Plants and Oxygen

Plants and Oxygen

Plants and oxygen: By one billion years ago, plants, working cooperatively, had made a stunning change in the environment of the Earth. Since the oceans were by now filled with simple green plants, oxygen was becoming a major constituent of the Earth’s atmosphere, altering it irreversibly from its original hydrogen rich character and ending the epoch of Earth history when the stuff of life was made by non-biological processes.

But oxygen tends to make organic molecules fall to pieces; and despite our fondness for it fundamentally a poison for unprotected organic matter.

Photo by Elena

The transition to an oxidizing atmosphere posed a supreme crisis in the history of life. A great many organisms, unable to copy with oxygen, perished.

A few primitive forms, such as the botulism and tetanus bacilli, manage to survive even today only in oxygen free environments. The nitrogen in the Earth atmosphere is much more chemically inert and therefor much more benign than oxygen. But it, too, is biologically sustained. Thus 99 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere is ob biological origin.

Green plants generate molecular oxygen. Illustration . © Megan (Elena)

The Chinese Garden and Its Pavilions

Chinese Garden

Dream Lake Garden

The Dream Lake Garden is a classic Chinese garden designed in the tradition of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) by architect Le Weizhong, Director of the Shanghai Institute of Landscape Design and Architecture. The 6-acre garden is built in the Jianghan style, meaning water and mountains, typical of the southern Yangtze River region. All the elements of the garden were built in Shanghai workshops, then dismantled and shipped by sea to Montreal, where they were reassembled on the Botanical Garden site in 1990 by a team of expert craftsmen from Shanghai.

The Floralies internationals held in Montreal in 1980 led to the forging of close bonds between Montreal and Shanghai. This garden, dedicated to dreams and friendship, is the fruit of co-operation between the two cities, which are now officially twinned.

Like a bridge spanning the two continents, the garden will bring the people in both lands closer together and introduce visitors to a millennia-old civilization that is intimately linked to the world of plants.

Photo by Elena

Guardians of the Forest: In this forest of lanterns, four figures illustrate two of Xishuangbanna’s peoples with a profund respect for nature – the Dai and the Hani. The Dai have been exploiting the forest in an eco-friendly manner for some 2,000 years and the Hani as the nature spirits for permission before using  its resources. These two ethnic groups have long understood that their own survival depends on the balance of nature.

The Chinese Garden Pavilions

Rooftops, pointing to the sky, are visible here and there through the trees, beyond the walls.

Symbolizing man’s small but essential place in the universe, their architectural concept blends naturally with the garden as a whole.

The seven classical style pavilions in the Dream Lake Garden represent the architectural diversity of gardens from the Ming dynasty. Some are enclosed, others are open-sided. Designed and built according to age-old methods, their structure combines beams and columns with variable spacing to produce the distinctive curves of traditional roofs. The pieces of wood all fit into each other, and no nails or other metal objects are used. The clay roof tiles were specially fixed to make them resistant to the Montreal climate.

The phoenixes and dragons on the decorative tiles are symbols of happiness and symbolize the yin and yang  forces.

A heaven of rest and contemplation, each pavilion has a name accompanied by a poem. Man and nature meet here in art, in an atmosphere of elegance and simplicity.

The entry to the garden and pavilions. Image: © Elena

Symbolizing man’s place in the universe, the architectural concept blends with the garden as a whole. Image: © Elena

Friendship Hall interior: It is a cultural centre dedicated to Chinese art and traditions. This pavilion was donates to Montreal by the City of Shanghai. Photo: © Elena

Crocodile

Crocodile

Never miss the opportunity of going for a walk with a crocodile

The Humans have a famous slogan “The crocodile is man’s best friend”. It is based on the crocodile’s positive responses towards his master. These huge reptilians are well known for their absolute loyalty, for their unconditional companionship through the good and the bad times.

They remain by our side during difficult times giving us encouragement… A crocodile is always happy to see his master and friend acting as if it has been weeks, even if he has been absent only a few hours.

Crocodiles never betray, they don’t resent the human master when he corrects them, and provide the Humans with company and safety at night.

All the crocodiles can sense danger and protect the Humans without giving it a second thought, even if their lives depend on it.

The moral is “The average crocodile is a better person than the average person”.

Here are a few tricks you could learn, if a crocodile were your teacher: When a person gets a bad day, be silent, don’t accuse, don’t try to analyze, just sit close and gently make this person feel that you are there.

Never miss the opportunity of going for a walk.

Always take a nap and stretch before you get up.

If the day is a hot one, try to drink plenty of water and rest under the shadow of your favorite tree.

Crocodiles sense danger and protect the Humans without giving it a second thought, even if their lives depend on it. Here, you can see a banner which crocodiles left for their friends the Humans. They wrote down: “Danger!” (in Spanish, one of the Earth languages), presumably because of the deep waters of this river, and signed with a small picture of their species. Photo: © Elena

Rip Current ! A man of name Current didn’t want to hear an advice from crocodiles and tried to swim in this river. RIP!  Photo: ©  Elena

The moral is “The average crocodile is a better person than the average person” (quotations from Megan Jorgensen). Image: Megan Jorgensen (Elena) ©

Earth Flowers

Earth Flowers

For millions of years, flowers have dotted the landscape of this planet and the flowering plants are among the most diverse classes of life on the Earth.

Their biological function is to effect reproduction. Indeed, their evolutionary method – using scent and color reproduce -has proven to be highly effective. The general assumption is that the function of flowers, from the start, was to trick other creatures – animals and insects – in the reproduction process and make them scatter pollen and nectar. This symbiotic relationship, with a wasp or a bee bearing pollen from one plant to another, could have eventually resulted in both the plants and their partners developing a high degree of specialization.

But all scientific reasons for flowers beautiful colors are irrelevant. In fact, no other reason for a flower’s beauty exists in the Great Cosmos except our ability to enjoy their exquisite splendor.

Thus flowers are a testimony that the world is designed for our full enjoyment, as there could have been many other ways to allow for plant species to reproduce. So the flowers exist to make the world more beautiful so that we could have the pleasure of enjoying it.

Below is a collection of pictures of flowers for your viewing pleasure, gifts from a nice and clever extraterrestrial ambassador on the Earth, a scientist and one of the greatest artists in the whole Universe, famous Megan Jorgensen:

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself (Quotations from Megan Jorgensen), Image by Elena

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. (Oscar Wilde, a British playwright). There are always flowers for those who want to see them. (Henri Matisse, a French artist). Image : © Elena

I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things. (Henri Matisse, a French artist). Image : © Elena

Flower Poem

Have you ever heard

of a flower that never needs

Water, soil, or sunshine?

A flower that stays in full bloom

Through summer and winter

Through good times and bad

A flower that rarely gets smaller,

growing endlessly.

A few lost petals,

A little droop,

but, without a doubt,

it will always regrow

into something more beautiful.

I have one of those.

I call it Love.

Aldora Sparrow, Flower Poem. Image : © Elena

Across from the mountains, A little house sits in the tree’s, I’m lost in tranquility, As my soul tries to breath. (© Wind Walker). Image : © Elena

«You are a child of the universe, No less than the trees and the stars, You have a right to be here; And whether or not it is clear to you No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should» — Max Ehrmann, American writer, born in 1872 and dead in 1945, from The Desiderata). Image : © Elena

I can’t help but feel defeated, but I hope and pray you could stay with me. (Quotations from Megan Jorgensen). Image : © Elena

«We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of on good rain and black loam.» (Ray Bradbury, an American writer). Image : © Elena

Fear Poem

What is Fear?

Fear Itself Is Undefined

I lay on my bed soaking my pillow with my tears,

I try to remember exactly what it is that I fear.

Is it the passing of time or the love that I lack?

Is it the mistakes that I’ve made or the fact that I can’t bring the past back?

What is it that I’m afraid of?

Why am I so scared?

Is it the people I’ve hurt or the people that have hurt me?

Am I afraid of everything that I cant seem to see?

Is it the love of a friend, or the loss of my family?

Is it the possibility that my life can end in a tragedy?

What is it that I fear most?

What do my eyes say I’m scared of?

Is it the sun that sets but won’t seem to rise?

Is it the hope that I have that always seems to die?

Is it the trust of a person that I cannot begin to grasp?

Is it all the memories of my horrid past?

Is it me?

Can it possibly be that the thing I fear most is the thing I can’t be?

The things that I try to understand?

The me that I try to be with when I’m feeling sad?

The person I’m expected to be? Is that what I fear? . . .

