People As Albums Of Inside-Out Songs

Strangely, the Sergeant Pepper album originated with a song which was never on it, “Strawberry Fields.” That November John came into the studio, and we went into our regular routine. I sat on my high stool with Paul standing beside me, and John stood in front of us with his acoustic guitar and sang the song. It was absolutely lovely. Then we tried with Ringo on drums, and Paul and George on their bass and electric guitars. It started to get heavy—it wasn’t the gentle song that I had first heard.

George Martin
from “All You Need Is Ears”

She yawned. She wasn’t much interested
in anything I was talking about.

“I didn’t like any of them,” she said,
“not the pretty one or the angry one
or the other two. From what their wives say
I didn’t miss much. Skipping all of them.”

“Their music shaped generations,” I said.

She laughed. At least she was interested.

“Did you know,” she asked, “John’s demo version
of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ was him
just on acoustic guitar and singing?”

I told her I thought I’d read that somewhere.

She laughed again. She said, “Just imagine
if Red Bull existed back then and John
had been fueled by the sugar and caffeine
and had gotten all fighting mad angry
and had insisted on using that track,
singing solo to acoustic guitar.
Music today might have a different shape.”

I thought, they liked doing something different.

And I thought, they liked experimenting.

What if they had used all their influence
to change music that way, to make it good
instead of making it about machines?

She laughed and interrupted my thinking.

“I can play you like a guitar,” she said.
“And when you think all of your thoughts project
onto your face something like inside-out.
I can watch them something like a movie.”

I said, “Can you see what I’m thinking now?”

She said, “Are you thinking that in the days
before the Beatles they would burn witches?”

I said, “You should be grateful to the boys.
They changed history. Count your lucky stars.”

She looked at me. I couldn’t figure out
even one single thought she was thinking.

She said, “Just think, back when they burned witches
people would know witches were being killed.
Do you believe witches now don’t get killed?
Wasn’t it better when everyone knew,
when the fires were so bright they blocked the stars?”

I said, “I can’t tell if you are talking
because you have something to say, or if
you just like watching my expressions change.”

“So what?” she asked. And she smiled, shrugged and laughed.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


Cynthia Lennon In The Plum Rains

“Now I Dream Of The Plum Rains”


Buying The Beatles Forever

Japanese Train Stations Forever


“The Stars From Here: A Puppet Thriller”

Blows Against The (Expensive) Empire


“The Primitive And What Came After”

The Occult Technology Of Lost Songs

Cynthia Lennon In The Plum Rains

I don’t have much today, but I have a little thing that has been causing me a lot of thought.

When something happens unexpectedly and some little, seemingly trivial, piece of information makes itself known all by itself, by accident even, that often gets me thinking more than if I had researched something carefully on my own initiative.

I know random stuff happens and it’s just random. I am not someone who dis-believes in coincidence or chance.

But at the same time I am one of those people who often wonder if there might be much more to some coincidences and random chance events than most of us traditionally allow.

I don’t know. But one of these little kind of random things has popped up and it’s causing me a lot of thought so I’m going to do a post about it. In fact, this may end up using two posts, today and tomorrow. I don’t know.

*

This goes back to a couple of days ago when I visited the Chicago library and wrote about my visit in my Tuesday post The Song And Sight Exactly.

When I was in the Chicago library I accidently stumbled on Pattie Boyd’s autobiography. The cover art and the sad story of that book have stayed with me for many years. So I made a little moment of the scene by photographing the Pattie Boyd book on the shelf in the library.

At the time I took the photograph, I did pay a little attention to the composition and I had noticed that at the right edge of the frame there was a book by Cynthia Lennon, her 2005 autobiography, “John.”

I let that composition stay with the picture just because it seemed like a good sideways kind of reference—I was taking a picture of a book by George’s wife and there at the side of the image was a book by John’s wife.

But then I found myself thinking more about that book, Cynthia Lennon’s book. For reasons I’ll talk about below, I had never read Cynthia Lennon’s autobiography. But after I took that photograph of Pattie Boyd’s autobiography, and then found myself continuing to think about the Cynthia Lennon book, I visited a library near here and took out a copy. I read the book yesterday.

*

I’m going to post today about Cynthia Lennon’s book, but before I talk about her book I want to say something about this topic, the Beatles.

By 2005 when Cynthia Lennon wrote her autobiography I had already stopped reading about the Beatles. I have already mentioned in an old post that I find it very frustrating reading about the Beatles because almost every new book contains a slightly different narrative and it is impossible to sort out what should be believed, what should be dismissed, and what should be “interpreted” to get at something like a real truth.

That being said, I did read most of what George Martin has written because he often concentrated on the music production aspect of the Beatles. And I’ve written a few posts about the Beatles, as a group and as individuals:

Buying The Beatles Forever

Japanese Train Stations Forever

“Strictly Speaking She Harmonizes”

Marginalia And The Kennedy Assassination — 1 & 2

Nuclear Accidents, Beatles, Mean Snakes

Saturn/Books/Mean Things/Rock And Roll

A Quick Badfinger Note

“Underwear Distance Of Love” (Reprise)


Having written so many posts about the Beatles (and I’ve written one or two others that mention the Beatles just in passing), it might sound bizarre for me to say this, but: I don’t like writing about the Beatles. It’s something like “Star Wars.” It’s a topic I know, I guess, a lot about, but it’s a part of reality that has gone from being fun and exciting to being simply tragic and endlessly sad. I try to avoid such things.

But sometimes I make an exception. For the Beatles, I thought I had said everything I’d ever want to say in “Buying The Beatles Forever.” But this one last thing has sort of pushed itself into my awareness and I’m going to write about it today just for the sake of completeness or just for the sake of being responsive to the strange accidental nature of this little bit of awareness. I don’t know. But I am going to make a conscious effort for today, and possibly tomorrow, to be the last things I write about the Beatles.

*

Okay. Back to Cynthia Lennon’s autobiography, “John.”

Cynthia Lennon does something very strange at the very start of her book. Something very strange and—I’m guessing—something that to many long-time Beatles fans and followers is wildly odd and unexpected.

She begins her book with normal front-matter: There’s an “acknowledgements” page. Then a “forward” by Julian Lennon. Then an “introduction” by Cynthia herself.


Then when the actual book itself starts, the first anecdote stretching over pages 1-3 is about the death of Mal Evans.


What the hell is that about?

This book by Cynthia Lennon will contain nothing new. It will be just a review of the standard Beatles narrative from Cynthia Lennon’s very limited perspective. But she begins the book with an extended anecdote about what is certainly one of the most mysterious and most perplexing deaths of the various deaths associated with the standard Beatles narrative, the almost nonsensical death of the long-time roadie/friend/producer/musician[?]/writer[?]/confidant of all four of the Beatles, Mal Evans.

What the hell is that about?

I mean: Cynthia Lennon discusses the death of Mal Evans before she gets around to talking about John at all [!] and then she transitions directly from the death of Mal Evans in 1976 to the murder of John Lennon in 1980.

What the hell is that about?


I don't know what that’s about.

For people unfamiliar with Mal Evans, here are the first few paragraphs of his Wikipedia entry:

Malcolm Frederick "Mal" Evans (27 May 1935 – 5 January 1976) was best known as the road manager, assistant, and a friend of The Beatles.

In the early 1960s, Evans was employed as a telephone engineer, and also worked part-time as a bouncer at the Cavern Club. The Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein, later hired Evans as the group's assistant road manager, in tandem with Neil Aspinall. Peter Brown (one of Epstein's staff) later wrote that Evans was "a kindly, but menacing-looking young man". Evans contributed to recordings, and appeared in some of the films the group made. After The Beatles stopped touring in 1966, Evans carried on assisting them until their break-up in 1970. From 1969, Evans also found work as a record producer (most notably with Badfinger's top 10 hit "No Matter What").

Evans was killed by police on 5 January 1976, at his home in Los Angeles. Officers were called when his girlfriend phoned the police and told them that Evans was confused and had a gun. The police believed that the air rifle Evans was holding was a rifle and shot him dead.

When Mal Evans was killed in Los Angeles, he had been working on his autobiography, to be called, “Living the Beatles’ Legend.” His co-writer was there, as was a young woman, the night he was shot. The book was wildly anticipated by fans of the Beatles because Mal Evans was such an insider, someone who had been there from almost the very beginning. And the rumors were that he was going to be the first insider to write a tell-all book that actually told-all.

After Mal Evans was killed, the manuscript for his book became “lost.”

Surprise, surprise.

Something like ten years later material that was supposedly background notes for the book surfaced at a New York publisher. At that point—a decade after his death—who knows how complete the material was or, really, its provenance?

*

So Cynthia Lennon decided to start her autobiography with a story about Mal Evans being killed.

Here is part of what she had to say:

Mal had been a faithful friend to the boys and was especially close to John: they got on incredibly well and, with the Beatles’ other loyal roadie, Neil Aspinall, he had been on every tour, organizing, trouble-shooting, protecting and looking after them.

