A Number of Things

Bird-lovers read books differently

2012-01-26T20:49:00.002Z

I've just started reading Paul Mariani's Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life (not before time - I've had it on my shelf for years). I was dubious from the start about Mariani's approach of putting himself inside Hopkins's head, telling us not just what the poet was doing on a particular date (the book is written in a series of entries, diary-style), but what he was thinking and feeling. I've always felt biographers who did this were on shaky ground, and an excellent example of why occurs in the entry for April 1866. During a stroll around Oxford, Mariani assures us, "Hopkins -- that inveterate observer of nature -- notes* the robin's-egg-blue spring sky."

I can tell you with absolute certainty that Hopkins noted no such thing. Not just because he wouldn't have used a stock phrase like "robin's egg blue," but because the European Robin -- the only robin this "inveterate observer of nature" would have been familiar with -- does not lay blue eggs. It is the American Robin (not closely related to the European Robin at all) that lays eggs of this colour, and the phrase "robin's egg blue" is American English. Mariani is American and is presumably no ornithologist; this wouldn't be a problem if he hadn't insisted on inserting his own thoughts into Hopkins's head in this silly manner.

I'll keep reading the book because of my love for its subject. I hope there won't be too many distractions of this kind.

* The book is also written in the present tense, another slight irritant.

The animals' Christmas

2011-12-12T20:58:00.004Z

First of all, I'm still alive. I've enjoyed my first term at Capel Manor very much, but between that and other things, blogging seems to have been pushed off my list of priorities. I'm hoping to change this in future, but I won't promise in case I jinx it.

Anyway, this is the last week before the Christmas holidays, and today I brought in a bag of presents for the small animals I've been working with. Seeing their excitement at getting their toys made this one of the most gratifying gifts I've ever given.

I'd been concerned lately about the degus, who had been chewing the bars of their cage and showing other signs of boredom. I thought adding a bit more enrichment might help, and it looks like I was right.

The photos I took weren't of great quality, partly because the animals were so active, but I think they capture the spirit of the occasion. Here are two of the gerbils playing with a new tunnel (the red glow is a reflection in their tank).

I hope everyone else's season has happy moments like these!

The Soapstone Monkey of Silence

2011-10-26T22:10:00.004+01:00

There's currently a fascinating pair of exhibitions on at the Wellcome Collection. Infinitas Gracias is a selection of ex-voto paintings and offerings from Mexico, and I spent a very interesting couple of hours there. But it's the other exhibition, Charmed Life, that inspired this post.

I admit the contemporary art in the show didn't hold much interest for me, but I did like the amulets on display. They were collected by the folklorist Edward Lovett in London in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They consist of a large assortment of objects, from the everyday to the positively bizarre, that were used by Londoners for various magical purposes: to ward off bronchitis, nightmares or poverty, to ensure luck in marriage or gambling, and so forth.

Among them, I found a little statue of a monkey, 2 or 3 centimetres high, sitting in a praying position. The label under it said, "Jade Monkey of Silence." Most of the other objects had further information about where they'd been collected or what they'd been used for, but this one said simply that: "Jade Monkey of Silence."

As soon as I saw this, I knew I had to find out more. Why? Because in my living room at home, I had this:

My monkey isn't jade -- it's probably soapstone -- but otherwise it is very similar in size and style to the one in the exhibition. I bought it in a charity shop about ten years ago for a pound, figuring it was a tourist souvenir. Now it seems it may once have meant more to someone than that.

I asked a staff member at the Wellcome Collection if she could give me any more information about the "monkey of silence" and what powers it was meant to have. She was very friendly and helpful, but couldn't find anything. Looking through reference books didn't help either. Lovett's own book about his collection, Magic in Modern London, has been out of print for years and hasn't been put online; the price for a used copy ranges from £50 to £150.

Eventually I asked MetaFilter, where the consensus has been that the figurine is a "speak-no-evil" monkey that at some point got separated from the other two Wise Monkeys. MeFi users pointed me toward almost identical monkeys being sold on Etsy and eBay, and I found one that had been posted by a visitor to the BBC's History of the World in 100 Objects site. In each case, the owner/seller of the monkey had either found it or inherited it from somewhere; everyone agreed that the monkey was old, but no one seemed sure how old. At least one (the one on Etsy) has a hole in the base like mine; the finder mentions that it was found "strung on a very old silk cord along with an antique Catholic medal," which suggests it was indeed used as a sort of good luck charm.

If anyone has any further information or suggestions (or a cheaper source for Lovett's book), please leave a comment. I'd be delighted to hear from you.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year

2011-10-22T18:35:00.003+01:00

I've seen a few exhibitions recently that I've been meaning to write about, but I'll start with the biggie. It was a good year for birds at the 2011 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. The winning photo, of course, was Daniel Beltrá's heartbreaking image of oiled pelicans at a rescue centre in Louisiana -- part of a set of photographs documenting the BP oil spill that also won Beltrá the Photojournalist of the Year prize.

But most of the other bird pictures were more cheerful. Oystercatchers were the slightly unexpected but welcome star of two category winners. Fourteen-year-old Mateusz Piesiak scooped the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year title with his photo of a young American Oystercatcher stealing a tidbit from an adult, while Peter Chadwick won the Gerald Durrell Award for Endangered Wildlife with a shot of African Black Oystercatchers caught off-guard by a wave.

Ilkka Räsänen, from Finland, won the 10 Years and Under category back in 2009 with his portrait of a greenfinch; this year, he was Highly Commended in the 11-14 Years category for his stunning picture of a tern splashing in a lake. I loved the way the bird's wings and the water droplets caught the golden sunlight. Also using water to great effect was Petr Simon with his Racket-Tail in the Rain. This hummingbird picture was so detailed that you could see a single raindrop on the bird's bill. Bowerbirds have been surprisingly neglected in past competitions, but Tim Laman made up for that with his cheeky photo of a male showing off his greatest treasure: a pink paperclip.

In several cases, perfect composition turned photos of not-particularly-spectacular species into something astonishing. Coots are so commonplace that I don't know if anyone's even bothered to enter a photo of them before, but Andrew George's black-and-white shot of a group walking on ice was a thing of beauty. There was also Henrik Lund's picture of a Horned Lark framed by dead stems in the Finnish snow. And Thomas Hanahoe's Knot Lift-Off seemed almost surreal. I also couldn't go without mentioning Stefano Unterthiner's geometric arrangements of cranes and swans.

Birds were also a big part of Bence Máté's beautiful portfolio, which -- almost inevitably -- won the Eric Hosking Award. I believe this is the last year that Máté is eligible for the award; he first won it in 2002 at age 17, and it's only for photographers under age 27. Perhaps young Mateusz or Ilkka will step up to take his place.

It wasn't all birds, of course. Two invertebrate pictures particularly caught my eye: sixteen-year-old Jack Salzke's painterly close-up of a honeybee visiting a magnolia flower, and Valter Binotto's Apollo at Rest, in which a white butterfly seems almost transparent among its surroundings. Joel Sartore captured a mountain goat in a jitter-inducing pose, while Louis-Marie Préau contributed the first portrait I've seen of a beaver underwater. And of course, no WPY exhibition would be complete without an adorable monkey photo, this time taken by Cyril Ruoso.

How did I spend Monday morning?

2011-09-26T20:05:00.003+01:00

Not long ago, my answer to that question would have included trying not to fall asleep during Powerpoint presentations, or being told off by the boss for not stapling documents to her satisfaction. No more. Here were my bosses for the day:

Jessica in her newly cleaned hutch. Later on she and her mate, Roger, were snuggling happily together.

Tia.

Tia and her friend Nola, recovering from the indignity of being put into pet carriers while we cleaned their room. They rushed out with great relief and were soon settling in among their fresh hay.

This work does have the slight disadvantage of not paying anything (in fact, I'm paying Capel Manor for the privilege), but in another sense it's the most rewarding work I've ever done.

That's all for now. Tomorrow morning my boss will be Aristophanes.

From Flash Gordon to Eternal Flame

2011-09-17T19:25:00.003+01:00

The building at 440-442 Alexandra Avenue in Rayners Lane has seen a lot. It started life as a beautiful Art Deco cinema in 1936. Altered over the years to suit changing tastes, it finally closed as a cinema in the 1980s, and for a time hosted a horrible theme bar where real aircraft were suspended from the ceilings. It then fell into disrepair entirely for several years, until in 2000 it was bought by the Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe and turned into the only European centre for Zoroastrian worship.

The Zoroastrian community have been a lot more conscientious than their predecessors in restoring the listed building to its original design. Today, as part of Open House London, we got to see the results of their work.

Yes, that's a bar. The Zoroastrians have no prohibition against drinking -- in fact, Cobra Beer was founded by a Zoroastrian.

The door in this picture opens on a flight of stairs leading to the old projection room, which now contains the "eternal flame" found in all Zoroastrian temples. We weren't allowed to go up there, but we did hear an interesting talk about the Zoroastrian faith. It seems like a pretty good-hearted religion; its followers focus on good deeds, believe in progress and see all faiths as coming from God. Zoroastrianism also grants women a relatively high level of equality. The speaker even claimed that the story of Portia in The Merchant of Venice was based on a Zoroastrian legend - except that in the original, the woman did not disguise herself as a man to argue in court, because she didn't need to. (I have to say, though, that I haven't found any scholarly confirmation of this theory.)

There are about 200,000 Zoroastrians in the world today, of whom about 5,000 live in Britain. They continue to face severe persecution in Iran and Central Asia.

A new direction

2011-09-14T16:40:00.002+01:00

I've mused from time to time on this blog (most recently here) about what direction I wanted my life and career to take. Should I change jobs? Give up work to write full time? Go back to school?

Well, things have been brewing for a little while, and now I'm finally ready to announce my plans. Next week, I'll begin studying for a Subsidiary Diploma in Animal Management at Capel Manor College. I'll be going there two days a week, and in the evenings I'll also be finishing up my Creative Writing certificate at Birkbeck. (I've also signed up for an advanced Classical Greek class at City Lit, just because I've always wanted to take my Greek further.)

All this, of course, means I'm not working. This won't be a problem during the 15 months of my Capel Manor course, though I do plan to look for part-time work to fit round my studies. More to the point, I hope that once I have an animal care qualification, I'll be able to find a job working with wildlife. To gain some practical experience, I've started volunteering with the Harrow Nature Conservation Forum. We spent yesterday evening cleaning trash out of a pond where a little family of moorhens live.

If I can find a way to make a living out of my two great loves - nature and writing - then I will be very happy. I'm glad I've finally taken the first steps toward doing this, and I'm very excited about the future. I hope to start blogging more often and chronicle my journey.

Toulouse-Lautrec and Jane Avril

2011-09-09T19:55:00.002+01:00

This is the 110th anniversary of Toulouse-Lautrec's death, which makes it a good day to write about the Courtauld Gallery's current show devoted to his relationship with the Moulin Rouge dancer Jane Avril. (This is another one you'll have to be quick to see -- it closes on 18 September.)

Toulouse-Lautrec met Avril (real name: Jeanne Beaudon) in the 1880s, when both were in their 20s; she soon became a close friend of the artist and a frequent model. Both had already been through considerable sorrow. Toulouse-Lautrec's problems are well-known. Avril was abused as a child and spent a good part of her adolescence in an insane asylum, being treated for chorea. Some critics suggested that her illness contributed to the development of her eccentric, violent dance style.

Toulouse-Lautrec's portraits of Avril seem to focus on her inner suffering. In his pictures her face inevitably looks weary and prematurely old. Yet the exhibition also includes photographs and depictions by other artists, which show that Avril did not, in fact, look like this; her looks were slightly unconventional, but her face was youthful and pretty, and she is often shown smiling.

Like all the Courtauld exhibitions I've been to, this one was very well-done and thought-provoking. I did find myself wishing that I had a better idea of exactly how Avril had danced. Presumably no film was made of her, and though many pictures catch her in mid-step, I didn't really get a feeling for what the overall routine would look like.

Botanical art

2011-09-06T18:29:00.003+01:00

You'll have to be quick to see the V & A's free show of botanical illustrations -- it closes on September 24 -- but it's well worth it. Actually, this exhibition has been on since February, but I only recently learned of it. In fact, the main criticism I have of the V & A is that it tends not to publicise its small, free exhibitions very well -- very little outside promotion, and no posters in the museum itself. Most people who have seen this show will probably have stumbled across it.

What they will have found is two rooms of beautiful art, spanning from 16th-century herbals to 20th-century seed packets. The show includes drawings, paintings, photographs and nature prints (in which an impression is made directly from the plant itself). Despite the buzz of museum visitors around me, I found walking through the exhibition very peaceful -- almost as good as visiting an actual garden.

Botanical art has traditionally been looked down upon as "mere" illustration, lacking the loftier goals of true art. And yet it seems to me that creating (and, to a lesser extent, even looking at) a botanical illustration could be viewed as an act of contemplation. Isn't there something profound about paying such close attention to a single fruit of the earth?

Prom 61

2011-09-02T19:49:00.004+01:00

Both the Royal Albert Hall and I have seen some big events since Wednesday night, but I figured you'd still like to hear about Yo-Yo Ma's performance. He and the BBC Symphony Orchestra gave the world premiere of Graham Fitkin's new Cello Concerto. Fitkin composed this piece with Yo-Yo in mind, and it showed. The long, subtle tones of the solos could have become dull in a lesser cellist's hands, but Yo-Yo made them tender and expressive. The orchestra gradually filled the background like mille-fleurs, then became louder and more insistent until it almost seemed to be competing with the cello; then it faded away again, and the piece seemed to return to the beginning.

I enjoyed the piece, but it was the curtain call that really made my night. Fitkin came on stage to get a big hug from Ma, who also presented him with a red yo-yo. The pair managed to knock over a music stand in their excitement.

The second half was Beethoven's Ninth, about which I really don't have anything new to say. The orchestra's performance was not electrifying, but the BBC Symphony Chorus and the Philharmonia Chorus gave the audience what they were waiting for in the Ode to Joy.

Prom 44

2011-08-18T16:46:00.003+01:00

Last year at the Proms, I heard an excellent performance of Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto with Julia Fischer as soloist. Last night's performance by Lisa Batiashvili was, if anything, even better -- her Cadenza enough to bring tears to your eyes. I've rarely heard such fine violin playing in concert, and will certainly be checking out her latest album, which includes this concerto among other works.

Unusually, this was actually the only Prom this season to include Shosty's music. The Philharmonia Orchestra preceded the Concerto with the suite from the Age of Gold. Their performance seemed to lack fire at first, but things perked up in the famous Polka, which had the audience chuckling along. And for her encore, Batiashvili chose the Lyrical Waltz from Seven Dolls' Dances, arranged by her father Tamas.

There was some kerfuffle at the beginning of the second half, when a couple of unpleasant middle-aged women sat in someone else's seats in our row and refused to move (apparently their argument was that someone else had sat in their seats, so they in turn were entitled to steal seats from other people). This meant that the opening bars of Stravinsky's 1946 revision of Petrushka were punctuated with the sounds of managers being called and negotiations being carried out. (Apparently throwing out the impostors was deemed too disruptive, and so the rightful owners of the seats were escorted to more expensive seats further down the Hall.)

I have never much cared for Stravinsky; he seems to be the one composer idolised by people who don't really like or understand modern classical music. I found some support for this idea in the number of people who didn't turn up till the second half, and then left as soon as Petrushka was finished. But the Philharmonia's playing was enough to win me over, and I enjoyed the half hour.

What came next was even better, though -- Tchaikovsky's symphonic poem Francesca da Rimini. This isn't Tchaikovsky's best known work, but I love the way it combines tender love themes with vivid depictions of the swirling winds in the second circle of Hell. Francesca has been treated with some sympathy by most artists (including perhaps Dante himself), and I couldn't help wondering if her story had reminded Tchaikovsky of his own forbidden love -- the homosexuality he was forced to conceal.

Prom 36

2011-08-11T18:33:00.002+01:00

It was the Prom I'd been waiting for all season, and it didn't disappoint. In the year of his 75th birthday, Steve Reich visited the Royal Albert Hall for a performance of three of his best-known works. Despite the late hour (it was the second Prom of the night), the hall was about three-quarters full, and the audience gave him one of the most enthusiastic receptions I've heard.

Reich himself performed on two of the pieces, Clapping Music and Music for 18 Musicians. Clapping Music was probably my favourite performance of the night. When I'd listened to the recording, I'd never really noticed the pitch created by hands striking together -- the piece had seemed purely percussive. In the live version, its musicality was much more obvious. It's a difficult piece to perform, and I noticed that Reich and his fellow clapper Rainer Römer rarely looked at each other, perhaps to avoid being distracted from their individual rhythms. Later, in the break while stage equipment was shifted around, I heard a couple of audience members trying to recreate the piece for themselves.

Reich was also one of the four pianists in Music for 18 Musicians. Though I'd often enjoyed listening to this piece on CD, watching it being performed gave me a whole new appreciation of it. Reich intended the performance of the piece to be a communal experience for the musicians. There was no conductor, and the performers faced each other instead of the audience. The pianists and percussionists sat off to one side until needed, and sometimes moved from one instrument to another. The effect was like watching a workshop or office, with all participants focused on the work they were creating.

In between these two pieces came Electric Counterpoint, played by Mats Bergström. Perhaps because of the less-than-perfect acoustics of the RAH, the recorded backing and Bergström's live guitar seemed to be at the same volume. This made the perforamance less effective than Pat Metheny's famous recording, where Metheny's live guitar is very much to the fore. Nonetheless, it was interesting to see how Bergström interacted with the speaker playing the backing track, sometimes bending toward it as if it were a fellow performer.

