Song of the Rolling Earth - Science Forum

Gustav Stresemann Institut (GSI)

Sitting in a friends kitchen and preparing for the Science Forum in Bonn at the Gustav Stresemann Institut “Nutrition and health outcomes: targets for agricultural research” Science Forum (CGIAR). 23.09. – 25.09.2013. 

I came across these words in Leaves of Grass. It inspires a kind of divine, deeply contented laziness and contentedness. Content to sit here and drink tea and feel confident that the benefit to the world will be greater than that of my effort to head out into the chilly streets and off to the conference...

Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, BOOK XVI, A Song of the Rolling Earth, Part 3

Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you,
The divine ship sails the divine sea for you.

Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid,
You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky,
For none more than you are the present and the past,
For none more than you is immortality.

Each man to himself and each woman to herself, is the word of the
past and present, and the true word of immortality;
No one can acquire for another—not one,
Not one can grow for another—not one.

The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him,
The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him,
The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him,
The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him,
The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him,
The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him—it cannot fail,
The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress
not to the audience,
And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or
the indication of his own.

Read more about the what is happening at GSI and related work (Lee et al. 2011; Witney 2008; 2011ab; 2012; Whitney et al. 2012).

Further reading

Lee, Jeung Hyoung, Hyun Sun DiMatteo Jo, Susanne Padel, Robert Anderson, Marco Schlüter, Francis Blake, Katsushige Murayama, et al. “Government Policies for the Promotion of Organic Agriculture with a Focus on the Asian Pacific Region.” In Special Workshop; Government Policies for the Promotion of Organic Agriculture with a Focus on the Asian Pacific Region, 17th IFOAM OWC, South Korea, edited by Cory Whitney, 97. Seoul, South Korea: Ministry of Food Agriculture, Forestry & Fisheries, Republic of Korea, 2011.

Whitney, Cory. “A Survey of Wild Collection and Cultivation of Indigenous Species in Iceland and the Faroe Islands.” MSc, University of Kassel, 2011. Kobra (University of Kassel’s Repository und Archive).

———. “Conservation Ethnobotany in the North Atlantic.” Non-Wood News; NWFP Digest, 2011. Food and Agriculture Organization.

———. “Nordic Ethnobotany and Conservation.” NWFP News: Non-Wood Forest Products, 2012. Food and Agriculture Organization.

———. “Small Is Beautiful; How Local Organic Can Steer Us Away From Catastrophe.” Ecology & Farming, 2008. Ecology & Farming.

Whitney, Cory, J. Gebauer, and M. Anderson. “A Survey of Wild Collection and Cultivation of Indigenous Species in Iceland.” Human Ecology 40, no. 5 (2012): 781–87. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-012-9517-0.

 

Organic Farm Poetry from Japan

Preparing for Tokyo I just visited the translated web page of Mr. Kaneko Yoshinori's Shimosato Farm in Ogawa cho town, Saitama prefecture.

While looking around the farm's webpages I picked this poem out of the jumbled automated translation of a farm trainees story. - It is about the trainees plan to make a book of the farming experiences and life experiences to share with farmers in Cambodia. - It is not clear who the author is so I cannot give proper credit but in the original text the author thanks the farmers Kaneko Noboru, Tomoko, Ishikawa, and Chigusa, as well as the fellow farm trainees learned together, and the people of Shimosato farm and Ogawa cho town. Perhaps forwarding this appreciation on is enough.

Farm Stare Future; Farm Frost 

Organic farming, intuition, the way to live life,

Became me in the farm frost.

The thing clasped about, 

Blood smears from this hand.  

In youth, traveling through India, 

Watching cremations, much until night fall. 

Three days, from fall to rise on the Ganges, 

Continue to burn hours after catching fire in the body, 

Smoke aims up to heaven, 

Ash, flow and hover to the river.

Meat and bone remaining burnt, 

Dog food and cow lick. 

Among those who have seen such a sight, 

Consciousness 

In me, all life that I have led was born. 

Later, learning from local people in Cambodia. 

The important thing in life, without, at all, 

such a thing as power, 

such as position, 

such as honor, 

such as money. 

To value life, 

To live bright with the family, 

The people of the village, 

To live richly together,

To know such things 

Commonplace. 

The philosophy more than anything else, 

Is to cherish life. 

Agriculture, 

That there is only that day in and day out, 

To keep the stack small and steady. 

Agriculture, 

Bad things in themselves are also getting better, 

As the villagers say, 

The land is no good in spirit unless it is rich. 

And it is to the agriculture taken for granted, 

That will live on for granted. 

This village, 

Farmers, 

Children, 

Beauty, 

The living land and soil, 

And all the live beautiful strong richness of farming 

We light a lamp in one corner.

Tryin' On Clothes

When I was traveling around in Ireland I thought I would leave the delicious-food-and-Jamesons-filled confines of the Dublin couchsurfing ambassador's house to head over to stay for a few days on a nudist colony. - After chatting with the people at the nudist colony through CS a few times it made me think that it is not my scene. Plus Ireland is really too cold and rainy to be naked all day long, even in summer.

Anyway, I read this poem by Shel Silverstein at the time called 'Tryin' On Clothes' and thought of it as a silly nudist poem. Today I rather see it as a deep ecology poem about a true and close relationship between humans and nature. - The amazing diversity of outward expressions of identity and culture sometimes help us to have a deeper sense of place (i.e. indigenous clothing) but the majority of it seems to be about ego and consumerism (see 'the story of stuff'). - So it I see this as a poem about 'Tryin' On Clothes' in a deep ecology sense and perhaps allowing a kind of nudity of the ego and of outward expression in deference and connection to a true natural self and place.

I tried on the farmer's hat,
Didn't fit...
A little too small -- just a bit
Too floppy.
Couldn't get used to it,
Took it off.
Tried on the dancer's shoes,
A little too loose.
Not the kind you could use
For walkin'.
Didn't feel right in 'em,
Kicked 'em off.
I tried on the summer sun,
Felt good.
Nice and warm -- knew it would.
Tried the grass beneath bare feet,
Felt neat.
Finally, finally felt well dressed,
Nature's clothes fit me best.

Wicked Happy Old Farmer

Moldy photo of a wicked happy farmer in Laos chucking hay with a bamboo pitchfork.

Planting to Resilience

Since returning from Laos and taking the job in Germany I have been spending my time on this project working with farmers in Greater Bushenyi region of Uganda. 

I am learning a lot about the diversity of the gardens there and also getting a lot of experience with the field herbarium: 

 If nothing else I am generating a great collection of herbarium samples to fill the shelves of the Makerere University herbarium. Those hard working researchers need a lot more support than they are getting:

My (as yet) still rather messy collection, shelved after drying. 
 

Now Don't Say I Never Gave You Nothin'

Free Stuff Conundrum

A market niche clearly exists for free stuff. There is an incredible demand and very little supply.

Just the other day I put up a post on the local online community site The New Hanoian (a kind of Vietnamese craigslist) for free stuff and it was answered in minutes by many people. I noticed that there were no old posts in that section of the site and realized why. I had to delete the ad after about half an hour because of all the mail.

In San Francisco we used to have the 'Really Really Free Market' as a kind of community gathering where people would give away everything from clothes to sandwiches and dance lessons. - That all ended tragically when the organizer Kirsten Brydum was shot in New Orleans.

What about a 'Really Really Free Market" for the international vagabonds among us? All the language teachers and NGO workers who are aimlessly roaming from job to job, and those international hitchhikers, sailors and couchsurfers who are looking for a bicycle or a jacket in their destination city. I say we need an online free market/library/warehouse/storehouse for all those vagabonds among us.

Why do we need all these piles of things stashed all over the world? Sometimes I feel like a human squirrel, arriving at a place and gathering up my collection of things to leave for a later date. - I would rather that these acorns are allowed to grow into trees (as a great percentage of the forgotten squirrel-stashed-acorns do). It would be preferable if I could put my surfboard, bike etc. into the local Free Market/Library and look to that in my place of arrival when I get there.

Too many of us are roving around only to invest in yet another motorbike and whole life to leave behind again. Let's share.

Radical Fermentation

Here in Hanoi we eat a lot of fermented foods.

The most common is a crazy stinky dish called Mắm, a purple paste of raw fermented fish and shrimp eaten with cold noodles and tofu, meat and other vegetables.

We also eat a lot of a dish delicious and sour dish called Dua Muoi, which is a mustard and beet fermentation, as well as Ca Muoi, which is a kind of small eggplant fermentation.

The macrobiotic community on Lac Long Quan has many rooms and corners of the house filled with bottles of fermenting fruits and vegetables. - My Vietnamese is only good enough to find out about the age of the fermentation and the general plant type. - I'll be finding out about it and be sure to put photos and ideas up on the 'Organic Slow Foodie' blog as I learn more.

