Interesting things (20260814)
There’s often a deep stoicism in those of us who have known lengthy illness: a quiet acceptance of bodily suffering that conceals its true burden. For our own survival, we’ve learnt to normalise feeling unwell. We measure our symptoms not against the healthy body, but against its worst potential. We think of the depths we once experienced, or how much worse we know it can get – and we tell ourselves that this is ok, really. We can live with this.
- A 639-year-long John Cage organ piece just changed chord, for the first time in two-and-a-half years
Several chord changes ago, i was in Halberstadt and got to just bathe in the sound of that single chord. The volume on this organ is not loud; the sound is persistent, though. While i have no idea how long i stood and soaked it in, by the time i left it felt as if my bones had absorbed the frequency.
In an era of high-tech fixes, Wilson, Goodwin, and their colleagues are doing little more with their elms than Gregor Mendel did with his peas: crossbreeding them. The idea isn’t new; such efforts began almost as soon as scientists learned of the disease, but no one has had much success. Between 1937 and 1965, scientists at Cornell University and the Boyce Thompson Institute grew, infected, and tested 21,000 seedlings. Only 16 survived, and many of those couldn’t pass along their genetic resistance. None made it to nurseries for distribution. That failure, among others, dampened the appetite to fund such costly, long-term research. “So many false hopes have been raised that there is apathy in some quarters about the outcome of our battle against this disease,” the author of a 1975 scientific paper on the subject wrote. But, he added, “surely it is worth the trouble.”
Sounds like an A+ addition to What Fresh Hell is This?.
Waddling forward....
- tea: gunpowder
- current soundscape: classical radio station