Prom 9

2011-07-22T21:21:00.003+01:00

The disappointment I felt at not seeing Martha Argerich in Prom 5 was more than made up for last night, when András Schiff gave a stunning performance of Bartok's Third Piano Concerto. This wasn't a work I was familiar with, despite its being considered one of the more "mainstream" of Bartok's compositions. Bartok was dying of leukaemia when he wrote it, and some suggest that he wanted to compose a crowd-pleaser so that his wife, a pianist, could earn money by playing it after his death.

Be that as it may, it's a wonderful piece. The first movement, based on Hungarian folk themes, has an almost jazzy feel (in fact, it reminded me slightly of George Gershwin). Schiff's playing had a lightness and warmth that suited the music perfectly. His excellent chemistry with the Hallé was shown off especially in the second movement, where piano and orchestra echo each other in a mimicry of nighttime bird and insect calls. In the impassioned third movement he sometimes flung his hands into the air during breaks in the piano part. It seemed inevitable that he would be called back for an encore, and so he was -- the fitting Hungarian Melody by Schubert.

The concert had opened with the Hallé playing Sibelius, a composer I keep meaning to hear more of. Now I'll have to add his charming Scènes historiques to my list of recordings to pick up. This was programme music for which you didn't really need to consult a programme: La Chasse immediately conjured up a wood, Chant d'Amour a romantic meeting, and Près du Pont-Levis a humorous bustle of ships. Afterward came Sibelius's Seventh Symphony, which conductor Mark Elder took at a relaxed pace -- perhaps too relaxed. The concert ended with an old favourite, Janacek's Sinfonietta, in which the brass section did a good job of blasting us out of our seats.

Birdwatching at the National Gallery

2011-07-21T05:51:00.005+01:00

In his new book Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle, Thor Hanson tells how the craze for feathers in women's fashion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries helped to spur the formation of America's National Audubon Society. (It was also the driving force behind the founding of Britain's RSPB, but Hanson's book is unfortunately quite U.S.-centric.) In 1886, one opponent of the feather trade, Frank Chapman, undertook an unusual birdwatching trip on the streets of New York, identifying more than 40 species in the hats of female passers-by.

Fortunately, feathered hats are long out of fashion (though Hanson's book includes a disturbing interview with one designer, Leah Chalfen, who's determined to bring the cruel practice back). But I was partly inspired by Chapman when I decided to birdwatch in another unlikely spot the other day: among the painted Italian altarpieces in the National Gallery's excellent free exhibition, Devotion by Design.

My final list was:

Two swallows, found in Carlo Crivelli's Madonna of the Swallow, painted at the turn of the 16th century. One of these perches on top of the Madonna's throne; the other surveys the martyrdom of St Sebastian in the predella. The saint, unusually, also appears fit and unpierced in the main panel.
One Eurasian Crane, also in the predella of Crivelli's altarpiece, in the scene depicting St Jerome in the wilderness. This scene also contains several other animals, including a couple of bunnies.
Goldfinch and Coal Tit, on the marble steps at the foot of the Virgin's throne in Benozzo Gozzoli's Virgin and Child Enthroned Among Angels and Saints, painted in 1461. They look quite alert and seem to be getting along.
An eagle, in Margarito of Arezzo's The Virgin and Child Enthroned, with Narrative Scenes, from around 1260. It appears here as a symbol of John the Evangelist, so it may not really count.
Doves in various paintings, representing the Holy Spirit. These may not count either.

Although I started out looking for birds, I also have to mention fish -- specifically those in Niccolò di Pietro Gerini's Baptism Altarpiece from 1387. They swim unconcernedly in the clear water around Christ's feet. This must have been an imaginative touch on Gerini's part; an altarpiece by Lorenzo Monaco, painted in the same year and depicting the same subject, shows the water as empty.

The Gallery's exhibition is very well put together, and even allows visitors to walk behind some of the altarpieces to see how they were built. I'll probably go again before it closes in October.

Hungarian photographs at the Royal Academy

2011-07-20T05:52:00.003+01:00

It takes a pretty enticing exhibition to get me into the Royal Academy, but Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century was just that. To my relief, I wasn't disappointed. Unlike some previous RA exhibitions, this one held a decent amount of material -- and a show consisting of only half these stunning images would have been worth the ticket price.

The exhibition includes photography of all types: scenes of everyday life; photojournalism from the World Wars, the revolutions and the fall of Communism; Surrealist photomontages; fashion and advertising shots. In Tibor Schoen's Ravens (1915), the eponymous birds surround a dead soldier on a snow-covered battlefield. Ravens scavenge flesh, but these particular ravens appear to be just hanging around, perched on bare branches or settled contentedly in the snow: life going on despite human horrors. The wide veils of the nuns in Ernö Vadas's Procession (1934) form an almost abstract geometric pattern: you have to look twice to be sure of what you're seeing. In György Stalter's Tólápa (1982), a Gypsy woman seems to be observing a cheerful gaggle of geese inside an abandoned house, while Sylvia Plachy's tragicomic Fallen Worker (1993) shows a heroic Communist sculpture toppled on the ground.

But two photographers really form the core of this show: Robert Capa and André Kertész. The Capa photographs here span from 1936 (the famous, and possibly staged, Death of a Loyalist Militiaman) to 1950 (Refugees in Front of the Sha'ar Ha'Aliya Refugee Camp, Haifa). Kertész's photos, meanwhile, span his whole career, from tiny prints made in the 1910s (farmers gathered by a cattle trough, a child playing with a cat) to semi-abstract Polaroids taken in New York in the early 1980s.

The Academy has reprinted poems by George Szirtes to accompany some of the photos. Otherwise, it largely sticks to its typical minimalist labelling. This has been a drawback in some previous shows, but it works well here, allowing viewers to form their own response to the images. It was especially effective with the two pictures that stayed with me most: Kertész's Mr & Mrs Rosskam, where the subjects look upward at the camera, seemingly surprised while playing with their cats; and Capa's Woman, Who Had a Child with a German Soldier, Being Marched Through the Street. Apparently a film was made last year in Ireland that tried to trace what had happened to this woman and her child; but I haven't seen it, and I don't know what they found.

Prom 5

2011-07-19T14:15:00.002+01:00

It can't have been easy for Frank Braley when he stepped onto the Royal Albert Hall's stage last night to play Beethoven's Triple Concerto with the Capuçon brothers and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. Here he was, a relatively unknown pianist making his Proms debut -- and not only was he filling in for Martha Argerich (who'd followed long-established habit and cancelled), but he was about to perform a piece whose best-known recording features none other than Sviatoslav Richter.*

Well, I'm not going to claim that a new Argerich or Richter was revealed to the world last night. But Braley has nothing to be ashamed of, having turned in a fine performance. I can't deny, though, that he was overshadowed somewhat by the Capuçons -- Renaud on violin, Gautier on cello -- with their superb chemistry and sparkling tone.

The concerto was a welcome second half to a Prom that had had a mixed beginning. Messaien's early orchestral work Les offrandes oubliées was a beautifully played, emotionally involving piece -- two lovely slow movements sandwiching a jolting fast one. But then there was Pascal Dusapin's Morning in Long Island, a special commission making its UK premiere. This fit all too well the old cliché about modern classical music sounding like the orchestra tuning its instruments -- except for the last movement, "Swinging," which sounded like Latin jazz being played on a faulty CD (complete with clicks). I have no aversion to contemporary music; in fact, the Prom I'm looking forward to most is Steve Reich's appearance next month. But there really didn't seem to be any reason for Dusapin's piece to exist.

* Who was no slouch at cancelling concerts either. Hmmm.

Persephone

2011-07-17T16:20:00.001+01:00

If there’s a goddess for the modern age,
It’s got to be Persephone. Just think
How much of life you spend inside a cage
Of your own make; what wastes of pulp and ink
You trundle through. The torment of Greek hell
Is drudgery, as Sisyphus attests.
(You can be pretty sure they have Excel.)
And like Persephone, what we do best
Is counting down the days. O Goddess, hear
Our cry. Show how to ration out our need,
Break dullness into blocks that we can bear;
To crunch each day one pomegranate seed
And so extract some sweetness and some hope.
Spring’s daughter, exiles’ queen, teach us to cope.

This is probably the cue for Twitter to go out of fashion

2011-07-06T22:16:00.002+01:00

If you get impatient waiting for new posts on this blog, I have good news: I've just set up a Twitter account. I can't promise that will be updated any more often, of course.

Medieval relics

2011-07-03T06:09:00.002+01:00

I didn't just look at Australian stuff at the British Museum yesterday. I also visited an exhibition focusing on the (very) Old World: Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe.

The veneration of relics is one of those things non-Catholics find it hard to get their heads round. No matter how enthusiastic a Protestant may be about Christian unity, their smile wavers a little if you tell them you need to get hold of a saint's knucklebone before you can dedicate your altar.

I wondered, therefore, if the contents of this exhibition might make some visitors squeamish. But there was nothing to fear. Few actual relics were on display -- the show focused instead on the elaborate containers built to hold them -- and those visitors could see were tiny fragments wrapped in cloth. The only relics I got a good look at were various thorns alleged to be from Christ's crown, although I have to say they all appeared to have come from different species of plants. Maybe Pilate's soldiers were also horticulturalists.

I also caught the dimmest glimpse of a piece of the True Cross, and learned for the first time how it had been brought to Europe. Essentially, the Empress Helena went to Jerusalem and tortured the local Jews until they pointed her toward some likely-looking bits of wood; these events were proudly depicted on the reliquary holding the fragment.

But there were more pleasant sights, too. My favourite part of the exhibition -- perhaps because it concentrated on the period I knew least about -- focused on Christianity's early days in Rome. A marble sarcophagus from the fourth century had an intricate relief of the Resurrection. Even better than that was the Epitaph of Severa. Its red-tinted carving showed a rather crudely rendered scene of the Adoration of the Magi (the Star of Bethlehem looked like a child's drawing of a flower). This is apparently the first known depiction of this subject.

Displays from later periods included a good mixture of Catholic and Eastern Orthodox objects. I was taken with a Byzantine altar that had carved marble curtains over the space where the relics were kept. Apparently pilgrims lowered cloth into the space to touch the relics, thus causing the cloth to become blessed.

Many of the Western reliquaries were shaped like the body parts they held. One arm-shaped reliquary was so small that the museum suggested it must have held a bone from a child saint. When I looked at the back of the hand, though, I saw that the knuckles and veins were rendered in detail and looked like they belonged to an adult. I also liked the gilt busts from 12th-century France and Holland, with their saints' beards and tonsures beautifully etched.

As befitted an exhibition held in Britain, there was a room devoted to Sts Cuthbert and Thomas Becket. Items from Cuthbert's shrine included a long curved "griffin claw" -- actually the horn of an ibex. Becket was an excellent example of instant saint-making. As he lay dying from his sword wound; monks collected his blood to be sold to pilgrims. Four hundred years later, Mary Queen of Scots' executioners, hoping to avoid a repeat performance, had her blood-soaked clothes burnt.

Recycling was an important feature both of the age of relics and of the age of iconoclasm that followed. A Scandinavian walrus tusk that was originally a chair leg was hollowed out to hold relics; so was a Muslim-designed bottle with an Arabic inscription. And after the Reformation, reliquaries were converted into household objects like salt cellars.

The British Museum has done an excellent job with this exhibition, avoiding the flashy technology and strained attempts at "relevance" that have marred some of their other recent shows. An unobtrusive soundtrack of Gregorian chant is as interactive as it gets.

Australia at the British Museum

2011-07-02T17:27:00.006+01:00

As part of its Australian season, the British Museum hosted a concert this afternoon by the internationally known didgeridoo* player William Barton. This took place in an Australian Garden temporarily planted in front of the museum -- a beautiful setting, but one that unfortunately triggered Mr Barton's hay fever. Still, he gave a great performance, sneezes and all.

Mr Barton bought three instruments with him. One was a pristine didgeridoo; one was an old one held together with duct tape; and one was two lengths of PVC pipe fitted together.

He explained that the advantage of the last one -- besides the fact that you could buy it in any hardware store -- was that you could change pitch by moving the pipes, whereas wooden didgeridoos are built for one pitch only. As a traditionalist, though, he prefers the wood instruments.

One thing that surprised me was the didgeridoo's versatility. I don't just mean the number of sounds it can make at once, though that's pretty impressive. Mr Barton also showed it can be used for a wide variety of musical styles. He didn't announce every song he played, but some seemed to be traditional pieces. Another was a story in sound about a hitchhiker trying to get a lift on a busy highway. There was a classical piece of Mr Barton's own composition, "Dust Storm," which he played to a recorded backing track. He even used the instrument for a rap. Whatever he was playing, he drummed his fingers on the didgeridoo or gestured in the air with his free hand, as if conducting himself.

The Museum also has two free exhibitions to tie in with the season. One is a collection of baskets woven by women from various Aboriginal groups, and the other is an exhibition of Australian prints from the past 70 years. There was a strong Aboriginal presence in the prints exhibition, too, and a sign warned any indigenous Australian visitors that the gallery contained the names and works of Aboriginal artists who had recently died (a taboo among some groups). Three works by indigenous artists particularly caught my eye: Garry Namponan's totemic map of his people's territory, showing a dog, brolga, eagle and dugong; Judy Watson's salt water country, with swirls mimicking the landscape of northwest Queensland; and Janice Murray's delightful picture of a Jabiru Stork.

Among the white Australian artists, I particularly liked John Brack -- the intense expressions on the faces of his Jockeys Returning, and his portraits of young dancers in Junior Latin American and Arabesque. Sidney Nolan's pictures of Ned Kelly didn't do much for me, but I loved his stark Ram Suspended in Tree. I was puzzled by the museum's claim, under a picture of Nebuchadnezzar by Arthur Boyd, that "Nebuchadnezzar's experiences during his period of insanity had no iconographical precedent in Western art." Really?

* Actually, in its publicity material the Museum spelled the instrument "didjeridu"; I don't know if that's the politically correct spelling now or what.

FAQ for the next 16 months

2011-06-30T22:12:00.002+01:00

Yes, I can still vote in American elections.
No, I won't tell you who I'm voting for.
No, I don't know who will win.
No, I'm not particularly interested in your op ...
... Oh. How original and insightful.
Thanks to the wizardry of our computer scientists, the U.S. Constitution is online, and is probably the best place to go with any questions about our government or electoral system.
Thank you for letting me know you consider the American public to be shallow and ill-informed. Have you had a look at the UK's best-selling newspapers lately?
Our elections get more news coverage than, say, Hungary's because our government wields more global influence. It's really not very shocking when you think about it.
No, I don't know why our restaurant portions are so big. What does that have to do with anything?
No, this isn't all being done for your entertainment.

A Russian Stamp

2011-06-26T17:13:00.001+01:00

David Fyodorovich

Well! Here we all are -- two and a half roubles’ worth!
The new lot don’t mind who took the old picture, or why.
There’s Dmitri Dmitrievich, who was back in favour for the moment --
Or what was left of him was. They’ve got him off to the side too,
Like a see-through girl in a pop video. There’s Sviatoslav Teofilovich,
Whom they didn’t put out of favour, because he wouldn’t have noticed.
And there’s me. Of course I always had to be cautious,
But Stalingrad bought me some grace. And a violin,
When a solo’s not called for, can glide beautifully along with the others.
Still, I must have annoyed whoever designed this thing. Dreadful!

Dmitri Dmitrievich

Yes, yes, I agree, it’s all marvellous.
-- Oh! My hearing’s not what it was. Yes, you’re quite right, it’s dreadful.
Are we meant to be getting out of a lift?
Or did they hope to keep us trapped in a doorway forever?
No wonder you’re smiling, David Fyodorovich:
You’re the only one who could fit your instrument in there.
Sviatoslav Teofilovich couldn’t bring a piano, that’s for sure.
And me -- well! I’ve brought my mind and my hand,
But my hand shakes these days and droops in front of me,
And I’ve long since learnt to keep my mind hidden.
Look how they’ve crammed us together, after so long spent teaching us to hate!
Sviatoslav Teofilovich almost crushes me. Good Soviet friendship.

Sviatoslav Teofilovich

We were never really friends, Dmitri Dmitrievich,
Except, perhaps, when David Fyodorovich and I played your Sonata.
You made me weak otherwise, from awe at your genius
And from things I can’t speak of. And I never understood
What you expected: I played the Preludes I liked,
Why should I play all 24? I should have thought you, of all people,
Had had enough of quotas. What made it so hard for you,
And so easy for me, not to play along,
To turn the joke on them: “A lift, you say?
“Getting off at the next floor? -- Well, I’m not!”

Landscapes from Norway and Switzerland

2011-06-25T20:26:00.008+01:00

A while back, I blogged about a new acquisition at the National Gallery, a seascape by the hitherto obscure Norwegian artist Peder Balke. That tiny painting left me wanting to see more of Balke's work, and I finally had my chance today, when I visited "Forest, Rocks, Torrents," the Gallery's free exhibition of 19th-century Swiss and Norwegian landscapes from the Lunde Collection.

There's a little seascape by Balke in this exhibition too, as well as a larger one showing the Trolltinden mountains in the background. Balke also provides the only cityscape in the exhibition -- a lovely Moonlit View of Stockholm, with the harbour and surrounding streets looking quite peaceful -- and, perhaps more surprisingly, the only painting with snow (Landscape from Finnmark).

The other landscapes in the exhibition seemed to have been painted in better weather, but that's not to say they were particularly cheery. Many were stony, bleak and, above all, lonely -- even when people and houses appeared, the effect seemed to be to highlight their isolation in the mountains. There were a few bright exceptions, however, such as the Swiss painter Alexandre Calame's pictures of Lake Lucerne. In Souvenir of Lake Lucerne, a small boy tugs at his mother's sleeve as they walk in the shade of lush trees on a sunny day, while in Lake Lucerne, Uri-Rodstock a single bird swoops over the scene, adding just the right spark. Then there was Johann Gottfried Steffan, known as "the [Swiss-]German Calame," whose Lake Brienz, 12 September 1865 was filled with brilliant colour.

Besides Balke, there were a couple of other excellent Norwegian painters in the exhibition: Thomas Fearnley (who got his name from his British grandfather) and Johan Christian Dahl. Including them may have been cheating slightly, though, as both seemed to have painted their most interesting landscapes in Italy!

There was one thoroughly Norwegian painting that caught my eye, however: Knud Baade's Scene from the Era of Norwegian Sagas. I've never liked Nordic mythology, and attempts by cultures to rediscover their heritage from some supposed golden age always make me uneasy. The warrior holding a spear on the sea cliffs didn't do much for me. But the sky was magnificent, with the moon shining through storm clouds. That's heritage enough for Norway, surely?

On sunshine and water glasses

2011-06-23T12:02:00.002+01:00

Since childhood I've been frustrated by the classic question meant to distinguish optimists from pessimists: "Is the glass half empty or half full?" It seemed impossible to answer in isolation. The best response I could come up with was, "It depends on whether you just poured water into it, or just drank some."

I thought of this recently when discussing the difference between American and British weather forecasts. In America, if a day will contain both sunshine and cloud, the forecast is "partly cloudy." In the UK, however, the forecast for such a day is "sunny intervals." By the old glass-of-water test, this would seem to show that the British are more optimistic than the Americans -- something that goes against both stereotype and my own experience.

But what if the real explanation is that Americans consider sunny weather to be the norm, and mention the clouds because they find them to be the most unusual feature of the day -- whereas the British expect their days to be gloomy, and therefore find spells of sunshine worth commenting upon? Who are the optimists then?

Dilemma

2011-06-06T20:54:00.003+01:00

When I was made redundant last winter, I wasn't that unhappy. I'd been ready to move on for a while. I got a good redundancy payment, and had quite a bit saved up in addition to that. I knew that with the economy as it was, it might take a while to find something new, but I didn't really mind. Money wouldn't be an issue for a year or so, and this would give me some time to write, take photographs, explore London, think about what direction I wanted my life to take. Most important was the writing, a passion I'd rediscovered after taking some part-time courses.

Things didn't quite happen that way. To my surprise, I got a new job almost immediately after my "garden leave" ended -- on my first interview, too.

There were a lot of things I liked, and still like, about the new job. It's located in an interesting part of London, and the atmosphere is generally more relaxed than it was at my previous employer.

And yet ....

Now that the novelty has worn off a bit, I can't escape the fact that this is yet another admin job, and that this isn't what I feel I was born to do. All the things that have always annoyed me about office work still annoy me here. It still feels like my real talents are being wasted. And I still have to squeeze what writing I can into evenings and weekends.

Most of my redundancy money is still there in the bank, and my savings are still there too.

A few options occur to me:

Stick with my current job and suck it up.
Leave my job to spend a while (say, six months to a year) writing while living off my savings.
Look around for a part-time job that would give me more time to write, and leave my current job when I find one (relying on my redundancy payout to make up the shortfall in salary).
Go ahead and leave my job to write, while also looking for a part-time job.

Needless to say, I'm not relying on the Internet to tell me what to do, but I would be glad to hear any insights or real-life experiences.

Health food shop cats

2011-06-03T22:29:00.002+01:00

I spent too much of my day off today running around London in search of gooseberries. I never did find them, and had to make do with Cape gooseberries -- not true gooseberries at all, but they're going in a fool anyway.

It would have been a frustrating afternoon, except that I also stopped into a handy health food shop for some tofu and found these two in residence. I'm not sure it entirely complies with health codes for them to be on the cafe counter like that, but it brightened up my day.

Frog Dance

2011-05-30T07:15:00.004+01:00

Frog by Hoji Matsumoto (d. 1800)

Good old Aristophanes went and bit the dust.
His date of death has not survived, but now there’s only us.
Aphrodite’s temple is smashed and full of reeds,
Just the place for leaping in a warm spring breeze.

Brekekekex, koax, koax!
Brekekekex, koax, koax!

A prince’s lifestyle these days isn’t what it used to be,
Just hanging round till mummy dies and meeting bores for tea.
Take our word for it, girlies: If a frog hops on your bed,
Let him kiss you, and turn into a frog instead.

Brekekekex, koax, koax!
Brekekekex, koax, koax!

Hoji Matsumoto, late of Osaka town,
Painted an ao-gaeru with an enigmatic frown.
They wondered in Japan back then, and now in London too --
But we know what our friend meant, and we won’t tell you.

Brekekekex, koax, koax!
Brekekekex, koax, koax!

You’ve taken quite an interest since our troubles all began:
“Help save our poor amphibians! Their only hope is man.”
It’s not that we’re not grateful, but we don’t expect the worst:
We won’t die out completely, because you’ll go first.

Brekekekex, koax, koax!
Brekekekex, koax, koax!

Li Xiangting and the Shih Tzu

2011-05-28T09:27:00.003+01:00

I don't know whether the British Museum has only recently started having concerts, or whether I just never paid attention before, but I was back there last night to hear a performance on the guqin, or Chinese zither, by the world-renowned player Li Xiangting. The guqin, like the rubab, was an instrument I'd heard played but never seen. Unfortunately, photography wasn't permitted during the concert. I wish I could show you the varied techniques that a guqin player uses, sometimes seeming to strike the strings like piano keys, sometimes strumming and sliding.

Before he began playing, Mr Li gave a brief talk (in Chinese, with the presenter translating) about the guqin's traditional relationship with painting and calligraphy. Later on we got to see this relationship in action. The artist Guo Le (who turned out to have been sitting next to me in the audience) joined Mr Li on stage. The presenter announced that Mr Guo would create a painting based on a theme chosen by the audience, while Mr Li improvised a tune on the guqin and xiao (bamboo flute). The subject we eventually chose was a Shih Tzu dog. This caused some difficulty at first, as neither musician, painter nor presenter had heard of the breed before. Fortunately, the production assistant found a picture online and projected it onto the overhead screen. Mr Guo produced a very characterful picture of the dog, while Mr Li came up with suitably bouncy accompanying music.

Most of the rest of the programme consisted of traditional music. I particularly liked Yi Guren ("Remembering an Old Friend"), a wistful composition from the early 19th century, and Jiu Kuang ("Wine Drunkenness"), a convincingly tipsy-sounding piece from the 15th century. There was also a contemporary composition, Jieshi ("Secluded Orchid in Jieshi Mode"), which the composer Raymond Yiu had based on the oldest surviving guqin tablature, from the sixth century. For this performance Mr Li was joined by members of the English Chamber Orchestra, who made modernist noises behind him while he played a conventional-sounding melody.

The only distraction from the music was a couple of mice who ran back and forth in front of the stage. The Gayer-Anderson Cat would not be pleased!

Tashi delek, Jig 'n' Jet

2011-05-20T19:51:00.004+01:00

As some of you already know, I was not a fan of the great Wills 'n' Kate pageant. You might assume this is because I'm a cynic who wants to stop other people from having a little fairytale magic in their lives. Not at all. In fact, when I hear professional atheists sneering that religion is a "fairy tale," the first thing that occurs to me is that I can't trust anyone who hates fairy tales that much. It's just that when you live every day with the peccadilloes and extravagances of Britain's royal family, the viciousness and hypocrisy of its press, and the crass opportunism of its retailers, it's hard to suspend disbelief long enough to pretend that anything resembling a fairy tale is going on.

Now, however, we may have something worthy of the label. Tell me: is the quotation below from Hans Christian Andersen? Charles Perrault? Or from a parliamentary address given earlier today?

As King, it is now time for me to marry. After much thought I have decided that the wedding shall be later this year.

Now, many will have their own idea of what a queen should be like – that she should be uniquely beautiful, intelligent and graceful. I think with experience and time, one can grow into a dynamic person in any walk of life with the right effort. For the queen, what is most important is that at all times, as an individual she must be a good human being, and as queen, she must be unwavering in her commitment to serve the People and Country.

As my queen, I have found such a person and her name is Jetsun Pema. While she is young, she is warm and kind in heart and character. These qualities together with the wisdom that will come with age and experience will make her a great servant to the nation.

In fact, those are the words of Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, the 31-year-old Druk Gyalpo ("dragon king") of the tiny Himalayan country of Bhutan, announcing his engagement to a 20-year-old student.

Jigme Khesar is an interesting king. So was his father, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who in 2008 shocked his people by declaring an end to absolute monarchy, sending out a draft constitution for citizens' approval and ordering the country's first-ever parliamentary elections. Finally he abdicated in favour of his son, who has continued leading the country down a democratic path.

That's not to say the place is now a liberal paradise. There is widespread discrimination against the ethnic Nepalese minority, and all citizens are required by law to wear traditional dress (though apparently the law is only sporadically enforced). But it's hard to imagine many other absolute rulers voluntarily ceding power in this way. By all accounts, the king is extremely popular with his subjects. And really, doesn't this put a lump in your throat?:

This union does not mean that I am starting my own family. From the very day I received the Dhar Ngay-Nga [brightly-coloured scarves representing the five elements of water, earth, fire, wind and space] from the sacred Machhen [Buddhist religious leader, I think], the people of the 20 Dzongkhags [administrative districts] became my family. Such is the duty and privilege of all Kings of Bhutan. It is through this union, that I shall have a Queen who will support, and work with me, as I serve the People and Country.

Ms Pema (who coincidentally has the same name as the Dalai Lama's sister) actually has a connection to Britain, since she received part of her education at Regent's College in London. According to the palace, she enjoys painting and basketball.

The king asked the government not to make plans for a lavish wedding, saying he wanted one "in accordance with age-old tradition, to seek the blessings of our Guardian Deities." The traditional Bhutanese marriage ceremony, Wikipedia tells us, consists of the couple exchanging white scarves and drinking from the same cup. Afterwards, wedding guests may well feast on the national dish of ema datshi, a mixture of chillies and yak's cheese, served with the local red rice (which naturally grows that colour).

And the Bhutanese need not worry too much about post-royal-wedding letdown. Both polygamy and polyandry are legal in Bhutan -- the present king's father has four wives, all of them sisters -- so there's always the prospect of another on the horizon.

The wedding is planned for October. You can follow developments on Bridge to Bhutan, Bhutan Observer, Bhutan Journals and the king's official Facebook page (of course!).

Rubab and tabla

2011-05-14T20:28:00.007+01:00

Today I went to the British Museum to hear a concert of traditional Afghan music by Homayun Sakhi and Yusuf Mahmoud. Mr Sakhi plays the rubab -- a double-chambered lute -- while Mr Mahmoud plays the better-known tabla.

Someone from the Aga Khan Music Initiative, which sponsored the concert, read out an introduction explaining the music we were about to hear. But to be honest, it was delivered in a monotone and I didn't pay much attention. So I'll just give you my impressions.

Each piece seemed to start with Mr Sakhi tuning his rubab. Eventually he would drift into playing a melody. Mr Mahmoud would listen for a few minutes, then give his drums a dusting of Johnson's Baby Powder and join in. The two of them would match and exchange rhythms, seeming to improvise on a central theme.

The result was magical. The rubab turned out to be a very versatile instrument, producing drones and percussive plucks at the same time. I've always loved the sound of the tabla, but had never seen it played. It was good to observe just how the smaller drum created the tuneful beats, while the larger drum pulsed like a heart under the music.

The pieces the duo played didn't vary as much internally as Western compositions can. Each piece maintained the same mood throughout, and was based on one or two melodic phrases -- only the tempo and the octave changed. It's a cliche to call such music "hypnotic," but it really does have the power to take you in and sweep you along.

Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the performance, though, was seeing how the two players interacted with each other. At the beginning of one piece, Mr Mahmoud listened to the rubab's melody for much longer than usual, shaking his head as if to say, "No, I can't do anything with this," until Mr Sakhi hit on something that inspired him. As they played, the two looked at each other constantly, picking up cues from one another and sometimes grinning from sheer delight.

(The camera didn't shake during that last picture; their hands really were moving that fast.)

Background Story 7 by Xu Bing

2011-05-13T22:48:00.004+01:00

(Technical note: If you're one of the kind people who left a comment on my previous post, please know that I didn't delete it. It was Blogger's fault; you can read their explanation here. The post itself disappeared for a while and then returned, so I'm hoping the comments may eventually be restored too.)

Once again, the British Museum has a small but fascinating exhibition in Room 3. This time it's a lightbox installation by the contemporary Chinese artist Xu Bing. From the front, the work looks like a traditional landscape painting:

Go behind the box, though, and the graceful "brushstrokes" turn out to be the shadows of dead leaves and rubbish.

So far Mr Xu, unlike his fellow artist Ai Weiwei, has escaped persecution by the Chinese government, but the political overtones of this work are not hard to see. It must take a lot of courage to make art in China these days. It's disgraceful that Western artists, with their soft lives, have largely kept silent about the dangers their Chinese counterparts face.

The Ship's Cat

2011-05-12T06:36:00.000+01:00

I can’t talk long. My duty’s never done:
Masts to be marked, untested rays of sun,
Spills to be sniffed at, lapped up or rejected,
Men to be watched, tribute to be collected --
The lump of pork, the scratch between the ears.
I may go up, if no one interferes,
To the place where I can see my whole domain.
They call it crow’s nest, liars. Still, I’ve lain
Nowhere with greater pleasure. It awakes
The kitten in me when the ocean shakes.
Its crests cry for the stalk, the pounce and more;
And fish with wings, the double traitors, soar.

Once I soared too, entranced. I must admit
Some fear at first; but after I had hit
The surface and endured the ghastly soaking,
My feline sense returned and I stopped choking.
There, all around me, every kind of fish,
And some for which I’d never known to wish,
Were mine for taking. Better still than that,
Who came to show me round but the Great Cat,
Bastet herself? But just as we were swimming
To the cove where roe and cream are ever brimming,
They pulled me up and laid me on the deck,
And then they put this bell around my neck.

Now the fools won’t give me peace. From down below
They hear me and come scrambling: “Kitty, no.”
But just you wait. I’ll show them who’s in charge.
Just let them want a wind to move this barge.
They’ll go without until they let me climb.
Have you got food or what? I’m out of time.

(Inspired by Henry Fielding's journal)

Critter ID needed

2011-05-10T19:26:00.002+01:00

Woodlouse of some kind, possibly, a photo by Laura A. Brown on Flickr.

I photographed this creepy-crawly in the park today, thinking I'd check it out in my new insect guide when I got home. Except that nothing matches it, and on closer inspection I don't think it's an insect at all. It looks a bit like a woodlouse to me, but Google hasn't turned up any familiar-looking photos. (Is there a guide to the UK's terrestrial crustaceans out there?) Does anyone know what it could be?

Koinobori

2011-05-05T05:08:00.004+01:00

Today is Children's Day in Japan, so I thought I'd share a picture of some koinobori ("carp streamers"), which are traditionally flown on this day. I photographed them at a kite festival in Harrow last month.

There's a traditional children's song about the koinobori, which you can hear in this wobbly but tuneful YouTube video:

According to Wikipedia, the lyrics are:

Higher than the roof-tops are the koinobori
The large Carp is the father
The smaller Carp are the children
They seem to be having fun swimming.

This year, of course, the occasion is bittersweet as we remember the children affected by the recent disasters in Japan.

Blackbirds feeding at man's feet

2011-05-03T18:19:00.002+01:00

Blackbirds feeding at man's feet, a photo by Laura A. Brown on Flickr.

This scene, I think, sums up everything I like about the park across from my workplace.

(That's a fledgling blackbird and its father, by the way.)

Actually, I am saying he deserved it

2011-05-02T05:34:00.002+01:00

In the days after 11 September 2001, I got used to hearing one particular phrase from the right-thinking people who surrounded me in London. I heard it from my parish's "justice 'n' peace" type priest, from a British civil servant I was working with (who, by the way, was supposed to be politically neutral on the job) and from every other friend, neighbour and journalist who embraced the anti-Americanism of the trendy British left. It went like this:

"I'm not saying anyone deserved this, but --"

(Yes, that does sound an awful lot like "I'm not a racist, but." And it has pretty much the same meaning.)

Well, I doubt any of those people are reading this blog, but just in case they are, allow me to edify them: this is what someone who "deserves it" looks like.

A couple more thoughts while I'm here:

It's possible that the government might feel the need to release photographs of bin Laden's body, to prove to his followers that he's really dead. I suppose I understand that, but I hope this time the British papers manage to restrain themselves from putting the photos all over their front pages, the way they did with Saddam Hussein's sons. Maybe Kate Middleton can lose a few more pounds and distract them.
Is it silly to say that I'm pleased for Christopher Hitchens that he lived to see this day?

Citrus iced green tea

2011-04-26T05:06:00.002+01:00

Last year I won a competition sponsored by a tea company. The prize was a teapot and an enormous stash of tea for my workplace. Because the company was promoting its green tea range at the time, most of the teabags were green teas with various flavourings. These didn't prove as popular as the black tea (in fact, once the "normal tea" ran out, my colleagues bought some PG Tips to brew in the pot), so when I left the place, I took the unwanted boxes of tea with me.

However, I soon realised I had a problem. Everyone has heard about the health-giving qualities of green tea -- everyone, that is, except my digestive system. If I drank a hot cup of green tea on an empty stomach, I couldn't feel at all confident that it would stay down. Eating beforehand helped, but I still got queasy sometimes.

