Apr 11, 2005 by Naomi.

Innate intelligence is not the guiding factor in many ordinary situations. Care and attention can prevent some problems with frustrating results. I think of a woman at her knitting. She is meticulous and so intense in her focus on each stitch that she doesn’t notice the source of her yarn.

You have to understand how a skien of yarn is put together to fully comprehend a possible problem. A skein of yarn is wound in an alternating twist around an end left visible to the worker. When that end is pulled and used as the source of the work it continues to feed out, unwinding from the inside.

There is also the cut end of the skein visible from the outside usually hidden
under a paper sleeve that identifies the type, color and manufacturer.
But when the sleeve falls, or is taken off, the end becomes a free agent
of sorts and normal movement of the skein might leave it dangling in the
loops that are being pulled in the knitting process from the other end.
As a result it is also pulled through the skein twisting as it feeds through
the interior of the skein.

Whoops! The yarn is being pulled and unwound from the outside along with the intended string from the inside. So now the knitter has two strings fed into her work. This does not immediately bother the knitter. She simply uses the correct string and pushes back the other one, twisting it continuously. When the work is finished the skein is hopelessly twisted and tangled in need of much patient attention to restore it to use for another project.

What is obvious here is that a simple oversight can cause extra work and frustration later on. Much the same as a hasty word or action can escalate into an unhappy consequence in a relationship or humiliation in a social setting.

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Apr 11, 2005 by Naomi.

The wisdom of establishing a solid foundation when building a house
is a given these days because it is a sensible investment to guard against
earthquakes and mudslides. But do we ever think of the legacy of our ancestors
as foundations of the basis for modern discoveries? That hardly ever enters
our minds. Yet none of the major - or minor - discoveries could have taken
place without the observations, imaginations, creativity, and actions
of those gone before.

Think of the discovery of the double helix. The Nobel laureates are
the first to reveal that they look at previous studies and make use of
the latest technologies to come up with the final understanding of that
wonderfully symmetrical twisting ladder that illustrates the building
blocks of life.

Some ideas, like the glacial ice flows configuring the Columbia basin,
were full blown theories completely rejected by contemporaries until geological
tools and carefully detailed studies followed to verify the concept.

Other earth shaking ideas like evolution came up simultaneously in unlikely
locations around the world but when brought forth in symposiums actually
solidified the theory.

In any scientific venture, observation of nature is the key - the basis
of all science - instilled in the human psyche because we began in nature,
observing nature, searching for the truths of “How did we come to be here?”

Some science had to wait for machines that could view and measure data
before going on to “construct” a building. But when that microscope or
spectrometry was developed, the data accrued made sense and opened new
vistas of discovery.

And all science, all knowledge builds on past discoveries and inventions,
not only to develop theories and add information but to improve the storage
and transmission for future use.

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Apr 11, 2005 by Naomi.

When Ayn Rand wrote her book about Atlas discussing our economic system, the greediest among us was convinced that survival was a case of dog eat dog and just plain step on anyone in your way to reach success. That’s what our system has come down to but that is not what evolution explains as survival of the fittest.

If an animal needs a hidey hole to make a nest for its young, it uses whatever is at hand. If a tunnel in the ground is unavailable, a burrowing owl will accept a buried length of plastic pipe. In lieu of a hollow tree, a raccoon will look happily at an abandoned chimney.

I know of one homeowner who spent several years observing a raccoon raising
her families in the unused chimney. One year a flying squirrel also looked
it over. After what seemed to be a vacation from the animals, an unwelcome
odor persisted. The chimney appeared to be the source. Upon close examination
a dead animal was found and with great effort, removed.

Obviously there were no offspring that year.

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Apr 11, 2005 by Naomi.

Cooks bond with their pots
and in their kitchen have lots
but in preparing a feed
cooks many times need
That special pot that he got.

The department store
where he went before
had stacks on the shelf
he chose one for himself
from boxes and boxes galore.

Cook opened the box
and thought he’d been foxed
cuz the pot wouldn’t fit
under the water spigit
so he gave up and washed his socks.

Now the bathtub bizarre
as ideas sometimes are
had a faucett with height
the big pot wouldn’t fight
so he filled it way up to the par.

Oh the food now in store
from one pot cooking more
is a sight to behold
and if truth be told
he’ll be eating the same till he’s sore.

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Apr 10, 2005 by Naomi.

Just so you know — gout is not entirely out of fashion, although we
only hear about it in old stories of fat people suffering while in their
cups. A gout stool was designed in the 1770’s to rest the ailing foot
when occupied with visitors in the parlor. It is a cute padded "A"
shaped piece of furniture of antique vintage on which the lower calf
and ankle can rest comfortably.

