About Those Best Laid Plans

I'll get right to it: the colonoscopy got canceled.

The decision was made in the ER at 2 AM.

You can leave it there, or read on for the rest of the (not too-o-o gross) story.

I had gotten as far as going through the week of increasing food restrictions, chugging the first half of the drink to clear the gut, and had taken my phone and a book into the bathroom to spend necessary time. All was going well... until it wasn't.

I started feeling nauseous. I had a plastic basket handy which is always there. They warn you about that as a possibility, though in my previous ones it had never happened. Neither did any of what came next. From there I went straight to feeling overheated and sweating, light headed like I could fall over at any moment, and unable to stand because the circulation had been cut off in my left leg. I knew that was pinching from the toilet seat but it all struck quickly. Things were going downhill so fast that I just managed to call Steve and get out one word: "Come!"

It did take him a minute with his walker, but he was prompt. By then I was also hyperventilating. He helped me shed a layer of clothes, in between my needing to collapse forward onto his knees as they faced me while he sat in his walker, then leaning over the bucket thinking I'd need that. Lucky for us both we had decided to get him a walker with a seat/basket so he could be as comfortable as possible when using it, much needed for what came next. 

Every move I made, as I vascillated between thinking I'd throw up (never did) to pass out (never did) to needing to stand to get the pressure off my leg (also by then never did - couldn't), he was there, doing his best to help, but best was just letting me fall forward onto his knees for a few seconds. After several minutes of that we decided he should call 911. 

We wound up with a cop and two paramedics, all of whom did their thing as best as they could, since by then I was barely coherent. The simplest question took about a minute to answer, if I even could wrap my brain around it enough to answer. What meds was I allergic to? I managed to recall I had some allergy but couldn't think of to what. Normally I can recite the whole list on command. Once somebody else was there to prevent my falling while sitting, Steve went and got the medical history list I've printed out in a folding form and handed it to them for whatever they needed. Meanwhile they attached 4 EKG leads on me knowing I had cardiac issues in my past. That was one part of me functioning perfectly at the moment.

My goal was to go lie down on my bed. I had an adult diaper in case I wasn't quite through with the purge yet (I was) and a flat bed protector for the bed. With the help of three people - who couldn't pull on my arms - we got me to the bed to reassess my condition and answer the question, did I want to go to the ER?

Obviously I decided yes. The only improvement in my condition at that point was I got enough circulation back in my leg that I could put weight on it again, though standing and walking was done while surrounded by people to catch me if necessary. After help dressing, I was strapped in a chair, taken out and down the steps, and strapped onto the gurney.

Note here that it was snowing. I hadn't worn a coat or jacket. The day had been warmer, noted when I hauled both garbage and recycle bins curbside earlier. Neither chair nor gurney had blankets. If they needed access to me, like monitoring blood O2 and BP, they needed it ASAP. But the gurney had been outside about half an hour, and transfer and belting in took a good five minutes. The ambo doors had been open the whole time since they pulled up. I was already shivering from the moment I was outside. They insisted the ambo had heat inside, but during the 20 minute ride it never got above maybe 50 inside. Compared to snow, I guess that was heat. But I wasn't just shivering, I was shaking, whole body. It was hard to get my BP, or a good reading on my O2 from the finger stall.

I knew at least one thing I hadn't realized before. My entire mouth was so dry it was hard to talk, though I was beginning to be a bit more coherent. I was definitely dehydrated.

Once in a room in the ER I was transferred to a bed by putting a heavy sheet under me and lifting/swinging me over. I wasn't helping, still shivering to much for purposeful movement. I had to sit up a couple times briefly, precipitating the worst charley horses in both thighs I've ever had until I could stretch out straight again. At least those stopped. The shakes lasted hours!

First they removed my shirt and sweatshirt, normal wear for me at home in 73 degree room temp with a blanket over my legs when sitting. By blanket I mean a double layer polar fleece that covers me chest to toes, and if needed I can tuck my arms inside as well. So of course in the ER they started me in a thin cotton gown which left my shoulders and neck exposed to the air, and under one cotton hospital blanket.  You want my arm still to put in an IV? Hold it yourself! Yes, for both tries! After a quick blood draw to check my electrolytes and whatever else, the room was suddenly empty.