Eventually I somehow discovered that while hot tea caused this reaction, iced tea did not. I have no idea why this should be. Then a couple of weeks ago, I had a delicious green-tea based cocktail at a Japanese restaurant. I decided to try and recreate it at home, but without the alcohol. (I could easily have drunk the stuff every day, but this wouldn't have been wise if I'd left the booze in -- it tasted a lot less alcoholic than it actually was.) What I came up with seemed close enough, and has been very refreshing during the hot weather we've been having. Here's the recipe:

700 ml water
Three green tea bags
100 ml freshly squeezed orange juice
50 ml agave nectar (my preference) or mild-flavoured honey -- OR 60g sugar
Glass jug with a stopper (this is probably too acidic to store in plastic)

Boil the water and steep the tea bags for three minutes (I use a glass measuring jug for this). Add the orange juice and sweetener and stir well. If you're using sugar, make sure it all dissolves. Pour into the glass jug, let cool to room temperature and then refrigerate till cold.

Variation: Replace the orange juice with lemon juice and double the amount of sweetener.
For special occasions: Mix three parts of the well-chilled drink with one part well-chilled sake.

This time it's personal

2011-04-25T05:09:00.003+01:00

The RSPB is asking British residents to e-mail Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, about the Government's "Red Tape Challenge." Currently, all of the UK's environmental laws and regulations are at risk of being scrapped in order to cut costs. The threat may or may not be as great as the RSPB implies, but it is still worrying that the Government thinks of environmental regulation as being potentially expendable -- particularly since they have adopted the unbelievably idiotic strategy of basing their cuts on comments left by the public on their website. I don't want people like this deciding whether I get to see blackbirds on my lunch hour, thank you very much.

As usual in these campaigns, the RSPB provide a template e-mail that you can send, but urge you to "personalise" it to make it more effective. Usually I struggle with this and send their e-mail with just a few tweaks.

Not this time, though. Here's what I wrote:

Dear Dr Cable

I am writing to you about the threat to environmental legislation posed by the Red Tape Challenge. I am extremely concerned by the thought that in a short-sighted rush to cut costs, Britain's beautiful and unique natural heritage may lose its protection.

I am an immigrant from the United States who came to Britain in 2000 and took UK citizenship in 2009. Although many things contributed to my coming to feel that Britain was my home, perhaps the most important was the love I developed for Britain's landscape and wild places, and its wonderful native species of birds, flowers and mammals.

But this natural wealth, as you know, is under constant threat from human activity. It requires robust government measures to keep it safe.

Safeguarding our environment is no mere luxury. Britain's wildlife has been a vital part of the country's identity since long before the current, temporary crisis. It will continue to provide beauty and delight long after the crisis is over -- if we let it. I therefore ask you to publicly commit to safeguarding our environmental protection measures.

I would like to close with George Orwell's words from his essay "Some Thoughts on the Common Toad":

Certainly we ought to be discontented, we ought not simply to find out ways of making the best of a bad job, and yet if we kill all pleasure in the actual process of life, what sort of future are we preparing for ourselves? If a man cannot enjoy the return of spring, why should he be happy in a labour-saving Utopia? ... I have always suspected that if our economic and political problems are ever really solved, life will become simpler instead of more complex, and that the sort of pleasure one gets from finding the first primrose will loom larger than the sort of pleasure one gets from eating an ice to the tune of a Wurlitzer. I think that by retaining one's childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and--to return to my first instance--toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable.

Thank you for your time.

Yours sincerely
Laura Brown

Easter delight and dread

2011-04-24T05:11:00.003+01:00

One of my favourite superstitions surrounding the Christian holidays (along with the belief that animals talk at midnight on Christmas Eve) is the idea that the sun dances when it rises on Easter morning. While doing some research into this belief, I came across a quotation from the poet Nicholas Breton (1545–1626) who described Easter as "the sun's dancing day, and the earth's holy day."

I went looking for the quotation in context, and found that it actually comes from a short prose piece and not a poem. On reading the whole thing, I had decidedly mixed feelings. There are some beautiful phrases, to be sure, but they're buried among others that disturb a modern reader: images of cruelty and bigotry. This didn't seem to bother Breton, who considered the entire thing to be a picture of "delightfulness." Perhaps for that very reason, I thought it was worth reproducing the whole thing here.

It is now Easter, and Jacke of Lent is turned out of doores: the Fishermen now hang up their nets to dry, while the Calfe and the Lambe walke toward the Kitchin and the Pastry: the velvet heads of the Forrests fall at the loose of the Crosse-bow: the Sammon Trowt playes with the Fly, and the March Rabbit runnes dead into the dish: the Indian Commodities pay the Merchants adventure: and Barbary Sugar puts Honey out of countenance: the holy feast is kept for the faithfull, and a knowne Jew hath no place among Christians: the Earth now beginnes to paint her upper garment, and the trees put out their young buds, the little Kids chew their Cuds, and the Swallow feeds on the Flyes in the Ayre: the Storke clenseth the Brookes of the Frogges, and the Sparhawke prepares her wing for the Partridge: the little Fawne is stolne from the Doe, and the male Deere beginne to be hearde: the spirit of Youth is inclined to mirth, and the conscionable Scholler wil not breake a holy-day: the Minstrell cals the Maid from her dinner, and the Lovers eyes do troule like Tennis balls. There is mirth and joy, when there is health and liberty: and he that hath money, will be no meane man in his mansion: the Ayre is wholesome, and the Skye comfortable, the Flowers odiferous, and the Fruits pleasant: I conclude, it is a day of much delightfulnesse: the Sunnes dancing day, and the Earths Holy-day.

I wish you all a happy and meaningful day.

This has gone too far now

2011-04-23T17:51:00.002+01:00

My free anti-virus program popped up this advert today:

(Click picture for large version)

The one-footed goose

2011-04-22T22:37:00.004+01:00

For as long as I've been going to Kew Gardens, I've been seeing this Egyptian Goose with just one foot. In fact, I usually make a point of looking out for it. It seems to do OK, despite walking with a noticeable limp; it eats just fine, and its mate is always nearby.

As I was walking around the gardens today, I saw something that filled my heart with joy.

In this video (not great quality, unfortunately) you can see how the goose gets around with one foot -- not to mention just how cute its goslings are.

Life and death

2011-04-21T17:51:00.002+01:00

At work yesterday we were invited to hear a lecture by a surgeon, David Nott, who has worked for several decades with the International Committee of the Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières and the British military. His talk on the challenges of performing surgery in war zones was accompanied, to the audience's discomfort, by graphic colour slides. The places where he has worked include Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza, Yemen and Darfur, and he expects to go to Libya soon. He mentioned casually that he had once operated on Osama bin Laden for kidney stones: "If the ICRC weren't so strictly apolitical, I could have changed the course of history."

Some of Mr Nott's grimmest stories came from Gaza and Yemen -- not only because of the horror people have inflicted on each other there, but because the surgeons had so little equipment and medicine to work with. Haemoglobin was measured by holding a blood sample up to the window and comparing its colour with a chart. The surgeons were forced to practice "advanced triage," meaning that they simply did not treat people with certain types of injuries (like severe head wounds), because they knew they didn't have the resources to save them. In Yemen, in addition to treating war casualties, the doctors had to perform numerous Caesarian sections on women carrying children with hydrocephalus or spina bifida; Mr Nott didn't know why such defects were so common in the area. To make matters worse, he told us that MSF were eventually forced out of Yemen, and the hospital where he'd worked was bombed shortly afterward. Many of the patients and native staff we'd seen in his photos, he said matter-of-factly, had died in that attack.*

But worse even than that was Darfur. Here, too, the doctors performed many Caesarians, this time on women and girls -- some very young -- who had been raped by the janjaweed. The operation itself could be performed fairly easily, but virtually every woman there was suffering from malaria, which causes severe anaemia. With no transfusions or clotting agents available, the mothers died from blood loss. One photo from Darfur showed a French surgeon scribbling on a notepad. "This is a living hell," he had written. "We are in a living hell."

In Afghanistan, of course, the military hospitals are far better equipped. In fact, 98% of wounded soldiers who make it to the operating table survive. This is despite sickening injuries -- we were shown pictures that my brain could barely take in. One man had had practically everything below his waist blown off by an IED: legs, genitals, intestines, everything. He lived. But Mr Nott wondered out loud whether saving the life of a horribly mutilated person was always the best choice. "We all die one day," he said. "Maybe it's better to die with some dignity."

* Despite all this, pretty much the only pleasant images I saw during the lecture were -- to my surprise -- the establishing shots of Yemen's scenery. With all the terrible news I'd heard from Sana'a, I certainly didn't expect it to look like this.

A Room and a Half

2011-04-15T21:06:00.004+01:00

Despite my previously documented affection for Joseph Brodsky, I somehow didn't hear of Andrey Khrzhanovskiy's 2008 film A Room and a Half when it was released. Last night I went to a screening at the Jewish Museum and found out what I'd been missing.

The film takes its title from an essay by Brodsky -- the closing piece of his collection Less Than One -- which moved me to tears when I first read it. In this essay, written after his parents' deaths, Brodsky describes growing up with them in the eponymous room and a half -- the family's share of a communal apartment in Leningrad. He goes on to imagine his parents' life in those rooms without him, after his forced exile from the Soviet Union. The Communist Party repeatedly denied their requests to go abroad to visit him; he never saw them again.

Khrzhanovskiy's film is based largely on this essay and on the title piece of Less Than One (another account of Brodsky's youth), but culminates in a surreal vision of a return trip to Russia that the poet never made in real life. Even without this ending, there would have been no danger of the film being mistaken for a documentary. It's a collage of live action, animation and archival footage that slips constantly back and forth between fantasy and reality. (All of the actors are excellent, but Grigoriy Dityatkovskiy was a particularly good choice to play the adult Brodsky; I sometimes had trouble telling whether I was looking at the real poet or the actor.)

The film is ultimately as heartbreaking as Brodsky's essay, but there's plenty of humour here too. A good deal of it is provided by cats in various guises. The family's pet cat (I don't know if they had one in real life) lightens several scenes with typical feline mischief; later on, cartoon cats stand in for Brodsky and his fellow poets, lounging about scribbling lines and gobbling down fish.

I was impressed by the film's soundtrack. There were pieces by Shostakovich (who appears briefly in a pub, where Brodsky's father asks him for the football score), popular Russian and American songs of the time, and recordings of Brodsky reading his poetry in typical singsong style. None seemed superfluous, and all fit the moment perfectly. Most striking of all, though, was the use of birdsong, and particularly the chattering of various types of crows.

At various points throughout the film, a pair of crows represent Brodsky's parents. There are the real life crows who live in Brodsky's garden in America (Brodsky tells us that one appeared after his mother's death, the other after his father's) and seem to follow him throughout his imagined journey to Russia. And when Brodsky's parents are old and alone in their room and a half, a pair of animated crows appear in several sequences. They are naturalistically drawn, yet have human expressions. They huddle together in one scarf, watch ice skating on a 1950s television, try to skate on a frozen pond themselves, fall down and help each other up. It's some of the most emotionally affecting animation I've ever seen. You can see a snippet of it in the film's trailer:

The Jewish Museum's screening was introduced by Elaine Feinstein, who spoke briefly about her friendship with Brodsky. I knew Feinstein mainly for her translations of Marina Tsvetaeva's poetry, which turned the strict rhyme and metre of the Russian originals into English free verse. I never liked this approach, and it seems Brodsky didn't either, because he criticised Feinstein for it when they first met. (Feinstein defended herself by saying that the conventions of English poetry were different from the conventions of Russian poetry, and that where Tsvetaeva used rhyme and rhythm, an Anglophone poet would have used free verse; thus, a free-verse translation was more accessible to English-speaking readers. I don't think I agree with that, but I understand better now where she's coming from.) Fortunately they got past that rocky start. Feinstein came across as a warm, generous and unpretentious person, and I was left wanting to read some of her own poetry.

By the way, a question for fans of Russian film: When the credits came on, I noticed that certain names were enclosed in boxes. Is this normal? What does it mean?

Slow-worm

2011-04-10T15:09:00.002+01:00

Slow-worm, a photo by Laura A. Brown on Flickr.

On a stroll through Harrow today, I saw this creature on a driveway. It looked like a cross between a small snake and a large worm. I guessed that it was a slow-worm (Anguis fragilis), a sort of legless lizard, and it turns out I was right.

I'd never seen a slow-worm in life, and certainly didn't expect to find one on a suburban driveway. I thought of moving it to a garden, but wasn't sure if it was safe to pick it up. From the Wikipedia article, it seems likely that it would have reacted by shedding its tail.

Wikipedia taught me some other interesting things about these creatures. They help gardeners by eating insects and slugs; it's illegal under British law to harm or kill them; and they can live more than 30 years, if cats and cars allow it.

Uyghurs and dogs (and books)

2011-04-09T05:45:00.002+01:00

Yesterday's post about guide dogs and Muslims reminded me of Rebiya Kadeer's memoir, Dragon Fighter, which I've been reading intermittently. Early on in the book, Kadeer mentions her family's beloved pet dogs, particularly her childhood favourite, named Shark. In 1960, Chinese soldiers took the dogs away (part of a general confiscation of Uyghur property). Shark escaped and returned to the family, only to freeze to death a few weeks later. Kadeer's father refused to turn over his body to the Chinese, even though it meant paying a fine.

This certainly seems to show that not all Muslims have objected to keeping dogs. Kadeer has unquestionably done more on behalf of oppressed Muslims than the idiotic clerics who tell cab drivers not to pick up blind passengers. I think I prefer her version of the faith.

Dragon Fighter isn't particularly well-written (perhaps because it was produced "with Alexandra Cavelius" -- I certainly hope Kadeer herself isn't this plodding and boastful), but it tells an interesting story. I must admit, though, that I've put it aside for the moment while I read A House for Mr Biswas, one of three V.S. Naipaul books that I picked up in a charity shop. (I've already read and enjoyed An Area of Darkness). On top of that, I'm also reading David MacDonald's Encyclopedia of Mammals, one snippet at a time -- it's a wonderful book, but much too large to take out of the house.

Muslims and guide dogs

2011-04-08T17:47:00.002+01:00

During some recent "equality and diversity" training, I learned that it is increasingly common for Muslim employees in the UK to object to working with or assisting blind people who use guide dogs -- dogs being traditionally considered unclean in Islam. Although our teacher didn't say it in so many words, this is an excellent example of why a blanket policy of "religious tolerance" can never work: Sometimes there is no way to respect one person's beliefs without interfering with another person's rights. I'm happy to say that British law is firmly on the side of the blind in these cases.

One of my first reactions to hearing about this (besides an odd fantasy about Christopher Hitchens being a member of our training group) was to wonder how blind Muslims cope with such a prohibition. It turns out that just a couple of days ago, The Age ran a story about two blind Muslim women who have defied the taboo and welcomed canine helpers while keeping their faith intact. I hope many more blind Muslims will find new freedom by following their example.

Japan Crisis Appeal Concert

2011-04-07T18:47:00.003+01:00

A friend told me about a benefit concert for Japanese earthquake relief in London next Thursday. Sadly, I won't be able to attend myself, as I've already bought tickets for this (yes, there will be a review here afterwards). But I thought I'd repost the info in case any readers can make it. It sounds like a good programme and a good cause.

Thursday 14th April 2011

Japan Crisis Appeal Concert @ St John's, Smith Square in London starts at 7.30PM

This concert is an event for the victims of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on 11 March. The entire profits from ticket sales will go to the Japan Society Tohoku Earthquake Relief Fund which is distributing aid to help people in the affected areas. The performances are given by Japanese and non-Japanese musicians based in UK who are donating their service for this special evening.

We will also hold a raffle with great prizes for which we will sell tickets before the concert. We have one night stay for two at the four star Hotel Russell in London worh £220, the Artisan Chocolate maker William Curley has kindly donated a chocolate hamper worth £150, a pair of lady's designer shoes by Finsk, a pair of tickets for London Symphony concert on 17th April worth £64, Japanese cooking experience day for two and many more.

With support from Japan Society and Play for Japan

More information and online booking

Tickets £35 / £25 / £10

http://www.sjss.org.uk/pages/Diary/content_page2_1.htm

If you cannot attend this concert, you can still give people in Japan love by donating at the following link.
http://www.japansociety.org.uk/donate/
Please do reference our event name.

Programme to include:

Chopin Waltz Brilliante op.34 no.1
Elgar Salut d'Amour
Noriko Motomatsu A prophet
Piazzolla Libertango
Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue
Plus works by Debussy, Rachmaninov, Puccini and traditional Japanese music.

Performers to include:

Megumi Fujita piano
Satoko Fukuda violin
Ayako Hotta-Lister koto
Megumi Nagae violin
Masachi Nishiyama piano
Phuong Nguyen accordion
Maiko Mori piano
Tomoka Mukai flute
Miho Sanou piano
Richard Stagg shakuhachi
Hiro Takenouchi piano
Koji Terada baritone
Piano 4 Hands (Joseph Tong & Waka Hasegawa)
Yo Zushi vocal & guitar

Waka Hasegawa

Duo Piano 4 Hands http://www.piano4hands.com

Co-Artistic Director of Bristol International Piano Duo Festival　http://www.pianoduofest.org.uk/

"Chinese" "scones"

2011-04-03T18:08:00.002+01:00

One of my standbys when I need a quick side dish is what we Americans call biscuits, which might be most easily explained to the British as savoury scones. I'm too lazy to roll the dough and cut it out, so I make "drop biscuits," which look like little cumulus clouds.

Tonight I wanted something to accompany an East Asian main course, and decided to bake biscuits with a vaguely "Oriental" flavour. I started with The Joy of Cooking's recipe for Drop Biscuits Made with Oil, and came up with something that, while it doesn't resemble an authentic dish from any cuisine, was nonetheless pretty tasty. Here's the recipe:

190g plain (all-purpose) flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon Chinese five-spice powder
Cayenne pepper, to taste
170 ml milk (dairy or non-dairy)
80 ml sesame oil

Whisk the flour, baking powder, salt and spices together in a large bowl. Whisk the milk and oil together in a smaller bowl, then pour them into the dry ingredients and stir to form a soft dough. Using a spoon, drop the dough onto an ungreased baking sheet to make six large biscuits/scones. Bake for 10-15 minutes at 240ºC/460ºF/Gas Mark 9, and serve warm.

