Potato World

Woodstock, New Brunswick

We went to the "Potato World" museum today. It rocked me back on my heels. The massive explosion of human knowledge and technology is nowhere more evident than in striving to understand how to grow a simple potato. A lovely five-sided potato flower waves over the New Brunswick fields in Spring.


Potatoes were discovered in Peru on the west side of South America in the 16th century and exported back to Europe. There they were largely regarded as poisonous (since they were a member of the nightshade family) until French peasants began to cultivate and eat them. Irish immigrants brought the potato to New Brunswick.

The branches of knowledge necessary to successfully cultivate and market potatoes in the modern age are mind-boggling. One must know how to rotate fields, cross-plow to prevent erosion and it help to have a tractor plugged into a GPS with a digger measuring the yield of each square meter so that the proper fertilizers can be applied in a remedial manner.

The knowledge gets deeper and thicker with certified seed crops and genetically engineered species of potatoes that are resistant to dozens of blights and weevils. The technology needed to make french fries efficiently is so lovely and crisp that it's like a diamond glowing in the center of my forehead.


Both Mrs. Phred and myself are deeply moved by them museum and suddenly an epiphany strikes us that we both can trace our impossibly improbable existences (the combination of a specific egg and sperm in a place and time) to emigration caused by potato blights before we (mankind) brought the potato under a semblance of complete scientific control.

The potato produces more protein per acre than any vegetable other than the soybean. It produces more energy per acre than any crop other than the sugar beet and sugar cane. A medium size potato is 100 calories and the skin has many essential vitamins. Compare this and the taste of french fries with 300 calories for a cup of rice and you begin to understand why I regard the potato as the "king of vegetables".

My mind is reeling from the complexity of cultivating the potato. The hierarchy and depth of knowledge that goes into the french fry and the potato chip is a blinding beacon reminding us of the value of the scientific method and the hyperbolic explosion of human knowledge.

We also saw the world's longest covered bridge today in Hartland, N.B. It's 1292 feet, about a quartermile...a top fuel dragster could hit well over 300 MPH from a standing start crossing it...


We're making a run to Bangor in the morning to stock up on the pills I need to keep my blood pressure down. We have a wonderful campground here with free Wi-fi on the banks of the St. Johns river. There are four tennis courts about two miles down the road in Woodstock. Maybe I'll score a win over Mrs. Phred?

Peeling Zen Potatoes

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

I think of myself as a Zen Master. I am not a Zen teacher. Teachers do not come into being until a student appears. The appearance of a student creates the teacher. I have no students.

When a student presents himself to a Zen Master, begging for instruction, he or she is traditionally rebuffed. The student must try harder and more sincerely. One student eventually cut off his left arm and presented it to the Master as proof of sincerity.

When you ask a question of a Zen Master you may be rewarded with 30 whacks from a cudgel. If you fail to ask a question you get the same treatment.

The secret of Zen is that there is no secret. Zen has nothing to teach. When you understand that you may stop your 30 year study under your master and say goodbye with respect. You become the Master.

In 1985, I went to work for a company with 500 employees in 40 offices. The first week the CEO gave me a new IBM XT with four boxes of software. It was our first computer. I took the software manuals to the beach in Sarasota on the weekend. One was DOS 2.3, one was Lotus, another a database and the last was a word processor.

The CEO came back on Monday any I made the ancient computer play "Yankee Doodle Dandee". He was satisfied.

By the end, all 500 staff had laptops, word processing, debit cards, access to accounting reports, e-mail, fast connections over a wide area network and they were keeping track of 1,000,000 donors on a database I designed. We were "ghosting" software installations and running data over fiber optics and big Cisco routers.

I had one idiosyncrasy (well, maybe more than one). When they logged into the domain controller that validated them in the morning, I would put some kind of Zen story into the login script and sign it "Zen_Master". Each morning was a different Zen story. No one ever questioned who the Zen_Master was. This went on for 20 years. Sometimes I gave them an Emily Dickenson poem and they sighed with relief.

Back then I never really understood Zen. Now, because of my advanced age and wisdom, I am a real Zen Master. Here's the deal: it's just life. Get though it. There's no secret. Peel the damn potatoes.