Ellen Swallow Richards

Pam Swallow is my first cousin three x removed. We share the same  great, great grandfather. She lives in New Jersey and is a writer of children’s books.  She is currently researching to write a book about me.  She is having a difficult time finding anything out that has not already been written many times over in print and all over this thing they call the Internet.  She is a great writer, though, so I know she will find an angle that no one else has approached.  She and I are planning a trip next spring to go back to MIT to visit my home and also the MIT Museum and Archives.  Maybe she will even meet with the MIT President, Susan Hockfield.  It will be interesting to hear her take on being the first woman president of MIT.

Yesterday was my birthday.  I was born on Dec 3, 1842.  If I were alive today, I would be 165 years old.  Now that is OLD.  I know there are advances in technology that are allowing people to live longer, but this is a little ridiculous.  But just think, if I had lived 165 years, all the projects that I could have completed.  It seems like with the condition of the earth today that not too many people listened to me over 100 years ago. Regardless, there is still a very intricate link between the quality of our environment and our personal quality of life. And the obesity epidemic is horrible.  Has no one paid any attention to all the work we did 100 years ago on nutrition and the foods that folks need to eat.  So much to do and so little time to do it all.

This has been a day of learning how to manage this historical blog, but we are getting there.  I received a package in the post today.  It is a new book after my own heart.  The book is called HOME ECOLOGY: The FACS of Living Green.  It is designed to assist FACS teachers to place emphasis on living green in all areas they teach. We need to have more people creating material such as this to keep our profession current and appealing.