Lift Up Your Hearts!

A family member was feeling chronically tired, unusual for someone of her age and apparent health. Suspecting anemia, the doctor did some blood tests. Lo and behold, her iron levels were fine—but she was deficient in vitamin D! From what I've heard, that's not unusual for Americans, especially those who live in the northern parts of the country. I grew up knowing that vitamin D was important for preventing rickets, a disease I had mentally relegated to history, like smallpox and scurvy. (I actually thought about smallpox more frequently than rickets, since I am of the last generation to receive routine smallpox vaccinations.) However, it turns out that vitamin D is essential for a lot more than that, including a healthy immune system. As with nearly everything health-related these days, there's controversy over how much is needed, but one thing is clear: many of us are deficient, and could safely use a lot more than we are getting now.

I find it interesting that the tests my doctor orders for every annual exam, which check my blood for multitudinous levels of this and that, do not include measures of vitamin D, or any other vitamin for that matter. Not that I'm worried about D in particular, given that we live in Florida. There's no doubt in my mind that the best way to obtain vitamin D is through exposure of our skin to the sun (don't tell my dermatologist I said that), not only because it is the most natural (there are not many un-fortified food with a lot of vitamin D), but because sunlight exposure produces other substances important to health, such as nitric oxide.

Let's see: For many decades, Americans have been increasingly avoiding the sun, spending nearly all our time indoors, and slathering ourselves with sunscreen when we are not. We have also been cutting down our intake of some of the best natural food sources of vitamin D: egg yolks, red meat, and liver, with fatty fish being about the only good source we're not encouraged to eat less of. (I'm certain it's not coincidental that fatty fish has throughout history been a popular food in lands where it's difficult or impossible to get sufficient vitamin D through sun exposure.) It's no wonder that we have a hidden epidemic of vitamin D deficiency!

I've always wondered why breast milk is apparently deficient in vitamin D, which is why babies who don't get fortified formula are routinely prescribed supplements. It doesn't seem right that the system designed for a baby's best nutrition should be so lacking. I can think of two possibilities: (1) mothers are themselves deficient, and thus can't provide what their babies need, and/or (2) in cultures with sufficient sunlight, babies have for millennia spent a great deal of time outdoors, naked or nearly so, and thus would be making their own vitamin D.

Florida is a good place for getting all the sun exposure we need. However, we too spend most of our time indoors, and shouldn't be complacent. When it was recommended from a couple of independent sources, I decided to download the dminder app on my phone. It's pretty simple, and lets me keep track of my vitamin D intake, from food, supplements, and exposure to the sun. In my case, the first two pale in comparison with the last, at least at this time of year.

Taking into account skin tone, clothing, weather, latitude, elevation of the sun, and time of exposure, dminder calculates approximately how much vitamin D I'm making through my skin for each exposure session (at least those for which I remember to start the app).

A few interesting observations:

• For the purpose of making vitamin D, there's no point to sunbathing except between the hours of 8:56 a.m. and 5:54 p.m., because the elevation of the sun is not sufficient at other times. (The hours change, of course, with latitude and the changing of the seasons.)
• Solar Noon at the moment is actually 1:25 p.m., thanks to our propensity for meddling with the clocks.
• In the present season, during which I wear shorts and a t-shirt, in the middle of the day I can easily generate 2000 IU's of vitamin D during a mere 25-minute walk around the neighborhood!

I will be interested to see what dminder has to say about the summer sun in New England.

Mark Schweizer's Liturgical Mysteries (St. James Music Press)

The Alto Wore Tweed (2002), The Baritone Wore Chiffon (2004), The Tenor Wore Tapshoes (2005), The Soprano Wore Falsettos (2006), The Bass Wore Scales (2006), The Mezzo Wore Mink (2008), The Diva Wore Diamonds (2010), The Organist Wore Pumps (2010), The Countertenor Wore Garlic (2011), The Christmas Cantata (2011), The Treble Wore Trouble (2012), The Cantor Wore Crinolines (2013), The Maestro Wore Mohair (2015), The Choir Director Wore Out (2018)

Back in 2000, I read and reviewed the first book in this series, The Alto Wore Tweed. I don't know what took me so long to get to the rest of it, but once I restarted, I couldn't stop. Four years ago, I said, "This book is just for fun. If there is something of redeeming social value about it, I didn't notice, but I laughed longer and harder than I have over a book in a long time." Our choir director introduced me to the series—we get some of our anthems from St. James Press, and are currently singing one by Mark Schweizer himself. Yes, he knows whereof he speaks when he writes about being a church musician!

