Notes From A Bear's Journey

     Fair warning that this post is a bit longer than most, and briefly --but only briefly-- starts with math.  Consider it one of those year-end overloads, the sort already blitzing your emails with recaps and best-of lists.  But if you want just the short version of this post, then jump to the 2 videos of our universe, both of which were mentioned in earlier posts but perhaps never clicked (on the links).  They're worth watching, if only to put things into perspective as you wind down after this holiday scramble.  What is our place in this universe, and why are we so caring and yet so hurtful, to ourselves, to others, and to the planet?  It's not like we can keep running away.  As Mark Twain was quoted, "there are two important days in your life: the day you were born and the day you find our why?"  So before you start to scroll down and think that this may be a bit wordy (it is), think about what you're doing, where you're going, what...

     Blink and you'll miss it.  Okay, you really can't  miss it because advertisers began marketing the "holidays" before Holiween (may as well just blend it all together). From a capitalistic viewpoint, you bought the candy to appease the kids and now begins your turn.  Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas and Super Bowl!  Wait, did I leave something out?  Like Thanksgiving (which generates little money for retailers, unless you're an airline or a gas station) or Giving Tuesday, a very charitable idea carefully placed after  you've spent your cash on things you probably didn't really need.  Here's an idea: have Giving Tuesday come on Thanksgiving week, a time when people are feeling full of gratitude and thinking of others.  Heaven forbid...that would leave less to spend come Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the grandaddy of them all, Christmas.  Ho, ho, whoa...how dare I try to dampen the holiday spirit?  But while Jimmy...

     Quick warning: this post will sound a bit depressing but it does end on a happy note.  And while it begins with medical issues we could all face, it may prove helpful to know a few symptoms of the unexpected.  But to start, what's with that title of clea r ing vs. clea n ing?  It's amazing the similarities a single letter, or phrase --say, inside vs. outside-- can change not only a meaning but also change how you say it.  As an example, you can say IN the house, and have it make sense, but not OUT the house, unless you add "side" or sometimes a preposition such as "out OF the house."  To wit, if asked where are the keys, one could answer "in the house" but you couldn't say "out the house" unless you added "outSIDE the house."  Why is that?  Now imagine you're from Albania and trying to learn such nuances.  The bottom line, English is often a funny language when it comes to such odd and sometimes strict rules of gram...

Cartoon by  Sarah Kempa: New Yorker      In one sense, little seems to have changed with human history.  Certainly invention and methods of what could be termed progress have evolved in many fields, from transportation to agriculture, and other fields that made life easier (for some, anyway).  The Talking Heads sang about "letting the days go by" and "once in a lifetime."  But now, with my elastic memory shifting, I remember hearing that song as "many the days go by" and "many a lifttime."  In my look back at life, or the life I've led so far, it feels a bit like both, the days slipping by and also having slipped by.  It's as if we can all say that we've led many lives, and yet in reality, this time here may simply be "once in a lifetime."   So jump now to Desert Island Discs , now well past its 75th year and still going strong.  The format is that guests are to be placed on a desert island soon after revealing their life ...