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People are often surprised to learn just how long some varieties of trees can live. If asked to estimate the age of the oldest living trees on Earth, they often come up with guesses in the neighborhood of two or perhaps three hundred years. The real answer is considerably larger than that, more than five thousand years.

The tree that wins the prize for its considerable maturity is the bristlecone pine of California. This venerable pine predates wonders of the ancient world such as the pyramids of Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the Colossus of Rhodes. It is not nearly as tall as the giant redwood that is also found in California, and, in fact, it is actually not very tall compared with many other trees, often little more than five meters in height. This relatively short height may be one of the factors that aid the bristlecone pine in living to a ripe old age—high winds and inclement weather cannot easily reach the shorter trees and cause damage. An additional factor that contributes to the long life of the bristlecone pine is that this type of tree has a high percentage of resin, which prevents rot from developing in the tree trunk and branches.

The hard, rigid plates that form the outermost portion of the Earth are about 100 kilometers thick. These plates include both the Earth's crust and the upper mantle.

The rocks of the crust are composed mostly of minerals with light elements, like aluminum and sodium, while the mantle contains some heavier elements, like iron and  magnesium. Together, the crust and upper mantle that form the surface plates are called the lithosphere. This rigid layer floats on the denser material of the lower mantle the way a wooden raft floats on a pond. The plates are supported by a weak, plastic layer of the lower mantle called the asthenosphere. Also like a raft on a pond, the lithospheric plates are carried along by slow currents in this more fluid layer beneath  them.

With an understanding of plate tectonics, geologists have put together a new history for the Earth's surface. About 200 million years ago, the plates at the Earth's surface formed a “supercontinent” called Pangaea. When this supercontinent started to tear apart because of plate movement, Pangaea first broke into two large continental masses  with a newly formed sea that grew between the land areas as the depression filled with water. The southern one — which included the modern continents of South America, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica — is called Gondwanaland. The northern one — with North America, Europe, and Asia — is called Laurasia. North America tore away from Europe about 180 million years ago, forming the northern Atlantic Ocean.

 Some of the lithospheric plates carry ocean floor and others carry land masses or a combination of the two types. The movement of the lithospheric plates is responsible for earthquakes, volcanoes, and the Earth's largest mountain ranges. Current understanding of the interaction between different plates explains why these occur where they do. For example, the edge of the Pacific Ocean has been called the “Ring  of Fire” because so many volcanic eruptions and earthquakes happen there. Before the 1960's, geologists could not explain why active volcanoes and strong earthquakes were concentrated in that region. The theory of plate tectonics gave them an answer.

John James Audubon, nineteenth-century artist and naturalist, is known as one of the foremost authorities on North American birds. Born in Les Cayes, Haiti, in 1785, Audubon was raised in France and studied art under French artist Jacques-Louis David. After settling on his father's Line Pennsylvania estate at the age of eighteen, he first began to study and paint birds.

In his young adulthood, Audubon undertook numerous enterprises, generally without a tremendous amount of success; at various times during his life he was involved in a mercantile business, a lumber and grist mill, a taxidermy business, and a school. His general mode of operating a business was to leave it either unattended or in the hands of a partner and take off on excursions through the wilds to paint the natural life that he saw. His business career came to end in 1819 when he was jailed for debt and forced to file for bankruptcy.

It was at that time that Audubon began seriously to pursue the dream of publishing a collection of his paintings of birds. For the next six years he painted birds in their natural habitats while his wife worked as a teacher to support the family. His Birds of America, which included engravings of 435 of his colorful and lifelike water colors, was published in parts during the period from 1826 to 1838 in England. After the success of the English editions, American editions of his work were published in 1839, and his fame and fortune were ensured.

The organization that today is known as the Bank of America did start out in America, but under quite a different name. Italian American A.P. Giannini established this bank on October 17, 1904, in a renovated saloon in San Francisco’s Italian community of North Beach under the name Bank of Italy, with immigrants and first-time bank customers comprising the majority of his first customers. During its development, Giannini’s bank survived major crises in the form of a natural disaster and a major economic upheaval that not all other banks were able to overcome.

One major test for Giannini’s bank occurred on April 18, 1906, when a massive earthquake struck San Francisco, followed by a raging fire that destroyed much of the city. Giannini obtained two wagons and teams of horses, filled the wagons with the bank’s reserves, mostly in the form of gold, covered the reserves with crates of oranges, and escaped from the chaos of the city with his clients’ funds protected. In the aftermath of the disaster, Giannini’s bank was the first to resume operations. Unable to install the bank in a proper office setting, Giannini opened up shop on the Washington Street Wharf on a makeshift desk created from boards and barrels.

In the period following the 1906 fire, the Bank of Italy continued to prosper and expand. By 1918 there were twenty-four branches of the Bank of Italy, and by 1928 Giannini had acquired numerous other banks, including a Bank of America located in New York City. In 1930 he consolidated all the branches of the Bank of Italy, the Bank of America in New York City, and another Bank of America that he had formed in California into the Bank of America National Trust and Savings Association.

A second major crisis for the bank occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Although Giannini had already retired prior to the darkest days of the Depression, he became incensed when his successor began selling off banks during the bad economic times. Giannini resumed leadership of the bank at the age of sixty-two. Under Giannini’s leadership, the bank weathered the storm of the Depression and subsequently moved into a phase of overseas development.

It is commonly believed in the United States that school is where people go to get an education. Nevertheless, it has been said that today children interrupt their education to go to school. The distinction between schooling and education implied by this remark  is important.

 Education is much more open-ended and all-inclusive than schooling. Education knows no bounds. It can take place anywhere, whether in the shower or on the job, whether in a kitchen or on a tractor. It includes both the formal learning that takes place in schools and the whole universe of informal learning. The agents of education can range from a revered grandparent to the people debating politics on the radio, from a  child to a distinguished scientist. Whereas schooling has a certain predictability, education quite often produces surprises. A chance conversation with a stranger may lead a person to discover how little is known of other religions. People are engaged in education from infancy on. Education, then, is a very broad, inclusive term. It is a lifelong process, a process that starts long before the start of school, and one that  should be an integral part of one's entire life.

Schooling, on the other hand, is a specific, formalized process, whose general pattern varies little from one setting to the next. Throughout a country, children arrive at school at approximately the same time, take assigned seats, are taught by an adult, use similar textbooks, do homework, take exams, and so on. The slices of reality that  are to be learned, whether they are the alphabet or an understanding of the workings of government, have usually been limited by the boundaries of the subject being taught.

For example, high school students know that they are not likely to find out in their classes the truth about political problems in their communities or what the newest filmmakers are experimenting with. There are definite conditions surrounding the  formalized process of schooling.