesn’t mention in his book. As it turns out, this particular kind of conversation is even rarer than Miller’s other uncommon varieties. Part of the reason for this, undoubtedly, is that very few people have ever given the subject much thought.
The type of conversation that I refer to is Christ-like conversation. I don’t mean to use the word ‘Christ-like’ as a reference to a particular community of saints or to a particular historic tradition. I mean ‘Christ-like’ in the sense of its reference to Christ. Christian conversation is conversation that informs that very probing question, “what would Jesus do?” as it relates to how we communicate with each other.
There is often a difference, though, between how Christ would communicate in any given situation and the way He would want us to. He, after all, is divine. We are mortals. The scriptures give us many examples of Jesus speaking to others. Only some of these, however, would be appropriate for us to imitate. Obviously it wouldn’t be right for us to be going around telling people that their sins are forgiven.
But there are at least a couple of examples of Jesus talking with others that make for epitomes of the Christian art of conversation. In these two cases, we find Jesus conversing with people that didn’t know, at least at first, who He was.
The first example comes from the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John. Jesus and His disciples are passing through Samaria and come to Jacob’s Well near the city of Sychar. Jesus stops for a drink and His disciples go on ahead.
A woman is at the well drawing water and Jesus asks her for a drink. She is a bit surprised that Jesus, being a Jew, would even talk with her, a woman of Samaria. Jesus’ response is both kind and direct. He not only implies that He accepts who she is but He also begins, right off, to talk about eternally important things.
“If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that sayeth to thee, give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water”. (John 4:9).
Perhaps to our ears, this might sound like an abrupt way to strike up a conversation. Maybe it was. Then again, maybe it wasn’t. One thing does seem clear though. The woman was neither overly startled nor intimidated by the statement. On the contrary, she responded with a direct and engaging comment of her own.
“Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water?” (John 4:11).
And so the conversation continues. Miller would certainly see this as a polite conversation. People don’t discuss such politically and religiously charged subjects – especially with those that likely have strongly different opinions – without being skilled conversationalists and very polite.
That’s all very well. Jesus, no doubt, was a good conversationalist. That’s not, however, why this example has so much merit for Christians. To understand this requires looking at how the discussion ends.
The conversation turns to prophets; and the woman, who is well informed on the subject, explains to Jesus her hope of the coming Messiah. Jesus then responds with a statement that is both fully in keeping with the flow of the conversation as well as being very powerful: “I that speak unto thee am he”.
This wonderfully insightful conversation ends with a testimony. Jesus, himself, testifies of the Christ. But testimony for Miller is not a criterion of good conversation. In fact it doesn’t meet the criteria for any kind of secular conversation at all. It certainly is, however, an example of Christ-like conversation.
In fact there are other kinds of conversation that Miller only discusses in passing. Pragmatic conversation, for example, is hardly mentioned at all. This includes the day-to-day exchanges of information we use all the time to get all the things done that we need to. This use of language is not necessarily entertaining and so doesn’t interest him much. It is noteworthy, though, that many great conversationalists, especially women, can make even these mundane exchanges interesting.
Rhetoric, or the attempt to persuade an audience, is another example that is only obliquely mentioned by Miller. He considers it clearly beneath the dignity of a cultured conversationalist, and doesn’t mention the three rhetorical appeals (ethos, pathos, and logos) by name but criticizes them nonetheless.
Ethos, or the appeal to the character and authority of the speaker, should have nothing to do with the quality of the discussion at hand. Quality conversation should rest solely on the verbal abilities of the parties involved. Pathos, or the appeal to the emotions, should also be out of the question. Good conversation should be fundamentally a mental effort that leads to enjoyment and even merriment. Emotion is too self-disclosing and limits one’s ability to discuss conflicting positions with charm and humor. Logos, or the appeal to reason and logic, might seem appropriate to good conversation but its use as a rhetorical tool is burdened by the same failing apparent in ethos and pathos. They are all appeals. They are used to convince and not to converse. Miller sees all of these as distractions; or even worse, as partisanship.
One type of rhetoric that is particularly galling to him is the kind that manipulates. It’s bad enough when people pretend to be who they’re not, but when they elevate hypocrisy to a conversational art, they have clearly gone too far.
The classic motivational book in this vein is Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People . Here we learn to smile more often and listen better - obvious virtues to acquire. In fact, we are told that our future has unlimited potential if we can learn to master the nuances of interpersonal relationships, including conversation.
Carnegie’s conversation is clearly tendentious. We engage in it to get ahead in life. Miller, of course, disagrees with this motivation. To him, conversation should be its own reward. If our only reason for conversing is to influence others, then everything is business and not pleasure or art.
And for that matter, Carnegie’s criteria are not necessarily Christ-like either. Certainly smiling, listening, and many of the traits he lists are, in fact, Christian virtues, but the motivation is all wrong.
Jesus’ message for the woman of Samaria is not selfishly motivated. He does listen and more than likely He smiled too. But Jesus is not selling anything. He wants to bring others to Him, to teach them the truth, to testify of the truth. There is nothing of the polite understatement and flattery so common in our corporate world and so publicized in self-help books today.
This doesn’t mean that self-help books are not Christian or discuss Christian themes. It does mean that they are not necessary to the goals of Christ-like conversation.
As with the case with the woman at the well, Christ-like conversation strengthens testimony and otherwise builds others up. To Lyman Sherman, the command was given from the Savior to “strengthen your brethren in all your conversations” (Doctrine and Covenants 108:7). We are also told not to worry so much about what sorts of things to talk about. If we really are on the Lord’s errand, He will help us along.
"For it shall be given you in the very hour, yea, in the very moment, what ye shall say. But a commandment I give unto you, that ye shall declare whatsoever thing ye declare in my name, in solemnity of heart, in the spirit of meekness, in all things. And I give unto you this promise, that inasmuch as ye do this the Holy Ghost shall be shed forth in bearing record unto all things whatsoever ye shall say" (Doctrine and Covenants 100: 6-8).
It is interesting that there are no qualifications made for this promise. It seems to be available to all who are serving the Lord, and clearly emphasizes the importance of the spirit in Christ-like conversation.
It is also interesting that there seems to be no particular emphasis on technique, at least not directly. There is, however, one conversational technique that Jesus used quite often. And He was quite good at it. It is the use of parables.
This method, incidentally, is often used by the world’s finest conversationalists. Most New Testament exegetes claim that these parables are used to teach those who are ready for Christ’s doctrines, while keeping them hidden from others. They are also used to teach in terms His listeners could more easily understand. And no doubt this is true.
But double-entendres also stimulate ideas and help jump-start pithy discussion. They’re an offer to enter into conversation. They also have another important characteristic. When they’re understood correctly, they carry a hefty punch. The mental breakthrough of understanding the hidden meaning of a parable carries with it a confirmation that is quite a bit more powerful than an otherwise simple explanation.
Perhaps more important than even this, however, is that the understanding of symbolic language can be culminated with a testimony for maximum effect. The example of the woman at Jacob’s Well is just such a case.
Language itself is symbolic. Yet when we use parables we are adding another element of symbolism to our conversation. In some ways this doubling of effect lends itself to higher spiritual understanding.
Poetry also relies on this enhanced symbolism to express itself. In fact poetry without it can hardly be imagined at all. This poem by Emily Dickinson is just a single example of multitudes:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops-at all -
Must of us tend to think of parables as teaching tools. By so doing we emphasize the elements of hidden meanings and customized messages that they carry. If we think of parables as tools of conversation, however, we find very different elements. Not only do they lend themselves to the witty discussions so loved by Miller, but also to the higher Christian virtue of spiritual understanding.
That we are even capable of so much symbolism is worth noticing. It is certainly unique to humans. Many intelligent animals are capable of communicating with gestures and simple sounds. We do the same ourselves. In fact it is often through non-verbal gestures that we communicate most effectively, at least most honestly. When we start using words, and especially when we start stringing them together into a sentence, we start down the road to abstraction. Often, even when our intentions are good, this abstraction gets confusing. Not only do we often misunderstand what others are saying, but we often have difficulty putting our own thoughts and feelings into accurate language.
Even the basics of grammar can be quite a formidable challenge all by themselves. Why then do we even bother with yet another layer of symbolism? Wouldn’t this just compound the difficulty of effectively communicating?
Surprisingly, the answer is no. The reason for this is that the two kinds of symbolisms are quite different. Words, that are symbolic of things in our lives (among other things) appeal to our minds, whereas spiritual and poetic symbolisms appeal to our spirits.
If the lining up of words on a sheet of paper can make us think of things we’ve never considered before, the telling of a symbolic story can help us understand at a deeper emotional and spiritual level than we’ve ever known before. It adds meaning to our knowledge. It is the instruction of the soul.
It is possible to engage in Christ-like conversation without wit, charm, or other typical forms of conversational talent. And the very basic principle of listening is different. Christ-like conversationalists listen with the heart and seek understanding and empathy. There is no need to worry about what to say next. After all, sometimes what is needed is just a smile, a chuckle, or a tear.
