Merry Christmas from Hines Terrace Herald

"The people who walked in darkness
Have seen a great light;
Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
On them has light shone.

For to us a child is born,
To us a son is given,
And the government shall be upon his shoulders,
And his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace
There will be no end... Isaiah 9: 2, 5-7a

“Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!” 

― Charles Dickens

The Birth of Jesus-Luke 2:1-21

2 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. ² (This was the first census that took place while^[a] Quirinius was governor of Syria.) ³ And everyone went to their own town to register.

⁴ So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. ⁵ He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.⁶ While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, ⁷ and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

⁸ And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. ⁹ An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰ But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. ¹¹ Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. ¹² This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

¹³ Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

¹⁴ “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
    and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

¹⁵ When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

¹⁶ So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. ¹⁷ When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, ¹⁸ and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. ¹⁹ But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰ The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

²¹ On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise the child, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he was conceived.

We hope you have a blessed Christmas,

   David, Mel, and Ford

My Favorite Christmas Carol-Come Thou Long Expected Jesus

I will not say much for the song does all the talk that's necessary for today.  It doesn't get better than this for me in the current season. Thank you, Mr. Wesley for such apropos and most excellent wording. And thank you. Mr. and Mrs. Webb for such a perfect version.  Enjoy. 

An Album Review and a Brief Ramble into My Past with Christmas Music

    It wouldn't take much asking around on your part to find out that Christmas isn't my favorite holiday. Mel calls me a Scrooge and I take that with a grain of salt and move on. She means it with all the love you can pack into a word. Many might find this strange, no, not the witty words of one Sweet Melissa, for she is a wealth of those, but this strange dislike of Christmas. And it is not completely true because there are many aspects of the Yuletide Wonder that I love. I love the eggnog. I love the overwhelming excitement that builds as each day of December ends and blends into the next moving Christmas Day ever closer. I love buying things that people love, hiding them, and watching their faces light up as they open them up. I love not being able to sleep the night before and getting up (yes, still) when it is still dark outside and wondering if Santa has come. I love Christmas Day breakfast and lunch. I love going to look at Christmas lights, both the good kind, but even better are the ridiculous displays where it looked like Ole' St. Nick stashed his favorite Holiday Hoarder. And I love the ritual of gathering all the paper, bows,  boxes, and bags and doing it ever so slowly trying to make sure no one's gift gets thrown in the fire. I love watching the flames as the colored paper causes it to flicker and turn odd colors. I love the smell of a real Christmas tree and the going to get it. I am humbled by the fact that the Maker of the Universe would send His only Son to lowly Earth knowing the ending and all for someone like me who is going to take it all for granted over and over. As you can see, I don't exactly dislike Christmas, but I guess the part I hate is when I stroll into Lowe's, Wal-Mart, Target, or Walgreens, in mid-October and I begin seeing the rise of Christmas items making their ugly presence known two and a half months early. Then Thanksgiving gets almost completely ignored as the infamous"Black Friday" sales become more and more absurd and the violence that goes with it becomes more and more unglued. And at times, I can't seem to get past the bad so that I can look at the good.

     And this is where music comes into play. I actually like Christmas carols and the traditonal favorites sung by Frank, Bing, and Dean. But then when you add to the equation that everyone and their brother, uncle, pastor, dog, llama, chipmunk, cousin, choir, Jewish singer-songwriter, Jewish saxophonist, rap artist, and rock band has their version of the same 15 songs and radio stations begin playing them twenty-four hours a day beginning on what seems like September 1st each year, it is enough to make me go crazy. So, each year, I try to distance myself from the usual and find something that is truly new or at least feels real. Sometimes, an album will give me several years of use before a new one must be found. I listened to Jars of Clay's, Drummer Boy, for about 10 years before something new came around. When I got married, Mel introduced me to an album called, Your King Has Come, but it was already six years old when I got introduced to it. And the Jars of Clay put out, Christmas Songs, in 2007 and that has had to be it for me besides a classical guitar album my older brother gave me as a cd back in '97.

