LIVING WITH NATURE Book Series

LIVING WITH NATURE Book Series

By Dr Abe V Rotor

Award-winning books (Gintong Aklat and National Book Awards) 

published by UST Publishing House Manila

Brown eggs are preferred over white eggs

 Brown eggs are preferred over white eggs

 Brown eggs come from native fowls that subsist mainly on farm products. They are very resistant to the elements and diseases that they simply grow on the range. White eggs on the other hand, come from commercial poultry farms and are highly dependent on antibiotics and formulated feeds. Another advantage of brown eggs is that they have thicker shells. Besides, their yolk is brighter yellow as compared to that of white eggs.

Preference to natural, and organically grown, food is gaining popularity worldwide. It is because many ailments, from allergy to cancer, are traced to the kinds of food we eat. Many kinds of allergies have evolved from genetically engineered food, for which they have gained the reputation of Frankenfood, after the novel, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, published in 1818.

Salted egg with fresh ripe tomato 

Bored with monotonous breakfast? Looking for a side dish?

Serve red eggs with fresh juicy red tomato. It's easy to prepare.  Just have a ready supply of red eggs and ripe tomatoes in the refrigerator. Lycopene, carotine and xantophyll in tomato  promote good health. Check the quality of the red egg.  Discard those showing discoloration and trace of unpleasant smell. 

Make salted eggs at home

Making salted eggs is an old technology, and most likely originated in China.

Here is an easy-to-follow procedure, the old folks’ way.

•  Mix 12 cups of clay and 4 cups of salt, adding water gradually until they are well blended.
•  Apply a layer of this mixture at the bottom of a palayok or banga.
•  Coat each egg with the mixture.
•  Arrange the coated eggs in layers, giving a space of 3 to 5 cm in between them.
•  Add the extra mixture of clay and salt on top, cover the container with banana leaves, and keep the setup in a safe and cool place.
• Try one egg after 15 days by cooking below boiling point for 15 minutes.  If not salty enough, extend storing period.
• Color eggs if desired. 

Eggshell seed bed 
This is for your home garden.  Save whole eggshells as seedling bed of pechay, mustard, cucumber, tomato, pepper, and the like.  When ready the seedling is transplanted with the eggshell intact.  Just crack it to let the roots grow freely and reach out for water and soil nutrients in the new place wherre it has been transplanted.  .   

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TRIVIA:
"Gibba" keeps rice longer from spoilage
 Whatever is the explanation why rice cooked in a pot previously heated with a pinch of salt will not spoil fast is beyond scientific explanation. Yet it is common knowledge in the rural area.

This is what housewives do. The call the process “gibba,” literary, to heat at extreme temperature like firing clay in a furnace. Put a pinch of salt in the cooking pot - clay pot, heat until the salt disappears. Cook rice as usual in the pot. This will prevent rice from getting spoiled in a short time.

Another technique using salt is to place a pinch of it on the cover while the rice is boiling. This is shorten cooking time. (Lesson from Miss Veny Rotor of San Vicente, Ilocos Sur, supported by Tinong Viernes, April 8, 2009).

Creative Photography - New Field of Humanities

Photography has been relegated to the machine. This is not true.  In fact ity has created a new field in humanities - Creative Photography, which is aligned to visual arts and Performing arts. 

Dr Abe V Rotor

Gulliver the giant, Gulliver the pygmy in Jonathan Swift's novels,
two friends acting, each in either role;
for in life, you are at one time a giant, at another you are a dwarf, 
and seeing others the same, wise or fool.

Years apart through three generations make no difference;  

looking back when the old were once children;

and children wishing  for the future within their grasp;

in between the beauty of life is a moving train. 

Image of Mother and Child - Holy Book's symbol of piety;

Holy Trinity too, with a Father God - the greatest mystery;

Prodigal Son and father - the mother Rembrandt sought.

 And Joseph?  Brave soldiers who died in wars they fought?

Community stage play of a subject and theme by local talents;

move over cinema, mall, computer and television;

we have had enough of  robots and cyberspace pseudo heroes;

life's real, we've each a role with common vision.     

Trophies, the greatest is invisible - 

you reward yourself unknown,

the one no other else can own. ,    

Don't cut the trees, don't!

Make a stairway across;

Save the clouds that fill the fount,

We have had enough, the Cross.

A Piece of the Garden of Eden Mural

A Piece of the Garden of Eden 

Mural by Dr Abe V Rotor

“Those ancients who in poetry presented

the golden age, who sang its happy state,

perhaps, in their Parnassus, dreamt this place.

Here, mankind's root was innocent; and here

were every fruit and never-ending spring;

these streams--the nectar of which poets sing.”

― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

A Piece of the Garden of Eden (8ft x 16ft) AVRotor

Does the Garden of Eden still exist? If the Garden of Eden still exists, no one knows where. The Bible says a river ran from Eden and separated into four rivers: Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates.  Here is an artist's concept of a little corner of that garden. ~                       

Resurrection and Regeneration Sometimes truth is stranger than (science) fiction.

Resurrection and Regeneration

Sometimes truth is stranger than (science) fiction.

Dr Abe V Rotor

 

    

Field cricket (Acheta bimaculata) and sand crab can regenerate a lost leg or two, including the large hind legs, and pincers (crab). Starfish when cut in half through the central disk will regenerate into two, each with complete arms. House lizard loses tail only to grow back later.  

