Diego Rivera: Calla Lilies*
Everything’s plundered, sold, betrayed,
Death's great black wing scrapes the air,
Misery gnaws to the bone.
Why then do we not despair?
By day, from the surrounding woods,
cherries blow summer into town;
at night the deep transparent skies
glitter with newborn galaxies.
And the miraculous comes so close
to the ruined, dirty houses —
something not known to anyone,
but wild in our breast for centuries.
~ Anna Akhmatova, tr Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward
I think the best comment on this poem is this statement:
“Probably of all our feelings the only one that is not truly ours is hope. Hope belongs to life, it is life itself defending itself.” ~ Julio Cortazar
Akhmatova by Yuri Annenkov, 1921 *
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it—always.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
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MARGUERITE YOURCENAR’S MEMOIRS OF HADRIAN
~ Memoirs of Hadrian begins in illness and distance, and with a letter. “My dear Mark,” the dying emperor writes from his villa at Tibur to his eventual heir, the adolescent he blesses as Aurelius. “I have formed a project for telling you about my life [. . .] to know myself better before I die.”
In the novel—Marguerite Yourcenar’s masterpiece—Hadrian’s rise from provincial Spain to the throne of Caesar is almost an afterthought. Instead, these Memoirs linger over Hadrian’s meditations on the nature of power and its proper use in affairs of state or friendship or love. Such rigorous examination of facts—especially the troublesome fact of the self—serves the real 21st century as well as the imagined 2nd. The emperor still speaks to us, however that “us” may change.
So I returned to Hadrian’s vision of a Rome made global through its citizens’ exchange of goods and ideas rather than its legions’ conquests. A peace between Rome and Parthia reopens trade routes all the way to India: “The circulation of gold and the passage of ideas (as subtle as that of vital air in the arteries) were beginning again within the world’s great body: earth’s pulse began to beat once more.”
Despising sectarian bigotry, he dreams of a Jerusalem—and a world—where “several races and several beliefs could live in peace [. . .].” In other words, he wishes, as anyone does, for the impossible. Still he applies all his power to the realization of such an ideal. In adopting Marcus, he reflects: “I may be giving mankind the only chance it will ever have [. . .] to see a philosopher pure of heart ruling over his fellow men.” I winced at all these lines; they stung far more today than when I first read them.
The novel’s most compelling events are those in which the emperor’s powers falter—in illness or age, or in love. When Antinous, the love of Hadrian’s saeculum aurum dies suddenly, at twenty, the emperor and all his lavished titles become “only a man with greying hair sobbing on the deck of a boat.”
Even in the midst of love, Hadrian is alone; his constant solitude is the price of his imperium. His companions of mind console him, his remembered and imagined travels. “There are places where one has chosen to live,” Yourcenar writes in her notes, “invisible abodes [. . .] quite outside the current of time. I have lived in Tibur, and shall die there, perhaps, as Hadrian did on Achilles’ Isle.” Lately I have lived most in Tibur too, at a villa I imagine only as Yourcenar imagined it.
The book ends as with the end of illness, the ultimate distance of death. Soon what Hadrian writes of his beloved Antinous will be true of him as well: “Centuries yet unborn within the dark womb of time would pass by [. . .] that tomb without restoring life to him, but likewise without adding to his death, and without changing the fact that he had been” (210-11). The fact of having been is little consolation, but precious little.
Life is atrocious, we know. What meaning and wisdom and joy we can muster from it is all the more precious for its evanescence, or for our own. This is not news. In his own golden age, Hadrian has the words humanitas, libertas, felicitas struck onto coin, as if to etch them in metal meant to keep them. Yourcenar herself inscribed these words for autograph-seekers bearing copies of her book.
Before his death, Hadrian chooses the word patientia for the motto embossed on new minted currency, a reminder that despite his agony and grief, “there is still much to be done.” Patientia, that ancestor from which descend our English words passion and patience. We need much of each just now, and to remember that their Latin root is suffering, as Marguerite Yourcenar and her Hadrian so well understood. ~
https://lithub.com/passion-and-patience-on-the-timeless-virtues-of-marguerite-yourcenars-hadrian/?fbclid=IwAR1ARb8LEMEvA1KVqy71GTS12GeT9swiovUt4FxxxzQAWqwXa6W4iDSIaTM
Hadrian: bronze head found in the Thames; the British Museum*
“I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness that characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with the arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.” ~ Saul Bellow
Oriana:
But first, the reader (or viewer or listener) has to have achieved a state of attention rather than distraction. Or at least be prepared to pay attention, the way we get quiet after we enter a museum.
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IQ VERSUS PERSONALITY: WHAT DETERMINES SUCCESS?
~ How much is a child’s future success determined by innate intelligence? Economist James Heckman says it’s not what people think. He likes to ask educated non-scientists—especially politicians and policy makers—how much of the difference between people’s incomes can be tied to IQ. Most guess around 25 percent, even 50 percent, he says. But the data suggest a much smaller influence: about 1 or 2 percent.
So if IQ is only a minor factor in success, what is it that separates the low earners from the high ones? Or, as the saying goes: If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?
Science doesn’t have a definitive answer, although luck certainly plays a role. But another key factor is personality, according to a paper Heckman co-authored in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He found financial success was correlated with conscientiousness, a personality trait marked by diligence, perseverance and self-discipline.
To reach that conclusion, he and colleagues examined four different data sets, which, between them, included IQ scores, standardized test results, grades and personality assessments for thousands of people in the U.K., the U.S. and the Netherlands. Some of the data sets followed people over decades, tracking not just income but criminal records, body mass index and self-reported life satisfaction.
The study found that grades and achievement-test results were markedly better predictors of adult success than raw IQ scores. That might seem surprising—after all, don’t they all measure the same thing? Not quite. Grades reflect not just intelligence but also what Heckman calls “non-cognitive skills,” such as perseverance, good study habits and the ability to collaborate—in other words, conscientiousness. To a lesser extent, the same is true of test scores. Personality counts.
Heckman, who shared a Nobel Prize in 2000 and is founder of the University of Chicago’s Center for the Economics of Human Development, believes success hinges not just on innate ability but on skills that can be taught. His own research suggests childhood interventions can be helpful, and that conscientiousness is more malleable than IQ. Openness—a broad trait that includes curiosity—is also connected to test scores and grades.
IQ still matters, of course. Someone with an IQ of 70 isn’t going to be able to do things that are easy for a person with an IQ of 190. But Heckman says many people fail to break into the job market because they lack skills that aren’t measured on intelligence tests. They don’t understand how to behave with courtesy in job interviews. They may show up late or fail to dress properly. Or on the job, they make it obvious they’ll do no more than the minimum, if that.
John Eric Humphries, a co-author of the paper, says he hoped their work could help clarify the complicated, often misunderstood notion of ability. Even IQ tests, which were designed to assess innate problem-solving capabilities, appear to measure more than just smarts. In a 2011 study, University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth found that IQ scores also reflected test-takers’ motivation and effort. Diligent, motivated kids will work harder to answer tough questions than equally intelligent but lazier ones.
Teaching personality or character traits in school wouldn’t be easy. For one thing it’s not always clear whether more of a trait is always better. The higher the better for IQ, and perhaps for conscientiousness as well. But personality researchers have suggested the middle ground is best for other traits -- you don’t want to be so introverted that you can’t speak up, or so extroverted that you can’t shut up and listen.
What does any of this have to do with economics? “Our ultimate goal is to improve human well-being,” Heckman says, and a major determinant of well-being comes down to skills.
A newer study published in the journal Nature Human Behavior focused on the flip side of success: hardship. After following some 1,000 New Zealanders for more than 30 years, researchers concluded that tests of language, behavioral skills and cognitive abilities taken when children were just three years old could predict who was most likely to need welfare, commit crimes, or become chronically ill.
The lead author of that paper, Duke University psychologist Terrie Moffitt, says she hopes the results would foster compassion and help, not stigma. Her results also suggested that helping people improve certain kinds of skills before they’re out of diapers would benefit everyone.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/if-you-re-so-smart-why-aren-t-you-rich?utm_source=pocket-newtab
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~ Plankton are responsible for 50% of earth’s oxygen. They are an essential part of the food chain. And billions of billions of ancient plankton have given their bodies to form the crude oil that powers modern society.
