Notes From A Bear's Journey

Up, Up and Away    Tomorrow marks the services for my aunt, and it was on my flight over that I truly began to reflect on just how much we can let slip away, or somehow blindly choose to assume all will be as it always was.  Take for example our jet going from a slow taxi out of the gate, pausing at the end of the runway, then accelerating with enough speed to lift off of the ground.  Easy, right?  Happens all the time, thousands of times a day, in fact.  So why be concerned...or amazed?     But as I looked at the full flight and thought of how heavy the plane itself is (the usual 737s are close to 100,000 lbs. empty), plus the dead weight of its 150 or so passengers, plus the weight of the jet fuel (larger jets such as the 767 burn about 800 gallons of jet fuel per hour per engine !) I tried to picture how so massive an object could go from a complete stop to a speed so great that it would soon have enough airflow to actually lift everyt...

Life's Too Short    We recently entertained some friends over the weekend, long-time friends from way, way back, all enjoying an annual gathering to both visit and enjoy some sloppy snow on the ski slopes.  But this time, an altercation happened, a small matter that suddenly grew and grew and burst opened unexpectedly, like a pimple gone bad.  And I use that term because from a somewhat distant viewpoint, it all seemed like an incredibly small matter.  But for our two friends, it was apparently the final blow after years of repressed dueling.    Sometimes, we all think that we can easily harbor things inside, push bad thoughts and feelings out of our heads and never see them again.  But sometimes, even we are surprised when such hidden resentments or emotions pop out of nowhere (or so it seems), an erupting well that we thought we had capped; and usually this is from an argument that escalates and escalates until our self-control simply goes p...

Surprises    The new year is well underway and it feels as if I am straining my neck looking out the window, getting one final glimpse of what the past year brought, all before I sigh and sit back and prepare for the journey ahead.  And what a year it was, one full of unexpected surprises.    For one (and I almost hate to start off this way), the past few months saw the number of "cookies" on my computer (those dang tracking things that haunt your smart phones and smart tvs and tablets and cars and who knows what else; but in this case, I am talking only about my laptop) jumped nearly tenfold from barely 2,000 in six months to over 190,000 in the next four months.  Each days usage of just under an hour generates nearly 5,000 tracking cookies...yikes!  But then data transmission is growing ever faster these days, the newest trans-Atlantic cables sending data at speeds of 340 gigabits per second, or about six times faster than your average high-spee...

Going Under    Occasionally I find myself wondering just what happened.  Friends whom I used to talk with on a regular basis have faded into the sunset, there, but rarely called.  It's not as if our friendship has diminished, for when we again meet (even if it's years later), all the time missed is forgotten and rather than acknowledge that we've changed, we seem to start off where we left off, our memories suddenly back and the clock starting over.  But what has happened?    You can find this in your own past usually by going to a reunion.  Close friends in school seem different somehow;  they've become conservative or quiet or distant, or so it seems.  This can be the case with former neighbors, or often just by a change in your lifestyle.  You get married and your single friends vanish.  You have kids and your childless friends fade away.  You grow older and your kids start to distant themselves.  But with frie...

Commonalities    There are things that we, as humans, all share.  And often we search for those things for our comfort, whether we're recuperating in a hospital or chatting in a market.  Beyond the basic needs of food, water and sleep ( Maslow's pyramid ), we can relate to others no matter where we are, geographically or economically...at least, one hopes that we can.    This was shown in the films, Stalingrad and It Came Upon A Midnight Clear , the fighting of war interrupted for one brief day and and one brief evening, the realization coming that the people shooting at you and people you were trying to kill, were young like you, had families and girlfriends like you, and were hungry and cold and just wanting to go home, wondering what all this was about, just like you.  And as quickly as it cane, it was over;  back to bullets and anger and a puzzling mix of emotions.    On a broader and perhaps happier scale, you can hear this i...

   If there's one theme in the past few postings, it's likely one of independence as one ages.  Being suddenly (or slowly) disabled from an accident or a sudden infection is alone life altering; but it is the aging process that more generally shifts one's attitudes from feeling immortal and having to accomplish or acquire much, to that of reflection and, in a sense, living life despite the shortened time.    Atul Gawande's recent book , Being Mortal (mentioned in the last posting), captures this well, at one point describing what many (or any) of us would feel:  All we ask is to be allowed to remain the writers of our own story.  That story is ever changing.  Over the course of our lives we may encounter unimaginable difficulties.  Our concerns and desires may shift.  But whatever happens, we want to  retain the freedom to shape our lives in ways consistent with our character and loyalties.  This is why the betrayals of bo...

Being Mortal    My wife recently asked me, what was my fascination with medical books these past few weeks?  On Becoming A Medical Examiner, The Cost of Cutting, God's Hotel and now, Atul Gawande's latest, Being Mortal .  And truthfully, the answer is...I don't know.  Perhaps it was the passing of my aunt, or that my own mother is nearing 90, or that my friends' mothers and brothers are all nearing the end of their lives.  Or maybe it was the watching of the National Geographic special on Judas with Jesus telling the Apostles, you have no idea.    Indeed, the more I read about our bodies, the more mysterious it seems, as if opening one door of discovery simply leads to another more complicated door.  Go deeper, go farther, go smaller, it doesn't seem to matter.  The wonders are everywhere.  The magazine onearth (a publication of the Natural Resources Defense Council ) featured an essay by Bruce Stutz titled "Flying Blind;"...

Traitor or Hero?    Some years ago, the National Geographic channel ran a special on the discovery of The Gospel of Judas , a C optic tome that was apparently part of the many discoveries at Nag Hammadi.  The book was extensively researched, not only by Coptic scholars but also by radio carbon dating and it was found to be authentic, the copy likely produced around 220-240 AD, some years after the earlier texts that comprised portions of the New Testament, the earliest of them produced around 60 AD (the original Greek document of the Gospel of Judas was thought to be written around 180 AD).  In all cases, the Apostles were long gone, their stories belatedly relayed to others orally, then to others, then to others, portions of the stories being gradually written down as their tales were passed through to different generations.  At Nag Hammadi , some 52 of these additional texts were discovered, and historians lament the fact that an unknown number were thought ...

Alms and Houses    It's a phrase from way back, "alms for the poor."  And while such charitable housing originated in the 1500s in England (which still has 2600 such developments), they are all but gone in the U.S., having been delegated primarily to the category, even in our dictionaries, as "poorhouses."  Dr. Victoria Sweet says that this might be a mistake, not only for society but for our health as well, all eloquently described in her book, God's Hotel .    Working at the last and now only almhouse in the U.S., Dr. Sweet describes something so foreign to our idea of medicine, taking us on a historical journey to the time when Western medicine broke away from the days of Hippocrates and began a period of isolating not only our injuries and diseases, but ourselves as well.  So Laguna Honda, the almshouse in San Francisco, becomes a scene out of WW II when wounded soldiers in beds rested in long corridors, airy windows and light the only dividers...

Ebola and Other Non-Issues    The above type of "shock" wording and heading are sometimes used by different media to grab your attention.  In this case, I used the words to yes, get your attention and to answer some of the inquiries about why I haven't covered some of the major issues, newsworthy items such as the Ebola virus and climate change, or the shifting of what city will head the EU as well as our increasing usage of water (and the shortage it is creating).  And the simple answer is...this is a blog.    Such elaborate and complex issues take far more research and space than a standard blog can accommodate (imagine trying to read an editorial and realizing that one day, instead of two paragraphs, it was two full pages).  Issues such as Ebola and climate change can and do change almost daily, frustrating both editors and readers alike, for such issues take lots of research, much of it ongoing.  And as much as we (as readers) would care f...

Bioplastics    Back in the day, the latest announcement was the development of a new diaper, a disposable one.  No longer would mothers have to rinse and store and wash their cotton diapers, for now they could simply throw them away...no worries, except one.  The landfills began filling up with them, billions of them and virtually none of them recyclable or able to break down (for the most part, this hasn't changed since they sill aren't recyclable and take nearly 500 years to break down).  Ah well, that's a problem from long ago (we thought) so might as well go have that one cup of specialized coffee, the one you make yourself in the tiny pod...go ahead, and welcome to the newest disposable problem.    It is estimated that many of the things we really don't "see" are problems catching up with us as our landfills grow ever larger and begin to leach through holding liners and drip down into water tables.  Those Keurig and Sensio and other coff...

Skeletons or Treasures    The arrival of a new year seems ordinary for many of us, but was majestic for earlier civilizations, the sun having completed another journey around us, or so it was thought.  We thought, after all, that we were the center of it all, the world around which all else revolved.  We now know better, at least regarding our planet.  But sometimes we lose sight of this within our own families.    My brother is much better at this than I am, observing delicate and almost miniscule changes in patterns or gaits or ticks when it comes to the family.  Me, I tend to pull back, talking all about the world and mind and space and actually being surprised when my brother points out something so obvious as a crooked tooth being in exactly the same spot as my other sibling (which makes me zoom in on his tooth and wonder how I could have not seen that).  The genetic similarities can stretch well beyond the physical of course, plung...