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Greg Taylor (1975-2015)

My beloved husband, Greg Taylor, passed away on December 25, 2015, Christmas afternoon, around 2:30 pm.

I would like to share our love story.

We met on Craigslist (yes, Craigslist--they have a dating site). On a Sunday afternoon, September 23, 2007, I answered his personal ad and we exchanged our first emails. His personals posting had the heading as simply "hi" and the post was a list of funny and random things about him, including "I'm taller than you, even if you're tall."

I responded with "hi back" and a corresponding list, including "I'm shorter than you, even if you're short. But most people say I don't 'look' short."

We met for the first time on a Friday night, September 28, after work in front of the (now gone) Virgin Megastore in Union Square. I arrived first, and was listening to my iPod. As he approached, I removed my headphones, got flustered because he was so handsome, and my earbuds got tangled. I handed them to him to hold for a second, a gesture he for some reason found endearing and would mention for years later. We decided to walk and find a place to eat, and ended up at Yaffa Cafe on St. Mark's Street (also now gone). For many years later, on September 28 we would go back and meet in front of the Virgin Megastore, which eventually was turned into a Duane Reade drugstore (of course).

We sat in the back courtyard and talked and talked and talked. He was a fifth-grade teacher, I was a children's book editor, he was studying history in grad school, I was always thirsty to learn more about everything. I liked sushi, he didn't eat raw meat. I had gone skydiving, he preferred his feet on the ground. But we couldn't stop looking into each other's eyes. His eyes were the most beautiful blue-gray. He told me they changed colors in the light, and I later discovered that they were sometimes flecked with green.

I had a birthday party to attend later that night in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, and asked him if he wanted to come with me. When he agreed, I knew he liked me. (He had told me earlier that he hated Williamsburg.) He told me later that when I asked him to come with me, he knew I liked him, too.

Now here's the "falling in love" montage. Kissing like there was no tomorrow. Going for walks--he showed me his neighborhood in Brooklyn and we walked to the Brooklyn museum and watched a dog frolic in the jumping fountain. It was there that we took our first picture together:

This is also the hat he wore when we first met.

Meeting each other's friends. House and dog sitting out in New Jersey (he LOVED dogs). Teaching me to play golf (he LOVED golf). Drinking a lot of wine (he LOVED wine). Introducing me to opera. Going to parties and weddings together, going to lots and lots of diners. (Later, when we briefly were looking to buy an apartment, it was important to us that the neighborhood have a diner.) Emails, texts, phone calls. Making each other laugh. Holidays. Supporting each other's careers.

Dog sitting Maggie, Roxie, and Caesar

He would share the books I edited with his students, especially Grace Lin's Year of the Dog, and he would proudly tell his students that he was friends with the real-life Melody who was a character in the book. When I attended his school's holiday concert, he introduced me as Melody and I was a celebrity. I later spoke to his school about being a children's book editor.

We took a trip out to Iowa together, where he spent his summers as a kid. Showing off, he took us down a backroad where we promptly got stuck in the mud and he had to call his uncle for help--they laughed and said he was a city boy now. 

Not a smart thing to do in a rental PT Cruiser

He started flying out to my parents' home in Southern California with me and ended up falling in love with California, and especially my parents' backyard. (He wanted to live there. In my parents' basement.) We played a lot of tennis and golf.


His mother was diagnosed with cancer, and he flew out to stay with her for six months to care for her. I went to visit him while he was there and spent Thanksgiving with his family and stayed in his childhood home.

We moved in together into his tiny 5th-floor walk-up apartment in Park Slope. The two of us and his two cats, Venus and Serena, made a nice family. And then in October 2011 he proposed, on the same rock in Central Park where my parents got engaged.

We were married less than a year later on July 21, 2012, in my parents backyard.



It was a glorious day, and we were excited to start a life together as husband and wife. 

And then he was diagnosed with cancer, synovial sarcoma, about six months after our wedding. You can read about that initial journey here. Major surgery, long recover, chemo, and then another long recovery.

Just as Greg was starting to regain his strength, we found out that his cancer had recurred in January 2014. We knew that with Greg's type of cancer, once it came back, there was no cure. At first, Greg didn't want any treatment--he didn't want to go through chemo again. We decided to travel--to Rome, and then Paris. Greg left the US for the first time (aside from Mexico) in February 2014 and we went to Rome and had a glorious week. Before he died, Greg wanted to walk where Augustus walked.





On the night before we were to leave for Paris, he was struck by excruciating tumor pain. We stayed in Rome for another week while we stabilized the pain, and then flew back to NY where he agreed to try a pill form of chemo. We were told that if the chemo worked, it would probably only work for 3-4 months. That pill ended up working for 18 months, and although he wasn't feeling great all the time, we were able to still have a relatively stable life. The chemo turned his facial pigmentation and hair snow white. He hated how his face looked and so he covered it with facial hair. Kids especially would stare at him--either thinking he was a pirate, or Santa, or, as we joked, a pirate Santa. Twice, once in our apartment lobby, and once at the Brooklyn Museum, he had a kid point to him and say, "Look! It's a pirate!"

Right before pirate Santa decided to shave his beard off.

We went to the US Open, a few hockey games and baseball games, and took a trip down to Atlantic City to see Bob Dylan perform.

