#so it's usually the non-native species like plane trees

[idkimnotreal]

i am aware i live in a subtropical climate. to me, autumn is just synonym with warmth - cool nights and hot days, sometimes just warm. it is rare for us to see cool or even cold days in autumn.

yet most people have ingrained in their minds the hollywood idea of the four seasons. it is taught to us in schools in southern brazil that our states have four well defined seasons (the three southern brazilian states), because it sets us apart from outer brazil. and it is true that we have four well defined seasons, however, they are not the same as new york city seasons.

so when people hear it’s autumn now they expect it to be cold. i don’t. i just expect to see pristine clear skies because the humidity drops and there is less heat in the air, which equals less water. i expect that even when the sun is at its zenith in the sky, the breeze is still cool and one can find respite in the shade, when in summer the humidity suffocates you with its wet embrace even in the thickest of shades.

autumn to me is like a hangover. it’s like what happens when summer is over (well, duh). it’s a morning headache after the heat of it. it’s eating cold food out of the fridge. it’s sitting on a toilet just after it’s been used by someone else. you know, that feeling, like it doesn’t really belong, like you’re not entirely there. i don’t know. liminal? maybe. it’s a transition - a limbo between two states, between summer and winter. and, on top of that, it’s also our very own autumn, not comparable to autumn anywhere else in the world. it’s its own thing.

autumn has always been my favorite season, at least ever since i’ve had one. it’s the season of possibilities. the euphoria of new year’s and carnival and vacations is over, the heat is finally over, yet the year is still young. and it’s the only season when it’s just going to get cooler and nothing else. there’s an entire winter ahead of us.

i just love the subtropical autumn. and i wish more people knew about it and appreciated it for what it is.

[learnplants]

Apologies for not posting yesterday, work was too much! Hopefully I can make up for it with the information on this tree! Today, we have Platanus X Hispanica, or commonly known as London Plane! It grows to be up to 35 metres tall, and is a deciduous tree, meaning the leafs drop off for the winter! It also has an incredible resistance to pollution, so it's commonly planted in urban areas! They can also live for several hundred years, and has an olive-green and grey bark that grows in plates, and when peeled, reveals a cream colour!

The leafs are actually quite similar to the sycamore, which leads to some confusion! But the London plane doesn't have the serated edges that sycamore leafs have! They grow thick and leathery leafs thay have 5 triangular lobes, that change to a rich orange-yellow in autumn and drop off soon after!

The flowers of the London plane are monoecious, meaning one tree grows both male and female flowers, but they grow on other stems! The flowers are ball shaped and usually bright red, making them very striking, and the openness of the flower makes it very easy to pollinate!

When the flowers are polinated by the wind, they develop into small spiky fruits, made up of a dense cluster of seeds with stiff hairs, allowing the wind to spread the seeds, after they start breaking up in the winter, allowing growth in the spring!

Platanus X Hispanica is found commonly in cities, especially in London, hence the name, because it can handle the high pollution and the compacted soil, whereas many other species will suffer! Because of it's city location, it has very little to do with the rest of nature, although the seeds may be eaten by more desperate grey squirrels! Also, since it's a Non-Native plant species, and a hybrid species (most likely a hybrid of the oriental plant and the American plane), there's no folklore or mythology involving the tree unfortunately!

There aren't many threats to the London plane, only the plane anthracnose, which causes dieback in leafs and new shoots, stunting growth!

Overall, Platanus X Hispanica, or the London plane, is a rather interesting tree, because of it's ability to handle the heavy pollution of London, and it's ability to break up compacted soil and survive in conditions many other trees simply wouldn't!

If you liked learning about this plant, feel free to like and comment, and reblog to share the knowledge! The more we all learn about our plants, the more we can help our environments! Also, feel free to follow, I post (mostly) everyday about something new!

Now, without further delay, here it is!

[drhoz]

7,050 views  Dec 20, 2019  Mistletoes are woody, parasitic plants that parasitise above ground on branches, as opposed to in the soil. There are almost 100 species of mistletoe in Australia and all of them are native – none is introduced.   But ask most people about mistletoe, and they’ll either recall an archaic tradition involving kissing and Christmas or say it’s a parasite that kills its host tree.  So then why would the City of Melbourne willingly introduce 800 mistletoe seeds into perfectly healthy street trees?

Mistletoe expert Professor David Watson has been involved in the project and says it’s not in the mistletoe’s interest to kill its host. The Melbourne city plan was to try to make the existing trees more wildlife-friendly. By introducing mistletoes, they are bringing structure, food and shelter for a whole range of wildlife.

The project introduced 800 mistletoe seeds from one particular species of mistletoe into a number of Melbourne’s ubiquitous, non-native London plane trees, which are excellent for tolerating pollution and a range of weather conditions, but which are not particularly good as wildlife habitat or food.

The mistletoe plants bring nectar, leaves, fruit, and a dense, evergreen network of branches to nest in. Mistletoes bring these extra ‘resources’ because they are not bound by the same rules as other plants; they take the water and nutrients they need from the tree so they can flower whenever they want, they don’t drop their leaves in times of drought, and so can offer nectar and fruit when no other plants do.

The Melbourne trees have been seeded with creeping mistletoe (Muellerina eucalyptoides), which were chosen because they are slow growing and will easily adapt to plane trees. The two-year-old plant that David points out to Millie still only has a few leaves. The sticky fresh seed was pressed onto the underside of the branch – where any moisture is likely to gather –then the team waited for them to grow. In nature, the seeds are usually distributed by mistletoe birds (Dicaeum hirundinaceum), which only feed on mistletoe fruit. The seeds pass through their digestive system in only 14-15 minutes and, because the seeds are sticky, the birds have to wipe them off on a branch to dislodge them.

Mistletoes also provide a benefit to their host plant; their leaves are very high in potassium and, unlike regular plants that withdraw nutrients from leaves before dropping them, mistletoe leaves are dropped ‘intact’, so the leaf litter makes good, fertile compost. “They are returning most of the nutrients to the tree,” David says.

As its scientific name suggests, creeping mistletoe (Muellerina eucalyptoides), has leaves that resemble Eucalyptus trees – this is to blend in with the natural hosts. Other mistletoes resemble specific hosts, such as acacias, hakeas, banksias, casuarinas, paperbarks and leopardwoods.

While many mistletoes carry their flowers high in a tall tree, it’s worth taking a close look if you see flowers at head height, as they are quite exquisite.

So if you find some mistletoe seed and you’d like to boost the biodiversity of your backyard, try adding some parasitic bling to your tree.

Featured plants: Fleshy mistletoe (Amyema miraculosa) – long, dark red flowers that hang between long grey-green leaves. Brush mistletoe (Amylotheca dictyophleba) – sprays of brick red flowers with pale green tips and wide, dark green glossy leaves. Samphire mistletoe (Amyema microphylla) – stubby, cylindrical fleshy leaves Wireleaf mistletoe (Amyema preissii) – thin, wiry bright green leaves, bright red drooping flower bunches and white or pinkish-white berries Creeping mistletoe (Muellerina eucalyptoides) – Eucalypt-shaped leaves and long, green, hanging flower buds that open to reveal red stamens inside. Leopardwood mistletoe (Amyema lucasii) – Attractive blue-green foliage with bunches of bright yellow flowers. West Australian Christmas tree (Nuytsia floribunda) – the tallest mistletoe plant, which grows directly in the ground as a tall tree – it can reach 15m tall – but whose roots attach to the roots of nearby plants to access nutrients. Has brilliant golden-yellow flowers.

Watch Gardening Australia on ABC iview: http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/gard...

[someonestolemyshoes]

Yo, saw your post about levihan prompts:

How about Hange discovering Levi’s secret hobby (of your choice)

Feel free to do whatever you feel like

And I love your work! 💕 have a good day

Hello! So sorry for the delay in this one, but thank you so much for your patience 🙏 I got stuck for such a long time in the middle of this ksksks but it is finally done! I also played around a little bit with the whole...discovering a secret aspect, but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway! And I hope you're ready for some sweet sweet childhood friends levihan~

**

Levi likes photography.

This, in itself, is no great secret. Hange can barely remember a time he wasn't following after her with a camera strapped around his neck, or packed into his bag—always within reach, should something striking catch his eye. A little neon plastic toy, at first; each click of the shutter cycled through preloaded images, expert shots of famous landscapes, places they could only dream of seeing. And then, a polaroid—still a toy, in essence, still plastic, still gaudy, but this one took real pictures in real time, and spit them out into their eager, shaking fingers within seconds.

Hange remembers them ruthlessly wafting the little laminate squares and watching with bated breath as black mottled into foggy grey, as the blurred silhouette of the park bench faded slowly into being. It was a fascinating thing, at the time. Magic at their fingertips. The picture turned out fuzzy and overexposed in places, where the sun had glared in over the corner of the park bench, but Levi had settled the little square on his little palms and looked at it like he held the whole world in his hands.

There were innumerable disposable cameras, too. Light little things with reels of film, never enough for Levi's insatiable desire to snap pictures of every single thing he saw. They spent half their childhood in the chemist, sitting in the hard plastic chairs, wriggling anxiously as they waited for the film to develop. Kuchel always handed them the envelope, fat with prints, with a small smile curling the corner of her mouth and a fond twinkle in her eye, and Levi always took it politely, while Hange gave a boisterous thanks, and the pair of them delved greedily into their spoils.

He was older, in his early teens, when he was gifted his first real camera. It was heavy, compared to all the others, a case made of metal with buttons and gadgets and a fancy screen on the back, to preview each picture he took. Levi was wholly enamoured with it. He spent hours adjusting it, figuring out what each button and knob did, how they affected each picture; took countless shots of the same rock in the park until he'd tested every combination of settings he could think of.

He had cycled through more cameras since then. Grown a small collection, each one a little different, a little more suited to particular shots. Hange understood the concept in theory, but the particulars were lost on her, and Levi never took the time to explain. Not that she minded—Levi's pictures were beautiful, breathtaking in the way he could capture even the most mundane details and make them something wondrous. Perhaps for the first and only time in her life, Hange had no desire for the magician to reveal his tricks.

He has an eye for things that Hange simply cannot see. She is observant—to a fault, at times, intensely analytical and endlessly curious. Everything is a question, an opportunity to research, to learn, but she doesn't see the way Levi does.

Wild daffodil. Narcissus pseudonarcissus. Hange sees a perennial flowering plant, native to Western Europe, classified by its pale yellow petals and elongated central trumpet. She sees phylogeny with a rich taxonomic history; subspecies originating all over the globe, some larger, some smaller, some more vibrant and some more muted. She sees anatomy, science.

Levi sees the way the evening sun rusts the buttery petals until they blush; sees the way dew drops hang like pearls from the tips of the leaves in the early morning, when the light is still smoky and thin. He sees a moment to be captured.

It should be impossible for a picture to hold so much detail. Hange can look at Levi's daffodil and feel the way the spring wind blows gently on her skin, the sun warm but the breeze a little biting, a remnant of the fading winter. She can smell the pollen heavy in the air, feel the tickle of short grass on her ankles, hear the trill of songbirds in the branches of distant trees.

His proclivity for photography grows with them. Hange's interests spear out in a thousand different directions, from physics and chemistry to botany, to engineering, to literature and mathematics, to history, languages and landscapes—life is a limitless source of information and Hange chases it every which way, insatiable.

And wherever she goes, Levi dutifully follows, with his camera in hand.

Until now.

Now, they are eighteen. The summer is lazily drawing to a close, and tomorrow, at 8:45am, Hange will be boarding a plane that will take her to the other side of the world to attend the university of her dreams.

And Levi will be staying here.

Despite Levi's perpetual scowling and indiscriminate grunting, their last evening together had overall been a pleasant one. Levi and Kuchel had worked hard on their meal, and it had been nice in a warm, filling kind of way, to spend her last night at home with the two of them.

Now, she and Levi are holed up in his bedroom, while Kuchel had insisted on doing the clean up herself. Hange's mind has been churning non-stop for weeks now, ramping up with each passing day, and tonight, her thoughts are unstoppable, and they spill from her with giddy, jittery excitement.

"The university is huge, but my course is pretty small—only like, 30 places. It'll be easy to get to know everybody."

"Nn."

"And did I tell you? There's a museum right on campus? They've got a huge collection, and I heard students can access it after the first semester."

"Hm."

"And there's a flower garden, too—they've got species from all over the world, Levi. They'll have plants I've never even heard of."

"You said."

"Oh! And—my accommodation isn't all that far from the coast. The water looks beautiful in all the pictures I've seen—look, see?"

"I know. You showed me already."

Hange looks up from her phone, where the screen is lit with a bright, sunny beach, tan sand and a stark blue ocean. Levi flicks his gaze over it and offers a noncommittal shrug of his shoulder. Hange frowns at him.

"You could at least pretend to be excited, you know."

Levi gives her a deadpan stare.

"It looks...warm."

Hange sits back with a thump, and kicks weakly at Levi's shin. She pouts over at him. "Better than nothing, I guess."

