87 quotes found
"A specialist is a man who knows more and more about less and less."
"Brutalized and penniless, the refugees fled to the world's largest Hindu country right next door. But the area bordering Bangladesh, West Bengal, has had a communist governemntn since 1977 and offered no succor. Rigid atheists, the communists reject any bonds of faith in favor of their internationalist goals and have thrown their lot in with the Islamists. VPA victims have been put in camps then sent on forced marches when the government decided to seize the land. The West Bengal Stalinists refuse to recognize them as refugees or give them any legal standing, though many of them have been living there for decades. It also hast turned a blind eye to cross-border attacks and further Muslim atrocities."
"Rabindra Ghosh, I said " has extensive evidence that there are Members of Parliament heavily involved in stealing land from Hindus, and even in rapes and other atrocities. You know what your enemies think of you as you sit next to them smiling? 'We can steal their land, rape their daughters and sisters, and just give them a few Taka.'" (xiii)"
"Since its birth as an independent nation in 1971, Bangladesh has implemented a number of measures to expand the constitutional and legal role of Islam, while institutionalizing prejudice and bigotry against its minority Hindu population. Hindus have also faced routine acts of violence, including murders, rapes, forced conversions, temple attacks, abductions, and land encroachments. Religiously motivated violence in Bangladesh has particularly impacted Hindu women and young girls, and has been utilized as a weapon of subjugation. (xvii, Samir Kalra)"
"Hindus comprised approximately 33% of the population in 1947... but were less than 20% by 1971. And in 2001, Hindus represented less than 10% of the population, while today many sources estimate that Hindus are only 8%. (xviii, Samir Kalra)"
"This book contains quite a few references to Nazi Germany, and there is a tendency for many people to discount such comparisons because they are so overused and often in simplistic and inappropriate ways. I am no less tolerant of such facile uses of a horrific set of events; and I find their overuse an insult to the memories of the victims. But I am using it rather extensively in this book precisely because the parallel is appropriate, certainly in the similar end foreseen by Islamists for Bengali Hindus and Nazis for Jews. If that recognition awakens the world to action, then this will be one of the most important uses of the comparison since World War II. (6-7)"
"In 1951, after the dust of Partition-era transfers settled, the ratio of Muslims to Hindus in East Bengal was about three and a half to one. Three years after Bangladesh won its independence, the ratio of Muslims to Hindus was still only a little higher than six to one,. By 2001, Muslims outnumbered Hindus by a ratio of almost eleven and a half to one. Bangladesh's Hindu population is dying. (30)"
"A the time of India's partition in 1947, they made up a little less than a third of East Pakistan's population. When East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971, Hindus were less than a fifth; thirty years later, less than one in ten; and several estimates put the Hindu population at less than eight percent today. (30)"
"The trajectory is clear and immutable; ...no matter that the land is dotted with Hindu historical and religious sites, although they are being destroyed or left to rot.(30)"
"What resources have the Bangladeshi Hindus? .... Flushed with passion after meeting with scores of refugees in 2008, I returned to AI's web site and scoured it in search of some outrage - any outrage -over what is so apparent in South Asia; but my search was in vain. ... To date Amnesty International has yet to show any stomach for opposing what could be the worst case of ethnic cleansing in our time. One could advance any number of reasons for their silence. Is it because the victims are Hindu; or the victimizers Muslim? Are they simply moral cowards; or do they just not care? Perhaps it is a case of AI placing ideology above principle... The last time AI, or HRW for that matter, gave the Bangladeshi Hindus even passing mention was in 2006. (Oxfam never has.) In its 2010 report on Bangladesh, AI shockingly did not even mention the oppression of Hindus; a horrid disgrace, that encourages the human rights atrocities those very organizations claim to be fighting! (32-33)"
"It was able to recover and produce numerous documents that included written orders to Pakistani troops and their irregular allies to kill as many Hindus as possible. (35)"
"I have seen the victims and in one remote corner of Northeast India in March 2009, I stared into the eyes of a 14-year old Hindu girl as she told of being raped by Muslims because she is a Hindu. (42)"
"Thousands of Hindu and Sikh girls were gang raped by fanatic Islamists. (48, quoting Narain Kataria, 2010)."
