‘Abdu’l-Bahá With Flowers
Abdu'l-Baha With Flowers
In 1972 I took a close-up Kodachrome photo of a painting hanging in the home of Margaret Gallagher, an Auxiliary Board Member in Hayward, California. Then I went out to her garden and saw the bright back lighted red flowers and double-exposed them onto the same frame. I made two slides, but one didn’t work because it was overexposed. Cameras of that era did not offer simple ways to make multiple exposures. You had to rewind a little and make your best guess about where the previous frame was located.
Many years later I scanned the original 35mm slide at 5,400 dpi (16-bit, 250 MB) and restored it because the original was damaged in a flood. I electronically and meticulously removed the canvas and oil paint texture on the left side of the photo. I was told that the painter’s name was Samimi and he lived in Monaco. The right half of the image is my photographic addition to it.
When I was on pilgrimage in 1973 I brought a few hundred copies of the photo with me at the request of Hand of the Cause A. Q. Faizi. He gave them away during his many teaching trips around the world. Though he asked me to sign the backs of the photos I never got around to it and was satisfied to remain anonymous. Among my treasures are hand-illuminated letters that Mr. Faizi wrote me in the 1970’s that include a reference to this image and to three other images on my website. You can find them online at the Bahai-Library in an unpublished book of his letters by Shirley Macias.
Because of Mr. Faizi’s travels this photograph has gone all around the world. It’s mostly found in second or third generation copies. I’ve heard fanciful stories about its origin, none of which were true.
I give these away for free on a very limited basis. I do not accept payment for copies of this image. It may be freely distributed by Bahá’ís as long as it’s not modified and the source of the image is included (the website address and author). It is a copyrighted image and not in the public domain. Accompanying text documents must not be edited or modified. If you wish to make a payment then please consider the Chilean Temple Fund.
Sometimes I make archival quality pigment ink prints as special gifts for friends and family. However, recently I’ve been using Shutterfly’s website at http://www.shutterfly.com to make prints. The high-quality JPG image on this website is contained in a ZIP file along with a copy of this document. You can download it and make your own prints using any service you wish including your own inkjet printer. You will probably want a print between 8×10 and 11×14 inches. Always specify “No Cropping” or “Custom Cropping” when ordering prints larger than 4×6 inches. There are several other quality printing sites and all are easy to use.
Download location for this image
The file contains three images which are optimized for three different standard paper sizes and a PDF document which gives more information about it.
Web page where the image is located.
If you don’t want to do the large 8 MB download you can just get the PDF file from my web page about the image. The document tells how to access the high resolution files and how to print them.
“Ministry of Flowers”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s personal wants were few. He worked late and early. Two simple meals a day sufficed Him. His wardrobe consisted of a very few garments of inexpensive material. He could not bear to live in luxury while others were in want. He had a great love for children, for flowers, and for the beauties of nature. Every morning about six or seven, the family party used to gather to partake of the morning tea together, and while the Master sipped His tea, the little children of the household chanted prayers. Mr. Thornton Chase writes of these children: — “Such children I have never seen, so courteous, unselfish, thoughtful for others, unobtrusive, intelligent, and swiftly self-denying in the little things that children love. …”
– In Galilee, p. 51.
The “ministry of flowers” was a feature of the life at ‘Akká, of which every pilgrim brought away fragrant memories. Mrs. Lucas writes: — “When the Master inhales the odor of flowers, it is wonderful to see him. It seems as though the perfume of the hyacinths were telling him something as he buries his face in the flowers. It is like the effort of the ear to hear a beautiful harmony, a concentrated attention!”
– A Brief Account of My Visit to ‘Akká, pp. 25-26.
He loved to present beautiful and sweet-smelling flowers to His numerous visitors.
– Dr. J.E. Esslemont, Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era, p. 57
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Martyred Prometheus
My life it seems is blessed with serendipity. Just a few hours after writing “A Tree Moves No Longer” I saw a momentary mention of the world’s oldest living thing on the History Channel. It was in a program about the physics and perception of time. I immediately googled the tree by name and found this major site among hundreds of others: http://sonic.net/bristlecone/
The serendipity event occurred on one of the site’s pages.
“The end of the field season was nearing. They asked for and were granted permission by the U.S. Forest Service to cut the tree down. It was ‘Prometheus’. After cutting the trunk at a convenient level, which happened to be more than eight feet above the original base, 4,844 rings were counted. This student had just killed the oldest living thing on earth!”
http://sonic.net/bristlecone/Martyr.html
Where was his reverence for life? Why did the Forest Service permit such a destructive act?
My mind wandered to a 40-year-old movie, Soylent Green, starring Edmund G. Robinson and Charlton Heston which was perhaps the first film about ecological disaster. Will the last living tree in California be covered by a tent like the one in Soylent Green? Will anyone care?
Even the oldest trees have the ability to produce cones with viable seeds.
“The bristlecone pines have survived for unknown centuries. The current threat is from all the people who come to visit them. ‘Methuselah’, the oldest tree, is not marked due to the threat of vandalism. The recording of past events provided by these trees, along with the great beauty are too valuable for us to lose. The bristlecones will survive on their own, but we must have enough respect for their place in the environment to assure their recordings of events yet to occur.”
http://sonic.net/bristlecone/growth.htmlYou can see several beautiful images of the bristlecones here:
http://sonic.net/bristlecone/Images.html
http://sonic.net/bristlecone/Images2.html
Peace be upon those who hear the melody of the Dove in the Sadrat-el-Muntaha! — Bahá’u’lláh, Compilations, Baha’i Scriptures, p. 66
In a Tablet Bahá’u'lláh states, ‘The Holy Tree [Sadrat] is, in a sense, the Manifestation of the One True God, exalted be He. The Blessed Tree in the land of Za’faran referreth to the land which is flourishing, blessed, holy and all-perfumed,where that the Tree hath been planted.’]
We exhort mankind in these days when the countenance of Justice is soiled with dust, when the flames of unbelief are burning high and the robe of wisdom rent asunder, when tranquility and faithfulness have ebbed away and trials and tribulations have waxed severe, when covenants are broken and ties are severed, when no man knoweth how to discern light and darkness or to distinguish guidance from error. — Baha’u'llah, Tablets of Baha’u'llah, p. 137
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Why Is My Gas Mileage So Good?
In a statement written by an agency of the Baha’i faith we read:
Writing to the political and religious leaders of his own day, Bahá’u'lláh said that new capacities of incalculable power – beyond the conception of the generation then living – were awakening in the earth’s peoples, capacities which would soon transform the material life of the planet. It was essential, he said, to make of these coming material advances vehicles for moral and social development. If nationalistic and sectarian conflicts prevented this from happening, then material progress would produce not only benefits, but unimagined evils. Some of Bahá’u'lláh’s warnings awaken grim echoes in our own age: “Strange and astonishing things exist in the earth”, he cautioned. “These things are capable of changing the whole atmosphere of the earth and their contamination would prove lethal”
Baha’i International Community, 1999 Feb, Who is Writing the Future?
Why is my gas mileage so good considering that I drive an SUV? My mileage figures never dip below 22.8 mpg and go as high as 29 mpg on long trips. In other words, I always get better than the EPA estimates for the model I drive, a Toyota Highlander Hybrid. The average SUV gets between 12 mpg (city) and 17 mpg (highway). I am taking these estimates both from the Consumer reports annual automobile issue and the EPA. Most SUVs have less total horsepower than my car has. Point by point, here are a few things that I do.
Air conditioning
According to Consumer Reports and my own observations, running your air conditioner will cost you a loss of about one mile per gallon. Rolling the windows down will create enough aerodynamic drag on the vehicle to cost you more than two miles per gallon. An overheated driver can easily become impaired so that is another consideration. Many contemporary cars have automatic climate control. In my car, I use the climate controls to set it to 70 degrees. My home is a different story altogether. I set the temperature at home to 80 degrees, which is reasonably comfortable. One reason why the revised Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) figures are a little more accurate is that they run a car’s air conditioning during part of their tests. That’s still not quite real world but it is more realistic.
A gem from Discover Magazine, June 2008: “Keep your windows closed at high speeds — drag from open windows can reduce a car’s fuel efficiency by 10 percent.” Here is another reference as part of an article titled Debunking Gas-saving Myths. Full article.
