https://qz.com/1327183/this-teeny-tiny-fern-may-hold-a-key-to-lowering-global-temperatures
Day 1 (DDRD 2,465) July 31, 2024
Read to page 48.
I was planning on going back to the T.H. Huxley essays after my Hal Clement mission, but then this
arrived in my library holds, and (1) I remembered how interested I'd been in this book when I heard an NPR interview with Zoë Schlanger, and (2) I said to my Self, "Self, don't you see that this book is going to sit on your shelf unread until the renewals run out, and then youre going to return it, hyman intact?"
And I had to admit that I had me there. So I thought, "What if I make this my next DDR?
So I did.
290 total pages, so not a major commitment. But even though I found the subject matter very interesting, it only took a page or two for me to realize that I was not fond of Zoë Schlanger's writing style. She's way too inclined to purple her prose, and occasionally makes odd & off-putting syntactical choices. But I pushed through that, not being anxious to throw in the trowel.
Happened upon some interesting new (for me) words, such as
In biological phylogenetics, a clade (from Ancient Greek κλάδος (kládos) 'branch'), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group,[1] is a grouping of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree.[2] In the taxonomical literature, sometimes the Latin form cladus (plural cladi) is used rather than the English form.[citation needed] Clades are the fundamental unit of cladistics, a modern approach to taxonomy adopted by most biological fields.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clade
And there were some decidedly intriguing sentences and phrases, such as "...ferns can remotely interfere with other ferns' sperm." (13)
Mention was made on pages 42 and 43 of perusing old botanical texts. One is the work of Charles Germain de Saint Aubin, who "began the book as a teenager in 1721, painting one page at a time, and adding to it until he died in 1786." (43) Can you imagine that kind of perseverance? Here's a sample of his work:
Day 2 (DDRD 2,466) August 1, 2024
Read to page ? Dunno. Definitely past 78, the goal for today. But my power went out and I read by waning sunlight until I lost consciousness. But tomorrow I'll read to at least 108. Deal? Deal.
Here's a small example of what irritates me about Schlanger's prose style: as she steps off the porch in the early morning, she says that she "ankled out like a deer...." (53) My first thought was, "That's an awkward phrase...and it gives me no image whatsoever." Not to mention that ankle is exclusively a noun. But I decided to check myself on that, and lo and behold, according to the OED, ankled was a verb form.
OED also supplied this information: How common is the adjective ankled?
Fewer than 0.01 occurrences per million words in modern written English.
Not sure where the "adjective" bit came from, but it's pretty clear that I'm not the only one unfamiliar with the phrase "ankled out."
Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it just strikes me as overly cute and more than a bit pretentious. It chaffes my butt a bit.
Another bit of "style" that irritated me: "But at that point, plant behavior was emaciated of funding yet again." (86)
Read to page 108.
BTW, last night when I abandoned my house (which was emaciated of electricity), I walked to my sister's house to charge my phone and soak up a little air conditioning. (My house was also emaciated of cool air.) While waiting, and so as not to disturb sis, who was watching something about a prison break on Netflix, I borrowed one of her books (passed on to her by my mom), Isaac Asimov's The New Intelligent Man's Guide to Science. I started reading the Forward by Someone Whose Name I've Since Forgotten...oh, wait a minute, I forgot that it's the 21st Century. Google, Google, toil and troobles.... Ahem. I started reading to Forward by George W Beadle, a Nobel Prize winner. And you'll never guess who Mr. Beadle mentioned in his Forward. Yep, Thomas Henry Huxley. So okay, universe, I can take a hint. After I finish this plant book, it's back to THH. Thanks for letting me know.
Day 4 (DDRD 2,468) August 3, 2024
Ok, OK. Enough already.
Read to page 140.
Ok, OK. Enough already.
Day 5 (DDRD 2,469) August 4, 2024
Read to page 170.
Footnote on page 156 states "about 44 percent of all farm workers are poisoned by pesticides every year." The text itself on this page notes that "as many as 11,000 farm workers are fatally poisoned by pesticides each year, and another 385 million are severely poisoned but don't die, to say nothing of the birth defects, breathing disorders, and other long term health impacts of constant exposure to the stuff."
Come to think of it...there are a lot of significant lessons to be drawn from this book: on how we view migrant workers (see above), on sexuality (some plants can change their sexuality, others have both sexes, etc.), on interconnectedness and interdependence, on respect for those not of the same species as Pozzo. It's all here in this book about plants. Though I still wish an editor had taken a lint roller to Schlanger's prose.
Day 6 (DDRD 2,470) August 5, 2024
Read to page 209.
Speaking of Schlanger's prose...
"I STEPPED OFF my long flight to Santiago, Chile, and boarded the second for the last leg of the trip." (174)
A simple sentence, but its just a bit awkward to me. For one thing, you step off your airplane, not your FLIGHT. For another thing, she boarded the second PLANE for the last leg of the trip. Small stuff, for sure, but it strikes me as either clumsy or, even worse, affected.
And ¡Ta Da! Rupert Sheldrake & His Morphogenic Field takes the stage for a quick bow. That would be an interesting follow-up to this book, but no, I don't want to be haunted by the Ghost of T. H. Huxley Past any more. Sorry, Rupert. Maybe another time.
(HowEVER...I would be remiss if I didn't note that a book Mr. Sheldrake wrote with theologian Matthew Fox, The Physics of Angels, is available for free here:
https://archive.org/details/physicsofangelse0000foxm_t9p2/page/n9/mode/1up. Just sayin', sir.)
Day 7 (DDRD 2,471) August 6, 2024
Read to page 240.
"Sunflowers are known allelopathics, meaning that they will secrete chemicals into the soil when resources are low to stop the germination of seedlings of other plants. As such, sunflowers are often good guards against invading weeds in garden patches." (211)
"Our environment...is inextricable from who we become, and who our children become." (The Light Eaters, 219)
Day 8 (DDRD 2,472) August 7, 2024
Read to page 290, The End. My lack of love for Schlanger's style really became problematic in the last 20 pages or so thus book. She became strident and repetitive...just like a run of the mill propagandist. She even slipped into a "I am saved, you are damned" * moment:
"I've stepped beyond that gate. I have faith that others can too." (256)
Well.
So all in all an interesting book, but it took me some effort not to be dissuaded from finishing it because of the writer. I think it was worth hanging in there, but I'm anxious to read more on the subject of plants from someone else...like Merlin Sheldrake, maybe.
