Guest guest Posted February 16, 2006 Report Share Posted February 16, 2006 " 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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