Yes, my cultures were recently contaminated with yeast.
First, I aspirated the offending media into a sterilizing tensioactive agent, and then placed the plasticware into a box to be immolated.
One always goes through a bit of mourning for one’s cells when this happens. Cultures can be more or less precious – this one was moderately so, such that its neighbor in the next dish received an antibiotic treatment and a briefly muttered superstitious prayer. We’ll see if it survives until tomorrow, when I was hoping to detach the cells and place them into a larger flask.
This treatment is somewhat more radical than that recommended for human habitats this time of year, but that is because it’s simply hopeless to not have yeast unless you install a tissue culture laminar flow hood. There’s a nice ceremony the night before Passover (Kol Chamira) where one looks for any bread crumbs one might have missed during spring cleaning, and then one says a prayer that means, I give up now and choose not to see any of it any more. It’s a gift to perfectionists, but it would not work for cell culture.
Happy Passover and Happy Easter to you Jews and Christians out there respectively. One of these days I do plan to keep my promise to write about recent scholarship in the concept of offensiveness. I am going to continue my highly intermittent posting schedule for some time yet, though. If I have ignored a similarly significant, imminent springtime holiday in another religion among my readership, please tell me about it in the comments.
My international calendar does not mention any other holidays, so I think you’ve got it covered for this week.
It’s weird, though, that you actually didn’t wish me a Happy Easter: many people who celebrate Easter traditionally are not Christian. I was raised atheist, but celebrate the Christian holidays because, well, everyone does. You get time off school/work, there is Easter stuff in all the stores – it’s become completely secularized. Bunnies have little to do with the Christian part of the holiday anyway. Atheist Jews often still culturally identify as Jewish, but atheist people with a Christian cultural backgroud never identify as Christian.
That makes you (and me) cultural Christians though, right? So I think we were included ;)
It’s also almost Vaisakhi (Sikh New Year), although unfortunately I’ll miss Saturday’s parade as we’re heading off to the Sunshine Coast for a pagan festival of egg painting, egg hunting, and chocolate bunnies.
Sorry, I obviously neglected to read the last sentence of your comment, Eva. I don’t identify as “Christian”, but I do think I’m culturally Christian in that I celebrate Christmas and Easter. (Not Lent though, obviously).
Those pagan rituals are the parts of Easter I observe, so I probably qualify as “heathen”. (Not to be confused with “Heather”)
See also: Christmas trees, lights, and feasting at
the solsticeChristmas.OK, I guess I’m a pagan too!
Any second now, someone will start ranting about how Orthodox Easter is next week.
Not me though. Happy Whatever to the lot of ya.
I’ve often wondered about Christianity within the Harry Potter books (said Cath geekily). The wizarding community celebrates Christmas (and, I think, Easter too), but the only aspects of it that are ever mentioned are trees, decorations, presents, and food. No-one ever goes to church or mentions God. I guess witches and wizards don’t need to believe in a supernatural being? But are culturally Christian through centuries of interaction with muggles? Do witches and wizards in other countries subscribe to the prevailing religion among local muggles?
I may be overthinking this a bit.
Oh well, happy everything to everyone from me too.
We don’t have any painted eggs yet, we’ll have to get busy this weekend. My mother told me that she just can’t have easter eggs in the house before Easter. I told her that it doesn’t matter, since it’s a pagan symbolism, anyway. But she’s sticking to it… so maybe she’s culturally pagan?
Happy everything! (I love that)
I love the idea of a Christian being culturally pagan.
I take egg painting much more seriously than my nephews, for whom the activity is intended. Actually they may be getting a bit old for it this year (although probably not for the chocolate egg hunt).
If it gets to the last minute and you’re out of time: really beautiful egg colour with absolutely no extra effort is easily achieved by adding dry onion peel (lots) to the water you’re boiling the eggs in. Result: boiled eggs with a really wonderful maroon colour (even better if you start with brown eggs).
Steffi> If you bind the onion peels around it in different thickness you get a nice pattern too… and if you have Birch leaves already (maybe in less northern Europe) they can go in another pot and make greenish eggs :)
Heather> So, you aren’t tempted to throw in a few extra yeast crumbles in the cultures to see if the antibiotic works? (no malice intended, I just read up on the tradition and saw that you actually assume that you are cleaning so good that nothing will be found ;) )
I find it fun when I realised that Passover in Swedish is Pesach, and then I understood what we talked about. (I guess would be more close to the “actual” language?) Anyway, being the cultural Christian I am I miss the Easter eggs with candy in them. The whole story of the bird transformed into a hare (in order to escape Orion) and then the longing for egg laying :) A nice story to explain why the hare comes with the eggs
Atheists like myself who have a Jewish genealogy may identify with Judaism in part of a sense of guilt that they are still around after the Holocaust, but without particularly feeling the need to believe in a supernatural being (though I think it is possible to have spiritual thoughts even without a God…)
I was brought up Unitarian Universalist, a pretty good compromise for folks of a humanist, culturally Christian background (and in that last, I include Jews and pagans etc. residing in mostly Christian countries). Here in Toulouse, the Jews are mostly of North African origin for obvious reasons of repopulation. I was amused in the kosher supermarket when the man at checkout asked me if I was Polish, not being of North African physiognomy. I wonder what a good compromise religious upbringing might be for an atheist Jew in Algeria?
