Blog archive
October 2024
Happiness by Priscilla Leonard
10/11/2024
Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden
10/11/2024
Unpainted Door by Louise Gluck
10/11/2024
In the Evening by Billy Collins
10/10/2024
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
10/10/2024
Betty Kilby, A Family History
10/01/2024
Betty Kilby, A Family History
10/01/2024
Betty Kilby, A Family History
10/01/2024
September 2024
Connecting with Village Connections
09/30/2024
Betty Kilby, A Family History
09/27/2024
Reflection on Life
09/20/2024
Expanding the Possibilities
09/19/2024
Need a Ride? No Problem!
09/17/2024
Security When Aging (Especially If You Are Single)
09/17/2024
The Bridge Begins at Thanksgiving
09/17/2024
The Power of Collective Service: Putting the Village First
09/17/2024
Tino Melchor - A Mentor for Young Teens in the Making
09/17/2024
Village Party Bus Delivers FUN
09/17/2024
We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know: That’s Why We Have Educational Programs
09/17/2024
On Rereading Tolle by Ed Rinderle
09/10/2024
Autumn Leaves
09/09/2024
August 2024
1619 Wide Ranging Interests
08/19/2024
1619 Wide Ranging Interests
08/19/2024
First Anniversary
08/19/2024
Alexandra Leaving by Leonard Cohen
08/16/2024
Muse des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden
08/16/2024
The God Abandons Antony by Constantinos P. Cavafy
08/16/2024
Ch – Ch – Ch –Changes
08/15/2024
Cultural Activities Team offers an ‘embarrassment of riches’
08/15/2024
Engaging in Pasadena Village
08/15/2024
Future Housing Options
08/15/2024
Message from the President
08/15/2024
There Are Authors Among Us
08/15/2024
Villagers Welcome New Members at the Tournament Park Picnic
08/15/2024
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas
08/14/2024
A narrow Fellow in the Grass by Emily Dickinson
08/13/2024
Haikus
08/13/2024
One Art by Elizabeth Bishop
08/13/2024
Poem 20 by Pablo Neruda
08/13/2024
Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
08/13/2024
Trees by Joyce Kilmer
08/13/2024
July 2024
Alma Stokes, The Struggle in Pasadena
07/25/2024
A Poetry Gathering: Liberating Experiences Available
07/19/2024
Civil Rights Movement Series
07/19/2024
Happy Hours in Pasadena: A Villager’s Perspective
07/19/2024
Pasadena Village and the National Dialogue on Villages and Healthy Aging Research
07/19/2024
President's Message
07/19/2024
The Kern River Rafting Caper
07/19/2024
The Village Artists Group creates creative camaraderie
07/19/2024
An Example of Inherent Racism
07/14/2024
Current, Upcoming Events
07/04/2024
June 2024
No Real Recourse For Discrimination
06/30/2024
A Personal Statement of Strength and Well-Being
06/25/2024
Juneteenth Reflections
06/24/2024
Reflections on 2023-2025
06/21/2024
Reactions and Reflections Re: Juneteenth
06/19/2024
As Our Organization Grows, Villagers Recall Personal Highlights
06/17/2024
From the Outgoing President
06/17/2024
Letter from the Incoming President: Beginning Our ‘Lagniappe’ Year
06/17/2024
The Editorial Team Looks Back: Creating the Voice of the Village
06/17/2024
This Year's Resource Fair was the Most Successful Ever
06/17/2024
Telling the Whole Story
06/12/2024
Nashville
06/10/2024
May 2024
Emergency Preparedness: Are You Ready?
