Tuesday, December 1, 2015

It's Okay to Wish Me a Merry Christmas

Received this wonderful message from the North Pole!


 
As I wrote in Starting the Conversation in December's issue of Northern Connection magazine, it's okay to wish me a "Merry Christmas!"
 
As I also mentioned, I never mind receiving a "Happy Holidays" or a "Season's Greetings" so won't you send us your favorite wish for the holidays?
 
 
 
 
 






Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Should Everyone Get a Trophy?





In the October issue of Northern Connection magazine, I started the conversation regarding participation trophies due to Steeler James Harrison being very public about returning his sons’ participation trophies. ESPN gives a great account of what happened: http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/13447657/james-harrison-pittsburgh-steelers-takes-away-kids-participation-trophies-says-awards-earned.

What do you think about Mr. Harrison’s viewpoint? After all, there is only one Vince Lombardi Trophy for the Super Bowl. Just as there is only one Mirror Ball Trophy awarded to the winner for Dancing With The Stars. Of course, baseball gets a bit confusing – even if you don’t win the World Series, you still get a pennant for winning the league, which depending on the stats for the two leagues, a team with more wins in a more difficult division may actually not make it to the World Series. Ultimately, making the World Series NOT a competition between the two best teams. This baseball discussion might have to be a future blog!

But getting back to the main point; Mr. Harrison feels participation trophies send a wrong message to children and leads to an entitlement attitude. Participation trophies did come from parents wanting their kids to get “something” for trying their best and giving their time and effort. But I believe the debate is whether the “something” should be a trophy which equates to an achievement. Why can’t the “something” be as simple as a ribbon or a team hat or “something,” does acknowledgement for participation really need to be a trophy?
Some competitions have even changed the “scale” of awards. For example, in many dance competitions, they have changed bronze, silver, gold medals, as in the Olympics, to gold, high-gold and platinum. I can’t help but ask, "why?" Every participant knows if they don’t get platinum, they aren’t eligible for top awards and scholarships, so why change the scale?

I think I’ll stick with my bake-offs – a blue ribbon is still a blue ribbon.
But, as always, what do you think? Feel free to leave comments below or email me at NorthCon@consolidated.net.

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

What do you think of the Cursive Controversy?



Is writing in cursive a thing of the past? In this month's issue of Northern Connection magazine, I point out that schools today just don't have the time to teach both cursive and keyboarding so they have been put in the difficult position of choosing the future over the past. Understandable, until you spend some time with the younger generation and realize that they can't read your writing - no matter how good or bad your penmanship is.

What does this mean for future generations? Are we cutting them off from the past?

And what does this mean for the whole industry of handwriting analysis?

As always, I am interested in your thoughts on the subject! Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below:

Saturday, August 1, 2015

The Expense of Technology...Is it Justified?




In this month's issue of Northern Connection magazine, I started the conversation on the expense of technology and wondering when or how it is justified. In the article, I referred to the example that a 10-year old colleague of mine gave me regarding 3D movies and how they can be as much as $10 more a movie and how he "didn't feel that was fair."

By way of another example, let's look at SMART phones - you can get an Android phone for free, or a reasonable price, so long as you agree to a lengthy contract with the telephone carrier. Then, phones range all the way up to the latest iPhone from Apple, and depending on how much storage space you want is even more incredibly expensive. Why is the iPhone so expensive? Because it's popular, because it's trendy and people are willing to pay it. Me? Being a tech-head, I know how insecure both Android and iPhone are and so for me, like everyone in the CIA and the Secret Service, I go Blackberry all the way - hopefully soon the new Blackberry operating system will soon be available on certain Androids but until then, your phone is in serious jeopardy of being hacked. So, for me, I feel the expense of a Blackberry is justified.

Personally, I think the frustration over the expense of technology often comes from the fact that it doesn't last very long for the money or it is out-of-date soon after you buy it. Have you ever had the experience where you no sooner by a gadget or computer only to find out a newer version is coming out or now available?

What do you think? When is the expense of technology justified for you?

Thursday, July 2, 2015

What's Fracking?

In this issue of Northern Connection magazine’s “Starting the Conversation,” I was wondering about your thoughts on the new drilling technology known as fracking.

This conversation seems to have two definite sides since so much money is involved either way.

For more information on the pros, check out www.pioga.org.
For cons, check out www.pennfuture.org.
Also, as I mentioned in the article, Oklahoma (not on a fault line) has started experiencing earthquakes that are registering 3.0 and more with some reaching as high as a 5.0 magnitude. According to an article in the New York Times, the Oklahoma government has just concluded it is due to the fracking: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/22/us/oklahoma-acknowledges-wastewater-from-oil-and-gas-wells-as-major-cause-of-quakes.html?_r=0
In addition, I heard that insurance rates are going up to any homes within a certain radius of the blast zone?
But most importantly, what do you think of fracking? Please feel free to leave comments below or contact me through the magazine!

