Raised Beds

'Raised Beds' must be one of the most oddball topics to have demanded the attention of the Dead Good Blogging collective. No wonder only two of us have risen to the challenge this week, for where does one go with such a subject? My friend Terry Quinn has cleverly written about hammocks, and has done so in a most entertaining manner. As for me, I'm slipping beneath the waves in my approach to the theme, to look at the parlous state of the planet's coral beds and what is being done to try and reverse a disaster-in-progress.

vibrant coral

Up until the mid-1980s, the temperature of our oceans and seas had been at a fairly constant level as far back as records went. Then over the last forty years those sea temperatures have begun to creep up, seemingly in line with the increase of man made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and in the last decade they have begun to rise at an alarming rate.

One of the most significant impacts went largely unnoticed for a while because it was out of sight, but the world's coral beds, home to one-third of all marine life, have started to die back largely as a result  of this sudden increase in sea temperatures. 

Without getting too technical, the effect is called 'bleaching'. It happens because when the water becomes too warm, the colourful algae that live symbiotically within the coral's tissue begin to produce reactive oxygen species, which are toxic and so the coral expels the algae and the coral tissue becomes transparent, revealing its white calcium carbonate skeleton.

When coral becomes bleached, it's a sign that it is sick and under stress, prone to disease, starvation and death. It is estimated that just in the last few years, a staggering 75% of all the world's coral structures have already been impacted to some degree by the bleaching process consequent upon warming waters.

In order to try and mitigate the ravages of this trend, conservation projects have been instigated by teams of marine biologists around the world to raise healthy corals in underwater nursery beds and to replant them on bleached coral structures (rather like a hair transplant) to give the original reef a chance to regenerate itself.

raising new coral beds

Typically, they nurture strains of coral that they believe will be less susceptible to rapidly warming waters. It is possible that the corals might have learned to adapt themselves if the temperature changes had been almost imperceptibly slow and over aeons, but the recent impact of man made climate change has been so sudden and so severe, the corals have not had a chance to adapt.

Sadly, the prognosis for corals is not a cheery one. Sea temperatures will continue to rise unless and until we can reverse global warming. Conservationists will continue to raise beds of healthy and more temperature-resistant corals for transplanting onto distressed structures in ever warming waters, but it could be a race that is destined to be lost. Let's hope not. 

Partly as a trailer for next week's blog about Desert Island Discs, today I have used as a starting point the titles of songs from my favourite British band of the modern era (namely The Coral, 2000 to the present) and shaped them into a poem that I hope connects with what I've been writing about above. I've called it simply...

Coral

Faraway worlds

oceans apart

wrapped in blue

It's in your hands

skeleton key

cycles of the seasons

Dreaming of you

Spanish Main

land of the lost

Watch you disappear

ghost of Coral Island

goodbye

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

Read More

Colour Fades

Even the sun was partially eclipsed today, draining colour from the morning sky. But that same sun has been steadfastly bleaching pictures on my walls and the spines of books on my bookshelves for years, turning bold colours to muted pastels. Strong light destroys pigments. There's probably a scientific explanation for the chemical fade, though I can't be bothered with that right now.

the chemical fade

I woke up this morning musing on colours - how lovely tangerine football jerseys are (do people still call them that?), why some place names reference colours like Blackpool (my adopted home town), Redcar or Whitehaven, and how silly any other variation on those names might sound: Yellowpool (slightly disgusting), Purplecar (just weird), Pinkhaven (too suggestive perhaps). It's strange the way my waking mind works. 

It's possibly no coincidence that the afore-mentioned are all low-lying coastal towns (in northern England as it happens) and that their colourful names derived originally from their natural features. Blackpool was named after the colour of water which drained into the Irish Sea after running through the area's peat bogs (blakke pule). Redcar got its name in Viking times from its reedy marshland (rede kjarr). And Whitehaven probably derives from Celtic times when osier beds grew along the shoreline of the bay and the willow fronds (wythies) were harvested to be used in basket and coracle making. As time passed, the natural features disappeared and the reasons for naming the places so colourfully faded in memory.

