CICO, THE STRAY

I purchased a compost box, to make use of my food scraps and yard waste, thus using the compost to organically grow my own vegetables. A few nights after putting the box together, I found the compost box door ajar and thought the wind had blown it open. I put the cover back on, only to find it open yet again the following morning.

I started thinking; it must be Luisa, my neighbor’s cat! I found that to be rather unusual though, since Luisa gets plenty of food at home and is well cared for by her owners. The only crime I can accuse Luisa of, is using my freshly laid turf soil as a litter box. But hey, that’s part of the food cycle, besides; she doesn’t cause as much damage as any other cat would, since she only has three legs. You see; Luisa got one of her front paws caught in a trap and her owners had to have it amputated.

I was touched when I heard the story, since I didn’t think people in Portugal cared this much for their pets.

Getting back to my compost box though, I had to exclude Luisa as the culprit, since I placed a large brick in front of the door, which ended up opened again the following morning. Luisa is very smart and agile, but couldn’t possibly have enough strength on one paw, to remove the 15lb brick I had placed in front of the compost box door. But if not Luisa, who was getting into my compost box?

While having lunch at my other neighbor’s house on New Year’s day, I noticed a large dog eating scraps in their back yard, when I pointed it out to my neighbor, he told me he’s been throwing scraps out in his back yard to feed this poor dog, which was apparently abandoned in our neighborhood, by some heartless person.  

It really touched my heart when I saw the poor animal, tail between his legs, eating a few bones my neighbor was kind enough to have given him.

As I was watching him eat, I figured I had found who was getting into my compost box; I also asked myself a question, where is this poor dog getting his next meal from?

After getting home that evening, I cut up a piece of beef, added a bone I had used to make soup and placed both on a plate underneath my BBQ canopy, since it was raining, I didn’t want the meat to get wet.

Early the next morning, I came downstairs to my office, looked out the window and notice the compost box door was still closed, as I had left it the night before. I decide to get my camera and set it up on the tripod, hoping perhaps, I catch a bird bathing in my bird bath, it would be a perfect opportunity for me to take some picture of nature, since it is one of my favorite hobbies.

 As I return to the window to finish setting up the camera, I noticed the compost box door was now open. How could this be? I had just looked at it, less than ten minutes ago and it was closed! I thought whoever opened the door was probably still around and decided to stay by the window for a few more minutes. It didn’t take long, as I turned the camera on, the same dog I observed in my neighbors yard New Year’s Day, showed up by my patio. At first, he didn’t find the food I had set out for him; it looked as if he was about to leave, but men’s best friend has something going for him, their acute since of smell.

Without warning, he lifted up his head, has if someone was calling him, turned around and headed straight for the food plate I had left for him. He ate the beef on the spot, then took the bone out to the yard and chewed on it for a few minutes, until it was all gone.

 From this day forward, I will continue to set out food for Cico, (yes Cico, that’s what I decided to name him) If all goes according to plan, Cico won’t be tearing down my compost box door again and as he gains confidence around my place, I will try to approach and pet him.

I just think, heartless people  such as his previous owners, shouldn’t be able to own a pet, if they just plan on abandoning it, when it’s no longer convenient for them to have one. In reality though, I don’t know who abandoned this dog, nor do I know their situation and struggles in life! Lacking that information, I just have to give them the benefit of the doubt.

After all, their loss can end up being my gain and there is a good chance, Cico and I can end up spending many happy years together.

(SAÚDE) VALE A PENA LER

A Lifelong Fight Against Trans Fats

By MELANIE WARNER

In 1957, a fledgling nutrition scientist at the University of Illinois persuaded a hospital to give him samples of arteries from patients who had died of heart attacks.

When he analyzed them, he made a startling discovery. Not surprisingly, the diseased arteries were filled with fat — but it was a specific kind of fat. The artificial fatty acids called trans fats, which come from the hydrogen-treated oils used in processed foods like margarine, had crowded out other types of fatty acids.

The scientist, Fred Kummerow, followed up with a study that found troubling amounts of artery-clogging plaque in pigs given a diet heavy in artificial fats. He became a pioneer of trans-fat research, one of the first scientists to assert a link between heart disease and processed foods.

It would be more than three decades before those findings were widely accepted — and five decades before the Food and Drug Administration decided that trans fats should be eliminated from the food supply, as it proposed in a rule issued last month.

Now, Dr. Kummerow (KOO-mer-ow) is still active at age 99, living a few blocks from the university, where he runs a small laboratory. And he continues to come to contrarian conclusions about fat and heart disease.

In the past two years, he has published four papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, two of them devoted to another major culprit he has singled out as responsible for atherosclerosis, or the hardening of the arteries: an excess of polyunsaturated vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower — exactly the types of fats Americans have been urged to consume for the past several decades.

The problem, he says, is not LDL, the “bad cholesterol” widely considered to be the major cause of heart disease. What matters is whether the cholesterol and fat residing in those LDL particles have been oxidized. (Technically, LDL is not cholesterol, but particles containing cholesterol, along with fatty acids and protein.)

“Cholesterol has nothing to do with heart disease, except if it’s oxidized,” Dr. Kummerow said. Oxidation is a chemical process that happens widely in the body, contributing to aging and the development of degenerative and chronic diseases. Dr. Kummerow contends that the high temperatures used in commercial frying cause inherently unstable polyunsaturated oils to oxidize, and that these oxidized fatty acids become a destructive part of LDL particles. Even when not oxidized by frying, soybean and corn oils can oxidize inside the body.

If true, the hypothesis might explain why studies have found that half of all heart disease patients have normal or low levels of LDL.

“You can have fine levels of LDL and still be in trouble if a lot of that LDL is oxidized,” Dr. Kummerow said.

This leads him to a controversial conclusion: that the saturated fat in butter, cheese and meats does not contribute to the clogging of arteries — and in fact is beneficial in moderate amounts in the context of a healthy diet (lots of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and other fresh, unprocessed foods).

His own diet attests to that. Along with fruits, vegetables and whole grains, he eats red meat several times a week and drinks whole milk daily.

He cannot remember the last time he ate anything deep-fried. He has never used margarine, and instead scrambles eggs in butter every morning. He calls eggs one of nature’s most perfect foods, something he has been preaching since the 1970s, when the consumption of cholesterol-laden eggs was thought to be a one-way ticket to heart disease.

“Eggs have all of the nine amino acids you need to build cells, plus important vitamins and minerals,” he said. “It’s crazy to just eat egg whites. Not a good practice at all.”

Dr. Robert H. Eckel, an endocrinologist and former president of the American Heart Association, agreed that oxidized LDL was far worse than nonoxidized LDL in terms of creating plaque.

But he disputed Dr. Kummerow’s contention that saturated fats are benign and that polyunsaturated vegetable oils promote heart disease. “There are studies that clearly show a substitution of saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats leads to a reduction in cardiovascular disease,” said Dr. Eckel, a professor at the University of Colorado.

Robert L. Collette, the president of the Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils, a trade association, says oil manufacturers work with their customers to take precautions against oxidation.

“Oxidation is something that consumers can detect,” he said. “Therefore, it is in everyone’s best interest to control it.”

The long arc of Fred Kummerow’s life and career illustrates the frustratingly slow pace of science and the ways in which scientific conformity can hinder the search for answers. Born in Germany just after World War I broke out, he moved to Milwaukee with his family when he was 9. His father, who worked at a cement block factory, did not have the money to send him to college, so Dr. Kummerow worked full time at a drug distribution company while attending the University of Wisconsin in the evenings. After he earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry, his first job was at Clemson University in South Carolina, where he helped prevent thousands of deaths in the South from pellagra, a disease resulting from a deficiency of vitamin B3.

His early research on trans fats was “resoundingly criticized and dismissed,” said Dr. Walter Willett, the chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health, who credited Dr. Kummerow with prompting his desire to include trans fats in the Nurses’ Health Study. A 1993 finding from that study, which showed a direct link between the consumption of foods containing trans fats and heart disease in women, was a turning point in scientific and medical thinking about trans fats.

“He had great difficulty getting funding because the heart disease prevention world strongly resisted the idea that trans fats were the problem,” Dr. Willett continued. “In their view, saturated fats were the big culprit in heart disease. Anything else was a distraction from that.”

