CUISH

There's a great little shop, CUISH,  in the center of Oaxaca City that sells a bunch of different varieties of artisanal mescal made from wild  agaves. The agave circled in red in the poster shown above, "papalometl", is the species (Agave cupreata) that I studied in Guerrero (see Mescal and Counting Agaves). The shop is dark and filled with hundreds of little bottles of mescal; tasting is encouraged before buying. [NOTE: The posters are free when you buy a bottle of mescal].

Bellagio

I have been awarded a writing fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation and will be in residence in northern Italy at the Bellagio Center, also known as "Villa Serbelloni", from August 17 to September 14. I will be working on a book about the field projects and botanical inquiries that I have been involved with over the last three decades; tentatively entitled Managing the Wild. I am thrilled about this. [NOTE: Image above, by Peter Anderson, shows the view of Lake Como from the Villa Serbelloni].

Farmers Market

New Rochelle has its Farmers Market on Saturdays. I went last Saturday and got a lot of really great produce. Have already cooked the kale, it was delicious, and an easy recipe for preparing this delightful leafy green can be found here (Steamed and Sautéed Kale.pdf).

Knife Handles

We found two small knives in the kitchen when we bought our house. One was accidentally thrown out and spent several years in the compost bin. The wooden handles on both split and finally fell off and had to be (rustically) replaced. Both knives, with their new handles, are shown in the image above. The beautful Wüshtof knife to the right was a birthday present from son Luke; I can't remember where the bread knife on the left came from. Maybe Kalimantan? [NOTE: I just changed the page header. Image shows U Myint Thein (Htamanthi WS) and me (NYBG) checking the GPS to see if plot 25 in the Nam Sabi Village Management Area was correctly positioned. It was]. 

Happy Birthday to HH Dalai Lama

His Holiness the Dalai Lama turns 80 on July 6th and his upcoming birthday was recently celebrated at the Glastonbury 2015 festival. He was brought out as a "surprise guest" during Patti Smith's set. They had a birthday cake and sang Happy Birthday and the Dalai Lama said a few words. He was clearly touched. I love his expression (2:27) when he blows out the candles. A very good use of 8 minutes of your day.

Wise Words IV: Wendell Berry

And, finally, Wendell Berry. This from The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture:

"We are dealing, then, with an absurdity that is not a quirk or an accident, but is fundamental to our character as people. The split between what we think and what we do is profound. It is not just possible, it is altogether to be expected, that our society would produce conservationists who invest in strip-mining companies, just as it must inevitably produce asthmatic executives whose industries pollute the air and vice-presidents of pesticide corporations whose children are dying of cancer. And these people will tell you that this is the way the "real world" works. They will pride themselves on their "sacrifices" for "our standard of living". They will call themselves "practical men" and "hardheaded realists". And they will have their justificaitons in abundance from intellectuals, college professors, clergymen, politicians. The viciousness of a mentality that can look complacently upon disease as "part of the cost" would be obvious to any child. But this is the "realism" of millions of moden adults."

And, once again from Zen master Yunmen:

Medicine and sickness heal each other. The whole world is medicine. Where do you find yourself?

[NOTE: My last four post are shared for the inherent wisdom they convey. Not as harangues to generate anxiety, or resignation, or a sense of helplessness. Rather, more as pointers toward The Great Work that we so desperately need to start].   

Wise Words III: Thomas Berry

[NOTE: Go here for a brief explanation of what this series of posts is about].

And now for Thomas Berry. From The Dream of the Earth:

"We have before us the question not simply of physical survival, but of survival in a human mode of being, survival and development into intelligent, affectionate, imaginative persons thoroughly enjoying the universe about us, living in profound communion with one another and with some significant capacities to express ourselves in our literature and creative arts."

"This description of personal grandeur may seem an exxageration, a romantic view of human possibilities. Yet this is the basis on which the human venture has been sustained from its very beginning! Our difficulty is that we are just emerging from a technological entrancement. During this period the human mind has been placed within the narrowist confines it has experiences since consciousness emerged from its Paleolithic phase. Even the most primitive tribes have a larger vision of the universe, of our place and functioning within it, a vision that extends to celestial regions of space and to interior depths of the human in a manner far exceeding the parameters of our own world of technological confinement."

