Alive on the Page

I've been reading Oliver Sacks' Everything in its Place: First Loves and Last Tales, a posthumous collection of essays by a master of that form. That he was a master of so much else — neurology, weightlifting, chemistry — ripples out from every page.

Sacks loved to swim, to walk in botanical gardens, to study ferns in Central Park, and the book contains short chapters on these topics and many more, easy explorations in the personal essay form. They move from the particular to the general, are informal and discursive. 

Sacks is most well-known for his book Awakenings, which chronicles his treatment of patients with a rare sleeping sickness, people who had missed whole decades of life then woke up and found themselves once again in the land of the living. 

Awake is how I feel after reading the work of this scientist and writer, gone almost 10 years but alive to me now thanks to this final, exhilarating collection. 

(Sacks' signature courtesy Wikipedia)

Totality or Bust

The idea was growing all week, fed by accounts of those who'd experienced a total eclipse in 2017 or earlier. It's a lot different than 80 or 90 percent, they said. If you can drive to totality, do it.

And so we did, shoving off early Sunday, bound for Washington, Indiana, where the moon will completely block the sun — and where we have kind and accommodating relatives.

It's totality or bust. Now let's hope the clouds stay away. 

Moon Landing

To continue with the theme of wonder, there is now a U.S. spacecraft on the moon for the first time since 1972. It landed Thursday on the lunar surface, near the south pole. 

The space craft was built and flown by a Texas-based company, Intuitive Machines, with NASA equipment on board. There were some tense moments at first due to issues with the craft's navigation and communications systems. But those appear to be resolved and the robot lander, Odysseus, is now transmitting signals.

Surely it's worth a song. I'm imagining this one set to the tune of Yusuf/Cat Steven's Moon Shadow. 

We're being treated to a moon landing, moon landing, moon landing. 

Leapin' and hoppin' with a moon landing, moon landing, moon landing.

And if we ever lose our way, tip our craft, botch our stay. 

And if we ever lose our way — let's hope we can launch once more. 

Jollity

Last night under the stars, a glimpse of the planets:  At Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts, the National Symphony Orchestra performed Gustav Holst's "The Planets," accompanied by NASA photographs, with my favorite movement, "Jupiter: the Bringer of Jollity," scoring the most applause. 

Jollity is defined as "the quality of being cheerful." Can a planet be cheerful? Perhaps if it's named after the king of the gods. Or if it's a gas giant more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined. 

One reason not to be jolly: what looks in photos to be a big red eye. It's not the result of excessive interplanetary partying, but a centuries-old storm bigger than Earth.

And speaking of Earth, the only planet Holst omitted from his piece, today at 7:15 a.m. EST is the one moment of the year when most of its people are bathed in sunlight — an incredible 99 percent of us. A reason for jollity, to be sure. 

(Photo: Courtesy NASA)

Stepping Up

I've never been a step counter, so the headline in yesterday's newspaper, "New Walking Tips Drop the 10,000 Steps Goal," wasn't a disappointment. But given that the article was about walking, well, I had to read it. 

I learned some interesting facts: While experts have lowered the 10,000 steps goal— the number of steps doctors recommend we get each day for healthy living — they haven't lowered it by all that much. For adults under 60 it's 8,000 to 10,000 and for those over 60 it's 6,000 to 8,000.

What I found especially useful were the equivalencies: 1,000 steps is approximately half a mile, and 3,000 steps represents about a half hour of walking. Helpful — to a point. I usually measure a walk by the number of ideas it inspires ... and I've yet to see a scale for that. 

Bird Song

It's a sunny afternoon on the deck as hummingbirds buzz the feeders, sparrows chirp and cardinals peep. In the distance, I hear a hawk cry and a bluebird squawk.  

Turns out, all this bird listening is good for my mental health, according to two different studies published in Scientific Reports, summarized in a Washington Post article published today. 

I'm not surprised. Hearing birdsong is one of the reasons I love walking and being outside in general. Turns out I'm not alone. Researchers asked 1,300 participants to answer questions about their environment and well-being through an app called Urban Mind. They found a strong correlation between hearing or seeing birds and a positive state of mind. Another study found that listening to six-minute audio clips of birdsong reduced anxiety and depression. 

