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It’s Memorial Day, the beginning of summer, time for barbecues, picnics, swimming and boating. Or at least that’s how most of America celebrates.  And how we used to. We didn’t give much thought to our military; they were just there to protect us, but we weren’t involved. Then we became military parents. Our son Patrick joined the Army (82nd Airborne) seven years ago and served three year-long enlistments, one in Afghanistan and two in Iraq.  We learned what it’s like to really worry about a child; our hearts raced every time we heard about another IED, mortar attack, ambush.  Was Patrick involved? His phone calls and skypes were our lifelines. He’s still in the Army, now a Staff Sergeant, Senior Jump Master and Advanced Infantry trainer.  We’re very proud of all he has accomplished, for his dedication protecting and serving our country. We support our troops and the groups who provide help to all those service men and women who came home with horrible injuries, seen and unseen, and for the families whose sons and daughters didn’t come home.  We are indeed blessed. So on this Memorial Day, I ask anyone who reads this blog to think about what this day really celebrates. And maybe give a little money to the groups that support our troops. www.woundedwarriorproject.org  is one of our favorites. Here are a few others:‎ The Gary Sinise Foundation http://www.garysinisefoundation.org Healing Wounded Heroes www.healingourwoundedheroes.org Homes For Heroes http://www.homesforheroes.com Homes For Our Troops http://www.homesforourtroops.org Operation Homefront http://www.operationhomefront.net Operation Second Chance http://www.operationsecondchance.org Paws & Stripes www.pawsandstripes.org  The USO http://www.uso.org  0 0

My daughter recently called for advice. I’ve noticed that as she’s matured, she does this more often.  This time it was a sensitive situation with a co-worker who was struggling to deal with cancer in the family while working to support everyone.  Clearly what she needed to do was take on the role of mentor; it was her time to make the transition from being a mentee. When she called back to say that both my husband’s and my advice had worked, she bemoaned the fact she had no experience being a mentor. I don’t think anyone has that experience when they make the transition. You just hope that what you’ve learned from the people who mentored you and your own life experience will serve you well.  I’ve had three wonderful mentors in my scientific life, all men, and rued the day when I became so senior, there was no one left to mentor me anymore. Entering the writing world, I immediately looked for mentors, because that’s the way you move ahead and succeed.  But this is a different world.  You are not part of an organization; writing is solitary. However, I discovered my critique groups were a valuable source of support and information and that speakers at our North Carolina Writer’s Network Conferences provided invaluable advice. Who has mentored you in your writing career? Where do writers look for mentors? 0 0

I don’t know about anyone else who did the A-Z blog challenge, but it felt rather strange this week not to be writing something for my blog. Which is probably why here I am, writing something for my blog. Actually, I’ve found myself back writing my second book more or less full time, rather than picking at it.  With all the words of wisdom I have gathered from my fellow bloggers, I actually took time off yesterday just to think…about where it should go next, where all the pieces floating around in my head will fit in…and for the first time made a sort of flow chart. I am not a big book planner. I just sit down and write.  I have an idea of the plot elements before I begin, as well as the characters, but basically I just create out of thin air. Working everything out ahead of time, as most of my colleagues do (successful ones, I should add), takes the fun out of it for me.  I think it’s because writing academic papers for some 40 years, where everything is totally planned out ahead of time and you are following a format (Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Plans for future work) didn’t allow for much creativity. That came in the work itself. I’d love input on how other writers use their creativity to write: character summaries, flow charts, white boards? 0 0

Zinnias were a part of my mother’s rock garden, one she carefully designed on the side of a slope that ended at our driveway.  Their color is riotous – yellow, red, white, chartreuse, purple, lilac – although I only seem to remember orange.  On a warm day, they had a very characteristic fragrance. Zinnias are bug-resistant, but unfortunately, deer love to eat them, so I haven’t been able to plant any here in NC.  Our deer eat practically any flower that isn’t walled off.  Butterflies love zinnias, and more’s the pity I can’t plant them, because we have swarms of butterflies on our azaleas in the spring and watching them is a real pleasure. Zinnias are native to scrub and dry grassland in an area stretching from the Southwestern United States to South America, and are particularly diverse in Mexico. I read they were named for a German botanist, Johann Zinn and are a member of the aster family. I understand that zinnias are also edible, although the taste is bitter, and they make great cake decorations. Does anyone have a riot of zinnias in their garden? 0 0

The North American Yew is, to my sense of smell, like many other evergreen shrubs or trees – it has a wonderful odor when the sun warms its needles. There is nothing better than taking a walk through groups or a forest of evergreens on a hot day and inhaling the crisp smell of the needles! It is commonly used as a border shrub but if the species grows tall and straight, the trees can form a long and elegant row along a driveway or road. Over the ages, the Yew has had mystical symbolism.  In ancient Rome and Greece branches of Yew were used to denote a house in mourning. It was also planted around cemeteries because it was believed the Yew had powers to ward off evil spirits. Robin Hood’s bow is believed to have been made from Yew!  Its wood was traditionally used in making English longbows and is still preferred today. However, the planter of Yew needs to beware. Care should be taken to ensure livestock cannot browse on it, and people have died from eating the seeds and consuming teas made from the leaves. 0 0

