Hatred to Microsoft and the earliest memory in my life

My camera is not recognized by the PC when I try to import pictures into it. I am trying to fix it with no success yet. When I inadvertently introduced the application of One Drive of Microsoft, everything seems to have started malunctioning. Deleting One Drive is not easy and could cause problems with previously imported pictures. Damn Microsoft!!

That's why I have not uploaded some new photos yet. When the problem is fixed, a number of posts will be up here.

This is a picture painted by a Russianm, Ivan Shishkin, in late 19th century. Already uploaded it in facebook. It sure reminded me of the sanatorium, which used to exist at this place. I was born and spent early childhood, and later latter half of my life. Among pine trees, there were small cottages for tuberculosis patients. My aunt has established it in the WWII in based on belief in Christianity when tuberculosis was not treatable and a fatal illness. Poor patients have gathered that sanatorium from all over the country. No effective medicine and no doctor at the facility. A few doctors used to visit there in certain interval. Maybe, I have already mentioned about it before.

My parents have known each other there and married when my father has come from the service in the military. We, three of siblings, were born there. My very first memory in my life is the hymn sung by the patients and the staff in acapella coming through the pine trees. It was breezy as well. Otherwise, only doves were sometimes singing. A very quiet and serene place.

At age 4 or 5 years, I have moved to Tokyo together with the rest of the family. The life in Tokyo is totally another story. I still fondly recall the life spent among the pine trees. It is literally the base of my life.

I have forgotten to mention why I wanted to upload this painting with my own memory. As I often wrote, I had been working in the farm garden in the most hours in the daytime, if not long enough like a real farmer. I know our children or any others won't be able to keep this property when I ceased working here in the near future. It was a kind of anxiety for me. However, now recalling of this pine tree forest, I am sure this place is destined to back to such a forest. Hopefully, it would be so peaceful and comfortable to visitors as it used to be, if any. Beyond my life, of course, it is of no use to worry as for own property or anything belonging to me in this world. 

A pine tree forest with gentle breeze coming through. Only doves singing in deep voice are echoing... Imagining of that, I am again captured by peaceulness. This painting has lead me to that consciousness. 

 

 

Harrell playing Arpeggione sonata

Lynn Harrell at a recital in Tokyo. It might be, judging from the stage and reflective board on the back, at the small hall of Tokyo Bunkakaikan in Ueno around 1980. A video of a program by NHK, possibly.

I have never listened to him in his young days. A true virtuoso. He played effortlessly such a difficult piece as Arpeggione sonata by Schubert. That piece should be played like a humming piece sung at a downtown street in Wien. His cello sounds like that.

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

Tokyo Bunkakaikan is an old concert halls facility which is close to my mother school. It is located at a corner of Ueno park next to the Ueno station. The park was a walk place for me in student days. I used to attend there for a various concerts then. In my jr. high days, I was a regular member of Tokyo Philharmonic with my father for a while. It was in '60s. Still a lot of fond memories. Harrell, seemingly warm hearted person, has died 4 years ago. I seldom visit that concert hall and even Tokyo now. Time has passed.

GAZA 2035 project

I have heard that, if Trump takes the seat of POTUS, his son would be involved in the development of Gaza, nearly 90% destroyed and more than 30K Palestenians killed, into a resort area. I felt nauseous at it. Does this news mean that?

 

 https://www.thenation.com/article/world/gaza-2035-aec-neom-saudi/?fbclid=IwY2xjawGSJD5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHfAt8tA-p9JHV_L5ULRY0Fc9KhCnCBK3uHUcRmJ6ule_GLp8b6FK5XU3Xg_aem_V0EqF33t8T0rJgTDwsrJVQ

I don't think such a project would come true. It would become a cause of further and more massive conflict. 

I still recall that a lot of industries in the US have been involved in the reconstruction in Afghan and Iraq after war. The biggest one was a division of Halliburton which was managed by the former vice president of Bush administration, Dick Cheney. 

The US still exports arms to Israel. I heard that it had been amounted up to 20 billion  USD. I know it has all started by the Hamas attack last fall. But Israeli counterattack has reached the level of ethnic cleansing as this report says. Endorsement and support to Israel by the US seem to aggravate the situation. If some faction of the US should be involved in this horrible project in the Middle East, it would leave incurable injury in the area and the faith in the US might fall down on the ground, I am afraid.

A missing comment

Scrolling down the previous posts in this blog, I found a comment by John AC4CA to a post regarding music of Piazzolla. Just did it by chance. It was a short but still considerate comment. I have mistaken reading it. Very sorry for that. It was 2017. As already written, he has had his wife in a facility due to her Alzheimer and was living alone at home. Whenever we met on the radio, we talked about music which we were playing as well as listening. He loved playing piano and said Chopin was his favorite. In each conversation, again not long enough but very impressive, I felt, even though he had lived a solitary life at home, he had himself fullfilled with ham radio, birdwatching or music. Of course, seeing his wife Jackie at the facility as well.

I should have talked to him more, especially on how he has grown up. He told little about such a thing. Suffering from neuroendocrine tumor, which has become treatment resistent year by year, and having his wife in a facility as told above, he must concentrate on the life at present. No room to recollect the past, I believe. 

How has he felt on Piazzolla? I have lost the chance to ask about it to him. Sorry but there have been full of such mistakes in life. He has passed in Feb 2023.

One of my Piazzolla's favorites. Already uploaded in a past post. 

I would ask anyone who would give me a comment in this blog as follows. I am trying to answer every comment and please be patiently waiting for that. If you have not got any answer from me, it could never be anything other than my mistake. Please identify youself in a way we both could understand if possible. If you are new to me, add that in your comment. Any comments will be much appreciated. 

