FredL

Andy, your comments are always interesting, but shouldn't your remarks have a larger frame of reference? Doesn't the state of this publication reflect the larger state of American Bonsai rather than a local anomaly there at the offices of ABS?

I've never liked this magazine very much and every year that I renew my subscription I find myself asking myself, "Why am I doing this?". At some deep, subconscious level, I find this magazine to be an entirely cold and scratchy experience which alienates me from bonsai rather than reinforcing my ties to it. Yet it does seem to accurately reflect the state of bonsai in America.

I keep coming back to the discussion of wabi/sabi that you layed on me during my attempt to present the case for simplifying our approach to bonsai. Boy! If a publication ever presented the antithesis to the spirit of this bonsai ideal, it's gotta be this magazine.

I mentioned awhile back that a new bonsai shop has opened in our area. Once again, BOY! After 3 or 4 trips to it, each of which left me more dissapointed than the one before it, I stopped going to it. It was just such a downer! Whatever it is that inspires a love of bonsai in me, the store owner of this place just doesn't get it.

I'm not going to say that the oners and publicist of ABS don't get the spirit of Bonsai. I will say that I would NEVER show a copy of this magazine (as I do with "Bonsai Today") to friends who visit my home and ask me what I'm up to in the back yard.

Fred