Time to plant again

A few days ago I plucked a few more morsels off the Brussels sprouts. I'll get a few more yet before they bolt, shedding seeds for next year, as they have, as they will.

Tonight I mixed water and peat, getting ready to plant again, as I have, as I will, so long as I can. Tomorrow I sow the pepper seeds, in two weeks the tomato seeds.

And so it starts again.

***

I pray that my students remember this much--that they were able to grow food in class, with little more than tiny seeds, light, and water, that they are part of this miracle of life, that ultimately the things that matter are ours through grace.

Not through government, or cash, or the gametes of a couple of wealthy Americans who happened to get together.

A child learns that she is part of something bigger than mere human culture becomes someone to be reckoned with. 

No matter what happens on Wall Street today, or in Trenton today, or in D.C., water will start to seep into the seeds I sow, and awaken an embryo every bit as alive as I am, and it will ache to reach the sun.

Everything we eat comes from the ground, and everything we eat will return to the ground, as will each of us.

***

This week I got to meet a couple of folks with a whole lot more human power than I'll ever have, or ever want, folks who rule over abstract concepts using abstract ideas, tossing around abstract half-truths that they either believe (bad) or not (worse).

Planting last fall's seeds into the ground with my hands, a very human act, reminds me of my place. We are all all bound, literally, to the earth. Holding a handful of good soil does me good.

Plants above grown in Room B362, by my students.

Hiroshima

広島

Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese army base. ... It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. . . . What has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history.

Harry S. Truman

It happened on this date, this "greatest achievement."




New technology used to "solve" an old problem. We cannot help ourselves.

Wes Jackson, founder of the Land Institute, suggested "we ought to stay out of the nuclei." Until we have a clue what we want, sounds like good advice.

You cannot separate tools from the critters who use them. Teaching science as some compartmentalized thought process without cultural context is a dangerous game.

What is our responsibility as teachers of science?
As citizens of the United States?
As human beings?

***

This morning I saw a wasp dragging paralyzed cricket along the edge of the driveway. The wasp was not much bigger than the cricket, and the wasp struggled. At one point she let go, stepped back a few inches, stroked her head a few times (much like a human facing a big task), and eventually dragged it down a hole by the driveway garden. The cricket was still alive, but paralyzed.

I did not intervene.

The wasp will lay her eggs in the cricket, and they will hatch in the cricket, still alive, and the cricket will, of course, suffer.

I did not intervene.

The larva wasp will use the the cricket, still alive, for food.

And still, I did not intervene.

Photo by Bruce Holderbaum

***

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that one way or another.

-J. Robert Oppenheimer

Ken Allan is a blogger on the other side of the Earth. ( Kia ora e Ken.) He's quirky, bright, thoughtful, and well worth reading.

He sent me the this video:




And now I teach science to (very) young adults. I have a responsibility to them, to the state, to myself.

Harry S. Truman called the bombing of Hiroshima "the greatest achievement of organized science." If that does not give you pause, you should not be teaching science.

You should not be teaching anything at all.

(Yes, this is from older posts, timeless ones.)

The photo is by Bruce Holderbaum and can be found here--used with permission.

Arne's "quiet revolution"

As part of the show-and-tell of working in grant funded projects taking care of very poor kids in very devastated cities. I got to meet CEO's, sit in boardrooms, greet national politicians--I even got to spend a couple of days in the White House sitting on some sub-committee of some sub-committee.

A few things I learned:

• Powerful people don't pay for coffee--it's just always there.
• Powerful people have pretty fingernails. (I get bored easily at meetings.)
  
• Poor kids of color with bright smiles on their faces loosen checkbooks.
• Nobody really wants to hear the truth.
• It's easy, real easy, to be seduced to join the other side.
  

I had a bad day now and again.

On one such bad day, someone got shot close to our clinic. He died, his blood on my clothes. A few hours later I was sitting with the number two person of a large, local non-profit, an agency that does good work, trying to develop a grant.

I grumbled about something, and the meeting deteriorated.

So I learned to stop grumbling. I learned to stop screaming. I learned to behave civilly. I learned how to do "that smile." And I kept reminding myself why, so I could glom money to keep us in business, caring for children few people cared about.

Our project got the money, the pols and corporations got the pretty press, and I got a lesson in prostitution.

***

I got a few minutes of face to face time with Al Gore, with just 3 others in the room, back when he was running for VP in 1990. He was bright, knowledgeable, and very different from the man who gave a speech just minutes later, when he was hustled out by his people.

I went home confused--how can someone separate themselves like that?

In 2000 he flat gave up the election. Maybe he was tired, maybe someone had something on him, or maybe he wanted to be that private Al Gore, the one I got to meet when he wasn't on camera.

***

Bill Gates. Eli Broad. Arne Duncan. Barack Obama.
None of these men spend any time listening to anyone who has not been filtered through boardrooms and golf courses, anyone who has not perfect the wile and smile needed to gain access to power.

Oh, they'll pose for the photo ops. They'll hand out the checks. They'll do all things possible to get their way.



On Thursday, Mr. Duncan will give a speech on the "quiet revolution" moving through schools. Powerful folks like "quiet." I know that. I kept quiet too many times when jumping on the corporate table screaming out the truth would ended my work, because I liked doing what I did.

And looking back, I'm not sure I changed a thing.

The Arne photo is from ABC News--the child is reading a thank you letter.

The board room belongs to International Flavors and Fragrances--
they polluted a local lake near where I grew up, but boy, look at that room!