Asa – not at all tempted. :-) In French, Easter is “Pâques” and Passover is “Pâque juive” – pascal, pasq, Pesach. So yes, the Swedish is closest to the original. How does Easter translate? And do tell us about the hare+eggs…
Cath – interesting, about Vaisakhi – that’s what I was looking for. Finally, a clever culture that puts the beginning of the year in spring rather than autumn or winter (although the others have their logic as well)!
Heather>In Swedish Easter is Påsk… not too different ;)
So the story… as I was told from the Greek mythos combined with a more northern Saxon/Germanic mythos (Ostara – the Goddess of Spring, with the German name for Easer etc)
Anyhow, there was a time when the Hunter Orion was walking the earth and he was cruel and hunted everything. One day he walked upon a bird who was flying in desperate circles in front of his face. When asked why, the bird chirped “because I want to protect the eggs in my nest on the ground so you don’t walk on it oh cruel Orion”. Orion laughed and looked for the little nest, nicely hidden in the grass, and then he crushed all the eggs under his heel, smiled at the bird and walked on. The bird was heartbroken and tried to assemble the eggs and the nest to no joy.
She cried and the Goddess of spring found her and asked “what is wrong little bird, why aren’t you happy in a time like this? Why aren’t you in your nest, hatching the eggs” The bird explained and the Goddess too pity on it, asked what she wanted the Goddess to do… The bird asked to be transformed into “something that can run away from the evil Orion” and can do something else that just be a small, little bird. The Goddess transformed the bird into a hare (Lupus). [the hare then goes on to help the Pleiades their ox (Taurus), from getting killed by Orion by running in circles and disorienting Orion’s hounds….. but that is, as they say, another story ;) ]
The next spring the Goddess found the little Hare moping around, looking gloomy. “What is wrong, little hare” she asked. The hare admitted that she missed the eggs… she’d already made a little nest but it was empty… The goddess thought about it and after consideration gave the hare the gift of being able to lay eggs once a year! Therefore the Hare lays Easter Eggs (made of chocolate) and in the sky all this is evident since the star signs can be found next to each other…. Lupus is underneath Orion, who is aiming towards the Taurus and close by there you’d find the Sevens sisters (The Pleiades) although usually two of them are hiding under a veil [yet another story].
There are many versions of it of course, another one involves the Goddess taking the bird as a lover… and the bird being a male looking out for its eggs while the spouse is somewhere else… but since I learned this as a child I never got the Xrated version ;)
Wow, how have I never heard that story?! I thought the birds / rabbits / Easter connection was a purely pagan fertility thing.
(Last word chosen due to brain exhaustion and not being able to think of a better one).
That was great, Asa! I’m very taken with the mixing of gods and (not-so-heroic) heros from different traditions. If I get difficult questions about the Easter – hare – laying eggs, now I know how to answer!
(In France, the Tooth Fairy is a Tooth mouse, so I had to think fast on that one. Magic mouse!)
If I have ignored a similarly significant, imminent springtime holiday
For me, it’s potato-planting holiday.
I’ll make a special potato-god invocation for you, Raf.
Heather> Thanks. I think Orion has been described more often as a “cruel hunter with a large appatite for women” and any other thing in the stories I have read and listened to. (A bit like Akilles if I think about it… although Akilles had his lover of course.. ah well, I disgress.)
Tooth mouse? really? huh. Why would the mouse give money? And more importantly, for what would the mouse need the tooth?!
Finally, a clever culture that puts the beginning of the year in spring rather than autumn or winter
Why thank you! (from she who was bought up as a Sikh who just took Seder but misses Easter eggs….)
(Back from the Easter three-day weekend national holiday in ostensibly secular France)
Hm. Why do magic mice or fairies need baby teeth? For the stem cells, of course!
Sarbjit – sometimes we would color the egg on the Seder plate and the ones we eat as starter course…
Fantastic story Asa! I had never heard of a reason for bunnies and eggs being part of the Easter holiday beyond loose associations with springtime and fertility or just that they are cuter than bears coming out of hibernation and geese making a mess around the ponds again.
Heather: but of course they do. Silly me not understanding that ;)
Elizabeth: thanks. I think you might find tonnes of different stories about why the hare/bunny comes with candy and eggs… but that one kind of made sense to me when I was younger anyway.
If nothing else, bunnies are less dangerous than bears. Regarding the geese… well…. I am not really a fan (at least not of those Canadian geese… they destroyed many a summer picnics back home with their poop and yapping)