According to World Book Encyclopedia gout is a chronic disease that
produces swelling in the joints. A defect in the body’s natural action
of breaking down certain proteins results in a production of too much
uric acid which accumulates in the blood.

Treatment consists of limiting the amount of protein in the diet and
of taking drugs such as aspirin and probenecid to hasten the elimination
of urine. Colchicine is a drug which relieves acute gouty attacks.

I hope never to have a cute gouty attack. More than likely drinking
lots of water will hasten urine elimination. But some folks in my family
are so concerned about having need of a toilet when none is handy they
deliberately shun good old H2O depriving their bodies of cleansing action.
Not me.

Winston Churchill said something like - "Go to the toilet whenever
one is available - just in case there is a long distance before the
next one." Good advice I take seriously.

What a friend of mine said when I didn’t have the urge while we stopped
during a bus trip was "C’m on, Let’s go. Even a drip is worth the
trip." We actually needed the exercise after miles in a cramped
van between tourist traps. Although the hole in the floor was not the
easiest to accommodate, the trip usually produced more than a drip of
which I was happy to have released.

I prefer to drink the largest amount of water before going to bed and
also whenever I subsequently arise for purposes of elimination. Drinking
water appears to be the best solution because diet isn’t as easy to
manage.

Like anybody is going to quit eating meat - the most obvious source
of protein. I don’t eat beef because it is costly. I love pork but it
is also costly so I rarely eat that either. Chicken gets tiresome regardless
of how innovative is the spicey cook.

Gout is not curable, but can be controlled by proper treatment. Just
thought you would like to know.

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Apr 10, 2005 by Naomi.

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Apr 10, 2005 by Naomi.

Some nasty virus lurks in my bronchia. The bird dog to route it out
is Amoxic/clav. Or so I expect. It is awesome to imagine a drug - an
active little chemical - invading my system to attack another piece
of energy causing pain in my chest. Except it is not invading. I willingly
put it into my stomach with a sandwich and apple juice (to prevent side
effects of nausea and diarrhea) and sent it on its way.

Imagine this little chemical dogging its way through my gastric juices,
struggling through my liver or along the lining of my small intestine
to become adsorbed into my blood on its way to find the culprit causing
my discomfort. Will it sniff its way to its target? I hope so. As much
as I stay clear of dogs, I expect it to do a comparable job, chew up
and eliminate my adversary.

I developed very uncomfortable cold symptoms.. I blew what seemed to
be cupfuls of mucous out my nose. I coughed up more of the same. When
I coughed my torso was wracked with pain. So off I trudged to the clinic
to see what could be done about it.

With no appointment I had to wait in line. A man in black, a horrible
color in view of my bleak outlook on life at the moment, beckoned me
into the inner sanctums of the clinic. Weight and vital signs were taken
with the mumbled results barely audible. I suppose I didn’t need to
know my blood pressure was 138 over 68 or that my temperature was 99.4
but I didn’t appreciate the mumbling. Maybe he was underpaid, overworked,
or worse yet, plain bored. I felt little respect from this nurse in
black. But he soon left me alone to study charts of the digestive system,
the circulatory system and the heart. I was intrigued with the spinal
bone design. If I had a photographic memory I could be an encyclopedia.

An hour later and nearly $100 poorer I put in motion the first of twenty
875 mg of hot diggity dog protectors. I gave up chicken soup, steaming
vapors, and gargling salts to embrace the modern way. Let specialized
chemistry take over.

Sic ‘em Rover.

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Apr 10, 2005 by Naomi.

Today a long time fantasist was put to rest. Perhaps fanatic is the
acceptable noun. Both words come from the root - fantasy.

What is as wonderful as a fantasy? Our thoughts produce them. Something
in our brains sustain them.

There is a fantasy among many that Elvis still lives. Doubtless there
are others who live in human fantasies as well. Poets in the distant
past wrote eloquent descriptions of places and times. No one up to now
has so completely created another place with living beings and written
languages as J.R.R. Tolkien in LORD OF THE RINGS.

J. R. R. Tolkien spent his lifetime putting an extreme fantasy into
a whole believable world. The world of Middle Earth was his creation
of a past that England could call her own. Fairies, elves, dwarfs, and
hobbits on the good side. Goblins, orcs, eliphants, shelogs, and spiders
on the bad side with wizards thrown in to influence all.