"In "Hindu Genocide in East Pakistan", Shrinandan Vyas synthesizes data from several sources to demonstrate that Hindus were indeed thee atackers' "primary target." (73)"
"One incident that is becoming more and more common was related to me in almost every colony I visited between 2008 and 2010: the random abduction of young Hindu women and girls. With a numbing consistency, their testimonies would tell of a young female walking by the side of the road. In some cases, she was going to draw water; in others she was on her way to school; and in some, she was just walking o her way to see a relative or friend. out of the blue, a gang of Muslims would drive up and snatch the woman and then take her to a vacant building or field and rape her repeatedly. (85)"
"On January 1, 14-year-old Subarna Karmaker was walking home from school in Kalapara in the state of Barisal. Several Muslim males led by a local Muslim identified as Jewel, age 22, grabbed her. They forced the girl onto their motorcycle, and fled. Subarna cried loudly for help, but no one came to her aid. Her father went to the police and complained, but was told that they knew of no crime and would not take any action. Subarna remains missing. (97)"
"A group of Muslims gang raped a 14-year-old Hindu girl and berated her for being hindu. She at first said they "chased" her and on furhter questioning said they "caught her and did bad things to her." (98)"
"15 year old Fulfuli Rani Roy was kidnapped by local Muslims from Dolapar in the state of Rajshahi. Her father filed a complaint with the local police, identifying the perpetrator as Mahabul Islam, the son of Rayaz Uddinbut. The police, however, said that they would not pursue a case in nthe matter, refusing as well to try and located and recover the girl. As a result, Fulfuli Rani Roy has not been seen or heard from since, and her father along with others allege that her kidnappers murdered her. (99)"
"On March 13, three-year old Milon Moni Das was abducted by local Muslims.... a neighbour found the Hindu child dead in some bushes.... Police then took one Muslim into custody, but released him after intervention by the local Awami League chairman. There has been no further action.... (99)"
"Jenny Lundstrom, who is a human rights officer for Global Human Defence in the Hague, is a tireless advocate for putting an end to the anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh. She notes that according to one source, "200,000 Bengali women were raped with a genocidal motive during the 1971 war." She also refers to "mass rapes of Bangladeshi women in the 1970s and 1980s" as a precedent for using rape support genocide since then, including cites 1,000 rapes of Hindu women and girls in the immediate aftermath of the 2001 election. (p. 100, citing Lundstrom, "With Intent to Destroy? Rape as Genocide under International Criminal Law: The case of Bangladesh, 2007")"
"The case involves a Hindu woman named Koli Goswami. ... The local Awami League MP, Retired General Abdus Salam, was present during this episode and threatened him with "dire consequences" should he proceed with the case any further or dispute the conversion. (102-6)"
"Reports began trickling out of Bangladesh in the spring of 2009 about what can only be described as an anti-Hindu pogrom in the heart of its capital. ... This is not about one terrible event, but about a system of legalized ethnic cleansing that has proceeded non-stop for decades and which places every one of Bangladesh's 13-15,000,000 Hindus at risk. The Sutrapur pogrom merely provides more evidence that government protestations to the contrary, normal legal protections are suspended for Hindus and other minorities in Bangladesh who are subject to arbitrary actions by the Muslim majority. (112-114)"
"Pogroms were initially anti-Jewish riots in the empire of Czarist Russia.... What makes the term particularly apt in this incident is the fact that this anti-Hindu pogrom was also carried out by average (Muslim) citizens, but the entire process was inspired by the government , abetted by it, and the perpetrators were protected by it. It is this unholy wedding of mob action and deliberate government effort that makes it truly an anti-Hindu pogrom. (112-113)"
"The embassy [in Washington], however, has not commented on incidents of anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh from 2009 forward; a period roughly consonant with the installation of the Awami League government in Bangladesh...(117)"
"In April (2008), 5 Muslims abducted 19-year old Durga Singh from Kolkata's Shibpur tram depot.... This happened after he protested the actions of.... a group of Muslims who would "molest [Hindu] girls" in Kolkata's Ghoshbagan area. The West Bengal government did not file any charges in this case."
"The attack on Bangladeshi Hindus is a crime against humanity. In and of itself, it is severe enough to spur our moral outrage and cause us to take action to stop it. But to make matters worse, it has been spreading across that open border into West Bengal, India. One would think these Hindu victims of Islamist terror would find a safe haven in the largest Hindu nation on earth, but they have not."
