Reef Bay Hike: What I Was Doing Last Thursday

Last Thursday morning I wasn't dissecting cows, I was going on a beautiful hike on St. Johns.
Above: Plant tree frogs live in but you can only see them when they come out onto the leaf at night.
Below: Termite mound in a tree and ruins of an early Dutch/Danish settlement.



Above: Tiny lizard.
Below: Lichen growing on the trees' bark made them look camouflaged.



Above: Beautiful springs.
Below: Ancient petroglyphs at the springs. The most blown up one supposedly stands for frog!




As we got closer to the beach (our final destination), we started to see hermit crabs.
Above: Incorrect way to hold a hermit crab.
Below: The correct way to hold a hermit crab is to give it a piece of stick to grab onto so that it doesn't pinch you!


From Reef Bay Sugar Mill it was just a short, hot hike to the completely deserted Genti Beach.
Below: I've never been so excited to see a boat before-- this one was here to pick us up and take us back to Cruz bay so we didn't have to hike back up the three miles of steep hill to the road.

Below: Me on the beach, fully dressed. I then quickly stripped down to a jogbra, zipped off the lower part of my hiking pants and got in the water. Heavenly (see my even bigger smile). Then I swam out to the boat with several other hikers, though some took a dingy out.




Above: Me onboard the boat, very pleased with myself for making the swim.
Below: The view back to the hills we hiked down as we pulled away from the shore.

Below: My first brown booby (a type of gannet)!



Coming into Cruz Bay we went right past Gallows Point where they used to hang people (pirates).
Above: Ominous black ship at Gallows Point.
Below: Gallows point.

Below: Pulling into the Cruz Bay harbor.

Arriving In The Virgin Islands

Above: Beautiful sunrise on my flight out of Bradley Hartford Airport.
Below: First view of islands as we descended into St. Thomas. IntrepidRetiredSocialWorker reports took a puddle jumper from San Juan, Puerto Rico to St. Thomas and reports she saw many beautiful tiny islands on her flight over.


First Stop: Red Hook Ferry Landing en route to St. John's. There were interesting signs about water taxis and also a very mellow Dachshund just hanging out with his owner who was volunteering at the information booth at the ferry landing.


Above: Three muskateers on the ferry ride to St. John's.
Below: First view of St. John's, ferry landing Cruz Bay.


Above: Our campground site. Yes, we were camping with no running water in our hut and no hot water whatsoever (I think I'm the only one who actually enjoyed the cold showers).
Below: My first view of the beach.

A Taste Of The Caribbean: St John's and St. Thomas

Above: Iguana at the hotel restaurant on St. Thomas. Below: Downtown Cruz Bay on St. John's-- note the tourist couple juxtaposed with the locals.


Above: Vodka on left, rum on the right (note several varieties and three different shades of Cruzan rum).
Below: IntrepidRetiredSocialWorker, me and my mom.



Above: Sign in a taxi. The islanders are very laid back, in marked contrast to the tourists. Below: Views of trunk bay and Coral bay on St. John's (at least as best I remember).

Round Two: I Advance!!!

My grades are up for Block 2: Cell Biology & Genetics and 7B: Veterinary Practice Ethics & Animal Care. I'm fairly pleased. My grades are well above passing for both classes-- which is all that really matters-- but their being fairly good also will help keep doors open for me down the road, which is important to me since I'm pretty sure I want to do a residency at some point.

Above is me with a squishably sweet, marshmellow mellow tiny little Pittie mix in the Caribbean. I got back on Saturday and will post photos soon!

Bizarre Sexually Transmitted Dog Cancer (And There Really Is A Disease Called Devils' Facial Tumor Disease)

