W.Va. Checks Tobacco Sales to Minors

West Virginia officials say retailers continue to ensure they’re not selling tobacco to minors.

An annual statewide survey indicates that 87.8 percent of retailers inspected did not sell tobacco products to youth under the age of 18 during 2014.

The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources says it’s the 15th consecutive year in which West Virginia has been in compliance with federal requirements that limit retail sales of tobacco to minor youth.

Bureau for Behavioral Health and Health Facilities Commissioner Vickie Jones applauded retailers and employees for their efforts to prevent tobacco sales to minors.

Brooke County Health Board Expands Smoking Ban

Beginning next summer, smoking will be prohibited in all public places in Brooke County.
Media outlets report that the Brooke County Board of Health unanimously voted Monday night to ban smoking in all enclosed public places. The ban also will apply to outdoor places like fairs, festivals and playgrounds.

 
The board previously had allowed bars and restaurants to designate 25 percent of their seating as smoking sections.
 
The new ban will go into effect July 1, 2015.
 
 

Doctor's License Suspended by the State

A West Virginia board Friday suspended the license of the operator of a pain management clinic where an investigation found syringes were being reused.
 
West Virginia Board of Osteopathic Medicine suspended the license of Dr. Roland Chalifoux Jr. at a disciplinary hearing on Friday.
 
Board executive director Diana Shafer said Chalifoux is the only licensed doctor at Valley Pain management
 
Patients of Valley Pain Management in McMechen who had an injection between the clinic’s 2010 opening and Nov. 1, 2013, were advised Monday to be tested for blood-borne infections after a patient contracted bacterial meningitis last October.
 
West Virginia’s state epidemiologist Dr. Loretta Haddy said the investigation found, among other things, that the clinic reused syringes on more than one patient.
 
Chalifoux’s medical license was revoked in Texas in 2004.
 

Mind-Body Connection, Pt. 2: The Morning Sitting

"Life without the morning sitting is like trying to walk without legs. This is the beginning, the foundation, of strengthening personal presence. If we are absent, then life is all stuff. Nothing real happens;" ~ Robert Fripp

"And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating… ~ TS Eliot

PREAMBLE: This is part of an ongoing series which deals with those physical-mental practices that have influenced me in a positive way and have helped me greatly with back/arm issues. One of the meditation-like practices I have learned is called the morning sitting. This is an extension of Alexander Technique (abbreviated AT) which we shall go into further depth in the next entry of this series.

How did you learn about this?

It was February 2008 and there was a blizzard atop Snowshoe Mountain. The trip up had been a beautiful, sunny winter drive up I-79, but once reaching the outskirts of Snowshoe, it was like entering a Stephen King novel. Up the winding mountain road, fog and a blinding snowstorm slowed driving to a crawl. Petrified by the inability to see the road more than a foot or two ahead, an angel of mercy must have led me to the fog-enshrouded “village” where the course was to take place.

It was a fitting beginning to a very intense four days with Robert Fripp and his students in what is referred to as Guitar Craft (Herein and henceforth abbreviated as GC). It is beyond the scope of this post to go into all the details of this course, but Mr. Fripp has an online diary which presents his perspective. Also, Guitar Craft has many defined terms (i.e. Guitar Craft, the morning sitting, etc.) on their website.

After dinner, we all descended to the basement and people were asked to share some brief biographical details and their goals for the course. Then Robert introduced us to the magical morning sitting. While the snow swirled and the wind howled outside, these 20 souls, 7 staff and 12 participants, listened in complete stillness as Robert lead us through this phenomenal exercise.

I became lost in a tangible silence. Silence was not the absence of talking, but a presence. A thick silence – a silence that is not emptiness, but is filled with a something. Something which defies words. From whence comes this silence? Was it our souls in communion? I don’t know.

All else faded away. Sitting in the room with us was not the world famous guitarist. All were equal, all were not one (as the cliché goes), all simply were.

Sounds like big stuff, yes? It is and yet it is practical. There is no mysticism, philosophy, religion here, but rather an awakening to ourselves in a way we never knew existed or was possible.

I began my morning sitting soon after that 2008 course, but my practice was rather spotty. I was on-off again for a while, but eventually it became part of my morning routine. At first, it’s an exercise in sitting still. I recently told a friend that, before he played a sound on his drum kit, to sit perfectly still for 15 minutes. His reply:”15 minutes? I don’t think I can lay still 15 minutes when I’m sleeping.”

What is this morning sitting business?

To be brief, it is a way of training the attention to be where we want it to be instead of it wandering hither and dither. It also sensitizes us to to our bodies, specifically our muscles so that we recognize unnecessary tension when we play an instrument or in any other activity of our lives. Over time, we can recognize the sharpening of this sensitivity as our morning sitting practice deepens. With more time and practice, an unexpected richness unfolds.

Why not just tell us what you do if it’s so practical?

Because it has to be experienced. I do not feel at all qualified to speak on this as much as those whose practice is much richer than mine. I was taught by Robert Fripp who studied with John G. Bennett who studied with George Gurdjieff. I have also taken guitar lessons with Tony Geballe, a long-time GC and AT student, and have discussed his approach to the morning sitting.

I will share what I know only by request. Send an email to (after you removed the underscores) jlange_@_wvpublic_.org.

Why do I need all this?

You may not. I do. We seem to inhabit a world that cannot shut off and must be habitually filled with noise, noise and more noise. There is no down time, nor time to refresh mind, body and soul. We must be doing something at every moment or we are wasting our lives.

That is precisely the problem. We have no “off” switch. Our minds are turbulent, grinding, repetition machines creating a mental noise which is non-stop. If the noise would stop, would we like what we would find? Who is inhabiting the being I refer to as “me”?

If this labyrinth of philosophy becomes too circular, consider it this way: because we have no “off” mode, our “on” mode is fatigued and lacks focus. No clear distinction between the focus of attention and relaxation diminishes both.

What then do we do to learn how to shut off? To be able to control our attention before the next commercial break, phone call, Facebook, text, ad nauseam?

Turns out that there are teachers who can help us.

Next: Interview with Sandra Bain Cushman – The Alexander Technique.

Annual marrow donor registry drive seeks ethnic diversity

WVU Healthcare and the Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center will host their annual marrow donor registry drive Friday, October 4th, from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Morgantown Mall in Monongalia County. Organizers say there’s an especially urgent need for African Americans to register.

 

Londia Goff is a bone marrow transplant coordinator and nurse clinician for the Osborn Hematopoietic Malignancy and Transplantation Program at the Cancer Center. She says this annual marrow drive where people register as potential marrow donors is critically important because patients with 73 different diseases, including leukemia and lymphoma, are dying for lack of matching donors.

 

Goff explains that a registry of willing donors was established in the 1980s and now contains some 14 million people. She says the likelihood of finding a match depends largely on ethnicity; those with European ancestry have an 80 percent chance, but that number drops dramatically for those with other backgrounds.

 

“It’s about a 7 percent chance for Hispanics; it drops down to a 3 percent chance for African Americans. So we desperately need people of ethnic backgrounds to join the registry,” Goff says. 

 

Joining the registry requires 18-44 years of age, a health screening, a couple mouth swabs, and maintaining up-to-date contact information. Goff says she hopes to register at least 200 people during the drive.

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