Yesterday 50, Today 54

I've returned to the pool and counting laps is a meditative exercise. I swam fifty laps in an hour yesterday and 54 today. 64 laps is a mile in this pool.

The pool is very warm! I swam without my cap to stay cooler. I walked home in my wet bathing suit with my dress worn over it, carrying my flippers. There is nothing that calms me down like a long distance swim.

I have anxiety when I am in receive-mode. Swimming is the cure!

Dream

I had a nightmare on Friday night. I woke up at three AM. The nightmare was that my sister was renting my parents former house to the Mafia.

Preventive Medicine: Zoning Enforcement

Our beloved City of Woonsocket needs to protect the citizens who live here and beef up its zoning enforcement. I say this from the bottom of my heart. I love my city but this is a blind spot that needs to be looked at.

a lone long sleeve shirt

This morning a lone long sleeve shirt hangs at the clothesline gallery.

The Clothesline is a Short Story

Clothesline Gallery 4th floor porch across the street just got colorful! It was all black dad clothes this morning. Now we have a turquoise shirt, and a red one and a gold one and blue and white striped one. The daughter.

Why do I love clotheslines? They are short stories.

Freedom

I did it again. I picked up the scissors and started snipping and snipping and snipping and running my fingers though my hair and snipping, snipping, snipping. I filled three bags with curls. I shocked my husband. "But it FEELS amazing!" I say. I never thought I'd do it, the soccer mom haircut but I never realized I'd be in a perpetual state of overheating. When I saw all the hair in the bag I realized how much heat it was holding. Now I can swim and shake like a dog and walk home. It does mean I can't hide anywhere. I have always been able to hide under my Medusa curls. Now my clown face is fully revealed.

Spring into Suicide Awareness: April+May

I have lost countless people to suicide.

Article
Another article
Important book about suicide.Night Falls fast by Kay Jamison

Don’t Pretend that this is Normal

Paul Krugman Article

I can't read about Mr. Chief Narcissist without being transported to my childhood. Christmas Day my mother humiliated me in front of 27 people at the holiday table. She was free associating, but directing it at me, something about masturbation as a toddler. It was the madness of King George just like what's happening in the White House. None of my siblings or relatives or family friends came to my defense. Were they all stunned to silence? I believe so. They knew they were dealing with a powerful narcissist. I don't know which is more painful what my mother said or the silence that followed. I got up and packed my bags and left, driving my little blue VW bug back to Rhode Island. No more holidays.

When I was in high school my mother announced a family vacation to Spain to visit my sister who was studying overseas. "You're staying home because you're no fun to be around!" Again, nobody came to my defense. My powerful father ran his own advertising graphics business in midtown Manhattan but at home, he was powerless. The implications of a family holiday without me still resonate to this day.

I never went back to my original family and I'll announce proudly to anyone who wants to know. "I ran away from home!"

Dara Torres

“The water doesn’t know how old you are.
-Dara Torres

Age Is Just a Number: Achieve Your Dreams at Any Stage in Your Life by Dara Torres
Dara Torres has set three world records and has brought home twelve Olympic medals, including four golds. She is the first American swimmer to have competed in five Olympics. She lives in Florida.

Diana Nyad: Find a Way

I am telling everyone about the Diana Nyad memoir,Find a Way. It is an amazing book! I finished it last night savoring the journey. Not only is she an amazing swimmer she is a beautiful writer.

James Baldwin is a Vitamin

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”

― James Baldwin

Most Important Decision

The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.
— Albert Einstein

The Reed

Who is luckiest in this whole orchestra? The reed
Its mouth touches your lips to learn music.
All reeds, sugarcane especially, think only
of this chance. They sway in the canebrakes,
free in the many ways they dance.

-Rumi, Essential Rumi, Constant Conversation (p94)

Definition of canebrake. : a thicket of cane.

Truth

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Attended

“The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.”
― Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Love

“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”
― Henry David Thoreau

Breathe

“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”
― Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

Influence of the Earth

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Disobedience

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
― Henry David Thoreau

Spacious

“Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.”
― Henry David Thoreau

Henry Davis Thoreau

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
-Henry David Thoreau

Bob Hicok Poem

GETTING THERE
by Bob Hicok


Anas and I had Oreos this morning, as we do

once a week, on the bench outside his store,

sharing them so we don’t get fat

(ter). Now and then, for a change,

Nutter Butters. Anas keeps a picture

of his mother above the register.

Right before he was shot three years ago

by a thief, he focused on her face.

Asked weeks later by a cop

what the man looked like, Anas thought

but didn’t say, Home. He told me that.

I told my wife, who told her mother,

who told her mother, who said, How lovely.

Even in her senility, her eyes sparked

to the word home. Anas’ wife is dead,

his mother, grandmother, but I’ve leant him

three generations of women

admiring his thoughts. Below

being a man, he’s Anas. Beneath

being Syrian, he prefers Paris.

Under wanting to get even, he doesn’t.

Retribution is like playing catch

with an egg. How far would we get with war

if every man first asked his mother,

Can I kill? Most of whom would say,

“It’s may I kill. And no, you may not.”


Bob Hicok's most recent book is Sex & Love & (Copper Canyon, 2016). Hold will be published by Copper Canyon in 2018.

Robert Bly, Talking into the Ear of a Donkey: Poems

“It's all right if people think we are idiots.
It's all right if we lie face down on the earth.
It's all right if we open the coffin and climb in.”
― Robert Bly, Talking into the Ear of a Donkey: Poems

“Don't ask why the elephants wear such large shoes,
And why the kangaroos are reborn kidnappers,
And why the sailing birds are all Romantics.”
― Robert Bly, Talking into the Ear of a Donkey: Poems

“We have never understood how birds manage to fly,
Nor who the genius is who makes up dreams,
Now how heaven and earth can appear in a poem.”
― Robert Bly, Talking into the Ear of a Donkey: Poems

Zeus

“Zeus energy, which encompasses intelligence, robust health, compassionate decisiveness, good will, generous leadership. Zeus energy is male authority accepted for the sake of the community.”
― Robert Bly, Iron John: A Book about Men

Bees

“We are bees then; our honey is language.”
― Robert Bly

Hair is Intuition

“Hair is intuition. Hair is the abundance of perceptions, insights, thoughts, resentments, images, fantasies waiting and ready to come out whenever we are thinking of something else.”
― Robert Bly, Iron John: A Book about Men

Hard and Soft

“Morris Berman has pointed out that museums characteristically present hard things, such as axes and spears, as evidence of early culture. But culture very likely begins with baskets made of reeds that are “soft” and hold emptiness.”
― Robert Bly

Hiding in the Jugs of Silence

“We will have to call especially loud to reach Our angels, who are hard of hearing; they are hiding In the jugs of silence filled during our wars.”
― Robert Bly, My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy: Poems

The Wound-Gift

“Our story gives a teaching diametrically opposite. It says that where a man’s wound is, that is where his genius will be. Wherever the wound appears in our psyches, whether from alcoholic father, shaming mother, shaming father, abusing mother, whether it stems from isolation, disability, or disease, that is precisely the place for which we will give our major gift to the community.”
― Robert Bly, Iron John: A Book about Men

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive

“Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think... and think... while you are alive.
What you call "salvation" belongs to the time
before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will rejoin with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten--
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the
City of Death.

If you make love with the divine now, in the next
life you will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,
it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that
does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.”

― Robert Bly

Become Nothing

“like a note of music, you are about to become nothing”
― Robert Bly, My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy: Poems

Robert Bly

I have daughters and I have sons.
When one of them lays a hand
On my shoulder, shining fish
Turn suddenly in the deep sea.
― Robert Bly

Early Morning in Your Room

by Robert Bly

It's morning. The brown scoops of coffee, the wasp-like
Coffee grinder, the neighbors still asleep.
The gray light as you pour gleaming water--
It seems you've traveled years to get here.

Finally you deserve a house. If not deserve
It, have it; no one can get you out. Misery
Had its way, poverty, no money at least.
Or maybe it was confusion. But that's over.

Now you have a room. Those lighthearted books:
The Anatomy of Melancholy, Kafka's Letter
to his Father, are all here. You can dance
With only one leg, and see the snowflake falling

With only one eye. Even the blind man
Can see. That's what they say. If you had
A sad childhood, so what? When Robert Burton
Said he was melancholy, he meant he was home.

