Thoughts for an old friend

 My father died almost 10 years ago.  When he passed away I had contact with him for like 5 years and only sporadically by phone and once or twice a year when my work gave me the opportunity to travel to Hawaii as part of a rapid cycle corn breeding in person.  I am grateful for those visits because otherwise I wouldn't have seen him before he died. When I wrote about his death 10 years ago my feelings were a little raw. I didn't know how to process the complexity of what I felt when he died. This has shifted or softened or changed over time.  I have more nostalgia and fond memories of him now than I think comes through in his obituary that I wrote then.

When he died, his friends had a service for him in Hawaii that I did not attend. My father had converted at some point to the Baha'i religion.  He never mentioned this to me in any of our conversations, but his friend Bill from the Baha'i had helped set him up with an apartment and got him on disability so he wasn't homeless. I had a couple of quite frustrating and emotionally draining conversations with Bill leading up to the funeral because I wasn't following the Bahai traditions for burial. Bill was trying to convince me to follow Baha'i practices and bury my father in Hawaii. I did not have the money to pay for a plot in Honolulu. Total cost for a burial plot and casket in Honolulu that complied with Bahai rules would have been almost 100K and I had no instructions from my father on how to handle his funeral. So I had him cremated and the ashes sent back to me. My mom and brothers found a small plot in Nampa. We had a family graveside service where we buried the ashes in a small wooden box. And I didn't know what to do with his personal effects that were piled in a terrible mess left after his death in his apartment that the police told me they would arrange with the landlord to take care of it because it was a biohazard and there was nothing of any value inside. He had no money or will or physical things worth salvaging so none of us went to Hawaii. Bill sent me tapes from the Baha'i service but I couldn't make it all the way through them because I was angry and heartbroken that the person they eulogized was a stranger to me.   

I had one emotional wound that I kept circling back to.  It still is a sore point that I haven't quite forgiven or forgotten. In my last conversation with Bill, he said to me - "It sounds like you feel like your father abandoned you." 

I paused for a long time and told Bill, "He did. I didn't see him for more than 20 years." 

Bill couldn't believe this.  He said my father talked about us kids all the time - I asked him if he talked about his grandchildren. Bill said he didn't know that he had any.  He didn't even know my children's names. My father didn't ever ask about them or much about the details of my life after we finally did get back in touch.  He did tell my sister he was proud of everyone for all of their education and professional achievements but thought I just pollinated corn for some seed company - not the worst description of my job, but I was a heck of an expensive corn pollinator. 

Recently, my old bishop from my childhood ward/church contacted me with a conference talk and bearing his testimony again about the church and inviting me to come back.  It poked this old wound because this was someone that I desperately looked up to as a father figure, but as I moved away, got married and built a life I lost touch with him. There were three men in that ward that were pillars of support for me when I was a teen - they were mentors and confidants and friends. They took me on campouts, fed me dinner with their families, and helped my family both financially and spiritually and emotionally.  I will always be grateful for them, but when I graduated their job was done and they went on to focus on their own families and new church responsibilities and projects.  I didn't hear from any of them for 20 years. 

Then I wrote about leaving the church and posted it on Facebook.  Suddenly, I was a project again and they reached out to talk to me about my "potential" and how sad they were that I was making this choice, and to send me scriptures and conference talks.  I know intellectually this is Mormon for "I am thinking about you and care about you." but it still smarts in this same kind of way because my old mentor doesn't really know me as a person now or my family.   

DNA Replication Real Time!

2024 - Catalyst: Looking back at 2023 and ahead to the new year.

2023 people and places 

Last year was a year for a lot of change for me personally and professionally and 2024 is looking to be another dynamic year at Bayer and for me. This year, I hope to be a catalyst for helping connect people, ideas, problems and solutions. 

One kind of fun metric for me of my career evolution is to look at the jobs that LinkedIn's algorithm recommends. It is a fun and eclectic mix - VP of Product Design for Facebook, customer sales representative for multiple companies, a quantitative genetics role at a start-up, digital design, and a breeding lead role. Some of the mix-up is that my role titles in 2023 changed from cotton product design - which was leading the cotton breeding team responsible for population improvement, parent and line selection, and genomic prediction, to then Customer Insights Deployment Lead - where I am working on selection indices, breeding product concept definitions, and incorporating customer feedback in how we breed and what we select. 

All those titles are a bit of a word salad and confusing to LinkedIn's algorithm, but there is a connecting thread from my education in cytogenetics, agronomy, plant breeding to my current role. I still continue to be interested in how to test new ideas for how to improve agriculture and breeding. I am grateful that Monsanto and now Bayer has let me do that in new ways throughout my career. 

I am a terrible pessimist by nature. If you ask me if I am a "glass half full" or "glass half empty" kind of person, I am probably a "glass going to be all the empty eventually, and let me tell you how" kind of person. Last year, I had some really unique opportunities for collaboration and travel last year that have given me a lot of optimism and hope that we will be able to meet and solve the looming problems in agriculture and climate change. I was able to visit Africa, India, Australia, and New Zealand. Visiting customers, breeders, and scientists in across the globe gives me a lot of hope as I see the brilliant people and solutions that they are working on for some really big and hard problems. 

I want to thank those that have collaborated with me in 2023 and hope to do better at that in 2024. I had some mental health and personal challenges that meant I had to step away from work I was committed to and not doing well with NAPB. I have been the world's slowest writer for some papers that I have been working on with IITA and Roslin scientists. 

In 2024, I want to continue that journey - connecting people, ideas, and solutions to the big global challenges that we face. That is the commitment I want to make for this next year - to be a better catalyst for that purpose. 

Happy 2024 and looking forward to the new year.

2023 - Year in Review

Aleah - Lots of big life changes.  Started an electrician training program at State Technical College and moved into her own apartment in Linn, MO.   She is learning a lot and enjoying living on her own, even if she has to ride her bike around. Linn is not really set up great for pedestrian or bike traffic, but she is loving the independence after graduation.  Next steps - car and driver's license. 

Emily and Celia - From Emily: 

"This year, Celia and I moved into our own apartment with our three cats: Baby, Lolly, and Kevin. This has been an awesome upgrade from having roommates. We have been playing an excessive amount of the RPG Vampire the Masquerade.  we have had campaigns set in 2023 Gig Harbor, WA, 2032 San Francisco, CA, 2023 Athens Greece, and the 1850s San Fran.  Celia has been working on her capstone: a series of poems. Celia has been Battalion commander of ROTC this semester and will graduate in the spring.  Over the summer I was a paraprofessional. This fall, I have been doing my first-year teaching middle school art. It has proved difficult but rewarding. At the beginning of the year, I got knee surgery - an ACL replacement and meniscus repair.  The recovery has been challenging but I am able to walk and lunge, etc. without pain."

