Darwin, the American Health Care Bill and Emily Ballou

The sun shone yesterday and I whiled away the day in Cambridge with two friends. We went to see the Darwin exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, which is well worth a look if you are this way. The things on display are many and various, a few examined the premise of the male of the species’ need to have not only a USP ( Unique Selling Point) to entice the female but that they had to be the best at whatever form of plumage, display or behaviour was deemed essential. Any female of the species that didn’t pick him was not only deeply lacking in taste but would produce inferior ofspring that would not add anything of significance to the gene pool of the species and ensure its survival or ability to adapt to the environment. There was a short video display of a display ritual of a particular bird, lots of long tail feathers fanned out, much like a peacock, was involved. The interesting thing was the way the female being displayed to seemed not in the least bit interested and spent time and energy ignoring the male bird. ‘Here’s a nice bit of corn’ she seemed to be saying to herself most of the time whilst the male shook his tail feathers, hopped almost right under her beak and generally thrust himself and his plumes at her. Nothing new there then, I have been to discos.

The celebrations for the 200th anniversary of the birth of Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of ‘On the Origin of Species’ has spawned innumerable things in Cambridge where he attended Christ College; lectures, readings, workshops, mugs, small rag dolls with white hair and long beards, tea towels, postcards, pop up books etc the list is endless. However there has been some good poetry spawned by the anniversary, so it isn’t all cuddly toys and jigsaws. Here is a wonderful reading by the Australian poet Emily Ballou from her new collection The Darwin Poems, which looks at Darwin’s life in poetry. Well worth looking at if you can get hold of a copy.

The whole exhibition really brought home to me that the publication of ‘On the Origins of Species’ was not only a huge shift in thinking away from creationist thinking but it also offered some people a world view that made sense of what they saw happening around them everyday, not just in nature but within society. Survival of the fittest was what had always happened and in Victorian society that was evident in the infant morality rates and the general conditions of the poor that led to an early death. Of course many of the wealthy and middle-class died young but not in the same numbers. ‘This is the way it has to be’, said some at the time. The concept of ‘the rich man in his castle the poor man at his gate’ and that ‘god ordered their estate’, weren’t lines from the famous and much loved hymn of the time, ‘All things bright and beautiful’ for nothing. The great unwashed, the poor, the ignorant, the feckless, the brutish under class would not survive because this was the way life was designed to be. The rich, educated and wise would always prosper and survive at the top of the heap.

I then read this morning, Obama’s address to Congress about the new Health Care Bill and I couldn’t help thinking about the Darwin exhibition in Cambridge. The constant fight to survive and adapt to meet change. None of the adaption Darwin thought of was conscious, species took thousands of years to adapt and some died out because they did not adapt quickly or well enough. Politics and government doesn’t have thousands of years to adapt systems of governance which will best ensure the survival of the people it governs. Man also has a moral element that interacts with all this adaptation. They may refer to an unseen higher power that dictates or limits the nature of change. They may seek to genuinely do what is best for the majority and thus spend years debating what may constitute the best or simply impose it by political and military means. They may decide that the furtherance of the well being and fortunes of a limited few, who would deem themselves more equipped to survive that other is the best answer, so government is dictated by the few, for the welfare of the few (as some have suggested the latest Afghan elections exemplify). Some may seek to limit the level of governance in order to maximise the moral concept of free will and the individual’s right to live their life as they see fit, unfettered by government dictates. All of them seem to tread the boards in the theatre of Darwinian thoughts on survival as, if you accept that whatever your moral beliefs are, and from whatever source you deem them to come, on the whole they are held to be best for man, the species. They are best to ensure society grows stronger, adapts to whatever is thrown at the species.

The health care bill in the USA raises huge issues about what you deem best for you and your fellow man. Whatever the moral, political or economic viewpoint you have, the task of convincing people about the need for change must boil down to, what do you believe your fellow man is worth to you and to your society? I put that not as a rhetorical question but a real one, how much is the health of Mrs Florence Peabody three doors up worth to you and society, enough to make your tax bill how much higher? In the UK we are lucky in so far as we have not had to debate this question recently, the NHS staggers on and there seems some basic underpinning agreement that the NHS is a good thing. Perhaps further down the road, if the financial burden of the elderly becomes too much to bear, we may be faced with the same question in stark terms. If someone has contributed x to the NHS system through national insurance and taxation are they entitled to x plus 1000% or a greater amount back, should they be unlucky enough to have some chronic or massive medical need. How much of another’s financial burden are you willing to carry? The survival of the fittest may at some point down the road be a very practical guideline to apply when limiting health care.

I will continue to watch the American debate with interest as it may be our debate soon if we have to continue getting a quart of health care out of a pint pot of money. I think the NHS is one of the defining things that makes me relieved and proud to live in the UK. It is, on the whole and for the time being, an example of how our society is at least striving to allow all some shot at survival and not just the fittest. It may have faults , it may not do it superbly well in all instances but at least there seems to be some will still left to help everyone in need.

