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Ferida Wolff writes: The rabbit blended in so well I had trouble seeing it at first. Its coat picked up the gray of the broken branches, the brown of the fallen leaves and the white of the small stones scattered throughout the patch. Seeing the rabbits made me think of how we all adapt to our environments. We learn to accept some things we are given and change others. We can shift our perspective to create a safer space and blend in when necessary. We and the rabbits are fast learners. It helps us to live and to thrive. more »

While food safety measures like washing produce and cooking meat and eggs all the way through can remove or kill bacteria and mitigate some of the risk of foodborne illness, these methods aren’t foolproof. A study published in 2017 in Food Science & Nutrition looked at whether washing ready-to-eat mixed salad greens and romaine lettuce inoculated with E. coli got rid of potentially harmful bacteria. They found that “only washing in a high flow rate (8 L/min) resulted in statistically significant reductions.” Another study points out the heightened risk that prepared salads pose, given the contamination potential of leafy vegetables, along with the added intermingled proteins which introduce the risk of cross-contamination and provide “an excellent substrate for bacterial growth.” more »

The trend is part of what drove the overall slight growth of the rural population in the United States from 2016 to 2017, for the first time since 2010, according to a Stateline analysis of census data. (Rural counties are those defined by the US Office of Management and Budget as outside cities and their suburbs.) The population in rural counties grew by only about 33,000 during that time, to about 46 million. While counties with large mining and farming industries shrank, counties with large recreation industries grew the most, by about 42,000, to about 6.3 million. more »

Jo Freeman reviews and writes: Alan Venable was one of Hope’s kids. A junior at Harvard, he joined 18 students from Brandeis University and four from other Boston area schools to go to Columbia S.C. for ten weeks. After two weeks, six of them moved to Calhoun County. When they started canvassing only 490 blacks were registered to vote in that county. They registered 114 in July, under the very restrictive registration rules typical of the Southern states, which were generally applied to blacks but not to whites. When the VRA became law on August 6, it removed the literacy test. Another 500 registered in the next two months. more »