--- Opportunistic learning ---

I'll never suggest vivisection or dissection on this site.

I'm one of those respect-for-life people.

I'm a predator, so I have no problem with sustenance hunting but I don't like trophy hunting. I don't think that animals should be used in medical research, much less product research. I don't think studies should be used where anyone is placed in danger - human or non-human. I am all for no-kill animal shelters and animal rescue facilities. Ethics committees should be aggravating organizations.

So, how might you learn about anatomy and physiology?

Well, there are YouTube videos of just about any surgical procedure you might want to see. But this blog is about opportunistic learning.

Nobody likes invasive medical procedures so people should take advantage of them as learning opportunities.

Doctors, more and more, are including educational debriefings after substantial therapies.

I've had three clinical procedures since I've been in Colorado. The first was my cataract surgeries. The staff was very personable and explained every step of the operations. I was conscious though sedated through the whole thing and the surgeries were not only pleasant but interesting. I am so glad that I waited until after they were over before I watched a cataract removal on YouTube!

My second medical adventure was a trip to the Porter Hospital Emergency Department after developing bronchitis and a profound fatigue. Again, the staff was personable and informative. They explained everything they were doing as they swirled around me in a kind of medical tornado. Afterward, they gave me a full, printed report of their results.

A report of a physical examination with blood work can tell you a lot about your physiology and most doctors are willing to provide a printout. Researching each test result can tell you all kinds of stuff about what's going on inside you.

I've just had my second screening colonoscopy. People are advised to have colonoscopies every ten years after the age of 50 - it's easy to treat colon cancer if caught early and it can be prevented if intestinal polyps are caught and removed as soon as they appear.

I've had three colonoscopies. The first was diagnostic and, at that time, they did not anesthetize people. The preparation was very uncomfortable and they couldn't get the endoscope past the upper left of my large intestine. I felt exactly where they stopped. So they sent me for a lower GI X-ray with a barium enema. I was awake through that also and, as unpleasant as it was, I did get to watch the monitor as they pumped mud into me. Barium mud.....that's the same stuff they pump into oil wells to keep pressure in the well. Not only are barium compounds heavy but they block X-rays well.

The second colonoscopy was when I turned 50. The prep was a little less griping but the gallon of slimy, tasteless polyethylene glycol was sickening and produced plenty of griping. But they, at least put me to sleep for the procedure. I missed the briefing afterward. The anesthetic they used caused me to dissociate. I sat through the talk, asked questions, listened to the answers, and the first thing I remember after the procedure was walking out to my friend's truck to go home.

This time, they have taken the magnesium citrate out of the clean-out-your-gut drink so there was no griping and I got to flavor it with Gatorade so the prep was actually okay. Rocky Mountain Gastroenterology in Littleton treated me like a king at the clinic and when they put me out, I was flat out. I also got to talk to the doctor afterward and they gave me informative photos of the inside of my large intestine.....all the way to the end, including the polyp they removed meaning that my 10 years to the next colonoscopy has shrunk to 5 years. If the next one is as agreeable as this one....no problem.

If you don't already, you can learn a lot about your inner workings by requesting medical reports from your regular physicians and encouraging specialists to share information with you after procedures...ask questions and show appreciation for good work

--- Terminus: Westminster ---

Good morning America how are you?
Don't you know me I'm your native son
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.

                                                Arlo Guthrie

The song laments the demise of the passenger trains that were just beginning to disappear when I was a child. I was about 14 when I took the only train ride of my childhood. Our Sunday School class took a train from LaGrange, Georgia to West Point, Georgia.

Trains took more scenic routes than highways. The road beds were narrower so they could manage rougher terrain. The hilly country of central Georgia was entrancing with the constant rhythm of the rail.

Of course, train travel hasn't disappeared completely but it has shrunk to the rare entertainment or the urban commuter trains.

Trains are a common factor in big city life as more metropolises offer options to the jammed city traffic. I still appreciate the Denver trains as a pleasure.

The new B and G lines remind me strongly of the one train ride I took as a child. The big silvery commuter trains have the flavor of the old passenger trains.

The B line runs from Union Station to Westminster Station near Federal and Lowell Boulevards. I wouldn't call the route scenic, running through mostly industrial areas of North Denver, but the terminus is pretty offering a view of the Front Range of the Rockies between Golden and Boulder, including the Flatirons.

                                             [The B Line commuter train at Union Station]

 The Westminster Station park blends Little Dry Creek into an architecture of art and nature. The creek is well used as an element of the landscape, along with indigenous plants and wildlife.

How many "Dry Creeks" are there in the Denver area? There are Little and Big Dry Creeks in both Littleton and Westminster. I am surprised to find that the Little Dry Creek that runs through Englewood, down the hill from me, is the same Little Dry Creek in Littleton that I saw while on the Highline Canal Trail.

There are other Dry Creeks in Colorado. and many of them sport trails. The funny thing is, I've never seen one of these creeks actually dry.

