Elizabeth - May 4, 2006

As a couple of you already know, our tabby Elizabeth passed into the Summerland this morning.
A former stray, she was perhaps eight, perhaps older. When we got her in late 2002, she was paranoid and post-traumatic, but soon came to trust us (me in particular), and had lately been taking on the characteristics of a normal, healthy cat, even engaging in play. She had a way of dozing on my lap with her neck resting on my wrist, and would frequently knead my belly prior to settling in, draping her tail around my other wrist. By comparison to our Manx, Maggie (whom we call "Trouble"), Elizabeth was "Sweetie" or "Princess" or "Baby". She was a good cat, but still shy among strangers.
Her illness came relatively suddenly; only the last couple of days had she not been herself, having a few "accidents", and becoming more distant. Last night it was obvious that she was ill, more limp and reclusive in demeanor, even hiding under the recliner with the "leave me alone, I want to die" attitude of the truly ill.
So we took her down to the vet hospital, where the vet confirmed that she was dehydrated, her temperature was down, and that she needed to stay the night for tests. They called in the middle of the night, the vet staying past her normal shift, to tell us that her liver was failing, and that only expensive, aggressive, and torturous treatment could save her. So we opted to do the honourable thing, and decided to terminate her life.
Having been through this a few years ago with Sybil, it was perhaps slightly less difficult for me than it was for Margarian. When the time came, we petted her one last time as the vet gave the injection. She turned her head away from us, rested her head on her paw, and went to sleep.
Farewell dear friend; we'll meet again on the other side of the veil.

Houston, April 2006

As I mentioned last month, I spent a week in Houston on business. It was quite a change from the dry, early spring climate of high-elevation Calgary to the humid, near-sea level, summerlike temperatures of coastal Texas. I was told it was a good time to come, as the summers there can be very hot.
I started off with taking the tour of the Johnson Space Center (http://www.spacecenter.org/), having to pass through two layers of security checks before I could visit the old Mission Control. NASA’s been run out of the new Mission Control since 1996, but the old centre has been kept as a historical site. The old consoles are still there, with their dial phones and non-interactive computer screens linked to a giant mainframe in the basement. I didn’t realize that the techs there had to rely on slide rules and paper to supplement the readouts they were getting from the spacecraft at the time. The tour also visited a training facility for shuttle and International Space Station missions, held within a huge building. We also paused at a grove of oak trees to commemorate the fallen seventeen astronauts of Apollo I, Challenger, and Columbia.
The centrepiece, though, was the interpretive centre, featuring a number of science-centre type displays, a full-size mock-up of the shuttle flight deck and crew deck, and a museum featuring the actual "Faith 7" Mercury capsule of Gordon Cooper, and the Apollo 17 Command Module. The highlight had to be the vault containing several Moon rocks, including a slice of basalt that you could actually touch (so I did).
I also visited "The Magick Cauldron", a major pagan store there (http://www.magickcauldron.com), and a hard-to-find but funky restaurant, the Last Concert Café (http://www.lastconcert.com/); unfortunately the Pagan Meetup scheduled for there didn’t go.
At the Houston Museum of Natural Science, I visited the "Body Worlds 3" exhibit (http://www.hmns.org/exhibits/special_exhibits/bodyworlds.asp). The anatomical dissections and arrangements were artistically (if not respectfully) done, and sometimes it was easy to forget that these were once real people. The isolation of blood vessels seemed exceptionally fragile, and made me wonder about the practicalities of transporting the exhibits. Some of my correspondents have complained about the show being "preachy", particularly about the effects of smoking. Except for one volunteer ranting about the causes of obesity, I didn’t find it that way. The audio tour was quick to point out, though, that the black specks in the lungs in several of the exhibits were due to smoking. I have a DVD of the exhibit, if anyone’s interested.
For the artistically-inclined, Houston also has the Menil Collection (http://www.menil.org/) , featuring works by Dali, Warhol, Max Ernst, and others, a wonderful collection of surrealist memorabilia, and some wonderful antiquities, including some lovely northwest coast Indian art, and even some Cycladic crones. The Rothko Chapel (http://www.rothkochapel.org/) is an eight-sided interfaith chapel showcasing 14 all-black paintings by American abstract expressionist Mark Rothko. The austere atmosphere makes it a suitable place for grief work, and a "broken" obelisk outside is dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King. Nearby is the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum (http://www.menil.org/byzantine.html) housing the only collection of intact Byzantine frescoes in the Western Hemisphere. The Menil Foundation rescued the frescoes from the thieves who stole it from the original chapel in Cyprus to keep the collection together. While located in Houston, the frescoes are still the property of the Church of Cyprus.
Did I mention that I went to Houston on business? Needless to say, I returned to Calgary both mentally and physically exhausted, but it was well worth it.