Lumigrate's Summer of Love 2012 Blanket (and Water Campaign)

Do you remember "The Summer of Love"? I was 7 and had a 'tixie haircut' we called it, as the 'pixie' was in style at that time, but I had gotten a lot of ticks the previous summer, so my hair was cut short, and each time I came inside my mother would look through my head of blond, straight hair to try to get them before they got into me.  I was completely unaware of what was going on the the culture in the United States in the summer of 1967, though for me, it WAS the summer of love: I got to see my beloved grandmother, "Nanny", after three long years of separation.  We wrote letters a lot, and she would call perhaps once a month -- 'long distance' was something of a luxury item in those 'good old days'.  

We met in Chicago, and stayed at the Palmer House Hotel. It was a lovely trip aside from that noisy, frightening 'El', the elevated train that ran around the city.  I put up such a fit when they tried to get me onto it her sister offered to take me back to the hotel. I also didn't like the kiddie-land roller-coaster at the amusement part, and looking back on things, it was very apparent I had something along the sensory integration disorder/neurological impairment 'spectrum'.  But I avoided diagnosis and treatment for that and my visual learning disabilities.  I had thorough testing as an adult through a mix of private and University-provided benefits as part of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which I utilized when I returned in my 30s to finally complete my bachelors degree in occupational therapy.  

I have an odd memory, and can remember being a toddler in my crib. While one of the memories is not particularly pleasant, the other is of 'dancing' to the beat of music being played either on the piano or on the stereo -- my father was a lover of several kinds of music. I grew up to not like the kinds of music he did, and he didn't like the kinds I did.  Like my mother, I loved to dance.  Not that I'm good at it, by any means, I'm not the most coordinated person in the world. But that summer of love with three glorious days with Nanny, I remember showing her how I could 'go-go dance' though I recall I had a twinge (more like a 'wham') of neck pain that curbed my enthusiasm.  

She bought a little trophy at the gift shop that had different stickers to be added to customize it, and "World's Best Dancer" was on it.  She also bought me a stuffed dog that I named 'Puffy Palmer', which became essentially, my 7 year old version of the doll that I had carried around prior to that, which had replaced the baby blanket(s).  She gave me a new doll every year for many years as my main Christmas present; always the same kind, which I never played with but carried around by the end of the year the pretty blond nylon hair and dress were matted and torn off.

The reason I say I had baby blanket(s) as security blankets is my mother had bought a new one and given it to me hoping she could throw the old one away but instead I ended up not allowing her to take the old one and I remember them as this mess of intertwined fabric.  It was one of her favorite stories to tell of when that was confiscated by a nurse at check in for my completely preventive tonsil and adenoid surgery at age four: "You can have THIS back, when you leave" the nurse had said, holding it up and away from her body like some kind of vermin. The next day was the first time that I concerned people around me related to bleeding unexpectedly. That might possibly be when I started realizing that there was much to learn and be wary of in the conventional medical world in the United States. 

So it might not surprise you to see that I, once again have a blanket gracing the pages of Lumigrate.com! This is our Summer of Love Blanket, and it came last week to a meeting I had with the two local providers on Lumigrate.com who are amped up as much as I am about having the local water districts which still 'feed' fluoride into the water treatment plants simply stop this unnecessary and damaging practice.  

(To make it REAL simple, if someone wants to supplement fluoride, why not let them take it in pill for like anything else we chose to supplement, why is someone making that decision for us, particularly when most people, once educated about it, don't want it in their water anymore. Old habits die hard.  Systems are hard to change.)

The Summer of Love, as you will see if you follow the link I provide, was a very interesting and important time in our history and basically, I feel like we are in another time that is going to be similar in terms of transformation.

"We are trying to do what no one else has ever done before in this
culture, and that is to find a new way for humanity."

- Stan McDaniels, in San Francisco, 1967Please go to PBS.ORG, at www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/love/tguide/index.html [1]

The "Lumigrate Summer of Love 2012 Blanket" is made by our Yenta. If you have not experienced her amazingly insightful writings full of humor and wisdom, please Search on her name and you'll find many topics to chose from.  In 2011, we had a lot of fun and interest from people with the "Peace Fleece" which "our Bubbie (grandmother) Yenta" had sent me at the holy days at the end of 2010.  I thought it was so nice, as it was a difficult Christmas for me, having had my father's life come to a peaceful conclusion, finally, on Labor Day, but she asked me to use it in 2011 to raise money for me/Lumigrate.com (we're kind of intricately connected, me and the website, it's like a child you give birth to and it's financially dependent upon you for a while, until it grows it's legs and then can, in turn, support you!

Rather than turning a blanket into a sale to raise $50 (or whatever it would be priced at), which basically feeds Miss SpoildeyCat for a month and keeps her in toys so I can get my work done, it seemed to me it would have more value if I'd have this magical, beautiful blanket get around with me a bit and create a story that went with it.  It was a success from an outreach/ marketing standpoint, and it helped raise a lot of awareness about fibromyalgia! It had a purple backing, and on the front along with the peace signs, it has little butterflies, which are the color and symbol for fibromyalgia. Our Yenta is a very creative woman, and fortunately understands fibromyalgia as she has it.  Perhaps that is part of the reason she is so wise and understanding of people who have pain and any kind of problem weighing them down.  She also loves to laugh and cheer people up, and I very much hope you take the time to read her contributions to the forum at Lumigrate.com.  

I hope that you will continue to follow us into this Summer of Love 2012 at Lumigrate.com.  Not only do we have quite a concerted effort going related to education about water in general and water with fluoride being added specifically, found at the following link: