Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Israel Ka'ano'i Kamakawiwo'ole was born at Kuakini Hospital in Honolulu The son of Evangeline Leinani Kamakawiwo'ole (aka Keale) and Henry Kalei'aloha Naniwa (aka Tiny). He lived the first 10 years of his life in Palolo Valley on O'ahu. Then the family moved to Makaha.Young Israel was surrounded by music, his uncle was Moe Keale, a well-known musician, and his parents worked at a Waikiki bar where many of the legends of Hawaiian music performed.

At age six, Israel learned to play the ukelele after watching and listening to his mother, his older brother, and his uncle. His first performed publicly at around age eleven when he and Skippy, his older brother, were called up to the stage by bands that played regularly for tourists at their parents' workplace.

On 1990 Israel Kamakawiwo'ole decided to start recording on his own. His first record,Ka 'Ano'i, became the most popular Hawaiian album of 1990, His second solo album, Facing Future, was released in 1993, and in 1995 the album E Ala E featured a duet with Skippy (using special studio effects). His next album N Dis Life(1996) continued to sell very well.

Throughout his last years, Iz suffered from severe obesity, at one point carried 769 pounds (350 kg). Israel died of weight-related respiratory illness on June 26th, 1997. Over 10,000 people attended his funeral on July 10th 1997, The wooden coffin lay at the Capitol building in Honolulu. He was the third person in Hawaiian history to be accorded this honor (the other two were Senator Spark Matsunaga and Governor John A. Burns). His ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean at M'kua Beach on July 12, 1997.

Laura Marling

I did not intend to write another piece so soon after putting up Song for the Holidays. But then I heard Laura Marling. She is a 21 year-old singer-songwriter from Hampshire, England. The music I post at AllAllan is filled with intense, deeply personal songs. Until I heard Laura Marling I thought they didn't write songs like that anymore. I was wrong.

Song for the Holidays

And now the holiday season is upon us. In my family's home on Roselawn in Detroit, it was sometime in the 50's and everyone was still alive. We lighted a candle for each of the eight nights of Chanukah. I was a seven-year-old boy whose only dreams were of a Davy Crocket toy rifle or a new bike. The real dreams, the ones that weren't about things, were still to come. One night it was gelt. Silver and gold wrapped chocolate that we devoured as our parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents looked on, proud of the job they had done making the children happy. Learned by their example, inherited from their genes, over the years and through the loss of them all, one by one, we that are left are left still making our children happy, making ourselves proud.

In 1966 I was in High School and we got two weeks off for the holidays. I sat in my room listening to folk music on the local public radio station or playing the music of a strange-named duo, eloquent, piercing, inspiring and personal. Simon and Garfunkel had just released Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. I embraced the poetry and feelings that I thought only I had known. Who were these guys?

In the 1990's the holidays were spent on the beach in South Carolina. Even with the summer people coming back to the island with their families, the beach was still nearly empty. We rode our bikes and drove into town to see the lights at James Island Park. My kids were given Chanukah just the way I had learned it and my little one was in charge of counting the nights, making sure a gift and new candle were part of each of the eight nights. My mother would have been proud. She passed way too soon, but she would have been proud.

How things have changed. I am so far away from those times, those aunts and uncles and parents and cousins and grandparents. I am so far from my kids, in geography and time and regrets. The holiday now is filled not with celebration, or faith, but sports on TV. We no longer have a single home. We have our own homes, with each one of the four of us caught up in the holidays of others, relying instead on phone calls and text messages.

The holidays have changed too. now they are about colored days that refer to special sales of the things that people buy. The ads are draped over our lives, filled with cars in bows and expensive jewelry that generate guilt and insufficiency. How can you love her if you don't buy her this and that? How can I love her? How can I love her? How can I love her?

Someone I didn't know died today. I read about it on The Drudge Report. He was born in 1949, the same year as me. He never made it to this year's holidays, this year's gifts, this year's guilt and this year's sports on TV.

Silence like a cancer grows.


A

Guest Editorial - Gerald Celente on MF Global

NNVC - maturity knocking

In 2009 I forecast that NNVC could be a triple digit stock (over $100/share) by 2014. That forecast was based on their game-changing anti-viral technology that has the potential to eradicate the most heinous viral diseases known to civilization. No hyperbole, just facts.

It takes time and money to go from here ($0.70/share currently) to there. They have the money now and we have the time.

NanoViricides, Inc. Announces That It Has Submitted a Pre-IND Meeting Request to the US FDA For Its Anti-Influenza Clinical Drug Candidate, FluCide™
Submission Represents a Major Advance for the Company


WEST HAVEN, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- NanoViricides, Inc. (OTC BB: NNVC) (the “Company”) announced today that it has submitted a pre-IND Meeting Request to the US FDA. The Company has requested an initial meeting with the US FDA to review the Company’s proposed strategy and plan for conducting safety/toxicology studies and human clinical trials required for approval of its anti-influenza clinical drug candidate, FluCide™ (i.e. NV-INF-1).

“This submission is a major milestone in the Company’s program to obtain US FDA approval for FluCide™,” said Eugene Seymour, MD, MPH, CEO, adding, “FluCide has demonstrated excellent efficacy and safety when treating influenza infections in our animal studies. We anticipate similar strong results in humans when the drug becomes available for human use.”

The Company has submitted required introductory documentation with the meeting request letter in consultation with the Company’s regulatory matters consultants, viz. the Biologics Consulting Group. The Company plans to submit additional briefing documents at least thirty days before the FDA meeting, in compliance with the FDA guidelines.

This pre-IND meeting request submission follows the Company’s recent announcement that it has chosen a clinical candidate, NV-INF-1, in its anti-influenza drug program (FluCide™) to develop for regulatory submissions both domestically and internationally. It is estimated that there are about 50 million cases of influenza annually in the USA alone, and about 250,000 patients are hospitalized for influenza. The Company believes that a single course of therapy that can be easily administered by a medical office is likely to be feasible for out-patients, with no additional follow-on treatment necessary. This expectation is based on the following results from its animal studies: (1) the extremely high treatment effectiveness in inhibiting the cycle of infection, virus expansion and spread of infection and, (2) the significantly long lasting effects of the drug treatment after the drug is discontinued. In addition to out-patients, the Company also plans to develop an indication for hospitalized severe cases of influenza.

The Company has recently announced that it is working on developing cGMP (“current Good Manufacturing Practices”) manufacturing capability for the production of its drug candidates. cGMP manufactured materials will be required when the Company is ready to file an Investigational New Drug (IND) application to the US FDA.