WHAT ABOUT PLAYING AROUND?

Do we, did we ever play around?

Why am I opening this subject? Because I wrote about Tiger Woods playing around. And also, I was uploading a new video for our Airbroadcasting Channel on You Tube -- we've been getting so many compliments from strangers as well as friends, about what a loving couple we are.

Playing around was in vogue when we were "in vogue" -- pictures and articles about us were in Newsweek, in the NY Times; we were mentioned quite often in gossip columns, and seen in the chic places with other "names."

Did we play around? Not really, but ... well, we were a very pretty, good-looking, lovey-dovey couple and ... well ...

Click and read about JC and Em playing around.

CURING CANCER?

<--------- Cyanobacteria. It may be a cure for cancer.

Scientists are saying, more frequently nowadays, that there is hope, a real possibility of being cured, if you have cancer.

The Cancer Treatment Centers advertisements on television, make it sound as if they're the place to go to for support, for help, and possibly a cure. But it's an advertisement -- most treatment centers are profit-making corporations that are selling you hope as well as treatment.

There IS hope -- new medications are already being used. Of course, we know that a cure depends on what you've got, and how long you've had it.

We see "happy" Michael Douglas -- he looks sort of happy and hasn't lost his hair. But he looks worn, and gaunt, almost frail, and it wasn't so long ago that Patrick Swayze was whooping it up, saying he was beating Pancreatic Cancer, and he didn't beat it.

But hope lives in a fighting spirit -- think of Lance Armstrong, professional road racing cyclist, who won the Tour de France a record seven consecutive times, after having survived testicular cancer, with a tumor that had metastasized to his brain and lungs.

Cyanobacteria is found in brackish muck in the Indian River Lagoon, on the Atlantic Coast of Florida.

One cyanobacterium called "Symploca" emits a toxin that attacks tumors. The guy who's mining it, collecting, studying it, hoping to get it FDA approved, is Hendrik Luesch, a 40-year-old associate professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Florida, in Gainesville.

He has sprinkled it on bone, breast, colon cancer, and they have withered before his eyes. He used "largazole" (another cyanobacterium), that doesn't do anything to healthy tissue.

Luesch hopes to have CYANOBACTERIA on the market in 10 years -- that's how long it usually takes to get FDA approval.

What's going on? Scientists have discovered that 60% of drugs are natural products, or mimics of natural products. Advances in technology are making it easier and profitable to hunt for drugs in coral reefs, and deep-sea trenches. And many research teams are experimenting with marine-derived compounds for treating cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, malaria, diabetes, depression, asthma, and other ailments.

There is real hope. Reach for it. Grab it. Hold onto it.

If I've said that before, it's because hope is your fighting spirit and fighting keeps you vigorously alive.

UNEMPLOYED ACTOR (video)

Now that "Scottsboro Boys" is closed, Emily asks John Cullum how it feels to be unemployed.

John jokes about the reality that all actors, understand. The fact is, all acting jobs are "temporary." He describes his discussion with actor, George C. Scott, when they were working at the Circle in the Square, in "Boys in Autumn." Even though Scott was employed in films and theater, more than most actors, he also felt what John feels as a show closes -- that he will never work again.

Emily knows John will miss the "boys" -- they were like a family.

AM I A SISSY?

Bette Davis said, "Aging ain't for sissies." Others have said it too.

I hear Bette, not the million nagging voices that tell you endlessly through the day, every day, that you are old, aging, no longer qualified to take center stage, and be what's important, what people want to pay attention to right now.

Bette Davis let herself look old as she grew older; she played older women. She kept working as an actress until the end of her life. There have been other great stars before her and after her, but no one quite like her What she did as an actress was always interesting, fascinating, amazingly truthful.

All those adjectives -- I'd like them to apply to me, as I work and strive. I am sure there is no one quite like me in my world, but ... gee , like the plant in the hallway that I wrote about the other day -- my bonsai with some of its leaves becoming less glossy, fading, a few falling off -- I'm seeing age happening to myself.

So how do I handle growing older, and older and ... .older ?

Before I pulled my thoughts together, I let my fingers fly and made a list of the aging things I've noticed about ME.

It was realistic.

Well, I am not going to share it. I am not planning to call attention to all those things one can see in the mirror, usually, before anyone else sees it.

Are you a sissy if you don't grow old gracefully, or a bigger sissy if you fight like hell to stay young, look young, act young?

The age things hit you, slowly at first. A cramp, a muscle, the whistles that you used to get and are not getting now, the casual remarks friends make, that suggest that you really shouldn't try to do thus-and-so because ... well ... you might get hurt. And your checkups with your dentist, your doctor, plus the ads for medicines, the references to retiring, to buying insurance and those age categories -- over thirty five -- 40 to fifty -- fifty to retirement -- fifty to seventy. And the fact that age numbers beyond seventy are rarely mentioned -- just huzzahs and news alerts about someone very frail looking who's hanging around in his/her nineties!

Stop, stop, you want to shout, as you change the channel, or turn the page.

But talk of the future keeps echoing, and in the night, when you can't sleep, your night thoughts are not bad dreams -- they are realistic inklings, forebodings of the future.

That's tough to shuck off. It can hang over your day. That is NOT for sissies.

Advice: You can fence it out, block it off or turn negative predictions into wry, humorous exchanges. What is better is -- become the plant on your window sill, or wherever it is. Water the plant, don't over water. flick off the fading leaves, don't let a pile accumulate on top of the earth in and around the urn, in which the plant, (YOU), are growing.

We were brought up to live, and living is doing -- seeing, tasting, feeling, learning. A sissy closes off the air, the light and the outside world. If you're not a sissy, be what I call a "boldy" -- a darter, darting in and out of air, light, and whatever is beyond the surroundings of home -- dart into the mystery of the unknown.

Yes, I'm saying -- go up, not down as you age. Reach up and out, and go beyond.