Random post from stuff gotten from e-mails


AWESOME news (I copied this announcement, hope I don't get in trouble….exciting though…can't wait for launch):

AOTA Set to Launch OTConnections

Occupational therapy students have been the inspiration behind AOTA's new online community, OTConnections, Using your example of building relationships with online friends, occupational therapy professionals now have their own dedicated community where they can interact with and learn from colleagues. After all, it's not just what you know, but who you know! 

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Woman's Day mentions occupational therapy since an occupational therapist helped develop a writing fundamentals kit – I forget whose blog I found this on:
http://archive.womansday.com/giveaways/13296/mead-writing-fundamentals-giveaway.html

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A cool OT-related site with some neat articles, including a post on things to make life easier, this is my favorite (which she got from another source): “Open the cupboard under the dishwasher and put one foot up on the edge while doing dishes it really helps your back”         http://www.squidoo.com/wholehealthobjectives

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Completely RANDOM but it made me laugh, watch closely: http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

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A lady named Faith left an interesting comment on my blog regarding poetry after I briefly mentioned some therapeutic uses of poetry.  Her comment is below, and also a tiny excerpt from a poem that I got from the Writer's Almanac Digest which I get daily in E-mail, from NPR….I see OT in everything and I liked this poem because this is an old man – writing this nostalgic poem – and I just want to be like – Dude, you just needed some school-based OT. But I guess he wouldn't have a poem to write about his academic failures had he gotten OT ahahaha, so it's six of one, a half-dozen of another…HEY LOOK I USED AN EXPRESSION CORRECTLY FOR ONCE!!! A shocking accomplishment.

….

And the old nun's ruler.
I feared everything: God,
Learning, and my schoolmates.
I could not count, spell, or read.
My report card proclaimed
These scarlet failures.
….

“Zimmer in Grade School” by Paul Zimmer from Crossing to Sunlight Revisited: New and Selected Poems. (c) The University of Georgia Press, 2007.

Listen
http://www.elabs7.com/ct.html?rtr=on&s=fj6,bqgr,dv,92dn,i4hx,bxxr,gc1e

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Faith has left a new comment on your post “Last of randomness“:

I loved the post about poetry having therapeutic uses. I love literature and am interested in becoming an OT. I was searching for a way of combining the two and found out that there is a whole discipline of literature and poetry therapy – a good book is 'Land of Stone – Breaking silence through poetry' by Karen Chase:

For more than a decade, Karen Chase taught poetry writing to severely incapacitated patients at a large psychiatric hospital outside of New York City. During that time, she began working with Ben, a handsome, formerly popular and athletic young man who had given up speaking and had withdrawn from social interaction. Meeting on the locked ward every week for two years, Chase and Ben passed a pad of paper back and forth, taking turns writing one line of poetry each, ultimately producing one hundred and eighty poems that responded to, diverged from, and built on each other's words. “Land of Stone” is Chase's account of writing with Ben, an experience that was deeply transformative for both poet and patient. In Chase's engrossing narrative, readers will find inspiration in the power of writing to change and heal, as well as a compelling firsthand look at the relationship between poet and patient. As she tells of Ben's struggle to come out of silence, Chase also recounts the issues in her own life that she confronts by writing with Ben, including her mother's recent death and a childhood struggle with polio. Also, since poetry writing seems to reach Ben in a way that his clinical therapy cannot, Chase describes and analyzes Ben's writing in detail to investigate the changes that appeared to be taking place in him as their work progressed.

There is also lots of stuff on the web under writing and healing – a particularly good site is www.oneyearofwritingandhealing.com

Have fun, and thanks so much for writing on this blog, I have found it so helpful and really inspiring!
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Sep 30, 2008 | Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none