The Gardener
Santa Clara, CA 95051
theroot_us@yahoo.com

  • HomeClick to open the Home menu
    • The Wave
    • The Henge
    • Jeans Are
    • Ghost Play
    • Tesla's Tavern
    • Daft
    • Coy Pond
    • Extreme Weather
    • The Visitor
    • Contagion
    • summation
    • Renewal
    • Friendly
    • Sound Check
    • Bee Tracks
    • Backyard Jungle
    • Dew Drops
    • The Hit
    • Rufus
    • Iridescent Bird
    • Tiger Tale
    • Early Bird
    • Red Rice
    • Etched
    • The Riddle
    • Orange
    • Insight
    • Peace Corps
    • going for the gold
    • diamond dew lights
    • a path of pavers
  • the hive trapperClick to open the the hive trapper menu
    • ripe cherries
    • bumble bee weed
    • dry humor
    • the space thimble
    • the play zoo
    • grasshopper's rondo
    • a homeric backhoe
    • fire and ice
    • bell hop"s bling
    • a parade of comets
    • cockroach country
    • the sand castle
    • a chimney charcoal starter
    • extra sensory reality
    • three florets
    • scrounging dumptster diamonds
    • doing a back flip
    • destined for compost
    • on fielding cattle
  • an orange fordClick to open the an orange ford menu
    • world wide weeds
    • mythic flower song
    • ah the loafster
    • go turn any stone
    • a seasonal meal
    • crow's wheel rhumba
    • our nested realms
    • on a leafless tree
    • crows hackberry home
    • hen house serenade
    • plain as day
    • on becoming conscious
    • an even match
    • a history of tomorrow
    • eddies in the stream
    • means and ends meet
    • junco on the fence
    • the splendiferous song
    • everywhere the axis
    • the labyrinth wriggles
    • wood hole winery
    • on machine awareness
    • the teetering tower
    • robin song science
    • a fly ornithology
    • the tale of yo-jimbo
    • the word bucket
    • the midnight tuba
    • time out of mind
  • Water SpoutClick to open the Water Spout menu
    • no blind spot
    • liberation
    • sun feather
    • creek shimmer
    • the engine telegraph
    • doom glow
    • the village bell
    • inner ear
    • free the clouds
    • noodles
    • og's paradox
    • fireflies at sunset
    • hue and laughter
    • for frankie
    • reason on the level
  • Atop the May poleClick to open the Atop the May pole menu
    • weeds
    • autonomous wheelbarrow
    • Bright colors Big balloons
    • bocce balls
    • human action
    • nasturtium
    • meaning
    • the trumpet
    • time lapse
    • tall tail
    • a better breeze
    • sunday thunder
    • two-way mirror
    • what we knew
    • larry 9-3-62
    • enough is
    • profusion
    • a jitney once
    • time's up
    • the cosmic well
    • the magic mountains
    • planchette pen
    • blankety blank
  • HeresayClick to open the Heresay menu
    • Heresay Three
    • Heresay Two
    • Heresay Four
    • Heresay Five
    • Heresay Six
    • Heresay Seven
    • Heresay Eight
    • Heresay Nine
    • Heresay Ten
    • Heresay Thirteen
    • Heresay Fourteen
    • Heresay Fifteen
    • Heresay Sixteen
    • Heresay Seventeen
    • Heresay Eighteen
    • Heresay Nineteen
    • Heresay Twenty
    • Heresay Eleven
    • Heresay Twelve
  • Being-TimeClick to open the Being-Time menu
    • Dominoes
    • Wood Duck Theater
    • Said The Crows
    • Frankie & I
    • From Here To
    • Larry Again
    • Pale Shadows
    • Rogue Wave
    • Fragen Shade
    • Dove Tail
    • Half-eaten Peach
    • Twilight Ozone
    • Midnight Sun
    • Granma's Kitchen
    • Category Zero
    • Ever After
    • Heresay
  • Cat's CradleClick to open the Cat's Cradle menu
    • Not A Quant
    • Sing, Sing, Sing
    • The Vortex
  • Living SpaceClick to open the Living Space menu
    • Planet Bliss
    • Blefirmagest
    • When We Wake
    • My Way
    • Music Loom
    • Banjo Blues
    • Reality Show
    • Twinkle
    • Frames
    • Ancient Pond
  • The ViewClick to open the The View menu
    • The Orion Factor
    • Humpty
    • The Unexplained
    • Untitled
    • Frankie
    • Thunder Fingers
    • Frankie & Twinkie
    • Death and Oranges
    • Clinkers
    • Brown Rice
    • Happens To Be
    • Twilight Tea
    • Fossils or Fusion
    • Three-Way Quartet
    • Artless Art
    • Blues Dhalia
    • Unboxed
  • TimelessClick to open the Timeless menu
    • Fossils
    • Just Add Water
    • O'l Factory
    • bAlls
    • Holo Words
    • Communique
    • Flight Line
    • The Leap
    • just SO
    • Tipster
    • Tripology
    • Twitch Hunt
    • An Audience
  • FusionClick to open the Fusion menu
    • Wheelbarrow
    • Endless
    • Segnaro
    • A New Page
    • Make It So
    • Gravel Gavel
    • Right On
    • Conspirit
    • Mind City
    • Hackberry Breeze
    • Peace Happens
    • For Sure
    • Sage Flat
    • Enchantment
  • The VanishingClick to open the The Vanishing menu
    • Sonorous Sun
    • Flung
    • Shuttlecock
    • Rhyme Time
    • JOY
    • Win-Lose-Draw
    • Text
    • Pale Blue Dot
    • Heliotrope
    • Cadillac Cat
    • Baker's Dozen
    • Roux
