The Earthrise Diary (April 2012)

                              THE EARTHRISE DIARY (April 2012)

      

© text Don Diespecker 2012; individual © is retained by authors whose writings are included in this text.

                                                                                                       Don Diespecker

In my relentless search for appropriate epigraphs I offer these two to readers who may be especially interested in the ocean and in rivers. This is the month in which the RMS Titanic went down 100 years ago—just 17 years before I was born. My same vintage cousin, Rik Diespecker, recently did some research on the ship that carried the Diespecker family from the UK to Canada in 1908. Our grandparents, Rudolph and Elizabeth Diespecker, together with their five sons (including my father, Durbyn, 1896-1977 and Rik’s father, Richard, {always ‘Dick’ in the family}, 1907-1973) were among the 556 passengers on the SS Parisian that sailed from London to Quebec City (and Montreal) in September 1908. Rik’s research showed that “The Parisian (5,359 tons, steel hull, speed 14 knots), had accommodation for 1,250 passengers, was built in Glasgow and launched on November 4 1880”… “Her maiden voyage, March 10 1880, was from Liverpool to Halifax and Boston. She was fitted with new engines in 1899 and in 1902 she was equipped with the Marconi Wireless Telegraph”… “London – Quebec – Montreal voyages began in April 1908 and continued until September 17 1909 when the Parisian resumed the Glasgow-Boston route. In April 1912 she rescued some of the survivors from the Titanic. She was scrapped in Italy in January 1914.”                                                                                     DD and RD

Louis Bleriot made his first flight in 1907 and flew across the English Channel in 1909.

Vitamins were recognized as essential to health in 1906; their classification in 1911 stimulated dietary studies.

Ammonia was synthesized in 1908, enabling Germany to produce the first high explosives.

The first helicopter flew in 1907.

The Model T Ford was sold in 1908. It was the first automobile made on an assembly line.

The former Boer republics helped form a new dominion, the Union of South Africa, 1910.

A nationalist government was set up in China in 1911 under Sun Yat-sen.

Igor Stravinsky’s Petrushka, 1911 and Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe were performed in 1912,

Nuclear theory, (that the atom contains a central nucleus), was announced by Lord Rutherford in 1911.

                                           The Random House Timetables of History

The trip was finally over: I had visited every dip and bend and deep and shallow of the most important river in the world. Now, up here, high on the Tibetan Plateau among the snowy crags of the Tanggula Shan range where the river was born, that world was deserted and almost soundless, with just a few yaks moving slowly across the meadow, tearing disconsolately at the thin grass. The river, here no more than a shallow stream just a couple of yards across, gurgled pleasantly, readying itself for its journey of almost four thousand miles down to where I had begun my journey in its immense, muddy and ship-jostled estuary on the East China Sea.

Simon Winchester, in the Introduction to the New Edition of The River at the Center of the World; A Journey up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time.

Saturday April 7 2012. I’ve been enjoying my Saturday breakfast while seeing the river in brilliant sunlight on a summery morning in autumn. Saturday breakfast is special because I give myself permission to indulge in black coffee (no sugar) and then a ‘scrambled omelet’ accompanied by a little crispy bacon. The relatively small amount of coffee, approximately two teaspoons, provides a disproportionate hit that hurls the Don brain into warp speed and enables a fast start on Writings (so fast, sometimes, that my mind must necessarily do an Immelmann turn when I remember to consume the otherwise forgotten two slices of toast and Rose’s English Breakfast Marmalade (no butter) to which I am somewhat addicted (it used to be Lackerstein’s Marmalde in a steel tin but I can no longer find that in the supermarket). The ‘no butter’ stricture is there for several good reasons: my blood vessels do not thrive on butter; my favourite GP has mentioned that I should ‘Go easy on the Dairy;’ also, my late father, Durbyn, during the Great Depression, when we lived in British Columbia, used to say that although he enjoyed butter and sundry other spreads, including marmalade, either of those he considered a special treat, but that butter and a second spread taken together on a slice of bread or toast was excessive and luxurious… (As I recall, our family’s favourite Saturday or Sunday breakfast in those 1930s days was ‘a stack of wheat’s,’{pan-fried wheaten pancakes with maple syrup…and sometimes with a tiny bit of added butter} thoughtfully made by Dad).

Saturday April 21 2012 was very similar to April 7–it was like a summer’s day. Between these two Saturdays the weather was largely rubbish: it rained, it showered, it drizzled and there was mud everywhere at Earthrise. Son Nick visited from Ottawa for a couple of days while he and wife Carol were visiting Pam and Carl at Mayfield and during a sunny lull at Earthrise and in that time we were able to pump some water to storage and walk a bit and sit and talk considerably and to eat and drink well (butter was not an issue).

Books, Writers and Creative Writing

Being pensive or contemplative before plunging into The Writings is usually the most sensible way to begin a ‘composing’ session. On these sunny autumn mornings, sitting at my worktable and with the computer switched either to off or perhaps to sleep I’m often aware of reflections on the dark screen in front of me. I see a fuzzy me, rows of dark books behind me on the wall bookshelves and I see sunlight streaming through the circular window above a slightly better illuminated row of dictionaries. And there’s an untidy pile of books dominating the adjacent table where the printer is nudged by a bunch of current files. The untidy book pile looms next to me as a reminder that I’ve failed to complete reading these particular books. Certain books are partly read, others have been scarcely opened or examined and there’s a bunch of them that don’t deserve this isolation at all: the annual Black Inc volumes of essays, stories and poetry regularly published as The Best Australian (essays or stories or poetry). Each of these anthologies enable the reader to sample at leisure and the writing is always extraordinarily good and often memorable: it would be a mistake to read any one of these anthologies straight through from beginning to end because each writer has uniquely different styles and their rhetoric is distinctive and the themes explored vary enormously. Such books deserve close attention and I sample them one narrative at a time to leave room for the contemplation they deserve—I’m trying to say that a book like Anna Karenina is an inspired and inspiring page turner and although the Black Inc anthologies are also great page turners the different authors are best understood one at a time and carefully rather than quickly. Most of the other books in the pile are the books that I should have read weeks ago (novels, for example).

Now I joyfully remove and almost discard one of Henry James’ novels: What Maisie Knew. The critics will tell us that this is a fine book; they will almost universally declare it to be something of a masterpiece, that it is an excellent example of literary fiction and that if the reading public has any sense at all they will apply themselves to reading and completing this astonishing work of art. The fine writer and critic, David Lodge (The Art of Fiction), not only praises this text, he also warns against it, for James often writes such lengthy and complex sentences solidifying into entire paragraphs that in Lodge’s view: …’you have to wait till the end, [of the sentence] holding the accumulating information in your head, for the clinching clause that delivers the main point… This makes reading James a strenuous, but rewarding experience: nod in mid-sentence and you are lost.’ Exactly! I am unable to get past the middle of this taxing narrative and am now abandoning the entire book. As much as I admire writing that enables the reader access to the ‘inner life’ of characters, James is too much: nod in mid-sentence and you are indeed lost. I wonder what kinds of conversations novelist Henry and his psychologist and philosopher brother, William, might have had?

Other unfinished books demanding my attention include Deborah Eisenberg’s (fiction) Twilight of the Superheroes, Anna Funder’s (fiction) (No. 1 Bestseller) All that I am, David Mitchell’s (fiction) Cloud Atlas, The Australian Long Story (there are 9 authors) (Ed) Mandy Sayer, Murasaki Shikibu’s (fiction) The Tale of Genji, the nonfiction Home Ground (Language for an American Landscape) (Eds) Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney, Maya Ward’s (nonfiction) The Comfort of Water, and Simon Winchester’s (nonfiction) The River at the Center of the World.

I dare not tell the whole truth about these books and I ought not   review partly read books. The last two named books are about rivers (Yarra and Yangtze); Home Ground is an alluring reference book that I sample occasionally: its structure is so attractive as to be compelling: it’s a big encyclopedic dictionary with wide margins. The entries describe landforms; there are drawings, some of them in the margins and most of them finely rendered; in many margins text (e.g., from novels) demonstrates how writers have used the defined words or phrases that comprise the entries; this is a book I dare not finish because reading it is such a pleasure: the reader is able to better understand some of Cormac McCarthy’s lyrical descriptions in his US/Mexican novels that have landforms with Spanish names. Cloud Atlas is fiction about fiction (metafiction) and as much as I’ve enjoyed half of it (chapters or segments are in differing styles) I have reached an impasse similar to that indicated by Lodge’s comments on James, i.e., I’ve lost the plot, literally. The Tale of Genji is said to be the world’s oldest novel. It has intriguing illustrations and although the stories are well told, reading them in translation is tedious (yes, I know this is sacrilege). I’ve read only a few pages of Esisenberg, but will persevere, and although I’m half way through Anna Funda’s novel I haven’t entirely warmed to the characters…yet. And as much as I like long stories (better than short stories) because the long story is a form I also enjoy writing, I have not, so far, particularly liked either the themes, plots or story lines of the narratives in The Australian Long Story. Also, I dislike long prefaces, explanations and forewords and am deeply suspicious of the generous praise contained in too many well-written blurbs: pages of hype are not substitute for fine or literary writing (sorry chaps).   

The circular window slightly behind me is well covered by dust and webs so that light has necessarily to filter its way through the glass. The window glass is also dusty enough to be a ground for the shadows of nearby trees as well as reflections of the trees seen further back in the garden where there is direct sunlight. Nice. I feel I’m both in a writer’s retreat and a possibly savage critic’s retreat. Attached to the inside of my beautiful circular window and now brilliantly seen reflected by my black computer screen is a filmy reproduction of a Rupert Bunny painting. Perhaps it’s just me and perhaps most of you reading this have known of this marvelous Australian painter for years. Rupert Bunny (Sept 29 1864- May 25 1947). The reader who has not seen Bunny paintings may Google his name to see for him- or her-self.             

                  

I usually go shopping on a particular weekday and drive a considerable distance to experience a range of road conditions that include the much maligned Darkwood Road, (especially those conditions along its furthest parts where I live adjacent to some of the road’s rural awfulness), the early morning rush of vehicles on the Trunk Road, the press of BIG vehicles of all kinds lurching through Bellingen such as tankers and logging trucks and on the highway the speed of modern sedans having high performance engines—all kinds of traffic or road conditions. As many of us drivers do, I also tune in and out of the great stream of consciousness while driving. And although I can’t possibly detail those thoughts or that imagery, one or two instances might be salvageable.

The week between the above two dates was not a typical or normal week. In that week it was necessary to leave home and to drive on five consecutive days. Because it seems unlikely to me that no reader will want to read my detailed description of that week I’ve chosen a few of the highlights and will present them here as tiny and partial proto essays in the hope that you, the reader, won’t be needlessly irritated or bored and that you may even experience sympathetic twinges—or that you may perhaps be entertained. These proto pieces (you may even think of them as feuilletons) are in no special order.

                                                    Round Trip

Here I am. I’ve been Out There, completed the mission, returned in one piece and would dearly like to have some lunch and then totter down to the Big Lawn to enjoy the simple pleasure of sitting in my garden.

I am awake before 05:00. The weather is less than wonderful. Darkwood Road when it emerges from the gloom looks cheerless and wet. The river is up a bit. The rain comes down in annoying on-off showers or drizzle. After breakfast I drive away into the wet. The bitumen further along my journey is wet and is also greasy in places. I am cautious with the brakes and have a preference for using the gears. The 1987 Honda can hold her own with The Big Guys driving modern vehicles having high performance engines because my car is expertly serviced and enjoys the best fuel; however, I don’t do road competitions; life is too short.

The first part of the day is easy because it isn’t unusual and I do this trip at least once a week: I merely get up early, catch some news, successfully pass in stages from bed to bathroom to being fully dressed, showered, shaved and ready to meet whatever comes up. I go shopping by surviving the awfulness of upper Darkwood Road, then the Trunk Road, then the highway that accommodates the early morning rush hour into Coffs Harbour and beyond. I shop and return home in the same order as when I left. Then I eat and then I sit in the garden: the garden is the best part of such a day. I have dodged the worst of the rain or showers. I have a newspaper. I have Simon Winchester’s beaut book (thanks, Nick: it’s a perfect gift!).  I can recover and recuperate and I do. This recovery stage is a delight. But before I read anything I look and see what’s what. Butterflies. I am fascinated and charmed to see butterfly air-shows.

                                              Air Shows

There‘s a part of me that wants to know the name of the butterfly: it looks so unusual and so purposeful; but there’s another part of me that enjoys the mysteriousness of the little creature’s behaviour and I don’t need to understand its modus operandi.

