Monthly Archives: November 2003

Space Links

Space

From Spaceman Glen. These are very cool. The first one has a giganto java applet and I had trouble getting it to load, but if you have a decent-sized computer, it’s worth it – It’s Molecular Expressions’ Power of Ten. It’s basically a site that starts you out in the Milky Way 10 million light years from earth, then moves you 10 times closer and 10 times closer and you eventually get subatomic inside a leaf on earth.

The other one also rocks, if you like space and stuff. It’s from Australia and it’s called The Best of Hubble. It takes you on a tour of some amazing Hubble images with some neat spacey music. Very cool. Very, very cool.

A Good Farmer

Uncategorized

by BARBARA KINGSOLVER
from the November 3, 2003 issue of The Nation

Sometime around my fortieth birthday I began an earnest study of agriculture.
I worked quietly on this project, speaking of my new interest to almost no
one because of what they might think. Specifically, they might think I was out
of my mind.

Why? Because at this moment in history it’s considered smart to get out of
agriculture. And because I was already embarked on a career as a writer, doing work that many people might consider intellectual and therefore superior to anything involving the risk of dirty fingernails. Also, as a woman in my early
40s, I conformed to no right-minded picture of an apprentice farmer. And
finally, with some chagrin I’ll admit that I grew up among farmers and spent the
first decades of my life plotting my escape from a place that seemed to offer me almost no potential for economic, intellectual or spiritual satisfaction.

It took nigh onto half a lifetime before the valuables I’d casually left
behind turned up in the lost and found.
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