Early Morning Storm

We had a storm this morning at 4AM I was asleep and thought it was Romeo-dog puking from eating grass (which happens occasionally). In my half sleep all I knew was he got up out of our bed and then I heard what I thought was wretching. Bill laughed because he was conscious and he said No. That's thunder!

Healthy Eating As You Age: Know Your Food Groups

https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/healthy-eating-nutrition-and-diet/healthy-eating-you-age-know-your-food-groups

Lemon Berry Fruit Leather

 https://blenderhappy.com/lemon-berry-fruit-leather-no-sugar-added/

and this https://blenderhappy.com/pumpkin-protein-smoothie/

Cucumber Ginger Grapefruit Juice

 https://blenderhappy.com/cucumber-grapefruit-juice/

Drink up!

I ran into Jason downtown in front of the library. How are you? 

I have chapped lips, I need to get chapstick, and I'm so tired! he said.

Try this. I handed him my sippy cup thermal water bottle. He was drinking it enthusiastically.

Drink the whole thing! I said. I can get more! And I ran in and got more from the library water fountain. 

Drink up, I said, handing it back to him. Chapped lips means you're dehydrated and it can also make you feel tired. Can you whistle? If you can't whistle keep drinking! You look taller, I said, and your eyelashes are longer! We both laughed.

Smiling Spine Floor Stretches

 I have been lying down on my kitchen floor to stretch my spine and muscles!

Dorianne Laux: Someone spoke to me last night, told me the truth. Just a few words, but I recognized it. I knew I should make myself get up, write it down, but it was late, and I was exhausted from working all day in the garden, moving rocks.

Dust

By Dorianne Laux

Someone spoke to me last night,

told me the truth. Just a few words,

but I recognized it.

I knew I should make myself get up,

write it down, but it was late,

and I was exhausted from working

all day in the garden, moving rocks.

Now, I remember only the flavor —

not like food, sweet or sharp.

More like a fine powder, like dust.

And I wasn’t elated or frightened,

but simply rapt, aware.

That’s how it is sometimes —

God comes to your window,

all bright light and black wings,

and you’re just too tired to open it.

Dorianne Laux, “Dust” from What We Carry. Copyright © 1994 by Dorianne Laux. Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd.

Source: What We Carry (BOA Editions, Ltd., 1994)

Young Rhino Pestering His Mom

https://twitter.com/i/status/1771099514679484892

It is among the evils, and perhaps is not the smallest, of democratical governments, that the people must feel before they will see. George Washington

Lauren Hunt: Urban Safari & the Rat Czar

 https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/04/30/magazine/why-boston-needs-to-cohabitate-with-its-rats/

The Gall!

I come from a family of people who have had their gallbladders removed. (mother and maternal grandfather) I refuse to go down that road if I can help it. I do have a nausea meter built in whenever I have foods that are too oily or fatty. I count myself as lucky when I listen to it.

Gallbladder Issues

If you find yourself clutching your stomach and feeling nauseous after eating fried foods or meals high in fat (yes, even the good fats), your gallbladder may be the culprit. “People with gallbladder issues often have an exacerbation of their symptoms when they eat heavier, fattier foods,” says Dr. Singh. “Pain in the right upper abdomen, pain that radiates to the back or shoulder, and nausea and vomiting can occur.”

The gallbladder is a sac that’s located under the liver. It stores and concentrates bile, which aids in the digestion of fat. When you eat foods containing fat, the gallbladder releases bile into the upper part of the small intestines. When someone has gallbladder disease—which often refers to gallstones and cholecystitis (gallbladder inflammation)—these functions are impaired and can cause pain as a result. When gallstones get stuck traveling through the duct that carries bile to the intestines, for example, they block the flow of bile and this can trigger a gallbladder spasm that results in extremely sharp pain.

Interestingly, gallbladder problems are more common in women and experts believe that it’s due to elevated levels of estrogen.

Try this: If symptoms are severe, you may need gallbladder removal surgery, but often, there are things you can do to prevent gallstones and their symptoms. Avoiding foods with excessive amounts of fat, like fried foods, keeping your portion sizes reasonable, and taking a digestive enzyme containing lipase (which breaks down fat) before meals may help, according to Dr. Singh. Research has also shown that women who eat more fiber and have several servings of nuts per week are less likely to need gallbladder surgery. 

