"Nothing lasts, not even pain."

Lines on a Blank Piece of Paper

Though old the thought, and oft exprest,
'Tis his at last who says it best--
I'll try my fortune with the rest.

Life is a leaf of paper white
Whereon each one of us may write
His word or two, and then comes night.

"Lo, time and space enough," we cry,
"To write an epic!" So we try
Our nibs upon the edge, and die.

Muse not which way the pen to hold,
Luck hates the slow and loves the bold,
Soon come the darkness and the cold.

Boldly begin!  Though thou have time
But for a line, be that sublime--
Not failure, but low aim, is crime.

Ah, with what lofty hope we came!
But we forget it, dream of fame,
And scrawl, as I do here, a name.

(James Russell Lowell)

"Most of us think of ourselves as standing wearily and helplessly at the center of a circle bristling with tasks, burdens, problems, annoyances, and responsibilities which are rushing in upon us.  At every moment we have a dozen different things to do, a dozen problems to solve, a dozen strains to endure.  We see ourselves as overdriven, overburdened, overtired.

This is a common mental picture--and it is totally false.  No one of us, however crowded his life, has such an existence.

What is the true picture of your life?  Imagine that there is an hourglass on your desk.  Connecting the bowl at the top with the bowl at the bottom is a tube so thin that only one grain of sand can pass through it at a time.

That is the true picture of your life, even on a super-busy day.  The crowded hours come to you always one moment at a time.  That is the only way they can come. The day may bring many tasks, many problems, strains, but invariably they come in single file.

You want to get emotional poise?  Remember the hourglass, the grains of sand dropping one by one...."

(Dr. James Gordon Gilkey)

Harsh second H1N1 wave not inevitable: U.S. experts

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. health officials are gearing up for the return this fall of the H1N1 swine flu virus that has sparked a global pandemic, but some government scientists say a second, potentially more severe wave of disease is not inevitable.

"Every influenza pandemic writes its own rules as it progresses," Dr. David Morens of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Morens and colleague Dr. Jeffrey Taubenberger said there is not enough evidence to conclude that the relatively mild spring wave of H1N1 flu is a harbinger of a more severe outbreak.

 

( Rest of story here: )