Saturday, May 2, 2026
One of the reasons I'm still alive at 78 is that I left my childhood religion. Why is this?
The one quality I find that encompasses all churches and religion tends to be hypocrisy.
In other words there is what people say and then there is what people actually do. So, a religion for many people is more like a Country Club and. less what they believe in.
I couldn't live this way. I needed to actually believe all the tenets of whatever church I lived in so I tended to be more honest than most people about this as a young person because I didn't want to just be another hypocrite like most church goers are on earth.
The problem is that when people lie to others or to themselves it creates a whole chain reaction of problems for everyone including themselves ongoing.
It greatly can shorten people's lives too.
I saw this quite clearly as a young person watching people in our church die from not going to the doctor.
I remember being 8 or 10 years old and asking my parents (who were ministers at that time of this church) why people didn't just go to doctors and maybe live instead of dying like Flies?
There answer usually was something like:"This is what they believe!" Which made no sense to me at all. Because logically if you believe something that gets you killed: "What's the point of that?" Because you are just stupid and dead and that's all?
So, obviously being religious in this way was not logical at all to me and I tend to be a very logical rational person and very pragmatic by nature.
After all, my ancestors first came to the U.S. from Switzerland in the early 1700s and my Great Grandfather was a Captain in the northern Army during the Civil War!
So, in the end, leaving my childhood religion kept me alive this long because I didn't have to become another hypocrite like most people in my church living a lie.
However, I just invited someone who is a friend since I was 7 years old (71 years now) in my childhood church to my birthday party in Mt. Shasta. And I said to him: "You know, Jimmy, I think our childhood religion has served you better than anyone else I have ever met. He just smiled and nodded his head.
Somehow he made it work for him his whole life and this worked for him.
But, most people I grew up with it tended to kill them before their time (the hypocrisy of it all).
So, even though it was very lonely sometimes in my 20s without the thousands of friends I had all over the world I didn't have to live a lie. I didn't have to become a hypocrite and so I was free to be whoever I wanted to be in the Sight of God.
By God's Grace
My Covenant worked for me which reminds me a lot of Moses in the Bible. I had a similar kind of experience in many ways to him (even seeing the Burning Bush on Mt. Shasta in August 1970!
Why Am I still alive at age 78?
When I look at my life I was able to do pretty much what I always wanted to do from about 1980 to 1985 which was live in the Wilderness surrounding Mt. Shasta and build my own house on 2 1/2 acres of Land and Ski in the winters and swim in mountain lakes or kayak them or swim in rivers and lakes in the summers and hike beautiful places all year long and spend a lot of time with my friends who like to do all these things too.
People often say I look much younger than my age. People often say I look in my 50s instead of 78. Part of this is my genetics where I still have all my hair which seems to be unusual for a man of my age.
I woke up from hernia surgery and a nurse asked me about my hair because I'm 78.
Though I was just coming up out of a deep anesthesia I was able to say this to them:
"Well. I have the whole Viking thing going on! I have hair on my head that keeps me so warm that I used to get heat prostration from it in my twenties and before and I even have hair growing in my ears from that whole Viking thing. I'm designed for really Cold Weather. So, actually California in some ways isn't the best place on earth for me to be unless I'm way up in the Mountains somewhere where it is much colder."
Which is all True:
So, from my point of view it was just how happy I was to live my dream of skiing and living in the Wilderness home schooling my children from 1980 to 1985 that kept me young. Those 5 years where I did exactly what I wanted to in a completely pure environment with clean air and clean water (best tasting on earth) and friends (mostly from California) who moved to MT. Shasta after College who loved mt. Shasta as much as I did.
So, why am I still alive at 78?
Because I lived my dream for 5 years before I had to go do something else and somehow this kept me alive through everything ever since.
By God's Grace
Note: if you can do what really makes you happy even if it is only for 5 years this might keep you alive way past most people you know too.
Because my best friend taught school in East LA even though he came from a very rich family but was gone by age 62 in 2006. My best friend from High School got a jet engine certificate from College and repaired and rebuilt jet engines in Thailand for the Viet Nam war in the Air Force and passed away partly because of this in 2011.
