An anniversary

· by Michael Welland

Nima1

The Nima Sand Museum on the coast of Japan’s main island of Honshu contains the world’s largest sandglass. Six meters in height, it is ceremonially turned at midnight on December 31st every year - and takes until exactly a year later for all the sand to fall. If, instead of December 31st, the giant sandglass had been turned on November 11th, 2008, when the first post on Through the Sandglass was published, the last grains would be trickling through today. I find it difficult to believe that this rather eclectic blog has been on the go for a year; I started it initially at the suggestion of my publishers as a follow-up to the book, but it has taken on a life of its own. There remain endless topics deposited on the cutting room floor after the book was edited that I still haven’t got round to covering - there just seem to be too many other things of interest (to me, at least) cropping up on a daily basis.

So, more than 120 posts later and after visits from people in 105 countries, I’m quietly celebrating my first year of blogging (“quietly” meaning a particularly good bottle of red wine, nothing more exuberant). It has been great fun and has given me the great pleasure of putting me in touch with all kinds of delightful people around the world - something that otherwise would never have happened.

So I want to sincerely thank everyone who reads this blog, whether routinely or just occasionally.

And please keep the comments, suggestions, links and references coming - they’re much appreciated.

Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with this: I sometimes fear that my obsession distorts the true frequency of mentions of my topic - but then I watched the news last week and, in one broadcast, were the images below (from the recent G20 finance meeting in St. Andrews, Scotland) and a description of yet another line being drawn in the sand. Put that phrase into google news search and there are 500 instances of its use in the last week. I rest my case.

G20

P.S. it seems that almost all the images on the blog have spontaneously and unilaterally decided to de-centre and left-justify themselves, detracting from the appearance - I have no idea why and am seeking the help of the experts at Typepad. Any suggestions will be most welcome.

Comments

  • Callan Bentley
    Congratulations on your first (hopefully of many) year of sand blogging!
  • suvrat
    great stuff Michael. keep it going!
  • Michael Welland
    Many thanks, Suvrat and Callan, for your continuing support.
  • jules
    Congratulations Michael! Looking forward to many more of your well researched essays that just keep on expanding in depth and area (like some sand dunes!)
  • Michael Welland
    Thanks, Jules - you make this whole process a pleasure!
  • Blaize
    Congratulations. I only recently started following your blog, and look forward to more posts on your interesting obsession. I live in Santa Cruz, CA, and the local paper has regular articles from Gary Griggs, whose interests in coastal processes include (of course) sand. Your blog helps me feed my own minor obsession with coastal processes and sand, solidified (sorry) when I read Cornelia Dean's Against the Tide.
  • F
    The problem seems to be in style.css. Every entry in there is left-aligned but one. I don't know where, but some entry is overriding the center-alignment in the images' HTML style. The images are centered when style.css isn't loaded. I guess I've been reading this almost as long as you have been posting. It is really an amazing blog, and one of the few I check on frequently. I've tried to comment in the past, but the commenting system wasn't playing nice. Let's see how this goes now that I've managed the arcane ways of OpenID and TypePad. Sand is everywhere. On the National Geographic Channel tonight, desert glass figures in prominently as evidence for an airburst bolide (astron. def.). Which reminds me of a previous attempt to comment on booming sand, which I got to hear courtesy of Nat Geo as well. Anyhow, happy anniversary!
  • Michael Welland
    Blaize - many thanks for your comment - the most enjoyable thing about the blog is actually hearing, out of the blue, from people who read it. Thanks also for the pointer to Gary Griggs - I see his recent piece is on submarine canyons, a topic that you may have noticed I find fascinating (a sub-obsession). Against the Tide is on my shelves, a valuable resource when I was researching the book. And, finally for the moment, we are delighted to have discovered your most entertaining blog - rest assured that Joe on his tractor has an extended and active international family - he's been working on the road outside our apartment for months.
  • Michael Welland
    "F" - I'm delighted that the comment-posting problems seem to be resolved (I, of course, had no way of knowing about them). As I said in reply to Blaize, above, actually hearing out of the blue from readers is a huge pleasure, so thanks for persevering. Thanks also for the suggestion about the formatting problem - I've sent your observation off to the Typepad help folk. Although I pride myself on problem-solving things like this, my abilities in the world behind the screen (html, css etc. etc.)are very limited; it's clear that I have done something that caused the spontaneous re-formatting, but I can't figure out what it is (being of a certain age so that these things are not inherently in my blood does not help). Anyway, I'm really pleased to find that you are a long-time reader and that you share my view that sand is everywhere. A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to be able to visit the desert glass area in Egypt - I'd be interested to hear what the NG program has to say, because, for me, it's a great example of one of the wonderful things that remains something of a mystery to science, the things that make science exciting. Like booming sand ....
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