Thursday, December 07, 2023

village life

Every picture tells a story, season 3, picture 9:

During the second world war, young mother Ruth (the botanist we saw here) and her little boy moved in with her parents in Königsberg. When it became clear that the city might not be safe, she moved west to the village of Hahnenbach, where her aunt Johanna had built the house we've seen earlier. In fact, she made this move twice, first in July 1941, but soon after that her brother died and she was called back to help in her father's factory at Königsberg, gave birth to her daughter there, and then moved west again in August 1943. That back-and-forth doesn't change much of the story, as both moves were uneventful and in good time. Considerable amounts of furniture safely arrived in the west. Her aunt's health and alleged need of support served as an excuse, as fleeing East Prussia wasn't really allowed.

So from the city of Königsberg they arrived to village life, glimpses of which we see here:

That's Ruth walking behind the wagon with her son by her side, as he looks quite young still, this may have been as early as the autumn of 1943.

The Hahnenbach fire brigade conducting an exercise by the eponymous river.

And Old Lina (Carolina Weirich, 1871-1951), from the village inn run by several generations of her family (Weirich / Giloy). If I have my ducks lined up correctly, Lina was a second cousin of Ruth's mother and of her aunt Johanna, who came to the village because of this family connection.

Should anybody have any answers to some of the many questions I am raising in this series, please leave a comment here (I'll need to vet it, so it may take a few days before it goes public) or contact me at michaelgrr [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk

Navigation tools:

Season 3 so far:

  1. family holiday
  2. play time
  3. fashion show
  4. bakery to butcher's shop
  5. the Hamborn brotherhood
  6. all grown up
  7. sisters in the snow
  8. the last holiday
  9. village life

The Mastodon thread for season 3 is here.

You can find Season 2 entries in this thread on Mastodon (complete now!) or via the list at the bottom of the last entry of the season (and also at the bottom of the first entry of this season).

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.

Monday, December 04, 2023

snake toxins

I have a feeling I did a feature on protein toxins in the early days, maybe 20 years ago, but couldn't find it. So I guess it was about time to revisit this field, which is a bit scary but also fascinating.

My feature is mainly about the evolutionary arms race between venomous snakes and their prey species, but I also included a shoutout for other toxic vertebrates including frogs, birds, and of course the duck-billed platypus. Read all about them:

The venom menace

Current Biology Volume 33, Issue 23, 4. December 2023, Pages R1209-R1212

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

See also my Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

Sequence studies show that the three-finger toxins produced by elapid snakes like this banded krait (Bungarus fasciatus) all evolved from a membrane protein that lost its anchor. (Photo: Rushen/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed).)

Friday, December 01, 2023

the tongue of the Sun

la lengua del sol

a film by José Luis Gutiérrez Arias, starring Flavia Atencio, Raul Mendez
Mexico 2017
(DVD with bad English subtitles available from HMV)

I am a sucker for the kind of chamber play that juxtaposes two humans in a room, like Room in Rome and En la cama, so here’s a third movie to compare these two with (or a fourth, if I include Now and Later). Like the earlier Chilean film En la cama, we have a hetero couple, but many other things reminded me of Julio Medem’s Room in Rome (if only because I’ve watched that one more often than the Chilean film).

The story is an entirely different one, as our Mexican characters face the end of the world (apparently expected to come from a ginormous solar protuberance, hence the title of the movie), but the elements shared with Medem’s film include the interlude of a third person knocking on the door, dramatic scenes in the bathroom, attempts at singing (more successful in Rome), and a similar tragedy in the backstory of one of the characters, as well as various gaps in what biographical information they are prepared to share.

On the end of the world side of things I appreciated the light-heartedness with which the protagonists (most of the time) make the most of the time that remains. Not having a future can liberate you of worries – even though the element of fear is also expressed. As our civilisation seems to be hell bent on self destruction, I am sometimes feeling that lightness too – doesn’t matter too much what we eff up now, as everything is effed up wholesale and for the next few centuries anyhow. The slightly esoteric plan they're hatching in the last part of the film reminded me of the famous aphorism the German science writer Hoimar von Ditfurth (1921-1989) used for a book title, which goes along the lines of "if I knew the world were to end tomorrow, I would still plant a little apple tree today."

All in all it's a very lovely and charming little film, which I'll happily watch again once I've had a chance to revisit En la cama and Now and Later. The question remains how this obscure Mexican no-budget film from 2017 ended up on the UK high streets in 2020 even though, of course, it hadn’t been released in UK cinemas. My theory is that some marketing genius realised that in a way it is about people in lockdown, so very timely for 2020. Which would also explain why after we left the lockdowns behind, the DVD is now sold for next to nothing.