― Robert Bly, Stealing Sugar from the Castle: Selected and New Poems, 1950--2013

Bly

“I know men who are healthier at fifty than they've ever been before, because a lot of their fear is gone.”
― Robert Bly

“In ordinary life, a mentor can guide a young man through various disciplines, helping to bring him out of boyhood into manhood; and that in turn is associated not with body building, but with building and emotional body capable of containing more than one sort of ecstasy.”
― Robert Bly, Iron John: A Book About Men

“A lazy part of us is like a tumbleweed.
It doesn’t move on its own. Sometimes it takes
A lot of Depression to get tumbleweeds moving.”
― Robert Bly, Morning Poems

“What does it mean when a man falls in love with a radiant face across the room? It may mean that he has some soul work to do. His soul is the issue. Instead of pursuing the woman and trying to get her alone, away from her husband, he needs to go alone himself, perhaps to a mountain cabin, for three months, write poetry, canoe down a river, and dream. That would save some women a lot of trouble.”
― Robert Bly, Iron John: A Book About Men

“The inner boy in a messed-up family may keep on being shamed, invaded, disappointed, and paralyzed for years and years. "I am a victim," he says, over and over; and he is. But that very identification with victimhood keeps the soul house open and available for still more invasions. Most American men today do not have enough awakened or living warriors inside to defend their soul houses. And most people, men or women, do not know what genuine outward or inward warriors would look like, or feel like.”
― Robert Bly, Iron John: A Book About Men

Robert Bly, A Little Book on the Human Shadow

“I am proud only of those days that pass in
undivided tenderness.”
― Robert Bly, A Little Book on the Human Shadow

“If any help was going to arrive to lift me out of my misery, it would come from the dark side of my personality.”
― Robert Bly, A Little Book on the Human Shadow

“The imperfect is our paradise. Note that, in this bitterness, delight, Since the imperfect is so hot in us,”
― Robert Bly, A Little Book on the Human Shadow

Marie-Louise von Franz, The Way of the Dream

“Following your own star means isolation, not knowing where to go, having to find out a completely new way for yourself instead of just going on the trodden path everybody else runs along. That's why there's always been a tendency in humans to project the uniqueness and the greatness of their own inner self onto outer personalities and become the servants, the devoted servants, admirers, and imitators of outer personalities. It is much easier to admire a great personality and become a pupil or follower of a guru or a religious prophet, or an admirer of a big, official personality - a President of the United States - or live your life for some military general whom you admire. That is much easier than following your own star. (p. 71)”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Way of the Dream

“Any lack of balance in this respect, either too far below or too far above the mark, has an irritating effect upon the surroundings. To know if one has an inflation, a person has only to see if he or she gets on other people's nerves. If so, one is probably a bit overestimating one-self, or underestimating oneself for with an inflation a person may have feelings of either superiority or inferiority. Feelings of inferiority are just a veiled inflation. If one feels inferior, that's really ambition; a person wants to be more than one is. One wants to be a great person and knows one isn't. Inferiority is also inflation and, therefore, gets on people's nerves.
Sometimes people come in and say, "Oh well, you know, I can't do it. How do you think I can do this? You know, I'm not capable, I'm so stupid, I can't think," and so on. Then I say, "Now stop that nonsense. Get on with your job." They are really making a conceited dance out of calling themselves inferior and incapable. (p. 73)”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Way of the Dream

“When people try to evade problems you first have to ask if it is not just laziness. Jung once said, "Laziness is the greatest passion of mankind, even greater than power or sex or anything." (p. 77)”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Way of the Dream

Marie-Louise von Franz, Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche

“People who have a creative side and do not live it out are most disagreeable clients. They make a mountain out of a molehill, fuss about unnecessary things, are too passionately in love with somebody who is not worth so much attention, and so on. There is a kind of floating charge of energy in them which is not attached to its right object and therefore tends to apply exaggerated dynamism to the wrong situation.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales

“There are people who cannot risk loneliness with the experience. They always have to be in a flock and have human contact.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology

“It's easy to be a naive idealist. It's easy to be a cynical realist. It's quite another thing to have no illusions and still hold the inner flame.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz

“My God, these Feeling types! ... Sensitive people are just tyrannical people - everybody else has to adapt to them.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz

“Depressions and melancholy are often a cover for tremendous greed.
At the beginning of an analysis there is often a depressed state of resignation-life has no meaning, there is no feeling of being in life. An exaggerated state can develop into complete lameness. Quite young people give the impression of having the resignation of a bitter old man or woman. When you dig into such a black mood you find that behind it there is overwhelming greed-for being loved, for being very rich, for having the right partner, for being the top dog, etc.
Behind such a melancholic resignation you will often discover in the darkness a recurring theme which makes things very difficult, namely if you give such people one bit of hope, the lion opens its mouth and you have to withdraw, and then they put the lid on again, and so it goes on, back and forth.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairytales

“If we can stay with the tension of
opposites long enough —sustain it,
be true to it—we can sometimes
become vessels within which the
divine opposites come together and
give birth to a new reality.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz

“Many people discover relatively soon in life that the realm of their inferior function is where they are emotional, touchy and unadapted, and they therefore acquire the habit of covering up this part of their personality with a surrogate pseudo-reaction. For instance, a thinking type often cannot express his feelings normally and in the appropriate manner at the right time. It can happen that when he hears that the husband of a friend has died he cries, but when he meets the widow not a word of pity will come out. They not only look very cold, but they really do not feel anything! They had all the feeling before, when at home, but now in the appropriate situation they cannot pull it out. Thinking types are very often looked on by other people as having no feeling; this is absolutely not true. It is not that they have no feeling, but that they cannot express it at the appropriate moment. They have the feeling somehow and somewhere, but not just when they ought to produce it.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, Lectures on Jung's Typology

“The philosophical system with which we try to interpret contents of the unconscious is open to still more, and that is the way in which an interpretation will not have a destructive effect. One should keep to what is possible and infer at the same time that there is a lot more to it so that there is room for growth.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairytales

“One has to consider what effect it would have on one to have to accept the fact that God was not the friendly guardian of kindergarten!”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairytales

“When not used as an instrument, the intellect becomes autonomous and dynamic and one can be sure that a man with such attitude is driven by his anima, otherwise he would discuss in a quiet, detached way.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairytales

“It is a fact that if an impulse from one or the other sphere comes up and is not lived out, then it goes back down and tends to develop anti-human qualities. What should have been a human impulse becomes a tiger-like impulse.
For instance, a man has a feeling impulse to say something positive to someone and he blocks it off through some inhibition. He might then dream that he had a spontaneous feeling impulse on the level of a child and his conscious purpose had smashed it. The human is still there, but as a hurt child. Should he do that habitually for five years, he would no longer dream of a child who had been hurt but of a zoo full of raging wild animals in a cage.
An impulse which is driven back loads up with energy and becomes inhuman. This fact, according to Dr. Jung, demonstrates the independent existence of unconscious.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairytales

“Practically, it is most helpful when one wants to find out the type to ask, what is the greatest cross for the person? Where is his greatest suffering? Where does he feel that he always knocks his head against the obstacle and suffers hell? That generally points to the inferior function. Many people, moreover, develop two superior functions so well that it is very difficult to say whether the person is a thinking intuitive type or an intuitive type with good thinking, for the two seem equally good. Sometimes sensation and feeling are so well developed in an individual that you would have difficulty in ascertaining which is the first. But does the intuitive thinking person suffer more from knocking his head on sensation facts or from feeling problems? Here you can decide which is the first, and which the well-developed second, function.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, Lectures on Jung's Typology

“Jung said that to be in a situation where there is no way out or to be in a conflict where there is no solution is the classical beginning of the process of individuation. It is meant to be a situation without solution; the unconscious wants the hopeless conflict in order to put ego consciousness up against the wall, so that the man has to realize that whatever he does is wrong, whichever way he decides will be wrong. This is meant to knock out the superiority of the ego, which always acts from the illusion that it has the responsibility of decision. . . If he is ethical enough to suffer to the core of his personality, then generally, because of the insolubility of the conscious situation, the Self manifests. In religious language you could say that the situation without issue is meant to force the man to rely on an act of God.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales

“One might well ask at this point why it should be necessary for a person to be in contact with his or her historical-spiritual roots. In Zurich we have the opportunity to analyze many Americans who come to the Jung Institute and thus to observe the symptoms and results of a hiatus in culture (emigration of their forebears) and a loss of roots. In that case we are dealing with people whose consciousness is structured similarly to ours; but when we bore into the depths, we find something that resembles a gap in the steps—no continuity! A cultivated white man—and beneath that a primitive shadow, of which the Americans on the average have far less sense than we do.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche

“We always tend to keep within ourselves threshold reactions such as a little doubt, or a little impulse not to do something. If the impulses are not very strong we are inclined to put them aside in a one-sided way and by this we have hurt an animal or a spirit within us.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairytales

“If you observe a content which then disappears for a short time into the unconscious, it is not altered when it comes up again, but if you forget something for a long time, it does not return in the same form; it autonomously evolves or regresses in the other sphere, and therefore one can speak of unconscious as being a sphere, or entity in itself.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairytales

“A human being in a neurotic state might very well be compared to a bewitched person, for people caught in a neurosis are apt to behave in a manner uncongenial and destructive towards themselves as well as others.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairytales

“Jung has said that to be in a situation where there is no way out, or to be in a conflict where there is no solution, is the classical beginning of the process of individuation. It is meant to be a situation without solution: the unconscious wants the hopeless conflict in order to put ego-consciousness up against the wall, so that the man has to realise that whatever he does is wrong, whichever way he decides will be wrong. This is meant to knock out the superiority of the ego, which always acts from the illusion that it has the responsibility of decision. Naturally, if a man says, "Oh well, then I shall just let everything go and make no decision, but just protract and wriggle out of [it]," the whole thing is equally wrong, for then naturally nothing happens. But if he is ethical enough to suffer to the core of his personality, then generally because of the insolubility of the conscious situation, the Self manifests. In religious language you could say that the situation without issue is meant to force the man to rely on an act of God. In psychological language the situation without issue, which the anima arranges with great skill in a man's life, is meant to drive him into a condition in which he is capable of experiencing the Self. When thinking of the anima as the soul guide, we are apt to think of Beatrice leading Dante up to Paradise, but we should not forget that he experienced that only after he had gone through Hell. Normally, the anima does not take a man by the hand and lead him right up to Paradise; she puts him first into a hot cauldron where he is nicely roasted for a while.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales

“If you think the anima as being "nothing but" what you know about her, you have not the receptiveness of a listening attitude, and so she becomes "nothing but" a load of brutal emotions; you have never given her a chance of expressing herself, and therefore she has become inhuman and brutal.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairytales

Wang Deshun

He said: ‘to enjoy good health and a sound body, first you must attend to your spirit, and the rest will follow.’
Wang Deshun, 80 Year Old Chinese Model

Truth

“a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes” most likely did not invent the phrase.

