Blue & warm day tomorrow at Aptos beach? www.freedomOK.net/wordpress

Memorial Day weather?
Memorial Day weather?

Blue day tomorrow, Memorial Day at Aptos beach? Hope so. Nice day for a backyard barbacue? Hope so. Remember what Memorial Day is all about.

Remember to keep faith with those who died in Flanders Field, World War I.

“In Flanders field, the poppies blow…

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies blow
In Flanders Field.

A lot of young people have died to keep America safe and the world safe from terrorists. How best to keep faith with them?

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Aptos psychologist: In memory of those who died to keep our country safe…”In Flanders fieds the poppies blow..Between the crosses, row on row… www.freedomOK.net/wordpress

In Flanders field poppies blow
In Flanders field poppies blow
The Memorial Day Poppy

“In Flanders Field the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders Field.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies blow
In Flanders Field.

John McCrae, 1915.

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Aptos psychologist: visualize your best possible self, help others and practise gratitude can increase your happiness? YES! go www.freedomOK.net/word press

Happiness Enhancing Activities With Evidence They Work
PsyBlog by Jeremy Dean www.spring.org.uk

“The ‘How to Be Happy’ article has become a staple of newspapers, magazines, books and, increasingly, of websites. We should ‘accept reality’, or ‘take a break’, or ‘be honest with ourselves’, or ‘surround ourselves with happy people’.

“These things are unlikely to do us any harm but that doesn’t stop them reading like a list of platitudes – the kind that people are always doling out but never follow themselves.

“We can all create our own lists of happiness enhancing activities and argue endlessly about which is better and for whom. While that’s fun for a bit, I always want to ask: which activities have evidence to back up their claims for increasing happiness?

“Psychologists have only started investigating this question relatively recently, so there’s not a very long list and it is obviously far from exhaustive, but at least there’s some research to back them up. The activities psychologists have investigated are gratitude, helping others, and firstly, visualising your best possible self.

1. Visualising your best possible self
Visualising your best possible self may sound like an exercise in fantasy but, crucially, it does have to be realistic. Carrying out this exercise typically involves imagining your life in the future, but a future where everything that could go well, has gone well. You have reached those realistic goals that you have set for yourself.

Then, to help cement your visualisation, you commit your best possible self to paper. This exercise helps draw on the proven benefits of expressive writing.

The effectiveness of this activity was tested in a study by King (2001). Students were asked to write about their best possible future selves for 20 minutes over 4 consecutive days. This group was compared with one writing on a neutral topic, one writing about traumatic life events and another writing about both traumatic events and their best possible future selves.

The results showed that those who had only written about their best possible selves showed greater improvements in subjective well-being compared to all the other groups. The benefits of the exercise could even be measured fully five months later.

Since the results were so encouraging after only a four-day exercise, two other studies have investigated longer periods. Sheldon and Lyubomirsky (2006) and Dickerhoof et al. (2007) carried out studies over 4 and 8 weeks respectively. Both of these backed up the previous findings.

It’s not hard to speculate on why this exercise might be effective, it probably helps to:

Create a sense of efficacy, meaning and purpose.
Foster optimism.
Set written goals and plan means of achieving them.

2. Helping others
Even if you haven’t come across the ‘best possible selves’ exercise, you’ll almost certainly have heard the idea that helping others is beneficial to the self. Helping out at a soup kitchen, volunteering on a helpline, visiting shut-ins – all are certainly virtuous activities. But isn’t helping others for no tangible personal benefit too much like self-sacrifice?

Actually, the research suggests there’s a very good selfish reason to help others – it really does seem to make us happier. In one study students were asked to perform five acts of kindness each week for six weeks (Lyubomirsky, Sheldon & Schkade, 2005). These were things like writing a thank-you note, giving blood or helping a friend with their work. Students were told either to perform one act each day or all five acts on one day.

Both experimental groups showed a better outcome than the control group whose well-being declined over the six-week period (perhaps exams were looming!). Those who performed their acts of kindness each day showed a small increase in well-being.

But the highest well-being was seen in those students who carried out all their acts of kindness on one single day on each of the six weeks of the study. Their well-being increased by an impressive 40%.

Lyubomirsky, Sheldon and Schkade (2005) suggest the reason for the difference is that a single act of kindness each day doesn’t make an appreciable difference to the everyday routine, especially as these were only small acts.

3.Practicing gratitude
I’ve already covered the third activity that has shown promise in increasing happiness: practicing gratitude. A study conducted by Emmons and McCullough (2003) found that sitting down weekly to write about five things we are grateful for increased happiness levels by 25%. If you’re short of ways of practicing gratefulness, this list of ways to be grateful culled from Dr Emmons’ book will be useful.

You might also be interested in my review of Dr Robert Emmons’ book ‘thanks!’ which details his experiments and expands on practicing gratitude.

Reasons to be cheerful
I’m sure these are only a tiny subset of the ways we can increase our happiness. At the moment, though, these are some of the ones that have the research to back them up.

In many ways these findings are encouraging. None of these activities involves spending vast amounts of money (or any money really!), none take up that much time and they are all within almost everyone’s reach.

The real challenge they present is in making changes to our daily routines, our standard ways of thinking and behaving. Compared to what we often perceive as a long and winding road to happiness, this trip looks like a doddle, if only we’d open our eyes and look.

» Discover more articles in this series on the new science of happiness.

» Read more evidence on the power of gratitude.

References

Dickerhoof, R., Lyubomirsky, S., & Sheldon, K. M. (2007). How and why do intentional activities work to boost well-being?: An experimental longitudinal investigation of regularly practicing optimism and gratitude. Manuscript under review.

Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377-389

King, L. A. (2001). The health benefits of writing about life goals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 798-807

Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K. M., & Schkade, D. (2005). Pursuing happiness: The architecture of sustainable change. Review of General Psychology, 9(2), 111-131.

Sheldon, K. M., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2006). How to increase and sustain positive emotion: The effects of expressing gratitude and visualizing best possible selves. Journal of Positive Psychology, 1, 73-82.

Tkach, C. (2005). Unlocking the treasury of human kindness: Enduring improvements in mood, happiness, and self-evaluations. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Riverside.

Psy Blog by Jeremy Dean

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Aptos psychologist: On Mother’s Day & Step-Mother’s Day: Who is “family”?

There are numerous mother-in-law jokes and step-mother jokes. Remember the wicked step-mother in Hansel and Gretel?

I over-heard recently: At a family re-union the step daughter (who has two children) said to her step mother over lunch hearing that a half-brother and wife were soon to have a child: “Oh, now you can finally be a grandmother!”

That comment, certainly insensitive, probably sums up how the step-daughter views her step-mother. Dad is Dad and she comes to see her father. She brings him a card for his birthday. But she does not view her step-mother as a grandmother figure for her children. Overtures, conversation, gifts and contact may occur. But the step-daughter only thinks of her biological mother as the one and only grandmother.

And why those feelings? I know the family fairly well. What the step-mother says is that many, many years ago stories were taught to that step-daughter Not true stories. Just stories. And those stories get passed on through the generaltions. Through stories passed down from biological mother to daughter those children are taught who is kin and who is not.

Maybe that’s something that Christian churches and other faiths can offer people: a way to see “family” much more broadly. Family is more than blood ties.

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Aptos: Aptos dad creates site to remember young daughter and raise money for rare cancer

Father designs Internet game in memory of daughter
By John Sammon
Posted: 04/26/2009

APTOS — Dave Wardle, in struggling to come to grips with the loss of a beloved daughter to a rare cancer-like disease, thought he could best serve her memory by designing a free online computer game that would spread awareness of hystocytosis and raise money to fight it.

“Sofia passed away six months ago,” Wardle said. “This is a rare disease, with 1,500 cases a year reported in the U.S. It’s like cancer, and it’s a blood-born illness produced in the bone marrow.”

“Wardle, 39, a computer programmer originally from England, moved to Aptos after meeting his wife Rebecca in 1992.

Doctors first diagnosed Sofia’s illness as leukemia. It would later appear to be in remission, but instead develop into histiocytosis.

“It started on the skin,” Wardle recalled. “Sofia developed these huge lesions, and they were very painful. She had them on her feet and couldn’t walk around.”

“Up until then, she had been a normal first-grader, a loving child who embraced life, a big sister and friend to her classmates at Rio del Mar Elementary School. A curly-headed child, she played the usual games, dress-up, stickers, music and dancing. She could hip-hop dance, too.

“But that ideal world shattered. “Just before Christmas of 2003, Sofia developed a fever, and her stomach was distended and firm to the touch,” Wardle said. “We took her to the doctor and were immediately sent to Dominican Hospital for blood tests. That was the beginning of our ordeal.”
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“Only 2 years old, she was one of the youngest patients at the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto. She would be ill for five years.

