Pardon me, I'll be in the kitchen

 

I  haven't had a slow cooker in a while. Then Prime did it's special sales days, and I had a gift certificate which covered all but $3 of this gadget. Now I even have a pressure cooker, which can make yogurt too. Thanks to family who really gave it to me as a birthday present.

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I had a great talk with our new UU minister, Rev. Jamie Boyce. It was kind of personal, but also I needed to find some helpers, so she channeled me towards the right people. I think I'd rather try a new mechanic for my old car based on their recommendations rather than FaceBook.

Nobel winners find light responsive cells in algae that may help brains

I find some science interesting to consider, from a creative viewpoint. I've been having some eye difficulty, and have a friend with another eye problem. Just saying, I'm interested in vision in a new way these days. So this article caught my attention. 

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 How pond algae led to a Nobel prize and a new way to study the brain

Published: October 5, 2026 in The Conversation

Scientists who worked out how to control brain cells with light have won this year’s Nobel prize in physiology or medicine. Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel were honoured for their research into “light-gated ion channels and optogenetics”.

Peter Hegemann, at Humboldt University of Berlin, and Georg Nagel, at the University of Würzburg, wanted to understand how a tiny, single-celled alga called Chlamydomonas senses light. Light-sensing is not unique to animals with eyes: organisms throughout the living world use light to detect their surroundings and respond to changes in their environment. Even single-cell organisms have proteins that respond to light. These proteins are used to move towards or away from light, to generate energy and to respond to the various demands of a 24-hour day.

Hegemann and Nagel discovered that Chlamydomonas has a beautifully ingenious mechanism of light detection that relies on a single protein called channelrhodopsin.

Channelrhodopsin is built into the outer membrane of the algal cell. Part of the protein faces the water outside the cell and part faces the inside. The protein also contains a small molecule called retinaldehyde, which is able to absorb light.

When light hits the retinaldehyde inside channelrhodopsin, it changes shape. This makes the channelrhodopsin protein change shape too. That change opens a tiny passage through the cell membrane. Positively charged particles, including sodium, can then flow from the water outside the alga into the cell. This movement of charged particles sends a signal inside the alga that helps it swim.

How fantastic to have solved such an interesting biological question, but why the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine? The answer lies in the way nerve cells work. Nerve cells use the movement of charged particles (called “ions”) across their membranes to control their activity. When positively charged particles flow into a nerve cell, they can make it more active.

The researchers realised that if they could put channelrhodopsin into nerve cells, they might be able to switch those cells on simply by shining a light on them. That is exactly what Hegemann, Nagel and the third Nobel-prize winner, Karl Deisseroth, a psychiatrist and bioengineer at Stanford University in California, went on to do.

Switching on nerve cells with light

The ability to control nerve cells with light is called optogenetics. It has become a powerful research tool because scientists can use it to switch specific groups of nerve cells on and off and see what happens.

First, scientists deliver the gene for channelrhodopsin to the nerve cells they want to study. The gene is usually carried into the cells by a virus that has been altered so that it cannot cause disease. The cells then make the channelrhodopsin protein, which makes them respond to light.

In animals such as mice, scientists can shine light into the brain through a thin optical fibre. When the light reaches the cells, channelrhodopsin opens and the cells become active. Nearby nerve cells that do not contain the protein are unaffected.

Light can be aimed at a very small part of the brain and switched on and off extremely quickly. This makes optogenetics a powerful way to investigate how the brain works. For example, if scientists want to know whether a particular group of nerve cells is involved in memory, sleep, sensation or movement, say, they can switch those cells on with light and see what happens.

In one experiment in 2012, a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology gave mice a mild electric shock in a particular cage. They used optogenetics to tag the nerve cells in the brain’s memory centre that were active during that the fear-conditioning experiment. Days later, in a different cage, they switched those cells on with light. The mice froze in fear, as if they remembered the shock.

Mice that were not shocked did not freeze, which showed that the light was reactivating a specific memory. Deisseroth was one of the study’s authors.

Optogenetics has transformed scientists’ ability to investigate how the brain and nervous system work. It may also have a future as a treatment. Optogenetics is already in early-stage clinical trials for people with retinal degeneration. In these trials, researchers introduce light-sensitive proteins into nerve cells that remain in the retina after the cells that normally detect light – called rods and cones – have been lost. This can make surviving cells respond to light and restore some vision.

Researchers are also investigating whether optogenetics could eventually be used to treat neurological conditions, including Parkinson’s and epilepsy.

