Copy and paste this address to see last Sunday's inspiring sermon by Dr. Aaron White at First UU, Dallas: http://vimeo.com/71299079
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Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Tuesday Fun with Emmy
Smurfin'
Ready for Monsters U...3D!
Game Room Action
(Girls with Guns???)
(Girls with Guns???)
Photo-Ops with Sully
and Mike!
Caleb finds a magic pin-ball machine...
(The maintenance man who had been working on it told me
that he had left a couple of "hits" on it,
so when Caleb pulled it, it "miraculously" started up.)
He was thrilled!
Then we picked up PapaRob and Sawyer for
a Cup-of-YO and
some funny faces.
I've missed my boys!
Monday, July 29, 2013
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Music!
Just returned from five marvelous, music-filled days
at the UUMN Annual Conference...
(Unitarian Universalists Musicians' Network)
What an experience!
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
The shower is PRISTINE!
Thanks to
My Rob
While he's on "sabbatical", he's cooking me wonderful dinners
and doing things like this that are huge GIFTS to me!
I think he's getting his groove back.
I think he's getting his groove back.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
My Persian Lunch
Compliments of Jamileh Rasty,
who came to the U.S. 15 years ago without
understanding or speaking a single word of English,
and who wrote me a lovely note...see card.
Before
(Saffron chicken with
currants, pistacios, orange peel, and rice)
(Saffron chicken with
currants, pistacios, orange peel, and rice)
After
It was delicious!
It was delicious!
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Life in the Middle Ages: A New Blog by Connie Schultz
– 17 COMMENTS
Halfway through my sixth decade, I’ve made a wonderful discovery about aging: You get to keep growing.
The moment of midlife clarity unfolded at 7:12 p.m. on March 7, 2013. I was fanning my face with a plane ticket after racing to the gate for a flight at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, oblivious to the young man running to catch up with me. He leapt in front of me and, in a breathless stage whisper, said, “Excuse me. Do I know you?”
Oh, how easily we succumb to the tug of vanity. My writer’s heart fluttered with gratitude for this, a loyal reader. I smiled and rested a palm on my collarbone.
“Well,” I said, “who do you think I am?”
“Elaine?”
The soundtrack in my head screeched to a halt.
I shook my head. “Connie.”
“Oh,” he said, his shoulders sinking. His eyes darted from the top of my head to the toes of my Tevas. “It’s your hair,” he said. “You look younger from behind.”
Silence, except for the gasps from fellow travelers who forgot to pretend they weren’t listening.
At the precise moment when I hoped exactly no one knew who I was, a woman from Cleveland Heights, Ohio, leaned in and said, for all to hear, “I look forward to reading this essay, Connie.”
Had this happened right after I turned 50, I might have spent the entire flight slumped in my seat clutching a compact mirror and weeding chin hairs. Five years into this adventure, I laughed and posted the man’s observation on Facebook.
So what changed for me in the past five years?
Practice.
It takes a little time to accept that the world is onto us. Nobel laureate Toni Morrison said in a speech at Oberlin College last year that each of us sees ourselves at a certain age, frozen in time, which may explain why my hair still brushes my shoulders. Inside, I’m 27. Outside, I’m the woman of a certain age who missed the helmet-hair memo.
I admit to occasional hand-wringing in front of the mirror, but most of the time I’m having fun reinventing myself. Magical thinking helps, as was duly noted by one of my wisecracking kids, who will remain nameless because he is my only son.
“Really,” he said. “You’re middle-aged? Planning to live to 110, are you?”
Honestly.
When I was 30, I read Gail Godwin’s novel The Finishing School. One particular passage, in which 44-year-old Ursula advises 14-year-old Justin about aging, scared me so much that I wrote it down and carried it in my wallet for years:
There are two kinds of people … One kind, you can tell just by looking at them at what point they congealed into their final selves. It might be a very nice self, but you know you can expect no more surprises from it. Whereas, the other kind keeps moving, changing. With these people, you can never say, “X stops here,” or “Now I know all there is to know about Y.” That doesn’t mean they’re unstable. Ah, no, far from it. They are fluid. They keep moving forward and making new trysts with life, and the motion of it keeps them young. In my opinion, they are the only people who are still alive.
Yikes. I vowed to grow like the weed you can’t kill. This year, I’m an American water willow. Last year, I was a hairy bittercress.
