Bald cypress fruit and drying leaves

Coming home from a productive photo session on August 25th, my gaze and I were arrested by the pale green fruits nestled among drying leaves on a bald cypress tree (Taxodium distichum) I presume had been planted along United Drive. Don’t you love the shapes and texture and colors? Of course you do.

Let the geometry of these fruits and leaves be a lead-in to today’s quotation: “There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science.” — Anton Chekhov, Note-Books, 1921. Unfortunately, there are people a century later who assail objectivity and universality, and who claim that mathematics is oppression.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman