Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth - Entry 4

Quote:

“EMERSON WROTE THAT IF THERE WERE GOOD MEN, we would not go into such raptures over nature. He cited an old proverb, one I've never heard elsewhere: “When the king is in the palace, no one looks at the walls.”

By “king” he did not mean someone unknown to us. He meant himself and each one of us. After five years of work on the soil––looking at these “walls” for their beauty, usefulness, strength––I have come to the conclusion that I ought to start all over again. I ought to write about the man the soil suggests.

Hans Jenny is as close as I have found. He was a man of deep integrity. With seven decades of hard-won knowledge, he confessed his ignorance. He insisted on seeing whole, when others made a virtue of seeing in slices. He knew science as a form of prayer.

Even Hans is not enough, though. Each of us is made of stardust, as my boss, Jim Morton, preaches every year. We have each, then, the stuff in us and the bound-up energy that might launch a beam of light.

Soil is only the darkest and coldest of all living things. The most widespread. And the most receptive. Warmed, it blooms. So may I in my darkest moments be attentive to the penetrating rays of the sun that finds the seed.

Work, motion, life. All rise from the dirt and stand upon it as a launching pad. At the outer edge of the atmosphere, the thin air continually gives off hydrogen ions that join the solar wind. To what end and what stars might this lightest, quickest dust be bound?”

Chapter: Stardust (p. 202) Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth by William Bryant Logan

Background:

This is the entire last chapter of the book. I like it because it sums up the book and wraps it up nicely. It also answers just about every question for the fourth entry.

For example, aside from the easy question of the point of view (which is first person as shown in the quote), the chapter name itself helps me to answer the first question: How is the book organized? Well, it should be obvious just from reading my various quotes from previous journal entries, but the book is organized in short stories all based around dirt. One thing that I find to be very interesting is that both the first and last chapter are titled "Stardust". I believe that this is based on the saying "Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust."––a saying that means that everything returns to the soil to bring life to others. In this case, the book is from "Stardust to stardust" since the book opens by stating that dirt comes from the stars since Helium and Hydrogen are the only two elements that are native to our solar system.

How would you define the author's style?

I would define his style as both friendly––in that he tells stories as a friend would tell stories to you and gives away information that is more personalized (see my third entry for more details on this)––and scholarly in that he supplies a large amount of information in a short amount of time. He also separates the two styles (friendly and scholarly) in chunks so that he will alternate. This allows the reader to easily find the "dirt" or information if they need to. 

Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth - Entry 3

Quote:

"AT CHRISTMAS, I was out on the prairie again. Third time in a year. It seems like I can't stay away. This time, I came up out of Council Grove, Kansas, at seven A.M., just around sunrise. For about a minute and a half, I saw the sun and the full moon balanced evenly at the opposite ends of the sky. And her was I, riding along the bald and slightly arched surface of the earth, halfway between the two.

What are we doing on this planet, and how did we get here? It took only a glance to tell that there would not be anything like us found on the yellow sun or the fast-paling  moon. The Earth has one thing that neither the sun nor moon has ever had.

And that one thing is clay.

I stopped by the Spring Hill Ranch, where there's a break in the fence. I like to walk the erosion gullies on the virgin prairie. There are fossils in the lower strata, as thick as nuts in an almond bar. But that morning, I found clay. I dug it out with a stone and formed it into small flutes and bowls. It was almost greasy to the touch, it had a sheen about it, and you could shape it into anything." 

Chapter: Clay and Life (p. 123) Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth by William Bryant Logan 

Background:

 After reading my 50 or so pages for the week, I took a look at the questions to post answers to for today. They all seemed to have to do with tone and voice, what persona the author takes on. I figured that the whole book could be used as an example of my answer to this question, so I randomly moved to one of the chapters that were fresh in my head. When I read the quote above, this song popped into my head and so I went with it.

In this chapter and many many others, the author adopts the persona of a friend; a very descriptive friend, but a friend nonetheless. He treats the beginnings of his chapters like the beginning of a casual conversation "At Christmas I was out on the prairie again. Third time this year." He leaks otherwise personal seeming information to you as if you cared. As a reader, you don't care about his addiction to visiting the prairie ("It seems like I can't stay away.") or that he "saw the sun and the full moon balanced evenly at the opposite ends of the sky". We don't care about any of these things. When we pick up a nonfictional book, we read it for information, not for an author's life experiences, yet it is those useless details and bits of unimportant information that keep me interested as a reader. It makes it feel like I know the author as a friend and that he is really talking to me rather than writing a boring book for me to read.