Battling Mallards

2011-03-26T20:55:00.002Z

Recently someone on London Wetland Centre's Flickr group posted a picture of some newly hatched Mallard ducklings. That was enough to persuade me to pay a visit this weekend. As it turns out, I didn't see the ducklings, but I did see plenty of male ducks either trying to impress the females or fighting off other males, both on the water and on land:

In the second case, the female they were fighting over looked completely uninterested.

In fact, a few minutes after I took that photo, she hopped into the water and swam away. The males were so absorbed in the fight that they didn't even notice. It all looked very vicious, but no damage seemed to be done beyond the loss of a few breast feathers.

Eventually one admitted defeat and flew away, but by then the female was long gone. Hopefully all this fuss will have resulted in some ducklings by my next visit.

This post contains strong language and bloody violence*

2011-03-24T05:22:00.002Z

I predict that Elizabeth Taylor will have pushed Japan and the Arab world right out of today's news reports,** so there's no hope of any lesser celebrity deaths being featured. But here's a tribute to a British athlete who, I must confess, I knew mainly in a musical context.

(If you can't see the embedded video, click here to watch it on YouTube's site.)

* If you count the reference to the Middle East.

** If you think it's insensitive of me to point this out, please note that at least I didn't make a tasteless joke involving her, Gaddafi and bad plastic surgery.

Snow the rabbit

2011-03-23T23:11:00.003Z

Today in the park across the street from my new job, I saw this albino rabbit being walked on a lead. His person (whose name I didn't get, sadly) told me he has a fiesty character and is the father of many daughters.

He was very interested in hopping about and exploring his surroundings.

This is the only time I'll ever be called "stylish"

2011-03-19T05:34:00.003Z

Recently, the Curator of The Pet Museum very kindly gave me a Stylish Blogger Award. And that means it's time for me to give something back to the blog world, by telling you seven things you may not know about me, and passing on the award to 15 other blogs.

I doubt I can find things that are unknown to everyone, but here are a few that may be a surprise to some:

As a child, I was fascinated by Canada and wanted to move there when I grew up. I thought it was very intriguing that there was a vast country right on our borders that no one ever seemed to talk about. (The fact that I had a crush on Alasdair from You Can't Do That on Television didn't hurt either.) Sadly, other things got in the way, and I have yet to actually visit there; the closest I got was a stopover in Toronto airport a few years ago.

My paternal grandfather participated in some of the nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll. Later in life he developed hypothyroidism, as did all three of his children. (I've been watching for symptoms myself.) I don't know if these two things are connected.

I have a bachelor's degree, but no high school diploma (I dropped out at 16 and got special admission to university).

I've never been on a roller coaster.

It's been 10 years since I lived in a house with a television.

I once asked Carl Bernstein a question that caused him to say, "You know, I never thought of that before." (He'd just given a lecture at WVU in which he'd denied that advertisers had any affect on media coverage. I asked him if he thought a women's magazine would ever run a piece telling its readers they didn't need the cosmetics advertised in its pages.)

I find it extremely difficult to read any work in which animals are hurt or killed. But books with human deaths are OK.

Now for my awards. I decided to exclude blogs that are in my blogroll, as well as blogs that I gave the Superior Scribbler award to a while back. So we have, in no particular order:

JC's blog, with wonderful bird photographs from around the world.
The Charley Project Blog is by Meaghan Good, who, as you might expect, also maintains The Charley Project, a site devoted to cataloguing missing-persons cases. In addition to articles about missing people, her blog has a lot of interesting glimpses into her own life.
Woodpeckers of the World. If you like woodpeckers as much as I do, you don't need any further explanation.
Centuries of Advice and Advertisements is a Tumblr, but I guess that still counts. You're bound to find something amusing or jaw-dropping here.
The Flaxen Wave loves Joseph Brodsky, and that's good enough for me.
Sviatoslav Richter: Recordings and Videos is included on similar grounds. Despite the title, it also publishes lots of old reviews and reminiscences, in multiple languages.
Bradshaw of the Future has a really interesting concept. It takes two seemingly unrelated words and shows the etymological connection between them. Highly recommended for language buffs.
Szabolcs Kókay is a very talented bird artist from Hungary, and you can follow his work on his blog, Wildlife Art and Illustration.
Vertigo keeps fans of the late W.G. Sebald up to date with studies and adaptations of his work, as well as books by other writers who follow in his tradition (particularly novels with embedded photographs).
Bhutan Journals. Bhutan is another country I've long been fascinated with, so I enjoy this sporadically updated blog about its culture and folklore.
Got Medieval may be too famous for me to put here. But with scholarship, Gingrich-debunking, and drunken monkeys, how can I resist?
Language Hat is definitely too famous, but it's how I found several of the other blogs on this list, so what the heck.
David Orr's Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs is pretty well known, but his other blog, Under Indiana, isn't. It turns out his home state is a lot more interesting than it seemed when I was driven along Interstate 90 a few years ago.
Aves Noir -- a lovely blog about all things related to corvids (crows and their relatives). Sadly, a bit quiet lately.
My final choice is definitely not safe for work. Vintage Pulchritude is a collection of nude or semi-nude photographs (all of women, as far as I know) from the late 19th and early 20th century. I find it interesting for two reasons. First, it shows a side of this period of history that we don't often think about (many people seem to take seriously Philip Larkin's claim that "sexual intercourse began in 1963"). Secondly, it gives an idea of what was considered desirable in the days before silicone and Photoshop.

An open letter to useless bureaucrats, paper-pushers and call centre workers everywhere.

2011-03-18T04:00:00.004Z

Dear incompetent jobsworths,

I think the cliché is to wish that you will get cancer. I won't do that. It's cruel and unfunny and offensive. Here's what I do wish:

I hope that one day you will have to be tested for cancer, and that you will have to phone a large centre to get the results. And while you're trying to get the results (which will be negative, but you won't know that yet, and you will feel as if your entire life depends on the next five minutes), I hope the following things will happen:

You will be told that the centre's "service level agreement" is three working days, and be scolded for calling before that time is up.
When you call back, you will talk to some swamped-sounding school leaver who will be unable to find any record of your existence.
You will be transferred to the wrong department four times, be kept on hold for at least ten minutes between each transfer, and finally be cut off.
You will hear at least three conflicting accounts of what the tests you have gone through measure, what the results mean and what happens next if the news is bad.
Someone will explain that the company to which the hospital outsourced your tests has just outsourced some of its work to yet another company, and therefore you can't blame them if there's a delay.
After all this, someone will claim that their records show the results were actually sent to you a week ago, but that they can't tell you by what method they were sent, to what address, or what the results were: "We can only read what comes up on the screen."
When you finally -- somehow -- learn that all is well and are able to return to work, you will be just a bit more considerate of the person on the other end of the phone.

Waxwings

2011-03-11T20:55:00.002Z

Waxwings in more detail a photo by Laura A. Brown on Flickr.

On this dark day, with its terrible news from Japan, I was glad for a little spot of brightness. On a visit to Uxbridge, in the outermost suburbs, I was surprised to see a flock of about 20 Waxwings. They were eating berries from some bushes in the centre of town, and then coming to rest in a nearby tree.

This was the first time I'd seen the Bohemian Waxwing (not to be confused with the Cedar Waxwing, a North American species). According to the RSPB, they can only be found in the UK between October and March, and there are less than 100 of them here in a typical year. I suppose this group was in the middle of its spring migration.

You can see more pictures of the Waxwings in my Flickr photostream. And while you're there, check out my contact Masashi Mochida, who takes wonderful photos of Japanese Macaques in Nagano Prefecture. Shortly before I started this post, I heard that the area where he works had been hit by a severe aftershock; fortunately, it doesn't sound like any serious damage was done. Let's hope this is the last shock -- and do keep checking your local Red Cross site to see if they are accepting donations for the quake victims.

Secret treasures of Afghanistan

2011-03-10T21:04:00.002Z

What do you think of when you think of Afghanistan? Do you think of delicate golden crowns that fold on hinges for easy carrying? Of chair legs shaped like swaying goddesses? Of glass blown into the form of prickly fish, and goblets painted with bright scenes of the date harvest? Of inlaid shells forming tiny colourful flowers? Of people dedicated enough to keep these objects safe from a succession of invaders, looters and fanatics?

All of these are part of the British Museum's Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World, probably the best exhibition I've seen this year. The show tells two stories little known to us: the mingling of cultures in ancient Afghanistan, and the struggle to preserve and recover its artifacts from today's turmoil.

Pretty much everything in this exhibition was a surprise to me. Take the Hellenistic society that once flourished at Ai-Khanoum. In many ways Greco-Bactrian art was similar to that found in Greece. But the sculptures had stockier figures, and elements of the mythology were blended or replaced with local equivalents. For example, Eros had traditionally been depicted as riding on a dolphin, but since the people in this landlocked country had never seen dolphins, they substituted fish instead.

Then there was Begram, now a small town near a U.S. air base, but once a major stop along the Silk Road. In the objects here, one could see traces of all the cultures that had shared the route. This part of the exhibition held my favourite objects, a collection of wonderfully expressive little bronze statues showing various figures from classical and Indian mythology (plus a rooster with a human head, which no one quite seemed able to explain).

The folding crown that is the emblem of the exhibition comes from Tillya Tepe, where archaeologists have found massive first-century burial hoards from a nomadic people of uncertain origin. The thousands of gold and turquoise ornaments that were unearthed there were thought for many years to have been destroyed by the Taliban, until it was revealed that employees of the Kabul Museum had hidden them away in commodity crates.

This story was echoed throughout the exhibition. Not everything escaped the Taliban: the show opens with what's left of a Hellenistic statue that they smashed. Work continues to recover objects that have been looted or smuggled out of the country during the past 30 years. But it's a testament to the strength of the Afghan people that anything survived at all.

This exhibition does everything that a museum exhibition should do. It surprises its viewers with new knowledge, delights them with beauty and gives them a new appreciation for the world around them. Go see it if you possibly can.

Bird mysteries

2011-03-05T19:13:00.004Z

Here's a pair of ducks I saw at Kew Gardens today. The top one is a plain old Mallard, of course (not that Mallards are really "plain"). But the lower one looks like a cross between a Mallard and a Shoveler. Is such a hybrid possible?

An ID on these captive exotic birds would also be greatly appreciated.

Update: Thanks to David Orr from Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs for identifying these as guinea fowl!

Jan Gossaert's Renaissance

2011-03-03T11:46:00.002Z

In the National Gallery's new exhibition devoted to the 16th-century Flemish painter Jan Gossaert (also known as Jan Mabuse), a sequence of pictures of Adam and Eve illustrates how the artist developed his own style. The earliest, painted around 1510, is a near copy of a work by Dürer. It has nice clean lines and not much expression.

Two pen-and-ink drawings made about a decade later are a lot more eye-catching. In one, the strongly muscled figures of the couple embrace. Their faces are highly individualised and not entirely attractive. The second drawing, on a dusky grey background, shows the couple huddling together at the exact moment when Adam eats the apple, as if seeking comfort from each other in their shared guilt. A final painting from around the same period shows them at the moment that their eyes are opened to their nakedness. The fatigue and anxiety on their faces is very moving.

The exhibition divides the rest of Gossaert's work into three main categories: erotic nudes, portraits of dignitaries, and religious works. A lot of his pictures of the nude Venus actually looked quite ugly to me, but Hercules and Deianeira is a much more touching and effective work. The room of portraits contained the only work of Gossaert's that I'd been familiar with before, An Elderly Couple. But the portrait I liked best was of A Man Holding a Glove. It was apparently painted in a great hurry, and the sitter's expression and the way he clutches the glove make me wonder just what was going on.

I found the pictures of the Virgin and Child remarkable because Gossaert portrayed the baby Jesus as acting like an actual baby. In one painting from 1520, he grabs hold of Mary's chin while squirming toward the edge of the painting, and in a picture of the Holy Family, he looks as if he's about to wriggle right off his mother's lap.

With this in mind, as well as that first picture of Adam & Eve, I was intrigued by Gossaert's picture of St Luke Painting the Madonna. The Virgin and Child, plus a passel of slightly unkempt-looking angels, appear in the same cheerful disorder I noticed in Gossaert's other paintings of the subject. But if you look at St Luke's easel, you see that he's actually painting a much calmer and tidier version of the scene.

The Gallery hasn't actually managed to get that many of Gossaert's paintings, and many of his drawings are badly faded. The exhibition is filled out with works by his contemporaries and influences. I was particularly pleased to see Jacopo de'Barbari's little painting of a sparrowhawk, which I don't think they normally have on display.

As usual, the Gallery also has a small free exhibition to complement the paid one. This time it focuses on a triptych by Gossaert's contemporary Jan de Beer.

I was charmed by the left panel, showing John the Baptist, in which a tiny lamb lounges on the pages of the saint's Bible like a cat demanding its owner's attention. A baby Baptist and an even smaller lamb appear at the foot of the Virgin's throne in the central panel. In this panel, the peacock-like wings of the angels echo the rich dress of the female saints surrounding the Virgin and Child (no humble austerity here!), while the round carved putti at the top of the throne recall the shape of the apples in the tree above. Meanwhile, on the right, a tiny dragon flies out of John the Evangelist's cup; in the background, you see the same dragon waiting to devour the child borne by the woman clothed with the sun.

Places You Find Cats

2011-03-01T10:33:00.004Z

Just a quick note to say that the cat photo from my Highgate Cemetery post has been turned into an instalment of the webcomic Places You Find Cats. I highly recommend this comic; the creator, Emily K., is a fantastic artist and does a lot to promote cat welfare. You can submit your own pictures of unusual places you've found cats, too!

Stories from Highgate Cemetery

2011-02-25T06:22:00.009Z

Yesterday I spent an hour or two walking around the eastern section of Highgate Cemetery. It has fewer famous graves than the western section (viewable by guided tour only), but nonetheless hosts its share of celebrities -- Karl Marx, George Eliot and Douglas Adams, to name a few. And of course, there are many people buried there who aren't so well known, but nonetheless lived remarkable lives. You can buy a map at the entrance with the most notable graves listed on it, but I thought I'd share what I'd learned about a few people who didn't make the map.

Kenneth Hsiao Chien Lo wrote 40 Chinese cookbooks, starting in the 1950s when Chinese cuisine was unknown to most British people. My father has actually owned a copy of his Complete Encyclopedia of Chinese Cooking since I was a kid, but I didn't make the connection when I saw his grave. Mr Lo was also a tennis champion. It's a Chinese custom to put food offerings on the graves of the dead -- hence the oranges.

Tom Wakefield published at least 15 novels, mainly dealing with gay issues, as well as an autobiography. I guess "Mother" is a joking reference to his sexual orientation (and maybe also to the cat he's pictured with), but I'm not sure.

Mansoor Hekmat, also known as Zhoobin Razani, was an Iranian Communist leader and an opponent of the Islamic Republic. He seems to have been fairly humane as Communists go, opposing Stalinism and rejecting both the Soviet and Chinese systems. You can read a wide selection of his writings on his official website.

Simon Wolff was a toxicologist who devoted his short life to campaigning for alternatives to cars. He died when he was just 38 (of a respiratory infection, according to this site), and his widow set up a charitable foundation to continue his work. I found links to three pictures of him here.

Buland al-Haidari was an Iraqi-Kurdish poet. You can read English translations of three of his poems here.

I was disappointed not to be able to find any information about Ahmad Aminzavar, humorist. Googling him led only to other photos of his grave. If anyone does know any more about him, please leave a comment.

Patrick Caulfield was a painter and printmaker. He was part of the Pop Art movement, but you probably didn't need me to tell you that.

The American author Opal Whiteley, whose strange story I recently learned, is also buried in this part of the cemetery. But I didn't come across her grave, and she's not famous enough to be on the map. Maybe next time.

These people lie with many others of whom Google knows nothing; some, perhaps, not remembered by anyone alive today. But their graves all have at least one visitor.

Victorian drawings and watercolours

2011-02-24T11:09:00.003Z

William Etty - Female Nude
with a Cast of the Venus de'Medici
Originally uploaded by Laura A. Brown

Once again the Courtauld Gallery has produced a small exhibition that knocks the socks off many larger shows. Life, Legend, Landscape: Victorian Drawings and Watercolours fills just one room, but I found myself lingering in it for a long time. One of the first works you see when you enter is this drawing by William Etty, which today looks a bit like an unintentional feminist statement. The model's expression seems to me to hold a hint of self-doubt, as if she is comparing her own beauty to the idealised form of the Venus de'Medici.

The exhibition is full of little treasures, including lesser-known works by Turner and Landseer, and one of Edward Coley Burne-Jones's sketches for a stained-glass window in the Victoria and Albert Museum's Morris Room (one of my favourite places in the city). There's a watercolour by Edward Lear of The Quarries of Syracuse, which served as the basis for a straightfaced oil painting called City of Syracuse from the Ancient Quarries Where the Athenians Were Imprisoned. But in the lines of the sketch beneath the watercolour, I thought I could glimpse the whimsy of the drawings that accompanied his nonsense verse.

