Day 4 - HEART ATTACK SEASON

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Day 4 of The Advent Series is here:

http://maninthemaze.blogspot.com/2011/12/heart-attack-season.html

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HEART ATTACK SEASON

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From The Associated Press

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'Tis the season for heart attacks

Rich meals, stress may be culprits

By Lauran Neergaard

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Washington - Those lords-a-leaping and

ladies dancing may want to consider the downside

of the holidays: Heart attack season has arrived.

December and January are the deadliest months

for heart disease, and many of the things that

make the season merry are culprits:

Rich meals, more alcohol - and all

that extra stress.

But what may make the Christmas coronary

more deadly than the same-size heart attack in,

say, August, is a double dose of denial.

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It's not uncommon for people to initially shrug off

chest pains as indigestion. Research suggests

they're even more reluctant for a run

to the emergency room when it means

disrupting a holiday gathering, or

if they've traveled to a strange city -

meaning they arrive sicker.

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Minutes matter.

"You have one a short window of opportunity

to save heart muscle," warns Dr. William Suddath

of Washington Hospital Center in the nation's capital -

where a cardiac team on duty 24 hours a day

aims to start clearing victims' clogged arteries

within 15 minutes of their arrival

in the emergency room.

How bad each year is varies widely,

but some hospitals say they saw an upswing

in heart attacks start on Thanksgiving weekend.

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At Suddath's hospital, it started with

a surprise spike the weekend before Thanksgiving -

with so many critically ill patients that

doctors ran out of a key heart-pumping machine

and had to rent two extras.

Doctors have long braced for the seasonal upswing.

A 2004 study confirmed it was a nationwide phenomenon,

with peaks in death coinciding around

the Christmas and New Year's holidays.
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Here's some comic relief from Rail Europe -
click your back button to return here:

http://downloads.raileurope.com/holidayCard/06_christmas_card.html

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and below, more humor from National Lampoon!

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What Beast Is This ?

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The Trouble With Christmas Dinner

by Liesl Schillinger

SLATE Magazine
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Six years ago,

when my brother Justin brought his fiancee, Victoria,

to Virginia for her first Christmas chez Schillinger,

my mother marked the occasion by making a roast suckling pig.

(Never mind that the entire family had gathered round

 the VCR the night before to watch Babe,

 the tear-jerking family drama about

an adorable piglet who evades the knife.)

On the morning of the feast,

my mother made mince pies while my father drove to

the country butcher to fetch the swine. When he arrived home

with the beast, there was a panic. It being December,

the suckling pig had matured into a suckling hog—

as big as a golden retriever—with curving sharp teeth and

 holes where its eyes had been. It looked like the victim

 in a porcine snuff film.

As my mother despaired,

my father had the presence of mind to grab a handsaw

and divide the monster into two halves,

each of which just squeaked into an oven.

After it was roasted, which shrank it some, Mama laid it out

on an enormous platter, covered its severed waist
 with a cummerbund of holly bunches, stuffed
 each hollow eye socket with a grape

(she put White-out irises on them,

 studded with cloves for pupils),

and pried its baked, fanged jaws wide enough apart

to pop in a Clementine orange.

When she appeared with the beast in the dining room,

we all screamed. Luckily, Victoria had brought a ham—

a gift from her mother, whose Southern dictum is,

"Never go anywhere without a ham."

In the wake of the suckling hog debacle,

my mother introduced ducks for Christmas.

An entire flock of waterfowl (six) were sacrificed to feed 12

celebrating mouths. Thirteen, actually; one of the bassets,

 Ruby, dug the carcasses out of the trash,

 out in the snow by the carport,

and gulped down so much duck fat that her liver shut down.

She had to be rushed to the vet, where the doctors

 said her blood was like a duck-grease milkshake.

After $3,000 of emergency medical treatment

(including a canine blood transfusion),

duck has fluttered off the menu, never to return.

This Christmas Eve, Mama is making chicken Kiev,

stuffed with apricots. We're not Russian, so this

 may not sound all that traditional,

 but it will be our tradition—at least this year.

With any luck, nobody will scream at the unveiling,

and no dog will end up in intensive care.

(This is an edited version of a longer piece that goes into

historical tidbits about what meats (beasts) have graced Xmas

dinner tables here and in England over the years.)

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HAVE A HEART!

I would rather have eyes that cannot see;

ears that cannot hear; lips that cannot speak,

than a heart that cannot love.

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Robert Tizon

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The greatest treasures are those invisible

to the eye, but found by the heart.

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Author Unknown

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One of the hardest things in life is having

words in your heart that you can't utter.

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James Earl Jones

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The heart has reasons that reason

does not understand.

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Jacques Benigne Bossuel

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There are many things in life that will

catch your eye, but only a few will catch

your heart....pursue those.

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Michael Nolan

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What is uttered from the heart alone,

Will win the hearts of others to your own.

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Wherever you go, go with all your heart.

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Confucius

A GIFT FROM THE INDIANS

This is a passage from The Soul of an Indian,

published in 1911. It was written by Ohiyesa,

a Santee Sioux Indian from Minnesota, who took on

the white man's name Charles Alexander Eastman.

He knew traditional ways and believed in the workings

of the Great Mystery, yet also believed in Christ,

went to Dartmouth, and received a M.D. from

Boston Univ. He became an adviser to presidents,

and spent much of his life building bridges

between the two cultures.

Amazon lists a number of sellers who have his

writings in stock - all have been republished

in recent years.

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I am an Indian;

and while I have learned much from

civilization, I have never lost my Indian sense

of right and justice.

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When I reduce civilization to its most basic terms,

it becomes a symbol of life based on trade.

Each man stakes his powers, the product of his

labor, his social, political, and religious standing

against his neighbor. To gain what?

To gain control over his fellow workers,

and the results of their labor.

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Is there not something worthy of perpetuation

in our Indian spirit of democracy, where Earth,

our mother, was free to all, and no one sought to

impoverish or enslave his neighbor?

Where the good things of Earth were not ours to

hold against our brothers and sisters, but were ours

to use and enjoy together with them, and with whom

it was our privilege to share?

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Indeed, our contribution to our nation and

the world is not to be measured in the material realm.

Our greatest contribution has been spiritual and

philosophical. Silently, by example only, in

wordless patience, we have held stoutly to our

native vision of personal faithfulness to duty and

devotion to a trust. We have not advertised our

faithfulness nor made capital of our honor.

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But again and again we have proved our worth

as citizens of this country by our constancy in the

face of hardship and death. Prejudice and racial

injustice have been no excuse for our breaking

our word. The simplicity and fairness has cost us dear.

It has cost us our land and our freedom, and even the

extinction of our race as a separate and unique people.

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But, as an ideal, we live and will live, not only in

the splendor of our past, the poetry of our legends

and art, not only in the interfusion of our blood

with yours, and in our faithful adherence to

the ideals of American citizenship,

but in the living heart

of the nation.

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