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[GWL]: There are no "idiotic questions."

Stupidity is in the eyes of the beholder.  In my 55-year life I have yet 
to hear an "idiotic" or stupid question.  

As garden writers we are basically teachers.  Teaching in any form is 
hard work.  It is by far easiest when we cultivate positive attitudes 
towards our students.  Which of us has not had the horrible experience 
of some school teacher who greeted every question with contempt and made 
every student who didn't know an answer feel stupid?  How much is 
learned with such a teacher?  And how efficient or enjoyable is the 
process?

We garden writers have a strictly NONCAPTIVE audience.  If we cultivate 
contempt for an audience, we usually don't have it for long.  

One of my mentors, biochemist Arthur L. Koch, used to say:  "I assume 
that my students are infinitely bright but infinitely ignorant."  In 
reality, none of us are infinitely bright; but we aren't infinitely 
ignorant, either.  So it all balances out.  Arthur's Assumption helps me 
maintain a cheerful attitude towards ALL of my audience, at all levels 
of expertise.

Garden writing is especially hard, because our audience spans such a 
great range of knowledge about any subject.  We usually have to try to 
interest as large a part of that audience as possible.  This means that 
we need to be able to start at the most beginning level on any subject, 
yet go fast enough, far enough, and in an interesting enough way so that 
we still retain and inform those who know a good bit about the subject 
to start with.  It takes skill.  It takes practice.  And it takes a 
generous, welcoming, and nurturing attitude towards all our readers, and 
most especially towards the real beginners.  The way to get and maintain 
that attitude is to plant, protect, and nurture it in ourselves.

I did not react much to the first few postings on the subject "idiotic 
questions."  But as the postings went on and on, I found myself feeling 
that they gave a nasty flavor to the GWL forum.  I was a bit puzzled as 
to why I reacted so negatively.  So I thought about it.  Since the 
reasons get right to the core of the business of garden writing, I share 
them here.  

Humor is tricky.  It works best when the teller of the joke is laughing 
at himself or his own group.  When various of us told jokes about 
writers/editors/publishers, we were basically laughing at ourselves.  
But the "idiotic questions" line represents writers laughing at readers. 
 It is "insiders" laughing at "outsiders."  

But the problem goes deeper.  I think laughing at my readers is 
dangerous.  It  cultivates attitudes that are the opposite of the ones I 
want to cultivate.   

In addition, I feel that there really are no stupid questions.  There 
are questions that show that the asker is ignorant about some particular 
area. And there are more and less helpful and insightful approaches to 
dealing with the questions that come our way.  

Few ordinary people know the pronunciations of botanical Latin these 
days.  Most Ph.D.-level biologists don't, for example.  If you know the 
pronunciations of botanical Latin, I'm happy for you.  However, you 
probably don't know plenty of other things that are at least equally 
important, even about gardening and plants.  The field is so large that 
all of us, however expert, are also abjectly ignorant in some areas.

One "idiotic question" I found especially nonidiotic and fascinating was 
the one that went:  "I work in a basement office.  There are no windows, 
and they turn the heat off on weekends.  What kind of plant will do well 
there?"  This question really gets to the basics -- the basics of the 
minimal needs for various kinds of plants -- and the basics of human 
drives that make people want to grow things.  Many plants can survive 
variable temperatures.  A modest growing light for plants in this 
person's basement may or may not be required, depending upon what the 
overhead lights are.  That may be all that is needed.  

That question brought back vivid memories -- memories of myself as a 
young molecular biologist with a rented apartment, no land, nothing but 
a big, beautiful, well-equipped, but sterile lab buried in the center of 
a building.  There were no windows.    

Feeling drives I did not understand, I bought three big pots and planted 
three mail-order citrus trees.  I took them to the lab and put them at 
the ends of the lab benches.  As I recall, I had a book on indoor potted 
citrus.  Come to think of it, that might have been the first garden 
writing I ever read.  I didn't know whether the trees would grow under 
the flourescent overhead lights in the lab.  But they did.  They grew 
and thrived.  All I did was water them.  The Meyers lemon tree did 
especially well, and flowered long and frequently, filling the lab with 
its wondrous aroma. . . and it's intimation of other possible ways of 
working, living, and being.  

It was a start.

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