By Sharon Schloegel 

If you are monitoring your overall diabetes control, you will be familiar with your A1c level and how important it is to have a ‘good’ A1c number.
Think of your A1c, which is the last three months of every minute of your blood glucose (blood sugar) values, as all of the sand in an hourglass. Think of just one glucose test you did as one grain of sand in that hourglass. The estimated average glucose (eAg) is an average of all of the grains of sand.
Your  A1c level corresponds to your finger stick blood glucose.  Let’s say that your A1c is 7 percent, this would give you an estimated average glucose of 154 and an A1c of 9 percent would be 212. The estimated average glucose was developed to give more meaning to your A1c result. You can now see what your glucose meter average would be if you were to test very frequently everyday.
Many people will see that their glucose meter average is very different from the estimated  average glucose. This is because most people do not test at many different times each day and may only test in the morning or only before meals which are usually the best numbers of the day. People tend to test when it is the most convenient and not the most meaningful. To get a better picture of your overall control you should vary the times daily.
When are the best times for you to test? This will depend on your overall control, medications and specific needs. Discuss this with your health care provider or your diabetes educator.
There is a drawback to using the A1c and estimated average glucose (eAg)  as the only measurement to determine your overall control because it does not take into consideration variations. You may have a great A1c of 6.5 percent and an eAg of 140 but be in poor control of your blood sugars. For example, if one person is out of control with frequent lows and many highs such as 40 to 400 and another person has stable numbers of  80 to 200, these two people may end up with the same A1c and eAg.
The A1c and the eAg are tools for you and your health care provider to use to evaluate and determine the best management plan for you. You can use your glucose meter to provide more specific information on how your blood glucose responds to your life: food, exercise, stress, and illness.
For more information and a conversion chart for eAg go to diabetes.org and type estimated average glucose in the search box or obtain information from your health care provider or diabetes educator.
Your Health is coordinated by Mercy Hospital. Sharon Schloegel is a registered nurse and certified
diabetes educator at Innovis Health
in Valley City.

By Jodi Rae Ingstad 

I haven’t put a plastic tarp up yet, so if you could please hold off throwing tomatoes at me until I’ve secured it, I’d appreciate it.
That thing you do when you roll your eyes while tisking your upper lip in disgust does not go unnoticed. My house is fully decorated for Christmas and some of you hate that.
As I turned the calendar page to Nov. 1, I could hardly contain myself. That’s the magic calendar day when I decided the plastic storage bins I have tucked away in the garage would have to come in.
I summoned that husband of mine to bulk up his biceps in order to carry them all to the house. I hadn’t seen the contents of the bins for a whole year. The anticipation for reuniting with what was inside reminded me of how I feel when I reunite with old friends. I removed the cover of the first bin. “Hello old friend,” I said aloud as I pulled out my Santa Claus wall hanging. I groomed his beard and excitingly went to find his place. Every year he hangs in the same place.
I walked briskly across the hardwood floors but not before stopping to pull my most favorite Christmas music box out. It’s the old-fashioned wind up kind. “Oh Come All Ye Faithful,” chimed a delightful sound in my ears as I continued digging in my bin.
In my head I am supposed to be a mother. I don’t have kids of my own and in the six plus years that husband of mine and I have been married, it’s only been us at Christmas. He has three grown children and they are always somewhere else on the holidays.
You wouldn’t know I don’t have children by the way I decorate for the holidays. I dream those romantic dreams of a close knit, well-adjusted family celebrating the reason for the season together. My dreams have always seemed impossible. I’ve never had that kind of Christmas.  
In order to protect my own spirit from feeling a void of an imperfect life, I decorate with all my might. This year is no exception. When I say my whole spirit smiles while I decorate, I mean it smiles!
Our cabin is so small that one extra thing feels like clutter. My mission this year is to clutter like no other. I am going to fill every nook, cranny, post, shelf and wall space with the reminder of Christ’s birth. Even our jacuzzi room is decorated.
Did you know they even make toilet seat covers that look like Santa?  
Last evening I sat back in husband’s chair that’s too big for me. It sits closest to the antique, cast iron fireplace that had a crackling fire in it. The glow of the room permeated warmth while the sound of Christmas music permeated my soul. It was in this moment of silence that the roar of reality struck.
I heard the phone ring and I heard that husband of mine jump up out of bed to answer it. It was his son, Timmy, calling from Los Angeles.  
“Dad,” he asked. “Can I come for Christmas?”
Have you ever seen me do my happy dance? I was gyrating like a gypsy in joy! Husband and I shared a hug and a tear. I tucked him back into our marital bed to slumber.
I continued watching television in the front room where all the most magnificent decorations hang. Just then my cell phone alerted me to a text message. It was from Molly – my beautiful step-daughter from Las Vegas. She wrote, “Hey! Can I come up for Christmas too? I just heard Timmy is coming!”
You may roll your eyes and tisk ‘til you topple. Decorating this early for Christmas has somehow made all my dreams come true.  
It’s not just the reason for this season. The reason lives among us constantly if we just believe.
Jodi Rae Ingstad’s column appears each Friday.

By Steve Browne 

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
President Ronald Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, 1987

This Monday, Berlin will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall with a “Festival of Freedom” at the Brandenburg Gate. Hundreds of thousands are expected to attend the gigantic street party.
Attending the ceremonies will be German Chancellor Angela Merkel; former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Anan; former leader of the Solidarity movement and first president of free Poland, Lech Walesa; and Mikhail Gorbachev, last leader of the Soviet Union.
Significantly, the Chinese government has blocked a German Web site celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall because Chinese bloggers were using it to talk about human rights in their own country.
Conspicuous in his absence will be President Barack Obama. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will stand in for him at the celebrations.
Obama, who found time to jet to Copenhagen to lobby the Olympic Committee on behalf of Chicago, is apparently too busy to attend.
I think by now it is becoming increasingly evident both to those of us who like Obama, those who don’t like him, and those who would like to like him if we could only understand his thinking, that our president is being very badly served by his advisers.
It seems not a single person in the president’s inner circle sees this could be the defining moment of his administration, an occasion to use his considerable rhetorical gifts to speak words that would go down in history alongside Ronald Reagan’s “Tear down this wall!” and John F. Kennedy’s “I am a Berliner.”
Why Obama himself does not see this is mystifying.
The communists in East Germany started building the Berlin Wall on Aug. 13, 1961.
At first it was just a high wall. In time hundreds of miles of barbed wire were added, as were guard towers with searchlights and machine guns, a wide strip of concrete with embedded metal spikes, tank traps to prevent vehicles from ramming the barriers, and buried microphones to detect tunnels. Guards always patrolled in pairs, and partners changed frequently to prevent them from conspiring to escape together.
Nonetheless, thousands escaped. But not without cost.
The Potsdam Center for Historical Research has determined at least 136 escapees were killed at the Berlin Wall during the 28 years it divided Berlin.
Among them were 98 who were shot, killed in accidents or took their own lives while trying to get over the wall. Most were young men between the ages of 16 and 30. Eight were women. Eight children died in escape attempts, five of whom were preschoolers or elementary students who drowned in the waters at the border. One baby, whose parents escaped successfully, was smothered.
These figures are almost certainly low.
Then in 1989, the wall fell, marking the end of an empire that between 1917 and 1987 murdered an estimated 61,911,000 of its own people.
And miraculously, the casualties during the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite states were in the low hundreds.
Chancellor Merkel, who grew up in East Germany, recently said, “I wanted to use this opportunity today also to express our gratitude, my gratitude, to the American people for the support that the American people have given us throughout the process leading up to German reunification, and I think it something that I would like to later on say it very clearly also in my speech to both houses of Congress. And let me tell you that this is something that we, the Germans, shall never forget.”
The question remains, have we forgotten?

Browne is a reporter and columnist for the Times-Record. His column appears Fridays.

By E. Kirstin Peters 

Dogs pant with their tongues hanging out, young men sweat by the bucket, and aging geologists just fall over on our faces in the shade on a hot summer’s day. But is there a way we could choose to cool the whole planet in a few decades if we really need to?
Global warming may or may not be our greatest problem in the 21st century. But if it is, there are two ways we could potentially lessen warming. One is exotic, but would address the worldwide problem of warmth. The other is more closely attuned to practical matters and common sense, and would help us limit heat increase that’s so prevalent in and around cities – where most Americans live.
Here’s the global picture:
Astute readers of the news media know that each time there is a major volcanic eruption – like Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 or Mount St. Helens in my own fair State of Washington in 1980 – the Earth cools. Pinatubo, for example, cooled the whole world by about 1 degree Fahrenheit. The effect lasted about a year. In strong cases, the volcanic cooling impacts agriculture and generally decreases crop yields – which is why it shows up in the news and normal people, not just us rock-heads, hear and care about it.
Volcanoes act as year-long cooling agents primarily because of the sulfate in their eruptions, tiny bits of which make it up to Earth’s stratosphere with the force of the blast. We humans also create sulfate particles in the air when we burn coal. That’s because coal, especially nice, cheap coal us geologists love, has quite a bit of sulfur impurities in it. Our coal-based sulfate in the air sometimes stays much closer to the ground and contributes to acid rain just downwind of smokestacks, but some of it gets carried upward, too. In either case, it acts as a bit of sunscreen that lowers temperatures.
There are now a few serious proposals about doing more, not less, sulfate “pollution” of the upper atmosphere. If global warming becomes severe, the argument goes, we could launch sulfate into the stratosphere to mimic the natural volcanic effect and lower global temperatures. The “solution” would tend toward the global. The work would have to be done each year, again and again, but all sorts of launching devices could be employed, including relatively cheap devices like airplanes, balloons, and perhaps even battleship guns.
I doubt it will ever come to that, partly because we could expect crop yields to drop. But I do think we could become smarter about a simple matter that would make our cities and suburbs cooler – and actually cool the planet just a bit as well.
Here’s a simple fact: dark colored objects warm up a lot more in sunlight than light colored ones. And, as you know, many roofs are dark: gray-black or dark brown asphalt shingles are popular on houses, black tar on flat roofs, and my own personal favorite, dark slate on a few roofs of historic stonewall houses back East.
What all these roofs have in common is that they warm up greatly when they are bathed in sunlight. That makes for hot roofs, but also for hot air all around the roof during the summers – thus contributing to hot cities and suburbs from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
You can actually see the effect in weather reports during the summer. Temperatures in the country on scorching days in July are routinely lower than in the suburbs and land-locked cities. That occurs for several reasons, including that the country is full of plants that are pumping water up into their leaves where it evaporates (and us country bumpkins stay cool because of it). Meanwhile, cities and suburbs show mostly roofs to the sun – and bake all afternoon long because of it, achieving higher and higher temperatures.
If summer heat turns out to be our greatest trouble, we might be well advised to think about light-colored roofing.  One white roof is like one small bit of snow lingering on the Earth’s surface all summer long, reflecting a great deal of light and energy – so, one roof at a time, we could actually help the whole Earth.  
Dr. E. Kirsten Peters is a native of the rural Northwest, but was trained as a geologist at Princeton and Harvard. A library of earlier Rock Doc columns is available at <RockDoc.wsu.edu>. This column is a service of the College of Sciences at Washington State University.