Flowers in downtown Black Mountain

 

 

Today's quote:

When we embrace the poignancy and vulnerability that come with gratefulness, we’re reminded that time is limited and experiences are fleeting, so we had better treasure deeply what we have now and live more fully into what we know really matters.

KRISTI NELSON

At the gardens

Watson Community Gardens. Last week I walked around the day after Tropical Storm Fred passed through...where I knew the Swannanoa River had overflowed her banks!

Beautiful cherries hanging from a tree...there were several cherry trees, as well as other fruiting trees!

The sand which the Swannanoa left on the walk in the flood of the day before.

Today's quote:

When we debunk the myths and learn the truth about how aging works, we discover that we can expect to age well.

More shops in Black Mountain

 

Trinity Pharmacy, Hemp products, but of course none with THC included, however CBD is excellent for good health!

Fish shop...for the sportsman who goes out and catches wild ones with a hook!

A gallery...I should go in there sometime!

Blair was making some bowls in the pottery shop.

Aren't these cute ceramic pumpkins? They'll last through many seasons!

A natural setting with a tiny waterfall and pond by the pottery shop.

 

Today's quote:

We can start fresh in this very moment, not needing to wait for a new day to start anew

Favorite perhaps?

 

The little family of adolescent Mallards were entertaining while we ate lunch.

There are usually a couple of crews of Hispanic men also eating, a lot of them like being inside for the air conditioning. It says a lot that these construction workers like the fare here.

I keep trying different shrimp dishes...and so far my favorite is Shrimp Tacos Baja. 

Tables are much closer again, and staff is only half way masked. I asked one gentleman where his mask was, and he said he'd been vaccinated. I (wearing my mask until time to eat) said so was I. I didn't say, but you can still pass on Delta virus! but I sure thought it. our waiter was masked throughout his service, and he got good tips!

Flat Creek is behaving herself again after Tuesday when she bathed the patio...a rise of maybe 3 feet. This flood didn't get inside the restaurant, as one a couple of years ago did. Since then there have been several construction projects here.

My birthday lunch with Teresa!

Today's quote:

Times of scarcity need to be met with generosity, times of fear with comfort, times of uncertainty with presence. When we care for those around us, we create a field of love.

THOMAS HÜBL

Yellow flowers

  

A bank of yellow flowers overlooking Lake Tomahawk for the summer.

Today's quote:

Paying attention is one of the kindest things we can do—for ourselves, for others.

SHARON SALZBERG

Quilt shop or Home Decor?

  

I didn't know the quilt shop had become a home decor shop...

Today's quote:

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.

DENNIS WAITLEY

The month of August is...

 First I consider it my birth month, and then I think of all the Leo birthdays, which even started in July.

Then there are all my relatives who were also born in this month...including a couple in early Sept. Lots of summertime babies!

Somehow two of my sons married Leo women. And the other son is a Leo himself.

Though I was born on the cusp of Virgo, and have a few traits from my independent self, I'm happy to also have a granddaughter and my youngest son born in early Sept.

OK, I don't really put much energy into astrology any more...kind of outgrew it...I guess.

Even though I read an announcement saying the pool had closed, there were people swimming at 10:45 when I arrived for my chair yoga class in the Lakeview Center last Fri.

I hadn't been in this room for almost 2 years...and was happy to remember a few people...some even by name! I had arrived early because I wanted to talk with Deb, the teacher, but had forgotten that she had another Yoga class just before this downstairs.

So I was happy to take part in the chair yoga class, without my back bothering me at all. 

And when I left the class, others were coming to have lunches (at $1.50 each donation.) I suggested to the woman in charge that it would be great if they offered a vegetarian choice. She smiled at me. We know that's a long way from happening. They are always struggling to keep the program running. During many months past, they had been boxing up lunches for people to pick up in the parking lot. The Council on Aging is trying to give many elderly people a nutritious meal, because they think many of them wouldn't have any hot meal at all. I can see that from my own hesitancy when I'm not feeling well to not want to cook anything.

Some tiny kids and moms were at the pool when I left around noon.

More about August? Well, I am planning to do some more work on my Ancestry charts...thinking of all the thousands of ancestors that I have!

