I have seen the light! (But how?)

"Seeing is easy. We open our eyes, and there the world is -- in starlight or sunlight, still or in motion, as far as the Pleiades or as close as the tips of our noses. The experience of vision is so common and effortless that we rarely pause to consider what an astounding feat it is: Every time our eyes open, they encode our surroundings as a pattern of electrical signals, which the brain translates into our moving, colorful, three-dimensional perception of the world.

"This everyday miracle has attracted the devotion and expertise of an unlikely individual -- Alan Litke, an experimental particle physicist based at the University of California, Santa Cruz. When not in Geneva, Switzerland, where he is working on the ATLAS particle detector for the Large Hadron Collider, Litke is working with neuroscientists and engineers, adapting the technology of high-energy physics to study the visual system.

"The central challenge is to understand the language the eye uses to send information to the brain. Light reflected from our surroundings enters our eyes through the transparent window of the cornea and is focused by the lens, forming an image on the retina. The retina of each eye contains about 125 million light-sensitive rods and cones, which translate light into electrical and chemical signals. These signals travel to the visual centers of the brain through a million retinal ganglion cells, or RGCs.

"The retina thus encodes the activity of 125 million cells in the signals of one million output cells, which deliver the brain a highly compressed neural code from which our entire visual experience is derived. Litke wants to understand how this neural network processes information from our surroundings and portrays it to the brain."

The mention of the Large Hadron Collider provides a convenient segue to a story that caught a lot of people's attention during the weekend:

Try this headline: Black Hole Eats Earth

"The world's physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature.

"But Walter Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a 'strangelet' that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called 'strange matter.'"

Better mood, better blossoms

A visual follow-up to this post from Wednesday:



Huh. Just learned something about magnolias: "People who study the evolution of flowering plants say that magnolia flowers are similar to some of the very first flowers. Among the magnolia blossom's primitive features are the facts that, in contrast to standard blossoms, they bear many stamens and many pistils. The stamens are arranged in spiraling rows, and both stamens and pistils are attached to a fingerlike receptacle. To understand why these features are considered primitive, you need to know a lot of technical stuff we can't go into here. However, one easy thing to understand is that some of the oldest fossil flowers discovered are similar to magnolia blossoms."





These flowering quince blossoms
will soon have their own post.
Simply stunning.




The sight of these cherry and plum/apricot trees in bloom brings a bit of sadness. It would be so nice if trees looked like this throughout the season. The color and aura at night are especially enthralling.

South Asia '08, part 12:Kickin' it in Krungthep...

...otherwise known as Bangkok.

My Lady Friend and I first visited Bangkok in November 2005. We had to stop there after we left Egypt in order to get visas for Taiwan. It was only a two-and-a-half-day stay, but oh, was it enchanting. We arrived in time for the Loy Krathong (floating lantern) celebration, in which thousands of papier-mache lanterns and other objects of ritual objects put into the rivers in order to pay homage to the spirits and benefactors of water in the country. It's one of Thailand major holidays (apparently an even bigger event in Chiang Mai than in Bangkok) with scores of temple fairs, fireworks, performances and promotions.

I read about some of the festivites before we had dinner at The Atlanta (where "no sex tourists, junkies, louts and other degenerates" are welcome). Soon afterward, we made our way by tuk-tuk to Wat Saket, where we joined thousands of local people who wound past crowded food stalls, clothing tents and carnival rides to the top of the temple where offerings were made at the relics shrine.

Two years later, we had -- well, I had -- three and a half days. My Lady Friend and her friend continued on to a gulf island for another week. We stayed at the Atlanta once again, this time learning that it's located just a couple of blocks from a nexus for the sex trade against which it stands in principle (and practice).

We set out to visit more of the sites that we missed during our visa-run visit in 2005, but we were both dealing with gastrointestinal issues that developed just before we left India. Still, we managed to see Wat Trimitr (though we went to the incorrect shrine), the Emerald Buddha temple at Wat Phra Kaew, Wat Arun (which we only saw from a riverboat the first time) and... well, I'll have to add footnotes to photos as I finish these posts.

