Local Date
22 May 2024Local Time
11:58Location
Hackney Downs, LondonCountry or Territory
United KingdomName
Sasha EngelmannSatellite
NOAA-18Radio Callsign
Archive ID
The surfaces of London are covered in traces of the downpour that happened last night. Though the rivers and ponds of water have drained away somehow, pools and thick mud remain. I meet Bill, his partner and their dog Nutmeg during a break in the rain on Hackney Downs. We speak about gravitational waves and the aurora. Bill asks to hold the turnstile antenna and kindly agrees to a photo. As they head on their way, I overhear Bill explaining to another dog owner what I am doing, and I feel grateful that Bill has become a mediator for the project in the neighbourhood, as I might otherwise get quite different reactions! Meanwhile the satellite stays 'in the sky' so long that my recording software automatically cuts off the recording when it nears fifteen minutes, but I can still 'see' the signal. As I decode and examine the weather image that reaches from Kirkenes, Norway to the Western Sahara, I join an online call where my union debates a motion to show solidarity with Palestine in the context of the ongoing 'scholasticide' in Gaza. After much discussion about 'logical fallacies' and whether the motion was 'doing too much', we are called to vote on a secondary motion to let the authors of the first motion take more time to amend its 'scope' before we actually vote on it. Meanwhile, someone in the room says, over 35,000 people in Gaza have been killed. Those who live in the ever-expanding houseless camps near Rafah are deeply unsafe and vulnerable. And yet those of us who are safe, who can 'drink a gin and tonic and go to bed' as one member puts it, are fighting about whether we should keep a point saying the university should divest from arms manufacturers involved in the unfolding genocide.