Clik here to view.
On the Creation of an Urban Tree Canopy Management Plan for Redmond, Oregon
Trees can be a defining element of a community as a ‘success’ story, a failure or somewhere in-between. A community’s trees are of it, not some separate amenity provided by the City. Ideally, just as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Political Chaos, Wildfire and Drought: We have a choice, but not a lot of time
I don’t usually repost what I’ve put on my FB page, but the world just keeps getting crazier politically, so much so that our new reality is being lost in the chaos. Now is not the time to give up. As...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tree Planting Problems at Dry Canyon Village
The reversion on this competing leader threatens to dominate the canopy if not removed. The planting appears good, straight trunk, well staked. It is always what is below ground, that is not readilly...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet, My Thoughts...
Had I not read Ben Goldfarb’s 2018 book, “Eager”, I probably wouldn’t have picked this one up. Why would I want to read an entire book on ‘roadkill’? But I trusted him. And so I read it. I found his...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Emperor of all Maladies: Mukherjee’s look into Our Relationship with Cancer
Siddartha Mukherjee’s first book, “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer”, is the third of his I’ve read. My interest earlier, and still, remains in understanding the biology of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
On Rediscovering the World We’ve Been Ignoring: An Introduction to the Life...
Science is the study of life and the world around us, an exploration of the reality of the universe conducted from different ‘directions’ with the intent of understanding its endless aspects. Today,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death”, a Review and Thoughts on...
I begin this post in my usual way of attempting to incorporate the science presented in Lane’s book into my own understanding of life. That’s what I do through the first portions of this piece. Then I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
On Biology, Ecology, Evolution: Health as a Product of an Engaged Life Aided...
Biology, the ‘life sciences’, botany, evolution, cell biology, ecology, health and disease, plant communities, our relationship as humans with each other, geology and the life around us, are all topics...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Good Virus, A Review and Thoughts About the Necessity of an Informed Public
Every book tells a story, even the driest academic tome…or rather, utilizes the form of a story. Humans communicate through story. It’s how we give some communicable ‘form’ to our thoughts which we can...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Seat of Awareness: On Plants and What We can Learn from Them
“From the viewpoint of the evolutionary biologist it is reasonable to assume that the sensitive, embodied actions of plants and bacteria are part of the same continuum of perception and action that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
On Ornamental Trees and the Remaking/Unmaking of Place: Revising the City of...
How Much to Water? Recommending trees from climates with significantly wetter growing seasons needs to stop if we are to continue growing our population. Landscapes as designed, and managed, are the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Gene: An Intimate History, a Review
I finished reading Siddhartha Mukherjee’s book from 2016, “The Gene: An Intimate History”, a dense, engaging book, written in a prose style, conversational, thorough, accessible and personal,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, a Review and Look Into its...
Long ago I took a couple philosophy classes at U of O; one on existentialism, in which we read several novels and discussed their themes; and another, an upper division, class on ethics, because I was...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human, A Review
The cell is the basic, irreducible, unit of life. Whether an organism is animal, plant, fungal or bacterial, the cell is its basic unit. While it can be broken down into its ‘parts’ for examination,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Way of the Cell: Molecules, Organisms and the Order of Life – A Review...
I’m an integrator, a contextual learner and a big picture kind of guy. I am willing to ‘slog’ through the details, the analyses of experts, to understand what is going on, when the details help me...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Every Life is on Fire: How Thermodynamics Explains the Origins of Living...
This is a book about ‘life’, that which animates particular organic structures, organisms, absent from other ‘structures’ which remain fixed, but for the physical and chemical forces which wear them...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Review and thoughts on Peter Hoffmann’s book, “Life’s Ratchet: How...
This is a relatively technical book, one whose title, with its definite mechanistic spin, nearly stopped me from reading it. In this Hoffmann begins with a history of science and how we have looked at...
View Article“Entangled Life: How Fungi Make our Worlds, Change our Minds & Shape our...
Sheldrake, Melvin, “Entangled Life: How Fungi Make our Worlds, Change our Minds & Shape our Futures”, Random House, 2020. I have spent most of my life outside amongst, growing, observing or...
View ArticleClik here to view.
On the Chaotic Unreality of the Real and How We Redefine It: Reimagining...
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, The Grand Odalisque. Ingres was a Neo-Classicist, who attempted to create images that mimicked ‘reality’ even as it distorted it for effect, lengthening her spine and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Every Life is on Fire: How Thermodynamics Explains the Origins of Living...
This is a book about ‘life’, that which animates particular organic structures, organisms, absent from other ‘structures’ which remain fixed, but for the physical and chemical forces which wear them...
View Article
