Roots in Love

Like humans, trees live together in families. The parents raise their children, care for them when they are ill, share food and warn each other of impending danger. In "The Hidden Life of Trees," Peter Wohlleben recounts the scientific evidence for all of this, including that trees communicate with each other through their root systems.

Wohlleben says it's hard for us to comprehend the social and emotional life of trees because we live on such radically different time scales. He describes a spruce tree in Sweden that is over 9,500 years old -- 100 times older than a very elderly human being.

I knew a 95-year-old man (not a tree) where I was living earlier this year. He loved to play dominoes with a friend and he welcomed me to watch so I might learn how to play the game.

The two men usually played in the game room at our facility, but it was closed off for repairs one day so we decided to repair to his room. I'd never before visited another resident's quarters.

In his room was a centrally displayed photo of his wife, who had passed away years earlier. Clearly, she had been the love of his life. And when he spoke of her, it was always in the present tense.

When I think about the truest measure of enduring human love, it usually is based in the continued ability to communicate with each other. Call it intuition, empathy, or just an unusually mutual understanding, but loving couples always seem to have achieved this kind of bond.

Besides trees and humans, many other animals and plants communicate and maintain social organizations, of course: Ants, elephants, fungi, monkeys, lions, flowers, bushes, penguins...the list goes on and on, without even mentioning domesticated species like dogs and cats.

By contrast, a broken communication system seems to signal impending death of a relationship in any species. It certainly ends the chance for human couples to stay together, for example.

So I wonder, do trees ever get divorced? Kicked out of their families? Go to couples' counseling? Probably not, I'm guessing, and maybe we could learn something from that.

With so few of the many animal and plant species even catalogued yet, let alone studied and understood, and at the same time so many of them endangered by human domination, I have a pessimistic feeling about our species surviving anything near as long as the time scale of that Swedish spruce.

For that reason, one field we desperately need to encourage our students to pursue is biology with all of its subsets (zoology, microbiology, genetics and evolutionary biology) in order to better enhance our appreciation for and conservation of our fellow living species.

We need to do this as if our lives depended on it.

***

The latest news...

* A divided nation asks: What’s holding our country together? (AP)

* The House of Representatives on Monday voted to override President Donald Trump's veto of the sweeping defense bill known as the National Defense Authorization Act, delivering a bipartisan rebuke to the President. (CNN)

 * The Place Hit Hardest by the Virus -- The coronavirus has disfigured Gallup, a small New Mexico town near Native American reservations, that is now one of the hardest hit places in the country. (NYT)

* After a year of pandemic and protest, and a big election, America is as divided as ever (WashPo)

* The Pandemic Is Imperiling a Working-Class College -- The coronavirus has hurt Indiana University of Pennsylvania, but its financial problems were planted years ago. (NYT)

* When he was 4, Santiago Potes' parents fled Colombia and settled in Miami. Now, at 23, he's a new graduate of Columbia University — and the first Latino DACA recipient to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. (NPR)

* As COVID-19 ravages U.S., shootings, killings are also up (AP)

* The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Monday said it is issuing long-awaited rules to allow for small drones to fly over people and at night, a significant step toward their use for widespread commercial deliveries. (Reuters)

* The high-altitude Whitebark Pine is vital to its ecosystem, but it’s being decimated by a fungus. Its admirers are fusing old and new methods to bring it back. (Wired)

* Biden accuses Trump appointees of obstructing transition on national security (WashPo)

* A former official in the George W. Bush administration blasted Republicans Saturday for continuing to back an “unhinged” and “delusional” Donald Trump and his twisted “fantasy” about a rigged presidential election. Elise Jordan, an MSNBC political analyst who worked as a speechwriter for former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, commented as Trump seems eager to sow chaos to get the GOP to block the results of the 2020 election on Jan. 6. [HuffPost]

* President Trump’s donors — the vast majority of whom are working-class supporters and retirees contributing just a few dollars a month — put $10.5 million into the erstwhile billionaire’s own personal businesses over the course of his presidency, a HuffPost analysis found. Some $8.5 million came from the Trump campaign and related entities that Trump controls directly. [HuffPost]

* The pandemic forced us to live our lives online. (WashPo)

* Hypnosis, now going virtual, is gaining more acceptance from doctors, researchers and entrepreneurs. But potential patients remain skeptical. (WSJ)

* A new species of flowering plant has been found in Hawaii and the details have mystified botanists.“Only one individual of the new species, named Cyanea heluensis, is currently known from a remote location in West Maui,” Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources said. (Sacramento Bee)

* Current polling in Georgia Senate races: Perdue (R) leads Ossoff (D) by 0.1%; Warnock (D) leads Loeffler (R) by 1%. (538)

* In a Village of Widows, the Opium Trade Has Taken a Deadly Toll -- Afghan men in an impoverished border settlement die trying to smuggle opium into Iran, leaving behind loved ones forced to survive on their own. (NYT)

* Heavy snow forecast over wide areas of Japan (NHK)

* China imprisons citizen journalist for Wuhan lockdown reports during height of coronavirus outbreak (WashPo)

* Journalism got more dangerous in 2020 — including in the United States (WashPo)

* How Biden can undo damage to U.S.-backed news outlets that counter authoritarian propaganda (WashPo)

* Minneapolis Announces Plan To Replace Police Officers With Thousands Of Heavily Armed Social Workers (The Onion)

***

"Highway Patrolman"

My name is Joe Roberts I work for the state
I'm a sergeant out of Perrineville barracks number eight
I always done an honest job as honest as I could
I got a brother named Frankie and Frankie ain't no good

Now ever since we was young kids it's been the same come down
I get a call over the radio Frankie's in trouble downtown
Well if it was any other man, I'd put him straight away
But when it's your brother sometimes you look the other way

Yeah me and Frankie laughin' and drinkin'
Nothin' feels better than blood on blood
Takin' turns dancin' with Maria as the band
Played "Night of the Johnstown Flood"

I catch him when he's strayin' like any brother would
Man turns his back on his family well he just ain't no good

Well Frankie went in the army back in 1965
I got a farm deferment, settled down, took Maria for my wife
But them wheat prices kept on droppin' till it was like we were gettin'
Robbed
Frankie came home in '68, and me, I took this job

Yeah we're laughin' and drinkin'
Nothin' feels better than blood on blood
Takin' turns dancin' with Maria as the band
Played "Night of the Johnstown Flood"

I catch him when he's strayin' teach him how to walk that line
Man turns his back on his family he ain't no friend of mine

Well the night was like any other, I got a call 'bout quarter to nine
There was trouble in a roadhouse out on the Michigan line
There was a kid lyin' on the floor lookin' bad bleedin' hard from his head
There was a girl cry'n' at a table and it was Frank, they said

Well I went out and I jumped in my car and I hit the lights
Well I musta done one hundred and ten through Michigan county that night
It was out at the crossroads, down 'round Willow bank
Seen a Buick with Ohio plates. Behind the wheel was Frank

Well I chased him through them county roads
Till a sign said "Canadian border five miles from here"
I pulled over the side of the highway and watched his tail-lights disappear

Me and Frankie laughin' and drinkin'
Nothin' feels better than blood on blood
Takin' turns dancin' with Maria as the band
Played "Night of the Johnstown Flood"

-- Bruce Springsteen (Covered by Johnny Cash)

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