Children, Meet Your Vegetables

Baltimore chefs donate their time to program that introduces kids to the joys of healthful eating

By Jacques Kelly

May 26, 2009 - The third-graders at a Catonsville elementary school recently took a break from the usual cafeteria fare of corn dogs and pizza to sample organic, field-grown salad greens mixed with black olives, apple cider vinegar and oil, Maryland strawberries and honey.

And they became chefs for a day, mixing their own salads and making their own dressing.

Their experience last week was a culmination of a three-morning seminar, called "Days of Taste," which teaches children about what's produced on Maryland farms, tells them about non-processed foods and encourages them to grow a little more adventurous at mealtime.

The program is offered at 17 Baltimore city and county schools, and the instructors who donate their time are some of Baltimore's best-known chefs, including John Shields of Gertrude's, Spike Gjerde of Woodberry Kitchen, Galen Sampson and Christian DeLutis of Dogwood restaurant and local chef and baker Ned Atwater.

"You can really see the light bulbs go off when some of the city children have never eaten a fresh, raw vegetable and they taste it in a salad," said Atwater, who has been teaching the classes for nearly a decade.

"Over the years, we've probably been to half the public schools in Baltimore," he said.

Last week, he took his aluminum salad bowls and non-iceberg lettuce to the Westowne Elementary School on Harlem Lane in Catonsville.

"Our program is different because we have real professional chefs and professional farmers," said Riva Kahn, a cell biologist who lives in Timonium and helped develop the program. "It opens the eyes of these kids to different career possibilities. Our angle is to let them discover that healthy food and good food are not mutually exclusive."

While not every plate at Westowne was completely clean at the end of the lesson, most were fairly empty.

"I like olives," said Samuel Cushman, 9, who explained his grandmother likes to put them in salads.

JanayaWilson, who said she likes to cook - and makes her own salad dressing - is not a fan of red peppers. "I've never liked them," she said, leaving an unconsumed section of them of her paper plate.

As part of the experience, the students boarded buses for One Straw Farm in White Hall in northern Baltimore County. They saw lettuce being started in the greenhouse and the growing fields. (Other suppliers include Brad's Produce in Churchville and Calvert's Gift Farm in Sparks.)

"I learned that compost is banana peels and leftover foods," said Kye McMath, who also said he now knows what part of the tongue are associated with sweet and sour.

Atwater led a post-salad discussion on whether the foods tasted salty, sweet, bitter, sour or "umami" - a Japanese word meaning savory.

"We put in things you wouldn't think would go in a salad - like strawberries - and they tasted really good," said Vivian Montgomery-Walsh, a 9-year-old. "Going to the farm was really cool because we learned how a seed turns into veggies and fruit."

The Westowne food and cooking class attracted a number of parents as helpers and faculty members as observers.

"The math and the science are great, then you can ... look at it as a health class," said Westowne's principal, Patricia Vogel.

"Days of Taste" is a project of the American Institute of Wine and Food, a nonprofit educational organization founded by television chef Julia Child, wine maker Robert Mondavi and others.

"It was a program that originated in French schools," said Atwater, who worked with Kahn and food writer Cynthia Glover to tweak the mini-seminar for local school children.

Members of the Baltimore AIWF chapter gave $14,000 for the school events last year.

All the chefs donate their time to teach the students.

Other chefs in the program include Nona Nielson-Parker of Atwater's, Michael Marx of Rub Barbecue, Barry Fleischmann of Innovative Gourmet, Vicky Barkley from The Classic Catering People, John Walsh of Chef's Expressions and Marc Dixon of Bistro Blanc in Glenelg.

"Over the years, I've seen food become more and more processed commercially," Atwater said. "I want to teach kids about a balanced diet and where the food they eat comes from."

Daniels Urges Graduates to "Live for Others, Not Just Yourselves."

INDIANAPOLIS (May 10, 2008) - Governor Mitch Daniels today challenged the graduating class of Butler University not to stand on the shoulders of the Baby Boom generation but to instead follow "The Butler Way" and lead lives of humility, unity and thankfulness.

Daniels encouraged graduates to, "live for others, not just yourselves. For fulfillment, not just pleasure and material gain. For tomorrow, and the Americans who will reside there."

The full text of the governor's speech is included below:

Butler University Commencement
Remarks by Governor Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr.
May 9, 2009
Hinkle Fieldhouse, Indianapolis, IN

In a job in which public speaking is an occupational hazard, there are two categories I try my best to evade: eulogies and commencements. The thoughts of the audience are likely to be elsewhere, and the chances of saying anything remotely original or memorable are, well, remote.

But, now and then, an invitation proves irresistible and, for me, Butler's was one of those. I have long felt as strongly about this school as a non-alumnus can, for many reasons. I had so many good friends who went here. The first love of my life went here. And then there is Butler basketball.

As a 10-year-old, new to Indiana, Butler basketball was about the only entertainment our family was able, or at least willing, to purchase for me. On countless frigid evenings, someone's dad would drop us off in the Fieldhouse parking lot, and someone else's dad would pick us up, after watching the Bulldogs either beat or scare the pants off some big-name larger school. I might stumble over my own college's fight song, but I still know yours by heart.

And I'm still an avid Butler fan. I love the style of play, the homegrown teams, and, of course, the incomparable venue that is Hinkle. But most of all, I love the soul of Butler basketball, the ethos, the philosophy espoused by Coach Hinkle so long ago, but still alive. It comprises simple and timeless principles: humility, unity, thankfulness. There's not a word about athletics in it. We can bet that, if Tony Hinkle had been the Dean of Business or the Chair of the Pharmacy Department, he'd have laid down the same guidelines. Rightly, you call it "The Butler Way."

If you're like I was, and most college graduates I've known, you will soon look back and say "Wow, I got out of there just in time." It's a very human tendency to conclude that one's high school or college went straight to hell right after they left. It's typical to recall these years with increasing fondness and nostalgia, to think of them as special, and to imagine your class as the greatest the school has seen.

On the record so far, you are. Your entering SAT scores, and the difficulty of many of the courses you've just taken, surpass any in Butler history. But the record of your class has only a first chapter; what counts is what you will do with your education, and your lives, starting - that is, commencing, tomorrow. Years from now, when you are addressing commencements or attending them as parents, people will review that collective record, and pronounce you either a good, an ordinary, or, who knows, maybe a great class. Of course, what really matters is what you do or don't achieve individually, but prepare to be lumped together in various ways and assessed as a group.

Among the grossest and most arbitrary of such lumpings is the idea of a generation, a generalization at war with the obvious reality that any age cohort is widely diverse, containing heroes and villains, angels and devils, geniuses and fools. The parents here today are wonderful people, who have loved you, sacrificed for you, and taught you well. Neither you nor they would be here, if that were not so. But many of their peers made very different choices.

Even though the whole notion of a "generation" must be discounted as the loosest of concepts, within limits it is possible to spot the defining characteristics of an age and the human beings who create it. Along with most of your faculty and parents, I belong to the most discussed, debated and analyzed generation of all time, the so-called Baby Boomers. By the accepted definition, the youngest of us is now forty-five, so the record is pretty much on the books, and the time for verdicts can begin.

Which leads me to congratulate you in advance. As a generation, you are off to an excellent start. You have taken the first savvy step on the road to distinction, which is to follow a weak act. I wish I could claim otherwise, but we Baby Boomers are likely to be remembered by history for our numbers, and little else, at least little else that is admirable.

We Boomers were the children that the Second World War was fought for. Parents who had endured both war and the Great Depression devoted themselves sacrificially to ensuring us a better life than they had. We were pampered in ways no children in human history would recognize. With minor exceptions, we have lived in blissfully fortunate times. The numbers of us who perished in plagues, in famine, or in combat were tiny in comparison to previous generations of Americans, to say nothing of humanity elsewhere.

All our lives, it's been all about us. We were the "Me Generation." We wore t-shirts that said "If it feels good, do it." The year of my high school commencement, a hit song featured the immortal lyric "Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today." As a group, we have been self-centered, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, and all too often just plain selfish. Our current Baby Boomer President has written two eloquent, erudite books, both about..himself.

As a generation, we did tend to live for today. We have spent more and saved less than any previous Americans. Year after year, regardless which party we picked to lead the country, we ran up deficits that have multiplied the debt you and your children will be paying off your entire working lives. Far more burdensome to you mathematically, we voted ourselves increasing levels of Social Security pensions and Medicare health care benefits, but never summoned the political maturity to put those programs on anything resembling a sound actuarial footing.

In sum, our parents scrimped and saved to provide us a better living standard than theirs; we borrowed and splurged and will leave you a staggering pile of bills to pay. It's been a blast; good luck cleaning up after us.

In Christopher Buckley's recent satiric novel Boomsday, the young heroine launches a national grassroots movement around the proposal that Boomers should be paid to "transition", a euphemism for suicide, at age 75, to alleviate this burden. That struck me as a little extreme; surely 85 would do the trick. Buckley meant his book for laughs, of course, but you'll find nothing funny about the tab when it comes due.

Our irresponsibility went well beyond the financial realm. Our parents formed families and kept them intact even through difficulty "for the sake of the kids." To us, parental happiness came first; we often divorced at the first unpleasantness, and increasingly just gave birth to children without the nuisance of marriage. "Commitment" cramps one's style, don't you know. Total bummer.

A defining book of our generation was Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which chronicled the exploits of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, practitioners of the drug-taking '60s counterculture in its purest form. On the last page of the book, in a pseudo-intellectual, LSD-induced haze, Kesey chants over and over the phrase "We blew it."

In that statement, if in no other way, Kesey and his kind were prophetic.

As time runs out on our leadership years, it's clear there is no chance that anyone will ever refer to us, as histories now do our parents, as "The Greatest Generation." There is no disgrace in this; very few generations are thought of as "great." And history is not linear. Many generations fail miserably at the challenges they confront, and their societies take steps backwards as a consequence. Consider Japan before World War II, or Americans in the decades before the Civil War.

And yet in both those instances and many others, the people who followed did great things, not only redeemed all the failings but built better, fairer societies than their nations had seen before. In fact, true greatness can only be revealed by large challenges, by tough circumstances. And your opportunities for greatness will be large.

Among the reasons I usually duck commencements is the danger of lapsing into clichés, and I'd bet that no cliché is more worn out on these occasions than the phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants." Like all such phrases, it was inventive and interesting when Sir Isaac Newton coined it, but centuries later it's overdue for retirement. In one commencement speech I read about, our current Secretary of State managed to use it twice in a single paragraph.

Today, if you are thinking about standing on the shoulders of the past generation, I'd say "Please don't." Of course, I don't mean for a moment that you should not appreciate profoundly the health, wealth, comfort, the great innovations, and the general absence of world conflict which make this age in this nation the luckiest that ever was. After all, "thankfulness" is a pillar of "The Butler Way."

What I mean to suggest is that you take into the world the values written on the locker room wall at Hinkle, which are not much at all like those associated with the Baby Boom. That you live for others, not just yourselves. For fulfillment, not just pleasure and material gain. For tomorrow, and the Americans who will reside there, not just for today. That song I mentioned ends with the refrain, "And don't worry 'bout tomorrow, hey, hey, hey." When it comes on oldies radio, please, tune it out. Do worry 'bout tomorrow, in a way your elders often failed to do.

And please, just to revise another current practice, be judgmental. Whatever they claim, people always are, anyway - consider the healthy stigmatization of racist comments or sexist attitudes or cigarette smoking. It's just a matter of which behaviors enough of us agree to judge as unacceptable.

As free people, we agree to tolerate any conduct that does no harm to others, but we should not be coerced into condoning it. Selfishness and irresponsibility in business, personal finances, or in family life, are deserving of your disapproval. Go ahead and stigmatize them. Too much such behavior will hurt our nation and the future for you and the families you will create.

Honesty about shortcomings is not handwringing. Again, this is a blessed land, in every way. Amidst the worst recession in a long time, we still are wealthier than any society in history. We are safer, from injury, disease, and each other than any humans that ever lived. Best of all, we are free. The problems you now inherit are not those of 1776, or 1861, or 1929, or 1941. But they are large enough, and left unattended, they will devour the wealth and, ultimately, the freedom and safety we cherish, at least in our thankful moments. So you have a chance to be a great Butler class, part of a great generation.

You're thinking, "Don't lay all that on me. My one life's plenty to take care of," and that's true. But if enough of you choose to live responsibly, for others, for tomorrow, the future will remember you that way, when it assesses you as a lump.

You are in fact off to a great start, provided, that is, that you absorbed a bit of the tradition around here. Here's a real, if apocryphal, story we were told at your age. It was said then that Butler recruiters would travel to high schools on the East Coast promising parents "Send your child to Butler and we will send them back the same person you raised."

Surely, if ever actually stated, that was never true. You are a very different person than you were on arrival, certainly wiser and more knowledgeable, which are two different things. I hope you are also more inclined to unity. To humility. To thankfulness. If so, you leave the lot fully loaded, equipped with all the standard features and the factory options, too. You're ready for the road.

And if enough of you drive carefully, and responsibly, one day on this hallowed wood floor some other soon-to-be-forgotten speaker will look back and say, "Oh, 2009. That was a great class. They were part of a great generation. They did it The Butler Way."

The Top 10 Things Celebrity Chefs Won't Tell You

The Cliff Notes version:

1. “I’m a celebrity first and a chef second.”

2. “There’s absolutely no reason to buy my cookbook.”

3. “Just because I have a cooking show doesn’t mean I’m a chef.”

4. “Sex sells, even with foodies.”

5. “I’m addicted to porn—food porn, that is.”

6. “The dishes I make on TV don’t always work so great at home . . .”

7. “. . . and sometimes they’re just plain gross.”

8. “It might be my restaurant, but that doesn’t mean I cook there.”

9. “My show is one long commercial for my cookbooks.”

10. “Bottom line: My celebrity status is great for business.”


All the details here.

Yes, You Can Start a Restaurant in a Down Economy...

But why in the world would you want to?

So you're thinking about opening a restaurant. The allure of fame and fortune seduces you, your love of food drives you, and you want to heat up your life in an exciting industry. That's all fine and well--just as long as you make sure the flame isn't turned up too high. Even in a healthy economy, the restaurant failure rate tells a grim tale, but in a recession, the industry is even more unforgiving. Expensive food spoils, labor costs are high, restaurant-goers are harder to come by, restaurants close and life goes on.

But we also know we're talking to a special breed of people: entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs have the drive to go against the grain and the nerve to try their luck in such a ruthless industry. We're not saying don't do it. We're just saying to equip yourself with the right tools or you might just find yourself at the bottom of the food chain. To help you get started, we reached out to a handful of industry experts and food entrepreneurs and compiled the perfect recipe for starting a restaurant or food business in a down economy.

Start with a Dose of Reality
Though you may be anxious to start stirring up business, you can't afford to skip this one step: building a solid foundation. "The biggest thing to avoid is 'Polaroid Syndrome'--here's me in my restaurant, here's me with my chef,'" warns Clark Wolf, founder and president of Clark Wolf Co., a food, restaurant and hospitality consulting firm. "That's not what this is. This is something very different and a lot more work."

Starting a restaurant requires in-depth knowledge about much more than just food. It's also about marketing, financing and people skills. Even if you're not single-handedly equipped with all that know-how, it's not necessarily a deal-breaker. "Take [on] a working partner, someone who's as equally involved in the business as you but brings something different to the table," advises Marilyn Schlossbach, a restaurateur and consultant who has been involved in the industry for more than 20 years.

Possessing the right knowledge is only part of the equation; having sufficient capital comprises the rest. "Historically, people have heard that undercapitalization is the No. 1 cause for failure in business," Wolf says. "It has never been truer. You really need to know not just how much money you need to open the restaurant, but also where the rest of it is coming from." Have enough capital to endure the first six months, Wolf advises, as well as an additional source of capital to get your business through several months after that.

Read the rest of the story here.

CARROT SOUFFLÉ

If you have trouble getting your kids to eat their vegetables, try this recipe.
Not only will they eat their carrots, they'll ask for more.

(Serves 8)

2 pounds carrots, chopped
1/2 cup melted butter
1 cup white sugar
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon mixed with
1 Tablespoon white sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add carrots and cook until tender, about 20 minutes. Drain and mash. To the carrots add melted butter, white sugar, flour, baking powder, vanilla extract and eggs. Mix well and transfer to a 2 quart casserole dish. Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar mixture.

Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature

Can You Trust a Skinny Chef?

Chefs Cook up a Weight-loss Solution

By Kelly Carter, Special for USA TODAY

Kristi Ritchey bought into the stereotypical chef image — rotund belly, chin to spare — for a while. She started cooking when she was 16, went to culinary school and nine years later ballooned to 260 pounds and wore a size 26.
"Everyone says 'Don't trust a skinny chef,' " says Ritchey, 27, executive chef at Greenleaf Gourmet Chopshop in Beverly Hills. "Well, you know what? I also don't like being a chef people stared at and wondered if I ate their meal. It was becoming very uncomfortable."

And unhealthy: Ritchey's wake-up call came when a prep cook rushed her to the emergency room. Now down to 150 pounds on her 5-foot-7 frame, Ritchey is among a new wave of U.S. chefs proving that size is not indicative of their talent. Not only are some losing significant weight, but their emphasis on healthier living is reflected in their menus — which means their customers reap the benefits as well.

Since losing more than 90 pounds, including 60 on an 800-calorie-a-day liquid diet, Kevin Hickey, executive chef at the Four Seasons Hotel Chicago, has "definitely added on (healthier) dishes," including a frittata made with egg whites, turkey, tofu, asparagus, low-fat mozzarella and tomato sauce.

He uses cream and butter sparingly. Instead of pan-searing his whitefish, Hickey cooks it in a stew with white beans. The liquid diet has helped him in the kitchen, where chefs agree the No. 1 rule is to taste.

"But I don't have to swallow it," Hickey says.

More...

Bus Driver Delivers Free Home-cooked Meals

JACKSON HEIGHTS, New York (CNN) -- Every day, unemployed men gather under the elevated 7 train in Jackson Heights, Queens. Many of them are homeless. All of them are hungry.

At around 9:30 each night, relief comes in the form of Jorge Munoz's white pickup truck, filled with hot food, coffee and hot chocolate.

The men eagerly accept containers of chicken and rice from Munoz, devouring the food on the spot. Quiet gratitude radiates from the crowd.

For many, this is their only hot meal of the day; for some, it's the first food they've eaten since last night.

"I thank God for touching that man's heart," says Eduardo, one of the regulars.

Watching Munoz, 44, distribute meals and offer extra cups of coffee, it's clear he's passionate about bringing food to hungry people. For more than four years, Munoz and his family have been feeding those in need seven nights a week, 365 days a year. To date, he estimates he's served more than 70,000 meals.

Word of his mobile soup kitchen has spread, and people of all backgrounds and status now join the largely-Hispanic crowd surrounding his truck -- Egyptians, Chinese, Ethiopians, South Asians, white and black Americans and a British man who lost his job.

"I'll help anyone who needs to eat. Just line up," Munoz says.

And at a time when food banks are struggling to keep up with skyrocketing demand, he's never been needed more. But for Munoz, a school bus driver by day, this work is a labor of love.

"When I see these guys on the street," he says, "it's like seeing me, 20-something years ago when I came to this country."

Munoz was born in Colombia and his father died in an accident when he was young. When his mother found it difficult to support Munoz and his sister, she made her way to New York, finding work in Brooklyn as a nanny. At her urging, Munoz followed in her footsteps, coming to the United States in the 1980s.

"She said this was a better future for us," he says.

Munoz obtained legal residency in 1987 and later became a citizen, along with his mother and sister. He never stood on a street corner to find work, but as an immigrant, he identifies with many of the men he feeds.

Munoz began his unorthodox meal program -- now his nonprofit, An Angel in Queens -- in the summer of 2004. Friends told him about large amounts of food being thrown away at their jobs. At first, he collected leftovers from local businesses and handed out brown bag lunches to underprivileged men three nights a week. Within a few months, Munoz and his mother were preparing 20 home-cooked meals daily.

Numbers gradually increased over the years to 35 per night, then 60. In recent months, that number has jumped to as many as 140 meals a night.

Sustaining this endeavor consumes most of his life. To his mother's dismay, his family's Woodhaven home is bursting with goods related to this work. An oversize freezer takes up most of the dining room, and the porch is lined with canned food and paper products.

Daily operations now run like a well-oiled machine. Munoz gets up around 5:00 a.m. to drive his bus route, and he calls home on his breaks to see how the cooking is going. When he gets home around 5:30 p.m. -- often stopping to pick up food donations -- he helps pack up meals before heading out to "his corner" in Jackson Heights.

"He comes here without fail," says one of the men. "It could be cold, it could be really hot, but he's here." Watch Munoz in action in Queens, New York »

On Saturdays he takes the men breakfast, and on Sundays -- his "day off" -- he brings them ham-and-cheese sandwiches. It's a relentless schedule, but either Munoz or his sister does it every night of the year.

"If I don't go, I'm going to feel bad," he says. "I know they're going to be waiting for me."

With the economic downturn, donations have slowed as the crowds awaiting Munoz's arrival have grown. But he is determined to do all he can to meet their needs.

Munoz estimates that food and gas cost approximately $400 to 450 a week; he and his family are funding the operation through their savings and his weekly $700 paycheck.

Asked why he spends so much time to help people he doesn't know, he answers, "I have a stable job, my mom, my family, a house... everything I want, I have. And these guys [don't]. So I just think, 'OK, I have the food.' At least for today they're going to have a meal to eat."

Want to get involved? Check out An Angel in Queens and see how to help.

Alice Waters' Crusade for Better Food

(CBS) When it comes to food, Alice Waters is a legend.

At age 64, she has done more to change how we Americans eat, cook and think about food than anyone since Julia Child. Waters was only 27 years old in 1971 when she opened her French bistro Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., today considered one of the finest restaurants not just in the United States but in the world.

Waters has produced eight cookbooks, but she's more famous as the mother of a movement that preaches about fresh food grown in a way that's good for the environment. The movement, now called "slow food," is a healthy alternative to "fast food." You might think this appeals only to the Prius-driving, latte-sipping upper crust, but Waters' ideas have gone mainstream.

It all started at Waters' culinary temple, Chez Panisse. She still shows up almost every day, as she has for the last 37 years, to oversee the cooking with her exquisite, infallible taste buds. It's not just the cooking that has made her famous: it's the ingredients. She was one of the first to serve antibiotic and hormone free meats and insist on fresh, organic, locally-grown fruits and vegetables.

"You started a revolution in food. How we think about food. How we cook food. But do you think of yourself as a revolutionary?" correspondent Lesley Stahl asked Waters. "I guess I do now, but when I started Chez Panisse I wasn't thinking of a philosophy about organic and sustainable. I just was looking for flavor," Waters replied. It's flavor that comes from serving only seasonal food, one of her hallmarks; say "frozen" and Alice Waters shudders.

Because all her food has to be fresh, she buys only from local ranchers, fishermen and farmers. People who meet Waters are struck by how gentle and dreamy she seems to be, and they wonder how someone like that became so successful. Truth is, Alice Waters is a steamroller, relentlessly going after what she wants.

And now she wants everyone to cook the way she does. And that has put her in the spotlight "People have become aware that way that we've been eating is making us sick," she said. She has become the leader of a movement to change how we eat. And she's getting traction. Now you can go to your neighborhood grocery store - even Wal-Mart - and buy organic. But in the process, she's become a target.

"People say Alice Waters is self-righteous and elitist. And these are words I've heard over and over," Stahl pointed out. "I feel that good food should be a right and not a privilege and it needs to be without pesticides and herbicides. And everybody deserves this food. And that's not elitist," Waters argued.

Read the complete Lesley Stahl interview with Ms. Waters here.

Congratulations to Class 53!

Congratulations to Class 53 of the Second Helpings Culinary Job Training Program, who graduated on March 13, 2009.

(Front Row, Left to Right) Ella Evans, Joycelyn Curley, Keith Rivers (Back Row) Chef Conway, Matthew Ball, Robert Sanders, Larry Stovall, Adam Yarbrough

Too Little Sleep May Raise Diabetes Risk: U.S. Study

NOW they tell me:

CHICAGO (Reuters) - People who get fewer than six hours of sleep at night are prone to abnormal blood sugar levels, possibly putting them at risk for diabetes, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

They said people in a study who slept less than six hours were 4.5 times more likely to develop abnormal blood sugar readings in six years compared with those who slept longer.

"This study supports growing evidence of the association of inadequate sleep with adverse health issues," said Lisa Rafalson of the University at Buffalo in New York, who presented her findings at the Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention in Palm Harbor, Florida.

Several studies have shown negative health consequences related to getting too little sleep. In children, studies showed it raises the risk of obesity, depression and high blood pressure. In older adults, it increases the risk of falls. And in the middle aged, it raises the risk of infections, heart disease, stroke and cancer.

Adults typically need between seven and nine hours of nightly sleep, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Rafalson and colleagues wanted to see if lack of sleep might be raising the risk for type 2 diabetes, the kind that is being driven by rising rates of obesity and sedentary lifestyles. It develops when the body makes too much insulin and does not efficiently use the insulin it makes, a condition known as insulin resistance.

Using data from a large, six-year study, they identified 91 people whose blood sugar rose during the study period and compared them to 273 people whose glucose levels remained in the normal range.

They found the short sleepers were far more likely to develop impaired fasting glucose -- a condition that can lead to type 2 diabetes -- during the study period than those who slept six to eight hours.

That difference held even after adjusting for age, obesity, heart rate, high blood pressure, family history of diabetes and symptoms of depression.

"Our findings will hopefully spur additional research into this very complex area of sleep and illness," Rafalson said in a statement.

A Really Great Recipe!

Yield:

One Happy Person


1. Take a 10 to 30 minute walk every day. And while you walk, smile. It is the ultimate anti-depressant.

2. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day. Talk to God about what is going on in your life. Buy a lock if you have to.

3. When you wake up in the morning complete the following statements, "My purpose is to __________ today. I am thankful for______________"

4. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.

5. Drink green tea and plenty of water. Eat blueberries, wild Alaskan salmon, broccoli, almonds & walnuts.

6. Try to make at least three people smile each day.

7. Don't waste your precious energy on gossip, energy vampires, issues of the past, negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment.

8. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a college kid with a maxed out charge card.

9. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.

10. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.

11. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

12. You are not so important that you have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

13. Make peace with your past so it won't spoil the present.

14. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.

15. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.

16. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: 'In five years, will this matter?'

17. Forgive everyone for everything.

18. What other people think of you is none of your business.

19. GOD heals everything - but you have to ask Him.

20. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.

21. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will stay in touch.

22. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.

23. Each night before you go to bed complete the following statements: I am thankful for __________. Today I accomplished _________.

24. Remember that you are too blessed to be stressed.

25. When you are feeling down, start listing your many blessings. You'll be smiling before you know it.

What's The True Value of Friendship?

The more friends you have, the more you earn, says a study. But modern life can allow little time to maintain meaningful relationships, so what's the optimum number of friends?

It's widely accepted that friendships are invaluable to the soul but few of us were aware that they could also boost the bank account.

A study of 10,000 US students over a period of 35 years suggests the wealthiest people are those that had the most friends at school. Each extra schoolfriend added 2% to the salary.

The researchers said this was because the workplace is a social setting and those with the best social skills prosper in management and teamwork.

Read more about the study here.

Talk About Your Hardened Criminals...

YORBA LINDA – A man who police say could be linked to a Viagra theft in December was arrested this morning – after dropping into the pharmacy through the roof.

At 2:30 a.m. today, a silent alarm went off at B&B Pharmacy on the 18500 block of Yorba Linda Boulevard.

When police arrived, they noticed that a hole was cut in the roof – similar to how they found the roof in December when a large amount of Viagra was taken and the pharmacy flooded during a rainstorm that evening, said Sgt. Bill Smyser of the Brea Police Department.

Read the rest of the story here.

NIH Study: Calories, Not Content, Determine Weight Loss

You aren't what you eat. You're how much.

That's the message from a two-year National Institutes of Health-funded study that assigned 811 overweight people to one of four reduced-calorie diets and found that all trimmed pounds just the same. It didn't matter what foods participants ate, but rather how many calories they consumed.

An intense debate has long raged over which dieting regimen is best. Low carb? High protein? Low fat? But the federal study, one of the longest of its kind, "really goes against the idea that certain foods are the key to weight loss," says Frank Sacks, principal investigator and a professor of cardiovascular-disease prevention at Harvard School of Public Health. "This is a pretty positive message. It gives people a lot of choices to find a diet they can stick with."

The study, published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, put participants on one of four diets: Two were low fat and two were high fat, and each of these included either a high-protein or an average-protein component. Carbohydrate intake ranged from 35% to 65%. All the diets were low in calories and saturated fat, and high in fiber, and participants were asked to exercise a fixed 90 minutes a week.

Patients, who attended counseling sessions, lost an average of 13 pounds after six months. After two years, they had lost nine pounds on average and trimmed two inches off their waists regardless of which diet they followed. The study, which ended December 2007, was conducted in Boston at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and in Baton Rouge, La., at Pennington Biomedical Research Center.

In the study, doctors calculated each participant's energy needs, and structured a diet that had 750 fewer calories than would be necessary to fuel his or her activity. Typical diets in the study had between 1,400 and 2,000 calories a day.

Continue reading here.

Blueberry Pomegranate Sorbet

A sweet frozen dessert with no fat, no dairy, and no added sugar. Also loaded with antioxidants.

1 cup Splenda sweetener
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup pomegranate juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 cups blueberries (fresh or frozen)
1/4 cup lemon juice

In a saucepan over medium heat, combine the Splenda, water, pomegranate juice, and salt. Cook, stirring, until the Splenda and salt have dissolved. Allow to cool completely.

In a blender or food processor, purée the blueberries with the syrup and lemon juice until very smooth. Do this in batches if necessary.

Strain through a fine mesh sieve to remove the blueberry pulp for a smoother texture, if desired. Cover and refrigerate until chilled, at least 4 hours.

Churn in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's directions. Sorbet will have the consistency of softserve ice cream when it's finished churning.

If stored in the freezer, remove about 15 minutes before serving to allow it to return to proper consistency for serving.

Makes approximately one quart.

Way to Look Out for the Sanctity of Marriage...

She has been Mrs. Scott, Mrs. Street and Mrs. Smith. She was also Mrs. Moyer, Mrs. Massie and Mrs. McMillan. But the former Mrs. Berisford, Mrs. Chandler and Mrs. Essex was born Linda Lou Taylor.

She grew up in the Central Indiana town of Alexandria -- a place that lays claim to the largest ball of dried paint in the world. Farther south is Greensburg, where a man once leaped from a plane 640 times in a day. More than a decade ago, the 68-year-old found her own way to bring Indiana a Guinness world record: She got hitched for the 23rd time.

Her first marriage was in 1957, for love. Her most recent wedding was in 1996, for publicity.

Now known as Mrs. Linda Wolfe, she is the most-married woman in history. She is also the most-married person alive. And she is alone.

Wolfe can't list her husbands in order. But she remembers things that matter. The nicest was George Scott, her first and -- at seven years -- her longest marriage. He was 31 and fresh from a stint in the military. She was 16 and just out of eighth grade. "We used to sing that song, 'I'm only 15 and he's 21,' " Wolfe said. "But we'd go around saying, 'I'm only sixteen and he's thirty-one.' "

The best lover was Jack Gourley, who liked skinny dipping and impromptu trysts. She wed him three times. The marriage to Fred Chadwick was the shortest: 36 hours. The love wasn't there.
The strangest exchange of vows took place at the Indiana Reformatory at Pendleton to a one-eyed inmate named Tom Stutzman, whom she said was wrongly convicted of rape. And her last beau . . . well, his history of marriage makes Wolfe seem almost chaste.

Wolfe has been married in front of judges and priests, in grand halls and living rooms. The bride wore a white taffeta gown. The bride wore a yellow, two-piece suit. The bride wore denim. She never wrote her own vows. And she always saw the end coming.

Two of her husbands were gay. Two were homeless. A few stepped out on her. One choked her and turned her lip inside out. Another secured the fridge with padlock and chain. Wolfe had enough bad experiences to rue the whole chaotic sequence. So one day, she squashed all her wedding and engagement rings into her daughter's dirty diapers, bagged them and waited by the curb for the trash collector. "I stood right there and watched, and they were beautiful rings," she said. "Good riddance."

Wolfe wears acid wash jeans and a sweatshirt, and goes heavy on the blush. Her hair used to be blond, but it's gray now. She lives in Anderson's Longfellow Plaza Apartments, a retirement complex that is HUD housing for the elderly. At $195 a month, it's affordable. She's been here three years, long enough to fill her room with trinkets, like her plastic Furby collection. Long enough for dust to gather on a half-dozen fake roses.

Medicine bottles, glass angels and crucifixes sit on the coffee table in front of her like talismans. Between lungfuls of smoke from her second Maverick 100 of the hour, she explains how she passes the time praying, and watching married TV couples like Ray and Debra Barone on "Everybody Loves Raymond" every night.

"It's easy to sum up," she said of her life. "When I was younger, I was just a snot-nosed kid, but the neighborhood boys were all in love with me. They all wanted to marry me."

Linda Lou Taylor was born in 1940, the youngest of seven children. Her father died when she was 2. Her mother took in washing and ironing and cleaned houses. "She made it -- took us through school," Wolfe said. "She was a real kind, sweet, loving mother. We grew up all of us Christians, till we got older."
As a young teen, Wolfe started chasing boys. She claims to have run off and unofficially married several of them, until her mother put a stop to it, pulling her indoors in the evening. Wolfe ended up with seven children of her own, born to her first three husbands. There's Ruth, who has three daughters. Becky is on her third marriage. Melody was a lingerie model. Robert died of cancer. Louis is in prison for a drug-related offense. Joe and Dan round out the set of siblings, all of whom endured a cavalcade of stepfathers and suitors.

"They don't come around me," Wolfe said of her brood. "They've got their own lives to live. "
Becky visits Wolfe occasionally. She said the kids try not to discuss their mother's marital odyssey -- not because they're mad, but because they're busy.

"People see it as something different, but it wasn't that way with us kids. It was hard to grow up with," Becky said. "We were made fun of when we were in school."

Her notoriety went way beyond school. By the early 1990s, Wolfe was commanding appearance fees of $5,000 to $20,000 on the talk-show circuit. "I've been on Joan Rivers, Geraldo, Phil Donahue. He got real fresh with me," Wolfe said. "I've been on Maury. I liked Maury. He gave me a real nice spread of flowers." She met Wayne Newton, Chuck Norris, Liberace and Sally Jessy Raphael. She did "Inside Edition" and was in the National Enquirer. "Oprah wanted me," she said, "but they didn't pay anything."

Locally, she did radio and newspapers, and rode in Muncie's St. Patrick's Day parade. But Wolfe laments that people in Anderson treat her as some kind of joke. "I got to thinking that in some of these towns where world record holders live, they have signs outside city limits," Wolfe once said. "I wouldn't mind if Anderson would have a sign like that."

Wolfe walks with a cane now. When she was younger, she said, she used to strut. "I'd flip my hair back -- it was just something I've always done," she said. "The cars would honk. There was a wreck or two because of me. That's just the story of my life. Men ran after me. I've tried to figure it out and I can't."

The many husbands of Linda Wolfe include a convict, a vending machine repairman, barmen and brawlers, electricians and plumbers, musicians and machinists. But her final man was a preacher. Glynn "Scotty" Wolfe was a Baptist minister, and by the time he reached his 80s, he was also the most married man in the world. Linda Wolfe was his 29th bride.

They say Scotty took the holy out of matrimony, that he married so often because he wanted sex without sin, and that he once divorced a woman for eating sunflower seeds in bed.
Scotty and Linda wed in Quartzsite, Ariz., in 1996. A British TV crew filmed the event, but Wolfe has never seen the footage, or the money promised to her for the publicity stunt.

"They carried him out from his nursing bed for the ceremony," she said. "I knew something was fishy." Shortly afterward, she returned to Indiana and he to California, where he died, destitute, 10 days before their one-year anniversary. One of his 19 children came to the funeral -- a son who couldn't afford the cremation fee.

Wolfe fears a similar fate. "I'm left with nothing, except a few old newspaper articles and some photos," she said. "I got a dollar and 33 cents to my name." She has been single now for a dozen years, her longest stint unmarried since childhood. Since her last groom, she hasn't dated and she doesn't kiss. Wolfe has the record, but she would rather have something else, more common and more lasting.

"But I would get married again," she said, "because, you know, it gets lonely."

Tough Choices for America's Hungry

(CNN) -- As Walter Thomas knows, it's hard to look for a job when your stomach is rumbling.

The 52-year-old from Washington, D.C., started skipping meals in early January when his savings account was running dry and his kitchen cabinets were almost empty.

Thomas at first didn't want to turn to the United States' food safety net, the food stamp program, for help.

But after being laid off in July from what seemed like a steady job in sales at a furniture store, Thomas swallowed his pride and applied for the monthly food aid.

"It lets me think, 'OK, well, tomorrow I'll be able to eat. If nothing else, I'll be able to eat,' " he said.

With the national economy in meltdown, more Americans than ever are relying on the federal aid program to keep from going hungry. In October, more than one in 10 people -- about 31 million -- were using the food stamp program to get by, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

More recent numbers are not available, but advocates for the poor say the number of those in need of aid probably has increased since then.

Stereotypes associated with food stamps abound, and recipients are often seen as prone to taking handouts, sometimes when they may not be needed.

