Timber Valley SKP Park of Oregon, Inc

By Jackie Deal

There are epidemics and there are pandemics.  To be a pandemic the situation must be world-wide.  And while we’re in the midst of a pandemic, there’s also an epidemic.  This epidemic “has been linked to increased risks of Type 2 diabetes, cognitive decline, and disability in people over 60, also death from cancer, heart disease and stroke.”  Wait a minute, let’s repeat that!  It leads to “Type 2 diabetes, cognitive decline (as in decreased mental abilities) and disability, ALSO, death from cancer, heart disease and stroke”. WOW! 

Simply put:   it’s “Sitting Disease”. One study showed that sitting less may lead to a longer life.  Now if it was something in the environment, like a plastic or an insecticide, you’d avoid it, right? You’d do all you could to prevent cancer, heart disease and stroke, right?

But sitting less?  That’s too simple, isn’t it? We like our remedies a little more complicated.  But wait ‘til you hear the remedy. “You need to move for at least 10 minutes every hour,” says Dr. Levine of the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix and Arizona State University. He has researched sitting disease for three decades. 

So how much do we sit? Well, start with breakfast, coffee, and the morning TV news: that’s an hour or two—of SITTING. TV sitting takes up a lot of our time all day long.  It wouldn’t take a lot of effort to get up and move around once or twice during the commercials.    You don’t really like those dull commercials, do you?  Why not resolve to move around during just half the commercials for a starter?  Maybe on the half hour or the hour.

”The rule of thumb in retirement is the same as during your work years: If you’ve been sitting there for an hour, it’s too long. For 10 minutes of every hour you need to be up and moving in what’s called non-exercise movement, because it’s not intentional exercise.”  (Intentional exercise would be the gym or Physical Therapy.)  A new acronym that tickles me is “neat”.  NEAT stands for” non-exercise activity thermogenesis”, and includes stretching, turning, and bending. 

Okay. Simply put: “Thermogenesis” is the production of heat in the body.  Your body “burns” calories that generate heat when you move vs. sitting around and letting the calories become fat.

 Dr. Levine recommends that you aim for 10 minutes of NEAT each hour. Exercise physiologist Fabio Comana, an instructor in San Diego State University’s School of Exercise and Nutritional Sciences, agrees, “Get moving more often with small goals,” he says. “Stretch out your entire body, all the muscles that are cramped. If you do it five or six times a day, you’ll start to notice a difference.”  How neat is that?  

If you’re trying to control your weight (and aren’t most of us?) you might be interested in “lipoprotein lipase “. LPL is an enzyme in the body that plays a critical role in converting fat into energy.  Remaining sedentary for long periods of time can reduce the body’s levels of LPL.

So how much total time do you sit each day?  Would you say close to ten hours? How much physical activity would it take to cancel that out? There’s an answer based on a very extensive study: a “meta-analysis” of nine previous studies, involving a total of 44,370 people in four different countries who were wearing some form of fitness tracker.  The analysis found the risk of death went down with “moderate to vigorous intensive physical activity” every day.

How much?  “Up to 40 minutes is about the right amount to balance out 10 hours of sitting.”  A walk around the neighborhood could be anywhere from 20-40 minutes.  And the study concluded: “any amount of exercise or even just standing up helps to some extent”. So:  MOVE IT!

by Sharon Elliott

Be forewarned, this author thinks in satire and writes in cryptic. In the event you are ultra sensitive or insulted by the use of some words, I suggest you skip this effort to be humorous.

So here’s what and how things happen. My daughters were informed that their mother was homeless, living on the street and had been taken in by a cult. A car engine in Eugene revved and wheels squealed  as one offspring took off for a drive south. Two other girls made airline reservations from both Columbus Ohio and Pittsburgh to Eugene, rented a car prepared to follow the first sister. All the while there was a lot of texting back and forth planning for an intervention.

The above happened as a result of a conversation with my great granddaughters. One asked “Grandma where is your house?” My response was “I don’t have a house.” Then I was asked “Do you live on the street then?” My response was “Yes, I live on a street.” Next the question was “Do you have friends?” I said “Oh yes, I am surrounded by people that look a lot like me.” Their father, in attempt to be funny told them “She lives in a Cult.” He then sent a text to my daughters and related the conversation in a manner that they believed their mom had lost it.

Now lets review the truth. No I do not have a house but I have a snug and ample home. I do live on a street, Hummingbird Lane and do I live in a cult. I looked up the meaning of a cult and this is what I found. A Cult is a derivative from the word Culture and is made up of a group believing in the same norms and values. So yes that word fits too. (Timber Valley SKP park has as its purpose to provide a low cost place to live for pleasure, recreation plus charitable and cultural opportunities)

How is our Cult alike and different than some more of the historical groups. Remember the Hale Bop Group. Well some of us wear white tennis shoes but not at the same time. We have a governing body but they do not serve Kool-Aid at the meetings. Thank goodness.

We are not only considerate of each other but tend to be concerned and loving toward our neighbors and friends. If we become aware of a need, we step up and fill the need. 

Our Cult’s physical neighborhood is spectacularly beautiful with tall trees, and vistas. There is a wonderful path through the woods which takes us into nature. The area is teeming with animal life like deer, birds, squirrels and an occasional bear or cougar. Then there are turkeys. No not the speeders but the two legged multi-colored feathered type. 

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and even though we cannot join together for  turkey dinner with all the trimmings there will be soup. Giving up a traditional event this year will hopefully assure one next year.