Darwin, Trees of Life and Past Life

I caught a programme on the radio about Tania Kovats' piece in the Natural History Museum commissioned to celebrate Darwin’s birth two hundred years ago. She found a two hundred year old oak and cut a thin vertical cross section from it, including the roots and then fixed it to the ceiling of the museum. I was cleaning the kitchen floor at the time and had to stop to listen to her talking about her travels in South America and her immersion in Darwin’s notebooks. His drawing of a tree to explain some elements of evolution triggered her submission. The oak she chose was due to be felled anyway to make room for other nearby trees to grow and 200 trees were planted as part of the project on the same site . The art of felling such an enormous tree and also bringing up the huge rootball was left to a forester and a tree surgeon who you could tell by their voices at the time of felling the tree were very wary of arty farty people doing arty farty things however they were both there at the unveiling of the piece and they were both obviously moved by the final piece, like being inside the heart of a tree said the tree surgeon. Seems the best accolade to me and also says something to those who thought the choice of Tania Kovats as the artist to celebrate Darwin’s life and work over and above some of the other better known Turner prize winning artists was surprising.

I am thinking about trees a lot this week as the magnolia tree on the other side of the road is in full bloom and looking its magnificent spring self, all southern belle as usual. I discovered recently that the magnolia tree must have been present before the advent of bees as its flowers are designed to take the weight of beetles to pollinate it. It also has medicinal properties in the bark apparently that decrease anxiety. I find just looking at it decreases anxiety and makes you feel somehow rooted in the cycle of nature along with it.

I now have an alder tree growing rampantly in front of my living room and it has now reached past the bedroom window, it is very close to the house and when the wind rocks it at night it taps on the window. A visitor asked me if I found this spooky recently and I was taken aback as I find it reassuring as if the tree is just knocking to remind me that its still there and growing. My living room has been transformed into a kind of bird hide, the birds have become used to me now and I put out nuts and seeds hung in the branches and now there is a pair of blackbirds nesting in there. I am beginning to feel part of the tree another branch attached to the truck. As a child I was always desperate for a tree house but we never had the sort of garden that would support a tree never mind a tree house I had to make do with dens made in the local waste grounds with other children. I refuse to go down the nostalgia route idyllic endless summers of freedom being allowed to wander where ever we wanted without fear of anyone or anything because of course it poured with rain sometimes and there were small terrors to deal with; other children, strange adults that you could never fathom, the old man that flashed any passing child in the park. The terrors were not so well publicized but there nonetheless. A child in my class at primary school had a permanent blink brought on by an abusive father constantly whacking him every time he said anything. There was a girl in the next class up who drowned in the canal, did she fall or was she pushed, she and her younger brother were together and he used to always fight with her about everything including the fact that she was only his half sister and she had no right to boss him around. We never knew the full circumstances of her demise; all we knew was that the announcement of her death in assembly lead to a long rant by the Headmaster about the need to do as we were told. No grief counselling available then, more of a ‘see what happens if you don’t behave’ and the chance to push home the lesson of obedience to your elders.

Now I will get to the point; there was a boy in my class, Graham, who had a tree, not in his garden but in a patch of waste ground he controlled. Waste grounds were held by various gangs much like the high rises and low rises in The Wire. He and his entourage built a tree house, it was held together by the odd nail, chewing gum and spit and consisted more of a few old planks to form a floor than a house but it still deserved the name of tree house locally. I was regarded as slightly odd even as a child because I was somehow promoted two years above my chronological age into another class so at eight I was mixing with the top dogs the kings of the playground and now and then I was invited up into the tree house. The tree house was like Graham possessing a penthouse flat and a fortress rolled into one until someone has the bright idea of setting fire to the tree.

The news of the burning tree house spread round the neighbourhood so fast nearly all the children at the school came to watch its flaming demise. Graham was gutted, and for three months a reign of terror descended in which he or his main henchman, a fat boy called Aubrey interrogated other children at the school without recourse to the Human Rights Convention. Aubrey had developed the technique of sitting on people and farting in their faces to an artistic level but no one cracked or even admitted to knowing someone who might have done the terrible deed. I found it odd that Aubrey should be so supportive of Graham as he was never allowed in the tree house because he was too fat and might break it but maybe this saved his face as we all knew he would never have been able to climb up the rope which was the only means of access to the house. If they had thought about it more they would have discovered that the tree had probably been set on fire by accident by the local teenagers going up to the platform at night with their girlfriends for a spot of one to one action followed by a Woodbine or two. I was always amazed at the fact that the girlfriends would have had to shimmy up the rope without spoiling their beehive hairdos or splitting tight Capri pants that were the rage at the time amongst the older generation as I saw them then. It was either those older boys or Ken, the other mini child gang boss who could lie brilliantly, like a politician with a lot to lose even in the face of an Aubrey fart special. Ken kept a splinter from the tree like a piece of the real Holy Cross in a matchbox in his pocket for at least a year after the fire.