There is also a distinct lack of pride in Christ-like conversation. In fact pride, if present, can only lessen its effect. This doesn’t mean that Jesus never used a witticism. In fact it’s hard to imagine that His enjoyment of parables was the only way He utilized language creatively. However He used it, though, His conversational talent was not used to show off. Ultimately Jesus wanted His listeners to learn spiritual things by means of the spirit.
Christ-like conversation is, after all, communication by the spirit. It can use many of the methods used by conversationalists and motivators but its own motivation is different. Witty, entertaining, or even friendly conversations are not the goal. Certainly making a business deal is not either. Bringing others to Christ, certainly is.
This is particularly clear in the 2nd scriptural account of a conversation including the unrecognized Jesus. In this case, the men that were with Him were traveling from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Here Jesus asks informed questions, listens, builds confidence, and teaches. As in His other conversations, He talks about His gospel. The journey takes several hours but the two men seem blind to who their companion is. It isn’t until after He leaves that they realize that they had been talking with the risen Lord.
"Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?" (Luke 24:32).
Christ-like conversation is simply this: to talk about the Savior’s gospel in a way that invites His spirit. And with all due respect to Miller and his interesting story, this type of conversational history still needs to be written.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Monday, May 14, 2012
Compost Potatoes
A few months ago (back in February) Michael and I were planting a handful of early crops. We were even bold enough to put out some seed potatoes, since spring in Fresno (California) comes pretty early. At the time, blossoms were already out on the almond trees throughout the valley.
Since we have a fairly small garden spot, we had left-over potato pieces after planting. Michael, as an afterthought, just tossed the extra pieces in the compost pile. Neither one of us thought much about it until a few days later when I noticed young potato leaves coming up – not from the planted potatoes, but from the discarded ones in the compost.
It seems that the small seed potatoes had fallen heavy enough to move into the compost heap by a few inches. It was deep enough that the warmth of the old decomposing leaves and lawn clippings encouraged them to grow – even at a time (in the middle of a mild winter) when we were still experiencing occasional frosts.
I watched the potatoes grow. They didn’t seem to be bothered by the few freezing nights that we had, nor were they bothered by the lack of direct sunlight (my compost pile is in an area that is shaded all of the time in the winter). They grew rapidly and were obviously very happy where they were.
Last week, I needed some of the compost and had to pull up one of the plants. To my pleasant surprise, I found three nice potatoes – about the size of lemons. This is definitely the earliest I have ever harvested potatoes before – its only mid May, mind you!
Sunday, April 29, 2012
The Weather
Weather is always in the news. Back in the day when we used to read newspapers, it was as frequently considered as the comics. Now almost everyone has a link to some sort to weather information. Even I, who refuse to be overly “connected”, check at least a couple of weather sites on a regular basis.
And the weather that we learn about is usually unpleasant. In fact with the sophistication and prevalence of communication technology it’s easy to get the impression that natural weather-related catastrophes are increasing in frequency. And it’s possible that they are.
In the 1990’s I remember learning about major flooding in the Dakotas, in California, and in Chicago. It seemed that there was one weather-related catastrophe after another – to the extent that Mother Nature’s malcontents almost became expected. I’m not sure that they have lessened very much since then. If we believe meteorologists, we have more to look forward to as the climate continues to change in coming years.
So we find ourselves in the odd situation of taking newsworthy catastrophes for granted even as we take all the other more typical weather events for granted too. Maybe we think differently when our own local weather is out of sorts. But this is not an every-day event. Weather has become so quotidian that we usually ignore it altogether. Our more serious conversationalists think of weather-talk as a subject for lesser mortals. Few people really love the weather and appreciate it for what it is: a veritable force of nature.
Or maybe we do have a few pleasant weather memories, like flying kites on a windy March afternoon. Perhaps we are genuinely interested in watching the evening weather report to see what the weekend will offer. But weather has a lot more potential than this for the genuine nature enthusiast. It is one of the great ways available of experiencing the natural world. One of the saddest effects of our cloistered work environments and over-crowded cities is the partitions we put between us and the weather. There is much that we are missing when we stay inside.
I grew up in the high deserts of Utah and summer rainstorms were a real treat. They weren’t very common but it seems we had at least a couple every year. When they did come, I experienced a thrill and an inexplicable urge to go out and get drenched. One sunny day I remember driving past a field where horses were jumping up and down, swinging their necks about, and otherwise having a great time. Not knowing the language of horses, I could still tell that they were very happy about something.
I asked my Dad what the excitement was all about. He told me that some animals often behaved that way right before a rainstorm. I could empathize with the horses. Summer rain made me feel the same way. But I was also surprised because I could only see a few clouds on the horizon. It certainly didn’t look to me like it was going to rain.
But rain it did. It took maybe half an hour to come and the storm didn’t last all that long, but it was enough to cool things down and leave that refreshing smell of pluvial pine and moist desert soil that lifts my mood to this day, just thinking about it.
Most of us, however, go to great lengths to avoid the weather. Maybe we do this without thinking about it. Most of the time we hurry inside just to be comfortable – to avoid the heat or the cold. And of course, we grew up with our parents telling us that we would get sick if we stayed out in the cold. And we were constantly being reminded of how terribly the sun could burn our skin.
But not everything is as it seems. More people do, in fact, get sick during the cold months than at other times of the year. A great deal of this, however, comes from the fact that we’re not as active in the wintertime. It is true that over-exposure to cold weather can compromise our immune system, but the larger reason for more sickness in the winter is because germs stay viable for a longer period of time in the cold than they do when it is warm. It’s like a pathologist keeping a culture of germs alive by putting a Petri dish in the refrigerator.
This doesn’t mean that being outside in the cold is dangerous. It does mean that germs might stay alive under your fingernails or on the doorknob a little longer. The best advice is to wash your hands more often, keep your hands away from your face and try to avoid germy atmospheres as much as possible.
As far as being out in the cold, it can make you feel a whole lot more alive. You might want to try a little experiment if you find yourself on a cloudy day unable to warm up. Put on a coat and go for a walk outside. Take your binoculars and notice what the creatures in your neighborhood are doing. Some of them will be sleeping and not visible. Others, however, will be out despite the weather. Notice the plants that stay green all year. You will probably be cold at first but then your body will warm up as you go. Soon you will find yourself enjoying the walk. When you get back inside you’ll take your coat off and say, “it sure is warm in here”. And you’ll feel a lot better.
And what about the sun? It gets overly maligned too. We love it on vacation at the beach, and are careful to use sunscreen. We could be just as careful when we’re not on vacation and get out a bit more. Some of us are so worried about getting skin cancer, that we’ve talked ourselves out of enjoying the sunshine. In fact, our bodies are made to utilize the sun’s energy. They need sunshine to make important life-sustaining molecules. Sunshine is a very important part of our health. We just have to avoid getting burned too much.
As you learn more about the living things where you live, you will get a better feel for their periods of activity. In warmer areas, the afternoon might be too hot for most species and they will be waiting for the cooler times of the day to be active. In other areas, the afternoon warmth is the most active time of the day.
Another way to enjoy the weather is to watch clouds. I know this sounds a bit dreamy, but it can be addicting. As I write this, the sky outside my window is filled to capacity with cumulous clouds pushed up against each other from horizon to horizon. They are the medium kind building to the tall stormy cumulonimbus clouds. They are bottom-heavy with water and each one weighs more than a small herd of elephants.
This may surprise you. How can something so heavy float through the sky? Is it magic? Not really. But it is a powerful force of nature. Water first gathers into the air from the moisture-rich ocean and earth. As warm air currents carry the humid air higher into the cool atmosphere, the moisture combines into microscopic specks that interfere with light rays. These specks reflect the image of a fluffy cotton ball and give away the presence of all the water. When these specks join together into larger droplets they give off heat of their own (a reverse process somewhat like sweating which cools us down, when water is given off).
If enough water accumulates in big enough droplets, it begins to fall to the bottom of the cloud – like the border of gray outside my window. When this happens a storm is brewing. Somewhere close by a landscape is going to get a big drink of water.
It is truly awe-inspiring to realize what is happening in the air around us. Sometimes this is dangerous. Yet even something as powerful as a bolt of lightning is also beautiful. There is a reason that the ancients – from Moses on – saw the works of God in the clouds, in the rain, and in the air around us. Atmosphere is part of a living planet. We should enjoy it for what it is.
Have you ever been out in a snowstorm when nobody else was around? The falling crystals reflecting light from a distant street lamp or farm house? It’s as if the snow itself muffled everything and enforced a widespread silence – a soft and sleepy silence.
Such a storm sends most people inside where it is warm. But if you really want to get warm inside put on some mittens, some warm shoes, a knitted cap and a good coat and go for a walk in the snow with a friend, with your dog, or with your lover. If you’re really courageous, try sleeping outside in the midst of it all.
You might think I’m crazy (maybe I am) but let me explain. When I was young we lived in a house with electric heating that was regulated in each room. My bedroom was in the corner of the house and I had two windows opening in different directions. On stormy nights I loved opening both windows, letting in the moist air and cuddling up under warm blankets. I just had to make sure I turned the heat off so my parents wouldn’t get mad.
Then one evening I had the bright idea of sleeping outside near my grandfather’s woodshed in a storm. I knew a place I could put my sleeping bag that would be protected from the snow. It was up next to the shed where Grandpa had placed dozens of old boards. There was a long wide shelf that was covered by a piece of plywood. Grandpa used to lay down there himself on sunny days and rest in the shade.
So I found a foam pad, gathered my sleeping bag and pillow together and prepared my bed. By the time I was situated, snow had already begun to fall. It came floating down in undecided spirals. I captured hundreds of their delicate frozen patterns on my outstretched hand before they melted and I licked them up.
It was a mesmerizing moment to be in bed and only inches away from a snowstorm. And even though I exhaled a small cloud of my own with every breath, I was as warm as could be. I will never forget the night as long as I live. Experiencing nature so intimately has that effect on my memory.
It does happen that weather-watchers develop a refined sense of our human frailty. Compared to the forces of nature, we very seem so helpless. Nature on a grand scale is no match for our puny presumptions. And yet this universal magnitude that seems to diminish us can also have a very contrasting affect. It can (and should) inspire us with awe.
Our ancestors knew this feeling well. They lived close to the land and experienced the torments of nature as well as her exceeding beauty. They understood their place in the universe because they felt the presence of the divine in this power. We are the ones missing the point when we fail to experience the same thing.
References
The Nature Company Guides, Weather by William J. Burroughs et al. (published by Time Life Books, 1996) is a fun handbook for things weather. Also valuable is Gavin Prestor-Pinney’s The Cloudspotter’s Guide (Sceptre, 2006). You might also visit the photo gallery of the Cloud Appreciation Society at http://cloudappreciationsociety.org.
And the weather that we learn about is usually unpleasant. In fact with the sophistication and prevalence of communication technology it’s easy to get the impression that natural weather-related catastrophes are increasing in frequency. And it’s possible that they are.
In the 1990’s I remember learning about major flooding in the Dakotas, in California, and in Chicago. It seemed that there was one weather-related catastrophe after another – to the extent that Mother Nature’s malcontents almost became expected. I’m not sure that they have lessened very much since then. If we believe meteorologists, we have more to look forward to as the climate continues to change in coming years.
So we find ourselves in the odd situation of taking newsworthy catastrophes for granted even as we take all the other more typical weather events for granted too. Maybe we think differently when our own local weather is out of sorts. But this is not an every-day event. Weather has become so quotidian that we usually ignore it altogether. Our more serious conversationalists think of weather-talk as a subject for lesser mortals. Few people really love the weather and appreciate it for what it is: a veritable force of nature.
Or maybe we do have a few pleasant weather memories, like flying kites on a windy March afternoon. Perhaps we are genuinely interested in watching the evening weather report to see what the weekend will offer. But weather has a lot more potential than this for the genuine nature enthusiast. It is one of the great ways available of experiencing the natural world. One of the saddest effects of our cloistered work environments and over-crowded cities is the partitions we put between us and the weather. There is much that we are missing when we stay inside.
I grew up in the high deserts of Utah and summer rainstorms were a real treat. They weren’t very common but it seems we had at least a couple every year. When they did come, I experienced a thrill and an inexplicable urge to go out and get drenched. One sunny day I remember driving past a field where horses were jumping up and down, swinging their necks about, and otherwise having a great time. Not knowing the language of horses, I could still tell that they were very happy about something.
I asked my Dad what the excitement was all about. He told me that some animals often behaved that way right before a rainstorm. I could empathize with the horses. Summer rain made me feel the same way. But I was also surprised because I could only see a few clouds on the horizon. It certainly didn’t look to me like it was going to rain.
But rain it did. It took maybe half an hour to come and the storm didn’t last all that long, but it was enough to cool things down and leave that refreshing smell of pluvial pine and moist desert soil that lifts my mood to this day, just thinking about it.
Most of us, however, go to great lengths to avoid the weather. Maybe we do this without thinking about it. Most of the time we hurry inside just to be comfortable – to avoid the heat or the cold. And of course, we grew up with our parents telling us that we would get sick if we stayed out in the cold. And we were constantly being reminded of how terribly the sun could burn our skin.
But not everything is as it seems. More people do, in fact, get sick during the cold months than at other times of the year. A great deal of this, however, comes from the fact that we’re not as active in the wintertime. It is true that over-exposure to cold weather can compromise our immune system, but the larger reason for more sickness in the winter is because germs stay viable for a longer period of time in the cold than they do when it is warm. It’s like a pathologist keeping a culture of germs alive by putting a Petri dish in the refrigerator.
This doesn’t mean that being outside in the cold is dangerous. It does mean that germs might stay alive under your fingernails or on the doorknob a little longer. The best advice is to wash your hands more often, keep your hands away from your face and try to avoid germy atmospheres as much as possible.
As far as being out in the cold, it can make you feel a whole lot more alive. You might want to try a little experiment if you find yourself on a cloudy day unable to warm up. Put on a coat and go for a walk outside. Take your binoculars and notice what the creatures in your neighborhood are doing. Some of them will be sleeping and not visible. Others, however, will be out despite the weather. Notice the plants that stay green all year. You will probably be cold at first but then your body will warm up as you go. Soon you will find yourself enjoying the walk. When you get back inside you’ll take your coat off and say, “it sure is warm in here”. And you’ll feel a lot better.
And what about the sun? It gets overly maligned too. We love it on vacation at the beach, and are careful to use sunscreen. We could be just as careful when we’re not on vacation and get out a bit more. Some of us are so worried about getting skin cancer, that we’ve talked ourselves out of enjoying the sunshine. In fact, our bodies are made to utilize the sun’s energy. They need sunshine to make important life-sustaining molecules. Sunshine is a very important part of our health. We just have to avoid getting burned too much.
As you learn more about the living things where you live, you will get a better feel for their periods of activity. In warmer areas, the afternoon might be too hot for most species and they will be waiting for the cooler times of the day to be active. In other areas, the afternoon warmth is the most active time of the day.
Another way to enjoy the weather is to watch clouds. I know this sounds a bit dreamy, but it can be addicting. As I write this, the sky outside my window is filled to capacity with cumulous clouds pushed up against each other from horizon to horizon. They are the medium kind building to the tall stormy cumulonimbus clouds. They are bottom-heavy with water and each one weighs more than a small herd of elephants.
This may surprise you. How can something so heavy float through the sky? Is it magic? Not really. But it is a powerful force of nature. Water first gathers into the air from the moisture-rich ocean and earth. As warm air currents carry the humid air higher into the cool atmosphere, the moisture combines into microscopic specks that interfere with light rays. These specks reflect the image of a fluffy cotton ball and give away the presence of all the water. When these specks join together into larger droplets they give off heat of their own (a reverse process somewhat like sweating which cools us down, when water is given off).
If enough water accumulates in big enough droplets, it begins to fall to the bottom of the cloud – like the border of gray outside my window. When this happens a storm is brewing. Somewhere close by a landscape is going to get a big drink of water.
It is truly awe-inspiring to realize what is happening in the air around us. Sometimes this is dangerous. Yet even something as powerful as a bolt of lightning is also beautiful. There is a reason that the ancients – from Moses on – saw the works of God in the clouds, in the rain, and in the air around us. Atmosphere is part of a living planet. We should enjoy it for what it is.
Have you ever been out in a snowstorm when nobody else was around? The falling crystals reflecting light from a distant street lamp or farm house? It’s as if the snow itself muffled everything and enforced a widespread silence – a soft and sleepy silence.
Such a storm sends most people inside where it is warm. But if you really want to get warm inside put on some mittens, some warm shoes, a knitted cap and a good coat and go for a walk in the snow with a friend, with your dog, or with your lover. If you’re really courageous, try sleeping outside in the midst of it all.
You might think I’m crazy (maybe I am) but let me explain. When I was young we lived in a house with electric heating that was regulated in each room. My bedroom was in the corner of the house and I had two windows opening in different directions. On stormy nights I loved opening both windows, letting in the moist air and cuddling up under warm blankets. I just had to make sure I turned the heat off so my parents wouldn’t get mad.
Then one evening I had the bright idea of sleeping outside near my grandfather’s woodshed in a storm. I knew a place I could put my sleeping bag that would be protected from the snow. It was up next to the shed where Grandpa had placed dozens of old boards. There was a long wide shelf that was covered by a piece of plywood. Grandpa used to lay down there himself on sunny days and rest in the shade.
So I found a foam pad, gathered my sleeping bag and pillow together and prepared my bed. By the time I was situated, snow had already begun to fall. It came floating down in undecided spirals. I captured hundreds of their delicate frozen patterns on my outstretched hand before they melted and I licked them up.
It was a mesmerizing moment to be in bed and only inches away from a snowstorm. And even though I exhaled a small cloud of my own with every breath, I was as warm as could be. I will never forget the night as long as I live. Experiencing nature so intimately has that effect on my memory.
