Interesting article about astrology

(Thanks to patrica robinett for this)

Doctors might soon ask, "What's your sign?"
By Erika Niedowski
The Baltimore Sun

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20): Governed by Neptune and symbolized by the fish. Compassionate, introspective, artistic. Often dreamy and impractical. May be prone to schizophrenia, epilepsy or bipolar disorder.

It may sound like some kind of new, madcap astrology, but several scientists are becoming convinced that our birth month may predispose us to particular diseases. Studies have shown that schizophrenia is more common among those born inlate winter or early spring. Multiple sclerosis is associated with births inApril, May and June. And epilepsy occurs more frequently in those withbirthdays from December to March.

The findings may seem whimsical or - depending on which month you eat cake and unwrap presents - alarming. But researchers hope the emerging patterns will offer clues into the origins of a variety of illnesses that, despite advances in treatment, have no known cause.

"It makes you think differently about disease," said Dr. Emmanuel Mignot, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, who has studied the association between birth month and narcolepsy. "Most people tend to think that disease is really something that isdetermined by your genes or what happens just before the disease occurs," he said. "Maybe there are a number of things that can happen well before."

In the latest study, published in the current edition of the journal Neurology, scientists at the National Cancer Institute found that adults born in January and February had the highest risk of brain cancer. Those with birthdays in July and August had the lowest risk. The paper's lead author, NCI epidemiologist Alina Brenner, is the first to offer a caveat: The findings could be the result of chance. But separate studies in Britain and Norway have identified a similar correlation between birth season and risk of brain tumors in children, witha statistical "excess" of births in winter and a "deficit" in summer.

If the association turns out to be real, Brenner said, it suggests that exposures early in a child's development - at any point from conception tothe first few months after birth - could have a hand in the genesis of the disease. Although it's not clear what those exposures are, they could include viruses, environmental toxins or even something as seemingly benign as the weather. Seasonal birth patterns have been most firmly established in schizophrenia patients. Danish researchers reported several years ago that the risk of developing the disorder was highest among those born in February and March and lowest among those with birthdays in August and September.

For his part, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, research psychiatrist at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., has ruled out the possibility that chance alone explains the findings. "It could be chance if it were one study of 250 people, or a few dozen people here or a few dozen people there," he said. "When you're dealing with a couple hundred thousand people and 200 studies, the chances of it being chance are zero-point-zero. It's remarkably consistent."

The leading explanation implicates a seasonal infection that could be disturbing the child's normal brain development, which may help explain whyother central-nervous-system disorders also are more common in those with winter births. "We know that infectious agents have a seasonality - influenza being themost striking," Torrey said. "Therefore, you certainly have to think of infectious agents infecting the mother late in pregnancy or infecting the newborn in the first few months of life."

Stanford's Mignot and a group of colleagues from France published a paper in the journal Sleep last year linking birth month with another disorder:narcolepsy. Patients with that condition are regularly seized with sleep during waking hours. Researchers compared the birth dates of 886 narcoleptics being treated atsleep clinics in Montpellier, France; Montreal, and California to those of more than 35 million people in the general population.The distribution of births was strikingly uneven, with the number of narcoleptics born in March (11.9 percent) significantly exceeding the number expected in the general population (8.5 percent). Conversely, researchers found a significant drop in the number of narcoleptics born in September (5.6 percent) compared with the number normally expected (8.7 percent).

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2002011657&zsection_id=268448413&slug=birthmonth21&date=20040821

Zen meditation for those feeling stressed

Picture yourself near a stream.

Birds are softly chirping in the crisp, cool mountain air.

Nothing can bother you here.

No one knows this secret place.

You are in total seclusion from that place called "the world".

The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a cascade of serenity.

The water is clear.

You can easily make out the face of the person whose head you're holding under the water.

Look...It's the person who caused you all this stress in the first place.

What a pleasant surprise.

You let them up.....just for a quick breath.....then PLOOP!...back under they go....You allow yourself as many deep breaths as you want.

There now......feeling better?

~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks to Serra on my Aromatherapy list for this! :-)

Blessings~

This is for you Shannah

and for all the military wives who sacrifice so much for all of us. Love you sweetie!
This is a wonderful WSJ op-ed by Ben Stein....(Win Ben Stein's Money show)

Strength at Home
By BEN STEIN August 18, 2004; Page A10

(This is a letter I wrote to the newsletter of an Army unit called The Strykers, stationed in Iraq out of Ft. Lewis, Wash. The editor asked me what I would say to make the wives feel appreciated while their husbands are in Iraq. This is what I wrote to one soldier's wife.)

Dear Karen,
I have a great life. I have a wife I adore, a son who is a lazy teenager but I adore him, too. We live in a house with two dogs and four cats. We live in peace. We can worship as we please. We can say what we want. We can walk the streets in safety. We can vote. We can work wherever we want and buy whatever we want. When we sleep, we sleep in peace. When we wake up, it is to the sounds of birds.

All of this, every bit of it, is thanks to your husband, his brave fellow soldiers, and to the wives who keep the home fires burning while the soldiers are away protecting my family and 140 million other families. They protect Republicans and Democrats, Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists. They protect white, black, yellow, brown and everyone in between. They protect gays and straights, rich and poor.

And none of it could happen without the Army wives, Marine wives, Navy wives, Air Force wives -- or husbands -- who go to sleep tired and lonely, wake up tired and lonely, and go through the day with a smile on their faces. They feed the kids, put up with the teenagers' surliness, the bills that never stop piling up, the desperate hours when the plumbing breaks and there is no husband to fix it, and the even more desperate hours after the kids have gone to bed, the dishes have been done, the bills have been paid, and the wives realize that they will be sleeping alone -- again, for the 300th night in a row.

The wives keep up the fight even when they have to move every couple of years, even when their checks are late, even when they have to make a whole new set of friends every time they move.

And they keep up the fight to keep the family whole even when they feel a lump of dread every time they turn on the news, every time they switch on the computer, every time the phone rings and every time -- worst of all -- the doorbell rings. Every one of those events -- which might mean a baseball score or a weather forecast or a FedEx man to me and my wife -- might mean the news that the man they love, the man they have married for better or worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, is now parted from them forever.

These women will never be on the cover of People. They will never be on the tabloid shows on TV about movie stars. But they are the power and the strength that keep America going. Without them, we are nothing at all. With them, we can do everything.

They are the glue that holds the nation together, stronger than politicians, stronger than talking heads, stronger than al Qaeda.

They deserve all the honor and love a nation can give. They have my prayers, and my wife's, every morning and every night.

Love, and I do mean Love, Ben.

(Mr. Stein, a television personality and writer, is co-author with Phil DeMuth of "Can America Survive," forthcoming from Hay House.)

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB109278411720394229-IhjfINilaR3o5ypbHmHaq2Hm4,00.html

Back to School time!

This is for all of you dealing with the impending start of a new school year (my personal favorite was #24 - I know that is a favorite pastime in my family :-) :

Twenty Eight Reasons Why English Teachers Die Young.

Actual Analogies and Metaphors Found in High School Essays.

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances likeunderpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without homeopathic boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and hewasroom-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegratedbecause of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way abowling ball wouldn't.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced acrossthe grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a landmine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

26. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.

27. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

28. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

Nana's Angels

On a much happier note, these are my grandbabies, Autumn (3) and Madison (17 mo).

Nana's have to show off, right? This is my blog - and this is the high tech way of cornering people and pressing wallet pictures into their face... LOL!!!

Gotta go, Miss Madison has emptied her baby wipes out of the box (those are worth gold in Iraq girl!) and is now empting my box of office supplies. Duty calls!

Blessings ~

Nana's Angels 

These news articles made me think of you, Brien

Brien is my youngest son, and he's getting settled into his new dorm room at Eastern IL University tonight. Well, I saw these articles on Dave Barry's blog, and they made me think of my darling son - off to study his fool head off (or else! :-)

This might have been a better choice for a school, dear...-

http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/display.var.729291.index.students_given_beer_money.html

And this serves as a object reminder to ALWAYS take a good sniff of the stuff in your glass before you chug...

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_930167.html?menu=news.quirkies.strangecrime

Best of luck this school year, Brien! I know you'll get Dean's List again!

Blessings -

Celtic Selky, herself! 

Birth Announcement!

I have a new baby blog! Hell, I've spent so much time reading others - it was high time that I got my own. I figure this is a good way for me to let others know what is going on in my life, and what my thoughts are on things I find important. If any one is interested. If not, oh well.

I probably will be writing about aromatherapy, some on astrology, and post links to things I find interesting.

Hope reading this will be educational and perhaps even entertaining!

Blessings!