Our Brain

Our brain is a thinking organ that learns and grows by interacting with the world through perception and action. Mental stimulation improves brain function and actually protects against cognitive decline, as does physical exercise. The human brain is able to continually adapt and rewire itself. Even in old age, it can grow new neurons.

Our brains are crammed with a massive amount of memories that we have formed over a lifetime of experiences. These memories range from the profound, to the most trivial.

How does our brain remember things? Our brain is a complex organic machine made up of many complex parts. Each part of the brain has a different function, ranging from operating the automatic actions we perform each day, such as breathing and our heart beat, to allowing us to feel, taste, smell and hear. One of the most complex processes that the brain has is the ability to remember events and information.

Sensory Memory is the first type of memory that the brain uses to remember things.. If the brain thinks this memory is important enough to send to short or long term memory banks, if not it is replaced or forgotten. Most sensory memory only remains in thr sensory registers for a few seconds.

Short-term Memory is different, it lasts up to a few minutes. Once a memory reaches this area of the brain it has been processed into a more complex idea. Short term memory can come in two forms, regular and working short term. .

Long term Memory is where most of the action happens regarding the brain actually remembering things.This starts with encoding. Encoding is where the details of a long-term-memory such as smells , colors or information are stored in the hippocampus and frontal cortex then take all of this information and turn it into electrical signals that can be distributed to different areas of the brain connected by nerve pathways and synapses. One part of the brain may store the smell involved with the memory, while another part of the brain may remember a color, number, or even-emotion.

Synapse==How strong a memory remains in your brain depends on the strength of the synapse between the nerve cells associated with the memory. The more you practice or think about a piece of information stored in your brain, the more that particular synapse is going to be used., it will grow in strength, this allows the memory to be more vivid and clear in your mind. If you do not access the memory often it begins to weaken. This may cause you to forget or have a hard time remembering a memory that has not been accessed in some time. Synapse is a junction that permits a neuron to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another cell.

We need to exercise our minds continually to keep them healthy. Give your mind challenges, use the opposite hand to do things, reading, working puzzle books, these are just a few. Our minds are a great gift, lets put them to good use. I must apologize for being so windy again.

Thank You

I would like to send out a "BIG THANK YOU", for all the birthday wish's, you sent to me. I love you all and consider you my extended family. I was 77 years young, ha, ha. Hope your Thanksgiving was a good one, God bless everyone of you.
Love===Margaret

"Grandmother"

When your pioneer grandmother and mine as young mothers, set out for new frontiers in the canvas-covered wagon, they carried with them high courage, a little iron stove and a hand mill.

And Grandmother certainly had need for them all. For courage meant something more to her than fighting off Indians--more than facing long, cold winters and days of loneliness, grasshoppers and crop failure. It meant getting up long before daybreak to crack the ice from the water pail for breakfast gruel, keeping up the courage of the family, with a crisp white ruffle for the window, or a new birthday dress for sister cut down to size from one of Mommy's old one and making cheery Christmas out of practically nothing.

But, hardest of all was to keep the family fed., no corner grocery store for her. Sometimes when she wanted to bake her bread, she found the grain damp, causing the mill to clog. But, day after day the little mill kept grinding and the little stove kept going. Somehow Grandmother knew these trials and worries were just part of progress, that the future would bring better ways.

After the first harvest the grist miller would relieve her task of grinding flour each day.The railway brought more people and household goods and news of our growing nation, of fashions and news from back home. But the best news to Grandmother and her pioneer neighbors was improvement of farm machinery and improved ways of milling wheat. And one startling invention after another brought better living. So the new methods of milling their Spring wheat gave them means to buy the new and better things.

Grandmother is a little old lady now, and as she sits enjoying her afternoon coffee and sandwich she remembers her little iron stove and the tiny hand mill. Seeing her bag of flour in the cupboard, with its familiar "XXXX" on the label, and now the word "enriched, she thinks. "What a long way we pioneers have come together-and what an exciting future lies ahead".

We know the pioneer woman had more hardships than are mentioned here. The illness and deaths they endured, probably made them the strongest. I always think of them in there little log home, with a roaring fire, sitting down to a meager meal all tired out from the hard day they had. I also think that those little families were more loving toward each other. The reason I think this is because today we have more to occupy our life, I don't mean we do not still love one another. When was the last time you told someone you loved them and meant it? Have a nice Thanksgiving and I found this story in an old, old Pillsbury Diamond Anniversary Recipes (75 years).

Give Thanks Party at Lynn's==Today

I am sharing three=funny stories that happened on the night before Christmas, well they were funny to us.

