Compost Tea

I made compost tea many years back (probably close to a decade ago now), after reading Toolbox for Sustainable City Living by Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew. (See my post on RUST for a bit about the book.)  I was reminded of this a couple of weeks back when I arrived to do an urban agriculture work day and walked into a mini-workshop on compost tea. The woman providing the information gave the best summary I’ve heard for using compost tea.

“Think of it as probiotics for plants,” she said.

Compost tea is derived from compost but it is used differently.   The main purpose of compost tea is to build up life in the soil. And, depending on what kind of life you want to build up (fungal or bacterial), you brew it differently.   All this is explained in the book, Teaming with Microbes by Lowenfels and Lewis.  Both this book and Toolbox have good descriptions of how to brew compost tea.

On the other hand, the method for compost tea described by Stephanie Davis in her book, Composting Inside and Out, (I talked about the book in my last post) doesn't involve aeration and so it creates an anaerobic ‘tea’, what Lowenfels and Lewis call ‘compost extract’.  If you want the right kind of microbes, you need to aerate it. (For a detailed, fussy description of how to brew compost tea, see this page by ‘The Soil Guy’.)  One way to get aeration is to use one of  those pumps that you aerate fish tanks with.   That's what I used, so many years ago.

It's not something you will need all the time, but if you really want to add life to your soil, compost tea will do it.

Quote of the Day: “The simplest definition of compost tea is: A brewed, water extract of compost.

“Properly made compost must be used…  Compost tea is therefore, a ‘cold brewing’ process, allowing growth of the organisms extracted from the compost.” - Elaine Ingham

The Joys of Compost

I realized at some point that most of my favorite things in the world began with the letters C,O,and M--communes and community, naturally, but also compassion and communication, and,of course, compost.

I sometimes joke (but I’m more serious than you might think) that compost is my religion.   I point out that Hindus and Buddhists think that when you die, you are reincarnated, Christians and Muslims believe that when die, if you are good, you go to heaven, and I believe that, if I’m very good, when I die, I will be composted.

I’ve talked a bunch about composting in this blog, particularly in my posts, Compost Happens!  and Waste. And I’ve written about the reasons composting is so important in my post on Thinking in Circles. When we compost, we mimic the way that the world works.  And there are lots of different ways to compost.

In my “Compost Happens!” post I talked about there being two main ways of composting. I wrote that eight years ago, I wouldn't say that now.

I got out a book from the library called Composting Inside and Out by Stephanie Davis. The subtitle of the book is “14 Methods to Fit Your Lifestyle”.  What's strange is that, even though it also says on the back cover, “Step-by-step instruction for 14 different composting methods”, there is no listing in the book of the 14 methods.  I had to tease them out by trying to look at all the options she provides. As far as I can tell, the 14 methods are:

1. Compost bins
2. Tumblers
3. Three bin systems
4. Digesters
5. Piles or heaps
6. Barrel tumblers
7. Bins
8. Wire mesh
9. Trench
10. Lasagna
11. Humanure
12. Nature Mill Auto Compost Bin
13. Bokashi
14. Worm bins

The first eleven methods are outdoor methods, the final three are for indoor composting.  Also, numbers 6, 7, and 8 cover DIY ways of composting as opposed to several others where you purchase a finished product.

Smiling Hogshead Ranch, where I am now helping out, lists six different ways to compost in their explanation of what the compost committee does (you have to tap on the word Compost), saying, “How much do we love compost? Let us count the ways…”

1. 3-bin system
2. Windrows
3. Leaf mold
4. Vermiculture
5. Bokashi
6. Mushroom composting

(Vermiculture is using worms.  Worm bins basically.)

I’m sure that, even between these two lists, they don't cover all the different ways of composting. The joys of composting are endless.

And, best of all, for me, I get to do a lot of it.

Quote of the Day: “Compost has rewards beyond our imagination. We benefit specifically in our gardens and, less obviously, within our thinking.   … Can composting encourage you to see the world differently? Many compost converts have told me that it has done so for them, and I have to admit it has changed my perspective as well.” - Stephanie Davis

High Spring

It’s the eve of May, a time the pagans in the US call Beltane.

I have written about this before often spelling it Beltaine.  (Which the internet says is the traditional Celtic spelling.)  Whatever the spelling, this is the time of year when everything is bursting into bloom.  It’s high spring. If Samhain, which I’ve written more about, is a time of acknowledging darkness and death, this is a passionate celebration of light and life.

It was a fairly mild winter here in New York City, but it was also cold, raw, damp, and dark.  Spring has been oh so welcoming. As I’ve written, with the collapse of Point A, I had been wondering what to do with myself.  That's not a problem anymore.

Our community, Cotyledon, is connected with a bunch of urban agricultural projects, like Smiling Hogshead Ranch and Hellgate Farm.   There wasn't much to do with them in January and February. Now I need to be careful not to do too much. (See my last post.)

Spring won't last.   One of the reasons I follow the pagan calendar is the reminder that the seasons flow into each other.  Spring will become summer, summer will become fall, and fall will become winter. Beltane is just the opposite pole from Samhain.   Life and death are intimately connected, as are light and dark.

The point is that I am going to enjoy all this while it's here.  Everything is in bloom and it won't last. And I am not getting any younger. I want to enjoy each season fully while I am here to enjoy it.

I hope you are enjoying your spring.

Quote of the Day:  “The most dramatic part of the Beltane celebration was the community bonfire.  People would gather around it, often bringing chairs or stools in order to ‘sit out the wake of winter.’  … The fire was usually lit on May eve - fed by whatever a village could spare - and was kept going until sunset on May 1st.  In general, most people extinguished all fires in their homes on May eve. … In keeping with the old ways, ‘new fire’ had to be brought back into the house from the Beltane flames.” - Bridget Haggerty

Studying Nutrition

Many, many, many, many years ago, I was ever so briefly a nursing student. (Yes, among many things, I am a nursing school drop out.)  I did well in the academics but I was a disaster doing the bedside work. One of the things I enjoyed learning about was nutrition.

And nutrition is still one of the things that I’m interested in. When I think about agriculture, a question arises.  What should we plant? Which leads me to the question of, what foods are better for people? How do we know? And one way of knowing is by studying nutrition.

I have been looking in libraries for a really good nutrition textbook.   I’m not interested in the latest diet or food fad, I want to know what mainstream nutritionists currently think.   (Okay, my nutrition education was from the 1970s, some things have changed since then.) I finally found one that I liked this winter, but then I left town for some traveling and returned the book.   Since I got back, I have been looking for that book, but it's no longer in the library and, stupidly, I didn't write the name of the book down. I went looking in the Queens library system catalog and did find something that looked okay in the catalog but turned out to be some kind of outline rather than a text.  (The book itself has the additional heading, “Student Note-Taking Guide”. Unfortunately, that part wasn't in the catalog.) Rather than just return it and try again, I decided to use it in conjunction with one of those ‘Idiot’s Guide’ books (which generally have decent information, even if the format is very commercialized and silly).  I figured between the two, I should get some halfway decent information. In the future, I may go looking for that good textbook again.

So what did I learn?   Here's some basics. First, there are six categories of nutrients: carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, minerals, and water.   Yes, water is a nutrient. The first three categories all have calories--as does a seventh non-nutrient, alcohol. Something that I did remember from my nursing years is that carbohydrates and proteins have four calories per gram, alcohol has seven calories per gram, and fats have nine calories per gram. All of the first six categories pay important parts in your diet.

Most of this stuff is common knowledge.   You want to get enough calories to thrive but not much more. Exercise as well as nutrition is important in maintaining your weight as well as your health. You need to get all your vitamins and minerals.  Eat plenty of vegetables. (Really. Probably the best piece of dietary advice I can give.) Drink plenty of water and get plenty of rest.

But a couple of things that aren't so obvious.  Your body needs sodium as well as potassium, but the ratio is important. You need to make sure that you are getting more potassium than sodium.   Fruit is a good source of potassium. Likewise, some fatty acids are essential, but you need to get more omega three than omega six. Fish is a good source of omega three, but for vegetarians like me, nuts and seeds (especially flax seeds and chia seeds) are also a good source.

Not all vegetables are alike.  I am a strong advocate of leafy greens (like kale, collards, spinach, and dandelion greens) and the orange veggies (like carrots, sweet potatoes, winter squashes, and pumpkin).  And, of course, you can never go wrong with broccoli.

Finally, for vegetarians and vegans, make sure that you get enough B12.  Unfortunately, the best way to do this is to take a supplement, since B12 is only found naturally in animal products.

