Huzzah! Hurrah! Hurray! Rah! Yippee! Hot diggity! Banzai!
Hoch! and Vive! ;-)

Makes good sense.

Jim Lewis - - Tallahassee, FL - VEGETARIAN:
An Indian word meaning "lousy hunter." - "Borrowed" from a sig
by fellow Home-Ease listowner, Scott Peterson


Please pardon my late response on this thread.
For another perspective on this issue, you should read
the editorial, The
Kiss of Death, by Doug Roth in the current issue of the Journal
of Japanese
Gardening (JOJG, Sept/Oct 2003, p. 3). Mr. Roth asserts that,
"Historical
preservation is the kiss of death for a Japanese garden." He
explains that if
historic preservation is a garden owner's sole objective, it
means that the owners
are no longer trying to improve it and are simply trying to
"preserve" it or return
it to a former state. "If they truly wanted a great garden,
they'd be thinking
about future glory and taking actions to move in that
direction."
Roth notes that there is value in historic
preservation, such as for
architecture, but it is not usually appropriate for gardens,
because of the fact
that a garden is alive and in a never ending state of flux.
"With skilled care a
garden gets better; with poor care it deteriorates. In Japan
old gardens are
regularly rebuilt, repaired, and reshaped, often to improve the
appearance. He
derides most cases of historic preservation for living things
as "an uninspired,
ill-fated approach."
I would submit that Roth's logic is generally
persuasive when applied to
bonsai as well. Just as the most skilled bonsai artists strive
for excellence and
hope to improve their bonsai routinely, those who manage public
collections should
have the flexibility to pursue the best design for a donated
bonsai, just as the
donor would have done. A curator should regularly consult with
other bonsai artists
(especially the donor artist, if possible) about design and
maintenance plans for
individual bonsai. (S)he should also possess a self awareness
of his/her design
biases and avoid making all the bonsai in the collection look
like their own.
Beyond that, they need to be free of rigid constraints of
trying to maintain a
design plan for a specific bonsai from a specific point of
time. To do otherwise is
unrealistic and detrimental to the health and design quality of
the bonsai.
Alan Walker, Lake Charles, LA, USA
http://LCBSBonsai.org http://bonsai-bci.com

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