Commonly attributed to Mark Twain, that quotation instead appears to be a descendant of a line published centuries ago by the satirist Jonathan Swift.

Article

Shampoo with Your Head Upside Down

Article

Waste Not...

I spent the morning wrapping up leftover meatloaf and slices of leftover ham into small sandwich bags for the freezer. My vat of 'rest of your life' soup is packaged up too into quart containers. The extra semolina loaves are in there too.

Ham Bone Soup

Article

Marie-Louise von Franz

One of the most wicked destructive forces psychologically speaking, is unused creative power. If someone has a creative gift and out of laziness or for some other reason doesn’t use it, the psychic energy turns into sheer poison. That’s why we often diagnose neurosis and psychotic diseases as not lived higher possibilities.
-Marie-Louise von Franz

Start the Day with a Poem

Preferably a poem in French!
You won't regret it.
Save the world news for later, 4PM.

The Calm Hiss

I've turned off my pressure cooker and the air is leaking out slowly. It's now a calm hiss. Putting the baby to sleep. I will take out the depleted bones and save the ham bone stock in the fridge and skim off the fat when it congeals.

Good Morning Democracy

On this day in 1978, the country of Spain became a democracy after 40 years of fascist dictatorship. Spain had been under the control of Generalissimo Francisco Franco since 1939, when he led right-wing Nationalist forces to victory in the Spanish Civil War and promptly set about turning the country into a totalitarian state.

Franco had lingered near death for months, his demise breathlessly watched by news media around the world. The attention to his imminent death became so pronounced that when he finally died in 1975, the American comedy show Saturday Night Live began a running gag in which Chevy Chase, in his role as news anchor on the recurring sketch Weekend Update, would inform viewers, “Franco is indeed dead” and “still dead.”

Not one head of state from a democratic country attended Francisco Franco’s funeral.

Under Franco, Spain had been a one-party state. He established concentration camps, forced labor, and executions as a means of political repression. Under Franco’s rule, a woman could not testify in a trial, become a judge or a university professor, or establish a bank account without having her husband or father as a co-signer.

Francisco Franco had assumed that his handpicked successor, Juan Carlos de Borbón, the great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of the French King Louis XIV and son of the last sitting Spanish king, would continue the authoritarian regime.

Indeed, many naysayers believed Juan Carlos to lack the necessary education and competency to rule, and his nickname became “Juan Carlos the Brief,” an allusion to how long he was expected to last.

Instead, Juan Carlos immediately began to dismantle the fascist government of Spain. He became king two days after Franco’s death and the first reigning monarch since 1931. The country held its first open and free elections in 1977, with over 150 political parties represented. The Communist Party was officially legalized. Juan Carlos granted amnesty to political prisoners. Languages like Catalan, Gallego, and Euskera, which had been forbidden, were now freely spoken.

On December 27, 1978, King Juan Carlos I signed into law the Spanish Constitution, which began the country’s official slide into democracy. On that morning in December of 1978, newspapers around the country ran headlines reading, “Good morning, democracy.”
-Writer's Almanac

Sarah Vowell

“Being a nerd, which is to say going too far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know.”
-Sarah Vowell

Wilfrid Sheed

“The American male doesn’t mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities.”
-Wilfrid Sheed

Alzheimer's Antidote

Excerpt

JOURNEY FOR THE NORTH by David Budbill

Read

Take Stock

I sliced the ham off the bone and put the slices aside to freeze in small packets. Meat is treated as an exotic spice in this house. Now the ham bone is simmering in my pressure cooker, perfuming the kitchen. Stock is money in the bank and my bank is a chest freezer given to me by a guy I met at my sister in law's summer BBQ. "I'll deliver it! We're moving," He said.

The French Radio Classique station is on 24/7. I am hoping to remember my French from junior high school, high school and college. I love the sound. Every word is beautiful. It's a gourmet language to me. And hearing another language is a welcome reminder that the world is big.

We hung another string of little white Christmas lights to light up the April gray. My indoor garden.

A Precious Gift From an Introvert

Today I am gravitating towards things that bother me in order to explore and understand them.

Why was it so noticeable that my family had a NY accent when I first visited them after running away from home.

Why does X flare her nostrils and make strange micro-jestures with her mouth and hands when talking to me but not when speaking to my husband?

Why am I so hurt by X smashing into the furniture and gauging it?
Answer: It was a rare and precious gift from an introvert.

Why is it so impossible to find open minds and open mouths?

Thoughts

I've been in shock and then grieving and now I am finally ignoring the politics to find my center.

I am an artist and this is how I breathe in this world. To put my art on the back burner is to threaten my well-being and my sanity.

I've been out of the studio for weeks starting with a habit of checking email at the dining room table and ending up staying there all day.

I need my studio and the privacy as much as I love being at the table.

Even an empty house has preferred rooms for work.
in the rooms we call our lives
from a Jane Shore poem

The Merry Recluse

I've been rereading The Merry Recluse by Caroline Knapp. I love her writing. I am also still reading Diana Nyad's memoir. I've been savoring it. April is a big reading month.

I dream of more bookcases since the piles on the floor are too numerous.

Biscotti di Vino - Wine Biscotti

Biscotti di Vino - Wine Biscotti
These are my favorite cookie because they are not too sweet, and perfect with a cup of hot English tea. I am allergic to wine but I love to cook with it!

I first found this recipe in my favorite cookbook We Called it Macaroni by Nancy Verde Barr, published by Alfred Knopf. The recipe has also appeared in Gourmet magazine.

In a large bowl combine the 4 cups of the flour, the sugar, the salt, and the baking powder and make a well in the center. Pour in the oil and the wine, combine the mixture, incorporating the flour mixture gradually, until it forms a soft dough, and knead in enough of the remaining 1/2 cup flour to keep the dough from sticking. Divide the dough into 40 pieces, roll each piece into a 5-inch rope, curl the ends and form them into hearts. Bake the hearts slightly apart on baking sheets in preheated 350F oven for 20 minutes. Reduce the heat to 300F and bake the biscuits for 15 to 20 minutes or until they are golden. Let the biscuits cool on racks and store them in airtight containers. Makes 40 biscotti.

The flavor blooms and develops over the week.

I make these with Carlo Rossi Chianti or cheap port, Marsala, or any strong, sweet red wine left at our house.

I like to use corn oil in the recipe, and white or sometimes even whole wheat flour. I also shape the cookies into hearts sometimes.

Sometimes rather than shape the dough into ropes I flatten the dough with my rolling pin and, since the dough is very crumbly, I also press down on the dough with my hands. Then I use a small scalloped-shaped cookie cutter to shape the cookies. I transfer them to cast iron skillets and bake them. The heavy iron pans serve as baking stones, regulating the heat. Shapes change the flavor. The ropes shape with white flour and Chianti have the most surface area and taste the best.

4 cups flour (keep ½ on hand just in case)
¾ cup sugar
2 teaspoons kosher salt (more if using whole wheat flour)
1 tablespoon double-acting baking powder
1 cup vegetable oil (I use corn oil)
1 cup full-bodied red wine; Carlo Rossi Chianti (or port or Marsala wine when using whole wheat flour)

Rain, Rain Feels Good

Loving walking Lily in the rain with my rainbow umbrella, red rain boots and yellow raincoat! No business at the car wash today. Picking up a few bits of trash. The City looks CLEAN!
Yay WOONSOCKET!

