Arius - Batanes' signature tree

Arius - Batanes' signature tree

Dr Abe V Rotor
Living with Nature - School on Blog

Batanes State University in cooperation with the Bureau of Agricultural Research of the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Science and Technology, is developing the Arius as a signature plant of Batanes in like manner Kiwi fruit is the signature of New Zealand, and Smyrna Fig of ancient Persia (now Iran).

Pastry made from the "berries " of Arius, product developed by Batanes State University. Pastry is the name given to various kinds of baked products made from ingredients such as flour, sugar, milk, butter, shortening, baking powder, and eggs. Small tarts and other sweet baked products are called "pastries"

Here is a classical example of a "wild plant" rediscovered for its many potential uses.

1. Pastries and other bakery products

2. Jam, jelly, "raisin"

3. Fruit wine, natural vinegar

4. Fruit juice, tea

5. Health food - rich in tannin, flavonoid, anti-oxidant, anti-cancer, calories

    and vitamins

6. Enhancement of active long life.

7. Reforestation, watershed, windbreak, ornamental

8. Pesticide - volatile oil is a safe insect repellent.

9. Natural Christmas tree - saves cutting of trees during the Season.

10. Living fossil - helps trace evolution and phylogeny of living things.

The gymnosperms are a group of seed-producing plants that includes conifers, cycads, Ginkgo, and Gnetales. The term "gymnosperm" comes from the Greek word gymnospermos, meaning "naked seeds", after the unenclosed condition of their seeds. Gymnosperms are much older than angiosperms, they were the dominant plants before and during the time of the dinosaurs (Mesozoic Period)) while the angiosperms began to flourish in the Cenozoic Period when the human species began to develop - and to what we and the living world are at present.

Stages in the development of the cone to berry. NOTE: The term berry is used here for practical reason, not as botanical description; true berries are the fruits of certain flowering plants. (Acknowledgement: Internet, Wikipedia, Missouri Botanical Garden).

Arius (Podocarpus costalis) a relative of the pine and cypress is a gymnosperm, which is distinct from angiosperms or flowering plants. Many gymnosperms like the redwood, bristle pine and our own Baguio pine are among the longest living organisms on earth. Although it may not live for one thousand to three thousand years like the Sequoia and Bristle Pine, Arius for one has a lifespan of 100 to 300 years for which it earned its name "century plant" in its native habitat - Formosa, now Taiwan and Batanes. To the Ivatans, it is Batanes Pine.

Arius is listed among the endangered species of the world. It is because of its limited natural habitat - mainly shrub forests and natural vegetation on limestone formation such as those found in Batanes, such habitat is now facing increasing loss to agriculture, settlements and other forms of land use conversion. Domesticated Arius and those propagated for ornamental and bonsai lose their natural ability to adapt to new environments. Thus they fail to maintain a natural population even with the help of man. But not in Batanes. This is why Batanes should undertake a conservation program for Arius through reforestation, habitat conservation and large scale planting. A natural gene bank must be established to study its genetic diversity and possible variations with those growing in other countries natural or introduced. Nursery management would be a good base for its propagation through multisectoral approach, Arius being the very signature of the islands - singular and distinct - worldwide.

Closeup of the foliage; medium size trees dominate a local landscape; Arius bonsai
estimated to be two centuries old or so. (Eastwood bonsai fair. Photo by the author, 2013 )

One of the treasured plants at the former EcoSanctuary of St Paul University QC was a pair of Arius trees until tall buildings took over the garden. Dr Sel Cabigan and I used to visit the plants when we were professors in that university. Indeed the Arius is a very curious plant.

First, it is unsuspecting as a gymnosperm. It does not have needle leaves like the pine. It produces cones becoming berries which ripen into dark purple, its seeds exposed at the bottom like the cashew (kasoy), as shown in the photo.

Second, as a conifer, it is an evergreen. The tree remains green throughout the year, its crown full and deep green. It loses its leaves one by one without being noticed, unlike the deciduous narra, talisay, and other flowering plants. Being a non-deciduous, it protects the area from brush fire. It is efficient as watershed cover to catch and store water, while protecting the soil from erosion and siltation, and unexpected change in pH and fertility. Its litter serves as mulch that slowly become organic fertilizer while conserving soil moisture in the process.

