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...

A BIZARRE WORLD?

THERE IS THE STORY of the old Cornish couple, sitting comfortably before a warming fire in the grate.  One says, "The whole world is a little queer (aka 'strange')"
"Except me and thee."
"Come to think of it, Thee are a little odd!"

This came to mind the other day, down at Soulful Cup coffee shop, around a table with the ageing regulars.  One has just said to me, 'Robert, as an Aussie, do you not think at times that America is somewhat bizarre.'

Not always prudent in utterance, I carefully replied,
'Every country I have visited is a little bizarre in it own way.'

I am writing this on Easter Sunday evening.  Consider that Australia, possibly the least religious country in the world, is careful to observe Christmas Day, Good Friday, and Easter Monday as public holidays (used to be called 'holy days').  Now consider the United States, likely 100 times more religious, where none of these three are holidays!

And how about politics?  In Oz (aka 'Australia'),  everyone must vote and they do it on a Saturday.  In the US, everyone has a choice whether to vote or not, but they can only do so on a Tuesday.  In Oz, just now, the Prime Minister (the Leader of the Party that won the last election and thus controls at least the Lower House) is threatening to call a 'Double Dissolution'.  The reason for this is that it looks like the Upper House (the Senate), under the control of the Loyal Opposition and a few Independent Members, may refuse to pass two important Bills.  If they do this, the PM can ask the Governor General (representing the Queen), to dissolve both Houses and all Members and Senators will then have to stand for election.  He hopes that he will win control of both Houses and then pass these vital Bills.  It does not happen very often and usually when the Senate twice returns the annual Supply Bill back to the Lower House, not approved.

This may seem very odd to Americans but it could be that the President of the United States might like to have this kind of card up his sleeve.  Just get rid of those pesky opponents who persistently refuse to 'play the game' by sending them back to the hustings!

Sometimes I feel a little like I imagine Bill Bryson (one of my favorite authors) did when, having returned to the US after living in the UK for quite a while, and finding himself in a small New England town writing a weekly column for a local newspaper about odd things that came up.  Eventually these became a book, 'I'm a stranger here myself.'   You know the situation...you are walking down a street in some town you have never been in before.  A car pulls up and a passenger lowers the window to ask, 'Can you tell how to get to...?'.

Oddest of all was the article I read just this morning in the Australia Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC, very like the BBC) online news.  It seems that the National Capital, Canberra, has become the coffee capital of the world!   A local barista had taken out, for the second time, the world title in, of all places, Seattle WA.  I thought Seattle is the coffee capital of the Universe.  So there you go, a 'little Aussie battler' from Down Under has come out On Top!

Seriously, Canberrans are true coffee cognoscenti and I can attest the excellence of local coffee.  I have to say this as my younger daughter lives in Canberra and we do drink coffee together a lot when I visit.

Yes, this world can be a little bizarre!

HUMAN DESTINY: or Learn to Think BIG!

IT COULD BE that human kind may be the sole avenue the Universe has to consciousness.

According to two scientists at the Australian National University, Aditya Chopra and Charles H. Lineweaver, we should consider the fragility of life throughout the Universe.

In this article, they address Fermi's Paradox, which draws attention to the increasing number of planets that astronomers are discovering where one might expect life to arise.  Paradoxically, there appears to be virtually no evidence that life has thrived anywhere else but here on Earth.  This article has attracted a lot of attention in this past week.

At such great distances, truly astronomical, how is it possible to determine whether life is present on planet?  One way is to use spectroscopy to analyze the planet's atmosphere.  Where humans now live, over billions of years, early life transformed the atmosphere, increasing levels of oxygen and nitrogen while decreasing the proportion of carbon dioxide.  If these constituent proportions show up as more like what we believe the original atmosphere of Earth to have been, we might conclude that life as we know it is not present.  Chopra and Lineweaver suggest that life might very well have begun on many planets but was not able to get sufficient hold to be able to 'terraform' the surface.  Thus conditions may have been adverse to life after only a brief appearance. 

