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Multiple Sclerosis & D
A new controlled trial in Ireland will test whether giving vitamin D to patients suffering from Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is beneficial. Recent research at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey has indicated an association between vitamin D levels and the body's ability to fight MS, so the controlled trial is welcome news.
The Vitamin D Council has a patient-friendly section outlining the possible link between MS and Vitamin D.
Tuberculosis & D
Over 100 years ago doctors observed that moving patients to sunny environments ameliorated their symptoms of tuberculosis (TB), although the reason was not understood. Today, scientific studies are beginning to identify vitamin D, generated by the skin's exposure to sunlight, as one of the keys to activating the body's immune response to the bacteria that causes TB.
Craig's 1973 Diary
- Details
- Category: People
One Year Diary
1973
Property of Craig Lyman
2804 Vernon Drive, Augusta, Georgia
The Meadow, the Path, and the Cave
- Details
- Parent Category: Writing
- Category: For Children
Gwen was the first to wake. Before dressing she went and zipped open the tent flap and pushed her head outside. There was a small glow down the valley past the creek that curved and tumbled like dark silver before disappearing into the forest. The sun was still an ember embedded behind the mountain that stood across the valley.
“Good,” she thought to herself. Neither her brother in the small tent nor her mother and father in the big tent were awake yet. Quickly Gwen threw on her clothes—an old pair of blue jeans with a hole beginning to form in the right knee, and a baggy cordoroy shirt that seemed ideal for hiking. She stepped outside through the tent opening. She heard Alan inside turn with a muffled stretch in his sleeping bag, so she zipped the flap closed behind her as gently as she could.
Man from Botan
UFO's and aliens, it would seem, have got popular. Especially saucers that come leaping down to pre-appointed spots, removing the small band of faithful off to the appointed stars.
This alien visitors business has been all through the movies, of course, from Close Encounters down to Alien itself. A week doesn't go by but some friend of mine (usually an intellectual I thought quite “safe”) suddenly drops a hint that, oh yes, he too is a “believer”.
Or I discover grown girls (can't call them women) up in strange states like Illinois who eschew sexual relationships with men, saving themselves instead for their future alien abductors who, in a detail apparently so much more sexual than any man could possibly hope to match, look an awful lot like amphibians or big-toed reptiles.
Forbidden Apples
“See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” is not God’s way. We learn this from Genesis. We learn it as we observe naked Eve and Adam wandering about blissfully in God’s garden of Eden. In that self-same garden God placed the serpent, and allowed it not just to be seen but to be heard as it spoke its words of deception. God never warned Adam and Eve about the snake. Never told them not to associate with it. Never prepared them for the ideas the snake might present. Not a bit of “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” in God’s garden. Nada.
God was quite willing to let the snake have its say: its beguiling promise that Adam and Eve could become god-like. God didn’t even offer a rebuttal. He let evil have its say without response.
Not surprising, therefore, that two innocents like our naked Eve and Adam fell head first for the serpents’s guile.
We call it guile, evil. But in fact the serpent did not lie.
Dark Sea
Another sweep of cloud over the moon, and the darkness starts again.
I climb the promontory and hug my Buddha, and sit and face the darkness of the sea. Dark, peaceful, quiet and only the wave in my ear.
A few shore lights lean across the bay. Torches line the lagoon in front of the resort.
People, buildings, trees are stilled. Caught motionless in time while beyond the real world churns.
Yet here by the statue of Buddha the wind and water are alive.
Buddha looks seaward.
And I, facing the sea, meet the delicious darkness.