But the profile of hunger in America is multifaceted, as diverse as the nation itself, especially in these times of economic hardship.

To get a better idea of what it's like to live on a food stamp budget, CNN correspondent Sean Callebs has decided to eat for a month on $176 and blog about the experience on CNN.com.

That's a situation many people, Thomas included, can relate to. Thomas, who said he had been working steadily since he was 13 years old, now receives $175 per month for food. That's about $5.83 per day -- less than $2 per meal.

Not that Thomas is complaining. After getting his first payment, which is added to an inconspicuous debit card to reduce the stigma associated with the program, Thomas went straight to the grocery store. He was hungry and grateful.

"It's definitely been a blessing to me," he said of the food stamp program, which, since October, has gone by the name Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Advocates for the poor, as well as those on federal assistance, hope President Obama's economic stimulus plan will increase food stamp payments. The average family on food stamps would receive $79 more per month if the stimulus bill passes in the U.S. Senate this week, according to The New York Times. iReport.com: How are you doing in this tough economy?

There is some debate about whether giving people money to spend on groceries is a valid form of economic stimulus.

Few are more hopeful the measure will pass than Crystal Sears, a 30-year-old mother in Germantown, Pennsylvania, who said she has been on food stamps for more than three years.

Sears said she sometimes skips meals so her three children can eat. Even with federal assistance, she said, she sometimes has to make a meal for herself out of crackers or food scraps.

She said she has been out of work for several years because all three of her children have medical conditions: Her 8-year-old son has a seizure disorder that requires frequent hospital visits and constant attention; her 2-year-old daughter was born with heart problems; and her 12-year-old daughter has scoliosis, a back condition that recently required two surgeries, she said.

Without much money, she's forced to make tough choices.

"If the kids needed sneakers and their sneakers are getting too small, or if my water bill is past due, I'd opt not to pay it and risk them sending me a shut-off notice just so my children can eat," she said.

Sometimes she chooses to buy more food instead of paying her gas bill to heat her home. When she does, the family sleeps huddled around their stove or an electric heater, she said.

Her monthly food stamp payment is $489, she said. That's sometimes sufficient. But some months, she said, she doesn't receive full payments because of mix-ups with paperwork. Until recently, she said, she received about $250 per month, which she said was far from enough to feed her family of four.

The SNAP program is meant to supplement a person's food budget, not cover all food expenses, said Jean Daniel, a spokesperson for the USDA, which administers the program.

Taking on part-time work would further complicate the application process, she said. Sears said she worked for seven years at a Salvation Army shelter before becoming unemployed.

"For me, I've always been a helper. And my thing is I don't like to help people to enable them. I like to help people so they can help themselves in the long run," she said.

Sears stretches her food budget by buying cheap and sometimes fatty meals. She said she doesn't like doing that but can't avoid it. With food prices high, she said, grocery shopping is stressful.

"We get like the mac and cheese, which is dehydrated cheese -- basically food that's no good for you health wise," she said. "Everything is high in sodium and trans fats ... and that's all we basically can afford. There's not enough assistance to eat healthy and maintain a healthy weight."

Advocates for the hungry say many people on the food stamp program opt to buy less-healthy foods because they can't afford fresh fruits and vegetables on such a tight budget.

Food stamp "benefits aren't really enough for a healthy diet," said Jim Weill, president of the nonprofit Food Research and Action Center.

Sears said she is grateful for the help she does get.

Maribel Diaz, a 36-year-old mother of three boys in Los Angeles, California, said her $319-per-month payment isn't always enough.

But she said she would starve herself before letting her boys go hungry.

"You're bringing home less bags [of food] now, because the milk is almost $5 a gallon and the bread is $3 a loaf. ... A chicken is, like, now $8," Diaz said. "If you're really breaking it down, you're not bringing a lot of groceries home."

All SNAP recipients are eligible for free nutritional counseling to help people stretch their food budgets, said Daniel, of the USDA.

Advocates for the hungry find flaws in the way the program is set up, but they praise it for being a safety net the government can't take away during tough times.

Unlike aid to soup kitchens, the food stamp program receives federal funding in times thick and thin, and has a $6 billion backup fund, Daniel said.

"The money will be found so people are not turned away," Daniel said.

All of the benefits paid to participants come from the federal government. States split the program's administrative costs.

Advocates see some flaws in SNAP but generally give it praise.

"I say about food stamps what Winston Churchill said about democracy: 'It's the worst possible system except all the others,' " said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York Coalition Against Hunger.

Berg said the program's benefits are too small and too difficult for people to obtain.

But the food stamp program is somewhat successful, he said.

"The main purpose of the program is to wipe out Third World starvation in America, and it's worked," he said, adding that he's optimistic about improvements that could come as part of the economic stimulus plan.

Thomas, the laid-off furniture worker in Washington, said he doesn't want people to feel sorry for him.

After being let go from his store, he stopped at an employment center before going anywhere else. He said he faxed about 20 résumés to similar companies on that very day.

None has resulted in a job yet, but Thomas said he has been to interviews for other types of work and hopes employment will come soon.

For now, he's just happy to continue the job search without the pain of hunger nagging at his stomach.

Science Unlocking the Mystery of Truffles

In France, truffles are scarcer than ever, but new research might change that. Scientists in Italy believe the fungus is created when male and female spores meet, and that truffles grow near oaks and certain other trees.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article5613938.ece

JS Reutz Catering

I've been receiving calls from supporters of Second Helpings and former customers of Just 'Cause Catering about catering options close to downtown.

One of my recommendations is Jeff Reuters at the JS Reutz Cafe, located in the Boner Center. I've written about them previously here.

You can check out their catering menu on their website here.

You Want To See A Hero?

(CNN) -- Passengers on the US Airways flight that crash-landed into the Hudson River Thursday afternoon praised the actions and courage of the pilot, a safety consultant with 40 years of experience in the aviation industry.

Sources tell CNN that Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger was piloting US Airways flight 1549 from New York's LaGuardia airport to Charlotte, North Carolina, when at least one of the plane's engines failed.

Passenger Jeff Kolodjay offered "kudos" to Sullenberger for a landing that minimized damage to the aircraft and its 155 passengers and crew.

"All of a sudden the captain came on and he told us to brace ourselves and probably brace ourselves pretty hard. But he did an amazing job -- kudos to him on that landing," said Kolodjay, who was sitting in seat 22A.

Sullenberger's wife told CNN that she was stunned to hear the news from her husband after it was all over.

"I hadn't been watching the news. I've heard Sully say to people, 'It's rare for an airline pilot to have an incident in their career,' " said Lori Sullenberger of Danville, California.

"When he called me he said, 'There's been an accident.' At first I thought it was something minor, but then he told me the circumstances and my body started shaking and I rushed to get our daughters out of school."

US Airways said all 155 passengers and crew are alive and safely off the plane.

The crash-landing has also earned the former fighter pilot and private safety consultant accolades from state and government officials.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg commended the pilot for not leaving the plane without checking to make sure every passenger had been evacuated.

"It would appear that the pilot did a masterful job of landing the plane in the river and then making sure that everybody got out," Bloomberg said at a press conference Thursday.

"I had a long conversation with the pilot. He walked the plane twice after everybody else was off and tried to verify that there was nobody else on board -- and assures us there was not."

Sullenberger apparently was forced to make an emergency landing after geese were sucked into one or both of the jet's engines. An eyewitness working on the west side of Manhattan said the belly of the plane touched the water first.

An official who heard tape recordings of the radio traffic from Flight 1549 reported the pilot was extraordinarily calm during the event.

"There was no panic, no hysterics," the official said. "It was professional, it was calm, it was methodical. It was everything you hoped it could be."

The pilot and air traffic controller discussed options, including landing at Teterboro airport in New Jersey, the official said. Then there was a "period of time where there was no communications back, and I'm assuming he was concentrating on more important things."

Sullenberger's background in aviation appeared to have prepared him for such a situation.

He has been a pilot with US Airways since 1980, following seven years in the U.S. Air Force.

His resume -- posted on the Web site for his safety consulting firm, Safety Reliability Methods, Inc. -- lists piloting procedures, technical safety strategies, emergency management and operations improvement, as areas of industry expertise.

He served as an instructor and Air Line Pilots Association safety chairman, accident investigator and national technical committee member, according to a biography on the site. He participated in several USAF and National Transportation Safety Board accident investigations, and worked with NASA scientists on a paper on error and aviation, his site says.

For the passengers on flight 1549, Sullenberger's skill and expertise were apparent.

"I've flown in a lot of planes and that was a phenomenal landing," said passenger Fred Berretta said.

Berretta was sitting in seat 16A right over one of the engines when it failed and the pilot turned the plane to align it with the Hudson River. He described silence in the plane as the passengers waited to hear from the crew.

A few moments later, the direction to brace for landing came.

"It was an amazing piece of airmanship," said Peter Goelz, a former NTSB managing director.

'Tis the Season (STILL) - Part 2

With all the controversy surrounding Christmas and other public observances that contain elements of religious symbolism, I'd like to offer the following totally inoffensive expression of goodwill for your use in next year's holiday greeting card:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or explicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2009, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. That is not meant to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere.

Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual orientation of the recipient.

'Tis the Season (STILL)

An interesting bit of holiday information from today's correspondence:


There is one Christmas carol that has always baffled me. What in the world do leaping lords, French hens, swimming swans, and especially the partridge who won't come out of the pear tree have to do with Christmas?

This week, I found out.

From 1558 until 1829, Roman Catholics in England were not permitted to practice their faith openly. Someone during that era wrote this carol as a catechism song for young Catholics.

