Word: sylvan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...story of China's stunning improvement in farm production is comprehensively told in a new 462-page book called Feeding a Billion (Michigan State University Press; $30). Its authors are Sylvan Wittwer, director emeritus of the Michigan State University Agricultural Experiment Station, and three Chinese farm experts: Professor Sun Han of Nanjing Agricultural University, Professor Yu Youtai of Northeast Agricultural College in Harbin and Wang Lianzheng, vice governor of Heilongjiang province. Wittwer, the principal writer, made five trips to China during the past seven years and received unstinting cooperation from the Communist authorities in undertaking an in-depth study...
What they observe is nothing less than a landscape being reborn. Nature is laboring mightily to transform the scoured flanks of the mountain, its debris- filled river systems and chemically polluted ponds and lakes into a facsimile of the sylvan setting that existed before the eruption. To the untutored eye, the evidence of devastation still seems overwhelming. Scientists, however, see a glass filling itself up slowly but surely. Says James MacMahon, head of the biology department at Utah State University: "It's not a forest yet, but the rate of progress is amazing...
...sylvan setting, cut by a small creek and shady pathways, creates a feeling of retreat and community at the center, says Rose Mary Sheldon, secretary to the director. Visitors are discourages, but determined Harvard sightseers can look around if special arrangements are made with the director's office. "It's just a think tank," says Sheldon. "We try to maintain a quiet atmosphere...
Sheila C. Barron '89, who frequently plays Transylvania with its tour of a sylvan world, says "The game is only a diversion, and kind of disappointing because it's less imaginative than you like. There's a haunting monotony to it; I keep playing just because I get so frustrated I can't stop...
Both men are legendary soldiers who have survived long years in Viet Nam -- Elias by a kind of supernal sylvan grace, Barnes by simply refusing to die. Elias is Jesus crossed with Jim Morrison. He will literally take a load off Chris' shoulders, or share a fraternal toke with Chris through the barrel of a rifle, or moon over the night stars, or smile ingenuously at his killer. He is hard to know and harder to destroy, a creature of Stone's wild literary sentiment. Barnes, who says of some fresh corpses, "Tag 'em and bag 'em," has no sentiment...