It’s been awhile since I have written.   I have no excuses really other than life has been a little hectic and crazy lately.  Our twins are now one year olds and I recently realized we have entered into a whole new world of parenthood. Getting through life in the NICU and being home with two newborn preemies seems like ages ago.  Now, we have successfully moved out of the formula feeding, bottle washing, sleeping most of the day and playing stationary on the floor phase and moved into the moving nonstop, sippy cup spilling and food tossing stage.  Oh yea, did I mention the putting everything in your mouth stage?  I didn’t know this at first, but come to find out there are different speeds to a crawl.  My children prefer high speed most of the time.  It is like watching a gecko run, their whole body wiggles and in a blink of an eye they have managed to cross a room and wiggle into the one spot they shouldn’t be but I somehow neglected to gate off.  They are good at pointing out where I miss these things.  I am happy to say, I think we finally got it. Our house is like a maze of gates and barriers.  Our dog is completely beside himself and gets lost in the maze but importantly, the girls are safe.

This time last year, our babies were lying in incubators, surgeries still ahead of them and so much uncertainty about our future.  Today they are healthy and they are happy and without a doubt they keep me on my toes. What continues to amaze me about them is that their laughs and even their cries are so genuine and both are equally as contagious.  When they laugh I laugh and when they cry, it breaks my heart. I don’t think there is a mother out there who hasn’t cried at one point or another at the sound of her own crying baby.  Even if just from being overtired.   I do however feel blessed that I am the mommy who gets to make it all better. How little snuggles or a tickle on the belly can make it all okay again.  Wiping away their little tears and replacing them with a mostly toothless grin is a feeling I just can’t describe no matter how hard I try.  I will have to remember these days when I have to say “no” to giving them the car keys or letting them stay out past curfew. I must enjoy every moment, because as I am learning, it goes by fast.

Did I mention that I am learning a lot too?   For example, I have learned how to change a diaper in a matter of seconds while my child is crawling away.  This is a skill I have only partially mastered, as my husband can attest to after coming home once or twice to two bare bottomed babies crawling around the house and me, sitting on the floor surrounded by diapers and wipes with my hands up in the air and the look of defeat on my face.  I have also learned the little tricks that keep the girls entertained and happy.  What songs they like, what toys seem to always do the trick and the foods that are always a big hit.  I have mentioned before that I have certainly learned there are many things about parenthood that come naturally but there are also there are the things you learn as you go. You just hope that someday your children won’t remember when you put their diaper on backwards or when they cried because you didn’t figure out fast enough that they wanted the blue stuffed bear and not the pink one.  You hope they remember that you were the one to wipe the tears away.  That you stayed up all hours of the night holding and singing to them to sooth the ache of a new tooth coming in.  Or that you kissed the boo boo they got on their knee while trying to stand for the first time. No matter how old they are, you hope they know that you will always be the one who will be there to wipe their tears away.

A contribution by Maria McCutchen, author of “It’s All in Your Head – A Life of Mental Fogginess And Physical Pain”

Sleep is precious to me, today. Because I typically only get 3-5 hours a night, and some nights, less, I will feel like I hit the jackpot when I get 5 or more hours! It seems so long ago since I’ve slept through the night – and I don’t mean the kind of “sleep” like I get now, where I wake-up a lot, and will have to fight to get back to sleep. I mean, sleep as in – sleep peacefully without waking up in the middle of the night, uncomfortable, in pain, and having odd neurological symptoms. I don’t even remember those days, to be quite honest. I forget what sleeping peacefully through the night was like.

All of my neurological issues cause this sporadic, restless sleep. I have to sleep on my right side, because on my back or on my left side, I get strange symptoms, which my doctor thinks may be nocturnal seizures. For whatever reason I don’t get them on my right side. But the only way to find out what’s going on is to get a sleep study and I just can’t right now….money, and the fact that they are miserable tests! I’ve had one and now I fear going through that again. So I continue to put it off – getting these odd symptoms looked into. And until I do get them looked into, I will just continue to sleep on my right side.

I cannot take sleep aids due to my neurological symptoms, so I have to do more natural things to help me sleep and I have found a few tricks that will help me at least get more sleep than when I don’t do anything at all.  They are:

• Warm Milk – It’s true – a cup of warm milk before bed will help you sleep. Well, most people anyways. It works for me. L-Tryptophan, the same amino acid found in turkey that makes many people tired after a big turkey dinner, is in milk too. L-Tryptophan will bring on the feeling of being sleepy so you will feel relaxed. It’s really like an all-natural sleep aid. It’s one of my favorite tricks to help me sleep.
• Warm shower or bath - Taking a nice hot shower before bed relaxes my tense muscles in my neck that flare up because of my cyst and Chiari. About a 20 minute hot shower before bed and I will feel nice and sleepy, and toasty. This works really well if I combine it with another one of my remedies.
• Heating Pad – Some nights I use a nice warm heating pad for my neck and my head. Mine turns off automatically and I don’t have to worry about it being left on all night. The warmth relaxes me, makes me sleepy, and I will usually fall asleep fairly quickly, and a lot of times – stay asleep.
• Chamomile tea – Chamomile tea contains Matricaria recutita, or Manzanilla. It is an herb that’s been drank for many years. It has especially been used as a sleep-aid. Chamomile tea tastes good, it’s smooth, and within about a half of cup, I am relaxed and very sleepy.
• Meditate – Some nights before bed, I meditate. I turn off the TV and I will put some relaxing music on, and meditate. I like to sit on the floor with my legs crossed, and my eyes closed, and meditate. I will vegetate in my mind until I’m not thinking of anything in particular, and just try to zone into myself. I will start to picture myself getting tired, and suddenly I am. There have been times when I’ve zoned out so much, that I have fallen off to sleep – right there on the floor, in Indian style.

Sleeping can be a big issue for people with brain problems, whether it’s a brain cyst or Chiari Malformation, or whatever. And if you are anything like me and can’t take medications easily, then it can be an even bigger challenge to get a good night’s sleep. If you have sleep problems and are looking for an all-natural remedy, try one or more of my suggestions. You may find that one or more work for you without the need to take heavy medications. One thing to consider is that you may have to do it a few times before your body adjusts, so don’t give up too quickly. If it didn’t work the first time, then do it again and…..sweet dreams!

Advertisement

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

It’s All in Your Head – A Life of Mental Fogginess And Physical Pain

by Maria McCutchen

Maria McCutchen did not have time to be sick. With a husband who had just lost a job, two young sons, and a cross-country move on the horizon, who had time to be sick? Maria didn’t have time for a common cold, let alone a major medical condition. But one day while shopping in the grocery store where she had shopped hundreds of times before, she couldn’t find the milk. It was then she knew what she was feeling was more than just stress or exhaustion. There was something very wrong.

After consulting a few doctors, Maria discovered she had a rare brain cyst known as a posterior fossa arachnoid cyst—a very large brain cyst. Hearing these cysts were normally asymptomatic was of little comfort, especially because she felt her mind and body slipping away more and more every day. Normal mental and physical functions were becoming harder to control. Even if the doctors didn’t believe the cyst was a problem, she knew it was.

It would take months of living inside a shell of a person that she’d become, months of living in a mental fogginess and sometimes even physical pain, before she would finally get the medical attention she needed. It’s All in Your Head chronicles her harrowing medical odyssey and her attempts to regain some sort of semblance of her old life after treatment.

A contribution by Maria McCutchen, author of “It’s All in Your Head – A Life of Mental Fogginess And Physical Pain”

It seems like we all have a story to tell. Most of us have something that has happened in our life that is worthy of sharing with others – something that others can learn from or relate to. It can be a story of family issues, work related issues, or as in my case, a medical related story.

Whatever your story, writing it can be a way of coping and healing. It can be therapeutic. And it can help mend any wounds that developed over the years. It can be a great way to finally get to a state of acceptance, if that is what you need. And in the process of healing your wounds, it can help others. Maybe there are others going through a similar situation that need to know they are not alone. Maybe there are others who could gain an insight to their own problem or situation. Whatever it is that others may gain from writing your story, it is sure to be beneficial to someone.

When I was diagnosed with my rare brain cyst, writing my story never crossed my mind.  It wasn’t until I began having one thing go wrong after another, and one doctor after another either denying me treatment or telling me that I was “imagining things.” Making me feel like a hypochondriac. It was demeaning to me to be made to feel as if I were crazy, when I knew that something was terribly wrong. That there was something medically wrong with me and not psychological. When I healed enough – just enough to be able to put thoughts together and write so that my story made sense, I wrote it.

“It’s all in Your Head,” is my book – the book that tells the story of what I went through after finding out that I had a very large and very rare brain cyst. It is a human interest story that will help others realize that they are not alone -  no matter what type of medical problem they are dealing with. It is a story that I hope is making it to the medical profession and reverberates the need to listen to their patients.

If you have a story to tell; if you have ever been through something that you think could benefit others in some way, consider writing it. You never know who it may help and what good could come of others reading about it. You may also realize that you feel much better, getting it told – getting it down on paper. It may just be the best part of your healing.

Advertisement

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

It’s All in Your Head – A Life of Mental Fogginess And Physical Pain

by Maria McCutchen

Maria McCutchen did not have time to be sick. With a husband who had just lost a job, two young sons, and a cross-country move on the horizon, who had time to be sick? Maria didn’t have time for a common cold, let alone a major medical condition. But one day while shopping in the grocery store where she had shopped hundreds of times before, she couldn’t find the milk. It was then she knew what she was feeling was more than just stress or exhaustion. There was something very wrong.

After consulting a few doctors, Maria discovered she had a rare brain cyst known as a posterior fossa arachnoid cyst—a very large brain cyst. Hearing these cysts were normally asymptomatic was of little comfort, especially because she felt her mind and body slipping away more and more every day. Normal mental and physical functions were becoming harder to control. Even if the doctors didn’t believe the cyst was a problem, she knew it was.

It would take months of living inside a shell of a person that she’d become, months of living in a mental fogginess and sometimes even physical pain, before she would finally get the medical attention she needed. It’s All in Your Head chronicles her harrowing medical odyssey and her attempts to regain some sort of semblance of her old life after treatment.

A contribution by Maria McCutchen, author of “It’s All in Your Head – A Life of Mental Fogginess And Physical Pain”

I had looked forward to being a mother all my life. I couldn’t wait to have kids and start living the life I had always dreamed of. The day came when I was a mother of two – two beautiful boys. Everything was just as it should be – I was living the life I’d always dreamt I would. Then, one day, that dream turned into a nightmare. I became ill, and being a mother was harder than I could have ever imagined.

My illness wasn’t like a cold, or flu, but a long-term medical problem that took months to figure out to begin with. But once a diagnosis was made, it took even longer to receive any type of treatment. Even with treatment, there were complications and permanent disabilities. My dreams of being a mom were slowly fading – at least the part of being the type of mom I had always hoped to be. Now, I was a mom – with a long term, permanent, even, medical problem.

My life became consumed with doctors, tests, surgeries, healing and recouping. I had to realign my mothering to fit in-with all my medical drama. It was hard to cope with, many times. I felt depression sneaking in on countless occasions and a lot having to do with the guilt of not being able to be there for my boys the way I’d always envisioned. I couldn’t do things with them anymore, like trips to the park, movies, even school events – I had to miss out on many things while their dad got enjoy all the events.

Depression and guilt consumed me. I still find myself getting down on the fact that even today, I cannot do everything as a mom, that I’d always thought I would be doing with and for them. But today, I try to remember that I do the best I can. I am there in every I can be, and what I can’t do, I just do a lot of explaining. I talk to my boys, who are getting older and understand much more. I tell them how I wish I could be there, but my health just won’t let me. And I want to hear all about the event I had to miss. We spend a lot of time talking about the event, and they love telling me.

Kids are resilient. And, they understand a lot more than what we think they do. With me letting them know that I wish I could be there, and that I would be there if not for my health, it gives them comfort. They know that I want to do much more than I have been able to over the years. They know that I love them, and that if I could….I’d be there.

I think that by being honest and open, it has allowed my boys to “accept” the way things are. By talking to them often and explaining to them how I feel and how I wish I could be there, they are more understanding people. I know that my boys are growing up under not-so-normal circumstances. But I also know that they are growing into compassionate, empathetic young men.

Advertisement

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

It’s All in Your Head – A Life of Mental Fogginess And Physical Pain

by Maria McCutchen

Maria McCutchen did not have time to be sick. With a husband who had just lost a job, two young sons, and a cross-country move on the horizon, who had time to be sick? Maria didn’t have time for a common cold, let alone a major medical condition. But one day while shopping in the grocery store where she had shopped hundreds of times before, she couldn’t find the milk. It was then she knew what she was feeling was more than just stress or exhaustion. There was something very wrong.

After consulting a few doctors, Maria discovered she had a rare brain cyst known as a posterior fossa arachnoid cyst—a very large brain cyst. Hearing these cysts were normally asymptomatic was of little comfort, especially because she felt her mind and body slipping away more and more every day. Normal mental and physical functions were becoming harder to control. Even if the doctors didn’t believe the cyst was a problem, she knew it was.

It would take months of living inside a shell of a person that she’d become, months of living in a mental fogginess and sometimes even physical pain, before she would finally get the medical attention she needed. It’s All in Your Head chronicles her harrowing medical odyssey and her attempts to regain some sort of semblance of her old life after treatment.

People are always asking me how we coped with having two babies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for almost three months.  Even a year later the question still comes up.  The reality is, that we knew we didn’t have a choice. Obviously we didn’t choose to have our babies born two and a half months early, or with health issues but it happened and we knew needed to pull together as a family.  For whatever reason this was the path we were sent down and we were going to make it through it. Don’t get me wrong, there were days I didn’t know how to cope and I certainly did my share of crying. But I had faith in the doctors and nurses, I had faith in me and my husband, and most of all I had faith in my babies.  I just knew that no matter what happened we could get through anything. As long as my babies kept fighting, so could I.

When we were experiencing life in the NICU, I often referred to other resources for help and guidance. I wanted to know how I could make this experience easier on myself and everyone around me. By the end of our journey I realized that I had created my own survival list, one I would happily share with anyone who was experiencing the challenges that we once did. Not everything came easy to us, but here are some things that eventually made my experience in the NICU a little easier:

• I Allowed Myself be Overwhelmed:  Everyday our children were in the NICU was an overwhelming experience.  Whether it was the first day, or the thirty-first day, every day presented challenges. I learned very quickly that being overwhelmed and anxious just went along with the whole experience, and the more I tried to fight it, the worse it got.  Eventually, I told myself that it was okay to be completely scared and overwhelmed.

• I Enjoyed the Good Days: I think every parent who has had a baby in the NICU will agree on one thing, there are good days and there are bad days.  Looking back, I realize how important it was to truly enjoy the good days.  There were definitely setbacks, we had several, but there were also many milestones along the way too. We would often celebrate the good days, by calling friends and family and telling them the good news, or we would have a piece of cake from the hospital cafeteria and talk about the future and our new life with our incredible new family. These days truly made it easier to take the bad days.  I tried never to allow myself not to enjoy the good days because I was worried about the next bad day.  I just learned to take one day at a time.  Sometimes you have to just except when you’re on an emotional roller coaster!

• I Asked a lot of Questions:  There is no doubt the girls had some wonderful doctors and nurses when they were in the hospital, but I learned that I had to ask questions if I wanted to know everything about their care.  The experience was new to us, but to the hospital staff, it was something they deal with everyday.  There was no such thing as a stupid question and I knew there was no way to ask a question too many times.  As a parent with a child in the NICU, it was easy to feel helpless, but we tried to stay informed and ask a lot of questions, it definitely took away some of that helpless feeling.

• I Took Care of Myself:  It took awhile but I figured out that I was no good to myself or my girls if I was sick because I neglected to take care of myself.  When my girls were first in the NICU, I never wanted to leave their sides, in fact, there were days I didn’t. I was overwhelmed, scared and recovering from a C-section.  I became so run down, it prolonged my own recovery and made it hard to think straight.  It made me realize, after being told by several people, that I wasn’t going to be a good advocate for my children if I was too tired to think clearly. Even worse if I got too sick, I wouldn’t be able to go to the hospital to be with them.  So I finally took the advice of the nurses and doctors when they told me to go home and get some rest. I could call from home to check on the babies at anytime, day or night.

• I Found Support:  I found that getting support from others who have been in a similar situation was extremely important and helpful.  Whether it was someone who is currently experiencing having a baby in the NICU, or who has in the past, they can be great resources and support.  I read a lot of books, I used the internet, and I took advantage of support groups and counselors that the hospital offered for support.

• I Helped Care for My Babies:  In the beginning of our babies stay in the NICU I was afraid to do anything that involved taking care of them.  They were so small and so fragile and on top of it, I was afraid of bonding with them for fear that it would make it harder to leave them when I needed to go home to get some sleep.  Nurses encouraged my husband and me both to be involved when we were there.  Keep in mind every situation is different.  Some babies are too sick, and can’t be held or touched by anyone other than the doctors and nurses.  But if there was any way that I could be involved in caring for the girls, I took full advantage of the opportunity.  After all, I am the parent! Not only did this help me bond with my babies, but it also prepared me for going home with the girls.  Once I got past my fears, I did everything they allowed me to do, and when we finally were able to bring the babies home, I felt very capable and ready to do things on my own.

For more please follow my Facebook page…

After discovering that I don’t in fact need a manual to take care of my twin girls, my enthusiasm has lead me to discover what being a parent is really all about. In an attempt to help me define my new role in life, curiosity provoked me to look up the definition of the word mother in the dictionary. As anyone can probably guess there are several different meanings and I was able to come to the conclusion that being a mother certainly has its respected place in society.  What it also made me realize, is that I have had many defining moments as a mother over the past year, none of which I have found in a dictionary.

Obviously the birth of my children made me a parent, but I am convinced that is not necessarily what makes me a mother.  There are certain events that take place, certain moments that I like to call “mommy moments”.   I will attempt to explain.  The other day my husband was driving home from a shopping trip and was excited to call and tell me that he had a surprise.  Well, I couldn’t imagine what it could be, because since the birth of our twin girls my husband and I haven’t exchanged many gifts. Not for any particular reason other than we just haven’t had much time.  I was pleasantly surprised when he walked through the door cradling a brand new vacuum cleaner. Be still my heart, it was sparkling and oh so pretty!   Honestly, I don’t think I would have been that excited over a pair of diamond earrings. I call moments like this my “mommy moments”.

I have had several “mommy moments” over the past year.  Feeling lucky and grateful to drive a spacious minivan, ditching my fashionable clutch for a diaper bag, going out in public with baby poop smeared on my white sweater and not noticing until I got home (yes that really happened) and  yelling at cars that drive too fast through my neighborhood have been just a few of many “mommy moments”.  Some of my moments are touching and beautiful, like when I watch my baby girls’ laugh or when they are sleeping peacefully.  I can’t help but feel amazed and proud that I was part of creating such miracles. There are other moments however, that are a little less charming if not less desirable.  For example, I can only hope that when my husband walks through the door in the evening he is distracted by his beautiful children enough not to notice that I am wearing his sweatpants and ripped t-shirt.  Or that I have neglected to even try and get the sweet potato and avocado out of my hair.  Whether he notices or not, he continues to tell me how beautiful I am every day.  Undoubtedly I am a lucky woman and I truly appreciate that he finds my “mommy moments” to be endearing.

I never thought the day would come when staying home on a Friday night snuggled on the couch, listening to the baby monitor and reading good book would be more desirable than a night out at the bar, or that I would prefer to go shopping at Babies R Us over any other store at the mall. Regardless I like my life much better these days, and I can honestly say that I wouldn’t change a thing.  After all, every “mommy moment” I have, whether it is embarrassing or not, is just a reminder of how incredibly lucky I am.

For more please follow my Facebook page…

In the early seventies I remember visiting Berry Pomeroy Castle with the family. In those days there were no restrictions and walls which had tumbled remained in place just how they fell.

Now in researching my new book I have been aiming to establish connections between the Tudor dynasty and my home in South Devon – a relevant positive correlation is the purchase made of Berry Pomeroy Castle in the outskirts of Totnes in 1547.from Sir Thomas Pomeroy by Edward Seymour, the 1^st Duke of Somerset and the Lord Protector of the young King Edward V1.

The Duke became a very rich man having been favoured by Henry V111 for his victory over the Scots, and took it into his mind to purchase a multitude of properties in England just for the fun of it – although I guess prestige had a lot to do with it. He rarely visited his properties and it was doubtful if he visited Berry Pomeroy because of the distance from London.

But the continuous struggle to maintain power was tenuous indeed. Unfortunately for him along with so many power hungry men of the time his head was removed in 1552 on a charge of treason which, it seems was never verified. But John Dudley, the wicked Duke of Northumberland, had much to do with it.

There was so much scheming in those days and the very cunning Dudley somehow made it look as though the ill-fated Somerset had committed the sin of sins in committing treason against the young King.

Consequently Dudley, having gained the favour of King Henry V111 for putting down the Kett’s uprising in Norfolk, became the Duke of Northumberland, the most powerful man in England.

But it turned out all of his scheming was  in vain because – in trying to prevent Mary Tudor from becoming Queen ,which – following his son,  Guildford’s marriage to Lady Jane Grey, whom he also duped into being Queen against her will – his aim being to make Guildford King,  things went very wrong for him.

It was as if he had not the gumption to realise the citizens of Norfolk had it in for him after his horrendous tortures and execution of both Robert and his brother, William Kett, who championed for local peasants in attempting to restore land taken by the gentry- and where, at Kennington, the incoming Queen Mary Tudor put her claim to the throne. Then, moving to Framlingham Castle in Suffolk, which was better fortified to meet Northumberland’s troops who changed sides realising the enormity of Mary Tudor’s supporters and so Dudley was done for.

Consequently, upon the death of Edward Seymour, Berry Pomeroy and all his lands were forfeit to the crown.

It was not until 1558, that his son by his first marriage gained title to the castle. Like his father he became a considerable landowner earning the title of High Sheriff of Devon.

Not caring much for the old Pomeroy buildings inside the castle walls, between 1560 and 1580 he removed them and erected a new four-storey house at the north end of the courtyard.

