i missed kathy today

"in crowding phenomenon that applies equally to flocks of birds and sheep,schools of fish, herds of reindeer or gazelle, and fields of cereals. the greater the genetic similarity, the less variation, the greater the likelihood that they will all be vulnerable to the same pathogen." from "against the grain" by james c. scott______________ i read that and kathy was standing over my shoulder saying " i told you that a dozen years ago "...which she did...oh, she'd be unhappy with me on a number of levels...then again, if she was still here things might be different...there are moments when i am forcibly reminded of how much she mattered to me...no doubt there are many others...i was part of her "gypsy traffic" and she impacted us all.

life goes on

my good friend kathy passed away nine years ago today...and looking though my past posts i find i did not mark the anniversary last year which strikes me as being fairly human and disturbing at once...i loved kathy very dearly...she could be exceptionally focused and profoundly serious when in academic mode...and she could be chatty and goofy and, at times, very vulnerable...especially to criticism from students...okay...she got to be human like everyone else...still miss the chats...still think of her...particularly when teocintli comes up...which, if you have paid attention, is a lot of the time around here...i don't feel badly about missing a year...life goes on and i am human too...stuff comes up...still miss the girl...hang tough kathy...maybe we will cross paths again sometime.

3 october 2009

this blog began a decade ago on this date mostly as a record of an experimental garden on the campus of indiana university northwest...

it was intended as an exercise in what dr. kathy forgey ( who never let me call her kathy...but whom i did not call dr. forgey either...she did tell me we were friends so i will take the liberty of referring to her as kathy from here on ) termed as "experimental archaeology" which was to explore why staple crops in agriculture are mostly annuals as opposed to perennials with the working hypothesis that annuals were more productive per unit of farmed area...more bang for the buck...greater return on work...

we grew wheat, spuds, asparagus, chinese yams, jerusalem artichokes, cow peas, tomatoes, and toecintli and eastern gamagrass as representatives of the ancestry of maize...and found that perennials, especially tubers, were every bit as productive as annuals in terms of return on work...so the hypothesis shifted to group mobility...annual seed is easier to transport than perennial tubers and root stock

unfortunately with the untimely passing of kathy and diane cutler of the i u northwest physical plant ( of whom i cannot seem to find a photo anywhere ) the garden was left in the hands of less sympathetic elements and met its demise in 2014...these things happen...i moved some the observations to the i u northwest community garden however i found that environment too open to ( unintended ) interference by outsiders so i moved most of it to my back yard yard which shifted the focus from the experimental to a look at everyday food...

i still grow maize ( left ) and teocintli ( northern tepehaun on the right )...

just to compare ( and be geeked by ) the morphology of the ancestor/descendant...

and i still grow wheat ) this year's crop of hard red winter wheat is sprouting and rooting away ) in a quest to see if i can produce enough grain to make bread from scratch...

all this gardening has brought the weather and the climate into a better focus...i pay a lot more attention to it..and how the plants behave because of it...and the insects and the birds...i am in the process of becoming native to my back yard because of it...not quite there yet...i know and see more than i did...it is a more complex process than i would have thought...doubtlessly more to learn...

all this gardening has me thinking about the food in the supermarket...how it is produced and where it come from...what's in it...and it has me paying more attention to what i eat...fortunately i live in a suburban/rural nexus and i can roam about nearby fields to have a firsthand look at industrial food's feed stock at its source ( these soy beans are nearly ready to harvest...if the rain stops )...

and all the above mentioned rain has had an impact on the industrial season..it is still standing in fields...

there is some dense yellow # 2 corn out there although most of the planted fields are in beans...

just as many are fallow and muddy...

while a few have been planted in a late crop of sunflowers...whether this is for harvest or simply ground cover is something i do not know...it seems late for a harvest...and if the rain holds up that may be moot at any rate...so it has been a decade of failures and successes...gains and some awfully painful losses...closer attention to elemental facets of life and a learning curve that becomes steeper and shallower depending on what i am looking at and how well cognition is functioning on a given day...four things i have learned for certain...all perennials are invasive, solanine from the nightshades ( potato and carolina horse nettle fruits ) makes my hands itch, teocintli plants look remarkably like maize even if their ears are not exact matches, and bees are very important critters...the rest is up in the air.

6 november 2010

seven years isn't what it used to be when i was younger...still...it seems longer since i last saw kathy...she was an educator who cared...who became a mentor...who turned into a friend ( i know we were...she told me )...and i miss my friend..and her humor..and intellect...and support...and input...and gentle criticism ("i'm reigning you in for your own good!")...if you knew her you miss her too..i am not alone in this...peace kathy...take good care.

five years

it's been five years since my friend died...i know we were friends because she told me so...i suspect she tried to be friends with virtually everyone...but i am content to have been part of her "gypsy traffic"...contemporaries in age and with some common experiences we found a lot to talk about...an instructor turned friend...happens sometimes...do i miss her? most days...but particularly when i am in the garden...and there still is a garden on campus...with some of the same perennials we were doing research on...so there are still bits and pieces of kathy on campus...for how long, who knows? even if that goes i still have teosinte in the back yard...she would have liked that...i could give her fresh seed to try to pop like popcorn. http://gardenengineer.blogspot.com/2009/12/this-is-mentors-are-for.html take good care kathy...it would be nice to see you again someday...peace.

four years

kathy never failed to make me feel special...i must have been a nuisance at times...i never hesitated to load up her email in box...but she always answered...ill or not...it may have taken time but she never scolded me or told me to back off...she could ( and was ) be as over the top on things as i can be and...at times...we fed off on another...i wasn't the only one she made feel like the center of attention...i have run across a few people who felt the same way...and part of that was she liked the attention too...she enjoyed the reciprocity and that was just fine with me..she loved to have lots of people around...when i once told her that there were times i just wanted to be let alone she responded...with some incredulity...that she never wanted to be alone and that she loved the "gypsy traffic" that moved through her home..i got to be part of that gypsy traffic and i am grateful for the opportunity...four short years that seem a lot longer at times...take good care kathy...miss you.

vc

i never called kathy kathy when she was with us...her sense of professional ethics wouldn't allow it...even though i was around two years older than she i was still an undergraduate student and there were boundaries she was unwilling to cross...she told me verbally and in a number of emails that she thought of me more as a friend than a student so after her passing i presumed to put us on a first name basis...not that i called her dr. forgey while she was here...we had nicknames for one another...mine came first and is irrelevant...she was "morning glory" for a bit after a phrase in an email exchange but she said that sounded "too sweet" and wanted something more in line with her feisty character...i don't really know if vc is feisty...but it's the name that stuck...it came from one of her extremely rare typos...she had just sent me a draft slathered in red bullets ( and, invariably, the last red bullet would say "good work"...just so i wouldn't be despondent over revisions ) and in the covering emails she said " maybe you should call me 'vc' for vicious slave driver "...she caught and acknowledged the typo in her next email but smart ass that i am i hammered the nickname home...she was gracious and accepted it, signing off with it in every following email right up to the one she sent me the day she died ( which, by the way, ended with the phrase "get back to work" )...last year i said the sting had faded a bit...maybe i was distracted by other events...not so this year...i still have friends i value a great deal among her colleagues and i am grateful for them...but this still smarts three years later...take good care kathy...would seriously like to see you again one day.