Changcheng: The Great Wall of China

Ni hao, LIFEers! (That is "hello" in Mandarin.) This week our intrepid class traveled back in time (metaphorically speaking) to ancient China with the help of Professor Bobby O'Brien to learn all about the facts and fiction of The Great Wall of China.

Let's learn the fiction first; all those wonderful little things we learned about the Great Wall that give the wall its mystique, but have no basis in reality. Myth 1: you can see the Great Wall from space. People probably thought that because the wall was so long, you could see it from space. But think about it, we have highways that are wider and just as long, and you can’t see them from space. The fact is you can’t see any man-made object on earth from space. Myth 2: the wall is ancient, built before the time of Christ. The truth is the majority of the wall is less than 500 years old, built by the Ming Dynasty. Myth 3: The Great Wall has always been called “The Great Wall”. Like most walls, the Great Wall is a defensive structure, and the ancient Chinese had no more romantic notions about the wall then any Americans have about our border fences. Myth 4: there are people buried in or beneath the wall. This rumor probably started because Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, constructed part of the wall, and he was infamous for executing enemies, both foreign and domestic, and conscripting thousands of laborers to build the wall. However, bodies have only been found next to the wall, probably the remains of workers who died on the job. Myth 5: the Great Wall is one long continuous wall. The wall is actually composed of many sections, built by many different people over a thousand years. (See the bottom of the blog for a map of the wall.) Lastly, Gary Larson in one of his Far Side cartoons put forth another theory: he depicted two ancient Chinese warriors standing upon the newly completed Great Wall; one of them boastfully states "NOW we'll see if that dog can get in here!"

So that is the fiction, now how about the facts? Let’s go through the how, why and who. First how. The first builders made the wall out of the materials on hand; dirt, vegetation, stones, and compressed the pile down into a mound or levy-like structure. This was called “hangu” or a ramming technique. Later builders practiced dry-stone-walling, where trained builders carefully placed rocks so they gripped each other and did not need mortar to stay in place. The final building method used kiln-fired bricks. The bricks were made at the construction site and were as strong as modern day reinforced concrete. But even more amazing than the bricks was the mortar; made from a mixture of lime, clay and rice-flour. Today, in the parts of the wall made via this method, the bricks are eroding away but the mortar still remains.

Next up; why. Why did they build this huge wall? The wall was built for defensive purposes, to keep out various peoples over time; the nomadic Mongols, the Turks, the Shin-Nu, and possibly one really bad dog. The ancient Chinese considered the nomadic groups to the north to be barbarians; they were less cultured, couldn't write, had no technology, no agriculture, nothing that makes up the basics of civilization. For centuries the two groups would either trade or raid. The Chinese had tools, food, and art. The barbarians had excellent horses. Whenever trading ceased (either through policy or lack of interest) the raiding began and wall construction renewed.

Lastly: who. Who built the Great Wall of China? The wall began with the Zhou Dynasty (pronounced “Joe”, 1025-265 BCE). China consisted of several small states constantly warring with each other and the nomadic peoples, and the first sections of wall were meant to keep invaders out. Next, the Qin Dynasty (pronounced “Chin”, 221-206 BCE) expanded the wall. The first emperor united the warring states, and it was during this time the wall was called “Changcheng” or “the long wall”. The Han Dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) greatly expanded the empire, built many roads and expanded the wall to its most westward point. They also built forts along the wall to serve as trading posts along the silk road. Several other dynasties built sections of the wall, but major building didn't resume until the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The Ming had tried and failed to conquer the Mongols, so they built a test wall in the Ordos desert. When the wall repelled an invasion, wall building was considered a necessary part of a successful defence, and the Great Wall began its era of greatest expansion. The Qing were the last dynasty, and faced a time of civil unrest. One of their generals sided with revolutionaries and opened the gates of Beijing to the invaders. With the enemies now permanently inside the kingdom, wall building ceased and the Great Wall fell into disrepair.

So how did the Great Wall become great? 17th century Jesuits visiting from Europe visited the wall and wrote home about it, coining the term “the Great Wall”. Voltaire and a host of others also wrote about the wall, expounding upon its impressiveness and probably contributing to many of the myths still around today. But it wasn't until the last century, and the growth of tourism, that the wall was internationally embraced. Even Mao said “you are not a real man unless you've got to the Great Wall”. After Maoist China, the government began to restore the Great Wall, embracing it as a symbol of China’s history and might.

