She gave a talk at NYU in April 2021. (46 min 37 sec) We listened to the first minute and a half or so. Roy more or less introduced herself and it was an opportunity to become accustomed to her gentle accent.
At about 25-28 minutes, we watched her discussion of Bose’s instruments with his illustrations. As part of that she mentioned that there’s a virtual tour on the Bose Institute website. The general link for the Bose Institute is here. Poking around further subsequent to our meeting I found this although I can’t figure out how to get there from the home page. Go figure! It still isn’t a virtual tour but it does have photographs of the different instruments.
Meanwhile, while I was looking for talks with Sumana Roy, I came across this, which I think I mentioned, although we didn’t watch it. It includes Wohlleben who wrote the first book we read as the bookclub, The Hidden Life of Trees. I had never heard of Jessica Lee. She wrote Two Trees Make a Forest. So, I’ve added that to my reading list, of course. Oh, ah, and I’ll watch the video… On Trees: A conversation with Peter Wohlleben, Jessica Lee, and Sumana Roy from the Yale Forest Forum. (1 hr 19 min 2 sec)
Roy wrote extensively about the Tagores and particularly about the garden and trees of Uttarayan. This link is to a pdf that includes the general garden plan for all five buildings as well as a number of historical images.
When we met I also showed another “summer house” belonging to someone else with a similar but different name. In one of those amazing computer snafus, I have actually lost all the links I had used during the discussion. I have mostly had no trouble at all reconstructing almost everything EXCEPT this one. It’s driving me nuts and I have spent far too many hours trying to find it. I think it came from a blog Bangladesh Heritage but, alas, I can’t find it there. Should you have better luck, here’s the link to the blog. . I thought the house I found was interesting because the author went to the site two separate times and documented vandalism, which is sometimes a problem with heritage sites. Designation is not protection… And the author described a dispute that was then arising over ownership and development, another problem and conflict in the fight to preserve historic sites.
The Chipko movement is a tree-hugging movement to protect trees from logging. It is generally said to have started in 1973 but does have roots further back in time. In fact, in the 18th century. Here’s one article with some information.
And, here is the link to the video we watched. It details all the information in the article above and more. (7 min 53 sec)
There was mention throughout the book of an assortment of art. Here are some links.
- metal tree
- xray tree
- some other Nick Veasey images
- xray tree again
- van gogh mulberry tree
Japanese forest bathing. This is another one where I can’t find the link I showed during the discussion but there are many videos. Many are filled with beautiful music, beautiful scenes, and people wandering around or sitting under trees looking peaceful and blissed out. The clip I showed had included some discussion of what forest bathing is and why it matters. This link is at least similar in intent to what I had found to show the group.
And then, with one more pass at trying to find it, I think I did although possibly not but here’s another link.
In Melborne Australia you can write a letter to a tree and the tree, with the help of a city employee, might respond! How cool is that! We talked about using something similar here in Albuquerque. As far as we could tell from checking out the Melborne tree app, all 77,000 trees have been placed on a google map. When you click on the tree, its email opens and you can send it a letter. No QR codes, no markers at the trees to be stolen. Brilliant, as the British or Aussies might say. As the videos tell the story, the city had thought this would be a way for people to report vandalism, broken limbs, etc. Instead, people took the opportunity to write to the trees. Check out the links here and here to watch a couple videos about the letters and to see the map. Perhaps you’ll find a tree you’d like to write to yourself.
Someone we have come across before from some of our other book discussions is Axel Erlandson. He took grafting and pruning to unheard of levels and his legacy of the “circus trees” remains an attraction in Gilroy, California (garlic capital of the world – a gentle reminder of A Garlic Testament about garlic growing here in New Mexico). This link is to a history of the man and his trees as told by his daughter. (7 min 47 sec)
For a contemporary view of the trees in the park (including their species and circus name), a lay discussion of the horticultural techniques, this is fast moving and sometimes silly video was prepared for Nat Geo Kids. Still, the information is informative and pretty cool. (7 min 8 sec)
And then, while putting this together and trying to find the links I had shown, I came across this academic talk: Botanic Architecture and the Tree Circus (1 hr 6 min 53 sec)
Toward the end of the book, Roy mentions Bios Urns, a pot into which you place your loved one’s ashes along with a tree seed so that they may live forever. Or perhaps a thousand years, anyway. I found this link which shows the process. Here’s another video of people talking about buying an urn but there are no images of who they grew in their urn…
And then there are all the accessories you can buy to ensure your tree grows.
That last might be useful as one of the people in the discussion said she would never take responsibility of growing a tree from ashes (or ask anyone to do the same for her) because the emotional pressure if you killed the tree would be horrible!