What is the intended audience and how does he tailor his writing to the audience?

Considering the subject of the book, level of vocabulary, and assumed understanding of certain concepts prior to reading the book, I think William wrote the book with the intention of college students, maybe seniors in high school, and adults reading this book. If he wrote it for students, he definitely did his job well. He writes descriptively to keep the student slightly entertained, but he also is sure to not hide his important information underneath all the description. "I found clay. I dug it out with a stone and formed it into flutes and bowls. It was almost greasy to the touch, it had a sheen about it, and you could shape it into anything." In this section of the quote, he places nothing but information about clay. He starts by nonchalantly showing the historical and traditional uses of clay which are shaping it into "flutes and bowls". He then moves on to describe its texture as "almost greasy to the touch", its look as having "a sheen about it" and its physical properties as being able to "shape it into anything." He then moves on to give hard facts about clay after the quote above. If a college or high school student was reading this book, they would easily be able to obtain the information. If an adult was reading this, they would be entertained by the amount of personalization in what would seem at first like a dull and boring nonfiction book.

Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth - Entry 2

Quote:

“I WAS IN A MONASTERY IN NORTHERN NEW MEXICO, high in the mountains near Abiquiu. It was February. Behind the chapel there was an open grave, the red soil mounded up beside it. “Has a brother died?” I asked a monk. “No,” he answered, “but we cannot dig in winter, so we opened this grave ahead of time, just in case.”

 An open grave is an open mouth. It disturbs the soil, throwing the wet cold subsoil to the surface. It exhales all the suggestion of the dark. But a grave is also the place where the foul is made fair. It is the way that flesh returns to the generative womb.

 The grave seems to interrupt the human story. But the fact is that graves are motherly for the Earth. They wrap up the things of time and deliver them back to the cradle. So that the show goes on. So that nothing will stop the stories from being told.”

Chapter: The Soil of Graves (p. 54) Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth by William Bryant Logan

Background:

This was the opening of a chapter that discusses how the dirt of graves are used to give life to various organisms. This is in essence, Logan's main purpose and thesis in writing this book. The underlying message that is in most if not all of his chapters are that dirt is the connection between death and life. Dirt is what completes the circle of life. Things are born, things die, but they all have to do with dirt. Things are born from the soil and when things die, they become part of and fuel the soil. This is Logan's thesis.

When I read this chapter, it occurred to me that this was his thesis. I am not sure why it occurred to me here rather than in any other chapter (as most of them talk about the thesis in one way or another), but it became crystal clear in this chapter. Perhaps it was the fact that it had to do with humans and so I was able to connect to it a little better. Perhaps it was the fact that it reminded me of the grave scene in Hamlet. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but it was at this chapter that I realized his thesis. 

I always agreed that everything decomposed and became part of the soil sooner or later. On a thesis level, I guess I might say that I already knew what Logan was trying to tell me. I did not, however, know all the details and small facts that Logan used to back up his thesis throughout the book. It is these small facts that keeps me interested.

Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth - Entry 1

Quote: 

"THE TEXTBOOKS WILL TELL YOU that humus is "deeply altered, black organic matter" lying in the top layer of the soil. But I only grasped what humus is about when my friend Pamela Morton showed me a picture of it.

Pamela spends parts of her summers in boreal Canada and has long been fascinated with the forest floor, where bits of blackening twigs, needles, bark, and the carcasses of small creatures decay. Humus is this organic part of the soil, the final residue of those matted leaves and cold bodies, intercalated, lapped, melding, losing their distinctions, dry on top but inside turning the shades of brown and black that we associate with rain-wet wood or a man's study. The deeper you go, the blacker it gets, and the fewer of the bits survive intact. A few inches down, it is pure black acrid matter having a texture like a cross between cotton candy and damp sawdust. This is the stuff from which all life on the land is born."

Chapter: Humus (p. 14) Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth by William Bryant Logan

Background:

Before I began reading this book, I looked at the first blog post assignment so that I knew what to think about as I read the book. Afterwords, I put the book reading on pause temporarily so that I may find out more about the author seeing as how this blog post is about his credibility and background.

According to his website, William Bryant Logan is a "certified arborist", the "president of Urban Arborists, Inc., a Brooklyn-based tree company", has won many awards that show feats of masterful writing in environmental subjects, and has other minor achievements. These achievements are impressive and show that Logan is probably capable of writing environmental information in an understandable and entertaining way. If nothing else, it shows that someone was impressed enough to give him an award and make three documentaries for his three books.

To back up his award, this quote shows very well that he is a good author that successfully captivates his audience and immerses them into the environmental world. In his first sentence, he credits his source of information for the chapter, Pamela Morton. He even goes out of his way to give a background on the Pamela. This is an excellent way to show sources which make the author's information seem more creditable as well as bring the author closer to the reader's level which in my opinion makes the book sound more personal as if a friend was giving the reader the information.

As for the information he relays, he uses many adjectives and metaphors which compare what may be unknown or complex terms to average every day objects in order to help people understand concepts in a painless and entertaining manner.

But does he have the authority or experience to speak about this issue?

Well, he isn't a scientist, but he definitely knows some and he credits them with the information which he displays in his writing. He is also a good author as shown in his writing and various awards. I would say he definitely has the experience and authority to speak about this issue. He definitely explains the scientific concepts better than most scientists would have.

What might bias Logan's argument?

I don't think anything would bias Logan's argument that heavily other than the information he has received from other scientists. He has looked to many scientists for the information that he puts in his book and is likely very excited about the topic of dirt if he is willing to make a book about it even though he is not an expert in the field. Therefore, it would not be unreasonable to assume that he would take in some information without question. This might possible cause some bias in his writing, but the large amount of information sources which he is pulling from for his writing would spread out and thin out the overall bias of his book.

Big Assignment thing with QCCQ's

Assignment 1: Water Knowledge

Yup. So a lady in a documentary asked me some questions and here are my answers to them.

1.       What fresh water sources are around you (home, school, work)?

"Sweetwater River, Sweetwater Reservoir, Loveland Reservoir, and San Diego Bay" (source)

2.       What watershed are you in?

I am in the Sweetwater Watershed (source)

3.       Where does your tap water come from?

"Between 85 and 90% of our drinking water is a blend from the Colorado River and Northern California. About 10 to 15% of the City's drinking water supply is made up of runoff from local rainfall that is captured in our reservoirs." (source)

4.       Where does your waste water (sewage) go?

San Diego Bay after being treated ("Between the headwaters and the outlet to San Diego Bay, the watershed contains" source)

NOTE: San Diego Bay is both a freshwater source and a waste water output source. This is an example of a method commonly referred to as "Toilet to Tap" (knowledge given to me by wastewater expert 'Greg' from 10th grade chemistry)

QQC #1

Beets in the Hood:
"Sixteen years ago, Allen gave up a lucrative job working for Procter & Gamble's corporate marketing department to found Growing Power, a tiny working farm in the heart of Milwaukee."

I can't imagine how Allen could be more successful running an urban farm and selling the benefits, but it seems like fun.

How does he get the space to grow enough plants to keep himself alive?

Michael Pollan Fixes Dinner:
"Al Gore didn't talk about it at all; 25 to 33 percent of climate change gases can be traces to the food system."

I can understand that exchanges of carbon dioxide and oxygen through plants and animals contribute to climate, but I would have never guessed that the food system had such a big impact.

Does this also contribute to global warming?

Veg-O-Might:
"It takes nearly 1 gallon of fossil fuel and 5,200 gallons of water to produce just 1 pound of conventionally fed beef."

That seems extremely inefficient. Considering the average american eats about 100 pounds of beef per year, this is a very ridiculous method of food production.

I wonder if these facts were taken to produce a single pound of beef? For example, maybe the same resources could be used to produce individual pounds of beef simultaneously so thousands of pounds of beef could be made. What are the sources of this statistic?

This Little Piggy Goes Home:
" ' I was doomed - I knew this was what I was meant to do,' he says."

I find it interesting that he used the word 'doomed'. I would have used the word 'destined' or 'predetermined' or something along those lines, but not doomed. Doomed is a very negative word.

Are there parts of his job that he doesn't enjoy that would lead him to say 'doomed'?

A Cubic Foot of Soil... (Test Prep)

If I took a cubic foot of soil as well as the plants growing there, I would expect to see many different organisms as soil is the essence of life. I would definitely expect to see earthworms breaking up and loosening in the soil; ants taking various things from above ground back into the soil (and therefore providing the soil with a variety of nutrients indirectly); grubs eating roots of plants which will slowly kill them (and when the plant die, and grubs die, they give nutrients back to the soil when by decomposing); pill bugs; centipedes; and millipedes, though I am not sure what either of these three organisms contribute; and various microbes that do a variety of different jobs. Most of the jobs performed by all of thee organisms help to create a richer soil in exchange for killing what lived in the soil before, however the soil that results from these jobs allows new plants and organisms to not only grow, but thrive in this rich new earth. The soil in our garden seems rather hard to me and because silt and clay have properties that allow them to condense and harden, I would say that our soil would be a silty clay loam (40% silt, 40% clay, 20% loam). This would likely be better to support trees and bushes which have stronger roots as those roots would have an easier time plowing through the hard soil and receiving the large amount of nutrients that come with silt and clay that does not come with sand. More delicate plants such as flowers or grass would have a harder time with this soil and so we would need to break it up and loosen it a lot. The limitation to this soil is also in the fact that it is mostly silt and clay. Neither silt nor clay creates a loose soil and so would trap water easily.

Plant Info for the Garden

The season of fall is here and will it come many vegetables for us to grow and harvest. Among those plants are my 3 favorite greens are lettuce, collard greens, and chard. These three plants have many similarities in terms of gardening. They all grow in autumn, given a 4x5 foot area, they will all produce one bunch per week, and they all grow well in loose, rich, fertile loam with a pH of 6.5-6.8. These three plants all are planted 3-4 inches apart in rows 12 inches apart from each other in soil that is 10-27 degrees Celsius. All three of these plants grow better in sunny areas and will work well in the San Diego climate. All three plants have large leaves that can block water from getting to the roots and so they should be watered using drip irrigation. None of these plants are companions with each other, but they all are companions with cabbage, peas, and strawberries. Lettuce and chard take anywhere from a month to a month and a half to reach maturity while collard greens take a month or less. I would say that it is very reasonable to include these three plants in our garden for a harvest at the end of the semester.

Lettuce:

• Type: Vegetable
• Nutrition Facts (varies from species of lettuce):
• Vitamin A: 7-10%
• Vitamin C: 1-3%
• Calcium: 0-1%
• Iron: 0-2%
• Other: Mostly water
• Growing climate: Sunny, warmer temperatures
• Space Requirements:
• rows 12 inches apart
• seeds 3-4 inches apart
• Soil:
• Rich, Fertile, Loam
• 10-27 degrees Celsius
• pH: 6.5-6.8
• N-P-K ratio:  Unknown
• Watering Method: Drip Irrigation
• Companion Plants:  cabbage, peas, strawberries

Collard Greens:

• Type: Vegetable
• Nutrition Facts:
• Vitamin A: 48%
• Vitamin C: 21%
• Calcium: 5%
• Iron: 0%
• Other: Great source of vitamin K
• Growing climate: Sunny, warmer temperatures
• Space Requirements:
• rows 12 inches apart
• seeds 3-4 inches apart
• Soil:
• Rich, Fertile, Loam
• 10-27 degrees Celsius
• pH: 6.5-6.8
• N-P-K ratio:  Unknown
• Watering Method: Drip Irrigation
• Companion Plants:  cabbage, peas, strawberries

Chard:

• Type: Vegetable
• Nutrition Facts:
• Vitamin A: 44%
• Vitamin C: 18%
• Calcium: 2%
• Iron: 4%
• Other: Lots of sodium
• Growing climate: Sunny, warmer temperatures
• Space Requirements:
• rows 12 inches apart
• seeds 3-4 inches apart
• Soil:
• Rich, Fertile, Loam
• 10-27 degrees Celsius
• pH: 6.5-6.8
• N-P-K ratio: Unknown
• Watering Method: Drip Irrigation
• Companion Plants:  cabbage, peas, strawberries

Okay So Here's The Dealio:

We are going to make an awesome tutorial video using B-roll and well recorded audio (indoors to avoid wind destroying the mic). In order to make this masterpiece, we will have to go through these seven steps of awesome:

1. Write Awesome Script.
2. Record Awesome Video.
3. Cut-out Not-Awesome Audio from Awesome Video.
4. Re-record Awesome Audio.
5. Combine Awesome Video and Awesome Audio.
6. Edit, Edit, Edit (Awesome).
7. Watch Awesome Video.

This Awesome Blog Post was created to represent: Andrew Proud-Madruga, Kristi Werry, and Kenan Millet, yours truly. Stay Awesome.