I was lucky...

I was lucky, I guess. I learned not only habits of mind, but substance of value. Both have informed my life.

The habit of analysing a text to discover the interplay of surface and depth, to uncover its connections to the culture in which it's embedded, to think thoughts I couldn't otherwise think, all these have enriched my life. Most of all, they've helped me get some inkling of what it's like to be someone else.

As for substance: The works I read for my degree have common themes. They are all riffs on the central insight of our religions and philosophies: that connection with other human beings is the only thing that makes life worth living.

My faith tradition supplies one version of this insight: "Love God, and love your neighbour." To love God means to love his creation. To love your neighbour means to see each other as precious beings. To do both means to be overwhelmed by awe at the gift of being alive.

It was the study of secular texts that brought me to see the sacred texts as primary. They are historically the first ones to teach those habits of mind and those matters of substance. That's why they endure. And that's why study of the humanities remains essential. Without the discipline of deep reading, a text will feed the darkest impulses of the human heart.

 

Three Haiku

1.
Frog in sunlit pond
Heron stalking with prim steps
Bubbles on water

2.
Planes glide through blue air
Silver fish in white water
Death waits for his time

3.
Tulips stand bravely
By dark cedar hedge, spilling
Colours like water

 2022.05.24

Airplane travel

We don’t travel on airplanes, we are shipped from one location to another like parcels of fish.

Sure, there are windows from which we can observe the clouds, if any, and the topography, which looks so little like the maps we’ve filed in our memories that we can barely recognise our location. That’s why some like to watch the display of the flight path over a vaguely aerial view of the ground. The alternative is to watch a movie, which seems a more honest admission that we can’t experience flight as travel.

Travel requires not only movement, but the sensation, the awareness, the feeling of movement. There is none such when we fly in a modern aircraft. The plane may as well be standing still somewhere in space with the surroundings flowing past. A car isn’t much different: we sit still in the car, and the road, the landscape, the air move past us. Does this mean the car is moving? Hard to say, until something interrupts the motion of the car, and we move inside the car and possibly out of it. The absence of the sensation of movement explains why driving and flight simulators work so well.                                

Travel requires agency. We move ourselves, by moving our limbs. We move across and through our surroundings. In a plane, in a car, in a train, we are carried by the machine. The only machine that enables us to travel is the bicycle, which we cause to move by moving our limbs, just as we cause our body to move by moving our limbs.

“Travel by airplane” misrepresents what’s actually happening. The plane transports us, just as it transports our bags.  Just like a parcel of fish.

Last two by Marsh, for now

Ngaio Marsh. Overture to Death (1939) The Vale of Pen Cuckoo: an inoffensive old house inhabited by a squire, his son, and his cousin. A plain old church and adjacent vicarage inhabited by the vicar and his daughter. A doctor with an invalid wife, attracted to a newcomer who is too smart by half. Two women of a certain age infatuated with the vicar, hating each other, and vying for the right to play the overture to the play. The play is put on to raise funds to replace the piano in the village hall. Someone rigs that  piano with a gun aimed at the player. The gun goes off when the victim treads on the loud pedal.
     Alleyn untangles the clues, manages to construct an accurate timetable, and finds that everything hinges on a box used to elevate a watcher to window level. The charm of the book is its character drawing. Marsh had a sharp eye for foolishness, and for the evil done by people who consider themselves respectable. She also has some sympathy for people who suffer from a stunted emotional life. Well done. ***

Ngaio Marsh. Death and the Dancing Footman (1942) Another case that’s solved by constructing a precise timetable, this time made possible a by a footman who dances to Boomps-A-Daisy, a popular tune he hears on the radio. The characters aren’t as interesting as usual. The setting is a weekend party that the host has deliberately arranged to bring antagonistic people together. We know from the beginning that this will result in murder. The puzzle is first, who will be the victim; and second, how it was done. A handy snow storm forces the unwelcome conclusion that the murderer is one of the guests.
     Alleyn sorts it all, of course. The solution is suitably satisfying in terms of poetic justice, and a romance blossoms. Marsh has a soft spot for lovers. She also tries her hand at natural disaster: her description of a car journey through a snow-covered wilderness is a kind of set piece.  ***

Two more by Marsh

Ngaio Marsh. Death In A White Tie (1938) It’s The Season. Lord Robert “Bunchy” Gospell, a friend of Alleyn and many other people, is found dead in a taxi after a specially successful coming out party. He has been keeping eyes and ears open to discover what he can of a blackmail racket. That was the motive for killing him. The murderer has ben very, very clever, but his eye and taste for elegant Renaissance objets do him in. That, and very careful tracing of the times different people were able to overhear Bunchy’s call to Alleyn.
     Bunchy at one point reflects on the cruelty of dragging young women through the debutante season, of placing them so blatantly on show for the marriage market. He’s a kind man, and  always dances with some of the wallflowers. Troy was at the ball, so Alleyn can plead his suit. Marsh is very good on the social and psychological effects of the Season. She flubs Alleyn’s love story. She’s trying for some kind of noble renunciation in case Troy rejects Alleyn, I think, and it doesn’t work. The glimpses in the later books of the Alleyns as a married couple and parents are more convincing.
     There’s some casual and silly racism here, too. Definitely of the times, and a reminder that current attempts to present a less offensive version of the past don’t work well. Marsh usually expresses irritation and more at racist attitudes, so its presence here jars.
     Nevertheless, a good puzzle, and a pretty good portrait of the upper classes behaving and misbehaving. ***

Ngaio Marsh. Death at the Bar (1939) Three friends arrive for their annual holiday in Ottercombe, an isolated fishing village with a cosy pub. One of them, a vain barrister, prods a recently a established local man. Later, the barrister dies of cyanide poisoning. The several other people with reason to dislike him create the maze that Alleyn and Fox must traverse. All’s well that ends well, including the obligatory romance. A nicely done puzzle, as usual, and nicely done semi-satiric portraits of te common vices of vanity, lechery, jealousy, envy, and so on. I’m still on a Marsh binge, and enjoyed rereading this novel. ***

Five by Marsh

Ngaio Marsh. Death of a Peer (1940) (A Surfeit of Lampreys [1941] in the UK) The Lampreys are a charming bunch of aristocratic ne’er-do-wells, with appallingly vague notions of how to spend money (when they’ve got it). They’ve managed to survive on luck. But now they really have run out of money, and Lord Charles’s appeal to his older brother, Lord Wutherwood and Rune, elicits an ill-tempered refusal. A few minutes later Wutherwood falls out of the lift, dying of a nasty skewer in the eye. Alleyn and crew do a nice bit of ‘teckery as usual, but the charm of this novel is the family, and the portrait of their New Zealand friend. She’s a nice girl, pleasantly overwhelmed by London, and an essential witness.

     The murderer could have been one of the family, but Marsh, I think, couldn’t bear to let one of these delightful specimens hang, so one of the servants dunit. That’s not a spoiler, as several servants have motive enough.
     A pleasant entertainment. Marsh always delivers, even when she’s not at the top of her form. **½

Ngaio Marsh. Dead Water. (1963) A boy suffers from warty hands and bullying. A “lady in green” at the spring tells him to wash his hands in the stream. He does so, and his warts disappear. Of course an industry grows up around this event. The owner of the property wants the whole thing shut down, and arrives to enforce her will. A day or so later, one of the promoters is found dead at the spring. Personal as well as business rivalries and entanglements make Alleyn’s job more difficult than usual. Marsh shows us a mix of greed, naive faith, passionate partisanship, cool skepticism, jealousy, and sundry other human failings. Above average for Marsh. It was one of the novels adapted for the TV series starring Patrick Malahide. ***.

Ngaio Marsh. Death in Ecstasy (1936) Nigel Bathgate, with nothing to do, visits the Church of the Sacred Flame, a syncretic cult designed to separate the credulous from their pennies and pounds. He witness the death of a Chosen Virgin at the moment of induction into that blessed state. An early Alleyn, he’s still somewhat too self-consciously facetious. Bathgate acts both as note-taker and reporter. Marsh indulges her talent for satire and social comedy. The motive for murder was money, as it often is. Well done entertainment, with nicely modulated touches of melodrama, and a subtext warning against peculiar creeds. I enjoyed this re-read.
     My copy was given me by my Aunt Rosemary. It’s a Penguin printed in 1941, with the green-for-crime cover of a genuine Penguin paperback, and a tea stain. Apparently a well-read copy on thin newsprint, now browning around the edges. On the last page it invites readers to deposit the book at any Post Office for distribution to the armed forces. The back cover is an advert for Pears soap, at 6d a bar.  ***
 

Ngaio Marsh. Enter a Murderer (1935) The second Alleyn mystery. The puzzle is plausibly set and solved. The setting is a theatre company, the murder occurs on stage, Alleyn happens to be in the audience courtesy of Nigel Bathgate, whose friend Frank Gardener plays the lead. Alleyn’s still an imitation of the early Wimsey, but Marsh’s skill at keeping up the  narrative pace allows us to be swept along on a pleasant wave of make-believe. I enjoyed this re-read, not least because of the convincing ambience of the theatre. Well done. **½

    

Ngaio Marsh. Vintage Murder (1937) Alleyn’s in New Zealand, riding the train to Middleton, where the theatre company that’s also on the train will be performing. Once again, Marsh convinces us of the reality of her theatrical setting. The actors, the managers, the stage staff, all ring true. The opening chapter tells of the journey through the New Zealand night. As a set piece, one of the best descriptions of train travel I’ve read.
     The murder of the company’s manager and majority owner leads to revelations of past and present rivalries and a few crucial secrets swimming among the red herrings. This is the fifth Alleyn. Marsh has mastered the genre, and shows increasing confidence in her writing. These novels are now historical documents. Comparison with what once was contemporary fiction shows what current attempts at historical fiction usually get it wrong. A pleasurable re-read. ***

What is Life? A comment on Viruses

There have been many definitions of “life”. I think the simplest definition of life is this one: Life is a system that acquires the substances and energy needed to continue to exist and to reproduce. If it fails to do this, it ceases to exist. Any such system is an organism.

By that definition, a virus is alive. It’s the simplest form of life: a packet of genetic information that drifts about until it latches onto a cell that it can invade. It then uses the cell to acquire the substance and energy it needs in order to reproduce.

Since a virus needs another organism to survive and reproduce, it is a parasite. Most parasites either do not harm their hosts or provide some benefit. A few (mostly microbes) are necessary for their host’s well-being and even continued existence. A few parasites harm their hosts, and some kill their hosts. A parasite species will survive only as long as its hosts do not die out.

It’s likely that many viruses, like many microbes, are not merely beneficial but necessary for their hosts’ well being. We know enough about bacteria, for example, to know that without them we would have trouble digesting much of our food. We don’t know that much about viruses. But we do know that some of them kill bacteria that are dangerous to us. We also know that viruses can transport bits of DNA between species, and that this sometimes results in beneficial changes to an organism’s genome.

What all this amounts to is that we are woefully ignorant of viruses’ roles in the web of life. The handful that bother us create the impression that we would be better off without them. That is certainly a false impression. We just don’t know enough. Yet.

Footnote: Very early on, some computer programmers wrote small programs with a rather strange property: they would use the computer's operating system to write copies of themselves into every available memory space. Rewriting these programs so that they would send copies of themselves to other computers was the next step. Thus the computer virus. Are they alive? Most of them are not. To be alive, the program would have to also prevent the computer from shutting down, thus maintaining the energy it needs for continued existence.