Old folks tell us of the magic of lizards growing new tails, crabs regaining lost claws, starfish arising from body pieces. How can we explain the mystery behind these stories?

The biological phenomenon behind these stories is called regeneration.

The male deer (PHOTO) grows a new set of anthers, and lose them after the mating season. Sea squirts and hydras are produced from tiny buds, so with yeast forming buds. This is the same way plants grow from cuttings, seaweeds grow from fragments, and algae from filaments. New worms may regenerate from just pieces of the body, and some fish can sprout new fins to replace the ones that have been bitten off.

Experiments demonstrated that the forelimb of a salamander severed midway between the elbow and the wrist, can actually grow into a new one exactly the same as the lost parts. The stump re-forms the missing forelimb, wrist, and digits within a few months.

In biology this is called re-differentiation, which means that the new tissues are capable of reproducing the actual structure and attendant function of the original tissues.

Studies on children who lose fingertips in accidents can regrow the tip of the digit provided their wounds are not sealed up with flaps of skin. They normally won't have a finger print, and if there is any piece of the finger nail left it will grow back as well, usually in a square shape rather than round.

Curious the kid I was, I examined a twitching piece of tail, without any trace of its owner. I was puzzled at what I saw. My father explained how the lizard, a skink or bubuli (alibut' Ilk), escaped its would-be predator by leaving its tail twitching to attract its enemy, while its tailless body stealthily went into hiding.

“It will grow a new tail,” father assured me. I have also witnessed tailless house lizards or butiki growing back their tails at various stages, feeding on insects around a ceiling lamp. During the regeneration period these house lizards were not as agile as those with normal tails were, which led me to realize the importance of the tail.

Regeneration is a survival mechanism of many organisms. Even if you have successfully subdued a live crab you might end up holding only its pincers while the canny creature has gone back into the water. This is true also to grasshoppers; they escape by pulling away from their captors, leaving their large trapped hind legs behind. But soon, like their crustacean relatives, new appendages will start growing to replace the lost ones.

Another kind of regeneration is compensatory hypertrophy, a kind of temporary growth response that occurs in such organs as the liver and kidney when they are damaged. If a surgeon removes up to 70 percent of a diseased liver, the remaining liver tissues undergo rapid mitosis (multiplication of cells) until almost the original liver mass is restored. Similarly, if one kidney is removed, the other enlarges greatly to compensate for its lost partner.

Regeneration of the kidney is in the nephron, which is composed of the glomerulus, tubules, the collecting duct and peritubular capillaries. The regenerative capacity of the mammalian kidney however, is limited as compared to that of lower vertebrates.

How about the human skeleton? The ribs can regenerate with the periosteum, the membrane that surrounds the rib, is left intact. A research was conducted on rib material being used for skull reconstruction. In that particular operation, all 12 patients had complete regeneration of the resected rib. I would not however, relate this feat to Genesis on the theory of creation.

 

  Hospital scene of organ transplantation; stem cell regeneration

Organ transplantation in higher animals has thus succeeded extensively and is now a regular part in medical practice. Resurrecting the dead however, remains a mystery. Stories in the bible of the raising of Lazarus and the dead little girl remain a matter of faith. 

                           

Yet in our postmodern times, a hundred or so ultra rich people lie in cryonics tanks awaiting the time when science shall then have the power to resurrect them. Then there is a short cut to resurrection, so the movie Jurassic Park, make people believe - the reconstruction of the total organism from a piece of its DNA (deoxyribose nucleic acid).

Why such wide and varied aims of man? Not because of man's unending desire for wealth and power, but the belief that the living world has common answer to present day inquiries. For example, is vegetative reproduction limited to plants and protists, why not to mammals? 

Why are lichens (PHOTO) older than most organisms, outliving them by years, if not centuries? Why is a single tissue capable of complete growth to form an entire organism, and that, from this organism another generation arises? If such is the case, then there is no real death of that organism after all. For is it not that life is a continuing process; the DNA is but a continuous stream from one generation to the next, ever young and vibrant, spreading into numbers we call population, and types we call diversity?

Then, if this is so, there is but a shade that separates regeneration and resurrection - or whatever terms we describe the continuity of life on earth. ~ Acknowledgement: Internet photos as indicated.

Man with a Hammer by Sculptor Francisco "Boy" Peralta

Man with a Hammer 

by Sculptor Francisco "Boy" Peralta

                                       Dr Abe V Rotor                              

Man with a Hammer, life size in stone by a local sculptor, 
the late Francisco "Boy" Peralta. San Vicente, Ilocos Sur   

Here he stands, sun and rain, season in and out, alone,

    a sledge hammer hangs on his brawn, frozen in time;

so blank his stare toward his subject, lifeless as stone,

  immortality defined in neglect in mournful sublime.  

And yet seeks man the mystery of power cum divine,

    a god from Mount Olympus, on Apollo to the moon;  

yet Man with a Hoe, Markham's hero a lowliest  kind, 

  and Rodin's thinking man turned prophet of doom. 

Mortal, shortcut to man's lofty dreams and often greed,

 a hammer falling from the sky striking the hardest;

not once, but many times 'til the die is cast to the grid,  

in Medusa's gaze, freezing man perhaps in his best. 

And bridging the gap of thoughts and generations,

in suspended animation of true story or legend;

yet live the man with a hammer for whatever reasons,

                                           and souls seeking immortality at the final bend.~