Bluephie's and Apostrophes

English teachers, rejoice. You have nothing to lose but your correcting pens.

This is about Bluephie’s Restaurant and Vodkatorium (www.bluephies.com). It’s not just the food, which is good. It’s the menu. The menu is an English teacher’s delight, or possibly nightmare. Every English teacher should print its online version and take it to school for his/her students to correct, by filling in the missing letters that are replaced with apostrophes, and by correcting the uses of small rather than capital letters. For me, this menu is a lesson in apostrophes. It’s also about capital letters, but that is secondary.

Bluephie’s lunch menu, in its zeal to appear informal and folksy, has given the lowly apostrophe a workout.  Examples are plentiful. “serve ‘em up.” “billy’s burger bar.” “today’s selections.” ol’ fashioned cooking.” “ Lots o’ shrimp.” “lots o’ shrimp.”  “honkin’ big tortilla.” “lil’ bites.” “that’s right.” “I’ll have that.” “big ol’ cake.”

The English language uses the apostrophe as a stand-in for letter omissions, as seen in the lunch menu. It is used to show correction, as in the name of the restaurant. It is a major workhorse for people who prefer to abridge their words. I give Bluephie’s good grades for over-using the punctuation mark correctly, although I am not sure about “lil’ bites.” Should it be “li’l’ bites?”

Some other uses of the apostrophe might be confusing. For example, Bluephie’s has a kids menu with no apostrophe on the online link. Might it be a personal menu for one kid, as a kid’s menu? Might it be for all the kids, as a kids’ menu? Bluephie’s doesn’t say. Plurals are a problem for a lot of people. Bluephie’s might have chosen to have a children’s menu rather than a kids menu. “Children” is plural, so the apostrophe goes before the final “s.” Fortunately, Bluephie’s seems to have avoided the “its” and “it’s” situation. They say, “That’s right,” and sidestep that issue. We English majors know that “it’s” means “it is,” and the possessive “its” has no apostrophe.

The Bluephie’s lunch menu uses hardly any capital letters. (More folksy fun?) Even “billy’s burger bar” refers to billy without the upper case. On the home page, not the menu, is the question, “Have you ‘ate’ today?” Actually, this one goes on to use “ate” with other words using “ate” such as “celebrate.”

I think I’ll go to billy’s burger bar for some ol’ fashioned cooking. I’ll try the honkin’ big tortilla and some big ol’ cake. I have one more question. What’s a vodkatorium?

Springfield Visit

I went to Springfield, Illinois, last weekend.  Springfield tourism is about Abraham Lincoln, and that is why I went there. Springfield is the capital of Illinois, but political presence was not as evident as the remembered presence of the deceased President.  The city seemed quiet to me after living with the ongoing activity of Madison.

Lincoln reminders abound, especially statues. Other reminders include his home, his tomb, the presidential museum and library, the old state capitol building (Illinois now uses a different capitol building), Lincoln’s law office, and even a church pew that his family used.  A church pew in a different church than the family church and that Lincoln didn’t use was a bit over the top for me, so we didn’t try to find it. We left our car at the hotel and walked to everything except the tomb, to which we drove. It was a good but short adventure.

My daughter Dolores (a.k.a. Dede and Dori) and her boyfriend Tom came with me. My little Toyota Yaris was filled with us and our bags. It’s a small car. We made the best of it.

Tourist attractions are easy to find. Springfield has at least two visitor centers that were staffed with helpful people. We needed to buy tickets for the Lincoln home. No luck at the visitor centers; we had to go to the visitor building near the home to get them. We were given maps of the downtown area, so it was easy to find other places of interest.

The Lincoln home, a National Historic Site, is restored to what apparently was its appearance when the Lincolns lived there. That was our first stop and the beginning of what I called the B.S. factor emanating from tour guides. Our guide in the home had plenty of anecdotes to tell about the family, and some of it probably was true. The house was very interesting, with floral wallpaper and very colorful carpets. The historic preservation people even preserved the family’s outhouse. The sidewalk is a boardwalk. The street is gravel with blacktop showing through. Good attempts at showing how people lived in Lincoln’s time.

I enjoyed the Abraham Lincoln Historical Museum and the old state capitol building. The historical museum is composed of exhibits that include a replica of Lincoln’s boyhood home in Indiana, and the front of the White House as it formerly appeared, into which visitors proceed to see other display areas. We saw a very poignant replica of a slave auction. A few video clips were playing. I especially liked one that featured the late Tim Russert doing a television newscast of the 1860 presidential election campaign. He did it in the style of today’s campaigns. He told the campaign story and mixed in fake political commercials sponsored by fake pacs. I laughed a lot. It was a good way to bring the 1860 story to life. Needless to say, Russert recorded this before he died.

The old state capitol building shows the simplicity of government as it was in the 1860s. We didn’t stay with the tour guide, whose anecdotal commentary carried the B.S. factor pretty far and made the tour very  long. The rooms are furnished in the style of the period and are well labeled. Large painted portraits of famous people are there, including George Washington and his young companion LaFayette, who assisted in the American Revolution.

We had prioritized our visit so we didn’t see everything due to time constraints. We omitted the Presidential Library.  We walked past the governor’s mansion and skipped the tour of the Frank Lloyd designed home after hearing that the tour would take an hour. We found the Episcopal Cathedral but it was locked. Restaurants were satisfactory but not nearly as fascinating as the restaurants around the capitol building in Madison. We found no Occupy Wall Street demonstrators around the Illinois capital building. Our last stop was the Lincoln tomb, which is occupied by the family, with the exception of son Robert, who is buried somewhere else.

A stop on the way to Springfield was at Starved Rock State Park near Ottawa, Illinois . We climbed the rock. It had stairways that made the climb relatively easy for most people. The view at the top is worth the climb. I’m glad we stopped there.

St. Dunstan's Library News April

This is my article for the church newsletter.

Here is the latest news from St. Dunstan’s Library. The library is waiting for you, right downstairs and down the hall. It’s open all the time. We have more than a thousand books on various aspects of the faith. With about 350 recent additions, the library has something for everyone.

You may have heard the news about the upcoming retirement of Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. If you want to know more about him, come to our library. We have Rowan Williams: an Introduction, by Rupert Short, published in 2003. The book covers Williams’ career and evolution as a thinker. If you need still more, try these books by Archbishop Williams: Anglican Identities;   Lost Icons.  Tokens of Trust;  The Truce of God;  On Christian Theology;  Resurrection.

To use the library, just find the book you want. The books are arranged alphabetically by author’s last name. Books with no author (yes, they exist!) are in the alphabetical list by title. The collection is arranged in a few categories, including Bibles and commentaries, nonfiction, arboretum collection, fiction, children’s books, music, DVD and VHS recordings (only a few), and pamphlets and tracts.

After you find a book, check it out. In the notebook on the shelf, write your name, the author and title of the book, and the date you take it. Keep it until you finish and then remember to return it to the designated return shelf. It’s the same shelf where you find the checkout notebook.

Happy reading!

Lent and Stuff

It's that season again. What does the word “Lent” bring into your mind? Giving up something? More church rules?  Something else to ignore in favor of real life? Or is it about looking at the spiritual dimension of life?

I haven’t heard much about Lent lately from my institutional church, the Episcopal Church. Our church is well known for not making doctrinal pronouncements. However, I think it continues to be interested in God and spiritual growth. It has sacraments, liturgical seasons, and the Book of Common Prayer. So it really isn’t a spiritual desert.

Is Lent just a time to decide what to give up? Do people still actually do this, or is it a relic of the 1950s? Is Lent about anything any more?

Is it just about rules? A list of rules is helpful for some people, especially Roman Catholics, who have plenty of rules. Other people might establish their own rules. Still others may treat Lent like new year’s resolutions, promises of better habits to observe for about a week and then forget. We are deep or shallow, consistent or not.

But why?  We live in a society where stuff is all around us. Our homes are full of stuff. The media advertises stuff.  President George W. Bush famously said after the 9-11 attacks that it’s ok to go out and shop again, as if that is what makes America strong. Stuff is baggage.

Enter Lent, a season of promise.  Lent, to me, is about unloading the baggage in order to bring the vision of God back into focus. In a world of stuff, people need to remember that life in Christ is not about stuff. It is about Christ, in whom we live and move and have our being. We pray, “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory (traditional version)”, and then we look into our garages, which are so full that we can’t get our cars into them. Lent gives the opportunity to rearrange our stuff so that God reappears in our homes and hearts.

Giving up something is a start, something important to that person.  It represents the acknowledgement that Americans have too much stuff. And yet, people with hardly any stuff still can do it. It’s the idea that passing up something strengthens the inner part of the person, lessens the gluttony of the soul, and leads the person to a greater share in the life of God. Yes, it really can happen. Yes, it isn’t always easy.

Lent has a purpose. It is about living the Christian life. It’s not about the church telling us what to do, as much as it is about looking at self denial as a way to get back on track with God. Jesus told the rich man to get rid of all he had and follow Him, and the man went away in sadness because he had a lot of stuff.

Every year I give up the same thing. Like Benjamin Franklin, who had a cycle of thirteen virtues to work on, at the end of the cycle it was time to start over. Franklin needed to start over with humility every time because he lost sight of it while working on the others. Judging from reading about his life, I’m not sure he ever mastered it. I give up complaining annually because it creeps back when I’m doing something else. Complaining is some of the stuff that clutters the garage of my soul.

That’s life. Lent formalizes it.

I also gave up potato chips.

The Blood Sugar Solution

Here is an interview that got my attention. A half hour (actually 34 minutes) with Dr. Mark Hyman. I was fascinated.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abGeRIEyEoE

Dr. Hyman is well known. Among other things, he is he doctor who is said to have turned around Bill Clinton's heart disease. He is chair of the Institute for Functional Medicine. Functional medicine? Hmmm. I have seen him in short television interviews, and several times on the Doctor Oz Show, where Dr. Oz gives Hyman time to present some of his medical ideas, and then says he disagrees with everything he has to say. That's the thing. We see these important people interviewed for about a minute of sound bytes, rather than seeing them take time to actually get to the point. In this interview, Dr. Hyman gets to the point.

Dr. Hyman has written several books. I have not read any of them. He has a new book called The Blood Sugar Solution. I thought this interview would be about the book. It kind of sort of is, but mostly it is about Dr. Hyman's philosophy. He says he treats causes rather than symptoms. When asked if he is a holistic doctor, he answered that he has a "whole list" to treat, meaning that he treats not just each symptom separately, but the underlying causes of the presentations of symptoms. He says that his pharmacy is the grocery store; food is his medication. Not junk food. Real food.

Hyman had things to say about type 2 diabetes. After all, his new book is about diabetes. He listed a lot of conditions that go with diabetes, including heart disease. He pointed out that most heart attack patients have diabetes or pre-diabetes. He said that statin drugs are not helpful in preventing a first heart attack and have dangerous side effects. He said that heredity does not explain the current epidemic of diabetes, since it was much less prevalent thirty years ago; it has multiple causes. He also said that type 2 diabetes is completely preventable. He has had patients who have prevented or reversed it.

Well, if this is the big disease that leads to many other diseases, it must be time to read his book. He didn't give details on what foods will take the disease away, but he said they are in his book.

This interview was done three months ago by Randy Alvarez, on wellnesshour.com, and posted on YouTube.  Dr. Hyman has an interesting website, drhyman.com. His new book has a website, bloodsugarsolution.com.

Child Abuse

It's hard to stop thinking about it. It's heartbreaking. How could we let it happen? How can a teenager live with all this? The news reporting has been full of it.

http://www.channel3000.com/news/30529168/detail.html

A 15-year old girl was found walking barefoot and wearing pajamas. A man stopped his car to help her and ended her terrible ordeal. He took her to the police. The girl had escaped from her home after fearing that her stepmother would throw her down the stairs.

The story unfolded, as described in the link above. The girl had been imprisoned and beaten in the basement by her father and stepmother, with no bathroom other than a box, and not allowed to eat, since she was ten years old. Her eighteen-year-old stepbrother had sexually assaulted her since she was ten years old. She ate garbage when she could. She weighed seventy pounds and was said to be starving.

This scenario took place in Madison, not inner city Milwaukee. The people are white, not black or some other race. While they don't live in my neighborhood, in a way they are my neighbors. We are all members of the human condition. The human condition includes providing our children with the basic necessities of life, including a safe and nurturing home. This girl's family failed her.

The girl didn't go to school. She didn't go anywhere. Her biological mother had given up custody because she was married to a sex offender. Her father didn't love her enough to give her a chance to live a normal life. Abandonment and abuse are scars she will carry for a long time.

