Entries Tagged 'Living Fully' ↓

I’ve read a number of articles lately about the effect of well-behaved, friendly dogs on people. Our local paper had one saying Santa Fe, New Mexico is now one of the communities with a reading dog program. The dogs are specially trained to help children improve their reading and communication skills by being supportive as the children read to them.

Then the August 10, 2010 Economist had an article entitled Manager’s Best Friend. It explains that the presence of a dog can help groups at work be more cooperative and effective in solving problems.

But the article I enjoyed the most was this one by the
Best Friends Animal Society. It demonstrates that it doesn’t have to be a real dog to have a profound effect. A picture can have magical effects too. A woman with Alzheimer’s disease had been slipping away from her family until she received a card with a picture of a happy dog with a cat draped over its head:

Now, when 87-year-old Sarah Harrell looks at the card with the photo of a “happy, smiling puppy face and tiny kitten draped over its head, she becomes happy, animated, alert and close to being our old Mom again,” Judy says. “Because she so loves the photo, I have it in a frame, and she now keeps it on the table near where she spends much of her day.”

I can understand that. Seeing a dog walking with its owner downtown always lifts my spirits and warms my heart. But so does looking at our Golden Retriever calendar and seeing the pictures on the Daily Puppy. It’s not quite as good as the real thing, of course, but it’s surprising how much it helps for those of us who don’t have pets.

What about you? How do you lift your spirits and warm your heart? How do you bring out the best in yourself?

Paulbence. Creative Commons license.

Will the internet replace books? Not likely. I personally buy more books than ever now that I have access to Amazon.com.

I’ve always loved to browse in bookstores and libraries, but we live in a small town so our bookstore has a limited selection. And while our library is excellent for a town our size, it was a letdown from Cornell, which has one of the best university libraries in the country. When I was there I spent many a happy hour browsing the stacks, finding treasures I didn’t even know existed.

But I adjusted. Our library had a database called Books in Print which could be searched by topic. It didn’t give detailed descriptions of the books so I would generate a list of books on a topic and fill out requests for interlibrary loans. Weeks or months later I could look at the books, assuming one of the libraries in the system had it and was willing to lend it out. It was a tedious process, and presumably expensive for the library, but I was impressed that the libraries were willing to go to the trouble.

Then one day I asked for Books in Print and was told the library no longer subscribed to it. It was now hooked up to the internet and was using Amazon.com for information about books. That was how I discovered Amazon.

So now I spend many a happy hour browsing for books on Amazon as well as for information on the rest of the internet. If a book is expensive I sometimes still request an interlibrary loan so I can see for myself if it’s worth buying. But often I can get a new or used one for a reasonable price on Amazon and simply buy it. When I’m finished with it I give it to Friends of the Library. They sell it at their bookstore for a nominal price, which means I can share the books with other readers and also know I’m helping to give the library money for more items and services. It warms my heart to be a part of the book lovers’ community.

Ed Yourdon. Creative Commons license.

Will the new e-readers affect the sales of books? My guess is it will make them more accessible. Already some authors are publishing digitally instead of going through the discouraging business of trying to find a print publisher. In some cases the big publishing companies will buy the printing rights after the book has generated enough interest digitally. And some authors have realized that if they publish digitally they can reach more readers and make a bigger profit if they lower the selling price. That’s a new revolution that is just getting started, but it’s a healthy trend I think. Newsweek has just published an article on the subject.

What do you think? Do you think the internet will help or hurt book reading?

 
Years ago “I’ve been agin’ ‘em all” was my husband’s and my favorite joke. The world has probably deteriorated even more since then, but at the moment I’m having too good a time to worry about it. I’ve already mentioned the Kindle, that boon to sore old eyes, and this week I’m using it for more than the books I buy at Amazon.com. If I send my own PDF files to Amazon it will send them back to me in the Kindle format, including the option of having the Kindle read them to me. Talk about miracles!

 
(In the above graphic ReadIris 12 converts paper documents into text, which I can then print out as PDF files.)

So that’s how I’m amusing myself as the world goes to hell in the proverbial hand basket. What about you?

 
I do a lot of my shopping at amazon.com, so I’ve been well aware of its e-reader, the Kindle. It’s the first thing we see on its home page. I found that annoying because I assumed the main claim to fame for the Kindle was the number of books you could store on it. No thanks, I thought. I’ve had to deal with chronic eyestrain all of my life and have had to devise strategies to minimize reading printed material. The only reason I got through college was because I majored in physics, where you can get by with a little reading and a lot of thinking. I used the same strategy when reading, picking books where a little reading led to a lot of thinking and integrating the ideas into my everyday life.