Hayden Konig is the chief of police in St. Germaine, a small town in the mountains of North Carolina. He's also the organist and choir director of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, across the street from the police station, and a would-be writer of "hard-boiled" detective fiction. St. Germaine could be Jan Karon's Mitford....except for all the murders.

The stories could stand by themselves as delightful "cozy" mysteries, but what really makes them so amusing to me is Schweizer's highly accurate view of life in the Episcopal church, from a musician's point of view. Allowing for literary license, and concomitant exaggeration and hyperbole, there is so much about the Episcopal Church (and choirs, and other denominations, and small town life) that he just nails. There's plenty of wordplay of the kind I dearly love, and for those in the know, lots of what are known in the computing world as "Easter eggs"—here in Central Florida we call them "Hidden Mickeys." For example, here's one of my favorites:

[Speaking of a tent-revival preacher] The good reverend had an assistant who would be choosing the Gospel passages on which Hogmanay McTavish would preach each and every evening. This assistant was what many politically correct folks might call "Poultry-American." Other folks might call her "dinner." Her name was Binny Hen. Binny Hen the Scripture Chicken.

I'm certain many of Schweizer's gems have gone over my head, but having lived within five miles of Benny Hinn's ministry in Central Florida, I couldn't miss that one.

I said that there was nothing of redeeming social importance in these tales, but the truth is that they contain a good deal of accurate information about both Episcopal Church services and classical choral music. Granted, even in our heyday our thurifer was unable to draw Biblical scenes in smoke; I've never had a choir director who was independently wealthy (that's some wishful thinking on the part of the author, I suspect); and I doubt Tim keeps a pistol in the organ bench (though I've never checked). Thankfully, the rates of crime and moral turpitude among the choir, congregation, and clergy are greatly exaggerated, but for general misbehavior—such as persistent chatting during rehearsal, and whining about the music—it is spot on.

If the "crimes and moral turpitude" are all too human, the language is quite mild for modern writing, the worst I could find being the following passage, in which cleverness covereth a multitude of sins.

Her name was Barbara—Barbara Seville—and she was a mezzo. Some said she slid to the top of the opera world on her husband’s money: that before she married Aristotle bin Laden, she’d been demoted to seamstress and spent most of her time in the wings tucking up the frills instead of on the stage doing the opposite.

Here are some brief passages I particularly enjoyed. Expect further excerpts in subsequent posts. Some are from the mystery itself, and some from the detective fiction Konig writes in his spare time and copies onto the backs of the Psalm copies for the choir to read during the sermon.

"I thought you had given up beer for Lent," Meg said.

"I started to, but then I decided to give up meddling in church politics. In order to do that, I'm going to need the beer."

The following is unfortunately an accurate discription of our own church's sound system.

Our sound system in the church was minimal—just a little amplification for the readers and the priest. Trying to send music through it was akin to listening to a symphony over a CB radio.

I began to suspect that the alto section was trying to forestall the rehearsal of the Harris piece. The alto line had been giving them fits for the last two rehearsals. The soprano section, on the other hand, was sitting quietly and smiling demurely, having already mastered most of the notes in the upcoming anthem. Basses and tenors were, by all indications, asleep.

“You know there’s a handgun in the organ bench?”

“Yeah. That’s mine. It’s a Glock 9mm. Tends to keep the tenors in tune.”

“A new dive just opened up across from St. Gertrude’s. It sounds like our kind of place. Good looking beer-fräuleins in tight shirts, lots of German brews, and Baroque organ music from a three-manual Flentrop with a sixteen-foot heckelphone you can really hang your hat on.”

“Sounds sweet,” I agreed, suddenly interested. “What’s this place called?”

“Buxtehooters.”

"Nancy's off today, Dave's in at noon," I said, and sipped my coffee. "I'm hoping there's no crime wave till tomorrow."

