Footnotes to a Conversation, May 9, 2022
“And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on a carousel of time . . .” [The Circle Game, Joni Mitchell]
Circling the Sun
A current exhibit in the UK compares Stonehenge with ancient Japanese stone circles. The monuments would have been designed in complete isolation from each other and yet there are striking parallels. The Oyu Stone Circles “include small standing ‘sundial’ stones that align to the sun on midsummer daybreak. At Stonehenge on the longest day of the year, the sun’s first rays shine into the heart of the monument.” We still notice the days getting longer or shorter, but very few of us treat the solstice as a celebration. Artificial light is a blessing, but it has also separated us from the natural world and left us out of sync with our fellow creatures. [The Guardian]
Rhythms of Nature
“Eating seasonally intertwines our eating habits with the rhythms of nature and inspires us to explore the full diversity of ingredients a farm has to offer, increasing the number of plant species we consume.” But it’s worth considering the environmental impact of different farming methods. For example, “tomatoes grown in an artificially heated greenhouse in the UK can produce anywhere between two-10 times as much carbon as sun-ripened tomatoes transported from Spain by road.” [Wicked Leeks]
Debugging the Machine
There is an urban legend that the first computer bug was an actual moth found in 1947 inside Harvard’s Mark II computer. In actual fact, the term dates back to the end of the 19th century when the Oxford English Dictionary defined a bug as “a defect or fault in a machine, plan, or the like” and referred to a letter published in the Pall Mall Gazette, which mentioned Thomas Edison having found a bug in his phonograph. [JSTOR Daily]
Footnotes to a Conversation is a weekly Monday feature covering an assortment of topics that I’ve come across in the preceding week – books, art, travel, food, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I also post occasional articles on other dates, including frequent book reviews and travel tales.
If you share my love of nature, check out EcoFriendly West, an online publication encouraging environmental initiatives in Western Canada, and Nature Companion, a free nature app for Canada’s four western provinces.