They sit at opposite ends of the window bench in Levi's bedroom, legs tangled haphazardly together in the space between them. The window was thrown open in some vain hope of tempting in a breeze, but the air is thick, and the soft wind that does blow is still stiflingly warm. It sways Levi's fringe against his brow, but does little to stave off the oppressive heat.

The sky outside is dark, but it is alive with stars. They cast bright sparks on an inky black canvas, and there is no moon in sight. Already, Levi has snapped pictures of it, twisted dials and pushed buttons and switched lenses until he was satisfied.

It is a beautiful sight. Infinite.

Hange lets one leg dangle out the open window. Levi gives her a sour look and wordlessly closes one hand around her other ankle. She has a long history of behaving carelessly—Levi has borne witness to one too many slips and stumbles to trust her entirely. It would be just like Hange, to miss her flight in favour of a trip to the emergency room.

His thumb strokes back and forth absently. There is a callus there, rough and catching, that scratches against her sensitive skin.

Her predominant feeling is one of excitement. Studying abroad had been a dream of hers for almost as long as Levi had owned a camera—to travel beyond the bounds of their small rural town, to see more, learn more, fuel the relentless hunger in her. But there is an undercurrent of something else, some squirming discomfort that refuses to settle. It intensifies with every sweep of Levi's thumb against her skin until it sits heavy in her gut.

She looks over at him. His gaze is trained out the window, a small frown furrowing the skin between his brows, but his eyes are glassy, with none of their usual sharp, unwavering focus. Whatever he is looking at, he is not really seeing it.

It would be a lie to say that his silence had not troubled her. He had been quiet throughout dinner, opting instead to listen to Hange and Kuchel's companionable chatter as he pushed his food around his plate, and he had barely said a word since they had cleared the table and retreated to his room. He had hardly even looked her way.

Irritation bubbles within her. Levi is always more subdued than she is, content to sit quietly while Hange babbles endlessly, about anything and everything. But he usually has something to say. His silence, today of all days, makes her angry. They have one night left like this—one more night to talk, face to face, before they will be separated for who knows how long, and Levi is offering her nothing.

"Levi," she says, before she can think. Something in her tone must startle him, for he blinks rapidly, as though pulled out of a daydream, and rolls his eyes to look in her direction. His gaze settles somewhere near her shoulder. She bristles. "Can you at least—"

"Levi?" Kuchel's voice is distant, floating up from the bottom of the stairs. Levi looks at the door instead. "Can you come give me a hand for a minute?"

Hange clamps her jaw shut. Levi casts her another sidelong glance, and ticks his tongue against the back of his teeth. He squeezes her ankle once, then pushes himself to his feet. "Don't fall, idiot. I won't be long."

Hange feels distinctly like a child on the verge of throwing a tantrum. It's immature, and perhaps it's unfair of her, but she had assumed that Levi's invitation for dinner might, at the very least, come with a little conversation.

She takes a deep, steadying breath. They never fight, not really—they bicker endlessly, poke each other's cheeks and pull each other's hair, childish rough housing that they never grew out of. But they don't fight and as grumpy as Hange feels about Levi's near silence, she doesn't want to start now. She runs a hand back through her hair and sweeps her eyes about the room, counting long, even breaths as she does.

Levi's room is immaculately neat and tidy. Everything has its place, on clean, dusted shelves, or stacked in straight, neat piles atop his desk. It is a level of organisation Hange has little energy for; she herself is a hurricane, picking up and dropping off detritus everywhere she goes.

But Levi's borderline obsessive cleanliness makes it easy to spot something that is out of place.

Hange's gaze falls on a drawer in the desk.  The drawer itself is as immaculate as everything else, gleaming wood and a reflectively polished brass handle. What catches her eye is the corner of a glossy piece of paper, caught when the drawer had been closed.

Hange is a curious creature. Rarely can she hold herself back from exploring an unknown, and now is no different. She unfolds herself from the bench and stretches to stand, then crosses the room on light, tip-toed feet.

Levi is, by and large, a rather private person. He does not share much of himself openly, hides behind an impassive mask, guards what is dear to him close to his chest. Hange is an exception to this rule, whether Levi wanted her to be or not.

As such, she has no real issue prying the drawer open, and is unsurprised by the predictable contents within.

Photographs.

Of course it was photographs.

Her lips tug up in a fond smile and her eyes roll, but it is as she is reaching in to flatten out the rumpled picture that had been poking out of the drawer, that she notices what they are photographs of.

Her.

Hange picks out a stack and sits cross-legged in the desk chair. She flips through them, eyes growing wider with each new picture she uncovers. Every single one is of her. Some recent, some not so recent—some must be from the very first real camera, for she is still in her braces, all thin, gangly limbs and scruffy hair and taped up glasses.

There are pictures of her in the winter, mitten-clad hands wrapped around a paper cup of hot chocolate, blowing steam into the chill air. She can see in stark clarity, the red tip of her nose and the chill bitten over her cheeks; she can almost feel the cold, taste the cocoa on her tongue.

She finds a picture of her from an autumn years gone by. She remembers it as though it were yesterday—they had spent the whole afternoon raking fallen leaves in the courtyard behind Kuchel's cafe, scooping them into a terribly tempting mound beneath the shedding tree. Hange had been unable to resist. Levi had captured her moments after her dive into the pile, sitting up with her weight propped back on her hands, dry leaves clinging to her messy hair and sticking to the fibres of her cardigan. The sun was low, and it cast her in a golden glow, highlighting the vibrant red and orange of the fall foliage around her, drawing out the auburn undertone in her hair and the amber of her eyes. Her smile is almost blinding.

Another shows her in the spring, laying on her belly in the long grass beside a row of blooming daffodils. There is a book spread open before her and she is, as expected, engrossed in it; Levi has snapped the shutter as she was turning the page, the thin edge of the paper caught between the delicate tips of her fingers.

Hange has never considered herself to be particularly pretty. She is just...Hange, a little bit of wild, a little bit of manic, a lot of clumsy and dirty. Being attractive has never been of much concern.

But there is something in the way Levi has photographed her, time and time again, in the way the light catches her, the candid ease of each new picture, that looks....beautiful, in its own way. Somehow, he has made her mess into a masterpiece.

Levi likes taking pictures of things. Plants, rocks, rivers, landscapes and skylines—he likes capturing the mundanity of everyday life and turning it into something spectacular, but he has never done the same thing with people. As far as Hange was aware, Levi had taken very few pictures of anybody at all.

And yet, she holds this pile in her hands, and there are plenty more pictures littering the drawer before her.

There is a strange feeling brewing on her as she stares at them. She had been so excited about moving away to study, so eager to explore the world beyond their quiet countryside home, that the reality of leaving had never truly sunk in. She feels it now though, acutely; a hollow ache in her chest that grows with each picture she flicks through.

Levi has been her shadow for as long as she can remember. There are few memories that he is not a part of, few moments that she can recall in which Levi was not by her side—he has been a constant for her. Something certain and dependable.

And from tomorrow, he will no longer be there.

Hange had known this. She had known it from the moment she had accepted her offer, and she had known it as they looked through her options for accommodation together, as they explored the local area through pictures and videos and maps online. She had known it as they had prepared her visa, organised her finances. Booked her flights. Every step of the way she had understood, logically, rationally, that studying abroad meant leaving Levi behind.

But the weight of it is only hitting her now. The reality of it is like a slap in the face, a punch in the gut—it leaves her shaken and breathless in the worst way.

From tomorrow, Levi won't be with her at all.

Her grip tightens on the photographs hard enough to wrinkle the glossy paper.

She had done a pretty good job of not getting too emotional about the whole thing. For the most part, Hange had been overwhelmed by her own excitement—there had been no time for sadness between all the loose ends she’d had to tie up in order to make the move a possibility. Now though, all that is left is to head to the airport and board her plane. No more distractions.

Hange doesn’t realise she is crying until the bedroom door opens again, and Levi steps into the room, coming to a sudden halt halfway over the threshold.

Hange can't tell if Levi's look of shock is because of the open drawer and the pictures still clutched in her hands, or the tear tracks on her cheeks. He stops dead in the open doorway, fingers still curled around the handle, and for a moment he stares at her with eyes wider than Hange has ever seen them, but then his brow dips low and his lip curls, and his grip tightens around the door handle. Hange holds the pile of photographs close to her chest.

She is expecting anger. She doesn't suppose she could blame him if he lost his temper with her, then. She has a terrible habit of bulldozing into everything, after all, and perhaps this was the one thing Levi had longed to keep secret from her. Her snooping, on top of his already sullen mood—perhaps this is the final straw.

But instead, he turns his face away, staring resolutely into the corner of the room. Starlight spills through the open window. Even in the thin, muted light, Hange can see a vibrant flush colouring the skin high on Levi's cheeks.

Hange sniffles, and wipes clumsily at her cheeks.

"I didn't have you pegged as a closet pervert, Levi," she says, waving the handful of pictures at him. Her voice comes cracked, and weaker than she'd hoped. Levi's knuckles turn white.

It's a funny thing, seeing Levi embarrassed. His emotional expression is usually limited to small twitches, here and there—a slight furrow of his brow, a wrinkle of his nose, a soft twitch of his lip. Hange can count on one hand the number of times she has seen his feelings show so completely. It's almost painful to witness.

"I don't mind," she says. Levi doesn't look at her. Hange looks down at the pile again. "They're nice."

Levi finally releases his death grip on the handle and pushes the door closed. His eyes are still downcast and his cheek is still cherry red, but he hasn't run away and he hasn't snapped at her (yet). Hange takes these things as good signs.

"I didn't know you took pictures of people," Hange says.

"I don't."

"Are you saying I'm not people, Levi?"

Levi lets out a disgruntled sigh. He crosses the room, and plucks the pile of pictures from Hange's hands. His cheeks are still pink, and his brows are still furrowed, but he has composed himself some.

“No, you’re not,” he says. “You’re a creature. You’ve got snot all over your face.”

Hange laughs wetly, wiping her nose with the back of her hand and rubbing the mess on her pants. Levi gives her a look of pure disgust, parking his hip against the edge of the desk beside her and skimming through a few of the pictures. There’s a curious expression on his face, a softness in his eyes that Hange isn’t used to seeing.

“Stalker,” she says. Levi kicks at the desk chair without looking up. “If you wanted a photoshoot, you could have asked.”

Levi scowls. He straightens the edges of the pictures with care, and sets them carefully on the desk. “If I wanted to take pictures of you posing, I would have asked.”

“Wanted to capture me in all my natural glory, huh?” Hange braces her elbows on the desk and rests her chin in both hands, grinning cheekily up at Levi. It must look ridiculous, with her watery eyes and the red point of her nose, but Levi isn't even looking at her to notice.

Levi says nothing. His gaze lingers on the pictures for a little longer, and the colour in his cheeks deepens. Hange nudges him with her elbow, smiling. The pictures are...sweet, in a way. There's something flattering about it. She slumps back in the chair, her smile wavering where a fresh wave of melancholy tugs at the edges of her lips.

“I’ll miss you, you know.” Hange’s voice cracks humiliatingly as she speaks. Levi looks over at her. Hange curses the wobble of her bottom lip and wipes at her eyes beneath her glasses. She isn’t expecting much; Levi is terrible at expressing feelings at the best of times, and so it’s more than surprising when, after a moment of consideration, he nods at her.

“Same.”

Fresh tears spill down her cheeks. Hange presses her fingers into her eyes, trying to stem the flow, ease the sting there. She doesn’t want to spend their last evening together crying, but now that the tears have begun, Hange can’t seem to stop them. A lump builds in her throat, aching beneath her tongue and she can feel her chin wobbling, lips pulling down at the corners. She sniffles pitifully, draws a shuddering breath.

“Oi…” Levi says, though he doesn’t sound angry, or even uncomfortable like she had expected. His tone is gentle. It rips a sob from her.

Hange feels him move closer. He jostles the front of the chair, and when she opens her eyes to look at him she finds him standing right in front of her, between chair and desk, looking at her with a furrowed brow. It’s different to his usual scowl—his brows are a little upturned in the middle, exposing some kinder emotion; something like worry, or concern.

Hange tilts forward until her forehead presses into his chest. Levi’s hand comes up quickly to the back of her head. His touch is familiar, comforting, and Hange cries a little harder when his fingers tunnel into her messy hair, cradling her against him.

She cries until she feels spent, sniffling and gulping empty air. Her fingers twist into the hem of Levi’s shirt as she composes herself, mumbling, “you’ll keep in touch, right? You won’t forget about me?”

Levi clicks his tongue at her. “Stupid,” he says. “As if you’d let me.”

“I’m serious.” She sits back and looks up at her. Her eyes are burning, raw and wet, and the skin of her cheeks stings from crying, but she looks at him with as much determination as ever and says, “call me. Every day.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s not! Just once, every day. Even if it’s only five minutes.”

Levi flicks her between her brows. “You won’t have the time, dumbass.”

“I’ll make time.”

Levi scrutinizes her for a moment, then says, “I’ll text.”

“Well, yeah, obviously.”

