Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

I have been writing at least one Blog a day ever since I started doing so 7 years ago, some days two or even three. As long as there's something to write about, or thoughts turning in my head, I have little problem putting them down, at least any old how without paying too much heed to phrasing or style. Thinking up a title to name the Blogs though often seems to require more effort, to have it appear to be to the point, representing somewhat the subject matter, or the condensed keyword or phrase that would remind me what the Blog was about weeks or months later. Fortunately, there are times too when a title would just pop up into my head, totally effortlessly.

My Blogs are not important, nor is there any commercial value. I would think it's quite an important matter for authors of books or novels to choose with extreme care their titles, as that might well be the make or break factor in many cases, to determine whether they have enough drawing power to get people to pick them up, turn a few pages and decide to buy them. Same as film titles, or songs. Like John Lennon's famous song called 'Lusy in the sky with diamonds'. Many would immediately wonder who Lucy is, why is she in the sky and what diamonds have got to do with it. I did.

Forty years after John Lennon composed that song, his son Julian wanted to contact the woman who inspired his father to title his song with. Lusy suffers the incurable disease Lupus and Julian wanted to help in anyway he could. He revealed to The Sunday Times that he had been able to help a little, sending her flowers and money.

Lucy O'donnell, 50 years old now, went to the same kindergarten in the County of Surrey, like Julian Lennon did. The child had at that time drawn a picture with lots of stars and told his father "That's Lucy in the sky with diamonds." This phrase John Lennon used for the song he was writing.

Tags:johnlennon,Lucy

Current Mood: Accomplished

It's Magic - Almost A Miracle

It has been a full year since X. had a horrific accident, falling off the metro train and trapped under the wheels last August, in Madrid. He arrived at the hospital with the left hand practically all but completely destroyed, leaving only the thumb intact. The right arm was sectioned from just above the elbow, but the fingers were intact. To all indication he would have no hands at all for the rest of his life.

The doctors, however, wanted to try to save one hand for him. Without able to programme it (they had only 6 hours to decide and carry out the op or it won't be effected at all), they quickly formed an emergency team of 15, surgeons, anaesthetists, traumatologists, to do a rare re-transplant, technically called here 'reimplante reverso agudo' - acute reversed re-implant, to put the amputated fingers from the right hand to his left hand, but having to reverse the positions as the pictures shown below: the positions of the little finger and the index finger had taken each other's natural location.

This infrequent operation was the first done in Spain, but 5th in the world. The other 4 cases done before were; one in China, 2 in America, and the last one in Turkey.

Today, one year later, Mr. X can use his left hand with 5 fingers intact. He can work the mobile phone, helps himself to drinks, grasp objects, and some other basic movements attending to daily sanitary functions. There's still a lot of rehabilitation to do, and the next challenge of the doctors will be helping to give him back the ability to write. Another similar operation was done in Valencia recently too, although that was programmed.

Isn't medical technology just mind boggling and wonderful?

Tags:hand,re-implant

Current Mood: Cheerful

The Mysterious Life & The Vacuum Cleaner

Was it the tycoon who had created an industrial empire that had invented the domestic vacuum cleaner? Or was it the personal friend of Adolf Hitler and his lieutenant Hermann Goring, and of Benito Mussolini? And friends too with the American president Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Mexican Manuel Avila Camacho, and the Dukes of Windsor of Great Britain. Or was it the innovator in the industrial field, patron of the development of carbon 14 in the 50's that involuted in the emerging business of the computer of IBM and owner of Telefonos of Mexico? Or the one who financed the archaeological discovery of the Pekin Man? Or was it the spy under protection of Mexico? As Axel Wenner-Gren were all those, the multi-faceted and multi-talented man, whom I mention briefly in my earlier Blog today, the man who invented the domestic vacuum cleaner, which converted him to be the first magnate in Sweden, and one of the richest men on the planet. He bought newspapers, banks, factories of arms, and the most important Celluloid company in Sweden, SCA. The idea of adapting the industrial vacuum cleaner to domestic use had made Axel Wenner-Gren not just one of the richest men in the world, but one of the most famous and revolutional. Shortly after the First World War he convinced the Sweden company Electrolux, for which he worked, to buy the copyright of the patent and pay him with shares. A few years later he became the owner of a leading company of the world in vacuum cleaners and refrigerators. The Times magazine published in their edition of 21st June of 1942 that Axel Wenner-Gren "was the most mysterious man in the occidental hemisphere." This enigma has begun to unfold with the publication in Mexico the book titled 'La Cruz del Sur' (The cross of the south). It reveals him as the spy Mexico protected, shared lovers with Hitler and Kennedy. Such a character in fiction would already be incredible and no one would believe all that had happened to one person. But all true in real life! However he spent his last 20 years in oblivion in Cuernavaca, near the Mexican capital. His wife, Marguerite Gauntier, an opera singer who had left her profession to follow her husband, had died in Mexico in utter misery. All that though, is another story. Tags:vacuumcleaner

Current Mood: Blah