AncienTrails

An Acre of Corn Gives Off 3,000-4,000 Gallons of Water a Day

71 bar steady 29.92 omph N dew-point 60 sunrise 6:22  sunset 8:11  Lughnasa

Waning Gibbous Corn Moon

Plants need rest.  The hydroponic lights have to go out overnight, or for a nighttime length period.  Right now, while the lettuce, chard, tomato, egg plant and pepper seeds have begun to germinate, I turn the light off and on by hand, but once these plants get roots outside the planting medium (rock wool, believe it or not), they will go on top into the hydroponic bath.  In that situation I prefer the regularity of a timer.  It will not be long until we have lettuce growing again.  We know we can do that.  This time we’re trying a few more complicated plants.

The night sky is clear.

All during the corn moon I have given corn more thought than I have in the past.  It is a giant among the vegetable crops; our Country Gentlemen stand about 8 feet high.  Corn came into domestication somewhere in Mexico, a grass.  Here’s this from the history of corn website:

teosinte

“Corn is a domesticated form of teosinte, a wild grass found in isolated patches in the Mexican western Sierra Madre. With the use of modern archeological, and genetic techniques, scientists estimate that teosinte was first domesticated in this area around 4,000 to 3,000 B.C. By 1400 B.C., corn cultivation had reached both Mexican coasts. This early corn looked very different than today’s corn in that the kernels were small and individually covered by their own floral parts (similar to oats and barley) and the cob readily broke into small fragments.

The word corn can be traced to an Indoeuropean word that was translated to mean ’small nugget.’ The various transmutations of this origin evolved into the Germanic ‘korn’ which means any cereal grain, and the Latin ‘granum’ (grain) which also refers to any edible grass seed.”

An acre of corn gives off about 3,000-4,000 gallons of water each day, and a large oak tree can transpire 40,000 gallons per year.  “Climatologists are building evidence that crops, particularly corn, are driving up dew points as they put water into the atmosphere through evaporation. They also may make corn-growing areas cooler and alter rain patterns.”

Grant Wood, Young Corn

81  bar falls 29.94 1mph W  dew-point 62  sunrise 6:21  sunset 8:11  Lughnasa

Waning Gibbous Corn Moon

Started reading Maus, by Art Spiegleman.  Morry Rothstein will present Maus and Persepolis at the first Docent book-club meeting for 2008-2009.  Though I read a lot of comic books, now known by the grander name of graphic novels, I’ve never read either of these.  I’m two chapters into it and already the poignancy, the humanity of this story has me.  In these two chaptes Spiegleman tells his father’s story of the Holocaust as it emerges in present day visits he makes to his father’s house. The visits themselves reveal his father as a less than pleasant guy.  In a way that surprises me his father the curmudgeon makes the story even more tender and sad.  How this all relates to art in the encyclopedic museum sense will make for a good meeting, I’m sure.

When we spoke about moments of greatest patriotism and least patriotism, I did not mention an experience that serves as both together for me.  In early November of 2004 I traveled to Singapore for the first leg of my Southeast Asia trip.  My sister, Mary, suggested we go to the American Club for the breakfast buffet on the day of the presidential election.  And so we did.

12,000 or so miles from home, far enough away that if I headed further west I would be on my way back home, Mary and I went up the formal stair way of the America Club, an expensive oasis of American culture at the tip of Malaysia, near the Straits of Molucca.

Set up in a large ball room were about forty, maybe fifty round tables holding 10-12 guests.  The room had several large screen televisions, all tuned to election coverage in the US, following the polls as voting was coming to a close.

BBC photo, Singapore Election Breakfast 2004, American Club

Bunting decorated the walls and the buffet had scrambled eggs, hash browns, pancakes, eggs benedict, bacon, sausage.  It was American decor and American food.  Walking into this scene, after a taxi-ride through the steamy tropical jungle that lines the streets of Singapore, made feel an instantaneous link with home.  A surge of patriotism hit me.  Our democracy in action, beamed to us, Americans, here in Southeast Asia.