Third, it is photoperiodic. It responds to specific day length that dictates cone bearing and formation of berries. It is climate specific. Though it may grow vegetatively on the lowland, and at lower latitude, it does not produce cones - and these may not form into "berries" at all. In Batanes and Taiwan the Arius undergoes the normal cycle, being indigenous in these places.

Fourth, its essential oil is an insect repellant, as ointment, smudge (katol), or simply by applying fresh leaves where insects abound like in poultry houses, kitchen cabinet, and tents. Try crushed leaves mixed with water for watering garden plants.

Botany of Podocarpus costalis: Morphology

Shrubs or small trees to 3 m tall; bark greenish, very smooth; branches spreading horizontally. Foliage buds 2-4 × 2-4 mm, of long, triangular scales with spreading apices. Leaves spirally arranged, crowded at apex of branchlets; blade of adult leaves narrowly oblanceolate or linear-oblanceolate, (2.5-)5-7 × (0.5-)0.8-1.2 cm but juvenile leaves larger, leathery, midvein prominent and raised adaxially, less distinct but more broadly raised abaxially, base tapered into short petiole, margin slightly revolute, apex rounded or obtuse, subacute in juvenile leaves, sometimes mucronate. Pollen cones axillary, always solitary, sessile, cylindric or ovoid-cylindric, 3-3.5 cm × ca. 7 mm, surrounded at base by a cluster of membranous scales ca. 2 mm wide. Seed-bearing structures borne on peduncles ca. 1 cm. Receptacle red when ripe, cylindric, 1-1.3 cm, base with 2 deciduous, lanceolate sterile bracts ca. 1.5 mm. Epimatium dark blue when ripe. Seed ellipsoid, (8-)9-10 × 6-7 mm, apex rounded, shortly mucronate, mucro ca. 1 mm. - Missouri Botanical Garden, 4344 Shaw Boulevard, St. Louis, MO, 63110 USA
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Batanes State University in cooperation with the Bureau of Agricultural Research of the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Science and Technology, is developing the Arius as a signature plant of Batanes in like manner Kiwi fruit is the signature of New Zealand, and Smyrna Fig of ancient Persia (now Iran). The joint undertaking is headed by BSU research and extension director Dr. Robert Baltazar who found the potential value of the carbohydrate-rich berries.

Special thanks to our relatives who brought to our home in QC pastries made from Arius: Mr and Mrs Werner Arthur and Erlinda Mohr, Jimmy Calucag, and daughters Ma Jennalyn and Ma Jamila Alconis-Calucag. Congratulations to Batanes State University and Dr Robert Baltazar et al.

I also wish to acknowledge my former professor and co-professor at the UST Graduate School, Dr Florentino H Hornedo, a native of Batanes, for his invaluable achievements as university professor, author, social scientist , and UNICEF commissioner, and most specially as a friend. ~


Lesson on former Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid Dr Abe V Rotor and Ms Melly C Tenorio
738 DZRB AM, 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday

Books are Back! (2nd of a Series): “There is no friend as loyal as a book.”― Ernest Hemingway

Books are Back!

"There is no friend as loyal as a book.”

― Ernest Hemingway

"A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors." – Charles Baudelaire

Well-liked Books at the Living 

with Nature Center

San Vicente, Ilocos Sur

Dr Abe V Rotor

Perhaps the most challenging issue today is that

"man is trespassing into the realm of Creation." - avr

"I was scared. Do you know what it's like to hold someone else's life in your hands? It's like playing God. Can you think of anything scarier than that?" - Sidney Sheldon

  

 

   

Literature constitutes the backbone of Humanities 

  

  

Rizal revival in today's consciousness

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, 

there is no use in reading it at all.” - Oscar Wilde ~

Have we, as a species, reached our sunset?

      Have we, as a species, reached our sunset?

                                                       Dr Abe V Rotor

Last bastion. Children play under a lone tree spared by bulldozer
in a new subdivision in Metro Manila

The riddle of the Sphinx goes this way. “What animal walks on four feet at sunrise, two at noon, and three at sunset?”

I first heard this riddle when I was a child, and when I failed to answer it my father casually explained the life cycle of man to me. It was one of the many mind teasers taken leisurely and with humor. But in a lecture which I attended at the University of Santo Tomas Graduate  School, Science as Critique of Society, where the future of man was discussed, the riddle flashed back to mind serious repercussions.

