The value of a college or university education is a frequent topic in today’s news. “Is higher education worth the cost?” “Is higher education worth any cost?” Much jargon is used in these discussions. Words like “formation” and “socialization”. (Is “deformation” a result of a lack of “formal” education? Are uneducated people “anti-social”?) Often I […]

I have a good Argentinean friend who was a wife of a top executive of a major, multinational industrial company. She also has great taste. Once, many years ago, she and her husband spent several days as a guest of a wealthy client of her husband’s company at his home in Martinique, a former French […]

The great thing about reaching middle age in our current society is that one does so, more or less, healthy. Until very recently in the history of civilizations, middle age did not exist for most people. Of course, health includes mental health – the most important of all. In my case I am lucky to […]

Last summer I became sandwiched between two political issues that appear sympathetic, but on close scrutiny show a profound and dissonant contradiction deep in the fertile soil of community gardening. Recently, First Lady Michelle Obama boldly proclaimed that the urban poor were at serious risk of deprivation of fresh produce. The so called “food deserts” […]

Much of the country is now experiencing winter weather. Recently, snow closed the better part of Interstate 40 in New Mexico, and Hayward, WI, was 2° F a night or two ago. But here on California’s central coast, many plants are still growing and flowering (a little slowly perhaps, given the short days). But some […]

The winter blues have never been a problem in my life, as they have for many friends who speak often about their generalized or indistinct feelings of depression at this time of year. They swear it’s not family-related and I believe them. I went to a college-preparatory boarding school for four years, located in northern […]

Why are most people right-handed and so few left-handed? The short answer is that nobody knows. But left-handers are present in all cultures, and there are always significantly fewer of them than right-handers. In western cultures, 10 to 13% of the population is left-handed; in some archaic people (the Eipo in West Papua, New Guinea, […]

I’ll never forget learning about sunflowers. During a few days in 1987 spent with the genius raconteur, plant breeder and seed impresario, Cees Sahin, I traveled through space and time (especially the latter) on the Starship Helianthus. Cees told me the little-known fact that the epicenter of sunflower cultivation was not the US Midwest—no, no!—but […]

Don’t tell a soil scientist about the “dirt” in your garden, and don’t call the dust of Mars “soil”, as NASA press briefings generally do. The soil scientist’s outrage may be feigned, but the point will be that soil is much more than something you sweep from your kitchen floor or wash from your hands, […]

Jay Gatsby famously says in The Great Gatsby “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!” He’s a larger than life character in a novel, of course, and (of course) he’s wrong anyway. But in good times or bad, most people would turn back the clock if they could. The past often shines more […]