Practice Test

Snowy Mountains

by John Gould Fletcher

Higher and still more high,
Palaces made for cloud,
Above the dingy city-roofs
Blue-white like angels with broad wings,
Pillars of the sky at rest
The mountains from the great plateau
Uprise.

But the world heeds them not;
They have been here now for too long a time.
The world makes war on them,
Tunnels their granite cliffs,
Splits down their shining sides,
Plasters their cliffs with soap-advertisements,
Destroys the lonely fragments of their peace.

Vaster and still more vast,
Peak after peak, pile after pile,
Wilderness still untamed,
To which the future is as was the past,
Barrier spread by Gods,
Sunning their shining foreheads,
Barrier broken down by those who do not need
The joy of time-resisting storm-worn stone,
The mountains swing along
The south horizon of the sky;
Welcoming with wide floors of blue-green ice
The mists that dance and drive before the sun.

“Snowy Mountains” by John Gould Fletcher—Public Domain

The Best Laid Plans of Ravens

In Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven,” a raven visits a lonely man’s home and responds to the man’s pleading questions with only the word “nevermore.” The poem’s narrator interprets the word as a prediction of doom for his future. A talking, prophetic raven may seem to be the wild imaginings of the poet, but a new study published in the journal Science hints that one particular idea behind the poem might not be as far-fetched as it seems. For most of human history, people assumed that animals do not understand the passage of time in the same way people do. Some people believed that animals might remember events from the past and that instinct might drive them to make preparations in order to guarantee survival, but most people did not think that animals had the ability to plan. At Lund University in Sweden, researchers argue that ravens may be able to think ahead and even plan for the future.

It can be difficult to test an animal’s ability to plan because human observers must be certain they are not mistaking instinctual behavior for intentional planning. For example, many animals hoard food so that they will not run out later, but scientists who study animals would not call hoarding a decision to plan for the future. This action is merely instinctual. Cognitive scientists argue that in order for an animal’s behavior to qualify as preparing for the future, the animal must use specific decision-making skills to solve a problem.

To avoid mistaking instinctual behavior for evidence of decision-making, the Lund University researchers designed two experiments to test ravens’ ability to plan. Ravens belong to the corvid family, a group of birds known for their intelligence. A study in 2007 showed that corvids have the tendency to save only certain types of food, which suggests that they are planning for the future rather than acting on instinct. In order to investigate that theory, the researchers had to design experiments that would achieve results that could not be explained by an instinctual behavior of food hoarding. Therefore, the ravens were taught two behaviors that they do not normally perform in the wild.

For the first experiment, the researchers showed the birds how to use a small stone to open a box and get treats. Once the ravens learned the behavior, the researchers presented the birds with four stones. Only one stone was the right size to open the box. The birds learned to select that stone and set it aside until the researchers presented the box. The second experiment involved bartering. A researcher would trade the ravens a large treat for a bottle cap. Later, the researchers presented the ravens with a group of items, including small treats and the bottle cap. The ravens chose the bottle cap over the treats and waited for the original researcher to trade with them again so that they could get more treats. In both experiments, the ravens waited patiently for up to seventeen hours for the researcher to return.

The results of these experiments are exciting, but more evidence needs to be gathered before scientists can fully conclude that ravens can plan for the future. Some scientists argue that the ravens might be choosing the stone and bottle cap because the ravens have been trained to do so, not necessarily because the ravens are thinking ahead. Regardless, like other recent advances in animal science, these experiments show that ravens could be much smarter than first believed, and scientists now believe that ravens do actually think about their own future.

Excerpt from In Search of the Unknown

by Robert W. Chambers

It was at that time the policy of the trustees and officers of the Zoological Gardens neither to employ collectors nor to send out expeditions in search of specimens. The society decided to depend upon voluntary contributions, and I was always busy, part of the day, in dictating answers to correspondents who wrote offering their services as hunters of big game, collectors of all sorts of fauna, trappers, snarers, and also to those who offered specimens for sale, usually at exorbitant rates.

To the proprietors of . . . mangy lynxes, moth-eaten coyotes, and dancing bears I returned courteous but uncompromising refusals—of course, first submitting all such letters, together with my replies, to Professor Farrago.

One day towards the end of May, however, just as I was leaving Bronx Park to return to town, Professor Lesard, of the reptilian department, called out to me that Professor Farrago wanted to see me a moment; so I . . . retraced my steps to the temporary, wooden building occupied by Professor Farrago, general superintendent of the Zoological Gardens. The professor, who was sitting at his desk before a pile of letters and replies submitted for approval by me, pushed his glasses down and looked over them at me with a whimsical smile that suggested amusement, impatience, annoyance, and perhaps a faint trace of apology.

“Now, here’s a letter,” he said, with a deliberate gesture towards a sheet of paper impaled on a file—“a letter that I suppose you remember.” He disengaged the sheet of paper and handed it to me.

“Oh yes,” I replied, with a shrug; “of course the man is mistaken—or—”

“Or what?” demanded Professor Farrago, tranquilly, wiping his glasses.

“—Or a liar,” I replied.

After a silence he leaned back in his chair and bade me read the letter to him again, and I did so with a contemptuous tolerance for the writer, who must have been either a very innocent victim or a very stupid swindler. I said as much to Professor Farrago, but, to my surprise, he appeared to waver.

“I suppose,” he said, with his near-sighted, embarrassed smile, “that nine hundred and ninety-nine men in a thousand would throw that letter aside and condemn the writer as a liar or a fool?”

“In my opinion,” said I, “he’s one or the other.”

“He isn’t—in mine,” said the professor, placidly.

“What!” I exclaimed. “Here is a man living all alone on a strip of rock and sand between the wilderness and the sea, who wants you to send somebody to take charge of a bird that doesn’t exist!”

“How do you know,” asked Professor Farrago, “that the bird in question does not exist?”

“It is generally accepted,” I replied, sarcastically, “that the great auk has been extinct for years. Therefore I may be pardoned for doubting that our correspondent possesses a pair of them alive.”

“Oh, you young fellows,” said the professor, smiling wearily, “you embark on a theory for destinations that don’t exist.”

He leaned back in his chair, his amused eyes searching space for the imagery that made him smile.

“Like swimming squirrels, you navigate with the help of Heaven and a stiff breeze, but you never land where you hope to—do you?”

Rather red in the face, I said: “Don’t you believe the great auk to be extinct?”

“Audubon saw the great auk.”

“Who has seen a single specimen since?”

“Nobody—except our correspondent here,” he replied, laughing.

I laughed, too, considering the interview at an end, but the professor went on, coolly:

“Whatever it is that our correspondent has—and I am daring to believe that it is the great auk itself—I want you to secure it for the society.”

When my astonishment subsided my first conscious sentiment was one of pity. Clearly, Professor Farrago was on the verge of dotage—ah, what a loss to the world!

I believe now that Professor Farrago perfectly interpreted my thoughts, but he betrayed neither resentment nor impatience. I drew a chair up beside his desk—there was nothing to do but to obey, and this fool’s errand was none of my conceiving.

Together we made out a list of articles necessary for me and itemized the expenses I might incur, and I set a date for my return, allowing no margin for a successful termination to the expedition.

“Never mind that,” said the professor. “What I want you to do is to get those birds here safely. Now, how many men will you take?”

“None,” I replied, bluntly; “it’s a useless expense, unless there is something to bring back. If there is I’ll wire you, you may be sure.”

“Very well,” said Professor Farrago, good-humoredly, “you shall have all the assistance you may require. Can you leave to-night?”

The old gentleman was certainly prompt. I nodded, half-sulkily, aware of his amusement.

“So,” I said, picking up my hat, “I am to start north to find a place called Black Harbor, where there is a man named Halyard who possesses, among other household utensils, two extinct great auks—”

We were both laughing by this time. I asked him why on earth he credited the assertion of a man he had never before heard of.

“I suppose,” he replied, with the same half-apologetic, half-humorous smile, “it is instinct. I feel, somehow, that this man Halyard has got an auk—perhaps two. I can’t get away from the idea that we are on the eve of acquiring the rarest of living creatures. It’s odd for a scientist to talk as I do; doubtless you’re shocked—admit it, now!”

