Shermanw’s Weblog

Respect The Ocean, for it swallowed my Mama.

respect the ice on roads, respect rocks you climb, examine-work with nature, Hydrate! Don’t thirst and then pray agasinst dryness! Nature is neutral to Us.

Nature cannot decide to alter its physical laws, nature only responds …naturally. Even miracles have a cost. Nature is “groaning in travail, waiting” for humans to become True.

Respect Water for the wildfires in Texas would. What is the largest perspective? Accident truely are accidents. Don’t blame it on God. Accidents come from human error of judgement, weak or lazy perception, uninspired kinetic ability …accidents in nature, lack of respect of nature multiplies natural “disaster”.

Enhance our perception &  judgement all around. Respect the water no matter what providential grade that you practice at.

“Man can restructure reality in freely synthesized ways…to live a strong, hard life, in which reality opens its endless possibility, is the mark of a warrior, a man of knowledge, and the only conceivable way to live.” p. 163

from The Crack in the Cosmic Egg: Challenging Constructs of Mind and Reality, by Joseph Chilton Pearce ( Pocket Books, New York 1971 )

I enjoyed digesting this book. I found it at a yard sale. There are some online resources that deal with Mr. Pearce’s work. Although this book was published in 1971, and it was a breakthrough for its time, I think it is still relevant today. When I read, last year, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig, I had some similar comforting thoughts that several of the cultural, philosophical/ religious issues of that time have made great progress towards resolution since then. The leading edges of prophecy and heavenly values, in my view, have accomplished foundations that most of us do not see or just take for granted. Thank You very much Mr. Pirsig & Mr. Pearce for your labors.

   A 17 year old friend of my daughter was visiting our house a few weeks ago.  She is a bright kid, full of spunk, very sociable. We were discussing driving skills, learners permits, drivers’ license stuff. It seemed to me that I was able to insert a few mild bits of wisdom about safe driving skills for teenagers.  It also seemed like they were listening to my short sentences. At a certain point in our conversation, our guest started saying: ” I don’t see why parents make such a big deal about driving a car. A car is just like a…( she began to look around the kitchen ) blender. Its just a machine.”

   Cough. I almost choked on my whey protein milkshake that I had made in that blender. I can’t remember now how I responded, because I exercised full self-control. I haven’t told her parents yet about the comment, because it seems that my interest in the lives and safety of my kids’ friends is beyond normal. Sometimes I just wanna be normal. Therefore, I am requesting someone out there to compose a hip-hop song named: ” A car is the same as a blender.”

   Later on, we were looking through the drivers’ manual and discussing the entrance ramps to highways. Our guest does not drive yet, but she does observe the outside world passing by when her parents drive her to the malls; and I must give her credit for memorizing some of the local roads and geography. When I began to describe why I like entrance ramps and the acceleration lane, she said something in the same tone of mild frustration that the entrance ramps drive her nuts.

   At that instant, I thought about how the fine calculations and vision of the civil engineers goes into the design of the entrance ramps, the slope, the angle, even the landscaping.  But I had to quickly shorten the thought into the following verbal response:    ” But the people who made that entrance ramp designed it to make us HAPPY.”     ….whew! I came into a deeper appreciation of the engineers, their thinking substantialized. This, then expanded into an epiphany. Here it goes: All industrial designers and people who produce things that we buy try to make these things so that we will like them. Alot of these products, except for the highest quality items,  have some flaws and weakness; yet the original purpose of their creation is for our happiness. As I began to look around our kitchen, living room and dining room at these common consumer items, I could see details in the design and function that I interpreted as divine creativity, Love. It had been a long time since I looked at ordinary manufactured items with this kind of heart.

   What started out as a conversation about driving with teenagers, then ended with a renewed appreciation for people who make things and sell them. Little gods, they are my brothers and sisters, inherting creatorship from the First Parent, the Absolute Reality. A car is not the same as a blender.

   Now that the Obama administration is trying to encourage us with the “economic stimulus package”, I’d like to add that we are each equipped by our creator with our own ability to stimulate the economy. Remember that our government officials are only intended to be managers. Politicians do not drive the economy, and they are not usually creators of goods and services. It seems strange to even suggest that the government can take credit for “stimulating the economy”, when they are only supposed to protect us with things like police, military, and a few simple laws.

   The true stimulators of the economy are the entrepreneurs, the creative drivers, who knock on new doors every day, who network in the community and stimulate growth through their own inspired creations. Now most of us will have to diversify our business, find out what the real needs are in this recession, create the new products and services and sell them. We will pull out of this recession, but don’t expect miracles from the government. The real miracles are done by inspired and driven, free people, co-creators.