When the Beatles broke up Mal had been lost. He’d gone to live in Los Angeles where he began drinking and taking drugs. It was there, on January 4, 1976, that the police had been called by his girlfriend during a row. She claimed that Mal had pulled a gun on her, and when they burst into the apartment the officers found Mal holding a gun. Apparently he pointed it at them before they shot him. It was only after he died that they found the gun wasn’t loaded. It was a tragic story, and we could only imagine that Mal had been under the influence of drugs. The Mal we knew could no more have shot someone than flown to the moon. Whatever the true story, his death had shocked us all and that night, our talk around Mo’s fireplace was of what a good man he had been and how awful his premature death was. To us, the idea of being shot was almost unimaginable—how could it have happened to such a good friend?

Cynthia Lennon wrote: “Whatever the true story...”

Indeed.

*

Cynthia Lennon doesn’t add much to the standard Beatles narrative in this book. But she does tell one more story, very briefly and very late in the book, that is interesting as a kind of companion piece to the story she started her book with.

Shortly after John Lennon’s murder, a man who was a friend of both John and Cynthia confided to Cynthia that John had been keeping detailed diaries for many years. The man told Cynthia that he had been told by John Lennon himself to see that the diaries were delivered to John’s son, Julian, in the event of John’s death. When the man tried to deliver the diaries to Julian, John’s wife Yoko had the man arrested on the charge of stealing the diaries. Yoko took possession of the diaries herself. And she kept them.

Surprise, surprise.

*

That’s all I have for today. Maybe more tomorrow.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


I’m Sorry The World Did This To You

Hen Politics, And Passages Between Worlds

“Now I Dream Of The Plum Rains”

Thinking About A Far Away Dawn

I don’t think we would learn more if we sent
robot spacecraft to orbit the people
we tried to understand with our science.

I don’t think we would learn more if we went
into space ourselves naked and aroused
instead of the robot spacecraft we send.

The Library That We’ve Made Of Ourselves

The song was written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love about Shirley Johnson England, the daughter of the owner of radio station KNAK in Salt Lake City, Utah where she worked as a teenager. She borrowed her father's Ford Thunderbird to study at the library at the University of Utah. While at the library she met up with some friends, went to a hamburger stand, and ended up at the drive-in movies. When her father found out, he took the car away. The next day she was at the radio station complaining about it to the staff while The Beach Boys were visiting and they were inspired to write this song.

Murry Wilson, the father of the Wilson brothers, denounced the whole idea for the song as immoral, and tried to prevent the group from recording it. The song, backed by a single-only mix of a cover version of Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers' "Why Do Fools Fall In Love", became a top-five hit. This eventually led to the musicians dismissing Murry as manager during the recording sessions for "I Get Around".

excerpt from “Fun, Fun, Fun”
at Wikipedia

Scientist At A Hamburger Stand

A Piece Of Paper Above An Asteroid

The Dawn spacecraft launched from Earth and traveled toward Mars to take advantage of the gravity of Mars to pull the craft along and help it accelerate. Then Dawn traveled to the asteroid belt and entered into orbit around the asteroid Vesta. After studying Vesta, Dawn left orbit and is currently pushing out a little farther across the asteroid belt to rendezvous with the asteroid Ceres where Dawn will again go into orbit to study the second asteroid. (The Dawn home page at NASA/JPL provides lots of constantly updated information about the spacecraft. Clicking the image above makes it larger. Updated versions of this and other graphics are at “Where Is Dawn Now?”)


*


There is a beautiful crown above us
early in the evening sky every night
as if we’re wearing it like kings or queens.

The crown has a name that’s beautiful, too,
Corona Borealis. In English
that translates simply to, The Northern Crown.

It can be hard to see in city lights
but with binoculars now there’s a way
but you have to visit the stars themselves.

There are two bright stars in the southern sky,
to the left Saturn, to the right, Spica.

In the eastern sky there is one bright star,
Vega in the constellation Lyra.

Almost overhead but just to the south
there is another bright star, Arcturus.

If you imagine a line in the sky
tracing straight from Spica to Arcturus
and then continuing east to Vega,
that line passes over The Northern Crown
just about one-third of the way between
the two bright stars Arcturus and Vega.

If you travel that line, travel through space
with binoculars one star to the next,
you visit Corona Borealis,
The Northern Crown, and you get to observe
that the stars really do look like a crown,
a beautiful crown of stars above us
as if we’re wearing them like kings or queens.

It’s not like visiting a library
or a hamburger stand or a drive-in,
but when dawn arrives for a king or queen,
a king or queen wearing the stars themselves,
nobody will take away their car keys.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


Updated Monthly Starchart
at Orion Telescopes

Corona Borealis
at Wikipedia

*

Crown And Tiara

Everything’s Still There

“The Stars From Here: A Puppet Thriller”

Blows Against The (Expensive) Empire
“Have you seen the stars tonight?”


*


This bit of star-hopping
really does work.

I did it Wednesday night, at
around 10pm Chicago time.
Every night the stars will get
a little higher, but the relationships
between them will stay the same.

But, soon, more bright stars will
be appearing in the sky as
the Summer Triangle rises.

The Song And Sight Exactly

Today I was planning to do a post about the Dawn spacecraft out at the asteroids, using its ion thruster to move from the asteroid Vesta to the asteroid Ceres. I’ve posted about the Dawn spacecraft a couple of times, and I wanted to follow-up on something I said in one of those posts.

Scientist At A Hamburger Stand

A Piece Of Paper Above An Asteroid

And I was going to say that the Dawn spacecraft was like a plot from a science fiction movie but it was real, carrying on with the “science fiction movie” language from yesterday’s post.

But my thinking, today, got completely derailed in a completely unexpected way.

So I may return to the Dawn spacecraft tomorrow. I’m not sure. Today I’m just going to recount what happened to me this afternoon.


*


Late this afternoon I was in Chicago for a while. At some point I realized I was right next door to a Chicago Public Library. So I went in to see if they had an old, obscure book about oil painting I’ve been looking for. They didn’t. And I noticed the Chicago library used a slightly different numeric classification system than our suburban libraries.

(Chicago did still use numeric classifications, though, they haven’t embraced the so-called “bookstore model” many libraries are adopting. If you don’t know what the "bookstore model" refers to you are lucky. I wish I didn’t know and I’m not going to post any links to it here.)

Anyway, although the Chicago library didn’t have the oil painting book I was looking for, I tracked down their fine arts section and looked through the painting books they did have on the shelf.

I noticed that with their classification scheme the shelves right next to the fine arts books contained pop music books. And as that registered with my thinking, I saw a photograph on the spine of one of the music books and that derailed my thinking completely. I gave up, for the moment, and for the day, really, looking at painting books and I pulled out the book with the familiar picture on the spine. I even took a photo of the cover.

This book. Pattie Boyd’s autobiography, “Wonderful Tonight.”

Pattie Boyd, of course, is the real Layla. She was the muse and inspiration behind Eric Clapton writing “Layla” and George Harrison writing “Something” and other great songs. I’ve posted about Pattie Boyd, and her autobiography, a few times.

The Good Old Days—Umm, Yeah...

Equally And As Hopelessly Lost

Thinking About Arranging “Layla”

For some reason it was something like shocking, seeing that book next to the painting books.

I’m so used to our suburban library system of classification that the juxtaposition was completely unexpected for me.

So then I got to thinking, again, about paintings versus photographs because I think that cover photograph of Pattie Boyd from her modeling years is more beautiful than any painting.


And I wondered, again: With photographs creating a kind of “standard” for what is possible in the realm of images, is it even possible for painters to live up to that standard, or even surpass it in one way or another?


A few weeks ago I found a very interesting essay by artist Alexi Worth speculating that Manet may have developed his bright and blunt style of portraiture partially as a response to the enthusiastic embrace by the French public of the then new medium of photography: The Lost Photographs of Edouard Manet

And I’ve done posts about the trend in fine arts called hyperrealism, where artists embrace photorealism as a craft and make selection or some other criteria a part of the process: The Margins Of Water In The Wild and The Abandonment Of Meaning and “Kari Loses An Underwire From Her Bra...”.

I don’t think Manet’s style is the answer, if there is one, to this issue. As eye-catching and beautiful as many of his canvases might be, I don’t think any of them match, or could have matched, the beauty captured by that photograph of Pattie Boyd.

I don’t think modern hyperrealism is the answer, because that simply makes a copy of a photograph.

I don’t think any of the abstraction approaches to images that developed after the post-impressionists are the answer. Abstraction doesn’t even attempt to directly mirror reality in any recognizable way.

I’m starting to think that photography may have capabilities—the “autographic” value maybe that I posted about in This Woman From The Canals Of Mars—that cannot be matched by any painting approach.

There very well may be some option available to painters that I’m not immediately aware of. Painters can be amazingly skillful, passionate and creative. Just because I can’t think of something that certainly doesn’t rule out a painter, some contemporary thoughtful and skillful person like Manet, looking at the issue and developing an approach or style which can duplicate or even surpass the power of photographs.

But I don’t think anybody has done it yet. And I don’t think I’m going to figure out what it is myself.


Of the image-making things I know and am familiar with, the only open question in my mind is: I wonder what Cezanne would have created if Pattie Boyd had posed for him?


I don’t know what I would imagine Cezanne would have come up with. He almost always seemed to work out something only he would have thought of.

I don’t think a Cezanne image would have been powerful or beautiful in the same way as that photograph. But I don’t know. Maybe Cezanne would have found a way to capture Pattie Boyd’s image, her beauty, or his reaction to it, in such a way that the power and beauty of his image would have equaled or exceeded the power and beauty of that photograph.

Maybe the “answer”—if there is one—is the classic French business that I quoted in my post The Tache And The Touche: A painter looking at the motif, reacting to it, and shaping every touch of paint on the canvas to match the painter’s reaction to the corresponding bit of real life in front of the painter.

I don’t know. That seems to take the answer out of the realm of a process or style an artist could adopt, and it would ask the artist, always, to look within, to be able to introspect so deeply and respond to that introspection so honestly, that the power and beauty the artist saw and responded to would not be duplicated, but, sort of, brought to life, again, in a different way. The famous Cezanne phrase of a harmony parallel to nature.

Such an outcome wouldn’t duplicate photography. But it would, in its way, accomplish a similar end. And, in fact, it would accomplish something outside the capabilities of photography, by building on what was happening inside the artist.

I don’t know.

I’m glad we have photography.

And I’m sorry painting isn’t as dynamic a cultural happening as it was in nineteenth century France, because I think I’d really enjoy seeing a great many different artists trying to deal with this in their own way.

In the modern academic world painters seem to establish a consensus and then stick with it regardless of any popular reaction (or lack of one). And modern commercial fine arts seems to be driven by arbitrary, even chaotic, market forces—whatever galleries and auction houses can manage to sell. And modern pop art is hardly even accessible to painting.

I bet in some way or another painters will work out this issue of mechanical images versus hand-crafted images and come up with something better than just painting quickly or abstraction or hyperrealism.

Maybe it will be something like Cezanne’s approach to realism, motif-inspired harmony parallels.

I’d really love to see what they come up with.


*


Songs capture something
an artist sees in someone
and a camera

captures exactly
whatever an artist sees.
Can any painting

capture both such things
the song and sight exactly
to hold forever?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


Reduction Of The Muse

“The Librarian And The Painter”

Lost In A Science Fiction Parking Lot

Many decades back, north of Chicago,
Northwestern University had two
astronomical observatories.

One, with an old large refractor, was used
for public relations activities.

The other was used for student research
and had two large Cassegrain reflectors
in a beautiful building on the lake
that looked like a science fiction setting
from a big budget science fiction film
except it was real and did real science.

During my high school summer vacations
I attended every astronomy
and astrophysics class I could convince
the university I could handle.

Once or twice I was able to visit
both observatories and hang around
asking questions, helping or just watching,
feeling like a science fiction movie
was in production around me except
the equipment and scientists were real.

The science fiction building on the lake
was torn down just a few years after that.

The maintenance costs were becoming high
and the location close to Chicago
getting to the twenty-first century
wasn’t a realistic location
for gathering astronomy data
when more and more dark sky sites came online
out west away from any city lights.

I miss that building but I was thinking
here now in the twenty-first century
understanding change and accepting change
might be the heart of this new century.

But then something else occurred to me, too.

As a high school student I would borrow
the family car to drive to Northwestern.

The parking lots where I would park the car
to attend class, hang out with scientists
or visit the two observatories
are still in the same places on campus.

Change here in the twenty-first century
is easier on our cars than on us.

And apparently all the parking lots
occupy realistic locations
for parking twenty-first century cars.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


Lindheimer Astrophysical Center


*


Saturn and Titan, And The Pleiades

“The Ancient Art Of Knowing The Sky”


Parking Lots

Five Parking Lots And I Wonder


Everything Is Out Of Order

Lost In The Astrophysics

The Volcano And The Heretic There

I expect this is going to be a hard weekend for me. A few weeks ago when I was moving around all my stuff for spring cleaning, it occurred to me that I’ve accumulated a lot of junk. I think I’m pretty careful about not buying useless stuff, but even so, over time, I’ve acquired a lot of stuff I don’t really want. So I’m going to dedicate next week to throwing stuff out. Every day I’m going to pick a different area or direction in here, and I’m going to ruthlessly get rid of stuff—donating stuff to groups and just tossing a lot of stuff into the trash. In general I’m not good at getting rid of things—that’s one reason I try to be careful and not buy things I don’t really want—but sometimes if I brace myself and gear up I can get in the mood of the process and enjoy the spirit of cleaning house and, well, then I can really clean house. So this weekend I’m going to start getting my thoughts ready, getting my emotions ready, to really get into spirit of clearing away unwanted junk. This is one way I start.


*


It’s too bad there is no volcano here.

If there was a volcano around here
I could put stuff on a rickety cart
and drag the cart up a rocky pathway,
trudging along, suffering in the heat,
struggling up to the volcano’s summit,
coughing and squinting in the sulfur fumes.

It would be something like a pilgrimage,
just hauling each load up to the crater.

And it would be something like religious,
staring down into the glowing magma
bubbling up from nobody knows how deep
as if the molten rock is the Earth’s blood.

It would be something like an offering,
me tossing my things into the lava.

Calculators that are twenty years old.

Pants, shirts and neckties that have been hanging
so long in the closet the hanger line
is permanently bent in the fabric.

Zombie DVDs, slasher DVDs
and Sarah Michelle Gellar DVDs.

Random gadgets that I haven’t bothered
buying batteries for in a decade.

It would be something like an offering,
me tossing my things into the lava.

As I type these words someone’s reading them
and although that person isn’t speaking
I’m witnessing something like precursors
to that person’s eruption of laughter.

She says, “You’re lucky there’s no volcano
because if you tossed your junk into it
it would erupt and kill everybody
for miles around and you’d be remembered
by those who survived the catastrophe
as the guy who caused it by insulting
the spirits of the Earth with your rubbish.”

It would be something like a pilgrimage.

It would be something like an offering.

And it would be something like religious.

But all religions have their heretics.

Something Like Clouds

“My colleague David Sands from Montana State University proposed the concept of ‘bioprecipitation’ over 25 years ago and few scientists took it seriously, but evidence is beginning to accumulate that supports this idea,” said Christner.

But, what makes this research more complicated is that most known ice-nucleating bacteria are plant pathogens. These pathogens, which are basically germs, can cause freezing injury in plants, resulting in devastating economic effects on agricultural crop yields.

“As is often the case with bacterial pathogens, other phases of their life cycle are frequently ignored because of the focused interest in their role in plant or animal health,” said Christner. “Transport through the atmosphere is a very efficient dissemination strategy, so the ability of a pathogen to affect its precipitation from the atmosphere would be advantageous in finding new hosts.”

It is possible that the atmosphere represents one facet of the infection cycle, whereby the bacteria infects a plant, multiplies, is aerosolized into the atmosphere and then delivered to a new plant through atmospheric precipitation.

“The role that biological particles play in atmospheric processes has been largely overlooked. However, we have found biological ice nuclei in precipitation samples from Antarctica to Louisiana – they’re ubiquitous. Our results provide an impetus for atmospheric scientists to start thinking about the role these particles play in precipitation,” said Christner. “This work is truly multi-disciplinary, bridging the disciplines of ecology, microbiology, plant pathology and climatology. It represents a completely new avenue of research and clearly demonstrates that we are just beginning to understand the intricate interplay between the planet’s climate and biosphere.”

LSU scientist finds evidence
of 'rain-making' bacteria

Bacteria can be aerosolized
and lifted up into the atmosphere
and water droplets will form around them
and clouds then for a while have DNA.

Scientists can speculate that the clouds
are one link in the larger lifecycle
of the bacteria reproducing.

But anybody can speculate too
and wonder if the bacteria here
I mean on the ground in plants whatever
are one link in the larger lifecycle
of clouds reproducing making more clouds.

Bacteria can be aerosolized
and lifted up into the atmosphere
and water droplets will form around them
and clouds then for a while have DNA
like plants and like animals and like us.

If clouds have DNA something like us
as scientists maybe mad scientists
can we speculate looking up laughing
and wonder if we are something like clouds?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


Ice Nucleation As A Narrative

One Bluebird Between Sky Time And Mud Time


Clouds Want To Be A Secret Book

Waiting For Clouds


Somewhere Between Chicago And Paris

The Secret Laboratory Of Immutable Laughter


The Thunderous Glamour Of Batteries

The Thunderous Tragedy Of Batteries