But I was not shocked; on the contrary, I was conscious that the same strange hope that Professor Farrago cherished was beginning, in spite of me, to stir my pulses, too.

“If he has—” I began, then stopped.

The professor and I looked hard at each other in silence.

“Go on,” he said, encouragingly.

But I had nothing more to say, for the prospect of beholding with my own eyes a living specimen of the great auk produced a series of conflicting emotions within me which rendered speech profanely superfluous.

From IN SEARCH OF THE UNKNOWN by Robert W. Chambers—Public Domain

Audubon: John James Audubon, an ornithologist and artist who created scientific illustrations of birds
dotage: a loss of reasoning brought about by old age

Looking for the Smallest Spark of Everything

Located underground near Geneva, Switzerland, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) helps scientists study and understand how the smallest particles of matter interact with one another. The LHC propels atomic particle beams along a 17-mile-long ring.

There are the things the world is made of,
things we can see and feel, and then
there are the things even smaller, things that seem
to exist only when we are looking right at them.

So beneath the level of molecules are atoms,
and beneath the level of atoms, we find
protons, electrons, neutrons; and beneath that—
what, exactly? Because we are talking about
everything here: your fingernail,
the candy at the back of your mouth,
the coffee your teacher drank this morning,
your little sister, and the stuffed dog
she used to carry around with her everywhere.
And everywhere.

Everything and everywhere
are made up of the same stuff, whatever
it is. How do we find it? We can listen for it
in the wavelengths from deep space,
talking back to us from unimaginable
distances. Or we can build long,
deep circular tunnels beneath the surface
of this Earth and race particles
(like racing cars, only very tiny cars
flashing along at close to the speed of light)
until everything we think we know
bangs against everything else we know.

And there, in the explosion, in the darkness,
briefly incandescent, they appear:
the quarks, the leptons, and the bosons;
the baryons and the mesons. Their names
sound like dinosaurs or maybe bands
playing terrible music in someone’s garage.

The one thing we know for sure
is that they spin. This is how gravity
enters our world, how our world is held
both together and apart, what keeps
together the pencil in your hand right now
as well as separate from, say,
Jupiter. They spin, and it is only down there
in the darkness—in the vast garage
where physicists jot down
what they can, whatever seems most real—
that they let us perceive their wild dancing,
combusting to the music they make.

Using Fire to Keep a Prairie Healthy

Inside the 40,000-acre Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in northern Oklahoma, herds of bison roam on the scenic land that is home to hundreds of different species of plants and animals. While one of the greatest threats to the prairie is wildfire, the use of controlled fires is actually an effective way to protect this idyllic landscape.

Fires that are started by lightning or other natural circumstances are inevitable, and the results can be disastrous. However, hundreds of years ago the American Indian people who inhabited the Great Plains area between Minnesota and Texas realized that these fires could also be helpful. The bison in the area seemed to prefer grazing on tender new grass on the recently burned land rather than on grass in the unburned areas. The American Indian people began to deliberately burn areas of land for bison to graze on, which enticed the herds away from the people’s crops.

Today conservationists at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve and farmers in the Great Plains continue to use controlled burns for land management. Intentionally burning a portion of land can dramatically improve the quality of the vegetation that regrows there. The fires burn away weedy undergrowth and help limit the overcrowding of shrubs and trees in the burn area, creating less competition for water and nutrients. Additionally, the process of burning excess plant matter adds nitrogen, an essential element for plant growth, to the soil.

One common target of controlled burns at the preserve and the surrounding area is the invasive red cedar tree. A single red cedar tree can consume up to 40 gallons of water per day, taking this vital resource away from other plant life. These tall trees also cast shade that prevents sunlight from reaching the plants beneath them. The fast-growing red cedar trees tend to crowd out prairie grasses, the primary food source for wild and domestic animals that make the prairie their home. An imbalance in one component of the prairie’s ecosystem affects the entire web of life. Controlled burns help maintain this ecosystem’s delicate balance.

Of course, these controlled fires are intended to burn only a portion of an area. A total burn, which is a risk with an uncontrolled wildfire, would destroy all wildlife as well as the crops farmers plant for income. The key to using controlled fires is knowing which areas of land to burn and when. Conservation experts at the preserve employ the “patch-burn” approach, meaning they rotate which portion of land is burned each year. They study the land to find out which areas would most benefit from being burned, and then they arrange about a dozen burns over one-third of the land. This patch burning contains the fire within a specific area and allows animals in the burn area to safely relocate. The following year, conservationists will burn a different section of the preserve, while the land burned the previous year regrows healthier than before.

Researchers have tracked and studied the variety of plant species and animals that live on the preserve, and their studies show that the patch-burn approach has restored biodiversity to the area by promoting the growth of species that were at risk of being crowded out. The patch-burn system is so successful that the conservationists at the preserve provide training to prairie farmers about conducting controlled burns on their own land. Burning land to make it healthy may seem counterintuitive, but strategic controlled fires have helped the prairie sustain life for hundreds of years and, with careful management, will continue to do so.

Bird Talk

by Carl Sandburg

And now when the branches were beginning to be heavy,
It was the time when they once had said, “This is the
  beginning of summer.”
The shrilling of the frogs was not so shrill as in the
  first weeks after the broken winter;
The birds took their hops and zigzags a little more
  anxious; a home is a home; worms are worms.
The yellow spreads of the dandelions and buttercups
  reached across the green pastures.
Tee whee and tee whee came on the breezes, and the grackles
  chuzzled their syllables.
And it was the leaves with a strong soft wind over them
  that talked most of all and said more than any others
  though speaking the fewest words.
It was the green leaves trickling out the gaunt nowhere
  of winter, out on the gray hungry branches—
It was the leaves on the branches, beginning to be heavy,
  who said as they said one time before, “This is the be-
  ginning of summer.”

We shall never blame the birds who come
  where the river and the road make the Grand Crossing
  and talk there, sitting in circles talking bird talk.
If they ask in their circles as to who is here
  and as to who is not here and who used to be here,
Or if instead of counting up last year as against
  this year, they count up this year as against next
  year, and have their bird chatter about who is here
  this year who won’t be here next year,
We shall never blame the birds.

If I have put your face among leaf faces, child,
Or if I have put your voice among bird voices,
Blame me no more than the bluejays.

“Bird Talk” by Carl Sandburg—Public domain.

Serpent Mound

The Great Serpent Mound, located in Adams County, Ohio, is a human-made mound of earth that researchers believe was created between 300 B.C. and A.D. 1100 by an indigenous culture.

Ohio, 1846

Brush Creek stood low when the museum men came
with their measuring tapes and sketchbooks.
 It was winter. Fringed with ice,
 the creek doubled back on itself
as if it had forgotten something.
 Pa was in Cincinnati, or else on his way home,
  so Ma told me to lead the men
  into the marshy low grounds. It being winter,
    there was little underbrush to speak of—
    in the summer there would have been
  briars, poison ivy, biting flies. I listened
for the swish of a beaver’s heavy tail,
 the chitter of a chickadee, or the cry of a hawk,
 but the winter silence of the creek pressed
 down on all of us like a weight.
The humps in the ground were all but
invisible until you were right up on them. The figure
was even less obvious: the sinuous body,
 the tail coiled three times around,
 and at the other end, the mouth wide open.
  In the summer the creek bottom was crowded
  with so much life that you could trip over
    the ridges of earth before you saw
    anything at all. In winter you could climb
    a tree and get some idea of the whole thing:
  the serpent’s body undulating, slithering
silently across the ancient
 earth. At the mouth end, there was an oval mound
 as if the snake were about to swallow an egg—
as snakes sometimes did in our rickety
henhouse—my Pa always said, or
as if swallowing the sun, one of the museum
 men suggested, taking notes with his quill pen,
 an old-style inkhorn slung at his side.
 I liked that: swallowing the sun,
  just the sort of thing a snake might do,
  might want to do. When, later, I told my sister Ruth,
    she disagreed. It is singing to the sun,
    she insisted. That is why its mouth
  is wide open. She said, “Sometimes I think
I hear it on summer nights. Not swallowing, singing.”

Excerpt from “Growing Peppers on the ISS Is Just the Start of Space Farming”

by Melanie Canales

The author, Melanie Canales, is a first-generation Peruvian American farmer and beekeeper based in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, on lands of the indigenous Monacan and Manahoac tribes. Her work focuses on creating healthy relationships between people and their surrounding ecosystems.

