http://hurryupharry.org/2016/10/30/first-hand-account-of-hatred-at-ucl-debate/

This is what it’s like to be Jewish on today’s college campuses.  While institutions like Columbia University invite convicted terrorists to speak, Israeli Jewish speakers, and those who wish to hear what they have to say, are either not permitted to speak due to the “apartheid” mythical narrative, or are confronted with violence such as Harry encountered at his university.  

I’ve taken all my herbs and pills, taken care of all the end of day tasks, now relaxing on my mountain of pillows, listening to a rowdy showdown between two owls–some kind of owl that lives in these Western Alabama woods.  Its call falls somewhere in between the Great Horned and the Barred Owl pattern, more toward Barred: “who-HOOoo-oooo….”  so much juiciness in owl appreciation.

And I do appreciate them very much.  I also appreciate crickets, and tree frogs, and katydids, and other nocturnal music makers to whom I have not been formally introduced.

Tonight in Alabama, near Tuscaloosa, in this superb Army Corps of Engineers campground upstream from the more famous Tombigbee Waterway projects, this artful wielding of human power over nature seems poignant.  If not for the extreme interference with the natural order of things to suit a human need to get coal down the river in barges to Mobile and the Gulf of Mexico, I’d be perched on the side of a ravine that was either dry or full of a raging river, I don’t know which.  As it is now, I’m floating on a sky island in a mostly placid freshwater sea, punctuated by the silence of the pontoon boats fishing around in the coves, and the boom of the barges as they blow their horn for the locks.  There is a locks here with a height differential of 500 ft.  Think of it! Some human thought it up that if you put a ship into a dry bathtub, then add water, your ship will float to the top, no matter whether the top is 2″ or 200 feet, doesn’t matter.  Thus was born the art of transporting shipping goods across dry land, using rivers instead of camels.

http://msystems.asm.org/content/1/5/e00105-16

Is your migraine in your mouth?

More and more health problems are becoming traceable to the bugs in our intestinal tract, which starts in the mouth and ends, well, you know.

This research, which was crowd funded–a great way to circumvent the government grant process, which has become biased in the direction of pharmaceutical research, in my opinion, and takes forever–shows that nitrogen-compound-producing bacteria in the mouth may trigger headaches.

So just as our native mouth flora determine whether or not we are prone to cavities, it may be the case that our mouth flora could be the culprit in causing migraines!

Now we must anxiously await the research that tells us how to get rid of the little bastards.

My son got his Ph.D. on Tuesday!  

I went to see him defend his dissertation.  He gave an amazing talk.  His field is Chemical Biology, and he studies ways of getting medicines into hard to get to places using viruses and light.  That’s about all I can understand…it is such far out science.

This is my baby boy who has given me so much grief and pain.  It’s not over, of course, but I am one proud mama, and of course I love the guy beyond all reason.

Whew, this journey to success has been a very long and bumpy one for him, but he is not merely one more Ph.D. in the world.  He is rising very quickly to the top.  It’s a long story, and I’m very tired, as I came down with the flu a couple of weeks ago and this past few days have been a whirl of travel and celebratory festivities.  So I’ll leave the details for another time, and just say

CONGRATULATIONS to my dear pain in the ass 😄😘🤗🤓🤖👍💖🍻🍾🌟😊

I am blown away.

Oh, it has been such a time of ups and downs and confusion all around!  My brain overfloweth.  Time has shifted into hyperdrive and every time I think I’ve got to a place where I can finally write, there goes something else and I’m blown away again.

Or perhaps I’m all sharpened up and set to go, but no internet, no cell signal, no connection to the WordPress world except perhaps the little previews from y’all that show up on the emails.

Or like the last couple of days, when my mood has been savage and it’s a wonder I’m not locked up somewhere, crazed with pain and raging against the neighbor’s stupidity for leaving their TV blasting with the door open and all I wanted was to listen to the remnants of hurricane rain pattering through the oaks.  Why do people go to lovely state parks if all they want to do is watch their damn TV?  They can do that at home, or at least shut their door so I don’t have to listen to it.

Yesterday the cause of my most recent volatility revealed itself: I have a viral illness.  Fever, chills, sweats, aches…my eyeballs feel like they’re trying to explode.  What a mess that would be, but since I’d be blind, I wouldn’t see it.  My head feels like Rocky’s punching bag.

Funny thing is, I still have an appetite.  Strange.  In fact, I find myself actually cooking.  Unusual, for me.

And I don’t want any cannabis, which is downright odd.

But before this all came into consciousness, that I am sick, I went to the health food store and stocked up on my winter supplements, the ones I use on a daily basis so as not to get sick, and the ones to abort sickness at the first signs.  

So, as soon as I realized my present state of illness, I began gobbling Chinese herbs and homeopathic remedies.  Better late than never, I suppose.  I’m hoping it will ward off the usual case of pneumonia that follows any sort of respiratory badness, since I have shit for lungs.

I was to have gone to visit my mother tomorrow.  That was my plan, until the fever, etc, hit.  But she is almost 90 and I don’t want to expose her to my germs, so I had to call that off.  I admit to feeling guilty, since I really didn’t want to see her in the first place, but I had every intention of doing so.  When I called to let her know I wouldn’t be coming, she didn’t sound too disappointed.  She also didn’t sound too disappointed that yet another of her cats has disappeared (this must be #7 or 8, minimum).  Oh well, plenty more cats at the shelter.  And plenty of coyotes that also have to eat!

I have settled in at an “old friend” campground, where I hope to rest and recover and finally write for you the story of the events of the past month, more or less, and I hope that as I write, things will untangle and perhaps I will feel less confused.

Hasta mañana, hasty potato…