Welcome to Saturday ...

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After slapping Sir John Gielgud a ­resounding crack on the back ­accompanied by a loud, "How are ya, Jack?" he turned, adjusted his cravat and said in a soft, melli­fluous voice, "And how are you, Christopher, in your own small way?" ~ Christopher Plummer

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

IF ~ Rudyard Kipling

~~

RIP
~

Proprioceptors know from the get go
balance
as you practice
having learned
guided discovery
teaching, Isn't it rich
to be human

Human with entails and pretty eyes to boot
mysterious violins inside
responding in harmonic moons
of the forgotten
until
tides breaking into cells
unwilling flesh becoming
flowers disturbed

Heart speaks
feels the pain
pumps up in disdain

shouting
no more
none of you
invaders from distant shores
mutants go away

Still, they come through storms
sailing for the vasculatures
pirates without a body, organs to call home
on and on drums beating
politicians bleating
ministers bleeding truth
until blood flows in emergencies

But, listen

cancers don't know
the heart knows first
yes, before the brain
before anything
before the beginning

senses, guides, proprioceptors

report

the heart knows fist
feels it all
and pumps on.

Written for my dear old college friend and MD suffering from cancer.

~~~
~

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smiley7's picture

Clouds persist, blue breaking through in places closing an uneventful week. Storms still roll in the mountains. Feeling old, stiff, not cranky, just worn, looking forward to puppy bowl. Smile

Have a good one ...

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~
"Please remember, especially in these times of group-think and the right-on chorus, that no person is your friend (or kin) who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow and be perceived as fully blossomed as you were intended."
—From In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose, 1983

Thanks for hosting!

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smiley7's picture

@QMS

Oops. forgot to credit the photo: The Guardian, Patrick Pleul/dpa

Wonderful quote; thank you for sharing.

Baking biscuits, plan is breakfast and a nap.

Have a good one.

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Lookout's picture

love the tree and shadow in the snow. "If" was a 6th grade memorization project. Learning a stanza at a time and then having to recite the whole thing. Perhaps that influenced my memorization of so many song lyrics all these years later.

Sorry about your Dr. friend with cancer. Wish him a quick recovery. Cancer must have sugars to grow. Best thing is to get off carbs (IMO).

A cool 30 F this AM, but at least the sun is shining. Rain is moving in this PM.

Hope all is well on the coast.

Acceptance
R. Frost

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night bee too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.'

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

smiley7's picture

@Lookout

Love the poem, thanks for sharing.
Have a good one.

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enhydra lutris's picture

poetry too. Sorry about your friend. Today is clear and heading for the mid sixties. That mean's it will probably hit 70+ in the backyard in the sun.

Feeling old and bedraggled myself, and talking myself into skipping farmers' market this week. It's my week to cook, and we have carrots, celery, some broccoli, some spinach, some napa cabbage and 1.5 onion. That last is the only concern, but, for emergencies and inspirations we have a can or two of enchilada sauce somewhere, so I needn't make any for my enchiladas, I use very little in the curtido I make for fish tacos, don't use any in pizza, leaving chili and a small pot of oxtail soup - so I think I can get by with that. It's no major hassle going, but it takes a big chunk out of the morning that I'm not sure I'm willing to give up today.

Ah well, time to get going on something.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

smiley7's picture

@enhydra lutris
sunshine. Have a good one.

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lotlizard's picture

@enhydra lutris  
https://onolicioushawaii.com/hawaiian-oxtail-soup/

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enhydra lutris's picture

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Pluto's Republic's picture

It looks like the real deal to me:

Israeli Hospital claims it has developed drug to cure serious cases of COVID-19

According to the hospital, 29 out of 30 patients with moderate-to-severe cases of COVID-19 were administered the drug, named EXO-CD24, and experienced a marked recovery in just two days. They were released from the hospital three to five days later.

The medication, developed by Professor Nadir Arber from the hospital’s Integrated Cancer Prevention Center, fights the cytokine storm—is a potentially life-threatening systemic inflammatory syndrome that is believed to be responsible for many coronavirus deaths.

“The medicine is administered through inhalation, once a day, in a procedure that takes only a few minutes, for five days,” explained Arber.

.

I didn't see this coming at all. Most of the research money has been going to vaccines, so I gave up on a real treatment/cure emerging. The truth is, the pandemic is so out of control that we were actually facing five more years of intermittent quarantine to suppress the virus. That's because we don't know how long vaccine immunity lasts — it could be years or it could be months. So we really had to wait until vaccines finally reached every last corner of the world. Only then can people be relatively safe from the mutating virus. And, except for China, the developed countries have not been in a hurry to donate vaccines or money to COVAX, which distributes vaccines to poor countries. I couldn't bear to write about that. However, this treatment/cure could be a real game changer, going forward. We still need to get the infection rates down to zero to live as openly as we had in the past. But if we know that SARS-CoV-2 can easily be stopped (with an inhalant), it makes the wait for global immunity much less dangerous for everyone. For the first time, there appears to be a path back to normalcy.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Dawn's Meta's picture

@Pluto's Republic in the 1918 Flu pandemic were young strong adults. They didn't die from the infection by the immune responses i.e. Cytokine storms.

