All the Way to Istanbul to Meet with the Best Eye Doctor in the Land

Here's a story that Grandpa Peter used to tell.

There was a little boy in Marash, Turkey, who had very bad eye infections.  No matter what his parents used to heal the little boy's eyes, no matter what the local medicine woman suggested, nothing helped.  So one day, the little boy's parents decided to take their son to the best eye doctor in the land.  The family traveled all the way to Istanbul.  After waiting days, the family was finally granted an appointment with the renowned opthamologist.   When the doctor entered the room and examined the little boy's eyes, he asked the little boy to hold out his hands.  The doctor looked at the little boy's hands, and proceeded to tie the boy's hands behind the boy's back.  

"He'll be fine now," the doctor said.

Oh, no! It's flu season again!

Beautiful warm days followed by rainy cold days . . . according to Marash Girl's mother, the perfect recipe for the flu.  What to do when you catch that cold?

Open all your windows and air the house out.  Just dress warmly and turn the heat up when you do this.

 Wash all sheets and blankets (all at once) in hot water and dry in hot dryer . . . also your daytime and nighttime clothing.

Air the pillows out by placing them on open windowsills and then throw them in the dryer and run the dryer at high heat

Run all stuffed animals through the dryer at high heat after placing them on the windowsills.

Wash your hands frequently.

If you are coughing or have a stuffy nose, steam up the bathroom and sit there breathing in the steam, or boil water and breath in the steam (at a distance, of course).

(Other suggestions gratefully accepted - please record on messages below.)

All this should be done in one day so there cannot be carry over of germs from one day to the next.

Ice Is Nice

Got an ache or a pain?  Bruised yourself?  Apply heat!  It sure feels good, but the new adage?  Ice is nice!  And sure enough, Marash Girl woke up with a joint pain, and rather than applying heat (which is what she wanted to do and what she had been told to do years ago when she was a child -- yes, she was a child way back when), she grabbed an ice pack from the freezer (they say a package of frozen peas is even better), stuck it in her pocket (which happened to be directly over the joint in pain) and, as the French are wont to say, "Voilá!"  The pain disappeared like magic, or like ice on a warm spring day!

Old Country Cure for the Common Cold

As Marash Girl sits at her computer considering what she should write for today's blog post -- and what she should have for breakfast to fight off a very bad New England cold -- (don't get too close, now!) -- she remembers her mother and grandmother, her aunts and uncles, the Aintab and Marash cure for the common cold (Well, not the common New England cold, but the common Marash and Aintab cold, Marash Girl is guessing), and that was to squeeze several oranges and lemons, toss the juice of those oranges and lemons into a pot along with the rinds of the oranges and lemons, cover the lot with water, and bring to a boil; simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat, add honey (a good dollop) and after the concoction cools for a bit, to drink and keep drinking!  What a cure. It always worked.  Now one would think that the boiling would have killed all of the vitamin C in the fruits, so it must have been the heat and the honey that acted as a cure . . . or was it?

Got a head cold?

With this sudden change in weather from a hot and humid summer to a cool fall, how many of you have a sore throat? A cough? Congestion?

Interesting that a newly arrived Armenian man from Aleppo had the same answer that my dad and mom always had when such afflictions struck:  Boil lemon juice with the whole lemon rind in water.  Drink, drink, drink.  Gargle with salt.

My secret?  Drink non-stop -- gingerale and hot and sour soup. apple juice and water.  Any liquid that you like, but drink, so that you have to pee every half hour.  Yes.  Liquids, rest and exercise . . . exercise, that is, from your bed to the bathroom!

Cold yogurt - the best thing for a burn?

After cold water, Marash Girl is told, cold yogurt is the best thing for a burn.  But then, cold madzoon (as she calls yogurt) is the best thing for a bee sting as well . . . Marash Girl learned that factoid one day many years ago on the afternoon that she was to play the piano for an audience of hundreds!

Nisha Charkoudian contributes to Army's development of app determining body's water needs

Researcher Nisha Charkoudian contributes to Army's development of app which determines body's 

water needs - written by Kelly Field, USARIEM, published October 24, 2014,  reprinted here from www.army.mil.