"The human community is passing from its stage of childhood into its adult stage of life. We must assume adult responsibilities."

I recommend this book to all members of the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens (Latin: "wise man"). We need to hear and carefully reflect on these words.   

Wise Words II: Susan Murphy

And then Dr. Susan Muphy Roshi. From Finding the Earth, Mending the World: Zen and the Art of Planetary Crisis:

"...we are all caught in a ridiculous posture right now. The posture of living 'normally' as we destabilise climate, trash seas and earth and atmosphere and decimate species, while chanting a mantra of perpetual growth and unrestrained human population increase and watching all these accelerate in a runaway chain reaction. It is ridiculous to pretend it is not happening, and almost equally ridiciulous to mention it, since no one can personally hope to change its course, and no one much wants even to hear about it. Our position as a species is now so untenable that it verges on rudeness to mention it in polite company".

"The crisis facing us all right now is a tremendous koan set for us by the earth, speaking to us plainly but in words we cannot yet fully comprehend, caught as we are in the frame of the past that cannot conceive of this emergency. To respond we need to free ourselves from a too narrow sense of self and an unquestioned assumption of self-entitled priority as a species." 

"Medicine and sickness heal each other. The whole world is medicine. Where do you find yourself?
 – Zen Master Yunmen, 9th century China".

Lovely, lovely book. [NOTE: I have been working with Murphy Roshi (thx, Susan) since January of this year on Case 1 from The Gateless Gate: Joshu's Dog, aka "the Mu obstruction" (see Mu, and then start carrying this koan around with you 24/7)].

Wise Words I: Gary Snyder

So let's start with Gary Snyder. From The Practice of the Wild: 

"Thoreau says “give me a wildness no civilization can endure.” That’s clearly not difficult to find. It is harder to imagine a civilization that wildness can endure, yet this is just what we must try to do. Wildness is not just the “preservation of the world,” it is the world. Civilizations east and west have long been on a collision course with wild nature, and now the developed nations in particular have the witless power to destroy not only individual creatures but whole species, whole processes, of the earth. We need a civilization that can live fully and creatively together with wildness. We must start growing it right here, in the New World."  

"The lessons we learn from the wild become the etiquette of freedom. We can enjoy our humanity with its flashy brains and sexual buzz, its social cravings and stubborn tantrums, and take ourselves as no more and no less than another being in the Big Watershed. We can accept each other all as barefoot equals sleeping on the same ground. We can give up hoping to be eternal and quit fighting dirt. We can chase off mosquitoes and fence out varmints without hating them. No expectations, alert and sufficient, grateful and careful, generous and direct. A calm and clarity attend us in the moment we are wiping the grease off our hands between tasks and glancing up at the passing clouds. Another joy is finally sitting down to have coffee with a friend. The wild requires that we learn the terrain, nod to all the plants and animals and birds, ford the streams and cross the ridges, and tell a good story when we get back home."  

Yeah, probably my favorite book in the whole world. [NOTE: Image shows my dog-eared copy of The Practice of the Wild. Has accompanied me to Hawaii, Myanmar, and Laos].

Our Current Situation As A Species

The four books listed in the right sidebar under "Amazon Associate" are insightful analyses of our current situation as a species. I am a huge fan of all four of these books, and view them as foundational in my own process of trying to figure out how best to respond to what comes next. I have previously posted on each of the authors (see Gary Snyder at 83, Earth Consciousness, Zen and the Art of Planetary Crisis, The Dream of the Earth, Distant Neighbors, and Happy Birthday, Wendell Berry), and what I would like to do now is to offer a brief selection from each book, each day, for the next four days. Like food for thought. Or tapas. And, of course, if you would actually like to purchase any of these seminal works, the links in the right sidebar work really well for this (thx).  

[NOTE: True-color image shown above from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is a combination of data from two satellites. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument abourd NASA's Terra satellite collected the land-surface data over 16 days, while NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) produced a snapshot of the Earth's clouds. Just so you know.].