Cruise Control
Cruise control even at boulevard speeds always delivers better mileage. You should engage cruise control whenever there isn’t too much congestion. My car has a real time gas consumption gauge right in the center of the dashboard. My son’s large SUV has one also but it only emphasizes the discouraging truth of such a large vehicle. It lost so much value recently that he couldn’t get rid of it. Even a gentle temporary tap on the gas pedal can drop the car’s steady consumption rate at 45 – 60 mph down from better than 40 mpg to less than 20 mpg. That’s exactly what the figures are for the car I drive. Drivers who don’t use cruise control are constantly stepping on the gas pedal. After having made four cross-country trips this past year, I am reasonably sure that practically nobody uses cruise control except possibly the police.
I get practically the same mileage at 55 mph that I do at 70 to 74 mph. That’s probably because my car’s engine is simply running at the most efficient part of its torque range. This is the first car I ever owned without a tachometer so I can’t be sure. I can’t shift gears anyway because it has a continuously variable transmission (CVT). Not only hybrids have that nowadays. The computer shifts more efficiently through an essentially infinite range than I ever could shift by myself. A smartly programmed computer is also why some cars now get better mileage with automatic transmissions than with manual ones.
If you read your Owner’s Manual (hardly anyone ever does) you’ll find your car’s torque peak RPM. That’s where it’s very efficient. Until you get over about 70 mph you might be getting the nearly the same mileage that you do at 55 to 60 mph. This doesn’t work on hybrids because they don’t have tachometers anymore and their automatic transmissions are continuously variable. The only setting is D for Drive.
Fast Starts
Avoiding fast starts is wasteful; that’s a given. Cars that take a long time to approach the speed level or whatever level most traffic wants to drive at are wasting gas. Not only do they lug and thus wear their engines, they frustrate other typically impatient drivers who will inevitably pass them, sometimes recklessly, and thus the total carbon emissions are greatly increased. The same idea holds true on the highway but more emphatically. The slower drivers are directly causing more carbon emissions. When they drive below the flow of traffic in the middle or fast lanes (a frequent occurrence) the effect is even worse. A slow driver in a fast lane is often an indicator of impairment and is usually dangerous aside from causing an increased overall carbon footprint.
I learned to drive in California. Thus, I learned that safe driving means entering a freeway at or near the speed of oncoming traffic. The state of Washington has a number of unintelligently designed freeway entrances where you have to come to a full stop at the end of the entrance lane. Then you must make a desperate attempt to speedup to avoid a collision with oncoming traffic. I never adjusted to that. In Georgia, the law requires you to move into another lane to enable traffic to enter the freeway at a safe speed.
I drove from Seattle to near Macon, Georgia in 1998, a distance of 2875 miles (4600 km) in just over 70 hours. I never exceeded the posted speed limits by more than two or three miles per hour. Experienced cross-country drivers know that prolonged speeding causes extreme tension which produces rapid exhaustion and impairment. Cruise control not only gave me better gas mileage; it kept me from becoming exhausted so I needed fewer rest breaks. If 70 hours for such a long trip seems short to you, it really is not short at all. It means that I only covered 41 miles per hour. On a shorter cross country trip, an average of 50 to 60 mph is a good estimate.
Tire Pressure
Regarding tire pressure, the owner’s manual or glove box recommendations are rarely optimal for best mileage. In American cars, the recommended pressures are intended to give a soft “boulevard ride” which is wasteful for a variety of obvious reasons including tire wear and handling issues. If you have Firestone tires, ask a Firestone dealer what the pressure really should be and so on, Michelin, etc. Better yet, ask the service writers at your car dealership. They usually know what is really best and for most vehicles it will be one to three units higher than what the auto manual says it ought to be.
If you don’t do this yourself and drive to a gas station to do it instead (where it costs money) it won’t help you. That’s because your tires build up pressure within a few blocks after you get started. If you rely on your oil change place or dealer to correctly inflate your tires that won’t help either. By the time you get there, your tires will already have more than the recommended pressure from the heat buildup of driving. They are just as likely to bleed air from the tires so you’ll be worse off than when you started. This is very common at “quick lube” places. A pressure reading is only meaningful when the tires are cold and you haven’t driven on them. You should get about two miles more out of every gallon if you pay close attention to tire pressure.
Reference: Saving Gas The Easy Way.
Idling the engine
My car only idles for 30 seconds after a complete stop. It automatically restarts the engine after you’re going about 20 mph. If your car has a well-maintained battery and electrical system you can also do that. Just turn off the engine if you have an unusually prolonged stop.
Fill up at the discount stations rather than the brand names. They sell exactly the same gas and quality as everyone else but for a little less money. Discover Magazine: claims that you should fill your tank in the evening. They observe that gas expands when it’s hot outside. Gas pumps measure gas by volume so if the temperature has cooled down you’ll get a little more gas for the same price. However, since the gas is stored underground where the temperature is nearly constant this tip probably doesn’t make any difference.
One more item that many people overlook: tighten your gas cap! You can lose more than 30 gallons a year through evaporative leakage otherwise. Discover Magazine, June 2008, has startling statistics on the extent of that loss in the state of California.
Finally, Consumer Reports is little better than a rough guess and nowadays it’s less accurate in some cases than the recently overhauled EPA estimates. Case in point:
Consumer Reports and Hybrid Cars. I drive a larger vehicle because I have to haul things including very large dogs.
Question
What if it were impossible for cars and trucks to go faster than 60 mph?
Passing other vehicles even when necessary for safety would be very difficult. In addition, the ability to make emergency avoidance maneuvers would be compromised. Hill climbing would be difficult. I remember a VW that I owned briefly in the 1960’s. It had difficulty reaching 45 mph uphill on the highway and several times was nearly engulfed by large tractor trailers. It was totaled by a head-on collision with an equally underpowered paper-strong car so I was rid of that death trap. That calamity was providential. I was unhurt when a drunken teenager crossed the median and hit me but the car was wiped out. I saw him coming but could not speedup to avoid a collision. Braking would have caused a pileup with ensuing destruction from behind. There was a lot of space in front of me but I could not reach it because the vehicle had so little power.
In other words, there are many factors to consider. I find it noteworthy that luxury cars continue to advertise ever more powerful engines.
The Top Ten Polluting Cars
Forbes Magazine published a list of the top ten most polluting cars. Click for a complete list of the top ten (there are several models on each level).
The top ten list includes nine Mercedes-Benz models, two BMW models, and the Volkswagen Touareg, the Number One most polluting car on the American road. Inclusions of these models are not surprising: GMC Suburban, GMC Tahoe, GMC Yukon, and some Jeep models. The list also includes six SUVs that are Flex Fuel (gas or ethanol). There are no Japanese car models in the top ten. With the exception of the Ford F-150 and Lincoln Navigator, there are no other Ford models on the list.
I can’t help but wonder what twisted logic motivated GM to introduce a pair of three-1/2 ton Hybrids. I read that they command close to a $20,000 price premium over their non-Hybrid equivalents. Not only would there never be any possible payback but also the environmental cost just to manufacture one is staggering. It was only recently that American manufacturers learned how to make their own hybrids and stopped licensing the technology from Toyota. Maybe they saw the inevitable crisis at last because it’s hard to see what else might motivate new engineering. Who buys such behemoths? Often it’s simply retired empty nesters that cannot possibly need Jabba-the-Hut land barges.
“Although American consumers are becoming more aware of environmental issues, they’re a long way from choosing vehicles for purely altruistic ecological reasons. ‘By and large most people believe that they have a right, a God-given American right, to drive whatever car they want and can afford,’ says Dr. Charles Kenny, a psychologist and president of The Right Brain People, a psychology research firm based in Cordova, Tenn. ‘Americans still have a love affair with their vehicles, which are associated in their minds with freedom and independence.’”
http://www.forbesautos.com/advice/toptens/worst-polluters-2008-story.html?partner=fadc_ss_most_polluting
The reason gas prices are so high are many including but not limited to the incredibly high cost of a useless war, government unwillingness to promote alternative energy, runaway profit taking by the oil companies, dwindling supply in areas where it still makes sense economically or is environmentally safe to drill, and a host of others.
Each time I’m in Atlanta I am amazed at how fast people drive. Driving 15 to 20 miles over the speed limit is typical. Atlanta has some freeways that are as broad as 14 lanes wide in places. People speed even in the “slow” lanes. Pickup drivers and tractor-trailer drivers are the worst offenders. You see Sheriff Bubba lying in wait in speed traps all over the state but not in Atlanta. That is one of the significant reasons the Atlanta area is so heavily polluted.
