Orphan #8 by Kim van Alkemade

Orphan #8

by

Kim van Alkemade

     My local library daytime book group has selected Orphan #8 for their February book to read.  I listened to it on audio.  It is a fiction story based on factual events.  A young girl named Rachel,  and her brother Sam, are placed in the NYC orphanage system about 1920.  Experimental X-rays are done on Rachel causing her to lose her hair and her eyebrows etc.  She suffers a childhood of being ridiculed.  Then as an adult nurse Rachel suddenly finds herself face to face with the doctor who did the experiments.  The doctor is dying and the doctor is a patient on Rachel's unit.  This historical fiction novel deals with a lot of issues.  It will be a good book to discuss at book club this month.  The history of medical experiments on children is very real.  Please read THIS article.  This book does have some graphic homosexual love scenes in its pages. It also raises ethical issues regarding not only medical experimentation but also questions about euthanasia. There will be no shortage of directions the discussion at book group can go this month!   Please click on the book title and author's name above to follow the links to learn more.  And for those who are wanting even more background information, the lengthy lecture on the video that follows is a tragic picture of how institutionalized children been been used, over and over, as subjects in medical experiments.  

Cinnamon

     As a child growing up, my great grandmother would spend Christmas Eve night at our house.  On Christmas morning we would wake up to the smell of what we called "sticky buns" baking.  They were pecan rolls and they contained cinnamon.  The smell of cinnamon is one that has holiday memories for many of us.  But did you know that cinnamon has many medicinal purposes as well?  It should not be a surprise that many of our spices are also distilled as oils and used not only in their powder form for culinary uses but also for medical reasons in their oil form.  I have cinnamon bark essential oil  at times in my diffuser and I use it in a form called vitality that is ingestible.  It is one that I rotate through, using a drop in my bedtime tea for a week and then rotating to another one of several for another week.  To name a few of many, Cinnamon Bark Essential Oil is used by those that believe it helps them as a   anti-microbial,   an anti-inflammatory,  for blood sugar stabilizing and for weight loss.  I am interested in its use as an anti-inflammatory.  Read more about the medicinal uses of cinnamon HERE in everyday language and for a more scientific article read THIS.  Be aware that cheaper fragrant oils that are sold are not the same as the essential oils which cost more.  Fragrant oils  smell just as nice but are synthetically created and do not have the same plant medicinal value.  I use Young Living essential oils because I am comfortable with the product being a high quality oil due to their seed to seal guarantee.  

     Please follow the links in the above paragraphs to learn more about the uses of cinnamon.  And enjoy the informative video that follows.  If you are ready to obtain the essential oils that I use please click HERE.  

My Best Ten Reads of 2019

  I read less than usual this year, completing only twenty-five books.  When I compiled my favorites list I found it to include fifteen titles. So in trimming it down to ten it was necessary to leave out some good ones.  And the task of putting the list of ten into best to least best was futile.  If you threw these titles up in the air they would all land at the same time.  But here is the order of the top ten that I settled on.  

