Are You a Good Samaritan?

Are You a Good Samaritan?

Now, when I say “Good Samaritan,” I don’t mean the leave a penny on the counter or the I give my spare change to the baseball kids at Wal-Mart kind of Samaritan. I’m talking about the inconvenience yourself, donate your time, help others in need, be a part of a greater cause type of Samaritan. Do you consider yourself a Good Samaritan? Is it something that is important to you?

Besides blessings we receive for following the greatest commandment, charity work has many other benefits: it helps you make new friends and contacts; it increases your social skills; it combats depression; it increases self-confidence; it improves your overall health, and it advances your career. Charity and volunteering generally just makes you happier.

Have you ever been on the receiving end of such good works?  I know I have. Just this past summer, my family and I were hiking and camping in Michigan at Ludington State Park. Ludington is a beautiful park that is butted up to Lake Michigan. At the park, I met Lois Pauley. Lois and her family have camped at Ludington for 37 years, and she is known as the “Waffle Lady.” Eight years ago, she and her family began “Waffle Wednesday.” They would make waffles for the other campers or for whoever happened to show up. They began with a single waffle maker, but the free breakfast has grown so much that she now uses two double-waffle makers and goes through about eighteen pounds of waffle mix at a time.  Meeting passersby and hikers is what she enjoys the most about her breakfasts, and she says that she gains way more than she gives. To help keep track of her multitude of visitors, she keeps a scrapbook full of names, pictures, and park history. My family passed by her site after hiking in from an overnight backpacking trip in the dunes. Passing by, I jokingly asked if the breakfast was for anybody. Without pause she said it was and started making us waffles. The conversation and food was delightful.

Does the charity that you give, be it time or money, benefit all who are involved? Of course it does. Personally speaking, there were times that I and my family needed and benefited from charity programs. If it weren’t for the good people who volunteered their time and their charity, I’m not sure I could have finished college and gone on to teaching. It really made a difference in my family’s lives—what a good service they provided.

Here are a few places where you can be bigger than yourself in our community: The Brazil Food Pantry; the Humane Society; Riley’s Children Hospital; Catholic Food Charities; the Goodwill store; Senior Living Facilities; rotary clubs; libraries; churches; the list just goes on and on.  Wherever you decide to spend your time, make sure that you are having fun. Remember, your time and work should benefit you and the organization you are helping.

What charities have you helped or benefitted from?

Natural Health and Home Remedies

Home Remedies

My Aunt Kathy is up from Missouri, and this weekend her, my mother, and I were speaking of the many spells, concoctions, remedies (tortures) that their mother (my grandmother) subjected my cousins, siblings, and me to in our youths. Anything from a coughs, the flu, spider bites, wasp stings, or 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 as medicinal and practical purposes. I hated to mention to Grandma 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 chewers 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—constipation was her go to diagnosis. If the prune juice didn’t quench grandma’s taste for inflicting torture, Castor oil did; the oil, a taste I will never, ever, forget was like the oldest, ugliest, and flat out meanest brother of stool softeners . . . it worked 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, and 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 coating.

Sometimes I felt as if Grandma and my mother sat at the window waiting/praying for one of us to fall and scrape a knee. Why else would they consider putting what felt like battery acid on our cuts and scrapes? Walking in the house with a banged up 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 in the early 1900s 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.

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 present, and not the 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 our stomachs from eating too much candy. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down?—baloney! Grandma used a spoonful of sugar to transparently mask the disgusting taste of turpentine (the kind that cleans paintbrushes). It worked as well as a smile masks a shark.

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—but my arm healed. So again, I guess it worked.

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? What kind of home remedy tortures do you remember?

Technology and the Myth of Social Media

Are you a digital native or a digital immigrant? If you did not have email, text messaging, or smartphones when you were young, you are a digital immigrant—someone who is new to the imposing processes of constant connectivity. If you have always had these technologies, you are a digital native—you are used to the connectivity and are a bit out of place without it.

