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The Unknown Citizen

Posted in Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , on January 20, 2012 by telescoper

I thought of this poem when I was moaning the other day about the widespread use of the term “Citizen Science” to describe, e.g., the admirable activities of the Zooniverse. One aspect of their work, planethunters, employs enthusiastic amateurs volunteers from the general public to search for signs of exoplanets, for example, with a notable success during the recent series BBC Stargazing Live.

The problem I have with using the term “Citizen Science” is that it logically excludes those of us who happen to be professional scientists; we are citizens too! At least I hope we are…

Not that I’m pedantic or anything.

I like the word amateur which is derived from the latin verb amare (“to love”) and hence properly means someone who does a task out of love, rather than for money. I’d agree, though, that this has acquired negative connotations of amateurishness (i.e. “unprofessional”) so is probably unsuitable for modern use. But what other word would be better? I just had a look at my thesaurus and it suggests, e.g. “votary”, “layperson” and even “groupie” although I don’t think the latter will catch on!

Anyway, as you will see,  none of this has really got anything to do with the poem, which I’m just posting because the word “Citizen” made me remember it. Apologies for the small font size, but I wanted to ensure that the line breaks didn’t get messed up.


(To JS/07/M/378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

by W.H. Auden (1907-1973)

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The Eagle Nebula (as seen by Herschel)

Posted in Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on January 17, 2012 by telescoper

It’s been a while since I posted anything from the Herschel Space Observatory, but here’s a stunning image I just saw on the BBC website which will more than rectify that omission. This is the Eagle Nebula, a much-studied object in terms of the optical light it emits, but this is a remarkable picture taken in the far-infrared part of the spectrum.

For more details, see here.

There’s much more to astronomy than looking at pretty pictures, but the opportunity to stare at things like this is definitely one of the perks of the job. It makes me think of Tennyson’s Poem, The Eagle…

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

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Housman on Cricket

Posted in Cricket, Poetry with tags , , on January 17, 2012 by telescoper

I’m posting this cheery little poem in honour of England’s batting performance in the first innings against Pakistan this morning..

Twice a week the winter thorough
Here stood I to keep the goal:
Football then was fighting sorrow
For the young man’s soul.
Now in Maytime to the wicket
Out I march with bat and pad:
See the son of grief at cricket
Trying to be glad.
Try I will; no harm in trying:
Wonder ’tis how little mirth
Keeps the bones of man from lying
On the bed of earth.

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When Death Comes

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on January 13, 2012 by telescoper

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox:

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

by Mary Oliver (b. 1935)

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The Messenger

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on January 11, 2012 by telescoper

The thing, he said, would come in the night at three
From the old churchyard on the hill below;
But crouching by an oak fire’s wholesome glow,
I tried to tell myself it could not be.

Surely, I mused, it was pleasantry
Devised by one who did not truly know
The Elder Sign, bequeathed from long ago,
That sets the fumbling forms of darkness free.

He had not meant it – no – but still I lit
Another lamp as starry Leo climbed
Out of the Seekonk, and a steeple chimed
Three – and the firelight faded, bit by bit.

Then at the door that cautious rattling came –
And the mad truth devoured me like a flame!

by Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937).

 

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Holmes for the Bewildered

Posted in Literature, Television with tags , , , , on January 9, 2012 by telescoper

Being back to work full-time, now that the new teaching term has started, I find myself in a position to do quick lunchtime blog post while I eat my sandwich. I was going to blog about this topic last week, but thought I’d wait a week in case anything happened to change my negative opinion on this issue. I’m aware that I’m in a small minority and didn’t want to expose myself to public disapproval without due care and attention. Well, last night my opinion certainly changed, only it got even more negative. So now I’m going to take a deep breath, gird my loins, and state for the record my honestly-held opinion that the new BBC TV Series Sherlock is complete and utter tripe.

It’s not that I object to the idea of  placing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s great stories in a contemporary setting. Not at all. Sherlock Holmes is one of the most memorable creations in all of fiction and the plots – at least most of them – are so well constructed that the stories should be translatable into a contemporary setting quite easily. There have been so many “traditional” versions of  Sherlock Holmes that I welcome the attempt to do something different with the character.

Neither is it that I object to Sherlock Holmes being played for laughs. The character does indeed possess a great deal of comic potential, which  a number of other interpretations have exploited with a greater or lesser degree of success.

What has happened in this series, however, is that the original plots have been butchered to the point where they make no sense at all. Instead we just have a series of thinly related comedy sketches, with only feeble attempts to link them to a viable mystery story, like a duff combination of the worst bits of Jonathan Creek and The Fast Show.

Last night’s puerile Hound of the Baskervilles was especially dire in this respect. The original story – a full-length novel rather than a short story – is a genuinely intriguing mystery-thriller, laced with undertones of the supernatural, and full of memorable characters, including of course the fearsome Hound itself.

For reasons best known to themselves Forced to squeeze it into one hour, the producers of last night’s version of this classic tale abandoned most of the original plot and introduced a load of silly nonsense about werewolves and hallucinogenic fog and the CIA. The Holmes-Watson double-act was quite amusing – and some of the dialogue very witty – but the plot was so thin it just reminded me of Abbott and Costello meet the Wolfman and other such films I watched when I was a kid. I thought the first episode –  A Scandal in Belgravia – was bad enough, but last night’s episode was truly excruciating. I won’t be watching any more.

It’s a mystery to me why so many people seem to think this tosh is so good, but then I’m used to being in a minority of one. Perhaps if you watch a lot of TV your expectations are lowered so much by the constant stream of drivel that anything that even tries to be original – which Sherlock admittedly does – sends you into raptures?