Social change depends on strong, healthy people, and since the society I want to create is one that meets everyone’s needs, knowing what we need nutritionally is important.  And thus I study nutrition.

Quote of the Day: “... nutrition is the science of how the body uses food. In fact, nutrition is life.   All living things, including you, need food and water to live…. If you don't eat and drink, you’ll die. Period.” - Carol Ann Rinzler

Radical Lichenology

I’ve talked about lichens before in a post about viruses, lichens, and slime molds, all things that don't easily fit into the usual biological categories. The easiest thing to say about lichens is that, although they aren't a single species, they act as if they are.  What lichens really are is a relationship.

In the book, Radical Mycology, which I’ve referenced in the last two posts,  there is a chapter on lichens called, naturally, Radical Lichenology.  It's written by Nastassja Noell, who apparently has a degree in Lichenology from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She defines lichens as being at least “a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and algae and/or photosynthesizing cyanobacteria.”  She goes on to point out that a lichen often contains more than that--sometimes including many other microbes and even fungi, becoming a “miniature ecosystem.”

According to her, there are three ways of looking at lichens.   The first is the ‘Reductionist Perspective’, seeing a lichen as just a fungus and a photosynthesizer working together.  The second is what she calls the ‘Mycocentric Perspective’, seeing the fungus as being in charge and treating the algae as if it were a plant that the fungus is raising.  The third is the ‘Systems Perspective’, where the lichen is an ‘emergent property’, an ecosystem that includes all the living things that make up a lichen, as well as the light, and temperature, and gas levels, and nutrients involved.

Lichens grow very slowly, at the rate of perhaps a millimeter a year, but some of them last for thousands of years.  In dry times, they can go into a dormant, desiccated state in which they can survive for more than a hundred years only to revive when rehydrated. However, they are very sensitive to pollution, so much so that they can be used as indicators of the environmental health of an area.

The chapter contains a lot more about lichens, how to harvest them, how to cultivate them, and how to use them for food and medicine, but what interested me was the fascinating relationships involved in a lichen as well as the systems perspective  that Nastassja Noell takes in looking at lichens and talking about them.

Quote of the day: “Lichens are expressions of pure joy.  … Inside the ecosystem of a lichen are most of the primary components of life: fungi, bacteria, algae, and cyanobacteria, all living in a discrete synergistic system that can rarely be synthesized in vitro but can withstand the extreme conditions of outer space….  The fungal symbiont creates a thick protective skin around the algae to protect it from desiccation.  In exchange, the algae gives the fungus photosynthesized sugars. And together, they form shapes and pigments that help them survive and thrive in their other-worldly surroundings.” - Nastassja Noell

A Really Fungi

I mentioned in my last post that I have been studying mycology, which is the study of fungi.  (Here's a joke from the book, Radical Mycology: “Why did the mushroom go to the party?  Because he was a fungi.”) Most people, when they think of fungi, think of mushrooms, but mushrooms are just a small (but very visible) part of the fungal world.

There are single celled fungi, including yeasts and ‘chytrids’, but many fungi form long strands of cells called ‘hyphae’ (singular: hypha) which join together to form a network called mycelium. These are the white threads that you can find in the earth, in compost, and in rotting wood. These are also the many colored molds you see on decaying foods. One of the largest mycelium ever found is a fungus in Oregon that is 3.4 miles in diameter and thought to be more 2,400 years old!

Mushrooms turn out to be the ‘fruiting bodies’ of the mycelium. Basically, when the mycelium decides that it is time to reproduce, it forms a mushroom, which contains spores that germinate to start new fungi.

Fungi are divided (by mycologists and other scientists) into several phyla. The various books that I looked at disagreed as to what many of these were, but there were two that all the books agreed on. These are the ones that produce some of the more visible fruiting bodies, the Ascomycota (which produces, among other things, truffles, morels, and cup fungi) and the Basidiomycota (which produces most of your standard mushrooms).

A different way of looking at fungi is to understand how they nourish themselves.   Fungi can be put into four categories: saprophytes, parasites, mycorrhizal, and endophytes.  

Saprophytes are the decomposers of the fungal world. They live off of dead matter: dead plants, dead animals, even dead fungi, as well as fecal material.  They (along with the bacteria) are the reason the world isn't filled with dead bodies (and leaves and logs and plants). The saprophytes recycle organic matter--especially wood, which is hard for bacteria to break down.

