I’ve always been one to dwell on memories. Ask Ryan about some of my family get togethers–it’s full of “do you remember when Chelsea…” or “that was just like that time when Ashleigh…” or “Grandpa Pa always said…” After taking a StrengthsFinder™ quiz at work I learned why: one of my main strengths as a person is context. This means that “people strong in the Context theme enjoy thinking about the past. They understand the present by researching its history.”

Context is very important because it not only helps you understand events of the past but also how to use that knowledge to handle current issues (the whole “history repeats itself” adage). I’ve always enjoyed history and geography, especially when it comes to the Bible, and I have found that I understand the big picture better when I can place the individual stories and details in their respective regions, cultures and times. I use this knowledge not just for Bible study and teaching, but for solving problems at my job, when documenting a process to improve or even when gardening. History and geography are indispensable to making our lives better now and in the future.

Unfortunately, it seems like the rest of our American culture in general is forgetting even simple history lessons. Lately we’ve seen politicians reinventing Paul Revere’s ride or the location of the Shot Heard ‘Round the World, “fourth graders unable to say why Abraham Lincoln was an important figure” (NY Times) and remarkably “less than half of eighth-graders knew that Islam originated in what is now Saudi Arabia” (Wall Street Journal). I realize that our current economic crisis is bad, but what I foresee is that our future will be destroyed by those who don’t have any historical or geographical context in which to make decisions.

Tonight we were browsing through books at a Barnes & Noble and noticed that they had rearranged a bit. As we went back to the furthest corner of the store we happened to notice that all the history books, geography and Bibles had been relocated there. The three subjects that most Americans are worst at–now in the very back of the store.

Fasting is usually done with water only or a partial fast. I just finished a 3-day juice fast, also called “juice feasting.” Juice feasting is different in that you drink fresh, unpasteurized juices in addition to water and herbal tea. Because the fiber is removed, juice feasting is said to give your digestive system a break so that your body can focus on cleansing and healing using all the fresh live enzymes and vitamins from the juice. I read raw foodist Angela Stokes A Juice Feaster’s Handbook and her juice feasting e-journal, nutritionist Natalia Rose’s Raw Food Detox Diet and also read up on Dr. Andrew Weil’s website for guidelines and recipes.

You can’t buy fresh, unpasteurized juice at the store, unless you go to a juice bar. We have very few around here and they are not always cost effective, so I made all the juices at home using a Breville Juice Fountain. Each day it took about 30 minutes to wash and trim all the greens, fruits, and vegetables for juicing, another 30 minutes to run them through the juicer and then another 45 for clean up (I rinsed all the juicer components after each juice).

Day 1 – Saturday, February 5, 2011
Total cost $26, 1.25 gallons of juice

• • Juice of 1/2 pineapple ($1.50)
• • Juice of 1/2 watermelon ($4.00)
• • Green Lemonade: kale, celery, apples, lemons ($6.20)
• • Spicy Skin Saver: grapes, watercress, radishes, cucumber, ginger ($8.15)
• • Hot Pink: pineapple, strawberries, beet root, ginger ($6)
• • Water
• • Herbal tea (Tulsi peppermint)

Day 1 Juices

Going into this I was really expecting that the juice wouldn’t be very filling and I’d be hungry all day. I spread the juices out throughout the day (in place of normal solid food meals) and after the fourth quart of juice I was so full I could hardly finish off the fifth quart! I felt great in the morning and had lots of energy. I stayed around the house and didn’t do any strenuous activities, but even so I got a little sleepy and developed a headache in the afternoon.

Day 2 – Sunday, February 6, 2011 (Superbowl Sunday – hard day for a juice feast!)
Total cost $28, 1.375 gallons of juice

• • Juice of  8 cups grapes ($11.50 – yikes!)
• • Juice of 1/4 watermelon ($2.00)
• • Green Lemonade: kale, celery, apples, lemons ($6.20)
• • Thai Green: kale, cilantro, pineapple, limes ($5)
• • Fruit Spice: pineapple, pears, ginger ($3.15)
• • Water
• • Herbal tea (Tulsi peppermint)

A day's worth of produce

I’m happy to report that I’ve noticed some swelling go down in my fingers; on Saturday I woke up with a new nodule on my right pinkie joint, a bright red lumpy knot that made it hard to bend my finger. By today it had disappeared! That usually doesn’t happen–usually, once a new swelling starts it’s downhill from there as other places start to swell, too. Not this time!

