majrodgers

First item:

Here in NW Ohio we have been plunged into Stygian darkness in the mornings yet again. Last Saturday night (March 9) we were instructed to change our clocks to daylight-savings time by advancing them one hour. The good news that such an act brings is that the evening stays lighter longer; the bad news is that same hour of daylight is subtracted from the morning, so the morning remains dark for longer. This is all fine and dandy for good folk living on the Eastern seaboard where the sun rises earlier than it does around here (and probably the people there do not get up as early as do mid-westerners), so they fail to notice much of a difference. At the western edge of the time zone, however, the sun is more laggardly in its rising, so now, when it used to be coming light at 7 AM when the kids are on the streets waiting for their school buses, it is pitch black and the poor kids are set into a state of confusion. The same applies to me, whereas last week I was going to the gym as the sun was rising; now I am driving there in complete darkness. Bah! Humbug!

Who decides these things and what is the rationale? Surely it cannot be the US Congress as they are incapable of making any decision on anything it seems, especially one that concerns my convenience. So who is it-perhaps the astronomer royal, or the US equivalent, if there is one? My inquiries, admittedly desultory, among my friends and acquaintances have come up with two responses: 1) it is to benefit the farmers who need to get the cows in the right mood for milk production, or some such. However, it was never explained whether it benefited cows stationed at the eastern edge of the time zone, or the other. In the US most cows are based in Wisconsin which is in the Central Time Zone, so why visit this nonsense on Ohio residents? On reflection I think this view was the prevalent one in Britain where there is only a single time zone, anyway. 2) It is to do with energy saving, as the evenings are longer and therefore the lights can go on later and since those easterners never open their eyes until sunup anyway, the extra juice used to combat the morning darkness will be used only in western regions of the time zone, yielding a small net saving. I welcome enlightenment (pun intended) on this issue.

Second item:

Recently I was having a very pleasant dinner with a Sarasota friend when the phrase “knocked up” was used. This caught my immediate attention and I must have annoyed my dinner partner somewhat as my mind drifted from what she was saying to my private thoughts on that phrase. I was perusing the famous quotation of Winston Churchill (or was it George Bernard Shaw?) that The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language, and this particular phrase exemplifies the difference. In the US those two words taken together mean very simply that a lady has become “with child”, whereas across the pond it has the connotation of someone going to another person’s house in the morning to awaken them. In this context it is presumably derived from the times of the Industrial Revolution when the working classes did not have alarm clocks and the owner of the coal mine or the iron works, to ensure that he had the required complement of slaves for the morning shift, would employ someone to go around the neighborhood tapping on bedroom windows, often with a long pole, such as a clothes prop; thus they were “knocked awake, i.e. up”.

Speaking of Winston Churchill there are those who believe him to have been a monstrous warmonger, although personally I think that the only warmongering he did was to use every trick in the book to get Franklin Roosevelt and the United States to declare war on Germany, which eventually they did. And if he indeed was a warmonger, Churchill did a lot to redeem himself by writing the mammoth “A History of the English-Speaking Peoples” a four-volume history of Britain and its former colonies and possessions throughout the world, covering the period from Caesar’s invasions of Britain (55 BC) to the beginning of the First World War (1914). I am waiting for that more recent warmonger, code-named “W”, to accomplish an even less-than-monumental work of redemption.

Third item:

I see that the Roman Catholic world has a new Pope just in time for St. Patrick’s day; I wish him (always a him!) and his flock of non-voters, the best of luck; maybe he will be able to do something about the imposition of daylight-saving time on us poor sinners.

Happy Paddie’s!