Concerning fermentation here is a much loved poem by Peter Schumann

CHEESE IS CLASSICAL
FERMENTATION FROM
THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. RADICAL CHEESE
IS HUMAN FERMENTATION + THE NEED
FOR HUMAN FERMENTATION.
THE CALL FOR FERMENTATION IS PRIOR TO THE CALL
FOR UPRISING BECAUSE UPRISING NEEDS ALL THE
WILD YEASTS OT THE MOMENT TO BE WHAT IT IS.
HUMAN FERMENTATION CONCERNS THOSE
PARTS OF THE HUMAN BODY
THAT ARE NOT GOVERNED BY
THE GOVERNMENT
LIKE THE GUTS AND THE
GUTSY PART OF THE BRAIN.
IN THIS DEMOCRACY WHICH
TEASES CITIZENS WITH
THE POSSIBILITY OF
DEMOCRACY, CITIZENS ARE
RAISED LIKE MILITARY
APPLE-ORCHARDS PRUNED
DOWN TO THEIR PREDICTABLE
MINIMUMS YIELDING CONTROLLED
FRUITS THAT LACK THE ECSTACY OF NATURE.
FERMENTED CITIZENS ARE CORRUPTED
BY THE ECSTASY OF NATURE + FROM THAT CORRUPTION
DERIVE STRENGTH TO CORRUPT NORMAL MILITARY-
APPLE-ORCHARD CITIZENS. ONLY BY THE SPREAD OF
SUCH CORRUPTIONS CAUSED BY FERMENTATION CAN
UPRISINGS OCCUR. UPRISINGS ARE NOT POLITICAL
ACTIVITIES BUT THE OPPOSITE OF POLITICAL ACTIVITIES:
ANARCHIC EXERCISES IN THE HUMAN POTENTIAL
OR ANARCHIC BLOSSOMINGS OF DESIRES WHICH
ARE HIDDEN CAPABILITIES.
THE WORLD THAT ADVERTISES ITSELF AS
THE WORLD IS THE WRONG WORLD. THE
BLOSSOMING OF DESIRES AGAINST THIS WRONG
WORLD IS DIRECTLY CONNECTED TO THE
GARBAGE SPIRITUALIZATION AS PRACTISED BY
PUPPETRY

Ancient Trees Give Way to New Development

I took this photo because I found that it could tell the whole story.
It is infinitely depressing to witness the forests disappearing here but I am finding some hope in the way that life springs up in every possible niche of the new human-built world.

Wholesome Food in Hanoi

Hanoi is a killer.

The street food is delicious and the people are good but it is hard to take the speed, the noise, the MSG, and the smog of a Hanoi life for very long.

I travel by bicycle or motorbike, from a good job with a local NGO to meditation or yoga class but still feel strung out and depressed after a week or two in this city. I find that all my senses are filled with heavy-metal dust. - I need a lot of support and Lac Long Quan is one place where I go to get it.

On the west shore of West Lake there is a small bulk producer of macrobiotics. - They have saved my life in this smoggy fast-paced action-packed city.

Macrobiotic is about a person's whole environment, from food to social interactions to the climate and geography. It views sickness as the natural attempt of the body to return to a more harmonious balance with the dark and light aspects of life - it is really about diet and lifestyle.

Here is a poem by Matsuo Basho, translated by Robert Hass

A monk sips morning tea,
it's quiet,
the chrysanthemum's flowering.

Humic Musings

Work has begun to overwhelm time for musing and writing. - Sympathetic Disengaged Curiosity is now intended simply as a fist in the air - a positive mark of solidarity - part of the deepening online litter of composting words and ideas - not really a catalyst so much as a space for light musings and general appreciation for poets and visionaries: fingers pointing at the moon.

On transitions here's Mary Oliver's poem 'The Journey': 

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save.

Gratitude List

Practicing gratitude is a good way to stop allowing the wonderful aspects of life slip by without awareness. The Dalia Lama has spent his life offering his encouragement for us to practice it, the Buddha taught it to his disciples over 2,000 years ago and now science is finding more and more evidence to support the notion that gratitude is a great source of well being and happiness.

Over the past few years a group of friends and I have been working on making lists of things that we are grateful for. For enumeration, and that possibility that it may inspire others to start their own lists, I offer a few gems:

Maine 2013: The way leaves dance in a light breeze; orange evening beams of sunlight moving through the room, peanut butter and butter on fresh baked bread, aimlessness, new seedlings in the garden, beansprouts and cherry tomatoes, pet names from my mother.

Arizona 2013: Waking up without an alarm, rainy afternoons, sparkly shoes, watching the sunset, unexpected letters, breathing in & loving out, pint-sipping, misty midnight walks, giving compliments, that feeling you get when you can't imagine anything better, the way fall air smells, snuggling under the covers, mischievous smirks, snort-y laughing, being in the moment.

