The Cuckleburr Times » Book Excerpts

Book Excerpt: Keys to The Kingdom by Senator Bob Graham

A Book Excerpt Author — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 06:15:57 +0000

July 15
Washington, D.C.

At 10:15 Friday morning Tony arrived at the senator’s hideaway in the Capitol, one of seventy offices secreted throughout the Senate wing. Ranging from cubbyholes to ornate suites, they were assigned depending on that truest acknowledgment of status in the upper chamber, seniority. As seventeenth in years of Senate service, Billington had a room that overlooked the east lawn, decorated with furniture from the Senate storeroom and landscape art of his state.

“Mr. Ramos, have a seat,” the senator greeted Tony.

“Thank you.” He sat on the end of the sofa closest to Billington’s desk.

The approving smile and tilt of the head indicated the senator was intrigued with Tony’s athletic grace and presence. “Mr. Ramos, before we go to the subject of our meeting, may I ask if you had a relative with your name who played infield for the Havana Sugar Kings? As I recall, you look a great deal like him.”

Impressed but not flustered, Tony replied, “Yes sir. That was my grandfather in the old Florida International League. I’m surprised you would remember that.”

Billington placed his hands behind his head and stretched out in the desk chair. “My father loved baseball. When I was growing up, we had season tickets to the Miami Sun Sox, and he and I drove in from the farm to almost every home game. The Sugar Kings were the dominant team in the league. Dad especially liked your grandfather’s grit and hustle.”

“I wish I’d been able to see him play.”

“You would have been proud. I remember when Dad told the sports editor of the Post about Tony Ramos and several of the other Cuban ballplayers. He said the Washington Senators should pick them up; the only thing they could do would be to improve the weakest team in the American League. But that was a couple of years before Jackie Robinson broke the color line, and the Senators were not about to do that in a southern-culture town like this one.”

“That was my grandfather’s dream, to play in the major leagues, and I know he would want me to thank your father.”

Billington paused to pour two glasses of water. After offering one to Tony he sipped and continued, “That was yesterday and today is now. I’d like to ask a question.”

“Yes sir.”

“Mark Block is not an easy grader, and he has given you very high marks. I’m satisfied you have several of the aptitudes we will need for the inquiry, so I’m more interested in motivation. Why do you want to break your INR career path to take this on?”

Tony leaned forward. “I think the president has fundamentally mischaracterized 9/11 as the beginning of a war on terrorism. It is not a war unless we make it one. This is not a war. It is an intelligence and paramilitary operation against a relatively small and enormously out-gunned enemy.”

“What do you mean by ‘relatively small’?” the senator asked.

“A week after 9/11, my current boss asked the head of the INR how many terrorists were there in the world?”

“And what did he estimate?”

“He said if you define a terrorist as a person who has been through training camps like al-Qaeda’s in Afghanistan, or Hezbollah’s in Syria or Lebanon, and who belongs to an organization prepared to use those acquired skills, he estimated 100,000. I don’t disparage that figure, but it’s hardly the Viet Cong, or Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf.”

“So, that’s why you want to join our inquiry staff?”

“Yes sir. To understand the nature, objectives, and capabilities of our enemy. And also to understand why we have exaggerated its threat. Those are some of the questions I think your inquiry can answer.”

“Tony, that is a very thoughtful statement of our mission. I want you on the team.”

The above is an excerpt from the book Keys to the Kingdom by Senator Bob Graham. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Senator Bob Graham, is a former two-term Governor of Florida and served eighteen years in the United States Senate. He was appointed by President Obama to co-chair the National Commission on the BP oil spill and served on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

He is recognized for his leadership on issues ranging from healthcare and environmental preservation, and for his ten years of service on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence — including eighteen months as chairman of the Committee. In 2004, he authored Intelligence Matters, based upon his experiences during the Joint Inquiry and its analysis of the run-up to the Iraq War. After retiring from public life, he served for a year as a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. While there, he wrote a book about civic participation entitled. Currently, he chairs the Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida.

Bob and his wife, Adele, reside in Miami Lakes, Florida. For more information, please visit Bob Graham’s Web site and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter.

Book Excerpt: Pitch Uncertain By Maisie Houghton

A Book Excerpt Author — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 06:05:01 +0000

I was born in 1940, a bad time for the world, but I never did anything bad until the day I cut off my hair and left it on the floor for my mother to find, a bright, hot pool of yellow curls.

I was four. It was wartime and we were living in a rented house in Winter Park, Florida. My father, an officer in the navy, had recently been stationed there. My mother and I, along with Sybil, my older sister by two years, and Elizabeth, “Tizzy,” a new baby of two months, had moved from New York City to be near him.

Florida, despite all its palm trees and relentless sunlight, seemed dark to me — the people and the houses. Unaccustomed to southern heat, my mother kept the old, verandaed house heavily shaded. The blinds were always down, the curtains drawn. Someone was always taking a nap, my mother, my father (but not together), the amorphous baby. Sybil and I tiptoed around the closed doors, but when we went outside the glittering light hurt our eyes.

In the kitchen was Lily Mae, the black maid. Marion Skillon, a trained nurse from Naples, Maine, was also there. Uncertain in a new land, my mother had persuaded Marion to make the long journey south. Marion, all starched whiteness and squeaking rubber-soled shoes, stuck to the new baby upstairs. Lily Mae ironed endless rivers of laundry and passed dead-looking platters of food in the shadowy dining room.

My father was almost never there. When he did appear, it was often with a swirl of laughing young pilots in uniform. They brought us shells from the beach that we never visited. They set us on their knees, putting down their drinks to balance us on their laps.

The afternoon I rebelled, my mother was a long while on the telephone. She wasn’t the type to chatter on. She served as a sounding board to solve other people’s problems. My mother had been called to the telephone during a rare treat: We had been having lunch alone together. Her low voice burred on as she twisted the cord in her hand. What was she saying? To whom was she speaking?

I slipped away from the dining room table, wandering sulkily through the muted rooms. On my mother’s desk a pair of scissors gleamed. Long and sleek, they were grown ups’ scissors, not the stubby, disappointingly blunt ones we used for paper dolls. I ran my hand over my head. My hair was the one thing about me that was different. In everything else I matched my sister — our seersucker dresses, our red sandals, our black eyes. But Sybil had two brown pigtails while I still had a baby’s fuzz of buttery curls. I thought about Marion Skillon in the mornings, twisting my hair into ringlets, wrestling the ribbon to the top of my head. “There now, aren’t you sweet? Now go and be good.”

Suddenly it was easy to pick up the slender weapon and start to cut. One tentative snip and then I was possessed with the necessity to act and be done with my boldness. My curls fell away like skin being shed by a snake. It went so fast I hardly knew what I was doing. I crept back to the kitchen to face Lily Mae. She stared silently. “Your mama be upset,” she said, shaking her head as she moved through the swinging door with a stack of freshly ironed shirts. A little panic seized me, but, almost gleefully, I hurried to stand defiantly before my mother. She was still sitting, unspeaking, by the telephone. She seemed unmoved. “Heavens, what did you do that for? It will take forever to grow out.” Marion peered at me over the banister railing. “You’ve lost your looks,” she sniffed.

My mother guided me toward the dining room. “We must finish lunch,” she murmured, rousing herself. The table looked half-ravaged, like my hair, with crumpled napkins and tired lettuce on the plates. I started to weep at the enormity of what I had done. Fat tears fell on my grilled cheese sandwich. “Don’t fuss, darling,” consoled my mother distractedly. She wasn’t even looking at me.

There was an unspoken lesson in that afternoon. My mother should have been angry but instead she held her tongue. Was it at that point that I learned to guard the peace, to mind my manners, to keep my mouth shut?

On my report card, the music teacher wrote “pitch uncertain.”

In school someone would grab me from behind on the playground: “whose side are you on? Lucy’s?” — the charismatic troublemaker, or “Kitten’s?” — the charismatic good-girl. It seemed easier — and smarter — to keep my mouth shut.

One day I came home from school tense, weepy from trying to please everyone. My mother uncharacteristically drew herself up and exhorted me to “Stick by your guns, have the courage of your convictions.” Most important of all, “Be yourself!”

“But how do I know who I am?” I wondered.

Growing up, I swam like a fish in the clouded waters of family life.

My family was large, consisting mostly of women. Since I was born in 1940, the men in the family were soon absent, sent as soldiers to Europe or as naval officers aboard ships to the distant Pacific.

I remember not only my mother’s mother, “Gran,” as we called her, but also her mother, my great-grandmother, erect, dignified and austere in her long dress. The family I remember also harbored a great-great maiden aunt, several great-aunts and endless pretty cousins. During the war we stayed intermittently with my mother’s mother, Gran Jay. Though a young widow at fifty-two, she still kept a rambling house in what was then the quiet countryside of Long Island for her five daughters and one neighboring daughter-in-law.

Gran ran her house as an ark, the center of an otherwise fragmented family life. Her daughters dipped in and out of this comfortable, familiar world, using it as a kind of sacred place, sometimes for absolution and redemption, sometimes just for temporary sustenance, always for nourishment.

The above is an excerpt from the book Pitch Uncertain: A Mid-Century Middle Daughter Finds Her Voice by Maisie Houghton. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Copyright © 2011 Maisie Houghton, author of Pitch Uncertain: A Mid-Century Middle Daughter Finds Her Voice

Maisie Houghton, author of Pitch Uncertain: A Mid-Century Middle Daughter Finds Her Voice, was born in New York City, grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the fifties and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1962. With her husband, she has lived in Corning, New York, for over forty years. Pitch Uncertain is her first book.

For more information please visit TidePool Press.

Book Excerpt – Rush: Why You Need and Love the Rat Race by Todd Buccholz

A Book Excerpt Author — Fri, 27 May 2011 22:17:43 +0000

The New Original Sin: Capitalism

In my view, during the twentieth century capitalism became the new original sin. Just as original sin expels human beings from Eden, capitalism becomes the new sin that prevents us from returning to Eden. If we could just expunge the drive to compete, and the desire to acquire, we could finally claw our way back to that noble, leafy, and peaceful place we left behind in Genesis, where we never wanted anything, let alone tried to get it. I will call such believers Edenists. (Note that even atheists can adopt an Edenist mind-set).

When happiness gurus get on a roll, they take individual advice and extend it to all of society: Not only should you take a timeout, but the entire economy should be given a timeout, or the economic equivalent of Ambien. Shut down capitalism and replace it with a kibbutz for three hundred million people. Why? To prevent envy and to drain our competitive juices. The happiness gurus believe that competition is cancerous, eating away at our souls and our chances for happiness. If we could just stomp out competition, we could achieve self-realization and bliss. Rather than relying on policy non sequiturs to achieve happiness, we would be better off dressing up like Druids and prancing around the rocks of Stonehenge hoping that it will help us pay our mortgage bills. (Yes, such tours are available.)

In fact, if you would like to visit an ancient economy stuck in Stone Age splendor, plan a trip to Bhutan. This little nation, with a per capita GDP about equal to the summer take-home pay of a kid’s lemonade stand in Des Moines ($1,400), is tucked in the Himalayas and has swallowed almost all the happiness potions. The king has forsworn gross national product, and instead requires his country to pursue “gross national happiness.” The king banned Coke and Pepsi (so smugglers sneak in the contraband). There is a national uniform for professionals, most buildings look the same, and “tourists are taken to all the same places and served the same food,” wrote one visitor, who couldn’t find Starbucks or espresso but did discover a valuable cache of Nescafe instant packets. Bhutan also mandates Buddhism as a state religion, so no one can be envious of anyone else’s creed. It appears that gross national happiness requires a lot of uniformity and government control in order to beat out the urge to compete.

I admit that now is not a popular time to link happiness with competition. I understand the rage in Western countries against the failings of modern life, especially following the financial market meltdowns of 2008 and 2009. Didn’t hypercompetitive bankers lead to the ruin of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns? Didn’t supercompetitive brokers baying for bucks in trading rooms nearly bankrupt the world? Didn’t reckless oil drillers lead to a devastating spill in 2010? So why not join the globalization protestors and hurl rocks into plate-glass windows at Starbucks? Maybe that will bring us joy. After all, as the financial markets thrash us and threaten our jobs, we are tempted to give up on modern life. So long to 401(k)s, ski vacations, and bucking for that salary hike that I wasn’t going to get anyway. I sometimes wonder if Sarah Palin boasts of her gun skills because she worries that the only industries left in America will be hunting and gathering.

No doubt, amid the financial wreckage, we all felt cheated, by the CEO crooks, the mortgage broker morons, and the short sellers. And we feel a natural yearning to go back to simpler times, to some Eden that exists in our Jungian memory. Maybe throwing rocks will remind us of how jolly we were during the Stone Age.

But “Kumbayah” does not work. Sitting around a metaphoric campfire, holding hands and singing communal songs does not make human beings happy. Sweaty, yes. Sooty, perhaps. But not happy.

More tourists have trampled on Thoreau’s Walden Pond snapping photos than have seriously considered giving up their cell phones to pick berries. We are delighted to try pomegranate juice — in the hope of finding the secret to clear skin and lower blood pressure — but virtually no American will plant his own bush and give up television. We may embrace symbols of a more homemade life, but these are tokens of wishful thinking, not titanic changes of substance.

Are we just selfish hypocrites who have fallen too deeply in love with a synthetic commercial world, with all its gadgets and traffic? Happiness books typically implore us to surrender our raw capitalistic drives, to levy taxes on high earners, and to derail the rat race before the entire world turns into a human-size Habitrail, plastic and pointless. And speaking of a Habitrail, these Edenists claim we are spinning on what has become known as the hedonic treadmill, so that the more we have the more we want. Typical advice: “Don’t worry, be frugal.” Or reach for the Prozac.

In my book, Rush: Why You Need and Love the Rat Race, I take on a seemingly preposterous task, employing the latest research in neuroscience and behavioral economics to argue the opposite: It is the race itself — sloppy, risky, and tense — that can bring us happiness. It is the very pursuit of love, new knowledge, wealth, and status that literally delivers the rush, lights up our brains, releases dopamine, and ignites our passion. Furthermore, I’m going to argue that the cause and effect between competition and happiness is hardwired into everyone of us. Some of the results will surprise you. Competition makes people more fair, and it also makes them taller.

Neuroscientists report that when a person begins to take a risk, whether it’s gambling or ginning up the nerve to ask a pretty girl to the prom, his left prefrontal cortex lights up, signaling a natural high. Alpha waves and oxygenated blood surge to the brain. Sitting alone in a pup tent does not yield the same effects. Likewise, our competitive juices cannot be separated from our desire to learn more. Ironically, those who deride competition are often the first to exalt education. They seem to have images of Plato sitting on a log. I exalt education, too, but it is foolish to pretend that desires do not press us forward to learn more, to gain more knowledge, and therefore to get smarter. The contented do not grow smarter, they grow moss.

The above is an excerpt from the book Rush:Why You Need and Love the Rat Race by Todd G. Buchholz. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Copyright © 2011 Todd G. Buchholz, author of Rush: Why You Need and Love the Rat Race

Todd G. Buchholz, author of Rush: Why You Need and Love the Rat Race is a former White House director of economic policy, award-winning teacher at Harvard, managing director of the Tiger hedge fund, and was a fellow at Cambridge University in 2009. He is also a founder of Two Oceans Management, as well as coproducer of the Tony Award-winning Broadway hit Jersey Boys. A regular contributor to NPR’s Marketplace, he appears monthly on PBS’s Nightly Business Report and his book New Ideas from Dead Economists is used in universities throughout the world. Buchholz has also written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Reader’s Digest. He lives with his wife and daughters in Southern California.

For more information please visit http://www.toddbuchholz.com and follow the author on Twitter.

Book Excerpt – Spinning The Law: Trying Cases in the Court of Public Opinion by Kendall Coffey

A Book Excerpt Author — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 00:08:30 +0000

A Media Primer for Spinners

For all the fascination with trials in the court of public opinion, no one really knows how much media campaigns actually affect the verdict. Ultimately, what matters is winning the courtroom battle for life and liberty rather than the contest over the next news cycle. No matter how important publicity may be to clients, the best press releases are written about winning, just as woefully bad news follows defeat. The legendary Johnnie Cochran had the memorable sound bite,”If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit,” but without the jury’s own words of “not guilty,” his phrase would have been pointless rather than timeless.

That said, even if the benefits of spin are difficult to quantify, there are many reasons to believe they are not illusory. Studies conducted of mock jurors — simulated jurors in simulated trials — suggest that negative news contributes to negative verdicts. And even though real jurors routinely deny that they are media influenced, it is undeniable that cases are decided by jurors who are media exposed. It is neither necessary nor realistic, however, to disqualify jurors simply because they were previously subjected to onslaughts of publicity about a case — the law does not require an empty mind, only one that is open. Although mediadrenched jurors must assure the court that they will be fair and will consider only the evidence and law presented inside the courtroom, those assurances are more comforting when the groundwork for fairness has been laid by balanced news coverage.

Once selected, jurors are instructed repeatedly to avoid media coverage of the case they are deciding. The law assumes that they honor their oath, but common sense says some may not. And even jurors who read nothing about a case live among others who may be reading everything. When a community is buzzing about a trial, no one wants to be remembered as one of the jurors fooled by clever defense lawyers into acquitting a notoriously guilty defendant.

The ears of judges often have chronic buzzing, particularly because they are not prohibited from following the news coverage of their cases. The law presumes that judges will ignore the media monsoons drenching the courthouse and decide every legal issue as if nary a drop had fallen. If we assume, though, that judges are real people who live in the real world — sometimes a world of judicial elections — it follows that they are acutely aware of community feelings about mediaintensive cases. And judges live in more than one community. Most care deeply about maintaining respect from their peers in the courthouse and from the attorneys who practice in the same locale. Because the legal community reads newspapers much more than most, the articles that judges and lawyers will be reading should be balanced as much as possible if the playing field is to be level.

Legal icon Dershowitz recently recalled some advice he received from a local lawyer when he was handling the appeal for convicted wifekiller Claus von Bülow: “The only way you can win this appeal is if these three judges (all male back then) can explain to their wives why they let off a wifekiller.” Absorbing the daunting reality, Dershowitz focused not only on the legal brief but also on facts about the medical evidence that would raise questions in the minds of reasonable readers.

Good press is also a recruitment poster for lawyers, experts, and even fact witnesses. Winnability magnetizes cases. Lawyers and experts may be mercenaries, but even hired guns prefer to be retained by winners. For the top professionals who can pick and choose their cases, many prefer a cause that is acclaimed to one that is being defamed. Even fact witnesses, the main determinant of most cases, can be more effective if they believe their testimony will be featured in a success story. Just as many prefer to join the team with all the cheerleaders, horrible publicity can impair recruitment efforts. (Note: large, upfront payments to attorneys and experts can make even beastly cases seem beautiful.)

Occasionally, the fear of negative publicity can inspire the parties to negotiate a solution before the judicial process reaches its own conclusion. Several years ago I represented a woman who shipped herself to the United States by plane, arriving inside a DHL box. This elegant but — no surprise here — petite client might have had an uphill battle seeking asylum to remain here. In theory, a socalled stowaway is among the least favored of all newcomers for purposes of immigration law. Her case began to attract attention, however, because while gift DHL packages are common, a gift immigrant understandably created a news stir. As press interest intensified over her battle for asylum, we held our fire and postponed the everpresent temptation to trashtalk the immigration service for trying to deport a young woman who was obviously courageous, even if too ingenious for safety’s sake. The government’s press anxieties actually helped us make a deal providing that if the authorities agreed not to send her away, we would keep the television cameras at bay. Along with downsizing our press strategies, we assured the government that our client would travel with passengers rather than inside packages in the future.

The above is an excerpt from the book Spinning the Law: Trying Cases in the Court of Public Opinion by Kendall Coffey. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Copyright © 2011 Kendall Coffey, author of Spinning the Law: Trying Cases in the Court of Public Opinion

Kendall Coffey, author of Spinning the Law: Trying Cases in the Court of Public Opinion, is a former U.S. Attorney who headed the largest federal prosecutors’ office in America, is the founding member of and a partner at Coffey Burlington, PL. Following his service as a U.S. Attorney, he was closely involved with the Elian Gonzalez case and the 2000 presidential election recount. A leading media commentator on high-profile cases, he has appeared on the Today Show, Larry King Live, Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper 360, CNN Headline News, as well as hundreds of other nationally televised programs.

For more information, view Kendall Coffey’s Web site and follow him on Facebook.

Book Excerpt: Into My Father’s Wake by Eric Best

A Book Excerpt Author — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 20:57:14 +0000

Prologue Excerpt

In the years before I finally went sailing alone I struggled with something nameless whose manifestation in my life I did not recognize for the longest time. Most of it was negative – a dull ache of some internal sort, sudden rage at conditions that would not submit to me, relationships that foundered in conflict or the effects of drinking, or drinking itself. This I had learned at home from a couple of experts and the traditions in which they came of age, where alcohol was just something one did at the end of the day. The drinking dulled but did not eliminate the background noise of the thing, which was perhaps the background noise of sadness, or echoes of irreconcilable conflicts, or the thing itself, whatever it might be. In matters of the heart, over time, I found I could only go so far and no farther, derailed or obstructed by something that must have been rooted in me early, if it was not my own by nature.

How much of this had to do with me alone and how much was a function of my family or the way I understood my place in it, or my father and mother, or the New England upbringing of my youth, I could not tell. It is easy enough to blame one’s troubles on others, particularly the people who brought us into the world and raised us. But surely I figured in it somewhere. Who expected to be fully happy, anyway? Perhaps it was all in the pursuit, as books on the topic seemed to say. For a long time I did not appreciate that most people were not raised as I was, and therefore had their own experiences of parental love and the frailties and failures that went with it. Some of those were devious and for me would be intractable to understanding without the help of others.

Not until my first experiments with psychotherapy (in which I was the lone family explorer) with a grey-haired woman in Cambridge did I suspect there was something to uncover in my family that might explain some of my conflicts. Early school reports documented me as very clever and engaging, but contentious and sometimes explosive. My years growing up on a former dairy farm in a small Massachusetts town, and later in private schools, were marked by more than my share of fistfights, confrontations on the soccer field and a record number of ice hockey penalties, though I never developed a taste for bar-brawls or street fighting. I could be very funny and entertaining – at least my family and friends generally said so – but when it came to being argumentative or provocative, few could match me in any grade from kindergarten on up. I despised authority in any form and if I felt the least bit trapped or pushed, in word or physical space, self-control was not my natural instinct. Call it spoiling for a fight, or a chip on his shoulder, or just a confused kid in pain, this tendency did little to endear me to my contemporaries, among whom I had a few but fortunately enduring friends.

If a turning point was signaled along the way it came without much notice during lunch in a Fifth Street bar in San Francisco in the mid ’80s. I was in my mid-thirties, stunted in some ways I could not name, drinking regularly if not relentlessly and slipping inexorably into the collapse of my first marriage. I remarked to another journalist and unrequited novelist – bound together as we were by the San Francisco Examiner, our unrealized ambitions as writers and a common tendency to fly into rages over trivial matters – that I didn’t think I could ever write my first book while my father was still alive. Why I said this at the time I was not sure, but I knew it was true and felt I was disclosing something powerful by saying it out loud to anyone. I was telling a truth without knowing why.

It would be about a decade before my father died in his waterfront bedroom in Cape Rosier, Maine, in the house my mother’s father had built 80 years earlier, overlooking the rocky shores of Eggemoggin Reach, where I did my first sailing and my father did his last. In the meantime I had sailed alone to Hawaii and back and struggled to write the story of that trip and the life that brought me to it. Expecting his death by congestive heart failure to arrive at any time, I invited him to read the first draft, about which he only said, with a grim, narrow look I knew too well, ‘So, you hate me, then?’ It defined the gulf between us more eloquently than anything I could have ever come up with on my own. A few months later, with that still between us, I drove him home from the Bangor hospital, knowing it to be the last time, so he could have a view of the water and his sailboat, ‘Enfin,’ idling at her mooring nearby. He died three days later in his sleep, just after I left on a business trip. A dozen years would pass – including my mother’s decline and death, and another failed marriage – before something moved me to finish the story once and for all – to try to accept and forgive and bury him with a decent tribute, and perhaps set myself free in ways I had never been.

It is a truism that we never know when we set out on a long journey just where we may arrive, or when. Life is made up of the unexpected, coming at us point-blank. Things are seldom what they seem, so our charted course is never the course we make in the end. While the father whom life dealt me left his indelible marks – for better and worse – there were others I found along the way. One was a tennis buddy of his, a former RAF pilot who flew night-fighters in Korea and then ran a mysterious business involving military hardware. During one of my explosive tantrums over a failed shot in a casual weekend doubles game, John Striebel looked at me with mild contempt and said simply, “That’s it, I’m done.” He sat down beside the court with an air of finality, rejecting summarily his younger partner, which broke up our precious Saturday game and made everyone a victim of my behavior. John was the first partner (or player) ever to walk off the tennis court when I was throwing a fit – the only one, actually. And I felt oddly grateful, even as I had to walk the half-mile home alone as he and my father drove past without showing any sign of my being there. Years later John would counsel me through my first divorce – don’t let your anger take over, he said. He also warned me not to wait too long before trying to sail solo in the ocean. Getting older has a way of making you afraid to do things, he said, and the fear will come on you unexpectedly.

Other fathers I found, or who found me, helped me discover certain truths that I could not see clearly on my own. Don Michael, an educator and consultant who became a mentor to me in my consulting practice, looked at me with compassion when I recalled some of my earliest memories, some of them clouded or blocked, which had something to do with violence. “No child can reconcile love and brutality, it just doesn’t make any sense,” he said, putting me on a path to understanding my history over time. Joe Miller, a Sufi philosopher and spiritual guide in San Francisco, showed me the power of powerful listening and evoked words that would become my compass for the rest of my life. And Professor Bill White, who continued to teach through his last tortuous months at Harvard Business School as he died of leukemia, showed me with deathbed selflessness what it meant to help others find their way.

It was my own act of faith that in finishing this story something crucial about my father and my relationship to him might finally come clear, although its manifestation would be a surprise. The manuscript that had gone on the shelf after he died suddenly demanded attention when my son turned five. That was about the same age that I had become consciously aware that my father was in my life. He had spent my earliest years commuting from Connecticut to a New York City bank and was seldom at home when I was awake, a condition I had recreated in my own son’s life. There was something about this age – five. My first daughter was five when my marriage to her mother broke up, and I felt compelled to get into the ocean alone, to get out there – maybe just to get out of here – to be truly alone to figure something out. This journey would not be finished, if I could call it so, for another 20 years. In truth perhaps it would never be.

The above is an excerpt from the book Into My Father’s Wake by Eric Best. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

© 2011 Eric Best, author of Into My Father’s Wake

Eric Best is an author, speaker, and strategy consultant to individuals and corporations. Educated at Hamilton College, Harvard and Stanford Universities, his background as a journalist (Lowell Sun, USA Today, San Francisco Examiner), futurist (Global Business Network, Morgan Stanley), and solo ocean sailor (SF-Hawaii and back, ’89 and ’93) inform his insights. The father of three, he lives and maintains offices in Brooklyn, NY, where he currently consults for a global financial firm and is working on two new books.

For more information please visit http://ericbestonline.com and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter

Book Excerpt- Awakening Consciousness: A Woman’s Guide! by Robin Marvel

A Book Excerpt Author — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 16:42:41 +0000

Your personal vibration is a lot like your fingerprint, it is unique to you as an individual. Each moment we have the opportunity to raise our vibrations resulting in a healthy mind, body and spirit. Living a conscious, positive lifestyle will encourage a strong inner core as well as raise your vibrations. You have the opportunity to enhance your life experience by choosing to experience life with elevated vibrations. Raising your vibrations will benefit you and all those you come in contact with.

Use the space below to list where you feel your personal vibrations may be low. Use this list to learn what areas you need to work on to raise your personal vibrations. [Note: book is lined anywhere it says "use the space below" in this excerpt, to allow you to do so.]

5 Surefire Ways to Raise Your Vibrations

These five steps are easy, powerful ways to increase your personal vibrations.

#1: Live in Gratitude

Each moment that you are able to find gratitude you raise your vibration. Next time you forget your attitude of gratitude stop and take a look around. Find something as simple as a plant in your living room. Take some time to appreciate the beauty that plant has added to your life. This works to shift your attitude because it is impossible to be in a state of gratitude and unhappy at the same time.

Make a Gratitude List~ use the space below to list some things you are grateful for.

# 2: Visit or call a friend with a positive personal vibration.

Just being in contact with a person with a positive personal vibration will boost your vibration in an instance. High vibrations always dominate low vibrations in all situations. Socialize with those with high personal vibrations and elevate your spirit.

Positive Vibration Friend List~ Use the space below to list your friends that will help raise your vibrations.

Friend Phone Number

# 3: Hold Your Power

Holding your power means being true to you. The demands on a woman can often leave us feeling overwhelmed with things we need to get done and taking care of everyone else. You have to remind yourself that it is okay to say no. This means saying no to your spouse, your children , your parents, your boss and the list goes on and on. Nurturing yourself is so important because if you are not true within yourself , you can not be true to all those in your life. Taking the time to honor who you are does not mean you have to go out and spend money on yourself, it just means devoting some time to you.

Ways to nurture yourself

* Reading your favorite book

* Allowing your husband or friends to take the kids for a couple of hours

* Ordering dinner in

Use the space below to list ways that you can hold your power

# 4: Practicing Acts of Kindness

Doing nice things for others is a surefire way to elevate your vibrations. Every person you encounter is busy on their own path. Offering a kind smile or a complement can change the moment as well as their entire life, not to mention the change it creates in your life as well. A great affirmation to practice while exploring acts of kindness is “because nice matters”. Do not underestimate the distance kindness travels.

Use the space below to list some Random Acts of Kindness you can implement into your life.

# 5: Living a Healthy Lifestyle

Your body is your temple. You have the opportunity to decide the health and wellbeing of your body. By nurturing your body with positive energy, good foods and exercise you are creating a strong, resilient healthy lifestyle. Living a healthy lifestyle includes taking care of your integrated whole. This includes your mind, body and spirit. All low vibrations and illnesses start on the inside and reflect throughout your life. Some great ways to live a healthy lifestyle are eating good foods, practicing positive affirmations and exercising your body.

Use the space below to list some ways you can treat your body as the temple it is.

Robin Marvel is an author, Empowerment and life positivity coach, energetic specialist and motivational speaker for children and adults. She is also the senior editor for Marvelous Spirit Press. Using tools from her “Awakening Consciousness” book series she is expanding creativity and self awareness in beings everywhere. To learn more please visit her website at http://www.marvelousempowerment.com

Book Excerpt: Tales from the Yoga Studio by Rain Mitchell

A Book Excerpt Author — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 07:08:32 +0000

Chapter 1

It’s at moments like this — when she’s put the class through their paces and has them settled back onto their mats in a state of collective peace, contentment, and deep relaxation, when their bodies are glistening with a light sheen of sweat, when the afternoon sun is glinting off the end of the Silver Lake Reservoir, which she can see through the wall of windows she and Alan had installed on the southern side of the studio, when all seems temporarily right with the world — that Lee starts craving a cigarette.

“Inhale through your nose into whatever traces of tension you’re still holding on to, and sigh it all out through your mouth,” she says. “Let it go.”

The craving is just a ghost from the past that visits her from time to time, drops in from the years of misguided study and too much stress at Columbia University Medical Center, when, like a quarter of the students, she would rush out to 165th Street from a lecture on emphysema, abnormal cell growth, or heart disease, light up, and huddle against the buildings in the gray dampness of those New York afternoons.

“One more long, luxurious inhalation, one more compete exhalation.”

And that wasn’t even the worst of her behavior. Thankfully, those days of rote memorization, trying to prove something to her impossible mother, always feeling as if she’d stepped onto the wrong flight and was hurtling toward an unknown destination, are long past and gone for good. No regrets, no second-guessing.

The fact that on the night Alan moved his stuff into a friend’s spare room, unannounced, explaining only that he needed some space to get his “head together,” she stopped at the convenience store on her way home from the studio and bought a pack of Marlboro Lights was a blip on the radar screen. She’d rather give herself some slack and say she wasn’t in her right mind that night. “Om shanti, Yoga Lady,” the Indian store clerk had said ironically, rubbing in the contradiction.

“They’re for a friend,” she’d lied, which made it even worse somehow.

She smoked only two and was about to throw the pack out before she considered how expensive cigarettes have become in the past ten years (who knew?) and told herself it was a horrible waste of money to dump them. She locked them in the glove compartment. Maybe she’d pass them out to a few homeless people. Except wasn’t that like handing out lung disease? Talk about bad karma. So now she didn’t know what to do with them except leave them safely out of reach until she figured out the best course of action.

How long has she had the class in savasana?

She watches fifteen rib cages rise and fall in unison in the beautiful golden afternoon light, ignores one awkwardly timed erection courtesy of Brian – - “Boner,” as Katherine and a few students refer to him, he of the white spandex yoga pants — and closes her own eyes. If she thinks herself into it, she can get a contact high from the class. A deep breath in, a long breath out, a reminder that even if life has suddenly gotten way more complicated in the past few weeks, even if for the moment might as well face it-it kind of sucks, it’s still better than it was back in those dark New York, failing-med-student days in her twenties-before Alan, before the twins, before Los Angeles. Before yoga.

She opens her eyes and sees that she’s run seven minutes over.

Fourth time this week. Or is it the fifth?

She brings the class back, has them sit up cross-legged, and then, with the sudden feeling of warmth and tenderness for all of them that inevitably comes over her at this point in class, she says, “Take this feeling with you, wherever you’re headed. This calm is there for you when you need it. If something totally unexpected comes up, don’t let it knock the wind out of you. You can’t control the other people in your life. But you can control your reactions to them. You can’t predict what the hell they’re going to do all of a sudden, out of nowhere, with no advance warning, just when you think everything is running so smoothly and perfectly, and then . . . ” Uh-oh. “Have a really great afternoon, folks. Don’t get bent out of shape. Namaste.”

The above is an excerpt from the book Tales from the Yoga Studio by Rain Mitchell. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Rain Mitchell, author of Tales From the Yoga Studio, began practicing yoga as a teenager and is currently at work on the second novel in the series. Rain’s favorite pose is corpse. Visit Rain’s website at http://www.talesfromtheyogastudio.com/

Book excerpt: How Frank Lloyd Wright Got Into My Head, Under My Skin and Changed The Way I Think About Thinking: A Creative Thinking Blueprint for the 21st Century by Sandy Sims

A Book Excerpt Author — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 07:00:48 +0000

Being in the Flow

Our daily life usually offers numerous opportunities to be in the flow. We only need to recognize them. The idea is to examine the nature of our experiences from the viewpoint of our inner connectedness and see how it changes the way we see things. I have written in my book how I felt much of what was happening for me felt as if it were being orchestrated by partners in another realm. My communication to them was in the form of desires and intent. Their communication with me was through synchronicities and my intuition. I could use their vision and they could use my arms and legs. Together we could make my ordinary daily life an extraordinary adventure.

These last few days have provided a perfect example.

I have been in San Antonio closing out my mother’s estate, and even though I was very busy something inside of me said go the Apple store to take advantages of their “one on one” program. I was having a few problems coordinating my e-mail accounts, and their service is always so helpful. My computer has become an essential tool as it is with all of us. Furthermore living in Mexico, easy access to support is not as convenient. So off I went.

Once in the store I found out that I had inadvertently signed up for two hours of help in the morning as I had clicked on “personal project.” That seemed fortunate as I only was expecting an hour. As I turned on my computer to get started, it crashed in front of the tech rep. This was a new phenomena. Since he was a teacher, he had to make an appointment with a specialist inside the Apple store. They worked me in and the tech rep fixed it, but the glitch reappeared while back on my project, and this time they asked that I leave the machine for a thorough overnight investigation. This forced me to relax and review old family photos, files and records, something that needed to be done. I had not thought about how much time getting lost like this in the past would take, But realized it was a necessary part of the grieving and completion process. I was just finishing up when the tech rep called the following day at noon. He said that he ran the computer all night and performed a number of tests and all seemed to be perfect.

Upon reflection, I appreciated the undistracted time. I was not tempted by an absent computer, and was able to sift leisurely through decades of family memorabilia knowing as I was discarding a life time of my mother’s past, that I would not pass this way again. Events had conspired to graciously expand the time needed for this moment of closure. I was grateful knowing that I had been in a flow.

I could have been upset with the computer glitch, but when there is a small setback, we need to see what benefits accrue, and curiously move into this space. As we do this we find ourselves more and more in the flow of life.

Why I Wrote How Frank Lloyd Wright Got Into My Head, Under My Skin And Changed The Way I Think About Thinking, A Creative Thinking Blue Print For the 21st Century – Comments from Sandy Sims

Originally I knew this would be a story of interest to people who follow architecture. After reading Wright’s autobiography I had been struck by the idea that not only was he famous but his drawings at the time were selling at auction for the same price as those of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. He had designed over 1,000 designs but some 500 remained unbuilt. In an “aha” flash I imagined that a collection of Wright’s unrealized designs built in Hawaii would be stunning.

The pursuit of this idea was so compelling, that I innocently and naively began the journey, and what a journey it was. I was cordially invited into many of Wright’s private homes, to meet their owners, and to hear their stories. I became friends with those in the Taliesin Fellowship, some of whom were the earliest apprentices to Frank Lloyd Wright. It was a rich journey. While in the beginning I was attracted to the financial rewards that might have accrued, I later became fascinated by the idea of what it would be like to live inside of the space created by both a mystic and a genius. I found out

For more information about Sandy Sims and How Frank Lloyd Wright Got Into My Head, Under My Skin And Changed The Way I Think About Thinking, A Creative Thinking Blue Print For the 21st Century, visit http://creativethinkingbook.com/ and visit this page to get the Amazon links http://creativethinkingbook.com/buy-your-copy/.

Book Excerpt: Life in The Slow Lane by Thomas M. Sullivan

A Book Excerpt Author — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 18:54:08 +0000

I start the day teaching two girls. We’re driving past the library when I see one of our cars on the road. I’m not sure who’s instructing, but it’s probably Thomas. I abandon my route for the moment and have my student turn each time Thomas does.

Five minutes into this tailing, my driver asks, “Are we following that car?”

“Yup,” I say, “it’s one of ours. You two want to have some fun?”

“Sure,” the driver says.

Her sister in the back keeps quiet. Thomas’s car turns left and we follow, maintaining our distance.

“Now,” I say as we stalk our prey, “you guys know how much you hate getting honked at, right?”

My driver glances over and says, “Definitely.”

“Okay, this is a learning exercise,” I say. “We’re going to practice what not to do by doing it. Should we ever honk at someone just because we’re in a hurry?”

“No,” the girls respond in unison.

Thomas’s car turns right after halting at an intersection. Focused on her slow pursuit, my driver does a California stop, rolling past the stop sign. She does check for cars, so it’s safely illegal and I let it slide. We’ve got bigger fish to fry here.

“What do we do when someone honks at us?” I ask.

The girl in the back doesn’t say anything, but her sister up front says, “Ignore them and only do what’s safe.”

I’m impressed and tell her so. Thomas’s car stops at a four-way intersection and we slink up behind it. I glance at the girl driving.

“Okay, honk. But do it gently.”

I forget that she’s probably never used a horn before. She leans into the steering wheel with both arms, pressing down like a celebrity chef kneading dough. The horn blares out a sharp, extended honk. The girls erupt in laughter and I see a face pop into the side mirror. It’s Thomas all right, but I doubt if he knows it’s us. Our car lacks the required student driver marking on the front, so we probably appear to be just another impatient jerk. A few second later Thomas’s car turns right and we turn left. We all agree that his driver handled the situation perfectly.

* * * *

Later that day I’m cruising down the road with a young girl doing her second lesson. She’s glumly recounting a lesson she had last week in which her instructor yelled at her for making a right turn too fast. Whoever this is (I don’t ask and don’t want to know), it sounds like a staff infection to me. From my driver’s hesitant tone I can tell that she’s confused by the experience, knowing something isn’t quite right but not sure if she should be bringing it up.

“Were you told to slow down before the turn?” I ask.

“No,” she squeaks, cowering slightly.

“Well then,” I say, “you didn’t do anything wrong, because you didn’t know any better. Case closed.”

We roll up to an intersection and stop for a red light. Waiting for the signal to change, it occurs to me that this instructor may himself need a lesson. He should be fitted with a remote controlled explosive vest, put behind the wheel, and told not to make a mistake. With someone watching from a helicopter overhead, finger on the trigger, he’ll learn just how nervous these kids feel.

Being a good teacher is easy. I know, from kids’ comments and my past experience, that I’m decent at the job. It’s simple, if you follow one basic rule: Never make a kid feel bad for making a mistake. It doesn’t matter whether you’re teaching him math to prepare for college or you’re helping him avoid killing a pedestrian with his car. If a teenager becomes dejected while learning, they’ll want to stop.

We sit silently, watching the action in front of us. The intersection is a typical monster for this high-tech suburb, with drivers in multiple lanes each getting a brief chance to turn. I watch with dismay, but not surprise, as an SUV guns past us on a yellow turn arrow and squeals through the intersection.

The signal changes to green. My driver pulls away from the light and continues down the road. At the next intersection she swings left onto a secondary road, braking into the turn and accelerating out of it perfectly.

“There you go,” I beam. “Looks like you got the speed down now.”

She smiles and nods, and then admits that her turn with the last instructor was pretty hairy. I laugh, envisioning someone, probably the ex-cop from my training class, gripping the door for dear life.

I ask my driver, “So, how’s it going with other instructors?”

The girl opens right up, talking about her in-class experience.

“Our instructor told the class that the cops in Portland are all corrupt.”

I learn that after the class ended a few kids repeated this comment to their parents, who in turn called the police department. Someone from the police bureau then contacted the office. Oops. The kid in back leans forward between the front seats and adds his thoughts on the class.

“Yeah, he also told us to avoid the DMV in Gladstone because they hate white kids and fail them.”

They both laugh at this. Jesus, it’s Hannibal Lecture. My students find it funny that the instructor is teaching Driver’s Ed even though he has three fused disks in his back from a car accident.

No instructor is perfect. I make mistakes here and there. We all do. But there’s a matter of degree and avoidability. Going to this guy’s class must be as comforting as patronizing a speech therapist with a stutter. I wonder how long he’ll survive. Probably a while, given our staffing shortage.

We pull into a dead end and stop the car. My driver is about to parallel-park for the first time. She breathes in and lets out a nervous sigh.

“What happens if I hit the curb?” she asks.

“Well,” I say, “then we just try again. Don’t worry about it.”

I cover the steps used for parking, and the girl appears to relax. She looks toward the edge of the road and hits the gas to move. The engine revs with the car in place. Realizing that she’s still in park, she looks at me with a small smirk, and I grin back. She prods the shifter into drive, taps the gas, and starts rolling. As we approach the curb she speeds up at the last minute. Why she does this, I have no idea. It’s a first for me. The right-side tires grind violently along the concrete. As we jerk to a halt I tell her to approach the curb slowly and use the reference point. She apologizes.

“Hey, that’s how we learn,” I say. “Plus, what do we care? I mean really, it’s not our car.”

The four of us laugh. This line works every time, instantly putting kids at ease.

This spurs my driver to relate a story about her older brother: He’s sitting behind the wheel of the family car, which is parked in front of the garage. The entire family is in the vehicle, and they’re driving out to buy a used car, a graduation gift to the brother for getting his license. Just as he’s been taught, he turns to face backward in preparation for backing out of the driveway. He then hits the gas and proceeds to lurch forward, crashing into the garage. His graduation gift becomes a new door, which his parents wrap in a big red ribbon.

* * * *

At 7 pm I limp back from Starbucks to find my last student waiting in front of the recreation center. It’s the eighth lesson of the day and I’m completely exhausted. I’m wearing bright white tennis sneakers, only worn once, since my regular shoes got soaked during a run last night. The sneakers make me look like I should be working in a hospital. My student gazes at my footwear.

“Man, those things are bright!” he says.

I take a huge swig of coffee and look over at the kid.

“My regular job is as a nurse,” I reply. “I’m just doing Driver’s Ed until the lawsuit is settled.”

My student furrows his brow, but when I smile he flashes a wide grin and laughs. I love the sound. It’s the main thing keeping me going, and probably my students as well.

Thomas Sullivan’s writing has appeared in Word Riot and 3AM Magazine, among others. He is the author of Life In The Slow Lane, a comic memoir about teaching drivers education. For information on this title, please visit his author website at http://thomassullivanhumor.com.

Book Excerpt: After Isaactown By Ward R. Jones

A Book Excerpt Author — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 20:43:04 +0000

The water tower showed itself. This tank on stilted legs was a beacon of Bev’s solitude, Norm felt. Such a waste, and how cruel that a woman of her character, her refined tastes and keen intellect would be stranded in this wasteland, this cultural desert. The town’s aging movie theater had never shown an art film unless you considered Zorba the Greek an art film, and even that was thirty years ago.

1973, the year he met her, Bruce was teaching at Harrisburg Community College. Economics and political science taught more from memory than the textbooks he handed out. His car, an aged Nash Rambler, had a tendency to stall, so he walked the two miles and back. At dusk he ordered pizza or Chinese from his tiny apartment. The sitting room, kitchenette, and bedroom contained nothing of value, so the door was never locked. Norm, then a third year associate with a Chicago law firm, was using part of his two-week vacation to make this unexpected visit. And now, he walked in, thinking he’d be alone.

He wasn’t. Seated next to him on the worn sofa was a girl with long black hair. A coil of it slid down her shoulder when she turned her head. Her dark liquid eyes met his, and though it lasted no more than a second it seemed to go right through to the deepest part of him. Feeling naked, he looked at the floor. It wasn’t until they were talking again that he noticed the small mole on her left cheek. Her olive complexion was flawless, he thought after sitting down. A size too large, her T-shirt had a peace symbol on the front. It circled the two mounds. Though small, they held his eyes, as did the cut-off jeans. On the sofa where her round hips sank a little, they had risen to mid-thigh. Above the ragged hem a hole the size of a nickel showed her tawny skin. Aching with envy, he spoke nervously about his work at the firm, blabbering longer than he should have about a case he’d been assigned.

He finally shut his mouth and listened as they talked about the elasticity of supply and demand for certain products and how they affected people of various incomes. “This is one of my best students,” Bruce said. His tone lacked the enthusiasm it deserved and rang more of possession than admiration. He had never had anyone remotely like this in his tiny apartment and should have been bursting with joy. Her warm glances were gifts and every few seconds she gave them to him.

Norm kept telling himself that she was doing this for a grade. But the longer he watched them the more uncomfortable his lumpy chair felt. He masked his envy with a look of nonchalance, he’d slouch his shoulders, take an occasional swig of the beer he’d gotten from the mini-fridge. While they talked he’d rest the can on his knee and try to listen, but his eyes kept drifting to that nickel-size hole in her jeans.

Excerpted from After Isaactown By Ward R. Jones with permission. An attorney for nearly 30 years, both corporate and in private practice, Ward R. Jones, author of After Isaactown knew the pressures, the challenges, and the life of the lawyer whose story he tells. It is this experience he draws upon to write a novel of business and law, a contemporary narrative that leads inexorably to the foibles of the human heart. To learn more about the author and the book, please visit Ward’s website at http://www.wardrjones.com/. After Isaactown is available here at Amazon.com.

Book Excerpt: Losing Your Only by Dr. Debi Yohn

A Book Excerpt Author — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 07:07:45 +0000

Dr. Debi John, author of Losing Your Only shares some thoughts and excerpts from her new book.

My current book, Losing Your Only is written to the Parents or Loved Ones that have lost an only child. This book is written from my own personal experience. When my only child was killed in a car accident, my life took a different path. I was living in Shanghai,China. He was going to college in USA. In my grief, I discovered that my purpose is to motivate, and support parents and all clients live to their life potential. Losing a child is horrific, losing an only child brings it up a notch. So what do we do with that kind of experience? We have decisions to make. We can live or we can die with the child. I decided not only to live, but to thrive.

Parents of the Heart

Like all the stages of grief, this one requires time and patience. It is especially daunting because you have to redefine who you are. I used to be a mom, Levi’s mom. But what do you call what I am now? After Levi died I wasn’t even sure I could be considered a mom any more. I mentioned earlier that there was no term in English for those who
lose their children, especially their only children. I’d like to propose one: Parents of the Heart. I am now a Heart Mom.

Dealing with Other People

You aren’t the only one who is having trouble defining who you are. Those around you also have difficulty with this. Other people may be uncomfortable with you because your situation arouses their deepest fears. No parent can fathom a life without his or her children. It’s all very subtle, but essentially being with someone who has lost their
child can somehow feel too close, almost like it could be contagious. So to be on the safe side, other parents avoid you.

There was a time that I was very self-conscious of how uncomfortable other people were around me. I felt the task of making them comfortable was my responsibility. With time, however, I came to understand that if others feel awkward, it’s their issue. Death is a part of life, a lesson you have learned all too well now. You have enough of our own issues to be dealing with those of other people as well. The best you can do is lead by example; understand their discomfort and know you aren’t responsible for it. Give people time.

Parting with the Past

Our lives leave behind a lot of debris. Look around your house and no doubt it is filled with things that belonged to or remind you of your Only. You see pictures and albums and wonder what the point of taking pictures is any more. After all, who will want to look at them?

I found a trunk of baby clothes, a christening gown I was keeping for my first grandchild, baby pictures, and scrapbooks. What is the protocol for dealing with all these things? You are walking down a path where there are no rules.

If you don‘t know what to do, do nothing! Immediately after your loss is not the best time for making decisions. Many people have free flowing advice on what to do with your child’s possessions. They may have the best of intentions, but only you can know what works for you. I’ll say it again, if in doubt, do nothing. Wait until you feel sure. There is no rush to deal with any of this.

Not long after Levi died, I gave away his size 13 Doc Marten boots. But then a year later I wanted them back—thank goodness I remembered who I gave them to and was able to ask for them. I had bronzed his first pair of baby shoes and I wanted to bronze his last pair of shoes too. Now I get so much enjoyment from seeing these two pairs of shoes, side by side. They tell a story.

If you are not ready to get rid of all your Only’s personal belongings, do it in stages. Begin by parting with what is easy. Take the trash out from their room, throw away the empty containers and clear out unimportant papers. Slowly you can move on to the old clothes they outgrew, then to broken toys, torn books, old magazines. You gradually
get closer and closer to more difficult items like a favorite shirt, games they played, or CDs they loved at the time they passed. Slowly part with more and more things. If you’re not ready to deal with a particular item, know that you can come back to it another day. If you need help, then ask. If this is something you want to do alone, say it. And if there is stuff you don’t want to get rid of, keep it. It’s okay. This is your grief. This is your time to be selfish.

