Update about blogCa

Monday, March 18, 2024

All life...

 "We have been carrying on two parallel conversations, one about respecting human diversity, the other about preserving natural diversity. Unless we merge those conversations, both will be futile. Our efforts to honor human differences cannot succeed apart from our effort to honor the buzzing, blooming, bewildering variety of life of earth. All life rises from the same source, and so does all fellow feeling, whether the fellow moves on two legs or four, on scaly bellies or feathered wings. If we care only for human needs, we betray the land; if we care only for the earth and its wild offspring, we betray our own kind. The profusion of creatures and cultures is the most remarkable fact about our planet, and the study and stewardship of that profusion seems to me our fundamental task."

Scott Russell Sanders

About the author:

Scott Russell Sanders was born in Memphis, Tennessee. His father came from a family of cotton farmers in Mississippi, his mother from an immigrant doctor’s family in Chicago. He spent his early childhood in Tennessee and his school years in Ohio. 

 In the past decade he has published A Conservationist Manifesto, his vision of a shift from a culture of consumption to a culture of caretaking; Earth Works, a selection of his best essays from the past thirty years; the novel Divine AnimalDancing in Dreamtime, a collection of eco-science fiction stories; and Stone Country: Then & Now, a new and enlarged edition of his documentary narrative co-authored with photographer Jeffrey Wolin. His children's books include Aurora Means DawnWarm as WoolMeeting Trees, and The Floating House.

He is currently at work on a collection of short stories, a book about the meaning of wealth, and a collection of essays about the role of imagination in an age of climate disruption. His writing examines the human place in nature, the pursuit of social justice, the relation between culture and geography, and the search for a spiritual path.  

Published as his biography, June 2023

by Anna Marie Silva


Burnett Reservoir, source of water for Asheville, NC. Photo by Swannanoa Museum

Bald Eagle


Boys racing on the beach, Cumberland Island, (1993-5?)

Sunday, March 17, 2024

When overwhelmed, the Americans of Conscience might help

 The good things from Americans of Conscience.

This list followed the special issue published 3.15.24...focusing upon "Support with Humanitarian Aid for people Facing Violence." 

They list many different organizations from which to choose to give support in 15 different areas, as well as appreciation notes for three actions by the Biden Harris administration and Doctors Without Borders.

It is only focused upon the Middle East, I might add. So it is leaving out aid for Ukraine, and Sudan, and Haiti, and other areas where civilians are suffering from armed conflict not of their choosing.

A randomized list of Good Things:

Thanks Americans of Conscience

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Gratitude - for where my food, my sustinance, comes from

 How does our food get from farm to table, or even out of the fields?

Look at one artist's visions that celebrated the food handlers. HERE. Colassal is an art-featuring newsletter which I receive free, though there are subscription versions available.



[Nariso] Martinez’s solo exhibition From These Hands/De Estas Manos at Buffalo AKG Art Museum brings together pieces completed within the past few years, focusing on produce boxes as both collage components and as framing devices for striking portraits. He often portrays his subjects wearing baseball caps and scarves over their faces, which protect them from the elements.


When he was 20 years old, Narsiso Martinez immigrated to the U.S. from Oaxaca, Mexico, with a powerful resolve to learn English and pursue a university education. “I wanted to break the cycle,” he says. “In my family of six siblings, I wanted to be the difference and have a college degree before having my own family.”

At 29, Martinez finished high school, and in 2012, he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts. And while he continued his education in pursuit of an MFA, he began to work seasonally in the apple orchards of eastern Washington state. Drawing from the visual language of produce brands and relationships with people he met on the farms, he developed vivid mixed-media works emphasizing the individuals who perform the labor necessary to fill grocery aisles, restaurants, and refrigerators around the country.


Today's quote:

Darker days are just as much a part of life as are the days graced with sunshine.

Friday, March 15, 2024

Just 4 years ago...

I've been thinking about how it was just 4 years ago.
If you're a kid, it probably seems a lifetime ago.

But for me, I feel that yesterday suddenly our world was turned upside down, millions of people were dying, and nobody had a cure. All the restaurants suddenly closed. All the retail outlets closed. Grocery store shelves were bare. Nobody who was in the entertainment industry had a job any more...at least live entertainment. You just didn't go where other people would also be inside with you.

We suddenly wanted to eat outside on patios (when we first went back to restaurants.) Doors all had signs on them, masks were required.

