In the Com­pany of Mi­crobes

Ten Years of Small Things Con­sid­ered

by Elio

This is the 10th an­niver­sary of this blog, per­haps note­worthy be­cause, as I say, "blog years are like dog years." In cel­e­bra­tion, a book has just been pub­lished by the Amer­i­can So­ci­ety for Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy Press en­ti­tled "In the Com­pany of Mi­crobes: Ten Years of Small Things Con­si­dered." The book con­sists of pieces I chose from among the blog's 1000+ posts. Most are es­says, rem­i­nis­cences, per­sonal re­flec­tions. I avoided purely sci­en­tific ar­ti­cles be­cause, for all their value, they are more likely to lose their time­li­ness and may lack a gen­eral ap­peal. About half the ar­ti­cles were writ­ten by oth­ers, in­clud­ing no­table mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gists. Here are also a num­ber of Tal­mu­dic Ques­tions, one of the fea­tures of this blog. It is il­lus­trated with mi­cro­bial-look­ing doo­dles by my artist daugh­ter Ju­dith. The ti­tle bor­rows from that of a pre­vi­ous book of mine. I would like you to think of this book as an es­ca­pa­de through the world of mi­crobes.

Speak­ing of an­niver­saries and birth­days, while Queen Eliz­a­beth cel­e­brated her 90th birth­day the other day, I was more qui­etly cel­e­brat­ing mine. I am two years be­hind her. My num­ber of years is di­vis­i­ble by 44 (but is not 132!), some­thing that is not likely to re­cur, not un­less, God for­bid, we learn how to ac­quire im­mor­tal­ity. Let me also state that I re­gard an­cien­ity with some self-con­s­cious­­ness. In­creased longevity, not just the birth rate, con­tributes to over­pop­u­la­tion. This be­ing a grave con­cern of all think­ing per­sons, I should ac­knowl­edge that my con­tin­u­ing ten­ancy ex­acts a price.

I thank my blog col­leagues for their re­cent kind wishes. Nice of them to do it! But, then, they're won­der­ful peo­ple.
 

 

Im­age in­cluded with the ex­cerpt on the home­page: Il­lus­tra­tions of cells, from the book, cre­ated by Ju­dith Schaechter.