As much as I'd wanted to return to Bangkok since our first visit, it turned out to be a bit of an anticlimax. The immersion in India and Nepal's traffic, hassle, trash, history, density, dung, smoke, incense, and open-and-or-sacred spaces required a very different response and awareness than what one deals with in Bangkok. Although it's a sprawling and bustling city, it's much more organized, orderly and commercialized (and thus controlled or contained) than the subcontinent. As heavy or hectic of a trip as one might have there at times, I missed the sense immediacy that the Indo-Nepali segment had inspired.

OK, on with the pics:








Part 11

More beauty (to counter a bad mood)

An alternate

Six slices of spring

Yangsan maehwa

While we visited a blossom festival in Yangsan, north of Miryang in Gyeongnam province, my companions referred to most of the flowers as baekggot, which are camellias.

These appear identical to the plum blossoms seen here.

Three aspects of a Full Moon

Varanasi revisited once more

The Boudhanath recording was on the A side of a tape that had the Varanasi sounds sampled here. I think this was from the second day in the city, as we weaved through the alleys and markets made our way to a musical performance on the ghats that was done by the time we arrived.

Varanasi_sounds.mp3, 16:43 (11 MB)
(Excuse the more or less dead air
from the two- to five-minute marks)

Walking the kora:A sound portraitfrom Boudhanath,January 2008

Boudhanath.mp3, 24:00 (22MB)

There are actually two recordings from Boudhanath, near Kathmandu, in the file above. The horns at the beginning were played by two monks on the upper balcony of one of the monasteries along the Boudhanath kora. Kora is a Tibetan word for the walking course, or the act of circumambulation, around a venerated site.

It was near 9 p.m. when the horns were being played, and the plaza was just about empty. I don't know what the purpose was (ritual or just practice?) and when I went back at the same time on other nights, there was no one performing.

In any case, it was an arresting and enchanting sound. Brought back the memory of hearing the Tibetan long horns being played as several thousand people and I converged on the National Mall to see and hear the Dalai Lama in July 2000.

After you hear the horns recede, the recording changes to the sounds from the kora around 8 a.m. the next day. At the northern tangent one will find a couple of enclosed shrines, the outer one flanked by two, one-meter-high prayer wheels. The pealing bells were inside of that shrine and another one located on the stupa's first tier.

Walking clockwise around the structure, I picked up the sounds of people's steps, snippets of conversations and the recitation of mantra (as well as a little hocking-up of phlegm). The whir and wobble of wood that you might catch was from the prayer wheels along the stupa's base.

There are a number of religious supply shops and tourist stores around the stupa. The strong and clear recitations and pop music you'll hear came from those shops' speakers.

There was another live performance captured during the first go-round. The sounds came from a second-floor music school next to the monastery where the monks played the night before. The plasticky squeaking right afterward was, as you can imagine, a child with a toy.

And then there's more of the same as I went around again. Oh yeah, I forgot that I walked through the shrine with the bells the second time. No wonder they're so loud.

Happy Equinox, everybody.

The sound and its stones

Another trio from Seattle...

Four arboreal forms

All were seen at Lincoln Park in West Seattle last month.

Can it be? The last post of the night!

Or not... I've got some Seattle pics ready to go.

Anyhow, here's the Moon from just a few hours ago.

Honey bubbles and hot tomatoes

The last bit of sweetness that I had saved for breakfast last weekend.




Some truly beautiful tomatoes that I bought Sunday night, just after I'd planted seeds from a similarly "ugly" variety.

So much for those daehanminguk dailies, huh?

I just now noticed that I haven't used the everyday Korean photo format since the end of December. But, oh well. The trip through India and Nepal broke down or reconfigured some of the neural networks, and I felt quite a bit distant from (or within) Korea after I returned. And then I left again for Seattle.

