Steven D. Brewer's blog

The summer after third grade, my family moved from a suburban neighborhood to a house in the woods. My father, fascinated by the writings of Thoreau and Aldo Leopold, wanted to live closer to nature. The woods were beautiful and fascinating for my father. But they were surrounded by rural farm fields. And rural families. For me, it was a huge cultural shock when I was bused out of the woods and into to a rural elementary school.

There were some kids who were accepting of me: who came up to me and made friends. But they were the exception. Many people (both kids and teachers) were immediately alienated by my educated diction and non-religious perspective. I lived under a constant threat of violence from that point forward until I went to college.

I was assaulted dozens of times. One kid knocked me off my bike because he had heard I was saying stuff about him. (I wasn't). One kid threw a rock and hit me in the head. I was pushed down, punched, and brutalized. Recess required constant vigilance to avoid bullies. And when I went to middle school—and there were locker rooms—it only got worse.

So when I read an account like Digging in the Trash it evokes an almost PTSD-like response from me. I've been there. I've known those people. He says:

I’m tired of standing by silently while privileged people in privileged places strip those less fortunate of their humanity. I’m tired of living in a place where men like my grandfather and Paco are shipped off to front lines to die for profit margins. I’m tired of an America where all the folks I’ve ever loved are dismissed as trash, where people are reduced to something subhuman simply because of where they live. I’m tired of having to explain it. I’m just goddamn tired.

One of my favorite writers, Larry Brown, was once called the "King of White Trash," and he had enough of a sense of humor to joke about it, to laugh and tell his daughter that if he was the king that effectively crowned her princess. Ultimately, I think the reason Larry was able to shake it off and laugh is because he’d grown used to it, just as we all have. We know we’re something that outsiders will never understand, that it’s noteworthy to see a landscape dotted with trailers and churches. We know we’re something perplexing to those who have never been here. We know that they’ll never be able to see that there is a tremendous beauty in day-to-day survival, that there is sufficient grace in refusing to buckle beneath the weight of this world.

A friend of mine sent me an article recently from The New Yorker titled, "Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich." It was basically an essay about how some of the richest people in America have been preparing for some sort of societal breakdown. I guffawed at the thought when I read it, not at the idea of America collapsing, but at the idea they think they’ll be the ones to survive. I laughed at the boldness, at the arrogance.

I’ve never been a betting man and the truth is I don’t have much money to lay down, but what I’ll leave you with is this. While all the privileged have been coasting through life so often on the backs of my people, we’ve been surviving.

You may not be a betting man, but this attitude only helps the predators. To say that outsiders will never understand is to doom yourself to tribalism. And sell yourself down the river. There are outsiders who do understand: the predators. They understand that you've cut yourselves off and you're ripe for exploitation.

You say the privileged have been coasting through life. Some are, but most are not: they're working hard. It is capitalism that oppresses the poor. It oppresses almost everyone.

The only way we get out of this is to organize. We break through the tribalism and work together. But as long as poor people use markers like speech and religion (and race) as placeholders for ideas and actions, they'll be willing to line up behind predators like Donald Trump. How's that workin' out for ya?

Near the Franklin Dining Commons Permaculture Garden are a line of European Linden trees (Tilia x europea). I noticed a branch where the leaves had been skeletonized by a small army of caterpillars (Fig 1.) The caterpillars were still active on one leaf and were lined up side-by-side eating along a single front on the underside of the leaf. I assume the underside because the cuticle is thinner there.

Figure 1. Tilia x europea skeletonized by caterpillars. Upper side on left.

The Tilia leaf is heart-shaped with an asymmetrical base. The leaf margin is toothed, except at the base. The venation is palmate with 5 major veins that lead back to the leaf base.

Approximately three-quarters of the leaf area has been consumed by caterpillars leaving behind only the network of vascular tissue. In addition, I observed an aphid on the leaf which I have been unable to locate in the photographs. Perhaps it was on the underside of the stem while photographing was taking place.

A tree I love to hate is the Japanese Tree Lilac (Syringa reticulata). A leaf is illustrated in Figure 1. It is unobtrusive during most of the year, but in early June, it has large white flowers that smell like a scent they use for toilet paper.

Figure 1. Syringa reticulata leaf. Upper side is on left.

I started this post on Friday, but was too busy to complete it.

Near the "Fine Arts Center" bus stop where I get off near my office, there are two sakura trees that bloom later than the tree in my yard. I looked over the leaves and selected one (Fig. 1) to photograph and describe today.

Figure 1. Prunus serrulata leaf. Upper side of leaf is on left.

I identified two differences between the Prunus serrulata "Kwanzan" leaf and the P. sargentii leaf I collected on July 5, 2017. The P. serrulata is flatter (less twisted) and the marginal teeth are all the same size and have a fine, drawn-out point with a black tip that the P. sargentii teeth lacked.

In other respects, the leaves are indistinguishable. The color, proportions, venation, and glands on the stem are roughly the same.

The surface of the leaf has some roughly linear marks. At first, I thought these might be leaf miners which look somewhat similar, but holding the leaf up to the light, I did not see any damage or change to the internal structures of the leaf. Other leaves had similar marks.

Today, I chose a leaf from a tree in my front yard. Figure 1 shows a leaf of Prunus sargentii, a Japanese Sakura tree. When this tree blooms (usually in April) the lush flowers last for only a few days, but are prized in Japanese culture as a symbol of the fleeting and transient nature of life.

Figure 1. Prunus sargentii leaf. Upper side of leaf is on left.

The leaves are ovate with a doubly-serrate margin and a left handed twist. The base is slightly asymmetrical. The venation is mostly alternate, but not entirely regular. Each vein curves at the end and connects with the next vein.

