Filed under: Brave New World, Connections, Government, Health, Marketing, Politics, Predictions, Science, Society | Tags: CDC, health, jim downey, politics, predictions, salt, science
<sarcasm> Gee, I’m stunned </sarcasm>:
No Benefit Seen in Sharp Limits on Salt in Diet
In a report that undercuts years of public health warnings, a prestigious group convened by the government says there is no good reason based on health outcomes for many Americans to drive their sodium consumption down to the very low levels recommended in national dietary guidelines.
Not only did they determine that there was little benefit in pushing for such low levels of overall salt intake, there might actually be health risks associated with such low levels. From the same article:
One 2008 study the committee examined, for example, randomly assigned 232 Italian patients with aggressively treated moderate to severe congestive heart failure to consume either 2,760 or 1,840 milligrams of sodium a day, but otherwise to consume the same diet. Those consuming the lower level of sodium had more than three times the number of hospital readmissions — 30 as compared with 9 in the higher-salt group — and more than twice as many deaths — 15 as compared with 6 in the higher-salt group.
Another study, published in 2011, followed 28,800 subjects with high blood pressure ages 55 and older for 4.7 years and analyzed their sodium consumption by urinalysis. The researchers reported that the risks of heart attacks, strokes, congestive heart failure and death from heart disease increased significantly for those consuming more than 7,000 milligrams of sodium a day and for those consuming fewer than 3,000 milligrams of sodium a day.
OK, current CDC guidelines, dating back to 2005 (though based on research going back into the 1980s):
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), 2010 recommend reducing sodium intake to less than 2,300 milligrams (mg) per day. The DGA’s also recommend you should further reduce sodium to 1,500 milligrams (mg) per day if:
- You are 51 years of age or older.
- You are African American.
- You have high blood pressure.
- You have diabetes.
- You have chronic kidney disease.
The 1,500 mg recommendation applies to about half of the U.S. population overall and the majority of adults. Nearly everyone benefits from reduced sodium consumption. Eating less sodium can help prevent, or control, high blood pressure.
How does this compare to what people actually consume? Well, sodium consumption from salt around the world is about 3,400 mg per person per day. This amount is pretty consistent across cultures, and has remained pretty stable over decades. In other words, the current governmental recommendations say you should be ingesting half to two-thirds of what people have been consistently ingesting. And there have been efforts by governments to impose increasingly strict limitations on salt consumption, usually through limitations on salt use in prepared foods.
There are two problems with that: one, there really isn’t good science to back up the limitations (as noted above). And two, limiting salt in prepared foods changes not only the flavor of the foods, but also the “mouthfeel“. And one of the easiest/most common ways to correct this is with the increased use of lipids (usually fats of one sort or another), since they have a similar effect to salt in creating food density. Meaning that people are probably ingesting more calories in response to prepared foods which has less salt in it. And since obesity is increasingly problematic …
Talk about your unintended consequences. Such is the danger of social engineering of just about every sort.
I started this post with the <sarcasm> </sarcasm> cues because I’ve long been skeptical of the science behind strict salt limitations. As I have noted previously, the evidence backing up strict limitations has been very mixed for decades. And there has been indication that for at least a substantial segment of the population, salt sensitivity wasn’t a problem at all. Now seeing that there is little evidence that lowering salt levels is beneficial for the general population, and that indeed there may be real risks in doing so?
Pass the salt, please.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Babylon 5, Connections, Failure, General Musings, Government, Health, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Science Fiction, Society, Terrorism, Violence, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: Babylon 5, blogging, CWC, health, jim downey, politics, predictions, Science Fiction, Syria, writing, www youtube
As we were on our morning walk, I rolled my right hand over a bit and looked at the blade of it. My wife looked down at it as well.
“How is it doing?”
I flexed the hand back and forth a bit. The pale yellow-green of a late-stage bruise was still very evident.
* * * * * * *
U.S. Warns Syria on Chemical Weapons
WASHINGTON — President Obama warned Syria on Monday not to use chemical weapons against its own people, vowing to hold accountable anyone who did, even as American intelligence officials picked up signs that such arms might be deployed in the fighting there.