"In June (2008), a large mob of approximately 5,000 Muslim fundamentalists, "comprised mostly of Bangladeshi infiltrators", attacked a major religious gathering of Hindus at one of their holiest sites at one of the pilgrimage points of Gangasagar in West Bengal. They outnumbered the pilgrims by 25 to one, and focused assaults on women and children... the West Bengal police... did not charge any of them. But in a move reminiscent of Nazi Germany, which would charge the Jewish community when they were attacked, the West Bengal government arrested 15 of the religious pilgrims "under several sections of the Indian Penal Code for inciting communal disharmony, while the perpetrators roam Scott free." (152-3, citing Survey of Hindu Human Rights West Bengal)"
"In October (2008), Hindus were in the midst of celebrating one of their most important holidays, Durga Puja. "Religious fundamentalists... cut off the power supply and vandalized the pandal and hung up the severed leg of a cow." (154)"
"Every Hindu with whom we spoke said the women of the house could not go to market or anywhere else without harassment and threats of sexual assault. Their children could not attend school because of the threats. (158)"
"The most poignant testimony came from a woman in the village of Norit. She told us how five weeks before our visit, Muslims abducted her 22-year old daughter, and she has not been seen since. (159)"
"Scholars, journalists, activists, and others have an almost knee-jerk tendency to praise Bangladesh's beginnings as a secular nation and trace its slide into Islamist domination from the 1975 assassination of its founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. That praise is warranted - but only to a limited extent, for secularism and any semblance of democratic ideals were in their death throes long before Sheikh Mujib was."
"What we must understand is this: The Vested Property Act is legalized racism and legalized thievery. The fact that the Bangladeshi government has refused to repeal it, let alone compensate the victims, makes it quite clear that it is not interested in developing a society that allows freedom and equal protection under the law for all of its citizens. (176)"
"While the act has been used against other religious and ethnic minorities on occasion, only Hindus have faced a consistent and organized effort to use the law to eliminate them from the Bangladeshi polity. Hindus are the VPA's real targets. Professor Abul Barkat of Dhaka University undertook the most authoritative study of the VPA and concluded that by 1997, 40 percent of Hindu families in Bangladesh had been affected by it and more than half of all Hindu-owned land already had been confiscated under thee act. Much more land and many more Hindus have been affected in the fourteen years since then. So, there is no doubt that the VPA is a critical ingredient in ethnic cleansing. The fact that the percent of Hindus in Bangladesh has been cut in half concurrent with the act is evidence of those even more sinister, ethnic cleansing, motives behind the law. (177)"
"The VPA is so clearly immoral that the question of its being an outrage to every decent human being should not even be a legitimate topic for discussion among civilized individuals. There is no justification for it, and every Bangladeshi should be embarrassed by it. Trying to make a case for it is like trying to justify Holocaust denial.... Some appeasers in universities and elsewhere are now trying to say that holocaust denial is merely another point of view that is a legitimate topic for study. Nonsense!... Trying to justify the VPA is a racist lie, too. (177)"
"In an attack that was clearly planned in advance with the connivance of West Bengal authorities, a mob supposedly acting out of spontaneous outrage descended upon the workshop [by Tapan Ghosh] while loudly denouncing it as "communal." (199)"
"One story men and women both told me repeatedly involved abductions of young Hindu women in Bangladesh. They might be walking by the road or on their way to school when groups of Muslims would force them into vehicles, carry them off, and then rape them. (224)"
"Five Muslim men broke into Koli's family [Koli Goswami] at 12:45 am on Junne 13, 2009. ... they carried her away. Her family has not seen her since. To many Westerners, stories like this strain credulity. It simply is not within the realm of their experience. (230)"
"Nipa Banarjee (17), a Hindu school girl, was kidnapped December 1, 2010... The police have taken no action.... (231-2)"
"Bangladesh is heavily invested in advertising itself to Americans and other potential trading partners as a "moderate Muslim country." ... Over the last few decades, however, they have come more and more under the thumb of radical jihadis. Yet, they have not stopped trying to portray themselves as what they perhaps were at one point, and few Americans know that the reality is not what they are saying it is."