So now I am having a sort of ground level tree house experience of my own only mine comes with a carpet, four walls and a TV, beat that Graham and big farting Aubrey.

So now I am trying to keep up with a poem a day for the month of April challenge from the States in response to trigger words or phrases given only on the day and the poem has to be completed within twenty-four hours. It feels like a poem exam which you can’t revise for but actually I always liked exams, something about time pressure gives you a buzz and then you can always play around with the submitted poem long afterwards. I have also been further delving into County Durham and immersed myself into tales of the Lambton Wyrm, hanging a French monkey in Hartlepool and the fact that the county is the cold Mumbai of call centres.

So G20, a trillion dollars thrown into the pot to fix things, they don’t seem to be fixing things on shoe string budget or should that be a G string. Not sure whether the IMF is the best institution to help the underdeveloped countries it has been less than helpful in the past but will keep an open mind. Mrs Obama however is shown to be a real winner even giving the queen a sort of hug or as close to hugly as you can get with a queen.

Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, Darwin and Gaza

I am reading the letters between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell and am finding much there to think about, both about the art of writing and about how life and art interact. Elizabeth Bishop took twenty-five years to finish her poem The Moose, she took her time, each word needing to be absolutely authentic and the right one. Robert Lowell on the other hand was notorious for revising and constantly changing already published poems, sometimes driven by his manic self, sometimes for other reasons. I have been going through the proofs of my collection to be published in April and I can feel Elizabeth and Robert staring over my shoulder. ‘That poem’s nowhere near ready’, says Elizabeth, ‘Give it more time a few more years and then you may see if it’s worth the ink, most poems aren’t’. Robert over the other shoulder mutters, ‘You could change it now, you could change it later, everything changes, poems that are published are not sacrosanct, next week, next month, next year, you may feel differently.’ Between the two of them I could just scream, ‘ So why bother at all’ And then of course there would be a sharp intake of breath and they would both shake their heads and they would tell me that if I didn’t know the answer to that then I would be best not writing at all.

Their letters are stuffed full of long descriptions, an obsession with collecting detail, of observing the minutiae of life. Both these poets seemed to be compulsive collectors of names of birds, names of fish and flowers, words for a sky, the look of the floor of a half built house. Below is Elizabeth Bishop’s memorial poem for Lowell. She always joked with him that he would write her epitaph as she was older than him but life will not be bidden. His habit of constantly changing and revising poems is threaded through the poem. Death is seen by Bishop as the last unchanging state, death seals all creativity.

New Haven
In memoriam Robert Lowell

I can make out the rigging of a schooner
a mile off; I can count
the new cones on the spruce. It is so still
the pale bay wears a milky skin; the sky
no clouds except for one long, carded horse's tail.


The islands haven't shifted since last summer,
even if I like to pretend they have
--drifting, in a dreamy sort of way,
a little north, a little south, or sidewise,
and that they're free within the blue frontiers of bay.

This month, our favorite one is full of flowers:
Buttercups, Red Clover, Purple Vetch,
Hackweed still burning, Daisies pied, Eyebright,
the Fragrant Bedstraw's incandescent stars,
and more, returned, to paint the meadows with delight.

The Goldfinches are back, or others like them,
and the White-throated Sparrow's five-note song,
pleading and pleading, brings tears to the eyes.
Nature repeats herself, or almost does:
repeat, repeat, repeat; revise, revise, revise.

Years ago, you told me it was here
(in 1932?) you first "discovered girls"
and learned to sail, and learned to kiss.
You had "such fun," you said, that classic summer.
("Fun"--it always seemed to leave you at a loss...)

You left North Haven, anchored in its rock,
afloat in mystic blue...And now--you've left
for good. You can't derange, or re-arrange,
your poems again. (But the Sparrows can their song.)
The words won't change again. Sad friend, you cannot change.

Elizabeth Bishop

The fighting in Gaza continues to increase, in order to preserve life Israel says it is forced to take life ( or destroy strategic military targets which unfortumately necessitates the taking of life, sometimes of innocents). 2009 seems to have started badly. Two hundred years since Darwin was born, the man who painstakingly examined man’s evolution, how we emerged from the slime and became the dominant species. The prime objective of evolution is survival of the fittest, the demand that the weak, the defenseless, those unable to defend themselves will eventually perish for the greater good, the betterment of the gene pool. Darwin’s theory is still painfully true today. Whichever side has right on its side is immaterial, it will be the children, the old, the sick who will suffer. Infra structure such as power and water supplies destroyed, will inevitably lead to terrible hardship and disease. Evolutionary theory doesn’t make room for morality and compassion, if those with the guns, the tanks and the rockets have the greatest chance of survival I wonder what the gene pool will evolve into in the centuries to come, that it survives at all may be in question. Justification always exists or can be manufactured for all actions taken by individuals, groups, communities or governments. Using the words of Bishop's last line, the words won’t change and the sad friends, the dead, those innocents who suffer, can no longer change themselves, the situation or anything that might make life a little better, that opportunity has been denied them forever.