   A quote from Candide: “let us cultivate our garden.”

John Brockman’s book continues to captivate. I’m almost finished. One article by Jaron Lanier on page 305, entitled: Interpersonal Communication Will Become More Profound; Rationality Will Become More Romantic caught my attention, since I’ve always been interested in small group dynamics. The opening paragraph sounds prophetic:

“The future may be transformed by the very nature of communication, much as it was when language appeared. This is not easy to imagine, but here’s one approach to thinking about it: I’ve been fascinated by the potential for post-symbolic communication for years. This new style of interpersonal connection could become possible, once large numbers of people become virtuosos at improvising what goes on in virtual reality.”

   This article stretched my imagination, and I’ll have to look up terms like: “homuncular flexibility”, “Finite and Infinite Games”. A few pages later, Rudy Rucker has an article on Universal Telepathy, with terms like: “subdimensions”, “insentient objects”, and the “Gaian Mind”.

   I’m glad to see scientists really stretching themselves with such …what I choose to call,  providential grace. Please check out www.edge.org

I wanted to add something  to my previous post. There is another category of plants in my garden that are not exactly annuals or perrenials. They are “those that re-seed themselves”. Plants that will flower and then drop the seeds if you let them dry out. In the fall and winter, as I start to clean up the garden, rake, hoe, add compost,  and get the soil ready for spring, then these seeds get mixed into the soil at various depths. Then they sprout up again in the spring.

   Most people are familiar with sesame seeds on bread, cookies and when used as a seasoning, but how about the Leaves?

   While visiting south Korea a few years ago, I had the chance to stay with a family of our church members in a small town. With every meal, they serve the famous Kimchee, of course. Actually several kinds of Kimchee. You can pickle/ferment just about any vegetable.

They also served a plate of spade shaped leaves about the size of my hand’s palm. Sometimes they already had a sauce ( based on soy sauce ) on the leaves. They would take a leaf and put rice and/or any combination of meat and vegetables in it and roll it up like a burrito. Excellent fiber, and the taste of the leaf itself, without any sauce, is kind of neutral.

   The following Spring, while shopping in the Japanese food store near Atlanta, my wife and I spotted  some vegetable seeds on sale. Sure enough, we got some seeds for sesame plants. I had enough leaves on those plants to fill several 5 gallon buckets with cuttings to distribute to the Korean members at church. I let several of the plants flower at the end of the summer. I let the flowers dry up, and sometimes, I cut the stalks in the fall and just place the drying plant in the area where I want new plants in the spring. For the past several years now, I have had more than enough sesame leaves.

I can’t quite describe the taste of sesame leaves, because my Americanized taste buds have been reduced to either sweet, sour or salty. I’d like to say that they have a minty taste, but I hope that some other person with a more refined and diverse range of taste vocabulary will help me out. What I notice most about the leaves is the texture. The leaves are kind of fuzzy, excellent fiber with a nice effect on the digestion. My daughter says the leaves are “hairy”.  Sometimes, if I’m too lazy to wrap some food in the leaf, I just eat the leaf as it is. I rarely use salad dressing, because my garden veggies already have their own tastes.

   When I cut green bunch onions, the stalks are about 10-12 inches long, so my boys play with them at dinner like they are huge straws or telescopes. Big green empty tubes to chew on. These green onions also re-seed themselves, but are not as plentiful as the sesame leaves.

   My garlic plants have flowered now in their third summer, so we will see if the seeds ( which I directed towards certain spots ) will produce more. Normally, the garlic multiplies by the bulb  if I just leave it in the ground. The bunch just get bigger and wider the following season.

   Some grape and cherry tomatoes, which drop the occasional over-ripe tomatoe on the ground, have “re-seeded” themselves this year. I decided, in the spring, to just let them grow wild without thinning or spacing a single plant. Whew!!! One whole section of a bed is literally a jungle of cherry and grape tomatoe plants. Harvesting every day. Photos later.

   There are lots of plants that would “re-seed” if I let them. The morning glory vines re-seed, and I have moved their locations several times over the past few years simply by doing what I mentioned above. I cut the dry vines in the fall and dump them where I want them next spring. I only hlep the process a little bit by shaking some of the dry flowers/ seeds onto the ground. The dried vines serve as a kind of “mulch”. But the morning glories will just sprout up everywhere if not carefull. Be relentless to pull them up in the spring if they sprout in unwanted places, because you’ll have plenty in the previous locations. If you leave them in one spot for several years, they might begin to attract hummingbirds.

   Today, I noticed Lantana flowers that either re-seeded or sprouted from live roots of last years plants by my mail-box. They are rather late re-seeders. Its August already. I had tossed the wild looking pink,white,purple “spider flowers?” into the bed by the mailbox last fall. They are also re-seeders. Perhaps they were so thick that they blocked out the Lantana till August?  What is the real name of these “spider flowers”?

   And the cucumbers as re-seeders…too much to handle.

 My first vegetable garden was in upstate New York near the Seminary in the summer of 1998. It was rich soiI and I had a surprisingly huge amount of produce for a beginner. I expanded it the following summer with even better results, and have been learning a little bit more each year since then.

 Now we live in Georgia and my raised beds have been amended with compost every year. The red clay here needs help, but I don’t mind. I just like being outdoors getting exercise. I’ve been asking questions and getting tips from Master Gardeners, the local County Extension Service, from local farmers that sell at the market, books, internet, and experimenting.

   Last year, I took some cuttings from the Sweet Potatoe vines and rooted them in pots, then transplanted them the following spring. A good way to multiply them. Today, I took some more cuttings, started rooting them in buckets of rain water, and plan to put in some more sweet potatoe plants in a few days, Its only August now, and it stays warm enough here till the end of October. I’ve grown them well into   November before. I’m almost certain that you can put topsoil on top of the vines that have little roots shooting into the ground, and it will produce more sweet potatoes in that spot. It seemed to work with one variety. But I had two different varieties planted near each other, so this year I’ll pay closer attention to this ongoing experiment.

   Our perennials include asparagus, blueberries, blackberries, 3 kinds of onions, two kinds of garlic, chives, one fig tree, and lots of herbs. These are all increasing almost by themselves. Annuals include lots of cherry and grape tomatoes, little yellow pear-shaped tomatoes, several types of the larger tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, sweet banana peppers, cucumbers. Lettuce and eggplant didn’t do very well. I’ve already started digging for the next bed. Most of my veggie beds are 4 feet wide. A few of them are 20-30 feet long.

   The whole back yard is fenced in with the gardens mostly in the back on on the sides. A natural little soccer field is down the hill parallel to the back patio. I maintain an obstacle course-running trail around the perimeter of the back yard. There is still room for more beds and fruit trees in the future on the gently sloping hill. Often, while I am working in the garden, the kids are also playing in the yard. As I learn more and expand into a few more cool-season crops, then we will have year-round vegetables. Georgia really doesn’t have much of a winter, so our warm growing season is long.

   I like having gardening as one of my hobbies. I’ll post more on the internal gifts of gardening in another post.

   “Multiplying Onions”.  I bought two different types from a local guy. One type multiplies through the root system and looks like green bunch onions. The other type has larger green stalks and formed flowers this summer. These flowers had the most amazing, odd shape and eventually became clusters of new onion bulbs with green shoots coming out. Naturally the supporting stalk is very thick. Not sure what to do with them, I cut some of them off and transplanted them. The others, I just left on the stalk. As the stalks began to dry, then naturally the new bulbs fall to the surrounding ground. Today, I just spaced some of the fallen bulbs in the blank areas between the rows of the parent plants, sprinkled compost and top soil over them, then some weathered wood chips. Watered them in. By October, I anticipate the whole section will be filled with green onion stalks.

   I’m becoming more interested in perennial vegetables recently

Today thinking about the “book review” I wrote yesterday. I’ve never written a book review for the public before, except for book reports in school, college and the Seminary. I was in a rush, and didn’t cover much of the scientific content in Brockman’s book. But one of the points that really excites me,  ( and I can’t recall the page number or author. Even the subject index’s solar energy entry didn’t find it. ) lets put up huge solar panels in every parking lot of Walmart, Home Depot and big box stores.

   Yes indeed! Lets call the Solar Energy Companies and encourage them to sell the idea agressively. The structures to hold  up the solar panels would be high enough for trucks to park underneath, and could even be designed to enhance the non-aesthetics of the typical shopping center. We would have some shade to park in, tons of electricity could be generated, and lots of new jobs in the solar power industry would be created.

   Why didn’t they start this years ago? Of course, they wouldn’t have to cover the whole parking lot. The solar panels could be concentrated around the edges of the lot, so that shade lovers, who still know how to walk, can get the extra 3 and half minutes of walking into their shopping routine. Some parking lots have a slight slope, which could be built on in order to not block existing signage and advertisments. If both McCain and Obama claim to support alternative energy development, then who else would object? I wouldn’t mind spending an hour a day pitching the idea for a solar panel company, even for a small comission for each successful sale. By the way, thank you Brockman for publishing the idea.

   A similar idea occured to me years ago. Build similar frames in parking lots designed to support ornamental and maybe native vines, like Morning Glory, so that by mid-summer, the vines would make a green, fresh roof to park underneath. The types of vines might be identified also by their air-cleaning effectiveness. The vines could be planted in the soil on the few tree islands that some developers make. A system of large pots with soil could be used also.  Each structure might only cover 4-8 parking spaces, depending on how the designer integrates it. A series of these structures could be made surrounding the islands or the shopping cart stations.

   On a hot day, if I have the choice between shopping at Walmart or Target, or some other store down the street, then those stores investing in such ”green living enhancements”, then I might choose to park and shop at the store with the live green roofed or solar panel shaded parking spaces.

   A few summers ago, Atlanta was labeled as having the 4th worst air quality of major cities in the USA. Solar Paneled parking lots, supplemented with Ivy covered carports would begin to cool off and freshen up our parking lots. But an advertising expert would have to articulate this idea into simple and flashy soundbites, so that we would have a scripts to use. Would Arthur Blank, Ted Turner, or some folks over at Georgia Tech support an idea like this?

   Back in the Spring, I was attending a Soccer tournament with our oldest son in Newnan County, GA. He plays for the Atlanta Soccer Academy, ( ASA). We had a break between games and visited Barnes & Noble. I made a pledge that I wouldn’t buy any books unless  it was absolutely necessary. My bookshelves are too crowded, and I should give some of them away… or circulate them. We browsed in every category of my interests: sports, organic gardening & sustainable living, psychology, theology, philosophy, business…

   Finally, on an endcap, this colorfull book jumped out and screamed: What Are You Optimistic About? subtitle is Today’s Leading Thinkers on Why Things Are Good And Getting Better, edited by John Brockman.  I bought it.

   The contributors are scientists, musicians, …mostly scientists. Most of the articles are only two or three pages long. Very informative. I am still digesting the book. Even though several of the authors blame “religion” for alot of our problems, and some of my work is within the religious sphere, I still understand their complaints and appreciate them. We will deal with the science and religion theme in a later post.

   On page 37, Anton Zeilinger, a Physicist. writes, “I am optimistic about the future of religion. We will learn to shed the unessential dogmas, rules, definitions and prejudices that religions have built up over centuries and millenia.” Personally, I believe that God is intensely interested in our progress scientifically, morally ( including the sanctification process ) and as a human family. I don’t invest in an argument between science and religion. Its a distraction from the essential things.

   Religions have indeed changed over time. Yet some essence remains and sustains spiritual interest longer than most political parties do.

   I hope that Brockman will follow up with a second edition that includes more artists, entrepreneurs, Ambassadors for Peace, social scientists, journalists, and maybe even a few religious leaders. He did include a piece by Brian Eno, an artist composer and record producer. I highly recommend the book, and if Brockman doesn’t mind, I’ve used some parts in seminars for the teenagers at our church.

   I’ve also used some sections of the book to educate our kids at our family evening meetings, because I think I’ve run out of bedtime stories.

   Provoke the Culture is the title of a booklet, ( 30 pages ) that I wrote, had printed and stapled together at Office Max in 2002, and sold in 5 different towns to real people, face-to-face for $3.00 each. Cost was .92 cents each to produce. I even paid for a business license at the County Building. I’ve been intending to publish a second edition, but finally decided to start a blog instead.

   I like cold call selling and seeing the spirit in people’s eyes. I choose to sell in the towns to the north, the south, east and west as well as my own town, Cumming, Georgia. These four towns would make a four-position-foundation wiht Cumming in the center.Dawsonville is to the north, Canton is to the west, Roswell & Alpharetta are to the south, and Gainesville is to the east.  They are each about 25-30 minutes from Cumming. By the way, if you keep driving past Roswell, you’ll soon be in Atlanta. I was new to the area, and this was a good way to get the feel of it.

   While selling my booklet, most people were relaxed about it. I walked into offices and shops, introduced myself, “Hi I’m Jack. I finally published my first book(let) and am visiting the neighbors…” Some folks asked why I didn’t have a web-site yet, and I said that I had to get a feel for the spirit of these real physical people in my community first.

   As for the content of my book… more on that later. key words? self-publishing, old-fashioned door-to-door sales ( it’s really just trading with the neighbors )