Warm Spirited Local News

I tip my hat to Joe Zlomek, he is sharing what I consider to be real news in our area.  For example, this morning I gazed out back at my frost covered lawn and  then I  poured myself a cup of hot tea.  It sounds like a perfect Saturday morning in November doesn’t it?  Well, to be fair my house is almost as cold as the outdoors because our heater died close to a week ago, and so my house warms with the sun every day, but still, I have access to shelter and a hot stove, space heaters and a fireplace heater,and I’m having my whole house heater installed, as a matter of fact, it is in, it just isn’t connected thanks to the guys at QDI.

But because it was so chilly out today I thought about folks in our community needing coats!  And when I signed on this morning I found through the magic of wordpress, that some of you who were coming to my blog were also looking for places to donate coats- and I had to go hunting because time is of the essence when people are freezing.  ( Thank you wonderful readers, you remind me to share with others!)

I found a wonderful young man that I’ve posted about in the last post named Matt, but I also checked out my friend Joe’s posts, and sure enough he has been talking about donating coats for a while now.  He mentions a soccer team collecting, and other organizations collecting.  Joe lets us know what is going on in our area.  He lets us know at the human level, not just the ‘news’ level.

Joe is a gatekeeper for human stories as well as local news.  You have to stop by his site, the Sanatoga Post, or the Limerick Post, or the Pottstown Post.

Tell him mo sent you!

Love,

mo

feelthewarmth.org

Matt Frangiosa had an idea after running into a friend that he knew was having some financial setbacks, the friend was wearing a sweater on a chilly day and when Matt asked where his coat was, the friend mentioned his son needing a coat, and so he gave him his.

That was the beginning of a plan for Matt to create an annual drive to collect coats for those who need them in our area. Anyone can call his organization if they have a few ‘like new’ coats and they’ll arrange to pick them up, but of course it would be much easier for them, and a lot more generous of you if you dropped  your coats off at one of the local businesses or organizations that are holding their own drives for ‘feelthewarmth’.

I’m listing a bunch of our area places, and I’m so glad to see that so many places in the ‘Greater Pottstown’ area are involved.  This is a chilly morning, frost is on the ground….think about what it must be like not to have a coat, or a hat, or gloves.  And then think about donating to this cause.

Locations:

Daniel Boone School District

Pottstown Memorial Medical Center ( Medical Records Department)

Soroptomist Club Pottstown

Texas Roadhouse ( Royersford Location)

Twin Valley High School

Zales Jewelers Pottstown

Thanks for your consideration, and please donate what you can to help others share the warmth this season!

love,

mo

Being Buried by Walmart

This isn’t another post about how tough the big box companies are on small towns.

This is a post about how Walmart can help shoppers feel comfortable even after they’ve died.

Walmart is now selling caskets online!  Yes,You can find the Lady of Guadalupe Casket online!  It doesn’t have the smiley face on it, but for some folks it still  feels a little icky.  But then again the economy is tight, people have to be frugal and funerals can be outrageously expensive.   In that case isn’t it a plus that Walmart and Costco are offering this service?  Isn’t it nice that for less than a thousand bucks you can rest your favorite relative in a nicely made coffin.  ( Just make sure they are dead first!)

Walmart isn’t selling death certicates just yet, so you’ll have to go through the proper channels for them.

Is Your Brain Making You Fat?

Say it ain’t so!  Brain’s can’t make people fat can they?  What decent brain would want to cause all of the life limiting illnesses that go along with being extra large?

Well, normal brains would!  Normal brains that might have triggers installed in them to protect their body against dying from starvation.  Brains are complicated and human brains are even more complicated.  But it looks like there is a defense system that goes into effect when brains are feeling starved.   When a brain is getting the impression that the body is starving, it releases fat into the blood stream.  And at the same time it sends hunger signals to the body.

Now what if your blood stream has fat in it because you’ve overinduged a bit.  The bad news is that it looks like that fat that is now circulating in your blood might tell your body you need more food.  Which means that even dieters who are desperately trying their best to eat healthfully could be in big trouble if they take even a little bite of something that contains some saturated fats.

 

 

The Fat and Skinny on Jersey’s Election

A lot of folks are relieved elections are over!  Personally, I miss getting to know a little more about the folks running the towns and states of this nation, but I’ll admit that I won’t miss being bombarded by advertising aimed at knocking the other candidates for elections.

Now we get to opine on what happened during this last election- why did Republicans pick up so many seats? Why did Democrats win that town?  Why did independents even run?

One question about a state right next to ours is why did Jon Corzine lose?  Jon of course was the Democratic incumbent in New Jersey and he was running for another 4 years as Governor, so what happened?  Was his losing part of the Obama backlash?

Well, there is some folks thinking he lost because he picked on fat people.  It seems Corzine approved some advertising that was aimed at showing voters how much bulk Christie had to him.  Christie finally asked Jon to ‘man up’ and just call him ‘fat’.   But is it possible that New Jerseyans voted for a man because he had a solid waistline?

Who knows!  Although  it probably is true that more voters look like Christie than look like Corzine!

What do you think?  Do you think politicians should be slim and fit?  Or can they be corpulent?

 

An Obama Baby Bump?

This article is a part of a larger piece in Scientific American, it relates to the fact that men’s testosterone levels are changed as a result of winning or losing an election.  There are a lot of questions that can be teased out of these studies, but one was certainly will there be an “Obama Baby Bump” this year?

Check out a bit of the article:

On election night last year, testosterone levels dropped rapidly among male voters of losing parties.

After the outcome of the U.S. presidential election was declared, neuroscientists at Duke University found that although male voters for Barack Obama, the winner, had stable levels of testosterone, the hormone’s levels rapidly dropped in males who cast ballots for John McCain or Robert Barr, the losers. In a questionnaire, the McCain and Barr voters reported feeling significantly more controlled, submissive, unhappy and unpleasant after the loss than the Obama backers.

The researchers monitored testosterone levels from the saliva of 163 college-age volunteers in North Carolina and Michigan by asking them to chew sugar-free gum and then spit before and after the results were announced. The male participants would normally have shown a slight nighttime drop in testosterone levels anyway, because the body doesn’t need it during sleep, but on election night, they departed dramatically from this routine: Obama voters’ levels did not fall as they should have, whereas those of McCain and Barr backers dropped more than would have been expected.

No significant effects were seen in the 106 female volunteers. Women have testosterone, but in much lesser amounts, making them less likely to experience rapid testosterone changes following victory or defeat.

Past research had shown that personally winning and losing in sports matches and other competitions raised and lowered testosterone levels in men. These new findings, appearing online October 21 in PLoS ONE, reveal that politics can influence testosterone in men “just as if they directly engaged head-to-head in a contest for dominance,” says researcher Kevin LaBar of the Duke University Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an Obama baby bump nine months after the election.”

Vitamin D and Cognitive Function

We have been told to avoid the sun because we all know that sun damage to our skin causes cancer.

Well, maybe we need a little more sun, or maybe if we are lucky we’ll be able to absorb Vitamin D from supplementation, but we definitely need more vitamin D in our systems because Vitamin D seems to have something important to do with cognition!

Your ability to think and react rests on the amount of Vitamin D circulating in your system, at least that is the results of some tests that have been done recently, so how about you read a little more about the tests and see what you think This article is part of an article found in Scientific American-

The push to prevent skin cancer may have come with unintended consequences—impaired brain function because of a deficiency of vitamin D. The “sunshine vitamin” is synthesized in our skin when we are exposed to direct sunlight, but sunblock impedes this process. And although vitamin D is well known for promoting bone health and regulating vital calcium levels—hence its addition to milk—it does more than that. Scientists have now linked this fat-soluble nutrient’s hormonelike activity to a number of functions throughout the body, including the workings of the brain.

“We know there are receptors for vitamin D throughout the central nervous system and in the hippocampus,” said Robert J. Przybelski, a doctor and research scientist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “We also know vitamin D activates and deactivates enzymes in the brain and the cerebrospinal fluid that are involved in neurotransmitter synthesis and nerve growth.” In addition, animal and laboratory studies suggest vitamin D protects neurons and reduces inflammation.

Two new European studies looking at vitamin D and cognitive function have taken us one step further. The first study, led by neuroscientist David Llewellyn of the University of Cambridge, assessed vitamin D levels in more than 1,700 men and women from England, aged 65 or older. Subjects were divided into four groups based on vitamin D blood levels: severely deficient, deficient, insufficient (borderline) and optimum, then tested for cognitive function.

The scientists found that the lower the subjects’ vitamin D levels, the more negatively impacted was their perform­ance on a battery of mental tests. Compared with people with optimum vitamin D levels, those in the lowest quartile were more than twice as likely to be cognitively impaired.

A second study, led by scientists at the University of Manchester in England and published online this past May, looked at vitamin D levels and cognitive performance in more than 3,100 men aged 40 to 79 in eight different countries across Europe. The data show that those people with lower vitamin D levels exhibited slower information-processing speed. This correlation was particularly strong among men older than 60 years.

“The fact that this relationship was established in a large-scale, clinical human study is very important,” Przybelski says, “but there’s still a lot we don’t know.”

A Warmer Winter This Year

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted that this year temperatures in our area will be warmer than they have been in years past, actually it looks like it will be warmer than it has been in 30 years, that is if their predictions stand true.

That means that heating costs might be a little less expensive, but then again, factoring in the fact that oil prices are rising, don’t bet on it!

Oil prices increasing and electric rate caps ceasing to exist means even if the winter isn’t bone chilling,  our wallets are going to take a beating.  Electric rates could rise up as much as 20 to 28 percent a month.  That isn’t exactly good news, but it could be worse!

Don’t ask me how!

You think about it!

mo

Daniel Boone’s New Sports Park Parked!

There are some people that enjoy sports.  Sports connect people.  Student players, their families and local community members attend games and so, it is not wholly unreasonable to want to make the experience pleasant for attendees.  However, there is a problem in Daniel Boone- some people wanted a new stadium, but in order to build a new stadium as per Union Township ordinances, you’d need to have a parking space for every 3 seats built.

In this case, that means they need parking for 600 cars.  But they don’t have that, and so, until they can come up with new parking for the new stadium, it looks like their idea is going to have to wait.

I wish the Daniel Boone School Board luck in making this decision.  One parent said families won’t move into the district if the facilties aren’t up to par.  I think that most families move into school districts because of the quality of the educations their children will receive and not necessarily because of the condition of their athletic fields, but I suppose some might hesitate to move into a community that doesn’t have adequate parking for school events.

What do you think?

mo

mogallant@gmail.com

Collegeville’s New Pet Hotel

They did it!  They created a hotel for pets, but it isnt’ a stand alone building, it is part of Collegeville’s new PetSmart.

Lucky pets can stay at the store and they have fashionable rooms or kitty condos to relax in.  There is a lot of activity and your pet can hear your voice simply by going into the ‘bone booth’ where you can call and allow your pet the opportunity to hear you from whatever exotic destination you are in.

The pet hospital is in the store and there are toys galore for your pet to enjoy if they happen to rip apart the one you sent them on ‘vacation’ with.

It sounds like the perfect getaway for pets- and it is in our backyard.

What do you think?

mo