John Ruskin's watercolour Mer de Glace, Chamonix is an intricately detailed study of the surface of an Alpine glacier. Ruskin, with his insistence on close observation of nature, was one of Gerard Manley Hopkins's greatest influences. In July 1868, on holiday in Switzerland,* Hopkins wrote this description of a glacier in his journal:

Walked down to the Rhone glacier. It has three stages -- first a smoothly-moulded bed in a pan or theatre of thorny peaks, swells of ice rising through the snow-sheet and the snow itself tossing and fretting into the sides of the rock walls in spray-like points: this is the first stage of the glaciers generally; it is like bright-plucked water swaying in a pail -; second, after a slope nearly covered with landslips of moraine, was a ruck of horned waves steep and narrow in the gut: now in the upper Grindelwald glacier between the bed or highest stage was a descending limb which was like the rude and knotty bossings of a strombus shell -; third, the foot, a broad limb opening out and reaching the plain, shaped like the fan-fin of a dolphin or a great bivalve shell turned on its face, the flutings in either case being suggested by the crevasses and the ribs by the risings between them, these being swerved and inscaped strictly to the motion of the mass. Or you may compare the three stages to the heel, instep and ball or toes of a foot. - The second stage looked at from nearer appeared like a box of plaster of Paris or starch or toothpowder, a little moist, tilted up and then struck and jarred so that the powder broke and tumbled in shapes and rifts.

But my favourite piece in the exhibition was Millais's The Parting of Ulysses (from Circe) -- a postcard-sized, brilliant blue watercolour that looked like a medieval miniature.

* He went there because he was going to enter the Jesuit novitiate in the autumn, and Switzerland didn't allow Jesuits in, so this was his last chance to visit.

Solidarity with Belarus

2011-02-19T18:18:00.003Z

This afternoon I went to a demonstration at the Belarusian Embassy organised by the Belarus Committee, a coalition of human-rights and free-speech groups including English PEN, Amnesty International, Index on Censorship and others. The actor Samuel West tried to deliver a letter on behalf of the group, calling for the Belarusian government to respect freedom of speech and assembly and to release all prisoners of conscience. The staff at the embassy refused to open the door.

It has been two months since rigged elections returned the dictator Alexander Lukashenko to power. (He's been president since 1994, during which time Belarus has never had an election judged to be free and fair by international observers.) It has never been easy to be a dissident in Belarus, but the days after the 2010 election saw the biggest crackdown yet. Over 600 journalists, writers and activists were arrested, and 33 remain in custody today. Just two days ago, one activist was sentenced to four years in a high-security prison after a one-day Soviet-style show trial (not too surprising in a country where the police are still called the KGB).

All of this is happening on the European Union's doorstep. So why did only a few dozen people turn up to the protest today? How many right-on British liberals would have turned up if the demonstration had been against Israel or the U.S.?

Peder Balke

2011-02-17T19:51:00.002Z

Yesterday I popped into the Post-Impressionist section of the National Gallery to have a look at the Cézannes, and also to visit my favourite painting in the Gallery, Rousseau's Surprised! Hanging among the more famous paintings, I noticed a new acquisition: a tiny, almost monochrome seascape by a Norwegian painter called Peder Balke.

I hadn't heard of Balke, but it turns out that's because hardly anyone has. Ordinarily, when we walk around a gallery, we're looking at the work of successful artists -- people who managed to play the game, sell their works, stay in the public eye. Even those who, like Van Gogh, died in poverty nonetheless managed to devote their lives to their art until the end. We don't often hear about the ones who might be called failures: those who eventually concluded that making a living as an artist wasn't for them.

Balke was one such "failure". Even a commission from Louis-Philippe of France was not enough to establish him as a professional artist. In the 1860s, after decades of trying, he gave up. (His Wikipedia article seems to say, in unclear English, that he went to work as a city planner or something like that.) But he continued painting for his own pleasure, and it is the work he produced then that is being rediscovered today.

How many other secret masterpieces are out there, I wonder?

Nothing but flowers

2011-02-14T20:51:00.004Z

London's weather is due to get gloomy again for the next few days. If you need some colour and cheer, I highly recommend Kew Gardens' Tropical Extravaganza, a celebration of orchids and bromeliads in the Princess of Wales Conservatory. As the pictures I took today show, there is no hyperbole in the name.

Skinny as a dry lease area

2011-02-13T06:45:00.003Z

Sometimes Google's automatic translator works quite well. And sometimes it, um, doesn't. But at least it produces some beautiful found poetry. Here, according to its English translation of a Korean Wikipedia page, are the known subspecies of slender loris:

Skinny lease to the highlands
Skinny as a lease of Mysore
Do not lease a bar, Skinny
Lease to the north, Skinny
Skinny as a dry lease area

Of course, all these belong to the genus Oh, and Rory scan.

Speaking of talking to strangers ...

2011-02-12T06:47:00.002Z

If a stranger talks to you in London, it's a pretty safe bet that they're either foreign, from the North (which most Londoners would regard as the same thing) or up to no good. So I was relieved when the man who started chatting to me yesterday turned out to have a foreign accent. We were waiting at a pedestrian crossing near the University of London.

"These signs are very good," he said, gesturing toward the instructions painted on the street.

"Sorry?" I said.

"Well, I am here visiting my son, and I see on the road: LOOK RIGHT. And if I look right, to make sure there are no cars coming, then I will be right."

"Er ... right."

"But if I make a mistake and look left, and I start to go across, and a car comes from the right ...."

"Yes?"

"Then I will be left on the road."

"Oh -- ha ha, very good! Where are you from?"

"Sweden. I am here visiting my son. I used to be in charge, now he is in charge."

"That's always the way."

"He is becoming a man. Well, have a nice day."

"You too."

Museums big and small

2011-02-11T16:39:00.010Z

The Petrie Museum is the only museum I've ever been to where the staff offer you a torch (flashlight) at the entrance. This collection of Egyptian archaeology is in a very unglamorous university building, and the weak fluorescent lighting means you need help to see some of the exhibits.

When we think of Egyptian artifacts, most of us think of the sort of things housed down the road at the British Museum: glitzy sarcophagi and monumental sculptures. The Petrie, by contrast, tends to have smaller things: little steles, statuettes, fragments of pottery and glass. These objects, accompanied by minimal labelling, fill glass cases in two largish rooms and along the wall of a basement staircase. Looking through them is a bit like a treasure hunt. The Petrie's displays cover a wider time period than the British Museum's -- from the Paleolithic through the Coptic eras -- and also focus more on the lives of ordinary people, with items like clothing and children's toys.

My favourite things in the museum were a series of limestone monkeys from Amarna, made in the 14th century BC. They were once painted, though only traces of the red pigment remain now.

But the most eye-catching thing in the museum makes a very different impression. It's what remains of a Badarian pot burial.

Apparently the skeleton belonged to a man who was quite tall for his day. The museum acknowledges the ethical questions that come with putting his remains on public view. "Should the burial be displayed in this way?" a placard asks.

Whatever your answer to that question, the Petrie's display doesn't seem nearly as dodgy to me as one of the current temporary exhibitions at the British Museum, which blandly celebrates the work of Eric Gill without ever alluding to the fact that he was a child- (and animal-) molesting scumbag. I think that little detail might affect how the viewer interprets both the idiosyncratic sexuality of some of his works and the ostentatious piety of others.

Another special exhibition at the British Museum is more cheerful. It compares traditional costume and jewellery from Oman and the Balkans. They're quite similar in some ways: women wrapped in layers of cloth, coins made into jewellery to show off the wearer's wealth. The Omani section also displays some of the ornamental weapons carried by men.

Ordinarily this wouldn't be my cup of tea (sexism, materialism and violence? Sign me up!), but I enjoyed looking at the brilliantly coloured fabrics used in both places. And it was nice to see a group of schoolkids enter the room and immediately rush over to the displays, calling to each other, "Look at this! Look at this!"

Stranger danger

2011-02-10T17:04:00.002Z

This afternoon I caught the Tube into central Harrow just as the local primary school was letting out. As I entered the station, I saw a small boy hiding inside one of the tall stands that hold free newspapers in the morning. He kept peering out anxiously at the kids streaming past the station, then ducking inside again.

I thought he might have been hiding from bullies or something,* so I asked him, "Are you all right? Has someone been bothering you?"

In a trembling voice, he said, "My mum's with me," and ran out of the station.

I got the impression that this was what he'd been told to do if a strange grown-up ever approached him. I'm very glad that kids are learning to protect themselves in such situations. But it was still odd to realise that the stranger was me.

*I also have to admit that if it had turned out he was just hiding there for fun, I would have asked to take his picture.

Images of Nature

2011-02-09T23:37:00.003Z

Multi-Ocellated Racerunner
Originally uploaded by Laura A. Brown

The Natural History Museum recently opened a new gallery to display selections from its vast (and till now mainly unseen) treasury of botanical and zoological art. The gallery will focus on a different theme every year. This year it's the large collection of Chinese watercolours commissioned by the 19th-century naturalist John Reeves. To protect the pictures from light damage, the museum will put a different set of watercolours on show every three months.

Judging by the quality of the works I saw today, I'm going to become a regular visitor to this gallery. This delightful little picture of a rare lizard exemplifies the skill and character of the paintings. Look at the shadow!

Another nice thing about the gallery is that the NHM are using some of the original display cases from the building's opening in 1881 -- reconditioned to protect the paintings, of course. This both allows the museum to claim some extra green credentials and gives a sense of its history.

Signs of spring

2011-02-08T18:05:00.006Z

Today was an unexpectedly sunny day in London, so I decided to visit Camley Street Natural Park. I'd only recently learned of the existence of this park, tucked away behind King's Cross and St Pancras stations. It's a small place, but when the weather is fine you can walk around it quite a few times without getting bored.

After a long, grey winter, it was a real pleasure to spend time here and see and hear the early signs of spring. The birdsong could be heard even over the massive construction going on nearby -- mainly great tits and coal tits, with the occasional blackbird and robin. There were little clusters of snowdrops and buttercups:

And there was plenty of life emerging from buds, both leaves and flowers.

I went in search of the two tame rabbits mentioned on the park's website, but found that they no longer live there. Apparently the local foxes kept trying to get into their hutch, so a member of staff took them home where they would be safer and less stressed.

The aquarium at the Horniman Museum

2011-02-02T22:59:00.002Z

I decided to go to the Horniman Museum because I'd read glowing reviews of it, but for a while I was perilously close to being disappointed. In the free part of the museum, the only part I really enjoyed was the musical instrument gallery. The anthropological exhibits had been collected from "primitive" peoples in the Victorian era for the purpose of illustrating the racist theory of "cultural evolution" (although, to be fair, the museum is upfront about this and makes clear that the idea has now been discredited), and the natural history section was full of stuffed specimens. Worst of all, some local parents seem to regard the place as an indoor playground: little kids were screaming and running around the galleries while their parents chatted on the benches.

Then I decided that while I was there, I might as well pay £2 to get into the museum's aquarium, and it was at this point that the visit turned around. I spent the next hour or so happily looking at fish, seahorses, frogs and other water life.

The aquarium's pride is its jellyfish -- it's apparently one of the few places to run an artificial insemination programme for them (though I'm not sure how that works and probably don't need to know). Here's a look at one beautiful creature:

As you can hear, there were still a lot of noisy kids in this section. But at least they were paying attention to the exhibits, and at least their parents were paying attention to them.

Things to hear and see

2011-01-31T19:58:00.004Z

Some of you knew it was only a matter of time before I blogged about this: Radio 3's Composer of the Week programme this week is devoted to Shostakovich's early years. Today's instalment featured several seldom-heard works from the composer's youth, including the First Piano Trio and the dialogue of the ass and the nightingale from Two Fables of Krilov. The series will also include works by lesser-known contemporaries of Shostakovich -- today it was Two Poems by Nikolai Roslavets.

You can listen to each episode online for up to a week after it's broadcast (I think this should work anywhere in the world). Or if you prefer a condensed version, you can download an hour-long podcast at the end of the week.

While I'm here, I'll also mention a great BBC television programme I watched online a few days ago. Miracle in the Marshes of Iraq follows the quest of the Iraqi-American engineer Azzam Alwash to restore the Mesopotamian Marshes.

Back in 1991, after an uprising by the Maʻdān people of southern Iraq, Saddam punished them by draining the wetlands where they had lived for centuries -- an astonishing attempt at genocide through environmental destruction. Scenes near the beginning of the programme showed the enormous scale of this project. Canals with names like "Glory" and "Loyalty to the Leader" were built to divert water away from the area, and massive dikes were built to keep the Tigris River out. By 2000, the region had effectively been transformed into desert.

After the American invasion in 2003, local people began breaching the dikes, but it wasn't until Mr Alwash arrived that a systematic plan was put in place to re-flood the marshes.

Nature is sometimes amazingly resilient. It wasn't long after the water was let in that life began to reappear: reeds, fish, dragonflies, and the many birds that had once been the pride of the region. Several species that had become seriously endangered by the draining of the marshes began making a comeback. While the BBC crew were filming, a flock of over 40,000 Marbled Teal arrived -- more than had been known to exist in the world. As Mr Alwash watched them, I could feel his joy through the screen. "This is what makes it all worthwhile", he said.

The people have begun to return, too, and several beamed as they told the presenter they had thought they would never be able to go home again. But home is not quite what it was. The restored marshes face new challenges: reduced flow from the Tigris due to dam-building in Turkey and Syria, and increased salinity of the water. However, Mr Alwash's organisation, Nature Iraq, has plans to cope with these through continual management.

The programme showed the dangers the BBC crew encountered. Their first attempt to film the rare Basra Reed Warbler was stymied when a villager objected to them using a rival tribe's boat instead of his own. What seemed at first to be a dispute over tribal etiquette took on a far more sinister meaning when the crew learned that the villager was a member of the Mahdi Army.

Mr Alwash's dream is to turn southern Iraq into an eco-tourist destination. That is clearly a long way off. But listening to him in this programme, I believed that it might one day happen.

If you're in the UK, you can watch the programme online for the next month or so. Unfortunately, it isn't available to people in other countries. But I note that it was made in cooperation with a PBS affiliate, so I assume it will be shown in the U.S. eventually.

Update: It turns out this programme was recently broadcast by PBS under the title Braving Iraq: Restoring the Garden of Eden. I believe clicking "Full Episode" should work for people in the U.S., though obviously it doesn't for me. Thanks, Pat!

Big Garden Birdwatch 2011

2011-01-29T16:16:00.002Z

My bird count this year was fairly light, probably due to a combination of the cold, grey weather, the relative lateness of the hour (3-4 pm) and a neighbourhood cat that was skulking around. I saw three blackbirds (two male and one female) two carrion crows, two magpies, two feral pigeons, two house sparrows, a jackdaw and a robin.

Of course, this doesn't give a complete picture of the birds that were around -- the Birdwatch rules say you can only count birds you actually see (not those you just hear) and only those that land (not those that fly overhead); and that you can only count the highest number of birds you see at one time (so if you see a lone robin on three separate occasions, your total count for the species is one). In particular, there were many gulls flying overhead, and I could hear quite a few songbirds in the distance.

And the birds I did see made up for their low numbers with plenty of activity: the two male blackbirds were clearly vying for the attentions of the female, and there seemed to be some kind of corvid rivalry going on between the carrion crows and magpies.

There's still another day to go in the Big Garden Birdwatch. If you live in the UK and you're interested in participating, have a look at the RSPB's site.

Chaim Krawiec

2011-01-27T11:05:00.009Z

The Yad Vashem World Holocaust Centre is sponsoring a virtual Wall of Remembrance on Facebook. Everyone who participates (by clicking "attending") is given the name of a specific Holocaust victim to remember.

I was given the name of Chaim Krawiec. A Google search turned up this photo of him on Yad Vashem's main site.

Brest Litowsk, Poland, A photograph of Chaim Krawiec. From a collection of passport photographs of Jews from Brest Litowsk which were attached to personal papers for the purpose of obtaining identity papers. Yad Vashem, Archival Signature: 5395/3661. Copyright © 2010 Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority. Reproduced in accordance with Yad Vashem's terms and conditions.

He looks very young; according to this list he hadn't yet turned 21 when he died in Auschwitz.* I wish I could find out more about him. Krawiec (better known to most of us in its Yiddish form, Kravitz) means "tailor" in Polish, but whether that said anything about his family's profession in the 1930s I don't know.

* This is assuming that these three references are all to the same Chaim Krawiec. I don't know how common the name was.**

** Update: It turns out that the Chaim Krawiec in the photograph and the Chaim Krawiec on the Auschwitz list are indeed two different people. The boy in the photo was born in 1926, meaning he was 15 or 16 when the photo was taken. There are also two other victims with the name in Yad Vashem's database. They should all be remembered.

Slender lorises

2011-01-22T17:14:00.002Z

Today I went to a members' event at London Zoo focusing on the slender loris. It was scheduled for their feeding time, and the keeper also shone a soft light into the enclosure so we could see them better. I appreciated this, because ever since the zoo put up a protective screen of fake foliage in front of their enclosure (which they were forced to do because of the idiotic behaviour of some visitors) I haven't had a good look at them.

The good news is that the lorises have been much happier since they got their increased privacy, and have proved it by producing four babies. We saw the parents and the two oldest offspring. I always forget how tiny these lorises are compared to pottos. They look impossibly delicate, although the keepers assured us that their thin limbs were actually surprisingly strong.

The lorises at the zoo are Grey Slender Lorises. The zoo is really keeping them to learn about their care in preparation for keeping their rarer cousin, the Red Slender Loris. One of the zoo's keepers told us about a trip he'd recently made to Sri Lanka to learn about conserving the species. While there, he'd acted as an adviser to Colombo Zoo, who apparently couldn't figure out why their lorises kept dying young. It turned out they were feeding them an all-fruit diet, when the species is actually mainly insectivorous. The Sri Lankan authorities' indifference toward wildlife (and, indeed, toward human safety) was also reflected in the practice of putting up power lines without any protective covering -- one of the major causes of death in wild lorises.

The keeper told us he'd learned quite a few things in the wild that had helped him take better care of his captive lorises. For example, he found that lorises naturally lived in a hotter and drier environment than London Zoo had been providing; the zookeepers had been moistening the soil in the lorises' enclosure, but now they no longer do so. When capturing wild lorises to take their measurements, the keeper found they were calmer if they were given a stick to hold on to. He brought that trick back with him, and it has made veterinary check-ups a lot less traumatic.

