"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be."
           - Mother Night

"Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand."
           - Cat's Cradle

 ~~~Light Opera~~~

Morning Smiles

http://www.just-oldies.com/1969/here_comes_the_sun.htm 

Guess I better start with the real deal here.  I don't have a lot of energy.  Some immune, neurological, endocrine, blood flow thing decided it liked me, came for tea one day, and never left.  So life sometimes yells, "CHALLENGE!" while I just lay here straight faced and keep right on eating sunflower seeds and zoning out. I am not an aloof person.

I AM wildly pleased to meet all of you, and exchange even the briefest of connections.  Please know that I do care,  but that my life moves a little bit slower than well people's lives. I also have had a brain aneurysm repaired. It was dead center to mission control,  and I am left with a titanium clip holding my rigging together. The reason I mention this, is that I cannot read OR write as easily as I once could.  So bear with me, and I will tell you my stories bit by bit. 

Meanwhile,  remember to look up, and cherish the day.  Remember to shine: we have a choice.

Love to CC, Pop, Scratch, Dazey, Chas, and all who pass this way.

~~~Light Opera~~~ 

Ode Magazine; gotta love it.

http://www.odemagazine.com/news.php?nID=624 

Certifiably...saintly?
UNITED STATES. In the early 1960s, when the first kidney transplants were taking place, something remarkable happened in New York City. A hospital urgently needed donor kidneys, and found nine perfectly healthy people willing to part with one of theirs for recipients they did not know. After the operation, all nine reported experiencing "positive emotional benefits, with no regrets or psychological complications after donation." And yet the project was scrapped, because doctors "remained suspicious of these donors' psychological status and motivation."
In 1999, nevertheless, a new program began, since by then removing a kidney had become a less-dangerous operation. And once again, perfectly healthy donors (200 so far) came forward to give up one of their kidneys to a total stranger.
Are these people the ultimate idealists or psychologically unsound? Psychology Today (March/April 2005) set out to interview some of them to find an answer. It discovered people of character-types who do a lot of volunteer work. Most said they found it completely normal to donate a kidney, and did not see themselves as saints or altruists. The magazine also ran across research by Canadian psychologist Antonia Henderson, who interviewed many of the donors for a report called Lunatics or Saints? "I am trained to detect pathology," she says, "but these folks are psychologically healthy."
It would seem the donors simply want to make the world a little bit better. But that's not quite it. "It struck me that it was not that they wanted to make the world a nicer place, but that they think it already is," says Henderson.

smiles, ~~~Light Opera~~~