Archive | October 2011

Want Music This Weekend In Our Area?

Check this out:

Friday – Oct 21

Ragtime Willie at St Peter’s Bakery – 6:30 to 8:30 – It is gourmet pizza night – BYOB - http://www.saintpetersbakery.com/

Gene Galligan at The Brick Tavern Inn on Old Bethlehem Pike in Quakertown – 7 to 10 http://www.genegalligan.com/

Steve Walker & Friends at the Frecon Hard Bean Café in Boyertown at 8:00 – $5.00 http://www.freconfarms.com/content.php?url=/hardbean.html

Jackie Tice Ensemble at Godfrey Daniels – 7 E. 4^th St, Bethlehem, PA – 8:00 – $17.50 http://www.godfreydaniels.org

Mark Schultz and the Wayne Rangers with Beaufort at Chaplin’s Music Café in Spring City – 8:00 – ($10) $12 http://www.chaplinsmusiccafe.com/

Grace Pettis and Jason Myles Goss at Burlap & Bean – 8:00 – ($10.00) $12.00 http://www.burlapandbean.com/

Eric Reitz at the Craft Ale House in Limerick – 8:45 http://www.craftalehouse.blogspot.com/

The Fractals and Son Step at Steel City Coffeehouse – Phoenixville – 8:30 ($10) $12 http://www.steelcitycoffeehouse.com/

Weeping Radish at Legend Café – 9 South 9^th Street in Lebanon PA – 7:00 http://legends9.com/

50/50 at Osteria’s in Collegeville – 7 to 10 http://www.osteriaevansburg.com/entertainment.html

Steve Forbert and Ben Arnold at The Queen – World Café Live – Wilmington 7:30 Downstairs Live – Doors open at 6:00 tickets range from $28 to $41 – see web site for details http://queen.worldcafelive.com/

The Barn Swallows w/ The Stray Birds and Tim Gleeson at Milk Boy in Ardmore – 8:00 – ($8) $10 http://milkboycoffee.com/home/

Saturday – Oct 22

Frankie Alazar at the Frecon Hard Bean Café in Boyertown – 8:00 – $7 cover http://www.freconfarms.com/content.php?url=/hardbean.html

Avi Wisnia at Godfrey Daniels – 7 E. 4^th St, Bethlehem, PA – 8:00 – $17.50 http://www.godfreydaniels.org

Johnny Never and the Solar Pimps with Andrea Carlson at Burlap & Bean – 8:00 – $7.00 http://www.burlapandbean.com/events.htm#20110114

The Melton Brothers with Erin Dickins at Chaplin’s Music Café in Spring City – 8:00 – $15 http://www.chaplinsmusiccafe.com/

Mike Noecker at the Craft Ale House – in Limerick – 8:45 http://www.craftalehouse.blogspot.com/

Talain Rayne and Chris + Brendan at Steel City Coffeehouse – Phoenixville – 8:00 ($10) $12 http://www.steelcitycoffeehouse.com/

Steve Hartman at Legend Café – 9 South 9^th Street in Lebanon PA – 8 to 10 http://legends9.com/

The Masses at Cooper Morgan’s Public House, in the Barto Hotel – 9:00 http://www.coopermorgans.com

David Jacob-Strain at Landhaven in Huff’s Church – 8:00 – $20 http://www.landhavenbandb.com/concerts/

Panama Jack at Osteria’s in Collegeville – 7 to 10 http://www.osteriaevansburg.com/entertainment.html

Mike and Paula at the Half Moon Café in Oley – at Clay on Main – 8:00 $7.00 http://www.clayonmain.org/

Sunday Oct 16

Open Mic at Chaplin’s music Café in Spring City http://www.chaplinsmusiccafe.com/

Open Mic at Esposito’s Restaurant & Pizzeria – Hosted by Andrew Maguire 1540 Friedensburg Road Stony Creek Mills Reading, PA 19606 – 610-779-9333

This information is from http://www.pottstownarts.org

Paul Fanelli On The Air With Sports at WNPV 1440 AM

Oct28

Hey! If you listened to sports in the Pottstown area over the last 10 years or so then you were bound to listen to my good friend Paul Fanelli! He’s been keeping busy lately, but guess what? Tonight Paul is back on air, at least broadcasting over the internet, at WNPV. or find them at http://www.wnpv1440.com.

Tune in tonight!

love,

WPAZ Now The Buzz ( WBZH)

Oct28

I was just alerted to the fact that the old WPAZ 1370 in Pottstown has a new name along with it’s new programming. It’s WBZH 1370 and I certainly wish them the best in the second phase of building community radio in the Greater Pottstown area.

