Blank-spiration

As an aspiring writer, I've had a dismal run of creations as of late. This morning it seemed like a lack of inspiration. Then, I thought to myself, perhaps inspiration, like happiness or being pissed at the world, is largely a choice. There are obviously outside factors that contribute to any state of mind, but for most people it is a conscious decision to be or not to be one way or another.

Today, I am inspired. I will start a new blog that does not have Korea or Korean dishes in the title. It will be like Rand of Kimchi, in that I will generally write short casual journalistic pieces. Every once in a while, I will say what I or my loved ones are doing in life. I will also try to make this new blog more well known (as I've been encouraged to do). So, please, check out my new online place for musings and writings, and let me know what you think.

One last thing, I finally got to see Joe Pug, with Evan on Monday. I wrote about him more than a year ago, thinking I had found the new love of my life. I was wrong, I met him a few weeks later. Now, we can watch his music together. The concert was great, you should definitely see him if he's in your area!

----30 Minutes Later----

Does anyone have any idea how hard it is to create a title for a blog?

----Another 30 Minutes Later----

The new blog has been created! The Written, Simply is now under way, and I will try (key word) to write more frequently.

Thanks to all who have read Riving in the Rand of Kimchi! You are great!

Sending you Peace and Love,

Alex

Houses, Tree Houses and Trees: A Bloggy Triptych

This is the third part of my bloggy triptych. My first post was about living in South Korea; while the second post revolved around the coolness of tree houses. This one will center on the art of Pleaching. It is like grafting two trees together, and it can result in some beautiful tree art. I must admit that the writing of this was started in March and is being finished in June...if it seems disjointed and slightly lazily written--well, it's because it is; sorry.

Part III: Trees as Art

I was talking to my father about pleaching a couple weeks ago. I asked him if he knew what pleaching was. Maybe it was the shoddy skype connection, maybe it was my mumbling, maybe it was neither; but my father humorously replied "Oh yeah, I think I ate one of those the other day!" He thought I was talking about the fruit, the lychee.

While lychees are delicious, and are born from a tree, and this blog post will examine many fruit bearing trees...I wasn't talking about this slimy subtropical martini maker. I was referring to the near forgotten art of pleaching.

What is Pleaching? You may ask...

pleach (plēch, plāch) tr.v. pleached, pleach·ing, pleach·es

1. To plait or interlace (branches or vines, for example), especially in making a hedge or an arbor.

2. To shade or border with interlaced branches or vines.

[Middle English plechen, from Old North French plechier, probably from Latin plectere; see plek- in Indo-European roots.]

(Thank you, dictionary.com)

Pleaching is the practice of planting trees relatively closely and binding the branches of neighboring trees together. The trees are wounded at the point where the branches cross, causing them to fuse and grow together through a process called "inosculation." It is similar to grafting trees--how most of the apple trees we see bearing delicious apples are started.

History

According to some websites (and we all know how reliable the internet is!). Pleaching has been practiced since the days of the Roman Empire, when horticulturalists pleached trees arranged in large grids to transport water from trees along river fronts to trees further inland through their connected branches, as well as offer a place for huts to be built (on top of the trellised trees) during times of flood. This practice didn't last long due to how time consuming it was. After this dawning of the practice through today, the art has become largely that: Art.

As Art

Through the eighteenth century, pleached trees were seen in European gardens in the form of fences, covered walkways and other beautiful, yet labor intensive, features in ornate gardens. The practice wasn't (and still isn't) commonly seen in the Americas. One man, Axel Erlandson, pleached trees as a hobby and farmed dozens of trees on his land in California. His farm was a small tourist attraction, referred to as "The Tree Circus."

Pleached Sycamore Trees, Axel Erlandson

The early nineteen hundreds saw some other American pioneers in the art of tree shaping. One John Krusback (Of Wisconsin!) reportedly imagined, trained and harvested the first "Grown Chair." It took eleven years for the au natural Laz-E-Boy to grow, and it is beautiful:

Grown Chair, John Krubsack

A couple in Australia has taken this craft to new heights. They move beyond "grown chairs" and have captured the art of "living chairs." They also create playful tree people and other sculptures. Through the use of other materials, such as mirrors and stone, they have also created tables and other art pieces. Their company is called Pooktre Tree Shapers. Check 'em out.

Peter and Becky's Fist Tree Person, Planted 1998

How does Pleaching work?

