Thoughts and Prayers

 We see or hear it every day. Good news, or more often bad, is shared on social media, and the poster is flooded with thoughts and prayers, and hands clapping together. 

There are those who see this as the only response to these small worries and larger personal disasters.  Because they don't see the respondent pick up the phone to call, or their car keys to head over to the afflicted home or family.

Some even wonder if those posting thoughts and prayers are even actually thinking or praying. Or are they making the polite response? Like "How are you?" as a greeting, but not really listening or interested to know how the other actually is.

Of course they have actually had a thought concerning the matter. They could hardly have read the post, let alone replied, without having a thought. As for praying, what is prayer but a directed thought?

But these conversations can make one wonder. They can make one take a long, deep look at their own personal version of "thoughts and prayers" being a helpful thing to do.

For those who have Faith in a deity, it's a no-brainer. They know. Faith is belief without proof, and they don't need proof. The truly faithful will do 'extra' things like add the names to a prayer list and call to ask others to pray  also. They may do this, and be trying to think of how else they can be helpful to those in need. Or they may not. That is between them, tyheir faith, and their deity.

There are others who wonder. Can "thoughts and prayers" make a difference in the outcome? Can thoughts and prayers effect a cure, decelerate a situation, or have any type of result?  (There have been research studies done, with mixed results.)

Will the differences, if they do occur, be lasting or ephemeral? Does it matter more in the long run, or the short term?

Even more importantly, why would they work? Is there any kind of science that can possibly explain this phenomenon? What could it be? How would it work?

The place to start is with a thought. What is a thought? What makes a thought? 

It is a spark. A minute (or notso small) creation of electrical energy in the brain. Not necessarily seen, or smelled, or identified by any other sense. But energy where there was none somehow has become a fact.

According to science, everything is or becomes energy. Many energies cycle through the states of liquid, solid, gas. Many energies become different forms of energy, as a result of a spark. 

Once, there was thought to be three states of matter -- solid,liquid, and gas. 

Now a fourth state is recognized. Plasma. Plasma is matter turned to energy. There are experiments with the energy of plasma becoming matter. Some scientists say it is impossible; others say they have achieved success at molecular or atomic levels. What greater things can be achieved once they learn and acquire understanding of how this works!

It is my belief -- unproven at this time -- that that may be how thoughts and prayers work. It is energy that can (although no one knows how) be directed in a certain manner for a certain purpose.

It may be that some people can do this, without consciousness, just as there are some who can draw or carve or create music or songs. 

It may be that there are people who can be trained to do these same things -- paint a landscape, vibrate a reed into organized tones (that create an emotion), direct energy toward a stranger who needs healing. 

Of course, it is equally true that these things don't work that way, that they happen randomly or not at all, that they can never be taught if they do eist.

But they might.

Science is finding out. 

Science is learning.

Most of all, Science is keeping open to the possibilities.

Not Quite "Christmas in July"

We are enjoying a lovely bout of October weather here at the end of July. It's not quite a "Christmas in July" but I'll take it. I think it's pretty darned nice!

I'm not quite sure what the technical situation is . The weathermen on the TV have been talking about "record high lows" and "record low highs". All of this makes sense to me while they are explaining it, with little charts and diagrams onscreen, but my understanding disappears with the charts. Somehow, I don't think a record high low is a record low. That would be a low low, to be a new record.
Am I wrong about that?

I am surprised at their surprise. For the last several years, the weather seems to have shifted somewhat. Spring blooms earlier, summer dies off earlier. The key is not in the calendar, but in the wildlife. We've had daffodils in February, redbuds at the end of March, black-eyed Susans and Tiger lilies in July. Daffodils used to be "Easter lilies" to us as children, the redbuds are more familiar in mid to late April, and the susies and tigers should only now be coming into full growth. Both of these are part of the transition to September.

September and October should be foxtails and goldenrod and grass (hay) drying in the fields. The last few years, we have had the goldenrod before school starts in mid-August. This year it looks as if the same thing will happen. We'll see the first snowflakes in late October or early November. The "January thaw" will be near Christmas.

But, NO.
Not necessarily.
Here I am, doing the same thing as the weathermen and meteorologists -- trying to put Mother Nature and her business into neat little cubicles (dates on a calendar.)

When will we learn that nothing not man-made fits into our neat little boxes?
Just because it's usually gold and orange in September doesn't mean it always will be so.
Just because it has always snowed in February doesn't mean we can't have sunshine and warm southern breezes that month.

There are plenty of people ready to blame man-made sources for the changes in the weather. Plenty of them, but their 'proof'' is that the weather has changed. That really doesn't prove the why.