Unburdened by the constraints of gravity, red and green peppers jut out at 45-degree angles inside the Advanced Plant Habitat (APH), a sort of space terrarium not much larger than a microwave. Four chile pepper plants stand effortlessly upright, despite the dozens of glossy fruits weighing them down. These plants have lived entirely in space; their leaves have never been chewed on by insects or rustled by a summer breeze, [and] their stems are unfamiliar with bending toward the sun’s arc across the sky. Scissors glint under the tank’s white and blue lights as astronaut Mark Vande Hei and his team snip the stems of those that are ready for harvest. The peppers whirl around their heads until the astronauts catch them and tape them against a board to photograph.

Back on Earth, the Plant Habitat-04 team of engineers and plant scientists are observing and conferring with the astronauts. Of the 26 peppers in this batch, only the 14 finest will stay on the International Space Station [ISS] for consumption. The rest will be wrapped in foil, sealed in a Ziploc bag, then frozen at a brisk −80 degrees, until they can come roaring back to Earth in the next cargo capsule to be studied later. Now, after a 137-day growth cycle, the astronauts remove the plants from the module and trash them. Project Plant Habitat-04 is complete. It’s taco night on the ISS.

Since 2014, NASA¹ has experimented with growing lettuces, brassicas,² and zinnias³ in space, an endeavor that relies on highly specialized technology over 50 years in the making. [Fall 2021’s] two successful pepper harvests . . . will provide data on the nutritional and psychological benefits of growing vegetables on-craft, as well as a crop’s ability to reliably produce long-term in microgravity. While controlled environmental agriculture is not new, the APH experiment represents an evolution in specialized growth habitats. It doesn’t aim to re-create Earth’s conditions, but to perfect each isolated variable of plant growth in the clinical environment of a spaceship.

“The Advanced Plant Habitat is the most complex plant growth system on orbit today,” says Lashelle Spencer, a plant scientist at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Its more than 180 sensors control and monitor temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide. The astronauts can adjust the color and intensity of the light, and how much moisture the plants’ roots are getting. It waters itself.

It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and Spencer has been at Kennedy since 5 a.m. to facilitate the peppers’ final harvest. As part of the project team, she played a crucial role in preparing the seeds that were sent hurtling into space in June and guiding the astronauts through maintaining the plants in orbit. . . . Though astronauts can spend upwards of 100 days in space, their on-mission meals come dehydrated and pre-packaged; their vitamins and minerals are isolated in supplements, which lose nutritional value the longer they’re stored. Spencer’s goal is to create the conditions necessary for cultivating healthy plants in space, so those plants can sustain healthy astronauts on long-term missions. Astronaut food is great, she says—“especially the shrimp cocktail. But you’re missing that crunch. You’re missing that fresh pop of flavor, the green flavor that’s not there in that packaged food.”

The sensory experience of growing productive crops can also help mitigate⁴ the psychological effects of long-term space travel. . . . Spencer says the team cracked open the door of the APH every day to observe their vegetable companions with all the tenderness of home gardeners. When harvest day came, they batted their bounty around the ISS, taking selfies and delighting in watching the fruits pirouetting around the spacecraft. . . .

“We were thinking no heat, so that [the peppers] wouldn’t be dangerous, but maybe the astronauts need a little spice in their life,” says Paul Bosland, who along with his colleagues at the Chile Pepper Institute genetically engineered⁵ the NuMex Española Improved chile pepper seeds grown in Plant Habitat-04. . . .

Working with NASA, Bosland cultivated a variety that could accommodate both the nutritional needs of astronauts as well as the logistics of growing a plant in space. . . .

. . . The experiment is helping gather the data necessary to determine the nutritional content of crops grown in space, and therefore how many people they can feed, and for how long. Though much is still unknown, Spencer is certain of one thing that future astronauts will need to do: “I think in an optimal world, a scientist like me would say that they would be growing plants from day one. From the day they left to the day they came back, they would be growing them.”

From “Growing Peppers on the ISS Is Just the Start of Space Farming” by Melanie Canales from WIRED, December 21, 2021. Copyright © 2021 Condé Nast. All rights reserved.

¹NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

²brassicas: a large genus of herbs, such as broccoli and cabbage

³zinnias: a genus of herbs and low shrubs that have flowers at their heads

⁴mitigate: to make something less severe or harmful

⁵genetically engineered: combined parts of DNA from different plants to produce a new plant

Excerpt from “How We Made the First Flight”

by Orville Wright

In 1903 brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright conducted experiments related to flying machines. These experiments would eventually lead to air travel becoming a reliable form of transportation.

During the night of December 16, 1903, a strong cold wind blew from the north. When we arose on the morning of the 17th, the puddles of water, which had been standing about camp since the recent rains, were covered with ice. The wind had a velocity of 10 to 12 meters per second (22 to 27 miles an hour). We thought it would die down before long, and so remained indoors the early part of the morning. But when ten o’clock arrived, and the wind was as brisk as ever, we decided that we had better get the machine out and attempt a flight. We hung out the signal for the men of the Life Saving Station.¹ We thought that by facing the flyer into a strong wind, there ought to be no trouble in launching it from the level ground about camp. We realized the difficulties of flying in so high a wind, but estimated that the added dangers in flight would be partly compensated for by the slower speed in landing.

Final Preparations

We laid the track on a smooth stretch of ground about one hundred feet north of the new building. The biting cold wind made work difficult, and we had to warm up frequently in our living room, where we had a good fire in an improvised stove made of a large carbide² can. By the time all was ready, J. T. Daniels, W. S. Dough and A. D. Etheridge, members of the Kill Devil³ Life Saving Station; W. C. Brinkley of Manteo, and Johnny Moore, a boy from Nags Head,⁴ had arrived.

We had a “Richard” hand anemometer with which we measured the velocity of the wind. Measurements made just before starting the first flight showed velocities of 11 to 12 meters per second, or 24 to 27 miles per hour. . . .

Audacity—and Calculation

Wilbur having used his turn in the unsuccessful attempt on the 14th, the right to the first trial now belonged to me. After running the motor a few minutes to heat it up, I released the wire that held the machine to the track, and the machine started forward in the wind. Wilbur ran at the side of the machine, holding the wing to balance it on the track. Unlike the start on the 14th, made in a calm, the machine, facing a 27-mile wind, started very slowly. Wilbur was able to stay with it till it lifted from the track after a forty-foot run. One of the Life Saving men snapped the camera for us, taking a picture just as the machine had reached the end of the track and had risen to a height of about two feet. The slow forward speed of the machine over the ground is clearly shown in the picture by Wilbur’s attitude. He stayed along beside the machine without any effort.

Flight

The course of the flight up and down was exceedingly erratic, partly due to the irregularity of the air, and partly to lack of experience in handling this machine. The control of the front rudder was difficult on account of its being balanced too near the center. This gave it a tendency to turn itself when started; so that it turned too far on one side and then too far on the other. As a result the machine would rise suddenly to about ten feet, and then as suddenly dart for the ground. A sudden dart when a little over a hundred feet from the end of the track, or a little over 120 feet from the point at which it rose into the air, ended the flight. As the velocity of the wind was over 35 feet per second and the speed of the machine over the ground against this wind ten feet per second, the speed of the machine relative to the air was over 45 feet per second, and the length of the flight was equivalent to a flight of 540 feet made in calm air. This flight lasted only 12 seconds, but it was nevertheless the first in the history of the world in which a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in full flight, had sailed forward without reduction of speed and had finally landed at a point as high as that from which it started.

From “How We Made the First Flight” by Orville Wright—Public Domain/Federal Aviation Administration

¹Life Saving Station: one of the rescue stations along the Atlantic coastline that provided assistance to mariners in distress

²carbide: a very hard material composed of carbon and other heavy metals

³Kill Devil: the town of Kill Devil Hills in eastern North Carolina

⁴Nags Head: a town in eastern North Carolina

Excerpt from “Scribe Like an Egyptian”

by Hilary Wilson

In ancient Egypt, literacy was the key to success. However, contrary to popular belief, not all Egyptian scribes understood hieroglyphs. Many relied instead on the simpler hieratic script for the multitude of everyday documents generated by the Egyptian bureaucracy.