"Police refused to register the case and destroyed the evidence. Officials including Superitendant of Police have refused to lodge case, intimidated family, and taken bribes. (324)"
"The most severe anti-minority activity, however, has been directed at Hindus, in part because they are the largest religious minority, in part because of the larger Hindu-Muslim conflict that so characterizes South Asia. Hindus are not safe in Bangladesh; not from radicals, not from their government. They were almost a third of the population after the population transfers that accompanied the Indian subcontinent’s 1947 partition. After Bangladesh gained its independence, they were less than a fifth; thirty years later, less than one in ten; and several estimates put the Hindu population at less than 8 percent today"
"Professor Sachi Dastidar (2008) of the State University of New York estimates that about 49 million Hindus are missing from the Bangladeshi census. This is not a phenomenon, as apologists try to assert, that is a mere consequence of demography or the actions of a small group of radicals. Rather, as Samir Kalra (2012), Senior Director and Senior Human Rights Fellow of the Hindu American Foundation, notes, there have been “nearly 1,200 incidents of violence directed against religious minorities (mostly Hindus) between 2008 and 2011.”"
"The election of an Awami League government was supposed to herald an end to the ethnic cleansing of Hindus, but it did not. During their first term in office, major anti-Hindu atrocities occurred at an average of at least one per week for the entire five years. They included murder, rape, child abduction, forced conversion, severe assaults, land seizures, religious desecration and more. There were periods of intense anti-Hindu activity, for instance, a 26-day period in the Spring of 2010 that saw three a week; and a nine-day period in May 2012 with an abduction and disappearance, a murder in broad daylight, and two gang rapes; one of a child on her way to a Hindu festival (Ghosh 2012; Benkin 2015).[1"
"On February 16, 2013, Bangladesh Minority Watch (BDMW) President and Founder Rabindra Ghosh and I walked into the remote Hindu village of Balai Bazaar, which is part of Chirir Bandor Upazilla, located in the far northern Bangladeshi state of Dinajpur.[14] Several months prior, the village had been overrun by a marauding gang of angry Muslims. According to numerous villagers with whom we spoke, the attackers moved “from home to home, taking some possessions and destroying the rest; from farm to farm stealing livestock and destroying crops.” They torched homes, burning many to the ground; and they abused many of the women, an all-too-common feature of such attacks. One woman described in detail how she and her daughter fled to nearby fields and hid there until the attackers left. Other women testified to me that they were sexually assaulted, and several witnesses claimed to have seen “five women rounded up by the rioters, forcefully disrobed, and their clothing thrown in a large bonfire and left publicly naked.”"
"After independence, officials of the Bangladeshi government under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman reviewed the laws of Pakistan under which they previously lived. Their mandate was to ratify some and eliminate or change others. At one point, they encountered Pakistan’s Enemy Property Act, passed in 1965 after another embarrassing defeat at Indian hands as a retaliatory law against Hindus. The openly anti-Hindu nature of the law matched the national rhetoric before and during the war, as well as most of the time since. Significantly, this was one of the laws that Bangladeshi officials decided to keep on the new nation’s books. Since, however, it had to maintain the fiction of a break from Pakistani bigotry, it was circumspect about it. They changed the name of the law from Enemy Property Act to Vested Property Act while adopting the Pakistani law verbatim"
"According to Professor Abul Barkat (and Shafique uz Zaman 2008) of Dhaka University, after about thirty years of Bangladeshi rule, approximately 75 percent of all Hindu land in Bangladesh was seized under the VPA. Nor did it matter if the ruling party was the Awami League or the BNP. Barkat’s data showed that the percentage of the spoils did not depend on which party was in power but on the party in power. Whoever held power took essentially the same amount of loot. During BNP rule it was BNP 45 percent, Awami League 31, all others 24. During Awami League rule it was Awami League 44 percent, BNP 32, all others 24. Despite the enormous amount of property seized, Barkat also noted that only about 0.4 percent of the Bangladeshi population derives any of the proceeds; the greatest number of it goes to party loyalists"
"During my 2014 fact-finding trip to Assam, locals frequently impressed on me how they believe the influx of “infiltrators” from Bangladesh is not only changing Assam’s culture, ecology, and demographics; they also are building support for radical Islam inside the state (Benkin 2014). I have been tracking the demographic change in West Bengal for almost a decade and have seen village after village on the border with Bangladesh, formerly with robust Hindu and Muslim populations, become entirely Muslim, the Hindu population having been forced to leave. The growth of Islamism in West Bengal through the influx of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh is well-documented."
"In 2015, the Bangladeshi Islamist party, Jamaat e-Islami, opened up a branch office in Kolkata, India. Extensive reporting alleged West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee helped funnel money to Jamaat inside Bangladesh (The Hindu 2014) and help Jamaat’s power in West Bengal politics grow (Banerjee 2015). By the end of November 2015, Banerjee appeared openly with Jamaat at a large public rally in Kolkata (Ali 2015)."