It has two levels of meaning: the surface meaning, plus a hidden meaning known only to members of their church. Each element in the carol has a code word for a religious reality which the children could remember.

The partridge in a pear tree was Jesus Christ.

Two turtle doves were the Old and New Testaments.

Three French hens stood for faith, hope and love.

The four calling birds were the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John.

The five golden rings recalled the Torah or Law, the first five books of the Old Testament.

The six geese a-laying stood for the six days of creation.

Seven swans a-swimming represented the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit--Prophesy, Serving, Teaching, Exhortation, Contribution, Leadership, and Mercy.

The eight maids a-milking were the eight beatitudes.

Nine ladies dancing were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit--Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control.

-The ten Lords a-leaping were the Ten Commandments.

-The eleven pipers piping stood for the eleven faithful disciples.

-The twelve drummers drumming symbolized the twelve points of belief in the Apostles' Creed.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

They'll Never Get a Jury to Convict...

CNN - A man angry that a family was talking during a movie threw popcorn at the son and then shot the father in the arm, according to police in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

James Joseph Cialella, 29, was charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault and weapons violations, a police report said.

Cialella told the family sitting in front of him in the theater on Christmas Day to be quiet, police said.

An argument ensued while others at the Riverview Movie Theatre watched "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Cialella then approached the family from the left side of the aisle and shot the father, who was not identified, as he was standing between Cialella and his family, according to the police report.

The victim was taken to Jefferson Hospital with a gunshot wound to his left arm, police said.

Cialella was carrying a Kel-Tec .380-caliber handgun clipped inside his sweatpants, police said. He was arrested and taken into custody.

Congratulations to Class 52!

Congratulations to Class 52 of the Second Helpings Culinary Job Training Program, who graduated on December 19, 2008.


(Front Row, Left to Right) Heather A. Holiday, Torie A. Smith, Ronald R. Richardson, Carla R. Slaughter, Robin J. Murry
(Back row) Chef Conway, Douglas D. Smith, Michael A. Strong, James R. White, Jr., Lawrence Dove, and Damon T. Malone.

A Gift For a Teacher

LITTLETON - "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exists, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy." This line is from one of the most famous newspaper editorials ever written, and it was inspired by a child.

Children have the ability to inspire the best in all of us. The students at Normandy Elementary School in Littleton have taken their love for a teacher to a new level, inspiring their parents, educators and members of the community.

Two students who happen to be sisters, started "The True Gift Fund" to help fourth grade teacher Jewely Del Duca.

Del Duca is fighting stage 4 colon cancer. She is 35 years old.

While undergoing chemotherapy she has remained in the classroom. Del Duca says her students keep her mind off cancer and provide her with encouragement and support.

This experience has provided students many other important lessons too. Del Duca is hoping to qualify for HIPEC treatment (Hyperthermic Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy) which involves a surgical procedure where a heated form of chemotherapy is delivered to the abdominal cavity.

Three times, Del Duca's insurance company denied her request for the expensive treatment.

Her story appeared on 9NEWS and CNN and the insurance company reconsidered.

Unfortunately, Del Duca is still waiting for consensus from doctors to get the treatment. In the meantime, her family and friends are raising money to cover the medical costs.

Del Duca's battle has had a significant impact on Jenna and Jocie Bradford. Jenna, who is in the sixth grade, remembers Mrs. Del Duca as her favorite teacher. Jocie is in Del Duca's class this year.

When Jenna started to think about Christmas this year she came up with an idea.

"I thought it would be better to instead of getting Christmas presents this year, that we donate all the money to Mrs. Del Duca," said Jenna.

In addition, she decided to ask every student at Normandy to consider giving up one gift and donate to the fund.

Jocie liked the idea too, although she was a wee bit concerned about giving up every present.

"I thought it was a good idea, but then I was like, there's going to be no presents. Then I started thinking of Santa and my grandma and grandpa and I knew that they would get me presents. And I was OK with that, because my room is just a cluttered mess," she said.

Del Duca was astounded by the children's selflessness. To give up Christmas presents is a big deal.

"To give it up for another human being is such a mark of empathy," added Del Duca.

The students have a Christmas tree just outside the front office with a message about the True Gift Fund. Everyone who donates is given a frog ornament, because Mrs. Del Duca collects stuffed frogs.

So far, the fund is up to $6,000, with a goal of $25,000.

Del Duca says she cried the first time she saw the tree. It reminded her how important the students are in her fight to survive.

"It definitely boosts my energy to so this. The fight, I know I'm not in it by myself, I know that my friends and family want me to fight and they're fighting with me," she said.

You can help too. You can contribute by writing a check to The Jewely Del Duca Fund at any Bellco Credit Union.

(Copyright KUSA*TV. All rights reserved.)

'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' Causes Stir at School

WILMINGTON, N.C. - "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" caused a stir at a New Hanover County school.

A parent complained about the song's religious reference and got it pulled from her child's kindergarten Christmas show at Murrayville Elementary School.

The song was pulled “because it had the word Christmas in it,” said Rick Holliday, assistant school superintendent.

A Jewish mother, who didn't want her name published, objected to what she called "religious overtones" in the song. So the principal agreed to pull it from the program.

School administrators said they were then flooded with complaints from other angry parents.

“I would say it's not a very religious song. It's about Santa Claus,” parent Anne Vanslyke said.

School board members, administrators and attorneys listened closely to the song's lyrics and decided the song was secular.

“Rudolph is a secular song. It was about a flying reindeer, not a religious symbol,” Holliday said.

Many parents shouted out with glee when they heard the song was back in the program.

“I think it's great that they let the kids sing because all the kids love that song,” Vanslyke said.

Any student who objects to singing a Christmas song or attending a program can decline participation and will not be penalized, according to school administrators.

“We do try to be cognizant of everyone's feelings,” Holliday said.

School administrations also decided that for future concerts, religious songs can be included, as long as other faiths are represented as well.

Giving For The Holidays

From Today's Correspondence:

We know that the economy is hurting many people this holiday season, but if you are able, we have made donating a little more convenient for you this year.

The Tie Dye Grill is proud to be a drop off site for the following items.

We have partnered with WRTV6 and the Warren Township trustee to be a drop off for Toys for Tots. Please drop by and bring a new unwrapped gift for a needy child in our community. There are many, many families that need help this year.

We also have a box for Veterans needing Scarves, socks, hats, gloves for the VA Hospital. This is sponsored by Travis Watts, ( Kevin's son) and the fifth graders at Bookview Elementary. This is Travis's brainchild, as they are HIS heroes, so please keep those warm who have kept us safe... The Veteran Box will be here until Dec. 14, only a few days left.

Please help us help those in need this holiday season!

Happy Holidays!
 
Shayne & Jan Dye
The Tie Dye Grill
1311 N. Shadeland Ave.
Indianapolis, In. 46219
Ph. 317-353-9393
Fax 317-353-6070

www.thetiedyegrill.com

Helping the "Help-Resistant"

By Martha Beck

(OPRAH.com) -- Margaret's twin girls were halfway through high school when she started thinking about returning to school herself. "I've always wanted to finish my degree," she told me. "Maybe get a master's, even. I'd like to teach."

"Cool!" I said. Margaret had been complaining of boredom, and I knew she'd thrive in an academic environment.

"But," she told me, her voice tightening, "there are problems. Jeff and the girls are used to me being home, cleaning, cooking..."

"Have you talked to them about it?"

"No, because there's more," said Margaret. "We only have two cars. Jeff drives one, and sometimes the girls need the other one in the evenings."

"Well, you can take classes when they're in school."

"But sometimes they drive to school. Then I don't have a car until afternoon."

"Then take the bus. Or have the kids take the bus. Or have Jeff drop them off. Or sign up for distance learning."

I was getting into quite a lather of life-coachy problem solving, but Margaret would have none of it. Every time I lobbed a suggestion, she'd smack it back at me like a tennis pro. After a 10- or 15-minute rally, I finally realized that the real issue wasn't Margaret's continuing education. It was something I call "help resistance." Oprah.com: Are the people in your life sucking you dry?

There may be infinite reasons Margaret and others like her ask for help and then reject it; some people may be deeply ambivalent, others biologically anxious, or a few unconsciously combative.

Whatever their motivation, people who resist help can frustrate you half to death, batting back every solution they request with the surreal persistence of Venus and Serena combined. The next time you encounter someone who resists help, I recommend stopping the fruitless verbal rally and addressing the real problem directly.

One of my personal mottoes is "Love it, leave it, or lead it." When faced with a problem, I allow myself these three options -- and only these three.

"Love it" means peacefully accept whatever's happening. If that's not possible, I may be able to "leave it," simply walk away from the whole dilemma. The third option, "lead it," requires that I recognize and use whatever power I have (even if I feel helpless). If I can't devise a solution on my own, I must "lead" my helpers by asking clear, purposeful questions and taking good advice when I get it.

I've found that the "three Ls" are invaluable when you find yourself trading volleys with someone who doesn't want to change.

Loving it: The Pollyanna response

If someone you like goes into a spate of help resistance, try loving your way out. Say something like this: "Well, that's quite a conundrum, but I know you'll figure it out. You're so smart and resourceful. Go for it!"

This response will frustrate most help resisters, who often want sympathy and concern, not cheerleading. They might plead with you, saying: "But I'm really worried! I don't know what to do!" If this happens, just keep reiterating your support, like Pollyanna at a pep rally: "Yes, and I'm absolutely positive you'll do the right thing. Hooray for you!"Oprah.com: How to set personal boundaries

Knowing how to "love it" is like having a killer forehand. Every time a floundering friend or family member serves gloom and doom, you bounce it back with adulatory optimism. Eventually, your opponent will tire and leave the court.

Leaving it: The guy response

If you have no interest in maintaining cordial relations with people who resist help, there's a quick way to get them to leave you alone -- forever. I also call this the Guy Response, because men (who aren't cursed with the so-called "tend and befriend" hormones that make us females offer sweaters and sandwiches to people who are actively burglarizing our homes) often do it naturally.

To use the Guy Response, listen as the person describes the problem, then say: "Wow, sounds like you're screwed. Have you seen my car keys?"

If the friend keeps trying to get your attention ("Are you listening to me? I've got a problem here!"), you can say, "I think I left them in the car. I'm going to check." Then leave.

There's a variation on this response, which I enjoy using on help resisters who bemoan First World problems like a delay in scheduling liposuction, or the inability to get people to weedwack their yards for less than minimum wage.

While staring at the person with an expression of shock and awe, say, "Oh my God, that's horrible." (You can find suitable facial expressions by going to YouTube and searching for the terms "dramatic chipmunk" and "dramatic lemur." Seriously -- check them out.) Then go look for your keys.

These "leave it" reactions are extremely effective, and can be quite enjoyable if you don't mind being crossed off a few holiday greeting-card lists. Wherever you want to avoid that side effect, try the more complex and thoughtful "lead it" strategy.

Leading it: The constructive response

When someone you really love goes into help-resistance mode, it may be time for you to lead the situation. In this case, that means asking for the information you need to be genuinely helpful. Say something like this:

"I can tell you need some kind of support from me, but I'm not exactly sure what it looks like. Do you want me to help you brainstorm solutions? Should I just be a neutral backboard, so you can bounce ideas off me? Or do you just need someone to understand how frustrated you're feeling? Tell me what you need. I'm here for you 100 percent." Oprah.com: How to have the hard talks

If you say this sincerely, even many people who habitually resist help will stop mindlessly backhanding your ideas and think through their real desires. This creates an atmosphere of honesty and relaxation, where real problem solving is most likely to occur -- and it also improves your relationship. In tennis scoring, I believe they call it "love."

Every now and again, I get into a mental match with a particularly resistant and annoying help resister: me. I hear my own voice, talking either to myself or a frustrated friend: "I need to work out, but I can't exercise in the morning because I always get injured when I do. By noon it's too hot, and I hate exercising indoors. And at night I'm just exhausted."

I can only imagine how frustrating this must be for my friends and family, given that it makes me want to knock myself unconscious with my own racket. Fortunately, the same approaches that work on others work splendidly when I'm the source of the problem.

The fastest way to bring change to a resistant situation is to accept it. Don't believe me? Try this: Think of a subject where you feel ambivalent (you want a baby but worry about your career; you're environmentally sensitive but can't imagine surrendering your Humvee; you're strictly vegan except that you so adore veal binges). Whatever your issue, write it down. Now, decide to do one thing or the other. Now! Right now!

You probably noticed that pressure spikes your anxiety, anger, rage, panic... in a word, your resistance. The best case is that it shoves you into quick decisions that don't really resolve your ambivalence. So let's try another approach. Let's say that for the next hour, you'll simply accept that you're not sure what to do. That's okay. Uncertainty won't kill you. For one hour, let it be.

If you do this mindfully, you'll feel a sense of relief, a space opening around the difficult issue. This enhances creativity -- so, paradoxically, accepting indecisiveness actually frees your mind to devise effective solutions. That's where the other two strategies come in.

Perhaps you feel obligated to do something you deeply don't want to do, such as watching political debates or contacting your PTA group leader. You may be resisting all suggestions because what you really want to do is simply "leave it." Quit the hated job. Don't return the e-mail. Just say nothing.

This is a daring solution, but think: Is "leaving" the problem really scarier than coming up with reasons not to leave the problem? If your answer is "yes," you may have reached a true impasse. Strangely enough, it's when you feel really helpless that you must pick up your authority and "lead" the situation.

You not only can but must lead situations where you genuinely need help. No one except you can say exactly what's stopping you, exactly where you're blocked by confusion or ignorance. Take charge not by demanding and then ignoring the help that's offered but by figuring out as clearly as you can just what you need, then requesting assistance from people who, in your judgment, are likely to be able to provide it. Even if they can't help you, they can usually refer you to someone else who can.

When Margaret did this, she understood her real problem wasn't the logistical difficulty of returning to school but her own anxiety about doing something new. Once she admitted that, she chose the hero's solution: Feel the fear and do it anyway.

Of course, she did need her family's assistance. She asked them if they'd share housework and driving. They exceeded her expectations, offering all sorts of suggestions, which Margaret gratefully accepted. Game, set, and match to Team Margaret.

Moving forward

If you follow the three Ls whenever you encounter help resistance, you'll find yourself playing a lot less verbal tennis. Excuse-making, whining, and pointless reiteration will disappear from your life. Not only will people who ask for help (but ignore it) cease seeking you out but you'll find yourself more capable of either peacefully accepting periods of indecision or getting the effective assistance that moves you forward quickly and decisively.

All the energy that once went into complaining, suggesting, and complaining some more (back and forth and back and forth and back and frigging forth) will align to propel you toward adventures and achievements.

I'm absolutely sure you can do this -- you with that clever mind, that resourceful nature, that winning smile. So get going, kiddo!

What's that? You're not sure of yourself? You have doubts? Things are more complicated than that?

Wow, I had no idea. I guess you're screwed. Have you seen my car keys?

By Martha Beck from "O, The Oprah Magazine," December 2008

'Tis the Season...

(CNN) -- Three violent deaths in two stores marred the opening of the Christmas shopping season Friday.

In the first, a temporary Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death in a rush of thousands of early morning shoppers as he and other employees attempted to unlock the doors of a Long Island, New York, store at 5 a.m., police said.

In the second, unrelated incident, two men were shot dead in a Toys "R" Us in Palm Desert, California, after they argued in the store, police said.

The toy company and authorities said the California shootings had nothing to do with shopping on Black Friday, which is historically one of the year's busiest shopping days.

The Wal-Mart worker, whom authorities did not identify, was 34 and lived in Queens, said Nassau County police Detective Lt. Michael Fleming. "This was utter chaos as these men tried to open the door this morning," Fleming said.

Video showed as many as a dozen people knocked to the floor in the stampede of people trying to get into the store, Fleming said. The employee was "stepped on by hundreds of people" as other workers attempted to fight their way through the crowd, Fleming said.

"Several minutes" passed before others were able to clear space around the man and attempt to render aid. Police arrived, and "as they were giving first aid, those police officers were also jostled and pushed," he said. "Shoppers ... were on a full-out run into the store," he said.

The crowd had begun forming outside the store by 9 p.m. Thursday, Fleming said. By 5 a.m. Friday, when the doors were unlocked, there were 2,000 or so shoppers, many of whom "surged forward," breaking the doors, he said.

The man was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Others in the crowd sustained minor injuries such as sprained ankles, Fleming said.

A 28-year-old pregnant woman was taken to a hospital, but "the baby is going to be OK," Fleming said. She was to be released later in the day, he said.

The California shootings occurred about 11:30 a.m. (2:30 p.m. ET), authorities said.
By the time police arrived, two men were dead from gunshot wounds, Riverside County sheriff's Sgt. Dennis Gutierrez said. He said authorities are not seeking any other suspects.

Gutierrez said that the men did not appear to be store employees and that the dispute appeared unrelated to shopping.

"There was a confrontation inside of the store. But over a toy? I don't think that is accurate," he said.

Two handguns were found near the men's bodies, Gutierrez said.

In a written statement, Toys "R" Us spokeswoman Kathleen Waugh said the shooting appeared unrelated to the heavy shopping day.

"Our understanding is that this act seems to have been the result of a personal dispute between the individuals involved," she said.

She said company officials were "outraged" by the shooting and were working with authorities to find out what happened.

Gutierrez said no one else in the store was injured. The store remained closed Friday afternoon but was expected to open as usual Saturday.

He said authorities would not release the men's names until their families have been notified.

Daniel Watson said he was at home with his children when his wife called from the Toys "R" Us store, where she and her mother were shopping.

"All I could hear was gunshots in the back," he said. "She said, 'They're in here shooting.' I told her to run and hide, stay down and hide."

He said his wife did just that, ducking under a clothes rack until the threat was over. Watson said neither woman was hurt.

Asked about the possibility of criminal charges in the Wal-Mart death, Fleming said he would not rule it out but noted that charges would be "very difficult," as it would be "almost impossible" to identify people in the crowd from the video, and those in the front of the crowd were pushed by those behind them.

Hundreds of people may have lined up in an orderly fashion but got caught up in the rush, he said.

Wal-Mart spokesman Kelly Cheeseman issued a statement saying, "We are saddened to report that a gentleman who was working for a temporary agency on our behalf died at the store and a few other customers were injured. Our thoughts and prayers are with their families at this difficult time."

The company is investigating the incident, the statement said.

Officers patrolling the shopping center overnight had had concerns about the size of the crowd, Fleming said, and had tried to get those in line better organized. Wal-Mart security officers were also present overnight, but he said he did not know how many.

"I don't know what it's worth to Wal-Mart or to any of these stores that run these sales events," Fleming said, "but it has become common knowledge that large crowds do gather on the Friday after Thanksgiving in response to these sales and in an effort to do their holiday shopping at the cheapest prices.

"I think it is incumbent upon the commercial establishments to recognize that this has the potential to occur at any store. Today, it happened to be Wal-Mart. It could have been any other store where hundreds and hundreds of people gather."

