AABS June 2004 Meeting
The June AABS meeting was called to order by President Roger Gaede at 7:30 p.m. Approximately 20 members attended.

Bill Heston announced our July meeting will feature a presentation on pines by expert club members.

July 17th Tropical Plant Sale and Workshop
Couldn’t make it to the St. Louis ABS convention earlier this year? Program chair Bill Heston is bringing one of the best vendors and a tropical bonsai expert and grower, Michael Devore to us with a broad range of stock, including black olives, serissa, bouganvillia, green island and narrow leaf figs, powder puff and rain trees. Come and buy a tree at excellent prices ranging from $10 up and stay to style it with help from Mike and senior club members for only $10.00. The workshop and sale is Saturday, July 17 th at the MBG from 1 to 4:30 p.m.

Prairie State Bonsai Society workshop last year featured Mike DeVore (in the back, first on the left) in a tropical workshop last year with trees like the ones he will bring to AABS.

Library Additions
Bob Thatcher, Librarian, introduced two new books available for members to borrow.

These are Bonsai School , edited by Craig Coussins and The Art of Natural Bonsai: Replicating Nature’s Beauty by Dave Joyce. Coussins’ book is a compilation of basic and advanced technique lessons contributed by bonsai artists from around the world. Reviews on the ‘net tout it as a complete bonsai course. Not only a good read but has seasoned masters remarking, “I didn’t know that!” Joyce’s book showcases spectacular photos and almost

300 pages of detailed bonsai techniques and information on specific trees. The author’s proceeds from this book go to support research on cancer, the disease that claimed Joyce’s life shortly after he completed his masterpiece. These and other books and periodicals are available for members only to check out and return at each monthly meeting.

Ways and Means
Bill Powell introduced articles to be raffled at the meeting. As usual, this was a chance for members to take home practical bonsai and club related merchandise worth $15 to $30 or more for only $1.00. John Parks has volunteered to help Bill with the committee, one of the club spots that needed to be filled given Chuck Omer’s relocation.

Newsletter
Chuck Omer was also compiling, mailing and labeling our AABS newsletter. Deborah Eddy and Ron Milostan coordinated this important service, too, for the club in recent years. Robert Bryant has stepped up to the plate and volunteered to help keep our newsletter going. Thanks, Robert!

Don’t forget that contributions from all members, new and old, are encouraged and welcome.

You can email your word format articles and photos to Robert at brybon_2004@sbcglobal.net preferably by the end of the preceding month for publication in the next issue.

[By the way, don’t forget to check out the excellent work our webmaster, Jarrett Knyal does every month publishing the latest newsletter at our www.annarborbonsaisociety.org site. You can easily archive newsletters by saving AABS folders in a desktop or document folder or use the website to check schedules of events or see newsletter photos (and more) in color on line.]

World Bonsai Convention 2005
Kathy Powell reminded members to please sign up at meetings or contact her or Donna Gaede if they are interested in possible group commercial or carpool travel to the WBC 2005 convention in Washington D.C. May 28-31 st 2005 . Registration forms and hotel reservations at the Washington Hilton are available on line now. You can access the WBC convention portal at http://www.bonsai-wbff.org. Updates on schedules, list of participants, contests, and juried display deadlines are posted regularly.

Annual AABS Show August 28-29th - Help is Needed and Appreciated
The club will return this year to a format in which members can enter their trees in various categories—including a novice branch-- for judging and awards. Doug Hawley of Cincinnati hopes to confirm soon that he will be our guest judge and leader of the traditional Saturday afternoon presentation. This informal discussion and Q&A session uses show trees as the focal point. All members are encouraged to come and enjoy food, libations, and the chance to learn more about bonsai through the eyes of an expert after the close of the show on Saturday August 28th.

Hugh Danville, co-chair of the annual show, met with members already involved in show preparation prior to the regular meeting. More volunteers are needed. This is a chance for new members or those who don’t have time to fill a regular club role to get involved and help the club survive and thrive.

Please contact: Hugh Danville: 734 455 7922
To help with set up on Friday afternoon and evening. And then to take down on Sunday evening and to sign up for food for volunteers and vendors on specific days and times. Members are also welcome to bring a dish or beverage to the Saturday afternoon members only after the show event.

Contact Bob Thatcher: tman15@earthlink.net or call 313-839-5815—to sign up for a 2-hour shift at the welcome table. Here, AABS members greet show visitors, hand out information on the club, sell T-Shirts, raffle tickets, and help with general questions.

John Parks: 248-685-0709 to help with or present a demonstration of styling and wiring on stock or trees in development for show visitors.

Tree Show Prep
Bill Heston opened the June meeting; tree show preparation workshop, with slides from the ABS St. Louis show. These gave members ideas on ways to display trees on stands, with accessory plants or in other settings. Those who brought trees to the June meeting received advice and hands-on help from AABS senior club mentors.

Margaret Parker Preps a Pine

Joyce and Robert LaVasseur work with Jack Wikle on their maples.

