Uh hhh oh! Looks like pumpkins are bad ... very bad this year! At least in Maryland.

Another friend sat down to read the first post, and immediately told me she had a response, which she had received in an e-mail the other day.

Here it is!

Kind of gives a whole new meaning to "Harvest Moon," now doesn't it?

No, I assure you, it is not the modern version of my brief college foray into the mysterious world of vegetable art, as noted above in the first post.

And, I think I should also add that at this point, in order to avoid the risk of having this blog quickly become typecast, I would be very reluctant to feature any more pumpkin photos.

Well . . . unless they are really good!

Naturally, that will likely prompt some to try and meet the challenge.

A friend has sent me the following email photo, entitled "When Pumpkins Drink ... , a seasonal reminder of the wages of sin.

Cute. And funny, I think. We're searching for the photographer, to give due credit. Anyone know?

It also reminded me of a somewhat similar pumpkin sculpture, one with a decidedly more racy theme, that I was somehow inspired to carve as a college sophomore, which I then proudly displayed on the back shelf behind the bar in a gin mill, where I was working as a bartender at the time.

It was intended to "shock" the girls. Didn't work. As I think back about it now, it was a little crude! I don't have a photo, and I wouldn't post it if I did!

But this one, especially with the barfing pumpkin, begged for a written response. So, I wrote back in mock seriousness that,

"Some would certainly say that this undermines the basic dignity of plants. Plants have rights too, ya know!"

And, that is the subject of this first post, here on our new blog, World Gone Nutz!

The Wall Street Journal carried the linked commentary (above) in a post entitled,

Switzerland's Green Power Revolution: Ethicists Ponder Plants' Rights
Who Is to Say Flora Don't Have Feelings? Figuring Out What Wheat Would Want
by Gautam Naik

Here are a few key grafs from that story, about what began years ago as Swiss government efforts to keep a short leash on genetic engineering trials, originally intended to allay fears "that a mutant strain might run amok and harm the environment." But the government interference seems to have lately taken a bit of an absurd turn.

Please, read the whole thing:

Back in the 1990s, the Swiss constitution was amended in order to defend the dignity of all creatures -- including the leafy kind -- against unwanted consequences of genetic manipulation. When the amendment was turned into a law -- known as the Gene Technology Act -- it didn't say anything specific about plants. But earlier this year, the government asked the ethics panel to come up rules for plants as well.
. . .

Several years ago, when Christof Sautter, a botanist at Switzerland's Federal Institute of Technology, failed to get permission to do a local field trial on transgenic wheat, he moved the experiment to the U.S. He's too embarrassed to mention the new dignity rule to his American colleagues. "They'll think Swiss people are crazy," he says.

Defenders of the law argue that it reflects a broader, progressive effort to protect the sanctity of living things. Last month, Switzerland granted new rights to all "social animals." Prospective dog owners must take a four-hour course on pet care before they can buy a canine companion, while anglers must learn to catch fish humanely. Fish can't be kept in aquariums that are transparent on all sides. The fish need some shelter. Nor can goldfish be flushed down a toilet to an inglorious end; they must first be anesthetized with special chemicals, and then killed.

Now the very notion that a "rights analysis" can somehow be applied to plants is just plain preposterous. But, if I saw some nasty kid destroying a nice tree or a bush, just for the heck of it, I guess I'd want to throttle the little creep.

I wouldn't. But I would try to find a way to stop him (it would be a him 99 times out of a hundred) and explain that that sort of mindless destruction is offensive. But I would not tell him that he was violating the plant's rights, for crying out loud!

If, on the other extreme, the kid was helping his father clear out a patch of staghorn sumac trees run wild, or yank up the undergrowth in an area infested with invasive plant species, like the lovely purple loosestrife, or invasive herbs that have had beneficial uses over the years, like garlic mustard, or trying to control some patch of golden bamboo that an annoying neighbor either planted so he wouldn't have to mow a lawn, or allows to run wild because he doesn't care, then I'd keep my damn yammer shut, or even commend the kid for helping out the old man.

The last people on earth who should be "promulgating" rules about the basic notions of how we should each personally relate to the world around us, are government bureaucrats. They know precious little about it, and even less about what the "rules" should be for the rest of us.

Now, lest you conclude that I am some insipid plant-snubbing troglodyte of some sort, I assure you that I did read Findhorn Garden years ago, and it surely helped me to focus on the mystical bonds that hold living things together. While I don't talk to them, I probably have accumulated more general knowledge about species of American trees than most people. I am an unrepentant tree-hugger.

There was a time when people did care about such things. My grandfather imparted it to me, not some government regulation.

If you want to see an extraordinary collection of trees, travel to Westerly, Rhode Island, right on the eastern border of Connecticut, and take a walk through their 1-acre arboretum, called Wilcox Park, a Victorian Strolling Park. Check out the trees.

There are more modern locales, where to me, the trees (many from the far corners of the earth) are the actual focus of wonder, in spite of the name of the place -- Grounds for Sculpture, J. Seward Johnson's sculpture garden, built in 1992, and located in Hamilton, New Jersey.

So there you have my take. Plants don't have "rights!" And the nutty people who build themselves up into a frenzy, trying hard to impose some such silly nonsense on the rest of us, do a real disservice to the whole idea of really protecting what is beautiful around us.