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A Midsummer's Night Dream

Elaine Meinel Supkis

In the Northern Hemisphere we are rushing towards the shortest night of the year, the Summer Solstice. I live on a mountain in the north and the sun now sets behind the mountain and rises only a few steps to the East after the brief night.

At midnight, the Big Dipper's cup sweeps the crown of the black forest and the moonless night is lit up by millions of fireflies that pulse with love's lusts as they flit about the forest and flash around the hay fields below. This vast insectian display of ardour and sexual attraction mirrors the vault of heaven where the stars glitter. Standing in the middle of the meadow, I feel as if I were flying in the dark night sky, Heaven and Earth, united.

The chorus of eight legged troubadors playing ballads of merry songs, calling to their mates, a continuous chorus of earthly delights, promises of legacy and eternal rule of the plant world! Down in the depths of the valley sing the frogs, a pulsating basso. In the darkness, silent bats and night birds swoop and curve as they slice through the love-struck insects. If I turn on a flashlight, I can see them as they glide past the beam.

Oh night of love, the Venus of Life! Everything that fled the winter's iron grip or who turned inwards or dropped its leaves, naked to the cold, all who hid in burrows or braved the blasts of storms, all are happy tonight for the afternoon's storms that traipsied through the valleys are gone and the stars now rule the cloudless night! Rain and warmth means an abundance of life. This is the week I hay the pastures and I saw a new-born fawn curled in a tight ball hidden by a veil of tall grasses. A sand-colored baby snake nearly gets caught in the blades of the grass cutting but I pick it up and drop it onto the rock walls which I and many previous farmers had wrestled from the earth and piled along the edges of the fields.

The wild strawberries are bright red gems hidden by the hay but as the tractor passes, they appear magically. I stop occassionally and pluck them. They are as small as the tips of my fingers but far sweeter than the biggest strawberry sold in stores, bloated beings created by abusing nature by pumping in chemicals and oil-based fertilizers. These wild strawberries can't fill the stomach but they fill the soul. Sucking on just one tiny berry brings delight to the senses!

The wild rose bushes are in full flower and the night carries their scent to guide me to where they bloom. White or pink, they have only five pedals and each flower is less than an inch across but unlike the hot house roses bred by humans, they are a potent perfume and it isn't their pretty appearance but rather this invisible but far more sexually attractive attribute that is most noticeable at night! Unlike the false beauty of modern roses nearly all of whom have as much perfume as a frog, these tiny flowers may look modest but are the Queens of the Night!

They are the hedgerows that seperate the pastures and fields. I didn't plant them, Mother Nature scatters their seeds through her sweet-singing army of song birds. In the news is the story this week that we are losing our emissaries of Venus, these feathered beauties, the song birds of forest and field! This is because we are changing their world, instead of living within Nature's embrace, we are raping her!

Click here for lovely Faure song by a young boy.

For these birds, the fireflies, the butterflies, the frogs, the fawns, they all need a variety of places, a tapestry of creation and one of the wonders of humanity was our ability to create 'farming' out of all this. So the opening of fields with hedgerows of wild roses and evergreens, the accidental junction of so many things whereby we sculpt Nature with our scythes as we prepare fields, harvest them and hay them, all this meshes with all other living things to create a culture, one filled with miracles like the stars flickering in the fields and fens at night for a week in the year, the miracle of the chorus of song birds greeting the first rays of dawn, the leaping deer or the running fox: all these things are moving alongside the sheep I used to herd or the oxen I used to work, the horses as they graze, this life is what Life is all about: variety and change.

When I share my world with the insects, mammals, birds, wild plants and reptiles, this makes my own life richer! Their bounty is given to me and I do things that make their lives richer or better, all of us have room on this mountain, the corner of creation...I am not the mistress of all this but a visitor who has to keep making the bed, cooking the meals and in general, insuring that all of us can live here in harmony and this means understanding everyone and giving them time to be.

So I stay the haying until the grass is going to seed and is so tall it reaches my waist. And mixed in with these grasses are many flowers: blue, yellow, red and white! And my bees as well as a host of insects visit these beautiful sex organs of what people foolishly call 'weeds' and as I hay, butterflies and grasshoppers rise from the carpet of tall flowers that are intermixed with the hay. And birds follow my tractor, swooping down upon them and the haying scatters seeds and pollen all over the place and this resets the meadows so they can continue to grow and flourish each year.