I didn’t like the American Club’s message of imperial might, an outpost in a savage land feel, but I did find my Americanness stimulated by being there with all those others who had an interest in the election.

The results of the election precipitated the opposite feeling.  As we voted in George Bush for a second term, I felt a shadow fall across Singapore.  A ride with a Chinese taxi-driver made me feel worse.  Our elections were incredibly important for people in smaller countries like Singapore.  Whoever held power in Washington had an outsized ability to wreck havoc or grant boons, often without intending to, to people all over the world.  These came in the form of military bases, trade regulations, decisions effecting the economy and policies relating directly to the country or region in question.

In that cab, headed toward Orchard Road, a testimony to the mighty capitalism of tiny Singapore, I felt miserable about the choice we had made and how it would affect all those people the cabbie named.  In a strange way, though, even the acknowledgment of the gross error we had made only underlined the degree to which I was an American and not something else. It also underlined the tremendous responsibility we have as citizens in a country that has this kind of power.  Thus, that day I felt the true significance of my country, both for good and for ill, and the ineluctable bond I felt for it, for both good and ill.

Lunch Reminder

83  bar falls 29.97  4mph NE dew-point 64  sunrise 6:21  sunset 8:11 Lughnasa

Waning Gibbous Corn Moon

Took Kate out to lunch at Bennigans to say thanks for cooking Monday night.  While there we watched a group of wheel chair bound residents of the Anoka Care Center load onto a transit bus after lunch.  A reminder of the ravages aging can create.  A good prod to exercise and healthy diet.

Didn’t get outside yet today and I have to get those daylilies moved so I can move the iris.

On the HanShan Path, Han Shan

On the HanShan Path

The trail to Cold Mountain is faint

the banks of Cold Stream are a jungle

birds constantly chatter away

I hear no sound of people

gusts of wind lash my face

flurries of snow bury my body

day after day no sun

year after year no spring

America, America

83  bar falls 30.00  1mph E dew-point 66  sunrise 6:21  sunset 8:11  Lughnasa

Waning Gibbous Corn Moon

“The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it.” - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Oh, man.  Just spent time on the phone, then online with a customer service tech for a web-based service to which I subscribe.  There’s gotta be a better way of establishing my bona fides.  With accounts and subscriptions all over the net my passwords, user names and security questions get mixed up sometimes.  In this case I think the problem was partly their end, partly my brain.  I haven’t solved it, but I lost energy for it.

Instead, apropos of Rousseau above, I made telephone calls to candidates for the Sierra Club. I’m not a fan of the telephone, but a large part of that, maybe all of it, is me.  Phone solicitations, unwanted callers annoy me and I do not want to annoy others.  That’s my rationalization, in fact, it is part a sort of phobia about contacting people I can’t see, in a way that comes as a surprise even with caller id.

When it comes to politics, persuasion has a key role, but I have developed an unreasonable and idiosyncratic reluctance to persuade–or to be persuaded by–another person.  I’m quite ok with persuasion in writing, public speaking, as part of a protest, but one to one I loose patience with the process.  This is a hangover from the sixties and one it is high time I eliminated.  My work with the Sierra Club this year is an excellent opportunity to challenge these predispositions.

America.  The Woollies spoke Monday night of America, though most seemed to want to collapse America into the United States, a distinction I try to keep fresh and bright.  The United States is the political entity created by American revolution, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  It has and grants legal authority.  The United States is, largely, our government. Congress, the President and the Executive Branch, the Supreme Court, all the state governments and the corpus of laws, rules and regulations these all create and enforce.  We, the people are responsible for our government, not to our government and crucially, we are distinct from our government.

