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.