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.

JFK

JFK
May 29, 1917 - Nov 22, 1963
RIP

Hampton Junior High School
Detroit, Michigan
Ninth Grade English
Last class of the day
Principal walked somberly into room
Whispered to teacher
Turns to class
The President is dead.
School dismissed
Go home.

Four friends walking home
Stunned silence
Frozen in time
Filled with fear
and apprehension

Vietnam War
3,000,000 Vietnamese, dead
52,000 friends walking home, dead

Number one song, 11_22_63
Dale & Grace: "I'm leaving it up to you."

Memories of Life

The world would be a better place without leaf blowers. There used to be rakes. They were used to silently sweep leaves into small piles which could be picked up and placed in trash bags. When I was a kid growing up in Detroit, my father, bother and I would get out there on Thanksgiving morning and the three of us would rake up a big pile of leaves and place it just off of the curb at the end of the driveway. In the years before they made burning leaves illegal, my Dad would light a fire and burn the pile off into the crisp autumn air. I can still smell the smoldering mound. Then we would all go inside and watch the Lions game.

Memories of life. Popping up here on my blog from time to time, so that some day my daughters will have a piece of their father to remember and maybe show to their children, who maybe will ask about a photograph on a table or discovered in an old album.

There are some things that are felt but never said. Some questions that get asked, for which are no answers.

Why didn't this one work?

"Your head just inches from my own, your toes cradled beneath mine. Your breathing slow and measured. You lay beside me, safe, content and deeply asleep. Ever so gently your hand slips into mine. Loosely, then tight, then loose again. You are drifting, immersed in some far away dream. Quiet lovers, in soft cadence, intertwined. I could have stayed forever."

These moments I write about; No finer gifts could ever touch my life.

But stories always end,
And if you read between the lines,
You'd know that I'm just tryin' to understand
The feelin's that you lack.
I never thought I could feel this way
And I've got to say that I just don't get it.
I don't know where we went wrong,
But the feelin's gone
And I just can't get it back

Camelback

Friday's have been slow, especially toward the end of the market session. So today I packed up an hour early and climbed up Camelback Mountain. Well, not all the way up. You get to know when your body says, "I'm too young to die," and its time to turn back down.

At a spectacular view of the desert below, I think about the last night we slept together. It has become one of those moments to remember as it is too revealing, too eloquent, to let go. I wrote about one in a previous post:

The closest we ever were as a couple were those special moments on the dance floor, sometimes just locked in a deep passionate kiss....

We were far into our Sunday night, our TV night. The shows and movies were over, the television was off and we were under the covers. I was mostly asleep. She was mostly awake. Out of a quickly forgotten dream, I felt her fingers on my back, up and down, back and forth, slow and methodical. I wondered at first if she was trying to wake me for a quiet, fleeting moment of intimacy. No, her touch was too gentle, too soft, too personal. She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me, she loves me not.

I knew that if I awoke, she would retreat, feeling smothered and seek distance. So I didn't stir. I did not want her light, sweet touch to stop, to disappear. Another man might awake and turn toward her. But another man would not be beside her, not this night.

I continue down Camelback, having not reached the peak, full of the memory, the magic, the melody of her touch. She loves me. She loves me not.

Cactus Tree

There's a man who's been out sailing
In a decade full of dreams
And he takes her to a schooner
And he treats her like a queen

Is love just the release of chemicals in the brain to aid in the procreation of the species? Do you know anyone over 50 who is in love?

A girl pours a shot of expresso into my coffee at Starbucks. It's 6:00am and I am not at my best. I think and feel, yes, I can fall in love with her. But all that comes out is a "Thank you," and a one dollar tip. Out of some distant memory I hear Joni Mitchell.

I sent M a text message about our times together. It was too early to call her and by writing it down I wouldn't catch her by surprise. Maybe what comes back is thought out, felt out, honesty.

There's a man who's sent a letter
And he's waiting for reply
He has asked her of her travels
Since the day they said goodbye
He writes "Wish you were beside me
We can make it if we try"

Thirty years ago, by now I would be holding hands with the girl from Starbucks. Small talk chit-chat would have led to the abandonment of our customer-barista roles and lead to the magical creation of chemicals, hope and budding feelings The dance of love. But now the days turn colder, light becomes dimmer, we don't think about love, we think about the end of days. Love never is lost, it just disappears.

There's a man who's climbed a mountain
And he's calling out her name
And he hopes her heart can hear
Three thousand miles he calls again
He can think her there beside him
He can miss her just the same

Then one day we find ourselves in that one last great love of our lives. We won't know when its over until its gone. I can count them all on one hand, the real ones, the great ones, the magical, romantic, intense ones, before they disappeared.

But not this one. I'm not ready to let her go.

She will love them when she sees them
They will lose her if they follow
And she only means to please them
And her heart is full and hollow
Like a cactus tree
While she's so busy being free

Down the foggy ruins of time

Hockey season is back again and once more we have the pleasure of watching Pavel Datsyuk and the Detroit Red Wings. When I was in high school in Detroit, we didn't have a hockey team. But a group of us hockey fanatics would rent out an hour of ice time at the Detroit Skating Club, from 11:00pm to 12:00pm on Saturday nights. It was a badge of honor to be one of the 22 selected to play each Saturday night.

It was also date night. That too was a badge of honor, to bring your date to the arena to watch you play. Yes, those were some strange times. I worked myself up to be a regular of the 22 by skating circles for 2 hours every day after school at the State Fairgrounds arena. One of the other skaters each day was a girl named Sheila Young. She ended up winning a Gold Medal in the 1972 Olympics.

Now some forty years later, I don't skate anymore, I don't play hockey anymore, Saturday night is no longer date night for me, whether in a relationship or not. No, let me take that back. M and I used to go dancing at a club here in Phoenix on Saturday nights. The closest we ever were as a couple were those special moments on the dance floor, sometimes just locked in a deep passionate kiss, with all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves. No hockey game ever compared to those kisses, those dances, those date nights.

All of that is gone now. The skating, the hockey, the date nights, M. It seems that nothing ever stays the same. It changes for the better, it changes for the worse, it changes just for the sake of change. But one thing never changed in all of that. Every time there was the future. Every one of those skates, games, dances, passionate kisses was full of hope and giddy expectation of what would be coming next.

And what came next?

Writing about what was once and forever, my life.


Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.