Changing Places

In celebration of our 22nd anniversary Friday, the hubby and I are off to Glen Ivy Hot Springs for the day to relax at the spa!

Be seeing you…

私の夫および私は鉱泉に行っている。

MAKE: Blog
Knittank
Lone Koefoed writes, “A knitted, pink tank from the Danish Army (related to the knitted pink motorcycle in Georgia). Part of an art exhibition and created by Marianne Joergensen plus appr 1000 volunteers (knitters) from around the world who knitted the squares 15*15 cm which MJ then stitched onto the tank.”

Must be getting old. There are indeed things I miss from the past – even things I never experienced…

The Examining Room of Dr. Charles

“Indulge an old woman and just write that prescription out for me, will you doctor?”

I thought for a moment. “How about I call this in to Walter, that way you don’t have to drop it off. Smith’s Pharmacy delivers you said, right?”

This pleased her immensely, as I knew it would. It was a little bit of shameless grandstanding on my part. “Bless you,” she said. If there’s an easier way to get into the good graces of an elderly woman than calling in her medications for her, then I haven’t yet found it. Or maybe I’m just unwilling to find it, since I suspect it might involve massaging bunions while watching General Hospital before a midday nap.

“So I’ll call it in,” I said. I picked up line six, got the outside line, and punched the digital tones to get me Smith’s Pharmacy on Mill Road. I secretly wished I had a rotary phone. Maybe an old-fashioned cherry cola, too.

“Smith’s Pharmacy, this is Walter speaking, how can I help you,” came the polite baritone voice from the other end of the telephone wire.

“Hello, this is Aidan Charles, how are you today, sir?”

“I’m quite well today, doctor. And how are you?”

I caught the automaton in me becoming uncomfortable talking to a real, live pharmacist instead of an asexual female voice messaging system with twelve options. I was used to: Thank you for calling Big Chain Pharmacy. At Big Chain Pharmacy we’re committed to serving you and your healthcare needs with pride. Did you know that we now offer drive-thru service? Please choose from one of the twelve following options, and have a great day…

“I’m doing alright myself, thank you,” I replied to Walter. “I’m calling today because I have Mrs. O’Brien here in the office. We need to renew her medicines.”

“Mrs. O’Brien,” Walter said with satisfaction. “She’s been coming here since I first opened up. Let me see… any changes to her regimen, or will it still be furosemide 40, metoprolol 50, alendronate weekly, and warfarin 5 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays alternating with warfarin 4 on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays?”

I was amazed. “That sounds right. Let’s refill them all for three months, and I’ll see her back then. Would it be any trouble to deliver them to her house?”

“No trouble at all, doctor. Is there anything else we can help you with today?”

Yes, Walter, there is. How about you lead us back into a time and place that respects community, one that doesn’t aim to primarily serve corporations, one that isn’t trying to foist health savings accounts, prescription costs, and the burden of health risk onto the already aching backs of individuals; one in which I can worry more about whether I’ve made the right diagnosis to help my patients than about whether they and their mad dog lawyers are frothing at the mouth ready to sue me if I haven’t; can you bring back F.D.R or Truman or Eisenhower? Can you do that, Walter? Can you also make me a cherry cola like they used to make in the mom and pop pharmacies before I was around?

“No thanks, sir,” I spoke softly into the phone. “It was a pleasure talking with you today. I’ll try to recommend more patients to your pharmacy.”

I hung up the phone and turned to Mrs. O’Brien. She had gathered all her things together and was ready to leave. “I appreciate you calling my pills in. I’m sorry you couldn’t use your fancy computer thing-a-ma-jig. I’m not sure all these gadgets make things easier for us older folks. We’re getting left behind I’m afraid.”

She cautiously stepped through the office on her way out, always one misstep away from falling and breaking a hip. Yet hers was a stronger world in many ways. I was sure of it.

Sorry, kids, gotta moderate comments for a bit – the spammers are thick the last couple days. I really hates them, hates them….

I’m zonked after Japanese class tonight. Brain full….

Whodda thunk it. Females want time to themselves and to feel more in charge of their own sex lives. Pssst, guys, big hint: quit trying to run women’s lives! Espeically the ones you’re not personally involved with. Bill Napoli, I’m talkin’ to YOU.

