I am just thinking aloud really, but I have always wondered????

Being a well adjusted nearly 62 year old woman I have spent the majority of my life without a partner.  I am not sure why this is, - maybe I am a difficult person to get on with - maybe I am too fussy - maybe I have never met the right person.  

People seem to like me well enough, I have always had a great interest in people and people seem to warm to me easily and that is because I have always been a better listener than a talker.  I am empathetic and considerate to others.  So I don't think that that I am difficult to get on with.   My man radar is a little unusual because I have never been interested in the ultra good looking one - I just know what has attracted me and it has was that indifinable 'something.'  In my relationships I thought I had met the 'right one.'  Unfortunately that was not to be the case.  However in saying that, they were extremely important parts of my life, and at the time I came into their lives for a reason and I theirs. 

I know I am a little short tempered and dismissive at times, usually when I am preoccupied with something - but aren't we all like that??  Maybe I am just a big pain in the bum - I would love to know.   What an interesting exercise that would be.

Actually I quite enjoy being on my own and  maybe therein lies the problem.  I enjoy the freedom to do as I please without having to worry about someone else.  If I want to I eat I do, if I want to have a rest I do, if I want to go and cook tea for my children I do, if I just want to sit and read a book I can, if I want to go on a holiday I can.  Every day I am busy and if I do have a day on my own I treasure every minute.

But there is a part of me that feels alone.  Why?

 

Sunday morning and we rose early to a lovely sunny day.  We did the chores that were waiting for us and then packed the car ready to go 100 kls. to a small country town where we were attending a birthday party for a dear friend of 50 years.
It was a lovely drive with many city cars rushing along the freeway on their way to a day in the country too, and we were feeling happy and relaxed.

After we got off the freeway we stopped on the side of the road and I got out and checked to see that the goodies we were taking with us were OK.  Back into the car and on our way.
We arrived outside the hall where the birthday was to be held, to be greeted by an old friend and her daughter and son-in-law.  They too were laden down with trays of cakes etc.  Quite a few guests were arriving now so we proceeded into the hall and after greeting some more people went to the kitchen to deposit the cakes.  Trays of home made eclairs, match sticks, cream puffs, brandy snaps, sponges, pastries etc.,,  (what great cooks) took up all the bench space and there were many country ladies preparing the eats.  (It was a real country  'do' and the people were very generous.)

After a few words with the helpers, we went into the main hall which was beautifully decorated with streamers and large balloons, while the tables, with their pale blue decor were a sight to be seen. By this time everyone was waiting the arrival of the 'birthday girl' and there was a lot of excited chatter as people, who had not seen one another for many years, again made contact.

A loud cheer errupted - the special guest had arrived with her sons and families.  She was radiant........this loving, giving, big hearted soul.  A tiny woman, no one would have guessed about her hard earlier life or that she had very little schooling.  Never a whimper from this one, just a 'get up and go' attitude.   A real battler.

About 150 people (families and children) attended and although many were well into later years, they danced into the night to the old time band and sang the old time songs with gusto.
Some recited poetry.
Many of the men had a couple of drinks to make them merry and the wives laughingly became taxi drivers.
A great party and a happy day was had by all.

Question:

"why are we letting some sections of the world community "stuff" up our Great Barrier Reef when you and I,  as Australian citizen cannot even go near most of it, because walking across it may damage the environment and you definitely cannot fish, recreationally in a national park  -  have we got our priorities right??......... when we police Australians and then let the rest of the world do as they please (ships and illegal fishing) go unchallenged..........it's a bloody disgrace..........AND THAT'S MY VIEW........

Anybody else agree with MY views???..........have a look at the attachment – thanks - graemeb Mentone Victoria Australia

Note - this is frustration that was bought on by an attachment that was with an e-mail on "our" beautiful Great Barrier Reef and at the same time the radio news was telling me how the ship that was "15 miles off course was leaking oil into and onto the reef - graemeb

Here's an American author who suggests realism rather than deluded positivism is the way to go when confronted with life's hurdles.

As a bit of a pessimist I got really optimistic after listening to Barbara Ehrenreich:

http://fora.tv/2009/10/24/Bright-Sided_Barbara_Ehrenreich

Seems to me to be a very sensible person.

In light of a recent event involving a Nigerian boarding a flight with the sole intention of causing the destruction and death of all its passengers I believe civil liberties should come second.

The safety and protection of all air passengers should take precedence over a person's civil liberties and it is my belief that "any" measures needed to ensure this should be allowed.

If this means a full body search and longer delays at check in  so be it;  I would have no objection whatsoever.   I also believe that as the would be perpetrators of these despicable acts have been...so I have heard, via News Radio,  from an authority on this subject  ...between the ages of 18 and 40 and are of a certain ethnic race and religious persuasion,  they should also be singled out for extra attention.

I realise what I have said will stick in the craw of civil libertarians but quite honestly I don't care.  The safety of a planeload of people, in my opinion, is vastly more important than the so called civil liberties  of one or more would be terrorists.

OK, I'm turning over a new leaf.  No more Mr Once-a-month Guy!  My blogs have been too infrequent.  So travels permitting, I'm going to try and ratchet it up to one a day.

I've been collecting quotes, curious quotes, interesting and odd quotes, for about 35 years, and while they'd probably make a decent book, I haven't the time to waste beating on publishers' doors, so I'm going to post them here for free.

The quotations are inspired by Alan Mackay's Harvest of a Quiet Mind, a book published by the Institute of Physics, and a volume that seems to be in the library of most science communicators around the world.  I started collecting unusual ideas as I came across them, and over the years, I have farmed them into categories, as you will see.

Now some people will know what curtiotisity is and who had it, and others won't.  They'll need to look it up, because I'm not telling.  Over time, I hope to develop your curtiosity, and perhaps to lead your reading in new directions.

One major difference from most quotation collections you will find on the web: I have made every effort to round up, track down and identify the sources of my quotations, and that means verifying them as well.  Some of us spend far too much time sorting out quotations attributed on flimsy evidence to Mr Disraeli, Mark Twain or some other humorist.

Oh, by the way, there are occasional traps for plagiarists.  See if you can spot them.

This story involves dead germs, invertebrate eyes and a mutant foxglove.  Be warned!

I was actually doing a small vignette on Coley's mixed toxins when I came across Bertram Buxton.  Coley was in the habit of treating sarcomas with a heat-killed mixture of two bacteria, Serratia marcescens and Streptococcus pyogenes. He injected his brew into cancers of the colon and uterus. "Coley's mixed toxins" as the brew was known, had mixed results, but a few of them were spectacular.

Now before you shrink back in horror and disgust, these were serious germs. Various strains and infections of Streptococcus pyogenes can cause impetigo, strep throat, scarlet fever, erysipelas and toxic shock syndrome. Serratia marcescens plays a role in some forms of bacteraemia, so neither is something to take lightly, but the treatment was certainly less deadly than the disease.

More importantly, medical lore had recorded cases where gangrene infections had seen off cancers, so there was a scientific basis of sorts.  A decade or so back, researchers started to see that the secret was probably a cytokine, a chemical known as Tumour Necrosis Factor or TNF.  For a while, there was a flurry of activity, but then it all died away again.

Anyhow, that took me to the pages of Science to see what had been said about Coley's toxins.  That brought me to Dr Buxton when I encountered his obituary, written after he died in Devon at the age of 82, in 1934.

Buxton had somehow fetched up on a cholera ship in New York harbour in the 1890s.  I will have to poke around later, to find out what a cholera ship was, but I can make a guess.  Ten years or so later, now aged 50, he was working as a pathologist, preparing Coley's toxins for the treatment of inoperable sarcoma".

He returned to England in 1912, but before then, he had shown a stern approach to money-grubbing that now characterises so much science and even more medicine.  When some of his work looked as though it might be commercially important, he decamped to Venezuela and wrote "a remarkable study of the invertebrate eye".  He was also an expert and a pioneer in microphotography, but where I would regard that as a diversion, his obituarist, one James Ewing, did not.

"His sole diversion was riding the bicycle and his remarkable skill in trick performances was long remembered by pedestrians on the upper west side of Central Park."

Back in England and now aged 60, Buxton turned to plant phsiology at the John Innes Horticultural Institution, and "produced by mutation a giant fertile hybrid of foxglove which was recognised by the Kew authorities as a new species".

Ewing quoted an earlier obituary in The Times, which referred to his work in agglutination, laying the foundation for studies in the assay of toxins and antitoxins. "The perfect charm, breadth of view, and superb technique are memories of Buxton which will not easily be forgotten by his many pupils and associates."

My current writing program has no place for Buxton, so I thought I would share with you this man who seems to have devoted his life to knowledge.

They just don't breed them like that any more.  No, not the foxgloves, silly!

The problem with Greypath is that it contains TOO MUCH information.   This poses a delightful dilema. Is Greypath really important to its contributors or is it just part of the deluge of information that swamps us every day?

I am sure that the former is the case.  It is just that we Greypathers are leading such busy lives in the real world that we have little time to take advantage of what Greypath offers in the cyberworld.


Last year I dropped out of a uni  media studies degree course because I didn't want my individuality to bne subsumed into "the university culture."  To be honest I jumped ship just before I would have been pushed overboard.  I have looked at the creative writing course in the Lyceum.  I did a similar programme at adult education a number of years ago.  I will do the Lyceum course when I can find the time. (I feel some excuses comming on.}

OK So I can't spell or do sums and no one could ever accuse me of being politicly correct.  In fact I take a perverse delight in being just the opposite.   What you see is what you get with no fancy packaging.  I am enjoying the experience of being myself after 66 years of conforming to the expectation of others.  Is there any one elseout there who knows what a great feeling that is?

He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small.
The Streptococcus is the test –
I love it least of all.

The provenance of this versicle is hard to trace, but it appears to have been the work of a Canadian physician, Wallace Wilson, and it was supposedly written in a letter to Dr. E.P. Scarlett, somewhere around 1920s. Some years ago, I was zeroing in on it when I suffered a catastrophic hard disc crash, and I never got back to the search. One day soon, I must do so.

I was reminded of it today when I read one of those articles which make me regert that I never studied medicine. Medical gentlemen (they all seem to be male) of a certain age, spend inordinate amounts of delicious time, teasing out the real reason why X or Y died, and how they died.

Today's email brought me a URL, http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/090817_mozart, which outlines the likely cause of Mozart's death. Forget Salieri and poison, forget all of the conspiracy theories: it seems that what took him off was a streptococcal infection. I won't steal their thunder: go there and read the article, to see how the authors, Richard Zeger of the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam and his colleagues, nailed it with a fair degree of certainty.

Mozart died at 35: just think what else he might have written, given even five more years!

I definitely loveth the strep least of all.

I am sure many female Greypathers will understand exactly where I am coming from with this blog.


For many years the words I have hated to hear when we were going away in the car on holiday or even a day trip were:  "Well, here is the map, you are the navigator."

The night before "he who must be obeyed" (he thinks!!!) goes through the road map directory and methodically marks up with little yellow "stickies" what page follows on from the other and then on the morning of departure I am handed the dreaded directory with all the "stickies" poking out along the top.

So off we go....well within 30 minutes or so the fights begin.   We find that he has gone into the wrong lane, we are boxed in, yet we have to turn left (I tell him this)  but we cannot so we sail right through the lights and then all the planning with the stickies has gone out the window because he now has no idea where he was and when I make a suggestion all hell breaks loose!    He reads the map one way I read it another!  In the end I just throw the darned directory on the back street and usually yell a few expletives and say "that is the last time I am going to navigate."!!

By some stroke of fate he  usually find his way to where we had planned on going, but the stress and arguing has taken its toll and it takes about an hour or so for the ice to thaw between us.

Sooooo.....a few weeks ago...having had enough of all this, I  insisted we purchase a Tom Tom XL.   After finally working out how it worked we went on our first trip to the local shopping centre...was a breeze!   Decided to go on another short trip....yet another breeze!

On Tuesday we decided to go to a vegetable outlet but "he who must be obeyed" decided he would try and fool the Tom Tom.   Yes we must bring some excitement into the journey now that I am no longer navigating!

Instead of going straight down the highway, turn right and go 2 kilometres and arrive at our destination...he decided to turn right at a set of lights before we reached the highway.  Well, poor Tom Tom was on the verge of a nervous breakdown...trying to get hubby to turn right at the first roundabout and come back to the lights and turn right and go up to the highway. I kept my mouth shut when hubby said "that information he just said was wrong...where are we...?"  No way was I going to respond..my lips were sealed.    No, hubby was not going to be told what to do by Tom Tom, so he breezed through another 3 further roundabouts , with Tom Tom telling him to take the third exit etc and go back but no, this was not going to happen  and hubby plowed on through the last roundabout and turned left.

Poor old Tom Tom eventually  realised where we were , did a re-adjustment and finally we were back on track with Tom Tom calling out the correct  instructions. 

With a smug look on his face hubby looked at me and said "well that worked out Ok didn't it?"