The parasites go after living tissue.  These are the fungi that cause diseases in plants and animals (including people).  And sometimes the lines are blurry between the saprophytic and parasitic fungi--especially when a creature or plant is old, weak, and/or dying.   Some saprophytes get a head start, so to speak, before the tree, or whatever, is truly dead.

The mycorrhizal fungi are extremely important for the soil.  Their mycelium are connected with plant roots and feed the roots minerals and other nutrients in exchange for the sugars that the plant provides. They are a huge part of the ‘soil food web’ that I mentioned in my piece about Elaine Ingham.

Finally, the endophytes actually live inside plants, mostly in a mutualistic manner, protecting the plant while the plant nurtures them.

Some books that I have found useful in my study of mycology include:

• A 1963 British text, Soil Fungi and Soil Fertility, by S.D. Garrett
• My 2002 old standby, Biology, by Campbell and Reece
• Another old favorite, Teaming with Microbes, by Lowenfels and Lewis (2010)
• The book that I mentioned in my last post and at the beginning of this one, Radical Mycology, by Peter McCoy (2016)
• And the well known book by Paul Stamets (the real person, not the Star Trek: Discovery character), Mycelium Running (2005)

(Incidentally,  Jeff Lowenfels has a new book out called Teaming with Fungi that I haven't gotten to look at yet.)

Next, Radical Lichenology.

Quote of the Day: “Imagine yourself as a fungus!... Where do you live? What do you like to eat? What do you observe in the environment around you?” - Mitra Sticklen and Maya Elson

Four Scientific Minds

As I’ve been saying, I have been reading a lot of science over the past few years. Not just soil science and chemistry and biology, but mycology and nutrition and microbiology and social science and, of course, system theory.   While I have learned a lot from a lot of different people, I realized recently that I have had four major influences.  As I said at the end of my last post, they are all women and I don't think that is an accident.

I am not opposed to ‘reductionist science’.  I think there are a lot of things that can be learned from it.  But there is only so far that you can go with it, before you need to connect the dots.  System thinking is essential to understanding the world and system thinking is all about relationships.   And, no surprise, women are a lot better at thinking about relationships than men.

So,here are four women who have strongly influenced my thinking.

And the first, since I’ve been talking about soil science and ended my last post with a quote from her, is Elaine Ingham.

Elaine Ingham is a soil microbiologist who has studied and popularized the interactions of the inhabitants of the soil.   She uses the term ‘soil food web’ to describe these complex relationships that support the health of the soil, the plants living in it, and the food we eat from those plants. While a bunch of it concerns who eats who in this subterranean ecosystem, a lot of it is also about how plants interact with bacteria and fungi, trading with each other and literally feeding each other.   I love how she uses the term ‘soil food web’, rather than ‘food chain’, to point out that it is not a linear process.   It’s about relationships and interactions and, of course, systems. She has gotten many people to rethink how they garden and grow plants and treat the soil.

A second microbiologist who has had an influence on me, is Lynn Margulis. I think of her as a microbiologist because of all of her work with bacteria but, like many important thinkers, she would hardly stay in one category.  She studied genetics and zoology, taught in the Biology department at Boston University, the Botany department at the University of Massachusetts, and the department of Geosciences at Amherst College.  She came up with the theory of endosymbiosis (that mitochondria and chloroplasts were independent organisms that were incorporated into eukaryotic cells), and then spent decades fighting all the opposition to it.  By the 1980s, it was generally accepted science. She (along with James Lovelock) was one of the originators of the Gaia Hypothesis. She was an opponent of Neo-Darwinism, believing that life moved forward by cooperation rather than competition. I love the quote from her and her son, Dorion Sagan, “Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking.”  Sadly, she died in 2011.

My third influence is Donella Meadows,  who I have written about  several times here.  I’ve promised a few times to do a full fledged review of her book, Thinking in Systems, but have never done it.  It’s been an influence on me, nonetheless, especially her chapter on 'Leverage Points'. She was the principal co-author of Limits to Growth which was a major warning that capitalist growth couldn't continue indefinitely.  It seems obvious, but in 1972 it was a shock to many leaders and routinely criticized by people who couldn't believe it.  Now it seems prescient.  She left MIT and their computers and moved to Vermont where she founded the Sustainability Institute along with an ecovillage and an organic farm.  Unfortunately, she has died as well, in 2001.