Via Pharyngula

From The Observer:

The funny thing is, it appears there’s a certain humanlike subjectiveness to the sex life of lab animals as well. When Jim Pfaus tested PT-141 on his female rats, he based his experimental design partly on the work of Raul Paredes, a fellow rat sexologist testing the effects of something more elusive: personal autonomy. That’s a tricky thing to measure, but it can be done. Paredes did it like this: first, he looked at rat couples living in standard, box-shaped cages and recorded the details of their sexual behaviour. Then, he altered the cages in only one particular: he divided them into two chambers with a clear wall broken only by one opening, too small for the males to get through but just right for the females. Architecturally it was a minor change, but what it did for the females was huge. It let them get away from the males whenever they chose to, and thereby made it entirely their choice whether to have sex. Paredes then observed the rats’ behaviour in this altered setting. Here’s what he found: the effects of giving a female rat greater personal control over her sex life are essentially the same as those of giving her PT-141. Autonomy, in other words, is as real an aphrodisiac as any substance known to science.

And people wondered why I breastfed my kids. Hardly been sick in their lives other than a few colds.

New penicillin found in wallaby milk – Breaking News – National – Breaking News

Scientists have discovered a bacteria-fighting compound 100 times more effective than penicillin – in wallaby milk.

Researchers found the highly-potent compound, tagged AGG01, was active against a wide variety of fungi and bacteria including antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

Research team leader Dr Ben Cocks said the discovery could have a profound impact on both human and animal health.

“This compound has the potential to be commercially synthesised and may prove vital in the war against increasingly resistant human and animal diseases,” Dr Cocks said.

He said researchers from the Victorian government’s Department of Primary Industries made the discovery while investigating the chemical properties of Tammar wallabies’ breast milk to determine how their immune-deficient newborns built up resistance to bacteria while in the pouch.

Using online biological information, they searched the wallaby’s genome to identify more than 30 factors in the breast milk that contribute to fighting bugs.

Compound AGG01 was found to be effective against a relative of the hospital superbug MRSA, or golden staph, as well as ecoli, Streptococci, Salmonella, Bacillus subtilus, Pseudomonas spp, Proteus vulgaris, and Staphylococcus aureus.

By Danny Gregory

Think about it: we all, even Brad Pitt or George Bush, occupy a tiny percentage of any other given person’s interest, That’s why some of us are interested in achieving fame: because it takes all those tiny percentages and multiplies them across millions of people. Eventually that adds up to something.

And because we are all, at best, living in our own self-reflecting bubbles, you should relax and do what you want. Stop caring so much about externals. Make what you like in the way that you do. Sure, maybe you’ll manage to be a blip on someone else’s radar, but that’s not why you bother. Live and make art for the only person that matters or truly cares.

Hullabaloo

America seems to be waking up to the fact that stolen elections, bogus recalls, movie stars and guys you want to have a beer with don’t actually add up to leadership. If they can be wised up to the fact that tax cuts for billionaires don’t actually benefit them, then we might be getting someplace.

AMERICA – TAX CUTS FOR BILLIONAIRES DON’T BENEFIT YOU!!!

Does this help?

Attytood:
Woman arrested for speaking freely right after Bush call for “freedom…to speak freely” — and CNN calls it “a blemish” on Hu visit

Woman arrested for speaking freely right after Bush call for “freedom…to speak freely” — and CNN calls it “a blemish” on Hu visit

Usually watching CNN with one eye as we blog from our undisclosed location doesn’t give us much new fodder, except for the occasional “stuck landing gear” crisis. But today we are aghast at the coverage of Chinese President Hu Jintao at the White House.

At an outdoor ceremony, Bush told Hu:

China has become successful because the Chinese people are experience the freedom to buy, and to sell, and to produce — and China can grow even more successful by allowing the Chinese people the freedom to assemble, to speak freely, and to worship.

Seconds later, one of the people assembled on the White House south lawn actually tried to speak freely right here in America — about both the lack of free speech and religious freedom in China.