Levi curls his lip and pulls at a lock of her fringe, muttering, “brat. Why don’t you call me?”

“I will,” Hange says plainly. Levi’s eyes widen a fraction. “I’ll call as much as I can. But you need to call me too, okay? I wanna hear from you a lot.”

There is a long pause, and then Levi turns his eyes away. The light in the room is pale and muted, but it is just enough to highlight the pale flush gathering anew on his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose. It’s almost cute.

“Fine. I’ll call. Happy?”

Hange grins at him. “Very. And I’ll send you photos of everything, all the time.”

Levi leans down towards her, pinching her nose between his thumb and forefinger and giving her head a little shake. “On your shitty phone camera?”

Hange nods. She bats his hand away and cranes herself up into his space, smiling something wicked. “You’ll hate it. They’ll be all blurry and I’ll have my thumb in the corner of every picture.”

“Pest.”

“Lots of selfies, too. So you won’t forget what I look like.” Hange blindly swipes up a picture from the desk, holding it up between them in front of her mouth and nose. Between Levi dipping down into her space and Hange stretching up into his, they are so close that Levi has to cross his eyes to get a look at it. “Not that I think it’ll be a problem.”

He rolls his gaze up to look at her over the top of the photograph. Up close, Hange can see just how bright the blue of his eyes is, how dark his lashes are; she can see the shadows they cast on his cheeks, the deepening flush bruising the skin red. Levi has always been a pale thing, but now, Hange can see the smattering of light freckles across his nose, barely visible in the low light. He looks pretty. Her heart stutters in her chest at the sight.

Hange has never fully understood Levi’s drive to photograph everything. To preserve any given moment, bottle up every minute detail. She sort of understands it, then—it’d be nice, she thinks absently, to save this particular view for forever. The thought makes her face grow warm.

“I won’t forget.” Levi’s voice is quiet, caught somewhere between embarrassment and uncertainty. He sways closer, rocks back, hesitates. And then he leans down and lets his forehead drop against hers. Hange can feel the press of his nose against her own, separated only by the picture between them.

Hange is used to being close to him. She’s a clingy person by nature, always grabbing him and hugging him, smooshing her cheek against his or shoving her face into his hair, but she is always the one to initiate such contact. Levi is tactile, in his own way—small, non-invasive touches, his fingers on her wrist or his palm at her back, always delicate, understated.

To have Levi enter so wholly into her space like this is new. It’s nice. Hange finds herself feeling very, very thankful for the paper between them, for the urge to lean forward and kiss him comes unbidden, so suddenly she isn’t sure she’d be able to resist the impulse if there hadn’t been a barrier in her way.

“Is it my dazzling good looks?” she says, acutely embarrassed by how breathless she sounds. Levi makes a small, noncommittal noise. His fingers find hers where she’s holding the picture, gripping it and pulling it until it slips out from between them. For the smallest moment, Hange feels the skin of Levi’s nose against hers, and the warm puff of breath on her lips, and then Levi straightens up, flipping the picture for her to see it.

“I’ve looked at your ugly mug every day for long enough. Don’t think I’d forget it so easily.”

It’s a truly unflattering photograph. Hange has her head tipped back, laughing boisterously at some thing or another, with her eyes pinched closed and chocolate sauce smeared over her lips, a drop of cream stuck to the end of her nose. Hange is sure she has looked better, but the thing is—despite her state, the picture still isn’t bad. Hange can hear the lilt of her own laughter and feel the tacky syrup, savour the sweetness of the cream on her tongue. There’s something so...animated about it, about the way the light dances over her skin and in her hair, and the way the background blurs around her, drawing her into sharp focus.

It’s nice, in a strange, unreserved kind of way.

But she’s still a mess. Hange snatches it and slams it down on the desk, glowering up at Levi.

“Why would you take that,” she whines, petulant. “You’re supposed to take pictures of nice things!”

“Because it’s very...you,” He says, neatly slotting the pictures back into the drawer, and moving back to sit on the window. Hange follows, drops herself onto the ledge opposite him with a pout.

“What, disgusting?”

Levi shrugs. “Messy. But...not bad.”

“I’m supposed to take that as a compliment, I guess? That’s almost sweet coming from you, Levi.”

Levi scowls over at her. She dangles one leg back out the open window, dropping the other heavily into Levi’s lap. He adjusts it until he is more comfortable, his hand wrapping again around her ankle, but does not let go once he has settled. He keeps a hold of her, his fingers tracing thoughtless patterns on her skin. The space between them is warm, comfortable. Hange leans her head back and breathes it in—the peace, the quiet, the simple pleasure of spending a tender evening with her favourite person in the whole world.

It’s nice. A small, frightened part of her doesn’t want it to ever end.

**

Hange has been set up in her student apartment for three weeks when the package arrives.

Moving had been harder than she had anticipated. She’d accounted for common issues—problems with her visa, her plane tickets, and had checked multiple transport options from the airport to her accommodation in case problems arose—but she hadn’t put all that much thought into what would happen once she settled at her apartment.

Unpacking had been boring. Her roommates were nice enough, the studious, bookworm-y type, but unlike Hange they weren’t overly sociable. They kept mostly to themselves in their rooms, perfectly content with brief conversations in the kitchen before retiring again, and with classes still two weeks away, Hange was finding the lack of social interaction difficult. She had explored some, but the city was vast in a cluttered, claustrophobic way. Hange had always enjoyed travelling, and had talked relentlessly of every adventure she could take herself on in a whole new country and all the new places she could explore, so much so that it was almost embarrassing, the way she had found herself so unwilling to stray too far from her accommodation without a companion by her side.

She’d felt a little homesick in the first couple of days, lonely and isolated. She missed the small comforts of the country, things she hadn’t even realised she had taken for granted. Quiet nights. Star studded skies. Long grass and trees and the fresh, earthy smell on the breeze. The city was unbearably loud at times, and even when the wail of sirens or the beep of car horns quieted, there was an unidentifiable hum beneath it all that never ceased even for a moment.

She felt Levi’s absence most acutely. Hange had known she would, but she hadn’t been prepared for how much it would hurt to be apart. She felt silly for it—it was ridiculous, to miss her friend more than she missed her own family, even. But Levi’s presence had been more constant than anything else, back home, and without him, she felt like a small part of herself was missing.

He called, as promised. Once a day, though oftentimes it was very late in the night for him, and he sounded tired. If Hange were less selfish, she might tell him to get some sleep instead—but she missed him. Hearing from him was the best part of her day.

It was about an hour before their designated call time when the post came. Hange answers the bell with a frown, which only deepens when the delivery driver hands her the package.

She takes it into her room, settling cross legged on the bed and inspecting the mystery item. It's a decent size, like a large shoe box, wrapped neatly in brown paper with her address lettered in tidy, familiar handwriting in one corner. Hange’s stomach lurches—she’d have recognised the writing anywhere, but her suspicions are confirmed by the return address. Levi’s.

She rips into the paper quickly, snatching up her keys to tear through the tape on the top of the box. It is stuffed full with packing paper, an envelope with her name on it sitting on the top. Hange picks it up and with trembling fingers, she opens it and unfolds the short note inside.

Hange,

Sorry things have been kind of shitty. This stuff might help or it might make things worse, but I figure you can just throw it out if it’s no good. Or give it away. Whatever. I don’t even know if all of this shit will make it through customs, so if you get an empty box it’s not my fault.

I don’t get how you eat half this junk, but I hope it makes you feel better, anyway.

Look after yourself. Eat real food.

Levi

Hange presses the note to her chest, grinning. Her heart aches, but having Levi go to this much trouble for her...it feels nice. Knowing he is still thinking of her. She’d never have admitted it out loud, but Hange had been concerned that perhaps Levi would forget about her after all, without her there to pester him all the time.

She pulls out some of the packing paper, and smiles widely at the rest of the contents.

Levi had put together what Hange can only call a care package. There are packs of her favourite snacks and sweets, things she’d complained she hadn’t been able to find in stores here; crisps, chocolate, hard candy, little mini boxes of sickeningly sugary cereal. There are tea bags with blends Levi knows she likes, each neatly labelled with instructions on what temperature to brew at and how long for. Levi had also packed some of the soaps Hange likes, the ones he uses but she refuses to buy for herself. The lavender scent drifts up out of the box and Hange’s heart squeezes tight in her chest. There’s a shirt in there, too—Hange recognises it at once, as one of Levi’s old, worn tees, thin grey cotton that feels impossibly soft in her hands. It’s far too big for either of them, and had always been the go-to item Levi would chuck at her when she decided she was staying over for the night and had nothing to wear to bed. Hange pulls it on quickly, savouring the soft feel and the smell of it.

In the bottom of the box, there is another envelope. This one is thicker than the first, and Hange knows what it contains before she even opens it.

Photographs. A small pile of them, depicting places she and Levi had frequented from when they were children right up until this last year—her favourite part of the forest, where the trees thin out and the river pools at the foot of a small waterfall. The great, open fields, sometimes full of long grass, sometimes clipped short and striped with windrows. Kuchel’s cafe, with umbrellas raised to block the sun on the tables outside, or else warm and low-lit and cosy in the cold winter. Hange settles back on her pillows as she flicks through each picture, a soft smile on her face. Looking at the images of home hurts, but it isn’t a terrible pain—she longs for these old times and these familiar places, but each recovered memory makes her happy.

In Levi’s pictures she can vividly recall moments in each and every location. He works some kind of magic with a camera, to trigger so many sensory memories—the scent of freshly cut grass, the feel of hay, dry and sharp, poking into her back through her clothing, and the gentle trickle of the river water, the splash of it as it runs over the falls, the feel of it cool on her skin. The tangy zest of fresh-pressed orange juice in the cafe, peach fuzz on her lips and the soft flesh of ripe fruit bursting between her teeth, sticky nectar coating her fingers.

Hange looks at each picture in turn, until she reaches the bottom of the pile, and there she stops abruptly, eyes widening at the last photograph Levi has packed for her.

It is one of Hange, taken in the window of Levi’s bedroom. She was looking out at the night sky, her elbow braced on her bent  knee, chin in her palm, a small smile lifting the corner of her mouth. The starlight haloed her, shining from her hair and illuminating the jut of her chin, the curve of her nose and the slope of her brow. Behind her, Levi had captured the bright glow of the stars like jewels on a deep velvet canvas. She looked peaceful. Happy. For lack of a better word, beautiful.

Hange grins widely. Her eyes sting and her throat aches, but the picture—the whole box, really—makes her happier than she's felt in weeks. She brews her favourite cup of tea from the blends Levi had sent her and settles into the corner of her bed, lifting her phone to snap a quick selfie. She sends it to Levi, complete with a caption: thank you for my presents 😊 all ready for your call!

Levi responds almost immediately, first with a simple you're welcome. And then, after a minute, you look good. Speak to you soon.

Hange sinks deeper into the cushions, cradling her tea close to her face, masking the pleased flush on her cheeks with the heat from the steam.

**

Hange keeps him longer than usual, today.

There is a simmering warmth in her stomach as she listens to Levi's voice over the line. It comes tinny through the speakers, low and rough in the late hour, and his dark, grainy image looks tired, lamp light casting him half in shadow. They talk of everything and nothing, same as always—Levi tells her about his day, about the cafe and Kuchel, and Hange pouts as she tells him how little progress she is making in befriending her new housemates. Levi never voices any concern for her aloud, but Hange can sense it in the dip of his brows as she talks. She gives him a genuine smile when she reassures him that classes will start soon, and she's confident she will settle better after that.

Levi seems reluctant to leave, but after a little over an hour of aimless, comfortable chatter, he is yawning and blinking heavily, the lower half of his face nuzzled into his pillow. In the end, Hange makes up some watery excuse about visiting the coast while the sun is still high, if only to let him get some sleep.

"Sure. Have fun."

"I will! Sleep well, Levi."

Levi hums. The view shifts, blurry and indistinct, the mic muffled by the rustle of sheets, and when everything settles he is laying on his side, fringe mussed and falling over his eyes. He covers another long yawn with his fist. "I will."

"You'll call tomorrow?"

Levi rolls his tired eyes, but the corner of his mouth pulls up in a fraction of a smile. "Sure."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Hange grins. Levi watches her for a long moment, eyes scanning over her face. Then he holds up a hand in a tired wave. "Night, Hange."

"Night."

Hange stares at the screen for too long when the call ends. That terribly selfish part of her would have loved to keep his company for the rest of the day. Maybe, with a little travel sized Levi in the palm of her hand, she'd have been brave enough to explore some more, enthused about all the new things to see with somebody to share them with.

Sighing, Hange drops her phone to the desk and stands from the bed, stretching. There are still things she can do—she has plenty of recommended reading to get through, a small mountain of books at her disposal, and she has mapped the route to her campus often enough that she isn't feeling too overwhelmed by the prospect of the journey.

As she heads for the door, Hange notices something on the floor beside the bed. A neat, rectangular piece of paper; one of the photographs Levi had sent her, laying face down on the ground.

She picks it up again and brings the paper close to her face. Levi had written something on the back of it in small, quick letters, less tidy than his usual practiced script, as though he’d scribbled it as an afterthought, or else that he wasn’t sure he really wanted her to read it.

There is a date, the same night she had found Levi’s secret photo stash, followed by Hange’s name, and the location of the shot. And beneath that Levi had scrawled a few words. Hange squints to read them, and then her eyes grow wide, blinking owlishly down at the note. Her heart swells almost painfully and something solid balloons within her chest, squeezing the air from her lungs. Her lips tremble into a smile as she props the picture carefully on the bedside table.

The day is still young. Hange brews herself another cup of Levi’s tea and settles on the bed with one of her books, content to spend the next few hours reading—though she finds it strangely difficult to focus, with the words Levi had written on the back of the photograph swirling round and round in her head. Hange doubts they will leave her any time soon. They left her feeling more homesick than ever, but there is a soft, giddy kind of comfort in them all the same. It's a feeling that Hange will savour for as long as she possibly can.

It's weird here without you. Come home again soon x

[earthbased]

Making Your Own Correspondences for Plants

Disclaimer: This post is about magical and spiritual use, not medical, and medical use is mentioned only for historical examples. Don’t mess around with medicine unless you know what you’re doing, or consult someone who does. I’ve previously written about where the majority of magical plant correspondences tend to come from in modern pagan & witchcraft sites and books. If you decide to DIY some or all of your correspondences, how you do it will depend on what your beliefs and practices are. Some things to consider:

Do you believe the magical properties are already in the plants, are unchangeable, and need to be discovered? Or that they depend on your beliefs and associations?

Do you value individuality and personal significance, or having shared lore with your community and culture? Or both?

Do you value the process of relationship-building with a plant or spirit?

Do you value receiving lore through ancestry or lineage? Does it matter to you how old it is?

I’m going to delve deeper into 3 main sources: existing lore, physical characteristics and the plant itself.

===1. Building upon existing lore===

Learning the history and folklore of a plant, even if it doesn’t have existing magical uses, is likely to give you ideas and a deeper understanding. Some potential sources of lore: recorded folklore and common names, oral tradition, fairytales and nursery rhymes, etymology, flower meanings, appearances in mythology, appearances in well-known books or poems, pop culture and fiction.

Whether or not you want to think about it, the greater story of your practice includes the story of your lore and how it came to you. Oftentimes that story involves violence, theft, deception and ridicule. BIPOC have written at length about cultural appropriation [link, link, link, link] & cultural genocide as one of the ongoing harms of colonisation and racism. If you’re not part of a culture that traditionally stewards a certain plant or body of lore, listening to (whether literally hearing or by other means) and respecting those people’s voices is your ongoing responsibility when engaging with it. Navigating these issues as a member of an oppressing group often involves ambiguity and discomfort. This is also part of the path. Remember that we’re blessed to have the opportunity to listen to these voices today. Others did not survive.

Practical uses, both modern and historical often include medicine, but there’s much more, e.g. thorny plants’ association with protection - not only because the thorns protect the plant itself, but because thorny hedges have been grown in many times and places to deter large animals or trespassers from crossing a fence. More recently, I suspect the modern-day association of lemon with cleaning products has led to its current use in magical cleansing.  In any case plenty of common correspondences have arisen fairly recently from modern-day uses. Whether you place special value upon ancient or pre-modern lore is up to you.  The reasons behind old magical lore were often related to practical use, so I see it as a continued tradition.

===2. Looking at physical characteristics===

What you see depends on how you look (and think). Many plants have heart, star or crescent-shaped leaves. What do these things mean to you? A crescent usually reminds me of the moon but you could also see it as a claw or a smile, two things with very different connotations. Sympathetic magic (a phrase from anthropology) is the idea that things can magically affect each other based on their similarities. But beyond the obvious, there are also symbolic meanings. Many unrelated trees across the world happen to have dark red oozing sap, often earning them a name like "bloodwood". A straightforward use of sympathetic magic would mean it can affect blood, e.g. to stop bleeding. But symbolically, blood often means vitality, death, birth or rebirth, so that oozy tree could be thought to represent any of those things too. Learning observable facts about a plant can be a rich source of inspiration and understanding. Some things to consider: habitat, place of origin, endangered or invasive status, the wild form of a domesticated plant, gardening information, close relatives, lifecycle and seasonal cycle, and parts of interest (leaves, roots, flowers, seeds). For example, a plant well known for its flowers could have something interesting about its seeds which are usually overlooked. The internet is a bountiful source of information, as are books. Your local community likely includes many people who might be willing to pass on their knowledge, for example in local gardening or nature enthusiast clubs, nurseries, environmental groups, and cultural organisations.

You can apply a traditional method of Western astrology to make brand new correspondences to use for sympathetic magic, even with plants that have never been used this way before. This involves comparing the physical qualities of plants (shape, colour, smell, texture etc) with a list of qualities associated with each planetary energy. You might pick one or two features that stand out and concentrate on those. The planet it matches best is considered its ruling planet and will determine its magical application. It's possible for different parts of a plant to have different ruling planets, but not necessary. Common references for planetary qualities include Renaissance philosopher HC Agrippa and famous herbalist Nicholas Culpeper, but your associations may differ, or come from another system of astrology entirely. In any case, once the plant is connected to the planet, it’s also connected to everything else the planet represents. For example, if I determined that a herb in my garden had Venusian qualities, I’d consider it useful for any magic involving love, beauty, harmony or comfort. By a similar process you can assign herbs to a list of deities, zodiac signs, tarot cards, or whatever you want. 

===3. Asking the plant itself===

What this looks like depends on your personal beliefs and practices. It might mean asking an individual plant or a spirit representing the whole species. It may involve trance or ritual, or be as simple as listening inwardly for an internal voice in your thoughts. Will you seek out a living plant, contact it through its dried leaves, invoke its spirit into your space or meet it in a non-physical plane? Additionally, not all communication is about sound and words. Among humans some languages are signed and some people communicate with picture boards. Images, emotion, gesture, touch, music and body language are things to consider.

In some belief systems listening to plants may be interpreted more metaphorically, involving intuition or imagination. Using intuition-enabling practices such as dream work or trance may help you to connect your accumulated knowledge to a spiritual or magical meaning. Imagination and roleplay is also a way of gaining a new perspective, such as the deep ecology practice of a psychodrama called the Council of All Beings (note that the original form was heavily influenced by misappropriated Native American practices and stereotypes).

“What [something/someone] is telling me” is a phrase that can be used literally or figuratively in English. In other languages, especially Indigenous ones, such a distinction may not exist. This use of grammar can reflect a way of thinking and relating that considers humans as one part of a whole. If you were raised in a colonial mindset, asking the plant about its correspondences (whatever form that takes) and considering the plant’s priorities can be a way of challenging that mindset by reframing the interaction as one between two beings, rather than a human acting on a passive object. To me this way of thinking invites respect and reciprocity. How you can act upon that is a topic for another post, or maybe another author.

[danieldaymiad-blog]

Research Questions about the Urban Ecology Center

While working at the UEC I had some Questions in mind for how this facility actually works and the importance of each activity. As being there for a while I learned some more refined answers for these questions which eventual became refined them selves. 

Research Question 1: Whats the benefits of being outside in the city? 

I learned about understanding this question when I stepped in the UEC’s outside activities. People my age spend a lot of time inside on days that aren’t so sunny and perfect. Because of the technological world we live in today we spend more time inside then what we would have seen over 50 years ago. I know that when friends and I try to have a nice day we now try to spend the day outside to really soak up the day and make memories out of it. However being inside the city it makes it hard to really realize the nature of the world that surrounds us.Being in the city we have towering building around us, noisy busses and transportation. The fast life of a upcoming business world that engulfing the US, city by city. After spending time inside the UEC you can notice the lovely nature that you are hear to more or less protect. I noticed this especially when I was on the morning bird walks around the UEC. Most of the facility is surrounded by trees and nature so this place takes you out of the corrupted city and more into a appreciation of the nature inside the vast city. Each event outside usually varies people types of people that come to the activity. Some are kids my age wanting to do something outside and appreciate the community others could vary to more older citizens that also just wanna appreciate the little things and give back what they can to the facility that treats them well and gives them acknowledgment. What I felt each day was very similar to working out, a sense of relief and elevation of being distressed in the community.  

Research Question 2: What benefits are there for snakes in Milwaukee?

I started to think about this question when I was on the website looking at volunteer opportunity and saw “Snake Survey” after learning a little bit online of what that might entail I realized why really is the importance of snakes for the UEC to have a program about snakes? Before in the summer when I spent time in Tennessee I learned to keep my distance from snakes because the snakes there were usually poisonous and very deadly. So for there to be an activity there that enforces hands on participation of being with snakes was a little out-landish. When we went on these events you would flip pallets over and grab the snakes resting under there with quickness and gentleness, a combination that was hard to grasp. These snakes that rested under there were not deadly in any mean, they were quite harmless and much like garden snakes. Why understanding the time and effort of keeping data and track of the population of the snakes in the area I began to reflect on the time that I lived in River West Milwaukee. I lived in this 2 floor house on Booth street and after a couple months living there my roommate and I realized that we had a problem with mice in our house. After some research I learned that much of the River West community suffers from these rodent infestation and that mouse removal is a problem in Milwaukee. After spending quite some time talking to the leaders of the programs they said that the snake population in Milwaukee is slowly decreasing and that’s why they spend so much time that they can on trying to give these snakes a sanctuary for understanding snakes. If we try to support and not victimize snakes like I did in Tennessee then maybe we can get rid of this mice infestiaation that terrorizes River West.  

Research Question 3: Why is it important for understanding the ecosystem?

As we all keep growing in this city there is going to be more of a population influx percentage for people living in the cities compared to living in more rural areas. With this development we notice more developments for unusual ecosystems where the percentage of wildlife to human growth is fluctuating. With more buildings going up there is a reaction of less naturalistic wildlife beings tampered with, thus creating an effect of evolution that we aren’t necessary ready for. The UEC spends their time focusing on these issues in the city of Milwaukee, with this understanding we can try to shape the minds of the citizens in this city and make them realize the outcome of the community. This often reminds me of the future city of Singapore. I recently found a documentary reflecting on how the Singapore community tries to elevate them selves to be a self-sustainable environment not only for the people but also for the nature/wildlife inside/around them. One architect there talks about how the structure that they try to make go up, rather than around and how to maximize the area in which they are building upon. They focus on building structures that also feature garden space in unique appealing ways as-well with being efficient for the environment. They make structure that we designed perfectly so that airflow can breeze right past them creating a natural current that doesn't effect the ecosystem around or in the city.  

Research Question 4: Why is it important to get rid of Invasive plants/weeds?

One of the programs featured at the UEC is called ROOTS. ROOTS is about walking to their flower garden of natural flowers that are native to the Wisconsin area. While you are there you get a briefing and a walk around the massive garden that they have there and you are informed of which plants are invasive and harmful to the actual native plants. 

An "invasive species" is defined as a species that is  Non-native (or alien) to the ecosystem under consideration; and, Whose introduction causes or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health. (Executive Order 13112).  -https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/invasives/index.shtml 

Realizing that there are plants outside of your area that could be affecting your health is a scary phenomenon. There were about 8 different plants in there garden alone that were identified as invasive species. Most times when these species are transferred it can be by foot, by pollination spread through air or by planes and transportation. A couples years back I learned from a professor at MIAD that he has had some encounters with people in Wisconsin that don’t understand the detrimental affect that invasive species have. He ran into someone who on there property they purposely planted and were preserving the purple loosestrife. This plant produces plenty of seeds and pollen to affect nearby communities and encouraging this Invasive species is not ok. 

Research Question 5: Can reflecting on the current situation of you community be beneficial?

Like I mentioned before I believe that we are living in a society that the progression of keeping up with the population is getting out of hand. The world is changing in a way that we haven’t seen before and progressing in a future world filled with technology and vast forms of transportation from A to B. With MIAd having programs with Interior design and Industrial design I feel that we are thinking about these problems in our classes today. How can we change the world in a way that coexist with nature around us vs trying to abolish the nature in our communities. We are growing in a world were the attention to how we are effecting our ecosystems are becoming more prevalent. With pollution destroying our health and air quality and how the deforestation of the world is slowly effecting our Oxygen and carbonation in the air quality. 

Stephan Hawking predicted that - “By the year 2600, the world’s population would be standing shoulder to shoulder and the electricity consumption would make the Earth glow red-hot,” 

Obviously that anyone who is reading this including me, this will not be a problem for us because we are probably not going to around by the year 2600 but this to is a scary phenomenon, which we need to be addressing now and have some set understanding for how future generations will tackle this. Now some people realize that aren’t going to be around much longer to care about how the environment is and they keep on destroying it. This is a very ignorant approach for our society. There isn’t any clear set paths that will help in full as-well as the task aren’t going to be easy. But if we can try to realize each personal view for how we treat the society we live in, and understand how we can approach a better environmental living day to day then thats the steps we need to take action. 

[torixus]

What Igbos Need to Know About Isiagu Symbol

Abstract 

In this essay, I use “akwa isiagụ” as metaphor to illustrate that Igbos have not done exactly well to preserve their language and culture. I posit they have abandoned their unique cultural symbol. That they are now parading a symbol of foreign popular culture as their foremost emblem. But I also present perspectives that might ignite a quest for self-rediscovery.

Akwa isiagụ is the clothing fabric patterned with motifs showing fierce-looking lion’s head and mane. Some designs show a less stern lion’s head, with two or three cow horns besides it. 

Since the last 50 to 60 years Igbos have managed to portray this fabric design as their classic cultural emblem. In fact, as something of a totem. Igbo chiefs and nze and ọzọ title holders use it to make their ceremonial gears. At native marriage ceremonies and similar cultural events, isiagụ garments of different colours and styles grace the day. Igbo people feel a certain sense of pride when they dress in isiagụ attire. Even non-Igbos regard isiagụ as being to Igbos what the tartan is to Scots. Or the yarmulke is to Jews. Such is the impression, that when they are identifying with or participating at an Igbo traditional practice (eg taking an Igbo chieftaincy), they dress in isiagụ gear. Recent examples include President Buhari, Fayose, Zuma.

But this is an imported foreign popular culture. Neither the lion nor the lion icon has any significance in Igbo cultural foundations. Indeed, using the descriptor ‘isiagụ’ to refer to a lion’s head motif is wrong use of the word “agụ”.

Incorrect Language

Agụ is not lion in Igbo. Agụ is leopard.  Folks have written about this before, and I've discussed in other forums on the subject. It is pitiful that it remains a source of confusion to many adult Igbos. There is just little understanding of Igbo origins and names of the feline (cat species) animals. You hear all manner of names that contradict biogeography. Like, “agụ is lion, andọdụm is tiger”. Or, “agụ is lion, and leopard is edi abalị”.

But let’s clear this.

Just as jaguars and cougars are found only in the Americas, tigers inhabit only in Eurasia. They do not belong to the fauna (native animals) of sub-Saharan Africa. Ancient Igbos did not see nor know about tiger, so did not have an indigenous name for it. 

Edi or edi abalị is the African civet. One of the 38 viverridae species, it is slightly smaller than the leopard. A carnivore, no doubt, but it is timider, less agile and far less specialised in opportunistic hunting.  It has a broadly cat-like general appearance, but its muzzle is more pointed than that of a typical feline. Leopard has distinctive camouflage spots that help it to use forest canopies for cover, enhancing its abilities for surprise hunting, But the African civet typically has black and white spots.

A nocturnal creature that sleeps for about 20 hours a day, the ancient Igbos knew the edi abalị very well. Which is why I[[gbos still use “edi” as metaphor to refer to a person who sleeps a lot. The leopard is bold, agile, versatile, and highly admired in Igbo cultural foundations. But edi is loathed and associated with negativity, because it smells and relies more on con and coy to lure its preys. That’s also why in Igbo language “edi aghụghọ” is a metaphor that references a deceptive person.

Knowledge of the Igbo language structure will indicate agụ is not lion. Many Igbo words were created from metaphorical use of existing words. To form names for creatures or objects, Igbos often devised a two-word metaphor comparing what is sought to be named to an another named object or creature. For example, ụlọ is house, and school is “ụlọ-akwụkwọ” (house for books), while hospital is “ụlọ ọgwụ” (house for medication).

Leopard - agụ – preys on mammals and has spots on its furs. That is why the wall gecko, that preys on insects and has spots, is called agụ ụlọ (ie house leopard). And the crocodile, that preys on water creatures and has patches that resemble the leopard’s spots, is called agụ iyi (leopard of the waters). Similarly, the palm genet, a small mammal that resembles the squirrel but unlike the squirrel has spots on its furs, is called “agụ nkwụ”. In contrast.] the lion has no spots on its furs.  The lion’s fur is generally plane brown.

The leopard is Igbo animal totem

Being about 3 times the size of a leopard, the lion is stronger and sometimes even preys on the leopard. The Igbo say “ọdụm na-egbu agụ”. Despite this, the lion has no special recognition in Igbo cultural systems. Ancient Igbos likely did not even have any or much contact with lion as a species. For whereas leopards inhabit in rainforests (although they are very adaptable and thrive in other vegetations), lions inhabit mainly in savannah or grasslands. Savannah vegetation do not exist (and likely never existed) in Igboland. Igboid areas sit generally on lowland rainforest.

A lion can occasionally stray into a rainforest or can refuge there if persecuted in its usual habitat. It must have been in such circumstances that Igbos came to know about the lion.  Yet that was not enough to diminish their fascination for the leopard, a beast with which they had contended for thousands and thousands of years. 

It should be noted that whilst leopards operate solitarily, lions are the most social of the cat species. Lions operate in close-knit social groups called “pride”. Ethologists (scholars of animal behaviours) have observed that this sociality makes the lion a better communicator than other big cats. But it means lions roar frequently and easily broadcast their presence and emotions. Conversely, a leopard’s solitary lifestyle makes it less detectable, and more perceptive and reactive to intrusion. For this reason, its senses of vision and hearing are sharper than those of a lion. Ancient Igbos witnessed this first-hand. They saw how a leopard, hiding stealthily amongst forest canopies, would detect the slightest animal or human movement, and chase and pounced savagely.

In forest environment, a lion has little chance to fight down the more agile leopard. A lion’s size and weight render it less agile to climb high. But a leopard can climb to the top an iroko tree in less than 10 seconds. Leopard is probably the only big mammal that can descend a tree head first. It uses its long tail to maintain perfect aerodynamic balance.

With top average speed of about 80 km per hour, lion is faster than leopard. But it can only run for very short bursts and needs to be close to its prey before starting an attack. But the leopard can run for far longer stretches, at average top speed of about 58 km per hour. A leopard can make a single leap of over 6m (20 ft) horizontally and can jump up to 3 m (9.8 ft) vertically. And it is a powerful swimmer. Although its vision is sharpest in the dark, it can equally be eagle-eyed in the day.

Incredibly versatile, leopard hunts on land, up on the trees and in water. On the trees it can out-manoeuvre specialised climbers and jumpers, including monkeys and baboons. Leopards have been observed leaping and snatching a monkey with a bite mid-air and regaining grip of tree branches. That is, it successfully launches mid-air strike from a treetop and lands back on the tree. It goes into rivers and streams where it overpowers creatures like alligators, and hauls them off the water, all the way up a tree.

A silent predator, when discreteness will give it advantage, it can be elusive. It has a pad of tissue in the flat of its claws that act as silencers when it walks. It can literally hide in plain sight. When it tucks itself in between the fork of tree branches, it just blends with the tree trunk.  It can create optical illusion to deceive its prey, including humans. A Leopard will coil its head and tail into its body and crouch flat on the ground appearing like dry wood lying about.  Very patient. If its target are animals in a troop, it can hold its cool and then attack the last of the troop from behind.

When persecuted by humans a leopard is more likely to fight back than is a lion. And it does not target one out of a group. It will attack one person after another.  Reason the Igbo say “ofu agụ na-achụ mba” (a single leopard can sack a town).

For thousands of years the Maasai people of Kenya have practiced the art of emerging from hiding to scare lions away from their kill and take it home for meet. But a leopard will drag its kill in its mouth and climb a tree. It climbs a tree carrying in its mouth a carcass far heavier than its own size. Animals like bull, giraffe, antelope. In those days, it would attack someone’s goat or sheep and drag it in its mouth deep into the forest and up on a tree.

The lion lacks these amazing abilities. In terms of general efficiency and productivity as jungle hunters, the leopard beats the lion, by many miles! Indeed, scientists have determined that, pound for pound (ie adjusted for differences in size and weight) the leopard is the strongest of all the big cat species.  

It was for these reasons that the ancient Igbo revered the leopard as their totemic animal for strength, agility, boldness, and courage. And that is also why Igbo language is littered with similes, metaphors, adages and proverbs that use agụ to illustrate positive energy and abilities. Like “omekagụ”, “agụnwa”, etcetera. And it is why many Igbo families and communities proudly took their names and sobriquets after agụ. Like “Umuagụ, Amagụ Dimagụ, Eziagụ, Duruagụetc.

Today, as urban dwellers we can look down on the leopard. But to the Igbos of those jungle days, a snarling leopard on the loose was literally nature’s force unleashed. Every hamlet had a chant or cry that was used to alarm the community when a leopard was sighted. In my own area the chant was “ ọ wụ agụ o!”. ( it is a leopard o!). Social codes dictated that a person who heard the cry also repeated it, till the entire community was alerted. And until the leopard was killed or confirmed to have returned to the deep forests, usual daily activities were suspended. Children and women would not go the streams to fetch water.  No one went to the farms nor led their sheep out to graze. Able bodied men were then organised, in groups, to track down the leopard. And think of it. Those men did not have guns. They went with spears, bows and sticks. Combating the leopard in these situations was an act of extraordinary bravery and patriotism - risking one’s life for the safety of the community.  That explains why the person who eventually killed the leopard instantly became a hero and given the honorific “Ogbu Agụ”. 

And eating a leopard meet was a once-in-a-generation-experience. Till today Igbos use the metaphor “ọ bụanụ agụ?” (is it a leopard meet?) to question the value of a highly priced or scarce commodity. Of course, the leopard skin was dried and kept by the leopard killer. He and his descendant would display it with pride for hundreds of years afterwards. And legend has it that reputable native doctors harvested the leopard’s bile/gall and used it to prepare the most potent charms or medicines, that warriors drank to boost their bravery and ferocity during intertribal wars. 

Very perplexing was this elusive and powerful animal to ancient Igbos, that they even considered it a mysterious creature. A reason many Igbo dialects added the suffix “mystery” or “invisible” (“owo”, “owu”, “owuru” or “awolo”) to its name. Many areas call it agụ owuru – ie, leopard of mystery, mysterious leopard, or leopard that suddenly appears and disappears.  Igbo metaphysics believed that some men acquired powers to transform to leopard. To assume the nature and characteristics of a leopard, even for a short period, was considered an attainment of a transcendental and superior state of being.

Indeed, ancient Igbo cosmology explained the entire universe as being some mystical leopard persona. The weather system and visible changes in the skies were said to be a leopard, the sky leopard. The thick clouds that formed in the sky before rainfall were its shimmering eyes just waking from sleep. The movement of tick clouds was the movement of the leopard in its marauding character.  The sparks of lightening that came before a thunder were the leopard’s flashing eyes. The thunder was its voice snarling in anger and ready to pounce.  The heavy rains were its urine gushing with a force typical of its strength. And bright day was the sky leopard fully awake, with eyes wide open.

The lion symbol is not originally Igbo

This portrayal of the lion as symbolic cultural icon of the Igbos is only recent. It is driven by the influence of modern media and foreign popular culture. We watch a lot of animal documentaries these days and read a lot of books that continue to inform us the lion is the king of the beasts. True! But they don’t tell us about the king of our forests.

Today in global popular culture (eg children cartoons, films, etc) we are taught to be like the lion. Because throughout histories and in many parts of the world the lion image has been used in stories, artworks, coats of arms, logos and advertisements to depict strength, ferocity, power, confidence and success. The bible and other major religious texts also contain the lion symbolism. And so, the Igbos yielded – completely! We abandoned our equivalent animal totem, and even had to distort our language as a result.

Yet Igbo folklore is filled with stories that reference “agụ” as the king of animals.  First generation Igbo intellectuals had no misunderstanding that agụ was leopard. And they were acutely aware of its significance in the Igbo culture and worldview.

In Onuora Nzekwu’s classic novel Eze Goes to School (published 1963), the ravaging beast which held the people of Ohia hostage, which Eze’s father killed but later died from the wound it inflicted on him, was a leopard, not a lion. Anezi Okoro’s 1966 novel ‘The Village School’ featured an intriguing student. Ismael was popular amongst his mates because his father was a reputed hunter who killed a leopard and took the title “The Leopard Killer”.

In 1950 Cyprian Ekwensi published a novel entitled ‘The Leopard's Claw’. Chinua Achebe later published a short story with the title "How the Leopard Got Its Claws".  He narrated an Igbo folktale featuring leopard as the king of the animals. Achebe’s other book ‘Anthills of The Savanah’ narrates the incident when the leopard, the king of the forest, was to kill the tortoise and how the tortoise scattered sand and grass. And in of ‘Arrow of God’ he masterfully devised an English translation of a popular Igbo proverb ‘Agụ aghaghị  ịmu ihe yiri agụ”   as “what the leopard sires cannot be different from the leopard”. 

These men did not talk about the lion. 

Chukwumeka Ike’s novel "The Bottled Leopard" explores Igbo metaphysics   in the context of interpersonal strife during primal times. It tells the story of how men acquired metaphysical powers and transformed to leopards to terrify their neighbours or attack their animals. 

Wago the protagonist of ‘The Great Ponds’ (the second novel of Elechi Amadi's trilogy) was revered in the community because he killed a leopard. He was even hailed by the honorific "The Leopard Killer". What surprised the members of the community was that the brave Leopard Killer later committed suicide, something they deemed an act of cowardice.

Gabriel Okara, an Ijaw man, was educated at Government Collage Umuahia and worked in Enugu for many years. He wrote the famous poem ‘The Drum and the Piano’. Romanticising primal African life, he used the imagery of a  “leopard snarling about to leap and the hunters crouch with spears poised”. 

If you’ve read the works of late great poet Christopher Okigbo, you will see repeated references to the leopard.  In a manuscript drafting the poem ‘Land of Our Birth’ which he intended to be Biafra’s anthem, Okigbo wrote of  Eastern Region’s (mostly Igbos) resolve to  found its own republic: “This leopard is now unchained”.

Defunct Biafran Armed Forces published and circulated a periodic newsletter/bulletin to engage the masses. It was not for nothing that the brand name of that bulletin/newsletter was “The Leopard”. Indeed, the coat of arms of that republic, which was the same used by  Eastern Region, proudly featured a charging leopard.  

Stay true to who you are

Leopard skin (“akpụkpọ agụ”) was the totemic body-covering material in Igbo cultural foundations. In this modern era, if any fabric should be an emblem of Igbo culture, it is leopard skin fabrics.  This lion symbol expresses nothing unique about the Igbo.  

Totemic symbols embody and express the spirit, history, character and worldview of a people: what they have been through on their road to civilisation. How they see themselves in the world. The standards and qualities they aspire to, collectively and as individuals. 

It is not difficult to see parallels between the leopard’s characteristics and core Igbo character: There is the leopard’s individualism – that Igbo man’s tendency to take his own destiny in his hands.   The leopard is vigilant and opportunistic. The Igbo are wired to identify and take advantage of changing dynamics. Think of the spirit of enterprise and consider the leopard’s ability to perform feats that are out of proportion to its size. What about the leopard’s versatility? The Igbo excel in any enterprise they truly apply their energy to. And then adaptability. The Igbo have not only survived different challenging conditions and thrived in different regions and environments. They have tuned adversities to opportunities and made huge successes out of nothing.

No imperial influence has forced the Scots to abandon the tartan. Nor has centuries of persecution swayed Jews to discard the yarmulke.  The leopard was also the animal totem of the Zulu. That proud people of South Africa remain proud of it. Why then did the Igbo falter?

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[angelofberlin2000]

Keanu Reeves opens up about a lifetime of playing iconic badasses, why he must eat steak before a big fight scene, and how he's managed to stay fit into his 50s        

The always-guarded actor talks about his life, his past hits, his latest project ('John Wick: Chapter 2'), and how he's still ready to kick lots of ass.

by David Katz                                        

February 10, 2017 3.32pm     

Do you like action movies?” asks Keanu Reeves, unable to contain his excitement, as he leads me on a tour of 87Eleven Action Design, a cavernous gym, production company, and choreography studio located in an industrial park near LAX that is arguably the white-hot center of modern movie fighting. “It’s like a training school, a dojo for stunts,” he says, clearly pumped to be back at what was his “second home” while he prepped for the cult action movie John Wick (2014) and the next installment, John Wick: Chapter 2, in theaters now.

Reeves’ youthful enthusiasm is a little surprising, and not because the guy is officially 52 years old. (In his mod black jacket emblazoned with “Arch”—the motorcycle company he co-founded—he doesn’t look anywhere near that age.) And it isn’t because I expected Reeves to be a jerk, either. The truth is, I had no idea what to expect, because Keanu Reeves—a star for more than a quarter century, a guy whose films have amassed nearly $2 billion at the box office—has achieved something miraculous in today’s celebrity-obsessed world: He’s preserved some mystery about himself.

“I’m not looking for a red carpet to walk, and I’m not trying to have a celebrity footprint,” he says when I mention that it’s rare to see his name  flashing across TMZ, and it’s even rarer for him to sit for an extended interview like this one. And while so many actors in Hollywood are focused on building their online “brands,” Reeves seems totally fine with letting the world of social media entirely pass him by. “I can see the appeal—it’s just not to my taste,” he says. 

Before I meet him, I know a few basic facts: He’s unmarried, with no kids. (“I’m an unsuccessful representation of the species,” he jokes.) Also, I know that much of my impression of Reeves is formed by his work, notably his tendency to play stoic heroes—like the Zen-like savior, Neo, in the record-shattering The Matrix trilogy—so I half expect to encounter a quiet, impenetrable monk.

Instead, Reeves is more like a high-energy action-movie fanboy, rattling off some of the films that 87Eleven co-founders—veteran stuntmen David Leitch and Chad Staheleski—have choreographed: The Bourne Legacy, Fight Club, and, of course, The Matrix, on which Staheleski served as Reeves’ stunt double. Fifteen years after that movie’s smash success, he knew those guys aspired to direct, and Reeves brought them a project he was developing about a retired assassin who goes on a bloody revenge spree after a group of thugs off his dog.

Reeves would star, and they would direct.

“Just good clean fun,” he says of the movie, with its super-stylized violence, insane body count, and wry tone. (“It is funny,” Reeves admits. “But not ha-ha funny.”) It was an odds-defying hit: Made on a small, $20 million budget, it grossed $86 million worldwide, cementing Reeves’ status, once again, as one of Hollywood’s most appealing and bankable action heroes.

In 2017, it’s easy to forget that Reeves is an unlikely badass. He first hit it big in comedy, in 1989, with the ridiculous Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, about two bodacious, underachieving California teenagers traveling through time in a phone booth. Not only was Bill & Ted Reeves’ first (but hardly last) surprise hit, earning a sequel, but nearly 30 years later people still talk about a reunion—an effort Reeves supports. “It would be absolutely fantastic and ridiculous to play those roles again,” he says. “Bill and Ted in their 50s?! Excellent. Bodacious!” (Yes, a writer is currently working on a script.)

For his sudden transformation into ass-kicking leading man, however, Reeves credits director Kathryn Bigelow, now known for war movies The Hurt Locker (2008) and Zero Dark Thirty (2013), but then starting out with Point Break, in 1991. Bigelow cast a 26-year-old Reeves as an FBI agent embedded with a band of bank-robbing surfers led by Patrick Swayze. It was another ridiculous premise, another huge hit for Reeves. “It was pulpy, it had a real energy,” says Reeves (who hasn’t seen 2015’s failed remake). “I’ve met people over the years who said, ‘I started skydiving because of that movie,’ or ‘I started surfing because of that movie.’” 

“Before a fight sequence. I still eat a steak. It started on ‘The Matrix’. It’s totally psychological.”

Reeves jumped from a plane once during production to get a taste of what it’s like, but he says that his co-star, Swayze, really caught the bug. “I think he had 30 jumps while we were filming,” he says. “The insurance company was, like, no. Eventually, he got a cease-and-desist from the production company.”

Whether it was because of the surfing, the long hair, or the laid-back delivery, Point Break stereotyped Reeves as the ultimate SoCal underdog—an image only bolstered by the blockbuster Los Angeles freeway thriller, Speed (1994)—which still persists today.

The irony is that Reeves isn’t a native Californian, or even an American. He was born in Beirut, Lebanon, to a British mother and Chinese-Hawaiian father (his name means “cool breeze” in Hawaiian) and spent his formative years in Toronto with his costume designer mom and her eclectic group of friends, including singer Alice Cooper. Reeves still identifies as Canadian, even if he’s lived in L.A. since he was 20 years old.

“Those were my formative years, from like, 7 years old on,” he says. He explains his attachment to his home country as “like the imprimatur of youth, that early sapling that grows into a tree.”

As he leads me up the stairs to 87Eleven’s annex, we get a bird’s-eye view of the place. Most of the floor space is taken up by a huge blue mat overhung by cables used for “wire work,” the suspended choreography that allows actors to dodge bullets midair and pull off impossibly high roundhouses. Today it’s being used by a stunt team from Logan, Hugh Jackman’s final Wolverine film, and Reeves looks on with jealousy. “I always want to work out here,” he says, “just come in and get some more training.”

For Wick, that meant he had to learn an entirely new discipline: judo. “I had a little experience in movie fighting,” he says, with typical (and sincere) modesty. “But I’d never done judo.”

He says the form is tricky to fake onscreen because, unlike throwing punches, “you really gotta throw someone.”

Reeves adopted a former MMA fighter named Eric Brown as his sensei. “At the beginning, I didn’t even know where to put my feet,” he says. “So it was a lot of me learning the basics.”

By the time he flew to New York and Rome to shoot John Wick: Chapter 2, which expands the mythology behind Wick’s order of assassins and reunites Reeves with The Matrix co-star Laurence Fishburne, he was a bona fide judo expert. “Keanu is the most persistent, non-giving-up guy you’ll ever meet,” says Stahelski. “He doesn’t want to act out the part. He wants to be the part.”

Reeves loves pushing himself during his action sequences, though he rejects the word “stunt” for anything he does himself. “There’s an incredible stuntman who doubles John Wick,” he says. “They hit him with a car. He’s standing there, and they hit him—that’s a stunt. Me? I’ll shoot some guns, flip some people—and that’s action. So, yeah, I do as much action as I possibly can, because I love it—and I love the opportunity to bring the audience along.

Which is one of the reasons why Reeves never enjoys stepping aside for the sake of his safety. “I hate that, it’s always a drag,” he says. “I want to be able to do everything. Since The Matrix, I’ve used this term, ‘superperfect.’ As in, ‘Can we get it superperfect?’” On a huge-budget studio movie that can afford infinite takes, that means doing it until it’s right. On a leaner film like Wick, where fights that could have been allotted five days might get two, it means no room for error. “But that’s part of what makes [a great action film] a pressure cooker,” he says. “It’s the intensity of just trying to do the best you can in the circumstances that you have.”

Looking back, he credits Point Break for making him think about his body more. “It was life-changing for me,” he says. “It introduced me to fitness and training.” He began working with Denise Snyder, who has remained his main fitness guru for more than 25 years, and has overseen his body throughout his career.

“He can get huge,” says Snyder. “That worked for Speed. But usually I don’t think for him massiveness works. On John Wick, it’s about his presence, and it can’t come from size. It’s got to come from structure. It’s really about pulling his shoulders back.”

Reeves says that meant not having “huge traps.” “I wanted to have that back,” he says, “to look like if I grabbed you, you were in my world now.”

Reeves isn’t slowing down his exercise regimen these days, though he admits that the biggest difference between playing an action hero at 52 versus 25 is the wear and tear on the knees. “I can’t do stairs as fast,” he says. “But if you say ‘action,’ I’ll go.” His recovery is a little slower, but his endurance is solid. His training diet is still simple. “Low sodium, low fat, and the night before a big fight sequence, I still eat a steak. It started on The Matrix. I was like, ‘Gotta go eat a steak, Carrie-Anne [Moss, his co-star].’ It’s totally psychological.” He prefers a nice New York cut, with a little fat on it. 

With Wick behind him, Reeves says he has some “civilian living” ahead of him before he chooses his next project. During these periods, he takes it easy. “Steak. Red wine. A nice single malt with a big ice cube. Ride a motorcycle.”

Reeves plans to keep the great action movies coming. “You just gotta find the right one,” he says. “You can’t just do it to do it. Unless you need the dough, which is a good enough reason.”

Of course, Reeves, who allegedly took in millions for his work on The Matrix movies alone, doesn’t need the dough. “Well, I do,” he insists, declining to elaborate too much. “It’s a long story that I don’t want to share with you.” Though later he offers a clue: “When you’re friends with someone, you want to help them, you sign something that turns into something else, and that comes back to haunt you.” Still, he says, money is a bad way to make career choices, and his résumé bears that out. (See: 1991’s My Own Private Idaho, 1993’s Little Buddha, and 2012’s Side by Side, a documentary he produced about Hollywood’s conversion from traditional film to digital.) He’s also the guy who started a motorcycle company five years ago.

In fact, Reeves actually showed up today on one of his bikes, a gorgeous Arch KRGT-1, what he calls a “performance cruiser.”

Arch is more than a vanity project, he says. He’s involved in every facet of the company, from design and testing to administration. The project fits perfectly into what Reeves sees as the guiding philosophy of his life: “You’re gonna die—make stuff.” 

http://www.mensfitness.com/life/entertainment/keanu-reeves-opens-about-lifetime-playing-iconic-badasses-why-he-must-eat-steak

[davidpires578]

Dark Chocolate and Sponge Cake (1)

Following on from a recent post about acquiring some mahogany, Swietenia mahagoni, originally from Florida, I had a few additional observations I'd like to share in regards to this special mahogany, based both on some recent readings and my impressions from having milled up a bunch of this stock now. I've learned much in the past few days. We're all doomed, basically. While I was searching for info on Swietenia mahagoni, I came across a British timber merchant who lists Cuban Mahogany as one of his species. On their page for the wood, one finds the following mouth-watering description:

"This stock is a fantastic find, unused old stock from a factory workshop originally imported from Jamaica in 1908. It is very rare, very famous and very desirable." 