For more -- lots more -- information about loris and potto conservation, have a look at loris-conservation.org.

He who shall train the horse to war Shall never pass the polar bar

2011-01-21T08:51:00.003Z

One part of the Wallace Collection I didn't spend much time in was the armour and weapons section. I did, however, have time to snap this horse's helmet, which reminded me of the lines above from Blake's "Auguries of Innocence" (one of my favourite poems).

This, in turn, reminded me that I have no idea what "polar bar" is supposed to mean. The online OED is free this month, but it wasn't any help. Does anyone have any ideas?

A 15th-century prank

2011-01-20T20:10:00.002Z

Joke bowl
Originally uploaded by Laura A. Brown

Yesterday I went to the Wallace Collection, which I'd never even thought about until recently, despite living just a short trip away. That's the great thing about London -- you can still find new treasures on your doorstep even after years in the city.

Anyway, I made a few discoveries there, both positive and negative. On the negative side, I've decided that I really don't like Sèvres porcelain: too fussy for my taste, and for some reason even the real thing looks like a cheap imitation to me. I also discovered a guy who I think might have been the worst painter of the Rococo era, Jean-Baptiste Greuze. His pictures of wide-eyed girls looked like they should have been painted on black velvet.

But I also had a great time looking at the extensive collection of Renaissance majolica. Its brilliant colours (especially the wonderful blues) and ornate designs were well suited for illustrating Biblical and classical scenes. But it could also be used for more light-hearted purposes, as this bowl demonstrates. "Attempting to find a genuine spout", the label explained, "the user would spill the liquid."

Scoping things out

2011-01-18T18:36:00.004Z

People bring lots of fancy equipment to London Wetland Centre to investigate the birds. But the curiosity isn't all on one side, as these Black Brant Geese demonstrated today:

Also, just because it was a first for me, here's a Great Crested Grebe I saw today.

That's the non-breeding plumage, so it's not time for their spectacular courtship dance just yet.

Chinese robes at the V&A

2011-01-13T20:10:00.005Z

Until 27 February, the Victoria and Albert Museum has a little exhibition of imperial robes from the Qing dynasty in China (which lasted from 1644-1911). Here you can see the costumes worn on all different occasions (court business, religious ceremonies, celebrations) by the emperors and empresses (as well as the little princes and princesses, who were dressed like miniature adults).

I've mentioned before how heavily populated Chinese designs are with creatures both real and mythical, and the clothing in this exhibition was no exception. The most common motif was a set of dragons symbolising imperial power: two facing each other, with expressions that could have been either menacing or mischievous, and another above them that looked straight at the viewer with an expression of clownish surprise. In addition to the dragons, the women's clothing for formal occasions bore emblems such as phoenixes and "double happiness" characters. The designs on their informal robes were more playful: dancing cranes or bunches of fat grapes.

The footwear in the exhibition was more pleasant to look at than it would have been for any other period of imperial China. Qing women, being Manchu, did not bind their feet, and their shoes didn't look any more painful than fashionable women's shoes today. I particularly liked one pair whose toes bore figureheads of grinning phoenixes.

Colours were important in the Qing court: on official occasions, women of the imperial household wore different shades of yellow according to their rank, and the emperor performed his sacrifices for the autumn equinox wearing a pale blue that was always referred to as "moon white". Unfortunately, the clothing in the exhibition has to be displayed in low light for conservation reasons, so you don't always get the full effect of the colours. There were only a couple of bolts of fabric (never made into clothing for some reason) that the lights seemed to strike in just the right way: stunning green satin and purple damask, covered with flowers, leaves and fruit, embroidered with brilliant thread. This gave some idea of what the court must have looked like in the Beijing sunlight.

It has to be said that this is a very small exhibition. Even looking at everything carefully, I got through it in half an hour. The £5 admission charge is probably only good value if you're deeply interested in the topic.

Here's one video that deserves to go viral

2011-01-12T07:24:00.003Z

My apologies to those of you who have seen me share this elsewhere, but you should have guessed I wouldn't be able to resist blogging about it as well. It's a video of the baby potto born late last year at Cincinnati Zoo. You can see the baby, with its silky white juvenile fur, riding on its mother's belly (or, in one case, leg), and making a go of climbing a branch itself:

An earlier clip from the zoo shows a baby potto from a couple of years ago:

And in another, a keeper at the zoo gives an overview of the species:

With luck, London Zoo will have a baby potto of its own soon.

Blast from the past: spurious quotations

2011-01-10T07:25:00.003Z

Over two years ago, I wrote about a quotation frequently attributed to Gandhi, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind". I couldn't find any evidence that he had actually said it, but didn't uncover any clues as to where it had really come from, either.

Well, now a new(-ish)blog called Quote Investigator has published an exhaustive discussion, complete with cites, of the phrase's origin. The blog's author, the pseudonymous "Dr Garson O'Toole", summarises his (?) findings thus:

Mahatma Gandhi may have used the expression, but no conclusive evidence for this has yet been discovered. It is also possible that the ascription is inaccurate and the books of Louis Fischer may have inadvertently helped to establish the attribution. A more extravagant version of the adage with the words “blind and toothless” was used by 1914.

The entire entry is well worth reading, as is the rest of the blog. Dr O'Toole hasn't yet covered the other quotation I mentioned in that old post, "The Church is a whore, but she's my mother all the same", but I think I'll ask him about it.

Many thanks to Language Hat for bringing Quote Investigator to my attention. This one is going on the reading list for sure!

They didn't even seek guidance from the Association of Shunammite Midwives

2011-01-08T07:26:00.002Z

Two women who were prostitutes came to the king and stood before him.

One woman said, "Please, my lord, this woman and I live in the same house; and I gave birth while she was in the house. Then on the third day after I gave birth, this woman also gave birth. We were together; there was no one else with us in the house, only the two of us were in the house. Then this woman’s son died in the night, because she lay on him. She got up in the middle of the night and took my son from beside me while your servant slept. She laid him at her breast, and laid her dead son at my breast. When I rose in the morning to nurse my son, I saw that he was dead; but when I looked at him closely in the morning, clearly it was not the son I had borne."

But the other woman said, "No, the living son is mine, and the dead son is yours."

The first said, "No, the dead son is yours, and the living son is mine."

So they argued before the king.

Then the king said, "One says, 'This is my son that is alive, and your son is dead'; while the other says, 'Not so! Your son is dead, and my son is the living one.'"

So the king said, "Bring me a sword", and they brought a sword before the king.

The king said, "Divide the living boy in two; then give half to one, and half to the other."

But the woman whose son was alive said to the king — because compassion for her son burned within her — "Please, my lord, give her the living boy; certainly do not kill him!"

The other said, "It shall be neither mine nor yours; divide it."

Then the king responded:

"Never mind, we have to wrap this storyline up early because there have been too many complaints to the scribes' union."

(Thanks to Oremus.)

Mahomet Weyonomon

2011-01-07T22:01:00.006Z

Mahomet Weyonomon memorial
Originally uploaded by Laura A. Brown

The thing about travelling around London by Tube is that you don't always get a sense of where things are in relation to each other above ground. So when I went to Borough Market to buy some Mexican ingredients*, I found myself wondering what the big church next door was. It was only when I read the sign on the gate that I realised it was Southwark Cathedral.

Southwark Cathedral doesn't get nearly as much press as St Paul's, but it's well worth exploring. Among the interesting things I found there was this memorial in the shape of a ridged mound, dedicated to Mahomet Weyonomon, whom I'd never heard of before. A plaque explained that he was a chief of the Mohegan people in Connecticut, and came to England in 1735 to ask George II for his tribe's land back. He was denied a meeting with the king, and not long after he arrived in London, he contracted smallpox and died. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the cathedral grounds; this monument was only dedicated in 2006 (apparently it represents the Mohegan tradition of naming a boulder after a dead chief).

I expected there to be a lot of information about Mahomet on the Internet, but there isn't much at all. A Wikipedia stub and a BBC report on the memorial's dedication are about as good as it gets; even the Mohegans' official site** doesn't mention him.

I'm particularly curious about how he came to have the name Mahomet. Is it a coincidence that this is also a variant name for Muhammad, or had his tribe had contact with Muslims?

* By the way, I highly recommend the Cool Chile Co.'s stall to any fellow Londoners wanting to cook Mexican food at home.

** Be warned that clicking the "Contact Us" link at the top of the Mohegan home page will redirect you to a porn site. I don't know if they were hacked, or if they let a domain expire or something. The rest of their site seems to work OK.

Fox in the snow

2010-12-30T07:27:00.002Z

Last night I looked out the window and saw a cat perched on a wall across the street, with a fox crouched below. I had already seen this cat facing off with a dog earlier in the day, and she was taking bold swipes at the fox with her claws. But the fox, unfazed, began trying to bite back. This clearly was not going to end well.

I ran outside and shooed the fox away. The cat had hidden under a parked car when I arrived on the scene, but when I called her, she jumped back onto the wall and began purring. I was stroking her when I realised that the fox had returned and was hanging around just a few feet away from me. No matter what I did, I couldn't get it to run away for more than a few minutes.

I decided the best thing to do was to try to find the cat's owner. She had a collar and bell but no tag, so I picked her up -- amazingly, she didn't protest -- and began making the rounds of nearby houses. And the fox trailed behind us the whole time.

The neighbours were all very nice, and several of them said they'd seen the cat around, but no one knew who she belonged to. The cat, meanwhile, was eager to get down and chase the fox out of "her" territory. Not a good idea, I thought.

Finally a woman suggested that the cat could spend the night in her enclosed garden, which had, she thought, walls too high for the fox to climb. Despite the cat's previous bravado, she did scurry in very quickly when the woman opened the door.

Chris had come outside in the meantime, and once the cat was out of reach, he found that the fox followed him down the street. So we tried to lead it as far away as possible, then, when it was distracted, went back home.

I'd never known a fox to be so bold and persistent. They usually run away as soon as a person appears. I can only assume the cold winter has left them starving and desperate. A good reason for people to keep their pets indoors.

Evolving English at the British Library

2010-12-29T21:21:00.002Z

I'd been so put off by the dumbed-down adverts for the British Library's latest exhibition that I almost didn't go. The captions at the entrance made me worry that my misgivings had been justified: "Did you know that English began over 1600 years ago among the Germanic tribes of Britain?" Surely anyone who didn't know that wouldn't have been in school long enough to be able to read the sign.

But things quickly improved when we got to the actual exhibits, which ranged from the oldest runes found in Britain to examples of modern text messages. I was particularly interested in a book of Latin psalms that, at some point in the 9th century, had been embellished with an interlinear translation into Old English. Who had owned this book, I wondered? Were there educated people back then who were able to read one language but not the other? Unfortunately, the labels didn't elaborate on this further.

Other treasures in the exhibition were the manuscripts of Beowulf and Sumer Is Icumen In; Tyndale's and Wycliffe's New Testaments; Roger Williams's Narragansett dictionary; The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay, open to a charming, if slightly inaccurate, illustration of a "kangooroo"; Hobson-Jobson; and the notecards used to compile the Oxford English Dictionary. A copy of Hooke's Micrographia lay open next to the journal article reporting the cloning of Dolly the Sheep, showing how scientific writing has changed over the years. The development of specialised jargon was illustrated with glossaries for medieval cooks, 15th-century masons, 17th-century sailors and 18th-century miners, while regional linguistic variations in the UK were demonstrated mainly with samples of dialect literature from the 19th century. There was also a section on swearing and sexual language, but I couldn't get near it because of the crowd.

The exhibition seemed to lose focus at times, displaying Victorian circus posters and clips from dreary '70s comedies without fully explaining why they were relevant. But there is certainly enough there to make it worth a visit, particularly since admission is free.

Spaghetti with lentil sauce

2010-12-20T20:07:00.002Z

We'll be getting our groceries delivered later than usual this week, thanks to Christmas demand and the weather, so for the past couple of days I've been making up dishes from what I can find in the freezer and store cupboard. This recipe, while not fancy, turned out to be quite tasty, so I thought I'd share it.

Ingredients
Olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 large cloves garlic, minced
3 carrots, peeled* and chopped
200g green lentils
400 ml water
400g tinned tomatoes
3 tablespoons tomato puree (paste)
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
Salt and pepper to taste
500g whole-wheat spaghetti

Fry the onion, garlic and carrots in the oil until the onions are translucent. Add the lentils and turn them over to coat with the oil. Add all the other ingredients (except the spaghetti, of course), bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and cover. Let the sauce simmer, stirring it from time to time, while you boil a pot of water and cook the spaghetti. At the end most of the liquid should be absorbed and the lentils should be tender; you'll need to stir it more often toward the end of cooking to keep it from sticking. Toss the sauce with the pasta and serve at once.**

* I used to think this instruction was unnecessary, but apparently some people don't peel them.
** This is probably unnecessary too, but recipes always end like that.

All others doth deface

2010-12-18T15:33:00.002Z

Last week a doctor told me that he never tries to wean patients off antidepressants during the Christmas season, because it is doomed to fail. I remembered his words later that day, when I took a shortcut through the Tube station and saw the board giving news about delays. Not one, but two lines were suspended because of -- as TFL's official phrase genteelly puts it -- "a person under a train". I'd never heard of two people jumping on the same afternoon before. When I went into a department store shortly afterward, it seemed appropriate -- in a darkly comic way -- that they were playing not Christmas carols, but a weedy cover version of "Everybody Hurts".

None of this was that relevant to me personally. I've actually been feeling quite happy this year, for a number of reasons. But I know that for many people, the season of "comfort and joy" is anything but, and that seems cruel and unfair. I wonder whether humans have always had a tendency to get depressed at times of public festivity, or if there is something about modern life that encourages it.

Nick has more reflections on the so-called "war on Christmas", and those who are truly under siege.

The tired elf

2010-12-14T08:45:00.003Z

Maybe I took the term "garden leave"* a bit too literally, but yesterday, as my former colleagues headed off to a bleak industrial estate, I went to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. It was very cold, so I spent a lot of time indoors, and particularly in the Princess of Wales Conservatory.** This delightful building has rooms devoted to ten different climactic zones, from desert to rain forest. One area near the rear of the building is currently hosting Father Christmas's*** grotto, and the plants near the grotto's entrance have been sprinkled with artificial snow.

Yesterday I got there just after the grotto closed, and saw a woman emerge who had clearly been playing one of the elves. She still had her costume on, and her face was brightly painted, but her expression was exactly what you'd expect from someone who'd just spent five solid hours helping shrieking kids on and off Santa's lap. If it wouldn't have been so rude, I'd have taken her picture; and if the cafe there sold liquor, I would have bought her a drink.

* American readers please note: "Garden leave" is not the same as "vacation".
** Not, as I originally thought, named in honour of Diana's deep interest in botany.
*** They've made a point of calling it this, rather than Santa's grotto, although "Santa" is common in the UK these days.

A strange morning

2010-12-08T15:34:00.002Z

On my way to work yesterday I saw a Pied Wagtail. If you haven't seen this bird, or read my previous posts about it, you only need to know that the normally staid RSPB bird guide begins its entry with the word "delightful". I watched it running along the pavement in front of me, occasionally taking off for a low, dipping flight, and calling to its flockmates on the other side of the road.

Then a cat emerged from a garden and headed straight for the wagtail. Without thinking, I hollered "NO" and ran toward them. The wagtail flew away before I got there; the cat tried to chase it across the road, but a car came by and he retreated to the pavement.

"You leave the birds alone", I said. The cat glared at me and ducked under a parked car.

As I walked into the pedestrian subway, I wondered what I would have done if the cat had caught the wagtail. I would have tried to get it away from him, but then what? The bird would have needed to be taken to the vet for antibiotics, at the very least. Where would I have found a vet who could do this, and how would I have explained myself at work? Would --

Suddenly the subway reverberated with unearthly bellowing. This turned out to be coming from a woman, her voice raspy with cigarettes, who was shouting and swearing at her small son for having lost his scarf the day before. I had to walk behind them most of the way to the office, and was relieved when they turned off in another direction.

When I got to work, I was called into a meeting and told I was being made redundant -- which I'd expected, and even hoped for. I subsequently learned that Friday would be my last day in the office, which I hadn't expected. Our building in the centre of Harrow is closing, and the business is moving to an isolated industrial estate in Hertfordshire. The company decided it wasn't fair to make redundant employees move, but didn't think it was worth keeping the Harrow building open while we worked our notice period. So they're going to pay me not to work for two months -- known as "garden leave" in the UK -- and then give me my redundancy package.

Although I've been ready to move on for a while, it is strange to be leaving the place where I've spent eight years of my career. I have two days to tie up loose ends and say goodbye. Because I've worked here so long, I will get a good enough payout not to have to worry about money for a while. Now it's just a question of what I do next.

Why I'm not Mighty Mouse

2010-12-07T08:02:00.002Z

When a few of my Facebook friends began urging people to change their profile pictures to cartoon characters, it was a bit of silly fun: filling FB with childhood memories. Within a few days, the meme had mutated. Now changing your profile pic would somehow "fight child abuse", either in the abstract, or specifically on behalf of the NSPCC. I missed the third act, as reported by Snopes, in which another set of users warned that the whole thing was really a paedophile plot to ... um ... lure kids to the computer screen, I guess. But when you put all three together, you have a nice microcosm of modern society.

Back during the bra-colour silliness, some Facebook users tried to inject some common sense by replacing their statuses with advice on how to prevent breast cancer. (The tip they chose was for women to breast-feed their babies, which isn't much help to women without babies -- or indeed to men -- but at least they tried.) I found myself wondering what the equivalent advice would be in this situation.

