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“Without swimming lessons, I would have missed out on so much. Since starting lessons, I’ve noticed quite a few changes.
“My mental health has improved so much, it’s almost therapeutic for me to come and swim, not focusing on anything else other than enjoying the water.
“It’s introduced me to amazing new people, and even new hobbies – at the London Aquatics Centre I’ve been able to try diving, which is an experience I just wouldn’t get otherwise.
“The group that you create in lessons is special because you’re all working towards the same thing, and you can connect in that way.
“I think swimming pools like mine, and opportunities for people of all ages are vital to the community.
“Without these, I would have missed out on so much and not only am I grateful to enjoy this experience and my lessons, but I would urge anyone to get involved because it makes such a positive difference to your life.”
The sector is looking to inspire more people into the water at any stage of their life – with data currently suggesting as many as half of adults feel it’s intimidating to learn to swim as an adult, and more than two in five feeling swimming lessons aren’t for ‘people like me’.
Worryingly, some appear to be more adversely affected by these misconceptions, with those from ethnically diverse communities even more likely to report that lessons would be intimidating.
https://www.swimming.org/justswim/love-swimming-alfredo-aguirre/
Monday, April 29, 2024
Alfredo Aguirre LOVES SWIMMING
Ibuprofen & Remedies for Hip Pain
take steps to reduce pain and other symptoms:
- Create a weight loss plan if you have overweight or obesity. This will help limit the amount of pressure on your hip.
- Avoid activities that make the pain worse.
- Wear flat, comfortable shoes that cushion your feet.
- Try low-impact exercises like biking or swimming.
- Always warm up before exercising, and stretch afterward.
- If appropriate, do muscle-strengthening and flexibility exercises at home. A doctor or physical therapist can give you exercises to try.
- Avoid standing for long periods of time.
- Take NSAIDs when necessary, but avoid taking them for a prolonged time.
- Rest when necessary, but remember that exercise will help keep your hip strong and flexible.
Hip pain that’s worse when you stand or walk can often be treated with home remedies. However, if your pain is serious or lasts more than a week, see a doctor. They can help you find the right treatment and make lifestyle changes to cope with chronic hip pain if necessary.
Cracker Machine or Back of the Spoon Crackers
Article crackers using a roller
or this back of the spoon or spatula method.
All Seed Crackers (I add rye sourdough starter discard)
Michel de Montaigne
The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.
A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.
A man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens.
The beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things.
Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and apply myself to them if they will not apply themselves to me.
Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.
Every man has within himself the entire human condition.
There is no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well and naturally.
Only the fools are certain and assured.
The only thing certain is nothing is certain.
No wind favors he who has no destined port.
My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.
Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.
To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it.
Kings and philosophers defecate, and so do ladies.
Few men have been admired by their own households.
A man must be a little mad if he does not want to be even more stupid.
Ambition is not a vice of little people.
Greatness of soul consists not so much in soaring high and in pressing forward, as in knowing how to adapt and limit oneself.
Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you make it for them.
Don’t discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.
Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.
He who establishes his argument by noise and command, shows that his reason is weak.
I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.
We should beware of clinging to vulgar opinions, and judge things by reason’s way, not by popular say.
Stubborn and ardent clinging to one’s opinion is the best proof of stupidity.
Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.
It is easier to sacrifice great than little things.
No noble thing can be done without risks.
I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
One should always have one’s boots on and be ready to leave.
I consider myself an average man, except in the fact that I consider myself an average man.
My art and profession is to live.
E.E. Cummings
As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn’t a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time — and whenever we do it, we’re not poets.
If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you’ve written one line of one poem, you’ll be very lucky indeed.
And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world — unless you’re not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.
Does that sound dismal? It isn’t.
It’s the most wonderful life on earth.
Or so I feel.
E.E. Cummings
Sunday, April 28, 2024
Territorial Males
That man just looked at me like if you let your dog pee on my yard I will kill you! my husband said as we walked by.
He hasn't been castrated YET! I said, meaning the man.
Ah yes, he hasn't been fixed!
This is the same problem with the Republicans, I said.
In males, neutering decreases the chances of developing prostatic disease and hernias, and eliminates the chances of developing testicular cancer. It also reduces problems with territorial and sexual aggression, inappropriate urination (spraying) and other undesirable male behaviors.
Change can be GOOD
The new YMCA pool environment is awesome.
The former YMCA pool experience was like LORD of the FLIES.
Sourdough Rye Sunflower, Poppy Sesame Wheat Crackers
Mix the sourdough rye discard with whole wheat flour, ground sunflower seeds, poppy seeds unhulled sesame seeds with pinches salt (and sugar if too tangy) and spread on parchment paper and place the paper on a baking pan. Bake at 350 for ten minutes. Then score with pizza cutter and bake some more. Then flip them over and bake some more.Turn off the oven and open the oven door a crack. You can leave them in the residual heat until they are crispy.