      And this leads us to maybe my five-way tie for all-time favorite artist: Sufjan Stevens. I began listening to him on the back eating porch that we had lovingly dubbed "Schenectady  at Alpine Camp for Boys and things (musically) haven't been the same for me. That was also the summer I began listening to Andrew Bird and wearing Chacos, so I guess we could say 2004 was the year many things changed for me. Sufjan put out a Christmas album in 2006, Songs for Christmas, and it consisted of 42 songs that were a good mixture of traditionals and originals. And it came in a really neat box set that came with all kinds of other goodies. Needless to say, I have been listening to these songs a lot since then; after December 1st, of course!

    And now, this year, 2012, Sufjan has released another Christmas album, Silver and Gold. For the time being, I am willing to say it is even better than the first, Songs for Christmas. I say this for two reasons: 1) it contains 16 more songs 2) the song list contains many more originals and many songs that I've never heard before. The music variety is par for the course if you are used to listening to Mr. Stevens. He does not stray far from what we've come to know from him and I for one am glad of this. There are slow, soft tunes, then there are rowdy sing-alongs, and then there are the 15 minute songs that take you from slow reverence to techno chaos in the span of a quarter of an hour. Those songs are really something else. 

   However, as usual, I find it very hard to explain in words how exactly a Sufjan album sounds to me. So, I will try to explain it like this, the songs from, Silver and Gold, make me feel like I did when I was a little boy and Christmas was still something I looked forward to for so long and so hard that I would wake my tired parents at 4 AM in an effort to begin Christmas Day. Or it makes me feel like the little boy who would ride with his older brother as fast as their bikes would carry them to the end of Venetian Village with the cold wind burning their noses and lips in an effort to meet their grandparents and get to ride in the back of their truck home. It was almost as if they were bringing the whole of Christmas with them in the back of that old, muddy Ford F150. Or it makes me feel like the little boy who used to sit through the chaos of Christmas Mass waiting for the crowd to leave, so they could rush back to his grandparents house near the river, so that they could make the ritualistic trip around Roundtree Drive to look at Christmas lights so grandpa could change into the Santa suit and burst through the door and we could pretend for a brief moment that he was Santa and not a grandpa who smelled of boiled custard and scotch. These are how the songs make me feel. They dredge up the memories many Christmases past and they dangle them in front of me and I get to relive them. 

Buy the album, listen loudly, and have a Merry Christmas,

     David

This Week's Wisdom for Writing

This post has been waiting to be finished for the last two weeks. Many things have changed since then, but a few are still the same. Hope you enjoy the post. Better late than never. JDD

   The past week, this current week, and the next two weeks have been and will be full of life's many obligations and issues. The main one is that my Fall semester is coming to a screeching halt and that means final notes, Open House, the infamous "test" before the midterm, exams, grading, conferences, emails, meetings,  subject reviews, peer reviews, finalized curriculum plans, and salt-n-pepper in there a lot more grading and you will have about 1/2 of what I have been up to. Also, Fordzilla (See pic below. He looks so innocent, but know he is not!) has outsourced his sleep patterns overseas and just doesn't do much of it anymore. Which is ok for him, I guess, but it makes everything else just a tad bit harder. I did want to update my blog this week though and I really wanted to share some more of Steinbeck's, Journal of a Novel, with you. I hope you aren't getting tired of the excepts. If you are, we are almost done with them. I just feel there is so much to be gleaned from them whether you are a writer, a reader, or even just a human being living on the planet.

"The writer's of today, even I, have a tendency to celebrate the destruction of the spirit and god knows it is destroyed often enough. But the beacon thing is that sometimes it is not. And I think I can take time right now to say that. There will be great sneers from the neurosis belt of the south from the hard-boiled writers, but I believe that the great ones, Plato, Lao Tze, Buddha....,Christ, Paul, and the great Hebrew prophets are not remembered for negation or denial. Not that it is necessary to be remembered but there is one purpose in writing that I can see, beyond simply doing it interestingly. It is the duty of the writer to lift up, to extend, to encourage. If the written word has contributed anything at all to our developing species and our half developed culture, it is this: Great writing has been a staff to lean on, a mother to consult, a wisdom to pick up stumbling folly, a strength in weakness and a courage to support sick cowardice. And how any negative or despairing approach can pretend to be literature I do not know." Pg. 115-116