Colleen - Sophomore!  Jobs - Lifeguard manager, Lifeguard, Babysitter, Hostess at Paul Manno's Italian Restaurant.  Best memories - bus ride back from Winter Guard.  getting driver's license, end of summer lifeguard party, epic hike around Lake Geneva. Worst moments - Pool backwash flooding incident. Recs Books: Lessons in Chemistry and Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.  Cried so hard.  Music: Lana Del Rey, Hippy Sabotage, Pouya.  Top songs - Forever waiting for you at my window - Pouya.  Work by Charlotte Day Wilson. 

Alex - 9th grade. Highschool attack. Fav memories of 2023 - Cross Country.  Getting the crazy PR of 27 at the best course in the cold and rain.  Sitting outside reading during the summer.  "It was lit" Went to Lake Geneva and running on the lake trail behind all the fancy houses on the edge of the lake. worst of 2023: "Race where expected to do well and read the clock wrong and then realized that it was not that good and everyone else got PRs.  Hate that course for ever and ever." Book recs: Vicious by V.E. Schwab.  The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. Music - Everything thing from Lana Del Ray.  Men I trust. Fiona Apple and Taylor Swift - newer stuff not old Taylor. Movies - Dune, Across the Spiderverse. 

Becca -- Grade - 5th grade. Ms Williams class. Fav memory: NWA tests especially the math tests are the worst because it has 43 questions, and it has a lot of hard questions because it gets harder if you get them right. One of favorite memories - Going to Cub Creek camp for a whole week.  Animals galore, riding horse named Cheyene and new friends. Hoping that school trip to BizTown next week will be the best of the year. Fav summer - No school.  Worst summer - Not having stuff to do. Rec - Percy Jackson - Heroes of Olympus and the Insiders. Owl House. Hello from the Hollowood's, Night vale and Taylor Swift.  Spiderman, Lana Del Ray

Leila - more detail to come.  Leila signed us up for a 18th century ball this year and sewed her dress - it turned out so great. It was such a fun night even if we were late sewing last bits of the costumes.  Leila also has new patterns and quilts this year that doing well - check out: Leila Gardunia Quilt Patterns and sign up for the newsletter to get the latest.  

Brian - Moments I won't forget:

I started taking meds for ADD this year. It was one of the worst moments when Leila and I argued about it. I didn't want to admit how desperately overwhelmed I felt and how much my anxiety was getting in the way of my life. Then that first day when the medicine kicked in and I felt at the same time a little buzzy, but also able to make a to do list, rearrange my calendar and just do those things without feeling like I was drowning.  Hasn't solved my problems but may help me deal with my life. 

Walking with my work colleague and friend in Spain while we argued about some challenging politics and moments at work and the possibility of me changing jobs.  It was lightly raining, and we had these intense conversations over coffee and toasted crusty bread spread with fresh tomato and olive oil. I have been spoiled at work where I have been able to make my own job multiple times and this new job means I get to focus on a mix of economics and genetics. I will miss my cotton team, but after two years they're ready to take on the problems without me. 

The other two work moments I want to remember really are from trips to Kenya and India.  Sometimes the world feels overwhelming to me: climate change, politics, pollution, wars, all of my other anxieties that I don't dare say out-loud most of the time but fill my brain, but on both trips meeting with African and Indian scientists and farmers I felt a growing sense of optimism and possibility for the future that has been inspiring to me all year.  Both countries are growing and developing in different ways but trying so hard to do the right things for farmers and the environment. 

Travel - Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Spain, US: Lake Geneva, IL, Boise, ID, Tucson, AZ, Illinois farm tours and Farm Progress Show, Australia, New Zealand, Kenya, India. 

Recommendations:

Books - Run me to the Earth by Paul Yoon, Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin - always will recommend.  Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. The Strange by Nathan Ballingrood. The Last Cuentista by Levine Querido.

Music - Hillary Hahn - Ysaye recording, Brandi Carlile - all of the artists she produced albums for this year is a great list of new and upcoming singers. Tanya Tucker - Sweet western Sound also made the documentary that is hilarious and heart-warming "The Return of Tanya Tucker", Joni Mitchell at Newport, Brandy Clark, Lucious, and The Secret Sisters

ADHD meds and response to "Search Engine" podcast

 From an email that I sent the "Search Engine" podcast team.  It is a really intriguing series and I am pretty invested as I have struggled this last few years with a lot of anxiety and frustration trying to keep focused.  

https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/whyd-i-take-speed-for-twenty-years

I feel like I should start this email with something like on talk radio where the caller says - "long-time listener, first-time caller." I have been a big fan since the beginnings of Reply All.  It was one of the first podcasts that I listened to every episode of and I have enjoyed the new podcasts you have done since leaving that show.  

This series though I put off listening to.  I wasn't sure what you were going to say, but I wasn't sure that I wanted to hear it. I am 46 and I have a three month old prescription to Vyvanse that I just started taking.  I was officially diagnosed with ADD three years ago after my wife pushing and pushing for me to start seeing a counselor about it basically for 20 years.  I wouldn't have started to take medication at all, but we had a huge fight about it and I ended by conceding and admitting that maybe, maybe that taking something might help me.  

And it has been three months where I keep thinking - "why didn't I do this sooner.  Is this how regular people's brain's work?"  and to my wife's credit she hasn't once said I told you so.  

I don't have the same experience as most people that were given ADHD meds.  I do remember in 2nd grade that my teacher, Ms Murr, made a special rule for me that I had to be touching my desk at all times - and I have this moment frozen in my brain where she is at the front and i am standing with one leg hooked around the leg of my desk and going around in circles while she talked.  She also told us she would put up any artwork we did in the classroom and my neighbor and I that were obsessed with dinosaurs got a roll of butcher paper and drew all the dinosaurs we could find pictures of in the encyclopedia and she put the entire roll up on the wall, cutting out a circle for the clock.  

I was smart, I did great in classes.  I read obsessively everything I could and being a fast reader was my superpower.  My parents were divorced when I was 11 and my mom went back to school to be a math teacher at that time.  I saw that doing well in school was a way I could escape and get the life I wanted.  And I was driven.  I worked so hard that I used to fall asleep doing homework at 1 or 2 in the morning and then deliver papers before school every day through high school.  

