Jewelry Formed Like Molecular Structures

36-year-old biochemist, Raven Hanna, designs jewelry made of sterling silver to resemble molecules, some of which affect human emotions: theobromine, caffeine, serotonin, dopamine and others. "I love the way people gravitate to the aesthetics of my jewelry," she said. Her creations often sell for $75 to $130. To purchase or find out more about Raven Hanna's jewelry, visit www.madewithmolecules.com
--from a Designer Profile in the Sunday Dec 30 SF Chronicle article by Nick Thomas

We Rewire When Learning

New Evidence in Learnings's Effect on Brain--by David Perlman, SF Chronicle Science writer
.
"Li Zuo, a neurobiologist at UC Santa Cruz, has discovered how learning and memory imprint their effects on the brain . . . that in learning a new task, the connections between specific cells in the brain are swiftly rewired, and that those fresh connections can become permanent . . . In other words, the new connections--known as synapses--remain fixed.
.
In the lab, she and her lab colleagues used some tricky, but harmless techniques available to brain researchers who study mice as models for the human condition.
.
The patiently trained scores of the mice, one at a time, to put a foreleg through a slot in a transparent plastic box and to grab a single speck of delicious birdseed no bigger than a pinhead.
Some of the mice they trained were only a few days old, while others were teenagers and adults.
Rewiring in under an hour
. After training, the scientists took high-tech movies of the living animals' brains--a procedure possible because the mice were genetically bred so their brain cell connections would show up on film glowing from fluorescence after each training exercise. It was painless to the mice.
. The synapses are formed by other tiny brain structures called dendritic spines. And in the lab, Zuo and her colleagues found that those microscopic spines not only rewired the connections in less than an hour after the mice were trained, but then remained stable permanently. After learning a different task, the mice were challenged again with the original birdseed task, and they performed almost flawlessly--proof that they hadn't forgotten, Zuo said. And a second set of movies of their brains showed that the earlier rewired synapses and dendritic spines had remained intact."

.
Jim Said: "It is also possible to feel it, or to be aware that it is occurring."

A Gilded Cherub For You

Happy Holidays To Everyone !

James K Polk--Westward Expansion

James K. Polk, the 11th President, has a reputation that languishes in obscurity, partly because he is said to be the driving force behind igniting the War with Mexico. He served only one term in office. Competing views of Polk have emerged, partly because of a new book being published this month, "A COUNTRY OF VAST DESIGNS, James K Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent", by Robert W Merry. Recent history has seen Polk relegated to the role of a shameful imperialist and seizer of territories along with being a carrier of the "slave-holder" sentiment into the formerly neutral West. With his victory in war with Mexico, he added territories comprising California, Nevada and Utah, as well as parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Wyoming. The book reminds historians that by 1845 The United States was the only functioning democracy in the world. The book also points out that Mexico, far from being a benevolent neighbor, was brutal and corrupt and a republic in name only. The war occurred from 1846 to 1848. Polk himself was said to be colorless and maddeninglly ambivalent in speeches, making him hard to label or characterize. He was said to be "smaller-than-life" but harboring "larger-than-life" ambitions and felt determined to act on his own counsel. He saw expansionism as the nation's work and believed that it would override all of the partisan concerns of the day. In this, he appears to have erred because the westward expansion appears to have inflamed the pro-slavery sentiments as well as the anti-slaver's belief that slavery should not go to the new territories. This unsettled the balance that was thought to have been achieved with The Missouri Comprise of 1820-21. These partision clashes led a dozen years later to the Civil War. His role as a promoter of the California Gold Rush is mentioned regularly in Haggin training. The new book plants a flag for a new thought that Polk was a shrewd expander of the American vision of itself and more than a greedy imperialist.

A Nobel Laureate Passes By

On a Saturday afternoon,
Throngs at Berkeley,
Sat Amid the Historic Stadium,
Where Andy Smith's ashes,
Were once dropped to the field,
From a small airplane,
While the stadium rested,
Draped in Black Crepe.
.
This fine autumn day,
We all sat in happy repose,
When unexpectedly,
Professor Oliver Williamson,
Winner of the 2009
Nobel Prize in Economics,
Climbed up the stairs,
In our aisle of seats on both sides,
Wearing a VIP badge slung around,
His neck, he smiled modestly,
Appearing aged--and small.
The crowd rose to its feet,
And faced him in the aisle,
As he climbed higher.
Jim said: "Bravo!"
And applauded too.