It does happen that weather-watchers develop a refined sense of our human frailty. Compared to the forces of nature, we very seem so helpless. Nature on a grand scale is no match for our puny presumptions. And yet this universal magnitude that seems to diminish us can also have a very contrasting affect. It can (and should) inspire us with awe.
Our ancestors knew this feeling well. They lived close to the land and experienced the torments of nature as well as her exceeding beauty. They understood their place in the universe because they felt the presence of the divine in this power. We are the ones missing the point when we fail to experience the same thing.
References
The Nature Company Guides, Weather by William J. Burroughs et al. (published by Time Life Books, 1996) is a fun handbook for things weather. Also valuable is Gavin Prestor-Pinney’s The Cloudspotter’s Guide (Sceptre, 2006). You might also visit the photo gallery of the Cloud Appreciation Society at http://cloudappreciationsociety.org.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Dew
You can watch a meadow mist
An early morning to the day
But have you stopped to wonder how
It ever got that way?
A blanketing of moisture on
An simple field of grass
That rodents dig and crickets chew
And vagrants dare trespass
But it first takes a darkling purge
To leave behind a dew
That wets the leaves and lifts the stems
And starts the world anew
Friday, March 30, 2012
Ask a Ranger
One of the best ways to learn about the natural world is to ask an expert for help. Even experienced naturalists can benefit from talking with local amateurs that know their corner of the world better than others can ever hope to.
You might visit a state or national park and ask a ranger about what you might expect to see. There is, of course, the occasional distracted or misanthropic employee that will not bother to engage your curiosity. But these kinds of people are not the rule. Most rangers are living their dream, of making a living around nature, and love nothing more than to tell you about it.
My advice is to start with a state park that doesn’t get inundated with weekend visitors. You might even decide to visit during the middle of the week. Nature has a funny way of showing herself a little more willingly when there aren’t so many people around. And you will be more likely to find someone with time to talk. If you’re lucky you may even get a tour.
Several years ago Erik, Michael and I were visiting Merchant’s Millpond State Park in the coastal area of North Carolina. It was late in the year and most of the leaves were gone from the trees. Only pine needles and a few brown beech leaves were all that were left on the trees. The forest was mostly a latticework of bare branches.
As we were finishing our dinner a ranger came by to check on us. It was obvious that he was less interested in our camping fee than in our experience at the park. There was almost nobody else around and he was curious why we had visited. I told him that we were just out to enjoy the forest and to look for birds. I told him that I was also an entomologist and that, believe it or not, insects could be found at such times if you knew where to look.
One thing led to another and we soon learned that Merchant’s Millpond State Park was one of the buggiest places on earth – a real find for someone that likes insects. Our new ranger friend told us about hoards of mosquitoes, deer flies and ticks that kept a lot of people away. But he also told us that were ways to avoid these pests. He then told us about some of the real treasures of the park. When we returned a few months later, he realized that we really appreciated our visit. He then invited us to come back and join him and his wife on a canoe trip into the remote areas of the swamp.
This was a trip the three of us will never forget. The canoe ride was, by itself, a new experience for Michael and he learned the art of paddling fairly quickly. We were surrounded by large cypress trees and there were dozens of turtles sunning themselves on half-submerged logs. Duckweed and pond lilies were abundant in the water and kingfishers, cormorants and herons watched us from their many riparian perches.
An hour into our trip took us to a narrow arm of the swamp. Swollen cypress trunks supported an arching canopy overhead. And then we saw our first water snake. It was sunning itself on a bush like a string of tinsel on a Christmas tree, and completely surrounded by water.
Then we started seeing snakes more regularly. Some of them were water moccasins, a beautiful yet venomous snake of southern wetlands. I knew this species lived in wet areas but I was not prepared for the surprise of seeing one swim. At times, individual snakes would start across the water in a zigzagging pattern just as if they were moving across the forest floor. Our ranger friend picked one up right out of the water with a paddle, showing no more concern than if he were picking up a floating piece of wood.
Then Erik and Michael were given flashlights, taken to a few hollow trees and (quietly), shown some of the rarely seen native bats sleeping upside down inside the cavity. Our most memorable moment was the alligator that we saw on our way back. It was first noticed by the ranger’s wife in a deep part of the swamp surrounded by duckweed. Things got a little interesting even after we stopped paddling and our momentum brought us to within a few feet of the reptile. It was one of those intense moments you don’t forget. For its part, the alligator hardly paid us any attention.
There are a lot of great nature moments that you will miss unless you ask a ranger what to be on the lookout for. Nature abides by her own time schedule and living things behave differently depending on where they occur. You may walk all the way through a park and see only common species if you only follow your own advice. And you may pass within minutes of a real treasure that you didn’t even know was there.
Some years ago I travelled with my friend Steve to Amherst Island on the Canadian side of Lake Ontario. We went during January and the countryside was covered in snow. The ferry from Millhaven (on the mainland) to Stella (on the island) took less than half an hour. The lake was choppy and the sky was gray – as it often is during the winter. But we arrived in good spirits, eager to see some of the island’s birds.
We were particularly looking for snowy owls that were known to come to the island in the winter. One doesn’t expect to see owls in the middle of the day. Owls, after all, are nocturnal – or so we suppose. In fact northern owls do not always follow this rule. Living in a land that experiences long periods of darkness and long periods of light, they make use of hunting opportunities as they present themselves, irrespective of light.
After a bit of driving around we found our first one. They were resting on the ground on top of the snow – white balls of feathers with dark flecks on their wings. They were wary and we kept our distance. As we became more familiar with the island, we learned that there was plenty for them to eat. In fact Amherst Island is home to several owls. Saw-whet owls, long eared owls, short-eared owls, barred owls, snowy owls and boreal owls can be seen there on a regular basis.
But our most exciting find was the northern hawk owl that we found the following day on the mainland a few miles east of Millhaven. This is a northern owl that is rarely seen anywhere near the United States. In fact you have to really know where to look to even see one in Canada. I have spoken to many birders (much more experienced than I am) that have never seen one.
The only reason we were so fortunate was because of Steve’s connections to the birding community in the area. During our second day on the island, Steve received a message that one had been spotted not far from Millhaven. We quickly changed our plans and drove to the spot as quickly as we could. After driving on many back roads, we finally found it – perched happily on a telephone line looking for signs of rodents.
There are people all around you – both where you live and where you might travel on vacation – that know where interesting species might be seen. They can make the difference between an average walk in the woods and an unforgettable wildlife experience.
If you happen to be visiting an undeveloped country, however, finding somebody to talk with about nature can be a challenge. Most of the parks you might want to visit will not have rangers or guides on staff. In fact there may not even be accessible hiking trails. Many countries are making the wise decision to protect wild areas but lack the funds to employ the help they need.
A good alternative is to contact one of the many ecotourism groups scattered throughout the world. You will want to do your homework or you will certainly pay more than you might like. But the time you spend will be worth the effort.
Some years ago while visiting Costa Rica, we found ourselves on the Osa Peninsula looking for insects and other kinds of wildlife. The area is a rich lowland tropical forest and we were amazed by the species diversity. There were brightly colored tortoise beetles and lizards that “walk” on water (and that are considered Christian lizards as a result). Giant fig trees lined the roads and many bird species that I couldn’t identify were flying all around.
It was easy to let the day get away from us. Evening came much sooner than expected. We had been hoping to find a place to camp but couldn’t even find a side road that would accommodate a tent. In the end we pulled into an eco-lodge and paid several hundred dollars for a single night’s sleep. I wasn’t very happy about this but made the best of it.
Then, when we discovered that a nature guide was taking a group out the next morning, we decided to sign up and go along. It turned out to be the highlight of our trip. We hadn’t even made it out of the small parking area before we saw a sloth high up in a tree – sitting with its back to us and otherwise motionless. If it knew we were there, it made no sign of it. We watched it do nothing for quite a while and then moved on.
Through the course of the morning we saw howler monkeys, spider monkeys, and squirrel monkeys. There were iguanas and other lizards. We found a second sloth and an eagle flying high above. Jaçanas, woodpeckers and macaws (along with many other species) kept our binoculars constantly at our fingertips. And all of these were seen from the same road that we had just travelled on the day before. The big difference was that our guide knew where to look and what to expect.
Now allow me to change subjects momentarily and bring your attention to a new awareness that is happening in many fields these days. Health care providers are slowly waking up to the fact that nature has a much more profound effect on our sense of wellbeing than previously realized. Mental health professionals are now prescribing nature walks and other therapies that take patients to parks, arboreta and other natural areas. More and more hospitals are being built with natural places for patients to enjoy. Even school teachers are finding that energetic students will be better behaved if they are taken outside and exposed to nature.
One of my favorite recent findings is the work done by Reese Nelson on college students taking standardized math exams. He placed house plants in one area of a testing center and kept another area without plants. He found that students taking the exam near plants not only did better on the exams but that their stress levels were less too.
