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Showing posts from 2010

On open letters

I read books - lots of them.  Often I think I should write to the authors about some of the things they say, or about areas of my own experience that seem to run parallel or counter to theirs.  I normally don't do so because I think these authors will be far to busy to bother with my meanderings.  Also I have twice written to authors only to be advised that they had recently died. So, my plan now is to put open letters, if I think I have something worth saying, into one another of my blogs rather than write to authors direct.  If I include the name of the writer and the name of the book and its topic there may be some faint hope that they will pick up my comments and respond as might others who know them or have read their work.  I don't like to flatter myself with the thought that my views will be available for anyone with access to the Internet to see, but they will.

The nightmare plant

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For many years we have had a plant of sacred bamboo Nandina domestica growing by the wall outside our back door. In Japan, if you have a nightmare, the custom is to go and tell the sacred bamboo plant so that it will take away any residual difficulties from the dream.  Perhaps that is why this plant has strangely anguished-looking foliage.

Psychogeog round Bevendean,Brighton, UK

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Yesterday in the August rain Jeremy Linden and I went to Meadowview in Bevendean on the eastern outskirts of the city of Brighton and, starting from map ref TQ33220608, we walked eastwards along a corridor of the Bevendean Down Local Nature Reserve (below) to the Race Hill footpath. Here we turned south and then up the hill past the race horses to the summit with its magnificent views across Brighton and the racecourse to the sea.  Close to the top of Race Hill on an unmade cul-de-sac is an isolated row of terrace houses called Bellevue Cottages built in the mid- to late 19th century. On the side wall of the blue cottage the owner had painted some impressive zodiacal devices.   After Bellevue we made the long trek down Bear Road with the cemetery wall on the right and open fields on the left, but much traffic in between.  At Bevendean Road we turned north and explored the Tenantry Estate - all new houses and turfed grassland built on the former Bevendean Hospital and its grounds

Stinging nettles through faded curtains

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The strong July sun falls from the east on to our large room curtains silhouetting the nettles in the border outside.  The curtains are faded now and torn or threadbare in places, but they do. The garden is unkempt but some like it that way, especially the stinging nettles.  All I have time for now is to keep a path open to the far end and back by a different route. There are many compensations like this out-of-focus pattern on the old fabric which moves gently as the breeze catches the nettle plants. Winter will take the plants away and leave just the worn material and the memory of sunshine.

A trip to Derbyshire

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On 17 May 2010 (our son's 35 birthday), I found myself at Chesterfield station in Derbyshire with a little time of my hands. To my surprise I discovered a statue of George Stephenson (supposedly one of our distant relatives) of Rocket fame outside the station entrance. Stephenson died in Chesterfield and is buried in the nearby churchyard at the church with its famous crooked spire. The bronze statue was erected in in 2005 to mark the opening of the new station entrance hall with a man who was so instrumental in the establishment of travel by train. I wandered psychogeographically round the precincts of the station entrance admiring the solid red brick architecture. And the intricacy of the view up Corporation Street from Crow Lane. I also enjoyed the sight and sweetly pungent smell of a flowering dwarf broom hedge (possibly Cytisus x praecox 'Allgold'). Soon though I was speeding through the Derbyshire Dales countryside at its late spring best en rout

On a Richard Dawkins review

In the Times Literary Supplement for 11 February 2009, Richard Dawkins reviews a book by Professor Jerry Coyne called Why evolution is true published by Oxford University Press.  Dawkins is sufficiently persuasive to have induced me to order a copy, so I might dare to say a bit more after I have read it. While I have been happy since childhood to believe, alongside Professor Coyne, that evolution is true, I often feel that the leaders in the field are suggesting that nothing about the mechanisms of evolution remain unresolved.  It is encouraging therefore to read in a paper by Antónia Monteiro and Ondrej Podlaha (2010) from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University "There is still much to do in order to fully understand how novel complex traits evolve. ....  it is important to continue exploring the full complement of genes that are shared across multiple traits to identify gene clusters that may be behaving as an integrated and context-insensitive netwo

Rural psychogeography

I was recently introduced, by my son Charles, to the realm of psychogeography, something I really should have known about as it has been going on for years and, according to some, has almost exhausted its possibilities.  Usually though it is to do with urban wandering, so the rural dimension is, perhaps, a rare variant. However, urban or rural, it is new and interesting to me.  I won't try and define what it is because it is easy to look up on the Internet, but I have appended below one of many examples of the genre penned by myself without knowing what I was doing. Solvitur ambulando , it is solved by walking, a Latin phrase normally attributed to St Augustine of Hippo.  But quite what is solved by walking I am not sure, though it sounds good. Anyway, here is my rural psychogeographic text (from 2001): 8 July 2001 (A walk from Coleford in the Forest of Dean where I was staying for a couple of days with David and Vicki Thornton. I got up early one Sunday morning and, since ever

How have I got into evolution anyway?

How have I got into evolution anyway?  It goes a long way back.  From early childhood I was deeply interested in wildlife and when I was 8 or 9, towards the end of World War II, my mother bought me a book called The Story of Living Things and their Evolution , written and illustrated by Eileen Mayo (1944) who was not a professional biologist. I was enthralled by this book and, turning the pages today, I can remember the pleasure each picture and the accompanying text gave me. The book was scientifically blessed with an introduction by Julian Huxley.  This contains some astonishing remarks.  For example, Huxley writes that Darwin and others "finally dethroned man from his claim to a unique position of Lord of Creation."  (I though that was God!).  Then Huxley rather contradicts himself in the next paragraph by saying that "as a result of studying evolution, we now know not merely that man has evolved from lower animals, but that he is now the sole trustee of life for fu

My almost successful arrival

My almost successful arrival in the land of evolution makes me feel a bit like Uncle Toby on Tristram Shandy and his fascination with fortifications and their technicalities. By following my nose on this I discovered that Michael Nyman, one of the modern composers I like most, had written something called The Nose-List Song as part of a Tristram Shandy opera (still under construction).  This shed no light on evolution, but was good to listen to. Suzan Mazur talks with Vincent Fleury of the differences between French and American (Anglo-Saxon) thinking, particularly as it relates to evolution and morphogenesis/self-organisation.  But what is Chinese, or Indian, or Australian aboriginal thinking going to contribute towards the debate?  In the latter case both animate and inanimate objects are said to have been brought into being by song.  This somehow chimes with the Music of the Spheres, the Musica Universalis of celestial motions, an idea dating back at least to the time of Pytha

A papaya smoothie

There are many recipes for papaya smoothies on the Web, but most call for the seeds to be removed and discarded.  Papaya seeds are edible and add an interesting spicy flavour if used in the smoothie. I made mine by putting the flesh and seeds of one papaya in the tumbler and topping up with white grape juice to the level of the fruit.  Vigorous blending crushed the seeds in this mixture and I passed the smoothie through a fine mesh sieve to get the black seed bits out.  It did not take long, or too much elbow grease to do this, but the result was excellent and unusual.