VALE CASSINI

WHAT A GOOD CHILD YOU HAVE BEEN

So many pictures, so much knowledge, so many surprises, such an achievement...

Who would have thought we would ever see Saturn so closely, and from so many viewpoints?

What will all those good folk who dreamt you into reality, watched over you, marveled at your development., made you the center of their lives, so now?

Indeed, what will we, the rest of us, do now?

And to think that you did all this with computing power many times less that which runs our smart phones.

Technolgy over 30 years ancient!

Tomorrow morning I will watch, along with countless millions, your last hours and salute the amazing, stupendous achievement of our humanity that you demonstrate.

What moves me most of all is that this was accomplished through the collaboration, ingenuity, creativity, and dogged persistence of scientists, engineers, and many other metiers of almost 30 nations.  None of these, so it seems, participated out of patriotism, to aggrandize their own particular countries, but out of curiosity and the desire to know.  Is this what makes humans human, I wonder?

Is not this better than war?

Could this be a path to greatness for us all?

And is it not sobering to think that we might well know more about Saturn, it rings, its moons than about the great expanse of our seas, their underlying landscapes, and the creatures that live therein?
We have come to learn so much in the last century or so.  When my mother was born (in 1901) we had no idea that the Universe was more extensive than the Milky Way, or just before my elder brother was born, that there were many galaxies beyond our own.  Between his birth and mine, much of our understanding of the quantum level laboriously unraveled. And so on....

Might not the amazing advances on all knowledge fronts be a clue to understanding the essence of being human and that our ability to collaborate in such ways portent that we may be nearing the end of our adolescence, and be about to grow up?

Yet the pursuit of knowledge, which the scientific method has so aided, of itself, cannot yield the secret, or understanding of what it is to be human. Perhaps it is our reflection on what may be the implications of our discoveries, and what we have done, or not done,  that can take us to that level.

We have a little way yet ahead, miles to go and promises to keep.

Meanwhile, many thanks to the Cassini Team.

NEW DIRECTIONS?

MY, MY...OVER TWO MONTHS, since my last posting!

As you can see, I have not died.

When I wrote that last posting, I really had no idea of what might be ahead of me.  On the other hand, can one ever know what is ahead!  Is that light at the end of the tunnel daylight gleaming the end of darkness, or is it the headlamp of the train that has just entered the tunnel?

Do not be concerned, I do not intend to bore you with the litany of recent troubles, except to report that getting rid of two one centimetre ball-bearing-like stones from within one's bladder can be a very good move.  Life has been a little chaotic due to some remodelling work, mainly to do with converting the lower floor of my home into an apartment, now all done and leaving me to restore some order and get on with things I want to do.

I started the '...accordingtoRoberto' blogs about a decade ago in response to some friends suggesting that I write about my various adventures.  But which adventures?  Looking back on postings (is this why folk write blogs, a form of keeping a diary?), I see that I have written about many things.  Not all would appear to be adventures and what seemed like adventures to me might have seemed mundane to many of you.  I have one reader who, with her partner, goes all about the globe looking after other people's houses.  That seems pretty exciting.  Another is required by her sister to travel to
France to look after her house and her dogs from time to time.  Oh dear, someone has to do that sort of thing!

Is riding a bicycle and pulling a suitcase transmogrified into a trailer from Quebec to Montreal the sort of adventure you readers might want to know about? Or working on an organic farm in the Pyrenees for a couple of weeks (WWOOF, WWOOF*)?  Or going to Costa Rica for dental work?  Or remodeling a house?  There were some things that seemed like adventures to me that I refrained reporting, like some 200 books I read in the first two years that I came to live here, happily surfing topics as many and diverse as my heart desired. Or like going on hut-to-hut cross country skiing across the border in Canada for a week? Or even the miracle of composting?

Perhaps the most exciting adventures have been in theology, an original and persistent interest (some of you will know that my first career was in the Christian ministry), evolutionary biology, and cosmology. Long term followers of my blogs will also recall the brief existence of the series, 'beliefaccordingtoRoberto', which is still up if you want to look at it.  These are areas that I did not count as general interest although I may yet touch on them. Not so much fun was trying to understand how cancer begins, progresses, and results in death.

