It’s been a real pleasure to see how many readers have been dropping by at the “More Bits……” article archive, which seems to have taken on a life of its own in recent weeks with many new visitors.
This autumn 2011, I returned to posting regularly on my original site “Writing from the Twelfth House”. It feels good to be back, re-connecting with my many subscribers who have been supporting the site since its launch in the autumn of 2008. Do go over and have a read of its now extensive article archive, as well as regular new posts. If questions of “mystery,meaning, pattern and purpose” attract you, you will find plenty to interest you at
“Writing from the Twelfth House”.
Heavenly Question Mark!
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Fresh woods and pastures new….
April 4, 2011
Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new……
As of now, I am winding up my existing blogs, including this one: they will remain on the Web as an archive of articles offering “….support, encouragement, inspiration and entertainment to open-minded people who, like me, are exhilarated and amazed by the beauty, mystery and complexity of the worlds we human beings inhabit - and for those writers and readers who share my preoccupation with questions of meaning, pattern and purpose….” I have said all I wish to say on those topics for the time being.
HOWEVER – DO NOT GO AWAY, DEAR READERS !
I will be returning in October 2011. The topics? Click HERE and you will find out!
For more details on these changes, click on
http://anne-whitaker.com/coming-up-soon-2/
Anne and Friend compose the new blog....
200 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2011
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
Who wants to live for ever?
February 14, 2011
Whilst musing on one of my favourite Monday morning topics, ie how to grow old as dis-gracefully as possible without dying prematurely, I came across this gem on Digg.com, rating number nine in the ‘most popular‘ list in the Science section of the Independent on line.
Have a read, and let me know what YOU think about growing old dis-gracefully……
Who wants to live for ever? A scientific breakthrough could mean humans live for hundreds of years
Growing old in marital harmony....
http://www.yvroldfarts.com/jokes.html
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100 words copyright Anne Whitaker/Digg.com 2011
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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Emergency help needed for Queensland
January 24, 2011
150 words copyright Annie Evett/Anne Whitaker 2011
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
“..……..If you’re serious about not becoming just another old lady, forget the nipping, tucking, and Botoxing yourself into oblivion, and follow these four rules:
Refuse to accept society’s view that you’re over the hill. So what, if conventional wisdom says that aging is about decrepitude and death. Certainly we’re all headed to the same inevitable place (yes the dreaded “D” word!), but who in the heck says we have to stop living before we get there? My dream is that as a generation, we change forever how future generations think about, plan for, and live in this next stage of life. Never again will aging be equated with being over the hill. Old ladies think they’re over the hill, and they are. You don’t have to go there.
Refuse to live a traditional retirement of only rest and leisure. Yes, getting enough rest is important, and leisure is a necessary break from our work, but if we’re not working, and we just have a steady diet of leisure, leisure and more leisure, how healthy can that be? How you live in this next stage of life — formerly known as retirement — should be as unique as your thumbprint. Old ladies buy into the traditional retirement model, and never experience the enlivening affects of purpose and passion. You don’t have to live like that.
Refuse to be warehoused with “old” people. Now, I don’t have anything against retirement communities per se, but it seems to me they’re just another — more glamorous — way of warehousing us as we age. Connection is essential at all stages of development, but never more so than as we age. I laugh when I think about my father-in-law’s reaction to moving into independent living at 83: “There are only old people here!” His interest in life diminished greatly when he left the community where he was actively and continuously interacting with younger people. Old ladies contract into and cut themselves off from interconnecting with the “outside” world. You don’t have to.
Growing old dis-gracefully!
http://media.photobucket.com/image/old%20lady%20funny/bamamom33/funny-104.jpg?o=4
Refuse to act your age…whatever that means. A look in the mirror aside, don’t fall prey to what’s expected of you as you age. You know, like “take it easy” or “you should” or “you shouldn’t” or you fill in the blank. One of the perks of aging is to let it all hang out. That means being authentically yourself in all our curiosity, enthusiasm, interests, and adventures. Give up looking good, for living life fully. Old ladies act like old ladies. You don’t have to act — just be yourself.
One more thing: absolutely, positively stop thinking of yourself as an old lady. You can be, each year, a new and improved version of you with more wisdom, clarity, peace, joy, love and delight…..”
Article tags: Positive Aging, Another Old Lady, Lin Schreiber Knowing, Retirement Coach, Academy Awards
About the Author: Lin Schreiber Certified Retirement Coach Lin Schreiber, author of the popular ABC’s of Revolutionizing Retirement, helps self-reliant women reinvent themselves in the next stage of life, formerly known as “retirement.”
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550 words copyright Anne Whitaker/ Lin Schreiber 2011
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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Inspiration from Jung: the miracle of the living soul
January 7, 2011
All my life’s work has been with people: as an adult education teacher in many settings, as a psychiatric social worker, as a private counsellor, trainer and supervisor of counsellors, and writer.
At the core of this apparent vocational diversity has been, I now understand, the same drive. It is that urge to find meaningful contexts for my own tiny, ephemeral spark of life, whilst offering some affirmation to others that their tiny flame matters too: it is worth struggling to get our light to burn with a purer and brighter radiance.
Something ineffable and charged can on occasions arise in deep communication between one person and another – those in the helping professions and their clients are by no means the sole partakers of this context. There is a moment in which the feeling of safety, intimacy, trust, empathy and openness of exchange becomes so intense that the level on which two people are interacting shifts from ‘ordinary’ to numinous.
