My mother's walls

I'm sitting by my mother's bed in her nursing home, thinking she looks sicker than when I was there last and wondering if this will be the last time I see her. On one of her walls is a picture of Jesus (above) that her mother bought her when she was a child in the 1930s. Jesus has been on every bedroom wall she's ever had since she was little. On her closet door are pictures of her family and friends (below).

My mother's been suffering from Multiple Sclerosis for 35 years. The walls of her nursing-home room is her world now. Today I brought in a deck of Old Maid cards for us to play. She can't hold them, of course, or see them very well so I played her hand for her. I'm glad to say that one of my brothers ended up as the Old Maid, not us.

Political son

My son loves Barack Obama so when I saw on the front page of the Jackson, Tennessee, paper this morning that a campaign office was opening here, I determined to go find it to get my son some bumper stickers, badges, etc.

I drove and drove though an icy rain, trying to find the address. Finally, at 1:30, I saw a house with lots of Obama signs and balloons in the yard. I thought that must be it; since it had only opened at 11:00 that morning, it would be full of people.

But it was completely deserted. As I looked through the window, I saw Obama signs and placards resting tantalizingly in the darkened front room.

I thought there would be more enthusiasm on the first day of opening. But maybe I was wrong about enthusiasm for Obama among Jacksonians because a letter to the editor in today's paper reads like this:

"I don't like any political presidential candidate in the present list. Clinton and Obama are socialists who will bankrupt this nation with their higher taxes, socialistic projects and failed national health care.

I don't care for the GOP candidates, either. None can come close to assuming the mantle of Ronald Reagan. They are not true conservatives. McCain is also a socialist and free amnesty advocate. I do not know where Mitt Romney gets his finances for his presidential run - his Mormon Church, maybe? Both have flip-flopped in their values, and their records prove that they are not conservatives.

A true conservative demands smaller government. More tax rebates back to the people. No pork. No earmarks. No national health care. A true conservative streamlines existing agencies and gets rid of the excess in government. A true conservative goes to war and wins the war completely and gets out when victory is achieved."

Quelling infeasible aspirations

Love this phrase (above) from the Times newspaper regarding mid-life unhappiness. According to new research, our happiness in life follows a U-shaped route where we are happy at one end (in our 20s) and happy at the other end (in our 70s) but at our most unhappy in mid-life, and it doesn't matter what our marital status is or if we have kids, etc., it's roughly the same.

According to the Times, we become happier later in life when we learn 'to adapt to our strengths and weaknesses and in mid-life quell our infeasible aspirations.'

My husband has long pointed out how this modern concept of having high goals to attain in our lives can drive us berserk. I always wanted to have a novel published and drove myself insane in pursuit of this goal; it was only when I let it go that I could relax (but then in the back of my mind I think 'LOSER! You should have been able to do it!')

Going to Tennessee

Going to Tennessee this morning so no stoopid posts today. Enjoy the rest!

Things you should probably know about me

I love Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, especially when they were young and beautiful as in the movie Fire Over England:

In fact, I loved Larry Olivier so much that my friend Elizabeth secretly wrote him when we were in college and begged him to send me a letter. One day when we were going to the cafeteria for breakfast, she gave me this letter and it was one of the happiest mornings of my life. See below:

One thing that puzzles me is that Larry said I was a 'veritable paragon' but he never said of what! That has kept me wondering for years and now it's too late to ask him exactly what he meant.

Across the Pond: the US/UK debate continues

This week Linda Monk (in the US) and Mel Thomas (in the UK) talk about what happened in South Carolina:

Linda says:
Barack Obama's victory speech in South Carolina last night was the best I've seen by a politician in a long, long time. That is, except the victory speech he gave in Iowa. This is a man who promises to bring back campaign oratory to the level of John F. Kennedy.

Now JFK's daughter has written in the New York Times that finally she can vote for a man like her father. Just hope it works out better for Obama in the end.

Obama's SC speech was set against a backdrop of white supporters, which was odd given the number of black voters in that state, which reported record turnout (double the primary voters in 2004). Sure enough, there were black folks when the camera panned around, but not in the seats behind Obama. You knew this speech was a campaign ad in the making, not for SC but for the Super Tuesday states coming up.

Rumor has it that the Clintons "set up" Obama to be cast as the "black candidate" after his victory surge in SC. But as they said in the first Clinton campaign, "that dog won't hunt." Obama has too much strength among young people and urban professionals. But by beating up on Obama so hard in the primaries, Billary is giving him what he needs most: experience. By the time this is over, Obama will be able to say, with a straight face: "OK Republicans, bring it on. I've already taken down the Clintons."

Mel says:
Interesting that the backdrop was white supporters....Clearly Obama's best strategy to win is by tapping into the vast reserves of those who have not previously voted. Which is not to say that he won't get support elsewhere, but the young, the poor and the black are probably the three constituencies where he'll get most bang for his buck.

It might be a difficult strategy for the Republicans to counter, too. Their election machine is tuned to appeal to those who in the past have been most likely to vote. Who's to say if the same tactics will work with a different electorate?

Linda says:
Roger that, Mel. The thing is that, among the poor (which are still a majority white in US), Hillary Clinton is leading big-time. Low-income voters and women are her two biggest constituencies. The tremendous surge of voters in SC is the biggest news for Obama--not just among blacks but among every category. The soul train is leaving the station and everybody wants on board. Obama has the big MO (momentum), and let's hope he can keep it up 'til November.

Elizabeth says:
Thanks for another interesting post. These races are increasingly nail-biting....

Bus stop loneliness

There's a bus stop outside my bedroom window, and when I'm having coffee and reading the paper in bed on Sunday mornings, there can be so much drama going on there.

Today a man was standing at the bus stop with tissues in his hand, crying and wiping his eyes repeatedly. I wanted to know what was wrong and help him but what could I do?

Sometimes I see fierce arguments between couples that include shouting, throwing mobile phones around and pushing/shoving.

At night the bus stop is like a Hopper painting (example below) -- very stark with a single light glowing in the darkness -- people send off such feelings of loneliness as they wait for the bus, lost in their thoughts and private problems.

I feel a part of their lives for a moment as I observe them but ultimately helpless to do anything even if I see them suffering.

Discrimination - A Real Life Experience

This guest post is from my friend Helen McGrath Garton. That's Helen on the left in the photo, with her two adorable kids. In the middle is Jacqui Gates, who has just had a beautiful bambina, and me on the right. We all used to work together and met up again last summer.

Here is Helen's post:

"I am new to the area and venture into one of the local shops. I get to the front of the queue with my goods and proffer payment. The lady at the checkout looks right past me to the person behind and serves them as I watch. I am small, so wonder if she hasn’t actually seen me. I move, gesture and manage a fleeting eye contact. Now she has seen me, it is my turn.

But to my confusion, I am still ignored while the next person in the queue (who also looks a little confused) is served. I feel my face flush red hot as I wonder what on earth to do. A couple more people from the queue are served. They look quizzically at me and my red colour deepens. I can stand no more and I am about to drop my stuff and run out when the next customer, a man, points to me: 'She’s before me.' The lady at the checkout shrugs and stretches her hand out to him 'That’ll be 80p, please.' The man sighs, then gently reaches down to me and takes the sweets from my clammy hand.

'I’ll take these as well,' he says. The lady at the checkout’s face becomes even more pinched. She doesn’t speak as she hands over the man’s change. She glances at me only very briefly but I register her expression of disgust.

'There you go,' says the man handing me the sweets as we turn away from the counter and head out of the shop. I try to hand him my pocket money and he smiles but shakes his head. 'That’s OK,' he says and we go our separate ways."

Helen, this post is wonderful. I love the abrupt ending, where you don't editorialize but allow us to draw our own conclusions. I also took note of you saying you were 'small' when we know it's the woman at the checkout who is really the small person.

