Touch Your Research Articles

Stealing thunder II

Stealing thunder II

"Lean Forward and Touch Your Toes": Is Scoliosis Screening Worth Doing?

I fondly recall the eighth-grade gym where I reported for my annual scoliosis check. After a quick lean forward and touch your toes and a pat on the

Erotic Martyrdom: Kingsley's Sexuality beyond Sex

declared, Every man should be honoured as God's image, in the sense in which Novalis says-that we touch Heaven when we lay our hand on a human body! (Letters 1: 106). This belief in the divinity of the human form was the rationale for the Muscular Christian (and often implicitly homoerotic) celebration of athletic physique famously promulgated by Kingsley's novels.' However, Kingsley's reverence for the human also led him to treat sex with his wife, Frances (Fanny), as a sacramental conduit to God. Married in 1844, the couple called their bed an altar, referred to intercourse as communion, and accompanied it with prayers and thanksgiving (Chitty 80, 91; Maynard 95-96). Kingsley also claimed that in heaven he and Fanny would be united [.. .] by some marriage bond, infinitely more perfect than any we can dream of on earth (Yeast 100). Kingsley believed that the afterlife was the site of a sexuality beyond ordinary sex. Although prefigured by marital lovemaking, this sexuality was only fully realized in heaven, where spouses would enjoy a heightened mode of eroticism freed from the suspect physicality of earthly intercourse. Indeed, unless aligned with the superior eroticism of the afterlife, sex seemed unacceptably carnal to Kingsley. He wrote Fanny that [t]he idea that communion with you is a mere temporary self-indulgence is so horrible to me that if you really believe it [that sex does not continue in heaven] I could never bring myself to touch your body (qtd. in Chitty 81).2 Kingsley sought to justify his desires by embedding them within a sanctifying framework, but this strategy often had the exorbitant effect of turning Christianity into a vehicle for Kingsley's erotic imaginary. This imaginary is notable for its violent scenarios, its interweaving of same-sex and cross-sex desire, and its supplementing of intercourse with alternative modes of consummation that forgo physical contact.

A Poetic End

A Poetic End

Reach out and touch your customers

This study of 105 dining parties at a casual chain restaurant found that a male server received significantly larger tips when he touched the shoulder of the person paying the bill than when he did not touch the customer. This touch effect on tips was essentially the same whether the touch was for two or four seconds, and whether the customer being touched was male or female. The age of the customer, however, did have a significant effect on the extent to which the touch increased the server's tips. Young customers responded more positively to the touch than did older diners. Nevertheless, the older diners who were touched did increase their tips compared to like-aged diners who weren't touched at all. Restaurant managers' personal objections to promoting touching seem to be misguided in light of these and other experimental data, and their fears of legal repercussions from touching customers are groundless.

If You Miss the Sign for Davlia

IfYou Miss the Sign for Davlia Ifyou miss the sign for Davlia while on the train to Delphi be prepared for something other than the cool white ruins, the long view from the mountaintop, and the exhalations ofthe oracle: for the next stop isn't on the map, and you must get back from there. On the flat road back there is no one else save the woman in black with a rooster beneath her arm. The hills lump up morosely. The heat rubs its side against your face. You decide instead to stop in the taverna where you are the first customer in years. The proprietor speaks only Greek, but the wine tastes like evergreen, the liquor like Christmas candy or fresh plums. Downing this you forget the high flanks ofParnassus and the olive-bordered shrine ofthe long-silent god. And when the tavern-keeper's daughter enters the dusty room, speaks her message, and leaves, you want to know what she has said. You want to touch your finger to her eyebrow and learn the wedding vow ofthe orthodox, your Blue Guide crumpled in the corner. 231 You want to stay here, your dark-eyed children on your knee, telling them stories, saying the words you could not read in Davlia, the milky-colored liquor on your breath. David Faldet Luther College 232 ...

Baby on the Way: Basics (review)

465 Review BABY ON THE WAY: BASICS By The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), Literacy Volunteers of America, and the editors of Baby Talk magazine. 48 pp. Washington, DC: ACOG, 1991. MOST of the current literature on prenatal care is written by and for persons who are comfortable with the written word. But many of the infants in this country who suffer from poor prenatal care are born to mothers who never graduated from high school or who have limited reading skills. This disparity prompted the publishers of Baby Talk, the country's oldest monthly baby magazine, to team up with The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and Literacy Volunteers of America to produce Baby on the Way: BASICS, a magazine that dispenses advice about prenatal care using accessible, easy-to-understand language. Baby on the Way: BASICS was released in November 1991, a year after the successful launch of Baby on the Way, a magazine designed to guide literate women through healthy, complication-free pregnancies. To illustrate the difference between the two, here are sample passages from the first version: The increase in progesterone levels can also cause your gums to become inflamed and bleed. This is known as pregnancy gingivitis. If the swelling is severe, permanent damage could occur, although your gums usually return to normal after you give birth. Regular brushing and flossing can prevent or lessen the severity of this gum condition. and the simplified second version: Your gums may get red and bleed. Brush and floss your teeth at least two times a day. Your gums will get better after the baby is born. The demand for the BASICS magazine, like that of its predecessor, was overwhelming. In June 1991, one month after a publicity mailing to Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) and Maternal and Child Health programs nationwide , ACOG received 1,200 orders for 175,000 copies of the magazine. Since then, the demand for Baby on the Way: BASICS has far exceeded its first-year press run of 514,000. Given the content of this magazine, and the desperate need Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, Vol. 2, No. 4, Spring 1992 466__________________________________________________________ for material prepared for low-literacy populations, the enthusiastic reception is not difficult to understand. The magazine contains articles titled "Your Pregnant Body: Head to Toe," a nutrition guide called "Eating for Two," and subsequent articles on exercise, medical checkups, medical tests during pregnancy, harmful habits, and infections . Articles on childbirth ("What Happens When Your Baby is Born") depict both regular and Cesarean deliveries. A section on what happens after delivery takes care to mention the likelihood that sometimes babies who are "very small" must go to an intensive care unit, and advises "If this happens, you might not get to see or hold your baby very much. But you should try to go to the hospital to visit your baby even if you can only see or touch your baby for a short time." Articles follow on family planning, breastfeeding, getting acquainted with the baby, a glossary ("Words Doctors Use") and furniture and other accessories to provide for the baby. The though tfulness of these presentations is illustrated by the placement on the edge of the magazine page of a truncated ruler measuring 2 Vi6 inches long—this to help the reader measure the space between the bars of a crib because "small babies can get caught or hurt themselves if the crib isn't safe." Thus Baby on the Way: BASICS highlights the most important aspects of prenatal care. The writing is simple without sounding patronizing, and the fullcolor illustrations and photographs are informative and gently upbeat. There are shortcomings, however. Although African-American women are featured in photographs, only one-quarter of the illustrations feature babies or mothers with brown skin, and four of the six men portrayed in the magazine are white. I think it is important to use blacks in such illustrations; certainly the audience for this magazine is significantly black. A greater presence of black babies and families would almost certainly help blacks feel that the magazine is directed at them and reflects them. I also question...

ME AND MY SHADOW:

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and various state tax agencies are likely to touch your life as a library administrator either directly or indirectly. “Wait a minute!” you say. “We're a not‐for‐profit library and do not have to pay income taxes!” Read on. By the end of this article, you may be surprised to find that some not‐for‐profit libraries should, and do, pay income taxes. In any case, there are many tax areas that you or others in your parent organization must consider when working with these government agencies.

"CRACK" NEONATES AND THEIR MOTHERS

"This is very unfulfilling. You stay up nights with these babies trying to keep them alive, and you realize there's an unacceptable home situation they're going to, without a caring set of parents," said [a neonatologist]. The absence of maternal feeling among some crack users is chilling. Recently, in the middle of the night [the neonatologist] was called into the hospital nursery to resuscitate a one-pound, three-ounce baby, 14 weeks premature, the offspring of a habitual crack user in her late teens. "When I told the mother, (the baby) was critically ill, she said, `I was going to get an abortion, but I was too busy,' " said [the doctor]. "I said, `Do you want to touch your baby? Your baby is dying.' The only thing she said is, `What time is breakfast?' " The young woman vanished right after her meal.

Similar Reactivity Produced by External Cues and Self-Monitoring

Various theoretical explanations have been proposed to account for the reactivity of self-monitoring. This experiment tested the Hayes-Nelson explanation that the self-monitoring procedure and other cuing procedures are functionally equivalent in signaling environmental consequences likely to be contingent on the target behavior. After a baseline period, sixty female undergraduates were instructed either to self-monitor their face-touching, or to notice when a slide appeared that said "Don't touch your face," or to remain in baseline (control). Comparable decreases in face-touching were produced by self monitoring and by external cuing, whether or not the slide was shown contingent on the subjects face-touching. Theoretical and practical implications of this cuing explanation of self-monitoring are discussed.

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH CHILDREN ARE TOLD HOW TO BEHAVE CORRECTLY

Children's books during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in both England and this country frequently contained detailed instructions on what polite society considered to be good manners for children. This passage from an English children's book written in 1762 was read and committed to memory by many children in England and also in this country: Of Behavior Before you speak make a Bow or Curtesy, and when you have received your Answer make another. Be careful how you speak to those who have not spoke to you. Nothing shows the difference between a young Gentleman and a vulgar Boy so much as Behavior in eating. Never touch your Meat with your Fingers. Pick your Bones clean and leave them on your plate; they must not be thrown down. Seldom blow your Nose and use your Handkerchief for that Purpose, making as little noise as you can. Never spit in a Room. Never sing or whistle in Company: these are the idle tricks of vulgar children. Take care not to make Faces nor Wink. Keep your Hands quiet, and use no antick Motions. Never laugh immoderately at a Story told by another Person. Never laugh at all at what you tell yourself. Never talk about any Thing but what you know. How foreign all this would seem to the contemporary child!

Appeals to touch your heart — and your pocketbook

Appeals to touch your heart — and your pocketbook

Touch Your Lips with Gladness

Touch Your Lips with Gladness