Pictured here is the Soldier Water Estimation Too app main screen. This Android-based smartphone application

 is a decision aid that translates a complex sweat prediction model into simple user inputs. The user need only 

estimate the anticipated intensity of the activity (low, medium, high, including example activities), choose 

from among three categories of military clothing ensemble and input weather conditions (air temperature, 

relative humidity and cloud cover) to estimate the fluid intake required to maintain optimal hydration.

NATICK, Mass. (Oct. 24, 2014) -- Clean, potable water is one thing the world universally cannot live without. It hydrates. It cleans. It keeps us alive and well. No doubt, water is very valuable to Soldiers.

However, as many mission planners know, water planning can be a nightmare. Too much water can strain already heavy combat loads, perhaps forcing some Soldiers to pack too little in favor of a lighter pack. When Soldiers don't have enough water, dehydration could set in, decreasing performance and increasing the risk of serious heat illnesses.

"Water is a huge logistical problem for training and field missions," said Dr. Nisha Charkoudian, a research physiologist from the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, known as USARIEM, Thermal and Mountain Medicine Division. "Obviously, planners do not want too much, but having too little can lead to serious problems. Dehydration exacerbates symptoms caused by heat and altitude exposure, and makes a lot of things worse, including the ability to perform physical tasks in hot and high-altitude environments."

To help solve this logistical problem, Charkoudian worked with researchers from USARIEM -- Dr. Sam Cheuvront, Dr. Robert Kenefick and Ms. Laurie Blanchard -- and a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory -- Dr. Anthony Lapadula, Dr. Albert Swiston and Mr. Tajesh Patel -- to develop an app that will help unit leaders accurately predict water needs with the goal of minimizing the burden of water transport and sustaining hydration.

"Research into heat stress has been going on for over 50 years at USARIEM," Charkoudian said. "We have been providing guidance to the Department of Defense about sweat loss and hydration, and refining it for many years through TB MED 507. Paper doctrine provides generalized look-up tables generated from complicated equations. The app meets requests from the increasingly digital battlefield for paperless guidance that is simple, accurate, mission-specific and available in real time."

Called the Soldier Water Estimation Tool, or SWET, this Android-based smartphone app is a decision aid that translates a complicated biophysical and physiological sweat prediction model into simple user inputs regarding the anticipated intensity of activity (low, medium, high, including example activities), three category choices of military clothing ensemble and weather conditions (air temperature, relative humidity and cloud cover).

The SWET app has user-friendly inputs and provides the user with the amount of water required for the specified conditions in liters per hour. A separate "Mission Calculator" tab further simplifies planning by providing total amounts of water required for a given unit (number of people) for a given mission duration (total time, in hours). Total water amounts are provided in liters, one-quart canteens, two-quart canteens and gallons.

Charkoudian said this app was designed for unit leaders to determine group water needs. The average amount of water needed per person does not reflect individual differences, but the model error for individuals is estimated to be small. Soldiers should expect to see this app within the year on the Army's Nett Warrior platform.

"This will be one of the first apps rolled out in the Nett Warrior platform," Charkoudian said. "I am so excited to be doing stuff that is directly helping Soldiers in the field. I think that's just so cool."

In the meantime, Charkoudian said that the app has already undergone limited user testing with the Army Mountain Warfare School in Jericho, Vermont, where Soldiers gave very positive feedback. She is looking forward to more feedback once the app goes live, to make updates and possibly explore its uses in the commercial world.

"There is the potential here for future versions of SWET for sports and sports drink companies, for team sports, as well as for humanitarian and disaster-relief organizations," Charkoudian said. "People want apps; that's what they are excited about. It's something everyone can relate to."

Advice on Wholistic Medicine at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Visiting the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston this afternoon, Marash Girl had the opportunity to reminisce with one of the guards about the room in which they were standing -- the room in which, many years ago, she had taken her little girls to listen to early music concerts, walking them to the front of the room (much to the consternation of the ushers who feared, of course that 2 and a half and 4 year old would disrupt the concert -- Marash Girl had to assure the ushers (or was it usher the assurers?) that her daughters were perfect and would be too busy watching and listening to create any havoc whatsoever . . .  of course Marash Girl was right! ] The little girls . . . Marash Girl's little girls . . . were able to hear the early music  and see the early music instruments and musicians creating the music --  all without craning their necks -- How the conversation went from there to wholistic medicine is unclear, but it did . . . and Marash Girl found herself talking to the guard about her father's memory of healing infected wounds by placing moldy bread on the open wound.  (See http://marashgirl.blogspot.com/2013/10/cure-for-infected-wounds.html)  It was than that the young guard, a musician himself and a believer in wholistic medicine added to Marash Girl's store of knowledge for healing infected wounds.  He instructed, "You can use coffee grounds, too . . . or place maggots into the wound!"  Marash Girl wondered what her father Peter would have to say about that!

A Cure for Infected Wounds

Does the history of penicillin include the fact that in Marash (according to Marash Girl's father Peter), folks would place moldy bread directly on an infected wound until it was healed?

Rainbow at the Back Door

                                             Rainbow at the Back Door                                                     Photo by Marash Girl      

Sergi and the Tabasco Sauce Solution

Riddling the last week of fun and games with Iffar and Elina was a joke about the fly in the soup . . .

Customer in restaurant:  Waiter, what is this fly doing in my soup?

Waiter:  It looks like it's doing the back stroke.

The joke, no matter how many times it was told at the table on the front porch, brought forth gales of laughter from the little ones who told it.  Perhaps because they had just returned from summer camp where there had been plenty of flies; perhaps because they had just spent a week doing the back stroke. Hopefully not because they had seen flies in their soup.

None the less, when Marash Girl and Ranek were having lunch at Legal Seafoods in Framingham, a black fly insisted on visiting their table.

"Waiter, there's a fly buzzing around our table."  The waiter, rather than suggesting that the fly was doing loop-de-loops to entertain us, simply answered, "I'll get the Tabasco Sauce."  

Nonplussed, Ranek and Marash Girl looked at each other, and at the fly as it continued to loop-de-loop around the corner table at which they were seated.

Soon the waiter returned with a saucer that had been splashed with a teaspoonful of Tabasco Sauce.  He placed the saucer on the table, and . . . .

The fly fled .  . . And never returned.  

Can anyone out there explain the chemistry of this miracle cure?

Cure for Kerosene Spill?

Aftermath of the Yard Sale . . . 

Unknown to Marash Girl, there was still kerosene in the antique kerosene stove that she was carting to the site of the yard sale . . . carting in the back of her station wagon.  Unfortunately, the stove was placed on its side, but on the wrong side, and kerosene leaked onto the upholstery which covers the back of the back seats (which had become, at the time, the bottom of the back of the station wagon.) Help!  Can't get rid of that smell.  Had it professionally cleaned, no luck; tried baking soda, no luck; tried white vinegar, no luck.  Leaving windows open but thunderstorms expected! 

Advice, please!

Clotheslines or the Gym?

The sight of an old clothesline in the heart of suburban Sagamore Beach (see Marash Girl's photo) jarred Marash Girl.  Once (and not so long ago) we carried heavy baskets of wet clothes out to the fresh air to hang on our back yard clotheslines -- the sunshine (if it was sunny) and fresh air (if we didn't live too close to a highway) revived us and the exercise (lifting and carrying weight, bending, stretching) energized (or alternatively exhausted) us.

Today we throw our wet clothes into the electric (or gas) dryer (consuming untold amounts of energy) and drive to the gym for our exercise.  Who's kidding whom?  Are we really emancipated or have we given up a wonderfully natural form of exercise (and don't forget the part about chatting over the back yard fence) for the artifice of weights inside an airless, sunless gym full of stressed bodies anxious to go through the motions that are required in today's world of perfectly toned bodies?

Of course, there's always gardening in the summer and shoveling in the winter . . . 

A Wilbraham Cautionary Tale

This morning, I burned my hand on the teapot and immediately went for the ice . . . but the experience brought back a 20 year old memory . . . 

