Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

I wanted to tell one of those little vignettes of urban life that I rarely write here. It happened to me last week during the run-up to Seafair, when all Seattle goes especially crazy about everything to do with the water. I was driving my 6-year old son and his friend from lunch at Mioposto to Seward Park, where we planned to hike and swim (it was a hot day).

I drove up to a four way stop intersection in a nice quiet Mt. Baker residential neighborhood and stopped the car. There was another car coming to my left which promptly drove, without stopping, through the stop sign going at least 30 mph. I promptly honked my horn to let them know they’d missed the sign. The car’s occupants began shouting like they were at a rock concert which revealed that they were two young women. As I turned in the same direction as they’d driven, I could see that they’d stopped the car in the middle of the street and were flashing what resembled gang signs out of their sun roof (my son later told me that though I hadn’t paid close attention to this particular part of the incident). The driver exited the car and began shouting at me though happily she didn’t attempt to approach my car. I shouted to her that she’d missed the stop sign. Their reply was hoots of derision. So I honked the car at them to get moving so we could end the farce/fiasco. They stayed put in their car in an act of petulant defiance. I honked some more (OK, I never claimed I was a total innocent in this mess). Finally they drove on.

Being pissed off, and believing that future driving like this could land them in prison or the hospital, I called 911 to report the stop sign that they’d run. I was beginning to give the officer the license plate and location of the incident when, a block later, still driving behind them, I saw a small dog in the street. Instead of slowing down, stopping, or swerving aside they drove right past the dog. Just as they reached it, the poor thing moved toward the car. I don’t even know if the creature knew the car was there. The car plowed into the dog, which bounced off the front wheel howling in pain as it rolled several times away from the car.

I was still on the phone with the 911 dispatcher and said without skipping a beat: “And I can’t believe they just ran over a dog.” That got the dispatcher’s interest. They sent out a police officer.

To their credit (the only credit you’ll hear me give them regarding this entire incident), the girls (they looked to be about 18 or so and African American and also appeared to have just come from, or were going to the beach–probably watching Seafair) did pull their car over. Part of me wonders whether another reason they might’ve done so is the dog’s owners were also African-American though that may be churlish on my part. As I pulled past them, I said: “Nice driving” (again perhaps not my finest hour). The driver looks suitably chastened by what she’d done. Somehow, I wish she’d been just a little bit chastened by running the stop sign. I wondered how chastened she might’ve felt if she’d run that sign with my van right in the middle of the intersection and plowed right into me with my two child passengers.

The 911 dispatcher said the only way they could take any action against the driver was if the dog owner wished to press charges. Otherwise, there was nothing they could do about either running the stop sign or injuring the dog. I hope to God neither I nor any other Seattle driver or pedestrian ever encounters them driving this way again. But with such callous disregard for traffic laws and life, what are the odds?

Blue Angels in formation at Seafair (Richard Silverstein)

We Jews know about tribes and tribal gatherings. But what happens when you live among a tribe but don’t feel yourself a full fledged member? Then tribal gatherings can be alternately strange and fascinating. Take Seattle’s Seafair. Fifty years ago, Seattle was a real burg. Once known for its lumber and fishing industries, it did have Boeing and several large military bases as mainstays of the local economy, but little else. This was before Microsoft; before Amazon; before Starbucks; before biotechnology.

Remember when Richard Nixon killed the huge Supersonic Transport (SST) project in 1972, which Boeing had counted on as its production mainstay? The company responded by laying off thousands of workers. And there were no other major industries to take up the slack. The joke going the rounds was: “Will the last person to leave Seattle turn off the lights.” That was then. Though Seafair predated the death of the SST, it was created in a similar context.

The city fathers felt they needed to dream up a way to put Seattle on the map. Why not take advantage of one of Seattle’s prime attractions: the water. Thus began Seafair, Seattle’s summertime festival.

Here’s how the Seafair website describes it:

In the half century since Seafair was launched, the city that Seafair helped put on the map has matured from adolescence to adulthood. When Seafair debuted, the Seattle area was without major league sports teams, a symphony or the Seattle Center. Seattle was hungry for national recognition and attention and Seafair filled the bill with Thunderboats racing on Lake Washington and parades which featured the likes of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

Over the years, Seafair built pride among the community which still resonates today. The Puget Sound of today is a robust, economically and ethnically diverse community and Seafair has become more important than ever. As major cities melt and become the same, Seafair is the fabric of our community that represents the Northwest lifestyle and keeps us unique.

Seafair has become a home town jewel that reaches nearly 2 million Puget Sound residents each summer. In fact, if you live in the Northwest, you look forward to Seafair and all the simple joys that it brings.

Seafair pirates land at Alki beach (Jim Bryant/Seattle PI)

You can hear the breathless boosterism in the copy. It’s as if Seattleites still need to prove they are an interesting town, worthy enough for people to go out of their way to visit. It’s sort of embarrassing to the cosmopolitan Jew in me who’s been all over the world and lived in many places. It makes you feel you are in Seattle but not of it. Does a modern metropolis on the cutting edge of technology and Pacific Rim trade really need a Milk Carton Derby, pirates landing at Alki beach, gas-guzzling hydroplane races, and Blue Angels flyovers? And speaking of Blue Angels, you don’t know dread or terror till you’ve heard an F-16 screaming a mere 200 feet or so over your head. Imagine the sound of a locomotive roaring through your bedroom while you’re in the midst of a deep sleep. Or as a friend said to me: “Is this how I want my tax dollars spent??” Does Seattle really need this to create a unique urban identity?