Eventually I located the call button, and after three tries through shaking managed to hit it hard enough to work. Somebody grudgingly brought in a pair of warmed cotton blankets, turned the thermostat in the room all the way up to 75 (!?!) and left. Busy? Indifferent? Or both? I'm going for both, since she barely spoke to me. Nor could she be bothered to bring them up to my shoulders. The blanket warmth lasted two minutes, during which I never stopped shaking, nor did I afterwards. I tried to hitch them up myself, but with my shoulders, success would still be a month or two away, between PT and my 2nd surgery, scheduled now for a month after Steve's upcoming hip replacement. He's been here for me, I need to be there for him. One of us still needs to drive, unmedicated by narcotics.

That book I brought to pass the time? It was on the tray a foot from the bed, not really a problem since I couldn't have held it steady enough to read anyway. They had left my glasses on, but I decided it wasn't on purpose. The arm on that side was pretty well pinned down due to the IV... and exposed to the air as well, thank you very much. I did finally give a mental "hell with it" and reached over to draw the tray close enough to grab  my phone to call Steve and let him know what I did/didn't know yet. It started the monitor showing my vitals beeping. Nobody came to check. Of course that also left me colder. Could they have warmed up the IV fluid any? I had asked, and they said they didn't have a warmer for it. Is everybody too stupid to just get a bowl of warm water from the faucet, set the bag inside a larger bag to keep it dry for a couple minutes, and then pour it into me? That would still leave the connecting ends clean, right?

Eventually the question came up of whether to try to get the meds needed to continue the 2nd half of colonoscopy prep since I was scheduled for that morning and just down the hall. With all the pros and cons discussed, including having no ride back home until at least when that procedure was due to be completed the next mid day, and the schedule already off by hours, with no promise anywhere of warmth until I got home, I decided not to go for it. It would have to be rescheduled. First, I needed to find out why I reacted as I did to the meds, never having done so before. And second, I damn well am not going to try it again until next summer. When It's warm!!!!!! Even my second shoulder is waiting till late May, at least. 

After I agreed to it, they scheduled a cab for me to get home in, finally arriving at 3AM, Steve still awake and waiting with cash to pay for it - from our combined stashes since I left my purse home. Even the cab had very little heat, so I never really warmed up until a few hours sleep under my polar fleece. Yep, the colonoscopy will have to wait for a retry till summer. Maybe August, eh, once the 2nd shoulder is useable?

So How Old Am I?

I could give you a number, I suppose, But there are other things in my life which reinforce my years on this planet.

I'm old enough to have gotten both kind of measles and chicken pox before there were shots. Miserable as it made him, we were relieved when my brother got the mumps at a very young age, knowing it was more likely he could be a father some day instead of if he got them as an adult.

I'm also old enough to have gotten TB tests in school every year, and also have either an arm or leg checked in class to be sure we had the scar from a recent enough smallpox vaccination. When the first polio vaccine came out we all got it from a needle. Our parents knew somebody in an iron lung, and I had a classmate in a leg brace. When the sugar cube version came out, a better and painless vaccine, we joined the town in the high school gym for our cube even after having had the first shot.

I'm old enough to watch eggs being candled by the lady Mom bought eggs from, and afterwards heard about diabetes in a granddaughter there. It was always what we call type one and she would die early from it, we were told, after going blind and loosing her feet to gangrene like her grandma.

I'm old enough that when I was very young, and our parents ran a resort, I was pretty much given free rein over the property without worrying about getting lost or running into bad people.  We just won't mention how often I followed the path along the lake in either direction from our place to the two resorts also on the lake. I knew exactly where in the yard the four-leaf-clovers grew every year. Finding a droppd penny was a treasure!

I'm old enough to remember outhouses and not just at summer camps, and getting a Saturday night bath in a tub on the kitchen floor, filled with water heated on a wood stove for the purpose, where each took their turn in the same water starting with the littlest (and presumably carrying the least dirt.)

I'm old enough that we had a phone on the wall where you lifted the ear piece, cranked out a pattern of shorts and longs to reach a very limited supply of numbers, and everybody on your party line could hear the ring pattern and listen to everything said.