And yet my two earliest best friends are gone in 2006 and 2011. I still have one friend from those Days who traveled over to India and Nepal in 1986 and met me and my family while we were traveling there from December of 1985 to April of 1986. So, he still lives in Mt. Shasta even though we don't rock climb or climb to the top of Mt. Shasta together (but we did in 1970 in August to the top) and he has climbed Mt. Shasta several times since then.
So, why Am I still alive at 78 years old?
Because I've been happy enough here to stay alive all these years. Also, I met my present wife when I was 46 and now I'm 78 so I'm much happier than I ever expected to be at this age by far.
So, I think if you are happy enough with your life and family and friends and where you live on earth often you might live a really long time!
By God's Grace
Friday, May 1, 2026
Being 78
In some ways life is a paradox. IN some ways I never believed I would see even 25 years old. Then I thought I would be gone by 50 from heart problems. Then I made it to various other markers in my life. Then I outlived my own father by almost 10 years now (10 next year) because he passed away at age 69.
So, not to see life as a paradox where we can pass on literally at any time or maybe even with modern medical technology live to be 100, 500, 1000 or more years old.
Like in the early 2000s my hypothyroid condition hadn't been diagnosed yet. So, I would get bronchitis because of an undiagnosed condition 7 times in a winter. My doctor prescribed Sudafed to keep me alive and had me take it way beyond normal to where I was hallucinating a lot but it did keep me alive still until 2006 when my physical Trainer from Germany listened to my symptoms and told me she thought I had a hypothyroid condition which she has too. She had also been trained as a physician's assistant in Germany as well.
So, then I tried what she recommended which is Armour Thyroid because pig thyroid glands are so very close to human beings thyroids it is almost like Pigs were bred from human genes at some point. So, when I tried Armour thyroid my mind went back to being about 20 years old again and I felt young again instead of feeling like I was going to die all the time. I think this change in attitude of getting enough thyroid was a really big deal in keeping me alive at the time 2006.
The point is that you never know how long you are going to live or what you are going to have to go through to get there. Is this good or bad? It's usually both.
The question is: "Are you strong enough to go through all the stuff you will have to to live as long as I have?" That's really the question right there.
What's the biggest killer of people after about 50?
I would say "Panic" kills the most people.
For example, when I had a heart virus most people died of the panic from blacking out all the time.
Because if you panic even once as you are passing out from a heart virus you die because of the sequence it sets up in your body.
So, because i had whooping cough and because I studied a disconnection meditation with Tibetan lamas in the U.S. and India and Nepal I knew how to not panic at all and so I survived all this.
My doctor said to me: "Fred. you are really lucky because most of the time the only way to diagnose the heart virus you had is through a post mortem (after death).
So, learning how to never panic is one of the keys to old age.
Also, I have learned to know mostly a minimum about operations and procedures. Why?
BEcause I know enough not to scare. myself to death that's why?
Also, I learned to be stoic through my father. If you aren't bleeding to death or need stitches often you just think about something else other than the pain. He taught me to do this sort of like a soldier being stoic.
So, what is it like for me to be 78.
It's quite remarkable actually because I never expected to live this long or to be so happily married for 30 years last December and we will have lived together 32 years this coming December 2026.
So, living a long time can be a relatively happy experience!
What physical age is it the best to be?
I would say about 32 to 37 is the best physical age to be. Why?
Because you know enough to survive usually and you can have more fun because your body isn't all messed up yet usually like it gets after 45 or 50 for most people.
How do you get to be 78?
One moment one day at a time.
By God's Grace
Mexico City has been sinking for over a century. A new NASA satellite is now watching it happen in real time
Mexico City has been sinking for over a century. A new NASA satellite is now watching it happen in real time
More than 20 million people are living on ground sinking above a reservoir.
More than 20 million people in Mexico City are living on ground that's sinking above an ancient reservoir.
The city has long been recognized as one of the fastest sinking sites in the world, but researchers didn't have the ability to continuously track the movement from space until now.