Bread Poet

Early Bird Bakery
Headquarters Bakery
Woonsocket Bakery
Occasional Bread

Tannen

“We all know we are unique individuals, but we tend to see others as representatives of groups.”
― Deborah Tannen

“A perfectly tuned conversation is a vision of sanity--a ratification of one's way of being human and one's way in the world.”
― Deborah Tannen

“The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation — or a relationship.”
― Deborah Tannen

“The more contact people have with each other, the more opportunities both have to do things in their own way and be misunderstood. The only way they know of to solve problems is to talk things out, but if different ways of talking are causing a problem, talking more isn’t likely to solve it. Instead, trying harder usually means doing more of whatever you’re doing—intensifying the style that is causing the other to react. So each unintentionally drives the other to do more and more of the opposing behavior, in a spiral that drives them both up the wall.”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

“It is natural in interaction to assume that what you feel in reaction to others is what they wanted to make you feel. If you feel dominated, it’s because someone is dominating you. If you can’t find a way to get into a conversation, then someone is deliberately locking you out. Conversational style means that this may not be true. The most important lesson to be learned is not to jump to conclusions about others in terms of evaluations like “dominating” and “manipulative.”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

“We all want, above all, to be heard. We want to be understood—heard for what we think we are saying, for what we know we meant.”
― Deborah Tannen, You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation

“The main difference between these alternatives is symmetry. Dependence is an asymmetrical involvement: One person needs the other, but not vice versa, so the needy person is one-down. Interdependence is symmetrical: Both parties rely on each other, so neither is one-up or one-down. Moreover,”
― Deborah Tannen, You Just Don't Understand

“When we think we are using language, language is using us.”
― Deborah Tannen, The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue

Puddle-Wonderful

“life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis”
― E.E. Cummings

“The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.”
― E.E. Cummings

LOVE

“Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star...”
― E.E. Cummings

Yes!

“I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.”
― E.E. Cummings

“The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches.”
― E.E. Cummings

Sing!

“I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance”
― E.E. Cummings

Believe

“For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It's always our self we find in the sea.”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”
― E.E. Cummings

Cummings

I saw a morphed version of this quote yesterday. Here's the real deal.


“To be nobody but
yourself in a world
which is doing its best day and night to make you like
everybody else means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”
― E.E. Cummings

ee cummings

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

-E. E. Cummings

Paris Radio

My version of travel is listening to the Paris Radio station at 5 AM as I set up my husband's breakfast and lunch. Radio Classique. The musical choices and arrangements are different than what we hear on classical FM radio station WCRB. If I am on the Internet the radio goes dead from bandwidth overload.

Happy Birthday Mr. Richter

It’s the birthday of the geophysicist and seismologist Charles Richter, born in Overpeck, Ohio (1900). Richter devised the earthquake grading scale that bears his name.

He began as a research assistant to the scientist Beno Gutenberg at Caltech in the early 1930s. At the time, scientists in Southern California wanted to begin producing regular earthquake reports, which required a reliable way to talk about the phenomena. The existing “Mercalli scale” ranked earthquakes by public fear response and building damage — both of which were highly subjective. Richter and Gutenberg developed an absolute measure of earthquake intensity by recording real motion during a seismic event. The Richter scale is logarithmic, meaning that each number of magnitude is 10 times stronger than the last. These more precise measurements were important in preventing future deaths.

Richter became so engrossed in his work that he kept a seismograph machine in his living room and made himself available to answer earthquake questions 24/7. He also helped to develop new building codes for earthquake-prone neighborhoods. In the latter half of the 20th century, the Richter scale was replaced by the moment magnitude scale, which measures the size of earthquakes in terms of the energy released. Still, to the public, the Richter scale remains the most recognizable measurement.

There are around 500,000 earthquakes across the world every year, only 100 of which cause damage. Tectonic movement of just seven to eight inches is enough for a major earthquake. The largest recorded earthquake in the world happened in 1960 in Chile, a magnitude of 9.5 on the Richter scale.
- Writer's Almanac

They Laughed

“They laughed and it felt great. All of a sudden, after so much coldness and emptiness in my life, I knew the sensation of all that warmth wrapping around me. I had always been a quiet, shy, sad sort of girl and then everything changed for me. You spend the rest of your life hoping you’ll hear a laugh that great again.”
-Carol Burnett

Deborah Tannen

Her friend explained that her family had taught her it was rude to ask about anything personal. If people want to tell you, they’ll volunteer. Not asking was her way of being a considerate friend.

-Deborah Tannen is a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University. This essay is adapted from her forthcoming book, "You’re the Only One I Can Tell: Inside the Language of Women’s Friendships."
Article

Xylomancy - 30 Ways to Tell the Future

Article

lu·na·tic \ˈlü-nə-ˌtik\

Merriam-Webster Logo
SINCE 1828

adjective lu·na·tic \ˈlü-nə-ˌtik\


Definition of lunatic

1
dated a : affected with a severely disordered state of mind : insaneb : designed for the care of mentally ill people a lunatic asylum

2
: wildly foolish a lunatic idea lunatic behavior

lunatic noun

See lunatic defined for English-language learners

See lunatic defined for kids
Examples of lunatic in a sentence

He hatched a lunatic plot to overthrow the government.

another of his lunatic ideas

Merriam-Webster Trending Articles

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Origin and Etymology of lunatic

Middle English lunatik, from Anglo-French or Late Latin; Anglo-French lunatic, from Late Latin lunaticus, from Latin luna; from the belief that lunacy fluctuated with the phases of the moon


First Known Use: 14th century

Moon Phase Cycle

Moon Phase Cycle: Bigger Picture
Apr 26, 2017, 8:16 AM Sun Conjunct Moon (New Moon)
May 2, 2017, 10:47 PM Sun Square Moon (First Quarter Moon)
May 10, 2017, 5:42 PM Sun Opposition Moon (Full Moon)
May 18, 2017, 8:33 PM Sun Square Moon (Last Quarter Moon)
May 25, 2017, 3:44 PM Sun Conjunct Moon (New Moon)
source

Self-Exploitation

Though perfectly willing to try out her candor on a reporter, she feels no apparent need to engage with social media. “All that going on Twitter and going on Instagram half-dressed, to me that’s sexual self-exploitation,” Ms. MacLaine said. “Let us discover who you are — yeah, that’s good.”
Article

Shirley MacLaine

“I have an orphan psychology, that’s what I’ve been told,” she said. “See, my parents were always busy, so when I was about 11, I had to get up early to get off to school by myself and then to ballet class. I was the one navigating the buses and streetcars. I had no one to talk to, because by the time I got home my parents were in bed.

“So to navigate those waters, just to make it home each day, I had to keep asking myself, ‘Who am I?’”
Article

Gourmet Dressing

“I’m not into gourmet dressing; who has the time to keep up that facade?” Her major concession to style: “I match my sweater to my shoes.”
Shirley MacLaine, Article

2 Good-Therapy Articles

20 Cognitive Distortions and How They Affect Your Life
By GoodTherapy.org Staff

‘I’m Still Not Good Enough’: When Trauma’s Old Ghosts Resurface
By Denise Olesky, MA, NCC, LPC, GoodTherapy.org Topic Expert

Dream

I dreamed my friend Pat Hegnauer wanted me to participate in her next Theater Production. "All I need is someone to eat and greet" she said.
"I can't commit," I said "Because when the big hand comes to grab me I have to be ready."

Rainy Tuesday

Vacuumed the cellar dust bunnies. Crazy, but it felt right. This is how I think. Then I drank hot tea and had it with my warmed up cranberry lemon muffin.

RUMFORD: A Baking Powder Opera

So the powder wasn't named for Rumford, RI but rather Rumford RI was named for the factory that made the powder and the factory was named for Count Rumford who endowed a Harvard science teaching position which was held by the guy who in addition to teaching at Harvard was involved in a chemical processing plant that among other things developed the braking powder also named Rumford. This Rumford Chemical Works was originally in Providence but it smelled too bad for the neighbors to bear and it was moved to East Seekonk, Mass. - until the border was adjusted and the factory was now suddenly in East Providence where apparently the neighbors didn't mind the smell.

That's not a song, that's an opera.

-Gerry Heroux

April Kruger

How Can You Tell When You’re Well With Bipolar Disorder?
When bipolar disorder removes the range of human emotions, I now appreciate ALL my feelings as being my authentic self.

By April Krueger
http://www.bphope.com/blog/how-can-you-tell-when-youre-well-with-bipolar-disorder/
For many people with bipolar disorder, wellness and stability are almost elusive states, something we might remember from our childhoods but something we’re afraid we’ll never experience again.

As I recovered from my most recent depression, which had lasted two and a half years, I yearned to feel something, anything to remind me that I’m human. I begged my psychiatrist to try a low dose antidepressant. He of course was worried about it sending me into mania. Of course I didn’t want to be manic either, but at the time I thought I’d prefer anything to the numbness of depression.

I asked my therapist over and over, “How will I know when I’m well?”

She didn’t have an answer for me because the answer to that question is uniquely personal to each of us.

After thirteen years of living with bipolar disorder I can finally say I think I know the answer for myself. I’m sharing it with you in hopes that it will prompt you to recognize when you’re feeling well.


How do I know when I’m well?

The answer for me is a very simple one.
I know I’m well when I experience a range of emotions.
And how do I reach this period of wellness?

The answer again is painfully simple – I sleep and eat in a balanced manner, not too much or too little of either.
But back to the emotions…

Depression & Mania. Maybe this statement oversimplifies things, but for me it is the clearest sign of my stability. The reason is because when I’m depressed I feel almost nothing. If there are any feelings at all they are anxiety and anguish. But even those tend to dissipate in the depths of a very long depression. Eventually I feel nothing at all and can’t understand why anybody in the history of the world ever cared about anything. And then there are the feelings of mania. When I’m manic I feel only excitement and wonder. I have no fear, no anxiety, and no sense of failure or consequences.
When I’m Well:

But when I’m well I’m able to experience a full range of human emotions within each day. I generally wake up in good spirits, but I might get frustrated or experience anxiety even before I leave my house. Then throughout the course of my day I’ll feel happiness, contentment, excitement, and I can laugh. In the same day I can experience setbacks, loss, sadness, fear, anxiety, and other not-so pleasant feelings. But whether I’m happy or sad or anything in between, I have learned to appreciate my feelings because they are the clearest indication that I am well and that I am being my authentic self.

As a society I think we tend to shy away from negative emotions and insist people always be “positive” and optimistic. But for me that sort of relentless optimism only spells one thing: mania. So when I’m well I notice all my feelings, comfortable and not so comfortable, and do my best to experience them with gratitude.

Swindler

"As an all around fraud Holmes had a wonderful success with men, but he preferred women and insurance companies. He said they came easier. Swindler of men, betrayer of women, he has left behind him a wake of ruin and tears that not all the courts of America can wash away," the Tribune reported.
Article

Prime Thoughts

“I expressed what I thought were my prime thoughts, and they turned out to be the prime thoughts of everybody else.”
-Robert Pirsig
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/books/robert-pirsig-dead-wrote-zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance.html

Chemical History: RI's Rumford Baking Powder

We are performing in Rumford Rhode Island for the opening ceremonies of the adorable Rumford Little League. This will be our fourth time with them and our 14th season as the MUNROE DAIRY MARCHING MILKMAN BAND.

I was telling my band mates about the history of Rumford Baking Powder.

National Historic Chemical Landmark
The American Chemical Society designated the development of baking powder by Eben Horsford at the Rumford Chemical Works as a National Historic Chemical Landmark in a ceremony in East Providence, Rhode Island, on June 12, 2006. The commemorative plaque reads:

In the mid-19th century, Eben Horsford, Rumford Professor at Harvard University, devised a unique mixture for baking, which he named “yeast powder” and later called baking powder. The acid component, calcium acid phosphate, originally manufactured from bones, replaced cream of tartar, an expensive byproduct of the European wine industry. The mixture of acid with sodium bicarbonate was stabilized by the addition of starch and marketed in one package. In the presence of moisture carbon dioxide is released, leavening biscuits, cookies, or other quick baking products. As a result of Horsford’s work, baking became easier, quicker, and more reliable.

World Health Organization: Protect Skin and Eyes

Moderate risk of harm from unprotected sun exposure. Limit sun exposure to 14-40 minutes. Apply skin protection factor (SPF) 30+ and wear protective clothing (hat and UV-A&B sunglasses).
-World Health Organization

The New Blue: Brandon del Pozo

Excerpt
Subway Encounter
Article: The New Blue

Lemon Cranberry Whole Wheat Buttermilk Muffins

I didn't measure I just threw ingredients together and baked them at the bottom of the oven while 4 semolina loaves are baking. They are delicious.

approximate
ingredients
2c whole wheat flour medium grind
1/2 c dark brown sugar
2T butter
1 egg
Kosher salt
baking powder
baking soda
buttermilk
cranberries
lemon zest
bake at 450 in pre greased muffin tin.

New Manufacturing in the Neighborhood

Article

Obama's Eloquence

“If you’re tired of arguing with strangers on the internet, try to talk with one in real life,” Mr. Obama said in the speech. “If something needs fixing, lace up your shoes and do some organizing. If you’re disappointed by your elected officials, grab a clipboard, get some signatures and run for office yourself.

“Show up, dive in, stay at it. Sometimes you’ll win. Sometimes you’ll lose,” he said, mentioning Mr. Trump only once. “More often than not, your faith in America — and in Americans — will be confirmed.”

Article

Damon Brown

The Leader of the Free World Is an Introvert. Here's How Obama Leads
As he wraps up his tenure, President Barack Obama shares that he is most productive in solitude. Here is how he leads while respecting his introversion.
By Damon Brown
Entrepreneur and author, "The Bite-Sized Entrepreneur"@browndamon
https://www.inc.com/damon-brown/the-leader-of-the-free-world-is-an-introvert.html

Thanks in part to Susan Cain's groundbreaking book Quiet, there is plenty of discussion showing that the introverts among us can lead as well as the outspoken. Jack Dorsey is saving Twitter from destruction from his quiet stoop, just as Mark Zuckerberg has made Facebook the ultimate unicorn with more silence than words. I lean toward introversion myself and successfully sold my startup and hit the TED stage, so I'm all for introverts getting their due.

And the latest one to shine? President Obama.

As he wraps up his tumultuous tenure as president, Obama shared his daily rituals with The New York Times. The biggest surprise is that he is most productive in silence:

"Almost every night that he is in the White House, Mr. Obama has dinner at 6:30 with his wife and daughters and then withdraws to the Treaty Room, his private office down the hall from his bedroom on the second floor of the White House residence.

"There, his closest aides say, he spends four or five hours largely by himself."

If the leader of the free world can thrive as an introvert, then all of us can. Here are three big takeaways from his routine.

1. Find your space: For Obama, it's after he has dinner with his family and until midnight. For me, when I led my startup, it was the wee hours between 3:15 a.m. and 6 a.m., before my baby woke up. We both sacrificed some sleep and social time to thrive, but the productivity makes the sacrifice worthwhile.

Carving out the quiet time isn't just a nicety but a necessity. Unlike our extroverted colleagues, who recharge by being around other people, we get our energy back by being alone. It also gives us time to process our thoughts, which is much easier in silence or solitude, as opposed to extroverts, who process their thoughts out loud.

2. Honor your time: In the profile, it is clear that Obama rarely deviates from his schedule. Previous chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who has worked with Obama for years, talks about how dedicated he was to using the late evening hour. "Everybody carves out their time to get their thoughts together. There is no doubt that window is his window," he says.

It is the very reason you should create blank days, minimally viable days, and other spaces that are blocked off for you to maximize productivity--and that's true whether you are an introvert or an extrovert.

3. Create boundaries: Finally, Obama has set boundaries: After dinner, he's heading to the quiet part of the White House. That takes an incredible amount of discipline. It's one thing to know what we need, but actually creating the environment to foster it is quite another thing. That means saying no. That means minimizing cluttered scheduling. That means being dedicated to being your most productive self.

How busy is your schedule? When world wars, civil unrest, and economic development are on your plate, it must feel nearly impossible to focus and create the space you need. If the president does it successfully, though, then it gives me hope that we can too.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
Published on: Jul 5, 2016

Six Semolina Loaves A Rising

This morning I mixed up semolina flour and bread flour with kosher salt and Fleishmann's instant yeast and my sourdough starter. The dough rose immediately so I punched it down and refrigerated it. After a walk to the library I came home noticed the dough rose to the top of the buckets in the fridge. I greased six loaf pans and shaped the cold dough in one oval per pan. I slashed the tops. It's proofing one last time in the cold empty oven. I will bake them soon.

Your Own Bread

“I think that when two people are able to weave that kind of invisible thread of understanding and sympathy between each other, that delicate web, they should not risk tearing it. It is too rare, and it lasts too short a time at best....”
― M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating

“There is communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.”
― M.F.K. Fisher

“...for me there is too little of life to spend most of it forcing myself into detachment from it.”
― M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating

“No yoga exercise, no meditation in a chapel filled with music will rid you of your blues better than the humble task of making your own bread.”
― M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating

First We Eat

“First we eat, then we do everything else.”
― M.F.K. Fisher

“I am more modest now, but I still think that one of the pleasantest of all emotions is to know that I, I with my brain and my hands, have nourished my beloved few, that I have concocted a stew or a story, a rarity or a plain dish, to sustain them truly against the hungers of the world.”
― M.F.K. Fisher

“When shall we live if not now?”
― M.F.K. Fisher

M.F.K. Fisher

Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.

Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg before it is broken.

Wine and cheese are ageless companions, like aspirin and aches, or June and moon, or good people and noble ventures.

There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.

War is a beastly business, it is true, but one proof we are human is our ability to learn, even from it, how better to exist.

- M.F.K. Fisher

Exploring The Molecular Basis Of “Runner’s High”

Web Date: October 5, 2015

Exploring The Molecular Basis Of “Runner’s High”
http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/web/2015/10/Exploring-Molecular-Basis-Runners-High.html
Neuroscience: Exercise-induced endocannabinoids decrease anxiety and pain perception in mice, study suggests
By Judy Lavelle
[+]Enlarge
Mouse on exercise wheel to illustrate “runner’s high.”
JOY RUN
Mice can display symptoms of “runner’s high”—less anxiety and a diminished ability to feel pain—study suggests.
Credit: Shutterstock

After a nice long bout of aerobic exercise, some people experience what’s known as a “runner’s high”: a feeling of euphoria coupled with reduced anxiety and a lessened ability to feel pain. For decades, scientists have associated this phenomenon with an increased level in the blood of β-endorphins, opioid peptides thought to elevate mood.

Now, German researchers have shown the brain’s endocannabinoid system—the same one affected by marijuana’s Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)—may also play a role in producing runner’s high, at least in mice (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2015, DOI: 10.1072/pnas.1514996112).
[+]Enlarge
Structure of anandamine.

The researchers hit upon the endocannabinoid system as possibly being involved because they observed that endorphins can’t pass through the blood-brain barrier, says team member Johannes Fuss, who’s now at University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf. On the other hand, a lipid-soluble endocannabinoid called anandamide—also found at high levels in people’s blood after running—can travel from the blood into the brain, where it can trigger a high. “Yet no one had investigated the effects of endocannabinoids on behavior after running,” Fuss says.

To explore how endocannabinoids are involved, the team familiarized a group of mice with running on an exercise wheel regularly. Then the researchers split the group into two sets of mice: one that would run for five hours and one that would remain sedentary. Soon after their five-hour run, the rodents in the first group displayed far less anxious behavior than the sedentary set when exposed to a so-called dark-light box test. In this test, a mouse’s anxiety is measured by the frequency with which the animal darts from well-lit areas into the dark to hide.

Similarly, mice in the running group had a higher tolerance for pain than those in the sedentary group, as measured by their tendency to jump or lick their paws when placed on a hot plate.

Finally, the researchers performed these same experiments on mice that were given endocannabinoid and endorphin antagonists—molecules that block cannabinoid and opioid receptors in the brain, respectively. The endorphin antagonists did not significantly affect results, but mice treated with endocannabinoid antagonists and mice genetically engineered to lack endocannabinoid receptors were still anxious and sensitive to pain despite having run for hours.

The team’s findings suggest that endocannabinoids such as anandamide help cause runner’s high. “The authors have moved the field forward by providing such a complete view of how this key reward system is involved in allowing exercise to improve psychological state and pain sensitivity,” says David A. Raichlen, an expert in human brain evolution and exercise at the University of Arizona.

The researchers write that other key aspects of runner’s high, such as euphoria, are too subjective to study in a mouse model.

Run for your Life

Article

Article

The Horror

‘They Starve You. They Shock You’: Inside the Anti-Gay Pogrom in Chechnya

By ANDREW E. KRAMER
Article

Little Red Riding Hood

Today I am little red riding hood walking around with a basket of warm scones and the wolf on a leash.

Cranberry Buttermilk Scones

MAKES: 12 servings
Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, divided
2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup cold butter
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup dried cranberries
1 teaspoon grated orange peel (I used lemon)
1 tablespoon milk
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Nutritional Facts

1 each: 283 calories, 12g fat (7g saturated fat), 32mg cholesterol, 422mg sodium, 41g carbohydrate (16g sugars, 1g fiber), 4g protein.
Directions

In a bowl, combine the flour, 1/3 cup sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda; cut in butter until mixture is crumbly. Stir in the buttermilk just until combined. Fold in the cranberries and orange peel.
Turn onto a floured surface; divide dough in half. Pat each half into a 6-in. circle. Cut each circle into six wedges. Separate wedges and place 1 in. apart on a lightly greased baking sheet. Brush with milk. Combine the cinnamon and remaining sugar; sprinkle over scones. Bake at 400° for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from pan to a wire rack. Serve warm. Yield: 1 dozen.

Originally published as Cranberry Buttermilk Scones in Quick Cooking November/December 2001, p34

Semolina Bender

My big bag of semolina doesn't fit in the chest freezer yet so I trip over it every morning inspiring myself to make more semolina infused dishes.

We grew up in the posh NYC suburbs but that didn't stop our mother from having Jewish panic over food shortages. All of us kids buy large quantities of ingredients at restaurant supply houses. A friend of mine asked me if I was a Mormon since I had a cellar full of grain in labeled tins. No, I'm in a food coop and if you scratch your nose at the wrong moment in the auction you'll end up with a five gallon bucket of blackstrap molasses. This happened to me and my bucket of molasses lasted for years.

As I get older I feel that sharing food is more important than the contents of the food.
David Lebovitz on making pasta.

Pain de Viande Meatloaf for Breakfast

Back to 4 AM wake up and meals alone but tonight we have band rehearsal. I mixed up a semolina dough to rise and I pressure cooked a pound of garbanzo beans while I was prepping Bill's lunch. I still dream of the public kitchen and what I will make there.

Pollen Mania

Top Allergens

Juniper
Maple
Birch

Strong Lungs

There's Fun and Fitness in the Pool for Asthmatic Kids

MONDAY, Feb. 20, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Safe, healthy fun for kids with asthma may be as near as the neighborhood pool, one respiratory specialist says.

Staying active can be a challenge for the more than 6 million children with asthma in the United States, noted Dr. Tod Olin. He's a pediatric pulmonary specialist at National Jewish Health in Denver.

"It can be a dilemma for many families. All it takes is one asthma attack, and suddenly patients can become very tentative about overdoing it," he said in a hospital news release.

"When it comes to cardio activities that are well-tolerated, swimming, specifically, is highly recommended, particularly in indoor swimming pools," Olin said.

The high humidity in indoor swimming pools protects against asthma attacks by keeping airways open, he said.

"We think that the way asthma attacks happen is that the airways dry out, and that sets off a cascade of reactions that ultimately squeezes down the airway," Olin explained. "If we can prevent that initial airway-drying step by staying in a humid environment, we prevent the asthma attack all together."

Children with asthma have often been told to limit exercise, he noted. "More recently, we've changed our approach," he said. "We now encourage kids to exercise, especially as the obesity epidemic has become more and more problematic."

Starting with swimming and letting kids with asthma choose the sports they enjoy make it more likely they will stay active, he said.

"I generally recommend that they use their albuterol inhaler about 15 minutes before exercise, but if their asthma is well-controlled, there is no reason to limit any activity," Olin said. "If their heart is taking them toward a certain sport, they should be encouraged to pursue that."

More information

The American Lung Association has more on asthma in children.

SOURCE: National Jewish Health, news release, Feb. 8, 2017

Judy Budnitz ALIVE and WELL

“He was a man who always gave the impression of wearing a top hat, even when he was not.”
― Judy Budnitz, Nice Big American Baby

Judy Budnitz
USA flag (1973 - )
The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. - Mark Twain

Judy Budnitz's stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Story, The Paris Review, The Oxford American, Glimmer Train, Fence, and McSweeney's, and she is the recipient of an O. Henry Award. Flying Leap was a New York Times Notable Book in 1998. Budnitz is also the author of the novel If I Told You Once, which won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award in the United States and was short-listed for the Orange Prize in Britain. She lives in San Francisco.

Why Leftovers Taste So Good

Article
Refrigeration allows for all of the various flavors in the dish to migrate into the cooling protein and starches. When stewed meat cools down, the gelatinous material from the collagen and tendons etc. that has melted during cooking begins to gel in and around the chunks of meat. As this happens, the various flavor compounds get trapped in the gel. With ground meat this is amplified even more because there's even more surface area for the gel and trapped flavor compounds to disperse over. The same goes for starches. When you cook a starch it gelatinizes. This means that it undergoes a distinct crystallography change - it will no longer have a crystalline structure but will be amorphous or fluid, and that's when it's digestible. As it cools down, the starch goes through a process called retrogradation and the molecules begin to to rearrange and realign themselves into a crystalline structure again. As it does, this flavor compounds from the surrounding sauce are trapped inside the structure.

Feeding The Greed Machine

“How can I be secure? (Pause.) Through amassing wealth beyond all measure? No. And what’s beyond measure? That’s a sickness. That’s a trap. There is no measure. Only greed.”
― David Mamet, Glengarry Glen Ross

Mamet

“We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.”
― David Mamet, Boston Marriage

“It's only words... unless they're true.”
― David Mamet

“Every scene should be able to answer three questions: "Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?”
― David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business

“You know, I once read an interesting book which said that, uh, most people lost in the wilds, they, they die of shame. Yeah, see, they die of shame. 'What did I do wrong? How could I have gotten myself into this?' And so they sit there and they... die. Because they didn't do the one thing that would save their lives. Thinking.”
― David Mamet

“People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want.”
― David Mamet

“All drama is about lies. All drama is about something that’s hidden. A drama starts because a situation becomes imbalanced by a lie. The lie may be something we tell each other or something we think about ourselves, but the lie imbalances a situation. If you’re cheating on your wife the repression of that puts things out of balance; or if you’re someone you think you’re not, and you think you should be further ahead in your job, that neurotic vision takes over your life and you’re plagued by it until you’re cleansed. At the end of a play the lie is revealed. The better the play the more surprising and inevitable the lie is. Aristotle told us this”
― David Mamet

“We're all put to the test... but it never comes in the form or at the point we would prefer, does it?”
― David Mamet

“Superman comics are a fable, not of strength, but of disintegration. They appeal to the preadolescent, (sic) mind not because they reiterate grandiose delusions, but because they reiterate a very deep cry for help.
Superman's two personalities can be integrated only in one thing: only in death. Only Kryptonite cuts through the disguises of both wimp and hero, and affects the man below the disguises.
And what is Kryptonite? Kryptonite is all that remains of his childhood home.
It is the remnants of that destroyed childhood home, and the fear of those remnants, which rule Superman's life. The possibility that the shards of that destroyed home might surface prevents him from being intimate- they prevent him from sharing the knowledge that the wimp and the hero are one. The fear of his childhood home prevents him from having pleasure.
He fears that to reveal his weakness, and confusion, is, perhaps indirectly, but certainly inevitably, to receive death from the person who received that information.
[...]
Far from being invulnerable, Superman is the most vulnerable of beings, because his childhood was destroyed. He can never reintegrate himself by returning to that home- it is gone. It is gone and he is living among aliens to whom he cannot even reveal his rightful name.”
― David Mamet

“We all hope. It's what keeps us alive.”
― David Mamet

“...My dad, may he rest in
peace, taught me many wonderful things. And one of the things he taught me was never ask a guy what you do for a living.