I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it.
https://fs.blog/harper-lee-on-reading/
Harper Lee, author of the much-loved novel To Kill a Mockingbird, wrote the following letter to Oprah Winfrey,
May 7, 2006
Dear Oprah,
Do you remember when you learned to read, or like me, can you not even remember a time when you didn’t know how? I must have learned from having been read to by my family. My sisters and brother, much older, read aloud to keep me from pestering them; my mother read me a story every day, usually a children’s classic, and my father read from the four newspapers he got through every evening. Then, of course, it was Uncle Wiggily at bedtime.
So I arrived in the first grade, literate, with a curious cultural assimilation of American history, romance, the Rover Boys, Rapunzel, and The Mobile Press. Early signs of genius? Far from it. Reading was an accomplishment I shared with several local contemporaries. Why this endemic precocity? Because in my hometown, a remote village in the early 1930s, youngsters had little to do but read. A movie? Not often — movies weren’t for small children. A park for games? Not a hope. We’re talking unpaved streets here, and the Depression.
Books were scarce. There was nothing you could call a public library, we were a hundred miles away from a department store’s books section, so we children began to circulate reading material among ourselves until each child had read another’s entire stock. There were long dry spells broken by the new Christmas books, which started the rounds again.
As we grew older, we began to realize what our books were worth: Anne of Green Gables was worth two Bobbsey Twins; two Rover Boys were an even swap for two Tom Swifts. Aesthetic frissons ran a poor second to the thrills of acquisition. The goal, a full set of a series, was attained only once by an individual of exceptional greed — he swapped his sister’s doll buggy.
We were privileged. There were children, mostly from rural areas, who had never looked into a book until they went to school. They had to be taught to read in the first grade, and we were impatient with them for having to catch up. We ignored them.
And it wasn’t until we were grown, some of us, that we discovered what had befallen the children of our African-American servants. In some of their schools, pupils learned to read three-to-one — three children to one book, which was more than likely a cast-off primer from a white grammar school. We seldom saw them until, older, they came to work for us.
Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it.
And, Oprah, can you imagine curling up in bed to read a computer? Weeping for Anna Karenina and being terrified by Hannibal Lecter, entering the heart of darkness with Mistah Kurtz, having Holden Caulfield ring you up — some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal.
The village of my childhood is gone, with it most of the book collectors, including the dodgy one who swapped his complete set of Seckatary Hawkinses for a shotgun and kept it until it was retrieved by an irate parent.
Now we are three in number and live hundreds of miles away from each other. We still keep in touch by telephone conversations of recurrent theme: “What is your name again?” followed by “What are you reading?” We don’t always remember.
Much love,
Harper
We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
It's the birthday of novelist Harper Lee, born Nelle Harper Lee in Monroeville, Alabama (1926). She has written just one novel, To Kill A Mockingbird (1960),
but it has sold more than 30 million copies. She hates interviews and
speeches, and prefers to live quietly in Monroeville, where she is known
as Miss Nelle. (Writers Almanac 2013)
The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss. Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
People with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called *character,* a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to the other, more instantly negotiable virtues.... character--the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life--is the source from which self-respect springs. Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
I closed the box and put it in a closet. There is no real way to deal with everything we lose.
Joan Didion, Where I Was From
You have to pick the places you don't walk away from. Joan Didion
“Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.”
― The Year of Magical Thinking“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.”
― Slouching Towards Bethlehem“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
― The White Album“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
―“Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.”
― On Self-Respect“I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”
―“We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.”
― The White Album“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe their husband is about to return and need his shoes.”
― The Year of Magical Thinking“You have to pick the places you don't walk away from.”
―“we are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. as we were. as we are no longer. as we will one day not be at all.”
― The Year of Magical Thinking
The Perils of Lap Swimming
I recently swam at a pool in Australia, and they had, can you believe it, times listed next to the lane's speed! I was so excited. Lane 1, "fast", 1:40 or faster (LCM). There were two women going very slowly in the lane, but when I approached the lane they moved over. I mean, it takes the guess work out of it. There was no bumping, and no throwing the fast people out. ttriven
https://forum.marathonswimmers.org/discussion/1577/perils-of-lap-swimming
Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
A good half of the art of living is resilience. Alain de Botton
Most of what makes a book ‘good’ is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
Alain de Botton
Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go. Alain de Botton
We are sensitized by the books we read. And the more books we read, and the deeper their lessons sink into us, the more pairs of glasses we have. And those glasses enable us to see things we would have otherwise missed. Alain de Botton
Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason. Alain de Botton
Maturity: knowing where you’re crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control. Alain de Botton
It takes a serious lack of imagination to have an entirely clean conscience. Alain de Botton
When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often. Alain de Botton
There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life. Alain de Botton
There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most. Alain de Botton
Adulthood involves learning to conclusively bury a great many of our hopes. Alain de Botton
Laughter is an important part of a good relationship. Alain de Botton
Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself. Alain de Botton
It isn’t normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement. Alain de Botton
The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.
Alain de Botton
Alain de Botton
The only way to be happy is to realize how much depends on how you look at things.
Alain de Botton
At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality. Alain de Botton
What kills us isn’t one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can’t turn down for fear of disappointing others. Alain de Botton
Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice. Alain de Botton
Mental health: having enough safe places in your mind for your thoughts to settle.
Alain de Botton
Ask not why the addiction, but why the pain. Gabor Maté
The relentless pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain, leads to pain. Anna Lembke
Addiction is giving up everything for one thing. Recovery is giving up one thing for everything. Unknown
Almost everyone is an addict – when addiction is defined as a manic reliance on something as a defense against dark thoughts. Alain de Botton
Modern food is made to keep you addicted. Modern news is made to keep you addicted. Modern shows are made to keep you addicted. Modern technology is made to keep you addicted. Addiction is the end game. Profit is what they seek. Jose Rosado
It’s pretty exhausting avoiding yourself all the time. Anna Lembke
Dream Urban Arboretum!
I dreamed I photographed my favorite trees in the city to document them here.
Interesting idea.
I also have some favorite architecture.
Saturday, April 27, 2024
2009 Blue Pontiac Named Mercedes
As a feminine name, Mercedes reveals a more humble, charitable nature than the luxury lifestyle it so often inspires. Born from the Latin merces, meaning "wage" or "reward," Mercedes encompasses benevolence, kindness, and compassion. It's rooted in the Spanish María de las Mercedes—Our Lady of Mercies—and pays homage to the Virgin Mary's ties to divine mercy. Often depicted in Christian art as a formidable figure shielding worshipers beneath an outspread cloak, the Virgin of Mercy represents unconditional love, protection, and empathy. For Mercedes, such admirable qualities may prove to be the rarest gifts of all.
She broke racial barriers as a Vegas showgirl. At 97, she’s still dancing.
She broke racial barriers as a Vegas showgirl. At 97, she’s still dancing.
Anna Bailey was the first Black woman to integrate an all-White chorus line on the Strip — and helped transform the city during the struggle for civil rights
By Amanda FortiniApril 27, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDTAnna Bailey recently emerged from retirement to come back to a Las Vegas stage to perform in a musical. (Bridget Bennett for The Washington Post)
Bailey was one of the original showgirls at the Moulin Rouge, which, when it opened in 1955, was the first racially integrated hotel-casino not only in Las Vegas, but also in the nation. She was also the first Black woman to perform in an otherwise all-White chorus line on the Strip.
On this day at the Aliante, she was like any other dancer, marking her steps, striking various poses: She lifted her chin, pointed her toe and balletically extended her arm; then she tilted her head back and dramatically spread her hand in front of her forehead like a fan.Along with 11 other former Vegas dancers, Bailey would play the small role of “legendary showgirl” in two group numbers. “Follies,” the sprawling, beloved Stephen Sondheim musical that premiered on Broadway in April 1971, is a bittersweet melodrama about aging showgirls who reunite at their former haunt, the Weismann Theater (a fictionalized Ziegfeld Theatre), on the eve of its demolition.Bailey, a slim, elegant woman with arrow-straight posture, finished her routine and sat down to watch the other actors block out their scenes. “I have to concentrate, and I have to rehearse,” she told me, as strains of “Live, Laugh, Love” floated through the theater. “We didn’t do it for about two or three days, and when you get to be a senior, it’s gone.”
Her fluid movements and sporty attire — a black baseball cap and loose pants with a racing stripe down each leg — gave Bailey the aura of someone two decades younger. “God bless everybody, because people always ask me, ‘What did you do?’ I really didn’t do anything but just live, day by day,” she said.
“I never did overdo it. I don’t smoke. Occasionally, I do like a cocktail,” she added with a mischievous grin. “Especially a rum and Coke.”Bailey said she had hesitated to commit to “Follies” because she has a touch of arthritis in her right knee: “I think it’s just aging,” she said with a shrug. “I’m one of the oldest girls here.” She also stopped driving last year, at 96. But her children (John R. Bailey, a local attorney, and Kimberly Bailey-Tureaud, co-publisher of Las Vegas Black Image magazine) persuaded her to take the leap.
“You never get over being a ham,” she explained. “When they put the lights on, I got the stage and the audience — it’s why my family encouraged me.”
Bailey marveled that the producers from Metropolis Theatricals, the nonprofit theater company that staged the limited-run production, had found her. “I’m just sitting in my living room, and I got a phone call one day,” she said, “I think maybe they Googled or something.”One of Bailey’s most charming qualities is how down-to-earth she is, especially considering that she’s an important figure in Las Vegas history, as was her late husband, William H. “Bob” Bailey, an entertainer who became a local television personality and prominent civil rights activist. She was part of the landmark opening of the Moulin Rouge, where performers and patrons of all races could dance and socialize together for the first time in a deeply segregated Las Vegas; she also participated in the desegregation of the Strip when she was hired to perform alongside White dancers at the Flamingo Hotel and Casino. Indeed, her long and storied life is a lens through which one can view the struggle for civil rights in Las Vegas.
“She is there for this pivotal moment in history,” said Claytee D. White, director of the Oral History Research Center at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas’s Libraries. “She comes in the ’50s, when big changes are taking place in the city — the Strip is growing up and you have the first integrated hotel. She witnessed everything from that period through the 1960s, when integration takes place, to the 1970s, when the consent decree is signed, giving Blacks jobs on the Las Vegas Strip. She is the first Black dancer at a hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. She sees the whole evolution of the city.”The next afternoon after the rehearsal, Bailey sat on a white leather couch in her peaceful, light-filled home in a planned waterfront community in Las Vegas, reminiscing about her early days as a dancer. Born in Savannah, Ga., in 1926, she was raised in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn from the time she was a year old. As a young teen, while studying at the celebrated Mary Bruce School of Dance in Harlem — she would take the train from Brooklyn to 125th Street for tap lessons several times a week — there was a strike at the Apollo Theater, and the students were asked to fill in. “I guess we crossed the line,” Bailey said. “All we thought about was working at the Apollo.”
It would be her big break: She began dancing for Larry Steele, the impresario known for his all-Black revues, and Clarence Robinson, the choreographer known for his work at New York’s legendary Cotton Club and on the 1943 movie musical “Stormy Weather.” Bailey toured with Robinson, as did her husband, who had been a vocalist in the Count Basie Orchestra. (The Baileys married in 1951.) When Robinson was asked to create a show for the new Moulin Rouge, he hired Anna as a dancer and Bob as a singer and master of ceremonies.Bailey arrived in Las Vegas in March 1955 — 28 and full of excitement for her new gig. There was so much buzz around the imminent opening of the Moulin Rouge that she and the 27 other young women who had been hired to perform there were met at the airport by a crush of photographers.
Bailey had assumed that the new hotel-casino was on the Strip, but the dancers were put in limousines and buses and ferried past the legendary hotel-casinos, under an overpass and over the railroad tracks, before arriving at a venue three miles away, on the outskirts of the majority-Black neighborhood now known as the Historic Westside. She was pleasantly surprised by the beauty of “the Rouge,” as she calls it, but the experience was nonetheless disorienting. “New York was the most liberal, diverse place,” Bailey said. “So, when I came here, it was like culture shock. … I thought the town was way behind the times.”On the Strip and in most other parts of Las Vegas, Jim Crow restrictions were in full, shameful effect: Black people weren’t allowed to patronize the city’s hotels, restaurants, theaters or clothing stores. Bailey recalls being forbidden to eat in a particular hot dog spot on Fremont Street: “We could go in there and buy it, but we had to eat outside.” Even famous entertainers could not dine, swim, stay or gamble at the casino-hotels where they performed.
“Sammy Davis Jr., Lena Horne, Nat King Cole, Pearl Bailey, Johnny Mathis — all the greats — they go in through the back doors of the casinos,” said White, the oral historian. “They cannot eat in the casinos. They go through the kitchen to get to the stage. They cannot gamble. If someone comes to town powerful enough, maybe they’ll say, ‘Okay, Sammy can sit at the table over in the corner with this person.’ But that is rare.”
Bailey remembers being turned away by a security guard when she and three other dancers tried to enter the Sands. “We were getting ready to step down into the casino and he stopped us,” she said. “But you know who saved us? Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra. Sinatra saw us and came and got us and took us to their table. They were so upset, they were hitting on the table.” Sinatra famously threatened to end his popular show at the Sands unless Davis was allowed to stay there with the rest of the Rat Pack.Although the Moulin Rouge opened with much fanfare — standing room only, celebrity patrons, the cover of Life magazine — it would close in six months.“We went there, and the padlock was on the door,” Bailey said. “And that’s how we found out. We had no idea.”
Although the reasons for the closure remain murky, with some historians citing financial mismanagement, debts and eventual bankruptcy, Bailey believes the casino was shut down because its 2:30 a.m. show, which no other casinos had, was taking business from the Mafia-owned, White-only casinos on the Strip. Still, in its short existence, the Moulin Rouge laid the groundwork for desegregation in Las Vegas. Five years later, in March 1960, Bob Bailey was among a group of civil rights leaders, hotel owners and government officials who met at the defunct venue — a symbolic choice — and signed the “Moulin Rouge Agreement,” which lifted Jim Crow restrictions and integrated the city.It was around this time that Bailey was hired by the entertainer Pearl Bailey (no relation) to perform at the Flamingo. Pearl placed her “right there in the middle,” as Bailey puts it, of the White performers, making her the first Black dancer to integrate a chorus line on the Strip. “I never had any problems with the other girls,” she said. “We were all so glad to be working.”
Her husband, meanwhile, a Renaissance man of sorts, hosted some popular television shows, worked as Pearl Bailey’s road manager and, in 1962, was appointed by Nevada Gov. Grant Sawyer (D) as chairman of the Nevada Equal Rights Commission. The Baileys also opened a lounge called Sugar Hill in 1964; for 25 years, it was a popular after-hours hangout. The pair were a power couple long before anyone used the term, and Bailey’s home is filled with memorabilia from their 63 years together.
“I really miss him,” she said, showing me a book of photos from Bob’s memorial in 2014. “That’s the only way we had strength, was being together,” she said, as she flipped through the pages. “Follies,” she added, has been a gift in the long wake of his death: “It gives me some sort of purpose.”The following week, as I watched the final performance at the Aliante, I realized that this was true not just for Bailey, but for all the former showgirls in the musical, many of whom danced in the Folies Bergère, the glittering, feathered spectacular that ran for 49 years at the recently shuttered Tropicana casino.
“Follies” is about the past, about regrets, about the ineluctable passage of time. It’s about entertainers in midlife and the razing of an old theatrical venue, both of which Las Vegas, with its retired showgirls and controversial penchant for imploding its historic casinos, knows well.
The women glide across the stage — they are in their 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, with Bailey the oldest by only a few years — seemingly blooming with renewed vigor, like plants that have turned toward the sun. Clearly, the muscles have a memory, but the spirit remembers, as well. After the show, Bailey stands at the front of the theater beaming. A few fans ask for her autograph.
“I think this will maybe be my last gig,” she told me, “but I’ll see what the future brings. I don’t know what might happen tomorrow.”
Hip Pain (After) Swimming
How to Eliminate Hip Pain When Swimming
The Swimming Pt
https://theswimmingpt.com/how-to-eliminate-hip-pain-when-swimming/
Oct 18, 2022 — Commonly, a swimmer will feel some discomfort in the front of their hip. In some cases, the hip pain can radiate down the side of their thigh, ...The Swimming Pt
https://theswimmingpt.com/how-to-fix-hip-pain-when-swimming-part-2/
Oct 25, 2022 — Decrease hip pain by using a foam roller to relax the muscles around the area; Specific exercise targeting glutes; Integrate into full body ...
White Sneakers in a Blue Pontiac
My mechanic drove over in my car to pick me up so I could pay him back at his shop. When I got in the car I saw a lottery ticket on the floor. "Is that yours?" he asked me.
"No is it yours? I don't play because I'm afraid I will win," I said. "Is it a winning ticket?" I laughed.
We drove back to Sam's shop and I paid him for the the muffler repair,
sub-contracted body work, and the inspection. When I got in the car I
noticed candy wrappers on the floor and dried orange candy stuck to the
passenger seat. Then I noticed the gas tank was empty. It was full when I
had brought it in. Must've been the body shop guy. Not Sam, definitely
not his candy, he's Mr Healthy Athlete.
When I got home I examined my "new" 2009 PONTIAC and the body work, and thought to check the trunk. There were white sneakers inside. I texted Sam. "I think your body shop guy left sneakers in the car."
"Okay thanks I'll ask him. Yes can you place them in a bag and leave it in the driveway, I'll swing by to get them later."
"I will save them inside the back foyer instead so they won't get stolen."
I pictured a bunch of young guys joy-riding in my car, or maybe one guy drove to NYC to see his girlfriend. The tires were all caked with mud. Maybe he drove through a swamp. Who knows.
My heart was racing and I was spooked. My new car had been man-handled
by a stranger who drove 350 miles in 2 weeks of rebuilding the rocker
panels. I wanted my first meeting with old Bessie the Boat to be lovely.
I went inside and wrote a friend. "I'm scared!, I'm spooked!"