This year’s Nobel prize celebrates work that started with a question that may sound esoteric: how do Chlamydomonas swim toward light? This question has no obvious practical importance. It doesn’t address an urgent need in human health, nor is it a clear route to riches. The success of optogenetics is an illustration of the importance of continuing to ask questions simply to understand the world around us because it’s impossible to predict where knowledge will take us.

Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel, winners of the 2026 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine. 

Ill. Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach, CC BY

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Just moving

 I'm enjoying thinking about an article I recently read, so here's an excerpt...

A question I’ve been exploring for most of my life is: what changes when we move our spirituality, or let movement become our spiritual practice? In this essay I offer some characteristics of a moving spirituality that I explored in my PhD and later in my book Dancing in the Muddy Temple: A Moving Spirituality of Land and Body.

Dove in the Branches. Image by Andy Murray

Movement is about Connection & Transformation

First of all, movement adds a different language for encountering the sacred. It’s not just ‘sitting still and emptying the mind’, or ‘dancing ecstatically’ (did you know that ecstasy means something like ‘having the god within’?).

Instead, it is a way of searching for and communicating with the layers of the seen and unseen world.… Recently I even start to see it as a way of encountering the mystery in the space between, between objects, emotions and thoughts.

Movement strengthens an immanent (instead of transcendent) spirituality that is expressed in our living, breathing body. Instead of still form mediation while the mind travels, movement mobilises our spine, (called the ‘Hollow Bone’ in some traditions), to enable receiving divine wisdom. Instead of consciousness travelling outward, beyond the corporeality of the body, we draw it in, and ‘wake up’ inside this interior reality where we are a spirit in a body. That way, we can experience the divine with literally just a movement away.

Movement also offers a way of ‘transforming’ states on the plains of the body, heart, mind and consciousness. A simple breathing exercise or repetitive gesture can help to transform different emotions. It’s like we are giving clear ‘direction’ to meditation in this way, by gently swaying from side to side, or calming our mental activity with a grounding movement from up to down. The combination of moving the spine in conjunction with conscious breathing seems to reset the nervous system more effectively than anything I know. 

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 From Feminism in Religion, by Eileen Kieft

You may have read several years ago when I enjoyed practicing Feldenkrais movements. Slow and minimal body gestures and postures were different but somewhat like yoga...but mainly the awareness one gained was a big part of it. Muscle memories are wonderful.

I even remember some of the Tai Chi that I learned years ago.

This morning I watched a jogger running down the street below my apartment. I haven't ever been interested in that practice myself, but watch the rhythm of motion that those people enjoy.

Yes, movement and meditation are really great.

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Joy is our birthright. Each and every one of us, especially those of us who have been conditioned to feel unworthy of it.

RACHEL RICKETTS ------------ Change a Light Day (First Sunday in October) Country Inn Bed & Breakfast Day (First Sunday in October) Dick Tracy Day eDay Education Day (Kiribati) Improve Your Office Day Intergeneration Day (First Sunday in October) International African Diaspora Day (First Sunday in October) International Blessings of the Fishing Fleet Day - (First Sunday in October) International Toot Your Flute Day Kanelbullens Dag (Cinnamon Bun Day) Lesotho Independence Day National G.O.E. (Growth, Overcome, Empower) Day (Sunday of the First Full Weekend in October) National Golf Day National Improve Your Office Day National Pickle Day (First Sunday in October) National Ship in a Bottle Day National Taco Day National Truckers Day National Vodka Day St. Francis of Assisi’s Feast Day Ten-Four Day World Animal Day World Communion Day (First Sunday in October) World Pet’s Day

Trivia and critters

 

I try when I awaken at night, to remember something in nature that I saw that day. Fortunately I have house plants!

The first Peanuts comic strip debuted on October 2, 1950 and featured Patty, Shermy, and "Good ol' Charlie Brown!" Happy anniversary to these wonderful young people of all kinds!

When we were reading Peanuts in the papers daily, we might spend an evening watching 2 movies, a cartoon, and a news reel from the comfort of our cars. There was no grass there then!

from Swedish artist Jenny Soderlund.

The Dryads by Debra A Hitchcock

Sharing with Saturday's Critters

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There’s power in love to help and heal when nothing else can. There’s power in love to lift up and liberate when nothing else will. There’s power in love to show us the way to live.

BISHOP MICHAEL B. CURRY ---------------------- Come visit me at Life in Durango please.

Soft fog

 

Fog is rising above my Durango CO neighborhood. 

Sharing with City Daily Photos whose theme is soft.

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There is in you something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself… that is the only true guide that you will ever have.

HOWARD THURMAN

From mountains to EMPs

 

From the internet...fortunately good photographers are traveling around in Colorado capturing the fall colors and sharing them on FaceBook.

My photo this morning. Another day of cool rain...temperatures in 50s.