Until now I have not considered myself a cultist but I feel honored to be a member of this place.

Remember when you potty trained your children?  There were two things they had to learn:  Where and When. And wasn’t it great when they finally learned?

It’s time to potty train my telephone.  You see, every time I go into the bathroom, my telephone rings.  Now it’s possible that either my bathroom or the telephone is bugged.  (The Russians did it!) I generally carry my phone around with me, either in my pocket or in my hot little hand.  There’s a coffee cup holder on the wall in that little private room that all RVs seem to have.  The holder is black and so is my phone.  If I’m in a hurry I plop the phone down on the coffee cup holder and then frequently forget it.  You know, black on black.

Then comes the search for the phone.  Did I leave it in the car?  Run out in the cold.  Nope. In some long forgotten jacket pocket?  No.  Aw, it’s ringing.  Now the surest way to locate a phone is in calling a friend to have them call you.  (Yah, sure.)

And after a frantic search to locate the ringing phone, nine times out of ten it’s going to be a scam call.  OOOH, I hate those robo calls. Have you had the one about your grandson who needs $10,000 to get out of jail in some foreign country?  Only problem is your grandson is only 5 years old. And if you ask “Which grandson?”  They say, “Your favorite one!”

Then there’s the one: “We’ve been trying to reach you, the warranty on your car has expired.” Well Dah! My car is older than Methuselah. It hasn’t had a warranty since the Civil War. (Talk about mixed metaphors.)

The real corker is “Quick! The Sheriff is coming to your house.  Quick! Call this number before he gets there.  We can stop him!”  Oh sure!  How dumb do they think we are?

Actually, the one that really gets the blue ribbon was a lengthy message from an old high school acquaintance.  She was having the “vacation from hell”; her purse had been stolen:  all her money, credit cards, etc. etc.  Could I please send $10,000 to this foreign country (which I’d never heard of). There were several problems with it.  First she was just an acquaintance, not a close friend.  Second, she was a prissy little missy who would never have said Hell. And the rest of the slang was unnatural, sounding like a foreigner trying to be hip. I got her phone number and called her:  she was cozily encouched before her fireplace in Northern Minnesota and had never been out of the states. Someone somewhere is still waiting for that $10,000.

Aw, telephones: can’t live with them and can’t live without them. But maybe, just maybe, a little potty training might help.  A schedule: time, place, function. And flush them away when they get too annoying!

I NEED YOUR HELP
By Jackie Deal

There’s a word, or a phrase, that I need. I know it exists and it’s tucked way back in my mind. I‘ve thought and thought (a hard thing to do with so little practice.) Google it? Of course, no matter what we need; Google it, right? But the problem is: I don’t know what the word is that I want to Google. I tried and Google just got into a snit and so did I. I even threatened to flush it down the toilet, but it knew better.

Dictionaries! AW! I have two huge dictionaries that I haven’t used since Google and Yahoo came along. Down on my hand and knees to dig them out of the bottom of the book case. Ugh! They weigh a ton. Blow off the dust. And then realize. You can’t look up a word if you don’t have a word to look up! Remember when your kids were little: “Mmmaaaa, how do you spell it?” And you said, “Look it up” and they said, “Mmmmaaa, how can I look it up if I can’t spell it?” Smart alecks!

Aw Ha! Roget’s Thesaurus. What a waste of time. Nothing even close. Can’t find antonyms and synonyms if you don’t have a word to begin with.

So what is this word I’m so steamed up about? Okay, let me explain. You know how after something bad goes along for a long, long time and you have to be on high alert and then eventually you begin to not really care anymore? It’s sorta like burn-out, only that’s not really it. It’s maybe what happens down in Louisiana or Mississippi (remember learning to spell that in grade school? M-i- curly que-curly que-i curly que-curly que- i-humpback-humpback i.) Now if you’ve just moved there, (no matter how it’s spelled) and there’s an evacuation ordered for hurricanes or tornadoes. You leap into the car, Whoops! Grab the kids and the dog and then leap into the car. But as it happens over and over you move slower and finally you say, “Aw what the heck, it’s just hype.” And you don’t leave.

It happened in London during the bombing by Hitler. At first everyone dashed into the shelters and stayed down low. But night after night when they weren’t hit; well, finally some of them didn’t run so fast or didn’t run at all. Unfortunately, then some of them never ran again.

It’s an actual medical condition. You can tolerate a condition of high adrenalin just so long. Adrenalin is the old “Fight or Flight” hormone. The Siberian tiger is attacking and you need to fight or get the blazes out of there. Nowadays, there’s no tiger but there’s still fearful and stressful situations and the adrenalin response kicks in. Continued high adrenalin can lead to high blood pressure, strokes and heart attacks.

But what I’m thinking of is more the emotional response. For seven month or so we’ve been on high alert. Social distancing: had you ever heard of that before the corona virus? Masks. Wash your hands. It’s posted on every doorway and in practically every bathroom. Don’t shake hands, don’t hug (What does a hug feel like?). And slowly we’re becoming a little lax.

We don’t know how much longer this will last. We do know that it’s supposed to get worse with the flu hitting, school starting and indoor gatherings in cold weather. Sounds like we should be more vigilant rather than less. But Oh. Ho hum.

And then we read the statistics: more covid positives this week than ever before. More deaths. Worldwide. And yes, right in our own counties and communities. Somehow we’ve got to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and remain vigilant. We’ve got to fight against that word that I can’t remember. Can you help me out? What is the word that I wanted to use for a title for this piece?