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Mother’s Day 2011. Six years ago I lost my mother to a sudden ‘thing’. Her picture, as a young girl, taken before WWII, is taped to the wall behind my computer; she has a wonderful smile; everyone says I look exactly like her; I’m proud about that and miss her. Maybe soon, I can hop on the Orient Express or through a parallel world wormhole and catch up to her. The Mississippi River is way over flood stage; perhaps the worst flooding since 1930. Last week, America had terrible killer tornadoes down South.

At 3 AM last night, I watched a recap of Japan’s Fukushima’s nuclear disaster; I didn’t forget about that. The gulf oil spill was a little over a year ago and I didn’t forget about that either. A recent HBO special, “Saving Pelican 895” details the herculean efforts in saving one particular precious pelican. Here’s a link to check out:

HBO special “Saving Pelican 895”

Charles Stanley Choules, the last surviving combat veteran of WWI

Claude Stanley Choules, the last known combat veteran of World War I and one of the last men to have served in both World Wars, died on May 5, in a nursing home in Western Australia. He was 110 years old. My mind is doing one of those swirling cyclonic jobs; I don’t know what to say first. There are 750 million cars in the world today. A couple of decades from now, we’re looking at 2 billion cars in the world. Sure, some of them will be electric powered, but that’s still a lot of oil/gas. A barrel of oil dropped by $17 this week; “What a dump.” I love this line, originally from a Bette Davis movie but really blasted on the screen by Elizabeth Taylor in ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.’ Here’s a great clip from the movie.

“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” movie clip from Youtube(powerful stuff)

I’ll get back to oil in a moment. When I saw this vitriolic movie with my first wife, we curiously decided to call ourselves ‘George’ and ‘Martha’ which was just about the most prophetic thing to happen to me up to then. A few years later came our semi-bittersweet divorce; although I did get the “Bridge Over Troubled Water” album in the settlement along with a collection of used athletic supporters and a cheap replica of Abraham Lincoln’s Illinois desk. So why did I say, “What a Dump” talking about oil? Because we’re all ‘Prisoners of Zenda,’ or someplace else and are constantly dumped on and manipulated by oil companies. I want to irresponsibly think BP had a hand in the latest increase to recoup the $20 billion they had to pay for the gulf oil spill restitution/reclamation. And as we speak, I wish I was living in a cabin all by myself on 300 acres in Alberta, Canada as they are about to start mining all that jazzy oil via the Kearl Oil Sands Project.

The proposed development of Kearl was done by our old friends at Exxon-Mobil in 1997. The Chinese have been hanging around Alberta for a long time. I wonder why? Exxon-Mobil holds 100% of some of the leases and latest projections hover around 5.5 billion barrels waiting around in an open-pit mining operation. Personally, my over extended gut from a superb Mother’s Day dinner in Freehold, New Jersey (home of Bruce Springsteen) tells me there’s way more than 5 billion barrels up there in Alberta, Canada. And with all that wealth, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has a majority now to cut Canadian healthcare and lots of other things. A quick interjection about Canada: Canada is listed as the friendliest country in the world, followed by Bermuda, South Africa, United States, Australia, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Malaysia, and Germany.

Does cutting health care sound familiar? My last two blogs ‘discussed’ Republican Paul Ryan’s proposed budget to eliminate/fix Medicare. Remember, I do not identify or belong to any political party. I like independent thinking and best candidates. A Republican attempt to wipe out Medicare infuriated (me) Americans; 80% are opposed to change. When Republican congress people went to Town Hall meetings, they got an earful, sending party panic attacks throughout the land.  I glee (not the show) how Ryan’s proposed budget for Medicare elimination is now up for ‘negotiations.’ Politics is a strange creation. I remember President Clinton’s impeachment hearing voting based on party lines. Few Republicans did not vote to impeach. Rep. Peter King from New York risked harsh Republican Party recriminations by voting not to impeach. When asked why, he eloquently said if Clinton was Republican, this wouldn’t be an issue or vote; a brave political ‘raising the flag at Iwo Jima’ for me.

This weekend in Sweden the Toward a Science of Consciousness: Brain, Mind, Reality conference was held May 3–7, 2011 at Stockholm University, Stockholm Sweden, keynoted by Sir Roger Penrose, speaking on “Consciousness and Physical Law.” Wish I was there. But someday, over the rainbow or alongside it, I’ll get to Sweden and Montana.

In keeping with my continuing pursuit of consciousness, on Tuesday, I attended my very first earthly Town Hall meeting in Manalapan, N.J. conducted by Governor Chris Christie. Four hundred, mostly senior citizens (so I was presumably comfortable) gathered in a tired ‘Covered Bridge’ club house full of political-esque banners to hear the Governor reiterate that he’s not running for President and when asked about teaching ‘creationism’ in Jersey’s public schools, he said, “That’s a new one” and cautiously(pre-Presidential run posturing?) said local school boards should be making that decision. Actually, New Jersey does not permit creationism to be taught in place of evolution. Prior to the governor’s grand entrance, a ‘briefing’ session advised what and how to ask questions in front of cameras and reporters. I didn’t see the ‘applause’ sign.

