Using Microbes To Stretch the Metaphor a Bit Too Far

OK, we like protection, we like umbrellas to protect us, we like the metaphor of the "umbrella"...but this "UMBRELLA" project has gone a step too far. According to a report from the JuraForum, researchers at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena have developed the "UMBRELLA" project for remediating soils containing heavy metals with a recipe based on on the kind of contamination and the conditions on the site. So where does "UMBRELLA" come from? From: "Using MicroBes for the REgulation of heavy metaL mobiLity at ecosystem and landscape scAle" -- I guess that works better than ""Using Microbes for the Regulation of Heavy Meta Mobility at Ecosystem and Landscape Scale" (UMRHMMELS), but not by much!

Umbrellas for Peace Coming to Santa Rosa, CA

The WillMar Center for Bereaved Children is coordinating an "Umbrellas for Peace" project in Santa Rosa, California, on April 24. According to the Sonoma Sun, "Rain or shine, some 600 volunteer artists-–bearing their own umbrella hand-painted with a personal message of peace and unity-–will be out for a 4 p.m. stroll on Sonoma Plaza."

"As a symbol of safety and strength, she explained, the umbrella is a wonderful medium to convey the hopes, dreams and wishes of each artist." Chicago artist Matt Lamb created the initial "Umbrellas for Peace" in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the project has since spread around the world. According to Lamb:

The umbrella is a metaphor for protection. It does not discriminate, and all people-regardless of race, age, gender or country--are safe under the umbrella. The top of the umbrella is the shelter and represents our hopes, dreams and aspirations. The underside of the umbrella represents concerns and fears. Lamb Umbrella’s for Peace helps children and adults express their positive emotions and heal negative experiences by painting them onto the umbrella. It teaches children peace, hope, love and creativity instead of the daily message of war and agression. It’s our goal to spread these messages into the world through art.

Mount Redoubt Eruption: The Umbrella from the Volcano

The umbrella metaphor extends in two distinct directions. First, is the "security" aspect--going to its function of sheltering users from rain or sun. Second, is the shape; this may have two aspects--the ribbed underbelly of an umbrella or the view from above. The latter is in the news as Alaska's Mount Redoubt eruption awakens public discussion of volcanoes. According to an NPR story, a "volcanic plume is essentially a column of hot gases and dust, topped with a horizontal 'umbrella.'"

While there is no example of this eruption's plume, here is a picture from the last eruption, in 1990. NPR, citing a recent article in Nature, points out that "inside that umbrella-shaped haze of gas and dust, a lightning-covered cyclone rages, spitting out waterspouts and dust devils."

More interesting is that the metaphor of an umbrella must be of more recent origin. The NPR story points out that "[v]olcano watchers described the general shape of these plumes as early as the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79." and notes a reference to this bizarre phenomenon in an obscure letter by Capt. S. Tillard, published in 1812, who was navigating the seas around the Azores when a volcanic vent erupted and he refers to the column of smoke as rotating on the water "like a horizontal wheel." So, if the umbrella now a universal metaphor for a shape, did it replace some other generally accepted concept or become its own permanent thing?

For an animation of an eruption, including depiction of the umbrella region, check out the San Diego State University's College of Science website. "The column thus spreads out in the umbrella region. The bottom of umbrella region is where densities of the plume and the surrounding air are equal. Continued upward mobility towards the top of the umbrella region is controlled by momentum. The umbrella region is often asymmetric due to the effect of high atmospheric winds in the stratosphere." This raises an issue of whether this metaphor derives from the shape or from the opening up of an umbrella.

Umbrella as Metaphor: Are These Brolly Blog Appropriate?

Since starting this venture down umbrella lane, the big issue has always been what to do with the word "umbrella". As a metaphor ("umbrella organization") and my basic response is to leave it alone. However, today I have come across two graphic extensions and have decided that some metaphorical umbrellas must get their time in the sun, too.

I am not sure whether this will be a repeated theme or not, but in this case, the word "umbrella" is only a feature of headline to Laura Tutor's story in the Anniston Star--"Widening history's umbrella includes women, famous and ordinary"--and of the accompanying graphic. It is intended, I gather to reflect the growth of interest and promotion of women's history. The article, perhaps stimulated by Women's History Month, tells about the National Women's History Project and the "concerted effort to integrate the story of women into the story of the world" over the last 30 years. The closest the story gets to the umbrella metaphor is perhaps one quote from Jennifer Gross, an associate professor of history at Jacksonville State University: "We need to broaden our idea of what history is."

The second image from this weekend is interestingly enough also only the creation of the headline writer. In this case the Jason Zweig column--"Corporate-Cash Umbrellas: Too Big for This Storm?"--in the Wall Street Journal is about the near record $811 billion in cash and marketable securities that nonfinancial firms in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index have on their books. He certainly alludes to this as being safety precaution of sorts, writing at one point: "Cash is not trash, of course; the natural urge to set a little money aside for a rainy day feels urgent in a recession." However, since Zweig argues that these cash supplies are a "flood" and that shareholders deserve an explanation of why they are being kept from the benefit of the funds (in terms of increased dividends or stock repurchases), it is very unclear who is being protected by a cash umbrella.