Has man, as a species, reached his sunset? Or is history merely repeating itself?

The world now and then remembers a sweet-bitter memory of its past. After “the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome,” mankind plunged into the Dark Ages, which lasted longer than the two previous civilizations combined. Are we taking the same road to destruction, a road strewn with roses, but facing abyss at the end?

This may be a tough question to handle. It is discomforting to consider, but necessary to absorb in the context of a wake up call. How can a world of computers, open universities, mega cities, supersonic transport and satellite communications find affinity with the world of the ancients to draw such a conclusion? “No, not in our modern world,” we say.

We Live in a Modern World.

Modern is a Janus word. It is seldom perceived this way because we take modern for granted since it is all around us in different forms: modern medicine, modern transport, modern education, modern technology, and modern weapons. You name it and the malls and the Internet may have it. What is modern is something we put to use, often hastily, replacing a present implement or practice.

For example, modern agriculture is pictured as using a combine, a huge air-conditioned tractor that can simultaneously perform several jobs. Modern industries are automated using robotics. Modern society is said to be successful when it brings people of different races, backgrounds and walks of life together. Modern education is one that makes learning computer-dependent. Electronics has invaded our lives, such as e-commerce, e-learning.

How wired is our globe? Today, 95 percent of PC power is idle; the grid aims at tapping it all. As the Net evolves, all machines and people will become nodes on one network, and any one computer will be able to tap the power of all. But by using the grid, crooks could commandeer cars, even home appliances. It is scary. (Time, Life in the Grid)

Let us take a look at the other side of midnight, so to speak. It is modern agriculture that created pesticide residues and spurred resistance in pests. It is also responsible for making man-made desert we call in ecology desertification.

Woodland in summer, acrylic painting, AVR 2009.
Loss of natural habitat endangers many species to extinction.

It is modern industry that has thinned the ozone layer and created non-biodegradable wastes. One the one hand, population increases have crossed the line beyond the threshold reserved for wildlife sanctuary. On the other hand, affluent living has thickened the atmosphere with waste gases and particulates causing the phenomenon called Greenhouse Effect. As cities grow the quaintness of living disappears. Much of the essence of the Lyceum has been lost in modern education. The common sense that often goes with the intelligence of naturalism is now being poorly cultivated.

Instinctive versus Acquired Intelligence

There was a conversation between a bushman and a visiting scientist in the middle of the Kalahari Desert in the movie, The Gods Must Be Crazy.

“Why are you so illiterate?” asked the bushman to his guest in his unique language.

It was a question a civilized person, a beautiful woman and a doctorate holder at that, would have asked instead.

But the bushman knew when a hyena had just passed; if the wind is dangerously picking up human scent and delivering it to waiting predators; and where to find water in a no-man’s land.

Today, instinctive intelligence has been juxtaposed with, if not replaced by, acquired intelligence, that one hardly knows the difference between the two. In times of peace and plenty, instinctive intelligence tends to become dormant, lulled by the many amenities of living. We are like a typical person from New York, who may be street-smart but maybe illiterate in matters of nature, and may be pathetically helpless when disaster strikes. We do not even know if we are existing in a “desert,” at a loss in realizing danger, because we are so used to the good life. This is the condition into which modernism has transformed us.

Where Does Modern Life Lead Us?

In Mary Shelly’s celebrated fiction novel, Frankenstein, wasn’t the monster Dr. Frankenstein created, a product of modern science in his time? It is not different today. Wittingly, or otherwise, we are creating a modern Frankenstein monster in our quest for power and wealth - a monster which first appears as an obliging genie, but at the end refuses to go back into the bottle of its origin.

Let us look into the monster modern man has created.

1. By splitting the atom man has unleashed the most explosive force the world has ever known. This tremendous power can plunge the world into Armageddon. Today’s nuclear stockpile threatens the globe with obliteration of humankind three times over. This means a thermo-nuclear war can instantly kill a population of 21 billion people, notwithstanding the gross destruction of other warfare organisms, and obliteration of the environment.