"Perhaps the biggest reason why intellectuals excoriated entertainment was that they understood all too well their own precariousness in a world dominated by it. For whatever the overt content of any particular work, entertainment as a whole promulgated an unmistakable theme, one that took dead aim at the intellectuals’ most cherished values. That theme was the triumph of the senses over the mind, of emotion over reason, of chaos over order, or the id over the superego, of Dionysian abandon of Apollonian harmony. Entertainment was Plato’s worst nightmare. It deposed the rational and enthroned the sensational and in so doing deposed the intellectual minority and enthroned the unrefined majority."
"The amino acids that come from animal sources tend to make our cells rev up and multiply faster. For example, there is accumulating evidence that high consumption of proteins from dairy sources is related to a higher risk of prostate cancer. That chain of cancer causation actually seems pretty clear."
"He had a gift for saying unpleasant things in the most charming manner."
"Five groups had ruled pre-war Germany: the twenty-odd sovereigns with the Kaiser at their head, the Army officers, the officials, the aristocratic land-owners and the possessors of heavy industry. Amid a people conditioned to obedience, they alone knew what they wanted and were not afraid to take it. An experimental Republic that did not break the political necks of nearly all five groups was, in time, almost bound once more to fall under their rule. Such is the law of the jungle."
"Did he believe all that he said? The question is inapplicable to this sort of personality. Subjectively Adolf Hitler was, in my opinion, entirely sincere even in his self-contradictions. For his is a humorless mind that simply excludes the need for consistency that might distress more intellectual types. To an actor the truth is anything that lies in its effect: if it makes the right impression it is true."
"Even if the more apocalyptic Germans were right and the German disorder really constituted "a return to primordial instinct, to the mystic chaos of creation out of which the great ecstasies of revolutions and religions arise," that could not alter the fact that the prerequisite of any true creation is freedom."
"Be thoughtful, appreciate everyone’s contributions, and organize your life so that you can pursue science. Science is more than a full-time job, and so is raising a family and being part of a community. Get help with the house, logistics, and anything else you can. Try to spend your time doing what matters most to you."
"Trust your intuitions and do the right thing. If it doesn’t feel right, you’re not doing the right thing. And you must believe in what you are doing. If you don’t, you should do something else."
"Have integrity and only publish what you’re convinced is really true and will stand the test of time. You can only build a career off real findings."
"Don’t compare yourself to others, and don’t worry too much about what other people think. There is always the temptation to compare your level of success with others’, but that is a trap. You’ll find happiness when you set your own internal standard for what you want to do, and do what you find internally rewarding."
"Share everything you can, and don’t be paranoid. If you’re racing to the finish line with other scientists, it’s better for you to support each other and get there together than to hold each other back. Excitement in fields is built by people doing things together, replicating and building off each other."
"Ignore mean-spirited people, if all attempts to establish harmony fail. Also ignore people who evaluate you not by your research contributions but by their stereotyped impression of you, whether that be because of your gender, background, or something else. You can’t control what other people think. Science (like other careers) can sometimes bring out people’s less prosocial instincts. When it does, I just focus on my science, and on the mentors, friends, and family members who love and support me. Even if you’re not the most popular person, if your science is true, then I believe what my mother-in-law says: The cream rises to the top."
"And finally, have fun. My motto all along has been “work hard, play hard,” although now for me playing hard means spending evenings with my kids. Scientists have the greatest career in the world. We get to decipher humankind’s greatest mysteries, and pursue our own unique, creative visions. There are few things in life more rewarding than that. It’s an absolute privilege to be able to spend your work life innovating and pursuing questions no one has ever known the answer to. Remember that."
"When my name was first mentioned for the beauty contest, the family was surprised that my father was all for my participation in it. His conservative views about women had naturally made us conclude that he would be against the attendant publicity. His only concern was to find out how strong the sentiment was for me."
"The reason why my father exerted himself to make me queen was to begin what—for lack of a better name—Ibshall call a tradition. My mother had been the first carnival queen in her day. I suppose it fascinated him to think of a daughter following her mother's footsteps, as indeed the newspapers then kept pointing out. It was a beautiful thought. It satisfied his hobby for collections."
"I am a positivist in the strict sense of the word. But I don't know if I really am in truth or in the sense that you ask. My father is an idealist, my mother a positivist. I think I share both."
