Princess Of The Southern Light

Siobhan Patricia Ellison, BS, MS, DVM, PhD, will arrive at the seaport of 73 none the worse for wear.  She has grouchy shoulders, a tender spot behind one knee and an overused wrist which occasionally complains, but she still requires only  one prescription medication, and even that is optional.  Each morning, she gets up, feeds her goats, puts on her walking shoes and ambulates a quick mile before work.  Mixed in with these activities are the requisite two cups of tea, undoubtedly a product of her English heritage, and one coffee, no sugar thanks, preferably accompanied by a tiny pastry.  This serves as breakfast.

Next, she moves through the connecting tunnel between our house and her lab, a bright, active place called Pathogenes, Inc.,  which daily receives blood samples from veterinarians across the universe, eager to know if horses in their care have diseases like Equine Protozoal Myelitis or Polyneuritis and if so, what to do about it.  Siobhan is the reigning queen of EPM solutions and the phone calls from afar come long into the night from distressed owners and vets looking for succor.  Truth be told, however, Siobhan would rather be a princess than a queen.  One of her clients, a large, heavy-set woman of African descent named Usha Knabe is a regular visitor to the lab on her trips to Ocala.  During the course of one visit, Dr. Ellison asked her the meaning of her name.  The lady lit up, smiled  and proudly said, “It means Princess of the Eastern Light!”

Siobhan was thunderstruck at the magnificence of the name.  What could be more glorious and gratifying than to be called the Princess of the Eastern Light?  It brings forth images of the Magi arriving on camels, bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh.  It’s remindful of the first-grade catechisms with their pictures of colorful haloes around the heads of saints.  Songs must be written, odes declared to the Princess of the Eastern Light, rose petals spread in her path.  But of course there can be only one Pope, one King of England and one Princess of the Eastern Light.  No problem.  Therefore, for this birthday and for all time, I, Cosmic Piebaker and Parttime Prophet, by the powers invested in me by anonymous wizards, declare Siobhan Ellison to be Princess of the Southern Light.  Should anyone present know of any reason this title should not be awarded, speak now or forever hold your peace.

With Laura Benedetti at San Antonio vet expo

Every Picture Tells A Story, Don’t It?

Now there are all kinds of girlfriends with all kinds of needs and the successful gentleman will pay attention.  Boxed roses for a plant lover are out of order, whereas a Colt 45 for a cowgirl is a master stroke.  Animal lovers prefer to pick out their own pups and rookie riders might prefer a nice Tennessee Walker to a spirited steed.  The question remained---what do you get for a dyed-in-the-wool scientist, especially when there’s a shortage of those wind-up Frankenstein dolls?  How about a nice Carbon Molecule Pill Box in teal?

Then again, early in our relationship Siobhan mentioned an affinity for the art of one Georgia O’Keeffe, particularly a painting called Red Poppy No. VI.  “I’ve tried to find prints everywhere, but there are none,” she idly complained.  Mental note taken, but not such an easy find in the pre-internet era.  I eventually tracked one down just a couple of days before we were to spend a night in St. Petersburg Beach, had it framed and placed carefully in the trunk of my car.  While Siobhan primped in our room before dinner, I found the perfect table in a little nook and told the maitre d’ my plan, which was greeted with great excitement by the restaurant crew.  I’ve discovered over all these years that people like to be participants in these merry events and will do what it takes to help construct the perfect moment.  They took down the painting over our table-to-be and replaced it with Red Poppy No. VI.

It didn’t take long for Siobhan to notice the O’Keeffe from a distance on the way to the table, while I barely acknowledged what she was talking about.  She continued on in amazement, considering this quirk of Fate to be some kind of positive omen.  Dinner was superb, and as we rose to leave Siobhan told the waiter how much she enjoyed looking at the print while dining.  “Very well,” he smiled, “If you like it that much, I’ll take it down for you.”

Siobhan was stunned at the offer, but adamantly refused the man’s largesse, at which point the smiling maitre d’ returned with the painting which previously hung above the table, commencing to reinstall it.  Everyone laughed and clapped as Siobhan finally realized the prize was really hers.  She did not take a step back, put her head in her hands and weep, but I think I detected a hint of mistiness in her eyes.  For Siobhan, that’s the equal of ringing the largest gong in China.

Headed into the depths of the Grand Canyon

Deep In The Heart Of Texas

Back in the Psychedelic Sixties when women were women and men dressed like it, the Subterranean Circus lured into its web hippies and dippies and hepcats and fratrats, straights and crookeds and those slightly bent.  Everyone wanted to take a dip in the new culture stream, including Mom, Pop and Ed the cop.  The Congress of the United States was worried.  Senator Smoot (Rep.--Ut.), fearful of subliminal messaging by the crafty hippies, exposed poor old Puff, The Magic Dragon as a song intended to draw innocent children into smoky dens of iniquity.  Alas, nothing but Time, herself, could slow down the runaway locomotive of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

Meanwhile, back at the University of Florida, a serious young girl named Siobhan Ellison was gathering her books, consulting her advisor and moving into Broward Hall on the UF campus, completely oblivious of the hallucinogenic storm swirling around her.  Since age seven, little Ms. Ellison knew two things; one, she would own a horse, and two, she would become a veterinarian.  In her subsequent twelve years in Gainesville, she would never visit the Subterranean Circus, nor even think about it.  She was there for serious business and had no time for tomfoolery.

Siobhan earned her BS degree in 1974, then a Masters in ‘76 and was eventually accepted into UF’s fourth vet school class in 1970, one of a very small number of females in what was then a very male-dominated field.  Her goal was to become a mobile equine vet and practice in nearby Marion County, a hotbed of the thoroughbred breeding and training industry.  Everything went swimmingly into her third year, during which all UF vet school students are obligated to write and apply for a grant.  Siobhan wrote hers in conjunction with Professor Llewellyn Peyton, submitting it to the American Quarter Horse Association.  The grant was approved and the AQHA sent a quartet of officials to Gainesville to visit their two new allies.

The president of the Quarter Horse group at the time was a crusty old Texan named Charles Graham, who operated a no-frills breeding operation in glamorous Elgin called the Southwest Stallion Station.  Ellison and Peyton were sent by UF to meet Graham and his crew at the Gainesville airport, and they were initially thrilled.  When Graham opened the plane door, however, the general mood quickly changed.  “Je-ZUZ!” he sputtered.  “Look at this---they send me a goddam nigger and a woman!”  The grantees looked at one another with concern.  Oh-oh, does this mean we don’t get our grant?  Siobhan leaned over to Peyton on the leaden walk to the car and smiled, “At least you got an adjective.” 

During his visit, Graham was nothing but contemptuous of the Florida way of doing things.  In an offhand remark prior to his departure, he foolishly told the future Dr. Ellison, “Come to Elgin some time and we’ll show you the Texas way of doing veterinary medicine.”   Siobhan perceived this to be sort of a left-handed invite, so when the term was over, she got in her little car and tootled off to Texas for what turned out to be a no-pay, long-hours job.  “I figured I’d learn a lot in a short amount of time.  And how bad could it be, anyway?”  Well…

When she arrived, Siobhan was directed to an empty, unfurnished trailer, her new home.  No bed, no appliances, no nuttin’.  When she alerted Graham to this obvious mistake, he told her “Don’t worry—you won’t be here long enough to need a bed.”  But Charley, poor fool, never realized who he was dealing with.  Graham considered himself a tough guy and made it a point to be the first one at work every morning, but now when he got there Siobhan, the early-bird, was waiting for him.  It irked him no end.  She also did the work of two people and was the last one to leave each night, despite getting no salary.  As the weeks passed, the grouchy old Texan developed an appreciation for this gritty woman’s tolerance for adversity and her ability to work through it.  He sent UF a message: “This little girl outworks everybody out here.  If you have any more like her, send ‘em this way.” 

Eventually, Siobhan learned everything she needed to know about Texas veterinary medicine.  On her departure, she told Graham, “Look me up the next time you’re in Florida and I’ll return the hospitality.”  Then she got in her car, drove to the nearest hotel, put up a Do Not Disturb sign on the door and fell into bed.  After some time, there was a knock on the door.  A little irritated, she got up and answered the rapping.  “Didn’t you see my sign?” she asked the intruder.  “Yes, Senora,” the nice lady said.  “But you’ve been here for three days now.”

The Rest Of The Story

Much later, in 1999, Dr. Siobhan Ellison went back to the University of Florida to earn her PhD, working in the laboratory of Dr. John Dame.  Candidates are expected to seek funding for their work from outside sources, so Siobhan thought of her old buddy, Charley Graham of the American Quarter Horse Association.  Dr. Dame advised her not to bother because “the Quarter Horse people have never given us a nickel,” but in Siobhan’s mind Dr. Graham still owed her a debt and she had no trouble asking for $40,000 AQHA dollars.  Charley was no longer president of the group, but still a heavy influence.  Unsure if he’d even remember her, Siobhan called and explained her project in detail.

“Oh yes, I remember you,” Graham replied.  “I have no idea what you’re talking about or why you need the money, but yes, I’ll get it for you.  I know whatever you’re doing, it’ll work.”  A few days later, the check arrived to the everlasting astonishment of Dr. John Dame.  Turns out crusty old Texans have their own code of honor.  Despite the passage of time and very long odds, those long days of endless toil in Elgin, Texas paid pretty good after all.

That’s all, folks, and Happy Birthday to the reigning Princess of the Southern Light.

bill.killeen094@gmail.com  

 

Eureka!

“Everything is theoretically impossible until it is done.”---Robert Heinlein

Are you becoming forgetful in your old age?  Don’t bother to reply, we know the answer and Prevagen isn’t it.  Your friends all try to reassure you it’s just a common malady but that doesn’t help when you go to bed in Cleveland and somehow wake up in Detroit.  “I was just driving down the street the other day,” said local agronomist Charles LeMasters, “and I had to pull over.  I suddenly didn’t know where I was.  Oddly enough, I wasn’t even stoned.  Good thing they have Road Rangers.”

Alas, Mr. L’s experience is commonplace in the older set, which now goes to taverns where everybody doesn’t know your name, or sometimes theirs.  An oft-heard complaint these days is “I know I came in here for something, but I can’t remember what it was.  Just a second while I retrace my steps.  When I get to the previous room, I always figure it out.”  This is, to say the least, mildly inconvenient, if not vexing.  “Where did I leave my car keys?” becomes “Where did I leave my car?”   But fear not, those wily scientists who research these matters are onto something.  There might be a hidden switch in your brain that could reverse memory loss.  OMG, find it quick, kind sirs!

The brain lies at the biological center of our lived experience, but the scientific underpinnings of the brain---specifically, how it forms subjective consciousness---remain mysterious.  Sadly, one truth is clear; as we age, so does our brain, filled with 86 billion neurons which form our experience.  Any tiny dysregulation within the brain has outsized impact on its user and the direction of his/her life.

For years, scientists have tried to find ways to stave off these negative effects and make a person’s healthspan largely match their ever-increasing lifespan.  In 2021, Stanford University investigated the debris-cleaning role of the myeloid cells within the brain, and three years later a study from the University of Rochester on the broader glymphatic system, which interacts with myeloid cells, found ways to restart the flow of brain-cleaning fluids.

In another installment of this ongoing research to improve the aging brain, scientists from the University of California San Francisco identified a protein which is central to aging the brain in humans.  By analyzing how genes and proteins changed over time in mice, the team identified a troublesome protein named ferritin light chain 1, or FTL1.  When scientists reduced the presence of this protein in the hippocampus, the mice regained some of their youthful characteristics, including improved nerve connections and better performance on memory tests.  The results were published in the journal Nature Aging.

“It’s truly a reversal of impairments…much more than merely delaying or preventing symptoms,” reports Saul Villeda, co-author of the study from UCSF.  “We’re seeing more opportunities to alleviate the worst consequences of old age.  It’s a hopeful time to be working on the biology of aging.”  To test this idea even further, the team articulately stimulated the production of FTL1 in young mice, and soon the mental abilities of the mice began to match those of older rodents.  When analyzing the effects of FTL1 protein in a petri dish, Villeda and his team discerned that nerve cells engineered simple, one-armed neural wires---known  as “neurites”---rather than the branching neurites typical of normal neural cells.

“To identify potential therapeutic targets to restore cognitive function in older people, we first need to gain mechanistic insight into the molecular drivers of cognitive decline in the aging brain,” the authors write.  “It has become clear that cognitive dysfunction in the aged brain in the absence of neurodegenerative disease is not paralleled by cell death, but instead by a decline in neuronal function at the synaptic level.”

The authors also note that a 2015 study found that increased ferritin levels in cerebrospinal fluid negatively impacted cognitive performance and accurately predicted conversion from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s disease.  The researchers hope that by targeting FTL1, future therapies may not only improve neural cognition but will also benefit people with neurogenerative disease.  As this study and many before it have clearly demonstrated, there is no singular cause of mental decline.  But with each new study, scientists work toward a holistic picture of neurodegenerative decline as we age, and with that new perspective comes the hope of new therapies that could make cognitive decline a thing of the past.

As Snuffy Smith once instructed, “Hitch ol’ Spark Plug to the wagon, Maw---time’s-a wastin!”     

Get A Little Spine, Ernie…

They’re not just milking cows up there in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.  A research team from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities recently demonstrated a groundbreaking process that combines 3D printing, stem cell biology and lab-grown tissues to provide spinal cord recovery.  The news networks must have missed it with all the bickering about Charlie Kirk’s hidden vaults.

Currently there is no way to completely reverse paralysis damage, despite what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might tell you.  The problem is the death of nerve cells and the inability for nerve fibers to regrow across the injury site.  This new research tackles the problem by building a bridge.

The team created a unique 3D-printed framework for lab-grown organs called an organoid scaffold, with microscopic channels.  These channels are then populated with ‘spinal neural progenitor cells’ derived from adult stem cells in humans, which have the capacity to divide and differentiate into specific types of mature cells.

“We use the 3D-printed channels of the scaffold to direct the growth of the stem cells,” says Guebum Han PhD, a former U of M mechanical engineering researcher and first author of a paper on the subject published in Advanced Healthcare Materials, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.  “This ensures the new nerve fibers grow in the desired way.  This method creates a relay system which when placed in the spinal cord bypasses the damaged area.”

In a study funded by the NIH, the State of Minnesota Spinal Cord Injury and Traumatic Brain Injury Research Grant Program and the Spinal Cord Society, the researchers transplanted the scaffolds into rats with spinal cords that were completely severed.  The cells successfully differentiated into neurons and extended their nerve fibers in both directions---rostral (toward the head) and caudal (toward the tail)---to form new connections with the host’s existing nerve circuits.  The new nerve cells integrated seamlessly into the host spinal cord tissue over time, leading to significant functional recovery in the rats.

“Regenerative medicine has brought about a new era in spinal cord injury research,” says Ann Parr, professor of neurosurgery at the University of Minnesota.  “Our laboratory is excited to explore the future potential of our mini spinal cords for clinical translation.

Hang on tight Lieutenant Dan, help is on the way.

Linlin Zhao with Yu Hsuan Chen.  But you knew that, didn't you?

If You Ain’t Got The DNA, Boys….

“….you’d better go back to beautiful Texas…Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee.”---Woody Guthrie

The Grim Reaper is smiling big these days, having made enormous hauls in Gaza and Ukraine, but all is not roses and sunshine at the Death Cave.  Those evil scientists are at it again, making discoveries and extending lives, and there’s no stopping them.

DNA damage makes up 2 of the 8 hallmarks of aging, and a new chemical probe has proven to protect healthy cells from DNA damage,  The  story of this paradigmatic development begins where so much of human health begins: the mitochondria.  These organelles are often called “the powerhouses of the cell,” but they do much more than just provide cellular energy.  They’re so important they even have their own DNA.  Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is separate from the DNA housed in a cell’s nucleus.  While nuclear DNA contains the vast majority of the genetic code, mitochondria carry their own smaller genomes that are essential for cellular functions.

MtDNA exists in multiple copies per cell, but when damage occurs these copies are often degraded rather than repaired.  If left unchecked, this degeneration can set off a cascade of failures linked to heart conditions, neurodegeneration and chronic inflammation.  But now researchers at UC Riverside have developed a chemical probe that binds to damaged sites in mitochondrial DNA and blocks the enzymatic processes that lead to its degradation.

“There are already pathways in cells that attempt repair,”  said Linlin Zhao, UCR associate professor of chemistry, who led the project.  “But degradation happens more frequently than repair due to the redundancy of mtDNA molecules in mitochondria.  Our strategy is to stop the loss before it becomes a problem.”  The new molecule includes two key components, one that recognizes and attaches to damaged DNA and another that ensures it is delivered specifically to mitochondria, leaving DNA unaffected.

In lab tests as well as studies using living cells, the probe significantly reduced mtDNA loss after lab-induced damage mimicking exposure to toxic chemicals such as nitrosamines, which are common environmental pollutants found in processed foods, waste and cigarette smoke.  In cells treated with the probe molecule, mtDNA levels remained higher, which could be critical for maintaining energy production in vulnerable tissues such as the heart and brain.

Mitochondrial DNA loss is increasingly linked to a range of diseases, from multi-organ mitochondrial depletion syndromes to chronic inflammatory conditions such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s, arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease.  when mtDNA fragments escape from mitochondria into the rest of the cell, they can act as distress signals that activate immune responses.  “If we can retain the DNA inside the mitochondria, we might be able to prevent those downstream signals that cause inflammation,” Zhao said.  “This is a really big deal!” 

Alas, there is no joy in Reaperville.  The Grimster frowns, turns over his sand timer and spits in his gruel.  “What a revoltin’ development THIS is,” he hisses.  “Always with the damn life-saving discoveries.  What we need around here is a good old-fashioned plague.  Where’s that Yersinia pestis when you really need it?” 

Longevity guru David Sinclair: "Live long and prosper."

That’s All Well And Good, Docs, But We’re In A Hurry….

The knights might be riding back with the Holy Grail but that doesn’t help those of us who are clinging to a tree branch on the wrong side of the cliff.  We’re looking for Sergeant Preston to come galloping in any minute now with a few bottles of the elixir of life in his saddlebags.  We heard it on the grapevine that there are now SIX chemical cocktails out there which restore aged cells to a youthful state in under a week.  Sure it sounds ridiculous, but any old port in a typhoon.  The winds are blowin’ and the snows are snowin’.

Most current anti-aging approaches rely on gene therapy that alters genetic material, as we’ve seen above.  Eventually, that may work for non-octogenarians, but what about those of us on the ASAP bus?

According to the Information Theory of Aging, the loss of youthful epigenetic information is the primary factor contributing to aging and age-related deterioration and dysfunction.  Additionally, studies support the notion that factors such as stress or DNA damage accelerate the aging process by causing a greater loss of epigenetic information.  This progressive loss can cause the cells to enter a state of dysfunction known as senescence, an irreversible state of cell cycle arrest.  Senescent cells stop dividing.  They also release signaling molecules that promote cell repair.  As a result of aging, senescent cells accumulate in the body, contributing to the development of age-related diseases.  Understanding of the aging process led scientists to seek ways to reverse age-related changes in cells.

One new study that veers from the path most traveled had researchers developing and utilizing screening methods, including the NCC (nucleocytoplasmic compartmentalization) assay.  NCC distinguishes young, old and aging or senescent cells.  They then identified new chemical combinations that could reverse cellular aging and rejuvenate the cells.  This method was allegedly highly effective, since the treated cells supposedly regained youthful function and gene expression patterns within days.  The researchers claim their results confirm the possibility that aging can be reversed in human cells without altering cellular identity or the underlying genetic code.  The study identified six specific chemical cocktails that could help restore a youthful DNA methylation profile.  A remarkable feature is that these compounds work at a fast rate and show results in under a week.  Additionally, the cell’s original type and function are retained.  Says who?  We would not believe any of this if Dr. David Sinclair of the Department of Genetics at Harvard University was not involved.  Sinclair is a decades-long student of longevity and the means to attain it, and one of the foremost scientists in the field.

“Until recently, the best we could do was slow aging down,” says Sinclair.  “The process previously required gene therapy, limiting its widespread use.”  The new cocktails use various molecules to reprogram cells, and results in mice and monkeys are positive.  They are not yet available to humans, being still in the research phase.  Some scientists have concerns about their safety, but hey, in the worst case how many years can they steal from an 85-year-old?

Sinclair’s team is preparing for human clinical trials, still awhile off.  We’re signing up volunteers like Ron Thomas and Will Thacker, brave gentlemen always first in line to aid in advancing the horizons of mankind.  Ron is still lining up a wife-care substitute and Thacker insists on some kind of guarantee that the new drugs won’t harm his punmanship, but they’re waiting at the station for pickup, ready to go where no man has gone before.  The brave don’t live forever, but the overly cautious don’t live at all.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com 

  

Thanks For The Memories

“Thanksgiving is a time to remember those people and events which helped create the fabric of our lives, brought laughter to our time here and gave us stories we can tell for the rest of our days.  These are a few of them.”---WTK

Not long ago, I paid a visit to rambling sculptor/painter William Schaaf at his charming studio barn in McIntosh.  Fellow artist Ron Chesser came by with a fistful of old Charlatans for me to sign.  Among the three of us, we probably know everybody who’s spent some time in Greater Gainesville in the past 60 years and we can tell a million stories about them.  And, as usual, we did.  You have to put an hourglass on these affairs or they will turn into five-hour recollections of fun and foolishness since many of the characters we have known over the years are jesters, villains and/or crazy fools.  And that’s just the male side of the silver dollar.

Take a strange visitor from another planet named Bill Partin, for instance.  Mr. P. bounced up the three steps into the Subterranean Circus one fine day hoping to find new companions.  He was about 6-3, bald, a tad heavy and wearing a fashionable grey suit.  He might have been the only customer who ever wore a formal ensemble into the Circus.  Full of piss and vinegar, Partin told us lively tales of his recent past in Texas, where he alleged to have been the first person busted in the state for possession of marijuana, brightening his tales with the repetitive phrase “hips, lips and fingertips,” to indicate his depth of commitment to those things he was into.

“Narc,” said the wily and worldly Dick North, turning his head away from the discussion.  After all, who else would dress up like this to visit a headshop and discuss marijuana misdemeanors?  But Partin never asked to buy, dropping in occasionally as he traveled hither and yon over the landscape merely for conversation and companionship.  After awhile, he became just another lunatic on the other side of the counter, of which there were untold hundreds, and was accepted into the hippie maelstrom.  Then one night he arrived with an unusually wide smile.  “Anybody wanna do some acid?” he grinned.

Midnight At The Bambi Motel

“The motor cooled down, the heat went down and that’s when I heard that highway sound.”---Chuck Berry & Bill Killeen

LSD ingested, Rick Nihlen, Partin, myself and a couple of companions motored over to the Royal Park Cinema to take in a show while the acid percolated.  Emerging from the movie, the rest of us were one mental toke over the line but Bill Partin grumped, “I got nuthin’.”  A bit surprised, we assured him gloryland was on its way and we headed to the UF Rathskeller to hear Goose Creek Symphony.  An hour in, big Bill came ambling up with a silly look on his face, yelled “Hips, lips and fingertips!…and danced off by himself.  Rick and I intended to stay there until the acid wore off, or if that was slow to happen, just walk the nine blocks home and pick up the car in the morning.

Another hour went by and Partin was back, ready to call it a night.  Whoa, we told him, driving under the influence was unwise, not healthy for children and other living things.  Bill haw-hawed and stumbled off into the distance.  I looked at Rick.  Rick looked at me.  “He’s going to kill himself, we have to go pick up the pieces,” said he.  Nihlen assured me that he couldn’t drive so it was up to me.  I was not bursting with confidence.

It took a couple of minutes but I gradually nudged the two steering wheels into one and crawled off campus to bustling Route 441, aiming to avoid trouble by staying in the serene right lane.  This seemed to be working superbly when Rick asked for a mild adjustment.  “You’re only going 30 miles an hour,” he said.  “You have to go faster or the cops will stop us.”  Damned if I wasn’t, even though it felt like I was piloting a jet plane.  Somehow, we made it to the legendary Bambi Motel.  Bill Partin’s flashy car was neatly parked outside one of the front rooms.  We didn’t need to knock on the door because the curtains were open.  He had crashed fully dressed and was sleeping like a baby.  “What the hell?” wondered Rick, scratching his head.  The light began to dawn for me.  Six-foot-three.  320 pounds.  Dancing like a fool for two hours.  “He’s a fast assimilator,” I guessed.  “Never took acid with anyone that big.  He owes us one, we’ll collect next visit.”

But for some reason, there was no next visit.  Bill Partin took his hips, lips and fingertips back on the road and never showed up at the Circus again, one of the great mysteries of the era.  Six months later, I arrived at the store one morning to find a note taped to the front door.  “Sorry to leave in such a hurry, but I’ve been evading law enforcement,” it read.  “If we never run across one another in the future, at least you got a good story to tell.”  We never saw Bill Partin again.  Hips, lips or fingertips.

Silver City Shenanigans

Sheila Johnson was the ultimate hippie.  She had the look, the attitude, the wardrobe and the demeanor, a pretty girl always arrayed in head scarves, ancient blouses and long skirts discovered at weekly trips to antique emporiums and Goodwill stores.  Sheila was charming, the owner of a constant crooked smile with eyes that could melt an iceberg, a disarming salesgirl always ready with a wink and a nod.

Sheila had a husband named Kenny, a good-humored straight arrow without a hippie bone in his body.  He had the look of a guy who stood helplessly in the road while Sheila ran him over, then dragged him back to her well-decorated blacklight cave.  He didn’t know what hit him, but he was glad it did.  Kenny would arrive at the store nightly at closing time, poke his head in the door, smile and wait for his wife to finish her merry recap of the day for the rest of us who worked in the Circus next door.  Sheila delighted in reviewing the moments large and small which made up her shift and her unique slant on events was always appreciated.

One evening, however, she regaled her audience with a bawdy tale of personal hijinks which had occurred at home the previous evening.  Sheila described a lustful and hilarious Kenny chasing her through the house nipping at her rear end and calling himself The Heinie Monster, while she screamed in mock terror.  She had the crowd in an uproar, when who else but Kenny stuck his head in the door.  Seeing the vile culprit, the store disintegrated into laughter, whooping and pointing at the confused husband.

“What?  WHAT?” he exclaimed, stunned and at sea.  Finally laughed out, the crowd gave him a standing ovation as he waved and left the stage with a confused look at Sheila.  Not long after, my then-wife Harolyn got a message from the storyteller: “I think I’m in the soup,” it read, “and there’s only one way out.  I’m going to have to let The Heinie Monster catch me.” 

Harolyn returned the note with an inquiry; “Photos to follow?”  Alas, no such luck.  Physical evidence of the mythical creature has not been established to this day, but Ms. Johnson’s thong bathing suit revealed what looked suspiciously like teeth marks on her left posterior.  She’s not talking, but the proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

The Customer Is Always Right On

Not to be unappreciative, but the Subterranean Circus customer base was perhaps the oddest assortment of humans ever to pass through the portals of a business establishment.  One of them,  Shelley Browning, whose husband Bert was a straight-arrow honcho in the Santa Fe Community College History Department, was in almost daily to buy nitrous oxide canisters called Whippets, which she’d share with her evening guests at Partyland, her charming home just off 13th Street.  Shelley’s place looked a lot like Manhattan’s Grand Central Station, but with more people, all in some state of bliss or agitation.  It was open nightly until everyone left, which rarely happened because the guests were in no condition to operate motor vehicles or be seen in public.  If you’ve ever been to Mexico, you’ve seen the shopkeepers sweeping out and hosing down their spaces in the early a.m. prior to the start of a new day’s business.  That’s how it was at the Browning estate in the dawning hours of a new day.

Shelley, herself, considered it all in a day’s work.  Once the grounds were made ready for another onslaught, she’d be off to the Circus looking for action or more Whippets.  A lusty young woman, S. Browning took her pleasure where she found it.  One day, that was in the back of Daniel Levine’s fine Volkswagen van, where she caught the owner sleeping in back.  Opening the rear door, she said “Howdy stranger, come here often?” before inserting herself in the vehicle and having her way with Danny.  “I was powerless to resist her fatal charms,” he admitted.  “It was like being inundated by a force of nature.”  Fortunately, Mr. Levine made a quick recovery and did not need to be taken to a hospital.

