Paula Pederson's Blog, page 6
December 21, 2017
Meditation Boosts our Immune Response
Solitude Les Chatfield, Brighton England courtesy Wikimedia Commons
Deepak Chopra M.D. states that “Your response to potential illness, as managed by the immune system, improves with meditation.” Cristin Gregory of Wellbeing Natural Health guides us to the following link:
Since your immune system responds to both negative and positive thoughts, meditation creates a positive mental environment for the immune system to flourish.
A UCLA study shows that HIV positive patients who practice mindful meditation slow down the reduction of their CD-4 cell count. These are the immune cells that are associated with keeping the virus from spreading.
Meditation boosts antibodies
Meditation stimulates immune system brain-function regions
Meditation supports immune health
I plan to take time to meditate over the holidays. I hope to make a habit of it. Best wishes for a healthy and happy holiday season. I’ll meet you again in 2018
Historical Christmas Trees
Thank you Maria and Henry for visiting from Denmark and helping us to see our country with fresh eyes. Best wishes for Peace in the coming year.
Health from one Heart to Another
Visiting the Ronald Reagan Library at my recent tour to California we entered a room with decorated Christmas trees. At first, I thought it had to do with White House Christmas trees but it appeared that they each symbolized a decade of the U.S. history.
The Christmas tree was invented around the 1500s in Germany. In Denmark, we started to have Christmas trees in about 1800s. I love history and found it very interesting and had a closer look at them. The Reagan Libray is situated one hours’ drive from Oxnard high on a hill near the ranch president Reagan owned. My latest posts are from our journeys to California.
The view from the Ronald Reagan Library
At the library, you follow Ronald Reagan’s personal story and political life and you can step into his Airforce One and feel the atmosphere. He always ordered the staff to make two chocolate cakes…
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December 14, 2017
Grains of our Pioneer Forebears
Various Unleavened Breads, courtesy Wikimedia Commons
How often have we heard that “Bread is the Staff of Life?” What kind of bread depends on where we came from and how we have evolved.
A communion service in a small Maine church taught me about differences in the way we consider and partake of many breads.
RICE CAKES are made from a grain that in antiquity was rare and treasured and kept for medicinal uses. Let rice cakes call to mind men and women who are ill, especially those with cancer, HIV-Aids, and those who suffer from mental illness.
MATZO calls to mind refugees and exiles, those who have been forced to leave their home and even flee their homelands. Let unleavened bread nourish refugees, immigrants, and pioneers who must make new lives for themselves.
TORTILLAS are a staple of many families in Central America, where political violence has raged for years. Let them symbolize all people who suffer in war.
CORNBREAD reminds us of the strength of our sisters and brothers of many races, who work to overcome racism and unjust social structure. Let it recall those who have been enslaved because of their skin color.
PITA BREAD represents those in the Middle East where so many forces have created obstacles to peace.
SALTINES shall represent the elders, the “salty” ones. Let saltines remind us of those who have endured and those filled with the wisdom of their long years.
SHORTBREAD brings to mind children. Let it signify little ones, and those especially concerned with them; mothers and expectant mothers, fathers and grandparents, teachers and midwives.
These breads remind us of our forebears, those whose life flows through our veins.
May the holidays bring peace.
December 7, 2017
Pioneer Ukrainian Canadian Immigrants
commemorative Canadian-Ukrainian Stamp courtesy Wikimedia Commons
My mother’s grandparents, Sanxira and Stefan arrived in Andrew Alberta from Ukraine in 1898 as homesteaders via the Canadian Pacific Railroad. They brought their daughter Anna and her husband Wasyl (my mother’s parents). None of them spoke English, nor could they write either English or Ukrainian. Customs officials changed their Cyrillic alphabet names to Tokaruk ( Sanxira and Stefan), and Huchulak (Anna and Wasyl).
Mom never said much about her Canadian childhood. After her death I learned that she was the first of her seven siblings to go to school because Central Alberta towns neither kept statistics on Ukrainian families, nor offered schooling to non-English speaking children. While her younger brother and sister followed her to school, and after college became teachers, they only found work in Ukrainian-settled towns.
My mother emigrated to Seattle and became an American citizen when she married my father, Hans Pederson, a Danish immigrant. At a family reunion 10 years after her death, I learned that Ukrainian children were often named after saints.
Christened as Domka Huchulak, Mom may have been named after the saints Eudochia, Eudokia, or else Teodora, a Byzantine empress. During her lifetime she also went by the following names: Dorris Huchulak, Anna Doris Hushlak, Domnica Hutsuliak, Doris Ann Pederson, and Doris Ann Holden.
As the family has expanded, the originally assigned Huchulak name has evolved into Huchulak, Huchlak or Hushlak.
It takes time to truly belong to another country.
November 30, 2017
Seattle, Birthplace of my Family Mystery
Arctic Club Seattle, Wendy Wiley Photo Hans Pederson contractor
Just spent a week in stunning Seattle announcing the second edition of my book, Mysterious Builder of Seattle Landmarks Searching for My Father.
On every trip I learn more about Hans Pederson, the Danish pioneer builder of old Seattle. He died during the Depression when I was one month old.
The second edition, updated to include author reviews and an index, brought talks and an interview with Bill Kenower, whose book, Fearless Writing, will help you to do just what the title suggests. Bill interviewed me, to finish off a rainy week in Seattle before I flew to southern California to spend Thanksgiving in the sunny nineties among the palm trees with my daughter.
