What's Funny About Thumbs?

Sixteen days ago I did something stupid and tried to move a deck chair while I was still sitting in it.  It collapsed and the top joint of my left thumb was trapped where the the two parts of the frame are articulated.  After having extracted it and, following a short period of silent screaming, it was clear that a trip to the emergency department of the local hospital was necessary.  The nail was flapping about and there was a lot of blood!


I had to wait a long time before seeing a doctor and was then sent for an X-ray.  When he came back, and looked at the fracture in the top joint, he said “Hmmm, what to do?  Hmmm, 63 years old!“ and disappeared.  The kindly nurse said “he’s gone to get advice”! When he came back he'd decided to stitch the nail back on and sew up the split flesh at the base of the nail.  There were six stitches in all.
  

The throbbing over the next two days and nights was intense.  

Sixteen days later, after ten days of antibiotics,litres of betadine (an iodine based antiseptic) and numerous dressings, the orthopaedic surgeon has just said that I can have the last two stitches, which are still holding the nail in place, taken out next Monday.  Then I’m due to see him again two weeks later.  He decided a fortnight ago that it didn’t need a pin to hold the two pieces of bone in place, and I assume it was him who advised the duty doctor in casualty that the thumbnail would act as a splint to hold the bones together.


Throughout all this even my nearest and dearest would say that I have been stoic and resolute, except when some people find the whole episode funny!  Then I get annoyed and tend to over-react by describing in detail the nature of the injury and the semi-circular shape of the suture needle which was used to sew the nail on.  In one case I showed the person concerned the blood which is still on the frame of the deck chair!

I don’t know what’s funny about men hurting their thumbs but it’s clear that about half of my female acquaintances think it is!  Does anyone know why?

Ludi’s Cannon

When you have a three year old who lacks for nothing what do you give him for his birthday?

If, like Quince, you have the time, patience and skill, it’s obvious, you make him a cannon!

He already has a tiny one, which he loves playing with, so this one needed to be big, safe and not capable of trapping little fingers, or shooting things into people’s eyes.

It’s made from plywood and plastic pipe and fires tennis balls using an elastic band.

He’s going to have it on Saturday morning.

Puffins and Wood Warblers in West Wales

To recover from the first week of a strenuous visit to the UK, which involved sleeping in five different peoples’ houses, and three nights camping in the woods in West Wales, by unwinding in a couple of Welsh nature reserves on the way to Manchester was a good idea. 

Skomer

Skomer is an island off the coast of Pembrokeshire which, in early summer, is home to large colonies of breeding birds estimated at a total of 330,000, including 12,000 puffins, 60,000 manx shearwaters, 17,000 guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes, fulmars and various gulls.  Manx Shearwaters are difficult to see. They stay out at sea during the day and only return to their burrows on dark nights when the risk of predation by greater black-backed gulls is low.  It is possible to stay overnight on the island and witness their weird calls as they locate their mates at the nest, there is, however, a long waiting list.

But it’s the puffins that are so charming!  They are really fearless and will tolerate you being only a couple of metres away as they fly to and from their nest burrows.

Thanks to Paul Hillion for the video which was taken at The Wick on Skomer.

This BBC2 video has some very good sequences of puffins fishing and pufflings, (young puffins).


Although puffins are quite capable of landing elegantly on the cliffs, I love the way they land on the sea.  They seem to prefer plopping into the water, as if they haven’t quite mastered the touchdown.  The effect is very comical!

Ynys Hir

Near Machynlleth is an RSPB reserve called Ynys Hir  known for its many pairs of nesting pied flycatchers and also for the wood warblers which can be heard in its mature oak forests.  After having been enchanted by them on my first visit in the 80’s I wanted to hear them once again.  The weather was against us since it was raining heavily but finally we found one which was singing in full view.  I was so pleased not only to hear but also to see one!


Thanks to  Paul C King of the Bradford Ornithological Group for the video

Wales is known for its rain and the visit would have been even better without it, sometimes it was raining horizontally!  The day after we left Mid-Wales there was 5 inches of rain overnight and major flooding!

Golden Orioles in Gagnac

In the last two weeks there has been a pair of male Golden Orioles calling from the woods across the valley.  I have yet to see them and they don’t seem to call every day.  Perhaps they sing only in warm weather but they have been spotted not far away having a fight in the trees. Confusingly the french word for Oriole is Loriot (you don't pronounce the t).

