On the road!

I'm heading off to Indiana tomorrow to my sister's graduation from Earlham College! It will be fun to see the whole familia and celebrate wonderful Hannah!

In other news:

My school takes a few dollars out of every student's tuition to put in a fund called the "Green Fee". Students can apply for this money and use it for sustainability projects. Last term they had students sign a pledge not to drink or buy bottled water in return for a reusable water bottle! They just got here this week: they are pretty cute! Bottled water really isn't any better for you, ya know! Tap water is generally safer than bottled water in the vast majority of the US. So just fill up your water bottle at the sink, or use a brita filter of something, people!
A girl from my old high school is doing her SIS (Senior Independent Study) project about not creating waste for 6 weeks. CHECK IT OUTTT!

Water water water

Where does the time go? I have been very busy.
But that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about all the things I want to post about.
Here are some random tid-bits:

I read a very interesting article/interview about water here.

I've been reading more of Wendell Berry's Bringing It To The Table. He says a lot of the things that seem obvious, but are never said enough, for example: "... if agriculture is to remain productive, it must preserve the land, and the fertility and ecological health of the land; the land, that is, must be used well. A further requirement, therefore, is that if the land is to be used well, the people who use it must know it well, must be highly motivated to use it well, must know how to use it well, must have time to use it well, and must be able to afford to use it well. Nothing that has happened in the agricultural revolution of the last fifty years has disproved or invalidated these requirements, though everything that has happened has ignored or defied them."
SO TRUE. How often do we think about the land we use? These requirements are rarely met.

Also, my Plant Biology class is amazing. I love learning about the inner workings of plants. Is photosynthesis not the coolest thing ever? When I read a passage in my textbook about how carrots were originally purple, I instantly smiled. One of my favorite things to do to get people interested in agriculture is to tell them purple carrots exist. People get so used to what they see at grocery stores it tends to blow their minds. :)

SO there are my random tidbits. More to come, of course. I have to write a paper about a human desire and a plant that fulfills that desire (based off of Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire), and I think I'm going to do control and GMO corn. So much exciting going on, and I'm also trying to find a way to get to Earlham to hear Michael Pollan speak in February. It's 2 weeks before my finals, though, so I'll have to plan VERY far in advance.

THINK ABOUT DIRT.
Have you thanked your vegetables today?