New Mexico 2012: Alpaca gatherings, alpaca eyelashes, buffalo roving, yellow aspen groves, yellow tea cup, bicycles, sweet rainbow children, the fuzzy grey of the changing season.

Seattle 2012: Stars, lightning bugs, robots, history, gifts, love, giggle, farts, dancing, sleep.

Nevada 2011: Baked sweet potatoes, truck campers, the Sierras, smooth tapioca pudding, peanut brittle, homemade apple butter, jars of change, winds of change, seasons that change, sweat pants.

New Jersey 2011: Gathering and eating food from our garden, grieving in order to move through, time alone, eggs and bacon, discovering new music, cartwheeling everywhere!

Scotland 2010: Making big plans and changing them at the last second, cutting off all my hair, the sun rising after I've lost track of time, remembering the magic of hot tea.

Arizona 2010: Rawberry strubarb pie, homemade earl gray rock candy experiments, Arizona evenings, suited up for tennis, rocking chairs and turkey vultures, never-ending fire roasted pablanos, gathering the bundle of your mind into this present moment.

California 2010: Deep breaths to bring me back to the present, sweet rose wine and rocking chairs, grounding ideas born long ago, calligraphic ink stained fingers, the rat's nest treasure, yoni art, reunions with east coast birds, homemade felt for yurt homes, dark mustaches forever in my heart.

Wisconsin 2009: Listening to my kids pretend stuff.

Vermont 2009: Falling asleep with my new born nephew in my arms, opening my heart to give and receive love, visits from close friends that live far away, sitting by a warm wood stove, midnight strolls under a clear sky, snuggling in my warm bed on a cold morning.

Georgia 2008: Translucent Bunny ears, silk dog fur, coarse dog fur, wild heavy rain, hail, very late night quiet.

New York 2008: Yoga interrupted by puppies, yoga interrupted by the smell of coffee, the smell of coffee, enjoying coffee while writing about yoga being interrupted, laughing at myself and this list, anticipating having fun in the theatre later, anticipating more laughing at myself.

What to do?

I just watched the Explorer in Residence at the National Geographic Society, Wade Davis's, TED talks again. They are very impressive but left me wondering if the current approach to collecting and preserving indigenous knowledge is really useful for these communities or just ego based materialism and misguided do-goody-ness.

There is no doubt that there is an unfortunate chasm between the indigenous communities interests and the interests of the research community. - It leaves an aspiring do-goody human ecologist with strong consideration of 'turning on, tuning in, and dropping out'.

San Francisco Zen Center's Reb Anderson asks if these doubt questions are 'apropos of peace' he suggests that they are not but that 'being' with these questions and 'standing beside' them is apropos of peace.

I relaxed into Reb's lessons and then relaxed even more when I found this poem by Mary Oliver called When I Am Among the Trees:

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

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Here is a regularly updated list of other things Cory writes

Our Island Earth

Anyone who has spent a significant portion of time looking at maps will probably agree that the Mercator projection is a poor representation of the globe. The Mercator projection is disorienting at best, it stretches Northern countries to look massive and places the north pole, Europe and North America as a kind of gigantic roof over the world.

Buckminster Fuller also found this to be a let down. He believed that this projection worked to further the disparity between the global north and global south and so he created a new kind of projection. He called his projection a dymaxion map, projecting the earths surface onto a grid of triangles and then laying them out flat (an unfolded icosahedron).


Looking at this realistic map of the earth brings great relief. One gets the feeling that we are in Pangea still. It shows all the continents stretched across with the north pole in the center, creating a kind of "Reunite Laurasia" or "Reunite Gandwanaland" map but in real time.

Here is a poem by Mary Oliver, not about about this amazing little blue planet of ours but about that giant orb of fire that makes all this blue and green possible.

THE SUN

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone—
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance—
and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love—
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed—

or have you too
turned from this world—

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

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Here is a regularly updated list of other things Cory writes

The Tongue Says Lonelines

Just heard this poem from Jane Hirshfield and was moved to put it up here.



The Tongue Says Lonelines

The tongue says loneliness, anger, grief,
but does not feel them.

As Monday cannot feel Tuesday,
nor Thursday
reach back to Wednesday
as a mother reaches out for her found child.

As this life is not a gate, but the horse plunging through it.

Not a bell,
but the sound of the bell in the bell-shape,
lashing full strength with the first blow from inside the iron.

~ Jane Hirshfield
from Come, Thief

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Here is a regularly updated list of other things Cory writes