I'm old enough that my first awareness of the cost of things was Mom complaining about the prices of stamps rising all the way to two cents for a postcard and three cents for an envelope. When I was in high school she sent me to the store for bread and milk, and complained again because each of those had risen to thirty five cents.

I'm old enough that when the family took a driving trip out to California one could still see distant mountains clearly as soon as they were above the horizon.

I'm old enough to have grown up without TV unless we traveled down to the Minneapolis to visit relatives who had it and knew who Howdy Doody and Captain Kangaroo were.  There was a radio in the house but rarely listened to until after supper. "Our Miss Brooks" and "Life of Riley" come to mind, and in the car hears "Gunsmoke" and "point of Law". When the family moved into a small town there was celebration when an antenna was put on top of the water tower and could broacast NBC for a 3 mile radios. We watched Bonanza and now Gunsmoke on our own small TV.

At that same time as bread and milk prices rose we moved to St. Paul,  where my brother started college and I finished high school. I dated a couple of boys who would drive from St. Paul to Hudson, Wisconsin to buy gas sold there for twenty-two cents a gallon. A full tank of gas was an affordable way for a teenager to just drive all over and call it a date, showing somebody who didn't get around much where parks and rivers the the fancy homes were.

I'm old enough to remember Daddy was a 4-pack-a-day smoker and nobody thought anything of it. As a kid I could even go buy him a pack without objection at the store. After his first heart attack, when he asked the doc when he should come back to see him for a follow up, the doc told him 6 months if he stopped smoking. If he didn't stop, he'd not live long enough for a next appointment. He quit cold turkey. A few years later he was one of the very first tripple bypass cardiac surgery recipients in the St. Paul area, eventually living to 97.

I'm old enough to have lost exact track of how many colonoscopies I've had to have. Including this week it might be five or six. But I clearly recall the one where the anesthesia didn't work in their drug coctail but the paralytic did. Thank goodness they don't use that any more. I would have loved to scream or swear, maybe both.

I'm old enough to have to think how many surgeries of whatever kind I've had, and realize later I missed one. Last week I had a diagnostic scan and was asked to list what all the scars were from, and that's just on my belly. There are more.

I'm even old enough - and have been for a while - to have prepared a mental list for this post of all I wanted to say and know I'm still missing a few things. But I'm not even close to old enough for forgetting how much I love the guy in the next chair, and all the reasons why over all the years. And most of that list you'll never get, on purpose.

Thanks, XCEL

 XCEL is our power company for this part of Minnesota. They have been for a long time, since they changed the name way back from NSP, or Northern States Power. When we were leaving MN to become AZ residents and snowbirds, XCEL was in the process of buying rural land and putting in solar panels. Now when you drive past, they look like blue waves covering former farm fields.

We're back and have them again. Since moving we've had two issues with loss of power. Both times, here's how it went. Power flickers once or twice and goes off. I pick up my cell phone, which still works, and call the number for XCEL I entered in its directory as soon as we signed up to pay for gas and electricity. Both times it went like this:

I got their business recording, letting me sort between billing, sign up or drop service, report a gas leak (beyond calling 911), or reporting a power outage. There might be more choices but I never needed to listen that long. I push the latter button. The recording confirms my status as a customer by the phone I'm using, then verifies my address as the location of the problem, then lets me know approximately how long they expect power to be out. 

Both time the estimate was twenty minutes.

Both times it was a bit quicker. 

We put away the candles, flashlights, and reset the house clocks during the two minutes it took to reset the cable connection on the TV. Not a minute of programming was lost since there is something in our cable  system that keeps about twenty minutes of back broadcasting from before every time we turn the TV on.  Besides, we had recorded what we were watching, enabling us to finish it, and the next program was filled in to cover the down time. There was no worry about losing heat on this thunderstorming winter night, though we knew where heavier clothes and blankets were if needed.  All in all, no problems.

Thanks, EXCEL !!!!

A Little Winter/Spring Fog

 It's March. The snow has lasted much too long, especially for a visiting friend who lost car keys in the snow back at Thanksgiving and is waiting for a thaw. Yes, the keys have been replaced, but there was also a very sentimental and irreplaceable medallion on the ring which serves as a last memento of a deceased parent. 