Day 3 – Monday, February 7, 2011
Total cost $19, 0.875 gallons of juice (I meant to also have a Green Lemonade today, but didn’t have time)

• • Juice of 10 oranges ($3.30)
• • Juice of 1/2 pineapple ($1.50)
• • Cucumber Mint Cooler: cucumbers, celery, mint, limes ($6.30)
• • Spicy Skin Saver: grapes, watercress, radishes, cucumber, ginger ($8.15)
• • Water
• • Herbal tea (Tulsi peppermint)

I didn’t wake up with knee pain today! In fact, for the first time since November, I ran. More like jogged, but I did it on three separate occasions today. My knees have been either to swollen to bend or too painful to step down hard, so jogging is pretty huge. I’ve noticed that my skin is starting to clear up, too.

Day 4 – Tuesday, February 8, 2011, fast break day
Total cost $25, 1.25 gallons of juice

• • Juice of 10 oranges ($3.30)
• • Juice of 1/4 watermelon ($2.00)
• • Green Lemonade: kale, celery, apples, lemons ($6.20)
• • Hot Pink: pineapple, strawberries, beet root, ginger ($6)
• • Spicy Skin Saver: grapes, watercress, radishes, cucumber, ginger ($8.15)
• • Water
• • Herbal tea (Tulsi peppermint)
• • Prunes, soaked in water (also drank the soak water)

I broke the fast by eating a few meals of soaked prunes followed by a colonic at Body Strategies. I’m slowly reintroducing foods back in my diet, making sure they (1) are mostly plants: greens, fruits and vegetables, (2) are whole foods (as close to their original state as possible–minimal to no processing or cooking), and (3) are properly combined meals (fruit by itself, don’t mix meats with starches, etc.).

Overall I had a good experience with this juice fast and would highly recommend it to anyone needing a “reset.” I noticed that on the first two days my willpower started to waiver in the evenings. I had some hunger pangs and I was really craving a cheeseburger that first day! By the third day I was really enjoying the different tastes of the juices and wasn’t really interested in solid food. I did have a few lessons learned: beets stain, grapes are really expensive, always buy more produce than you think you’ll need, and make all the juice for each day in the morning so that you’re already prepared for the day (instead of waiting until the last minute, or going all day without and then trying to cram it all in at 10pm).

Grandma Betty's Kansas Day Cookies

Happy birthday, Kansas!

Kansas joined the Union as a free state during the Civil War on January 29, 1861. Originally home to the Kansa tribe, the land was claimed mostly by the Louisiana purchase. Settlers began pouring into the state in 1854 until now we have a population of 2.7 million people.

Kansas has such a rich history and is an integral part of our United States, from our native tribes, Civil War history, the Santa Fe Trail, the beautiful Flint Hills, Cosmosphere space history and agriculture, to our famous residents like Amelia Earhart or Dwight Eisenhower, or to landmark decisions like Brown vs. Board of Education.

To celebrate this great state, go do something uniquely Kansas today! Go visit the State Capitol Building or the Kansas State Historical Society (where I volunteered with Grandma Betty when I was six!) in Topeka. If you can’t make it to Topeka today, go eat at a local restaurant, visit a local museum, watch The Wizard of Oz, or just go outside to enjoy our unseasonal January weather! The entire state will be celebrating all year long, so be sure to check out these sites to get ideas on places to visit or things to do in Kansas: Wichita Eagle coverage, Kansas 150 official site, or Travel Kansas.

What’s wrong with a normal spring mattress? Formaldehyde and boric acid are ingredients in the flame retardant coatings, the synthetic material doesn’t breathe, and the springs create pressure points. These spring mattresses weren’t created until the 1930′s; up until then people (like my great grandma) slept on cotton-filled mats. So our thought was, if we’re trying to be as natural as possible, what would people have done pre-industrialization? What would Abraham & Sarah have slept on?

We did some research and decided on a mattress and bedding made of 100% all natural wool. Why wool? Besides being naturally flame retardant, waterproof, and dust mite repellant, sheep’s wool regulates body temperature. To clean, deodorize, and fluff the mattresses and bedding you simply lay it out in the sun. How natural is that?

After some searching we found a company called Shephard’s Dream. All their products are all natural or organic and are handmade with such high craftsmanship they are heirloom quality. After having a sample sent to us to test out, we purchased the handmade fir frame, mattress, topper, pillows and comforter. Absolutely heavenly! The wool is incredibly soft (unlike the itchy wool I remember as a kid), the comforter is light and fluffy, and I feel very peaceful and safe when I sleep in it.

There’s an article in this month’s issue of Mental Floss magazine called “Cut it Out: The History of Prophylactic Surgery in America.” It lists “wisdom tooth removal” among the surgeries that may not really be necessary. Several doctors and organizations have called the removal of wisdom teeth a public health hazard that only serves the doctors, who in some cases make  $500,000 per year just by removing the teeth.

My thesis was entitled Energy Consumption of Manufacturing Equipment in a Production Setting. In a nutshell, I hooked up meters to manufacturing equipment to see how much electricity they used and how they used it. The goal was for HBC to use this information to make their selection of equipment more energy efficient and to consider energy usage when making their production schedules. We also used the data to verify other research that will provide any company a mathematical model that predicts their energy usage when building certain types of products. If you’d like to read my paper, visit the WSU Library SOAR database. It should be available within the next semester.

Looking back, I really enjoyed the process of gathering the data, analyzing the results, and putting it all together in the paper. My advisor was very encouraging and instructive and even took me to Japan to present a selection of my thesis at a conference! Overall, it was a tremendous amount of work that would have gone much faster had I been a full-time student, but in the end I’m glad things worked out the way they did.

In the photo below, I walked during the May 2010 graduation ceremony even though my paper wasn’t turned in until the summer semester. Thank heavens (and my advisor and committee!) for extensions.

With the help of a week of vacation I’ll catch everyone up on the exciting second half of our Japan trip, my youngest sister Chelsea moving in with us for college, Ryan starting grad school, me going off arthritis medicine, and much more.

For now, I’ll leave you with my favorite video of the week: A Social Network Christmas. A very cool rendition of the birth story of Jesus on Facebook, if it had existed back then.

Electric City

For this trip, we didn’t want to duplicate any sites we saw last time, so we tried three different areas. On Monday night, we went to Akihabara, to an area known as “Electric City” for its abundance of electronics shops and video game arcades. (We were in dire need of an ethernet cable to use in our hotel room.) We found a store with seven stories that sold everything from big screen HDTVs to chopsticks.

Tokyo Metro at Night

On Tuesday night, we ate dinner at MOS Burger fairly early with Sam’s advisor, so we just wanted to find some good dessert. We ended up going to Ikebukuro to an enormous shopping mall called “Sunshine City.” It was also several stories tall (about the first 5-6 floors of a 59+ story skyscraper). There were so many places to see (there are 120 shops and 60 restaurants, plus an aquarium), that I know we only saw a fraction (plus it was getting late). We couldn’t decide on what to get for dessert until we agreed on ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery (but this Cold Stone had green tea ice cream!).

Imperial Palace

On Wednesday, our last day in Tokyo, we parked our luggage at Tokyo Station, where we would be catching the shinkansen (bullet train) later. We toured the grounds of the Imperial Palace, an area built in the Edo era, and still in use today. It was a beautiful area that gave us just a glimpse into feudal Japan.

Statue of Kusonoki Masashige

Since Japan (and Tokyo especially) is a complete mix of modern and traditional, this entire area of Japan cultural history is surrounded by expensive skyscrapers, international embassies, world trade, and everything that embodies the global society. We ate lunch in what could be considered “downtown” Tokyo, as it was the equivalent of New York’s Fifth Avenue.

Shinkansen at Tokyo Station

We did a little more shopping and then rested our very sore feet for a while before boarding the bullet train to Takasaki to meet Paul and Stacey Herrington (see next several posts).

This conference is held every 2 years and alternates between Japan and the U.S.; what fantastic timing that it was in Japan the year that I was asked to attend! This year it was on the Hongo campus of the University of Tokyo.

The conference was all in English, so I didn’t need to learn Japanese or have a translator. My talk was titled “Energy Analysis of a Turret Punch in a Production Setting,” which looked at how a CNC turret punch used electricity as it produced parts. Think of ENERGY STAR efficiency but for manufacturing equipment. My talk was well-received and there were good questions afterward.

Judith Alexander, a missionary who currently works with the Taga church and helped us arrange our travel, was a great friend we had made there during our short visit in 2006. We were able to catch up with her as well as the preacher, Sugao Tadokoro. They treated us to lunch and great conversation at Woody’s (just a few blocks from the church building), before having to head back to the bus station. Judith drove us to the bus stop (after first making a detour to the beach), and they sent us off with hugs and greetings for the Haruna church.

Below are two pictures from the most recent trip and two from the previous trip. Clockwise, from upper left: 1) The Taga church building, 2) Sugao preaching on Sunday morning (this trip), 3) Saito-san, a wonderful elderly couple in the church (from last trip), and 4) Sugao and Judith (from last trip).