When audio books and personal computers became available I was in hog heaven. The selection of audio books is far from perfect, but they certainly let me “read” a lot more books than I could before. And the internet gave me access to a lot more information. Enlarging the text and reading from a greater distance is a lot easier on my eyes. So why even think of the Kindle?

However…there were a couple of books I really wanted to read. One of them, A Primate’s Memoir by Robert Sapolsky, I was lucky enough to find in large print. That worked just find so I did research on various reading aids/magnifiers. And it turned out the Kindle was one of my best options. I can expand the print, not quite as large as large-print books but enough, and expand the margins so my eyes can see a whole line in a glance, which means I don’t have to keep moving them sideways along a line…the thing that really wipes them out. And some of the books have text-to-speech enabled, which means the Kindle will read to me. I tried that idea several times in the past, but the software wasn’t good enough to be pleasant. It’s improved a lot. The Kindle occasionally mispronounces words, but on the whole it does an amazing job. I’m now experimenting with using that feature as I read and it does make things easier. Anyway, my horizons in reading material is much broader than it has been, and I’m grateful.

What about you? Do you have any handicaps that you have to work around? What tools have you found that help?

 
What do you do when you have to wait? I use a small backpack instead of a purse and it usually contains writing material and something to read. If I know ahead of time I will experience a long wait I bring along a bottle of water to sip on.

That works for me when the problem is to avoid wasting time or getting bored. It’s a lot harder to wait when something important to me is at stake and I’ve done all I could to make it happen. When it’s out of my control, completely in the hands of other people.

Kaitlin and Torben have been going through this lately. They’re in the process of getting their house remodeled and moved into a rental house about a month ago. The tentative start date was May 4th and the project was hung up in red tape until last Saturday morning. There will no doubt be more delays before the project is finished, but at least there’s a good chance that it will finally be started. What a relief.

What about you? Is it waiting sometimes hard for you? How do you handle it?

I can’t say if anyone has ever fallen in love with one of my smiles, but I sure have done it with the smiles of other people…and of dogs. Some of my strongest memories are of friends…especially dogs at the local shelter…smiling. Often those dogs came in frightened and confused and needed tender, loving care before they could start smiling and playing again. How could I not be touched?

Has anyone else ever felt this way?

 
A lot of people write about how adults have lost the ability to play, to have fun. As I’ve said before, I’ve never grown up. This picture is a great symbol for how I spend most of my time:
 

 
Sure I had fun when I was kid, but I was often bored and didn’t have the power to do anything about it. Now I do. On the whole I’m having a lot more fun now than I did then.

What about you?

I suppose I should point out I have an unusual idea of fun. Our 2010 taxes are going to be more complicated than our 2009 ones, so I’ve been playing around with TurboTax to get a feeling for how to handle them. Then I was curious to see how the other major tax-preparation software, H & R Block, was different so I ordered it from amazon. (I waited until April 15th and bought it at two-thirds regular price.) Curiosity is a powerful motivator for me.

What can I say? Maybe one secret of having fun as an adult is to have weird tastes?

What do you think?

cheerfulmonk. Creative Commons license.

 
As I mentioned last month, my granddog Banshee passed away. I’ve been thinking of her a lot this past week because I’ve been tackling a pile of paperwork. The above picture reminds me that I don’t have to be glum about it… there’s no reason I can’t enjoy the process. Banshee’s smile is infectious and it lifts my spirits whenever I think of it.

I also think of her when I spend time learning to draw. This is a picture of my inner artist:

cheerfulmonk. Creative Commons license.

 
She reminds me not to take myself and life too seriously.
 
Torben uses the following picture as a screensaver. It’s one of his favorites:
 

 
It reminds him of how happy Banshee and Sammy were last Thanksgiving when they were running free up on our land in the mountains.

 
What about you? Do you like to work? Look at work? Enjoy not doing work? Would you like to be this carefree fellow in the hammock?
 

 
I wouldn’t. I’m more like the kid in the picture below…thoroughly involved in projects, making terrible messes, learning a lot and having a great time.
 

 
What about you?

cheeerfulmonk. Creative Commons license.

homo sapiens (Latin): knowing man or wise man

Which species do you think is the wisest? Cats or humans?