OTs are the "Must Have" new fad!

Jeff sent me this article link from Wednesday's edition of the New York Times about my former profession, pediatric occupational therapy (on the Fashion and Style section, of all things)!

In a nutshell, upper-class parents are hiring occupational therapists (OTs) to give their children a boost in fine motor and visual motor/perceptual skills (like handwriting, scissor skills, copying figures, etc.), often so they can get into an ultra-competitive nursery school or kindergarten. Additionally, many otherwise typical children are having difficulty with fine motor skills, partly due to a heavy academic push without time for normal "child's play" which builds these fundamental areas.

I have seen this firsthand, working as a pediatric OT for over six years, four of which were mostly school-based. My college thesis was actually on the role of extracurricular activities as it infringed upon free-play opportunities! Parents were often surprised when I explained to them that normal "childish" behaviors like crawling and playing in squishy/wet/sandy material is crucial for intrinsic muscle and sensory development.

It's nice to know therapy is no longer regarded as only for those with "something wrong". However, I never had the honor of being employed solely to give a privileged child an advantage!

Quoting from the article, one father from the Upper East Side says:
“Even with the economy like it is, the hottest question when we socialized at our country house this summer was not what country club do you belong to, but who is your child’s O.T. back in the city. And how can I get an appointment?”

Jeff is ever the entrepreneur; I'll let him know if he gets tired of Alabama, we can always move to Manhattan!

Northwest Highlights

We had a super time in the Pacific Northwest! I toured a bit by myself during the day and then enjoyed the evenings with Jeff. We had great meals (including local fish, authentic Greek gyros, homemade Italian pasta, fantastic steaks, and a great Indian buffet). We went dancing Tuesday night at a ballroom studio in the theater of a historic brick building. We walked the downtown, (including of course Pike Place Market), rode the Monorail, saw the Space Needle, and watched stained glassblowing.


Eating gyros near the Market

Jeff played hookie Thursday (the last morning of the conference) and we did the Underground Tour (some of Seattle's streets were built over the original turn-of-the-century sidewalks and ground floors after a devastating fire, so you can walk under the city in the preserved spaces).


Down in the belly of the city

Then we continued our history lesson with a stop at the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park (which is basically a free museum run by the National Park Service as an extension of the thousands of preserved acres in Alaska and Canada, as Seattle was the launching place of most of the gold seekers). That was fascinating! To see the physical hardship men (and a few women and children) went through in an attempt to just reach the goldfields (let alone dig to find paydirt) was staggering. This was no easy "get rich quick" scheme, that's for sure!

(As an aside, kudos to a few of the only sane, logical men around: the Canadian Mounties. They began regulating and recording the people crossing the border, ensuring law and order, collecting names and contact info to notify loved ones in case of emergency or death, requiring adequate supplies to prevent freezing or starvation, certifying homemade boats and rafts for safety before allowing them to float downstream, etc. It was serious business, as each person needed approximately one ton of supplies to survive for a year in the Yukon, and they had to carry it 33 miles over the mountain pass during one part of the journey.)


What would you do-o-o for a Klondike bar (of gold, that is)?

A trip up to the observation deck on the 76th floor of the Columbia Center (tallest building in the Pacific Northwest) yielded an excellent view of the city and mountains from almost 1,000 feet up.


Columbia Center, and Jeff surveying his domain


View of the harbor and Mt. Rainier

We rented a car Friday and drove down to Vancouver (with the sunroof open and the windows down to bask in the sunny, warm afternoon). We toured Fort Vancouver (an outpost for the Hudson Bay Trading Company in the early 1800's, another fascinating story) and the Marshall House (base housing for two years of commanding officer George C. Marshall, of the Marshall Plan fame).



We spent a lovely weekend in the company of our gracious hosts. We drove south to Salem for services and greeted many old and new friends. A game night that evening left Jeff a bit winded and sore after basketball, dodgeball, and kickball, but a radiant day spent walking at the zoo Sunday stretched out the cramps and prepared us for a red-eye flight that evening back to Huntsville. All in all, a splendid trip I can't wait to repeat; I'm just sorry it took me 30 years to make it up to such a beautiful part of the country!

Why throw fish when you can READ!

Make thy books thy companions. Let thy cases and shelves be thy pleasure grounds and gardens.
- Judah ibn-Tibbon (12th century)

I know Seattle is probably most famous for the Pike Place Market, but one of my favorite places was the Central Library. It is a quite new structure (compared to the historic building I usually love), but the aesthetic and functional design is incredible. For example, the non-fiction collection winds up through the four top floors of the ten story building on a continuous series of shelves called the Book Spirals; this way, you can walk uninterrupted through the Dewey Decimal system without ever needing stairs and elevators. The floors slope gently up and around and the bookshelves sit on slight concrete wedges to level them. There is an escalator up the center as an "express" method of finding a particular section, as well as the standard staircase and elevator to get you to any given floor.



Another favorite feature was the book return and sorting mechanism. I watched a four minute video describing the method, which is simply genius. It takes individual books straight up and over the heads of patrons in a series of ducts to a sorting room, rotates them all so the binding is aligned and covers face the same direction, reads a radio signal to determine what section is required, feeds them off appropriately, stands them up, and shoots them on to shelving carts to be reshelved. With a collection of over 1 million pieces, you can see why this automated system would be needed!



But the best part was the children's section. I spent so many happy hours at public libraries as a kid (it was a regular occasion once or twice a week to make the trek, either walking to a small local branch or driving to a larger one). This place was so warm and whimsical, any child would want to find a good book and read. And for those who only go to the library to play (yes, I mean you, Dear ;-), there was a well-stocked area for that, too.

Seattle!

One of the biggest boons of Jeff's job as a professor is the opportunity to attend and present at technical and professional conferences. Okay, one of the biggest boons for me, that is! Jeff always invites me along anytime he goes; when it's somewhere industrial like Detroit or Pittsburgh, I usually have more pressing things at home. But when it's somewhere interesting, I always make time. We've been to Hawaii, Cape Code, Baltimore, DC, and now Seattle on these trips.

So I'm presently blogging from the convention center in downtown Seattle on our third day here. Our flights up early Sunday were thankfully uneventful, given the current bad weather on the East Coast. We have a fantastic corner suite with two whole walls of solid glass windows at a very eco-friendly, sustainable brand-new hotel (thank you AAA discount ;-).

We are here almost a week, then we will rent a car on Friday and drive down to the Portland, OR area to spend the weekend with friends.

I've been seeing a lot of downtown Seattle on my own the last few days, but after Jeff presents tomorrow morning, he will be free the rest of Wednesday and all day Thursday so we can explore together. I'll be posting more about our past and future escapades in the next few days.

Safe in Huntsville

For all those who were wondering: yes, the University of Alabama in Huntsville where the shooting occured last Friday is the same university at which Jeff is employed as an assistant professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department. He knew both the shooter and two of the faculty killed (he had been working on an interdisciplinary project with the biology chair and one of the associate professors). Jeff's office is about half a mile from the Shelby center where it happened. We're all fine, and we appricate the concerned friends and family who called and emailed to check up on us. The campus is closed all this week, so it will be interesing to see how things go next week when classes resume.