Six Things, Volume 21

Tree | Vinyl | Feathers | Tile | Game | Swifts

The Friday posts have slid over to Saturday in recent weeks. Partly to give myself a bit more time if I’ve had a busy week, but also to avert ‘Friday morning inbox clog’ for those of you who subscribe to multiple substacks. I don’t suppose it makes much difference to you either way, but I thought it only polite to mention it.

Onwards to the Things!

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Thing 1 – Tree

Some days you feel big, others you feel small. Today, thanks to the OneZoom Tree of Life Explorer, is a small day. An afternoon spent delving into it is a bit like spending a few seconds in the Total Perspective Vortex, but without the fairy cake.

I wouldn’t want to put you off, though. All I mean is that it is (as you’d expect for a project aiming to map "the evolutionary links between all living things known to science") rather big. It is also rather fascinating.

Faced with the chaotic unruliness of nature, humans do rather have an instinct for imposing order on it.

“This goes here, and that goes there, and this one goes between them.”

How can we truly understand things, the thinking seems to go, unless and until we’ve found out where they belong?

How indeed?

You can start, if you like, at the very beginning – a ‘choose your own adventure’ journey of serial clicking, starting from the place marked 'all life’, each path seemingly without end – until, a mere 85 or so clicks later you find yourself looking at something called Escherichia coli O145:NM str. 2012C-4480 (one of many organisms on that particular branch you’d probably be best to avoid if possible).

If the thorough, chronological approach doesn’t appeal, you could pick a favourite species and zoom out from there. Or perhaps start with a group and browse from there. When you’ve got over two million starting points, it’s not as if you’re short of options.

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Thing 2 – Records

Like many people of my age, I retain a small collection of vinyl records – about thirty or so. I keep them mostly from a woolly sense of nostalgia rather than any desire to listen to them. They include several recordings made by my father, which are, for obvious reasons, unthrowawayable.

And there are a few that were an entrenched part of my childhood, to the extent that even to look at their sleeves takes me back, in a Proustian daze, to my bedroom circa 1973.

One of them is fairly rare (you can see yourself in both sides). It might just be worth hooking up the turntable for one last play of that one.

I never fetishised records. They were – and, if only I could be bothered to dig out and refurbish the turntable, might once again be – a way of listening to music rather than objects to be cherished in their own right (although I do admit a fondness for the ridiculous over-the-topness of some of prog rock’s wildest extravagances, both in musical ambition and gatefold cover design).

I probably had a couple of hundred of them in their heyday, before the shiny glamour and convenience of the compact disc rendered them more or less obsolete. Trips to charity shops gradually whittled them down, and now they sit on a low shelf in the corner of the office, a lonely reminder of a lost world.

Gladys Palmera does not have a couple of hundred records. For her, a couple of hundred records is merely the starting point before the starting point – the equivalent of Fidel Castro clearing his throat before a speech.

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Thing 3 – Featherfolio

I’ve written before (more than once) about the allure of feathers, so you won’t be surprised to learn that I’m drawn to the imaginative work of feather artist Chris Maynard. Every so often his newsletter drops into my inbox and I entertain thoughts of buying one of his stunning pieces. And then I look at the prices.

Perhaps I’ll just get a signed copy of his book…

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Thing 4 – Tile

New bathroom tile just dropped.

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Thing 5 – Game

I’m so sorry, but if I’m going to suffer then so must you.

If you don’t have a phone or a tablet, then you are spared the joy/misery of this addictive game, as it doesn’t work on a computer. Lucky you.

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Thing 6 – Swifts

I wrote on Wednesday about swifts, fretting and so forth.

Here they are saying goodnight. (I’m hoping Substack’s new video embedding feature works…)

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