Good question. I was, and still am to a degree, wondering the same thing. Not all trees are able to be grafted together. Here is a list of some "inosculate" trees (trees whose branches will naturally graft if given the chance), they are the best candidates for pleaching:

Elm	Holm Oak	Olive
Live Oak	Golden Oak	Pear
Apple	Peach	Almond
Beech	Hornbeam	Linden
Hazelnut	Crepe Maple	Dogwood
Golden Willow	Wisteria	Grape
Privet	Liburnum	Sycamore

Different species of trees can be pleached together, however I don't know if ALL species can be pleached with one another. If they are to be pleached, they must be roughly the same size and age, and you must consider climatic restraints. One man in Japan supposedly has a citrus tree with 11 different kinds of citrus fruits growing on his tree! Since I have never pleached any trees (although I do plan on having at least a one ring tree circus of my own one day), you'll have to trust this ehow on the art of pleaching.

...And I JUST found this awesome PDF: http://lda.ucdavis.edu/people/2008/TLink.pdf, it is long, but it looks well worth the read if this practice interests you at all!

Houses, Tree Houses and Trees: A Bloggy Triptych

Part II of a three part series on homes, trees and tree homes. This is the central and largest panel! Tree houses rock.

Oh! To Live in the Trees!

It's all because of my mom...My love of tree houses that is. Maybe the love and fascination would have come on its own-- it probably would have. However, my visions of a Swiss Family Robinson style pad, with swinging hallways and multiple rooms would probably have been replaced with something less luxurious and more along the lines of a "Girls Rule and Boys Drool, let's build a trapdoor and a pulley system to bring up cookies" kind of fantasy tree house.

We did have a tree house up near our family's lake house that my uncle built back in the day. It was great...a simple, single level with a ladder going up to it. It overlooked the small patch of plum trees that grew along the trail between the lake house and my grandpa's house as well as the lake. It was also surrounded by a forest of birch and evergreens, and up the hill from where it is lies the old pasture that my great grandparents used to use for grazing their cattle (I think, correct me, mom or Jill, if I'm wrong...).

Tree houses come in all shapes, all sizes, all climes and a dazzling array of styles. They are defined as a building constructed above the ground among the branches of or near the trunk of a tree. After perusing the internet, the term "treehouse" seems to apply to anything built above the ground in near proximity to trees. From the family home to the destination hotel to the ultimate children's hideaway, these things are going places (mostly up). Maybe they've always been around in such a multitude of designs, but the internet makes them much more visually accessible than in the past, if it is so.

Here are some of the most interesting, eco-friendly and visually appealing tree houses that I've come across (thank you, Evan, for some of these leads!).

1. Free Spirit Spheres

These hanging wooden spheres can be found dangling in the temperate rainforest of Vancouver Island, Canada. They are delightfully named Eve and Eryn and can be rented for one to three people at $125 to $175 a night. They are suspended from three trees using ropes, so they sway with the trees a little, as well as move when people inside shift their weight. The website also sells spheres for the head over heel types. They come in wood or fiberglass.

(I swear I'm not being paid to write this)

There are other hotel destinations like this. I find them pretty exciting in the ways of environmentally friendly travel. Flying, taxi-ing, staying in hotels, eating pre-packaged and restaurant food--all of these aspects of travel have pretty large impacts on the environment. I know my wanderlust pales in comparison to others...and I'm not one to let it go unsatiated for too long; so, it's great that there are options to help lessen that impact while basking in the beauty of a forest seen from a piece of architectural art.

There are many tree house resorts in tourist driven tropical countries, but it seems a bit harder to find them in other areas. Here are some links to a couple in the states...

• Out'N'About, Oregon: This resort has several different priced and different sized houses. The website is shitty, but the accomodations look sweet. And hey, they're in Oregon, pretty cool.
• Cedar Creak Treehouse, Washington: This one makes me drool, really, I'm salivating over this place right now. It's solar powered, near Mount Rainier and fifty feet above the ground in a cedar forest...awesome.
• River of Life Farm, Missouri: This resort is located along the Fork River near the Mark Twain National Forest, the tree houses look pretty great, and most of them have fire places! There are also some normal cabins and a lodge for larger groups.

2. Korowai Tree Houses, Papua New Guinea

Many jungle tribes of the world live in tree houses on stilts above the jungle floor. Most of them do this to avoid the dangers and annoyances associated with scavenging animals. People that live near rivers or other large bodies of water often have houses on stilts too, for obvious reasons--to save their homes in the event of seasonal floods.

The Korowai of Papua New Guinea, however, have their houses on stilts 40 meters (that's really high, fyi) above the forest floor for wholly different reasons--they need to protect themselves from cannibalistic hunters from a rival tribe. They have special poles to reach their treetop abodes that can be pulled up in the case of intruders; they can also be seen from any place in the home--movement of the pole is suspect to investigation.