Here’s the announcement at the Book Publisher’s Northwest convention. Our little walrus on the front table stole the show. You can see a row of walruses on the book cover. They guard the Arctic Club, the building my father built in 1917 as a home for his fellow prospectors on the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898.
November 23, 2017
London Pioneers
As social media expands, I can no longer keep up with Critical Dispatches.com, who has branched out into Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. He used to record original London street art scenes, one shown above. He also photographed quotes on the noticeboard at Camden Road station. Here are the two quotes from the noticeboard featured in an April 2016 blog.
Difficult Roads often lead to beautiful destinations.
Opportunities are like sunrises. If you wait too long, you miss them.
November 16, 2017
Immigrants Leave Home
Edvard Pedersen, Emigrants at Copenhagen Harbor 1890
Young, strong, and adventurous immigrants lead the way to new lands They leave a hole in the hearts of their parents, brothers, and sisters left behind in the old country. North American immigrants never expected to see their families again once they made the arduous and expensive journey across the Atlantic. While the travels of today’s immigrants are often perilous, U.S. immigration laws allow their extended families to unite so that the clan may all come together in the new land.
Late 19th and early 20th century North American immigrants often came from Northern Europe — my father, Hans Pederson, from Denmark to Seattle, my mother’s parents, Wasyl and Anna Huchulak from Ukraine. Too many people and not enough farmland drove them away. Those who stayed behind had a better chance of survival.
The immigrants worked at anything they could. Farming, logging, fishing, cooking, housekeeping, and building railroads from East to West. They arrived at New York’s Ellis Island faced with the ordeal of the dreaded examination. During one part, using the same tiny forceps over and over, immigration officials raised their eyelids to check for disease. After that, the families were often assigned new names using the English alphabet.
They joined their countrymen in squalid apartments to smash cockroaches, or they settled in dank basement flats to contend with rats. Work, work, work, until exhaustion drove them to bars and brothels, or to bed if they were prudent and self controlled.
The self discipled sent money home when they could. Few could afford to go back home to find a wife. Perhaps they married a woman of their own tradition who had come over to cook or clean in some American home where she could learn the language. Or they sent for a wife that they could afford if their families paid the fare.
Today’s immigrants may obtain assistance from the U.S. government as they get established. Asian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, or African, many have been traumatized by war. They face other challenges as they try to assimilate. Few settle in to the same profession that they had before.
November 9, 2017
An Early American Depression
Lockport NY on the Erie Canal, 1839 US Public Domain courtesy Wikimedia Commons
To pay for new railroads and canals, 1830s American corporations and states went on a borrowing binge. Bonds sold to British and other European investors financed many more railroads and canals than were needed, Alasdair Roberts tells us in America’s First Great Depression, the Delancey Place January 9, 2017 selection. Panic ensued as the bonds went into default in the late 1930s.
“‘Great bitterness of feeling is very naturally felt by the mass of investors in American bonds’ the American minister to London reported. ‘Many have by their investments lost all the earnings of active life and the fund on which they relied for their support in old age.’
It made no difference to investors that not all states defaulted. Barings Bank of London’s agent confided to the Boston agent that British investors ‘in their anguish are crying out against American stocks, and we shall never be able to sell any more. . . . I have come to the conclusion not to sell any more American stocks.
Competitor Anthony de Rothschild urged his brothers to sell all U.S. investments. ‘Let us get rid of that blasted country—as much as we profitably can. It is the most blasted and the most stinking country in the world—and we must get rid of it.”
November 2, 2017
Seattle to China, New York and Maine before Suburban Motherhood
Dressed for New York City’s Easter Parade
After my Seattle birth, I spent my early childhood in Shanghai, Honolulu, and Manila. I grew up in New York City during World War II. When my expat businessman stepdad retired, we moved to Maine. I went away to a girl’s boarding school, and then a women’s college. How grateful I am for my outstanding education.
After my marriage, we settled in a New Jersey suburb to raise our five children. Good schools, along with baseball soccer, and basketball teams. Since many believed that competitive sports damaged children’s self esteem, we didn’t enroll our kids.
Foreigners lived across the street. I might as well have been a foreigner too. Coddled by private schools dedicated to my progress, I didn’t understand that sports also taught teamwork and competition in America. Through sports my children would have learned to compete, cooperate, and belong through teamwork.
They know that. Today their children play baseball, soccer, basketball, lacrosse, and golf. Most days are practice or game days. On game days, the kids dress up proudly with their teammates. Their friends are their teammates. Their parents make friends at the games. With all the time they spend with their teams, I don’t know how the children get their school work done. But they are on the honor roll.
My parents were pioneer immigrants. Hans Pederson from Denmark to Seattle. Doris Huchulak, born to a family Western Canadian immigrants from Ukraine. It takes a while for American values to percolate through a family.
October 26, 2017
Advice from a Pioneering Writer
Maine’s Stephen King, the most successful writer in American history, is also known as the King of Horror or the Master of Mystery. He has written 54 books that have sold 350 million copies worldwide, along with having the most number of motion picture adaptations by a living writer.
From Ted Pease’s September 22, 2017 Today’s Word on Journalism, A message from Stephen King:
“books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn’t carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.”
Happy Halloween
Maine author Stephen King Courtesy Wikimedia
