the real green engineering.

[ india, cherrapunji. rootbridges. all other images from theoriens ]

what happens when man can't build a bridge.

why, grow one of course. this northeastern bit of india is one of the wettest places on earth (monsoon winds from the bay of bengal ensure that), streaked by many swift rivers and mountain streams. it is also native to the rubber fig, its use as a bridge better explained by its scientific name ficus elastica.

for generations now, people have been splicing betel nut tree trucks and guiding roots of the rubber fig through them.



the literally named 'double decker root bridge' can hold over fifty people at a time, which already include quite a few tourists.

this just took my breath away. apparently it also takes ten- fifteen years to be fully functional; i'm glad that here at least, human patience (inevitable or not) has allowed such a feat testament to the harmony nature and man can achieve. tolkien would be proud.

the golden spruce.

[ northwest, united states. from STRIKE ]

i got alot more than i'd bargained for when i picked up the golden spruce. tree, land, wind, sea, air and man, -above all, man- i did not realise the combustable combination they were.

take a long look here: imagine how a tree could have grown through centuries to become so; imagine its place and what it fought, what it strove for, its comrades in the pursuit of life. imagine how man first came upon the giant; imagine how man saw how it could be used, and how he thought up clever ways to harvest it all; ruthless being conquering being-
[march 04, 1906, at rock pile creek, sonoma, california]


i'd turned myself towards rows of page-bound greenery. i was looking for an insight into the inanimate mass we both depend on and plunder. oil, water, air, fuel, crops.. then forests: stoic browns and proud plumes, quiet and relentless, all knowing, still, wilderness, i'd thought. how quaint my ideas were. but the story of a man in the middle of it all is indeed all wilderness, all madness.


from chapter 14, after the tree falls,

al wanderer, hadwin's former colleague from lillooeit, could have been speaking for all woodsman through history when he looked back over his own empty corner of british columbia and said, "good god. i didnt think it was possible to log this much."

"man", (George Perkins Marsh) wrote more than 140 years ago, "who even now finds scarce breathing room on this cast globe, cannot retire from the Old World to some yet undiscovered continent, and wait for the slow action of such causes to replace...the Eden he has wasted." That year (1864) saw the creation of california's yoesmite state reserve, which included the continent's first federally protected trees.

by 1919, just as a group of wealthy californians was forming the Save the Redwoods League, the first portable chain and circular saws began appearing on the cover of Scientific American.

einarson picked up his train of thought: "another reason i like falling," he said, "is i like walking around in old-growth forests. it's kind of an oxymoron i guess - to like something and then go out and kill it."

When dust dance, far.

[australia, sydney. 1-3. from Brendon Thorne/Getty Images]
[ 4. from Shisberg]

Sydney Morning Herald:

... And everywhere there was dust. It coated footpaths, shop floors, train stations and any other surface the wind could penetrate.

Cityrail trains carried it through tunnels and into underground stations.

"When I got on the train at Cronulla all our seats were covered in this red dust," Robyn Jaques said.

... Up to 75,000 tonnes of dust per hour was blown into the waters off the coast and particle pollution was the highest on record - over 15,000 micrograms per cubic metre at times, when a normal day would see less than 20 micrograms.

The choking dust was far thicker than bushfire smoke, which commonly contains about 500 micrograms per cubic metre.

... Loose red dirt from the arid outback was blown east by strong winds, in what was described by The Sydney Morning Herald as "the day the country blew into town".

... Strong winds following the hottest August on record sucked up dust from a decade-long drought in what experts said was the biggest such incident to hit Sydney since 1942.

joy in a tin can/ get yer fix

[ . www.theflowmarket.com]

anything can be sold.

it doesnt have to be real.

call my berlin bluff.

[berlin. stilinberlin.blogspot.com ]


when demands build and duty bears down, one turns to comfort- comfort eats and comfort looks. and i love stilinberlin for letting me indulge in a little 'action-imagination'- it's the place you go to to live out all your incarnations and play out your most heroic, bravest deeds.

whether an intellectual hobo or a mother who builds jet engines, everyone's a revolutionary. and everyone's implicated in it.

longtime readers to this blog will know my ongoing infatuation with berlin. but it is also a deep respect. there, the only rule is to be real, and reality is tough, not always nice, and always needs a keep on keeping on. how do i tell? no one dresses like they care what everyone else thinks (ugh-ly you say? fingers to you and your prada bag- and i outfinger you 'cos theyre in ragtag mittens); everyone dresses like they think, playfully, bitterly, about what they themselves stand for.

lately, stilinberlin has gone younger and gone upscale, becoming more polished. but well, eager young energy. why not, if its the berliners.