Monday, May 11, 2020

Coronavirus quarantining, Day 58, Monday, May 11th, 2020

Lennart Helje is a painter and illustrator who born in 1940 in Lima, Sweden.

The tree of the red birds by Lennart Helje
hahahahaha

How cool is that

Copper’s Virus-Killing Powers Were Known Even to the Ancients

The SARS-CoV-2 virus endures for days on plastic or metal but disintegrates soon after landing on copper surfaces. Here’s why

Heavy metals including gold and silver are antibacterial, but copper’s specific atomic makeup gives it extra killing power, Keevil says. Copper has a free electron in its outer orbital shell of electrons that easily takes part in oxidation-reduction reactions (which also makes the metal a good conductor). As a result, Schmidt says, it becomes a “molecular oxygen grenade.” Silver and gold don’t have the free electron, so they are less reactive.
Copper kills in other ways as well, according to Keevil, who has published papers on the effect. When a microbe lands on copper, ions blast the pathogen like an onslaught of missiles, preventing cell respiration and punching holes in the cell membrane or viral coating and creating free radicals that accelerate the kill, especially on dry surfaces. Most importantly, the ions seek and destroy the DNA and RNA inside a bacteria or virus, preventing the mutations that create drug-resistant superbugs. “The properties never wear off, even if it tarnishes,” Schmidt says.
gee I love Randy Newman Randy Newman - Stay Away
aww, so charming
Naps from The Mercadantes on Vimeo.
whoa


tee hee

 huh, tens of thousands of grackles in Houston swarm over a parking lot. Grackles like parking lots.
“Grackles often congregate in large numbers before dawn or after sunset on tree branches, wires or roofs, in groups sometimes known as “annoyances.”


Doctors keep discovering new ways the coronavirus attacks the body

Damage to the kidneys, heart, brain — even ‘covid toes’ — 
prompts reassessment of the disease and how to treat it

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Friday, May 8, 2020

Coronavirus quarantining, Day 55, Friday, May 8th, 2020

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Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Opal Whiteley's extraordinary writing

From the Diary of Opal...1906..
Under the step lives a toad.
I call him Virgil.
He and I are friends.
Under the house live some mice.
They have such beautiful eyes.
I give them bread to eat.
I know what to name my favorite mouse.
He is Felix Medelssohn.
In the pigpen I hear Peter Paul Ruben squealing.
He wants to go on explores.
The man who wears grey neckties and is kind to mice gave a little bell for my lovely pig to wear to church.
Brave Horatius, my dog, came walking by.
He wagged his tail.
That meant he wanted to go on an exploration trip.
The crow, Lars Porsena,flew down from the oak tree.
He did perch on the back of brave Horatius.
He gave two caws.
that means he wanted to go on an exploration trip too.
Felix Mendelssohn crawled into my lap.
I gave him two joy pats.
He cuddled under my curls.
Brave Horatius did wait waits.
After that, we turned about to the way
that does lead to the forest
to the place where is my cathedral
where we pray prayers
and where mentholatum helps them all
to have well feels.
I pray for the goodness of all.
.
Opal Whiteley, written at age 7