And now The Rest of The Story.  A multi-talented woman, Shelley Browning was an expert on the thoroughbred horse and she talked us into going into the racing business.  She accompanied Harolyn and me to the Ocala Breeders sale where we bought our first mares and advised on the pedigrees.  Shelley followed our horses as if they were her own and never was short of advice to offer.  Unlike many people, she never had a problem celebrating the success of others.  “We’re all in this thing together!” was a favorite quote.  Hard living and an assortment of medical liabilities limited her time on the planet but most who knew her would agree on two things---Shelley Browning   was never bored and she never regretted one minute of her stay on the playing fields of Earth.

The Dancing Queen & Fish Stories

Shelley Browning had a half-sister named Christy Oenbrink, a big blonde with a sly smile and a great mane of hair.  Christy was a ballet dancer, tall and graceful, possessed of a great wit and a spectacular sense of humor, including a special talent for laughing at her own foibles.  Shelley brought her by, said she needed a job and we hired her the next day.  Christy could sell igloos to Iraqis, trousers to legless men.  She quickly cleared one small counter of ugly pipes which had been there since the War of Jenkins’ Ear, and asked for more.  Lovesick customers brought little gifts and hung on her every word.  One local musician fell in love with her, brought flowers and camped out in the parking lot until she agreed to go out with him.  Another suitor abandoned his partner of eight long years and immediately proffered marriage.  Christy took it all in stride.

One day, my stepson Danny came home from grade school and said his kiddie football coach told him he was too clumsy, needed better footwork.  I recruited Christy, the smooth dancer, to help.  “No way, Bill!” he protested.  “The other kids will laugh at me, I ain’t doing it.”

I brought Christy by.  He almost fell over, quickly agreeing to the dance lessons.  “She could be in the movies,” he told me.  Not wanting to disappoint Cleopatra, he learned his lessons well and amazed the football coach.  “What happened to Danny?” the coach asked me.  “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” I assured.

Christy eventually moved away, got married and disappeared into the ethers.  She returned several years later, came by the store and reminded me of a night long ago when several of us went out to a dance bar after work.  I ended up going home with a young kid named Dani Hughes, the beginning of a year-long relationship.  “Fate!” she said.  “It could have been me.  I didn’t know you were looking.”  And I didn’t know she was.  C’est la vie.

Dani, 19, was an athletic young girl from Chepachet, Rhode Island.  I was 45.  Over the course of a year, I learned a lot about what her generation was into and she learned some ancient history.  She got me back into playing racquetball.  We went to the races in Miami, to the beach a few times, once getting busted for indecent exposure at Washington Oaks State park near Marineland ($400 fine, don’t do it).  It scared her to death but she was a trouper, a fact further demonstrated by her unlikely fish story.

Dani had a repetitive dream about catching a very large fish.  “I’ve got to put this dream away,” she complained one day.  “Let’s go fishing.”  So we did, renting a sizeable boat and crew near Daytona and heading out to sea on a bright, bright, sunshiny Summer day.  “What are you looking to catch?” asked the jolly captain.  “Anything big,” she said, and we headed out to shark country.

Before long, they had one on the line, and it was definitely big.  Miss Hughes sat in her sturdy chair, strapped in and working hard.  A sympathetic crew member came over to me and said, “You know your girl is going to need a little help here,”  I wished him  luck getting Dani out of her chair.  The battle went on for a very long time but she finally got the thing up to the back of the boat, a very large golden dusky shark who flopped all over the deck showing his ample rack of teeth before being subdued.

The crew proudly put their shark flag up and we headed back.  Dani was so thrilled she paid $400 to have her catch mounted and warehoused until she could find a proper place for it.  She never had the fish dream again.     

Twelve months into the relationship, Dani Hughes  came up to me and said her brother in Palm Desert wanted her to visit for a while.  All her short life, she had wanted to see California.  I told her to go.  All of nineteen years old, she protested, “I never left a relationship that was going well before.”

I told her about my mother and father, also 25 years apart in age.  A great relationship while it lasted.  Then my father died at age 63, leaving my 38-year-old mother with three kids to support.  She got the drift, went to Palm Desert and had a great time.  Dani visited around Thanksgiving of the next year and brought by her new boyfriend, similar in age.  “I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said, smiling.  “Probably a bunch of fish stories,” I said.

Photo, top of page: left to right, far side of the table, Anne White, Pamme Brewer, Bill Killeen, Newt Simmons and Francis Patriquin.  The others are UF classmates of Pamme.

That’s all, folks…

Eat hearty, for tomorrow we…well, you know.      

 

  

If You Go Down To The Woods Today….

“You belong among the wildflowers, you belong in a boat out at sea.  Sail away, kill off the hours.  You belong somewhere you feel free."---Tom Petty

A gang of incurable optimists led by ancient troublemaker Robert Hutchinson has decided to pick up the beat in the land of 1000 lakes, Melrose/Keystone Heights, Florida.  Hutch and a few cronies have put together a non-profit and bought a batch of raw acreage close to the intersection of Alachua, Bradford, Clay and Putnam counties, establishing WildFlowers Music Park, the better to amuse you with, my dears.  Some of the locals, alas, are miffed, thinking that Bingo Night at the Rooterville Animal Sanctuary and a few rounds at Tom’s Mini Golf should be enough excitement for anybody, but many others will beg to differ.

WildFlowers, all 270 acres of it, is in the process of being transformed from bushes and trees into a rural music park for concerts and other live musical events.  The new owners promise to keep things as natural as possible.  “Not only will we not be removing any of the large live oaks, but we’ll be caring for them and removing invasive species that threaten their existence,” says Hutchinson.  “We are restoring the land to use as a public nature park and will be growing native wildflowers and grasses for the seeds.  Once a year, we will celebrate our mission, support one or more families and make our mortgage payments by hosting a family-friendly festival of music and dance.  The first one will take place in March, 2026.”

Once a year doesn’t mean there won’t be more than one concert at WildFlowers.  After all, it is a music park, right?  But country folk are often slow to clap their hands and jump up and down, wary of those famous flies in the ointment.  Melrose entrepreneur Mark Chiappini, whose family has operated the retail colossus in town since the place was called Shake Rag and people lived in caves and ate dirt, wants everybody to relax.  “We need something like this out here,” insists Mr. C.  “It’s a great place to live, but a tough local economy.  For a businessman, hard to make a buck.  WildFlowers can’t do anything but help.”

Local influencer Regina Coeli (secret identity Gina Hawkins) has hired on as an organizer, which means she will thump drums for the project and drag people out there by their ears, if necessary.  Coeli is a force of nature who will drive up to your house in her cute little panel truck, open the door and invite you in for coffee and Danish, then slam the door shut and haul you to Snoqualmie, Washington if she’s of a mind to.  Don’t fight it, you’ll have a good time.  “Forty years of service and never a complaint,” says Gina, “Come on-a my house, my house come on, I’m gonna give you everything.”

A Visit To Wonderland

A mere mile south of bustling downtown Melrose, Florida sits a gently rolling mosaic of upland meadows, mixed hardwood forests and wetlands that range from small sinkholes to bottomland swamps to a ten-acre ephemeral sandhill lake.  You’d hardy notice if the area wasn’t astir with aging gentlemen clanging around on tractors uprooting junk trees, clearing out annoying bushes and readying the place for the March 2026 opening concert of WildFlowers Music Park.

Out for a look at the shenanigans, we raised an eyebrow when Captain Hutchinson said everything would be in readiness well before D-Day.  There’s land to level, stages to build, pathways to create and March is just around the corner, but Hutch and his cheerful pal Richard Vories sneer at the challenge.  “Most of the clearing work will be done by the end of November,” they promise.

The festival, itself, will be “A celebration of music and dance, a community-driven event that emphasizes creativity and local engagement.”  The event and those following will be scaled-down versions of your typical festivals, fostering a welcoming, laid-back atmosphere and an eclectic mix of music genres and other activities including visual arts, crafts, dance and wellness activities for all ages.  There is no truth to the rumor that Mark Chiappini will dive from a 50-foot-high platform into a bucket of water, but Gina will do her highly-acclaimed Dance of the Seven Veils, always a show-stopper.

The festival will be three or four days long, hopefully with occasionally simultaneous music on three stages.  Approximately half of the attendees are expected to camp on site.  Anywhere from 1500 to 3000 paying customers are expected, along with 500-900 performers, vendors, contractors, volunteers, sponsors, dealers and itinerant bikers who always seem to show up at these things.  WildFlowers is keenly aware of the limitations of small-town roadways and will engage a professional traffic planner/engineer to model the vehicle impact on affected arterial and collector roads, and we’re glad that isn’t us.

The park expects their events to have a much lower sound level than large rock concerts and electronic dance music shows, some of which have been known to blast neighbor Grandpa Jones out of his bed at two in the morning.  The wealth of forested areas and rolling terrain surrounding the festival stages should help.  If you’re dubious, one good reason for keeping the volume down is to prevent the din from the main stage from overwhelming the music coming from the smaller stages nearby.  The mainstage will also be pointed away from all existing houses in the area, the closest of which is more than 1000 feet away.  The greatest challenge in controlling sound at outdoor music ventures is managing those pesky low-frequency bass wavelengths.  The WF gang swears they’ll keep the noise down, anyway.  “We’ve got bass trap woofters and phase canceling techniques,” smiles Richard Vories, looking like a kid in a candy store.  “And Mark is thinking about adding earplugs to his inventory, just in case.” 

Bill with the Mayor of Melrose

NIMBY vs. Not So Bad

Resident Steve Lebel isn’t so sure all this is such a great idea.  “Fundamentally, it’s the impact on the neighbors; the proponents have selected a site that’s in the immediate neighborhood.  People move to Melrose to find peace and quiet and a concert venue immediately adjacent to the village is going to impact that.”  Lebel maintains that traffic, emergency access and environmental risks are high on his list of concerns.  He argues that campers won’t have to leave the site, thus merchants in the community will see little economic benefit.  “It seems that the services that campers want will be provided on-site,” claims Lebel.  “We might get a little bit of retail business but folks aren’t going to leave their campsites if they can buy whatever they want on-site." 

Many neighbors disagree, however.  Some believe the events could bring new energy to the town and point to similar festivals around the country that have operated safely and to the economic benefit of their communities for years.  Larry Easton, who lives across the street from the proposed site, says the festival could provide cultural enrichment and help attract young families.  “It’s going to be a permanent green space, they have marvelous conservation plans.  We love the idea of a music festival and we think it’s important for Melrose if we’re going to avoid the fates of Waldo and Hawthorne.”

Easton contends that people have attended similar festivals elsewhere for decades and the events have become important important parts of their lives, adding that opposition is driven by fears which don’t match up with what he’s seen at similar festivals.  Wildflowers honcho Hutchinson insists that property values near similar music parks have virtually always increased.

WildFlowers is always looking for volunteers and invites visitors.  To get involved as a volunteer, performer or vendor, tab on WildflowersMusicPark.org or look up Gina, dangerous as that may be.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com  

The Underdog

Walter Babish was a timid kid, rare for a Polack and new to the neighborhood.  He was an outsider, unathletic, short and shaped like two fire hydrants joined at the hip.  Walter was quiet, and kept to himself.  When he spoke, which was rarely, it was usually to spout his favorite word, “sorry.”

Eddie Ledwich was also late to the neighborhood, but not as late as Walter.  Lean, tough and looking for trouble, Ledwich thought nothing of beating a guy up in the morning and then again in the afternoon as part of his victory tour.  We got into it one day in Jackie Fournier’s back yard and there was a gallon of blood involved.  Jackie’s grandmother, who could beat up both of us, came out with her broom and broke it up, calling it a draw.  “Next time, I’ll cut your ears off…both of you!” she swore.  Knowing Nana Severance as we did, we didn’t discount the possibility.

It was impossible to conceive of a situation where Walter Babish would take on Eddie Ledwich, but there they were one fine Friday morning, duking it out on the corner of Exeter and Garfield streets.  No one seemed to know what started the fracas, but everyone was delighted that Walter, tears slowly rolling out the sides of his eyes, was standing his ground.  Ledwich got in a head shot now and then, but blows to the body just bounced off the keg-like Babish.

Eddie’s modus operandi was always to keep advancing, usually avoiding his opponent’s blows, but sometimes fighting through them.  His normal adversaries lacked the meaty arms and general heft of Walter, however, who would not back up a step.  Babish, of course, had the rapidly-gathering crowd (if not God) on his side and he felt the weighty responsibility of carrying the dusty banner of the have-nots.  “Kick his German ass, Walter,” chirped little Jimmy Lavery, Walter’s next-door neighbor.  Several seconded that emotion.

If you have a distinct weight advantage and you hang around long enough, good things will sometimes happen.  Ledwich missed a careless jab and Walter caught him on the chin with a heavy shot, buckling his Nazi knees.  Now there was moisture escaping from the bully’s eyes as his foe, bolstered by the haymaker, advanced to the roar of the crowd.  The home-field advantage is not a made-up thing, it lives in little crazed college football towns and high-school basketball gyms every night of the week.  It’s not just you out there taking on the enemy, it’s your band of merry men bringing the power.

Ledwich was backing up now, floundering, people laughing at him, cursing his soul and his heritage.  Babish peppered him with body blows and Eddie was on the ground, sobbing and cussing a blue streak.  He screamed that he would kill Walter “next time,” but even Eddie knew better.  There would be no next time.  The underdog had risen and having done so, suddenly realized his own possibilities.  It was perhaps the best day of Walter Babish’s life.  And it was even a learning day for Eddie Ledwich, who picked up one inarguable truth.  On a given day, despite all odds, beware the mystic powers of the underdog.

Root, Root, Root For The Home Team, But Otherwise….

Growing up in loyal Massachusetts in the 1950s, you rooted for the Red Sox, even though they always finished second in their division to the hated Yankees.  If you grew up in Chicago, chances are you led cheers for the Cubs, even though they never beat anybody.  Someone in Chi-town coined the term “lovable losers,” as apt a description as ever emerged from The City of The Big Shoulders.  Thing is, though, that Fenway Park and Wrigley Field were always filled to the brim with zealous fans cheering on their beloved underdogs.  When the Sox finally ended their 86-year World Series drought in 2004 by sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals, the descendants of lifetime Boston fans took newspapers to the cemeteries to show their deceased forebears the miracle had finally arrived.  When the Cubs ended their even longer 108-year hiatus in 2016 after a thrilling seven-game series with the Cleveland Indians, Chicago fans descended on the Wrigleyville area of town in monster celebrations which went on through the night.  One ancient fan went over to his refrigerator and took out a can of beer he’d placed there 32 years before, reserving it for the Big Day.  Even fans of most of the other teams in Major League Baseball were happy for the two longtime losers and their zealous fan bases.  Everybody loves an underdog, right?