The proliferation of nuclear weapons – atomic, hydrogen, neutron and cobalt bombs - reached its peak during the Cold War. With the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR, in 1987, the accountability of nuclear stockpiles became a big question among its former satellites. It is not impossible to smuggle a nuclear warhead which is only about the size of an attaché case, or produce radioactive material for making a nuclear bomb in the guise of nuclear power generation. We know that nuclear weapons technology is no longer the monopoly of the West and highly industrialized countries. The latest additions to the list of countries capable of making nuclear weapons are North Korea and Iran.

2. Unrestricted massive expansion of frontiers of production and settlements has resulted in loss of natural habitats, in fact, whole ecosystems as evidenced by the death of rivers, lakes and coral reefs, and destruction of forests and wildlife. It is a fact that if man can tame the earth, so can he destroy it.
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The demise of a single species can produce a cascade of extinctions and threaten an entire ecosystem. (AVR, Living with Nature in Our Times, 2008)
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3. Growing affluence continues to accelerate man’s conquest of nature through industrialization. Practically every country in the world is on a race towards industrialization in order to meet capitalistic standards of high economic growth and development. But Gross National Product (GNP) merely sums up a country’s output. Very little focus is given to Human Development Index (HDI), the guarantee of equitable distribution of benefits that elevates quality of life in a country. In certain societies such us ours, socio-economic inequity can be aptly summarized as having 10 percent of the population controlling 90 percent of the nation’s resources, and that 50 to 60 percent of the population is trapped in a cycle of poverty.

Industrialization has widened the division between the affluent and the poor, stunting migration patterns that have caused massive urban growth, while siphoning off the resources of the countryside. This, in turn, has created a world order dominated by multinational companies and self-proclaimed global leaders now questioned by the free world, and challenged by civil initiatives and terrorism.

The current civil unrest in North Africa and Middle East is an offshoot of such inequity and restriction of freedom. Civil society led by professionals, students, and various organizations that are independent of political and religious beliefs and affiliations has recently rocked the silent Arab world spreading like fire to twelve countries. The tools of revolution? The Internet - Twitter, Blog, Facebook, Wikileaks, and the like, cell phones, TV and radio. The power of communication is so overwhelming that dictators like Ali of Tunisia and Mubarak of Egypt were forced to step down - and likely too, Qaddafi of Libya.

4. The recent scientific breakthrough, the breaking of the code of heredity - DNA (Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid), the Rosetta Stone of genetics, has opened up an entirely new concept of the origin and development of life.

But more amazing and frightening is the new power of man to tinker with life itself – playing God’s role in the creation of new life forms, extending human life to nearly twice its present longevity, and in eliminating diseases even before their symptoms are manifested. Cloning suddenly became a fearful word as applied to humans, following the success with “Dolly, the sheep,” the first cloned animal. Even this early we are warned of food products manufactured from Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO), dubbed as Frankenfood.

One by one, countries are coming out against crops with engineered genes – and there may be more to the skepticism over GM crops. Genetic modification can be a strategy to bring agriculture under the dominance of foreign corporations. On the grassroots level farmers doubt if GM crops can be grown side-by-side with non-GMO plants and not being affected negatively since open pollination knows no boundaries.

The biggest scare that can be spawned by genetic engineering is Genetically Modified Man (GMM) - a being different from the original man described in Genesis, who is God-fearing, loving, sociable, intelligent, and with a high sense of values.
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A transformation of our technology and values could make it possible to build a society that will stand the test of time. (Time, A Culture of Permanence)
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5. It was unprecedented that the world has traveled far and wide on two feet – communications and transportation – with the West discovering the East, and subsequently resulting in intermarriages of the races, in trade and commerce, education and culture, politics and government, religion and philosophy. With the advances of science and technology the world has shrunk further into the size of a village now wired with fiber optics and satellites. But such union cannot be merely characterized as gross merging. Here the rule of compatibility may bring diverging directional paths, especially when we force the union of dynamic processes, such as the liberalism of the West and traditionalism of the East. Through time and with continuing “intermarriage”, perhaps a global society will form and accelerate towards homogeneity. We rejoice in meeting friends from across the globe, at getting international news live, and in finding commonalities of interests, and in being part of a genetic pool.

Remember the universal soldier? The Renaissance man? This new kind of man - will he be superior over say, than man in the times of the Greeks and Romans? Will this superman represent the fittest of the survivors in accordance with the standards of evolution? Or the righteousness of man in pursuit of the precepts of the Church?