[Westminster Station and Park]

Westminster is a sprawling northern suburb of Denver. The land is high plains with mostly grasslands with most of the neighborhood trees being more the product of landscaping than nature. Dry Creek and Little Dry Creek in Westminster usually looks tame enough but in times of snow melt and heavy rain in the spring and fall, there is a danger of flooding and flood management is an issue here. About half the distance between Westminster Station and Sheridan Boulevard, the stream becomes a concrete conduit.

                                                  [Fire Training Tower at England Park]

                                                           [Little Dry Creek conduit]

Westminster Station Park seems to be a surprisingly good area for birdwatching. The short time that I was walking through, I spotted a snowy egret, magpies, ducks, and a red winged blackbird. I wasn't out for birds so I didn't have the equipment to catch the blackbird on the wing with his brilliant red and yellow bars.

                                                    [Birds at Westminster Station Park]

                                  [Westminster Station Park with the Rockies in the background]

Actually, anywhere there's water in Denver is a good place to watch for water fowl. On the walk back from University Station, I crossed Harvard Gulch and saw these two ducks huddled on a rock.

                                                            [Ducks at Harvard Gulch]

Train rides are special but train stops often have points of attraction that should not be missed.

--- Language on the Internet ---

I can't say that I'm spectacularly successful in my adventures in Spanish, but, at least, I'm having fun. The core of my coursework is the MIT opencourseware for their first year 21g-701 Spanish class of 2003. I picked up the textbook and workbook for the class and jumped in.

MIT offers course materials for several languages including Chinese, English as a second language, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. The Spanish courseware is available online here:

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/find-by-topic/#cat=humanities&subcat=language&spec=spanish

It's structured around a "Spanish soap opera" called "Destinos". In that way, you get to not only see and hear Spanish as it is used in several parts of the Spanish speaking world, but you also learn quite a lot about Spanish culture, history, and art.

I am enjoying the story of a dying Mexican aristocrat trying to find his lost first wife and child through a Los Angeles lawyer. The series is available through the Annenberg Learner site here:

https://learner.org/series/destinos

Annenberg provides learning materials for a wide range of subjects. The video series are generally well made and entertaining.

I supplement the coursework with several other resources including the games on the Digital Dialects site. Many commercial Spanish course products use these kinds of "video games" to engage their customers. Digital Dialects offers free learning tools for many (many!) languages. Check them out here:

http://www.digitaldialects.com

The last time I tried to learn Spanish, I started with a book by Kato Lomb - Polyglot. Lomb worked in 16 languages and won an exalted reputation as an interpreter and teacher. Although I strongly recommend the book, it didn't lead to me learning Spanish. Still, I attribute my failure more to my own lack of aptitude in acquiring new languages. One of the tips from the book stuck with me though. Ms. Lomb suggests reading books in the new language. That process, of course, is arduous at first and becomes easier and easier as you pick up the language. The problem for me is that it doesn't seem to help me much with conversational Spanish.

I have several Spanish language educational and literary files saved on my computer though. They're easy to find on the Internet, for instance, on sites like The Gutenberg Project and The Internet Archives.

While reading through Spanish materials, I keep Google Translate open on in my Internet browser. It's easy to get to by searching for "translate spanish to english", for instance. You get two boxes. Type a word or phrase in one box and the translation appears in the other box. You can switch languages in process and you can even here the phrase spoken. I counted 99 current languages covered by Google Translate. There are some I have never even heard of.

How many different languages are common in your community? I lived for twenty  years in the small south-central Alabama town of Selma and met many people from their Spanish and Chinese communities. Denver has a vast diversity of cultures and languages.

As one gets older, picking up a new language typically becomes more difficult, but it seems that, if you make it a regular thing when you're young, it's easier. I have a friend in Auburn, Alabama that regularly adds on new languages and surprises exchange students by conversing with them in their own languages. Learning new languages is fun. Start when you are young.

--- Highline Canal: Spring ---

The Highline Canal Trail is like a highway for pedestrians.

That sounds too much like a metaphor. Let me drop the "like". The Highline Canal Trail is a highway for pedestrians. If you're hiking or biking and you want to get from A to B, then the Highline might be your friend, along with the many other urban trails that intersect it.

Pedestrianism has it's advantages and disadvantages. It's not for the lazy. It's usually slow (barring heavy traffic on the roads)) and takes considerably more effort than driving. It's not going to take you any great distance unless you're going to get into backpacking in a big way.

On the other hand, it's cheap and doesn't rely on fossil fuels. And you get a bonus. All that exercise your doctor prescribes? It's built in.

Exercise. This 17 mile stretch of the Highline pretty much convinced me that I'm getting too old for the 30 mile day hikes I used to do. 20 seems to be my new limit....at least when temperatures rise above 70 degrees.

I joined the Highline Canal Trail near Dry Creek Road in Littleton. There are several access points in the area.

                                                     [Approach to the Highline Canal]

In following the "highline" contour of the area, the canal has to navigate many roads and natural streams by passing over or under. Here is one of the aqueducts over Dry Creek. It's definitely not a Roman aqueduct but it has it's charm in a Currier and Ives way.

                                                                  [Aqueduct]

As an early 20th century work of engineering, it's certainly interesting.

The canal and it's accompanying trail meanders through a wide variety of scenery, including urban shopping areas.

                                                                         [Littleton]

And just to show that I actually did begin near milepost 20, here's milepost 21.

                                                                      [Milepost 21]

Although I was hoping spring wildflowers would be out for the hike (and there was some as I will show), the predominant color was green.

                                                                   [Along the trail]

One of the many walkers I met early on the trail described the trail as "bone dry". As this photo shows, that isn't exactly right. Denver Water allows water to flow along the canal occasionally, but even when it's not flowing, snow melt and rain will produce ponds along the way.

                                                             [Pond on the canal]

There are quite a few vistas of the Rockies along the canal, such as this view of snow capped Mount Evans.

                                                                    [Mount Evans]

One wildflower I encountered was this small white ground cover. I couldn't quite narrow it down but the five petalled flowers and lacy leaves reminded me of an anemone. A good site for wildflower identification in Colorado is Wildflowers of Colorado (http://www.wildflowersofcolorado.com/index.html), which let's you search by flower color and provides lots of photos.

                                                                  [Anemone?]

At one point, the canal crosses Lee Gulch and it's a little difficult to figure out which trail is the Highline Canal and which is the Lee Gulch Trail. Actually, it's not that difficult since the Highline Canal Trail follows the canal....always.

                                                               [Cascade on Lee Gulch]

There are places where the canal really is "bone dry" and you can see the stream bed and how the canal is constructed. Through most of it's length, the Highline flows across natural earth.

                                                                      [Dry bed]

Where there is water, the many foot bridges across the canal provide picturesque scenery.

                                                                        [Footbridge]

I left the trail where it crossed University (the first time) and walked up to Cherry Hills Marketplace for lunch at the Original Pancake House. The food was good and reconnection with the trail was easy. I just followed Orchard Road back down to where it intersected the Highline Canal.

In places honeysuckle splashed that banks of the canal with white, pink, and rose.

                                                                   [Honeysuckle]

These are different honeysuckle than the ones I'm familiar with down South. Those are vines....these are bushes.

I'm especially fond of succulents and cactuses. Their blossoms tend to be extremely varied, intricate, and colorful. Euphorbia is one of the common varieties in this area. It's also called "spurge" There are many species but this green flowered kind is the only kind I've seen locally.

                                                                     [Euphorbia]

These little guys are called Cowboy's Delight or Copper Mallow. They're tiny but the orange blossoms sorta grab you.

                                                           [Copper Mallow plant]

The orange color on this tree trunk is pretty but it is probably a disease called Cytospora Canker.

                                                               [Orange tree trunk]

And this is only the third snake I've seen since I moved to Colorado, all garter snakes (I miss snakes).

                                                                     [Garter snake]

I've hiked the last 7 miles of this stretch of the Highline before. You can see the backyards of some very large homes here. The structures in Cherry Hills Village tend toward the impressive, ornate and large.

By the time I got to Hampden, my feet were blistered, I was tired, and  it was verging on heat-prostration-weather for me, so, after walking down to University, I was ready to hop a bus for the last half mile.

Poetically, spring is the time that nature revives from it's long winter sleep. Actually, nature never sleeps, it's just harder to see what's going on in the winter. But spring is a great time for people who are interested in birds, other wildlife, or flowers. What's happening outside in your area?

--- Terminus: Five Points ---

My terminal hike last  month was my third trip to Downing Street Station. The first was also my first to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Unless you're down for a long walk, I wouldn't recommend that one.  The second was a group tour of Whittier neighborhood presented by the Ford-Warren Branch of the Denver Public Library and Chris Englert from Walk2Connect. It was an interesting tour highlighting Black history in Denver.

This walk was short, less than a mile from Downing Street Station back to 19th Street. The day was overcast but at least it was cool.

                                                           [Downing Street Station]

This part of Welton Street, known as Five Points, has also been called the Harlem of the West and is known for it's jazz culture. There wasn't a lot happening that morning. The little park had a few monuments to local history including this statue of Dr. Justina Ford "The Baby Doctor."

                                                         [Statue of Dr. Justina Ford]

Doctor Ford (1871-1952) was Denver's first licensed African American, female doctor and she specialized in obstetrics and pediatrics for over 50 years.

Five Points, if I ignore the 40+ story buildings in the background, less than a mile away, reminds me of a little Southern town with its city street bounded by store fronts.

                                                                   [Two street scenes]

I had a nice lunch at the Welton Street Cafe that advertises Southern and Caribbean food and, sure enough, it was good Southern and Caribbean food. I had a great catfish sandwich and (wonders upon wonders) real fried okra!

Almost back to downtown Denver, the Blair-Caldwell Branch of the Denver Public Library offers  a considerable collection of African American materials. The full name is Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library, and it's worth a visit.

[Chinese statue]

That was the end of the line for my Welton Street walk and the beginning of the line for my trip back home.

Selma, my home for 20 years, has a strong historic heritage including pioneer Alabama, the Civil War, the mystic Edgar Cayce, and Civil Rights. A walk around Selma was a walk through history. Your town has a historical legacy, too. Can you find it?