Convergence of the Twain

Here's another gem by Thomas Hardy that has many literary real-life applications other than the one for which it was originally written. The raw, powerful beauty of his words and the brooding tone pull you into every stanza even though you know the foregone conclusion.

The Convergence of the Twain

BY THOMAS HARDY

(Lines on the loss of the "Titanic")

I

In a solitude of the sea

Deep from human vanity,

And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

II

Steel chambers, late the pyres

Of her salamandrine fires,

Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

III

Over the mirrors meant

To glass the opulent

The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

IV

Jewels in joy designed

To ravish the sensuous mind

Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

V

Dim moon-eyed fishes near

Gaze at the gilded gear

And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?" ...

VI

Well: while was fashioning

This creature of cleaving wing,

The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

VII

Prepared a sinister mate

For her — so gaily great —

A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.

VIII

And as the smart ship grew

In stature, grace, and hue,

In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

IX

Alien they seemed to be;

No mortal eye could see

The intimate welding of their later history,

X

Or sign that they were bent

By paths coincident

On being anon twin halves of one august event,

XI

Till the Spinner of the Years

Said "Now!" And each one hears,

And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

Cool Cancer Research Article

During the week of April 4 through 10, I went to San Diego to visit my son Blake, who just returned from deployment in the Persian Gulf. Really, in the gulf because he was on a ship. No landlubber is Blake who got his sea legs for real over the last six months. It was a great welcome home party made even better when my younger son, Logan, who is currently stationed in Germany, also came stateside to see Blake. What a great homecoming and reunion it was! Alas, all good things come to an end. We all returned to our respective homes and work. "WORK!", in my best Maynard G. Krebs voice. (Maynard was the affable but labor-phobic beatnik from the Dobie Gillis show.)

During my flights to and from San Diego I (twice) read an article in Scientific American about advances in immunotherapy treatments against blood-borne cancers. And thanks to the OpenStax Biology text that I've been reading, most of it made sense to me! Yes, my nerdiness is paying off in a strange, perverted way. Who but a nerd, and, of course, a college student, would download a 1,500 page biology text and read it? I love to learn!

Immunotherapy uses the body's own immune system to help identify and destroy malignant cells. Many malignant cells don't look 'foreign' to our immune system so don't trigger an immune response. This cellular trickery is common to most cancers and, in my case, allows those bad actors to continue to grow and crowd out other good stuff in my blood, like red blood cells, and neutrophils, which carry oxygen all over my body and fight off infections, respectively.

The most intriguing treatment approach described was the one where three types of cells were extracted from your body: healthy white blood cells, malignant white blood cells and healthy dendritic cells. Then the molecular structure of receptors on the healthy and malignant blood cells is compared to see how they differ. Malignant cells usually express at least one incorrect receptor protein on the cell surface which is what causes problems in the first place. (Remember my earlier post about apoptosis, natural cell death?) Once these differences are identified, the healthy dendritic cells can be 'programmed' to seek out the malignant cells that express the incorrect receptor, identify them to the immune system and thereby cause the immune system to attack those malignant cells. I'm glad medical researchers have some tricks of their own.

Unfortunately, without a subscription to Scientific American, we are unable to see this article online. Bummer! Otherwise, I would post a link to it under my Lymph Links section. The article is in Scientific American, Volume 314, Issue 4. I'm very pleased to see these kinds of advances in cancer treatments, especially since the side effects of them are usually far less consequential than chemotherapy or radiation.