But enough of this. When it comes to colour fading, nothing makes the point quite so dramatically as how one's hair colour changes as one ages. Take my own, a glossy chestnut when in my prime (with hints of ginger and red), now a greyish blond shading to white in my mature years (lol). Quite some transformation to now from then.

now and then (portraits of the artist)

And damn it, in the end I just had to read up on what lies behind the colour fade. In human beings, it turns out to be a couple of factors related to the ageing process. It's a fabled double whammy. 

One is a decrease in the quantity of melanin our bodies produce as we grow older. Melanin is a complex chemical pigment. It not only partly determines skin colour, but also hair and eye colour. As melanin production slows, so skin, hair, eyes tend to get lighter as one ages, sunbathing becomes more dangerous, and "individuals can take on a pale, almost translucent appearance". 

The other is naturally produced hydrogen peroxide. And here is where it gets really fascinating. We all need oxygen to live (obviously) but it also hastens our demise by playing a role in the aging process. Electrons are the glue that hold atoms together in molecules, and all sorts of electron transfers occur between molecules when they engage in the numerous chemical reactions that go on in our body all the time. Sometimes during these reactions an electron is transferred to oxygen, converting it into a highly reactive 'superoxide' ion that attacks and rips other molecules apart. But we have evolved a defence system, in this case an enzyme called superoxide dismutase that gets rid of superoxide by converting it into hydrogen peroxide. And that hydrogen peroxide acts on the hair at its root, as it grows out of the follicle, to bleach it, turning the hair grey. 

So now you know. I have never been so vain as to try and dye my hair. I think it looks unnatural and rather sad in men, if I'm honest. Sorry if that offends.

And talking of vain, although it's hardly on topic, I decided I had to write a poem satirising that odious creature who has become President of the United States for an unbelievable second term. I refer of course to King Donald. The poem borrows its title in part from James Joyce's  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and a little from Dylan Thomas's subsequent  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog.  When I found the illustration of Trump below, a further satirical extension seemed appropriate. It's a sort of 'found' poem, reconstructed out of many of the orange man-child's own self-congratulatory phrases plus a deflationary coda. I give you...

A Portrait of the Narcissist as a Young Bitch

I'm a  perfect physical specimen
and I’m extremely young.
I don’t have any of the problems
that you read about.

My fingers are long and beautiful,
as, it has been well documented,
are various other parts of my body.
I’m immune. I feel so powerful.

Frankly, I wouldn’t mind
if there were an anti-Viagra,
something with the opposite effect.
I’m not bragging.

I’m just lucky. I don’t need it.
I’ve always said, if you need Viagra
you’re probably with the wrong girl.
I would give myself an A+.

First and foremost,
I'm a real estate person.
And that's what I love the most.
I own buildings. I'm a builder.

I know how to build.
Nobody can build like I can build. Nobody.
And the builders in New York will tell you
that I build the best product.

People love me. And you know what,
I have been very successful.
Everybody loves me.
I've got the hottest brand in the world.

I've always won,
and I'm going to continue to win.
And that's the way it is. I have
a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

You know, I was dealt a lot of bad hands
but I hold all the cards,
the Trump cards.
Everything in life is luck.

I don’t want the presidency.
Good people don't go into government.
But the working guy would elect me. He likes me.
When I walk down the street, those cabbies start

yelling out their windows. And beautiful women
they let you do it. You can do anything.
Grab ’em by the pussy. I’m not bragging.
I’ll kiss the guys and the beautiful women

and everybody. I’ll just give you a big, fat kiss.
I’m the most successful person ever
to run for the presidency, by far.
Nobody’s ever been more successful than me,

tremendous intelligence, smarts, cunning,

the man in the golden tower.
No, but there is something —
I won’t have to be locked up in my basement.

Coda:

91 Criminal Charges

34 Felony Convictions
26 Sexual Assault Allegations
6 Bankruptcies
5 Draft Deferments
4 Indictments
2 Convicted Companies
2 Impeachments to date as President of the USA

1 Total Asshole

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

Read More