Stick Around You Might Learn Something

Years ago my stepfather brought me to see the famous illustrator Richard "Dick" Hess. When Dick Hess opened my illustration portfolio my father started leaving the room. Dick said to him "Stick around, you might learn something."

All Floors are Yoga Mats

The yoga stretches have helped immensely. My new YMCA has 3 free yoga classes a week. I might consider integrating this into my life. Meanwhile I am vacuuming floors so I can stretch on them. All floors are yoga mats including the kitchen linoleum floor!

Bake Hot & Quick Crackers

 https://theconscientiouseater.com/whole-wheat-sesame-crackers/

My liquid is sourdough starter but this is a great recipe.

Message in a Bottle

 When I was 11 (in 1970),  I saved my allowance and sent away for the pink covered paperback: The Boys and Girl's Book About Divorce. There was no Dr. Phil back then and I wanted good information. 

Now as an adult I see that writing is sending out messages in a bottle hoping they might land on an island and be read.

The purpose of being a serious writer is not to express oneself, and it is not to make something beautiful, though one might do those things anyway. Those things are beside the point. The purpose of being a serious writer is to keep people from despair. If you keep that in mind always, the wish to make something beautiful or smart looks slight and vain in comparison. If people read your work and, as a result, choose life, then you are doing your job. Sarah Manguso

Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. This is what I’ve always thought it meant to be a writer. Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them. Edwidge Danticat

Word of Mouth Bread Baking Lessons

I am relieved that it is not sunny or overly warm today. The neighborhood is quiet again. AMEN. Us introverts can't handle the living loud days of instant summer.

I am making crackers again this morning using sourdough starter, poppy sesame and flax seeds using whole wheat sourdough discard and salt. All I do is spread it thin on a baking mat and bake it hot and quick!

I'll be teaching bread baking again soon in a friends home. The word has spread. It's so much fun! I feel like Mary Poppins. I show up and show everyone how much fun it is to bake bread. 

I tell them People all over the world have baked bread for millennia you can do this. We're going to have a great first experience in bread making so you'll be inspired to continue at home.

I am thinking I should call myself "Word of Mouth" bread baking lessons!

Open versus Territorial: I appreciate the humans who are open minded.

The fences I see around town are a perfect metaphor for human connection and disconnection and more importantly FEAR. 

How many times am I conversing with someone and an opaque vinyl fence goes up and quickly becomes green and black with mold. 

What is lovely is a low picket fence where the trees and flowers and rusty wheelbarrow shows through. To me that says yes I have a boundary but you are allowed to be here. A breathable boundary versus a razor wire stop here or you will be shot and killed boundary.

For the folks who have staked out territory and ownership claims, metaphorically or tangibly it can be incredibly dangerous to try to connect. I had this problem with my parents all the time. If I tried to share an article or a book or describe my favorite teacher I was quickly reminded that they were offended and had already claimed all of that territory. How dare you try to share with us, the all powerful and greatest of them all? Either worship us as your favorite teacher, author, writer, or be gone!

So I left.

If I share a recipe with a foodie friend she might appreciate it although someone who sees themselves as an expert might fend it off as a challenge. 

I appreciate the humans who are open minded.

Touching the head appears to have more of a beneficial effect than touching the torso, some studies found. Michon couldn’t explain that finding, but thought it could have to do with the greater number of nerve endings on the face and scalp.

 https://www.sanjuandailystar.com/post/large-scientific-review-confirms-the-benefits-of-physical-touch

Large scientific review confirms the benefits of physical touch

The analysis revealed some interesting and sometimes mysterious patterns. Among adults, sick people showed greater mental health benefits from touch than healthy people did. Who was doing the touching — a familiar person or a health care worker — didn’t matter. But the source of the touch did matter to newborns.

“One very intriguing finding that needs further support is that newborn babies benefit more from their parents’ touch than from a stranger’s touch,” said Ville Harjunen, a researcher at the University of Helsinki in Finland, who also reviewed the study for the journal. Babies’ preference for their parents could be related to smell, he speculated, or to the differences in the way parents hold them.

Touching the head appears to have more of a beneficial effect than touching the torso, some studies found. Michon couldn’t explain that finding, but thought it could have to do with the greater number of nerve endings on the face and scalp.

Michon stressed that the types of touch considered in these studies were positive experiences to which the volunteers agreed. “If someone doesn’t feel a touch as being pleasant, it’s likely going to stress them out,” he said.

A low-pressure guide to make strength training a habit

 https://www.sanjuandailystar.com/post/a-low-pressure-guide-to-make-strength-training-a-habit

 

So I asked exercise psychologists, scientists, trainers and muscle evangelists for their best advice on launching a lasting strength-training routine. Here’s what I learned.

 

Start small.

 

For those of us who haven’t done much strength training — or if it’s been a while — experts suggest starting with short but consistent strength sessions. “Set some small goals for yourself,” said Mary Winfrey-Kovell, a lecturer in exercise science at Ball State University. “Some movement is better than no movement.”

 

How small? Depending on one’s schedule, needs and desires, exercise scientists suggest devoting 20 minutes twice a week to strength training, or perhaps 10 to 15 minutes three times a week.

 

This is backed up by another recent study in The British Journal of Sports Medicine, which found that just 30 to 60 minutes a week of strength training can bring significant long-term rewards, including a 10% to 20% reduction in one’s risk of mortality, cardiovascular disease and cancer. (Notably, the benefits plateaued after an hour and decreased after two hours per week.)

 

Start simple.

 

Fitness marketing often tries to convince us that any routine worth doing must involve fancy devices or specialized gear, but in fact you need very little. “Strength training does not have to mean barbells and super heavy weights and lots of equipment,” said Anne Brady, a professor of kinesiology at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.

 

Muscle-building exercises that rely on your own body weight — think pushups, planks and sit-to-stands (sometimes called chair rises) — can be incredibly effective when done correctly and consistently, she said. You can always incorporate equipment as you progress in strength and knowledge.

 

Embrace being a novice.

 

Kicking off a strength-training routine when you have little or no experience can feel daunting — particularly if you work out in a gym or public space, in view of more experienced exercisers.

 

Many of us “hold ourselves to a standard that we need to look like we already know what we’re doing,” said Casey Johnston, author of the popular lifting newsletter “She’s a Beast” and the book “Liftoff: Couch to Barbell.” “It’s OK to make mistakes. It’s OK to ask questions.”

 

More than anything, learning proper form — and which movements are safest for your body — can help to avoid injury and promote a lasting routine. If you’re able to afford it, consider hiring a certified personal trainer for a few sessions, either virtual or in person, who will create a training plan and guide you through the exercises. And if you work out in a gym, don’t be afraid to ask staff for guidance.

 

One upside to starting from scratch? Your strength will improve exponentially at first. “I think most people would be surprised by how quickly they can get a lot stronger than they are,” said Johnston. After a few sessions, she said, “you really will feel the difference in functionality in your body.”

 

Try “temptation bundling.”

 

Need an extra push? Kelley Strohacker, a professor of exercise physiology at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville who researches health behavior change, suggests a behavioral economics hack called “temptation bundling.”

 

It works like this: By “bundling” something we love and look forward to — for example, a favorite podcast or TV show, gripping audiobook or playlist — with an activity we find challenging, we can boost our chances of doing the latter. “Simply pairing those together can help ease a little bit of that initial, ‘I don’t really want to do it, but I know I should,’” said Strohacker. The key, however, is to only allow yourself to indulge in that particular pleasure while doing the workout.

 

Remember that the goal is forward progress.

 

If you find that you need to miss sessions, show self-compassion, said Strohacker. Strength-training, like all exercise, is a long game, and the ultimate goal is to simply keep at it throughout our lives, despite setbacks along the way.

 

“Our culture really pushes this narrative of ‘you can do it if you really want to,’” she said. “This is very oversimplifying.” Life happens. Research suggests the true path to longevity and consistency in any activity are “enjoying it and feeling accomplished,” she added. This becomes easier when we celebrate our progress, no matter how incremental, and find our way back when we stray off course.

Yoga for the Aging Athlete

https://yogachicago.com/2019/01/yoga-for-the-aging-athlete/

I have discovered the hard way that stretching is most important for us athletes. 

