A tribute to Katharine Hepburn & Spencer Tracy And to "Unconditional Lovers" everywhere... Yesterday, today and tomorrow...

The following are excerpts from her autobiography, Me-Stories of My Life, by Katharine Hepburn, with regard to her long standing, 27 year love affair with Spencer Tracy:

"It seems to me I discovered what "I love you" really means.  It means I put you and your interests and your comfort ahead of my own interests and my own comfort because I love you.

What does this mean?

I love you.  What does this mean?

Think.

We use this expression very carelessly.

LOVE has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only with what you are expecting to give - which is everything.

What you will receive in return varies. But it really has no connection with what you give.  You give because you love and you cannot help giving.  If you are very lucky, you may be loved back.  That is delicious but it does not necessarily happen.

It really implies total devotion.   And total is all-encompassing - the good of you, the bad of you.  I am aware that I must include the bad.

I loved Spencer Tracy.  He and his interests and his demands came first.

This was not easy for me because I was definitely a me, me, me person."

"At lunchtime they'd just meet and sit on a bench on the lot. 
They'd hold hands and talk
- and everybody left them alone in their little private world."
 - Gene Kelly

"It was a unique feeling that I had for S.T.  I would have done anything for him.  My feelings - how can you describe them?  The door between us was always open.  There were no reservations of any kind.

He didn't like this or that.  I changed this and that. 

Food - we ate what he liked.

We did what he liked.

We lived a life which he liked.

This gave me great pleasure.  The thought that this was pleasing him.

Certainly I had not felt this way with my other beaus. I was looking for them to please me.  It is a very different relationship.  It's like a wonderful cocktail party.  But it ain't love."

"There is an enormous difference between love and like.  Usually we use the word 'love' when we really mean 'like'.  I think that very few people ever mean 'love'.  I think that 'like' is a much easier relationship.  It is based on sense.  A blind spot - 'love'."

"People have asked me what was it about Spence that made me stay with him for nearly thirty years.  And this is somehow impossible for me to answer.  I honestly don't know.  I can only say that I could never have left him. He was there - I was his.  I wanted him to be happy - safe - comfortable.  I liked to wait on him - listen to him - feed him - talk to him - work for him.  I tried not to disturb him - irritate him - bother him - worry him, nag him.  I struggled to change all the qualities which I felt he didn't like.  Some of them which I thought were my best, I thought he found irksome.  I removed them, squelched them as far as I was able."

"When he was sort of toward the end of his life - his last six or seven years - I virtually quit work just to be there so that he would't worry or be lonely.  I was happy to do this. I painted - I wrote - I was peaceful and hoping that he would live forever. "

"Someone asked me when I fell for Spencer.  I can't remember.  It was right away.  We started our first picture together and I knew right away that I found him irresistible.  Just exactly that, irresistible."

A Contemporary Love Song 

With The Same Message of Unconditional Love -

 Stand By You (my new favorite song...it may become yours, too!)

Stand By You - Lyrics

Hands, put your empty hands in mine

And scars, show me all the scars you hide

And hey, if your wings are broken

Please take mine 'til yours can open, too

'Cause I'm gonna stand by you

Oh, tears make kaleidoscopes in your eyes

And hurt, I know you're hurting, but so am I

And, love, if your wings are broken

Borrow mine 'til yours can open, too

'Cause I'm gonna stand by you

Even if we're breaking down, we can find a way to break through

Even if we can't find heaven, I'll walk through Hell with you

Love, you're not alone, 'cause I'm gonna stand by you

Even if we can't find heaven, I'm gonna stand by you

Even if we can't find heaven, I'll walk through Hell with you

Love, you're not alone, 'cause I'm gonna stand by you

Yeah, you're all I never knew I needed

And the heart—sometimes it's unclear why it's beating

And, love, if your wings are broken

We can brave through those emotions, too

'Cause I'm gonna stand by you

Oh, truth—I guess truth is what you believe in

And faith—I think faith is having a reason

And I know now, love, if your wings are broken

Borrow mine 'til yours can open, too

'Cause I'm gonna stand by you

Even if we're breaking down, we can find a way to break through

Even if we can't find heaven, I'll walk through Hell with you

Love, you're not alone, 'cause I'm gonna stand by you

Even if we can't find heaven, I'm gonna stand by you

Even if we can't find heaven, I'll walk through Hell with you

Love, you're not alone, 'cause I'm gonna stand by you

I'll be your eyes 'til yours can shine

And I'll be your arms, I'll be your steady satellite

And when you can't rise, well, I'll crawl with you on hands and knees

'Cause I... I'm gonna stand by you

Even if we're breaking down, we can find a way to break through (come on)

Even if we can't find heaven, I'll walk through Hell with you

Love, you're not alone, 'cause I'm gonna stand by you

Even if we can't find heaven, I'm gonna stand by you

Even if we can't find heaven, I'll walk through Hell with you

Love, you're not alone, 'cause I'm gonna stand by you

Love, you're not alone

Oh, I'm gonna stand by you

(even if we can't find heaven, heaven, heaven)

Yeah, I'm gonna stand by you

"You don't pick who you fall in love with. There are so few people to love. It's hard for one adult to even like another. Almost impossible."         - Katharine Hepburn

"Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get -- only what you are expecting to give -- which is everything. What you will receive in return varies. But it really has no connection with what you give. You give because you love and cannot help giving."                                                              - Katharine Hepburn

                             

"It is a great love story such as this that does not need to be spoken of, does not need words and can never truly, no matter how many times one tries, be denied.  Most certainly not conventional or traditional, this great love affair is a testament to the power of true love and the notion that, once one has crossed paths with one's soul mate, the force of that encounter may make it impossible not to be swept completely and utterly away..."                                                                               - This Glamorous Life Blog, By Joey Bailey

Kate is quoted as saying:  "Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only with what you are expecting to give, which is everything."  And give everything she did.  Spencer was married to Louise Treadwell, the mother of his two children, and as a devout Roman Catholic, he would not divorce her.

Nevertheless, Katharine and Spencer began a relationship that spanned 27 years. Outside of work, they were careful never to be seen in public and they were never photographed together. Despite this, they became one of Hollywood's most recognizable couples. 

They took great pains to keep their private life out of the spotlight.  Although Spencer had already left the family home, he never legally separated from his estranged wife.  Tracy soon settled into a cottage near Hepburn's Beverly Hills house.  Louise never did ask for a divorce, which was the only way that Tracy would end his marriage.

Louise Tracy was often quoted as having said, "I will be Mrs. Spencer Tracy until the day I die."  And indeed, she was.

Louise wanted the title.  Kate wanted the man.  They each got what they wanted.  Or closer to it than the alternative.  Close enough to make life better - not only "bearable", but actually pleasurable, each in it's own way.

“I didn’t need the title.  She could be ‘Mrs. Spencer Tracy’, that was important to her.  She had the children and she needed that.  I didn’t.  I was happy just to be with him.  Any little part of him, on any terms, his terms."
                 - Katherine Hepburn  

Hepburn's friends were stunned by the change in the woman they knew to be fiercely independent.  To them, Kate suddenly appeared to be morphing from a "dyed in the wool" feminist into what they perceived to be a submissive role, ceaselessly doting on and seemingly sacrificing everything (marriage, children and even some career choices) for Tracy.

Hepburn always vehemently protested such accusations, stalwart in her perception that it was not sacrificing when you truly love someone, as their happiness becomes the most important thing in the world to you.  Spence's happiness became Kate's happiness and it gave her great joy to bring whatever comfort she could to him, to soothe any heartache and bring as many smiles and as much fun as she could into his otherwise tortured life.  An unconventional viewpoint for the feminist, to say the least, but one she believed with all of her heart until her death at age 96 in 2003.

The random thoughts that possibly went through Kate’s mind at the beginning of their relationship:

You can tell me anything.

And yet, I understand, even without words.

But still…trust.  Communication. 

Is this fair?  No.  
Do we want it anyway?  Yes. 

A deep, far reaching (from long ago) desire and need to comfort, nurture, make things easier.

It’s not a burden.  
It’s an honor and a privilege.  
It’s called “unconditional love”.

A familiarity – like coming home.  
Oh, there you are!  I’ve been waiting for you – I just didn’t know it.

Grounded in the present, yet looking ever forward.    
This time need not be quite so horrific.  
Quite the contrary.  
We can bask with gratitude in every day, one day at a time, right now.

So what’s right and what’s wrong?

One thing need not have anything to do with the other. 

How could it hurt?  How could it help?
Don’t overthink it.

Click here for more info.: "Tormented by guilt and a family tragedy, why Spencer Tracy never left his wife for Katharine Hepburn"

The "unconditional love letter" Kate did write to Spence, 15 years after his death:

The "unconditional love letter" perhaps Spence should have written to Kate (and Kate - as well as any woman - would love to have received):

Dear Kath (his name for her),

Thank you doesn’t seem adequate, but since there are no words that can accurately express all that is in my heart, I will say thank you so much for bringing joy back into my life.  I say “back”, but it is joy as I’ve never felt before.  Laughter, love, passion and life as I’ve never known them.  Thank you for being my best friend.  Thank you for sharing my life as two halves that have become whole.  You are the one thing that has been missing from my life, for all of my life – until now – thank you for being here!   Thank you for making this the very best time of my life and for bringing me to life; not again, but for the very first time.

Thank you for making everything fun.

