Bonsai's future

Vance Darling believe me they have big following with the new styles...and you are right that they are passing it on not only to youngsters but to some of us older people that should know better.   
Do you remember that famous bougie by Min Hsuan Lo in his book. That is considered a masterpiece and it is the one that set the new trend  with this style.
Let me seeif I can find the picture of it on my PC, which Mr. Min send me while he was trying to help me style a bougie like that.
I dont know where it is...but I am posting mine that is supposed to be styled in the same way...and which I am clueless as now to style. Hope to learn more when I see him in Bandung in Oct.
Meanwhile I was told not to cut off anything.
Believe  me or not they all went ah and oh and wanted to buy it...and I am still puzzled with their reaction, and if there was a chance I could have given them present.

Octopus style making a re-appearance - G.M?
[ Have not forgotten you, waiting for something special to send to you.]

Study the home trees, and new ideas will be born.
Best to all.
K

JimLewis wrote:

and does not involve chest-thumping braggadocio.

How about crotch grabbing (or are they trying to hold their pants up)?

I'm getting used to rap/hiphop -- at least when it appears they've taken a bath in the last month or two and don't itch in unmentionable places.

I was a bit snobby about the Beatles, back in the day, but they and their music grew on me (though for some reason they're still not represented in the thousand or so CDs and vinyls I own.  Those are mostly opera, classical, folk, and bluegrass/old-time country, in that order.  Not much use for most of today's country "stars.").  

The Beatles as a whole was greater than the sum of their parts.
My parents hated their long-haired guts until Yesterday was released.

Last time I checked, Yesterday stands as the most-recorded song in the English language.

Back to Bonsai - I'm giving my best podocarpus as a wedding gift to a co-worker.

Back to Bonsai - I'm giving my best podocarpus as a wedding gift to a co-worker.

Does he WANT a bonsai?

If he does, great idea for a gift.

If he has no idea he's getting it, and no knowledge of bonsai, not so good -- for him or the bonsai. Bonsai are dangerous as gifts if the person who is getting them has no idea what to do with one.

JimLewis wrote:

Back to Bonsai - I'm giving my best podocarpus as a wedding gift to a co-worker.

Does he WANT a bonsai?

If he does, great idea for a gift.

If he has no idea he's getting it, and no knowledge of bonsai, not so good -- for him or the bonsai.  Bonsai are dangerous as gifts  if the person who is getting them has no idea what to do with one.  

[...snip]...

She has seen my trees over the years, and asked me to help her pick one out for her wedding ceremony. I couldn't find a better fit to her needs than a podocarpus I have, so I will give it to her as a wedding present. She knows to bring it back if things start going bad.

Still the question of bonsai future is in doubt. This last post kind of illustrates it, a lady is given a bonsai as a wedding present. This is not a bad thing but I am still struck by how few people that are actually involved in doing/growing bonsai. From my point of view I don't understand why more people are not doing bonsai but it is what it is, a kind of back water off the mainstream of American activity of video games, texting, sexting, and eating bad food.

Vance Wood wrote:From my point of view I don't understand why more people are not doing bonsai but it is what it is, a kind of back water off the mainstream of American activity of video games, texting, sexting, and eating bad food.

and that is a very good thing !

i have been part of many "off the grid" activities, most from the very beginning... (punk rock, great lakes surfing, early days of skateboarding and being the first to get snowboarding allowed at a ski resort in wisconsin)

and every single one of those things are now common as muck...

and the end result ?

it all gets watered down by over exposure, over acceptance and over promotion, with un-needed corporate "sponsorships" that really just want to cash in and get their piece of the pie...

perfect example is surfing on the great lakes: nobody outside of the lakes even heard of it until a few individuals started yelling "hey - look at us !!! we're surfers too" and before you know it, the annual "gathering of the tribes" over labor day weekend in sheboygan wisconsin becomes unnecessarily sponsored by CORONA of all things, and they take what was once a gathering of maybe 50-75 friends and turn it into a party with billboards and the whole she-bang... to the point that the guys and gals that belong there cant even get a parking spot to their own gathering and the old time locals simply stopped coming because of the circus that comes with corporate sponsorship....   

i mean, do we really want to see quality bonsai available at walmart ???
(by "quality", i dont mean the crappy half-dead gingsing ficus that they probably already carry)

sorry for the tangent, but mainstream acceptance of something truly unique is a bit of a sore spot for me as i have never seen anything good come of it...

maybe thats just an american viewpoint...

maybe the populations of other countries/cultures know how to embrace something beautiful and unique without spoiling it.

whew...

again, sorry....  

You're not likely to see quality bonsai turned into The Joby Nooner any time soon, it takes too long to make a good bonsai especially if you don't buy one and are oblivious to the amount of time it took to get it to a marketable state.

well, i wasnt really referring to "specimen" trees, but more like mass produced, quality, pre-bonsai stock material
(done in the same manner as the thousands of landscaping japanese red maples that flood the garden centers every spring)