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Um, Eh, Hmmm, Ya Know

April 24, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: SkoolGo.com.

We all use a lot of verbal pauses as we collect our wits to say whatever is on our mind. Lots of “ums” and “uhs.” And I remember that in teenage years, we couldn’t get through a sentence without several “ya knows.” It used to drive the grownups crazy.

Now at Knowable magazine, we learn that these interjections are actually valuable.

“Listen carefully to a spoken conversation,” Bob Holmes writes, “and you’ll notice that the speakers use a lot of little quasi-words — mm-hmm, um, huh? and the like — that don’t convey any information about the topic of the conversation itself. For many decades, linguists regarded such utterances as largely irrelevant noise, the flotsam and jetsam that accumulate on the margins of language when speakers aren’t as articulate as they’d like to be.

“But these little words may be much more important than that. A few linguists now think that far from being detritus, they may be crucial traffic signals to regulate the flow of conversation as well as tools to negotiate mutual understanding. That puts them at the heart of language itself and …

… they may be the hardest part of language for artificial intelligence to master.

“ ‘Here is this phenomenon that lives right under our nose, that we barely noticed,’ says Mark Dingemanse, a linguist at Radboud University in the Netherlands, ‘that turns out to upend our ideas of what makes complex language even possible in the first place.’

“For most of the history of linguistics, scholars have tended to focus on written language, in large part because that’s what they had records of. But once recordings of conversation became available, they could begin to analyze spoken language the same way as writing.

“When they did, they observed that interjections — that is, short utterances of just a word or two that are not part of a larger sentence — were ubiquitous in everyday speech. ‘One in every seven utterances are one of these things,’ says Dingemanse, who explores the use of interjections in the 2024 Annual Review of Linguistics. ‘You’re going to find one of those little guys flying by every 12 seconds. Apparently, we need them.’

“Many of these interjections serve to regulate the flow of conversation. ‘Think of it as a tool kit for conducting interactions,’ says Dingemanse. ‘If you want to have streamlined conversations, these are the tools you need.’ An um or uh from the speaker, for example, signals that they’re about to pause, but aren’t finished speaking. A quick huh? or what? from the listener, on the other hand, can signal a failure of communication that the speaker needs to repair.

“That need seems to be universal: In a survey of 31 languages around the world, Dingemanse and his colleagues found that all of them used a short, neutral syllable similar to huh? as a repair signal, probably because it’s quick. …

“Other interjections serve as what some linguists call ‘continuers,’ such as mm-hmm — signals from the listener that they’re paying attention and the speaker should keep going. Once again, the form of the word is well suited to its function: Because mm-hmm is made with a closed mouth, it’s clear that the signaler does not intend to speak.

“Sign languages often handle continuers differently, but then again, two people signing at the same time can be less disruptive than two people speaking, says Carl Börstell, a linguist at the University of Bergen in Norway.

In Swedish Sign Language, for example, listeners often sign yes as a continuer for long stretches, but to keep this continuer unobtrusive, the sender tends to hold their hands lower than usual.

“Different interjections can send slightly different signals. Consider, for example, one person describing to another how to build a piece of IKEA furniture, says Allison Nguyen, a psycholinguist at Illinois State University. In such a conversation, mm-hmm might indicate that the speaker should continue explaining the current step, while yeah or OK would imply that the listener is done with that step and it’s time to move on to the next.

“Continuers aren’t merely for politeness — they really matter to a conversation, says Dingemanse. In one classic experiment from more than two decades ago, 34 undergraduate students listened as another volunteer told them a story. Some of the listeners gave the usual ‘I’m listening’ signals, while others — who had been instructed to count the number of words beginning with the letter t — were too distracted to do so. The lack of normal signals from the listeners led to stories that were less well crafted, the researchers found. …

“Nguyen [says] such words are far from meaningless. ‘They really do a lot for mutual understanding and mutual conversation,’ she says. She’s now working to see if emojis serve similar functions in text conversations.

“The role of interjections goes even deeper than regulating the flow of conversation. Interjections also help in negotiating the ground rules of a conversation. Every time two people converse, they need to establish an understanding of where each is coming from: what each participant knows to begin with, what they think the other person knows and how much detail they want to hear. Much of this work — what linguists call ‘grounding’ — is carried out by interjections.

“ ‘If I’m telling you a story and you say something like “Wow!” I might find that encouraging and add more detail,’ says Nguyen. ‘But if you do something like, “Uh-huh,” I’m going to assume you aren’t interested in more detail.’ “

We all know something about this, although we probably haven’t considered the science of it. Dinner conversations in our house used to have us stepping over each other’s speech, so we had a kind of rule: If you had “your ‘um’ in,” the floor was still yours.

More at Knowable, here. And, ya know, you can read the same article in Spanish at that site.

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The Climate vs Buildings

April 23, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: José Hevia.
Rambla Climate-House by architect Andrés Jaque in Molina de Segura, Spain.

Today’s article addresses how architecture can and should repair our ecological system. How in cities, for example, a comprehensive vision would extend beyond beautifying downtown to embracing the understanding that we are not the only species on the planet.

At El País, Miguel Ángel Medina interviews architect Andrés Jaque about buildings that can be good for the environment.

“For three years,” he says, “Andrés Jaque, 53, has been dean of the Graduate School of Architecture at Columbia University, one of the most cutting-edge centers in architectural innovation. The Madrid-born architect is spending his time at the university rethinking how buildings and cities should face climate change. He believes that we must commit to an ‘interspecies alliance’ and that buildings, beyond just being sustainable, should also contribute to repairing our ecology.

“Jaque has proposed several projects with this concept in mind, such as the Reggio School in Madrid — designed to create life within its walls and attract insects and animals. …

Andrés Jaque
“Architecture is the discipline that has most clearly assumed the responsibility of responding to the climate crisis. In the last 15 years, there’s been a radical transformation [in the field]: materials have gone from being sustainable to [repairing the ecology]. And [the architectural field] has revised its own mission, which is no longer to just build new buildings, but to manage the built environment. Additionally, it has brought about an intersectional vision: understanding that the material, the social, the ecological and the political are inseparable and that climate action has to coordinate these fronts of transformation. This has placed architecture at the center of environmental action.

Miguel Ángel Medina
“Do architects share this interpretation?

Jaque
There’s a part [of the field] that’s anchored in a heroic vision of modernity and another that’s commercial… but there’s another that has a political commitment to the planet. And [those who adhere to this] understand that architecture must respond not only to the most immediate circumstances of a commission, but also to action for the planet. …

“There are two systems: a material world of extractivism — which is a mix of carbonization, colonialism, anthropocentrism, heteropatriarchy and racialization — that’s currently collapsing. And, in the cracks of this system, another kind of architecture is emerging, which seeks alliances between species based on symmetry, which pursues a global regime of solidarity and which advances along a line of decarbonization that marks the esthetics, the materialities [and] the types of relationships that constitute contemporary culture. This is gaining undeniable strength. In the future, we’ll see a change that’s as important as the one that modernity once represented. …

Medina
“What do we do with urban planning, given so many extreme phenomena?

Jaque
“We’ve been pioneers in proposing a change of focus, from an emphasis on the city as a kind of stain on the territory, to a trans-scalar approach. This is a way of understanding [the physical structure that is] an urban block of apartments, the microbial relationships that occur in the bodies of those who live on that block, as well as the large networks of resource extraction that make life on that block possible.

“The city has lost the capacity to contain all realities, [which is necessary] in order to think in a climatic and ecosystemic way. And we need a new model that allows us to understand that what happens on a molecular scale has implications on the scale of bodies, buildings, streets, neighborhoods, the planet and the climate. Designing [cities] in a trans-scalar way requires changes in the methodologies of architecture, which we’re exploring. …

“Cities are going through a period of great transformation. A transformation in which the city has to be understood as something physically porous, which allows for the circularity of water, which contributes to multiplying life… a transformation of materiality that promotes a flow of materials that also contributes to the health of bodies. [We require] a very different way of urbanizing the air – in such a way that it’s understood that there’s a direct relationship between our lungs and the climate – and a commitment to the generation of diverse and empowered living environments. The main difficulty is how to do this quickly, so as to mitigate the impact of the climate and environmental crises.

Medina
“What’s this new ‘interspecies diplomacy’ that you advocate in favor of?

Jaque
“Humans are just one of many forms of life. And the idea that humans can decide to sacrifice the rest of the species to serve their own interests has been shown to be harmful. Understanding that we’re dependent on many other species — and that we’re actually inseparable from them — is more realistic. We depend on the quality of the soil, on the ecosystems. An interspecies alliance based on protecting the living conditions of diverse species is beneficial for all life on the planet.”

More at El País, here.

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Hidden Apartments in Carnegie Libraries

April 22, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: Ahmed Gaber for the New York Times.
The Hudson Park Library, one of more than 60 branches built in the city in the early 1900s with funding from the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. These branches typically included an apartment for a live-in custodian.

A couple years ago, a guy was discovered living secretly in a mall in Providence, and now there’s even a movie about him.

I’m thinking of that as I read this New York Times story about the hidden apartments in Carnegie libraries. (And here’s your regular reminder that robber barons like Carnegie were once philanthropists, too.)

John Freeman Gill writes, “New York City is full of secret spaces. … But few such places so capture the imagination as the apartments hidden inside the mansion-like public branch libraries funded more than a century ago by the industrialist Andrew Carnegie. Is there a voracious reader anywhere, after all, who doesn’t relish the idea of living in a library?

“In 1901, Carnegie committed $5.2 million (the equivalent of well over $170 million today) for the construction of dozens of neighborhood libraries on land provided by the city. Designed by powerhouse firms like McKim, Mead & White, more than 60 branches were built across the five boroughs, bringing not only books but architectural grandeur to working-class neighborhoods largely deprived of both. Hidden from the public above the elegantly appointed reading rooms, each library typically contained a modest family apartment for a custodian, who performed the punishing work of stoking its coal-fired furnace around the clock.

“In the latter half of the century, these custodial apartments were gradually vacated, as the coal furnaces were replaced and the caretakers retired, the last one around 2005. Over the years, many of the units were converted for new library uses, while the remaining dwellings, left to molder for decades, took on a decrepit, ghostly appearance. Today only seven Carnegie apartments survive intact in the New York Public Library system, all uninhabited.

“ ‘The first time I saw a Carnegie apartment, I was just blown away,’ said Iris Weinshall, chief operating officer of the New York Public Library, which operates 30 Carnegie branches in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island. ‘Many of them are almost like haunted houses. It’s a pretty eerie feeling.’

“Now, however, four of the abandoned apartments have been re-envisioned and renovated as part of a $176 million, city-funded modernization of five branches in under-resourced neighborhoods: the libraries at Fort Washington and 125th Street in Manhattan, Melrose and Hunts Point in the Bronx and Port Richmond on Staten Island.

“Overall, the Carnegie Branch Renovation Program preserved historic features like double-height ceilings and open-plan reading rooms, while upgrading the interiors to maximize public space and installing elevators in two libraries that lacked them. At the two Manhattan branches and Hunts Point, the custodial apartments were transformed into teen centers, while at Port Richmond, the unit became a mechanical room. The Melrose apartment, where a caretaker kept a chirping aviary of hundreds of birds in the 1950s, was lost to fire in 1959.

“Perhaps unsurprisingly, those who grew up in the city’s Carnegie libraries tend to be bookish sorts.

“ ‘I can hardly imagine what my life would’ve been like without the experience of living in that library,’ said Ronald Clark, 90, who moved into the third floor of the Georgian Revival-style Washington Heights branch as a teenager around 1949. ‘I was able to have all my questions answered as a young person growing up.’

“For example, he said, he was lying in bed one night at about age 15, ‘thinking about the things that the Bible says about the creation and the things that science, the archaeologists, have found. And I said, well, there seems to be a contradiction. So I got up and went downstairs, turned on one of the reading lights, and got out the Bible, laid it out, went to Reference, got an encyclopedia, and I read both of them and realized they were both saying exactly the same thing.’ That discovery, he added, ‘set me off on a search for all the scientific and spiritual connections that I could find.’

“Mr. Clark studied science at the City College of New York, becoming the first in his family to earn a degree. After performing classified work for the United States government in Nuremberg, Germany, he moved back to live with his custodian father, Raymond Clark, in the Washington Heights library. There he raised and home-schooled his daughter, Jamilah, for several years.

“In the evenings, Ms. Clark would accompany her grandfather downstairs to the children’s floor, where he had her sit on a table.

“ ‘He would be sweeping and mopping, and I would just sit up there and either read books, or they had a little television down there, so sometimes I would watch The Electric Company,’ she said. ‘Being that the library was closed, it was my own little paradise that I had all to myself.’ ”

More at the Times, here. Intriguing photos.

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Love for Small Species

April 21, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: John and Suzanne’s Mom.
Fungi and algae receive less than 0.2% of conservation funding, according to a new study. Small speices never seem as cool as rhinos and elephants.

Is it human nature to pay more attention to the large and aggressive than to the small and quiet? As a female, I think so.

At the Guardian, Mariam Amini writes about how that tendency, when applied to the study of the natural world, can be harmful to the planet.

“Most global conservation funds go to larger, charismatic animals,” she says, “leaving critically important but less fashionable species deprived, a 25-year study has revealed.

“Scientists have found that of the $1.963bn allocated to projects worldwide, 82.9% was assigned to vertebrates. Plants and invertebrates each accounted for 6.6% of the funding, while fungi and algae were barely represented at less than 0.2%.

“Disparities persisted among vertebrates, with 85% of all resources going to birds and mammals, while amphibians received less than 2.8% of funding.

“Further funding bias was found within specific groups such as large-bodied mammals towards elephants and rhinoceros. Although they represent only a third of that group, they were the focus of 84% of such conservation projects and received 86% of the funding. Meanwhile mammals such as rodents, bats, kangaroos and wallabies remained severely underfunded, despite being considered endangered.

“ ‘Nearly 94% of species identified as threatened, and thus at direct risk of extinction, received no support,’ said Benoit Guénard, the lead author of the study. ‘Protecting this neglected majority, which plays a myriad of roles in ecosystems and represents unique evolutionary strategies, is fundamental if our common goal is to preserve biodiversity.’

“Alice Hughes, a coordinating lead author of the research, said: ‘The sad reality is that our perception of “what is threatened” is often limited, and so a few large mammal species may receive more funding than the near-12,000 species of reptile combined.

“ ‘Not only does this limit our ability to implement protective measures, but it closes opportunities to researchers. I have lost count of the number of times collaborators have switched taxa [organism populations] purely because theirs was difficult to fund. This leads to a chicken and egg situation – some of the groups with the highest rates of recent extinction, like freshwater snails, have the most outdated assessments.’

“The study, led by Guénard and colleagues at the University of Hong Kong, analyzed 14,566 conservation projects spanning a 25-year period between 1992 and 2016. …

“ ‘We are in the midst of a global species extinction crisis,’ said research author Bayden Russell. … ‘We need to change how we think about conservation funding. The community needs to be educated about the value of biodiversity and protecting species that are under threat.’ …

“ ‘Governments, in particular those which represent the main pool of funding, need to follow a more rigorous and scientifically driven approach in conservation funding,’ said Guénard.”

More at the Guardian, here.

And be sure to check Anna Kuchment’s Boston Globe interview with Mandë Holford, here, about a poisonous snail with lifesaving properties. It reads in part: “Some of the most powerful drugs in our medical arsenal come from animal venom. Ozempic was derived from Gila monsters, a lizard native to the southwestern US; Prialt, used to treat chronic pain in HIV and cancer patients, comes from deadly cone snails; and captopril, the first ACE inhibitor, a class of drugs used to treat high blood pressure, came from Brazilian pit vipers.”

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Passover and Easter

April 20, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photos: Suzanne and John’s Mom.

People are celebrating Passover and Easter in my retirement community.

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Spring Ephemerals

April 20, 2025 by suzannesmom

042118-trout-lily-brick-wal

Photos: Suzanne and John’s Mom.
Trout lilies in Massachusetts.

I always look eagerly for the early spring wildflowers to emerge. I even planted several kinds when we had a house. You are not supposed to transplant them, because most require very special woodland conditions, but there are vendors who grow them from scratch, like Grow Native Massachusetts and Garden in the Woods, and their flowers are safe.

It was only this year I learned that these beloved wildflowers are called spring ephemerals.

The Massachusetts government website says, “Early flowering plants that produce leaves, bloom, and set seed quickly after the snow melts in the spring are referred to as spring ephemerals. … They represent the seasons changing. Spring ephemeral flowers also provide the much-needed first nectar and pollen of the season for over-wintering pollinators, including bumblebee queens, mining bees, halictid or sweat bees, early butterflies, beetles, flies, and gnats. In return, these insects transfer pollen from one plant to another. 

“Spring ephemerals are found in deciduous forests dominated by sugar maple, ash, black cherry, and hop hornbeam trees. Before the trees have their leaves, these wildflowers show up early to take advantage of the unobscured access to sunlight. While the trees are still dormant, spring ephemerals are in a race against time. They take advantage of the above-average nutrient levels in the soil (from decomposing fall leaves) to photosynthesize quickly. This provides the energy they need for flowering, setting seed, and storing carbohydrates for the following year all before the tree canopy blocks sunlight from the forest floor. 

“The forest trees pull large amounts of water out of the soil when they start to grow leaves. The amount of water being absorbed by the trees is so great that it causes groundwater levels to drop. Before this happens, spring ephemerals use the higher moisture levels in the soil to carry out their life cycle. The dampness also helps them tolerate low temperatures they often face in early spring.

“Please keep in mind that the survival of a plant population depends on each plant’s ability to produce seed for the following year. If you find a location with these beautiful plants, enjoy them in place and do not pick them. Other people who follow in your path will appreciate what you have admired and left untouched, as will the many native pollinator insects that depend on spring ephemerals for their survival.”

If you are interested in more, Wikipedia gets wonky with scientific explanations of not just spring ephemerals but desert, mud flat, and weedy ephemerals. Here’s what is says about the spring ones.

“Spring ephemerals are woodland wildflowers which develop aerial parts (i.e. stems, leaves, and flowers) of the plant early each spring and then quickly bloom, and produce seed. The leaves often wither leaving only underground structures (i.e. roots, rhizomes, and bulbs) for the remainder of the year. This strategy is very common in herbaceous communities of deciduous forests as it allows small herbaceous plants to take advantage of the high levels of sunlight reaching the forest floor prior to the formation of a canopy by woody plants. Examples include: spring beauties, trilliums, harbinger of spring and the genus of Dicentra particularly D. cucullaria, Dutchman’s breeches and D. canadensis, squirrel corn.”

More at Wikipedia, here. Mass.gov, here, has some great photos.

An early spring flower called bloodroot, planted by a committee at my retirement community.

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250th

April 19, 2025 by suzannesmom

Pottery: Sue Brewster.
My retirement community has prepared for the country’s 250th anniversary — counting from April 19, 1775, when “the shot heard ’round the world” was fired at the North Bridge — in charateristic ways. In the pottery workshop, for example.

You will be pleased to know that the American experiment in democracy lasted nearly 250 years. It’s nothing like geologic time, but it’s pretty good depending on your frame of reference.

There will be celebrations all around New England to recognize the key events of 1775. In our town, the day will include an extra long parade and a visiting dignitary whose name the planners withheld until the last minute.

Back in 1975, the 200th anniversary of Patriots Day, the visiting dignitary was Gerald Ford. Protesters camped out on the hill above the North Bridge, by the Buttrick Mansion. They are said to have been rowdy, and Emerson Hospital had to treat several of them. This time, extensive preparations were made to handle rowdiness.

To give you a taste of the day’s activities at just one of many locales, here is what the museum posted:

“Celebrate the 250th Anniversary of April 19, 1775, with a free community celebration at the Concord Museum. … Free admission (9:00 am – 5:00 pm), including access to the immersive April 19, 1775 galleries to see the original lantern from Paul Revere’s famous midnight ride and the new special exhibition Whose Revolution.

