7th Gen Blog

Cherries, those sweet, pretty little red morsels, tend to add joy to any event. People find them fun to eat, and their image is frequently used as a decorative pattern on everything from kitchen towels to swimwear. The fruit was brought to the United States in the 1600s, after winning over taste buds in Rome, Greece, and China. Modern-day production was started in 1852 by a Presbyterian missionary named Pete Dougherty, who planted some cherry trees on Old Mission Peninsula in Michigan.

Last week I attended the United Nations Social Innovation Summit in New York City. As always at such conferences, there were many brilliant speakers, innovators and giant conglomerates talking about their sustainability agenda in an era when to not to do so would be a sign of immoral capitalism.

It's a simple process. Walk outside. Open a canister. Fill it with air. See what's there. And this spring, what's there in the Arctic's air is a new number no one wants to see: 400 parts per million, a milestone in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels the Earth hasn't experienced in (count 'em) 800,000 years. Here's another number: 1. That's the number of solar power systems we can each install to bring that other number down.

The historical origins of the fleshy orange melon known as cantaloupe remain a mystery to this day. Some scholars believe the creamy fruit first surfaced during Biblical times in Egypt and Greece, and others have found evidence of its beginnings in Armenia, India, or Persia, at various time periods. However, it is generally agreed upon among food historians that the 14th century was when the cultivation of cantaloupes really took off in Italy and in Spain, with Christopher Columbus ultimately bringing them to North America at the end of the 15th century.