NASA shared a satellite image on Wednesday from the U.S.-India satellite NISAR that captures parts of Mexico's capital sinking by more than half an inch every single month. The space agency said the impact of those incremental changes have added up over time, leading to "fracturing roads, buildings, and water lines" across the city.
Dora Carreón-Freyre, a researcher who has studied Mexico City's sinking for more than 25 years, has seen that damage up close in the Iztapalapa region, which she says is one of the hardest hit.
"The houses that are founded in [volcanic] rock are stable, but the houses in the middle between the rock and the lacustrine plain are already broken, most of them," Carreón-Freyre told ABC News. "In 2017, a taxi fell inside a fracture."
Over the years, scientists studying the city’s land subsidence, a scientific term for sinking, primarily relied on ground and space satellites that could only collect annual data.
NASA says NISAR is the first satellite to carry two radar systems at different wavelengths, allowing it to record near real-time ground movement changes from space every 12 days. For David Bekaert, a scientist who works on the NISAR mission, that frequency is what makes the data so valuable.
"This all allows us to build time series or snapshots on how the ground is moving over time," Bekaert told ABC News.
For researchers who have spent decades studying the city on foot, the new satellite data offers something they never had before.
"To have these tools and to realize the distribution of these differential rates –it's amazing," Carreón-Freyre said. "Things that we only learned by walking everywhere when we were young, it's different now. Technology is here to help us."
The image is a compilation of data collected by NISAR between October 2025 and January 2026.
A century of sinking
Th fact that Mexico City is sinking is not new. NASA says it has been documented the changes for more than a century.
According to a 1995 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the city was already sinking roughly two inches per year by the late 1800s.
By the 1950s, that number jumped to 18 inches, the report found.
The first finding was reported by engineer Roberto Gayol in 1925, who pointed to a large canal and tunnel built to drain water out of the city's waterlogged ground as the potential cause.
Scientists now point to a more direct culprit — decades of draining the ancient lakebed aquifer that the city was built on.
As water is pumped out, the ground above it compacts and stays that way, according to a study published by the American Geophysical Union. Think of wet clay that gets squeezed flat and hardens in place.
Still, not every part of the city sinks at the same rate, Bekaert said.
"That compaction causes the ground surface to sink, and because it doesn't happen evenly, different parts of the city move at different rates," Bekaert explained.
Parts of the city have lost as much as 30 feet of elevation over the last century, according to researchers, and scientists say the worst-hit areas have sunk as much as 127 feet.
NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation launched NISAR on July 30, 2025, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre.
Mexico City is just the beginning when it comes to this technology, scientists say.
"More broadly, my interest lies in mapping ground motion across coastal zones, where a large proportion of the world's population lives and understanding surface change is particularly important," Bekaert said.
Scientists say NISAR can now continuously monitor sinking cities anywhere on Earth — a capability Carreón-Freyre says is urgently needed as that threat is already playing out elsewhere in the world.
"And what I saw in the Philippines is really terrible because they have two phenomena working together that is very bad for the population: subsidence and sea level rise," she said. "They are sinkings 30 centimeters per year."
After nearly 1,000 cases, here's how South Carolina officials beat back a measles outbreak
After nearly 1,000 cases, here's how South Carolina officials beat back a measles outbreak
Most cases were among unvaccinated children under age 17, officials said.
A few months ago, a measles outbreak seemed poised to overwhelm the northern region of South Carolina.
More than 100 infections were being reported every week, with the total eventually surpassing that of last year’s record-setting outbreak in Texas.
However, after six months and nearly 1,000 cases, the outbreak took a dramatic turn in the right direction.
Over the weekend, the South Carolina Department of Public Health said no new cases had been confirmed for 42 days, leading to an announcement on Monday that the outbreak is officially over.
Public health experts told ABC News that the combination of a strong vaccination push, people following isolation and quarantine orders and an awareness campaign helped beat back the disease.
"Measles vaccinations [were] the most effective single containment tool," Dr. James Harber, an internal medicine physician with Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System, told ABC News. "And then to identify the index cases and their exposures and enforcing quarantine, and there's that integrated public health and private sector collaboration. Those are the keys."
Vaccination push
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently recommends people receive two doses of the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine -- the first at ages 12 to 15 months and the second between 4 and 6 years old.
One dose is 93% effective, and two doses are 97% effective against measles, according to the CDC.
In Spartanburg County -- the epicenter of the outbreak in northwestern South Carolina -- 88.9% of students had the required immunizations needed to attend school, among the lowest in the state, according to state health department data.
This is lower than the 95% threshold needed to achieve herd immunity.
In the wider Upstate region of South Carolina, some pockets have much lower vaccination rates. State data shows that, for the 2025-2026 school year, one elementary and middle school only had 17% of students with the required immunizations.
Of the 997 cases during the outbreak, 932 were among unvaccinated individuals who were mostly under the age of 17, state data shows. Experts told ABC News that a vaccination campaign helped play a big role in reigning in cases.
"We believe vaccination is one of the primary reasons this outbreak came to an end," Dr. Brannon Traxler, deputy director of health promotion and services and chief medical officer at the state health department, told ABC News. "Thousands of people got vaccinated. An additional 3,788 doses of MMR were administered in Spartanburg County during the six months of the outbreak compared to the previous year."
Traxler said that 15,000 additional doses were administered in the Upstate counties over this period competed to the year prior.
She added that January and February were record months for MMR vaccination in the state.
The health department does not track vaccine exemptions at the individual level, but Spartanburg Regional Medical Center's Harber believes some vaccine-hesitant parents were encouraged to vaccinate their children -- even those with previous exemptions on file -- as the outbreak grew and their kids were exposed to the virus.
"I think the numbers ... speak to the idea that that definitely happened," he said. "Parents and/or young people who have historically requested and been granted exemptions and not been vaccinated saw what was happening within the community and then changed their minds."
People following isolation, quarantine orders
South Carolina health authorities first confirmed the outbreak on Oct. 2, 2025, after eight cases were recorded in the Upstate region.
Most cases were recorded in Spartanburg County, with some confirmed in neighboring Anderson, Cherokee, Greenville and Pickens counties.
Only two other counties that didn't border the epicenter saw measles cases: Lancaster County in the north central area and Sumter County in the central area.
Harber said that people generally followed health officials' orders about quarantine and isolation, which helped keep the outbreak under control
"I think that's probably the second most important part, the very aggressive quarantine and exposure control when index cases were identified," he said. "They were very quickly provided with information around isolation and what they needed to do -- staying away from others and to help prevent that spread."
Harber said more than 2,000 quarantine orders were issued and almost 900 students stayed home when they tested positive across 33 schools in the Upstate region.
"That rapid identification and isolation of the suspected cases .. once they were confirmed really helped to prevent that secondary spread that is such a big problem because of how contagious [measles] really is," he said. "So, we really had great compliance especially within families and that really helped shorten transmission window based on all the data we have."
Awareness campaigns
Traxler said the state health department conducted wide-range outreach in Spartanburg County and surrounding areas to "educate the public about the facts regarding measles and the outbreak as well as to encourage people to consider being vaccinated to get long-term protection against the virus."
She noted that the department communicated with schools, churches, community-based organizations, community leaders, local health care professionals and other organizations.
Traxler added that the health department offered vaccinations at mobile health units at libraries, churches and other locations, where workers also distributed educational materials.
Ukrainian and Russian-speaking communities in South Carolina were hard hit by measles during the outbreak, and so the health department translated measles fact sheets and vaccine information into Ukrainian and Russian, as well as Spanish, Traxler said.
However, just because the outbreak is over doesn't mean the work is done, she added.
Other states are continuing to see measles cases and the U.S. is currently at risk of losing its elimination status, which it earned in 2000. Measles would once again be considered endemic or constantly circulating.
"The outbreak is over, but our work to understand and prevent measles is not. Large outbreaks of measles, and other infectious diseases, can be prevented entirely when vaccine coverage in the population is very high," Traxler said.
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