Organizing Heritage Photos and Memorabilia

Many of us have piles of photos and memorabilia given to us that go back a few generations. These are very special photos and other items that should be persevered in a way that it is easy to access the desired photo or memorabilia and can serve as wonderful record of your family history. Thinking about the boxes you have filled with photos, birth and weeding certificates, report cards, postcards, drawings, etc., can be overwhelming. I would like to suggest some steps you can take to make organizing and putting items into scrapbooks a manageable task. Remember to set realistic … Continue reading

Can Mammograms Be Harmful?

I have been putting off my yearly mammogram. I’ve had one almost every year since I turned 40, as dictated by someone somewhere as the thing I was supposed to do. Recently, there has been some controversy as to whether the “need to start having mammograms” age was 40 or 50. Now, there is another controversy – that routine mammograms can cause breast cancers to be overly treated. Overly treated? If you have breast cancer, can treatment really be overly? Maybe not, but maybe so says Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, who recently coauthored an analysis of mammograms published in The … Continue reading

Beware the Green Eyed Monster: How Jealousy Can Impact Your Blended Family

I tiptoed up to the topic, believing that most of us are pretty sensitive about it: “Sometimes step parents feel…I don’t want to call it jealousy, but…” at which point Kelly, eight years into her step mom experience, interrupted, “Oh, you can call it jealous! I was definitely jealous!—of a six year old, no less!” We were talking about what can often become a defining dynamic between children and step parents, and consequently, a divisive issue for a biological parent and their spouse. It’s not an emotion many of us are willing to cop to, especially if the trigger is … Continue reading

New Religious Offerings in Hotel Rooms

I first heard about this latest travel tidbit from the ladies on ABC’s chatfest “The View” a few weeks ago. But as usual their squawking made it nearly impossible to decipher what the real issue behind hotels offering more than just the Gideon Bible for guests to choose from was all about so I decided to do some research on my own. For those of you just getting up to speed on this “Hot Topic,” the Provenance Hotel chain (they run boutique properties in Oregon, Washington, and Tennessee) recently started offering a “spiritual menu” to its guests that goes beyond … Continue reading

Internet Romance: In All the Old Unfamiliar Places

One of the freedoms that have come into play in Iraq is difficult for the conservative nation and there are more than a few who consider it dangerous. The Internet has arrived in post-invasion Iraq and parents are more than a little concerned about the fact that their sons and daughters are going to be able to meet each other through the Internet and they can’t observe them or safely chaperone their topics of discussion. Some parents have discovered their children chatting in unsupervised conversations and removed the computer from their homes. It’s important to recognize that Iraq is a … Continue reading