According to this, I should always be bopping around with a smile on my face because in addition to hearing outside birds, I also hear inside ones, Alfie and Toby, the parakeets who grace our house with their chatter and whose racket often prompts callers to ask, "Do you have birds?" 

Yes, I always say, yes, I do, and they're wonderful. 

(Alfie and the late, great Bart.)

Solstice Miracle

The low light was shining directly into my eyes during part of today's trail walk. But it's all part of the package on the shortest day of the year. 

For some reason now, as I write this post, a funny little glob of a rainbow has appeared. I don't recall seeing anything like it before: an ordinary sky except for one cloud bleeding yellow and orange light.  We've had no rain; the sun is lower in the firmament. 

I'm sure there's some sort of scientific explanation. But I'm going to consider it a solstice miracle.

(P.S.on February 2, 2023: I just learned that my "solstice miracle" is called a sundog.)

Grandparents Rock!

New research finds that grandmothers may be one reason for the dominance of homo sapiens. Humans have alleles (alternative versions of a gene) that protect against late-onset Alzheimer's Disease and otherwise safeguard the functioning of  grandmothers and "other human elders who are involved in caregiving of the young." 

This study helps explain why women live on past menopause and bolsters the "grandmother hypothesis," which posits that it's in grandmothers' evolutionary interest to ensure that grandchildren survive to reproductive age.  

Scientists who study the evolutionary effect of various genetic mutations have noticed that these mutations were not present in Neanderthals and other early human lineages. 

All of which says, to me at least, that grandparents rock!

(My parents, who lived to see almost all their grandchildren graduate from high school.)

Of Hominids and Humans

I wasn't planning to read the entire Washington Post story today about Swedish geneticist Svante Paabo's Nobel Prize in medicine, but the more I learned the more captivated I was. Paabo's research into prehistoric DNA, a field he's credited with founding, has shone a light on ancient humans, including Neanderthals and a new species of early hominid he discovered, the Denisovan. 

Paabo's work has implications for human health in 2022: a genetic risk factor for severe Covid was inherited from Neanderthals, and 1 to 2 percent of non-African people have Neanderthal DNA. 

While the early hominid science was inspiring, it was the humanity of the scientist that touched me most. The photo accompanying the article showed a laughing Paabo being thrown into a pond by his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute. Paabo told reporters that when he got the call from Sweden at his home in Germany, he thought it was someone calling to tell him his summer house there had a plumbing problem.  

And finally, he gave a lovely tribute to his mother during his remarks. "The biggest influence in life was my mother, with whom I grew up," Paabo said. "It makes me a bit sad that she can't experience this day." 

(A Neanderthal skull unearthed in Israel. Courtesy Wikipedia.)

The Butterfly Effect

It's a beautiful day here, with a light breeze, low humidity and hummingbirds topping up frequently at the nectar bar. The perfect day to take breaks in the yard, picking up sticks and pulling stilt grass.

A few minutes ago the chainsaws revving in the distance finally claimed their victim as Folkstone lost another of its giant oaks. By now I recognize the harbingers, those first crashing-through-brush sounds that are followed by the thud of a massive trunk hitting the earth. I almost felt the ground shake. And I wasn't the only one. A distant dog began to bark, too. 

It made me think of the butterfly effect, a part of chaos theory which posits that small changes can have large effects, with the oft-used metaphorical example of a tornado's path being affected by the flapping of a butterfly's wings far away. 

Although that example is a simplification, small changes do have big consequences. We see it all the time in our lives, in everything from the first tiny crack in a windshield to the first small rupture in a relationship. I think that's why the concept of the butterfly effect caught the popular imagination. And why I thought of today, as the tree fell and the dog barked and I ... wrote my post about it.

The Plague

And so it begins. The averted handshake at this morning's Ash Wednesday service. The shunning on Metro of anyone who's coughing or sniffling. The headlines and newscasts and public health warnings.

It will worsen, no doubt. There will be closures and restrictions, dire predictions. There will be confusion and panic. Truth will be elusive.

It's no less than what other eras have had to bear, but for us it will be novel (in more ways than one).  Because we were raised with vaccines not quarantines.

I'm reminded of the ending of one of my favorite novels, Albert Camus' The Plague:

He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city. 

Top of the World

As I sit snug in my house with a dusting of snow on the ground and trees, I read about a land where snow and ice reign — or at least reign for a little while longer.

The research vessel Polestern is part of the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAIC), the largest Arctic research expedition in history. It is studying the polar ice cap that sits at the top of the world.

The researchers recently spoke to a Washington Post reporter about what they've been encountering there. The resulting article read like one of those great polar adventure stories. At one point the scientists heard a low "grumble" and realized that the large floe to which they'd anchored their vessel was splitting apart. They once had to kayak across a newly formed channel to reach their instruments.

"We are teetering at the edge of feasibility," said the co-coordinator for the MOSAIC expedition, Matthew Shupe. In the not-so-distant future, he said, "setting up an ice camp for a whole year is not going to be possible."

But he and the other scientists can't imagine being anywhere else. Said Shupe: "It is so cool to be embedded in the middle of this new Arctic state."

(Photo: mosaic-expedition.org)

Entropy, Part 1

I've been interested in entropy since I read David Christian's book Origin Story, though I realize that saying one is interested in entropy is like saying one is interested in gravity.  Let's just say I've been fascinated by the idea that the world will end not with a bang or a whimper but with a return to the disorder from which it sprang (though disorder will in fact be simplicity, which is part of the confusion I would like to explore).

My "readings" on entropy are purely amateur. The great physics text Wikipedia, for example, and a site I found called Ask an Astronomer. Is there a book yet called Entropy for Dummies? No, but there is one called Thermodynamics for Dummies.

Because entropy—the natural tendency of things to become more disordered over time (a phrase I'm borrowing from James Clear)—is actually the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

This is scary territory for an English major, someone to whom higher math is Algebra II and whose high school physics teacher was prone to saying, "Miss Cassidy, why are you in my class?"

But at this point in my life, I say why not try and learn a little about entropy. If I believe in the Second Law–and does one have a choice?—it isn't going to get any easier.

Seismic Joy

I like the thought of jumping for joy, of arms raised, fists pumped; of running in circles because you don't know what else to do with yourself; because there's just so much good feeling it won't stay put, must bubble out — all the physical expressions of positive emotion.

I didn't know until yesterday, though, that when enough people jump for joy at the same time, it can actually cause an earthquake. Not a monstrous one, but one that can be detected on seismic read-outs like the one above. Apparently this happened on Sunday in Mexico, when cheering fans erupted with jumping and dancing when Mexico upset Germany in World Cup soccer play.

And it's not the first time. A seismograph a block away from where the Seattle Seahawks scored the winning touchdown in the 2011 Super Bowl registered what it called the "12 Man Earthquake" or "the Beast Quake." (This from my favorite weather site, The Capital Weather Gang.)

I bet there were some mini-tremblors in D.C. week before last when the Caps won the Stanley Cup. And I'm not ruling out seismic activity in Lexington, Kentucky, in late March or early April of  1978, 1996, 1998 or 2012, all recent wins of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tourney.

Human-made quakes? Why not? They underline our connection with the earth, our influence over it, that it shakes and shimmies and trembles with our joy.

(Seismograph read-out courtesy Washington Post Capital Weather Gang)

The Howling

We're back to winter here, with a blast of Arctic air that's sending us down to 10 degrees wind chill tonight. Back to three layers, plus coat, hat, gloves and scarf.

Inside, it's warm and cozy — as long as I ignore the wind.

Why does the wind howl, anyway? It's a question I've been asking myself this winter.

When wind whips around a building or a tree, it splits up. The sound comes from the two currents rejoining on the other side, according to an article on the website Mental Floss.

Leafy trees absorb more of the vibration than bare ones do, so the howling is louder this time of year.

The explanation makes sense, but doesn't stop the goosebumps. A howling wind is still a scary sound — even with a scientific explanation.

Bone Deep

I read in the newspaper this morning a report about the strength of prehistoric women's arms.  Although at first glance this falls into the "yeah, right, what else is new?" category, it was fascinating to view the list of chores that researchers think account for the difference:

Tilling the soil with digging sticks (the plow had yet to be invented)
Grinding the grain with stones
Milking goats or cows and processing the milk
Making pottery
Turning wool and skins into textiles

"We've largely been underestimating the scale of this work," said Alison McIntosh of Cambridge, an author of the report. All this physical activity produced bones that were larger and stronger — but also showed signs of strain. These long-ago women routinely did more than they should.

While the shin bones of modern female athletes compare to those of prehistoric women, the arm bones are another matter. The ancient women's bones appeared even stronger (and more strained) that those of current female crew team members.

I think of these prehistoric women digging and grinding, I think of my own puny arms, of my life of ease, sitting at a desk, typing words on a small keyboard.  It's good to be reminded of the difference.

Observe the Moon

On a tour of the Johnson Space Center yesterday I learned that tonight is International Observe the Moon Night, a date set aside each year to look at and learn about Earth's satellite. I didn't even know there was such an event, but I consider myself lucky that I learned about it where I did.

Home of moon rocks and interplanetary dust, of an intact Saturn rocket housed in a building as impossibly long as it is impossibly tall, the Johnson Space Center is also where the Orion spacecraft is coming to life. Orion is built for interplanetary travel — and will someday take humans to Mars.

Also on the Space Center campus is the historic mission control center: the place where nine Gemini and all the Apollo missions were monitored, where scientists scrambled to bring Apollo 13 astronauts back to Earth, where cheers erupted when the words came crackling through the monitors: "The Eagle has landed."

It was the moon they saw, the same moon we can see tonight. Only for the first time in history, a human footprint was outlined in its dust.

Ripples in Space

Yesterday's announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves, a phenomenon that Einstein  predicted but which had not been observed until now, does not exactly make me slap my forehead and say, "I knew it, I knew they were going to figure that out one of these days."

I had no idea that gravitational waves were even in the maybe column. Physics for me will always be a high school class I somehow registered for without the required calculus and Mr. Taylor peering over his glasses to say, "Miss Cassidy, WHY are you in my class?" 

But after reading about the "chirp" scientists heard after converting gravitational waves to sound waves, a "chirp" that had for decades eluded them, I wanted to learn more about gravitational waves, these "ripples in the fabric of space."

"Gravitational waves provide a completely new way of looking at the Universe," Stephen Hawking said upon learning of the discovery. "The ability to detect them has the potential to revolutionize astronomy. This discovery is the first detection of a black hole binary system and the first observation of black holes merging."

Black holes merging. Ripples in space. Kinda puts everything else in perspective, doesn't it?

(Photo: Phys.org.)

32 Degrees Fahrenheit

Once an English major, always an English major. And as an English major, I've always appreciated imprecision. The characters are motivated by greed — or maybe it's ambition. The landscape mirrors the late 19-century love of technology — or maybe it's the late 19-century fear of technology.

It's the principle that's important — and the principle is often imprecise, something to ponder or debate. It's not black or white but something in between.

Which is all to say that I'm fascinated by the unerring precision of the natural world. Water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Not at 34 or 36.

I was tremendously grateful for this fact yesterday, as I crept up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway to collect my college student. It took three hours to drive 54 miles. But if it had been three degrees chillier, it might have taken me six hours.

There I go again — thinking like an English major.

(This picture has very little to do with 32 degrees Fahrenheit. It's an English major kind of photograph.)

Cleaning Up

As one who routinely gives short shrift to sleep, cutting corners whenever possible, I read the newspaper article with great interest. Reporting on a study published in the journal Science, the article said that new imaging techniques have allowed researchers to better understand how the brain cleans cells during sleep.

Apparently, the space between cells expands while we're snoozing — which gives a network that drains cellular waste from the brain more space to flush out the toxins.When we sleep less, the brain can't go about this housekeeping function as efficiently — and toxins build up. No wonder my head feels foggy the morning after I've slept five hours or less.

This finding explains the restorative nature of sleep and may also help scientists better understand Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.

All I know is, I've gone to bed earlier and slept later ever since I read the article. And that's a good thing.