HMV

Thursday, November 30, 2023

the last holiday

Every picture tells a story, season 3, picture 8:

We left the three daughters of Frieda the pianist and Peter the customs officer playing in the snow last week - this next set is dated only 18 months after that, and although it is summer (June 1943) their outlook has darkened considerably. Although aged over 40 and initially deemed indispensable in his role, Peter was drafted to the war in the summer of 1942.

The photos show him on his last holiday from the war. Later the same year he spent some time at Baumholder (near Oberstein) for injury reasons so he will have seen the family briefly on that occasion, but I think the last holiday still marks a poignant occasion as he didn't come back and the girls were left without a father.

For this photoshoot, the family of five were united, but one of them had to take the photo, so we have various subsets. Not sure what kind of camera they had and what happened to it.

Should anybody have any answers to some of the many questions I am raising in this series, please leave a comment here (I'll need to vet it, so it may take a few days before it goes public) or contact me at michaelgrr [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk

Navigation tools:

Season 3 so far:

  1. family holiday
  2. play time
  3. fashion show
  4. bakery to butcher's shop
  5. the Hamborn brotherhood
  6. all grown up
  7. sisters in the snow
  8. the last holiday

The Mastodon thread for season 3 is here.

You can find Season 2 entries in this thread on Mastodon (complete now!) or via the list at the bottom of the last entry of the season (and also at the bottom of the first entry of this season).

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.

Thursday, November 23, 2023

sisters in the snow

Every picture tells a story, season 3, picture 7:

We saw Frieda the pianist and her three daughters in a family portrait at the tail end of season 1, but due to the large age gap between the second and the third (almost ten years), there aren't all that many photos of them growing up together. Here they are enjoying the snow in Idar-Oberstein in the winter of 1941/42, in different pairings.

Little sister and middle sister (no idea who the boys are):

ditto, minus the boys and the snowman:

Little sister and big sister

And from the same photoshoot, little sister on her own.

The family lived in a flat at Friedrich-Ebert-Ring 18 in Idar-Oberstein. Although I have revisited the town recently, I didn't quite make it to that address, and I'm not sure if the houses visible in the photos are near to it.

Should anybody have any answers to some of the many questions I am raising in this series, please leave a comment here (I'll need to vet it, so it may take a few days before it goes public) or contact me at michaelgrr [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk

Navigation tools:

Season 3 so far:

  1. family holiday
  2. play time
  3. fashion show
  4. bakery to butcher's shop
  5. the Hamborn brotherhood
  6. all grown up
  7. sisters in the snow

The Mastodon thread for season 3 is here.

You can find Season 2 entries in this thread on Mastodon (complete now!) or via the list at the bottom of the last entry of the season (and also at the bottom of the first entry of this season).

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.

Tuesday, November 21, 2023

lost railways

some thoughts on

Last trains: Dr Beeching and the death of rural England
Charles Loft
Biteback Publishing 2023
(original hardback 2013)

For the last 30 years and a bit I’ve been living in Oxford and very happily too. The one thing that bugs me is the state the railways are in. Although Oxford is located centrally and in the middle between the two biggest cities, there are no electric trains here and overall fewer trains leaving the station than, for instance, the small regional station of Düsseldorf-Bilk (which is my base when I travel in Germany, see photo and caption here). As recent events have underlined, the country has spectacularly failed to invest in modern high-speed rail, meaning that people routinely take planes from London to Manchester, Edinburgh or Glasgow.

When I want to go to London, I take the coach, as the train is unaffordable and diesel-powered anyways, so not much greener. When I want to see some other cities for a change, I take the Eurostar from there – cheaper, faster, and more comfortable than travelling within the UK.

There are no railways connecting us to neighbouring Oxfordshire towns except Didcot and Banbury which happen to be on the main line (the recent reopening of the Chiltern line has added Bicester). Going to Witney, for instance, you spend an hour each way on a bus stuck in a permanent traffic queue. Buses go every ten minutes or so, so there would have been enough demand for a train that would only take ten minutes. No trains to Abingdon, Wallingford, etc either. The absence of regional lines corresponding to the German Regionalexpress directly affects our quality of life here as people from the wider region drive into Oxford by default and thus clog our streets and pollute our air.

It has dawned on me over the years that these regional rail connections existed once, but were cut in the 1960s, mostly in the wake of the infamous Beeching report, an attempt to cut costs by closing unprofitable lines, stations and services. In Last trains (a general reader book based on the author’s earlier academic monograph on the topic), Charles Loft examines the politics around these cuts – which has relevance beyond the railways as the politics is similar around today’s dismantling of the NHS.

Reading it both as the history of the railways we’re missing now and of the other public services we still have but may lose soon, this is quite painful but important. The author tries hard to present a balanced view between the social usefulness of railways and the political imperative to save taxpayers’ money, and it is kind of comforting that it could have become much worse, and one of the scenarios examined under tory governments featured no railways whatsoever.