What might I write of in the future I wonder, and ought I seek to tell you only of things that I think you might find interesting?

The truth seems to be that I find myself in a very curious place.  My life appears to lack, for the first time, 'intention'.  This is hard to write about...and perhaps I mean to say that it lacks the property of 'in order to...'?  This last year has brought some close touches with dying and death.  Yet I am unconcerned about my dying.  What concerns me is that now, at the age of 80 years, I very likely still have quite a deal of time left to me (barring the unpredictable, of course), since I may carry the genes of longevity (my mother lived to 102, and my two half brothers, one on my mother's side and the other on my father's, are now into their 90s.  What I fear, like many my age, is the onset of dementia, and an inability to care for myself.  I know what can offset these: eat properly, be active, stretch one's mind, maintain social ties, and so on.  Above all, I desire a life that is interesting and interested.

Perhaps my pursuit of these essential goals may be interesting to you?

Here is what is currently to hand: via CoursEra, six weeks online study of epigenetics at Melbourne University, travel to India and Nepal in October, some hut-to-hut skiing in Maine, relearning some cross country skiing skills in Colorado, and more exploration of Costa Rica.  I think that there may be some matters of interest here and there worth reporting.  Please do let me know and, as we have noted from time to time:

Watch this space!

*WWOOF:  Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms

JOURNAL ON JOURNEYS

I HAVE BEEN TRAVELING...
And not quite back home yet.  When I do get home, early next week, I think distance travelled may  almost equal around the globe!

In a sense, I have been time travelling as well, reaching the absurd age of 80 while in Australia.  In my home town (Adelaide, in South Australia), I visited some of the old spots, where I was as a boy, noticing that nothing stays the same.

The best of this trip occurred in Canberra, Australia's Federal Capitol, where, over the weekend just prior to the BIG EVENT (May 29) I enjoyed the company of my three children and my six grandchildren, like as not a once-in-a-lifetime event for each of us.  It would be truly amazing were the like of this to happen again.  My eldest daughter and her daughter live in Colorado, my son and his three live in Sydney, and my younger daughter and her two live in Canberra, while I live in Corning, New York State!  Thus, a special event in all respects.  In addition, I was able to visit with my sister (in Adelaide), and one of my two brothers (in Sydney).  For what more might a fellow wish, entering the ninth decade of life?  The pic is from the second picnic

And a Kangaroo looked on...

Other special events marked this journey.  In Denver, I attended the graduation of Uma's younger daughter from the prestigious Law School there, something that she longed to see (so, in a sense, I felt somewhat in her place), and catching up with several of her family, including her brother Ravi, with whom I plan to travel in India and Nepal later this year.  Here in San Francisco I took my goodbye with a longtime friend who had elected to die under California law. Now I am back in time to join with her family in the celebration of her life at week's end.

So, you see, much by way of significant events marked the way.

As I think of my life, I muse, "Who could have predicted all the twists and turns of the path that has led over the years to the NOW?" Not that I am unique in this since it is so for everyone!

 Particularly for an uncle of mine whom I discovered only in this past year.  Like me, he too was born and grew up in Adelaide, but toward the end of the Nineteenth Century.  He was the second child of my grandmother's first marriage.  Her husband was a mounted police trooper.  When Walter was only three months old, his father died when his horse fell and rolled on him.  A decade later, my grandmother was courted by my grandfather and things did not go well for young Walter, the upshot of which was that he took off by ship to begin life anew in Western Australia.  Toward the end of the century, the great gold rush in that part of the world caused the population of the state to double within a decade!

So, just eleven years of age and alone, he began his journey into manhood.  Who could have guessed that, at age 24, he would be about to embark, as an immigrant arrived at Ellis Island, on the great adventure of life in the United States and be buried in Vancouver, British Columbia?  His focus was on going to Columbia to study there at the University of Missouri.  A year later, the local newspaper described his journey of 20,000 miles to achieve this goal.  What are the chances of such an amazing exploit happening.