These new findings might seem obvious or intuitive to those of us that have been seeking natural places all our lives. Yet these formal efforts are bringing the importance of nature to a wider group – a group with decision-making potential. The reason that I bring this up is because now, more than ever before, you can find park rangers and informed amateur naturalists that are willing to go the extra mile and accommodate your interest in the natural world. It is now becoming a civic service in many places, not just a habit of a few hobbyists.
Daphne Miller (a general practitioner in San Francisco) was recently made aware of the impact conscientious rangers made after visiting a conference where she heard of the work of some rangers in Yosemite National Park in California. The rangers had realized the positive effects the park was making on the mental health of many visitors and were working to meet their needs. Miller’s work, recognizing the larger utility of this finding, is being called “ranger therapy” in some quarters. In fact, there are rangers that have now been trained to provide “nature prescriptions” to visitors that need this kind of natural medicine.
Now I realize that this may sound a bit odd to some – somewhat like the psychotic and well-heeled city slicker asking the happy country bumpkin for help with a flat tire. I don’t intend it that way. I think we should take the natural world more seriously than this. Those that have made career decisions to be in nature have, for a long time, lived on lower incomes than many of us. And the reality is that their efforts have often been ignored or trivialized. It’s a positive thing that we begin to recognize the importance of their work.
The more we ask these natural experts for help, the more we promote the natural world that they represent. Asking for their advice is the best part of their job. It will also help you make the most out your time in nature.
References
Daphne Miller’s reference to ranger therapy is in Richard Louv’s, The Nature Principle (see page 82), published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2011. Nelson’s University of Idaho dissertation on the effects of testing center plants (Mitigating stress in college students by enhancing testing center environments through passive interaction with plants) can be found on the UMI website (http://gradworks.umi.com/32/20/3220450.html - accessed 3/27/12).
You might visit a state or national park and ask a ranger about what you might expect to see. There is, of course, the occasional distracted or misanthropic employee that will not bother to engage your curiosity. But these kinds of people are not the rule. Most rangers are living their dream, of making a living around nature, and love nothing more than to tell you about it.
My advice is to start with a state park that doesn’t get inundated with weekend visitors. You might even decide to visit during the middle of the week. Nature has a funny way of showing herself a little more willingly when there aren’t so many people around. And you will be more likely to find someone with time to talk. If you’re lucky you may even get a tour.
Several years ago Erik, Michael and I were visiting Merchant’s Millpond State Park in the coastal area of North Carolina. It was late in the year and most of the leaves were gone from the trees. Only pine needles and a few brown beech leaves were all that were left on the trees. The forest was mostly a latticework of bare branches.
As we were finishing our dinner a ranger came by to check on us. It was obvious that he was less interested in our camping fee than in our experience at the park. There was almost nobody else around and he was curious why we had visited. I told him that we were just out to enjoy the forest and to look for birds. I told him that I was also an entomologist and that, believe it or not, insects could be found at such times if you knew where to look.
One thing led to another and we soon learned that Merchant’s Millpond State Park was one of the buggiest places on earth – a real find for someone that likes insects. Our new ranger friend told us about hoards of mosquitoes, deer flies and ticks that kept a lot of people away. But he also told us that were ways to avoid these pests. He then told us about some of the real treasures of the park. When we returned a few months later, he realized that we really appreciated our visit. He then invited us to come back and join him and his wife on a canoe trip into the remote areas of the swamp.
This was a trip the three of us will never forget. The canoe ride was, by itself, a new experience for Michael and he learned the art of paddling fairly quickly. We were surrounded by large cypress trees and there were dozens of turtles sunning themselves on half-submerged logs. Duckweed and pond lilies were abundant in the water and kingfishers, cormorants and herons watched us from their many riparian perches.
An hour into our trip took us to a narrow arm of the swamp. Swollen cypress trunks supported an arching canopy overhead. And then we saw our first water snake. It was sunning itself on a bush like a string of tinsel on a Christmas tree, and completely surrounded by water.
Then we started seeing snakes more regularly. Some of them were water moccasins, a beautiful yet venomous snake of southern wetlands. I knew this species lived in wet areas but I was not prepared for the surprise of seeing one swim. At times, individual snakes would start across the water in a zigzagging pattern just as if they were moving across the forest floor. Our ranger friend picked one up right out of the water with a paddle, showing no more concern than if he were picking up a floating piece of wood.
Then Erik and Michael were given flashlights, taken to a few hollow trees and (quietly), shown some of the rarely seen native bats sleeping upside down inside the cavity. Our most memorable moment was the alligator that we saw on our way back. It was first noticed by the ranger’s wife in a deep part of the swamp surrounded by duckweed. Things got a little interesting even after we stopped paddling and our momentum brought us to within a few feet of the reptile. It was one of those intense moments you don’t forget. For its part, the alligator hardly paid us any attention.
There are a lot of great nature moments that you will miss unless you ask a ranger what to be on the lookout for. Nature abides by her own time schedule and living things behave differently depending on where they occur. You may walk all the way through a park and see only common species if you only follow your own advice. And you may pass within minutes of a real treasure that you didn’t even know was there.
Some years ago I travelled with my friend Steve to Amherst Island on the Canadian side of Lake Ontario. We went during January and the countryside was covered in snow. The ferry from Millhaven (on the mainland) to Stella (on the island) took less than half an hour. The lake was choppy and the sky was gray – as it often is during the winter. But we arrived in good spirits, eager to see some of the island’s birds.
We were particularly looking for snowy owls that were known to come to the island in the winter. One doesn’t expect to see owls in the middle of the day. Owls, after all, are nocturnal – or so we suppose. In fact northern owls do not always follow this rule. Living in a land that experiences long periods of darkness and long periods of light, they make use of hunting opportunities as they present themselves, irrespective of light.
After a bit of driving around we found our first one. They were resting on the ground on top of the snow – white balls of feathers with dark flecks on their wings. They were wary and we kept our distance. As we became more familiar with the island, we learned that there was plenty for them to eat. In fact Amherst Island is home to several owls. Saw-whet owls, long eared owls, short-eared owls, barred owls, snowy owls and boreal owls can be seen there on a regular basis.
But our most exciting find was the northern hawk owl that we found the following day on the mainland a few miles east of Millhaven. This is a northern owl that is rarely seen anywhere near the United States. In fact you have to really know where to look to even see one in Canada. I have spoken to many birders (much more experienced than I am) that have never seen one.
The only reason we were so fortunate was because of Steve’s connections to the birding community in the area. During our second day on the island, Steve received a message that one had been spotted not far from Millhaven. We quickly changed our plans and drove to the spot as quickly as we could. After driving on many back roads, we finally found it – perched happily on a telephone line looking for signs of rodents.
There are people all around you – both where you live and where you might travel on vacation – that know where interesting species might be seen. They can make the difference between an average walk in the woods and an unforgettable wildlife experience.
If you happen to be visiting an undeveloped country, however, finding somebody to talk with about nature can be a challenge. Most of the parks you might want to visit will not have rangers or guides on staff. In fact there may not even be accessible hiking trails. Many countries are making the wise decision to protect wild areas but lack the funds to employ the help they need.
A good alternative is to contact one of the many ecotourism groups scattered throughout the world. You will want to do your homework or you will certainly pay more than you might like. But the time you spend will be worth the effort.
Some years ago while visiting Costa Rica, we found ourselves on the Osa Peninsula looking for insects and other kinds of wildlife. The area is a rich lowland tropical forest and we were amazed by the species diversity. There were brightly colored tortoise beetles and lizards that “walk” on water (and that are considered Christian lizards as a result). Giant fig trees lined the roads and many bird species that I couldn’t identify were flying all around.
It was easy to let the day get away from us. Evening came much sooner than expected. We had been hoping to find a place to camp but couldn’t even find a side road that would accommodate a tent. In the end we pulled into an eco-lodge and paid several hundred dollars for a single night’s sleep. I wasn’t very happy about this but made the best of it.
Then, when we discovered that a nature guide was taking a group out the next morning, we decided to sign up and go along. It turned out to be the highlight of our trip. We hadn’t even made it out of the small parking area before we saw a sloth high up in a tree – sitting with its back to us and otherwise motionless. If it knew we were there, it made no sign of it. We watched it do nothing for quite a while and then moved on.
Through the course of the morning we saw howler monkeys, spider monkeys, and squirrel monkeys. There were iguanas and other lizards. We found a second sloth and an eagle flying high above. Jaçanas, woodpeckers and macaws (along with many other species) kept our binoculars constantly at our fingertips. And all of these were seen from the same road that we had just travelled on the day before. The big difference was that our guide knew where to look and what to expect.
Now allow me to change subjects momentarily and bring your attention to a new awareness that is happening in many fields these days. Health care providers are slowly waking up to the fact that nature has a much more profound effect on our sense of wellbeing than previously realized. Mental health professionals are now prescribing nature walks and other therapies that take patients to parks, arboreta and other natural areas. More and more hospitals are being built with natural places for patients to enjoy. Even school teachers are finding that energetic students will be better behaved if they are taken outside and exposed to nature.
