A Logophile’s Ludic Musings: I

As an unrepentant logophile (lover of words), I’ve assembled a list of unusual, obscure, or simply charming-to-me words. Ludic is defined as “playful, in an aimless way,” and that’s my plan for approaching this a-to-z challenge—keeping my feet on the joy trail and meandering wherever the daily word takes me.

I is for…

insperge – (v) obsolete.  To sprinkle or scatter something, often referring to water or oil used in religious ceremonies. Earliest know usage, late 1500s.

Spring is my favorite season, and when I turn my thoughts to scattering or sprinkling, seeds are what come to mind.

I’m a fanatic devotee of flowers, and I’m extra lucky because my brother, who has a green thumb, loves to grow vegetables and is extremely generous in sharing them. There are so many seed-generated wonders for which to appreciate and be grateful.

I strongly advocate for the use of heritage and non-GMO seeds. If you’re so inclined, I might invite you to check out the work of Dr. Vandana Shiva, activist, environmentalist, and author of Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis. She talks about our responsibility and the challenging tasks at hand, and most beautifully, she reminds us, “We are all seeds.”

Next, I might gently nudge you to explore Global Movement for Seed Freedom. They are a global network of individuals and organizations committed to ecological agriculture, fair trade, and the right to save, exchange, and use open-pollinated, non-GMO, non-patented seeds.

I encourage you to read about their mission and then, if you’re so inspired, to sign the Declaration on Seed Freedom. Even if you don’t garden, don’t work with seeds, don’t plant vegetables or flowers, or even think this affects you in any way, I assure you it does.

Something else worth considering is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, deep inside a mountain on a remote island halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole.  There are many gene banks of seeds/storage facilities around the world, and yet it is recognized they are vulnerable to regional or global catastrophes, not only limited to natural disasters but also accidents, equipment failure, mismanagement, funding cuts, war, and civil uprising.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was designed to be a global “fail-safe” facility, duplicating seed storage held by local vaults across the world.  The location was chosen because of the cold climate and permafrost. It’s built into the side of a mountain, and the climate ensures the vault rooms “will remain naturally frozen even if there is failure of the mechanical cooling system and rising external air temperatures due to climate change.”

Alarmingly, global warming is melting permafrost, and water has entered the tunnel of the vault, although it did not reach the storage area or affect any of the seeds. Still, there is no doubt about it: it can be discouraging. There is still so much to be done – fighting GMOs, ensuring seed diversity, and making environmental issues a priority. But now is not the time to give up in despair.  I’m reminded of the old nursery rhyme:

“Plant four seeds in a row. One for rook, one for crow, one to wither, one to grow.”

We have to keep at it – keep planting our ideas, our voices, our literal and metaphoric seeds.

While on the topic of seeds, I can’t help but mention another gem of a book published by Tara Books, entitled Seed with text by Gita Wolf and artists from the Warli tribe in western India. The first edition of 2000 is handmade, screen-printed on handmade paper, and contains four different paper forms/constructions. To say it is fabulous doesn’t do it justice.

As an artist, I’ve worked with seeded papers a lot over the years. One of the things I like to do on the equinoxes and solstices is create weathergrams that I hang outside so the elements can disintegrate them over time. It feels appropriate to mark the turning of the cyclical, seasonal wheel with something that itself will ebb and dissolve. I often make my own paper embedded with seeds. Here’s an example of a weathergram in which I embedded leaves from a previous autumn. I enjoy knowing it eventually returned to composting.

In in the meantime, I’m ready to scatter seeds and grow some pansies (also delightfully and obscurely known kiss-me-quick-by-the-garden-gate).  

Pansies are a favorite of mine. Just as they were for my grandmother. They might have also been for Shakespeare, as he mentions them in two of his plays. In Midsummer Night’s Dream, he has Oberon, the king of faeries, using it as a love charm and also relating how the pansy, previously white, received its color when shot by Cupid’s arrow.

I quite contentedly manage to keep my life infused with flowers in as many ways as possible. So boundless thanks to seeds and soil, sun and water, and to the bees and all the other pollinators. What about you? What seeds are you planting, whether in a garden or in your life? Do tell – you know I’d love to hear.