Pre-tornado photo: Marash Boy builds a fire in the fireplace in Wilbraham (As Marash Girl is the photographer,
there are no photos of her building a fire.)  N.B. The tornado deconstructed the fireplace which is no longer.

Marash Girl loved to go barefoot in Wilbraham -- over rocks and leaves, grass and soil. . .  even when she was preparing the fire for shish kebab.

As it happened, the fire was almost perfect, coals ready to be rearranged for the shish kebab, when a coal fell off of the open end of the fireplace, and Marash Girl's bare foot stepped on that coal with her full weight.  The burning coal burned the bare foot, as burning coals on bare feet are wont to do, but Marash Girl knew just how to proceed, or at least thought she did.  She grabbed some ice from the ice bucket, limped to the front porch, and,  for the next 8 hours.  watched the view of the valley from her seat on the porch, placing her burned sole on ice, and replacing the ice as it melted, until at long last, the burn disappeared.  No pain. No scar. The moral of the tale?

Mosquitos gotcha?

Many years ago, on the top of Wilbraham Mountain, [long before the days of Afterbite,] Uncle Harry (Haroutioun Charkoudian, born in Marash, owner of  Springfield, Mass.'s CHARKOUDIAN DRUGS) saw the young 'uns scratching their mosquito bites.  "Do you have any ammonia?" he asked Marash Girl.  "Bring it here with some cotton balls and I'll show you something."  He proceeded to soak a cotton ball with ammonia, and hold it against the itching bite.  Lo and behold, the itching stopped.  Just like magic.  And so when the father in MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING recommended Windex to his daughter and future son-in-law as a cure for everything from cold sores to you name it, he was actually emulating Uncle Harry's use of ammonia.   (An old country cure?) Conclusion?  If you're itching and don't have any ammonia, or you can't bear the smell of ammonia, simply spray some Windex on those itchy spots, and like magic, the itch will disappear!  Thank you, Uncle Harry.

Sure Cure for Sore Throats

Yesterday, Brother James mentioned that his daughter Nicolette (who is a counselor at a summer camp in upstate New York) had a sore throat and that he had recommended . . . before he could finish his sentence, Marash Girl broke in, as she is sometimes wont to do, with her tried and true (and fun) cure for sore throats.  Wanna hear what she recommended that ALWAYS works both for her AND her children?

Go to a good movie in a movie theatre (not on TV or on your computer --  don't worry about the entry fee -- you'd pay more than that to go to see your doctor), order the largest possible popcorn with butter and salt (extra large refillable size) and a Coke (extra large refillable size with plenty of ice, NOT diet, no substitutes), grab plenty of napkins --  (DO NOT sneak in your own bottle of Coke or your own bag of popcorn to save a dollar or two because if you do, this cure will not work).  Now settle down in your favorite section of the theatre, preferably with no one on either side of you, and steep yourself in the world of the movie.  If you have finished the Coke and the popcorn by the end of the film, you may have an engorged tummy, but your sore throat will be gone!

Heal thyself

And while we're on the subject of healing (see yesterday's post), there's an old country story that Marash Girl's father loved to tell.  A boy in Marash had a serious eye infection and no matter who his mother turned to for help, no one offered a cure that worked -- not the old women, not the village sages, not the doctors.  But there was a doctor a day's journey from Marash, famous for his cures.  The boy and his mother finally decided to make the investment, hire a donkey, and trek to the abode of the famous doctor.  When they reached the doctor's home, they were hopeful, and rightly so. The doctor, watching the boy carefully, looked at the boy's eyes, looked at the boy's hands, carefully washed both, and offered the following advice.  "Tie your son's hands behind his back for a week.  His eyes will heal."

