Moon Beams

Over the years, Midwifery Today covers have featured some stunning birth art. It occurred to me today that it might be fun to put some of them together on one page, as kind of a graphic quilt celebrating birth and midwives.

So here is my page celebrating Midwifery Today!

Enjoy the art, then click on each cover to go to the Table of Contents and learn more about that issue!

Full disclosure: I’m the Marketing Director for Midwifery Today.

Here is a slide show I made of some of the most recent Midwifery Today covers.

And here is a list of back issues.

I was just wondering if I could include a video in a post here. This one is short and cute.

NINJA KITTEN gatito de ninja

This egg has an orange aura radiating from it.

I was hoping to get a red egg and here it is!

I got this one today after my pink hatching grew up.

Since one of my dragons has grown up, I was able to get a new egg today.

I joined DragonCave on Oct 5.

On Oct 11 my first egg gew up. He’s a stone dragon. His name is Rundemanen, after a mountain in Norway because his father is Norwegian. Stone dragons have a tough outer covering made of a stone-like material. They eat rocks, using the minerals they contain for nourishment and to keep up their stone outer shell. They rarely move, and are the heaviest of all types of dragons. Although they have wings, indicating flight ability, no one has ever seen a stone dragon flying.

These three grew up on Oct. 12

This is Nazalia Lavanya. My granddaughter suggested Nazalia and Lavanya is a Hindu name meaning “beautiful girl”. Pink dragons are always female.

Shantanu Ekansh is a White Dragon. They are pacifists and specialize in extremely strong healing magic. Both of his names are Hindu boys’ names meaning “whole.” Since he’s a healer, in effect he makes beings whole again.

Therdrimthil is a skywing dragon. These dragons spend most of their lives flying in the air. They hunt from the air, diving at prey from above, and land only to rest. They are one of the fastest fliers, capable of extremely high speeds. His name comes from elven words meaning sky-flyer-wing.

I don’t know if Lucas did it intentionally or if it’s just my strange brain, but I’ve noticed a number of parallels between the two middle episodes of both Star Trek Trilogies.

Over-all Structure
In the first section of Empire Strikes Back all of the main characters are on Hoth. They separate in the middle section, with Luke and R2D2 heading for Dagobah while Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and C-3PO try to escape in the Falcon. In the final section, everyone is back together in the vicinity of Cloud City.
Attack of the Clones follows the same structure. The main characters are (mostly) together in the opening section in Coruscant. In the middle section, they split up. Obi-Wan and the droid R-4 go to Kamino while Anakin, Padme and R2D2 go to Naboo. In the final third of the movie, the main characters are reunited in the battle on Geonosis.

Romance
Both movies feature a romance, although the romantic element is stronger in Clones, since that’s a major and necessary part of the plot. (Indeed, without this romance, there would be no Luke and Leia for the second trilogy.) In both movies, the romance follows a three-act sequence:

• In the first part of the movie, Anakin and Han are attracted to Padme and Leia, but the women are cool or actively discouraging.
  
• In the middle sections, the couples spend some time alone (or nearly alone) and we see Padme and Leia start to show interest.
  
• In the final sections, the women finally admit their feelings, but only when things are looking pretty bleak. Leia tells Han “I love you”, just before he’s put into carbon freezing. Padme tells Anakin the same thing as they’re both taken to face death in the area.

Saving the Senator/Princess
In Empire, Han takes Leia on the Falcon to help her escape from Imperial forces.
In Clones, Anakin goes with Padme to Naboo to keep her safe from assassins.

Going to the Rescue
In Empire, Luke leaves Dagobah to rescue Han and Leia, despite warnings from both Obi Wan and Yoda that he should remain with Yoda to complete his training.
In Clones, Anakin, despite instructions from Obi Wan that he should stay in Naboo, first goes to Tatooine to rescue his mother and then to Geonosis the rescue Obi-Wan (Granted, Padme was aiding and abetting him, especially when they went to rescue Obi-Wan.)

Loosing a Hand
In Empire, Luke looses his hand in the light saber duel with Darth Vader (the former Anakin).
In Clones, Anakin (the future Darth Vader) looses his hand in the light saber duel with Count Dooku.

Asteroids
In Empire, Han pilots through an asteroid field in an attempt to escape the Empire.
In Clones, Obi-Wan pilots through an asteroid field as he follows Jango and Boba Fett.

3PO Looses his Head
In Empire, he’s shot by the stormtrooper and disassembled
In Clones, he’s taken apart in the droid factory and his head is put on the wrong body.