Through it all, Greg handled his illness with courage and grace. It wasn't easy by any means, but I was eternally grateful to him for how he accepted and dealt with his situation. He knew this cancer would probably kill him, and although he was terrified of dying, his goal was to get as many good days out of life as possible. He had always been loving and attentive and romantic, but these past three years, he became even more so. 

For my 40th birthday last year, because he knew he didn't have the energy to take me out or throw me a party, he threw me a cyber party instead. He got over 100 T-shirts made in our wedding colors (fuchsia and purple) with the Chinese character for "love" on the back, and my last name in Chinese "Ling" on the front, to match the tattoo on my shoulder. He sent them to friends and families all around the US, and asked them to take pictures of themselves in the shirts and email, Tweet, and Facebook the pictures to me on my birthday. Here are just a few:



He told me he needed to make sure to tell me how much he loved me as much as he could in the time he had left. He told me that I should feel comforted in knowing how much I made his life better. He told me how in awe he was that he had met me, that I had responded to that one Craigslist ad so many years ago. He left me love notes around the apartment, on my computer, in my wallet. We had so many silly inside jokes, and I'm mourning the passing of what was known only between us. And of the children we never had (he was SO GREAT with kids, and would have made an amazing father), of our future that has been cut short.

But, I'm also so so so grateful for the time we had together. I loved him unconditionally. I loved his all-enveloping hugs, his sweet kisses in the middle of the night. I think we probably laughed even more together in these past three years--it became almost a competition to make the other laugh. We made up funny dances and funny voices. He got more and more into music, especially Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and John Lennon (he admired the great love between John and Yoko), and also discovered a love for Elvis Presley, Kris Kristofferson, Motown. But, Bob Dylan above all.  

Gradually, the chemo stopped working, and Greg started having more and more pain. We tried one last chemo, which worked for two months, and we knew that we were running out of options. A few months ago, we found out that Greg had a spot in an immunotherapy trial at Sloan Kettering, and we jumped at the chance. It was a Phase 1 trial, never tested on humans, but we knew if there was someday going to be a cure, it was probably going to be through immunotherapy. But on the day he was due to start, they discovered that his liver levels were high, which disqualified him from the trial, and the doctor sent him over to the hospital to see if they could solve the problem so that he could start the trial.

As my mother told Greg the last time she saw him, "You're still very handsome!"

I'm very lonely.  Venus is also lonely.  The two of us are acting like our worlds have been destroyed.  

While we cuddled - more like held on to one another as the universe battered us - she said, "Dad?"

I said, "What is it, sweetie?"

"I miss Alvina."

I said, "I do to, Venus.  I miss her too."

She asked, "Is it always going to be like this?  Is it always going to hurt this much?"

I explained to her that it will always hurt but that we will get better at dealing with it.  Eventually the wound will heal and a scar will grow in its place, making us stronger.

She said, "What?"

"Ugh," I said.  "Right now we hurt because the wound is so new.  As time passes the wound will close and a scar will form." 

She replied, "What are you talking about?  I don't have any open wounds.  I said I miss Alvina."

"It's a metaphor," I said.  "We are wounded EMOTIONALLY.  We will develop EMOTIONAL scars."

She said, "I have no idea what a metaphor is.  A metaphor?  What the fuck is a metaphor!  I'm a fucking cat.  Stop treating me like a human being, because I'm not a human being.  Also, STOP TOUCHING ME!"  

Then she swatted at me and jumped off the bed and ran into the other room.

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Deeply saddened to hear that teacher/librarian Debbie Alvarez has died. Though we don't know each other in person, Debbie and I have emailed each other as well interacting on social media. She has been so generous in her support of me and my work on her blog, including a post just last week. 

Like many others, I'm a fan of her blog, The Styling Librarian:

I love the tagline in the top right corner: "In my opinion, books are the best accessory."

The portrait in the top left corner was done by me. While Debbie was interviewing me for her blog, I discovered that she was just about to have a surgery (she didn't say what it was for), so I asked for her address so I could send her something to help cheer her up while she was recovering. She was hesitant, saying that it was sweet of me to offer but that shipping to Hong Kong was crazy expensive, and that my found object art posts already brightened up her days. I insisted, and here's what she wrote about it. 

Photo: BENJAMIN BRINK/The Oregonian

 Debbie never mentioned the word "cancer" in any of our emails; I only found out when we became Facebook friends and I followed one of her post links to her personal blog, and then scrolled back to older entries. And then I felt like an idiot, because I remember telling Debbie about having a cold bug in the household when she first approached me about doing an interview. I was complaining about a cold and there Debbie was, about to head into cancer-related surgery.

Sometimes the lack of comments on my own blog made me wonder how many people actually read it, but Debbie encouraged me: "So excited, just love how you share thoughts with others, your enthusiasm got me to finally pick up a pen and become persistent with my own writing and join SCBWI here in Hong Kong." 

Despite what she was going through, Debbie continued to support others, post on her blog about the love of reading, and embrace life as fully as possible. Debbie Alvarez was an inspiration to me, and the world is a lesser place without her.

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It was midnight and I had just slumped into bed, exhausted after one of my first days on-call as a new intern, and still adjusting to life in a new apartment. As my nagging reflections on the day were just beginning to subside, insistent knocking at my door jolted me back to alertness. Dragging myself out of bed to open the door, I was surprised to see a diminutive elderly lady who appeared quite perturbed.

The post The music next door appeared first on OUPblog.

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As we approach the 70th anniversary of the end of Japan's War, Japan’s “history problem” – a mix of politics, identity, and nationalism in East Asia, brewing actively since the late 1990s – is at center stage. Nationalists in Japan, China, and the Koreas have found a toxic formula: turning war memory into a contest of national interests and identity, and a stew of national resentments.

The post What can we expect at Japan’s 70th war commemoration? appeared first on OUPblog.

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Influenced by the discoveries of cognitive science, many of us will now accept that much of our mental life is unconscious. There are subliminal perceptions, implicit attitudes and beliefs, inferences that take place tacitly outside of our awareness, and much more.

The post Who’s in charge anyway? appeared first on OUPblog.

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On June 21, Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in Philadelphia, Mississippi will hold its fifty-first memorial service for three young civil rights workers murdered by the Ku Klux Klan at the start of the Freedom Summer. Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner were activists who planned to create a voting rights school at the church, located in rural Neshoba County.

The post Murders in rural Mississippi: remembering tragedies of the Civil Rights Movement appeared first on OUPblog.

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Most of us are probably not going to end up with amnesia so severe our memory of the past ten months is completely wiped out as happened to my heroine Gwen in Loving the Amnesia Bride. However, if you’re anything like me, you walk into a room intending to do something, which had to be important since you went there with a purpose. But now you’re standing inside the doorway with no earthly idea what you walked all the way across the house to do.

Or you’re all ready to run some errands…if you could just find where you left your darn car keys. Really, how far away could they have disappeared in the two hours since you last drove the car??? Clearly, it’s time to address the problem. And the problem is not the keys.

Below are ten foods which have been scientifically proven to deliver health benefits to your brain—improving memory, focus and concentration. So, let’s start eating!

1. Blueberries – All berries are good options, but blueberries are the superhero food choice! Blueberries protect the brain from oxidative stress and may reduce the effects of Alzheimer’s, dementia, and premature aging.

2. Salmon – Salmon is high in Omega-3 fatty acids, which are essential for brain function.

3. Broccoli – Broccoli has nutrients for healthy blood flow, protection against free radicals, and removes heavy metals that can damage the brain.

4. Beans/Legumes – These excellent sources of complex carbs and fiber provide a steady supply of glucose for the brain without the risks of sugar spikes. They are also packed with folate, a B vitamin critical to brain function.

5. Avocados – Although high in fat, the avocado is a monounsaturated fat, which promotes healthy blood flow to the brain. Their antioxidants protect the brain from free radical damage. They also contain potassium and vitamin K, which protect the brain from the risk of stroke.

6. Pomegranates – Either the seeds or the juice will do, protecting the brain from free radicals with their strong antioxidants.

7. Sunflower Seeds – These, along with other seeds, are packed with protein, omega fatty acids, B vitamins, and tryptophan, which the brain uses to boost mood and combat depression.

8. Whole grains – If you’ve ever bought whole grain bread, the advertising on the package probably shouted that whole grains reduce the risk of heart disease. And if your heart’s healthy, that’s good news for your brain.

9. Almonds and other nuts – Nuts are extremely good for the brain and nervous system. High levels of vitamin E protect against dementia and cognitive decline by protecting the brain against free radicals and improving brain power.

10. Chocolate – Chocolate, especially dark chocolate, has strong antioxidants and can improve concentration and focus. It also stimulates the production of endorphins, putting you in a good mood. 

Now, excuse me while I munch on some chocolate-covered almonds and look for my car keys!

  Sara Daniel writes what she loves to read—irresistible romance, from sweet to erotic and everything in between. She battles a serious NASCAR addiction and was once a landlord of two uninvited squirrels. She lives her own happily-ever-after romance with her hero husband, and she gets amnesia at least three times a day because she can never remember where she left her keys!

Learn more about Sara on her website and blog. Subscribe to Sara’s newsletter. Stay connected on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

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I believe any book can fuel the imagination when it arrives in the right hands at the right time, but there are also some which explicitly explore how we nurture creativity and create space for inspiration and following our dreams. The Wonder by Faye Hanson and The Imaginary by A.F. Harrold and Emily Gravett are two such books which I’ve read recently and which have left me brimming with delight, hope and happiness and which have sparked hours of inspired play in my children.

The Wonder by Faye Hanson is a sumptuous début picture book about a young boy whose head if full of daydreams which transform the humdrum world around him. Time and again adults tell him to get his head out of the clouds and come back to reality, but this is barely possible for a child who finds wonder, curiosity and delight wherever he looks. Finally in art class he’s able to let loose his imagination onto a blank sheet of paper delighting his teacher and filling his parents with pride.

The child in this story sees ordinary objects but has the imagination to turn them into astonishing stories, breathtaking ideas, and worlds full of adventures waiting to happen. I know I want to foster this ability in my own children (and in myself!); the world becomes more beautiful, richer, and simply more enjoyable when we are able to imagine more than the grey, wet and humdrum daily life that all too often catches us up. This utterly delightful book is an enthusiastic encouragement to let more imagination in to our lives.