10) The Hidden Life Of Trees by Peter Wohlleben  

9)  The Pioneers by David McCollough

8)  The Woman In The Photo by Mary Hogan 

7)  It Takes A Village by Hillary Rodham Clinton 

6)  Becoming by Michelle Obama

5)  Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens 

4)  March by Geraldine Brooks 

3) Radium Girls by Kate Moore 

2) American Eden by Victoria Johnson 

1) Year Of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks 

American Eden by Victoria Johnson

American Eden

by

Victorian Johnson

      Originally, I checked out this book on my kindle app from the State Library of Ohio.  But I did not get it completed by the time it returned and there was a waiting list before I could get it again.  I was enjoying the book so much that I bought it.  I rarely purchase books anymore as normally I can get through them in the allowed time from the library.  But I have had a busy month or so.  I finished the book this past week and found it to be a fascinating story about very interesting subjects.  It is a biography of David Hosack, who was a botanist and a physician early in the 1800s.  He wanted to discover and utilize the many plants here in the United States that were yet to be discovered and he wanted to do so to further the field of medicine  and save lives.  He also wanted to bring to the United States the medicinal plants from other countries so that medicine did not have to be imported.  He was poorly supported by others and used much of his own money to work toward his goals.  His perseverance in spite of serious set backs was very admirable.  He also rubbed shoulders with many much more famous men such as Hamilton, Jefferson, Burr and others.  He was, in fact, the physician of both the Hamilton family and the Burr family.   And not only did he work tirelessly on his medicinal plant goals,  he kept up a medical practice,  he taught medical students, he founded places like almshouses and hospitals, and he was a founding member at organizations such as historical societies.   I enjoyed this non fiction book very much and highly recommend it.  It is one of my favorite books that I have read this year.  Please click on the author's name and book title above to follow the links for more information and enjoy the video that follows.  

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Becoming

by

Michelle Obama

     The December reading selection for my local library book group  was Becoming by Michelle Obama.  This book is an autobiographical work.  I listened to it on audio and the author narrates the book herself.  It was wonderful to hear Michelle tell her story in her own words.  As a democrat,  I miss the Obamas being in the Whitehouse and the message of this book was one of hope.  There were many things that could be meaningfully quoted from the book but two statements that jumped out at me where 1) "Bullies are scared people on the inside and scary people on the outside."  and 2) "It was possible, I knew, to live on two planes at once.  To have ones feet planted in reality but pointed in the direction of progress.".   I hope everyone reads this book.  It is impossible for me to explain everything that  Michelle explains so one needs to experience the book  for themself.  This non fiction work  is extremely inspirational and entertaining at the same time. I enjoyed it very much! Please click on the book title and author's name above and follow the links to more information.  And watch the video that follows.  

Ginger

Ginger

     

     It is now December and the holidays are upon us which seemed like a good time to talk about ginger essential oil.  It is an oil that has been around for thousands of years. Ginger is familiar because it is often used in the form of a spice in baked goods such as gingerbread men and gingerbread houses.  It is that reason that ginger is often associated with the holidays.  But people use ginger essential oil for medicinal reasons.  Ginger is most often used for nausea but it is also commonly used as an anti-inflammatory.  It can be ingested if it is an essential oil that has been processed in a manner safe for ingestion, but not all have been, so it is necessary to to confirm that before ingesting.  Ginger can also be safely diffused or applied topically if added to a carrier oil.  An article that is written in layman's terms about ginger essential oil can be found HERE and one written in more scientific idiom   can be found by following this LINK.   Those who might be interested in obtaining ginger essential oil can find a portal to my website HERE.  Please enjoy the informative video that follows:

Update On My Writing

     It has been over six months since I have blogged anything about my writing.  This past April I wrote about my WWI Nurses project and that blog can be found HERE.  I did want to update everyone about what I have been up to this year.   Earlier this year I wrote a biographical sketch about an ancestor who was a nurse midwife during the late 1700s and early 1800s in Pennsylvania.  Her name was Susanna Rohrer Muller and that article was published this fall in the magazine Mennonite Family History. It can be obtained HERE.  But most of this year has been spent working on a very special project. 

     Starting in the mid 1990s my aunt and I started taking weekend get away vacations that we called "Mary Rohrer Weekends".  We named them this because we shared the same maiden first and last names.  On one of these weekends, we began to talk about the idea of a family cookbook.  We chatted about our cookbook from year to year.  We wanted to honor the women we knew in the 1900s and the lives that they lived.  As a result, when we decided that 2019 was the year we were actually going to write the cook book, in addition to recipes, we included biographical sketches and descriptions of what home making was like during the 20th Century.  

     We finally completed the book and it is available on lulu.com.   A coil bound paperback  can be obtained HERE or and an ebook can be obtained  HERE.  

     Before this project, I had aspirations to write a book when I retire.  But after both of us have worked so hard all this year on this project I have decided that I don't want to work that hard in my retirement.  I would like to to continue to write biographical sketches and short articles about the women in my family history.   I do have research started to write a biographical sketch of my great great grandfather's sister and plan to write it early in 2020.  But the rest of this year I am taking a writing break!