My Once-Remembered Indian Village--James Estrada

[Use frequent scene breaks]
.
Plastic maps,
Painting and wild animals,
Exfoliating granite.
UMACHA and tools on the ground,
First Julia.
Ranger's introduction,
Julia portrait,
Blessing song and Julia's biographay (coughing).
Basketry (Fire Lady Fable).
Takes coat off; truck passes by--CRACKING.
Acorns in the village--rules about acorns.
Men talk. Women talk.
Weak acorns.
Jim walks away,
To see stones and UMACHA.

Pilot, Adventurer, Role Model--with the allure of one who died in her prime

Amelia Earhart received her pilot's license in 1921, broke the women's
altitude record in 1922 . . . After her solo flight across the Altantic she
became the first pilot to fly solo to California from Hawaii in 1934. [Ted
Waitt, producer of "Amelia"] said, "The more I researched her
disappearance, the more fascinated I became with her life. What she
did, at the time she did it, is extraordinary. At the time, flying was
considered an extreme sport, and the risks that she faced took an
incredible amount of guts. She was an amazing role model . . .
. On July 22, 1937, Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan,
took off from New Guinea, 22,000 miles into their effort to
circumnavigate the earth. They aimed for Howland Island, a sliver
of an island about 2,500 miles into the Pacific. Almost everyone, even today, is aware that they never made it; they most likely ran out of
fuel and crashed into the ocean. [Director, Ms. Nair] said, "The more
I read about her, the more I thought she is like I was. Beyond the
enigma of how she died, I'm hoping people will see themselves in her
decisions to set aside her fears and live her life to the fullest."

Phantastical Machine

Click the arrow below to see an interesting video
--but turn up the sound.

A Valued Quote--From my email Friend

Hi Jim,

I'm forwarding a quote for you from Thomas Leland.
.
"At every crossroad follow your dream. It is courageous to let your heart
lead the way."
.
Jim Said: "Thank you Hilde."

Returning Birds -- A Nobelist's Poem

. RETURNING BIRDS

This spring the birds came back again too early.

Rejoice, O reason: instinct can err too.

It gathers wool, it dozes off--and down they fall

into the snow, into a foolish fate, a death

that doesn't suit their well-wrought throats and splendid claws,

their honest cartilage and conscientious webbing,

the heart's sensible sluice, the entrails'

maze,

the nave of ribs, the vertebrae in

stunning enfilades,

feathers deserving their own wing in

any crafts museum, the Benedictine

patience of the beak.

.

This is not a dirge--no, it's only

indignation.

An angel made of earthbound protein,

a living kite with glands straight from

the Song of Songs,

singular in air, without number in the

hand,

its tissues tied into a common knot

of place and time, as in an Aristotelian

drama

unfolding to the wings' applause,

falls down and lies beside a stone,

which in its own archaic,

simpleminded way

sees life as a chain of failed attempts.

.

--by Wislawa Szymborska

awarded the 1996

Nobel Prize for Literature.

From her collected poems, "View

With a Grain of Sand"

In The Orchestra Pit

James Levine brings the Boston Symphony Orchestra to New York's Carnegie Hall this week for a program featuring Chopin, Debussy and John Williams. He addresses toward the First Violins. (photo by the New York Times)

Love Declared--Publicly, In a Crowded Theater

Photo from the play, "A BRIEF ENCOUNTER" by Noel Coward

Jim said:
"A night of firsts,
A night of nights.
A sumptuous fest,
For eyes and ears.
A tall blonde actress,
Her hair done high.
Does strum a ukelele,
Amid the theater aisles.
Two actors, declare
Their love.
Across ten rows
Of people.
Amid the main floor seats.
"Laura, don't you see?
It's too late to deny,
What has happened,
Between us."
Said Robert.
Laura said, "Robert please,
We must be sensible."
---said Jim

Just Another Day In the Universe--An Interval Of Time Has Passed. Did anyone notice?

Star light, star bright,

First star I see tonight . . .

