Jump to content
IndiaDivine.org

[landinstitute] SCOOP #12, Feb 15, 2006

Rate this topic


Guest guest

Recommended Posts

" The Land Institute " <LandInstitute

[landinstitute] SCOOP #12, Feb 15, 2006

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 12:43:36 -0800

 

Scoop

 

from The Land Institute

 

Issue 12, February 15, 2006

 

============================================================

 

 

 

See SCOOP back issues at www.landinstitute.org, " What's New? "

 

 

 

Marty Bender

 

You may know Marty Bender if:

 

· you took a bird walk at our Prairie Festival, or

 

· you participated in any of our events, or

 

· you contacted us for data, or

 

· you worked on the Sunshine Farm, or

 

· you were an intern at The Land Institute, or

 

· you've visited us since 1978.

 

 

 

This is the staff bio for Marty from our Web site.

 

 

 

Marty Bender is Project Director and Ecologist for the Sunshine Farm.

He has a unique background in and knowledge of biology, agriculture,

and energy technology on the Great Plains. Marty earned a BA in

physics and chemistry from Wittenberg University and a PhD in plant

ecology from the University of Kentucky. He was an intern at The Land

Institute in 1978 and stayed on as a Research Associate until 1983.

During this period he co-authored several papers with Wes Jackson

which developed the quantitative benefits of sunpowered systems

including the resource savings for perennial polyculture. He is now

producing a stream of research journal publications from his work on

the Sunshine Farm.

 

 

 

Marty will always be here in spirit.

 

Following is his memorial from the Home Page of our Web site,

www.landinstitute.org.

 

 

 

In Memoriam — Marty Bender

 

story image 1

 

Updated January 31, 2006

 

 

 

Marty Bender

 

December 26, 1951 – January 22, 2006

 

 

Memorials to any of the following:

 

The Land Institute

 

St. Mary's Grade School

 

Salina Public Library

 

 

 

Marty Bender could tell you a grass species by the hairs at the base

of its stem, and how many calories made the world go round. And tell

you he would.

 

If you asked The Land Institute's energetics bulldog and largely

self-made naturalist for help understanding this vast economy largely

ignored by the world's economists — how much oil was burned to mine

the coal to smelt the steel to make the tractor to drink the oil to

grow the wheat to raise the loaf of bread to fuel your body — you

likely wouldn't just get an answer off the top of his head, though he

might indeed recall how many watts a chickadee flutters — and imitate

its call, too. No, you'd probably get a whole paper. It could be

quickly copied from among thousands accumulated over years to pack

more than 50 file cabinet drawers and boxes, which he navigated like a

hawk in home forest. Or next day you'd find in your mailbox a sheet of

his research and calculations, rendered in a hand seemingly aimed to

burn lead through paper.

 

Either way, it would be more than you asked for.

 

Writer Wendell Berry said, " I learned for myself that a request to

Marty for a little help would bring it forth abundantly, and even

overwhelmingly. "

 

Historian and Land Institute board member Donald Worster said he once

asked Bender for a few facts about energy consumption on a Kansas farm.

 

" Back in the mail came a response that must have taken him several

hours to assemble — far more information than I needed, all given in a

spirit of selfless generosity that characterized Marty to the core.

Besides his family, he lived for The Land Institute and its research

programs. "

 

Bender's answers were both blunt and exacting, what institute board

Chairman Conn Nugent called a " tough theology " :

 

" Will biofuels one day power an expanding American economy? No way,

says Marty: You could grow fuel crops on every square inch of North

America, and still fall way short of the net energy provided by the

contemporary supply of fossil fuels. Solar panels? Wind machines?

Hybrid vehicles? Sure, Marty would say, those are good things. Just

don't expect them to let you live in the style to which you've become

accustomed. "

 

Bender, who taught himself calculus in junior high school, was

naturally made for science. But as a self-described city boy from

Dayton, Ohio, he was not a born or bred naturalist. He graduated, cum

laude, with a degree in physics and chemistry before developing the

interest in biology that would take him to The Land Institute.

