Open Books Open Minds (2019/2020) - 'Lab Girl' by Hope Jahren

Jahren's scientific publications are linked here, including full text PDFs of the articles. Topics: – The Carbon Isotope Composition of Terrestrial Land Plants; The Carbon Isotope Composition of Ancient Terrestrial Organic Material; The Arctic Eocene and Miocene; Water and Isotopes in Plant Tissues; Isotopes and Human Diet; Forensic Applications of Stable Isotopes

A poet, the late W.S. Merwin, and his wife Paula saved palm trees "in paradise" -- the Peahi Valley on the island of Maui, where they preserved and protected 400 different species of tropical trees.

"Wild strawberries can’t be encouraged, nor can they be discouraged: They come to you unbidden and unearned. They appear, or do not, by the grace of the sun.”

“… it's the biggest question there is. What does it mean to be alive on the planet?
And answering that for you and me is one thing, but answering it for an organism that is so terribly different than we are and so terribly much more successful and long-lived and spectacular, that we can't even interview, the way you can ask me a question. I have to pull it out of its environment and put it in the lab and try to grow it and control it and get — and work so hard to just get a small, small window into something so different.”

“I have tried to write honestly and openly about how these are not the safe spaces we would like [to think]. So I had that wrench in my pocket because I was working alone at night and I knew there were a lot of other people who had a key and some of them creeped me out – the wrench made me feel safer. That is the reality of all women’s lives – we negotiate risk while we live our lives, and that is true in science as well. I think men are surprised when I say that, and women are not.”