Pure Poetry: Matthew Erickson on the J.L. Hudson Ethnobotanical Catalog of Seeds

Amplify’d from www.arthurmag.com

THAT SUBTLE, INEFFABLE FEELING POSTED BY Administrator

Pure Poetry Matthew Erickson on the J.L. Hudson Ethnobotanical Catalog of Seeds

Compared with artists’ books, mimeograph-era poetry rags, record-nerd fanzines, silkscreen and letterpress ephemera, a seed catalog may seem to be the least covetable of printed matter. But the J.L. Hudson Ethnobotanical Catalog of Seeds surely belongs within that cultural niche. It must be the only seed catalog that has simultaneously appeal to those with a taste for fine printed works, radical politics, early Natural History, botany and gardening practices. The work being done by the company called J.L. Hudson, Seedsman is already well known and loved by plant growers, who have been ordering from the company’s stock for the past 100-plus years. Yet as far as I know, little has been written about the Hudson catalogs themselves, and what they represent aesthetically and politically.

My first exposure to the catalogs was through a copy of the 2003 issue of The Free Press Death Ship, the beautifully assembled (now defunct?) compendium of all forms of micro-press publications under the sun. After browsing through the Death Ship’s seemingly endless list of entries on widely-varied zines, pamphlets and newspapers I stumbled on what seemed like an unusual listing for an unusual item:

Thousands of rare and hard-to-find seeds from every continent…a life-long effort combining the practical motivation to earn an honest living with the ethical inspiration to preserve rare and endangered plants by disseminating them into new areas of the world…typed on a Linotype caster and proofed on a Vandercook press…this is a catalog, not a fanzine. But it’s a magnificent example of independent publishing and do-it-yourself ethics all the same.

After trying to envision what this kind of thing would look like, I sent my dollar bill to the address listed beneath the listing and a few weeks later got a copy of the J.L. Hudson catalog.

J.L. Hudson, Seedsman does indeed, like nearly all businesses these days, have a website (http://www.jlhudsonseeds.net). It’s a fairly basic one at that, but it does have their whole seed list. However, I think that the way that I discovered the catalogs, via their printed matter, is the key to what makes the whole enterprise so great. Through perusing their reading materials, it seems as though the owners may or may not have phone lines, may or may not have proper street mailing address at their HQ in the Santa Cruz mountains, and, though they use computers to update their website, they continue to typeset their catalogs without them. Yet it doesn’t really seem to be a matter of mere Luddism that keeps it that way, more of an aesthetic-ethical choice. (Another publication in a similar vein called The Match, also anti-computer and espousing anarchist politics, had an entertaining essay in its Summer 2003 issue by J.L. Hudson’s proprietor David Theodoropoulos called “A Trip to Hell” about his experiences doing computer layout for his self-published book Invasion Biology: Critique of a Pseudoscience.) Perhaps a parallel could be drawn between the desire to print your own periodical with your own set of skills and the desire to grow your own food from seed with your own hands?

The motto of the company is “Preservation Through Dissemination” and is emblazoned around their seal of a bird clasping a seed between its beak while an airplane flies far overhead. The motto on the seal is placed between two Latin words, “vendimus” (sell) and “semina” (seed), the latter of which can’t but remind me of Wallace Berman’s era-defining art-poetry magazine/lifework of the same name from the early 1960s (http://www.lalouver.com/html/publications/publications44.html). Like the Hudson catalogs, Berman’s entirely self-published proto-zine was in part about spreading ideas in the same fashion as one sows seeds and shaping a broad community around a shared set of values. (If you can recall the scene in Easy Rider where the boys end up at the back-to-the-land commune, Berman has a few seconds of screen time there as a hippie tossing seed onto a bare field.) The J.L. Hudson catalogs have the subtle, ineffable feeling that other self-realized publications have when you are holding the result one person’s (or a few people’s, as the case may be) singular creative vision and craftsmanship.

Aside from the fact that the Hudson seed catalogs were produced via Linotype and Vandercook, the whole of the text/image within each annual edition comes close to becoming an encyclopedia on the poetics and ethnograhics of plants. Frequently boxed within the four columns of entries for the seeds are wonderfully detailed and semi-Victorian illustrations of selected plants, with the wide flowers rising through the surrounding words. They give a kind of time shift, making you not sure which epoch of utopianism the thing in your hands originated.