I’m not sure when the official name change took place so I’m going to have to do some footwork to find out! ( Ross and Dave, get ready for some questions!)

In the meantime, you can find them online or on your AM dial at 1370. Check them out and um, tell them mo sent you

love,

Wanting More Readers!

Oct28

Let’s begin by saying I don’t want more readers. I know that is a very disturbing attitude for a blogger to have. I’m sorry I have it, but hey, what can you do?

I have readers and I like talking on here with the feeling that I’m actually talking to someone, but every day when I publish my stuff WordPress automatically asks me if I’d like more readers and every day, sometimes multiple times I shake my head no.

I could sell my act, but then I’d have to have an act and this way I just talk about what I feel like talking about and if it attracts the attention of others I consider it a plus, if it doesn’t then I think so what?!

I’ve said before that I think I have hypergraphia. I think I absolutely have to write what I think. I even go so far as to hum along with my sentences to make sure they are what I want to say. If you were to happen on me doing my writing you might hear me humming along while I type. It isn’t something I’m proud of- I think it’s kind of weird but it’s my thing.

I’m just thinking that I’m like a dung beetle only I’m collecting newsy detritus. I’m folding it all up into a big ball and I’m shoving it along. Nobody can know why…it’s a mystery.

Do dung beetles care if they are being watched as they create their balls of waste? I think not!

Do I want more readers? Who the hell cares?!

love,

My Blog is Educational…Therefore I Claim Fair Use Rights!

Oct28

Every once in a while I like to make it perfectly clear that this isn’t a blog where the owner makes any money. I do this strictly for educational purposes. My intent is to create a site that might be available someday for anthropologists to sift through and come up with some answers about the human condition. I make no promises that they’ll find anything valuable here….they’ll just be able to find what I was interested in. Since I rarely go back and sort through my thoughts I wouldn’t recommend it as a helfpful practice for anyone else. Nonetheless I insist that the stuff I write here could potentially be used educationally!

It certainly isn’t feathering my nest!

By the way, if you want to send me a few coins so that I can feather my nest I think that is allowed! Just shoot me an email to find out which post office box I want you to send the moola to.

love,

How Can I Help My Child To Read?

Oct28

A lot of parents or caregivers have worries about helping their young readers develop necessary skills in order to read. What works? What should children know in order to make reading a breeze?

My advice is to “puzzle it out”.

First let me assure you that there aren’t easy answers to helping beginner readers because reading isn’t as easy as it looks. Just because you know how to recognize words doesn’t mean that your child will. Note that I said you know how to recognize words. I didn’t say you are intentionally sounding out every single word you read did I? We think all we have to do is teach children the phonics behind words and they’ll excel, but that isnt’ the only skill they’ll need. And the word blending that is required to understand phonetics might be a little advanced for newly emerging readers.

You see, reading is about decoding language. And written language takes special decoding skills. You not only have to recognize the letters, but then you need to notice word patterns and then you have to figure out how letters and punctuation get arranged on a page! That is quite a lot of information and that is why there are plenty of opportunities for new readers to get confused and feel like they just can’t do it.

One of the first keys for a successful early reader is learning that symbols can be instructions in short form. An arrow indicates a direction that someone is to travel in, or a red light means stop. Once children connect symbols with meanings they are on the road to reading. Make sure they know it. Let them learn to be proud of recognizing familiar business signs, or street signs, or informational symbols.

A second key is the ability to hold an image in their head. Superior readers can see words in their “mind’s eye”. So simple tracking games can help with this skill. You can play a game where you show a child a set of objects and then you remove one and ask the child to identify it. In order to do that they have to visualize the object in their “mind’s eye” and then hunt for it.

Clapping games help children recognize syllables and roots and their endings. So clapping games would be a third key. Sing a favorite song or call out a rhyme and clap along. Children will pick up on the way words are built.

There are plenty of other helpful keys that will contribute to a young readers success but this is a good start! For example parents might feel it is important to correct their childrens language errors. While it may be vital for a child to learn to speak properly it isn’t necessarily true that language errors will hamper reading comprehension. A child that can read ” I will do it” still might say ” my do it”. Gentle prompts will probably straighten out language errors like that.

There, I told you reading was complicated and here you thought it was easy! Reading seems easy but that is only because we know how. After a lifetime of reading it’s easy to forget how we learned ourselves!