Then when you check their catalog for what is actually listed for Cuban Mahogany, you find out that this 'fabulous' and "very desirable" find is a few 2"x2" sticks, 24" long.  Twigs, basically. Uh, jeez, erection lost. Keim lumber lists a few bards from a non-straight tree, and a few of those individual boards go for more than $10,000/ea.  nearly $20,000(!) Will anyone bite at that price? It won't be me. I think that is one of the most expensive pieces of wood I've ever come across. Kinda nuts. From what I understand the wood I have is from a Florida Key, or nearby, harvested some 40 years ago. According to the writer Clayton D. Mell, the Floridian variety was the densest of all the mahoganies found around the Caribbean and down into south America. My direct experience confirms how heavy this particular material is in the hand. However, just because a mahogany tree grew in Florida there is no guarantee that the hard and dense quality of native Swietenia mahogani wood will be what lays within. A Proceeding from the Florida Horticultural society by Julia F. Morton entitled "Our Misunderstood Mahogany and its Problems" was an enlightening read in this regard. It seems that Florida, in line with its national reputation as a super site for invasive non-native flora and fauna of all kinds, has become a place where mahoganies of all kinds are being planted as specimen trees. You can find Swietenia mahagani, and Big Leaf Mahogany (S. macrophylla) planted, as well as Khaya spp., or African Mahogany. So, if you stumble across mahogany lumber purportedly from Florida, it doesn't mean it is the native kind. That's one point. And in cases where the native variety has been planted for landscaping purposes, the nature of the environs strongly determines what the wood is like. Location is everything. As Morton notes in her piece,

"It develops a tall, straight trunk and hard, dark wood in hammocks on outcroppings of limestone on the Upper Keys. If close to the shore, it is protected by a fringe of mangroves. On the more humid mainland and poorly drained soil, the wood is pale and not as hard; limb breakage is common."

Further the author notes, as regards the native mahogany,

"Its native habitat in southern Florida was picturesquely portrayed by John Gifford in his book Living by the Land:

"It is common ... in very low, limestone swamps close to the sea, where it produces wood of exceptional quality. It grows in little groups, often surrounded by red mangroves, and although spots where it grows are a trifle above the surrounding land, it thrives within a few feet of very salt water, flooded at times by storm and often actually sprinkled with salt spray . . . This tree is native to the Madeira Hammock . . . close to the Bay of Florida. Trees which have been there for a long time have on many occasions been flooded with salt water to a depth of several feet, and the land is more or less salty at all times, except when leached by heavy downpours of rain ... It grows in the midst of the mangrove swamps, on jagged coral rock so rough and full of potholes that walking there is difficult and even dangerous."

The note about the Madeira Hammock - the S. mahagoni is also termed 'Madeira wood' (Madeira stems from 'madera', meaning wood in Spanish.) - this location is found at the southern tip of the Everglades, West of Miami and north of the Keys - note the mark on the following map: p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Helvetica}

So that's the sort of ecology within which the good native mahogany can be found - not that there is much native Florida mahogany to be had these days except in exceptional/illegal circumstances. I had never come across the term 'hammock' before as a ecological feature, so in case you are interested, here is the meaning according to Wikipedia:

"Hammock is a term used in the southeastern United States for stands of trees, usually hardwood, that form an ecological island in a contrasting ecosystem. Hammocks grow on elevated areas, often just a few inches high, surrounded by wetlands that are too wet to support them. The term hammock is also applied to stands of hardwood trees growing on slopes between wetlands and drier uplands supporting a mixed or coniferous forest. Types of hammocks found in the United States include tropical hardwood hammocks, temperate hardwood hammocks, and maritime or coastal hammocks."

As far as the ecology of the Tropical Hardwood Hammocks found primarily in Miami-Dade County, a very informative read can be found here. These hammocks are quite vulnerable to the effects of both climate change and associated changes in sea level, falling water tables, and human introduction of exotic plant species:

"Recent GIS mapping of invasive exotics throughout the Florida Keys shows that approximately 2,833 hectares (7,000 acres) of susceptible upland habitat have been invaded by exotic plants, especially Australian pine, Brazilian pepper and latherleaf (Kruer et al. 1998). Areas of disturbed substrate within and adjoining Keys hardwood hammocks are often heavily infested with exotic plants that are rapidly spreading into and displacing the natural plant community...Hybrids between native and exotic plant species have also begun to appear (Hammer 1996, Sanders 1987), ultimately threatening native species with extirpation or extinction."

Fortunately, most tropical hardwood hammocks outside of the Florida Keys along the coast of the Everglades are now protected from development, but climate change affects everywhere, and invasives are spreading without regard to lines were draw on a map, so it all remains threatened regardless. Swietenia mahagoni coming from southern Florida is a wood in which the location in which it grew is a huge factor in the quality of the wood obtained. I imagine the same goes for the species when it is growing on other islands in the Caribbean. Take for example a quote from Patrick Browne (1756) in his work The civil and natural history of Jamaica, in regards to S. mahagoni growing in Jamaica:

"This tree grew formerly very common in Jamaica, and while it could be had in the low lands, and brought to market at an easy rate, furnished a very considerable branch of the exports. It thrives in most soils, and varies both its grain and texture with each; that which grows among the rocks is smaller, but very hard and weighty, of a close grain and beautifully shaded, while the product of the low and richer lands is observed to be more light and porous, of a paler colour and open grain . . . The most beautiful part of the wood is that obtained by sawing across the bottom of the stem and root."

I realize now that I am most fortunate to have stumbled into the 'good stuff'. Sobering to read the wood was but 'formerly' very common in 1756. I mentioned in the last post that there is some S. mahagoni for sale on eBay, apparently 97 years old and originally from Jamaica. Here's a photo from one of the ads:

What's curious to me about what is pictured, if it really is S. mahagoni from Jamaica (which is one of the places where it does naturally grow), then is why is this wood so light colored? The material I have, though not as old as 97 years (since cutting), is dark purple, and I have found that the surface oxidation, after some 40 years, penetrates deeply into the wood. Even Big Leaf Mahogany turns a darker color after a few years, so, I'm a bit suspicious of what is advertised there on eBay. 97 years old - really? It's priced at $32/board foot. To give a charitable assessment, maybe it is a variety which is much blonder in color and doesn't oxidize darker as it ages? Hmmm, it's not convincing me, but you never know. I think I'll give it a pass, and in any case, when I contacted the seller for a list of his boards and their sizes they did not reply, so I doubt we'll be getting to the point where they would send samples. As mentioned earlier, I have now milled up a bunch of the 'Madeira Wood'. Here, laying on the infeed table of the surfacer, are the components for the upper and lower horizontal frames with a few pieces of leftover stock standing to the left:

In the leftover pile I have a ribbon stripe board which is a bit of an orphan since it does not match anything else in this piece, along with a short and wide chunk which unfortunately has slash grain and is of limited usability:

More bug-eaten trimmings, and a pith board on the left:

Next are the pieces which will form the main posts, the front door frames, and some of the back framing of the cabinet:

While it is certainly true that to have the most direct feel for any wood you need to chisel it and plane it, or turn it on a wood lathe, I have nevertheless formed a strong impression of the material just by running it over my jointer, through my bandsaw, and even the planer. I can report that it does not suck. In fact, I am kinda ruined now for Honduran Mahogany. I was finding myself a bit giddy after cutting stock for a few hours. And I'm only giddy once every few years. I now have a glimmer of understanding as to why joiners and furniture makers of the 18th and 19th centuries coveted this material like they did, and found the Big Leaf Mahogany 'spongey' by comparison. If you would entertain an analogy, S. mahagoni, at least what I have, could be described in the following manner: while Honduran mahogany is some kind of Weight Watcher's™ diet chocolate bar, this stuff is more like a decadent fudge and dark chocolate bar. Or, put another way: Honduran Mahogany is like Wonderbread™, while Cuban Mahogany is like an artisanal loaf from a specialty bakery with a chewy crumb and intriguing flavors. It's hard to explain otherwise. I am in the process of obtaining more, as much as I can afford. Fortunately my sister in law has lent me some money to help out with this purchase, on very generous repayment terms. I face a few challenges, beside staving off personal bankruptcy in my lust to buy more of this wood. One is the oxidation issue. The dark chocolate to purple color of the wood is the product of some 40 years of exposure, and the oxidation has reached deep into the wood - close to 3/8" (1cm). That means that re-sawn sticks have reveals of much lighter wood in the middle, trending towards the dark brown as you reach either arris on the face. Obviously, a year or two down the line, the freshly-cut surfaces will darken and begin a journey to a point where it will all look much the same, namely dark chocolate with purple tones. I'm sure that 5 years from now it will be a good portion of the way there. However, the 'brand new' appearance of a cabinet is important. I'm not one of those people obsessed with closely matching colors  - that's more of an interior designer tic it seems to me. I enjoy the variegation of natural materials, and like getting to know them as they change over time. However, the difference here between faces is quite striking, so maybe I'll have to do something. I spoke with the fellow from whom I obtained the Cuban Mahogany. He has long experience with Big Leaf mahogany, but has only worked a very small amount of his cuban stock, and was familiar with the issue of which I asked. He suggested a solution which had also crossed my mind, namely using dye on the lighter faces. He said that the dye will, over many years, weaken in effect, and sorta 'wear off' the surface, however as that happens the wood is naturally darkening, so it's like a simple case of replacement over time. That sounds good to me, and he recommended a particular Behlen's product, an alcohol-based non-grain raising dye in the Solarlux line, the Van Dyke Brown. I've found Behlen's stuff to be good, though for dyes I've employed TransTint products previously. I'll of course test this stuff on a small scrap piece first. I also plan to check in with my client to see how he might like the piece without the use of dye to obtain greater uniformity of color. If it were my piece of furniture I'd be inclined to use the wood 'as is' and let it age gracefully, but not everyone will feel similarly. I think I'll build the piece and see how it looks all assembled before making a decision in that regard. This cabinet, as it is going into a bedroom and will not be exposed to the same sort of hazards and wear conditions as were the coffee table, side table, and sideboard I built for the client, could perhaps be fine with a thinner, less tough finish, something even closer to the wood. With that in mind, I've chosen a German product made by Kreidezeit, and sold in the US under the Unearthed Paints label. This is a 'hard wax oil', and is a blend of Carnauba wax, colophonium resin (that is, Rosin) and a Tung Oil/Linseed oil mix. The product is 100% solids, with no solvents or water. No friggin' VOCs to deal with, which is all good as far as I am concerned. I initially came across this wax oil product on a Japanese website, which lead me to find the German company site and check it out further. I was glad to find they had a supplier in the US. I've heard good things about the 'hard wax oil' and it is very simple to apply, just wipe on, leave 20 minutes and

[torixus]

What Igbos Need to Know About Isiagu Symbol

Abstract 

In this essay, I use “akwa isiagụ” as metaphor to illustrate that Igbos have not done exactly well to preserve their language and culture. I posit they have abandoned their unique cultural symbol. That they are now parading a symbol of foreign popular culture as their foremost emblem. But I also present perspectives that might ignite a quest for self-rediscovery.

Akwa isiagụ is the clothing fabric patterned with motifs showing fierce-looking lion’s head and mane. Some designs show a less stern lion’s head, with two or three cow horns besides it. 

Since the last 50 to 60 years Igbos have managed to portray this fabric design as their classic cultural emblem. In fact, as something of a totem. Igbo chiefs and nze and ọzọ title holders use it to make their ceremonial gears. At native marriage ceremonies and similar cultural events, isiagụ garments of different colours and styles grace the day. Igbo people feel a certain sense of pride when they dress in isiagụ attire. Even non-Igbos regard isiagụ as being to Igbos what the tartan is to Scots. Or the yarmulke is to Jews. Such is the impression, that when they are identifying with or participating at an Igbo traditional practice (eg taking an Igbo chieftaincy), they dress in isiagụ gear. Recent examples include President Buhari, Fayose, Zuma.

But this is an imported foreign popular culture. Neither the lion nor the lion icon has any significance in Igbo cultural foundations. Indeed, using the descriptor ‘isiagụ’ to refer to a lion’s head motif is wrong use of the word “agụ”.

Incorrect Language

Agụ is not lion in Igbo. Agụ is leopard.  Folks have written about this before, and I've discussed in other forums on the subject. It is pitiful that it remains a source of confusion to many adult Igbos. There is just little understanding of Igbo origins and names of the feline (cat species) animals. You hear all manner of names that contradict biogeography. Like, “agụ is lion, andọdụm is tiger”. Or, “agụ is lion, and leopard is edi abalị”.

But let’s clear this.

Just as jaguars and cougars are found only in the Americas, tigers inhabit only in Eurasia. They do not belong to the fauna (native animals) of sub-Saharan Africa. Ancient Igbos did not see nor know about tiger, so did not have an indigenous name for it. 

