― Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook
You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it and enjoy the French seeds of bread with cheese in a company of Kenyan and English Melbournian grrls
Atlas Obscura: “On a shelf just behind the reference desk at the Harmon branch of the Phoenix Public Library, are small pouches of seeds. Like the books and DVDs, they’re available to check out. The library allows visitors to take a few packets of the vegetable and flower seeds home for free just by showing their library card. “It’s innovative, it’s different, it’s another way for people to interact with the library,” says Lee Franklin, the library’s spokesperson. “It’s been really well received.” The Phoenix Public Library first put seeds on the shelves at one of its branches in 2014. Franklin says they were immediately in high demand. Now the library distributes an average of 1,000 seed packets per month across nine of its 17 branches. Franklin says the program has proven to be sustainable with minimal costs—around $300-$500 to bring a seed-sharing program to a new branch of the library. And, Franklin says, the organizational tasks of offering seeds fit seamlessly with the library’s existing cataloguing system.The Phoenix Public Library is not alone. Hundreds of public libraries around the U.S. have adopted similar initiatives to offer free seeds to library-goers. Seed-sharing programs aim to expand access to crops and educate the public, while also protecting scarce agricultural resources..”
Wired: “Our eyes are hardening; we can barely see our phones anymore. We must learn to look at the wider world. The eyes are unwell. Their childhood suppleness is lost. The lenses, as we log hours on this earth, thicken, stiffen, even calcify. The eyes are no longer windows on souls. They’re closer to teeth. To see if your own eyes are hardening, look no further than your phone, which should require no exertion; you’re probably already there. Keep peering at your screen, reading and staring, snubbing life’s third dimension and natural hues. The first sign of the eyes’ becoming teeth is the squinting at phones. Next comes the reflexive extending of the arm, the impulse to resize letters into the preschool range. And at last the buying of drugstore readers…”
Yes, Bookmobiles Are Still A Thing - Pew Trusts: “The van comes to a stop just as it reaches the hens. A bleating lamb is the first to greet Sandra Hennessee as she opens the van door and lets in the midday sun. To get here, on an Amish farm in rural western Kentucky, Hennessee headed west from the small town of Mayfield and drove for miles on a two-lane road, passing churches, farms and open fields. With every bend and bump in the road, the wooden shelves inside the 27-year-old van creaked. With every stop, the hundreds of plastic-wrapped and paperback books on the shelves shifted. Now on the farm, a woman dressed in a floor-length blue skirt, a black jacket, boots and a bonnet climbs inside. “Hi, honey,” Hennessee says. “What can I help you find?”
All Things Considered – NPR – Podcast and Transcript: “Between 2009 and 2015, the number of independent bookstores grew by 35 percent. This happened during the so-called “retail apocalypse,” which has pitted Amazon against every retail outlet in America. We’ve been hearing for years that the independent bookstore business is in rough shape. It turns out that’s not entirely true. Paddy Hirsch of NPR’s daily business podcast The Indicator from Planet Money has more…”
Bing Blog: “In December, we announced new intelligent search features which tap into advances in AI to provide people with more comprehensive answers, faster. Today, we’re excited to announce improvements to our current features, and new scenarios that get you to your answer faster. Since December we’ve received a lot of great feedback on our experiences; based on that, we’ve expanded many of our answers to the UK, improved our quality and coverage of existing answers, and added new scenarios. Bing now aggregates facts for given topics across several sites for you, so you can save time by learning about a topic without having to check several sources yourself. For example, if you want to learn more about tundras, simply search for “tundra biome facts” and Bing will give you facts compiled from three different sources at the top of the results page…”
National Archives: “Under 44 USC 3106 and 36 CFR Part 1230, “Unlawful or Accidental Removal, Defacing, Alteration, or Destruction of Records,” Federal agencies are required to “notify the Archivist of any actual, impending, or threatened unlawful removal, defacing, alteration, corruption, deletion, erasure, or other destruction of records in the custody of the agency.” NARA also receives notifications from other sources such as the news media and private citizens. NARA establishes unauthorized disposition case files to track each allegation and any communications with the agency until the issue is resolved. The Records Management Oversight and Reporting Program is responsible for handling all unauthorized disposition cases. For more information or to report a case of unauthorized disposition, please contact us via email at UnauthorizedDisposition@nara.gov. The table below lists all open and closed cases for the current fiscal year and includes the open and close letters (when available or permissible) for each case from NARA to the agency. The unauthorized disposition case file contains more information including the communications between NARA and the agency. If you would like more information on a case, please contact the NARA Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Office to file a FOIA request for the case information. Please use the Case ID indicated on the below table in your FOIA request. The table is updated monthly. At the end of the fiscal year, the closed cases will be removed from the table and saved on the Unauthorized Dispositions Closed Cases web page. For information on any cases that closed prior to the end of Fiscal Year 2017, please refer to NARA’s Annual Performance and Accountability Reports. Please note Performance and Accountability Reports prior to the 2008 report do not contain information on unauthorized disposition cases…”