I am going to read three poems from the
life of George Washington Carver Carver
was born enslaved in 1864 he was a near
contemporary of Albert Einstein who
proclaimed pronounced Carver a great
scientist after Carver's death
covers career began as an attempt to
understand why the soil of the south had
been depleted and he discovered that it
was because of the years of growing
cotton only and he prescribed
alternating crops growing peanuts and
then southern farmers had peanuts they
didn't know what to do with him and
Carver had to figure out how to use
peanuts so he came up with hundreds of
uses for this crop including things like
gasoline and motor oil and then he went
on to two more inventions mostly having
to do with crops and during the First
World War
Carver developed ways of dehydrating
foods I will just read the poems now and
he was both a great scientist and a
deeply religious man and you'll see both
of those things in these poems this
first poem is called the wild garden at
dated 1916 the flowers of circus
canadensis ovate Philo taka dichondra
leaves the serrate leaves of taraxacum
officinalis viola species and trifolium
pratense flowers a handful of tulip
petals a small chopped onion a splash of
vinegar a little salt and pepper and oil
and voila would you like a second
helping the Creator makes nothing for
which there is
no use there are choice wild vegetables
which make fine foods the pit iam
species a common dooryard pest can be
cooked up as greens cirsium vulgare e
stems harvested with gloves and the
scissors in a roadside ditch and
stripped of thorns can be steamed
drizzled and pulled through the teeth so
the delicious heart loses to the tongue
hmm excuse me if all crops perished the
race could survive on a balanced diet of
wild vegetables the homeliest lowest
torn out by the roots poisoned the
inferior the weeds they grow despite our
will to kill them despite our ignorant
of what their use might be we refuse to
thank them but they keep on coming back
with the creator's handwritten
invitation another Hamrick Alice fritter
try some of this Potentilla tea
the dimensions of the Milky Way were
discovered by Harlow Shapley in 1918 and
this is called the dimensions of the
Milky Way behind the men's dorm at dusk
on a late May evening
Carver lowers the paper and watches the
light change he tries to see earth
across a distance of 25,000 light-years
from the center of the Milky Way a grain
of pollen a spore of galactic dust he
looks around the shagbark those swallows
the fireflies that blasted mosquito this
beautiful world a hundred billion stars
in a roughly spherical flattened disc
with a radius of 100 light-years imagine
that he catches a falling star well Lord
this infinitesimal speck could fill the
universe with praise
[Music]
Carver called his lab at Tuskegee
Institute God's little workshop and
that's the title of this poem a hand
lettered sign above the room number on
the closed door
do not disturb written in the air the
professor had had another vision of an
experiment he should try a question he
should ask the creators small still
voice asked what would happen if you
made a resin of peanut oil and added a
little bit of this nitric acid here some
of that sulfuric acid there some alcohol
some camphor a little of this a little
of that what the molecules form clusters
tightly bonded into one plastic which
could then be shaped and molded a thin
white silence issued from the door seems
settled on all who knew the door was
closed again made them walk softly
modulate their laughter take themselves
seriously the creator asked what about
elasticity is fichus elastica the only
plant on earth whose sap is a latex what
about Oscar pious syriaca what about
epinoia batata
coagulated and stabilized vulcanized and
compounded with an inert filler with
their SAP become a half solid half
liquid which deforms under applied
stress yet after stretching recovers
completely the professor took his
Eureka's on grueling Medicine Show
lecture tours he spoke softly holding up
his peanut axle-grease his peanut diesel
fuel his peanut gasoline his peanut
insecticide his nitroglycerine
plastics his rubber his sleeping
compound his iron tonic his goiter
treatment his faith his science his
miracles
[Applause]
[Music]