Descendants of the Seymour’s were handed down the castle buildings but eventually the pile was neglected and by 1701 was a ruin. John Prince, the Vicar of Totnes in 1675-1681 who had known the castle in its heyday, said in his book The Worthies of Devon:

…The apartments within were very splendid; especially the dining room, which was adorn’d, besides paint, with statues and figures cut in alabaster- ’tis now demolished, and all this glory lieth in the dust…

Once there were 50 rooms there indicating that the Seymour family spent a good deal of money on a castle which was romantically placed on a hill overlooking a wooded valley and no doubt, if those walls could talk, we would know an awful lot more, for walking among the ruins, especially before the pile was restored in the 1980’s. I well remember how it was in the early seventies when anyone could just wander at random and imagine how grand it once was. There was certainly something about the place that I guess will forever be a mystery, like so many of the ruins from the past which still remain, like they are tantalising us to try and work out what exactly happened, the trials and tribulations of the invading Parliamentarians in Cromwell’s time, the spirits of not one but two ladies who are said to haunt the pile.

Unfortunately illiteracy was strife in those times so evidence is always scarce. It will be quite different for our descendants looking back to our present time when they will have ample evidence from various sources.

Amazingly, Berry Pomeroy is still owned by the present Duke of Somerset, though it is now administered by English Heritage.

QUEEN OF MISFORTUNE
A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

A Love Story of Shakespearean Dimension!

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same strange who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

As a new mother I am always thinking about what I want to teach my girls as they go through life.  Of course I want them to eat their veggies, always be polite, be kind and giving to others and to always behave themselves when out in public. I am pretty sure that is every parents goal, or at least I am hopeful.  What I am talking about is all of the “other stuff”.  The things that aren’t necessarily the fundamentals, but the things that I figure are good to know as they get older and become adults. No doubt some of life’s most important lessons are learned through experience, I will not deny that.  But I thought it may be a good idea to pass some of my so-called wisdom on to my own children and give them the opportunity to learn new and perhaps more important lessons on their own.  I’m sure in the end they can teach me a few things, after all they already have.

To narrow it down and in no specific order of importance, I have put together a list:

• Always send thank you cards when someone gives you a gift
• Integrity is perhaps the most attractive quality a person can have
• “Keep smiling, it makes people wonder what you’ve been up to”
• Sometimes going inside is faster than the drive through
• Don’t settle for a low thread count.  It’s worth it to spend a little extra money on good bedding.  After all, a good night’s sleep is priceless!
• If you have the option, don’t get call waiting.  Finish your conversation because you can always call the other person back when you are done.
• If you are going to sit at the bar do not wear low rise jeans or at least do everyone a favor and tie a shirt around your waste (obviously I will save this one for when they are older)
• If you find a $20 bill lying on the ground and you don’t know who it belongs to, give it to someone in need
• Oreos are better than Hydrox cookies (sorry Grandpa)
• Stock up on holiday candy for out of season cravings.
• If you are tall, where high heels and be proud!
• Work hard, but don’t forget to stop and dance, it’s free (even if you can’t dance  like their father and he knows it)

Well there you have it, thirty years of life lessons put down on paper.  It may not be much but luckily I have time to add to it because for now, the only thing my girls need to worry about is napping, playtime and of course smiling and laughing! Since we seem to have mastered those things, I think we are off to a good start!

For more please follow my Facebook page…

Like many others I am sure, I have welcomed this unseasonably warm weather with open arms.  Long walks with the girls, trips to the park and car rides with the windows down has certainly been a better alternative to being cooped up at home waiting for flu and RSV season to pass.  The doctors have always recommended lying low this winter while the girls were still young and developing.  While overall they are now healthy babies, their lungs and immune systems had a little catching up to do since being born three months early and recovering from surgeries.  So the first day the temperature reached above sixty, we were outdoors and we were loving it!  With the warm weather though, have come memories that have left me again thinking a lot about the past and more importantly about the future.

On one of the warmest days so far this year, I was getting into my car and the smell of spring sent chills down my spine.  Immediately, I flashed back to spring of last year when I would get into my car every morning to take the hour drive to the NICU to spend the day with my girls. The distinct feeling of being apart from my girls was all too familiar and almost too much to stand.  As I drove down the road, I felt like I was going back to the NICU, but this time I glimpsed in the rearview mirror and looking back at me through the mirrors on their seats were two beautiful, happy and healthy babies.  How far we have come, more importantly how far they have come.

I have spent the last year trying hard to remember every detail of the time we spent in the hospital.  Not only  was I afraid to forget how incredibly brave and strong my girls were as they came into the world, but I wanted to make sure that I could preserve every memory so I could one day share it with them.  I methodically wrote things down and relived many moments over and over again in my head.  Unfortunately for me, working so hard to preserve these memories made it somewhat difficult to move on and look forward to what the future has in store.  I no longer want the smell of spring to send a chill down my spine.  I want the smell of spring to come with new memories, like the memory of my beautiful baby girls staring back at me in the mirror as the warm air blows around us.

Unlike last year at this time, I don’t need to be afraid to think about the future.  I don’t need to be held back by all the “what ifs” that once seemed to control my life.  The fear and uncertainty has been replaced pure love and joy for each and every moment I spend with my girls.  With so much in front of us, I no longer need to dwell on the past but embrace the future.  The girls amazing journey into this world will never be forgotten because after all, it is the past that made it possible to look toward the future.

For more please follow my Facebook page…

A contribution by Maria McCutchen, author of “It’s All in Your Head – A Life of Mental Fogginess And Physical Pain”

What is it that you are going through that you feel like there is no end? What is it that has you questioning, “Why must I endure this?” Whatever it is, there is hope. There is hope for dealing with your medical ordeal. There is hope for dealing with your loved one’s medical ordeal.

Sometimes we forget that every cloud does have a silver lining. We forget to look for it, especially if it is being masked by a temporary, darker lining. But if you wait long enough, eventually that silver lining will emerge and it will brighten your day….your life.

How many days did I spend in darkness without a hint of silver to focus on?  Too many to count. How many days did I spend wondering if the dark cloud that seemed to have permanently settled in over me, would ever move and make way for the sun again? More than I can think of. But eventually those dark clouds did move. And the sun did eventually come ’round again. Slowly at first, but the clouds did move.

It is difficult to always remain positive when you physically feel ill. It’s also difficult to remain positive when you feel emotionally spent because of your physical ailment. And it is difficult to see anything positive – anything futuristic, when you are living for the moment, just trying to get through the moment.

One thing that I kept repeating to myself when things got tough, a saying that my mother used to say, was “And this too will pass.” I must have repeated that in my head – in my mind, a thousand times over the years. And each and every time, whatever it was I was going through and dealing with at the moment, it would eventually pass.

Something else I strongly believe and cling to are these words: “God is our refuge and strength, an EVER-PRESENT help in trouble. Whatever you’re going through, He is near you NOW…He is present…and He will help you.”

No matter what you are dealing with, there is hope and there is a brighter side. You just have to believe.

Advertisement

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

It’s All in Your Head – A Life of Mental Fogginess And Physical Pain

by Maria McCutchen

Maria McCutchen did not have time to be sick. With a husband who had just lost a job, two young sons, and a cross-country move on the horizon, who had time to be sick? Maria didn’t have time for a common cold, let alone a major medical condition. But one day while shopping in the grocery store where she had shopped hundreds of times before, she couldn’t find the milk. It was then she knew what she was feeling was more than just stress or exhaustion. There was something very wrong.

After consulting a few doctors, Maria discovered she had a rare brain cyst known as a posterior fossa arachnoid cyst—a very large brain cyst. Hearing these cysts were normally asymptomatic was of little comfort, especially because she felt her mind and body slipping away more and more every day. Normal mental and physical functions were becoming harder to control. Even if the doctors didn’t believe the cyst was a problem, she knew it was.

It would take months of living inside a shell of a person that she’d become, months of living in a mental fogginess and sometimes even physical pain, before she would finally get the medical attention she needed. It’s All in Your Head chronicles her harrowing medical odyssey and her attempts to regain some sort of semblance of her old life after treatment.

When visiting my cousin in Leicester, England, little did I know that her invitation for my wife Daphne and I to join her for a walk in the Bradgate Country Park would lead the way to the publication of my first novel.

The park had a certain charisma about it, the arrangement of the trees, the flora and fauna, and I immediately felt it was a special place. Walking some, we reached the ruins of an old 16th century house. Noticeably only a small chapel was intact and I realised then what my cousin was about, knowing my interest in old houses, castles, and ruins.

“This is where poor Lady Jane Grey was brought up, Peter,” my cousin informed me.

“Who was she?” I asked faintly remembering the name.

And when she told me, how Jane was brought up there, the corner tower they named the Lady Jane Tower, how she was Queen for just nine days, and how she had her head cut off when she was only sixteen, I was immediately absorbed in anything to do with her.

What on earth made the bloody Queen Mary Tudor give the instruction to execute Jane and her husband Guildford? I would soon find out, that was sure!

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

My cousin seemed surprised we had not heard of her but then, living in the vicinity, it was unlikely that she wouldn’t have known of her, of how she was duped by the wicked John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland, to take the crown after the death of the boy King Edward, not seeming to realise he had not the support of the people in his quest to prevent Mary Tudor, King Henry VIII’s eldest daughter by his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to take her rightful claim to the throne.

I decided then, I just had to write something about this wretched girl who had been almost forgotten, and rarely mentioned in the annals of history, she had had a very rough deal here on earth and deserved more recognition for that which she had to endure.

I became obsessed with my subject, researching every avenue open to me both on the Internet and reading other books, which had been written about her. Until that time, I had assumed much of that which has been written of her was reliable and authentic, but it was not going to be that easy by any measure of the imagination.

Putting aside fictitious accounts of Jane’s life, how she was brought up, and her marriage and so on, I discovered that which was said to be true often differed with other accounts, and for some time I was utterly confused in my quest to gather as much fact as I could muster of her.

I knew from the start that much of my book would have to be fictional, because her life was so very short and not all that much had been chronicled of her. I needed a skeleton of truth, like the various letters written by her in different forms, a prayer, her speech from the scaffold and letters written by her tutors, and other sources as displayed in the British Museum

And then came the task in trying to make something legible of those sparse facts. Many authors give a romantic account of Jane’s association with Guildford Dudley whom she was forced to marry against her will.

I wanted to trace hints of what might have been. For example, there came an uncomplimentary reaction when she was advised she would have to marry Guildford, enough to convince me that she positively did not want the marriage when she declared that she was betrothed to Herbert, the young Earl of Hertford.

Then there were hints of a great admiration of her tutor, John Aylmer, in Roger Ascham’s written account when he visited Jane, and she was alone in Bradgate whilst her parents were out hunting. This spurred me to create in my novel a more meaningful relationship which, when she grew to be a woman, accepted then to be at the age of fourteen, became a love match, thus giving me an ideal romantic string in my book.

I read also of a ‘stranger’ in the crowd when Jane was on the scaffold awaiting her execution, a stranger who climbed up to assist her when blindfolded when, on her knees, she was unable to find the block. It seemed probable that a disguised John Aylmer could have been the stranger, so I have made him so in my book.

I discovered a number of hints that led me to write what I imagined of Jane could have been true.

Returning to Bradgate, I needed to be alone to capture something, which may just bring her alive in my thoughts, to help me give a good and respectful account of her life there. And I was not disappointed. I spent a whole day there just sauntering around and getting the feel of the ruins and the surrounding area. I felt somehow her body had been returned to a special place where she picnicked with her guardian and nurse, Mary Ellen. There is the story of a horse and cart, which appears as an apparition late every New Year’s eve. Maybe it was transporting the body of Lady Jane to her burial place?

