Twenty years ago today, we moved into our new home. Two decades! Like every oldtimer, I shake my head in wonder at the passage of time. It’s still great to be here. mjh

I took an online IQ test today. I usually avoid such things — they threaten the delicate balance between arrogance and shame. I will say that the verbal stuff — analogies, in particular — was easy. The math was harder. The SATs told me that years ago. But there were several spatial/graphical examples that I never grasped. I truly had no clue what was expected of me. At times like that, my left brain punts to my right brain: Here, you figure this out! Perhaps I should have used my left hand to make those selections. For all I know, my right brain pulled it off — he can’t say, really. My left brain is still miffed. He’ll be in his room for hours throwing books and toys to let the whole house know he’s suffered a grave injustice. Ah, but nothing coaxes him out of his corner quite like a tasty metaphor. mjh

Lily Pond is a small alpine lake in far southern Colorado (just barely north of New Mexico). I’ve always called it Lily Pad, perhaps due to some collusion between my dyslexia and pun-center, that cluster of cells chuckling in a corner of my brain. I’ve posted a photo of Lilly Pad on my flickr account.

Now for a confession: I may not have gotten out of the car for this one (I can’t remember). We enjoy what we call “car hiking.” I’m a little embarrassed to admit that we sacrifice a real connection to the land that can only be achieved on foot for the easy sightseeing, trading the details for the blurry big-picture. There we go, burning fossil fuels, generating pollution, dust and noise, tearing across the scarred landscape for our own selfish pleasure. We might as well be on ATVs pulling snowmobiles behind us.

The only mitigation for our selfish acts is to share some of that pleasure with others. If someone sees a photo or hears a story and thinks, “that’s must have been fun,” then that may thumb the Karmic scale back towards neutral. Please help us with our penance by reading my journal and/or looking at some photos. peace, mjh mjh

Ah, Wilderness! » Conejos Journal – July 2007

Conejos Photos

One of these pictures was highlighted by New West.

Democrats Targeted In GOP Debate – washingtonpost.com, By Michael D. Shear, Washington Post Staff Writer

DES MOINES, Aug. 5 — The Republican candidates for president used a nationally televised morning debate to mock Democrats on foreign policy, taxes and health care while sparring with each other over abortion and the administration’s anti-terrorism efforts.

From a stage in Iowa, the state where the nation’s first voting will begin in five months, the GOP candidates said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that their Democratic rivals support plans for “socialized” medicine and predicted that taxes would be raised if a Democrat returns to the White House. …

Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani sparked loud applause when he declared that “the knee-jerk liberal Democratic reaction — raise taxes to get money — very often is a very big mistake.” …

“We are winning. We must win. And we will not set a date for surrender, as the Democrats want us to do,” McCain said.

Echoing him, Giuliani said: “The reality is that you do not achieve peace through weakness and appeasement. . . . We should seek a victory in Iraq and in Baghdad, and we should define the victory.”

The lone voice in continued opposition to the war, Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.), was again outspoken about America’s involvement. …

A new Washington Post poll of voters in Iowa indicates that the Republican race remains muddled. Romney is leading the race here but his support remains soft. Only 19 percent of Republicans likely to vote in the state’s caucuses say they are very satisfied with their choices. …

Rep. Tom Tancredo (Colo.) defended his recent comments that he would deter terrorist attacks by threatening to bomb Mecca and Medina, two important holy cities in Islam.

“The State Department called that ‘reprehensible’ and ‘absolutely crazy,’ ” Stephanopoulos said.

“Yes,” Tancredo answered. “The State Department — boy, when they start complaining about things I say, I feel a lot better about the things I say, I’ll tell you right now.” [mjh: Yup, when competent professionals say I’m crazy, I feel validated.]

A Diversity of Opinion, if Not Opinionators – washingtonpost.com

Walking around [the major conference for progressive bloggers] during the weekend, it became clear that only a handful of the 1,500 conventioneers — bloggers, policy experts, party activists — are African American, Latino or Asian. Of about 100 scheduled panels and workshops, less than a half-dozen dealt directly with women or minority issues. …

“It’s mostly white. More male than female,” says the former high school math and science teacher turned activist. “It’s not very diverse.”

There goes the open secret of the netroots, or those who make up the community of the Internet grass-roots movement. …

Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, who is part Latina, … said one reason she came to Yearly Kos was to get an answer to this question: “Why is the blogosphere, which is supposed to be more democratic, reinforcing the same white male power structure that exists?”

I read an interesting article today — interesting in its own right, but more so because I first read about the subject, Coley’s Toxins, nearly 25 years ago and I last thought about that almost 23 years ago when my Mom was diagnosed with cancer.

I’ve long had a broad interest in science. I contemplated majors in oceanography, chemistry and linguistics; I enjoyed math (except for geometry) in school. After school, I subscribed to various science and health magazines. (This was long before Tim Berners-Lee birthed the Web. Ask your grandparents what it was like.) So, there’s nothing odd about me reading about obscure cancer treatments long before it had any relevance in my life. I’ll let you inform yourself about Dr. Coley and his cancer discoveries by reading the same article I just did (link at end of this entry).

It was a year or two later, 23 years ago this very month, that information about cancer took on new urgency. My Mom was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (or non-non, whichever is considered less likely fatal — ironically). After I recovered from utter despair, I recalled the article I had read about this little-known treatment. I thought it might be called Coxey’s Toxins (one of the endlessly amusing effects of my dyslexia). I scoured the library’s periodicals. Imagine going to an old building and leafing through huge books with article titles to find a reference, then taking that to a librarian who would find the actual magazine somewhere in the dark stacks. No, that isn’t a metaphor: that’s what happened, once I found Coley instead of Coxey.

I reread that article and confirmed the hope it offered: cancer cells are weak and succumb to fever. Induce fever in a cancer patient and the cancer may die. (The new article offers other possible explanations for the effect.) Armed with a photocopy, I approached my Mother’s doctor and asked, “what about this?” Well, our cancer specialist was a busy man, to be sure, and educated beyond the likes of a distraught son with an article from a popular digest. No doubt my Mom had more faith in me, but she took her conventional chemo like a good patient. Was the mainstream cure really worse than the disease? Given how sick and weak it made her and that it was no cure at all, probably. mjh

Damn Interesting » Coley’s Cancer-Killing Concoction

Coley’s Cancer-Killing Concoction

Scrub jays show up in our yard frequently, sometimes one, sometimes three or four at once. When I see them, I put a handful or two of peanuts in the shell on a patio table. It is wonderful to watch them swoop in, perching on a wire or the back of a chair before landing on the table noisily, shaking its glass top, bouncing oddly to the pile, which is soon spread out by the fussy way a jay shakes each peanut — “no, not this one” — drops it, shakes the next, drops it, returns to the first, and so forth. If another jay is around, each becomes much less discriminating and just grabs and dashes. I rarely see them eat, though I have seen them hide nuts in the yard.

This morning, an especially tattered jay moved in more stealthily than most. He eyed the empty table before flying to a dead tree in the middle of our yard. (Merri is right: this dead tree is a great perch for many birds.) I thought he might bathe, but, instead, he dropped to the ground to forage among some plants. He returned to the same spot in the tree and flew in a different direction to poke among other plants. Eureka — he found one of his stashed nuts and flew to the top of the crabapple tree to peck at it before flying off.

A few minutes later, a much more assertive jay, familiar with the routine, demanded I put new nuts out. Minutes later, the remnants are scattered across the table. It’s the dog’s lucky day when one rolls off — he eats them, shell and all. mjh

PS: See mjh’s blog — Avis Habilis for an account of birds learning from birds of another species.