Shit Lessons

When I was six, my parents returned from Australia to the village Dungiven, high in the Sperrin mountains in Northern Ireland. On my first day in the village primary school I felt like the odd one out with my Australian accent and was nervously playing with the salt and pepper glass containers on the table at lunchtime. Unfortunately, I managed in my nervousness to smash one of them. The headmaster’s wife flew down vulturelike and was furious with me.

She proceeded to tell the entire school and a terrified me, that since the top of the small salt seller was mirrored, I had, in fact, broken a mirror and would now have 7 years of bad luck. My maths was good enough to work out that my life would be pretty horrid until I turned 13. 

Lesson 1: Shit can happen. 

Strangely when I was 13, seven years later, and waiting outside my secondary school for the bus home a bird pooped on my head. I remember the embarrassment of all the white shit in my hair. Given that the seven years bad luck had almost ended I remember hoping that it had marked the last of an unlucky seven years. However, another cynical part of me made a mental note.

Lesson 2: Unexpectedly, shit can even fall from above.

In my university, studying science, one of my friends was really into shit. He was keen on building biodigesters (this was almost half a century ago!) and eager, to point out that slurry (shit) could be fed into a biodigester and be broken down into wonderful useful compost and valuable methane.

Creating good stuff out of crap seemed a no-brainer to us all. He graduated with a first class, honours, and did a PhD on the same subject and spent ages promoting biodigesters everywhere to anyone who would listen. To his distress, farmers and industrial polluters alike weren’t interested at all. They explained it was simply cheaper to dump it in rivers and lakes and pay a fine. He approached government authorities like the department of Agriculture and the Water Service and explained the situation. They weren’t interested either. 

Lesson 3: Some people simply don’t give a shit.

Two decades passed and I had a family with three sons and a new home, a gatelodge in Magheramourne.  Before long, I discovered, there was shit in my garden. Not a solitary dog poop messing up the green lawn but a swimming pool of the stuff at the bottom of my garden. I flagged it up to the relevant authorities and soon a man in overalls came to inspect. Over two years, more and more men came, in increasingly better clothing, and all agreed that it certainly looked and smelt like a ditch full of shit. Eventually, even our local MP came to view my shit ditch.

One of the Department of agricultural officials politely expressed concern about the health and safety of my three young children with such a hazard so close.   It turned out that our lodge house was suffering from the sewage funnelled from the neighbouring stately home. It had been converted into a hotel but still used the same septic tank designed for a single family. As a result, raw sewage poured in and out of the septic tank. When sized correctly solids have time to settle at the base of the tank and the overflow pipe higher up the tank allows water to drain out. It’s not a high-tech affair but when shit capacity exceeds the septic tank's ability to separate solids from liquids then the consequences are pretty dire.  Shit flows in and out unchanged by its quick visit to the septic tank.

After doing two years of everything by the book, eventually writing to even the ombudsman, the hotel was fined a tiny amount. Much less than the cost of replacing their useless septic tank. In hindsight, I should’ve had the courage to take two bucket loads of the raw sewage to the hotel lobby and poured it around the reception area explaining that I was returning their shit from whence it came. No doubt I would’ve been arrested but the subsequent bad publicity for the hotel would have caused them more than the piddling little fine. 

Lesson 4: Sometimes you have to spend years dealing with other people’s shit.

It is now almost sixty years from my first shit encounter at primary school and my biodigester friend was in the local news this week.  He had been invited on the radio to speak about the blue-green algae causing devastation in Lough Neagh (the biggest lough in the UK and Ireland) and our rivers and coastlines.  For the first time people were instructed not to swim in these waters due to the high levels of toxins.  Dogs can die from ingestion of the contaminated water and it can cause suffocation of fish and other creatures.  My friend explained why there was an increase in this blue algae blooms (they are actually not algae at all but a type of bacteria called cyanobacteria which requires sunlight, nutrients and carbon dioxide to grow and reproduce).  He explained that agricultural fertiliser runoff and waste water systems provide the perfect conditions for the algae to flourish.  It is easy to only blame farmers, industries and businesses for their contribution to the problem we are now facing however there are other surprising contributors too. On the 12th September it was revealed that NI Water (a government owned company) was fined 170, 000 pounds for releasing 70 million tons of untreated sewage into local rivers and lakes over the past ten years.  In fact, it is estimated that each year they now release 7 million tons of untreated sewage.  I remember being so disappointed with the department officials who did nothing when the hotel poured their sewage into my garden.  Decades later it is these very departmental bodies themselves who are pouring shit into our waterways.

Lesson 5: It’s important to find out who is responsible for the shit.

The Gihon Spring in Jerusalem

The Gihon Spring is not a constant source of water, it flows occasionally not continually.  It is thought that its name comes from the Hebrew word meaning ‘to gush forth’. The spring emerges in a cave 20 ft by 7 and it has recently been discovered that the earliest buildings in Jerusalem were found here beside the spring around 4500-3500 BC.  

Not only was this a source of drinking water for the ancient settlement but it was also used, via terraces to irrigate the gardens in the close by Kidron Valley where food was grown. Terracing allowed the water to flow in such a way as to irrigate much of the side of the hill leading down the valley. In Scripture, this watered terrace is referred to as the ‘King’s Garden’ (see II Kings 25:4; Jeremiah 52:7; Nehemiah 3:15).

Originally, the spring would flow three to five times daily in winter, twice daily in summer, and only once daily in autumn, which meant that it was necessary to create a pool to store water so that it would always be available to the inhabitants. Originally a fairly straight channel (The Siloam Channel) was made (around 2100–1550 BC in the time of Melchizedek and Abraham) about 20ft into the ground and covered with slabs leading to the Upper Pool of Siloam.  

These underground channels were added to over the subsequent years including the Warren’s Shaft system which led from the Well gate above Gihon down to the spring.  This enabled people to collect water from the spring. In the Iron Age (1200 BC – 550 BC) a winding tunnel was carved into the rock leading from the Spring to the Pool of Siloam (perhaps during the reign of Hezekiah (739 - 687 BC).  

2 Chronicles 32:30

This same Hezekiah also stopped the upper spring of the waters of Gihon, and brought them straight down on the west side of the city of David. Hezekiah prospered in all his works.

This effectively replaced the Middle Bronze Age channel and was likely done in preparation for the Assyrians who were about to besiege the city.  Having a source of water outside the city walls but accessible from inside was a powerful protection for the city of Jerusalem.  However, King David had earlier used some of these underground shafts to capture Jerusalem in 1004BC and this is mentioned in,

 2 Samuel 5:6-10 

Whoever would strike the Jebusites, let him get up the water shaft to attack….  

Later David’s son Solomon would be crowned King at the Gihon Spring, 

1 Kings 1:32-34

Take with you all the servants of your lord, and let them make Solomon my son ride on my mule, and bring him down to Gihon.  Let Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anoint him there as king over Israel. Blow on the trumpet and say, ‘Long live King Solomon!

So obviously, the spring has long played a major role in not only the founding of Jerusalem but also in its development.

King Solomon would go on to build the first Temple in 960 BC.  This would be destroyed in 580 BC by the Babylonians and 22,000 Jews would be sent into exile.  In fact, the population was reduced to 1/10 of what it was before.  

The second Temple was built and then consecrated in 515 BC 20 years after the Jews had returned from exile.  This Temple lacked the Ark of the Covenant as this as well as other holy items had been lost. King Hezekiah is the last biblical figure to have seen the Ark.  The Fall of the Second Temple was predicted by Jesus,

Mark 13

As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!”

 “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

Jesus Christ was crucified around 30/33 AD and The Second Temple was completely destroyed forty years later in 70 AD by the Romans.  During its long and fascinating history, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times.

In 2004 a burst sewage main in the Arab neighbourhood of Silan allowed the uncovering of the original Jewish pilgrim path running from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple Mount, Judaism’s most Holy spot.

In 2023, the stepped remains of the ancient Siloam Pool, long thought to be located elsewhere, were uncovered near the City of David. According to the Gospel of John, it was at this sacred Christian site that Jesus healed the blind man. 

John 9:1-12

He spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva; and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. And He said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam”. 

https://nypost.com/2023/01/02/biblical-site-where-jesus-healed-blind-man-excavated-for-public-view-affirms-scripture/

Ancient pilgrims would ritually immerse themselves in the pool of Siloam in order to be cleansed for their climb up north to Jerusalem’s temple. Following more excavations, a largely intact ancient stone road was identified, extending from Siloam up to the area of what is known today as Robinson’s Arch, a partially surviving entrance to the southwestern corner of the ancient temple platform. The Pilgrim’s Road is approximately 2,000 old and is in all likelihood the path that Jesus and his disciples would have taken to ascend to the temple of Jerusalem.  It is thrilling to see this underground route and it allows future pilgrims to follow in their footsteps on this recently discovered road.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUoiyFEPK6o&ab_channel=TheJerusalemPost

https://youtu.be/KUoiyFEPK6o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn_4yZbtR3M&t=2s&ab_channel=themedialine

The O'Shea brothers, enormously talented, and insuppressibly unconventional

The museum Building at Trinity College, Dublin was designed by architects, Deane & Woodward however the stone carvings on doors, windows and capitals were carried out by the brothers John and James O’Shea along with their nephew Edward Whelan from Cork. These stone masons were of considerable talent and the building with its Gothic revival style is impressive even to this day.  It seems the brothers were trusted to be creative and given a degree of freedom in how they worked.

 “Woodward allowed the brothers considerable flexibility and they carved their designs in situ. It is said that they worked from material gathered from the College Botanic Gardens, in Ballsbridge. The keen-eyed may spot cats, snakes, frogs, squirrels and birds, lurking among shamrock, daffodils, oak, ivy, lilies, and acanthus.”

Patrick Wyse Jackson’s ‘A Victorian Landmark: Trinity College’s Museum Building’ in the Irish Arts Review Yearbook 1995, p.151 

Their realism in the stonework is impressive in its detail and the use of depth and negative space is particularly stunning. In places the leaves appear as if curled back to reveal berries behind them.  The usual practise was to carve at ground level and have the work inspected for accuracy and skill before being lifted into situ. However, such was skill of the O’Shea’s they were allowed to carve unworked blocks of stone already lifted high into their final position in the building. The brothers achieved some reknown after their work on Trinity College and on Kildare Street Club.  This later club was described by George Moore in contemptuous terms, 

“The Kildare Street Club is one of the most important institutions in Dublin. … it represents all that is respectable, that is to say, those who are gifted with an oyster-like capacity for understanding this one thing: that they should continue to get fat in the bed in which they were born. This club is a sort of oyster bed into which all the eldest sons of the landed gentry fall as a matter of course…”

The O’Shea brothers incorporated a rather creative criticism of their own in the Kildare Street Club window piece which presents the club members as monkeys playing billiards.  It was clear that these brothers had not only creative ability but also a sense of humour that they freely expressed in their beautiful stone work.

Another example of their creative skills is to be found in Oxford Museum which was opened in 1860.  Henry Acland, a Reader in Anatomy at Christ Church campaigned to have a new museum for both research and teaching purposes.  In particular, he wanted to bring together in one place all the extensive collections that Oxford University had accumulated over the years.  In the open competition for architects for the new museum, Deane and Woodward, of Dublin won with their neo-Gothic design.  Their success was in part due to their earlier success in designing Trinity College Museum in Dublin.  The Oxford Museum was heavily influenced by the ideas of John Ruskin who felt that architecture should be shaped by the natural world. This museum has its place in history as within a year of it being completed it was the venue for the famous debate on Darwin’s Origin of the Species. 

Each column surrounding the court is made of a different British rock while the capitals and corbels are carved into a range of plants.

These carvings took two years to complete (1858-1860) and James and John O’Shea with their nephew Edward Whelan once again demonstrated their exceptional talent as stonemasons of both high quality and creativity.  They used living specimens from the botanic garden to inform their work.  The brothers started working on carvings around the outer windows but a shortage of funds and the constant interference of University officials (the Members of Convocation) meant that the project was never completed.

O’Shea was said to be so incensed he carved owls and parrots as a parody of the University Convocation and was immediately sacked.  He had been heard shouting from high up on the scaffolding,  "Parrhots and Owwls! Parrhots and Owwls! Members of Convocation!" University officials were so angry about this parody that they accused the O’Sheas of "defacing" the building with unauthorised work.

These unfinished carvings are still visible today over the main entrance of the museum. The remaining capitals, which had to be subsequently finished in 1910 by other stonemasons, are easily identifiable as they are so evidently beneath the standard of the work of the O’Shea brothers.

The O'Sheas and Whelan would later work with Woolner and the architect Alfred Waterhouse in the design of the Manchester assize courts. 

They produced a series of capitals depicting gruesome forms of punishment in history for this building, an unusual choice for a court building! The original building was demolished following bomb damage in World War Two however some of the brother’s carvings survive in the replacement building.

These enormously talented, and insuppressibly unconventional, mason sculptors, the O'Sheas have certainly left their mark on memorable historical buildings.  Twenty years after working at the Oxford Museum James O’Shea, left his family in Manchester to return to Oxford. However, by this time he was homeless, an alcoholic and he would tragically die here.  It feels perverse that a talent that had beautified one of the most historic buildings of Oxford would find himself living destitute and die alone on those very same streets.

Giant by name and giant by nature

We often look back and think of the ancient structures at Stonehenge (3000 BC to 2000 BC) and wonder about the people who made this impressive spot. We are blown away by their inventiveness, just how did they move those large stones (7.3 metres tall and weighing as much as two tons), and wonder why they did it.  We know the stones were mined quite far away and had to be transported long distances so no wonder we are impressed.  

But almost 6000 years earlier than Stonehenge, Gobekli Tepe in South Eastern Anatolia (Turkey) is a Neolithic archaeological site with 17 pillars inscribed with herds of gazelle and other figures of wild animals. This site makes Stonehenge fairly modern by comparison. This is one of the world’s oldest permanent human settlements and is linked to that interesting period when humanity first transitioned from being hunters and gatherers to having an agricultural lifestyle.  Whereas Stonehenge was probably originally designed as a cemetery, Gobekli Tepe is thought to have originated as the world’s first temple and was quite sophisticated, with grinding stones and mortar and pestles etc. Dating from 9500 to 8000 BCE this is certainly an impressive place.

Amidst all the ancient history of such places, there are also stories that seemed to have survived over the millennia in many parts of the world.  Giants in various shapes and sizes have long been the stuff of legend.  Americans dug up skeletons of giants all over their continent in the late 19th century and early 20th century, and their heights were said to range from 7ft to 20 ft tall.   When these were debunked in 1934 by a leading scientist in the Smithsonian Institution (dinosaur bones were included in these finds), many fanatics convinced of their “truth” turned on this institution. Indeed, Smithsonian archaeologists were accused of destroying giant bones in order to cover up their existence.  

Just in case you thought this confusion was a result of early ignorance of scientific investigation this particular story was revived as recently as 2014. An internet story began circulating that claimed the Smithsonian Institution had custody of giant skeletons but they destroyed "thousands of giant skeletons" in the early 20th century.  Reuters and the Associated Press were this time able to expose the falsity of this.  It is depressing that nonsense reappears like a bad smell again and again.  Do we really have to waste valuable research time and money having to dispel crazy myths over and over again?  You think of education as a progressive process always advancing and illuminating humanity but it appears that miseducation is even more prevalent these days!  Will education deteriorate until it simply consists of just removing erroneous information gleaned? 

Two of my three sons shared a bedroom and my youngest son had his head filled with everything his older brother could think to tell him. For instance, that the universe was formed by a monkey and a vending machine in one long complicated tale that his brother retold so many times my youngest knew it by heart.  I feared my youngest son’s first few years of schooling would just entail unlearning all that his mischievous brother had instilled.  Back to the giant legend and to both ancient discoveries and old manuscripts.

Chinese ancient manuscripts speak of legendary figures of great height with deep-set blue or green eyes, long noses with full beards and red or blond hair.  Strangely much later, Pliny the Elder (23-79AD) mentioned a report from a Ceylonese ambassador to the Roman Emperor Claudius of a people in north-west China who exceeded the normal height, had flaxen hair with blue eyes and who made an uncouth sort of noise when talking.  It all sounds like nonsense but then the Tarim Mummies were discovered and these tall red-haired, Caucasian-looking people were found with felt and woven clothing and seemed very tall. They are called Tarim because that is the region in present-day Xinjiang, China (surprise, surprise - North West China!) where they were found.  They existed in this region from 1800 BC to the first centuries BC and are believed to descend from Indo-European language speakers who migrated into the Russian steppes around 3300 BC (no wonder their language was foreign sounding to those in China). 

One such mummy, known as the Cherchen Man, was an adult male who is believed to have died around 1000 BC and was aged around fifty years at the time of his death. He was tall and his hair was "reddish brown flecked with grey, framing high cheekbones", he had an aquiline "long nose, full lips and a ginger beard", and was wearing "a red twill tunic" and leggings with a pattern resembling tartan. 

Obviously, news of this group had travelled far and wide hence the ancient Chinese and Pliny references.  Height variation is not new, after all, ancient hunter gathers had an average height of 5 ft 9 inches but when an agricultural lifestyle was adopted the average height of a man had fallen to just 5 ft 3 inches by 3000 BC.  In comparison to those average heights, these guys must have seemed like giants!

Our species has been on the move over the millennium and with the aid of modern science we have a better notion of how and when that took place.  It is fascinating to see this movement on a map.

Looking at this movement over the millennium it is no wonder the human race is of many hues, sizes and dimensions. We know that pygmy tribes have an average height of 4 ft 11 inches and we accept that this variation is found in tribes.  So perhaps there were tribes of tall people too? After all exceptionally tall people turn up in unexpected places. Here are a few captured on camera. 

Battista (or Baptiste) Hugo and Antoine Hugo were born 11 years apart in the late 1880s. The brothers were born in Vinadio, a village in the Italian mountains. Baptiste reached a height of 7ft 6.5 inches. Antoine was somewhat smaller at just under 7 ft 5ins.

The Imperial Durbar in Delhi in January 1903 was designed to celebrate the ascension of Edward VI and Alexandra of Denmark as the Emperor and Empress of India. In attendance at the Durbar, were the Rulers from all the big and small states that made up India.  The Maharaja of Kashmir brought along his giant bodyguards who literally stood heads and shoulders above everyone there.  They were twin brothers of which the taller one was 7 ft 9 inches and the shorter one 7 ft 4 ins tall. Called the Giants of Kashmir they were in service of the Maharaja as elite riflemen and his personal bodyguards.

Martine Van Buren Bates (1837-1919), called the Kentucky giant, was 7 ft 9 inches tall and he is photographed below with his wife who was even taller at 7 ft 11 inches.  

Mind you being this tall could bring its own problems.  Martin was one of the few of this height who survived into his 80s.  Health problems can arise due to extreme height and vice versa, health problems can cause extreme height.  There is a disease that triggers excessive growth due to a tumour on the pituitary gland. Gigantism is a very rare condition that happens when a child or adolescent has high levels of growth hormone (GH) in their body, which causes them to grow very tall. Many children with gigantism (29%) have a genetic mutation that causes the pituitary tumour to form. Given this is inherited, nowadays genetic screening of patients with GH excess is recommended to avoid the excessive growth associated with this condition.  In contrast, nowadays to treat short stature, growth hormone can be supplied to children to trigger growth.  It is horrifying to discover that in the 1950s and 60s estrogen treatment was given to some girls to stunt their natural growth.  It was thought if they were tall it would impact their future ability to marry!  

The evidence is clear not only do giants exist now but they have also existed in the past. Here is a table of giants and I have only selected those over 7 ft 5 inches and got no further than India in the alphabet of countries so apologies to those I have left out. Note too, how many died at quite a young age.  Being tall is obviously a challenge to our physical systems.

The next question is, could there have been tribes of giants?  Well, given the genetic components both in terms of simple inherited height and also gigantism it is conceivable that an isolated tribal community could have boosted their height considerably relative to others.  The average height of a man from Netherlands is 6 ft, among the tallest in the world, and their diet which is rich in milk and meat seems to have helped.  The Trapp family in Esko, Minnesota, USA, consisting of mum Krissy (6 ft 3 inches), dad Scott (6 ft 8 inches), children Savanna (6 ft 8 inches), Molly (6 ft 6 ins), and Adam (6 ft 8 inches) demonstrate that clearly having tall parents helps boost height 

Imagine, if instead of having three children the Trapp family had 12.  After all, when I go back to my own family two generations on both sides 12 was a fairly common family size.  Then, suddenly the idea of a tribe of giants seems not just a possibility but a distinct probability.

