P is for Polanco

Since the announcement of the $35 million 5-year contract in April, Gregory Polanco has been emerging as a shining star.  Last night he drove in 5, including a 3-run homer, in the 12 to 1 crush to Arizona Diamondbacks.  It was an outstanding performance, but not an exception.  Pirates got a bargain out of this “young boy” (24-year-old) from Dominica.

“P” is for Pirates! “P” is for Polanco!

The bitter “bitter melon garden”: A time to plant in Ecclesiastes 3

Katy moved and transplanted many bitter melons and a few Taiwanese pumpkins and tomatoes out to the garden last Sunday (May 8), citing several well-founded reasons: (1) all our garden friends have so done, (2) the weather forecasts all said the lowest temperature would be 42 degrees F to the end of May, (3) the bitter melons have borne fruit (see photo right).

I had my reservation.  I am of the opinion of respecting the mother nature and the conventional wisdom that the last frost of the spring is usually in mid or even late May in western Pennsylvania.  In fact, the last frost fell on Memorial Day weekend a few years ago. 

If one pays attention to the weather forecast, one will see the temperature has been revised practically daily.  Since the planting, the lowest temperature has been revised to 39, then 35, then 32 and now 29 degrees is predicted for tonight and frost for tonight and tomorrow night.  This is the peril of  迫不及待的 (cannot wait) gardeners.

The protective fabric covers (for plants) were sold out at WalMart today; we got the last one. Katy has since dug out the moved most of the bitter melons indoors; it was indeed a bitter “bitter melon garden”.  The tentative moving out for the second time will be Monday (May 16).   They no longer look vigorous or vibrant; their health has been compromised.

Ecclesiastes 3 tells us there is “a time to plant”; the time is around or after Memorial Day weekend in western Pennsylvania.

Ecclesiastes 3: A Time for Everything

There is a time for everything,

    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . .

The beauty of science makes one weepy

I saw this photo (Milky Way over the Wood Island cottage) in the website of our friend, Steve.  It comes with the following comment.

“Sometimes the beauty and scale of the Cosmos just makes me choke up and get weepy ... (this feeling is accentuated by an appreciation of the physics behind it all ... which is a different kind of beauty)”

This reminds me of an article (The making of a scientist) by Richard Feynman, collected in the book of Classic Feynman.  The following three italic paragraphs are the excerpts.

I have a friend who’s an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don’t agree with.  He’ll hold up a flower and say, “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree.  But then he’ll say, “I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is.  But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull.”  I think he’s kind of nutty.

First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people—and to me, too, I believe.  Although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is, I can appreciate the beauty of a flower.  But at the same time, I see much more in the flower than he sees.  I can imagine the cells inside, which also have a beauty.  There’s beauty not just at the dimension of one centimeter; there’s also beauty at a smaller dimension.

There are the complicated actions of the cells, and other processes.  The fact that the colors in the flower have evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; that means insects can see the colors.  That adds a question: does the aesthetic sense we have also exist in lower forms of life? There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower.  It only adds.  I don’t understand how it subtracts.

And Feynman did even touch the issue of fragrance, which, I am sure, also evolves over the age.  There is an article (Why do flowers have scent?) on the 4/18/2005 issue of Scientific American.  Like colors of flowers, the distinct scent of certain flowers attracts their pollinators and the nectar and/or pollen is their rewards.

Steve had a good fortune to be able to sit in Feynman’s classroom when he was giving that famous “Feynman’s Lectures on Physics” in early 1960s.  Like teacher; like student!

The art of bargaining (by Lin Yutang)

Lin Yutang

Moment in Peking was written in English targeting the Americans and English-reading readers.  No one can do a better job than Lin Yutang in telling the story of Chinese living in a turbulent period between 1900 and 1938, literally telling the story of His Country and His People.  I’ll write a series of posts with a category of “Moment in Peking” in this blog, let them serve as my “book report”.

His My Country and My People, The Importance of Living and The Importance of Understanding are the best books to introduce Chinese culture to the western world.  I never read his novel until recently when I picked up Moment in Peking.  Pearl Buck repeatedly nominated Lin for Nobel Literature prize; I always thought he was never so honored because he was not a good novelist; how wrong I was!

The following excerpt from Moment in Peking is the best writing of the art of bargaining by Chinese.  Only Lin Yutang can do it.  Western writers would have no such insight whereas Chinese writers couldn’t write such an exquisite English that rivals that of the best American/British writers.

The art of bargaining

He [Mr. Feng, brother of Mrs. Tseng, who is the manager of Mr. Tseng’s shops] had the merchant’s typical manner of talking, which was interspersed with many silent “hah’s” and “haw’s” and ran the gamut from silent whispers to vociferous shouting as circumstances required.  He had acquired all the nuances of raising his voice in an emphatic tone of determination and repudiation when bargaining for a purchase, and softening it to a heartfelt cordiality when closing the bargain, knowing how to appear to stand his ground when he was prepared to yield, and yielding abruptly with a gesture of friendship at the last moment as if he was conferring a favor.  He knew how to condemn or deprecate what he desired to buy and to extol to perfection what he wanted to sell.  All these hot arguments, those red-faced loud-voiced repetitions did not mean anything except he didn’t like the price you quoted, and a stepping down on his part was always conveyed by a whisper in your ear, as if it was the greatest diplomatic secret and you were his most intimate confidant.