    • Crazy Quilt
    • The Warehouse
  • Beneath TreesClick to open the Beneath Trees menu
    • The Visitor
    • The Castle
    • The Airplane
    • Here Goes
    • Wood Song
    • Renegade Rider
    • Hot Saxes
    • Moving On
    • Search Dog
    • SETI
    • Fried Artichokes
    • The Rock
  • Rolling ThunderClick to open the Rolling Thunder menu
    • Toehold
    • Pistory
    • Back Beat
    • Next . . .
    • Stop and Go
    • Beyond
    • Sleep
    • Pulse
    • Outback
    • Retro
    • The Source
    • It Is
    • Red Berries
    • Communication
    • Simpatico
    • Salt Pond Dues
    • Green Gremlins
    • ONE
    • Tea
    • Magic
    • Jackdaw
    • Final Analysis
  • With FireClick to open the With Fire menu
    • Puff
    • Wild Onions
    • The Toll
    • Mute Messenger
    • Serentripity
    • Five Ring Circus
    • The Road To Well
    • Pacific Players
    • Gumbo Gone
    • MGB
    • Castle Rock
    • Truth
    • Breeze
    • Daycare
    • Nothing Doing
    • Existence
    • Flying Circus
  • FREEDOMClick to open the FREEDOM menu
    • The Corner
    • The A Train
    • Solstice
    • Holiday 2016
    • The Quarry
    • Suite Home
    • Spring
    • The Dream
    • Go For It
    • A Grove
    • Unfree Speech
    • Seasons
    • Wheelies
    • Rim Shot
    • Rain Drops
    • The Loft
    • Benton Street
    • Jingo Jangle
    • Surreygate
    • 'Snuff Box
    • Tiuana
    • Being
  • NO MINDClick to open the NO MIND menu
    • Surfing
    • H two OH!
    • SV Tweet
    • Fusion
    • Dove's Dream
    • Super Sol
    • Unseen Universe
    • Outsourced
    • Effortless
    • Fool's Gold
    • Between Storms
    • Gas Lamp Blues
  • Debit MemoClick to open the Debit Memo menu
    • Whim Logic
    • Ripples
    • Renewal
    • Frond
    • Noon Moon
    • The Red Seals
    • The Song Itself
    • Marmalade Mind
    • The Marquee
    • Dodge Cities
    • Book TV
    • Hymn
    • Referendum
    • Next
  • DRY CREEK OVERPASSClick to open the DRY CREEK OVERPASS menu
    • THE CREEK TALKER
    • heresy
    • nothing doing
    • the story
    • cap trade
    • burning bright
    • purgatory
    • the way
    • stirring coffee
    • Sightless Vision
    • dung flower
    • mute vision
    • dove
    • Margin!
    • Bone Deep
    • yestermorrow
    • the ROSE garden
    • Cancelled Flights
    • Oak Country
    • XTECHNO
    • gateless
    • Transitions
  • reckoningClick to open the reckoning menu
    • hysteria
    • juice like blood
    • yonder
    • step by step
    • sharp tools
    • blinders
    • plain clothes
    • souveniers
  • phoenixClick to open the phoenix menu
    • ashes
    • leaf mould
    • window blossoms
    • flat bush
    • improvised vision
    • 100 proof insurance
    • how's them apples?
    • bits and pieces
  • circling forthClick to open the circling forth menu
    • back home
    • middle earth
    • lightning strikes
    • tabitha
    • night vision
    • spirit tune
  • karmic fireClick to open the karmic fire menu
    • rosie
    • harbinger
    • sleepy time tea
    • speed bump
    • breaking news
    • juice
    • plenitude
    • brain storm
    • no price
  • wild muffinsClick to open the wild muffins menu
    • moments
    • bow sprit
    • taiko buzz
    • real music
    • from here to . . .
    • karma dogs
  • oil lamp daysClick to open the oil lamp days menu
    • repose
    • tranquility
    • harmony
    • rapport
    • departure
  • bird brainClick to open the bird brain menu
    • wind song
    • dust devils
    • folded echo
    • bach boogie
    • bird brain
  • rusted dinosaurClick to open the rusted dinosaur menu
    • blue haze
    • what hath?
    • fractal
    • transbiohomo
    • rusted
    • peacocks
    • beetles
    • tents
    • trance
  • sand dollarsClick to open the sand dollars menu
    • grist
    • griftology
    • gerrymander
    • gondolas
    • griffins
    • galloping
    • galaxies
  • LIFTOFFClick to open the LIFTOFF menu
    • commencement
    • joy nest leap
    • wisp of reason
    • breeze cap
    • the gathering
    • impersonal portrait
    • when chaos dies
    • going down the trail
  • oroborusClick to open the oroborus menu
    • smoke in our eyes
    • anthrology
    • buried gold
    • R and R
    • dominion
    • compost
    • oroborus
  • laughing thunderClick to open the laughing thunder menu
    • swivel liberty
    • scrabble stone
    • never never mind
    • clap rag shuffle
    • circus pipes
    • endurance
    • sky serpent
    • song breeze
    • fog thorns
  • thoth moodsClick to open the thoth moods menu
    • peace cloud
    • truth food
    • drifters
    • out of context
    • radar ears
    • crow song
    • green tea day
    • floating
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Savvy Neighbors Impede Profiteers
  • Links
  • AS THE WORLD BURNSClick to open the AS THE WORLD BURNS menu
    • the creek talker
    • ark welding
    • old tree
    • the compost bird
    • through the scaffold
    • holly day celebration
    • infinity paralyzes time?
    • opus 3!
    • way past

