Tales of Other Worlds

Joined by filaments of fungi, the roots can share nutrients and water with their nearby neighbors and offspring according to choice and need. Grouping different species with varying strengths and weaknesses allows them to help each other. The implications of this cooperation are important for forestry companies that need to restore clearcuts in the most economical way and for the government agencies tasked with maintaining healthy forests and parks.

To balance the meticulous details of her scientific work, Simard intersperses the story of her personal life: marriage, children, a cancer diagnosis, a discovery about her sexuality.  There is also the history of her timber family, along with photos, that goes back several generations.

In the 1980s and 90s Simard was a young woman working in a man’s business, and the reception her revolutionary insight received was the one we can all imagine.  The idea that the forest was an entity that cooperated and shared among its parts was not an idea important men could take seriously.  They didn’t care that this had been the indigenous view for centuries.

Success is slow in coming.  Although there have been many scientific articles, speeches, YouTubes, letters in support, despite the fact that her findings have been replicated and enlarged by scientists all over the world, despite seeing that her test plots flourish while theirs decline, timber companies are still enamored of monoculture, the clear cut, and herbicides. 

To learn more about Simard’s work you can join the group she founded, the Mother Tree Project, directed at furthering research and keeping the general public informed.  Look for them at http://mothertreeproject.org

It’s a surprise that it was written by a woman. I think of Japan as male dominated, authoritarian and aggressive. But those qualities come from a later period which was controlled by the samurai and martial arts. During this earlier time, the Heian, culture and fine arts were most important and their influence is seen in the softer traditions of Japan: beautiful silks, woodblocks, the koto, haiku, cherry blossoms.

Genji is a story of court life.  Followers of The Crown will recognize the many prescribed rituals and traditions, the intense interest in pedigree, the jockeying for position, the jealousy and intrigue. Genji, the emperor’s son by someone other than his wife, is the most beautiful and brilliant of all, but cannot be the heir.  He is so beautiful that people wish he were a woman, a concept typical of the time when male and female beauty were not so differentiated as now. 

Genji, like all the nobility, excels at the arts. He writes poetry, sings, dances, and plays the flute.  Also like others in his position, he is a master of the art of seduction. The first section of the manuscript deals with his many pursuits, repeatedly describing the women and his affairs in detail.

From our 21^st century point of view, Genji’s morals are deplorable.  He pursues married women, including those married to his relatives, one to his father; he is interested in beautiful little girls.  Although he is willing to “wait” he adopts and grooms them.  He knows he is very attractive and acts accordingly.  But, the author tells us, he is very good to his women – gives them presents, cares for them in need, is kind and respectful.  It was a different time and place and I had to keep reminding myself not to judge the shining prince by current standards.  There is no tone of disapproval in the novel.

Why bother to read this?  The repetitious plot becomes tiresome; there is a huge confusing list of characters; the book is about 1200 pages.  But there is so little literature that shows life from a thousand years ago.  The picture of the Japanese aristocracy that emerges is vivid and detailed; it is a window into a time long gone. Many of the book’s themes are current today: the impermanence of youth, love, and beauty; choosing between a marriage of love or one leading to advancement; the secondary role of women.  It is a classic often referred to in literature and art.

One thing to do is look at Project Gutenberg (a website that allows anyone to read classics online for free) and choose a few chapters.  It uses the translation by Arthur Waley which was the first in the Western world. This will be enough to get the flavor of the wonderful descriptions and poetry:

A child’s guardian, who is ill, looks at her fondly and recites: ‘Not knowing if any will come to nurture the tender leaf whereon it lies, how loath is the dewdrop to vanish in the sunny air.’ To which the waiting-woman replied with a sigh: ‘O dewdrop, surely you will linger till the young budding leaf has shown in what fair form it means to grow.’

“When love is unrequited, it becomes a bittersweet melody that echoes through the soul.”

“In the garden the natural vegetation of the hill-side had been turned to skilful use. There was no moon, and torches had been lit along the sides of the moat, while fairy lanterns hung on the trees… A heavy perfume of costly and exotic scents stole from hidden incense-burners and filled the room with a delicious fragrance.” 

When Chief Elmore is called to investigate a suicide on a nearby farm, he sees right away what the sheriff, a good old boy whose limit is dealing with feisty teenagers, cannot.  This is a murder and the victim’s wife and son are missing.  Around the same time, he learns that a convict on death row has escaped.

The setting is rural Arkansas and the author, who lived there, has a very sure way of creating his characters and setting. This evocation of community is one of the strongest parts of the novel. At the end, we hate to leave his perceptive college educated deputy Ricky and his young family; Elmore’s good looking wife Ellen Mae, loving, loyal and unsure of herself; his first love Grace, who married someone else when he was too long getting home from the war;  his car obsessed teenage boys.

The time of this novel is November 1963 and a third story (but not a murder) involves civil rights activism in the South.  Chief Elmore did not like President Kennedy and the novel offers some basis for that.  We hear about state troopers preparing for Kennedy’s visit after he leaves Dallas.

This mystery is not as “cosy” as I like; the murders are graphic and corpses detailed.  I prefer my murder off stage.  But it is a page turner!