Hieroglyphs—“the Words of God”—compose a writing system with more than 1,000 distinct characters, the meanings of which were lost for 1,500 years before they were deciphered by Jean-François Champollion in 1822. Including both ideograms (which convey a whole word or idea, either concrete or abstract, in a single sign) and phonograms (representing either an alphabetic sound or a group of consonants), [the writing system] was used in formal inscriptions on tomb and temple walls as well as on elaborate funerary papyri. For everyday purposes, however, scribes used a shorthand version of the hieroglyphic script known as hieratic, which was quicker to write and more economical of space. The two writings existed side by side for at least 2,500 years.

Scraps of ancient hieratic writing, mostly penned by student scribes on limestone flakes called ostraca, suggest that no matter how humble his origins, an educated Egyptian could achieve almost anything. Horemheb (d.1292 B.C.) is a good example. Born of middle-ranking parents, his scribal training led to an army career. From Scribe of Recruits, during the reign of Akhenaten (1353–1336 B.C.), Horemheb rose through the military ranks and, by the rule of Tutankhamun (1332–1323 B.C.), he was commander in chief of the Egyptian forces. As a close adviser of the young Pharaoh, Horemheb was appointed “Deputy of the King throughout the Two Lands,” and might have expected to succeed to the throne should the king die childless. He had to wait a few years, but eventually Horemheb achieved the pinnacle of his career by becoming the last king of the 18th Dynasty, making his mark by instituting dramatic reforms to the organisation of the army, the judiciary and administration in general. The lasting success of these changes owed much to his scribal background. . . .

But education was not available to all. Government departments and major temples supported schools, where boys commenced their training at six or seven, sometimes earlier. To these boarding establishments . . . family or household servants delivered the students’ food and drink rations daily for several years, during which time the student was not contributing to the family’s income. Boys from poorer families could only hope to be educated with support from a wealthier relative or patron, or through apprenticeship to an older scribe, perhaps the local clerk or land agent, who would teach them the basics of the scribe’s craft. This limited the scope for employment but such “on the job” training allowed apprentices to help out at home while learning. . . .

Scribal education began with the elementary principles of the hieratic script. The lowliest scribes, who trained for just five or six years, probably learned only the rudiments of the hieroglyphic script. Students were set exemplar documents and extracts from popular texts to copy, to practice their hieratic handwriting on basic-format letters, reports and contracts, while absorbing the good advice contained in the texts. Surviving examples of copy-work sometimes include tutors’ corrections added in red. Some significant Egyptian literary works survive almost exclusively from student copies.

A schoolboy “dictionary” of hieroglyphs with their hieratic equivalents shows that a knowledge of more than 450 signs was required for everyday writing purposes. Lessons in record-keeping and filing and labelling enabled any half-competent scribe to perform that most essential of all scribal functions: the making and updating of lists. For professions such as those of government official, priest or lawyer, a scribe would train for several more years, increasing his vocabulary to perhaps a thousand or more signs. Those with the best handwriting or drawing skills might follow the craft of creating beautifully illustrated copies of funerary texts, commonly called Books of the Dead. Others could become draughtsmen, artists or architects. Doctors compiled their own collections of medication recipes, treatments and associated incantations, many copied from texts found in the House of Life, the temple library. Lawyers had to be familiar with the corpus of civil and religious laws and precedents found in the official records, which were administered by archivists. Egypt’s bureaucratic society depended on the skills of an army of scribes of all ranks from filing clerk to tax assessor. For young Egyptians, “be a scribe” was the best of career advice.

From “Scribe Like an Egyptian” by Hilary Wilson from HISTORY TODAY, August 8, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by History Today Ltd. Company.

bureaucracy: an administrative staff of government officials
funerary papyri: a sheet or scroll of papyrus containing religious images and hieroglyphs meant to help the deceased be reborn in the afterlife
rudiments: basics
schoolboy: slang that refers to materials used during the course of receiving an education
draughtsmen: people who draw plans of machinery or structures
corpus: a collection of writings

Letter from Brooklyn

by Jacob Scheier

I can already see how this will end.
How I will grow tired of the bridge’s
steep incline, and the absent-minded tourists
wandering into the bicycle path.
The weather will turn cold.
But that all happens later.
For now it is the early edge of fall,
leaves green still while the air narrows,
is slightly crisp, almost grazing
the hair of my arm like a passing stranger,
as though the air has been forced into intimacy
by the brevity of daylight.
But when it starts darkening at 4,
this closeness, I know, will be a felt distance,
like someone drawing your attention
to their lack of intimacy.
These days I am still walking at a cathedral pace
beneath the branches bending across avenues,
brownstones like rows of lived-in chapels,
like a pop-up picture book I could have had as a child,
but didn’t. How Brooklyn makes me nostalgic
for the moment I am walking inside of.
These late afternoons filled
with a loneliness that makes me feel
distinctly myself, and an awareness
of how rare that is.

“Letter from Brooklyn” from LETTER FROM BROOKLYN: POEMS by Jacob Scheier, published by ECW Press. Copyright © 2013 by Jacob Scheier All rights reserved.

brevity: briefness
cathedral: meditative
chapels: private places of prayer or worship
nostalgic: yearning for the past

Excerpt from “Impressions of an Indian Childhood”

by Zitkala-Sa

Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) was a Native American writer, musician, teacher, and political activist who was raised on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. In 1900 she published “Impressions of an Indian Childhood” (the term Indian was commonly used at the time to refer to Native American people) to expose readers to what life is like on a reservation.

Soon after breakfast Mother sometimes began her beadwork. On a bright, clear day, she pulled out the wooden pegs that pinned the skirt of our wigwam¹ to the ground, and rolled the canvas part way up on its frame of slender poles. Then the cool morning breezes swept freely through our dwelling, now and then wafting the perfume of sweet grasses from newly burnt prairie.

Untying the long tasseled strings that bound a small brown buckskin² bag, my mother spread upon a mat beside her bunches of colored beads, just as an artist arranges the paints upon his palette. On a lapboard she smoothed out a double sheet of soft white buckskin; and drawing from a beaded case that hung on the left of her wide belt a long, narrow blade, she trimmed the buckskin into shape. Often she worked upon small moccasins for her small daughter. Then I became intensely interested in her designing. With a proud, beaming face, I watched her work. In [my] imagination, I saw myself walking in a new pair of snugly fitting moccasins. I felt the envious eyes of my playmates upon the pretty red beads decorating my feet.

Close beside my mother I sat on a rug, with a scrap of buckskin in one hand and an awl in the other. This was the beginning of my practical observation lessons in the art of beadwork. From a skein³ of finely twisted threads of silvery sinews my mother pulled out a single one. With an awl she pierced the buckskin, and skillfully threaded it with the white sinew. Picking up the tiny beads one by one, she strung them with the point of her thread, always twisting it carefully after every stitch.

It took many trials before I learned how to knot my sinew thread on the point of my finger, as I saw her do. Then the next difficulty was in keeping my thread stiffly twisted, so that I could easily string my beads upon it. My mother required of me original designs for my lessons in beading. At first I frequently ensnared many a sunny hour into working a long design. Soon I learned from self-inflicted punishment to refrain from drawing complex patterns, for I had to finish whatever I began.

After some experience I usually drew easy and simple crosses and squares. These were some of the set forms. My original designs were not always symmetrical nor sufficiently characteristic, two faults with which my mother had little patience. The quietness of her oversight made me feel strongly responsible and dependent upon my own judgment. She treated me as a dignified little individual as long as I was on my good behavior; and how humiliated I was when some boldness of mine drew forth a rebuke from her!

In the choice of colors she left me to my own taste. I was pleased with an outline of yellow upon a background of dark blue, or a combination of red and myrtle-green. There was another of red with a bluish-gray that was more conventionally used. When I became a little familiar with designing and the various pleasing combinations of color, a harder lesson was given me. It was the sewing on, instead of beads, some tinted porcupine quills, moistened and flattened between the nails of the thumb and forefinger. My mother cut off the prickly ends and burned them at once in the centre fire. These sharp points were poisonous, and worked into the flesh wherever they lodged. For this reason, my mother said, I should not do much alone in quills until I was as tall as my cousin Warca-Ziwin.

