Happy Birthday Charles Darwin!
It’s the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth today, and I’ll be celebrating this weekend by going to Epping Forest to hopefully see signs that the beechwood is beginning to shrug winter off. It’s a good time of year to go outdoors and look for signs of winter’s end – many birds are claiming their nesting territories already and very early wildflowers will be struggling through snow, ice and flood. I could have chosen a million ways to celebrate – there are organised events taking place all over the world over the next couple of days, many of which can be found here. I have to confess though that (shhhhh… whisper it) a lot of the celebrations on that list seem to be just that – formal - you know, a little bit worthy. I’ll be getting along to a Darwin exhibition or two I’m sure, but to me there can be no better way of celebrating with a walk in a wintry forest and letting my curiosity run riot. Darwin’s greatest strength was his ability to look, a facility for noticing the small things and reading their implications, a lesson I’ve taken to heart from the moment I could understand it. What could be more appropriate than wandering in pursuit of my own discoveries, however modest, in honour of the man who’s inquiring mind led to one of the most important discoveries of modern times.
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I’ll spend today pondering the evolution of the cold virus.
Oh, well!
Happy Birthday, Darwin!
Oh Kit, you have a cold? That’s lousy. Rotten, rotten cold viruses, always changing, always one step ahead… a perfect example of evolution if ever there was one. Here, have a hot lemon and honey drink. It has grated ginger too – it’s good!
Actually (knock on wood) I have fought the cold off thus far. . . though I’ll take that hot drink, thank you VERY much! It sounds fantastic right about now. . . it’s Littleman and Mr. Sweetcheeks who have the coughing crud. Babyman seemed to have very early signs of a cold today, and I HOPE I’m mistaken about that. Time will tell.
Darwin accomplished so much, he deserves the recognition, wow 200 years. Thanks for posting. Anna
Thank you Anna, for coming over to visit!
Darwin’s theory of Evolution now seems to be operating in reverse, if the evidence of the 13yr old father is taken into account.
dear oh dear
Happy Birthday Charles D
xhenry
Oh Henry, I worry for all three children (the parents are little kids out of their depth after all). The sharks are already circling and taking big bites out of them and their parents don’t seem to be any help. This kind of thing has always happened (probably lots more often a couple hundred years ago) but then the families didn’t have to run the gauntlet of hypocritical newspapers, the temptation to sell their pitiful story and the howling moral outrage of slimy editors and columnists. Hmmm, there seems to be a sub theme developing in this blog, shall I call it “how I want to destroy the media and replace it with something more worthwhile?”
Birdie,
Have you ever read about Darwin’s personal life? A bit of it was on the news paper on Darwin’s Day. He was thinking of opting out of a married life so as to go and see the nature! He thought that a family would forbid him from going free. See how much dedicated he was?
But he eventually decided to marry Emma (thats the lucky girl’s name!) and when he died he died in her arms. How romantic!
You should try to read more about him if you have not already done.
Kudos to him!
Cheers to you
Arun Basil Lal
Hi Arun! I’d love to know more about him, I reckon there will be a few biographies I could read to get a better idea of how he became the man he was! That’s a lovely story, I guess they must have been a very happy couple.