In Canberra, at the National Library, I was able to read the memoirs he wrote about this formative epoch in his life.  He was an excellent raconteur; sot well he writes that it is almost impossible to put his work down! Since learning of him, I have been embarked on discovering as much as I can about him.  Fortunately, others have been very interested in him and their work has provided many clues to his very adventurous life.  No one, however, has attempted to tell the whole story.

This is the adventure upon which I have embarked.  My plan is to complete the necessary research and to have a first draft done during this first year of my ninth decade.  Of course, there are other interesting things to do but Uncle Walter will be a main focus for the time being.  If I gain the confidence, I will mount the various chapters in The Cloud as they evolve.  Let me know if you are interested to follow his story, which I will tell as through his eyes, but informed by my own experience of clinical psychology and work with dysfunctional families.

Here in Walnut Creek the weather is warm and balmy.  I find myself recovering from the rigors of the journey so far (not a few beds, all differently comfortable, long periods in airplane seats, and the like).  It is very pleasant to be nearing where I feel to be my home.  Another week and I shall be back in Corning.  I shall be glad indeed to be once more amongst my good local friends and to take coffee at Soulful Cup.

ON GRIEVING II...Two Months On

FORGIVE ME IF I SEEM TO BE GOING ON WITH THIS A BIT MUCH...
On the other hand, this blog did start because some of you wanted to follow my adventures.

I am discovering that 'getting on with it' is not so easy as one might think, nor do previous grievings assist one through the next.  Each, it seems, is its own beast; all the more so should the experience of the one now missed have been intense and intimate.  On some days a small event can precipitate, without warning, a vague sense of something missing, a loss of direction, an extended difficulty of finding and maintaining focus, when there seems to be too much to do, when one feels as if wading through thick mud.  And so one falls, not into despair, but into a determination to get just some things done, and it does not matter which.

How good it is to get out of the house, to go downtown to the familiar coffee house to meet one's friends, or to go to the 'Y' to work out and catch up with other friends.  Or just to take a walk.

If you have to do this grieving business, I suggest you try a different season than one might term 'WinterBecomingSpring' (Germans must have a special compound word for that), particularly if the  Spring bit is delayed, hesitant, or just not straight forward.  It really helps if the lengthening days are filled with sunshine, and not at all if there are days of rain followed by (oh no) more days of rain.  On the other hand, just trudging along, getting more done each day, may well be the thing to do.

Actually, this is how grief happens to be, so I have decided to get with the program and see how it turns out.  Not even psychologists can 'push the business on', it would appear!  This seems to be working.  Apart from the constant support of friends, and the happenstance of good wishes from acquaintances met accidentally, some really good things have helped me along.

For instance, I have had three 'Couch Surfer' guests, each of whom has been very interesting. One from Northern Quebec Province, a glass blower doing a week's training at the Museum of Glass (hereafter 'MOG'), for a week.  Another was a Conservator from the Hermitage Museum St Petersburg Russia, consulting with MOG staff about her professional interests. And last weekend, someone from Philadelphia on a road trip and wanting to revisit the MOG.  All three most interesting women.

Being a Couch Surfer Host is a great boon and it may be that I am the only one in or near to Corning.  I suggest you 'google' Corning Museum of Glass.  It is internationally famous and  folk from many nations visit, as well of folk from all over North America.  Lucky me!

Oh...last week, I graduated from the Cardiac Rehabilitation Program.  It is amazing how I have come back from that rather unremarkable cardiac event at the beginning of Thanksgiving Week.  One relevant fact: following the insertion of the stent, my resting pulse rate was 75 bpm; now it is in the low 50's.

And that is not all.  Next weekend I begin my trip back to Oz, via Colorado, where I will visit with my daughter and granddaughter, and attend the graduation of Suju (Uma's younger daughter) with Tara, her older sister, and her Uncle Ravi.  By the end of June, I will have visited my three children, seen each of my six grandchildren, and caught up with my sister, brother, and other members of my family, plus several friends of yore.

While I am away, Daniel, my friend and contractor, will have completed converting the lower level of my house into a separate apartment so that I can have more visitors from afar.  So the future continues to unravel!  By then the weather should be perfect for lots of cycling and the next Decade will begin.