Alfredo Aguirre LOVES SWIMMING

“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/

Ibuprofen & Remedies for Hip Pain

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/is-it-safe-to-take-ibuprofen-for-the-aches-and-pains-of-exercise-2017080912185

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.

Takeaway

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.

https://www.healthline.com/health/hip-pain-when-standing

Cracker Machine or Back of the Spoon Crackers

Article on cracker making using a roller

or this back of the spoon or spatula method which I use.

All Seed Crackers (I add rye sourdough starter discard)

When they are thicker they are flatbread. 

Lately I use seeds as the oil and do not add any additional oil to my seed blend. The possibilities are endless because you can add herbs and spices too. It makes for a great breakfast on the fly with cottage cheese.

poppy seeds, raw ground sunflower seeds (I use a coffee grinder), unhulled sesame seeeds, flax seed, (whole wheat and dark wholemeal rye flour) + salt

Jackhammer Monday!

 They're tearing up the street at 7AM.

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. 

more

Up too early again. Listening to the patter of rain dripping from the tree limbs onto the tent and the hush of the creek in the darkness. Breathing in the scent of earth and rain.

geologist Richard J. Nevle

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself. Michel de Montaigne

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

Hip Pain in Athletes

 Article https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2000/0401/p2109.html

 

https://www.verywellfit.com/the-best-12-stretches-and-exercises-for-your-hips-5179317 

https://www.verywellfit.com/how-to-use-a-foam-roller-3120309

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.

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.

Vote Tank Top

What radio station is this, musical or newsical?

Art Isn’t Supposed to Make You Comfortable

 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/28/opinion/art-morality-discomfort.html

No Days Off Mistake

https://www.triathlete.com/training/recovery/your-no-days-off-mentality-is-dumb-pointless-and-holding-you-back/

https://blog.myswimpro.com/2019/03/07/10-tips-for-older-swimmers/ 

https://www.uchealth.org/today/rest-and-recovery-for-athletes-physiological-psychological-well-being/

Legendary Swimmer Mark Spitz, Who Still Does Imaginary Races Against Michael Phelps The nine-time Olympic gold medalist says he eats healthier now than during his athletic prime

 https://www.gq.com/story/real-life-diet-mark-spitz

 Listen

Lost Recipes from Marion Cunningham

 https://theculinarycellar.com/lost-recipes-marion-cunningham/

No one is a great poet because she is a miserable drunk. No one is a great poet because he has had a nervous breakdown. Suffering, however, can be experienced as a curse or a blessing; the luckiest is the one who can experience it as a blessing.

 poet Carolyn Forché

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

Do not whine... Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone. Joan Didion, Blue Nights

That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it. Joan Didion

Windmills and Tulips

I don't know what I think until I write it down.

 Joan Didion

Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. Joan Didion, On Self-Respect

I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead.

  Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image. Joan Didion

To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves--there lies the great, singular power of self-respect. Joan Didion

You have to pick the places you don't walk away from. Joan Didion

“Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.”
― Joan Didion, 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.”
― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
― Joan Didion, 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.”
― Joan Didion

“Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.”
― Joan Didion, 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.”
― Joan Didion

“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.”
― Joan Didion, 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.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

“You have to pick the places you don't walk away from.”
― Joan Didion

“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.”
― Joan Didion, 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

Translation: yes, it’s cliquey. Friend groups who won’t welcome a new person are, by definition, being exclusionary.

 https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1062447.page

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

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

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.

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 

There is a cost to medicating away every type of human suffering, and as we shall see, there is an alternative path that might work better: embracing pain. 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.

2009 Blue Pontiac Named Mercedes

 Meaning:Wage, reward

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.

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 Fortini

April 27, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

Anna Bailey recently emerged from retirement to come back to a Las Vegas stage to perform in a musical. (Bridget Bennett for The Washington Post)

LAS VEGAS — On a Sunday afternoon this month in North Las Vegas, Anna Bailey could be found at the back of the Aliante Casino, Hotel and Spa’s theater rehearsing her moves. Bailey, a dancer who has had a pioneering and historic career, had emerged from a half-century retirement to perform in a revival of “Follies.” Although you would never have guessed by watching her that the 97-year-old had not performed since the 1970s.

 

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.”