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More than eighty years ago Ernest H. Wilson visited Korea in search of new plant material for American gardens. What he came upon and brought back has mainly enriched them. Today our cognition of what was once a remote country has mainly increased. However, much of what we know and associate with Korea today is unpleasing for a lot of American lives have been lost there. In fact, the very mention of the name ordinarily brings an expression of confusedness or a shake of the head. And yet, the work of a scientist at the University of New Hampshire, Professor Meador, who lately expended a year in Korea, may well bear watching. He has collected seed of numerous vegetables and fruits there and is now busy crossing them with American strains in an effort to give rise to hardier varieties for our Northern climate which will mature in our comparatively short growing season.
When a friend handed me an old copy of the Atlantic Monthly, dated May 1875, in order to read Celia Thaxter’s “A Memorable Murder” as background for a visit to the barren and rocky Isles of Shoals which lie off the coast of New Hampshire, I was astounded at the illustrious galaxy of great literary figures represented in this single copy. I could not aid but jot down the names of the prose and poetry contributors. Today closely all are amid the most widely known and esteemed in American creative writing of recognized artisti value รณ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Henry James, Jr., Thomas Bailey Aldrich, William Dean Howells, S. J. Barrows, James Russell Lowell, Mark Twain, John Greenleaf Whittier, William M. Baker, Sarah Orne Jewett, F. B. Sanborn, J. W. De Forest and Celia Thaxter. In addition to these signed articles, there were various literary and musical reviews and essays on education. There, in a thin but singular volume, was quality of style and thought and gracious expression that we may well afford to hold and emulate as our ideal.
The man who introduced that extremely pleasing rose to the world passed on not long ago in a hospital not far from the campus of Swarthmore – a college he loved for it is traditions and it is outstanding collection of plants. I refer to Robert Pyle of West Grove, Pennsylvania, one of America’s outstanding champions of the rose. Like his close friend, the late J. Horace McFarland, Mr. Pyle searched far and wide for new varieties and new uses for the rose. His travels took him to Europe each year where he studied the new varieties being developed there. It was his keen eyes and his shrewd judgment that made it possible for us to grow and take pleasure in the miniature Rosa rouletti and the hybrids in other colors that followed. Robert Pyle has left his mark on American gardens with the a good deal of choice varieties of roses which he introduced. What more noteworthy memorial could any man hope for than to have given joy to millions with the rose Peace – even if this were his only contribution. Because of his all-engrossing interest in horticulture, he worked arduously for United Horticulture, and served as it is president. He felt keenly the importance of uniting all the specialized groups in America who were consecrated to the pursuit of horticulture in it is multitudinous forms and specialties. His resourcefulness was limitless and his ideals great.
We think we have troubles with bugs and blights. Let’s ponder these words from a 3,700-year-old farm bulletin. LED grow lights were not around at that time! Extension instructing is much older than most folks realize. An expedition in Iran unearthed a clay tablet bearing agricultural data which antedates the initial antecedently known bulletin, ‘Works and Days,’ by the Greek poet, Hesoid. Among the approved exercises here listed are putting the grain in the soil two fingers deep and irrigating a fourth time to net an extra yield of one cup in each ten. On the day when the seed breaks through the ground, the farmer was advised to say a prayer to the goddess of the mongoose, enemy of field mice and other vermin that might injure the grain. He ought to also scare away the birds.
Crossing American Grain Grady Clay
In Real Places, Grady Clay presents the American landscape in a exclusively fresh and untypical way. Rather than look at locations, he studies constructed, imaginative sites. Clay explores the fascination of “Fall Color Country,” or “Lover’s Lane.” What draws persons to these “generic” landscapes and keeps them coming back in a literal sense and figuratively time and time again? Real Places catalogs and describes a distinguishable cross-section of America, emphasizing the beauty and intrigue of these concealed gems. Heavily illustrated with maps and photographs depicting the daily as well as the bizarre, Clay’s agreeably diverting Baedeker allows us to see in a new way what has always been “right before our eyes.”
“This book provides a language for the architecture of daily life.”—Ross Miller, Chicago Tribune
“Spirited observations and capsule histories.”—Suzanne Stephens, New York Times Book Review
“Compelling. . . . Included here are a good deal of nuggets of clear or deep perception and illumination.”—Brad Knickerbocker, Christian Science Monitor
“An funny and touching book with regards to the reality we Americans have captured in our language.”—Boston Sunday Globe
From Publishers WeeklyClay’s premise in this agreeably diverting guidebook is that generic place-names like edge of town, good address, commuting suburb and inner city obscure the singular features of specific locales. In the same witty manner of his Close-Up: How to Read the American City, he proceeds from abandoned farm to whale-watching site, with stopovers at flea markets, lovers’ leaps, hazardous waste dumps, the Pacific Rim, boondocks and other places, talking about each term’s roots, historic associations and the preconceptions embedded in it. Based on his coast-to-coast travels of the last 10 years, and illustrated with scores of photographs and maps, this eye-opening handbook of America’s cultural geography will foster new ways of thinking with regards to the human-made environment. Urban affairs editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, Clay here unravels the geopolitical tensions amid cities, suburbs and rural areas, with attention to the clash amid developers and sustainers.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library JournalClay (Close-Up: How To Read the American City, 1980) traveled America in a wide swath from Southern California to Massachusetts, benefitting clear or deep perception into the language and terminology we Americans use to define the spaces within which we live and work or merely visit and describe to others. He makes the parlance of humane geography intimate and accessible as he explores the derivation and evolution of place names, from hub and vacant lot to hangout and speed trap. American diversity of sensing and attitude are delightfully revealed in these liquid terms, which defy rigid definition but stay alive and altering as populations change, land use is altered, and the ravages of zoning law and natural disaster precise their influences. Special humane geography and anthropology collections will want this for severe perusal, while the broad illustrations will make it likeable to public library patrons.?Bruce Alan Hanson, Wayzata East J.H.S. Lib., Minn.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Crossing American Grain Grady Clay Image
Crossing American Grain Grady Clay Pic
Crossing American Grain Grady Clay Picture
Crossing American Grain Grady Clay Image
An encyclopedia of small-scale urban and rural geography
This profusely-illustrated book comprises of approximately 120 mini-essays on a slew of topics that relate in a heap of way to urban planning and urban geography, though there’s rather a bit on rural geography as well. For a good deal of idea of the content, here are the original five of his essay headings, if they had been in alphabetical order: Abandoned farm/town, active zone (i.e., crime zone), air rights zone, airspace, annexation area, all the way to ‘wreck site’ at the end of the alphabet.
The essays are of uneven quality, and oftentimes seem a bit shallow. It’s not agreeably diverting sufficient to succeed as a ordinary book, and not analytical sufficient to succeed as a severe treatise. There’s a niche for a book that would address topics of small-scale geography in the not-quite-rural but not-city-center places in which most of us spend our lives. Such a book might explain the dissimilar ingredients of suburban sprawl — types of buying goods centers, mercantile strips, and housing developments, how they develop, how they affect the surrounding area, and how they age. Sadly, this book seemed pointed in that direction but fell short.
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