As I began...WATCH THIS SPACE!

ON GRIEVING...

ACCORDING TO HINDU BELIEF, 40 days after a person's dying is the time that the soul is released from the body to continue its journey.  At the end of this period, members of the family are freed also, to take up life once more and to move on from their sorrow.  Uma grew up in this belief and later adopted Buddhist ways. A period of 40 days is quite significant in Eastern cultures, including stories from the Bible.  In Islam too it is the end of the period of mourning.

Earlier this week, Uma's brother, Ravi (next one up in the family, she was his 'little sister'), reminded me that Sunday last was the 40th day since her passing.  I was just back from three weeks in Colorado, with my daughter and granddaughter

This was very helpful and  interesting to me, as over the weekend I had begun to feel lightened in mood and found that I was more free to think of what might lie ahead for me.

Maybe this is the time to post something about my grieving.  I am sure that I will continue to miss Uma and discover moments of sadness regarding her long struggle with cancer.  However, you may be heartened to discover that I do feel freed up from grieving.

In truth, I began to grieve for Uma some three years back, two days after she told me of her diagnosis of cancer.  It was fierce grief that struck me unexpectedly many times over that weekend.  This was quite shocking to me as I regard myself as having a sanguine disposition.  The saying goes that 'ignorance is bliss'.  However, those of you who know me well will understand that I am prone to set to researching whatever serious thing that turns up in my life.  So here it was, a diagnosis of Stage III C Breast Cancer, and triple negative, basal type (TNBC) at that!

This was news of the most sobering sort.  I discovered that this was ill fortune of the worst sort.  If caught very early in Stage I, TNBC is quite responsive to therapy.  However, it is a most aggressive cancer and quickly progresses.  At later Stage III, it has already infested the lymph system and there is every likelihood that there are freely circulating cancerous cells, having separated from the original tumor.  Uma chose to have surgery, radiation and then chemo-therapy.  I will not go into the detail of this except to say that it was not successful in preventing cancer taking possession of various skeletal sites.

Eighty percent of progressed beast tumors can treated with some success.  However, ninety percent of deaths from cancer occur once metastases begin.  It is even worse with TNBC, for which there are no 'targeted' therapies.  Death within a year is certain in all but a few cases.

So there I was, a 'fix it if yon can' sort of fellow, knowing that Uma's 'cancer journey' could have only one outcome and the most I could do was to love, care for, and support her.  Partly, I grieved that this was all that I could do.  Mostly I grieved for the life that was being taken away from her.  She was much better at this than I and, toward the end, seemed more concerned for me than about her approaching death.

Cancer is a fierce and relentless foe.  I am not sure that the treatment is not worse.  As I said in my previous post, there comes a time when hope dissolves and one wishes for the end.

Mostly I have simply missed Uma.  For the first few days that I was away in Colorado, I found myself wanting to call her to tell her what I was about. In truth I do not think that I could bear to hear her voice on the answering service.

To manage my grieving, I have been writing 'letters to Uma'.  I wrote one last one since talking with Ravi.  I notice that I am now organizing myself to move on.  So, those of you 'out there' who may be concerned about me, have no fear for me.  I seem to be doing 'OK'

A DIFFICULT YEAR...

I SEE that it almost a year since I last posted.

PRETTY AMAZING, when you consider what a talker I am!

ON THE POSITIVE SIDE:  Here in NYS, seniors are encouraged to audit courses at University and Community Colleges, the cost of tuition being forgiven.  Last semester, my friend (Daniel) and I enrolled in two courses at the local College,  Introduction to Philosophy and also Cell Biology.  The former was a good refresher and the lecturer was brilliant (I did four years of philosophy in my first undergraduate degree but that was many years ago!).  The latter, a second year course, was quite a stretch but totally rewarding for the work I had to put into it.  Biology has greatly changed since when I did it (many years ago), especially in the last decade, and is now very molecular.  All very good for the brain.  Quite wonderful to discover the inner workings of living cells, down to the molecular level.