One of my favorite recent findings is the work done by Reese Nelson on college students taking standardized math exams. He placed house plants in one area of a testing center and kept another area without plants. He found that students taking the exam near plants not only did better on the exams but that their stress levels were less too.
These new findings might seem obvious or intuitive to those of us that have been seeking natural places all our lives. Yet these formal efforts are bringing the importance of nature to a wider group – a group with decision-making potential. The reason that I bring this up is because now, more than ever before, you can find park rangers and informed amateur naturalists that are willing to go the extra mile and accommodate your interest in the natural world. It is now becoming a civic service in many places, not just a habit of a few hobbyists.
Daphne Miller (a general practitioner in San Francisco) was recently made aware of the impact conscientious rangers made after visiting a conference where she heard of the work of some rangers in Yosemite National Park in California. The rangers had realized the positive effects the park was making on the mental health of many visitors and were working to meet their needs. Miller’s work, recognizing the larger utility of this finding, is being called “ranger therapy” in some quarters. In fact, there are rangers that have now been trained to provide “nature prescriptions” to visitors that need this kind of natural medicine.
Now I realize that this may sound a bit odd to some – somewhat like the psychotic and well-heeled city slicker asking the happy country bumpkin for help with a flat tire. I don’t intend it that way. I think we should take the natural world more seriously than this. Those that have made career decisions to be in nature have, for a long time, lived on lower incomes than many of us. And the reality is that their efforts have often been ignored or trivialized. It’s a positive thing that we begin to recognize the importance of their work.
The more we ask these natural experts for help, the more we promote the natural world that they represent. Asking for their advice is the best part of their job. It will also help you make the most out your time in nature.
References
Daphne Miller’s reference to ranger therapy is in Richard Louv’s, The Nature Principle (see page 82), published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2011. Nelson’s University of Idaho dissertation on the effects of testing center plants (Mitigating stress in college students by enhancing testing center environments through passive interaction with plants) can be found on the UMI website (http://gradworks.umi.com/32/20/3220450.html - accessed 3/27/12).
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Review of 1493 by Charles Mann
We live in a post-Columbian world that is losing its truly local cultures. It is common for people like me, with only a middle-management job, to travel internationally and to see places very different from the community I grew up in. More and more of us are doing this now – in spite of recent economic troubles. At least in the business community we have become a global culture. This is good for business but it is also harming the earth’s ecosystems. Our impact on the planet has been, and continues to be, immense. Charles Mann’s recent book 1493 is an account of some of these impacts.
This is a companion volume to Mann’s book 1491 that took a close look at the New World before Columbus. What strikes me most about these two books is the broader historic perspective they provide of the human impact to earth. Mann makes a convincing argument that it is much greater than we realize.
One of the things we learn about in 1491, for example, is that the huge populations of buffalo and passenger pigeons, that struck early colonists with such amazement, were unusually high because their human predators had previously been reduced by disease. These diseases in turn had come via immigrants from the Old World. The unrecognized reality in America before Columbus, it seems, was a much larger human population than we thought. And the corollary is that the Americas were greatly impacted by the European discovery of the New World.
In 1493 we get to see the reverse of this. We get to see how the entire planet has changed because of post-Columbian globalization. The crux of the issue is apparent in Michael Samway’s important term Homogenocene which Mann introduces to readers. Apparently meant to look like a name for a geological epoch, the homogenocene depicts a modern world with reduced biodiversity and an increasingly global human culture. Mann does a good job of showing us just what this homogenocene looks like.
We are all aware of the popularity of American tobacco in Europe after Columbus, for example. Most of us also have an inkling of the influence that malaria and other insect-borne diseases had on the New World as well. Mann’s treatment of these examples is probing and up-to-date. You were wrong if you thought you knew all there was to know about these, and other, stories from your college geography class of yesteryear. A lot has been learned since then. Did you know, for instance, that even though all American colonies had slaves, those that suffered from malaria had more?
Other examples include the introduction of sweet potatoes and maize into China. It is not unusual to learn that both crops were popular in many places around the world. What comes as a sobering surprise is that they had large ecological effects in China early on even as they fed a growing population. Both crops could be grown in upland areas, unlike rice that was grown almost exclusively in valleys. But along with the cultivation of these uplands came the removal of forests and serious erosion became a problem. These same issues remain a serious problem today. Mann’s treatment of the effects of rubber production is a classic modern example.
The influence of the American potato on the world’s hungry has also been immense. We know this. But the history of the potato and its influence on the agro-industrial complex will be news to many. It will probably also come as a shock to some that these examples of the Columbian Exchange are an important part (perhaps the most important part) of why China is the most populous nation in the world today. Mann’s book helps us realize just how much globalization affects our lives – much more than most of us realized.
There are a few mistakes in the book. Mann seems unaware of the diversity of American worms. And he writes that tuberculosis did not exist in America before Columbus - it did. But his discussion of these issues is of minor importance and hardly a distraction.
In contrast, one of Mann’s strengths is his thoroughness. His footnotes and endnotes (yes, he uses both, and to surprisingly good effect) are full of fascinating tidbits. We learn that Ireland may have known about the New World before Columbus and that the Chinese used scale insects to make a low-quality wax for candles. This is a book that will reward student and scholar alike.
Yet, in spite of a very worthy effort, Mann does not tell us what we really want to know: about what we should do with this predicament that globalization has left us in. I don’t think that this is a political convenience. Mann both annoys and encourages environmental as well as business interests. He is eminently fair and describes the world as he sees it. But are we better armed to face the troubling future? I don’t think so.
Certainly we are better informed, and if this is all that Mann set out to do then he was successful. But this is a shame, nonetheless. If we can’t get a prescription from an objective and credible observer like Mann, than one wonders what real solutions we’ll ever find at all.
Do we continue, as is, with our quarantines? What is the correct role of international trade? Do global values trump other, more regional, belief systems? What does a fair comparison between global and local cultures tell us? Is globalization going to change (or is it even possible) with limited and dwindling per capita resources?
It’s difficult to know. We live in challenging times – when the world in turn lies open before us and intrudes itself upon us. Wise decisions are needed even as they are hard to find. My own suggestion is a simple one: hope for the best but plan for the worst. I mean that local communities should become more sustainable. It’s important that we get over our destructive prejudices and love all of God’s children. And it’s nice to say that we either sink or swim together. But the truth is that the earth is a planet not a boat. How do we save our earth when we neglect our own neighborhoods? We can start improving the world by loving our neighbors and our own human habitats. I think if you read 1493 you’ll agree with me.
References
Samway’s article Translocating Faunas to Foreign Lands: Here comes the Homogenocene was published (1999) in the Journal of Insect Conservation 3(2):65-66.
This is a companion volume to Mann’s book 1491 that took a close look at the New World before Columbus. What strikes me most about these two books is the broader historic perspective they provide of the human impact to earth. Mann makes a convincing argument that it is much greater than we realize.
One of the things we learn about in 1491, for example, is that the huge populations of buffalo and passenger pigeons, that struck early colonists with such amazement, were unusually high because their human predators had previously been reduced by disease. These diseases in turn had come via immigrants from the Old World. The unrecognized reality in America before Columbus, it seems, was a much larger human population than we thought. And the corollary is that the Americas were greatly impacted by the European discovery of the New World.
In 1493 we get to see the reverse of this. We get to see how the entire planet has changed because of post-Columbian globalization. The crux of the issue is apparent in Michael Samway’s important term Homogenocene which Mann introduces to readers. Apparently meant to look like a name for a geological epoch, the homogenocene depicts a modern world with reduced biodiversity and an increasingly global human culture. Mann does a good job of showing us just what this homogenocene looks like.
We are all aware of the popularity of American tobacco in Europe after Columbus, for example. Most of us also have an inkling of the influence that malaria and other insect-borne diseases had on the New World as well. Mann’s treatment of these examples is probing and up-to-date. You were wrong if you thought you knew all there was to know about these, and other, stories from your college geography class of yesteryear. A lot has been learned since then. Did you know, for instance, that even though all American colonies had slaves, those that suffered from malaria had more?
Other examples include the introduction of sweet potatoes and maize into China. It is not unusual to learn that both crops were popular in many places around the world. What comes as a sobering surprise is that they had large ecological effects in China early on even as they fed a growing population. Both crops could be grown in upland areas, unlike rice that was grown almost exclusively in valleys. But along with the cultivation of these uplands came the removal of forests and serious erosion became a problem. These same issues remain a serious problem today. Mann’s treatment of the effects of rubber production is a classic modern example.
The influence of the American potato on the world’s hungry has also been immense. We know this. But the history of the potato and its influence on the agro-industrial complex will be news to many. It will probably also come as a shock to some that these examples of the Columbian Exchange are an important part (perhaps the most important part) of why China is the most populous nation in the world today. Mann’s book helps us realize just how much globalization affects our lives – much more than most of us realized.
There are a few mistakes in the book. Mann seems unaware of the diversity of American worms. And he writes that tuberculosis did not exist in America before Columbus - it did. But his discussion of these issues is of minor importance and hardly a distraction.