NJ Governor Chris Christie

I think all my world-wide readers should know that the ugliest building complex in America is located in my home garden state of New Jersey. Where do I begin; let me count the ways. The Xanadu project is a five-story retail and entertainment complex undergoing construction in the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, NJ near New York City. It was to have been completed in 2007, but the grand opening has been pushed back each year after 2007.  It is the most vile and ridiculous looking building anywhere, in part because of an architecturally inept, stupid(I’m an adult and still use the ‘stupid’ word because it feels so good here) indoor ski jump (picture included)

the ugly ski jump on a $2 Billion dollar job. Come on.

After a bunch of different owners, seven years and $2 billion dollars, this 2 million plus square foot retail and entertainment joke has a new developer and name, ‘American Dream’ and fiscally conservative (another $ billion or so to put on a new face/facade and other lures) Governor Christie will go along with a deal including $200 million in state tax breaks while trying to take away paid unused sick days from state employees who will have to one day retire at 65 not 62(actually this is a positive move to preserve long range pensions). This bitterly ‘ugly’ complex is expected to open in time for New Jersey’s hosting the Super Bowl in 2014.

The Edsel Ford. another design stroke of ugly. But I wish I had one now

Suddenly, ‘I Remember Mama’ and the Edsel Ford back in 1958 which lasted 3 model years and I think became a synonym for the word ‘failure’ just like Xanadu. Who makes these decisions?  And I’ve eliminated the ski-jump architect from possibly redesigning my mid-American two-car garage.

Back in 1975, I took a six foot tall, blonde, blue-eyed vegan on a blind first and last date combined. Her not eating meat appealed to me on several fronts; the humanity of not killing animals, the health aspect of meat avoidance which I figured might contribute to life’s extension and finally, trying in vain to impress her(by saying I was a vegan too. Of course I became one because of her).  Synchronicity suddenly abounds: I took that rich girl to Hayden Planetarium to get elevated spiritually/cerebrally/chemically and to see the stars. Tomorrow, I’m back at Hayden Planetarium with my son to see Dr. Michio Kaku, amazing astro-physicist talk about the real future that Republican Representative Paul Ryan’s gang can’t get their hands on yet. Michio Kaku, author of New York Times bestseller ‘Physics of the Impossible’ will discuss his astonishing forecasts of scientific leaps in the next century, including driverless cars that float above ground, x-ray vision, robot surgeons, and even an elevator to space.

Update next week in blog. But I love segues; not eating red meat means I avoided eating glue all these years. Can it be that the meat you’re eating (not me) could be made up of scraps glued together to form a deceptively ‘normal’ piece of meat? Using a special product called ‘meat glue,’ meat suppliers have been caught using meat scraps, too small to sell, to create normal sized portions of meat for distribution. This misleading sales tactic is so effective that even experts can’t tell the difference between a regular piece of meat and a piece of meat tainted with ‘meat glue’. So what the ‘h’ is meat glue? Meat glue is an enzyme known as trans-glutaminase. Many meat glues are created by cultivating bacteria. Shockingly, other meat glues are made from the blood plasma of pigs and cows, specifically the coagulant that makes blood clot. This special enzyme is so toxic that people working with it use masks not to breathe it in. Why can’t they breathe it in? I never called that tall blonde girl again; perhaps an excessive height thing. Last week, I used Facebook to track down a few of my 1960’s girl friends and then ran to give my wife a big grateful hug because she was in a New York City bar the same night I was, back in 1976, a year after the vegan date fiasco.

More healthy words:  Researchers in Mexico describe that coffee is one of the richest sources of healthful antioxidants in the average person’s diet. Some of the newest research points to caffeine (also present in tea, cocoa, and other foods) as the source of powerful antioxidant effects that may help protect people from Alzheimer’s and other diseases.

However, scientists know little how caffeine works in scavenging free radicals that have damaging effects in the body. And those few studies sometimes reach contradictory conclusions which may mean that in four hundred years, research may find cigarette smoking is good for you, as seen in Woody Allen’s movie ‘Sleeper.’ A long time ago in a galaxy far away and for reasons which I’ll take to a wormhole, in search of myself, I smoked cigarettes for ten years; ‘me’ with the proven largest vital lung capacity at Rutgers Pharmacy School, smoked until the late 80’s (and also gained 100 pounds). On the morning of July 21, 1989, I heard a voice. I stopped smoking cigarettes cold turkey and three months later, I had lost 100 pounds amidst rumors of all kinds of failing health scenarios.  Here’s a Youtube song by Donovan that I listened to every day for 3 months of dieting.

Donovan’s “Catch the Wind” on Youtube

Alas, it was the voice of will power and determination, the ingestion of 500 calories a day, exercise every day, a musical constant splash of ‘Simon and Garfunkel,’ ‘The Drifters,’ ‘Judy Collins’  and ‘Donovan’s’ “Catch the Wind” which anchored and drove me to spiritual communion. In them there spiritual hills of Sedona and central Jersey, there’s a lot of power and resolve; but that energy is really everywhere and inside everyone. You need to walk outside under a full or quarter moon, talk to yourself, inhale deeply, resolve to become an environmentalist, altruist, blogger, vegan and most importantly, a human being and you can do anything at any age. You know what; that’s exactly what my mother told me all my life. Happy Mother’s Day.

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