Hanson’s illustrations are dense, saturated, and rich. Careful use of colour lights up the boy’s dreams in his otherwise sepia coloured life. Limited palettes add to the intensity of these pictures; it’s interesting that their vitality doesn’t come from a rainbow range of paints, but rather from focussing on layer of layer of just a few colours, packed with exquisite detail. There’s a luminosity about the illustrations; some look like they’ve got gold foil or a built-in glow and yet there are no novelty printing techniques here.

All in all, an exquisite book that will tell anyone you share it with that you value their dreams and want to nurture their ingenuity, inventiveness and individuality.

Now let me play devil’s advocate: Is there sometimes a line to be walked between feeding a child’s imagination and yet enabling them to recognise the difference between real life and day dreams? In The Wonder, there are plenty of adults pointing out the apparent problems/risks of day dreaming a great deal. On the other hand, in The Imaginary, a mother fully enters into her daughter’s imaginary world, not only acknowledging an imaginary best friend, but actively supporting this belief by setting places at meal times, packing extra bags, even accepting accidents must be the result of this friend and not the child herself.

Amanda believes that only she can see her imaginary friend Rudger. But all this changes one day when a mysterious Mr Bunting appears on the doorstep, apparently doing innocent door-to-door market research. But all is not as it seems for it turns out that Mr Bunting has no imagination of his own and can only survive by eating other people’s imaginary friends. He’s sniffed Rudger out and now he’s going to get him, whatever it takes.

If you’ve ever wondered where imaginary friends come from, and what happens to them when their children grow up and stop day-dreaming this is a book for you. If you love a good villain, adventures which include libraries and narrow escapes you’ll enjoy this too. If you’re a fan of elegant and attractive books you’ll want to feel this between your hands. The illustrations by Emily Gravett are terrific (in every sense) and incredibly atmospheric, magically adding beauty and tension to a story which I thought couldn’t be bettered.

Intelligent, clever, thoughtful, and packed with seeds of love and inspiration The Imaginary is perhaps my favourite middle grade/young fiction book of the year. If you want a fuller flavour of this gem before hurrying to get it into your hands, head and heart, there’s a full teacher’s guide to The Imaginary available on the Bloomsbury website and you can watch a video of Emily Gravett working on her illustrations here.

*************

One of the ways my girls have been inspired in their playing since sharing these books became clear when they told me they wanted to make a star-making machine to go with the one features in The Wonder (see the illustration above).

M first wrote out some recipes for stars:

I provided a little food for thought…

…and a selection of machine parts.

Several hours later the star machine was coming together

Next up a selection of star ingredients were sourced:

The machine was fed…

Can you see the pulses of one star in the making?!

And out popped these stars (here’s a tutorial) at the end of the star making process:

Here’s one just for you:

Whilst making our machine we listened to:

Invisible Friends by Dog on Fleas

Imaginary Friend by Secret Agent 23 Skidoo

‘Pure Imagination’ from the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film

Land of Make Believe by Bucks Fizz (Groan!)

Other activities which could work well alongside reading The Wonder and The Imaginary include:

Creating a wonder wall on which to write all those curious questions you and the kids want to find answers to. There’s a lovely tutorial for creating your own Wonder Wall over on Nurture Store.

Going on a Wonder Walk. I’ve been thinking about places which spark the imagination or create a sense of awe and thinking about how I can take the kids to visit these places and see what ideas the experience sparks. In general the sorts of places I think have the potential to ignite wonder include high-up places with views to the horizon, hidden places, for example underground, enormous spaces whether man-made or natural, and dark places lit only by candles or fire. I think these locations could all work as seeds for the imagination, and so during the coming holiday I’m going to try to take the girls to a place that fits each of these descriptions.

Spirals feature a great deal in The Wonder‘s artwork. Here are various art projects which might inspire your own spiral creations: spiral mobiles, spiral suncatchers, spiral wall art made from scrap paper and even human spirograph art (you need huge pieces of paper but this looks great fun).

How do you foster your kids’ imagination? And your own?

Disclosure: I was sent free review copies of both books in today’s post.

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By Cretien van Campen

Frail older people are more oftentimes considered a burden for society, than not. They are perceived to require intensive care that can be expensive while producing nothing contributory to society. The collective image is that frail older people are ‘useless’. In my opinion, we do not endeavor to ‘use’ them or know how to release productivity in them.

Around the age of 70, the extremely frail wheelchair bound musician Johnny Cash made the music video ‘Hurt’ with the help of film director Mark Romanek and producer Rick Rubin. The video was a tremendous success, receiving abundant critical acclaim and becoming a favorite with many for all time. The song was taken from a series of albums, the ‘American Recordings’, Cash created in his frailest period, selling millions of copies. The albums have been regarded as outstanding contributions to American culture and many people have found strength, joy and solace in his recordings.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Cash was no exception. He was not the only frail older person who flourished in his last years. The painter Henri Matisse, the music conductor Herbert von Karajan, and others reached creative summits in the last seasons of their lives. Also non-artists like sawmill worker Lester Potts became a creative painter in his later years when he was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. In other types of dementia, such as frontotemporal dementia, creativity can be released as well.