Last year at this time...

 

Halloween 2020

I was in Pulmonary Rehab...with the great staff seen here...though they shared Dave the nurse with Cardio rehab.

For graduation from the second rehab in a row, I got the specialists to take off their masks for a pic with me. Honestly I had had a relapse of coughing  just a week before, so my final pulmonary results were not that great. But I did enjoy continuing to work out at the gym at the Cardiac Medical Center with my insurance picking up the tab.

Let's review where I was in June of 2020. For several weeks I could barely walk to the mailbox or garbage cans outside my apartment. My heart attack had been May 15, and the stent and hospital stay were over by May 19.

This was in the midst of early COVID-19 medical treatments while I had been hospitalized, and then the Ornish Rehab program by the end of July (Here is a link about my beginning Ornish Rehab.) All of the medical providers had to have amped up to have adequate sterile treatments. So we disinfected our hands regularly, stayed 6 feet away from each other, and masked continually.

Dr. Asbill and Tamara. He was the head of Ornish, and she was the nurse coordinator. The program closed in Dec. 2020. I've heard that Mission Hospital is starting a rehab program using the Pritiken Diet. So at least they are aware how important diet is to rehab!

I had my first post hospital doctor's visit sometime in June. I was put on many medications when I had been discharged from the hospital, and even spent a week wearing a heart monitor, because I was so short of breath doing anything. No arrhythmia was found at least. I continued to have blood tests, and calls with various nurses. 

My resting selfie with the heart monitor while exercising. This really gave me a sense of assurance when I pushed myself and was breathing heavily.

It was a hard couple of months...until I started the Ornish program July 30. I didn't exactly need medical care, and many friends brought me foods (vegetarian of course). I kept in touch with my friends, but hadn't been able to see any of them because we all were distancing and isolating. I was really lucky my friend, Helen, was willing to take me to the hospital and pick me up a few days later.

The staff which gave us Ornish direction...Tamara, Michelle, Jay, Kelly and Chris.

Another friend has a full time job, but can frequently text me when she doesn't have customers...and we stayed in touch a lot! I would also talk by phone to another friend weekly...and I certainly spent a lot of time sleeping! 

On graduation from Ornish, we gave the staff little cups with their names on them...pictured are Patrick, Jay, Jordan, Michelle and Tamara

Food? Many gifts from church friends, and I'd already done the "stock pile of 2 months worth of food" in case there wasn't any other available. But I was glad not to cook. I remember a good friend from church brought some cleaning supplies, which were hard to find in June 2020.

I had kind of enjoyed having nurses take care of me for the 4 days of hospitalization...I kid you not. Then I was home with was a sudden sense of my independence in which I really didn't know how to treat myself. I knew I had to exercise by walking, so started going to the lake again, stopping as needed!

I could sit at the computer (and did) and put out the monthly newsletter at the end of May and June. I could continue my blogs, which were mainly sharing photos around my life (still are!)

I liked these reclining steppers...NuSteps.

Half of the machines were closed to use, so people could remain 6 feet apart. We didn't have to wear masks while exercising, which was a bit help. I never heard of any of the participants getting sick from that.

I just looked at some of my old blogs during the time I did rehab...I really felt cared for, and was optimistic in my life. I've become a bit more - sober perhaps...not as dedicated. I know that I can continue to eat vegetarian and exercise (which I really need) but some days I just don't have much care, and am back to wanting someone else to cook for me, so I purchase food that's been prepared that I can take home to eat. That includes fish and sometimes red meat. Yes, I allow myself to have some things that aren't on my diet. And I allow myself to skip exercise sometimes. 

Will I live until this time next year? Or the next? I don't feel very attached to continuing this life, though most of it is enjoyable!

I'm currently looking at how to grieve my loss of pottery creativity. And maybe to find something my shaky hands can do still. Who knows...

A scientist who dealt with racism

 Dr. Ernest Everett Just, (August 14, 1883 – October 27, 1941)

 "Since history is not the factual record of events but the dramatic narrative our species superimposes over events, it is historical irony, in the classic Ancient Greek literary sense, that [Dr.] Just was among the biologists whose work laid the foundation for genomics and its sobering revelation that we share 98% of our DNA with a head of broccoli, dwarfing to absurdity the sub-negligible biological differences on which humans peg the artificial othernesses of their senseless biases." 

