The Growlery (March 2003)
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Michael Gilleland
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The Growlery (March 2003)
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Folk singer Pete Seeger (1919-) used to sing with the Weavers, one of whose songs contains these words in its chorus:
I ain't gonna study war no more,
I ain't gonna study war no more,
Study war no more.
I ain't gonna study war no more,
I ain't gonna study war no more,
Study war no more.
Pete Seeger is the nephew of Alan Seeger (1888-1916). Before the belated entry of the United States into World War I, Alan Seeger, an American citizen, joined the French Foreign Legion to help defend France against invasion by Germany. Besides being a soldier, Alan Seeger was also a poet. A poem which he wrote about death in combat during springtime has special meaning in the spring of 2003, as American, British, and Australian troops begin to fight in Iraq:
I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air --
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath --
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.
God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear ...
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
True to his pledged word, Alan Seeger did not fail that rendezvous. He died on the battlefield at Belloy-en-Santerre, France, on July 4 (Independence Day), 1916. Americans, and Frenchmen too, could perhaps learn some valuable lessons about honor and sacrifice and heroism from the life and death of Alan Seeger.
As an antidote to the onslaught of depressing news these days, I've been reading Bernd Heinrich's The Trees in My Forest (1997). I'm not ashamed to be labeled a tree hugger. I've embraced worse causes in my day.
A book like this is a painless way to absorb fascinating bits of scientific knowledge. On p. 27 we learn that one apple can indeed spoil the bunch, since a rotten apple releases ethylene, which causes adjacent apples in the barrel to accelerate their own maturation, to the point that they, too, start to rot. I'll try to be a little more careful in choosing my companions from now on, lest I contaminate them, or they me.
In the chapter on apple trees, Heinrich points out that less than four percent of the 18,000 or so flowers on a typical apple tree will bear fruit, which is a good thing, since otherwise the tree would collapse under the weight of its own fruit. "Trees regulate their own production to produce only what they can support" (p. 135). Would that we humans did the same!
At the end of the chapter on mushrooms (p. 187), Heinrich talks about the fungal apple scab which Vermont farmers spend a million dollars a year to eradicate, although it's really little more than a cosmetic blemish, and concludes:
Given the choice, I'd purposely pick out apples with some black fungus scabs, because they could not more honestly be labeled "fungicide-free," in the same way that a tiny tasteless moth caterpillar in the apple core says "insecticide free."
From this book you can also appreciate the curiosity that makes a good scientist tick. After an ice storm, I might admire the fragile beauty of ice-encased twigs and branches, perhaps even take a photograph, but what does Heinrich do? He cuts twenty-five samples of ice-covered branches from different types of trees, weighs them while the ice is still frozen, and then weighs them again after the ice has melted, to determine which types of trees carry the greatest burden of ice per unit weight (pp. 62-63). Ash carries the least, birch the most.
It's surprising but also encouraging how little, even in an age when scientific knowledge is exploding, we know about God's creation. Of the estimated one million species of fungi, scientists have identified only 69,000 (p. 186). There is much work left to do.
This is a beautiful book in more ways than one. Heinrich's modest, elegant prose is a model of its kind, and should be read slowly in order to appreciate fully its unobtrusive treasures. But what especially delighted me was the author's own illustrations -- delicate, detailed, scientifically accurate line drawings of trees, twigs, buds, leaves, and seeds. It's hard to pick out favorites amid such an embarrassment of riches, but the two pages of polypore pictures (4th and 5th glossy pages between pp. 112-113) especially entranced me. To see these three skills (scientific knowledge, prose artistry, and fine draftsmanship) reach such a peak in a single individual is humbling.
I didn't grow up in the Depression, but many of the toys in John O'Dell's delightful book The Great American Depression Book of Fun (New York: Harper & Row, 1981) are familiar to me, because my father did grow up in the Depression, and the toys he made for his kids were the toys of his own childhood -- wooden guns with clothes-pin triggers that shot rubber bands (chapter 1), cane whistles (chapter 3), spool tractors and paddle boats (chapter 5), and slingshots (chapter 7).
The difference is, my father knew how to make those toys, and so he handed them down to the next generation. I did not, I'm sad to say. What's worse, I didn't keep a single one of those boyhood toys. What I wouldn't give today to hold in my hand the smoothly sanded grip of a rubber band gun, or one of my father's powerful slingshots.
I learned to play chess from a library book, and made a set of flat pieces from paper, which I moved around a checkerboard. One day my uncle saw me playing with these paper pieces, and a few days later he presented me with a fine set of wooden chessmen, which I still have and cherish to this day.
I did have other store-bought toys, of course, such as the marbles kept in canvas draw-string bags, a big metal truck, and a chemistry set. My father built me a wooden stand to keep test tubes in, with its own water supply, rubber tubing, and tiny glass faucet.
Another store-bought toy which every boy of my generation had was a jack-knife. Mine was a Cub Scout model, used for whittling and also for games of mumblety-peg during recess at grammar school. For those who have never heard of it, you play mumblety-peg by balancing the tip of your jack-knife on your palm, or index finger, or other appendage, and then flipping it in such a way that it sticks in the ground. It's a follow-the-leader game (like the "donkey" variety of basketball), where you must repeat what the previous player does. Mumblety-peg of course would be utterly forbidden in schoolyards of our brave new 2003.
We also had sleds, bicycles, and baseball bats and gloves, although many of these were hand-me-downs. The dusty baseball gloves, with their cracked leather, probably came from my grandfather, who with his brother was a semi-pro baseball player, in the days when New England factories and mills still sponsored their own teams. The hand-me-down bicycle which I rode even in college (forget about a car) had a big, heavy frame, balloon tires, and several coats of paint.
Our childhood games were mostly played outdoors. There was a spacious field behind our house, several acres in extent, where we picked wild strawberries and played baseball during the summer, and went sledding in the winter. Every spring the town firemen burned the grass of the field to black stubble, which quickly grew back green. This field, which used to have a rusted Model-T in it, is filled with houses today, alas. You can go home again, but what you see in the old neighborhood might disappoint you.