"And in other ways I seem to have been writing on this book all of my life. And throughout, you will find things that remind you of earlier work. That earlier work was practice for this, I am sure. And that is why I want this book to be good, because it is the first book. The rest was practice." Pg. 117


"To a certain extent I have thought about the reception of this book. And it seems to me that it might find a public ready for the open and honest. As you know the novel has been falling before the onslaught of non-fiction. That is largely because the novel has not changed for a very long time now. Sherwood Anderson made the modern novel and has not gone much beyond him. I think I am going beyond him. This may be rejected and kicked down but I do not think so. I really don't. However, this is a conjecture which will be demonstrated." Pg. 124 


"A book is as complicated as life, in some ways more complicated." Pg. 128


"I must have great violence in me because I react to violence in nature with great joy. And a good thunder roll makes me feel almost as though I could do it myself." Pg. 131

"...It is about time for something like that. and it is also time for gaiety. the death of Samuel has removed gaiety from the world. And I have to put some back in. For Eden must be everything, not only the grim and terrible because that isn't the way life is. Life is silly too sometimes and that must be in it. Everything I have seen or heard or thought must go in and I feel the necessity for release now." Pg. 131

"A book finished, published, read--is always an anticlimax to me. The joy comes in words going down and the rhythms crowding in the chest and pulsing to get out." Pg. 132

"I have been planting the book full of restlessness which precedes change. Just as history seems to ride up a series of plateaus, so does it seem to me that a man's life goes--up a little or down and then a flat place, and then another quick change and another plateau. In a book about a man, because of the restriction of space, the distance between the rises or falls is necessarily small and this must give a feeling of unreality." Pg. 134

"A cousin of mine--Pat Hamilton, son of George, grandson of Samuel and the only bearer of the name, the only one (isn't that odd)--died two days ago. He was an incurable alcoholic and died of a heart attack after a two-weeks' drunk. And there lies that family name. I have the blood and my sons but he had the name. I feel badly that he did not wear it well. He left it no pride and surely no shine. In fact he dirtied it...This is the tragedy of a name." Pg. 138

"A book, as you know, is a very delicate thing. If it is pressured , it will show that pressure." Pg. 139

"A book takes so long that people get tired of waiting. I know that. But I said at the beginning that this had to be written as though it would never get done." Pg. 139

"Today I have to do something I haven't done in this whole book. I have to eliminate some of yesterday's work and change the pace I had set for it. It has not been often. It was just wrong. But I don't mind. And surely that is a minimum." Pg. 144

"Maybe good, maybe bad. But I shall want to draw the reader into the personal so that he is reading about himself." Pg 145

"It has been good, but good things should not last too long or they cease to be good things." Pg. 145

Happy Reading,

   David 

Wednesday's Wisdom for Writing

   We skipped a week of these excerpts because we figured most would be up to their eyelids in cranberry sauce, turkey, dressing, and holiday guests and there would be little to no time for the sitting down and letting your thoughts move through your pencil onto page or for your putting of fingers to keyboard. But we do want to continue on with more words from John Steinbeck's, Journal of a Novel. I am learning more and more from these and from the ones that don't relate directly to writing, it is so interesting to sit inside the mind of someone who created so much and think for a brief moment about the thoughts they once thought. Hope you enjoy these.

"And on my way to bed I was torn out of my pattern. I never write out of hours. But I came in and wrote the dialogue of Sam'l Hamilton which is in today's work--it tore out so rapidly that the words are nearly unreadable. It is a completely passionate piece of writing." pg 100


"I have sharpened up a new 12 of pencils, fine long ones. This is a kind of indulgence. How I love a new pencil." pg. 100


"And now I have set down in my own hand the 16 verses of Cain and Abel and the story changes with flashing lights when you write it down. And I think I have a title at last, a beautiful title, EAST OF EDEN. And read the 16th verse to find it. And the Salinas Valley is surely East of Eden." pg. 104


"You can see that my handwriting is a little haywire yet. So I will have to dawdle until it settles down. Change of desk has something to do with it I guess. I have a little room to work in and it is mine exclusively and I can look at the ocean out of my window. It has a desk to work on--not a titling desk, but an ordinary one. I will soon get used to that, I think. the question is one of rhythm. After a break, it takes time to get it moving in waves again. But that is simply a matter of keeping at it." pg. 105


"One is never drained by work but only by idleness. Lack of work is the most enervating thing in the world" pg. 115.

