Here in Highland Park, New Jersey

I decided to do a post on something that won’t kill you: Lice. Yes, we had our experiences last year with those itty bitty critters. I cannot remember any incident with lice when I was growing. Never got checked, ever. Lice were something we discussed at Pesach time. Nowadays, every other person with kids is trading stories…

I would like to save you some money. You see, we were told that my boys had lice, but we were not told how to treat the stuff. Or we were told (and bought) many things, many of which were marginally helpful or plain old useless. So, I will now tell you the most important piece:

Get a good lice comb!

Here’s the one I purchased. The key is the comb should be metal, and the teeth of the comb need to be close together, or else the nits will just stay put. One comb I purchased had teeth so close together it pulled out much hair. The LiceMeister comb has served me well, and I boil it and clean it and then lend it to others with nitty bitty problems.

OK, so you’ve got your comb. And comb you will: comb and comb and comb some more. And one nurse asked me if I was right-handed. Why? She noticed I had no nits on the right side of my head and just two or three on the left-side. So be sure to comb both sides of your head, too.

Your kid comes home with lice. First, you have to get rid of the live ones. Kill them with olive oil. Mayonnaise works, too. I recently learned of a great other choice: Pantene Conditioner. I was told it’s got to be Pantene.

By the way, the Nix shampoo your doctor may tell you to use, besides having all those lovely chemicals, is probably resistant to the current strain of lice. Stick to the olive oil.

Shmear the olive oil through your child’s hair. Wait a few hours. Comb, comb, comb. You should be combing out dead bugs now, not live ones. The olive oil (or mayonnaise or pantene) has suffocated them.

Your next task is the nits. This is the hard part. The old-fashioned way is to nit-pick each one out. I did comb, comb, comb, and I got them out. The thing about the nits is they have a natural glue. So they want to stay on the hair, not leave. We used white vinegar to unglue them. We also used some Rite Aid anti-nit glue that may or may not have helped. Since our own experience with lice, I’ve learned that a combination of Pantene Conditioner and baking soda can help remove the nits. And comb, comb, comb. Baby wipes to clean off the comb in between combings can help. But you can also use paper towels or napkins…no need to run out just for the baby wipes.

Feel free to share your own stories or removal formulas.

My mother, z”l (zichrona l’bracha, may her memory be a blessing), called it ‘the Big C.’ She couldn’t say its real name, Cancer. That would be too much of an admission of its arrival, of the arrival of this dreaded, unwelcome guest. My mother was diagnosed with colon cancer soon after my wedding. The early years of my marriage and of my sons’ babyhoods were marked by worry about how was she doing, how much longer would she be with us, could we do anything at all to reverse the decree, as it felt to us. The doctor gave her less than two years to live; she lived for more than five. Part of her longer survival might have been due to the force of the chemotherapy. My father’s care for her helped, too. A large part was her own desire to live just a bit longer, to see a few more grandchildren born, to dance at a few more simchas.

Unfortunately, I have been impacted by cancer much of my life. In 4th grade, a dear boy in my class died of this disease. Would I get a lump on my leg, too? I used to think. Every ache and pain for the next few years scared me. There was a little girl whose family had come all the way from Israel to the Boston area so she could be treated for cancer. The little girl lived a few more years, but then she too succumbed. As the years rolled passed, I learned of adults who had died of cancer. A friend’s aunt. A friend’s father. An aunt in Israel.

In my twenties, a friend’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. I remember how warm a woman she was. I loved going to her home on Shabbat, the table spread with delicacies, and her warm smile making me feel welcome. Once, I went with my friend and her family on a hike in Maine. Out in the woods, we cooked hot dogs over an open fire. I remember her mother said: “I never ate these before I was diagnosed. I always avoided food like this (hot dogs). But now, what does it matter.” What a sad, sad day it was when we attended her funeral.

Years later, my friend would blame fat. “My mother made everything with fat, fat, fat,” she would say. What kind of fat wasn’t clear. One can only guess (saturated animal fat at the main course, with hydrogenated fat for dessert? With some rancid, overcooked oils thrown in anywhere?) Her father, too, would be stricken; about a year or two before my mother died, her father died of prostate cancer.

How I got stuck on the cancer and nutrition link and continue to follow this issue is a subject for another post. I can only write so much on this topic without feeling emotionally drained.

But I will say this: remember how my friend’s mother never ate hot dogs before she got sick? I gradually came to the opposite conclusion. Giving up hot dogs wasn’t merely enough. The food pyramid that we are taught about nutrition isn’t enough. There’s a lot to know about nutrition, and all our bodies are different.

In memory of my dear mother, here are some of her paintings.

I find the History of Health fascinating. So I decided to share this news:

Study says Black Death did not kill indiscriminately
(Reuters)
The Black Death that decimated populations in Europe and elsewhere during the middle of the 14th century may not have been a blindly indiscriminate killer, as some experts have believed.

