Raymond Barnett

Living and Writing in the Natural World

High and Low: Mt. Whitney and Death Valley

June 22, 2014

A hiker under the Natural Bridge of a canyon in the Funeral Range (!) of Death Valley

After two spring trips to Monterey Bay and the coast, it was back to the hot continental interior in mid-June, Ash and Lou summiting 14,495-foot Mt. Whitney (highest place in the Lower 48) while I camped out in minus 150-foot Death Valley (lowest place in North America). I guess we’re a family of extremes.

Ash is doing the Pacific Crest Trail this summer, and missed her bro. So I drove Lou and his buddies Liam, Chris, and Alden to Kennedy Meadows where the southern Sierra foothills emerge from the Mojave desert, to meet her at a re-supply point. Read More

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Monterey Bay 2: Writers and Whales

May 31, 2014

The opportunity to tour the infrequently-opened Cannery Row home of Ed Ricketts, John Steinbeck’s barely-disguised inspiration for “Doc” in Cannery Row, proved irresistible, joining as it did the life and writing of Steinbeck with that of Joseph Campbell, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Robinson Jeffers—with up-close humpback whales thrown in the next day to boot.

So much fun was had kayaking off Monterey Bay with my buddy Al last month, that I persuaded my wife Tammy to join me on this return visit. The tour of Ed Ricketts’ home, which also housed his Pacific Biological Supply Read More

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Monterey Bay 1: Elkhorn Slough, Kayaks, and Muir

May 7, 2014

A pelican's view / Of Elkhorn Slough

“Whack!” I stopped paddling. Yes, there he was, not 20 feet away. A sea otter on his back in the water, having just whacked a clam against a rock on his belly. “What?” he seemed to ask as he stared back. “You never seen an otter use a rock?”

As a matter of fact, I hadn’t. My buddy Al and I had seen maybe 50 sea otters on our paddle into Elkhorn Slough off Monterey Bay, but the famous example of tool-use had eluded us—till now. I gazed slack-jawed at my furry friend, until he tired of my poor manners, took a last bite of clam, and flopped over and swam away. Read More

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A Tale of Three Gardens

April 2, 2014

A garden in Suzhou: shan and shui

The Huntington Library, Museum, and Gardens in Los Angeles now have a first-rate Chinese as well as a Japanese Garden. Tammy and I visited both several weeks ago, and they reminded us of pleasant times in Claude Monet’s Water-lily Garden in Giverny, France in 2008. All three are superb, but in dramatically different ways, that reflect much about the cultures that gave rise to them. Read More

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A Strange Case of Sherlock Holmes and the Rose

March 6, 2014

Jeremy Brett's Sherlock

We did a lot of traveling to the Bay Area this past month—February—and I was struck by how many trees were flowering all over northern California. Rarely were we out of sight of the glorious treat of a tree full of blossoms, usually almond, cherry, or peach of the early-blooming Prunus genus. All creation seemed to be bursting with beauty, and even the hard-bitten scientist that I am could understand those who come to the conclusion that not only is life good, but that surely there must be a higher being or force lavishing his (or her?) love on the world via the flowers.

And this in turn reminded me of one of the most bizarre incidents in the entire Sherlock Holmes canon: Holmes’ soliloquy in The Naval Treaty, in which he proclaims moss roses in particular, and flowers in general, as proof of “the goodness of Providence.” Read More

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Comments

Apr 02, 2014 9:29 AM EDT

I wish I was sitting next to a snow-covered mountain smoking a pipe like that.

