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Friday, January 17, 2014

Fish for Friday

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

Mysteries of the Human Body:
    It’s possible for your body to survive without large fractions of its internal organs. Even if you lose your stomach, your spleen, 75% of your liver, 80% of your intestines, one kidney, one lung, and virtually every organ from your pelvic and groin area, you wouldn’t be very healthy, but you would live.
    During your lifetime, you will produce enough saliva to fill two swimming pools. Actually, saliva is more important than you realize. If your saliva can not dissolve something, you cannot taste it.
    The largest cell in the human body is the female egg and the smallest is the male sperm. The egg is actually the only cell in the body that is visible by the naked eye.
    The strongest muscle in the human body is the tongue and the hardest bone is the jawbone.
    Human feet have 52 bones, accounting for one quarter of all the human body’s bones. Feet have 500,000 sweat glands and can produce more than a pint of sweat a day.

And they say their is no black Santa Claus! "Alajuelita celebrates Cristo El Negro."

They have taken [our aunt] to the hospital (ICU).
    I will keep you informed of any news I hear. If you believe in prayer, please say a prayer for her.
    A personal note to Morris [so, The Rest of You Receiving This Note, DO NOT READ the following], I’m just letting you know the fact that she is in the hospital, no negative response about prayer is needed.


About that 2-part article "Annals of Extinction: The Lost World" in the December 16 and December 23 & 30 issues of The New Yorker,
as far as the environment goes, I figure our grandchildren (or grandnieces and nephews) are probably going to witness horrors. There may be massive flooding, extinctions of half the world’s species, etc. If a fragment of man survives, we will be a humbled and hopefully wiser race. Perhaps that is what is needed to cure us of war and religion and greed and all our other inhumanities. If we don’t survive, then hopefully our counterparts on other planets are being wiser. Ants are intellectually insignificant as individuals, but rather brilliant as a tribe. Humans, alas, are usually the opposite. Perhaps some other species of advanced consciousness is more like ants.
    Or maybe we’ll be hit by a giant asteroid. Or maybe solar flares will wipe out technology (I’m rooting for that one). See, there are lots of options to brighten our day.
    I do accept the theory of evolution. And it appears (a dangerous word) that evolution is biased towards consciousness. Thus, there may one day be a theory of evolution of consciousness that states that consciousness is the end toward which the entire universe is headed. Earth, for all its beauty and promise, is so tiny. But so are diamonds, and they are considered the most precious of substances. I think the human evolution towards consciousness is vastly important to the universe, and that it will not, in the end, be a failed experiment.
    There, that’s all the comfort you’re getting out of me today. Stop reading The New Yorker and get yourself The Enquirer. Excerpt:

...[H]umans are so radically refashioning the planet—leveling so many forests, eliminating so many creatures that once occupied those forests, transporting so many other creatures around the globe, and burning through such vast quantities of fossil fuels to keep the whole enterprise going—that we may well end up producing a catastrophe comparable in scale to the one that laid waste to the graptolites. Already...the geology of the planet has been permanently altered....
    In recent years, a number of names have been proposed for the new age that humans have ushered in....
    The word "Anthropocene" was put into circulation by Paul Crutzen, a Dutch chemist who, in 1995, shared a Nobel Prize for discovering the effects of ozone-depleting compounds....
The University has issued an Emergency Warning and activated the sirens because the National Weather Service has issued a TORNADO WARNING for Chapel Hill and Carrboro.
    If you are outside, seek shelter in a sturdy building immediately.
    If you are already inside, move to an interior room on the lowest floor.
Avoid windows.
    If no shelter is available, lie down in a low-lying area.
    Protect yourself from flying debris.
    The sirens are activated when there is a significant emergency or immediate health or safety threat to the campus community.
    A tornado warning means that a tornado has been spotted, or that radar indicates a thunderstorm circulation that can spawn a tornado, according to the National Weather Service.


