Tag Archives: sky

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Rock surfaces

Happy Earth Day!

I walked North Beach twice this week and Marrowstone Island once so far this week. This is from North Beach yesterday. This rock makes me a little anxious because I think it will come down. It’s well above my head and is probably 5 feet by 5 feet. Bits of the cliffs fall and I do not want to be under them.

There is another, a little smaller, a bit further along. Those are not small trees on the top of the cliffs, so the scale becomes clearer.

Another of the huge rocks has been on the beach for a while. Look who is living on the surface, while the tides roll in and out. An amazing surface, right?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: surface.

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Daily Evil: S is for Sneaky

Sneaky. One thing that I think really is evil is gossip. Talking about someone behind their back and spreading rumors and never speaking to the person themselves. But I do not need to punish anyone. The gossip will eat them from the inside, like a cancer, and they will look like fools when they are proven wrong. Curling churlishly with guilt.

I look at the sea and I let it all go.

This watercolor by Helen Burling Ottaway does not have a date. I love the whitecaps using the paper. Tricky to do that, I have tried. My daughter also draws horizons and seascapes, over and over. This is 11 by 15. I suspect it is from the late 1970s or early 1980s, because there is a watercolor of my sister on the beach, similar to this. My paternal grandparents lived on Topsail Island in North Carolina and that is the most likely location.

S is for sneaky and snarky and sea. Here is a snarky song.

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Inadvisable

Don’t be flippant with this one.

Taken on Marrowstone Island earlier this week. I was so busy watching this eagle that I tripped over a rock and face planted. If I’d hit a rock I would have lost teeth or knocked myself out. Luckily both I and the camera did fine.

I tend to spot the eagles in the trees by sound. I do watch for them as well. This one called to another, who circled towards the tree. Sound locates them.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: flippant.

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Xeno or infection phobic?

So is Xenophobia a pathological fear of strangers or foreigners? Like agoraphobia or arachnophobia? The Mayo Clinic site has a listing for agoraphobia but not for arachnophobia or xenophobia. Perhaps agoraphobia is more disabling. Though with our world having more and more people, xenophobia might be terribly dangerous as well.

Current world population: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/.

Number of people with Long Covid: at least 65,000,000, though the talk I attended yesterday say that’s a low estimate. Nearly one percent of the world population.

This article in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2 is about Long Covid, the research to date and the areas that need research. This is a very fast moving target with information exploding from multiple labs.

I attended an on line continuing medical education about Long Covid yesterday: https://hsc.unm.edu/echo/partner-portal/echos-initiatives/long-covid-fatiguing-illness-recovery/. This is a global monthly teaching session about Long Covid and current research and diagnosis and treatment. Yesterday’s talk was about immune cell abnormalities that persist and evidence is showing up that they are causing some of the problems. However, as one researcher said, the problems are multifactorial and any system in the body can be affected in more than one way.

Essentially some of the immune cells are puffy, sticky and enlarged. The suspicion is that the postexertional malaise is related to these puffy sticky cells. During exercise, or for some people normal activity, the muscles need more blood flow and more oxygen. The puffy sticky cells are stiff and won’t slide through capillaries easily. The muscles send a panic “I need oxygen!” message to the brain and the muscles do not work. The recovery can take a day or two days because of the food/oxygen deprivation. The researcher said that the same mechanism is suspected in ME-CFS (myalgic encephalopathy-chronic fatigue syndrome).

My muscles are feeling normal. My chronic fatigue is comparatively mild and happens with bad infections or with a vaccine that raises antibody levels, as it is supposed to. That’s how immunizations work. Do I have antibodies that shut down my muscles or do I have puffy cells? I would postulate the former but I can’t be sure right now. My home science kit is not quite up to that study.

When my fast twitch muscles are not working, are affected, it is very weird. They DO NOT WORK RIGHT. It is hard to describe: it is sort of pain, but it’s more of a very very strong STOP EXERCISING NOW message. And then I am exhausted for 1-2 days. In contrast, my muscles are a bit sore after a four mile beach walk 2 days ago and then an intense physical therapy session, but I am not exhausted. No naps the last two days. I have returned to my normal sleep patterns, less hours.

One of the researchers presented new technology that can make a movie of the microscopic cells going though a space with a narrowing like a capillary. Video electron microscopy. They are describing the cell shapes and whether they go through a capillary diameter normally or stick, for people with no Covid, diabetics, acute Covid and Long Covid. All are different. It is fascinating new technology.

I think I am more infection phobic than xenophobic. People all have the same basic blood cells inside, even with lots of different genetic patterns. So far infection phobia has not led me to agoraphobia, but the talk yesterday sure makes me want to keep my mask on.

There were over 350 attendees yesterday from all over the world. Lay people can sign up as well and the videos are stored for anyone to watch. I will watch yesterday’s a second time because five different scientists presented in 30 minutes and I ignored the chat which was going full speed with references to look up. Homework. And progress is being made.

Blessings.

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: xenophobia.

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I took the photograph two days ago from East Beach on Marrowstone Island. The distance between the sea lions and the container ship is much further than it appears, and this is taken with a Canon PowerShot SX40HS zoomed most of the way out.

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Daily Evil: M is for moan

M for moan and maudlin and mourn and mountain.

Another watercolor, 14 by 27, 1987. There is another older watercolor, no year, on the reverse. Misty mountains. This could be West Virginia, the panhandle where my grandmother lived for a while, or a trip to the northwest.

M is for mother, too. I miss her.

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Daily Evil: L is for Longing

Is longing evil? I don’t know. Rumi writes that all longing is longing for being reunited with the Beloved and is a form of prayer. I think that is gorgeous.

L is also for Lake. This is a 9 by 12 inch watercolor, dated 1991. I don’t know the title. This is Lake Matinenda in Ontario, north of Michigan. My grandparents bought land there and we went up in the summers year after year. I have not been there since 2018 because of Covid and distance. I do know that stretch of shoreline.

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Daily Evil: H is for Hill

I can’t think of anything evil this morning.

This etching is titled Golden Hills, 2nd Edition, 14/20, 1980. The plate is 4 by 5.5 inches, so this is a lot of very delicate work. My mother used dental pics to draw in the tar on the plate. The darker lines are etched deeper in the acid bath. The shadowed hill is tricky, isn’t it? I think that the texture is a fine piece of fabric pressed into the tar and then lifted, to make the pattern so even.

I think these hills are in upstate New York. My maternal grandparents lived in Trumansburg, New York. By 1980 my parents were living in Alexandria, Virginia.