O’er west horizon sinks the setting sun

As Earth in its gyration turns

E’er close transporting woeful night, as day

Its wearied labor slow adjourns

In loath retreat now does the vanished orb

Flame hovering cirrus with bright fire

Thus ending splendid day with dazzled sky

And sailor’s fond delight inspire

Whilst overhead a slice of gibbous moon

Peers meekly through that flimsy cloak

And strives to grace the shore with silv’ry sheen

Thereby eschew night’s somber yoke

Among celestial constellations glides

That moon, to its ecliptic held

Its Newton’s force limp sea doth lift and tides

Become relentlessly compelled

E’er soon the crescent moon pursues the sun

And darkened carapace unfurls

Lone pierced by bright pinpricks from distant stars

And galaxies with far-off worlds

What of this day, how was it gaily spent?

How did we use that fleeting space?

By ling’ring lax or lab’ring hard, perchance?

Or nestling long in fierce embrace?

Let me introduce you to my new neighbors.

This is Asako Tamura, who is to sing the role of Leila in Bizet’s “Pearl Fishers” at the Sarasota Opera in February, and you can find all about her at http://www.asakotamura.com, and you can hear her on this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f1Cxd4mZxk, which was recorded in Montevideo which, as #1 son Michael would tell you, is the capital of Uruguay.

And here are her mother, Ryoko, who came from Japan to babysit, and daughter Marina. Mother is a singer too, in choruses, so she told me.

They moved in about a week ago and are to live next door to me for a month or more. They make a big contrast to the 4 Swedish guys who rented next door before the Tamura’s arrived; they were all about golfing, fishing and alcoholic libations-very nice guys, too. This year in Sarasota I am being exposed to a bevy of international people; the lady who resides on my other side, Loretta, is half Italian and half Greek and we converse in Italian, so I am getting practice for my upcoming stint in Castiglione della Pescaia.

Arrivederci!!

Would you believe that I landed a shark yesterday? Note the careful choice of words: I did not say that I caught a shark but that I landed one. Whatever, it was an unplanned and thoroughly stimulating experience.

The story goes like this: I was taking my usual sunset walk through the surf on Lido beach when ahead of me I see a line-up of four fishing poles all with lines leading into the sea. This was no surprise, since most evenings that I walk there, this Hispanic gentleman sets up his line of four poles and watches for action from a beach chair. I have walked by him now some dozens of times coming and going, but never once have I seen his tranquility disturbed by a sea creature. However, yesterday was very different; as I approached I could see that he had taken one of the poles out of its clamp and he was reeling in and the pole was seriously bent so I figured it was something of major proportions. He was still working on this line when another of the four suddenly started dancing and arcing towards the water and even someone as ignorant of the art of fishing as I am knew that there was another bite. The fisherman saw it also and hurried to deal with it. By this time I had come abreast of him and he suddenly pushed the first pole at me and uttered something in Spanish (I suppose) that was completely unintelligible to me. However, given the situation and the urgency of what was happening, I assumed that he was asking me to reel it in. So there we were, he was reeling in the second bite and I was holding onto the first for dear life, trying to figure out how to operate the reeling device on the pole. Once again, however, my remarkable intellect was equal to the situation in that I figured I could bring the fish to shore simply by walking backwards away from the sea; this would have the same effect as shortening the amount of line. So I proceeded thus and soon I saw the animal that had been caught and was thrashing about in the shallow water in a battle with the hook in its mouth. It possessed a long nose, a wide mouth and the tell-tale dorsal fin-I guessed that I had landed a shark! Now that the fight was effectively over, I walked back to the edge of the sea and replaced the pole in its clamp allowing the critter to do its threshing on the sand. I looked over to my companion and saw that he had a similar catch, viz., a grey shark. He was yelling “Shark” at me which either confirmed the identification or there is a Spanish word that sounds like shark. My little blighter was about 2 feet in length and his was about 3, not exactly the size of Jaws, but sharks nevertheless. I wish that I had carried a camera, phone or other photographic device with me so that I could have recorded the identification and size, but alas I did not. Now that the show was over I continued on my walk, leaving him to do whatever he needed to do. The unexpected drama of suddenly being required to land a shark, even a little one, made my day-sort of.

