Love Note’s

By Diane Forrest,

Today is a day that is very near and dear to me, one I think is very important.  It is National Love Note Day.  People have been writing and receiving love letters for centuries. They were first made famous by romantics like Lord Byron and William Shakespeare during the 1700s in Europe.  A love note is a way to express your feelings to your loved one in written form. It can be as short, long, or fancy as you wish.

My husband always wrote me notes.  He would put them in my lab coat pocket, on the bathroom mirror, on my pillow, everywhere.  He would spend a lot of time looking through cards on each occasion.  He wanted to make sure he picked out the perfect one that said what he wanted to say to me.  When he became bedridden he was so hurt because he couldn't buy me cards.  I would give him a pad of paper and colored pens and tell him to write his own.  I kept each card and note he ever wrote me, each one showed his thoughts and feelings about me, and how much he loved me.  After he passed away, my father made a wooden box for me.  On the top he placed a heart that my husband had made for a quilt hanger.  I filled the box with the cards and notes, and it began to overflow, filled with the love he had for me.  I still find notes that he wrote to me, and I filled another box with the cards and notes I wrote to him.  Now that he is gone, I can pull out the box and read through the notes and still feel his love.

My stepson recently started a new job that required him to be away from home for 8 weeks, leaving behind his wife and baby girl.  One of the first things I asked him is if he had some stationary to write to his wife.  He laughed and said he had email and text messages.  While that is all fine and good, it still doesn’t replace the hand written note you can hold onto and save.  I sent him several blank cards and a book of stamps so he could surprise his wife with his handwritten sentiments.

Of course writing love notes aren't just for your spouse or special someone, but also your children as well.  They need to know that they are loved too.  When I packed my son a lunch for school I would put a note in, or cut his sandwich with a heart shaped cookie cutter, or some other way to show him that I love him, and was thinking about him.  One day I was mad at him for something, I dont remember what, but by way of apologizing to me, he wrote a conversation we frequently had and slipped it to me.  I have kept it with me every day since then. 

It is so easy to get wrapped up in the small, insignificant aspects of life. Love Note Day reminds us to recognize those important things in your life like the people that you love. So take out an old fashioned pen and paper and write a love note for your loved one, letting them know just how much they mean to you.

Years ago, while a much younger man and deployed around the world is where I learned the importance of writing letters and love note to my wife and family.  It was during those few minutes each day that I was able to connect to them and express my feelings and wish them well.  Love notes continue to be written without any special occasion, just to let them know how special they are. (Akindman)

One Hit Wonder's

By Diane Forrest,

I'd like to thank the guy

Who wrote the song

That made my baby

Fall in love with me

Who put the bomp

In the bomp bah bomp bah bomp?

Who put the ram

In the rama lama ding dong?

Who put the bop

In the bop shoo bop shoo bop?

Who put the dip

In the dip da dip da dip?

Who was that man?

I'd like to shake his hand

He made my baby

Fall in love with me (yeah!!)

These are the lyrics to Who put the bomp bye Barry Mann, written in 1961.  This song was one included on a cd I have called top hits of the 60's.  You may not recognize the singer, that is because this was his one and only hit song.   It was a very catchy Dance song, with fun words.  Click on this link to hear it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXmsLe8t_gg.

"Don't Worry, be happy"

I am telling you this because today is One Hit Wonder day.   A One Hit Wonder is is a person or act known mainly for only a single success. The term is most often used to describe music performers with only one hit song.   I was looking through the list of 100 One hit wonders....you may be surprised who it on that list.   From Randy Travis, to Paris Hilton ( who even knew she sang?)  To Geraldo. 

Some of the songs you can't forget are:

• "Who let the dogs out?"
• "Ice Ice Baby"
• "Don't Worry, be happy"
• "Don't break my heart, my achey brakey heart"
• "what the world needs now is Love sweet love"
• "Mr. Big Stuff, who do you think you are?"
• "I'd like to teach the world to sing"
• "smokin in the boy's room"

The list goes on and on.  Even though these artists only had one hit, they made their mark in history, and how many of us can say we had a hit song?  So cudo's to them for their contribution to the music industry, and for many memories these songs gave us.  To view more One Hit Wonders, click on this site: http://www.onehitwondercentral.com/

Banned Books Week

Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment.  Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted banning’s of books across the United States.

Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week.  BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.

The books featured during Banned Books Week have been targets of attempted bannings.  Fortunately, while some books were banned or restricted, in a majority of cases the books were not banned, all thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, booksellers, and members of the community to retain the books in the library collections.  Imagine how many more books might be challenged—and possibly banned or restricted—if librarians, teachers, and booksellers across the country did not use Banned Books Week each year to teach the importance of our First Amendment rights and the power of literature, and to draw attention to the danger that exists when restraints are imposed on the availability of information in a free society.

Every generation since recorded time has banned and or destroyed books/records!  Think about that for a few moments my friends.  Can you possibly imagine what wonderful and intellectual information we would have learned had these recordings not be destroyed?

Simple things – family bible, church records, and birth, marriage and land records destroyed over petty differences.  Entire generations of family history destroyed. As a genealogist, this frustrates me beyond words.  As one who enjoys reading a very wide variety of literature, I find it appalling that folks want to ban Mark Twain, Earnest Hemmingway, the American Heritage Dictionary, Joseph Heller’s acclaimed Catch 22, J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye; and the list goes on and on.  Factual accountings of past events banned – to protect the wrong doings by our government.

Links for more information regarding Banned Books:

• Banned Books Week FAQs http://childrensbooks.about.com/od/censorship/a/bannedbooks.htm
• Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/bannedbooksweek/index.cfm
• Banned Books Week http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/

Adult Immunization Awareness Week

As Larry the Cable guy would say...

In its 18th consecutive observance, National Adult Immunization Awareness Week emphasizes the need for health-care providers and public health officials to intensify their adult vaccination efforts. This week is typically held in the early fall of every year, before the height of cold and flu season. In addition to the influenza and pneumococcal vaccines, the Centers for Disease Control recommends all adults be vaccinated against diphtheria, hepatitis A and B, measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, meningococcal disease, and varicella (chickenpox).

Many adults are unaware of the potential risks of vaccine-preventable disease, the need for booster doses or the availability of new vaccines. So this September, talk to your health care provider or visit your public health department and find out if you're current on your immunization recommendations and get immunized today.

According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), you never outgrow the need for vaccines. The immunizations you need as an adult are based on a variety of factors such as age, lifestyle, high-risk conditions, type and locations of travel, and previous immunizations. Throughout your adult life, you need immunizations to get and maintain protection against: flu, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, shingles, pneumococcal, HPV, etc.

• Seasonal influenza (flu) - In general, anyone who is 6 months or older can benefit from the protection of a flu vaccination.
• Tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (whooping cough) - for adults up to 64 years, one booster dose
• Shingles - for adults 60 years and older
• Pneumococcal disease - for adults 65 years and older, and adults with specific health conditions
• Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection - for women 26 years and younger
• Other vaccinations you may need include those that protect against hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chickenpox (varicella), and measles, mumps and rubella.

For the complete list of vaccination schedules for all ages, as well as vaccination recording forms please go to: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/schedules/default.htm

Cherries Jubilee Day!

By Diane Forrest,

Imagine you are at a friend's home for a dinner party.  The meal is over, and in walks the host with a gorgeous silver bowl with flaming cherries.  Well this could be your lucky day!  It’s Cherries Jubilee Day!

The recipe is often credited to Auguste Escoffie who prepared the dish for one of Queen Victoria's Jubilee celebrations. Whether it was the Golden Jubilee in 1887 or the Diamond Jubilee in 1897.   Cherries jubilee quickly became a standard dessert item in America's finest restaurants reaching its peak of popularity in the 1950s and 1960s.

This is a great, refreshing dessert especially after a hearty meal. This does have to be prepared immediately before serving, but does not take a lot of time. Your guests will enjoy the blue flames when the brandy is ignited.

Here is a delicious recipe for you to try:

Cherries Jubilee

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 1 pound Bing or other dark, sweet cherries, rinsed and pitted (or use frozen pitted cherries)
• 1/2 teaspoon finely grated orange zest
• 1/4 teaspoon cherry extract
• 1/4 cup brandy
• 3 cups vanilla ice cream

Directions

1. Whisk together the sugar and cornstarch in a wide saucepan. Stir in the water and orange juice; bring to a boil over medium-high heat, whisking until thickened. Stir in the cherries and orange zest, return to a boil, then reduce heat, and simmer for 10 minutes. While the cherries are cooking, spoon the ice cream into serving bowls.
2. Remove the cherries from the heat, and stir in the cherry extract. Pour in the brandy, and ignite with a long lighter. Gently shake the pan until the blue flame has extinguished itself. Spoon the cherries over the bowls of ice cream.