THEN THERE WERE THE ELECTIONS.  Six months after my last note, in which I discussed the interesting differences between election time in Oz and here in the US, we were at the Polls, having to choose between the two most unpopular candidates for a long time.  Now we have 'The Donald', whose 'First Hundred Days' may be proving a prelude to most likely 'interesting times'.  It is difficult to take politicians seriously after the wars of abuse and so little to hear about just what the candidates really intended to do.  The winner, real estate mogul and star of so called 'reality TV', seems to be coming up against a strong dose of Washington DC reality and there is even talk of how we might get to say 'You're fired!'.

AS IF THIS WAS NOT BAD ENOUGH, Thanksgiving Week began with a weekend of a blast of cold air.  Caught in a swirl of frigid air and leaf dustings as I crossed my back alley to talk with my neighbor, I experienced a brief bronco-spasm.  Then, on Monday morning, I had a similar experience walking to coffee with my regular mates.  Going home from the coffee shop, I felt a slight ache in my left shoulder that became a tingling in my left palm.  Arriving a home, these sensations had departed but I did feel somewhat lightheaded.  Of course I 'googled' these signs, only to discover that they might well be signalling a heart attack.  A call to to the doctors' office resulted in an instruction to go to the ER...which I obeyed forthwith!  Once there, only 15 minutes away, everything seemed relatively normal with no confirmation of an earlier angina.  However, two hours later the second blood take revealed those dreaded enzymes indicating that I was in fact suffering a heart attack right there in the ER.  What better place could there be for that to happen!

The next morning, after all the usual workups, I had a stent placed well down in a branch of my right coronary artery.  Luckily, my heart incurred only slight damage.  I have been busy in the cardiac rehabilitation program since, making good progress.  And very glad I am that I had the good sense to pay attention to only the slightest of signs of impending trouble.  Frankly, it does have a salutary effect of one's appreciation of life.  At church the next Sunday, I was especially appreciative of the blessing of health, as you might easily imagine.  A wonderful thing about that week is that a quirk of circumstances made it possible for my daughter Bronwyn, and granddaughter, Stephanie, to visit with me on Thanksgiving and a further day or so.  As they say, it is an ill wind that blows no good.

SPEAKING OF ILL WINDS, the one that had been blowing all this last year was that my beloved friend, my belle amie, Uma, who was diagnosed with breast cancer three years ago, received the news that the cancer had returned as metastases in her hip.  Thus began a long year of various treatments and surgeries, all of which resulting in her becoming progressively debilitated.  I am sad indeed that she succumbed to the cancer just four weeks ago.  She had been a very wonderful part of my life for a decade (the Decade of Uma).  I will have some things to say about cancer in a later post.  I will miss her undoubtedly.  However, we talked a good deal about her inevitable death (metastatic triple negative breast cancer has no effective treatment as yet), yet she was as much concerned about me as I for her.  Her question to me, over our last coffee on the last fine day of last year, 'Robert, what are you going to do when I am gone?', is a driving force for me.  On her account, I am, in more ways than one, in good heart and pressing on.

Here is a picture of Uma in better times, before cancer possessed her.  She will always be very dear to me:

Two weeks back, we put on The Party at 74 Sterling Street, to celebrate the Decade of Uma.  It was quite 'a bash', the house bursting with friends.  How blessed indeed it is to love and be loved!
  on
This is my first experience of someone very dear to me, in the sense of an intense relationship.  I tended my father in his dying, which extended over several months, most of which time he was in a coma. He was 70 when he passed away. My mother died at a good old age, almost 103, in Australia.  I was fortunate to be with her a month before her passing.  My best friend, Barry, whom I had know since my theological college days, died at age 55, soon after I had arrived in the US, his heart transplant having failed.  I have had numerous experiences of the dying of others as a pastor for some eleven years, some very good friends.  However, this three year so called 'cancer journey' was full of heartbreak, accompanying a dearly loved one along the road to death. Eventually, their suffering brings on the wish for their dying.  This seems a hard thing to admit, unless one has been along that road. Against all odds, one keeps alive here and there a shred or two of hope but the approaching end is eventually powerfully persuasive.

All of which has me treasure the life that I have had,  which continues, and which brings to focus that one can make the most of what is fleeting indeed.  As I have remarked, it is an ill wind...