For more information on the Great Wall, please check out these books.
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Wall-China-Against-World/dp/0802142974/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288466567&sr=1-3
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Wall-China-BC-1644-Fortress/dp/1846030048/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1288466604&sr=1-1

See here for a map of the Great Wall of China, and all its many segments:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_Great_Wall_of_China.jpg

Finding Health Information

Greetings LIFEers! Today's class had something that all of us at some point will need to know: how to find information regarding health and treatment options. When seeking out information on health, there are many places you can go: to professionals for advice, like doctors, nurses, PAs or pharmacists; or you can use print resources like books, health columns in newspapers, magazines or newsletters. But today we focused on a third source of information: the internet, and Cheryl Rowan from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine joined us to teach us how to navigate those murky waters.

Lets say you are searching for treatment options for dementia. If you go to Google and type in "dementia" you will get over 16 million websites that cover that topic. Obviously you are not going to spend hours and hours going through each of those sites. If you look at just the sites that pop up on the first page, you see Wikipedia, which calls itself an encyclopedia but should never be used as a source for something as serious as health as it can be edited by you and me, which means you can change the definition of a cat to be a small breed of dinosaur and claim Marie Antoinette was president of the moon. So don't use Wikipedia.

There are four ways to evaluate if a website you are on is a good source for you.
1) Provider - who is in charge of the site? This information should be at the top or bottom of the main web page along with contact information. If you can't find out who supports the website and how to reach them, then the site is less trustworthy. Also, lets say you are looking up dementia and the site you go to is hosted by a drug or big pharmaceutical company, you should be cautious. The drug manufacturer may try to influence you to use their drug for treatment when you may have better options. So avoid those sites when you can. A general rule of thumb is to avoid .com and .net sites as they are run by companies and thus have a biased point of view. Look for .gov and .edu sites as these are government and educational sites respectively which are more research based.
2) Quality of Information - is the information expert reviewed and current? Our knowledge of medicine is growing fast, so information has an expiration date on it just like milk. Try not to use sources that haven't been published or reviewed in the last 2 years. And avoid unbelievable claims. If the drug they sell can make you live longer, feel better, loose weight and grow hair, it is probably too good to be true. Move on.
3) Funding - where does the money come? Many sites support themselves by letting companies advertise on their website. And ads can be deceiving. They can be designed to look like reputable websites when they are actually trying to sell you a product. WebMD is physician sponsored but supports itself with advertising, so you may see ads for treatment of dementia that aren't in your best interest.
4) Privacy - does the site ask for a log-in or personal information to access their site? Be careful, because sites can also get funding by sharing their customer lists, so by providing your personal information you are opening the doors for spam. The site should tell you how your personal information will be used. If you are okay with this, then proceed. But know there are many reputable sites out there that don't require this.

So now you've told us what to avoid, but are there sites we should go to first, you ask. Yes, I say! MedlinePlus, NIH, NIH Senior Health, AHRQ, National Institutes on Aging and Ask Me 3 are all sites that meet the four criteria above.

MedlinePlus - http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ - is run by the national library of medicine, so it is a trusted government site. There are no ads. Also, purple buttons at the bottom of the page will convert the website into over 40 languages, although you will lose some content, depending on the language. At the top of the page, a purple button that says "Spanish" will convert the page you are on into Spanish; a handy source for an English speaker helping out a Spanish speaker seeking health info. Health topics are listed A-Z. They have drug and supplement information and surgery videos and interactive tutorials.

NIH Senior Health - http://nihseniorhealth.gov/ - is senior friendly and focused on senior health issues. Again, this is run by the government so there are no ads. All the content is physician approved. At the top of the homepage are buttons that enlarge the type, change the contrast and even have a voice read each page to you.

Agency for Healthcare Research Quality - http://www.ahrg.gov/ - covers key topics for consumers and patients. It also has a guide for comparing medical treatments and free email updates.

National Institute on Aging - http://www.nia.nih.gov/

Alzheimer's Association - http://www.alz.org/

AskMe3 - www.npsf.org/askme3 - gives you help determining what questions to ask your doctor or health care provider. Bases health on 3 questions: What is my main problem? What do I need to do? Why is it important for me to do this?

For more information on health research, please contact

Cheryl Rowan
Houston Academy of Medicine - Texas Medical Center Library
1133 John Freeman Blvd.
Houston, TX 77030
email: cheryl.rowan@exch.library.tmc.edu
phone: 713-799-7880

Book Talk: Speak Truth to Power

This week our LIFE class was joined by Mignette Patrick Dorsey who talked about her book "Speak Truth to Power", the story of her father, Charles Patrick, a civil rights pioneer. When we think of civil rights heroes, we think first of Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks, but there were many people who pushed for civil rights in ways large and small before the national movement in the 1960s.

