Can't you do better?

— Photo by Maurice van Bruggen

“What are you saying? That you want

eternal life? Are your thoughts really

as compelling as all that?…”

— From “Field of Flowers,’’ by Louise Gluck (born 1943). The winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature for her poems, she lives in Cambridge, Mass., and is writer in residence at Yale.

In Garden in the Woods, a 45-acre woodland botanical garden, at 180 Hemenway Rd., Framingham, Mass. It is the headquarters of The Native Plant Trust, and is open to visitors between April 14 and Oct. 15.

New England still makes (expensive) things

Bright red locates Framingham

From The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)

“Sanofi opened the doors of its 100,000-square-foot digital bio-manufacturing facility in Framingham, Mass., on Oct. 15. The French drug-manufacturing company is one of Massachusetts’s largest life-science employers.

Sanofi’s new facility is among the first digitally enabled continuous manufacturing sites, making the building itself about a fifth the size of traditional facilities {in the sector}. The new building features state-of-the-art technology that connects the production process with research and development to better improve the commercialization of important medicines. The acceleration of their production capabilities is a key pillar in Sanofi’s ambition to establish “the gold standard in the bio-pharmaceutical industry.”

“‘We have been investing for some years to prepare for Sanofi’s future. Our Framingham facility leads the way in delivering the next generation of biologics manufacturing, leveraging intensified, continuous processing in a fully integrated digitally powered facility,’ said Philippe Luscan, executive vice president for global industrial affairs at Sanofi. ‘This opening demonstrates we are at the leading edge of innovation and manufacturing excellence, helping us to shape the future of both our company and the industry.”’

Garden in the Woods, overseen by the New England Wild Flower Society, features the largest landscaped collection of native wildflowers in New England. It is in Framingham’s Nobscot section, off Hemenway Road.