Always after these confining lessons I was wild with surplus spirits, and found joyous relief in running loose in the open again. Many a summer afternoon a party of four or five of my playmates roamed over the hills with me. We each carried a light sharpened rod about four feet long, with which we pried up certain sweet roots. When we had eaten all the choice roots we chanced upon, we shouldered our rods and strayed off into patches of a stalky plant under whose yellow blossoms we found little crystal drops of gum. Drop by drop we gathered this nature’s rock-candy, until each of us could boast of a lump the size of a small bird’s egg. Soon satiated with its woody flavor, we tossed away our gum, to return again to the sweet roots.

From “Impressions of an Indian Childhood” by Zitkala-Sa—Public Domain

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BEADWORK IN SOUTH DAKOTA

Date	Event
1500s	The Dakota use beads made from bones, shells, stones, and animal teeth. European traders bring glass beads to North America.
Late 1600s	The Dakota begin trading with the French in Minnesota.
1830s	The Dakota begin using glass beads in clothing, artwork, and decorations in place of Native-made beads.
1862–1865	The Dakota are expelled from their homelands in Minnesota as a result of the U.S.-Dakota War.
1900s–1920s	The Dakota create items to sell outside their community.

Source: MNopedia

¹wigwam: hut with an arched framework of poles covered with bark, mats, or animal hides

²buckskin: leather made from the skin of a male deer

³skein: coiled length of yarn or other thread loosely wound on a reel

Champion of the Channel

In 1926 an editor at the London Daily News predicted that Gertrude Ederle, an American swimmer with eighteen world records and three Olympic medals, would fail in her attempt to swim across the English Channel. He claimed that “even the most uncompromising champion of the rights and capacities of women must admit that in contests of physical skill, speed and endurance they must remain forever the weaker sex.” Yet, at only nineteen years old, Ederle not only became the first woman to accomplish this feat, she also broke the men’s record by two hours. Gertrude Ederle’s triumphant swim across the English Channel was a testimony to her determination, innovative spirit, and passion for swimming.

Crossing the English Channel is a daunting task for any swimmer. At its narrowest point, the channel measures twenty-one miles across. Its icy waters hover around sixty degrees Fahrenheit, and its unruly tides and currents toss swimmers about like bobbing corks. Stinging jellyfish, seaweed, and floating debris from shipwrecks and lost cargoes present added hazards.

For decades the channel’s perils have defeated countless swimmers. Ederle, too, failed in her first attempt to cross the channel in 1925. Just six miles short of finishing, she became ill, and her coach had to haul her out of the water. Undeterred, Ederle decided to try again. Ederle knew that if she did not complete the challenge this time, she might never get the opportunity to set this record, because a rival female swimmer was preparing to make her second attempt at the crossing as well.

To prepare for the marathon swim, Ederle found ways to improve her equipment. She and her sister Meg discovered that melted candle wax perfectly sealed goggle edges, effectively waterproofing Ederle’s goggles against hammering waves. The sisters also designed a two-piece silk swimsuit for Ederle. During her first channel-crossing attempt she had worn a standard one-piece swimsuit that, after the lengthy hours of swimming across the channel, had stretched out, filling with water and creating drag, making an already challenging task almost insurmountable. Unlike the cumbersome typical bathing suit, this silk invention weighed little and allowed for easy movement.

On August 6, 1926, Ederle waded into the channel near Cape Gris-Nez, France. At first she shivered in the bone-chilling water even though she had covered her body in eight layers of grease for insulation. Her limbs felt stiff. Her strokes were irregular. Driving forward, she fought to clear her mind and find what she called her “sphere,” a place where the sea became her only companion and the shrieks of gulls and the humming of boat engines faded away. Using a new overhand stroke called the American crawl, Ederle eventually settled into a steady pace, briskly breaking through waves.

Throughout Ederle’s swim, two tugboats accompanied her. One carried newspaper reporters who wired dispatches of her progress to shore. The other, displaying a sign that read “This way, ole kid!” with an arrow pointing forward, transported her coach, family, and friends. Her coach played songs, such as “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” on a phonograph so that Ederle could time her strokes to the rhythm. Using a net, her coach also passed her baby bottles of broth for nourishment.

For hours Ederle swam, dodging debris with an amused smile. However, as she neared the English shore, a sudden fierce storm erupted. The tides and waves forced Ederle backward, and she fought the stubborn swells for several hours. The salty water caused her tongue to swell and inflamed her ears. Yet Ederle felt indescribably happy as she churned through the sea. Finally, as she neared the English shore, the storm abated, and the tide turned. No longer fighting against her, the sea pushed her toward the shore and victory.

After fourteen hours and thirty-one minutes, Ederle, on wobbly legs, stepped onto the English shore. The waiting crowd roared, honked their automobile horns, blasted their tugboat whistles, and set off flares that flashed in the sky. Ederle had swum into history.

When Ederle returned to New York, she received a parade, where thousands of people shouted “Trudy!” Not only were everyday American citizens proud of Ederle, but she also inspired them to be more active. Over the next few years, more than 60,000 people credited her with motivating them to earn their American Red Cross swimming certificates. Gertrude Ederle’s accomplishment proved to the world that with determination and passion, it was possible for a person to achieve his or her goals.

SOLO SWIMS ACROSS THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

Earliest Speed Records
Year	Swimmer	Time
1875	Matthew Webb (M)	21 hours, 45 minutes
1923	Enrico Tiraboschi (M)	16 hours, 33 minutes
1926	Gertrude Ederle (F)	14 hours, 31 minutes
1926	Arnst Vierkotter (M)	12 hours, 38 minutes
Current Speed Records
Year	Swimmer	Time
2012	Trent Grimsey (M)	6 hours, 55 minutes
2006	Yvetta Hlavacova (F)	7 hours, 25 minutes

5 Reasons Physical Books Might Be Better Than E-Books

by Shaunacy Ferro

Though e-book¹ readers have become a more common sight around town, traditional books still have their evangelists.² According to The New York Times, e-book sales have been falling in 2015. Print definitely isn’t dead. In fact, according to some research, it may actually be a better choice for some readers. While scientists are still trying to tease out exactly how digital reading affects us differently, here are five ways e-books might be inferior to their dead-tree cousins.

E-books can reduce reading comprehension.

In a study of middle schoolers, West Chester University researchers found that students who read on iPads³ had lower reading comprehension than when they read traditional printed books. They discovered that the kids sometimes skipped text in favor of interactive features in the e-books, suggesting that certain multimedia in children’s e-books can be detrimental to the practice of reading itself. However, the researchers noted that some interactive features in e-books are designed to enhance comprehension, and that those might be more helpful than game-type interactive graphics.

Young kids can get distracted by e-books.

Similar results were found by a small study by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center that consisted of 32 kids reading e-books and print books with their parents. It found that “enhanced” e-books might be distracting. Kids who read enhanced e-books—ones with interactive, multimedia experiences—were more engaged with them physically, but in the end they remembered fewer narrative details than those who read print books or basic e-books.

You remember less about a book’s timeline.

Another study of adults also found that e-books can be hard to absorb. The researchers asked 25 people to read a 28-page story on a Kindle⁴ and 25 to read the story in paperback, then asked the readers to put 14 events from the story in chronological order. Those who read the story on a Kindle performed worse on the chronology test than the book readers, though they performed about the same as print readers in other tests. Earlier research by the same scholars, from Stavanger University in Norway, found that Norwegian 10th graders also remembered more about texts if they read them in print rather than on a computer screen.

They’re not great as textbooks.

While e-book textbooks are often cheaper (and easier to carry) than traditional door-stop⁵ textbooks, college students often don’t prefer them. In some surveys of college kids, the majority of students have reported preferring print books. However, a 2012 study from the UK’s National Literacy Trust of kids ages 8 to 16 found that more than 50 percent of children reported preferring screen reading.

They’re tiring.

Staring at a lit screen can be tiring for the eyes and the brain. A 2005 study from Sweden found that reading digitally required a higher cognitive workload than reading on paper. Furthermore, staring at LED⁶ screens at night can disrupt sleep patterns. A 2014 Harvard study found that people who used e-readers with LED screens at night slept worse and were more tired the next day. So, if you’re going to go for an e-book, go for one without the backlight.

