In Memoriam to My Brother

Posted on May 16, 2022 by Professor Taboo

Several times since January of 2022 my sister and Mom explicitly urged me to getaway, to take a 4-5 night break away from my 24/7 Caretaking of Mom. She is 82-years old with severe Stage-6 Dementia. By March 31st it was so obvious to myself, to Mom, and especially my sister that I badly needed a break. Mom added, in her usual sharp wit, and said “I need a break as well, from you! It won’t just do YOU good Dwain!”

Mom was right. We had been getting on each other’s last frazzled nerves for several weeks. I soon texted and called a few of my close friends in Dallas to tell them I was coming up one weekend in April. Just planning the trip was quite reinvigorating, I hate to say. No offense Mom. But 4-5 nights just for me? Oh yeah! Where do I sign? Plus, my friends got excited, one in particular: my all-time best friend of near 25-years. Literally like a brother to me. His name? James, James E. Allen III, and he was my one and only closest male friend. Then a situation happened.

On the weekend-Sunday prior to my arrival in Dallas the following Thursday, James informed me he would have to have Quadruple Bypass Surgery and Heart-valve Replacement April 27th, the day before I arrive. My entire “Getaway” plans just changed, drastically. No longer was my trip going to be ALL fun and relaxation, especially with the main character (James) not being readily free and available as planned. Before this medical news, we had already decided to do several of our favorites things together: watch the Dallas Mavericks basketball playoff games as well as the Dallas Stars hockey playoff games together at two-three of our favorite bars. Chunk all those plans out the window now. He would be in a hospital bed my entire trip.

If you would like to read much more extensive details of my trip and the events surrounding James, my dearest friend, go here: Further details.

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Tuesday morning, May 3rd, 2022. James coded 2-3 more times during the night and wee-hours, Erin texted me. James wasn’t doing well, she said. He can barely squeeze your hand/fingers.

About 1:45pm Erin told me it was all just too much for his body. He had passed away. When I got off the phone, I broke down. My closest friend was gone, my only dearest male friend. He and I would never again talk for hours about sports, mostly his two favorite: American football and basketball. We also shared and confided everything about ourselves with each other. We laughed more than we deserved together because each other’s wit made us. And our sometimes clumsy brain-farts and bad decisions cracked us both up. We knew our best and our intimate worst parts, and yet never wavered in our loyalty to each other, through the best of times and times of pure hell. James was a dependable brother to me like no other guy I’ve ever known. Life will not be the same without him.

James E. Allen, III: b. August 10, 1970 — d. May 3, 2022.

Allen family (L to R): James, sisters Nicole & Misha, brother Troy.
James and sons Tommy (center) & Nickolas (Nick)
At Lonnegan’s, Arlington, TX
James & close friend Terrence
Tommy, James, and Nick
Myself, Molly, & James – Lonnegan’s
Nickolas & James
Tommy & James, at football practice
At Penn State, James, Erin, & Terrence
Molly & James, Lonnegan’s
Nick & James at PSU and the Ohio State game 2016
Suzanne & James
With Joe Paterno at Penn State

I will miss you terribly brother for the rest of my days. There’s another empty void now in my life, as well as one for many others. RIP James.

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A Cure is Here

Posted on April 28, 2020 by Professor Taboo

Given my intense irritation recently at the Anti-Safety, Pro-COVID-19 propagators in the news and their public defiance of intelligent, virological Social-distancing and Stay-at-Home Orders—while coronavirus infections continue to rise in alarming numbers—I thought it would be fantastic to post some remarkable, positive humanitarian news in the area of science and medical therapies in the fight against cancer! After all, we reasonable, well-educated people have been in need for an exciting story that reinforces the enriching necessity for expert, scholarly science, breakthrough medical science especially that ushers hundreds and hundreds of happy results, happy recoveries, and lengthy remissions! Ah, every so often something good does come out of Texas! It’s good to be proven wrong sometimes.

∼ ∼ ∼ § ∼ ∼ ∼

Dr. Allison, the 2018 Nobel Prize Co-Winner in Physiology or Medicine, is the subject of a riveting documentary that shows the spotlight on his groundbreaking work and serves as a stark, prophetic reminder of the obligation for extensive science in the year of COVID-19. Perhaps COVID-20 as well.

Last night I was fortunate to catch the broadcast by PBS’ Independent Lens the documentary film Jim Allison: Breakthrough. Boy was it a much needed encouragement and frequent cheer-leading shouts of “YES, OH MY STARS & GALAXIES,” and “I LOVE YOU SCIENCE” that I needed right now. Watching too much current news can really begin to dampen and darken your spirit for life. Your levels of endorphins, dopamine, and oxytocin can suffer from too much prolonged cortisol.

From our own University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center website on Dr. Allison’s astounding research and work. I highly recommend reading the entire webpage:

Immunotherapy innovator Jim Allison’s Nobel purpose, some excerpts

Jim Allison, Ph.D., chair of Immunology and executive director of the immunotherapy platform, pioneered a revolutionary cancer treatment that frees the immune system to attack tumors.

“By stimulating the ability of our immune system to attack tumor cells, this year’s Nobel Prize laureates have established an entirely new principle for cancer therapy”

[…]

Allison showed that the protein CTLA-4, which is found on the surface of T cells, acts as a brake — a type of immune system checkpoint the body uses to avoid a dangerously over-reactive immune response. He then developed an antibody to block CTLA-4’s “braking” action, freeing T cells to attack cancer.

His work and determination led to the development of Ipilimumab, the first in a class of drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors. In 2011, the drug — commercially named Yervoy — was approved for late-stage melanoma by the Food and Drug Administration. It has yielded unprecedented results. Twenty percent of patients with advanced melanoma who took the drug now live for at least three years, and many live 10 years and beyond.

[…]

Crucial funding for his research over the years has come from the National Institutes of Health, particularly the National Cancer Institute, the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Cancer Research Institute, Prostate Cancer Foundation, Stand Up To Cancer and PICI.

Toward the end of this documentary film Dr. Allison is reading a letter he received from a lady, a wife, a total stranger. I am not going to spoil it for you, but it is definitely a moment that all we human beings with a grateful, compassionate, unselfish heart must hear/read more often than not. Perspective needed. This is unprecedented news in this daunting, beautiful life we’ve been privileged to live, inside this tiny minuscule space in time, on one tiny, tiny pale-blue rock among billions and billions of other stars and planets in our ONE little galaxy… among billions or trillions of other galaxies. It is called the Overview Effect. Get some.

Share any thoughts below you might have once you’ve watched the film, or not watched if you’re already familiar with this man’s phenomenal work and dedication over many decades of incessant persistence. It is truly a man, a scientist, and story to greatly admire. I do.

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Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always — Stay Curious!

Visiting Our Cusp, Limits, Fearlessly

Posted on December 21, 2019 by Professor Taboo

Sometimes during unsettled times when so many around us are disconnected, cold, detached, uncaring, and avoiding simple social kindness to one another, or hyper-charged looking for drama and some type of controversy—perhaps because they’ve been living too long in begrudging routine mediocrity or luxury—we lose sight of what really matters in life as simple human beings. We forget that there is very little difference between all of us. In fact, genetically less than 0.1%. If we would embrace this commonality, this intimate reality, our very fragility and vulnerability with each other in this daunting, life-giving Universe… then we are never alone. Never unwanted or not needed. Never without friend or family. This primal, very basic organic condition we all share will never, EVER change; at least not in the next 100,000 years or more.

Be that as it may, we do sometimes need reminding, refreshers in how very minuscule each of us are in this vast, never-ending, beautifully inhumane Cosmos that completely dictates our quality of life and death. Our time here is but a flash in the bucket in the biggest picture, BUT remarkably impactful for the ‘millisecond’ of life and memories with other loved ones. With so many things uncertain yet ready to experience, its marrow ready to be sucked down to the last molecule of our 80, 70, 50, 20, or 10-years of life, whatever it is to be, makes it… pure gold! Every second, every ounce! How will you spend it? How will others experience you and remember you?

I posted this years ago from Oriah Mountain Dreamer. I want to post it again, as a reminder… that we usually have only one chance to make the most of this short, mortal, beautifully remarkable gift called life really count the most. Oriah knows exactly how to best live and die in it:

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon…
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

For the rest of Oriah’s powerful, to the bone and straight to the heart realism, go here.

If we do not test ourselves when life is good, plush for ourselves, and push our abilities our kind empathy, understanding, and what we can manage and gladly give, then how can we ever truthfully know how much our proactive help matters? How much does our charitable action count? How much does our voice count to help make other’s lives easier, happier in a purely humane way? It takes so much more to join the disadvantaged… raw in person and heart than simply saying words or writing a check. Joining all of humanity, the worst, the most unfortunate is where the most profound, deepest fulfillment of live is discovered. The alternative is a planet of unfeeling, insensitive, self-absorbed, non-humanity, as the song aptly describes…

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Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

Hallows Coming – Byron

Posted on October 26, 2019 by Professor Taboo

Our Hallows stories remind again, warnings to callous men unwary, mother Earth’s grace tested will run short unleashing untold fury.

∼ ∼ ∼ § ∼ ∼ ∼

had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum’d,
And men were gather’d round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other’s face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain’d;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguish’d with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil’d;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look’d up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash’d their teeth and howl’d: the wild birds shriek’d
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl’d
And twin’d themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour’d,
Even dogs assail’d their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish’d men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur’d their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer’d not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famish’d by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap’d a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak’d up,
And shivering scrap’d with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other’s aspects—saw, and shriek’d, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr’d within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp’d
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir’d before;
The winds were wither’d in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

— Lord Byron, Darkness

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Hallows Coming – Frost

Posted on October 19, 2019 by Professor Taboo

Frost’s poem diverges a bit from my previous Halloween poems. Loss and loneliness is experienced in many various ways by different people in unique settings, none exactly identical. Memories of missed loved ones can inspire or haunt us, or both.

∼ ∼ ∼ § ∼ ∼ ∼

Dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me–
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,–
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.

— Robert Frost, Ghost House

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