Some Events on the Weekend

Soul music: Winter Jam & Soul Fest

Winter Jam returns to Amalie Arena at 6 pm Saturday with a group of top stars like Crowder, Britt Nicole and Colton Dixon. $30 at the door only. (813) 301—2500. www.amaliearena.com. On Sunday, Soul Fest comes to the USF Sun Dome. R&B singer Brian Mcknight leads this year’s stars along with New Edition’s Johnny Gill. $51.75 and up. (813)974—3004. www.sundomearena.com.

Theme Parks: Epcot, Legoland

The International Festival of the Arts opens at Epcot, combining visual and performing arts. It runs Fridays through Mondays through Feb. 20. This week brings concerts from Ashley Brown, who played Mary Poppins on Broadway, and Josh Strickland, who played Tarzan in Disney’s production on Broadway. Included with admissions: 497--$114. www.epcot.com.

Art: Second Saturday Art Walk

This week is St. Petersburg’s Second Saturday Art Walk. Among the many offerings, it is the opening of the Female Persuasion exhibition at the Cider Press Café, 601 Central Ave. The exhibition features four local women who represent a range of techniques and styles, $26--$36.www.ArtWalk.com.

Motorcycles: Gibtown Bike Fest

This free motorcycle rally(拉力赛) in Riverview will have live entertainment including Greg Billings, Marshall Tucker and the Black Honkeys. It runs 3 to 10:30 pm Friday, 10 am to 10:30 pm Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm Sunday at the International Independent Showmen’s Association Clubhouse, 6915 Riverview Drive, Riverview. (813)677—3590. The free reception is 6 to 9 pm Saturday.

Some families choose to take expensive vacations, such as to the Grand Canyon. However, my favorite family vacation was different. Nine years ago, my parents created a grand plan to build the home of their dreams in a neighborhood Honeymoon Hill. As the dream was launched smoothly, our family of five squeezed tightly into the vehicle to go there.

The old home was gradually turned into the construction management office for the new one. As the new home began to take shape, it siphoned our attention and our primary home became the place where we merely slept. The three of us children worked and became soon-to-be-skilled laborers. I quickly learned that personalities were readily displayed when we painted a wall. Some stuck to their claims, stopping others entering their area. Others systematically painted their wall, working from top to bottom in an organized fashion. And one drew smiley faces and signed his name there.

Of course, the journey didn’t come without a few lessons learned. I came to understand that paint would never be removed from a rag, however many times I washed it. We learned other important lessons when my dad attempted to shingle(盖) a roof in the air: safety is indeed important, and sometimes money is well spent in the hiring of a professional.

A Mother’s Day dinner served on a temporary table could actually taste far better at the end of a long day’s work than the everyday meals we remembered back at the old home. Most importantly, I learned my family can forgive each other’s barks in close quarters. This project began to matter much to each of us in our own way.

When we finally completed the construction after 28 months, the resort we now call home went beyond all the other tours, and our family grew closer because of it.

Circles can be found everywhere in the natural world, but with no accurate way to measure them they are very mysterious and might never be fully understood. When you take the distance around a circle and divide it by the distance across a circle, you will always get Pi(∏). While Pi is equal to about 3.14 when rounded, it is infinitely long. With the help of computers, mathematicians have been able to calculate Pi out to over a trillion decimal(小数) places. This makes Pi puzzling, even to the most famous mathematicians.

Pi Day is celebrated globally on March 14, since the way we write this date, 3/14, looks just like Pi when rounded. In 2009, U. S. Congress voted to officially make March 14 Pi Day. Certain parts of the world—places where March 14 is written as 14/3—will instead celebrate Pi Approximation Day which takes place on July 22^nd because of the result of 22/7.

Pi has appeared in movies, comics, music, and more. “In modern movies, any time the filmmaker wants to create a sense of mystery, the symbol Pi is used,” says Blatner. People also love working to memorize the digits(数位) of Pi and competing against others to see who can remember most. The Guinness World Record for reciting the most digits of Pi is held by Lu Chao of China, who successfully recited Pi to nearly 67,000 decimal places.

Above all, Pi Day is about having fun with the number, according to Blatner. People will celebrate Pi Day by eating pie and throwing pie, and with fun Pi-related games. Princeton, New Jersey holds a series of Pi-related festivities. Events this year include a surprise birthday party for Albert Einstein whose birthday also falls on March 14, and a “Walk a Pi Event” where participants will walk 3.14 miles together. Just like the number itself, the possibilities for Pi Day are truly endless.

There’s a revolution happening in the way that food is grown around the world. Vertical farming piles crops on top of one another in a climate controlled, indoor facility, and uses advanced technology to produce food in the most environmentally friendly way the world has ever seen.

At AeroFarms in Newark, New Jersey, crops are piled more than 30 feet high in a 30,000 square foot space. They use aeroponic(气雾栽培) technology, involving misting the roots of the plants, using an astonishing 95% less water than conventional farming methods. David Rosenberg, CEO of AeroFarms told Seeker, “Typically, in indoor growing, the roots sit in water. If we mist nutrition to the root structure, the roots have a better oxygenation(氧合作用).”

AeroFarms uses no pesticides. The plants are grown in a reusable cloth made from recycled plastic, so no soil is needed to grow them. They also use a system of specialized LED lighting instead of natural sunlight, reducing their energy footprint even further. “Many people say ‘Sunless? Wait. Plants need sun.’ Actually the plants don’t need yellow spectrum(光谱). So we reduce our energy footprint by doing things like reducing certain types of spectrum to make it function as sunlight,” Rosenberg said.

Dickson Despommier, an ecologist from Columbia University, was one of the first advocates of vertical farming. In 1999, he proposed that vertical farming could help feed our ever-growing, overpopulated cities, while using less water than current farming methods and reducing the need to transport food long-distances. Despommier likely imagined his idea would be taking shape on a global level, just 18 years later.

There are now vertical farms in Canada, Panama, Britain, and throughout America. AeroFarms is currently building another vertical farm facility in an old steel factory that’s larger than a football field. They expect it will grow up to 2 million pounds of greens every year.

Rosenberg believes that vertical farming is truly the way of the future. “It’s a tough business, but it’s one that’ll stay with a bigger and bigger impact.”