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

Dear Carol,

I would like to say thank you for your response regarding idiotic
questions.  Over the years, in this profession --- (more a professional
gardener than a writer)  I found lots of great co-workers who became so
focused on gardening, horticulture, and Latin names that they thought of
little else.  Often,  I would hear them make jokes about what others did
not know ---- and "stupid" questions.  These things happen without them
really realizing they were laughing at our audience-- our pay checks.  This
has always troubled me.

A friend of mine in the PR dept. of  a public garden once referred to those
of us who spoke in Latin as "Mulch Brains"  and that label has stuck with
me ever since.  Now that I am over 50 yrs. I find it easier to remind my
"Mulch Brain" friends to lighten up.  Our subject is wide and we all have a
great deal of knowledge about a narrow slice of horticulture.

Pat

At 08:23 PM 10/17/01 +0000, Carol Deppe wrote:
>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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