Memories tumble out and sustain me. The other day I was dusting a crisscross of Popsicle sticks my daughter had made in first grade. “The best mother,” the faded ink reads.
Immediately, I am a newly single mom, walking into her elementary school for open house. A flock of parents giggle as they lean in to read something on the bulletin board. One of them spots me, and off they go.
Slowly, I approach the board and recognize my daughter’s drawing of me. “My mother is a bit eccentric,” her essay begins. “She has longer hair than other mothers. She is getting a divorce, but we don’t call it that. Mom says she’s having a growth spurt.”
What tugged at my heart then fills it with hope now. Life was hard, and then it got better. Repeat. Fifty was tough, but 55 feels just right.
“I look forward to that essay,” the woman at the airport said to me after the case of mistaken identity. My, how she egged me on. A dozen essays are bubbling up for a blog I’m calling “Life in the Middle Ages.” Every Friday I’ll post a new piece here.
We have so much to talk about. Reading glasses and puppies. Exercise and falling in love. Grandchildren and high heels. Juicing and social media. Solitude and activism. Food, too. We have to exchange recipes at some point, don’t you think?
Add to this list—you, dear readers. Because aging is a team sport, and I can’t win this game without you. And being a baby boomer, I believe everyone should get the chance to play.
Sign up to follow Connie’s “Life in the Middle Ages” blog here. Join the event and you’ll get a Facebook notification whenever she adds a new essay.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Friday, July 19, 2013
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Sunday, July 14, 2013
A Must-See!
It has been four years since Ayn Bowron — far better known to peers and fans as “the lovely and Talented Miz Ayn,” which was how the late P.J. Belly always brought her to the stage — has performed in Lubbock.
Or, for that matter, grilled a burger in Levelland.
Most fans remember Miz Ayn supporting her day job, when she opened a small Levelland restaurant, named it the Mean Woman Grill and made sure she never ran out of music or atmosphere.
Eventually, she took all her savings and moved to Mexico, living as cheaply and as long as possible on a beach.
But she’s back and has agreed to headline a concert at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 17, called Miz Ayn and Her Very Excellent Buds, at the Cactus Theater, 1812 Buddy Holly Ave.
She indicated that her set list contains only new material, with the exception of two songs that she has promised to perform on request.
She emailed, “This show is gonna be awesome and funny and, hopefully, raucous. I plan on heckling the audience, with a very special torture reserved for (friend) Ralph DeWitt because I am sick to death of his ‘suggesting’ that I get a job.”
She added an LOL at the end.
Not surprisingly, she confirmed that street poet Paul Bullock will open. “He will do a poem he wrote about our time in Mexico and his ‘amigo gustavo.’”
Miz Ayn called out those she expects to accompany her on stage:
“My son, Buddy Bowron, will play either bass or guitar.
“Gypsy Jane, one of our former Mean Woman Grill waitresses, will play guitar and hopefully also sing. She is extraordinary.
“Gypsy Jane, one of our former Mean Woman Grill waitresses, will play guitar and hopefully also sing. She is extraordinary.
“Kathleen Vowell. She is a singer-songwriter who is a 10-time champion knife-thrower. And yeah, I am going to ask her to throw some.
“My very good and talented friend Ron Riley playing harmonica. That’s assuming he has returned from the yearly harmonica conventions he attends.
“The Lubbock Texas Rhythm Machine, led by prize-winning blues guitarist Dustin Garrett. They are always awesome.
“And Don Caldwell himself will play saxophone — because he thinks I am cool. (And I am.)”
Those are Miz Ayn and her Very Excellent Buds.
Tickets are on sale and Miz Ayn is interested to see how much of her former Lubbock following remains after she left to try out life in Mexico.
But I suspect her West Texas fans are faithful.
Reserved seats are $20, or $40 for balcony box seats. Call 762-3233 for reservations and more details.
Saturday, July 13, 2013
C Jane Kendrick's Blogsite
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
As I have been writing about learning to love my natural body I have heard many readers raise concerns about the issue of health. One comment reads:
"I don't think there is anything wrong with a person who is truly overweight wanting and having the goal of losing weight. In fact, a doctor will tell that person to do that--the vast majority of health problems in this country come from obesity, and if losing 30 pounds will allow someone to live a longer and healthier life, I think that is a great goal and should not be looked down upon. I encourage my husband to exercise because I want him to be around longer and not have the same health problems of high cholesterol as his dad. How do you feel about health issues and weight? I have never noticed you to address this issue when talking about body image."
I wanted to address that great question today, and gratefully my friend Dr. Kim Bateman agreed to write a response for me. I think you'll find this guest post insightful, if not a bit shocking:
After 35 years of medical practice combating disease and lifestyle flaws, and of watching my own powers ebb, I’ve stumbled onto two pieces of encouraging news.
I recently ran across this graph, which gives me hope—and pause. When I was in school, American male life expectancy was 69 years. Now that I’m edging up to that cliff and not just a little concerned, out comes a graph like this, which somewhat gratuitously adds another nine years of life. And what’s more, those of my age group who managed to escape the ravages of the young: birth defects, hang gliding accidents, homicide, suicide, and military service, average life expectancy reaches 83!
How can this be? What about all the talk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, violence, environmental decay, unsafe foods, and obesity ruining society as we know it? How can people be living longer each successive year if the health of the nation is going to pot? Is someone playing Chicken Little?
Did I say obesity? I’m an expert, having personally lost 50 pounds three times. The same 50. My daughterJanna, an eating disorder expert, got to me, so I threw away my scales, gave up dieting, started eating intuitively and (I don’t know for sure without scales) have accumulated approximately 50 pounds back again, but not without guilt and concern they might jeopardize that magical average life expectancy of 83.
Let me bring these findings home to you. Since you likely measure yourself with scales, presumably you’re more familiar with weight in pounds than BMI. For a 5’7” woman, the weight range associated with the longest life would be 160-191 lbs. That’s right. Just take a moment to ponder that. And we’ve been calling this category “overweight.” For the same woman, 192-223 lbs. would confer the same life expectancy as a “normal” BMI. Doctors call this grade I obesity. I think we should change the names to extra-healthy and pleasantly plump.
Now that is contrary to logic and to everything we doctors have been preaching for decades. (I recognize that some of you readers or your doctors are going to be skeptical. If so, check out the references at the end.) It looks like society’s hysterical drive to thinness isn’t just driven by fashion, but by the medical profession itself. Maybe doctors’ offices need to throw out the scales, too.
This isn’t just any study. It is a “meta-analysis” which considers the 141 best research studies on BMI and mortality involving 2.88 million individuals and over 270,000 deaths, and was published in the highly respected Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
As mentioned, this study just reflects many others with similar findings. And it agrees with related studies on dieting, one of which shows that a voluntary weight loss (“successful” dieting) of 20 lbs increases mortality rate (rate of dying) by 11%. (The exception to this is type II diabetes, in which even moderate obesity carries increased mortality that is improved with weight loss—an important subject for another time.)
So those are good tidings that ease my conscience and my fears. Of course, none of this means that good food and regular exercise aren’t linked to longevity. They are. And we will all die someday. Most of us will get sick. It just means we doctors can do more harm than good when we recommend a target weight and dieting to everyone above a certain BMI.
In a letter to the editor of JAMA following publication of this article, Swapna Abhyankar MD and Clement J. McDonald MD chimed in aptly, suggesting to doctors: “…we also wonder if it is time to simply reject the notion that being overweight or mildly obese is always bad for patients and to stop hounding such patients about their weight.” Amen.
And me? I’m going to enjoy this pleasantly plump body of mine, feeding it whatever makes it feel loved, making sure that my daily walk is a pleasure, not a duty, and hoping those extra 14 years of life expectancy will count for something.
Flegal KM, Association of All-Cause Mortality with Overweight and Obesity Using Standard Body Mass Index Categories JAMA, January 2, 2012—Vol 309, No. 1
"I don't think there is anything wrong with a person who is truly overweight wanting and having the goal of losing weight. In fact, a doctor will tell that person to do that--the vast majority of health problems in this country come from obesity, and if losing 30 pounds will allow someone to live a longer and healthier life, I think that is a great goal and should not be looked down upon. I encourage my husband to exercise because I want him to be around longer and not have the same health problems of high cholesterol as his dad. How do you feel about health issues and weight? I have never noticed you to address this issue when talking about body image."
I wanted to address that great question today, and gratefully my friend Dr. Kim Bateman agreed to write a response for me. I think you'll find this guest post insightful, if not a bit shocking:
After 35 years of medical practice combating disease and lifestyle flaws, and of watching my own powers ebb, I’ve stumbled onto two pieces of encouraging news.
I recently ran across this graph, which gives me hope—and pause. When I was in school, American male life expectancy was 69 years. Now that I’m edging up to that cliff and not just a little concerned, out comes a graph like this, which somewhat gratuitously adds another nine years of life. And what’s more, those of my age group who managed to escape the ravages of the young: birth defects, hang gliding accidents, homicide, suicide, and military service, average life expectancy reaches 83!
How can this be? What about all the talk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, violence, environmental decay, unsafe foods, and obesity ruining society as we know it? How can people be living longer each successive year if the health of the nation is going to pot? Is someone playing Chicken Little?
Did I say obesity? I’m an expert, having personally lost 50 pounds three times. The same 50. My daughterJanna, an eating disorder expert, got to me, so I threw away my scales, gave up dieting, started eating intuitively and (I don’t know for sure without scales) have accumulated approximately 50 pounds back again, but not without guilt and concern they might jeopardize that magical average life expectancy of 83.
And then came the other piece of good news. This January a large study on BMI (a measure of weight per height) and mortality showed that “overweight” people (BMI from 25-30) actually have significantly lower mortality than people who are underweight, normal in weight, or obese (BMI>30). Further, the “grade I obesity” group (BMI 30-35) had the same mortality rate as the normal weight group. So, increased risk of dying afflicts thin people and very obese people. And a bonus for me: for people over 65, no BMI, high or low, predicts mortality.
Let me bring these findings home to you. Since you likely measure yourself with scales, presumably you’re more familiar with weight in pounds than BMI. For a 5’7” woman, the weight range associated with the longest life would be 160-191 lbs. That’s right. Just take a moment to ponder that. And we’ve been calling this category “overweight.” For the same woman, 192-223 lbs. would confer the same life expectancy as a “normal” BMI. Doctors call this grade I obesity. I think we should change the names to extra-healthy and pleasantly plump.
Now that is contrary to logic and to everything we doctors have been preaching for decades. (I recognize that some of you readers or your doctors are going to be skeptical. If so, check out the references at the end.) It looks like society’s hysterical drive to thinness isn’t just driven by fashion, but by the medical profession itself. Maybe doctors’ offices need to throw out the scales, too.
This isn’t just any study. It is a “meta-analysis” which considers the 141 best research studies on BMI and mortality involving 2.88 million individuals and over 270,000 deaths, and was published in the highly respected Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
As mentioned, this study just reflects many others with similar findings. And it agrees with related studies on dieting, one of which shows that a voluntary weight loss (“successful” dieting) of 20 lbs increases mortality rate (rate of dying) by 11%. (The exception to this is type II diabetes, in which even moderate obesity carries increased mortality that is improved with weight loss—an important subject for another time.)
So those are good tidings that ease my conscience and my fears. Of course, none of this means that good food and regular exercise aren’t linked to longevity. They are. And we will all die someday. Most of us will get sick. It just means we doctors can do more harm than good when we recommend a target weight and dieting to everyone above a certain BMI.
In a letter to the editor of JAMA following publication of this article, Swapna Abhyankar MD and Clement J. McDonald MD chimed in aptly, suggesting to doctors: “…we also wonder if it is time to simply reject the notion that being overweight or mildly obese is always bad for patients and to stop hounding such patients about their weight.” Amen.
And me? I’m going to enjoy this pleasantly plump body of mine, feeding it whatever makes it feel loved, making sure that my daily walk is a pleasure, not a duty, and hoping those extra 14 years of life expectancy will count for something.
Brief bio for Kim Bateman, MD
35 years in medical practice, former Utah Medical Association President, AMA officer, National Family Doctor of the Year, noted medical quality improvement expert, over 30 published academic articles.
Flegal KM, Association of All-Cause Mortality with Overweight and Obesity Using Standard Body Mass Index Categories JAMA, January 2, 2012—Vol 309, No. 1
Heymsfield, MD, Does Body Mass Index Adequately Convey a Patient’s Mortality Risk? JAMA, January 2, 2013—Vol 309, No. 1
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Monday, July 8, 2013
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Friday, July 5, 2013
Thursday, July 4, 2013
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Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Wednesday at RWFE
A baby starfish appears in the Aquarium.
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Lunch on the Courthouse Lawn
It sounded like a good idea.
Always on the look-out for his next case!
Our neighbors on the 11th floor...
The Addams Family, perhaps?
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