Rabbits feet and shooting stars

I am not sure how to put it. In spite of their popularity, they don't work. They do not deserve their reputation. Why I know that? I have never needed a shooting star more than in the last few days to do my bidding. It didn't come through, though. What do you do when all the real effort and all the hard work and all the goodness in your heart do not change things and the shooting stars have no power. Prayer? I tried that, too. The simple fact is you can't control certain people's set ways. One of the big problems is that I didn't not come equipped with the wisdom of manipulation. As a matter of fact I detest any kind of manipulation. My brother sometimes said that we were taught to be too nice and too ethical and too fair. We are passionately striving to be righteous. Maybe that's where the fault lies.

It all has to do with health care. I would like to see the medical profession stop micro-managing our health. Where is the kindly family physician who did house-calls? Where is the healer who knows all the organ systems in the human body instead of only one. An orthopedic surgeon told me not all that long ago that he only worked on bones. A urologist recently told me that he doesn't know what the kidneys do. I didn't really believe him. But I know that he was not going to admit that the kidney was part of the urinary tract. He was not going to be pinned down.

I made a doctor's appointment the other day. I requested my primary care physician. When I said what was wrong with me, I was told I should go see an Ob/Gyn doctor. Why? I don't know. If I had to see a specialist, I would have preferred seeing an orthopedic surgeon because he knows more about my aching wrists. It must have been that they wanted me to get a mammogram because they have the equipment, and the equipment needs to be kept busy at all times. The Ob/Gyn I went to grudgingly prescribed a bone density test. That sounds close to being in the direction of my complaints. Maybe I am getting somewhere after all.

Speaking of rabbits. I sometimes have the strange feeling that I have followed the rabbit into its hole and that I am still hanging onto that rabbit's foot for dear life. The four shooting stars I saw? They are awfully pretty. But do they help? I don't believe they do.

An interesting new view from the window

My new office space is near a window. In the morning the sun floods into my area and welcomes us all. I wouldn't have thought that construction could be interesting. But from the window I can see the Munger project and behind it an underground parking structure. It is fascinating to watch the cranes and bulldozers move dirt and see -- what looks like toys -- two gigantic nozzles that pump fluid concrete into the supports for the construction moving about the expanse. I see men spraying water over the dusty mounds. I wonder how things will be in a year or two.

In theory we are all compassionate

It's interesting how much effort and energy the media put into Terry Schiavo. Oh, yes, I do know she has been dead for a while. But when another similar case comes along the whole debate is going to be warmed up again. It's all in the name of compassion. But, alas, compassion comes so easily when it's anonymous and far away. It's so good to sample it like a piece of confection from a box. We get our emotions up, and then without being any worse for wear--after all it wasn't any close relation--we have had our little mental need for pity and sorrow, and as quickly as it comes, it disappears only to be replaced with the drowning under a bridge miles away or a number of miners in Utah, not to speak of the war in Iraq; it can be pushed out of the way easily in that manner. We have compassion as a program that says enough of that; let's feel sorry for something else now.

Compassion without any real reference to personal involvement makes us all into compassion junkies. Getting a fix for something that should really be a reaction that stimulates the solving of problems that underlie the tragedies. But instead we prefer experiencing them vicariously.

Compassion has become so jaded. I can tell when I speak to the healing professionals about my son Erik. They have spent all their compassion already on a media event, preferably something far away that ideally has a rational explanation. Terry Schiavo was perfect for that. No muss, no fuss, no bother.

Sunflowers out of this world

They really made the yard light up. One went to the cafe in Los Altos. The other five wound up in the back of the back house. Could it be that they grew to Jack-And-The-Beanstalk size? They did. They have now wilted and their seed baskets are over a foot in diameter. The salted roasted sunflower seeds are the best I have ever had. The stalks would be sad to lose their heavy load if it were not for the hops plants that are still winding up to the sky. They, too, have blossoms now. Picked thy have the fragrance of beer. But the seeds from the sunflower, they are truly out of this world. They have the memory of sun in them. They are worthy of a fairy tale to be told a non-believer.

I started again with the music

Wednesday was wonderful. Most of the dancers were back from their vacations and we played all the dances that we knew would get the spirits up. It worked. Every so often I thought about all those who had never danced, and I felt sorry for them. Yes, they are a sorry lot, those who have never danced.

But now to something completely different. Since I had been told that I shouldn't take off my shoes and socks while people took a break while attending summer events -- they attempted to look so professionally picturesque -- I have taken to sitting in front of the bookstore on a bench by "the claw" sunning myself, instead. The law school quad is deserted most of the time. And the event participants think the law school quad is there for them only.

The fountain is a more public space, and the many spectators taking pictures of their children make this vantage point a much more interesting one than the benches in front of the hostile Calder "faucon." I wished they had a wading pool in front of the law school for children and deck chairs for their parents and me. I am not sunning myself to annoy people. I am sunning myself to keep cancer and multiple sclerosis and osteoporosis away. I am only using up twenty minutes of sun and would only be wearing out twenty minutes worth of bench or deck chair paint. And again I feel so sorry for those who do not know the meditative moments my mid-day rest brings.