Pittsburgh « cookiecrumbstoliveby

“We’re not interested in the truth.”
Ken Burns

(Julie Cook / 2021)

Doesn’t seem to matter whether I purposely keep the television off…off
from any sort of current events and news…it still seems to seep out of
those dark and odious cracks.

Two different stories caught my eye via an electronic news feed.

The first tale is distressing, disturbing and actually quite stomach turning—
as in I felt as if I was reading some surreal Frankenstein tale…

The reality, however, was that this tale is actually rooted in the research
facility of a major leading University.

Here are a few of the highlights in which to whet your curious whistle.

With tales of harvesting body parts…body parts from freshly aborted,
near term babies.

I felt sick to my stomach as well as broken hearted.

Sick to my stomach that aborted babies are teated like a “pull down menu”
of body parts.
Broken hearted that we humans have relegated our most vulnerable to
being literally harvested for research.

There is a cold callousness to such a business.

As well as emptiness which has lead to a true loss of humanity.

Harvesting is for fruits and vegetables, not body parts from
near term aborted babies.

Yep. Aborted. Near term. Babies.

And how odd Dr. Fauci’s name pops up in this stomach churning tale.

The link to the full tale is at the end….following

A few paragraphs I’ve chosen to highlight.

Millions in federal money flowing to tissue bank that collects fetal ‘heart, gonads, legs, brain’: report
University of Pittsburgh said it ‘complies with rigorous regulatory and ethical oversight’
By Sam Dorman

In a PureFlix interview last year, former university employee Lori Kelly
discussed a federally funded project with researchers seeking to collect
bladders and kidneys from babies as late as 24 weeks into pregnancy.
Kelly said that as project manager, she worked to develop
“a pull-down menu of baby body parts for researchers to choose
from to submit to the tissue bank, so that we could send the
body parts to them.”

Tuesday’s revelation adds mounting scrutiny to a program that has
already received attention for fetal experiments.

Earlier this year, Pennsylvania’s state legislature held a hearing
in which members discussed an experiment involving grafting
fetal scalps, containing “full-thickness human skin,”
onto rodents.

That particular project utilized tissue from the university’s
human tissue bank. It was also supported by grants from the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID),
which is led by top coronavirus adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci.
While it’s unclear exactly how much federal money was spent on that project,
it was funded through two large grants —
one $1,498,642 and one $430,270.

The documents uncovered by Judicial Watch also show Pitt discussing
its effort to minimize warm ischemic time, or the amount of time an
organ maintains its body temperature after blood flow has been severed.
It’s unclear how these procedures take place, but Daleiden
has raised concerns about the university’s stated use of labor
induction abortions.

“If the fetus’ heartbeat and blood circulation continue in a labor
induction abortion for harvesting organs,
it means the fetus is being delivered while still alive and the cause
of death is the removal of the organs,” reads a press release from his
Center for Medical Progress.
Typically, abortion procedures rely
on digoxin to kill a fetus. However,
both that and dismemberment tactics can ruin viable tissue intended
for donations.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pittsburgh-fetal-tissue-project

The next tale dealt with a story regarding filmmaker historian Ken Burns.

If you’ve ever watched a PBS special, no doubt you’ve seen and heard
Ken Burns with his melodious voice extol the paths of our collective US history.

And now it appears as if Ken Burns is taking FB mogul Mark Zuckerberg to task.

Ken Burns is no conservative Republican…he is a historian… an individual who looks back to just how we came to where we are today.
A historian who is keen to the truth of past…be it good or bad or both…
because he understands that history is indeed both, good and bad… as we today must learn from both that good and bad.

Yet, as Ken Burns is learning, there are many who no longer wish to learn but rather those who wish to forget…all the while preferring to rewrite what was…

“Filmmaker Ken Burns calls Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg ‘an enemy of the state’
who belongs in jail
‘He doesn’t give a sh-t about us, the United States,’ Burns said”
story by Brian Flood

https://www.foxnews.com/media/ken-burns-facebook-mark-zuckerberg

“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship
in spirit and truth.”
John 4:24

(a pigeon rests on a statue placed above the ridge of the Assumption chapel at the corner
of Garancière street and Palatine street, behind the Saint-Sulpice church. / Julie Cook / 2018)

Back in the summer, back when the beach was consuming so many of our minds,
I offered a post featuring some shots I’d taken of some pelicans I’d seen while enjoying
our summer trip to the panhandle of Florida.

Nothing says beach and ocean like seeing a brown pelican sitting on an old weathered pier or that
of a formation of these gangly birds gliding effortlessly just above the surf…

Days such as today…days that are damp, windy, overcast and grey quickly push our thoughts
to warmer sunnier days. This as we are just entering into our darker colder days of the year.

I noted in that previous post how much, for reasons unknown, that I love pelicans…
They are my favorite birds oddly enough.

Birds that eat whole fish and hold them in their gullets for later…
my husband calls them nasty birds while I call them resourceful.

My previous post touched on the seemingly odd relationship pelicans have had in Christian lore
and tradition.

I did a little research and offered a bit of teaching from the information that I had gleaned…
The premise was that during times of famine, mother pelicans have been known to pluck their own
breasts until they bled in order to offer their own blood to their hungry babies…
offering life-giving sustenance.

A direct reference to Christ who offers His own blood for our spiritual hunger and
our own salvation.

So recently when visiting Paris, we were staying at a small hotel just outside of
the Luxembourg Gardens.

(just a tiny area of the Luxembourg Gardens with a shot of the Senate building behind/
Julie Cook / Paris, France / 2018)

This boutique hotel sits in the shadow of the second largest church in Paris,
Eglise Saint-Sulpice.

(Eglise Saint-Sulpice / Julie Cook / Paris, France / 2018)

I happen to really love this church as it is not Notre Dame.

(Notre Dame / Julie Cook / Paris, France / 2018)

It is not consumed by crowds and tourists.

It was the anchor to the neighborhood my aunt and I called home for a couple of
days about 8 years ago and the same anchor to the same neighborhood my husband and I called
home more recently….the Germain-des-Prés, Odéon of the 6th arrondissement.

Entering this historic building is definitly otherworldly.

It’s like walking into an ancient, silent and dark crevasse…as well as
stepping back into a far removed time…think pre-Revolution and pre-Bonaparte.
Yet the Revolution did hinder the finishing of the facade.

The original church was constructed in the 13th century but the building we see
today dates to the early 1600’s—finally being completed in the late 18th century.
Yet it suffered, as did so many in Paris, during the Revolution.

There are some famous paintings by Eugene Delacroix…

Along with some masterful statues and some simple but lovely stain glass…

Along with the scars from living through the days of a revolution down to
simple neglect and decay…

Add of course the massive and impressive organ

And yet there is reverence…
There is a deep and mystical yearning by many who come here…
those who come curious or those who come seeking.

They come to sit,
to pray,
to sleep,
to hide,
to rest,
to wander,
to wonder…

And so it was when I was actually outside on a side street…
walking alongside the perimeter of this massive hulking building that I looked up
and actually saw it…
the mother pelican sitting atop a spire of a side chapel.

The same imagery that came to mind back in July…and here it was again in September.
Found not at the beach and not in some warm tropical locale but rather in the midst
of a massively large city whose people are often too busy to glance upward albeit toward
their rather famous tower…

And yet here it was…as always, a powerful reminder of sacrifice.
Life, death, redemption, and salvation…

(all photos by Julie Cook / Paris, France / 2018)