Perfect Pitch

At first I thought of blogging about beautiful singing voices, grassy playing surfaces or clinically clever advertising campaigns. But then I figured I'd take an oblique approach (for a change, ha ha) to the given theme of perfect pitch, you know, get down and dirty with a sticky mix of chemistry and folklore, covering everything from bitumen via pitchblende to tar babies. I hope you're okay with that. Are you sitting comfortably, Saturday? Here it comes...

slouching towards ecotastrophe

Pitch or tar (the words can be used interchangeably) can be derived from a number of sources including coal, oil, peat and certain woods. It is a dark brown or black viscous liquid and gave us the term pitch black. In common usage, tar generally refers to the more fluid, and pitch to the more solid, forms of this viscous mixture of ever so slightly dangerous hydrocarbons; (it's the benzene, mostly). Traditionally  pitch or tar has been used as a form of water-repellent coating on the hulls of boats, the walls of sheds, the roofs of houses, the surface of roads, and in the making of tar-babies. 

The 'Uncle Remus' stories of Joel Chandler Harris are not as popular as they were when I was a child and living in West Africa in the 1950s, but they were a memorable part of my early reading, books gifted to me by an American missionary family of our acquaintance, and the tale of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox and the Tar Baby in particular has always stayed in mind.

Harris, an American journalist and folklorist of the deep south, carried out field research in the 1870s among his country's African-American plantation workers and wrote their tales up originally for newspaper serialisation so as to "preserve in permanent shape those curious mementoes of a period that will no doubt be misrepresented by historians of the future." Of course the oral tradition of the plantation workers had its roots much further away and longer ago in Africa, where I was born and was living, not that I knew of their provenance as a five-year-old.

There are quite a few 'tar baby' folk tales to be found in African folklore. The one about Anansi is the most widespread. I'll paraphrase it here:

Anansi was a greedy and lazy character. He lived on a farm with his wife and children, who went to tend it every morning while he sat in the house and gorged himself. Instead of helping around the house or on the farm, he became fat from consuming all the fruits of his family’s labour, causing them to become thinner. After a while, his wife decided that she'd had enough and came up with a plan to weed Anansi out of the house. She made a tar figure and left it outside in the yard, calling it an intruder. Anansi went outside to order it off his land but the tar figure would not reply or move, so  Anansi got very angry and punched the tar figure with both fists. However, his hands got stuck in the tar, causing him to become even angrier. He continued to assault the 'tar baby' until he was stuck completely and, ashamed, remained in that state until death.

I hope the moral of that cautionary tale is abundantly clear. 😉

Closer to the Brer Rabbit story is a version from Mozambique. Again, I'll paraphrase from the French:

There was a pesky rabbit (more correctly a hare - lièvre) who, by means of false alarms of war, had repeatedly robbed the ground-nut patches of a certain village. Eventually the  inhabitants became suspicious, and decided to lay a trap for him. The first step was to gather tar (in this case la glu noire) from which to make the 'tar baby'  (un mannequin de femme) which they set up in the garden. The next time the pesky rabbit gave the alarm that the enemy was coming, the villagers all ran away; but, seeing the 'tar-baby' still there, the rabbit shouted for it to scram too ("Va-t-en, femme!"). When the figure neither replied nor departed, the rabbit tried to move it bodily and became stuck fast. The people then came up, extricated the rabbit from the Tar-Baby's embraces, and informed him that they were going to kill him. "Very well," said he, "but don't kill me on the ground, kill me on the chief's back!" They returned to the village and spread a mat on the ground, on which the chief obligingly lay down, and the rabbit squatted on his back. A strong warrior then prepared to spear the rabbit and, as might be expected, ended up killing the chief, for the rabbit leaped into the air at the critical moment and made his escape without any difficulty. The indignant villagers then massacred the warrior.

That one's for the MAGA dunderheads who have voted the reprehensible Trump in not once but twice. 😡 

And while we're on the topic of bombing Iran, let's not forget that it was the Americans and British who first destabilised Iran by prompting and supporting a coup d'etat in 1953, enabling a military junta to overthrow the democratic Iranian government which had recently nationalised the country's oil production capabilities so that Iranians, rather than exploitative British and American oil companies, would actually benefit from the country's natural resources.  And it's still the West's thirst for middle-east oil that underlies most of the turmoil in the region and was the major geo-political factor behind the disastrous Gulf Wars of recent memory.

Colonialism, imperialism, economic bullying, we can't keep our sticky paws off the perfect pitch, it seems. It has become a major reason why the Arab world distrusts the West. And now the flow from the middle east is growing increasingly unreliable, the pro-fossil fuel lobby is redoubling its efforts to increase drilling in the USA and under the north sea in defiance of all the scientific evidence that climate change from increased greenhouse gases is endangering the entire planetary ecosystem. Just read Bill McKibben's 'The End of Nature'.

"Drill, baby, drill" (Donald Trump)

If we're not careful, we will die, like greedy Anansi, in the sticky embrace of the 'tar-baby'.

After all that, you want a poem? OK then. Here's my latest mytb-busting word bomb of an ecoblast. It's a pastiche after Don Mclean, and it's for my friends in Just Stop Oil. You know the tune. It doesn't matter if you haven't got perfect pitch. Sing along....

Tarry, Tarry Night

Tarry, tarry night
Paint the future black and grey
No more sunny upland days
This darkness in our souls won’t ever lift

Fossil fuel kills
Scorches trees and animals
No more breeze to cool our ills
We’re cancers on this once so pleasant gift

Now I understand
What they were trying to say to me
As they campaigned for our sanity
And how they tried to set us right

We would not listen, did we not know how?
Too late to listen now

Tarry, tarry night
Portraits done in heavy oils
Shameless heads on corporate walls
With greedy eyes for all that they could get

Dangerous and yet
Voted for by all of those
Without the courage to oppose
The lies that in the end have brought us low

Now I think I know
What they were trying to say to me
As they campaigned for our sanity
And why they said to let oil go

We would not listen, didn’t want to know
Too late to listen now

For we could not love the earth
Although its love for us was true
And when no hope was left in sight
On that tarry, tarry night

It did what jilted lovers often do

Gave up the will to fight. In truth

This world was wasted
By the likes of me and you

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Fern Fever

Great crazes from history? No contest for me. It's got to be the mid-Victorian madness known as Fern Fever, or pteridomania to give it's official name. Fern Fever was a peculiarly British eccentricity that is thought to have originated in the 1830s at a time when amateur and professional botanists began taking a serious interest in the countryside of the United Kingdom in increasing numbers, sleuthing for new discoveries.

Why ferns in particular? Partly because as a group they had been less researched and written about than our native flowering plants, and partly because they could be found in greater variety and abundance in the wetter, wilder parts of the north and west, regions that had just begun to become more accessible with the rise of railways and decent roads.

By the 1850s, pteridomania (a phrase conjured up by Charles Kingsley) had become something of a national obsession, regardless of class. A hobby for some, a scientific pursuit for others, a commercial undertaking for horticulturalists and publishers, fern fever gripped doctors, labourers, merchants, miners, school teachers, solicitors, men of leisure, shopgirls and society wives alike.

As Kingsley wrote in his 1855 book 'Glaucus': 

"Your daughters, perhaps, have been seized with the prevailing 'Pteridomania' ...and wrangling over unpronounceable names of species (which seem different in each new Fern-book that they buy) ...and yet you cannot deny that they find enjoyment in it, and are more active, more cheerful, more self-forgetful over it, than they would have been over novels and gossip, crochet and Berlin-wool."

Fern collecting became commercialised and respectable with the provision of literature and merchandise to support the craze. 

A recent invention, the Wardarian Case (fore-runner of the modern terrarium), was a popular purchase and could be found in many stylish drawing-rooms. This protected the ferns from pollution, a growing hazard in metropolitan areas. Fern houses, adjuncts equivalent to modern conservatories, and much grander outdoor ferneries served a similar purpose.

In fact Ward's invention paved the way for botanist George Loddiges to build the world’s largest hothouse in East London (illustrated above), which included a fern nursery. Even though the fern was already associated with magic and nature folklore, Loddiges knew that he needed to further enhance its reputation in order to attract visitors to his hothouse. So he encouraged a belief that fern collecting showed intelligence and improved both virility and mental health. Soon, his neighbour, the famed botanist Edward Newman, published 'A History of British Ferns', a very well-received book which supported Loddiges’ claims and fuelled fern fever.

A devoted pteridomaniac, armed with Newman's book or a copy of Thomas Moore's 'The Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland' could set off like an intrepid adventurer on a wild fern hunt for the seventy or so native species. And some fern collectors didn't just restrict themselves to the British Isles. They would tour Europe or even further abroad into Asia in search of obscure samples for their ferneries. Or without going to such lengths themselves, they would purchase interesting specimens from a growing number of Fern Dealers.

At the height of fern fever, possibly on the back of Loddiges' claims about the efficacy of fern collecting, fern hunting parties became popular social occasions. The appeal may also have had something to do with the fact that these parties afforded romantic opportunities for young couples to meet in an informal setting. 

Soon. even the truly discerning Victorian hostesses abandoned tea parties in favour of organized outings, daylong woodland expeditions complete with picnic baskets and competitions for who would find the rarest specimen of fern. Botany was, after all, one of the few avenues open to women who wanted to experience adventure for themselves. It was popular and widespread enough to be deemed an acceptable outdoor activity for the ladies who could even engage in fern hunting unchaperoned, since it was considered an entirely wholesome, healthy, and moral activity. Even very young girls (as noted by Kingsley above) would collect samples of ferns, dry and press them, and display them in albums.

Out of this upswell of fern fever came a response firstly from the world of decorative arts and then from homeware manufacturers. By the time of the 1862 International Exhibition, the fern motif was ubiquitous, on everything from glassware, pottery, metal, wood, wallpaper, and printed fabrics to jewellery, cutlery, gravestones and memorials. Even the contemporary custard cream biscuit features a baroque fern design if you look closely. 

On a slightly more salacious note, apparently it was understood that a woman wearing a sprig of fern or fern motif in the form of an accessory (brooch or scarf maybe), was sending a coded message that she was up for a bit of adventure. I tried to access the British Pteridological Society website to verify, but the site is currently unavailable.

As fern fever proliferated, some botanists began to express concerns that the rarer populations of British ferns might be in jeopardy from zealous collectors. As early as 1865, Nona Bellairs in her botanical guidebook 'Hardy Ferns' was calling for legislation:

"We must have 'Fern laws', and preserve them like game."

It is true that some of the rare species were nearly decimated and have never quite recovered, They hang on in isolated pockets. But by the 1890s, and for no obvious reason, fern fever had practically run its course. Fern nurseries fell into neglect and fern houses and ferneries collapsed into ruin. Wild populations of ferns were left in peace and by and large recovered unmolested and unnoticed after their half-century brush with fame.

This latest poem is decidedly a work-in-progress, and I shall probably take it to the next meeting of our Blackpool & Fylde Stanza group for their considered input. 

The Fern Collectors

Up with the snark in their thoughts

and quaintly mannered as Wesleyans

on a Sunday School trip, they fit

tight with excitement, all smiles

and smelling of bay rum and lilies,

into a third-class coach on a train

from Liverpool Street bound for

Epping and forest and ferns.

Clutching their maps of Essex, 

their copies of Newman or Moore 

and talking in turns about

that visit to the Hackney hothouse

the week before and where they might

explore today, their eyes burn with

fern fever, their presses await.

A whistle blows and the fun begins.

"Will you go hunt, my Lord?" quips one

and they fall to discussing specimens

they could happen upon. Broad Buckler

is common in those parts, likewise

Hartstongue fern, less so Adderstongue.

They do not use their Latin names,

too stilted and serious for the air

of flirtatious badinage arising

in the carriage, as the young men 

wax lyrical about the Lady fern,

its delicate and lacy qualities,

and the maidens blush demurely

at talk of how Male and Hard ferns 

stand proud from the undergrowth.

They've not even passed Leyton yet

but they cannot arrive too soon. 

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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