In situ primary production in young Antarctic sea ice

An in situ incubation technique used successfully to measure the photosynthetic carbon assimilation of internal algal assemblages within thick multiyear Arctic sea ice was developed and improved to measure the photosynthetic carbon assimilation within young sea ice only 50 cm thick (Eastern Weddell Sea, Antarctica). The new device enabled some of the first precise measurements of in situ photosynthetic carbon assimilation in newly formed Antarctic sea ice

The Unconventional World of Dani

Curtis, GregoryLiberal Art

Book Review: Walking Gently on the Earth

Excerpt: For that reason, I approached Walking Gently on the Earth with a healthy sense of skepticism, ready to be preached at again regarding the choices I’ve made about my family and lifestyle. Yet a few pages into Lisa Graham McMinn’s new book, I knew this exploration of sustainability would be different: more gentle, as the title itself suggests. McMinn, along with her daughter and co-writer Megan Anna Neff, examines the ways we can more readily nurture “God’s good gift”—that is, the earth and everything in it— through what McMinn calls “an ethic of care.” Although McMinn and Neff challenge readers to be more considerate of the earth and its people, their challenge is measured by the sense that living sustainably should not create a heavy burden to be suffered through, but instead provide a richer existence, one worth celebrating

Reigniting the Firebrand Heart

Excerpt: From the very first pages of her memoir, Assimilate or Go Home, I felt an affinity with D.L. Mayfield. Perhaps I recognized my students in Mayfield’s idealism and innocence, a missionary fervor that burns brightly in many undergraduates who attend Christian universities like the one where I teach. Perhaps I saw in her narrative my own youthful firebrand heart when, as a senior in college, I longed to get arrested protesting injustice; imagined sitting in a jail, even, believing such activism would show how deeply my convictions ran and how ardently I loved Jesus

Book Review: Bonnet Strings: An Amish Woman\u27s Ties to Two Worlds and Others

Excerpt: In Entering the Wild, Janzen narrates the process of crafting these hymns; and I found this chapter, titled “Three Women and the Lost Coin: How Three Women Found Me,” the memoir’s most compelling. In 1990, Janzen was asked to be on a committee to recreate a Mennonite hymnal that might “nourish . . . congregations for twenty years or more.” The committee, wanting to include several hymns honoring the feminine characteristics of God, turned to Janzen. Janzen describes encountering the work of three mystic women—Julian of Norwich, Hildegard von Bingen, and Mechtild of Magdeburg—and nding there “the possibilities of devotion and celebration that opened windows to my own imagination.

Life Writing and Mennonite Identity - Review: Essay of Mennonite Women\u27s Memoirs

Excerpt: Rhoda Janzen’s recent success is enviable, her hefty book deal with a prominent press and the publicity that followed her first memoir the kind of triumphs to which writers often aspire. Her book Mennonite in a Little Black Dress has – in its own way – brought Mennonitism to the mainstream, introducing readers (and plenty of them) to a religious sect that remains, to many, enigmatic and exotic. The book’s title alone is alluring, juxtaposing the long-held stereotypes about cape-dress-wearing and be-capped Mennonites with the startling image of a skimpy black shift, a modern emblem of sexy fashion: and so, it seems, entirely not Mennonite

Book Review: Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home

Excerpt: An honest admission: When I first saw Rhoda Janzen’s new book featured in Time magazine and in The New York Times, my initial impulse was toward envy—unadulterated, green-as-possible envy. As a fledgling writer who grew up in a close Mennonite community, I often dreamed of creating a humorous memoir about my religious upbringing, complete with satirical observations about the peculiarities of Mennonite culture. Janzen’s Mennonite in a Little Black Dress was the book I always wanted to write. That the author had received a good bit of publicity for her work only intensified my shade of green. After finishing Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, however, I’m convinced the book is misnamed, and that the publisher added “Mennonite” to the title as a clever marketing tool: the cache of a seemingly exotic religious sect being used to sell a different type of story. Certainly Mennonites play a role in Janzen’s book, but only as a quiet thrum to a much larger, more complex and more compelling story about the author’s spiritual quest to discover the self she had lost, and the results of her efforts

Book Review: Letters and Life by Bret Lott

Excerpt: Lott’s newly published book, Letters and Life, limns and amplifies the themes expressed in “Genesis.” Letters and Life enters into a centuries-old conversation about what it means to be an artist and a Christian, relying on what has already been written about the Christian artist to expand and deepen our notions of faith and art, showing that, like the child-narrator in “Genesis,” the artist in creation imitates God