Finally, I have recently grown to appreciate Elinor Ostrom, a political economist, who, ironically, was rejected from UCLA’s economics department (getting a PhD in political science, instead) and went on to become the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in economics.  She directly challenged the idea that a shared commons would always end in tragedy, doing research and field studies that showed examples of societies that successfully managed natural resources together.   She championed multifaceted, grassroots approaches, arguing against any single answer for social and ecological problems.  She outlined the basic principles involved in these sharing systems and you can actually watch her explain how to get beyond the tragedy of the commons.   And, while doing the research for this post, found out that she, too, died, in 2012.

In honor of these wonderful women, all of whom taught the benefits of cooperation and relationships, I would like to request that anyone who reads this, further explore the work of any or all of them.  Their ideas and thinking deserve to be spread. They were true pioneers and I think we can all learn from them.


Quote of the Day: “... communities of individuals have relied on institutions resembling neither the state nor the market to govern some resource systems with reasonable degrees of success over long periods of time.” - Elinor Ostrom  

The light and the dark again

Yes.  I haven't written in this blog since February.  No.  I haven't died.

I've been busy.

I have been managing another blog,  Commune Life, and that has taken lots and lots of time.  I've also been part of a group that has just started a new community which we are calling Cotyledon.

A cotyledon is the embryonic part of a seed that holds the nutrients for the new plant and bursts out and sends up a tiny shoot with one or two little leaves.  We see ourselves as the germination of the work we have been doing over the past two years in NYC.

And just as the cotyledon develops in the dark and makes its way into the light, our fragile little community is determined to develop into an ongoing commune that will make a difference in the world.

I wish all of you who read this the blessings of both the dark and the light.

Quote of the Day:  "Every moment of light and dark is a miracle. "  - Walt Whitman

Baboons and Culture Change

In my last post I summarized the differences between chimpanzees and bonobos as “chimpanzees are hierarchical, patriarchal, competitive, and violent, whereas bonobos tend to be more egalitarian, matriarchal, cooperative, and much less violent. “  It’s a generality, but there’s a bunch of truth in it.  Unfortunately most other primate groups (except for humans) seem to be more like the chimps than the bonobos.  (I think that human beings have the potential to be like either--or both.)

We often see biology as a certain kind of destiny.  While humans have the freedom to change, it sometimes seems like we are fighting our biology.  And most animals (unless trained by humans) seem to be locked into a social/behavioral styles.

However, one study of baboons found something interesting.  Baboons, as I said, tend toward a patriarchal, hierarchal culture.  The scientists in this study were observing a troop (their term) of baboons that were near a tourist lodge and foraged in their garbage dump.  More importantly, it was only the most aggressive males that were able to forage in this dump and when some meat in the dump was infected with tuberculosis, it was all the most aggressive males in the troop  that died.

This totally changed the culture of the group.  There were now more females than males and the males that were left were less aggressive toward less dominant males (although apparently not toward their peers) and toward females.  

For some reason, the researchers lost interest in this troop that they were studying, and they began studying another baboon troop--although they kept informal tabs on the first troop (which they called the Forest troop).  The deaths of the dominant males happened between 1982 and 1986.  Observations of the group stopped around 1986.  In 1993, the researchers began studying the Forest troop again and were surprised to find out that the less aggressive culture persisted.  This was surprising to them because male baboons, as they age, leave the troop they were with and bond with females in another troop.  By 1993 there were no adult males that had been with the troop in 1986, yet the behavior change that happened with the death of the aggressive males persisted.

As the researchers put it: “A decade after the deaths of the more aggressive males in the troop, Forest Troop preserved a distinct social milieu accompanied by distinct physiological correlates. Critically, as noted, no adult males …  had been troop members at the end of the tuberculosis outbreak. Instead, these males had subsequently transferred in as adolescents, adopting the local social style. A number of investigators have emphasized how a tolerant and gregarious social setting facilitates social transmission…”  The more tolerant and less aggressive culture persisted as incoming males adopted or were socialized to the new culture.

In some ways it’s as if the baboons shifted from a ‘chimp-like’ way of relating to a ‘bonobo-like’ way of relating and that difference persisted through a complete shift in the male members of the troop.  I wonder what that says about ways we can change human society--short of poisoning all the aggressive males.