It was the COVID-19 pandemic.

And so far, it's escaped TV shows. But believe me, at some time, there will be a show with the setting (medical perhaps) and the background of the early days of the pandemic.

I just found a memory on Facebook, which they somehow cull through to give me just a few of the ones I posted...but this one was about how to deal with the virus when you caught it.

Good advice from a nurse on Twitter if you should get the virus:

I know we’re all tired of hearing/talking about it, but one thing I HAVEN’T really seen going around is advice for what happens if you DO get coronavirus (many of us will), only advice for how to try to AVOID it.

So as your friendly neighborhood RN, a wee thread:
Things you should *actually* buy ahead of time (Erm, not sure what the obsession with toilet paper is?): Kleenex, Acetaminophen (Tylenol) in 325 mg tablets, Ibuprofen (Advil) in 200 mg tablets, Mucinex, Robitussin or DayQuil/NyQuil, whatever your cough medicine of choice is.

If you don’t have a humidifier, that would also be a good thing to get. (You can also just turn the shower on hot and sit in the bathroom breathing in the steam). Also a good time to make a big batch of your favorite soup to freeze and have on hand.

If you have a history of asthma and you have a prescription inhaler, make sure the one you have isn’t expired and refill it/get a new one if it is.

You basically just want to prepare as though you know you’re going to get a nasty respiratory bug like bronchitis or pneumonia. You just have the foresight to know it’s coming.

For symptom management, use the meds I mentioned. For a fever over 101, alternate Tylenol and Advil so you’re taking a dose of one or the other every 3 hours. Use both cough suppressants and expectorants (most cough meds have both). Drink a ton, hydrate hydrate. Rest lots.

You should not be leaving your house except to go to the doctor, and if you do, wear a mask (regular is fine, you don’t need an N95). You DO NOT NEED TO GO TO THE ER unless you are having trouble breathing or your fever is very high and unmanaged with meds.

90% of healthy adult cases thus far have been managed at home with basic rest/hydration/over-the-counter meds. We don’t want to clog the ERs unless you’re actually in distress. The hospital beds will be used for people who actively need oxygen/breathing treatments/IV fluids.

If you have a pre-existing lung condition (COPD, emphysema, lung cancer) or are on immunosuppressants, now is a great time to talk to your PCP or specialist about what they would like you to do if you get sick. They might have plans to get you admitted and bypass the ER entirely.

One major relief to you parents is that kids do VERY well with coronavirus— they usually bounce back in a few days, no one under 18 has died, and almost no kids have required hospitalization (unless they have a lung disease like CF). Just use pediatric dosing of the same meds.
(If you want to share, copy and paste.)

And (knock on wood) I've not yet had the virus. Incidentally, this nurse was wrong, as many kids did get very sick with COVID.

I got to have a heart attack. Not until May 15, 2020. So the protocols were in place for COVID when I went through ER. But since I have a chronic cough with my COPD, it was confusing for them. For hours I was in isolation, because the hospital had run out of COVID testing supplies, and they would have to send the test out to a lab which might take a day for results. Then my Dr. said to get my test done immediately and it was negative. (I had no fevers, and just pain in my neck and shoulders as heart attack signs.) But of course my blood work kept showing something that they know indicates a heart attack. I depend upon labs...because we all know a heart attack in a woman presents differently than a man. No numb left arm, no sweaty clamy face, etc.




Anyway, 4 days later I went home with a stent on my heart and lots of new meds to take, most for the rest of my life.

But I was right there with these front line care teams. I got to see them at work, seriously overworked, since there were so many patients coming into hospitals. Did they have enough beds? I got shuffled around a few times...so they were working on that.

And I remember just 4 years ago, Millions of People Died from COVID in the pandemic.

Millions of first responders worked above and beyond, as well as care teams in medicine.

I won't forget.

And here are some good links from PBS' NOVA giving some not-so-current information about the pandemic.

Covid and Climate Change for breathing- by Drew Lanham, ornothologist and conservationist in 2021

Lingering Symptoms from COVID-19 are “Unprecedented” published 2021

I think I'm going to go looking elsewhere for more recent findings. I'm quite sure the medical professionals have been studying this virus for the whole 4 years it's been around.


Today's quote:

It’s precisely the people who are considered the least “likely” leaders who end up inspiring others the most. Everyday people and everyday acts of courage eventually change everything.