I pushed hard through undergrad, masters, PhD and work in a unique RnD job that I kind of made up and Monsanto and then Bayer keeps paying me to do that is everything I wanted.   But things were starting to fray and fall apart.  The ways that I was forcing myself to be productive and focused weren't working anymore as I got into my forties.  Then with Covid, I had crippling anxiety and that made it harder and harder to focus.  Working from home those years made it worse and I desperately tried to cover that up at work, but at home it was increasingly clear to my family that if I was going to survive this I needed an intervention.  It was like a reverse intervention where my wife and kids one on one and in a group basically were like - you need to start taking drugs.  

There were signs before. Most people assume that I have ADD/ADHD - I can hyper-focus and I survived for years by procrastinating and then desperately finishing at the last second. This is a stressful way to live.  I had three seizures in college - which my neurologist attributed basically to lack of sleep and overwork.  I had MRI, EKGs, all of the other tests he could find but I refused to go on any medication because it took all of the focus I had to try and force myself to get to the end of my degrees.  

I was insistent though that I could handle it and I have been for my whole career.  I felt like taking medication was admitting to a weakness that I was overcoming with just hard work.  And I was doing it, but looking back a few months in I realized that I was also doing it with a lot of anxiety and desperation that I didn't need to have.  

My first day on Vyvanse I sat down and wrote out a to do list and then proceeded to do it.  Just like that.  Without any procrastination or anxiety.  It was insane.  I did feel a little buzzy - and at the same time quiet.  Like my brain was silent while I worked and I didn't know what to do with that.  I worry a little because I crave that feeling now even after just three months.  I wake up in the morning and I find myself thinking about it and wanting it.  I dread that I am dependent on this drug and that I am unable to feel like that without it. 

I loved the series.  I appreciate your public introspection and honesty about this.  I don't know what my life would have been like if I had started taking this sooner, but I feel a little sad that I fought it for so long.  Maybe, I would have been happier.  Maybe I wouldn't have had to struggle and fight my own brain to get to where I am now.  Maybe not.  Maybe it would have made me less creative. 

I swore to myself as a teen that I would live without regrets.  But now in middle age, I think that is impossible.  I wish I would reboot my life like a video game sometimes and see what difference it would be if I had taken a different path.  Or like a choose your own adventure book where I could turn back the pages and find another chapter that took me on a different journey.  But, I can't.  For now, I guess I will see what my brain and life is like as I take a low dose of meth every morning. 

Meditations on memory and focus

I don't know if it is a peculiarity of the eye, the brain, or the camera lens but I can never seem to get the focus on the camera to match what I see or remember.  As I flew home from India over Greenland, I looked out of the window and saw a plane that seemed to be just below us - so close I thought.  Contrails erupted from the tips of its engines and I could see clearly the logo of the other airline and dots of the windows reflecting the glacier and fjords below both of us.  But in the photo I took with my phone, the plane is far away and a pixelated blur against the horizon and clouds.  

Was it an illusion of the mind and eye that when I looked out the window it seemed to zoom in or is a fault in my iPhone camera skills to be able to mirror this focus and clarity?

This is probably a testable hypothesis or googleable question, but I like the idea that my brain and eye can make the sunset and the nights sky better IRL than the camera of my phone.  

I want to be able to pull that clarity on my self and my time.  I wish that I could see it better than it is captured by a camera or a word, but the reality is that I cannot and it slips away so fast.  

Even the image that I had so clear of the plane, that seemed so profound, is losing its realness.  Pieces I can remember - the parts I described above.  Those even closer images are zoomed in and crisp, but the rest of the details are just an outline between them and now as I write the memory becomes this. I see the blurry edges like a sketch drawing and the focus sections blown up around.  

Will that fade to be replaced with just words and memory of what it felt like to write this? The ache in my hand, the tired feeling from being up too late, the drying tears of the sad book that I finished before looking down on the plane, my cold from India and my suppressed cough in my throat, the sweat on my sandals and my cracked lips. 

No, that too will fade.  Even as I read these words in the future I will have to imagine this moment.  Maybe then I will remember but each time I try it shifts and changes by the act of remembering

Crop Science Innovation Summit

Looking back at 2022

Becca

4th grade. Finished the Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus books and favorite Character is Nico D’Angelo. Trip highlight - being able to go to all the beaches - Scotland, Netherlands, Greece. Ice cream in Greece, Netherlands.

Recs: Liked Wednesday. Podcast - Hello from the Hallowood.

Aleah

12th Grade -Senior. Got accepted into trade school at Missouri State Tech. Loves her construction tech class at school and interesting economics discussions in AP econ. Likes that she doesn’t have to take German this year.

Favorite trip thing - marketplaces and museums - favorite was the Prague National History Museum. Ice cream in Greece. Recs: Movie rec - Knives out and the Glass Onion. Podcast - Dungeon’s and Daddies

Colleen

9th grade. This year’s highlights: got driver’s permit, quitting swim team, color guard, book club. Really came to love crocs. Best trip memory - walking around in Edinburgh, walking to the beach in Castricum, Netherlands. So much walking. Also Mother India restaurant in Edinburgh. Place - Parthenon. Most disappointing - Big Ben. First Apartment in Greece.

Recs: Books - “Song of Achilles.” Show - “Seven Lives of Lea.” Movie - “Spiderman - into the Spiderverse.” Music - Lana del Rey, Favorite playlist - Nightime Tunes. Labyrinth. Favorite app - pinterest shuffles

Alex

8th Grade. Best thing about this year - Making new friends. Playing DnD with Friends and hanging out at Charlie’s. Best trip memories - pizza place in Edinburgh. Walking around London with the sisters. Most disappointing - Big Ben.

Recs: Book - “Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.” Movie - “Do Revenge”, because it is so silly. Show - The Good Place - rewatched this year. Music - Automatic, Lush.

Emily + Celia

Finished and set up senior capstone show, graduated went on a long trip with the family, got a dog, started subbing everyday in Kirksville school district. Celia and Lee played a lot of ttrpgs, several Magic the Gathering campaigns as well as Vampire the Mascarade.

Celia’s favorite part of the trip was Aegina island and swimming in the pool with the kids, walks everyday, as well as getting to try a bunch of different coffee shops. Emily’s favorite trip memory was exploring the Hermitage in Edinburgh, especially when she was able to adventure on her own - going “goat” and following all the little animal paths and scaling big rocks to find berries.

Recs: Shows - Wednesday on Netflix, Summer Camp Island on HBO. Books: Sapiens by Yuval Harari, Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, and Brain Camp by Kim and Klavan.

Leila

Started substituting a few days a month at the elementary school. Planned and executed a 5 week European vacation with 8 people - we are a full tour group now. New patterns came out this fall. State Fair book and You Can quilt Book published with Amazon Kindle print on demand.

Leila's trip highlights - beach in Netherlands, Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Strawberries in Scotland, Ice cream in Netherlands, fresh juice in Island apartment. Bread/KFC in Czech. Tej in London, morning coffee with Brian in London. Pulling the whole thing off in spite of covid and so many trains, metros, buses, planes, ferries, Ubers, cabs, and rented bikes.

Recs - Books: Listened to a lot on tape. Veronica Speedwell Mysteries.

Brian

Had a good year working with cotton breeding at Bayer with new team members that started this year. I also worked a lot on collaborations with Abacusbio, Roslin, TAMU, and NC State. I struggled to focus and keep on top of my mountain of email and meetings this year and was diagnosed with ADHD, which will not be a surprise to anyone.

I traveled quite a bit this year, in the US to NH, MS, TX, FL, AZ, Africa - Kenya for meetings with CGIAR/IITA and Botswana to visit Amanda Jacobsen and family and to see some rhinos, and our long summer trip to England, Scotland - dual purpose work trip with Roslin Institute and meetings with Abacusbio, Netherlands, and Greece. We had the best of intentions of visiting family over Christmas, but Southwest had a meltdown and our flights were cancelled. I enjoyed reconnecting with people after two years of covid restrictions and hope to visit more friends and family in 2023.

Best thing about our Euro trip - morning walks to coffee shops before the rest of the family woke up. Worst thing - getting covid in Netherlands, although Becca was the very best quarantine buddy ever and made Netherlands my favorite place we visited. Second worst thing was the first apartment in Athens, but escaping to Aegina island was lovely and peaceful.

Recomendations: Books - Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, The Anthropocene Reviewed. Shows - Andor Movie - Everything, everywhere, all at once.

Aleah at 18

 

The missing circle or Where is God

One thing noticeably absent from my last post was a description of how my belief in God and the downstream beliefs about Jesus and Christianity have changed.  What surprised me about the response to my last post was that no one really asked about that either, except for my friend Bro. Dunstan.  (Embarrassingly I misspelled his name in the first version of this posted.  Fixed.)

In general, I have been deconstructing not only my relationship with and understanding of the LDS Church, but also God.  I am not sure I am quite ready to label myself as an atheist, but don't know of a theistic tradition I want to adopt. 

So in the same spirit of my last post, I will try to explain my thoughts around this starting first with four modifications of my original Venn diagram - because everyone loves a Venn diagram!  For simplicity, each of red ellipses represents "God". I also am avoiding parsing Bible or Book of Mormon verses or scripture intentionally in this post.  This is just how my brain has been obsessing about this topic recently. 

LDS doctrine 

What I taught as a missionary and believed as a member is most succinctly summarized in the missionary manuals - Link.  

Basically, God is both our creator and father of our spirits.  Definitely we also believed that God was male - not as much open discussion but loudly whispered beliefs that there was an unnamed female wife/mother as well.  Or multiple heavenly mothers... That we were created/organized as spirits first in a premortal life and then the world was created for us by the gods so that we could be born in a fallen mortal world, get bodies, be tested, and then return to heaven as resurrected, perfect beings eventually to become like God. LDS doctrine usually describe God as having a physical perfect body because he was also at some point in the eternities on a planet like earth, lived life, was resurrected and now promoted to God.  

Christ is a separate being that started as the first spirit created and then born on earth with a mortal mother and God as the physical father.  His role is to mediate between us and God and to overcome death and sin so that we can return to wherever God is.  He also has a physical immortal human-like body after his resurrection.  Post-Talmage Mormon Doctrine links Jesus with Jehovah before his birth and that he was a part of the godhead before and after his life on earth, but is not the same being as God.  

The Holy Ghost is like a third member of the godhead as a separate being of spirit because he hasn't been born yet and exists to influence us for good.  The devil is also a spirit creation of God but rebelled before creation and exists as a spirit to tempt and test the rest of us to do evil. 

In my diagram, I would say this is actually most like the top right diagram - Universe independent of God.  Maybe better said - God independent of the Universe, because God created the universe and It operates following the laws of nature and he/she/it exists outside and beyond those rules.  Humans have free will and operate independent of God.  In Mormon doctrine, He has a human-like physical body and exists somewhere kind of outside the temporal universe or on a planet near a sun called Kolob.  He existed at some prehistory/precreation point on his own world and was part of that creation.  That could be illustrated with a fifth diagram where the red ellipse representing god is part of the world, but would need to have a series of Venn diagrams representing that he progressed from being part of the world to being something more than that and that he was created by some other god.  Maybe an infinite number of Venn diagrams inside of other Venn diagrams and multiple gods.  It's Venn diagrams all the way down.

He can influence and impact the world and humans - but within the laws of nature and free will, subject to the laws that were set up before we were created.  In the Mormon world view that is why we have scriptures, angels, prophets, and the Holy Ghost - all ways that God can influence us in the world without taking away our independence from Him. The LDS church exists because of Him trying to restore the right ways to worship and follow him before the end of the world so that we can have faith, repent, etc to be judged worthy to return to live with Him. That is why they have missionary work, temples, new scriptures, etc. 

To be blunt, I don't believe in this God anymore.  I don't think this is how the world works.  Back to the diagram starting with:

Universe as God

God is not just the creator of the universe and doesn't exist independently.  He/She/It is the universe - a pantheistic interpretation of God.  I am imagining this view of God as a god of nature and forces and kind of incorporeal, but also that we are a part of God in that everything is part of God. In this description of God, God is to the parts of the universe almost like our cells are part of us.  The entirety of creation is part of this organism that is God.  Maybe that is too biological of a metaphor.  In this view if there is an afterlife it is becoming more indistinguishable from this Universal God.  

Do we have free will in this scenario?  Not sure.  Do our cells have free will?  Do red blood cells ever have an existential crisis about their job ferrying oxygen around the body and want to be more? I don't know, but we and other creatures all feel like we do - we think we have free will.  All other life is part of this living universe and is part of God somehow.  Humans are not a separate community from the world - inspiration tends to be in this world view about losing sense of self and belonging to the unifying bigger existence.  

Which religions fit in this category? I think a lot of new Age beliefs approach this.  Also religions where nature itself is god and communing with those forces is how we get closer to God.  In some ways this is an attractive idea - the world can have purpose and meaning, but that meaning is mostly that we are part of this bigger universal thing.  I like that idea.  Not sure I believe it really is true, but I do like it. 

World as God

I think the biggest difference with the last scenario  is that in this view of God - humans are kind of a special creation from the rest of the world.  We have free will and are more independent of God.  Also that the world was created for humans.  Our communities can exist independent of God, but there are interactions where some groups are inspired and led by God and others may not be.   God in this case could be like the Universe as God. Inspiration I think still tends to becoming one with nature.  

Is this a Christian God? Possibly there is a flavor of this somewhere, but it doesn't seem to be to me.   I think you could also capture a lot of nature polytheism into this kind of description of god where each god is a component of the world maybe?  I don't know.  Venn diagrams don't capture all the complexity of world religions I guess. 

I like this even less.  Because it still has a deity that is essentially integral to the nature around us, but we are independent of it?  What would that kind of God want from us?  

Universe Independent of God

This version of God is outside of time and the Universe.  He/She/It most likely created the universe and us.   So many different versions of God could be described this way.  In part I think this also implies that there is one god or set of gods that is universal for the world and all humans.   In a pantheon, those gods interact with each other and individuals, communities, and the world.  You could envision this universal god many different ways and it could have different level of interaction and control of the physical, human, and personal life. 

I think that this is the kind of God most Christian church's really believe in when they think of God - an "Omni" god - omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient that is also perfect, eternal and more than anything Good. There are a lot of variations in beliefs about the specific nature of this god and how that relates to Jesus, Holy Ghost/Spirit - whether trinitarian, binitarian, nontrinitarian, etc. but this god is not part of our world.  It is outside and supreme over the world.  

Like I described above, this to me is the way LDS church sees God, with some caveats.  I think one of the things that is a Mystery about the nature of god is that we talk about God being at the same time personal and impersonal - a judge and a comforter.  Maybe that is why trinitarian or not, the roles of Jesus and the Holy Ghost are important to be able to have a vision of a God that is incomprehensible, yet also something/someone that people feel like they have a close personal relationship to.  I certainly yearned for that and maybe as someone that is a little bit apostate now I have lost really my understanding of how that works.  I don't feel that personal connection now to God.  Did I have it before? At times I felt this strongly, other times I definitely did not.  Like when my son died the Idea of a all powerful personal god was not comforting - it made me angry.  And I didn't see how the vision of this god fit with that grief and loss. 

God of One Community

This is more common than I thought as a Mormon.  I think a lot of the historic gods of a specific culture and people including Judaism and early Christianity fit actually in this category - with the caveat that the same time God's nature may be that God and the community are part of the world or independent of the world.  My illustration is not complex enough to capture that.  Missionary work in this world view is adoption into the community of that God and membership is defined by that belief.  It also can be a pluralistic world view in that different communities could have different Gods that coexist potentially to rule and modify the world.  Exaltation is leveling up that communion with God and leaving the rest of the world behind. 

Even though I think most Christians, and certainly Mormons, would not accept the pluralistic implications or limitations to the scope and role of god that this implies, Christianity and Mormonism have echoes of this in how we talk about membership and conversion  as adoption into the community or family of the church.  Judaism is an ethnoreligion like this and I think the Old Testament and even most of the New Testament show this kind of view of God.  It comes through I think in how LDS leaders and members talk about being part of "Israel" - representing God's community and Gentiles - not god's community.   Patriarchal blessings have echoes of this too where each one declares the member's "lineage" as a tribe in the house of Israel.  It is behind the racism of the past LDS church teachings and leaders as well that excluded black people from being members of this community with varying justifications for why.  I think pairing this view of the community and God together with a patriarchal history and description of god, a strong single leader/prophet, and a doctrine of becoming like that patriarchal-potentially-polygamous God - whammo you get polygamy and misogyny. 

This was a part of my faith crisis.  I began to feel that if God was more than the god of our community that we wouldn't have the messy doctrine and uncomfortable history of the church.  And if we were God's special community that He was not actually doing a good job of leading this community or we were doing a bad job at following.  I worried about leaving this community because it meant rejecting the community - which I didn't want to do, and also it's god.  And maybe that fear was justified because that is part of what still bounces around my head a lot.  

Conclusion

I wrote the last blog post so that people who know me would understand some of the reasons why we decided to leave the church.  There was a real comfort in feeling like I had those answers and I am the first to admit that with this change in my life, I don't have them any longer.  I still study the scriptures, but I don't believe the stories they tell about Jesus, the prophets and the church are a clear message like I once did. I don't really know what God is like anymore.  

 
If there is a god though, I think God is bigger and more than I was taught in the church.  It’s a big universe.  If there is a grand design - a plan that we are all part of, then the LDS church is just one player - and a relatively small one with 16 million/8 billion people - less than 0.2% of the world. This is an old world with life that has been evolving for billions of years. I don't know what is before or after this life, but I think it is myopic to think we are in the end days. One planet in a big solar system.  One solar system in a galaxy with billions of stars. One galaxy in a ginormous universe. It is billions of years old and will keep on spinning for billions more.   It makes me feel small - but small I think in a good way. 
 
If there is an eternal design, inevitably I am a small part of it, but still a part of it.  I was as a member of the church, and I still am.  Like the metaphorical Adam and Eve, I choose to step out of the sheltered garden of the church and into the world.  When I was on my mission, attended BYU, married Leila, and had my family - I felt strongly that was where I needed to be. I feel the same about this decision. I am part of the rest of the 99.8% of the world - that is what I am joining. Intentionally.  I really feel like that is where, if there is a grand design, I am supposed to be. Even if that means losing my faith.

18 months later - Update after leaving the LDS church

As I was riding in to work today, I was thinking about trying changes in my life this last year and about what I needed to do today. Maybe it was the procrastination talking, maybe it was the beautiful cool morning ride with almost no traffic, but I had kind of this moment of inspiration, where I thought of how to talk about changes in my life since leaving the Mormon/LDS/Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Just before Easter, Mar 2021, we went to church - like we pretty much have done all of my life, every single week. The year before had been disrupted by covid and we had been mostly attending zoom sacrament meetings, but things were opening back up. The Stake presidency/High Council talk that week was about being “All the Way In.” Leila and I went for a walk afterwards and I wanted to know what that meant for us. I had been having a faith crisis for a while - and wasn’t sure what that meant for our family or for Leila. In a life changing moment we decided that we were actually out. We would leave the church. We talked and talked about why and what that would mean for a week or two before deciding to tell the kids at dinner on my birthday. Why on my birthday - I don’t know. It made the day kind of weird. Certainly not the conversation we usually have after cake and presents.

From there we talked to the bishop, people in the ward, and our families. But I haven’t written about it for social media, in part because I didn’t want to be confrontational about it and I wasn’t sure how to put it all in context. So here is my attempt to do that.

First, because I am me - a diagram, then definition of terms and then a FAQ like explanation.

Definitions

Self	Community	World
Identity	Family	Nature
Morals	Intimate partners	Environment
Feelings and Thoughts	Friends	History
Actions	Colleagues	Culture
	Neighbors	Economics
	Parasocial/online community

Examples of interactions

1. Self x Community - How we act and what we choose to do with other people. How we act in relationships, friendships, work relationships.
2. Self x World - Where we live and work, decisions about how we interact with the natural world. What we value and choose to do with resources - agriculture, development, garden, house, how we travel, where we travel, hobbies, etc.
3. World x Community - Stuff the community does to influence the world, or things that the world influences the actions of the community. For example: Governments, politics, culture, language, selection, adaptation, technology, history, pollution, agriculture, climate change.
4. Self x Community x World - That is all the things I do or have done - a combination of interactions between inner and external life. Who I am at work and school and home. If there is an answer for how and why I act the way I do it hides in this combination of my self, our community, and our world.

Why did I leave the LDS church

1.         Self - Ultimately, my identity, morals, thoughts and feelings began to be in conflict with the doctrines of the church. I no longer was able internally to “doubt my doubts” - I began to see things in the church and its teachings that conflicted with what I understood was true and right. The process of this faith crisis/deconstruction and the details of this I am happy to talk about for hours and hours, but isn't particularly unique to me.  The things that I struggled with were things a lot of people are challenged with - the history of racism, patriarchy, and polygamy, the truth claims of mormon prophets and scripture, my belief and doubts about god, and what I believed was right and wrong. 

        I can remember the moment where I felt like I was breaking - I was standing in our room, next to the closet, crying, trying to tell Leila about my concerns and my feelings about the church, and she told me - you know, it is OK to not believe.  And once I let that be an option, that I knew that was what was right for me now. 

2.         Community - I have heard people say that the people in the church aren’t perfect, but the church is. I think the opposite may be more true. I love the people and community that I had in the LDS church and there were points in my life where they were life saving and essential. For example, when my parents were divorced and we needed help - our ward was there for us. BYU was good for me. My mission in Nicaragua was a lot of things, but I met so many people that I loved there. Then, I met my wonderful wife and we had a family together. Our wards have been safe places where I found a lot of friends and support my whole life. I felt like I owed the church allegiance for all of that support in my past.

        But, there were problems in the church and its community, like misogyny, racism, and intolerance, from the institution and its history that began to erode that allegiance. My children did not feel that same connection, especially my LGBT children that did not feel like they could be accepted there. I could see the strain on my wife and daughters from patriarchal gender roles and expectations. I didn’t fit those either. I found I disagreed with the leaders of the church about gender, sexuality, and how it defined itself as the “one and true church”. I started to feel like it would be better to leave than stay.

3.         World - There is a scripture in the Book of Mormon that says that all things testify of Christ and sometimes that is what I was taught to believe about the church.  But many things in the world didn't fit with the teachings and actions of the church. Evolution made a lot more sense than the creation myths.  The Book of Mormon, Abraham, and Moses - uniquely LDS scripture's truth claims weren't supported from all the things I learned about the world. The history of the church was not as simple and faith promoting as I learned in the church.  I found the stories of polygamy and the beliefs of the prophets really hard to support.  The culture of like Utah and Idaho Mormons is sometimes criticized, but it grows out of the doctrines and teachings of the church that I didn't like.  The economics of the church's finances was a huge blow to my testimony.  When I learned the extent of church's reserves of stocks, real estate, and for profit business, I was shook.  

Why did we all leave the LDS church

Everyone has own story that I am not sure is my place to tell here.  That is why I just talked about my thoughts and feelings. In general, the older kids all had their own issues with church doctrine, practices and history. Some had already decided that they didn't believe, and just hadn't told us.  Once we were at dinner and one of the girls asked kind of out of the blue, "Was it OK that Joseph Smith married someone that was like 14 years old?" I said I didn't think so and they kind of nodded and dinner conversation wandered back to normal small talk. Others felt as LGBT youth that the church wasn't an accepting place for them.  For others, it was a lot easier to do other fun things on Sunday instead of church.

In March 2021, when Leila and I started intensely debating whether we would stay or leave and what that meant for our family and when we talked to the kids, we allowed the kids to choose their level of activity, but we wanted to also set some boundaries.  That was mainly what we had to talk to the bishop about.  Mostly, the ward has been great at that.  I can tell at points that there are questions about what is going on with the Gardunia's and some leaders really would like to try and reactivate the kids, but for now none of us are attending. 

What has changed?

1. Self - It has been the biggest of changes, and the smallest of changes.  Mostly I think my identity, morals, ideas, etc. haven't changed, but internally I have spent a ton of my brain space deconstructing and thinking about the church and what I still believe and what I don't.  A huge part of my identity was defined by being a member of the church and my roles that I played there and I still carry all those past versions of myself. The biggest revelation is that even with abandoning those roles, that I am still me and a me that I like.  My sense of right and wrong is mostly the same - although I have started drinking tea and coffee regularly and occasionally alcohol.  I realize just how judgmental I was of others and it is freeing to let that go.  That has helped I think improve my relationship with my children - especially Emily and her girlfriend, and reveals some painful shortcomings that I have had. My core values though are the same -  I still want to be the best father, spouse, friend, and plant breeder in the world. 
2. Community - I miss my friends from church and that community.  I don't think it is intentional on anyone's part to grow apart, but the church keeps everyone so busy and I am busy.  There just isn't time to add extra effort to keep in touch the same without the weekly and regular touchpoints that came from activity in the church.  We have tried to be better connected to people in the neighborhood and our family.  A huge part of my time is still swallowed by work unfortunately.  I still consider myself in a way part of that community of people and this hasn't changed that.  So please don't let this change in my life deter you from reaching out or connecting. 
3. World - in the end, the church is just a small fraction of the world, although it felt like a huge percentage when I was in it.  Me leaving the church hasn't seemed to make much impact either way on either the church or the world, but the biggest change is trying to reevaluate my interactions with the world of history, philosophy, culture, and economics.  For a concrete example - where to donate money now.  Most of my charitable donations went to the church for 45 years.  Do I donate the same amount to other places? if so where?  Still trying to figure that out but mostly supporting environmental and social organizations that I think are doing some good in the world.  

