In the state of Iowa, Diane Ott Whealy wanted to protect historic plant varieties, like the seeds her great-grandfather brought to the U.S. from Germany more than a hundred years ago.

London was fifteen hundred years old, and was a great town—for that day.

I have a hundred things to write to you, great and small, if only I could do it neatly, but my writing grows more and more indistinct, a sign, I fear, of heart weakness.