Loss is Part of Living

I speak of Levi often. I want people to remember him. I don’t want him to be forgotten. Other people talk about their kids, and I encourage you to talk about yours. You will enjoy speaking about your Only, and others will get to know him or her even though he or she has passed. People will respond to your cues. When you mention your child, others will begin to be comfortable with talking about those that have passed. Through your openness, you may discover many people who have suffered losses and never spoken of them. In a way, you are giving others permission to talk by taking the first step. I believe that as a society we should be more comfortable talking about death.

One Day at a Time

With Levi’s energy missing, all the parenting responsibilities gone, and no real work responsibilities, I felt lost. I didn’t know what to do with my time. The phone didn’t ring. There were no crises to resolve, no more of the “red alerts” every parent has to deal with. I had no parenting responsibilities. People started suggesting that I retire, play golf, write a book, adopt another teenager, have another child, and so on. Yes, I did need a
purpose. Yes, I was struggling with living. But have another child? I was over 50! Sometimes the most well-meaning advice is far from helpful.

This is what I call the “breathe in, breathe out” stage. You take life one hour at a time. One day at a time. It’s hard to think any further ahead than that. Eventually you will begin to move beyond this and feel that you are living once more, only in a very different reality.

Memory Box

I have created a special memory box for Levi. It’s a Chinese tea box the size of a small trunk in which I keep Levi’s ashes along with those of his beloved cat, Bishop, and some special mementos. These include his wallet, the baseball that was given to me at his funeral service, his favorite hat (which he was wearing when he passed), and other sentimental things. You may want to collect meaningful keepsakes of your Only in a special place as your own personal memorial to them.

Thank you for your interest in Losing Your Only, by Dr Debi Yohn. This is a very personal story which helped Dr Yohn discover her purpose – to motivate and support parents and others to live life to their highest potential. The digital version of the book is currently available at http://losingyouronly.com/get-the-book/. If you would like to be notified about the upcoming print and audio release, please visit this page and send Dr Debi your name and email address.

About The Author

Dr. Debi Yohn is an international psychologist, author and speaker with 32 years experience living and working on 3 continents. Her work has taken her to Saudi Arabia for 7 years and Shanghai, China for 8 years. While in Shanghai, she founded “Lifeline Shanghai” a “911” service to help English speakers in need. She currently lives fulltime in Huatulco, Mexico and travels the world working with her clients, writing and managing her diversified business and charitable interests. To read Dr Debi’s full bio, visit http://bookpromotionservices.com/2010/12/02/dr-debi-yohn-biography/

Book Excerpt: Spilling the Beans on the Cat’s Pajamas: Popular Expressions — What They Mean and How We Got Them

A Book Excerpt Author — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 01:50:11 +0000

This book excerpt is entitled Snug as a Bug In A Rug and comes from Spilling the Beans on the Cat’s Pajamas: Popular Expressions — What They Mean and How We Got Them by Judy Parkinson.

Snug as a Bug in a Rug.

A whimsical and comfortable comparison dating from the eighteenth century, although a “snug” is a sixteenth-century word for a parlor in an inn.

The phrase is usually credited to Benjamin Franklin, who wrote it in 1772 as an epitaph for a pet squirrel that had belonged to Georgiana Shipley, the daughter of his friend, the Bishop of St. Asaph.

Franklin’s wife had sent the Shipleys the gray squirrel as a gift from Philadelphia, and they named him Skugg, a common nickname for squirrels at the time. Tragically, he escaped from his cage and was killed by a dog. Franklin wrote:

Here Skugg
Lies snug
As a bug
In a rug.

However, there are earlier uses, as in a celebration of David Garrick’s 1769 Shakespeare festival. Seen printed in the Stratford Jubilee:

If she [a rich widow] has the mopus’s [money], I’ll have her, as snug as a bug in a rug.

And there are several similar variations from which the phrase may have sprung. In 1706, Edward Ward wrote in The Wooden World Dissected:

He sits as snug as a bee in a box.

And in Thomas Heywood’s 1603 play A Woman Killed with Kindness, there is:

Let us sleep as snug as pigs in pease-straw.

The above is an excerpt from the book Spilling the Beans on the Cat’s Pajamas: Popular Expressions — What They Mean and How We Got Them by Judy Parkinson. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Judy Parkinson is a graduate of Bristol University. She is a producer of documentaries, music videos, and commercials, and won a Clio award for a Greenpeace ad. Parkinson has published four books and has contributed to a show of life drawings at the Salon des Arts, Kensington.

For more information, please visit www.rdtradepublishing.com or follow the series on Facebook.

Book Excerpt: What Would Rob Do? An Irreverent Guide to Surviving Life’s Daily Indignities by Rob Sachs

A Book Excerpt Author — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 02:18:41 +0000

Forget Someone’s Name? What Would Rob Do?

When nobody else has been around to help out, I’ve also tried getting someone to talk about her own name. I’d say something like, “I used to get made fun of all the time when I was little because people would call me names like ‘Saxophone’ or ‘Sexy Sachs’ or ‘Rob my sacks of cats.’” (Okay, nobody ever used the last one.) After sharing my story, I’d ask if she ever got teased, hoping she will give me a funny story that I can use to remember her name. Or sometimes I’d inquire, “What did your family call you when you were little?” Hopefully, it won’t be Princess.

If you’re not so good at face-to-face reconnaissance, there are less invasive methods for procuring names. In college I used to peek in backpacks, binders, notebooks, or anything that might have a name written on it. Now you can use social Web sites like Facebook or MySpace to see if you can figure out who somebody is through your circle of friends. You can also befriend someone who is really good with names and have him act as your personal Rolodex. Another “more advanced” technique is to challenge a person to a rap battle. The trick is to begin your rhyme with the words, “My name is . . . ” Mine goes something like this:

My name is Rob,
I’m on the job
And though I eat with my hands,
I ain’t no slob.

Then tell her it’s her turn and she needs to follow the same format. Sit back and wait for her to give up the goods.

These tricks don’t always fly in a work setting (though it would be fun to rap battle with some of my coworkers). There are times when the easiest thing to do is to come clean about forgetting someone’s name. Within the first thirty seconds of talking to someone, it’s okay to say, “I’m an idiot and I’ve forgotten your name.” If you’re not feeling self-deprecating, a simple “Oh, remind me of your name again?” will do as well. Letting a conversation go longer than five minutes without saying that makes you not only an idiot but a jerk, since the person you’re talking to thinks you’ve been duping him the whole conversation.

My career at NPR has taken me from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles and back to D.C. I knew there would be a lot of people I’d recognize but whose names I’d forget. To get some new tricks for the workplace, I called memory expert Harry Lorayne. He holds memory seminars all the time and has a full line of memory-related products. He was at first reluctant to talk to me, since people usually pay a lot of money to get the information he gives. Fortunately, I got him to open up on my specific problem of forgetting names, and he gave me a few hints.

He said that most of the names we forget are ones we never heard in the first place. Many times when people tell us their names, we’re not really paying attention. When you hear someone say his or her name, you have to flag it in your brain as a vital piece of information. Lorayne recommended repeating the name right away to try to commit it to memory.

Let’s say you’re meeting me. I’ll say, “Hi, my name is Rob Sachs.” You can first verify that you heard it being pronounced the right way. Say it back to me. “Rob Sachs, is that correct?” Second, you can make a quick association with the name, or start talking about it in the conversation. Ask if Sachs has any relation to Saks Fifth Avenue or Goldman Sachs. (There is none, by the way.) The more you talk about the name right away, the more likely you are to remember it.

Another possibility is to try to associate someone’s name with one of his physical characteristics. For instance, if you meet someone named Ben Green and you notice he has green eyes, you can repeat that in your head. Ben Green with the green eyes. Ben who has eyes that are green. Ben’s last name is Green. My trick for remembering a name like Mikhail Gorbachev would be to think of the red splotch on his head as being gory. “Gory splotch” sounds like “Gorbachev.” This might be a stretch, but it can work. The idea is to have a visual cue that correlates to the name.

Lorayne said another great thing to do is to use the name as often as you can over the course of your conversation. Try to eliminate all pronouns and just say the person’s name instead, while always being careful not to say the name too much, since that can be a little creepy. “So Rob, what do you think about the weather? How about those Phillies, Rob? Rob, what brings you here?” I’ve tried this out, and to my amazement, it works. People also appreciate hearing their own name, because it makes them feel you care about them, or are a thoughtful person.

Harry Lorayne is a pro at this. He can repeat the names of a whole roomful of people he’s just met. He told me that if you practice a lot and work on it, over time you will get better at it. These techniques have already started to help me in the office, though I still have one more trick. If I didn’t catch someone’s name or have forgotten it, I now go to the new searchable online database of NPR employees that contains everyone’s picture from their photo ID. It’s my own little office facebook, and I’ve lost more than a few hours of productivity studying it.

The above is an adapted excerpt from the book What Would Rob Do?: An Irreverent Guide to Surviving Life’s Daily Indignities by Rob Sachs. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Rob Sachs has spent the last ten years as a producer, reporter, and director for NPR shows, including Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Tell Me More. He created the podcast What Would Rob Do? in 2006 and serves as its host.

For more information, please visit www.WhatWouldRobDo.com.
Follow the author on Twitter: @robsachs
Follow the author on Facebook: facebook.com/whatwouldrobdo
Click here to subscribe to Rob’s podcast.

Book Excerpt: Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy: Curiouser and Curiouser by William Irwin with Richard Brian Davis

A Book Excerpt Author — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 18:40:23 +0000

Introduction: You’re Late for a Very Important Date

“You take the blue pill,” Morpheus says to Neo in The Matrix, “and the story ends . . . . You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.” It’s a tempting offer, isn’t it? For at one time or another in our lives, we’ve all wanted to escape — from a dull and tedious job, an impossible relationship, from a world in which we often have so little control over what happens to us. Perhaps it’s for reasons such as these that our culture has become positively obsessed with the idea of transcending the confines of this world for the cool fresh air of another. Whether it’s by a red pill, a secret wardrobe, a looking glass, or a rabbit-hole, it doesn’t really matter. We’ll take it.

Of course, we don’t just want to know how deep the rabbit-hole goes. That’s a given; after all, it’s a portal to another world — “four thousand miles down, I think.” We also want to know how to make sense of what we discover when we suddenly land “thump! thump!” in Wonderland and pass through the looking glass. And Alice’s Wonderland is an oh! so curious place filled with both dangers and delights. Here we encounter blue caterpillars who smoke hookahs, babies who turn into pigs, cats whose grins remain after their heads have faded away, and a Mad Hatter who speaks to Time. There is a White Queen who lives backward and remembers forward, and there are trials in which the sentence is handed down first with the evidence and verdict given out only afterward. And you’d better be on your best behavior while there. As the Red Queen sees it, beheading is a punishment that fits every crime!

We’ve spoken of Wonderland’s dangers, but what of its delights? Why should anyone want to travel to such a world? As Cheshire Puss tells Alice, you must be mad “or you wouldn’t have come here.” Is Wonderland simply a land of sheer nonsense, or is there a method to Lewis Carroll’s madness? Well, as the Duchess wisely observes, “Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.” And the moral of the book you now hold in your hands is that there are deep philosophical riches to be had in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, answers to life’s ultimate questions, if only you have the proper guide.

You don’t have to be blue, a caterpillar, or under the effects of the hookah to ask a deep question like “Who in the world am I?” As Alice says, “That’s the great puzzle!” Indeed it is. How can I know whether this or that job is right for me, if I don’t know who me is? Indeed, how can I know what I can become in the future? (Hardly any of us, I dare say, is satisfied with who we are at present.) And to know the answers to these questions, I must know who I have been. I must remember. But that’s often my problem: I forget. What to do? What to do? The Alice-addicted philosophers in this book will clear the air of the hookah smoke and forward you the decryption codes for unlocking your personal identity. And you’ll be glad they did.

As you read on, you’ll be amazed to discover why nice girls don’t make history (and Alice is better than any Disney princess); what the Red Queen can teach us about nuclear strategy; whether we should do more with mushrooms than just eat them (and what sort of “trip” to expect if we do); and how Alice, procrastination, and the Spice Girls are all mysteriously connected. “What a curious feeling!” You can put it all together for the first time. So “Read Me.” Venture to taste this book, and if “finding it very nice,” we recommend that you “very soon finish it off.”

The above is an excerpt from the book Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy: Curiouser and Curiouser (The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series) edited by Richard Brian Davis with series editor William Irwin. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Richard Brian Davis is an associate professor of philosophy at Tyndale University College and the coeditor of 24 and Philosophy.

William Irwin is a professor of philosophy at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He originated the philosophy and popular culture genre of books as coeditor of the bestselling The Simpsons and Philosophy and has overseen recent titles, including Batman and Philosophy, House and Philosophy, and Watchmen and Philosophy.

The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series:
A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, and a healthy helping of popular culture clears the cobwebs from Kant. Philosophy has had a public relations problem for a few centuries now. This series aims to change that, showing that philosophy is relevant to your life–and not just for answering the big questions like “To be or not to be?” but for answering the little questions: “To watch or not to watch House?” Thinking deeply about TV, movies, and music doesn’t make you a “complete idiot.” In fact it might make you a philosopher, someone who believes the unexamined life is not worth living and the unexamined cartoon is not worth watching.