 
 

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Response to Vaccination Conversation

In the April 2015 Northern Connection article, I "Started the Conversation" regarding the controversy over vaccinations and I received the following response from a reader that is very interesting but too long for the comment section so I decided to post the response as its own page:

From a Reader: Hi, Ms. Anderson, this is my (long) response to your April 1 “Start the Conversation” article. 

Thank you so much for starting (and continuing!) this conversation. This is a tough subject, and one that has upset and frightened people on both sides of the issue.  We all want to keep our children and the whole community as healthy and safe as possible.

I think you’re an excellent writer, and you’re very brave to dive into this subject.   I don’t quite agree with your theory that most parents delaying or refusing vaccines are making wrong decisions based on lack of knowledge about the diseases, though I’m sure that some do fall into this category.  I’m old enough to have had some of these diseases, and there’s a pretty large disconnect between what these diseases are like in developed countries, and what today’s young doctors believe about them. I think it’s more an issue that today’s doctors have forgotten (or were never taught) that some of these diseases are not the deadly plagues the vaccine industry paints them to be, at least, not in developed countries with modern sanitation, clean water, good nutrition, and advanced medical care.

I don’t feel like I can really advise new parents on which invasive medical procedures they should give their children, but I would like to correct some of the common misconceptions about vaccines and the diseases they are meant to prevent.

First of all, I think most of the parents who are criticizing vaccine safety are not looking particularly at autism, but at the tens of thousands of reports of severe adverse vaccine reactions that are reported every year, and at the thousands of cases that have been conceded and compensated by the US Department of Health and Human Services.

These reactions include disabling and painful autoimmune disorders, paralytic and other neurological disorders, seizures, brain damage, and death.  The number of such reactions reported may have been extremely rare 30 or 40 years ago, but it has drastically increased in the last few years, as has the number of reactions conceded by the government.

Some of us have experienced these reactions first-hand already, or our children have. Aren’t these reactions just as valid as the experience of those who have gotten the diseases the vaccines are meant to prevent?  Shouldn’t our experience be part of this conversation?

Secondly, I think most people assume that each vaccine is just as safe and effective as the manufacturer claims.  Shouldn’t we look at each one and see if it really is?
Let’s look at at the MMR and measles for starters.

Most people today don't know that in 1955, 7 years before the first measles vaccine was introduced, the mortality rate for measles was about 1 in 5,000 reported cases—but many cases went unreported, as measles was then considered an annoying but not dangerous disease that all children got, like colds and flu  According to:  http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/189/Supplement_1/S1.long, 4 million individuals in the US were infected with measles every year, with a death rate of about 1 in 10,000.
Although the MMR is extremely successful at reducing measles incidence for the SHORT TERM, it is causing unforeseen major problems.

The immunity acquired by the vaccine is not lifelong, in spite of the promises of "lifelong immunity from a single shot!" that were made in order to initially sell the vaccine. What actually happens: 5-10% don’t develop any immunity to measles (and 35% don’t for mumps) after the first shot, so a second shot was added for everyone.  Still, even after 2 shots, about 5% are considered “non-responders” for the measles portion of the vaccine (15-25% for mumps) and for the rest, immunity wanes sometime in adulthood, which causes 2 very troubling issues:

a) Vaccinated adults with waning immunity are, for the first time, at risk of getting the disease, including from recently vaccinated individuals, who shed live virus cells. This was not a phenomenon when the vaccine was first instituted, because the adult population at the time already had lifelong immunity from having had the disease as children.  We are seeing it now, with documented cases of adults actually contracting measles from their own recently vaccinated infants.  Measles contracted in adulthood has a much higher complications rate than measles contracted in childhood.

b) Infants are now at risk of contracting measles, not only from recently vaccinated siblings, but from exposed adults whose vaccine-induced immunity has waned. They were not at risk for this before the introduction of the vaccine, for the following reason: measles was originally a CHILDHOOD DISEASE, not an infant disease. Infants didn't get measles, because they were born with measles-specific antibodies conferred by their mothers, who had gotten measles as children. This protection generally lasted through infancy and even toddlerhood. If the mother breastfed, duration of protection continued even longer.  This protection wore off sometime in childhood, when measles was, for the vast majority, not a severe disease.

But mothers who never had measles, even if vaccinated for it, do not confer that protection to their infants.

So the MMR may have been excellent at reducing measles incidence in children, but has then shifted the burden of disease to the two populations most at risk for complications--adults and infants. Since the vaccine does not produce complete or lasting immunity, there will always be outbreaks, even with 100% compliance—with the infants and waned-immunity adults shouldering most of the risk of complications.