America exists at the crossroads where a farm elevator rises out of vast fields of wheat.  America emerges at high school basketball games, bass fishing tournaments and baseball games.  America gets together at church socials, VFW meetings and suburban soccer games.  America has a geography, topography, a meteorology.  The United States does not.  America has churches and bowling leagues, softball games and croquet on well manicured suburban lawns.  The United States does not.  America has a history found in MacGuffey readers, Walt Whitman’s poems, Lincoln’s speeches and Frederick Douglass’s.  Moby Dick and Hester Prynne, Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett.  Sooners.  Gold rushers.  Mountain Men. Suffragettes.  Temperance workers.  This is America.

Those four corners with gas stations or drugstores or cafes, those long streets with bungalows and those with Victorian era mansions, the cars and trucks on the highways, Country Music and Bluegrass, Jazz and Gospel these express American culture.

Culture blends with the land to create an idiosyncratic way of living recognized easily by others, but often not well understood by those immersed within it, just as the fish doesn’t think about water and humans give little thought to air.  Thus, the world knows what it means to be American better than we do.

This question or topic deserves more probing, greater depth.  It goes to the very definition of ourselves in the world.

A Desert Region Selling Fresh Water To Minnesota?

70  bar rises 29.97 0mpn NNE dew-point 67 sunrise 6:21  sunset 8:12  Lughnasa

Waning Gibbous Corn Moon

A California Aqueduct (note the evaporation problem)

A while back the commodification of drinking water, that is selling it in plastic bottles, got to me.  I no longer buy it for home and only occasionally outside the house, flying being a notable exception.  It was a little unusual for me to buy 3 24-packs on Sunday, but the Niagara Drinking Water was 3 24-packs for 9.99.  A real bargain.  Anyhow I bought them for the Woolly event last night.

While drinking one, I read the label.  It has Niagara Drinking Water over a representation of a large falls.  There’s also a rainbow there.  When I saw Ontario on the label, that seemed to make sense, Ontario being on the north side of the falls.  Then I looked closer.  No, it wasn’t that Ontario.  It was Ontario, California!

Whoa.  Since southern California gets 20% of its water from the Colorado (the rest coming from a combination of the Sierra snow pack, groundwater aquifer pumping and other in-state water projects), it means two interesting things.  One, an area that is essentially a desert exports water to the rest of the US, at least as far away as Minnesota.  Second, it is plausible that 20% of the water shipped from California to Minnesota 24 plastic bottles to the case came from diversions of the Colorado River.  This is not to mention the obvious irony of sending fresh water from a desert region to a region with 16,000 fresh water lakes and shoreline on the second largest body of freshwater in the world.

This is a crime against the planet, the intellect, common sense and the already fragile water supplies of the West.  Wish I’d read the label before I forked over my 9.99.

In addition to the above I just found this on the Politics in the Zeros website:

“Water use in California consumes significant amounts of electrical energy. Preliminary estimates indicate that total energy used to pump and treat this water exceeds 15,000 GWh per year, or at least 6.5 percent of the total electricity used in the State per year.

Water use results in such large energy costs primarily because so much of the State’s water demand is located far from available sources, and the moving of water is inherently energy intensive.”

Sort makes you wonder who is in charge?

To Strive Together

86  bar falls 29.97  0mph W  dew-point 65  sunrise 6:20  sunset  8:12  Lughnasa

Waning Gibbous Corn Moon

the first olympic games, getty images

Compete.  The word has a complicated etymology.  Bill Schmidt mentioned it last night.  Below is a history from the Oxford Etymology Website:  (not the OED)

1620, from Fr. compéter “be in rivalry with,” from L.L. competere “strive in common,” in L., “to come together, agree, to be qualified,” later, “strive together,” from com- “together” + petere “to strive, seek” (see petition). Rare 17c., and regarded early 19c. as a Scottish or Amer.Eng. word.

Checking my OED I found two etymologies, one of compete as an obscure and rare verb:  L.  competere to fall together, come together, be fitting, be convenient or fitting. This history also combined with a later french word of the same spelling that relied on com=with and petere=fall upon, assail, aim at, make for, try to reach, strive after, sue for, solicit, ask, seek.   In an unusual second etymology for compete there is this:  competere in its post-classical sense:  to strive after (something) together or in company.”