In contrast, one of Mann’s strengths is his thoroughness. His footnotes and endnotes (yes, he uses both, and to surprisingly good effect) are full of fascinating tidbits. We learn that Ireland may have known about the New World before Columbus and that the Chinese used scale insects to make a low-quality wax for candles. This is a book that will reward student and scholar alike.
Yet, in spite of a very worthy effort, Mann does not tell us what we really want to know: about what we should do with this predicament that globalization has left us in. I don’t think that this is a political convenience. Mann both annoys and encourages environmental as well as business interests. He is eminently fair and describes the world as he sees it. But are we better armed to face the troubling future? I don’t think so.
Certainly we are better informed, and if this is all that Mann set out to do then he was successful. But this is a shame, nonetheless. If we can’t get a prescription from an objective and credible observer like Mann, than one wonders what real solutions we’ll ever find at all.
Do we continue, as is, with our quarantines? What is the correct role of international trade? Do global values trump other, more regional, belief systems? What does a fair comparison between global and local cultures tell us? Is globalization going to change (or is it even possible) with limited and dwindling per capita resources?
It’s difficult to know. We live in challenging times – when the world in turn lies open before us and intrudes itself upon us. Wise decisions are needed even as they are hard to find. My own suggestion is a simple one: hope for the best but plan for the worst. I mean that local communities should become more sustainable. It’s important that we get over our destructive prejudices and love all of God’s children. And it’s nice to say that we either sink or swim together. But the truth is that the earth is a planet not a boat. How do we save our earth when we neglect our own neighborhoods? We can start improving the world by loving our neighbors and our own human habitats. I think if you read 1493 you’ll agree with me.
References
Samway’s article Translocating Faunas to Foreign Lands: Here comes the Homogenocene was published (1999) in the Journal of Insect Conservation 3(2):65-66.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Moroni and the Internet
In recent years a few noble souls have concerned themselves with the unpopular notion that the internet is changing the way we think. They aren’t really suggesting that we are getting dumber (although arguments are made that in fact we are - in both senses of the word) so much as that we are becoming less able to concentrate. Fewer and fewer people are able to follow a thread of thought, anymore, for any longer than it takes to scan a webpage.
Ours is a generation of cliff notes and the information segment. Not only are movie scenes much shorter than they used to be but our schools now regularly treat attention deficits as a treatable illness. Of course, we live in a faster-paced world and, some will argue, the nimble mind is now more important than an extended focus. Besides, we haven’t really become less intelligent, we’re just quicker and more competitive.
Well maybe – but then again, maybe not. Consider Christine Rosen’s recent argument that we no longer read online so much as we scan whatever happens to be on the screen in front of us. Web surfers rarely read the text on a webpage in the same way that we traditionally read a book. They jump from one paragraph or snippet to the next.
“Clicking on link after link, always looking for a new bit of information, we are actually revving up our brains with dopamine, the overlord of … the “seeking system”.” While connected to cyberspace the typical person deals with a combination of new incoming messages, quick responses to those messages, news updates, calendaring, planning, etc. All of these things (mediated by our dopamine-fueled system) “keep your brain constantly a bit distracted from what you’re reading online”.
We have become the masters of multitasking. Unfortunately, there seems to be a price to be paid for some of these associated virtues of our modern adaptability. We are losing the wisdom that comes from an extended focus and self-understanding that comes from personal rumination of the written word. We are becoming more superficial.
This problem is not entirely a product of the modern digital age. Daniel Boorstin noticed the trend in 1961 in his book, The Image. His point was that modern society was creating too many simple and convenient substitutes for the real world. He called these substitutes pseudo-events. And in the world of literature he noted the democratic trend to simplify important texts by abridgement.
Until recently, though, these abridgements (or “digests”) were written for specialists. With the success of The Readers’s Digest in the 20th Century, however, this began to change. Originally, the magazine was filled with condensed versions of other magazine articles. The founders (De Witt and Lila Wallace) at first just cut out sections of other magazine articles and reprinted their condensed versions. It wasn’t until much later that the magazine published its first full length article.
Boorstin noted about The Reader’s Digest, “This, the most popular magazine in the United States, has offered itself not as an “original,” but as a digest. The shadow outsells the substance. Abridging and digesting is no longer a device to lead the reader to an original which will give him what he really wants. The digest itself is what he wants. The shadow has become the substance.”
This worries me. It would seem that, by extension, an online snippet is even more removed from the substantial than even an abridgment. We are compounding superficiality, which wouldn’t be so bad if we restricted our scanning to practical expedients. It should be possible, after all, to capture a news update from our phone before settling down for a serious hour with Shakespeare. We should, in other words, be able to give priority to things that really matter even as we manage our superficial technologies. But are we really being so wise?
One of the great scriptural references in The Book of Mormon addresses this very issue. It is known among Mormons as The Book of Mormon Promise and is found at the end of The Book of Moroni (which is the last book in the The Book of Mormon). The preface to this promise begins in verse 3 of Chapter 10.
“Behold I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.”
Now this scripture has been variously loved, ignored, and misunderstood by generations of Latter-day Saints. It tends to get missed by superficial readers – especially when the important verses that follow are underlined in red. But Moroni, who wrote for our time, seems to be zeroing in on this particular one of our modern mistakes – I mean our superficial reading (and scanning).
The first request is that we remember something. This is certainly not a skill that our technological age encourages. If anything, the internet tells us that we need no longer worry about remembering. Why should we? Everything we need to know is just a few clicks away.
And yet the great literature of the world has always required of us a bit of reflection. Russell Kirk writes that, “The mass of miscellaneous information thrust upon us already is overwhelming and dismaying. What we need is not more information; what we require, as a public, is the ability to discriminate and integrate that mass of information, and to reflect upon it”.
Then as the content of our remembering is processed (explains Moroni) we are to ponder upon its meaning in our hearts. It would seem that Moroni is asking us to be very intimate readers. This apparently simple verse is asking us to do something like the following: read a sacred text, familiarize ourselves with sacred history enough to be able to reflect upon it, then (once a rational understanding has been achieved) consider the deeper significance of what it means to us. Awareness is expected to go from the written word into our short term memory, then to our long-term memory, then to our hearts, and finally to change our lives. We are to process a thought through the brain, through the heart, and then through the will. This is not a process measured in megabytes and seconds. This is clearly a process of engaging a text and letting it inform and to change our lives.
What happens if we sunder this sequence to the soul? What happens if we re-train our minds to become efficient scanners without retaining our human-paced ability to reflect? I think we risk being deceived. We run the risk of finding ourselves spiritually, historically and humanely limited.
But in truth, we don’t know what our current literary neglect will do to us. One possibility is that we will only be less informed. Another possibility is that we will physically become less human. Consider the recent findings (reported by Nicholas Carr) of researchers studying the brains of London taxi drivers.
It turns out that those drivers with the most experience – those having driven the streets of London for decades – had enlarged areas of the brain. Their posterior hippocampus tended to be larger than normal. This change had developed because of an exaggerated need to navigate the intricate maze of streets in a large and complex metropolitan area. The authors of the study believe that this acquired ability also came with trade-offs. The size of the brain, it is believed, is only able to grow so much within a rigid adult skull. If one area gets bigger does this mean that an adjacent area must get smaller?
Or in other words, if we become master scanners, do we lose an existing (yet underutilized) ability like deeper reflection – something like gaining fat while losing muscle? Maybe we do, but we don’t know. I have more optimism in our God-given brains than to become alarmed over this anatomical issue. What does alarm me a great deal, however, is our ongoing cultural neglect of serious literature and the ability to seriously engage a text.
This ability is being neglected, for sure. Just take a few minutes and scan the literature on public education these days. Most of the discussion is over budgets, test scores, new legislation, technology, etc. Where is the serious thought about texts? Now, in order to save money, we even hear of proposals to eliminate many existing books from the classroom – relying on web-based alternatives instead.
We have every reason to be concerned about this. Take for instance Betsy Sparrow’s (et al.) recent findings in Science that the internet affects memory. In a series of experiments, students were tested on their ability to recall information under various situations. The researchers found that the ability to remember was significantly less when participants expected that they could find the information later online. What students where remembering, was how to access the information rather than on the information itself.
I think Moroni just might be a little concerned about this. Maybe it isn’t all that important whether or not we memorize the names of the Beatles, of every recipe we use, or every street name between hear and the airport. Let’s use our gadgets for such expedients. But let’s remember that it does matter if we’ve committed sacred texts to memory. It also matters whether or not we remember the main arguments of a political philosopher or of an observant historian. And how do we expect to make our lives better if we can’t even remember what an inspired leader taught us just a few months ago?
There were good reasons that our ancestors memorized texts. We are a bit surprised when we learn, for example, that a couple of hundred years ago, public speeches (often lasting many hours) were memorized by talented listeners and written down afterwards. We are sobered by the dedication of Muslims that memorize the Koran. And now that I’m not so far from being a senior citizen, I’m amazed that many of the long texts I memorized as a youth are still with me and inform my thinking to this day.