Camellia with cherries on top

These cherry and camellia blossoms are called
beotggot (벗꽃) and dongbaekggot (동백꽃), respectively.

A hwangsa sunrise in context

These photos were taken on March 11, 12 and 14. The sky on the 11th was quite clear. The 12th and 14th had moderate yellow dust levels. Neither of those days was as dusty as March 3, but you can get an idea of the effect that this particulate matter has.

South Asia '08, part 11:Our last full day in Delhi

Yeah, right... we did go to India two months ago, didn't we? The night that I came back to Korea, it already seemed like a half-remembered dream.

Anyhow: an hour or so into the trip back from Agra, the train's engine blew out. We sat out on the tracks for at least two hours, the soldiers onboard walked back and forth between the cars, and another engine eventually arrived from Delhi. No one complained. We arrived at the station sometime near 2 a.m., and still the touts and taxi men had their hassle game on lock.

The next day began with a search for a digestive remedy for my Lady Friend, a late breaksfast, and arrangements for our ride to the airport the next afternoon. We debated whether to go to Qutb Minar, Humayun's tomb or other sites before heading to the Connaught Place markets. Qutb got cut and we hired an autorickshaw for the tomb, which, like the Agra Fort, was a feast of Mughal-period stylings. I spent so long wandering through the side gardens, living quarters and neglected masjids that I got one faraway photo of the actual tomb before I had to hightail it back to the parking lot.










Amelopsis, a name for this?
The full plant, to aid identification







Part 10 -- Part 12

Moon temples, ripples and tides

Three images from Seattle that were captured three weeks ago.

Five in-flight skies

More images not unlike these,
but from above the Pacific Ocean
instead of Lake Michigan.

The Moon on March 10

Other flowers and forms

The last was taken during the Seattle-to-Tokyo flight last Saturday. We passed over the Aleutian archipelago, which was very fascinating. More window-seat photos to come.

Go native while you grow your own.

Two compelling items that appeared recently in The New York Times:

To Feed the Birds, First Feed the Bugs

"Although gardeners might believe that when they plant a butterfly bush, native to China, they are helping butterflies, they are merely attracting the adults who sip the nectar. The plant cannot be eaten by the butterfly larvae.

"The typical garden might hold weeping cherries and rhododendrons, lilacs and crape myrtles. That is beautiful, perhaps, but it's a barren wasteland to native insects and thus birds. Almost all North American birds other than seabirds -- 96 percent -- feed their young with insects, which contain more protein than beef, writes Doug Tallamy, chairman of the department of entomology and wildlife ecology at the University of Delaware.

"[In his book Bringing Nature Home,] Tallamy cites the work of Michael Rosenzweig, an evolutionary biologist based at the University of Arizona, who has analyzed data from all over the world and found a one-to-one correspondence between habitat destruction and species loss. In Delaware, for instance, state ecologists say that 40 percent of all native plant species identified in 1966 are now threatened or extinct; 41 percent of native birds that depend on forest cover are rare or absent.

"If you cut down the goldenrod, the wild black cherry, the milkweed and other natives, you eliminate the larvae, and starve the birds. So the message is loud and clear: gardeners could slow the rate of extinction by planting natives in their yards."

A Global Need for Grain That Farms Can’t Fill

"Everywhere, the cost of food is rising sharply. Whether the world is in for a long period of continued increases has become one of the most urgent issues in economics.

"Many factors are contributing to the rise, but the biggest is runaway demand. In recent years, the world’s developing countries have been growing about 7 percent a year, an unusually rapid rate by historical standards.

"The high growth rate means hundreds of millions of people are, for the first time, getting access to the basics of life, including a better diet. That jump in demand is helping to drive up the prices of agricultural commodities.

"Farmers the world over are producing flat-out. American agricultural exports are expected to increase 23 percent this year to $101 billion, a record. The world’s grain stockpiles have fallen to the lowest levels in decades.

"'Everyone wants to eat like an American on this globe,' said Daniel W. Basse of the AgResource Company, a Chicago consultancy. 'But if they do, we’re going to need another two or three globes to grow it all.'"

Plants are power tools, part three

"And all the people perceived the thunderings,
and the lightnings, and the voice of the horn,
and the mountain smoking."

"Thus the book of Exodus describes the impressive moment of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. The 'perceiving of the voices' has been interpreted endlessly since these words were first written. When Professor Benny Shanon, professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, reads the verse, he recalls a powerful hallucinatory experience he had when he visited the Amazon and drank a plant potion called ayahuasca. 'One of the things that happens when you drink the potion is a visual experience created via sounds,' he says.

"Shanon presents a provocative theory in an article published this week in the philosophy journal Time and Mind. The religious ceremonies of the Israelites included the use of psychotropic materials that can be found in the Negev and Sinai, he says.

"'I have no direct proof of this interpretation,' and such proof cannot be expected, he says. However, 'it seems logical that something was altered in people's consciousness. There are other stories in the Bible that mention the use of plants: for example, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden.'

"Shanon, former head of the Hebrew University psychology department, said his first experience with ayahuasca was in 1991 when he was invited to a religious ceremony in the northern Amazon in 1991 in Brazil. 'I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations,' he says. Since that time, he has used it hundreds of times, and has published a book about the plant.

"'Hypotheses have been around for 20 years connecting the beginning of religions with psychoactive materials,' Shanon says. He believes the Israelites used two plants in Sinai and the Negev: one of them is wild rue, a hallucinogen used by the Bedouin to this day. However this plant is not identified with any plant mentioned in the Bible.

"The acacia tree also has psychedelic properties, Shanon says, which the Israelites could have used. The acacia is mentioned frequently in the Bible, and was the type of wood of which the Ark of the Covenant was made. According to Shanon, he drank a potion prepared from a species of acacia while he was in South America, which caused similar experiences to those produced by the ayahuasca."

This was part two.

Seedtech for 2008

Those (few) people who took me up on last summer's Concentric Garden seed offer received the growing guide below. As a public service to those who might want to grow plants from seed, here's the text in full. To ward off insects and taste-testing animals after the plants take root, refer to Farmer D's recipes.


Red Corn
(Zea mays)

Grows from 9' to 12'. Drought tolerant. Use for flour, cornmeal or cob eating when young. 100- to 110-day growth term. Full sun.

Sow when soil is warm and there's no more chance of frost. Plant seeds 1" deep and six to eight inches apart. Space rows 2' or 3' apart, if possible. Plant in a three- or four-row block (instead of one or two long rows) to ensure full growth of ears.

Tender corn can be eaten after 90 days (cornsilk tassles will have browned and withered). Harvest fully grown ears after they've dried on the plant.


Rattlesnake Snap Beans
(Phaseolus vulgaris)

Vines will grow to 10'. Have to train them on trellis or poles, or companion plant with sunflowers or corn. Sixty to 90-day growth term. Full sun.

Sow after danger of frost is past and air has warmed (let's say May). Plant seeds 1" deep and 2" apart in rows that are 6" apart (or plant in circles around poles/companion-plant supports).

Harvest bean pods for eating when they've grown to 7" or 8" and have purple stripes. For seed harvesting, allow pods to dry on vine, then pull beans from the chaff.


Morning Glories and Moonflowers
(Ipomoea tricolor, Ipomoea noctiflora)

Vines will grow from 8' to 12' (or however long they want to grow, really). Not sure about the number of days to flowering, but seedlings will emerge after 10-20 days.

**To aid germination**: Soak seeds in warm water 24 hours before sowing; scratch surface of larger moonflower seeds before soaking.

Sow seeds after average date of last frost. Plant seeds 1/2 inch deep, either in clusters from which you want vines to emerge, or spaced 6" to 12" apart. Imopoea prefers full sun, but will grow in part shade.