"You're probably okay," said Cynthia. "We've had two murders in two weeks and I heard that yesterday someone tried to bludgeon the bishop to death with his own stick. That should do us for a while."

I sighed. "We've had two unrelated deaths and the bishop just happened to be standing in the way when Humphrey Brownlow decided to attack the video drone with the crozier during a naked baptism."

"Video drone?" said Pete. "Naked baptism? I've got to start going back to church."

"You know," said Cynthia, giggling, "I've heard of other churches that get together to sing hymns of faith, hear a sermon, pray for each other, and then go out to lunch afterward."

"Where's the fun in that?" I said.

I've done a lot of business with Shutterfly in the past, which is why I'm still on their mailing list despite all my projects having been relegated to the back burner for quite a while, due to time and priority issues. This was in an e-mail that come about a month ago.

On its face, this could be thought of as simply a considerate move on the part of the company. The fact is, however, that Father's Day is the only time for which I've seen such an offer. For Mother's Day, Valentine's Day, Christmas, "Pride Month," or any other occasion about which someone might take offense, the (reasonable) expectation seems to be that customers will understand that Shutterfly is happy to promote any occasion that causes people to spend money, and exercise their option to participate, or not.

What is so especially offensive about fathers? Every single person who is or has ever been on the face of this earth has a father. You can't get more inclusive than that. You may not like your father, he may have been abusive, he may have abandoned you. Perhaps you are grieving because your own father has died, or because a child of whom you are the father has died, or because you want desperately to be a father yourself but are not, or because you are estranged from your own children.

However, the simple, inescapable, biological fact is that you have a father. Without him, you would be literally nothing.

(Will that always be the case? I've seen enough changes over the past seven decades to rule out nothing. What am I saying? I've seen enough in the past four years to be skeptical of anything that begins, "It can't happen...". If you, yourself, are a clone, or the product of some manipulation that didn't start off with an egg and a sperm, let me know. I don't promise to believe you, but you might have an interesting story.)

Honor Your Father made the top-10 list of imperitives, along with Don't Murder, Don't Steal, Be Faithful to Your Spouse, and other rules that make life worth living.

It is popular, for reasons complex and no doubt at heart diabolical, to diminish the importance of men in general and fathers in particular. Don't fall for it.

Honor your father.

I miss the Muppet Show! Thanks to a friend with some exciting news, I was reminded of The Cat Came Back. My friend wasn't aware of the song, so I went looking on YouTube.  There are several versions, including some highly sanitized and no doubt considered more appropriate for children, but this is my favorite.

Hope is doing great, nursing and sleeping well.  Heather, too, feels well and actually (to her mother's eyes, anyway) looks more rested than she did in the last month of pregnancy.

On Wednesday, Jon and Grace will go to Boston, so she can have her post-day-100 bone marrow aspirate. Prayers will be much appreciated!

Grace appears to be doing very, very well. We do video chats, and it's wonderful to see her smiling, hear her laughing, and observe as her language blossoms.

The BMA is an important test, to give a picture of what's going on under the surface. Plus, it involves anesthesia, which is always a special concern. Last time they had to poke her twice to get enough sample, so we're praying that they can do it with just one this time.

Thank you all!

UPDATE 6/6/24 Grace made it through the procedure well, though that's all I know at this point.  Boston isn't the best at sharing results, seeming to prefer the "no news is good news" approach.  Chimerism results come much later, anyway.

Hope Serena Daley
Born Friday, May 31, 2024, 6:50 p.m.
Weight: 9 pounds, 11 ounces
Length: 22 inches

Hope was born at home, 17 minutes after the family's midwife arrived. Her timing was amazing; she made her appearance at the exact time her oldest brothers had planned to leave for their orchestra concert. Needless to say, they hung around a little longer. But they made it in good time, and it was an excellent concert—we watched the livestream. Too bad the audience was slightly reduced, but Hope can be forgiven for stealing the show at home.

Grace, the proud big sister.

Twenty-three hours later: Hope and Joy.

On June 8, 2023, we were in Gdansk, Poland. It was just for a day, and Gdansk was not for the most part a particularly pleasant city to visit. Poland has had more of a struggle than, say, East Germany in the aftermath of winning its freedom back in the 1980's, and Gdansk is far less clean and modern than the former East Berlin.