We were playing cards, drinking and eating at the same time. My brother-in-law, names "Shorty", guess why. He is a tight-wad and when playing cards keeps track of his money very closely. Not paying any attention, not to mention he was drunk, poured his beer into his jar of money instead of his beer glass.==year 1969

We were playing cards again, this seems to be a night before Christmas family tradition years ago. My husbands sister Karen went to the bathroom, very tipsy. Next my cousin Bill went and when he came back to the table, he was holding a very wet twenty dollar bill. He said to Karen, "it is a good thing you did not flush the toilet, this was floating on top".= year 1966

This one I think is very funny. After we were done playing cards, my husband went to brush the snow from our car. He was standing on the passenger side snow bank, acting cute. All of a sudden he slipped and went right under the car, we had to go out and help him get out from under. = year 1969

Link back to Lynn's blog. To do this look on my right side bar and you will see the "Give Thank's Party" logo, just click on this, it will take you to Lynn's blog and she has a list of everyone that is participating today and they have posted why they are thankful. Things on my thankful list are, my family and my blogging friends and our armed forces for protecting our country and may they come home safe.

Potatoes

The history of the potato has its roots in the windswept Andes Mountains of South America. It is a region plauged by fluctuating temperatures and poor soil conditions. Yet the tough and durable potato evolved in this thin air. The tough pre-Colombian farmers first discovered and cultivated the potato some 7,000 years ago.

Western man did not come in contact with the potato until the late 1537, when the Conquistadors tramped through Peru. And it was even later, about 1570 that the first potato made its way across the Atlantic to make a start on the continent of Europe. About 1780 the people of Ireland adopted the rugged food crop, its acceptance in Ireland was its ability to produce abundant nutritious food. Soon the potato would gain wide acceptance across Europe and eventually back over the Atlantic to North America.

The potato is a member of the nightshade family and its leaves are, indeed. poisonous. A potato left too long in the light will begin to turn green. The green skin contains a substance which can cause the potato to taste bitter and even cause illness in humans.

There are about five thousand potato varieties worldwide, three thousand which are found in the Andes. Potatoes yield abundantly with little effort, as long as the climate is cool and moist enough for the plants to gather sufficient water from the soil to form the starchy tubers. China is now the world's largest potato producing country. In terms of nutrition, the potato is best know for its carbohydrate content.

Potatoes are used to brew alcoholic beverages, such a vodka, and used as food for domestic animals. Potato starch is used in food industry as, for example, thickeners and binders of soup and sauces, and in the textile industry, as adhesives and for the manufacturing of papers and boards.

Today, the potato is so common, plentiful and pervasive in the Western diet that it is taken for granted. We forgot that it has only been with us for a few hundred years. And just think there are so many uses for it, such as mashed, fried, french fries, baked, raw, boiled, roasted and cubed, just to mention a few.

Sorry this was so long, but it was interesting to research, and this is just the tip of information on this delicious food. I am sure it will be included in the holiday meals, yum, yum, just thinking of those holidays spreads makes me hungry. Have a nice Thanksgiving.

My Awards

I just wanted to tell my friends that I appreciate any awards they have given me.. I don't know how to put them on my side bar so everyone knows I have received them, sorry. My son has tried to teach me how but I still can't do it. Unless he has time from his internet business of making web pages or improving someones blog or business pages or doing over all design work, I will not be able to put the award on my side bar.

I do thank you blogger s that have been so kind to award me, thanks again.
Love==Margaret
I like what drantony said in his comment and he is right, you my friends are my best awards. Have a nice Thanksgiving.

Zippers

Each day most people use some sort of clothing fastener as they go about their daily lives. Weather it is buttons, snaps, valcro or zippers. The country of Japan makes 90% of the world's zippers. The zipper required the ingenuity of several inventors.

Elias Howe, who invented the sewing machine, received a patent in 1851 for an "Automatic Continuous Clothing Closure". Perhaps because of the success of his sewing machine, he did not try seriously to market it and missed out on the recognition he might have received.

Forty-four years later, Whitcomb Judson, who invented the pneumatic street railway marketed a "Clasp Locker", a more complicated-hook-and eye shoe fastener. Colonel Lewis Walker, Whitcomb launched the Universal Fastener Company to market the new devise but short lived because it had little commercial success.

In 1849, Walter Hunt patented the device which is now known as the safety pin, he called it the "miracle fastener", since they were machine made they were inexpensive. The invention of snap fasteners have been attributed to German inventors Louis Hannart in 1863 and Herbert Bauer in 1885.

The design used today was invented in 1913 by a Swedish born scientist Gideon Sunback, it was the "Hook-less Fastener." and after more improvements patented in 1917.

Prehistoric culture fashioned straight pins of thorns to hold animal hides together. Egyptians used brooches, metal straight pins, buckles or clothes ties to secure their clothes. Romans used straight pins and clasps similar in design to modern safety pin to fasten their intricately draped clothing at the shoulder. Japanese kimonos were wrapped over the body and held in place with a sash known as an obi tied at the waist.

Buttons were originally used more as an ornament than as a fastening, the earliest known found in the Indus Valley, circa 2800-2600 BC. The Indus Valley is a Bronze Age civilization in the western part of India. Functional buttons were buttonholes for fastening clothes, appeared, first, in Germany in the 13th century, they soon became wide spread, as they became so popular in fastening clothes.

Just wanted my friends to know that the most simple clothing fastener has an interesting history. What would we do without the zipper, it is on so many articles we use every day. What would we do without zip lock bags!