Sam Basch - The SAFREA Chronicle

Sam Basch

Brilliant minds

“… errors are notoriously hard to kill, but an error that ascribes to a man what was actually the work of a woman has more lives than a cat.”

This was the wry comment from Hertha Ayrton, British engineer, mathematician, physicist, inventor and activist, on learning that her friend Marie Curie’s work was credited to Curie’s husband. Why, for all she achieved by dint of hard work and a brilliant mind – and others like her – is Hertha Ayrton’s name not among the ‘Great Britons’ – like that of her compatriot Isambard Kingdom Brunel? Denial of women’s talent?

samjbasch 8th October 2020 No Comments

Sam Basch

Time travel

Hidden away in the Cathkin Valley near Champagne Castle in the central Drakensberg is a country store – more correctly the ‘Negosie Museum’. It is designed to take one through a nostalgic time warp into your childhood years of the 1960s, with household goods and foodstuffs of that period, still in original packaging.

samjbasch 2nd October 2020 6 Comments

Sam Basch

All that glitters

Humankind has always had a penchant for gold. It’s actually a fever, gold fever, striking down all those with the indescribable urge for quick riches. Up north in the Limpopo province are the remains of South Africa’s first gold-mining company.

samjbasch 25th September 2020 No Comments

Around the Block

On heritage property, iconic buildings and rich SA history

Owning a heritage property means owning a valuable and sentimental South African artefact – both aesthetically pleasing and with a rich historical story attached to it.

Denise Mhlanga 25th September 2020 No Comments

Sam Basch

Birds and the bees

Delicate white blossoms tell us that spring is here. Not taking particular note of insects, flowers and birds in our gardens at other times, we now see the bees, tirelessly working their magic, and exult in the art of nature

samjbasch 23rd September 2020 4 Comments

Press Releases

South African company scores in major international renewable energy project

Pretoria-based Etion Create has just been selected as one of the preferred suppliers in the Sofia offshore wind farm project in the United Kingdom, one of the largest in the world.

samjbasch 16th September 2020 No Comments

Sam Basch

Pillars of Tower Hamlets

Four black metal pillars in a half circle, about three or four metres high, standing between two blocks of flats in London’s East End. To what purpose? Play things for kids? A work of art?

Actually the London Borough of Tower Hamlets was where the Stepney Gas Works produced coal gas for more than a century. Coal was conveyed by barge on the Regent’s Canal and converted here to gas for households, industry and the city’s streetlights. It made it a target for aerial bombardment in World War II. This now becomes an interesting story…

samjbasch 11th September 2020 2 Comments

Sam Basch

Take a long view

Britain has the allure of timelessness and tradition, and a language that is spoken widely. The age-old traditions the Brits so jealously guard have their roots elsewhere. Even their English language was a Germanic import, brought there by Angles, Saxons and Jutes.

As the Danes invaded in the 9th century, and even settled in places, the Wessex king Alfred kept them at bay. He is credited with saving the English language. But William the Conqueror’s invasion from Normandy in 1066 almost killed English. Fortunately three centuries of French at court introduced a lexicon that massively enriched modern English.

samjbasch 31st August 2020 7 Comments

Opinion

Flatten the flight curve

Mass air travel for all and everyone got millions flying to all corners of the earth. They clogged up tourist sites everywhere…

Though safe and reliable, aircraft are also noisy and pollute. Yet aviation is inextricably woven into the fabric of the global economy. Millions earn their living from it. Can we deny those the right to a livelihood? Can we deprive hundreds of thousands of tourist sites and businesses the income they have come to rely on since mass tourism started?

Covid-19 has bought us time to reflect on why we fly. We’ve got to flatten the flight curve.

samjbasch 19th August 2020 No Comments

Home

Wild, weird and wonderful

Words cannot describe the spectacle of wildflowers that flourish every year on the West Coast and Namaqualand. Photographs give an idea, but you have to visit there to be caressed by soft air, to smell the earth and sea, feel the sun’s warmth, the silkiness of the petals, the lustre of the blooms.

This is a wish-list item that reminds us how magnificent nature can be…

samjbasch 9th August 2020 5 Comments