When I looked around the old boundary walls of Bradgate house, it wasn’t long before I felt the need to kneel and pull up some turf there to find the stump of a long felled tree, and then, a little distance apart, I found another and then another until I realised there had been a circle of trees in the area, and I was drawn to the centre where I felt strongly her remains had been interned. But there was a huge clump of spiky bramble preventing me from stepping into the centre. It felt to me that the centre area was sacrosanct and must not be disturbed, which made me all the more convinced her remains were there.

I wrote a letter published by the Leicester Mercury, asking for information regarding Bradgate’s connection with Lady Jane Grey. One response from a gentleman, who lives in Leicester, mentions a time he and his wife were walking around the boundary wall there. They heard a young child crying over the other side of the wall. On clambering up the wall and looking over the other side however, he could see nothing. The couple suggested I wrote to the park ranger who, they advised, kept a record of ghostly happenings and sightings. But when I followed this up, the ranger denied this and suggested the sound attributed to a crying child was probably that of a peacock, several of which inhabit the area.

The most unusual and exiting reply came from the friend of an American girl who claimed to be Lady Jane in her former life. Because at the time I was so very involved and absorbed I had a thought of what if? This would be indeed a writer’s dream if it could be somehow verified, which in reality was of course unlikely, but nevertheless I gave it a go and wrote to the party concerned and, surprise, surprise – no reply!

I discovered much about the architecture of the house, how it was the first brick building to have been built since Roman times, most of them in that century having been constructed of stone.

A man-made lake had been dug around a natural well to the rear of the house on a slightly higher plain which, given the natural influence of gravity, enabled the supply of running water through a series of clay pipes beneath the floor, which could be pumped up as required, a facility regarded to be a sheer luxury in those days.

On the day I went to Bradgate visitors were sparse, so I was able to spend time just meditating in effort to draw in something, but it is not easy, when you want something to happen, that the mind plays irrational tricks. So I tried to keep level minded, hoping that Lady Jane, if her spirit was still there, would transmit something, anything to me. I moved over to what once was a spiral staircase leading to what was said to be her apartment in Lady Jane’s Tower. I stood there motionless just listening, feeling and hoping, but I felt nothing, but I did rub my fingers along the few bricks and mortar which remained, and there I did feel something, like the mortar had been grilled out and something hidden inside, but, needless to say, there is no evidence of this.

But I have used the idea in my book relating to a message received by Jane of her father, which seems to merge well with the rest of the chapter. So could it be, there was actually something implanted there, was there something very faint itching to get through to me?

I had to conclude why would Jane want to return to a place where for much of the time she was unhappy and beaten by her parents? But there was a romantic twist in my story of her relationship with John Aylmer. So that was a reason she could come back occasionally, if my theory was true. But it is never that easy and, no matter what, nothing could be confirmed. I just had to get on with it and do my best, with the knowledge that Jane really wanted me to write something about the truth of how she was duped by John Dudley and forced into an unwanted marriage to his son.

To gain some inherent mood, imagining how those last days must have been like for the Lady Jane, I visited the Tower of London so see the house in which she was imprisoned. I really needed to get into the building and enter the upstairs apartment to imagine the true feel of the place, look through the window she would have peered through to see the erection of her scaffold and the return of her husband’s decapitated body after he had been executed on Tower Hill. Imagining how she must have felt that day on the 13th February 1554 stepping down those stairs and entering the courtyard so bravely and graciously.

But regretfully, this was not possible, so I had to create the scene as it might have been as I looked at the scaffold scene on the green adjacent to the Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vincula where the body of Jane of Royal Blood should have been buried beneath. I believe, Queen Mary Tudor prevented this and her body, left for hours afterwards on the scaffold, was removed by persons unknown and returned to Bradgate.

When in Queen Victoria’s reign, the floor was raised they discovered the skeleton of a small woman which were first thought to be of Lady Jane but later found to be those of Ann Boleyn who was also executed there.

Then there was the probability of her portraits, two or three, that were said to have been done and to be of her. But I could find no absolute proof of that, and I have come to the conclusion that Queen Mary Tudor was so unhappy and guilty about having authorised the execution of her cousin Jane, she ordered the destruction of anything she could find relating to her.

The difficulty was in trying to imagine how she would have looked until, eventually, there was a brief mention by a French ambassador attending her coronation, that she was small, standing just over five feet and demure with a pale complexion, red hair, and freckles.

So much of the material was now to hand, and I felt I could master the challenge and start to write something I would call a faction piece because it is fiction very much based on hard researched and gained fact.

Three years later, given the immense patience and understanding of my wife Daphne, I completed the book, and feel I have given of my best a near truth account as possible of this unfortunate nine day Queen.

Advertisement

QUEEN OF MISFORTUNE
A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

A Love Story of Shakespearean Dimension!

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same strange who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

If you have been following our story, I am guessing I have made my point by now that there have been many medical terms and expressions that I have become familiar with of the course of the last seventeen months , since discovering I was pregnant with twins.  We were introduced to terms like Twin to Twin Transfusion, anemia, brittle bones disease, double hernia, NICU and as you know by now congenital heart defect (CHD). These things, all in their own right, held certain challenges and required both my husband and I to not only stay informed so that we could advocate for our children, but also to help us give them the best care possible once our twin girls came home.  I was recently reminded during a phone conversation with my daughter’s cardiologist that having a child born with a congenital heart defect, while very scary is not a diagnosis which will ultimately cause our child to live life on the sidelines.  As any parent, I want my children to have opportunities that will help them become strong and independent adults.  I never want to be faced with telling either one of my girls that they can’t do something because they have limitations, and I feel very fortunate that I won’t have to.

As many of you may or may not know, congenital heart disease can be a very broad diagnosis.  It means that a child is born with an abnormality to their heart, and the severity of the condition can range from mild to severe.  After our daughter survived delivery, the doctors were able to give her an accurate diagnosis.  It was touch and go in the beginning, but once she was born and began to grow, her prognosis was looking clearer.  There are many different kinds of heart defects, our little girl was diagnosed with what the doctors considered moderate to severe pulmonary stenosis.  If you’re anything like me, you have no idea what this is and you may assume the worst.  The doctors did their best to explain this condition and after diagrams and what seemed like hours of questions answered, we felt like we had a better understanding of her condition.  Without going into too much detail, for those weak in the knees, it is when the pulmonary valve does not function properly causing increased strain to the heart.

As always, I am compelled to remind everyone I am not in the medical field, as with everything I write about, this is in my own terms and how I experienced and understand it.  So please do the research if you want to know more, there are great resources out there. What I can tell you is that my daughter’s condition did require surgery which in the end would change her diagnosis from severe to mild pulmonary stenonsis.  What did this mean?  It meant that instead of trips to the cardiologist every three weeks, we now go every three months.  It means that as she grows, her heart may grow stronger.  But it also means that there is a chance the condition could become severe again in which case another surgery may be needed.  Only time will tell. Regardless, doctors are keeping a close eye on her and her prognosis is no longer scary, it is definitely manageable.

This leads me to why I have decided to write about this.  It often comes up in conversation that one of my twins was born with a congenital heart defect.  What I have found over the months is that the term, to most people is very alarming.  It was at one time very alarming to me too.  Don’t get me wrong, heart defects are certainly nothing to dismiss and there are severe cases and different kinds of heart defects which are indeed very worrisome and require lifestyle adjustments.  We are lucky that our daughter can live a normal and active life.  However, not everyone understands that.  Many people, including myself at times treat my daughter as though she is too fragile to do certain things.  “Can’t let her cry, she has a heart problem”, or “she should probably take a break from playing so she doesn’t get tired”.  My hope is that as my daughter grows up, eventually starts school and wants to be involved in other activities, that she is not held back by lack of understanding her condition.  I will do my best to make sure that she is always given the same opportunities as other children.  She is strong, she is healthy and she can and will be able to do anything!  I will do my best to inform and educate people in her life but most importantly, I will teach her that she is no different from other child and that her heart condition does not define who she is, and it never will.

For more please follow my Facebook page…

In 1954 I was posted as a Royal Air Force medic to the RAF service hospital in Rostrup, near Oldenburg in West Germany.

In 1945-49 The Allied powers who defeated Nazi Germany in World War II divided the country west of the Oder-Neisse line into four occupation zones for administrative purposes comprising the American, British, French and Soviet zones.

As a young man I remember sadly the result of absolute war seeing Hamburg raised to the ground having also, as a kid, experienced the fear of war being brought up in North London

But my job was primarily as a medic taking care of service personal who became ill during their tour of Germany.

One of the joys I remember well was listening to AFN; the American Forces Network from Bremerhaven in the US Zone.

The radio station created a lot of interest and pleasure for both patients and staff, particularly the so named ‘Stickbuddy Jamboree’ slot which played requested country and western music disc- jockeyed by Red Jones, a guy full of zest and sparkle.

I had several of my requests played including: The truck Driving Man (Terry Fell) and Dottie West’s Country Sunshine. The sound of Red’s voice was really something, the resonance of a southern states guy which complimented the music played. I can hear him now: “Here’s a number for Pete Carroll and all you guys in the RAF hospital, Rostrup and I sure hope you who are patients there soon recover.”

It was magic and it seemed for ever more we listened to the show. I won an AFN Radio competition and was treated to a real top notch fried chicken meal by the yanks in Bremerhaven, I don’t think I have ever ate so much in my life, those guys sure  knew how to enjoy their food.

They were all so outgoing and generous, – gregarious too – a far cry from how we Brits were, a little more reserved and stiff upper lipped I would say.

We were envious of our American counterparts because their pay was approximately three times the amount of ours and their uniforms were better styled and made of a smart mixture of wool/gabardine, when we had to make do with a thicker serge type material which  always seemed to appear clumsy and uncomfortable.

The bizarre thing is, I have had difficulty in researching this piece because, it seems, most of the guys have passed on and here am I still chasing memories.

Well I guess 58 years gone by is a long time and yet, to me it all seems like yesterday.

And I can still hear those wonderful songs oozing out of the past.

I wonder if any of my closest buddies are still going. We called ourselves the three musketeers; Ian Smith from Derby who loved racing cars and  married a German girl called Ursula, Ray Vickers from Hexham who converted me to Methodism and I believe, became a Methodist minister and of course myself. Another mate was Jack Taylor whom I saved from drowning after, well inebriated, he climbed the unrigged mast of a yacht in Rostrup lake and toppled over!

And I must mention also Terry Stokes who became a Vicar at Wells Cathedral.

Well, I guess 58 years gone by is a long time and yet, to me it all seems like yesterday.

And I can still hear those wonderful songs oozing out of the past.

Advertisement

QUEEN OF MISFORTUNE
A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

A Love Story of Shakespearean Dimension!

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same strange who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

You know, getting old is not so bad, I think of it as natural progression – like the immense changes that have occurred in my lifetime. And one can cherish memories, well the happy ones anyway – and most of us can remember those no matter how old we are – as for the ones better forgotten, well I guess they helped show the way in appreciating the happier times.

Memories can spring from the most unexpected things. Locally I noticed, tucked away behind a wall, the remnants of an old Victorian style lamp-post. Then a tune rumbled in my mind,  the lyrics sung by Sammy Kaye  -something about the old lamplighter and how he made the night brighter all those years ago.

Then the mind flashed back, I was a kid again playing in the street with my mates, as we did then – cars scarce, only the well- off could afford them and they never travelled more than 25MPH in the side roads.

