In Progress

I have so much work to do on this blog.  I simply needed to start though...I couldn't wait for aesthetics.  Patience...cleaner lines and more interesting views are coming.

The Specialists

I have big ideas for this blog.

I've blogged before under various other names but always there was this dilemma...I never felt like I could really unleash myself.  Or like it was okay to be fully myself while blogging.  Although I couldn't put my finger on it then, my thoughts on the matter have led down this path.

We live in modern world of specialists...everywhere you look, there's a specialist of some sort.  And specialists, must by virtue of their nature, specialize in something to the exclusion of other things.  Initially, one of the medical professions may pop into your head, such as an allergy specialist or a cardiologist.  But don't stop there.  Keep seeking with your mind all the other areas of modern life in which this "taking apart" of things has occurred.  There certainly is specialization in careers.  Anyone in cubicle can attest to that and the mind-boggling beauracracy that goes hand in hand with no single employee ever grasping the bigger picture of their particular business.  But I urge you to go beyond doctors, beyond business...even so far as education.  School is preparation for "real" life which, in all reality, runs together like wet watercolors and yet in training for this adult thing called life, what are considered necessary lessons are delineated and compartmentalized from each other so most students never get the idea that one subject may bleed messily into the next, until much later in their in their high school career but by then, they're already preparing to major (or specialize) in something in college.  I don't dispute that obviously, they will know math is used with science or that reading will be necessary to even approach science or history.  I simply purport that this method of singular instruction deeply and yet subtly conditions young formative minds to view their world in pieces rather than the spectacular dynamic whole that it is.  What is the result of so many generations of this type of thinking?  What about our world today is a reflection of this?

Masanobu Fukuoka in The One-Straw Revolution writes of some of the frustrations he encountered on the subject.  Fukuoka was a rice farmer in Japan who radically challenged the farming status quo by what he called "Do Nothing Farming".  He once worked for the Yokohama Customs Bureau in the Plant Inspection Division and then fell ill as a young man and nearly died.  This near-death experience brought him to the epiphany that Man knows nothing.  Everything we do interferes with a pristine inter-dependent system that is designed to work beautifully without our help.  In his farming work, he did significantly less than the average rice farmer and yet enjoyed larger and heartier yields so he is still the subject of much speculation and study by several experts.  Here is an excerpt from the chapter Limits of the Scientific Method.

Recently Professor Tsuno of Ehime University wrote a lengthy book on the relationship of plant metabolism to rice harvests.  This professor often comes to my field, digs down a few feet to check the soil, brings students along to measure the angle of sunlight and shade and whatnot, and takes plant specimens back to the lab for analysis.  I often ask him, " When you go back, are you going to try non-cultivation direct seeding?"  He laughingly answers, No, I'll leave the applications to you.  I'm going to stick to research."

So that is how it is.  You study the function of the plant's metabolism and its ability to absorb nutrients from the soil, write a book, and get a doctorate in agricultural science.  But do not ask if your theory of assimilation is going to be relevant to the yield.

I have to wonder, with such narrow schools of focus on everything from dietetics to string theory, what is the yield?  We have mechanics who specialize in vehicle types, hair stylists who specialize in long hair, grocery stores that specialize in health food, schools that specialize in law, authors that specialize in economics, dentists that specialize in orthodontics...the list goes on.  I know it's unavoidable for there to be no specialization considering everyone cannot know everything.  But are we losing the big picture when we focus so precisely on one particular slice of reality?  We've seen what happens with this in politics and it is often not pretty.  In worst case scenarios, we can see what happens when we cannot bridge the gap between races and "specialize" in only our own particular worldview to the exclusion of the others.  I would daresay even religion is a particular type of spiritual specialization.  

What's so odd to me is that this all seems to be incredibly counter-intuitive.  The relationships of things in nature are so incredibly labrynthine, that even doing something as simple as trying to learn about minerals in order to bring up my copper levels was a nearly impossible task and I confess I still haven't fully grasped all the inter-dependent relationships of all the mineral levels.  As I learned about how magnesium is necessary for calcium absorption, I learned that barium interferes with calcium absorption but only if selenium levels are low.  But fairly moderate aluminum toxicity will interfere with yttrium which is responsible and necessary for selenium absorption and distribution. And I've only mentioned a few.  As you can imagine, it gets even more complex from there.  So I wondered, do I have a hard time with "cloud" thinking because I've been raised to think in linear way?  As I read more and more about minerals and their deficiencies and symptoms I couldn't help but realize that minerals are the very primal basis for life and having healthy levels of them should logically be the first line of defense in healthcare.  But it's not.  Doctors should know more about this and apply the knowledge on a daily basis...but they don't.  Why?  I can only guess is has something to do with their specialized training.  

In the midst of all these lines drawn in the sand, I find myself at the computer browsing favorite blogs.  There's the cooking blog, and the farmgirl blog...then there's the sustainable blog and the philanthropy blog.  Also the crafting blog, the apartment therapy blog, the art blog....  And here's the thing.  I am not one thing.  I am, as they say, a walking contradiction.  And my thoughts are occasionally a mess.  They don't always come out prepackaged and nicely categorized to fit right into my little class of blog.  And I suspect the same of all of you.  So since I've identified this thing as the very issue which causes me the most heartburn about blogging

the pressure of having to conform to what my blog is supposed to be about or forcing myself to come up with ideas about gardening for my gardening blog when what i really want to write about is jack white

I'm officially, up-front, saying no.  I will not classify myself.  I have a few select favorite interests and hobbies but I can't bear the thought of slapping a couple of those on my blog-forehead and living with that tattoo for the rest of my blog-life.  Warning:  I may be all over the place.  If that's cool with you, then this is the beginning of a wonderful blog-friendship.  

Preoccupied With The Sun

As I begin my very first post, I gaze out the window at the fading light and sigh.  It's been so long since I've seen the sun.  Winter in Ohio is sort of like all the time in Seattle only without the brief bouts of sun.  Almost every day, just as we approach sunset, the clouds begin to thin just a little and suddenly I can see an uncharacteristic brightness start to warm the sky!  But ... then I see the sun's already sunk below the horizon and my hopes of catching a sunbeam are dashed.  It wouldn't be an insult if this happened rarely; that would be considered well within the odds of normalcy and I'd let it go with a "shucks" and snap.  But somehow, this seems to happen all the time.  Maybe this is the new normal for central Ohio.  Weather has been changing so much lately, it's hard to really know what "normal" is.

And here I am making small talk about the weather in my first post.  That's the thing about me though...I'm fascinated with things like weather and maps and bird calls.  Which is why I'm geeking out over this.  Over the past week we've had several solar flares and CMEs

coronal mass ejections for the non-initiated

which may or may not be responsible for me feeling ridiculously dizzy.

and not in a blond way

I confess I can be a little woo-woo, as they say about us crazy people, and I've found this article from the Carlini Institute to be a little enlightening.

While I'm reeling from this latest flare and enjoying my weekend, I'll be dreaming of brighter days and maybe a winter a hike.  I've recently discovered what I think is a beaver lodge and I can't wait to go hide out on the bank on a nice day and see if I can catch them dragging a sapling into the water. Here's to hoping for some of this.