Memory and reflection go hand-in-hand. And the kinds of memories that really matter are the ones that we gather from important texts. If we get wired by engaging the digital world, then we need to know when to step away from it. We need time to stop and think. Moroni was keenly aware of this. In fact, who knows, he may have been looking right at us and our distracted selves shaking his head. It’s worth reflecting on just such a possibility.
References
Christine Rosen’s article In the Beginning Was the Word appeared in the Autumn, 2009 issue of the Wilson Quarterly (Volume 33(4):48-53). My copy of Daniel Boorstin’s book The Image, A Guide to Psuedo-Events in America was published by Vintage in 1987. Russell Kirk’s statement comes from Humane Learning in the Age of the Computer, found (as Chapter IX) in Redeeming the Time, published by ISI Books in 1999 (second printing). For the account of the London taxi drivers and the issue of brain changes caused by the internet, see The Shallows, what the internet is doing to our brains by Nicholas Carr (published by W.W. Norton & Company, 2010). For Betsy Sparrow’s (et al.) article see: Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at our Fingertips, Science, 333, pp. 776-778 (2011).
Ours is a generation of cliff notes and the information segment. Not only are movie scenes much shorter than they used to be but our schools now regularly treat attention deficits as a treatable illness. Of course, we live in a faster-paced world and, some will argue, the nimble mind is now more important than an extended focus. Besides, we haven’t really become less intelligent, we’re just quicker and more competitive.
Well maybe – but then again, maybe not. Consider Christine Rosen’s recent argument that we no longer read online so much as we scan whatever happens to be on the screen in front of us. Web surfers rarely read the text on a webpage in the same way that we traditionally read a book. They jump from one paragraph or snippet to the next.
“Clicking on link after link, always looking for a new bit of information, we are actually revving up our brains with dopamine, the overlord of … the “seeking system”.” While connected to cyberspace the typical person deals with a combination of new incoming messages, quick responses to those messages, news updates, calendaring, planning, etc. All of these things (mediated by our dopamine-fueled system) “keep your brain constantly a bit distracted from what you’re reading online”.
We have become the masters of multitasking. Unfortunately, there seems to be a price to be paid for some of these associated virtues of our modern adaptability. We are losing the wisdom that comes from an extended focus and self-understanding that comes from personal rumination of the written word. We are becoming more superficial.
This problem is not entirely a product of the modern digital age. Daniel Boorstin noticed the trend in 1961 in his book, The Image. His point was that modern society was creating too many simple and convenient substitutes for the real world. He called these substitutes pseudo-events. And in the world of literature he noted the democratic trend to simplify important texts by abridgement.
Until recently, though, these abridgements (or “digests”) were written for specialists. With the success of The Readers’s Digest in the 20th Century, however, this began to change. Originally, the magazine was filled with condensed versions of other magazine articles. The founders (De Witt and Lila Wallace) at first just cut out sections of other magazine articles and reprinted their condensed versions. It wasn’t until much later that the magazine published its first full length article.
Boorstin noted about The Reader’s Digest, “This, the most popular magazine in the United States, has offered itself not as an “original,” but as a digest. The shadow outsells the substance. Abridging and digesting is no longer a device to lead the reader to an original which will give him what he really wants. The digest itself is what he wants. The shadow has become the substance.”
This worries me. It would seem that, by extension, an online snippet is even more removed from the substantial than even an abridgment. We are compounding superficiality, which wouldn’t be so bad if we restricted our scanning to practical expedients. It should be possible, after all, to capture a news update from our phone before settling down for a serious hour with Shakespeare. We should, in other words, be able to give priority to things that really matter even as we manage our superficial technologies. But are we really being so wise?
One of the great scriptural references in The Book of Mormon addresses this very issue. It is known among Mormons as The Book of Mormon Promise and is found at the end of The Book of Moroni (which is the last book in the The Book of Mormon). The preface to this promise begins in verse 3 of Chapter 10.
“Behold I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.”
Now this scripture has been variously loved, ignored, and misunderstood by generations of Latter-day Saints. It tends to get missed by superficial readers – especially when the important verses that follow are underlined in red. But Moroni, who wrote for our time, seems to be zeroing in on this particular one of our modern mistakes – I mean our superficial reading (and scanning).
The first request is that we remember something. This is certainly not a skill that our technological age encourages. If anything, the internet tells us that we need no longer worry about remembering. Why should we? Everything we need to know is just a few clicks away.
And yet the great literature of the world has always required of us a bit of reflection. Russell Kirk writes that, “The mass of miscellaneous information thrust upon us already is overwhelming and dismaying. What we need is not more information; what we require, as a public, is the ability to discriminate and integrate that mass of information, and to reflect upon it”.
Then as the content of our remembering is processed (explains Moroni) we are to ponder upon its meaning in our hearts. It would seem that Moroni is asking us to be very intimate readers. This apparently simple verse is asking us to do something like the following: read a sacred text, familiarize ourselves with sacred history enough to be able to reflect upon it, then (once a rational understanding has been achieved) consider the deeper significance of what it means to us. Awareness is expected to go from the written word into our short term memory, then to our long-term memory, then to our hearts, and finally to change our lives. We are to process a thought through the brain, through the heart, and then through the will. This is not a process measured in megabytes and seconds. This is clearly a process of engaging a text and letting it inform and to change our lives.
What happens if we sunder this sequence to the soul? What happens if we re-train our minds to become efficient scanners without retaining our human-paced ability to reflect? I think we risk being deceived. We run the risk of finding ourselves spiritually, historically and humanely limited.
But in truth, we don’t know what our current literary neglect will do to us. One possibility is that we will only be less informed. Another possibility is that we will physically become less human. Consider the recent findings (reported by Nicholas Carr) of researchers studying the brains of London taxi drivers.
It turns out that those drivers with the most experience – those having driven the streets of London for decades – had enlarged areas of the brain. Their posterior hippocampus tended to be larger than normal. This change had developed because of an exaggerated need to navigate the intricate maze of streets in a large and complex metropolitan area. The authors of the study believe that this acquired ability also came with trade-offs. The size of the brain, it is believed, is only able to grow so much within a rigid adult skull. If one area gets bigger does this mean that an adjacent area must get smaller?
Or in other words, if we become master scanners, do we lose an existing (yet underutilized) ability like deeper reflection – something like gaining fat while losing muscle? Maybe we do, but we don’t know. I have more optimism in our God-given brains than to become alarmed over this anatomical issue. What does alarm me a great deal, however, is our ongoing cultural neglect of serious literature and the ability to seriously engage a text.
This ability is being neglected, for sure. Just take a few minutes and scan the literature on public education these days. Most of the discussion is over budgets, test scores, new legislation, technology, etc. Where is the serious thought about texts? Now, in order to save money, we even hear of proposals to eliminate many existing books from the classroom – relying on web-based alternatives instead.
We have every reason to be concerned about this. Take for instance Betsy Sparrow’s (et al.) recent findings in Science that the internet affects memory. In a series of experiments, students were tested on their ability to recall information under various situations. The researchers found that the ability to remember was significantly less when participants expected that they could find the information later online. What students where remembering, was how to access the information rather than on the information itself.
I think Moroni just might be a little concerned about this. Maybe it isn’t all that important whether or not we memorize the names of the Beatles, of every recipe we use, or every street name between hear and the airport. Let’s use our gadgets for such expedients. But let’s remember that it does matter if we’ve committed sacred texts to memory. It also matters whether or not we remember the main arguments of a political philosopher or of an observant historian. And how do we expect to make our lives better if we can’t even remember what an inspired leader taught us just a few months ago?
There were good reasons that our ancestors memorized texts. We are a bit surprised when we learn, for example, that a couple of hundred years ago, public speeches (often lasting many hours) were memorized by talented listeners and written down afterwards. We are sobered by the dedication of Muslims that memorize the Koran. And now that I’m not so far from being a senior citizen, I’m amazed that many of the long texts I memorized as a youth are still with me and inform my thinking to this day.
Memory and reflection go hand-in-hand. And the kinds of memories that really matter are the ones that we gather from important texts. If we get wired by engaging the digital world, then we need to know when to step away from it. We need time to stop and think. Moroni was keenly aware of this. In fact, who knows, he may have been looking right at us and our distracted selves shaking his head. It’s worth reflecting on just such a possibility.
References
Christine Rosen’s article In the Beginning Was the Word appeared in the Autumn, 2009 issue of the Wilson Quarterly (Volume 33(4):48-53). My copy of Daniel Boorstin’s book The Image, A Guide to Psuedo-Events in America was published by Vintage in 1987. Russell Kirk’s statement comes from Humane Learning in the Age of the Computer, found (as Chapter IX) in Redeeming the Time, published by ISI Books in 1999 (second printing). For the account of the London taxi drivers and the issue of brain changes caused by the internet, see The Shallows, what the internet is doing to our brains by Nicholas Carr (published by W.W. Norton & Company, 2010). For Betsy Sparrow’s (et al.) article see: Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at our Fingertips, Science, 333, pp. 776-778 (2011).
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