1
Only about 9 percent of all plastic ever made—billions of tons—has been recycled. The startling statistic was published in December in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances.
2
What we’re reading:
“From the Book of Time,” published in Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, an excerpt:
I rose this morning early as usual, and went to my desk.
But it’s spring,
and the thrush is in the woods,
somewhere in the twirled branches, and he is singing.
And so, now, I am standing by the open door.
And now I am stepping down onto the grass.
I am touching a few leaves.
I am noticing the way the yellow butterflies
move together, in a twinkling cloud, over the field.
And I am thinking: maybe just looking and listening
is the real work.
Maybe the world, without us,
is the real poem.
3
While robins are known as a harbinger of spring in Pennsylvania, many are not the long-distance migrants we believe them to be. Look out, instead, for the return of the red-winged blackbird, a true migrant and sign of spring.
4
In 1916, Evelyn Almond Withrow served John W. Beatty, the first director of Carnegie Museum of Art, with a handwritten letter asking him not to overlook her Carnegie International submission because of her gender. This year’s Carnegie International, the 57th iteration, marks the first time the majority of the artists identify with the pronoun she.
5
The United Nations has designated 2019 as the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements—which includes 118 elements—in recognition of the 150th anniversary of Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev’s massive contribution to science.
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