THE BOOK OF BAMBOO – Line drawings David Farrelly, ‘86. Sierra club books Rev. micheal sunanda 1987

I met David In Eugene in 87, Harmonic Convergence’ year, he was wise, witty & fun musician. His book inspired me to infinite potential for growing & making & using 1000 things of bamboo, now happening in 1000s of villages. His style of writing is pro-cooperative in many ways in history & now for bamboo cultures that use it in dozens of ways in arts & crafts. There’s 100s of kinds of bamboo used for hard & soft, toys & tools, structures & even food. He claims 1,500+things are made of bamboo globally, maybe more, since it’s a creative resources like clay, hemp, etc. ‘Bamboo’ is craftwork encyclopedia of beautiful hand drawing of dozens of things made from water pipes, to bicycles, spoons, & many kids toys they can make: flutes, hoops. balls, spears, swings, etc. I’ve been seeing bamboo groves in US since mid 1980s. 1000s of bamboo products are made in tropic al bioregions & shipped around earth to sell, like I saw in Hawaii. Bamboo is so diverse, flexible, strong, fast growing, abundant & beautiful, bushy & easy to grow, even too much.

Here’s a short list of bamboo things: chopsticks, fences, housing, baskets, fishing- poles, footbridges, carts/trailers, masts, poles, bike-frames, boats, , hats, kites, docks, kiosks, stilts, buckets, water-pipes, storage, gardening, navigation, needles, pens, blinds, mats, waxes, walls, blow-guns, windmills, whistles, wheel-borrows, eating shoots & roots, hedges, decoration, picture frames, firewood, domes, guns, fertilizer, mulch, dams, awnings, anchors, coils, brewing, arrows, acupuncture needles, active-charcoal, candlesticks, baby carriages, seats, crutches, aphrodisiacs, cable, canes, clubs, cookware, combs, cups, balls, art, tripods, crying & storing crops, ladders, pots, rattles, music, rings, rulers, rakes, rayon, racks, rats, springs, floors slide-rules, stuffing, shading, playspaces, screens, scoops, scales, sandals, nails, sake & 100s more in warm climates.

Bamboo is the fastest growing tree on earth, a large mutable grass raised &* harvested by millions of villagers in Asia, Africa, SE Asia, Indonesia, Australia, Japan, China, Central & Latin America, etc. Millions export their crafts & raw bamboo, Farrelly has found on his extensive travels. Bamboo is like organic gardening, in flexibility, natural, & diversity in climates & elevations. Its free of most industrial controls, like hemp is controlled now.

I enjoy David’s refreshing homespun awareness of bamboo culture & crafts, with poetry, music & kids like. Even the drawling in charming. Find some bamboo growing in your region, used for what? How easy/cheap is to make things? It takes little effort to grow it, work to harvest & keep it contained. There’s 1000s of bamboo growing & crafting clubs & networks in the tropics I found in Hawaii, where friend had a Bamboo nursery he grew & sold in pots.