Weather has never been constant according to Modern Man's demands. The constancy is vague and steady,  seasonal; not date-to-date, not month-to-month. Weather just won't fit our convenience.

Maybe the solution to our (not a) problem will end up being the time-honored tradition of updating the calendar. That is what our species has done historically when the seasons and the dates have become out of sync.



I say let's keep our calendars loose and flexible, and let us not bind ourselves too closely to what our little blank calendar boxes and our record books say we should expect from the weather. Because, no matter how many blacks we draw for time and nature, these things will not co-operate with the corporate mentality.

Above all, though,  let us enjoy  this October weather in July. 

Food for Thinking

My new grandson is approaching the 4 month mark. He is also drooling, pushing the nipple around with his tongue, stuffing anything into his mouth, and seeming unsatisfied with just his milk.

In a less enlightened age, these would have been seen as signs that he's ready to try solids.
Nowadays, the doctors usually will not recommend feeding until six months of age, unless weight loss starts to 'trend' in the child. A calendar and a magic number are, of course, more rational guidelines than individual development. They are a better indicator than common sense that says if the baby is getting hungry, try feeding him.

I have an objection to the recommended feedings, too. Back in the dark ages, when I was growing up and helping with an endless stream of younger siblings, the first things we offered were fruits.
Now, historically, or maybe I mean evolutionarily, this makes sense. Humans started out as hunter-gatherers, and when our babies were ready to start solids, over ripe fruit was probably the softest thing available for gathering.. Thus, babies would start eating with fruits, and that practice remained at least to the 1970s.

Now, they want parents to start the infants on cereals -- grains. A food that, even at its purest, has to be ground and/or milled before it can be prepared for a toothless mostly sucking infant.
This just doesn't fit the needs of a hunter-gatherer society. Prepared foods would come a little later, logically.

Now, before someone tells me about the delicate process of sensitizing (or not) the baby's delicate digestive process, I'd like to offer a couple arguments.

1) gluten intolerance
2) celiac disease.

We didn't have these  runaway rampant allergy/digestive problems back in the days when we fed our infants by using common sense and instinctive traditions, did we?
Yes, there were some; proportionately, not as many.

Babies with delicate systems largely did not survive. It's good that we can now compensate, sometimes, for these problems, but maybe we should take a serious look at how they are started. Somewhere there should be alarm bells ringing that we are creating the problem by circumventing the evolutionary process.

Many people point at processed foods. Well, that well may be part of the problem, but is it the start of the problem? Maybe someone needs to investigate the possibilities that mothers have for eons been right and the scientists, in just a few decades, have created problems with their charts and calendars and thinking that "how it should be" is "how it is."

Those of us who have fed children out in the real world know that they don't live, grow, or thrive under laboratory conditions.
Ever.

Lower the numbers; raise the profits

This is the latest strategy of the health industry. Everybody is sick and needs us -- and our products. Whenever the numbers start to decrease, we'll go back into our laboratories and jiggle some statistics around and we can PROVE that a lower number for the same high-number illness is just as bad for you. Therefore, the lower number indicator means you have the higher number illness and you MUST have our medicine to survive.

I've seen this happen with hypertension. It happens every few years. People, I am sorry to tell you this, but no one has normal blood pressure anymore. It is either low or high, according to the professional experts. The parameter for normal has become so narrow as to be nonexistent.

It's been happening about every five years with diabetes. Numbers that were low-normal just a few years ago are now borderline high. Diabetes can now be diagnosed by one high reading in a doctor's office, instead of making a patient undergo that intolerable glucose tolerance test, or instead of tracking the blood sugar levels over an extended period of time.

I read a study yesterday that says that  "over 60% of people are obese"

Now, I'm not a scientist, nor have I studied health. Another thing I am not is a math genius. But I vaguely remember things about averages and norms and suchlike. When something is in the 60% range, that, mathematically, means it's pretty much the average, the norm.

Just because someone educated drew a line on a paper and said everyone above this line is sick doesn't mean they are. 

There are still doctors who go by the older numbers if their patients aren't in distress. They are few and far between and often work in isolated, rural areas. They don't go along to get along with the insurance companies. They ask "Why?"
When they ask "Why?" they become estranged and ostracized.

They generally don't want to practice that kind of medicine anyway, so they go to where they are over-needed and where they are listened to.


What really bothers me about medicine by the numbers is that it leaves out the element of change. Evolution, or mutation, or whatever you want to call it. Humans began as five-foot tall bipeds who could live thirty years.

Science and scientists have had no problem with embracing our growth and evolution from that standard.
Imagine if some nearsighted observer in the Whatever-ithic era said that anyone over 5'2" was an aberration, and had an illness and needed to be treated for it. Maybe had the afflicted eating weeds known to stunt the growth. Would we still be five foot and old at thirty?

No, we would not. Change and growth are not aberrations. At first as those numbers begin to trickle in, they are an anomaly, and yes, worthy of study. Worthy of tracking. Maybe even worthy of treatment, until it reaches the point where there are more 'anomalies' than there are 'normals'.

Once that point is reached, it is the duty of responsible scientists, researchers, and statisticians to take another look at a new definition of normal, a new average. Not to hit the panic button and start name-calling those they are trying to help.

We're not getting sicker -- we're getting different. We're changing, evolving, mutating.

We are growing.

Environmental Assessment: Asian Longhorn Beetle: Bethel Ohio

To anyone interested in this fight -- yes, that should be you, if  it isn't -- the Environmental assessment has been prepared, and the officals want to hear from you. They are seeking opinions from the public. Please read the report thoroughly -- it will take a while and multiple readings -- before deciding your stand. But please, do take a stand. Do make your voice heard. The report can be read here: http://www.bethelalb.com/ALB-OH-ClermontCounty-2012-EA.pdf

Now, they are not promising that they will act on what people tell them. They are a government organization which means essentially that they will infer everything and promise nothing. But they are asking for opinions. Let's give them that much.

This is important to everyone, although it is most important to the people of Bethel. It is their trees that are being eradicated. (Not the beetle.) It is their properties being destroyed, it is their countryside being laid bare for flooding and wind erosion. It is their small hometown being turned into a hot spot.

The numbers are hard to comprehend, but there are people gifted with the ability to put the concepts into words. Bill Skvarla, beetle activist, offers this example:  If the street tree in front of the Midway Theatre is the only tree in Bethel that has a beetle, every single healthy uninfested host tree in the entire Village will be destroyed according to USDA's EA-Alternative B.

Imagine that.
Imagine if your home town had to be denuded of all its tall shady trees because a tree in the town part of town had a problem. Would you like that? Would it seem reasonable to you to lose all the shade on your house because someone a half mile away had bug holes (and maybe-probably bugs) in one of their trees?

This is a problem for everyone, not just Bethel. If the government can do this to us, they can do it to others. Maybe the excuse won't be the Japanese long-haired beatles. Or green borers. But There will be something,
I promise you.

And you will have to suffer it, because allowing this without a fight sets a precedent. A precedent of government takeover of your private property. A government takeover of your community's landscape. A government takeover of your right to stand up and say "No!" to the chainsaws and bulldozers.

Read.
Research.
And speak out and speak up.



http://bugs.clermontcountyohio.gov/ALB.aspx;
http://www.agri.ohio.gov/TopNews/asianbeetle/;
http://clermont.osu.edu/news/asian-longhorned-beetle-found-in-ohio-osuextension-offers-information-hotline; the APHIS ALB plant pest page
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/plant_pest_info/asian_lhb/index.s
html.

Should RDA be RYA?

The experts are quick to blame our expanding waistlines and backsides on a lot of things, including sedentary lifetimes and overprocessed foods.

It never seems to occur to them that it may be their advice that's stuffing us.

Some commercials once came close to addressing this problem, showing people pulling and tugging overloaded groceries carts of broccoli commenting about how much of this you have to get to get the RDA (Recommended Daily Allotment) of a specific nutrient.

The truth is, no one can get ALL the RDA nutrients, even if they eat all day every day and eat only 'good' food.

The RDA is something created by statisticians. In some laboratory somewhere, after months and years of study, it was discovered that if people eat nutritionum monthly, they won't fall ill fron nutritionum deficiency. However, a medium sized person has to ingest a medium sized portion. One applies math and realizes that this amounts to 30portion sizes per pound (pspp). If you extend the math out, that means that in a month, the person needs 1 pspp per day. Then the body won't have to store anything, if you just eat your 1 pspp per day.

They are forgetting that the human body was made to store nutrients. That's what's making us all fat. Our bodies just keep on doing their job no matter how hard we make them work to do so.

Let's forget RDA. If we can't do it right away, maybe we can try for RWA -- a weekly dose of what we don't need every day.

Humans are adapted -- or were -- to live in a seasonal world. Fruits in the summer, veggies whenever they can be found, meat when it is available. Many a person living some form of vegetarianism will tell you -- you don't need all that 'stuff'\.' You don't need vitamins if you eat right.

If you do eat by the charts, even cutting out fats and processed foods, you will still get fat and your body will still take early retirement because of overwork.

Don't eat well -- eat REAL.
And heal.