Black Garbanzo Beans
(Cicer arietinum)

Originally grown in Mesopotamia 6000 years ago. Grows from 18" to 24". Ninety-five to 105-day term of growth. Full sun.

Temperatures need to be consistently above 60F before planting (mid-April in Midwest). Sow seeds one foot apart, 1/2-inch to 1" deep.

Harvest beans when fully developed and when at least 2/3 of pods are dry. Thresh to release seeds from pods.


Sunflower Masala
(Helianthus spp.)



Plants will blossom with varying colors: full or pale yellow; yellow w/ light orange midsections; orange or yellow with rust- colored midsection; full-on rust; dense, puffy yellow.

Plants will grow from 2-1/2 to 10 feet. Flowers emerge after 60 to 75 days.

Sow seeds after last frost date (mid-April is OK for most areas). Plant seeds no more than 1" deep. Plant them in pairs or trios 1 foot apart. They're fairly drought tolerant when established, but early growth will need consistent moisture.

After pollination, cover flowerheads with cheesecloth or bag to inhibit bird-snackin' (if you want to get as many seeds as possible). Let the flowerheads turn yellow before cutting it from stalk, then place it in a paper bag or open cardboard box to dry. Make sure that there are holes in the bag and that flowerheads aren't stacked on top of each other in order to speed drying and to inhibit fungal growth. After a couple of days, you can pluck out or shake out the seeds.


Candy-colored Zinnias
(Zinnia elegans)



Varying colors: hot pink, magenta, cherry red, orange, yellow, white, peach. Plants can grow as tall as 3'. Drought tolerant and, along with sunflowers, quick to germinate [7 to 10 days). About two months to flower. Full sun.

Seeds can be planted after last frost date. Sow seeds in pairs or trios 1/2 inch deep. Space seeds 6 to 12 inches apart.

Flowerheads will develop a cone-shaped center as seeds mature. When you collect the seeds, remember that the flowers must only be cut when the arrowhead-shaped seeds are grey-black or brown. You can peel back the petals around the edge to see the color of the seeds.

Cut flowers need to dry for a few days before plucking seeds. Remember that there will likely be many seeds hidden inside the center cone, not just connected to the petals around the edge. Turn the cone upside-down over a bowl and pick at the seed sheaths.


Marigolds By Another Name
(Calendula officinalis)


Varying colors: citrus orange, yellow-orange, cream with yellow accents, bright yellow. Plants grow from 18" to 24". One-and-a-half or two months to flower. Full sun.

Seeds can be sown after last frost date. Plant seeds in pairs or trios, no more than 1/2 inch deep. Space seeds 6" to 12" apart -- with good moisture and fertilisation, calendula will get a little bushy.

Flowers can be used in salads. They can also be used for ointments or creams to treat sunburn, bites, cuts, stings, etc.

Pollinated flowers will produce curled, bug-lookin' seeds that will change from light green to beige or brown when dry. Consistent clipping of mature seedheads and unpollinated flowers will ensure continued blossoming.


Korean Kalonji
(Nigella sativa)

[The seeds of this plant are used for cuisine and medicine throughout Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. I bought the seeds at an Indian grocery in Seoul.]

Delicate and intricate pale-blue or off-white flowers on one-foot-tall plants. Growth term is about two months. Full sun or part shade.

Seeds can be sown after last frost date. Plant seeds on the surface or no more than 1/4" deep. Scatter seeds among other plantings or spread them along the edge of garden bed for a color border. Good companion in color and shape with larkspur or flax.

Nigella seedheads have a UFO-meets-paper-lantern appearance. Allow these pods to dry completely, then open the pouches to collect the seeds.


Anasazi Beans
(Phaseolus vulgaris)

[Anasazi is a Dine' (Navajo) word that can mean "the ancient ones." It refers to the cliff dwellers who lived in the Four Corners area of the US. The anasazi bean was originally found in the ruins of a cliff dwelling in the early 1900s. Carbon-dating indicates that this bean has been in cultivation for 1500 years.]

