Restored Land, Open Routes

Welcome to Positive Times for November tenth, twenty twenty-six. Today we follow four concrete steps, each with its own date: a completed clean-up, two spacecraft on their way, a nursery inauguration and an international ratification. Then we pause for a small discovery. We are looking for what has really changed, while keeping the remaining questions open.

Harwell completes physical clean-up of 4.2 hectares

We begin at Harwell in Oxfordshire. On November ninth, Nuclear Restoration Services announced that the physical clean-up of four point two hectares was complete. More than ninety-seven thousand tonnes of material, including buried structures, were removed from the former effluent treatment plant and neighbouring sewage area. A public route alongside the site has also reopened. A new pond manages surface water and provides space for wildlife, and material excavated to build it was reused to reshape the area. That achievement must be distinguished from the land’s future: final procedures to remove its nuclear licence and surrender the environmental permit are still under way. Reuse remains a possibility, rather than a completed step.

• Nuclear Restoration Services / GOV.UK · NRS completes largest land remediation project at Harwell

ESCAPADE leaves Earth behind and heads for Mars

Now let us look upwards. NASA’s two ESCAPADE spacecraft each completed an Earth flyby, on November seventh and ninth. NASA confirmed the result on the ninth. Each pass combined Earth’s gravity with an engine burn lasting about nine minutes, setting the spacecraft on course for Mars. Arrival is planned for September twenty twenty-seven; the journey is not already over. Together, the spacecraft are intended to study how the solar wind, meaning particles from the Sun, interacts with the Martian environment and contributes to atmospheric loss. The science campaign is expected to begin in summer twenty twenty-eight. First come the cruise, course corrections and entry into orbit. Even in space, a good departure does not remove the next steps.

• NASA · NASA’s ESCAPADE Completes Powered Earth Flybys, Now En Route to Mars

Penne inaugurates its nursery on Via Guido Rossa

Back in Italy, in Penne, the municipality inaugurated its new nursery on Via Guido Rossa on November seventh. The official announcement says services in the new building would start on November ninth for children already enrolled. The inauguration is confirmed; we do not have an independent check of the first days of activity. The Brunello Cucinelli Group donated the kitchen, while a local cooperative bank supported furniture purchases for municipal nurseries. These contributions equipped the facilities alongside the work on the building itself. The announcement does not say how many additional places are available, or whether waiting lists have fallen. So we report the new building and the announced start, without attaching undocumented results to them.

• Comune di Penne · Inaugurato il nuovo asilo di Via Guido Rossa

Armenia ratifies the underwater heritage convention

Our fourth story concerns cultural heritage underwater. Armenia deposited its ratification of UNESCO’s two thousand and one convention on October twenty-eighth. UNESCO announced this on November ninth; for Armenia, entry into force will be January twenty-eighth, twenty twenty-seven. The deposit has happened, but the rules are not yet in force for the country. The convention covers traces of human existence with cultural, historical or archaeological significance that have been at least partly underwater for at least a hundred years. It provides for cooperation and protection, considering preservation in the original location first, before activities directed at the heritage are authorised. This is neither a discovery announcement nor an order to bring everything ashore. Protecting an object can also mean leaving it in its context.

• UNESCO · Armenia ratifies the 2001 Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage
• UNESCO · Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage

Alexander Girard: a room begins with fabric

Our small discovery begins with a piece of fabric. Alexander Girard led Herman Miller’s textile division from nineteen fifty-two to nineteen seventy-three. Colour and pattern took part in designing interiors, beyond covering furniture. MoMA holds Rain, his linen curtain fabric from nineteen fifty-three. Its designer, year, material and use help us identify a particular historical design. Now for an exercise from our editorial team: draw three equal rectangles, using the same colours, but fill them with narrow stripes, broad stripes and a few circles. Which feels quieter? Which more insistent? There is no compulsory answer, and we are not reproducing a Girard textile. We are separating the choice of colours from the scale of the pattern. Observing before delivering a verdict can be a useful beginning for a room, and perhaps for a new story too.

• Vitra · Alexander Girard
• The Henry Ford · Alexander Girard Designs for Herman Miller
• Museum of Modern Art · Rain Drapery Fabric, 1953

That brings our listening session to a close. The November tenth edition contains the full readings, the dates of the events and sources alongside the texts. You can move between Italian and English and return to the details at your own pace. Thank you for sharing this time with Positive Times.