How to become a philosopher

Thanks to alert reader Lisa who has sent in a handy website called WikiHow ('the How To Manual that you can edit'). (Click on WikiHow above to be taken to the website.) It contains useful information such as "How to Persuade an Atheist to become a Christian." Excerpt below:

How to Persuade an Atheist to Become Christian

Dealing with a friend that has different beliefs than you can be frustrating for both yourself and the non-believer. Learning how to deal with it can be extremely difficult and you might want to try and convert them. If you do chose this route, however, you must always keep this in mind: be gentle and never force your ideals upon others if they don't wish it. If your friend expresses a deep, sincere wish for you to leave their beliefs alone, please respect that.

Or perhaps you'd rather become a philsopher instead of a Christian? WikiHow can tell you how to do that too:

How to Become a Philosopher

Have you ever thought you could be just like Aristotle - if you just had the right push? Well, here it is. These are instructions on how to become the philosopher you have always wanted to be.

Understand that there is no exact way to become a philosopher, you either have the ideas or you don't. You must free yourself of all limitations such as prejudice, religion, and point of view. Philosophers are often people that see the world from a child's eyes. It is important to listen to people, and travel a lot, to get a sense of the world and the people in it. Asking people in your town about what they think of the war in Iraq isn't really going to help, as a lot of these will give stereotypical answers, and will not be well-informed.

Thanks for the great site, Lisa. Maybe some of our readers will add instructions of their own to this site. It's community edited.

The way to happiness

News from the Sunday paper today on how I can be happy and beautiful like the woman in this picture -- all I need to do is buy these 20 Must-Haves for summer!

Better get shopping! :)

Sunday miscellany

Because it's Sunday, we might as well have something to mull over -- this poem by Rumi that a friend sent me to comfort me after my mother died is good. I've been newly sad over my mother dying last March. As the seasons change, and the year marches on, I realize (as if anew) that I'll never see her or hear her voice again.

This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival--
A joy, a depression, a meanness--
Some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows
Who violently sweep your house empty of its comforts.
Still, treat each guest honorably
He may be cleaning you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice--
Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes
Because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Rumi

Don Giovanni

My daughter and I were watching a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni, and I just grooved when it came to the fantastic final scene where DG is punished for his evil ways by being dragged down into hellfire. It reminded me of when I was young and always thought someone would step in from somewhere and stop my father from being so horrible to his family. My mother called the sheriff a couple of times when he got violent but the sheriff wouldn't do anything because he was my father's pal. So watching this scene delights me because I wish that life had imitated art:



The concluding chorus delivers the moral of the opera:

So ends he who evil did. The death of a sinner always reflects his life ("Questo è il fin").

More on Overweight Divas

There's an interview in the Sunday Times with Deborah Voight, the soprano who was fired from the Royal Opera House for being too heavy. We've been arguing about it in this blog recently, and here she makes another appearance in the news.

Voight had a gastric bypass but says the pounds are creeping back. She says:

"You eat because you are happy, because you are sad, because you are travelling alone (as an opera singer) about 10 months out of the year, because you have an entire evening to kill and because a salad is not as fulfilling as a plate of chips."

The knowledge that chips are a bad food option might stop most people from devouring a plateful, but has no effect on her she says. "I have a guilt mechanism that kicks in after I've eaten them, not before. Mine is a compulsion to eat. So I will have the chips or the extra glass of wine and then feel guilty about it.

What I am working on now, and will work on for the rest of my life, is developing a memory of that guilt. I don't stop and think, 'How will I feel afterwards?' I just think, 'I am going to eat to satisfy myself. I am going to eat this and enjoy it and it will make me feel better. It's very hard to break that pattern.'"

Speaking of Food

I made blackened fish for lunch. We can't get catfish in the UK so I used tialpia instead. While I was cooking the fish, I dipped some already cooked green beans into the pan with butter so they could be coated with the flavors, and then maybe the kids would eat their vegetables.

For dessert, my daughter made a lemon cake but we had no frosting. I found some lemon curd in the cabinet and mixed it with icing sugar and a little milk, and voila, the most delicous lemon cake ever. Now I need to slice up some strawberries to go with it.

It was meant to be

Have you ever noticed people who make impulsive and bad decisions have to rationalize it later? (I know, I know, I do it too.) But when they start rationalizing, we have to bite our tongues to avoid pointing out, "But what you did was so stoopid! How could you think that was going to work?"

Because the Internet provides us with forums to share our personal stories and lives, we can observe the behavior of others more closely from what they post.

I'm going to tell you the excuse that drives me insane. Someone will make one idiotic decision after another, then when it all falls apart and they have no place left to turn, they will say:

"It was meant to be this way! It's fate."

(So their hands are tied & what happened had nothing to do with them; it was ordained by God.)

I've published myself....

I used to write novels in my spare time that never got published. Now they live in a drawer somewhere in my house. I think they probably aren't that good, but I worked hard on them and learned a lot.

A friend in America told me that Kindle, Amazon's new wireless reading device, needs material. Kindle isn't available in the UK yet, but it's big stuff in America. Here's a photo of it with some info:



Revolutionary electronic-paper display provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper.

Simple to use: no computer, no cables, no syncing.

Wireless connectivity enables you to shop the Kindle Store directly from your Kindle whether you’re in the back of a taxi, at the airport, or in bed.

Buy a book and it is auto-delivered wirelessly in less than one minute.

"This is the future of book reading. It will be everywhere." Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball and Liar's Poker.

My friend suggested I publish my novel for Kindle Books -- part of Amazon.com's website. So I did one last night -- amazingly simple. Now I need you guys to go and put some five-star ratings at the site so people will buy it. Go here to Amazon to write a review (just say it's brilliant and give me five stars, thanks).

I was amused at some of the questions people put in at the Kindle site. Authors were irate because their stuff wasn't being published fast enough. "This book is eagerly awaited by my fans," wrote one. "Why are you taking so long to get it published?"

I had to laugh because they are acting like they are Flaubert or Tolstoy or something when probably they are just sort of hack writers like me.

Not what I want to hear!

Argh! I've written before about how Saturday nights at your local Indian restaurant having a curry is a favorite British habit. Every Friday night we get Chinese food from a nearby takeaway to enjoy. But how can I enjoy this as much as I used to after I read this article yesterday in a British newspaper?

"An Indian takeaway can contain more saturated fat than a woman should eat in an entire day.

The nation's favourite dish, chicken tikka masala, with pilau rice and plain nan, contains on average 1,338 calories.

A woman would need to cycle for more than five hours to burn that off. And for those who prefer Chinese, a takeaway including sweet-and-sour chicken can be laden with the equivalent of 19 teaspoons of sugar.

The disturbing figures have been uncovered by the consumer group Which? It argues that more information should be given about what goes in to takeaway meals.

At the same time, the Government's Food Standards Agency says it is time for restaurants to follow the example of supermarkets and print nutrition information on menus.

Which? found that the average saturated fat in a takeaway of chicken tikka masala, pilau rice and plain nan came in at 23.2g (0.8oz), when the recommended daily maximum for a woman is 20g (0.7oz) and for a man 30g (1oz).

The same meal provided 3.6g (0.12oz) of salt, where the daily maximum for an adult is 6g (0.21oz).

Surprisingly, weight for weight, nan bread contained even more calories than the curry swimming in oil.

There were 290 calories in a 100g (3.5oz) nan, compared with 685 in 350g ( 12.3oz) of chicken tikka masala.

Researchers found that a supermarket version of the same meal had 45 per cent less saturated fat, and less sugar.

In a Chinese takeaway of sweetand-sour chicken, egg fried rice and spring rolls, there was 62.3g (2.19oz) of sugar - 19 teaspoons.

The daily sugar limit for a woman is 90g (3.1oz) and for a man 120g (4.2oz).
The total fat level was 60.4g (2.1oz), 86 per cent of the daily ration for a woman, and there was 4.7g (0.16oz) of salt.

Burning off the 1,436 calories in the meal would need a woman to cycle for six hours."

Beauty tips and do models shave their faces?

A reader sent in the following beauty tips. The last one is a bit surprising though! See what you think:

1. Try this hair product called "It's a 10." It's $19 for 4 ounces but honey they are not lying when they call it a "miracle leave-in conditioner." When I was having my hair trimmed the other day, I was whining to my stylist that I sure miss that obsolete '70s product, Clairol's "Hair So New" spray. She suggested I try this, and it's great.

2. Another beauty MUST HAVE is a little dropper-bottle of BioSil---you can get it at health-food stores or chemists', I guess, or order it on the Web. It's a super absorbable silicon supplement. Six drops a day (I put mine in those empty gel-caps but you can dump it in orange juice) will do miracles. I started about 1.5 years ago, and my hair is so much thicker.

3. Shaving. I can't use most grainy exfoliants because of my sensitive skin. The last time I had a facial up in NYC at Mario Badescu, the Russian girl whispered to me, "Just lightly shave every morning like a man." It removes the dead epidermal cells and leaves the face baby-soft. I did some Web research, and apparently it's done all the time, only women are embarrassed to confess they do it (???) But you think about it---that's probably why men look cute longer---their dead skin is razed off daily.

Me again: To add more info to the female shaving question -- I saw this Q&A yesterday on the Internet:

Q: Do models shave their faces? Their skin always looks so smooth!

A: Absolutely not, and you shouldn’t either. Face shaving is such a masculine act that it can be psychologically confusing to do as a woman. If you feel like you have excess hair on your face, try waxing, plucking, using depilatories, or laser hair removal. You can also ask your doctor for Vaniqa, a prescription cream that slows hair growth in about four to six weeks. But you shouldn’t obsess over a little peach fuzz. I’ve definitely seen my share of it on models’ faces. The reason you haven’t is because facial hair is pretty much always retouched out of photos.

Causes of obesity

A friend sent me an interesting study called The Relation Between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Adult Health: Turning Gold into Lead by Vincent Felitti MD. She writes, "A 1998 study of more than 17,000 members of Kaiser Permanente funded by the Centers for Disease Control found 'a strong, graded relation' between obesity and 'adverse childhood experiences' such as domestic violence and sexual abuse."

It's very interesting to make this connection between childhood abuse and obesity, but since obesity has exploded in the past 30 years, does mean that childhood abuse rates have rocketed too?

See anagrams for your name

Thank you BWJ for this post:

Talk about some BLOG FUN!
Go to this site and type your name in here!

http://www.anagramgenius.com/server.html

Deliriously singing

A friend sent me some articles on Jefferson Davis (president of the Confederacy and born 200 years ago this week) about the time he spent near Vicksburg, Mississippi. The link to the Vicksburg Post is here. They make interesting reading, especially the personal details such as how Davis' first wife died:

"On Aug. 11, 1835, Sarah Knox Taylor Davis wrote her mother, "Do not make yourself uneasy about me; the country is quite healthy." With malaria a constant threat during the summer months, the couple decided to go to his sister Anna's plantation home, Locust Grove, inland from St. Francisville, La. Away from the river, it was thought, would be healthier than Davis Bend.

At Anna's, both contracted malaria, experiencing chills and fever. For a time it appeared Jefferson Davis would not live, but then his wife took a turn for the worse. They were in adjoining rooms when he heard his bride deliriously singing a song from their courtship, "Fairy Bells." Davis managed to get to her room, where he held her in his arms as she died. She was buried in the family cemetery near the house, and he watched the service from the window. It was Sept. 15, 1835. At 21, she had been a bride of only three months."

Brits and Wimbledon

It's Wimbledon time again in England -- every year my daughter corrects the way I say it -- I always say WimbleTON, which is wrong.

Anyway, yesterday a Brit won so it's a big deal because the UK always loses at Wimbledon. Here's an amusing headline from today's paper:

A British winner! But it's only Day One and she WAS born in Ukraine

Some Wimbledon facts below:

Blogs can give unrealistic view

Blogs can give unrealistic views of people's lives, can't they? I was thinking that I ought to say when things go wrong for me sometimes so there's more of a balanced picture.

I haven't been speaking to my husband for over 24 hours because of something he did on Sunday. It wasn't any big deal but he wouldn't apologize because he didn't know what to apologize for, and isn't that even a worse crime!

So I'm up to my elbows in drudgery (laundry, cooking big batches of food so I won't have to cook when I come home from the office during the week, gardening, picking up the kids' messes) on Sunday, and sulking over my husband's perfidy, my daughter's sniping at my son, and my son's crankiness. And there's not much sun, and it's a bit chilly. Where is summer??

And I'm picturing all of my friend's perfect Sundays -- they are having loads of friends over, eating and drinking wonderful things, laughing and having a great time. Today I exchanged emails with one of these friends who does fun things with her family every weekend, and it turns out she had a bad Sunday too!

"But that can't be," I replied. "You have so many social events, so many friends -- everytime I come to your house, there's laughter and great conversation...."

She must have just been saying that to make me feel better, don't you think??

8 drugs doctors won't take

I put this info in a comment but I keep thinking about it so am moving it into a post. It's about eight drugs that doctors won't take themselves and why. (Remember when people got really nervous about smoking cigarettes was when doctors themselves finally quit smoking.) Link to article is here -- excerpt about the items that interested me below:

Prilosec and Nexium

Heartburn can be uncomfortable, but heart attacks can be fatal, which is why the FDA has investigated a suspected link between cardiac trouble and the acid-reflux remedies Prilosec and Nexium. In December 2007, the agency concluded that there was no "likely" connection. Translation: The scientific jury is still out. In the meantime, there are other reasons to be concerned. Because Prilosec and Nexium are proton-pump inhibitors, they are both incredibly effective at stopping acid production in the stomach — perhaps too effective.

A lack of acid may raise your risk of pneumonia, because the same stuff that makes your chest feel as if it's burning also kills incoming bacteria and viruses. You may also have an elevated risk of bone loss — in the less acidic environment, certain forms of calcium may not be absorbed effectively during digestion. "The risk of a fracture has been estimated to be over 40 percent higher in patients who use these drugs long-term, and the risk clearly increases with duration of therapy," says Dr. Rodgers.

Your new strategy: When you feel the fire, first try to extinguish it with Zantac 150 or Pepcid AC. Both of these OTC products work by blocking histamine from stimulating the stomach cells that produce acid. Just know that neither drug is a long-term fix.

Visine Original

What possible harm to your peepers could come from these seemingly innocuous eyedrops? "Visine gets the red out, but it does so by shrinking blood vessels, just like Afrin shrinks the vessels in your nose," says Thomas Steinemann, M.D., a spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Overuse of the active ingredient tetrahydrozoline can perpetuate the vessel dilating-and-constricting cycle and may cause even more redness.

Your new strategy: If you still want to rely on Visine, at least make sure you don't use too many drops per dose and you don't use the stuff for more than 3 or 4 days. But you'd really be better off figuring out the underlying cause of the redness and treating that instead. If it's dryness, use preservative-free artificial tears, recommends Dr. Steinemann. Visine Pure Tears Portables is a good choice for moisture minus side effects.

Pseudoephedrine

Forget that this decongestant can be turned into methamphetamine. People with heart disease or hypertension should watch out for any legitimate drug that contains pseudoephedrine. See, pseudoephedrine doesn't just constrict the blood vessels in your nose and sinuses; it can also raise blood pressure and heart rate, setting the stage for vascular catastrophe. Over the years, pseudoephedrine has been linked to heart attacks and strokes. "Pseudoephedrine can also worsen symptoms of benign prostate disease and glaucoma," says Dr. Rodgers.

our new strategy: Other OTC oral nasal decongestants can contain phenylephrine, which has a safety profile similar to pseudoephedrine's. A 2007 review didn't find enough evidence that phenylephrine was effective. Our advice: Avoid meds altogether and clear your nasal passages with a neti pot, the strangely named system that allows you to flush your sinuses with saline ($15, sinucleanse.com). University of Wisconsin researchers found that people who used a neti pot felt their congestion and head pain improve by as much as 57 percent. Granted, the flushing sensation is odd at first, but give it a chance. Dr. Roizen did: "I do it every day after I brush my teeth," he says.

Me again: I just bought one of these neti pots from Amazon and will give it a try.

The Diderot effect

I'm reading The Overspent American by Juliet Schor about how much we spend and how much we are in denial that our spending is spurred on by what other people have or where we want to be in the social strata. Schor points out that we all think that other people are too materialistic, but never ourselves ("I only have things that I want or need," we'll say, never seeing our own excesses -- just like, I suppose, how we can see other people's faults so clearly but not our own.)

I was very interested in this section called Learning Diderot's Lesson: Stopping the Upward Creep of Desire:

"In the eighteenth century, the French philosopher Denis Diderot wrote an essay entitled 'Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown.' Diderot's regrets were prompted by a gift of a beautiful scarlet dressing gown. But in a short time, his pleasure turned sour as he began to sense that the surroundings within which the gown was worn did not properly reflect the garment's elegance. He grew dissatisfied with his study, with its threadbare tapestry, the desk, his chairs and even the room's bookshelves. One by one, the familiar but well-worn furnishings of the study were replaced. In the end, Diderot found himself seated uncomfortably in the stylish formality of his new surroundings, regretting the work of this 'imperious scarlet robe that forced everything else to conform with its own elegant tone.'"

Garden Party timetable

My invitation to the Buckingham Palace garden party came in the post, and I told a few people about it -- and they didn't waste any time raining on my parade!

One said, "Is the Queen attending?"

"No," I said, feeling a bit sheepish. Is it no good if the Queen's not there? I wondered to myself.

"NO Queen??" she asked.

"Charles will be there!" I interjected.

"But no queen," she said, shaking her head.

And yesterday at a BBQ, a woman said, "I'm in the Red Cross. I saw that invitation to apply for the garden party but I just COULDN'T BE BOTHERED with it."

"Well, I could be bothered," I said, as nicely as poss. "And I got an invite. I am very excited."

"Hmmph," she replied.

Anyway, I thought you all might find the timetable that they sent me for the afternoon amusing:

3:00 Gates open

3:30 Tea is served in the main tea tent until 5 pm

3:40 Yeoman of the Guard hold ground

4:00 The Royal Air Force Red Arrows fly past

4:05 The National Anthem announces the arrival of Their Royal Highnesses The Prince of Wales, The Duchess of Cornwall, and Her Royal Highness Princess Alexandria, the Hon Lady Ogilvy (there are two orchestras playing in the afternoon)

4:10 A small number of individual presentations will be pre-arranged to take place at the Garden Party.

4:15 Tea is served in the Diplomatic Tea Tent

4:30 Tea is served in the Royal Tea Tent

5:10 Members of the Royal Family take tea in the Royal Tea Tent

5:50 Members of the Royal Family depart

6:00 The National Anthem

Henley Boat Race update

Update on my daughter rowing at Henley yesterday:

Katie's boat came in LAST in their race. :(

She got a couple of cool shirts out of it for participating though and even though her race was over by 9:30 am, she stayed the rest of the day with her pals there, drinking Pimm's so it wasn't an entirely bad experience....

Taste of London

Went up to London on Friday night after work to a Taste of London in Regent's Park. There you can get samples of fabulous dishes from expensive and trendy restaurants that you would never get to or have the money to dine at normally.
We had a wonderful time and are going to go every year from now on. It's still on until Sunday in case any of you feel like attending.

Here's the blurb on it:

"Seen as 'One of the World's greatest food festivals' (Time Magazine, October 2007) Taste of London will be hosting over 40 of the capital's top restaurants in the glorious surrounds of Regent's Park on 19-22 June.

Restaurants including Le Gavroche, L'Atelier du Joel Robuchon, China Tang and Café Anglais will be serving up signature dishes in sample sizes and world class, Michelin starred chefs including Tom Aikens, Angela Hartnett, Gary Rhodes and Atul Kochhar will be showing off their renowned culinary skills."

My husband Mel and I were wandering around last night trying to decide where to eat next, and famous chefs would pass by. "Look," I said at one point, "Anthony Worrell Thompson is about to walk right past you."

"Huh?" he replied. "Who's that?"

"A famous chef," I said, looking at the guy's bright red hair. "See, he's walking right next to you now!"

Then later, I said, "See the guy there who is telling everyone to come taste his delicious white tomato soup?" Mel looked over. "That's Gary Rhodes."

"Don't know what he looks like," Mel said, even though he had just consumed a delicious lemon tart from Gary Rhodes' restaurant stand.

I think my favorite dish of the night was from Tamarind, an Indian restaurant in Mayfair. It was spiced chickpeas (garbanzo beans) with whole wheat crisps, mint and tamarind chutney, sweetened yogurt and blueberries. The flavors were unexpected and amazing -- what more could you ask from a dish?

I want to try and re-create it at home. I found the recipe below for spicy chickpeas so I think I'm halfway there:

Spicy chickpeas (or garbanzo beans if you live in the US)

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon cumin seed
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon lemon pepper
2 tomatoes, chopped
2 (15 ounce) cans garbanzo beans, drained
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 onion, chopped

In a large pot over low heat, warm oil and cumin; heat until cumin turns a darker shade of brown. Add salt, chili powder and lemon and pepper seasoning; mix well. Stir in tomatoes; once the juice begins to thicken add in chickpeas and mix well. Add in lemon juice and mix well; add onions and stir until they become soft. Remove from heat and place into a serving bowl; serve immediately.

Meet the Recessionistas

In an earlier post, I revealed that I try to only buy discount clothes for myself because I feel too guilty paying full price -- especially in England, where a nice suit for a garden party can cost £500.

After that post, I received an email from regular commenter Theresa, telling me of her similar habits. She wrote:

"For my wedding, I was planning to wear something that was hanging in my closet, but after 17 years in the mortgage banking industry, everything was dressy, was black or navy, not exactly wedding apparel. One Sunday morning, Vince and I were heading into a Best Buy and just next door was a Ross Dress For Less, so I left him to his electronics and went in thinking something might 'jump out' at me.

I walked in and the first thing I saw was a pink skirt suit and remembering that Vince said he liked me in pink...well...

I'm attaching a picture from our day...what do you think of my outfit which cost $32.46 ($29.99 plus tax!)"



Theresa, I loved your dress -- the rose pink colour is beautiful. But I'll bet you didn't realize that you and I are suddenly trendy! Jezebel.com explains why:

"From the ashes of the economy rises a chic new phoenix: The Recessionista. While the fashionista may have locked herself in the vault with her tiaras, her younger, hipper sister—recessonista—is at the mall finding designer threads (or diffusion designer threads) at discount prices.

Recessionistas take advantage of discount designer lines at places like Target, H&M and Kohl's. Pre-recession, perhaps we were just cheap?"

Wrong gender

My daughter Katie is rowing at Henley tomorrow. I was excited to think that I could get all dressed up and wear my new fascinator and see her and partake in the social activities, the champagne drinking, etc. But then I learned that the *real* Henley, the Royal Regatta, is next week because that's when the MEN row. The women are rowing this week to no fanfare at all. It doesn't seem right that she can't be in the Royal Regatta simply because of her gender, but that's the Real World for you.



Katie has had these experiences before. When her brother used to sing in a Christmas concert at Wellington College (where royals send their kids to school), we would attend and be dazzled by the old buildings and beautiful atmosphere in the chapel. Katie would sigh and say, "I wish I could go to school here," but again, WRONG GENDER so no chance. (Now I think they are starting to accept some female students, but too late for Katie.)

Stuff I find interesting that you probably won't

The opera I blogged about on Monday, Ariadne auf Naxos, only came into being through the patronage of Karl Wittgenstein, who funded many of Richard Strauss' operas. I loved this line about him in the Royal Opera House's program: "A steel magnate and one of the richest men in Austria, Karl gave up industry at 52 and devoted himself to good works and patronage."

Wouldn't that be nice if the rest of us were so loaded that we could give up 'industry' (or our boring day jobs) and devote ourselves to good works?

Anyway, Karl's sons were Ludwig, the famous philosopher, and Paul, a concert pianist. Ludwig was such a genius, and said many incredible things, including this:
The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.

What I didn't know, though, is that Paul was a concert pianist who fought in World War I, was gassed then had to have his right arm amputated. He returned home and wanted to continue his career as a pianist, but of course, only had one arm left. So he commissioned composers to create pieces for him to play, and that is why we have the beautiful Concerto for the Left Hand by Ravel to enjoy today.

The corruption of psychiatry

I find the following so shocking. I am usually one of the most cynical people in the room, but I am sure this guy would have bamboozled me if he'd wanted. I keep trying to remind myself not to believe what people say in general (finding it out for yourself is best), but who would think someone so eminent would be so corrupt?

The New York Times did an expose, and this excerpt is from the website AlterNet:

What Dick Cheney is to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, psychiatrist Joseph Biederman is to the explosion of psychiatric medications in American children. Recently, Biederman was nailed by congressional investigators and the New York Times for overestimating just how greedy an elite shrink is entitled to be. Beyond a peek into the corruption of psychiatry at its highest levels, the scandal is an opportunity to reconsider the Big Pharma financed view of why kids become disruptive and destructive.

On June 8, 2008, the New York Times reported the following about Joseph Biederman: "A world-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful anti-psychotic medicines in children earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007 but for years did not report much of this income to university officials, according to information given congressional investigators."

Due in part to Biederman's influence, the number of American children and adolescents treated for bipolar disorder increased 40-fold from 1994 to 2003, and as Bloomberg News reported (September 2007), "The expanded use of bipolar as a pediatric diagnosis has made children the fastest-growing part of the $11.5 billion U.S. market for anti-psychotic drugs."

Pediatrician and author Lawrence Diller notes about Biederman, "He single-handedly put pediatric bipolar disorder on the map." Biederman has been in a position to convince many doctors to diagnose bipolar disorder in children and to medicate them with anti-psychotic drugs. In addition to being a professor at Harvard, Biederman is also chief of research in pediatric psychopharmacology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, which publishes more than 30 papers yearly on psychiatric disorders. And Biederman himself has authored and co-authored approximately 500 articles, 70 book chapters, and more than 450 scientific abstracts, as well as being on the editorial board of many professional journals.

Scary reading

Some scary reading on the train into London last night -- I was reading a book review about The End of Food: The Coming Crisis in the World Food Industry by Paul Roberts.

The review says:

"Paul Roberts told us in his last book, The End of Oil, that the modern world was in trouble because of our relationship with oil. He was right -- our oil economy is crazy. Here, in the End of Food, he tells us that the modern world is in trouble because of our relationship with food. And he's right again...both books are worth reading but this is the scarier of the two....

It's all about scale. Food retailers have grown so big that they compete with each other by cutting prices...the result is everything's getting bigger and cheaper.

One of the consequences of all this cheap food, of course, is that we're getting fatter."

I've just ordered this book from Amazon but I know it'll be hard to read because I won't want to hear what it has to say (that food is overproduced, and we can't sustain this so the era of cheap and plentiful food is almost over).

The book review included a photo from the Million Pound March -- these women march for 'size acceptance.'

Transformation is the life of life

Wonderful night at the opera last night seeing Ariadne auf Naxos (Richard Strauss) at Covent Garden. The Royal Opera House is so beautiful, especially downstairs where the expensive seats are. I was passing through there on my way to the rafters to the cheapest seats where you can't even see the expressions on the singers faces, or actually, know who is singing if there is an ensemble on stage, and I took note of the Perrier-Jouet champagne bar. I looked as the champagne was being poured -- it wasn't just gold, it had a pinkness to it as well -- it called to me, so I had a glass before marching up to my fate in the cheap seats. (It's a good thing my husband never reads my blog, or he would find out that I spent about $20 on a glass of this nectar.)

So the upshot with the opera is that Ariadne has an intense love affair, it breaks up and she goes off to a deserted island to be depressed. She waits for the God of Death to come for her and sings so beautifully as she waits, and when death finally comes for her, it's not really the god of death, but Bacchus, a really cute god with lots of life in him, and a great singing voice. She falls in love and is transformed by that emotion into a new person.

Here's what the author of the libretto wrote to Strauss about it:

You ask me what the transformation Ariadne experiences in Bacchus's arms is all about....Transformation is the life of life, the real mystery of creativity; persistence is paralysis and death. Whoever wants to live must get beyond himself, must transform himself; he must forget. And yet all human dignity involves persistence, remembrance and faithfulness. This is one of the profound contradictions on which existence is built....

Here's a little sample of the opera (below). This man is trying to cheer up Ariadne who just sits around the island and mopes all day:

Facts about Bush visit yesterday where protests were banned

Annoying habits of the British upper class

Dealing with members of the British upper classes can be infuriating. They have their private rules, codes of conduct, and if you violate one, they'll never tell you but let you know in a snide smug way that you only figure out later (after the moment has passed). Maybe this helps them feel better about the loss of the Empire, I don't know....

Once when I had to see an older consultant at a hospital (the ones on the edge of retirement are the very worst behaved -- they can make you feel like something they found under their shoe), and he gestured for me to sit down and told me his name.

"Pleased to meet you," I said. He stopped what he was doing, peered over his glasses, laughed superciliously and replied, "I certainly hope you shall be," or something like that to let me know that I had made a gaffe. I felt uncomfortable for the whole appointment after that, and when I left, I went on a quest to discover what I had done that was so wrong.

I found out, but have also read a passage in a book today called Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour by Kate Fox that covers this very thing:

The Pleased to Meet You Problem

...in some social circles -- mainly the upper-middle class and above -- the problem with saying 'pleased to meet you' is that this common phrase is just that: 'common', meaning a lower-class thing to say. The people who hold this view might not put it quite like this -- they are more likely to say that 'pleased to meet you' is 'incorrect,' and you will indeed find some etiquette books that confirm this. The explanation offered is that one should not say 'pleased to meet you' as it is an obvious lie: one cannot possibly be sure at that point whether one is pleased to meet the person or not. Given the usual irrationalities, dishonesties and hypocrisies of English etiquette, this seems unnecessarily and quite uncharacteristically scrupulous.

An embuggerance of an illness

A while ago, I blogged about how my friend and I have our own language that has developed over thirty years of friendship. I gave the example of Ro, our word for getting roaring drunk. The original post is here.

In today's Sunday Times is an article about a new project to capture words like these in a new dictionary. So, of course, as soon as I finish this post, I am going to go submit some of our words. If you want to submit something, the website is...but before I tell you, you must promise to tell us your word in a comment to this post...anyway, website is www.englishproject.org.

Article from the Times below:

Has your dog got a “griffley” expression – or perhaps, like the author Terry Pratchett, you are suffering from an “embuggerance” of an illness?

If so, you are using some of the thousands of words exchanged within families, groups of friends or even public schools being gathered by linguists for a guide to the hidden English that never makes it into the dictionaries.

They have called it “kitchen table lingo” and members of the public have begun to send in their contributions.

“In just under a week we have received more than 700 words,” said Professor Bill Lucas, a trustee of The English Project, a £25m initiative dedicated to telling the story of how English developed.

To qualify as kitchen table lingo, words must be used by more than three people for at least a month and cannot appear in the Oxford English Dictionary. The words will be published online and in books.

Fuel shortages

Was still pondering whether or not to go protest Bush's visit to England tomorrow but now I can't drive up to London as Shell oil tanker drivers have gone on strike, and we are having fuel shortages over here. The advice we've received is not to make any unnecessary car trips for four days and not to panic-buy gas. It's hard not to buy in a panic though, but I've resisted so far. But I have a long commute to the office each morning so I need gas for next week.

Do you know what these oil tankers demands are? They want a 13-percent pay increase, and they already make about $60,000 a year. I was reading an article last week from the US that said FedEx drivers only make $25,000 to $35,000 a year, and they have to spend $47,000 buying their own truck.

Anyway, back to George Bush. He's costing the British taxpayer $2 million in security -- they are going to seal off central London tomorrow and close Heathrow airport for a few hours so Air Force One can land. "Why do they have to close the busiest airport in the world for him?" my husband asks. "Why can't he fly into RAF Brize Norton, the military base, instead?"

A nice cup of tea

A nice cup of tea is the answer to all your problems in the UK. If anything traumatic or joyful happens, British people must have a cup of tea afterwards. It is very refreshing to have some nice hot tea at around 4 in the afternoon when lassitude from a long day overtakes you.

There are so many rules on how to make a cup of tea correctly. One friend puts milk in straight after she puts the tea in but my husband declares this approach totally wrong. He puts a little boiling water in first, lets it brew, then tops it up and milk goes last.

I, for all the years I have lived here, have never learned to make a 'proper' cup of tea, and the stuff I make has no flavor. Therefore, whenever I see a British person near a kettle of boiling water, I make them make me a cup of tea because, as my husband says, I can't be trusted with this task.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the tea bag -- it's in all the British papers today, and sadly, they are forced to admit that an American discovered the tea bag (but real tea drinkers won't have anything to do with a tea bag -- only loose tea leaves will do for them).

Here's the story below:

Raise a cuppa to the tea bag as it marks its 100th birthday.

Invented by tea merchant Thomas Sullivan in New York City in June 1908, they can now be found in virtually every one of Britain's 24 million homes.

But if it wasn't for a handful of confused Americans, the tea bag may never have made it into our cups at all.

They came about only after Mr Sullivan, in an attempt to cut costs, sent samples of tea leaves to potential customers in small silk pouch-like purses.

Unsure quite what to do with the strange little bag, the Americans dunked it into a cup of hot water. And so was born the tea bag.

The return of the little black dress

Yay, I got a ticket to this on Monday night. All the toff seats ($300) were gone, so I'll be sitting up in the cheap seats in the rafters using my binoculars to see the singers, but at least I'll be there to hear the glorious music.

Here's the story from yesterday's New York Times , and the YouTube video is underneath that.

Deborah Voigt is finally putting on that little black dress.
On Monday Ms. Voigt, the acclaimed American soprano, will star in Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos” at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London: the very production from which she was fired in 2004. At the time, the director, Christof Loy, proclaimed her too heavy to wear a sleek black cocktail dress that he deemed integral to his concept. The dress has since become a symbol of skewed priorities among opera directors who value a singer’s appearance over vocal artistry.

For the moment Ms. Voigt, who has not appeared at Covent Garden since 2001 and who had weight-reduction surgery in 2004, is making light of the matter. Last week she and her publicists produced a video spoof, “Deborah Voigt: The Return of the Little Black Dress,” and posted it on YouTube.

This is the video (below).

Eccentric fashion

I found some Birkenstocks over the weekend that I just had to have. They are 'anatomically correct' I told my husband, but he said that seemed to imply there was a male organ in them so I think I must have meant 'ergonomically correct' in that they have ups and downs in the shoe that mirror the actual foot. They are so fab that I wore them to the office but am now sort of wondering if they are too unprofessional to wear, but it is summer and the living is easy, right?

Another problem is when I wear these shoes, my bag really doesn't go at all. My bag is another quirky purchase of mine -- it is covered with Japanese holograms (below). I had to put it into a large black bag with all of my office junk in it to hide the fact that my shoes and my bag just don't go.

Is it just me or is there stuff from decades ago in your work bag? I have my calendar (diary, they call them over here), Ipod, headphones, tissues, pens, etc., in my bag but also there are things like CDs that I have no idea what's on them, ancient lipsticks -- wait I'm just checking in there now -- years-old computer screen cleaner that I've never used, an empty box that used to have medication in it, a squeezy-tube twister that I used to get the last bit of heat rub out of a tube when I hurt my back (two years ago), glass cases with nothing in them, a glove with no partner from last winter, sanpro and on and on. Why do I carry this in with me every morning? I have emptied out bags like this at other jobs -- I empty it all into a plastic supermarket bag then leave that in my closet for a few years. I have several bags just like this from other places I've worked. (I work on contracts so usually start with an empty bag for work then it just accumulates stuff.)

Sad or what?

Where's my imaginary cigarette?

Book club meeting on Monday night. I had my camera, of course, but complained that it was getting boring just taking photos of smiling women around a table for my blog so Sabine Gruber had an artistic idea for a shot (above). I had to call my daughter to ask her how to work the camera though. I can barely even turn the TV at home with all the gadgets required to do it now that we have a satellite box, DVD recorder, SkyPlus box for recording programs straight off the TV, etc.

Anyway, book club was great as usual. Everyone in it is interesting with fresh ways of thinking about things so I learn a lot from each meeting.

Last night, though, one of our members was speaking about her stressful life at the moment. She sighed then said, "Give me my imaginary cigarette." When we asked what she meant by that, she said she'd watched so many movies where people are stressed out then put a cigarette in their mouths and exhaled, then seem relaxed, as if all the tension went out of them at that moment. She viewed the cigarette as the agent to effect that change. "I tried it once," she said, "but it was absolutely disgusting, so real cigarettes won't work for me. But I still want that imaginary cigarette that will take all my stress away with the first puff."

Stephens College

My friend Elizabeth Applebaum and I met when we were at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri. It is a small liberal-arts college that used to be a finishing school in the '30s and '40s. I had a great-aunt who went there in the 1930s, and I still have one of her books on deportment published by Stephens College. Some nuggets from Smartly Speaking (published in 1936):

The singing of Laudamus Te (We Praise Thee) marks the official opening of every convocation and the singing of The Stephens Hymn closes every convocation. Each song is loved by every loyal Stephens girl. The refinement and culture of a true college spirit suggests that every Stephens girl learn these songs early in her first year.
...
A girl chewing gum is not attractive. Do not ask others to watch such a process.
...
A woman does not talk to a man on the street except to exchange a friendly greeting or a few casual remarks. If he wishes to talk to you, he will walk along with you. Dismiss him gracefully by saying, "I'm glad I saw you, Jack."

Back to modern times:
Stephens has this small problem in that no one really eminent has gone there in a while, so the two main celebrities they can claim as alums are Dawn Wells from the 1960s show Gilligan's Island, and Paula Zahn, former CNN reporter.

We read bragging articles about these women all the time in material released from the college. They make reference to how important Stephens was in forming their characters and preparing them for life in a hard world.

But recently both of them have been in the headlines. First Dawn Wells:


Mary Ann? Or Mary Jane? Actress Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island so many years ago, has been busted with marijuana and has been sentenced to four days in jail!

If you can believe it (we can't!), actress Dawn Wells was pulled over by police and busted with weed...and she's 69-years-old! She had four half-smoked joints and two cases for cannabis in her car!

Then Paula Zahn:
From the New York Daily News on Monday:
The husband of former CNN anchor Paula Zahn says there's no way he could have mismanaged her millions because she was spending the money as fast as she made it.
Less than two weeks after being sued by Zahn for making "dubious investments" with more than $25 million, her jilted hubby, Richard Cohen, fired back by branding his estranged wife a wastrel who wants to air their dirty laundry in public.

"The $20 million cost of her Connecticut mansion alone (without even including the extravagant nature of Ms. Zahn's annual expenditures) consumed more than her entire income over their 20-year marriage," Cohen's lawyer, Douglas Flaum, charged in court papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.

A source close to Cohen, 59, added that Zahn, who recently lost her anchor job at CNN, spent "wild" money on clothes, even as the network gave her a healthy clothing allowance.

Did their Stephens education have anything to do with this, do you think?

George Bush visit protest

I'm thinking of doing this next weekend (below). I know some (many?) of you will not approve but I try to be supportive of causes my friends feel strongly about so I'm sure you will be the same with me. :)

Protest at Bush visit - 1pm, Parliament Square, 15 June

War criminal George Bush will visit London during his European tour next month. He is expected on 15 June.

Stop the War is planning a protest in London on that day against Bush and his war policies, and against the British government's continuing support for his wars.

PS
This doesn't mean that I don't support the troops over there. I think they are doing a fantastic job -- it's Bush I can't stand for sending them over there in the first place.

Work longer, live longer

I used to think the minute I started to get long in the tooth that my work (I work as an IT contractor for companies) would dry up. That will still probably happen but some interesting developments mean that if I hang around in the workforce long enough, I will be in demand again later as there aren't enough young people coming up to fill our jobs. I read somewhere the shortages would start to get acute in 2015 (or was it 2030), so if I just hang around the job market until then, even more opportunities to make money will crop up. And then, according to the bottom paragraph, the longer I work, the longer I'll live.

"A lot of employers are starting to confront the rather unusual problem of shortages of workers. To fill that deficit, quite a few companies are proving to be adept at finding, hiring, training and developing older employees. In his provocative new book, "The Longevity Revolution," Dr Robert N. Butler, a top expert in geriatrics, cites some examples:

"Wells Fargo has bused more than 100 retirees from the big retirement community of Sun City, Ariz., to its operations center in Tempe, where they helped process monthly statements. And McDonald's created a successful McMaster's program for hiring older workers because some franchises find they can't attract enough younger ones."

These hiring drives have the extra added attraction of helping people to live longer and better lives. Says Butler: "In studies at the National Institutes of Health, my colleagues and I found that people who had clearly specified goals and organization in their lives lived longer than those who did not. Whether work extends a person's life requires further investigation, but its enhancement of the quality of life seems certain."

Scenes from the lives of my friends

From a friend in DC:

"Wednesday through Friday afternoon were horrible. Our neighborhood was struck by a mini-tornado that created lots of downed trees (our massive oaks), one damaged house, and no electricity for 50 hours.

On Wednesday afternoon, I saw the fast rush of horizontal winds, blowing huge limbs, and yelled for my husband to join me in the basement. He said, oh no tornados are in the forecast. I yelled that being from Mississippi I had more experience with that than him, and ran downstairs but he didn't come. After it all blew over, I pointed out that a huge oak had fallen in our back yard, hitting the fence in two places, and just missing our utility shed. Oh, he said in surprise, I didn't hear that!

We have now agreed that he should defer to his Southern wife in these matters!"

Sunday Miscellany

Stuff I'm mulling over today:

Watching people getting older
Went for dental checkup yesterday with the kids. I've been going to my dentist since my daughter was born 19 years ago. He and I were both in our early thirties. Because I only see him once a year, I easily observe that he's looking older, seems grumpier and more set in his ways with the passing of time. Then I realize that must be true of me too as he is merely reflecting the years I have gone through as well.

Jealousy
I get jealous of some of my friend's lifestyles -- they have big houses with lots of land, they go on trips to exotic places (I'll go to France for a vacation, but they'll go to South Africa or China which is way out of my budget), they have more money than I do. I must work on being more content with what I have.

Recipe of the Day
Today I'm going to make my friend Gail's recipe for fajitas. She made corn tortillas from scratch (I buy them from a marketplace in London that makes them right there), chopped up green onions and red/yellow peppers, coriander (cilantro -- I have some growing by the front door) and chicken. You cook all that in a frying pan with fajita spices or cumin, chili power and any other hot spices you have on hand, but her secret that made it special was at the very end of cooking, you add a package of sour cream and cook that until it's bubbly. The resulting meal is incredible.

Test results
Mammogram results came back -- everything is fine. I pause to reflect on two people I know currently diagnosed with breast cancer out of the blue and think how lucky I am.

Currently Reading
Red Princess: A Revolutionary Life by Sofka Zinovieff. Author is writing about her grandmother's wild life in pre-Revolutionary Russia, then in exile in Paris, then as a communist. She's recreating the book from her grandmother's diary so it's a bit flat as there's no one left to talk to who knew her then. The author travels around Russia finding places where her grandmother lived but this telling the tale once removed is a bit sterile.

Trying to find an outfit for the Royal garden party
Started searching for something to wear to the Buckingham Palace garden party in July. Everything is so expensive! Hundreds and hundreds of pounds for a dress, 500 pounds for a suit and even a hat is almost a hundred. I finally decided that I am not buying a traditional hat but will cop out and wear a fascinator -- those things that Camilla has made fashionable. Here's an example:

Not making beautiful music

I had a piano teacher about eight years ago -- I've never been able to play the piano well enough to accompany myself while singing so thought I would improve my skills -- but had a bad experience. It was clear early on that the teacher disliked her students: "I had a couple of people cancel today; I'm so glad; I didn't have to bother with teaching them, but I get to keep the money." You could never cancel a lesson for any legitimate emergency and not have to pay -- any cancellations forfeited the entire fee. Then when you were at the lesson, she'd moan about all her other students and how difficult they were. And when her husband came home, they would start conversing normally about his day at the office and what to have for dinner as if you weren't in the room too and struggling to play some little Beethoven piece.

She was so mean that I came to dread the lessons, then finally asked my husband to call and tell her I couldn't continue, to which she said that I would lose all the rest of the money I had paid for the series of lessons. By that time, I felt it was a small price to pay to be free of her negativity in my life.

Years later, my friend Karen Firbank had a jewelery party. We were going to be shown some new exciting pieces, and we all intended to buy what we could so Karen would get some cool gift later for hosting the party. We settled in, chattering to each other and drinking sparkling wine.

Then the woman selling the jewelery began to make her presentation. There was something oddly familiar about her. I searched my memory as I listened to her speak, and watched her movements. Why did I feel like I knew this woman?

And it dawned on me -- this was my piano teacher from the past, but many many pounds heavier, and not much changed in the attitude department. I resolved then and there that I wasn't going to buy a thing from a woman who had been so difficult when I was simply trying to improve my piano skills.

The party concluded, and afterwards, Karen seemed embarrassed about something. "What's wrong?" we asked her.

"No one bought a thing," she confessed. "Not one ring, not one bracelet or necklace. I think she was miffed. She said she'd never had this happen to her before."

I immediately blurted out why I hadn't bought anything. "I'm sorry," I said, "but I'm not helping that woman economically if I can help it. I used to take lessons from her, and she was horrible to me. I've never forgotten it."

And do you know, dear readers, that everyone else at that party had a similar tale? Most of them had children who had taken lessons from her, and all of them had unpleasant stories to tell from their association with her. None of us had said anything to the others but we'd all decided we weren't going to purchase anything from her.

Now is that karma or what? I wonder if this thought occurred to her as she drove home empty-handed?

Dinner with the girls

Dinner with the girls last night, except my camera ran out of battery before I got any photos of the group. My camera was still working when I arrived at Tessa Elphick's thatched cottage and admired the rural beauty of it all. I was enchanted by her chickens and the view from her kitchen and the flowers in her garden and the utter peacefulness of her location, tucked away as she is in a little village in Hampshire.

Here is Tessa in her kitchen:

And here's her husband Richard, being 'farmer-y' as I put it. He was busy in the garden, and I got a shot of him and their cockerel.

This cockerel did not like me at all and almost pecked my hand off when I tried to feed him (below). Tessa has given me eggs from her chickens before and they make the best breakfast -- so much better than supermarket eggs.

Dinner with the girls was fun as usual with everyone saying what they were really thinking. We began to harp on our children (how they don't appreciate us) and illnesses of family, friends then we moved on to hospital disasters (botched operations, etc.) Finally, Karen Blakeley interjected: "Is this really all we can talk about? Our children? Illnesses? What about our dreams for the future? Our goals, our hopes?"

At this point, we fell silent and just looked at her blankly.

The poignancy of echos

The poignancy of life is at its strongest when you live through something twice -- the first time you go through it, the experience is straightforward, but the second time, the echos of the first experience are there like extra notes in a chord, and the weight of that knowledge makes it harder to bear.

For example, I am trying to help a severely depressed person. I should be a good choice for this job, since I have struggled with depression myself most of my life. But when I am listening to this person speak, and suffer, and cry, I see myself with my mother, when I was that way with her. I can see her patiently listening to my woes, my grief and my pain. That makes me feel guilty that I made her suffer with my own problems when she had so many herself.

And then, when I am in the darkness in one of my children's bedrooms and straightening their blankets as they sleep, it takes me back to all those times I stood at the base of my mother's bed and watched her and straightened her blankets as she tried to sleep. She was bedridden with Multiple Sclerosis for 30 years so memories of her in bed and me standing over her is about all I have left of her.

Trend from US that will be in UK soon??

What would I do without US readers to tell me the latest trends? A friend has just told me about Zumba. I had no idea what it was, but thought it must be some sort of new energy drink....

"I'm going to a Zumba class in a few minutes at the gym. Has this Latin dance exercise craze hit England yet? It's so much fun---you do hootchy-kootchy moves to loud Hispanic music for an hour. It's a great workout, but if you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, you feel like a fool---I did that the other day and was humiliated---I'm just SO not the Jennifer Lopez sexy type."

Check out the video below. Can't wait for it to get over here. They must have these classes in London, just not out in the sticks where I live yet:

A great reason to live in Michigan

My friend in Detroit, Elizabeth, wrote me sarcastically that the following link was another great reason to live in Michigan, but I look at this and think YES! I would love to go this! How can she joke about an Elvis Fest not being fun?

Michigan's Elvis Fest

A royal hypocrite

One of my favorite topics of conversation is England's royal family and what coddled money-wasters they are and how we should get rid of them. So when an invitation came for me to take part in a lottery to secure a ticket to a royal garden party at Buckingham Palace honoring the British Red Cross (of which I am a diffident member), I applied. There weren't many places so I didn't expect anything but was aware of the irony of me even applying.

Yesterday I got a letter that I was successful and will receive an invite. I was so excited. A big fat invitation package will arrive in mid-June that will tell me how to behave around the Prince of Wales & Camilla, and how to dress. (Morning coats for men, hats for women) I have no idea of the protocol involved and would probably just say "Hey Charles, how's it going?" if nobody told me differently.

On top of the hypocrisy of me going to a Buckingham Palace garden party is the fact that I haven't done that many Red Cross duties either. I am the secretary of our branch, but that mostly means I send emails and messages to people -- hardly onerous life-saving work.

But I'm still going, so there.

Pic below is of me on a Red Cross duty, and below that is a column I wrote for the Chicago Tribune in which I outline how terrible the royal family is.


Excerpt from article in the Chicago Tribune:

chicagotribune.com >> Editorials
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why the fuss over welfare moochers?

By Elizabeth Scanlon Thomas. Elizabeth Scanlon Thomas lives outside London
Published February 15, 2005

When I moved to England as an adult, I was entranced. Summer days here seem to go on forever, whether you're sipping beer at a pub on the River Thames or enjoying tea and scones during a visit to the many ancestral homes open to the public. The hazy golden sunshine diffuses the harshness of everyday life and makes afternoons pass like dreams. Every village has a memorial to soldiers who died defending the empire too. It's tradition.

Another tradition is the civil list. This is a list of people who get money from the government to live. The royals get about $15 million a year--as if they didn't already have huge personal fortunes amassed at the public's expense.

The National Audit Office in England has released information about their spending. For example, Queen Elizabeth's garden parties cost almost $934,000 a year, with $67,000 spent on invitations alone.....

Copyright Chicago Tribune 2005

(Note: then I go on from there making salient points then ending up with a big finish :) but will spare you that)

More evidence that my hubby is not the Antichrist

Breaking news just in. My husband Mel is definitely not the Antichrist. This discussion started in this post(click on link to see it.)

A friend writes: "Apparently the Antichrist is gay and Jewish, according to John McCain's favorite fundamentalist. Is Mel upset?"

See the YouTube video for yourself below. I hope Mel is OK when he sees this as I think he enjoyed thinking he might be the Antichrist -- think of the press coverage he could have gotten, and the product endorsements ('the Antichrist uses Gilette razors, shouldn't you?):

How to fail an exam

Some real answers to exam questions: (click on pic to make it bigger if you can't read it)

Oui-ha! The French love country and western stuff

We vacationed in France last summer. The first morning I was on the beach at Argeles sur-Mer, a lovely coastal town on the Mediterranean, struggling to decipher the local paper with a French dictionary as my constant companion. All of a sudden, I saw an article I could understand immediately. “Get your kicks on Route 66!” it said in English, accompanied by a photo of a middle-aged French man standing next to an American car from the ‘50s. The article detailed how fascinated this man was with America, and lovingly listed each state in the U.S. that he had been privileged to visit.

The next day, the newspaper devoted an entire page to a festival celebrating America that had been held the day before. The day was glorious success, the paper reported, and mentioned that visitors could buy “chapeaux Stetson” (Stetson hats) and Elvis Presley memorabilia. The attendees feasted on American dishes and marveled at imported Cadillacs and Harley-Davidsons.

I realized that even though many Americans didn't like the French when Chirac's government didn't go along with Bush's war, the French still loved parts of our culture.

Confirmation of this came over the weekend with a story in the Times:

They turn out in their hundreds in Stetsons and boots as hits such as the Crazy Foot Mambo and the Cowboy Strut echo around their village halls.

They are drawn by a love of American culture - although definitely not American politics - and a passion for line dancing, which enables them to swing but avoid all human contact.

Now country and western has become so big in France that the country's bureaucrats have decided to bring the craze under state control.

The French administration has moved to create an official country dancing diploma as part of a drive to regulate the fad. Authorised instructors who have been on publicly funded training courses will be put in charge of line dancing lessons and balls.

The rules, which come into force next year, come after the rapid spread of country and western in France, where an estimated 100,000 people line dance several times a week. Jean Chauveau, the chairman of the country section of the French Dance Federation, said: “It's growing at a crazy rate. There are thousands of clubs and more are springing up all the time.”

He said the French shunned the square dancing that is popular among country and western fans in the United States because it involved physical contact. “They don't want to take anyone by the hand or anything like that,” he said. But they were passionate about line dancing, where participants follow the steps without touching anyone else. “I think this corresponds to the individualism of our times,” Mr Chauveau said.

Cockfighting ring broken up

For some reason, this story from the Clarion-Ledger newspaper in Jackson, Mississippi, cracked me up. I think it was the idea that 50 men would think this was a fun thing to do on a Saturday afternoon and also when I read that the ringleader had been arrested on the same charge four years earlier and fined 10 dollars because cockfighting is just a misdemeanor in Mississippi.

An alleged cockfighting ring near Clinton was busted Saturday by Hinds County sheriff's deputies acting on a tip.

Eugene Davis apparently hosted the event on his property at 1486 Percy Davis Road, officials said.

He and six other men were booked into the county detention center, charged with cockfighting and cruelty to animals.

Officials said he admitted facilitating the Saturday event.

Deputies also said Davis told them he had been arrested on the same charge four years ago and fined $10.

The names of the other men were not available. Each faces a Monday court hearing. Cockfighting is a misdemeanor in Mississippi, punishable by a maximum $500 fine.

When deputies arrived at the scene, about 50 people were huddled around a large dirt pit next to a run-down trailer, said Deputy Randell Howard, one of the first to arrive.

Most of the observers took off and were not caught, he said.

"They ran out into the woods," he said.

So messy

Crisis!! The man who runs the Democrats Abroad group in Reading stopped by my house while he was taking his son out on his tricycle to say hello. It was 11:15, and I wasn't even dressed. I spoke to him outside, and I knew I needed to invite him in for a cup of tea as is the British way, so I did but it was a feeble invite.

I was standing outside in my robe, and Brits don't do this at any time of the day, especially at 11:15. I was so embarrassed. I usually have a fallback, though, and it's that my living room is pristine and ready for visitors at anytime. Last week Karen Blakeley surprised me by dropping in and I looked like a complete wreck (but I was fully dressed so I get points for that) but I took her to the living room and shut the door from the rest of the wreckage of the house, and Mel made a cup of tea and toasted a tea cake so all was fine.

But today, I didn't have that refuge. Oh no, because my son has taken over the living room this weekend. Why has he done that when he has a bedroom upstairs, and we have a slob room for watching TV and relaxing?

Just look at the mess (below -- those are my son's knees in the photo as he refused to be photographed):