The case of Cash also is an example of what is needed to release creative productivity in a frail older person — and what has to be avoided. In his last years Cash suffered from several complex diseases and physical limitations, a long and sad process which biographer Robert Hilburn has described with compassion and in detail. Cash was successively diagnosed among others with Parkinson’s disease, Shy-Drager syndrome, and double pneumonia. These contributed to hospital admissions several times a year and receiving prescriptions in quantities that greatly impacted the long time Dexedrine (speed) addict. (Cash had been addicted during his career as a touring artist.)

By the end of the twentieth century Cash was in forlorn condition, exhausting himself in a mixture of drugs and over-extended tours. Of deeper emotional consequence, his records did not sell the numbers they once had. His musical career was considered by many to be over by the time he was approached by producer Rick Rubin. In retrospect Rubin gave Cash two ingredients that supported his creative productivity: mental reminiscences and physical exercises.

In elongated sessions at home Rubin and Cash played old and new music, evoking reminiscences with musical roots and connecting them with the music of younger generations, which created new flourish and renewed hunger for music in Cash. He transformed from an older musician playing golden oldies into an interpreter of contemporary songs with vision, re-honing his craft. Mentally, he returned from living in the past to living in the present and creating new interpretations, which revived a sense of direction to his life. He connected to younger generations and inspired them with his interpretations as he mutually was inspired by their music.

Not only in the mental and spiritual domains did he regain strength, but also in the physical domain. Rubin engaged a befriended physiotherapist. Physical exercises got Cash out of his wheelchair and walking independently again, while simultaneously bringing back feeling in his fingers to play the guitar with agility. By exercising his body, energy returned and he was able to sustain longer recording sessions, his most valued passion.

Rubin is an artist, not a doctor. He did not cure Cash. Instead he gave a man whose health was rapidly declining renewed opportunities and stimuli to thrive and find meaning in his life. Cash often said that all he wanted was to make music. The music gave him the will to survive, and to fight the diseases.

Although the medical records of Cash are confidential, reports from his family share indications that he was overmedicated. According to his son, his father would have lived longer and produced more songs and recordings if the medication had been decreased – something his physiotherapist pleaded for several times after another hospital admission.

Returning home after this hospital stay, every inch of his body appeared unduly medicated. As well meaning of his professional caregivers were in prescribing such pill-induced treatments, he actually lived in a medical cage, and his brilliant mind suffered. Fortunately some of his family members and friends understood he needed physical, mental, and spiritual space to flourish. They helped in opening that cage with recovered mental and physical strength and he eloquently delivered to us some of the most heart-provoking songs in the history of music.

Cretien van Campen is a Dutch author, scientific researcher and lecturer in social science and fine arts. He is the founder of Synesthetics Netherlands and is affiliated with the Netherlands Institute for Social Research and Windesheim University of Applied Sciences. He is best known for his work on synesthesia in art, including historical reviews of how artists have used synesthetic perceptions to produce art, and studies of perceived quality of life, in particular of how older people with health problems perceive their living conditions in the context of health and social care services. He is the author of The Proust Effect: The Senses as Doorways to Lost Memories.

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Image credit: Johnny Cash 1969, Photograph by Joe Baldwin. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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This is the second in a four-part series on Christian epistemology titled “Radical faith meets radical doubt: a Christian epistemology for skeptics” by John G. Stackhouse, Jr.

By John G. Stackhouse, Jr.

We might have reason to doubt some or even much of our day-to-day apprehension of things. We’re all in a hurry, all having to learn and discern and decide on the fly. Surely in the realm of medical research, however, the most important research we conduct, expert knowledge is sure and sound? David H. Freedman, in his disturbing book Wrong, introduces us to Dr. John Ioannidis. You’ll never sleep well again.

Ioannidis, an expert in expert medical studies, has impressive credentials. Graduating first in his class from the University of Athens Medical School, he completed a residency at Harvard in internal medicine and then took up a research and clinical appointment at Tufts in infectious diseases. While at Tufts, however, he began to notice that a wide range of medical treatment did not rest on solid scientific evidence. While next at the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins University in the 1990s, Ioannidis stated that two-thirds of hundreds of medical studies he read in the scholarly literature were either fully refuted or pronounced “exaggerated” within a few years of their publication.

This seems troubling. Be more troubled, however, as Freedman continues:

[Ioannidis] had been examining only the less than one-tenth of one percent of published medical research that makes it [in]to the most prestigious medical journals.… Ioannidis did find one group of studies that more often than not remained unrefuted: randomized controlled studies… that appeared in top journals and that were cited in other researchers’ papers an extraordinary one thousand times or more. Such studies are extremely rare and represent the absolute tip of the tip of the pyramid of medical research. Yet one-fourth of even these studies were later refuted, and that rate might have been much higher were it not for the fact that no one had ever tried to confirm or refute nearly half of the rest.

