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Update 7/5/05
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• Healthy eating doesn’t have to include meat
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Breaking from routine important for mental health
By Ruth Lang
Special to The Times

Everyone anticipates the arrival of summer. This season offers people, especially youngsters, a chance to relax and have fun. It is also a time for family vacations and personal respites.

Summer is a time of personal renewal and refreshment — a chance to get away from the grind and recharge. It offers a chance to visit different places, to see and learn new things.

Each individual needs to periodically get away from the routine, if only for their sanity.

The beach is a popular and highly visited summer spot. The pool is another. Becky Dyar of Today’s Hair Studio and her family like to spend their summers this way.

The Dyars’ view of vacations is that they create “quality time with the family. You bond better when you’re together. You’re more of a group instead of just individuals.”

Becky Rutter and Bob Hawthorne, of Marietta, went to Hervida 4-H Camp for some family time this summer.

“We like to do stuff together,” Rutter said.

Rutter said the family was planning to go to North Carolina in August.

For some, summer is a time to catch up on abandoned household duties. Bonnie Schmidt, church secretary for First Presbyterian Church on Fourth Street in Marietta, said her dream vacation would be a “10-day cruise to someplace warm,” but that she usually spends most of her three weeks of vacation around the house painting or working in the flower gardens.

Schmidt agrees that it is important to get away from the humdrum “because you come back refreshed with a new outlook on life. But with my vacations,” she said, “you come back with a lot of work done.”

The Rev. Keith Kapple of Open Door Baptist Church in Marietta believes there are some biblical reasons for taking a break every now and then.

“Jesus is the example. He often went into the mountains to pray and get away and refresh himself.”

Kapple’s personal reasons to relax, he said, were similar to those of Jesus.
“Just to get away from the routine, to keep from getting in a rut, and to give yourself a chance to get new ideas,” Kapple said.

Kapple and his wife recently returned from vacation at Wilmington Beach, N.C. Kapple was glad to get a chance to “just relax, pray, seek God’s will and admire the beauty of God’s creation.”

Other ideas for a break from routine include painting your room, cleaning out the garage or getting out your bell-bottoms and having a disco night with your kids.