Spontaneously growing carrots

At a corner of my small farm, there are a number of carrots growing completely spontaneously. There were carrots grown there last year, which flowered this spring, have shed seeds and have sowed them around themselves. These carrots are from those seeds.

Those spontaneously grown plants are told to grow well at the place. I don't know how it occurs. It is still well known "mycorrhizial fungi" around the plants are working together with the plants, transferring nutrients from the plants to the fungi while the former accepting such as phosphorus from the latter. That synbiosis is essential for the plants. 

The fungi invades the plants in a way and its genetic information is let in tha latter. They say the genome could be contained in the seeds. That may be why the newly grown plants from those seeds are adapted well to the soil. I was excited to read about this mechanism. Mother nature has provided such a deliberate system.

Hopefully, they will grow and would become materials for dishes this winter. 

If the real world is provided with the same synbiosis for human beings, I wonder if we are living on it or ostracizing, killing each other. 

 

Autumn days

Fall seems to be changing its position to winter very soon. It will get below 10 degrees C early in the morning here in a few days. I am hurried up sowing the seeds of winter/spring vegetables now. In next month, onion seedlings will be planted. Then I will be free from farming for a while.

A couple of days ago, hearing from my brother that they are not very well, I have visited an old couple in a town of 30 minutes drive. The husband, 85 years of age, used to get married to our cousin decades ago, who passed away all of sudden at her pretty young age. She was kind to us and used to often help us for chores starting our residency at a med school almost hal a century ago. When she got serious intracranial bleeding, she was referred to a med school hospital I was working. Being only a pediatrician, I could not do anything for her but just watched how she was tried to be rescued at the ER. It turned out in vain. They have had 3 daughters by then. I recently heard one of their granddaughter had become a med student.

Years have passed when he got remarried with another lady, his present wife. She, a woman of good will and kindness, used to help us with my parents and our kids for years. Since both of us were working busily as doctors, her aid for my old parents and for house chores was really appreciated. 

The husband told he had had complete AV block which urged him to be equipped with heart pacemaker a couple of years ago. He was smiling to tell me it would work for a decade. The wife was more serious with congestive heart failure. She looked rather pale. She said the heart output had been only a fraction of normal. She seemed to get tired easily while doing something. She told me, with faint smile, it won't be too long before she would be called to heaven. 

Both of them have been christians since their young days. It has become difficult for them to attend to a church due to health issues. They have not asked for any help by the local  administration, which I could hardly believe. They have a daughter working a nurse not too far away. It seemed she had been visiting them for help, even though not too often. 

Handed them my cell phone number and mail address, telling them to call me when they need any urgent help, I quit their home, which was beautifully cared for with grass and flowers. I promised them to bring vegetables grown in my garden farm sometime in the near future.

I regretted not having tried to get in touch with this old couple for such a long time. We had been helped so much by them when we needed their help. It is our turn to do so for them. 

And at the same time, I felt both of us were getting into the same chapter of life as they did. Warm autumn days in life won't last too long.

Lying politicians and fascism

The major political party, LDPJ, in our country has elected Sanae Takaichi for its president. She is a direct lineage of former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, in political vision as well as political ethos. Their expansionary fiscal policy with quontitative easing in "another dimension" has ended in total failure, at least in my view. The debt monetization resulted in over 1000 trillion JPY government debt. Half of it has been imposed to the bank of Japan, which makes it quite difficult to do with the ongoing inflation. 

Takaichi is prone to lie in various situations. In politics, they should sometimes keep themseles mute about certain topics which is kind of silent lie. Such lying could be allowable in some cases. In Takaichi's case, she willingly tells lie for her profit. 

Since she has run for office in '90s, her culliculum vitae told she had worked as a congressional fellow in the US in her young days. It has been questioned and, recently, it turned out her name was not in the roster of congressional fellows in the past. When she worked as the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communication, she assumed that a paper published from the ministry had been a fake and, telling that in the House, she even told she would resign not only the minister position but also the Member of the House of the Representatives. However, even after the paper turned out authentic, she never did either. There are plenty of such cases with her. I am afraid such politicians prone to lie for their benefits would lead our country to wrong way.

Nowadays, there are a lot of populism politicians in power all around the world. It seems like a historical process that people are accepting and even applauding them. Brexit was an example and so is the ongoing mess in the Trump administration. In such an age, we should appreciate what Hannah Arendt told about lying and fascism as follows;

 Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, explored how truth can be systematically eroded until people lose the ability to think for themselves. She observed that totalitarianism thrives not through persuasion or conviction, but by breaking the link between words and reality—by turning people into beings for whom truth and falsehood no longer matter.