In spite of these derivations the word has as its 1st definition (the usual and most important according to OED practice):  To enter into or to put into rivalry with, to vie with another in any respect.

Meaning number 2 has this: to strive with another, for the attainment of a thing, in doing something.

Meaning #2 seems to have a much clearer relationship with the etymology.  The 1st meaning, however, is very old, going back in the history of quotations to 1598.

I mention all this because of my emphasis the other day on the pernicious effect of competition on sport.  I stand by that statement and by what I consider as its tragic consequence, but I can see how a return to the etymological significance of the word better carried in meaning 2 might change the landscape and understanding of sports.  I think Bill meant to say that it is the Olympic ideal, this notion of striving with others for the attainment of a thing, i.e. the Olympic motto swifter, higher, stronger (citius, altius, fortius).

The two meanings do swirl around together, especially in the Olympic environment, and I wish the striving after with, rather rivalry against, sense predominated, but it does not.

Climbing Up the Cold Mountain, Han Shan

73  bar steady 29.99  0mph WSW dew-point 63  sunrise 6:20  sunset 8:12  Lughnasa

Waning Gibbous Corn Moon   moonrise 2112  moonset  o928

  Han Shan

Climbing Up The Cold Mountain

Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,

The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:

The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,

The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass.

The moss is slippery, though there’s been no rain

The pine sings, but there’s no wind.

Who can leap the world’s ties

And sit with me among the white clouds?

Delicious, fresh food

73  bar rises 29.90  0mph NNE dew-point 64  sunrise 6:20 sunset 8:14

Full Corn Moon

The Woollies went home about 30 minutes ago.  “A feast.”  “You’ve set a new standard.”  “Can we come back here next month.”  All these compliments were the direct result of Kate’s skill as a cook.   She assembles recipes, parcels out work, gets stuff done.  Her food is delicious and fresh.  Much of our meal came from the garden.

We sang When You’re Sixty-Four to Kate over dinner and sang her happy birthday just before every left.  As she said, “It was a Norwegian birthday.”  Meaning she worked a lot.

Folks liked the garden viewed from the upstairs deck.  Bill and Tom and Scott commented on the vegetable garden and the fire pit.  We don’t get that many people through here in the course of a year so it was nice to have other’s reaction to what we do.  The Woollies also liked the renovation project Kate headed up. A talented gal and I’m lucky to have her in my life.  As I have felt since I got to know her 20 years ago.

The topic for the meeting focused on American identity.  More on this tomorrow when I’m not so fried.  Having people up drains me.

Reading the OED

90  bar steady 29.83  0mph NNW dew-point 59  sunrise 6:18  sunset 8:14  Lughnasa

Full Corn Moon  moon rise 2053  moonset  0816

The salmon is in the house.  So is the shrimp.  And ice.  Plus beer, NA, diet pop and bottled water (for entertaining purposes only).  We have the leaves in the dining room table, the first time since we bought the table a year ago.  It’s long.  Really long.  Kate has the triangle of refrigerator, sink, stove cordoned off and wants no helpers in there.  I don’t think anybody will fight her for the privilege.

Who said late August had no heat.  Not this guy.  With 90 and dewpoint at 59 outside dining stretches the Minnesota tolerance limits.  Good thing we have air conditioning and tables inside, too.

Got an Amazon order.  A couple of things that look fun.  Reading the OED, a guy who read the entire OED in one year.   Also, the Landmark Herodotus, an annotated version of the Histories.  There’s something about history and  historiography that fascinates me.

My first two tours of the new academic year have come in over the transom.  4th graders from Lakeville who want to see things Made In America and an MIA patron who wants a tour with an emphasis on Korea.  Be good to strap back into the harness and pull a wagon or two.

I’m off to sweep the patio and arrange furniture.