In the astonishing world of plankton, bright pink, micron-sized dinoflagellates looking like spaceships glide slowly over the surface of the sea; beautiful, flute-like tintinnids exchange genes temporarily with each other; and slender chaetognatha, or arrow worms, bristle with hairs and become cannibals as they gobble up their relatives.
These and a million other mostly microscopic planktonic species of viruses, microbes, larvae and eukaryotes are the largely invisible origins of life, the very bottom of the food chain and the enablers of all existence. Together, these tiny, single-cell life forms that drift on the upper layer of the oceans produce half our oxygen, act as carbon sinks, influence our weather and serve as the base of the ocean food web.
Using different types of net [Tara Oceans Expeditions] collected and sequenced nearly a billion genetic barcodes and discovered, at depths of up to 1,000 meters, unknown worlds of viruses, bacteria, worms, gelatinous creatures and strange photosynthetic organisms. Many had never been seen before or even imagined and the Tara expeditions have transformed the study of our oceans.
Sardet’s book, called Plankton, merges science with art and illustrates what he calls “the irreplaceable beauty and diversity of planktonic life forms”, but it comes with a warning that the world’s oceans are being changed by climate change and acidification.
“Some data suggest phytoplankton have significantly declined in the world’s oceans over the past century,” he says. “On the other hand, some warm water predators such as jellyfish are thriving. Whether we are witnessing an actual global decline or massive changes in planktonic distribution will require more study. Certainly many species will be forced to adapt.
“We have modified the ecosystems by diminishing the big predators. No one knows if what man has done is reversible. We are closer to the start than to the end of what there is to know.” ~
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/06/microscopic-magic-of-plankton
CAN GARDENING HELP YOU LIVE TO ONE HUNDRED?
~ It is well-known that an outdoor lifestyle with moderate physical activity is linked to longer life, and gardening is an easy way to accomplish both. “If you garden, you’re getting some low-intensity physical activity most days, and you tend to work routinely,” says Buettner.
He says there is evidence that gardeners live longer and are less stressed. A variety of studies confirm this, pointing to both the physical and mental health benefits of gardening.
In recent Dutch study, researchers asked participants to complete a stressful task, then split them into two groups. One group read indoors and the other gardened outdoors for 30 minutes. The group that read reported that their mood “further deteriorated”, while the gardeners not only had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol afterwards, they also felt “fully restored” to a good mood.
Australian researchers following men and women in their 60s found that those who regularly gardened had a 36% lower risk of dementia than their non-gardening counterparts.
And preliminary studies among elderly people suffering from cognitive issues (such as dementia and Alzheimer’s) report benefits from garden settings and horticulture therapy. Sunlight and fresh air, for example, help agitated elders feel calmer, while the colors and textures of various plants and vegetables can improve visual and tactile ability.
Let nature nurture you
It’s not just about health effects, either: the social benefits of gardening can also increase longevity. Dr Bradley Willcox of the University of Hawaii studies centenarians in Okinawa, which has the world’s highest ratio of centenarians, at approximately 50 per 100,000 people. Many residents maintain small personal gardens well into old age.
He says that gardening helps with other essential, if somewhat more ephemeral, factors in increasing longevity. “In Okinawa, they say that anybody who grows old healthfully needs an ikigai, or reason for living. Gardening gives you that something to get up for every day.”
On top of that, explains Willcox, Okinawans value the concept of yuimaru, or a high level of social connectedness. “Getting together at a local market, bringing your produce and sharing your latest creations from the garden is a big social activity,” he says. “That certainly helps people feel grounded and connected.”
A sense of connection to other people is important, but so too is the individual connection to nature. One Harvard University study showed that people who were surrounded by lush greenery lived longer, with a lower chance of developing cancer or respiratory illnesses.
Farming for a longer life?
If gardening is good, is farming even better? Many of the lifestyle factors associated with longevity – such as living in the country and getting lots of exercise – apply to farmers as well.
Some evidence suggests that farming is one of the healthiest occupations. One Australian study showed that farmers were a third less likely to suffer from a chronic illness, and 40% less likely to visit a GP than non-farm workers. Researchers from the US compared mortality rates among farmers against rates for the general population and found farmers less likely to die from cancer, heart diseases or diabetes. And studies in Sweden and France have also showed farmers are healthier than non-farmers.
Dr Masahiko Gemma of Waseda University in Tokyo studied self-employed farmers in the central province of Saitama, who were found to have a longer life expectancy that non-farmers and work later into life. Many of Gemma’s respondents were part-time farmers or retirees, and he describes many of their responsibilities as “similar to the work of maintaining a garden”.
“Small family farms are common in Japanese agriculture,” says Gemma, explaining that his survey did not include farmers working for large-scale corporate operations. He found that self-employed farmers enjoyed statistically significant and positive changes in psychological and physical conditions before and after engaging in light farming activities. “Our guess is that farming work contributes to the maintenance of good health and spirits,” he says. ~
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20181210-gardening-could-be-the-hobby-that-helps-you-live-to-100?fbclid=IwAR2jZlxUkZN6IACL4D0ockNedyhTWqjsCnv3Uc8M8dNo83PQnIsQKmVQRJU&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com
*WHAT TO SAY IF CLOSE FAMILY WORRIES THAT YOU ARE GOING TO HELL
~ My mother said this to me and my reply was in this vein... What's lucky about your faith, mom, is that your god has promised you, -PROMISED- that there will be no suffering in Heaven. So you can be assured that if I go to hell and suffer the torment of fires for eternity, _you_won't_care_. God promised. It will either be as if I never existed and you will forget all about me OR perhaps you will find pleasure in my rightful torture. You can rest easy - it won't bother you a bit once you're in heaven. Says so right there in the book. So. Back to earth. How about that concert the kids sang in? Beautiful, wasn't it?
How did that work? Well, she has never asked me about it again. So I'd say it worked. ~
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I remember that it in Dante’s Inferno an angel or a saved soul can come down to hell on some errand, but is completely untouched by the suffering s/he sees. No distress at all.
By the way, I never had to deal with this. Those who appear to care for me don’t believe in hell, or else believe in god in some sense (e.g. as “the soul of the universe”), and assume that this god accepts everyone, and there is no reward or punishment in the afterlife.
Imagining a conversation with someone sophisticated I’d use the “state of mind” definition, and the non-existence of personal consciousness after death. But then the more sophisticated would not be talking about hell.
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“WHEN A MAN SELLS HIS DAUGHTER AS A SLAVE,
she shall not be go out [be freed in the seventh year] as the male slaves do” ~ Exodus 21:7
I came across it and thought for the thousandth time how terrible it was to be a woman back then . . . and then immersed myself in other things. But the verse keeps haunting me. “When a man sells his daughter” — just that alone.
And there are parts of the world where this still goes on . . . and worse.
What pure luck, to have been born in the West this late in history.
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“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.” ~ Frida Kahlo
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MOOD AND GUT BACTERIA
~ The study that ignited the whole concept [of bacteria affecting mood] took place at Kyushu University in Japan.
The researchers showed that "germ-free" mice - those that never came into contact with microbes - pumped out twice the amount of stress hormone when distressed than normal mice.
The animals were identical except for their microbes. It was a strong hint that the difference was a result of their micro-organisms.
It was the first hint of microbial medicine in mental health.
The brain is the most complex object in the known universe so how could it be reacting to bacteria in the gut?
One route is the vagus nerve; it's an information superhighway connecting the brain and the gut.
Bacteria break down fiber in the diet into chemicals called short-chain fatty acids, which can have effects throughout the body.
The microbiome influences the immune system, which has also been implicated in brain disorders.
There is even emerging evidence that gut bugs could be using tiny strips of genetic code called microRNAs to alter how DNA works in nerve cells.
There is now a rich vein of research linking germ-free mice with changes in behavior and even the structure of the brain.
At Cork University Hospital, Prof. Ted Dinan is trying to uncover what happens to the microbiome in his depressed patients.
A good rule of thumb is a healthy microbiome is a diverse microbiome, containing a wide variety of different species living all over our bodies.
Prof. Dinan says: "If you compare somebody who is clinically depressed with someone who is healthy, there is a narrowing in the diversity of the microbiota.
"I'm not suggesting it is the sole cause of depression, but I do believe for many individuals it does play a role in the genesis of depression."
And he argues some lifestyles that weaken our gut bacteria, such as a diet low in fiber, can make us more vulnerable.
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You're more microbe than human - if you count all the cells in your body, only 43% are human.
The rest is our microbiome and includes bacteria, viruses, fungi and single-celled archaea.
The human genome - the full set of genetic instructions for a human being - is made up of 20,000 instructions called genes.
But add all the genes in our microbiome together and the figure comes out at between two million and 20 million microbial genes,
The microbial genome known as the second genome and is linked to diseases including allergy, obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, Parkinson's, whether cancer drugs work and even depression and autism.
It's an intriguing concept - that an imbalance in the gut microbiome could be involved in depression.
So scientists at the APC Microbiome centre, at University College Cork, started transplanting the microbiome from depressed patients to animals. It's known in the biz as a trans-poo-sion.
It showed that if you transfer the bacteria, you transfer the behavior too.
Prof. John Cryan told the BBC: "We were very surprised that you could, by just taking microbiome samples, reproduce many of the features of a depressed individual in a rat."
This included anhedonia - the way depression can lead to people losing interest in what they normally find pleasurable.
For the rats, that was sugary water they could not get enough of, yet "when they were given the microbiome from a depressed individual, they no longer cared", says Prof. Cryan.
Similar evidence - linking the microbiome, the gut and the brain - is emerging in Parkinson's disease.
It is clearly a brain disorder. Patients lose control over their muscles as brain cells die and it leads to a characteristic tremor.
But Prof. Sarkis Mazmanian, a medical microbiologist from Caltech, is building the case that gut bacteria are involved.
He has found "very powerful" differences between the microbiomes of people with Parkinson's and those without the disease.
Studies in animals, genetically hardwired to develop Parkinson's, show gut bacteria were necessary for the disease to emerge.
And when stool was transplanted from Parkinson's patients to those mice, they developed "much worse" symptoms than using feces sourced from a healthy individual.
Prof. Mazmanian told the BBC: "The changes in the microbiome appear to be driving the motor symptoms, appear to be causal to the motor symptoms.
"We're very excited about this because it allows us to target the microbiome as an avenue for new therapies."
The evidence linking the microbiome and the brain is as fascinating as it is early.
But the pioneers of this field see an exciting prospect on the horizon - a whole new way of influencing our health and wellbeing.
If microbes do influence our brains then maybe we can change our microbes for the better.
The microbiome - our second genome - is opening up an entirely new way of doing medicine and its role is being investigated in nearly every disease you can imagine including allergies, cancer and obesity.
I've been struck by how malleable the second genome is and how that is in such stark contrast to our own DNA.
The food we eat, the pets we have, the drugs we take, how we're born… all alter our microbial inhabitants.
And if we're doing that unwittingly, imagine the potential of being able to change our microbiome for the better.
Prof. Cryan said: “I predict in the next five years when you go to your doctor for your cholesterol testing etc, you'll also get your microbiome assessed.
The microbiome is the fundamental future of personalized medicine.”
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-bacteria-are-changing-your-mood?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Mary:
From Hadrian to the microbiome the question seems to be — what is the self? Certainly more than our history, it must also be the process and development of thought, not only memory but how we frame and tell that story, our edits. Just as IQ is inadequate as predictor of success without including personality, motivation, background and family influence, most definitions of identity remain partial at best. Without considering all these, as well as habits and behavior, it would be a mystery why all Mensa members are not equally successful or even adequately so...and many are not.
The real stunner here is the connection between the microbiome and behavior, or what might be called personality. It is revolutionary to think that all those organisms that populate us, that we think of as present but "not me," are surprisingly very much part of the "me" we assume wholly our own. In some ways this is very disturbing, making us even more determined and less autonomous than we thought. The boundaries of identity expand and blur...eventually including questions like who's the boss...can the microbiome hijack us like some insect parasites, directing our behavior to serve ends not strictly our own? Fascinating and full of many possibilities for both medicine and psychology.
Oriana:
Well said. In an individualistic culture, it may be difficult to accept that anyone’s “self” is composed of lots of things not of our choosing. It’s bad enough that we have no control over our human genes, but now we find out we have to deal with some 20 million microbial genes!
