Although I’d like to believe that I would personally be able to recognise the courage and the dedication of the staff at the headquarters of the International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas completely on its own merit, I think a measure of thanks for the capacity for appreciation and foresight—both in besieged Tal Hadya in Syria and Saint Petersburg—is due to the parallel history and challenge of botanists that remained to protect the Vavilov Institute of All-Russian Plant Industry that I learnt about recently.
The act of determination and defiance, also adapted into podcast form, saved the vast seed banks of Leningrad whilst under Nazi assault and had the staff themselves dying of hunger to stave off mass-starvation that would result if there were no repository of food-crops for planting after the war. The Syrian institute itself is host to refugee cultivars saved from the Iraqi seed vault in Abu Gharaib and other regional combat-zones, however, while these and other reserves are of vital importance in re-establishing a healthy and prosperous populace after fighting has ceased, seeds are not just artefacts—like so much cultural heritage that could not be salvaged and works of art in the former case that were evacuated from the Hermitage, but rather need the farmers (with their institutional knowledge that may or may not already be on the run) to till fields free of fighting. The legacy is for future generations as well but dividends are yielded in one season.
Sunday 1 January 2017
cornucopia or fertile crescent
creative-commons
The first of January has been designated Public Domain Day, as the year’s beginning is when under most countries’ intellectual property laws is when copyrights expire and authors’ works make the transition into the realm of public domain and fair-use, especially important for community theatre and local orchestras and the like. The Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University lists some of the works from around the world entering into the freely licensed sphere this year as well as some further resources and information behind copyrights and their longevity. Be sure to give our friends at the Public Domain Review a visit as well.
the island of the day before
Year in and year out, as the Earth’s rotation marks the procession of the hours around the globe—although with geo-political license that apportions certain time zones to one area and groups national entities, especially those comprised of disperse archipelago and the divisions aren’t smoothly radiating from pole to pole—one’s given to wonder how it might feel to live in a place that’s off-set from the rest (majority of the population, perhaps, but there are quite a few of these zones and ones that describe great swathes of the Earth’s surface) by a half-hour and even rarer lesser increments.
Any readers in those places, please let us know your thoughts. Would it be strange and jarring to be synchronised at the top of the hour or does it even register? Maybe that is by turns convenient and awkward for scheduling and meeting dead-lines. Though probably not longer than living memory Tonga (UTC +13:00) and New Zealand’s Chatham Islands (UTC +12:45), places which are sadly usually covered up by the frontispieces of globes, have lied precarious close to the international date line, the edge of tomorrow—by convention—and now are afforded times later than, ahead of the neighbouring, relatively neighbourless waters, which to my mind would push them into tomorrow, instead of just later that day. We’re eager to hear from any residents of Nuku’alofa or Waitangi or anyone else that might have some insight into this perplexing situation.
mmxvii
