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Cat Guest Blog’s its Way into History! Nom the Cat Blogs — Breaking News!!!

This just in. a cat has taken over my blog.I am not kittening….The first guest blog was composed by a cat..Not just any cat, the ultimate YouTube cat! Read on……

Hello.

My name is “nOm”. I am a cat. I am also a YouTube addict.

My YouTube channel is https://www.youtube.com/user/nameofthepen.  My featured video below:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTLsAnxUwzQ

Nom the Cat

Thomas has astonished and honored me with an invitation to do a guest posting.

I “met” Thomas over on YouTube. I guess he was intrigued by an internet-addicted feline, while I was absolutely enchanted by his world-class music videos.

I told him, “I don’t know what to write”, and he said (more or less), “You can blog about being a cat on YouTube, and some of the characters you meet there.”

He even offered tuna.

So I thought, “What does it matter if I go down in flames? I’ll still have a couple of lives left. And, besides, if he wants to trade tuna for tripe, I’ll take it!”

So, here goes…

I am thrilled to have had the fortune to be alive when the internet arrived.

And, with it, YouTube.

With YouTube, I can see videos made by people from all over the world. I can see their homes. I can see their children. I can see their clothes. I can see their food. I can see their towns and countries and monuments and historical sites. I can hear their music.

Most thrilling of all, I can see their cats!

A virtual magic cat carpet, taking me anywhere in the world at the mere gesture of a mouse! No, not that kind of mouse, silly!

And, with the comment sections on the videos, and the help of the Google translator, I can, to a fair extent, understand what most people are saying, no matter the language used.

I can even speak back to the people!

It’s magic, I tell ya! Witchcraft. What we cats were born for!

I even consider it a partial reprieve from the “curse of the Tower of Babel”. (Yes, sadly, it affected our species too.)

Each day it amazes and enchants me anew.

I have met many, many, MANY people.

Most are warm, honest and decent.

A few are exquisite.

And a handful have been pretty darn mangy.

I have explored countless rabbit holes in the vast kingdom of YouTube.

And I’ve gotten pretty thoroughly lost for a while in a few of them.

But, I have learned more than I ever would have thought could fit into a cat-sized cranium.

And the more I learned, the more I knew I didn’t know.

Then, I finally realized that opinions, like fur, should be regularly shed and replaced.

A very famous cat summed it up nicely when he wrote:

“I am the wisest cat alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.” ~ PlatoPuss

Well, that’s about it. I’m overdue for my cat nap.

Thanks for reading.

=^.^=
nOm, the interwebs kitteh

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Thomas Schoenberger on Flu, Cocooning, Wireless to Touchless

The Trend Towards Global Hermits. Maybe Howard Hughes Was Right.

St.-Jerome-In-His-Study

It started with cable, I suppose. With the advent of multiple choices in television channels.

1918 flu panNo need to talk to your wife, or kids, the news is on, or sports, or perhaps that comedy show you are addicted to. But then, like a spore, it grew. Cocooning , a 1980’s word to describe never having to leave home for your entertainment, became the in thing.

Then wireless became the new thing, as people no longer needed to sit behind a contraption thick with wires. Then cell phones,once weighing pounds rather than ounces,got trimmer, sleeker and faster.  Soon, a trip to the supermarket did not mean you have to even interact with a checker. When once we traveled in horse and buggy, we now travel in private carriages, with silent lights of green and red directing us over smooth asphalt.

CampFunstonKS-InfluenzaHospital

 

Now, as we watch the news, stern “contributors”, anchormen and women issue dire warnings of super flu’s, germ outbreaks, violent weather,floods, pathogens, etc.  Go to any Target or Walmart and there are hand wipes at the entrance, ready to keep people from catching these harmful bugs. But does any hand wipe or even rigorous wishing of the hands eradicate a virus like Norovirus?  No. Does the influenza vaccine only work 60% of the time?  Yes.  So much for modern medicine.s. In total, 1,407 human pathogen species are currently recognized. Of these, 177 (13%) are regarded as emerging or re-emerging,and 25% of these were only recognized in the last 25 years. There have been times in history where the very act of touching another was either toxic, fatal,or even illegal.We cannot wholly depend on any “official channels” being honest with us, because they justify that the consequences of hysteria might just be as damaging or more damaging than any rogue viral pandemic.