“A family-friendly encampment of Revolutionary Living History (10:00 am – 5:00 pm). Billerica Colonial Minutemen will drill with muskets, cook over an open firepit, and demonstrate colonial crafts.

“Family drop-in activities (9:00 am – 4:00 pm) inspired by the American Revolution and the new Barefoot Books publication Rise Up!

“A Forum with Doris Kearns Goodwin (6:00 – 7:00 pm) on the American Revolutionand its legacy. In-person attendance is at capacity. Join a stand-by line or register for virtual attendance.

“An outdoor concert with the Goodwin Band (7:30 – 8:30 pm), finishing with a view of a town-wide drone show.

“Food trucks, an ice cream truck, and a wine and beer truck all day and evening.”

Speaking of food trucks, you should know that they were a big bone of contention a few years ago at Town Meeting, when planning was getting underway. Not historically accurate, you know.

I have no idea where you can park, but if you can get here early, our tourist site notes, “church bells at 1st Parish toll at 5:45 a.m. to sound the alarm [and] Dr. Prescott arrives at the North Bridge after riding across the fields calling out the warning to towns and villages that the [British] Regulars were on the march and that their destination was Concord. The Concord Minutemen fire salutes and the Concord Independent Battery fire several volleys from the field at the Old Manse.”

I have heard the Independent Battery fire historically accurate volleys several times over the years, and my advice to you is to wear earplugs.

For other information, check the town website, here.

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Where Has the Night Sky Gone?

April 18, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: Nicholas J.R. White.
A night sky above a copse of trees on Guirdil Bay on the Isle of Rum in Scotland.

In the summer, when we are staying in New Shoreham, we can see the stars at night, including the Perseid meteor showers. But the rest of the year, newspaper alerts about cool things happening in the night sky are wasted on us. I would love to see, at least for a little while, what the residents of the Isle of Rum can see.

Kat Hill writes at the New York Times, “Rum, a diamond-shaped island off the western coast of Scotland, is home to 40 people. Most of the island — 40 square miles of mountains, peatland and heath — is a national nature reserve, with residents mainly nestled around Kinloch Bay to the east. What the Isle of Rum lacks is artificial illumination. There are no streetlights, light-flooded sports fields, neon signs, industrial sites or anything else casting a glow against the night sky.

“On a cold January day, the sun sets early and rises late, yielding to a blackness that envelopes the island, a blackness so deep that the light of stars manifests suddenly at dusk and the glow of the moon is bright enough to navigate by.

‘For this reason, Rum was recently named Europe’s newest dark-sky sanctuary, a status that DarkSky International, a nonprofit organization focused on reducing light pollution, has granted to only 22 other places in the world. With the ever-increasing use of artificial lighting at night, places where people can gaze at the deep, ancient light of the universe are increasingly rare.

“Rum’s designation is the result of a long, meticulous bid by the Isle of Rum Community Trust. The effort was led by Alex Mumford, the island’s former tourism manager, and Lesley Watt, Rum’s reserve officer, with the support of Steven Gray and James Green, two astronomers who started Cosmos Planetarium, a mobile theater offering immersive virtual tours of the night sky. Rum ‘stands for something greater,’ Mr. Mumford said, and aspires to be ‘a haven for others to experience the darkness and the Milky Way.’

“A seven-mile walk from Kinloch through the wild and empty heart of the island leads to a Greek-style mausoleum, built in the 19th century, above Harris Bay on the west side of Rum. Locals regard it as the best spot on the island to take in the night sky; on a cloudy night with no moon, one resident said, ‘you can’t even see your hand in front of your face.’ But this night was clear, and stars and meteors wheeled spectacularly overhead as the Milky Way drew a glistening smudge above the brooding mountains, Askival and Hallival. Venus, Saturn and Jupiter stood in a line above the mausoleum’s sandstone pillars.

“Plans are in motion to renovate an abandoned lodge nearby into a place where tourists could stay in their quest for celestial splendor. ‘What you are seeing is not just a 2-D map, but the four dimensions of space and time,’ Dr. Green said. ‘You are looking back into the past.’ …

“On Rum, human life is lived in the small pools of light that spill from windows or glow from headlamps. One key to attaining dark-sky sanctuary status has been to help residents adapt to and embrace the darkness. Porch lights are recessed into doorways and point down; the pier has LED lights, also pointing downward, that provide just enough illumination for marine safety; a shop’s outdoor motion-sensor lights come on only for a few minutes when needed. When the community trust started its sanctuary application in 2022, roughly 15 percent of homes and shops followed the lighting recommendations outlined by the initiative; compliance is now at 95 percent.

“The blackness of night provides more than a cosmic spectacle for humans to enjoy; it is also essential for the environment. ‘Low light levels are important for nocturnal species,’ Ms. Watt said. ‘And artificial lighting can influence the feeding, breeding and migration behavior of many wild animals.’ …

“Education — of adults and children, locals and tourists — is central to dark-sky awareness. Andy McCallum, a teacher on Rum, showed off the models and maps of stars and planets that his handful of students had designed.

“ ‘For our pupils, it’s a powerful reminder that although we live on a small island, we’re part of a vast and interconnected universe,’ he said. It made them proud, he added, to help preserve a unique environment for future generations.”

More at the Times, here. Wonderful photos.

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A Relaxing Vacation with Lambs

April 17, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: Handout via the Guardian.
You can take hikes with goats. Why not enjoy time with lambs, too?

I’ve been saving an article from the Boston Globe for some future birthday, when I’ll talk my family into joining me in a hike with goats. It’s a service that a goatherd here in Massachusetts offers, and I think it might be fun.

But now I’m learning about spending a weekend with lambs. Maybe that would be even more fun. But I would have to fly to England, and I’m down on air travel.

Sally Howard writes at the Guardian, “In a shed in the Malvern Hills, lambs struggle clumsily to their feet as holiday-making couples look on.

“Clare John, the third generation in her family to farm these 50 acres of Worcestershire pasture, began offering lambing-themed breaks two years ago in response to a surge of customer requests. Rowley Farm’s holiday cottages are block-booked for the 2025 spring lambing season, which traditionally peaks around Easter.

“ ‘For farmers like me it’s a bit strange to treat sheep like pets,’ John said. Self-catering guests arrive at Rowley Farm from February to May to feed hay to her pregnant ewes, and to bottle-feed orphan lambs who have been abandoned by their mothers or are the thirds in triplets (which ewes can struggle to feed).

“ ‘Mostly the guests want to touch and cuddle the lambs rather than do the mucking out,’ she said. …

“Farm Stay UK, a co-operative for farmers in hospitality, said that 90 of its 400 members now offer ‘lamb watch’ holidays. A number of farms are expanding their lambing offerings for 2025. … Church Farm in Lancing, West Sussex, offers evenings with the ‘shepherdess team’ where visitors can feed lambs and watch out for live births.

