While swimming I'm often cooking dinner in my mind.

No wonder you can't count laps, Sabrina said, laughing.

I bought a bag of Idaho potatoes the other day. I remembered Chef Michael Smith had a fabulous recipe for smash and bake potatoes. I've made them before and they are great. First I had to cook some potatoes to smash and bake since I had no leftover baked potatoes. I quickly pressure cooked them whole (jabbed with a fork) for 20 minutes in the instant pot, less time for stove top pressure cooker. 

https://natashaskitchen.com/instant-pot-baked-potatoes/

https://chefmichaelsmith.com/recipe/oven-crisped-potatoes/

These are delicious!!  We left a tray of them in the oven (turned off). The residual heat continued to dry them while we walked our dog. When we came home we tried them again and they were even better. They had a chance to dry out a bit crisping more.

There is no longer a 6 o clock or 9 o clock news. It’s a running tap of terror, doom and shock.

Jameela Jamil A Low Desire To Please 

Girls are extraordinary at emotional warfare. I never have understood why we send scores of men to war. We should only send teenage girls to fight each other, with no weapons. Just words. They would fucking annihilate each other. The only groups powerful enough to not have to kill the enemy, they simply make the enemy want to kill themselves. My body still carries the shrapnel of the moments girls at school would nudge each other when I entered the room, as they scanned my outfit… and would squeeze each other’s arms whenever I spoke in class. I am not over it thirty years later. Jameela Jamil, A Low Desire To Please 

Why Swimming May Be the Best Exercise for Older Adults

 article

For many Canadians, swimming brings back fond memories of carefree childhood summers, playing games like “Marco Polo” or earning swimming badges. But beyond the nostalgia, swimming is much more than a pastime—it’s an impact-free, buoyant-friendly way to stay active. Ideal for seniors, it offers a gentle, yet effective workout, helping to ease arthritis pain, increase flexibility, and boost overall well-being.

1. Water Takes the Weight Off Your Joints

You may have heard the term “low impact” exercise. This simply refers to any exercise that does not exert a jarring force on your joints. When swimming, around 90% of your body weight is supported by the water, so you will float through your exercise session without putting pressure on your joints. The relatively weightless environment and support from the water can help people overcome painful movement caused by arthritic and other health conditions. Making it an ideal exercise for seniors.

2. Swimming Gives Your Heart a Workout

As with any form of cardiovascular exercise, you reap significant benefits to your long-term health by swimming regularly. A stronger heart pumps blood more efficiently, meaning improved circulation throughout your body (even your brain!). Engaging in regular water aerobics for seniors can help maintain a healthy weight, reduce the risk of heart disease, and improve overall endurance.

3. Swimming is Brain Healthy

The fountain of youth? Just immersing yourself in water increases blood flow to the brain. This improves memory, mood, concentration, and cognitive function in general. Swimming may also help repair damage from stress and forge new neural connections in the brain.

After experiencing a stroke, Rose was affected on one side. With continuous water exercises in the pool, she has regained and maintained better function. “I feel very fortunate to have the frequent use of the pool and would certainly encourage everyone of all ages to experience the pleasure and benefits of water therapy”, says Rose. “We are so fortunate to have a pool in our senior retirement residence.”

4. Swimming Reduces the Risk of Falls for Older Adults

Swimming benefits seniors by improving balance control, which, in turn, reduces the risk of falls. By engaging all major muscle groups—especially the upper body, core, and legs—swimming not only increases overall muscle strength but also serves as a significant protective factor against falls. An Australian study that evaluated 1,700 men aged 70 and older found that those who swam were 33% less likely to fall compared to those who did not swim.

5. Increases Flexibility and Range of Motion

Do you feel stiff when you wake up in the morning?  If so, you are not alone. Most people lose some range of motion as they get older. Good news! The buoyancy of water allows swimmers to move their limbs more easily through the full range of motion. Doing so regularly helps keep your joints supple and improves flexibility, an important factor in older adults’ health and well-being.

Denise P., a resident of College Park II, shares how aquatic exercise has improved her flexibility and mobility: “The pool has been great for my muscles and limbs. For someone living with arthritis, my joints are less painful with consistent attendance in aquatic exercise classes. After each class, I feel regenerated, refreshed, and full of energy!”

6. Water-based Exercise Builds Stronger Muscles

At 91 years old, Sondra R has been swimming since a child. The Shaftesbury Park resident credits swimming, in part, with her continued ability to drive and walk Assiniboine Park with her 95-year-old husband.

“We are physically and mentally as sharp as possible given our age”, she shares. “For me the major benefits are that swimming works every part of my body. It’s not like jogging – you can’t injure yourself in the water.

Swimming is a full body exercise that tones every major muscle group in your body. Each stroke focuses on different muscle groups, so using a combination of strokes when swimming will allow you to feel the burn — and get the tone you want — faster than many land-based exercises. Sondra assures us that “you can do crunches and any exercise safely in the water.”   As an added bonus, building stronger muscles in turn helps maintain bone density!

7. Swimming is Good for the Spirit 

While we swim, almost all the senses are engaged: sight, sound, touch, and smell (and sometimes taste!). The rhythmic repetition of strokes and breath creates an anchor that soothes the spirit. Feeling the water moving over our body creates a massage-like sensation. The calm and quiet alleviates stress and encourages relaxation and even creativity. In short, swimming is a form of mindfulness that can release built-up tension.