The take-away message? If you’re really trying to absorb material, you might want to go for a physical book. And if you’re going to be up all night studying, turn off the backlight.

However, all this may not mean that reading on a Kindle is really going to melt your brain. For instance, reading an e-book on a computer is a much different experience than reading on a Kindle, which is specifically designed for consuming books. So, too, is playing with an interactive e-book on an iPad, compared to using a simpler e-book device that only presents the text, with no opportunities to click away into digital distractions.

And some studies have found that part of the difference between the way people absorb information from e-books versus paper might be due to approaching e-books differently—in one test, participants didn’t regulate their study time with digital books like they did with paper texts, leading to worse performances. It’s possible that our expectations of e-book reading—as well as the different designs of the digital reading experience on a computer or iPad or Kindle—might affect how we approach the text and how much effort we put into studying them. As generations of e-book readers evolve, and people become more accustomed to the idea of sitting down with a digital textbook, these factors could change—for better or for worse.

“5 Reasons Physical Books Might Be Better Than E-Books” by Shaunacy Ferro from MENTAL FLOSS, October 2, 2015. Copyright © 2015 Mental Floss, Inc.

¹e-book: an electronic book, a publication made available digitally for reading on a computer or other device

²evangelists: advocates or supporters

³iPads: tablet computers

⁴Kindle: device for reading e-books

⁵door-stop: a reference to the idea that some textbooks are large and heavy enough to hold a door open

⁶LED: Light-emitting diode; LEDs are often used as a backlight for electronic devices such as smart phones and tablets.

Excerpt from The Highest Tide

by Jim Lynch

The narrator’s summer job is collecting marine specimens in Puget Sound, Washington. In this excerpt, he is looking for specimens in the mudflats before daybreak. Mudflats, or flats, are coastal landforms created when sediment and silt from tides are deposited as the tides recede.

I rounded the oyster beds, to the far side. . . . It was low tide by then, and I saw the water hesitating at its apex, neither leaving nor returning, patiently waiting for the gravitational gears to shift. Dozens of anxious clams started squirting in unison like they did whenever vibrating grains of sand warned them predators were approaching. I stopped and waited with them, to actually see the moment when the tide started returning with its invisible buffet of plankton for the clams, oysters, mussels and other filter feeders. It was right then, ankle deep in the Sound, feet numbing, eyes relaxed, that I saw the nudibranch.¹

In all my time on the flats I’d never seen one before. I’d read about them, sure. I’d handled them at aquariums but never in the wild, and I’d never even seen a photo of one this stunning. It was just three inches long but with dozens of fluorescent, orange-tipped hornlike plumes jutting from the back of its see-through body that appeared to be lit from within.

Nudibranchs are often called the butterflies of the sea, but even that understates their dazzle. Almost everything else in the northern Pacific is dressed to blend with pale surroundings. Nudibranchs don’t bother, in part because they taste so lousy they don’t need camouflage to survive. But also, I decided right then, because their beauty is so startling it earns them a free pass, the same way everyday life brakes for peacocks, parade floats. . . .

The dark mudflats loomed like wet, flattened dunes stretching deep into Skookumchuck Bay in front of our house. From a distance, they looked too barren to support sea life. Up close, they still did, unless you knew where to find the hearty clams, worms and tiny creatures that flourish in mud. . . . I’m not sure why I decided to take a look. It was still an hour before sunrise, and I knew exactly what the bars² looked like in the moonlight, but for some reason, I couldn’t resist.

I heard it long before I saw it. It was an exhale, a release of sorts, and I instantly wondered if a whale was stranded again. We had a young minke³ stuck out there two summers prior, and it made similar noises until the tide rose high enough for rescuers to help free it. . . . I looked for a hulking silhouette but couldn’t find one. I waited, but there were no more sounds. Still, I went toward what I thought I’d heard, avoiding stepping into the mud until I had to. I knew the flats well enough to know I could get stuck just about anywhere. The general rule was you didn’t venture out past the shells and gravel with an incoming tide. I sank up to my knees twice, and numbing water filled my boots.

. . . I kept stepping toward the one sound I’d heard, a growing part of me hoping I’d find nothing at all. When I stopped to rest and yank up my socks, my headlamp crossed it. My first thought? A giant octopus.

Puget Sound has some of the biggest octopi in the world. They often balloon to a hundred pounds. Even the great Jacques Cousteau⁴ himself came to study them. But when I saw the long tubular shape of its upper body and the tangle of tentacles below it, I knew it was more than an octopus. I came closer, within fifty feet, close enough to see its large cylindrical siphon⁵ quiver. I couldn’t tell if it was making any sounds at that point, because it was impossible to hear anything over the blood in my ears. . . .

The creature’s body came to a triangular point above narrow fins that lay flat on the mud like wings, but it was hard to be sure exactly where it all began or ended, or how long its tentacles truly were, because I was afraid to pry my eyes off its jumble of arms for more than half a second. I didn’t know whether I was within reach, and its arms were as big around as my ankle and lined with suckers the size of half-dollars. If they even twitched I would have run. So, I was looking at it and not looking at it while my heart spangled my vision. I saw fragments, pieces, and tried to fuse them in my mind but couldn’t be certain of the whole. I knew what it had to be, but I wouldn’t allow myself to even think the two words. Then I gradually realized the dark shiny disc in the middle of the rubbery mass was too perfectly round to be mud or a reflection.

It was too late to smother my scream. Its eye was the size of a hubcap.⁶

From THE HIGHEST TIDE by Jim Lynch. Copyright © 2005 by Jim Lynch. Used by permission of Bloomsbury USA. All rights reserved.

¹nudibranch: type of sea slug

²bars: sandbars

³minke: species of small whale

⁴Jacques Cousteau: renowned French oceanographer

⁵siphon: tube-like organ that is used for drawing in or removing fluids

⁶hubcap: removable cap over the end of a wheel axle

Excerpt from “How Exercise Could Help You Learn a New Language”

by Gretchen Reynolds

Many scientists suspect that exercise alters the biology of the brain in ways that make it more malleable and receptive to new information, a process that scientists refer to as plasticity.

But many questions have remained unanswered about movement and learning, including whether exercise is most beneficial before, during or after instruction and how much and what types of exercise might be best.

So for a new study, which was published recently in PLOS One, researchers in China and Italy decided to home in on language learning and the adult brain.

Language learning is interesting. As young children, almost all of us picked up our first language easily. We didn’t have to be formally taught; we simply absorbed words and concepts.

But by early adulthood, the brain generally begins to lose some of its innate language capability. It displays less plasticity in areas of the brain related to language. As a result, for most of us, it becomes harder to learn a second language after childhood.

To see what effects exercise might have on this process, the researchers first recruited 40 college-age Chinese men and women who were trying to learn English. The students had some facility with this second language but were far from proficient.

The researchers then divided the students into two groups. Those in one group would continue to learn English as they had before, primarily while seated in rote vocabulary-memorization sessions.

The others would supplement these sessions with exercise.

Specifically, the students would ride exercise bikes at a gentle pace (about 60 percent of their maximum aerobic capacity) beginning 20 minutes before the start of the lessons and continuing throughout the 15 minutes or so of instruction.

Both groups learned their new vocabulary by watching words projected onto large screens, together with comparable pictures, such as “apple” and a Red Delicious. They were shown 40 words per session, with the sequence repeated several times.

Afterward, the students all rested briefly and then completed a vocabulary quiz, using computer keys to note as quickly as possible whether a word was with its correct picture. They also responded to sentences using the new words, marking whether the sentences were accurate or, in the case of “The apple is a dentist,” nonsensical. Most linguists¹ feel that understanding sentences shows greater mastery of a new language than does simple vocabulary improvement.

The students completed eight vocabulary sessions over the course of two months.

And at the end of each lesson, the students who had ridden bikes performed better on the subsequent vocabulary tests than did the students who sat still.

They also became more proficient at recognizing proper sentences than the sedentary students, although that difference did not emerge until after several weeks of instruction.

Perhaps most interesting, the gains in vocabulary and comprehension lingered longest for the cyclists. When the researchers asked the students to return to the lab for a final round of testing a month after the lessons—without practicing in the meantime—the cyclists remembered words and understood them in sentences more accurately than did the students who had not moved.

