Open Writing

Patrick O’Brian, my favorite novelist, was also highly esteemed by his colleagues. Such was his command of English that his fellow historical novelist Mary Renault, for example, referred to O’Brian as “our Homer’’. His incredible powers of recall allowed him to draw upon a lifetime of historical research to weave beautifully written prose that’s laced with wordplay and historical trivia.

Reading about spiders recently reminded me of a passage from O’Brian’s “Treason’s Harbour” where a character proudly announced that he had “become a urinator.” Mr. Webster says “urinator” doesn’t mean what you’re probably thinking, meaning instead “One who, or that which, dives,” adding that the Urinator imber is also the proper appellation of the Northern loon.

O’Brian’s urinator went on to describe the new diving bell he’d purchased, one designed by Dr. Halley. Some research revealed that Edmund Halley, of comet fame, also invented a working diving bell in 1690. He reckoned that he could replace air in a submerged metal bell by having assistants above-water send down weighted barrels of fresh air, and proved it ninety feet below the surface of the River Thames. I also learned that Halley believed the earth was hollow, and when the inner gases escaped into the outer atmosphere it caused auroras.

My memory’s always been a chancy thing, so I was grateful to the spider who triggered this literary recollection, Argyroneta aquatica, AKA the diving bell spider. This creature could survive on land, but chooses to live underwater trapping tiny air bubbles on its leg hair and carrying it to its sunken silken bell. There Argyroneta can remain for long periods, dangling its legs temptingly out of the bottom of the bell, until an incautious bug or tadpole wanders by. Males build bells next to the female’s, construct connecting tunnels and then break into the other’s bell, where nature takes its course.

Chagrin impels me to clarify some news about Alaskan spiders that cropped up in a previous column, viz: the mysterious peony-destroying spider. “Viz,” by the way, means “to wit; that is; namely.” I reported that this spider was threatening Alaska’s commercial peony crop, and that caught the attention of Patricia Holloway, director of UAF’s Georgeson Botanical Garden and peony researcher. She read my spider column just before making a Kenai trip to visit peony farmers there, and found that only one grower was affected and then only with minimal impact. Pat informed me that Alaska’s commercial peony farms, “14 growers ranging from Fairbanks to Homer, and more than 14,000 peonies are in the ground,” are thriving and shipping their beautiful product to the Lower 48 with great and profitable regularity.

I’d intended to learn more about the peony situation, but life and a rotten memory intruded. Fortunately, remembering was the focus of a recent NY Times article by Benedict Carey. He cites a new study reported in “Science,” writing that “Scientists have for the first time recorded individual brain cells in the act of summoning a spontaneous memory, revealing not only where a remembered experience is registered but also, in part, how the brain is able to recreate it.”
In a University of Pennsylvania study, miniature electrodes were inserted into the brains of severe epileptic patients who were shown 5-10 second film clips. During viewing researchers could see which neurons fired in the hippocampus, a critical memory-forming part of the brain, and which didn’t. The patients were distracted, then asked to think about the clips and say whatever came to mind. When they recalled a specific image, the same brain cells fired as were active when viewing specific clips, and the researchers could tell what the patient was recalling a second or two before it was verbalized.

Some scientists believe that brain cells are triggered by other senses, too, “including possibly sounds, smells, time of day and chronology – when an experience occurred in relation to others.”

Now peonies, spiders and urinators are linked in my memory, such as it is. Good thing I frequent libraries, which are primarily repositories of all sorts of human memories. And as Francis Fauvel-Gouraud, author of the 1845 book, “The Art of Memory,” noted, “Memory is the library of the mind.”