HEALTH: HEALING FROM INJURIES

Health, Laughter, and Persistance

Good morning from New Haven, CT, where we have a mix of sun and clouds with a few more thundershowers likely today.

I am not a health professional. Far from it. I'm so interested in simply living that I will run my body as far as it will go without attention. But I have needed to learn certain basic health strategies, such as eating vegetables for breakfast (hey, it works for me!) and how to handle a lifelong problem with yeast. Sarah Summer's eBook Natural Cure for Yeast Infections rounds up the data nicely.

Click Here!

But this blog is about what I learned about healing from a knee injury. In a word, persist.

A week ago we had perfect weather for a hike. I was used to doing a five mile loop every Monday, but that was before I fell on my left knee, cracked the knee bone, and traumatized the entire joint. All the tissues were involved. My knee was so sore, and so disappointed in me for not taking better care of it, it didn't want to be a knee anymore. I wore a knee brace for a month and then started therapy. At first the knee would only bend about 45 degrees. I did LOTS of exercises! Reluctantly at first, and then with more enthusiasm, the knee decided, Well, all right, I'll be your knee again.

I vowed I would take my first hike by early May. On May 3rd I walked the two and a half miles around Wintergreen Lake, a lovely easy gradient hike. And now, with my Monday trip up around West Rock, I'm fully back to hiking! Enjoy a few of the sights with me. Like this picture of Judges Cave where a couple of Connecticut judges hid out in 1661 after siding with the losers in England's political wars.

I can now grab my ankle and bring left my knee up to my butt just as I do my right knee. One thing I decided during the course of this healing time: I do not ever want to be disabled. What good is life on earth if you're not in the action?

Bringing the topic back to general health, remember to laugh. Have a look at James Siew's eLaughter. This fun ebook is worth the price just for the jaunty music--but don't try to read it while eating! These jokes will clear your sinuses. Click Here!

What am I doing these days?

Getting Sweet Potato Suppers ready for republication as an eBook.

Writing articles and reviews for eZines.

Taking pictures of my grandkids and the wide world around. (Some of the kid pictures in my blog were taken by my daughter-in-law.)

Looking for a good laptop with camcorder and voice recorder.

Keeping connected with family and friends, so wonderfully easy with email and other websites such as facebook.

Happy Trails, from Swamp Walking Woman

GRADING EGGS WITH THE RED SOX

Do you have a favorite memory of spending time with your dad? Are you responsible for helping your kids succeed in sports? I have written an article for a baseball magazine, included in part below. Because of how my dad taught me to appreciate the game of baseball, I began thinking about how fathers encourage their daughters. I found a great link about teaching girls to play net ball.

Click Here! From the point of view of health, emotional health, family cohesiveness, and just plain fun, this eBook is a must.

My dad, age 95 this year, is in mourning for his team, the Boston Red Sox. After the good years together, Manny Ramirez should have treated the team better. (Manny was recently traded to the Dodgers because he quit trying for the Sox.) Dad himself has treated the Red Sox with the utmost respect, cheering faithfully for almost a century from his armchair and in the thick of farm chores accompanied by the radio. Cheering for his team to win a World Series.

I used to pack eggs for my dad. We owned a big poultry farm and there were always baskets of eggs waiting in the cooling room to be sorted and placed into egg cases that held thirty-two dozen each. He loved my company. Plus, we had the Red Sox. I’m sure he decided when to grade eggs by when the game came on. This picture shows him with me before I was much help. He seems confident I'll grow.

To grade eggs Dad first lifted a basket of eggs from the floor of the cooler to the bench. He then picked up each egg, cleaned any sawdust off it and held it to the light to make sure it was good. If another egg had broken in the nest, there might be egg yoke dried on this one. He sanded the dried yolk off with a small piece of sandpaper strapped to his fingers.

Dad switched the egg grader on and placed the eggs one at a time on a slant composed of two metal rubber-covered edges. The eggs rolled down the gentle foot long incline. From there they were moved along and balanced on wires that tripped them into different trays by weight. My job was to put the eggs in the correct cases.

By now the game would be in full swing and Dad would tell me just how Lou Boudreaux should coach. He’d brought Jimmy Piersall back too soon after injury or he should fine Jimmy for throwing his cap at him—which I think he did. Dad and Boudreau often agreed. Dad said he should keep Ted Williams in cleanup position and Boudreau did. Later he said it was time to put Frank Malzone fourth in the lineup. When Boudreau did just that, Dad was satisfied he had influence. By the time I was twelve I knew the lineup and their batting averages. I also knew a wonderful father who could get excited about hiking up Mt. Katahdin, about getting the hay in before a storm, and about baseball. I knew that life was good, that there was much happening of interest, that I could learn, that I could care, that I was beloved.