A
voice inside said just go swim. The car is a tool for the pool. Go swim
and figure it all out later. I had to look up how to adjust the
vertical position of the seat. It was tilted back, the way guys like to
drive, positioning themselves toward the center of the car and
straight-arming the steering wheel. I googled how to adjust the seat on a
2009 Pontiac G6, and successfully pulled the lever adjusting the seat. Okay I feel a little better.
I packed my swim bag, found the classical station on the car radio, and headed out to Forge Park to swim. It was good advice.
When
I came home my neighbor was outside. I told him the story of the
sneakers and the gas. He said that's bad! Then my husband arrived and I
told him. After dinner we composed a long text to our mechanic to let
him know about his auto body guy's actions. Sam apologized, and when he
showed up for the sneakers he apologized again and handed me cash for
the gas his sub-contractor had used. "I'll just subtract it from the
next bill he gives me," he said.
Loved this advice applied to anything
Brogan Ingram handles extreme messes for free. What she’s learned can benefit anyone.
Start smallCleaning is not something you can do in one quick session, according to Ingram. “Don’t try to clean the whole house at once,” she says. “Don’t even try to clean a whole room at once.” Instead, she recommends choosing one corner or surface in the room.“It sounds silly, but I say just pick one, like, two- to three-square-foot space and just clean that,” Ingram adds. Habit formation starts small, and once you can keep a tiny space clean, it will become easier to keep larger areas in the house tidy.“It’s about not having insurmountable, unrealistic expectations about getting the whole house clean,” she says. “People get stuck because they see a huge task they don’t want to do or don’t feel like they can complete, so they just don’t.”Stick to a scheduleHaving a schedule for cleaning can help reduce the overwhelmed feelings. If you’re just starting out, set a timer for just a few minutes a day.“You do your five minutes, and all of a sudden you have motivation,” Ingram says. “It’s crazy how it happens. You get a little shot of, ‘Okay, I completed something!’ And you feel like, ‘Well, maybe I can do something else.’ It snowballs.”Sticking to your schedule also means only cleaning for a set amount of time each day and trying not to overdo it. “If you’re spending hours or a whole day doing something, chances are you’re just adding to the negative relationship with cleaning and subconsciously making yourself dread doing it again,” Ingram says.Schedules are a very personalized thing. Ingram cleans her home for 30 minutes each day, focusing on a different room. Then, for eight weeks twice a year, she adds a few more intense tasks to her daily schedule for each room — things like scrubbing walls and baseboards or cleaning behind the refrigerator — for a deeper cleaning.“There’s not one schedule that’s going to be for everybody, because our houses are different, and our energy levels are different,” she says. “I always tell people to just think about your life, write down all the rooms in your home, and then just make little bullet points underneath each room of things that you could do in each one daily or weekly, not to deep clean it, but just keep it tidy.”Don’t go it aloneIt’s common to think about everyday clutter as a shameful thing, Ingram says. People get stressed about cleaning before company arrives and feel a need to apologize for even the most minor messes. None of that is helpful. Instead, Ingram says, people need to recognize that most everyone has some version of the same struggles, and teamwork can help.
“Body doubling” is another common technique used by people with ADHD. Essentially, it means doing potentially frustrating tasks in the company of another person, whose presence can help reduce distraction and procrastination.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2024/04/27/cleaning-tiktok-brogan-ingram-advice/
The Truth
Those of us who think we know by Stephen Dunn
the same secrets
are silent together most of the time,
for us there is eloquence
in desire, and for a while
when in love and exhausted
it’s enough to nod like shy horses
and come together
in a quiet ceremony of tongues.
It’s in disappointment we look for words
to convince us
the spaces between stars are nothing
to worry about;
it’s when those secrets burst
in that emptiness between our hearts
and the lumps in our throats.
And the words we find
are always insufficient, like love,
though they are often lovely
and all we have.”
― New and Selected Poems, 1974-1994
“All I wanted was a job like a book so good I'd be finishing it for the rest of my life.”
― Walking Light
―
The Sudden Light and the Trees by Stephen Dunn
My neighbor was a biker, a pusher, a dog
and wife beater.
In bad dreams I killed him
and once, in the consequential light of day,
I called the Humane Society
about Blue, his dog. They took her away
and I readied myself, a baseball bat
inside my door.
That night I hear his wife scream
and I couldn't help it, that pathetic
relief; her again, not me.
It would be years before I'd understand
why victims cling and forgive. I plugged in
the Sleep-Sound and it crashed
like the ocean all the way to sleep.
One afternoon I found him
on the stoop,
a pistol in his hand, waiting,
he said, for me. A sparrow had gotten in
to our common basement.
Could he have permission
to shoot it? The bullets, he explained,
might go through the floor.
I said I'd catch it, wait, give me
a few minutes and, clear-eyed, brilliantly
afraid, I trapped it
with a pillow. I remember how it felt
when I got my hand, and how it burst
that hand open
when I took it outside, a strength
that must have come out of hopelessness
and the sudden light
and the trees. And I remember
the way he slapped the gun against
his open palm,
kept slapping it, and wouldn't speak.
―
There will always be people who think suffering leads to enlightenment, who place themselves on the verge of what’s about to break, or go dangerously wrong. Let’s resist them and their thinking, you and I. Let’s not rush toward that sure thing that awaits us, which can dumb us into nonsense and pain. Stephen Dunn, Pagan Virtues: Poems
A Troubled Guest
“A man’s mistakes (if I may lecture you), his worst acts, aren’t
out of character, as he’d like to think, are not put on him by power or
stress or too much to drink, but simply a worse self he consents to be.”
― Pagan Virtues: Poems
I’ve turned corners there was no going back to, corners in the middle of a room that led to Spain or solitude.
“And I’ve turned corners there was no going back to, corners in
the middle of a room that led to Spain or solitude. And always the thin
line between corner and cornered, the good corners of bodies and those
severe bodies that permit no repose, the places we retreat to, the
places we can’t bear to be found.”
― New and Selected Poems 1974-1994
worked through the terrors of influence, and are willing to acknowledge their debts by using them in order to go their own way
“Poets who remain poets have, presumably, worked through the
terrors of influence, and are willing to acknowledge their debts by
using them in order to go their own way. They’ve learned what Thomas
Mann knew: “A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than
it is for other people.”
― Walking Light: Memoirs and Essays on Poetry
― Walking Light: Memoirs and Essays on Poetry
Evil always has an advantage and always succeeds until its enormous feet understep some moral chasm, or a damsel held dear by the populace cries out and is heard. Stephen Dunn, Whereas: Poems
― Whereas: Poems
― Whereas: Poems
― Between Angels: Poems
A Circus of Needs: Poems
this thin man whose desires
were barely covered by skin,
standing absolutely still.
But everytime he moved
there was another place to go,
and everytime sadness would arrive
with its wonderful cocoon
not even that would last.
Flaubert said — I assume about the balance between repression and freedom — “Be regular and orderly in your daily life, so you can be violent and original in your work.” ― Stephen Dunn, Walking Light: Memoirs and Essays on Poetry
“Your poem effectively begins at the first moment you’ve surprised or startled yourself. Throw away everything that preceded that moment, and begin with that moment.”
“Too many poets are insufficiently interested in story. Their poems could be improved if they gave in more to the strictures of fiction: the establishment of a clear dramatic situation, and a greater awareness that first-person narrators are also characters and must be treated as such by their authors. The true lyric poet, of course, is exempt from this. But many poets wrongly think they are lyric poets.”
―
“Finally, what I want from poetry is akin to what Flaubert wanted from novels. He thought they should make us dream. I want a poem, through its precisions and accuracies, to make me remember what I know, or what I might have known if I hadn't been constrained by convention or habit.”
―“How to survive as an other? The small town may be a paradigm of how boundaries can permit generosity, but it is also a place where people on the fringe, say homosexuals or intellectuals or African-Americans, develop a hunger for larger and more hospitable boundaries, those offered by cities, or, in another sense, by poems. There may be implications here for open and closed forms. That aside, true community — beyond physical parameters — often arises when you realize that everything you’ve thought peculiar to yourself has been thought or even lived by someone else. This is how poetry, not to mention literature in general, manifests some of its most exquisite manners; in the course of being true to itself it makes a gesture to others.”
― Walking Light: Memoirs and Essays on Poetry
“The good poem is implicitly philosophical. The not so good poem, conversely, may exquisitely describe a tree or loneliness, but if the description does not suggest an attitude toward nature, or human nature, we are left with a kind of dentist office art — devoted to decoration and the status quo.”
― Walking Light: Memoirs and Essays on Poetry“Donald Justice’s admonition that a good poem should exhibit “that maximum amount of wildness that the form can bear” is also relevant, though again it’s equally useful to think of expanding the notion of form to accommodate even more of the wild.”
― Walking Light: Memoirs and Essays on Poetry
should be handcuffed
and searched for loneliness.
― Different Hours
Stephen Dunn Poem
“Where are we going?
It’s not an issue of here or there.
And if you ever feel you can’t
take another step, imagine
how you might feel to arrive,
if not wiser, a little more aware
how to inhabit the middle ground
between misery and joy.
Trudge on. In the higher regions,
where the footing is unsure,
to trudge is to survive.”