My ears always perk up when my professors start saying really strange stuff. So when I heard Dr. Levine say, "Now if you are interested in X-files type fringe stuff..." I listened! He was referring to Canine Venereal Tumor (aka Transmissible Venereal Tumor, Sticker Tumor or Infectious Sarcoma). This strange cancer is spread by contact-- cells of the cancer are directly transferred from one dog to the next by touch! It is considered an STD-- I bet you didn't know that animals can get STDs as well as people-- although it can also be passed by one dog sniffing another's genitalia, in which case it infects the nasal cavity.
Another really weird thing about this cancer is that it can be traced back to a single animal, probably an Asian wolf, living about 200 years ago! There are several pieces of evidence for this-- all CVT tumors have very similar genetic make-up, but contain less chromosomes than a dog and have chromosomes of a different shape than dog chromosomes (their centromeres are positioned differently). Also, there is no viral component to this cancer. The analysis used to determine where this cancer originated involved a group of 16 dogs in three different countries-- Italy, India and Kenya-- as well as another 400 dogs from 85 different breeds, and was the published by Claudio Murgia in Cell in 2006.
The age of this cancer means it is one of the oldest cancers in the world. Interestingly, it was first identified over 100 years ago, in 1876, by a Russian veterinarian who showed that tumor cells from one dog could be used to infect another dog.
The cancer is found in many parts of the world, mainly in warm climates. It can be passed to other canids, including coyotes and foxes.
CVT is a histiocytic cancer, meaning its lineage is derived from the same lineage as macrophages. It forms cauliflower shaped tumors. Signs of genital infection include discharge and difficulty urinating due to blockage by the tumor; signs of nasal infection are also discharge, as well as nosebleed, oronasal fistulae and facial swelling.
Interestingly, CVT appears to have become less aggressive with time. It often regresses on its own after a period of several months, and rarely metastasizes. If it doesn't regress, the standard treatment is systemic chemotherapy (at Cornell: vincristine, 2 treatments past gross resolution of the disease) or radiation therapy.
The only other known transmissible cancer is a sad story. Devil's Facial Tumor Disease infects Tasmanian devils (an Australian marsupial) and is the main factor contributing to their being endangered as a species. You can read more about it in this New York Times article from Dec 31, summarizing the recent findings of a Science paper on the subject.

Bucolic Ithaca: The View Just Down The Road From Where I Live

Sometimes grey can be prettier than sunshine... I think the second photo down in this bunch is my favorite. I might make a print of it called, "Learning To Love The Grey."

These barns, bales and fields are just down the street from me (technically uphill). I've been having lots of fun taking photos of this beautiful scenery in lots of different weather and lighting. It makes for a nice study break and makes me feel grateful for the rustic beauty of Ithaca.

Color Creeps Back In: Images Of An Icy Winter Stream

These are images of a stream that I cross over every morning on my way to school. I noticed that the photos I was taking were no longer black, white and shades of grey, and this series, taken two days apart, was part of the impetus for the poem "Color Creeps Back In" that I wrote:

color creeps back in

gradually

shades of grey

begin to have hints of pastel pinks

and purples
the heart tingles
waking up from being asleep

The effect moods have on one's perception of the world is powerful. Medications can also have a marked effect. When writing the poem, I also had in mind this passage from Kay Redfield Jamison's 1995 memoir on living with bipolar illness, _An Unquiet Mind_:

After discussing it with my psychiatrist in Los Angeles and my doctor in London, I did, very slowly cut back on the amount of lithium I was taking. The effect was dramatic. It was as though I had taken bandages off my eyes after many years of partial blindness. A few days after lowering my dose, I was walking in Hyde Park, along the side of the Serpentine, when I realized that my steps were literally bouncier than they had been and that I was taking in sights and sounds that previously had been filtered through thick layers of gauze. The quacking of the ducks was more insistent, clearer and more intense; the bumps on the sidewalk were far more noticeable; I felt more energetic and alive.

I had been thinking of Jamison's analogy of 'sights and sounds that previously had been filtered through thick layers of gauze' when I wrote my line 'your body swathed in cast padding.' I wanted to evoke the same image of everything traveling through layers of cotton, and cast padding has an association with immobility for me, of being frozen, paralyzed. I also think cast padding is slightly more specific medical terminology than gauze, and I like that my immersion in the language of veterinary medicine seeps through into my poetry-- technical medical language is a part of me, my vocabulary-- I am steeped in it.

I was also thinking of a piece I had read by Ariel Gore in Ms. magazine in the '90s. She writes, in "Intimacy":

I'll wear white like the bright bone of my promise. I'll speak in whisper, wear blue and blend into the dawn. I'll walk tall, wear red so the blood won't show.

Something about the way she used color to emphasize her intent struck me, the way different colors are linked to and can signify different emotions. Writing poetry isn't always like that for me, but there are times when other, better, writers' words echo through my head when I am writing and I co-opt, revise and incorporate them into my own writing.