pick two…

After many failings in growing plants indoors, which I can only hope was due to lack of sunlight or over-watering, my first garden is ready to bear fruit.  Too many, and yet not enough hours were spent re-grading the backyard, constructing raised beds, and sifting soil to create what seems to be a decent home for vegetables to grow.  The next set of beds will be more difficult, with more layers of crushed stone and larger roots to cut through, but should be worth it in the end.

Only cursorily like watching a child grow, watching these plants start from seed or seedling and slowly grow to be mature has been a joy.  Checking on the well being of the plants constantly in their early days, and giving them physical support as needed.  Soon, the tomatoes will turn red, the eggplant blossoms will bear fruit, and the beans will dangle from the vines.  I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like having a garden, and finds the growing process at least slightly addictive.  I think I have caught the bug, especially since the plants aren’t dying on me.

Maybe it’s the economy, or an unconscious trend, but I’ve been hearing about more people and groups that are using a bit of land to grow their own food.  Michelle Obama is only part of that trend, not the instigator.  So maybe it’s a subtle backlash to all the newspaper articles asking kids where the Thanksgiving turkey comes from (answer: the store/freezer).  Knowing where your food physically came from, not just the brand name, has a certain appeal.  You are what you eat, even if that is dirt you used to play kickball on.  And I take heart from knowing that some of who I am, literally comes from my own back yard.

No matter how much the web, communication, and the world is inundated by pictures and videos, it will always be based in a world of text.  Now I am a huge fan of movies, good TV shows (even if they’re watched online), and all manner of graphics that do an incredible job of communicating meaning, but the real underpinning of all of this is still the written word.

It is the script, text on a printed page, that drives the actors on screen.  The newscaster or politician reading off the teleprompter.  It is now making a high-profile splash through the use of  short text messages and Twitter posts using pocket devices.

And though the home set of encyclopedias has all but vanished, and general book sales have been waning for years, one of the most popular forms of personal expression is writing.  Topical books on politics and personal celebrity biographies are all the rage.  Not to mention how much popularity there still is about everything James Patterson or J.K. Rowling publish.  And though there are new alternative outlets for their written work, like the Kindle digital book, or even audiobooks (to which the reader adds an extra level of artistic performance) the written word is still king.

The law, though it may be supported by photos or graphics, will for the foreseeable future be the basis of our societies.  And it is the written word that will be preserved, to be a guide for those generations that will come after us.

As we transform and convert all that we create to digital formats, for the purposes of copying, distributing, and preserving, we must remember that even the images of our lives, as put on our computers, are based and suspended in written computer code.  A written language foreign to most, drives much of our modern world, and is behind every computer.

But the computers of the world function as abstractions, or tools that abstract us from reality.  I click the mouse on my screen, which is an abstraction of a selection, of a command, of code, of a binary number sequence which is the reality of that mouse click.  But it is the computer that uses and understands the binary code, an extrapolation of billions of logical yes/no’s per second.  And in the computer age, “1″ is king and “0″ is queen, while everything else is just subjects in the binary monarchy.

I don’t live in that kingdom.  I know of it, and can dip my toes in it when needed, but until the machines rise up against us, I will stay in my world.  Where the word is still king.  Where I will struggle to place the characters together in a pattern that will communicate meaning.