To learn more about the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series, visit www.andphilosophy.com, and follow the series on Twitter and Facebook.

Book Excerpt: Fix-it and Forget-it Cookbook Revised and Updated: 700 Great Slow Cooker Recipes by Phyllis Pellman Good

A Book Excerpt Author — Mon, 31 May 2010 12:06:34 +0000

Broccoli Corn Bread
Winfred Ewy
Newton, KS

Makes 8 servings

Prep. Time: 15 minutes
Cooking Time: 6 hours
Ideal slow-cooker size: 3- to 4-qt

1 stick margarine, melted
10-oz pkg. chopped broccoli, cooked and drained
1 onion, chopped
1 box corn bread mix
4 eggs, well beaten
8 oz. cottage cheese
1¼ tsp. salt

1. Combine all ingredients. Mix well.

2. Pour into greased slow cooker. Cook on Low 6 hours, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Serving suggestion: Serve like spoon bread, or invert the pot, remove bread, and cut into wedges.

The above is an excerpt from the book Fix-it and Forget-it Cookbook: Revised & Updated: 700 Great Slow Cooker Recipes by Phyllis Pellman Good. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Book Excerpt: The Power of Half: One Family’s Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back by Kevin Salwen and Hannah Salwen

A Book Excerpt Author — Sat, 29 May 2010 13:20:21 +0000

Hannah’s Take: Starting a Family Conversation

Many people tell me they can’t believe how much my family talks about issues. This can be especially shocking for people who often know my silly side. But for my family, dinnertime brings us together during crazy weeks filled with school and sports and work. Even if your family is rarely together during the week because of conflicting schedules, make sure to have meals or time together over the weekend. Then the trick is to find something that every member can have an interest in.

In our family, we look for ways to expand events into discussions. For example, a TV show about a celebrity’s mansion I saw one night led to a conversation about why Americans (including us sometimes) become fascinated with celebrities. A couple of things I saw online gave me plenty to think about and discuss with my family.

If the environment is your thing, try going to www.thestoryofstuff.com and watch Annie Leonard’s video about where the products we consume come from and what that does to the earth.

Regardless of your passion, just try to get the conversation started with someone in your family.

When my family began discussing the deeper issues of the world, my parents started listening when Joe and I spoke. They were open to new ideas, and in these conversations they tried hard to make us all equals. They made an effort not to be bossy and they listened with open minds.

For instance, one night at dinner I brought up a school assembly speaker who had described the genocide in Darfur. My parents didn’t try to educate me immediately on what was going on there; instead, my mom quickly grabbed a story about Darfur that she had seen in the newspaper that morning and read a bit to all of us. Joe threw in what he knew about Darfur, and suddenly we were talking — really talking. I think we stayed at the table at least fifteen minutes longer than usual that night because we felt connected.

Activity

Sometimes it’s really hard to know what will spark a good conversation. Nathan Dungan of Share Save Spend (www.sharesavespend.com), a website that teaches kids about money, has some great ideas in his packet of “Discussion Starter Fun Cards.” Some are better for younger kids, some for older. For example:

How would you feel if you spent half as much on gifts (birthday, holiday, etc.) this year?
If you were to give more money to a charity of your choice, what cause or organization would you pick? Why?
How does immediate gratification get in the way of giving away money?
If you can only give what seems like a little bit of money, why give?
When have you bought something that you didn’t really use or enjoy once you had it?
If you inherited $50,000, what would you do with it?
What is the best thing about sharing?

The above is an excerpt from the book The Power of Half: One Family’s Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back by Kevin and Hannah Salwen. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Copyright © 2010 Kevin and Hannah Salwen, authors of The Power of Half: One Family’s Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back

Warm, funny, deeply moving and wholly uplifting, The Power of Half is the story of how one family slammed the door on the status quo and threw away the key.

For their family project, the Salwen family is investing in the Hunger Project. For more information about that project and how you can create your own, visit www.thepowerofhalf.com.

$1 of each copy sold will be donated to Rebuilding Together, serving America’s low-income home-owners and providing critical repairs at no charge to those with the greatest need. For more information, visit www.rebuildingtogether.com.

Book Excerpt: Irreplaceable by Stephen Lovely

A Book Excerpt Author — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:09:55 +0000

A P R I L 2 0 0 5/Prologue

Isabel crouched low on the bike, hands in the drops, legs cranking. Her cycling jersey, damp with sweat in the upper back, clung to her skin. Sweat crept down her forehead and temples, trickling into her eyes. She wiped her brow with the back of a glove. She touched three fingers to her carotid artery and felt thuds in her neck.

When she’d left town an hour before, the sky had been mildly overcast, but now the wind had come up and the clouds were on the move. The sky was inky. The air was fragrant with moisture and manure. Red- winged blackbirds were restless on the phone wires. She guessed she had five or ten minutes to reach town before the downpour.

The wind tossed and shoved. She relaxed her grip on the handlebars to let the bike absorb the blows. She resisted the more forceful assaults by leaning into them, achieving a precarious balance until the trickster wind stepped back and she had to quickly shift weight again to avoid careening onto the shoulder.

She felt exposed and vulnerable. This was Iowa, and though she didn’t hear the tornado siren, she kept her eye out for a funnel cloud on the horizon. She needed to get home. She wanted to see her husband, Alex. She wanted to pet her dog, drink a glass of orange juice, get to the basement—if there was a tornado warning. If not, take a hot shower.

At the same time she was excited. Exhilarated, even. To be struggling against this wind, this impending storm. To be brushing up against danger.

She plummeted down a steep hill, a chute of rushing air, body and bike melded into a hurtling projectile, achieving a sensation of incredible speed, freefall, release from all surrounding matter.

She sped across a long, flat straightaway past fields covered with the stubble of last year’s corn, a farm house, distant pastures, configurations of cows, a stand of oaks.

She pedaled hard through the approach to another hill, downshifted, and surged into her climb. She bent sharply forward at the waist, gripping the handlebars palms- down, nose practically touching her forearms. She shifted her weight back and mashed her legs through their strokes, holding her cadence, fighting her way up. For the first twenty yards she felt like an engine—a sleek, powerful, perfectly calibrated device clipped onto the bike to crank its pedals. Then she ran out of gas. This was a long, steep hill, and she wasn’t yet in shape. It was only her third ride of the season. Her lungs felt singed, her thighs heavy as iron. The bike wobbled beneath her.

She looked up and saw the crest of the hill approaching, not ten yards distant. A field of soybeans dipping toward a farm. Goats huddled in a barn doorway.

She struggled to the top, where the wind lunged and bullied, its sound sharpening to a whistle at the peaks of the gusts.

The roar of an engine lunged out of the ground behind her, and she felt a jolt of panic: in the fraction of a second before impact she realized she was too far out into the road.

A P R I L 2 0 0 6/One

Alex Voormann slouches in a folding chair in a basement room of U.S. Exam’s corporate campus wishing he could call his wife. He’d like to vent, perform a little comedy routine called “My Shitty Day.” You wouldn’t believe the inanity we’ve got going over here, Iz. He used to enjoy calling Isabel at the lab and luring laughter to her serious surface. She’d giggle and protest. Alex, I am so busy. Still, she’d be tickled, and glad he called.

Alex would like to call Isabel, but Isabel’s dead. She’s been dead now nearly a year.

Diane Topor, director of U.S. Exam’s SCAT Project (Secondary Composition Advancement Testing), appears at Alex’s side dressed in one of her citrus- colored power suits. She inserts a piece of paper into his field of vision. “Remember this essay? You gave it a zero. The Quality Control Panel gave it a unanimous score of three. Can you account for the discrepancy?”

Alex is used to Diane bringing his work back to him, querying his scores, defending inept young essayists. He leans back in his chair for a better view of the essay, wanting Diane to notice his wrinkled, untucked polo shirt, his faded jeans with the fringy tear in the knee. He rakes his fingers through unkempt hair and tries to remember the essay and author. Of course. Tina Criswell. Age thirteen, of Fort Collins, Colorado. In response to the essay question—What do you think is America’s biggest problem? What can be done to fix it? Use details and examples to make your writing vivid to the reader—Tina wrote, Teen pregnancy. Abstain until marriage. Her script is neat, tight, curlicued. Beneath her words she drew a winking smiley face. The smiley face is provocative and impossible to interpret. What does it mean? Sex will be hot when you finally have it? Abstinence is a joke?

Alex encountered this essay just before lunch, and felt it a perfect candidate for the zero score. The student does not attempt to address the question and/or the student’s answer is illegible and/or written in a language other than English.

He looks up at Diane, hoping she’ll take his bewilderment personally. “A three?”

Diane raises her eyebrows, a direct challenge to his intelligence.

Alex rummages through his papers for the Holistic Scoring Guidelines and reads aloud from the description of a three. “ ‘Vague focus.’ I didn’t see any focus. ‘Content limited to a listing of ideas.’ Where do you see ideas? ‘Inconsistent organization.’ Organization of what? ‘Repeated weaknesses in mechanics and usage.’ What mechanics? What usage? Diane, this girl didn’t write anything. She didn’t take the question seriously.”

Diane places her hand tenderly over Tina’s words. The sleeve of her blazer slides up her wrist, revealing a stiff white cuff and a gold watch with a butterfly-shaped face. “We consider this an attempt. A minimal attempt, but an attempt nevertheless. There is focus. The focus is teen pregnancy. Two ideas are listed and organized. One, teen pregnancy is a problem, and two, a possible solution is to abstain from sexual activity until marriage. There are no weaknesses in mechanics and usage. Indeed, we have a sophisticated use of the imperative verb form.”

Alex surveys the basement room’s sulfur yellow walls, the urine-colored window overlooking the back of a shrub. Is it possible that this is all a bad dream from which he’ll eventually awake?

He scoots his chair back to face Diane more directly. “I can’t believe the panel gave this a three. Do the guidelines mean anything? Are you sure the QC people aren’t working off the guidelines for first and second graders?” He’s exaggerating his dismay; he really doesn’t care about anything except bucking against Diane and U.S. Exam and this whole dubious enterprise of branding adolescents with numerical scores. “You’re rewarding this girl for doing nothing. We know she’s smart. She used the word ‘abstain,’ and spelled it correctly. She blew this test off. She told you to take your test and shove it.”

Diane draws a long breath meant to display how much oxygen her response will cost her. “One of our concerns, Alex, is that you seem to have difficulty recognizing effort when you see it. You consistently score lower than the panel by two or three points. This is unacceptable, in the long run, but in the contemporary we’re willing to work with you.”

Alex tries to calm down. He does need the job, after all. He allows penitence into his voice. “Look, I made a judgment call. I don’t call this an attempt. Not for a seventh grader. See this space here?” He touches his hand to the exam booklet, the blank answer space. “This should be filled with words, thoughts, ideas.”

Diane nods, a perfunctory display of understanding. “Revisit this essay and see if you can’t surface its merit. That was the imperative verb form, in case you didn’t recognize it.”

“I believe you’ve committed a usage error, Diane. You don’t revisit something you’ve read. You might revisit, say, Italy, but when it’s a book or other piece of written material the correct term is re-read, I’m pretty sure.”

“Re-grade the essay,” Diane says, and slides it onto the table.

*****************

Before meeting Isabel, armed with a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and a master’s in archaeology, Alex worked doing rescue excavation for the Iowa State Archaeologist. He and his team, over which he was proud to have been awarded a supervisory role, traveled to the sites of future roads and highways and dug up fields and abandoned lots, making certain, before bulldozers rolled, that there was nothing present of historical or cultural value—remnants of a prehistoric settlement, say—that might be destroyed.

Alex liked the work, the days spent in the country kneeling on dry, hard ground, brush in hand, his fanny pack stuffed with tools (soup ladle, teaspoon, dental probe), his primary concern a meter- wide square of the Earth’s surface. He liked the solitude—his square meter, his province—and the safety net of camaraderie, the other excavators close by, kneeling over their own square meters, respectful of his need to concentrate but available to chat if the occasion arose.

He would come to appreciate a similar blend of solitude and easy communicativeness with Isabel. Sitting in a room with her, reading or studying, he had the silence and space to conduct his inner life, but it wasn’t the barren, unbounded space of loneliness: Isabel was right there carrying on her inner life, which she had linked to his in what seemed to him an astonishing act of love and generosity and confidence, and when one of them sensed a need or receptivity in the other they would set out talking, populating each other’s minds with thoughts, ideas, theories, connections. They shared a spirited affection for science—Isabel was working toward a PhD in plant biology—and during their days apart, while he was kneeling over some remote patch of ground, Alex liked to think of her back in town peering through a microscope at a spore or out in a field taking pollen samples—liked to think that they were engaged in a joint venture, a collaborative investigation of the physical world.

He’d enjoyed playing in the dirt for as long as he could remember. As a child he liked its grittiness and fragrance, the feel of soil in his hands, under his fingernails, the excitement of not knowing what he’d find if he dug down even an inch: a blue glass perfume bottle the size of a thumb, a copper bullet, an arrowhead. Twenty years later he was still just playing in the dirt, the way he saw it, only with more sophistication, more technology at his disposal, and a better sense of what he was looking at, looking for. Each layer of soil was a flypaper-thin page that might present to him—in the language of its color and texture, its stones and tiles, bones, seeds, glass, mineral deposits—glimpses of animal and plant and microbial life, of the planet’s tumultuous geophysical history. Over millions of years frost and ice had shattered exposed surfaces, rain and wind dumped mud and dust into hollows, water seeped, roots groped, bacteria and fungi fed on debris, insects dug burrows, worms inched through the soil passing millions of tons of it through their bodies. It gave Alex quite a feeling, kneeling on top of all that—all that work. He felt integrated with the onward march of centuries. He wasn’t floating in a cold, dark universe: there in the dirt was the drop of sweat just fallen from his nose.

Two years ago there were budget cuts in Des Moines, layoffs at the Office of the State Archaeologist. Alex’s attempts to find another job—with a cultural resource management firm, an environmental canvassing organization—led nowhere. He was forced to wait tables to pay rent and bills. Relocation didn’t appeal to him. He and Isabel had married by then, and Isabel was midway through her doctoral program. They had constructed a life together that seemed to depend so much on the stately limestone university and its ongoing cultural bazaar, the familiar coffee shops and bookstores, restaurants and bars, the tree- lined pedestrian mall, the quiet streets longing to be aimlessly walked—all the things that had conspired to bring them together.

When Isabel died, Alex lost the hopefulness and assurance necessary to search for serious work. A dense weight settled in his forehead. Concentration, once a talent, was impossible: filling out a form, reading a job description, his brain went white, failed to engage, as though all the neurons involved had been clipped and cauterized. He took to buying People magazine. The stars were marrying other stars, the stars were conquering cancer, the stars had never been happier. Alex spent whole days lying on his back on his living room floor, limbs sprawled, feeling nauseous and doomed.

In the evenings he walked a mile to a shopping mall and played pinball in a video arcade stuffed with teenagers. In his favorite game, Tentaclon, the player was charged with defending the planet against an invasion force of gigantic, mutant octopi. There were bells and buzzers, flashing lights—white, blue, red—chutes and tubes through which the shiny silver ball arched with incredible speed, slots that opened, panels that flipped, a pulsating display panel that proclaimed in huge orange letters OCTOPOD DESTROYED! and BONUS PROJECTILE!

The machine had so many parts and components that Alex felt, after thirty minutes at the flippers, like a much less complex organism than he was: a spineless polyp feeding on sound and light. He played for hours. There was no doubt, no ambiguity in this game about what you were supposed to do. When the ball approached the flippers, you flipped. Thwack. Again: thwack. When you lost three balls, the machine shut down, but you could resuscitate it with a pair of quarters, and—miraculously, it seemed to Alex—with a ringing of bells and a flourish of lights it would shake itself to life.

Stephen Lovely was born in Dallas, Texas and spent most of his childhood in Ohio. He attended Kenyon College, where he majored in English and made his first awkward forays into fiction writing. After graduating from Kenyon he moved to Boston and spent two years working on the editorial staff of Cell. He attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop from 1990-92 and studied with Deborah Eisenberg, Margot Livesey, Ethan Canin, and Frank Conroy.

Stephen then worked for seven years as a night clerk in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. He began writing Irreplaceable during this time.

In 2005 he became the Director of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, a summer, residential creative writing program for high school students. He currently lives in Iowa City with his girlfriend and their three dogs and three cats. Learn more about Irreplaceable and Stephen at his website, http://www.stephenlovely.com.

Book Excerpt: Broken Whole by Keith Adams

A Book Excerpt Author — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:04:16 +0000

I have always been strongly compelled to organize, categorize and understand every piece of information in my life. Now, as I felt my mind expanding infinitely in all directions the flood of ideas through my brain was becoming almost impossible to handle. I was, for the moment, still able to control it, but I was close to being overmastered. The hardest thing was to figure out simple priorities against the raging background of my thoughts. And now the pressure was vastly increased by the screamingly high priority of not worrying my partner, Ben. He’d called me, out-of-the-blue, almost in tears because I was late for our meeting with our couple’s counselor, and I’d immediately set off to try to get across to West Hollywood.

At all costs, I thought, I had to protect him from worry. For weeks, I’d known that my increasingly confident and ambitious demeanor had made Ben anxious. I knew he thought that I was becoming slightly manic, so I’d gotten into the habit of concealing things from him: I didn’t want his worry to restrain me from achieving my goals. Ben’s last boyfriend had had episodes of intense mania as well, so this only increased my desire to hide from him all signs of any behavior that he might wrongly interpret as manic.

For the moment, I could still wrestle my thoughts to a stand-still long enough to remind myself, every other minute, that it wasn’t life-or-death. If I missed the meeting with our counselor, Ben would be upset; very upset: but we’d get through it.

At the Renaissance Hotel on Highland, I tried to get a taxi, but the hotel staff ignored me. I became briefly and savagely furious with them until, once again, I managed to recall that my sense of urgency was self-imposed. But that thread of rational thought kept disappearing in the vastness; I couldn’t hold onto it for more than a few seconds at a time. Each time it slipped my grasp, my focus would return to the urgency of protecting Ben at all costs.

I wasn’t scared about myself, however, until I rounded the corner onto Hollywood Boulevard. And then I felt, just for a second, that it might be possible to drown in the deluge of my own thoughts.

I tried again to hail a cab. It was rush-hour; traffic barely moved, and all the cabs were full. I was, by now, almost panicking with the urgency of saving Ben. It had finally become impossible for me to have a rational perspective; I really was drowning.

I redoubled my pace, crossing through traffic to catch a cab in the other direction, anything. Once more I momentarily recalled the lack of real urgency, but only briefly, before crashing back, with increased violence, into a skewed sense that making the meeting with Ben and our couple’s counselor was life-or-death.

I steeled myself: ‘Calm down, there’s no rush.’ A second later, I looked at the time, and started to run. The clash of priorities began to feel like a pile driver in my head; then a constant thunder. I ripped my expensive watch – a sexy, masculine watch with a wide leather strap that Ben had given me – off my wrist, and threw it, along with my cell-phone, into a parking lot, hoping that if I could no longer tell the time, the raging confusion would cease. But it only got worse.

Dimly through the clattering chaos, I momentarily heard a shining clear note: instead of worrying about Ben, I should take care of myself. This was my own crisis now, not Ben’s: I was falling headlong into the void, and had to save myself. Moreover in saving myself, I’d save Ben too. If I lost my mind, Ben would shed far more than the few tears he’d cry at my missing our counseling appointment. It seems so obvious now; but that’s a symptom of mania: that you can get so consumed by something that it makes you blind to all other priorities. In this case I was so driven to protect Ben that I was quite literally driving myself insane.

That gleaming note I’d felt moments earlier disappeared again in the gathering murk; I felt my sanity slipping away; I knew I needed to medicate myself immediately, either with drugs or alcohol. I pitched into a Mexican restaurant.

‘I need a drink,’ I grated out to the petite hostess, who looked at me worriedly, taking in the contrast between my wannabe-superstar appearance – six-foot-six, hair spiked with blond highlights, dressed in a tight-fitting, black open-necked Miu-Miu shirt – and the desperation presumably written on my features.

‘You’ll have to wait for a table.’

‘You don’t understand, this is an emergency,’ I shouted.

She looked at me as if I were an alien, and then shrugged. I strode into the bar, grabbed a bottle of tequila, and walked out, ignoring the bartender’s flailing arms and angry shouts.

I was on Sunset Boulevard by now, just east of La Brea. I drank about a fifth of the bottle: it tasted foul. Vodka is my drink, I thought randomly. My mind was still falling into chaos; the alcohol wasn’t working.

I went into a 7-Eleven, where the cashier looked up at me, startled, seeing the open bottle of tequila in my hands, not exactly looking like a typical wino.

‘Call 911!’ I said, urgently.

The cashier barely even made eye-contact with me before switching back to his customer. I couldn’t understand why nobody could see my pain. I was running into intense alienation wherever I turned.

I shouted at him, ‘Call an ambulance, now!’

‘Get lost!’ he told me.

I was amazed that he didn’t seem the least bit scared of me. I slammed my fist onto the counter, and poured the bottle of tequila all over it.

‘Now will you call the police?’ I needed help, any kind of help. I knew I needed to be restrained and medicated.

A young gay customer yelled at the cashier, ‘Call 911!’ The kid led me outside.

‘Here, I’ll call them,’ he said, soothingly.

I tried to sit down, but I couldn’t keep still. He couldn’t get through to 911; he was on hold for ten agonizing minutes; I couldn’t wait. I crossed the street through moving traffic, and entered the strip-mall on the corner, which contained a Starbucks, nail salons, and some jewelry stores. I thought the police would come eventually, and I was concerned now that they’d think me dangerous, that bullets might fly.

The tequila was finally slowing down my thoughts. Somehow, I suddenly instinctively knew the worst of the crisis was passed; I’d saved myself. But there were still the consequences of my actions to deal with, and I was still far from being myself. I heard sirens, so I went into one of the salons to sit peaceably, my hands clearly visible so the police could see I wasn’t armed (although it’s not clear why I thought there was the possibility of a shoot-out). I was completely exhausted and intolerably thirsty. The tall Asian transsexual who was doing somebody’s nails, kept looking over at me, a half-smile alternating on her pretty face with curiosity. I prayed she wouldn’t say anything to me.

The police never came, so eventually I went outside. I still wanted to go to the emergency room, but maybe now I could do it without police involvement, I thought. I convinced a kindly Filipino security guard that I was having a medical crisis, and he lent me his cell-phone so that I could call 911.

He had, ironically, a blue-tooth headset, my first exposure to one despite my recent over-immersion in technology, and it took me a while to get it to work for me. But I couldn’t get through to 911 – I was kept on hold for even longer than the kid across the street had been. I knew Ben would be worried. It seemed impossible, but it had only been thirty minutes since I had left the Renaissance after failing to get a taxi there.

I finally gave up on getting through to 911, but I didn’t know who else to call. I didn’t want Ben to know what had happened – at least not yet. But Ben’s cell-phone number was the only number I knew by heart, and neither of my therapists had listed phone numbers, so finally I had no alternative but to call Ben. He was frantic. He’d been calling and calling, getting my voicemail. I told him my cell-phone was dead, and asked him not to ask me any questions; just come and pick me up.

At last I could let the tension breathe out of me. I thanked the security guard for the use of his phone and asked him if he could please find me some water. He looked at me dubiously, so I started to pull off my $300 belt to offer in exchange for a bottle of water. He relented and got me a bottle of water, declining the belt.

When Ben picked me up, I had to figure out how to explain to him everything that had happened that day (because, you see, this headlong rush through Hollywood was only the climax of an astonishing day.) I knew it wasn’t the right time to tell him anything about what had preceded his tearful call from our counselor’s office less than an hour earlier. Nonetheless, my mind was still racing, and there was the manic temptation to explain myself fully. I kept holding onto the fact that I couldn’t possibly tell him everything without scaring him; I had to simplify things. I kept saying to myself ‘breathe’, as a mantra to remind myself, through the haze of explanations yearning to be spoken, not to be driven to make Ben understand everything. I wrote ‘breathe’ on a scrap of paper as we drove home, because I didn’t trust myself. And once I got home, I wrote it out again, on more scraps of paper, so I’d see it everywhere.

Later that night, as I got ready to take a shower, I looked at the scrap of paper on the sink with the word ‘breathe’ written on it. I suddenly had the image of Ben finding it, picking it up, and thinking it was another indication that I was not entirely in my right mind. We had a decorative bowl in the living-room full of pebbles of green glass bought from Pottery Barn. So after my shower, I grabbed a few green pebbles, and left them in inconspicuous places replacing the pieces of paper. Now I knew that every time I’d see one of those pebbles, it would remind me of ‘breathe’, and I’d stop trying to put into words what was going on in my racing mind.

But would I still remember ‘breathe’ in the morning? I surreptitiously stuffed a pebble underneath the sheet on my side of the bed, knowing that whenever I woke up, the physical discomfort would reconnect me to ‘breathe’.

The next morning, things returned to a surprising degree of normality between us. We were both anxious about what had happened; but also eager to please each other. I felt sure that I’d never again let worry for Ben drive me to the edge of insanity. I also knew that it was going to take a lot of dialogue before he could fully understand what had happened the previous day. I had no idea there were even worse days to come; that the first, as yet undiagnosed, manic episode of my life hadn’t wrought, by any means, all the damage it held in store.

Keith Adams perennially wonders how an abnormally tall, working-class boy from the North Sea coast of England ended up in a house in Hollywood with two dogs, and his partner, a leading medical research scientist at UCLA. Although he writes for a living (computer code), he always hoped to do “real writing”, from experience. That opportunity came from being diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2006, after a serious brush with insanity. At one point, he seriously believed he would be a combination gay superstar / epochal intellectual / latter day Messiah. Quite obviously, he became none of those things, but he did survive the inevitable crash to tell the tale, thanks to the support of friends and family.

His book, “Broken Whole: a California tale of Craziness, Creativity and Chaos”, a raw but entertaining memoir of mania, is available in e-book form from Chipmunka Publishing (paperback due later in 2010). Read additional extracts, and more about the author, at his website.

Book Excerpt: Overcome Supermarket Roadblocks

A Book Excerpt Author — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:18:46 +0000

This book excerpt is from The Weight Loss Plan for Beating Diabetes: The 5-Step Program That Removes Metabolic Roadblocks, Sheds Pounds Safely, and Reverses Prediabetes and Diabetes. The book is co-authored by Frederic Vagnini, M.D., FACS, and Lawrence D. Chilnick.

Shopping Defensively

Here are some specific hints for defensive shopping:

Prepare ahead. If there’s one rule to follow, this is it: Don’t to go to the supermarket “on the fly.” We’ve all run out for a few things and ended up buying twice as much as we needed. Often, something in the store tempts us to do just that. For example, how many supermarkets position the bakery right where you walk in, with the wonderful smell of newly baked bread or cakes perfuming the air? It’s not an accident.

Consult your cookbooks and create a weekly menu. Write down all of the ingredients you need for it.

Know what you are going to make, and make sure that most of what you buy fits into your overall meal plan.

Check the fridge and pantry so you know what you don’t need to buy.

Shop weekly. Shopping too often or stretching your shopping trips to every two weeks will make sticking to your meal plan more difficult.

Learn the store layout. The fewer tempting products you see and the less time you spend browsing, the easier it will be to avoid buying the wrong foods. The healthiest fresh foods are in areas against the store walls. Don’t spend time in the central aisles with things you don’t need.

Look up and down. The most attractively packaged food is on shelves at eye level.

Stay away from the areas where store employees are offering free samples of high-carb and fatty foods.

Eat before you shop. A hungry shopper buys more food and makes worse food choices, plus with diabetes, you need to eat at specific times and in amounts that ensure stable blood sugar.

Shop alone and without the kids. Although research claims that men are more likely to stick to their list only, the levels of obesity in both genders suggests otherwise. Going to the supermarket should be a directed, time-limited event. You are there to buy certain things you need; you don’t have to review every single one of the store’s offerings. If possible, shop for food when the kids are in school because they are special targets for marketers.

Make healthy choices. This doesn’t only mean buying fresh vegetables from local farms or good produce in the supermarket. A healthy choice is a meal you make at home — not take-out or prepared foods. Over the past decade, sales of prepared foods at the deli counters and throughout the store have risen steadily. Americans now spend over $15 billion per year on prepared foods in supermarkets and in shopping mall food courts.

While sales of starchy, fat-dripping fast foods are dropping, prepared take-out foods aren’t much better. The choices are often “family friendly”: fried chicken, chicken nuggets, chicken wings, baked potatoes, egg rolls, tacos, and creamy “comfort food” soups. Did you know that much of the prepared supermarket food is made by the same giant food companies that make the fast foods? If you buy prepared foods, avoid those with heavy mayonnaise or breading and high calories. Dodge items featuring rice or mashed potatoes, too.

Some experts suggest you take a close look at how much of your diet comes from the prepared choices. If prepared food makes up more than half of your diet, you have a problem. While one solution would be to learn to cook more or better, some people simply don’t like to cook or have too little time to make meals at home. But this isn’t an insurmountable problem.

Making the Supermarket Your Support System

Doing your own cooking will help you control what you eat, control your glucose, and lose weight. You will still go to the supermarket, but buying fresh vegetables in season, certain fruits, and good protein sources such as fish, chicken, turkey, and other lean meats will make your diet more interesting and flavorful. You might even discover that cooking can be fun, and you can make it a group activity. As you lose weight, you will feel better physically and mentally because the food you eat will be better for you. Your body will thank you.

Another good tip is to ask questions at the market. You’d be surprised how much help the people behind the counters can be, and not only at high-end supermarkets.

The desire for certain foods has been studied and reported on over the years. It’s often been noted that people fantasize more about food than any other pleasure, including sex. After all, food gave us our first pleasure as children, and eating habits last a lifetime. Given the level of obesity in the country, is it any surprise that many adolescents who do their “hunting” in front of the computer or video game are following in their parents’ footsteps?

The above is an excerpt from the book The Weight Loss Plan for Beating Diabetes: The 5-Step Program That Removes Metabolic Roadblocks, Sheds Pounds Safely, and Reverses Prediabetes and Diabetes by Frederic Vagnini, M.D., FACS, and Lawrence D. Chilnick. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Copyright © 2009 Frederic Vagnini, M.D., FACS, and Lawrence D. Chilnick, authors of The Weight Loss Plan for Beating Diabetes: The 5-Step Program That Removes Metabolic Roadblocks, Sheds Pounds Safely, and Reverses Prediabetes and Diabetes

Frederic J. Vagnini, M.D., FACS, coauthor of The Weight Loss Plan for Beating Diabetes: The 5-Step Program That Removes Metabolic Roadblocks, Sheds Pounds Safely, and Reverses Prediabetes and Diabetes, is a board-certified cardiovascular surgeon whose understanding of the ravages of cardiovascular diseases is grounded in twenty years as a cardiac surgeon. He hosts a popular call-in radio show and has published several books, including The Carbohydrate Addict’s Healthy Heart Program, a New York Times bestseller.

Lawrence D. Chilnick, coauthor of The Weight Loss Plan for Beating Diabetes: The 5-Step Program That Removes Metabolic Roadblocks, Sheds Pounds Safely, and Reverses Prediabetes and Diabetes, is the authors and creator of the New York Times bestseller The Pill Book, which has sold 17 million copies and is still in print after more than two decades. He is a publishing executive, editor, teacher, journalist, broadcaster, and author of several popular health reference books, electronic products, audiotapes, and videos.

For more information please visit www.amazon.com.

The Best Foods for Strong Bones

A Be My Guest Author — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 23:45:40 +0000

This book excerpt is from The Whole-Food Guide to Strong Bones: A Holistic Approach by Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D.

Let me make very clear what the best foods are for the bones — in this order:

1. Vegetables, especially leafy greens, and also roots and stalks (for the iron and calcium, and for vitamins K and C, which, together with protein, help deposit the collagen matrix)

2. Protein, such as animal foods, beans, and soy foods (for the collagen matrix)

3. Stock (for the minerals)

4. Whole grains (for the magnesium)

5. Foods rich in trace minerals, such as seaweeds, nuts, and seeds

6. Edible bones (for the calcium and other minerals)

7. Healthy fats (for the fat-soluble vitamins needed for the bones, such as vitamins K and D)

To underscore the approach of eating for bone health, the recipes in part 3 are generally arranged in the above order, although in most cases the fats are included in the recipes, not featured as a separate food. Every section, then, relates to bone health in a specific way. Let’s take a closer look at these categories and review how each relates to bone health.

Vegetables

Calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron, and other minerals are found abundantly in the vegetable kingdom, especially in produce that’s organically grown. Of particular value for bone health are all the leafy green vegetables, such as kale, collard greens, mustard greens, arugula, bok choy, parsley, watercress, and mesclun, the only exceptions being spinach and Swiss chard, as explained below. Other vegetables especially helpful to the bones include broccoli, cabbage, carrots, zucchini, and acorn or butternut squash. In fact, the food that provides the most calcium per calorie is bok choy, at 790 mg per 100 calories when cooked. Other vegetables with a high calcium content include cooked mustard greens, with 495 mg calcium per 100 calories; raw celery, with 250 mg calcium per 100 calories; and steamed broccoli, with 164 mg calcium per 100 calories. For comparison, skim milk provides 351 mg of calcium per 100 calories, so the veggies are quite within the ballpark.

Some vegetables, most notably spinach and Swiss chard, contain a relative abundance of calcium but also contain oxalates, substances that may interfere with calcium absorption in some cases. However, people on low calcium diets (300 to 400 mg per day) are more efficient at overriding the effect of oxalates and absorbing calcium than people on diets high in calcium-rich dairy products.

Protein Foods

As explained earlier, protein is essential for giving bones the flexibility that helps prevent fractures. There is controversy as to whether protein from animal or vegetable sources is better. For quite some time, the popular assumption was that a diet high in animal protein could contribute to osteoporosis. This assumption has been shown to be incorrect. Some people object to the consumption of animal foods for a variety of reasons. My viewpoint has always been that the choice to be vegetarian or not is a very personal one, and that either can be very healthful as long as the diet is balanced and the foods consumed are fresh, natural, and unrefined — and hopefully organic.

Cooking with Stock

Cooking with stock is a very traditional way of increasing the nutritional value of dishes made with added liquid, such as soups, stews, grains, beans, and sauces. By cooking bones and vegetables for a long time over low heat, many of the minerals are leached out into the cooking water, making the stock highly nutritious and also alkalizing, especially if something sour has been added such as vinegar or wine.

Whole Grains

In modern times, the primary grains that most cultures rely on for sustenance — rice and wheat — are usually stripped of their bran and germ and thereby made deficient in nutrients. Whole grains, such as brown rice, whole wheat, barley, oats, rye, millet, cornmeal, amaranth, quinoa, teff, and buckwheat, are excellent sources of complex carbohydrates, fiber, and B vitamins, and they’re very satisfying to boot. Consuming sufficient amounts of whole grains (about a handful of cooked whole grain per meal) also means you need to consume less animal protein due to a concept known as protein sparing. When grains (or fats) provide more calories, this diminishes the body’s need to metabolize proteins for energy. This conserves muscle tissue, and whatever is good for the muscles is good for the bones. In addition, whole grains are a good source of magnesium, which helps increase absorption of calcium from the blood into the bones.

Foods Rich in Trace Minerals

Seaweeds, nuts, and seeds are some of the foods richest in trace minerals. As mentioned in chapter 3, trace minerals play an important role in bone health. Remember, less important than how much calcium you eat is the balance of minerals (and other nutrients). Eating food rich in trace minerals will go a long way toward providing mineral balance.

Seaweeds, which are most commonly used in Japanese cuisine are rich in minerals, making them an excellent addition to healthful cooking. In fact, a study of osteoporosis in Taiwan found that those who include seaweed in their diet two or more times per week showed a slightly higher protection against osteoporosis (Shaw 1993). Seaweeds are also valuable for being especially high in iodine, which is necessary for good thyroid function. As discussed in chapter 3, the thyroid and parathyroid glands play an important role in bone health.

Nuts and seeds have the advantage of also being a great source of bone-healthy essential fatty acids, as well as plant protein. A handful of nuts or seeds a day is a good source of trace minerals, such as iron, boron, selenium, phosphorus, and magnesium.

Edible Bones

Perhaps your initial response to the idea of eating bones is “what?!” But bones can be eaten when prepared in certain ways, and if you think about it, what better source of natural minerals for our bones than bones themselves? See the recipes in part 3.

Healthy Fats

Good-quality fats are essential for bone health. As we apply the “three-bears-rule” again, too much is no good, but too little is no good, as well. You need to eat enough of these important nutrients, even if that means unlearning a fat phobia. The average postmenopausal woman needs about 65 grams of fat daily. That means you need approximately 2 or 3 tablespoons of good-quality fat per day in an eating regime based on vegetables, beans, grains, nuts, and seeds, or about 1 or 2 tablespoons if your diet also includes animal products. Nutritionist Udo Erasmus cautions against using any one type of fat exclusively because it won’t contain a full profile of fatty acids and therefore might create an imbalance (Erasmus 1993). We need both omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. However, a diet high in polyunsaturated vegetable oils is skewed too much in favor of the latter.

REFERENCES:
Shaw, C. K. 1993. An epidemilogic study of osteoporosis in Taiwan. Annals of Epidemiology 3 (3):264-271.

Erasmus, U. 1993. Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill: The Complete Guide to Fats, Oils, Cholesterol, and Human Health. Burnaby, BC: Alive Books.

Reprinted with permission by New Harbinger Publications, Inc. The Whole-Food Guide to Strong Bones: A Holistic Approach by Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D.www.newharbinger.com.

The above is an excerpt from the bookThe Whole-Food Guide to Strong Bones: A Holistic Approach by Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D., author of The Whole-Food Guide to Strong Bones: A Holistic Approach, is a health educator and award-winning writer, consultant, and lecturer. She is the founder and CEO of the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts in New York City. She is author of several books including Food and Healing and writes a column, “Food and Your Health,” for New York Spirit magazine.

For more information please visit www.FoodAndHealing.com.