The basic biological principle concerning the survival and dominance of an organism is having a large population, surrounded by a wide range of genetic diversity.

We know that each organism has a life cycle of its own patterned by its species, but the intriguing part is that each species has a unique population cycle.

To attest to this natural law, observe the swarms of locusts and gnats, the spontaneous appearance of mushrooms to make many a fairy tale, the aggregation of corals following a once-in-a-year orgy, large herds of reindeer, salmon runs, schools of tuna.

Additionally, diseases run into epidemic levels, decimating large numbers of people in the bubonic plague which killed one-third of the population of Europe. Sometime between 1918 and 1920, the total number of deaths due to the Spanish influenza was estimated at 40 million with the US and India, hardest hit. Based on the world’s population at that time, one out of six people on earth was killed by this pandemic disease. Today, we are confronted with similar threats, AIDS (Acute Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome), and the recent SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). The world stands alert in preventing the repetition of another epidemic.

Many of us may still remember Pied Piper of Hamlyn, a German folk story. If one would only realize its theme, which is mass suicide, the story would make a horror box office, rather than one for bedside reading.

Once upon a time a strange young man called on the mayor of Hamlyn who was worried about how to get rid of the rats infesting his town. “I will eliminate the rats,” assured the Pied Piper. To which the mayor, on seeing his jester’s costume and a small musical instrument in his hand, laughed, “I’ll give you all the money you want if you can do just that.”

Taking the words of the mayor seriously, the Pied Piper played a strange music with his pipe and walked through town, and rats followed him. Rats from the attic, canals, the kitchens, rats from everywhere, were drawn by his music. Playing until he reached the edge of the sea, the piper caused the rats to plunge into their death, thus ridding the town of these pests.

But the mayor did not keep his promise of paying the piper.

So the Pied Piper played again, this time with a more strange music that caused children to follow him. Children came from their homes, schools, and the streets, were drawn by the music of the piper that led them to the mountains. They entered the misty forest, and thence into a yawning cave that closed after them. The children were never heard again. Only a lame boy was spared. He saw it all happen and told this story.

Does the Pied Piper story have any scientific explanation?

Scientists in Scandinavia observed a similar mass suicide among lemmings. Every once in a while, the population of this rodent increases substantially and becomes a pest to farm folks and homeowners. In large numbers, they move from place to place, ravaging agriculture and articles of commerce. After this rampage, they plunge themselves in hordes into the sea in the same manner as the rats of Hamlyn.

Here is another celebrated case. Locust (Locusta migratoria manilensis), a major insect pest, follows a more complicated population growth pattern. There are four stages in its life cycle. In the solitaria phase the insect behaves individually like the grasshopper in an Aesop fable. As food becomes scarce in the summer, the individual locusts group together to form congregans. These then coalesce to form larger groups, proceeding to the swarming stage, migratoria. Except for those that revert to the solitary phase, the dissocians, the swarm continues to expand. Because of sheer numbers, an overnight attack by the pest can virtually demolish entire crops of rice, corn, legumes and vegetables. The swarm darkens the sky at midday, hisses with a deafening sound, rides on wind current to reach far and wide, destroying many things on its path.

This population growth pattern that ends in mass extinction is also happening in the microscopic world. This can be observed in yeast during alcohol fermentation. The yeast cells rapidly increase in number, so with the enzyme – zymase - which they secrete. Zymase converts sugar into alcohol, so that alcohol builds up while the amount of fermentable sugar proportionately decreases. Ironically it is the accumulated alcohol and starvation that ultimately kill the yeast cells, a phenomenon known as autotoxicity.

Do we carry in our genes the Pied Piper or Lemming syndrome? Has human society any similarity with the migratory habit of locust? Are we internally building toxic materials, like the yeast, which will lead us to our doom?

These are questions that will trouble and challenge our most profound thinkers. But there is one thing that we should remember. It is not man’s superior mind that is the saving grace of the world, because the more he discovers things, the more he asserts his superiority in the biosphere.

It may be man’s intelligence that is bringing his doom closer. It reminds us of the Fall when man disobeyed God and ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Whatever is our interpretation of Paradise Lost, the fact remains that mankind’s vulnerability lies in the improper use of his rationality. One such blatant act is the destruction of his environment as man craves to fulfill his unending quest for food, energy, lumber, minerals, and the like.

There is a theological and ecological dimension to this thesis. When we destroy nature, we invariably disrespect our Creator.

Here is a stage play to portray man and the monster he created in battle. The modern Hercules pursues the Hydra of many ugly heads. It will be more dramatic than the romanticized Greek mythology. And the task will be enormous. Will our new Hercules succeed?

These are tools that we would offer to our hero to use.

 Elimination of all weapons of mass destruction
 Preservation of ecosystems
 Renewal of values and strengthening institutions
 Population planning and control
 Social control for equitable distribution of resources
 Restrained agriculture and industrial development
 Science and technology with conscience
 Enlightened education and media
 Effective governance and order
 Investment in the new generation and the future

Let us imagine that the play will last for days, years, generations or eons of time. We must be patient and persistent, like the Sphinx on the watch, but let us not fall victim to it.

We know that nothing is permanent in this world. Everything has a life cycle – even the stars – and this is what makes things transient. Take for example our sun. It is no longer the young blue-flamed torch in the sky for it has aged. It is now reddish and approaching a nova, the last stage of a star about to explode, and die - in the next 5 billion years.

There was once a scientist who expressed the highest level of optimism for humankind. He envisioned that as the sun becomes senile and prepares for its demise, man shall then have colonized the other planets, thus ensuring the continuity of his species.

Our species has its birth, growth, maturity and stability, before it too, shall perish and give way to another dominant organism. What will it be? Nobody knows. This natural law of succession is evident from the fossil record that tells of the earth’s natural history. Of the five billion years of the earth’s existence, scientists found evidences of primitive life forms as early as three billion years ago, progressing very slowly to break away from the simple, unicellular life forms.

Then, a billion years ago, life burst into a myriad of multi-cellular forms. Very recently did man arrive. If the world’s history is a year calendar, man arrived in the evening of December 30th. That is how young our species is as compared with, say the Coelacanth thought to have perished 60 millions years ago, or the dragonfly and cockroach which have been existing on earth ahead of the age of the dinosaurs.

Man in the last one million years became a dominant species, but not for the reason that he possesses the instincts of other dominant organisms before him, but by the use of a special singular tool - high intelligence - which no other organism at present or in the past ever possessed.

The question today is not how we dominate the earth but for how long will we dominate it. It is not appropriate to compare man with the dinosaurs, or the early mollusk, or amphibians or fishes. These organisms cannot shape their environment and their destiny as man can. Man has conquered every corner of the earth, and soon the space above and around it, and in the depths of the oceans. He has studied how nature works and has been able to duplicate it in a growing number of ways. He has created new elements and compounds, including amino acids which are building blocks of life itself.

There is reason to believe that our species, if unchecked, may soon face extinction. But it is not unlikely that this demise will come from a giant meteor crushing earth, similar to what is believed to have caused the disappearance of dinosaurs. However, some scientists like Dr. Schumacher, the proponent of “Impact Technology,” believes that this extraterrestrial accident is not remote from happening again.

But if the death of our species would come, it is likely our own doing. Our intelligence may be unable to overcome the dictates of our survival instincts, leading to our own mass suicide. Will our society, perfect as Utopia, simply drift like the migratory locust searching just for food, mate, and other biological needs?

Will our species remain entrapped in a geometric population growth pattern, unable to use its intelligence to break free? It is possible that the population explosion, unending materialism, and breakaway science and technology will combine to create autotoxicity similar to that which killed the yeast cells?

We are engaged in a drama where we are not only the audience, but also its characters, playing the role of a new kind of hero, one who can save our environment and our species. The hero’s victory means the survival of mankind. It is a long struggle and we believe we will triumph.

If we play the hero’s role well, we can yet delay the arrival of our sunset as a species.~

A disturbing image

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This is the answer of the riddle of the Sphinx. Man is that animal. As a child in the morning he crawls on all fours; as an adult at noon he walks erect on two legs; and as an elderly person, reaching the evening of his life, he walks with a cane for his third leg.

The Living with Nature Handbook by AV Rotor, UST Press 2003

Books are Back! Well-liked Books at the Living With Nature Center (San Vicente, Ilocos Sur)

Books are Back!

