Author Archive

Fun Exercises To Quickly Improve Creative Thinking by Ashley Lipman others a number of suggestions that you and your students or family can use to get the creative juices flowing. See how many of her tips you already use and consider which ones you might want to add to boost your creativity.

Getting Past Brain Blocks

There’s an old saying: the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Many times you’ll set a day aside so you can get something done. Then you get all prepared for the work, and you can’t write a word, or record a note—or whatever creative thing you’ve set yourself to do.

Maddening, isn’t it? How do you reliably, continuously stimulate your imagination productively? How do you overcome constraining mental blocks when they backhand your productive day out of the clear blue? Well, for one thing, you need to separate what you’re doing. If you’re trying to force art, just stop; you can’t do it.

The best you can do is produce an approximation of your talent which has no vision behind it, and so no “soul”. However, if you are creatively involved in certain projects requiring your talent, you don’t have the luxury of awaiting inspiration.

Ideally, you should avoid putting yourself in a position where the artistic output of a qualitative kind aesthetically speaking is demanded of you. Realistically, you can’t always do that. So next I’ll go over a few ways you can creatively unclog your mind and get things done more quickly.

1. Take A Walk, Keep A Voice Recorder With You.

A change of scenery can do a lot to get your imagination going. If you’ve been writing a story at home on your laptop, and your brain just won’t kick into high gear, maybe go to a local coffee shop that you like. If that doesn’t work, take a walk in a park with a voice recorder should any ideas come to you. Also, keep one near your bed in case you wake up with a bright idea.

Sometimes the ideas are too large for a voice recording, but sitting down with a notebook is a bit more inconvenient—still, for some, this is a better option. Certainly, it depends on your particular personality, and the things you’re working on. The point is, sometimes you need to shake things up a bit. When you do that, new ideas develop as a consequence of the change.

2. Role-Playing Games

RPGs, or Role Playing Games, aren’t quite what modern people think of when they see the abbreviation “RPG”. Today, everybody thinks of video games, but RPGs started with things like Dungeons and Dragons back in the seventies and eighties.

You might run a fast little D&D campaign to reap some of the ideas from the experience. These are inexpensive and widely available in many different iterations. D&D mods exist which have fantasy themes, modern themes, and science fiction themes; so you’re not restricted to a “classic” approach.

You don’t have to rely solely on D&D as a means of role-playing, that’s just the most common option. Also, it’s a fun group activity. Similarly, though, you can throw a bunch of words in a hat and pull a few out at random to stimulate your imagination. It’s best if you have people write down words you didn’t think of yourself if you go this route.

3. Meditation, Exercise, And Search Engines

In the morning, you should take the time to meditate. Now that need not necessarily involve an eastern religious practice. You can meditate on traditional scriptures if that suits you. You might meditate on political writings, poems, fiction, or just the outdoors before you. Different meditation motifs exist for different people.

Similarly, working out can clear your mind and give you interesting ideas. If you work out an hour a day, you’ll get ideas. Catch a few of those ideas and use them as fodder later on. The key here is isolating situations in life where the mind naturally wanders and using those instances to your advantage.

Everybody’s mind does this. Those who are the most creative have simply learned to harness the reality. But it’s easier said than done, and if all else fails, don’t be afraid of using search engines for ideas to help stimulate your imagination.

4. Music, Journaling, Doodling, And Stimulating Conversations

Music can put you in a sort of emotional fugue where the ideas flow like wine. Journaling every day can capture old ideas you can refer to later when you reach a blockage. Doodling or freewriting can pop up concepts from your subconscious, making them available to your conscious mind as you go about getting ideas.

Lastly, stimulating conversations with unique individuals gives you the benefit of their mind and their subconscious as a field for idea mining. Keep the eccentric people close, and refer to them when you have no other recourse.

Clearing The Up Creativity Blockages

Take a walk, change the scenery, look into RPGs, meditate, exercise, utilize search engines, listen to the right music, journal, doodle, and have stimulating conversations. All these things can be used to help you think of things, and be imaginative. One thing you shouldn’t do is isolate yourself in the same routine continuously. Good luck. Thanks, Ashley. She can be reached at mark@outreachmama.com.

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Education as a Resource by Jenna Smith offers several examples of how education along with the discovery and use of information is necessary for the survival of civilization and for enhancing the quality of human life. While no one is an expert in all of the topics mentioned here, they may inspire students to pursue one or any other topic that peaks their interests.

Introduction

Learning is seen as a model for self-actualization, a system put in place to teach how the world works and equipping us with tools for better living. Education is a system that gives instructions meant to provide a calculated effect. Learning provides society with factual knowledge, job skills, and cultural norms. The wisdom tools help us understand complex undertakings like: How to get to Mars, How to repair a heart, Trading in the stock market, and much more.

The Stock Market

General Electric, stock symbol NYSE GE, is a tech company based in Massachusetts in the United States dealing with energy generation, management, and application solutions. The company’s average annual price target is $9.13. Data shows an upside of 32.77% with the targeted price high being $13.00 and the low price target being $5.00.

General Electric currently has seven hold ratings and eight buy ratings for the stock. With this data, the resulting consensus rating is “Buy.” This data is collected and presented by the use of technology. Machine learning has to lead to a better understanding of the stock market and, in turn, can give you better knowledge about whether to buy a stock.

Up-To-Date Information

This kind of information has to be readily available around the world for a company to continue trading in the stock exchange. The entire human civilization uses the financial sector. It needs fast learning access platforms, including the internet, with up-to-date information about relevant critical factors to its functionality and the likes of the Internet of Things. These systems require databases of information from which decisions are made. This system contains information previously tested, observed, and stored in facilities like libraries and, lately, internet servers worldwide known collectively as the cloud.

Information in these facilities is updated with every experience that humanity encounters to prevent dependence on outdated data to improve the chances of achieving the desired outcome with each trial.

Traveling to Mars?

Humanity, as a species, depends on commonly used resources. These resources are still abundant on our home planet, but this will change according to analytic predictions made concerning population growth and demand. (Such predictions have been wrong in the past.) This requires humans to become a multi-planetary species soon if it is to survive. That fact demands more learning experience about neighbor planets and asteroids that can be mined and colonized.

The planet Mars is a close option due to its proximity to earth, which raises a need for knowledge about space navigation settlement and survivability on a planet not meant to support human life. The level of expertise requires trained specialists that can only be fostered in an advanced learning society.

Space is a wild place, and enduring there requires us to understand human anatomy and how we react to the space environment. This revelation calls for an understanding of how individual organs work and how to repair them when they fail due to the various factors.

The Human Heart

There have been outstanding achievements in the treatment of heart failure. Technological advancements in heart treatment have reduced fatalities. An example is the artificial pacesetter placement that substitutes when the natural ones fail in order to improve a patient’s mortality. With every new technology, heart failure is becoming more manageable. As of 2018, about two million Americans suffered from severe heart failure each year. This is data collected before the development of the MitraClip, which is used to repair the mitral valve, which can significantly improve an individual’s quality of life.

Incredible Artificial Intelligence (AI)

A system of passing knowledge between individuals or generations is an essential requirement for any civilization’s survival and development. Breakthroughs in AI learning helps machines perform complex tasks like collection and analysis of data by weather satellites and robots investigating the effects of pollution on our oceans. This has led to more discoveries on how humans can coexist and interact with machines. The collection and processing of data on global pandemics like the coronavirus could not have been possible without such developments.

Learning satisfies the need for personal development. Formal learning, however, is designed to ensure universal access to education, which will not always help achieve individual fulfillment. All of us have goals we intend to achieve, which requires the opportunity for self-development. Embracing education plays a significant part in individual fulfillment as it benefits society. Thanks, Jenna. She can be reached at jennaleesmith1@gmail.com

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In the final part of Steve Suto’s heart transplant saga, he shares his feelings about living with a new heart and how he is trying to be worthy of his donor’s gift. Share his new reality and join me in experiencing the inspiration it offers even for people like me who are likely to never have to face what he did. If you missed the rest of the story, here are the links to part 1 Reflections of a Heart Transplant Survivor, part 2 How to Qualify for a Heart Transplant, and part 3 Making the Wait for a Donor Heart Bearable.

Waking Up With a New Heart

I want to chronicle a hopefully finite time within “the course of human events” when transplants started during my lifetime and when someone can take a patient’s DNA and grow a transplant organ. This new organ will adequately replace the failed organ and not be rejected. Until there is no need for organ donation, transplant patients will be dependent on the humanity of organ donors and the amazing skill of transplant surgeons.

At the end of part three, I was sedated on the operating table and the transplant team at Strong Memorial in Rochester, NY was in the process of transplanting its 168th heart. When I knew I was finally going to have my transplant operation, I had total confidence in my transplant team.

My thoughts about transplants and how transplants have been portrayed during my life have crystallized into this confidence. Up to my being a candidate for a transplant, most of what I thought about transplants came from fuzzy memories of TV dramas and newspaper stories. Organ rejection was the theme of most of these dramas. I remember more than one of those stories featured people having no chance to survive without reconciling with a long lost identical twin who might donate a kidney. I remember Dr. Christian Bernard’s organ transplant team’s attempt that ended in organ rejection and Barney Clark’s artificial heart.

These developments were front-page news. That was cutting edge. (pun intended) Now transplants are still complex team efforts but they are common. The most progress has been made regarding the post-op issues of infection and organ rejection.

Tests, Tests, and More Tests

With my new heart, I was regularly tested for organ rejection and my blood was monitored for levels of meds that were adjusted as needed. I believe that monitoring and making adjustments to my individual reactions to my post-op medications takes skills equal to and equally important as anyone on the operating team.

The efficient transplant operation team took less time for my operation than the average heart transplant. During my heart transplant operation, I spent less time on the operating table than I spent on the table during either of my hip replacement operations.

Rejection is an ever-present concern for every new day in my life, but rejection is not common with people who take their anti-rejection meds as prescribed every day. Now my doctors need to deal with me as an individual and prescribe a level of anti-rejection meds that allow me to accept a foreign organ. I also need to be able to have enough natural immunity to fight off life’s other infections like the flu.

It’s funny how soon you can forget your last dream. I don’t remember dreaming during any of the times when I was sedated for an operation. A dream about a future time when not having the uncertain wait for a donor organ became a reality. It’s probably as good as any dream I forgot.

Pestering the Nurse-Heros

I woke up in the ICU about ten hours after the transplant operation. Now I’m officially in my “Brave New World.” My surgeon had done over 150 of these transplants and sometimes they leave the chest open. In my case, they chose to immediately close me up. I was sedated as necessary but the effects of my body taking to this new heart like a duck takes to water overcame a lot of this. When the fog in my head lifted enough I was ready to walk and I even surprised my wife Carol with a phone call after the ICU nurse prepared her by saying the call was all good news.

Normally nurses in the ICU have stationery sleepy patients and they don’t have to deal with patients ready to walk around or constantly pestering them for ice chips or drinks. If it was up to the ICU nurses I would have been sent back to the transplant ward immediately but my doctor cautiously had me stay there and upset the normal routine for another day. Within 36 hours of waking up in the ICU, I walked the 200 yards back to the transplant section of the floor. I think I was the first one over 60 who walked this distance. I was happy to hear my unofficial record was later broken by another transplant patient.

Back in the heart transplant ward, I was recovering in a private room displacing my friend Fred who preferred a private room when there was one available. I don’t think he minded picking up and temporarily moving to a semi-private room under the circumstances.

Time for the Grateful Dead Reference

Now Carol was given the task of preparing our home for my upcoming isolation. She had a little over a week to have the house cleaned and free of mold and other hazards. Soon I would be at a point where I was statistically safer at home and away from a hospital environment.

Driving home we listened to Sirius radio’s Grateful Dead Chanel. Somebody was reading my mind when I had a notion that I wanted some kind of divine sign. I found it when we were turning onto my street and the radio started playing the Dead singing “Truckin, I’m a-going home, Woah Woah baby back where I belong. Back home, sit down and patch my bones. Then get back truckin on.” Can’t make that one up. It happened. Johnny Cash once said that the best part of any long journey was the last mile going home.

For the next four weeks, I was tested for rejection using heart biopsy samples. Then the next four tests came two weeks apart. The next four came a month apart. Today there are blood tests available that are as reliable as those biopsies. I’m now taking this blood test twice a year.

Ahead of the Mask Game

The first six months after the operation I had to wear a mask in public or when I had visitors in my home. Alternately, when my visitors wore masks I didn’t need one. That time came and went and now ironically, I have enough hand sanitizer and masks left over to get me through CoVid.

So far so good. Today they have greatly reduced my intake quantities of anti-rejection meds and I had enough resistance to survive the flu bug I picked up on the 2019 Outlaw Country Cruise cruise ship. This bug managed to slip by the flu shot I had the summer before.

As I convalesced from the transplant I had to deal with the notion in my mind that I was now destined to be an instrument in divine intervention. I thought I was more than lucky and I was going through something extra special, and by some providence that I was spared to accomplish something of an extra special purpose that will be revealed in time.

Fortunately, I’m dealing with enough issues while recovering without dealing with being delusional. The idea of being spared for a divine purpose is used to describe a saint. Keeping it real, no way am I going to try to set out to be one of those. I’m still just an individual who has in the past tried hard and I even done reasonably well. Am I now expected to be more?

I’m dealing with my feelings that there has to be a way I can repay this whole thing. How can I come up with a scheme I can pull off as an appropriate reciprocating gesture. Finally, I face the reality that I can’t. So I need to stop obsessing about this debt.

There Is no Payback When It Comes to Transplants

By thinking there’s a need to pay somebody back in full, I’m changing the rules of the game. The deal was I should go back to my life. This notion that I owe something more was not the original transaction between me, my donor, and my medical team. Going back to my life was worthy enough. The only thing I can pledge to do is to try to grow and become a better version of myself.

I believe that because a heart is donated many of those characteristic synonyms for the expression “heart” like courage, persistence, loyalty, guts, and love are built into a donated heart because this particular heart is a donation without conditions. The vetting continues when a transplant hospital inspects the heart that the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS) found for you.