Bill Heston Helps Refine A Fig

Kathy Powell, Recording Secretary
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Wednesday, August 25 th Meeting
Connie Bailie will host an open house featuring the Matthaei bonsai collection followed by a slide show demonstrating the development of some of the trees over many years. Members with modest trees take heart! Find how much improvement can happen over time.

Bonsai sale at David Levitsky's residence located at 721 Bellflower Dr. , Brooklyn MI, Spicer Heights Subdivision. I need to thin my benches the sale will be on August 15 between 12 noon and 5 pm. Club members’ only rsvp to 517-414-5444.

Jerry Mieslik, now living in Montana , is a well known AABS life member who has a long time interest in tropical bonsai. Jerry has published a new book Ficus: The Exotic Bonsai.
Signed copies of the book are available for $32.25 + $4.70 for shipping. Write to Devonshire Gardens Ltd., 161 Ridge Run Drive , Whitefish , MT 59937 USA . More information about the book is also available at www.bonsaihunk.8m.com

Send new memberships to:

Tamara Milostan
4228 Highcrest
Brighton, Michigan 48116

Make check out to Ann Arbor Bonsai Society
Dues are $25

View from Here by Jack Wikle Current Reading . . . and Reactions In recent weeks I have been trying to write something informative about how trees grow. This isn’t it. Maybe next time. If you have internet access, be sure to seek out a thoroughly fascinating, somewhat frightening and well illustrated article titled, “The Shimpaku Juniper: Its Secret History.” (Go to the World Bonsai Friendship Federation website, www.bonsai-wbff.org, click “Articles and Images,” then click the article title.) As one who spends almost zero time searching the internet to see what I can find written about bonsai, I wouldn’t have known of this account but for finding it mentioned in the Minnesota Bonsai Society’s newsletter. Here is a plea for help. Someone? Anyone? Please let me know when you discover other internet pearls that I will never find on my own. By curious coincidence, this shimpaku article came to my attention just after I had spent some very enjoyable time reading and digesting “Microcosms for a Metropolis,” an article from her Ikebana International magazine (Vol. 48, Issue 2) forwarded to me by bonsai friend Eunice Corp. (Eunice is a long-time Ann Arbor Bonsai Society member and founder of Sakura Bonsai Society of Northern Michigan, a Traverse City group. She now summers in Cadillac, MI and winters in Hawaii .) The ikebana magazine article, delightfully thoughtful and well written, was about “grass bonsai” (in Japanese, “ kusamono bonsai) but it included an extended discussion of the historical and philosophical roots from which ikebana, bonsai, and now kusamono bonsai (herbaceous plantings in containers as artistic statements) have all grown. Clearly, Zen Buddhist goals of finding “richness in poverty and beauty in simplicity” have been the foundations of much of Japanese gardening and their other arts for a very long time. Reading how both “Chinese and Japanese Zen [have] advocated as ideal a life of detachment from the crass and materialistic” while stating that, “greatness [can] be found not in what is magnificent or splendid but in the small and unassuming,” strengthened once again my appreciation for this way of thinking. Actually, the Japanese success in making cosmic seeming artistic statements with the simplest of materials has excited me ever since spending seventeen months in their country as a young GI in the mid-fifties. I see this as what I have really wanted to do in my own bonsai efforts. It is a goal that still excites me. Reading the shimpaku article, on the other hand, was quickly sobering, raising many questions not easily answered. This history reviews the shimpaku story from its discovery as exciting new bonsai material in the late 1800’s to its near extinction from its wild habitats by collectors in little more than 100 years. Were these collectors heroes or villains? Or, were they simply common men engaged in honest effort to support their families? After all, they were just “harvesting” trees that in their natural habitats would never be seen closely by more than an individual or two at the most. Should their customers, many of whom paid small fortunes for the choicest finds, be considered worthy patrons of important art or thoughtless financiers of the despoiling of nature? Should we be keeping in mind that the collectors and their customers were often making the beauty of these special junipers accessible for the appreciation of hundreds and even thousands of other people? Were there ever-ignored voices that questioned, “Should we be taking them all?” Where was the Zen aesthetic sense of detachment from what is crass and materialistic when all this was going on? Were rejection of desire coupled with the search for contentment in life’s essentials ever a part of this equation? All these questions seem easily asked though difficult, perhaps impossible, to answer. To abstain completely from “harvesting” a natural resource, trees in this case, as material for art seems too extreme. At the other limit, how can unrestrained collecting lead to anything but justifiable disparagement of bonsai and those of us who practice it? Finding a comfortable balance somewhere between these extremes is going to be very difficult in our country. I find myself wondering if we are wise enough to learn from the Japanese experience. return to top Please send articles, anecdotes, information, announcements, quotes, artwork or anything else of interest to club members to: Robert Bryant, 30685 Rushmore Circle , Franklin Village MI 48025, brybon_2004@sbcglobal.net or Chuck Omer, 4411 Stearns Hill Rd. Waltham , MA , 02451 , e-mail cndomer@juno.com The deadline for submissions to the newsletter is the End of Preceding Month.

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