Gardens and Control

Gardens are curious affairs. We speak of growing vegetables, but, in fact, vegetables grow themselves. Indeed, it is the vegetables that grow us. Gardens are, to write philosophically, a strange amalgam of control and spontaneity.  A wild garden, maintained for aesthetic reasons, requires limited control.  Spontaneity there is tolerated.  A productive food garden, in contrast, requires a surfeit of control. The task of the vegetable grower is to foster the conditions under which the edibles will grow.  And this, as often as not, requires the killing of creatures.

Got Compost?

I’m interested in the decomposition dynamics of compost piles. In the coming weeks I’d like to do some preliminary studies on decay rates and nutrient processes of compost piles. Especially of interest to me are those compost heaps where their keepers have reasonable knowledge of inputs (even a reasonable description will qualify).  Vermi-composting is especially welcome.  Chicago region is preferred but we can work out something if you are farther afield.  Contact me at lhenegha [at] gmail.

The Pastoral, literary and environmental, defined.

The pastoral as a literary form and a strand in environmental thought is so polymorphic, that it can seem to capture everything. But something that is everything can seem to be nothing at all.  This is not a problem unique to the term “pastoral”.  The term “environment”, for example, which can be extended to include everything surrounding an organism, and at a pinch can also refer to an “internal environment”, runs the same risk unless it is quite precisely operationalized. To do so scientists identify those ecological factors most relevant in determining the functioning of an individual organism.

So how may the pastoral be operationalized?

The pastoral flags an occupation: shepherds and tenders of flocking animals and other peaceful creatures, a place: primarily rural or gently humanized landscapes, at times gardens and other oases of green; a mood: nostalgic, a sense of belonging, of being at home, a tone: harmony and balance, a spirituality: that oceanic feeling of connection with nature, a technological orientation: modest and appropriate, and offers these human gifts: well-being, redemption, forgiveness and recovery.    

Happily Ever After

At the secret core of many stories lies the promise of a happy ending.  And they all lived happily ever after.  I call this the pastoral promise — it’s a promise of a world set beyond the action that gripped us as we read.  Once these words are written those tensions that have maintained the story, the ones that propelled us along, have dissipated. A curtain descends and we are to learn nothing more of our heroes.  The prince and the princess have wed, the wolf is dead, the evil witch perishes, the children are restored to their parents, and all is well with the world. In perpetuity.  Never-ending happiness, impossible in our everyday lives, though we may crave it, exists as a private world beyond the limits of the page, even in the best of stories. Can we ever be happy?

And They All Didn't Live Happily Every After: The Prodigal Returns:

THE PRODIGAL RETURNS: The week after his return the Prodigal Son remembers why it was he left.  His friends, those coarse bumpkins who so recently munched upon the sizzling flesh of a fatted calf, tell their same old jokes. They are as hopelessly myopic – as uncosmopolitan – as they were before.  They nudge and wink in a way that irritates him who has now seen more of the world. What use have they for tales of his hardship in places they have barely heard of?  They want to hear about the girls he's been with, for is it not for such exotic dalliances, such debaucheries that once he claimed he was leaving.  But that is not what he wants to talk of now – he is different in a way he cannot seem to state.  The father, all bearhugs and solicitude but days ago, is once again a sullen autocrat.  He cannot resist reminding the Prodigal that an inheritance was squandered. He queries him on his skill with swine.  And his brother, who has taken the week to cool off, now sees his own glory-days on the rise.  The Prodigal Son, whose prodigious heart-swell and homesickness had him walking home, will soon leave again.  Perhaps it is best that he does for the world has transformed and he has transformed, and he had no home to come back to.  His father and his brother have a home, but it is a different one than he used to share with them.  The Prodigal is homeless for walking away is the act of violence that annihilates the home. 

Celebrating 100 Years of Beauty in the Forest Preserves: Centennial Symposium and Sagawau Canyon Tour 28-29th May

Please consider attending this two day event to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of the Forest Preserves

Thursday, May 28, 2015
CONFERENCE at DePaul University
9 am – 5 pm

DePaul University Student Center
Lincoln Park Campus
2250 N. Sheffield Ave., Room 314, Chicago, IL 60014

Panelists include historians, philosophers (including Elizabeth Millan) and scientists (inc moi!), planners and educators.
Topics Include:
• Historical Roots and Aesthetic Implications of the Forest • Conservation and Social Perspectives • Wildlife, Ecosystems and the Next 100 Years

Friday, May 29, 2015
SAGAWAU CANYON TOUR & PICNIC

Canyon Tour: 10:15 am
Picnic: Noon

Sagawau Environmental Learning Center
12545 W. 111th St., Lemont, IL 60439

Canyon tours will be led by experts from the Forest Preserves of Cook County. Shuttle buses will be available to and from the event site starting at Ogilvie Station.

To register please visit
https://www.forestpreservefoundation.org/centennial-symposium.html