05/28/2024
Farewell from the 2023/24 Social Work Interns
05/28/2024
Gina on the Horizon
05/28/2024
Mark Your Calendars for the Healthy Aging Research California Virtual Summit
05/28/2024
Meet Our New Development Associate
05/28/2024
Putting the Strategic Plan into Practice
05/28/2024
Washington Park: Pasadena’s Rediscovered Gem
05/28/2024
Introducing Civil Rights Discussions
05/22/2024
Rumor of Humor #2416
05/14/2024
Rumor of Humor #2417
05/14/2024
Rumor of Humor #2417
05/14/2024
Rumor of Humor #2418
05/14/2024
Springtime Visitors
05/07/2024
Freezing for a Good Cause – Credit, That Is
05/02/2024
No Discussion Meeting on May 3rd
05/02/2024
An Apparently Normal Person Author Presentation and Book-signing
05/01/2024
Flintridge Center: Pasadena Village’s Neighbor That Changes Lives
05/01/2024
Pasadena Celebrates Older Americans Month 2024
05/01/2024
The 2024 Pasadena Village Volunteer Appreciation Lunch
05/01/2024
Woman of the Year: Katy Townsend
05/01/2024
April 2024
Rumor of Humor #2410
04/28/2024
Rumor of Humor #2411
04/28/2024
Rumor of Humor #2412
04/28/2024
Rumor of Humor #2413
04/28/2024
Rumor of Humor #2414
04/28/2024
Rumor of Humor #2415
04/28/2024
Rumor of Humor #2416
04/28/2024
Stimulated by "Caste"
04/22/2024
Tulsa reparations, Religion and Politics
04/09/2024
March 2024
Trumps War with Black Women
03/31/2024
Addressing The Needs of Older Adults Through Pasadena Village
03/25/2024
Coming Soon: More Resources for Older Americans, Online and in Person
03/25/2024
Community Building Locally and Nationally
03/25/2024
Preparing for the Future with Ready or Not
03/25/2024
Volunteering is at The Heart of the Village
03/25/2024
Women's Liberation: Then and Now
03/25/2024
Writing Memoirs Together
03/25/2024
Current Views on Current Events
03/20/2024
Unchained
03/18/2024
Rumr of Humor issue # 2409
03/10/2024
Blacks Portrayed by European Artists
03/03/2024
Rumor of Humor #2408
03/03/2024
February 2024
Caring for Ourselves and Each Other
02/27/2024
Doug Colliflower Honored
02/27/2024
Great Decisions Connects Us to the Worldwide Community
02/27/2024
Letter from the President
02/27/2024
Pasadena Village's Impact
02/27/2024
The Power of Touch
02/27/2024
Villages as a New Approach to Aging
02/27/2024
Addressing Gang Violence in Pasadena-Altadena
02/21/2024
Rumor of Humor Issue 2407
02/19/2024
Thank You For Caring.
02/12/2024
Rumor of Humor 2405
02/11/2024
Curve Balls
02/10/2024
Sylvan Lane
02/10/2024
Rumor of Humor 2404
02/09/2024
Larry Duplechan, Blacks in Film
02/03/2024
January 2024
Pasadena Village Joins Community Partners in Vaccination Campaign
01/29/2024
Rumor of Humor #2403
01/28/2024
Pasadena Village Joins Two Healthy Aging Resource Projects
01/25/2024
Decluttering: Do It Now
01/24/2024
Village Volunteers Contribute to the Huntington Magic
01/24/2024
Villagers Creating Community
01/24/2024
Villagers Reflect on Black History Month
01/24/2024
Walk With Ease, 2024
01/24/2024
Wide Ranging Discussion on Current Issues
01/22/2024
Wide Ranging Discussion on Current Issues
01/22/2024
Rumor of Humor # 2402
01/21/2024
Rumor of Humor # 2401
01/15/2024
Re- Entry Programs, a Personal Experience
01/08/2024
Dr. Mulchaey - Pasadena Carnegie Observatories
By Bob SnodgrassPosted: 11/02/2021
I hope that you all are well. I Look forward to next Monday when we have a special guest speaker, arranged by Howard. He is Dr. John Mulchaey,Director of the Pasadena Carnegie Observatories. He will talk about space observation by optical (visual and more and more infra-red), and other technologies and ongoing Carnegie Projects. The Carnegie Observatories began in 1904 as the Mt. Wilson Observatory with funding from George Ellery Hale. The Mt. Wilson telescope was used by Dr, Edwin Hubble in his historical work, which established that our Milky Way is only one of millions of galaxies, that our universe is expanding and many other observations. This was superseded by the Mt, Palomar observatory and now by the Las Campanas observatory in Chile, where the giant Magellan telescope will be installed, which will have seven large primary mirrors for observation in the visual and infra-red spectrum. All village members are welcome to join our Zoom talk even if they have no association with our group. It’s free.
We won’t have time for member presentations this month, but science news has continued to sizzle. NASA’s Lucy mission to the so-called Jupiter Trojan asteroids. Launch on 10/16 went well but within 24 hrs. problems with one of its two giant solar panels became apparent. It couldn’t be fully opened. What to do? It’s still not clear but a human space mission as was sent to fix Hubble’s problem, is not in the offing.Other functions such as thruster maneuvering and navigation are intact. “That solar array is generating nearly the expected power when compared to the fully deployed wing,” NASA said. So while engineers review the data to understand what went wrong, they are also making calculations to figure out if Lucy will be able to do all the things it is supposed to do in the darker areas of the solar system.
