About an hour into our continued search, Walt called out that he had found it. It was on a slope so steep and rocky, we had to lie on our sides to keep from sliding down. But that was the good news, because the plant was apparently thriving in a niche where competing plants could not survive.
» More ...Evelyn Fox Keller, a well-known social critic and professor of philosophy of science at MIT, termed the 20th century the “Century of the Gene.” Five years into the 21st century, it can be easily argued that we are in for another century full of genetic wonder, hope, frustration, and fear.
It is impossible to read a newspaper or watch the news without hearing about the discovery of a gene that will affect all of our lives. Recently, genes have been reported to be responsible for problems ranging from compulsive shopping, obesity, and alcoholism to breast and prostate cancer. How do nonscientists wade through the hype … » More …
There aren’t many anthologies that juxtapose poems by the likes of Robert Frost with those of elementary school kids. In Praise of Fertile Land does, and it works.
My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a treeToward heaven still,And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill Beside it, and there may be two or threeApples I didn’t pick upon some bough.But I am done with apple-picking now,
intones Frost in “After Apple-Picking”—expressing, it may be, not just the fatigue of harvest, but adult world-weariness.
Then along comes second-grader Henry Phillips, offering “A Recipe for a Garden”:
Add roses and a huge stretch for tulips.Pinch in a … » More …
Poetry in motion he wasn’t. At least not on the basketball court, even though 6’ 9” Jim McKean, his fadeaway jump shot, and his rebounding (he still holds the single-game Far West Classic rebounding record of 27, set against Princeton in 1967) were anchors of the rebirth of Washington State University men’s hoops in the mid-’60s.
“He didn’t have real good feet and was not a great athlete,” Marv Harshman, WSU’s head coach at the time, said a couple of weeks before the start of this year’s NCAA tournament. But that wasn’t the whole story.
“He had great hands, and he played with his head,” … » More …
Educating the incarcerated is not an undertaking for the faint of heart. In Dancing to the Concertina’s Tune: A Prison Teacher’s Memoir, Jan Walker ’60 explores her unusual career in correctional education and seeks to give the reader an understanding of prisons and inmates.
At bottom, the book is about how education can be used as a means toward transformation and, perhaps, redemption. Walker is steadfast in her argument for educating the imprisoned in parenting and family skills. She clearly lets both reader and inmates know she understands that, while poor family structure is likely to have contributed to the criminal’s path, it is no … » More …