Thank you for this!

My husband is wasting his life....

...watching episodes of Grey's Anatomy. It was good for the first year, but basically, it's been going round and round in circles ever since then, but my husband and my daughter keep watching it.

Meredith Grey and Derek have been having the same conversation, even though it switches between characters forever. Tonight Derek wants Meredith to say 'she's in' because he feels she's not committed to the relationship, but I'm sure she said the same thing to him last season.

My husband is lying on the sofa with an episode on now, and I asked him if he ever feels like he's wasting his life watching this stuff.

But then he never says that to me when I'm reading the National Enquirer so I should shut up.

Government Health Warning - Dangers of swallowing chewing gum...

My friend Kumar Sriskandan sent this to me. He's a GP so he knows about these medical things....

Kumar is not only a brilliant doctor but a talented photographer. Here's a link to his website, Kumar Sriskandan Photography. You can order these pics online. I have one of Kumar's Venetian shots in my front hall, and people are always complimenting me on my good taste!

Can you do Istanbul?

I auditioned for a spot in the Philharmonia chorus in London last night. They sing with the London orchestras so I was very worried I wouldn't be good enough.

I had to do a vocal sight-reading test, and I almost expired from nerves. I was so bad at the sight reading; I don't think I got any of it right. Then I sang Gershwin's Summertime but my sound was too loud and brassy so they made me re-do it in a thinner, softer way. I was so anxious that I could barely breathe. My instinct was to run out of the audition room and go home.

I waited for agonizing minutes as they discussed me then someone came out and told me I'd been accepted. Then she said, "Can you do Istanbul?"

Well, I'm such a rube -- I replied intelligently, "HUH?"

(Turns out they are on singing tour in Turkey in February but I can't do that. I'm going to Tennessee to see my mother next week so can't take that much time off work.)

Drugs that need to be developed ASAP

My friend Tessa Elphick sent me these; they really cheered me up this morning.

D A M N I T O L
Take 2 and the rest of the world can go to hell for up to 8 full hours.


E M P T Y N E S T R O G E N
Suppository that eliminates melancholy and loneliness by reminding you of how awful they were as teenagers and how you couldn't wait till they moved out.


ST. M O M M A'S W O R T
Plant extract that treats mom's depression by rendering preschoolers unconscious for up to two days.

UK living standards to surpass US??

London papers trumpeted this news last week (the excerpt below is from The Times):

"Living standards in Britain are set to rise above those in America for the first time since the 19th century, according to a report by the respected Oxford Economics consultancy.

The calculations suggest that, measured by gross domestic product per capita, Britain can now hold its head up high in the economic stakes after more than a century of playing second fiddle to the Americans."

This news didn't impress my family though. "The houses are still bigger over there," grumbled my son, who would like to live there. "People have more land to live on."

"Prices are still lower in the US," added my husband, always thinking of the family budget.

"And the sun still never comes out here," I added, thinking of what bothered me the most about life in England.

Military Keynesianism...

...which writer Chalmers Johnson defines as "the mistaken belief that public policies focused on frequent wars, huge expenditures on weapons and munitions, and large standing armies can indefinitely sustain a wealthy capitalist economy. The opposite is actually true."

My guest blogger today makes this point:

"Military spending is a way to erect an unofficial tariff wall. You can't protect your civilian industries because it's 'anti-competitive.' What you can do is shelter an increasingly large part of your economy by putting it into the defense sector, thus defining work which *must* be done by Americans. There is a beneficial side-effect that R&D spending gets subsidised by the government and can be used in civilian applications (which is why Boeing does so well). But you can't keep it up indefinitely -- eventually too large a part of the economy is on a war footing, at which point everything collapses."

Thank you, guest blogger. I should have taken more than one class in Economics so you wouldn't have had to explain this to me.

Broaden your horizons

I called my friend Karen Firbank (that's her on the left; I have the mask on) during my lunch hour for a chat. Karen has a bubbly personality and always makes me laugh but today we talked about some of our worries and how to cope with them.

I said the way I handle life is to do a lot of different things so when something goes wrong in one area, I still have other things going on to take my mind off of it. I told her that I'd read something that the actress Ethel Barrymore said once that confirmed this idea for me:

"You must learn day by day, year by year to broaden your horizon. The more things you love, the more you are interested in, the more you enjoy, the more you are indignant about, the more you have left when anything happens."

Is time an illusion?

Last weekend my daughter was reading to me about time from the latest New Scientist magazine:

"It is the invisible presence that governs your world. Trailing you like an unshakeable shadow, it ticks and tocks incessantly - you can sense it in your heartbeat, in the rising and setting of the sun, and in your daily rush to make meetings, trains and deadlines. It brings order to our lives through the categories of past, present and future....

Physicists have long struggled to understand what time really is. In fact, they are not even sure it is exists at all...."

That shook me right out of my complacency. "Wait a minute," I said. "If time doesn't exist, how do you explain my sagging jawline?"

An embarrassing vice

I can't live without reading the National Enquirer. I know a lot of the stories are completely bogus, but thirty minutes of reading the Enquirer and eating a bag of Fritos (can't get them in the UK so can only dream of them these days) is such pleasure. I forget all my mundane problems as I get lost in the question of whether Sharon Stone has had plastic surgery or whether Oprah really hates Dr. Phil.

My high-school friend Brenda asked me one time when I was 15 why I read such trash. I couldn't describe to her the fun of reading complete trash. I was embarrassed though. My college friend Elizabeth Kaplan Applebaum shares the same vice and the lengths we went to in college to cover up our addiction was incredible.

"Shall we get an Intellectual's Weekly today?" she would ask in our code for the trashy mag.

"Yes," I would reply. "I'm in the mood for some intellectual stimulation."

Then we would get the Enquirer and hide it in the middle of a more cerebral publication like the New York Times and put it on the supermarket belt. When the cashier rang up the paper and the Enquirer fell out, we would evince surprise.

"How did that get in there?" we would ask each other, and tell the guy to just ring it up anyway.

Even today, 35 years after I started reading the Enquirer, I'm still embarrassed to purchase it, tucking it under other things at the checkout so it's not just sitting there advertising my stupidity to everyone in the grocery store.

Across the Pond - a political debate

My friend Linda Monk in the US and my son in the UK recently had a political discussion over e-mail that I'd like to share:

Linda says:

Well, Mikey, here we go trying to make sense of politics on both sides of the Atlantic. I'm so impressed by how closely you follow politics in the USA--that must be your Southern heritage asserting itself through your Mom (Southerners take to politics like mama's milk).

Most Americans don't follow politics that closely. Doesn't give you much confidence in the US as the so-called "leader of the free world," does it? We're just too busy running up the credit card debt.

On the other hand, you Brits have it too easy. You just vote for the party, and that gives you "plausible deniability" for your own leaders. When Blair was up for re-election, you all got to vote for Labour anyway--and nobody laughed at you for being idiots. It's just not fair to us Americans who are working so hard to get rid of Bush and then get ridiculed anyway. As you may have found out already, politics is not a game for those who fear ridicule.

OK, so let's take a look at the presidential races after the Nevada caucuses and the South Carolina Republican primary (Dems will have their SC primary next weekend).

First with the Repubs: McCain's win in SC is a huge loss for Huckabee, who now looks more like vice-presidential material (but that's only one heartbeat away from the presidency, particularly if the oldest candidate, McCain, is the eventual nominee).

Now for the Dems: Hillary surprised us in Nevada, where Obama supposedly had the advantage. The largest union in NV, the culinary workers union, is dominated by Latinos, and they endorsed Obama. The rules allowed these workers to caucus at their casino workplaces on Saturday, supposedly giving them a big advantage over other Dems. Traditionally, Latinos will not vote for black candidates (a sign of the rivalry between the two groups over being the largest minority in America).

