Plants and People

Smith, A, MacKinnon, JB. 2007. The 100-mile diet: a year of local eating. Vintage Canada Edition, Toronto, Ontario.

This week’s reading brought the whole class full circle. We started with James and Alisa, makes sense that we end with them too. It gave a kind of closure that many classes are missing in this strange world we are currently living in. While I am not too upset about not having to read and write a reading response each week from now on, I am definitely sad to see the class end.

In the last half of this book we can see that there has been a large shift in James and Alisa’s views on their new diet, partially because it is no longer new. This half of the book is much less about the finding and making of recipes than the previous half. I think this is reflective of the way that their life no longer feels like all they do is hunt for local foods. At this point the search is just a part of their everyday life now. No need to make a big deal of it. This half feels much more focused on community. They use their connections to make more connections and meet new people who have new food for them. They meet Hamish and have to use connections to get the wheat from him to them.

The second half also felt much more personal than the first half. We learned about Alisa’s struggle with mental health, the problems in their relationship, and James’ family life. Of course, James’ family issues brought the story to Kamloops which I am sure had most of us a little excited. And then, likely one of the most fulfilling moments, we get to see the change that they have created throughout the world with their little experiment. In particular, Alisa showed us the group in Minnesota. The group is set up to be doomsday preppers, by when we actually meet them, the reader is shown that they aren’t these crazy people who thing the reckoning is upon us. Instead they are just slightly eccentric people very passionate about local eating (often because that is what they have known).

In the epilogue, James and Alisa switch the point of view in the story. Throughout the story, we have been swapping between their points of view in a first person point of view. At the end, however, they switch to a second person point a view. Instead of being inside one of their heads, we are there with them in the little rowboat going to make salt. By doing this, they reach out to the reader and suggest that they should also give this experiment a chance and you may find, like James and Alisa, that it is still possible to live off the land. Especially if you have other humans willing to help you out along the way.

Pollan,M. 2006. Omnivore’s Dilemma: a Natural History of Four Meals. Penguin Group, New York, New York.

This chapter of Pollan’s reminded me a lot of the half of the 100 Mile Diet that we have read. It took me a while to get into the groove of reading it, but once I was there, I didn’t want to stop. The structure of this chapter was much more story like than much of Pollan’s writing and following a timeline helped me stay interested.  Along with the timeline, the characters in this section, including Pollan, had me intrigued.

Pollan’s description of Joel and his family gave me an immediate impression of who they are. Right off the bat, Pollan establishes that Joel’s views on farming are very different from most and sets Joel up to be the counter argument to the story of the large feedlot we saw earlier. Joel’s wacky inventions and the punny names for them sets him up as someone who is carefree but deeply passionate, something which he clearly shares with his son and the interns on the farm.

Pollan’s never fails to disappoint with his use of descriptive language, as exemplified by his description of the processing of the chickens. I never thought I would hear someone describe viscera as “unexpectedly beautiful, glistening in a whole palette of slightly electric colors” (234). Not exactly the language I would expect when talking about disembowelling chickens. This is a stark contrast to the description of the meal he shares with friends at the end of the story. The language there is one that reminds me of sharing a meal with my family. The warm setting of a loving family sharing a meal was a big juxtaposition from the earlier imagery.

Pollan, Michael. Botany of Desire. Random House, 2001.

Greetings from my couch! I am still in Kamloops, working from home. The week has been kind of crazy transitioning all my classes to online, but I am hanging in there and starting to get into the groove of working from home.

My first task during social distancing was to read Michael Pollan’s chapter on marijuana in The Botany of Desire. I find that Pollan’s work is very hit or miss. I enjoyed the chapter on the apple, did not enjoy the one on potatoes. I think this chapter falls more in line with my feelings towards the potato chapter.