The male is striking in the typical oriole black and yellow plumage, but the female is a drabber green bird. Orioles are shy, and even the male is remarkably difficult to see in the dappled yellow and green leaves of the canopy.  There are very few good videos of them on Youtube.

I wasn’t aware that they are in this part of France but this  Wikipedia article states that their breeding range extends from Portugal, Spain and France across the United Kingdom and Scandinavia to Poland, Russia, the Balkans, Turkey and West Asia to the Caucasus up to Mongolia and China. They winter in central and southern Africa. They generally migrate during the night, but may travel during the day in the spring migration. During the fall migration they migrate via the Eastern Mediterranean where they feed on fruit; they are often considered a pest in this region because of this.

Their call is a screech like a jay, but the song is a beautiful fluting weela-wee-ooo or or-iii-ole, unmistakable once heard. It carries a long way and this morning one could be clearly heard in the distance.

The Eurasian Golden Oriole inhabits a range of habitats. In Western Europe they prefer open broadleaf forests and plantations, copses, riverine forest, orchards and large gardens; in Eastern Europe they may inhabit more continuous forest as well as mixed or coniferous forests. They generally avoid treeless habitats but may forage there. In their wintering habitat they are fond in semi-arid to humid woodland, tall forests, riverine forest, woodland/savanna mosaic and savanna.

They feed on insects and fruit. They build neat nests in tree forks and lay 3-6 eggs.
I hope that they keep coming back to Gagnac.

Thorium Makes the Mainstream Media

BBC Series - Costing the Earth

Nuclear Power without the Nasties? 28 Feb 2012 http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/costearth 

Kirk Sorensen

It’s really gratifying to see the subject of thorium fuelled nuclear power begin to penetrate the mainstream media.  I downloaded the podcast of this half hour BBC programme and listened to it yesterday.  The researchers and editors have done a very competent job; it’s an excellent piece of journalism and captured the subject very well in all its aspects, but without delving too far into the detail.  Kirk Sorensen was interviewed and, amongst other topics, gave a very lucid account of the reasons why the Oak Ridge Molten Salt ReactorExperiment (MSRE) was closed down in 1969.

Environmentalists for Thorium


Baroness Bryony Worthington

Others also interviewed were Michael Childs, of Friends of the Earth, and Baroness BryonyWorthington, who used to campaign for them.  They were correctly presented as environmentalists enthusiastic about thorium nuclear technology.  

Michael Childs

The ending was particularly striking.  It accurately relayed the scepticism of the nuclear establishment in the UK concerning thorium, and contrasted it with the optimism of Michael Childs and Baroness Bryony Worthington. Wouldn’t it be highly ironic if a significant proportion of environmentalists were calling for work to start on thorium based nuclear power, whilst the nuclear establishment were blocking research funding?  Personally I think that’s what’s very likely to happen in Europe.  Michel Allibert of the Reactor Research Group at Grenoble also highlighted the regulatory difficulties in the podcast.  In the US I’m a bit more optimistic, because it appears that Kirk Sorensen has a plan to get around these issues, but the same conservatism and regulatory forces are still present.  

Is the future Chinese?

In my opinion, the country which will fund and develop research into LFTR’s (Liquid Fuelled Thorium Reactors) and build the first commercially viable reactor will most likely be China.  They have an enormous growing need for energy and no constraints on regulatory compliance.  They also have the money and are rapidly developing the expertise.  For years they’ve been raiding the archives at the US’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the place where the original research was done in the sixties by Alvin Weinberg.  I’ve read some of the old Oak Ridge papers and Alvin Weinberg ran a tightly managed organisation. Everything was documented and reported, including their setbacks and problems.  

It’s a gold mine for English speaking Chinese researchers! They topped the visitors list in 2009 and 2010. 

In 2009 :-

1. China (1,139)

2. India (569
3. Germany (478)
4. United Kingdom (420)
5. Japan (408)
6. South Korea (363)
7. Canada (310)
8. Russia (258)
9. France (250)
10. Italy (105) 

And in 2010:-

“Once again, in 2010, China was the biggest source of foreign visitors to Oak Ridge National laboratory - accounting for more than 20 percent of the total number of foreign visitors and more than twice as many as any other country.

