=== Celebrating Powwows ===
Pauwau is an Algonquin word that once referred to medicine men, who danced, during tribal ceremonies. However, Europeans whom witnessed these ceremonies for the first time thought the word referred to the whole event and began calling the events 'powwows,' the term now used by most American Indians. These early ceremonies were held, by individual tribes to cure disease or to ensure success in battle or hunting. At modern-day powwows, people gather to dance, sing, socialize, and witness ceremonies honoring the achievements of individuals or groups. At most modern powwows, the main focus is dance. Attendees can be apart of the competitive dances or the open social dances called intertribals. The participants danced to the music of drums. Each group of people who sit around a large skin drum, singing and playing the drum in unison, is known as a 'Drum.' These Drums provide the music for each powwow activities. While smaller powwows may host only one Drum, larger powwows (which can last for days) usually involve several Drums. Many American Indians mark important events of their lives at powwows. At a recent powwow at Stanford University, one family paid tribute to their son, who was soon to graduate from law school. A special dance was announced, and the crowd grew quiet. The young man's father stepped up to the microphone and began describing his son's many achievements. When he was finished, a Drum began to sing and play. Some of the young man's family members began to dance in a circle. Before that, people came from out of the crowd to shake hands with the young man and dance with his family. In this way, his achievements were honored by the entire community. Today, American Indians attend powwows due to the fact that they want to celebrate their culture as well as the achievements of their family members. Powwows provide and afford a chance to mark important transitions, to visit with old friends and meet new ones, dance and singing take place, and to celebrate the future as well as the past.
=== Edward O. Wilson’s Ants ===
Careful of where he steps, carrying tweezers, vials notebooks and pencils, Edward O. Wilson has looked over, under, and into the world of ants. He has discovered that the influence of ants’ behavior on their success as a species is as great as their number is vast. By thinking about and contemplating ants, which are among the planet’s smaller creatures, Wilson has arrived at significant conclusions about their social organization and survival. Wilson studies patterns of organization and behavior in whole ant colonies. Because ants resume normal behavior quickly, ant colonies are easy to maintain and study in a laboratory. By observing ants in a few colonies in the field and in the lab, Wilson can describe an entire species. He designs his studies with two questions in the notebooks of his mind. First, how do colony members differentiate and divide labor? And second, why has some combinations of these divisions of labor more successful than others? Wilson has found that worker ants are at the center of a colonies success. They integrate the colony and provide labor specialization. Some worker ants dedicate their lives to feeding the colony, foraging for and retrieving fifteen to twenty times their weight in food daily.
=== The Behavior of Ants ===
specifically a contribution made to the colony by example of individual sacrifice for colony welfare, worker ants.
=== The Pleasure of Tea ===
Much has been written about the Japanese tea ceremony and its sophisticated ritual.
=== Everyday People ===
Rita Dove’s poems are sometimes described as intimate.
=== ... ===
...
=== The Compost Pile ===
I never met a true gardener who won’t break into philosophical rapture when the topic of conversation was compost. To avid gardeners, the compost pile—a heap of decomposing kitchen scraps and yard waste—is at once the most profound and practical of beasts. A compost pile may look like just a mound of decaying muck—apple cores, coffee grounds, and grass clippings, for example—but they are host to a community of living things. Indeed, it teems with microscopic beings whose business it is to eat and excrete. By doing things to a variety of dead organic matter, these microbes supply the nutrients plants need to grow. In as little as four to six weeks, the omnivorous microbes recycle kitchen waste into a rich, black, crumbly soil. When finished compost, or humus, are raked into garden beds flowers and vegetables are almost guaranteed to be healthy and productive. Besides providing nutrients, humus, while acting like a sponge, retaining water and giving plant roots access to air. Thus, composting completes the cycle of life: new life grows out of the broken-down elements of the old. That is why gardeners love compost. Of course, the compost pile also helps them hide their mistakes. The compost pile also helps them hide their mistakes. Gardeners also enjoy the hidden, unseen complexity of compost. Some people rake their leaves to the curb and are happy when the truck hauls them away, while composters use their leaves and their ingenuity. Compost needs a balanced diet of leaves and other “fresh” ingredients. But other conditions must be carefully balanced as well for the microbes to perform their best. Is the compost too wet? Too dry? Does it need to be turned? Only experience and experimentation can tell for sure. If it’s not decomposing properly, a compost pile can literally stink. That’s just one reason why some gardeners treat this voracious beast as attentively as a pet. When I feed mine potato peels, I can almost hear it purr.