I married a man who also loved baseball. Among Don’s baseball trivia is the story of an early player, Germany Schaefer, who stole second base in an attempt to attract a throw and allow the player on third to steal home. When that didn’t work, Schaefer stole first so he could try the ploy again! Schaefer had a reputation for being a clown and also for playing serious baseball. Sometime later a rule was made against the reverse steal, purportedly because of Schaefer’s stunt.

If you enjoy jokes and funny stories, check out James Siew's excellent joke ebook. This fun ebook is worth the price just for the jaunty music--but don't try to read it while eating! These jokes will clear your sinuses. Click Here!

Moving around in the northeast, I have sometimes cheered other teams—Yankees, Mets, and any team having a good season. I have admired many players. But when I go home and find Dad in his easy chair, the National Anthem playing, the starting signal to “Play ball!,” there is only one team to root for and we all help, cheering with Dad for the team that finally vindicated him for his years of faithful encouragement and won the World Series, twice!! Back when Manny still wanted to help.

Until next post, Swamp Walking Woman

The Woman Writer: Pat Carr's Rule #1

Women writers, are you serious about publishing? The Summer Writers Conference of the International Women's Writing Guild is a nourishing scene for women writers and a place where many of us have developed publishable work. I'm grateful to Hannalore Hahn and her daughter Elizabeth Julia Stouman and the Guild's Conference crew for providing a safe place where magic happens routinely.

This year I attended Pat Carr’s class. I usually do. I like the way she guides writers and listens to their work. Pat will say, “Ah! Yes!” And she will pause to allow time for the images and dialogue, created by one precious student, to hang in the magical air.

If you know Pat, you know her Rule #1, as we fondly refer to it:

Do not write from inside the mind
of someone you have not been!

I’m writing a novel with a twelve year old boy as a main character. As soon as I wrote this line, I thought of Pat’s rule:

Gideon watched his mother’s tongue and teeth, thinking of bees, of the buzzing of bees, as her tongue flicked words through her teeth.

I came to Pat’s class because I wanted to ferret out these slips into a boy’s mind. To be honest, I don’t know what boys think or how boys think.

Students argue with Pat. We are used to reading great writers who write, with seeming success, from inside the minds of persons they have not been. Check out Isabel Allende’s The House of Spirits and The Infinite Plan. Or Amy Tan. Be puzzled, as most of Pat’s students are at first. Is there anything wrong in these books? They held me enthralled.

When students ask why not write from inside the mind of someone you have not been, Pat tells them “Because it’s immoral.”

I don’t want men to write as if they know what a woman thinks. I get indignant. It’s like when a person of privilege says they know what poverty must be like. Oh, yeah?

Pat’s Rule #1 forces me to study closely the observable details, in memory or in creative imagination. This discipline makes my work stronger.

I rewrote the short passage from Gideon’s River as follows:

Gideon’s eyes narrowed and his head moved forward a notch toward his mother.

“Stop talking!” he yelled. “There’s spit on you tongue. Your teeth are crooked. You sound like bees buzzing.”

Now when I read books by authors who get inside the minds of characters they have not been, I see this as the breech of ethics it is. I agree with Pat.

At the conference I also took a class in how to use simple photography to enhance your writing. The pictures on this page were taken on campus at Skidmore. (I’ll let you know when my full essay about Pat Carr’s Rule #1 comes out in an e-zine.)

If you are serious about publishing, check out Jim Edwards' How to Write and Publish an E-Book in 7 days or less.

Click Here!

And if you're using photography to enhance your writing, here's Tony Pages Photo Toolbox Of Creative Tools And Techniques:

Click Here!

Send me your email address. I'll send you a gift.

patricialapidus@sbcglobal.net

CHILDREN CAN HAVE ADVENTURES CLOSE TO HOME

One of my grandsons is rapidly growing from toddler to little boy with all the interests of a boy. He has a small plastic turtle which he cherishes. And picture books including turtles. Turtle was one of his first words.

Recently he touched a real tortoise. This land relative of turtles was munching grass on a neighbor's lawn when my grandson and his mother, together with friends, discovered him. (See the little guy in the blue hat.) The lady who keeps the tortoise as a pet came outside to talk.

"He's only eighteen years old. They grow a lot bigger," she said. "He lives on grass so I let him out to munch on my lawn. Tortoises don't drink water. They get enough water from the grass."

My grandson was finding out how his shell felt.

Nicole McKensie has written an e-book about raising children. Her title MOM HAS TO HAVE FUN seems fullfilled in this picture where my daughter-in-law in enjoying the tortoise as much as the kids--or perhaps enjoying the kids' response to the tortoise. For a variety of ideas on how to help children, click here:

http://patricia77.momhasfun.hop.clickbank.net

McKensie feels that daily life with the questions children can raise, the conflicts they can get into, and the efforts they make to grow themselves up, should be fun for the parents. My sons and their wives enjoy children. They don't need much guidance yet, but if they did, I would recommend McKensie. In her video presentation, she smiles a lot. She has fun not only raising six children but writing and presenting this book.

I worked as nanny to a one-year-old. There was a Walgreens Store going up two blocks away. We went daily to see how the building was progressing and how the parking lot was being prepared. Backhoes, cement trucks, men shoveling cement and men leveling cement. He would watch by the hour.

When my children were in grade school they had a rare opportunity to watch a backhoe at work. In fact, they had a grandstand seat from our porch, from which they could see the city sewer line put in. Piles of dirt everywhere. Men shouting. The teeth of the big yellow backhoe's shovel biting into our lawn. It was too good to miss. I excused them from school that day. They learned more at home!

But you don't have to wait for adventures to come into your yard--or for a tortoise to walk across your neighbor's lawn. Children want to know what goes on in the area where they live. And here's where I write more from regret than from what I actually did. If I had their childhood to live again I would make appointments with an official at the fire station and give the kids a tour. I would take them to places where people work in ways that they could see and appreciate. When we went out for pizza, I would strike up a conversation with the man behind the counter rotating the circle of dough, let him talk about how he learned to do that! I would take them to visit with the mayor. Help them talk with a lifeguard at the beach about her job.

Probably I was too busy, too tired from working one full time job out of the house and another at home! Still. On those occasions when we went camping in the Catskills or spent a summer evening watching a minor league baseball game at Damaske Field--where we ate tofu pups we brought and ice cream treats we bought, saw the Franklin Mountain rise in the south and the sun set in the west--they went to bed spent and satisfied.

Till the next post. Swamp Walking Woman

LEARNING TO TALK

Stuck!

My grandson, who is a year and a half old, likes to say uh-oh when something falls or when a toy doesn’t work. In fact, he enjoys saying uh-oh when nothing much is wrong or for reasons we don’t follow. Like anyone, he wants to comment on the happenings around him—with what words he knows. He is on the front end of an explosion in vocabulary. It is fascinating to watch him work at this important developmental task, one that each of us accomplished so early that we hardly recall a time when we could not talk.

With speech comes responsibility. When he fusses to get picked up, his father reminds him to say up. He does. He also says up when he wants to get down—though he says sit down when he sits to get his shoes on. He says thank you very sweetly when he presents his sippy cup for a juice refill, sure his grandmother will help him. When I open the refrigerator door, he comments, get juice.

Before he learned to talk, his mother showed him how to signal his wants. For example, when he is all done with a meal, he waves his arms sideways from the center in a gesture familiar to most of us, one that means no, enough, all done! Although he can now say all done he still uses this signal, especially when the message is urgent. Along with the signals, she talked to him a lot before he could talk, giving him her voice to study.

This week he speaks about 30 words and several phrases: all gone, balloon, ball, bubbles, up, mama, dada, bread, juice, shoes, mo-mo (more), done, baby, night-night, bye-bye, thank you, car, truck, no, uh-oh, see, hello, garbage, cup, cracker, off, nose, down. Balloon is pronounced with a lyrical rise on the second syllable. Much of his speech is almost sung. The purity of a child’s voice at this stage is holy—like the truth of his facial expressions. One morning he put several small items into an empty gallon container. Having forgotten to turn the container over and dump the pieces out, he tried to push his hand into the opening. Looking at me with grave concern, he said, stuck! Lucky I had my camera ready.

Probably he is saying more than we hear—he’s working on how to say it as well as what to say. Some of his vowels and consonants are not yet set as the English sounds they will become. Stuck and truck and clock are pronounced the same, beginning with a sound between g and k—much like the way a Spanish e is neither a short nor a long English e. The mouth is capable of making a much greater variety of sounds than those used in any one language. Each child must somehow get her mouth to form the sounds needed to pronounce the words of her caretakers. She slowly narrows the fluidity with which she begins, leaving out the many possible nuances not used in the language she must master. She begins early by cooing a range of vowels and, then, more and more the vowels she hears. Linguists can tell the difference between, for instance, the coos of a Japanese baby and those of a German infant. Realizing how early children begin practicing to talk makes me respectful of infant babble.