This chapter of Pollan’s tackles what is, arguably, one of the most controversial plants: marijuana. Pollan describe that to some this plant may be more than just a plant, but to gardeners, it is a challenge. Pollan starts off the chapter like he is going to be talking about the botany of the plant and the challenges that it presents to a gardener. Instead, Pollan spends most of the chapter getting overly philosophical. I was prepared to spend a chapter sifting through descriptive language to learn about the plant, however, I was not prepared to sift through “I’m not sure any of us perceives reality ‘as it really is’ (how would one know?), but Huxley is persuasive in depicting wonder as what happens when we succeed in suspending our customary verbal and conceptual ways of seeing” (169). I think after a few reads I can mostly grasp the point Pollan is trying to make, but I’m still not certain. I am a biologist, not a philosopher and I would prefer to keep it that way.

The excessive use of footnotes in this chapter was also a deterrent for me. On multiple pages (126-127,132, 159) in this chapter, Pollan uses almost half of the page as a footnote. In a few of those cases, the footnotes even spill from one page to the next. If this information was really so important to the reading of the text, why did Pollan not include them in the main body? And if they were not very important to the understanding why include them? Small footnotes for brief clarification are one thing but  half a page? That’s a bit much if you ask me.

Overall, I cannot say that this was my favourite thing to read. Pollan focused too much on the philosophy, morality, and history of the plant and gave the reader very little actual information on the plant.

Hanson T. 2015. The triumph of seeds. New York: Basic Books. 277.

Reading Thor Hanson is like a breath of fresh air after reading Pollan. While they have similar styles, focusing on one plant to tell a larger story, I find myself much more engaged in Hanson’s writing. Throughout Hanson’s story of seed defense, he keeps the content digestible while still engaging the reader intellectually. There were times when reading Hanson that I found myself chuckling and other times when I found myself deeply invested in the pathway ricin takes to destroy our cells. Throughout the chapter, Hanson pulls on references to pop culture (like Beatrix Potter and JRR Tolkien) to further connect to the reader and engage their prior knowledge.

Hanson uses analogies throughout the chapter to demonstrate take home points. One of my favourite examples of this is his use of square dancing as a description of co-evolution: “Relationships like those between rodents and seeds develop in the midst of something more like a square dance, with couples constantly switching partners in a whirl of spins, promenades, and do-si-dos” (pg 115). This analogy reinforces the idea that evolution never happens in a vacuum, but instead with countless factors all influencing the same outcome. Another example is his reference back to the baby plant in a box analogy: “Once mother plants began packing lunches for their babies, everything from dinosaurs to fungi wanted a taste, and the evolution of seed defences became inevitable” (pg 123). This quote sets up most of Hanson’s argument for the next 3 chapters of the book.

Hanson has a knack for catching the reader at the end of the chapter and luring them into reading further. He provides a brief segue at the end to entice the reader: “If plants could successfully protect their babies just by building a better box, then there would be no point in drinking coffee, Tabasco sauce would be tasteless, and Christopher Columbus would never have sailed for America” (pg 127). By adding these brief connections between the current topic and the next topic, Hanson keeps the reader wanting to turn the page to learn more. The same thing is done at chapters 10 and 11. The end of chapter 11 had me disappointed that I didn’t have to read anymore. I was caught up in the story and ready to hear what Hanson had learned about the coevolution of almendro.

Hanson’s description of both scene and characters keep the reader interested. His description of Noelle shows the reader how incredibly passionate she is about the research she does: “When the conversation turned to chillies, all signs if fatigue disappeared” (pg 134). The reader can grasp that this is truly what Noelle loves doing. The descriptive language is there again when Hanson describes Slate. I could almost see the building and the group huddled around to learn about coffee.

Pollan, Michael. Botany of Desire. Random House, 2001.

The Botany of Desire tells the tale of humans and plants using apples and potatoes to guide us through the process. These plants are effective at telling the story because of their commonality. If Pollan were to use plants unfamiliar to the reader, it would be much harder for them to relate. We can appreciate the sweetness of an apple and the versatility of a potato which helps Pollan string us along on their journey of creation.