The White House said it had an “increased concern” that the government of President Bashar al-Assad was preparing to use such weapons, effectively confirming earlier reports of activity at chemical weapons sites. The administration said it would take action if they were used, suggesting even the possibility of military force.
“Today I want to make it absolutely clear to Assad and those under his command: The world is watching,” Mr. Obama said in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington. “The use of chemical weapons is and would be totally unacceptable. If you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons, there will be consequences and you will be held accountable.”
* * * * * * *
From The Long, Twilight Struggle:
Londo Mollari: Refa, any force attempting to invade Narn would be up to its neck in blood–its own!
Lord Refa: We have no intention of invading Narn. Flattening it, yes–but invading it? We will be using mass drivers. By the time we are done their cities will be in ruins, we can move in at our leisure!
Londo Mollari: Mass drivers? They have been outlawed by every civilized planet!
Lord Refa: These are uncivilized times.
Londo Mollari: We have treaties!
Lord Refa: Ink on a page!
* * * * * * *
The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) is an arms control agreement which outlaws the production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons. Its full name is the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction. The agreement is administered by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which is an independent organization based in The Hague, Netherlands.
The main obligation under the convention is the prohibition of use and production of chemical weapons, as well as the destruction of all chemical weapons. The destruction activities are verified by the OPCW. As of January 2013, around 78% of the (declared) stockpile of chemical weapons has thus been destroyed.[5][6] The convention also has provisions for systematic evaluation of chemical and military plants, as well as for investigations of allegations of use and production of chemical weapons based on intelligence of other state parties.
Currently 188 states are party to the CWC, and another two countries (Israel and Myanmar) have signed but not yet ratified the convention.[1]
Syria is one of six UN member states who are not signatories to the Convention.
* * * * * * *
Shortly after the conversation above:
* * * * * * *
Syria crisis: ‘Strong evidence’ of chemical attacks, in Saraqeb
The BBC has been shown evidence which appears to corroborate reports of a chemical attack in the northern Syrian town of Saraqeb last month. Eyewitnesses and victims say that government helicopters dropped at least two devices containing poisonous gas on the town.
The Syrian government says it did not and will not use chemical weapons.
Shortly after midday on 29 April, the town of Saraqeb came under attack from government military positions about five miles (8km) away. A local activist we met filmed as the shells landed.
* * * * * * *
As we were on our morning walk, I rolled my right hand over a bit and looked at the blade of it. My wife looked down at it as well.
“How is it doing?”
I flexed the hand back and forth a bit. The pale yellow-green of a late-stage bruise was still very evident.
“It’s healing. The pain has gone from being that bright, intense flash you get from a broken bone to a dull but substantial ache. That tells me that it’s knitting back together properly. A few more days of not stressing the hand, and it’ll be OK.”
We paused, watched the dog take care of his business. As I reached down with a plastic bag to remove the results from the neighbor’s lawn, I thought about how lucky I was.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Book Conservation, Connections, Gardening, Health, Preparedness, Press, Publishing, U of Iowa Ctr for the Book | Tags: Amazon, Annie Tremmel Wilcox, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, health, jim downey, Kim Merker, serendipity, UICB, University of Iowa Center for the Book
My wife came through the kitchen, past the back door, and stepped into my bindery. I was in the process of gathering and folding the sections for the limited edition of Communion of Dreams. I paused, looked up.
“Did you see Annie’s email?” she asked.
I sighed. “Yeah, just a few moments ago.”
* * * * * * *
Because of the crazy weather we’ve had this spring, it seems like everything has been out of kilter in the garden. As a result, I’m just now getting around to doing the usual spring maintenance on the raised strawberry bed. Yesterday, as I was finishing up the weeding, having removed a couple bushel baskets worth of henbit and no small amount of rogue grass, I decided to see if I could get out the entire root of some large and nasty prickly thing.
To do this, I dug down into the surrounding soil with a weeding tool, then grasped the base of the plant with a large pair of old pliers. These plants are tenacious, and this is about the only way I have found to get most of their roots out of the ground without resorting to explosives. Anyway, I got a good grip on the root with the pliers, positioned myself, and pulled mightily.