He said "If you think about it, when you ask a guy, what do you do you do for a living," you’re saying "how may I gauge the rest of your utterances." are you smarter than I am? Are you richer than I am, poorer than I am?"

So you ask a guy what do you do for a living, it’s the same thing as
asking a guy, let me know what your politics are before I listen to you so
I know whether or not you’re part of my herd, in which case I can nod
knowingly, or part of the other herd, in which case I can wish you dead.”
― David Mamet

“It’s not a lie. It’s a gift for fiction.”
― David Mamet

“Invent nothing, deny nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school.”
― David Mamet, True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor

“Put. That coffee. Down. Coffee's for closers only.”
― David Mamet, Glengarry Glen Ross

“We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.”
― David Mamet

“Every fear hides a wish.”
― David Mamet, Edmond

“Art is an expression of joy and awe. It is not an attempt to share one's virtues and accomplishments with the audience, but an act of selfless spirit.”
― David Mamet, True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor

“Everybody makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself, it isn't fun. It's entertainment.”
― David Mamet

“Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: it's full of surprises, and you're constantly getting fucked.”
― David Mamet, Speed-The-Plow

“I go out there. I'm out there every day. [Pause] There is nothing out there. ”
― David Mamet

“What is our life: (Pause.) it’s looking forward or it’s looking back. And that’s our life. That’s it. Where is the moment?”
― David Mamet, Glengarry Glen Ross

“As you all know first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.”
― David Mamet, Glengarry Glen Ross

“Every reiteration of the idea that _nothing matters_ debases the human spirit.

Every reiteration of the idea that there is no drama in modern life, there is only dramatization, that there is no tragedy, there is only unexplained misfortune, debases us. It denies what we know to be true. In denying what we know, we are as a nation which cannot remember its dreams--like an unhappy person who cannot remember his dreams and so denies that he does dream, and denies that there are such things as dreams.”
― David Mamet, Writing in Restaurants: Essays and Prose

“Fox: It's lonely at the top.
Gould: But it ain't crowded.”
― David Mamet, Speed-the-Plow

“Society functions in a way much more interesting than the multiple-choice pattern we have been rewarded for succeeding at in school. Success in life comes not from the ability to choose between the four presented answers, but from the rather more difficult and painfully acquired ability to formulate the questions.”
― David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture


“Anyone can write five people trapped in a snowstorm. The question is how you get them into the snowstorm. It's hard to write a good play because it's hard to structure a plot. If you can think of it off the top of your head, so can the audience. To think of a plot that is, as Aristotle says, surprising and yet inevitable, is a lot, lot, lot of work.”
― David Mamet

“In the meantime: (1) be direct; (2) remember that, being smarter than men, women respond to courtesy and kindness; (3) if you want to know what kind of a wife someone will make, observe her around her father and mother; (4) as to who gets out of the elevator first, I just can't help you.”
― David Mamet, Some Freaks

“The basis of drama is ... is the struggle of the hero towards a specific goal at the end of which he realizes that what kept him from it was, in the lesser drama, civilization and, in the great drama, the discovery of something that he did not set out to discover but which can be seen retrospectively as inevitable. The example Aristotle uses, of course, is Oedipus.”
― David Mamet

“The first rule of tinkering is, of course, ‘save all the parts.’ But in dismantling the social fabric, the parts cannot all be saved, for one of them is time. Time, we were told, is a river flowing endlessly through the universe and one cannot step into the same river twice. Not only can we not undo actions taken in haste and in fear (the Japanese Internment), but those taken from the best reasons, but that have proved destructive (affirmative action); the essential mechanism of societal preservation is not inspiration, but restraint.”
― David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture

The Lincoln Lawyer

Last night we caught The Lincoln Lawyer on the catheter channel on TV. It was excellent!

The Lincoln Lawyer (film)

The Lincoln Lawyer is a 2011 American legal thriller film adapted from the novel of the same name by Michael Connelly, starring Matthew McConaughey, Ryan Phillippe, William H. Macy, Bryan Cranston and Marisa Tomei. The film is directed by Brad Furman, with a screenplay written by John Romano.

The story is adapted from the first of several novels featuring lawyer Mickey Haller, who works out of a chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Car rather than an office. Haller is hired by a wealthy Los Angeles businesswoman to defend her son, who is accused of assault. Details of the crime bring up uncomfortable parallels with a former case, and Haller discovers the two cases are intertwined.

Cocoa Biscotti

We made cocoa biscotti today a mash up of Nancy Verde Barr and David Lebovitz recipes. We pressure cooked German potato salad for our band rehearsal. Both foods taste better the next day.

Opera and Sauerkraut

I was convinced I was adopted because I LOVE opera and sauerkraut but then I saw my mother's toes and I knew I was her child.

Smile

Sometimes it's more important to smile than to shout.
Article

David Mamet Teaching

David Mamet sat in on a poker game full of thieves and left with the inspiration for American Buffalo. Now, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of Glengarry Glen Ross takes you through his process for turning life's strangest moments into dramatic art. He'll teach you the rules of drama, the nuances of dialogue, and the skills to develop your own voice and create your masterpiece.
Read

COZY is...

Cozy is the feeling after swimming across the pond. Cozy is the smell of baking bread or granola or meatloaf or anything good. Cozy is coming inside after shoveling the driveway. Cozy talking with a friend. Cozy is watching fish swim in a fishtank with the lights off. Cozy is small white Christmas Lights at night. Cozy is a fire in the fireplace and telling stories or playing chess with the dogs nearby. Cozy is laughter. Cozy is knowing who to call. Cozy is washing clothes while reading. Cozy is making a pot of coffee while sweeping the floor. Cozy is sewing the right outfit for yourself that you will love forever. Cozy is having kids over to write poems and draw. Cozy is making cookies for new neighbors. Cozy is a picnic in the backyard with Mayor Police Chief and all the folks who care about the neighborhood.

Banana Biscotti

Banana Pecan Biscotti

READY IN: 1hr 25mins

Recipe by Lee_tah

From Cooking Light website. Something different to make with over-ripe bananas (this is the key to a strong banana flavour--the more spotted the banana the tastier.) The biscotti are very small "baby-finger" sized--probably how they earned a low calorie rating!
ShortieNJ
Top Review by ShortieNJ
Mine didn't harden as much as I would like, but, they are delicious. 1/2 way between hard and chewy...yummm. I used 1/2 whole wheat flour and 1/2 all purpose ... More

Nutrition


1 3⁄4 cups all-purpose flour
1⁄2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1⁄4 teaspoon salt
1⁄3-1⁄2 cup mashed banana, about 1 banana
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 large egg
1⁄3 cup pecans, chopped

Directions

Preheat oven to 350°F.
Lightly grease your cookie sheet.
Sift flour and baking powder into a bowl. Add sugar and salt and stir together.
In another bowl combine all the wet ingredients: banana, oil, vanilla and egg.
Pour dry ingredients into wet ones along with pecans; stir together.
Flour a board and turn dough out onto it. Form two 8-inch logs. Put onto cookie sheet and pat down to 1/2 inch thickness.
Bake at 350°F for 23 minutes. Turn oven down to 250°F.
Remove logs from cookie sheet and cool for 10 minutes.
Then cut into about 1/2 inch slices and bake 15 minutes at 250°F.
Turn biscotti over and bake another 15 minutes.
*Biscotti will still be soft but will harden as they cool.

Tribal Monkey-Mind

fb is a monkey-mind cocktail party 24/7. When great things are fed to the lions they are belittled. This is the zone for selfies and vacation photos. But why share? I don't get it.

Last night I scrolled through the pages of a friends daughter and was astonished that the photos were all selfies in a bikini, holding drinks, pursed lips but the mother's page was the same thing! So there it is the family dynamic illustrated in photos.

Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.

Why Is the Funeral Ritual Important?

by Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.

"When words are inadequate, have a ritual."
Anonymous

Rituals are symbolic activities that help us, together with our families and friends, express our deepest thoughts and feelings about life's most important events. Baptism celebrates the birth of a child and that child's acceptance into the church family. Birthday parties honor the passing of another year in the life of someone we love. Weddings publicly affirm the private love shared by two people.