"It is the fashion now in writing to have every man defeated. and I do not believe all men are destroyed. I can name a dozen who were not and they are the ones the world lives by. It is true of the spirit as it is of battles--the defeated are forgotten, only the winners come themselves into the race. And Samuel I am going to try to make into one of those pillars of fire by whom little and frightened men are guided through the darkness." pg. 115

Hope you enjoy,

   David

Happy Thanksgiving from Hines Terrace Herald

    We here at HTH know it has become ever so popular to hate the Thanksgiving holiday because it is in the way of the ever-increasing importance of the Christmas buying season and because it has become a little more politically incorrect with each passing year. However, it is our favorite holiday of the year and we look forward to it as soon as the last dish is put away and the last ounce of turkey is consumed by some other means besides the way it was intended to be. We also know our history from books not found on the New York Times Bestseller lists. (Oh, the joys of a primary source!) And so we would love to wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday because we love the idea of setting aside a day to be thankful for all of God's many gifts, large and so small that they are sadly forgotten and overlooked, to us. We could not exist without them. The Thanksgiving holiday would not be complete without some quotes from William Bradford about why they came to America (and no, it wasn't to build an empire, nor was it to steal and kill the Native Americans) and why they chose to set aside the day of Thanksgiving.

   Before we get to those, we'd like to share one thought that is like most things here at HTH, not original, but really got us thinking and that is: "What if you woke up tomorrow and the only things that were in your possession were the things you thanked God for today?" We know somedays, we wouldn't be waking up to much. Since we read that a couple of years ago, we have attempted to move throughout each day thanking God for each and everything thing we do and have. It has made us increasingly aware of how richly blessed we are and has humbled us on many occasions about how good God has been to us and still continues to be. And now to Mr. Bradford, the first governor of the Plymouth Colony:

On why they left England and Amsterdam:

"all great & honourable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be both enterprised and overcome with answerable courages. It was granted ye dangers were great, but not desperate; the difficulties were many, but not invincible. For though their were many of them likely, yet they were not cartaine; it might be sundrie of ye things feared might never befale; others by providente care & ye use of good means, might in a great measure be prevented; and all of them, through ye help of God, by fortitude and patience, might either be borne, or overcome. True it was, that such atempts were not to be made and undertaken without good ground & reason; not rashly or lightly as many have done for curiositie or hope of gaine, &c. But their condition was not ordinarie; their ends were good & honourable; their calling lawfull, & urgente; and therfore they might expecte ye blessing of god in their proceding. Yea, though they should loose their lives in this action, yet might they have comforte in the same, and their endeavors would be honourable. They lived hear but as men in exile, & in a poore condition; and as great miseries might possibly befale them in this place, for ye 12. years of truce [the truce between Holland and Spain] were now out, & ther was nothing but beating of drumes, and preparing for warr, the events wherof are allway uncertaine."


On the setting aside of the day of Thanksgiving:

"They begane now to gather in ye small harvest they had, and to fitte up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health & strenght, and had all things in good plenty; fFor as some were thus imployed in affairs abroad, others were excersised in fishing, aboute codd, & bass, & other fish, of which yey tooke good store, of which every family had their portion. All ye somer ther was no want.  And now begane to come in store of foule, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees).  And besids water foule, ther was great store of wild Turkies, of which they tooke many, besids venison, &c. Besids, they had about a peck a meale a weeke to a person, or now since harvest, Indean corn to yt proportion.  Which made many afterwards write so largly of their plenty hear to their freinds in England, which were not fained,  but true reports."


And a declaration of praise:

"May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: “Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and he heard their voice, and looked on their adversity, etc.” Let them therefore praise the Lord, because he is good, and his mercies endure forever. Yea, let them which have been redeemed of the Lord, show how he hath delivered them from the hand of the oppressor. When they wandered in the desert wilderness out of the way, and found no city to dwell in, both hungry, and thirsty, their soul was overwhelmed in them. Let them confess before the Lord his loving kindness, and his wonderful works before the sons of men.”