The root started to come out. But then it snapped off suddenly. My right hand, grasping the pliers, flew free. For about 8 inches. Then it encountered the back edge of the concrete block used in construction of the raised bed. I knew I had broken the fourth metacarpal (the bone in the hand which goes from the wrist to your little finger) before I even raised my hand to look at it.
* * * * * * *
I met him by accident, and it changed my life. It’s a story I’ve told many times, but I don’t recall writing about it before.
I was a couple semesters into work on my MA in English Lit at the University of Iowa. I was looking to get a drop/add slip signed, and opened the wrong door.
See, there were these two doors, side by side. The one on the left went where I intended to go. The one on the right led into the Windhover Press, the fine letterpress at Iowa. But I didn’t notice the sign on the door, and didn’t realize my mistake until I was already a step or two inside.
A short, greying man wearing thick glasses was busy doing … something … behind a piece of machinery I didn’t recognize. He looked over the top rim of his glasses, and gruffly asked: “Can I help you?”
It should have been my cue to stammer out an apology for interrupting him, then turn and leave.
Instead, I stopped, looked around more. It started to sink in what it was I was looking at. “Wow, what *is* this place?”
My appreciation for tools and fine equipment must’ve shown on my face. He smiled. Just a little. And stepped out from behind the Vandercook proof press he was working at, wiping his hands on the (once) white apron he was wearing. “Like it says on the door, this is the Windhover Press. The fine letterpress. We make books here. By hand.”
“People still do that?” Well, I knew that they did. In the abstract. But being confronted with the no-nonsense reality of it had me a bit stunned.
“Yeah. Let me show you around.”
He did. I was fascinated. I did drop the class I was planning on dropping, but rather than some class on literary theory I added in a class on “The Hand Printed Book”.
* * * * * * *
‘He’ was Kim Merker. I spent two semesters taking his class. And I learned a lot about letterpress printing, about paper, about ink. And a bit about bookbinding. I also met one of my closest friends, Annie, who was Kim’s assistant at the press and who usually referred to him as “Herr Gutenberg”. Actually, it was Annie who taught me a lot of what I learned there.
Because Kim was gone a lot. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was busy putting together something new. Something which necessitated a lot of meetings, a lot of schmoozing, a lot of travel. That something was the embryonic Iowa Center for the Book.
So Kim and I never became particularly close. Oh, I got along with him just fine, and was always happy to see him in the press when I went there for one of my ‘classes’. And he did teach me a lot, himself.
But I found I was more interested in the simple bookbinding techniques I learned, and shifted my attention to doing more of that as time went on, moving on to taking other classes, learning from other artisans who had been brought together for this new and somewhat vague ‘program’ called the UICB.
Still, without him allowing his work to be interrupted and taking the time to show a gob-smacked grad student around, I never would have become a book conservator and book artist.
* * * * * * *
I felt the sharp pain that comes with a bone break. Dropping the pliers, I lifted my hand and looked at the back of it. There was already a knob there at the point of impact. I felt it. Flexed my fingers. Couldn’t feel any shifting of bone or fragments. And while it hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, there was no additional pain from moving my fingers. Just a weakness in my grip in the little finger.
Yeah, I broke the metacarpal. I was certain of it. I finished up the last few bits of the weeding I hadn’t done, using my left hand, and then replaced the boxwire panels which protect the strawberry plants from birds and critters.
I came inside, washed my hands, and again did an assessment. Was there any reason to seek medical attention? Not really. I’ve broken enough bones and had enough other injuries to be able to tell when I should see a doctor or head to the ER. In fact, I’ve broken four metacarpals in my life, and this was actually the second break for this particular one. Only for the first one was a cast needed — because I had shattered the bone when I was 16. (That was the last time I hit anything in anger.)
As I explained to a friend: I prefer to lead a somewhat rough & tumble life rather than a completely safe one. Sure, there are more hurts that come along with that, but the risks are generally worth it.
* * * * * * *
My wife came through the kitchen, past the back door, and stepped into my bindery. I was in the process of gathering and folding the sections for the limited edition of Communion of Dreams. I paused, looked up.
“Did you see Annie’s email?” she asked.
I sighed. “Yeah, just a few moments ago.”
Kim Merker had passed away two weeks ago. Word was just now getting out beyond his family and those who knew him best. There was a statement up on the UICB website.
I had looked at the dates of his life. And counted the years to when I first met him. I’m almost the same age as he was then.
“I’m going to want to try and attend the memorial service they have for him this fall,” I said.
My wife nodded. I went back to gathering and folding sheets.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Arthur C. Clarke, Augmented Reality, Connections, Feedback, Google, Health, Humor, Kindle, Marketing, Science Fiction | Tags: Alzheimer's, Amazon, April Fools, blogging, Communion of Dreams, feedback, Google, Google Nose, health, Her Final Year, humor, jim downey, Kindle, reviews, Science Fiction
I usually refrain from posting anything on April Fool’s Day. I mean, seriously, why would you want to? My sense of humor is quirky enough that most people don’t *quite* share it. And the competition for a good April Fool’s gag is really stiff. But on the other hand, if you try and post anything ‘serious’ — particularly the odd or innovative stuff I like to blog about — there’s a fair chance it will be either ignored or dismissed.
So I usually just don’t bother.
But today there’s three new reviews up on Amazon, and I thought I should share. Even if they do leave me wondering whether they’re a gag in themselves.
Well, not this one. At least I don’t think so.
Loved the premise, but the in my opinion, the book fell short of delivering. “Set up a meeting Seth, set up another meeting Seth” seemed to be a lot of the dialogue. Might have been better as a short story. Took me a long time to read as it never “grabbed” me.
That’s the whole of it. Well, other than the two stars and the title of the review: “borderline boring”
The next review isn’t much longer. In fact, it’s even a bit shorter. Here it is:
Jim Downey is evocative of Arthur C. Clarke at his best. Downey has taken Clarke and led us to the place where Clarke left us. i can’t remember a book of this genre that i’ve recently enjoyed more than this one. MORE please!
Nice, eh? Particularly with a five star rating and bearing the title: “Clarke left us, Downey is taking us onward now.”
But it was posted after I (jokingly) whinged about it on Facebook. So I wonder whether it was a serious review, particularly since the same person also posted a review of Her Final Year:
now, with parents getting older, mother with alzheimers, father with rheumatoid arthritis and stupid doctors, this book was perfect! i passed it on to the sister that’s handling all the problems since we live over 300 miles away. she and i agree that it is invaluable for caregivers.
But that sounds serious, so …
Damn. I hate April Fools Day. It always leaves me so confused.
Say, did you hear about Google Nose?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Book Conservation, Carl Zimmer, Connections, Faith healing, Health, National Geographic, Predictions, Psychic abilities, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Carl Zimmer, civilization, Communion of Dreams, dental hygiene, diet, Ed Yong, evolution, faith healing, genetics, health, jim downey, National Geographic, predictions, psychic abilities, science, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, writing
I’ve been entirely preoccupied with a big book conservation project which landed in my lap unexpectedly and needed attention right away (and trying to keep work going on St. Cybi’s Well), but a news item I saw the other day has been kicking around in my head. Er, so to speak. It’s the notion that the quality of dental hygiene & health in the modern era is *much* worse than it was before the advent of civilization. Here’s a good passage from one of the better articles which sums this up:
Our mouths are now a gentrified shadow of their former selves. And as Carl Zimmer described earlier this week, ecosystems with an impoverished web of species are more vulnerable to parasites. He was writing about frogs and lakes, but the same is true of bacteria and mouths. The narrow range of microbes in industrialised gobs are more vulnerable to invasions by species that cause disease, cavities, and other dental problems. “As an ecosystem, it has lost resilience,” says Cooper. “It basically became a permanent disease state.”
Of course, current thinking is that this is due to a fairly radical change in diet between the two time periods, with our reliance now on domesticated grain crops.
But I know the real reason:
“He had a nutty theory that early man had been shortlived, but impervious to disease. Something about being able to trace back mutation clues to some proto-genes that suggested a powerful ability to heal.” Jackie frowned.
Yeah, that’s from almost the end of Communion of Dreams. And is a topic we’ll revisit in the prequel.