At an age when life itself is an accomplishment, Dr. Kummerow said he had no intention of stepping away from the work that has consumed him for six decades. He continues to work from home and talks daily to the two scientists who work in his lab, which receives funding from the Weston A. Price Foundation.

His wife of 70 years, Amy, died last year at age 94 from Parkinson’s disease; he has three children, three grandchildren and a great-grandchild.

He takes no medications, and his mind shows no sign of aging: He has an encyclopedic recall for names, dates and, more impressive, complex scientific concepts. After his muscles became inflamed from a blood pressure drug that he has since stopped taking, he started using a wheelchair combined with a walker.

His most significant health problem, appropriately enough, was an artery blockage at age 89 — probably a result of the inevitable effects of aging, not diet.

Bypass surgery took care of the blockage, and the fact that he now has an artery from his arm running into his heart has made him even more determined to keep working. Heart disease remains the leading cause of death for Americans, and he would like to stick around to continue funding research that will help change that.

“What I really want is to see trans fats gone finally,” he said, “and for people to eat better and have a more accurate understanding of what really causes heart disease.”

POEMA DO DIA

Afastava-se o meu ser, ano após ano,

E a minha alma, partindo-se, ficava,

Quando meu ser da memória a debuxava,

Por não poder sustentar-se desse engano.

Por uma praia do vasto oceano

Sobre um curvo cajado me encostava,

E os olhos pelas águas alongava,

Que pouco se doíam desse dano.

Pois com tamanha mágoa e saudade,

(Dizia) quis deixar-me a que eu adoro,

Por testemunhas tomo céu e estrelas.

Mas se vós, ondas, tendes piedade,

Levai também as lágrimas que choro,

Pois assim me levais a causa delas.

Vai um cafézinho, com telha....na tola!

A Praça Rodrigues Lobo, no coração de Leiria, é um local edial para quem gosta de relaxar e saborear um bom café, numa das várias esplanadas que esta linda cidade tem para nos oferecer.

Embora tenha tido um episódio menos agradável, numa dessas esplanadas, quando duas meninas de raça Romena me tentaram furtar o meu telemóvel, eu continuo com a minha teimosia, que Leiria, se não for mesmo a cidade mais segura e limpa de Portugal, deve seguramente, estar bem perto do topo.

Por motivos da segurança dos cidadãos que, como eu, gostam de usufruir do melhor que esta cidade tem para nos oferecer, quero partilhar com os leitores, um alerta que pode, eventualmente, salvar a vida de alguém. É que numa dessas esplanadas, na Praça Rodrigues Lobo, existe uma espécie de ratoeira, que poderá inevitavelmente causar danos incorrigíveis, se não mesmo a morte, a um ou uma insuspeitável cliente.

As fotos inseridas neste email, dão para ver o estado de degradação do prédio, embora seja muito mais evidente, quando visto a olho nu no local.

O esplanada do café, até não tem má aparência, mas quem, como eu, anda sempre com um olho no burro e outro no cigano, deverá com certeza aperceber-se, que os andares superiores do prédio estão em estado de degradação, com vidraças partidas e a parte do telhado que sobresai sobre a esplanada do café, já lhe caíram duas telhas e pouco deve faltar para que outras caiam.

Caso não sejam efectuadas as devidas reparações, espero que as telhas ao cair, caiam no dia de encerramento do café. 

Poema do dia

Aquela triste e leda madrugada,

Cheia toda de mágoa e de piedade,

Enquanto houver no mundo saudade,

Quero que seja sempre celebrada.

Ela só, quando amena e marchetada

Saía, dando à terra claridade,

Viu apartar-se de uma outra vontade,

Que nunca poderá ver-se apartada.

Ela só viu as lágrimas em fio,

Que de uns e de outros olhos derivadas,

Juntando-se, formaram largo rio.

Ela ouviu as palavras magoadas

Que puderam tornar o fogo frio

E dar descanso às almas condenadas.

PROSTHETICS IN THE DEEP

While visiting my cousin in Northern Portugal this week, he shared some stories with me that left me (ROFL) rolling on the floor laughing. Besides an orthodontist, I don’t believe there's any one person in the world with so many denture adventures as he. In fact, he doesn't even wear dentures; he is actually, a young looking 74 year old.