In spite of industry claims, measles has never been eradicated in the US (or anywhere else), by the way. Yes, we read such claims, but it’s actually never happened.  There have been several  hundred of cases every year, not including vaccine-strain measles, which for some odd reason are reported as “atypical measles” and are not counted in measles statistics. These are cases that are either caused by the vaccine itself, or are cases caught by someone exposed to either vaccine shedding, or to an individual developing a case of vaccine-induced measles. 

There is no evidence that vaccine-induced measles is any milder (or any worse) than wild-strain measles.

This leads us to the issue of vaccine safety. The MMR has NEVER been adequately assessed for safety, and the Cochrane Reviews—a group of pro-vaccine MD/PhD researchers who are widely considered the gold standard of mainstream medical review--have been pointing this out for at least the last decade. Their exact words in every review of the MMR are: “The design and reporting of safety outcome  MMR studies, both pre- and post-licensure, is largely inadequate.”  http://www.cochrane.org/CD004407/ARI_using-the-combined-vaccine-for-protection-of-children-against-measles-mumps-and-rubella.

We cannot say with any certainty how many neurological or autoimmune disorders are triggered, as there is no adequate tracking system, nor are not adequate safety studies looking at this. http://www.cochrane.org/CD004407/ARI_using-the-combined-vaccine-for-protection-of-children-against-measles-mumps-and-rubella.

We do know that some occur.  We do not know how many, or why they occur at all.
Merck’s own website tells us that MMR-induced seizures are most likely to occur within 8-14 days of vaccination—yet post-marketing surveillance fails to look at this, and health care providers receive no education for the particular time frame, so they do not know to report such reactions to VAERS. (I challenge you to find a mother of a a one-year-old who can remember much from two days ago, let alone two weeks ago—most would never associated a febrile seizure with a vaccine received 8-14 days ago.)

 Merck’s website also tells us that up to 25% of adult females will develop arthritis/arthralgia as a side effect from MMR; there is no way to know how many 12-month-old infants (which is the age the vaccine is given) also develop painful inflammatory/autoimmune joint pain, nor what other “silent" symptoms or repercussions there might be, as 12-month-old infants are generally not able to explain what hurts.

The package insert also tells us that the MMR has never been assessed for carcinogenicity nor for fertility impairment.

This is very disturbing. This vaccine has been recommended since 1971, and the post-marketing information on safety outcome is still inadequate?

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.  There are 13 other vaccines on the schedule, with widely varying safety, efficacy, and/or necessity issues.

Yes, it’s frightening to think that vaccines don’t do everything promised. It’s also frightening that so many people marginalize and demean anyone who criticizes vaccines.

And yes, it is confusing for new parents, especially when many sources on both sides are inaccurate, misleading, or both—like the parents.com article you linked, which mentions only the most obscure serious vaccine reactions without mentioning the most common serious reactions. It also throws around some VERY convoluted statistical estimates as though they were known facts (for example, reporting the pertussis death rate as 1 in 1,500 when the CDC reported 1 in 2,400 “pertussis-related deaths” in 2012, although I would agree that even 1 in 2,400 is a serious problem). There are several other major problems with that article, and I’ll be happy to go into more detail if you like.

Even if we leave autism out of the discussion, vaccination today is NOT a "no-brainer.” It’s not an all-or-nothing issue; what is true of one vaccine or disease is not necessarily true of all, and we should not be thinking of this as "vaccination: yes or no?”  We should be looking at each disease, and each vaccine, and we should be looking at the studies, not at a 1-size-fits-all schedule for all vaccines/all children, and not at few industry-paid experts promoting that schedule.

Much remains unknown about the immune system, about autoimmunity, and in particular, about unforeseen adverse reactions to vaccines.  The experts can’t seem to predict who will have a severe adverse reaction to vaccines; when it happens, they don’t know why—not even when the reaction is quickly recognized and reported, which makes it all the more disturbing to learn that such reactions are increasing.

That’s why it’s so important to keep the conversation going, and I am deeply grateful to you for starting it (and continuing it!). 
Thank you so much,

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

The Best of Fatherly Advice

Since Father's Day is in June, I started the conversation in the June issue of Northern Connection magazine wondering about the best of fatherly advice and pointed towards the "Pittsburgh Dad" series - I love this series and even though it's already summer here's one of my favorites regarding snow days and the Pittsburgh Dad's advice of eventually having to pay the piper...



What is the best (or worst) fatherly advice you ever received? Be sure and leave your advice in the comments below!

Monday, May 4, 2015

When Do We Start Listening to Our Mothers?