I believe that history is not just a listing of dates and events. History is my opinion the prevailing consciousness of people that dictate events. Examples include The Dark Ages, The Renaissance, The Age of Exploration, Imperialism, The Age of Reason, The American and French Revolutions, The industrial Revolution, The Space Race, and the Digital Age. These were all driven by new attitudes that spurred new science. Also, history is written from the perspective of the survivors and the winners. I don’t want my story told by an archeologist discovering and assembling clues that are fossilized.

Science’s trial and error and the experimentation throughout medical history have given us the transplant era in human history. Science might soon end this era. When organ donation is not necessary, it will end so much heartache but we will be missing the humanity of a gift without conditions. I pray humanity will come up with another worthy outlet for this expression of humanity when organ donation will not be necessary.

The Bonus Round and the Transplant Games

I’m now living in the bonus round with this new persistently beating heart. I lived long enough to be there for Carol when she had emergency life-saving procedures. She was always there for me. I lived long enough to meet more of my heroes who lived up to expectations. I lived to be on this planet when I could witness events and repeatedly say I would not rather be anywhere on this planet than right here and right now.

Examples of these times and places were two years on the Outlaw Country Cruises. Also, I competed in the NYS Senior Track & Field Games, the Florida Senior Games, and The US Transplant Games in Salt Lake City. The US Transplant Games has two competing divisions, donors and recipients. There are competitions that range from trivia, darts, poker, golf, ballroom dancing, tennis, swimming, track & field, and just about anyone is capable of finding their level of competition celebrating what they are capable of doing. There was even one organ recipient who set an age-group world record for the International Masters Track & Field age-group competition.

At the transplant games in Salt Lake City 2019, we set a Guinness record for the world’s largest gathering of Transplant Recipients. In the future with the danger of CoVid behind us, I hope to live to break that record. At these games, I took home two silver medals in throwing events for my age group and I feel vindicated that I only lost to a former world transplant champion. I hope to someday qualify to compete in the World Transplant Games.

Before my transplant, I was pretty good in track & field and I was captain of my college track team. In my senior year, I qualified for the Division III National Championship meet and got thrashed by three athletes who would become Olympians. After I graduated I competed in masters track and I was more than once a gold medalist in my age group at the USA TAC Indoor Pentathlon Championships. Two ruptured Achilles tendons in one year ended that career.

After I had both hips replaced I missed being around Track & Field athletes so I made an attempt to compete in age group throwing events. A little more willpower might allow me to lose enough weight to try high jumping again. The three medals I won at the NYS Senior Games in 2017 were mounted on a plaque and given to the nurses at the Strong Heart Transplant Unit with the inscription “The nurses told me their wish was that I get back to my life. These medals prove to them that I did just that.” I did not sign the plaque because it was about the nurses, not myself. This was their trophy. I hope it is there for their inspiration when they encounter the inevitable setbacks in their lives.

The Donate Life Booth at the New York State Fair

I neglected to mention how Carol and I volunteer to work at the Donate Life booth at the Great New York State Fair in Syracuse. Our goal is to educate fairgoers and sign up anyone interested as a registered organ donor. For the record, New York State’s Organ Donor List is more inclusive than the Department of Motor Vehicle’s. Please go to one to sign up if you haven’t already.

This transplant process allowed my body to adapt and heal in so many ways. Can anyone practicing medicine do much more than put your body in a place where you can heal? Give credit where credit is due. Nurses come back every day and provide care and comfort to patients no matter what the result. Don’t confuse doing what you need to do to survive with real heroics. Additionally, I include Donors and their families with real heroes.

To everyone out there thank you for wearing a mask during the CoVid crisis. Every transplant recipient will be taking anti-rejection meds for the rest of their lives and exposing themselves to the world as immunologically compromised.

To everyone who has stayed with my story for whatever reason, I hope I have given you something interesting to read. I might have answered your questions about living through the transplant process. I hope I did not muddy the waters. Please remember that I’m alive today because of humanity. There are so many other stories like mine out there too. Every single survivor of a transplant gives testimony to our humanity.

There is no existing product on the market you can just buy and sell that can replace humanity. I know nothing about my donor pertaining to issues that divide us. I hope that my audience embraces the spirit of “live and let live” that this world needs today more than ever. If you agree, please fulfill this part of yourself and register as an organ donor.

Thanks again to Dr.Doug Green who I will give credit to spurring me to broaden my horizons and complete this project. Now I have much more confidence in writing prose so I’m ready to take on haiku that I will self publish at the next Chinese sit-down restaurant restroom the Governor allows to open. Here goes.
Here I sit forlorn
My last pay toilet yen spent
I only break wind
©2020 Steve Suto

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