“Some put this popularity down to the effect of TV shows … or the growth of live-stream lambing cams such as lambwatch.co.uk and Walby Farm Park’s Lamb Cam Live.

“Farmer Helen Hearn introduced lambing-shed slots for visitors in 2023 after demand began to outstrip capacity at 450-acre Penhein Farm in Monmouthshire. Guests accompany Hearn – checking the sheds for births, ensuring lambs in the field are paired up with their mothers and bottle feeding the lambs – at a charge of £45 [~$60] for up to eight people a shed. ‘We charge for lambing as it takes four times as long to do our farming rounds when the public is involved.’ …

“She thinks lambing breaks answer a human need for connection to nature. ‘In previous generations most British people would have an aunt or cousin who worked on a farm and would be around farm animals that way,’ she said. ‘That’s all gone now.’

“Hearn said she wouldn’t install a lamb cam for the public to witness live births, however. ‘Often I’ll get a delivery that’s tricky … and the vet needs to come for a caesarean or the lamb comes out dead,’ she said.

“TikToker and amateur lambing enthusiast Melissa Arnold, AKA @melissa­lovessheep, refers to herself as ‘a crazy sheep lady.’ The graphic designer has volunteered for lambing season at her local farm, Readstock in Bagber, Dorset, since 2022. With no prior farming experience, Arnold has now delivered and raised more than 90 lambs. …

“ ‘I discovered lambing when I was going through a tricky period in my life and it’s total escapism for me,’ she said. However, she points out the hobby isn’t all gamboling newborns. ‘It’s an everyday soap opera in the lambing shed. Lambs and ewes die regularly, and you have to learn to handle that.’

“In Hampshire, farmers Fran and John Drake have had to take on additional staff, including veterinary students, to cope with surging demand for lambing stays at Michelmersh Manor Farm, a family-run mixed arable, dairy and sheep farm where 140 lambs are expected this April. ‘We have one London family coming back for their fourth lambing season,’ Fran Drake said. …

“Michael Gibbs, who has farmed at Mill Farm in Middle Tysoe, Warwickshire, for 50 years, welcomes local schoolchildren into his lambing sheds but is unconvinced about turning it into a spectator sport. Farming is a business, after all. ‘The French have a taste for British lamb at the moment and prices are up 30% on 2022,’ the 73-year-old said, passing a trailer of hoggets (sheep between one and two years old) off to market. ‘That’s what the job is at the end of the day. It’s not all cuddles.’ ”

More at the Guardian, here. No paywall at the Guardian, but please consider donating something to support their journalism.

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To Make Mining Greener

April 16, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo via the Guardian.
Imperial College researchers Franklin Keck, left, and Ion Ioannou are seeking a biological approach to mining copper with less danger to the environment. 

Can mining be made greener? I know it sounds implausible, but you have to love people who will tackle questions like that. Especially as the modern world is demanding more and more metals.

Robin McKie writes at the Guardian that copper “faces an uncertain future as manufacturers prepare to expand its use to make the electric cars, renewable power plants and other devices that will help the planet move towards net zero. Unrestricted extraction could cause widespread ecological devastation, scientists have warned.

“The issue is to be the prime focus for the new Rio Tinto Centre for Future Materials, based at Imperial College London in partnership with several international university groups. …

“ ‘The world needs to electrify its energy systems, and success will absolutely depend on copper,’ materials scientist and Imperial vice-provost Prof Mary Ryan, one of the centre’s founders, told the Observer last week. ‘The metal is going to be the biggest bottleneck in this process. So, in setting up the centre, we decided copper would be the first challenge that we dealt with.’ …

“Copper has become essential for powering devices ranging from smartphones to electric vehicles because it transmits electricity with minimal loss of power and is resistant to corrosion. Around 22m tons of copper were mined in 2023, a 30% increase from 2010, and annual demand will reach around 50m tons by 2050, say analysts.

“Such an output will have enormous environmental consequences because copper mining uses acids that poison rivers, contaminate soil and pollute the air. Producers such as Peru, Chile and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have seen natural habitats destroyed, wildlife populations wiped out and human health damaged near mines. Deep-sea mining has been proposed, but the idea horrifies marine biologists, who say such enterprises would devastate sea life.

“The aim of the new centre is to find ways round these problems and help provide the materials the world will need to reach net zero. It is funded by the mining group Rio Tinto and hosted by Imperial College London in partnership with the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, the University of California, Berkeley, the Australian National University and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

“One key project is seeking new ways to mine copper. ‘We typically extract it from minerals that have crystallized out of very saline, copper-rich brines,’ said Professor Matthew Jackson, chair in geological fluid dynamics at Imperial College. ‘However, this process requires huge amounts of energy to break open the rocks and bring them to the surface and also generates a lot of waste as we extract copper from its source ores.’

“To get round this issue, Jackson, working with international partners, has been searching for underground sites where copper-rich brines are still in liquid form. These brines are created by volcanic systems which can, crucially, provide geothermal energy for extraction.

“ ‘That means we can extract the copper by pumping the brines to the surface via boreholes – which is relatively easy – and also use local energy to power the mine itself and possibly provide excess energy for nearby communities,’ Jackson said. ‘Essentially, we are seeking to build self-powered mines and have already pinpointed promising sites in New Zealand, and there is potential to explore conventionally barren areas such as Japan.’

“A different approach is being followed by another Imperial project where a company, RemePhy, has been started by Imperial PhD students Franklin Keck and Ion Ioannou.

“They have used GM technology to develop plant-bacterial systems that have an enhanced ability to extract metal from the soil. ‘Essentially, you will be able to grow these crops on land contaminated by waste left over from the mining of metals such as copper, and they will extract that metal,’ said Keck.

“The importance of these techniques was stressed by Ryan. ‘The world will need more copper in the next 10 years than has been mined in the whole of the last century. [We] need to both reduce our demand for copper and work out how to extract it in the most sustainable way possible.’ “

More at the Guardian, here. No firewall. Donations support reliable journalism.

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Writing to Edward Gorey

April 15, 2025 by suzannesmom

Did you ever have a correspondence with an author or other celebrity? I know that as a child, author Francesca Forrest got to know the fantasy writer Lloyd Alexander and his family really well. And it all started with fan letters.

In today’s story from the Comics Journal, we learn about a family’s relationship with Edward Gorey.

Cynthis Rose wrties, “Edward Gorey’s friends apparently called him ‘Ted.’ But, in our family, he was always ‘Mr. Gorey.’ My father chanced on his works during a business trip, back when they were small, slight booklets that seemed handmade. With them came an entire world, curious and enticing, fashioned out of the finest and most meticulous pen strokes. It was focused on luckless protagonists with preposterous names, languorous figures who proved surprisingly gritty. Their startling encounters and unforeseen fates soon established a hold on my preteen mind.