When the novelists wrote about medicine: Moment in Peking and Middlemarch

I still have nearly 300 pages to go for the 813-page Moment in Peking.  I would have finished had the garden work not been going on in earnest.  I don’t know exactly how many hours I worked this past Sunday; it was double digits for sure.  I have read many of Lin Yutang’s books and I regret that I haven’t read Moment in Peking sooner.

This is why I am somewhat hesitated to write this post pointing out an error when Lin Yutang talked about medicine (or more precisely insulin)

The following is the excerpt from Chapter 31:

Sutang, who had come to visit them occasionally, had sometime ago convinced him that he [Mr. Tseng] had suffered from the "sugar-urine disease" and that there was a sure scientific cure for it in the Western medicine called insulin. . . .

For three months he observed strict mourning [of his mother's passing], and in the first weeks he even refused to take medicine. Lying there, broken in spirit and body, Mr. Tseng at last yielded enough to try insulin regularly. 

He [Mr. Tseng] was anxious to leave the capital anyway, because Yuan Shihkai's monarchist plans had become public and rebellion had begun.  General Tsai Ao secretly slipped away from Peking, escaping Yuan's vigilance by pretending to debauch himself in sing-song houses, and declared the rebellion on Christmas Day, 1915, in southwest Yunnan. . . .

he [Mr. Tseng] was so grateful for his recovery from near death, he said to Sutung one day, with his usual mandarin dignity: "I will make you my son-in-law.  You have saved my life.  I will give you my daughter."  He did not even mention which daughter, and Sutaung did not dare ask. . . . Sutung took it for granted that it was Ailien that her father meant, . . . He [Mr. Tseng] decided that the wedding was to take place as soon as she [Ailien] was graduated from school, in the summer of 1917.

It clearly said that Sutung [a Western medicine trained doctor] gave Mr. Tseng insulin before “Christmas Day 1915”.  Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolated insulin in 1921.  Insulin was first given to human, a 14-year-old boy, in Toronto in January 1922 and Banting was awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1923.

Thus there is no way that Mr. Tseng could have received insulin back in 1915.  Lin Yutang left New York for Paris in 1938 and spent one year to write Moment in Peking.  Lin must have heard about the wonder of insulin then [Lin wrote “for sure a scientific cure] and didn’t double check the dates of insulin discovery and clinical use.

In preparation of writing Middlemarch George Eliot read medicine and observed how doctors practiced medicine in her time because Dr. Lydgate is a main character. She once visited Oxford University and had a professor of medicine demonstrated the neuro-anatomy for her.

The followings are excerpts from Middlemarch, showing George Eliot’s observation of the medical professionals in her days is still true in our modern time.

In short, Dr. Spragg had weights, and might be expected to grapple with a disease and throw it; while Dr. Minchin might be better able to detect it lurking and to circumvent it.  They enjoyed about equally the mysterious privilege of medical reputation, and concealed with much etiquette their contempt for each other's skill.

The following is what Eliot wrote when Dr. Lydgate read medicine far into the smallest hour.  What a keen insight into a young doctor’s mind.

Lydgate felt a triumphant delight in his studies, and something like pity for those less lucky men who were not of his profession. . . I should never have been happy in any profession that did not call forth the highest intellectual strain, and yet keep me in good warm contact with my neighbors.  There is nothing like the medical profession for that: one can have the exclusive scientific life that touches the distance and befriend the old fogies in the parish too.

 No wonder Virginia Woolf described Middlemarch as ”one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.”

Gardening is a way of showing you believe in tomorrow: A patient gardener grows hollyhock

I previously wrote a post of “holy hollyhock” as it is heavenly; its beauty is soft, exquisite and out of this world.  I might as well call it holy-hock!

The variety we planted in 2014 (see photo right) was “Peach ‘n Dreams”; somewhat similar to peony.There are two ways to plant hollyhocks; both ways we tried:  We planted some bare root hollyhocks a few days ago.  Katy brought some hollyhock seeds from London a few years ago; here they grew; hopefully they will survive and thrive to move out to the garden.

Perennial though they may be, they are short lived, lasting for 2 or 3 years only.  Most are biennial; they grow foliage the first year and bloom only the second year.  We gardeners believe in tomorrow, even if tomorrow only comes next year.

Our friend, Charles said many of his gardener friends are serious (嚴肅, 認真), some are passionate (熱愛) to the level of being obsessive (酷愛), or even addictive (上癮).  A gardener also has to be patient, as “gardening is a way of showing you believe in tomorrow”.

growing hollyhocks from seeds

hollyhock bare root

hollyhock growing from seeds

growing hollyhocks from bare roots