― Lines of Defense: Poems
Friday, April 26, 2024
Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing. Bernard Malamud
“First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge & enhance an idea, to reform it . . . Revision is one of the true pleasures of writing.”
―
The purpose of a writer is to keep civilisation from destroying itself. Bernard Malamud
(Interview, New York Post Magazine, September 14, 1958)
David Hume born 1711
It's the birthday of the man who said: "The truth springs from arguments among friends," and "The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster." That's Scottish philosopher David Hume, born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1711. While working as a librarian, he wrote the six-volume History of England (1762), which became a bestseller and gave him the financial independence to write and revise his philosophical treatises. He wrote A Treatise of Human Nature (1740), Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding (1748), and Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). He was a strict skeptic, and questioned all knowledge derived from the senses.
David Hume said, "Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty."
And, "Reading and sauntering and lounging and dozing, which I call thinking, is my supreme happiness."
And, "He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to any circumstances."
The Writer's Almanac
Slow Down
If you can just maintain that consistent energy in one direction, it’s incredible what you could deflect over a long period of time.
Hugh Howey
We need, above all things, to slow down and get ourselves to amble through life instead of to rush through it.
Alan Watts
It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.
Confucius
help prevent the muscle loss
Many factors, including your age, height, weight, and activity level, determine your daily calorie needs. In general, moderately active women ages 26–50 should consume approximately 2,000 calories per day to maintain their weight and stay healthy (1).
That said, this range can vary widely based on the factors mentioned above.
As women age beyond 50, they generally require fewer calories to maintain their weight. This is because as people grow older, they tend to lose muscle mass and be less active (2).
In general, average healthy women over 60 should consume 1,600–2,200 calories to maintain their weight and stay healthy.
Women who are more active should stay on the higher end of their calorie intake range, while women who are more sedentary should stay on the lower end of their range.
However, even though your calorie needs are lower at 65 than when you were in your 20s, you still need to eat just as high or even higher amounts of certain nutrients compared with younger people.
For example, women over 65 should consume a higher proportion of their calories from protein to help prevent the muscle loss that typically occurs with age. This muscle loss is known as sarcopenia, and it’s a major cause of weakness and fractures among older adults (3, 4).
In addition, other nutrients you should aim to consume more of include:
- Fiber: to help prevent bowel-related issues like constipation and diverticulitis (5, 6)
- Calcium and vitamin D: to help keep your bones strong and healthy as you age (7)
- Vitamin B12: with age, your body may find it harder to absorb vitamin B12 (8)
- Iron: to prevent a deficiency and anemia, which is more common with age (9)
You can increase your intake of these nutrients by eating a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, lean meats, dairy products, and fish.
Last medically reviewed on March 31, 2021
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/calories-for-a-healthy-65-year-old-woman
when people recognize the actual sources of their privilege is they become a little more humble and they are more willing to help other people, more willing to invest in the future
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22673605/upper-middle-class-meritocracy-matthew-stewart
America’s upper-middle class works more, optimizes their kids, and is miserable.
One of the things you write about in the book is how much this 9.9 percent are willing to invest in their children — in nannies, in schools, in extracurriculars. Where does this pressure come from, this urge people have to make their kids the best?
I think the driving motivation is fear, and I think that fear is well-grounded. People intuit that in this meritocratic game, the odds are getting increasingly long of succeeding. They work very hard to stack the odds in their kids’ favor, but they know as the odds get longer, they may not succeed.
That’s coupled with another one of the traits of this class, which is a lack of imagination. The source of the fear is also this inability to imagine a life that doesn’t involve getting these high-status credentials and having a high-status occupation. This life plan looks good, and it certainly looked good in the past when the odds were more sensible. But it’s not a great deal. It’s something that isn’t just harmful to the people who don’t make it, it’s also harmful to the people who get involved and do make it, in some sense.
What follows when people recognize the actual sources of their privilege is they become a little more humble and they are more willing to help other people, more willing to invest in the future. For me, one of the most distressing statistics is that the richer people get, the less they believe in publicly supported child care. It’s not that they don’t want their taxes to go to pay for child care, it’s that they’ve internalized this idea that everyone can do this, everyone can raise their own child or just hire a nanny. “Let them hire a nanny” is the new “let them eat cake.” It just shows how this incredibly virtuous, super-well-educated class becomes oblivious to the basis of its own existence.
A new book by philosopher Matthew Stewart (no relation), The 9.9 percent: The New Aristocracy That Is Entrenching Inequality and Warping Our Culture.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/pregnant-women-people-feminism-language/620468/
Why I’ll Keep Saying ‘Pregnant Women’
Being inclusive is important. But it’s not everything.