She noted that the goal of totalitarian education was never to instill belief, but to destroy the very capacity for belief. When people no longer know what to trust, when facts become interchangeable with fiction, the ground of moral judgment collapses.

Arendt wrote:

“This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want.”

Her insight remains unsettlingly relevant. When truth is corroded, it is not replaced by another belief—it is replaced by confusion. And confusion, left unchecked, becomes the perfect soil for control.

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), a German-born historian and philosopher, spent her life examining how freedom is undone not just by violence, but by the quiet decay of truth itself.

Mahler unsuitable for a night cap

Insomnia has been a friend to me. It is told to be a predisposition to be dementia. I could not help worrying about it. Sometimes, sleep pill helps me as already told somewhere in this blog. On the other hand, I am unwilling to take such a med. Then, I listen to some music. Tonight, it was "Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen" by Gustav Mahler. I used to play it twice at different orchestras, once at the university and the other time much later in fifties of age. I always love the last song "Die Zwei blauen Augen". The story of broken heart at the sweetheart's wedding ends with this funeral march. Mahler has composed quite a few funeral marches in various works like this or in the 5th symphony etc. Each is quite impressive. It is well known he has been struggling with own death throughout his life. Through beauty of music, he seems to have pursued the solution of the problem of death. 

After "Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen", there was a few Lieders put in the source. One of them was "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" after a poem by Rueckert. This piece handles directly the problem of death. It sounds like peace which we might arrive at death. I always wonder if he has found any solution or the way to it when he finished the 9th symphony, the culmination of his music activity as a composer.

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTqbTP5qy7k

Anyway, it was not a right choice for a night cap. 

After taking a pill, I may listen to Bach on headset in the darkness. 

Fall potatoes

Potatoes are grown twice in a year. Spring and fall. The fall seed potatoes should have shorter resting period than the spring ones. If the resting period is too long, it would take weeks to have them sprouted. They won't grow before it gets frosty.

This year, I have forgotten purchasing the short resting potatoes. Reluctantly, I have planted some potatoes harvested this spring. They are told to have intermediate range of the resting period. I have chosen those already budding on the surface.

In a couple of weeks, even though I was doubtful it would happen, some of them are sprouting out. Much grass compost around them. Hopefully, they may bear new potatoes by November. I am moved to see new lives are being born as expected.

 

Sweet potatoes have been harvested. Pretty big ones. In a week or so of ripening in the oom air, they will get even sweeter. 

Other winter/spring vegetables like onion, green onion, radish, broccoli chinese cabbage are being planted. The last session of weeding is also done all around the property.

It is too rainy today and not suitable for farming. I would spend the day listening to Bach's keyboard music. A peaceful fall day.

Faure's requiem again

Recently, I have been listening to Faure's requiem before going to sleep. The source is a performance by Orchestre de Paris conducted by Daniel Barenboim. It was recorded in 1974. Barenboim was around 32 years of age then.

As always told, this requiem is fairly lyrical. As if not done with the reality of death. Faure's 2nd son has told in his biographpy that Faure was not concerned about distress of death but was taking death as a blessing to get apart from the world full of anguish. It was an expression of the back side of his pessimism.

This Barenboim's performance sounds a bit different from the usual explanation of this requiem to me. Even though it is basically beautiful, I feel, it is oriented to expression of toughness in death. That impression comes from  rather slow tempo with exaggeration of bass part, especially of the organ. Solemnity due to such perormance sure betrays our preconception for this music. 

I wondered for what young Barenboim had conducted this piece in this way. It was only his 2nd recording with the orchestra. He must have had a definite motivation to choose and  perform this requiem in this way. Bringing an innovation to this music? 

All of sudden, I realized it was a year later than his wife Jacueline du Pres had turned out to have multiple sclerosis. It is a fatally destined illness. Both of them have enjoyed playing chambermusic a few years earlier with their company like Ithzak Perlman,  Pinchas Zuckerman or Zubin Mehta. It has been left as a heavenly pleasant recording somewhere. Through Barenboim getting married with dU Pres, they have spent the happiest time in their lives. But Jacqueline's illness attacked them into abyss of absurdity. It may not be wrong to assume Barenboim has put his thought at that time into this recording. 

This is not the recording I listen to. It was a bit later than that. The same orchestra conducted by Barenboim. Around 1980.

 

 

Barenboim has left remarkable achievements in music. I always admire, in addition to a lot of marvellous performances as a pianist as well as a conductor, his efforts with West Eastern Divan Orchestra to unite Israeli musicians with Palestanians. He has suffered from Parkinsonism himself and is slowly taking his exit from his career as a musician now. What is he thinking of this requiem now?