On Autumn Saturdays, football fans pile into their home stadiums to watch the local gladiators dispel some arrogant invaders, then go home and root for every underdog they can find on television.  Not everybody, but most of them.  Academic studies all seem to agree that more than two-thirds of the populace prefer the underdog to the favorite and many backers of the favorite will change allegiances if they learn the underdog is winning.

The Underdog Effect is a psychological phenomenon where people are more inclined to support those who are perceived as disadvantaged or less likely to succeed.  This doesn’t just happen with sports or competitions, it’s a deep-seated response that influences our behavior in many areas of life.  At its core, the UE is about rooting for those who face overwhelming odds.  Think David & Goliath, where a pitiful shepherd knocks off Haystacks Calhoun with nothing but a slingshot and a positive attitude.  The story has endured for centuries, not just because of its dramatic narrative but because it taps into a universal human instinct—the desire to see the seemingly powerless individual or group overcome the all-powerful.  Hopeless characters like Rocky Balboa resonate with us because they embody the ultimate underdog spirit.  We’re drawn to these stories because they reflect a struggle against adversity, a struggle we can all relate to on some level.

Alas, supporters of the underdog often fall on hard times, which is why we Remember The Alamo, the Battle of Thermopylae and the Super Bowl collapse of the 2016 Atlanta Falcons.  But those with little hope wouldn’t be proper underdogs if they started winning all the time now, would they?

Great Moments In Underdog History

Did a small band of underdogs once save Western civilization?  Many historians think so.  In 1566, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (not to be confused with Foudini the Magnificent of early TV fame) led his Ottoman Empire army of 150 thousand (count ‘em, 150,000) surly soldiers on a march to take Vienna.  As they marched through Croatia, Suleiman’s boys ran across a small nuisance army that had recently attacked a Turkish encampment, and the Sultan decided to obliterate them just for kicks.

The army in question was a meager force of 2300-3000 Croats and Hungarians under the command of Ban Nikola Subic Zrinski, a Croatian-Hungarian noble and general.  Fearing an attack from Suleiman’s gigantic army, Subic asked for reinforcements from Vienna, but received zero.  Las Vegas posted 1-10 odds on the Sultan, which is about the same as they gave Secretariat in the 1973 Belmont.  You know what happened that time.

The underdogs decided to hold up in the town of Szigetvar in Hungary.  On August 6, 1566, the Ottoman army approached snickering, certain of a quick siege after a minimal battle.  Didn’t happen.  For the next month, the small force fended off the massive army and held the town.  Unimaginably, the Sultan died of old age on September 6th, never seeing Szigetvar taken.  After his death, the Ottomans went nuts, beginning an all out attack.  As they madly charged toward the gates of the town, however, the portals suddenly swung open and a large mortar filled with broken iron responded, instantly killing hundreds of shocked invaders.

The 600 or so remaining defenders then charged out into the town in a suicide attack, taking tons of Ottoman soldiers with them.  Subic was killed by an arrow to the head and most of his army fell with him, but even in death he was still killing enemy troops.  His forces set a trap in the town’s castle as the battle was ending, lighting a fuse to the powder magazine.  As the Ottoman troops checked out the town for survivors and loot, the castle suddenly exploded, killing at least 3000 of the enemy.   The Ottoman casualties from the battle were huge.  They lost 30,000 troops, one-fifth of their army, and with winter coming abandoned their attempt to take Vienna, returning to Constantinople.  The defeat was so significant that many in Europe called it the battle that saved western civilization.  The Ottomans would not attempt to take Vienna for another 120 years.  Still, as usual, Vegas didn’t have to pay off.

2004

The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Beantown nine that day:
The score stood three to four with but one inning left to play.
The leadoff hitter soon flew out, the second did the same.
A pall-like silence fell upon the patrons of the game.
A straggling few got up to go in miserable despair. 
The rest clung to the hope all underdogs declare.

Now not-so-mighty Millar was advancing to the plate.
He whacked one to the outfield and wound up on first base.
Now Millar was no whippet, and his run might save the day,
The Red Sox called in Roberts for the penultimate play.
Roberts soon stole second and then scored on Mueller’s hit.
Then stands were in a frenzy, the fatal fire was lit.

In the 12th inning, David (Big Papi) Ortiz knocked one out of the park for an unlikely Sox victory.  Next day, the Red Sox got two in the eighth to tie the game and won it on Ortiz’s RBI single in the 14th inning on his tenth pitch off Loaiza.  The game went on for 5 hours and 49 minutes. a new record for postseason play.

This was all fine and dandy, but none of the 25 teams that tried had ever come back from a 3-0 playoff deficit, and the final two games of the series were in New York.

Game 6 was the famous “bloody sock” game, in which Boston hurler Curt Schilling pitched with a torn tendon sheath in his right ankle; it had been sutured in place in an unprecedented procedure by Red Sox doctors. Schilling went seven strong innings, allowing only one run as the Bosox prevailed 4-2.

Game 7 was finished almost before it started, with the Sox clubbing Yankee pitching for six runs in the first two innings and two more in the fourth.  It was all over but the shouting, with Boston winning 10-3 in a laugher.  The Red Sox had done the heretofore impossible, beating the alleged best team in baseball in four straight games after climbing out of the gutter.  It was merely the cherry on the cake when they swept the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2004 World Series.

Underdogs everywhere rejoiced at this inconceivable coup in Boston, but nowhere so much as in the old home town where a record 3.2 million people showed up for the massive victory parade.  The fans lined up over 100 deep in some areas, forcing the city to adjust the route to accommodate the swarm.  Next day, Patrick Thomas, a lifetime fan, went to his grandfather’s grave, placed a Red Sox hat on top of his stone and shared a glass of champagne with Gramps, a Sox fan from 1919 to his death in 1993.  Cemeteries all over New England had stories of similar visits.

Another fan, Jim Gavaghan, got in his car and raced across town to share the joy with his dyed-in-the-wool Sox fan father, a man very old in the tooth.  Perhaps a little too stoked, Jim shook his dad’s hand and shouted, “You can drop dead now!”  His father, only slightly taken aback, replied “Are you kidding?  We’re just getting started.  I’m going to make it to the next one!”  He did, too, despite every prognosis, only succumbing days after the Red Sox dispensed the Colorado Rockies in 2007.  Be a doubter all you like, the power of the underdog is mighty.

That’s three strikes, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com  

        

    

The Wonders Of Lithium

“Look---up in the sky!  It’s a bird!  It’s a plane!  No, it’s LITHIUM to the rescue!”

You folks out there probably don’t know this, but Lithium isn’t merely the magic trick that makes electric cars possible, staves off depression, makes pacemakers viable and keeps your skillet good and greasy all the time.  Now, it turns out the L superhero is kicking some Alzheimer’s ass.  Those hardworking tykes at Harvard Medical School seem to have come across a breakthrough for the ages.

Alzheimer’s is a curse that’s puzzled researchers for decades.  More than 7 million Americans are living with this neurodegenerative nightmare, and it’s predicted that by 2060 the number will double.  Scientists have come across intriguing clues---like the unusual buildup of certain proteins in the brains of people with The Big A---but haven’t been able to pinpoint what’s fundamentally driving the disease.  It’s the famous riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.  But maybe not for much longer.

The Harvard team, led by Bruce Yankner, MD, Ph.D, has linked the dread disease with---you guessed it---a deficiency of lithium in the brain.  The boys also discovered that the metal naturally occurs in the brain and likely plays a major role in shielding it from neurodegeneration.  Yankner first zeroed in on lithium about ten years ago while studying a protein called REST which is believed to protect against Alzheimer’s and is activated by the compound.  Researchers analyzed the brain tissue of cognitively healthy people and those with advanced Alzheimer’s and found that levels of the compound were high in the first group and plunged dramatically in patients with the disease.

Then, they went one step further by testing whether low lithium levels could lead mice to develop Alzheimer’s.  Researchers fed the animals a low-lithium diet, which brought their levels down to what’s typically seen in people with Alzheimer’s and found that this “actually spurred the pathology of the disease and led to memory loss,” according to Yankner.  The scientists were then able to reverse that memory loss and clear the brain of certain hallmarks of the disease, like inflammation and the accumulation of proteins called amyloid plaques, by giving the mice a very low dose of lithium orotate.  After experimenting with several other types of lithium compounds, the team found that lithium orotate was most effective, due to its propensity to evade amyloid, while others bind to it and become inactive.  Wow!

Short of having Dr. Bruce and the gang come to our house, what’s the best thing we can do to get on the lithium train, you might ask.  Well, as you might expect, you can load up on the usual suspects like green leafy vegetables, nuts, legumes, lentils and chickpeas, all of which are great sources of lithium, as are some spices like turmeric and cumin.  “Interestingly, these foods are all core components of the popular Mediterranean diet,” says Yankner.  Lithium can also be found in mineral water.

There are also lithium orotate supplements available online, but Dr. Yankner would rather you didn’t.  “As encouraging as the mouse studies are, until we see it in humans we can’t say definitively whether it would be safe or not and what is the best effective dose.”  But they will soon enough, and one day in the near future lithium tests could detect early-stage Alzheimer’s and be used as a therapeutic treatment.  The Harvard boys hope to initiate medical trials within the next year.

The above is yet another reason we don’t need dumb presidents fouling the waters of Science.  Trumpy’s  shield reads “Mentiri!”  Harvard’s motto is “Veritas.”  The Prez has maybe a couple years left if he’s lucky.  Harvard is 388 years old and counting.  We know who we’re betting on.

Just The Facts, Ma’am:

1. Lithium is the third element in the periodic table.  It has three protons and its symbol is Li.  Lithium has an atomic mass of 6.941.  Natural lithium is a mixture of two stable isotopes, lithium-6 and lithium-7.  The latter accounts for over 92% of the natural abundance of the element.

2. Lithium is an alkali metal.  It’s silver-white in pure form and is so soft it can be cut with a butter knife.  It has one of the lowest melting points and a high boiling point for a metal.

3. Lithium doesn’t occur free in nature.  However, it is found in nearly all igneous rocks and in mineral springs.  It was one of the three elements produced by the big bang, along with hydrogen and helium.

4. Pure lithium is extremely corrosive and requires special handling.  Because it reacts with air and water, the metal is stored under oil or enclosed in an inert atmosphere.  When lithium catches fire, it is difficult to extinguish the flames.

5. Lithium is the lightest metal.  Also, the least dense solid element, with a density of about half that of water.  If lithium didn’t react with water it would float.

“I Don’t Believe In God, But I Believe In Lithium.”---Jaime Lowe

Jaime Lowe: “So, I was on a manic high, which meant that I was hallucinating.  I thought I could talk to Michael Jackson.  I thought I knew secret tunnels to Neverland.  I was like imagining Muppets.  and some of it was very---you know, some parts of mental illness are kind of funny.  Many parts are horrible.  I had accused my dad of being physically abusive and he had never been physically abusive.  At this point, I was running away from him.  And all of my parents.  My parents are divorced.  I have like a million parents.  But they all had seen this pattern of mental disarray and they had figured out the adolescent ward at UCLA was the best place for treatment, so that’s where I ended up.  But I had to take a lot of antipsychotics.  I had to go through a lot before Dr. DeAntonio, the head of adolescent care there, diagnosed me.  He identified my problem immediately because the symptoms are so bizarre, but all similar.

I was there for about three weeks, the first three weeks of my senior year.  It was terrible.  And it was also, you know, fantastic, because I got better.  At the beginning, I was very resistant to medications.  I was still hallucinating, delusional.  I thought the apocalypse was happening.  I thought I was going to war in Nicaragua.  Like, there were these enormous pipes outside the window, and it was just a hospital generator, but I had the idea they were going to get me with poison gas and that it was going to be like another Holocaust and we were all going to die.  I was originally told I was manic depressive, but now they call it bipolar disorder.  That was when I came to the realization that I needed to take the medication.  And that medication was lithium.

So the lithium for me, when I took it, I didn’t feel many side effects, which is partly why it worked for me.  I had been experiencing so much tumult in my life I needed to have something that kind of evened everything out and the lithium did that.  I told myself, ‘okay, this is what’s going to work for me, and this is what I have to do.’  When I went to college, everything was great and I didn’t really think about it.  Lithium was kind of in my back pocket and it worked.  It worked so well that after college my psychiatrist decided we could like, taper down, maybe even try life without lithium.  That was not a good idea.  When I’m not on the medication, the highs and lows are unmanageable.  There are highs that are like wearing head-to-toe glitter and 18 tutus and 30 necklaces.  Don’t even ask me about the lows.” 

A Peek Into The Crystal Ball

Lithium faces a mission no superhero would envy; to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.  Overall, lithium’s demand is forecast to increase 12 percent annually through 2030, underpinned by EV adoption, renewable integration and digitalization.  One million tons were mined in 2024 and the output must grow to 2.7 million tons by 2030, particularly in the EV sector.  The disparity between raw material supply and demand is worsened by the lengthy timeline for developing lithium mines.  These mines can take 5 to 25 years to become operational, while midstream and downstream facilities require less than five years.  This misalignment presents a significant bottleneck for the battery industry.  Benchmark analysis reveals a staggering $514 billion investment is required by 2030 to meet battery demand.  General Motors and Tesla are making significant moves, with GM investing $650 million in Lithium Americas for its Nevada mine and Tesla is building a $1 billion lithium refinery in Texas.  Tesla plans 20 million EVs annually by 2030, while General Motors and Mercedes-Benz aim for fully electric cars by 2035 and 2030, respectively.

With lithium in relatively short supply, it behooves the industry and owners of electric vehicles to get the most out of their current batteries.  A lithium battery will need less frequent charging to stay healthy is you use the 20-80 rule; keep its state of charge between 20% and 80% rather than frequently charging to 100% or letting it fully discharge.  By avoiding extreme states of charge, you reduce stress on the battery and significantly prolong its overall lifespan.  When storing the car for an extended period, aim for a charge of 50-80 percent.

If you’re an old reptile like Bill, who unconscionably prefers his gas-guzzler, you’ll be out of luck in the relatively near future.  Almost all cars are likely to be electric within the next 20 years, maybe sooner.  The Senate blocked California’s law banning new gas-powered vehicles after 2035, but Captain Trumpy won’t be around much longer and similar laws are coming.  Lithium---it’s the wave of the future.  You can rock it, you can roll it, do the stomp and even stroll it, but you can’t slow it down.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com