OK To Pray, But Keep It To Yourself

Scientific American reports on a $2.4 million dollar study sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation that looked at the effect of third party prayer on patient outcomes.

In a three-year study of 1,800 patients undergoing heart bypass surgery, on the eve of their operation, church groups began two weeks of prayers for one set of patients.  A control group of patients were not prayed for.  Each recipient had a prayer contingent of about 70, none of whom knew the patient personally.

The study found no differences in survival or complication rates compared to those who did not receive prayers.

The only statistically significant blip appeared in a subgroup of patients who were prayed for and knew it.  They experienced a higher rate of post-surgical heart arrhythmias (59% vs 52%) than unaware subjects.

Gnat King Culled

Every few years, from now on, I'm flipping that chair over and vaccuming away the accumulation there. 

If I increase the purging frequency like that, chances are I won't be met by the horrific petri dish of life forms that burst into their first sunlight when I toppled the beast yesterday.

My Gehry Designed Life

To the ever expanding list of ignominies Life has seen fit to build into my entertainments, add a scabrous throat infection.  I picked it up nine days ago while overnighting on the rez and it's beginning to make me cranky.  I'm plagued with a relentless sore throat and a cough that hurts.  Can't sleep (longest stretch was last night from 11 til 2:30), have tried all the drugs they'll sell me, all to Noah Vale.

Herself, off ministering to the sugar diabetics of the Cree Nation the land that has no phone service, offers up non-stop suggestions by email.  "See a doctor"  "Get some antibiotics"  "Gargle with salt water"  Like I'm supposed to be able to assemble and cook salt water by myself?

For the past few days I've mostly sat, glowering, in my Ancient Blue Chair, fending off the advances of cats and - oh yes!  something new! - marauding kamikazes of tiny black flying things.  Haven't gotten a close enough look yet to determine whether they're miniature flying monkeys, but with the levels of aceteminiphen in my system, anything is possible.  They've designed their sorties to where they zip by really close to my face, so when I swing wildly at them there's a 50/50 chance I'll either whack myself on the side of the head or at least knock my glasses over to the side.

And she worries that I'll be bored and won't be entertained when she's gone.

Duped Again

A lovely, still, warmish evening out on the deck.  We're in our chairs, leaning back in repose, watching another beautiful Arizona sunset across the Estrellas.  The grandkids have gone home, the pool area has been picked up, the cats are cautiously reappearing.  We're into our second glass of a piquant merlot as planets and then stars appear in the firmament.

"Oh!  I can see - what do you call it, that line of stars!" she points high into the southwest.  "That's Orion's Belt" I intone helpfully.  "Ahhhh" she says with as much feigned interest as a second glass of wine allows.

"Do you see that bright star there, lower and to the left?" I inquire in my most socratic professorial manner.  "MmmmHmmm" she affirms. 

"That's Sirus, in mythology it's Orion the Hunter's dog.  Like a dog, Sirius follows Orion across the sky and is the brightest star visible from Earth" I continue, warming now to the subject.

"Oh, Sirius! Isn't that where we're getting all our music from now?" she cheerily responds.

I almost damage the ligaments in my neck, snapping my head around in sudden and horrified dismay. 

"Heh heh heh      Gotcha"     she murmurs through her little Mona Lisa smile.

Look! Up In The Sky!

Jupiter, now the brightest object in the night sky after the moon, is growing a new red spot.  It's been visible to astronomers for a couple months now, but is growing rapidly right along side, and is already as bright as the original red spot which has been visible since telescopes were first turned toward it 400 years ago.  Why is that?  What forces and conditions caused the original and what is creating this new one?  Just for reference, Jupiter is as big as all the other planets put together.  The original red spot is so big several Earths could fit inside it.

And another thing.  It was a thousand years ago this week that the brightest star ever visible from our planet showed up deep in the southern skies.  We now know it was a supernova, but imagine the talk around the dinner tables back then when an object as bright as the moon suddenly appeared.  It was so bright it was visible in the daytime, and at night it was bright enough to  read by, for those few who could read back then. 

Seems like a lot of people can read now, but don't.  But there I go again.

At Summerford's Nursing Home

Like plants in pots, they sit along the wall,
Breached at odd angles, wheelchairs locked,
Or drift in tortoise-calm ahead of doting sons:

Some are still continent and wink at others
Who seem to float in and out of being here,
And one has balked beside the check-in desk—

A jaunty shred of carrot glowing on one lip,
He fumbles a scared hug from each little girl
Among the carolers from the Methodist church

Until two nurses shush him and move him on.
There is a snatch of sermon from the lounge,
And then my fourth-grade teacher washes up,

And someone else—who is it?—nodding the pale
Varicose bloom of his skull: the bald postman,
The butcher from our single grocery store?

Or is that me, graft on another forty years?
Will I become that lump, attached to tubes
That pump in mush and drain the family money?

Or will I be the one who stops it with a gun,
Or, more insensibly, with pills and alcohol?
And would it be so wrong to liberate this one

Who stretches toward me from his bed and moans
Above the constant chlorine of cleaning up
When from farther down the hall I hear the first

Transmogrifying groans: the bestial O and O
Repeating like a mantra that travels long
Roads of nerves to move a sound that comes

And comes but won't come finally up to words,
Not the oldest ones that made the stories go,
Not even love, or help, or hurt, but goodbye

And hello, grandfather, the rest of your life
Coiled around you like a rope, while one by
One, we strange relatives lean to be recognized.

by Rodney Jones from Salvation Blues: One Hundred Poems, 1985-2005