Charles Patrick's role as civil rights pioneer began with a traffic incident in 1954 in Alabama. While waiting to back into a parking space, a white woman pulled in to the space instead. When he confronted her about it, the lady became agitated and stated that her husband was a police officer and implied that she could park wherever she wanted. The woman reported the incident to her husband and some time later, Mr. Patrick was assaulted by the police. In those days, it was common for a black man standing in front of a judge to say "I failed your honor", a plea similar to "no contest" regardless of innocence as the law (and unlawful) were quick to lynch. But Charles Patrick had had enough. As a veteran of the Korean War, Mr. Patrick didn't want to hide the truth. He took the beating case to trial. He won the civil trial; the offending officers were suspended. The case was then appealed directly to the personnel board, and this time the offending officers were fired.

But Mr, Patrick's story goes beyond his decision to speak his truth to the powers that be at the time. It is the story of a community that was tired of the status-quo and was ready for change. Many citizens; black and white, Christian and non-Christian, spoke out against his mistreatment and wrote letters to the city government letting them know the voters would not support any elected official who opposed Mr. Patrick. Although we tend to think of civil rights as a series of a few highly publicized events which catapulted the movement into the mainstream, it was really the culmination of many smaller unreported stories of people just like Charles Patrick that caused a groundswell of action to push our nation into a new era.

To learn more about Mr. Patrick's place in our nation's history, please check out the website below.

http://www.mignettepatrickdorsey.com/

Beading for a Cause

Greetings LIFEers. This week's class was about beading for a cause. The project: lanyards. The cause: children's neuroblastoma cancer foundation. The LIFE class spent our hour happily beading lanyards, the strings that go around the neck to hold a name badge or security card. Most lanyards you buy are boring fabric or elastic, but you can turn your lanyard into an attractive necklace through beading. Our instructors were from the NB Lanyard Project, a devoted group of mothers who create and sell lanyards to raise money for the children's neuroblastoma cancer foundation.

Neuroblastoma is the most common form of cancer in infants, with an incidence rate almost double that of leukemia, and has one of the lowest survival rates of all childhood cancers. The average age at diagnosis is 17 months, and nearly 70% of children are at the advanced stage of the disease by that time. But despite these startling facts, children's neuroblastoma research is tragically underfunded compared to other childhood diseases. All of the lanyards made in our LIFE class this week were donated to the NB Lanyard Project to help raise funds for this tragic disease.

For more information on The NB Lanyard Project, go to http://lanyardlink.blogspot.com/

For more information on children's neuroblastoma, go to http://www.cncfhope.org/

Convex, Double Bevel and Chisel Point

Have you ever been out to dinner with a terrible conversationalist and thought to yourself, "someone, please, sharpen this knife"? If so, Professor Jason Moulenbelt is here to save the day, by teaching us LIFEers how to sharpen knives and other blades. (Side note: injuring yourself to get out of boring or awkward situations is never advisable. Instead, try faking a headache or an emergency phone call.) It was a full hour my friends, and the class hung on Jason's every word. The excited tension in the room was so thick you could cut it with a ...well, anyway, moving on.

Did you know that in most states you can only legally carry a blade that is 4" or less, but here in Texas, it is 5"? Which made Jason guilty of only one count of bringing a weapon on our campus, for the 9"golok, which was pretty cool. Jason walked us through the anatomy of a knife, ways to tell if your blade needs to be sharpened or honed, and then methods of sharpening or honing your blades. FYI, did you know scissors are merely two long chisel points put together on a pivot? That being said, you still shouldn't run with scissors, or chisels.

Sharpening vs honing? Who will win? Actually, you will, when you learn the right way to do both, since you will have knives in great shape, ready to cut through anything with minimal effort. Sharpness is defined by how well your knife cuts into something. Honing will make sure the blade is straight and thus makes a clean cut. An easy test to tell if your blade is dull is the thumbnail test. Run your blade GENTLY over the back of your thumbnail. If the blade bumps along, then it needs to be sharpened.

To sharpen your blades, you can either do it yourself, or take your blade to, as Jason put it, " a reputable knife sharpening place, not the mall." To do it yourself, you can use several tools, but Jason was quick to remind us that you get what you pay for. The best sharpening tools are usually Japanese water stones, Arkansas water stones, or diamond files. The stones need to be kept wet so the metal filings coming off the blade get whisked away and not embedded in the pores of the stone. Remember in the old days when your grandpa used to spit on the stone before sharpening his knife? Same principal.