Reading is about figuring out symbols and decoding patterns in words and language. It’s like figuring out a puzzle each and every time you read. Those of us who are skilled at reading are just excellent puzzle solvers. So if you have any early readers in your house, or you are wondering how to help a struggling reader remember that reading is something you have to “puzzle out”. Help your young reader to learn to decode words and once you do there is a good chance you’ll have a super reader on your hands!

love,

Rickets Is Back!

Oct28

I noticed an alarming story over in the Daily Mail today about children developing rickets. That is a disease that we thought was wiped out in developed countries. The bones in young children don’t have enough calcium and that comes from not having enough vitamin D.

Vitamin D comes from several foods and from sunlight but as parents are being more cautious about exposing their children to the sun because of skin cancers they may have to pay more attention to enhancing their children’s diets with some extra vitamin D and calcium.

It isn’t like this is an epidemic. It’s just a concern because we all thought we had it licked and now it’s showing up again. Black children are slightly more likely to come down with it than white children and that is probably because the melanin in their skin deflects some of the rays of the sun lowering the bodies absorption rates of vitamin D.

Let me let the professionals talk about it. This is a bit of an article from way back in 2003 from the La Times:

The body needs vitamin D to regulate levels of calcium, which plays an important role in many body processes and regulates muscle function, nerve function and blood clotting. With too little vitamin D — found in eggs, meat, green leafy vegetables, fish oil and fortified cereals — the body becomes unable to absorb enough calcium to keep bones strong. The bones weaken, causing deformities of the legs, arms, spine, skull and chest, fractures, dental deformities and pain associated with rickets.

Darker-skinned children are more vulnerable to vitamin D deficiency — and thus more susceptible to rickets — because their pigmentation naturally filters out sunlight. But exposing them to more sun could raise their risk of skin cancer, posing a dilemma for doctors and parents trying to prevent the disease. Further complicating the problem is that sunscreens prevent vitamin D synthesis.

Benefits of sunlight

Pitukcheewanont believes that the benefit of “appropriate sun exposure outweighs the risk of skin cancer, especially in children,” and recommends at least 20 minutes of midday sun three times a week for children in Southern California. Although sunlight is the best natural source of vitamin D, parents seeking an alternative can give their children vitamin D supplements.

At King-Drew Medical Center in South Los Angeles, Dr. Robert Christiansen, a pediatric endocrinologist, said he’s been seeing two to three serious nutritional rickets cases annually in recent years, almost all among African American kids. “Most of the kids I see are developing it in the first eight months of life. The ones I see are the ones that get into trouble with very low calcium; their calcium goes down and they have a seizure.”

Benefits of sunlight

Okay, so important things to note are that nursing mothers need to supplement Vitamin D for themselves and for their babies.

Also, since vitamins need each other in the body in order to be properly used there may be other vitamins or minerals that are necessary for vitamin D to be useful. I’m thinking of magnesium particularly.

You can pick up Vitamin D3 in your local pharmacy. Or you can get it in a multivitamin, or fish oil supplements.

Just think about it!

love,

Fancy Ketchup Anyone?

Oct28

Heinz Ketchup has a plan to entice Facebook friends to buy their new ketchup. It’s a little different in color, packaging and taste and it will cost a bit more. Here is a bit of the story from the UK’s Daily Mail:

It may not please the ketchup purists out there, but Heinz will next month launch a new tomato sauce, ‘blended with balsamic vinegar.’

The altogether posher condiment replaces traditional white vinegar with the sweet, Italian aged vinegar, allowing customers to ‘experience the richer, more sophisticated side of America’s Favorite Ketchup.’

The limited edition sauce will debut on November 14, when it will be available to Heinz Ketchup’s Facebook fans.

Embracing its newly upmarket status, Pittsburgh-based HJ Heinz is quick to recommend pairing its 58th variety of sauce with ‘hamburgeurs,’ ‘haute dogs,’ and ‘French frites.’

A nationwide launch follows at the end of December, when fans across the country can pick up a bottle of the $2.49 sauce in stores.

In keeping with its ‘sophisticated’ market, the price tag of the balsamic sauce sees a steep rise from its namesake original, which sells for $1.89 a bottle.

Adding to its allure, the new ketchup variety will only be sold in ‘luxury’ restaurant-style 14-ounz glass bottles, complete with a black label.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2054273/High-class-Heinz-Ketchup-gets-gourmet-makeover-new-balsamic-vinegar-variety.html#ixzz1c4fnoZOV