Hola todos,

There is much news to report: many exciting projects, developments, accomplishments, and of course, catastrophes. We have installed some florescent lights on the system in Living Center South (Don Corleone.) On the Don, we are growing only basil plants, which looks very healthy. We are using nylon ropes instead of shreds of bath towel for the wicks, which is hydrating the rockwool much more successfully. (If you recall, the towel-wicks were responsible for the death of 90+ plants back in December.) We are hoping that the florescent lights will provide a more evenly-distributed light to the plants than do the centrally placed halogen lights. After 6 days of florescent lights, there hasn't been any conclusive evidence to suggest that either lighting system is superior. The lighting is certainly an issue; these systems were designed for greenhouses with ubiquitous natural light, which does not exist in any of the locations where we have installed these systems. With any luck, we will be able to refine the lighting on the systems to the point of effectiveness before the end of the research grant so that the communities won't have to struggle with such issues in the future. This has become somewhat of a theme of the research project. We had planned on being able to observe more the relationship between functioning hydroponics systems and community groups, but most of our efforts have been geared towards making the systems functional so that a relationship might exist between the systems and the community--a profitable one, inshallah.

I will begin with the catastrophes to avoid ending on a sour note. Added to the history books near the Great Ph Catastrophe of November is now the Colossal Computer Crash of February. My laptop fell victim to an underqualified computer technician named Shyam who was remotely operating on my computer from India. He managed to delete all the software off my computer in the blink of an eye, effectively erasing all my files. Some data was lost, but the majority was safely backed up.

Projects: Brooke Gomez and family are rapidly beautifying the room at Good-Neighbor's Mission. I don't have any pictures of the room itself now, but I will on Monday and will hastily post those for your viewing pleasure. I will also be assisting Brooke in constructing some smaller, personal-sized floating-bed hydroponics sytems to put at the GNM. I believe her plan is to have kids plant some lettuce and foster their plants to adulthood...and then devour them in a salad or a sandwich. The Gomez's beautification efforts have also engulfed Captain Planet and Norman Borlaug, who were given some cosmet enhancement to save them from the mediocrity of their dull, woody appearace. Who knows, maybe this little touch of class will encourage the plants to grow faster.

We harvested all the lettuce at GNM last week--a total of 1.07 pounds of the freshest smelling greenery I have ever taken a wiff of. The first lucky recipients were Blanche, and a southern family whose name's were unfortunatley recorded in illegible handwriting (mine.) While I don't have any testiments to the taste of the produce yet, everybody agreed that there had never been a more potently delicious smelling lettuce grown in Saginaw or anywhere else.

In preparation for planting the second crop, I also cleared the systems of all the plants who didn't make it. The mass grave of the departed is pictured hear. Crop II will be planted this coming Monday. The reason I onl harvested the lettuce was because I am not really sure how to harvest anything else, so I will be watching a series of you-tube "how-to" videos before harvest the kale, which is also quite large, along with the spinache.

So, until Monday, quedate verde.

Stu