In the summer of 2012, Zachary Dunn climbed onto the roof of a red-brick schoolhouse in Lela, a small village in southwestern Kenya. A crowd of children milled about on the ground, watching him attach a small weather station to the peak.
Schools in Kenya have become crucial partners with TAHMO by installing weather stations and collaborating with sister schools in Europe and the United States. In Corvallis, Adams Elementary School installed a Decagon weather station last September and has just started communicating with the St. Scholastica Primary School north of Nairobi.
The reliability of a weather station is subject to the wanderings of wildlife. Frogs crawl into rainfall collection buckets. Insects build nests in air tubes. Rodents chew through wires. And that’s on top of damage from dust, high winds, ice and hail — or simple equipment failure.
Now an award-winning assistant professor in the School of Writing, Literature and Film at Oregon State University, Elena Passarello credits her interest in her craft to the influence of her mother, an eighth-grade English teacher and the matriarch of a family she describes as “bookish, library people.” Literature was woven into casual gatherings and conversations at the dinner table.
Going forward, Stacey Harper says, zeroing in on the toxic impacts of using capsules and other “carriers” for chemicals will be critical to making sure current environmental protections are adequate.
“Yo-yo” dieting isn’t just a problem for your clothing budget as you try to keep up with your fluctuating jean size. It’s also bad for your bones. As unwanted pounds melt away, a dieter’s skeleton typically loses mass and strength. When the pounds come back, the lost bone doesn’t.