Interesting sidebar: Crude oil does not come from decaying dinosaurs. That’s a fable spread by Evangelicals who think dinosaurs all died because of a world-encompassing flood 4000 years ago. Oil is actually composed of zooplankton and algae. They believe that since we’re only going to be here for a short time until the rapture comes that it makes perfect sense to use up every resource. Evangelicals are one of the major voting blocks in the US.
Question
Eventually, fossil fuels will go the way of coal and steam fired engines. Won’t that make a large difference?
Yes, they have to do that. Not only are there sustainability issues but the pollution from fossil fuels now endangers the entire planet. Pollution threatens mass species extinction, loss of human habitats in coastal areas, and mass famines. The mad rush to “Americanize” in China will add tens of millions of new cars and thus accelerate the ongoing environmental catastrophe and hasten the tipping point. I believe the tipping point is inevitable.
Another interesting thing: the Northern hemisphere might not continue to get warmer. After the tipping point, it will get a lot colder due to the shutdown of the “ocean conveyor” and coming changes in the jet stream. Both of them control the weather of the Northern hemisphere. If the growing season shortens dramatically then crops will fail. Eventually that will lead to the same deprivations that are accelerating in Africa.
Question
Scientists are finding efficient ways of turning plant waste materials into biofuels instead of using food crops. Why isn’t that being done now in the US to any meaningful extent?
As long as agribusiness giants who dominate the American cornfields (Archer Daniels Midland is one) together with oil interests underwrite the US legislative and executive branches, that will not occur.
Question
Won’t higher fuel prices encourage conservation?
Obviously higher fuel costs impact the poor the most and the rural poor the most. Well-intentioned liberal thinkers who want to tax us into conservation and artificially boost the price of fuel even higher are totally disconnected from the poor and their needs. They drive their polluting diesel Mercedes and gas guzzling SUVs around big cities and remain as clueless as everyone else. If the US wasn’t spending a trillion dollars on a meaningless and destructive war, they could subsidize the price of fuel for the poor. Meanwhile the push for corn-based ethanol, a fuel whose production emits more pollution than it will save, drives up the price of food dramatically higher.
A Toyota Prius is manufactured at a high cost to the environment because its batteries (not to mention plastics and other materials) are highly toxic. The pollution lands in China, the manufacturer of the batteries and the source of its raw materials, where the rest of us don’t have to think about it. Prevailing winds from Asia drop the pollution they carry all over the American West the next day and every day after that. The Chinese government is as shortsighted about pollution as the US government and the giant oil companies. The enormous consequences of pollution and the staggering annual loss of lives it causes in China are well documented.
Recall the quote from Baha’u'llah that opened this essay: “These things are capable of changing the whole atmosphere of the earth and their contamination would prove lethal.” It can also refer to the consequences of environmental pollution rather than only as a reference to nuclear power and weapons. I have never read that implicated and additional meaning in any authoritative Baha’i text. It is purely an assumption on my part to extend the meaning because it makes practical sense.
Technorati Tags: gas mileage,environment,climate change,automobiles,transportation,gas prices,price of oil
Tags: agribusiness giants, Archer Daniels Midland, automobiles, Baha'i, biofuels, California, China, Chinese government, climate change, Consumer Reports, Discover Magazine, Dogs, energy, Environment, Environmental Protection Agency, faith, food, food crops, gas mileage, gas prices, GMC Suburban, GMC Tahoe, GMC Yukon, Lincoln Navigator, oil interests, price of oil, psychologist and president, Toyota, Toyota Prius, transportation, US government, Volkswagen, Volkswagen Touareg, WashingtonRelated posts
The Movement of Trees
I had the bounty of visiting old growth Redwood forests in California many times. Once when my boys were ages six and eight respectively we drove down to the Bay Area from Oregon along the Old Redwood Highway. We took detours into some stands of ancient trees including the tallest one that is still standing. It was about as tall as a 35-story building.
On the drive through Northern California we passed a logging operation where hundreds of old growth trees had been logged. My 8-year-old son turned to me and said, “Daddy, someone murdered those trees” and I said “Yes, that’s exactly what they did.”
How can an artist portray a tree in such a way as to make it appear to move? Vincent Van Gogh achieved movement in every painting he ever made of nature as did Marc Chagall. Note how the living Sun occupies the entire sky.
When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it – a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand – as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there’s a clash between the two, it’s bad art. – Marc Chagall
Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. — Warren Buffet
“Flowers swung upon her branches in clusters of yellow flame, formed each to a glowing horn that spilled a golden rain upon the ground; and from the blossom of that tree there came forth warmth and a great light.” — So Tolkien writes of Laurelin, the Golden Tree
The Bahá’í Writings include countless references to trees in symbolic and powerful metaphors.
Bahá’u'lláh, The Persian Hidden Words
The Ridván is a beautiful garden, which the Master had planted in a plot of land which He had acquired. It is on the bank of a brook. There is a large mulberry tree with seats round its trunk. Many beautiful blossoming trees are now flourishing there, also flowers innumerable, and sweet-smelling herbs; it is a blaze of glorious colour and wonderful beauty. The scent of attar roses, of rosemary, bergamot, mint and thyme and balm, lemon-scented verbena, and musk makes the air sweet with their wealth of various fragrances. Scented white and scarlet and rose-coloured geraniums are there in wild luxuriance, and trees of pomegranate with their large, brilliant scarlet blossoms, also other lovely blooming shrubs. Each a symbol of devoted, loving service. — Lady Blomfield, The Chosen Highway, p. 96
After driving for about half an hour we reached the garden where Bahá’u'lláh spent much of His time during His long years of exile in ‘Akká. Although this garden is small it is one of the loveliest spots we had ever seen. Bahá’u'lláh frequently said to His gardener, Abu’l-Qasim, ‘This is the most beautiful garden in the world.’ With its tall trees, its wealth of flowers, and its fountains, it lies like a peerless gem surrounded by two limpid streams of water just as it is described in the Qur’án; and the atmosphere which pervades it is so fraught with sacred memories, with divine significance, with heavenly-peace and calm that one no longer marvels to hear of the traveller who, passing one day before its gates, paused and gazing in saw Bahá’u'lláh seated beneath the shade of the mulberry tree, ‘that canopy not made with hands,’ and remembering the prophecy in the Qur’án, he recognized his Lord and hastened to prostrate himself at His feet. — Adib Taherzadeh, The Revelation of Bahá’u'lláh v 4, p. 29
The zeal and devotion of the gardeners who tended the plants and laboured day and night to make the Garden of Ridván a place of beauty for Bahá’u'lláh to enjoy, was no less striking. The Garden of Ridván was situated on a very small island. The little river, which emptied into the sea, divided itself into two streams surrounding that small area of land. In the time of Bahá’u'lláh the garden was laid out in flower-beds and there were many ornamental shrubs and fruit trees. There was a splashing fountain from which water was fed to all parts of the garden. As it flowed, it came rippling down in a broad stream over a stone platform under two large mulberry trees. The stream which flowed by the island was about fourteen to fifteen feet wide and three feet deep; fish were darting about it in abundance. It was fringed with weeping willows, and the fragrance of jasmine and orange blossoms filled the air. Most of these features are preserved today, except that there is no water circling the garden, for the streams have been diverted in recent times.
Whenever Bahá’u'lláh visited the Garden of Ridván it was a joyous occasion not only for Himself but for the Master and all the friends. The atmosphere in this oasis of beauty brought some relaxation to Bahá’u'lláh as He sat on a rectangular bench placed in the shade of the two large mulberry trees. Many believers attained His presence there, and they too sat on similar benches. Adib Taherzadeh, The Revelation of Bahá’u'lláh v 4, p. 12
I visited the Ridván Garden outside of `Akká, Israel back in 1973. This is a preliminary sketch of one tree in the garden whose movement and beauty captivated me.
This is one of the variations that I developed from the preliminary version.
I collected a few passages from the Bahá’í Writings that mention Trees
Tags: Adib Taherzadeh, Artist, California, Garden of Ridván, gardener, Israel, Marc Chagall, Old Redwood Highway, Oregon, Redwood forests, Ridván Garden, Vincent Van Gogh