- Heather

Mar 19, 2021 8:50 PM EDT

The sentiment (about the roses) is well-phrased and fit to please. The eloquence and polish might readily, in this version, be ascribed to Dr. Watson, who was once referenced by Holmes as his 'Boswell', without whom he was 'lost'.
I always thought that it was A. an effort to divert the thoughts of the neurotic sufferer in the room, to something more pleasant than his chronic anxiety, and B. perhaps a tribute, in symbology, to the devoted fiancee, keeping him alive through a low place in his life, and surely emblematic of the "goodness of Providence".... to him.
The fact that it in (as anyone can see) uncharacteristic of Holmes to speak that way, is evidence of the portrayal being more realistic than the hackneyed tropes that are thought of as Holmesian: the deerstalker hat and briar pipe (that he often did not wear and did not smoke, his pipe usually being portrayed as straight) and other Basil-Rathbone-era accumulations. A real (or, realistic) character may say or do something very unusual, on occasion, rather than be limited to only a handful of characteristic tics.
Another example of unusual Holmesian behavior is in The Reigate Squires, in which he ends up being strangled by one of the squires, without showing any of his usual fighting spirit or expertise at the arts of physical defense and offense. It is quite unusual! to say the least. I guess that Holmes was having a really low day, that day, somehow.
Flowers might be said, even post-Darwin (from a point of view sympathetic to Holmes' remarkable speech), to not only be designed for insects. Flowering plants have been very successful at getting human beings - a living creature of this world, you know? - to cultivate, propagate, and develop them extensively. In fact, the moss-rose being a cultivar rather than a product of 'Nature' (i.e. the world without 'Man') proves that they do more than 'get pollinated by insects'.
Also... flowering plants as a group have many odd phenomena in them, to those educated in botany. Violets, for instance, use their flowers for.... ? .... because violet flowers are usually sterile, and produce no seeds. Their seed-producing flowers are borne underground and have no petals and are not decorative. Also, there are wind-pollinated 'flowers' ... I will stop here, having gone on far too long.

- UpSky2

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Bones of Jade, Souls of Ice

February 5, 2014

Wang Mian's "Blossoming Plum"

On my bike ride through Bidwell Park this afternoon, I noticed the first several blooms on one of the dozens of Wild Cherries scattered amongst the bays and oaks of the woodland. Only a couple of flowers on one spindly branch, mind you—but they made my heart sing. You may be in the middle of winter, but when the Prunus trees begin to blossom, it’s a promise from the universe that spring is beginning its slow amble toward your part of the world.

In Japan, of course, the Japanese Cherry ( Prunus serrulata) is the center of national attention in the spring, as its bloom is tracked from Kagoshima on the southern tip of Kyushu island northward up the entire island chain, with thousands of people thronging the parks and Shinto shrines featuring this harbinger of spring.

In China, for over a thousand years the blooming of the Chinese plum ( Prunus mume) has been eagerly anticipated in January and February. Read More

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King Tut's father and Moses

January 3, 2014

The young Tutankhamun and his queen

One of the most enjoyable aspects of writing historical novels, for me, is the interesting things you bump into during the research phase. I’ve just finished a major revision of my second Sherlock Holmes novel, set in 1923, in which Holmes is called to Egypt to unravel whether the co-discoverer of King Tutankhamun’s tomb, Lord Carnarvon, is being poisoned. (The historical Carnarvon in fact died of “blood poisoning” four months after entering Tut’s tomb with his archaeologist, Howard Carter—thus originating the “Curse of the Mummy” phenomenon.) Read More

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Comments

Jan 06, 2014 8:42 AM EST

I can't wait to read your next Holmes!

- Heather

Apr 29, 2014 6:24 AM EDT

Was Moses Akhenaten?

Some research has shown that Moses married his half sister Nefertiti and their son was Tutankhamen. Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV) was forced to abdicate due to his faceless "Aten" God. Moses is also said to have been the son of Joseph's (Chief minister to Amenhotep III) daughter Tiye. Sounds interesting. Is it true?
(Ray's response: Thanks for your comment. "Is it true?" Difficult to say; this all happened so long ago, and religious convictions intrude upon all evaluations. What we do know, from DNA analysis of mummies sponsored by National Geographic Magazine in 2008 and overseen by the dean of contemporary Egyptian archeologists, Zahi Hawass and Western colleagues, is that Tut's father was Akhenaten and his mother was a full sister of Akhenaten (incestuous matings were not uncommon in the New Kingdom's Eighteenth dynasty). These studies (published in National Geographic in September 2010) also established Tut's wife as his own half-sister, a daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Moses? We really don't know anything for sure about him from a scientific perspective, for the simple reason that we've never had a reliably-certified body for him. The Muslim faith holds that he's buried in a certain site; the Jewish faith claims he was buried personally by God at an unknown site.)

- Anonymous

Feb 22, 2015 5:42 PM EST

read "Akhnaton , King of Egypt" by Dimintri Merejowski , antique and rare bookstores online, a movi script i am writing ,adaptation

- pat caleb

Sep 26, 2017 7:08 AM EDT

Using DNA samples taken from the mummies' bones, the scientists were able to create a five-generation family tree for the boy pharaoh.

The team looked for shared genetic sequences in the Y chromosome—a bundle of DNA passed only from father to son—to identify King Tut's male ancestors. The researchers then determined parentage for the mummies by looking for signs that a mummy's genes are a blend of a specific couple's DNA.

In this way, the team was able to determine that a mummy known until now as KV55 is the "heretic king" Akhenaten—and that he was King Tut's father. Akhenaten was best known for abolishing ancient Egypt's pantheon in favor of worshipping only one god. The big surprise of the DNA analysis was the revelation of the identity of Tutankhamun’s mother, as it showed that the other unidentified female mummy from Amenophis II’s tomb, known as the ‘Younger Lady’ was the woman who gave birth to him. It also showed that this unnamed royal lady was one of the daughters of Amenophis III and Tiye, and therefore the sister of Akhenaten.
Pasted from: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/02/100216-king-tut-malaria-bones-inbred-tutankhamun/

- Dhorne

Jun 08, 2023 12:02 AM EDT

I've often thought Moses might have been a disciple of Akhenaten. As the priests pushed the old g-ds back into popularity, he might have seen that isolated band of Goshen shepherds as a good way to restore the movement.

- Bruce S

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Darwin's Champion in China, Part 2: An Evening with Ye Duzhuang

December 3, 2013

Helper, Ye, Ye's wife, Barnett, Zhou, and Yu

I knocked on the door of Ye Duzhuang's apartment at the Academy of Agricultural Sciences compound on Beijing's northwest edge.

Ye answered the door himself. Before me stood a tall man, over six feet, lean, with jet black hair above a calm face with a strong nose. He was 70 years old, but still alert, and moved with little trace of his age.

“Dr. Ye?”

“Come in, Dr. Barnett, come in!” he said affably. I walked through a short hallway. A small room opened to our right, Ye’s study. Read More

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Darwin’s Champion in China, Part 1: The Turbulent Life of Ye Duzhuang

November 5, 2013

Ye Duzhuang

Chinese intellectuals and artists suffering abuse at the hands of the state have been much in the news these days. The blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng, avant-garde artist Ai Weiwei, and Nobel Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo have received the most prominent press, but the shameful list certainly must include also Hu Jia (AIDS and environmental advocate), Zhu Yufu (“It’s Time” poet), Gao Zhisheng (dissident rights lawyer), Wu Yuren (installation artist), and Chen Wei (advocate of a “jasmine revolution”). And there are many others. The drum roll of imprisonment and intimidation reminded me of an evening I spent in the spring of 1984 with a most remarkable Chinese scientist. Read More

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Bull elk and Dutch Ovens on the Lost Coast

October 2, 2013

California's Lost Coast: 66 miles of wilderness

My buddy Al was busy shooting sunset-in-the-ocean photos from our camp in California’s Lost Coast Wilderness a week ago when I whispered, “Look left. Slowly.” He looked, and muttered “Aw, hell.” There, fifteen feet away, was 900 pounds of bull elk. It is rutting season currently, and this bull’s already massive five point antlers had—believe it or not—some six feet of iron chain wrapped around the left antler. Read More

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