That free-speaking woman was promptly hauled off and arrested:

She shouted in heavily accented English, “President Bush: Stop him from killing” and, “President Bush, stop him from persecuting the Falun Gong.”

Bush, standing next to Hu, leaned over and whispered a comment to the Chinese leader, who paused briefly when the shouting began and then resumed his remarks.

The protester was waving a banner with the red and yellow colors used by Falun Gong, a banned religious movement in China. She kept shouting for several minutes before Secret Service uniformed agents were able to make their way to her position at the top of the camera stand. They dragged her off the stand.

A photographer who was standing next to the protester tried momentarily to quiet her by putting his hand in front of her mouth.

Watching the scene unfold, we felt like we were living on a different planet from the folks at CNN. Any enemy of free speech is an enemy of ours, and we have long loathed the totalitarian regime in Beijing. Like millions of other, we still see the picture of the lone man standing up to a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square as the iconic picture of our times.

Why do we get the impression that President Bush, his Secret Service — and CNN — were rooting for the tanks.

Amaryllis bloom – there are four of these, about 6″ across.

Climbing Angel Face Rose – this rose blooms right behind our spa, and the scent is as heavenly as its name implies.

Pride of Madera – blooms on the hill behind our house. Somewhere in this picture are two hummingbirds fighting over the blooms.

Unfortunately the dogs and I were chased out of the garden by another sign of spring – a swarm of bees looking for a new home. Had to alert the neighbor’s babysitter to close their garage door – there are two little boys in their family who were probably not all that happy to be forced inside, either.

And our weather is being moody again – after a beautiful week of sunshine and heat, we’re getting a preview of May Gray today. Oh well, at least it was nice for the spring break tourists.

I guess it’s just song day around here…

I’m The Decider

I am me and Rummy’s he, Iraq is free and we are all together
See the world run when Dick shoots his gun, see how I lie
I’m Lying…

Sitting on my own brain, waiting for the end of days
Corporation profits, Bloody oil money
I’m above the law and I’ll decide what’s right or wrong

I am the egg head, I’m the Commander, I’m the Decider
Koo-Koo-Kachoo

Baghdad city policeman sitting pretty little targets in a row
See how they die when the shrapnel flies see mothers cry
I’m Lying…I’m Ly-ing…I’m Lying…I’m Ly-ing

Yellow cake plutonium, imaginary WMD’s
Declassifying facts, exposing secret agents
Tax cuts for the wealthy leaving all the poor behind

CHORUS

Sitting in the White house garden talking to the Lord
My thoughts would be busy busy hatching If I only had a brain

CHORUS

(coutesy of Paul Hipp)

Via inkycircus inkycircus

Join in a chorus of the Devonian Blues then. Brought to you be the illustrious “fin artist” Ray Troll:

Thinking ’bout my mama and I’m thinking ’bout you.
Got those sarcopterygian devonian blues…

Every single girl and every single boy
Was born from the clan of the wayward dipnoi.

Don’t let the preacher man spoil all the fun
But it took a lot more than six days to get the job done.

TPM Muckraker April 19, 2006 01:31 PM (Printable Format)

The man Bush tapped to fill Karl Rove’s spot as his policy wizard is none other than Joel Kaplan, who took part in the infamous “Brooks Brothers riot” of 2000. That’s when a bunch of Washington GOP operatives, posing as outraged Floridians, waved fists, chanted “Stop the fraud!” and pounded windows in an effort to intimidate officials engaged in the Florida recount effort.

In George Bush’s Washington, there’s no shame in staging a fake protest to undermine a democratic election, apparently: last year, the Washington Post’s Al Kamen noted that “the “rioters” proudly note their participation on resumes and in interviews.” Kaplan was even the one to cheekily dub the fracas the “Brooks Brothers Riot.”

I want to live somewhere where I can grow a real garden, where the soil isn’t a foot or two of bad topsoil on scraped-off granite.

I want to live someplace where I can have a few acres where I can raise golden retrievers as service dogs and let them run around freely, where land doesn’t cost a fortune. I want to live in a house that is big enough for me to have a “playroom” (since my son says a playroom would be more appropriate for me than a studio) and for my husband and I to have a real office and library.

