Sunday, May 3, 2009 - Poplar Bluff MO
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Lava field dawn, Valley of Fires, Carrizozo NM, April 28, 2009
It's still raining but forward progress is being made
The leaks still leak but the wind dropped during the day and my gas mileage picked up a little.
With a little luck I'll see some sun tomorrow. Yippeee!
Interesting signage at the Wal-Mart here in Poplar Bluff. One sign says no truck parking. The other says No parking or loitering outside business hours. The catch is the store is open 24 hours and yes I can park here overnight (I asked). Clever. I recall one other Wal-Mart, though not which one, with a similar ambiguous wording that had the effect of reducing RV overnights without actually prohibiting them. Must be a response to some community issue.
Night camp
Wal-Mart Supercenter in Poplar Bluff MO
Wal-Mart Supercenter Store #19, 333 S Westwood, Poplar Bluff, MO 63901 - (573) 686-6420
- Nice level parking - to the right side of the lot away from the store
- Verizon cell phone service- Very good
- Verizon EVDO Broadband service - Good service
- Locate this Walmart on my Night Camps map
- Find other Wal-Marts in the area
- Check the weather here
Teosinte and the Improbability of Maize
The ancestors of wheat, rice, millet, and barley look like their domesticated descendants; because they are both edible and highly productive, one can easily imagine how the idea of planting them for food came up. Maize can't reproduce itself, because its kernals are securely wrapped in the husk, so Indians must have developed it from some other species. But there are no wild species that resemble maize. Its closest genetic relative is a mountain grass called teosinte that looks strikingly different - for one thing, it "ears" are smaller than baby corn served in Chinese restaurants. No one eats teosinte, because it produces too little grain to be worth harvesting. In creating modern maize from this unpromising plant, Indians performed a feat so improbable that archaeologists and biologists have argued for decades over how it was achieved. Coupled with squash, beans, and avocados, maize provided Mesoamerica with a balanced diet, one arguably more nutritious than its Middle Eastern or Asian equivalent.