AI-JEN POO




Thursday, March 14, 2024

Civil Rights - some history


I watched the TV news in 1965. I didn't want to think this was actually happening in the US. I also never learned all these details about the marches. Only bits and pieces. Maybe these are more bits and pieces, and since there were thousands involved, maybe there will still be thousands of pieces to learn about.


from:

Letters from an American 3.7.24  by Heather Cox Richardson, historian


Black Americans outnumbered white Americans among the 29,500 people who lived in Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s, but the city’s voting rolls were 99% white. So, in 1963, Black organizers in the Dallas County Voters League launched a drive to get Black voters in Selma registered. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a prominent civil rights organization, joined them.

In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, but the measure did not adequately address the problem of voter suppression. In Selma a judge had stopped the voter registration protests by issuing an injunction prohibiting public gatherings of more than two people.

To call attention to the crisis in her city, Amelia Boynton, who was a part of the Dallas County Voters League but who, in this case, was acting with a group of local activists, traveled to Birmingham to invite Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., to the city. King had become a household name after the 1963 March on Washington where he delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech, and his presence would bring national attention to Selma’s struggle.

King and other prominent members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference arrived in January to push the voter registration drive. For seven weeks, Black residents tried to register to vote. County Sheriff James Clark arrested almost 2,000 of them for a variety of charges, including contempt of court and parading without a permit. A federal court ordered Clark not to interfere with orderly registration, so he forced Black applicants to stand in line for hours before taking a “literacy” test. Not a single person passed.  

Then on February 18, white police officers, including local police, sheriff’s deputies, and Alabama state troopers, beat and shot an unarmed 26-year-old, Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was marching for voting rights at a demonstration in his hometown of Marion, Alabama, about 25 miles northwest of Selma. Jackson had run into a restaurant for shelter along with his mother when the police started rioting, but they chased him and shot him in the restaurant’s kitchen.

Jackson died eight days later, on February 26. 

The leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Selma decided to defuse the community’s anger by planning a long march—54 miles—from Selma to the state capitol at Montgomery to draw attention to the murder and voter suppression. Expecting violence, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee voted not to participate, but its chair, John Lewis, asked their permission to go along on his own. They agreed.

On March 7, 1965, the marchers set out. As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a Confederate brigadier general, Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, and U.S. senator who stood against Black rights, state troopers and other law enforcement officers met the unarmed marchers with billy clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas. They fractured John Lewis’s skull and beat Amelia Boynton unconscious. A newspaper photograph of the 54-year-old Boynton, seemingly dead in the arms of another marcher, illustrated the depravity of those determined to stop Black voting.

Images of “Bloody Sunday” on the national news mesmerized the nation, and supporters began to converge on Selma. King, who had been in Atlanta when the marchers first set off, returned to the fray.

Two days later, the marchers set out again. Once again, the troopers and police met them at the end of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, but this time, King led the marchers in prayer and then took them back to Selma. That night, a white mob beat to death a Unitarian Universalist minister, James Reeb, who had come from Massachusetts to join the marchers.

On March 15, President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed a nationally televised joint session of Congress to ask for the passage of a national voting rights act. “Their cause must be our cause too,” he said. “[A]ll of us…must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.” Two days later, he submitted to Congress proposed voting rights legislation.

The marchers remained determined to complete their trip to Montgomery, and when Alabama’s governor, George Wallace, refused to protect them, President Johnson stepped in. When the marchers set off for a third time on March 21, 1,900 members of the nationalized Alabama National Guard, FBI agents, and federal marshals protected them. Covering about ten miles a day, they camped in the yards of well-wishers until they arrived at the Alabama State Capitol on March 25. Their ranks had grown as they walked until they numbered about 25,000 people.

On the steps of the capitol, speaking under a Confederate flag, Dr. King said: “The end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man.”

That night, Viola Liuzzo, a 39-year-old mother of five who had arrived from Michigan to help after Bloody Sunday, was murdered by four Ku Klux Klan members who tailed her as she ferried demonstrators out of the city.

On August 6, Dr. King and Mrs. Boynton were guests of honor as President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Recalling “the outrage of Selma,” Johnson said: "This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies."

The Voting Rights Act authorized federal supervision of voter registration in districts where African Americans were historically underrepresented. Johnson promised that the government would strike down “regulations, or laws, or tests to deny the right to vote.” He called the right to vote “the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men,” and pledged that “we will not delay, or we will not hesitate, or we will not turn aside until Americans of every race and color and origin in this country have the same right as all others to share in the process of democracy.”

As recently as 2006, Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act by a bipartisan vote. By 2008 there was very little difference in voter participation between white Americans and Americans of color. But then, in 2013, the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder decision got rid of the part of the Voting Rights Act that required jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination in voting to get approval from the federal government before changing their voting rules. This requirement was known as “preclearance.”

The Shelby County v. Holder decision opened the door, once again, for voter suppression. Since then, states have made it harder to vote; in 2023, at least 14 states enacted 17 restrictive voting laws. A recent study by the Brennan Center of nearly a billion vote records over 14 years shows that the racial voting cap is growing almost twice as fast in places that used to be covered by the preclearance requirement. 

Democrats have tried since 2021 to pass a voting rights act but have been stymied by Republicans, who oppose such protections. Last September, on National Voter Registration Day, House Democrats reintroduced a voting rights act, now named the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act after the man who went on from his days in the Civil Rights Movement to serve 17 terms as a representative from Georgia, bearing the scars of March 7, 1965, until he died on July 17, 2020. 

On March 1, 2024, 51 Democratic senators introduced the measure in the Senate. 

Speaking in Selma last Sunday at the commemoration of the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris shared that the first thing she sees on walking into her office is a “large framed photograph taken on Bloody Sunday depicting an injured Amelia Boynton receiving care at the foot of [the Edmund Pettus] bridge.”

“[F]or me,” she said, “it is a daily reminder of the struggle, of the sacrifice, and of how much we owe to those who gave so much before us.” 

“History is a relay race,” she said. “Generations before us carried the baton. And now, they have passed it to us.”

—----------

Notes:

https://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/37721510v1p2.pdf

https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/august-6-1965-remarks-signing-voting-rights-act

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/selma-montgomery-march

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/25/fight-to-vote-newsletter-voting-rights-act

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gop-voting-restrictions/2021/02/19/d1fab224-72ca-11eb-85fa-e0ccb3660358_story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-voting-bloody-sunday-order/2021/03/07/ce45b082-7f60-11eb-9ca6-54e187ee4939_story.html

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-2023-review

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/people-color-are-being-deterred-voting

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47520

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-democrats-keep-bringing-up-voting-rights/

https://sewell.house.gov/2023/9/on-national-voter-registration-day-rep-sewell-and-house-democrats-introduce-the-john-r-lewis-voting-rights-advancement-act

https://www.warnock.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senator-reverend-warnock-colleagues-reintroduce-john-r-lewis-voting-rights-advancement-act/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/03/03/remarks-by-vice-president-harris-commemorating-the-59th-anniversary-of-bloody-sunday-selma-al/

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Less than six degrees of separation

 


A friend from church's daughter, they are numbers 1 and 2.

The daughter's friend, number 3, gave her information about the need for help for a family in Gaza who were related to her.

Her (daughter's friend's) uncle in the Netherlands (number 4) wrote about his family who were trapped in Gaza (not sure their relationships but at least 4-6 people) thus number 5 in our relationships.

How did I close the gap? They set up a go-fund me, which I contributed just a small amount to. But because of that I was sent details of how the funds were used.

The family in Gaza helped feed 20 other families with the funds. They had hopes of going to Egypt, and were waiting for transportation. I think the funding was helping toward this also. Just a few days ago we received word the family had arrived in Egypt. 

So I was only 5 degrees of separation from that family. Those hungry people, who have had their lives devastated by this awful war....I cannot look at the news any more. I cannot see the smiling politicians barbing at each other or smiling about the wonderful benefits they promise, which are all lies.

I've spent the last 2 years hoping the Ukraine could make a final stand and Russia would give up.

The stupid idiots in Congress who were elected by all kinds of other idiots are sitting on the money that could help Ukrainians. Lives are being lost there every day.

Refugees from other armed conflicts all over the globe are also suffering from lack of food, clean water and medical care.

I'm so grateful to live my comfortable life. Today I helped a neighbor who is in an electric wheelchair by bringing her groceries home from the store, which was not planned in advance. She had also come up short when checking out, so I loaned her enough for the toilet paper, but she was not buying the cat food or paper towels. When I loaded the trunk with her things, another bagger brought out the cat food and paper towels, which someone else in line had paid for. 