"Politics is messy. A woman is for her home where she has a lot of work to do. Some women are gifted to be in business, well and good. But a woman should stay as far away as possible from politics."
"Scouting as a method in education was conceived to be exactly opposite to that of the classroom. No lectures or sermons, outdoors and not indoors, leadership in the pupil and not in the teacher, decision from the patrol group and not the individual, reliance on natural resources at hand and not on store-bough equipment, importance on trying and no on the result, the personality and not the dress, the spirit and not the body."
"Not that we do not want the government to extend relief when necessary, but it is the mark of a responsible and capable administration to make sure its efforts do not end there. Rehabilitation is a far better solution to our social difficulties because its effects will be lasting and permanent. It is urgent that relief be given promptly but it is more urgent to train the people, with the help of such relief, to be able to help themselves."
"The human spirit sleeps only while the body is weak and hungry. Because it is God-given, the spirit cannot always be deadened and filled. The dental of the intellectual as the true leader of the people in favor of the peasant and the laborer has not been proved by history."
"Who know but that, once his poverty and misery shall have been assuaged, the Chinese will return to the freedom of thought, speech, and enterprise that we have realized is necessary for personal happiness and national well-being."
"To condemn me because of an unrealistic law—which I am sure even the president has violated—is unfair. But to make this the issues of my candidacy and to overrule my clean record in the Senate is unjust."
"What Ninoy knows about the political game and how to be a professional in it could fill an encyclopedia. But look at him. You wouldn't even believe that he is already grown up. His impish stories, full of fun, hides a mind that, like a camera, sees and records and connects. A real political treasure, this Ninoy. Like his father before him."
"One of the challenges of being a senator is the solution to problems alien to one's field of interest or preparation. Like a knife, one is sharpened by these challenges, some of which are quite sharply new. In the Senate, one meets new types of people, new procedures of work, new competitions, both fair and unfair, new techniques of harassment from within and without the premises and the political party. More than these, one must learn the mastery of new subjects preparatory to defending them on the floor in sponsorship or questioning them during interpellation. Preparation has always been the key to success for these situations, and especially useful is the correct anticipation of an oppositionist to a measure, and who these oppositionists will be."
"A woman's life, like any one else's life, or, for that matter, like any enterprise or movement or activity or venture, improves with planning and programming. For woman, Nature herself made the plans and the program and duly prepared her physical body for it. Each plan and program has its own season in her life."
"Timing is the answer to many problems, the solution to many situations."
"Alignment and adjustment to God's plans for us is one of the basic requisites to happiness here in earth. This is especially necessary at a time when the Filipino woman, buoyed with a newfound sense of accomplishment, is tempted to forget what she was made for and how her talents can be used."
"Taking after her mother, Pura, who was the first Carnival Queen, she, too, was accorded the same honor 23 years later, even as she distinguished herself in the University of the Philippines where she majored in Philosophy and later pursued her master's degree in social work. A Barbour Scholarship awardee, she finished her master's degree in literature at the University of Michigan. She obtained her doctorate of philosophy in social science at the University of Santo Tomas with magna cum laude honors."
"' is unique in many ways. Endemic to the of Mexico and the United States, its broad, persistent, heavy leaves are unlike any of its associates. Its large edible seeds contain about 50% oil, which is directly used as a and as a . The oil has excellent qualities for many industrial and medicinal uses. Chemically it is a liquid wax and by is easily converted to a hard white wax. ’s singular characteristics as a , however, present many problems facing its development as a cultivated plant."
"In , s are scattered like gems in an arborescent matrix. They grow mainly upon the rocky slopes of hills and mountains and are generally lacking in the valleys and on the plains. Hence, the distributional pattern is islandlike. Compared with the massive populations of agaves in and in the , they are very sparse in Sonora. However, they are distinctly characteristic of the succulent component in the vegetation of our America deserts and arid regions ... … Desert species exist with about 5 inches or less annual precipitation and can endure rainless years; montane species receive 30 or more inches annual precipitation."
"In North America, perhaps had as much to do in fostering the beginnings of agriculture as any other of plants. In Agaveland anyone can plant and grow agaves. All that is needed is to dig up or pull up a young offset and bury its base in moist or dry soil, with or without roots, wherever it is wanted. If it does not strike root and grow the first season, the chances are that it will the next. (1965) has made a strong case that such transplants were the primary agricultural subjects of the . Compared with seeds, the shift of useful plants from the open wild site to camp or village was more obvious and direct with transplants, and their care, protection, and culture were simpler. The hunting and gathering tribes had good reason to regard agave with special attention, because agave supplied them with food, fiber, drink, shelter, and miscellaneous natural products. Protection may have been one use, for when planted around a cottage, the larger species make armed fences, a common practice in modern Mexico."
"Howard Gentry was an inspirational figure from an heroic age of arid plant science — exploring from horseback the of the in the 1930s, working on the wartime t in the 1940s, travelling around Iran in search of gum s and around the deserts of Arizona and California in search of in the 1950s."
"The South Carolina outbreak of lettuce-rot occurred in , the second largest lettuce-growing district on the eastern coast of the United States, with a reputation of growing the finest quality of on the entire eastern coast. The South Carolina disease may be either a stem or a leaf infection ... In an early stage the plants are a lighter green color than the healthy ones; later the head may show rot through the center or only on the top. A general wilting of the head may occur with or without visible spots or rot. In some cases rotting is rapid; in others the heart remains sound, while the outer encircling leaves are in a bad state of decay. The diseased plants are not firm in the soil, the stem is brittle, and can be easily broken off at the surface or a little below the surface of the soil. In an early stage of disease the stem when cut across shows a blue-green color; in a later stage it is brown."
"A bacterial leafspot disease of the occurs widespread in the Eastern States. It is mostly a disease but occurs occasionally on plants grown out of doors. The organism was isolated from diseased plants received from different sources and the disease reproduced on the leaves of healthy plants. Warm, moist conditions with poor ventilation are necessary for the organism to infect the leaves extensively. Care in regulating the temperature, air, and moisture conditions of the greenhouse and in giving plenty of space to plants grown out of doors will go far toward preventing the appearance of the disease and toward curing it when it is present. All spotted leaves should be removed and destroyed. Very sensitive varieties should be discarded. The name Bacterium pelargoni is suggested for the organism causing the disease."
"A disease of es which caused big losses to the growers occurred last June in Texas, and in August and September in Nebraska. The disease is first noticed in green full-grown tomatoes, but it is hard to detect at this stage unless close attention is given to the stems. When the fruits are green they show a little brown spot or a dark ring around and under the stem. As the fruit is shipped green, the packers may overlook this condition very easily. When the tomatoes reach their destination they have become a pink color, the disease has advanced and shows more plainly, for the stem end has then become a dark brown. The inspector notices this and, although there is not much external evidence of disease, he breaks the fruit open and finds a hard brown center. The rot is usually down the center and may extend from stem end to blossom end but sometimes it takes an oblique course and includes a portion of the seeds, darkening them also. There is no slime or ooze. Bacteria occur in great numbers in the tissues. The same organism was isolated from both the Texas and Nebraska material and the disease was reproduced in green and ripening fruits in the greenhouse, using pure cultures."
"I want to believe that it is sometimes our greatest and most difficult pain that leads us to our lives' purpose."
"... '. At the end of his , Hemingway writes of , “I wished I had died before I loved anyone but her.” That line, and his portrayal of their marriage in his memoir—so poignant and steeped in regret—inspired me to first to read biographies of her, and then to write a novel, ', which tells the whole of their wildly romantic and ultimately tragic love story from her point of view. All the biographers agree that of Hemingway’s four wives and numerous conquests, Hadley’s the one who is changed for the better by knowing him. She blooms. When the two meet in 1920, Hadley’s a quiet, twenty-eight-year-old near-spinster. Her life has been difficult, strained by illness and death, and she’s all but given up on love and happiness. Ernest bowls her over with his aliveness and intensity. Though she can’t help but be anxious about his attractiveness to others, she takes the risk."
"Don’t try to impose your will on a book before you know what it is—or what it needs. Writing is a kind of trust exercise: you do the work, you show up again and again, and over time the story begins to meet you. It’s like standing at the edge of a clearing, palm open, trying to lure a wild animal out of the woods. Little by little, it creeps closer. And listen to your obsessions. Whatever you can’t stop thinking about—that’s your compass."
"By using 'man, mankind, men, he, and his' all through, you unconsciously convey the old image of the noble masterful male once more out to rescue the human race....Here is the vocabulary you must use if the new image of man is not to be sexist as the old: 'humankind, humanity, human being, humans, persons, individuals', etc. For this century, at least, until our thought habits have been reformed, the use of 'man' as an inclusive term is out....You can't stick in a sentence on women's lib and adequately transform the concept 'human' thereby."