Quote of the Day:  “In summary, we have observed circumstances that produced a distinctive set of behaviors and physiological correlates in a troop of wild baboons. Moreover, these behaviors were taken on by new troop members...

“Finally, these findings raise the issue of their applicability to understanding human social behavior and its transmission. Human history is filled with examples of the selective loss of demographic subsets of societies... The present data suggest that demographic skews may have long-term, even multigenerational consequences, including significant changes in the quality of life in a social group.” - Robert Sapolsky and Lisa Share

Chimps, Bonobos, and Tribes

Lately I’ve been thinking a bit about our primate relatives and what their social structure says about what human beings are capable of being.  

Way back at the beginning of this blog, I wrote posts about Bonobos and Chimpanzees (7/30/08) and about Peacemaking among Primates (a book by Frans de Waal) in a post entitled Peace on Earth  (12/24/08).  These bonobos and chimpanzees are our closest animal relatives.

In many ways the behaviors of chimps and bonobos couldn’t be more different.  In a very broad generality, chimpanzees are hierarchical, patriarchal, competitive, and violent, whereas bonobos tend to be more egalitarian, matriarchal, cooperative, and much less violent.  In books like Our Inner Ape (another book by Frans de Waal) they represent opposing tendencies that humans have--people perhaps are a bit of both.  But is there any behavior that both species have in common?

Here’s one.  Both chimps and bonobos are what’s called fission-fusion species.  Baboons, orangutans, and spider monkeys are as well--and so are humans.  What this means is that populations combine and separate.    Often during the day they split up and travel in little groups and at night they all get back together.  This is especially common among the chimps and bonobos.  To quote Iain Couzin and Mark  Laidre, “The most fluid societies of any nonhuman primate are found among chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus), humanity's nearest living relatives.”

The point is that chimps, bonobos, and humans are all tribal animals.  There is a bigger ‘parent group’ (which I will refer to as the tribe) and smaller subgroups (which I’ve heard called clans or bands).  Again, quoting Couzin and Laidre: “More than 99% of human history was spent in a hunter-gatherer existence, characterized by dynamically shifting social groupings at multiple levels. At the highest tier in hunter-gatherer societies is the ethno-linguistic group or ‘tribe’, formed by several local ‘bands’ that fuse together when resources like water are clustered during dry seasons. Bands themselves, which are made up of around 30 individuals, break up into smaller foraging parties during daily forays out from a base camp. While some individuals remain at the camp to watch over youngsters and tend the old or injured, the foraging parties gather edible plant material and hunt animals, afterward bringing the bounty back to a central place for sharing and redistribution.”

We are tribal animals.  We belong in tribes.  “...99% of human was spent…” in tribes and our closest animal relatives live in fission-fusion tribes.  It’s in our biology.  So current human civilization is an anomaly.  And we are constantly trying to reform into tribes.

Conservative Republicans know this--at least at a gut level.  Their loyalty is to their tribe--and they see themselves besieged by those who don’t fit: pinkos, queers, Muslims, and Mexicans.

I think small towns and villages are our tribes--and in the cities, neighborhoods.  There was a story about the Portuguese population of East Cambridge (MA) several decades ago, that if a kid misbehaved several blocks away, his mother would know about it (via a phone call) before he got a chance to get home.  The pluses and minuses of villages, towns, and neighborhoods was that most folks knew one another.  This was a problems if you didn’t fit in--if you were too liberal or radical or queer or whatever.  But a big problem with big cities is that few people know each other and that gives many folks the liberty to be anonymously rude or worse.  You can much more easily mistreat someone you are not likely to see again.

I think intentional communities are part of what I will call the re-tribalization movement.  Even at large communities like Twin Oaks, or Dancing Rabbit, or Ganas,  I feel more at home since as I walk around I realize that I know most of the people I walk by.  Since being in community, I often feel bewildered by walking city streets and realizing that I don’t know any of the people I see.  It feels wrong somehow.

And, in larger communities, I see smaller subgroupings happening--which some of us (ironically given the info I have above) call ‘finding our tribe’.  I think these subgroups are reenacting our history of clans and bands within a tribe.  This fissioning and fusing is in our genes.

What else can we learn from primates?  I’ve talked a lot about bonobos and chimpanzees.  In my next post I want to focus on a study done with baboons.