The flames may get quite high when flambéing, so pay attention to anything flammable above and around where you ignite the cherries. When the initial large flame has died down, a small blue flame will continue to burn for several seconds. Shake or stir the cherries gently to expose more alcohol to the flame, being careful that they do not burn. The goal is to have the small, blue flame burn for as long as possible, thereby reducing the raw alcohol flavor, caramelizing the sugars, and entertaining your guests!   

Eye Safety

Sports and Home Eye Safety Month

In continuing with our theme over the past couple of months of Safety, we highlight Sports and Home Eye Safety in September.  From personal and firsthand experience this topic should be near the top for everyone.

Think Safety First!

It is estimated that 100,000 Americans suffer eye-related injuries from sports activities each year.

What sports are most likely to be associated with eye injuries?

Basketball leads the list for the sports injuries in this country. Really, most of them occur from basketball and baseball—they make up about a third of all sports injuries in this country. This is followed by swimming and pool sports; and then racket sports and court sports; and then football, soccer, and golf. Now most of the injuries in these sports are caused by getting poked in the eye by a finger, because larger balls like basketballs really don’t fit into the eye socket. But smaller balls like racket balls and golf balls do fit into the eye socket and really give a lot of force directly to the globe. Golf balls, especially, because of their high velocity, cause just devastating eye injuries.

What kind of eye injuries do you see in people who do not wear protective eyewear while playing in sporting activities?

We see sporting injuries involving just about all parts of the eye, and often times people have a scratch on the cornea—and this can occur really from relatively minor trauma to the eye. And these are really painful but they tend to do well with appropriate treatment. But if you have a little more forceful blow to the eye, you’ll tend to get bleeding in the back of the eye or the front of the eye, or a cataract or retinal detachment, or even fractures of the bones—or even worse is a direct rupture of the eye.

If someone is hit in the eye but their eye doesn’t hurt, does that mean that everything will be OK?

Unfortunately, no. It’s a common misconception because anyone whose had a significant blow to the eye really should have an urgent evaluation of the eye. And this is because some minor injuries can be quite painful, but really some potentially blinding injuries are painless.

What should a person do if they get an injury to their eye while playing sports?

First is you really don’t want to touch, rub, or press on the eye because this can cause further damage—especially if the eye has any kind of an opening in it. You’d like to cover the eye up to minimize further damage, and sometimes if you don’t have a protective shield, you can just use either a paper or Styrofoam™ cup and tape it over the eye. If the vision is blurred, you really should get in to see somebody urgently. If you felt something hit the eye with any more than a minor force—either hitting your eye or your eyelids, even if the vision’s normal—you should get a thorough examination to look for silent but potentially blinding injuries to the eye like retinal tears or injuries that predispose to glaucoma. It’s OK to triage damage to go to an emergency room, but if you really need a more thorough examination to look for more subtle or severe damage, you really need to have this by an ophthalmologist or optometrist.

How easy is it to prevent eye injuries?

That’s the awesome thing, it’s really very easy. We know that about 90 percent of sports-related eye injuries can be prevented by wearing appropriate protective eyewear. And most of these lenses in this eyewear are made out of polycarbonate, which is an incredibly strong and clear plastic. But the recommendations for the type of protection really vary according to the sport. So, for example, if you have a relatively low-risk sport, such as singles tennis, a sturdy street-wear frame is really adequate protection. But if you have high-risk sport like ice hockey, a helmet and full facial protection is really recommended. And you really need to have these things fit by somebody who knows what they’re doing: an eye care professional who’s knowledgeable in sports eye wear. And I’d really recommend you ask around for a good one before spending the money.

Who needs to wear protective eye-wear?

Ideally, everyone should wear it, but the people that it’s most important for are functionally one-eyed athletes. And by functionally one-eyed, I mean somebody whose visual acuity, despite wearing glasses, can’t be corrected to better than 20/40 in their poorer-seeing eye. If a functionally one-eyed person has an injury to their better seeing eye, it really is a life changing event.