An analysis of 490 skeletons from a London cemetery for Black Death victims demonstrated that the infection did not affect everyone equally, two U.S. scientists said on Monday.

While many perfectly healthy people certainly were cut down, those already in poor health prior to the arrival of the plague were more likely to have perished, they found.

Guess what? This is another “Eat your veggies” post. Health is in your control, up to a point. Take care of yourself, and you may be able to ward off even the Black Death!

Sharon DeWitte analyzed skeletons unearthed from the East Smithfield cemetery in London, dug especially for plague victims and excavated in the 1980s, for bone and teeth abnormalities that would show that people had health problems before they died of plague.

She found such abnormalities in many skeletons, suggesting these people had experienced malnutrition, iron deficiencies and infections well before succumbing to the Black Death.

More on nutrition in a future post. Or maybe a recipe soon… Jill cooked up a soup, and I photographed some homemade croutons and an apple pie.

When I first blogged about the cemetery vandalism in New Brunswick, I wrote Are we in Eastern Europe? I am pleased to say we are not. What is the difference? Here in Central New Jersey, not only is the Jewish community reacting with shock to the recent vandalism, but there is also condemnation from the general community.

From today’s Daily Targum, the Rutgers student newspaper:

“It is one of the most dramatic events you [can] see in a physical sense,” said Rutgers University Student Assembly treasurer Yonaton Yares, a School of Arts and Sciences student.

RUSA unanimously passed a resolution Thursday to get students involved in the site’s repair.

Members of the assembly said such a resolution was necessary in order to make a statement on behalf of the student body that such acts are unacceptable.

“[The resolution] shows that Rutgers University doesn’t tolerate that kind of crime, because we don’t want to destroy our diversity,” said College Avenue Council Vice President Yelena Shvarts, a Rutgers College junior.

The key to preventing such acts from occurring in the future is to become opinionated, said RUSA recording secretary Kathryn Jenkins, a Douglass College student.

Yares said this incident has brought together members of Rutgers Hillel.

“We have decided to say that Rutgers students - Jewish, non-Jewish, black, white or Latino - all care about this,” he said.

RUSA hopes the assembly can generate the same solidarity among students that the University community demonstrated during the Don Imus controversy last year to prevent future acts from occurring.

“When someone goes on the radio and attacks our women’s basketball team, they don’t just attack those women. They attack the entire Rutgers community,” said RUSA chair Jim Kline, a Rutgers College senior. “The same goes when you attack the Rutgers community and what it stands for.”

Surveyors are beginning to assess the damage done to the site in an attempt to estimate the amount that repairs will cost.

A week after the incident, four teenagers were arrested and charged for committing the vandalism, though the acts were not deemed anti-Semitic by authorities, according to The Associated Press.

But Kline said the acts are upsetting to the Jewish community.

“I think our voice as the student body lends an olive branch to the Jewish community. It allows students to enter into this dialogue about racism, sexism and, in this case, anti-Semitism,” Kline said. “It’s important to have these conversations now that we live in this bubble where we can openly discuss ideas and thoughts.”

Somehow I think there is a connection to the film I viewed by a Franklin Township student yesterday. Sonal Thawani’s film “Take a Stand Against Violence,” a 6-minute piece showed the positive action taken by her community’s youth in response to the recent violence in her township. It was heartening to see in Sonal’s film that many people in her community wanted to see a stop to the violence. Likewise, we all would like cemetery desecration to stop as well.

My main thought is it is easier to teach a five-year old to respect property, respect the dead, and respect others than a 17 year old. And as both cemetery desecration and violence against one’s peers reflect poor anger management, some kind of positive channeling is needed at a young age. I hardly profess to have answers, but I am good at asking the questions.

The Highland Park Library Teen Film Festival screened a variety of movies by local teens today. Some movies, like my son’s, were fiction mysteries. One well-executed film by a Franklin Township teen was about community efforts to stop local violence. A few of the Highland Park teens have been taking a film class in Princeton, and their films were highly edited and quite artsy. The range of creativity one can produce with a camera is striking. Michelle Reasso, the hard-working, encouraging teen librarian, worked with her son and another teen to create a trailer for a zombie movie. She remarked how difficult it was to produce a film. First one had to come up with a plot, then one had to decide where and when to film and find others to be characters in the film, then one had to edit the film. She said everyone wanted to be a zombie, but when the time came to actually shoot the movie, no one was available (except for a teen filmmaker’s father, who reluctantly took on the role).

Here’s a picture of one of my son’s films, with his main character Professor Quack, who solves mysteries complete with British accent somewhere in London (actual filming is done in my basement):

With the full audience in the room, there was lots of enthusiasm for a teen film festival next year. After all, the zombie movie is so far only a trailer…

My son found a new addictive online game:
http://www.mofunzone.com/online_games/how_well_do_you_know_your_world_.shtml

You click on places on a world map. The more accurate you are, the more points you get. It goes from easy to expert. I’ve gotten up to level 10; my boys could not get past level 6. Now I know where Timor, Belize and Benin are.