Come dusk, the lamplighter would turn up on his bicycle, armed with a long pole with a hook on the end which, when attached to a lever on the lamp, would turn up the gas flame. This he would do regularly at dusk and again in the dawn when it was time to dowse the flame. There were about twenty lamps in our street but in the flick of an eyelid, the job was completed and he was off to the next one.

But now the song haunts my mind, how the lamplighter of long, long ago was part of our lives, his smile would cheer a lonely heart, if there were sweethearts in the park, he’d pass a lamp and leave it dark.

Yes, it is good being old given such wonderful memories when life was so very much simpler and uncomplicated and I consider myself  one of the fortunate ones in belonging to my generation, having lived through those times,  along into the swinging sixties when the music revolution regenerated our lives which had been dulled by the trauma of a terrible war felt for years afterwards.

But much has to be said for progress although to some of us there is much left to be desired, those virtues of the past which seem lost forever and I find myself praying that future generations will resolve all the present day problems, but without hope there is nothing and as I was recently reminded; the young, like I was  in the days of the lamplighter, know no different so do not fret, everything is meant to be, not for us to judge or wonder why.

I hope so, like the lamplighter, redundant during the war when all lights were dowsed, there was another song – sung by another of my generation, the inimitable Vera Lynn, it was called “When the lights come on again, all over the world!”

And sure enough they did, and the lamplighter was happy again. It was a brave new world and there was everything to live for.

Advertisement

QUEEN OF MISFORTUNE
A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

A Love Story of Shakespearean Dimension!

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same strange who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

In the grand style of Studs Terkel and Dave Isay, an epic oral portrait of today’s London that is as rich and lively as the city itself

Five years in the making, Londoners is a fresh and compulsively readable view of one of the world’s most fascinating cities—a vibrant narrative portrait of the London of our own time, featuring unforgettable stories told by the real people who make the city hum.

Acclaimed writer and editor Craig Taylor has spent years traversing every corner of the city, getting to know the most interesting Londoners, including the voice of the London Underground, a West End rickshaw driver, an East End nightclub doorperson, a mounted soldier of the Queen’s Life Guard at Buckingham Palace, and a couple who fell in love at the Tower of London—and now live there. With candor and humor, this diverse cast—rich and poor, old and young, native and immigrant, men and women (and even a Sarah who used to be a George)—shares indelible tales that capture the city as never before.

Together, these voices paint a vivid, epic, and wholly original portrait of twenty-first-century London in all its breadth, from Notting Hill to Brixton, from Piccadilly Circus to Canary Wharf, from an airliner flying into London Heathrow Airport to Big Ben and Tower Bridge, and down to the deepest tunnels of the London Underground. Londoners is the autobiography of one of the world’s greatest cities.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Craig Taylor

Craig Taylor is an acclaimed writer, playwright, and editor. He is the author of One Million Tiny Plays About Britain and Return to Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village in the 21st Century, and he edits the literary magazine Five Dials. He lives in London.

Editorial Reviews

“Ambitious [and] creative. . . . A book to deepen your relationship with London and make you fall in – or out – of love with it all over again. . . . I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed it.” (Lucy Worsley, author of If Walls Could Talk )

“Samuel Johnson said, ‘When you are tired of London, you’re tired of life.’ Craig Taylor is tired of neither London nor life, and this book is a gorgeous, utterly irresistible—even addictive—ode to both.” (David Shields, bestselling author of The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead and Reality Hunger )

“Craig Taylor is the real deal: a peerless journalist and a beautiful craftsman. He’d be a household name already if he wasn’t so modest. He’ll be one anyway in due course.” (David Rakoff, bestselling author of Fraud and Half Empty )

The British Are Here - ‘Londoners,’ an Oral History by Craig Taylor

The New York Times Book Review – March 1, 2012 (Excerpt)

Craig Taylor had a rough time when he first moved to London from Canada a dozen years ago. Someone tried to pick his friend’s pocket. A scam artist took advantage of him. Wandering around with an ancient A-Z street atlas, he often felt “lonely, duped, underprepared, faceless, friendless.” But something about the city got under his skin, so he resolved to push beyond his own experience and take its measure. Happily for us, the result is “Londoners,” a rich and exuberant kaleidoscopic portrait of a great, messy, noisy, daunting, inspiring, maddening, enthralling, constantly shifting Rorschach test of a place, as befits the book’s subtitle, “The Days and Nights of London Now — As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It.”

Here are subway workers and sex workers; homeless people and millionaires; enthusiasts and malcontents; immigrants and old-timers; the practical and the dreamy; people going and people coming. Taken as a whole, they send us some way toward addressing that slippery big-ticket question: What is London? How do you define a city so sprawling, so changeable, so varied? The answer, of course, is that there is no one answer. My London is as different from your London as you are different from me and that lady over there is different from both of us. And though countless excellent books have been written on the city, this is the one that best captures what it’s like to live in London right now, through the words of the people themselves — just as Studs Terkel did for Chicago in his oral histories years ago.

Taylor devoted five years to collecting the material for “Londoners.” He gathered stories from all 32 boroughs, conducting formal interviews with more than 200 people, running through 300 tape-recorder batteries and taking down enough notes to generate transcripts of more than 950,000 words. Fewer than half the people he talked to made the final cut. Some interviews took months to set up and lasted just a few minutes. Others went on for hours. Very occasionally, glimpses of Taylor himself emerge, as when he stays up all night with a hyperenergetic trader at New Spital­fields Market, a delightful scene that reveals his gameness for the project. (“You feel all right? It’ll start creeping up on you now,” the trader says kindly at 6:40 a.m., as Taylor finally collapses into the delivery van. “Why don’t you close your eyes, and I’ll wake you up when we get there? Little 10 minutes, quarter of an hour will do you a world of good.”) [Read the full article...]

Advertisement

THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

A young woman walks into a laboratory. Over the past two years, she has transformed almost every aspect of her life. She has quit smoking, run a marathon, and been promoted at work. The patterns inside her brain, neurologists discover, have fundamentally changed.

Marketers at Procter & Gamble study videos of people making their beds. They are desperately trying to figure out how to sell a new product called Febreze, on track to be one of the biggest flops in company history. Suddenly, one of them detects a nearly imperceptible pattern—and with a slight shift in advertising, Febreze goes on to earn a billion dollars a year.

An untested CEO takes over one of the largest companies in America. His first order of business is attacking a single pattern among his employees—how they approach worker safety—and soon the firm, Alcoa, becomes the top performer in the Dow Jones.

What do all these people have in common? They achieved success by focusing on the patterns that shape every aspect of our lives.

They succeeded by transforming habits.

In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation.

Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation’s largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death.

At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work.

Habits aren’t destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Charles Duhigg

Charles Duhigg is an investigative reporter for The New York Times. He is a winner of the National Academies of Sciences, National Journalism, and George Polk awards, and was part of a team of finalists for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. He is a frequent contributor to This American Life, NPR, PBS NewsHour, and Frontline. A graduate of Harvard Business School and Yale College, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two kids.

Editorial Reviews

“Charles Duhigg’s thesis is powerful in its elegant simplicity: confront the root drivers of our behavior, accept them as intractable, and then channel those same cravings into productive patterns. His core insight is sharp, provocative, and useful.”
—Jim Collins, #1 bestselling author of Good to Great and Built to Last
 
“The Power of Habit is not a magic pill but a thoroughly intriguing exploration of how habits function. Charles Duhigg expertly weaves fascinating new research and rich case studies into an intelligent model that is understandable, useful in a wide variety of contexts, and a flat-out great read. His chapter on ‘keystone habits’ alone would justify the book.”
—David Allen, bestselling author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

“Charles Duhigg masterfully combines cutting-edge research and captivating stories to reveal how habits shape our lives and how we can shape our habits. Once you read this book, you’ll never look at yourself, your organization, or your world quite the same way.”
—Daniel H. Pink, author of #1 New York Times bestselling Drive and A Whole New Mind

How You Can Harness ‘The Power Of Habit’

NPR Book Review – February 27, 2012 (Excerpt)

The 19th century psychologist William James observed, “All our life … is but a mass of habits.”

Ad men in the 20th century took this aphorism to heart. It wasn’t enough to simply sell a product; the goal was to hook consumers and keep them coming back.

In his new book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, Charles Duhigg, a business reporter for The New York Times, explains how some companies have achieved enormous success by altering people’s habits. By luck or design, they’ve been tapping into a powerful psychological pattern: the “habit loop.”

The habit loop is a three-part process. First, “there’s a cue, which is kind of a trigger for an automatic behavior to start unfolding,” Duhigg tells Morning Edition‘s Renee Montagne. “There’s a routine, which is the behavior itself … and then there’s a reward, which tells our brain whether we should store this habit for future use or not.”

Toothpaste is a perfect example of how companies put the habit loop to use. About a hundred years ago, says Duhigg, no one in America brushed his or her teeth. But when one of the nation’s most prominent advertising executives, Claude C. Hopkins, heard about a new toothpaste called Pepsodent, he thought he could make a killing.

“Claude C. Hopkins had made his name creating habits around products and making them famous,” Duhigg says. “He had these two simple rules: make a product into a daily habit — find some simple cue, something that’s going to trigger the consumer — and second of all, you have to give them the reward. … He intuited [the habit loop] years before laboratories had proven that it exists.” [Read the full article...]

Habits: How They Form And How To Break Them

NPR Book Review – March 5, 2012 (Excerpt)

Think about something it took you a really long time to learn, like how to parallel park. At first, parallel parking was difficult and you had to devote a lot of mental energy to it. But after you grew comfortable with parallel parking, it became much easier — almost habitual, you could say.

Parallel parking, gambling, exercising, brushing your teeth and every other habit-forming activity all follow the same behavioral and neurological patterns, says New York Timesbusiness writer Charles Duhigg. His new book The Power of Habit explores the science behind why we do what we do — and how companies are now working to use our habit formations to sell and market products to us. [Read the full article...]

Can’t Help Myself - ‘The Power of Habit,’ by Charles Duhigg

The New York Times Book Review – March 9, 2012 (Excerpt)

Human consciousness, that wonderful ability to reflect, ponder and choose, is our greatest evolutionary achievement. But it is possible to have too much of a good thing, and fortunately we also have the ability to operate on automatic pilot, performing complex behaviors without any conscious thought at all. One way this happens is with lots of practice. Tasks that seem impossibly complex at first, like learning how to play the guitar, speak a foreign language or operate a new DVD player, become second nature after we perform those actions many times (well, maybe not the DVD player). “If practice did not make perfect,” William James said, “nor habit economize the expense of nervous and muscular energy, he” (we, that is) “would therefore be in a sorry plight.”

But of course there is a dark side to habits, namely that we acquire bad ones, like smoking or overeating. I imagine that most people — save, perhaps, for a friend of mine who said, in reaction to a news story about the dangers of hyper­tension, “I’ve given up all of my vices; please don’t take away my salt!” — would love to find an easy way of breaking a bad habit or two.

Charles Duhigg, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, has written an entertaining book to help us do just that, “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.” Duhigg has read hundreds of scientific papers and interviewed many of the scientists who wrote them, and relays interesting findings on habit formation and change from the fields of social psychology, clinical psychology and neuroscience. This is not a self-help book conveying one author’s homespun remedies, but a serious look at the science of habit formation and change. [Read the full article...]

Book review: ‘The Power of Habit’ by Charles Duhigg

The Los Angeles Times Book Review – April 9, 2012 (Excerpt)

When Paul O’Neill took over the floundering Aluminum Co. of America in October 1987, he shocked attendees at an introductory news conference by proclaiming that his focus would not be on expanding sales or improving profitability. Rather, he said, his emphasis would be on improving employee safety. Investors at the conference thought he was crazy and rushed from the room to tell their clients to sell Alcoa stock immediately. “It was literally the worst piece of advice I gave in my entire career,” one later said.

O’Neill instituted wide-ranging programs to increase safety in what was previously a dangerous industry, empowering employees to offer suggestions and ensuring that accidents were immediately brought to the attention of executives. As the accident rate declined — ultimately to about 5% of the national average — something funny happened. Communication among employees increased, line workers offered other suggestions to improve efficiency, and the company underwent a renaissance. Within a year, Alcoa’s profits reached a record level. By the time O’Neill retired in 2000, the company’s stock was worth five times as much as when he started. [Read the full article...]

The Sabina Strong Series Continues – Vampire’s Trill

Lorelei Bell has created another unique and mesmerizing mystery masterwork that tops its prequel Vampire Ascending in drama, fast-paced action, love, passion, heartache, and devastation. New friends, new adventures, shocking revelations, and harrowing experiences make for riveting reading in this second installment of the Sabrina Strong Series. Sabrina learns more details – through Vasyl’s recounting of his human and vampire life – of what her role as a sibyl means and how the past and the future will come together. She finally learns what role Vasyl has played in his search for the next sibyl and why she is so tremendously important. [Read more...]

Vampire’s Trill is available at Amazon.Com – including the Kindle Version, Barnes & Noble – including the Nook Version, and any other good bookstores.

Also available in the United Kingdom at Amazon.co.uk including the Kindle version.

A contribution by Maria McCutchen, author of “It’s All in Your Head – A Life of Mental Fogginess And Physical Pain”

I was in a good place in my life; happy – maybe too happy. With my two little boys, I was enjoying spending time with them and just being a mom. It was quite a shock when out of the blue I started having strange headaches. They weren’t the typical headaches, but aches I would get at the back of my head, and especially when I would rest my head against the back of the recliner or headrest in the car.

As unnerving as many of the beginning symptoms were, it was one day while shopping in my frequented grocery store when I couldn’t find the milk, that I suddenly realized something was very wrong. I scheduled an appointment with a neurologist and he scheduled an MRI. The results were as unnerving as the symptoms I was living with. I was told I had a large brain cyst – a large fluid-filled sack that had grown on my brain and was apparently born with. I was also told not to worry, because these cysts don’t normally cause problems for people; that they are usually asymptomatic – produce no symptoms.  But if that was the case, then where were all these strange symptoms coming from?

My book chronicles my story of trying to find someone, anyone who would listen to me and help me. As my symptoms progressed into frightening, unbearable symptoms of not being able to breathe through the night, numbness, pain and memory problems, I knew if I didn’t find someone to help me, I wouldn’t be around to watch my children grow into adulthood.

My story tells my story of trying to find a doctor who understood my condition, the treatment processes I had to go through, and many complications due to lack of care by one particular physician who never seemed to have my best interest at heart. It follows my story of trying to live, not only live with this rare medical anomaly but live with this doctor whose lack of care, wound up nearly costing me my life.

I lived through some very dark days in New Mexico, days where I thought I might give up the fight in trying to get my life back and regain my health; and even if not the life I had before, just some sort of life that wasn’t plagued with pain and suffering. My book chronicles this story of trying to not only gain my life back, and if not my “old” life, then at least a life where I could at least live enough to be a mom to my boys. I began to fight, and refused to give up.

When you read “It’s all in Your Head,” you will hopefully feel inspired to keep going, and to keep trying to find answers to your own medical issues. I hope it will inspire others to never give up. As long as there is a fight in you, there is hope.

Advertisement

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

It’s All in Your Head – A Life of Mental Fogginess And Physical Pain

by Maria McCutchen

Maria McCutchen did not have time to be sick. With a husband who had just lost a job, two young sons, and a cross-country move on the horizon, who had time to be sick? Maria didn’t have time for a common cold, let alone a major medical condition. But one day while shopping in the grocery store where she had shopped hundreds of times before, she couldn’t find the milk. It was then she knew what she was feeling was more than just stress or exhaustion. There was something very wrong.

After consulting a few doctors, Maria discovered she had a rare brain cyst known as a posterior fossa arachnoid cyst—a very large brain cyst. Hearing these cysts were normally asymptomatic was of little comfort, especially because she felt her mind and body slipping away more and more every day. Normal mental and physical functions were becoming harder to control. Even if the doctors didn’t believe the cyst was a problem, she knew it was.

It would take months of living inside a shell of a person that she’d become, months of living in a mental fogginess and sometimes even physical pain, before she would finally get the medical attention she needed. It’s All in Your Head chronicles her harrowing medical odyssey and her attempts to regain some sort of semblance of her old life after treatment.

There is just no preparing ourselves for certain things in life.  We can certainly try, but often when it comes down to it there are just certain things that you have to experience yourself to completely understand them.  I am finding this to be true with many aspects of parenthood.  You can read all the books and magazines you want, you can watch videos, join parenting groups and even surf the web but until you are living in the moment you can’t always truly grasp some of the joys and challenges you will face as a parent.

I received a lot of advice over the months when it came to teething, for example.  I prepared myself for drooling, fevers, rashes, fussiness, and last but certainly not least, sleep deprivation.  What everyone failed to tell me was that along with all the other things, my babies were in fact going to turn into little tiny monsters…….with teeth.  I’m not talking cranky and moody from time to time, that I expected.  I’m talking about my sweet little innocent, snuggly babies actually becoming drooling angry monsters! There is no crying, there is screaming.  There is no fussing, there are full out tantrums.  And there isn’t just drooling, there is a constant flow of spatter streaming from my babies mouths. If you could bottle the stuff up and sell it, I would be set!

Have I mentioned how strong babies are?  Have you ever tried pulling a babies fist out of his or her mouth when they are teething and trying to gnaw at their knuckles to ease the pain?  Well you can try, but I’m guessing if your baby is half as strong as mine, you will lose the battle. The funny thing is that I have spent plenty of money on teething products and yet their tiny hand seems to be the best remedy.  I guess I don’t need to ask myself what they did before all these clever inventions. Although I have to admit, and I may be alone on this one, I do feel better about my baby chewing on a set of rubber keys than her own hand.  It just looks so primitive, not to mention painful.

Aside from it all, the worst part about having a teething monster baby, is that you would do anything to take away their pain.  There is nothing worse than when your baby looks up at you, tears in their eyes, fist in their mouth and you know what is wrong but you can’t stop it from happening.  You can try to make them as comfortable as possible and believe me you do.  As I mentioned before I have the inventory of teething rings and biscuits to prove it.  The only thing I can say is thank goodness they won’t remember this.  Although, I’m sure there will come a day, perhaps their teenage years, when I will want to remind them about the days when my sweet little babies were my little monsters!

An unflinching portrayal of the Korean immigrant experience from an extraordinary new talent in fiction.

Spanning Korea and the United States, from the postwar era to contemporary times, Krys Lee’s stunning fiction debut, Drifting House, illuminates a people torn between the traumas of their collective past and the indignities and sorrows of their present.

In the title story, children escaping famine in North Korea are forced to make unthinkable sacrifices to survive. The tales set in America reveal the immigrants’ unmoored existence, playing out in cramped apartments and Koreatown strip malls. A makeshift family is fractured when a shaman from the old country moves in next door. An abandoned wife enters into a fake marriage in order to find her kidnapped daughter.

In the tradition of Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker and Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, Drifting House is an unforgettable work by a gifted new writer.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Krys Lee

Krys Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea, raised in California and Washington, and studied in the United States and England. She was a finalist for Best New American Voices, received a special mention in the 2012 Pushcart Prize XXXVI, and her work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Narrative magazine, Granta (New Voices), California Quarterly, Asia Weekly, The Guardian, The New Statesman, andCondé Nast Traveller, UK (forthcoming). She lives in Seoul with intervals in San Francisco.

Editorial Reviews

“When reading the stories of debut author Krys Lee”s Drifting House, the simplicity and restraint of the writer come to the fore: declarative sentences, no fulsome descriptions despite the exotic locales of some of her stories. It is in this quiet confidence that the true strangeness and beauty of the work can emerge. . . . It is the cool telling that allows the tectonic plates of history, social forces and circumstances to move beneath these stories, conveying the feeling that something urgent and profound is at stake, beyond the lives of these striving, damaged and unforgettable characters.” —Marie Myung-Ok Lee, The San Francisco Chronicle

“However dark their fates might be, Lee blesses her characters with passions forged from the flames of suffering. The survivors of Drifting House are those who dare to find their salvation in small moments of beauty and connection, who have endured great losses, but pick themselves up and keep moving forward. . . . Drifting House reminds us of the illumination that comes from recognizing the shakiness of the ground under our feet. We tell ourselves that we are in control of our stories, but we never are. Lee’s survivors know the truth: Control isn’t possible. Once we accept that, we take our first, small steps toward grace.” —Heather Havrilesky, The Los Angeles Review of Books

“Drifting House offers a rare look at how damaging politics takes a personal turn, undermining even what we are able to call home. . . . The greatest strength of these nine stories is Lee’s ability to locate them in the strange and brutal dimensions of lives distorted by dictatorship, exile, expatriation, and even hunger. Her stories also slide through the quiet violence of divorce, loneliness, parenthood, and erotic attraction. . . . Lee is a patient storyteller with a distanced, mostly omniscient point of view. Such a sweeping, plain-style narration is essential for lacing together a collection that unfolds in three countries. The even tone lifts these stories out of melodrama and turns them instead into pristine things that are as unsparing as they are compassionate.” —The Daily Beast

In ‘Drifting House’: Home Is Where The Hurt Is

NPR Book Review – February 20, 2012 (Excerpt)

If you can bear it, it pays to read the intense, disturbing stories in Krys Lee’s justly heralded debut collection, Drifting House, twice. The first time through, you’re liable to be so overwhelmed by grim details such as a severed arm in a kitchen sink or a homeless man desperately stabbing a would-be thief with metal chopsticks that you may miss the deep humanity underpinning Lee’s dark vision.

In nine haunting tales, this Korean-born author, educated in the United States and England and now living in Seoul, writes of the psychological fallout from Korea’s troubled history and the toll on families living in a fractured world.

Fiction about immigrants, Asian and otherwise, struggling to adapt to Western culture­­­ is a rich vein that has been well-mined by writers such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Monica Ali, Ha Jin and Chang-rae Lee. Krys Lee’s focus, however, is less on cultural adaptation than on the disfiguring psychic scarring that unfathomable hardship, including war, repression and starvation, has left on her characters.

In the extreme emotional intensity and brutality of her family interactions, plus her political overtones and underlying feminism, Lee’s fiction evokes Maxine Hong Kingston’s groundbreaking 1975 book, The Woman Warrior, and Beijing-born Yiyun Li’s searing works about life under the Chinese dictatorship. [Read the full article...]

The Sabina Strong Series Continues – Vampire’s Trill

Lorelei Bell has created another unique and mesmerizing mystery masterwork that tops its prequel Vampire Ascending in drama, fast-paced action, love, passion, heartache, and devastation. New friends, new adventures, shocking revelations, and harrowing experiences make for riveting reading in this second installment of the Sabrina Strong Series. Sabrina learns more details – through Vasyl’s recounting of his human and vampire life – of what her role as a sibyl means and how the past and the future will come together. She finally learns what role Vasyl has played in his search for the next sibyl and why she is so tremendously important. [Read more...]

