Just before I went into labor with my eldest daughter in 1985 (sounds like so long ago!), I decided to SPRING CLEAN my entire house. Yup! I organized every drawer and closet, and tossed out things I didn’t need. Then I made to-do lists!

Later I learned that this need to clean is called “nesting” and it’s common for mothers-to-be to nest before having a baby. I wanted to get everything in my life organized and in control as I awaited a huge change in my life. Over the weekend, I got that same nesting feeling. No – I’m obviously not pregnant – but living amidst uncertainty, chaos, and disbelief in a country I used to be proud of has been stressful. I organized a spring cleaning schedule for myself and I spent 11 hours cleaning my kitchen on Sunday.

Cleaning and organizing my stuff gives me power over my life. I can understand it. I can control it. I can make it exactly the way I want it. It’s mindless work but it made me happy. I tossed out all kinds of junk that I’ve held on to for years. I cleared out my closet of clothes I’ll never wear again (probably because I’ll never fit in them!). I found quilts and baby blankets.

The whole process was healing. When I woke up this morning I felt accomplished and appreciated how my hard manual labor produced these results. I knew where I placed everything. I felt empowered – like I could take on the world. So listening to my body about nesting for my baby’s arrival 30 years ago AND spring cleaning to prepare for whatever this new administration throws before me is my way of hunkering down for the unknown. 

Did you know that only 4% of our president’s statements were completely true? He is a compulsive liar.  According to Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist, “When we are overwhelmed with false, or potentially false, statements, our brains pretty quickly become so overworked that we stop trying to sift through everything.” When we’re barraged with a stream of lies (sounds like what we’ve been dealing with for the past year), this cognitive overload makes us give up deciphering what is true and what is false.

We inevitably absorb some of the lies, and this onslaught of untruths become normalized in our brains and we just begin to accept them as truths and reality. By repeating these lies over and over again, people believe they’re true. This effect is known as an “Illusory truth” and has been demonstrated by recent FAKE NEWS.

But here’s the really disturbing part about lies. Even when the truth comes out to refute a lie, just the act of countering the lie actually reinforces the lie! Yup! The brain hears the first part about the subject but the argument proving that the subject was wrong often gets lost.  So even when there is a deluge of evidence to prove that the statement was a lie, just the act of using those key words reinforces the lie in your brain. Retracted information can actually continue to reinforce the opposite position.

Think: Hillary’s emails.  After the original accusation about illegal emails, every statement made to defend her just further burned a guilty opinion in the public’s mind. Then when Comey conveniently brought up the question of Hillary’s emails just before the election (without any further proof or new evidence), the public heard it as yet another claim about her guilt – even though it was completely unfounded.

Worst of all: The onslaught of lies becomes normalized. Not sure what will become of American government in the next 4 years. I am trying to wrap my head around what this research means and how to state the truth and be heard. 

In our fast-paced world where information can be had in mere seconds from millions of readily available sources, reading for depth has become an anomaly. Standardized tests require students to read passages quickly and answer multiple-choice questions within a short time span.  The timed test is really unnecessary and produces inaccurate results. The testing organization is not interested if your ability to fully understand, ponder philosophically, and then render an answer.  Nope!  They want to see what you can take away from the question under pressure in a conveniently short period of time. 

In order to ace the ACT or SAT college entrance exams, students flock to take speed reading classes so they can skim over passages to make educated guesses.  When students speed read, however, they don’t comprehend what they read as if they read it at normal speed. You can’t analyze or think critically when you’re reading fast. All you get is the gist of the passage, which is simply superficial knowledge.

So if students take in bits and pieces of what they read, they’re possibly making bad decisions or assumptions that can lead to big problems.  After all, it’s easy to miss important words like “NOT” and completely misunderstand the passage. Applying speed reading to real life, the speed reader would have to spend unnecessary time fixing their mistakes – something they could have avoided by simply reading at a healthy pace to understand the text.

I love the quote by Einstein, “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”

So rather than rereading what you didn’t understand because you were speed reading, just read for depth the first time.  Block off time when you aren’t rushed or pressured and then read for knowledge.  You’ll be smarter for it, and you’ll do better on any test. 

As a Japanese American, I worry about how President Trump can bypass Congress by using the EXECUTIVE ORDER privilege to “protect America.” I am a 3^rd-generation American; my parents were both born in Los Angeles and their parents were born in Japan. In 1942, my mother’s family was incarcerated in Rohwer, Arkansas and forced to leave their home and business (Yamasa) in Los Angeles, while my father’s family was incarcerated in Manzanar, California. My entire extended family lost all of their properties, businesses, and personal possessions as they only had a few days to pack up and leave their homes. They lived behind barbed wire for over 3 years.

Then-president Roosevelt signed the infamous Executive Order 9066 in 1942 (following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor), which allowed him to set policy without congressional approval – avoiding public debate and opposition. With just a few days’ notice, all 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans living in the United States were required to relocate to one of 10 internment centers in the United States.

Why? Americans were angry about the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and needed to point their hatred and prejudice toward something tangible.  While Japanese Americans were and are 100% Americans like Irish Americans, German Americans, and the other European Americans, they looked like the enemy – the Imperial Japanese from Japan. Even though the government claimed to fear espionage, not one Japanese American was ever caught doing any such activity. As a matter of fact, the Japanese American 442^nd infantry regiment was the most decorated combat team in WWII.  Talk about patriotism: They fought for America while their families were incarcerated. Wow.

As I write this blog, Trump has announced his first executive order: building his wall on the border with Mexico. He is using tax-payer money to start his wall but claims that he’ll have Mexico pay for the rest of the wall (with a 20% tax on all imports from Mexico as part of the Border-Adjustment VAT). This also means that he is hiring an additional 5,000 Border Patrol agents and 10,000 immigration officers.  With just 34,000 beds available for immigration detention, it looks like private prison companies will be utilized to handle the 8 million undocumented workers.

It’s been 75 years since Roosevelt issued the Executive Order 9066.  We as Americans need to stand up for our rights and unite to prevent any deliberate attack on any group of people.  Today it’s undocumented workers – will it be Muslims tomorrow? I’m worried about how Trump will use his Presidential Executive Order privilege to discriminate and further divide this nation. 

Will is just about done building his tiny house project.  He started it in July of this year and worked on it every day during the summer.  He got it framed before he headed back to school. Then when school started, he continued to work on weekends when it wasn’t raining and installed the plywood sheets around the house and the roof framing.  Now, over the winter break, he put up the siding, got the roof installed, and started the electrical installation. 

This has been quite an exciting project for Will because he laid out his own building plans, created a budget, purchased all of the materials, and organized the build schedule with his mentor.  As I’ve mentioned in a previous blog, Will had zero building skills prior to the start of this project.  He has learned all of the aspects of building a real house because a tiny house is a real house. 

Will plans to major in electrical engineering with a possible double major including mechanical engineering.  By spending a year building a tiny house, he has a valuable perspective from the builder’s point of view.  By understanding the importance of the end-user’s skill set and knowledge, he’ll be a more effective engineer.

The cloudy skies gave way to blue skies over Santa Cruz to welcome the 1000s of enthusiastic, peaceful people for the WOMEN’S MARCH in Santa Cruz today. I loved reading the clever posters demanding to be heard and watching little children, tweens, teens, college students, parents, seniors, and disabled people wearing bright colors and marching from City Hall to the Louden Nelson Center today.

With my friend Julie Monroe, posters, and my Go-Pro, we felt HOPE and EMPOWERMENT from what seemed like 15,000 marchers!

Check out my video clip!

