Category Archives: Uncategorized

Can we Control the Excesses of Industry in Tropical Forests?

“We trust that this measure of discipline will serve as a stern warning that zeal for research must not be carried to the point where it violates the basic rights and immunities of a human person.” (quoted in Skloot 2011, … Continue reading

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A Walk Down Memory Lane

My trip to Cameroon wound up being routed through Istanbul, not something I’d initially planned, but still a thought that pleased. I left a chilly upstate New York (mid-May), where coming gardens, ending classes, and finishing professional papers occupied my … Continue reading

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Springtime and other ruminations

I lie in my Peruvian hammock (obtained in 1983 and speckled with mold from years of disuse), gazing up at the blue, puffy-white-cloud-studded sky. I see the black angles and curves of the tree branches silhouetted against this sky, reminding … Continue reading

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Another Interdisciplinary Dilemma: Nurturance and Competition, Consumption and Production, Sharing and Dividing

I was persuaded, a year or so ago, to take on the task of reading all the chapters in a book that Malcolm Cairns is pulling together (A Growing Forest of Voices, it’s called—a sequel to his 2007 collection, Voices … Continue reading

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Integrating science, social science, and the humanities

In Cornell’s IGERT program on Food Systems and Poverty Reduction, we’ve been trying to bring budding scientists of various hues together with (a few) social scientists [IGERT stands for Integrative Graduate Education, Research and Training and such programs are funded … Continue reading

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On Unintended Mentoring–From the Recipient’s Perspective

Reading the book, At Seventy: a Journal, by May Sarton (NY, W. W. Norton & Co., 1984), put into my mind the notion of mentoring.  Although as a young person—the time we imagine we most need mentoring—I got very little … Continue reading

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“Triple Shot, Grande, Nonfat Soy Milk, Peppermint Latté”

We sit down on two of the tall stools at a Starbucks counter.  We’d stopped somewhere in Pennsylvania, for a break in the 9-hour drive from Lovingston, VA to Etna, NY, after an enjoyable Thanksgiving visit.  Starbucks is already decorated … Continue reading

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Thinking about Marx and Women

I’m reading a wonderful book called Caliban and the Witch, by Silvia Federici.  Its central point is a link she makes between the definition of women’s roles as domestic/private and capitalism.  It’s a point I don’t 100% ‘buy’; but she … Continue reading

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Men in Pink: American Football, From a Woman’s (Semi-Anthropological) Perspective

Although I watch a fair amount of American football—bonding with my husband, remembering my father, thinking of my brother—I do find that there are some oddities on the football field (always, but perhaps a bit more so this year).  The … Continue reading

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Obama vs. Romney, Biden vs. Ryan

This time I’m more than perplexed. I’m worried.  And I don’t understand the thinking of a large percentage of the American electorate.  Mitt Romney expresses his view of the world as a contest in which competition reigns, with inevitable winners … Continue reading

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