I want to be surrounded by people who understand concepts like “watershed protection”, “sustainable living”, “permaculture”, “green design”.

I want to live in a country where the need to have cheap oil doesn’t make some people obscenely rich and leave others working several jobs at minimum wage or less, barely making a living, where the cost of a set of cushions to replace the worn-out ones on the patio furniture doesn’t cost more than a whole new set of furniture shipped from China, where the need to have cheap oil isn’t worth starting a war and killing thousands of people.

I want to live in a country that cares enough to provide health care coverage for all its citizens.

I want to live in a country whose rulers aren’t doing everything possible to make the country bankrupt and themselves and their cronies wealthy.

I want friends in my life who care about me, for myself, not for the role I play in their life or what I can do for them. Friends who don’t care who I’ve slept with, who don’t share the latest juicy gossip with me – or about me. People who won’t stop speaking to me and cut me off completely because they don’t like what I do or say. People who can understand that having bipolar disorder doesn’t make me a bad person, doesn’t mean I don’t have the same feelings and emotions they have but just need a little bit more consideration and caring sometimes.

I want to have people in my life who don’t mind when I tell them I love them, who aren’t afraid of that. I want to be able to trust people again, instead of fearing getting hurt when they walk away from me.

I want to live with a family that doesn’t throw their crap all over any horizontal surface in the house I’ve just managed to get clean.

I want to be able to sleep at night without being in pain, without lying next to someone who is snoring away in oblivion, not even knowing or caring that I haven’t slept in two nights.

I want to have a friend I can call at 4 in the morning when there’s nobody around who understands me.

Via Cosmic Variance, I woke up to this story today. People have asked why I blog so openly about my experiences with bipolar disorder. This is the reason why. Please read the entire story about this brilliant young man, and the sad, tragic loss of his life.

Rutland Herald: Rutland Vermont News & Information

“Please don’t shoot me,” the young man reportedly said before he started running. The policeman saw Brodie jump into a marsh between the road and the river. He heard him complain the water was cold. He saw him get out, only to run toward the icy Connecticut. He heard a loud splash.

“I shined my flashlight out and could make out the shadow of John and the rippling of the water,” the policeman wrote. “I then heard John say ‘Help me, help me.’ His voice sounded very weak and in distress. I told John to come back to my voice and my flashlight. A few moments later, I did not see John at all.”

Authorities would not find Brodie’s body until five days later. Arena Israel read the short newspaper story on the drowning of a man described as “reclusive.” The Brattleboro woman recognized him as the meditator in the blue mechanic’s jacket who sat beside her at a local Buddhist center. She started making phone calls.

Brodie, she discovered, had parents in Maryland and a brother, sister-in-law and niece and nephew in California. He took the supermarket job to escape the complexities of physics, he told friends, only to find his mind spinning with questions about bagging efficiency. Israel also learned the probable cause for his late-night ride.

“John was a brilliant, creative, and deeply spiritual person who lived a rich, full, and courageous life in spite of his struggles with bipolar mental illness,” she wrote in a letter to the editor several days later.

Bipolar disease, once called manic-depression, is a brain condition that causes unusual shifts in a person’s emotions and energy. Brodie had taken medication for it when he was diagnosed while studying in Canada several years ago. But seeking an alternative to mainstream medicine, he eventually stopped.

Brodie’s obituary appeared in the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun.

“John Hartley Brodie, 36, a theoretical physicist, accidentally drowned on January 28, 2006 near Brattleboro, Vt., where he was residing,” it began.

“Boy, could John carry a great conversation. We covered anything from politics to philosophy, spirituality, world affairs and, of course, very heavy mind-bending physics and math,” friend and fellow physicist Stephon Alexander wrote in a letter read aloud. “I honestly can’t help but express anger and frustration about his not elevating to his rightful stature in his field. But I knew that John was not about that stuff, he wasn’t in it for the ego trip. He did physics because it gave him joy.”

The locals told stories about the humble soul who padded around his apartment barefoot, who telephoned a mental health advocate a week before his death seeking help for his condition.

“If Jesus Christ was walking among you today, would you recognize him?” John Wilmerding of Brattleboro said. “I think John challenges us now to grow beyond our own boundaries, to realize each other as great souls.”

But returning home, people started talking, telephoning, typing more newspaper letters. Why didn’t Brodie take his medications? Why didn’t the homeowner who heard the doorbell let it go rather than calling police? Why didn’t the patrolman deal with the situation differently?

Brodie lived to explore different questions. At the service, someone read a poem he once wrote his father:

“Tell me why the sky is so blue today
I love you as I said before and anyway
Can you see above the lumine of the sky
When we will see each other at the end of time.”

Outside the meetinghouse, the sun shone, a breeze blew. Inside, a copy of Israel’s letter to the editor sat on a table.

“For me, John is an example of a type of endangered human species,” she wrote. “May we as individuals, and as a community as a whole, come to respect and value the more courageous, vulnerable and gifted among us before it’s too late.”

I didn’t know John, obviously, but I knew those dark, lonely places he visited before his death, and the brilliant, brilliant places his mind could reach in those manic moments. I think about my sister and nephew and their much more difficult struggle with this disease than I have had. And all I can think is, “It could have been me, so easily…”

Dear john I knew you
About as well as anyone
We were the wild ones
So sure those days would never end
Now they’re only memories my friend

Dear john I’ll see you
Some day again

There’ll be a celebration
When all will be revealed
We’ll have a reunion
High on a hill

Dear john how are you
God know it’s heaven where you are
Find some peace there
May it never end

Dear john my heart knows
We’ll meet again
Dear john I’ll see you….
Some day again

– tommy shaw, Styx

Infrared Milky Way

Every night I say a prayer in the hope that there’s a heaven
And every day I’m more confused as the saints turn into sinners
All the heroes and legends I knew as a child have fallen to idols of clay
And I feel this empty place inside so afraid that I’ve lost my faith

Show me the way, show me the way
Take me tonight to the river
And wash my illusions away
Show me the way

And as I slowly drift to sleep, for a moment dreams are sacred
I close my eyes and know there’s peace in a world so filled with hatred
That I wake up each morning and turn on the news to find we’ve so far to go
And I keep on hoping for a sign, so afraid that I just won’t know

Show me the way, Show me the way
Take me tonight to the mountain
And take my confusion away

And if I see a light, should I believe
Tell me how will I know

Show me the way, show me the way
Take me tonight to the river
And wash my illusions away
Show me the way, show me the way
Give me the strength and the courage
To believe that I’ll get there someday
Show me the way

Every night I say a prayer
In the hope that there’s a heaven…

(Styx – Dennis DeYoung)

Just wait a day. Raining all day here, more on the way.

Pouring right now. I guess feather clouds mean it’s going to rain like crazy the next day. Who knew?

At least I got some wildflower seeds spread in between showers.

The afternoon really got going with the dance of feather clouds across the sky…

My neighbor Pete was out walking Benny…

My neighbor next door was out with her baby…

Lots of great flowers blooming in the garden…

A trip to the doctor’s office for a checkup after the hospital visit a couple weeks ago, and to get my hormone levels tested.

And yummy, yummy, Avgolemeno soup for dinner! (First time I’ve made it, so I’m glad it came out well…)

globeandmail.com

The votes of 40,000 Canadian citizens who qualify as “Italians abroad,” some of whom have never set foot in Italy and many of whom don’t speak Italian, played a pivotal role in the defeat of billionaire Silvio Berlusconi in Italy’s election yesterday, according to poll results released late last night.

For the first time in history, a country’s political fate appears to have been determined by citizens of other countries, after Mr. Berlusconi introduced a scheme in 2002 that defines eligible Italian voters by blood lines rather than residency.

As it became apparent yesterday that he had been defeated by this system, which provides 12 deputies and six senators to represent Italians on foreign soil, the Prime Minister and media magnate reacted with outrage.

In a sombre speech yesterday, delivered shortly after official vote counts showed tight victories in both Italian legislatures for the left-wing coalition of Romano Prodi, Mr. Berlusconi said he would not accept the results.

Heh. Can’t wait til the Republicans are defeated by their own Diebold hacks….

So, what’s sprouting in your life these days?