Carl_Bergstrom

Maybe what I wrote wasn't clear enough, Ron.

Here's what I wanted to say, broken down in pointwise form.

1) North America has untapped veins of yamadori material as big or bigger and as good or better than that found anywhere in the world.

2) One major source of world class bonsai is the flow of superb yamadori to a series of professionals who develop that material on a 25+ year timescale.

3) In North America, we are not executing (2) with anything like our full potential, because there are relatively few knowledable people collecting, relatively few professional growers developing this collected material, and relatively few world-class talents working with it, and relatively few collectors/enthusiasts putting in the money to back the entire enterprise.

4) That will change in my lifetime, I hope to contribute to that change, and this potential is a source of tremendous excitement to me.

You've given us (A) a list of artists who for all their talents don't have the access that they potentially could to ready-developed world class collected material and (B) a list of a few high quality collections that show some good native yamadori and also draw extensively on imported material.

I don't see how these serve as counterarguments to anything I've said, much less as evidence that I've "not bothered to look" or whatever it was that you accused me of.

Ron, I'm saying American bonsai could be so amazing, and it will be so amazing, within the next 50 years. I'm not putting down how far we've come in the last 50 years when I say we could go so much further in the next. If there wasn't this sort of room for spectacular advance, we'd be that much poorer for excitement in this artform. You're accusing me of complaining that our glass is half empty. I'm just so excited at the rich drink we can pour into that top half.

Best regards,
Carl

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