My emphases.
The community was founded in 1888 and grew up around a ranch owned by Enos Seeds and his brother, Thomas.[2]
Grassland seems to be assoc. with the number 61 (same population for 3 decades):*
From the 1940s through the 1970s the population was recorded as 200. It had dropped to sixty-one by 1980. In 1974 Grassland still had two cotton gins, a store, and a station. The population was still sixty-one in 1990. The population remained the same in 2000.
It’s also Lynn County’s oldest community according to that same Texas Online Almanac article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Herbert#Biography
Herbert began researching Dune in 1959 and was able to devote himself wholeheartedly to his writing career because his wife returned to work full-time as an advertising writer for department stores, becoming the breadwinner during the 1960s. He later told Willis E. McNeilly that the novel originated when he was supposed to do a magazine article on sand dunes in the Oregon Dunes near Florence, Oregon. He became too involved and ended up with far more raw material than needed for an article. The article was never written, but instead planted the seed that led to Dune.
http://www.duneinfo.com/giedi_prime/books/frank-herbert.aspx
Eye
ISBN: 0-743-43479-XEye features the startlingly original collaboration “The Road to Dune,” a walking tour of Arakeen narrated by Frank Herbert and illustrated by acclaimed British artist Jim Burns. Also included is an introduction by Herbert describing his personal feelings about the filming of David Lynch’s movie version of Dune; Herbert’s own favorite short story, “Seed Stock”; and tales from throughout his career, some never before collected.
http://oreilly.com/tim/herbert/ch09.html
As suggested in the discussion of Children of Dune, Herbert seems to subscribe to a kind of evolutionary ethic, which uses survival as a touchstone for evaluating species behavior. This ethic is also the subject of one of his most effective short stories, “Seed Stock” (1970).
A colony has been landed on an alien planet. It is dying. There is no return. The colonists are trying to reproduce Earth; they cannot understand why their efforts do not work. There is a strange force that warps embryos and seedlings so they do not flourish. The experts choose the most normal-born of the plants and animals to nurture, with no success. They cannot see (because it is unthinkable) that it is the seemingly most stunted and sickly of the plants and animals that are adapting. Kroudar, the laborer, listens with his body; he feels the different rhythm of life on his new planet. He does not try to maintain the old ways. He nurtures the new
—–
*
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_significance_of_601_in_The_Andromeda_Strain
In 4orrin1, the 601 here is directly overlapped with the number 61 of Giant Rat of Sumatra (36:39).
Sunklands 