PLANET BLISS

 

 

Not so long ago, rungs of the social ladder led to a volleyball beach. Trading dope and blissful thinking, the children of whale oil axle grease kings chased mandalas and sea gulls, shouting at clouds.

There had been orchids at Orchard Supply Hardware, before Santa Clara got branded, forgetting how our municipal charter said the City's purpose was to serve the community. At OSH there was an endless supply of tools and parts for fixing a leaky faucet, building a fence, overhauling a Briggs and Stratton mower engine. The rusted dinosaur at El Real Nursery was a roadside attraction. There were hedges to trim, weeds to pull, sprinklers to repair. Having outlived Blossom Hill orchards, OSH was our celebration of work, a hardy survivor.

Ordinary yard work. My neighbor's ongoing philosophy, “It never ends, Dave.” And I said, “It kept me in business for over thirty five years.”

When Orchard opened its doors, glazed tiles decorated the entryway to Bank of America. If you were waiting at the corner for the light to change, the blue tiles pleasantly reflected light. You could watch them and see the red stop light change. In a different context however, say in a physics classroom, red and blue combine to produce magenta.

Physics was a high school subject I ignored. I had my own business then as a commercial photographer, and preferred working in the darkroom, especially in 35mm color, which needed a six step process to develop red, blue and green dye layers. This process replaced an even more cumbersome one in which three black and white transparencies, mounted in projectors with red, blue and green lights, when all projected together in exact superimposition, produced full color on a projector screen.

The red stop light anomaly might have gone unnoticed indefinitely. Until 1959, when I came across an article in Scientific American, “Experiments in Color Vision,” by Edwin H. Land. He had discovered that only two colors are needed, and that they can be any two, so long as they differ by a minimal wavelength. Another requirement he learned, completely different from the rules of classical physics, is that the two related images of a scene that are superimposed must not be uniformly organized, but rather distributed in the manner of scenes found in everyday life.

He described an “eye-brain computer,” which recognizes patterns of intensities that have been previously experienced in ordinary situations, using the rods and cones of the eye. These patterns are not necessarily tied to any particular situation but are the basis for assigning colors in a wide range of situations. In his words, it “...can build colored worlds of its own out of informative materials that have always been supposed to be inherently drab and colorless.” The eye-brain computer normalizes experience so that a red stop light can stay red in more than one context.

We also have an ear-brain. A nose-brain. A heart-brain and so on. These comprise one mind that is accumulating experience, that recognizes patterns, including changes to Blossom Hill and OSH, and much more. The mind summarizes its results and finds trends. Blossom Hill and OSH went through social and economic changes. They were also affected by specific changes in the weather that participate in a trend we call climate change. There is a tendency, as seen in the function of the eye-brain computer, to normalize in accordance with previous experience: Oh, it's just the weather doing its thing.

What if the trend turns out to be more than just a little disturbing? How quickly the bojangle beach changes, past the wind swept cypress on its granite rock by the sea. Now it's raining dogs and fire hydrants.

With something so manifest, so disastrous, how is it that climate change does not have everyone's attention?

This morning my April issue of Discover magazine arrived. There is an article by Sofia Deleniv:“When Ignorance Is Bliss, why we sometimes choose not to know.” She speaks of a study published in 2018 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in which the lead author, Caroline Charpentier, says --

'Our brains treat positive information as a reward to be approached, but negative information . . . more as a punishment to be avoided'




write "subscribe" or "unsubscribe"  in the subject line of an email to:  theroot_us@yahoo.com

The Gardener
Santa Clara, CA 95051
theroot_us@yahoo.com