Happy Thanksgiving,

    David

Ode to the Gilded Gingkoes of Hines Terrace

Ode to the Gilded Gingkoes of Hines Terrace

Ode to the great gilded gingkoes,

I lie in wait for thy succinct reign,

To spring forth out of thy green and wooded branched hideaways,

Into the light of daytime's caressing lumniary rays, 

Out of odd-triangled veined leaflets comes,

Small lines of ancient yellowed secrets of,

Emancipated iridescence rising languidly to the textured surface,

To be revealed when the arctic winds dismount,

Having driven the heated solstice to the other side of the equator,

Falling through the airy atmosphere,

Transiently folded and kept hushed and inert,

By thy intrepid and enameled hand,

Which for a fleeting and illuminated wink,
Rises and falls upon the hallowed lines of,
The piece of Earth where I draw my meager breath.

David

Wednesday's Wisdom for Writing

   Well...today is Wednesday and it is time once again to attempt to glean wisdom and knowledge from John Steinbeck's, Journal of a Novel. I hope you are getting something from these posts or that you find them entertaining in the least or find them challenging at the most. Here are the day's excerpts:

"Now the day progresses and I haven't put down a word yet, but it is coming and I almost ready. Almost! I have the tone now" pg. 72

"And an amazing number of pretty girls are passing by my window. I like pretty girls very much but I am old enough now so that I don't have to associate with them and that's a relief" pg. 72 (Funny, right?)

" Of course--that's the way it has to go. So simple when it finally comes to you. That's the way it is. You fight a story week after week and day by day and then it arranges itself in your hands." pg. 72

"I believe too that if you can know a man's plans, you know more about him than you can in any other way. Plans are daydreaming and this is an absolute measure of a man. Thus if I dwell heavily on plans, it is because I am trying to put down the whole man. What a strange life it is. Inspecting it for the purpose of setting it down on paper only illuminates its strangeness. There are strange things in people. I guess one of the things that sets us apart from other animals is our dreams and our plans" pg. 75

"This is the kind of a day I like. I can do a few sentences, then stop and enjoy them. Most days there is something else to be done afterwards, but this is Tuesday, if I don't finish until evening, it doesn't make a bit of difference. And how nice that is." pg. 77

"You know it is about time for me to throw out a flock of pencils. They are getting short and I detest short pencils." pg. 77

"The callus on my writing finger is very sore today. I may have to sandpaper it down. It is getting too big." pg 78 (Oddly cool and weird, right?)

"I am ready and the words are beginning to well up and come crawling down my pencil and drip on the paper. And I am filled with excitement as though this were a real birth." pg. 83

"But I learned long ago that you cannot tell how it will end by how you start. I just glanced up this page for instance. Look at the writing at the top--ragged and angular with pencils breaking in every line, measured as a laboratory rat and torn with nerves and fear. And just half an hour later it as smoothed out and changed considerably for the better." pg. 85

"But I'm very glad the book is not finished--I would hate to have it done. I don't like to think of the time when it is done. That will be a bad day for me. A real bad day." pg. 88

"The book dies a real death for me when I write the last word. I have little sorrow and then go on to a new book which is alive. The line of my books on the shelf are to me like very well embalmed corpses. They are neither alive nor mine. I have no sorrow for them because I have forgotten them, forgotten in its truest sense." pg. 90

"I worked over the week end on that other story and had to throw it away again. It takes me so long in planning to do the simplest thing. I don't know what will come of that." pg. 98

Happy reading and writing,

   David

The Wonders of Apple Cider Vinegar (Except the Taste)!

    

     We here at Hines Terrace Herald know the election is over and we couldn't be happier to not have to watch or listen to another hate-filled add full of half-truths that is candidly endorsed by the candidate or listen to another acquaintance who has suddenly acquired their PhD in Political Science from Stanford with a specialization in items they've gleaned from the internet, talk radio, and NPR. We will, however, miss the funny signage from candidates with names like , "Bubba", "Bubbers", "Ron Lawless", "Skipper" and "Schmuck" that want so badly to run for office that they are willing to have their names blown up to font 3000, put on a sign, and put on every free space of ground in the county. Some of us here at HTH are saddened and overwhelmed by the results of the election, while some us are excited about the expansion of government services and products because they were titled, "handouts" and this person likes when everything is done for him and hopes that continues his whole life. And while the election is behind us now and it is time to move on and move forward, we couldn't help putting our great hulking editorial weight behind an endorsement for another glowing product: Apple Cider Vinegar. 