This is indeed good news. Now who will use it and make it?

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A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.

Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.

enhydra lutris's picture

@Pluto's Republic

delivered via inhaler that seems to be capably of neutralizing the virus itself, but they can't get anybody to run a trial becasue all of the funding is being devoted to developing vaccines:

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/ucsf-team-has-engineered-tin...

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

@Pluto's Republic @Pluto's Republic

~

we need choices
not so much the first thing to come
down the wire

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smiley7's picture

@Pluto's Republic

vaccines being few and far between along with as you point out all the unknowns, makes the news most significant.

Thanks for bringing it.

Have a good one.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Pluto's Republic

This sounds good.

It's good to see you.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

lotlizard's picture

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/feb/13/christopher-plummer...

It’s not clear, even reading the original interview in the Guardian.

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janis b's picture

From that perspective of the tree and shadow, the associations are many.

I enjoyed the poems very much, especially yours. All the best for you, your life-long friend, and speaking hearts.

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smiley7's picture

@janis b

Happy you enjoyed the poem, worked hard on it. He was Butch and i was Sundance, a very close friend. Haven't seen or talked with him in 40 years, but recently reconnected and emailed through a fellow Beta pledge mate.

Hope you are well down-under; return to your butterfly metamorphosis often, incredible photos.

Have a wonderful week.

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Very nice tree photo, on first glance, I thought it was a feather.

In that poem Kipling certainly came across as undaunted and persistent . It seems as if Christopher Plummer was a hale and hearty personality type as well. I remember C. Plummer fondly from his role in The Sound of Music. That musical was part of the soundtrack of my childhood.

A few of Kipling's lines from this poem stand out as especially poignant:

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

and then;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

I'm sorry your good friend is dealing with cancer. It's very hard. I hope for the best.

I've recently spent a bit of time at the Art Institute (virtually). I looked at quite a few watercolors and really enjoyed the trip. (It's so nice on the eyes.) I also watched the 'unreal city' exhibit you posted. That was fun.

Hope your weather clears up and you get your sunshine soon. Take care.

(edited for blunder)

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smiley7's picture

@randtntx

Been depressed lately, need some sunshine, but none in upcoming forecast. Grin and bare all there is to it until it passes; not feeling up to snuff contributes, i'm sure.

Do have an online project, new experience for me; learning a website, a powerful platform with lots of bells and whistles, a challenge for my old brain. Thankfully the telephone support is rather efficient. It's time consuming, but hopefully helps keep dementia away, being foggy enough already, i hope so.

Enjoy those virtual tour opportunities as well, can get lost for hours.

Hoping you a wonderful week.

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@smiley7 be tough and tricky, that depression thing. I've dealt with it, as has my family, my extended family, and a certain percentage of my friends. Don't let it get the best of you smiley. I know we all have various strategies to deal with it but if those strategies are not working for you do not hesitate to ask for help. I know several people who are doing on-line therapy via a tele-doc set up. It can be helpful.
None of us are at fault for what we are going through and you have had additional stresses. Make sure to take care of yourself. Feel free to PM me and I will be happy to tell you what I know (which is not very much, but perhaps useful).
I'm extremely sorry your'e going through a tough time. If talk can help, I'm a good talker, and I would love to help.
Take care smiley

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smiley7's picture

@randtntx

Perhaps i chose the wrong word. Know depression well, married into manic depressive family on powerful drugs, saw, endued, and cried with them and still do on occasions. Mine is more selfish, driven by diseases which have a hold on me making days intolerable, end on end, and wear on me, a better way to express the depression i mean.

Cranky old man may be another way to describe the feeling. In truth, robbed of energy is a challenge i handle better on some days than others.

Thank you sincerely for caring and for being there.

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@smiley7

for a good cause

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smiley7's picture

@QMS

Listening to Evil ways, Santana live at Woodstock as i write.

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@smiley7 , it's not selfish at all. Either will give us a run for our money.
Glad your'e listening to C. Santana. I saw him in concert many moons ago...not at Woodstock though.
Fun days.
Your website work sounds like a good endeavor, you have more patience than I.
Hang in there and take good care Smile

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travelerxxx's picture

The heart does know.

Paying attention to my dear wife, after returning from her first of the two Pfizer jabs today, I can sense the change, the relief. One more to go for her, but she's off and running - well, if her hip would allow that.

Thank-you for the wonderful poetry and the stunning tree (one wonders how that shot was taken). My thoughts of healing aimed toward your friend.

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@travelerxxx your wife got her first dose, and good your'e watching closely.
My MIL got hers yesterday and all is well. No issues.
Hoping it goes smoothly for us all.
Take care.

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