In that moment, (to my subjective recollection) both souls are held, in a state of grace, in the palm of some vast invisible benevolent Hand. Both sparks of life are suspended in a sense of the sacred….
Such a state can never be evoked. It can only be bestowed – fleeting, memorable, perhaps life changing.
Coming across the following quotes recently thus struck a profound chord:
first, from Carl Gustav Jung –
“ That is why I say to any beginner: learn your theories as well as you can, but put them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul. Not theories but your creative individuality alone must decide.”
Carl Jung from “Contributions to Analytical Psychology” (quoted in Self and Society Vol 27 No 1 March 1999, p 22.)
second, from ‘Gilead’ by Marilynne Robinson, p 51 –
“ When people come to speak to me, whatever they say, I am struck by a kind of incandescence in them, the ‘I’ whose predicate can be ‘love’ or ‘fear’ or ‘want’, and whose object can be ‘someone’ or ‘nothing’ and it won’t really matter, because the loveliness is just in that presence, shaped around ‘I’ like a flame on a wick, emanating itself in grief and guilt and joy and whatever else …. To see this aspect of life is a privilege of the ministry which is seldom mentioned.”
(‘Gilead’, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is a wonderful novel in which, towards the end of Rev John Ames’ life in 1956, he begins a letter to his young son, setting down all that he wishes to communicate which impending death will otherwise render impossible.)
I urge you to read it for its humanity and its wisdom.
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500 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2009/slightly edited and re-published 2011
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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Simple blood test developed for Alzheimer’s Disease
January 6, 2011
By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent 6:00PM GMT 06 Jan 2011
Researchers have been able to detect “markers” in the blood that identify the disease three to five years before any memory loss occurs.
The breakthrough means that treatment for the disease could be started before irreversible brain damage has been caused – dramatically slowing down progression.
The same technology could also make it easier to spot other disease such as Parkinson’s and hard-to-detect cancers, said the researchers.
Around 750,000 people in the UK suffer from dementia, more than half of whom have Alzheimer’s.
At present the only way for sure to know if someone has suffered from the condition is to carry out a brain examination after their death.
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Scientists have long been trying to discover ways of detect antibodies, chemicals and other substances in the blood that identify the body is fighting the condition.
But this has proved elusive until now.
In the new study, scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida, have come up with a new approach by manufacturing thousands of molecules in different shapes – known as peptoids -designed to react with antibodies.
By passing these over Alzheimer’s patient’s blood they found three that reacted with antibodies but did not in healthy blood.
This suggests these antibodies are unique to the condition.
Further tests on six patients and laboratory mice showed that it was 93 per cent accurate and could eventually be used to detect the condition up to five years in advance.
Professor Thomas Kodadek, who led the research, said tests on thousands more patients was needed to test the accuracy of the test.
“If this works in Alzheimer’s disease, it suggests it is a pretty general platform that may work for a lot of different diseases,” he said.
Experts described the research as exciting but cautioned that it is still in the early stages.
Dr Susanne Sorensen, head of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, said: “This is a refreshing new approach to diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease which holds promise.
“Early diagnosis is very important and a simple non-invasive blood test for Alzheimer’s disease would be invaluable.
“However, this research is in the early stages and more investigation is needed to find out it if it can be developed in to a reliable and practical test for the future.
“As a million people develop dementia in the next 10 years we urgently need more funding to find reliable tests for the diseases that cause dementia.”
Dr Bryce Vissel, head of research into neurodegenerative diseases at The Garvan Institute in Australia, said: “This exciting study has significant implications for advancing understanding and treatments of diseases like multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease.
“This is a step towards being able to develop better treatments because we may now be able to identify people early in the disease and test drugs on them before the disease is too advanced.
“Perhaps even more importantly, the study offers a new approach to identify disease markers in the blood which could have significant implications for accurately diagnosing a range of diseases.”
The research was published in the journal Cell.
Festive Greetings to all our readers from Snowy Scotland!
December 24, 2010
To read our greetings, click below the picture…..
Winter bridge view – 24.12.2010
Festive Greetings from Scotland’s winter wonderland!
Never, ever stop being silly….
December 20, 2010
I’ve been having a lot of fun lately, despite having to excavate myself from Scottish snowdrifts every time I leave the house (I exaggerate, but not that much!).
The project? Getting connected. So now I am Twittering away merrily – encountering my existing Net friends in a new way. Jude Cowell, that redoubtable blogger from Georgia, USA, is a well-known Web presence, with no less than eight blogs the last time I looked, the best known probably being ‘Stars Over Washington‘.
But today, on Twitter, I found a ninth! Here is a snatch of verse from the brilliant Woolly Mammoth Chronicles:
Woolly Mammoth
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Old woolly mammoth had great size
though now he’s rather thin
some fossils and a hank of hair
are all that’s left of him.
i do not want a woolly mammoth
would not want to be one
if Science brings the creature back
excuse me while i flee one.
….and so on. This is such a quirky, funny and informative new site – check out some brilliant science links as well as an intro to Jude’s other blogs.
- Jude Cowell
- Pencil artist, blogger, and reluctant astrologer with a lamentable interest in politics, that ‘organized system of hatreds’ so right away you know I’d rather be drawing! Art On, All!
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200 words copyright Anne Whitaker/Jude Cowell/ 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page*******************
Novel approach to aging….
December 14, 2010
I am excited today. I am immensely cheered up. Not often you find a cheap solution like this to the problem of aging……
Just rub this anti-wrinkle cream on all your mirrors.....
http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/a/anti-ageing.asp
……it won’t remove them – but it WILL make them harder to see!!
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