Just wanted to have something to post for today!

I've read John Walter's newsletter today, about how EMPs will easily destroy our civilization,

 Electromagnetic Pulses. 

I've also read One Second After - a 2009 science fiction novel by American writer William R. Forstchen. The novel deals with an unexpected electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States as it affects the people living in and around the small American town of Black Mountain, North Carolina.

Released in March 2009, One Second After was ranked as number 11 on the New York Times Best Seller list in fiction in May 2009

There have been several sequels to this novel, and the last book I tried unsuccessfully to read was about an elevator to the moon by the same author. It had been proposed decades earlier by another sci-fi author, and was deemed scientifically implausible due to atmospheric friction on the cables.

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In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

 -Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642)

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I'm continuing to watch  the Prime series "Genius" about Einstein. It is kind of good, and kind of continues with the same theme of how hard it was for him to work in a world that didn't recognize his talents. 

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Blog-aversary

 Today says I've been blogging since 2008! My first blog was Goddess in Clay. It's been completely dismantled, and no longer exists in the la-la land of blogs.

So I wrote a few months, then decided to expand and include posts of my own functional clay work...which I started making also in 2008. I had retired in 2007, and recovered enough to start working in the community studio in downtown Black Mountain NC.

Those first efforts were pretty sad, but I was not deterred. I had already studied ceramics and got a BFA many years before. I even spent many Saturday mornings in summers selling my wares at the Tailgate Market.

In the meantime, I would sit here at a computer (I think I've been through one CPU tower and am on my 3rd laptop) and read about other people's lives all over the world, and share little bits of my existence.

For me it was fun to have different topics for different blogs. And so the pottery one, where there used to be recognitions based on how many pottery posts were made in a year...evolved into all art...Alchemy of Clay. 

And since people really responded to photos of the area I lived in...Living in Black Mountain was born (2013-2024) then finally retired as I focused more on this one, When I Was 69 (2013-present.)

However, I had other interests, and started Three Family Trees (2018-now) about my genealogy interests, and Open Yesterday's Pages (2024-26) about anything historic, and then Inner Workings  started just last year for my more serious thoughts.

Then the opportunity came to move to live closer to one of my sons, and perhaps breathe better in drier conditions, so I moved to Durango CO, and within a month I knew I needed to start a new blog Life in Durango!

And I even tried at one time to write a blog about the clay studio, which I kind of let fall away after a while. Most of my blogs are still active, except maybe the goddess one...so I put goddesses in whenever I feel like it, wherever I'm writing. And I sure don't have anything to say on most of them, except this and the Durango one. I keep trying to skip this one...but hey, something is worth sharing, and boom, here I yam!

I enjoy interacting in comments...and making replies. I know few other bloggers do this, but that's ok. I do have busy days when I just barely read blogs at all...but there are seldom days where I don't connect to the www out there at all. I admit to being a blog-addict!

So when blogger started having problems last month or so, I was really worried. I've thought of this as a safe place to store all kinds of information. It's not just the social connections, it's an archive for me. 

I know some of you have been blogging longer than I have, and it's really great to have those friendships. And I also have the sadness associated with those who have died, or just stopped blogging for some other reasons. I have a good-bye blog which will automatically post (if blogger so chooses) whenever I'm no longer able to write here. I just keep adding little bits to it, taking some off, and setting the publication date forward a few months time. So there might be a bit of silence before it finally is posted...and I imagine that's just the way it will have to be.

Until then, I'll see you in the funnies!

Where have the small farms gone?

"The American Farm Bureau Federation documents that over 160,000 farms vanished between 2017 and 2024. In 2025 alone, another 15,000 ceased operations—8,000 of them small farms generating between $1,000 and $9,999 annually."