Thank you for making every day an adventure.

Thank you for loving me, incredibly, as much as I love you.

Thank you for sharing your life with me.

I love you talents, your heart, your intelligence, your perfectionism, your persistence, your sweetness, your tenderness, your warmth and your beauty – inside and out.  I love that you love me.

I love and appreciate your loyalty and your faith in me.  You’ve taught me the true meaning of “unconditional love”.  I know I can never find the words to tell you just how much that means to me.   

I love you.  More than I’ve ever loved and more than I thought it was possible to love.

What a blessing you are for me and how very much God must love me to have sent such a person to me!

I am truly blessed.  What a journey we are about to embark on.   I know you are grateful – as am I – as we should be!

Yours Forever, Love,
Spence

In total  Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy made nine films together:

Woman of the Year (1942), Keeper of the Flame (1943), Without Love(1945), The Sea of Grass (1947), State of the Union (1948), Adam's Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), Desk Set (1957) – pictured - and Guess Who's Coming To Dinner (1967) 

 "It's a force of life, sex, you can't deny the thrill of riding high, wide and handsome with someone you love," Kate later said of their affair. "The only thing is that age doesn't bring any sexual wisdom. You're just as confused 40 years later as you were when you first heard about it."- Katherine Hepburn

Extra­-Terrestrial Life? Part 2 - By Contributing Astronomy Editor, Dan Matlaga

To continue Mark Twain's suggestion of a debate between a telescope and microscope (which has the greater view?), I want to continue with the microscope side - without billion dollar instruments.

A common question from grade school students who visited the planetarium at Arizona State University was: "If you could live on any planet, which planet would you choose?"

My answer always was "Earth."

A low audible rumble of disappointment was heard.

I continued...

"In the tens of thousands of photographs I've seen of the surfaces of Mercury, Mars and Venus, nothing - I mean absolutely nothing - comes even remotely close to the spectacular view one has while standing on the beach of Point Pleasant, New Jersey (or any ocean front beach). Before you is the magnificent spectacle of the Atlantic Ocean.  Trying to take all of this in is both a mental and physical challenge. No Martians, Venusians or Mercurians can present anything as spectacular.

Dead silence.

Cue the crickets!

When you eat something, the chemistry set in your body tries to break down the food into sugar.  The primary sugar is glucose. The glucose donates electrons to the oxygen you breath. This exchange of electrons from a higher glucose to a lower oxygen state is what provides you with energy to, for example, read this submission, empty the trash and check the mail.

The year was 1982. A problem existed at Lake Oneida upper New York State.  The lake,  fed by slopes that contained magnesium, was expected to have magnesium oxide deposited in the ooze at the bottom of the lake. When the ooze was analyzed there was very little magnesium oxide - less than one thousand times the anticipated amount.

Kenneth Nealson had the answer.  He thought there must be some kind of bacteria capable of making the magnesium oxide disappear. He discovered the agent responsible was a bacterium known as Shewanella. Shewanella was the first, but far from the last bacterium of this type. We are now aware of  an estimated thousand strains of bacteria popularly called "electric bacteria" they don't give a rap about sugar, oxygen or sunlight to produce their energy.  Instead they eat and breath electricity.

Shewanella

You probably are already aware of metal eating bacteria if you have been following the story of the Titanic. 

The rusticles decorating the sunken wreck are the result of 20 or so different bacteria eating away at the ship's steel.  They are part of the same strain of electric eating, metal eating bacteria.

You want to determine the bacteria in the soil of your backyard - possibly for your son or daughter's 6th grade science fair project. 

It is simple. Get a teaspoon of soil, place it in a Petri dish, add a nutrient such as sugar water and cover the dish.  Return to the dish in a few days and there you have it, the dish teeming with microbe life. A drop of the water from the dish examined under a microscope reveals plenty of life forms for your science project.

As they are metal seeking, electron seeking microbes won't be caught up in the experiment because they do not seek oxygen, sugar, or sunlight for energy production, unless you caught a few by accident.

There are aquarium tanks in some biology labs that have only water, a charged electrode and electric bacteria in the tank.  The tank is kept in darkness.  The only energy source for these electric bacteria are in consuming the electrons from the electrode.  The bacteria are swimming around in the tank without incident.

I can imagine the headlines, however, had these bacteria been found on Mars... "Extra Terrestrial Life Found on Mars." And "...this life unlike anything found on earth.  They eat electricity and discharge electrons!"

         "No way"                        "Way!"

It is not that these bacteria are extraterrestrials, rather it is additional evidence of how little we know of life on earth...life in your own backyard.

  

   

Extra­-Terrestrial Life? Part 1 - By Contributing Astronomy Editor, Dan Matlaga

Mark Twain read everything he could get his hands on.  Often he would remain in bed until 3:00 p.m. surrounded by newspapers, magazines and books. A daughter remarked she could not understand how her father could have personal opinions on every historical figure, every government and every disease known to man.

When Mark Twain died April 1910, his private book collection of 3,000 volumes was donated to the local Redding, Connecticut Public Library. This was appropriate as Mr. Twain aided in the founding of the library. Unfortunately the books were placed in the public stacks, so today considerably fewer books remain. 

 Placing Twain's library books in circulation was unfortunate because lost are his marginal notes about the book author's observation. In one book that survived, there in a paragraph or two about the soon to be dedicated 60-inch telescope atop Mount Wilson, we find Twain's marginal note.  "Someday write about a debate between a telescope and a microscope - which has the grander view?"

HUBBEL TELESCOPE

Certainly first thoughts would place the Hubble Space Telescope  vs. the Hadron Collider in contention. These headline instruments are a wonder of our modern age.  

HADRON COLLIDER

Let's take a different tack to note two microscopic discoveries that do not involve billion dollar instruments.
Jean-Michel Claverie and Chantal Abergel went into the world to find giant viruses.  These viruses are so large they can be seen with an optical microscope.  A good optical microscope can magnify 1,000 to 2,000 times. The electron microscope was invented in 

Chantel Abergel and Jean-Michele Claverie

the early 1930's in Germany.  It could magnify 400 times, but demonstrated the use of electrons to illuminate a specimen, instead of light, was workable.  By 1940, electron microscopes were able to magnify 140,000 times.  Today the number is 2 million times.

These pandoraviruses are so unlike any other viruses, some have suggested they may make up a fourth domain of life on earth.  It has been suggested that a study of genes may turn up a strand of DNA unlike any on earth.  The strand may represent part of a life form from space that was incorporated into an earth life form.

PANDORAVIRUS

What Jean-Michele Claverie and Chantel Abergel discovered from the mouth of Tungquen River and from a freshwater pond in Australia was the largest pandoravirus found to date.  A typical virus may have as many as ten genes while the pandoravirus has about 2,500 genes. The discoverers of these super sized viruses analyzed their viral DNA.  Approximately 7% of the DNA is common to other viruses, while 93% is unlike any other DNA ever observed.  That is, it has no lineage back to earlier forms.

Does this 93% represent alien life? Or is this simply another demonstration of how little we know of earth's life possibilities?

Next Monday...Part 2!

MERMAID UPDATE! - Upon Request: Transformation DETAILS!!!

UPDATE to the last blog post:  

Absolutely EVERYTHING (or at least the most interesting things) you've ever wanted to know about mermaids

If you have not yet seen it, please click on the above link - we had over 900 hits!

This update is in response to a special request from our own Contributing Editor, Dan Matlaga, who...BTW...is a retired Astronomy Professor, so his request was purely in the interest of science, I'm sure.

Dan enjoyed the post but felt it lacked imagination as it did not show any specific drawings or pictures of the actual transformation detailing precisely how a mermaid pulls off (literally) the whole "tail to legs and back again" thing.

Although I disagree that it "lacked imagination" and feel just the opposite; it left the details up to one's imagination, it is true that we didn't give any specific proof or visuals to assist in forming one's own hypothesis.  Therefore, in the interest of science , here goes.

So...without further ado, I have come up with this drawing:

AND this picture: 

Heavily Photoshop'd Selfie - had to paint out the selfie stick...among other things.
The things I do for this blog!

Both of the above focus on the actual transformation process taking place.  I hope that will satisfy all of those scientific minds (that sounds so much better than "dirty old men") out there!

COMING SOON!

Now that we've settled that...please be sure to check back on Monday for Professor Dan's latest post:  Extra­ Terrestrial Life ? Part 1  

And who does't love Extra Terrestrials???  Certainly we, Kabrini fans, do!!!  

So join us right here on Monday and again the following Monday for Extra Terrestrial Life ? Part 2

After that, some additional topics are in the works:

One on the  phenomenon of truly unconditional love - showcasing the classic retro romance between Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, but incorporating a few contemporary, modern day elements that will highlight the timelessness of the subject,which is...loving someone so much that their happiness comes before all else.  (OK, so I should have done this one over Valentine's Day - but being on time has never been an attribute of mine!)

I'm also working on putting something together regarding Esther Hicks and the channeling of Abraham.  If you are unfamiliar with all of this, Google it and check it out!  The similarities between Abraham and Joe's Kabrini are undeniable and in fact, I believe they are one and the same.

Hmmm...Certainly quite a diverse range of topics!

But for now, the mermaids are signing off, fusing back into tail mode and slipping quietly into the sea until next time.  They will be back eventually - we have a fascination with mermaids here...can't imagine why.   ;)