But we do have a right to know and I for one fear that Howard Hughes may have been pretty provident in his fear of germs. The Persians invented the handshake, as a signal that they were not carrying weapons.But one must wonder if we are headed to a handshake-less,a touchless society……..Here is a little history from a forgotten pandemic less than 100 years ago, and it killed 50 million people…..
Thomas Schoenberger
Below on Influenza below from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Influenza (Flu)
H1N1 virus
Types
Vaccines
Treatment
Pandemics
Outbreaks
See also

The 1918 flu pandemic (January 1918 – December 1920)[1] was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic which infected 500 million[2] people across the world, including remote Pacific islands and the Arctic, and killed 20 to 50 million of them—1 to 3 percent of the world’s population[3] at the time—making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history.[2][4][5][6][7] To maintain morale, wartime censors minimized early reports of illness and mortality in Germany, Britain, France, and the United States;[8][9] but papers were free to report the epidemic’s effects in neutral Spain (such as the grave illness of King Alfonso XIII), creating a false impression of Spain as especially hard hit—[10] thus the pandemic’s nickname Spanish flu.[11]

Most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill juvenile, elderly, or already weakened patients; in contrast the 1918 pandemic killed predominantly previously healthy young adults. Modern research, using virus taken from the bodies of frozen victims, has concluded that the virus kills through a cytokine storm (overreaction of the body’s immune system). The strong immune reactions of young adults ravaged the body, whereas the weaker immune systems of children and middle-aged adults resulted in fewer deaths among those groups.[12]

Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the pandemic’s geographic origin.[2] It was implicated in the outbreak of encephalitis lethargica in the 1920s.[13]

 

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My Mother, Elsebeth Schoenberger, the Resistance Fighter

 

73 years ago, on a cool spring afternoon, my mother’s country was invaded by the Nazi’s. Her small Danish town suddenly found itself in the clutches of the diabolical Nazi war machine. The country was joined in subjection by France and Netherlands. That spring, the world looked on in horror. Later that year, London would endure a Christmas season from hell, with Santa Claus nowhere to be found, and the only sleigh in the sky seemed to be the horrific V1 and V2 rockets causing death and destruction from above. For my mother, a hopeful and innocent 11 year old girl, the advance of  the Nazi thugs was the second major blow in her life. She had lost her father 4 years before. He was an M.D. and never made it past his 38th year.I never knew my grandfather.

SchoenbergerBookThe German invasion of Denmark on 9 April 1940 was part of a wider campaign in Scandinavia designed partly to provide bases for the German navy and partly to secure the German supply of iron ore from Sweden. The main target of the German operation was Norway, but the occupation of Denmark was also judged to be necessary to protect the southern end of the sea route to Narvik, the winter port for the iron ore trade.

Planning work for the invasion began in January 1940. The operation was given the codename Weserübung (Weser Exercise), with the invasion of Denmark known as Weserubung Süd (Weser Exercise South). The tiny Danish army was to be overrun by two infantry divisions (the 170th and 198th) and the 11th rifle brigade (motorized). Landings were to take place at Copenhagen, Middlefart, Esbjerg, Tyborøn, Korsør, Gjedser and Nyborg, while more troops would invade Jutland across the land border with Germany.

The plan worked perfectly. A small naval expedition, led by the minelayer Danzig entered Copenhagen harbour at 5.00am on 9 April, and landed troops who were able to seize the citadel. Ålborg airfield at the northern tip of Denmark was captured by German paratroops, and at 7.30 am an infantry battalion landed at the airfield. At 5.25 am the land invasion began. Here there was some fighting, but the defenders of the Danish border were quickly overwhelmed. Further resistance was clearly pointless, and the Danish government was forced to agree to a German ultimatum to end the fighting. King Christian ordered a cease fire, to start at 7.20am. Denmark would be occupied by the Germans until the end of the war.

The invasion seemed to waken the ancient Viking psyche of the Danish people. My mother, who just months before had been playing with dolls and dreaming of a career in academia, marrying a Prince Charming, and living happily after, had to confront poverty, violence , death and intimidation daily.

