The Way to a Man's heart...

...Is through his stomach.

I heard this old adage all my life, and Southern ladies proved it’s true. If you want to impress a gentlemen caller, bake him a pie. The kind you make depends on the impact you wish to evoke. Each variety can arouse a unique response.

• Buttermilk pie: This smooth, silky pie says to its eater, “Hello, I’m sweet and simple. I go down easy, but I’m a little unsophisticated.”
• Apple pie: Use firm, tart apples and this pie evokes an all-American wholesomeness reminiscent of one’s beloved and recently deceased granny.
• Pecan pie: With its rich, dark and gooey nuttiness, this sweet treat whispers gently to its recipient a mouthwatering love sonnet, a beautiful poem written with corn syrup and sugar upon a flaky crust. If you think this suitor worthy, a fresh-baked pecan pie is the pie you’re after.
• Fruit cobbler: My greatest success was a result of fresh-picked peaches, cherries or blackberries lovingly placed over a tender, flaky crust and covered with a lattice-work of crust strips sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. Served warm and topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, a serving of cobbler inspires awed appreciation every time.

I’m living proof of the success of pies. I’ve created hundreds. We celebrate our 64th anniversary in August.

Gesundheit!

CEDAR FEVER SYMPTOMS: runny nose, itchy eyes, nasal congestion, incessant sneezing, clogged ears, sore throat, aches about the face and head, malfunctioning sense of smell, fatigue, general malaise, and the nonstop grumbling about all of the above.

A friend relocated from Portland, Oregon to the Edwards Plateau region of Texas (Austin), and believes that Cedar Fever will be the death of her. Since I suffer from the same debilitating allergies, we often complain, sympathize and discuss remedies.

THE CAUSE: Ashe juniper, also known as mountain cedar or post cedar or Mexican juniper or Texas juniper or the more colloquial &*^%#@ing #@$%^&*. During winter, when these abundant evergreens release the pollen in noxious clouds of microspores, they become the bane of allergy sufferers. These evil plants also suck up precious water and offer poor forage for livestock. But they also prevent soil erosion and provide good habitat for wildlife, including the endangered golden-cheeked warbler and the never-endangered white-tailed deer. Ash juniper has been a part of the Texas landscape for thousands of years. And despite cries for the tree’s total eradication by pitchfork-and-torch and Kleenex wielding mobs, it’s here to stay.

THE REMEDIES: We can’t cure it, but we can become temporarily less miserable. Options include cocktails of over-the-counter and prescription-strength antihistamines, decongestants, corticosteroids, and anti-inflammatory drugs. There are also nasal irrigation techniques, submersion in mud, staying indoors, moving to Siberia and “the bottle.” If Ashe juniper is your only allergy, you only have to survive December, January and half of February.

Because I’m also allergic to all grasses, shrubs and trees (excepting the Banyan), I have no time off. In addition to corticosteroid injections in September, I swallow a Zyrtec tablet every night and use Nasonex nasal spray.

With a little experimentation and the help of a good allergy specialist, you can find relief and survival – at least until the Texans Against Cedar can get legislation passed that will eliminate this enemy.

A Second Earth

Somewhere out there are worlds that can support life.

For life as we know it to exist, we must have a nice, solid hunk of planet we can plant our feet on. We need lots of water and other friendly chemistry, some of it forming a quilt of atmosphere to keep out the cold. And we need to be just the right distance from just the right star – not too close, not too far; not too hot, not too cold. A terrarium like that incubating for, say, a billion years, might have a fair chance of cooking up something living. Those just right conditions don’t occur often, which explains why it’s been so hard to find life on the tiny handful of worlds we have even a remote chance of visiting: the moons and planets in our solar system. For a long time, scientists didn’t know much about planets elsewhere, so the rest of the cosmos looked like a biological washout.