8. Swimming Supports Your Spine!

You don’t have to worry about the weight of your body on your spine or your posture when you move your body through water. The buoyancy of the water supports the body, reducing the impact on the spine and allowing for a gentle, yet effective, workout for older adults.  If you’re not a swimmer, you can still use the water for gentle exercise: do some walking workouts waist-deep in a swimming pool to take the pressure off your joints and back while still getting movement.

9. Senior Swimming Helps Circulation

The horizontal position of swimming can help with venous return (the flow of blood back to the heart), which may be beneficial for circulation, especially for those who suffer from conditions like varicose veins. This is because the support of the water reduces pressure on your legs and feet, while strengthening leg muscles helps to push blood through your veins more efficiently.

10. The Secret Solution to Menopause?

In recent years, menopause has begun to take centre stage in scientific research and on social media. As it turns out, swimming has numerous benefits for older women. It helps with menopausal brain fog by boosting your brain power, increasing alertness, clarity, and energy levels, and releasing endorphins (happy hormones). Studies also show that swimming in cold water can significantly reduce symptoms of menopause such as mood swings and hot flushes.  Water exercise also helps women cope with changes to metabolism, improves circulation, and increases sleep quality.

The Self alone exists. When you try to trace the ego, which is the basis of the perception of the world and everything else, you find the ego does not exist at all and neither does all this creation that you see. 

Ramana Maharshi

The idea of time is only in your mind. It is not in the Self. There is no time for the Self. Time arises as an idea after the ego arises. But you are the Self beyond time and space. You exist even in the absence of time and space. Ramana Maharshi

You and I are the same. What I have done is surely possible for all. You are the Self now and can never be anything else. Throw your worries to the wind, turn within and find Peace. Ramana Maharshi

You are already that which you seek. Ramana Maharshi

Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside. Ramana Maharshi 

Your true nature is that of infinite spirit. The feeling of limitation is the work of the mind. 

Ramana Maharshi

Correcting oneself is correcting the whole world. The Sun is simply bright. It does not correct anyone. Because it shines, the whole world is full of light. Transforming yourself is a means of giving light to the whole world. Ramana Maharshi

When one makes the mind stick to one thought, the mind becomes rock-steady and the energy is conserved. Ramana Maharshi 

Consciousness is the screen on which all the pictures come and go. The screen is real, the pictures are mere shadows on it. Ramana Maharshi 

When there are thoughts, it is distraction: when there are no thoughts, it is meditation. Ramana Maharshi

The question ‘Who am I?’ is not really meant to get an answer, the question ‘Who am I?’ is meant to dissolve the questioner. 

Ramana Maharshi

Reality is simply the loss of ego. Destroy the ego by seeking its identity. Ramana Maharshi

Thoughts come and go. Feelings come and go. Find out what it is that remains. Ramana Maharshi

Surrender means to be without any attachment to thoughts. 

Ramana Maharshi

If the ego rises, all else will also rise; if it subsides, all else will also subside. Ramana Maharshi

The solution to your problem is to see who has it. Ramana Maharshi

Everything offered to others is really an offering to oneself; and if only this truth were realized, who is there that would refuse anything to others? Ramana Maharshi

Why should you trouble yourself about the future? You do not even properly know about the present. Take care of the present, the future will take care of itself. Ramana Maharshi

Do not hurry, take your own time. Keep the remembrance of your real nature alive, even while working, and avoid haste which causes you to forget. Ramana Maharshi

Dream

 I dreamed that my car mechanic also had a dental practice and I wondered how he cleaned his hands.

"I practice with my head, but I play with my heart"

 source

Hanna Arendt

"The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please." Hanna Arendt

The Sign

When I came home from swimming and grocery shopping Bill was already home and getting frustrated with trying to make the boiler go on. I said, Let's eat! and I put the bowls of hot vegetable bean soup on the table. Gotta eat and rest, I said. Then we can deal with it. 

When we sat down Bill saw the sign on the table that I had made over the weekend. KITCHEN BOILER SWITCH IS OFF. (there are 2 switches on the first floor that shut the boiler and one is in the office and one is in the kitchen). He said Oh yeah! That's why it wasn't working.

 

We ate soup and turned on the boiler and celebrated with a sip of black coffee and dark chocolate and went to bed.

We did not buy a thermostat yet but at least we have a way to make the heat come on for now.

Today is Bill's 71st Birthday. I teach a double tonight but I hope to make him his favorite pumpkin pie.

On Fake Hannah Arendt Quotations

 https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/on-fake-hannah-arendt-quotations-2024-08-04

Being in motion is stimulating to the soul.

 Joyce Carol Oates

BEAUTIFUL NEWS: Clark University receives $20 million donation from Panera Bread founder

Clark University receives $20 million donation from Panera Bread founder

The donation will also support the university’s recently launched School of Climate, Environment, and Society.

Clark University will receive the largest single gift in its history, a $20 million donation from Panera Bread founder and alumnus Ron Shaich, to support a restructuring of the Worcester college’s operations.

The gift, a mix of endowed and expendable funds, will bolster Clark’s enrollment and financial aid initiatives as part of the strategic transformation plan announced last spring, the university said last week in a statement.

