Friday Flora Familial folio edition

Another from my Mom's garden, which was, and may still be, better than yours.

My Mom was a very good artist; she had some training, a mother who illustrated her own books, and an aunt who was a professional artist working in oils (Fera Webber Shear).  Her chosen medium was acrylic, and her subject botanical illustration.  I encourage you to click on that photo, see it as big as possible.

I spent half of a day this week going through old holiday greeting cards sent from all my parents' friends over the last couple of years.  My task was to put together the mailing list for a belated holiday card, thanking my parents' friends for their kind wishes and telling them of my Mom's passing.  There were certain generational trends in evidence.  Among my parents' friends of longest standing, the themes of late retirement such as travel and grandchildren mixed with brushes against morbidity and mortality.  There were also a number of cards from my Dad's students, and these showed the ripeness of latter working life, children married, thoughts of retirement mixed with the highest tide of professional and social attainment.

I need to get my own personal belated holiday cards out.  Looking at the mailing list, I am seeing some stereotypical themes in my own age cohort.  We are, mostly, in the endurance phase of our careers.  Most, though not all have children, and some of those are starting to head off to college--but a few years and they will be entering the post-children phase of their lives.  I, and a few others, are on different tracks.  I have switched careers rather dramatically, and am starting from the bottom.  We have no human kids.  I'll be looking at a rather different set of milestones, but I have to say that I do like hearing about everybody else's.  It gives me a good feeling to see my friends do well.

So.  I'd better get to work on that card.

Time and meteors

If the night sky could have looked down a few days ago, it would have seen the Real Doctor and me looking back up at it.  We were lying on our backs in the driveway, taking advantage of the dark skies of a moonless midnight in August, hoping to see the remains of a long-ago comet as they shot through the atmosphere above us.  As had been predicted, the Perseid meteor shower was pretty good.  Before my eyes had properly adjusted to the dark, a bright meteor skimmed the hills of the northern horizon; within a minute of lying down, another shot most of the way from the zenith to the western horizon, leaving a trail that quickly disappeared.

We stayed out for a few more minutes, contemplating the skies and what passed through them.  There were a handful of the less impressive "there went one" sort, and a two of the "OOOH!" variety.  Sure enough, their trails could all be tracked back to Perseus.  After a few more minutes, we bundled ourselves back indoors and to bed--it was a weeknight, and the Real Doctor had to be on the job early the next day.

The stargazing made a nice break from the routine.  Going out and looking hard at the night sky always gives me a helpful reminder of my place in the world.   Watching the fixed stars as the make their way across the sky, watching the moon and planets as they wander among the fixed stars, watching interlopers such as this last winter's Comet Lovejoy as they sprint across the field--these snap my attention to the fact of my being a dot on a spinning rock orbiting a star in a galaxy.  It can make me feel small, but, at the same time it makes me feel as though I am of this whole clockwork.  It is oddly comforting.

I don't think there's anybody other than the Real Doctor that I'd rather be with as the Earth makes its way around its orbit, as it rolls between the sun and the constellation Perseus; to be with, lying in a driveway out in the country, as Perseus reaches the zenith; to be with, as we watch bits of comet burn up so spectacularly in the high air, while our livestock guardian dog makes confused noises at our out-of-the-ordinary behavior.

The setting encouraged reminiscence.   A long time ago, I had just moved to Madison, Wisconsin, to start graduate school.  I didn't know many people there--I had a few acquaintances, mostly from bicycling.  However, being pretty new in town, I didn't have a whole lot of good friends.  I sought to fix this situation.  It's not really my wont to go to parties, or even go out to movies.  Rather, going for bike rides or hikes and camping is more my style.  It was August, and predictions were being made that that year's Perseid meteor shower would be a winner.  So, I thought I'd invite some acquaintances, such as I'd wanted to become friends, to ride our bikes up to Devil's Lake, camp out under the dark rural  skies, and watch meteors.

Well, it was a bust.  Everyone I invited declined, either right away or at the last minute; my cup of tea is not everyone else's.  Among those who declined was the Real Doctor.  Much later, she noted that she was kind of weirded out by the invite--from this guy whom she'd basically only seen riding a bike, had only known for a very short time, and who wanted to go camping in the middle of nowhere.  It didn't seem like that good of an idea.  Although my intentions were completely naive, I have to say that she showed good judgement.

Of course, things worked out eventually:  by April, the Real Doctor and I were an item.  Earth has shown her midnight side to Perseus twenty-some times since then, blundering through the mortal remains of Comet Swift-Tuttle to dazzle us, her tenants, who lie on their backs in the driveway to watch the show.  The watchers ooh and ah, and think of time and trips around the sun and anniversaries.  This year's celestial show brought up another chunk of time to note:  that stretch of time, between this week's meteor shower and my failed attempt at socializing--that chunk of time, for all of which the Real Doctor has been someone I wanted to know better--that portion of my life is now longer than that which preceded it.  She has been on my mind, one way or another, for more than half of my life.

etymology

It's with wistfulness that we note the passing of Vasily Alexeyev, "the strongest man in the world." Alexeyev was a Soviet-era Russian weightlifter, and handily won gold medals in the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games. He could pick up and put down a staggering amount of weight.
In 1972 I was five years old, and I thought it was the best thing in the world that a guy with a name like Alex was on TV, being celebrated as the champion of strength and power. Apparently, though I don't remember it well, I'd go around the house hoisting objects above my head and claiming to be Alexeyev, champion of the world.

This is not a situation well tolerated by a five-year-old's elder brothers. It won't do for the youngest to be the champ. For the two elder brothers, it's far better to have the youngest to be the loser, in third place, and even better for him to have a funny name. In this photo from '72, the guy on the right is the bronze medalist, the East German Gerd Bonk.
Every time I Alexeyev-ed, I was Bonk-ed with greater vigor. This went on till Bonk became my nickname, and I still answer to it. So, today I am obliged to pick something heavy up and grunt as I hold it over my head in honor of my late, almost namesake. As for Gerd, he's still alive, though apparently not doing well. His body is a wreck, debris from the East German penchant for chemically-enhanced athleticism.

The merit of our forefathers...

The Real Doctor called me during the last day of Mic105 lab, a week ago. She was rather excited; calling from her car’s phone, which always muddies the reception, I gathered that I should call in to NPR’s Talk of the Nation Science Friday immediately. They were talking about a subject of personal relevance and expertise, so it would be good for me to contribute. It took a moment to find the number, and by the time I did it was 12:59:50—too late.

The subject was the origin of the word “clone.” This is a word which was dragged out of the Greek and attached to the meaning of “a group of plants that are propagated by the use of any form of vegetative parts such as bulbs, tubers, cuttings, grafts, buds, etc., and which are simply parts of the same individual seedling.” The person responsible for this appropriation, proposed in the October 16 1903 issue of Science, was Dr. Herbert John Webber, of the Department of Agriculture Plant Breeding Laboratory. What gave it personal relevance was that Dr. Webber was my great-grandfather.

I never met H.J. Webber, though I have an eighth of his genes. My grandfather, Dr. John Milton Webber, was also an academic horticulturalist. My mom, as has been noted, has a better garden than you and a groaning bookshelf of horticultural tomes. And then there’s me, also toiling in the vineyards of science. This brings up another term from the same 1903 paper—“transmitting power.” This is “the faculty which an individual organism has of transmitting its individual peculiarities to its progeny.” Although the word “clone” stuck—and has broadened its meaning far beyond what my great grandfather could imagine in 1903—“transmitting power” fell by the wayside, replaced in some ways by “penetrance.” However you describe it, H.J.’s biologist/academic genes had transmitting power or penetrance.

…

Occasionally, a name on the roster really jumps out at you. The name was “Leidy,” which in a Microbial Diversity class roster sticks out like “Saint-Saens” in a music appreciation class roster. I queried the student, and sure enough, he’s a descendant of the brother of Joseph Leidy, the pioneering American doctor / anatomist / paleontologist / microbiologist / microscopist / parasitologist. (his biography is subtitled “The Last Man who Knew Everything.”) If you want to know about amoebas, or if you just want to look at some absolutely ravishing hand-drawn illustrations by a brilliant microscopist, check out his “Fresh-water Rhizopods of North America,” available in its entirety online. So, now I can say that I’ve schooled Leidy on microbiology.

Those were the days...

Any well-established university science department has its elders, venerated as much for their scientific achievements as for their embodiment of a physical connection to the departed giants of the field. One of our microbiology department's elders is John Ingraham. He's rightly celebrated for his discoveries (do you like wine with a controlled malo-lactic fermentation? Thank John), and when you look at him you see a lineage that goes to C. B. van Niel and then to Kluyver and then to Beijerinck.

I was reading an autobiographical sketch John wrote for the 1991 Annual Review of Microbiology (1991--twenty years ago he was already an eminence grise), and came upon this nugget about working at UC Davis:

It seems almost dream-like to recall the cordial relations between state government, university administration, faculty and students, the emotion-choked Chancellor at retirement responding to the standing faculty’s applause with, “Only at Davis.” Phone calls to administration, support staff and other faculty were almost always greeted with, “What can I do to help?” The governor and members of the legislature (almost all UC graduates) were proud of their excellent educational system from kindergarten through graduate school. The governor always attended picnic day (Davis’ annual campus/community joint celebration) to ride in the lead car of the parade and greet all comers. But Governor Pat Brown was the last to do so. With the coming of the 1960s, Vietnam, and Ronald Reagan’s governorship, university/state government relations soured.

I think if Mark Yudof were in the lead car at Picnic Day, he'd get tomatoes thrown at him. If the governor were in the lead car, the tomatoes would still be in the can.

Ingraham, John L. (1991). Learning to Fly Fish. Annual Review of Microbiology 55, 1-9.