But who can argue with the hoopla and excitement? Many thousands of tourists actually fly long distances to witness the spectacle. What they see in it I couldn’t precisely tell you. I view it something like Christmas. The goyim love this thing. It’s loud, annoying, in your face, and the music makes you want to tear your hair out; but they seem to be having fun and part of you doesn’t want to deprive them of their pleasure. But another part wants to scratch your head in wonderment at all the foolishness.

I guess Seattle is a number of major ways remains a small town. You can feel it in the crazy fan allegiance to every hometown sports team from Huskies football to the Mariners. And that is the charm of the place and the bane of it as well. I’ve lived in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, New York, Dublin and Jerusalem. I truly love living in this city. But despite it’s cultural offerings, it simply lacks the sizzle of a few of the above cities. There is no Koreatown, no Symphony Space, no Knitting Factory, no Carnegie Hall, no MOMA, not even LACMA. On the other hand, none of these places have the Cascades, a 20 minute commute from a home in the woods to downtown, or one of the best places in the world to bring up young children.

The NY Times today published a distressing ode to invasive plants in Border War, a column penned by George Ball, “president of the seed and plant company W. Atlee Burpee & Company” as the Times author credit notes. I was under the impression that Martha Stewart owns Burpee, but I haven’t been able to confirm that online. But for those of you in the Pacific NW I know for a fact and must sadly say that one of our finest nurseries, Dan Hinckley’s Heronswood, is also owned by horticultural pirate. I can’t help but wonder how Hinckley, one of the word’s great nurserymen and an intrepid plant explorer, makes of this column.

Pacific NW native, trillium ovatum, does battle with invasives (photo: NWPlants.com)

What I particularly object to is that an executive of one of the world’s largest agricultural seed companies was given prime NYT real estate to argue that his products (the non-native, hybridized and denatured seeds used by agriculture, both big–massive industrial farms–and small–suburban homeowners) are cool for the environment. The Times should be ashamed. Where is the column by a director or board member of the thousands of organizations in this country which support native plants?

Before I get farther on in this discussion, I should stop to explain that “exotic” plants (also called invasive, noxious or pest) are plants which arrive from other places and take root in our local landscape. Many times (though not always) such plants have aggressive growth habits and overwhelm more delicate native species. Speaking of which, native plants are those which have grown in your region for centuries during which they’ve adjusted themselves to climate, terrain, pests, and diseases. These plants have found a balance with nature which many exotics have not yet done. For this reason, many horticulturists prize native plants.

Back to shilling for big bucks…here’s how Ball dishonestly sets up the premise of his argument:

THE horticultural world is having its own debate over immigration, with some environmentalists warning about the dangers of so-called exotic plants from other countries and continents “invading” American gardens. These botanical xenophobes say that a pristine natural state exists in our yards and that to disturb it is both sinful and calamitous. In their view, exotic plants will swallow your garden, your neighbors’ gardens and your neighbors’ neighbors’ gardens until the ecosystem collapses under their rampant suffocating growth.

If anything suffocates us, though, it will be the environmentalists’ narrowmindedness. Like all utopian visions, their dream beckons us into a perfect and rational natural world where nothing ever changes — a world that never existed and never will.

Himalayan blackberry thicket–imagine tearing that out with your own hands, Mr. Ball (photo: Invasive Species Initiative)

“Botanical xenophobes”–very catchy. Must’ve been written for him by some sharp publicist. But champions of native plants are not “xenophobes.” They do not hate all exotics, but only those which destroy native habitat. Here in the Pacific NW we are overrun by English laurel, Himalayan blackberries, and English ivy among others. These plants aren’t mere annoyances. They actually overwhelm a landscape and force all native species to the margins. That’s one sure recipe for the potential eventual extinction of some of our finest plants. Ball promotes another lie when he says environmentalists dream of a “perfect and rational world where nothing ever changes.” One thing anyone who studies Nature comes to learn is what Edmund Spencer noted in his Faerie Queene, mutatis mutandis, everything changes within it and does so constantly.

In this passage Ball seems to be deliberately playing an neocon idelogical card in calling native plant exponents “radical fundamentalists,” another preposterous statement. But I find it instructive that Ball seems to be aligning his argument with political conservativsm. If you think about what’s between the lines of this article, Burpee and other seed conglomerates are under attack around the world from small farmers who believe its seed choices are destroying the diversity of seed stock developed over thousands of years of natural selection. As Sustainable Table notes:

A few huge companies now produce much of the seed used by farmers; in 1999, the 10 largest seed companies controlled about 31% of the global seed market. These companies typically sell only the widely-used industrial varieties of plant seeds. This makes it increasingly difficult for farmers to buy non-industrial seed varieties and thus contributes to the disappearance of traditional plant varieties.