1. China (1,522)

2. India (709)
3. Germany (631)
4. United Kingdom (536)
5. Japan (498)
6. Canada (476)
7. South Korea (452)

 According to information provided by ORNL's Laboratory Protection Division, the number of foreign visitors processed last year was 7,487. That's up significantly from 2009 (6,007), which, in turn, was up from 2008 (5,092). There's obviously a growth pattern.

This is at least the sixth year in a row that China has headed the foreign visitors list, and it's probably been even longer. The lab did not have historical statistics readily available.”

France 2

There was also a short report which dealt with the subject of thorium on the national news on France 2 on 29^th January (in French). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ78iID1mF8  It ends rather pessimistically with the scepticism of the nuclear establishment coming through loud and clear.  

Minimising Thorium’s Advantages

In spite of the fact that the Oak Ridge MSRE reactor ran successfully from 1965 to 1969,  today’s “industry experts” both in France and in the UK are still saying that pumping high temperature molten salts at atmospheric pressure is difficult and dangerous.  (But almost certainly not as dangerous as containing and pumping high pressure water, with a potential for loss of coolant and subsequent explosion risk, which has already happened at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima).

The current stance of such experts is “It’s likely to be difficult and take a long time so it’s better to do nothing”, they minimise the advantages of Liquid Fuelled Thorium technology, and ignore the historical reality of a reactor that functioned for 4 years at Oak Ridge.

What a wonderful illustration of the decadence of Western European society which has lost the capability to invest, to take risks and to innovate!

Götterdämmerung – The Twilight of the Gods

New York Metropolitan Opera – Simulcast Saturday 11th February 2012

I’d forgotten just how spectacular this opera is musically!  I don’t simply mean the well known sections, like Siegfried’s Funeral March, but the way that Wagner weaves his leitmotifs together to tell the story at a different level from the words being sung; or sometimes to comment on the action, by revealing in the music, the forces at work behind the drama.  I will never again say that the first scene with the Norns is boring!  This time, listening with a more educated ear, Wagner’s genius and hard work just blew me away!  

In this production the whole cast was of the highest quality.  I can criticise none of them for their singing or their musicality.  In fact I’m totally in awe of the principals who are capable of sustaining their concentration and physical resources over such a long period of time.

Deborah Voigt and Waltraud Meier

Deborah Voigt as Brünnhilde, was exceptional.  She was always spot on with timing and intonation, and when she had to deliver her major effort in the immolation scene at the end, she sailed majestically over the orchestra!

Waltraud Meier as Waltraute, in the scene between her and Brünnhilde, piled on the passion as she pleaded with Brünnhilde to give up the ring. Deborah Voigt answered in the same manner. This was a most effective scene between two excellent performers.



Jay Hunter Morris

Jay Hunter Morris as Siegfried had no problem depicting the part vocally since he has a natural “heldentenor” tone.  Apparently he stepped in quite late to take the title role in “Siegfried”, for which he was the understudy, and fully justified his opportunity.  He couldn’t look the part better if he’d been specially made for it.  His long fair hair, baby blue eyes and powerful physique looked every inch the hero, but with just a hint of boyish naivety!   In the interval interview, his soft southern drawl, when I was expecting a German accent, was a bit of a shock!

Hans Peter Konig and Wendy Bryn Harmer

Hans Peter König as Hagen has a full resonant bass voice, massive stature and dark looks all of which are well suited to the role, and in the earlier scenes he came through strongly dramatically.   I think, however, that in the later scenes he was not well served by the direction, because, from time to time, there were moments when his evil presence should have been much more prominent, and somehow he just retired into the crowd.

Wendy Bryn Harmer as Gutrune, wasn’t the slight, sad, submissive creature that I’ve seen in other productions.  This Gutrune though naive, was open and smiling.  She didn’t deserve to be manipulated by her half brother Hagen and one felt sorry for her when she learnt of Siegfried’s death. 

Iain Paterson as Gunther is a fine actor with good stage presence, and he created a very believable persona in what is often considered to be a minor part.  

Iain Paterson

He has a strong voice and this supported his interpretation of Gunther as a well renowned, if not heroic, leader who knows his own limitations.  He genuinely likes Siegfried and is serious about swearing a blood oath of brotherhood with him.   Of course, he also lacks moral integrity and is easily manipulated by Hagen. 
I was impressed by Iain Paterson's reading of Gunther and congratulate him on portraying much more depth in the role than I was previously aware of and than most performers reveal.