I first saw the potential of aquaponics when I was at Disneyworld/Epcot on Living with Aquaponics ride (check out this YouTube video). They had a tomato TREE that grew year round and produced 100s of big beautiful tomatoes. That year, we built a greenhouse for our mini-aquaponics system that included 2 fish tanks, 1 filter tank, and 4 media (rock) beds for veggies.  This unique growing system uses NO DIRT, just water to raise fish and grow plants. The fish poop creates a natural fertilizer for the plants, which in turn, cleans the water for the fish.  It’s really remarkable that you don’t need any fertilizers or chemicals at all!

This year, Merit Academy’s aquaponics class added a floating raft bed to the aquaponics system.  Instead of plants growing in rocks and water (media beds), these plants grow in Styrofoam beds that float on top of the water.  We’re excited to compare the media beds to the floating raft beds to see which systems produce more veggies. Teaching students innovative food production techniques inspires them to solve world hunger and sustainability problems that we face today and in the future.

Being snowed in for 3 days with my daughter Nicole gave us the opportunity to talk about political issues that we hadn’t had time to discuss with our busy lives. I was proud to hear about her marching and activism to stop the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare). Yup! She and her fellow ER docs have been advocating for the sick and the poor who have benefitted from the ACA during the Obama Administration.  At Harbor UCLA Hospital, most of her patients have utilized the ACA (aka ObamaCare) for their medical care, and without the ACA, the people who need medical assistance most will not be able to afford it.  Only the young, healthy, and wealthy benefit by repealing the Affordable Care Act.  

Many Americans don’t know that “ObamaCare” IS the Affordable Care Act.  Can you believe it? Nicole says that some of her patients are confused by the rhetoric and state that they want to get rid of ObamaCare! She is surprised that she has to explain to her low-income patients that they need ObamaCare and that without it they would lose medical care, medications, and treatment. 

Dr. Trevor Wilson, one of Nicole’s co-residents at Harbor UCLA, wrote a letter that you can sign to join their movement to save the Affordable Care Act.  Click here to sign and be added to the list of supporters.

Here is the full text of the letter:

For The Health Of The People

Please read the letter below regarding the Affordable Care Act’s imminent repeal. If you support this letter and would like to add your signature below, please fill out the form following the letter. You will receive an e-mail confirmation that your signature has been added to the list of supporters.

If you would like to share your stories, expertise, commentary, or other information related to this topic, you may add an addendum to the letter via this parallel page: Stories Of The People  These responses will be made public online so please do not share any confidential or identifying information unless you are approving of it being public. 

Disclosure: We have no financial conflicts of interest. Specifically, we do not receive any funds from clicking on this site or signing this letter and do not use advertising for funding.

Letter:

Dear President-Elect Trump and Congressional Members of the Senate and House:

This is an open, bipartisan letter, written by those of us who provide and advocate for health care. Among us are doctors, nurses, lawyers, social workers, advocates, students, and caregivers who have worked with thousands of patients since the enactment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). We are also citizens who have been witness to the changes the ACA has made in the lives of friends and family.  What unites us is concern that a single act of Congress will mean the difference between life, serious illness, and possible death for millions of Americans.

Before the ACA, millions of Americans, even infants, were unable to obtain or maintain coverage due to pre-existing conditions and lifetime maximum limits. Altogether, over 47 million Americans were uninsured. For our patients, this has meant the difference between being able to pay for treatment or losing their homes and entire life savings. For others, it meant foregoing treatment altogether and having to rely solely on emergency care. Collectively, we have witnessed patients with conditions like congestive heart failure, high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, asthma and mental health disorders unnecessarily suffer from inadequate access to primary care.  And in many other cases, we have seen resultant strokes, heart disease, kidney disease or failure, blindness, loss of limb, heart attacks and other organ damage, all due to a lack of access to preventative care.  