To confirm your permanent insomnia, journalist Julian Sher examines the world of forensic science and finds many instances of wrongful convictions. He points to a 2009 study published in the Virginia Law Review that surveyed the cases of 137 convicted persons later exonerated by DNA evidence, and found that in more than half of the trials forensic experts gave invalid testimony, “including errors about shoe prints and hair samples.” That same year, the National Academy of Sciences published a book-length report warning that even fingerprint matches can be misleading and calling for a drastically improved approach to forensic science. So much, then, for people’s fates being determined by the clear, cold, infallible judgment of the scientific expert witness. (So much, also, for the entire CSI franchise…)

As the world begins to shimmer ever more before our eyes and the solid ground beneath our feet threatens to evanesce, along comes historian Alison Winter to offer an entire book about the questionable reliability of Memory. What we do not readily comprehend, what does not fit within our set of presuppositions, does not tend to register with us immediately and clearly, if at all, and therefore also not in our memory. Conversely, what we expect to experience, or afterward believe we must have experienced, gets written into our memories despite what may have actually happened.

Contrary, that is, to the popular notion that somewhere buried in our brains is a perfect recording of everything we have ever experienced, Winter shows through her study of the last century of memory research that our minds instead are constantly coding what we experience as “memorable,” “sort of memorable,” “not memorable” and the like, according to our understanding of the world and according to our valuing of this or that element of the world.

Furthermore, our memories are plastic, and remain vulnerable to addition, subtraction, deformation, reformation, confabulation, and other processes as our lives progress and as our beliefs change, rather than being fixed, veracious “imprints” of the external world upon our minds.

What, then, can we possibly trust in our quest for knowledge? If we cannot trust our own senses, reason, memory—or even those of the most expert experts in our society—are we simply lost in the blooming, buzzing confusion of an incomprehensible world?

In a word, yes. Yes, we are.

John G. Stackhouse Jr. is the Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology and Culture at Regent College, Vancouver, Canada. He is the author of Need to Know: Vocation as the Heart of Christian Epistemology.

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Image credit: Laboratory technicians at work in medical plant with machinery and computers. © diego_cervo via iStockphoto.

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There are many exercises available to awaken intuitive abilities but this one is a favorite because it is so simple and so effective. Also, it surfaces an issue that really matters—one the participant may not even realize as a conscious issue before doing the exercise. Lastly, it facilitates a resolution or process for working with the issue that is line with the soul’s need. The exercise was developed by Henry Reed, Ph.D., Director of the Edgar Cayce Institute for Intuitive Studies  and can be found at: http://intuitiveheart.com/SoulReflection/. The instructions are at http://intuitiveheart.com/SoulReflection/memory-divination-instructions.html which involve:

1. Doing the 7 minute Inspired Heart Meditation followed by the Memory Divination Exercise. Both can be downloaded as one meditation in a free mp3 file at http://intuitiveheart.com/SoulReflection/ihmemdiv.mp3
2. Processing the memory received according to the instructions. Basically, what does this memory remind you of in relation to something important in your life right now? How do you feel about this current concern? What are the challenges?
3. Going to http://intuitiveheart.com/SoulReflection/selected-important-question.html to find a random question generated. Reflect on this question in light of your memory and the processing of it. What comes to light?

For a description of my experience doing this exercise, please see the sequel post at http://wp.me/p45aiq-4N.

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By Cretien van Campen

Would you take a person with dementia to the beach?

This might not really be an idea you would think of. There are several possible constraints: difficulty with travel, for example, being one. And what if, having succeeded in getting the dementia sufferer there and back, the next day you asked if they enjoyed their day out and he or she just stared at you with a confused gaze as if to ask, ‘what are you talking about?’

If you think it makes little sense to take persons with dementia to the beach, it will surprise you that a nursing home in Amsterdam has built a Beach room. In this room, residents can enjoy the feeling of sitting in the sun with their bare feet in the sand. The room is designed to improve the well-being of these residents. The garden room at the centre of the home has recently been converted into a true ‘beach room’, complete with sand and a ‘sun’ which can be adjusted in intensity and heat output. A summer breeze blows occasionally and the sounds of waves and seagulls can be heard. The décor on the walls is several metres high, giving those in the room the impression that they are looking out over the sea. There are five or six chairs in the room where the older residents can sit. There are also areas of wooden decking on which wheelchairs can be parked. The designers have even managed to replicate the impression of sea air.

Visits to the beach room appear to have calming and inspiring effects on residents of the nursing home. One male resident used to go to the beach often in the past and now, after initially protesting when his daughter collected him from his bedroom, feels calm and content in the beach room. His dementia hinders us from asking him whether he remembers anything from the past, but there does appear to be a moment of recognition of a familiar setting when he is in there.

Evidence is building through studies into the sensorial aspects of memorizing and reminiscing by frail older persons in nursing and residential homes. Several experimental studies have noted the positive effects of sense memories on the subjective well-being of frail older persons. For instance, one study showed that participants of a life review course including sensory materials had significantly fewer depressive complaints and felt more in control of their lives than the control group who had watched a film.

The Beach Room is an example of a multisensory room that emanates from a specific sensorial approach to dementia. The ‘Snoezelen’ approach was initiated in the Netherlands in the late 1970s. The word ‘Snoezelen’ is a combination of two Dutch words: ‘doezelen’ (to doze) and ‘snuffelen’ (to sniff ). Snoezelen takes place in a specially equipped room where the nature, quantity, arrangement, and intensity of stimulation by touch, smells, sounds and light are controlled. The aim of these multisensory interventions is to find a balance between relaxation and activity in a safe environment. Snoezelen has become very popular in nursing homes: around 75% of homes in the Netherlands, for example, have a room set aside for snoezelen activities.

On request by health care institutions, artists have taken up the challenge to design multisensory rooms or redesign the multisensory space of wards (e.g. distinguished by smells) and procedures (cooking and eating together instead of individual microwave dinners). Besides a few scientific evaluations, most evidence is actually acquired from collaborations of artists and health professionals at the moment. The senses are often a better way of communicating with people affected by deep dementia. Like the way that novelist Marcel Proust opened the joys of his childhood memories with the flavour of a Madeleine cake dipped in linden-blossom tea, these artistic health projects open windows to a variety of ways of using sensorial materials to reach unreachable people.

So, would you take a person with dementia to the beach? Yes, take them to the beach! It can evoke Proust effects and enhance their joy and well-being. Although, we still do not know what the Proust effect does inside the minds of people with dementia, we can oftentimes observe the result as an enhanced state of calmness with perhaps a little smile on their face. People with dementia who have lost so much of their quality of life can still experience moments of joy and serenity through their sense memories.

Cretien van Campen is a Dutch author, scientific researcher and lecturer in social science and fine arts. He is the founder of Synesthetics Netherlands and is affiliated with the Netherlands Institute for Social Research and Windesheim University of Applied Sciences. He is best known for his work on synesthesia in art, including historical reviews of how artists have used synesthetic perceptions to produce art, and studies of perceived quality of life, in particular of how older people with health problems perceive their living conditions in the context of health and social care services. He is the author of The Proust Effect: The Senses as Doorways to Lost Memories.

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Image credits: Multisensory ‘Beach room’ in the Vreugdehof care centre, Amsterdam. Photo: Cor Mantel, with permission from Vreugdehof.

The post Dementia on the beach appeared first on OUPblog.

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Okay, the first thing we need to do here is remember what we were talking about last week, which was:

1. When, in the course of our lives, are we actively taught self-control, which we need to practice self-discipline?
2. Those of us who don't learn self-control when we're young have the additional issue of remembering that self-discipline is something we want to practice because the whole self-control/self-discipline business is not a natural part of our lives.

And why do we writers want to become self-disciplined? Because self-discipline relates directly to being able to stay on task and manage our time.

Yeah, I Really Want To Remember To Do That

Part of being self-disciplined involves remembering that you're going to do it. How so? Think of any new behavior you want to engage in. Say I want to look over the entire buffet for healthier choices before I start filling my plate. Or I decide to exercise before I have breakfast. I also want to write 20 minutes on weekends and holidays when the family is here. In any of these cases, willpower failure can be due to a number of things, but I would like to add just plain forgetting what we'd planned to do to that list. We walk into a restaurant and truly just forget that we had a plan for dealing with the buffet because we'd never had a plan before, so it's not something we naturally do. We get up in the morning, eat breakfast, and go "oops" when we realize that we forgot the exercise plan.

Please, Gail, how about a writing-related example. Okay. Here's one. I didn't do my 20 minute writing sprint on Saturday. I could easily have done it in the morning, but I spent several hours cooking random things instead. In thinking about it afterward, I realized there was no reason in the world why I had to cook all those things. I could easily have squeezed 20 minutes of writing in, which would have kept me in the world of my WIP. I really just forgot that I had a plan. Maintaining self-discipline isn't something I'm accustomed to doing, at least, not with that particular task.

So Now We Have To Work On Improving Memory, Too?

Well, it certainly can't hurt anything, can it? So how are we going to do it?

1. We can try creating habits, which are like self-discipline without any thinking. Muscle-memory for the memory. Presumably with a habit, we would simply do something we wanted to do. However, Kelly McGonigal, my personal self-discipline guru, isn't a fan of habit. She believes habits work best for small behaviors that don't require a lot of us, which explains why I'm now flossing my teeth regularly. It's not brain surgery. She talks about using things like automatic goal pursuit, implementations, and commitments instead of habit. But you have to remember the goal you're pursuing automatically, you have to remember the plan you're going to implement in certain situations, you have to remember your commitments.
2. We can try meditating, because it appears to be a cure-all for what ails you. Now that we have ways to study the brain and the impact of various activities upon it, there is some science to back up its use. Again, my friend Kelly McGonigal says that meditating helps with self-control and attention because it develops the prefontal cortex, the portion of the brain that deals with impulse control. The effort to keep your mind from wandering actually develops the brain.

Memory, Gail, memory. Remember we're talking about memory. I do remember that. Maybe because I started a short meditation practice in June, one that I'm only able to keep up with 3 or 4 days a week. I didn't notice any revolutionary gains in concentration, but I did wonder if my memory was improving. It wasn't that I wasn't forgetting things. What I was noticing was that I "recovered" from the forgetfulness faster. Meaning I remembered where my cell phone was as soon as I realized I didn't have it. I remembered I hadn't turned the timer on while baking as I was leaving the kitchen. Sure enough, a little time on the Internet turned up a very recent article on a study that indicates that meditation does, indeed, improve memory.

What Will Memory Do For Us?

My theory is that improving memory will lead to improved self-discipline will lead to improved time management. Because absolutely everything is tied in with time.

