[Magdalen] 2020d

[cady soukup]

Thank you Allan,

I have "The Hidden Life of Trees" lined up as one of my next reads. I
do read books on Kindle, but I can appreciate 'real' books as a
friendlier interface. A good friend reads ONLY books, so if I want to
share a book with her, I have to send her a real book!

The book "To Speak for the Trees" takes tree communication a few steps
further (trees on watersheds and the oceans into which the water
sheds, and trees as known by indigenous populations in Europe and
Canada, for example). Wow! Yes, the communication is slow, but it is
present and important to productivity (rather than the short-term tree
farms that have dominated agricultural thought/practice for so many
years).

I work from home, so do not drive much any more, so audio books are a
bit of a waste. I also get so thoroughly bound up in an audio book
that I have been known to miss turns on long trips. Embarrassing but
informative as I try to figure out where I am and what to do next. The
worst (a family memory) is a trip on which we missed the exit, took
the next (toll road) exist, had almost no gas, and were trapped on a
small road going through an odd series of backwater Appalachian towns
that had no gas stations. The kids still laugh about that one as we
all had a lengthy discussion about navigation, paying attention, and
lack thereof. They have become very good drivers (due to their
mother's bad examples?)!

My fascination with trees is increased by mushroom hunting & walking
through "our" woods (we have 10+ acres of tulip poplar-dominated woods
at the top of a local watershed; we have permission to walk on several
other local properties encompassing a much larger area). Last year, my
husband gifted us with a mushroom hunting "foray" in Floyd, VA, where
we joined a crew of mushroom hunters from all over the east coast. The
leader is a self-educated, dedicated polymath who has hunted mushrooms
for decades all over the world, adding tremendously to mycological
lore and information. We have already signed up for the 2020 spring
foray in Floyd.

I had hoped to familiarize myself enough with our trees by bark that I
could walk through the woods in the winter and be able to tell the
trees apart, but that has not happened (to my satisfaction) although I
know many of the main players. I'm not quite sure how to approach
learning more about how our trees communicate without specialized
equipment, but that may be an aspirational goal?

Remembering the Japanese persimmon tree in your back yard and how
Camille baked a lovely cake with them. Thanks for your hospitality
ringing down through the years!

Much love - Cady

On 1/8/20, Allan Carr via Magdalen <magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:
> l read a book about tree communities years ago, The Hidden Life of Trees.
> One thing I remember is that trees talk to each other, very very slowly,
> hormonally and chemically through their roots.  They actually have a
> collective intelligence, like a bee or ant colony. I love these strange, at
> least to me, facts.
>
> I ordered Ehrman’s Jesus Before The Gospels. Amazon suggested a couple of
> more Ehrman books which I didn’t think I had read so I went hog wild and, it
> being late, ordered all three (each was a fairly cheap paperback!). That
> will, undoubtedly, be a surfeit of Ehrman.
>
> Thank you for your email, and thanks to everyone who responded to my
> birthday email. I was genuinely touched.
>
> I think my problem with books was my attempt to only read and listen using a
> Kindle. I’ll try real books from now on, if only paperbacks. Maybe that will
> restore my reading habit.
>
> Once again, thanks to you all.
>
> Allan Carr
>
>
>> On Jan 7, 2020, at 2:09 PM, cady soukup <cadyasoukup at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Happy Leap Year Birthday Allan!
>>
>> May you continue to find enjoyable moments in the midst of the tangled
>> web that is living. May blessings find you and Camille this year,
>> however unexpected or small they may be.
>>
>> I am both TV- and movie-impaired - the bulk of them are no longer
>> compelling to watch, so I read instead. Recent books that have have
>> enjoyed include
>>
>> "To Speak for the Trees" by Diana Beresford-Kroeger - a meditation on
>> a life of living, researching, and working with trees and their
>> communities.
>>
>> "The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History
>> in the Old South" by Michael W. Twitty - still reading this one -
>> amazing breadth & depth of old ways of life, history, and cooking, and
>> how it all works together).
>>
>> "Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered,
>> Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior" by Bart Ehrman - an
>> examination of how personal and cultural memory works and how it
>> intersects with story/history.
>>
>> Yes, I tend to read more than one book at a time.
>>
>> May the Epiphany season be kind to us all, there is quite enough going
>> on in the public sector to need large doses of kindnesses given and
>> received just to make it through each day!
>>
>> hugs anyway - Cady
>>
>>>
>
>