And this Purdue University Center for New Crops and Plant Products site puts the argument even more strongly:

The loss of biodiversity threatens global food security, especially for the poor, who rely on biodiversity for 85 to 90% of their livelihood needs.

[An alarming] trend I’d like to mention is privatization of plant breeding and seed sales. The first half of 1998 witnessed a dramatic consolidation of power over plant genetic resources worldwide, a trend that began over three decades ago. The global seed trade is now dominated by “life industry” corporations whose vast economic power has effectively marginalized the role of public sector plant breeding and research. Of course, the consolidation trend is not just in seeds but in all sectors of the life industry.

* 20 years ago there were thousands of seed companies, most of which were small and family owned. Today, the top 10 global seed companies control 30% of the $23 billion commercial seed trade.

Not to mention that native plant lovers are turning away from Burpee’s unimaginative plant selections and returing in droves to the plant choices that have worked best in local landscapes over millenia–native varieties.

Burpee can’t like any of this. It hits them where they live– in the pocket book. Hence, Ball’s mini temper tantrum in the Times’ Op-Ed section.

Here’s more specious argument:

The anti-exotics argue that gardens should be populated exclusively by native plants, as if the exotics were trying to enter the flower bed illegally.

What is it with this immigration trope?? Anyway, I’m not aware of “anti-exotics” who argue gardens should be populated exclusively by natives. Seems to me, the author is trying to set up a strawman who’ll fall over at the mere breath of his counter-argument. Horticulturalists, as far as I can tell, argue that we should return to natives and feature them prominently. But I know of few who argue against exotics, period. That seems extreme to me, which is why I doubt there is such a person except in Ball’s fervid imagination. I’ve had a garden here in Seattle since 1998. When I first planned it I told the landscape designer I worked with that I wanted to have as many native plants as I could while still featuring those exotics which I liked. I believe in a mix of the two with the native plants deserving pride of place for their long-lasting existence among us in this place.

[Denying exotics a place in our gardens] would compare with the denial of human immigration on grounds that certain ethnic groups breed in numbers “too prolific” for the existing elite to tolerate. Imagine, then, a horticultural ruling class. No “invasives” need apply: let the lily find another valley. Such prohibitions of exotic plant species demonstrate only an elitist snobbery that is as dangerous to a free society as it is to a free botany.

What horse crap! This is why the immigration trope is so idiotic yet so desirable for Ball. Using it, he can bring up to specter of racism calling native plant lovers racist and elitist for choosing natives over exotics. Ball’s argument is pathetic. Exotics actually DO crowd out natives and bring some species to the edge of extinction (at least in their local habitats, if not universally). Again, I’m aware of no horticulturalist (and Ball doesn’t provide any examples either) who’s advocated a “prohibition” against exotics. That would seem preposterous and impossible to enforce. Natives are not an elite, they are just common sense. In gardening, you generally go with what works in your environment. Natives work because they’ve been tried and tested over centuries, if not millenia.

Another fallacy of Ball’s argument:

No one, and certainly no gardener, grows truly destructive invasive plants in his garden.

Not true. There are many exotics grown in gardens by unsuspecting folk who do not realize the danger if those same plants are let loose in native habitats like forests which might lie right across the street. Not to mention that one of the hallmarks of exotics is that they hitchhike everywhere and easily establish toeholds in places like gardens even when the owner doesn’t want them there.

Aside from requiring a bit of weeding, exotics are safe as milk, unless one considers gardening a chore rather than a passionate hobby.

Reading this made me realize I need to invite Ball to join my neighbors in Friends of Madrona Woods who’ve spent seven years tearing out ivy, holly and Himalayan blackberry from the hillsides of this lovely urban park (and we’re nowhere near done yet). We have work parties every month. If Ball thinks exotics are charming little creatures who deserve our tender mercies and consideration, I don’t think he’d feel the same way after tearing out ivy vines for a few hours on our hillsides.

Friends of Madrona Woods is a Seattle environmental group devoted to restoring a local city park to a native habitat. We plan the first Seattle “daylighting” of an urban stream from source to Lake this summer. To learn more about how the native vs. exotic debate plays out in our little patch of woods visit our site.

My family loves Kubota Garden, one of the earliest Japanese gardens in Seattle. It’s located in the Rainier Beach neighborhood on the south shore of Lake Washington. Fujitaro Kubota bought the land on which the garden exists in 1927. Then he built a family home and created a nursery business and eventually a garden. Now it is a Seattle city park and beautiful Japanese garden. In my opinion it is one of the more beautiful and least-known local park.

Last weekend, the sun shone full and gorgeous and we decided to pack Jonah in the car and make a visit. The garden is set on 20 acres, though it feels quite compact. The major features are a small manmade “mountain,” a natural stream and waterfalls, a set of “necklace” ponds replete with ducks and Japanese painted bridges, a lawn and stately old evergreens and other tree varieties. The mountain was created in the 1960s by hauling in thousands of tons of rocks and building a promontory several hundred feet high giving a visitor splendid views of the lawn, trees and ponds below.

For an excellent summary of Kubota Garden and its history see Historylink.org.