Creek Notes: 2 February

☼ This Friday from 6 to 8 across from the Floyd Country Store: come to the Artisan’s Center in The Station and say hello. Hang around for as much of the running image show (on my laptop, the place is too small for a bigger display) as you’d care to. The whole series of 100 images is about 15 minutes. I’ll be signing books AND also have the last of my stock of photographic note cards available. Do come keep me company for a bit, won’t you? This is very informal–a drop-in kind of event.

☼  Cancer-sniffing dogs: Labrador retrievers (no surprise there) have an incredibly discerning sense of smell. This story describes how, with the appropriate rewards, a black lab can be trained with 98% accuracy to detect colorectal cancer. You can imagine the examination process I automatically imagined, and wondered if dog-to-dog greetings I’d witnessed over the years were actually medical exams. But no, at least in this case, they examine human breath samples.

☼  Vulnerability. We can’t do it. We must do it. I highly recommend you spend 18 minutes and listen to this TED talk by Brene Brown. Our mental and relational health could benefit from knowing when, how and why to be vulnerable. I struggle with this just about every day in considering what to share on this blog. What are your vulnerability issues?

☼  Yasi is the name of yet another “catastrophic” natural event. Interesting how, over the past few days, this terminology has entered the meteorological lexicon. It is what comes next after SEVERE. The ice storm in the mid-west was deemed catastrophic. “Monster cyclone” Yasi, now approaching Australia, bless their beleaguered hearts, is increasing beyond a category five cyclone. Get used to the word CATASTROPHIC in regard to future weather, folks. Yasi looks every bit as bad as Katrina–and possibly much worse.