However, we are not entirely powerless — we can eat a diet rich in fiber and fermented foods, and thus nourish the good bacteria. Still, we can’t quite reverse the diet we ate in childhood, or our mother’s prenatal diet. But to a limited extent, we can improve our microbiome and reap the rewards of better mood and more energy, as well as a better-regulated immune system, less inflammation (just lowering the inflammation lifts the mood), and various other benefits we are only beginning to explore).
I think of my good bacteria as my special pets, and I try to feed them well. Sauerkraut, kimchi, fiber-rich sweet potatoes — foods I didn’t use to eat, but now consume daily for the sake of my micro-darlings. And I can feel the benefits.
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FACIAL MASKS MOST EFFECTIVE STRATEGY TO STOP COVID INFECTION
~ A new study out in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that among all the strategies for reducing transmission, wearing face masks may be the central variable that determines the spread of the virus.
“Our analysis reveals that the difference with and without mandated face covering represents the determinant in shaping the trends of the pandemic,” the team, from Texas A&M University, the University of Texas at Austin, California Institute of Technology, and the University of California San Diego, write in their new paper.
They analyzed the various mitigation measures put in place in the three major centers of the outbreak—Wuhan, Italy, and New York City—from January 23 to May 9, 2020. The team also looked at the slopes of the curves representing the number of new cases, and how they changed after each measure was mandated. For instance, in NYC, the stay-at-home and social distancing orders didn’t do a lot: the curve really started to change after masks were mandatory. (See the figure below.) Compare that to the U.S. overall, which never put in place a face-covering policy.
And in Wuhan, the response was not only swift, but multiple measures—namely, social distancing, lockdown, and face coverings—were put in place simultaneously. In the U.S., it was slower, and importantly, sequential, making it much less effective. “[T]he response to the pandemic was generally slow in the western world, and implementation of the intervention measures occurred only consecutively,” the authors write. “Clearly, the responsiveness of the mitigation measures governed the evolution, scope, and magnitude of the pandemic globally.”
The team also looked at how the virus, in droplets and aerosols, travels in the air; how fast it travels; the weather conditions in the respective geographic locations; the “dose” and effectiveness of how it infects the respiratory system; and other variables. "Our results clearly show that airborne transmission via respiratory aerosols represents the dominant route for the spread of COVID-19," said study author Renyi Zhang in a statement.
"Our study establishes very clearly that using a face mask is not only useful to prevent infected coughing droplets from reaching uninfected persons, but is also crucial for these uninfected persons to avoid breathing the minute atmospheric particles (aerosols) that infected people emit when talking and that can remain in the atmosphere tens of minutes and can travel tens of feet," said study author Mario Molina in a statement.
Indeed, a study last month in the same journal showed that just talking loudly in a room released droplets that lingered in the air for eight to 14 minutes. The new study also echoes the update made by the CDC recently, stating that while transmission by infected surfaces (e.g., touching a doorknob that a sick person coughed on) was possible, it’s not the main route of infection—air is.
Interestingly, the team also calculated how many people were likely spared from infection by wearing face coverings. "By analyzing the pandemic trends without face-covering using the statistical method and by projecting the trend, we calculated that over 66,000 infections were prevented by using a face mask in little over a month in New York City,” said Zhang. In Italy the number was 78,000. “We conclude that wearing a face mask in public corresponds to the most effective means to prevent inter-human transmission. This inexpensive practice, in conjunction with social distancing and other procedures, is the most likely opportunity to stop the COVID-19 pandemic."
As states continue to reopen and many see steady rises in infection rates, they should heed the message in the findings of studies like this one.
Finally, the researchers make the important point that science must be the foundation upon which pandemic policy is based. It’s unfortunate that we live in a time where this point has to be made, and repeated, but here we are. They write that “sound science should be effectively communicated to policy makers and should constitute the prime foundation in decision-making amid this pandemic. Implementing policies without a scientific basis could lead to catastrophic consequences, particularly in light of attempts to reopen the economy in many countries.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2020/06/13/face-masks-may-be-the-key-determinant-of-the-covid-19-curve-study-suggests/?fbclid=IwAR2CSXEcY6xmah5yoQluLCgVC4zOULVhx1zAjjqPd4BmRn7BtDX2PZsRiNM#1df2a8446497
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ending on beauty:
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
~ Langston Hughes
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