So what did she do in light of these overwhelming odds? She fought back. She become an active member of the Danish Resistance  She braved detention and even execution.During the 5 years of daily challenge and privation, she learned to combat the enemy, carrying messages and weapons for the Danish resistance,every day risking her life and freedom for her country. This little Lutheran girl found the courage to face impossible odds,and deep within the wall of her construct, over 65 years later, she wrote a book, chronicling her experiences.

The book is becoming popular.It’s topical. In this new global village, one need not look far to find countries swept up in the grip of totalitarianism.To my mother,occupy has nothing to do with camping in a park. My mother lived a “Danish Spring” in 1940,she fought thuggery,brutality and impossible odds, and though she lost her childhood in the process, she gained a sagacity well beyond her tender years,and her story is one that must be told, now more than ever. Her book, Birgetta’s War  now speaks to a new crop of resistance fighters, children facing the spector of evil, children finding hope in the most unnatural of places, the fog of war.

This week she turns 84. In the last 3 years, she has become a widow, an author and, to the delight of everyone, a new bride. Nothing new for this incredible and inspirational figure. Happy birthday Mom. Please visit her website, and buy the book

http://www.birgitteswar.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Healing Power of Music

We wake up to and endless parade of violence , riots, strife, and mayhem and most of us simply want a safer world for our kids.

In my studies regarding comfort and music, healing and music and the salubrious effects of music on trama victims, I can only use one word to describe what I observe.

Alchemy.

We have come light years in advancing music and healing. In the next ten years, I firmly believe music therapy will become a customary course of medicine. In keeping with this thought, I offer an excerpt from an article that caught my attention several years ago. To me, the message is only getting more relevant as the world gets crazier.Music should make sense,. Music should heal. Music should inspire. Music has a mandate.Musicians have a social responsibility and the ones I know and love live up to the highest ideals in humanity. With this lofty ideal in mind, here is a quote that I wanted to share with you from this article:

The hope of music’s curative powers has spawned a community in the United States of some 5,000 registered music therapists, who have done post-college study in psychology and music to gain certification. Active primarily in hospitals, nursing homes, special needs classrooms and rehabilitation units, music therapists aim to soothe, stimulate and support the development or recovery of abilities lost to illness or injury.

While music therapists use a mix of improvisation and proven techniques to help patients, neuroscientists are looking to uncover the scientific basis for music’s healing powers. They are trying to understand how music can help rewire a brain affected by illness or injury, or provide a work-around for injured or underperforming brain regions.
By doing so, they hope to better identify which patients might respond best to music and what musical techniques might best help them to regain lost or compromised function.
“Music might provide an alternative entry point” to the brain, because it can unlock so many different doors into an injured or ill brain, said Dr. Gottfried Schlaug, a Harvard University neurologist. Pitch, harmony, melody, rhythm and emotion — all components of music — engage different regions of the brain. And many of those same regions are also important in speech, movement and social interaction. If a disease or trauma has disabled a brain region needed for such functions, music can sometimes get in through a back door and coax them out by another route, Schlaug says.
 The above referenced data constitutes important new developments in exploring why Music developed. Was it a repetition of a mother’s heart, or perhaps percussiive instrumenst meant to scare off perdatory beasts?  My gut tells me that music is not of human origin. It exists in the animal world and pre dates ,,,, us.
The need for music becomes greater in times of dischord, excuse the pun. With so much hatred, polarizing idiocy and bigotry thriving globally, it’s the music makers and the painters and artists who bring comfort and hope and yes, reflect the human heart. I look very closely at the amazing musicality of autistic children. I have known special needs children who have shown truly savant level understanding of music. I still to this day cannot fathom the mystery, but it’s real
I count myself lucky to have known great musicians and composers. The artists I know all strive for peace, all want a return to normalcy and a return of artistic merit. We are dreamers and romancers and shamen and interpeters.Music , by all rights, must transend human experience, even as it startles and stirs souls. Music is perhaps the holiest thing on Planet Earth. Imagine for a minute, a world devoid of music. Even Hell is suppose to have music. The absence of music is the absence of life, hope, dreams and ambitions.
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