Notes From A Bear's Journey

     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 summer months when Cornwa

     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 to nothing about,

     The polite term is cognitive decline; but most people know that we're just slapping a coat of paint on naming this blatant form of losing our minds, in a sense.  Alzheimers, dementia, memory loss, however you describe it, most of us will know immediately what you're describing without the specifics.  Wrote AARP : By 2030, 8.5 million older Americans are projected to have Alzheimer’s.  A half-million of us will develop it this year.  Once it begins, there's no way to halt it.  As brain cells die, connections between them wither and the brain itself shrinks, memory worsens, thinking skills decline and navigating everyday life becomes less and less possible.  At least a third of people with early-stage Alzheimer’s slip into a more severe stage in about three years.  But with all of that being said, the article added: A surprising and mysterious trend has arisen in recent years that may help point us toward a cure for dementia.  Rates of Alzheimer’s disease in the U.S. are