"The world is just a great big onion/ And pain and fear are the spices that make you cry/ Oh and the only way to get rid of this great big onion/ Is to plant love seeds until it dies, uh huh."
Uh huh, not the greatest of lyrics! Quality control disappeared in a puff of whatever was being smoked that year (1969). However, the principal and incongruous image has remained in memory for half a century, which must say something, though I don't know what.
Not an onion then, but a planet-sized electro-magnet (to be precise) created by the effects of a convecting molten iron interior and the earth's rotation - on a vertical axis as it happens - giving us fields of force that flow out of the south pole and into the north, fields that in turn magnetise ferrous materials giving them polar properties (called north and south in representation of the mother magnet). As we all learned at school, like poles repel while opposites attract...
... and beyond that simplistic fact I can't generate much enthusiasm for the topic. I blame this on it being the ninth week of Covid-19-ness (oh, I've been checking back through the blogs) and while I don't think our government has handled Britain's response to the pandemic in a very credible way, I also suspect that's not what people want to read about right now. So... let's move on to some poetry. I offer you, gentle readers, a work-in-progress. Maybe some day someone will stick it on their fridge!
Aerial No More
I have spun from pole to pole
and skirted fair earth's girth,
traversed our planet round
that once was thought flat,
back to the place I started from.
The best of journeys end where
they began, sweet home-coming.
But now I am confounded, can orbit
nevermore. Three holes sprung
in the fireball sun when seen
through NASA's glass darkly
(and half full) all bode ill
for our enabling comsat angels,
will scramble their sweet whisperings.
Now unseen solar winds rip havoc
through our fragile nets, tear them
to a tangle, disorient our masts,
cause our geomagnetic fields to go
awry around the heavens, birds to
mis-migrate and whales to flounder.
Now we must all learn to navigate anew.
I didn't want to short-change you though, so I include a musical link to finish. Have a listen to this majestic recording: "Like a flying magnet, hyperdrive has never seen any reason to remain the same." This is Grace Slick with Jefferson Starship from 1974. Just click on the song title to activate the link to YouTube>>>> Hyperdrive
OK, thanks for reading. Stay isolate, stay safe, be supportive. S ;-) Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook
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