A Tribute to Women---And a Woman Who Swims

Some days my chest bursts with pride when encountering information like this. I'll explain why at the end of this post.
.
"Young Woman and the Sea", by Glenn Stout
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 336 pages; $25
. from the Book Review by Amy Wu, special to the SF Chronicle Aug 21, 2009
.
In the world of sports literature, swimming books are few and far between. There are autobiographies of Olympians and workout manuals by top coaches, but not many books satisfy the appetite of swimming aficionados who seek a good read about the sport's evolution.
.- - -Glenn Stout's "Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World" is a welcome exception.
.
The book not only examines the history of swimming and the challenges of making it across the channel but also offers insights into the women's movement. . .
.
But the star of Stout's account is Gertrude "Trudy" Ederle, who in 1926 became the first woman to swim the English Channel--to this day considered the Mount Everest of the sport. Cold waters and rough currents make the 21 miles between Dover, England, and Cape Gris-Nez, France, notoriously challenging.
.
Long after she made history, Ederle remains an inspiration and heroine in the swimming community. " -by Amy Wu
.
Jim said: Some days, my mind wanders back to the time that you told me of what you had done. I can imagine you in the dark waters of the Atlantic, wearing your swimming cap and determined in your strokes against the cold waves--your destination not yet in sight and not to be seen until much later when dawn arrived. Even now I tremble to think of your daring and courage as a woman and as a leader of women. So it seems doubly ironic to sit in front of you at lunch and appreciate your total grace and modesty when I questioned you about how you made the cover of a magazine. You promised to send me a copy and I still have it. I peppered you with more questions when you patiently explained to me that you and some women friends had swum the English Channel successfully. You told me of the party you and the women had at the tavern on the far shore, sharing glass-lifting toasts. So it seems fitting that, as I see your ghostly image at the right side of this page, that you almost appear to be wearing your swimming cap right now. Your feat continues to inspire me and everyone who knows you. A new American Women's Relay-Team Swimming Record! The heart swells.

Delta Cattails

A picture for you. -Jim

Mister Moonlight

. . . . Even full moonllight bathes the garden with only about one-half-millionth as much light as sunlight. This darkness brings subtle changes in our perceptions of the garden. There's not enough moonlight to activate the color sensing cones in our eyes, so the same garden that is in Technicolor in afternoon is in black and white at night. Not that it is any less appealing: What it lacks in colorful fun it gains in quiet elegance.
. . . . Without the distraction of color, mass and form are what catch our attention in the night garden. Forsythia, rhododendron, lilac and other shrubs that are dense with leaves take on a bold presence at night, joining other amorphous masses. . . . Walls and trees--every dense, three-dimensional form, in fact--also take on a bold presence in the silvery moonlight. Their forms might suggest alien creatures. They might guide our eyes or feet along in the dim lilght. And they might offer an earthbound anchor from night's awesome "big sky." . . . . For relief, step out into the moonlit garden and be greeted by serene, static masses. . . . everything visible in the moonlit garden seems larger than it does by day. By night, butterfly bushes will seem ready to embrace or envelop from all sides; an arbored entranceway to a vegetable garden feels like it towers overhead at night. . . . Among night's most hauntingly beautiful flowers are those whose pale trumpet shapes attract the pollinating bats and moths that go about their work only at night. Like their pollinators, some varieties of these flowers . . . open only at night, shyly folding up each morning. . . . The sweet fragrances wafted into the air by many night bloomers strengthen their allure to bats and moths. The perfumes alone might be sufficient enticement to bring you out into the garden at night, to enjoy, even in the absence of moonlight.
- - - -by Lee Reich of the Associated Press, in SF Chronicle Wed Aug. 24, 2009

The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love and the Meaning of Life

