Have you ever noticed?

Have you ever noticed that some people are happiest when they have something to be unhappy about? 

I say, let them be “happy.” 

What makes a good community?

I read this in the local paper a while back and it got me thinking, what makes a community?
---- was discharged from Royal Columbian Hospital earlier in the day and trying to make it home. He still had his hospital bracelet on. His strength ran out at this location after getting off the SkyTrain. Frail, coherent, pale and soft-spoken, he told me he had called a friend to come after he fell. We waited together and, after a short while, a young man arrived to take him home.

This is my Community. We stop and check on people when something looks amiss. We help when our neighbours reach out. Our community is full of caring people.

This community is close to the one I live in and the letter writer has I believed, an idealized view of his/her community. I like to walk, and when I walk if I see someone I say hi, just to be friendly. In my hometown when I walk and say hello or hi, 95% of the time I get a response back. I went for a walk in the community mentioned in the above letter. When I said "Hello, or Hi" I was met with suspicion, anger and fear. The response was such that I have not gone back.   The letter writer has had a different experience than I did in his/her community.

So perhaps I am being unfair for judging a community just on the friendliness of its people. What do we look all look for in a good community?

Researchers,  David McMillan and David Chavis (1986), in their analysis of previous studies about this topic, found that four factors show up as community attributes, they are:

• Membership - that feeling that we have a right to belong and feel welcome
• Influence - that sense that we have some say in the community issues that affect us and that our perspectives are appreciated and respected
• Integration and fulfillment of needs - The belief that our community has what we need to survive and be prosperous and healthy (goods, services, recreation, desirable social interaction activities etc.).
• Shared emotional connection -This is a sense of community and quality of interactions 

Another study "the Soul of the Community Project" conducted in 26 communities across the nation by the Knight Foundation and Gallup (2010) looked at those factors that facilitate "community attachment". This study found that those communities with the highest levels of community attachment also had the highest rates of growth in the local gross domestic product.

The 10 community characteristics that most influenced community attachment (in order of importance) were: social offerings, openness, aesthetics, education, and basic services,  leadership, economy, safety, social capital, and civic involvement.
So the letter writer found an attachment to his community not just based on caring but on other factors that he/she may not be aware. What do you think makes a "good community?"

Love of Books

“In each word, all words. — Yet, speaking, like writing, engages us in a separating movement, an oscillating and vacillating departure.”  Maurice Blanchot

My grandson is 8 and he is a reader. My wife believes that if a child can read, they can do, almost anything. I agree. I have always been a reader since I could remember and when I was his age, I loved books just as much as I hope he does. In the 1950s there was no World Wide Web, no Instagram, no instant communications, nor was there Facebook. We did not have a TV, so we could only learn about the world from our parents, the radio, our friends or from printed books.

We were poor by today’s standards when I was his age and buying a book was not an option, but belonging to the library was an option. So, most of what I read came from our library. Every two weeks we would go to the library and while my mom picked out her books, I would browse the shelves reading covers and opening up books to sneak a quick read of a few pages. I wanted to spend hours grazing on the feast that was there for us, but time was always too short. I would pick out about 5 or 6 books that would capture my attention for the next two weeks.

Books are special, there is something magical about a book — the texture of it in your fingers and the way it looks on the stand by your bed or snuggled in with others in the bookshelf.

During the day, after school I had chores, so the only time I could read was when I went to bed. That's when a new world would open up to me in the books I loved to read. When my mom would come in and say lights out I would read under the bedclothes with a flashlight. I was always a bit nervous that I would be caught and the book hauled away, but I never was caught. 

I read stories of exotic places and I imagined I was there.  I read about Tarzan of the Apes, Tom Sawyer, and Huckleberry Fin and found the genre of Science Fiction and Mystery which I still read today. And the more I read, the more I wanted to read.

Reading set my imagination on fire, I remember watching the story of Tom Sawyer on TV when I was about 16 and I thought, he doesn't look like the person I saw when I read the book. 

Why do we read?  We read to remember. We read to forget. We read to make ourselves and remake ourselves and save ourselves. “I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life,” Mary Oliver wrote in looking back on how books saved her. 

