Robert Graves

Poets don’t have an ‘audience’: They’re talking to a single person all the time.
—Robert Graves
Paris Review

Yellow Apple Tree

At noon I walked down the street to the yellow apple tree with Lily and my apple picker and a big canvas bag. John my friend the grounds-keeper came out. "That's cheating," he said when he saw my apple picker. It was fun to use it. It was good to see him. I kept reaching for the challenging apples, the big ones way up high that were the size of grapefruits. "The tree got pruned last year," said John. "I remember, I bet that's why the apples are so big, the tree is happy." I said.
"Come back with your wagon," he said. "I will," I said, standing with the heavy bag, "This was fun." I said, leaving. When I got home I had lunch and took a long walk with Lily. Then I walked back to the tree carrying the picker with the wagon in tow. The first apple I tried to pick was huge and it came right down and bounced off my forehead. Wow, I thought. I couldn't have done that if I tried. I resumed. I listened to the birds and the trucks and cars driving by. Nobody seemed to notice or care what I was doing. I filled all three three bags in my little red wagon. I even rescued the apples that fell and rolled into the street. They got bruised but I figured I'd chop the bruises off first. When I came up the driveway with my overflowing wagon two kids asked to have an apple and I let them pick out a few. They wanted the largest ones they could find. I hope they liked them.

Dream

I dreamed I rescued a puppy from a tree. It was hiding from a big dog and it was cold. It had been outside all night. I held it in my arms like a baby. It had sharp nails. I wondered if I should call my veterinarian Dr. B. Do dogs get hypothermia? Do I feed the pup with a baby bottle? I knew I was going to fall in love with this dog. I rolled over a few times to go back into to the dream.

The Apple Pie Tree

The apple pie came out great and we ate it for dinner. I need to make the crust a bunch more times to get better at it but it was delicious.

Bang

I heard a bang. It was the boy next door, Farrell's older brother. He had kicked the football into my yard and it hit my glass table. I went out and he apologized. No harm done. It happened again, this time hitting my house. I went out and asked him to please kick it the other way towards the empty parking lot. There was another crash. The ball was back in my yard. "You're scaring my animals and me. Each time there's a noise, I jump through my skin," I said. I picked up the football and handed it to him noticing it had very little air.
"What's your name?" I asked
"Phillip," he replied.
"With two l's?"
"Yes."
We shook hands.
"Your football needs air," I said.
"Do you have a needle and a pump?" He asked.
"I might. Wait here." I ran inside to look.
I found the pump and the needle and brought it out. We struggled with trying to fill the ball and he managed to make it work.
"Thanks!" he said.
"That might help to steer it," I said.
He walked down the driveway with the ball and vanished.

Can't Make this Stuff Up

I was walking straight but then Lily pulled me into Precious Blood cemetery. I let her lead. A car drove in and passed me and turned the corner out of view. I hoped I wouldn't come upon something troubling. I climbed the hill with Lily and as I turned the corner I was relieved to see two women. As I got closer I saw that they were dancing on a grave. It looked like they were step dancing. I didn't want to disturb them but as I walked by I listened to their conversation. They were discussing their famous tap dancing ancestor in the family whose grave they were on. The older woman was the grandmother to the younger woman.
Can't make this stuff up.

Licensing Effect

Drop a bunch of kale into your cart and you’re more likely to head next to the ice cream or beer section. The more “virtuous” products you have in your basket, the stronger your temptation to succumb to vice.

Such hedonic balancing acts are neither unpredictable — who, after all, hasn’t rewarded themselves with a piece of cake or an extra beer after a killer workout? — nor inherently bad. But an emerging body of research into what psychologists call the “licensing effect” suggests that this tit-for-tat tendency is deeply wired in us, operating even when we’re not aware of it. And in a world where we’re bombarded by pitches for an endless array of health-boosting products of dubious efficacy, that can be a problem.
[...]

So how can we maximize our chances of coming out ahead? Psychologists have identified a few tactics.

One is to focus on the process of living healthfully rather than the goal of being healthy. A recent University of Zurich study tracked the progress of 126 dieters and found that, as predicted by licensing theory, the more weight the subjects lost in any given week, the less weight they would lose (or the more they would gain) the following week. But this rebound effect was weakest when the subjects homed in on the process of changing their eating behavior rather than on the outcome of losing weight or improving their appearance.

Article

Susan Olson's Corn Oil Pie Crust

pie crust recipe:

Basic 9 inch pie

3 Cups King Arthur unbleached flour
3/4 Cup Corn oil (I find it should be corn oil)
6 T combination of milk and water - or just cold water if no milk around
Mix lightly and form into two balls
(I'd add a teaspoon of Kosher salt.)

Roll between wax paper, Put in pie pan - if things are off, patching is easy as dough is quite moist and pliable.

Put fruit in crust - add 1/2 C or a little more sugar depending upon desired sweetness. If apples - just sugar - If berries or peaches need to mix sugar with some flour.

Dot with butter
Add top crust - cook at 425 for 40 or so minutes - until brown and bubbly.

Also see KING ARTHUR RECIPE below for one crustsource.

1 1/2 cups (6 1/4 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup (2 3/8 ounces) vegetable oil
3 to 4 tablespoons (1 1/2 to 2 ounces) water or milk

Open Space

I went to the pool and the water relaxed all of the muscles I can't reach. I am continually hunting for open space in my psyche by writing walking and swimming. Solitude in motion.

Eggplant Drama

At the market I bought two gigantic eggplants. When I got home I sliced them as thin as I could and salted them to extract the bitter juices. An hour later I rinsed them and drained them in my colander placing a heavy weight on top. This morning in a panic I remembered the eggplant in the fridge. By seven am I was layering the eggplant slices with my tomato olive chick pea sauce in my glass baking dish. Another dish is layered with my spinach garlic ginger sauce. I still have half a bucket of eggplant.

I can rarely cook at dinner time. I have to bake and cook in the morning or the afternoon when I am hungry and optimistic and then warm it up later, when I am tired, hungry and grouchy.

5:AM Jupiter Venus Mars

Look outside and see Jupiter Venus + Mars!
More info

Pear Tree

We went to get the pears from Billy's tree. He told us we could. When we showed up with our boxes and picker we saw that the ground had been raked. The remaining pears were hanging on the tree. Two shiny black cars were parked directly underneath. We stood there for a moment. A voice from the window said "Can I help you?"I saw a large woman's face filling the window. "Billy told us to come help ourselves the pears." I replied. She was blank like she didn't know who I was talking about even though Billy is her brother. "I don't want the pears to hit my car. I paid 40 thousand dollars for that car," she said. "I don't want them to hit your car either, no matter what kind of car," I said.
"Let's go," I said to my husband. "We can ask Robin since she offered us pears too and there's a lot of pears on her side of the tree. I was relieved to be away from the large woman in the window. We brought our boxes and picker home. "Let's just have a long walk, I'm in a terrible mood," I said. We walked out to Harris pond admiring the orange trees. We ran into Sarah decorating her porch. She was wearing a purple shirt. We stood in the road as the sun was setting over the water. We had a few laughs about the big scary spiders decorating the neighbor's houses. Then we walked home in the dark. My flashlight was dangling a small beam of light from my lanyard as I walked it bounced off the sidewalk. I felt much better.

Beauty Would be So Proud

I just finished reading My Fat Dad, a memoir by Dawn Lerman, and I COMPLETELY loved it. My Fat Dad is a memoir centered on food, the food she grow up with, the food of her relatives. I learned a lot about my own upbringing from Dawn's writing - reading her book was like catching up with a long-lost cousin. In some ways our childhoods were identical. We must be nearly the same age and both of our fathers were in advertising in midtown Manhattan. There were so many parallels. I want my brothers and sisters and cousins to read this book. I was grateful for having read her story, and she told it so well.

I woke up this morning thinking about how important Dawn's grandmother Beauty was to her and how Beauty fostered, inspired, and nurtured a love of cooking in Dawn. She received everything Dawn shared with her with wisdom and compassion. This love was carried from Beauty to Dawn to Dawn's sister April. With Dawn's urging and help April was cast as Orphan Annie in a production that traveled around the country.

I empathized with Dawn's feelings of emptiness and abandonment in an environment of privilege. Dawn's life-saving grandmother Beauty made me think of my own grandmother Sophie. It was heartbreaking to imagine Dawn's distracted parents, the atmosphere of benign neglect. How could one not completely love and adore this child? Dawn described her upbringing with sincerity, clarity, and grace. She grew up in a particular time and place which I recognized completely.

I loved this memoir. Dawn is a warrior telling her truth. She found her voice and she used it beautifully and compassionately. As with the best books I was nourished having read it. Beauty would be so proud.

Individuation vs The Good Girl Pact

Article

When Compliance in Childhood Haunts You in Adulthood
By Beverly Amsel, PhD,

City Hosts third Annual ‘Day of Prayer’

City hosts third annual ‘Day of Prayer’ TODAY!
October 23, 2015
By
JOSEPH FITZGERALD for THE CALL

WOONSOCKET – The city’s third annual Woonsocket Day of Prayer on Saturday will offer something new to participants this year: a short march of spiritual solidarity from The River United Methodist Church on Federal Street to the event site at River Island Park.

Bishop Herson Gonzalez, pastor of Calvary Worship Center and founder of the Woonsocket Day of Prayer, says the quarter-mile walk is intended to give the event a little more exposure.

“We wanted to make it a little more visible in the community and to let people know that we have a faith community here that is willing to walk and pray together,” says Gonzalez.

The march – which is open to the public - steps off at 10 a.m. from The River United Methodist Church, 17 Federal St., but participants are asked to begin arriving at 9 a.m. for a unity prayer, coffee, donuts and pastries.

Antoni van Leeuwenhoek: First Person to Observe Bacteria

It's the birthday of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, born in Delft, the Netherlands (1632). He perfected the microscope, and was the first person to observe bacteria. Leeuwenhoek was not a trained scientist; he studied to be a draper's assistant in Amsterdam. He became a draper and haberdasher, and eventually took an administrative job in the government. He devoted all of his spare time to his hobby, grinding glass lenses and making microscopes. Over his lifetime, he ground over 400 lenses, and he built many microscopes, using techniques that he kept secret. He used his own microscopes to become the first person to observe bacteria and protozoa, which he called "animalcules." He was also the first to see red blood cells. One of his most important contributions was his research on fleas. He was able to explain how insects breed, because he could, for the first time, see their tiny eggs. He argued against the popular theory of spontaneous generation, which said that the tiniest insects could be generated from thin air.
-Writer's Almanac

Community Results

Article

Doorman: the Ultimate Friend

Article

Listening

Listening is not a reaction, it is a connection. Listening to a conversation or a story we don't so much respond as join in -- become part of the action.

- Ursula Le Guin

Participate

“Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

“People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks & Essays on the Writer, the Reader & the Imagination

“The creative adult is the child who has survived.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“We're each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters, Volume 1

“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

“Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

“The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn't have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable. If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell it to you again when you're fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you're reading a whole new book."

(Staying Awake: Notes on the alleged decline of reading, Harper's Magazine, February 2008)”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“Only in silence the word,
Only in dark the light,
Only in dying life:
Bright the hawk's flight
On the empty sky.

—The Creation of Éa”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

“It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin


“As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

Knowledge Heals

“It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We know it, because we have had to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

“Belief is the wound that knowledge heals.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Telling

Urban Life

The lady next door loves to chuck everything out the window, couches, laundry, garbage, letters. Once I saw her toddler at the window three flights up and I held my breath. But I'd never move to the suburbs even if I won the lottery ten times over.

Real Problems

She was furious that someone had put a piece of trash in her trash barrel, not inside the bag.
Come to my neighborhood for real problems, I said laughing.

The Trouble with a Mask

“The trouble with a mask is it never changes.”
― Charles Bukowski

Bukowski

“Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.”
― Charles Bukowski

A Lucky One

I never met another man I'd rather be. And even if that's a delusion, it's a lucky one.
― Charles Bukowski

Those Eyes

“There are times when those eyes inside your brain stare back at you.”
― Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

Do Nothing

“This is very important -- to take leisure time. Pace is the essence. Without stopping entirely and doing nothing at all for great periods, you're gonna lose everything...just to do nothing at all, very, very important. And how many people do this in modern society? Very few. That's why they're all totally mad, frustrated, angry and hateful.”
― Charles Bukowski

There's a bluebird in my heart

“There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you.”
― Charles Bukowski

the free soul is rare

“those who escape hell
however
never talk about
it
and nothing much
bothers them
after
that.”
― Charles Bukowski

“the free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.”
― Charles Bukowski, Tales of Ordinary Madness

There are Worse Things

“there are worse things
than being alone
but it often takes
decades to realize this
and most often when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than too late”
― Charles Bukowski

“My dear,
Find what you love and let it kill you.
Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.
Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.
For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.
~ Falsely yours”
― Charles Bukowski

“If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose”
― Charles Bukowski

The Problem with the World

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”
― Charles Bukowski

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
― Charles Bukowski

What a Circus!

“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
― Charles Bukowski

Some People Never go Crazy

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”
― Charles Bukowski



“Do you hate people?”

“I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.”
― Charles Bukowski, Barfly



“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
― Charles Bukowski



“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.”
― Charles Bukowski



“I've never been lonely. I've been in a room -- I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt awful -- awful beyond all -- but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me...or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I'll quote Ibsen, "The strongest men are the most alone." I've never thought, "Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I'll feel good." No, that won't help. You know the typical crowd, "Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?" Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn't want to hide in factories. That's all. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!”
― Charles Bukowski

Find what you Love. . .

Sometimes solitude is one of the most beautiful things on earth.

People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.

If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.

What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.

You either get it down on paper or you jump off a bridge.

Find what you love and let it kill you.

- Charles Bukowski

Soon They Forget How to Think

"I was naturally a loner, content just to live with a woman, eat with her, sleep with her, walk down the street with her. I didn't want conversation, or to go anywhere except the racetrack or the boxing matches. I didn't understand t.v. I felt foolish paying money to go into a movie theatre and sit with other people to share their emotions. Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateur drunks, the bores."
—Charles Bukowski, Women, 1978


"This is a world where everybody’s gotta do something. Ya know, somebody laid down this rule that everybody’s gotta do something, they gotta be something. You know, a dentist, a glider pilot, a narc, a janitor, a preacher, all that . . . Sometimes I just get tired of thinking of all the things that I don’t wanna do. All the things that I don’t wanna be. Places I don’t wanna go, like India, like getting my teeth cleaned. Save the whale, all that, I don’t understand that . . ."
—Charles Bukowski, Barfly, 1987


"There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death. They don't honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can't hear it. Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die."
—Charles Bukowski, The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship, 1998


"The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidates who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go."
—Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye, 1982

Fugitive Anger

You are probably going to have to deal with whatever fugitive anger still needs to be examined—it may not look like anger; it may look like compulsive dieting or bingeing or exercising or shopping. But you must find a path and a person to help you deal with that anger. It will not be a Hallmark card. It is not the yellow brick road, with lovely trees on both sides, constant sunshine, birdsong, friends. It is going to be unbelievably hard some days—like the rawness of birth, all that blood and those fluids and shouting horrible terrible things—but then there will be that wonderful child right in the middle. And that wonderful child is you, with your exact mind and butt and thighs and goofy greatness.
-Anne Lamott

Venus Jupiter Mars, Orion and more

The sky is clear this morning and the outside lights are burned out so Bill and I stood in the yard and looked up for a while while Lily poked around the bushes.

Yesterday I tried to walk through anger and frustration but only got exhausted, and I was still angry. Anger means my energy is dropping shifting to winter mode. I must resist panicking and remember what it's good for.

I can't resist looking at the orangey red maple trees every chance I get.

Full Moon Tuesday Oct 27, 2015

October 27, 2015 - 08:05 am (EDT)

Brain Health

Article

It’s the Whole Approach

“There is a perception among people who have heart attacks and heart disease – and I see this in my patients – that there’s already so much damage there’s not much they can do,” said Dr. Malhotra, an interventional cardiologist and adviser to the United Kingdom’s national obesity forum. “But by changing your diet, you can dramatically reduce your risk of having a heart attack even if you have coronary artery disease. We have data suggesting that the risk reduction can happen within weeks.”

Dr. Malhotra visited the Mediterranean with a documentary filmmaker, Donal O’Neill. Together they noticed that a healthful diet was one of many factors that seemed to play a role in the longevity of people in Pioppi, where the average person has a life expectancy of about 90.