While we still do not understand exactly how life began, most cosmologists and astro-biologists believe that early planetary conditions, such as after the cessation of sustained bombardment by meteorites about 4 billion years ago (4Bya), cooling and constant rain produced conditions favorable to life processes appearing.  Increasing complexity of life forms over the next 3.8 By finally led to intelligent life forms, of which humans are the superior example.  We have a long way to go to become sufficiently intelligent, in my view.

Though still mysterious to us, consciousness at some level seems to be shared by vertebrates with sufficiently complex nervous systems.  To get to this point has required a lot of time and considerable 'luck'.  If Chopra and Lineweaver are almost right, then it is likely that humans, with our ever-increasing knowledge of how the Universe works, as far as the proverbial eye can see, may be the only consciousness the Universe has of itself.

In their book, The View From the Center of the Universe: Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos, Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams make the point that we humans a currently nicely placed to think about this role.

I suppose that, by obdurate striving or out of just plain ignorance, we might ignore this invitation.  Far easier to keep on with our tragic and silly wars, disregard of human worth, or whatever else might be proposed should occupy our interest.  How could anyone suggest seriously that this might be our destiny, to lead the Universe into an understanding of Itself?

My reading of cosmology leads me to consider that, if not struck out by a vast natural disaster like the collision with a very large meteor some 65 Mya,  or by devising our own destruction, or by determination to think as small as possible, we could arrive at a sustainable occupation of this planet, our Earth, our Mother, for at least a billion years more.  What might become of us should our prowess and sagacity continue to grow over such an expanse of time?

NEVER DID...GET TO WRITE MORE ABOUT CANBERRA

Actually, after my return to Corning...

I FELL INTO SOMEWHAT OF A SLUMP!!!
A despondence being perhaps the nicer term

Slumps can be hard to figure out, as one can be in a slump for a while without perceiving that 'in a slump' is where you are.

Slumps can be hard to figure out due to that they are at the convergence of several factors. Or the  the slide into the 'slough of despond'  (taken from Pilgrim's Progress), is so gradual as to be almost imperceptible.  Anyway, there I was for several months.

I put it down, in part, to seasonal mismatch.  I did this to myself once before...going to Australia at the end of  Winter (here) to the early Autumn (there).  Winter really hung on here and was very cold. To give all due credit. Spring 'Down Under' was wonderful.  Lots of fine days with only one day of rain.  The problem seems to be that the days (there) are getting shorter when my constitution, at Winter's end, is expecting them to get longer.  Once back here, it was lots of rain and Spring still struggling to get going.  Perhaps a case of 'Not enough production of that happiness messenger molecule, Serotonin'.

But then too there was the signs that my dearest friend's breast cancer might have reappeared.  Uma had begun to experience pain in the hip.  It was thought that this may have been a feature of ageing. However, since this type of cancer is most likely to metastasize to the bone of the pelvic region, dark clouds of dread began to gather. And so it has proven to be.  So we are into a new round chemotherapy and tomorrow is the day when a PET scan tomorrow morning will determine whether the new treatment regime has been effective.

I suppose that I will write more about this sometime, but not yet.  Being the support for a person so situated is a difficult role and one hard to learn.  Along the way I have learned a lot about cancer; fortunately, reading journal articles is something I have done most of my life, so it has been not so difficult to turn over many in this area.  Always one is searching for the next stepping stone.  Most important of all is to surround the one you love with the best and strongest affection.

So I suppose these two streams, converging, have swept me to a place I would prefer not to be.  I am amazed at how the threads of life can so quickly come to disarray here and there.  However, I am glad to report that they are coming together and am accepting of the reality that they will do so in their own good time, so long as I keep pegging away, usually in no particular order.

Uma being no longer to rider her scooter, I have taken it over.  I thought this picture might brighten this narrative for you.

It is a 2008 Yamaha and very swish.  Just 50 cc, liquid cooled, and fuel injection.  Does 100 mpg but is strictly an 'around town' vehicle,  I had it inspected (for registration) at the local Harley Davidson shop.  They asked me how fast it would go.  They though it very funny when I told them this depended on wind direction and slope of the road!

It had been sitting around doing nothing much and seems to like being around and about.  It gets lots of attention, I can attest!