   

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The One series continues with a debut author.When I tell you that this debut author is my wife, I say it from the vantage of a blessed and fortunate man. Not only does she support me in my writing, I suddenly discover this new side of her. What she reveals in her story, Questions, in some ways is new to me too. We are coming up on our fourteenth anniversary and now I get this glimpse of a person filled with faith and enchanted by the simple magic around her. It truly is my privilege to present this new voice to you.

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2 1/2 years ago I bought my trusty little Apple laptop. The other day I was working on it and up came a window telling me I had about 100 GB of information on it!  This memory includes programs that I run, but most of it is ART!!  Fabric design, product concepts, children’s books and more. Peepsqueak and his friends, Newton my lamb and his friends, a friendly new elephant and monkey, some babies, some clowns, Lae Dee Bugg, Snofolk, and more!  Always more.  What great fun it has been to look back at the last 2 1/2 years!  It has me wondering just how much art will fill this computer by the end of 2013!  I have some ideas right now!!!!

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My nickname for this model is Gaitskell although he doesn't really look like Hugh Gaitskell. But when politicians are pontificating I find it helpful to visualise them with no clothes on. I drew this in Zen Brush which is fun to use for lifedrawing.
ZenBrush on iPad. Click to enlarge.

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Two more pages from my ongoing Autobiography.
Paper53 on iPad. Click to enlarge.

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Two more pages from the forthcoming Memoir.
paper53 on iPad. Click to enlarge.

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All self-explanatory, I trust.
Paper53 on iPad. Click to enlarge.

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Two more sheets from The Memoirs.
Paper53 on iPad. Click to enlarge.

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By Meghann Wilhoite

I have a confession to make: I have a terrible memory. Well, for some things, anyway. I can name at least three movies and TV shows that Mary McDonnell has been in off the top of my head (Evidence of Blood, Donnie Darko, Battlestar Galactica), and rattle off the names of the seven Harry Potter books, but you take away that Beethoven piano score that I’ve been playing from since I was 14, and my fingers freeze on the keyboard. My inability to memorize music was in fact the reason I gave up on my dream of being a concert pianist—though, in retrospect, this was probably the right move for me given how lonely I would get during hours-long practice sessions…

I’ve since come to terms with my memory “deficiency,” but a recent New York Times article by Anthony Tommasini on the hegemonic influence of memorization in certain classical performing traditions brought some old feelings to the fore. Why did I have to memorize the music I was performing, especially considering how gifted I was at reading music notation (if I may say so myself)?

As Tommasini points out (citing this article by Stephen Hough), the tradition of performing from memory as a solo instrumentalist is a relatively young one, introduced by virtuosi like Franz Liszt and Clara Schumann in the 1800s. Before that, it was considered a bit gauche to play from memory, as the assumption was that if you were playing without a score in front of you, you were improvising an original piece.

I should be clear at this point that I have nothing against musicians performing from memory. Indeed some performers have the opposite problem to mine: the sight of music notation during performance is a stressor, not a helper. Nonetheless, I do feel that the stronghold that memorization has on classical soloist performance culture needs to be slackened.

One memory in particular related to memorization haunts me still. After sweating through a Bach organ trio sonata during a master class in the early 00s, the dear late David Craighead gave me some gentle praise and encouraged me to memorize the piece. “Make it your own” were his words. I was devastated. How on earth was I going to memorize such a complex piece?

In spite of my devastated feelings, I heard a nagging voice in the back of my mind telling me Dr. Craighead was right. If only I could memorize the piece, it truly would be my own. I’d heard before from other teachers that the best way to completely “ingest” a piece was to practice it until you didn’t need the score anymore. The lone recital I gave from memory during my college years was admittedly an exhilarating experience; I definitely felt that I had a type of ownership over the pieces, even if I was in constant terror of having a memory lapse. In hindsight, though, I believe my sense of ownership was not a result of score-freedom, but from the hours and hours (and hours) I spent in the practice room preparing for the recital.

Whether or not you are moved by my struggles (being a little facetious here), I think that, in 2013, it is time for us to acknowledge the multiplicity of talents a classical soloist may possess, and stop trying to squeeze everyone into the same box.

Meghann Wilhoite is an Assistant Editor at Grove Music/Oxford Music Online, music blogger, and organist. Follow her on Twitter at @megwilhoite. Read her previous blog posts on Sibelius, the pipe organ, John Zorn, West Side Story, and other subjects.

Oxford Music Online is the gateway offering users the ability to access and cross-search multiple music reference resources in one location. With Grove Music Online as its cornerstone, Oxford Music Online also contains The Oxford Companion to Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Music, and The Encyclopedia of Popular Music.

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The post To memorize or not to memorize appeared first on OUPblog.

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The time has come to write my autobiography.
Paper 53 app on iPad. Click to enlarge.

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I was trying out the Zen Brush app and drew this portrait of my sick dog who's been laid up in dog hospital for two days.
ZenBrush on iPad. Click to enlarge.

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I admit it: I have trouble retaining the details of books. Most texts eventually get relegated to a dark corner of my mind, slowly accumulating dust until they're barely visible at all. The only thing I can remember about DeLillo's White Noise is that the narrator's wife is named Babette, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen [...]

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