Greetings to all on this winter solstice which, in Sarasota FL, is not very wintry.

Mom can I have chocolate milk this morning?

No! Sweet Sue you’re putting on weight

And did you brush your teeth yet, dear Johnnie?

Come on kids, school’s starting at eight.

And the flags fly half-staff.

Can we have breakfast at Starbucks today?

Please, please, Dad, that would be so great.

I’d love a chunk of their lemon pound cake,

No, no son, my car-pool won’t wait.

And the flags fly half-staff.

For Christmas I’d like that video game

They demoed on TV last night.

No Jim! That’s not at all good for your age

It would make your mother go white.

And the flags fly half-staff.

Mommy, I can’t go to my school right now

My tummy is giving me pain

Oh, come on, my lad, you’ll get over it

I hate when I hear you complain!

And the flags fly at half-staff.

Here we go again. It seems that Syria, a neighbor of Israel, has stockpiles of nerve gas, aka chemical weapons, and the US and, by extension, everybody else in NATO is becoming concerned that as the Syrian rebel forces squeeze Bashar al-Assad and his henchmen into the tightest of corners, they will unleash these weapons of mass extermination upon their foes, viz., the people of Syria. My guess is that, being an MD who has presumably taken the Hippocratic Oath, he will refrain from the use of such a weapon and will prefer to carry the fight to his enemies using conventional body-piercing methodology such as bullets and shrapnel, which is apparently less politically incorrect. Israel, being a country next door to Syria and in eternal conflict with it, though never with chemical weaponry, has a proper concern that as the Syrian conflict reaches a climax, these stockpiles will be inherited by the rebel forces, after which anything could happen. We are warned that the weapons could find their ways to the hands of crazies such as Al Qaeda or Hezbollah, thereby upsetting the balance of power in the region. So the state of Israel, with the assistance of its multitudinous proxies, prods the slumbering US, with the result that Mrs. Clinton, standing tall in her most stateswoman-like posture, draws a red line in the sand across which Mr. Assad must not go.

But what if he flips her off? What do we, i.e. NATO, do?  Do we dispatch an aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean armed with drones (maybe we already did) and thence bombard the storage sites? Would such an activity unwittingly release the VX and Sarin gases into the atmosphere whence they could drift into the surrounding populated areas? After all, as the Chernobyl incident showed, substances carried on the wind know no national boundaries; air-borne chemical death is indiscriminate, visiting itself on friend and foe alike.

And these drones, might they be steered, as in the Afghan theater, by pilots clad in flight gear sitting at video terminals in Tampa FL (close to where I am now) where resides the HQ of Central Command which has the purview for conflicts in mid-eastern countries? And after a particularly successful bombing run would these self-same pilots and their senior officers repair to parties hosted by Ms. Kelly, that much-acclaimed socialite? If they were, one imagines that she would be urging them to do their utmost to ensure that they only unleashed their smart bombs on Syrian stockpiles of Sarin when the surface wind was blowing from the West, in that way to protect the people in the land whence she hails; such a small world isn’t it?

Meanwhile, a half a world away we learn that voter-approved initiatives in the Great States of Washington and Colorado have legalized the recreational use of marijuana/cannabis/dope. In Washington’s neighbor state of Oregon, there is already widespread use of pot for medicinal purposes and even a healthy person there will not be hassled by the police for having an ounce or so in his pocket or her purse. However, growing, selling or possessing any amount of marijuana remains illegal in ALL states of the union under federal law, so if you are wish to go toking in Tacoma, you had better check that the FBI are not in the same room. This can only be described as surreal; citizens at the same place and time being subjected to two contradicting laws. Surely this move to liberalization will be frowned upon by many, but for others it will represent a business opportunity. Travel agents will be setting up pot tourism flights to Seattle from all over the US; it will be a boon for the hotel and airline industries. And what about the return flights, will the TSA, being a federal agency, set their full body scanners to sniff out cannabis on all passengers leaving SeaTac and other airports? I can visualize large crowds of tokers clustered outside airport doors, smoking up the remains of the stuff still in their pockets rather than turn it in to the boys and girls of the TSA; could non-smokers get high while threading their ways through the massed puffers? I can’t wait to hear how this turns out!

These momentous events, including the evidence from Egypt that the president thinks that he is a pharaoh, are dwarfed into insignificance by the truly world-shaking news that the Duchess of Cambridge had a severe bout of morning sickness for which she had to be hospitalized. Very few pregnant ladies are taken to the hospital for such an everyday occurrence, but then very few ladies are carrying a future monarch within their persons. The sympathetic noises from the world’s sisterhood for her ignoble condition were mixed with expressions of joy that this was the result of a hitherto-unannounced Royal Pregnancy. Poor Britain, it has hardly got over a Royal Wedding and a Royal Olympics and now it is faced with another media blitz over the usual questions raised by any pregnancy, even non-Royal ones; boy or girl, twins or more, when will it/they arrive, and what will the little bundle of joy be named???

If it is a boy and to be named after his father, there are four names to choose from: William, Arthur, Philip and Louis. Since the dad will be William V, should the throne ever become vacated by today’s incumbent, a William in utero would be number VI, but would a female in utero be named after her paternal grandmother? We await the outcome of these momentous decisions with bated breath.

My question about all this is more philosophical; when does the little blighter gain Royalty status and become entitled to HRH? The mother is a commoner, like me and 99.99% of British people (I refrain from using the word “subjects” here because I do not regard myself as being subject to any monarchic entity), but Kate’s lucky egg, a poor haploid commoner, was impregnated by sperm from a Royal – a future monarch, no less. Is the now diploid entity immediately entitled to HRH, with Royal sperm trumping all other claims? Or does it have to wait until its blood can be shown to be truly blue? Again my breath is bated until the answers to all these questions are revealed. One thing I know for sure is that the womankind of Britain, of the seventeen realms of QEII, of her Commonwealth, of the remaining colonies, and of the former colonies, etc., etc., are gushing at all this kerfuffle!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

A play in one act (unfinished)

Act 1 (of 1)

Scene 1(of 1)

The atrium in the Curia Julia (Senate House) in ancient Rome in the time of Emperor Baractacus. Two senators, Durbinus and Macanius are sitting on a bench conversing.

Senator Macanius: Good day to you, senator, you are looking especially well.

Senator Durbinus: Thank you, dear colleague, I am indeed well, and who would not be given the happy proclamation of our new emperor Baractacus, who, as you know is from my very own province.

Macanius: Humbug! That man has radical intentions and will set about to destroy the great republic of Rome; a republic that was established through the military power of our brave Caesars. Look at what happened only last week when the great general Petrarcus was humiliated by Baractacus in front of the whole Empire; just because he took his scribe as a mistress; I ask you, I wager that not one man in this senate is without a mistress. I understand that he is not a senator and had a highly sensitive position and therefore was needed to be seen as whiter than white. So he had a minor lapse of judgment, but surely not enough to be brought to his knees. But for this, one day he himself might have been proclaimed emperor of Rome.

Durbinus; Maybe so, respected senator, but what damage has been done to Rome? There are hundreds of fine generals waiting to take his place; one thing that this empire is not short of is generals. I suppose that this has come about because Rome is constantly engaged in war in one part of the world or other.

Macanius: That is so, dear friend, but the wars are absolutely necessary to ensure Rome’s rightful place in the world. We are the center of philosophy, culture and art and the barbarians in the world beyond resent this and are always seeking ways to take us down. Thus we need a great army with copious resources to uphold our national security. We must be strong in order to secure our continued existence.

Durbinus: Yes, that is an argument that we heard much of from the former emperor Giorgian Secundus who, with his henchmen started two wars against nations far in the orient and sent thousands of our prime citizens to their deaths. It seems that when we are blessed with emperors of your political stripe we find that the taxes of the people are always used to procure more soldiers and more armaments, instead of being used to improve the health and wellbeing of our citizenry.

Macanius: There you go again with your plaintive song about the people and their wellbeing; it makes me want to puke. Without a strong military your people and the rest of us would be overrun by the barbarian hordes; then they would see how well off they are now by paying their taxes and supporting the military-industrial complex.

Durbinus: Listening to you brings to mind the old joke about the elephant powder, do you remember that one?

Macanius: I don’t think so, remind me.

Durbinus: Well, I was out walking by the Tiberius the other day and I saw a man in the distance who was bending over and appeared to be waving his hand around, sort of gesticulating at the ground. As I neared him, I realized that he was sprinkling some kind of powder on the sidewalk. I was curious so I asked him what he was doing and he replied that he was sprinkling the elephant powder. I expressed surprise and asked him what the elephant powder was for, to which he replied that it was to keep the elephants away. Now I was very confused as I had never seen an elephant in Rome, especially along the banks of the Tiberius and so I raised this point to him, to which he replied, “See, it’s working.” So I liken your military might to this man’s elephant powder.

Macanius: Now I know that you are crazy; you do not deserve protection from the screaming hordes. Think of your wives and children and grandchildren and how life would be for them under barbarian rule.

Durbinus: Well, since Rome has persistently looted and pillaged from those same barbarians over decades and sucked them dry of their resources, I imagine if they come tomorrow they would do some pillaging and looting and even raping, a sort of reparations. But they are humans, after all, and eventually they would settle down and life would come to a new equilibrium, I am sure.

Macanius: You are impossible, esteemed colleague; will you never listen to reason?  But to change the subject, thinking of the Petrarcus affair, what do you know of that woman-what’s her name-who initiated the events that led to his downfall and has been the center of attention of late?

Durbinus; I think that this is an intriguing story which will prove to have the legs of a division of legionnaires; I believe that there is a lot more to be revealed. I understand that this lady has a commodious villa in the vicinity of the large military encampment at Tampina, some leagues to the south of our eternal city. She has a reputation of being a generous host at parties that she throws at her home. Many of her invitees are senior princeps, generals and members of the Praetorian Guard, including Petrarcus and the one billed as his successor, Alenianus. It has been hinted that this Alenianus is very much in the favor of the lady Gilkelia to the extent of exchanging a dozen or more scrolls with her every week. I think that the members of the scurrilomedia are smelling smoke and are assiduously seeking the fire.  By the way, it seems that the Lady Gilkelia hails from a country at the eastern end of the Mare Internum, somewhere near to Judaea where that trouble-making rabble-rouser started up his act some years back. Incidentally, I think that the governor Pontius made a big error by allowing the locals to crucify him. That elevated him to martyrdom among his followers and they have been milking it ever since to great effect.

Macanius: I was not aware of her origins; but I do believe that ladies of that region are often very captivating. Anyway, honored colleague, you and I are very much in accord on this, and I have been thinking deeply about it of late and a question has raised itself in my mind and I will ask it to you. If you were a woman with fine posture and an engaging personality who suddenly took it into your head to set up a Pleasure Palace, where would be one of the best locations to establish such a place? Think of this as a purely theoretical concept, my dear friend.

Durbinus: Hmm, let me see, since I would be providing pleasure for men, then it would make sense to locate it where there is a large concentration of customers, viz., men.

Macanius: Exactly and where would you find such a place where many men are clustered?

Durbinus: Hmm, I am not sure, perhaps the Senate? Wait, wait, I have it; I think the most likely place would be in close vicinity to an army encampment.

Macanius: That is exactly what I have been thinking. And to my surprise I learned yesterday that the Villa Gilkelia is no more than a couple of leagues from the gates of one of the largest such installations in the Empire, at Tampina, known as Castra Madillia and it is where thousands of our finest legionnaires are ensconced, either being trained for missions at the edges of the empire, or having returned thereto from foreign parts. Many of these worthies are far from their homes, which could be anywhere in the Empire, thus they are lonely and deprived of conjugal rights and therefore ripe for the attention of ladies at a Pleasure Palace. Yes, dear colleague, I think that we are in agreement that the most suitable place for installing a house of pleasure would be at the gates of a military encampment, such as Castra Madillia. I must hasten to say, dear colleague, that because Castra Madillia and Villa Gilkelia are in such close proximity does not mean that they have the kind of connection alluded to above; that would indeed be a stretch of Aristotelian logic, but it certainly makes one ponder.

Durbinus: Well, I do not think that pleasure palaces are outside the law, are they? It would be a sorry state of affairs if Rome were to outlaw such places as prurient. It seems to me that our brave soldiers, especially the higher-ranking ones, being forced to be away from their families and without feminine succor when they are away in foreign lands, need to have an outlet for their masculine drives when they return home, or before they go out on dangerous missions, whatever the case maybe. As I see it, Pleasure Palaces serve a national security purpose by refreshing the vitality of our fighting men.

Macanius: I find myself in complete accord with your sentiments, honored friend, and my only lingering concern is about whether or not monies are being sequestered away from the tax collector. What I suggest is that you and I go to this camp on a senatorial fact-finding mission to ascertain whether such a Pleasure Palace exists and if so what its tax status is.

Durbinus; I am in complete concurrence, dear friend, let us inform our servants and slaves to prepare for the journey. As I have been thinking about this notion, it has occurred to me that perhaps we should write a law requiring all military camps in the empire to have one or more Pleasure Palaces embedded into their structure for the refreshment of their fighting men. There are hundreds of such camps across the Empire and if we institutionalize Pleasure Palaces in all of them; it would be a profuse new stream of tax revenue.

Macanius: Let us then away to Tampina!

It is always an occasion of pleasure for me when October comes around, year after year. This is not, as many may think, because October is the month when baseball’s World Series is fought out, nor because it is my birth month, although that is certainly a thing of moment. After all, reaching another birthday milestone at my advanced age is something that brings on a mixture of relief, surprise, and a feeling that somehow I am cheating Mother Nature (or more likely Beelzebub). I regard it as a distinction that has come to me in spite of all the things that I have done to myself to encourage my demise. Wonder of wonders, it seems that I have not yet reached my expiration date! Thus I thumb my nose at the forces of darkness for another year.

No, the pleasure referred to on line 1 of this piece is that October is the month when the year’s crop of Nobel prizes is announced. Maybe like everyone else, I am a little less than agog to read the name of this year’s lucky winners in the various categories. Of course, I know that my own name will not be there, because that piece of news would have been conveyed to me before it was conveyed to the media. Rather my interest focusses on whether anyone that I know will get the accolade, sort of like the interest with which we scan obituaries to see whether someone we know has been called across the great divide. Of course the probability that a name that we know will show up in an obit is much higher than that name will first appear in a list of Nobellists. To push this line of thought to the place where no one really wants to go, we can be certain that the obituary probability is tending to unity for us, one and all.

As usual, the winners of this year’s prizes in the science categories were unknown to your correspondent (and after just a couple of days, they have become unknown again). The only exceptions to this rule over the years have been George Porter and Ahmed Zewail; the obverse of this is that I know and have known many scientists who should have been awarded the Nobel-don’t we all? But for me, the thing of note this year was the awarding of the Peace Prize to the European Union, another piece of whimsy by the Norwegians, somewhat akin to their awarding the same prize to B.H. Obama a couple of years ago. It has been said that Barack is the only Peace Nobellist to have a hit list (which he decreased by one member after Osama the ‘Orrible was fed to the fishes). According to the citation, the EU has “for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe”. During that time the EU has avoided having war on its own territory, although it has been arming itself to the teeth in the meanwhile and polishing its martial arts by involving itself in other folks’ wars on other folks’ territories; it seems that such is the nature of peace in our time.

So, if the Nobel guys of Norway are indeed afflicted with whimsy, then I suggest that we, whimsical creatures that we are, make an effort to outdo them and predict some future awardees. To start the ball rolling I have three propositions for you that, in no particular order of eccentricity, are:

1)     US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton for her astuteness in preventing the Israeli nation from unleashing its attack dogs on Iran.

2)     The Russian punk rockettes “Pussy Riot” for their willingness to endure incarceration for demonstrating against the excesses of Tsar Vladimir.

3)     Queen Elizabeth II for her long-standing fortitude in putting up with the foibles and idiosyncrasies of the last 12 presidents of Britain’s largest colony.

Hmm, on reflection these are all women!

Speaking of presidents, it probably has not escaped your notice that the USA is in the final throes of a Presidential (and of lesser mortals) election; there is about a month to go ‘ere the last votes are cast. Astute observers of the American political scene might assert that elections commence the day after inauguration of a new president, gradually picking up stridency, until in this final month the uproar is pandemonic! The aforesaid Mr. Obama is being seriously tested by a gentleman named Mitt Romney. Those of you who are of a scientific bent might be engaged to learn that George Romney, Mitt’s father, who was a former governor of Michigan, automobile mogul and former candidate for the republican presidential nomination, was closely related (second cousin) to Henry Eyring, one of the developers, along with Michael Polanyi and Meredith Evans (my own doctor-grandfather) of Transition State Theory. Moreover, both Mitt Romney and Henry Eyring trace their heritage to Miles Romney who was born and raised in Dalton-in-Furness in what was then the county of Lancashire (now Cumbria) UK. Miles was converted to Mormonism by missionaries and in 1841 the family immigrated to the US, first to Illinois, thence to Utah to assist in the settlement of the city of St. George. There is a lot more very interesting information on the Romney tale at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18422949.

Why do I care about all this? Well, I really do not, but my interest was slightly elevated when I saw the mention of Dalton-in-Furness, because in the 1960’s Dalton had a cricket team (probably still do) and in that era I was employed in the nuclear labs at Windscale works, which also had a cricket team of which I was a member. Both teams were in the North Lancashire league (although properly Windscale was situated in the neighboring county of Cumberland) and twice on Saturday afternoons in the summer we would play against each other, home and away. So, in years distant past I cavorted and capered at cricket on the playing fields of Dalton-in-Furness, and I like to think that Miles Romney did too, in years even more distant past. Thus is made the extreme tenuousness of my link to the current presidential contender. Incidentally, neither Eyring, nor Polanyi nor Evans were elevated to Nobel-dom, but Michael’s son John, was awarded the 1986 Chemistry prize, along with Dudley Herschbach and Yuan Lee. John Polanyi studied at Manchester University, obtaining his PhD in 1952. His supervisor was Ernest Warhurst, a former student of his father’s. I mention this because Ernie Warhurst was a man of great warmth and humor who helped and advised me during my own PhD work and in the years when I was a junior faculty in the same department. I took the accompanying photo of Ernie seated at his beloved ESR machine sometime in the early 1970s.

Now for a final word on Nobel prizes; this year’s award for Literature went to Mo Yan, aka Don’t Speak, a Chinese author. The cognoscenti have criticized this award (isn’t there always someone?) on the grounds that Mo’s writings, although plentiful, are not serious enough to be afforded Nobel status. Maybe, maybe not, but this brings the thought that now that I have given up the pursuit of the Chemistry prize (just joking folks), perhaps my literary efforts such as blogging and poetry can be deemed prize material. After all, if lack of seriousness is a criterion, I qualify hands down!

That’s all folks! (for now)