This week, for some unfathomable reason, the major news broadcasts took time, actually two days, to tell us about a shark attack on two young women in the Bahamas.
Really? In a world that brings us news of devastation in Gaza, a president who now says he will take over Gaza and make it into an expensive Mediterranean beach club, when young boys without portfolios are halting foreign aid that saves the lives of sick and starving children, when these barely-boys have been able to gather private information about U.S. taxpayers and other murky, not-at-all-transparent dealings, do we need to spend our angsts on the fate of two vacation-goers in the posh Bahamas? I mean, who lives in the waters off the Bahamas? Fish and sharks and, being fish and sharks, they need to behave like what they are. We don’t often go into the lion’s den and expect a purring kitty, do we?
Or is this a way of teaching us about the scientific knowledge about the diets of cartilaginous fish?
Where are the stories about the far more immediately important bird flu and its effects on avian, bovine, feline and human populations as well as our pocketbooks? What we know about the world from modern media is what the program director choses. Who or what motivates that person or persons?
Walter Cronkite, where are you when we need you?
I am no Walter Cronkite, but today I am offering my personal choice of a news story – and maybe some almost science.
There is a new Memory Café, to be called Refection’s Café, scheduled to be held on the first Tuesday of the month at St. Mary of the Assumption Church in Baldwinsville. Patterned after the Pebble Hill Presbyterian Church’s ministry of Memory Cafe, its promo reads: “Engage in fun, creative and stimulating activities. Build connections with others who understand your journey. Share moments of joy in a supportive community and access helpful resources for navigating memory challenges…” Cost: free.
The Café will meet from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. on March 4, April 1, May 6, June 3, July 1, Aug. 5, Sept. 2, Oct. 7, Nov. 4 and Dec. 2. It holds great promise for a solid something that is as important… maybe as important as medications available for those with dementia in all its varieties.
While pharmaceutical companies wander around in the molecular levels of our synapses seeking the cause of Alzheimer’s, others are investigating how the larger life experiences influence how this malady occurs and a good part of that investigation focuses on ordinary things like diet and social interaction. It is only recently that geneticists have uncovered how life experiences interact with the expression of genes. What we experience changes how signals are sent to genes, changing how they work. Called epigenetics, it acknowledges the strong influence of how and with whom we live.
Like all of the other prescriptions it does seem that sugar and other substances cause changes that are not what one could categorize as healthy. It hypothesizes that food is medicine and that isolation, loneliness, etc. also influences how we program our genes.
Being with those who care, living in an environment that supports that human need that translates into genetic expression is the current thinking. As always, as the world religions will tell us, the basic power to cure is …dare I say it … love or a reasonable facsimile thereof. If that word is too strong, then what about the concept of belonging, of mattering.
At the Pebble Hill Memory Café today, for example, we celebrated the eighth Anniversary of the café. Gathering, we shared a meal, sang songs, listened to inspirational poetry, to very awful jokes and enjoyed the rousing sing-a-long performance of the Salt City Ukelele community of joyful musicians. This ministry is a balm, a nostrum of significance for those whose memories are fading in the dark days of dementia and the loved ones who care for them.
So, the Memory Café presents us with a caring, nutritional environment, staffed by members of a congregation who makes it their job to create something greater than the sum of its parts …today with cake, music and song to celebrate … Ok, and a little sugar once in a while. It is a far better activity than swimming in waters where there are hungry sharks.
A much better, more uplifting story than governmental chaos or the bird flu, too.
