Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  In the US there are parades, and everyone is considered Irish for the day.  And yes, in some pockets of the country you'll still find pictures of Leprechauns, pots of gold, and rainbows.  To be sure despite political correctness, there will be some pinching of another is not wearing green. Oh, yes, how many will be eating corned beef and cabbage today?  What about the green beers, and the Irish ales and whisky's to be had?  Truly this is an American holiday! 

After 1720 C.E. there was a steady stream of Irish immigrants to the American colonies/United States creating an Irish diaspora.  In Boston, a major port for the colonies, a gathering of Irish immigrants grew, both of Presbyterian and Catholic background.  Many of the colonies were originally settled by English immigrants, so the Irish settlers found it important to rally together against penal laws prohibiting the freedom of religion and economic opportunities.  Together in a new land, how the similarity of speech and culture must have also been a comfort.  In 1737 the Charitable Irish Society was founded to assist those immigrating to North America, specifically Boston, Massachusetts. In other areas throughout the colonies similar Irish support groups, like the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and the Hibernian Society, were formed.   They brought with them their charity toward others, especially those in need, and their shared faith, especially in Ireland's Patron Saint, St. Patrick.

At the time of the Revolutionary War, there were so many Irish immigrants fighting for the Colonies that General George Washington (who would be our first president), during the bleak winter at Morristown (1778-9) called for a day of rest and merriment so that everyone could be in solidarity with the Irish colonists in celebrating their heritage and patron saint, while at the same time boost morale. (See History.com).   Thus this simple feast to commemorate one homeland, became an American holiday lasting through the present.  We are all sojourners and through our solidarity we seek solace together through this shared tradition.

So, in the tradition of Irish Blessings,

May love and laughter light your days and

warm your hearts and home.

Happy Pi Day!

This is the day, March 14, that from coast to coast that college math students to kindergarteners get out their pizza and favorite fruit pie, hold contests and celebrate that little number called pi.  We all use it when calculating circumferences of circles and finding the area of circles, and more. 

Pi is a special number in that is a very special number because its decimal number seems to go on forever without repeating. Groups of mathematicians have tried to solve pi since the middle of the last century. In 2012 it was reported that a group had solved pi, but there is some speculation about that.  Pi was first  originally used by William Jones in 1706 and made popular in 1737 by Leonhard Euler.  Pi is an irrational number that is also sometimes approximated by the fraction 22/7 and the decimal number 3.14 (which is why today is Pi Day).

Anyway, happy Pi Day! 

We Got Rain! & other random water thoughts

We got rain in California yesterday where I live.  I know those of you reading this in Europe of even the East Coast might laugh an the excitement, but it is exciting.  For the first time in a long time our hills are green and the wildflowers are starting to bloom. We had some rain a few weeks ago, yes, but it hasn't been enough to refill our dams or aquafers.  The dams still have a long way to go.  As for the local aquafer, the water companies are still restricting us as the saltwater intrusion continues (I live along the coast.) and one of our towns wells has had to stop pumping because it was contaminated with Chromium VI, a naturally occurring element in our area. There are still fears that we will run out of water in my local area by next September/October.  Every rain brings the hope of pushing that date back further.   If only we had some of that water from the snowfalls from the Midwest and East coasts!  What a wonder that would be!

In the ancient world tunnels were made into mountains to underground springs/water table using a slightly sloped horizontal tunnel to connect several vertical shafts along the way.  Gravity would take water along the tunnel, called qanat, to the fields or irrigation canals.  The cool thing about qanats is that they still exist in areas like Iraq, so natural disasters like earthquakes, sandstorms, etc. haven't really effected some of them.  Mankind has definitely done some damage.  In college some of us used to think about ideas like this as we tried to solve California's visits with drought.

California has adapted ancient technology in the form of aqueducts and canals to help distribute water to different regions of the state.  Impressive is that water must be pumped in certain places 2,882 feet high using different pumping stations.  California is home to the world's highest water lift, where it is raised 1,926 feet! 

So, if we are capable of so much, both in the ancient world and now, why do we suffer with droughts?  We sometimes forget about water rights, state regulations, and cost effectiveness.  However, shouldn't we keep dreaming, thinking "What if..." and challenging ourselves to think of ways to keep providing clean drinking water to our citizens, and helping those annually inundated by floods? 

Shock to the Heart

If any of you knew/ know Bon Jovi's song, "Shot Through the Heart" you'd probably laugh that I thought for years that it was "Shock to the heart and you're to blame, darling, you give love a bad name."  I guess the reason was that we didn't have the internet back then where we could google the lyrics.  I have a young friend currently trying to get me to learn a song from Shakira without cheating by looking at the lyrics.  As I barely know Spanish, it will be fun to learn how I mispronounce/mishear all these new words.

Thinking of the misheard Bon Jovi lyrics, 'shock to the heart' it correlates to something that I recently learned about.  An older friend of mine had a double bout of pneumonia over the turn of the new year and suffered severe congestive heart failure needing constant oxygen as part of the treatment now.   In the last couple of weeks her pulse started to slow and she didn't feel good.  It turned out that she had developed A Fib (atrial fibrillation).  What does this mean?  Put simply normally the heart contracts and relaxes in a rhythmic pattern with the pumping actions of the atrium and ventricles. In atrial fibrillation the atrium beats irregularly and sort of quivers instead of pumping the blood into the ventricles/lungs as it should.  You can imagine, this is a very bad things.  It can cause blood to slow down (as in the case of my friend), blood to pool causing clots, and strokes.  There are medicines that can be used to help stimulate atrium.  In some cases, as in my friend's case, electrical cardioversion (shocking the heart) can be used to send a low voltage of electricity through paddles on her chest to charge the atrium into its regular pattern.  She was pretty scared at first because at her age, they couldn't knock her out, they needed her awake.  However, she was quite pleased that they were able to give her medicines to make it so she couldn't feel it, as well as a muscle relaxant.  She had been in the hospital for three days, and after the procedure she was sent home as the electrical cardioversion is typically an outpatient procedure.  She had so much energy.  Unfortunately two weeks later she has A Fib again.  She is currently taking the medicine and has the choice of trying the shock therapy again.  She is older though and is ready to move onto the next life.  She is a great woman though, one of my heroes.

For the official Bon Jovi video on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrZHPOeOxQQ