Three Beautiful Things 04-13-2026: Potatoes and GMOs, Another Appalachian Episode, Book Talk

1.  I finished the last chapter of The Botany of Desire today. It focused on the potato and developed into an examination of the former agrochemical and agricultural technology corporation, Monsanto (sold to the German chemical company Bayer in 2018). Much of this chapter discussed and illustrated Monsanto's work in the field of genetically modified organisms. 

In particular, Monsanto genetically engineered a potato called NewLeaf. The NewLeaf potato seed was genetically engineered to resist the Colorado beetle, thus altering the need to apply pesticides to eradicate this potato damaging pest. 

The first three chapters of this book explored apples and sweetness, tulips and beauty, mariuana and intoxication. 

This last chapter explored the potato and control. I learned about efforts in potato farming to control the look, taste, shape, and pest and disease resistance of the potato, much of it in service to satisfying consumers' desires for what a potato, a potato chip, and a French fry, among other potato products, ought to look and taste like. 

I'm ready to go back and read this book a second time and see if on a second reading I can get a better grip on its general argument and compelling explanations and detailed support. 

2. This evening, Debbie and I listened to another episode of the podcast Inside Appalachia. Its focus was on West Virginia, especially coal miners. You might remember that on April 5, 2010 a coal dust explosion occurred in the Upper Branch Mine, a Massey Energy owned coal mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia. Twenty-nine miners died. 

Inevitably, listening to one miner as he looked back and made his observations and shared feelings about the blast, my mind went back to the May 2, 1972 Sunshine Mine Fire/Disaster near Kellogg that killed ninety-one miners. 

It's not the first time that I've listened to miners and other citizens of the mining regions of Appalachia and thought about how connected these people are with people in mining towns here in North Idaho. 

I thought a lot about the many times I've listened to miners who survived the Sunshine Fire/Disaster being interviewed in the film You Are My Sunshine. It's all harrowing. 

3. It's fun when Debbie is home for many reasons, but one that I enjoy immensely is how we discuss books and the ways they are written. 

We both read books written in a variety of different time periods, books translated into English from other languages, and books of different genres, like poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. We also read as wide a variety of voices and experiences as we can.

This evening we had a relaxed conversation about styles of writing, especially about the English sentence. I mentioned that I thought sentences had an architecture and that I especially enjoyed the way, say, 19th century novelists would at times write long sentences, packed with subordination, often rich in detail, and that when this kind of sentence pops up in more contemporary prose, it fires me up.