It’s likely that with or without a fully deployed solar array, Lucy will continue its journey to the swarms of Trojan asteroids. Scientists believe that these asteroids are remnants of the material that formed giant planets and see them as "fossilized space objects" that hold the keys to understanding the solar system's evolution. There are two small Earth trojans, sharing our orbit. I hope that we can talk further about the Trojan asteroids at a future meeting.
The October 28thissue of Science has interesting new studies and reviews on sleep. Over the past few years, studies in worms, jellyfish, and hydra have challenged the long-standing idea that sleep is unique to creatures with brains. Now, “The real frontier is finding an animal that sleeps that doesn’t have neurons at all,” says David Raizen, a neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn). Sponges, some of the earliest animals to appear on Earth, fit that description, but haven’t been found so far to fit the expanded definition.
Scientists often define sleep as temporary loss of consciousness, orchestrated by the brain and for the brain’s benefit. That makes studying sleep in brainless creatures controversial. “I do not believe that many of these organisms sleep—at least not the way you and I do,” says John Hogenesch, a genome biologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Calling the restful, unresponsive state seen in jellyfish and hydra “sleeplike” is more acceptable to him.
Others in the field have a much more inclusive view: that sleep evolved not with modern vertebrates as previously assumed, but perhaps a half-billion years ago when the first animals appeared. “I think if it’s alive, it sleeps,” says Paul Shaw, a neuroscientist from Washington University in St. Louis. The earliest life forms were unresponsive until they evolved ways to react to their environment, he suggests, and sleep is a return to the default state. “I think we didn’t evolve sleep, we evolved wakefulness.”
Sleep in humans, rodents, and other vertebrates is a highly evolved behavior—one adapted to each organism’s needs and lifestyle. Gleaning insights into its basic function from those species could be difficult. Earlier evolving creatures, with fewer cell types, less complicated molecular pathways, and simpler behaviors may reveal sleep in its most fundamental form.
So,some sleep researchers have turned to invertebrates such as flies and roundworms—and most recently to sponges and another early-evolving group, placozoans. Already, this work has produced two key new insights: that sleep’s benefits extend far beyond the brain, and that muscles, the immune system, and the gut can all have a say in when and how sleep occurs.
A new picture of what controls sleep might also lead researchers to new treatments for sleep disorders. Our hope is that what we learn will help us understand why some people can’t sleep and also how disrupted sleep might affect their health and performance.
The earliest studies of sleep defined it by how it changes human behavior.
By the 1950s and ’60s, researchers converged on a definition of sleep based on polysomnography, a combined measure of brain activity, eye movement, and muscle tone that became a gold standard. Scalp electrode studies (EEGs) showed that human sleep has two major stages: rapid eye movement (REM), a more active stage in which dreaming occurs; and non-REM, defined by slow, synchronous waves of electrical firing.
Behavioral and physiological tests have revealed how varied sleep can be in the animal world. Cows and other large grazing mammals sleep standing up. Some marine mammals sleep while swimming and some seabirds catnap while flying, letting one half of the brain doze while the other keeps working. Bats sleep about 20 hours a day; wild elephants as few as two. Most of the animals studied with electrical recording techniques have at least two stages of sleep, though the brain activity characterizing these stages can vary. The color changes of the octopus as it sleeps suggest it, too, has several sleep stages.
The signs of sleep
Most animals, even very simple ones, have a restful state. How well each creature satisfies these criteria is controversial, but the work is expanding our understanding of the role and control of sleep, even in humans.
Some want to shift to molecular criteria such as whether an organism has genes that are part of sleep-promoting pathways in mammals and other species known to sleep. For example, Itoh’s team reported last year that more than 200 genes changed their activity in sleep-deprived hydra.Several of these genes are involved with sleep in fruit flies.
“We are moving from a behavioral or physiological definition to a cellular and molecular definition,” says Stanford neurobiologist Philippe Mourrain. “As we define more and more what sleep is [on those levels], we will have an idea of its function.”
There’s no question that sleep benefits the brain in creatures that have one. It helps the brain consolidate memories and flush out toxic waste. It may also help the brain stay plastic by pruning and strengthening connections between nerve cells.
If animals without brains need sleep, those functions can’t be the whole story. Because sleep is so widely conserved, it likely serves a fundamental function to preserve basic physiological processes
I expect a good talk and hope to see many of you on the 8th.
Bob Snodgrass.