“For, lo, the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone;
the flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing of birds is come…”
Sometimes it really upsets me—
the way the clock’s hands keep moving,
even when I’m just sitting here
not doing anything at all,
not even thinking about anything
except, right now, about that clock
and how it can’t keep its hands still.
Even in the dark I picture it, and all
its brother and sister clocks and watches,
even sundials, all those compulsive timepieces
whose only purpose seems to be
to hurry me out of this world.
This is a great article I stumbled upon when doing research for my Environmental Science class. It presents both the pros and cons of GM crops equally and with no clear bias. Here is the overview paragraph:
Genetically-modified foods (GM foods) have made a big splash in the news lately. European environmental organizations and public interest groups have been actively protesting against GM foods for months, and recent controversial studies about the effects of genetically-modified corn pollen on monarch butterfly caterpillars1, 2 have brought the issue of genetic engineering to the forefront of the public consciousness in the U.S. In response to the upswelling of public concern, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) held three open meetings in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Oakland, California to solicit public opinions and begin the process of establishing a new regulatory procedure for government approval of GM foods3. I attended the FDA meeting held in November 1999 in Washington, D.C., and here I will attempt to summarize the issues involved and explain the U.S. government’s present role in regulating GM food.
I encourage anyone interested to spend a few minutes reading it. Decision making should be informed, so inform yourself!
le link:
So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one, in the end - not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we must. Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart. When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by forces of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall. You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman’s second glance, a child’s apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words “I have something to tell you,” mother’s papery ancient hand in the thicket of your hair, the memory of your father’s voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.
- Brian Doyle
Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
I’ve sat down to write:
To describe pictures with vivid blue,
And deep orange,
To help you see
The snowy blanket covering the trees for their sleep,
Or the billowy smoke rising from the chimneys of those
Cold
Square houses.
I’ve sat down to write:
To describe the slant in his eyes,
and the sandy tint to his air,
To help you taste
The sting of that ginger tea smoothing over your chapped, splitting lips,
Or the lemon that has turned sweet from the honey resting at the bottom of your cup.
I’ve sat down to write:
But all I can do is remember.
