For what it’s worth
Sorry about the graphic way of sharing this piece out of the New York Times. But I did want to share it.
To Meat or not to meat
If you’ve been following my blog you know I am pretty much an omnivore. I love eating and I’ll eat most everything (at least once — though I admit to not being keen on insects),
That does not mean that I have (personally in my diet, as opposed to just philosophically) not struggled or experimented with both vegetarianism and veganism. My experiments last for a while, and then they fade; usually because I’m craving sausage or brisket or some such gustatory delight. I am troubled by the fact that producing meat is as wasteful of resources as it is. I admit that. Yet, like most of us (statistically), when push comes to shove it’s easier — a lot easier — just to go to the grocery and buy what’s on offer and not worry about whether I’m getting all my necessary nutrients as is necessary with a true vegan diet.
That said — I honestly think that each year I get closer to being willing to cast away from the meat-eater’s wharf and set sail on a sea of veggies.
Which, I suppose is why this article resonated with me more than I expected it to do. Enjoy.
My beef with vegans says more about me than them
Veganism suddenly seems to be everywhere. Here’s why I’m finding it so vexing…
Speaking as a meat-eater, I find it annoying how many vegans there suddenly are. I suspect a few other meat-eaters feel the same. Do you, some meat-eaters, if you’re really honest with yourselves?
It’s not a good look, I realise, to appear annoyed with groups of people living their lives in the way they choose without harming others – and, in the case of vegans, taking the not-harming-others to considerable lengths. Nevertheless I’m going to stick my neck out (also not a good look) because it’s true. I’m not asking you other meat-eaters to do the same. You never have to seem annoyed, just to privately ask yourselves whether you find all these vegans slightly annoying.
If you do, then the obvious next question is why. Well, there are lots of reasons: for example, some vegans seem so radical and preachy and angry. Though actually, again being honest, I don’t really mind that. I quite like it. It makes it easy to discount them as weird, which was my view about veganism in general before I started finding the number of vegans annoying.
Now, I’m definitely going to continue eating meat. That’s decided. I don’t like change and I do like sausages
I think what I find annoying, deep down – and, again, some meat-eaters, you don’t have to own up to this, but it might interest you to discover whether you feel it – is the very fact that I can’t discount vegans any more. The thing that’s annoying about there suddenly being lots of them is the nagging suspicion that they might be right. When there were hardly any vegans, I hardly ever had to think about that.
After all, it’s not as if eating meat is an incontrovertibly lovely thing to do. I mean, it’s lovely to eat, it’s delicious, but I’m talking about actually killing an animal: you know, an organism that can feel stuff, and likes some things and doesn’t like other things, that can pretty clearly experience fear – either that or it can act, which would be an even greater sign of sentience. It doesn’t necessarily feel particularly great to put an end to that creature’s life, I imagine. So, speaking personally, I’m thrilled it all gets handled by other people, because I don’t reckon that if I’d just, say, strangled a goat I’d be feeling brilliant about myself.
Look, I can defend meat-eating. It’s perfectly possible to farm meat in such a way that the animals have decent lives and don’t die in pain and fear. I don’t know how often that happens, but it’s possible. Still, it’s hard to frame an argument that it’s actually wrong not to kill them. Not killing them feels, ethically speaking, to be playing on the safe side.
Now, I’m definitely going to continue eating meat. That’s decided. I don’t like change and I do like sausages. So, as you can imagine, having my mind forced down the contemplative avenues above is somewhat vexing – and, as a result, it becomes emotionally tempting to blame all the vegans for that vexation. So that’s where I am with all this. End of column.
Except, I suppose, I ought to explain why I’m talking about this now. There’s a vegan in the news – his name is Jordi Casamitjana – who is campaigning to get “ethical veganism” protected as a “philosophical belief” under the Equality Act. He’s calling it “ethical veganism” to distinguish it from veganism for purely dietary reasons. “Some people only eat a vegan diet but they don’t care about the environment or the animals, they only care about their health,” he told the BBC. I suppose, to him, they’re like Blairites to a Corbynista. Worse than cannibals.
Casamitjana’s veganism is full-on. It’s not just about food, it’s his whole life. He has no truck with leather, silk, wool, zoos, aquariums, anything that’s been developed using animal testing, anything that uses captive animals in its advertising, or dating non-vegans.
He used to work for the League Against Cruel Sports but it wasn’t vegan enough for him. He says he discovered that the league’s pension fund invested in companies that carried out animal testing and was sacked for telling people, which he characterises as being discriminated against for his veganism. The league disagrees, saying he was sacked “because of gross misconduct. To link his dismissal with issues pertaining to veganism is factually wrong.”
The employment tribunal that’s going to decide this will also rule on whether veganism meets the Equality Act’s definition of a belief. According to the act, it has to “be a belief as to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour”, it must “attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance; and be worthy of respect in a democratic society, compatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others.”
I’m loath to admit it, but it totally qualifies, doesn’t it? Nick Spencer of the theology thinktank Theos is more sceptical, warning that, “If we’re all turned into rights bearers, my rights clashing with your rights, we end up having to appeal to the courts to sort out our differences and that can become oppressive for everybody.”
Maybe so, but that’s an argument for changing the Equality Act. You can’t just hope no more groups assert themselves under it, or say that all the slots for belief systems are taken because otherwise we’ll have too many “rights bearers”. Ethical veganism is coherent, heartfelt and spreading – and, frankly, its adherents might need protecting from the prejudice of irritated meat-eaters like me.
Ethics, practically speaking, are relative. Our ethical compasses are calibrated according to the norms of the time in which we live. So I eat dead animals because I was brought up to eat dead animals. It seemed like almost everyone did when I was younger, and the tiny minority who didn’t certainly had lots of cheese and eggs. It was normal, and it still is normal, just a bit less so.
It’s not uncommon, in the history of human societies, for things once deemed normal to start being deemed wrong. Sometimes it’s something like homophobia, sometimes it’s something like openly criticising those in power – it depends on the time and the society. Maybe all these vegans are harbingers of such a change. It annoys me because it makes me worry that I’m becoming a victim of history, just like all the animals I’ve eaten.
On the topic of societal changes in what is “normal” and what is “wrong” it seems as if there are numerous areas of routine life that are undergoing revisions in our attitudes. From racism and white privilege to our attitudes towards Capitalism to our sense of sexual equality — many of us are struggling to adjust our value systems to bring them into alignment with what we are being educated to accept.
And one of those, I think, is the whole concept of how we slaughter — that is how we get all that yummy meat from the farm to the table. Let’s face it, no matter how you take a life there is pain and suffering. We can minimize the impact on the creature being killed, but taking life is always traumatic. Whether that alone is enough to move me, or anyone, to a plant based diet … well, we all have to make choices on that account. And we are all free to change our mind on that account at any time we choose.
Children Learn
When our daughter was still a pre-teen there came a time that I “suddenly” realized that she was picking up on things that I was definitely not trying to teach her. In fact, I saw in her characteristics I definitely didn’t want to be modeling for her, but which I had, in fact, done just that.
The thing about kids is that they are their own personalities. I, or any parent for that matter, have no control over what our children will choose to like, or choose to copy — consciously or unconsciously. Those “personalities” are beyond our control and a child will be what the child wants to be no matter how gentle or strict we want to be with them. We can try to force kids into a mold we have decided upon and it doesn’t really work. And some children will be “easy” from birth, others “difficult” and it’s not about how good a parent they are and more about what the personality of the child is. There are some things that can be modified by “nurture” but “nature” will have her own about much of who the child becomes.
As a result, leaving a child in an environment where they experience the benefits of good upbringing at least gives them an option in what to copy, who to be like, traits to admire.
But whether we do anything right or not, kids will learn anyway.
Being Better
One thing that the past few years have taught me is that it doesn’t pay to be self-contented. I’m not talking about being down on yourself, I’m talking about always trying to grow, develop, and mature. None of us “knows it all”, we haven’t figured everything out, we still have room to improve.
This little graphic isn’t mine, but boy howdy it sure does a good job of laying out a plan of attack for daily life:
Of course success in growth is dependent upon one’s willingness to question their own values, ideas, and ideals. Quite plainly — if you’ve been paying attention to the social and political climate in the U.S. for the past decade — there are a great many people who are unwilling to do that. The would rather stick their head in the sand, pretend everything is always going to be as it has been in the past and do nothing to change the world for the better. I’m not one of those, so I have no problem taking a periodic look at my attitudes in the hopes of learning to be a better person. I may be in my 70’s but life isn’t over yet and I’m not done growing (I hope) or being a better person.
The hardest point in this list, to me, is the first: Unlearn, unlearn, unlearn.
The thing about this is that the things we know — often — go without thinking. We just do them, we just think them, we just believe things. Bringing one’s self up short and asking: “Why am I doing this” or thinking this, or why do I believe this?
I don’t know about you, but I hope to travel good way along the road of life yet…. wish me luck.
It Must Be Perfect
In a lifetime I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people fussing and fretting over something that just had to be perfect. Truth be told that every one of those people had numerous areas of their life that were anything but perfect, and yet in some isolated aspect in their eyes they were determined that one particular thing should be performed precisely as they perceived perfection.
Through quite an ordinary experience I have been reminded recently of how such self-delusions can haunt our lives. The occasion happened to be binge watching an Australian Television contest program called My Kitchen Rules — or MKR.
My motivation for watching had nothing to do with perfection of any sort; rather I’m interested in food, I have travelled in Australia, and I was interested in a broader view of Australian attitudes about what constitutes “good” food and the differences in language for food items that we here in the U.S. have named differently.
The My Kitchen Rules program has seen some 11 seasons in which 10 to 19 teams of two compete in various challenges until one team is crowned the winner, for prize money of $250,000AUS – $100,000AUS. Yeah — that was a prize reduction for the last couple seasons as popularity of the program waned.
The reason I got to noticing the obsession with perfection had as much to do with the seasonal changes in programming as it did with the actual contest itself. Into the second season it became obvious (by comparison to the first season) that the producers of the series were placing major emphasis on particular characteristics of the teams for the sake of ratings. Certain contestants were always portrayed with heavily skewed personality traits; argumentative, judgmental, arrogant, etc., etc.. A search of regional media revealed that the skewing of coverage was strong enough that one former contestant was able to sue the production company for having so misrepresented them to the public as to make them un-hireable — a lawsuit which they won and the company is now having to pay this individual an annual salary because they cannot find work. All of which gets a long way away from where I wanted to go with this post.
The contestants on the program over the course of several years became noticeably less skilled as cooks, less well informed about food, and clearly more interested in the prize money than in food. But the change in contestants made their personal attitudes expressed in front of the camera even more telling.
As the seasons wore on and the skill level of the contestants declined the contestants were heard more often obsessing over how close their preparation of various food items was approaching what they personally viewed as perfection. But over the series it became obvious that their personal understanding of the “right” way to cook something was frequently flawed. They just didn’t know enough about what they were doing to know what a perfectly cooked duck breast (for example) was supposed to be. Or the “right” (as in a chef’s technique) way to make mayonnaise, or the right way to make an au jus. Hearsay, assumptions, impressions, or just watching other people were taken as the right way to do something even if that way was wrong.
It’s funny that we humans tend to prefer taking pride in one small success than in acknowledging our overall weaknesses. It’s hard to see our own faults; to suffer them to be exposed to others. And depending on our upbringing it may be that we have suffered greatly for every time we have failed to live up to someone’s idea of perfection. Friends of mine suffered physical punishment when growing up for their failures. I was fortunate in having parents who didn’t punish or spank me for offending their sensibilities — I always knew what I had done wrong when I was punished and it wasn’t because I missed “perfection.” My point being that sometimes we have “perfection” drilled into us in irrational ways. Dealing with that conditioning can be nearly impossible to correct, and I certainly understand that.
But the context of a game show where failure results in disqualification makes the striving for perfection all the more poignant. Teams of two crumble or grow stronger when they face a challenge and either find a way to make the best of a bad situation, or end up arguing and tearing each other down because they have been unsuccessful.
If you follow this blog you know I am not a competitive person. You would never find me on a game show; it’s just not for me. And I’m not particularly locked into the “right” way to cook food. I love adjusting traditional recipes, and trying different techniques. I don’t have a dining room full of customers who have to be satisfied at the end of each evening. I cook for a few people here and there. I may not alway get things just right, but neither am I wasteful. The idea of making and discarding great ingredients because something is slightly “off” just makes me crazy. I find waste offensive. I can see that if you are in a competition making a minor mistake can throw you out of the contest, but that still doesn’t make me feel better about people who aren’t sure how to do something wasting 3/4 of what they have cooked only to find that even when they have done the best they can their final product is still inferior to the competition.
Fortunately in real life — television game shows aside — we don’t have to have “perfection.” We can insist on perfection if we choose but it’s not a mandate in daily life. Whether we are looking for a new house, or a suit (yeah — I’m still one of those guys who lived in a business suit most of my working life) we may have our preferences but we can “live” with something other than the optimal.
Young couples that just have to have all the bells and whistles in their new apartment are looking for perfection. Buying that “perfect” car is another example. Either of those choices doesn’t make us a better or worse person and the only person keeping score is ourself. Oh, I suppose our so-called friends may think less of us if we don’t have a house as fancy as theirs — or better than theirs — or the same with the car we drive, the places we vacation, the company we work for, etc., etc.. But the opinion of someone else about the life you live is always going to amount to… well…. a hill of beans. They don’t pay your bills, they don’t sleep in your bed, they don’t eat your food.
We can burden ourselves with ideas of perfection but I guarantee that the aspects of any one person’s life that are “perfect” are few and far between. They are most often compensation for the rest of our life being ordinary. And ordinary isn’t a bad thing.
Wash Your Hands
I wanted to publish this quoted article as something of value even though it’s source is a bit away from my usual references. I think the INFO is worthy your consider.
It’s so easy to react to COVID as if it was an isolated event in history. Seeing life in situ rather than in isolation seems to be a disappearing art. The world has cycles and patterns. Isolating our view of phenomenon only puts us at a disadvantage in a universe that functions with rigid laws and infinite variability. We cannot change gravity. All humans will die. The universe has no obligation to listen to our opinions. We have to fit into the bigger world, not the other way around.
Ever wonder why those signs are in the bathrooms at restaurants that say: All Employees Must Wash Their Hands? Well, take a little medical and historical journey with me as we address another comment/question I received that again had nothing to do with kink. The comment asked if “natural” immunity wasn’t as good or better than vaccination. The answer is absolutely positively no, with one slight caveat. But back to history. Bear with me.
Mary Mallon, a young Irish immigrant, got typhoid fever (caused my Salmonella typhii) at some point, and recovered. But Mary didn’t actually completely recover. Her immune system kept her disease in check, but allowed the bacteria to happily keep living in her gut. Mary became an asymptomatic carrier. Typhoid fever is spread by fecal-oral contamination (just like polio). Mary and the bacteria were locked in a stalemate, neither side killing the other. As far as anyone could tell, Mary Mallon was healthy, but she wasn’t. Mary was also a cook. A cook who didn’t wash her hands. Every time Mary defecated, she would contaminate her hands. The hands that then went on to handle the food she was serving to people. If Mary hadn’t been a cook, or if she had practiced correct hygiene, the world would never have heard of her. But since she was and she didn’t, you know her as “Typhoid Mary”. Hence, the little signs in the restaurant lavatories.
The term “natural” immunity is a misleading term. The correct terminology is “disease-induced immunity”. The word “natural” was coined by people who have an anti-vaccine agenda. It was not by accident. Just as anti-abortion people are “pro-life” and the other side is “pro-choice”. If one side was “I’m going to force you to carry an unwanted fetus” and the other was “I want to kill my baby”, well, neither side would have much support, I suspect. Natural sounds nice, like organic. It has to be good if it’s natural, right? Well, uranium, radon, cyanide, hemlock, and gamma rays are completely natural, and I would not recommend exposing yourself. Also, that natural red dye in foods? It’s ground up beetles. Sounds less appealing now, eh?
So the question is really “is disease induced immunity better than vaccine induced immunity?” No. Why? Because to have disease induced immunity, you have to have disease, and that disease can kill you at worst, make you very sick and let you spread it to other people, or give you long term disabilities. Just like Polio: if you survive it, you’re immune, but possibly paralyzed. Do you want Polio or do you want the vaccine?
As for Covid, vaccine induced immunity is very good. There is a .001% chance that the vaccine could harm you. Whereas, there is a much, much higher chance that Covid can harm you. In fact, 20% of you will end up in the ICU, and 5% of those in ICU will die. But people are very bad when making rational risk decisions. We get in our cars, where you have a much higher chance of dying every day than having a vaccine related hospitalization or death. Also, since the vaccines are biotechnology wonders, you don’t actually get the virus, so there is no chance of you getting the actual disease. But people are not good at understanding abstract concepts. This doesn’t just apply to medicine. Humans have implicit bias that is hard to overcome, regardless of what the math actually tells us. And people, by and large, don’t understand how vaccines work. It’s not your fault. The terminology is designed for scientific accuracy, not general understanding.
Now here’s the little caveat, and I’m going to use some terminology that might require explanation. Vaccine induced immunity (at least with the current vaccines) is humeral immunity. That means the virus can and does enter your nose and mouth and can start a local infection before the antibodies (IgG and IgM) in your blood can attack it. So, you might get a little sick if you have an otherwise normal vaccine response. People with disease induced immunity have local immunity as well. There are IgA antibodies in the lining of their upper respiratory tract that can prevent the virus from getting any farther. Still, you have to survive a potentially fatal disease to get it, and, just like Mary Mallon, we do not know if asymptomatic carriers exist. There could be Covid Marys out there. Now, there are ways of designing a vaccine that provides local immunity. Back to our polio example, the oral vaccine worked better because polio enters through the GI tract, and the oral vaccine induced local immunity. A nasal spray Covid vaccine would likely do the same, if it can be developed. The goal in this case was to get an effective and safe vaccine as fast as possible, because this disease kills. It’s not perfect, but you are far, far less likely to get sick, and if you do, you are far, far less likely to get more than a little sick. There will be even better vaccines as time goes by, but you don’t have the luxury of spending 10 years developing a new vaccine in a pandemic. Don’t get me wrong; these weren’t “rushed”, they just used technology already developed for different diseases. mRNA vaccine work was done over many, many years (actually for Ebola).
The biggest problem, to be honest, is under vaccination. And I don’t just mean the percentage of people in rich countries that have the luxury of choosing not to get a vaccine. I’m talking about the billions of humans who do not have access to vaccines and who are currently serving as incubators for new and more deadly strains. This corona virus is a little unusual in that it has a higher tendency to mutate than most. That is the most significant problem we face. This disease is not going away until the majority of humans on the planet get vaccinated. It’s probably never going away regardless. It will go from pandemic to endemic, which means you’re gonna have to get vaccine top ups based on whatever strain is floating around (just like influenza). And that also means that disease induced immunity is also going to be less effective, FYI. That’s why you get colds every year. You’ve got disease induced immunity, just not to the newest strain running around.
I hope that answers the commenter’s question. I promise to get back to out regularly scheduled programming.
-Doc
thelockeddoc.com
Diabetes & Covid
Nearly 7 million adults have died worldwide in 2021 so far due to diabetes or its complications, the IDF estimated – that’s more than 1 in 10 global deaths from any cause.
“And if you want another startling statistic, as many as 40% of the people that have died in the US from Covid-19 had diabetes,” said Dr. Robert Gabbay, chief scientific and medical officer for the American Diabetes Association.“
Diabetics, don’t fuck around, especially in the middle of a pandemic that is hitting diabetics hard. You know the things you need to do to keep your diabetes under control. Do those things.
Diabetes is a ‘pandemic of unprecedented magnitude,’ and experts fear Covid-19 may make it worse
By Sandee LaMotte, CNN
CNN — The year 2021 marks 100 years since the discovery of insulin, a game-changing drug in the fight against diabetes.
Despite a century of advancements in treatment, education and prevention, World Diabetes Day 2021 occurs in the wake of grim statistics. One in 10 adults around the world — some 537 million people — are currently living with diabetes, according to figures recently released by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF).
By 2024, the IDF predicted that the number of people with diabetes is expected to rise to 1 in 8 adults.
“As the world marks the centenary of the discovery of insulin, I wish we could say we’ve stopped the rising tide of diabetes,” IDF President Dr. Andrew Boulton told CNN. “Instead, diabetes is currently a pandemic of unprecedented magnitude.”
Nearly 7 million adults have died worldwide in 2021 so far due to diabetes or its complications, the IDF estimated — that’s more than 1 in 10 global deaths from any cause.
That doesn’t count the lives lost to the novel coronavirus, which has been particularly deadly for people living with diabetes. A study published in February found having either Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes tripled the risk of severe illness and death from Covid-19.
“And if you want another startling statistic, as many as 40% of the people that have died in the US from Covid-19 had diabetes,” said Dr. Robert Gabbay, chief scientific and medical officer for the American Diabetes Association.
The pandemic also took a toll on how well people have managed their diabetes over the past year and a half, said Boulton, who is also a professor of medicine at the University of Manchester in the UK.
“My fear is we’re going to see a tsunami in the next two years of diabetes and its complications because people have missed their screening appointments due to fear of catching Covid-19,” he said.
Is Covid a trigger for diabetes?
As bad as these numbers are, experts are concerned that Covid-19 might contribute to an even greater problem.
“There may be more people developing diabetes because of Covid,” Gabbay told CNN.
Boulton echoed that concern: “There may be a specific Covid-induced diabetes, although there is some debate on that at the moment.”
A global analysis published in 2020 found as many as 14% of people hospitalized with severe Covid-19 later developed diabetes. Another review published this October found examples of new-onset Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes in babies, children and adults infected with Covid-19.
“Whether new-onset diabetes is likely to remain permanent is not known, as the long-term follow-up of these patients is limited,” the study reported.
It’s very possible that Covid-19 is not the culprit. Blood sugar abnormalities could be triggered by the stress of an infection and the steroids used to fight Covid-19 inflammation, Gabbay said.
Another explanation is that the person may have had pre-diabetes — some 88 million Americans currently do, according to the American Medical Association and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The organizations have partnered with the Ad Council to create a new public service campaign: “Do I Have Prediabetes?”
People also may have had diabetes that was not previously diagnosed. The IDF estimates that of the 537 million adults living with diabetes around the world, almost half (44.7%) are as yet undiagnosed.
But there is also evidence that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, can bind to the ACE2 receptors in the islet cells of the pancreas — the organ that produces the body’s insulin, Boulton and Gabbay told CNN.
“The virus attacks those cells in the pancreas and interferes with their production of insulin, so that may be another mechanism,” Gabbay said. “And those individuals that are diagnosed in the hospital with diabetes for the first time, through whichever mechanism, sadly do worse.”
Early identification is key
Reversing the rising tide of diabetes cases requires early identification. Nipping Type 2 diabetes in the pre-diabetic stages is preferred, since it’s before the body begins to suffer damage from irregular blood sugars and lifestyle changes are easier to implement.
Studies in Finland a few decades ago found that people with “very slight elevated blood sugar” who followed a sensible diet and regular exercise “had a 54% reduction in proceeding to Type 2 diabetes,” Boulton said.
“And it didn’t have to be flogging yourself in the gym,” he added. “It’s sensible exercising, walking instead of riding the bus and walking up the stairs instead of taking the elevator, that can do the trick.”
Two recent studies found that adding about a third of a cup of fruit or vegetables to your daily diet could cut your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by 25%, while higher consumptions of whole grains, such as brown bread and oatmeal, could cut the risk by 29%.
Even full-flown diabetes can be put into remission, Gabbay said, with a regime of diet, exercise and stress reduction and proper use of medications.
“People in remission may still be at risk for some of the long-term complications, and therefore, they still need to be monitored, with quarterly blood tests, a yearly eye and foot test, and yearly screening for kidney disease and cholesterol levels,” he said.
To determine if you are at risk for Type 2 diabetes, the American Diabetes Association has a 60-second online test. After answering a few questions about family history, age, gender and physical activity, the test spits out an answer.
Being over age 60, overweight, having had gestational diabetes while pregnant, having a family history of diabetes, currently living with high blood pressure and a lack of physical exercise all raise your risk.
The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, November 16
Excuse me, but I’m on an emotional high after the weekend. The thing that makes my the happiness is seeing Peggy happy, and she’s never happier than when she’s with children — particularly our family. This visit to Minneapolis has been wonderful.
Next to seeing Peggy happy, seeing Kathryn happy comes in second, and she was in her element being “Grammy” for little Sophia.
Life is good. All is well. Let there be happiness for all.
Peace, and be kind to each other, for Pete’s Sake.
Embrace Serendipity 
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