“Looking back, this is not surprising. I was a kid who worked in theatre, spending half of every day in a theatre school. Since the age of eleven, I had been portraying other children onstage. This surrounded me with ideas of glamour that, if not quite real, were certainly persuasive. Filled as it was with fantasy, costume and wit, Mr. Gorey’s esoteric universe did not seem strange.

“All the more since my theatrical world was not the same one as the sunny productions of local schools. Instead of joining my classmates in Oklahoma!, I was emoting in Lady Audley’s Secret or The Diary of Anne Frank. I wasn’t reading A Wrinkle in Time and Judy Blume, but grappling with Ionesco, Chekhov and Oscar Wilde. 

“Mr. Gorey’s books made him seem a fellow traveler. I saw his kohl-eyed vamps as shady White Russians and his muscular villains as figures out of Bram Stoker. Even his trailing aspidistras felt familiar – just like the herringbone suits in his characters’ closets, they were the hallmarks of a period stage set. Maybe that’s why it seemed logical to write him, once my father looked him up in a Manhattan phone book. 

“Was I surprised when Mr. Gorey wrote me back? I don’t recollect, but most probably not. Ours was a family who liked filling envelopes. We all wrote postcards, birthday letters, condolence notes, thank-yous and regular, chatty epistles. Almost everyone I knew had a pen pal. Once, when my dad opened a box of chocolates and found one missing, he grabbed his Underwood and wrote the head of the candy company. His typed rebuke (why was the workforce kept so hungry they were forced to pilfer bonbons?) was rewarded by a new and bigger box of chocolates.  

“Mr. Gorey made himself a Proustian part of my postal history. He wrote on discreet, elegant, letter-size paper, almost always ivory or pale dove grey. The inks he favored were sepia and navy blue and the pen he used had a small, blunt nib. As everyone now knows, he also liked to decorate envelopes. However fanciful their design might be, those I received always included his famous black doll.

“What were his letters like? Like his stories and the little books he sent, they were florid and funny and full of deliberate effects. Mr. Gorey seemed to be insatiably curious, with catholic tastes that informed his literary style. He was a voracious reader and would cite both classic tomes and modern trash, differences in form or century notwithstanding. He once wrote that he had found ‘the definitive list of phobias.’ Another time, he sent me a recipe for grapefruit slices ‘bathed in’ Coca-Cola. 

But any letter from Mr. G was instructive, because he was never, ever lazy with language. Always reaching for the mot juste, he cherished terms like ‘habituated,’ ‘diverting’ and ‘gelatinous.’

“He made words perform and took the time to make every letter an event. His missives were as lively as those of Dickens and, like his little stories, owed much to Ronald Firbank. 

“Over time, we discussed a range of topics: the Moors murders, the benefits provided by a ha-ha, Gustave Doré’s views about the London slums, Lillian Gish in The Wind, Japanese ghost behavior in the Edo era, spirit photography, London’s cheap bookstores, Rudolf Nureyev’s feet, illicit dissections and why green wallpaper had killed Victorians. 

“My own life at this time had a Gorey-esque cast. At fifteen, for instance, my parents sent me off to London by myself. I had earned the money through my theatre school, which ‘loaned out’ their pupils to make commercials. I spent three happy weeks in an English hostel, quartered on the eighth floor of a nine-storey building. From here, I searched out genuine art by Aubrey Beardsley, talked my way into Scotland Yard’s ‘Black Museum‘ and explored a then-almost-derelict East End. I also managed to meet another pen pal – the retired costume historian James Laver. An ex-museum staffer and theatrical bon vivant, Mr. Laver was an expert on dandies and the Decadents. 

“When we met for tea in the Charing Cross Hotel, he invited me to dinner at his Greenwich home. This turned out to be a memorable evening, not least because of the Zulu dignitary who arrived with a leopard skin over his suit. To honour my interest in the Yellow Book era, dinner was also followed by a vintage absinthe. Served through the requisite slotted spoon and sugar cube, it was extraordinarily bitter – and extremely strong.

“Mr Gorey liked to hear about such episodes. I wrote him about the streetlamp that ran on sewer fumes, the private museum of Teddy bears and toy theatres – even the Lava soap (largely pumice) that produced my grandma’s youthful skin. I sent him the label of J. Collis Browne’s Mixture, a morphine-and-peppermint-oil cure still popular in London. I wrote him a great deal about cemeteries and tombs, from English boneyards to the graves of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. When it came to things that no-one else cared about, I could always depend on Mr. Gorey. I could tell him how Pearl Bixby Wait got the whole idea of Jell-O from Orator Francis Woodward. 

“To this day, many things Mr. Gorey told me – some true, many not – have remained stuck in my mind. (Notably, that someone called ‘Sebastian Chaveau’ invented the marshmallow.) I’ve never tried to verify one of these assertions and I’ve avoided reading about their author. But, from time to time, something makes me think of him. Like a phrase I read last month in Daniil Harms’ diary : ‘Poisoning children is cruel. But something has to be done about them!’ ” 

If you’re a Gorey fan, you’ll understand. More at the Comics Journal, here.

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Jumbled Seasons in Pictures

April 14, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: John.
Our older granddaughter skiing in Maine. I’m told it was cold.

Today’s photo roundup covers some winter and some spring. The weird thing is that just as we were beginning to enjoy spring in Massachusetts, we got a snowfall on April 12th, followed by a warm and sunny day today. That makes us wonder what April 19th will be like — a big deal here. It’s the 250th anniversary of what we think of as the beginning of the American Revolution, the confrontation at the North Bridge. (Amazing to think of how long democracy has lasted among erring mortals!)

Getting back to the photos, there was fresh snow on the boardwalk in February, making it eminently skiable. But after a few days of people walking there, it was all ice.

Next photo shows Erik’s Squirrel Buster birdfeeder with a visiting cardinal.

Keeping warm indoors at our retirement place, we enjoyed Joe Reid’s latest trio, with guest vocalist Mikayla Shirley from Berklee College of Music.

My anthurium in the sun is next.

The rest of the photos are from several local art displays.

They include an outsize but otherwise lifelike banana peel by Mary Kenny, a marble bird by Stephen Wetzel, and “Pollen,” a piece of fabric art by Rebecca V. Mann expressing her preoccupation with the fragility of nature. These are followed by Felix Beaudry’s woven head. Resting.

The last photos are part of an extensive sidewalk exhibit in which works by artists of all ages were somehow laminated and glued down so people could walk on them. You can see my shoes. The first, of trees, is by Jack Confrey, a young guy you’ll meet meet if you go to the website, here.

Then there’s a child’s art and a QR code for anyone interested.

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Saving the Orchid Behind the Drink

April 13, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: Kalliopi Stara.
Powdered orchid bulbs are the main ingredient of the popular Middle Eastern drink called salep, or sahlep. But the orchids are endangered.