For example, in many states that person could no longer get a driver’s license to drive. Also, there are people who’ve had prior damage to their eye that are especially vulnerable to injury. Or people who are moderately or severely near-sighted because they have about a 10 times greater chance for developing things like retinal detachments following eye trauma if you compare them to a person who is not near-sighted.

And then lastly, another group that’s at high risk for sports injury is children. And this is because children really engage in sports in a fairly fearless manner and they’re also athletically immature so they’re pretty susceptible to sports injuries. And there are several good studies that show that eye injuries are markedly reduced in baseball and hockey youth leagues that have mandated appropriate protective eye-wear.

Do protective lenses hamper athletic performance?

There is a misconception of that and it’s probably the most common excuse for people not wearing protective lenses is that they think they’re not going to do as well. However, these lenses have been designed differently and really are very sports-specific. And there are multiple studies out now that show that properly fitted protective lenses do not impair sports performance. (University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics)  http://www.uihealthcare.com/kxic/2007/september/eyesafety.html

Some of the Home Eye Safety items to remember this time of year are working out in your yard, picking up branches, leaves; trimming and pruning are all excellent examples of working where eye safety is critical.  While those leaf blower work wonders, they also kick up a dust and debris and often find your face and eyes – been there and done that and have learned the hard way to wear my safety glasses while doing those activities.

As adults we also need to set the example for your children – make sure that the kids are wearing protective gear as well – each and every time.

Sparky has it right!

Native Americans Day - Indians

Native Americans Day

In A Nutshell (from shmoop.com)

In 1783, the United States was a new nation of about 3 million people living, for the most part, along the Atlantic seaboard. Native Americans, perhaps numbering around 600,000, controlled most lands west of the Appalachian Mountains. By 1890, a bit more than a century later, the United States stretched from coast to coast and was home to some 66 million people. Only 250,000 Indians remained, most of them living on reservations holding just a fraction of the land they once controlled.

Why Should I Care? (from shmoop.com)

Native Americans were here first, but those Americans who arrived later have never gotten their story quite right. From the moment Columbus stepped off his boat in the Bahamas and called the people he met there "Indios"—meaning people of India—Native Americans have been misrepresented, stereotyped, and simplified. Puritans assumed they were consorting with the devil in the forest. White expansionists branded them ruthless warriors. Even their nineteenth-century defenders often described them as "noble savages."

Indian Tribes:

Abenaki; Algonquian ;Apache ;Arapaho; Blackfeet; Caddo; Cherokee; Cheyenne ;Chickasaw; Chinook; Chippewa ;Choctaw; Comanche; Cree; Creek ;Crow; Dakota ;Delaware ;Fox ;Hopi ;Huron ;Illinois ;Iowa; Iroquois ;Kansa ;Kickapoo; Kiowa; Menominee; Miami; Missouri; Modoc; Mohawk; Mohegan; Munsee; Natchez; Navajo; Nez Percé; Omaha; Onondaga; Osage; Oto; Ottawa; Paiute; Pawnee; Pottawatomie; Sauk; Seminole; Seneca; Shawnee; Siouan; Sioux; Stockbridge; Tuscarora; Winnebago; Zuni.   This is only a few of the 532 recognize Indian Tribes.

I have spent some time reviewing a few tribes: Pawnee (they were important part of my genealogy research of the Johnston’s and Irwin’s); Osage (Missouri linkage); the Crow, Cherokee, Apache, Kansa, Missouri, Shawnee, were all part of history surrounding my ancestors many years ago.

From time to time, I read or hear folks discussing their woes and injustice – for the most part – they may have some merit – but nothing like the American Indians. We are still trying to understand the Inca’s and Maya’s – along with other American Indians (North, Central and South).

If you are interested in knowing more about Native Americans, I strongly recommend following this link http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/ to Access Genealogy Native American – Indian Genealogy.

Links:

http://www.teachervision.fen.com/native-american-heritage-month/teacher-resources/6648.html

http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/

http://www.shmoop.com/native-american-history/

NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURE

http://www.greatdreams.com/native.htm

First Nations Histories

http://americanhistory.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=americanhistory&cdn=education&tm=120&f=20&tt=14&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.dickshovel.com/Compacts.html

So on this day of recognition of the Native Americans Day and in preparation of the Native American Heritage Month in November – please take some time and do a little research and get a better understanding of these great people.  Thank you!