Thanks to everyone who has stopped by my blog! I hope you enjoyed my A-Z choices so far, although some did have a yuck factor.  I’m glad there are not more letters in our alphabet since the end of the alphabet has been a bit of a headache.  The only choices for a U with an odor were urine and ugli fruit, and I’d never seen an ugli fruit.  And if I hadn’t had histology labs, what would I have done for X?  Y and Z were easier by comparison! I’ve been amazed at the writing by the authors whose blogs I have visited in return – a tip of the hat to your talents, insight, and thoughtfulness.  I look forward to reading more….   0 0

It’s hard to find an odor beginning with X, but this particular substance figured large in my graduate career.  Xylene, from the Greek word xylos, meaning wood, is an aromatic hydrocarbon. I won’t bore you with the chemical formula, and just because xylene is an aromatic hydrocarbon doesn’t mean it smells good.  It just means it contains one or more benzene rings. Xylene is highly flammable, can irritate the eyes and should not be inhaled, although if you are working in a histology lab, this sometimes can’t be avoided. Hence, I know its smell.  This chemical is used in the leather, rubber and printing industries because it is a solvent, i.e., other chemicals dissolve easily in it.  It’s also an ingredient in paints, lacquers, varnishes, inks, dyes, adhesives and cleaning fluids, and is used as an industrial de-greaser and in motor and aviation gasoline blending agents. My exposure to xylene came in my undergraduate and graduate histology courses. Here is a very simplistic explanation of where xylene comes into the processing of tissue for histological examination. After a piece of tissue is fixed (a chemical process that kills the tissue so postmortem decay is prevented and the tissue is preserved), it is dehydrated in alcohol, and then the alcohol has to be removed from  the tissue. This is where xylene comes in, as a transitioning agent: it removes alcohol from the tissue, along with any lipids, rendering the tissue clear.  The tissue is then infiltrated with an embedding medium so that it can be sectioned for examination. In truth, this process is very complex and there are many different organic compounds that can be used along the way, depending on the type of tissue being processed and what the histologist wants to preserve in that tissue. I rarely ran histological preps after those courses, but I remember the long hours spent in the histology lab and the various smells associated with the different steps in the preparation process.  And guess what? Now they have machines to do it!     0 0

I was going to do wine, but the subject is vast and I suspect many other bloggers will choose this topic. So I am going with this flowering vine which some regard as a weed, because it grows rapidly and can choke out native plants, particularly in the southeastern US.  In China and Japan, it’s considered ornamental, and I personally think it’s beautiful. The vines of Wisteria, which is a member of the pea family, climb by twining around any available support.  The pendulous clusters of Wisteria flowers, called racemes, can be purple, violet, pink or white, and have a very mild fragrance; the most fragrant species is Chinese. The vines can climb as high as 20 m above the ground and spread out 10 m laterally. The world’s largest known Wisteria vine is of the Chinese lavender variety. It was planted in Sierra Madre, California, in 1894 and measures more than 1 acre in size and weighs 250 tons. Purple Wisteria used to cover the back of the old house in which I grew up, and I remember sitting on the back porch, listening to baseball games on the radio and the sound of the bees busying themselves with what the wisteria had to offer.  With the sheer amount of wisteria blossoms on our house, you could definitely smell their sweetness, so Wisteria definitely holds some nostalgia for me. 0 0

I couldn’t not talk about vanilla, one of the most ubiquitous spices.  Its extract can be used in cakes, cookies, pies, cupcakes etc., but also with meat,  shellfish and fish.   There are many varieties of vanilla, but Mexican, Tahitian, Indonesian and Bourbon (not related to the liquor) are the main ones. Vanilla originated in the country to our south, Mexico, and figures in recipes for Mexican recipes for carrots, flan, shrimp and chicken.  It was first noted in chronicles of a Spanish expedition to central Mexico in the 1520’s, where ground vanilla beans flavored the royal chocolate beverage of Emperor Moctezuma’s court, tlilxochital.  Check out the recipes for Vanilla Balsamic Chicken at http://www.cookinglight.com/food/quick-healthy/easy-chicken-recipes-00412000068136/page55.html and Mexican Braised Chicken with Vanilla: Pollo al vainilla (Karen Graber) at http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/2262-pollo-al-vainilla-braised-chicken-with-vanilla Vanilla extract is made by macerating/percolating chopped vanilla beans in ethyl alcohol and water for approximately 48 hours. After aging for several months, the mixture is filtered. The FDA specifies that pure vanilla extract contain 13.35 ounces of vanilla beans per gallon during extraction and a 35% alcohol/65% water mixture. The resulting amber liquid is clear and richly fragrant. You probably don’t know that almost all the extract from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean is now synthetic, and not pure vanilla extract. Natural vanillin is a substance intrinsic to the vanilla bean, but artificial vanillin is made from wood-pulp by-products. Vanilla flavoring is a blend of pure and imitation vanilla, so check the packaging carefully and look for pure vanilla extract. And don’t forget to inhale its rich, wonderful aroma the next time you open a bottle of vanilla extract.       0 0