That plan is to refocus academic programs around the school’s strengths — climate, environment and society, and media arts, among others — and position the university to compete more effectively in the current higher education landscape.

“With this gift, Mr. Shaich is affirming the promise of our strategic plan to propel Clark into a new chapter of sustained relevance, excellence, and impact,” Clark President David Fithian said in the statement. “The leading role he is taking to support us philanthropically is a testament to his belief in the distinctive and distinguished nature of a Clark education.”

The restructuring comes as colleges nationwide grapple with what Clark officials call an “unprecedented combination of pressures,” according to the university’s website. Enrollment is down at many universities, the costs of school is increasing, and President Trump has pulled federal funding from campuses that don’t align with his administration.

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The plan includes new programs, including a three-year accelerated undergraduate degree, and the elimination of academic programs that have drawn limited student interest.

The donation will also support the university’s new School of Climate, Environment, and Society, the statement said. Fithian added that the funding will help Clark “as we continue the hard but necessary work of reducing expenses and rightsizing the institution.”

Shaich, who also helped launch Tatte Bakery and Cafe, Cava, and Life Alive, graduated from Clark in 1976 and received an honorary degree in 2014. He’s a current trustee and remains involved with the university.

As a student, Shaich founded and ran the General Store on campus, the statement said. His previous $5 million gift funded the Shaich Family Alumni and Student Engagement Center, which opened in 2016 as a hub for campus operations.

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“Clark, like all of higher education, is at a critical inflection point,” Shaich said in the statement. “I applaud the way in which President Fithian and the entire University are confronting this moment proactively, boldly, and with plan and purpose.”

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Lila Hempel-Edgers can be reached at lila.hempeledgers@globe.com. Follow her on X @hempeledgers and on Instagram @lila_hempel_edgers. 

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/26/metro/clark-university-panera-bread-donation/

Scents and Non-Scents: I am a NOSE.

The Walgreen's generic citrus Lysol sprayed on my car vents on the hood below the windshield (what my mechanic advised) worked. Now everything has aired out and evaporated and my car now smells only vaguely like a rental car. Soon it will smell like coconut candle wax which is my car's odor by my choice. No more rotting mouse smell.

My car smelled like old dusty newspapers when it was given to me even after cleaning it a few times. Somebody had given me a big scented candle in a glass jar with wooden lid, after teaching a bread workshop. I keep the scented candle in my car's cup holder (unlit of course) and the scent is my air freshener. It becomes molten lava in the summer and at those times I put on the cover to avoid burns and spills. So far it's been working for over a year. When Bill borrowed my car he kept reaching for his coffee and getting candle wax on his fingers. We laughed about that.

 

A woman I know, she is adorable and giggles a lot. She told me her bird flies all over the house freely presumably pooping and peeing on everything. One day she buzzed down the car window to say hello and her car smelled like a bird poop. Then I remembered. She lives in a bird cage!

Vegetable Soup from Leftovers

I just made vegetable soup from leftovers and it is good. I used leftover carrots, leftover liquid from cooking beans, leftover brown rice, wheat berries, un-hulled barley, kidney and garbanzo beans. 

Then I added whole canned tomatoes, fresh chopped garlic, olive oil, fresh basil, 2 Maggi chicken flavor bullion cubes dissolved in a cup of boiling water ahead of time. Then I added chopped frozen spinach and frozen corn, Chianti and water.

To rapidly cool the soup I immersed frozen water bottles in the liquid. The soup cooled quickly and  I refrigerated it. I often use frozen water bottles instead of fresh ice when I cool off my hard-boied eggs. This was my first time trying the similar method to fast cool a soup. I like it!

It's important to cool a soup or chili or any food before refrigerating to prevent bacterial growth that could lead to food poisoning. 

After the soup cooled I rinsed the water bottles and threw them back in the freezer. 

A campaign by the National Wildlife Federation and the Xerces Society, asserts that leaves are not trash, debris, or yard waste.

Ask the Gardener: Why to ‘leave the leaves’ in your yard this fall

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/23/real-estate/leave-the-leaves-fall-autumn-yard-rake/

https://xerces.org/ 

Life doesn’t give you the people you want, it gives you the people you need: to love you, to hate you, to make you, to break you, and to make you the person you were meant to be. Walt Whitman

Even with old friends, you end up in used bookstores inspecting old typewriters sacrificed to decoration.

 Dean Young, from his poem Skipping the Reception 

I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think. Rumi

You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop. Rumi

Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop. Rumi

As you start to walk on the way, the way appears. Rumi

Love is the bridge between you and everything. Rumi

Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion. Rumi

When will you begin that long journey into yourself? Rumi

Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it. Simone de Beauvoir

Think more highly of what fate has given you than of what it has denied. Baltasar Gracián

alicia andrzejewski memoir

 I wonder if it’ll ever mean as much to her as it does to me that snakes’ venom creates antivenom, that when they strike us, only they can save us. I wonder if I can, as my mother did for me, teach her to meet snakes — to meet fear — at the door with respect.

https://aliciaandrzejewskiphd.com/memoir 

Crazy Week

Last Sunday at 12:30 PM we got our Covid and flu shots at the CVS in Blackstone. My arms were very sore that night and the next day so rather than swimming laps I worked on the course for my First Aid and Basic Life Support training.

I reminded Bill that we had to get the boiler ready to be turned on because the end of the week would be in the 30's at night. Monday night after school Bill began working on the low water shut off switch mechanism in preparation. But then he said something is wrong, the fuse keeps getting tripped.

Time to go to bed and call the boiler man in the morning. The next day Bill phoned from school. We think something electrical is malfunctioning with our boiler. "You will be charged, because it's electrical!" The secretary at the oil company warned.

The company has been bought up by a big company so now we no longer have these things covered on our plan. "It's in the handbook!" she quipped. Do we even have a plan? We'd better read the handbook. What the hell is the name of the company now anyway? 

Tuesday I was home all day again taking the online course exams while my sore shoulders healed. The doorbell rang and it was Nate the boiler man. He's a Friendly Giant! He's 6 foot 6 inches. Six inches taller than my basement ceiling. He came in and tilted his head and found the problem. It was a squished wire from when we took apart and reassembled the low water shut off switch. Even Nate had to assemble it twice because the first time it leaked water.

Tuesday evening

After dinner but just before leaving to teach swimming I made a small mug of Ovaltine. I suggested Bill have a taste He said no thanks. I said You like malt in beer but I like malt in Ovaltine. Have a taste. He had a taste and fainted. I was right there next to him so I caught him under the armpits. He remained vertical. It was a vertical faint. When he came to I suggested he sit down and I explained what happened. He said really? I thought I was having a conversation.

I was ready to call off my teaching due to this medical emergency. He said No, I'll be fine, go teach. I told my supervisor what happened and she said, Go home it's fine we can cover for you. I said, let me call to check on him since I have a few minutes before my class starts. Bill said he was fine and he sounded good. He was reading about vasovegal syncope and realized that he had been dehydrated and on his feet all day and then stayed late on his feet for a meeting after school. Ever since his fancy Contigo thermos was stolen 2 weeks ago he has had trouble finding a workable solution for staying hydrated. All of our other thermoses don't stay as cold or they tip over and spill. I said order a few! (My Jewish impulse to buy in bulk). He found one at a good price and ordered it.

UPDATE: We picked it up! The hydration has resumed and Bill feels fine.

  * * *

(a week earlier)

So last night after teaching 2 classes and coming home at 9:30 which is very late for me but a normal Tuesday, a big black pickup truck was in my parking space in front of my garage. I honked two times. A man came running up to my driver's side window from the street and said, I was just helping my fiance with her car. I had noticed a man on the street with a navy blue jeep hood open leaning into the engine compartment as I drove in. I said, Okay, sorry. He was ready to move his truck. I said, By the way do you know you can exit out the other driveway? He said, I used to live here, I know my truck won't fit. Okay, I said, and moved so he could get out. I pulled up next to my neighbor's car and then after the truck left I backed up while turning and heard the sound of breaking plastic. Oh no! I pulled into my spot and got out and my car was fine. I looked and the trailer that has been abandoned back here with an old motor boat on it and 2 flat tires was what I hit. The metal bracket holding the right side reflector tail light on the trailer bent and the reflector light broke off. I picked it up and two wires dangled. I put it in the boat. Bill said don't worry about it. I do feel awful even though this has been junked here and never used for many years and most likely destined for the dump. We've seen the owner once, years ago, pumping air into the tires, but still, I do feel bad. I damaged something. It was an accident. Bill will take a look at it at some point maybe who knows we can get the replacement reflector and bend back the metal and hook it back up.

UPDATE: Yesterday, a week after the incident, I was at the computer taking an online course for work when I heard a godawful sound. It was my neighbor Rick, the landlord's maintenance man. He was sawing the fiberglass boat into 2 foot pieces to fit into the dumpster. When I looked outside a few hours later the trailer was gone too. He probably wheeled it into his garage to rebuild it and presumably sell it. So my damage has been absolved in a sense, a week after the incident. My guess is the original owner of the boat and trailer stopped paying rent for the parking space years ago and the absentee landlord just learned that it was still here in his parking lot. I'm just glad I don't have to look at my mistake every day. 

 * * *

I got in my car after teaching Tuesday night and there was a weird earthy overly intimate mushroomy chemically rotting dirty socks smell as I drove home blasting the heat. I convinced myself it must be rotting leaves from parking under our gorgeous maple tree. The scent was even weirder the next day. So when my husband came home Wednesday night I asked him if he would sit in the car while I ran the car engine fan and see if he smelled it. Yeah, it's  awful! he agreed. Most likely a dead animal. We looked under the hood, but found nothing. We called Sam our mechanic and he said I could come by the next day after I teach. So I did. Sam could not smell it. I was glad my husband had because I fear being seen as a hypochondriac when it comes to doctors, dentists, and auto mechanics.

Sam told me to buy some Lysol and spray it into the two large vents on the hood, below the windshield. Do it for 15 seconds. Then run the fan. At first I was thinking of Pine Sol. Do I pour it in?  He said, No, the spray. Do you know Lysol? I was picturing Pine Sol. I realized this on the way home. My fear of appearing stupid made me stupid.

I came home and made a peanut butter sandwich and then I walked 4 blocks to Walgreen's and bought a can of Lysol. I sprayed the stuff and ran the fan and my car smelled like decomposing mouse sprayed with Lysol.

Today as I drove I opened all the car windows, aimed the vents away from me, blasted the heat and covered my nose with my neck gator, as I drove 40 miles an hour to work.

The car smell made me think of a dank hospital basement or a tenement hallway of a building where smokers live. I imagined a brown painted hallway with clear plastic treads on the steps where a plump landlady with hair gathered into a tiny gray bun is wearing a flowered apron with big pockets and red cotton rick rac zig zag trim. She is mopping the floor (with Pine-Sol) to mask the smoke smell. She is annoyed but polite. English is not her first language.

All of these associations came from the chemical smell. I drove to work keeping all 4 windows open and ran the heat and the fan. I wore my worn out leather dog-walking gloves red fleece hat and red neck gator. It was 60 degrees out. People might  have thought I was crazy. Who cares. I have a dead animal in my heater box. I parked in the sun hoping it might speed the process of decomposition and remedy the situation. I am a nose. I can smell a 200 year old molecule of cat pee in a historic house. I will keep the windows open when I drive for as long as I can.

Today was the first day with my new student. I was told her name is Jen. At 10:15 I looked around for a woman ready for a swim lesson. A woman walked up to the pool. Are you Jen? Yes. I'm your teacher today. I didn't sign up for a class. I laughed. She said that happens to me all the time especially when I order take-out. Many people are named Jen. What's your middle name? Louise. Use your middle name be Jen-Louise and be hyphenated  I suggested. That's a great idea, she said. Just then another lady showed up. Are you Jen? No. Then a lady I recognized showed up. Are you Jen? Yes! I remember you, I taught your son. 

Tonight we turned on the boiler for the first time this season. I immediately felt overheated so I ran downstairs to get a tank top and smelled something funny. I checked the boiler room - the basement was flooding. I yelled up to Bill. I dropped a bunch of towels on the puddles and hung a bucket to catch the water draining from the pump pipe. Bill shut off the boiler and found the off switch for the water pump. Bill investigated further. A shut off had not been turned back on by the boiler man. We turned it back on and the leak stopped and the water level came back to normal and we are relieved. I picked up the dirty wet towels and they are currently swishing away in the washing machine.

The week is not over yet but so far it's been a wild ride.

What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes a part of us. Helen Keller

One should never count the years – one should instead count one’s interests. I have kept young trying never to lose my childhood sense of wonderment. I’m glad I still have a vivid curiosity about the world I live in. Helen Keller

It all comes to this: the simplest way to be happy is to do good. Helen Keller

 True happiness is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. Helen Keller

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold. Helen Keller

We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world. Helen Keller

The struggle of life is one of our greatest blessings. It makes us patient, sensitive, and Godlike. It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it. Helen Keller

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. Helen Keller

There is beauty in everything, even in silence and darkness. Helen Keller

Come to the edge,' he said. 'We are afraid,' they said. 'Come to the edge, he said,' and slowly, reluctantly, they came. He pushed them and they flew.

― Guillaume Appolinaire

William James

 

#1. “The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.”

James emphasizes the power of attitude in shaping one’s life. This quote encourages us to consciously cultivate a positive mindset, which can significantly influence our life trajectory. He probably said this to inspire proactive control over personal circumstances.

#2. “Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.”

This quote illustrates the impact of belief on reality. James suggests that a positive outlook can lead to a fulfilling life. This sentiment likely stems from his interest in pragmatism and psychology. It inspires us to foster optimistic beliefs for a satisfying life.

#3. “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”

Here, James highlights the importance of individual actions. He urges us to understand that even small actions can have a significant impact. Likely said to motivate personal responsibility, this quote can inspire us to take mindful actions that contribute to a larger purpose.

#4. “The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.”

James indicates that wisdom involves discernment, not just knowledge. He encourages focusing on what truly matters rather than getting lost in minutiae. This quote is a reminder to prioritize effectively when making decisions.

#5. “To change one’s life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly. No exceptions.”

Advocating for immediate, bold action, James suggests an assertive approach to life changes. Likely aimed at combating procrastination, this quote can motivate us to take confident steps towards achieving our goals without delay.

#6. “We don’t laugh because we’re happy – we’re happy because we laugh.”

Reflecting the James-Lange Theory of Emotion, James proposes that our actions can influence our emotions. This quote challenges traditional understandings of emotions, suggesting that we can use actions like laughter to evoke happiness.

#7. “The deepest principle of human nature is a craving to be appreciated.”

James acknowledges our innate desire for appreciation. Likely highlighting the importance of validation, this quote encourages us to express appreciation towards others, thereby nurturing stronger interpersonal relationships.

#8. “A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”

Criticizing closed-mindedness, James promotes genuine critical thinking. This quote urges us to question our biases and strive for open-mindedness, fostering a more thoughtful and inclusive perspective.

#9. “There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.”

James underscores the distress caused by chronic indecisiveness. This quote highlights the importance of decision-making for mental well-being, encouraging us to be more decisive to reduce anxiety and improve our quality of life.

#10. “The self-same moment that we say, ‘I am,’ we have asserted, and cannot help admitting, freedom.”

source

Joy came always after pain. Guillaume Apollinaire

“It's raining my soul, it's raining, but it's raining dead eyes.”

  ― Guillaume Apollinaire 

Sea, I am like you, filled with broken voices

 Sea, I am like you, filled with broken voices,
And my ships, singing, give a name to the years.

Guillaume Apollinaire 

source 

“All the words I have to say have turned into stars.”
―  Guillaume Apollinaire

“People quickly grow accustomed to being the slaves of mystery.”
― Guillaume Apollinaire, The Cubist Painters

When man resolved to imitate walking, he invented the wheel, which does not look like a leg. In doing this, he was practicing surrealism without knowing it.

― Guillaume Apollinaire

Without poets, without artists... everything would fall apart into chaos. There would be no more seasons, no more civilizations, no more thought, no more humanity, no more life even; and impotent darkness would reign forever. Poets and artists together determine the features of their age, and the future meekly conforms to their edit.
― Guillaume Apollinaire, Selected Writings

We don’t laugh because we’re happy – we’re happy because we laugh. William James

 Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. Marthe Troly-Curtin

It’s beautiful to be alone. To be alone does not mean to be lonely. It means the mind is not influenced and contaminated by society. Jiddu Krishnamurti

Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort. Franklin D. Roosevelt

All happiness depends on courage and work.

Honoré de Balzac

You do not find a happy life. You make it.

 Richard Feynman

Whatever satisfies the soul is truth. Walt Whitman

Aimless Love

by Billy Collins

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore, I fell in love with a wren and later in the day with a mouse the cat had dropped under the dining room table.   In the shadows of an autumn evening, I fell for a seamstress still at her machine in the tailor’s window, and later for a bowl of broth, steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.   This is the best kind of love, I thought, without recompense, without gifts, or unkind words, without suspicion, or silence on the telephone.   The love of the chestnut, the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.   No lust, no slam of the door — the love of the miniature orange tree, the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower, the highway that cuts across Florida.   No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor — just a twinge every now and then   for the wren who had built her nest on a low branch overhanging the water and for the dead mouse, still dressed in its light brown suit.   But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow.   After I carried the mouse by the tail to a pile of leaves in the woods, I found myself standing at the bathroom sink gazing down affectionately at the soap,   so patient and soluble, so at home in its pale green soap dish. I could feel myself falling again as I felt its turning in my wet hands and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

__________

From Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems, Random House, 2013. Billy Collins served as the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003.

Thursday, October 23, 2025

 Philip Bump writes of the demolition of the East Wing:

The metaphor of Trump crushing a portion of the White House as he aims bulldozers at democracy itself is almost too obvious to note. But it’s not just a symbolic parallel: both are rooted in the same indifference to what these American institutions mean to Americans and to America. Both are rooted in Trump wanting to treat those things as his own and now feeling empowered to do precisely that.

The Trick

I told my adult swim student THE TRICK to finding time to get in the water to practice. I said the trick is to ask yourself to show up and swim 1 lap because if your expectation is beyond that you will convince yourself you can't do it. You want to start by winning and not by having to earn self-approval.

This week my students swim stroke had improved immensely. I said, wow!

He said, I tried the trick and it worked. I came to swim one lap and ended up doing ten.

I said, I'm so happy to hear that. I still need the trick. It's human nature and we have to get around our own mind. Even when I know it's a trick, I still need it.

She kept swimming out into life because she hadn't yet found a rock to stand on.

 ― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams 

The Amazing Barbara Kingsolver

https://reasonstobecheerful.world/appalachia-opioid-addiction-women-barbara-kingsolver-recovery-center/

Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.

 Margaret Atwood

The Stories you Tell Yourself Shape Your Reality

Article by Dr. Judy Ho

Wednesday, October 22, 2025

Josh Marshall

Read today's article.

Nutrition and Hydration concerning a Swim

Some of my students are elderly and I remind them about the importance of hydration and a lighter meal before swimming. Sometimes dehydration can be felt as nausea.

 https://blog.myswimpro.com/2020/11/03/what-swimmers-should-eat-before-during-and-after-swimming/

Swim Tips Video: How to Stop Sinking Legs (Fix 3 mistakes) Coach Mike Nitro

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoDX-k0YA6c

Dehydration

Last night after dinner but just before leaving to teach swimming I made a small mug of Ovaltine. I suggested Bill have a taste He said no thanks. I said You like malt in beer but I like malt in Ovaltine. Have a taste. He had a taste and fainted. I was right there next to him so I caught him under the armpits. He remained vertical. It was a vertical faint. When he came to I suggested he sit down and I explained what happened. He said really? I thought I was having a conversation. I was ready to call off my teaching due to medical emergency. He said No, I'll be fine, go teach. I told my supervisor what happened and she said, Go home it's fine we can cover for you. I said, let me call to check on him since I have a few minutes before my class starts. Bill said he was fine and he sounded good. He was reading about syncopy and realized that he had been dehydrated and on his feet all day and then stayed late on his feet for a meeting after school. Ever since his fancy Contigo thermos was stolen 2 weeks ago he has had trouble finding a workable solution- all of our other thermoses don't stay as cold or they tip over and spill. I said order a few! (My Jewish impulse to buy in bulk). He ordered one at a bargain price and we are picking it up tonight.

Tuesday, October 21, 2025

Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt use it — don’t cheat with it. Be as faithful to it as a scientist — but don’t think anything is of any importance because it happens to you or anyone belonging to you… You see, Bo, you’re not a tragic character. Neither am I. All we are is writers and what we should do is write. 