However, Gdansk was as moving and as inspiring as Berlin, where we had touched remnants of the Berlin Wall and stood at the site of Checkpoint Charlie. Arguably, Poland led the revival that liberated Eastern Europe, and it was an awesome experience to see the Gdansk shipyard where the Solidarity Movement had its beginnings.

An unexpected additional blessing was that we were in Gdansk for the Feast of Corpus Christi, and we were vividly reminded that in Poland during the Soviet era, the Catholic Church resisted the assaults on Christianity more successfully than in most other Eastern European countries, and that the Church's leadership and courage was a major factor in their liberation.

It came as a complete surprise to us, walking around the city, suddenly to find ourselves in the middle of their Corpus Christi Day procession, and what a moving experience that was. Even with all the tourists (like us) milling around and taking pictures. (I was not so moved as not to notice the very clever sound system, with speakers strategically placed throughout the procession to keep everyone together. I've been in too many much, much smaller Palm Sunday services, in which the tail of the procession gets hopelessly and painfully out of sync with the head, not to appreciate this innovation.)

I have nothing to improve on the Memorial Day posts I have made in the past, except this thought that has been on my mind lately.

Perhaps the best way we can honor those who stood bravely "between their lov'd home and the war's desolation" is to stop taking for granted the freedom they gave their lives to protect. Let's not defile their sacrifices by treating lightly the present-day assaults on our sacred liberty and Constitutional rights, but work to preserve what was gained at so great a cost. 

Oh! thus be it ever, when free men shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

We travelled to Bethesda, Maryland recently for my nephew's wedding. We originally booked our flights with Spirit Airlines, but they kept changing our outgoing flight time until it no longer worked for us, so we cancelled that and went with Southwest. That turned out to work well, making it easy to meet two of our granddaughters at the BWI airport. Our return flight, which wasn't so time-critical, we kept with Spirit.

We had several hours to wait for the girls' flight, but BWI is a nice airport for waiting, even though they could do better when it comes to convenient charging outlets. After we were all together, we picked up our rental car from Avis—and experienced our first culture shock. They gave us an electric car! That added a lot of unnecessary stress to the weekend, but I'll save my ranting on that point for later.

Our hotel, a Hyatt, was very nice, if you discount the fact that the parking lot had zero working charging stations for electric cars.

Of course one of the best things about attending a wedding is getting together with family and friends—so much happier than the other major occasion for which far-flung relatives gather. One of the highlights for us happened the first day, when we encountered one of the groom's college roommates, who was wearing this shirt:

You don't run into fans of Jelle's Marble Runs every day, and finding each other was a thrill for all of us. 

The mother of the groom generously provided loaves of her famous pumpkin bread; when the TSA has made you leave behind your knife, you do what you have to do. (The card was washable.)

It was an evening wedding, so on Saturday we did this and that and tried to rest up for the upcoming long night. Some family members were ambitious enough to pay a visit to the National Mall, but the girls weren't excited about the idea and that was okay with us. We did get together at an historic diner for lunch.

The wedding itself was beautiful. Personally, I prefer church weddings, with Prayer Book liturgy and vows, and hymn singing. But it wasn't my wedding, and an outdoor ceremony in a beautiful park with vows written by the bride and groom and music I'd never heard before still managed to bring tears to my eyes. Before the ceremony was over, a light shower combined with chilly temperatures had several of us shivering, but every marriage will have its difficult places. If you don't let them get you down, you might get a double rainbow on the other side, like this one that blessed the reception.

I suspect something is wrong with our food, as well as our habits of living.

Reading my father's journals from 1959 to 1970, I noticed in particular something about our eating habits: we ate dessert three times a day. We had lunch dessert, dinner dessert, and bedtime dessert. I remember trying hard to convince my parents that we should logically have breakfast dessert as well, but was overruled. Probably because breakfast in those days was all too often sweet enough to be dessert in itself. True, we didn't have pre-sweetened cereal, but we had sugar in a bowl on the table....

And yet we were not overweight, much less obese. Not thin, but a healthy weight. Moreover, not one of us ever worked out at a gym or had any kind of regular exercise program. Ordinary living kept us in decent shape. My father was an engineer with a desk job; my mother a homemaker.

What made the difference? I can only guess.

I'm convinced that our food was both healthier and tastier. After all, I am older than McDonald's. Milk from a local dairy was delivered in glass bottles to our front porch; it was pasteurized, but not homogenized. Meat came from local butchers; I liked it best from the Jewish butcher, because then I was allowed to nibble on the raw ground beef, as we knew it had not been in contact with any pork products. (Pork was an exception to "food was healthier back then"; trichinosis was still a big problem, caused by pigs being fed raw pork, or so I was told.)

We didn't have farmers' markets back then; what we had instead was nearby farms that sold some of their produce at stands along the road. Their fruits and vegetables were only available in season, but they sure were fresh, and clearly superior to what the grocery stores sold. Our food didn't have nearly the variety we have today, but it was enough, and it was good. There's a blessing in being able to have access to food flown in from halfway across the world, and ethnic restaurants on every corner, but overall, thanks to agricultural mass production, it doesn't have the flavor it once had.

Consciously or unconsciously, we undoubtedly eat more quantity in an effort to make up for lost quality.

The other big difference that I remember in our food is portion size. At home, we always had plenty to eat, but common sense, both nutritionally and financially, kept the portions quite a bit smaller than is common today, even at home. And restaurant portions are ridiculous now! When I was growing up, restaurant meals were very rare occasions, and fast food almost non-existent. Even in restaurants the portions were much smaller than today. I had my first McDonald's hamburger during college; it cost 23 cents and, if memory serves, was half the size of a quarter-pounder today.

One thing we didn't do much of was snacking. Except for a small bit of milk-and-cookies after school, which was primarily valuable for the debriefing/decompressing time spent in the kitchen while my mother prepared dinner, eating between meals was considered unnecessary and even unhealthy.

Did I mention that we mostly ate at home? The food itself was largely home-prepared.  Store-bought cookies, box cake mixes, pre-prepared salads, frozen meals—all either non-existent or considered far inferior to homemade. (Exception: Girl Scout cookies.)  [Update:  Thanks to Porter for catching my egregious misstatement, as I had orginally written "superior"! Not, I assure you, a Freudian slip.]

Then there was exercise. If there were fitness establishments, I never saw one. Gym class in school was for fun, not fitness: tumbling, marching, and playing games (including dodge ball) where winning was not of primary importance. There were no formal team sports that I remember before high school, though pick-up games of all sorts were common in our neighborhood, which abounded with playmates of all ages. Winter or summer, we were outside and active. Avid bookworm that I was, I still spent much of my spare time outside, either playing with my friends or wandering the fields and woods near our house. As I said, my father had a sedentary job, but walked for transport when he could (sometimes wearing snowshoes in the winter), played games in the yard with us and the neighborhood kids who congregated in our yard, and—though not as often as he would have liked—took us hiking in his beloved Adirondack mountains. There was also a good place to swim that was only an eight-minute drive from home, so you can bet that in those days without air conditioning swimming was a frequent summertime activity. Plus, he and my mother (occasionally helped by us kids), spent a lot of time gardening. Not farming, just ordinary suburban gardening, but everything was done by hand. Sawing wood, digging holes, planting bushes, roses, flowers, and even the occasionable vegetables, though the latter were much more efficiently obtained directly from the farms. Then there was mowing the lawn: keep in mind that this is what our lawn mower looked like:

I don't mean to imply that our situation was ideal. We were in a time of transition, and definitely headed in an unhealthy direction, but we were not all the way there yet when I was young. Both society at large, and the medical profession in particular, had already given up on breastfeeding and thought bottle-feeding with a concoction of sterilized water, evaporated milk, and corn syrup was the superior way to go. Someone with more financial sense than taste buds then introduced our generation to the instant orange-flavored drink known as Tang, and as a teenager I downed Carnation Instant Breakfast before going off to school. Unbelievably, these abominations still exist today.

But for a while, in my childhood, we ate nutritious foods full of natural natural flavors, and spent a lot of active time outdoors (without sunscreen). We even survived having regular bedtime dessert.