We veteran talkers don’t think about how we place our tongues or how much throat to put into a word, nor, for that matter, how much force is needed to execute each sound. Like many children, my grandson started saying ba for ball. His father demonstrated how to make the end of the word. He now says balla, over-pronouncing the l sound. Our English l at the end of a word like ball is pronounced so gently that a child can miss it at first and then have trouble getting just the right amount of force into it.

A person with a limited vocabulary must make every word count. Cracker also means cheerios. All gone applies equally to a tray from which he has eaten all the cheerios and to an empty clothes hamper. And bye-bye is uttered when one of his parents goes as far as the kitchen. For one of my children, broken was such a word. A torn blanket was broken. A ripped paper was broken. One morning when he was sick he said, I broken, Mommy.

The limits of vocabulary would frustrate you and me now, but we know we each tolerated not being able to talk, or not being able to express all that we wished. My grandson is rather placid, I think, considering the many things he says that we don’t yet get. For example, he speaks several phrases. The ones we have picked up on include where’d it go?, what’s this?, what’s that?, like that!, they’re there, get juice, sit down, and put it down. He sometimes utters a series of syllables we don’t catch. He’ll keep trying. It is this spirit of persistence that I admire. Toddlers have small bodies, certainly, but their courage and intentions are big as life. And who are toddlers but every one of us? Each of us made this journey. Judging by my grandson, our attitudes were awesome.

Beginning

Welcome to my blog. The title, Swamp Walking Woman, is the title of a book I will publish in the weeks ahead. It's a mythic fairy tale for modern times, a tale of women's strength. More on that later.

This blog will reflect my interests: writing, community, raising able children, health, and laughter. Oh, and I'm very enthusiastic about my two small grandsons.

In 2003 I published Sweet Potato Suppers, a memoir of the decade my husband and I lived on The Farm, a community of spiritual hippies. This book will soon be available as an e-book, as well as a book and a CD. That's right. I will read you a bedtime story while you sit back and relax. This is appropriate. The book started out as a story for my children, so they would know what The Farm had to do with them and with anyone who longs for connection, community, tribal living, and living green. Like most folks, I want to provide a green earth for our children unto the seventh generation.

WRITERS: As I explore the internet for ways to write and publish, I will share my findings with you. Here's one I'm just getting into. So far it is very good nuts and bolts advice. HOW TO WRITE AND PUBLISH YOUR OWN E-BOOK by Jim Edwards and Joe Vitale. Click Here!

PARENTS: I will also share links to advice for parents. I like Nicole MacKensie's ebook and on line class. There is no work more sacred than raising children. I made mistakes and muddled through. Of course, we all learn along the way--and now, with the internet, we elders can offer our experiences to the present generation of parents. See the curiosity based parenting method. No punishment. Free e-class. Learn to set rules and consequences that develop respect naturally… Plus have fun in the process.

http://patricia77.momhasfun.hop.clickbank.net

LAUGHTER: Most everyone has had to solve health problems, especially those of us over 50. I'll share some of my discoveries and provide links to the sites that have helped me. Any thought of good health leads to the health of laughter. Start with James Siew's ebook of humor. Click Here!

I like jokes immensely. You can tell me your favorites and I'll tell you mine. I'll lead you to any great links I find for good stories, good jokes, and laughter. Yesterday I was driving in a quiet neighborhood when I looked up to see, just beyond a tall spruce tree, an orange stucco house sparkling in the sun. That house look so good I laughed out loud with only the car for audience.

Tales of the things children say and do are tops for me. Here's one. My grandson, at the age of 20 months, was just learning to jump. He would get up on a small stool, bounce up and down a few times, and carefully step down. Then he would say, "I jumped!" Now he is over two and he really does jump. Well, I'm going to imitate him. I'm just beginning to get the hang of blogging. Here's my first effort. I've bounced up and down a few times and stepped cautiously into cyberspace. Wow! I blogged!

Send me your email and I'll send you a free gift.


One more thing. If you want to earn money on the internet with a simple blog like this, I recommend Easy Writing Biz.com. Click Here!

Trish Lapidus
Ps. Check out these links.

Curiosity based parenting method. http://tinyurl.com/4f4ztz

This fun ebook is worth the price just for the jaunty music--but don't try to read it while eating! These jokes will clear your sinuses. Click Here!

Till the next post. Swamp Walking Woman