Ernest Hemingway 

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

― Ernest Hemingway

There are a thousand ways to practice.

When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling. Try that for practice. When you’re in town stand outside the theatre and see how the people differ in the way they get out of taxis or motor cars. There are a thousand ways to practice. And always think of other people.

Ernest Hemingway

Josh Marshall: The Subtle Genius of ‘No Kings’

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-subtle-genius-of-no-kings

Monday, October 20, 2025

We Shall Overcome

 Joan Baez singing.

Saturday, October 18, 2025

African Inspired Lentil Soup

1 pound lentils rinsed, 2 bunches of kale rinsed and chopped, 4  carrots chopped, 3 white onions chopped, a bulb of garlic, a bunch of celery chopped, a cup of Chianti, 2 chicken bullion cubes dissolved, 1 quart of water,  olive oil, 1 ice cream scoop of natural peanut butter, 2 inch knob of ginger root (unpeeled).

Place everything in the instant pot and cook for 1 hour. Enjoy. 

UPDATE: Last night I  made another twist and I added water and Chipotle pepper sauce to the soup.  It was fantastic!

Delicious tuna salad

One can of  tuna fish (drained), chopped scallions, chopped apples, mayonnaise.  

Friday, October 17, 2025

But why I cry out against Rubens is because he painted undressed people instead of naked ones.

  E. M. Forster 

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way. E. M. Forster

Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden. It is the best evidence we can have of our dignity. E. M. Forster

In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences and out of the mixture he makes a work of art. E. M. Forster

Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things. Edgar Degas

To be an artist, you need to exist in a world of silence. Louise Bourgeois

I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity.

Je n'ai guère de souci de beauté ni de perfection... Je n'ai souci que de vie, de lutte, de fièvre.

Émile Zola 

They dared not peer down into their own natures, down into the feverish confusion that filled their minds with a kind of dense, acrid mist.

Émile Zola, Thérèse Raquin  

I wanted to start a revolution, using art to build the sort of society I myself envisioned. Yayoi Kusama

 

When you have a sorrow that is too great it leaves no room for any other. Émile Zola

An artist is above all a human being, profoundly human to the core. If the artist can’t feel everything that humanity feels, if the artist isn’t capable of loving until he forgets himself and sacrifices himself if necessary, if he won’t put down his magic brush and head the fight against the oppressor, then he isn’t a great artist. Diego Rivera

When truth is buried underground it grows, it chokes, it gathers such an explosive force that on the day it bursts out, it blows up everything with it.

 Émile Zola 

The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before.

Neil Gaiman 

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. Thomas Merton

Thursday, October 16, 2025

Nightmare

I dreamed I was shooting a rifle into fog. It was fun so I did it a few more times. Moments later a stone cathedral off in the distance erupted in flames spattering like lava. It was a historical landmark. I ran upstairs in a small house with small rooms and confessed to a lady who was my mother in the dream that I must have been the cause. I assumed I would go to prison for at least 15 years.

Wednesday, October 15, 2025

Good News in RI Healthcare

https://whatsupnewp.com/2025/10/dr-michael-fine-three-things-that-are-smart-not-crazy-about-health-care/

Confession

So last night after teaching 2 classes and coming home at 9:30 which is very late but a normal Tuesday,  a big black pickup truck in my parking space in front of my garage. I honked two times. A man came running up to my driver's side window from the street and said, I was just helping my fiance with her car. I had noticed a man on the street with a navy blue jeep hood open leaning into the engine compartment as I drove in. I said, Okay, sorry. He was ready to move his truck. I said, By the way do you know you can exit out the other driveway? He said, I used to live here, I know my truck won't fit.  Okay, I said, and moved so he could get out. I pulled up next to my neighbor's car and then after the truck left I backed up while turning and heard the sound of breaking plastic. Oh no! I pulled into my spot and got out and my car was fine. I looked and the trailer that has been abandoned back here with an old motor boat on it and 2 flat tires was what I hit. The metal bracket holding the right side reflector tail light on the trailer bent and the reflector light broke off. I picked it up and two wires dangled. I put it in the boat. Bill said don't worry about it. I do feel awful even though this has been junked here and never used for many years and most likely destined for the dump. We've seen the owner once, years ago, pumping air into the tires, but still, I do feel bad. I damaged something. It was an accident. Bill will take a look at it at some point maybe who knows we can get the replacement reflector and bend back the metal and hook it back up.

UPDATE: Yesterday, a week after the incident, I was at the computer taking an online course for work when I heard a godawful sound. It was my neighbor Rick, the landlord's maintenance man. He was sawing the fiberglass boat into 2 foot pieces to fit into the dumpster. When I looked outside a few hours later the trailer was gone too. He probably wheeled it into his garage to rebuild it and presumably sell it. So my damage has been absolved in a sense. A week after the incident. My guess is the original owner of the boat and trailer stopped paying rent for the parking space years ago and the absentee landlord just learned that it was still here in his parking lot. I'm just glad I don't have to look at my mistake every day. 

 

“The vocation of each writer is to describe the world as he or she sees it; anything more than that is advertising.”

 ― Hanif Kureishi, The Word and the Bomb 

“And silence, like darkness, can be kind; it, too, is a language”

― Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy and Midnight All Day: A Novel and Stories  

Tuesday, October 14, 2025

 “I bear the wounds of all the battles I avoided.”