I learned that we owe the survival of the wreckage we still have not so much to foresight but to the electoral fallout that further cuts would have had. Essentially, Tories feared losing their support in the shires cut off from civilisation, whereas Labour feared the unions falling away. Everybody feared that Scotland and Wales might resent being cut off from the railways entirely by Westminster.

It is also remarkable that different branches of the government involved in allegedly modernising the country didn’t talk to each other. Thus, a shiny new city, Milton Keynes, was built from scratch in a place that simultaneously lost its rail connection westwards to Oxford and eastwards to Cambridge.

What I still find puzzling is that planners and politicians in the 1960s didn’t think through the effect that a total switch to car ownership would have. Although climate change wasn’t in the news yet, the sheer surface area needed if 60 million people move 40million metal boxes to wherever they want to go, requiring a multiple of their sizes in car parks and road surface, would have destroyed not just the countryside but also the cities. Well it largely has, but if the misguided “modernisers” of the 60s had pulled through with these plans (famously including an inner ring road across Christ Church Meadow, vetoed by the University), it could have become even worse.

Blackwells (bought it from The Last Bookshop in Jericho, actually, but can't find it on their website)

Loving the cover. Seeing that I have four separate railway families in my immediate ancestry, I may well be epigenetically programmed to become a railway nostalgic.

PS I wasn't aware of this, but just the day I posted this a feasibility study for the rail connection to Witney was published. Funny how the press release doesn't mention this connection once existed. They keep stressing it's a new line. The BBC report, however, does discuss the historic line and its closure in the Beeching cuts.

Monday, November 20, 2023

mission not accomplished

Not so very long ago, the end of 2023 was the target date by which wild polio strains would have been eradicated and the vaccine-derived variants been brought under control. It is now clear that these goals will not be accomplished this year or any time soon. Like meaningful climate saving measures and action against antibiotic resistance, the planned second-ever eradication of a human disease remains a movable feast.

I've taken the approaching target date as an opportunity to have a closer look at what went wrong, what still needs to be done, and how we can overcome diseases more generally. The resulting feature is out now:

Can we wipe out diseases?

Current Biology Volume 33, Issue 22, 20. November 2023, Pages R1163-R1165

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

See also my Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

The new generation of polio vaccines features stabilising manipulations to the RNA, designed to stop the attenuated virus from mutating back to the more virulent form. (image: National Institutes of Health.)

Saturday, November 18, 2023

in praise of old technology

I was keen to read and review this book

Reimagining Alternative Technology for Design in the 21st Century
by Brook S. Kennedy

as I'm really interested in the idea of using and modernising the sustainable technologies that we have had for a long time, rather than inventing new ones that turn out to be unsustainable. It was an interesting read but also a bit frustrating as written purely from an American perspective and thus telling the reader about allegedly extinct alternatives that many of us in Europe still have been using all the time, such as bikes, trams and clotheslines, shutters on windows, etc. Anyhow, a slim volume and thus a quick read with some interesting insights into the history of technology and how it took wrong turns in the 20th century, as well as some smart ideas on how to do better in this one. (Incidentally, this week's crop of EurekAlert press releases included one called: Sticking with old technology can be a strategic move).

More about it in my long essay review now out:

Back to the future

Chemistry & Industry Volume 87, Issue 11, November 2023, Page 38

access via:

Wiley Online Library (paywalled PDF of the whole review section)

SCI (premium content, ie members only)

As always, I'm happy to send a PDF on request.

Blackwells

Thursday, November 16, 2023

all grown up

Every picture tells a story, season 3, picture 6:

We saw the Hamborn brothers growing up last time, so here they are all grown up now.

The oldest working in the postal service (then still Deutsche Bundespost, with virtually all employees enjoying the benefits of being civil servants, Beamte), still at Hamborn:

whereas the other two went to work in the steel industry in Duisburg. Here's the middle one on holiday (don't have any pics of him at work I'm afraid, otherwise I would have called this entry men at work). I have absolutely no idea where this is, most likely southern Germany or possibly Austria:

and the youngest at his workplace (fourth from left), hopefully after the end of the shift:

Photos are all undated, but the first two should all be from the 1950s, the last one more likely 60s to possibly early 70s

Should anybody have any answers to some of the many questions I am raising in this series, please leave a comment here (I'll need to vet it, so it may take a few days before it goes public) or contact me at michaelgrr [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk

Navigation tools:

Season 3 so far:

  1. family holiday
  2. play time
  3. fashion show
  4. bakery to butcher's shop
  5. the Hamborn brotherhood
  6. all grown up

The Mastodon thread for season 3 starts here.