The snow banks left by the plow have melted on the other side of our street.  On our side,  shaded by our homes due to low sun angles all winter, the piles are still here in dirty glory, snow converted to ice but still stubbornly in place. A metal detector is part of the plan for key retrieval, as not all hope is lost, maybe for this weekend, depending on how high forecast temperatures really go, and whether cars are reliable transportation for people on unreliable budgets. It's been a tough winter on those as well - cars and budgets.

The roads themselves around here are in great condition, and travel for enjoyment has resumed slightly. With a heavy fog Wednesday, a morning trip was ordered, along with the camera.

There is a lake at the bottom of the hill. Visibility ended just before the shore, so I'll let you take my word that all ice houses were removed exactly on schedule, and so far as we know, safely. Had I walked to the bottom I still likely could have seen the ruts in the snow-over-ice near shore where for the last couple months racing snowmobiles on the lake could be heard nearly any time one stepped outside. Do note snow on the north vs. south sides of the street. And yes, it was garbage pick-up day, in case sharp eyes picked the cans sitting out.

As I headed toward the river which was my destination, I passed another lake, again with very limited view and no open water. However, sitting patiently on the ice near shore, waiting for a thaw was a pair of trumpeter swans, securely sleeping. The highway is narrow there with no place to pull off safely, so no picture except in memory.

The goal was a small park along the St. Croix River, known to us locals as Osceola Landing, part of the National Parks system, recently upgraded for picnics, better canoe egress, and a large paved boat access ramp off a huge parking area with added restrooms. The best part is the total lack of entry fees. Or perhaps the scenery, turtles, and birds. Whatever your pleasure is, that day offered a still ice-covered river with just enough exceptions to solid ice to keep people off and boats away. It didn't stop dog walkers or those of us with cameras from enjoying an outing on higher ground.

A tiny spur of land juts out into a backwater near the highway bridge. Canoes can pull up to the stairs near the point and carry their lunches to the tables and grills on its point. As hard as those are to see in winter, the foreground grasses and  weeds all but completely obscure it in summer. You have to know it is there. Behind it the water wraps around, a the barrier which keeps foot traffic off the private farmland rising on the far side. The main stream of the river is on the other side of the park so most people don't make the lengthy u-turn to explore it.

Turning around from shooting that, the small slice of river continues on out to rejoin the main stream, down past the far side of the round grey tree which grows in the middle of the stream on a sand bar. 

Dead trees topple into the stream, an untended hazard for canoists, and when low enough to reach from the water, allow turtles to crawl up for a morning warm-up in summer sun, like this photo from last summer. One can also spot a lot of birds then, but the only bird of this day was a single trumpeter swan, flying through the trees, hidden from cameras, only revealing its presence by trumpeting about every three or four seconds as it headed south... presumably for warmer, ice free water, and a source of food after a vary long and optimistic trip.

Why Can't I See God?

 We were watching TV and a commercial popped on, supported by some Christian organization, and with kids asking questions like this title. It concluded with the assertion that Jesus welcomes questions. I barely noticed the rest of the details in the ad, as a single one caught my attention.

"Why Can't I See God?"

I'm going to leave aside the question of whether there truly is a God out there somewhere and if so, which theology best conveys what a God is all about. There are too many opinions - yes, opinions - and I'm not picking one. Instead I'm going to ask that child - or any child  - who asks that question a question of my own: What is it you expect to see that you would call "God"?

Are you looking for some aged white-bearded man in flowing robes? Lots of paintings and other art forms do their best to minimalize a God into such forms. If something deserves the title of God, why would it look like us? Do we think we are gods? Getting past the first  question, why would any God look like a hairy old person? If that is what you are looking for, there are all kinds of old, white-haired men all over this planet. Which one would you pick out as God? Why not that other one over there? Or  those dozen? Why a man, and not a white-haired old woman? I assure you there are plenty of us out here as well, with our own founts of wisdom, and some of us are perfectly capable of growing white whiskers as well if that's what your God-image needs.

Let's assume you have seen the art and decided they don't fit the bill for you, then what are you looking for? Maybe it has to be some old guy (I bet you can't get past that depiction yet, right?) with special powers it shows off all the time in order to be noticed. Does it fly? Fade in and out of visibility? Bring a fist down on your enemies of the day, and smite them and all they possess to smithereens? Cure your particular sick person because you asked nicely with the perfect special words?

