Book Review: Steady Hedy: A Journey through Blindness & Guide Dog School

Carolyn Wing Greenlee’s recently released book, Steady Hedy: A Journey through Blindness & Guide Dog School is a journey into another world, a world without the benefit of sight. Through Greenlee’s delightfully graphic writing, the reader is given glimpses of what she has suffered with retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic eye condition that leads to incurable blindness. At the time she attended Guide Dogs for the Blind (GDB) in San Rafael, California, her vision had dwindled to 4%. In her class of ten, three were totally blind; the others were in various stages of debilitating visual impairment.

For years, Greenlee chafed at the inconvenience of her deteriorating vision loss. Simple tasks took longer, going shopping, especially in a strange store, was a formidable task. Walking brought fear of bumping into something or falling into a hole. The worse part was giving up driving, which meant giving up much of her independence.

People who suffer from blindness feel isolated, no longer feeling that they are a part of the group. They require help which in turn make them feel guilty. They miss communication through body-language and, especially in a group, feel they’re missing out on the flow of conversation.

By a series of surprising connections, Greenlee finds herself surrounded by a community of support, individuals who help bridge this gap by providing counseling, technology, mobility skills, and a fresh prospective on blindness. They enable the disabled. The year-long preparation she receives from these many groups and individuals make Greenlee’s admission into guide dog school possible.

At the school, Greenlee launches into a world of unknowns–unfamiliar surroundings, challenging tasks, unknown fellow students, new routines. A third-generation Chinese American, Greenlee constantly battles feelings of insecurity, incompetency and inadequacy as the result of her Confucian background. She questions whether she will measure up to the task of learning the work and successfully bonding with a guide dog.

After three days of orientation, the students receive their dogs and Greenlee is given Hedy, a small black lab. She’s bitterly disappointed not to have the color of dog she hoped for–a yellow lab. For one, with Greenlee’s limited vision, the light color itself would allow her to see the dog more clearly. To Greenlee, Hedy seems small, smelly and indifferent. It is not love at first sight for the dog, either. It’s obvious Hedy longs for her previous trainer and shows Greenlee no fondness, only aloofness. Clearly, the dog is only there because she has to be. The staff assures Greenlee that with patience and consistency Hedy will come around. It’s a partnership: the handler directs the dog and the dog delivers its owner safely. But it takes patience, time and trust. Especially trust. With hard-headed Hedy, Greenlee worries. Will they ever become a truly interdependent team?

Greenlee chronicles the ambitious activities of the school. While at first she wonders what they could possibly find to do for 28 days, now it is a rush to get everything done. Along the way, the students have adventures, form close friendships, and have a surprisingly good time even though the schedule is grueling. Step by step they face the challenging obstacles placed before them. With the support of GDB, the students become courageous, adventurous, and full of hope, aspirations they hadn’t thought possible.

Stedy Hedy is an engaging, often funny, and thoroughly satisfying story of new found freedom in the face of catastrophic loss, where, as Greenlee says, “Your worse nightmare can become the source of your deepest healing.”

Steady Hedy: A Journey through Blindness & Guide Dog School can be ordered through your favorite bookstore, through the publisher Earthen Vessel Productions (www.earthen.com), Amazon.com, Kindle and iBooks.

Don't Be a Victim of Fraud

Fraud comes in many forms--telemarketing, mail scams, bunco schemes. If you're approached with a deal that's “too good to be true,” it probably is. If "you've gotta move on it now," you'd better take your time. Watch your step if you're approached by one of these "get rich quick" schemes:

The Bank Examiner A phony bank examiner, IRS agent, or policeman contacts you and asks your help in catching a dishonest employee. You're asked to withdraw funds from your account and give it to the "examiner" so serial numbers can be checked. Of course, the money vanishes, along with the "examiners." Banks, IRS, or the police never use this procedure.

The Pigeon Drop In this bunco scheme the victim is approached by someone saying they have found a large sum of money and will share it. The swindlers ask that you withdraw "good faith" money from your account. They take your "good faith" money and then make phony arrangements where you can pick up your share of the found money. It’s hard to believe so many people fall for this one, but it happens.

Telemarketing Fraud Many types of fraudulent businesses are promoted by telephone, such as travel scams, prizes offered by postcard whereby the victim is asked to call 900 number at a high fee, magazine promoters, charity solicitations. Not all telemarketing is fraudulent, but it's a good idea to ask the company for their offer in writing.

Pyramid Schemes An illegal pyramid scheme requires that you make an initial investment to become a member. Then you must recruit others into the investment who also pay a fee. For each person you bring into the program, you either receive money or bonuses. In an illegal pyramid scheme, making money depends not on how much merchandise is sold, but how many people you bring into the business.

Phony Repairs Auto, roof, and plumbing repairs account for many swindles. Sometimes the victim is charged an outrageous price for work done; sometimes no work was done at all but the victim has signed a "contract" and the swindlers claim money is owed. Or, the contractor may say he needs much of the money up front so that he can buy materials and that’s the last the buyer sees of him. Always get a written estimate before work begins. If you are unsure about the company, call your local Better Business Bureau. It’s also a good idea to ask for local references. Better yet, ask your friends if they know of a reputable repair company.

Work-at-Home schemes These endeavors rarely make money as claimed. By the time the victim has bought the kit or required supplies, the market for the finished product has disappeared and the company won't buy back the supplies.

Here are tips to avoid being a victim of fraud:
1) Be leery of "get rich quick" schemes. The quicker you say “yes,” the quicker the perpetrator gets rich.
2) Don't be pressured into making hasty decisions for offers made for "a limited time."
3) Never give your credit card or bank account information over the telephone to anyone other than a reputable company.
4) Beware of free prizes that require you to pay tax, shipping charges, or handling costs. Refuse a prize if you have to make a purchase to claim it.

DVD Review: Dirt! The Movie

Of all the planets, earth is the only one known to be covered with a thin layer of dirt. This dirt, or soil, is alive and capable of sustaining life. The video Dirt! The Movie is a documentary about the value of soil and its necessity for our survival.

Man’s existence is dependent upon healthy soil. Experts, naturalists, from all over the world recognize its importance to survival. Unfortunately, the quest for money gained through commercially exploiting natural resources has disrupted the natural cycles nature has provided. Tearing up the ground for mining, drilling for oil, cutting down forests, paving fertile ground, even short-sighted farming techniques have altered the natural use of soil and has adversely affected the lives of people all over the world.

The movie, directed by Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow, and narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis, also features experts who have experimented with returning the soil to doing what it’s supposed to do. In one instance, a Los Angeles school yard’s pavement was removed and in its place the children planted vegetables and other life-sustaining crops. Their thrill, plus the vivid demonstration of the power of soil, was a heart-warming reminder of the value of returning to natural earth.

In stark contrast were scenes of barren land, devoid of life because of excessive chemical use, over-planting, and misuse of the land. Sick, starving people are the victims of the misuse of soil. One of the most memorable quotations from the movie, “Drought, climate change, even war are all directly related to the way we are treating dirt,” is a dramatic statement of man’s mistreatment of our fragile planet.

We can take heart, however, by taking action. By doing a few small things correctly, each one of us can do a lot to restore dirt, to become aware of its value, of its life-giving qualities. “What we’ve destroyed, we can heal.”

I encourage everyone to see this memorable DVD documentary, Dirt! The Movie. For more information and to order the DVD, visit www.dirtthemovie.org.

Roy Lesher: Volunteer Extraordinaire

Serving where needed is a way of life or Roy Lesher. He recently returned from ten days in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico where he worked with a team dispensing free eyeglasses to 2,498 patients, people who couldn’t afford to buy glasses for themselves. Roy, a member of the Lions and VOSH (Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity) plans to return to Mexico within a year, though to another location. The team’s future plans also involve Jamaica and El Salvador. The common link to both the Lions and VOSH is Helen Keller who inspired both organizations to serve the blind and conserve sight.

Born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1939, Roy attended school and college in his home state. He served with the U.S. Air Force from 1962 through 1985 and retired as Lt Colonel. Most of his military career was oversees–Taiwan, Korea, Spain, Turkey, and almost all countries in the Far and Middle East. He also served in the U.S. in Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Virginia and Washington DC. While in Washington he served with the Pentagon and White House Communications Agency.

After leaving the military he received a Master’s Degree in International Studies and another Master’s in Business Administration. He worked for several years in the industrial pump field, and served as an International Tech Consultant. Finally, retiring a second time, Roy and his wife Sally moved to Camano Island, WA in 2004.

But “retired” isn’t exactly a fitting word for Roy. He continues to serve on numerous community organizations. Today he spends most of his volunteer time with the Stanwood Lions Club as Treasurer and Chairman of the Sight and Hearing Programs. Aha! So that’s the story behind Roy’s particular skill of sight screening! The Lions Club screens more than 2,100 school children throughout the district every year.

Roy Lesher is well known locally for his community on-line newsletter. I first heard of it when a friend e-mailed a copy to me. It has become the most reliable and timely way to learn about what’s going on in our community. Roy thoughtfully colors the new material in blue, but leaves the previous but still current news in black. Many organizations make their announcements through Roy Lesher’s newsletter.