Edi or edi abalị is the African civet. One of the 38 viverridae species, it is slightly smaller than the leopard. A carnivore, no doubt, but it is timider, less agile and far less specialised in opportunistic hunting.  It has a broadly cat-like general appearance, but its muzzle is more pointed than that of a typical feline. Leopard has distinctive camouflage spots that help it to use forest canopies for cover, enhancing its abilities for surprise hunting, But the African civet typically has black and white spots.

A nocturnal creature that sleeps for about 20 hours a day, the ancient Igbos knew the edi abalị very well. Which is why I[[gbos still use “edi” as metaphor to refer to a person who sleeps a lot. The leopard is bold, agile, versatile, and highly admired in Igbo cultural foundations. But edi is loathed and associated with negativity, because it smells and relies more on con and coy to lure its preys. That’s also why in Igbo language “edi aghụghọ” is a metaphor that references a deceptive person.

Knowledge of the Igbo language structure will indicate agụ is not lion. Many Igbo words were created from metaphorical use of existing words. To form names for creatures or objects, Igbos often devised a two-word metaphor comparing what is sought to be named to an another named object or creature. For example, ụlọ is house, and school is “ụlọ-akwụkwọ” (house for books), while hospital is “ụlọ ọgwụ” (house for medication).

Leopard - agụ – preys on mammals and has spots on its furs. That is why the wall gecko, that preys on insects and has spots, is called agụ ụlọ (ie house leopard). And the crocodile, that preys on water creatures and has patches that resemble the leopard’s spots, is called agụ iyi (leopard of the waters). Similarly, the palm genet, a small mammal that resembles the squirrel but unlike the squirrel has spots on its furs, is called “agụ nkwụ”. In contrast.] the lion has no spots on its furs.  The lion’s fur is generally plane brown.

The leopard is Igbo animal totem

Being about 3 times the size of a leopard, the lion is stronger and sometimes even preys on the leopard. The Igbo say “ọdụm na-egbu agụ”. Despite this, the lion has no special recognition in Igbo cultural systems. Ancient Igbos likely did not even have any or much contact with lion as a species. For whereas leopards inhabit in rainforests (although they are very adaptable and thrive in other vegetations), lions inhabit mainly in savannah or grasslands. Savannah vegetation do not exist (and likely never existed) in Igboland. Igboid areas sit generally on lowland rainforest.

A lion can occasionally stray into a rainforest or can refuge there if persecuted in its usual habitat. It must have been in such circumstances that Igbos came to know about the lion.  Yet that was not enough to diminish their fascination for the leopard, a beast with which they had contended for thousands and thousands of years. 

It should be noted that whilst leopards operate solitarily, lions are the most social of the cat species. Lions operate in close-knit social groups called “pride”. Ethologists (scholars of animal behaviours) have observed that this sociality makes the lion a better communicator than other big cats. But it means lions roar frequently and easily broadcast their presence and emotions. Conversely, a leopard’s solitary lifestyle makes it less detectable, and more perceptive and reactive to intrusion. For this reason, its senses of vision and hearing are sharper than those of a lion. Ancient Igbos witnessed this first-hand. They saw how a leopard, hiding stealthily amongst forest canopies, would detect the slightest animal or human movement, and chase and pounced savagely.

In forest environment, a lion has little chance to fight down the more agile leopard. A lion’s size and weight render it less agile to climb high. But a leopard can climb to the top an iroko tree in less than 10 seconds. Leopard is probably the only big mammal that can descend a tree head first. It uses its long tail to maintain perfect aerodynamic balance.

With top average speed of about 80 km per hour, lion is faster than leopard. But it can only run for very short bursts and needs to be close to its prey before starting an attack. But the leopard can run for far longer stretches, at average top speed of about 58 km per hour. A leopard can make a single leap of over 6m (20 ft) horizontally and can jump up to 3 m (9.8 ft) vertically. And it is a powerful swimmer. Although its vision is sharpest in the dark, it can equally be eagle-eyed in the day.

Incredibly versatile, leopard hunts on land, up on the trees and in water. On the trees it can out-manoeuvre specialised climbers and jumpers, including monkeys and baboons. Leopards have been observed leaping and snatching a monkey with a bite mid-air and regaining grip of tree branches. That is, it successfully launches mid-air strike from a treetop and lands back on the tree. It goes into rivers and streams where it overpowers creatures like alligators, and hauls them off the water, all the way up a tree.

A silent predator, when discreteness will give it advantage, it can be elusive. It has a pad of tissue in the flat of its claws that act as silencers when it walks. It can literally hide in plain sight. When it tucks itself in between the fork of tree branches, it just blends with the tree trunk.  It can create optical illusion to deceive its prey, including humans. A Leopard will coil its head and tail into its body and crouch flat on the ground appearing like dry wood lying about.  Very patient. If its target are animals in a troop, it can hold its cool and then attack the last of the troop from behind.

When persecuted by humans a leopard is more likely to fight back than is a lion. And it does not target one out of a group. It will attack one person after another.  Reason the Igbo say “ofu agụ na-achụ mba” (a single leopard can sack a town).

For thousands of years the Maasai people of Kenya have practiced the art of emerging from hiding to scare lions away from their kill and take it home for meet. But a leopard will drag its kill in its mouth and climb a tree. It climbs a tree carrying in its mouth a carcass far heavier than its own size. Animals like bull, giraffe, antelope. In those days, it would attack someone’s goat or sheep and drag it in its mouth deep into the forest and up on a tree.

The lion lacks these amazing abilities. In terms of general efficiency and productivity as jungle hunters, the leopard beats the lion, by many miles! Indeed, scientists have determined that, pound for pound (ie adjusted for differences in size and weight) the leopard is the strongest of all the big cat species.  

It was for these reasons that the ancient Igbo revered the leopard as their totemic animal for strength, agility, boldness, and courage. And that is also why Igbo language is littered with similes, metaphors, adages and proverbs that use agụ to illustrate positive energy and abilities. Like “omekagụ”, “agụnwa”, etcetera. And it is why many Igbo families and communities proudly took their names and sobriquets after agụ. Like “Umuagụ, Amagụ Dimagụ, Eziagụ, Duruagụetc.

Today, as urban dwellers we can look down on the leopard. But to the Igbos of those jungle days, a snarling leopard on the loose was literally nature’s force unleashed. Every hamlet had a chant or cry that was used to alarm the community when a leopard was sighted. In my own area the chant was “ ọ wụ agụ o!”. ( it is a leopard o!). Social codes dictated that a person who heard the cry also repeated it, till the entire community was alerted. And until the leopard was killed or confirmed to have returned to the deep forests, usual daily activities were suspended. Children and women would not go the streams to fetch water.  No one went to the farms nor led their sheep out to graze. Able bodied men were then organised, in groups, to track down the leopard. And think of it. Those men did not have guns. They went with spears, bows and sticks. Combating the leopard in these situations was an act of extraordinary bravery and patriotism - risking one’s life for the safety of the community.  That explains why the person who eventually killed the leopard instantly became a hero and given the honorific “Ogbu Agụ”. 

And eating a leopard meet was a once-in-a-generation-experience. Till today Igbos use the metaphor “ọ bụanụ agụ?” (is it a leopard meet?) to question the value of a highly priced or scarce commodity. Of course, the leopard skin was dried and kept by the leopard killer. He and his descendant would display it with pride for hundreds of years afterwards. And legend has it that reputable native doctors harvested the leopard’s bile/gall and used it to prepare the most potent charms or medicines, that warriors drank to boost their bravery and ferocity during intertribal wars. 

Very perplexing was this elusive and powerful animal to ancient Igbos, that they even considered it a mysterious creature. A reason many Igbo dialects added the suffix “mystery” or “invisible” (“owo”, “owu”, “owuru” or “awolo”) to its name. Many areas call it agụ owuru – ie, leopard of mystery, mysterious leopard, or leopard that suddenly appears and disappears.  Igbo metaphysics believed that some men acquired powers to transform to leopard. To assume the nature and characteristics of a leopard, even for a short period, was considered an attainment of a transcendental and superior state of being.

Indeed, ancient Igbo cosmology explained the entire universe as being some mystical leopard persona. The weather system and visible changes in the skies were said to be a leopard, the sky leopard. The thick clouds that formed in the sky before rainfall were its shimmering eyes just waking from sleep. The movement of tick clouds was the movement of the leopard in its marauding character.  The sparks of lightening that came before a thunder were the leopard’s flashing eyes. The thunder was its voice snarling in anger and ready to pounce.  The heavy rains were its urine gushing with a force typical of its strength. And bright day was the sky leopard fully awake, with eyes wide open.

The lion symbol is not originally Igbo

This portrayal of the lion as symbolic cultural icon of the Igbos is only recent. It is driven by the influence of modern media and foreign popular culture. We watch a lot of animal documentaries these days and read a lot of books that continue to inform us the lion is the king of the beasts. True! But they don’t tell us about the king of our forests.

Today in global popular culture (eg children cartoons, films, etc) we are taught to be like the lion. Because throughout histories and in many parts of the world the lion image has been used in stories, artworks, coats of arms, logos and advertisements to depict strength, ferocity, power, confidence and success. The bible and other major religious texts also contain the lion symbolism. And so, the Igbos yielded – completely! We abandoned our equivalent animal totem, and even had to distort our language as a result.

Yet Igbo folklore is filled with stories that reference “agụ” as the king of animals.  First generation Igbo intellectuals had no misunderstanding that agụ was leopard. And they were acutely aware of its significance in the Igbo culture and worldview.

In Onuora Nzekwu’s classic novel Eze Goes to School (published 1963), the ravaging beast which held the people of Ohia hostage, which Eze’s father killed but later died from the wound it inflicted on him, was a leopard, not a lion. Anezi Okoro’s 1966 novel ‘The Village School’ featured an intriguing student. Ismael was popular amongst his mates because his father was a reputed hunter who killed a leopard and took the title “The Leopard Killer”.

In 1950 Cyprian Ekwensi published a novel entitled ‘The Leopard's Claw’. Chinua Achebe later published a short story with the title "How the Leopard Got Its Claws".  He narrated an Igbo folktale featuring leopard as the king of the animals. Achebe’s other book ‘Anthills of The Savanah’ narrates the incident when the leopard, the king of the forest, was to kill the tortoise and how the tortoise scattered sand and grass. And in of ‘Arrow of God’ he masterfully devised an English translation of a popular Igbo proverb ‘Agụ aghaghị  ịmu ihe yiri agụ”   as “what the leopard sires cannot be different from the leopard”. 

These men did not talk about the lion. 

Chukwumeka Ike’s novel "The Bottled Leopard" explores Igbo metaphysics   in the context of interpersonal strife during primal times. It tells the story of how men acquired metaphysical powers and transformed to leopards to terrify their neighbours or attack their animals. 

Wago the protagonist of ‘The Great Ponds’ (the second novel of Elechi Amadi's trilogy) was revered in the community because he killed a leopard. He was even hailed by the honorific "The Leopard Killer". What surprised the members of the community was that the brave Leopard Killer later committed suicide, something they deemed an act of cowardice.

Gabriel Okara, an Ijaw man, was educated at Government Collage Umuahia and worked in Enugu for many years. He wrote the famous poem ‘The Drum and the Piano’. Romanticising primal African life, he used the imagery of a  “leopard snarling about to leap and the hunters crouch with spears poised”. 

If you’ve read the works of late great poet Christopher Okigbo, you will see repeated references to the leopard.  In a manuscript drafting the poem ‘Land of Our Birth’ which he intended to be Biafra’s anthem, Okigbo wrote of  Eastern Region’s (mostly Igbos) resolve to  found its own republic: “This leopard is now unchained”.

Defunct Biafran Armed Forces published and circulated a periodic newsletter/bulletin to engage the masses. It was not for nothing that the brand name of that bulletin/newsletter was “The Leopard”. Indeed, the coat of arms of that republic, which was the same used by  Eastern Region, proudly featured a charging leopard.  

Stay true to who you are

Leopard skin (“akpụkpọ agụ”) was the totemic body-covering material in Igbo cultural foundations. In this modern era, if any fabric should be an emblem of Igbo culture, it is leopard skin fabrics.  This lion symbol expresses nothing unique about the Igbo.  

Totemic symbols embody and express the spirit, history, character and worldview of a people: what they have been through on their road to civilisation. How they see themselves in the world. The standards and qualities they aspire to, collectively and as individuals. 

It is not difficult to see parallels between the leopard’s characteristics and core Igbo character: There is the leopard’s individualism – that Igbo man’s tendency to take his own destiny in his hands.   The leopard is vigilant and opportunistic. The Igbo are wired to identify and take advantage of changing dynamics. Think of the spirit of enterprise and consider the leopard’s ability to perform feats that are out of proportion to its size. What about the leopard’s versatility? The Igbo excel in any enterprise they truly apply their energy to. And then adaptability. The Igbo have not only survived different challenging conditions and thrived in different regions and environments. They have tuned adversities to opportunities and made huge successes out of nothing.

No imperial influence has forced the Scots to abandon the tartan. Nor has centuries of persecution swayed Jews to discard the yarmulke.  The leopard was also the animal totem of the Zulu. That proud people of South Africa remain proud of it. Why then did the Igbo falter?

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