Perhaps you've grown up a bit and are looking for something more.... special. Unique. Awesome. Scary. Lovable. Reassuring. Magic. If you've gotten past the old geezer in robes, how can you tell then whether what you are seeing is God or not?

Maybe you define God as the Creator. Do you mean create art? Ideas? Life? We people can do all that, and we're not alone in that. This post is an idea, and I'm creating it. I assure you I am not any God, despite being old, white haired, and even very competent at growing whiskers. I've made art by manipulating things, and the quality is nowhere near what I'd call God-like, as much as my ego is vested in making it. And yes, I can create life. I have three times. Each time another tiny cell is required to start the process, and after some months a new life pops out that is separate from me. All animals do it. Plants do it. Microbes do it. Are any of us God? I'm sure not feeling like one. I certainly won't/can't do that kind of creation again.

Many describe God as eternal. First we need to ask whether anything is eternal. We used to define it more or less as time longer then we could comprehend, starting before a beginning and lasting after an ending. As for the "can't comprehend" part, that definition sure fits the bill. Besides, it begs the question of "who/what created God?" Not to mention where the void came from... and so may others. We're figuring out, the more we learn, that we have just no idea.

Our scientists, particularly astronomers, are finding out how much further back in time from now other things existed. We call the most likely process starting that the Big Bang, pegging it around fourteen billions years ago. Is  that God? Galaxies spread out in all directions, bits of energy and mass coming together making stars and planets and nebulae which swing around each other, joining into larger and larger parts that move in patterns to make all the varied pieces of galaxies which make up the observable universe, Galaxies in turn start to eat themselves from the center out, sometimes even eating their neighbors. We call those black holes. Are those gods? What's on the other side of those black holes? Where does everything go and will it come back? Has or will it be a never-ending process? We try to put a before and an after on all that creation and discover our minds can barely grasp the concept, much less all the processes involved. Is the universe God?  However you answer that   question, where did God come from? Or, a bit more worrying, if you can't find or explain God, what did start it all, and even where did God go if there used to be one? 

Is God just a word we came up with to try to explain the incomprehensible? Or just a concept we needed to shift blame from our powerlessness and ignorance when some part of us can't tolerate chaos?

I'm not claiming to have the knowledge to answer those questions. I can only say they exist, and need to be answered before anybody or group can claim to know who or what God is, much less what something we designate as God looks like or wants from us.

Maybe we  can see God and look at God all the time. It does seem to be in our nature to ascribe God to being behind everything we cannot understand. I can see a flower and find it beautiful, watch it feed bees with pollen and nectar, understand how to water one and select seeds or cuttings to grow new ones of the same, or even something slightly different. But I can't "make" one. Each has its own rules for life and I can't change those. I can appreciate. I can also destroy, though only on a limited basis. A flower can wilt, eventually crumbling into pieces of scattered dust. Though changed, all are still in existence. I take that as proof as my not being God. I would so love to eliminate poison ivy!

When I was young, my religion taught me that God was visible in (his) creation. God was visible in the kindness and love of those around me. All those other trappings of formalized religion were added in too, like paying money to the church, obeying the laws as set forth in the book(s) deemed Holy, all of which in my case could be reduced to only recognizing one entity as my God, and behaving well to all around me. Despite contrary messages all around me, both from religious people and society, those were the top two things. 

So for what it's worth from this inexpert source, I see love and kindness as coming from whatever one wishes to believe in as god-like. Even if it isn't seen coming from others, it can come from us. We can choose it. The capability is inside us. It can be seen as a gift from God, or not. We are free to decide our actions in many things. If we were God, we could decide everything. We can be, in a very tiny way, God-like, depending on how we define what we call God. It does not make any of us God.

Second, as I get out and see more of this magnificent planet we live on, I am in awe of whatever forces made it and the unfathomable time scale it took it to be this way. I figure that awe is what most people feel when they label something as being god-like. The more we learn of what this planet is, what we are, what the universe is, the more awesome it all becomes to us. I can't begin to explain it. Words are too little to have enough meaning. I can't even understand it except to acknowledge the crushing enormity of it all, and yes, the humbleness of realizing it's a universe that's still changing and hidden and being partly revealed to those who work to see. It can be crushing, particularly because it is in our nature to find ourselves the center of everything, though we're not. The child first finds the maker(s) of all things possible in their parents, and when things are well-ordered, their world expands and grows to the awesome, uncontrollable, and scary. How we deal with that is the measure of ourselves, not of God.

I still have questions, of course. As far as I know, no human will ever be able to answer them. We're working around them, and calling it knowledge. Or understanding. Or at least progress. Let's go straight to the Big Bang. If everything wasn't here, and somehow exploded out of somewhere else into here something like fourteen billion years ago, and is still spreading out all over here and growing and growing, where did it all come from? Is or was there another universe that was somewhere else  first, and overcrowded it's space somehow, and exploded from some tiny point into this giant enormous "here" from a single point source? What happened to start it? Where did it come from? Where is it going? And why? The realization of the huge unknowable is what prompts us to not only create God as the explanation, but also  to create the definition of God, a cosmic mobius strip.

We will never know the beginning nor the end. We will only know our own, and only if we're paying attention at the time - a challenge for sure. Being able to see God will require clearly seeing ourselves, not because we are what we declare God to be, but because what is within us demands a form of completeness only served by the concept of God. We do our best, despite never being capable of getting there. God is what we invent from need, and define God as unknowable. That is why we can never see God: we've made God that way. If there is something more out there that is seeable, we will have to change.

Wait! You Bombed A Frickin' Girls' School ???

Do I need to say I was shocked at yesterday's news about tRump and Netanyahu bombing Iran? First thought wasn't the alleged build-up of nuclear weaponry capacity. It wasn't true back when Dubbya claimed it was, and tRump is so much more of a liar. Not better, since he's so transparent, just it's a constant stream of what he wants to be true running from glimmer of a thought, likely gained off watching TV, straight through and out of his mouth - or fingers on a keyboard -  without a stop for some coherent reflection, were he even capable most days. The man is demonstrably unwell.

All those thoughts were there of course, but the first one was why the hell do we in the US, any of us, think we have the right to tell another country how to lives their lives and choose their government or - since it's tied in - their own religion?  We have a petty ugly history of it for the most part, and try to glorify it for a lot of wrong reasons. (I hold out WWII as an exception.)

The second  was why now? My immediate thought was it was just another attempt to get us all to quit thinking about what's in the still missing Epstein Files, or of what was in but has been deleted from what has been released, how awful a pedophile tRump is/was (since so many of us forget how publicly he bragged about it), with the aim on his part to possibly raise his ratings here at home. Because they've been way down, and that's what drives him.

My shock was about him combining with Netanyahu first instead of going to the US Congress, which actually holds the authority to declare war, but then was followed quickly by the almost tossed off comment by the TV announcer I first heard that one of the bombs landed on a girls school with a resulting fifty-plus deaths. Students. Girls. Children whose lives are already severely restricted by their religious society who were still trying to better their lives if even minutely, who might have one day become mothers capable of guiding their children in better ways of human interactions than the ones these girls themselves grew up in, now never getting that chance.

I wonder who thought that these girls were a danger to the world? Was it total stupidity or just plain cruelty? I ask that like it could be either-or, when both are obviously true.

I wonder about the soldiers who sent the bombs. Do they have any clue which of their bombs hit that school? Are they proud that they killed girls? Or will it haunt them as they go about their lives, perhaps looking at their own daughters or nieces or random children on a playground back home, or in a school concert, or play, or science fair?

YOU BOMBED A FRICKING GIRLS' SCHOOL !!!!!!

Jellyfish Galaxy?

Boredom leads to fascinating discoveries on occasion. Boredom? Well, the Olympics' two weeks of wall-to-wall coverage is over, regular programming is coming back amid a ton of reruns, so there's some new stuff to watch, but all is mostly indoor activities still, despite the calendar building up with all kinds of medical appointments with more to schedule. There's no heading out to see the newest flower in the yard, or just walk down to the lake to see which birds are back north yet. Some snow has gone, but keeps getting replaced, including by ice, all of which reinforces the "keep indoors" injunction for anybody not willing to risk certain kinds of accidents. Even the garbage goes out to the big cans without one leaving the porch, and the cans don't actually fill often enough to require weekly hauling curbside. And no, spring housecleaning is NOT on the agenda! Yes, the dirt is visible, but the will to push the body right now has gone walkabout - ironic since the body itself can't. Even a pile of tax documents are sitting on a table sneering at me.