I read and it helped define me as I grew up; many of us read to understand who we are and why we are here. We read to become selves. The gift of reading is that books can become both the oxygen to keep you from suffocating and the very wind that sculpts the canyons of your life, turning it in this direction or that, crossing great distances and opening new territories of being, cutting through even the toughest foundation. 

Hermann Hesse wrote in his visionary 1930 meditation on “the magic of the book” and why we will always remain under its generous spell, no matter how the technologies of reading may change.

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Medical Humour

My thanks to George who sent me these, very funny, enjoy

Medical Exams

1. A man comes into the ER and yells...' My wife's   going to have her baby in the cab.' I grabbed my stuff, rushed out to the cab, lifted the lady's dress and began to take off her underwear. Suddenly I noticed that there were several cabs - - - and I was in the wrong one.

Submitted by Dr. Mark MacDonald, San Francisco

2. At the beginning of my shift, I placed a stethoscope on an elderly and slightly deaf female patient's anterior chest wall. 'Big breaths,'. . . I instructed.

'Yes, they used to be,'. . . replied the patient.

Submitted by Dr. Richard Byrnes, Seattle, WA

3. One day I had to be the bearer of bad news when I  told a wife that her husband had died of a massive myocardial infarct.

Not more than five minutes later, I heard her reporting  to the rest of the family that he had died of a 'massive internal fart.'

Submitted by Dr. Susan Steinberg

4. During a patient's two-week follow-up appointment with his cardiologist, he informed me, his doctor, that he was having trouble with one of his medications.

Which one?' I asked. 'The patch... The Nurse told   me to put on a new one every six hours and now I'm   running out of places to put it!'

I had him quickly undress and discovered what I hoped  I wouldn't see. Yes, the man had over fifty patches on his body!

Now, the instructions include removal of the old patch before applying a new one.

Submitted by Dr. Rebecca St. Clair, Norfolk, VA

5. While acquainting myself with a new elderly patient,  I asked, 'How long have you been bedridden?'

After a look of complete confusion, she answered   'Why, not for about twenty years - when my husband   was alive.'

Submitted by Dr. Steven Swanson- Corvallis, OR

6. I was performing rounds at the hospital one morning  and while checking up on a man I asked . . .' So how's  your breakfast this morning?'

It's very good except for the Kentucky Jelly. I can't seem   to get used to the taste. Bob replied.

I then asked to see the jelly and Bob produced a foil  packet labeled 'KY Jelly.'

Submitted by Dr. Leonard Kransdorf, Detroit,

7. A nurse was on duty in the Emergency Room when a  young woman with purple hair styled into a punk rocker  Mohawk, sporting a variety of tattoos, and wearing strange clothing, entered . . . It was quickly determined that the patient had acute appendicitis, so she was scheduled for  immediate surgery. When she was completely disrobed on the operating table, the staff noticed that her pubic hair had been dyed green and above it, there was a tattoo that  read . . .' Keep off the grass.'

Once the surgery was completed, the surgeon wrote a short note on the  patient's dressing, which said 'Sorry . . . had to mow the lawn.'

Submitted by RN no name,

8. As a new, young MD doing his residency in OB I was quite embarrassed when  

performing female pelvic exams.. To cover my embarrassment I had  unconsciously formed a habit of whistling softly.

The middle-aged lady upon whom I was performing this exam suddenly burst out laughing and further embarrassing me.

I looked up from my work and sheepishly said... 'I'm sorry. Was I tickling  you?'

She replied with tears running down her cheeks from laughing so hard... 'No

doctor but the song you were whistling was 'I wish I was an Oscar Meyer Wiener.'

Dr. wouldn't submit his name....

AND FINALLY!! ! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Baby's First Doctor Visit

This made me laugh out loud. I hope it will give you a smile!

 A woman and a baby were in the doctor's examining room,  waiting for the doctor to come in for the baby's first exam.

The doctor arrived, and examined the baby, checked his  weight, and being a little concerned, asked if the baby was breast-fed or bottle-fed. 'Breast-fed,' she replied..

'Well, strip down to your waist,' the doctor ordered.

She did. He pinched her nipples, pressed, kneaded, and   rubbed both breasts for a while in a very professional and  detailed examination.

Motioning to her to get dressed, the doctor said, 'No wonder this baby is

underweight. You don't have any milk.'

I know,' she said, 'I'm his Grandma,

But I'm glad I came.