A Quiet Night Outside the Hudson Hotel
West 58th Street
Waffles & Dinges
Columbus Circle
West 58th Street
West 58th Street
Harry Smith CBE FRS, 1921-2011
I recently found out through ProMED Mail (post here) and the article in the Independent newspaper that was linked to (here) that Professor Harry Smith CBE* FRS^, passed away just before Christmas last year. When I embarked upon my PhD in the School of Biosciences at the University of Birmingham Medical School our group, under Principal Investigator Dr. Clive Sweet, Harry Smith would sit in on our lab meetings. He had mentored Clive though his Post-Doc and helped him set up his lab, studying influenza virus, at Birmingham. On his retirement from the Chair of Microbiology at Birmingham, he had been given Emeritus Professor in Microbiology and Honorary Science Research Fellow positions. This is how, despite being in his late 70′s and early 80′s when I was doing my PhD, he was able to actively contribute to our research discussions. He was as sharp as a tack! In addition to his academic career he had previously been at the Microbiological Research Establishment (MRE) at Porton Down working, amongst other things, on the pathogenicity of anthrax. Thus, he was in essence a classical microbiologist having studied both bacteria and viruses. He maintained this diversity throughout his career mentoring another group working on gonococci in addition to ours.
Harry had some fascinating stories to tell and was also very informed on the potential for microbes to be used as biological weapons, something that evidently came from his time at Porton Down. During my PhD we had the Foot and Mouth outbreak in the UK, the attacks on New York of September the 11th 2001, and shortly thereafter the mailing of letters containing anthrax in the US. This allowed Harry to become very animated. In particular he always maintained that it wasn’t necessarily the most pathogenic microbe that would be effective as a bioterrorist weapon but the microbe that caused the most fear in the public. This brings to mind Franklin D. Roosevelt’s oft-quoted famous line “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” At this time he also told us about how when working on anthrax at Porton Down they would have to scrub the laboratory clean by hand! It seems so cavalier now in our ultra-cautiously regulated times and indeed he had a cheeky smile when recounting the story. It was through him that I also came to appreciate that it wasn’t only human pathogens that could be used as a biological weapon. The Foot and Mouth disease outbreak adequately illustrated what a virus could do to our livestock. Both FMDV (Wikipedia) and another virus of livestock, Rinderpest virus (Wikipedia), have been on bioweapon agent lists, though Rinderpest virus was only the second virus after smallpox to be eradicated (New York Times).
The moderator of the post on ProMED mail, Martin Hugh-Jones, was spot on when he said that Harry had an “ability to see more than what was on his bench.” He brought a vast array of knowledge to our lab meeting discussions and would frequently look outside our own particular track of research to find something pertinent we should mull over. One important lesson I took from him occurred when I presented a piece of data at lab meeting that seemed promising, but had variation in one of my replicates had made the results too variable to be significant. He was actually happy to see this, and said that he didn’t like experiments that were “too perfect” because life, and indeed the science of biology, is not like that.
Besides having a cutting scientific mind, Harry had a sharp sense of humour and was a pleasure to chat with on things outside science as well. I feel very privileged to have had the chance to learn from him and to have known him, if only for a brief time.
RIP, Professor Harry Smith, CBE FRS.
*Commander of the British Empire, 1993, for his services to the Ministry of Defence, amongst which he was the first biological science member on the Defence Science Advisory Council.
^Fellow of the Royal Society, 1979.
Ai WeiWei at the Tate Modern
This is from January 2011. A portion of Sunflower Seeds is now on display at Mary Boone Gallery, NYC. Happy Chinese New Year!
Cedar Point in Winter
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When we drove into Cedar Point County Park we were instantly struck by a feeling of bleakness. Clearly the winter weather had something to do with that and in the summer I am sure it has a much better vibe–judging by all the reviews online it is a very popular campground. Situated between Northwest Harbor and Gardiner’s Bay in Long Island it has wide views of both bays, and a lighthouse stands on the end of a sandy spit to keep watch during storms. I was intrigued by the completely deserted nature of the park, my wife was decidedly creeped out though and elected to stay in the car with our son. I pulled up next to the main set of buildings and parked. Not another soul was about. After walking around the campground for a while I understood why my wife felt that way. Basketball and beach volleyball courts went unused, buildings were boarded up for the winter, gas pumps hung lifeless in their lot. Between the buildings the tarmac gave way to a narrow sandy path that led down to the bay. Following it you came out into a completely open vista in which their was no place to hide and where I suddenly felt completely and utterly alone. It was on the return walk to the car that I realized there were one or two private homes and a couple of trailers homes on the site. The fact that there were people who lived there in such isolation, who may well have been watching my every move, gave me the chills. I made straight for the car. Once inside it a silent gesture between my wife and I made it clear that we agreed it was time to leave.