That has changed. In the past 15 years or so, astronomers have discovered more than 4,200 potential exoplanets – planets orbiting distant stars – and confirmed the existence of more than 1,050 of them. In a galaxy with 300 billion stars, there are surely untold billions of other planets out there. Is anyone home on any of them? Because telescopes cannot yet allow us to view exoplanets, their existence and nature are inferred mostly by how they cause their parent stars to wobble and by the amount of starlight they block as they pass in front of them.

In 2017, NASA will launch the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, specifically looking for exoplanet atmospheres. Other important tools are NASA’s James Webb Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope in the Chilean desert.

One astronomer says, “With billions of rocky worlds available, life would have to be extremely picky not to be able to evolve out there.”

El Niño

When the Pacific Ocean warms, the weather gets weird.

For many Americans, 2013 ended with an unusually bitter cold snap. Late November and December brought early snow and bone-chilling temperatures in much of the country. For the first time in two decades, record-cold days outnumbered record-warm ones.

But the U.S. was the exception, globally, November was the warmest ever. Early data indicates that 2013 was the fourth-hottest year on record. Enjoy memories of 2013. Chances are good that 2014 will be even hotter – perhaps the hottest year since records have been kept. That’s because 2014 will be an El Nino year.

El Nino, Spanish for “the boy,” occurs when the surface ocean waters in the southern Pacific becomes abnormally warm. Because the Pacific covers 30% of the planet’s surface, the additional energy generated by its warming causes an assortment of weather changes around the world.

Los Ninos are associated with abnormally dry conditions in Southeast Asia and Australia and a weakening of the Indian monsoon. They may cause extreme rain in parts of North and South America, even as Africa experiences drought. Marine life may be affected, too, since El Nino can reduce the up-swelling of cold, nutrient-rich water that supports large fish populations. And unusually warm ocean temperatures can destroy coral.

The strong Los Ninos cost the U.S. an estimated $25 billion, and studies have linked the phenomenon to outbreaks of tropical diseases and higher rates of civil war. Research shows that a powerful El Nino from 1789 to 1793 devastated crops in Europe, which helped spark the French Revolution. The three warmest years on record, 1998, 2005 and 2010, were El Nino years. In order for climatologists to declare an El Nino in effect there must be three months of ocean temperatures that are at least 0.9 degrees F. higher than average. Predictions are that temperatures greater than that will be reached in 2014. So be prepared.

2014 may be a record breaker on many fronts.

The Doctor Will Skype You Now

We’ll be hearing this phrase more often as telemedicine apps replace non-emergency visits.

After a bad fall, my friend awoke in the night with a swollen, throbbing knee. She grabbed her phone and opened Doctor on Demand, a new app that allows users to video-chat with doctors to get medical help in real time. She typed in her symptoms, got paired with a nearby specialist and sent him several photos of her knee. Within minutes, the doctor advised my friend that the knee appeared to be dislocated. They agreed on a time for an MRI the following week.

Telemedicine – or soliciting live medical expertise from afar – is becoming increasingly mainstream. Doctor on Demand is very popular and HealthTap boasts more than 1 million users. Asking text-based questions on HealthTap and AskMD is free and a 15-minute appointment through Doctor on Demand costs $40 and doesn’t require insurance.

For patients, telemedicine apps are a cheap, easy alternative to nonemergency consultations. For doctors, the apps are a tool to build a public profile, attract new patients and make a little extra cash during their downtime. For hospitals, they’re a means to streamline care for existing patients.

Of course, there are concerns. The medical apps can be useful for diagnosing routine illnesses like the flu and minor injuries like dislocated knees, but they’re not meant to totally replace in-person doctor’s exams; especially for potentially serious ailments like chest pain. Also, patients should get prescriptions from a doctor who has their medical-record history on hand.

One physician interviewed said, “If telemedicine is a way of keeping healthy patients out of the doctor’s offices, that’s a good thing.”

We are going to see a major shift in how medicine is practiced and where.