June 2022 Leaflet ~ Elisabeth C. Miller Library, UW Botanic Gardens

College of the Environment | University of Washington

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Volume 9, Issue 6 | June 2022

Ask a Librarian: Resources on Executive Order 9066

Researched by Brian Thompson and Laura Blumhagen

Q: I read about Kai Vanderlip, the Redmond high school student who helped Lake Washington School District elementary libraries to choose books about the experiences of Japanese Americans incarcerated under Executive Order 9066 during World War II. Does the Miller Library Youth Collection have the books Kai recommended? What else do you offer on this difficult chapter of American history? It still resonates, 80 years later.

A: Indeed it does. Some of his recommended titles might not fit into our collections due to our focus on plants and gardens. Right now we offer four titles for young readers: Flowers from Mariko, A Place Where Sunflowers Grow (which is on Kai's list), Paper Wishes (see also the classroom guide), and Nature Art with Chiura Obata. Adults and teens can check out three autobiographical works by David Mas Masumoto (Epitaph for a Peach, Four Seasons in Five Senses, and Harvest Son), a new book on Amache entitled Finding Solace in the Soil, and a chapter of Defiant Gardens. This is a collection area we will continue to develop.

Bark Beetle Books by Suze Woolf
In the Miller Library through June 29

Please join us in welcoming Suze Woolf to the Miller Library this month. She brings a selection of her Bark Beetle Books. These sculptural artist books are part of an ongoing series (forty volumes so far), some of which were shown at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art this spring.

Leaflet readers are invited to meet the artist at the exhibit opening on Thursday, June 2, from 5 to 7 pm in the Elisabeth C. Miller Library.

To Speak for the Trees by Diana Beresford-Kroeger
Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy

To Speak for the Trees: My Life’s Journey from Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest by Diana Beresford-Kroeger

For several of her teenage years in Ireland, Diana Beresford-Kroeger lived in fear of being sent by the government to one of the infamous Magdalene Laundries, where orphans like her and unwed mothers suffered abuse and maltreatment. Her second parent died when she was thirteen, and at first it seemed no one would care for her. Then Uncle Pat relented, leading to wonderful summers in the Irish countryside.

Numerous aged women there chose her as a vessel to receive beliefs, stories, and especially ways of healing, that went back to the Druids. Much of this knowledge had been hidden from the ruling British during what the author calls the penal period. In the process, Beresford-Kroeger learned to affirm herself after her traumatic childhood, and to love and honor nature, especially trees.

Beresford-Kroeger writes winningly about this period of her life. Especially given that her parents had not paid much attention to her when they were alive, she makes clear how much these women were responsible for enabling her to develop into the respected scientist and author she became.

After college in Ireland, Beresford-Kroeger came first to the U.S. for a few years, and then settled in Canada. There she completed a PhD but opted out of an academic career after experiencing much discrimination because she was a woman. Instead, she found success as an independent scholar, though she says she fears the word “success” as associated with greed.

The first 186 pages of this 284-page book tell the above story. It brings together her own amazing history, her botanist’s outlook, and the often mystical understanding of the Druids. The final section is a Celtic alphabet of trees. The Celts assigned trees’ names to each letter of their Ogham alphabet. For example, the letter H was called “Huath,” and the tree is the hawthorn. A drawing of each letter is included, plus a description of the letter: "H is designated as a vertical line met by a single horizontal line to the left” (p. 227).

Along with each letter, Beresford-Kroeger gives information about the tree, the healing properties assigned to it by the Celts, and often, how modern scientists have discovered its medicinal value – sometimes the same as the Celts’, sometimes different. The ancients used extracts from hawthorns for “unspecified weakness.” Today medicines developed from that tree are used for hypertension associated with various heart problems.

Two of Beresford-Kroeger’s previous books – Arboretum America and The Global Forest – are also available at the Miller Library. This one adds background and context to them. About a year after her parents died, she remembers standing outside one of those Magdalene Laundries and smelling fear. This book shows how she channeled that fear into a powerful advocacy.