It calls to mind the story of Jaycee Dugard, who was abducted, imprisoned and sexually abused in California a few years ago. Jaycee Dugard escaped back to her loving family. Both Jaycee Dugard and the Madison girl were not found by the safety net of social workers who came to their homes because they were monitoring someone in the home, Dugard's captor, and the fifteen-year-old girls stepbrother. The system failed both girls.

Jaycee Dugard gave birth to two children fathered by her captor; the Madison girl was so malnourished that police said she had not entered puberty by age fifteen.

Something is terribly wrong with people who are entrusted with children, and yet they become cruel predators. The court system is dealing with the family of the Madison girl, but it can not give back the interrupted life she didn't have. Foster care is likely to be a better alternative than her own family. But what will go on in the heart of a girl who has been so badly violated, as she lives into adulthood? Hillary Clinton once said that it takes a village. This girl will need the whole human village.

Patti Brennan's Cave

This morning I actually got excited about science.  Thanks to Wisconsin Public Television, I watched a program that made a difference. In contrast to the usual banality of television, I saw my friend Patti Brennan in a panel of people representing various science disciplines. Usually I don’t connect with science presentations more difficult than the level of Animal Planet, but here were men and women who were talking about collaboration.

Patti Brenan is a nurse, and more than a nurse. Calling her a nurse is like calling cake straw. She is a teacher of nursing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and much more. On this day, rebroadcast from December, 2010, she talked about collaboration of medical practitioners and home care. This was exciting to me. If I understood her correctly, she was saying that the trend now is to keep patients in the hospital for shorter time periods and have them recover at home earlier than had formerly been done. Her vision was to create virtual environments that she called caves. The cave would be created after someone in the medical field recorded visually the home environment of the patient, to give a better picture of the home environment’s ability to manage the patient’s needs. She pointed out that homes sometimes are not well adapted to recovery situations. How is the home set up for locating medications; does the home have space for a patient’s elevated leg without tripping someone; is the kitchen arranged well for doing what is needed; do you have to put important equipment on the living room coffee table? And so on.

The cave Patti described would show these things and others that normally would not be in a person’s range of view.  She said something like, suppose I’m here and you’re over there and both are seeing different views. The cave would bring them into one viewing range. This would enable medical people to assist the person in the home with accurate ideas of the person’s recovery environment. It would be virtual collaboration of the patient at home and the appropriate medical person. Wow!

To me this sounded wonderful. I might add that Patti explained all this in a few minutes in a way that a non-professional like me could understand. It seemed like a really good way to enable a recovering person to be at home without feeling cut off from medical assistance, and also a way for the patient to avoid making mistakes due to limitations of the home environment. I really liked Patti’s cave idea. I think she was describing some ongoing research that people in her field are doing in collaboration with some other scientific disciplines, so that something like this could actually happen.

My experience with this situation is limited. After my (now deceased) husband had knee replacement surgery in 2001, one knee at a time, not both the same day, he came home. A nurse came in and showed him and me how to do the recommended exercises. She did some medical checking on him. That was good. But as I remember it, that was about all. We were on our own. The cave would have been helpful and reassuring.

Again, the same husband went on kidney dialysis a couple of years later. He went to the dialysis center several times every week, where the medical people performed the service with what looked to me like a lot of equipment. After several years, he came home and said that the people at the dialysis center suggested that he have his dialysis done at home. Immediately I was terrified of being left alone with this monster machine. I felt huge trepidation at the thought of being the one who would use this device to keep him alive. No details on how to accomplish it came home with the suggestion. In theory, home dialysis sounded like a good idea. In practice, I would have felt better with Patti’s cave if it had existed. I declined the invitation. The cave is an outstanding idea.

The other presenters in the televised panel talked about ways to use science to accomplish collaboration among science professionals.  I was impressed with the anthropologist who talked about how people who work together across discipline lines need to address language issues. They all have their own specialized vocabularies. I saw this as a second major point in the discussion. Medical people sometimes talk to their patients in language that seems obscure and unhelpful. The doctor/nurse professional and the patient create another cross-professional situation. (The profession of the patient is to be an ordinary human being.) What does it mean when the nurse asks if a person had any emesis? I think the common patient response would be, “Huh? Are you asking if I puked?”

Since I am healthy, I don’t experience some of this, but I am impressed that all the panelists in the presentation who represent different approaches to science actually are trying to do things together. I am extremely impressed with Patti’s way of sending her vision directly home to me.

Thanks, Patti. Thanks also to Wisconsin Public Television.