She rides her electric chair so fast it's quite dangerous. I guess it has brakes of some kind. But she goes along the street where there are no sidewalks, and heaven help a car that doesn't notice her.

So I unloaded everything into my tote cart and left it outside my door, until she got home. Since there were frozen things I didn't want to leave them in the sun in my car. She appeared about 5 minutes after me, and I took the things in her apartment, right across the courtyard from me. 

Yes, I thought, charity does begin at home.

And now I know that I'm only 5 degrees separated from a family that fled their home in Gaza to Egypt.


Today's quote:

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”
Marilyn Monroe

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Micro-plastics in humans - the whole article

Plastic Found Inside More Than 50% of Plaques From Clogged Arteries

Plastics are now everywhere, with tiny fragments found in several major organs of the human body, including the placenta.

Given how easily the microscopic particles infiltrate our tissues, it's vital that we learn exactly what kinds of risks they could pose to our health.

Researchers have been busy studying the effects of microplastics in mini-replicas of organsand in mice, to get a sense of how they might impact the human body. However, the concentrations of microplastics used in those studies might not reflect people's real-world exposure, and few studies have been done in humans.

Now, a small study in Italy has found shards of microplastics in fatty deposits surgically removed from patients who had an operation to open up their clogged arteries – and reported their health outcomes nearly 3 years later.

Removing fatty plaques from narrowed arteries in a procedure called a carotid endarterectomy reduces the risk of future strokes.

The team behind this new study, led by Raffaele Marfella, a medical researcher at the University of Campania in Naples, wondered how the risk of stroke – as well as heart attacks and death – compared between patients who had microplastics in their plaques and those who did not.

Following 257 patients for 34 months, the researchers found nearly 60 percent of them had measurable amounts of polyethylene in plaques pulled from their fat-thickened arteries, and 12 percent also had polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in extracted fat deposits.

PVC comes in both rigid and flexible forms, and is used to make water pipes, plastic bottles, flooring, and packaging. Polyethylene is the most commonly produced plastic, used for plastic bags, films, and bottles, too.

With microplastics previously found coursing through people's bloodstream, the researchers were reasonably concerned about heart health. Lab-based studies suggest microplastics can trigger inflammation and oxidative stress in heart cells, and impair heart function, alter heart rate, and cause scarring of the heart in animals such as mice.

"Observational data from occupational-exposure studies [also] suggest an increased risk of cardiovascular disease among persons who are exposed to plastics-related pollution, including polyvinyl chloride, than that seen in the general population," Marfella and colleagues write.

In the study, patients with microplastics in their excised plaques were 4.5 times as likely to have experienced a stroke, non-fatal heart attack or died from any cause after 34 months than people who had no detectable microplastics in the plaques that surgeons had removed.

The amount of microplastics, and even smaller particles called nanoplastics, was measured using a technique called pyrolysis–gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, and their presence confirmed using another method, stable isotopes analysis, which can distinguish between the carbon of human tissues and that of plastics made from petrochemicals.

Microplastics were also visible under powerful microscopes: The researchers observed plastic fragments with jagged edges inside immune cells called macrophages, and within the fatty plaques. Examining the tissue samples, the team also found higher levels of inflammatory markers in patients with microplastics in their plaques.

Panel of two black and white images showing jagged plastic particles, marked with arrows, in tissue sections, viewed under a microscope.
Jagged plastic particles were seen inside macrophages and deposits of fatty tissue, removed from clogged arteries. (Marfella et al., NEJM, 2024)

Bear in mind, however, that an observational study like this can't definitively conclude that microplastics are causing the downstream heart effects; only that there is an association. The study did not consider other risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as smoking, physical inactivity, and air pollution.

"Although we do not know what other exposures may have contributed to the adverse outcomes among patients in this study, the finding of microplastics and nanoplastics in plaque tissue is itself a breakthrough discovery that raises a series of urgent questions," such as how to reduce exposure, writes pediatrician, public health physician and epidemiologist Philip J. Landrigan, of Boston College, in an accompanying editorial.

Plastic production has exploded in the past two decades, only a fraction of which has been recycled, and yet rates of cardiovascular disease have been falling in some parts of the world, so more research is needed to understand the link between the two.

The study has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine.