h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Dear friend,

I have just seen your message and your homepage thanks to dear lil - a friend of us both.

I do hope that I shall not scare you off due to the fact that I really am rather ancient. although I count myself edcxtremely fortunate to have wonderful friends on this websie and also when they comeup and chat to me when I am am being wheeled in my wheelchair. !!

I have always wished that I should try and keep my brain cells active and that appears to have happened in my case - mostly - but unfortunately I cannot get around on my own.

Go well and I hope that we can have a good friendship.

sincerely,

AlsoRan83

Monday 16th april, 2012 15.15 GMT

Good to hear from You!

At 60, I've got a growing appreciation of the hazards and handicaps of aging.

Most of my friends, are as a matter of fact, rather older than I am.

As I recall, you have grave arthritic problems.

I've got three kinds of that myself, mainly due I think, to years of heavy overwork in my US Army supply/admin jobs.

I'm now retired from that, thankfully.

Most of my time over the past 3 years, having been gone most of the time over the preceding 10 years, has been as primary care provider for my Mom.

I've been taking that for my sister, who'd been doing it in my absence, despite her own problems of fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis, while my mom had a series of strokes and heart attacks and bypass operations, the most recent over the past year.

If I understand correctly, a major part of your career was as an educator in the Union of South Africa, a very difficult and sometimes dangerous job in an an extremely challenging and difficult physical and social environment.

I'm long overdue to finish and upgrade my personal space, it seems like every time I begin to settle into it, I have another emergency to resolve on the home front.

At any rate, any time, you want to chat, feel free drop me a note.

Dear friend,

Thank you for the cake and the cup of tea.

I have been lying awake - it is now 5.50 GMT - thinking about the power of so many of the inventions during my lifetime. The power to improve and draw the different populations closer, and also the power to annihilate, as with the fearsome atomic bomb.

So much has happened. Somewhere on one of my postings I wrote that I was phenomenologist. I have a very important research result to to report, but this particular research methodology seems not to be accpeted on this website. It is a real pity, because when used in research - which I was doing in South ~Africa, this methodology never prescribes the solution for a social problem. It merely describes. with empirical evidence - the current "state of affairs".

Anyway, I hope to have the energy to give an example of the most successful manner in which this research methodological tool was used in solving an extremely difficult social situation.

It is kind of you to find the time t o write to an ald lady who , due to the psoriatic arthritis which is muy lot, is the reason why I have been in a wheelchair for nearly twelve years.! anyway, as long as my brain is not permanently affected I shall not complain. !! And that is where the brain exercises which I have been doing for the last three and z half years have proved to be both such a wonderful gift and methodological tool.

I now notice that I am replying to myself. so somewhere I have made a miostake as I thought i was replying to ITT ETC. ETC. !!
Oh well, perhaps you will find this. anyway, I shall print ot so that I do not forget to make this my first task.....
One of my methods of 1remembering! after the stroke which I had in my temporal lobe. !!

With Kind regards,

AlsoRan83


Wednesday 18th April 2012 GMT

On phenomenology, I've always enjoyed the traditional kind, as in Richard Shapiro's "Enigmas" or Rupert Gould's "Oddities" and "Enigmas" or "Ripley's Believe It Or Not"*.

Often I get the feeling that traditional phenomenology has been all but displaced by UFOlogy.

An h2g2 alternative to the "Edited Guide" is "The Post".

They never have as much new material as they'd like and phenomenology is among the genres they can handle, even if its first person and anecdotal.

Dimitri Georghini does most of the editing for the Post.

http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/brunel/U1590784




On Africa, the local congregation of my church**, has some ongoing projects in Africa, especially places like Uganda and Zimbabwe, also hosting native African ministers as guest speakers.




On cardiac health issues, I'm currently in treat for a problem with erratically fluctuating blood pressure, had a TIA, a very small stroke, followed by severe angina pains, back in 1979 and was a very long time recovering.





*Ripley's is still in active publications and still accepts new submissions.

http://www.ripleys.com/

**Unitarian-Universalist