If you have the good fortune to watch the extended versions of Lord
of the Rings as I have, revel in the genius that went into the story.
That begins of course with the creator and the story itself. Then came
the decades of obsession with the fantasy by readers, artists and authors.
Middle Earth is a place readers reveled in and never left. Artists developed
characters from vivid prose and poetry. Authors delved into relationships
and published reams trying to account for the dedicated work of Tolkien,
almost a life long desire to make a story worth reading. And it has
been read - over and over again. Some said it would make a great movie.
It would be a blockbuster epic. And finally for what we can now visually
enjoy, came Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh.

We will never know the depth of obsession those directors possessed
to envision and carry out the finished product. The more I watch the
hours of Appendixes for the Trilogy, the more I wonder at the scope
of imagination and dedication that took place before the concept was
solid enough to convince backers to advance the money for the years
that went into the production.

How did Jackson manage to find the perfect actors for each of the main
players? There is no hint of that. Yet each selected one must have put
forth a resume or portfolio or asked for the opportunity to participate.
And each must have been measured against others. Most had professed
to have read everything about the Rings series as well as the epic many
times over. Although Viggo Mortensen said he never read any of it, his
son was enthused and convinced him to take the part of Aragorn.

In the extended DVD version appendixes are included to show how much
work went into the making. The fact comes through that scenes were concocted
around the actors and the concept of friendship to tell a cohesive tale
without making a two day movie. New information was added to round out
a well told tale. Well done. Very creative. Maybe those five years or
whatever to finish did take a psychological toll on those who worked
together. Somehow the comraderie of the directors and department heads
brought out more heroes among the hundreds that made the breathtaking
props and other support for the film than Tolkien showed in the story
itself.

The whys and hows of genius will forever elude me but I appreciate a
fantasy that has captured the human imagination without bringing on
the tragedy that follows in real life. Fantasy is easily grasped by
the human brain. From results in human aftereffects some fantasies look
healthier than others.

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Apr 10, 2005 by Naomi.

Each morning I dress in clean clothes remembering when long years ago
I would slip into the same garments I put on the day before. The law
now is not to wear anything I had on my body before. If I removed it
because I wanted a different color or a better style or wore it all
day into the dirty clothes pile it goes.

Now for the lecture - when I was your age …. Don’t listen. Just let
me tell you there were very good reasons why as a child of seven years
I pulled on the same long johns still inside the same long cotton stockings
that lay in a neat pile beside my bed. First of all I only had one other
pair of long underwear and considering our circumstance was lucky to
have that. However they were not red as much as I would have liked the
color. Second there was no opportunity to wash each day. Heating the
water in a copper boiler (they were special containers for that) on
the top of a kitchen range (a strange name for a wood stove of iron
with a fire pot, an oven for baking, a warming oven above, and a water
reservoir) was an hour long task usually begun after noon meal, which
we called dinner. Except on wash day the boiler was put on the night
before and the fire stoked long before daybreak. Often the white clothes
were boiled in the water to loosen the dirt before Mother would soap
them and rub them mercilessly across a washboard that leaned against
the inside of the big galvanized washtub.

In Minnesota from October until May when Mother put the clothes in
the dryer - that is - hung them on the clothesline - garments froze
into grotesque shapes that sometimes softened in the bleak winter sun.
The best times were when clothes would be blown soft by an incessant
wind and smell sweetly of fresh air. Often the frozen garments were
brought in to dry on a rack that took second place to children’s bodies
beside the Round Oak heater in the family room. But that is a joke and
an entirely different story. My clean underwear was ironed by my movements
after I donned it on Sunday morning clean from the Saturday night bath.
It was a good feeling - pulling on the long underwear, the first time
or the seventh time. It warmed quickly on my body and added to my feeling
of security. I don’t have that feeling now when I put on any garment,
let alone my underwear.

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Apr 10, 2005 by Naomi.

Scorpions are members of the subclass arachnida along with Daddy longlegs. They prey on insects which ordinarily live outdoors so why would a scorpion want to venture into a civilized living room? I give up - why?

The violated family can’t answer that. They are weary of capturing and disposing of these critters and just might mount further interlopers for display. At least a mounted specimen would prove to the outside world that the insect did indeed come to visit. Well maybe some skeptics would think the family went on the unlikely adventure of stalking the desert to capture one just for show and tell.

Bringing one into the house to prove a point is quite farfetched. The female doesn’t lay eggs. Eggs are incubated in the enlarged female, then up to 60 of the born young may cling for a week or more to the female’s back before leaving to fend for themselves.

Although there are 25 species of scorpions found in the United States, their sting is not fatal to adult human beings. Now isn’t that a comforting bit of precious information?

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