Excerpts from the review of this book authored by Alison Gopnik of Berkeley, reviewed by Mark Sloan, in a special to The Chronicle:
.
Baby brains are very different from those of adults. The prefontal cortex--the center of such "adult" activities as thinking, planning and inhibiting thoughts that distract us from the task at hand--is much less developed, for example. As a result, babies are more impulsive, less-wired for inhibition and, Gopnick suggests, "aware of much more, much more intensely, then we are."
.
She likens a bably's attention to a lantern, casting its light in all directions, illuminating the nooks and crannies of a strange, new world--perfect for learning a great deal in a short time. Adult attention, given our abjility to focus and shut out distractions, is more like a spotlight. We can write reports and meet deadlines like crazy, but we also miss a lot of interesting things going on around us. Babies, though, notice everything.
.
It's that lantern-like conciousness that allows a baby to construct a mental map of her world and how it works. . . . Gopnik's research proves that even 1-year-olds are capable of counterfactual thought--that "coulda-woulda-shoulda" thinking that allows us to learn from experience, consider possibilities and change our future behavior accordingly.
.
Humans have by far the longest childhood of any primate species. Gopnik presents compelling evidence that this period of extended helplessness is actually a key to our evolutionary success. Lantern consciousness, counterfactual thinking and imaginative play allow children to explore alternative worlds and scenarios. During this period of "paradoxically useful uselessness," children learn to see the world as it could be, and to make plans to create that world--skills that will be crucial in an ever-changing adult society. Play is indeed the work of childhood, and it has been since the dawn of Homo sapiens. . . Children, she writes, help provide answers to deep, meaning-of-life questions. They "put us in touch with important, real and universal aspects of the human condition," such as awe, magic, beauth and truth.
.
Babies and children are our future, in more than the simple genetic sense. They will one day dramatically reshape our world, as every generation before them has done. We would be wise in this era of diminishing resources and test-obsessed education to provide them with the love, security and unstructured time they need to play, imagine and explore the vast range of human possibilities. Because the very people who will ultimately create the world of the future, "the explorers we set out there at the farthest edge," as Gopnik concludes in her moving final chapter, "look very much like our children."
---Sunday, August 16, 2009 San Francisco Chronicle

Laurel On Her Head--Induction of a Poet

Friends gathered to celebrate the 75th birthday of Diane de Prima, the city's fifth designated poet laureate.
(A man who is a friend) noting that de Prima will not be sworn in officially until February, performed his own version of an inaugural ceremony for the crowd. His ritual specificied that the laureate use "all of your power to guard, honor and propagate poetry of all kinds for all people in all walks of life, and remind them to celebrate the world in all its mystery."
A lush and full laurel wreath was placed upon the head of the poet, whose right hand lay upon a volume of the collected works of John Keats, and who accepted the honor "in the name of all the poets and all the alchemists of all time."
A long list of fellow poets was read, including Catullus, Ezra Pound and Michael McClure who was the city's fourth poet laureate. . . A slight breeze wafted through the studio, as poetry lovers found their natural post-ceremony affinity: Some hovered over a bountiful display of food, . . . others were at the windows, admiring the parade of antique cars. . .parked on Mission Street.
"There is no season that is not a season of song," the honoree had said in the ceremony. It was a great day for poetry.
.
--from newspaper columnist, Leah Garchik on Thursday August 13, 2009

To The Edge Of The Universe

On a skyway,
A concrete flight
Through urban rooftops.
.
The car and steering wheel
dissolve,
Into the Milky Way.
.
A billion tiny stars
Streaking toward my windshield,
In the blackened starry sky.
I gasp.
.
Further and further out,
The flight gains speed,
And light shifts,
To the red end of the spectrum.
.
Farther still,
Where clusters fade away,
The void is called,
The Big Black Room.
.
I nod acceptance,
But then, a big surprise!
Beyond The Big Black Room,
A Big White Room awaits!
A blinding light engulfs us all.
--Jim

Notes From A NonExistent Himalayan Expedition

So these are the Himalayas.
Mountains racing to the moon.
The moment of their start recorded
on the startling, ripped canvas of the sky.
Holes punched in a desert of clouds.
Thrust into nothing.
Echo--a white mute.
Quiet.
.
Yeti, down there we've got Wednesday,
bread and alphabets.
Two times two is four.
Roses are red there,
and violets are blue.
.
Yeti, crime is not all
we're up to down there.
Yeti, not every sentence there
means death.
.
We've inherited hope--
the gift of forgetting.
You'll see how we give
birth among the ruins.
.
Yeti, we've got Shakespeare there.
Yeti, we play solitaire
and violin. At nightfall,
we turn lights on, Yeti.
.
Up here it's neither moon nor earth.
Tears freeze.
Oh Yeti, semi-moonman,
turn back, think again!
.
I called this to the Yeti
inside four walls of avalanche,
stomping my feet for warmth
on the everlasting
snow.
.
--Poem by Wislawa Szymborska (Polish)
and the winner of the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1996. From her volume
of collected poems, View With A Grain
Of Sand

Latest Quotation: Attributed To Its Author Below

In The Temple

In the temple of science are many mansions --- and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them there.

Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who have offered the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes. Were an angel of the Lord to come and drive all the people belonging to these two categories out of the temple, it would be noticeably emptier but there would still be some men of both present and past times left inside --- If the types we have just expelled were the only types there were, the temple would never have existed any more than one can have a wood consisting of nothing but creepers --- those who have found favor with the angel --- are somewhat odd, uncommunicative, solitary fellows, really less like each other than the hosts of the rejected.

What has brought them to the temple --- no single answer will cover --- escape from everyday life, with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from his noisy cramped surroundings into the silence of the high mountains where the eye ranges freely through the still pure air and fondly traces out the restful contours apparently built for eternity.

-From a 1918 speech by a young German scientist named Albert Einstein

An Excerpt from "The Elegance of the Hedgehog"

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. A best-seller published by Europa editions. Chapter 11 Existence Without Duration

What is the purpose of Art? To give us the brief, dazzling illusion of the camellia, carving from time an emotional aperture that cannot be reduced to animal logic. How is Art born? It is begotten in the mind's ability to sculpt the sensorial domain. What does Art do for us? It gives shape to our emotions, makes them visible and, in so doing, places a seal of eternity upon them, a seal representing all those works that, by means of a particular form, have incarnated the universal nature of human emotions.

The seal of eternity . . . What absent world does our heart intuit when we see these dishes and cups, these carpets and glasses? Beyond the frame of the painting there is, no doubt, the tumullt and boredom of everyday life---itself an unceasing and futile pursuit, consumed by projects; but within the frame lies the plenitude of a suspended moment, stolen from time, rescued from human longing. Human longing! We cannot cease desiring, and this is our glory, and our doom. Desire! It carries us and crucifies us, delivers us every new day to a battlefield where, on the eve, the battle was lost; but in sunlight does it not look like a territory ripe for conquest, a place where---even though tomorrow we will die---we can build empires doomed to fade to dust, as if the knowledge we have of their imminent fall had absolutely no effect on our eagerness to build them now? We are filled with the energy of constantly wanting that which we cannot have, we are abandoned at dawn on a field littered with corpses, we are transported until our death by projects that are no sooner completed than they must be renewed. Yet how exhausting it is to be constantly desiring . . . We soon aspire to pleasure without the quest, to a blissful state without beginning or end, where beauty would no longer be an aim or a project but the very proof of our nature. And that state is Art. This table---did I have to set it? Must I have covet this repast in order to see it? Somewhere, elsewhere, someone wanted that meal, someone aspired to that mineral transparency and sought the pleasure offered by the salt, silky caress of a lemony oyster on his tongue. This was but one project of a hundred yet unhatched, leading to a thousand more, the intention to prepare and savor a banquet of shellfish---someone else's project, in fact, that existed in order for the painting to come to life.

But when we gaze at a still life, when---even though we did not pursue it---we delight in its beauty, a beauty borne away by the magnified and immoble figuration of things, we find pleasure in the fact that there was no need for longing, we may contemplate something we need not want, may cherish something we need not desire. So this still lilfe, because it embodies a beauty that speaks to our desire but was given birth by someone else's desire, because it cossets our pleasure without in any way being part of our own projects, because it is offered to us without requiring the effort of desiring on our part: this still life incarnates the quuintessence of Art, the certainty of timelessness. In the scene before our eyes---silent, without life or motion---a time exempt of projects is incarnated, perfection purloined from duration and its weary greed---pleasure without desire, existence without duration, beauty without will.

For art is emotion without desire.

Permission to Come Aboard?

Good afternoon. It'a pleasure to join with the Docent Council members and staff to support and assist in the things that the Haggin Museum does. I'll look forward to your posted items and I'll try to follow Janet's example of interesting offerings. Talk to you soon.