Beauty

“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”
― Kahlil Gibran

Trees are Poems

“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.”
― Kahlil Gibran

Kahlil Gibran

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
― Kahlil Gibran

This Morning

This morning on my downtown walk with Romeo, I noticed a man passed out below the SPEEDWAY sign. His head and torso were on the raised island of mulch and his legs were draped across the sidewalk. He was facing up and his left hand was slightly open. Two scruffy guys, were standing right beside him talking to each other as if this was normal. I watched cars speeding by, even an ambulance passed but nobody stopped. As I walked I wondered what to do. Then I spotted a woman on her way to work at the health center. "Excuse me, do you have a phone? Could you call an ambulance? There's a man passed out under the SPEEDWAY gas station sign. You can see him from here," I said, pointing down the street. "Those are his legs draped across the sidewalk."
"Yes, absolutely, I can do that!" she said. I turned at the corner and started walking up my street. Two minutes later the ambulance and fire truck with sirens blaring, zoomed by.

Egg Head

This morning I sat down on the couch to tie my sneakers and my dog got so excited that he jumped up and smacked his skull against my forehead. Swelling began immediately. I wrapped two ice cubes in my turquoise washcloth and nursed the egg.

Life

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
― Lao Tzu

Lao Tzu

“Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Cooking Under Pressure

Cooking class

POV: Swim Team

http://www.pbs.org/pov/swimteam/
“More than just a heartening sports saga, Swim Team brings to light the systemic challenges confronting teenagers with developmental disabilities and their parents,” said Justine Nagan, executive producer/executive director of POV/American Documentary. “For too many, public resources and programs are either nonexistent or few and far between. In this film, we see how autism affects people of varied backgrounds, including those in communities of color and working-class families. Swim Team, with the stories of the Hammerheads and their parents, explores all of these issues and is a compelling, cheer-worthy sports film: a win-win for audiences all around.”

Swimming on the Spectrum

Invaluable Therapy

Besides drowning prevention and water safety, parents report other side effects from learning how to swim, including improved speech and cognitive function. According to an article published in the International Journal of Sport Psychology, water is a soothing environment that emphasizes gentle and repetitive motion. For children on the autism spectrum, the water on the body has a calming effect and reduces any enervating noises. Parents notice that pool time helps students cope with everyday stresses outside of the water as well.
A Social Outlet

According to the Autism Spectrum Disorder Foundation (ASDF), swimming can help children on the autism spectrum improve speech, coordination, social skills, self-esteem, and cognitive processing. While these children are often excluded from other sports because there are too many elements to focus on, being underwater can provide them with alone time where he or she doesn’t have to anticipate a ball being passed to them or be responsible for the success of a team. Swimming provides an excellent opportunity for parallel play and for a child to be in the play environment but to interact at a level that is comfortable for them.

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Water Meditation

Stress Management Plus Fitness

While swimming is great for fitness, it can also be a very peaceful exercise. Being in the water is quiet, smooth and rhythmic. You can experience a great exercise session that also feels like a meditation.

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Why Swimming?

Why Swimming Is So Good For You

the fact that you’re submerged in water means your bones and muscles are somewhat unshackled from the constraints of gravity, says Hirofumi Tanaka, a professor of kinesiology and director of the Cardiovascular Aging Research Lab at the University of Texas.

How you breathe during a swimming workout is another big differentiator, says David Tanner, a research associate at Indiana University and co-editor of an educational handbook on the science of swimming. During a run or bike ride, your breath tends to be shallow and your exhales forceful. “It’s the other way around with swimming,” says Tanner. “You breathe in quickly and deeply, and then let the air trickle out.” Because your head is under water when you swim, these breathing adjustments are vital, and they may improve the strength of your respiratory muscles, Tanner says. “This kind of breathing keeps the lung alveoli”—the millions of little balloon-like structures that inflate and deflate as your breathe—“from collapsing and sticking together.”

The exercise is also linked to many of the same life-extending, heart-saving, mood-lifting benefits associated with other forms of aerobic exercise.

Perry Ritter

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My own Little Swimathon

I didn't think I would last more than one lap. "That's all it needs to be!" I reminded myself so I knew I had a choice. I've been pushing the peanut forward recently. I'd been swimming 40 laps for a while and this week having a case of the blues I tried 60 laps. Today was a surprise at 72 laps but I hadn't planned on it. I swam gracefully and slowly. Swimming is its own reward when you love the water. The bonus was that 72 laps is two miles. After 100 minutes of swimming, I floated home calm and centered. I am still feeling the effects. This has been my best treatment for the cyclical seasonal anxiety/depression of receive-mode.

Late Night Summer Kitchen

Last night at 9PM my stomach growled. I came down to grab a few slices of Pepper Jack cheese and ended up cooking for two hours.

First I pressure cooked a dozen eggs for 7 minutes (perfectly hardboiled).

I chopped my big head of green cabbage into slaw with carrots and red onions. I made my buttermilk/mayonnaise/ hot sauce dressing and mixed it with the slaw.

I pressure cooked red bliss potatoes with celery and olive oil and wine vinegar mustard, salt and sugar, hot sauce dressing for my favorite German potato salad.

These are my favorite summer foods delicious eaten cold on a hot summer day.

I soaked a pound of red kidney beans to pressure cook in the morning and then I jumped into the shower to cool off.

Spit Prevents Foggy Swim Goggles

Human spit does have the potential to keep your swimming goggles fog-free.

By spitting on the lenses of your goggles before a swim, and rubbing that delicious mix of mouth bubbles around the rim, you're actually creating what science calls a "surfactant". In simple terms, what the spit does is stop moisture particles from connecting with each other on the lens of your goggles, which slows down the ability of fog to form.

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Notes on a Banana

I just read Notes on a Banana by David Leite and loved it.

Blue Mind

Swimming's twin blessings: shared experience and solitude.

"Swimming is between me and the water, nothing else," said the late American writer John Jerome in his 1997 book Blue Rooms: Ripples, Rivers, Pools, and Other Waters. "The moment the water encloses me, I am, gratefully, alone."

Swimming also lets us escape the sound-addled world, if only for as long as we can hold our breath. It's like putting on nature's noise-cancelling headphones and slipping away from the everyday into another space, if only temporarily.

***

It's hard to believe that in Australia, a nation of swimmers, daylight bathing became legal only in 1902, when a newspaper editor swam into the headlines by defying a public ban at Sydney's Manly Beach.

We wouldn't go to so much trouble, surely, if swimming didn't make us happy. Californian marine biologist, cognitive researcher and author Wallace J Nichols says that we each have a "blue mind" (the title of his new book), programmed to enjoy and benefit from proximity and contact with water. "We are beginning to learn that our brains are hardwired to react positively to water," writes Celine Cousteau, granddaughter of Jacques, in the book's foreword, "and that being near it can calm and connect us, increase innovation and insight, and even heal what's broken."

***

The direction people swim laps usually matches the direction of traffic in that country; keep left in Commonwealth countries to avoid mid-lane collisions, swim anticlockwise in Europe. And almost everyone does it: whether we're in the Solomon Islands or Siberia, we want to swim, perhaps need to.

I know I do. Having fed this obsession for some years now, it shows no sign of abating. My swimsuits wear out, my goggles fog up; I replace them and swim on. Bath-warm or brass-monkeys, stormy or still, crowded or calm, there's nothing like communing with water, anywhere and in any way you can, to bring you back to your senses and remind you that the world really is your swimming pool.

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Michelle Oberman

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Michelle Oberman is a law professor at Santa Clara University and the author of “Her Body, Our Laws: On the Front Lines of the Abortion War, From El Salvador to Oklahoma.”

Dream

I dreamed about a colorful flexible side table. It had red knobs and the table was wearing colorful pants and shoes just like a character. I was showing it to people. "Look you can make the tabletop move in any direction," I said.