I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.
George Washington Carver

This is the quote for the week in my desk calendar that was a gift from a friend.

According to Wikipedia, Carver had a traumatic infancy when he was stolen with his mother and sister from their owners, apparently to make money on their sale. George was recovered, but was never reunited with his mother, although slavery was abolished early in Carver's lifetime.

'Since black people were not allowed at the school in Diamond Grove, and he had received news that there was a school for black people ten miles (16 km) south in Neosho, he resolved to go there at once. To his dismay, when he reached the town, the school had been closed for the night. As he had nowhere to stay, he slept in a nearby barn. By his own account, the next morning he met a kind woman, Mariah Watkins, from whom he wished to rent a room. When he identified himself as "Carver's George," as he had done his whole life, she replied that from now on his name was "George Carver". George liked this lady very much, and her words, "You must learn all you can, then go back out into the world and give your learning back to the people", made a great impression on him.'

The words Watkins spoke seem to define Carver's subsequent life. He shared the wisdom of crop rotation with farmers, and found and shared many uses for peanuts, soybeans, sweet potatoes, and pecans, education regarding nutritious foods that was useful for everybody, but especially for those like he who had emerged from the impoverishment of slavery.

As I was creating this post, I read further down into the article and discovered the following:

'Carver never married or expressed interest in dating women, and rumors circulated about his sexuality at Tuskegee Institute while he was an employee...Late in his career, Carver established a life and research partnership with another male scientist—Austin W. Curtis, Jr... The two men kept details of their lives discreet, and as such historians know little about how these men understood their relationship. Nonetheless, the fact that Carver willed his assets to this man (consisting of royalties from an authorized biography by Rackham Holt) testifies to the importance of each other in their lives.'