“The results suggest that physical activity during learning improves that learning,” says Simone Sulpizio, a professor of psychology and linguistics at the University Vita-Salute San Raffaele in Milan, Italy, and a study co-author.

These improvements extend beyond simply aiding in memorization, she added. The exercise also deepened language learners’ grasp of how to use their newly acquired words.

This study involved college students performing relatively light exercise, though, and cannot tell us whether other people completing other types of exercise would achieve the same results.

It also offers no clues about what is occurring inside the brain that might be contributing to the benefits of the exercise. But many past studies have shown that exercise prompts the release of multiple neurochemicals in the brain that increase the number of new brain cells and the connections between neurons, Dr. Sulpizio says. These effects improve the brain’s plasticity and augment the ability to learn.

From a real-world standpoint, the study’s implications might seem at first to be impractical. Few classrooms are equipped with stationary bicycles. But specialized equipment is probably unnecessary, Dr. Sulpizio says.

“We are not suggesting that schools or teachers buy lots of bicycles,” she says. “A simpler take-home message may be that instruction should be flanked by physical activity.”

From “How Exercise Could Help You Learn a New Language” by Gretchen Reynolds from THE NEW YORK TIMES, August 16, 2017. Copyright © 2017 The New York Times Company.

¹linguists: scientists who study language

Snowy Mountains

by John Gould Fletcher

Higher and still more high,
Palaces made for cloud,
Above the dingy city-roofs
Blue-white like angels with broad wings,
Pillars of the sky at rest
The mountains from the great plateau
Uprise.

But the world heeds them not;
They have been here now for too long a time.
The world makes war on them,
Tunnels their granite cliffs,
Splits down their shining sides,
Plasters their cliffs with soap-advertisements,
Destroys the lonely fragments of their peace.

Vaster and still more vast,
Peak after peak, pile after pile,
Wilderness still untamed,
To which the future is as was the past,
Barrier spread by Gods,
Sunning their shining foreheads,
Barrier broken down by those who do not need
The joy of time-resisting storm-worn stone,
The mountains swing along
The south horizon of the sky;
Welcoming with wide floors of blue-green ice
The mists that dance and drive before the sun.

“Snowy Mountains” by John Gould Fletcher—Public Domain

Excerpt from “The Past and the Future of the Earth’s Oldest Trees”

by Alex Ross

About forty-five hundred years ago, not long after the completion of the Great Pyramid at Giza, a seed of Pinus longaeva, the Great Basin bristlecone pine, landed on a steep slope in what are now known as the White Mountains, in eastern California. The seed may have travelled there on a gust of wind, its flight aided by a winglike attachment to the nut. Or it could have been planted by a bird known as the Clark’s nutcracker, which likes to hide pine seeds in caches; nutcrackers have phenomenal spatial¹ memory and can recall thousands of such caches. This seed, however, lay undisturbed. On a moist day in fall, or in the wake of melting snows in spring, a seedling appeared above ground—a stubby one-inch stem with a tuft of bright-green shoots.

Most seedlings die within a year; the mortality rate is more than ninety-nine percent. The survivors are sometimes seen growing in the shadow of a fallen tree. The landscape of the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, as this area of the White Mountains is called, is littered with fragments of dead trees—trunks, limbs, roots, and smaller chunks. Pinus longaeva grows exclusively in subalpine regions of the Great Basin, which stretches from the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada to the Wasatch Range, in Utah. Conditions are generally too arid for the dead wood to rot; instead, it erodes, sanded down like rock. The remnants may harbor nutrients and fungi that help new trees grow. Bristlecones rise from the bones of their ancestors—a city within a cemetery.

Coast redwoods and giant sequoias, California’s gargantuan world-record-holding trees, can grow fifty feet or more in their first twenty years. Bristlecones rise agonizingly slowly. After four or five years, the seedling on the steep slope would have been just a few inches higher, sprouting needles in place of the embryonic shoots. The needles are a deep green, tough, resinous, and closely bunched in groups of five. On a mature tree, they live for fifty years or more. Decades may have passed before the tree was human height, and decades more before it resembled a conventional pine. Bristlecone saplings grow straight up, with relatively sparse foliage, looking like undernourished Christmas trees. After a few hundred years—by which time the Old Kingdom of Egypt had fallen—it was probably forty or fifty feet in height.

Many tree species live for hundreds of years. A smaller but not inconsiderable number, including the sequoias and certain yews, oaks, cypresses, and junipers, survive for thousands. Once a bristlecone has established itself in the unforgiving conditions of the White Mountains, it can last almost indefinitely. The trees tend to grow some distance from one another, so fires almost never destroy an entire stand. Because only a few other plant species can handle the dry, cold climate, the bristlecones face little competition. Unlike most plants, they tolerate dolomite soil, which is composed of a chalky type of limestone that is heavily alkaline and low in nutrients. As for insect threats, bristlecone wood is so dense that mountain-pine beetles and other pests can rarely burrow their way into it.

Empires rose and fell; wars raged; . . . and the tree from 2500 B.C. continued its implacable slow-motion existence, adding about two-hundredths of an inch to the diameter of its trunk each year. Minute changes in the tree-ring record make bristlecones an exceptionally useful source of data about changing conditions on Earth. When rains are heavier than normal, the rings widen. When volcanic eruptions cause global cooling, frost rings make the anomaly² visible. . . .

As the millennia go by, bristlecones become contorted and wraithlike.³ The main stem, or leader, dies back. Entire branches, even the trunk itself, become fossils. At first glance, the tree may look dead. Such is the case of the forty-five-hundred-year-old tree that clings to life near the tourist path that now runs through the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. Spears of dead wood jut into the air. The trunk is a marbled hulk stripped of bark, like driftwood thrown from a vanished ocean. A ribbon of live bark runs up one side, funneling water and nutrients to clumps of green needles high above. All told, the tree is an unprepossessing specimen; most people march past it without giving it a second glance. . . .

. . . No two super-elderly trees look alike, to the point where they have acquired the characteristics of individuals. Trees are prone to anthropomorphism; we project our dreams and our anxieties onto them. Bristlecones have been called elders, sentinels, sages. The possibility that climate change will cause their extinction has inspired a spate⁴ of alarmed news stories, although tree scientists tend to discount the idea that the bristlecones are in immediate danger. They have survived any number of catastrophes in the past; they may survive humanity.

From “The Past and the Future of the Earth’s Oldest Trees” by Alex Ross from THE NEW YORKER, January 20, 2020. Copyright © 2020 by Condé Nast. All rights reserved.

¹spatial: relating to physical space

²anomaly: oddity

³wraithlike: ghostly

⁴spate: sudden abundance

Excerpt from “The Food Business Incubator”

by Mandalit Del Barco

“La Cocina” means “the kitchen” in Spanish. It’s also the name of a business incubator¹ based in San Francisco’s Mission District. Since it began in 2005, it’s been helping local food entrepreneurs, many of whom are low-income immigrant women, develop their small businesses.

Over the years, many of its alumni have found success: more than 50 chefs in its program have become self-sufficient business owners, and many of them have opened their own brick-and-mortar restaurants. Two alumnae of its culinary program . . . were even recognized as semi-finalists for prestigious James Beard awards.²

A new cookbook, We Are La Cocina: Recipes in Pursuit of the American Dream, tells some of their stories.

Executive director Caleb Zigas says the nonprofit La Cocina grew out of two grassroots economic development organizations³ who found many people cooking at their homes and selling food on the streets. The vendors needed an affordable commercial kitchen space and technical assistance in order for their businesses to be legally viable. La Cocina provided just such a space, in addition to helping them develop business plans, pull city permits and more.

Zigas says as many as eight businesses can work in the kitchen space at La Cocina at any one time. Some can prep for a farmers’ market sale, corporate catering gigs or weddings, while others might be making and packaging their food products.

“It’s just an incredible and exciting range of techniques, flavors, perspectives, age, language. And that’s a really beautiful thing,” he says. . . .

Twice a year, La Cocina hosts “F&B: Voices from the Kitchen,” a storytelling project where their chefs can tell their own stories, as they do in the new cookbook. Some of the chefs will be on tour to promote the book, whose proceeds will go to support La Cocina entrepreneurs.

NPR⁴ caught up with . . . La Cocina chefs, who shared their stories:

Mariko Grady, Aedan Fermented Foods

At La Cocina, you can often hear Mariko Grady singing or humming as she prepares miso, koji, and amasake. Her fermented products come in four different flavors, including mushroom and chicken, to be used in soups and sauces. She originally brought the fermenting rice and barley koji seeds from Japan, where she had a 30-year career as a singer and dancer with the prestigious modern theatrical dance group she founded, Pappa Tarahumara. They performed around the world, and 16 years ago, had a one-night show in San Francisco. The man who would become her husband was in the audience. She soon joined him in San Francisco, often returning to Tokyo to rehearse. But after the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in 2011, her company disbanded. . . . Grady focused on nourishing her family and creating a line of fermented products that she sells online, at local Bay Area stores and at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. She began at La Cocina in 2012 and named her business after her son, Aedan. (Written in Kanji characters, the name means “wisdom” and “handed down from generation to generation.”) . . . Her fermented products are “also full of wisdom about how to relate to nature and how to create a healthy life,” she says. . . .

Shani Jones, Peaches Patties

Shani Jones is a native San Franciscan. Her father was born in New Orleans, her mother, in Jamaica. She says their home was always filled with a variety of spices and dishes like jerk chicken and Jamaican patties—savory pastries filled with beef or chicken. Jones says she learned to cook from her mother, whose nickname was Peaches. After returning from college in Atlanta, Jones worked on her doctorate in organizational leadership and management while driving a Lyft⁵ car. She often told passengers about her idea of opening a catering company with her mom’s recipes. They steered her to La Cocina, where she developed her own business, named after her mother. Five years later, she caters and runs a kiosk⁶ at a small food cooperative in Bernal Heights, where some of her handmade patties have an Ethiopian twist, “because my husband is Ethiopian.” Jones has big aspirations for Peaches Patties: “The ultimate goal,” she says, “is to be the patty kingpin⁷ of the West Coast.”

From “The Food Business Incubator That Helps Immigrant Women Pursue The American Dream” by Mandalit Del Barco from WEEKEND EDITION SUNDAY, June 19, 2019. Copyright © 2019 NPR.

QUALIFICATIONS FOR LA COCINA APPLICANTS

Level of Income	La Cocina considers assets and access to opportunity when screening applicants. La Cocina’s mission is to support entrepreneurs who face barriers to becoming successful in the food industry. Applicants must be classified as low- or very-low-income earners according to the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Guidelines for San Francisco.
Business Plan	Applicants must have a business plan that is ready to be put into action. La Cocina will help applicants refine an existing business plan. Applicants without a business plan should contact one of La Cocina’s partner organizations for guidance in developing one.
Viable Product	The applicant’s food must not only be delicious but also stand out. For a business to make a profit, there also has to be a market for the food.
Entrepreneurial Work Ethic	La Cocina is excited to work with entrepreneurs who are motivated and passionate about growing their business. Succeeding in the food industry requires a lot of heart and hard work.
Community Spirit	The 30+ entrepreneurs who share La Cocina’s kitchen are from many different backgrounds. La Cocina values the community it has created and expects each entrepreneur to be active in bringing the spirit of La Cocina to the wider world. In order to succeed in the La Cocina kitchen, accepted applicants must be flexible and willing to work closely with others.

Source: La Cocina

¹business incubator: company that helps new and startup companies develop by providing services such as management training and office space

²James Beard awards: an award named after American cook and author James Beard, considered one of the highest honors in the culinary industry

³economic development organizations: organizations whose mission is to promote economic improvement within a specific geographical area

⁴NPR: National Public Radio, a nonprofit media organization that produces and distributes news and cultural programming

⁵Lyft: ride-sharing company where people use their own cars to provide rides to customers

⁶kiosk: cart or small structure with one or more open sides that is used to vend merchandise or services

⁷kingpin: the leader in a group or undertaking

Cross-Purposes

What I am is built: concrete and steel.
I defy gravity. I am what every athlete
wants: to remain at the apex of the leap,
up in the air. And yet I am useful, too:
cars, trucks, people, even trains
make their way across my broad back.
Swallows and ospreys$^1$ nest in my trusses.

What I am is motion. I am water, and I am older
than anything else you know. No human
built me. I am gravity’s best friend; I pool
and flow wherever gravity takes me.
I am the blood flowing in the runner’s chest,
and I catch everything: from the hills,
the mountains. It all washes down through me.

What you are is an accident,
what happens to rain when rain gives in
to Earth’s gravitational pull.
You are some tears dribbling from a mountain’s
eye, running down the pavements
of small towns, into the cities, to the sea.
You are the path of least resistance.

What I am is power. You, of course,
have none: you are a static lump, an artifact
slowly decaying. But my regal flow
nourishes grasses, permits empires to rise.
Those who made you will break you,
in time, replacing you with yet another
clumsy structure. I have seen. I know.

“Clumsy”? Being rebuilt makes me
a friend of time, does it not? And it means
that I have siblings—those “clumsy” structures,
my sisters and brothers.
We stitch across the rip you make.
We are steel thread to the human needle.
We bind you up. We sew you.

And I sow into you; in every cranny
of your superstructure my vapors cling.
They bring out your softness, your rust.
Boast your best, and boast better yet.
I am listening to the bright hum
of the wind in your wires. Because I am,
above all else, patient. I will wait for you.

$^1$ospreys: large birds

Going Solar in China

In the Anhui province of China, 166,000 floating solar panels are strung together atop the rippling surface of a lake. It is the largest solar-power farm in the world, an immense blanket of renewable energy strong enough to power 15,000 homes.

The floating solar-power farm, which harvests the sun’s rays for power, was first conceived by the Sungrow Power Supply Company after heavy rains flooded a collapsed coal mine and created a lake. Sang Dajie, a former coal miner from the area, is now an electrician for the farm, which occupies the original mine site where he used to work. Now, instead of working under the dangerous conditions at the mine, he spends his days maintaining the solar panels on the water. “The coal mine,” says Dajie, “was very hot and the air was bad. . . . But here I feel safe. The new energy is safe.” People in China rely primarily on the burning of coal in massive power plants to create electricity. While the burning of fossil fuels, like coal, is a reliable source of energy, the process releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, creating air pollution and harming Earth. Solar power, on the other hand, is clean and safe for the environment.

Solar panels are typically placed on rooftops or in open fields, but experts in China determined that the newly formed lake was a great spot for the solar-power farm. Solar-power farms over water are efficient because the water keeps the panels cool. A water-based solar-power farm can potentially generate more power than one based on land. Additionally, with the solar-power farm on the lake, the land in the surrounding area remains available for farming, which is another source of income for Anhui residents.

Originally, China displayed minimal interest in solar energy. The use of solar energy was limited primarily to rural areas that had no access to a power grid. Without access to other means of electricity, people in these areas used solar panels as an alternative to lighting candles and kerosene lamps. China began to manufacture solar panels for other countries in the late 1990s when the German government offered its people financial incentives for installing solar panels. The heightened demand for solar panels was instantaneous, and Chinese businesses were quick to seize the opportunity. Soon the governments of Spain and Italy also offered incentives for using solar technology, and Chinese manufacturers were ready for the increased demand.

Between 2008 and 2013, China improved its manufacturing technology and processes so much that it effectively lowered the worldwide cost of using solar energy by 80 percent, further increasing demand. However, a point came when Chinese manufacturers had become so efficient at producing solar-power equipment that they outpaced the demand. The manufacturers were producing two solar panels for every one solar panel they sold. In order to make manufacturing a profitable industry again, the Chinese government offered its own financial incentives to Chinese citizens for using solar energy. Now, projects like the floating solar-power farm are putting those surplus panels to use, in addition to providing jobs and cleaner energy.

A second solar-power farm has already been constructed near the massive one in Anhui as part of a government initiative to build more low-emission power plants. The goal is to meet 20 percent of the country’s energy needs with renewable, clean energy sources by the year 2030.

As Sang Dajie puts it, “I’m glad we are reusing this area to create a better future.” China’s dedication to increasing its production of renewable energy through solar power demonstrates that patience, time, and flexibility can result in transformation.