Thursday, November 26, 2009 - Poplar Bluff MO
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The Little Tug That Could, reworking a tow, Fort Defiance Park, Cairo IL, November 26, 2009
I took a few hours this Thanksgiving day to watch the tugs and tow boats go about their business at Fort Defiance Park at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in Cairo IL.
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.