“The disease progressed slowly, and during the treatments there seemed to be successes. “It was a rollercoaster for us,” Wardle said. “At one point in 2008, the skin symptoms were getting better, or they seemed to be. But the disease was attacking other parts of her body.”

“The parents had insurance. However, the medical bills ran into the thousands of dollars as the child had to undergo an agonizing round of treatments, including chemotherapy and radiation. Though the pain at times was enough for her to cry out, her father said she bore it with courage and determination. She wanted to get dressed up for school, and go back and be with her classmates. Toward the end of her life, she was planning to become a singer, and had an iPod filled with her favorites: Hannah Montana, Hilary Duff and music from the theatre production, High School Musical.

“It’s amazing how much courage she had, and with good humor,” Wardle said of his daughter. “She taught us the meaning of bravery.”

Sofia was 7 at the time of her death. Her parents have a son Quinn, 5.

Wardle said the loss of his daughter was a blow that had him searching for a way to not only remember her, but to do something to try to find a cure for the disease so future children would not have to experience it. “I had to take an extended sabbatical from work,” he said.

Wardle called being Sofia’s father both a blessing and a tragedy, a struggle full of love and heartache. But, he noted, his daughter will always be an inspiration for him.

He created a Web site in Sofia’s memory called “Sofia Maze.”

An interactive challenge,
the game involves helping Sofia navigate a multi-stage picture maze, from her home in Aptos, to the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. The game combines beautiful images, with jokes, visual humor and whimsical distractions.

“Low-tech gaming can be just as compelling as the latest offering from Sony or Nintendo,” Wardle said.

The game created by Sofia and her dad went live Friday. The site will promote sponsorships and raise funding through donations to fight histiocytosis, the money going to the Histiocytosis Association of America and Jacob’s Heart Children’s Cancer Support Services.

People wishing to donate to fight histiocytosis can call Sofia’s father at (831) 332-1021 or visit sofiamaze.com Sofia’s Maze.

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south of Aptos: a church that posts all the bibical verses that make up Nicene Creed grows rapidly

A thriving church in downtown Monterey posts all the Biblical sources for the Nicene Creed as their statement of faith.

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Monterey Church meets in a theater in downtowm Monterey. It was started about 5 years ago and is growing quickly. Per the photos posted on their web site, most church leaders look under age 35. Radical and timeless. If you go, post your thoughts.

montereychurch.netMonterey Bay Church lists all the Biblical verses that form the Nicene Creed.

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Aptos arrest at 114 Cantebury Drive, low cost housing behind St. John’s Church

img_2941Jay Bradley Holmes, of 114 Cantebury Drive, Aptos, CA was booked into Santa Cruz County jail recently. He was standing outside his house with a gun in his pocket when the police arrieved at 2:45 am. How dumb can you get? He is mad that his wife called 911. He had a stolen gun in his possession and was booked on multiple charges.

Think of the BIG stresses in life: divorce, job loss, death in the family. Husband in jail is another BIG stress. For support for that and other families in the neighborhood, just over the fence is http.//www.sjlife.orgSt. John’s church. St. John’s welcomes all persons.

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St. John’s Espiscopal church moves to Aptos

buildingahomesign
Know where the best gas station is in Aptos? Yes, it is the Unocal gas station near the entrance to Sea Cliff State Beach. They are the best gas station in Aptos because they have real mechanics that FIX cars.

Across the street from the Unocal gas station, thre used to be a large field. Low income housing built on one parcel. More low income housing comes soon. There is a sign saying that a park is coming. Dont hold your breath.

And in that field, across from the best gas station in Aptos, is where St.John’s Episcopal Church moves soon. Very soon.

Soon, St. John’s will knock on neighborhood doors. They will ask you a few questions. Such as: What do you like about the community? How can St. John’s as a church be a Good Neighbor? What hopes and dreams do you have for your community?

You can check out St. John’s web site at: http:www.sjlife.org

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The Word Shop in Aptos

The Word Shop, Aptos
The Word Shop, Aptos

Good conversation, wide variety of Christian and other kinds of books including plenty of crap books. Staffed by volunteers. Been around more than 10 years. Located in Aptos near entrance to Sea Cliff State Beach. Need a book? They will find it for you. For more information go to: http://www.companyof saints.com

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