ANOTHER FORM OF DEADLY SUPERSTITION

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Boy Who Fought Cancer Treatment Dies

CANTON, Ohio (AP) - An 11-year-old boy whose parents won court approval to treat their son's leukemia with an unconventional method has died after five years of fighting the cancer. Noah Maxin died Thursday at Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital in Cleveland, said Rinda Schelat of Reed Funeral Home in Canton.

Noah's parents, Greg and Theresa Maxin, won the right in 2002 to abandon chemotherapy treatment for their then-7-year-old son. County child welfare officials had accused the couple of neglect after the Maxins told Akron Children's Hospital they were pulling Noah out of chemotherapy three months into a 3 1/2-year treatment plan.

The couple said they were concerned about the long-term effects chemotherapy would have on Noah, whose cancer had gone into remission. After researching alternative treatments, they found a doctor specializing in holistic medicine who recommended a healthier diet along with supplements to boost Noah's immune system.

The parents put him back on chemotherapy after the cancer returned four months later.
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SO THESE FLAMINGOS CHOSE TO BE GAY?

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A pair of gay flamingos have adopted an abandoned chick, becoming parents after being together for six years, a British conservation organization said Monday.

Carlos and Fernando had been desperate to start a family, even chasing other flamingos from their nests to take over their eggs at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) in Slimbridge near Bristol.
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PORTLAND ART MUSEUM DIARRHEA BLUES

So Mertie and I went to the Portland Art Museum and we paid and entered, then we looked at the Asian section first—horses, then horses, and, of course, horses, bronze and ceramic, and bowls and pitchers, bronze and ceramic (BCE, CE) and some more bowls, then some horses—our feet and ankles and balls of our feet already going numb on the hard floors, eyes skimming over the ink drawings of plum blossoms, and we skipped so much and went down under into the Morris (?) Building and rising up to the Post 60’s and Impressionism and Expressionism, Minimalism and the photography section, and here’s a name and there’s a name, and, with my diarrhea, several trips back down and into the restrooms on the bottom floor between the two buildings by the piled up polished sculpture, several trips, and, then, back up to find Mertie and sliding past the works and the names and getting lost from one another and only a few names making a dent, right, like Monet and Gauguin, and Lautrec, and Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, Morris, Warhol—of course—and colors blending into colors and so tired, the feet and ankles, and, at 69, it’s not so easy looking at art anymore, specially an entire museum full of the stuff—like a basketball player—it’s the museum-goers legs that go first—until our heads ached as much as our feet and the big elevators were really exciting, big enough to raise and lower large pieces of art so that we felt like little pieces of art forgotten in the corner of the elevator until, finally we have enough, too much, too much, and can’t look at another piece of art ‘cause it’s too sweet, it’s just too damned much, too much for the eye and, so, out quickly, not seeing everything, can’t see everything, in one trip, and how great the slight drizzle rain fell on us outside, like soothing balm of cure for the art museum blues. The diarrhea ending—I may be done with art museums for the rest of my life.