Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Home Remedies


It’s flu season and I can’t help but to think of the many spells, concoctions, remedies (tortures) that my mother and grandmother subjected my cousins, siblings, and me to as we were growing up. Anything from a cough to the flu, a spider bite to a wasp sting to a case of head lice was readily cured by something that my grandmother believed would help.

            Many of these home-made cures were staples of the medicine cabinet and they doubled for multiple purposes. I hated to even mention that I felt anything less than the utmost of health and vitality. At the mere whisper that my stomach was upset, Grandma would serve me up a sweet but hideous looking glass of prune juice. It looked like the swill at the bottom of a tobacco chewer’s spit cup, and I must say that as a child, I thought it tasted that way too. The prune juice was meant as a stool softener; I guess it worked . . . eventually. If the prune juice didn’t quench grandma’s taste for inflicting torture, the Castor oil did; the oil, a taste I will never, ever, forget was like the oldest, biggest, and meanest brother of stool softeners/laxatives . . . it works beautifully.

Another surefire way to cure an ailment was with Vick’s Vapor Rub. Even if you tried to hide it, grandma could tell by your voice that you had a cold. The white container with a blue lid in her hand, she sat on the edge of the bed and had you sit up. I admit that it was nice and soothing when she would rub some on my chest and under my nose; it made my eyes water a little, but I actually could breathe a little better. However, was it really necessary, Grandma, to make me eat a finger full of this greasy salve? It coated my teeth as I choked it down making it impossible to sleep, for I then had to incessantly swallow for fifteen minutes straight trying to vacate my mouth of that impossible and detestable coating.

Sometimes I felt as if Grandma and my mother sat at the window waiting for one of us to fall down. Why else would they even consider putting what I considered battery acid on our cuts and scrapes? Walking in the house with a scraped knee, she would grab a bottle of mercurochrome or iodine and swab it into the open wound. Oh my God, how it burned. Back then I was sure that it would burn completely through my leg, “It burns Grandma!” any one of us would say as she fanned the burning with a magazine. “It’s ok. We used this stuff when I was a little girl and it healed right up,” she would say. I still cannot believe that they endured the same pain and in turn passed it on to their kids and grandchildren. I know, because they always told me, that people were tougher back then, but give me a break. It seems borderline insane. Now, how about the holidays?

Just like all kids, my cousins, siblings, and I loved Easter, Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine’s and all the sweet sugary goodies that our parents allowed us to stuff in our mouths. In the same way that kids think about the now and not the near future when they stand in place and spin in circles, we gorged and gobbled all the sweets we got our hands on. Mom, because of Grandma’s warning, worried about the worms that Grandma assured her would infest us from eating too much candy. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down?—baloney! A spoonful of sugar masked the disgusting taste of turpentine like a smile masks a hungry shark. They actually had us eat a spoonful of sugar with a few drops of turpentine in it, and yes, it tastes exactly the how it smells.

Bug bites: I was gathering eggs for my Great Uncle Virgil when I was a teenager. Somewhere in the process I was bitten by a spider. A knot the size of a silver-dollar raised on my arm. Upon showing my uncle (who smoked a pipe), he put a big chaw of the pipe tobacco in his mouth and after it was real good and real slobbery, he splatted it onto my arm and wrapped a kerchief around it. I remember watching his spit seep out from underneath the cloth and drip off my arm—yuck!

Anyhow, I survived the stomach aches; the stopped up noses eventually cleared up; my knee did heal; I am never, and probably never will be, malnourished or wormy, and my arm never fell off from the spider bite. So that being said, maybe it worked?

Paul Harbour's first posting

This initial posting is regarding my use of technology in my career. I am an English teacher, and in 2011, I must learn to use (efficiently) as much technology as I have available to me. That being said, we have MIMIO, screen projectors, and computer labs available at my school. I dream of the day that each student will have a tablet to use during class. It is funny that teacher once complained that students would try to text during class; we then complained that students would use laptops during class; before we could even ask for those technologies, laptops are a thing of the old and tablets are the new--we didn't get to use any of them.

The biggest hurdle we have in public schools regarding technology is the lack of funding. It seems that when money is available (and in Indiana it isn't), it is more readily used in extra-curriculars instead of for new technologies that would enhance learning. I know that if the money were available, my school would do its best to make and use new technologies. Of course there would be the problem of training and teaching the teachers how to use the new stuff, but that would be a welcome problem.

"Fear not," is a philosophy that is rooted deep in my religious beliefs. Because of this, I must be willing to tackle any and all new obstacles that I may face in the task of education. I am beginning a new class that will enable me to embrace change and learn the many advantages to using technology. I hope to use my new knowledge to assist my students in their educational endeavors.