Well-liked Books at the Living 

with Nature Center

San Vicente, Ilocos Sur

Dr Abe V Rotor

“The man who does not read good books is no better than 

the man who can't.”-  Mark Twain  

   “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”

― Jorge Luis Borges

   

Foresee the future with a bit of fear and anxiety, 

 in Future Shock and Eco-Spasm of Toffler;

live the lives of great men and women in history,

       and trace English back across its border. - avr 

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” ― Toni Morrison 

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
― Madeleine L'Engle“

   

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”
― Charles W. Eliot

... a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

  

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”― Jorge Luis Borges

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” ― Oscar Wilde

   

"Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.”- Abraham Lincoln

“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.” ― William Styron, Conversations with William Styron

“Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.”- Napoleon Bonaparte

Acknowledgement: Quotations from the Internet

Yes, you can bring down the rainbow - and touch it, too.

 Yes, you can bring down the rainbow - and touch it, too.  

“Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.” — E.Y. Young

Dr Abe V Rotor

Morning rainbow across the hills and river in Bamban, Tarlac

Children in the neighborhood delight in making a rainbow through an aquarium as prism.  You can make one, too, in your home.  

Rainbow - a kaleidoscope of colors in a pattern of seven - red, orange, yellow, green blue, indigo and violet - that guide man's art in endless combinations.

Rainbow - it builds slowly before our eyes; it comes as twin, or breaks out suddenly  perking up life in its low ebb, and taking out the boredom of living. 

Rainbow - gauge of  weather, reference for travel and trade, source of inspiration of lovers,  bards and writers, subject of the arts, icon of faith and devotion. 

Rainbow - the make-believe subject in children's stories of fairies and spirits; the most sought treasure of grownups -  the proverbial pot of gold. 

Rainbow - ephemeral for which its beauty in heightened, like a rose in the morning, 
first rain in May, the passing of day and night, and the march of seasons.  

Rainbow - likened to the cycle of life - its birth and death, glory and fall, its simplicity grandeur, its independence and attachment to all things, visible and invisible.

Rainbow - now you see it, now you don't, a puzzle to the old and young in all walks of life, yet seeing it best with a clear mind, pure heart and spirit.

Rainbow - it conquers gloom, sows hope, builds the biggest, the most beautiful and magnificent arch of the world that bestows honor to everyone. 

Rainbow - the cathedral in the sky that brings the faithful of all beliefs together in awe and respect to the Creator, the unifying grace of all mankind.  

Rainbow - too high, too far, too abstract, yet to the children it is near, it is real and true; rainbow the symbol of beauty and hope, it comes when the sky is gloomy and dark. ~

Rainbow comes down to earth in many ways - in flowers in spring, leaves in autumn, mountains at sunrise, reflection of lakes, spray of running streams, mirage in deserts, feathers of fowls, and the like.  The rainbow is commonly imitated in man-made structures and designs, and many items of trade and commerce.

Living things like this rainbow fish have captured through evolution the colors and pattern of the rainbow, assuring them of their place in the living world.   

Underworld: "I live by the pen and paint brush, and imagination."

Underworld

"I live by the pen and paint brush, and imagination." - avr

Glass Paintings and Verses by Dr Abe V Rotor 

Living with Nature - School on Blog (avrotor.blogspot.com)

Also open Naturalism - the Eighth Sense

Turkey Fish

                                                          Marine Crustaceans

I live by the pen and paint brush,

     and imagination;

I live where no man had lived

     before Creation.

My world sinks into a deep

     submarine;

My world recreates a unique realm

     at its rim.

Where corals and weeds grow

     into a dome,

Where myriads of creatures have

     found a home.

Here there is also conflict

     among niches;

Here there is also want amid

     the riches.

Here creatures live by artful deceit

     and lies,

Here friends and foes co-exist

     with their allies.

What makes this world differ

     from the other?

What makes it orderly

     in disorder?

Do we find beauty in evil

     and its kind?

Do we find too, sin and shame

     in a bind?

Do we find beauty

     in diversity?

Do we find beauty too,

     in monopoly?

The artist's eye sees more,

     but more from the mind;

The artist's eye sees deeper

     than the rind.

I wouldn't wish to live here,

     not in this realm;

I would just paint it, paint it

     like a dream. ~

 

Sea Horse, Grouper Fish