No, dear critics, I don’t think Sherlock is “great TV” at all. In fact I think it’s dreadful.

There. I’ve said it.

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One Cigarette

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on January 6, 2012 by telescoper

No smoke without you, my fire.
After you left,
your cigarette glowed on in my ashtray
and sent up a long thread of such quiet grey
I smiled to wonder who would believe its signal
of so much love. One cigarette
in the non-smoker’s tray.
As the last spire
trembles up, a sudden draught
blows it winding into my face.
Is it smell, is it taste?
You are here again, and I am drunk on your tobacco lips.
Out with the light.
Let the smoke lie back in the dark.
Till I hear the very ash
sigh down among the flowers of brass
I’ll breathe, and long past midnight, your last kiss.

by Edwin Morgan (1920-2010)

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The Old Year

Posted in Poetry with tags , on January 1, 2012 by telescoper

The Old Year’s gone away
To nothingness and night:
We cannot find him all the day
Nor hear him in the night:
He left no footstep, mark or place
In either shade or sun:
The last year he’d a neighbour’s face,
In this he’s known as none.

All nothing everywhere:
Mists we on mornings see
Have more substance when they’re here
And more of form than he.
He was a friend by every fire,
In every cot and hall –
A guest to every heart’s desire,
And now he’s nought at all.

Old papers thrown away,
Old garments cast aside,
The talk of yesterday,
All things identified;
But times once torn away
No voices can recall:
The eve of New Year’s Day
Left the Old Year lost to all.

by John Clare (1793-1864).

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Parliament Hill Fields

Posted in Poetry with tags , on December 30, 2011 by telescoper

On this bald hill the new year hones its edge.
Faceless and pale as china
The round sky goes on minding its business.
Your absence is inconspicuous;
Nobody can tell what I lack.

Gulls have threaded the river’s mud bed back
To this crest of grass.  Inland, they argue,
Settling and stirring like blown paper
Or the hands of an invalid.  The wan
Sun manages to strike such tin glints

From the linked ponds that my eyes wince
And brim; the city melts like sugar.
A crocodile of small girls
Knotting and stopping, ill-assorted, in blue uniforms,
Opens to swallow me.  I’m a stone, a stick,

One child drops a barrette of pink plastic;
None of them seem to notice.
Their shrill, gravelly gossip’s funneled off.
Now silence after silence offers itself.
The wind stops my breath like a bandage.

Southward, over Kentish Town, an ashen smudge
Swaddles roof and tree.
It could be a snowfield or a cloudbank.
I suppose it’s pointless to think of you at all.
Already your doll grip lets go.

The tumulus, even at noon, guards its black shadow:
You know me less constant,
Ghost of a leaf, ghost of a bird.
I circle the writhen trees.  I am too happy.
These faithful dark-boughed cypresses

Brood, rooted in their heaped losses.
Your cry fades like the cry of a gnat.
I lose sight of you on your blind journey,
While the heath grass glitters and the spindling rivulets
Unspool and spend themselves.  My mind runs with them,

Pooling in heel-prints, fumbling pebble and stem.
The day empties its images
Like a cup or a room.  The moon’s crook whitens,
Thin as the skin seaming a scar.
Now, on the nursery wall,

The blue night plants, the little pale blue hill
In your sister’s birthday picture start to glow.
The orange pompons, the Egyptian papyrus
Light up.  Each rabbit-eared
Blue shrub behind the glass

Exhales an indigo nimbus,
A sort of cellophane balloon.
The old dregs, the old difficulties take me to wife.
Gulls stiffen to their chill vigil in the drafty half-light;
I enter the lit house.

by Silvia Plath (1931-1963)

Here is (part of) the poet’s own introduction to this intensely moving poem, which was written shortly after Sylvia Plath suffered a miscarriage in 1961:

I imagine the landscape of Parliament Hill Fields in London seen by a person overwhelmed by an emotion so powerful as to colour and distort  the scenery. The speaker here is caught between the old and the new year, between the grief caused by the loss of a child, and the joy aroused by the knowledge of an only child safe at home. Gradually the  first images of blankness and absence give way to images of convalescence and healing as the woman turns, a bit stiffly  and with difficulty, from her sense of bereavement to the vital and demanding part of her world which still survives.

And here is Sylvia Plath reading it:

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Great Expectations

Posted in Film, Literature, Television with tags , , , , on December 29, 2011 by telescoper

I don’t make a secret of the fact that I don’t watch TV, and didn’t really do so over the Christmas holiday. However, I did catch the new BBC adapation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations which I think is one of the greatest novels in all literature. I wasn’t that keen to watch it, after seeing several pointless modern films of the story that didn’t do justice either to the original novel or to the marvellous 1946 film directed by David Lean, which I think is one of the greatest movies ever made. It’s not that I think people shouldn’t do remakes of classic stories – great novels can bear many different versions – it’s just that they’re often done with neither wit nor imagination and the end result can be so obviously inferior that one wonders why it was ever released. The recent remake of the perfect Ealing Comedy The Ladykillers, for example, was such total crap from start to finish it made me want to beat the director over the head with a blunt instrument.

In the end, though, I was persuaded to watch it and was very impressed indeed with the new version.   Douglas Booth, who plays the teenage Pip, as well as being an extraordinarily handsome young man, is also a fine actor. The young Pip’s encounter with the convict Magwitch (played by Ray Winstone) in Episode 1 was every bit as memorable as the older film, but I’ve decided to put the latter up here to encourage those who haven’t been fortunate enough to see the classic version.

I’m interested in suggestions of best and worst remakes….so feel free to add yours through the comments box.

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