Eric Owens as Alberich , when he appeared in his short duet with Hagen, easily imposed himself on the scene.  His has a very strong stage presence, which was well supported by his voice and physique.

Eric Owens

The Metropolitan Opera orchestra was very ably directed by Fabio Luisi.  Overall it was an excellent performance and I have just a couple of minor quibbles.  He stated in the interval that he was trying to brush away the accumulated heavy Germanic tradition of Wagner performances.  Occasionally this led him into taking a few tempi rather fast, sometimes pushing the singers to accelerate their phrasing.  At the end the orchestra was, understandably, tired resulting in a few untidy brass chords but it was a long live performance!  

Hagen in the hall of the Gibichungs

So that leaves the production by Robert Lepage.  It’s difficult to describe in words but instead of conventional scenery and flats they used a series of huge triangular shaped segments, pivoting around a horizontal axis and extending right across the stage.  To paint these segments with colour and movement they used video projection.  This is a flexible system and can be very effective, for example, by setting some of the segments vertically one can create the pillars of the Gibichung’s hall.   Or by setting all the segments at a shallow angle, and then projecting water flowing around rocks, one could create the Rhine for the Rhine Maidens, (who, by the way, were all excellent and whose voices blended very well).

Once you have decided to take this route, which unsurprisingly has had its mechanical problems, you’re more or less forced to use it throughout.  So then the quality of the video, or the graphics, becomes supremely important.  This was mixed.  I got tired of the wood grain effect associated with the Gibichung’s hall, and at times I couldn’t see the relevance of moving some of the segments but not others. 

I thought that the ending of the whole opera, when Valhalla burns, was very weak.  The flames were not convincing, and the collapsing of a few plaster gods into dust at an upper level was a very poorly conceived idea, a real damp squib.   

I also really hated Grane, Brünnhilde's mechanical metal horse, which was extremely ponderous and unnecessary.  It should be quickly put out to grass!  Why not have it on video in the distance? That way it could also fly instead of slowly trundling along!

There should also have been much more use of traditional stage lighting as a backdrop to the projected images.  

We are all so used to fantastic CGI effects that there is much more scope for creativity using projection than was demonstrated in this production. But rather than try to compete with movies, I think that for future productions using this system they ought to employ a contemporary artist to design the projected graphics and videos, looking for a more abstract effect.  Perhaps they should use someone like David Hockney, who did such a brilliantly inspired job for the Magic Flute, Tristan and other operas in the seventies and eighties. 

But if you’re lucky enough to have booked tickets to see the whole Ring cycle in the spring don’t let these criticisms put you off.   Based on this simulcast I can assure you that you’ll enjoy it!  The music and images are still going round in my head days later!

Ny Malagasy Orkestra – The National Orchestra of Madagascar

On Saturday, at Prudhomat in the Lot, outside the Salle des Fetes it was minus 8 deg C, but inside it was hot and getting hotter.  The NY Malagasy Orkestra was performing their second set and my friends and acquaintances had the rare treat of seeing me dancing along with the rest of the audience!

These guys are really good musicians.  They come from all parts of Madagascar and play mostly traditional instruments like the strange double necked box guitar, a three string bass and a box harp.  The amplification of their acoustic instruments allowed them to perform and be heard in front of the gloriously indisciplined audience (I’m more used to opera and classical music).  They also use an accordion, a real guitar, violins and of course percussion.  They have excellent performers in all sections. 

Compared to some of the West African all electric bands that I’ve heard, their sound is more delicate and balanced. It was ideal for the smallish room where about 300 people had gathered. 
 
Justin Vali is a real virtuoso on the valiha, the instrument in the middle of this picture, which is traditionally made from a single piece of bamboo, but now often has steel strings that can be replaced when required.

The group had been in St Céré for a week and had visited the schools and the École de Musique so the kids were all there with their parents.  It was a very good night for the Lieu Commun, a local cultural organisation who promoted the residency, which is part of a winter festival they have called Madagascar en Quercy.

As well as playing African polyrhythms superbly, the members of the Orkestra  can also sing really well in harmony.

And finally, here’s a video of Justin Vali, who presented the evening, looking very cool in his Elvis shades and with his own troupe of dancing girls.  Well if you’ve got it flaunt it!

If they're ever performing near you don’t miss them!