I am brazenly stealing Heather's post; I can't say it better.

This is the day the doctors consider the transplant to be successful. 

This doesn't mean that she's not still at risk for a bunch of things. But it does mean that Faith's cells are firmly established in her system and doing their job!

I couldn't resist posting this Future Proof video, because my husband is obsessed with flavored sparkling water, and our grandchildren love it, too—probably because they're allowed to drink more of it than they are allowed soda. Special note to said husband: check out this guy's favorite brand (9:17).

(14 minutes on normal speed, mild language warning. I am, by the way, really annoyed by the objectionable language that finds its way into so many YouTube videos. It would probably be easier to note when there isn't bad language. Good ol' YouTube, for whom "free speech" means you can swear to your heart's content as long as you refrain from expressing unfashionable opinions.

The long-anticipated Day +100 is rapidly approaching, but Grace managed to make it more exciting by picking up her first post-transplant cold. Turns out it is just a simple cold, but in her situation a runny nose and mild fever sent her on her first unscheduled return to the hospital post-transplant. There are so many things more serious than a cold that they have to check for, and they need to observe her closely to make sure her body is handling the challenge well.

I worried that she might fear the prison doors were closing around her again, but she took it well, and was very happy to beat her dad in Chutes and Ladders twice in a row. (Does anyone besides me remember that the game was once called Snakes and Ladders?)

Here's the short story version from Heather:

Overall, things have been going well, Grace's numbers coming back satisfactorily.

But then she got a cold. Just runny nose and sneezing. But after her nap, she had a mild fever. Boston wanted us to take her to Dartmouth, but Dartmouth said that if her fever went up, they'd be transferring her to Boston. So Jon decided to take her straight to Boston. (That was Tuesday night.)

They did a plethora of tests and the only positive was rhinovirus. But they wanted to keep an eye out on her for at least 24 hours, so they admitted her. She did get blood overnight, but everything else is looking good. Jon is hoping to come home tomorrow afternoon. She did some painting and lots of games with Daddy. He went over to the Dana Farber resource room to get her more books, since I had only packed her a few.

This is a really short version to get the word out and still get myself to bed relatively on time. Please keep up the prayers. Day +100 is just around the corner, and Jon discussed with the doctors the weaning process for the immunosuppressant drug.

I'm so very thankful that our family has not had any sickness from the time we had COVID at Christmas until now. Please pray that general trend continues and we keep sickness (and hospital visits) away.

Here's a really cool thing about the timing: Our nephew's wife (niece-in-law?), the one who's a pediatrician at Boston Children's, happened to be on duty in the Emergency Room Tuesday night!

Before Canada's Freedom Convoy, which catapulted his vlog into fame, if not fortune, my favorite Canadian lawyer, David Freiheit, was a mild-mannered YouTuber who expounded on legal issues in a funny and understandable way. Today this flashback to 2019 showed up, and I offer it to you, in case you want to vicariously experience some really exciting zip lines, and learn about liability waivers in the process.

The U.S. News & World Report has come out with another ranking, this time of U.S. states, based on factors such as education, economy, public infrastructure, safety and the environment. I don't usually care much for such lists, based as they often are on factors opposite to what I would like (e.g. "family-friendly" countries being those with free daycare, instead of economies that allow families to live on one income). Sometimes they might even be outright harmful, which this one could be considered.

Why? Because New Hampshire is ranked #2, and Florida #9. What's more, Florida ranks #1 in the categories of Education and Economy. (New Hampshire is #1 in Crime, i.e. lack thereof.)

That's a good thing, you say? Well, yes and no. But neither New Hampshire nor Florida needs some magazine to tell us we have it good. We know that, and I'm not at all sure we should want to let those from other states in on the secret. I used to argue with the many people who say, "I could never live in Florida; it's too hot and too buggy; there are hurricanes and alligators." Now I don't bother. We love to have people visit—tourism is a big part of our economy—but we don't need any more permanent residents. You voted for the policies that made your state unliveable; don't come here and mess up ours. As the New Hampshire bumper sticker says, "Welcome to New Hampshire; Don't Mass it up."

(In case you're curious, the #1 state overall is Utah.)