cognitively stimulating activities in midlife

Two years ago, the Lancet Commission, a group of experts in brain health and aging, published a landmark dementia prevention analysis that noted, “The potential for prevention is high and, overall, nearly half of dementias could theoretically be prevented by eliminating ... 14 risk factors.”

Their list includes addressing vision and hearing loss, as well as reducing high cholesterol, blood pressure, and obesity, and encouraging exercise and “cognitively stimulating activities in midlife.” source

James Baldwin: Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

Krishnamurti: The greater the outward show, the greater the inward poverty.

Charles Baudelaire: One must always be drunk. On what? On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish. But get drunk.

Oscar Wilde: Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.

Hermann Hesse: Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business... finds no home in this trivial world of ours.

 

William Shakespeare: Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

James Baldwin: Throw everything out of your mind. Read a little, sleep. The world will still be here when you wake up, and there'll still be everything left to do.

William Faulkner: Read, read, read. Read everything― trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.

 

Carl Jung: The world is full of people suffering from the effects of their own unlived life. They become bitter, critical, or rigid, not because the world is cruel to them, but because they have betrayed their own inner possibilities. The artist who never makes art becomes cynical about those who do. The lover who never risks loving mocks romance. The thinker who never commits to a philosophy sneers at belief itself. And yet, all of them suffer, because deep down they know: the life they mock is the life they were meant to live.

Luc van Donkersgoed: Think not of the books you’ve bought as a “to be read” pile. Instead, think of your bookcase as a wine cellar. You collect books to be read at the right time, the right place, and the right mood.

Pistou again

Our Price Rite sells bunches (I call them bouquets) of cilantro and I turn them into pistou. Pistou is like pesto but there is no added nuts or cheese. Pistou is French.

ingredients: olive oil salt (vinegar or lemon juice) garlic and cilantro

rinse and dry the leaves on a towel first 

https://themadscientistskitchen.com/fresh-pistou-a-pesto-with-a-difference/

It's fabulous on vegetables, home cooked chick peas, pasta, toast, meat, fish, chicken, hard boiled egg, you name it. 

Jim Harrison

I like grit. I like love and death. I’m tired of irony. A lot of good fiction is sentimental. The novelist who refuses sentiment refuses the full spectrum of human behavior and then he just dries up. I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments and take a chance on being corny than die a smartass.

JIM HARRISON

Winter Weather High Stakes Living

The funny thing about this weather is it's so high stakes. If you break down while driving to work you can freeze to death. Hopefully you have a charged cell phone and Triple A. If you don't run the water in the pipes the pipes will freeze and possibly burst, If you don't secure the puppy she will escape and can hurt herself... and on and on.

Lulu's Back in Town by Fats Waller

 Gotta get my old tuxedo pressed, gotta sew a button on my vest
'cause tonight I've gotta look my best, Lulu's back in town

Gotta get a half a buck somewhere, gotta shine my shoes and slick my hair
Gotta get myself a boutonniere, Lulu's back in town

You can tell all my pets, all my Harlem coquettes
Mister Otis regrets, that he won't be aroun'

You can tell the mailman not to call, I ain't comin' home until the fall
And I might not get back home at all... Lulu's back in town

Saved the Turkey Vegetable Soup

I was able to save the frozen soup by defrosting and diluting it. Most of my soups are generally too concentrated or too think. Maybe it's just my tendency to be too intense. I call them gloops. But this is still a soup and the broth need to be diluted because back when I first made it I roasted the turkey carcass and made a stock in the pressure cooker.  Everything is concentrated in the pressure cooker it's almost like a dehydrator that way.

Today I added chick pea stock and canned whole tomatoes (best flavor) and I added potatoes, and water and strips of carrots using the peeler and then my naughty over processed ingredient, powdered chicken broth.

Anyway it's delicious. 

Then I made mashed potatoes from the salvaged red potatoes and added them! 

Courage to Learn Courage to Teach

Four adult women joined my swim class that started yesterday. It was awesome. We start with bobbing by breathing and humming. 

For the three ladies who already swim, I talked about keeping your head lower in the water when swimming. Basically the body as aiming for the shish kebob position of your whole body lined up on top of the water. Your head is a tomato on the shish kebob and it turns slightly so you can breathe. If you lift up your whole head rather than gently turn it, your legs sink. Then I helped my beginner to float on her back while supporting her lower back. Lift up your hips and your chin and throw your head back far enough to get your eyebrows wet. Try to relax, I've got you. When you are tense your muscles tighten and cause you to sink!

My students said they were thrilled to learn how to breathe better and noticed the difference in their buoyancy. Then I told them most problems dissolve in water. Most problems are water soluble!! Breathing is the yoga unity aspect of swimming and it also takes your worries away --as long as you are not panicked and fear drowning! We all laughed.

I remind them to drink water after the lesson when they are taking a hot shower. Don't wait for thirst! We forget that we sweat while we swim and if we become dehydrated it can cause headaches. I speak from experience. Then I lost my voice at the pool as I often do--it's a reaction to the pool chemicals but I won't quit. I'll hold up signs if I have to, I said laughing.

In the locker room I noticed one woman has a few toes missing from complications from lupus. We talked about places to adopt cats and dogs because she wants a 4th specifically senior cat. Another woman had a double mastectomy and was born with  a brain injury and other health problems. She spoke to me about her grandson's awful 4th grade teacher. She swims to tamp down her anxiety. The water is the best anti-anxiety medication I know! I said.

 

It's a real community of love and support. Another women attends 3 water aerobics classes a day sometimes because as she said it takes her mind off of her back pain. She's a jolly lady with spinal stenosis. She has grand children and a husband and two King Cavaliers that sleep in their king sized bed.

Perpetual Trigger

When I escaped my family of origin by running away they contacted friends of mine. Let's make Emily jealous, they said. They invited my ex for Thanksgiving, and took a friend from my post-college life out to the fanciest restaurant in NYC.

So the current climate of politics mirrors the bully-power King-and-Queen behavior of my now deceased but historically dreadful parents. The news cycle is all reruns for me. A perpetual trigger. Children in cages! That's us. 

Trump’s Big Loser Energy, and Other Tales From the Annals of Political Messaging

In a democratic republic (and really in all times and places), the slavish hunger to be in the thrall of a strongman or a king is the ultimate moral degeneracy. It is a perverse form of moral weakness. The mores of civic democracy are rooted in strength, and self-respect. One of the strangest aspects of contemporary politics is the way that what were once the emblems of weakness and humiliation became rebranded as a kind of power: grievance, special pleading, whining, the demand for protection from the sting of defeat. It’s extremely weird. Trump is, more than anything else, a loser. He fears defeat and he can’t take it and he’s making wild claims to try to wriggle out of accountability and the public rebuke that he experiences as a moral death. Contempt, scorn and, yes, laughter are the only proper responses to Trump’s claims and demands. They’re weakness rather than strength, and no one should be fooled into treating them any other way.

 Josh Marshall

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trumps-big-loser-energy-and-other-tales-from-the-annals-of-political-messaging 

Karin Wulf‬: The thing about being a historian is that you know that everyone dies. And also that there are people in every generation who act like they won’t. Some more bizarrely and aggressively destructively than others.