Much of America is becoming a biological desert. The tiny, often colorful and certainly talented song birds are fewer in number for the long journey from the warm south to their nesting grounds here on this mountain are hazardous for there are fewer and fewer places they can rest and eat. Suburban lawns are dead zones despite the green. There are no carpets of wild flowers for the bees and birds! People wonder why bees are dying!

They need flowers! Lots of flowers! Even as I hay fields, I leave large swaths of flowers for my bees, these are cut only in the fall when their season is past! I use no chemicals so insects take their share but in return, I have a huge bird population! From hummingbirds to chickadees, hawks to owls, swallows and crows, the variety I see each day is astonishing. And they nest and flock around my house and become accustomed to my voice and appearance.

It is amusing when they return. The older birds who remember this place and use the stars and sun to track their migrations so they can return to a happy home, will literally fly up to me and say 'hello'. I recognize them from oddities in their markings or songs. Some of the older birds are so accustomed to me, they think nothing of being inches away from where I sit when I am outside!

And this is what we are losing. People wanting identical lawns are killing nature. When I lived in suburbia, I tore up my front lawn and planted flowers. I grew old-fashioned roses which have a sweet scent. I planted fruit trees that birds love. In return, my yard was filled with birds! The tragedy of humanity is how our own greed is causing us to throw out the true treasure of this Earth: the bounty of Nature!

With the advent of genetic engineering, the destruction of Nature is now threatening the entire web of life. I suspect, since my bees are doing well, it is industrial farming that is killing off the bees. My hive, in attention to the lure of Mother Nature, as all living things this week, sensing the high glory of the year, the longest day, the new Queen was hatched and half of the hive gathered around Her Majesty and in a large mob, they all flew off to seek a new home. This is how I got my vigorous, healthy hive!

They arrived in this day, the longest in summer, and demanded I set up a hive box for them. My husband obeyed this request and now we have them living with us and sharing the sweet honey they make from the wild flowers and the roses blooming in the hedge rows.

I love Nature, I love the cycle of Life and this is so precious, it is greater than any work of art, more valuable that all the gold in bank vaults, it is why I exist and it makes my life possible. The love Nature spreads is what made my life sweeter with kisses and love from the man who shares all this, and like all the living things having sex and spreading armour this night, I was blessed with children who are now grown and living just as I have; this is the cycle of love and life!

I ardently wish to protect all this and this means ending the possession of nuclear missiles and other death machines. This means curbing our appetites and not devouring all this, it means understanding Nature and working with her. Much of my labor is to NOT ruin this web of life but to mesh with it and take what I can from it, what I am allowed.

It is really all rather easy, actually! The hens lay their eggs eagerly and let us take them and eat them and in return, we protect them and care for them summer and winter. The horse bears me on his back or pulls for me because in return, I feed and protect him. The sheep gave me wool and the oxen pulled hard no matter how big the tree.

So tonight, I want to thank all these living things for making my life worth living. A gracious bow towards the true Empress of All Things, thank you, Mother Nature. May you forgive us all.

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6.4 Earthquake in Yunnan China Today

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Today, there was a 6.4 Richter scale earthquake in Southern China. Aside from the fact that the rapid movement of Australia's plate is deforming a large chunk of Asia, this region has some interesting side stories concerning tea trade and wars.

From Xinhua:

Three people have been confirmed dead and at least 290 injured after a strong earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4 on the Richter scale struck southwest China's Yunnan Province on Sunday.

The quake shook the old downtown area of Hani and Yi Autonomous County of Ning'er, in Pu'er City, at 5:34 a.m., with the epicenter at 23 degrees north and 101.1 degrees east, according to the China Earthquake Administration.

The quake also forced the evacuation of 120,000 residents, said a spokesman for the provincial civil affairs department.

The local seismic bureau had recorded 14 aftershocks of at least 2.5 magnitude by 10:50 a.m.. The strongest occurred at 10:49a.m. with a magnitude of 5.1, centered at 23.02 degrees north and 101.06 degrees east.

This is a most interesting place. Geologically complex places tend to also be the gateway to history. In the picture above, I drew red lines showing the curvature of the earth's crust which is very complex due to several forces. The Indian plate slamming into Asia raises the Himalaya mountains and is ramming right through Southern China, shoving Indochina to one side. Indochina is being pulled sideways by the Australian Plate which is now the fastest moving plate on earth and which is triggering massive earthquakes across half of the planet not to mention some of the biggest tsunamis in history.

The substrata interactions in this junture of where so many tectonic plates clash, is a mystery. Sumatra looks as if it is being forced over the east flank of the Indian subcontinental plate. The world's most dangerous volcanic chain runs along the western face of Sumatra.

From Harvard University:

We collected the water level changes of all 30 wells' groundwater observation data in Yunnan provincial Digital Monitoring Network induced by the 2004 Sumatra Earthquake. The network was funded by China Earthquake Administration (CEA) and managed by Yunnan Provincial Earthquake Administration (YPEA), which were continuously telemetered in 24 hours each day and digitally recorded in 1 sample per minute. There were 28 wells worked well when the 2004 Sumatra earthquake occurred and 24 wells responded to the Great event except 4 wells without response. We analyzed the shapes of 24 wells' water level changes and found that there were 9 oscillatory changes and 15 permanent changes which included 7 increasing and 8 decreasing changes. The decreasing changes with relatively small amplitude distributed along or very near to the Red River fault, and the increasing changes distributed far from the Red River fault. The amplitude of the water level changes did not decrease with epicentral distances which reported by other scientists based on mono-well researches. We investigated the time processes of groundwater level changes and found that there were about 19 changes originated before the Rayleigh wave arrivals which were not coincident with former report that groundwater level mainly induced by the passage of Rayleigh waves. It's amazing that the earlier triggered earthquake swarms mainly along the Red River fault and the later prominent earthquakes occurred mainly near the wells with large amplitude of increasing induced water level changes. The above observations not only can not be explained by static strain changes induced by the rupture of the Sumatra earthquake according to dislocation theory, but also can not be explained by the ground motion directly.

Earthquakes along the Alaskan subduction zone can and have affected geysers in Yellowstone Park which is more than a thousand miles away. Wells in that zone respond by changing water levels when there are 8.5+ quakes in Alaska. The fact that this happens on the opposite side of the planet means there is some probable similiarity in the geology of the lower levels of the earth's crusts at work here. I find it interesting that today's earthquake and after shocks were at the 10 km level. This is a common level for quakes, some of which are the greatest quakes of all. The region where it happened isn't one of the most active on earth by a long shot but it is remarkably similar to California: due to contrary forces, over time, tension builds and is relieved quite suddenly.

The leading edge of the Australian Plate and the line running northwest along the Indonesian archipeglio into Burma and then along the southern line of the Himalayan mountains and the Alaskan subduction zone are some of the most active areas on earth. But every once and a while, the juncture where Indonesia is being squeezed against China, there are pretty good quakes.

This rumpled landscape is one of the centers of civilization in China as well as a bone of contention in many, many wars. This region is the ancient gateway for trade between China, Tibet, Indochina and eastern India. This is one of the big tea growing areas in Asia. Tea grows best in mist-shrouded mountains.

Until just a few years ago, the borders between China and its southern neighbors was not formally recognized. At the end of the Vietnam war, China and the triumphant North Vietnamese clashed in this region and the Vietnamese, battle-hardned and war-smart, beat the Chinese invasion in 1979. The border has not been verified via treaty until recently when the Chinese, eager to do things diplomatically rather than violently, inked a series of treaties with everyone who has any adjoining borders with their huge nation.

Here is the most recent border clash between China and Vietnam in this very region, just 5 years ago!

Asian Political News, July 22, 2002:

A Chinese police officer was killed and five other security personnel were injured when Vietnamese and Chinese forces exchanged fire in a border clash on May 6, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) sources revealed Tuesday.

Armed Chinese police from Yunnan Province, southwestern China, and Vietnamese forces exchanged fire when the Chinese personnel crossed into the Muong Khuong district in Lao Kai while tracking a criminal gang, the sources said quoting information from China.

In the gunbattle, one Chinese officer was killed and two other Chinese officers wounded. Three Vietnamese personnel were also injured, the sources said.

From China Expat:

Tibetan milk-butter tea is most certainly an acquired taste. It is oily, very salty, and frankly does not taste much like tea. However, to the accustomed drinker, the yellowish-grey liquid can come to take on almost magical properties, especially after a stout hike at 4000 meters. The magic is simply that the fatty yak’s butter is extremely protein and nutrient rich, salt is rather critical for survival, and the tea is very nicely caffeinated. But it turns out that the benefits don’t stop there: the Tibetans’ preferred tea leaves produce some of the healthiest, if most unlikely, varieties of tea on the market. So how, then, did tea come to Tibet in the first place (where it most certainly cannot grow), and perhaps more interestingly, how did this particular type of tea become the secret ingredient in one of the world’s earliest and most effective energy drinks?

My parents have been stationed in Nepal, India and China over the years. I have lived with or been friends with people from the Himalayan regions. I have actually drunk this tea but not with yak butter although my parents have. It is an odd drink and if one expects a sweet drink, this comes as a shock. I learned, as a child, to drink my tea without sweetners so I didn't mind drinking this concoction.

From the article above:

By that time, Han merchants had long worked with local Dai lords (imperial-era rulers of the Dai people, an ethnic group speaking a language similar to Thai) in southern Yunnan to secure tea harvests from the surrounding low, sub-tropical mountains ideal for growing green tea leaves. This region eventually came to be known as Pu’er (普洱). The merchants there would ship the dried and processed leaves to many areas in northern and eastern China. With increasing demand to send tea to the northwest for sale in Tibet, rather than cut into already profitable stock, the merchants simply compressed and packaged leftover, broken or otherwise unseemly leaves from the year before. Compressed into bricks, this type of tea was sometimes aptly called zhuancha or ‘brick tea,’ but it came to be more commonly referred to as Pu’er tea. Because much of these second-rate offerings had been sitting in dank rooms in the hot, humid climate of southern Yunnan, they had often begun to ferment, turning a desultory brownish color and emitting a heavy, musty smell.

Compressing the leaves means the profit in transporting this tea overland via yak or two-humped camels is greatly increased. The delicate small tea leaves that make the most aromatic teas fade fairly fast if transported great distances and the cost is astronomical if the leaves are held in loose bags. But in the high mountains of Tibet, the desire for a strong medicinal drink meant they turned necessity into a virtue and developed a love of the stronger-flavored tea bricks. I suppose the fermentation didn't hurt sales, either.

When I was a child, I loved the designs on these tea bricks. When they were pressed into shape, the Chinese used molds that had dragons and flowers and Phoenix birds flying, beautiful, complex art.

While roaming about the web looking up information about Yunnan, I came across all sorts of odds and ends. One was a site set up by someone whose dad fought in this region in WWII. This area happens to be the famous Burma Road.

This site was created as a tribute to my Dad and his service in the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II. It tells the story of his three years in the U.S. Army including the 2½ years he spent in CBI. Photos Dad brought back are used to tell the story and the site contains all his CBI memorabilia, including his Army service documents. Also included is a brief history of the China-Burma-India Theater and information about General Stilwell, Merrill's Marauders, the Services Of Supply, etc.

This seldom-seen site is a trove of information and documents from WWII. A worthwhile visit. My parents have flown in a DC3 in this area. Nearly crashed when a flock of birds smashed into the windshield. It has been a very dangerous area for flying and this is where the famous Flying Tigers who supplied the Nationalist Chinese during WWII operated.

I found this to be amusing:

The Soldier Didn't Say A Word

Three friends were sitting around a bar, each one smoking a big black cigar,
And each one’s eyes were filled with tears,
Each one had decided to go to war, to keep the Japs from his back door,
But, each by some unearthly chance, had joined up in a different branch.

The Marine rose on unsteady feet, his eyes were filled with conceit,
When the war is over we’ll meet again, and I’ll tell you stories of real fighting men,
The Sailor smiled; you will learn, when you hear upon my return,
The Soldier didn’t say a word and acted as he hadn’t heard,
I’ll never brag or boast, my men until I’m sure I’m home again.

They made a farewell parting bet, one that they would never forget.
The one whose story was the best the beers would be paid for by the rest.

The war was over and they came back drinking beer in the same old shack.
The Marine with ribbons on his chest, rose to his feet before the rest,
I saw action in the South Seas and shot Japs right out of the trees,
I downed them like a bunch of fleas, now beat that if you please.

The Sailor rose with a great big smile and laughed at the Marine for a while.
Friends, he said, I really saw the flight,
In Italy, England and the Reich, I killed Germans to my delight
But you would lose your appetite, if I told you of every fight.

The Soldier didn’t say a word, and acted as though he hadn’t heard,
Then he hit the bar with an awful slam, and said,
I WAS IN BURMA AND ASSAM.

The Marine jumped up, the Sailor too,
“Brother, we owe the drinks to you.”
For each one heard and knew too well that
THERE SAT A MAN RETURNED FROM HELL.

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