Hehehehehehehe.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Feedback, Health, Predictions, Publishing, Science Fiction, tech, Travel, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, direct publishing, jim downey, predictions, Science Fiction, Scrivener, St. Cybi's Well, technology, travel, Wales, writing
I haven’t been doing a lot of blogging the last couple of weeks. Partially, that was due to my having actually come down with the actual flu — and getting that shortly after I had finally gotten rid of the last vestiges of the previous illness really sorta sucked my energy level down.
But there was another reason: I’ve been writing St. Cybi’s Well.
Well, kinda. Kinda-sorta.
See, I’m using Scrivener. Which I like a lot, but which is completely different from my previous work habits in writing a book. In an odd way, it’s more comprehensive, more systematic. I’m still learning how to use it, and it is taking some fumbling around and a bit of mental re-organization to get the hang of it. But rather than just having an outline and building one chapter after another, I find I’ve been constructing a framework and then working on individual scenes scattered through different chapters. By the time I finish with St. Cybi’s Well I’ll really understand how to use these tools efficiently, and hopefully that will mean more books, sooner, after this one. We’ll see.
Anyway.
I hope to have some solid things to share in a month or so. But in the meantime, I would invite you to browse my 2003 and 2006 travelogues of trips to Wales. You’ll get a pretty good glimpse into the locations and descriptive language for St. Cybi’s Well, since I am basing a lot of the book on those very real experiences. Consider it something of a sneak preview, just because you read the blog.
And thanks for that, by the way. It’s good to know I’m not just talking to myself here.
Cheers.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Art, Blade Runner, Connections, Depression, Failure, Flu, General Musings, Health, Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, Science, Science Fiction, Scientific American, Society, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: Alzheimer's, art, bipolar, Blade Runner, blogging, care-giving, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, health, Her Final Year, hospice, jim downey, John Bourke, Kickstarter, memoir, memory, New York Review of Books, Oliver Sacks, parainfluenza, Philip K. Dick, reality, science, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, video, writing, www youtube
Of late, as I have been slowly getting over the rather nasty bout of parainfluenza I mentioned previously, shedding the more annoying and disgusting symptoms, I’ve also come to realize that just now I am pulling out of the depressive trough of one of my long-term bipolar cycles. It wasn’t a particularly bad trough, and was somewhat mitigated by the success of the Kickstarter back in the fall. Nonetheless, it was there, as I can see in hindsight.
I am frequently struck just how much of our life doesn’t make sense until seen from a distance. Just recently I was surprised at the revelation of *why* the failure of Her Final Year to be more successful bothered me as much as it did: it was because I had seen the book as being a way to create something positive (for the world) out of the experience of being a long-term care provider. To have the book only reach a limited audience was, in my mind, saying that our roles as care-givers didn’t matter.
Which isn’t true, of course, but that was the emotional reality which I had been dealing with. The “narrative truth”, if you will. A term I borrow from a very interesting meditation by Oliver Sacks at the New York Review of Books website titled Speak, Memory. From the article:
There is, it seems, no mechanism in the mind or the brain for ensuring the truth, or at least the veridical character, of our recollections. We have no direct access to historical truth, and what we feel or assert to be true (as Helen Keller was in a very good position to note) depends as much on our imagination as our senses. There is no way by which the events of the world can be directly transmitted or recorded in our brains; they are experienced and constructed in a highly subjective way, which is different in every individual to begin with, and differently reinterpreted or reexperienced whenever they are recollected. (The neuroscientist Gerald M. Edelman often speaks of perceiving as “creating,” and remembering as “recreating” or “recategorizing.”) Frequently, our only truth is narrative truth, the stories we tell each other, and ourselves—the stories we continually recategorize and refine. Such subjectivity is built into the very nature of memory, and follows from its basis and mechanisms in the human brain. The wonder is that aberrations of a gross sort are relatively rare, and that, for the most part, our memories are relatively solid and reliable.
Let me repeat one bit of that: “Frequently, our only truth is narrative truth, the stories we tell each other, and ourselves.”