It seems to me that the best way for adults to prevent child abuse would be to take an interest in the children around them, and be prepared to get involved if a child seemed troubled. But here we run into the difficulty reflected in part 3 of the cartoon character saga. These days, any grown-up who takes an interest in children not related to them is viewed with suspicion. Ironically, as a result of our anti-paedophile paranoia, children's interaction with adults is increasingly limited to their own families -- which is, of course, where most sexual abuse takes place.

And maybe he can win by a Nose

2010-12-05T12:26:00.002Z

(Sorry for the light posting lately. Things have been hectic for reasons I can't fully go into yet -- nothing terrible, just a lot of upheaval. I hope to resume more regular posts before long.)

If you needed further proof of my status as a Shosty fangirl, consider this: I have a daily Google alert set up for "Shostakovich". Lately the activity on this has increased, but not because of a surge of interest in 20th-century classical music. Rather, it's because an Irish racehorse called Shostakovich has been attracting some notice.

Since my feelings about racing are mixed at best, I've generally skipped these articles, but today a headline caught my eye: Shostakovich can hit the right note. What struck me wasn't so much the weak pun as where it appeared: The Daily Mirror. Was this the work of an arts graduate held captive on the copy desk, making a desperate attempt at self-assertion after a day spent proofreading articles about Katy Perry? No, the piece's second sentence showed that the reporter was aware of the musical connection too:

Sylvester Kirk's juvenile couldn't orchestrate a win when favourite in this grade at Wolverhampton last time, but the manner of his two previous successes here - he is unbeaten on the surface - suggest he's capable of another win back in Robin Hood country.

Full marks for trying, guys (or girls?), but I doubt one Mirror reader in a hundred will have any idea what you're on about. Have you considered applying to the Telegraph?

The Jews of Morocco

2010-11-21T17:53:00.002Z

The Jewish Museum's latest exhibition brings together two sets of photographs from Morocco. The first, taken by Elias Harrus in the 1940s and '50s, focuses on the then-thriving Jewish communities in the south of the country. I was impressed, as usual, by the vibrancy of the colour photos from this period (I assume they were taken on Kodachrome, but my one criticism of the exhibition is that it included no technical details).

We saw Moroccan Jews celebrating festivals, working in marketplaces alongside their Muslim neighbours, and visiting the shrines of local Jewish saints (some of whom, like Rabbi David Halevi Draa Zatzal, are also revered by Muslims in the region). Harrus worked for the Alliance Israélite Universelle, which was devoted to opening modern schools in the region; one poignant photo shows a group of young married girls, who were not permitted to attend, watching the other children enrol.

In the decade after Harrus took his photos, more than 95% of Morocco's Jewish community emigrated to Israel. In 2008, Pauline Prior travelled to Morocco to photograph what remained.

Most of Morocco's Jews now live in Casablanca, and the exhibition included photos of their lives, but Prior also visited the Southern villages Harrus had photographed. There she found that many of the old Jewish buildings had fallen into ruins. But some of the synagogues are still being maintained -- by the Muslim population. Because Moroccan citizenship cannot be lost, the Jews and their descendants are free to return at any time; and the Muslim villagers are determined that when their old neighbours come back, they should find their property well cared for.

Buddhist sculptures and African money

2010-11-14T19:31:00.002Z

Buddhist lion
Originally uploaded by Laura A. Brown

Room 3 of the British Museum is currently devoted to two 17th-century Japanese sculptures showing Buddhist bodhisattvas mounted on an elephant and a lion. Like most exhibitions in this room, it's simple but quite well done -- just the sculptures, some explanatory signs and a recorded soundtrack of chanting monks.

The animals are vividly portrayed but not particularly realistic. Why should the lion have a human nose? Is it just that the sculptor had never seen a lion, or was something else intended?

Another interesting small free exhibition focuses on African money and stamps from the past hundred years. I learned about several events in African history that I hadn't heard of before -- for example, Katanga's short-lived attempt to declare independence from DR Congo (the exhibition included an unfinished bank note design, abandoned when the province was forcibly reunited). The museum displayed some quotations from Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, explaining why he wanted to be on the newly independent country's money; from these I guessed that he had turned out to be a dictator, and when I went on Wikipedia I learned I was right. Bringing back more recent memories was a display of Zimbabwean bank notes printed shortly before the government gave up and switched to American currency. There were notes for 25 million, 20 billion, even 50 trillion dollars -- all practically worthless.

Birds in Finland and everywhere

2010-11-09T19:41:00.002Z

I once had a very vivid dream about being in a library devoted to birds. As I mentioned when I blogged about this before, such bricks-and-mortar bird libraries do actually exist, but none of them seem to be particularly near me.

Now, however, there is an online equivalent -- thanks to the Semantic Web-based Thematic European Reference Network Application, or STERNA. Their web site explains:

Birds and all kinds of information related to birds are at the core of the STERNA digital library. It brings together and presents all sorts of multimedia resources on birds, bird species and their habitats in one information space.

You can't look up information on the STERNA site itself, but the people at ARKive (a site I use regularly for its great wildlife photos) have set up a portal that you can use to search their library. Just pop in a bird's name -- scientific or common -- and you can find pictures, videos, sound recordings, articles, maps, museum records or all of the above. I wanted a recording of the Eastern Towhee's "drink-your-tea" call, and the portal came up with 19 good-quality sound files on respectable sites -- a much better result than I'd got by Googling "towhee mp3".

This seems as good a place as any to mention that I recently spent a half-hour or so when I was supposed to be doing homework looking up Finnish bird names on Google Translate instead. I've always thought Finnish was a beautiful language, and its words for birds bore out that idea. I mean, the English mallard is a fine word, but it doesn't sound quite as elegant as sinisorsa. And harakka, meaning "[European] Magpie", must be the most appropriate name for that bird in any language; listen to the recordings on STERNA to see what I mean.

Garnished with shavings of ignorance

2010-11-04T20:35:00.003Z

One of the biggest annoyances encountered by vegetarians in Britain is Parmesan cheese. As I've explained before, within the EU this cheese is never vegetarian. Yet I would estimate that it shows up in at least half of the "vegetarian" dishes served by restaurants in this country, as well as in a depressing number of "vegetarian" cookbooks. I've occasionally tried to politely alert restauranteurs or caterers to the mistake, only to be met with the same look people get when someone on the bus starts talking about past-life experiences.

So I'm pleased that someone a bit higher-profile has now taken up the cause. The Vegetarian Society just unveiled its new "Say Cheese" campaign, to alert people in the food industry to the fact that Parmesan isn't suitable for vegetarians. Hopefully this, like previous campaigns, will get a decent amount of media coverage.

Go drink tea

2010-10-24T07:06:00.001+01:00

There are times in life when you have to make a decision. When you have to push aside everything that's been standing in your way and go after a dream. That happened to me on Friday, when I finally stood up and said, "Yes! I'll do it! I will attend the free Way of Tea demonstration in the Japanese gallery at the British Museum!"

I've been seeing these demonstrations advertised forever, and always thought it might be fun to go. But they're usually held on a weekday, and whenever I've had a day off, either I've had something else to do, or it wasn't taking place, or I just didn't think of it. But on Friday I found myself in London with a free afternoon, and there was a demonstration scheduled that very day. So I joined the standing-room-only crowd in front of the model teahouse in room 92.

I have to admit that I wasn't expecting the presentation to be led by a tall Englishman in a kimono. But it turns out that tea ceremony circles attract both Japanese and non-Japanese members all over the world. The demonstration was given by the London branch of the Urasenke Foundation; there are other tea schools, which all differ slightly from each other.

After giving a short talk on tea cultivation and the history of the Way (and passing around a little box of matcha powder, which almost got lost), our host explained the ceremony to us while a colleague performed an abbreviated version, with two volunteers from the audience serving as guests. They took us through the various steps -- ritually purifying the utensils, warming the bowl, whisking the tea, offering sweets and so forth -- and also instructed the "guests" in the rather complex etiquette they had to follow. The ritual we saw was for "thin tea"; I was intrigued by the presenter's description of "thick tea", which apparently is made with much more powder and has the consistency of yogurt.

I would have liked to have heard more about how the tea ceremony fits into Japanese culture and thought, but it's understandable that a short demonstration focused on the practical side. I'm glad I went, and hope to learn more about the subject in future. If you're interested in attending a demonstration yourself, you can check the museum's events calendar to see when the next one is.

Still more WWT photos

2010-10-23T07:05:00.002+01:00

I'm slightly embarrassed to post this after having seen such amazing photography yesterday, but I've entered three more photos in the WWT competition. (See previous entries here, here and here.) This will probably be the last lot. Have a look and vote if you're so minded:

The crane, by the way, was featured in the Wetland Centre's "Duck of the Day" talk when I last visited. OK, he's not a duck, but we forgave him that because he was utterly delightful -- friendly, vocal, inquisitive, and already eye-catching despite still being in his juvenile plumage. I'm very glad these birds are being reintroduced to Britain.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year

2010-10-22T20:59:00.006+01:00

For quite a while, the young Hungarian photographer Bence Máté was a fixture of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. He could be relied on to scoop up the Eric Hosking Award, and usually earned prizes or commendations in a few other categories as well. Then, in the 2008 and 2009 competitions, he seemed to disappear. They didn't even bother awarding the Hosking prize in his absence.

Well, this year he's back -- and he's finally claimed the top prize. His delightful picture showing the silhouettes of leafcutter ants as they go about their business in Costa Rica is the wildlife photograph of the year.

While there's no denying the photo's excellence, I did wonder if the judges' choice of a picture of insects had been influenced by last year's tame wolf fiasco. Presumably no one can claim that Máté got his subjects from a local ant farm!

Máté also won the Hosking Award yet again, for a portfolio of six photographs that included the ant picture. I particularly liked the King Vulture and the playful Burrowing Owl chicks. Next year will be the last year that Máté is eligible for this particular award, so they will need to either find another worthy young photographer or retire the category for good.

The WPY exhibition is always one of the most satisfying of the year. No photo on display was less than brilliant, but there were certain ones that stood out for me. Like Jochen Schlenker's stunning scene of a single ibex in the vastness of the French Alps, its reflection captured perfectly in the lake below. Or David Herasimtschuk's haunting picture of a lachryphagous moth drinking from a tapir's eye. In the bird behaviour category, two very different photos stayed with me: Arto Juvonen's winning image of a goshawk carrying off a screaming gull nearly as big as itself; and Yossi Eshbol's charming picture of a Black-Winged Stilt and her chicks in their salt-crystal nest.

Last year's harsh winter in much of the Northern Hemisphere meant that the competition included plenty of snowy shots, like 14-year-old Sam Cairns's landscape of a snowy loch with swans, and Orsolya Haarberg's muskoxen emerging from a winter nap. Also, though I could be mistaken, it seemed to me that rather more of the entrants than usual had taken their photos close to home instead of travelling abroad. The effect of the recession, maybe?

I usually come away with the name of one photographer to watch. This time it was Francisco Mingorance, with his long-exposure shots taken at dusk in volcanic landscapes in Spain. His "Bugloss at Sunset" is one example; he also won the Creative Visions of Nature category for an aerial image of the Rio Tinto.

One of the competition's aims is to highlight environmental issues and humanity's often cruel treatment of animals. This means some entries are always hard to look at -- like everything in the One Earth Award category, or Mark Leong's shocking portfolio of the illegal wildlife trade, which won the new Wildlife Photojournalist of the Year prize. More optimistic, perhaps, was Kai Fagerström's specially commended entry in the same category, which showed the variety of animals that have taken over a house abandoned by humans in the Finnish woods.

I also found reason for hope in Haijun Pei's portrait of a Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey, which won first prize for photographers aged 10 and under. These monkeys, like many of China's rare species, are endangered. If there are enough children in China who love them, their future may be more secure.

Cézanne's card players

2010-10-21T22:34:00.001+01:00

Often a small, little-hyped exhibition will impress me more than a major show. That happened again today, when I went to the new Cézanne exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery. This show takes up just one room, and you can see it as part of the museum's normal admission price. Yet I enjoyed it far more than the Gauguin show at Tate Modern.

The Courtauld have displayed three of Cézanne's five paintings of card players (the owners of the other two weren't willing to lend them), along with preliminary sketches and related paintings. I was especially impressed by the two earliest paintings -- slightly different depictions of the same scene -- which expressed a tremendous amount while using minimal detail.

The sitters for the portraits in the exhibition were all peasants who worked on Cézanne's father's estate. With the Gauguin show still fresh in my mind, I couldn't help thinking of how different Cézanne's attitude toward his subjects seemed to be. Where Gauguin saw the Breton peasants and Tahitian natives he painted as characters in his primitivist fantasies, Cézanne portrayed his sitters with individuality and dignity.

I ended up walking through the exhibition twice, having looked at the rest of the Courtauld's small but wonderful collection in between. I didn't know much about Cézanne's work before, but this intimate study of a single theme made me want to know a lot more.

Canaletto at the National Gallery

2010-10-19T16:02:00.003+01:00

Yesterday morning I was ordering some new prescription sunglasses, and a senior optician argued with his assistant about the tint she'd chosen for me. "Too dark", he said. "The sunlight doesn't get that strong here. You'd only need that if you went abroad".

It's true, the quality of sunlight varies hugely from country to country. I was reminded of this later in the day, when I walked into the National Gallery's exhibition of 18th-century paintings of Venice. The works by Canaletto and his rivals (the two elements that make up the exhibition's subtitle) showed light of a kind you simply don't see in London. This was true even in the paintings of crowded urban areas, where the buildings cast shadows on each other. And of course, in the more spacious scenes of the great canals and piazzas, the sky was the deepest, clearest blue.

The exhibition started with some of the earliest creators of "view paintings" (vedute). These were the artists Canaletto had to beat when he started out. I found that the two painters who appealed most to me from this group, Johan Richter and Luca Carlevarijs, gave the people in their paintings far more individual character than Canaletto did. Canaletto seemed to consider the crowds in his scenes to be just another element of the overall composition.

Next the exhibition's focus turned to Michele Marieschi, the biggest rival to emerge after Canaletto was established. It was hard not to like Marieschi, a poor kid who quickly rose to challenge the older, higher-status painter. Several of his works, indeed, were good enough to be mistaken for Canalettos until the 20th century. But when his paintings hung next to the real thing, you saw that he never quite achieved the brilliance and clarity of Canaletto's light.

Canaletto's nephew, Bernardo Bellotto, came a bit closer. But rather than compete with his uncle, he eventually headed north and painted scenes of Dresden and Warsaw. His paintings from Venice left me wanting to see his later work. Finally, at the end of Canaletto's life, Francesco Guardi took the vedute in an entirely new direction, anticipating Impressionism by a century.

Unfortunately, the crowds in the exhibition (it was quite full even on a Monday afternoon) meant I couldn't stand in front of each painting as long as I would have liked. You could spend a long time taking in the details of each one.

My only criticism concerns the ticketing. Not only is the price of £12 rather high for a relatively small exhibition, but the Gallery has turned its online booking system over to Ticketmaster, which rips off customers by charging a per-ticket booking fee -- something I've never seen for an art exhibition before. Do see the show if you can, but try to buy your tickets in person.

An open letter

2010-10-18T07:21:00.003+01:00

My Sunday got off to a troubling start yesterday when I received a Facebook friend request from someone whose very name gave me a jolt of anxiety. It was the mother of someone who had made my life hell for nearly a decade.

This is the response I have sent to her. I post it here (with names deleted) because it occurs to me that I spent much of my childhood suffering in silence -- either afraid to complain about what was being done to me, or not taken seriously or not believed. This woman's son and his buddies had no qualms about humiliating me in public. I see nothing wrong with publicly calling out those who enabled it.

Dear Ms X,

I understand that you are Y's mother. I have also confirmed with my own mother that you were fully aware of his behaviour toward me throughout our school days. That being the case, I trust you will understand why I am unwilling to accept your "friend" request.

Perhaps you do not, in fact, understand the effect on a child of being ridiculed, humiliated and subjected to cruel treatment on an almost daily basis over a period of years. I can tell you that by the time I was 12 or 13, I was afraid to venture further than a small "safe zone" around my home, because of my fear of meeting your son or some of the friends he had induced to torment me. I became severely depressed and even thought of committing suicide to escape their behaviour. (If you watch the news, you will know that some bullied children have done just that.) Worst of all, the bullying had a long-lasting effect on my self-image. It was many years before I could believe that I was not the pathetic loser Y said I was, or that anyone could like me for who I am.

I have moved on since then, and I sincerely hope, for his sake, that Y has too. But I would prefer not to be reminded of that extremely painful time every time I log into Facebook. Also, while I realise "friend" can have a different meaning in social networking than it does in real life, I am still not inclined to be "friends" with those who acquiesced in my suffering.

Thanks for understanding.

Sincerely,
Laura Brown

I grew up in a time when adults considered bullying to be no big deal, just something kids did. Most former victims of bullying I know can quote a standard litany of responses they got from the grown-ups they asked for protection. "They're just teasing -- don't be so thin-skinned." "The boys probably just like you." "Ignore them and they'll stop." "Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you." "Don't worry about what other people think of you, just live for yourself [at age 12]." "You must have done something to make them not like you; why don't you try to fit in?" I heard them all. Needless to say, if the adults saying these things had been subjected to similar torment by their own peers, they would have gone running to their lawyers, if not the police.

Nowadays schools in Britain, at least, take bullying a lot more seriously, and many schools have "zero-tolerance" policies. Of course, having a policy and enforcing it are two very different things, but it's better than having no policy and not even acknowledging the problem, which is what happened in my day.

When discussing bullying with friends, I've noticed two things: 1) many, many adults had traumatic experiences with bullies as children, and 2) every single one of them was convinced at the time that they were all alone. Hopefully, the attention being given to bullying now will at least let future victims know they aren't the only ones.

(For an excellent account of childhood bullying from an adult perspective, I recommend Ann-Marie's "Bully Chronicles", accessible from the right sidebar of her blog.)