When Roy isn’t serving the community, he spends time with family–he and Sally have five children and five grandchildren. He also follows his passion of genealogy, occasionally trekking to Salt Lake City, UT for research.

Our community is richer because of Roy Lesher. He serves for the love of it, for the love of his fellow man. When Roy says, “We’re always at our best when we’re helping people,” he really means it. He lives it.

To receive Roy’s newsletter, contact RoyLesher@aol.com to be placed on his distribution list.

Mount St. Helens: Rising from the Dead

Much to everyone’s surprise, including scientists who have studied the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens extensively, a resurgence of life has returned to Mount St. Helens. The landscape has shifted dramatically from a gray, still and nearly barren panorama to an environment that is green, active and life-filled. The mountain’s return to vibrant life is a remarkable reminder of the power and beauty of nature.

When Mount St. Helens erupted thirty years ago, the landscape looked as though it would never support life again. The lateral blast left 234 square miles of standing-dead or blown-down forests, killing an estimated 10,000,000 trees. As the north face of the mountain collapsed, creating the largest landslide in U.S. history, wind and heat wiped out virtually all animal and plant life. An estimated 7,000 deer, elk and bear, and untold thousands of birds and small animals perished. The Toutle River grew so hot witnesses reported seeing fish jump out of the water to escape the heat.

Sparkling Spirt Lake, directly in the path of the blast, was pushed more than 800 feet up the side of a neighboring mountain by debris and came back down to rest several hundred feet higher than it was before, leaving all marine life eradicated.

Even outside the blast zone, a hot slurry of mud from the Toutle River churned over the land–taking with it huge trees, dozens of homes, and every living thing in its path.

How could this miracle of rebirth happen? The weight of wet snow packs and summer heat have effectively deteriorated the blown-down trees, making fertile ground for wind-blown seeds. The distinctive irregular surface of the landslide entraps runoff from rain and snow melt, forming new ponds and wetlands, spawning new life. The little pocket gophers survived the blast from their underground tunnels and continued feeding on roots, leaving droppings containing seeds along the way. Spiders blew in and birds followed to feast on the spiders. They, too, left rich droppings for future growth. Today, the downed forest in places is almost hidden by an assortment trees, shrubs, grasses, wildflowers and weeds, fodder for returning elk, deer and other animal life.

Even Spirit Lake has gone through a remarkable metamorphosis, returning to near pre-eruption conditions. The lake’s once cold, clear waters were transformed into a primordial soup, a rich broth of sediment and organic matter covered by a floating log mat. Bacteria populations exploded in these ideal conditions, cleansing the lake. Today, Spirit Lake hosts vibrant ecosystems and even trout, although scientists believe the fish were illegally introduced by visitors after the eruption.

Much of the recovery has been instigated by nature. However, employees of Weyerhaeuser, one of the largest pulp and paper companies in the world, planted 18,400,000 trees by hand in an effort to rebuild some of the forest after the blast. It took workers four years to complete the project.

The effects of the 1980 eruption are still very evident–the enormous crater is stark evidence of the magnitude of the event. From Johnston Ridge, named after geologist Dave Johnston who lost his life in the blast, visitors can see a close-up of the lava dome, crater, pumice plain, and the landslide deposit.

Mount St. Helens is witness to and a lesson in nature’s remarkable evolution. From a colorless, barren landscape to an array of color and life, the mountain again beckons visitors to its wild beauty. When was the last time you visited Mount St. Helens?
http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/mshnvm/

Guest: Paty Jager, Author of Doctor in Petticoats

My guest today is Paty Jager, Award-winning Western Romance author. She’s joined us today to share insights of her latest novel, Doctor in Petticoats. At the end of the blog, Paty tells us about her contest being held during this blog tour.

Welcome, Paty. Tell us about your work.

All of my Halsey brother books have a heroine with an occupation that at the time was male dominated. Doctor in Petticoats is set in Oregon in 1889 which was fifty years after the first woman, Elizabeth Blackwell, earned a degree from a U.S. medical school, there were still lots of prejudice against women as doctors both from male doctors and patients.

My editor and my critique partner both made comments when my heroine is considering if she should forgo motherhood to be a doctor. I read several books written by some of the frontier women doctors and they felt if they had children it would 1) take up time they would need to start a practice and 2) the possibility that they could bring home a disease to their own children. Several waited until their practices were well established before they had children and then they would only do obstetrics or scale down their practice. It was also felt by the male doctors that female doctors were too weak to control any sexual urges they might have toward male patients. As we all know the male is much weaker when it comes to that than females. But it was one of the major concerns of the male instructors in colleges, that women had too frail a constitution to handle crisis situations and resist their desires. Mothers for centuries have been dealing with far more than men.

Here are a few more stats on women physicians:
♥The Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania was the first women's medical college and it opened in 1850 with 40 students.
♥By 1860 there were about 200 women medical doctors in the U.S.
♥ In 1864 Rebecca Lee Crumbler became the first African-American woman to earn an MD and Mary Walter became assistant Surgeon General in the U.S. Army.
♥ In 1889 Susan La Flesche Picotte became the first Native-American
woman to receive a medical degree in the U.S.
♥In 1897 Eliza Ann Grier, an emancipated slave, became the first
African-American woman to practice medicine in Georgia.
.
Blurb for Doctor in Petticoats
After a life-altering accident and a failed relationship, Dr. Rachel Tarkiel gave up on love and settled for a life healing others as the physician at a School for the Blind. She's happy in her vocation--until handsome Clay Halsey shows up and inspires her to want more.

Blinded by a person he considered a friend, Clay curses his circumstances and his limitations. Intriguing Dr. Tarkiel shows him no pity, though. To her, he's as much a man as he ever was.

Can these two wounded souls conquer outside obstacles, as well as their own internal fears, and find love?

Excerpt
“I’m going to look in your other eye now.” She, again, placed a hand on his face and opened the eyelids, stilling her fluttering heart as she pressed close. His clean-shaven face had a couple small nicks on the edges of his angular cheeks. The spice of his shave soap lingered on his skin.

She resisted the urge to run her cheek against his. The heat of his face under her palm and his breath moving wisps of wayward hair caused her to close her eyes and pretend for a few seconds he could be her husband. A man who loved her and wouldn’t be threatened by her occupation or sickened by her hideous scar.

His breathing quickened. A hand settled on her waist, slid around to her back, and drew her forward. Her hand, holding the lens, dropped to his shoulder, and she opened her eyes. This behavior on both their parts was unconscionable, but her constricted throat wouldn’t allow her to utter the rebuke.

Clay sensed the moment the doctor slid from professional to aroused woman. The hand on his cheek caressed rather than held, her breathing quickened, and her scent invaded his senses like a warm summer rain.

Blog Tour Contest

This is my twelth blog on my fifteen blog/twelve day tour. Leave a comment and follow me to all the blogs on my tour and you could win an autographed copy of my June release, Doctor in Petticoats, a B&N gift card, and a summer tote filled with goodies. To find out all the places I'll be, go to my blog- http://www.patyjager.blogspot.com to find the list.

Paty Jager
Award- Winning Western Romance Author
Website: http://www.patyjager.net
Blog: http://www.patyjager.blogspot.com
Buy: http://www.thewildrosepress.com

Book Review: The Good Times are All Gone Now

The Good Times are All Gone Now: Life, Death, and Rebirth in an Idaho Mining Town, by Julie Whitesel Weston takes a refreshingly frank look at the author’s hometown, Kellogg, Idaho.

Weston delves realistically into the gritty world of a town’s quest for lead, silver and zinc by Bunker Hill Mining Company, the community’s largest employer. Although the book begins with the author’s return to Kellogg to witness the 1996 demolition of the mining company’s smokestack, much of the book takes place in the fifties and sixties, during Weston’s years as a school girl. But she also reaches back to the nineteenth century of Kellogg’s founding and the townpeople’s involvement in this stark mining environment, as well as five generations of her family in Idaho.

Weston takes an honest look at her family’s dynamics–a supportive mother, an older brother and younger sister, and a well-respected father, much admired as a skilled physician, but who at home is feared for his drunken rages. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Weston thrives among the hard-working townspeople, is at the top of her class at school, and makes life-long friends.

Kellogg, known for its rich mines and notorious for its tough way of life, its brothels and gambling, is nevertheless Julie Whitesel Weston’s hometown and she mourns the demise of a way of life. Although the mines brought wealth to the community, they also brought sludge piles of contaminated waste, causing devastation to forests and rivers.

Toward the end of the book, the author recognizes a new Kellogg emerging, a town with a different focus, turning years of decay into new life, opportunity and jobs. The realization that her hometown has changed forever is mixed with the bitter-sweet memories of the past, but hope for the future.

The Good Times are All Gone Now: Life, Death, and Rebirth in an Idaho Mining Town is a funny, sad, touching and skillfully-told story of a town and its people, of a young girl influenced by all she saw and experienced. Weston does a remarkable job of putting the reader inside the heart of a town, giving a fresh viewpoint to otherwise casual observers of that unique way of life.

The book is available through the publisher, The University of Oklahoma Press, the author’s website www.julieweston.com/books.htm, and Amazon.com.