    I have had acid reflux or something very close to it for a very long time and have found myself in the constant cycle of taking Prilosec, carrying around Tums, and about 100 other items to calm the acid in my poor little stomach. And all of that does an ok job, but sometimes it just doesn't work. Sometimes....nothing works! And if you have acid reflux or GERD, you know the scenario. It is a constant cycle of medicine and being depressed about your body letting you down once again. So, this past year, I have been searching for something to be my cure-all. I had long grown tired of paying for all the promises of a normal digestion process and I have also been worrying about what all those items are doing to me internally. I have read and heard that Prilosec dissolves the lining of your stomach. Is that what we really want? I know I don't. And so I began my little quest to find something that was effective and yet affordable. I had tried eating differently, but there were days that a glass of water gave me heartburn. I tried eating at different times. I canceled items from my diet. I took digestive supplements. I went gluten-free for 6 weeks and I lost 8 pounds and had more energy, but still had heartburn. I sucked on lemons. I staggered taking the medicine (Prilosec) and the vitamins. Nothing seemed to work till I walked into a local health food store one day and told them of my quandary. They showed me two items. I bought one. The wrong one. It was for calming the acid in my body. It was expensive and tasted terrible. It had a whole side full of promises. The product should run for office because it broke them all. And then I gave up. I went back on Prilosec, carried my Tums, and the other 1000 other products. It was just my burden to bare. Some people are fighting terrible things like Dementia or Cancer. All I've got is some hellacious heartburn that keeps me up about 2-3 nights a week. What did I have to gripe about. Then...

   Then I remembered through some sort of sleep-deprived fog that there had been a second product sitting in the "digestion aid" section of the health food store. I had foolishly said no. And that product was apple cider vinegar. I went downstairs, rummaged through the pantry, found the apple cider vinegar, poured a little in a cup, mixed it with some cold water, drank it down, and shivered like I'd seen a ghost, and tried not to throw up. And then something almost miraculous happened. My throat opened up and then I suddenly didn't have any heartburn or acid racing up my throat. It was wonderful. I would have shouted with full-throated glee if it hadn't been 3:30 in the morning and my son had just fallen back to sleep. The next day, I looked up apple cider vinegar to see if it was okay to consume it and discovered that some people drink it three times a day and consider it to be a necessary part of life. I figured they were just trying to sell a product and then the night came again and brought with it heartburn and I once again drank the cup of apple cider vinegar and sat back in full astonishment. The stuff really worked. It was nasty. It was terrible, but for 10 seconds of taste discomfort, I could sleep ALL night! I was hooked. The next day I went to the health food store and purchased a 32 oz. bottle of Bragg's Organic Apple Cider Vinegar. It was a wise and good investment. 

    Since I purchased the bottle of Apple Cider Vinegar, I have been amazed at all the aliments that it is supposed to help with. There are places and sources that claim it will help you with everything from diabetes to obesity. Some sources, like the "ever-truthful" WebMD makes note that many of the claims made about the wonders of apple cider vinegar have not been studied with evidence to prove if they are indeed truthful or just claims. All I really know or care about for the moment is that it has really helped with my heartburn. I am not completely cured in anyway, but since I have purchased my bottle of vinegar (for $6) I have only taken 4 Prilosec tablets which cost about a $1 a piece. In a monetary sense, I have saved myself around $32 dollars, or if you want to be nit-picky about things, I guess I have actually only saved $26. I will add that I have now begun to sleep well on many nights because I will muscle down my little, terrible concoction of apple cider vinegar and cold water and then I won't have to worry about being woken up by acid racing up the back of my throat. (I know WTMI!). I will also say that it has been around a full month and I have not gone through my first bottle. And apple cider vinegar is from apples. I know where they grow them and that an apple is supposed to go into my body and my body knows what to do with it. I am not fully sure what some of the ingredients that are in Prilosec actually are or how they make berry-flavored Tums without actually using berry juice and I feel pretty good about saying that those items were never meant to enter my body and my body can deal with them, but doesn't want to have to. It's like the over-talked about idea of a zombie apocalypse,  we don't want to live through that, but are pretty sure we would know what to do. 