It seems whenever someone with falsies visits him, or he and his wife volunteer to give someone a ride, my cousin ends up on the most unusual searches for their guest’s fake teeth. 

Out of several stories he shared with me, I picked the following two, as the best denture stories I've ever heard and decided to document the events.

1.         Just before coming to Portugal from England on Holiday, on October 2001, my cousin and his wife offered an elderly lady a ride back home to visit her sister in Lisbon. The trip went well, for the most part, but her sister didn't have a big enough home to provide her accommodations during her stay in Portugal. My cousin offered, and she accepted, to stay at their house in northern Portugal, until their return to England. The roads leading up to Arcos de Valdevêz are fairly straight and well maintained, from Arcos to their final destination however, the nine kilometers of road  leading to Boimo, is comprised of over sixty sharp turns, necessary to manage the mountainous landscape.  Their elderly hitcher managed not to get motion sickness, or should I say, almost managed not to get motion sickness the entire trip. Kilometer eight was just too much to bear and she had to grab a barf bag to empty some of her stomach contents. My cousin pulled over, to allow the rather embarrassed passenger to dispose of her sour barf out the car window and into a ravine of prickly wild blackberry bushes. Just a few minutes later, as they unloaded their luggage at my cousin’s house, their guest realizes she's missing her precious choppers. My cousin's wife suspects she accidentally spat them into the barf bag and summoned my cousin to go look for the bag and search through its contents to try and find the dentures. After digging through the prickly bushes, he finds the barf bag, dumps its contents and among them, the choppers. Unfortunately, they were broken into two pieces during impact. After a quick trip to the orthodontist, the old geezer was able to get the dentures repaired and enjoy some delicious food during her stay. 

2.        On Augusts’ 2002 vacation, my cousin has yet another denture adventure, this time it was his wife's aunt, whom they invited to spend a few days at their home away from home, in Boimo. According to my cousin, his wife's aunt, gorged herself during lunch, as if she hadn't ate in years. Once the meal was consumed, his 80 year old aunt, retired to an upstairs bedroom, to allow her stomach time to devour its contents. Her 80 year old stomach muscles were unable to handle the heavy load and she finds herself praying to the porcelain gods, emptying some of her stomach contents into the toilet bowl. After releasing some of the food she had over indulged, she quickly flushed the toilet, not realizing she was also flushing her precious teeth into my cousin’s septic system. Once their guest awoke from her afternoon nap, she realized her dentures were missing and went to her niece in desperation and told her she must have accidentally flushed her dentures down the toilet. Younger niece quickly runs to her hubby (my cousin) to tell him of the incident. Being the gentleman my cousin is he wasted no time removing the septic tank lid in an attempt to find his aunt's missing teeth. My cousin was very disappointed to see the septic tank was nearly full, the disappointment was greater the moment his wife handed him a bucket and asked he start emptying out the tank. Bucket after bucket, my poor cousin empties out the septic tank onto the trail next to his back yard. I can just imagine the stink this caused on a hot summer day. To make matters worse, he got to the bottom of the tank without finding the dentures. That's when he decides to go flush the toilet once more, sure enough, out came his aunt's pearl white teeth. Sure there were some food waste particles stuck between some of the teeth, nothing a good tooth brush couldn't fix. As for my cousin, he swears he was unable to have dinner that night, as he watched his aunt chewing her food, with the same teeth he had removed from the crapper that afternoon.

O PÔNEI EXPRESSO

Qual será a margem de erro considerada aceitável pelo US Postal Service, CTT ou de qualquer outro serviço de correios no mundo? Será que cada vez que mandamos uma carta pelo correio tradicional, temos que nos preocupar se a mesma chegará ao seu destino final? Analisando bem os primeiros seis meses do meu regresso a Portugal, no que a correio tradicional diz respeito, vejo o correio tradicional por cá, com uma margem de erro deslumbrante. 

Entre Maio e Novembro, recebi aproximadamente doze cartas, três das quais tinham sido abertas na tentativa de furto. Os CTT fizeram a entrega das mesmas, dentro de um envelope plástico transparente, com um uma senha a indicar que as cartas tinham sido abertas na tentava de furto. As três cartas foram enviadas em datas diferentes, por isso mesmo, não se trata apenas de uma ocorrência isolada. A quarta carta, que me foi enviada dum tribunal dos Estados Unidos, da qual compartilho uma foto, foi enviada para Taipei, em Taiwan.  A direcção estava escrita corretamente, com código postal, cidade e país, como podem ver na foto inserida, a mesma foi entregue dois meses após ser enviada. 

Resumindo; isto, dá uma margem de erro de cerca de 33%. 

Sempre que possível, uso a internet como meio de comunicação, pois com esta margem de erro exibida pelos serviços de correios tradicionais, penso que até o pônei expresso devia ser mais fiável.

POEMA DO DIA

Quando o Sol encoberto vai mostrando

Ao mundo a luz quieta e duvidosa,

Ao longo de uma praia deleitosa

Vou na minha inimiga imaginando.

Aqui a vi, os cabelos concertando;

Ali, com a mão na face tão, formosa;

Aqui falando alegre, ali cuidosa;

Agora estando quieta, agora andando.

Aqui esteve sentada, ali me viu,

Erguendo aqueles olhos, tão isentos;

Aqui movida um pouco, ali segura.

Aqui se entristeceu, ali se riu.

E, enfim, nestes cansados pensamentos

Passo esta vida vã, que sempre dura.

"POEMA DO DIA"

Ditoso seja aquele que somente

Se queixa de amorosas esquivanças;

Pois por elas não perde as esperanças

De poder nalgum tempo ser contente.

Ditoso seja quem estando ausente

Não sente mais que a pena das lembranças;

Porque ainda que se tema de mudanças,

Menos se teme a dor quando se sente.

Ditoso seja, enfim, qualquer estado,

Onde enganos, desprezos e isenção

Trazem um coração atormentado.

Mas triste quem se sente magoado

De erros em que não pode haver perdão

Sem ficar na alma a mágoa do pecado.

Larápias entre nós...

A minha primeira experiência com larápios (neste caso larápias) em Portugal, aconteceu me dia 14 de Setembro 2013, no centro da cidade de Leiria. Enquanto almoçava na esplanada do restaurante "Mata o Bicho" com pessoas amigas, que me visitavam dos Estados Unidos, duas jovens Romenas aproximaram se da nossa mesa a pedir esmola e tentar vender a revista borda de água.

Uma aproximou se da mesa pelo meu lado direito, a outra pelo lado esquerdo, insistindo com uma das minhas amigas, para que lhe desse uma esmola. Enquanto me virava para a que estava do meu lado direito, na tentativa de a afastar da nossa mesa, a do meu lado esquerdo, pôs uma revista sobre o meu iPhone, quando levantou a revista, levou o meu iPhone junto com a revista.

A minha sorte, azar das larapias, uma turista de Espanha na mesa ao lado, apercebeu se do furto e alertou me que as larápias me tinham furtado o telemóvel. Quando me levanto para ver se as via, já iam bem ao fundo da rua num andar bem apressado. Eu liguei o turbo e desatei a correr na direcção das larápias que quando se voltaram para ver de onde vinha tal ruído,já eu estava praticamente em cima delas..

Com uma pilha de nervos e adrenalina aos níveis  máximos a correr me nas veias, desatei aos gritos em inglês. Não vou aqui escrever os nomes que lhes chamei, mas começavam quases todos com a letra M, F, e B. Nos primeiros instantes elas ainda resistiram e não me deram o telemóvel, mas talvez por receio da minha fúria e das centenas de pessoas que entretantato se levantavam das suas mesas para ver o que se passava, decidiram entregar me o iPhone.

O acontecido, serviu me de lição, embora que bem sucedida. Agora mantenho sempre a carteira e iPhone no bolso, e ando sempre, como se costuma dizer, com um olho no burro e o outro no cigano.

Apenas queria compartilhar esta cena triste com os leitores, não para vos dizer que não visitem Portugal, mas sim, que o façam com cautela. Com o lixo que deixam cá entrar, Portugal já não é o que era, nem mesmo nas cidades mais calmas, como Leiria..