Asked whether the security had been adequate, Fleming said, "In light of the outcome, in hindsight, the answer is obviously no. ... This crowd was out of control."

Flexible Vegetarians Come Out of the Closet

Dietitian Dawn Jackson Blatner is a flexitarian, which is defined as a vegetarian who is flexible enough to eat some meat, poultry or fish.

She discusses the diet in her new book "The Flexitarian Diet." She says it's a "win-win" because people get the health benefits of vegetarianism without the limitations, although some disagree.

Read her story and some of here dietary recommendations here.

Childhood Hunger Grows

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Some 691,000 children went hungry in America sometime in 2007, while close to one in eight Americans struggled to feed themselves adequately even before this year's sharp economic downturn, the Agriculture Department reported Monday.

The department's annual report on food security showed that during 2007 the number of children who suffered a substantial disruption in the amount of food they typically eat was more than 50 percent above the 430,000 in 2006 and the largest figure since 716,000 in 1998.

Overall, the 36.2 million adults and children who struggled with hunger during the year was up slightly from 35.5 million in 2006. That was 12.2 percent of Americans who didn't have the money or assistance to get enough food to maintain active, healthy lives.

Almost a third of those, 11.9 million adults and children, went hungry at some point. That figure has grown by more than 40 percent since 2000. The government says these people suffered a substantial disruption in their food supply at some point and classifies them as having "very low food security." Until the government rewrote its definitions two years ago, this group was described as having "food insecurity with hunger."

The findings should increase pressure to meet President-elect Barack Obama's campaign pledge to expand food aid and end childhood hunger by 2015, said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger group.

He predicted the 2008 numbers will show even more hunger because of the sharp economic downturn this year.

"There's every reason to think the increases in the number of hungry people will be very, very large based on the increased demand we're seeing this year at food stamp agencies, emergency kitchens, Women, Infants and Children clinics, really across the entire social service support structure," said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger group.

Weill said the figures show that economic growth during the first seven years of the Bush administration didn't reach the poorest and hungriest people. "The people in the deepest poverty are suffering the most," Weill said.

The number of adults and children with "low food security" -- those who avoided substantial food disruptions but still struggled to eat -- fell slightly since 2000, from 24.7 million to 24.3 million. The government said these people have several ways of coping -- eating less varied diets, obtaining food from emergency kitchens or community food charities, or participating in federal aid programs like food stamps, the school lunch program or the Women, Infants and Children program.

Among other findings:

• The families with the highest rates of food insecurity were headed by single mothers (30.2 percent), black households (22.2 percent), Hispanic households (20.1 percent), and households with incomes below the official poverty line (37.7 percent).

• States with families reporting the highest prevalence of food insecurity during 2005-2007 were Mississippi (17.4 percent), New Mexico (15 percent), Texas (14.8 percent) and Arkansas (14.4 percent).

• The highest growth in food insecurity over the last 9 years came in Alaska and Iowa, both of which saw a 3.7 percent increase in families who struggled to eat adequately or had substantial food disruptions.

Nonprofit Eatery Can't Bring Home Bacon

By Kathy Stephenson The Salt Lake Tribune -- The Salt Lake Tribune, November 9, 2008

For nearly a year, Salt Lake City's One World Cafe - founded on the altruistic goal of letting customers set their own meal price - has been on a crash course with business reality.

In mid-October, employee paychecks bounced and the longtime manager was fired. Bo Dean's dismissal angered the rest of the staff enough that they walked out in protest.

Founder Denise Cerreta was forced to call a temporary staffing agency so she could serve customers.

Inexperience seems to be the main problem for the nonprofit cafe at 41 S. 300 East.

"As the restaurant grew, I didn't have the expertise at running a kitchen," acknowledged Cerreta during a media teleconference call on Friday. "We needed more structure and a more professional kitchen."

A recent review of the business showed the restaurant was overstaffed and management of employee time was poor. It never even had an employee time clock. The restaurant also had failed to keep concise records of food costs and fixed costs. All told, mismanagement cost the restaurant $8,000 to $10,000 a month, Cerreta said.

"There just wasn't a system in place so that it would work as a professional establishment," added Steve Lyman, a longtime restaurant manager from Squatters, Red Rock and Bambara, who is volunteering his time to help get One World in order.

During the past week, the restaurant has implemented new kitchen procedures and hired a new executive chef and sous chef.

"We were financially shaky, but we will be fine," Cerreta said. "We are in no danger of us closing."

Following tradition wasn't what Cerreta wanted when she founded The One World "Everybody Eats" Cafe five years ago.

She envisioned a restaurant with no menus or set prices. Cerreta, and later her chefs, would make entrees, soups, salads and desserts from organic meats and locally grown produce. Diners filled their plates with only the food they wanted and paid what they thought the meal was worth or what they could afford.

The idea was unique and quickly gained national attention. Cerreta turned the business into the nonprofit One World Everybody Eats Foundation with its own board of directors. She traveled the country speaking about the concept and helped people start similar community kitchens in other cities.

But this summer, while Cerreta was in Seattle, One World's revenues began declining. Meal donations, which once averaged $10, had fallen to $7.

At one point, the bank account was so depleted that employee paychecks bounced.

"Mine didn't clear for 3 1/2 months," said Dean, who had worked at the restaurant since its inception. He had been asked to create a more professional operation in recent months, but when the board decided he wasn't up to the task, they fired him.

Dean believes Cerreta's constant absence from the restaurant and lack of communication exacerbated the financial problems.

To expand the "One World" concept, Cerreta was out of town much of the time, he said. She also has pulled trained chefs away from day-to-day restaurant operations to help with the expansion.

"It's hard to implement changes when I was the only one around," said Dean, who heard that he had been fired from a fellow employee - not Cerreta or the board.

The Nun and the Taxi Driver

From today's correspondence:

A cabbie picks up a Nun.

She gets into the cab, and notices that the VERY handsome cab driver won't stop staring at her.

She asks him why he is staring.

He replies: 'I have a question to ask you but I don't want to offend you.

She answers, 'My son, you cannot offend me. When you're as old as I am and have been a nun as long as I have, you get a chance to see and hear just about everything. I'm sure that there's nothing you could say or ask that I would find offensive.'

'Well, I've always had a fantasy to have a nun kiss me.'

She responds, 'Well, let's see what we can do about that: #1, you have to be single and #2, you must be Catholic.'

The cab driver is very excited and says, 'Yes, I'm single and Catholic!'

'OK' the nun says. 'Pull into the next alley.'

The nun fulfills his fantasy, with a kiss that would make a hooker blush, But when they get back on the road, the cab driver starts crying.

'My dear child,' says the nun, 'why are you crying?'

'Forgive me but I've sinned. I lied and I must confess, I'm married and I'm Jewish.'

The nun says, 'That's OK. My name is Kevin and I'm going to a Halloween party.'

Too Few Understand Diabetes' Dangers

By Kathleen Doheny

TUESDAY, Oct. 28 (HealthDay News) -- While millions of Americans are at risk for developing diabetes, too few perceive the threat it can pose to their health, according to a new survey.

In fact, most respondents feared shark bites, plane crashes or cancer more, even though they are more likely to get diabetes, according to the pollsters.

"We undertook the survey because we are trying to better understand why people aren't taking diabetes as seriously as we need people to take this disease," said Ann Albright, director of the division of diabetes translation for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a spokeswoman for the American Diabetes Association (ADA), which sponsored the survey.

While 49 percent of the more than 2,400 U.S. adults polled said they most feared cancer as a potential health problem, just 3 percent said they worried about diabetes. In fact, each disease has about the same number of expected new cases each year, more than a million annually.

Overall, one in 10 U.S. adults, or 10 percent, have been diagnosed with diabetes at some point in their lives, compared to 6 percent who have experienced cancer, the ADA says.

"Our point is not that people shouldn't be concerned about cancer," Albright said. "We are trying to help people put things in a more accurate perspective."

After cancer, respondents next feared heart disease, mentioned by 12 percent, and nervous system disorders, noted by 11 percent.

The online poll was conducted by Harris Interactive in August 2008.

Other answers in the survey also suggest that people's fears are not realistic. When asked to pick from a potential list of accidents, plane crashes topped the list, noted by 16 percent of respondents. That was followed by lighting strikes, feared by 5 percent, vehicle accidents, 3 percent, and fire, 2 percent.

Asked to note their concerns with animal or insect contact, 13 percent noted snake bites and 8 percent spider bites. Four percent mentioned shark attacks.

About 70 confirmed shark attacks occur globally each year, experts estimate, and in 2007, 491 people died in plane crashes.

In contrast, 233,619 Americans died in 2005 from causes related to diabetes, the ADA noted.

The survey results suggest people need to assess their diabetes risk and take it more seriously, Albright said. Keeping to a healthy weight, or shedding excess pounds, is one big step to reducing the odds for diabetes. In fact, losing just 5 percent or 10 percent of body weight can help, she said.

The results suggest that people need to increase their awareness of diabetes risk, added Dr. David M. Nathan, director of the Diabetes Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He reviewed the poll results but was not involved in the survey.

People "should be more concerned about getting it," Nathan said. The good news is they can sometimes prevent it with lifestyle change and, if they are diagnosed, keep diabetes under control.

Amparo Gonzalez, president of the American Association of Diabetes Educators, agreed.

"The finding that only 3 percent of people surveyed feared being diagnosed with diabetes is surprising," Gonzalez said. Like Nathan, she emphasized that the disease is often preventable if lifestyle changes are made in time.

To learn more about your diabetes risk, visit the American Diabetes Association.