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rapprochement...and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault
How to re-enter this world of my weblog? So much has happened, so much to talk about, and how do I account for my absence?
Well, maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe we just go in and out—of our projects, our journals, our intentions and our resolves. What matters is just that we return, eventually, to today, when I'm excited about a story I read, and I want to share it.
It's about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Today was the official opening of the vault, which is was dug 393 feet inside a sandstone mountain, under the permafrost, on a remote Norwegian island called Spitspergen in the Arctic, about 1,120 km from the North Pole.
Today, during the official opening, the vault was unlocked, and the first box of seeds was placed inside by the Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, and Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize laureate and environmentalist, Wangari Maathai. The box contained varieties of rice seeds from 104 countries.
Nicknamed "The Doomsday Vault," the Svalbard Seed Vault "is designed to store duplicates of seeds from seed collections from around the globe. Many of these collections from developing countries are in developing countries. If seeds are lost, e.g. as a result of natural disasters, war or simply a lack of resources, the seed collections may be reestablished using seeds from Svalbard."
You can see the video of the opening ceremonies, as well as a really great video about the World Cowpea Collection, at the Svalbard Seed Vault website.
posted at 2/26/2008 08:27:00 PM
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Comments:
It is so good to see you back on the weblog. I am a HUGE fan of your novels and really enjoy reading your blog.
Hello, I had to read My Year of Meats for a class and ended up liking it very much. I also saw you when you came to Winona State University and showed the film about your grandmother’s bones. Now I have to write a paper about My Year of Meats and I was wondering if you could help me or give me some of your opinions. I have to examine a cause and effect relationship from the novel. I must detail at least 3 causes and 3 effects, or a chain of 3 actions.
There were so many different things going on in the book that I am having a very hard time narrowing them down. If you could please help me, just a little that would be wonderful.
As will be gathered
from these notes of mine,
I am the sort of person
who approves
of what others abhor
and detests
the things they like.
—Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book
circa 1000 AD
Clearly,
if Sei Shonagon had had access
to the Internet,
she would have had a weblog
instead of a Pillowbook.
—Ruth Ozeki, Weblog
circa 2000 AD
It starts with the earth. How can it not? Imagine the planet like a split
peach, whose pit forms the core, whose flesh its mantle, and whose fuzzy skin
its crust - no, that doesn't do justice to the crust, which is, after all, where
all of life takes place.
: 12:28 PM
©© Ruth Ozeki 2003 under the Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