[Dr] "Just felt increasingly stifled by the swell of racism in his nation’s bosom, which kept him from obtaining a teaching position at a major university worthy of his talent and credentials."

Source: BrainPickings Newsletter 5/23/21

Ernest Everett Just (Marine Biological Laboratory Archives)

Dr. Just "...admired as the “black Apollo” of science by the Italian women working at the Neapolitan laboratory for which he left Woods Hole, is the subject of The Vast Wonder of the World  by librarian-turned-author Mélina Mangal and Colombian illustrator Luisa Uribe — a lovey addition to the growing corpus of picture-book biographies of cultural heroes to foment young hearts with inspiration for growing vast minds and tenacious spirits.

Dr. Just "...believed that "life as an event lies in a combination of chemical stuffs exhibiting physical properties; and it is in this combination, i.e., its behavior and activities, and in it alone that we can seek life.".^[31] He also wrote: "[L]ife is the harmonious organization of events, the resultant of a communion of structures and reactions",^[11] and "We [scientists] have often striven to prove life as wholly mechanistic, starting with the hypothesis that organisms are machines! Living substance is such because it possesses this organization--something more than the sum of its minutest parts"^[32] He argued forcefully that the "ectoplasm," the outer region of the cytoplasm, and not the nucleus, constitutes the heart of the dynamic cell. He was convinced that the surface of the egg cell possesses an "independent irritability," which enables the egg (and all cells) to respond productively to diverse stimuli.^[33]

Source: Wikepedia

1.  Just, Ernest Everett (1988). The Biology of the Cell Surface (Facsimile ed.). New York: Garland Pub. ISBN 978-0824013806.
2.  Just, E. E. (1933), "Cortical cytoplasm and evolution". Am. Nat. 67: 20–29.
3. ^ Newman, Stuart A. (2009), "E. E. Just's 'independent irritability' revisited: The activated egg as excitable soft matter" Archived 2016-01-18 at the Wayback Machine. Molecular Reproduction and Development 76 (11): 966–974.

Why whole food plant based diet?

I've gone through some deep thought, then asked a few professionals, mainly my doctors, what they thought of my diseases and any dietary recommendations. That left me still not sure. Then I just ate what I most liked for a while, but avoided a lot of dairy and meat, and did have more fats and cholesterol raising foods. Tomorrow I'm having my fasting blood work done. I've had 6 solid months of eating a whole food plant based, low fat diet. And only in the last month have I fluctuated.

So I'll not be able to tell exactly how that stricter level of eating might have affected my numbers. But I have found out why it was important for me to try other foods for the last month. First, I couldn't cook when I was really sick with pneumonia. I ate minimally, and mainly soups, crackers,and liquids but was also on antibiotics, which also played havoc with my gastro-intestinal system.

Incidentally, these are other doctors who are talking about WFPB diets, and Dr. Ornish isn't involved anywhere. 

As I came out of fevers, I continued to not want a messy kitchen that had to be cleaned up, so I went to various take-out restaurants. That was at least once a day for five out of seven days a week. And some of those meals had fish or chicken in them, as well as veggies.

I did find I preferred to avoid high fat foods. But I was craving salt a lot. Not sugar. I was happy still with my daily 2 fig newtons. But I could go through a bag of potato chips, or popcorn a day. I haven't figured out why except that the drugs I'm on have really dehydrated me. My skin looks like an alligator's. I have to rub vaseline on my feet so they don't crack from the dryness. I sure hope I can get off whatever drug causes that symptom. I'm drinking a 10 oz. glass of water every hour or so during the day. Swelling sometimes in my ankles, but not directly related to salt intake...and maybe more related to how long I sit here at the computer.

So these comments are for my own journaling efforts.

And here's a link to one of the best (though its 10 years old now) movies which promotes whole food plant based diets to reverse some diseases, including cardiac conditions.

Forks Over Knives on YouTube. If you haven't seen it, or some of the other ones about eating for health, do take the time to see it. There's really no reason we should continue to eat in an unhealthy way.