Quote of the Day:  “...why is gossip necessary? Far from being mere small talk, gossip serves myriad vital functions within our fission–fusion societies, both at the individual level and at the group level. Gossip can facilitate social cohesion in the face of repeated separations, reminding individuals of the bonds they have with distant others. And it can also allow information to percolate through the group about the trustworthiness of each member, enabling listeners to keep track of others despite limited first-hand observation. Gossip, therefore, and maybe even language more generally, may have evolved specifically as an adaptation to the highly fission–fusion-oriented societies of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.”  - Iain Couzin and Mark  Laidre

The Soul of Soil

I’m here at a co-op house that I usually stay in when I’m in the Boston area and I was looking for something to read.  A novel perhaps?  But I couldn’t find any novels I wanted to read on the co-ops bookshelves.  I was finally settling down with a book on “libertarian paternalism”, when I happened to spot The Soul of Soil on an out of the way shelf.

There it was.  Soil chemistry.  Soil biology.  Compost!  I love this stuff.

I’ve written about soil stuff before (see particularly The Story of Soil, 3/13/10, and Soil Science, 7/20/13) but it’s always good finding and reading more.  This book is especially good because it takes a systemic viewpoint.   It talks about organic agriculture, and regenerative agriculture, and even permaculture, but mostly the authors (Grace Gershuny & Joseph Smillie) claim the title ‘ecological agriculture’ for what they do.

The only thing that bothers me is that they sometimes seem to not understand some basic biology.  For example, the authors appear to need to describe everything as either an animal or a plant.  They actually describe fungi as plants that “do not contain chlorophyll”.  This is a system of classification that hasn’t been used in biology since the 1970s.  But their knowledge of chemistry and the various soil critter seems sound and they even point out that the most common variety of earthworm in North America came with the Europeans and “turned out to be better adapted to cultivated conditions than its native predecessor.”

As far as I’m concerned, I can’t read too much about the soil.  I think that taking care of the soil is key to taking care of ourselves, especially when it comes to growing food or any form of plant life.  The authors use the quote: “Feed the soil, not the plant,” and go on to say “soil organisms will provide a balanced diet to crops.”  I’m willing to forgive a lot to anyone who cares this much about the soil a little mistake or two.  (Plus, this is a really fun book to read--at least if you like soil.)

Quote of the Day: “...to understand soil is to be aware of how everything affects and is affected by it.  We are all part of the soil ecosystem.” - Grace Gershuny & Joseph Smillie

Viruses, Lichens, and Slime Molds

Life is weird.  Biologists have a basic understanding of what life is, but then there are all these exceptions  There are all these things that refuse to fit into categories.  

Like viruses.  Are viruses alive?  Depends on your definition of life.  One source refers to them as being "at the edge of life."  Another gets around the question by defining viruses as “A submicroscopic infectious agent that is unable to grow or reproduce outside a host cell.”  It further points out that a virus “is non-cellular but consisting of a core of DNA or RNA surrounded by a protein coat.”  Viruses kind of mess up the idea that there is a big divide between living things and nonliving things.  And viruses are at least closer to life than prions which still manage to cause disease in spite of not having any genetic material.

And then there’s lichens.  Lichens are not plants.  Above all, they are not mosses, although they sometimes look like them and even occasionally have names like reindeer moss that would make you think they are mosses.  They are not even one particular kind of living thing.  They are a ‘mutualistic symbiosis’, a composite of a fungi and either an alga or a cyanobacterium, and these two organisms are so intertwined that they act like a single organism.  Sometimes the organisms can not live on their own and other times they can but they look very different. One lichenologist described lichens as “...fungi that have discovered agriculture".  Lichens blur the boundary between the different ‘kingdoms’ of life: fungi, plants, and animals.

Finally there are slime molds.   The slime molds also don’t fit in a clear ‘kingdom’ model.  But what makes them really interesting is that they are a single celled creature that occasionally aggregates into a multicellular being and ends up looking something like a slug.  They’re found on every continent and seem to get everywhere.  They can find things in mazes and imitate highway systems.  Scientist love them.  (And I wrote about them in my post on Emergence on 6/10/15.)

Alive?  One thing or a conglomerate?  Uni- or multi-cellular? Life sometime just refuses to fit into easy categories.

Life is weird.  Life is wonderful.

Quote of the Day: “Everybody knows what a caterpillar is, and it doesn't look anything like a butterfly.” - Lynn Margulis