Notes From A Bear's Journey

      So picture this: you walk into your bathroom, turn on the faucet, and only hear a hissing sound.  Was something going on with the water?  And if you're thinking like Rebecca Fogg, your next thought might be to flush the toilet, just to check.  Which is what she did.  And which is when her toilet exploded, as in bomb exploded.  The chunks of porcelain flew by in an instant, which is also when she noticed the blood in the wall.  Where was that from?  Looking down, she saw that her hand now dangled loosely, partially severed near the wrist.  As she wrote in her book, Beautiful Trauma :  I tear into the bedroom, hunt for the tabletop phone with my left hand, and dial 911 while heading back to the kitchen.  I struggle to keep the phone pressed between shoulder and ear as I yank a dirty dish towel off the oven door handle and crumple it into my right wrist.  Saturated with blood in seconds, it lands with a splash...

     There was a time that I loved bees, and I still do except that now I'm quite allergic to their stings (pretty much any bug that bites me sends me swelling up more than most).  No biggie, I told my doctor, which was when he pointed to my throat.  You get stung there, he said, and your airway will close.  He wrote out a prescription for an Epipen, the most popular and also the most expensive epinephrine shot (I went for the generic version, of which there are many).  None of that has stopped me, even as I hang up my hummingbird feeders each spring and watch them fill with both bees and wasps (which often dine on spiders).  But when I'm ready to refill those feeders, the dozen or so bees or wasps steadily move away as if aware that I'll be back with "fresh" food, even if I have to shake the feeder against the rail to shake off the one or two wasps still feeding.  They buzz silently and float around as if dandelion puffs scattering about....

     Cornwall, England, is not that easy to get to if you're coming from the West.  Flights to London may be all over the map (three airlines each have three nonstop flights a day just from Los Angeles, causing Delta to pull out of that nonstop market) so getting to London itself is somewhat of a breeze.  And there are  nonstops from other west coast cities, including Salt Lake City, where we were (although Delta has reduced those flights from daily to 5x per week).  But whatever city you'd pick, you'd face at least 10 hours of flying, and land with the usual grogginess as you waded ahead to the no-human customs/immigration area (pretty much everything is facial recognition these days so forget that stamp on your passport).  Another slog of 20 minutes to the bus terminal (in the UK buses are called coaches, as in Ted Lasso) and after another 90 minutes, you'd have pulled into Gatwick Airport (nonstop flights from Heathrow are only in the 3 busy su...

     Every now and then I'll be asked about certain things in the news and how I feel about them, what do I know about them, and what would I do about them?  These can range from the flood of weight loss drugs to the traces of the bird flu virus being detected in some of our milk (wrote STAT : The H5N1 bird flu virus has been around for decades ) .   The short answer is that basically, I "know" very little about these and many other topics.  As with many of you readers, I may read about them or hear about them now and then, and perhaps dig a bit and see what reputable research is out there.  But overall, my views and opinions carry little more weight than that of any other person, perhaps even less weight.  Individual viewpoints and opinions are just that...individual; and nowhere will this be more evident than in that dated form of communication one terms a "blog."  And let's face it, many of you are quite well-versed in topics I know next t...