Amongst this personal grand gallery of human influences for which I am forever grateful, none has influenced my daily doings more than Dr. Frank Crosswhite. This month marks two years since Frank passed away, leaving one more unfilled slot in my own personal Mount Rushmore of plant heroes that I can sow the seeds of conversation with. However, I never feel far from Frank each and every time I hand-water plants, something Frank seemed to be perpetually thrilled with doing, despite the fact that his professional compatriots found mystifying, if not annoying, that a man with such special academic talents could easily have consigned this monotonous chore to lesser trained monkeys such as myself. I understood however that to water plants was a joy to Frank, as it is to me, understanding that it is not just water we are dispensing to each individual organism- it is Love.
Frank was the Executive Editor of “Desert Plants”a remarkable publication of the University of Arizona. In his editorial role, Frank avoided the dusty language of academia, instead relating to the reader’s childlike wonder of plant magic as if each species were a gift under a Christmas tree whose delights are just waiting to be unwrapped. One of my most memorable of Frank’s editorials was simply titled, “The Goodness of Plants”.
Here is an excerpt from Frank’s Arizona Daily Star obituary whose full text can be viewed here, and which I highly recommend to my fellow plant enthusiasts.
Crosswhite's balance of academic endeavors with hands-on work made him something of an anomaly, Bach said.
"Most academic people, they have a Ph.D. after their name, they are notorious for book knowledge, but they don't have much practical experience," Bach said. "That's what made Frank different from most academics."
It wasn't just plant experts who appreciated the Crosswhites' work. They were adept at articulating their knowledge to people of all ages, education levels and backgrounds.
"Both he and Carol were able to talk about plants in ways that were correct botanically and formally, but at whatever level their audience might be, from fifth-graders to fellow scientists," Upchurch said.
Frank Crosswhite may have been a little too enthusiastic, his wife said, but no one ever complained.
"He had encyclopedic knowledge at his command in so many different fields," she said. "He could make a story that was just absolutely fascinating based on what, to other people, would be dry-as-dust facts."
On tours, "he would have people feel and touch and taste the plants. The only thing people were not prepared for was, if they kept asking questions, he'd keep answering them. His tours would extend far beyond their intent. They (visitors) would come back just as the arboretum was about to close with sunburned noses, but still asking questions," Carol Crosswhite said.
This man who looked like a character straight out of the 1950’s, with an unchanging crew cut and conservative style, skewed my perceptions of what spirit might reside in any particular body. Frank’s philosophical musings were just as hip as any Tom Robbins or Ken Kesey novel, but were always guided by a pragmatic allegiance to the theme of humanity’s unfolding, lock-step march to the future with our plant allies. It occurs to me that Frank was best situated to accurately assess the fallen state of humanity’s society because of, not in spite of, his being embedded in a 1950’s worldview.
Below, in honor of my friend and big brother in the field of ethnobotany, with whom I miss our hours of conversation so much, I give you two paragraphs of Frank’s editorial (Desert Plants, Vol. 9, #2), “The Moral Element in the March of Science, Technology and Agriculture”.
Frank, you are a real plant whisperer. I thank you so much for everything that you so freely shared with me. Hell, you even paid me to listen. I swear I feel you with me all the time I’m laying down the water and the love on my plants. (Eyes welling up with tears…)
“A normal, living, breathing, human animal is attuned to a balanced pattern of functions whereby in the regular course of the day a variety of work, play, rest, enjoyment, and other activities are intermeshed, allowing a wide variety of inborn genetic adaptations to be exercised. It is still possible, although unlikely, for most of us to live in such a pristine way- to pick fruit from a tree for breakfast, to till a small field in the morning, to weave a cloth, to eat a hot rabbit stew in the cold of winter, to watch the habits of migrating waterfowl, to pick herbs for tea, to add some thatch to a leaky roof, to make a stone wall, to milk a cow, and then the next day to do different things. A person having such a life would be a social misfit. For the good of society this person would be expected to specialize- perhaps do nothing all day long other than remove staples from checks sent to the IRS, or sit in a factory gluing rubber soles to left size 71/2 shoes, or sort mail in a post office, or sweep floors in a downtown skyscraper, or operate a bottle-capping machine.”
“Our society thrives on such a division of labor even though each individual has had to deviate from the regular course of life to which this human organism is genetically adapted. In the dictionary sense of the word pervert, society is truly guilty of perverting the individual by “causing deviation from the right, true, or regular course” of the individual’s biologically adapted life. In a sense the individual human is to society what a milk cow is to a farmer.”
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