So there's lots of time spent online. Some of course is spent writing, including here. Other time is spent reading weird stuff, or at least weird for a lot of people. I got introduced to "Science X Newsletter" over a year ago, and get a new email containing dozens of links in various categories five days a week. Sometimes they build up, sometimes they are promptly devoured. I tend to ignore chemistry, physics, and astronomy, and stick with biology, earth news, medical news, and sometimes pop in to read "other". I might not get to one for a week, as a bunch piles up, but they don't go away until I delete them. Sometimes it's accidentally, though I did fix that glitch a while ago. In the beginning I tried to read everything and not just the teaser first paragraph, but the load grew heavier of unread stuff beckoning.

Suddenly it changed. The folks putting it out decided they either needed my money to keep reading any and everything that caught my interest, or I'd have to wade through ads for every in depth article I read. Screw that! OK, sure, I agree that they're worth it. The service is invaluable. But so are a lot of things online, and my budget isn't that accommodating, especially these last months when I'm not working. Five dollars a month here, and ten there, can build up in a hurry. I can't support them all. Decisions needed to be made. 

Since I still get the very short version of each newsletter, meaning a title and a couple sentences, sometimes a very tiny photo or indecipherable diagram, I can still browse through those. If something is really compelling, I can pull up the full article and fight a system of ads which has a very poor history of letting you clear it off the page after reading/watching it fully, meaning it still covers the article I clicked over to read even after the video ends. The result is it gets quicker and quicker to go through the teaser titles to see what's going on. 

If something looks more interesting, I find myself noting a key word or two and heading elsewhere trying to find more information. Maybe Google. Or Wikipedia even. I've been surprised by how brand new concepts (to me) wind up there, though the opposite is also true, and whatever it was doesn't seem to exist. Today was a good day.

Science X Newsletter had a teaser on jellyfish galaxies. What? Never heard of them. You? The thumbnail photo didn't really give me a clue, so first Google then Wikipedia. Both had information, or at least enough that I now know a bit what they're talking about. I'll even pass on the simple layman's version, since you've read this far.

I presume you are familiar with our own galaxy and its shape as spiral galaxy, more or less two dimensional with arms spinning off in curves along a relatively flat plane, maybe (or most likely?) with a black hole in the center. Got that image? If not, go Google it.... or use whatever search engine you please.

OK, now imagine something huge, like perhaps another spiral galaxy (don't ask me, I'm not sure) rams into it fairly flatly (aka broadside) and knocks a bunch of combined stuff through the "flat" to the other side, and some of that kind of dangles in strings as if still attached to the galaxy but trying to move away.  What's left of the original flattish spiral along with what it gained from whatever rammed into it that couldn't escape (yet?)  now resembles the head of a jellyfish. The tendrils of escaping matter - stars, planets, dust clouds, nebulas - that haven't fully separated (yet)  appear to be hanging below, like those on a jellyfish. (I doubt they move like an ocean jellyfish, but that  would be interesting! Likely very destructive as well.) Scientists describe the cause of this as ramming, so I'd guess there's enough color shift to suggest it's all still in motion. I haven't read the article for the above stated reasons.

I have no idea whether these are supposed to be static in their new confirmation, but I can't imagine they would be, just that the moment in time we observe them shows them that way, just like any constellation in our sky seems permanent. We know things move and that different forces like gravity hold them in a pattern. Observe our solar system, everything moving yet staying much the same. We can observe the evidence left of collisions in the distant past from craters on the moon, or even here on earth. Some of us have seen comets breaking up within our lifetimes, like Shoemaker-Levy 9 falling into Jupiter back in 1994 in 21 pieces.

Now go look up jellyfish galaxies and let your imaginations play, or bring out your crayons and design your own versions. Have fun! It's that or knock yourself flat on your ass with awe and/or fear.

You do you.