Unfortunately, Hillary's victory in NV proved that stereotype right. Now Obama has to win, and win big, in next weekend's SC primary, in which blacks are the majority of voters. But it looks like Obama's success with white voters and Hillary's dissing the role ordinary people (read: blacks) played in the civil rights movement has caused many blacks to finally get on board the Obama train. Hillary has lost her previous advantage among black voters, big time. Plus the Atlanta Journal Constitution--a city that is a bastion of upwardly mobile blacks--has just endorsed Obama.

Where is John Edwards, you may ask? Well, he is chugging along in third place--and the latest scuttlebutt is that if it is clear he cannot win, he will endorse Obama not Hillary. But who knows whom his white working class constituency will really support in an anonymous voting booth. Edward's role as the working class hero, and friend of progressives, is to me seriously compromised by his new house in NC (see link below). How working class and eco-friendly do you think this will look to voters?

http://www.johnlocke.org/site-docs/images/edwardshouse.jpg

Mikey replies:

Yes, while we vote for the party and they organize their leaders, it just isn't democracy (not that democracy is 100% effective however) as we only choose our MPs(Members of Parliament) and not the head of government or state. However one good thing is that we don't have boneheaded neoconservative "leadership" up at the top. Instead we have a so-called social democratic government which has swung heavily to the right since 1997.

There are too many yes men in Parliament. One good thing we have in England is that misleading political TV advertising is banned. Also we have universal health care which is in immersed in some controversy at the moment.

You're right, the Presidential races on both sides of the aisle are unpredictable. I myself am behind Obama.

I will tell you why McCain won SC. He won because the moderates banded together and voted for him while the right-wing religious evangelical vote split their votes between Huckabee and Thompson, giving McCain the state. Much like Nader and Gore in 2000, (that is the number reason why I hate the Green Party, even though most of my positions are in line with theirs) and it is true what people said "A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush". Luckily Nader isn't going to run this fall.

Giuliani is a joke. He was relying on FL, NY and CA for his Feb 5 victories, but McCain actually is leading in Florida, just. I think its time for Thompson to go and for Edwards to endorse Obama.

Linda replies:

Wow, Mikey, I think you are a future political scientist! I am learning a lot about comparative politics through you. They don't tend to teach that very well on this side of the pond.

I see you are in a big hurry to get this race decided on both sides. I know democracy and partisan politics can get frustrating at times, but there are those of us who believe a drawn-out contest is good for the candidates on either side. In a country as big as the U.S., there are so many differing groups of people with differing points of view (300 million plus), you want as many people as possible to participate so that we hopefully get better decisions. The current Bush administration is known for ignoring everybody who disagrees with them, and look where that got the USA!

I'm in no hurry for Edwards to endorse Obama, because I'm worried that when he does, a lot of white men will just start tuning out of the campaign. That's the reality of race and gender politics in the U.S. I want Edwards to endorse Obama, but not too soon. Everybody has to believe they are invited to the party, so to speak. If white guys feel left out, the Republicans will win.

Elizabeth says:
Thanks so much for this lively debate. I understand this might be a weekly thing? Look forward to it.

Yes, I'd like more ceramics please

My grandmother Scanlon was a creative, restless and intelligent person. After she retired, she pursued many hobbies as well as doing volunteer work. Plus she tried to teach herself French throughout her 70s and 80s.

She took up painting and soon the houses of her children were filled with portraits and still lifes. After that she became enchanted with ceramics, and our houses received even more treasures.

I remember one day her telling my uncle that she was going to make him a soup tureen at her next ceramics class. He smiled and said "No more ceramics!" then laughed to show he was only half serious.

But now that she's gone and there will be no more paintings or ceramics to come from her, don't you think we would all loved to have had more?

PS
Pics are of her first painting of her childhood ballet slippers, and a couple of her ceramic Pilgrims that she made for our Thankgiving table.

Modern medicine: less is more?

We've been discussing healthcare on comments in this blog lately. For example,

Lisa said:
"...I think even the anecdotes to which we are exposed and our experience tell us that medicine is (in a general sense - not a particular treatment for this or that) extremely unreliable in a sense we often don't appreciate."

St. John's Wort said...
"One could argue the pharmaceutical industry is unregulated also (see unpublished reports). I say this as a committed user of SSRIs. But maybe that is the placebo effect, according to the latest evidence. Still, I'll stick with what I know."

You should read Shannon Brownlee's book, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer. I couldn't put this book down until I'd finished the entire thing. Here's a quote from a recent review:

"Contrary to Americans' common belief that in health care more is more — that more spending, drugs and technology means better care — this lucid report posits that less is actually better. Medical journalist Brownlee acknowledges that state-of-the-art medicine can improve care and save lives. But technology and drugs are misused and overused, she argues, citing a 2003 study of one million Medicare recipients, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, which showed that patients in hospitals that spent the most were 2% to 6% more likely to die than patients in hospitals that spent the least. Additionally, she says, billions per year are spent on unnecessary tests and drugs and on specialists who are rewarded more for some procedures than for more appropriate ones."

I found this book so interesting that I sent the author an email about it, and she wrote back immediately with a response. She also asked me to tell my American friends about her book so that's what I'm doing now.

She is not a particularly public person

On the front page of USA Today is the story of Wadooah Wali, a woman who got married to another woman, put her wedding photos up on Facebook, then got upset when a business colleague she didn't know well sent her a comment, 'Nice pictures.' She'd wanted to keep information about her sexual orientation private; that is, just revealed to a certain set of her friends.

What is privacy in the Internet age anyway? People interviewed in this article talk about how the ability to control how others perceive you is threatened by Facebook and blogging, but when have we ever been able to control how others perceive us?

I was amused that Ms Wali says 'she is not a particularly public person; she's happier behind the scenes,' but doesn't mind starring in a page-one story in USA Today or having the very photo she wanted to keep secret on the second page.

Hammie RIP

"Is he really dead, Mommy?" my son asked. "Are you sure?"

I stroked the hamster's soft fur on his stiff body. "Yes," I said. "He has rigor mortis." Hammie (we called both of our hamsters Hammie as we couldn't tell them apart) looked so peaceful lying in the bedding from his cage that we couldn't resist touching him. "Where are you now?" I asked him, as he'd been so full of life just the day before, constantly running around and taking food out of my hand whenever I offered it.

The other hamster didn't know what happened; he was trying to play with his brother with no response. Now he's lost his playmate.

Hammie looked so sweet and quiet that we decided to take his picture like the Victorians used to. (They took pics of people, not hamsters, of course, but if they'd had cheap photography like we do now, who knows what they would have done?)

I found this quote to explain to my son what Victorians thought about death photography:

"What a comfort it is to possess the image of those who are removed from our sight.
We may raise an image of them in our minds but that has not the tangibility of one we can see with our bodily eyes."

Flora A Windeyer in a letter to Rev. John Blomfield, November 1870

To maliciously rejoice

Some of us at the office were trying to explain to a Russian colleague what Schadenfreude was. He was confused for a bit, then said:

"Oh, that's Злорадствовать!" Then he explained that word, pronounced Zloradstvovat, means 'to maliciously rejoice.'

Now he's just sent me some other examples:

Neid zu fühlen ist menschlich, Schadenfreude zu genießen teuflisch: "To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish." (Arthur Schopenhauer)

Lachen heißt: schadenfroh sein, aber mit gutem Gewissen: "Humour is just Schadenfreude with a clear conscience." (Nietzsche)

Dutch: Geen schoner vermaak dan leedvermaak: "No entertainment more beautiful than enjoining someone else's suffering." (Proverb, often used ironically).

The French proverb: Le malheur des uns fait le bonheur des autres: "One person's misfortune is another's happiness". However, the equivalence here is inexact, as the proverb really means that only that one person would benefit from another's misfortune, not actually find pleasure in misfortune for its own sake. A better expression would be "Se réjouir du malheur d'autrui" ("to gloat").

The Three Brothers

I love antique books and go to antiquarian book sales every so often. Last night I was reading one of my latest acquisitions -- Grimm's Fairy Tales -- the book is so old there's not even a date on it.

One of my favourite stories was the tale of the three brothers. Their father said he would leave his house to the son who showed the best mastery of a skill. The sons became a blacksmith, a barber and a fencing-master. They competed to show their father who was the most worthy of inheriting his house. In the end, the father gives the house to the fencing-master. But then the story goes on:

"The brothers were very fond of each other...all three lived together in the house and worked at their trades....

Thus they lived until old age overtook them, and when one fell ill and died, the other two grieved for him so sorely that they also fell ill and died. And then, on account of the great love they had for each other, they were all three laid to rest in the self-same grave."

Isn't that a sweet ending? Imagine this happening in real life! Siblings not fighting -- what a fairy tale.

Parenting and capitalism

When your kids are little, you think, when will I ever get my own life again? Where I'm free to come and go as I please? Well, let me tell you, that day comes quickly, and then the kids are way too cool to have anything to do with their parents -- then you end up having to beg or bribe them to spend time with you.

Once I said to my daughter, 'Why don't we go out and do something together?'

She looked at me quizzically, then asked, 'How much cash do you have?'

Then I knew the score -- cash in my bag means she'll spend time with me.

Life for parents is hard in an age of untrammeled capitalism....

My second brain

I notice that even before I realize what I think about something, my stomach already does and will start hurting as if to warn me away from an event or a person. Once when I had several stressful things going on at once, my stomach rebelled and I couldn't eat for days. The doctor told me I had to change my lifestyle or get an ulcer. So I stopped interacting with some stressful people and changed the way I handled things and learned to listen to my stomach.

Psychology Today ran an interesting piece about how your stomach is your 'second brain':

"Ever get a gut feeling about someone, or anxious butterflies in your stomach? That's because you have a second brain in your bowel, according to Michael Gershon, M.D., author of The Second Brain (HarperCollins, 1999), and a neurobiologist at New York's Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. Gershon recently explained to PT how an independent network of over 100 billion neurons in the gut not only signals our bodies to stress but causes illness.

Q Does the brain in our heads influence the "second brain"?

A Yes. Butterflies in the stomach arise when the brain sends a message of anxiety to the gut, which sends messages back to the brain that it's unhappy. But the gut can also work in isolation."

Read more at http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-19990501-000013.html

Dissipating troubles

I keep telling my son that reading a good book would take his mind off of his problems, but does he listen?

"I have never known any trouble that an hour's reading would not dissipate."

Charles Louis de Montesquieu

Old people's karma

The place where I work is full of young thangs, all in their '30s. A guy at work earlier this week was complaining that his knees and back hurt. "I feel so old sometimes," he said, gesturing around the office. Then he looked at me and the guy who sits across from me. "Until I look at you two, that is."

You can imagine how graciously I took that remark. I work out almost every day, and even though I can't help that I'm getting older, I certainly don't like being reminded of it.

Today this guy is at home sick because of bad back pain.

Is that Karma because of his remark to me? I leave it for you to decide.

Scenes from the lives of my friends

One of my friends just sent me this snippet from her life. It was so amusing that I had to share:

"My BF just left for a business trip. Now he's texted me from the airport asking my advice about a razor he might buy. I said, 'That's man stuff! How should I know? Would you be able to advise me on getting sanitary towels with or without wings or for light or medium flow?"

Good one, Anonymous Contributor! Thanks for letting me post it.

Sept 11-type attacks from England?

This is being reported in the London papers this morning:

"The United States fears that the next September 11-style attack on America could be launched by Muslims from Britain or Europe who feel "second-class citizens" and alienated by a "colonial legacy", according to the US Homeland Security chief."

I hope the US doesn't decide to use air strikes in England to get rid of what they decide are terrorist training camps (later discovered to be a disused bottle factory or something similarly unthreatening).

3 Minutes on the Sunbed

I was amused to read a sign at the hairdressers just now -- surrounded by hearts and glitter, it said to do something wonderful for your loved ones on Valentine's Day and give them the following package:

Cut and blowdry
Shoulder massage
Nail filing
3 minutes on the sunbed

The salon I go to has loads of old-age pensioners for clients so I can't imagine them demanding their three minutes on the sunbed.

But also, doesn't it seem kind of unethical to flog sunbeds now, especially when teens don't really understand the dangers?

Good news! Annie Lennox dropped from her label

Finally some good news today. I might not have to listen to any more new Annie Lennox songs or read stoopid interviews where she announces a new album and that she's 'stronger than ever' or 'happier than ever.'

"Singer Annie Lennox has been dropped by her record label — in what she’s called a shocking snub and a “kick in the teeth”.

The “No More I Love You’s” star, 53, was left shocked when her label, Sony BMG suddenly began ignoring her weeks before her contract was due to expire."

Now if someone will drop Natalie Imbruglia's recording contract, I'll be even happier.

Lipstick and confrontation

I saw my friend Karen Blakeley last night. She's taught me so much about the virtues of saying what you think, the fun of arguing and the joy of confrontation. Her family loves to argue. In my family, on the other hand, if you had a disagreement, you were out. My father said one time he never wanted to see me again after an argument when I was a child, and I was bereft because I didn't know where to go or what to do after that. (I was eight at the time.)

I didn't realize that you can have an argument and still love the other person and they love you. Karen has tried to teach me this for years, and I am trying to learn but I'm still mostly a repressed person who needs a blog to say what she really thinks!

Karen is highly educated and recently published a book, Leadership Blind Spots and What To Do About Them , but what do you think we ended up talking about?

Lipstick -- we are women after all. Finding the right lipstick, I told Karen, can be the work of a lifetime. I personally recommended Max Factor's long-lasting lipstick in Dusty Rose 830. It lasts forever, and is a beautiful colour.

Timid adventurers

A boy was being bullied. His parents were trying to help. "You shouldn't worry what they say," said one. "Just ignore them," said another. But that didn't help.

"I'll call the school," the mother said.

"No," the boy said, frightened. "They'll kill me then."

"Bullies love secrecy," the mother said. "They need to be brought out into the open."

And the mother thought that bullies aren't just confined to young people. Adults get bullied too. We need to stand up for ourselves, no matter what our ages.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said:

"When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”

Left Behind

I read Singled Out: How Two Million Women Survived Without Men After the First World War by Virginia Nicholson a couple of weeks ago, and it's a very interesting book. The book tells the stories of women who lost their boyfriends or husbands in the First World War, and there weren't enough men left to go around so a whole generation of women were left single (in age where you were supposed to get married and have kids to be fulfilled).

These women did the best they could but the writing some of them left behind is poignant:

"It seems to me that a pleasure in small things does come back to one; the beauty of the outward world and of people, the satisfaction of warmth in sunlight or fire or even in a hot bottle, the friendly gesture of a child or the ripe juiciness of a plum -- it is good to savour these things as they come. Shall I admit to you that sometimes as I wait for a bus on a wet London night...when no very obvious gratifications are present, I say to myself, "Well, anyhow I'm alive and I can see the other people and the play of lights reflected from the pavements and even the posters."