The stem is short and has a reddish pigment. There are two reddish glands on the stem the first about a millimeter behind the leaf and the second another millimeter behind the first.

There's no evidence of herbivory or damage to the leaf. I did observe some leaves that had parts missing, usually along the margins. Given the placement of the branches (above a driveway and a path used by people) its possible the leaves were damaged mechanically be people moving past the branches. I did observe a leaf hopper (Homoptera) on one leaf and some silk (spider? caterpillar?) on another.

Since I started my leaf blog, I'm having a harder and harder time choosing a tree and leaf to look at—not because I'm running out of choices, but rather the opposite: there are so many tantalizing choices, its difficult to pick the next one. This time, I choose an American Elm (Ulmus americana) right behind the Morrill Science Center (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. Ulmus americana leaf. Upper side is on left.

The Elm has ovate leaves with a double, or triple, serrate margin and asymmetrical base. The leaf has pinnate venation and there are approximately 13 side veins on each side of the leaf. About half of the side veins have branches near the margin of the leaf. The leaf has a very fine downy fuzz on both the upper and lower surfaces. The stem is quite short relative to the leaf.

Once again, I'm wondering a bit about the distance between the side veins and the sizes of the smallest areas of the leaf served by the venation system. The side veins seem close together, relative to other leaves I've looked at recently.

On the surface of the leaves are irregularly shaped galls with a pebbled surface. The galls have a yellowish color, although some have become black. On the underside of the leaf, there are gray fuzzy areas that correspond to the gall on the upper surface. There are a number of areas where the leaf surface is rough on the surface and fuzzy underneath, but where there is not an obvious gall: perhaps there are two phenomena.

Today, I collected a leaf from a distinctive purple tree near the Franklin Dining Commons. The Norway maple (Acer platanoides) is a common ornamental tree that is often planted in cities because it is hardier and more tolerant of air pollution than native Sugar maples. It has two color varieties: the purple pigmented one and an unpigmented variety that's easy to confuse with Sugar maples. If you're trying to tell them apart, the bark is different on a Norway maple (a criss-cross diamond pattern) and Norway maples have a milky white sap.

Figure 1. Acer platanoides leaf. Upper side of leaf is on left.

The leaf is very dark green—almost black, in artificial light. The veins and stem are a reddish purple, especially on the underside of the leaf.

The leaf is palmately lobed with two small lobes near the base and 5 major lobes toward the tip. I had noticed yesterday that the stem of the Horse-chestnut seemed comparatively long, but this stem is much longer relative to the leaf. The stem is half-again longer than the leaf. I noticed, however, that there was a lot of variability in stem length.

The leaf has 11 holes where presumably insects have been consuming leaf material. Most holes run along a vein. One hole spans a vein in the leaf leaving just a narrow bridge across the hole. A number of holes have a kidney shaped pattern with smooth outward borders and a ragged inner border, perhaps related to the pattern of consuming the leaf.

On the underside of the leaf is a small, white cocoon. The area is covered over with a dense layer of white silk.The silk pulls the leaf together to make a small, bent section, where the pupa is concealed.

I actually collected this leaf (Figure 1) yesterday while I was carrying the Coffee Tree leaf back. The Horse-chestnut one of my favorite trees in the spring when it flowers. People say the flowers look like candles and, on a dark, rainy day, the tree does seem to light up when the flowers are in bloom.

Figure 1. Aesculus leaf. Upper side is on left.

The leaf is palmately compound with 7 leaflets. The leaves are ovate with irregularly toothed margins. The venation is not opposite, but nearly so. The stem seems extremely long, relative to the leaf.

The leaf has several patches of what appears to be a fungus. In each area is a brownish red region surrounded by a brownish region. The regions cross side veins, but rarely cross the mid-vein. There is some brownish material on the underside of the leaf where leaflets come together.

I decided it was a Really Good Idea, having proposed to make infrastructure for the the Poem Windows, to try out the system to make sure it would actually work like I expected. I bought a Geeekpi 7" 1024x600 display with Acrylic Stand and assembled it.

It arrived without instructions of any kind. There were 5 acrylic pieces, a PCB, an LCD, and a bunch of little nuts and screws and other things. I went to the Amazon page, where there were several pictures that were actually sufficient for most of the assembly. I discovered the hard way that you needed to get all the cables connected before trying to assemble the stand, but I had only been hooking pieces together very loosely, so it was not much work to disassemble and then reassemble the stand after everything was hooked up. The only really frustrating part was trying to attach the ribbon-cable video connector, which was not described anywhere nor clearly visible in the video.

Eventually I got it assembled and was genuinely amazed when I hooked everything together, powered it up, and it lit right up. And then turned off. I checked the connections a couple more times and then logged into the pi via ssh and un-commented the safe_hdmi directive to see if that would make it work. And it did! So from that point on, it was just a matter of getting the HDMI configuration right. Eventually, I found that there was a page with configuration information. The magic recipe (from that page) was
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=87
hdmi_cvt 1024 600 60 3 0 0 0
hdmi_force_hotplug=1

Voila! One Poem Window prototype, suitable for testing and display.

The next Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon BD, Special 4, is out:

It isn't in English yet, but you can get it auto-subtitled in Japanese (turn on CC) and then you can have those translated into English (under the gear-shaped settings icon). But the result is so dadaesque, I'm compelled to question whether it's actually even drawing from the correct source material.

During the intro: "Cities and provinces of the announcement 667 the environment In addition That's 24 people the elderly, et al. The date of manufacture i.org solid"

When Tohru guns down Emma in the back, she says "Two of people in advance rice to each computer".

When Kobayashi-san is looking at at a computer game screen "For example, it has been found in liaison ipod dealer has entered".

In another spot "Comments and was confirmed inform in such growing more anxiety."

But, please! Tell me again how machine translation is going to solve the world language problem.