I think this is at the very heart of why fiction has such power, and appeal. I also think that it explains the well-documented phenomenon of people believing things which are clearly and demonstratively false, if their facts come from a trusted source.
Little surprise that writers of fiction are aware of this very human trait, and have explored it in all manner of ways. I have a note here on my desk, a scrawl written on a scrap of paper some months ago as I was thinking through character motivations in St. Cybi’s Well, which says simply: “We take our truths from the people we trust.”
And here’s another example, from one of my favorite movies, exploring a favorite theme of Philip K. Dick’s:
That theme? The nature of reality. And this is how the Sacks essay closes:
Indifference to source allows us to assimilate what we read, what we are told, what others say and think and write and paint, as intensely and richly as if they were primary experiences. It allows us to see and hear with other eyes and ears, to enter into other minds, to assimilate the art and science and religion of the whole culture, to enter into and contribute to the common mind, the general commonwealth of knowledge. This sort of sharing and participation, this communion, would not be possible if all our knowledge, our memories, were tagged and identified, seen as private, exclusively ours. Memory is dialogic and arises not only from direct experience but from the intercourse of many minds.
In other words, that reality is a shared construct. A Communion of Dreams, if you will.
Time for me to get back to work.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Connections, Feedback, Health, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Writing stuff | Tags: art, Australia, blogging, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, health, jim downey, Karst, literature, Missouri, Nullarbor Plain, reviews, science, Science Fiction, writing
Sorry I haven’t posted much — been down with the nasty respiratory virus which is going around, and which has aggravated my torn intercostal muscle. So I’ve been devoting most of my energy to other things, like not hacking up a lung.
Anyway, thought I’d share a new review:
Oh dear; a shocker. Not only did this diatribe descend into fantasy rubbish, but the characters were as flat as the nullabor plain. The whole thing had about as much narrative flair as a year 8 kids English assignment
Ouch. Unsurprisingly, he gave it only 1 star. Though he did say that he wished he could give it zero stars.
Bad reviews are part & parcel of being a writer or artist or just about any other kind of public person. No biggie — Communion of Dreams isn’t to everyone’s tastes, and that’s OK. I do wonder a bit whether this review was intended for another book. Evidently a couple of other people wonder the same, given the comments.
Anyway, at least I learned something from the review: the Nullarbor Plain (which I think the author meant to say) is a geographic region of Australia. And it shares something in common with our property here in central Missouri: it’s a karst formation. So that’s kinda interesting.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go not hack up a lung.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Feedback, Health, Hospice, Marketing, Promotion, Society | Tags: Alzheimer's, Amazon, blogging, care-giving, dementia, direct publishing, discount, free, health, Her Final Year, hospice, jim downey, John Bourke, Kindle, memoir, promotion, reviews
So, some big news to share about our care-giving memoir Her Final Year.
Starting tomorrow — New Years Day — and running through this Friday (January 4th), the Kindle edition of Her Final Year will be free to download for anyone who wants it.
But that’s not the big news.
During the same period, Jan 1 – 4, the paperback version of the book bought through our CreateSpace store will be $2.00 off: just use discount code ZZYCFFG2 when you check out. Please note that this offer is only good through the CreateSpace store, not on Amazon generally.
But that’s not the big news, either.
The big news is that we’re permanently lowering the price of the book — in both Kindle and paperback editions — by $3.00. Yup, the new Kindle edition price will be just $5.95, and the paperback edition price will be only $13.95. These price changes will go into effect on January 1, and will be the new baseline prices across the board.
To date we’ve given away 7,191 copies of the Kindle edition of Her Final Year. That’s a very good start in terms of getting the book into the hands of people who need it, and the reviews have been *very* positive. But we would like to see it have even further reach. So even though we haven’t yet broken even on the costs invested in the book, we’ve decided to go ahead and lower the price permanently, and to kick off that new price with these special 4 days of promotions.
Help us out — be sure to get your copy of the book, if you haven’t done so already, and to let others know. Caring for people with Alzheimer’s and other age-related dementia is a huge, huge problem for families all around the globe. Our experience as care-providers can make the journey easier, sharing how we coped with the joys and sorrows, the personal failings and the personal growth.
Thanks — and Happy New Years!
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 