 

" I look back, " Bender said at the institute's Prairie Festival in

2004, when a nature trail was named for him, " and find it hard to

believe that during the first 25 years of my life, the only things I

could actually name were robins, blue jays, cardinals, pigeons and

nighthawks. "

 

This even though as a Boy Scout he went camping every month.

 

But when he began leading scouts himself, their questions about bird

and trees were a call to the wild. He went birding with an Audubon

group. He took Peterson guides to the field. What he couldn't identify

there he sketched for comparison at home with a three-volume plant

manual. He amassed several hundred pages of notes, and kept lists of

everything he identified in west-central Ohio: at least 200 birds, 200

insects, 70 butterflies and moths, 40 mushrooms.

 

He did this so he could refresh his mind with the new names.

 

" I am embarrassed to tell you, " he said, " but as I drove to work every

day, I memorized the scientific names of plants over and over again. I

had to do this in order to recognize the scientific names in

professional botanical surveys that I looked up in various research

journals. "

 

Land Institute President Wes Jackson said, " As it was said of Charles

Darwin, he had an enlarged curiosity. "

 

That curiosity and dedication eventually took Bender from teaching

high school to being a county park ranger. And that took him to meet

Jackson, and then to the institute as an intern, in 1978, for the

big-picture environmental bent he missed as an undergraduate.

 

" Here, the emphasis was not on environmental problems, but on how we

got into this mess and how we might get out of it, " Bender said at the

Prairie Festival.

 

He stayed on as a researcher and helped study prairie plants in

preparing ground for the institute's mission, to make agriculture work

more like natural ecosystems.

 

After five years, Bender left to earn his doctorate in plant biology.

Then he returned to lead a project called the Sunshine Farm. For 10

years the institute would look as far as possible through the human

and natural economies for how much energy, material and labor came

into a farm and out of it, toward conversion of agriculture to

renewable energy. Bender's expansive view fit.

 

Doug Tompkins, co-founder of the Foundation for Deep Ecology and a

primary benefactor of The Land Institute, said Bender was crucial for

the organization to do something like the Sunshine Farm:

 

" Marty was one of those people who had a particular fix on things, a

particular slant that was important and critical to the big analysis;

without it, without this slant and fix we would have fallen short in

our collective thinking. Those who may have higher profiles and put

the big picture together, some like Wes, have to have the Marty

Benders around to put solid foundations under their broad macro

arguments. "

 

Wendell Berry said, " I visited The Land Institute for the first time

in 1980. I have known ever since that a crucial portion of the energy

and intelligence of that place was Marty Bender's. I have known this

not only from my experience of Marty himself, but also from Wes

Jackson's frequent mentions of his perfect trust in Marty and his

admiration and of course his gratitude for Marty's great ability. "

 

" Marty was one of the most gifted people I have ever known, " Jackson

said, and irreplaceable. " To say that he will be missed does not

capture the sense of loss all of us feel here at The Land. "

 

The Sunshine Farm study itself ended in 2001. Bender set to analyzing

it and writing a book, expected to take several years.

 

In November 2003, he was diagnosed with a terminal cancer. Jackson

told him that he was free to leave the institute, with pay, to spend

his time however he wished. Bender stayed, to write the book. For two

years he worked full-time. In November 2005 his physical energy could

no longer match his intellectual desire, and he finally stayed home.

Shortly before his 54th birthday on Dec. 26, Bender's wife, Mary,

brought him to the institute for the last time. He spent the morning

explaining the roughly three-fourths of the book he'd written, what

was left, and how to finish. The Land Institute will do this.

 

Bender kept reading magazines brought to him, though shifting from

science to current events. He listened, critically and analytically,

to classical music. To the day before his death, he talked and joked

with visitors at home. And the next day, from a hospital bed, he spoke

to his three children. Even into his last week, Bender had still

planned for a family reunion this summer. Though from diagnosis on he

did not deny what was happening, he still worked and talked looking ahead.

 

He is survived by his wife, Mary, children, Samuel, Sean and Ansley,

and his mother, three brothers and a sister.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...