    I plan on continuing my apple cider vinegar regiment. I hate the taste, but I hate heartburn or GERD so much worse. If you have heartburn or GERD, I would give it a try. I would suggest buying an organic and unfiltered vinegar, so you can get the full affects. And if you do try it, I hope it gives you some comfort when you, like me, are standing in your kitchen over the sink at 4 am with hellacious heartburn and all you really want to do is be able to climb back into bed so you won't be miserable at work or treat your family members poorly because you have acid racing up the back of your throat and they don't know or really understand. 

David

   

How to Get Ready to Run 3.1 Miles in Just 30 Days

   We, the good ole' folks at Hines Terrace Herald, are going into unknown territory and hoping for the best.  No, we aren't going to give you a good quality blog post for a change for those whose minds instantly went there, but rather we are hosting our very own 5k race. And we are chartering new ground here because we aren't charging a cent for it! If you want to think of us as going rogue or being the"Jack Bauer's" of the racing community, we'd like that very much. Our little race is named the First Annual Hot Cocoa Invitational 5k and if you click on the link, you can find all the info. about it, sitting right there at the end of your fingertips. Now, please don't confuse us with the very large racing series that is the, Hot Chocolate 15k/5k: America's Sweetest Race, that is hitting the country in 7 large cities and charging a cool $45 to run 3 miles or $65 to run 9.3 miles. We ARE NOT them and they ARE NOT us! If you think we are the same, you will be greatly disappointed. There are some similarities and there are some very large differences. We both will have a race. We will both have hot cocoa waiting at the end. We both may have an official timing apparatus. We will have a bonfire. They won't. They will have a chocolate fountain. We won't. We will both have water and Gatorade to drink. We will be showing a Christmas movie. They won't. They will have bands. We may be blaring Christmas music from our TV courtesy of Mel's Pandora station. They will probably have several live bands. We will offer one bathroom. They will probably have 100 porta-johns. Their race will cost you a lot of money. Our race is free (I think, but we'd all better check the fine print). If you get hurt at that race, you could probably sue them and not have to work for as long as Guiding Light was on tv. If you get hurt at our race, it wouldn't do to sue us because you currently have more money on the floor of your car than we have stashed away. And lastly, we'll have this guy. And they won't!

   So...now you have a race to get ready for. The next step is now you need to train. And finding the right type of plan is key. If you are a beginner, the plan I will highlight is perfect for you. If you get paid to run and you walk around and are known as an" elite runner" or a "professional runner" or one of the constant contributors to the forums at letsrun.com, then the plan I am highlighting will either insult you or cause you to fly into great rage at how running has been turned over to ever disgusting "hobby jogger" who has the audacity to run for fun! Gasp! How dare they! I believe there are two important keys to training and the first is a good set of shoes and the second is to never try to make your body do too much too soon. It will rebel and it will not be nice or merciful. It is also important to follow the plan so that you look like this on race day

and not like this

And we here at HTH want your training to look like this

and not like this

  So...let's get to the plan and away from the silly pics, right? Well, here it is. This training schedule is a run/walk to continuous running program. Each week, you'll  increase your running distance and the time you spend running. After thirty days of consistent training, you should be able to run the whole 3.1 mile distance without taking a walking break. However, if you do have to take a walking break during your race that is more than fine and Olympian Jeff Galloway would encourage it. He does. Here is the plan we here at HTH are getting behind:

Week 1:

Day 1: Run 10 minutes, walk 1 min – repeat 2 times 

Day 2: Rest or cross-train 

Day 3: Run 12 minutes, walk 1 min – repeat 2 times 

Day 4: Rest 

Day 5: Run 13 minutes, walk 1 min – repeat 2 times 

Day 6: Rest or cross-train 

Day 7: Rest 

Week 2:

Day 1: Run 15 minutes, walk 1 min - repeat 2 times 

Day 2: Rest or cross-train 

Day 3: Run 17 minutes, walk 1 min, run 7 min 

Day 4: Rest 

Day 5: Run 19 minutes, walk 1 min, run 7 min 

Day 6: Rest or cross-train

Day 7: Rest 

Week 3: 

Day 1: Run 20 minutes, walk 1 min, run 6 min 

Day 2: Rest or cross-train 

Day 3: Run 24 minutes 

Day 4: Rest 

Day 5: Run 26 minutes 

Day 6: Rest or cross-train 

Day 7: Rest 

Week 4:

Day 1: Run 28 minutes 

Day 2: Rest or cross-train 

Day 3: Run 30 minutes 

Day 4: Rest 

Day 5: Run 20 minutes 

Day 6: Rest 

Day 7: Race! Run 3.1 miles 

   We don't promise a World Record out of this training schedule, but we do promise that if you follow it, it will get you across the finish line like Billy Mills

and into the arms of a nice piping hot cup of homemade hot cocoa and maybe even a napkin full of sweet treats. And that is what our race is really going to be about or at least that's what we're hoping.

Happy reading, training, running, and hopefully in 30 days, racing,

David

Thursday's Wisdom for Writing

    I moved my Wednesday post to Thursday for this week due to the election. I wanted the results (of which I don't know at this time) to be able to sink in without much or any comments coming from us at HTH. I will say that today's excerpts from Steinbeck's, Journal of a Novel, seem very applicable to our current state of affairs.This shouldn't surprise me, but it always seems to. Truth when spoken clearly is timeless. Or better put by our favorite Miss O'Connor,  “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” I hope that you, the loyal reader, are enjoying these excerpts and that they are helping you in either your writing life or in your thoughts. I know I am still gleaning so much from them. Well, without further adieu , let us delve back into Mr. Steinbeck.

"Reflection is no bad thing although I must say in this time it is not a popular pastime." pg. 60

"If a man has too pat a style, his reader can after a little time keep ahead of him. I mean the reader will know what is coming by how it is done." pg. 62

"I did not get far from the book. I have thought of little else. It's strange how one can become so obsessed that there is always the double thing--the book and whatever else is going on and both running parallel. I guess it has to be that way." pg. 64-65

"Since you told me what the girl said about wanting to get on with the story and not stop for comment, I have thought a good deal about that. It is going to be one of the most constant criticisms of this book. People are insistent to get on with their lives too and not to think about them." pg. 65

(This next one is long. Take the time to read it. Maybe even read it twice.)

"You have said and Harold has often said that a big book is more important and has more authority than a short book. There are exceptions of course but it is very nearly always true. I have tried to find a reasonable explanation for this and at last have come up with my theory, to wit: The human mind, particularly in the present, is troubled and fogged and bee-stung with a thousand little details from taxes to war worry to the price of meat. All these usually get together and result in a man's fighting with his wife because  that is the easiest channel of relief from inner unrest. Now--we must think of a book as a wedge driven into a man's personal life. A short book would be in and out quickly. And it is possible for such a wedge to open the mind and do its work before it is withdrawn leaving quivering nerves and cut tissue. A long book, on the other hand, drives in very slowly and if only in point of time remains for a while. Instead of cutting and leaving, it allows the mind to rearrange itself to fit around the wedge. Let's carry this analogy a little farther. When the quick wedge is withdrawn, the tendency of the mind is quickly to heal itself exactly as it was before the attack. With the long book perhaps the healing has been warped around the shape of wedge so that when the wedge is finally withdrawn and the book set down, the mind cannot be quite what is was before." pg. 66-67

"I am learning how specialized I am and also that the degree of specialization is also the degree of limitations. Let me give you an example of what I mean. Let me give you an example of what I mean. When I work on a book to this extent and with this concentration, it means that I am living another life." pg. 67

"It has been a good day of work with no harm in it. I have sat long over the desk and the pencil felt good in my hand" pg. 68

"Then I forced the work and it was as false and labored and foolish as anything I have ever seen. I tried to kid myself that it only seemed bad, but it really was bad. So out it goes. and what do you suppose could have caused it? I just don't know." pg. 71

Happy reading and writing,

  David