Irreverent Self-portrait

A glimpse of Me and another glimpse of Me

Irreverent Self-Portrait Continued. Click your way in to see some pictures of Timbuktu. Yes, Timbuktu exists. The term "Timbuktu" is not merely a metaphor for a never-never place; it stands for a real place in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Sort of the end of the world but -- real. You will also find a rogue gallery of family pictures, people scattered all over the place, each with a brief verbal ID tag. 


GOOD HEALTH W/O DRUGS OR DOCTORS

Yours to Make or Mar

The "National Geographic" of Jan/73 carries an article about three pockets of healthy people which its teams of investigators discovered -- the Hunza of north-eastern Pakistan, the people who live in the Caucasus Mountains in southern Russia and the Indians of Villacabamba high up in the mountains of Ecuador. The re searchers who went in to investigate could not believe what they found -- people a hundred and older still working in the fields, grand- fathers looking so much like their grandsons that the observers had trouble telling them apart, an almost total absence of the degenerative diseases that plague humanity in the developed worrld -- no heart disease, no diabetes, no cancer, no arthritis. When they had sifted through and evaluated the evidence, they came to the conclusion that the settings in which these people lived all but compelled them to practice a lifestyle that makes for good health. Living in mountains, where practically every step they take means mountain climbing, they get enough exercise without even trying. Their food is organic food, not corrupted by chemical fertilizers or insecticides. They work hard but they also get enough rest, their nights not having been turned into day by the advent of electric light. [To be continued after the break]

Laughter is the best medicine. If you think you need a dose of it, click

Laughter, More Laughter. and Yet more Laughter....

Bilbo and Gollum and The Hobbit Riddle Page

Healthy people anywhere, individuals or groups like the Hunza, owe their good health not to the ministrations of Western Medicine but to a wholesome lifestyle. Healthy people, by and large, do not consume drugs. It is the sick who do, and often the drugs make them sicker. All-too often the drugs people take to get better kill them. A recent University of Toronto study comes to the conclusion that drugs -- legitimate drugs, not street drugs -- kill at least 100,000 people a year in the US. I heard the man responsible for the study interviewed on radio. He readily admitted that this was little more than the tip of the iceberg. For one, the study was based on the number of drug deaths reported in 39 major US hospitals. It did not concern itself with drug-induced deaths that occurred at home. Moreover, doctors are not required by any law to report such deaths. If they report them, they report them voluntarily. Impossible to estimate how many such deaths go unreported.
 

The study made no attempt to estimate the number of drug-induced deaths that are not recognized as such. The researcher readily conceded that the figure of 100,000 would more than double if all deaths attributable to drugs could be accounted for. Soon after the Canadian study was published, I saw a piece of news in the German press, which reported that drugs kill about 8,000 people annually in Germany and seriously harm at least another 80,000. That's obviously gross under-reporting. If drugs kill more than 100,000 a year in the US, one-third of that would represent a reasonable figure for Germany, the population of the US being about three times that of Germany.

Medical literature records a number of situations where doctors went on strike. Contrary to expectations, the people thus deprived of their doctors' services did not seem any the worse for it. Let's look at just one such situation. In 1972, the doctors of Los Angeles County in California withheld their services from all but emergency cases. When the strike was over and investigators went in to assess the damage, they discovered, much to their surprise, that there had been no damage. Most people had suffered little, if any, inconvenience during the slow-down. And they discovered something even more surprising -- that the death rate had gone down in the county while the doctors were off the job. The investigators attributed the drop in the death rate to fewer drugs and less surgery.

I heard David Suzuki say on television not long ago that about one-third of North Americans have turned to alternative medicine. They can't all be crazy. If you want to find out what it means to live so that you won't get sick again, just do a little browsing in HOW TO BE YOUR OWN BEST DOCTOR.

If you have a moment, drop into my Reading Corner, where you will find things like "Time Magazine," issues old and new; "Der Spiegel" and a good many other things. Or join me for a stroll along Philosopher's Walk

Click here to sample some Proverbs and Sayings from all over the world. One is so used to proverbs in one's own language that one does not give them much thought. Proverbs from other languages and/or cultures may touch on familiar themes in ways so strikingly new as to catch one's full attention. Here are two of my favorites, one from Hausaland (West Africa) and one from Saudi Arabia. The first one, "Ba ruwanka," is the Hausa way of saying "This is none of your business." Literally it means "This is not your water." How so very appropriate for Hausaland, much of which is semi-desert, where water is more precious than precious.

The second one, "The son of a duck is a floater," is the Saudi way of saying "Like father like son." Though I have heard or talked about the Saudi version scores of times, I still grin when I think of it. In German, by the way, the same proverb comes in yet a different metaphoric garb; to wit, "Der Apfel faellt nicht weit vom Stamm" -- an apple does not fall far from the tree,
 

Here is one of my favorite poem

Assault of Angels

The mind trembles from the assault of angels.
Running in familiar light it sees the sea,
It remembers the dark subway and the lost fields
of childhood. It remembers the loneliness
of first love and the end of summer.
Those are familiar and small.
But the assault of angels is more terrible
Angels are invisible. Angels cast no shadow
And their unpredicted motion moves the familiar
shadows into light. Angels cannot burn their fingers.
Unacknowledged, they pass unseen: no-one will
ever know. Refuse them. They have no claim to charity.
To ignore them offers a key to omniscience.
Angels breed darkness out of light. Angels
rejoice in things we hate and fear. Angels
are the launching of a new ship. Angels offer
to inhabit the landscape of your body.
Angels will let you grow as a child grows.
They are your enemy, they will destroy you.
And a time comes when a man's afraid to grow.
A time comes when the house is comfortable and narrow.
A time, when the spirit of life contracts.
Angels are at the door. Admit them. Now.
(Michael Roberts)

If this little taste of poetry has whetted your appetite for more, there is a veritable feast waiting for you at the Poetry Corner, 

On the Yahoo Page you will find links to all sorts of interesting, useful and / or amusing sites. If you'd like to have a photo album up in cyberspace, accessible to anyone who has access to the Internet, click on "Photos" and follow the prompts that guide you to the creation of an album of your own.

• What's In YOUR Name?
• What time is it?

Ready for some music? Click your way into the Music Store, where you'll find more music than you can listen to in a year -- country music; pop, old and young; music from films and classical music....

• HTML Laboratory
• DilbertComics
• The Whitehouse
• Stock MarketQuotes

 Below you can find out what's happening in World Tennis and World Soccer.

• Tennis News Briefs
• Tennis Round-up
• International Soccer Briefs
• World Cup 2002
• Atlantic Canada Loto

Come, visit Nova Scotia, Canada's Ocean Play Ground. To get your pre-trip briefing, click Nova Scotia. A quick look at the difference between High Tide and Low Tide in the Bay of Funday might persuade you to come. The Bay of Funday separates Nova Scotia from New Brunswick. I am talking about the highest tides in the world. The difference between HIGH and LOW can be up to 17 meters. That's something you might want to see for yourself. Should you with to branch out further, drop into Canadiana

If, when you are done with Nova Scotia, you have a little time left, you might want to send a friend a postcard.

Click here to find out what's doing in the Valentine Corner.
 

Online Rhyming Dictionary

 

 

I find the following collection of Court Room Howlers hilarious. See what you think of them.
 
 

Women, of and for and by --

Education of Young and Old

 

 

The Depot of Links as yet not placed where they belong is nevertheless worth looking into.

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Ambros Prechtl

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If you'd like to leave an E-mail message, drop it here: aj086@chebucto.ns.ca

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