They were surprised by how the people they encountered enjoyed and savored their food, turning every meal into an excuse for a social occasion with friends and family. They noticed that people spent a lot of time outdoors getting fresh air. Instead of designating daily periods of time to jog or exercise, they engaged in a great deal of leisurely physical activity like walking and riding bicycles. And they seemed to have low levels of chronic stress.

“We need to redefine the Mediterranean diet,” Dr. Malhotra said. “The truth is that it’s a lifestyle. It’s the whole approach. It’s the food. It’s the social interaction. It’s getting the right kind of exercise. It’s being outside. It’s getting sunlight and sunshine. The question, though, is how can we combine all these lessons from this village with what we know about modern medicine.”

Dr. Malhotra and Mr. O’Neill were also surprised by what they learned about food in the Mediterranean.

Although olive oil and vegetables were a constant, some aspects of the traditional diet varied greatly from one part of the region to the next. They found that pork and lamb were common in some areas, but that sugar was traditionally consumed infrequently. They learned that all olive oils are not created equal. And they discovered that the type of grain typically eaten in Pioppi is very different from what most Americans consume.

Article

Henry David Thoreau

‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.’
- Henry David Thoreau

Colors and Sounds

It's warm and windy and my red maple tree is highway dept orange. Our clothes and sheets are drying on the line. My window is open and I can hear the cars and trucks and dry leaves blowing mini tornadoes. I hear the voice of a woman talking across the lot. Classical harpsichord music is playing on the radio.

20 Years later We're All Still Involved

Article

Justin Trudeau

Mr. Trudeau is different. He is a better match for Canadians’ vision of themselves: peaceable, educated, emotionally stable, multicultural.
Article

Book: Becoming Nicole

If you aren’t moved by “Becoming Nicole,” I’d suggest there’s a lump of dark matter where your heart should be. “To my beautiful daughter,” her father wrote on her Facebook page, in response to a despairing post that once again expressed her fear she’d wind up alone. “I worry about you every day, but I have seldom worried that you will be alone. You have never been alone. You are admired by so many. You are beautiful, amazingly smart, strong beyond your years and funny. I know that someday someone will take you away from me. I say someday because I am not ready for you to grow up.”

Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family

By Amy Ellis Nutt

Crime and Punishment

More than anyone else, the police understand what violent crime looks like. They risk their lives every day. If they can stand up and say that America needs to change fundamentally the way it handles crime and punishment, everyone should be listening.
Article

Saoirse Ronan Embraces her Journey

“You’re not from the country you’re living in, however great that is,” he recalled telling her. “When you go home you’re no longer from that place either. And people view you differently, and you view them differently, and it’s all different. And you can’t tell why.”
Article

Ram Dass

"When you see the beloved all around you, everyone is family and everywhere is love."

-Ram Dass

Disadvantaged: Hurts Boys More

Boys are falling behind. They graduate from high school and attend college at lower rates than girls and are more likely to get in trouble, which can hurt them when they enter the job market. This gender gap exists across the United States, but it is far bigger for poor people and for black people. As society becomes more unequal, it seems, it hurts boys more.
Article

A Week of Friday's

For some reason every day this week has felt like a Friday. This happens sometimes.

Eastern Sun

There's a glorious pink and blue sunrise this morning.

John Gould: Door Closed, Door Open

"Gould said something else that was interesting on the day I turned in my first two pieces: write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out." That high-schooler was Stephen King. King wrote later: "This editor was the man who taught me everything I know about writing in 10 minutes."

"Writing a good essay isn't that easy. You can't do it with a pointing stick. I try to make a point obliquely, adroitly, and whenever possible, with humor. It must always be a surprise. The surprise is what makes people laugh."

“Now we have confirmed that there is spooky action at distance.”

Article

You are the one who is flying the plane.

“The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.”
― Marianne Williamson

“There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do.”
― Marianne Williamson

“Until we have seen someone's darkness, we don't really know who they are. Until we have forgiven someone's darkness, we don't really know what love is.”
― Marianne Williamson

“You may believe that you are responsible for what you do, but not for what you think. The truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think. ”
― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

“Success means we go to sleep at night knowing that our talents and abilities were used in a way that served others.”
― Marianne Williamson

“In the absence of love, we began slowly but surely to fall apart.”
― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

“Women are still in emotional bondage as long as we need to worry that we might have to make a choice between being heard and being loved.”
― Marianne Williamson, A Woman's Worth

“Everything we do is infused with the energy with which we do it. If we're frantic, life will be frantic. If we're peaceful, life will be peaceful. And so our goal in any situation becomes inner peace.”
― Marianne Williamson

“We can always choose to perceive things differently. We can focus on what's wrong in our life, or we can focus on what's right.”
― Marianne Williamson

“...available people are the ones who are dangerous, because they confront us with the possibility of real intimacy.”
― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

“Something amazing happens when we surrender and just love. We melt into another world, a realm of power already within us. The world changes when we change. the world softens when we soften. The world loves us when we choose to love the world.”
― Marianne Williamson

“Whenever we feel lost, or insane, or afraid, all we have to do is ask for His help. The help might not come in the form we expected, or even thought we desired, but it will come, and we will recognize it by how we feel. In spite of everything, we will feel at peace.”
― Marianne Williamson

“When a woman rises up in glory, her energy is magnetic and her sense of possibility contagious.”
― Marianne Williamson, A Woman's Worth

“Just like a sunbeam can't separate itself from the sun, and a wave can't separate itself from the ocean,
we can't separate ourselves from one another.
We are all part of a vast sea of love, one indivisible divine mind.”
― Marianne Williamson

“In every community, there is work to be done.
In every nation, there are wounds to heal.
In every heart, there is the power to do it.”
― Marianne Williamson

“Rather than accepting that we are the loving beings that He created, we have arrogantly thought that we could create ourselves, and then create God. Because we are angry and judgmental, we have projected those characteristics onto Him. We have made up a God in our image. But God remains who He is and always has been: the energy, the thought of unconditional love.”
― Marianne Williamson

“Usually, when we think of power, we think of external power. And we think of powerful people as those who have made it in the world. A powerful woman isn’t necessarily someone who has money, but we think of her as someone with a boldness or a spark that makes her manifest in a dramatic way. When we think of a powerful man, we think of his ability to manifest abundance, usually money, in the world.
Most people say that a powerful woman does best with a powerful man, that she needs someone who understands the bigness of her situation, a man who can meet her at the same or even greater level of power in the world.
Now this is true, if power is defined as material abundance. A woman often faces cultural prejudice when she makes more money than a man, as does he. A woman who defines power by worldly standards can rarely feel totally relaxed in the arms of a man who doesn’t have it.
If power is seen as an internal matter, then the situation changes drastically. Internal power has less to do with money and worldly position, and more to do than with emotional expansiveness, spirituality and conscious living…
I used to think I needed a powerful man, someone who could protect me from the harshness and evils of the world. What I have come to realize is that…the powerful man I was looking for would be foremost, someone who supported me in keeping myself on track spiritually, and in so maintaining clarity within myself, that life would present fewer problems. When it did get rough, he would help me forgive.
I no longer wanted somebody who would say to me, “Don’t worry honey, if they’re mean to you I’ll beat them up or buy them out.” Instead, I want someone who prays and meditates with me regularly so that fewer monsters from the outer world disturb me, and who when they do, helps me look within my own consciousness for answers, instead of looking to false power to combat false power.
There’s a big difference between a gentle man and a weak man. Weak men make us nervous. Gentle men make us calm.”
― Marianne Williamson

“Every ending is a new beginning. Through the grace of God, we can always start again. (Page 120.)”
― Marianne Williamson, Everyday Grace: Having Hope, Finding Forgiveness And Making Miracles

“Always seek less turbulent skies.
Hurt. Fly above it.
Betrayal. Fly above it.
Anger. Fly above it.
You are the one who is flying the plane.”
― Marianne Williamson

“A queen is wise. She has earned her serenity, not having had it bestowed on her but having passer her tests. She has suffered and grown more beautiful because of it. She has proved she can hold her kingdom together. She has become its vision. She cares deeply about something bigger than herself. She rules with authentic power.”
― Marianne Williamson

“A tulip doesn’t strive to impress anyone. It doesn’t struggle to be different than a rose. It doesn’t have to. It is different. And there’s room in the garden for every flower. You didn’t have to struggle to make your face different than anyone else’s on earth. It just is. You are unique because you were created that way. Look at little children in kindergarten. They’re all different without trying to be. As long as they’re unselfconsciously being themselves, they can’t help but shine. It’s only later, when children are taught to compete, to strive to be better than others, that their natural light becomes distorted.”
― Marianne Williamson

“Spiritual progress is like a detoxification.”
― Marianne Williamson

Marianne Williamson

We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present.
― Marianne Williamson

Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.
― Marianne Williamson

The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.
― Marianne Williamson

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

Children are happy because they don't have a file in their minds called "All the Things That Could Go Wrong."
― Marianne Williamson

Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.
― Marianne Williamson

It takes courage...to endure the sharp pains of self discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.
― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

And no one will listen to us until we listen to ourselves.
― Marianne Williamson

Terry Gross: Opening Up

That weekend Gross had plans to see a four-and-a-half-hour opera, Rossini’s ‘‘William Tell.’’ She discovered opera only recently, and wishes she had found it when she was still taking singing lessons with an instructor, who died a few years ago. From him she learned about head tones and chest tones and how, when you’re singing, your voice ‘‘should resonate in the bones of your face.’’ She added: ‘‘When I was taking singing lessons, I felt like, No one’s having more pleasure in singing than I am. I sound horrible, but that doesn’t matter. I’m enjoying it.’’

~

Gross’s interviews have often been compared to therapy. That’s in part because of her seemingly neutral stance, but also because of the feeling of safety she gives her interviewees. Once in a while, a guest confesses to Gross that he’s confiding something for the very first time. ‘‘I don’t know that I’ve said that to anyone,’’ the ‘‘Project Runway’’ host Tim Gunn told Gross in 2014, of spending time in a psychiatric hospital as an adolescent. Gross’s response was as affecting as Gunn’s story. She handles confessions quietly, acknowledging the weight of what’s been said without drawing undue attention to it.

Gross herself started seeing a therapist several years ago. ‘‘When she asks me a question that gets exactly to the heart of what I’m trying to say, but maybe haven’t articulated clearly, it just feels so good,’’ Gross told me. ‘‘My ideal as an interviewer is to be the person who gets it. Like somebody can tell you something really personal,’’ she continued, and ‘‘you can ask them something that can help them comfortably move to the next place and go deeper.’’ She went on: ‘‘Hearing someone speak really personally, and having that affirm your experience as a sexual person, or as a sick person, or just as a person trying to get through daily life, is really valuable. And I think that’s why we turn to literature, I think that’s why we turn to film, beyond the entertainment it gives us.’’
Article

Forget the iPhone

Forget the iphone, I want to get a police radio.

Wild Boar

She particularly enjoys instructing women, "they listen, they pay attention, they want to do things the right way and be safe!" says Bruno. Subsequently, Bruno has started 2 extremely successful Ladies Nights at Midstate Gun Range in Coventry, RI and The Fall River Rod and Gun Club in Westport, MA.

Bruno also hunts. She has hunted deer and wild boar in Texas. She is not a trophy hunter but prefers to eat the meat.

Perhaps inevitable given her other passion, Bruno has debuted what apparently is the nations only gun talk show hosted by a woman: Lock Stock and Daria.

Woman Love the BASS

Women love the bass and the low notes in general.

Hand Held Radio Scanner

I'm going to try to get one of these to keep up with the news in the 'hood. A police radio is a short story machine.

Dance Mania

I love to dance around the house ever since I was a kid I would dance for hours wildly when the house was empty, which was most weekends.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plague_of_1518

Dancing Plague of 1518
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Engraving of Hendrik Hondius portrays three women affected by the plague. Work based on original drawing by Pieter Brueghel, who supposedly witnessed a subsequent outbreak in 1564 in Flanders

The Dancing Plague (or Dance Epidemic) of 1518 was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace (then part of the Holy Roman Empire) in July 1518. Around 400 people took to dancing for days without rest, and, over the period of about one month, some of those affected died of heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion.

The outbreak began in July 1518, when a woman, Mrs Troffea, began to dance fervently in a street in Strasbourg.[1] This lasted somewhere between four to six days. Within a week, 34 others had joined, and within a month, there were around 400 dancers, predominantly female. Some of these people eventually died from heart attacks, strokes, or exhaustion.[1]

Historical documents, including "physician notes, cathedral sermons, local and regional chronicles, and even notes issued by the Strasbourg city council" are clear that the victims danced.[1] It is not known why these people danced, some even to their deaths.

As the dancing plague worsened, concerned nobles sought the advice of local physicians, who ruled out astrological and supernatural causes, instead announcing that the plague was a "natural disease" caused by "hot blood". However, instead of prescribing bleeding, authorities encouraged more dancing, in part by opening two guildhalls and a grain market, and even constructing a wooden stage. The authorities did this because they believed that the dancers would recover only if they danced continuously night and day. To increase the effectiveness of the cure, authorities even paid for musicians to keep the afflicted moving.[2]

Historian John Waller stated that a marathon runner could not have lasted the intense workout that the men and women died from hundreds of years ago.[3]

Josephine Baker

Baker had a mischievous, manic, Liza Minnelli quality. While her co-stars move on camera at a blithe, comfortable pace, Baker seems about to burst from the screen, all arms and legs and kinetic energy. This was the verve that captivated her nightclub audiences. What the movies cannot show us is the flamboyance that captivated them offstage as well.

There was Baker strolling down the Champs Elysees with a panther and a monkey on leashes. (Later, she had a cheetah as well.) There was Baker stealing off to have an affair with the future king of Sweden. There was Baker recovering from cyanide poisoning at the hands of Hermann Goering. And, through it all, there was Baker the woman of style, a walking advertisement for the great couture houses and jewelers of Paris.

Article

1:30 AM

I heard my husband go downstairs in the middle of the night. He was gone for quite a while. When he came back I asked him if he had been working at his desk. He said No he heard noises that woke him up. "It was three men skateboarding round and round under our window." I suggested he phone the police. "If it woke you up it probably woke up other people on our street." So he made the call, and the police drove by, and the men left. AMEN.

Short Story Machine

The police scanner!

Dawn Lerman

I am reading MY FAT DAD by Dawn Lerman and I can't put it down. My mind has a running list of people I must tell to read this book. I feel like I have met a long lost cousin or sibling. I am learning a lot about my childhood and family by reading about hers. We both grew up in the MADMEN era with a loving grandmother who saved our life. We both grew up Jewish although she knew it and I did not. We both grew up with unhealthy food-obsessed families except my family ate at the table. I will write more soon. Meanwhile I am savoring each chapter. GET THIS BOOK!

She was in Love

My mother was in love with doctors, deliberately hurting herself to get back on the gurney.

Magical Badge of Honor

I LOVE the badge the correctional officers gave me at the Columbus Day Parade on Federal Hill. They didn't even know me but after chatting for a few minutes they made the gesture. If they only knew how much that means to me. I wear it every day on my black vest. Maybe they do know. Intuition works in mysterious ways. As correctional officers working in a prison they have to rely on their intuition every second of their day.

We are all Squirrels

We are all in squirrel mode running around before the big freeze hibernation of winter.

Any Direction

In the fall I am glad I can walk in any direction now that it's not blazing hot. The world is brand new again and I feel free to explore. My dog Lily never minds. I like to walk towards the sun if it's a cold day and lately I walk towards the colorful trees. I love trees. My dog loves people so we see people on the morning walk and we get to explore trees on the afternoon walk.

A bunch of changes have occurred lately. A few houses are up for sale and a few families have moved away. But I have to trust that when one door closes another will open. And it's true!

Last night Armand's grandchildren played fetch with Lily and their mom was smiling from the porch. It's moments like these that recharge my batteries.

Acorns are abundant on the sidewalks and I feel like Charlie Chaplin doing a slapstick routine walking on marbles!

I am glad Lily doesn't let me blow off walks. We are a pack-of-two and we need to get out at least two times a day no matter the weather and I am grateful.

Ursula K. Le Guin

"I am going to be rather hard-nosed and say that if you have to find devices to coax yourself to stay focused on writing, perhaps you should not be writing what you're writing. And if this lack of motivation is a constant problem, perhaps writing is not your forte. I mean, what is the problem? If writing bores you, that is pretty fatal. If that is not the case, but you find that it is hard going and it just doesn't flow, well, what did you expect? It is work; art is work."
- Ursula K. Le Guin

NYC's Reforestation

For centuries, the city’s trees were uprooted with reckless abandon — miles of greenery supplanted by a concrete jungle.

But New York’s trees have made a comeback, and today we’re celebrating.

At a ceremony in Joyce Kilmer Park in the South Bronx, the city will unveil a lacebark elm that marks the culmination its Million Trees NYC campaign.

The Empire State Building will glow forest green to honor the milestone.

When the city last took count, the tree population stood around 5.2 million, with 168 different species, the most common of which was the London plane.

And though we may never know the city’s oldest tree, many point to the so-called Queens Giant in Alley Pond Park.

For those looking to get involved in the city’s reforestation, the Parks Department is hosting a fall stewardship day this Saturday at parks in all five boroughs.

RI Athletic Club

The RI Athletic club is partnering with CVS this week and they are offering a free flu shot for RI residents Saturday 9AM-12PM.

Celebrating the Introvert

It's hard to describe to an extrovert how important solitude is for those us introverts especially since they see us for about three minutes of the 24 quiet hours.

Giant Muffin

Updated recipe October 20th!

1 heaping cup whole wheat flour
2 cups wheat bran
1 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
cardamom +cloves sprinkled in too, if you want
freshly chopped ginger root!
2 eggs
sugar 1/4 c
molasses 1/2 c
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup canned solid pack pumpkin
2/3 cup corn oil

Preparation
Preheat oven to 350°F
Bake in Bundt pan for one hour or until a wooden skewer comes out clean.
Let cool for 15 minutes, then tip out of pan.

Umbilical Cord

My radio is my umbilical cord leading to the surface of the ocean as I work under the sea.

AMAZING Breadcrumbs

Entering the priesthood and nunnery of art means letting the journey take you wherever it wants to go. It also means you are completely alone with the space between your ears. But don't despair, acceptance is the beginning of discovery. You are not alone at all. Many great men have walked this path and left AMAZING breadcrumbs.

Robots out of Breath

The robots are chasing me and I am running as fast as I can.

My Life

Get up, make coffee, let the dog out. Start writing. Shit, shower, shave, shine shoes. Bake a bread or wash the clothes. Keep writing and reading. After many hours it's time get the hell out and be a human walking on the sidewalk. Go anywhere. Keep the notebook and pens and bags handy. Pick up trash. Keep your ears and eyes open. Scoop up after the dog. Keep walking. Enjoy the shadows. They are the best part. Come home. Start cooking simmering marinating. Walk some more, write some more. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.

Fluffy Hunter: Walkin Blues

Listen
"The Walkin Blues" by Sam Pler
I love this! Walk right in Walk right out.

James Carter Organ Trio “The Walking Blues”
composed by Bass/Powell
from At The Crossroads CD Album (Decca Records 2011) on WICN radio 9:40 AM
CHECKOUT that BARI SAX!!!!!!!!!!!

Love of the 'Hood

My mother always taught me to buy wholesale and get the bargain but now, I beg to differ. A walk to the neighborhood mini mart is worth the added expense. To be on foot with my dog and run into my neighbors, when buying a quart of milk, is priceless.

Saves a Man

I contacted an author I like and asked her if I could get a reviewers copy to review her NEW book for my blog. Because I love her writing. She said YES.

It's supposed to arrive today!!!!!

I had to share because this is the courageous part of me trying to make things happen.

My karma is JUST DO IT don't wait for any big signal or money as validation. Life is HERE, life is NOW.

My other thought is about my obsession with prisons. Perhaps it is because I am always trying to break out of mine. It's daily, by the hour by the second, the prison between my ears. (laugh)

When I visit the schools it is just like a visit to the prisons. The uniforms are the same, the shiny desks in rows, the shiny hallways, the commands.

A piece of paper is a life raft. The pencil, the oar, saves a man from drowning.

WICN Michelle Willson played a song CREATIVITY SAVES LIVES.

Love and glorious trees,

Emily

Humanoids of Planet Earth

I am still learning about this planet. People say things and I believe them. A mistake I never stop making. The language of intention is "talk" my husband reminds me. But how do you tell the difference? I ask. Time tells the difference, but I never stop believing. Perhaps it all began when I was 5 years old and my biological father would say on his visit, I'll take you to the zoo next weekend. But it never happened that way. He'd come pick me up and I'd say, zoo? Nope.
I've had many promises evaporate they are the ones where people say "I'm coming to visit." Those are the ones that rarely happen. We are scary, my husband reminds me. Our life and passions are expressed in our environment and this terrifies people. So if they can't make it here they can't make it very far with me? Exactly. But you have to stop believing what people say. I can't do that. I'm a believer.

Spicy Peanut Ginger Garlic Broccoli

I just made this Chinese Broccoli improvisation and it was so good. First I trimmed and cut the broccoli florets. Then I took a 2 hour walk. When I came home I heated my 12" cast iron pan with olive oil, small dried red chili peppers, freshly chopped ginger root and freshly chopped garlic. I threw in the broccoli florets and salty peanuts and stirred. Then I splashed some soy sauce on it. I covered the mess for a minute and then splashed some water on it. When the broccoli was bright green but slightly tender I served it. Yum!

Root Causes of Homelessness

Establishing a right to counsel in housing court wouldn’t just reduce the human cost of homelessness — it would save New York money in the long run. It costs about $2,500 to provide a tenant with an attorney for an eviction proceeding, while we spend on average over $45,000 to shelter a homeless family. Our proposal makes good moral and financial sense.

Unless we attack the root causes of homelessness, we face the prospect of more New Yorkers entering our shelter system faster than we can move others out into apartments. We have the tools to stop this crisis, and we have the solution to end the eviction epidemic. New York should establish a right to counsel in housing court now.

Article

Fascinating Laws About Speech

Here

Mariel Hemingway

My passion now is to help other people understand that they’re not alone or isolated in how they feel, whether it’s being the caretaker of someone who’s suffering from mental illness or addiction, or who’s been left behind by suicide or those who actually suffer themselves. I think we’re at a tipping point of being able to talk about this issue without feeling shame and embarrassment.
– Mariel Hemingway

Mariel Hemingway’s “Out Came The Sun”
A moving, compelling memoir about growing up and escaping the tragic legacy of mental illness, suicide, addiction, and depression in one of America’s most famous families: the Hemingways.

She opens her eyes. The room is dark. She hears yelling, smashed plates, and wishes it was all a terrible dream. But it isn’t. This is what it was like growing up as a Hemingway.

In this deeply moving, searingly honest new memoir, Academy Award Nominated Actress and mental health icon, Mariel Hemingway, shares in candid detail the story of her troubled childhood in a famous family haunted by depression, alcoholism, illness, and suicide. Born just a few months after her grandfather, Ernest Hemingway, committed suicide, it was Mariel’s mission as a girl to escape the desperate cycles of severe mental health issues that had plagued generations of her family.

Surrounded by a family tortured by alcoholism (both parents), depression (her sister Margaux), suicide (her grandfather and four other members of her family), schizophrenia (her sister Muffet), and cancer (mother), it was all the young Mariel could do to keep her head.

In a compassionate voice she reveals her painful struggle to stay sane as the youngest child in her family, and how she coped with the chaos by becoming OCD and obsessive about her food, schedule, and organization.

The twisted legacy of her family has never quite let go of Mariel, but now in this memoir she opens up about her claustrophobic marriage, her acting career, and turning to spiritual healers and charlatans for solace. Ultimately Mariel has written a story of triumph about learning to overcome her family’s demons and developing love and deep compassion for them.

At last, in this memoir she can finally tell the true story of the tragedies and troubles of the Hemingway family, and she delivers a book that beckons comparisons with Mary Karr and Jeanette Walls.

As if Wives were Volcanoes

“A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.”
― John le Carré

“Home's where you go when you run out of homes.”
― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy

“The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.”
― John le Carré

“Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.”
― John le Carré, The Looking Glass War

“Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers.”
― John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“There are moments which are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.”
― John le Carré, A Most Wanted Man

“The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous”
― John le Carré

“By repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed.”
― John le Carré

“The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.”
― John le Carré

“Unfortunately it is the weak who destroy the strong.”
― John le Carré

“I have a theory which I suspect is rather immoral,' Smiley went on, more lightly. 'Each of us has only a quantum of compassion. That if we lavish our concern on every stray cat, we never get to the centre of things.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“All men are born free: just not for long.”
― John le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“To possess another language, Charlemagne tells us, is to possess another soul. German is such a language. Once you have it in your head, you can go there anytime, you can close the door, you have a refuge.”
― John le Carré

“Tessa distinguished absolutely between pain observed and pain shared. Pain observed is journalistic pain. It’s diplomatic pain. It’s television pain, over as soon as you switch off your beastly set. Those who watch suffering and do nothing about it, in her book, were little better than those who inflicted it. They were the bad Samaritans.”
― John le Carré, The Constant Gardener

“After all, if you make your enemy look like a fool, you lose the justification for engaging him.”
― John le Carré

“Our power knows no limits, yet we cannot find food for a starving child, or a home for a refugee. Our knowledge is without measure and we build the weapons that will destroy us. We live on the edge of ourselves, terrified of the darkness within. We have harmed, corrupted and ruined, we have made mistakes and deceived.”
― John le Carré

“You should have died when I killed you.”
― John le Carré

“Ideologies have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.”
― John le Carré

“There was nothing dishonourable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one's own generation.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“Wives?" she asked, interrupting him. For a moment, he had assumed she was tuning to the novel. Then he saw her waiting, suspicious eyes, so he replied cautiously, "None active," as if wives were volcanoes.”
― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy

“Let's die of it before we're too old.”
― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy

“If you see the world as gloomily as I see it, the only thing to do is laugh or shoot yourself.”
― John le Carré

“It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“It is also the pardonable vanity of lonely people everywhere to assume that they have no counterparts.”
― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy

“I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn't. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one's aims are, that's the trouble, specially if you're British.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

John le Carré

“Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes”
― John le Carré

Vignette: Crisps

What did he do? He drove me to a potato chip factory right in the middle of all of this. I remember zoning out watching little slices of potatoes boil in oil. I was ready to bust through the glass and join them. To this day I can't look at a potato chip.

Did you ever tell him how you felt?

No.

Why not?

Because he was a complete stranger.

I thought he was going to kill us to get out of child support.

Why was that?

My mother never said anything good about him and always complained and worried about money even though she married a millionaire.

How does that make you feel?

Like kicking ass.

Thanksgiving in my House

Days like this make me want to host Thanksgiving in my house. I will roast my turkey outdoors.

Winter Poses New Danger for Migrants

By RICK LYMAN OCT. 18, 2015

Men, women and children lined up to be registered at a migrant processing center in Croatia. Most people will travel farther north to Germany or Sweden.

OPATOVAC, Croatia — The migrants coming into Europe through the Western Balkans in recent months have been resourceful and adaptable enough to slip around unfriendly police officers, raging rivers, hostile borders and razor-wire fences. But there is one thing they cannot evade, and that is the looming winter.
Article

Urban Cow

I tried to convince a friend to let me keep a jersey milking cow on his nearby farm. No luck but still hunting. Chickens are legal now if approved by zoning commission. But chickens don't give milk!

Hot Shot

Get through the cold house days.
Portable heat.

Annual Boiler Tune Up

We look forward to our annual boiler tune up to make sure she's working right even if the price of oil is completely unaffordable.

Cookbooks Teach us How to Live

Laurie Colwin famously said we read cookbooks to learn how to live. She was right!

Grimm's Tales Allow Children to Grapple with their Fears

The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales
by Bruno Bettleheim
A 1976 book by Austrian-born American psychologist Bruno Bettelheim in which he analyzes fairy tales in terms of Freudian psychoanalysis.

In the book, Bettelheim discusses the emotional and symbolic importance of fairy tales for children, including traditional tales at one time[clarification needed] considered too dark, such as those collected and published by the Brothers Grimm. Bettelheim suggested that traditional fairy tales, with the darkness of abandonment, death, witches, and injuries, allowed children to grapple with their fears in remote, symbolic terms. If they could read and interpret these fairy tales in their own way, he believed, they would get a greater sense of meaning and purpose. Bettelheim thought that by engaging with these socially evolved stories, children would go through emotional growth that would better prepare them for their own futures.

A Farmer on the Bus Line

3 years ago I grew basil and parsley at the community garden and then strung the plants up to dry in my office. I lived off the dried plants for 2 more years.

Wright's dairy farm used to let us cart away free manure. I'd ask my friend John to drive his massive truck over with me and we'd shovel manure.

I love living like a farmer on the bus line.

Today I am incubating yogurt.

Revelation about Control

We can't pick our our audience or our friends. We can't control or even know the impact we have on each other. This is an important revelation that I must continually remind myself of since I grew up under a controlling regime.

I LOVE Ram Dass

"You start to go to meet another human being in truth. And truth is scary. Truth has bad breath at times; truth is boring; truth burns the food; truth is all the stuff. Truth has anger; truth has all of it. And you stay in it and you keep working with it and your keep opening to it and you keep deepening it."


Open Heart Extra - Relationships - The Idea of a Soul Mate
soulmatepost
The Idea of a Soul Mate

Posted December 31, 2014

Question: The problem seems to be that when you are in a relationship, in the beginning everything is happening, but when you marry that person it changes. I’ve been in several relationships, major relationships, and been married and divorced twice and I’m searching for something special. Something I’ve been told has been called a soul mate. Do you believe in such a relationship or person and what would that mean? How would I know that?

Ram Dass: Got it! Keep looking! I’ll give you the farthest out answer first of all and then we’ll come back to something that everybody can handle. In the farthest out answer, we have all been around so many times that every one of us has been everything with everybody else. So when I look at you, you and I have been in so many relationship s together. It’s just that we don’t remember. Do you know how many times we have been born and died? Remember that story, Buddha says: If you take a mountain six miles long and six miles wide and six miles high, that’s the distance a bullock walks in a day. And a bird flies over the mountain once every hundred years with a silk scarf in its beak and brushes the tip of the mountain. In the length of time it takes the scarf to wear away the mountain, that’s how long you have been doing this. Just think about that. Once every hundred years the scarf goes over. A scarf and a mountain. It goes on and on and on. In India there are Yugas and Kalpas of hundreds of thousands of years and then they just start cycles all over again. And we’ve been through all of them again and again and again and again.

Now, behind all of it is the One. And that is all there is. All of us here are one in drag, appearing to be many. So we are all “soul mate”. There is only one of it. It’s not mate, because it’s not even two. It’s only one. There’s only one of us. So what you’re really doing is constantly marrying yourself at the deepest level of God marrying God. Now you come down into soul. And each soul has a unique karmic predicament (you could call it a psychic DNA code) that in a way guides which way its life will go. And it is entirely possible that souls when they take birth into parents that are part of their Karma, will at some point meet a being and they have agreed in advance to come down and do this together and meet. And that’s what we usually call soul mates.

What you have found from your past marriages is that what you are attracted to in a person isn’t what you ultimately live with. After the honeymoon is over — it’s after the desire systems that were dormant in the relationship that have the attraction in it pass and all of it passes — then you are left with the work to do. And it’s the same work. When you trade in one partner for another, you still have the same work. You’re going to have to do it sooner or later when the pizzazz is over. And it just keeps going over. And you can’t milk the romanticism of relationship too long as you become more conscious. It’s more interesting than that. It really is. And people keep wanting to romanticize their lives all the time. It’s part of the culture. But the awakening process starts to show you the emptiness of that forum. And you start to go for something deeper. You start to go to meet another human being in truth. And truth is scary. Truth has bad breath at times; truth is boring; truth burns the food; truth is all the stuff. Truth has anger; truth has all of it. And you stay in it and you keep working with it and your keep opening to it and you keep deepening it. Every time you trade in a partner, you realize that there’s no good or bad about it. I’m not talking good or bad about this.

But you begin to see how you keep coming to the same place in relationships, and then you tend to stop. Because it gets too heavy. Because your identity gets threatened too much. For the relationship to move to the next level of truth requires an opening and a vulnerability that you’re not quite ready to make. And so you entrench, you retrench, you pull back and then you start to judge and push away and then you move to the next one. And then you have the rush of the openness and then the same thing starts to happen. And so you keep saying “Where am I going to find the one when this doesn’t happen?” And it will only happen when it doesn’t happen in you. When you start to take and watch the stuff and get quiet enough inside yourself, so you can take that process as it’s happening and start to work with it. And keep coming back to living truth in yourself or the other person even though it’s scary and hard.

God Bless Jane Brody, She can Explain Nutrition

Article

Tune In

In order to fully trust our inner voice we must first tune to the frequency of the heart. The more we quiet the mind and free ourselves from clinging to thought forms the better able we are to hear the deeper voice within.
- Ram Dass

NYC Rent Stabilized Tenants Get Harrassed

The tenants — many of them cooks, tamale vendors, housekeepers and other low-wage workers of Mexican descent who pay modest rents for the neighborhood and have lived in their building for decades — are battling Raphael Toledano, a former real estate broker who has been acquiring properties in the city in recent years.

Mr. Toledano, 25, bought 444 East 13th Street, near Avenue A, last January — along with two neighboring buildings he later sold — and soon after, the tenants said, property managers came knocking with doomsday situations and buyout offers of up to $50,000. In court documents, Mr. Toledano has denied harassing the tenants, and blamed the property management company, which he subsequently fired, for any problems that occurred.

Article

Heat House with Hot Flashes

It works.

The Only thing Missing

The only thing missing is a public kitchen. Wouldn't it be great to have a restaurant stove set up for the public just like a public library? A few years ago two guys walked into the church on my street and started grilling steaks. The secretary found them and chased them away. But the truth is we need a public kitchen!
Kids are not learning the basic survival cooking; how to bake bread, how to make stir friend vegetables, how to cook rice, how to roast a chicken, how to make soup. Door to door cooking classes could help. Just ask me.

Badge of Honor

I love wearing my black vest with my new badge, and exposed bare arms. If I was a therapist I'd have people sew their own vests and make their own badges. Everyone needs a badge not just the girl scouts.

If I was a Therapist

If I was a therapist my office would be a kitchen with musical intstruments, drawing and painting supplies, cats and dogs and goats and chickens Jersey cows and a pool. There would be a tree in view at the window. Everyone would be cured!

Venus Jupiter Mars

This morning at 6AM my husband pointed out the three planets, Venus Jupiter and Mars which have been moving closer together each day.

I LOVE Opera

I love opera. I must've been adopted because I love opera and sauerkraut.

Baking a Marinara Sauce

I am a lazy cook. I love to throw everything in a pot and bake it slowly at 225. Today it was fresh garlic, celery, crushed tomatoes, chopped onions, chopped black olives, extra virgin olive oil, fresh garden basil, dried oregano, and a dash of Adobo. The aroma was amazing especially after walking downtown in the dark cold. The streets were empty because it's a Sunday. I walked around with my dog, with a tiny flashlight dangling from around my neck bouncing a bluish-white beam across the sidewalk.

Stay Informed

Woonsocket Dog Laws

Bake-O-Mat

Community ovens for sharing baking and eating. Just like a laundromat but BETTER!

Season of Freezing

If you have heat, be sure to count your blessings.

True Love

Article

Rhode Island's Quirks and Customs

Mark Patinkin: A Brit's guide to Rhode Island's quirks and customs
How a visitor from England might be struck by the R.I. customs we take for granted.

So today, an imagined list of how a Brit might be struck by the R.I. customs we take for granted:


• Instead of putting milk in their coffee, they put coffee in their milk.

Article.

Communal Eating

If I could I'd put a 50 person dining room table on the double yellow line on my street just to have a communal meal. Lately I have befriended those pillow stacks of jasmine rice in Price Rite and found myself hauling one home. I am not a gourmet, I am a lover of shared healthy delicious meals. Rice can feed a nation and a neighborhood and I would like to start with the latter. We could construct bath tub sized rice cookers and serve beans and veggies and select embellishments. Meat as a condiment! We could make pressed cider and apple pies in a wood fired oven. We could churn our own vanilla ice cream. We'd have Lao, Brazilian, Dominican, West African, Haitian, Romanian, French Canadian, Russian, Irish, and Puerto Rican foods to represent all of the people on the block. Sounds like a block party to me.

Ego Globe

He carried his ego on his back like Atlas.

Ali Rachel Pearl

Ali Rachel Pearl is pursuing her Ph.D. in English at the University of Southern California.

Hollow-Headed Zombies

Sometimes I have survivor's guilt. That I got to live and thrive and so many have died or continue to roam the earth as hollow-headed zombies.

Indian Writers

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/world/asia/india-writers-return-awards-to-protest-government-silence-on-violence.html

Lonely Death + Family Secrets

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/nyregion/dying-alone-in-new-york-city.html

Reminds me of another family secret. My favorite Aunt Aunt Gloria red headed beautiful smiling in photos died alone emaciated, anorexic with an apartment full of cats she adopted from the newspaper. Family secrets are very important.

“We’ve become a bridge to the community.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/us/a-veterans-of-foreign-wars-post-in-denver-trades-beer-for-a-sun-salute.html

Under the Sky

I can still sit outside and work in the sun. I prefer to work under the sky, and live in New England.

Letter Writing

Letter writing is my window to the world. Now I am writing to you and to me at the same time. This is the magic!

Saved by the Beauty of the World

"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things."

- Mary Oliver


Transcript: http://www.onbeing.org/program/mary-oliver-listening-to-the-world/transcript/7271
Listening to http://onbeing.org/program/mary-oliver-listening-to-the-world/7267

Ms. Tippett: Right. And then you talk about growing up in a sad, depressed place, a difficult place. In another — you don't belabor this, I mean, and in other places — there's a place you talk about you were one of many thousands who've had insufficient childhoods.

Ms. Oliver: Yes.

Ms. Tippett: But that you spent a lot of your time walking around the woods.

Ms. Oliver: Yes.

Ms. Tippett: In Ohio.

Ms. Oliver: I did. And I think it saved my life. I — to this day, I don't care for the enclosure of buildings.

Ms. Tippett: Mm-hmm.

Ms. Oliver: It was a very bad childhood for everybody, every member of the household, not just myself I think. And I escaped it, barely. With years of trouble.

Ms. Tippett: Yeah.

Ms. Oliver: But I did find the entire world in looking for something. But I got saved by poetry. And I got saved by the beauty of the world.

Patty Jenkins

Patty Jenkins
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Patty Jenkins
Born Patricia Lea Jenkins
July 23, 1971 (age 44)
George Air Force Base, Victorville, California, USA
Occupation Film director, screenwriter
Years active 2001–present
Spouse(s) Sam Sheridan (m. 2007)

Patricia Lea "Patty" Jenkins is an American film director and screenwriter. She is best known for directing Monster (2003).[1]

Jenkins, a native of California, grew up around the world and lived in 15 different countries before she was 6 and 4 different states before college. She attended the AFI Conservatory. She graduated from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1993. The most famous film she has directed to date is Monster, a docudrama about Aileen Wuornos. On July 14, 2011, she received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for the pilot of The Killing. She received two nominations for the 2012 DGA Awards for Outstanding Directorial Achievement, one for "Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Dramatic Series" for The Killing and "Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television/Mini-Series" for Five. On January 28, 2012, she won the DGA award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement for a Dramatic Series for the pilot of The Killing.

In 2007, Jenkins married Sam Sheridan, author of the books A Fighter's Heart and The Fighter's Mind.[2]

In April 2015, it was revealed that Jenkins will direct Wonder Woman, the fourth movie in the DC Extended Universe for a 2017 release. Jenkins was hired after the original director, Michelle MacLaren, left the project due to creative differences. She was previously attached to direct Thor: The Dark World but left the project due to creative differences.

Apple Cider

Apple cider with a few grains of instant yeast, overnight makes a 2 percent beverage.

I wish every teacher and public official and artist and musician I knew could read this book

. . . and everyone in the neighborhood.

Some quotes from "Stage Performance" by Livingston Taylor

On nervousness:

Remember that your audience means a lot more to you than you mean to them. Your performance is more than likely one small part of their whole time out. They may have been out to dinner, may be celebrating a birthday, may be talking closely with friends. If you don't perform at your all-time best, it will not matter to the audience, especially not nearly as much as it matters to you.

Sometimes the worst does happen, and is spite of your best efforts and wishes, you wind up being absolutely awful. This is normal. Don't be so hard on yourself.


On the audience:

They want attention, and they want to feel that their presence is special to you, that it makes a difference in the course of events that make up your show. They want to believe you are glad to be with them. If you're focused on yourself and caught up in nervousness, you're taking attention away from your audience- the attention they want and deserve...Their attention is a gift. Don't throw it away. Even if you think you don't deserve it, receive it graciously.

Look at, and pay attention to, your audience.

If you are tense, your audience will be tense too, and will become exhausted.

Expect that the unexpected will often happen. Work with material that is basic enough to your skill level that, if an unexpected event occurs, you will be able to respond to the event, while still maintaining your composure.

The performer has the absolute right to be on stage. The audience also has the right to not like what the performer is doing. Sometimes people will love what you do, other times not like it at all. Just do your best at the time, and be patient, and enjoy performing to the end of your show.

Ask yourself where you can add to the audience's enjoyment. If you do something once and the audience likes it, do it again. If they don't like it, don't do it again.

Be patient.

Let your audience know when it's time to respond.

Periodically you need to be still, or at least slow down, as with dancers, or your audience will become tired out.

It's okay to be human on stage...They love you to be normal, to make a mistake, acknowledge it, smile, shake your head slightly, forgive yourself, and move on.

The key to your success lies in making your audience comfortable.

Do not beat yourself up for not being 100 percent. Do the best you can with what you have at the time.

Do not rush the music. This tells the audience you are nervous.

Accept compliments graciously.


On hecklers:

Group pressure solves nine out of ten cases of boorish behavior. If it doesn't resolve it, then someone may have to directly speak with the heckler, troublemaker.

If you are an opening act, be quick and good. Know when to get off the stage.


On sex and the entertainment business:

The real problem comes when we use inappropriate sexuality in an attempt to advance our careers. Attractiveness is not a substitute for skill/ability. And you may attract unwanted attention.


On your career:

Don't get lost in the fantasy of how your career should be. It's good to have heroes and inspiration, but not good to compare yourself to others, and the career progressions of others. Each person's path will be different.

Reread your Favorite Books

I love to reread my favorite books the way I love to eat my favorite foods.

Bebop

Whenever I run into Bebop he sings a few jazz standards and mimics playing the tenor sax. We're usually in Price Rite. Today I am thinking of him as I listen to WICN jazz station wondering if I should try to learn this stuff. I could play more music with the guys.

Jazz standards are musical compositions which are an important part of the musical repertoire of jazz musicians, in that they are widely known, performed, and recorded by jazz musicians, and widely known by listeners.

Joe Slezik
Jazz Host

Jazz Matinee, 12-4pm, Saturday

Joe was born in Concord, MA but grew up in Bellingham.

Secret to Life

I think I figured out the secret to life.
LIVE.
With both feet, both hands, and all of ones heart, ears nose mouth...

Max Sebald's Writing Tips

Here.

First Female Ranger 'gardien du parc'

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151014-virunga-women-rangers-mountain-gorillas-congo/?sf14132582=1

It's Important to Live

Writing changes the way you hear, photography changes the way you see, dance changes the way you move, cooking and baking changes your tummy. Walking around listening to your neighbors, all of these things enrich your life.

Photographer Louie Psihoyos

Made famous by his work in National Geographic, Psihoyos also is known for his elaborate photo shoots and for creating images that stand the test of time.

"Iconic" is one of Louie Psihoyos' favorite watchwords. Not to be confused with "ironic," even though he might find that slip of the tongue agreeably appropriate when it comes to some of his more memorable portraits or pictorial vignettes. Pretty much every Psihoyos image, however, is memorable in some way, and many of them have, indeed, become photographic icons since he began his career more than three decades ago.

Psihoyos (drop the "P" and think "sequoias") is among that lucky breed of professionals who have found truth in the maxim, "Do what you love and the money will follow." The 47-year-old photographer lives in Boulder, Colo., and enjoys a thriving income from stock images accumulated through a huge backlog of assignments and visual obsessions over the past three decades.
~
Every cell of your body has to be aligned so that you're making the best possible image," he says.

In true Psihoyos fashion, even his early experiences seemed gilded with a little magic. One of his favorite cocktail-party anecdotes is about how he got his photographic education paid for by "Goldfinger." The morning-after version is that his scholarship was actually provided by a wealthy businessman named Joseph Ehrenreich, who dabbled in shady gold investments and also was a major distributor for Nikon. (Ehrenreich reportedly was the real-life inspiration for the title character in Ian Fleming's James Bond classic.)

"You have to give of yourself 200 percent in everything you do; then the right people find you like a beacon."


http://www.photomediaonline.com/features-stories/people-and-places/item/677-louie-psihoyos-in-search-of-the-iconic.html

Thelma Williams Daredevil Nose

Thelma Williams

Job Sniffing Armpits Is Uplifting For Some
By Bob Morris of the Sentinel Staff, August 22, 1986
The photograph ran in Wednesday's paper. I don't know how you could have missed it. I don't know how anyone could have missed it. It was certainly the most galvanizing photograph I've seen in a good long time.It was shot by National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos to accompany an in-depth report in the magazine's September issue about the sense of smell. In the picture, four shirtless men are lined up, backs to camera. Each man has his right arm upraised. Standing alongside each man is a woman.Here's the photo


September 07, 1987 PEOPLE magazine

Thelma Williams' Daredevil Nose Probes the Pungent Secrets of America's Toes

By Ron Arias

Every day in a white-walled room in Miamiville, Ohio, a half dozen middle-age women in lab coats line up with noses poised and clipboards at the ready. Their mission: to rate the efficiency of deodorants, antiperspirants, mouthwashes and feminine hygiene sprays by sniffing in places that would give 99.9 percent of us olfactory arrest.

Led by Thelma Williams, a spry, 59-year-old veteran sniffer, the odor testers of Hill Top Research, Inc., routinely snort the emanations of scores of armpits, feet and morning mouths, noting their reactions on a 1 (good) to 10 (fatal) scale. Results, before and after use of a particular product, are then sent to such clients as Procter & Gamble, Bristol-Myers and Lever Brothers. "It's amazing how many of these large companies can't find anybody to sniff an armpit," says Williams. Adds the mother of five and grandmother of eight: "When you've rinsed out diapers or cleaned up after a child who is sick, this is nothing."

Williams and her crew work with about 500 paid test subjects, drawn from the farms and small towns northeast of Cincinnati. For deodorant and antiperspirant sampling, the guinea pigs agree to avoid using such products and bathe with unscented soap for 10 days before testing. Alcohol is forbidden on the night before a test because it affects how a person smells. "We need people with a somewhat bad odor in order to figure out if the product reduces it," Williams explains, noting that only those whose natural rankness ranks between 4 and 8 are accepted for testing.

In a typical series of tests, sniffing is done at regular intervals for one week in a room that is continually flushed with fresh air. After the test subjects doff their unscented, laundered T-shirts (women, tested separately, are required to wear bras or halter-tops), the judges take short, repeated "bunny sniffs," sampling for a short, pure burst of "malodor," not the distinct scent everyone seems to have. Later, after using the product in question, the subjects are sniffed again to see if their odor level has dropped to the two-or-less rating that manufacturers desire. In the case of antiperspirants, test subjects sweat out the product trials in a specially designed "hot room" where the temperature is 100° F. To keep the perspiration level from being skewed by emotional factors, panelists are forbidden to play cards or discuss religion or politics. But if a client firm requests emotionally engendered sweat, a psychologist is brought in to stir debate among the sweatees.

In addition to smelling "axillary vaults"—Hill Top's fancy term for armpits—judges also sample mouth odor. Starting at 4:30 a.m., these exams require pristine morning mouths, unadulterated by coffee or cigarettes, and are conducted with testers taking whiffs through a cardboard tube. For feminine hygiene sprays panelists are cloaked and examined quickly in curtained cubicles. "None of us minds doing this," says Williams, "but we don't want to embarrass them."

Armpit tests are the most common, with between 50 and 90 persons daily raising a salute for science. They are paid up to $65 per week. "This just gives me something to do—plus I make money," says Pete Hupp, a retired maintenance foreman and two-year odor-testing veteran. Williams generally discourages raunchy BO jokes, but admits she was amused when one man's raised arm revealed a happy colony of plastic worms.

As the lead nose for Hill Top, Williams earns up to $40,000 a year. Williams herself never needs a deodorant, has an aversion only to dog scents and likes to rest her smeller on camping trips with her husband, Ralph, 73. Only at home is she occasionally put upon for a freebie whiff. Her 9-year-old grandson, Josh, likes to greet her with a friendly wave and a hearty, "Smell my armpits, Grandma."