At this time of year each sunny day or partly sunny day is a bonus. The yellow and brown leaves of the white cedars drift to the lawn like showers of light snow. I see that there is no breeze at all and feel sure that the leaves have been let go in flurries from several trees (trees do this as though making considered decisions). Then the flurries stop. Just like that. If any reader thinks this odd may I gently point out that sitting quietly in a garden will enable each of you to see this for yourself. These occasional flurries and falls of leaves although they have little to do with us may greatly benefit us in calming ways; that’s why I so much enjoy leaves falling: seeing the phenomenon is always a remarkable experience.

In my view watching butterflies, like watching falling leaves in autumn, is in the nature of a meditative practice and is healing. Driving from here to Coffs Harbour and ‘back’ again (forward, really) is far from calming or contemplative, at least it is for me. I know that after returning home from lengthy drives and my then sitting outside in the garden returns me to calmness and that such interludes are vital to my wellbeing.

At this time of the year there are distinctive butterflies at Earthrise: average in size, milk chocolate brown in colour, and having striking yellow markings on each wing. The yellow and sometimes cream markings are sometimes in the nature of roundels on aircraft wings, sometimes they remind me vividly of bold lightning flashes. If one settles on the ground I can get fairly close on hands and knees and then I’m able to also see two tiny ‘eyes’ on the tail, and these look yellow, too, but they’re so small that their diameters are scarcely 1-mm. A millimeter or two is hard to see unless I can get really close and on my knees, yet when I see spider web filament drifting over the river, I can clearly see the silken strand. There are so many online references to spider silk that the mind boggles—spider silk is finer than human hair: threads are only a few microns in diameter, a micron being a millionth of a metre… Even though I know that my seeing this material depends greatly on light the ability of anyone or any creature being able to make discriminations like that are amazing—in my opinion. I can discriminate the width of a single strand of some fine material from the air containing it that is a mere few millionths of a metre in diameter! From the house I often see spider silk drifting over the river perhaps 40-m away and that seems magical to me. Yet seeing the tiny roundels on the butterfly’s tail is much more difficult.

Also in my magical and amazing visual acuity repertoire: seeing close together butterflies bobbing at speed two or three metres away from my garden chair. Their ‘bobbing speed’ is hard to estimate and although I’ve no idea of how fast two or three butterflies are moving this way in direct relation to one another, I can see that such movements and turns and sudden changes of altitude are very quick indeed. How do they do that without causing mid-air collisions? 

 

                                           The Helmsman           

My favourite dictionary now seems old: the word cybernetics comes to us from the Greek kybernet, (helmsman, steersman), and I’ve remembered that from my student days and when the University purchased its first computer and we used to punch cards to represent our input data to a machine we called a PDP 8…

On a different morning (and also quite early in the day) I very carefully disconnect my computer, very, very carefully carry it to the car and secure the machine inside the vehicle. I plan to take my computer to a computer wizard for a sort of servicing. I extend the normal driving experience and visit my IT guru who is also old friend. The landscape is changing: bush that once thrived en route has now vanished because the road builders have so effectively obliterated it that I am in danger of becoming lost. What my friend doesn’t know about our kind of computer isn’t worth bothering about. I dare not name him. Were I to identify this magician of the IT/computing world, he would be besieged by hordes of computer drivers desperate to have their machines Fixed or Improved or Fine Tuned. Like me, he is retired; these days ‘retirement’ is code for ‘extremely busy and in the middle of everything.’  I am very fortunate and am not going to reveal anything that will enable you to find him. When he connects my machine and studies her actions there is a strangely compelling change in the air that now seems to sparkle with a strange ambience and I think I am hearing very melodic and distant music. The inner workings of my computer are rapidly displayed on the screen; enormous amounts of detailed lore appear in what I suspect are called windows and successive displays of detailed graphics flash briefly and slow my senses. Celestial music seems to waft down from the sky. Images flash strangely by. Then I slowly awake from my drowsy state to hear the Old Helmsman’s voice saying: ‘All is well; she looks OK.’

                              

                                           Inner Workings                                                 

X-rays are a form of electromagnetic radiation, similar to light but of shorter wavelength and capable of penetrating solids and of ionizing gases. Radiation gives me pause for thought; as does ionizing. And I remember the recent accidental electrification of my roof and bathroom floor and not forgetting the fallen tree that wrecked the ‘point of attachment’ to the incoming power line; none of which was nice. The one form of light that I welcome comes from the sun and enfolds me while I muse in my garden.

