Hildegarde in my book - and in the news!

I finished the book, God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Journey to the Heart of Medicine, by Victoria Sweet, just in time to be surprised and delighted to hear that soon Hildegarde of Bingen will become an official saint and a doctor of the Church. In her book, an account of Laguna Honda, the USA's last "almshouse" for the poor and destitute in San Francisco, Dr. Sweet, who was one of the medical staff at Laguna Honda, talks about her study of the benefits of "slow medicine" as practiced by medieval healers, such as Hildegarde. She even relates how she used a method of treatment she learned by reading about Hildegarde to heal a woman whose decades of drug abuse had resulted in a complicated health crisis that defeated other doctors.

Slow medicine counts on the use of "Dr. Quiet, Dr. Diet, and Dr. Merryman" - treatment that stresses peace, nutritious and delicious food, comfort and joy - all this over pharmaceuticals, surgeries, and quick release from hospitalization. Health care is moving away from slow medicine, and we will be the poorer and sicker for it.

Hildegarde of Bingen has long been one of my heroes. I love to quote her, " All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all shall be exceedingly well."

First Veggies from the Garden!

Spring is so early here this year. The lilacs are all bloomed out, and they are usually just in time for Mother's Day. The peonies will probably bloom before graduation time at the beginning of June, BUT, I planted cucumbers and tomatoes yesterday when I saw that the weather forecast for the first week of May included 70s and 80s. While I was doing that, I realized that some of the French breakfast radishes (do they really eat radishes for breakfast in France?) were ready! Great on our salad last night, and they're very mild, too - maybe that's why they have the "breakfast" label. Too bad I don't have a picture of the ones we ate, but here's a substitute.

A Revolutionary's Thoughts on Teaching

Graphic novels are one of the favorites in my reading lists. When I checked the library's latest, I found one written by none other than Bill Ayers, of Weather Underground fame. He is now newly retired from the University of Illinois at Chicago where he was a distinguished professor of education. He wrote the book with a graphic artist and it was so interesting, I dropped everything else to finish it in two days. His ideas reminded me of Summerhill, the English school that allowed students to choose their own learning goals.

A few days after I finished the book, I had an hour's drive out to do some grandkids sitting and turned on NPR. A local weekly program of music, lectures, etc., The Paper Machete, was on and Bill Ayers was the guest. He was recounting the dinner he and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, had donated in February 2012 as a raffle item for the Illinois Humanities Council. Instead of getting a measly couple of hundred dollars for a home-cooked dinner for 6 at the Ayers/Dohrn home - as they have gotten for this type of dinner donation for other causes, someone chose to eliminate all other bidders by bidding $2500 - right-wing commentator, Tucker Carlson! Carlson also invited the notorious Andrew Breitbart, who attended the dinner with Ayers and Dohrn just a few weeks before his sudden and unexpected death. Hear what happened at the dinner in the WBEZ podcast, which takes about 15 minutes. Scroll down the page to the podcast arrow. Fascinating.

Ode to Librarians from Red Green

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyy8gYkU2TY#t=3m47s

Don't bother to watch anything after the song is over.

Adventure of the Soul

I've just started a big, fat autobiography of Gandhi. The introduction has me so interested in it already. Gandhi writes that, in his life he wants to achieve only Moksha - what others might call salvation - and that for him, God is Absolute Truth, although he has only had faint glimpses of this. He also says, "..for the essence of religion is morality." Thus, he decided to write of his "experiments" with truth in his choices and actions.

I have vague memories that Gandhi has been criticized for not treating his wife and children well, so I will be looking for the truth of this, too.

How to Learn Something

Saw this post in a library professionals newsletter, and since I now have reached the era of "senior moments," I was really interested in it. I remember back in the bad old days that I never believed in studying regularly - I was always cramming at the last minute. In some ways that worked well for me, but this article shows how I could have done better - but not by starting earlier and being more consistent about it.

If the best way to learn something is to repeat the process of remembering it at a point (not too long after you first learned it) where you really have to dig around in your memory for it, here will be the acid test for me: remembering a new password. I usually use the same old one and never change it - a mortal sin on the Web, apparently. I'm going to change my Google password right now - and not write it down! Stay tuned.

Now I Can Heal

Since Halloween, I've been treating the skin on my face with Fluorouracil 5, a cream based on chemotherapy concoctions that exposes and destroys precancerous skin lesions caused by sun damage. It's a long and demoralizing process - scares kids, too - but the payoff is that it can treat all active and latent skin lesions in one shot.

After I saw the Website posted by a guy who went through the same thing nearly 10 years ago, I was encouraged to stay with it until my dermatologist finally said I was done last Tuesday.

The first photo shows me in the beginning when I only applied the cream at night 3 times a week for a month. After that, it was every night for two months. Ok, I got one week off right after Christmas, but that was all. I could cover most of the red spots with Bobbi Brown concealer, but after awhile, even that couldn't hide them all. People at work were understanding, but I got a lot of horrified looks from library patrons.



The last photo shows me last Tuesday with bare skin - right after I got the good news to stop the treatment. I'm a mess, but the scabs are starting to flake off already with new pink baby skin underneath. The doc said I lasted longer with the cream than any other woman he's treated. Let's hope my results (no skin cancer) last longer, too! Moral: use sunscreen.