Is This Wisdom?

A chair-maker does not sit any better than I do. 

--Mitchell Hegman

Didga Drops In

Why not a cat?

If the video here fails to launch please click on the following link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3w5AoWPK64 

--Mitchell Hegman

Blue Flax

Spring is almost near enough that I can throw a rock and strike it.  As revealed by the journals I have constantly maintained since moving out to the country 24 years ago, I should expect to see my first returning bluebird either this week or next week.  Today, following a couple weeks of fairly cold temperatures, we are anticipating something near 50 degrees.

This afternoon, I intend to disperse handfuls of blue flax seeds all around my solar array.  I am hoping that the seeds (and eventually the plants) will take hold in the soil I disturbed during construction.  Blue flax is a tough competitor.  Flax will happily grow in poor soil and blossom long into the hot, dry summer.  One of my flower books noted that the cultivated species of flax have very tough stems that can be made into ropes, cords, fishing lines, and nets.

I am all about the pretty flowers.

Posted is a photograph I captured a few years ago of blue flax high in the mountains.

     --Mitchell Hegman

Relaxing

I am somewhat incompetent at relaxing.  Okay, that statement is a bit soft.  I really suck at relaxing.  Just “sitting there” is a problem for me.  You need to remember, I was the kid in grade school who constantly tapped a pencil against the desk and flicked paper wads around the back of the class.  At home, my mother would kick me outside as soon the temperature rose above freezing because I drove her nuts with my chaotic indoor activities.  She never really took a liking to my indoor toy truck demolition derbies or occasional experiments with fire.

Now that I am older (okay, I am actually old), I continually fiddle with silverware, cups, papers, my computer, or anything within reach if am standing or sitting in one place for any length of time.  I cannot even watch television without doing something else at the same time.  My idea of a relaxing weekend is working on my cabin or building something here at the house.

Here is the biggest problem.  Now that I am—let’s go with mature from here—my mind has developed a habit of over-charging and purposely injecting nonsense into my perception if I am just sitting around.  When not keeping myself busy, my mind will do such things as send naked people prancing through my houseplants or transform the numbers and lines on my open checkbook ledger into a rotating two-dimensional carousel.  The other day, as I sat for a bit after exercising, I thought I heard twenty pounds of housecat talking to me.

Frankly, I am little worried about the prospect of a full retirement.

--Mitchell Hegman

The Big Picture

Stranded here on our little blue planet, we are merely running in place.

--Mitchell Hegman    

The Doorbell Works In Both Directions

My two cats freak-out when the doorbell rings.  My friend, Kevin, particularly enjoys watching the cats scramble to hide at the sound of the bell.  If Kevin notices one or both of the cats lazing in the sun near the window when he walks up to the door, he will peer in as he rings the bell so he can watch a cat explosion.

Kevin stopped in yesterday, but was unable to ring the bell because I saw him and opened the door before he reached it.  After visiting with me for a while he said good-bye and headed for the door.  “I missed my chance at scaring the cats,” he groused.

After closing the door, Kevin poked the doorbell button several times and filled my house with: bing-bong-bing-bong-bing-bong-bing-bong!

A parting shot at my 40 pounds of housecat.

--Mitchell Hegman

A Cure for Cancer?

You would likely do almost anything to cure your child if your child was diagnosed with cancer.  With a grim prognosis, you might travel to a foreign country where unorthodox treatments are used.  You would entertain any form of experimental treatment if nothing else worked; but what if your doctor advocated injecting your child with a massive dose of the HIV virus or an injection of the measles virus as a cure?  What then?

These viruses are known killers.

All viruses walk a fine line between being a living and non-living thing.  Viruses cannot reproduce themselves...and yet, that is their sole function.  Viruses are, essentially, weird little zombies that contain a single genetic code for reproduction.  Set adrift, a virus will do nothing until it happens onto a proper living host cell.  Once a virus finds a living cell to its liking (they tend to be very finicky), a virus will attach to or invade the cell and take it hostage.  As soon as possible, the virus will inject its specific genetic instructions into the cell.  The infected cell now alters all internal machinery to do one thing: make more copies of the virus that infected it.  Eventually, the cell filled with the viruses it reproduced will burst and spew out more viruses to go forth and seek more living cells so they can reproduce.

Oncologists are now commissioning some of the more insidious viruses to kill cancer.  Not “treat.”  Kill.  I am far too simple to navigate the thorny patch of details of exactly how, but cancer researchers are commanding such monsters as the measles virus and the HIV virus in battles against cancer.

Using an “it takes a thief to catch a thief” theme, researchers genetically “gut out” the deadly viruses and retool them so the viruses are attracted to and kill only specific tumor cells in the human body.  Mass doses of the altered viruses are injected into cancer patients.  The cancer patients rapidly fall into an extreme fever as the viruses go to battle with cancer cells.  Some children battling leukemia have lapsed into a coma for a few days as the cancer cells and viruses engage.

The success in treating children with leukemia has been remarkable.  Once the children break through the fever, they quickly recover.  The cancer is often completely eradicated in a matter of only a few weeks.  Nothing of the cancer remains.  Nothing.

At a minimum, such genetic tinkering scares the hell out of me, but I cannot help but cheer this:  A possible cure for cancer!

I had neither read nor seen anything about using viruses to fight cancer until I watched an exposé about this on VICE, the HBO investigative series.  Some doctors predict the use of viruses in treating cancer may be fairly widespread by 2016.   Honestly, I shed a few tears as I watched once doomed little kids walking away cancer-free.

 

I thought of my wife—nearly four years gone.

--Mitchell Hegman