Botany and other Stories have just published their latest newspaper - and it may be their last. (they are in the process of building a website!).
They usually choose a theme for each issue, and the theme for this one is paper. Hay is very dependent on paper, in the form of second hand books, but we don't usually think much about the paper they are made from. So they start with a history of paper, from Ancient Egyptian papyrus to modern wood pulp (inspired by a French scientist called Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur, from his observations of wasps' nests).
The centre spread shows the polluting impact of paper, including bleaching the paper, and the vast number of paper coffee cups that are thrown away every year - as well as the number of trees that are cut down each year to make paper to print new books. It's a sobering read.
There is also a review of Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal, and a local lady talks about kapok, the flowering tree she remembers from her childhood in China.
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