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more They Are Killing the Farmers and Nobody Is Asking Why. John Walter Sep 28   READ IN APP   Editor’s Note What follows is assembled from verified documentation: bankruptcy filings from U.S. federal courts, European Union parliamentary records, United Nations agricultural reports, audio recordings of farmer protests in Brussels and The Hague, and interviews published in agricultural trade publications and regional newspapers between 2024 and 2026. I have confirmed every statistic through primary sources, every quote through multiple recordings, every name through official documents. Some individuals requested anonymity—not from government retribution, but from banks holding their mortgages and corporations controlling their seed supply. Others insisted their names appear in full. They want their testimony preserved. When the Last Tractor Leaves Arkansas: The Reckoning That Farmers from Stuttgart to Brussels Have Been Trying to Warn Us About The Thirty-Three Bankruptcies That Led the Nation in a Category No One Wants to Claim In February 2026, Arkansas led the United States in agricultural bankruptcies. Thirty-three farms filed for Chapter 12 protection in the first twelve weeks of the year—the highest number in Arkansas in the twenty-first century, more than double the previous year’s total. Georgia followed with twenty-seven filings, a 145 percent increase from 2024. Nationally, Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies reached 315, marking a 46 percent increase and the third consecutive year of rising filings. These figures represent only farmers with sufficient assets to require court protection. They exclude the thousands who simply walked away, who sold combines and tractors at auction for scrap value, who woke before dawn one morning and decided never to plant again.  The Colorado River Missed Its Deadline: Fifty Thousand Jobs and the Water That Never Came While Midwestern farmers grappled with fertilizer costs, their counterparts in the American West confronted water scarcity reaching crisis proportions in 2025. The Colorado River Basin, providing water for 5.5 million acres of agricultural land and 40 million people, has been in structural deficit for years. In 2025, negotiators from seven states missed deadlines for establishing new operating guidelines. Agricultural water use accounts for approximately 75 percent of beneficial uses in the Colorado River Basin and about 60 percent of all consumptive uses. In California’s Central Valley, water scarcity has already forced fallowing of hundreds of thousands of acres. The Public Policy Institute of California estimates up to 50,000 jobs could be lost in the Central Valley alone. Imperial Valley farmers, producing two-thirds of U.S. winter vegetables, faced impossible choices. Some sold water rights to urban areas rather than continue farming. Others shifted to less water-intensive crops with lower profit margins, accelerating financial distress... Three and a Half Times Higher: The Suicide Rate That Agricultural Economists Do Not Include in Their Spreadsheets Farmers in the United States die by suicide at rates 3.5 times higher than the national average. The suicide rate in rural America increased 46 percent in recent years. Between April 2024 and March 2025, 259 farm bankruptcies were filed. Each filing represented not merely financial event but psychological trauma... Seventy-Nine Percent Control One Quarter: The Consolidation That Is Not Foreign Ownership But Something More Systematic In 2025, American farms making $1 million or more in annual sales increased by 50, while farms generating $1,000 to $9,999 fell by 8,000. Nearly 79 percent of farms generate under $100,000 in annual sales yet control only about one-quarter of farmland. Millions of acres are now owned by investors who will never set foot on the property. The Union of Concerned Scientists has identified this consolidation—not foreign ownership, which receives disproportionate political attention—as the genuine national security threat... The Warning That Has Been Repeated Since 2024: What They Know and What We Refuse to Hear What emerges from this accumulation of data is systematic destruction unexplained by individual failure. Jose Maria Castilla warned of “crazy laws.” Caroline van der Plas warned that “when the farmers are gone, they are not going to come back.” Florian Poncelet testified to persistence: “We’ve been protesting since 2024.” They are warning anyone who will listen that the system is breaking, that abundance assumed as birthright is conditional and temporary. The skills required to farm well take decades to develop. The knowledge of specific places takes generations to accumulate. Once lost, this human capital cannot be replaced. They are warning us. They have been warning us for years. The question is whether we will listen before the warnings become memories, before the farms become suburbs, before the soil becomes dust, before the hunger becomes our own. ---------------------- Thanks to John Walter's newsletter. I have cut out all the data which refers to European and Indian farmers. It's gruesome reading, and you are welcome to sign up for the newsletter. I found several links required me to subscribe to different sites, which I declined doing. My other concern (minimal in the face of these stats) is the sentence regarding "The suicide rate in rural America increased 46 percent in recent  years." It doesn't say when that percentage is measured from and to. from the internet, posted by  former potter, John  Bauman

Full moon

 

Saturday just before dawn, 6:30 am, Sept. 26, 2026, Durango CO. The highest point of land is Perin's Peak.

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I honor the North Carolinians and all the helpers who were faced with the devastation from Hurricane Helene 2 years ago today. See my post Life in Durango, where I talk more about it.

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If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change, our children’s birthright.

AMANDA GORMAN ------------------------- Holidays to hold this day: Ancestor Appreciation Day Consumacion de la Independencia (Mexico) Crush a Can Day Daughter’s Day (Fourth Sunday in September) Day of the French Community Gold Star Mother’s Day (Last Sunday in September) Google’s Birthday International Day of the Deaf (Last Sunday in September) Morning Show Hosts Day National A.J. Day National Chocolate Milk Day National Corned Beef Hash Day National Doodle Day National Gay Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day National No Excuses Day National Police Memorial Day National Scarf Day Priesthood Sunday (Last Sunday in September) Turkmenistan Independence Day World Day of Immigrants and Refugees World Deaf Day World Tourism Day Sunday Sept. 27, 4:28 am