Yet it’s the image paired with the writing that sets the tone for the whole vibe. From the entry for Primula veris:

Bright yellow fragrant nodding inch-wide flowers clustered on 8–12” stems in spring. The petals each have a red spot. Attractive rosettes of crinkled leaves. Europe. A legendary plant of the herbalists, with a long history of use. Norse mythology dedicated it to the goddess Freya, and it was held to be the entrance to the treasure palace. The sedative flowers are made into cowslip wine, an old folk remedy for insomnia, giddiness & nervous troubles. The fresh blossoms are made into conserves. They were once held in high esteem as a cosmetic, believed to remove spots and wrinkles. Seed viable 2-5 years. Give seed 2 weeks warm, then 8 weeks cold, to sprout in 1-2 w.

Pure poetry! Many entries have input from the network of people who have tried growing specific seeds. From the entry for the E. Californica: ‘California Poppy’: “During the summer, they form a dense carpet of finely cut, blue-green foliage, smothered with a profusion of vivid, glossy flowers – Booth.” Or, from one of the many tobacco varieties: “You might like to know that tobacco grows very well outdoors in Alaska, reaching 6 feet tall and flowering even in cold wet summers. I just start the plants early, like tomatoes. – V. Robeson, 11/98.” And then in the next column over: “‘Desert Tobacco’ Creamy white ½-1” long trumpets in spikes. Vigorous annual from 8” to 3 feet tall. Desert washes from S. California to Texas. Smoked by the Hopi, Pima, Papago, Maricopa, Cocopa, Mojave, Yuma and Cahuilla, who believed it one of the first plants created by the god Mukat.” The tone is folksy and populist, peppered with anecdotes, wisdom and, in the case of the many vegetable seeds, occasional cooking tips from active participants in the wider project of preserving through disseminating.

Apart from the great visual and material qualities of these catalogs as objects, they pique my interest for a variety of other reasons, not the least of which is that, along with converting a dullard into an aspiring botanist, they try to shake some apathy out of the apolitical greenthumb. How many other seed companies maintain a table every year at the San Francisco Anarchist Bookfair? How many seed catalogs have detailed descriptions of available specimens with quotes from Proudhon, Kropotkin, Goldman, the (17th century) Diggers (along with Plutarch, Burroughs and LeGuin, among others) nestled within the margins?

Yet the political aspect of this project reaches beyond only tabling and quotations. J.L Hudson could be seen as an articulation on the forms of political organization: open vs. closed, decentralized vs. centralized, localized vs. Statist, decontrolled vs. controlled, etc. For the past decade or so, immense seed banks have been slowly sprouting around the world. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, the enormous and expensive so-called “Doomsday seed bank” (pictured above), is perhaps the antithesis to the kind of eco-political project that the Hudson seed catalogs have been building. In 2008 the government of Norway finished construction on the vault on the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen with a stated goal of preserving biological diversity and protecting the world’s food crops through climate change, plant disease and population growth. (See: http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/lmd/campain/svalbard-global-seed-vault.html) Designed to withstand any number of possible catastrophes, climatic and/or apocalyptic, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is the epitome of a bureaucratic, centralized form of biological preservation. At the beginning of a lengthy article in the August 27, 2007 issue of The New Yorker, John Seabrook wrote of the potential magnitude of the project: “We tend to imagine apocalypse coming in the form of a bomb, an asteroid, or a tsunami, but should a catastrophe strike one of the world’s major crops [Cary] Fowler [the head of the Global Crop Diversity Fund] and his fellow seed bankers may be all that stand between us and widespread starvation.” As noble as the project’s intentions may be, is there not something slightly unsettling about a small handful of scientists standing between the world’s populace and their crops? Thankfully, that’s only one end of the seed-saving spectrum.

In many respects the work of J.L. Hudson is more akin to the widespread decentralized seed exchange and seed library movements taking place in rural and urban locales around the country (some of which have been written about in these pages: see “Seedy Sunday, Skeeball and the Ides of March” by Nance Klehm). As an Emma Goldman quote from the margins of the 2007 catalog states: “They do not want to know that centralization is not only the death-knell of liberty, but also if health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible in a clock-like, mechanical atmosphere.” The political project that the catalogs represent is a kind of disassembling of government-run seed preservation so prevalent today. Their motto of “preservation through dissemination” is about keeping plant diversity alive by circulating seeds to the public of interested gardeners—who in turn can send their heirloom varieties to J.L. Hudson’s own seed bank project—rather than a geographically isolated type of preservation through collection and burial in temperature-controlled chambers for private interests.

In bold type within the colophon of the catalogs is a declaration of “uncopyright” for its material, stating that the content therein is of the Public Domain: “We believe the unrestricted exchange of seeds and knowledge are essential to a free society.” This cuts to the core of considering these seed catalogs as fine printed matter, as anarchist propaganda and as small press art objects. While by all practical measures these are just seed catalogs, with product descriptions and prices, they quietly open up questions of how we interact within our natural environment, of how ideas and plant species can be sustained through a horizontal circulation without borders. Were it not for the careful print and design of the physical catalogs, I’m not sure if I would have given them much attention or noticed the Brion Gysin quote nestled beneath the listing for Anagallis: “Kick that habit, man.”