Anasazis are bush beans, so they might grow to 1-1/2 to 2 feet. Full sun.

Sow seeds in the early summer (mid-May). I've seen a recommendation to plant seeds 1" deep and 3" apart (after seedlings develop, thin to 6" apart). Plant in rows that are 6 to 8 inches apart.

Beans can be eaten green, like the rattlesnake beans on the first page. Or, let the pods dry and then collect the speckled beans. Anasazi beans are sold (perhaps not so) exclusively by Adobe Milling Company in Durango, CO.


Angel's Trumpet/Jimsonweed
(Datura stramonium)

[Let me first mention that the plant more accurately called Angel's Trumpet is part of the Brugmansia species, not Datura. The white or yellow Brugmansia flowers hang down like bells.]

Plant can grow as tall as 5'. Produces numerous white, champagne glass-shaped flowers that unfurl around sunset and fall off the next day. You might know that this plant is used for shamanistic/sacred ceremonies among various cultures, but be warned that the tropane alkaloid content of this plant can be lethal, and the level of alkaloid production varies throughout the growth cycle. Let its beauty be enough.

Sow seeds in mid- to late April. Plant seeds 1/2" deep, spaced one foot apart. Full sun. Not sure about time to flowering because the plant in our garden came from dormant seeds in the soil.

When flowers drop off, you'll see a spiky, dark green knob develop where the flower had been. This knob will lighten and grow to a couple inches in length, covered with prickly thorns. The pod can be allowed to dry and split open on the plant, or it can be cut and taken indoors to dry. The pod will split into four sections, from which one can find small, black, kidney-shaped seeds.

Much more about Datura here.


Garden Preparation Tips

Sketch out and measure the area that you'll want to use. Determine a budget for seeds, soil and tools (as well as for water use and soil amendments). Choose the plants you'll want to grow and when during the season they will need the most care. Determine what size pots or boxes you'll need if you're going to do container gardening. Figure six inches of container width for every foot of plant height (obviously, something like a giant sunflower ought to go into the ground -- or be prepared to anchor it in its container).

Assess the growing area's exposure to sunlight, rain, foot traffic, foraging animals, and proximity to living space (how easy will it be to water?). What else is growing nearby, and will it bush out or encroach into the prospective bed(s) in the summer?

Take a soil test. Little test-tube kits can be purchased at Lowe's or Home Depot for $3-$5. This will tell you the pH level and mineral vitality of the soil. Use that information to...

Fertilize and loosen the soil. Dig at least one foot below the grass, then add layers of manure and sterile topsoil (w/o chemical fertilizer) as well as grass clippings and leaves (if available). Do try to use only natural soil amendments, not chemicals or synthetic pellets.

If your soil is fine or sandy, add extra topsoil. If your soil is very dense, add layers of perlite or vermiculite. Avoid peat moss, which is overharvested for commercial use. Top off these layers with organic fertilizer pellets or seaweed-and-fish emulsion. The latter will also deter deer and rabbits.

Cover beds with at least two inches of mulch. I prefer cedar (Lowe's has an organic variety). Avoid cypress, which is also overharvested.

Weed and weed some more (particularly if you work the soil when dandelions produce their seeds). However, if you can tell something's not a typical weed, you might want to let it grow. The Datura "volunteered" itself from seeds that had lain dormant for at least 20 years until they were brought to the surface when I dug up the beds.

2.27 sunrise times three

On approach to O'Hare on February 27

Hwangsa sunrise

Ah yes... I returned to Korea just in time to venture out into an early saturation of "yellow dust."

Each spring, prevailing winds whip up sand from Mongolia along with topsoil and pollutants from China, the combination of which then wafts over the Yellow Sea into Korea, Japan and other parts of the Pacific Rim. This is usually at its worst in April, but here it was the third day of March and the Sun appeared as if it was covered by rice paper because of the dusty haze.