One of my sources for this blog is the international radio show called The World. It posts recordings of episodes and sometimes transcripts. I like to have a transcript, and if there isn’t one, I try to see if I can find the story elsewhere. Durrie Bouscaren at The World got me interested in today’s topic on some endangered orchids, and then I was able to find a 2023 Atlas Obscura piece to use as text.

Here is Vittoria Traverso writing about the Turkish beverage called salep at Atlas Obscura.

“For Kerem Özcan, a data scientist based in Amsterdam, winters in his home country of Turkey would not have been the same without salep, a hot drink made of crushed orchid roots, milk, and sugar. On ski trips to the mountains of Uludağ, ‘we’d always end the cold and tiring day with a salep,’ he says. Özcan, who left Turkey in 2013, is one of the many Turkish people living abroad who thirsts for salep. ‘I tried to quench it with eggnog a couple times, but it didn’t cut it for me,’ he says.

“Much like eggnog, salep is a staple winter drink, and it is enjoyed throughout Turkey, Greece, and parts of the Middle East. Part comfort food and part medicine, it is a popular folk remedy for everything from stomachache to impotence.

“In recent years, increased interest towards plant-based drinks and traditional foods has fueled a surge in demand for salep. But the craze is taking a toll on the drink’s key ingredient.

It can take as many as 13 orchid bulbs to make one cup.

“Currently, wild orchids are considered endangered in many parts of Greece and Turkey due to overharvesting, drought, and habitat degradation.

“It’s hard to say when and where salep originated but historical evidence suggests ancient Greeks and Romans consumed a similar beverage. Özge Samanci, head of the Gastronomy and Culinary Arts Department at Özyeğin University in Istanbul, explains that the Greek doctor Dioscorides described the medical properties of orchid roots in his first-century treatise De materia medica. Roman doctors also used bulbs to prepare a beverage called satyrion, a Latin word for orchid, as an aphrodisiac.

“During the Ottoman Empire, salep was a medicinal staple. ‘There is evidence that salep was consumed in palaces of the Ottoman Empire as early as the 15th century,’ Samanci explains. …

A journal entry by Jane Austen in 1826 describes the taste of salop as ‘nectar.’

“ ‘Tea is great, coffee greater; chocolate, properly made, is for epicures; but these are thin and characterless compared with the salop swallowed in 1826,’ Austen wrote.

“While salep is no longer a part of English daily life, it is still considered a winter must in Turkey. … Until recent times, salep was considered a special treat. ‘Drinking salep is usually a moment of luxury,’ Samenci says. ‘It’s not something you drink four times a day like coffee.’ …

“Interest in traditional and more wholesome foods is putting pressure on salep’s key ingredient. Orchid powder is made from the bulbs from the Orchis, Ophrys, and Dactylorhiza which include about 109 species of orchids mostly native to North Africa and Eurasia. In order to make salep powder, also known as ‘white gold’ for its market value, foragers dig orchid plants out of the soil with small shovels. Then, the round roots of each plant are harvested, cleaned, boiled, dried, and crushed into powder. This orchid powder can sell for up to 80 US dollars per pound.

“A few farms do cultivate orchids for salep, but it’s a difficult and expensive endeavor. The vast majority are still foraged in the wild. Most wild orchids used to make salep are listed as protected species under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) which regulates the trade of endangered animals and plants. In theory, protected orchid plants should be traded across national borders only with documentation certifying that they have been harvested or cultivated sustainably. However, orchids are one of the most sought-after species on online platforms that sell illegally sourced wildlife. …

“Susanne Masters, an ethnobotanist at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands [advises] people to avoid consuming salep at all to avoid further endangering wild orchids. ‘To consume salep sustainably you would need to be growing your own, or personally know and trust a person who is a custodian of a landscape in which the orchids used for salep are growing.’ ”

The long, fascinating article is at Atlas Obscura, here.

Durrie Bouscaren first got me interested with her update at Public Radio International’s The World. You can listen to her story here. No paywall for either site.

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Museum of Failure

April 12, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: Matt Stromberg/Hyperallergic.
Ford Edsel at the original Museum of Failure in 2018.

Years ago, my husband and I went to see a Harvard student performance of a rarely performed Cole Porter musical, Nymph Errant. The thing we remember most is that the director was outside handing out flyers disavowing his participation. Someone else had made decisions about the final production, and he wanted the audience to know he disagreed — violently!

I’m reminded of that incident by the current kerflufle over something called the Museum of Failure. The .com version, supposedly the original, is at war with a .net version and its recent exhibition.

Lily Janiak at the San Francisco Chroniclewrites, “Will the real Museum of Failure please stand up?

“Earlier this month, Time Out reported that a popup exhibition of some of history’s most spectacular bad ideas [would] tour next month, with a San Francisco stint at the space formerly occupied by Madame Tussauds in Fisherman’s Wharf.

“The website museumoffailure.net likewise teased the exhibition. But a different website called museumoffailure.com — which had the same logo and branding and much of the same content — made no mention of it.

“Turns out the discrepancy isn’t a marketing blunder. It’s an international copyright dispute.

“When the Chronicle contacted Samuel West, the proprietor of museumoffailure.com and the creator of the museum’s concept, he disavowed the San Francisco stop. 

“ ‘This is a surprise to me,’ he wrote via email. … He later claimed on a video call that it was ‘fraudulent.’

“David Perry, a spokesperson for SEE Global Entertainment Inc., which is producing the Fisherman’s Wharf event, rebutted West’s claims.

“ ‘SEE Global owns the international trademark for and all the assets in the Museum of Failure: period end stop,’ Perry wrote via email. ‘In years past, we have welcomed him to all iterations of the Museum of Failure as a valued cheerleader with all due credit given.’

“West, who’s based in Malaga, Spain, and has a Ph.D. in organizational psychology, studied play in the workplace, including how improv theater can improve a team’s creativity. He was interested in destigmatizing failure but thought, ‘It’s too interesting to be a TED Talk. I need a new form.’

“That new form, the Museum of Failure, premiered in 2017 in Sweden, where he was living at the time. A hit, it went on to tour to Taiwan, France, Canada and beyond. …

“For an item on the Fyre Festival, West made a replica of the real-life ‘Fyre Festival luxury lunch — a pathetic-looking cheese sandwich in a Styrofoam box — out of plastic. For a piece on Theranos, he made replicas of ‘little tiny vials’ of blood, putting them next to test tubes for scale. (The blood was ‘Halloween vampire blood,’ he said.)

“One of the museum’s fans was Martin Biallas, CEO of SEE Global Entertainment Inc., whose previous exhibition credits include the Disgusting Food Museum — which West also co-created. …

“In 2017, Biallas and West signed an agreement under California jurisdiction that granted SEE ‘exclusive license’ to the museum’s ‘assets, artifacts, memorabilia, content and exhibit and merchandising items and the descriptions thereof’ for a period of five years, with two options to renew. West could continue to stage his own popup exhibitions so long as they were either more than 200 miles or more than 12 months away from Biallas’. The agreement also ensured West would receive 20% of all gross revenues.