I’ve reached Coffs Harbour after another early start and am now in a room in one of the city’s radiology ‘centres’ (if ‘centres’ is the right word). It’s somewhat Star Wars in here and, I suspect, there are lots of invisible volts in the wiring: a carefully wrapped and insulated bundle of wires or cables nudges my head and I step back indignantly. Big machines hum softly and therefore ominously. It’s a little chilly in here. This is a nil-by-mouth occasion; I’ve been up since dawn, had no breakfast and have dared to take only my half tablet of metoprolol to discourage my blowing up or breaking down on the journey from home to ‘the largest city in northeast NSW’. In a way, I am now not just old, I am an old tough guy who has early morning adventures driving on the highway at speed followed by early morning stoicism when confronted by X-ray and scanning machines. I have arrived here in one piece by imagining myself heroically as the successful driver of a Starship that has zoomed through the Belts of Orion and evaded Klingon battle cruisers and I have held my own with younger space cadets on the highway. The radiologist (I suspect him of being the Practitioner, i.e., a medico who is also a radiologist) invites me to exchange my shirt for a thin blue smock of the disposable kind. The smock can be secured in a bow from behind. Easy. The purpose of the smock is partly to combat my dribbling or drooling of barium and thereby preventing me from making a mess of my clothes. The barium drink is explained (my dictionary later reveals that ‘barium’ is probably barium sulphate, ‘which is used chiefly as a pigment in paints and printing inks, and in medicine, because of its radiopacity, for x-ray diagnosis’). I follow directions and stand with my chest pressed to a cold screen. I hold my breath. X-rays, I suspect flood briefly through me. I remain expectantly in the pressed chest position. The radiologist ducks inside his capsule to check the result. He returns wanting another take. The rays surge through me again. I then totter to a different location in the same room to stand on the small metal platform of a second machine, one that not only scans: it has the potential to tilt me at odd angles. I knock back the first drink of barium; such drinks are also called ‘meals’. It doesn’t taste so bad; it’s just thick and uninteresting although almost tasty. This particular machine is scanning in real time and also, it seems, taking pictures while the barium finds its way down my gullet to my stomach. The radiologist calls in a colleague. Is something amiss? The colleague arrives leaving the door open. The two colleagues confer in the cubbyhole pod or bunker. I remain motionless because I can see through the open door to the front desk and beyond. If I stand very still, I imagine, then the other humans that I can clearly see moving near the front counter may not see me and so will perhaps not be perturbed by viewing the disembodied person who has been captured and held in a back room. If these other persons look in my direction they will see the top half of an old guy, apparently an antique cross dresser enchantingly turned out in a new blue translucent smock which has scarcely any barium dribble down the front. Fortunately, I am not in full tilt and am thankful to be not far off the vertical. The person consulted leaves and the door is closed. I relax. Now I am tilted and requested to drink more barium, this time through a straw. By squinting while sucking I can see the imaged barium descending with ghostly certainty through my oesophagus like ectoplasm to my stomach. This is mildly interesting. What takes most of my interest, however, is an alarming X-ray view of my upper vertebrae maintaining some sort of connection with the back of my head and one of them, the Number One Vertebra, I guess, looks so detached as to be sticking out like a sore thumb. I make joking reference to this. The radiologist person laughs tolerantly and gently. We continue sociably with the procedure until suddenly it’s all over. I get dressed leaving my dribbled-on smock behind, recover my wits and leave the machine room and the radiology centre to rejoin ordinary humans in the streets and wander away to the Palm Centre where I recklessly have some very acceptable coffee (this being a special revivifying occasion) and a gluten-free strawberry muffin, then I lurch away to the parking station where I picnic on the car’s bonnet and finally head for home, burping.

                                                      

                                           Mind Pictures

Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as ‘chain’ or ‘train’ do not describe it fitly… It is nothing jointed: it flows. A ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life (William James, 1890).

When we drive our motor vehicles we are, hopefully, fully conscious and that means that whatever we are actively doing we are also actively thinking, idly thinking, contemplatively thinking and excitedly thinking and doing that in different phases. I know I do and I also know that it’s essential that I drive focused and alert and wholly aware of where I am (usually IN traffic) and what I am about: I’m paying attention, largely to my driving; I’m also paying attention to much of what is running through my mind that is not ‘attention to driving’ for I am paying attention, as well, to myself.