― Fernando Pessoa

“To be great, be whole;
Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you.
Be whole in everything. Put all you are
Into the smallest thing you do.
So, in each lake, the moon shines with splendor
Because it blooms up above.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Poems of Fernando Pessoa

“I've never done anything but dream. This, and this alone, has been the meaning of my life. My only real concern has been my inner life.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“If I write what I feel, it's to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant, because everything is unimportant.”

― Fernando Pessoa , The Book of Disquiet

Life is whatever we make it. The traveller is the journey. What we see is not what we see but who we are.

 Fernando Pessoa 

Some people around you will not understand your journey. They don’t need to; it’s not for them.

 Paulo Coelho

Monday, October 13, 2025

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

Alan Watts

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth. Alan Watts

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Culture of Counter-Culture: Edited Transcripts

This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play. Alan Watts

We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas.

― Alan Watts

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

 Alan Watts  

Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.

― Alan Watts

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float. Alan Watts

Lao Tzu: Govern a nation as you would fry a small fish.

Cooking a small fish is a great metaphor, not only for a king to rule the kingdom, but also for you to rule your life. You need to turn the fish over to cook both sides, but not so many times that it falls apart — and this means you must use the Tao of moderation and balance.

A king who follows this path can protect his kingdom against the demons of chaos, crime and conflict, as well as the negative consequences of well-meaning interference. Similarly, those who follow this Tao can protect themselves against the inner demons of self-sabotage and the harmful effects of meddling in other people’s business. Just as the sage kings of ancient times ruled their subjects in peace, Tao cultivators who understand this lesson enjoy harmonious relationships with the people who who are near and dear to them.

When you and your loved ones come together this way, the result is a positive fusion. As your virtue connects with theirs synergistically, everyone gets a bit closer… to the goal of returning to oneness.

https://taoism.net/tao-te-ching-chapter-60/ 

Alan Watts

If you happen to be sitting, just sit. If you are smoking a pipe, just smoke it. If you are thinking out a problem, just think. But don’t think and reflect unnecessarily, compulsively, from sheer force of nervous habit. In Zen, they call this having a leaky mind. Alan Watts

Nothing is stronger than habit. Ovid

Dream

I dreamed I was back in time in my childhood home. I was smoking a cigarette in the kitchen and my mother came home and caught me.

Sunday, October 12, 2025

Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Victor Hugo: He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark. Victor Hugo

To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life. Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Saturday, October 11, 2025

Candy Corn Day October 30

 https://www.thedickinson.net/national-candy-corn-day-oct-30.html

Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion. Edward Abbey

A Father

As a child I had a recurring dream that I would meet a girl and ask her who her father was and she would show me and I'd say, no, that's my father.

When I was about 20 I visited my biological father and he told me all about his wonderful daughter Cathy. "She never had a father," he said. I couldn't believe I was listening to my biological father describing her as never having had a father. What about me? 

Cathy was the new adult daughter he inherited from his third wife, the first of her 3 marriages.

Providence’s proposed Gasoline Powered leaf blower ban

 “The goal of this as we discussed before is to address the noise pollution in our city … and address the carbon emissions and other forms of environmental degradation that come from gas leaf blowers,” AnderBois explained.

More of this, please!

 It was a terrible shock to realize my actual memory of my dad was supplanted by the written representation of this memory. And what’s worse, this version barely sparked any feeling in me. This material of “us” had been worked over so much that it didn’t hurt anymore. Which is maybe what people talk about when they say writing heals. I was no longer someone to whom this story happened; I was the author of this story. I wanted to comfort my friend, to express empathy. But my emotions were rubbed smooth, like a piece of sea glass you find on the shore, sanded by years of currents. Alysia Abbott

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/10/opinion/fairyland-movie-alysia-abbott/

“The one thing ... that is truly ugly is the climate of hate and intimidation, created by a noisy few, which makes the decent majority reluctant to air in public their views on anything controversial. ... Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.” ― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

 “There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.”

― Edward Abbey

“There is beauty, heartbreaking beauty, everywhere.”

― Edward Abbey  

“Where all think alike there is little danger of innovation.”

― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire  

“When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.”

  ― Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang 

“No more cars in national parks. Let the people walk. Or ride horses, bicycles, mules, wild pigs--anything--but keep the automobiles and the motorcycles and all their motorized relatives out. We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, legislative assemblies, private bedrooms and the other sanctums of our culture; we should treat our national parks with the same deference, for they, too, are holy places. An increasingly pagan and hedonistic people (thank God!), we are learning finally that the forests and mountains and desert canyons are holier than our churches. Therefore let us behave accordingly.”
― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

Be loyal to what you love, be true to the earth, fight your enemies with passion and laughter.

― Edward Abbey, Confessions of a Barbarian: Selections from the Journals of Edward Abbey

“The ugliest thing in America is greed, the lust for power and domination, the lunatic ideology of perpetual Growth - with a capital G. 'Progress' in our nation has for too long been confused with 'Growth'; I see the two as different, almost incompatible, since progress means, or should mean, change for the better - toward social justice, a livable and open world, equal opportunity and affirmative action for all forms of life. And I mean all forms, not merely the human. The grizzly, the wolf, the rattlesnake, the condor, the coyote, the crocodile, whatever, each and every species has as much right to be here as we do.”
― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

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