To sharpen stones, pay attention to the angle you are holding the blade as you push the edge away from you. One way to tell you have the correct angle is to color the edge with a magic marker. When you sharpen at the correct angle, you should remove all the color. Also, pay attention to the grit of the sharpening material. A lower grit removes more material, but most knives don't need a low grit sharpening unless you really damaged your knife. When honing, pull the knife towards you on a firm strop. Strops can be made of many types of material, but are traditionally leather.

See the pictures below of our exciting class, including Jason's arsenal, I mean, tool display. Then read the slide show about blades, edges, and ways to sharpen a knife. With so much knowledge, soon you'll be the sharpest knife in the drawer! Aaaaaaaand I'm done. See you next week!

How To Sharpen A Blade

View more presentations from LSC-CyFair Library, LIFE Workshops.

Put on Your Dancing Shoes

Greetings LIFEers; this was an exciting week as we got out of our chairs and put our dancing shoes on! We were joined this week by John Clement from the Houston International Folk Dancers, who gave us the fundamentals of folk dancing. Folk dancing is defined as any dance that people do in a social situation. As such, folk dancing changes over time. You could argue that the rock & roll dances of the 60s were a type of folk dance, that gave way to disco in the 70s and hip-hop of the 80s and 90s. But generally, people think of folk dancing as group dances done in lines or circles with simple steps. We learned several of these dances this week.

From Serbia, to Greece to the Israeli Waiter Dance, the LIFE class took a dancing tour of Europe. Of course, mere words cannot describe the dances. To get the most out of it, you must participate. This was the first time in LIFE history that our regular meeting room actually got HOT! But the time flew by as we danced around the room, and we thanked John for his instruction and his patience.

For more information on folk dancing in the Houston area, check out the Houston International Folk Dancers web page, where they offer group dances and instruction.

http://home.comcast.net/~jnjbloom/index.html

Until next time....

Eating in the Raw

Bon appetit! That's what Julia Child always said at the end of her show, the French Chef, after teaching her audience how to cook meats, casseroles and sauces heavy in cream and butter. But as delicious as her food was, healthy it was not (unless you include the healthy French lifestyle of lots of walking and activity) which is why there is a focus on healthier eating through raw foods. Our LIFE class was thrilled to learn all about it from Elizabeth Harris, who joined us from her newly opened restaurant, Art of Pure Food.

So what is raw/pure food? Well, raw food is any food that is uncooked (or cooked under 114°F) unprocessed and organic (all natural soil, fertilizers and pesticides). Eating food raw gives you the active enzymes and nutrients that cooking and processing usually destroys. Living food consists of plant seeds that have sprouted, so their enzymes are at their most vital and active. Raw and living foods have more antioxidants, less fat, less cholesterol, fewer calories and helps you build and maintain a healthy digestive tract.

Although this seems like a recent trend, this diet has been practiced and preached for over one thousand years, and started to take off in the west as early as 1900, although it didn't reach mainstream culture until the 1980s here in America, with the publication of Leslie Kenton's book "Raw Energy-Eat Your Way to Radiant Health". Today, most grocery stores have organic produce and vegetarian/vegan sections of their stores to cater to this diet. And of course, there are restaurants sprouting up that have only raw foods on the menu. While scientists and nutritionists still debate the pros and cons of a full vegan diet, there is no doubt that a diet high in vegetables, grains and fruits is best.

Now you may be thinking, carrots and celery for the rest of my life, how exciting. But that is where restaurants like Art of Pure Food step in. You can eat many of your favorite dishes (including desserts, yeah!) following the raw food diet. And to prove that, Elizabeth taught us how to make chocolate truffles, which were delicious and nutritious, two words that I thought don't normally go together.

Chocolate Truffles
Prep time: 15 minutes - Servings: 24 truffles
Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups raw almonds soaked overnight & drained

1/4 cup raw organic cacao powder

5 pitted dates soaked for 30 minutes

1/4 cup organic raisins soaked 30 minutes

1/2 cup raw shredded organic coconut

Instructions:

Soak the almonds for approximately 8 hours and drain. Soak raisins and dates for 30 minutes, drain water and set aside. Place drained almonds and cacao powder in food processor and process until finely chopped. Add drained pitted dates and raisins to processor with almonds and cacao, process until everything is combined and mixture starts to pull away from the sides into a paste. Remove mixture and roll into small balls the size of a nickle. Roll the balls in the shredded coconut. Other suggestions: roll into cocoa powder or finely chopped nuts instead. Keep refrigerated.

If you'd like to visit Art of Pure Food, please see the link the below. They also teach classes in raw cooking, accept groups and feature art of local artists on their walls. Bon appetit!

Art of Pure Foods
14520 Memorial Drive, Suite 16
Houston, TX 77079
281-940-7382
http://www.artofpurefood.com/