Happy Mother's Day to all the mother's out there! In the May issue of Northern Connection magazine, I "Started the Conversation" recalling and wondering about all the great advice we get from our mothers and when do we start listening?

In the article, I related this personal story:

In addition to the typical advice, I have received a ton of great advice over the years from my own mother. The advice ranges from how to clean (although I think she may be giving up on that one), how to see someone else’s side or point of view, how to manage a household and so much more. But I think the best advice she gave me and my sister was through our teenage and college years when she simplified all rules into one guiding principle: “Just don’t do anything that will cause me any grief.” And that pretty much summed it all up. We knew not to drink, smoke, stay out late, behave or dress promiscuously, drive carelessly or give into any other temptation that might, in any way, shape or form, do anything that could result in causing our mother “grief.”

I still get great advice from my mother, for which I am always grateful. especially the lesson behind the phrase, "This too shall pass" - so no matter what I may be going through, I should always either count my blessings or avoid becoming despondent or too stressed out because - this too shall pass...

So I would love to hear from you and learn what was the best advice you ever received from your mother? Or, what has been the best advice you have ever received on motherhood for all the expectant mothers out there?

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Vaccinations: A Tough Decision

In the April issue of Northern Connection magazine, I stated the conversation about the tough decision facing young parents in the medical vs. rumor debate and asked what you think about the touch decision itself.

One of the most intriguing facts I found in my research was that parents need to do their research and weigh the odds: "The measles vaccine, for instance, can cause a temporary reduction in platelets (which control bleeding after an injury) in 1 in 30,000 children, but 1 in 2,000 will die if they get measles itself. The DTaP vaccine can cause seizures or a temporary "shocklike" state in 1 in 14,000 people, and acute encephalitis (brain swelling) in 11 in 1 million. But the diseases it prevents -- diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis -- are fatal in 1 in 20 cases, 1 in 10 cases, and 1 in 1,500 cases, respectively."

Here's the rest of the article: http://www.parents.com/health/vaccines/controversy/vaccines-the-reality-behind-the-debate/

Also, here's the link to the CDC site on vaccines: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/

In Starting the Conversation, I mentioned that my theory about the debate is that young parents haven't witnessed the diseases, the effects and the death tolls, but what's your theory? Do you have any advice?

Please leave comments below and let's Continue the Conversation:


Sunday, March 1, 2015

Coping with an Empty Nest?


This month it all about letting go. Never an easy thing especially when it’s a loved one and a loved one who has been dependent on us and, truth be told, who we have been dependent on, as well, dependent for companionship, sense of being needed and so much more.

Once, I was volunteering as a marshal for the PGA and one of the main organizers came up to me and said – “How do you all raise children here in Pittsburgh? We LOVE having events here – the teenage volunteers are GREAT! They show up, they work hard, they do what is asked of them and take it seriously. They’re just GREAT!”

I said, “It’s not like this in the rest of the world?”

He said, “Heck no! Everywhere else, especially in California, they’re lazy, spoiled, mean, entitled, and irresponsible – nothing like here in Pittsburgh – the exact opposite, as a matter of fact.”

“Well,” I said, “I don’t have children myself but I can tell you that Pittsburghers don’t raise children, we raise adults. And parents take a great source of pride in how their children turn out and that is to be hard workers, responsible citizens and great parents themselves.”

In talking with this PGA professional, I was so incredibly proud of being a Pittsburgher and the wonderful job all the parents do in raising their children and young adults.

Do you have any advice or experiences to share? How do you cope with being an empty nester?

Please leave comments below!

Monday, February 2, 2015

What's the Fad with Fad Diets?




I started the conversation in Northern Connection magazine about the alluring fad of fad diets, exercise machines and the like and asked, “Why do you think we find them alluring?” Each definitely brags about their success stories from no carbs to hill-climbing machines.

Of course, at least for me, I know there are some excuses that I love to make – my favorite is that I’ve lost over 100 pounds – I’ve just lost the same 10 pounds 10 times. A friend of mine says that “there are two kinds of people in this world, those that eat to live and those that live to eat” – I most definitely fall into the latter category but still, I would like my clothes to fit better, etc. I think my biggest problem besides the scale,  is that I just love to enjoy eating out, new recipes and I love to make recipes that friends and family really gobble-up and just love to savor.

Everyone says that the key is to find something you love to do – I love to play golf but it isn’t having any real effect on the waistline. But, that’s probably my fault as I should walk the course rather than rent a cart. Is there any diets or exercise that you have experienced that you have found that works – any for those of us over 40 and closing in on 50 – just doesn’t seem to want to move.

But what do you think? What have you found that works to take it off and keep it off? Please feel free to comment in the section below: