Wednesday 21 July 2021

Gone forever

 I arose just after five this morning - it was hot and I knew I would not get back to sleep, so I came on to my computer and wrote an early post, ending by saying that if I thought of anything to add I would be back later.   Well, in The Times TMS an actor, the son of a Bishop, was talking about the Seven Wonders of the World.   When he was a small boy he heard his father preach on the text'Man does not live by bread alone' and he remembers thinking that man could very well live on just that if it was but toast.  He went on to say how he didn't think some of those seven were all they were cracked up to be - the one he particularly mentioned was The Great Pyramid, because it was now just situated in a very ordinary suburb of Cairo.

That set me thinking of what I would choose as a Wonder these days.   My subjects are English Literature and Music so all scientific subjects are above my thinking - the same goes for Mathematical things - so I chose the one thing that I know little about but which has had such an influence on my life.    I chose Machinery/Electricity.   As I sat here this morning  typing my post a machine was washing the breakfast dishes, a machine was doing the washing, another machine was drying a load.  On this very hot and humid day another electrical device was keeping my milk from going sour (this weather in my mother's day meant cream cheese for tea as the milk would have gone sour.)  A tractor and various trucks and machines were cutting the grass in the field behind the bungalow and carting it away.   I could go on.   Sufficient to say that my father, himself an engineer for the whole of his working life,  would not have believed the changes in the last fifty years - oh and add to that the two richest men in the world each chartered an space ship this week to take them to the edge of space.   What next?   What would you choose as a modern wonder?

That is all I shall write today having just spent an hour in the front garden dead-heading the plants in my tubs- they are getting past it.   A good feed in the morning and hopefully they will put on a spurt of new flowers.   sleep well.



20 comments:

Rachel Phillips said...

I'm getting déja vu here.

DUTA said...

The Internet is the greatest wonder of modern times.

Heather said...

We depend so much on electricity today that most of us take it for granted. Two shops in our town were closed earlier this week as there was an electrical fault to their premises. One is a gift and coffee shop, so no means of making coffee or paying for it or other shopping. The other is a stationery and print shop, so no printing and again no tills operating.
My grandmother still used a black leaded stove for heating and cooking, though in my early lifetime she had an electric cooker for use in summer but still used the old stove in winter. And without electricity how would we recharge our mobile phones, use the Internet, etc, etc.

CharlotteP said...

As you are a musician, how about a symphony orchestra? Sometimes more than a hundred musicians collaborating and perfectly coordinated by a conductor, to bring to life music which may have been written hundreds of years ago. Making magic happen!

Tom Stephenson said...

The Great Pyramid becomes more impressive the further away you are from it. Close up it is too large to appreciate. The modern equivalent? I don't know, but I think it will be very small by comparison - electron microscope small.

The Weaver of Grass said...

Yes indeed Rachel - deja vu indeed - I lost my earlier post which went off in quite a different direction after the same start - but it is too hot and I am too tired to reado my blog after losing it. Not Wonders really more disoveries and inventions.
DUTA - the internet and the offshoots - the world wide web for eample.
Beethoven's Missa solemnis springs to mind Charlotte

Susan said...

Having information/resources at our fingertips using our computers and i-phones. The worldwide web is amazing.

Cro Magnon said...

No hesitation here, my wonder would definitely be my small digital camera. I never fail to be amazed by how clever it is. Only a few years ago, people would have thought it was magic!

Anonymous said...

On my father's side of the family the family surname was Bowels, dotted with many Edwards, originally gardeners from Devon, and continued to be nurserymen and market gardeners on immigrating to Australia as early settlers to South Australia - however many of the family both in England and Australia changed the spelling to Bowles at some stage- difficult for me for family research. My great grandfather was Ted Bowels pronounced bolls as in 'trolls'. My father's Mum was the last association with the name, ,before marriage - most of the family didn't have a problem with the name as it was never pronounced bowels. My Dad was bought up by "Grandma 'Bolls", dour and humourless, but as the family said...she's not a true Bowels, just married into the line. Families eh?
My friend's married surname is Butt...not a lot of leeway with that! Pam, S.Aust.

Anonymous said...

Just realised your perennial wallflower post was the previous one...bit late aren't I! Pam.

The Weaver of Grass said...

Thank you for responding folks - a hitch yesterday with the complete disappearance of my post and the extreme heat which rather fuddled my brain I think. Six o'clock in the morning - already the sun is well up but at present there is that freshness in the morning air which suggests that we are coming to the end of this intense heat and I can get back to normal.

thelma said...

Going off on a tangent but everyone has outlined what is most extraordinary in the comments. But going back to Bowles wallflower, a marvellous plant, the plant was named after E.A.Bowles, who painted and cultivated new varieties of flowers. You can read about him here....
https://www.eabowlessociety.org.uk/history
And somehow the forward motion of the human mind as it creates and conquers is perhaps the best thing about humankind, always striving.

Librarian said...

A lot of what has been achieved in medicine is a miracle to me - of course, that is particularly poignant for me at the moment, with my two eye operations only weeks ago. I see now better than I have done since I got my first pair of specs at the age of seven!

Janie Junebug said...

The life my mother lived was vastly different from the way I lived at each stage and age first and foremost because of medical machines invented by doctors and scientists.

Love,
Janie

Debby said...

I think that there is wonder everywhere. What is sad is that everyone forgets to expect it, to look for it.

Yellow Shoes said...

Current Wonder of the World is my smartphone.
Overall W of the W in my opinion has been the contraceptive pill.

Rachel Phillips said...

The contraceptive pill might qualify as a wonder of the world if it were used the world over to control world population but as things are, it doesn't reach very far.

The Weaver of Grass said...

Thelma - Love the Bowles wallflower - I have always had one in my garden.
Thanks everyone for your ideas - all of thm good ones.

Crafty Green Poet said...

I'm reading an inspiring book at the moment 'A New Map of Wonders' by Caspar Henderson which takes a journey through all kinds of things that inspire wonder - from the birth of the universe to the structure of animal cells. There is wonder everywhere.

If I were to choose a 'Modern Wonder' though, the internet possibly, though that definitely has negative impacts as well as positive.

Carruthers said...

I'm wondering if the very idea of 'wonders' isn't beginning to sound quaint these days. We've just begun to realise how insignificant we are. We know how small the earth is. The atmosphere is not that thick: space isn't very far away. We're vulnerable. And we've just woken up to the fact when we're well on the way to making our lives unsustainable.

Having said which, if I had to think of a 'wonder' I might suggest the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

It's funny how only physical objects tend to be considered 'wonders of the world'. Vaccines, antibiotics and pain relief are pretty wonderful. There are loads of others, too many to count: Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues, Marx's Communist Manifesto, the Dreaming created by the native peoples of Australia, coffee, Terry's Chocolate Oranges, etc., etc.