The Healing Earth

Have a bad cut on your hand?  If it's summer and you have soil to work with, you have no worries! Just go out there and garden.  Why?  Good question.  There she was, Marash Girl, with a pot full of Lily of the Valley cuttings that had to go into the ground, but she had a bad cut on her index finger. . . Vaht to do . . . Plant the cuttings . . . she could always clean up the cut afterwards.  And plant she did.  But what happened to the finger?  It actually looked better after it had worked with the soil.  But that didn't make sense.  She washed the cut, dried it, bandaged it, and later that day, planted again.  Same thing. Soil in cut; cut looked and felt better.  Then she remembered.  Her father used to tell her that in the old country, in Marash, if folks had a cut, the old ladies would put dirt on the cut.  Was it dirt?  Well, for sure they would put moldy bread on the cut and that would heal it.  But in another version of this tale, Marash girl remembers her father saying that they packed the cut with dirt and then bandaged it.  And they put dirt in babies diapers to absorb the poop (the ecologically friendly precursor to ecologically unfriendly Pampers).  What is it that Marash Girl is remembering?  Are there any confirmations out there?  Marash Boy?

Okay.  Marash Boy remembers his grandmother packing mud on a hornet sting.  And we all certainly remember the mud packs of yore placed on the face to beautify the skin.  And Marash boy, yes, he remembers working  at the greenhouse (Mt. Tom Greenhouse, Holyoke, Massachusetts) planting, and noticing that any cuts he may have had on his hands would heal up faster after working with the soil.

The spiritual uplifting (and muscle workout) we get when we work in the garden is well known.  But the healing of cuts?  

Have you, dear reader, experienced healing, physical or spiritual, when working with the soil?

Invasive Zebra Mussel Threatens Massachusetts Aquatic Wildlife

This sign gave Marash Girl pause on Saturday when she stopped at the McDonald's on the Massachusetts Turnpike going west, just before the Lee Exit.  Curious, rather than calling the number on the sign (her cell phone doesn't get reception in the mountains), she asked her cousin, Staten Island Baby, exactly what the threat was.  It seems that the tiny Zebra Mussel (so called for its striped shell) is taking over Massachusetts fresh water rivers and lakes and using up the food supply that would otherwise be sustaining native species.  Staten Island Baby reports that "Zebra Mussels attach themselves to hard surfaces including boats and water intake pipes and also to crayfish, turtles, and native mollusks.  They are an invasive species and threaten native wildlife and upset ecosystems. Communities have spent millions of dollars trying to stop the invasion."  According to NationalAtlas.gov, the Zebra Mussel is native to Poland, the Balkans and Russia, and "first appeared in North America in 1988 in Lake St. Clair, a small water body connecting Lake Huron and Lake Erie. Biologists believe the zebra mussels were picked up in a freshwater European port in the ballast water of a ship and were later discharged into the Canadian side of Lake St. Clair."  Why does the small mollusk pose a threat to our native wildlife and ecosystems? It appears that a "female zebra mussel begins to reproduce at 2 years of age, and produces between 30,000 and 1 million eggs per year" which translates into the fact that a colony of Zebra Mussels "may be filtering all the water in a lake or stream in a day,"  thus depriving native species of the nutrients they need for sustenance.  So if you're a boat owner, call the number given on the sign above, or simply wash the bottom of your boat before you move from one body of water to the next, and if you're not a boat owner, spread the word, because, after all, who knew?

Ladybugs, Welcome!

And while we're on the subject of insects, let's talk about the beautiful Ladybug -- another blessing from the insect world.  It's considered good luck if the little Ladybug (in New England they're orange with black polka dots) lands on your person. When we were little, we would have to chant the following nursery rhyme before we blew the Ladybug off:  Ladybug, Ladybug, Fly away home.  Your house is on fire, Your children are gone.  We always felt sad that the beautiful Ladybug had such a sorrowful situation to return to, though I don't think we ever really believed the nursery rhyme.

Ladybugs eat aphids, so folks with gardens and orchards (such as we were) welcomed the presence of the beautiful tiny orange beetle with black polka dots. According to the National Geographic, "Ladybugs lay hundreds of eggs in the colonies of aphids and other plant-eating pests. When they hatch, the ladybug larvae immediately begin to feed. By the end of its three-to-six-week life, a ladybug may eat some 5,000 aphids."

That may help us understand why, in a society that was once agrarian,  a Ladybug's landing is always considered good luck.