November 2008 Archives

Tree

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Back when it had leaves, we took a sample to Bordine's.  The tree-guy there identified it as a Cherry.  Never saw any fruit.  It might have flowered once, the first year we were here.

Even then, it was in rough shape.  I brought-down the lowest horizontal branch, which was obviously rotten, the first summer.  The branch was dropping bark and branchlets into the yard.  We hoped that removing the obviously-diseased branch and applying a fungicide would save the tree.  It did not.  The tree has been succumbing since, each year losing a higher branch.  This last summer it had only token leaves on the highest branches.  A month or two ago we noticed ear-type fungus growing on the trunk.  Clearly dead.

Didn't threaten the house, really (might have brushed the south-west corner, but that's all).  Did threaten the fence.  With the multiple trunks, I needed help to fell it.  Cutting through the south-pointing horizontal branch, outside the fence, was the obvious initial cut.  But I wanted come-along ropes to ensure the tree dropped where I wanted it to drop.  Adam and Liz were here and happy to help (Thank you!).  Nic stayed with Goobs, and away from chainsaws, while we felled the tree.

Now I have to decide what to do with the wood.  The easiest thing is to cut it into firewood.  But I have two 5-foot racks full of firewood already, and the idea of burning Cherry is repugnant.  You make furniture out of that stuff, you don't burn it.  I guess I try to rough-cut it with a chainsaw into planks.  Maybe split some into something resembling turning blanks for Dad.

Teleological Authority

I finally finished (up to the current novel, anyway) Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books.  One of the things he has Thursday contemplate is the "bookworld's" lack of detail relative to reality.  More recently, I've been listening to Philip K. Dick's Minority Report and Other Stories.  Most of the stories in that set are about people lacking complete data about the world around them.  At the moment, I'm listening to Oliver Sacks's Musicophilia.  As usual with his books, the stories are about patients with neurological conditions and how those conditions affect their interaction with the world.

It came to me, as I thought about all these books, that the teleological argument for the existence of a Deity can be thought of as "The world is a narrative; humans are incapable of creating a narrative as richly-detailed as the world; therefore the world must be created by an author who is greater than any human."  Thinking about this, I realized the fundamental assumption is not the existence of a Deity.  It is the assumption that life is a narrative.  I wonder about that.  I wonder about what it means for the human mind.

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