No Place for Palmistry at the Library

A library system in South Carolina had to cancel their summer program for youths after being accused of promoting witchcraft and drug use, and receiving threats by telephone and email. Their planned program included palmistry and tarot, which didn't sit well with members of a local Baptist church.

School Library Journal: The Pickens County Library System’s half-hour summer programs for middle and high school students were supposed to take a light-hearted look at the topics "Secrets and Spies: How to Keep a Secret by Writing in Code or Making Invisible Ink" and "What’s Your Sign?" Another program was to examine astrology, palmistry, and numerology; and others were to feature tarot cards, tie-dying t-shirts, how to make a Zen garden, and yoga.

Now the programs are cancelled in the wake of phone and e-mail threats from the community, believed to emanate from a single local Baptist church. The astrology program was labeled as "witchcraft" by callers, while the Zen garden and yoga programs were objected to as "promoting other religions." The t-shirts workshop? "Promotes the hippie culture and drug use," callers said.

"If you have an anonymous call of a bomb, what do you do?" asks Library Director Marguerite Keenan, explaining her decision to cancel the YA programs. "You clear the building, you close the building for the protection of the children. And that’s hugely sad."

Keenan says that the stream of threatening 20 or 30 anonymous phone calls, plus e-mails, began two weeks ago. Callers spoke of "picketing" the county’s four libraries and made statements such as "We’re going to get you" and "How dare you?"

Palmistry on Facebook

OK, so I'm way behind the times. Yesterday I found out about facebook.com after receiving an invitation to join. Turns out they already have over 24 million members, and almost 300,000 in just the Greater Vancouver area.

It looks like I'm not the only hand analyst late getting onto facebook. If you search for "palmistry" the total is only 11 people and 5 groups listed. Compare that to the people interested in "meditation" where there are hundreds of listings, more than 500 groups, and 96 events.

So why are there so few interested in palmistry on facebook? Maybe palmists tend to look back towards old research, while those on facebook are looking ahead. Or perhaps the stigma associated with palmistry is still too much for social networking.

Splitting Fingernails & Osteoporosis

One early warning sign for osteoporosis is vertical splitting of the fingernails. This usually indicates a long-term calcium deficiency. My mother has osteoporosis so it runs in the family, and I have also had these fingernail splits a few times over the past decade. Each time I (eventually) added calcium supplements to my diet and the splitting disappeared in a few months.

These images were taken today, and show my own middle fingernail on the left hand. It was difficult to get a good photo of the fingernail split, so I played with the image color a bit so you can see it better.



Starting today I'm again taking calcuim supplements. The one that works best for me is "Mega Cal" soft chews by Jamieson. 650 mg twice per day.

I'll add new photos every once in a while so you can see the changes to the fingernail over time.

Post #50

Hard to believe it, but here's already the 50th post to this blog. Quite something, considering the first one was just April 29.

Big work day today, mostly on lots of small changes to the websites.