“But on Tuesday, Feb. 25 [this year], West told the Chronicle that not only has Biallas not renewed the license; Biallas hasn’t given him his 20%. …

“In 2023, West hired a lawyer to inform Biallas he was in breach of contract and demand payment. The letter goes on to note that Biallas successfully applied to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the word mark ‘Museum of Failure.’ Perry supplied the Chronicle with proof of trademark ownership.

“ ‘At the time of the application, your client knew that it did not own the rights to Museum of Failure,’ the letter states. 

“Biallas’ lawyer responded by alleging that West knew about the trademark application. The letter also asserts that because West had been embroiled in a prior Museum of Failure ownership dispute, with Niklas and Jenny Madsen of Swedish design company Superlab, West might not have legal standing. …

“Biallas has also been involved in other legal disputes about exhibition copyright. He was a plaintiff in a lawsuit alleging that two of his former employees stole imagery from his ‘Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel: The Exhibition’ and toured it in an exhibition called ‘Michelangelo: A Different View’ under the auspices of German company Exhibition 4 You. That lawsuit was settled in 2021. 

“In 2022, the Louvre sued Biallas’ SEE Global, alleging ‘misappropriation of the Louvre’s reputation and intellectual property through a venture called ‘ “Louvre Fantastique.” ‘ … That lawsuit was settled.

“Last year, SEE Global sued the patent attorney it had hired to secure Louvre permissions, alleging negligence. In a response and counterclaim, attorney David D’Zurilla and his firm Schwegman Lundberg & Woessner, P.A. wrote that they ‘were retained specifically to prosecute a trademark and they successfully obtained the trademark.’ That case will head to trial in July if a settlement isn’t reached.”

More at the San Francisco Chronicle via MSN, here. The art magazine Hyperallergic wrote a review of an exhibit by the .com version of the Museum of Failure, here. Sounds like there’s more than enough failure to go around.

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Insights on Hobbyists

April 11, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: Autodesk Instructables.
Building a ship in a bottle. “Hobbies are about doing things: planning, painting, building, contributing an article to your favorite magazine,” writes Alexander Poots at UnHerd.

Niche print magazines seem to survive even after everyone else has gone online. According to an article at UnHerd, that’s especially true of magazines about hobbies.

Alexander Poots writes, “Phil Parker is the editor of Garden Rail magazine. He’s a passionate man — especially on the subject of steam engines. ‘The steam engine is the nearest anybody has come to building a living thing,’ he says. … He talks about the joy of seeing them in action. The smells, the hiss and chuff, the weight of them on the line. It’s a joy that many people want to recreate at home. …

“Layouts in back gardens across Britain range from tiny loops of track to colossal, intricate landscapes. Parker knows a guy whose line crosses Lilliputian bridges and snakes through mountains 10 feet tall. Layouts are much more than models, he says. They really are railways, albeit on a smaller scale than usual. A keen sense of ownership is important: ‘these are their railway lines.’

“Ardent hobbyists are often viewed as eccentric. I think they might be the only normal people left. As a rule, they are active and engaged. They are more interested in making than consuming. They dream and they do. A passive appreciation for steam engines or military history or orchids isn’t enough. Hobbyists want to take part.

“ ‘I grew up fascinated by history, and wargaming helps you make that interest interactive,’ says Daniel Faulconbridge, editor of Wargames Illustrated. ‘It’s not good enough for me that I just read about the Battle of Hastings, I want to collect the figures that represent the troops that fought in the battle, and then paint them and play a game with them.’ …

“Magazines like Garden Rail and Wargames Illustrated are at the heart of the hobby world. The variety is extraordinary. Hornby Magazine, Airfix Model World, The Orchid Review, Lute News. Monthly publications dedicated to remote control aircraft and koi keeping. Some hobbies have broader appeal than others — the UK has enough carp fishermen to support both Total Carp and CARPology. But even the more niche titles have a readership large enough to keep them viable in a brutal publishing environment. …

“The physical hobby magazine has in fact proved surprisingly durable. Both Faulconbridge and Parker acknowledge that their readers tend to be older, and prefer print media because it’s what they grew up with. There’s also a practical aspect: if you’re following a guide to painting a model Landsknecht, it’s easier to have a paper copy open on the table than faff about with a phone or tablet. …

“Again and again when talking to Parker and Faulconbridge, I am struck by the emphasis on the physical. Hobbies are about doing things: planning, painting, building, contributing an article to your favorite magazine. ‘You come into a hobby and you’re not being encouraged to binge-watch something on the tele — which is a very, very passive activity — you’re being encouraged to have a go at something,’ Parker observes. …

“Hanging out with like-minded people is the best way to have a go. Community is a word that comes up a lot in my chats with the editors. … Parker emphasizes that railway modeling exhibitions are as much social gatherings as they are celebrations of the hobby. As anyone who has worked an allotment knows, shared enthusiasms have a way of collapsing social barriers. Parker remembers one exhibition where he sat around a pub table with ‘a physics professor, a guy who ran his own bus company, a Liberal Democrat councillor, a theatre manager, a bishop and two lawyers. Our common interest was model railways. You find yourself meeting a really wide variety of people.’

“Still, it’s a mistake to think that these groups are purely focused on the hobby itself. Wargames and model railways are often the starting point for other things. Friendships are made, money is raised for charity, and support networks are formed. ‘Men are particularly bad at chatting,’ says Parker. ‘But they will chat about steam engines and they will chat about garden railways, and that chat can then move on to more valuable topics. We run the largest model railway forum in the world, and tucked away on it is a prostate cancer discussion group.’ …

“Hobby magazines survive because they are outgrowths of these communities. Most articles are written by hobbyists, in what Faulconbridge describes as ‘a fanzine approach.’ Neither the editors nor the contributors are in it for the money. They just love it. In a recent thread on X, Stone Age Herbalist observed that the continued success of the hobby magazine can be attributed to a particularly British — and more broadly Northern European — genius for voluntary association. Whether centered around giant vegetables or antique fountain pens, little communities bubble up everywhere. …

“A link between hobbies and productive industry can also be found in the world of railway modeling. Parker tells me that, ‘I’ve just reviewed a loco from a company based in Doncaster, Roundhouse Engineering. You’d be amazed, we do still build steam locomotives in this country! It’s a proper Rolls Royce engine model, beautifully constructed. They do pretty much everything in-house.’ This pride and attention to detail is at the root of what all hobbyists are up to. …

“Hobby magazines are heartening advertisements for that reward. Planning, making, getting things wrong, having a laugh about it.”

More at UnHerd, here.

Are bloggers hobbyists? We seem to check a lot of the boxes in the definition.

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