You can find Season 2 entries in this thread on Mastodon (complete now!) or via the list at the bottom of the last entry of the season (and also at the bottom of the first entry of this season).

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.

Friday, November 10, 2023

the year of the fiddle

In the zodiac of my life, there are instrument obsessions that define certain time spans, so since last November this has definitely been the year of the fiddle. Which surprised me because I never had much interest in violins until I accidentally succeeded in repairing the old one that my aunt had (and didn't enjoy much) as a little girl back in the 1930s.

After playing it rather too enthusiastically at the folk weekend (in April) I've begun to notice some joint pains in the fingers of the left hand, so I'm not putting in massive amounts of practice but I do make sure to play a few folk tunes and a bit of Mozart (K525 or K304) every day, progressing very slowly.

For the anniversary, I've recorded the Äppelbo Gånglåt again (only to realise later that I already shared a version of that at the six-month milestone. Comparison of both videos shows that I play it a bit faster now (by around 10%) and a bit less out of tune. So all indicators going in the right direction.

Family reunion: All three instruments have been in the family for more than half a century: Heinrich the cello, Blue the guitar and Christa the violin.

PS Previous instruments on the zodiac were:

  • tenor sax 8/21-10/22 (the ergonomically designed instrument that works even with a frozen shoulder, also suited to keep people at a distance during plague times)
  • cello 3/20 - 9/22 (Plague Year Bach Project brought to a halt by shoulder problems)
  • alto recorder 1/19 - 2/20 (both my altos appear in this year review, the black Triebert is the one I play regularly)

Thursday, November 09, 2023

vestische Musikschule

On Flickr I came across a postcard of the Vestische Musikschule at Gelsenkirchen-Buer, which is where from 1969 to 1971 my mother took piano lessons (for herself rather than offering any kind of musical education to her children). Her teacher was the then head of the school, Kurt Kayser. So I was intrigued to read on the back of the flickr postcard the name Eusebius Kayser.

The chronicles of the city of Gelsenkirchen name Eusebius as the headteacher when the school reopened in 1946, but Kurt as the founder (in 1920) as well as the headteacher in the early 1970s, until his death in 1972. Which is all a bit confusing, but I assume they were related and the music school was more of a family business rather than a public institution? Eusebius also played cello, like Kurt, and in 1946-47 played recitals together with his mother, Ida Kayser-Insinger, playing piano. Search "Eusebius" in the city chronicles for 1946 and 1947.

The name Vestische, by the way, looks kind of official but isn't, as the Vest Recklinghousen was a judiciary district in the Middle Ages, but hasn't had any official significance since. When I was growing up in the Vest, the name was everywhere, but it was never clear to me where the Vest was exactly.

It bothers me that there is virtually no info about the Vestische Musikschule to be found online, apart from the snippets I already mentioned, so if anybody knows more, I'd be grateful for any hints. The city's public Musikschule has been in operation since 1978, so I'm thinking the Vestische may just have been merged into that, or it may have died out with the Kayser family?

NB In the budget for 1974, funding for the foundation of a music school was rejected, the city chronicles note. There is no mention of the word Musikschule in the volume for the previous year.

The building at Pfefferackerstraß 11 looks really lovely on the old postcards. As the one on flickr has been scribbled on, here's a clean copy I found in a forum online:

Source

The building is now the home of a ballet school called Swoboda - when you search for that you'll also get a google streetview image.

More generally, in the research for my musical family memoir project, I am getting the impression that music schools and conservatoires don't often have a Wikipedia entry or any kind of written history online - in contrast to eg schools and universities. Making music look like some sort of clandestine society?

Monday, November 06, 2023

power to the peatlands

In September I attended the conference Power to the Peatlands in Antwerp and learned lots of things about the ongoing efforts to save or restore peatlands, not just as ecosystems but also as carbon storage that has a major impact on climate change. What I love most about this topic is how our idea what progress means has turned by 180 degrees in just a few decades - until around 1970 draining the swamps was considered a good idea (which today mainly survives in political metaphor), whereas now progress is all about rewetting the landscapes we once drained.

Now I've rounded up everything from the cultural history to current climate efforts in my latest feature which is out now:

Powerful peatlands

Current Biology Volume 33, Issue 21, 6. November 2023, Pages R1127-R1129

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

See also my Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

Population pressure and generous investments made the Netherlands a pioneer in draining wetlands to create new land for agriculture. The iconic windmills now admired by tourists often served as pumps to remove water from low-lying areas. (Photo: R Boed/Flickr (CC BY 2.0 DEED).)

PS back in the noughties, I read various sources about wetlands drainage programmes in 17th century France for family history reasons, because Octavio Strada Junior, grand-son of Jacopo Strada, was involved with them and made quite a success of it. His well-documented descendants include French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing. A firm connection to my Strada ancestors remains to be found though.