The funeral ritual, too, is a public, traditional and symbolic means of expressing our beliefs, thoughts and feelings about the death of someone loved. Rich in history and rife with symbolism, the funeral ceremony helps us acknowledge the reality of the death, gives testimony to the life of the deceased, encourages the expression of grief in a way consistent with the culture's values, provides support to mourners, allows for the embracing of faith and beliefs about life and death, and offers continuity and hope for the living.

Unfortunately, our mourning-avoiding culture has to a large extent forgotten these crucial purposes of the meaningful funeral. As a death educator and grief counselor, I am deeply concerned that individuals, families and ultimately society as a whole will suffer if we do not reinvest ourselves in the funeral ritual. This article explores the grief-healing benefits of meaningful funerals-benefits we are losing to the deritualization trend.

I have discovered that a helpful way to teach about the purposes of authentic funeral ceremonies is to frame them up in the context of the "reconciliation needs of mourning"-my twist on what other author's have called the "tasks of mourning." The reconciliation needs of mourning are the six needs that I believe to be the most central to healing in grief. In other words, bereaved people who have these needs met, through their own grief work and through the love and compassion of those around them, are most often able to reconcile their grief and go on to find continued meaning in life and living.

How the authentic funeral helps meet the six reconciliation needs of mourning:
Mourning Need #1. Acknowledge the reality of the death.

When someone loved dies, we must openly acknowledge the reality and the finality of the death if we are to move forward with our grief. Typically, we embrace this reality in two phases. First we acknowledge the death with our minds; we are told that someone we loved has died and, intellectually at least, we understand the fact of the death. Over the course of the following days and weeks, and with the gentle understanding of those around us, we begin to acknowledge the reality of the death in our hearts.

Meaningful funeral ceremonies can serve as wonderful points of departure for "head understanding" of the death. Intellectually, funerals teach us that someone we loved is now dead, even though up until the funeral we may have denied this fact. When we contact the funeral home, set a time for the service, plan the ceremony, view the body, perhaps even choose clothing and jewelry for the body, we cannot avoid acknowledging that the person has died. When we see the casket being lowered into the ground, we are witness to death's finality.
Mourning Need #2. Move toward the pain of the loss.

As our acknowledgment of the death progresses from what I call "head understanding" to "heart understanding," we begin to embrace the pain of the loss-another need the bereaved must have met if they are to heal. Healthy grief means expressing our painful thoughts and feelings, and healthy funeral ceremonies allow us to do just that.

People tend to cry, even sob and wail, at funerals because funerals force us to concentrate on the fact of the death and our feelings, often excruciatingly painful, about that death. For at least an hour or two-longer for mourners who plan the ceremony or attend the visitation-those attending the funeral are not able to intellectualize or distance themselves from the pain of their grief. To their credit, funerals also provide us with an accepted venue for our painful feelings. They are perhaps the only time and place, in fact, during which we as a society condone such openly outward expression of our sadness.
Mourning Need #3. Remember the person who died.

To heal in grief, we must shift our relationship with the person who died from one of physical presence to one of memory. The authentic funeral encourages us to begin this shift, for it provides a natural time and place for us to think about the moments we shared-good and bad-with the person who died. Like no other time before or after the death, the funeral invites us to focus on our past relationship with that one, single person and to share those memories with others.

At traditional funerals, the eulogy attempts to highlight the major events in the life of the deceased and the characteristics that he or she most prominently displayed. This is helpful to mourners, for it tends to prompt more intimate, individualized memories. Later, after the ceremony itself, many mourners will informally share memories of the person who died. This, too, is meaningful. Throughout our grief journeys, the more we are able "tell the story"-of the death itself, of our memories of the person who died-the more likely we will be to reconcile our grief. Moreover, the sharing of memories at the funeral affirms the worth we have placed on the person who died, legitimizing our pain. Often, too, the memories others choose to share with us at the funeral are memories that we have not heard before. This teaches us about the dead person's life apart from ours and allows us glimpses into that life that we may cherish forever.
Mourning Need #4. Develop a new self-identity.

Another primary reconciliation need of mourning is the development of a new self-identity. We are all social beings whose lives are given meaning in relation to the lives of those around us. I am not just Alan Wolfelt, but a son, a brother, a husband, a father, a friend. When someone close to me dies, my self-identity as defined in those ways changes.

The funeral helps us begin this difficult process of developing a new self-identity because it provides a social venue for public acknowledgment of our new roles. If you are a parent of a child and that child dies, the funeral marks the beginning of your life as a former parent (in the physical sense; you will always have that relationship through memory). Others attending the funeral are in effect saying, "We acknowledge your changed identity and we want you to know we still care about you." On the other hand, in situations where there is no funeral, the social group does not know how to relate to the person whose identity has changed and often that person is socially abandoned. In addition, having supportive friends and family around us at the time of the funeral helps us realize we literally still exist. This self-identity issue is illustrated by a comment the bereaved often make: "When he died, I felt like a part of me died, too."
Mourning Need #5. Search for meaning.

When someone loved dies, we naturally question the meaning of life and death. Why did this person die? Why now? Why this way? Why does it have to hurt so much? What happens after death? To heal in grief, we must explore these types of questions if we are to become reconciled to our grief. In fact, we must first ask these "why" questions to decide why we should go on living before we can ask ourselves how we will go on living. This does not mean we must find definitive answers, only that we need the opportunity to think (and feel) things through.

On a more fundamental level, the funeral reinforces one central fact of our existence: we will die. Like living, dying is a natural and unavoidable process. (We North Americans tend not to acknowledge this.) Thus the funeral helps us search for meaning in the life and death of the person who died as well as in our own lives and impending deaths. Each funeral we attend serves as a sort of dress rehearsal for our own.

Funerals are a way in which we as individuals and as a community convey our beliefs and values about life and death. The very fact of a funeral demonstrates that death is important to us. For the living to go on living as fully and as healthily as possible, this is as it should be.
Mourning Need #6. Receive ongoing support from others.

As we have said, funerals are a public means of expressing our beliefs and feelings about the death of someone loved. In fact, funerals are the public venue for offering support to others and being supported in grief, both at the time of the funeral and into the future. Funerals make a social statement that says, "Come support me." Whether they realize it or not, those who choose not to have a funeral are saying, "Don't come support me."

Funerals let us physically demonstrate our support, too. Sadly, ours is not a demonstrative society, but at funerals we are "allowed" to embrace, to touch, to comfort. Again, words are inadequate so we nonverbally demonstrate our support. This physical show of support is one of the most important healing aspects of meaningful funeral ceremonies.

Finally, and most simply, funerals serve as the central gathering place for mourners. When we care about someone who died or his family members, we attend the funeral if at all possible. Our physical presence is our most important show of support for the living. By attending the funeral we let everyone else there know that they are not alone in their grief.

Sarah

She wanted to come over and cry with me when my dog Lucy died. "No thanks, I said. surprised at the sudden desire to be at mt house under such sad circumstances especially when i never saw her on good days. My father-in-law told me there were people who would crash a funeral in the houses in South Boston. Essentially they were professional grievers. They would show up wearing black and howl and moan crying with the families. This is what Sarah wanted to do with me. She wanted to come over when tragedy happened but never when I was making a pie and inviting her for tea or supper. She only invited me over on Christmas Eve, and it is to take care of her misery. I was repelled. "Sorry I'll be making a quiet supper and staying at home," I told her. There are 364 other days of the year but she isn't interested in those nights because then she'd have to be an adult with adult conversation and that causes her great anxiety. The few times I have ever seen Sarah out in the world she was stoned out of her mind. I can always tell. It's sad to see that when you peel away the pot and pints you get a woman haunted by anxiety and phobias.

Roy Orbison

He had severe stage fright, and performed dressed all in black, hiding behind a pair of thick prescription Wayfarer sunglasses. He said: "I wasn't trying to be weird, you know? ... But the image developed of a man of mystery and a quiet man in black, somewhat of a recluse, although I never was, really."

One day, during a songwriting session with his partner Bill Dees, Orbison asked his wife, Claudette Frady Orbison, if she needed any money for her upcoming trip to Nashville. Dees remarked, "Pretty woman never needs any money." Forty minutes later, Orbison's most famous hit, "Oh, Pretty Woman," had been written.
-Writer's Almanac

Oh, Pretty Woman
by
ROY ORBISON

Pretty woman, walking down the street
Pretty woman, the kind I like to meet
Pretty woman
I don't believe you, you're not the truth
No one could look as good as you

Mercy

Pretty woman, won't you pardon me?
Pretty woman, I couldn't help but see
Pretty woman
That you look lovely as can be
Are you lonely just like me?

Wow

Pretty woman, stop a while
Pretty woman, talk a while
Pretty woman, give your smile to me
Pretty woman, yeah, yeah, yeah
Pretty woman, look my way
Pretty woman, say you'll stay with me

'Cause I need you, I'll treat you right
Come to me baby, be mine tonight

Pretty woman, don't walk on by
Pretty woman, don't make me cry
Pretty woman, don't walk away, hey...
OK

If that's the way it must be, OK
I guess I'll go on home, it's late
There'll be tomorrow night, but wait—
What do I see?

Is she walking back to me?
Yeah, she's walking back to me
Oh, oh, pretty woman