Friends

I'm rewriting the post from a while back that got erased because I want to put it in here so I remember these a few years from now. I signed up for a few Smithsonian Associates lectures in the spring. 

Two had microbe themes. The first was based on Carl Zimmer's latest book, Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe, but I didn't realize Zimmer was doing the lecture himself until it started. He's a pretty engaging speaker, and I learned a few things. The book grew out of his research and reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic, where everyone was suddenly interested in what was floating in the air. My favorite part was when he talked about early studies of what he calls aerobiology, which included a scientist named Fred Campbell Meier convincing pilots like Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart to take samples from planes. There was a great photograph of (I think) Meier, who was also a pilot, holding what appeared to be a petri dish taped to the end of a long stick while flying a plane. I also learned about William and Mildred Wells, married scientists who advocated for irradiating the air in institutions like schools to reduce the spread of disease. It's likely that organic particles, from bacteria to fungal spores and pollen, seed raindrops and therefore affect climate.

The other lecture was by a microbial biogeochemist, Karen Lloyd, based on her recent book, Intraterrestrials: Discovering the Strangest Life on Earth. Ostensibly this was meant to be about microbes in "extreme" environments: in acid lakes, a mile under Earth's surface, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, permafrost, etc. However, the lecture was scheduled for just after the deep cuts to NOAA, NASA, and NSF were announced, and so Lloyd spent a substantial amount of time talking about the importance of government funding for modern science. I understood the choice, but I also felt like people who signed up for the lecture likely already understand and support government funding for science. And time spent on how science gets funding was time not spent on talking about how cool microbes are and how they survive in all of those wild places. 

The last one was on a completely different topic: the Mogao Grottoes in northwestern China, part of a series on UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The lecturer, Justin Jacobs, is a historian, and I was  a little disappointed that there wasn't much information about the art in the lecture. It was interesting, though, to read about the grottoes, why they were built and how they've managed to survive (the dry climate and the remote location). 

On the 29th, we start a four-part series called Understanding Modern Art. I'm a little more interested in this than Brent, who already likes and appreciates modern art.