Napeague, NY
Trees of the Walking Dunes
A Rough Sea at East Hampton Beach
When we pulled the car up at the small parking lot on the edge of East Hampton beach we could see why the majority of people were choosing to admire the view from the comfort of their cars, flask of hot coffee in hand. The water was being whipped by the wind, creating large amounts of spray, as the medium-to-large-waves relentlessly headed towards shore. As I got out of the car the wind nearly pushed the car door shut, and I realized it was stronger than I thought. But not so strong that it would deter me from a beach walk. The sign up for winter,
NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY
SWIMMING PROHIBITED
was warranted on this day.
Sign in front of East Hampton beach.
As I walked towards the beach, the short fence-posts cast long, hard shadows on the sand as the harsh midday sun was low in the sky. A seductive curve to the fence enticed me to the beach even as it attempted to act as a barrier.
Lines in the Sand
There is something intrinsically fascinating to me about the sea. I can lean over the side of a boat or stand on a beach and watch it for ages. I am drawn in whether it is calm or rough; it has a natural awe that attracts me. Waves rose and crested one after the other with scarcely seconds between them. A large breaker curled at the top, snarling in anger before crashing down in a heaving mass of turbulent foam. Those behind the breaker raced towards the shore, seething as their white-caps sprayed behind them in the wind. I couldn’t help but be transfixed by the display as I stood, my body square to the ocean. As I looked obliquely along the beach it seemed that the sea and sky, with their waves and clouds, were acting as one force in some kind of invasion.
An Angry Snarl
White horses; spray and foam
Invasion
As I walked further along the beach, I noticed seven pillars standing defiantly in the wash of the waves. They appeared to be the pilings of a pier that had long since been swept or rotted away, though I could not see any other indication that a pier had once jutted from the land apart from the pilings themselves. Standing in formation, three on the left, four on the right, they waited for each successive wave to break. I stood there awhile and watched the combative show of strength from both the sea and the pillars.
Seven pillars
I walked on for a little while more. The sun disappeared behind a bank of clouds and the sudden darkening caught my attention. I looked back down the beach from whence I had come as the sun came out from the behind the clouds and cast a bright light upon the scene. What had seemed a longer walk–due to the swirling wind–revealed to be shorter than I thought. Looking at my camera’s frame counter, I realised I had gone through nearly a whole roll of film. There was only one exposure left. I raised the camera for one last time to take in everything I had just seen: the brightness of the sun, the darkness of the clouds, the angry sea rushing in towards the seven defending pillars, and the road back along the fine sand towards the parking lot. It was a beautiful view.
From Whence I Came
I made my way back slowly and settled into the car. My wife and son were cooing and playing together in the warmth. The wind and the cold would have been a bit too much for such a young baby. We relaxed a little longer there in the parking lot before heading back into town for something to eat.
POSTSCRIPT:
Before the holidays I had decided to use film as much as I could while in the Hamptons with my family. I am not sure why, but I suspect it was just a decision taken in the spirit of creativity. All the photographs above were made using Ilford Delta 400 film in my Minolta XG9 on aperture priority. There is something very gritty and full of character about film in general, and I think this is shown in these photographs. The film was perfect for the vision I had for my trip to the Hamptons and indeed for the beach that day. However, for some reason I wasn’t expecting quite as much grain or heavy contrast, even with the bright midday/mid-afternoon sun, when using this film. Maybe I was confusing it with another Ilford film such as HP5, and I’d be happy to hear your thoughts on this. The results I was expecting were a bit closer to the following image I made with my iPhone 4s, which was processed in Instagram with the black and white preset Inkwell.
Shore Lines
Two Arrows
- Two Arrows, Brooklyn
On the 12th Day of Christmas…
The twelfth day of Christmas is the day before, or the day of depending on how you take it, the night of the 5th of January (Wikipedia). After the feast of the Epiphany on the 6th January is when the Christmas decorations come down, although many people seem to want to start taking them down earlier these days. It also happens to be my wife’s birthday so the celebrations keep going for a little while longer. This was our first Christmas together as a family, and that is all my true love needed to give me. Hope you all had a wonderful Holiday season.
You can see the completion of my Holiday Displays of New York series up in my Google+/Picasa album, on 500px slideshow or in a Flickr set depending on your preference for viewing. The final images go up today to coincide with the end of the Holidays. I hope you enjoyed the series.