There are several related essays—on organics, hybrids, public domain seeds, the “white list” on invasive species, on “native”/“invasive” plants (the subject of Theodoropoulos’ self-published book)—within the J.L. Hudson website that are worthwhile reads for understanding the ethics behind the project. While there, you can also get info on how to request a print catalog.

http://www.jlhudsonseeds.net Read more at www.arthurmag.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/f1uo

Arthurmag Blog: Diggers Papers

The Arthurmag Blog has been posting scans of documents produced by & about the San Francisco Diggers, from SF's Haight-Ashbury district, dating from late 1966 through 1967. Of course, this same sort of thing went on in other cities across the US a year or two later. Back in '68 or '69 in Dallas, I was a 14/15 year old alienated kid looking for some sort of something to grab onto. On one or two occasions, I went downtown & bought some wholesale Dallas Notes underground newspapers & tried to sell them on the street & at school. I got hassled by the cops on the street & sent to see the principal at school. I was lucky to break even & the thrill quickly wore off. I experimented with some drugs & even went down to Lee Park a few times to the Sunday afternoon love-in's; but mainly I went to hear the bands & look at the hippie girls. I missed the infamous "Lee Park Bust" when confrontations & arrests occurred.

Gradually in high school, I became even more alienated & turned off by the hippies, after it seemed everyone at my school was turning into one. I just withdrew into my own world of listening to music & hanging out with a group of guys who were real outcasts at school, but bound by our love of obscure rock 'n roll bands that no one else at our school had heard of.

This is an on-going series of posts from Arthur & I will add some additions to the series on this blogposting page at a later date...


http://www.arthurmag.com/contributors/diggers/
http://www.arthurmag.com/contributors/diggers/page/2/

arthur (Homegrown Culture)

POSTED BY Jay Babcock
JUL 12, 2009
Diggers Papers No. 1: The Communication Company announces its presence/mission in Haight-Ashbury, 1967

Arthur is proud to present scans of essential documents produced by and about the San Francisco Diggers, who were in many ways the epicentral actors in the Haight-Ashbury during the epic, wildly imaginative period from late ‘66 through ‘67. The Diggers’ ideas and activities are essential counter-cultural history, sure, but they are also especially relevant to the current era, for reasons that should be obvious to the gentle Arthur reader.

Most of the documents that we are presenting here are broadsides originally published on a Gestetner machine owned and operated in the Haight by the novelist Chester Anderson and his protege/sidekick Claude Hayward, used the name “Communication Company,” or more commonly, “ComCo.” In this first broadsheet, probably distributed sometime in January, 1967 along the Haight on telephone polls, walls, and in windows, ComCo announces its presence, and its mission. Click on the image below to see it at full-size…



JUL 13, 2009
Diggers Papers No. 2: “The Diggers state simply…”

...Anderson and Hayward were both Diggers, and ComCo was pledged to publish anything that the Diggers gave them to print. Diggers documents were almost never signed by individual Diggers. Sometimes they are the product of a single individual; sometimes they are a collaboration; sometimes they are summaries of discussions between one of more Diggers.

This particular scan is from a copy of the broadsheet that Chester had mailed to a friend, explaining what he was up to in San Francisco, having recently moved there from New York. That’s Chester’s handwriting near the top and the right: “This I didn’t write but it explains a lot.”

This sheet was distributed in late January, 1967 along the Haight on telephone polls, walls, and in windows, like all ComCo broadsides.



JUL 14, 2009
Diggers Papers No. 3: “Storm Warning”
.
..This sheet was distributed on February 3, 1967 along the Haight on telephone polls, walls, and in windows, like all ComCo broadsides.



JUL 15, 2009
Diggers Papers No. 4: “Second Notice”

...This sheet was distributed on February 5, 1967 along the Haight on telephone polls, walls, and in windows, like all ComCo broadsides. It is a direct follow-up to “Storm Warning”, issued on February 3, 1967.



JUL 16, 2009
Diggers Papers No. 5: “The Digger Office Is Now Open”/Historical Diggers

This double-sided document was probably printed and distributed in early February, 1967. Click on the images below to see this document at full size. Sorry for the crap quality of these scans—we’re working on getting better ones.




JUL 17, 2009
Diggers Papers No. 6: “Busted”

...This sheet was probably distributed after February 6, 1967 along the Haight. It would seem to be a direct follow-up to earl;ier broadsides warning of a “festival of busts” that the cops were supposedly planning (see “Storm Warning”, “Second Notice”). Evidently some folks got busted anyway...



JUL 20, 2009
Diggers Papers No. 7: “Bring the color gold. Bring photos of personal saints and gurus and heroes of the underground. Bring food to share. Bring flowers, beads, costumes, feathers, bells, cymbals, flags.”

What we have here are two posters advertising the January 14, 1967 “Human Be-In” at Golden Gate Park, which featured a principal Digger—poet/dancer/visionary Lenore Kandel—on the stage. Following the posters is a write-up for the event by journalist/novelist/poet Chester Anderson, who was new to town and new to the Diggers. I’m not sure if this document was ever published, and it’s not a “Diggers” document per se, but it’s an evocative piece of writing about the day, and representative of how the Diggers were thinking about the free, public events they were bringing into reality.





JUL 21, 2009
Diggers Papers No. 8: “The air smells green.”

...In this January 14, 1967 broadsheet, probably distributed along the Haight on telephone polls, walls, and in windows, Anderson passes on some learned tips on good Bay Area headventure trips.



JUL 22, 2009
Diggers Papers No. 9: “DON’T DROP HALF OUT.”

...What we have here was part of a set that were distributed en masse (500 copies) along the Haight on telephone poles, walls, in windows, and so on, on January 28, 1967. Chester wrote these pages, and apparently sent copies to a friend or family member with handwritten text explaining some of the terms, and it’s one of those papers that we’re showing here.



JUL 27, 2009
The Diggers Papers No. 10: “Approximately Public Explanation/FUCKIT”/”The Diggers Gladly Accept”

...According to Claude, these broadsides were then “handed out on the street, page by page, super hot media, because the reader trusted the source, which was another freaky looking hippie who had handed it to him/her.”

The two scans below are from Chester’s collection—that’s his handwriting on the top of the first page. The authors are unknown, the pub dates are unknown: late January 1967 is our best guess.




JUL 28, 2009
The Diggers Papers No. 11: “Two-Page Racial Rap”

...“Two-Page Racial Rap” is by Chester Anderson, dated February 9, 1967. Contents are self-explanatory.




JUL 29, 2009
The Diggers Papers No. 12: “Bring trucks (flatbed) with 5kw generators”

...Here’s a copy of one broadside published by Com/Co in early February, 1967. This is from Chester’s collection, but as he notes in handwriting at the top of the page, he did not author it. This was one of at least three sheets circulating during the time that encouraged SF heads to head to L.A. for the weekend.



AUG 3, 2009
The Diggers Papers No. 13: “Buena Vista Park is Middle Earth” (a poem by Chester Anderson for John Fahey)

...Here’s a scan of a broadside published and distributed by Com/Co on February 8, 1967. Note: Chester was gay, perhaps bisexual, from what I’ve been told by people who knew him.



AUG 4, 2009
The Diggers Papers No. 14: THE INVISIBLE CIRCUS (Feb 24, 1967)

...Here are two posterish images—the black and white one is an early poster by Victor Moscoso—plus two flyers to do with the Invisible Circus, a “community” that was supposed to last for 72 hours at the Glide Memorial Church one weekend in late February, 1967. More on what happened at the Invisible Circus in our next installment of The Diggers Papers…






AUG 6, 2009
The Diggers Papers No. 15: “It’s your freedom baby.

Arthur is proud to present scans of essential documents produced by and about the San Francisco Diggers, who were in many ways the epicentral actors in the Haight-Ashbury during the epic, wildly imaginative period from late ‘66 through ‘67. The Diggers’ ideas and activities are essential counter-cultural history, sure, but they are also especially relevant to the current era, for reasons that should be obvious to the gentle Arthur reader. (ESPECIALLY this one!)...




AUG 10, 2009
The Diggers Papers No. 16: “Suckers buy what lovers get for free”




AUG 13, 2009
The Diggers Papers No. 18: BEDROCK ONE event flyer/poster by R. Crumb (late Feb ‘67)

...This particular Com/Co document is a flyer/poster/broadside by a pre-fame Robert Crumb advertising BEDROCK ONE, a March 5, 1967 event organized by Anderson himself. Check out that lineup, a real who’s who of the contemporary Haight-Ashbury arts/life scene: the Steve Miller Band, the Orkustra (the band led by guitarist Bobby Beausoleil, who would later be associated with both Kenneth Anger and Charles Manson), poet Richard Brautigan, the infamous street agitators San Francisco Mime Troupe, the San Francisco League for Sexual Freedom, the Lysergic Power & Light Company, and more.



AUG 14, 2009
The Diggers Papers No. 19: another BEDROCK ONE event flyer/poster

...This particular Com/Co document is a flyer/poster/broadside by an unknown artist advertising BEDROCK ONE, a March 5, 1967 event organized by Anderson himself...