Technology has taken over virtually every aspect of our lives. It seems that regardless of where I am,  someone, anyone, can contact me electronically—I can run, but I can’t hide. If you are less than 25 years old, you are likely ok with this. You tend to look at your phone every thirty seconds to check a Facebook, Twitter, email feed, or text message during face to face conversations failing to realize how off-putting it is to someone like, well, me.

We have long thought that technologies are causing us to lose human touch connections. However, I think just the opposite is true. Humans are social creatures, and we always will be. We are simply using other mediums to socialize.

Take Facebook for example. Without it, you actually must engage another human being in conversation that is physically in front of you with manners and etiquette. With it, you begin conversations with hundreds or thousands of acquaintances that are on your friends list. I liken Facebook to being in a gymnasium with everyone I have ever remotely known. We all have megaphones, and we are all shouting things like, “I just want to thank God because my hubby got up and let the dog out while I slept. I am so blessed!” or vague posts such as, “I am so disappointed in you. You people really need to grow up,” leaving me to wonder who you are talking to and then assuming that maybe it’s me—ick, the stress of it all.

There is also the problem of social media used in unlawful or unethical ways. We all know of someone, usually a child or predator, who has used social media to make someone else’s life miserable. They wrongly use the internet to humiliate, insult, or extort our children, and then leave parents and schools to pick up the pieces of a young and wrongly shattered life.

How does this happen? We parents allow it to happen, but how can we prevent it? Here are some things that will help: 1) Make a habit of going through your child’s phone. If they don’t like it, or if you catch them deleting text messages, take the privilege away—no excuses. 2) Insist that your household computers and tablets only be used in the most traveled room of your home (usually the kitchen or living room). Remember that when you let your child have internet capabilities in the privacy of their bedroom, you are letting them walk through the virtual door of God knows who. You wouldn’t let them walk into a random strangers home, so don’t allow them to enter virtual homes either. 3) Teach your child that if they are attacked online to ignore it. I know how hard this is, but trust me it is the only viable solution. 4) Remind them, and yourself, that we all leave digital footprints and that anything we post via the internet is forever and can be screen captured—do you really want a vicious response or risqué photo to reappear when you are applying for your dream job?  5) Know every password to every social media account your child uses—again, no excuses. 6) Talk to your child about the importance of tone when writing and discuss the importance of kindness.

Do I do this with my own children? You bet I do. They may not always like it, but to echo my parents, they have no choice in the matter.

I, at 42, am a digital immigrant; however, I am a willing victim of 21^st century technology. I have a blog, a Twitter account for my students and their parents, a seldom used Facebook account, and a     couple websites—if you can’t beat’em, join’em.  

How do you feel about this subject? Do you believe these technologies are hurting or helping us?

“Cat’s in The Ladle” and Other Food Myths

Have you heard rumors about restaurants? Juicy rumors about restaurants serving cat meat, rat infestation, or dead animals in sandwiches? This hearsay pops up from time to time. Twisting our taste buds and cracking the gears in our stomachs and minds. We know what these rumors do to us: we spread the word quickly without reasoning the validity of the gossip.

Think about the restaurants that have to battle the rumor and fight to keep patronage. These myths, malicious rumors, often cripple their short term business and have the potential to hurt the longevity of their restaurant. Most of the time, the rumors are false. Why do these tales surface?

With this legend, as with all, it is important to break the story into the following parts: who is the rumor about? Who is it told to? And then, why is it told?

According to Snopes.com, the complaint of foreign objects in food is most often against one of the bigger restaurant chains and is for monetary gain—the accusers are trying to extort money. However, the accusers, in their moment of self-indulged brilliance, imagine a quick cash payout and fail to realize that when the claim is false, the process is a form of extortion. The accusers will file a claim with the police department in hopes of making their claim “legitimate.” This is where the get rich quick scheme goes horribly wrong—it all comes out in the wash so to say. As the claim is investigated by the legal system and by the restaurant and as the claim is found false, the shysters are quickly charged with filing false police reports and grand larceny. They then scramble and try to drop their charges against the restaurant, but it is too late.

Other restaurant myths are aimed at non-chains or against specific ethnicities. These claims are results of xenophobia—fear of foreigners. When I was young, my town of Desoto, Missouri got its first Chinese Restaurant. The restaurant, owned by a very nice and wonderful Chinese family, was clean and friendly. The restaurant thrived; we had nothing but pizza and burgers before they moved to town.  As their business grew, the bottom line of the local restaurants began to fall. Stories of filth and the serving of cat meat, both of which were not true, surfaced.

Xenophobic rumors are common in small towns throughout the country. These tales are usually started by territorial business owners in the same town who are losing customers. The loss of income is combated with vicious hearsay. The target of the rumor can do nothing more than wait out the gossip.

What kind of rumors have your heard about restaurants in your own town?

 

 

Digital Citizenry and Social Media Myths

Are you a digital native or a digital immigrant? If you did not have email, text messaging, or smartphones when you were young, you are a digital immigrant—someone who is new to the imposing processes of constant connectivity. If you have always had these technologies, you are a digital native—you are used to the connectivity and are a bit out of place without it.

Technology has taken over virtually every aspect of our lives. It seems that regardless of where I am,  someone, anyone, can contact me electronically—I can run, but I can’t hide. If you are less than 25 years old, you are likely ok with this. You tend to look at your phone every thirty seconds to check a Facebook, Twitter, email feed, or text message during face to face conversations failing to realize how off-putting it is to someone like, well, me.

We have long thought that technologies are causing us to lose human touch connections. However, I think just the opposite is true. Humans are social creatures, and we always will be. We are simply using other mediums to socialize.

Take Facebook for example. Without it, you actually must engage another human being in conversation that is physically in front of you with manners and etiquette. With it, you begin conversations with hundreds or thousands of acquaintances that are on your friends list. I liken Facebook to being in a gymnasium with everyone I have ever remotely known. We all have megaphones, and we are all shouting things like, “I just want to thank God because my hubby got up and let the dog out while I slept. I am so blessed!” or vague posts such as, “I am so disappointed in you. You people really need to grow up,” leaving me to wonder who you are talking to and then assuming that maybe it’s me—ick, the stress of it all.

There is also the problem of social media used in unlawful or unethical ways. We all know of someone, usually a child or predator, who has used social media to make someone else’s life miserable. They wrongly use the internet to humiliate, insult, or extort our children, and then leave parents and schools to pick up the pieces of a young and wrongly shattered life.

How does this happen? We parents allow it to happen, but how can we prevent it? Here are some things that will help: 1) Make a habit of going through your child’s phone. If they don’t like it, or if you catch them deleting text messages, take the privilege away—no excuses. 2) Insist that your household computers and tablets only be used in the most traveled room of your home (usually the kitchen or living room). Remember that when you let your child have internet capabilities in the privacy of their bedroom, you are letting them walk through the virtual door of God knows who. You wouldn’t let them walk into a random strangers home, so don’t allow them to enter virtual homes either. 3) Teach your child that if they are attacked online to ignore it. I know how hard this is, but trust me it is the only viable solution. 4) Remind them, and yourself, that we all leave digital footprints and that anything we post via the internet is forever and can be screen captured—do you really want a vicious response or risqué photo to reappear when you are applying for your dream job?  5) Know every password to every social media account your child uses—again, no excuses. 6) Talk to your child about the importance of tone when writing and discuss the importance of kindness.

Do I do this with my own children? You bet I do. They may not always like it, but to echo my parents, they have no choice in the matter.

I, at 42, am a digital immigrant; however, I am a willing victim of 21^st century technology. I have a blog, a Twitter account for my students and their parents, a seldom used Facebook account, and a     couple websites—if you can’t beat’em, join’em.  

How do you feel about this subject? Do you believe these technologies are hurting or helping us?