On a rainy day

Having posted on poor growth of sweetpotatoes at a field last month, I found there were a little bit better harvest of sweetpotatoes in the other fields recently, despite of apparently overgrowth of the vine. It is always miraculous how they grow and are cropped. Before it gets too cool, the rest should be cropped. I should go on working hard in the farm.

Plants of taro are ready to be harvested as well. Potatoes, spinach, broccoli or carrots are growing. They may be harvested by Dec. 

The global warming is becoming closer to us. The summer vegetables have been affected by it. I have seen several vlogs of farmers who complain of poor harvest of summer veggies. They have been sold at higher prices at store. The fall/winter vegetables should be planted, they say, a week or two later than ususal. It seems the winter is coming quicker than before. The summer has been directly taken over to the winter. No long break of fall this year. 

Early in this hot summer, rice was run out at stores. There are a number of reasons why it has occurred. One of them was the relative crop failure due to the abnormally high temperature last summer. The price of rice has risen even by 50%. That high cost is still carried on despite newly harvested rice is in the market now. The cost of rice has been kept irrationally low. Rice farmers have had hard time with the cost for years. On the other hand, the main food for people in our country, rice, should be reasonable. It is an issue that politics should handle with. It should be argued at the other post.

I would point out that the government is trying to replace rice plants to a new spieces or its crossbred descendants. It is a newly developed one which absorbs Cadmium, Cd, much less than previous old spieces. 

As a researcher in agriculture says, there is an area which is polluted with Cd. The national agricultural research center has developed a new rice spieces, which irradiation of heavy particle beam inactivated the gene responsible for absorption of Cd. They are trying to replace the ordinary species to this new one or its descendants. Cd pollution is limited only certain areas in our country. The new species has another serious defect. It is genetically lowered in absorption of another mineral Mn. Mn has an important role in in photosynthesis as well as resilience against pathogens. When this new species is grown, they should add Mn as a fertilizer component. Relative Mn deficit could cause growth issue and liability for infections. Those new species might not grow well in global warming. 

Irradiation could damage the other genes unknown yet. It may cause the other serious issues. Natural selection occurs in a long time scale. Our ancestors have chosen species which work well for us. Artificial gene manipulation with irradiation could result in "magnificient" failure in the future. 

Why do they popularize this new species of rice in our country? To get more money! The farmers, subsequently the consumers of such rice, should pay for the pantent. There should be other factors involved in this new rice species. They are invariably related with money!

OK, that's about it. Even though I won't renew posts so often, I am getting along fine. Today, the rain has kept me indoor and let me write this post.  

Excessive vine growth of sweet potato and a dish of the hypertrophied vine

Plants' growth are told to divide two phases, nutritional growth and reproductive growth. In the former phase, a plant grows individually at its trunk, vine or leaves. In most cases, the latter phase follows it. It leaves crops or fruits. 

The former growth is accelerated with meteological factors and low carbon/nitrogen ratio in the soil. High nitrogen from too much fertilizer is often a cause of this phenomenon.

In the excessive vine growth with the sweet potatoes, the latter, that is, too much fertilizer won't be the cause. Regardless of the remnant amounts of fertilizer, it has occurred in the same manner at different fields. Another evidence that the weather, most likelily the hot spell in the past spring/summer, may be the fact some of Marie Gold planted at different places of the garden, of course, without any fertilizer has shown the same excessive growth of the trunk/leaves. They have bloomed very few flowers. The typical case is shown in the following photo. The two trunks have grown large in unusual way while some flowers are out in the other few plants. I have never seen this overgrowth in the past.  

This is only a hypothesis that global warming is influencing our tiny garden/farm. But we should be careful about such a thing. We are the crops brought by the reproductive growth of the crops. If those crops grow only in the nutritional growth but not in the reproductive growth, it may cause famine.

Last night, I have cooked the overgrown vine of sweet potatoes with chicken as this photo shows. My wife at first prejudiced that it could have been like a menu people used to cook in the war time without much food. But she was pretty happy at this dish when it was cooked. This recipe was published by a lady in Shikoku, my wife's birth place, as an old one from ancestors.    

 

Failure of sweet potato growth

It is the time to harvest sweet potatoes now. As a conclusion, the crop was not very good this year. 

Excessive vine growth has occurred. They say it is due to excessive fermentation and/or too much rain. One of the fields was due to hyperalimentation due to the remnant of fertilizer for the previous vegetable. I am not sure what has brought the problem at the other fields. A climate issue? It is beyond my capability to avoid this excessive growth in such a case.

Some of the poorly grown fruits were bitten by bugs. Vegetables or generally any plants have a system of immunity against such infestation of insects. Those subnormally grown ones are liable to the problem. 

The other day, I was surprised to know, in the case of famine or of war involving our country, our government had a plan to have golf course or school grounds converted to farm and to grow sweet potatoes. The self sufficiency rate of food is only 38% now. Considering of importing the farming materials like fertilizer and its resources or seeds etc, it drops below 10%. This fact has not well known to the people. The government won't do with this subtle crisis without such a terrible plan to grow sweet potatoes. 

As my experience with growing sweetpotatoes this year tells, it is not easy for amateur instant farmers to grow such as sweet potatoes which is told to be a rather easy crop. I would propose the administration officers/politicians to grow sweetpotatoes at the garden of the Diet by themselves.

Now some people are aware of this issue but still only a minority. Food security issue is going on in our country in subtle and serious way.

The over grown sweet potatoes's vine.