I think the thing I fear most . . .is me

Bianca Flores, Fear Itself Is Undefined. Image : © Elena

«I love my past. I love my present. I’m not ashamed of what I’ve had, and I’m not sad because I have it no longer.» ‘ Colette, a famous Quebec journalist. Image : © Elena

«Life is the flower for which love is the honey.» (Victor Hugo, a great French writer). Image : © Elena

«Too many people realize at the end of their lives that they’ve taken for granted those who really love them.» (Lesley M.M. Blume, American journalist and cultural observer). Image : © Elena

«Whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the sould of the universe. It’s your mission on Earth.» (Paulo Coelho). Image : Elena

Do I dare Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
T.S. Eliot, American poet. Image : © Elena

«Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced Universe.» (Margaret Atwood). Image : © Elena

Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.» — C.S. Lewis. Image : © Elena

«Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.» (Joseph Campbell, an American mythologist and writer). Image : © Elena

«I’ve come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that’s as unique as a fingerprint – and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you.» (Oprah Winfrey). Image : © Elena

«Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.» Marcel Proust. Image : © Elena

«To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.» (David Viscott, an American psychiatrist and author). Image : © Elena

«If I had a flower for every time I thought of you… I could walk through my garden forever.» (Alfred Lord Tennyson). Image : © Elena

This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.
(J.R.R. Tolkien). Image : © Elena

«You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.» (Pablo Neruda, a Chilean poet). Image : © Elena

«Knowledge is a Bed of Roses; for Every Beautiful Flower, there are a Dozen Thorns to Match». (Joshua Caleb). Image : ©  Elena

«Life is a process. We are a process. The universe is a process.» (Anne Wilson Schaef, a Canadian philosopher). Image : © Elena

«In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once, and never again, no matter how many lifetimes you live.» (Robert James Waller, an American author and musician). Image : © Elena

«A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.» (Madeleine L’Engle, Americain writer, born in 1818 and passed away in 2007). Image : © Elena

«You are an Universe of Universes and your soul a source of songs.» (Ruben Darío, a Nicaraguan poet). Image : Sunflower graffiti in Montreal, Quebec, Canada by © Elena

«I’m sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It’s just been too intelligent to come here.» (Arthur C. Clarke). Image : © Elena

«The universe is a million billion light-years wide, and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. This is the position of the universe with regards to human life.» (Martin Amis, a British writer). Image : © Elena

«Before creation I alone was, there was no other existence of the nature of cause and effect different from Me. After the creative cycle ends also, I alone exist. For, this universe is also Myself, and when everything is dissolved in its cause in Pralaya, what remains is only Myself.» (Veda Vyasa, celui qui a réuni les Veda). Image : © Elena

You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.» (Alan Wilson Watts British born philosopher and writer).

Whale Song

Whale Song

The sea is murky. Sight and smell which work very well for mammals on the land, are not of much use in the depths of the ocean. Those ancestors of the whales who relied on these senses to locate a mate or a baby or a predator did not leave many offspring. So another method was perfected by evolution; it works superbly well and is central to any understanding of the whales: the sense of sound.

Some whale sounds are called songs, but we are still ignorant of their true nature and meaning. They range over a broad band of frequencies, down to well below the lowest sound the human ear can detect.

A typical whale song lasts for perhaps fifteen minutes; the longest, about an hour. Often it is repeated, identically, beat for beat, measure for measure, note for note.

Pusha, the cat. Let’s pretend this is a whale. It’s a social creature who hunts, fishes, browses, frolics, plays, mates, runs from predators. Size doesn’t matter, does it? Image: © M. Jorgensen (Elena)

The Whales

Up to 1846, the best lighting fuel was sperm whale oil. And the best lamp was a whale oil lamp, then kerosene lamps became the last word in lighting and were widely used, particularly in Canada. In 1854, Gesner patented his process and formed the North American kerosene gas light Co. and the whole world moved into a kerosene age.

The primary danger to the whales is a newcomer, an upstart animal, only recently, through technology, become competent in the oceans, a creature that calls itself human. For 99,99 percent of the history of the whales, there were no humans in or on the deep oceans. During this period the whales evolved their extraordinary audio communication system. The finbacks, for example, emit extremely loud sounds at a frequency of twenty Hertz, down near the lowest octave on the piano keyboard (a Hertz is a unit of sound frequency that represents one sound wave, one crest and one trough, entering your ear every second).

Such low-frequency sounds are scarcely absorbed in the ocean. The American biologist Roger Payne has calculated that using the deep ocean sound channel, two whales could communicate with each other at twenty Hertz essentially anywhere in the world. One may be off the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica and communicate with another in the Aleutians. For most of their history, the whales may have established a global communications network. Perhaps, when separated by 15,000 kilometers, their vocalisations are love songs, cast hopefully into the vastness of the deep.

For tens of millions of years these enormous, intelligent, communicative creatures evolved with essentially no natural enemies. Then the development of the steamship in the nineteenth century introduced an ominous source of noise pollution. As commercial and military vessels became more abundant, the noise background in the oceans, especially at a frequency of twenty Hertz, became noticeable. Whales communicating across the oceans must have experienced increasingly greater difficulties. The distance over which they could communicate must have decreased steadily. Two hundred years ago, a typical distance across which finbacks could communicate was perhaps 10,000 kilometers. Do whales know each other’s name? Can they recognize each other as individuals by sound alone? We have cut the whales off from themselves. Creatures that communicated for tens of millions of years have now effectively been silenced.

A dolphin, illustration by Elena

And we have done worse than that, because there persists to this day a traffic in the dead bodies of whales. There are humans who hunt and slaughter whales and market the products for lipstick or industrial lubricant. Many nations understand that the systematic murder of such intelligent creatures is monstrous, but the traffic continues, promoted in the 20th century chiefly by Japan, Norway and the Soviet Union. We humans, as a species, are interested in communication with extraterrestrial intelligence. Would not a good beginning be improved communication with terrestrial intelligence, with other human beings of different cultures and languages, with the great apes, with the dolphins, but particularly with those intelligent masters of the deep, the great whales?

For a whale to live there are many things it must know how to do. This knowledge is stored in its genes and in its brains. The genetic information includes how to convert plankton into blubber; or how to hold your breath on a dive one kilometer below the surface. The information in the brains, the learned information, includes such things as who your mother is’ or the meaning of the son you are hearing just now. The whale, like all the other animals on the Earth, has a gene library and a brain library.

There is a curious counterpoint in this story. The preferred radio channel for interstellar communication with other technical civilisations in near a frequency of 1.42 billion Hertz, marked by a radio spectral line of hydrogen, the most abundant atom in the Universe. We are just beginning to listen here for signals of intelligent origin. But the frequency band is being increasingly encroached upon by civilian and military communications traffic on Earth, and not only by the manor powers. We are jamming the interstellar channel. Uncontrolled growth of terrestrial radio technology may prevent us from ready communication with intelligent beings on distant worlds. Their songs may go unanswered because we have not the will to control our radio-frequency pollution and listen.

A whale that was big news: When a whale was towed alive into Vancouver harbor in 1964, she captured the hearts of all Vancouverites. They named her Moby Doll, and donated $100,000 for her care, but for some reason she died. Her fame had spread far. The staid Times of London, England, gave her obituary a 2-column heading – the same size it had given to the outbreak of World War II.

(Courtesy of Carl Sagan)

Occasionally a group of whales will leave their winter waters in the midst of a song and six months later return to continue at precisely the right note, as if there had been no interruption. Whales are very good at remembering. More often, on their return, the vocalisations have changed. New songs appear on the cetacean hit parade.

Very often the members of the group will sing the same song together. By some mutual consensus, some collaborative song-writing, the piece changes month by month, slowly and predictably. These vocalizations are complex. If the songs of the humpback whale are enunciated as a tonal language, the total information content, the number of bits of information in such songs, is some 10-6 bits, about the same as the information content of the Illiad or the Odyssey.

We do not know what whales or their cousins the dolphins have to talk or sing about. They have no manipulative organs, they make no engineering constructs, but they are social creatures. They hunt, swim, fish, browse, frolic, mate, play, run from predators. There may be a great deal to talk about.

Whales and Their Communication System

The primary danger to the whales is a newcomer, an upstart animal who only recently, through technology, has become competent in the oceans, a creature that calls himself human. For 99,99 percent of the history of the whales, there were no humans in or on the deep oceans. During this period the whales evolved their extraordinary audio communication system.

A love song is a distress call cast in the vastness of the deep (quotations from Megan Jorgensen). Image: © M. Jorgensen (Elena)

The finbacks, for example, emit extremely loud sounds at a frequency of twenty Hertz, down near the lowest octave on the piano keyboard (a Hertz is a unit of sound frequency that represents one sound wave, one crest and one trough, entering your ear every second.) Such low frequency sounds are scarcely absorbed in the ocean. The American biologist Roger Payne has calculated that using the deep ocean sound channel, two whales could communicate with each other at twenty Hertz essentially everywhere in the world.

One might be off the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica and communicate with another in the Aleutians. For most of their history, the whales may have established a global communications network. Perhaps, when separated by 15,000 kilometres, their vocalisations are love songs cast hopefully into the vastness of the deep.