Interestingly I read this study, which has relevance to where I am from, Northern Ireland.

“An international team of scientists led by Prof. Márta Korbonits from Queen Mary University, London, reported key findings regarding pituitary tumours of genetic origin. The study, published in the journal Human Mutation and covered by the BBC and The Times, identified an increased number of patients with acromegaly and gigantism in the Mid Ulster region of Ireland and demonstrates how a change in the gene called AIP was inherited from one single person, the "common ancestor", who lived approximately 2,500 years ago….These findings may explain the known historical accounts of Irish giants originating from the area and, in a way, justifies the numerous local legends involving giants.”

I am not at all sure I agree with that last statement. After all, giants have been mentioned in cultures all over the world so did they all suffer from this disease?  Before modern medicine, gigantism meant you died fairly young so I am not sure that is an evolutionary gain. I don’t want to make a big thing out of this but the tall the short of it is, physical size is just one aspect of being human.  By far the biggest is the person you are inside and the quality of that will determine your own legend and legacy.  Those we remember throughout history were rarely the tallest but they contributed massively to our civilisation.

A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.

Plato

Started with skirting boards and ended with shoes

 It started many months ago. All I wanted was a bit of paint to touch up the skirting boards in the house, a simple task. However, one tin of white paint seemed to cost a fortune in the local hardware shop. Hesitating at the astronomical cost, I spotted a tiny tube of tester paint. This particular tester had a kind of sponge dispenser on the top. It meant you could squeeze the paint out onto the skirting boards directly without the need for paintbrushes and had possibly just enough paint to do all the skirting boards removing all the unsightly stains. 

As with all such hardware purchases, the leftover tube ended underneath the kitchen sink. After six months I purchased a pair of shoes for my mum. She needs to have wedge heels, with shoelaces and light colours, they also need to be soft and comfortable. The shoes when they arrived were a kind of dirty beige colour. This was disappointing but even more upsetting was the fact that they were far too small for my mum despite being her size! These shoes ended up in the back of the cupboard in the bedroom, one of my least successful purchases. Roll on yet another six months and I purchased on the Internet a shoe stretcher.  I never knew such things existed. This one had rave reviews and when it arrived met all my expectations.  

Feet change shape over the years and this stretcher could account for bunions, corns etc.  You just screw it tightly and leave the shoe overnight and by the next day, the shoe fits like a glove.  I spent a happy few weeks altering every shoe I could lay my hands on in the house.  It looks like a torture device but actually removes pain instead of inflicting it.  I was delighted with this purchase and wondered why I never knew such things existed!  

Of course, the yucky beige shoes were stretched and thankfully fit my mum for quite a while.  But she never got used to the yucky colour and for some reason when they got wet, they looked as if they were suede covered in greasy oil stains.  She stopped wearing them and I stretched them some more until they fit me.  They were light and comfortable but looked horrid. I wore them anyway after all waste not, want not.  Finally, this week I decided to change their colour once and for all.  I was determined not to spend any more money on these stupid cheap shoes.  Thankfully, I remembered the skirting board paint tester and used it on the shoes.  Don’t judge me!  I guess using house paint on shoes is not a good idea but I have reached that age where frankly, am I bothered?  The paint is beginning to crack a little but I am pretty pleased with the whole affair.  

There is joy in reaching an age when

1. There is no one to stop you from crazy ideas

2. You get to mess up and move on

3. Success is in the moment not some time in the future

4. You don’t give up on your mistakes you just reverse up and drive over them again

Table your mistakes, learn from them, then move on.

Confucius

Dear One,

It has been such a special time with you and I have luxuriated in all these moments of fellowship. I cannot be grateful enough for all these gifts of love. The heart-to-heart chats, the beautiful walks, and my young grandchild’s hugs all serve as a wonderful immersion in love. 

These past years of Covid have stolen such meetings from too many. Heart-stopping to think of all the fellowships that ended in permanent separation on this earthly plane. There are no words for those who faced such endings. So, it is with utter gratitude I find myself with loved ones these days. I am appreciative of health to enjoy such company and to have weathered this pandemic. Perhaps some of us have emerged scarred from all that has happened. Changed creatures from what we were before. I feel my brain is not what it used to be. No matter, perhaps recovery will take time. That is my hope and, in the meantime, I relish connections with loved ones that seem to stretch with love past the veil of brain fog and communicate heart-to-heart. I don’t have to be 100% to bask in love and laughter. 

Perhaps love, that cord that stretches even past death, is how we all must hold onto that which is vital. I am enjoying CS Lewis’s diary, who knew his spelling, was almost as bad as mine? When called up to serve in World I he wrote to his father to come and see him before he was shipped off to France. He would subsequently find himself on his 19th birthday on the front lines in the Somme Valley and lose his university flatmate and best friend Paddy Moore on those muddy killing fields. His father didn’t visit, not even when his son returned to hospital in the UK injured from France.  C.S. Lewis’s words on this haunt me dreadfully, “my father was a very peculiar man, in some respects: in non more than an almost pathological hatred of taking any step which involved a break in the dull routine of his daily existence.” How true it is, that we have to sometimes break free from dull routines which blind us to the real priorities. I felt travelling to see you was the break I needed to remind myself of how precious such steps are in all our lives.

“Deal ye one with another with the utmost love and harmony, with friendliness and fellowship . . . This goal excelleth every other goal, and this aspiration is the monarch of all aspirations.”

Bahá’u’lláh

Maurice vomits every morning just slowly until night prevails

Artist's impression of Pluto showing one of its large moons that never sets

In our family, this mnemonic was how we remembered the planets and their order in terms of distance from the sun.  Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.  My eldest brother Maurice has a sensitive stomach so this saying was close enough to the truth to make it easier to remember.  

Imagine my upset when in 2002 new data processing technologies discovered a series of planet-like objects orbiting the sun close to the orbit of Pluto.  This included Eris, Haumea, Makemake, Gonggong, Quaoar, Sedna and Orcus.  Indeed, one of them Eris is about the same size as Pluto.  However, Pluto is only 1/400th the size of Earth and is even smaller than our moon.  This bunch of objects along with Pluto were renamed dwarf planets instead of planets.  Planets were redefined as objects that met three critical requirements

(a) is in orbit around the Sun

(b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape

(c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.

It is the last of these requirements clearing the space around it that these dwarf planets fail to do.  One look at the Kuiper Belt indicates a failure of good housekeeping, it is far too messy. The strong gravitational field around a real planet serves to either capture, attract or perturb smaller objects around it. Those objects that pass the first two criteria but fail the third were renamed dwarf planets. 

No one really cared about these newcomers being downgraded to dwarf status but for some reason, a lot of people got really upset about Pluto no longer being a proper planet.  Pluto was found to have five moons of its own but did have an unusual orbit. All the other planets have orbits that lie as if on the surface of a plate extending out around the sun but Pluto has this weird tilted orbit going on.  

The Kuiper Belt where Pluto resides is one of the largest structures in our solar system.  It is like a huge donut, vast, mysterious and cold and dark.  Much, much further out there is another structure called the Oort Cloud, a spherical region of icy comet-like bodies and both the Kuiper Belt and the Oort cloud are sources of comets.  

Obviously, Pluto this black sheep of the family, was not only devoid of good housekeeping but deliberately ignoring the basic rules of the solar system.  

All those years ago I resented that my family mnemonic had been messed about by forces beyond our control.  But actually, comets have been having an incredible impact on our solar system over history. Take for example the Chicxulub comet which impacted 66 million years ago in Mexico. It created a crater 93 miles across and 12 miles deep.  It caused the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction of three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth.  A recently published scientific paper has managed to connect 5 out of 6 mass extinctions of life with times of enhanced impact cratering on Earth.  The author concluded with the frank but frightening statement, “This cosmic cycle of death and destruction has without doubt affected the history of life on our planet.”

Worryingly Jupiter, which is 300 times the size of the Earth, has been found to act a bit like a huge pinball machine in defecting incoming long-period comets into orbits close to the sun and our vicinity.  Halley’s comet, which comes from the Oort Cloud revisits every 75/76 years and was first recorded in 240 BC and has been recorded since on innumerable other occasions like 1066 on the Bayeux tapestry. Mark Twain famously said he came into the world with the arrival of Halley’s Comet and would go out with the next. In his autobiography, published in 1909, he said,

“I came in with Halley's comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.” 

Twain died on 21 April 1910, the day following the comet's subsequent perihelion.

There are also many other striking features of comets that should be recorded.

The Hale Bopp Comet is large at 35 km in diameter and has a really long orbit.  It passed Earth in 2215 BC and didn't return until 1997.  The next time it comes our way will be 4385, so a long wait.  In the 6th dynasty reign of the Pharaoh Pepi II which coincided with the 2215BC comet appearance, his pyramid has text mentioning a star appearing.  This star is particularly noticeable, after all, it is 6 times the size of Halley's Comet and in its 1997 flyby, it became the brightest comet for decades and was visible for twice as long (18.5 months) as the Great Comet of 1811.  Sadly such evident celestial signs in the sky are often misinterpreted here on Earth.  In the case of the Hale Bopp Comet, 39 members of the Heaven's Gate Movement in the US committed mass suicide in March 1997 with the goal of teleporting to a spaceship they believed to be behind the comet.

In Jan 2004 NASA’s Stardust probe flew within 236km of comet Wild2, which is 5km in diameter, and managed to capture samples from its trail.  These were returned to earth and found to contain glycine a fundamental building block of life. Perhaps comets as well as taking life have also contributed life to planets? 

On 4th July 2005, NASA’s Deep Impact probe fired a washing machine-sized object into the path of the comet Tempel 1.  It created a hole in the comet the size of a football stadium.  This comet is 6km in size and orbits every 5/6 years.

The European Space Probe in 2014 managed to put a lander on the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko and there is actually a video of what it captured on the surface of this comet!  It blew my mind to see this clip. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/67P/Churyumov%E2%80%93Gerasimenko#/media/File:67P_Churyumov-Gerasimenko_surface.gif

Given that comets and asteroids are prone to come flying Earth’s way with depressing regularity it is heartening to see someone practicing what to do if we manage to spot one on a collision course towards us in time. Just last year in 2022, after 10 months of flying in space, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) successfully impacted the asteroid Dimorphos. This asteroid was no danger to us but it proved that it was possible to move an asteroid in space and it succeeded in deflecting its course. You can watch a video of this collision here https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-dart-mission-hits-asteroid-in-first-ever-planetary-defense-test. Perhaps there is a part of you, like me, hoping they don’t nudge one into a collision course with earth while practicing!

Mind you we shouldn’t resent these impacts as there is evidence that a powerful impact on Earth probably created the moon around 4.1-3.8 billion years ago.  Without the moon’s tidal impacts on our sea, life as we know it may not have even begun. As a recent Scientific American article put it, “…the lineages that ultimately gave rise to humans were at first intertidal.”  Without those specific regions of the seashore, that are covered at high tide and uncovered at low tide, the viable condition for life may not have occurred.  Even more compelling is current scientific theories suggesting that all the water on Earth was acquired from water-rich comets or asteroids hurled here by the influence of Jupiter. When we talk of the ‘water of life’ perhaps we need to be grateful for Jupiter’s pinball nature.  Jupiter’s huge gravitational field in some ways also protects Earth as it also acts as the vacuum cleaner of the solar system sucking in some asteroids and comets.  One confirmation of this is the fate of the comet Shoemaker Levy-9 which hit the giant planet Jupiter in 1994.  This struck with the force of 300 million atomic bombs and left traces of water in Jupiter’s atmosphere reinforcing both Jupiter’s protection role but also proving the ability of comets to donate water to planets. 

Possibly, amidst all the chaos of flying objects and collisions, both destructive and constructive, life finds a way.  Perhaps, like in the rest of the Cosmos, things can arrive in our own lives unexpectedly and devastate what we hold dear.  We just have to hope that something in that pain and chaos may contribute to our future growth and development.

“… this endless universe is like the human body, and … all its parts are connected one with another and are linked together in the utmost perfection.”

‘Abdu’l Bahá