Monastery - St Anselm College

 

Album - Water To Drink Not Write About

Testing.  Will probably pull down. 

Art goals for 2022

 

I need to draw more.  2002 I drew almost every day.  

2021 Social media thoughts

 I have liked facebook on the whole, but it isn't always good for me. I spend time on it to procrastinate sometimes. I find myself getting upset and riled up about political or social media controversies that seem designed for my ADHD brain. It sucks me in.

I have spent some time trying to make this a better place for me. In part I have refrained on commenting on political things - except on Ann Wagner's dumb posts, but she is my representative so I guess I have just one venue for political trolling. The last few years years of the Trump presidency it was clear my political engagement online wasn't good for me or anyone else I also have not posted that much and decided to post from instagram and to put less of my life in the social media frame. I love the way John Green (vlogbrothers) has discussed framing with social media. This has been helpful, but it means there is stuff going on with my life that I haven't shared here. So please reach out and keep in touch. I have a bunch of social media accounts now. I have been posting my work/genetics thoughts on Twitter (@BrianGardunia) and have longer personal thoughts and writing still on my blog (Graduategrumblings.blogspot.com). Even though that is a public blog, I tend to write quite personal things there, but I have stopped using it for daily/weekly regular updates. For example, I have not written about leaving the church here on Facebook. LinkedIn tends to be a spam creator, but it was really useful for trying to recruit people for Bayer/Monsanto and looking for jobs. I don't make videos and tiktok is like cocaine for my ADD brain so I have avoided that platform. The question I have is still how I will continue to use facebook or instagram. Should I stop, when do I stop? Another area that is obvious with social media platforms is that they are commercial money making machines where we as users are part of the product they are selling. Ads are part of the experience and definitely part of what makes Facebook/Google/Twitter/etc money. The social media platform cares more about them than us. Users are really data mining opportunities for ads and sales. I don't love this about social media. To make it more bearable, I have been aggressive about manipulating the algorithm by clicking consistently on certain kinds of ads. Facebook is now full of three kinds of ads for me: 1. Language apps - especially Natakallam a nonprofit that leverages refugees to teach languages like Arabic. 2. Shoe ads - I like shoes. I started clicking on shoe ads now almost 10 years ago when I tried to get tickets to a sold out Brandi Carlile concert at a resort in Mexico that was part of a lesbian travel package. I started getting ads for gay and lesbian cruises and thought maybe clicking on shoe ads would make a very vanilla adscape I could ignore easily. 3. Native American news - I started on this rabbit hole last year at the end of the Trump administration as a way to still get news but from a different lens that didn't make my blood pressure boil. Highly recommend. There are a lot of interesting things I have learned by filling my feed with Native American news and art. This is certainly long enough that it shouldn't be on Facebook. I will copy to my blog and elaborate there, but I wanted to post here to see what the conversation could be about how you are managing what you keep in the frame for social media and how you consume and use social media. What do you do to better manage your time, your profile, and how social media affects your life? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZgkUUEf56s

Tick tick tick

Decision making in a commercial breeding program - BrIN Learning Series

If you ever thought - "man, I wished there was an hour long recording of Brian giving a powerpoint presentation about his job I could watch. . . " You are in luck.

I presented to a group at the international breeding and seedbank centers around the globe and they recorded the presentation.

I was staying at a friends cabin in Colorado and so it is early in the morning as I sat on the porch. I didn't realize they were recording the session until I started talking and I had modified an existing presentation, which I should have run past legal for approval, but didn't. So I was nervous and then my computer died right at the end so it is by no means a TED talk.

The Wizarding World, Muggles and Mormons

Becca and I finished the Harry Potter series in record time this last year due to you know - Covid19.  I am convinced that J.K. Rowling actually is magic.  Harry Potter is totally entrancing and each of my kids has totally fallen in love with reading because of it.  They also have confessed that they have waited on their birthdays for possibly, maybe, but seriously hoping they were getting a letter from Hogwarts.  Because they also want to be wizards. 

This time through the series, something struck me.  There is a dark substory.  The backstory to why Voldemort and the Deatheaters even come to power and that war is a disturbing one. It is Dumbledore's dark past too.  Harry is mixed up in this as he is destined to confront Voldemort and bring balance to the force - sorry wrong series - that is Anakin Skywalker. After a lifetime of abuse from his adopted parents and brother, he is thrilled to learn on his 11th birthday that he is not like them; he is a wizard.  This is thrilling because it not only gives him an escape from his life, but opens the door to a secret and magical world. He is a mix of savior and counter to Voldemort's dark aims - he befriends repeatedly halfbloods, but he is just as set apart from the muggle world.  But he offers a better way to be set apart and yet not be an enemy to the rest of the world. 

There is a dark side to this world though. Magical people internalize this separateness and see their secret knowledge and power make them different and better than their nonmagical neighbors.  They call the majority non-magical people muggles or mudbloods.  They want to restrict marriages between them to keep their race pure.  Their racist attitudes are built into the mythology and the history of their school.  It is the fight between Slytherin and the other founders.  This is the evil that is behind Voldemort.  He is just the face of that intolerance.  And unfortunately, it really didn't end with his death. 

I see some echoes of that in Evangelical and Mormon theology.  It may be behind our own racist past and led to the denial of the priesthood and temple ordinances to black members all the way to the 1970s. I am not saying it was an inevitable result, but it is the soil that these kind of dangerous ideologies grow in.  I see it in our political movements as well - polarization and separation of news sources, people having social and political bubbles, "America first", anti immigrant rhetoric, weaponizing patriotic language

1. Magical world view - expanded cosmology, nature, and apocalyptic world view, a rejection of science. Our religion was founded by this kind of thinking - Book of Mormon was translated with a rock and they used divining rods, etc. for trying to scry god's will.  Plus I worry that planning for a savior to come and solve the problems for us in a Millenial conflict keeps us from really addressing the problems we have.  
2. Secret knowledge and levels -  Temple, second endowment, but it also levels of priesthood and church callings.  The hierarchical thinking about knowledge and transparency.  I think this is one of the reasons the LDS church stopped revealing results of its audits.  It does them, but it isn't open to the whole body of the church.  It is need to know information. But this kind of culture makes it relatively easy to suppress and ignore past history that is negative.  Just shut that away because it will hurt people's faith and keep that knowledge to the people who are in higher levels and can handle it. 
3. Set apart - being a Chosen people means others are not chosen. In Harry Potter, you literally get a special invitation and come to a secret school in a secret location. But it means that the magical community is isolated even when surrounded by muggle towns and neighbors. It would have been such a different book if they had banded together with muggles to fight Voldemort. For us in the LDS church, it also means that we aren't fully in our communities.  Think about even the language we use to describe ourselves - a ward family, brother, sister, gentile, active, inactive, apostate, nonmember, investigator.  We are invested heavily in our church lives - activities, seminary, church, missions, church schools, social networks, business networks, etc.  And it enables us to be separate to be a holy and peculiar people, but it may mean we aren't truly invested in our communities.  It means we see the rest of the world as other. 
4. Power and authority reinforced through social control - In Harry Potter they have separate schools, a separate ministry, different shops, etc.  And Voldemort isn't the only enemy to Harry - it is the ministry itself that is trying to hold on to power and keep control and although they are against Voldemort - the worst of embodiment of the separatism that keeps Muggles out of their lives, they justify plenty of terrible actions to keep power and maintain their isolation.  And they do it out of love - out of trying to do their best to keep their culture and their people safe. 

Harry Potter shows a better alternative to Voldemort - embracing people that are diverse and different within his community - Hermione, Hagrid, Firenze, Lupin, Dobby, Kreacher, the goblin in the last book, Buckbeak, even the ghosts at the school and the captured dragon in Gringotts, and all of his friends that are kind of different and unique. He wins not because he is a better magician than Voldemort, but because he in the end has help from all the people on the fringes - even the Malfoys that are kind of apostate Death Eaters by the end.  But they are still all within the magical world.  I would love to see another series of books on what happens if they were exposed.  What if Hogwarts students went to a regular school - and say learned math and history instead of Muggle studies and Arithmancy.  What if they used technology and magic together.  

What does this mean for me?  As we have stepped back from our safe Mormon world during this year, it is a scary muggle world out there.  I loved feeling like I was part of a special, set apart generation, saved for these latter days. I went to BYU - the closest Mormon thing to Hogwarts and have been set apart for many callings since.  I have been embedded in this set apart community and it has been my culture, my history, and a safe place.  It gave me roles and heroes to build my life around. I see my kids chaffing against those expectations though.  And maybe it is time to start to build more connection with the rest of the world. 

References

American segregation https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/rappaports-law-en

https://boaporg.wordpress.com/2013/02/17/muggles-mormons-and-theology/

Bach memories

Link for Yascha Heiffitz playing my favorite Bach: Link

When I was in fifth grade I remember having a pen pal at school.  My teacher had another classroom from Brooklyn that wrote us letters.  We were each paired up with a student in that class.  I don't remember the name of the kid I wrote to.  I remember really clearly him asking me if I liked Run DMC and I am pretty sure I told him that I liked running and playing a lot but I didn't what what DMC was.  I asked him if he liked Bach. I had a tape collection of classical music - it wasn't very big, but I played the Bach and Beethoven tapes over and over again. He had no idea what I was talking about. It made me realize that I might be a wierd kid.  

I wish I could find those old letters.  It would be fun to track down the boy that I wrote to see what happened with his life 30 years later.  I wonder if he remembers that strange kid from Teton, ID. 

I am a poor letter correspondent I am afraid - even on my mission I was sporadic about writing, but that was when I have done the best.  I enjoy keeping in touch with people and it is important to me, but I don't always do what is needed to maintain those connections.  One of my oldest friends is a monk now and writes me occasionally and I know he would write more if I were better at writing back.  I really value connection and long term friendships, and keep trying to put down roots somewhere.  At the same time though I feel a need to move to go new places and do new things and sabotage myself.  Even now I feel this itch to get out of St Louis and move somewhere new.  

So if you haven't heard from me in a while, know that I mean well and look forward to the next time we see each other in person.  And if you want a good pen pal, you should totally write to Becca.  She sends letters out every week to her friends and anyone that writes to her.  

24 Hours of Reality: "Earthrise" by Amanda Gorman

Amanda Gorman really stood out to me at the inauguration. The three moments that made me cry were when Vice President Harris walked out with the capital police officer that helped protect senators, when Jennifer Lopez called out in Spanish, and during Amanda Gorman's poem. 

This video is another of her poems from a few years ago as a call to action to do something about climate change.  I want to do something about climate change.  I worry about it so much, like an unhealthy amount.  I see it in the change in diseases and pests, in our warmer winters, in dying trees. I bought an electric car a few years ago and since my accident have not replaced it, instead relying on public transportation and my bike, and in the last year mostly working from home.  I related so much to this reply all podcast. 

But, I want to do more.  I think we must do more.  

Yesterday, we had a seminar at work about climate change that left me for the first time hopeful.  The speaker at Bayer - a professor in agriculture and climate change made a pretty convincing case that agriculture can truly help reduce greenhouse gases.  Here were roughly his conclusions:

1. Carbon-negative farming techniques - banking organic matter in soil.  These include: cover crops, no-till, optimal nitrogen fertilizer applications, and bioenergy crops.  I am a little skeptical that bioenergy crops are the solution, and he didn't talk about coproduction of wind and solar energy as part of farming.  There are a lot of windmills going up throughout the Midwest and I think with better energy storage and local energy utilization methods they could be a key component of sustainable carbon-negative farming techniques. 
2. Agriculture will be a major player for good or for ill in climate change.  Think storing carbon while producing food vs chopping down rainforest for soybean fields.  Runoff of Nitrogen, phosphorous, and soil into rivers and the ocean vs efficiently converting that into organic matter - improved soils, feed, food for livestock and people. 
3. Technologies available now
• Nitrous oxide abatement - precision N application and management
• Carbon sequestration - Cover crops, no till
• Cellulosic bioenergy - He didn't count this but anytime we can use all the biomass for animal feed that has to be better than grain fed systems.
4. Areas for research
• Plant N use efficiency
• Increased carbon sequestration - more roots, stabilization, better capture of organic matter in the soil
5. References
• Syswerda et al. 2011
• Basso, Shuai, Zhang and Robertson 2019 Sci Reports
• Prin 2004
• Robertson 2012
• Tian et al. 2016
• Global Carbon Budget