Opal Whiteley’s Riddles

Opal Whiteley’s Riddles

In our age of anxiety about tiny pageant queens and helicopter parenting, we have perhaps forgotten that the archetype of the gifted child antedates reality television and kindergarten-admissions coaching. The sight of a public aflutter over the talents—and the eventual fall—of a seemingly perfect child is at least as old as the last century. Consider the story of the once celebrated, then controversial, and now forgotten Opal Whiteley, whose best-selling diary predestined her to become something of a riddle. Like most “child geniuses,” her story is strange and complicated, but follows a certain familiar pattern: that of a gift that threatens to overwhelm.
Her life had the flavor of the apocryphal from the start. From the time when Opal arrived at the University of Oregon’s campus, in Eugene, in 1916, she was often seen chasing butterflies around and perched in trees, reading. She was eighteen, but she stood under five feet, with olive skin and long, dark braids. Despite her penchant for unfashionable clothing and odd behavior, she was something of a celebrity in Oregon, where she’d grown up in a small town called Cottage Grove. From the age of twelve, she’d been travelling all over the state giving well-attended lectures about the natural world, a subject on which she was largely self-taught. The press called her a genius; she called herself the Sunshine Fairy. Her popularity stemmed from her avoidance of the dryness of science; she was more of a charismatic mystic. The wife of the president of the university told people that she had once come upon Opal crouched on the ground, singing what seemed to be hymns, to some earthworms.
By the time a twenty-two-year-old Opal made a fateful appearance at The Atlantic Monthly’s Boston offices in July, 1919, her star had dimmed. She’d dropped out of college and spent a difficult year in Los Angeles, trying to become an actress. As a kind of backup plan, she’d written “The Fairyland Around Us,” a book version of her lectures. But before she could have it printed, she was scammed out of the money that she’d raised for it. Scraping together travel costs from some benefactors, Opal came East to find a publisher. Her search led her to Ellery Sedgwick, then the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief. The way he later told the story in an autobiography, he saw immediately that he could not publish “The Fairyland Around Us.” Still, he thought this woman, who had “something very young and eager and fluttering, like a bird in a thicket,” was a charismatic figure. Did she have anything else he could publish, like a diary? She did, she said, but a sister had torn it up. She’d kept the pieces in boxes, though. They were in storage in Los Angeles. Enchanted, Sedgwick telegraphed for the boxes immediately.
There is some dispute as to whether the meeting was the kismet that Sedgwick claimed. But, in any event, Sedgwick smelled an opportunity. He was a Boston Brahmin, and a man who had risen to his position by simply buying the half-century-old magazine and appointing himself its master. He was certainly aware that the current best-seller in the country was a novel reputed to have been written by a nine-year-old English child, Daisy Ashford’s “The Young Visiters.” When Opal’s diary arrived from Los Angeles, its contents were mostly ripped-up scraps of butcher paper and backs of envelopes, covered in a colorful childish scrawl. Opal explained that it was the only writing material that had been available to her as a child in the backwoods of Oregon. As Opal was by then out of money, Sedgwick installed her at his mother-in-law’s house to begin the long work of piecing it back together. It would take her several months to do so. There are pictures of her surrounded by fragments, tacking them up on the wall.
What emerged from the long process thrilled Sedgwick. Its diction is idiosyncratic (it begins: “Today the folks are gone away from the house we do live in”), but, even to today’s reader, the diary holds a certain charm. It is peopled not only by Opal and her family and neighbors but also by her many pets, most of whom shared their oddly appropriate names with famous artists: a mouse is called Felix Mendelssohn, a pig Peter Paul Rubens, a cow Elizabeth Barrett Browning. And the childlike wonder feels realistic. Its observations come off in the funny way that a six-year-old’s—Opal’s alleged age at the time she wrote the diary—often do: “Potatoes are very interesting folks. I think they must see a lot of what is going on in the earth; they have so many eyes.”
Opal’s reveries are occasionally cut short by “the mamma,” who appears in the narrative mostly to switch young Opal when she’s been bad. And Opal finds her impossible to please. “She says I am a new sance,” Opal writes, in a preserved misspelling that shows the limits of her childish vocabulary. Curiously, though, as Opal put the book together, Sedgwick noticed a proliferation of French words in the diary. He asked Opal if she knew French. She said she did not.
The diary reaches its fifth chapter before it mentions a person called the Angel Father. The Angel Father, and eventually an Angel Mother, too, are benevolent figures from heaven who left Opal a book full of names she needed to learn; it was from these books that the precocious names of her pets were drawn. And the Angel Father had taught her a song he said she must always remember: “Le chant de Seine, de Havre, et Essonne et Nonette et Roullon et Iton et Darnetal et Ourcq et Rille et Loing et Eure et Audelle et Nonette et Sarc.”
The diary itself does not explain exactly who the Angel Father and Angel Mother represent. When the first installment of “The Story of Opal” appeared in the Atlantic, in March of 1920, Opal wrote a short introduction. In it she said that she remembered, as a very young child, a mother and father (later the Angels) who were not the Whiteleys. She remembered going out in a boat with that mother. “Then something happened and we were all in the water.” Her mother died that day, and she was later told her father perished elsewhere. Eventually, the introduction claimed, Mrs. Whiteley obtained Opal as a replacement for the “real” Opal, who was the same age as the diarist but had died a few years before.
Fuelled by that fantastical backstory, the diary was an immediate sensation. It was published as a book in both America and England (a copy can be read at archive.org) and crept onto best-seller lists. But there were skeptics from the start. On the East Coast, the New York Tribune wrote of the doubters, “They are certain that no six-year-old could have written these chronicles, so rich in classic lore, so well sustained in narrative interest, and, above all, so extensive that the mere physical labor involved would be worthy of a highly systematized author of bestsellers.”

More of her books, readable free online here.
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Sunday, May 3, 2020

ooh, Kerby Rosanes' art


His SKETCHBOOK ILLUSTRATIONS III




 



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Friday, May 1, 2020

Coronavirus quarantining, Day 48, Friday, May 1st, 2020


Chaz Hutton








































tee hee

Lockdown lingo - are you fully conversant with the new terminology?

*Coronacoaster*
The ups and downs of your mood during the pandemic. You’re loving lockdown one minute but suddenly weepy with anxiety the next. It truly is “an emotional coronacoaster”.

*Quarantinis*
Experimental cocktails mixed from whatever random ingredients you have left in the house. The boozy equivalent of a store cupboard supper. Southern Comfort and Ribena quarantini with a glacé cherry garnish, anyone? These are sipped at “locktail hour”, ie. wine o’clock during lockdown, which seems to be creeping earlier with each passing week.

*Blue Skype thinking*
A work brainstorming session which takes place over a videoconferencing app. Such meetings might also be termed a “Zoomposium”. Naturally, they are to be avoided if at all possible.

*Le Creuset wrist*
It’s the new “avocado hand” - an aching arm after taking one’s best saucepan outside to bang during the weekly ‘Clap For Carers.’ It might be heavy but you’re keen to impress the neighbours with your high-quality kitchenware.

*Coronials*
As opposed to millennials, this refers to the future generation of babies conceived or born during coronavirus quarantine. They might also become known as “Generation C” or, more spookily, “Children of the Quarn”.

*Furlough Merlot*
Wine consumed in an attempt to relieve the frustration of not working. Also known as “bored-eaux” or “cabernet tedium”.

*Coronadose*
An overdose of bad news from consuming too much media during a time of crisis. Can result in a panicdemic.

*The elephant in the Zoom*
The glaring issue during a videoconferencing call that nobody feels able to mention. E.g. one participant has dramatically put on weight, suddenly sprouted terrible facial hair or has a worryingly messy house visible in the background.

*Quentin Quarantino*
An attention-seeker using their time in lockdown to make amateur films which they’re convinced are funnier and cleverer than they actually are.

*Covidiot* or *Wuhan-ker*
One who ignores public health advice or behaves with reckless disregard for the safety of others can be said to display “covidiocy” or be “covidiotic”. Also called a “lockclown” or even a “Wuhan-ker”.

*Goutbreak*
The sudden fear that you’ve consumed so much wine, cheese, home-made cake and Easter chocolate in lockdown that your ankles are swelling up like a medieval king’s.

*Antisocial distancing*
Using health precautions as an excuse for snubbing neighbours and generally ignoring people you find irritating.

*Coughin’ dodger*
Someone so alarmed by an innocuous splutter or throat-clear that they back away in terror.]

*Mask-ara*
Extra make-up applied to "make one's eyes pop" before venturing out in public wearing a face mask.

*Covid-10*
The 10lbs in weight that we’re all gaining from comfort-eating and comfort-drinking. Also known as “fattening the curve

whoa

heh

Got a pet cam to keep an eye on the cats | Got a cat to keep an eye on the pet cam

sounds so bizarre

As an optimist, who has often worked with or known people who are deeply pessimistic or been around people unable to step out of what seemed to me a rigid optimism, this was a useful thing to learn about, defensive pessimism.

How Defensive Pessimism Can Help You Cope with Anxiety

Stop telling people that everything is going to be fine. Sometimes it isn’t, and this is where defensive pessimism helps us cope with that fact.
Not everything in the world goes according to plan. Some things go terribly wrong. For optimists, this can be devastating. You see, optimistic people, while their happiness is usually pretty healthy, sometimes do not account for what can go wrong. With the use of defensive pessimism, individuals can accept bad outcomes.

How does defensive pessimism work?

When I speak of a defensive type of pessimism, I don’t mean you’re getting offended and being negative. No, I’m talking about using your thoughts to plan a defense against the pain of bad outcomes.
It’s like that old saying goes, ‘plan for the worst, but hope for the best’. You see, that’s what your defense is all about. When it comes to anxiety, being defensively pessimistic is actually much better than trying to be optimistic all the time.

How to use defensive pessimism to calm your anxieties:

1. Utilizing strategy

While positive thinking helps you stay upbeat and hopeful, defensive pessimism works those strategy muscles. When you play chess, you don’t think one move ahead, but three, four or even five moves…strategy.
Some even think further ahead than that. Strategies in pessimism help us to understand that we do need to appreciate the now, but we can also plan ahead in case our opposition, the world, throws us a surprise.

2. Preparations expert

When you use pessimism to your advantage instead of letting it become overwhelming, you learn how to make logical preparations. It’s kind of like being realistic about life and knowing what tools to have for both good and bad outcomes.
This doesn’t just apply to surprises, it can apply to anything negative that plagues you or could become a problem. If you are prepared, negative issues will only be a small bump in the road. A prime example lies in retaining what’s called “Plan B”. You’ve heard me talk about it a few times, I believe.

3. Past experiences drive intellect

A defensive pessimist is often pushed by negative past experiences. These traumatic events cause many problems for them later in life, but it also grows a strong human being. These individuals rarely use optimistic strategies to combat life’s problems. They understand that “Just stay positive” doesn’t solve problems, and doesn’t keep them away.
Instead, they think of all the possible scenarios of most any given situation, just short of letting it overtake them. They know when to stop, and keep stress at bay, replacing that worry with those strategic plans that I mentioned above.

4. Using all your abilities

When you are defensively pessimistic, you tend to utilize hidden abilities. Optimists may never use these abilities because they tend to ward of concern and worry completely, depending on everything going the way it’s supposed to.
When you properly use your defenses however, you use all the abilities you’ve earned in life, plus the gifts you were born with to make sure you have that safety net. When things go south, you have a basket full of options to choose from. Yes, you’re prepared, and having many powerful abilities just adds even more to your preparations for “Plan B”.

5. Controls and tames anxiety

So, we come to the main reason why defensive pessimism is also a good mindset. When you have anxiety, and everyone is trying to make you stay positive, your levels of panic actually rise. This happens due to the pressure of thinking all good thoughts. It leaves you unprepared for what could happen. While it might not be all that good to constantly dwell on bad things, it’s also not good to assume everything will be rainbows and butterflies all the time.
Being defensive allows you to work through scenarios in your head and gives you the chance to tame your anxiety by coming up with solutions you may possibly need later. Controlling anxiety means staying in control of your life.
Optimism actually doesn’t give you all that much control at all. It just means “Stay happy, believe in good things, and never think the worst”. While this sounds all good and wonderful, it can be extremely dangerous to some.

Balancing between pessimism and optimism

I’ve been pessimistic many times in life, even to the point of being too dark. I have tried being optimistic, and that worked for a while, but only a while. So, defensive pessimism has actually become a way of life for me.
I do prepare for the worst and hope for the best, most of the time. While I don’t know the whole truth about how healthy this is, I believe it can’t be any worse than turning a blind eye to problems and assuming life will always turn out great. I would be fooling you and me both.
I do, however, think defensive pessimism is worth a try. Planning for the pitfalls of the future can really allow you to exercise strategy, gathering preparations and bracing for negative impacts. Either way, striking a good balance between dark and light in this manner is well worth a try.

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