3.Building with Whole Trees

This beautiful, Wisconsin home was built using whole trees for framing and other structural purposes. Roald Gunderson, the owner and architect, has been toying with whole tree construction since the late nineties and has made some stunning houses.

He harvests small diameter, young trees from his forested property after he has trained them to grow in certain ways. Arches support much more weight than traditional building styles, so he molds the trunks of the trees into arches over a few years. He harvests ash, aspen and other quick growing, fast spreading trees and claims that getting them out when they are young is like thinning a carrot patch--it helps the other trees capture more sunlight and grow into healthier adult trees.

He also uses larger trees that have been felled by weather or disease, but he doesn't harvest healthy large trees for lumber. A whole tree can support fifty percent more weight than the lumber made from the same tree. The large trees hold a special beauty and warmth.

I love these houses! They are cheap, environmentally friendly (no clear cutting, low heating cost, generally smaller homes, reclamation of already felled trees), and beautiful! He now has anarchitecture/construction company that builds whole tree homes for interested families. After building twenty houses, he says his forest shows no signs of logging. Very cool.

4. Tree House Restaurant

This restaurant in Okinawa, Japan isn't built on a real tree...but it's pretty cool, and worth taking a look at. The base is modeled after a banyan tree, and the restaurant supposedly serves organic food harvested from a nearby farm. Pretty sweet for a fake tree restaurant.

(The phoniness of this "tree house" was menially alleviated by the fact that it serves local food)

Houses, Tree Houses and Trees: A Bloggy Triptych

My next three posts will explore the relationship between a home and the land it inhabits. I will not go into extreme detail, but I will explore three areas that have interested me as of late. Part I is about housing in Korea. Part II will be about tree houses, while part III will delve into the world of pleaching--a previously unknown art form similar to tree grafting. These are vaguely related, but enough to make a written triptych with tree houses as the largest, main panel which the other two posts relate to.

Part I: Hanok vs. Apart-uh

(Hanok: A Traditional Korean Home)

The architecture and construction of new homes is fascinating to me. In Korea, it seems that there is a very small amount of traditional building happening across the construction spectrum. Tearing down and building up are common place here; however, what goes up is generally of the tall aparment building variety. The huge apartments are all owned and overseen by a few companies (Hyundai, Samsung and others), and they all look the same. Living in one of these apartments indicates that the family is of a higher class, whereas life in a Hanok is reserved for the country folk (all of my students!). These "apart-uh" are functional and hold large amounts of people, which is necessary in such a densely populated country, but they are so...boring.

(Apart-uh: Samsung Apartments, South Korea)

When seen from a mountain top in Seoul, or countless other cities, these high rise apartment buildings look like a spreading fungus-like growth (did they take a cue from one of their favorite mushrooms, the alba clamshell?). I remember one of my first ventures into Seoul almost a year and a half ago. The previous summer, I had done a short roadtrip with my friend and my cousin to Colorado, taking the "long" way through South Dakota. SoDak has a population of 800,000 souls. In Seoul, as our bus bumbled along passed these huge white apartment towers, I couldn't help but think that I could see (of course, I couldn't "see" the actual people...they were inside, or at work, or wherever) as many people in about twenty minutes on a bus as one could see in the whole state of South Dakota.

(A Rapid City, South Dakota Home)

South Dakota, by the way, is almost twice as big as South Korea, with 75% of South Korea's land covered with uninhabitable mountains and a population approaching fifty million. So, this makes sense...but really, the huge apartment complexes are just ugly.

(South Dakotans have also created this--huge white heads to

stare at the indigenous...Which isn't that much better than huge white

apartment buildings to stare down at a traditional way of living)

"Don't ever tell anybody anything...

If you do, you start missing everybody. "

This is the last line from J.D. Salinger's iconic Catcher in the Rye, a book that almost every high schooler has read since its publication in the early fifties. I did some research on Salinger, and was surprised at my findings. Maybe I had learned these things in the ninth grade when we read the book; if so, they have escaped me. He apparently hated the popularity that Rye achieved. Its success caused him to despise the publishing industry and retreat to a home in New Hampshire where he lived in seclusion for the rest of his life. He gave very few interviews, his last being in 1980.

I guess I am almost jealous of this escape from the public eye. Someone who could write a book full of so much searching and angst would undoubtedly be bothered by celebrity and all of the outside definitions that go along with it. Franny and Zoey, published after Catcher in the Rye addresses his yearning for privacy. As a reader and person curious as to the lives of those that I revere, his reclusive lifestyle is frustrating....We want to know how you think and what you do and how often you sleep and what your house looks like and who your friends are and....! On the other hand, it is totally acceptable, even admirable, that he was able to thwart off biographers and snoopy literary critics and snobs.

Even in the face of his reclusiveness, we can paint ourselves an imaginary portrait of his personality through his numerous quotes and quips (yes! I love quotations...). They are pretty funny and thought provoking:

“It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it.”

“That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose.”

“I hope to hell that when I do die somebody has the sense to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetary. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.”

“It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.”

“An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.”

Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behaviour. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as some day, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.”

“All morons hate it when you call them a moron.”

“I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”

What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by, or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse.”

“I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.”

“I don't exactly know what i mean by that, but I mean it.”

“Mothers are all slightly insane.”

“I don’t know about bores. Maybe you shouldn’t feel too sorry
if you see some swell girl getting married to them. They don’t
hurt anybody most of them, and maybe they’re all terrific
whistlers or something. Who the hell knows? Not me.”

“I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty... you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are.”

Looks like I'll be adding some Salinger onto my 2010 reading list...

Emoticons, Peer Pressure and the Environment

I vaguely remember my younger brother's potty training days. What do I remember most? Smiley face stickers. Smiley face stickers in a rainbow of colors. He would get stickers whenever he would use the potty instead of his pull ups or training pants (tangent: I've finally realized why the British use of the word "trainers" for what Americans call "sneakers" has always struck me as slightly odd).

Emoticons in the form of stickers were a large part of many people's childhoods. The Mr.Ick face stickers made it very apparent that we shouldn't drink Drano. A smiley face on homework meant we did a great job. Two smiley faces or a smiley face with a huge smile on a test? Wow, you are awesome. A winky face sticker from a third grade crush was liable to make any elementary age girl cover a whole notebook with hearts and different ways to sign Mrs.(insert future married name here).

So, we have been conditioned to rely on these simple nose-less miniature caricatures of human emotion. The smiley face wasn't unveiled until 1964, with its height of popularity of smiley pins peaking a few years later (furthermore, it wasn't really invented by Forrest Gump...pity). I can only assume that stickers came some years after the pins, thus making the ubiquitous smiley face sticker perfect for the generation X- and Y-ers. It is only natural that we feel so familiar with the little guy (or gal...). Furthermore, we link the presence of a smiley face to a feeling of elation, success and "I am totally better than the people who didn't get smiley faces." Likewise, a sad or frowney face encourages repulsion or encouragement to do better next time.

You must be asking now, "How the heck does this relate to the environment?" Well, I just read this Grist article which links human behavior, smileys and energy consumption. It reveals the tactics that some companies have used to help reduce energy consumption amongst individuals and their households.

We've all seen those little cards in hotel bathrooms that say something along the lines of "Re-use your towel! Save the planet!" Interestingly, these cards encourage only 33% of hotel patrons to re-use towels. When hotels decided to lie a little bit and tell the customers, "Re-use your towel! 75% of our patrons do, and you should too!" the numbers rose to 50% of people re-using towels (all of this is from the Grist article). As the article states, "People want to do basically what People Like Them do." It's so simple and so true. To get people to change their ways, convince them that everyone around them has already changed...

Now, I don't want this to come off as "I'm Alex and I live the epitome of an environmentally conscious life." That is far, far from the truth, but it is something I strive to do, and I try to convince others of doing the same. So, it's great to see the tactics that other similarly minded people are using to try to get this done. To quote the aforementioned article again, "Attitudes don’t translate into actions." But, other's actions could translate into changed attitudes, especially if peer pressure and smiley faces are involved.

Which brings us to the presence of smiley faces on energy bills. What if you got this in tandem with your next energy bill?:

You'd be pretty happy right? You're better than some of your neighbors...but you can be even better next time. A smiley face with a bar graph? Your second grade children can even see that you're pretty awesome. They can also see that you didn't get two smiley faces.

Strive for two smiley faces, it will save you money and boost your ego at the same time.

The moral of this story: However juvenile and kitschy smiley faces may seem to be, they hold a special place in our development as social creatures. They hold more sway than we may even realize. Good job Mr. Smiley Face creator (not Forrest Gump...pity).

"Hey Anytime I Can Heart My Good Hearty Buddy Heart. HEART"~HJ

Emoticons--hate 'em or love 'em, they are ubiquitous in the world of social technology. They are almost universal--transcending language, class and distance. They can change the whole tenor of a non-verbal conversation.

So, what happens when we take those little faces and symbols and transliterate them back into the English written language? How do people react to this, and why?

This is a major issue facing the youth of today. To emote through picture or through words? How far is too far? To answer these questions, I interviewed a handful of friends. Keep in mind that these are all white, middle class, liberal twenty-somethings, three are male, two are female...In short, the scientific method didn't even cross my mind, and these results may be a tad biased. Also, the only thing I asked was, "How do you feel about the use of 'heart' as a verb? As in 'I heart sweaters.'"

Why sweaters you ask? Well, This all started because my friend said that she had finally whipped out her sweaters, ready for the chilly season to begin. Here is the conversation (for all of you who wonder what highly intellectual things I do in my freetime):

Friend: i broke out the sweaters
Me: i heart sweaters
Friend: please don't ever use heart as a verb around me again
Me: i'm always gonna use it now
I actually don't know if I've ever used it as a verb...but now, i will, forever
Friend: i would honest to god stop talking to you
me: whatever
(3 minutes pass)
Me: I think it's lame too, it seemed fitting to use with sweaters though
(16 minutes pass)
Me: what if I said "I <3 sweaters"
Friend: let's just drop it
Me: fiiiiiinnneeeeeee

In light of this conversation, I began to ask other friends. Here are the results (I have changed names for anonymity, in case anyone would be offended that I am sharing these highly private conversations--However, if you would like to be recognized, and you bitch enough, I guess I can edit this):

Interviewee #1: HJ
Me: How do you feel about using "heart" as a verb?
as in "I heart sweaters"
or "I heart cowbells"
HJ: i was gonna say... it depends on the context
HJ: but then again, i don't really know of a context where it wouldn't be at least somewhat lame
:)
i heart you alex
Me: hahahaaa
you're right, that was more than somewhat lame
thanks
HJ: hey anytime i can heart my good hearty buddy heart. HEART.
Me: <3

Interviewee #2: Moustachio
Me: How do you feel about the use of "heart" as a verb?
as in "I heart sweaters"
or "I heart potato salad"
(13 minutes pass--it's a tough question)
Moustachio: hmmm
i <3 you
yeah
it works
but make sure to tell the kids that it is not used all the time
Me: oh, ha! it's not with the kids
I was having an argument with someone
Mustachio: oh
i seeee
Me: I should teach the kids that though
Moustachio: i guess i was confused
we're going to a wedding
Me: yes we are, and I heart weddings
Moustachio: me too
i <3 them

Interviewee #3: Alpal
Me: question: how do you feel about the word "heart" being used as a verb?
as in, "I heart chocolate"
or "I heart sweaters"
Alpal: it bothers me. unless said in jest
i don't like the world of abbreviated language via emoticons or other symbols being reconverted back in to the language
like saying i winky face at you
what do you think?
Me: hahahaaa
yeah, that's bad
but hilarious
it pisses one of my friends off so badly, that I want to heart everything
I'm gonna have to add on the other emoticons
Alpal: haha
haha,please do!

Interviewee #4: This Guy
Me: How do you feel about the use of "heart" as a verb? As in, "I heart sweaters" or "I heart eating Pizza School three days a week, and I can because I only ate 1.5 pizzas over those three days." (fyi, Pizza School is a Korean chain that sells $5 ~9" pizzas)
This Guy: I knew some girls once who overused heart as a verb and they kind of ruined it for me.. So while I may never use it, I accept it in small doses. But used in any context of Pizza School is ok with me. (Edit: except in the negative. I don't heart Pizza School is an unacceptable form of using heart as a verb.)

Results
As you can see, I did use some rather leading questions in terms of the appropriateness of the use of "heart" as a verb. I think the results are fairly clear though. Using heart as anything other than a noun is lame. It always has been and it always will be. It is especially lame when people use it seriously. The lameness factor decreases or increases according to what person or object the affection is being addressed.

One interviewee didn't seem to understand that I was referring to using "heart" in place of "<3" but that's okay. S/he was confused. At least s/he hearts weddings.


I haven't touched much on the other emoticons and symbols. I used to scoff at them, a lot, until I realized how silly some of them are. I will use them as a form of endearment, or annoyance, or just plain silliness. I will not use them in many e-mails. I will use them on facebook posts. I will not use them with certain people. I will overuse them with others. I am a flip-flopper when it comes to emoticon use.

All in all, using emoticons is weak enough, and then to turn around and just flat out bastardize the English language...it's too much.

I might still do it though, sparingly--to piss certain people off.

Abbreviations are a whole other bucket of worms
On that note, LOLFOL and I googly eye at you,
heart,
a