Laura Hayden

Spring has sprung! The quick and unscientific explanation of Spring Equinox is that the days will finally have more sunlight hours than nighttime hours. But this is only if you are in the Northern Hemisphere, syke Southern Hemi. This was the earliest Spring Equinox in 120 years. Why you ask? Because of it being a leap year. Why does that matter? Again a bunch of boring Gregorian calendar stuff dating back to 1562 and really it has nothing even remotely to do with shoes. Here’s the short of it; spring happened ¾ a day earlier. Did you feel the change? It’s like an earthquake under 1.5 on the Richter scale, no one notices.

Why does all this matter? Quick botany lesson, a lot of plants (especially the one’s we like for food) need more hours of sunlight to trigger their internal clocks to bloom. They stay dormant until sunshine hours are longer. The opposite is true for poinsettias; they are triggered to bloom when there are less daylight hours, which is why we have poinsettias during December, because the daylight hours are short. Of course all of this can be manipulated now with electricity.

But Spring by its very nature means the end of hibernation. It sparks hopefulness in humans as well as blooming plants. Look up Ode to Spring on the Internet, your search will trigger about a billion songs, poems, essays etc… Most of these homages to Spring will have Beethoven’s Ode to Joy as back ground music. Which is a solid choice if only slightly cliché’. It’s still a marvelous piece of musical genius. People love the hope that comes with longer warmer days. I get it. I love long warm days too. I have lived entire my life in SoCal. But I have been in some pretty hash weather. I get it. Winter sucks!

I raise my ceremonial imaginary glass to you Spring. I too am hopeful by the increase in sunshine in my life. May all your plants literally and figuratively flourish! Oh and we are only one week away from being able to wear white shoes, if you follow such things. Happy Spring!

Laura

I honestly don’t know when zombie apocalypses went for horror movie premise to a possible reality based catastrophe. People appear to preparing for the pending doom like earthquakes, tsunamis and fires.

Maybe its because we see zombies daily, walking the streets with that glazed look, faces lit with an unhealthy glow from their phone. Stumbling into people on the sidewalk and walking into traffic almost getting run over, while their fingers twitch spasmodically in front of them. This small electronic device has become BFF to many and turned vast numbers of people into the living dead. Look up- Damn it! Life is happening and you missed it!  Free yourselves from this electronic slavery. Make yourself in charge not your phone. Okay soapbox over.

But really zombie chatter seems to be everywhere. So I dug a little deeper and WOW there are tons of articles, reports and even dissertations on the current zombie obsession. Clemson University professor Sarah Lauro states, the phenomenon isn’t a random fad, but part of a historical trend that mirrors a level of cultural dissatisfaction and economic upheaval.  So that’s sociology.

What about the hard sciences?

Well according to some scientist types a zombie apocalypse is sort of possible—and this is sort of scary.

So here are known ways humans can take on zombie like behaviors minus the cell phone.

First, brain parasites aka toxopasmosa gondi which if infected can change your personality into batshit insane. Yes, that is a medical term.

Second human zombie transformation can happen via neurotoxins which are poisons that slow your bodily functions to the point that you’ll be considered dead, even to a doctor. Okay, maybe not a very good doctor. The poison from fugu, like in Japanese blowfish can do this. The victims can then be brought back under the effects of a drug but leaves them in a trance-like state with no memory and only able to perform simple tasks like eating, sleeping, moaning and shambling around with their arms outstretched. Okay I added that last part.  Scary part–this has happened in Haiti. Haiti is where the word zombie originated. There are books about it. Really.

Up third on how to become a zombie is the rage virus aka Mad Cow in humans also know as Creutzfeldt-jakob disease. Symptoms include changes in gait, (medical speak for walking) hallucinations, lack of coordination, muscle twitching and rapidly onset of delirium and dementia. Yup, that sounds like a zombie to me.

Next up we have neurogenesis, which is stem cell studies using dead brain cells. Yup, is some Frankenstein stuff or if you prefer reanimation research.  And it’s closer than you think. It could be a super awesome break through for science or a scary zombie work force, better start looking up from our cell phones and pay attention to the world we live in.

And lastly nanobots a technology that produces microscopic, self-replicating robots that can invisibly build or destroy—anything! Ant Man was not that far off. They are working on using nanobots to travel into the human body to repair damaged areas even in your brain. This screams zombie human race coming in the future. This is the first shoe blog I’ve presented that I thought I should have a reference section at the end.

What really started my research about zombies was I invited to a zombie walk. And of course I wanted to make sure I arrived in the correct zombie attire. If you don’t know what a zombie walk is, its flash mob zombie style aka mass gathering of people who, dressed in the clothes and makeup of the undead, stagger about and dance. The zombie mob originated in 2003 in Toronto and has been documented in 20 countries.

All I wanted to know was what was fashionable zombie walk attire. Because I might be the undead- but I still want to be among the hot undead.

In another study done recently, people freaked out, again a medical term, if asked to spend the night in a graveyard, even if offered a gun for protection. Why? Because on some instinctual level, all humans know it’s just a matter of time until the zombies show up.

Thank goodness I’ll have the correct shoes for the Apocalypse.

Laura