Margery Fry in The Single Woman (1953)

More political comments; from Missouri this time

"I was heartened by Obama's performance in Iowa and not disheartened by New Hampshire; that is, after all a wild card state, where independents can make up their minds a split second before they pull the lever--no predictions possible. It was interesting, however, that analysts said women and registered Democrats went substantially for Clinton, while independents supported Obama. That may be ominous. We shall see. I don't think South Carolina will offer any significant evidence (unless, unthinkably, Obama should lose there), but Michigan will. It's interesting to see an election in which all of the Repug candidates are such troglodytes that it is impossible to imagine any winning a general election. But then I think of Bush--a powerful reminder that any doofus or moron can be president in this country. Even so, surely twice-burned is more than enough for most of the electorate."

Thanks for sending this in. Any moderates want to send in a guest blog?

A blasphemous thought

I'll probably go straight to hell for saying this, but every time I walk past this church around the corner from my house, I think gratefully of how much time I've saved by never going in there.

And I was wondering why, even if there is a deity, he requires institutionalized worshipping. If so, how do we know that he still doesn't require animal sacrifice? We could be really making him angry by not doing that anymore.

Benazir but not Hillary

Here's a guest blog by my friend Linda R. Monk who is a constitutional scholar and the author of “The Words We Live By: Your Annotated Guide to the Constitution.”

"I have followed Benazir Bhutto's career my entire adult life, and her assassination ripped my heart to the core. It was a feeling, I imagine, not unlike that of black people in America and around the globe when Dr. Martin Luther King was mowed down in Memphis.

Like Dr. King, Bhutto represented the aspirations of women worldwide. As the first woman elected prime minister of a Muslim country, she was a beacon for those in Islam and other faiths who believe that Allah did not give women ability only to exclude them from the public square. A fellow Harvard grad of the same generation, I took special pride in Bhutto's accomplishments. When she stumbled, I had to face her weaknesses in governing, but I never questioned her motivation to serve--even after it became clear that she was George W. Bush's sacrificial lamb in Pakistan.

So why don't I support Hillary Clinton for president? Like Bhutto, Clinton's ascent to power came not directly, but through the man in her life. For Benazir, her beloved father was hanged; for Hillary, her troublesome Bill was impeached. Perhaps in both women there was a sense of seeking power to redeem family honor, much as George Bush the younger sought to restore the reputation of George Bush the elder.

Indeed, her similarities to the current President Bush are what give me the greatest qualms about Senator Clinton. At every major decision point in her personal and professional life, her instinct has been to conceal and cover up, rather than expose to the light of sunshine. Her health commission in 1993 worked behind closed doors, just like Vice President Cheney's energy confabs with private stakeholders.

Travelgate, Fostergate, Whitewatergate, Monicagate: at what point did she ever admit that she or others could have done wrong and perhaps hurt the nation in the process? Sound familiar? This river of denial is what those in recovery circles refer to as being a professional enabler--much as President Bush is also deemed a dry alcoholic (someone who no longer drinks, but has the same addictive personality unable to deal with facts.) Women have argued for decades that the personal is political; we cannot retreat from that argument when the political is personal.

But the fundamental reason I cannot support Senator Clinton is the Twenty-second Amendment, which would be violated in spirit if not law by two presidents sleeping in one White House. Publicly held corporations would not allow such fraught-filled relationships in the executive suite, and neither should the American people. Ruling families are not healthy for democracies--whether Kennedy or Bush or Clinton. This may be the same reason many Pakistanis opposed Benazir Bhutto. One can be proud of a woman who runs for president without believing she would make the best president.

I have reservations about Senator Barack Obama, too, although he is my candidate. He has all the makings of a Jack Kennedy, both good and bad. Charisma, intelligence, vision--but also the soft hands of a pretty boy for whom accomplishments may have come too easy at times. Kennedy was eaten alive at his first summit with Khrushchev, and the world came to a nuclear brink before he found his stride. One inhales sharply at the thought of Obama and Putin alone in a room together. Yet no one else is better positioned to improve the world standing of the United States, its most critical strategic asset. A respected Palestinian correspondent recently noted the intense excitement about Obama's candidacy in the developing world.

Senator Clinton's shuttle diplomacy as first lady hardly qualifies as the tough decision-making called for when lives are at stake. Her much-touted "experience" is really more like "seasoning," a woman of a certain age who has been around the block and is surprised by nothing (except Bill's serial philandering). Obama has neither seasoning nor experience, but he does have "the vision thing," a test Clinton utterly failed in her vote to give President Bush a blank check in Iraq. Having worked on the Watergate hearings, she should have known better.

Senator Clinton would make a skilled majority leader of the U.S. Senate, and with Speaker Nancy Pelosi help create a Congress that can do, instead of one that can't. Whoever is elected president will need strong leadership in Congress to turn this country around. But she is not electable as president--her negatives are higher than any other presidential candidate--and the sooner Democrats come to terms with that fact the sooner they can move on to the post-Clinton era. Hasn't the country earned it by now?"

Thanks Linda for such a thought-provoking piece. I am lucky to have such intelligent friends who contribute to this blog. Keep 'em coming!

If Selfridges was a Tesco, it would the one on Cheapside

I've been sent a guest blog from a London university student. Here's what she has to say:

"My story starts on Christmas Day, the day I was given two copies of the same Nintendo game. Having managed to obtain the receipt of one of them, I resolved to exchange it for another game.

I knew I was in trouble before I had even crossed over London Bridge; in the distance I saw Pret A Manger, Zen Cafe and House of Fraser, darkened, abandoned and most importantly, closed. As I made my way deeper into the City, a succession of closed shops paraded their way past me. I should have expected this: the City's dead at the weekends! I made my way to the front of Game and it was, as I already knew in my heart, shut.

Turning to go and trudge the mile back home, I saw something most shocking. An open shop. A Tesco. In need of toilet paper, I went in.

My first indicaton that this Tesco may not be quite normal was when I spied the 30+ checkouts (let me remind you, this was only a Tesco Express). My suspicions grew as I brushed past the many stalls of donuts, cookies and flapjacks. My eyes grew wide as I found the only pasta this Tesco had was organic fresh pasta. I held back a squeal of delight on finding the diverse fruit and vegetables available (lychee and butternut anyone?) and I laughed at the oversized ready meal section.

But truly my delight hit its peak when I discovered that this Tesco contained Bonne Maman gallettes. I can't even find these things in France.

Finally I remembered my original goal: toilet paper. And in my quest to find it, I found stuff I'd only ever seen before in Selfridges. If the desire to eat Japanese, Thai, Indian, Mexican or indeed most European cuisines ever strikes you, you could do worse than visit this most peculiar of Tescos on Cheapside."

Great guest blog, thank you London student! Does anyone else have anything for me to post?

What ever happened to Horatio? Osbourne? W. Otto Miessner?

I've been playing and singing songs out of my grandmother's school music book, The Progressive Music Series, published in 1915.

I see the formidable names of the authors on the title page and wonder what happened to them after 1915:

Horatio Parker
Osbourne McConathy
Edward Baily Birge
W. Otto Miessner

And now thanks to the Internet, I can look them all up and find out. I wonder what they would make of their biographies being available on the Internet for people who are still using their music book almost a hundred years after it was published.

BTW, my favourite song in the book is this one:

Drink to me, only, with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine ;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I'll not look for wine.

A.C. Grayling and Happiness

I saw the philosopher A.C. Grayling speak at a lecture series on Happiness, and I was very impressed by what he said. And he was so cute with that long philosopher hair (pic above doesn't do him justice) and passion for his subject matter emanating from every pore.

He spoke about being happy versus living a good life. As he writes in his book What is Good? The Search for the Best Way to Live:

"Many important and difficult questions arise in the course of a human life, but few can compare with the most significant question any individual can ask, namely, 'How shall I live, in order to live a good life?'"

His speech was lively, passionate and contained such nuggets as the observation that each of us only lives about 1,000 months so we'd better get on with finding purpose in our existence.

I became so enthusiastic about A.C. that I ordered books of his from Amazon and enthusiastically started to read.

After reading a few chapters in different works of his, I realized that he is afflicted with the same problem that plagued scientist Stephen Jay Gould.

They might be (or have been, in Gould's case) brilliant thinkers, but their writing doesn't reflect it. In fact, their over-complicated and sometimes turgid writing styles positively stand in the way of people comprehending their messages.

Book recommendations

Here are some book recommendations from my college English professor, Tom Dillingham. I write him for reading ideas every year but now I can share them with you.

"Cormac McCarthy's The Road is very gloomy and powerful, but then I read his No Country for Old Men and was blown away by it. I recommend reading it before seeing the movie (since the movie is good enough that it doesn't matter if you know the whole story). I haven't read any of his other stuff, but I probably will.

Philip Roth's Everyman and Exit Ghost are both very good, though not up to his best. Still, he is among the best and amazingly energetic for so late in his career. But if you haven't read his The Human Stain or American Pastoral, they would probably be the best recommendations.

On the disappointment side, Don DeLillo (one of my favorite authors) just did not make it with Falling Man. I think if any other writer had published it, I would have thought it was a really good try, but it is so much less than his best that it was a serious disappointment to me. I could almost feel him struggling to make it work.

An older novel that I "discovered" is John Williams's Stoner, which I think is very good; it is set in Columbia, Mo, and the central character is first a student and then a teacher at the University of Missouri during the period leading up to WWII. Well-written and undervalued, I think.

Ironically, the novel I read just recently that impressed me the most is a very old fashioned (and old, as in 1950s vintage) historical novel by M.F.K. Prescott, called The Man on the Donkey, set in the reign of Henry VIII and about the Catholic prising to stop the expropriation of the monasteries. It is slow and detailed, and I simply loved it. I have even bought her biography of Mary Tudor, but haven't read it yet. Terrific writer.

One biography I recommend very enthusiastically is Julie Phillips's James Tiptree Jr.: The Double Life of Alice Sheldon. Even if you have not read Tiptree's fiction (which is some of the best science fiction of the 20th century), you will find this book fascinating. It is brilliantly researched and written and I think it easily ranks with the best literary biographies I have ever read. Another good biographical study (not really a biography, but a work of biographical criticism) is Francine Prose's Caravaggio: Painter of Miracles, which has the real virtue of being quite short.

As a longtime fan of Gunter Grass, I have to add Peeling the Onion, which is a wonderful memoir and not deserving of the slanderous attacks dumped on him; but in many ways, I would first recommend Crabwalk, which is not my favorite of his novels, but it's up there."

Thank you, Dr Dillingham, for what is easily the most cerebral posting we've had so far! I really must make an effort to stop being so shallow myself.

You never know what your kids are up to

My son got 'married' yesterday, and I didn't even know it. It wasn't until my daughter saw his profile change on Facebook that she alerted me to his marriage to someone I'd never heard of. (He didn't really get married; kids change their status to whatever they want without caring that others on Facebook might take it seriously.)

So I went on to investigate and saw a photo on my daughter's home page that featured two strange (fully-clothed) men occupying her bed at her room at college.

I'm telling you, you never know what's going on with your kids until you check their Facebook home pages....

Population explosion

Watching two men shouting at each other in a road rage incident in London, I paused to wonder how I could ever have thought that England was a land of incredibly polite people before I moved here from America. It must have been too much time spent watching Masterpiece Theatre on PBS that made me think that way.

Figures released recently by the Office for National Statistics show that England will soon be the most crowded nation in Europe with approximately 620 people crammed into one square mile. (In the United States, it's approximately 79 people per square mile.)

There is superficial politeness though with the British habit of saying "Sorry" all the time. ("No, I'M sorry" is a common reply to someone saying an initial "Sorry." You could go on for weeks like that.) But even if British people do go through the motions of being polite, if you appear to be a threat to their personal space, you will pay as they have no problem telling you off in public for whatever wrong they think has been committed against them. My husband's mother used to routinely embarrass him by shouting, "There's a queue here!" to anyone who looked as though they might get to the cash register before she did.

By 2016, the Office of National Statistics predicts the population of the United Kingdom will have increased by 4.4 million. How bad tempered will we inhabitants of this island be by then?

Americans are so nice to have rest rooms

When my husband first visited America, he was tired after the plane trip. He drove a bit then spotted a Restroom sign. "How nice of America to have rooms for people to rest in," he thought, and pulled over. "I am quite tired after my journey so would enjoy a little rest."

How stunned he was when he went into the restroom and found there were only toilets inside! No places to rest at all....

This is a running joke in our family now so when my daughter and I went to NYC last year without him, we made sure to snap some photos of restrooms for him to see. This one is taken in Macy's department store on 34th street. You should have heard what the Americans said as they pushed past me to use the ladies' room. They thought I was insane posing for a picture there, but I had to persevere.

Lisa's new neighbours

My friend Lisa Raspopovich (she's an expat American living near London) recently moved, and she's already having Hitchcock moments with her new neighbour. Read on:

"So, we've been here at the new house for just over three weeks, and I've already made an enemy of a neighbour.

And there aren't a lot of neighbours here out of whom I can make enemies. Go to google maps at the google.co.uk website and put in my postcode: SG7 5EZ and look at the satellite view. Go on, I'll wait.

See? It's mostly us and rapeseed growing.

Still, I managed to make an enemy, and it's not my fault this time.

After we were here for about four days, I was driving home with my son and as I pulled in front of the house I glanced over to see a grey mess on the grass of the side garden. Oh crap, I think - the araucana. One of my lovely chickens, dead on the grass.

So I shepherd my son into the house and go back out there to see the poor rumpled bird and I immediately race to learn the disposition of the other three. I open the coop door - two girls in there, breathing and okay, only one more to account for.

I can't find her anywhere - but I do see a few of her feathers here and there: not a good sign. I assume a fox has been and has carted her off for tea.

Finally, as I am walking around a bit more, I see more of her feathers, in a trail that leads to a small gully, and to her! She is alive, and I carefully pick her up to have a look. I think she is in shock, and I note she has a couple of good-sized tears to her abdomen. I wonder if she's going to make it as I move her to a large garden trug and move her to the doorway of the house with plans to take her to the utility room so that she is warm, and I am wondering if I can even locate my box of veterinary supplies amongst the unpacked boxes.

Then I start to consider all this: very unusual that a fox has left a hen alive, and the araucana wasn't beheaded, which is what foxes tend to do. Then I remember how the last tenant at this house, Ashley, warned me about the two staffies that belong to the guy next door who runs a farrier supply business in one of the converted barns. Now, seething, I calm myself and march over there to introduce myself.

So I start with my name, and after telling me his (Martin) and offering up a piece of our post mistakenly delivered to him, I broach the true business of my visit.

"My dogs don't go over there." he claims. "But they would go after a chicken if they saw it. Wow, now I feel terrible thinking that maybe they've gotten your birds."

I hope that at least he gets the idea that he can't lose sight of his dogs such that they come trespassing over here harming my animals and then I return home. Somewhere in there my sweet dark brahma hen has died.

Christmas comes and goes and the people who keep offices in the converted barns are mostly away, except for the occasional workaholic who pops in for a few minutes to do something or other. No sign at all of the farrier supplier.

After the new year, the office people start coming back to work. Martin is there with his dogs on the 3rd and 4th. In the middle of the day on the 4th, I look outside my office window to see one of his dogs eating the kitchen scraps I put out for the chickens. I race outside and scare the dog away, chasing it. I note that it hasn't run all the way around the fences as I'd assumed, but that it just hopped over the little well that abuts the fence - the well has a grate over it and so it's an easy enough passage for a dog.

I race to check on the last two girls: my last brahma is in the coop perched at the top, but I can't find the other araucana. But I can't find any of her feathers either, which is a good sign - she was probably crazy scared when she saw that dog, and took off. Finally I give up looking, thinking that maybe she will be back later when it is apparent that it is safe again.

I go into the house, call my husband for a rant and try to cool down before I go visit Martin again.

When I finally go over there, I can't believe my ears. "These dogs wouldn't hurt chickens; my next door neighbour has chickens and they don't bother them at all." he says. Then I am even more incredulous when he adds: "Those dogs have been going over there for four years - I don't think there's any way to stop them."

Yeah there is a way to stop them, I think, it's called a two-by-four to the cranium.

But I really don't know what to say, trying to control myself and thinking of the benefits of general neighborly geniality. The story has changed so dramatically since the last time I spoke with him. I imagine that if I go back now he'll claim he doesn't have any dogs, or that he doesn't even know what a dog is.

Inside my anger is at the simmering point, and being told that his dogs somehow have adverse possession rights to my property by virtue of the fact that they've peed over here for quite some time is not sitting well with me. I can't help myself and so I finally tell him that if his dogs are conditioned to come over to my house then I will take it upon myself to re-condition them.

He finally appears to show genuine concern in the conversation and wants to know what I am talking about.

I tell him that I will throw things at the dogs or hit them to get rid of them. "No you won't." he warns and then continues, "Did you see my dogs kill your chickens?" So now where he formerly claimed to feel sorry about his dogs hurting my birds, he's decided that harming my animals is of little concern if his dog gets hit with a
broom. "I've had enough of this." I say turning to leave. He mutters "So have I." as I walk away.

I get inside and research the law. Thankfully the English love their agricultural pursuits and I find that I can actually injure or use deadly force against the dogs (Animal Act of 1971), provided that I don't have any other way to stop them worrying or harming my chickens - but of course I do have other means. But it's good to know that a swift kick or a clonk on the head is within my legal rights.

I have the feeling there will be another installment of this story."

Things I would have blogged about if it had been invented

If blogging had been around earlier:

I would have blogged about my laser eye surgery in 1997. I would have recounted the horror I felt when my eye was clamped, and there was no escape. The laser got closer and closer, and, of course, I couldn't see anything but it. The surgeon spoke cheerfully on one side of me but I was pinned to the table and couldn't turn my head to acknowledge him. I wanted to run but I couldn't. Then I smelled the burning tissue as my eye was being lasered. It was like being in a horror movie...

...but with a great ending. I almost cried when I was sitting in the bathtub a day later and realized I could read the shampoo bottle on the other side of the bathroom. I'd never been able to see a thing before.

Ten years later, I'm still glasses-free, except I'm going to need reading glasses soon.

Elizabeth Applebaum's challah recipe

Speaking of my friend Elizabeth (as I was in the previous post), I used to go to her house on the Sabbath, and the challah her mother made was incredible. I asked Elizabeth for the recipe, and she sent me this. It is so delish. Try it.

"Here is my challah recipe. It almost always turns out tasty.
Put in bread machine in this order:

2 eggs
1/3 cup oil (I use whatever is on hand, usually grapeseed)
1 cup hot water
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp. salt
4-1/2 cup flour (usually I use white, but sometimes, when I am in my, "Okay, that's it. No more junk food for you kids. We are going to eat healthy!" phase, I use a mix of white and whole-wheat flour, about 3 cups white and the rest whole wheat. When I use whole wheat, I add a few tsp. of vital wheat gluten).

Make a well in the flour and put in 2-1/4 tsp. yeast, making sure the yeast does not touch the liquid. Place in machine and use DOUGH ONLY cycle.

When done, transfer to another bowl and cover with a towel. Place in a dry area for several hours, to let dough rise. When ready, roll out and shape as desired (I usually do braids). This will make two medium challahs.

Place loaves on greased cookie sheet and bake in preheated 325-degre over for about 30 minutes."

Back to Israel after 15 years away

My best friend from college, Elizabeth Kaplan Applebaum, recently visited Israel after not having been there for more than 15 years. She was a student at Hebrew University there.

Here's her report:

"I'm ready to move to Israel right now. Despite the many, many difficulties there, I love life in Israel and that was confirmed during this visit. Everything is more there. It's more challenging, more frustrating, scarier - and it's more fun, more interesting and safer (I'll get to that in a minute). It's exceptionally diverse. I walked the streets and there is everything everywhere: those handsome Israeli soldiers with a distinct Mediterranean look, Ethiopian Jews, Muslim Arabs, refugees from Darfur (Israel has accepted many), immigrants from the United States and Europe. Israelis make many mistakes - I would put PR at the top of that list, followed closely by the political leaders they've elected since Yitzhak Shamir - but they're absolute geniuses at intelligence and managing a democracy that has a place for everyone - even the very people who want them dead.

I like all the stuff open late at night: coffee shops and book stores, ice-cream parlors with flavors like persimmon and pomegranate, the little markets selling hot chestnuts and sachlav, a pudding-like dessert that tastes of orchids. I did a lot of shopping, went to the Old City and the Wall and to Yad Vashem. Just walking along day to day was the best. So much was familiar, and I got to use my Hebrew again. But everything is so incredibly different from life in the U.S. The air smells different, like rosemary and cigarettes and car exhaust, but it's clearer, too. The food is different, of course; I ate falafel day and night. It was so deelish. It's much more sophisticated in some ways than just 15 years ago: building is going on everywhere, and there are now malls that look like they could be anywhere in the world (except for all the Hebrew, of course)."

On a personal note, Elizabeth introduced me to Sleepytime tea when we were students and now every time I make it, I think of her.

The End of Christmas

I didn't need anyone to tell me that the Christmas season officially ended on the 6th of January because that's when my daughter left to go back to university, and the festive air in our house left with her.

No more Monopoly tournaments, badminton matches at the local gym, card games, country walks and making cruel fun of Fox News while we watch it.

My son and I read books by the fire last night (OK, he was reading his MSN messages but I guess it still counts as reading?) and that was fun but we still missed Katie.

Fawning over novelists

I usually hate every word Peter Hitchens writes but today in the Mail on Sunday (I read this for celeb goss, I admit. I read the Sunday Times too though so that even it out), he made a little sense. He wrote:

"Does anyone really gain either pleasure or instruction from the strange prose of people like Ian McEwan? Or do they just pretend to?"

I'm with Pete on that one.

I spent so many hours struggling through Atonement, and when it got to the end, and I discovered that none of it had really happened, I was so angry that I wanted to get my money back on the book. (yes, I know it's fiction but I had suspended my disbelief...)

Then McEwan writes Saturday and waits for the acclaim and gives interviews about how disgusted he had been with the anti-war marchers who were demonstrating in the big march of 2003 (he set his book on that day). Well, I was one of those anti-war marchers so of course his disgust over the demonstration of my beliefs riled me too.

The London papers go on and on about him and other past-it British writers like Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie. Anything they say or do can be the subject of a multi-page fawning article that will then be reported on one of the English television stations so they will interview the novelist, then a paper will write another report on that.

I'm serious -- if one of these guys even farts, they'll send some reporter over to interview him about what that means in the context of modern British literature, and he will be happy to pontificate for boring paragraph after boring paragraph.

Lining up chocolate squares

I had tons of leftover Christmas chocolate that I wanted other people to eat before I had the chance to so I took it into the office at Nokia. I plopped bags of chocolate squares on a space near my desk. It wasn't long before a software engineer came along and lined all the chocolates pieces up neatly, divided up by colour and flavour. I recognized that behaviour immediately as the sort of thing people who have Asperger's Syndrome do.

So I moved some of the squares and put them back in a haphazard fashion. Well, five minutes later didn't some other guy come and put them all back into neat lines.

I messed them up again. Then a pair of engineers stopped by for chocolate and put the rest of them them into little pyramids, again divided by the colour of the packaging and flavour.

This went on all day, and I finally commented on their behaviour saying they were acting a bit autistic.

"Didn't you know that all software engineers are geeks?" replied one of them cheerfully.

Arise, Sir Mel

In the UK, you can get a knighthood for just doing your job. Movie stars like Sean Connery have a great career making movies, are extremely wealthy, then get in the Honours List for that. This year's Honours List includes a talk show host. The system exists, according to the government website, "to reward those who work and serve at the sharp end - people who have really changed things, or who have given outstanding service to others in difficult situations." So I guess having a really difficult interview with Madonna is enough to merit a knighthood?

My husband says if just showing up and doing your job is enough to be knighted by the Queen, he wants in on it. He wants to be Sir Mel Thomas, awarded a knighthood "for services to database administration."

My mother's handwriting

This is a picture of my mother, who has suffered from Multiple Sclerosis since I was a teenager. She hasn't been able to write for more than 20 years because her muscles are wasted so when my aunt found a recipe for my mother's Christmas macaroons written in her own hand (below), I was very happy.

I never even knew 'corporatist' was a word

Here's a guest blog from a left-winger who wants to remain anonymous. Thanks for sending it in. Does anyone more moderate want to send in a guest post?

"I am surprised by the showing of the Democratic caucus in Iowa. Seeing Clinton come in 3rd place when she is supposed to be the solid frontrunner makes me realize that Democrats are waking up to the fact that Hillary in my opinion is too right wing on foreign policy (such as refusing to apologize on her vote for the Iraq Resolution 6 years ago) and friendly to the capitalist monopolistic scum that are the insurance companies. Until recently, I had been behind Clinton all the way. However seeing the youthful and charismatic Obama's message of hope rather than her message of experience, Obama will pull the troops out of Iraq and establish universal health care without giving in to the corporatist insurance market. I would most like to see a Barack Obama/Mike Bloomberg ticket or a Barack Obama/Brian Schweitzer (the Governor of Montana) which would bring out Western and moderate voters as well as the usual liberal bloc. Therefore I hope that Obama wins New Hampshire as well, and see Obama get the nomination.

One problem I think needs solving is the blur between the Administration and the corporate interests. Without restriction, our country will turn into a society of social authoritarianism and anarcho-capitalism. We need to regulate capitalism before it's too late."

My brother's Iowa caucus report

My brother Mike Scanlon voted in the Iowa caucus yesterday. Here's his report:

"The room was packed with several hundred people, and when the proceedings began there was standing room only.

Each candidates representative was allowed to speak for three minutes. Four or five impassioned speeches were delivered and we broke up into smaller groups, divided by precinct. My wife and I attended the second precinct caucus in a class room. We were among the last to arrive and stood for the next half hour. The second precinct roll was called and ballots distributed. We then cast our votes which were tallied in the front of the room and results reported to the chair of the Jefferson county republican party and then reported to republican headquarters in Des Moines Iowa.

The atmosphere was cheerful and party like with a serious undertone. We both enjoyed exchanging pleasantries with friends and acquaintances, and a young lady from the local newspaper interviewed us. This was the first caucus my wife and I have attended, it was sobering to know that what would occur would have an impact on the presidential election. Our candidate, Ron Paul, was an underdog, not expected to show among the leaders. We voted for him nevertheless."

A great report, Mike. Thanks for doing that. Anyone else want to guest blog? Just send me something at etwritingservices@yahoo.co.uk

Exploited labour

I watched a documentary about how workers are exploited in Asia and China so we can have cheap clothes in the West and felt guilty, knowing how much I love discount fashion. When I came across a woman who handweaves scarves herself I thought I'd buy one (even though it cost a fortune) and start on the road to redemption.

The only problem is, it leaves colourful bits of wool on anything I'm wearing, from my coat to my jeans. So annoying even if the purchase was guilt-free.

My Florida primary vote

I really blew it on my vote in the Florida primary. Luckily, I haven't mailed it yet because I can request another ballot and re-think what I did. I am stunned by the results in Iowa where Hillary Clinton came in third so don't want to waste a vote on her if she's not going to be able to pull off this race. I was going to vote for whomever got the Democratic nomination because I want the Republicans out of power, and I thought Hillary was going to be the man to do it, so to speak.

Then I heard Obama say he would be the one to get the troops out of Iraq, and I liked that.

I really need to do my homework on these candidates.

US presidential elections

My brother is participating in the Iowa caucus today, and I just voted in the Florida presidential primary using an overseas-voter mail-in ballot. Registering to vote in the American elections has been made easier so I was happy to be able to vote against George Bush in the last election (not that it made any difference).

I've been remiss in not following the candidates' positions more closely this election but it's harder to do that when you live in England. I do enjoy reading about the politician's gaffes though. I especially enjoyed Mike Huckabee thinking that Pakistan was still under martial law when Benazir Bhutto was killed.

Treasures of our lifetimes

I read on the Jezebel website (http://jezebel.com)that there's a new book published on how to be like Nancy Drew, the girl detective. So many of us American girls grew up reading Nancy Drew and wanting to be like her. I used to save my allowance and go to the local bookstore in Natchez, Mississippi, to buy the latest one.

According to the Amazon website, "The Official Nancy Drew Handbook will teach you how to live the Nancy life, with tips on fashion and beauty, romance, relationships, survival, sleuthing, and success."

I'm almost tempted to buy it, even though I'm way too old to take advantage of any of her tips. :)

I kept a couple of Nancy Drews from the '30s that belonged to my mother, and I have a truckload of them from the '60s that I was saving for my daughter to read when she was older. But she wasn't interested in Nancy Drew so keeping those books has been a waste of effort. I threw a bunch of them out a couple of years ago but still have a dozen or so that I just can't part with.

I guess that's what we do in life -- we collect a bunch of stuff that means so much to us but nothing to the next generation who then have to throw it out. I felt so terrible when I had to go through my mother's stuff before she went to a nursing home so vowed then and there that I would have already thrown my stuff out before my daughter was faced with it. You feel so guilty getting rid of things that meant so much to someone else but mean nothing to you. I think our treasures are meant to comfort us in our lifetime, but then they need to go so the next generation isn't lumbered with them.

Herbal Medicine Crackpots

I'm sure herbal medicine is great, but it can't totally replace conventional medicine, can it? I used to go to dinner parties with this woman who was fervently into herbal remedies and said that there hasn't been any medical innovations since penicillin so basically, we could disregard everything since then. When I heard her say that, I was so grateful that she wasn't in charge of any august medical body because I need to take thyroid hormone every day & I'm sure she'd take that away from me right off.

I used to tailor my dinnertime conversation so I didn't give her any openings to go off on her herbal medicine tangents. The smallest thing could trigger her too. I wrecked my knee skiing a couple of years ago and had to go through a year of pain and physical therapy but finally had it rebuilt using grafts from my hamstrings. But then I had the most gruelling rehab trying to get my leg to work properly again.

Then I see this woman at a dinner party again and am almost through it without any herbal outbursts when someone asks me how my knee is. Upon hearing this, the woman says, "You should have come to me first. I would have given you arnica and fixed it right up!"

I wanted to say, how is arnica going to rebuild my ruptured ACL? And how can you just blithely say such a thing after all the trauma I've gone through? But did I say any of that? No.

What are your New Year's resolutions?

Tell me what your New Year's resolutions are. Mine is to see how many days I can go without chocolate and crisps, and also I want to stop being so stressed out all the time.

New Year's quote

This is a nice quote to start the New Year from the The Times:

Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again.
Wisely improve the present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the
shadowy future, without fear, and with a manly heart.
(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

But I think he means with a 'womanly heart' in my case....