Music and Transplants

If you've read Dan's Cancer Weblog you know that author is in preparing for a BMT - bone marrow transplant. Since Dan's my long-time friend and brother-in-law I find myself seeking information that may be useful to him. Here's something I stumbled across while looking for something else on the Pioneer Library's EBSCO service:

"It may be difficult, but in troubled times, researchers say, people need to take comfort from life's simplest pleasures. In a small study at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, Dr. O. J. Sahler found that bone-marrow transplant patients who listened to music reported less pain and nausea, and their transplants took less time to become functional." -- Newsweek; 2/24/2003, Vol. 141 Issue 8, p50, 2p, 1c

Writing and Healing

I'm continuing to browse through Chia Martin's Writing Your Way Through Cancer. She lists these advantages of writing -- advantages, it seems to me, that appy to almost everyone and may accrue from writing as well as other forms of self expression including drawing, painting, photography, exercise, biking, swimming, fishing, walking, conversation.

Martin says writing:
-strengthens the immune system
-encourages uninhibited expression
-objectifies experience ("...coaxes monsters out of our mind and into the light of reality allow us to see their true nature.")
-generates personal power
-stimulates a mood of healing
-enables de-stressing
-opens a doorway into insight and personal introspection
-clears the mind
-costs nothing, is portable, and available to almost everyone

"You have something to say. It is unique, authentic, soley yours."
--Chia Martin

Regrets, I've had a few, but then again too few to mention...

"Web logs provide an important and valuable means of exchanging ideas. Certainly there are blogs I wish I'd never written. (Or at least not published.) But blogging has given me a greater set of friends, a broader set of ideas and a way to organize and express my thoughts. I recommend the process with all of its good and bad aspects." --Jim Stewart (author of Jim's Pond)

Amen, Jim.

Bush Picks Utah Governor Leavitt to Head EPA

Looks like there will be a change in the lineup for The Governor's Monthly News Conference -- and a whole lot of other things.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0811BushEPA11-ON.html
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20030811_1139.html
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=3258450

Leavitt has championed several distance learning initiatives including Western Governors University, The Utah Electronic College, and the Utah Education Network.

EPA job is 'no win situation'
Phil Windley's take on this: "Leavitt to Head EPA"

B-blogs, a tool for business

"Unlike corporate websites, b-blogs are cheap to launch and easy to maintain, thanks to powerful, easy-to-use tools. Unlike spam, or junk e-mail, b-blogs aren't intrusive; users must click to them. Done well, b-blogs provide a fast, informal way to share information -- project updates, research or test results, product-release news, industry headlines -- inside and outside your company."
--Inc.com | Technofile: Blogging for Business

Tanner Park Aquaduct

Shots from Friday night, posted Sunday afternoon.

From under Sandstone Wall and Aquaduct in Tanner Park, Friday, August 8, 2003. About 8:00 p.m.

Sandstone Wall and Aquaduct with historic marker placed in 1996 by Sons of Utah Pioneers.

Closeup of the marker.

"Absences and omissions are the places where a journal's most powerful stories reside."
--Alexandra Johnson, Leaving a Trace