Because falling leaves often remind me instantly of snow falling I tend to visualize snowy times and places—and I sometimes do this while driving. I recently remembered working on the runways (part of a civil engineering contract) at Tehran-Mehrabad Airport in 1956 and the snow falling heavily. I sometimes traveled around Iran as a passenger in old Iran Air DC-3s (the ‘Dakota’) and those times reminded me of lighter snowfalls when I was a schoolboy in Victoria, BC, Canada: in the mid-Thirties I would walk from the family home in Oxford Street, to Sir James Douglas School in all weathers and on snowy days I’d wear a zipped windbreaker and had one of those old-fashioned leather ‘flying helmets (with goggles) on my head—like many other kids. I remember that in my mind I was the intrepid aviator flying heroically through a blinding snowstorm…and in those far-off times the real North American aviators of the day were Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974) who had made the first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927 (from New York to Paris) and Amelia Earhart (1897-1937), the first woman to fly the Atlantic alone, five years after Lindbergh, in May 1932 and who became the first woman to receive the US Distinguished Flying Cross (she and her male navigator disappeared without trace while making a Pacific flight in a twin-engine Lockheed Electra in July 1937). A couple of months later I sailed with my family on a freighter carrying lumber from Chemainus (Vancouver Island, BC) to South African and Mozambique ports (we were all signed on as crew) and I remember how frequently Amelia was discussed. In the Thirties we had the radio and the newspaper and we went every week to the movies: the Lindbergh kidnapping, the exploits of famous aviators and the political changes in Europe were hot topics that I knew of, yet was too young to discuss; small children look, listen and learn. I still visualize those times.

The butterflies that I enjoy watching in my garden, the ones with the vivid markings, also remind me of other times, other places because the wing markings look like crudely drawn and too-thick ‘lightning flashes’ and the lightning flashes remind me of the insignia worn by the Nazi SS and although that’s an unfortunate image to be reminded of, it comes up frequently, uninvited.

More cheerfully, here’s a relevant quotation (from The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind by Julian Jaynes):

Or introspect on when you last went swimming: I suspect you have an image of a seashore, lake, or pool which is largely a retrospection, but when it comes to yourself swimming, lo! Like Nijinsky in his dance, you are seeing yourself swim, something that you have never observed at all!   

And isn’t this pretty much what we all do?

The drive between Bellingen and Thora is worth taking now because the trees are showing their autumn colours. In some respects driving here is like driving in an Impressionist painting: that’s how good these trees look. Those parts of me that would enjoy being a film director would like to experimentally fly slowly and low above the road so that I might find the best times and weather conditions and altitudes to make a film of these trees (no voice-over narrative; a little Debussy music, perhaps)—and that makes me wonder, again, about butterflies: do butterflies sometimes bob around the flyways of my garden (at different altitudes, times of the day, varying weather) just for pleasure?

I’ve managed some further Yangtze reading in the garden where the sun still shines. Reading about some aspects of the Yangtze is unsettling: that river has many dangers, is hugely deep in places, has terrifying currents and rapids and its floods are enormous; bridging the river except in a few locations, is quite impossible, it seems. Although the Bellinger in flood can be very unsettling indeed (here at Earthrise), it otherwise seems so non-threatening and modest most of the time. I wonder how the local Council in Bellingen might react to the notion that “the single most important purpose of a dam is the elimination of floods”?

In the garden where I’ve been comfortably reading, despite the persistence of winged beasties, the double pink hibiscus continues flowering as do all of the red salvia seedlings; the flowering dahlias finished flowering on April 29, some cannas droop sadly but are flowering, just; small bright cumquats ripen—enough to make some jam or marmalade, perhaps; and the brown butterflies are still busy (they are colourfully mobile and can never be missed). Along Darkwood Road in the sunnier places there are many ripening berries on the white cedar trees; when I stand beneath one looking up I see several species of birds happily feeding on them.

Food for thought: I see that in a recent article by Paola Totaro (Sydney Morning Herald, April 9 2012) that Hindu cremation ghats at the Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu are to be replaced with a modern electric crematorium and that it otherwise “takes about three hours to burn a human body, with every funeral pyre consuming at least 300 kilograms of wood.”

The next Diary is due to be posted on May 31. Essays and book reviews written by Diary readers are welcome.

Also, please see Russell Atkinson’s new blog in “The last Mile,” at <www.theoldestako.wordpress.com> (it’s about “subverting paradigms, one very popular one in particular, with three mindboggling maxims and an overlooked wonder”).

Best wishes from Don. April 30 2012.