fred wobus . com

I recently came across a fascinating literary term – “mushroom talk” or “talking about mushrooms”. It refers to a passage in Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” where two characters go out picking mushrooms. It is Sergei and Varenka who are deeply and tragically secretly in love. And although Sergei would like to offer his hand in marriage, all he dares to talk about is mushrooms. It starts with an invitation for a day out in the forest:

“Take me with you. I am very fond of picking mushrooms,” he said, looking at Varenka; “I think it’s a very nice occupation.”

While in the forest both of them they realise Sergei is about to propose.

“A softened feeling came over him. He felt that he had made up his mind. Varenka, who had just crouched down to pick a mushroom, rose with a supple movement and looked round. Flinging away the cigar, Sergey Ivanovitch advanced with resolute steps towards her.”

Sergei thinks to himself about declaring his love and offering his hand.

“They walked on for some steps in silence. Varenka saw that he wanted to speak; she guessed of what, and felt faint with joy and panic. …”

Finally the moment is right and both know what is about to happen.

He even said over to himself the words in which he meant to put his offer, but instead of those words, some utterly unexpected reflection that occurred to him made him ask:

“What is the difference between the ‘birch’ mushroom and the ‘white’ mushroom?”

Varenka’s lips quivered with emotion as she answered:

“In the top part there is scarcely any difference, it’s in the stalk.”

The most tragical thing has happened. They should have declared their love and ended up talking mushrooms. He only had that one chance on that day in the forest. Sergei is too torn apart by his loyalty to a mere memory of deceased lover from his youth.

Sergei never marries Varenka. All they enjoyed that day was tender talk about mushrooms.

Pure tragedy.

While searching the internet for texts on marine pollution I came across the home page of Earl Killian and his mentioning of Rachel Carson’s seminal book Silent Spring. The book, published in 1962, condemned the use of harmful chemicals & pesticides and was instrumental in the banning of DDT in the US. The book is also widely regarded as the spark that ignited the environmental movement in the 1960’s.

The recent editions feature an introduction by Al Gore, which I was looking for and Earl Killian kindly provides a link on his home page :

http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/EOP/OVP/24hours/carson.html

I cannot say when Earl found Al Gore’s text at that address, but can only guess that it was when Bill and Al called the shots. Here’s what the current occupant of the White House wants you to see under that link:

Quite unsurprisingly anything related to Al Gore’s good work has vanished and has been replaced with information on the “War on Terror” and other “useful” lies.

But nothing really disappears from the  Internet, and the ex-VP’s intro to Silent Spring can be found here (a page on the United Eco-Action Fund website).

… Good!

Appalachian mountains

Northern Appalachian mountains in Pennsylvania (Google Earth placemark )

Schoolroom memories

It was always those heavy multi-coloured pieces of felt that where supposed to teach us how mountains were formed. On more than one occasion my geography teacher would grab both ends of those layers of felt and push them inwards causing it to flex and bend. That was how close I got to geology at school and it all came back to me while reading a passage in the following book.

 

North America and the 1906 quake

Rock formations

“A Crack in the Edge of the World” is fascinating read by Simon Winchester and it talks much about the geology of America in general and the devastation of San Francisco in the 1906 earthquake in particular. The narrative on the geological basics of North America is a eulogy to the early explorers and the breathtaking natural monuments they found as well as providing a captivating insights into plate tectonics and other aspects of the often ignored and fairly recent science of geology. Winchester has the rare talent to research little-known facts and put them into elegant prose one never tires to read.

“There is so much time in geology”

In one of his stories he takes the reader back to 1969 when the grey-bearded world of hammer, lens and acid bottle was finally coming round to the notion of plate tectonics. During a scientific conference on the subject “[...] the full import of the plate tectonic revolution burst on the participants like a dam failure.” Notably it was Eldridge Moores who had a “blinding flash of insight” while musing over the presentations of his colleagues. It was a realization that would make him famous.

Moores grasped that certain rocks which today form the tops of mountains are the remnants of ocean floors. In turn he deduced that the great mountain chains of the West are …

“[...] the result, time and time again, of neighbouring plates bumping into each other. [...] The plates bang into each other, and, where they do so, large amounts of material are dislodged and stay put, being heated and compressed by the enormous forces of the collision. Then the collision abates [...] and the foreign material that is left behind [...] is already or becomes in time a mountain chain. [...] Most of these bodies or sequences trend north and south in great elongated ranges of mountain peaks [...] that etch the land below when you are flying across America toward the Pacific Ocean.”