When introducing John Chapman, Pollan begins to describe how he sees the world in a different way than most people. Pollan describes how Chapman has “a knack for looking at the world from the plants point of view.” I find this description entertaining as we often discuss Pollan in this way in this class. Pollan, to us, is John Chapman to Pollan. Pollan talks about Chapman in a way that often paints him as an eccentric, man with a strange view of the world,  that almost takes his beliefs too far, similar to how we talk about Pollan. The story of Chapman kept my attention and I felt like I was on this journey of discovery with Pollan. Pollan’s comparison of Chapman to Dionysus is one that stood out to me. As an avid reader of Percy Jackson as a child, one way to get my attention is to mention Greek gods. Also in the apple section, Pollan had a few lines that really stood out to exemplify his point. His flowery language appealed to the reader without taking it too far. When describing the nature of apple seeds Pollan says: “In the case of the apple, the fruit nearly always falls far from the tree” (pg 10). This plays on the idiom we all know to drive his point home effectively. When Pollan is in the orchard, on page 46, looking through all the varieties of apple, he goes on to list them. The listing takes almost an entire page and is a page which my eyes almost completely ignored. Pollan’s point could have been made without listing all the varieties and instead just listing the categories of names he had come up with.

Pollan was less effective when telling the story of the potato. His story of the GMO potato, while interesting, could not capture my attention like Chapman did. In this section, Pollan’s language was often over the top, confusing me more than it did clarifying. An example of this is: “Potatoes were chthonic, forming their undifferentiated brown tubers unseen beneath the ground, throwing a slovenly flop of vines above.” (pg 200). This line made me more confused than anything. I had to go look up the word chthonic and then attempt to decipher the rest of the sentence.

Overall, this piece of Pollan’s was far more digestible than some of his other works which we have read in the past. His descriptive language was used effectively and was not overdone nearly as much as we have seen previously. The characters introduced helped to progress the story and keep the reader interested.

Pollan,M. 2006. Omnivore’s Dilemma: a Natural History of Four Meals. Penguin Group, New York, New York.

In the first part of this book, Pollan tells us the story of corn. I can’t say that corn has ever been a thing I have thought particularly hard about, however, Pollan manages to write over 100 pages on it. Pollan uses corn as a device to tell the story of the rise of agriculture. He begins before colonization, telling us about how the Mayans used the ancestors of our modern-day corn and ends with the most modern meal there is: MacDonald’s.

When starting off the story of corn, Pollan first gets us to understand how plants work. He uses an effective analogy to demonstrate the cost of opening up stoma in a way that is more digestible than just explaining the process. He compares it to humans so we can better grasp the concept: “It’s as though every time you opened your mouth to eat you lost a quantity of blood.” (pg 21). He then goes on to describe the impact that the settlers had on native peoples. He uses effective language to communicate how devastating colonization was in more than the normal sense. He describes settlers bringing a “biotic army” with them, something they likely did not think about having an impact (pg 24).

Pollan takes us through the rest of the story using characters. We follow Naylor through the early 1900 to observe the changes that commodity corn has brought to agriculture. We learn about Naylor’s father and the struggles he faced, some of the same challenges facing farmers today. Then, of course, we switch to steer number 534. By introducing 534, Pollan can create a personal link to the journey on which our food embarks. I found myself feeling sorry for 534 when Pollan noted “534’s eyes looked a little bloodshot”. While Pollan created a character which the reader can sympathize with using steer 534, he also did what the industry did, depersonalizing the steer. If Pollan had named the steer like we would name a pet it would have taken away the reality of the industry.

Pollan ends this part with a trip to MacDonald’s, a pretty common event today. The difference with Pollan’s trip, however, was the analysis he did along the way. The amount of corn found in the meal he had astounded me. The fact that even your French fries (arguably the simplest thing on the menu) was 23% corn got my attention. At the beginning of this book, I cannot say I had given hardly any thought to how prevalent corn is in our market. Pollan managed to get me thinking about how much corn was in my dinner last night.

Diamond J. 1999. Guns, germs, and steel. W.W. Norton & Company Inc., New York, New York

I found the writing in this part of Diamond’s book much more dense than that of the previous chapter we read. In these chapters, Diamond tells of the rise of agriculture in different parts of the world. In these chapters there was less descriptive language, instead, Diamond had a tendency to simply state the facts. Because of this, I found these chapters much slower to read and I struggled to keep my focus on the text in front of me.

In the fourth chapter of the book Diamond uses the title of the book in the text: “food production was indirectly a prerequisite for the development of guns, germs, and steel.” (pg 86). By doing this, Diamond gets the reader’s attention and draws them to the point he is making. However, he does this again on page 103 and it loses some of its effect. It’s kind of like when someone you think you know says something that seems out of character, the first time it shocks you, but after that it becomes normal.

Diamond also uses figures throughout the text. These figures, however, did not help me interpret the text. Figure 4.1 on page 87 did not help me to understand the information I had already been presented in any way that I didn’t get from the text. The use of pictures was also done in an ineffective manner. Diamond puts a big block of photos in the middle of chapter 5. Not only are these in the middle of a chapter, they are in the middle of a sentence. This makes the reader remember what they were reading as they flip through 16 pages of photos unrelated to the text they are literally in the middle of. After finishing the reading the reader then has to go back and look at the photos, something most will likely not do.

In chapter 8, Diamond finally breaks away from the dense text and provides us with an anecdote to illustrate a point. The story of him questioning the locals gives the readers a much-needed breath where they can digest the cognitive load that Diamond has been burdening them with. For these chapters to be more effective, Diamond should be using more of these stories and more descriptive language to spread out and lighten the load he is putting on the reader.

Turner N. 2005. The earth’s blanket. University of Washington Press, Seattle, Washington.

Nancy Turner’s The Earth’s Blanket discusses an incredibly important and rarely known part of the relationship between plants and humans. We so often view our relationships with plants in a very European sense, as Turner puts it “not only the indigenous people but their flora and fauna have been colonized” (pg 36). While Turner is addressing an interesting topic, does not do it in a style that I find particularly engaging.

Turner often uses lists to make her point and describe a setting to the reader. These lists, however, tend to be too long to keep the readers attention. This can be seen when she is listing indigenous languages on page 15, and again on page 27 when she lists the aquatic life damaged by pulp mill and sewage runoff. As a reader, these lists make me lose focus and ignore all the things in the middle. These lists often include both common and scientific names which makes them feel twice as long. Another example of the lists diminishing the effect of the text can be found on page 27: “Being an active and direct player in the ecosystem, at once an observer and a participant, a learner and a teacher, a contributor and a user, can make us sensitive to Earth’s needs and dynamics, to the damage we are doing to the planet and its life”. This quote makes a good point but as soon as I see the commas, I assume Turner is going to begin listing again and almost miss an impactful idea.

Along with Turner’s use of lists, I find that there are too many quotations used throughout the chapters. It is understandable that Turner is trying to keep the words in the original meaning and give due credit to the speakers, but the blocks of quotes every other page are distracting. They often stop or slow the flow of the story. While quotations can be incredibly useful in storytelling, I think Turner overuses them throughout this book.

Turner uses wonderful descriptive language throughout the book. While the language is good, it can be a bit too much at times. The descriptions can overshadow the point Turner is trying to make by forcing the reader to think too hard about what they are being told. For example: “They knew best the possibilities of the plow- that sharp-footed instrument of conversion- that churned and turned the soil and removed the entire constellation if life forms existing in a place to substitute another, seen as more desirable” (pg 34). This line felt forced and far too drawn out. Yes, it tells me all about the plow and how the settlers loved it, but that could have been said in a far more concise manner that could still sound nice.

Overall, Turner tells an amazing and important story, but her writing does not do that story justice. Turner bogs it down with lists and quotations, then tries to bring it together with descriptive language. This combination makes it a slow read, that takes lots of focus to keep from drifting away.

Diamond J. 1999. Guns, germs, and steel. W.W. Norton & Company Inc., New York, New York

Pollan M. 2001. Botany of desire. Random House, Toronto, Canada.

This week’s reading tackled the beast that is artificial selection. Both Diamond and Pollan introduce artificial selection in the attempt to alter the way the reader thinks of the products of the process that are often overlooked. In common language, artificial is used to describe something fake and often carries a negative connotation. Both authors attempt to steer the reader away from that conception of artificial selection.

In Diamonds chapter on artificial selection, there are only two points at which he actually says the words “artificial selection”. Both of these moments are in the final paragraph of the chapter. Throughout the rest of the chapter Diamond refers to domestication instead. Domestication is typically associated with a long standing relationship with a species, from which we both have benefited. Artificial selection, however, carries the weight of an exploitive relationship in which humans are the only ones who benefit. He describes how we have picked up on the process of natural selection and used it to our advantage. As he describes our domestication of plants, Diamond draws our attention to the long standing relationships we have with plants and how it is mutually beneficial. When he puts the words “artificial selection” only at the end, the reader then realizes that he has been discussing this the whole chapter. This almost tricks the reader into forgetting the aversion they may have towards artificial selection until after he has truly explained what those words mean. He leaves it to the reader to then realize that domestication and artificial selection are the same thing.

Pollan, on the other hand, is clear with fact that he is discussing artificial selection but encourages the reader to look at it, not as a “fake” process, but rather one that humans have played a part in. In Pollan’s writing he encourages the reader to think critically about our view that humans are “other” from animals. Pollan, instead, imagines us just like a bee. There to serve the plant just as much as the plant serves us: “All these plants, which I’d always regarded as the objects of my desire, were also, I realized, subjects, acting on me, getting me to do things for them they couldn’t do for themselves.” (Pollan pg xv). Pollan and Diamond both are trying to tell the same story. They are both illustrating the complex relationship we have with plants and how we have cultivated it over generations. They do this differentl,y however, Diamond tends to tell it in the light of human accomplishment, while Pollan tells it from the point of view of the plants. In Pollan’s story we are no more to a plant than a bee is.

Hanson T. 2015. The triumph of seeds. New York: Basic Books. 277.

This book felt pleasantly familiar to me. Thor uses simple words to describe complex topics in a voice that is reminiscent of Lyn’s. The topics Thor discussed were ones I felt fairly knowledgeable about, but he explained them in a way that would be digestible for those not so versed in the topics. If he himself does not have a simple way to explain it, he finds someone else who does. An example of this is the comparison of a seed to “a baby plant in a box with it’s lunch” (pg 9). Of course, this is remarkably similar to Lyn’s voice in my head telling me that a seed is “a baby plant with a winter jacket and a packed lunch”.

This book, though much more technical than the 100-Mile Diet, was just as easy and enjoyable to read. While the 100-Mile Diet prompted an analysis of our eating habits, the information in the Triumph of Seeds left me feeling like I got more from the small part I read. I came away from this reading feeling like I learned something from the things I read.

Thor uses incredibly detailed descriptions to immerse the reader in the story. My personal favourite description is of his desk: “dated from an earlier era, a time when people built office furniture from welded steel, chrome, and double-weight Formica. It was large enough for a fleet of mimeograph machines and teletypes, and heavy enough to withstand the shockwaves of a nuclear attack.” (pg xxii). Thor’s description of the events he finds himself in keeps the reader engaged, even when he begins to go into the more technical parts of the book. He also uses stories to break up the dense knowledge he presents. When he is discussing Mendel’s work, he constantly flashes back to himself planting his own pea plants. This breaks up the dense material and makes it easier to read.

The description of Mendel and his work was something that really stood out to me when reading. Mendel has been a large part of my science education, and to hear of the struggles he went through to be recognized was eye-opening to read. We often think of publications like Mendel’s changing the world immediately, however, Mendel never got to see the effect his work had on our fundamental understanding of life. Ask anyone who studies science who Mendel is and they will not hesitate to explain his work, the work Mendel never had a chance to discuss.