Now at the end of November. the days are really drawing in. Some are fine and relatively warm in the middle (40 to 50 deg F today), and the mornings, especially after a clear night sky, quite' brisk'




This is what my outside (outsize) thermometer showed this morning!  It got down to 10 deg F.

I think I am picking up.  It has been good to write this little piece.  I find myself looking forward to the snow, a little of which we have already seen.

Thanksgiving was fun.  The church I attend from time to time does a TG dinner for any who have no place to go.  About 100 attend.  This year I served the squash.  Late afternoon, I joined Uma and Tara (her daughter) for drinks and something TGish to eat.  A pleasant day indeed.

78 AND IN CANBERRA

Canberra is the National Capitol of Australia.  I am sitting in the reading room of the splendid National Library.  Today is my true birthday and not a day later were I in the US.

Already this has been a special day for me, my second day staying with my second daughter (my youngest child), Elizabeth, and her family.  I have just come from morning coffer with her, in the cafe at the original Federal  Parliament House, a low-slung, white painted, and stately building and now the National Museum.  A little eerie, conversing with her about her soon-to-be-written essay in her study program on librarianship, as if surrounded by a cloud of long gone politicians!
The new Parliament Building is much more splendorous and cost a great deal more.  I plan to tour it with Elizabeth next week.

The day is fine, somewhat cloudy and, despite the nearness of Winter, comfortably warm (about 60 deg F or 12 deg C).  So here I am, starting out on a new posting for my blog (LifeAccording...this time).  When my net book battery wanes, I will 'do' the newspaper room and then the latest exhibition (the Prayer Books of the House of Rothschild)  After that, a walk beside Lake Burley Griffin and then lunch.  How very pleasant!

Burley Griffin was the architect who won the world competition for the design of this city.  What an excellent job he did of it!  During the struggles leading up to Federation in 1901, the national capital was at times in Sydney and at other times in Melbourne, the capitals of the two earliest and more prominent States (New South Wales and Victoria).  Finally, after very nearly the two states coming to blows, the site of the capital was settled between the two, a little out of the way.

In the 19th Century, the states (formed independently of each other) had little to do with each other, the distance between settlements being quite vast compared with the New England towns in the US.  To go from my home city, Adelaide, to Sydney necessitated a risky sea voyage of more than a week or two.  I did this, together with four other crew, in a 33 foot sailing boat in the early 1980s, taking 11 days of continuous sailing, including one very impressive storm, lasting two days.  The southern coastline, being the Southern Ocean and at the edge of the Roaring Forties (winds), is littered with very many shipwrecks.
I very likely will write more about my time here over the next week or so.

Until then, au revoir!

ABSURDITY AT O'HARE

THEATRE OF THE ABSURD?
Blame it on the French.   Seems this approach to typifying life began with them.  On stage every thing is more than a little weird (clocks run backward and other strange effects come and go).  It all looks and sounds as of a species of insanity.

Sometimes this sense of the absurd  forces into the 'normal', when it really does assume a sense of the insane.  Perhaps to doubt the 'normal' is upsetting...'Am I loosing my mind?'

Here I am in Chicago Airport, waiting for a plane to take me to las Vegas so that once there and half a night to run, another will take me to San Francisco.  Does seem a little odd but, at times, airlines must suspend the simple approach in order to get everyone where they want to go, more of less.
After a day or so, I will board a flight to get to Sydney.  Three days later, I will catch another flight to get to Adelaide.  A week later, another flight will take me to Canberra.  Bliss, oh bliss, I shall catch a train to return to Sydney...how normal that will be.  Then it will all run backwards and, a month away, I will be back in Corning.
As Bill Clinton once confessed, I am doing this because I can.  Does seem a profligate use of energy, not to mention many other resources.  Is it not amazing that i can do such a thing?  The rationale?  I get to see family and friends I have not seen for more than two years.  Hey...I am coming up to 78 years. who is to say that I will be able to do such in a year or two more?
According to its magazine, this one airline completes almost 6000 flights a day, to places all around the globe. Perhaps as many as six million people are in the air at any one time!

Wait for it...When I was a young fellow, this was not 'the normal'.  Very few traveled internationally,  Most who did went by sea (six weeks from Australia to England); only the very rich flew (big old flying boats, seats on which cost a mint).  For most, the best chance to travel was to go off to war.  The odd friend to two who sailed away would only do this once, on their return they would settle down, get married, have children, resuming the mundane.

Amazingly, since 1985, I must have flown across the Pacific thirty or so times, not to mention other trips. So, is this not absolute absurd?

In my grandfather's time, a person who emigrated rarely returned to the land of their birth.  One said a final goodbye, shedding copious tears, then necessarily content to send and received letters to maintain contact with family and friends 'back home'

The absurdity to descends on me, sitting here in the airport, has a greater dimension; I wonder how to express it.

At base, flying is a wonderful thing.  I should know, a thousand hours or so in gliders and small planes...I have been so fortunate and had experiences, some a little hair raising, that beggar description.  There is a core of self-indulgence in this, but I would have it no other way.

But this business of huge airports, hordes crammed into tens of thousands of flying cylinders, the security rigmaroles, the noise, the inconvenience,  the sheer in humanity of it...is certainly absurd.
Not the only absurdity by any means.  We could continue onto motor cars...

How much more pleasant in the very fast train (of course (a long air trip if one lives in the US, or Australia). One buys the ticket, the train glides in on time, we find our seats, the train departs smoothly and noiselessly.  Outside, the beautiful country side, or occasional picturesque town, flashes by.
Or even the noisy, smelly, steam trains of my childhood.  Such panache, such wonder, such excitement, such wondrous noise!!!

Five overnight hours await me in Las Vegas; how about that for an absurd place?
With the wonders of the Internet, I sense the day may come when I will forgo all this and be content to see and hear loved ones.

But I will still travel...it forms the mind.

As the French have it, Les voyages forment la jeuness.

My take on this, travels keep one young.

PLASTIC AND WHAT TO DO WITH IT?

IN THE MOVIE, THE GRADUATE, the young hero, at this graduation party, is drawn aside and given advice what would be a good future....
"Plastic," he learns, "the future is plastic."
At least for the residents of the oceans, this seems to be the case.
According to EcoWatch, a joint US-Australian study estimates that 8 to 12 million tons of plastic waste enter the oceans each year.  I suppose that, over two decades,  this adds to maybe 240 million tons, forming vast gyres.

Much of this is plastic bags like the ones I see blowing around the supermarket parking area,sometimes retrieve, and put in the rubbish bins.
Here in the US, 13% of the 4.5 pounds of trash we throw away each day consists of plastic. A good deal of this ends up buried in municipal tips.
Most of the stuff in the oceans comes from China and other Asian countries, according to the study.

Although plastic bags and the like could as well be made from plant material, petroleum and natural gas are the basic constituents of the plastics we encounter.  That is a lot of fossil material...according to the US Energy Information Administration, it is about 4.4% of fossil fuel produced.  Wow!!!

The plastic gets thrown away, washes into drains when it rains, enters the rivers and, eventually, the ocean.  There some gets into fish, usually killing them.  As the plastic breaks down into molecular sized bits, it enters plankton and rises through the food chain.  At this point, lots of fish are caught by us and we eat them, thus recycling plastic in ways we never dream of.

One wonders what could be done about this.  One might be tempted to think that, if just this is perhaps the one thing that, if fixed, would make a great difference...well worth attempting.

'Dream on, Robert', do I hear you say?

A Popular Science article (The Garbage Man) tells the amazing story of Mike Biddle who unearthed how recover plastic constituents from waste plastic so that these can be recycled as new plastic material for 10% of the cost of making the stuff from fossil fuel stock. He still has a research plant here in the US but had to give up recycling due to not being able to get enough raw waste materials.  Seems we only recycle 13% of plastic over here.  Now he has operations in China, the UK, and Austria.

What blows my mind is the possibility that plastic material can be recycled at a 90% saving in manufacturing costs while, at the same time, providing a powerful economic incentive to get on with crude recycling operations that would prevent plastic ever getting into the oceans.  AMAZING!!!

Here is George Biddle where he loves to be,