The last phrase of this excerpt brought an aerial photo back to mind which I had taken on a chilly snow-dusted March morning on a flight from Newark to St. Louis. The plane crossed Pennsylvania and the uniform undulations of the Appalachian mountains were spread out below the plane like a page from a geography school book. There were the bulging felt layers of the class room in all their timeless geological glory.

(more…)

So, you never know what day it is ? Or maybe you are looking for a dash of colour on the wall behind your desk ?

What better way to liven up the day at the office than put up a calendar with some colourful, educating and entertaining underwater photographs of nudibranchs.

Although Nudibranchs are commonly known as seaslugs, they share nothing of the gooey slimy-ness with their terrestrial cousins. These creatures are cherished by hundreds of thousands of divers for their dazzling display of colours and their bewildering variety of shapes and sizes. Some call them “the butterflies of the oceans“.

The natural history team at Seachallengers has invited underwater photographers from around the world to participate in the new 2007 Nudibranch Calendar. The main critera was that all photos had to be of some type of opistobranch. In the end more than 100 photographers from 30 countries dug up piccies of all sorts of slugs in a variety of sizes, poses or states of reproduction (As hermaphrodites, nudies do get quite kinky).
Right up until the submission deadline, I was pretty convinced that I had nothing worth publishing. Nevertheless, the dive bums Dave Behrens and John Moore convinced me to give it a go and I submitted a bunch of my own photos.

Lo and behold, two of my photos were selected and they appear in the calendar as a fullpage (yes I have a whole month to myself) and a smaller filler picture … all in glorious technicolour.

Dave & John have compiled a sample month to get an idea of the quality and layout. And, before you ask, no my picture is not in the sample. You’d have to get a copy to find out yourself :-)

When Neal Stephenson wrote “The Baroque Cycle” he must have gathered an incredible amount of information about what life was like around the turn of the 18th century. But it seems that some inspiration was not quite so historical.

I stumbled upon a particular quote that I found striking, amusing and a bit scary:

The profession of politics would be altogether too disagreeable without compensations above and beyond what is strictly appropriate.

These words are spoken by Roger Comstock in a fictional conversation with Viscount Bolingbroke on the eve of the accession of Hanoverian George I to the throne of England.

I could delve into a discourse on corruption in the present age, but I found the Character of Bolingbroke to be quite captivating too.
The Visocunt will be known to scholars of the history of English politics, in fact his works are available at Amazon.com.

I have always wanted to try out Amazon’s “Search Inside” feature for something useful. So I looked up what the Late honorable Saint had to say about corruption.

The search found two hits, but the Viscount uses the word not in its political context. I had hoped to find 18th century insights on the pleasures of the ruling classes.

Page 88 makes me flad that Stephenson read this and possible countless other works in my stead and serves up a literary dish is more easily digested that this:

All our ideas of relation are framed by the comparison the mind makes of one idea with another…
I suppose a mistake most commonly, when we are thought to frame phantastical ideas of relations by a wrong comparison of real ideas.
I suppose we shall find on such occasions, if we observe closely, that the phantastical idea of relation does not arise so much from a wrong comparison of real ideas which the mind contemplates, as from a voluntary or involuntary corruption of the reality of these supposed real ideas.

My intellect may be encumbered to understand this, so I tried to grasp the second hit on page 298:

I proceed, therefore, in the same manner to observe that many ancient traditions might induce one to think that the unity of God was the original belief of mankind, and that polytheism and idolatry were the corruptions of this orthodox.

Now I start to think he is plainly wrong as it had been my impression that monotheism was a fairly late invention of an Egyptian Pharao who sought to strengthen his power base by simplifying the spiritual landscape of his minions.

Anyway, if you haven’t picked up a copy of “The Baroque Cycle” (it’s actually 8 books in 3 volumes) then do so soon and start reading. It’s a whopping 2600 pages in all and has taken me the best part of a year to churn through.

Don’t hold your breath for it to be made into a film very soon. It seems to be as unfilmable as The Lord of the Rings and that took 47 years to appear on celluloid.