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Friday, October 13, 2023

How A Tiny Island Is Adapting To Climate Change ... On Its Dinner Plates, by Umair Irfan, Vox

The goal is to make Dominica, a country facing some of the most severe harms from global warming, into a climate-resilient nation.

That’s where cassava comes in. Dominica has a footprint of 300 square miles and the majority of that land is too mountainous for many types of industrial agriculture. But cassava actually thrives in Dominica’s hilly terrain. As an underground tuber, it can withstand intense storms that would otherwise wipe out grains growing above. It can survive in the soil untouched for years, if need be.

A Gothic Novella With A Feminist Twist, by Lauren Elkin, New York Times

Why are we predestined to love certain writers? What is the personal algorithm of affinity? How do we keep our creativity and curiosity alive in the face of loss and hardship?

In the end, “My Death” is not about death at all, but about life after catastrophe: how art revives us, and how writers live on in their readers.

Allan Massie On Rambling Man, By Billy Connolly - 'A Christmas Present That Will Cheer Anyone Up', by Allan Massie, The Scotsman

This book is destined to be a Christmas present that will cheer anyone up. Well, perhaps not quite anyone. It might, I suppose, struggle to draw a smile, let alone a laugh, from that that other great Scots Comic’s creation, the Rev IM Jolly. But there might be a flicker even from his doleful lips.