Vampire’s Trill is available at Amazon.Com – including the Kindle Version, Barnes & Noble – including the Nook Version, and any other good bookstores.

Also available in the United Kingdom at Amazon.co.uk including the Kindle version.

As an aid to recovering from a nervous breakdown, the narrator of The Journalist begins to keep daily records of almost everything that goes on in his life, from how much he has spent on books and movies to what he eats.

This low-key novel is not, as one might expect, about a member of the press. Instead, its unnamed protagonist is a middle-aged manic-depressive who, encouraged by his wife and doctor, begins to keep a journal. Before long, he’s off his medicine and taking the diary entirely too seriously-ignoring the needs of home and work in order to better index his entries. He also starts to notice suspicious behavior all around him: by his wife and best friend (whom he believes are having an affair), and by his mistress (whom he suspects of seducing his son). Mathews (Cigarettes) writes lucidly and with a great deal of sensitivity, but his form betrays him. The journal scheme sounds good but doesn’t work well on the page, and at least half the text concerns the protagonist’s diet, clothing or endless indexing efforts. Had Mathews allowed himself a more introspective narrator who could make the occasional astute perception about what it means to keep a journal, this would be a much better book. Yet it is by no means an unrewarding read, since Mathews depicts his forlorn protagonist with ironic humor. – Publishers Weekly

Mathews’s journalist is a diarist, not a newspaper reporter. Recovering from a mysterious nervous collapse, he begins to record everyday events in a notebook, including what he ate for lunch, how much he spent on movies and books, and the number of pills he took. At first the diary puts him more in touch with his surroundings, but as he becomes more observant, the entries increase in length. Soon he is experimenting with elaborate classification and indexing schemes to bring some order to the unwieldly manuscript. The more time he devotes to organization, the further behind he gets in his entries, and he finds himself trying to recollect events that occurred days before. To avoid unnecessary distractions, he begins to withdraw from family and friends. More focused and accessible than Mathews’s highly experimental early works (e.g., Tlooth, LJ 12/1/66), The Journalist is essentially a reworking of Michel Butor’s classic nouveau roman, Degres (1960). Recommended for most collections of serious fiction. - Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles for Library Journal

There are no safe places for the disintegrating self, not even the private journal; that is what the unnamed “journalist” discovers in this teasing, lightly involving novel from Mathews (Singular Pleasures, 1993, etc.). Middle-aged, middle-class, he lives in a college town in an unidentified country. He has an unglamorous office job, a loving wife (Daisy), an equally loving mistress (Colette), and a lovable if enigmatic son in high school (Gert). Daisy and his doctor, worried about his mental state, suggest he keep a journal, and he starts his new project with zest, seeing it as a “a hold on reality,” a way of reconciling his two selves–the one that experiences life with the one that observes it. Soon enough, however, this journal, which he had envisioned as an instrument of control, turns into a tyrant that controls him. He becomes obsessed with the right way of classifying experience, and the margins sprout headings and subheadings like weeds. Meanwhile, his relationships are suffering. Daisy turns secretive, and his best friend, Paul, is avoiding him. Could they be having an affair? Why is Gert suddenly so friendly with Colette: More mischief? And why is there never enough time for his lonely task of keeping his journal and getting it right? He cuts back on sleep (his love life is already a thing of the past) and uses the office for his writing, until his boss forces him to take indefinite leave. “I’ve lost them,” he acknowledges, referring to all the people in his life, just before his final dissolution and hospitalization, when a new narrative voice supplies rather too pat explanations for all the puzzles. Not as bleak as it sounds. Mathews chronicles his diarist’s dilemma with humor and gentle irony; his slide into the abyss occasions more bemusement than terror. – Kirkus Reviews

A Depressive Diarist Chronicles His Descent

NPR Book Review – February 20, 2012 (Excerpt)

“Doesn’t the act of noticing matter as much as what’s noticed?” So asks the narrator of Harry Mathews’ masterpiece of minutia, The Journalist.

On the mend from a nervous breakdown (though it’s mentioned only in passing — “the steering wheel came off in my hands,” he says), he’s been encouraged by his doctor to keep a journal. A seemingly benign idea, and he throws himself into the task with gusto — far too much gusto, it turns out, as the journal soon eclipses his entire life.

I’ve been reading Harry Mathews for years now, but of all his novels, I tackled The Journalist last. It’s his least discussed work, and in my experience there’s usually a reason for that. Mathews himself, in an interview, called it a “terrible flop”, and complained that “nobody got it.” So I started the book expecting something sub-par, thinking that even lesser Mathews would still offer a worthwhile and instructive read. And so I was surprised to find that not only was The Journalist good, but that it was every bit as great as Mathews’ more celebrated novels.

The story begins innocently enough, and reads more or less as one might expect a journal to. It’s divided by days, or times of day and the narrator strives to make the journal “as complete as possible.”

To accomplish this he devises a series of increasingly complex categories and divisions within which to frame the events that make up his life. Category A relates to the verifiable, while category B relates to the subjective. When these begin bleeding into each other, he attempts to clarify things by adding “a further division into what concerns others and what concerns only myself.” The result is categories A1, A2, B1, and B2. But this system also proves incomplete, and the narrator modifies his categories further still: within each existing section there will now be two more sections, one allotted to happenings involving people, and another involving “things” — an overheated frying pan that recently burned his hand, for example. [Read the full article...]

The Sabina Strong Series Continues – Vampire’s Trill

Lorelei Bell has created another unique and mesmerizing mystery masterwork that tops its prequel Vampire Ascending in drama, fast-paced action, love, passion, heartache, and devastation. New friends, new adventures, shocking revelations, and harrowing experiences make for riveting reading in this second installment of the Sabrina Strong Series. Sabrina learns more details – through Vasyl’s recounting of his human and vampire life – of what her role as a sibyl means and how the past and the future will come together. She finally learns what role Vasyl has played in his search for the next sibyl and why she is so tremendously important. [Read more...]

Vampire’s Trill is available at Amazon.Com – including the Kindle Version, Barnes & Noble – including the Nook Version, and any other good bookstores.

Also available in the United Kingdom at Amazon.co.uk including the Kindle version.

As the girls first birthdays approach, only two short months away, I find myself looking at the calendar a lot these days and asking myself  “where were we this time last year?”  Like I have mentioned before, pregnancy was nothing like I had imagined.  Although things could not have turned out better, with two happy healthy babies, I can’t help but feel like I was slightly robbed of having the pregnancy I had dreamed about since deciding to have a baby. I had always imagined being one of those pregnant women who ate whatever she wanted, took yoga, walked everyday and got the chance to go out and show off her magnificent pregnant belly.  I was looking forward to decorating the nursery and what every mother to be dreams about, her baby shower.   But as you already know, that is not how my pregnancy went, at all.

Looking back I realized early on I had preconceived ideas of having an easy, if not perfect first trimester.  So my husband and I decided around six weeks into the pregnancy that we were going to surprise my step daughter with a trip to Disney World.  What seemed like a good idea at the time, a week later at the onset my morning sickness, turned out was not such a good idea after all.  After three days of walking around the park nauseous and completely worn out from the start of many other unpleasant symptoms, I swore when we left, that I never wanted to see Mickey Mouse or his entourage again. For whatever reason in my mind, Mickey had become the enemy and I couldn’t get away fast enough!

Once we returned home from our trip, I found refuge in my bed.  Morning sickness had taken over my life and the only relief I found was hoping that it would eventually pass.  I had done a lot of reading and I was sure that after the first trimester things would turn around.  I still had visions of the perfect pregnancy, it was just a little delayed that’s all. At this point I still believed I was only having one baby.  I was completely unaware of what was ahead of us. It wouldn’t be long though before we would find out the big news that we were having twins! Getting the news is a whole other story , one I will share eventually. Regardless of how we found out, with the big news came the very real fact that it wasn’t going to be an easy pregnancy after all. Instead of yoga and nursery decorating, I was going to have to figure out how to manage spending the next several months on bed rest.  At the end of the first trimester, when things were expected to be looking up, complications and the doctor’s concerns of preterm labor required me to stay on almost complete bed rest for the remainder of the pregnancy.

I will admit that until the end of the pregnancy I was certainly fortunate to be allowed certain “privileges” while on bed rest.  This meant I while I had to spend a majority of time in bed, I was allowed to shower, move around the house or hospital room (only when necessary) and go to doctors appointments. Being on bed rest wasn’t so hard in the beginning because the truth was that I didn’t feel well enough to do anything anyway. Yet, the problem was still that the only thing I had time to do was think and even worse worry about my babies.  It seemed that every doctor’s appointment came with more bad news and with all of the time I had to think, I had envisioned every scary scenario in my head.  The days blended into the nights and time itself seemed to slow down.  I slept when I was tired, which was often but when I didn’t sleep I would think.  There seemed to be no easy way to distract myself from the scary thoughts in my head.  I remember sitting in bed rubbing my belly just praying that my girls would make it just one more week.  I knew every week was a huge success but the problem was that most weeks felt like an eternity. Eventually I would spend the remainder of my pregnancy in the hospital, and although it provided me with a change of scenery it also presented me with new emotional challenges.

To sum it all up, there was no yoga, no shopping, and no showing off my magnificent pregnant belly and there was even no baby shower. Despite all the disappointments, I can honestly say that when I ask myself “where were we this time last year” I quickly realize that it doesn’t matter because of where we are now.  I’m not going to pretend to have words of wisdom or something insightful to say about spending your pregnancy on bed rest.  It wasn’t easy, and if I had to do it again it wouldn’t be any easier.  But the fact is I survived it and more importantly my babies survived because of it!

One of the most exhausting tasks for historians and writers has to be the delving searches for factual material. Given the aid of modern technology the job has been made easier, and there is an abundance of information given the last century or two.

But the printed word becomes rarer the further one goes back and so called fact so very often differs, to get as close to the truth as possible it is often necessary to draw the line and draw a feasible conclusion as to what was most likely given the period.

I was amazed to learn that John Prince’s invaluable volume Worthies of Devon was the only work to be printed in book form during the author’s lifetime.

Prince gives credit to John Hooker (1525-1601) who’s Synopsis Chorographical of Devonshire which was never published. And there were others too who never made the press or, in the case of William Pole (1561- 1635) – who scrupulously gathered together a large collection of manuscripts appertaining to Devon’s history, were mainly lost in the Civil War.

In the search for material we are fortunate indeed that Prince had the ingenuity to jot down all those facts about the gentry of old. He was vicar of Totnes from 1675-1681 and then, at the invitation of the Duke of Somerset, was made vicar of Berry Pomeroy, a post he held for over forty years

I can imagine him spending hours in the vicarage compiling what must have been a mammoth task, it must have been very daunting for him searching for a publisher at that time, because the general reason such books were scarce was due to the fact they were not a viable commercial project thers being few who could read, least write -and the most favoured books that did reach print were bibles and other devotional texts.

And there were many writers who wrote just for the fun of it, those country folk who wrote primarily for their own amusement and that of their friends and not seeking publication.