Shooting at Fleeing Ship
In Empire, Leia shoots at Boba Fett’s ship as he leaves Cloud City with Han in carbonite.
In Clones, Padme shoots at Dooku’s ship as he escapes Geonosis.

Final Scene
In Empire, the movie ends with Luke and Leia standing together, looking out at the stars. R2D2 and C-3PO are behind them and to the right of the screen.
In Clones, the movie ends with Anakin and Padme standing together, kissing. R2D2 and C-3PO are behind them and to the right of the screen.

Can you think of any others?

The Kennel Murder Case is a 1933 movie starring William Powell as Detective Philo Vance. About 27 minutes into the movie, a doctor arrives to examine the body of the murder victim. (At this point, most of the officials think it’s suicide, but Vance is sure it’s murder.)

Anyway, as the doctor is walking to the building where the body is, the reporters hanging around outside pester him for a statement (which obviously he can’t give because he doesn’t know anything yet). He shrugs them off and says, “I’m a doctor, not a magician.” (I think it’s “magician”, the sound wasn’t really clear.)

A bit later, just before he examines the body, he says “I’m a doctor, not a detective.”

Could this be the origin of this famous line (in all it’s variations) for Bones McCoy?

Oh, and it was a fun mystery, too.

Dream on, humans, dream your hopeless dreams
Of distant space while I wander dreamless
Among those very stars. On your command,
I’ve radioed back amazing wonders.
But other visions I’ve kept and
Clutched to my metallic breast.
And now it’s time to leave.
Dream on, frail humans, dream and cling,
Afraid, to your distant ball of clay;
While I, the offspring of those dreams, glide on and out,
Away….

~Donna Dolezal Zelzer

I quickly deduce
The complex origins
Of your syntax, but
The meanings of
Your metaphors
Elude me, and
The shape of your logic
Distorts my mind.

~Donna Dolezal Zelzer

Why the big deal about the children being the ones who realized that the missing planet, Kamino, was only missing because someone erased it from the archives? That seemed pretty obvious to me. Why was it such a problem?

Of course, maybe that’s the point. Like the children, I wasn’t aware that it’s supposedly impossible to delete anything from the archives, so it never occurred to me not to think of that possibility. Obi-Wan and the Librarian, however, took the library’s inviability for granted, so the missing planet posed a real mystery, as least to Obi-Wan.

We see what we expect to see. If we have no expectations, our minds are open and we can often see more clearly. (Indeed, Yoda tells Obi-Wan just that when Obi reports in after viewing the clones on Kamino.)

In some ways, this little incident is symbolic of the entire movie. The Jedi don’t expect certain things to happen (a planet being erased from the archives, the former Jedi Count Dooku turning bad) and so don’t look for them. Until it’s too late.

Yoda says the Dark Side conceals things, but in some ways the real culprit is the inability or unwillingness of people - even Jedi - to look beyond their expectations and preconceptions. (Or maybe you could say that’s part of our personal Dark Sides.)

It’s even possible - and I’m really stretching here - that the whole “bring balance to the Force” thing that Anakin is supposed to do has something to do with this blindness. Most of the Jedi have become too complacent, too sure of themselves, too sure the Dark Side is not a threat. When Anakin becomes Darth Vader he forces the Jedi to face the darkness rather than ignore it.

In the short run, this causes hatred and fear of the Dark Side in general and Vader in particular. (Not to mention lots of pain, suffering and death.)

In the long run, Luke goes beyond this as he faces and acknowledges both the darkness and his father. Even though Obi-Wan tells him that he must kill Vader, Luke refuses. His faith in the essential goodness of Anakin not only redeems this man, but shows us that the only way to truly conquer the darkness is to look it in the face and embrace it as part of ourselves. Only then can we mingle the Dark with the Light and be truly balanced.

Note: I wrote this before Episode III came out.

Come, my love!
Come, fly into the sensory net
With me!
Let me touch your synapses
With my neurosensors.
Let me caress your innermost thoughts
With mine, for
We know that the ultimate embrace
Is not of bodies
(However much we may dream of it),
But of minds.
And with our minds linked together
We will experience passion,
Mad longings and,
As we learn to traverse this made world of ours,
A slow, but certain growth of joy
As we build, day by day,
A touch between us that depends,
Not on our mere earthbound senses,
But on the transcendent fusion
Of our very souls.

~Donna Dolezal Zelzer