It is undisputed that lacking comprehensive access to health care causes morbidity and mortality and results in far greater expenditures of treatment resources and costs.  Ethically, we believe that not providing adequate access to quality, affordable, healthcare for all Americans is simply immoral. Accordingly, we are gravely concerned about the threat of the ACA’s imminent repeal and are advocating that you utilize your responsibility as entrusted public servants to ensure that the lives of American children, families, persons with disabilities, and senior citizens are not left without quality access to health care.

In addition to expanding Medicaid and providing health care subsidies to millions, the ACA and its implementing regulations have also provided critical protections against discrimination by gender, race, disability, and sexual orientation; mandated maximum out of pocket costs; as well as preventative coverage for mammograms, pap smears, and vaccines. Certainly the law, as every piece of legislation, would benefit from an iterative process of improvements, however, it is imperative that any intended replacement must not fall below the basic benefits and protections the ACA already provides. read more

My kids call me a softy because I go out of my way to get my bug catcher to remove spiders from my house without killing them.  Because I don’t like touching creepy crawling critters, I’ll devise contraptions to pick up worms on the driveway and ladybugs on my desk to put them out of harm’s way.  Yet, I muse about how I (we) flinch when we hear about a school shooting or any mass shooting – for a few hours, or even days, then we move on. We have become so de-sensitized to gun violence that we don’t do what we need to do to STOP PEOPLE FROM SAVAGELY KILLING ONE ANOTHER.

If you’re like me, you’ve heard the media and watched the victim’s families sob after each mass shooting episode, but did you know the real statistics about gun violence?  I didn’t, and I’m dumbfounded by it.

US deaths by guns caused by TERRORISTS since 2002 = 17

US deaths by guns caused by AMERICAN WITH GUNS since 2002 = 11,101

We have spent nearly ONE TRILLION DOLLARS and lost civil liberties and personal privacy in the name of stopping terrorism, when Americans with GUNS is clearly our real problem. Check out this BBC article “Guns in the US: The statistics behind the violence” to see how outrageously blinded we are as a nation. It seems obvious to me that we need to lock up the guns and make it difficult to have possession of any firearm but a hand gun. 

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I just read an interesting article about how sugar is the world’s most popular drug. Those of us who are health conscious and try to eat less-processed food, carbs, and sugars, know that the food industry has been putting corn syrup and sugar into our foods for decades.  We know that we have to read the labels to understand what we are ingesting because what we eat affects our health.  Ever since processed sugar was introduced into our diets back in the 16^th century, its intoxicating effects have created addictions to pastries, candies, and other sweets. Some claim that they need sugar to overcome caffeine and nicotine addictions.  Even babies and children prefer sugar and go through withdrawals when they come down off of sugar highs. 

While it’s difficult to prove that we are addicted to sugar and that this addiction is also a contributing cause of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, removing it from our diets can change how we feel. When I was in my early 20s and 30s, I remember becoming addicted to sugar around Halloween.  I would have bags of my favorite candies in the kitchen and I couldn’t help myself when I passed them.  I just HAD to have 1 or 2 pieces – after all, they were small.  Right? And, I would have another couple of pieces the next time I walked into the kitchen, and then I would make trips to the kitchen just to get the candies.  And, then I’d raid my daughters’ Halloween candies that they kept in their rooms.  This would go on until after Thanksgiving because I would start baking apple pies, pecan pies, and pumpkin cakes.  Yup, it was a tradition, therefore it was okay. 

It wasn’t until after Christmas that I realize I had gained weight and felt bloated.  Then, like the rest of the nation, I went on a diet.  When I stopped eating candy, desserts, and carbs, I lost weight and I felt so much better.  Strangely, I also noticed that I stopped craving sugar.  So not eating sugar made me need it less. Hmm.

Now that I know that processed grains (flours) are really sugars, it makes sense to me that when I eat bagels, croissants, or pastas, I feel the same highs and lows as if I ate a candy bar. So, yes, I was addicted to sugar, and I never thought of myself as an addict because I don’t drink or do drugs. So no more sugar or grains for me!

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