But indeed Prince’s work has given many an insight to his life-span 1643-1723, a peek through the annals of time, and how it must have been for many who could never have envisaged the world we know today . A work, wherein the lives and fortunes of the most famous divines, statesmen, swordsmen, physicians, writers, and other eminent persons, natives of that most noble province, from before the Norman conquest, down to the present age, are memorized…out of the most approved authors, both in print and manuscript.

In his endless efforts to publish his work he submitted to the weakness of the flesh ( as so described) and was victim to a frivolous scandal  ‘not at all becoming to a man of the cloth’ regarding a secret rendezvous with a loose woman which was never made clear. But temporarily deprived him of his living and  gaining that aspired  publication.

Prince was over-ambitious in his work. The alphabetical entries from A to H fill half the book, while L to Z are squeezed into the final quarter, as the above problems took their toll on his inclusions.

Not to be outdone; a second volume, detailing 115 entries chosen by Prince to redress the balance, was unfortunately never published.

The book most read today is that of the new edition printed in 1810 – which can be read online and which has to be a must for those who are interested in how Devon ticked in that period.

I love the way in which he describes his subjects, some being of gentle and tender disposition and others in the vaults of misery and hopelessness, but generally he gives extraordinary clear and memorable accounts of the many he mentions in great detail that it is almost like they still live.

Wonderful stories to of how many so called greedy land and property owners like the famous Cary family of Cockington, were not that bad after all; they built alms-houses for the homeless, afforded them a shilling per week and supplied them with clothing at Christmas

In 2001 Todd Gray published the court depositions of ‘that scandal’ of Prince’s church trial as The Curious Sexual Adventure of the Reverend John Prince, which awakened interest in Prince. The records had gone unpublished, partly due to the coarse language used by some of the witnesses; which now has become less shocking.

In 2005 the book was adapted as a play The Tale of John Prince, performed by the South Devon Players theatre company, and written and directed by Laura Jury. The Company performed the play at two venues relevant to the story: The Seven Sisters Hotel in Totnes (next door to the former site of Angel’s inn); and also in Berry Pomeroy Church.

Advertisement

QUEEN OF MISFORTUNE
A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

A Love Story of Shakespearean Dimension!

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same strange who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Although it is quickly becoming a part of the past, there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about all we went through in the first three months of our twin’s lives.  It may be over, but there are certainly things that will never be forgotten.  Like any new mother, there are days when I feel overwhelmed or extremely tired, but there is never a day that I don’t also feel completely blessed.  I can honestly say that I take nothing for granted.

I have written about Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTTS), prematurity, our baby girl’s heart condition, and our other baby girl’s battle with anemia.  As traumatic as it all was, they were things we had slightly prepared ourselves for while I was pregnant.  We knew because of the TTTS, that there were several issues we were going to be facing. It wasn’t always easy but we always did our best to face them head on. Maybe I was naïve, but I just assumed that once the girls were home we would already know everything we were up against. I knew that as the girls grew there was a chance of new complications from their prematurity, but early on I had imagined that all of their diagnoses were given in the NICU. Later we would find out about Osteopenia (brittle bones) but it was actually before that, at our first doctor’s appointment out of the hospital, when I would realize there would be more to overcome soon after we were home. While my husband was in the city with one baby preparing for her heart surgery, I was home with our other baby girl getting ready for her first pediatrician appointment.

Most of the first doctor’s appointment went as I was anticipating.  They weighed her and gave her a quick but thorough exam.  Again, keep in mind it was just the day before that she was in the NICU, I couldn’t imagine that anything would change in such a short time.  Then just as I was ready to start packing up, the doctor proceeded to give me more news that I wasn’t quite prepared for.  He explained that my little girl had a hernia in her groin and that she was going to need surgery to fix it. I struggled to take it all in as I was beginning to feel like my strength and my sanity was being tested.  I remember thinking that the only way I could get through in was to take one day at a time. First we would get through  heart surgery, then we would get through this.  What other choice did we have?  The girls had already proven how strong they were, surviving delivery proved that.  They could do this, the question was, could I?  Luckily, hernia operations were fairly common in infants, and once it was repaired she would be okay.  We needed to get through so much and if I thought about it all at once, I would have crumbled.  Instead, I focused on each moment and I prayed.

A few weeks later, my husband stayed at home with our baby recovering from her heart surgery and I went with her sister back into the hospital to have her double hernia repaired. I was extremely frightened as they took my fragile four pound little girl back into the operating room.  Like so many times before this one, I wept as the nurses carried her away.  A mother in the waiting room glanced over and gave me a compassionate smile, she too was feeling the helplessness and anxiety of being apart from her baby.  I shared a bond with the parents around me just like I did in the NICU.  Only this time, I was comforted by the fact that we were going home the next day and we would spend only one night in the hospital.  That night I laid next to my little girl in her hospital bed as she slept, I knew that everything was going to be okay, after all we had made it this far and we all had each other.

A contribution by Maria McCutchen, author of “It’s All in Your Head – A Life of Mental Fogginess And Physical Pain”

Many people suffer from one form of depression at one time or another in their lifetime. There are multiple types and degrees of depression, but the one I suffered from was derived from my brain issues.

My brain cyst did more than create physical symptoms. It created mental ones too. Not only did I have fear, anxiety, and a list of other emotional issues, but I began to suffer depression too. And for several reasons.

My brain had been under a sea of fluid for months. All the extra fluid was not only squishing my brain, but robbing me of my mental and emotional faculties as well. I was unable to reason and to filter. I was unable to process.

All of what the cyst was physically doing, and the fact that doctors wouldn’t listen and wouldn’t do anything for me, created an emotional meltdown. I was becoming more depressed every day that went by, that no one would do anything for me. Eventually I was a weeping mess.

Even after my brain surgeries, I continued to suffer with depression.  One problem would get cleared up and another would form. My brain wound up being permanently damaged, and my ability to cope was slipping away. I had to find a way to deal with bouts of depression other than medication, because by now, my brain was so damaged that I could not take medications well. Almost anything I took caused some sort of reaction or another so I had to deal with my depression naturally.

Naturally, to me, meant that I had to create a new lifestyle for myself and either introduce something good for me into my life, or take something that was causing negative problems, out. One thing I have always liked to do is exercise, but with all my medical problems, for months at a time, I would have to put it aside. Now, I had to reintroduce it into my life and make sure I stayed on top of it. The natural endorphins that exercise releases was like a medication for me. It helped me see the brighter side of things and look for the positive in my life.

My diet was another area to address. After reading about caffeine and the negative effects it has on temperament and emotions, I gave caffeine up completely. Instead I drink a non-caffeinated herbal tea. I also kept my diet simple and cut out things like refined sugars and too many processed foods. I try to eat more naturally.

Stress. One thing that quickly deplete your strength, your will and your good mood, is stress. We all have it in our lives at one time or another and to some degree. I try to prioritize things for different stress levels to keep me from getting overwhelmed, then later, depressed. If something still wants to stress me out, I will sit down and write out “why.” Once I have it in front of me, it often times doesn’t seem as worrisome as before I put it in writing.

The more you can do naturally for depression, the more you may be able to overcome it on your own. Some of it is a learning process, while other things fall under “Practicing.” Not everyone can take a full, natural approach to anxiety and depression. But for me, I had no choice but to, and it worked for me.

Advertisement

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

It’s All in Your Head – A Life of Mental Fogginess And Physical Pain

by Maria McCutchen

Maria McCutchen did not have time to be sick. With a husband who had just lost a job, two young sons, and a cross-country move on the horizon, who had time to be sick? Maria didn’t have time for a common cold, let alone a major medical condition. But one day while shopping in the grocery store where she had shopped hundreds of times before, she couldn’t find the milk. It was then she knew what she was feeling was more than just stress or exhaustion. There was something very wrong.

After consulting a few doctors, Maria discovered she had a rare brain cyst known as a posterior fossa arachnoid cyst—a very large brain cyst. Hearing these cysts were normally asymptomatic was of little comfort, especially because she felt her mind and body slipping away more and more every day. Normal mental and physical functions were becoming harder to control. Even if the doctors didn’t believe the cyst was a problem, she knew it was.

It would take months of living inside a shell of a person that she’d become, months of living in a mental fogginess and sometimes even physical pain, before she would finally get the medical attention she needed. It’s All in Your Head chronicles her harrowing medical odyssey and her attempts to regain some sort of semblance of her old life after treatment.

When I first looked at William Brockedon who was born in Totnes, Devon in 1787- in the light of his worthiness of my writing a piece about him -  I almost  let it go, the first mention of him being the son of a popular watchmaker in Totnes who’s family owned a local mill  and other property since the reign of Henry IV-who carried on his father’s business there for five years after  his death, did not seem to accrue a lot of interest, but then reading on: how fascinating it was to learn that not only was he a painter,  and an inventor, but also he became an author describing  in text accompanied by his own drawings. the route Hannibal took across the alps, which he took almost step by step  himself and  which, remarkably he repeated no less than sixty times, culminating in the publication of his first book published in 1827 entitled Illustrations of the Passes of the Alps followed by two more ongoing publications  containing beautiful drawings by the author

He studied drawing and the fine arts at the Royal Academy and during 1809-1815 exhibited there and at the British Institution and quickly became an elected member of Academy of Rome and Florence where he was greatly admired.

That in itself was an achievement to behold but his active mind was forever sparking his inventiveness until he died in 1854 – coming up with among other things, something we all take for granted when we pick up our prescriptions from the chemist – the pre-dosed medical compound having been compressed into capsule, lozenge and tablet form following the patent of his tablet press in 1843. This followed his invention for the conversion of lead dust for pencil making along with a new form of bottle corks, and several new applications concerning the making and application of vulcanized India rubber, used by firearms manufacturers who were greatly impressed, and it is he who coined the word “vulcanization.”

Since the early beginning of medicine there had been a dire need for convenient dosage forms – to enable the safe taking of fluids, whether solutions, suspensions or emulsions – Brockedon came up with the perfect remedy, so simple and so easy and thus avoiding overdose sometimes resulting in fatalities.

It is all the more fascinating to think the watchmakers’ son had no connection whatsoever with  medicine. We surely owe him much and I wonder how long it would have taken for someone else to come up with the idea. He certainly revolutionized medical and pharmaceutical practices

His travel writings and such also brought him to the attention of Charles Dickens with whom he became acquainted and who said of him “he knows a good deal about some curious places – is very ingenious – and may be very useful.”

In his later years he would fill his study with countless scientific books and his tool shed with implements then used in everyday life, and consider a new scientific approach, some inevitably failed but others succeeded and much of his attention to minute detail could arguably be attributed to the influence of his father being a watchmaker and who supplemented his son’s education and instilled in him an early leaning for scientific and mechanical matters.

His father prematurely died when William was fifteen and he found himself taking charge of the clock making business with the backing of his mother but his need to eventually move on became apparent but he had the backing of his mother who became very proud of him.

He married in 1821 Elizabeth Graham, who tragically died in childbirth when she was forty on 23 July 1829,  leaving two children, Philip North, born at Florence on 27 April 1822, and Mary, married to Joseph H. Baxendale, the head of the removal firm of Pickford & Co. The son, who was educated as a civil engineer, became the favourite pupil of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, but died of consumption at the age of 28, on 13 November 1849. On 8 May 1839 Brockedon married for the second time the widow of Captain Farwell of Totnes, who survived him, and by whom he had no children.

Advertisement

QUEEN OF MISFORTUNE
A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

A Love Story of Shakespearean Dimension!

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same strange who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.