You’ve got a friend in me:


Street art in Poland

I was about to put three frozen home-made biscuits into the convection oven for a post-breakfast treat (with Tupelo honey, of course). Mom said, "But I was going to make biscuits this evening. If you have those now, I’ll have to make them tomorrow." I said, "Go ahead and make them today. This’ll be a big biscuit celebration day for the 49ers win over the Panthers."
49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick imitating
Panthers quarterback Cam Newton after scoring a touchdown

Limerick of the Week:
And if the 49ers don’t beat their Panther foe,
will his wife still mix and roll the biscuit dough,
    even though her hubby
    won’t feel very clubby?
Eating biscuits would be like eating crow.*
* San Francisco did win, 23-10 over Carolina, and will face the Seahawks on Sunday in Seattle for the National Football Conference Championship and a trip to Super Bowl XLVIII on February 2.
_______________
Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean

Comment box is located below

15 comments:

  1. The human body, Santa El Negro, public private communication, this Anthropocene time, tornado warning at Carolina, an elephant is a dog's best friend, 49ers biscuits could have been crow.

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  2. Good fish as always. I look forward to my fish and coffee on Friday mornings. Thanks Morris

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  3. Very good limerick Morris!

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    Replies
    1. Thank you, Karen, and keep that interesting (highly fishable) correspondence coming!

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  4. This is a riot! The limerick is sublime. And how refreshing to find you’re cheering on the 49-ers, despite the tattoos. As an expatriot of impoverished, over-served and soul-weary San Francisco, I know it's hard for some to root against the Seahawks -- they're very nice people -- so your allegiance is appreciated.

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    Replies
    1. Eric, what's that about nice? You mean the Seahawks aren't going to tackle Kaepernick, Crabtree, Gore, Bolin, and Davis hard? Do you know some of the players personally. What's the back story on that? Did you design one of their houses or something?
          The key to the limerick, of course, was when I realized that at the time of the post-breakfast treat, the outcome could still be a Panthers' victory. "Eat crow" was ever so much more satisfying a conclusion than "basking aglow" or whatever. Well, given that the 49ers had actually won, anyway. It might have been more challenging to write the limerick if they'd lost....

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  5. Replies
    1. Susan, Carolyn asked me to always refer requests for her recipes to her personally. Do you have her email address? (I don't want to post it publicly.)

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  6. Apparently it's Michelle Obama's birthday, so....

    Happy Birthday, dear First Lady Michelle,
    may your special day go specially well.
        From here in Carolina
        to way off there in China:
    Happy Birthday! Happy Birthday! all yell!

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  7. IT'S NO MYSTERY. "Mysteries of the Human Body" points out the resiliency of the human body. I would add that we humans can also consume copious amounts of cows, pigs, chickens, fish, eggs and dairy and survive at least long enough to procreate. And it's no mystery what the "something" is that the two swimming pools of saliva dissolve. Its STARCH! That's right (Wikipedia) "saliva is essential in beginning the process of digestion of dietary starches" supporting the fact that we humans are first and foremost designed by nature to thrive on starch and NOT on animal foods.

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    Replies
    1. Hear, hear! The correspondence came to me under the title "Mysteries of the human body," and I kept it. Also, there are I think 31 more items, and I plan to run five each week until the final week, when I will run six. I hope you will find more items to comment on. Thanks, Jim.

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  8. Kaepernick likes to mock opposing quarterbacks.
    But come this Sunday the Seahawks will get the sacks.
    It’s Wilson who this weekend will stand tall.
    Not to dance but to touchdown the football.
    And the Niners will see it all while lying on their backs!

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    Replies
    1. Jim, your verse is as wobbly
      as Wilson's passes bobbly;
          and for us fans, Sunday
          will be one big funday:
      the game, it will be squabbly.

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    2. By the way, belated Happy Birthday! I'm sorry I got distracted on Wednesday and failed to greet you in a timely fashion. You, Ed, and I all turned 71 in the past two weeks. (And maybe a million other people; do you have any statistics on just how many there may have been?)

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