ambushed by really little things

"And then every now and then I get ambushed by really little things."- Joe Simpson, English mountaineer, author, and motivational speaker.

Leo and I just saw "Touching the Void," a compelling documentary based on a successful but near-fatal climb in the Peruvian Andes in 1985. The events of "Touching the Void" have now become a part of mountaineering folklore. Knowing that both of the climbers survived is nothing compared to learning how they survived. Here are the highlights of the story:

Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, were undertaking the first ascent of the West Face of a peak in the Peruvian Andes, Siula Grande. On the ridge down, they encountered difficult terrain, Joe fell and broke his leg, the calf bone splitting his knee.

Simon Yates took it upon himself to lower Joe down the vast majority of the mountain. However, despite Simon's single-handed rescue attempt, a turn of events left Joe hanging over a steep overhanging ice face in the middle of a building blizzard. Yates was trying to support him from a desperate bucket belay hollowed from the snow, uncertain what exactly had happened. After hanging on for over an hour, Yates reached a point where he had to make a choice: Be pulled from the mountain into the abyss and certain death, or cut the rope. Yates cut the rope holding his partner and Joe fell into a gaping crevasse below, landing unexpectedly on a snow bridge. After cutting the rope Simon proceeded down the mountain, passing the crevasse and assessing that Joe must have died from the fall.

Despite his significant injuries, Joe lowered himself further into the crevasse and managed to find a way out. Suffering from hypothermia and dehydration, he then still faced the enormous task of crossing a glacier unroped, and with a broken leg.

The riveting documentary is an amazing portrait of the human psyche. The extras include interviews with Simpson and Yates returning to the mountain in 2002, during the filming of the documentary. Here is how Simpson characterized the déjà vu he experienced upon revisiting what should have been his final resting place:

"Do you have any idea how bad it was? I don't think you do. I don't think you have the first idea.

I died here. I lost everything I was, that I wanted to be.

And then I got it given back."

The documentary leaves me pondering how I might respond in the most desperate of circumstances and what I would do with a second chance like the one that Simpson got. I have a feeling that I'll be thinking about this for a while.

not all soul music comes from the church

Op-Ed Guest Columnist: It’s 2009. Do You Know Where Your Soul Is?
By BONO
Published: April 18, 2009

I AM in Midtown Manhattan, where drivers still play their car horns as if they were musical instruments and shouting in restaurants is sport.

I am a long way from the warm breeze of voices I heard a week ago on Easter Sunday.

“Glorify your name,” the island women sang, as they swayed in a cut sandstone church. I was overwhelmed by a riot of color, an emotional swell that carried me to sea.

Christianity, it turns out, has a rhythm — and it crescendos this time of year. The rumba of Carnival gives way to the slow march of Lent, then to the staccato hymnals of the Easter parade. From revelry to reverie. After 40 days in the desert, sort of ...

Carnival — rock stars are good at that.

“Carne” is flesh; “Carne-val,” its goodbye party. I’ve been to many. Brazilians say they’ve done it longest; they certainly do it best. You can’t help but contract the fever. You’ve got no choice but to join the ravers as they swell up the streets bursting like the banks of a river in a flood of fun set to rhythm. This is a Joy that cannot be conjured. This is life force. This is the heart full and spilling over with gratitude. The choice is yours ...

It’s Lent I’ve always had issues with. I gave it up ... self-denial is where I come a cropper. My idea of discipline is simple — hard work — but of course that’s another indulgence.

Then comes the dying and the living that is Easter.

It’s a transcendent moment for me — a rebirth I always seem to need. Never more so than a few years ago, when my father died. I recall the embarrassment and relief of hot tears as I knelt in a chapel in a village in France and repented my prodigal nature — repented for fighting my father for so many years and wasting so many opportunities to know him better. I remember the feeling of “a peace that passes understanding” as a load lifted. Of all the Christian festivals, it is the Easter parade that demands the most faith — pushing you past reverence for creation, through bewilderment at the idea of a virgin birth, and into the far-fetched and far-reaching idea that death is not the end. The cross as crossroads. Whatever your religious or nonreligious views, the chance to begin again is a compelling idea.

•

Last Sunday, the choirmaster was jumping out of his skin ... stormy then still, playful then tender, on the most upright of pianos and melodies. He sang his invocations in a beautiful oaken tenor with a freckle-faced boy at his side playing conga and tambourine as if it was a full drum kit. The parish sang to the rafters songs of praise to a God that apparently surrendered His voice to ours.

I come to lowly church halls and lofty cathedrals for what purpose? I search the Scriptures to what end? To check my head? My heart? No, my soul. For me these meditations are like a plumb line dropped by a master builder — to see if the walls are straight or crooked. I check my emotional life with music, my intellectual life with writing, but religion is where I soul-search.

The preacher said, “What good does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” Hearing this, every one of the pilgrims gathered in the room asked, “Is it me, Lord?” In America, in Europe, people are asking, “Is it us?”

Well, yes. It is us.

Carnival is over. Commerce has been overheating markets and climates ... the sooty skies of the industrial revolution have changed scale and location, but now melt ice caps and make the seas boil in the time of technological revolution. Capitalism is on trial; globalization is, once again, in the dock. We used to say that all we wanted for the rest of the world was what we had for ourselves. Then we found out that if every living soul on the planet had a fridge and a house and an S.U.V., we would choke on our own exhaust.

Lent is upon us whether we asked for it or not. And with it, we hope, comes a chance at redemption. But redemption is not just a spiritual term, it’s an economic concept. At the turn of the millennium, the debt cancellation campaign, inspired by the Jewish concept of Jubilee, aimed to give the poorest countries a fresh start. Thirty-four million more children in Africa are now in school in large part because their governments used money freed up by debt relief. This redemption was not an end to economic slavery, but it was a more hopeful beginning for many. And to the many, not the lucky few, is surely where any soul-searching must lead us.

A few weeks ago I was in Washington when news arrived of proposed cuts to the president’s aid budget. People said that it was going to be hard to fulfill promises to those who live in dire circumstances such a long way away when there is so much hardship in the United States. And there is.

But I read recently that Americans are taking up public service in greater numbers because they are short on money to give. And, following a successful bipartisan Senate vote, word is that Congress will restore the money that had been cut from the aid budget — a refusal to abandon those who would pay such a high price for a crisis not of their making. In the roughest of times, people show who they are.

Your soul.

So much of the discussion today is about value, not values. Aid well spent can be an example of both, values and value for money. Providing AIDS medication to just under four million people, putting in place modest measures to improve maternal health, eradicating killer pests like malaria and rotoviruses — all these provide a leg up on the climb to self-sufficiency, all these can help us make friends in a world quick to enmity. It’s not alms, it’s investment. It’s not charity, it’s justice.

•

Strangely, as we file out of the small stone church into the cruel sun, I think of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, whose now combined fortune is dedicated to the fight against extreme poverty. Agnostics both, I believe. I think of Nelson Mandela, who has spent his life upholding the rights of others. A spiritual man — no doubt. Religious? I’m told he would not describe himself that way.

Not all soul music comes from the church.

Bono, the lead singer of the band U2 and a co-founder of the advocacy group ONE, is a contributing columnist for The Times.

her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you

Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" never fails to give me goosebumps.

The funny thing is ... I had always assumed Jeff Buckley's 1994 cover was the original, because it was the first version I heard. A few years ago, my (then-) colleague Suzanne walked into my office as I was listening to the Buckley version. I asked "Have you heard Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley? I love this song." She smiled, said "yes," and slowly walked away. Now I'm wondering if she was being polite by not pointing out that it was a cover, or if she just assumed that I knew it was cover. (She's a huge Leonard Cohen fan.)

Anyhow, here are a few of my favorite versions of this gorgeous song... Buckley's is still my favorite -- I love the warm sounds of the guitar.

Leonard Cohen (Coachella, 2009)


KD Lang

Rufus Wainwright

Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Maybe there's a God above
And all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It's not a cry you can hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

There was a time you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah

nothing else will do

Our friends Holly and Bucky included The Weepies' "Gotta Have You" on a CD they gave to all of us at their wedding a few weeks ago. The uncomplicated lyrics and lilting melody have worn themselves into my subconscious, so I suppose it's time to share the song.

Gray, quiet and tired and mean
Picking at a worried seam
I try to make you mad at me over the phone.
Red eyes and fire and signs
I'm taken by a nursery rhyme
I want to make a ray of sunshine and never leave home

No amount of coffee, no amount of crying
No amount of whiskey, no amount of wine
No, nothing else will do
I've gotta have you, I've gotta have you.

The road gets cold, there's no spring in the middle this year
I'm the new chicken clucking open hearts and ears
Oh, such a prima donna, sorry for myself
But green, it is also summer
And I won't be warm till I'm lying in your arms

I see it all through a telescope: guitar, suitcase, and a warm coat
Lying in the back of the blue boat, humming a tune...

tortellini, arugula, goat cheese, and roasted tomato salad

We enjoyed the seared scallops with roasted tomatoes so much that we kept the trend going for last night's dinner.

This is a modification of something I had at Bristol Farms for lunch last week. The Bristol Farms version used moistened sun-dried tomatoes and goat cheese-filled ravioli. We didn't have goat cheese ravioli, so the seven cheese tortellini was the next best option. (I still prefer small ravioli to the tortellini, due to a better cheese-to-pasta ratio.) Although we had julienned sun-dried tomatoes in our pantry, we opted for the roasted grape tomatoes. (Roasting the tomatoes intensifies their sweetness with minimal effort.)

Ingredients
1 lb fresh cheese ravioli (small) or tortellini
1 cup fresh grape tomatoes, roasted OR 1/3 cup moistened sun-dried tomatoes, julienned
2 cups arugula, washed and spun dry
4 TBSP chevre, crumbled
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, divided
6 TBSP extra virgin olive oil, divided
1 1/2 TBSP vinegar (we used white balsamic)

Preparation

1. Preheat broiler.
2. Make the vinaigrette in a small jar or bottle. Combine 4 TBSP olive oil, 1 1/2 TBSP vinegar, 1/4 tsp salt, and 1/4 tsp black pepper. Shake vigorously.
   
3. Arrange tomatoes in a single layer in a shallow roasting pan; lightly coat tomatoes with 2 TBSP olive oil. Sprinkle tomatoes with 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper; toss well to coat. Broil 10 minutes or until tomatoes begin to brown, stirring occasionally.
4. Cook the pasta al dente in lightly salted water. Drain and rinse with cool water.
5. In a large bowl, combine the still-warm pasta, arugula, and tomatoes. (Be sure to use a spatula to get every ounce of the olive oil, tomato juices, and spices from the roasting pan into the bowl.) Shake the vinaigrette vigorously and confirm that the salt has dissolved. Pour over pasta, arugula, and tomatoes. Sprinkle with chevre. Serve immediately.
   

seared scallops with roasted tomatoes

Leo and I made this for dinner on Friday and it blew us away. Roasting the tomatoes intensifies their sweetness with minimal effort. The cast-iron skillet creates a brown crust on the scallops that can't be achieved in a non-stick pan.

Yield: 4 servings
(serving size: about 4 1/2 ounces scallops, about 1/3 cup tomatoes, and 1 1/2 teaspoons basil)

Ingredients
3 cups grape tomatoes
Cooking spray* (we used 2 TBSP extra virgin olive oil)
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, divided
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 1/2 pounds sea scallops
2 tablespoons thinly sliced fresh basil
Pasta

Preparation

1. Preheat broiler.
2. Arrange tomatoes in a single layer in a shallow roasting pan; lightly coat tomatoes with cooking spray or 2 TBSP extra virgin olive oil. Sprinkle tomatoes with 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper; toss well to coat. Broil 10 minutes or until tomatoes begin to brown, stirring occasionally.
3. While tomatoes cook, heat oil in a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat. Pat scallops dry; sprinkle both sides of scallops with remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt and remaining 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Add scallops to skillet; cook 2 minutes on each side or until desired degree of doneness. Add pasta to skillet, toss with tomatoes and scallops; sprinkle with basil.
   

Nutritional Information: Calories: 204, Fat: 5.1g (sat 0.7g,mono 2.6g,poly 1g), Protein: 29.6g, Carbohydrate: 9.4g, Fiber: 1.4g, Cholesterol: 56mg, Iron: 1.1mg, Sodium: 519mg, Calcium: 49mg. (Note: Does not include nutritional information for the pasta.)
Via: Maria Everly, Cooking Light, APRIL 2009

national pet month

I just entered these photos of Ruby in the National Pet Month contest at work, along with the following information. I hope we win!

Ruby is a 5-year-old Flat-Coated Retriever. We got her on Craigslist when her owner had to move. We're training her as a therapy dog due to her high intelligence and sweet disposition.

Quirks:

• Missing her top right front tooth (she looks like a hockey player when she smiles).
• Grins with her mouth closed, but her lips pulled back (so that you can see all of her teeth) when you get home.
• Wiggles when she walks because she’s a little bit pigeon-toed.
• “Editorializes” – she loudly punctuates our conversations with Scarlett O'Hara-esque sighs.
• Gets excited when she hears the word “work” – she goes to work with my partner a few days a week.
• Is afraid of most cats.

Likes:

• People
• Bacon
• Watermelon
• Walks
• The beach
  
• Squirrels
• “Watching” TV with us on the couch

Dislikes:

• Waiting for walks
• Having to work for food

the new math

via Casey

kooks, demagogues, and right-wingers on tax day

The next time your whackjob cousin/ sibling/ neighbor/ in-law mouths off about taxes, share this wisdom from Robert Reich.

A Short Citizen's Guide to Kooks, Demagogues, and Right-Wingers On Tax Day, by Robert Reich: No one likes to pay taxes, so tax day typically attracts a range of right-wing Republicans, kooks, and demagogues, all of whom tell us how awful we have it. Herewith a short ... guide ... responding to the predictable charges:

1. "Americans pay too much in taxes." Wrong: The United States has the lowest taxes of all developed nations.
2. "The rich pay too much! The top ten percent of income earners pay over 72 percent of all income taxes!" Misleading: The main reason the rich pay such a large percent is they've become so much richer ... in recent years. If you look at what they pay as individuals ... you'll see a steady decline over the years. ...
3. "The bottom 60 percent pay only 3.3 percent of the taxes!" Misleading again. Most Americans are paying more in sales taxes than they ever have. Property taxes have also been rising at a steady clip. And Social Security taxes have also risen (thanks to the Greenspan Commission), while earnings over about $100,000 aren't subject to Social Security taxes. So-called "sin" taxes (mostly beer and cigarettes) have also skyrocketed. All of these taxes take a bigger bite out of the paychecks of people with lower incomes than they do people with higher incomes.
4. "Obama is raising your taxes!" Wrong. Obama is cutting taxes for 95 percent of Americans, by about $400 per person a year... Only the top 2 percent will have a tax increase, but even this tax increase is modest. Basically, they go back to the rates they were paying under Bill Clinton... And they won't start paying this until 2011 anyway.
5. "The huge debts we're wracking up will cause your taxes to rise!" Wrong again. When it comes to the national debt, as I've said before, the relevant statistic is the ratio of debt to the gross domestic product. The only sure way to bring that debt down and make it manageable in future years is to get the economy growing again -- which requires that, in the short term, the government spend a lot of money... In the long term, the biggest source of concern is rising health-care costs. And that's something Obama and Congress are aiming to tackle.
6. "We have a patriotic duty to stand up against Washington taxes!" Just the opposite. We have a patriotic duty to pay taxes. ... President Teddy Roosevelt made the case in 1906 when he argued in favor of continuing the inheritance tax. "The man of great wealth owes a particular obligation to the state because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government."

An acquaintance from law school, now a partner in one of Washington's biggest and wealthiest law firms, explained to me one day over lunch how he and his partners use tax rules to create offsetting taxable gains and losses, and then allocate the gains to the firm's foreign partners who don't pay taxes in the United States. That way, they keep the losses here and shelter their income abroad. I noticed he had an American flag lapel pin. "You're supporting our troops," I said, referring to his pin. "Yup," he replied, entirely missing my point.

True patriotism isn't cheap. It's about taking on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going.

Via Jeremiah

doga

I took my first yoga class in 1998. I distinctly remember coming home and seeing my Golden Retriever, Casey, stretching and understanding why the position is called "downward-facing dog." I watched him move through a series of stretches and smiled, thinking about how cool it is that humans took inspiration from the natural world in order to improve focus, gain strength, and relax.

Flash forward eleven years -- I've got Ruby, a willful Flat-Coated Retriever who thinks she's Leo's girlfriend and that I'm a contractual obligation. Don't get me wrong -- she loves me. She just loves Leo more.

We love her, too. We love the way she "editorializes," loudly punctuating our conversations with Scarlett O'Hara-esque sighs. We smile when she comes over and licks our hands if we're hugging -- it's one part "break it up," one part "love me, too." And we invariably laugh if she walks out of the room when things get physical between Leo and I.

I'm not sure that she'd be up for doga with me. With Leo, well ... that's another story.

Physical Culture: Bonding With Their Downward-Facing Humans

By BETHANY LYTTLE
Published: April 8, 2009

IN Chicago, Kristyn Caliendo does forward-bends with a Jack Russell terrier draped around her neck. In Manhattan, Grace Yang strikes a warrior pose while balancing a Shih Tzu on her thigh. And in Seattle, Chantale Stiller-Anderson practices an asana that requires side-stretching across a 52-pound vizsla.

Call it a yogic twist: Downward-facing dog is no longer just for humans.

Ludicrous? Possibly. Grist for anyone who thinks that dog-owners have taken yoga too far? Perhaps. But nationwide, classes of doga — yoga with dogs, as it is called — are increasing in number and popularity. Since Ms. Caliendo, a certified yoga instructor in Chicago, began to teach doga less than one year ago, her classes have doubled in size.

Not everyone in the yoga community is comfortable with this.

“Doga runs the risk of trivializing yoga by turning a 2,500-year-old practice into a fad,” said Julie Lawrence, 60, a yoga instructor and studio owner in Portland, Ore. “To live in harmony with all beings, including dogs, is a truly yogic principle. But yoga class may not be the most appropriate way to express this.”

Appropriate or not, this is how it works: Doga combines massage and meditation with gentle stretching for dogs and their human partners. In chaturanga, dogs sit with their front paws in the air while their human partners provide support. In an “upward-paw pose,” or sun salutation, owners lift dogs onto their hind legs. In a resting pose, the person reclines, with legs slightly bent over the dog’s torso, bolster-style, to relieve pressure on the spine.

Doga instructors are not required to complete certification, though teacher training seminars do exist, like ones taught by Brenda Bryan, 43, a yoga and doga instructor in Seattle who has just written a book on the subject. In general, instructors learn informally by sharing techniques. Guiding these techniques is an agreed-upon, though not officially stated, philosophy: Because dogs are pack animals, they are a natural match for yoga’s emphasis on union and connection with other beings.

Ms. Yang, 39, a financial analyst in Manhattan, has gone to doga classes for more than a year. Though she says that her 10-pound Shih Tzu, Sophie, has helped deepen her stretches by providing extra weight, the main reason she goes is to bond with her dog. “I always leave with a smile,” she said.

Such post-doga smiles run about $15 to $25 a class. Whether this is a bargain or overpriced depends on how — and why — the class is taught. Paula Apro, 40, of Eastford, Conn., owner of an online yoga retail store, tried a class near her home last summer.

“A stuffed animal — but not even a dog-shaped stuffed animal — was used by the instructor,” she said. Owners struggled to get their very real dogs to replicate the stuffed-animal poses, she said, and bags of treats were used to get the dogs to change positions. “It was lunacy,” Ms. Apro recalled. “Peanuts, my retired racer greyhound, didn’t participate at all. Instead, I did downward-facing dog while he ate the most treats he’s ever had in a 60-minute period.”

Ms. Caliendo said such tales are the exception. She offers her class in conjunction with the Royal Treatment Veterinary Spa in Chicago, which specializes in holistic animal care. “In no way is doga for teaching dogs silly tricks,” she said. “The dogs are never manipulated into any type of pose.”

Ms. Caliendo’s classes focus on poses and massage for dogs aimed at improving digestion and heart function, and poses for people that emphasize stress reduction and feeling well.

Ms. Bryan, the author in Seattle, said: “It’s a new field so there can be confusion about what doga is and isn’t.” Her classes are loosely structured and filled with humor. “Who cares if everybody’s facing the same direction and doing exactly the same thing?” she said. “Besides, laughing is spiritual.”

Ms. Bryan said some of her earliest classes were a challenge. “I was brand new to this, and in one class, this dog just wouldn’t stop barking,” she said. “There I was, trying desperately to look tranquil and calm, but inside I was, like, ‘Shut up!’ That was the turning point for me. I mean, this was a dog. Plus, he was having the best time of his life.”

Kari Harendorf, 38, teaches doga in Manhattan. “Jobs are disappearing,” she said. “Mortgage payments are looming. Change is everywhere, but your dog remains steadfast. So, why not spend time together?”

Ms. Harendorf links yoga to reductions in stress hormones, like cortisol, and blood pressure. “People always ask me, ‘Do dogs need yoga?’ ” she said. “I say, ‘No, you need yoga. But your dog needs your attention, and bonding with your pet is good for your health.’ ”

She is saying something many dog owners already know: Were it not for their pets, many people would never take daily walks in the park. By extension, it’s easy to see how taking your dog to doga may be a surefire way to make certain you do yoga yourself.

modern love: a memory magically interrupted

I've given up on my fantasy of having a normal (adult, mutually respectful, healthy) relationship with my mother.

She's a complicated narcissist (I mean that in a clinical sense, not a flippant one) who stokes the embers of bitterness about perceived wrongs, ridiculous betrayals, and imagined duplicity because she is unhappy about the choices she has made in life. She has fanned the flames of anger, jealousy, and control with every relationship around her until each one (except -- inexplicably -- her marriage to my father) is destroyed and then she's had the gall to complain about the mess left by the ashes.

Over the years, I've moved through many stages with her, being a pleaser child, a resentful (but safely rebellious) teenager, a liberated undergrad, a frustrated twenty-something, a codependent wife, a disappointed cancer patient, a self-realized divorcée, a reconciliation-seeking thirty-something, and an approval-craving woman. In three decades, I've stopped speaking with her for years at a time, vowed never to set foot in her home again, mourned a relationship that never will be what I need it to be, and calmly but resolutely tried to stop giving her so much power over me.

I've spent more hours than I can count unravelling the knots in my psyche with the help of amazing therapists, patient significant others, and understanding friends. I've tried to learn how to move through life without craving approval and acceptance from authority figures and loved ones. I've even fantasized about what life would be like if my parents ever got divorced. I know every word to Ani DiFranco's "Angry Anymore" and really thought I wasn't until I learned that my mother gave what can only be described as a shitload of money to the Yes on Prop 8 bigots last year.

As I move toward parenthood, I spend time thinking about the kind of mother I want to be and the relationships I hope to have with my children. In the end, I wish my own mother no harm and know that it would take a miracle for us to have a civil relationship. Perhaps there will be a silver lining if I wait long enough for it to appear.

Modern Love: A Memory Magically Interrupted
By ROBERT LELEUX
Published: March 20, 2009

“YOUR grandmother has Alzheimer’s, right?” the doctor asked me, scrawling notes into a floppy manila folder.

I hadn’t expected to discuss my grandmother’s Alzheimer’s with him. I was hoping to hear some explanation as to why, apart from her memory, my grandmother’s overall health seemed so mysteriously improved. Her lupus, for instance, had all but disappeared from her blood work.

“Yes, but ...” I began.

“Well, there is a theory,” he said, interrupting, “that people with Alzheimer’s heal themselves of their diseases. Because they forget they have them.”

I glanced across the room at my beautiful grandmother, smiling vaguely in her lipstick-pink trench coat. “But you don’t really believe that?” I asked.

The doctor shrugged with an implicit “Who knows?” which I found irritating because I hadn’t flown all the way from Manhattan to Nashville to discuss fanciful theories. I wanted solid answers about JoAnn’s health, and he’d thrown me with his talk of miracle cures.

But by that evening, after I’d driven my grandparents home, I realized that the real reason this doctor had startled me was that for the first time I’d heard someone confirm my experience of my grandmother’s disease. Alzheimer’s has, in a sense, healed my grandmother, and our family.

Despite my family role of bulldog journalist, responsible for sniffing out facts, I’ve always preferred fairy tales to literal truth. And I wonder if that isn’t a better way (in my family’s case, anyway) to approach Alzheimer’s, a malady that for us has had a decided fairy tale ring to it, one of those stories where a beautiful lady is cast under a wicked spell that makes her lose her whole life — only to get it back again, better than ever, by the closing paragraph.

Five years ago, when JoAnn’s Alzheimer’s was first diagnosed, I couldn’t imagine anything less fair. At the time, I composed a mental list of all the people I knew who could lose their minds without anybody noticing, scores of people whom I’d never heard say one original thing. While my grandmother, on the other hand, was the genius of the cocktail party, a brunette version of our fellow Texan Ann Richards, who always seemed poised with a staggering, stiletto quip.

As a young artist in New York, I’d spent years trying to find my voice. When I did, it was my grandmother’s. To this day, I’ve never liked anything I’ve created that didn’t somehow remind me of her. So the fact that my clumsy development and slow self-discovery was occurring just as her decline began felt like a tragic bargain. I was finding my voice just as she was losing hers.

The only certainty about Alzheimer’s is that it’s characterized by uncertainty: There is no definitive test, no definitive diagnosis. But in July several years ago, after undergoing a gruesome but unserious operation, my grandmother began to exhibit signs of the disease. It was as if her anesthesia never lifted.

I now believe she suffered a mini-stroke mid-operation — an event that frequently “ignites” incipient Alzheimer’s — but by the time I formed this suspicion, it was too late to test. So throughout that year, as my grandfather and I accompanied her to a legion of new doctors, each of whom mentioned the possibility of Alzheimer’s, my grandmother grew ever more foggy, sometimes hilariously so.

“The wonderful thing about Alzheimer’s,” she would say, unfurling her arm like Bette Davis, “is that you always live in the moment.”

Like many Southern women of her generation, my grandmother had been a stifled lady prone to fits of drape-drawn depression, medicated with Champagne and Streisand.

“Sad lives make funny people,” she told me when I was 16.

At the time, this remark had just sounded like one more zinger. But eventually I came to consider it the distillation of her philosophy. Humor was the way she had coped with every unpleasant thing in her life, from her long estrangement from my mother, her only child, to the onset of a crippling disease.

But while my grandmother was able to laugh at her decline, her husband couldn’t. He didn’t find anything funny about watching her forget their life together. I think all my grandfather ever wanted was to be left alone with his wife — a goal he’d finally accomplished after more than 40 years of marriage, when they retired from Houston to his family’s Tennessee home.

In this way my grandparents reminded me of the Reagans, one of those couples who are so gaga for each other that there is no room for the kids. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just that perfect couples rarely have happy families. They have to have children, because they love each other too much not to make something of it. But then, the honeymoon never ends, and who brings their children on a honeymoon? It’s like they always say: two’s company, and three’s an angry kid like Patti Davis, desperate for attention, with a complex about being shoved outside the magic circle.

Except that in our case, Patti Davis was my mother — a Scarlett O’Hara for the silicon age, with a chest as big as her mouth and hair. Between these two genteel Southern ladies, our family became an Old West town: It just wasn’t big enough for both of them.

Which meant that my grandfather, Alfred, adoring JoAnn as he did, not only stopped speaking to his daughter, he even stopped speaking about her, at least with me. Until the day when we were finally forced to accept the fact of JoAnn’s Alzheimer’s and its awful progression.

The more JoAnn forgot, the more often Alfred asked me to visit. And at the end of one of these Tennessee weekends, as my grandfather wound his Buick through the dark hills on the way to the airport, he suddenly blurted, “Sonny, I think it’s time your mother came home for a visit.”

I was too surprised to say anything. Then he repeated, “I think it’s time your mother came home.”

“I’ll make it happen,” I mumbled.

“Good,” he said, tapping the wheel. “It’s time.”

Of course, I had no idea how I would make it happen. Fortunately, my mother — who, for many years, had been no stranger to a Bloody Mary — was newly sober, and I took advantage of that narrow window of Alcoholics Anonymous time before making amends becomes a crashing bore. All that summer, I begged her long distance. I swore that if she would only visit her parents one more time, everything would be different. Finally I played my ace: I asked her to visit them in Tennessee for my birthday in September.

“Damn it,” she screeched. “So now if I don’t go, I’ll be ruining your birthday? Fine. I’ll do it. But prepare yourself for disaster.”

“There won’t be any disaster,” I said.

“Oh, really? Give me one good reason why things will be different this time.”

“Alzheimer’s,” I answered.

For my grandfather and me, having to witness JoAnn’s Alzheimer’s had been agonizing — like watching “The Miracle Worker” backward. Every day seemed accompanied by a new limitation. But for my grandmother, the disease had seemed liberating. For the first time in all the years I’d known her, she seemed truly happy.

Imagine: to be freed from your memory, to have every awful thing that ever happened to you wiped away — and not just your past, but your worries about the future, too. Because with no sense of time or memory, past and future cease to exist, along with all sense of loss and regret. Not to mention grudges and hurt feelings, arguments and embarrassments.

And that’s the fantasy, isn’t it? To have your record cleared. To be able not to merely forget, but to expunge your unhappy childhood, or unrequited love, or rocky marriage from your memory. To start over again.

There had always been an element of existential fury to my grandmother’s barbed wit, concerning her lost time and missed chances. But as her Alzheimer’s advanced, she forgot to be angry. And she seemed healthier, too: her pace quickened, her complexion brightened, her hair thickened. And with my help and her husband’s credit card, even her wardrobe improved. Her transformation was magical and unmistakable.

It was certainly unmistakable to my mother on that bracing September day when my grandparents and I picked her up at the Nashville airport. “Look, JoAnn,” Alfred said, “it’s Jessica.”

“Isn’t that funny,” said JoAnn, before embracing my mother. “That’s my daughter’s name, too.”

My mother forced a smile and shot me a wary look that abruptly softened once we got to the Buick and my grandmother reached for her hand. “Tell me all about yourself, darling,” she said. “I want to know everything about you.”

All through my birthday dinner that evening, JoAnn positively doted on her daughter — beaming sweetly and patting her hand. This behavior unsettled my mother, who afterward made a theatrical production of rooting through the closet in her bedroom.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Looking for space pods,” she said. “Who are those people, Robert? And what have they done with my mother? I keep thinking I must be in a blackout. That I must be drunk in a ditch somewhere, and when I wake up I’ll have the hangover of a lifetime. Because believe me, if that nice old lady had been my mother, I’d never have left home.”

DURING the following week, the starchy blue autumn skies remained clear, and so did the irony. Now that my grandmother had, in a way, disappeared, she was fully present to my mother for perhaps the first time in their relationship. Now that she was all but unreachable, she was finally available. Each evening, as JoAnn scooted close at dinner, my mother found the nearness less nerve-racking.

On the last day, as we were leaving for the airport, my grandfather kissed us goodbye. Soft black cows strode serenely on the hillside. Suddenly JoAnn grabbed onto the lapels of my mother’s jacket, as if she were about to shake her.

My mother looked rattled, but then JoAnn said: “Thank you for coming, Jessica. I want you to know how much it means to me. I want you to know that I know we’ve never been close. And I know that’s been mostly my fault. I’m not sure how much time I’ve got. But more than anything, I want to have a shot at spending it with you. It’s so important. I mean, after all, Jessica, we’re sisters.”

I groaned, then looked over to see my tough mother crying.

“Close enough, Mama,” she said.

Robert Leleux, who lives in New York, is the author of “The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy” (St. Martin’s Press).

quotable

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. - The Dalai Lama , b. 1935, Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader [b. Tenzin Gyatso]

dna test for cervical cancer

I'd love to take this test instead of getting into the stirrups.

DNA Test Outperforms Pap Smear
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
April 7, 2009

A new DNA test for the virus that causes cervical cancer does so much better than current methods that some gynecologists hope it will eventually replace the Pap smear in wealthy countries and cruder tests in poor ones.

Not only could the new test for human papillomavirus, or HPV, save lives; scientists say that women over 30 could drop annual Pap smears and instead have the DNA test just once every 3, 5 or even 10 years, depending on which expert is asked.

Their optimism is based on an eight-year study of 130,000 women in India financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and published last week in The New England Journal of Medicine. It is the first to show that a single screening with the DNA test beats all other methods at preventing advanced cancer and death.

The study is “another nail in the coffin” for Pap smears, which will “soon be of mainly historical interest,” said Dr. Paul D. Blumenthal, a professor of gynecology at Stanford medical school who has tested screening techniques in Africa and Asia and was not involved in the study.

But whether the new test is adopted will depend on many factors, including hesitation by gynecologists to abandon Pap smears, which have been remarkably effective. Cervical cancer was a leading cause of death for American women in the 1950s; it now kills fewer than 4,000 a year.

In poor and middle-income countries, where the cancer kills more than 250,000 women a year, cost is a factor, but the test’s maker, Qiagen, with financing from the Gates Foundation, has developed a $5 version and the price could go lower with enough orders, the company said.

“The implications of the findings of this trial are immediate and global,” Dr. Mark Schiffman of the National Cancer Institute wrote in an editorial accompanying the study. “International experts in cervical cancer prevention should now adopt HPV testing.”

At the moment, there are huge gaps in how rich and poor countries screen.

In the West, women get smears named for their inventor, Dr. Georgios Papanikolaou. Cells are scraped from the cervix and sent to a laboratory, where they are stained and inspected under a microscope by a pathologist looking for abnormalities. Results may take several days.

The DNA screen also needs a cervical scraping, but it is mixed with re-agents and read by a machine.

In poor countries, most women get no routine screening. Pain sends them to a hospital, by which time it is often too late.

But in some countries, women get “visualization,” pioneered in the last decade, also with Gates Foundation support: a health worker looks at the cervix with a flashlight and swabs it with vinegar. Spots that turn white may be precancerous lesions, and are immediately frozen off. Diagnosis and treatment take only one visit.

Pap smears fail in the third world because there are too few trained pathologists and because women told to return often cannot.

The Indian study, begun in 1999, divided 131,746 healthy women ages 30 to 59 from 497 villages into four groups. One group, the control, got typical rural clinic care: advice to go to a hospital if they wanted screening. The second got Pap smears, the third got flashlight-vinegar visualization, and the fourth got a DNA test, then made by Digene, which is now owned by Qiagen. The company did not pay for or donate to the study, its authors said.

After eight years, the visualization group had about the same rates of advanced cancer and death as the control group. The Pap-smear group had about three-fourths the rates, and the DNA test had about half.

Significantly, none of the women who were negative on their DNA test died of cervical cancer. “So if you have a negative test, you’re good to go for several years,” Dr. Blumenthal said.

The study’s chief author, Dr. Rengaswamy Sankaranarayanan of the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, said, “With this test, you could start screening women at 30 and do it once every 10 years.”

Asked whether that advice would apply in the United States, Debbie Saslow, director of gynecologic cancer for the American Cancer Society, replied, “Absolutely no.”

“A negative test would mean a woman’s chances of developing cancer are small, but not zero,” she added. “But if he’d said five years, I wouldn’t have a strong reaction.”

Since 1987, she said, the cancer society and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have recommended Pap smears only every three years after initial negative ones. In 2002, they recommended the HPV test too, and evidence is mounting that the Pap smear can be dropped.

“But we haven’t been able to get doctors to go along,” Dr. Saslow said. “The average gynecologist, especially the older ones, says, ‘Women come in for their Pap smear, and that’s how we get them in here to get other care.’ We’re totally overscreening, but when you’ve been telling everyone for 40 years to get an annual Pap smear, it’s hard to change.”

Dr. Sankaranarayanan said most European countries screen every three to five years, and many do not start before age 30.

Cervical cancer is caused by a few of the 150 strains of the human papillomavirus. Women pick strains up as soon as they start having intercourse, but more than 90 percent of cases clear up spontaneously within two years. Early DNA tests would find these, but lead to useless overtreatment. So in women ages 20 to 30, doctors often order repeat Pap tests, which is expensive but may catch the tiny minority of cancers that develop in less than 15 years.

“The U.S. has high resources and low risk-tolerance,” Dr. Schiffman explained, while countries like India have little money and are forced to tolerate risk.

Dr. Jan Agosti, the Gates Foundation officer overseeing its third world screening, said Qiagen’s new $5 test — which proved itself in a two-year study in China — runs on batteries without water or refrigeration, and takes less than three hours. In countries where women are “shyer about pelvic exams,” she added, it even works “acceptably well” on vaginal swabs they can take themselves.

modern love: in a charmed life, a road less traveled

There are days when I feel so happy that it oozes from every pore in my body. I literally radiate it, and the optimist in me wants nothing more than to experience this bliss for the rest of my life.

The cautious optimist in me sometimes dwells on what my life would be like if fate (or a drunk running a red light) shattered that happiness. Because I've endured one Krakatoa in my life, I hope that the dark days in my life are not merely dormant, but forever in my past. I realize that it's not productive to spend time in the dark recesses of my imagination, so I usually don't. Then I stumble on an essay like this one that reminds me that no matter how awful circumstances can be, when there's love, there's hope.

Modern Love: In a Charmed Life, a Road Less Traveled
By LAYNG MARTINE Jr.
Published: March 6, 2009

MY wife and I were in a motel in Roanoke, Va., on our way home from three months at the Hershey Medical Center in Pennsylvania, where she had been convalescing after being crippled in a car accident. It was our first night away from the skill and comfort of the nurses we had come to depend on, and so far, so good.

Then we woke up and smelled something. It smelled like a bowel movement. I lifted up the sheets. It was a bowel movement, and it was in our bed.

We knew we had a lot to learn, but we had no idea how much.

Hearing the word paraplegic had made us focus on the big thing, the fact that Linda could no longer walk. Less anticipated were the smaller humiliations and inconveniences, like bowel movements in bed or on the way to a party, sores that came out of nowhere and took months or years to heal, and inaccessible restroom stalls that caused Linda to have to catheterize herself in the public area where people were washing their hands and talking.

And on it went, the list of indignities. She couldn’t watch “Good Morning America” if the remote fell off the bed when she reached for her glasses. She wet the seat on airplanes and in friends’ cars. She could no longer feel sexual intercourse (and the powerful muscle spasms in her legs threatened to crush anyone who tried).

But we’ve learned, and adapted. Now we know the places with good handicapped-access bathrooms (Starbucks), which airline makes things easiest (Southwest), which cities have smooth curb cuts (San Francisco), and which movie theaters don’t make us sit four feet from the screen.

Anyone who is in love is living a charmed life, especially if you’ve been in love for many years, through good times and bad. I have been crazy about Linda since the first time I saw her. We always felt we could handle any challenge because we were facing it together. This time we knew we had the will, but the demands were so exhausting, the changes so pervasive, that sometimes we wondered how we would cope.

This incredibly capable woman who loved to hike mountains, ride waves, and run marathons, who had cleared our sizable backyard of eight-foot-high brambles and helped me move all our furniture into three houses, suddenly couldn’t do any of those things, ever again.

Not long after getting home from the hospital, when we were having dinner by candlelight at our kitchen table, she burst into tears. “I don’t know if I can do this for the rest of my life,” she said.

All I could say was, “We’ll do it together.”

We began to think of what we could do to replace playing tennis, walking on the beach, working in the garden. Since Linda loves the ocean, a friend found a specially designed beach chair made of PVC tubing with wide inflated tires that allow it to be pushed across the sand. It’s yellow and white with a big red umbrella.

The first time I saw Linda sitting atop those tubes and under the red umbrella, I told her she looked like Ronald McDonald’s homecoming queen.

She laughed like crazy, then repeated it to everyone she knew.

A few summers later, one of our three sons suggested that he and I get on either side of the chair, slide Linda off, carry her into the ocean and drop her just beyond the waves so she could float calmly behind the crashing breakers.

At first we put her in a life preserver, but she tipped over and couldn’t right herself. So we took it off, and to our surprise she bobbed peacefully, looking once again like every other person lolling in the sea on a summer day.

You know those great old stores on Newbury Street in Boston with five or six steps up to each one? At first we could get up only about three of those a day. Now we can do every single store, one right after the other, all day long. My arms and my back are stronger — so are Linda’s — and there’s a rhythm to our teamwork that’s become second nature to us.

We take many more drives now, preferably in our convertible, looking for pretty roads and funky hamburger places, especially ’50s-style drive-ins where they bring the food to our car. Before the car even moves an inch, though, Linda has to put on her seat belt, because even a semi-sudden stop at low speed will whap her face against the dashboard as if she’s a spring-loaded bobblehead. She has no stomach muscles. Her body works only from the chest up.

I remember the day we had to tell her that. She was in the I.C.U., tubes all over, machines and screens whirring and blinking, traces of dried blood in her gnarled hair. The doctor and I stood on either side of her bed.

“Linda,” he said, “this accident you were in was a rough one.”

“I can tell,” she said, her words warped by the breathing tube.

“At the moment your legs do not move.”

She looked at him. “Will they?”

“I doubt it.”

Her eyes shifted over to me. I squeezed her hand gently.

After the doctor left, tears filled her eyes. “It was all too perfect,” she said, “wasn’t it?”

And it did seem that way. It always had.

My first glimpse of her was through the screen door of her house; I’d gone there to see her brother. She was 21, and I was 22. She looked adorable in her orange dress, and I thought, “If that girl will have anything to do with me, that’s it.”

We married soon after.

We settled in Nashville, where I was an aspiring songwriter. A decade later we were able to buy a summer house on a harbor in Rhode Island. That’s where we were going when the accident happened. We had been traveling in two cars when something went wrong with mine and we stopped in Knoxville at a repair shop. Linda was wearing a blue and white seersucker dress as she and our youngest son, Mac, who was 15, walked to her car. It was the last time I would ever see her walk. As they pulled away, she called out, “See you in a few hours!” and blew a kiss.

I blew one back.

We planned to meet up later at a motel in Allentown.

Have you ever come upon a traffic jam on the Interstate and looked for an exit to try your luck on the back roads? That’s what I did the night of Linda’s accident. I drove right by my family without even knowing it. I bet I wasn’t more than 100 feet away.

It was late. I was impatient. Traffic was stopped in both directions. Finally I managed to move to the shoulder and scoot along to an exit, where I found an empty frontage road running parallel to the highway.

Barely onto it, I saw a cluster of blinking blue lights in the distance. Wow, what happened? I wondered if Linda and Mac were already at the motel, or if they were also stuck in this jam. Then I thought: Could they be in that accident? But wait — of course not. They were way ahead.

A while later I stopped at a diner, where I found a pay phone and dialed the motel. When I asked for the Martine room, the desk clerk said, “There’s someone on the other line calling for Martine, too.”

“Who?”

“Someone from the hospital in Hershey.”

“Can you connect me?”

“No, but they gave me their number.”

I hung up and redialed, my face hot. The woman who answered identified herself as the hospital chaplain. She said my family had been in an accident.

“Are they all right?”

She put the doctor on, who told me that my son was O.K. My wife, however, was a different story.

I listened as he described her condition, then asked, “Can she think?”

“Yes. Her brain is fine.”

And that’s when I knew we could do it, long before I had any idea what “it” was.

Now, 15 years later, we do know.

We know that most people — strangers, anywhere — will knock themselves out to help us if we explain what we need. We know to say “Yes” to nearly everything because there is probably a way to do it. We know there is happiness available every day, most of it requiring more effort than money. And effort seems like a small price to pay for a day at the beach, a trip to New York or for dinner up eight steps to a friend’s home.

A few months after the accident, Linda started driving again. Her car has hand controls. She thinks nothing of driving to visit her father two hours away by herself. She has rolled three marathons — yes, a full 26-plus miles in a racing wheelchair.

And now, so long since that fateful night, looking across the dinner table at my wife, or seeing her across the room at a party, the hopeless crush I have on her is as wonderfully out of control as when I first saw her more than four decades ago through the screen door. I still get excited after work when I pull in the driveway and know that I’ll soon get to see the sexy, beautiful, very funny person I live with. And, later on, snuggle up to her in bed.

We’ve rolled up and down the hills of Tuscany, squeezed into pubs in Ireland, explored narrow streets in Paris and Rome, gone to Red Sox games, had coffee in the sunshine in San Francisco, Portland, Chicago and Miami. And we’ve learned that alongside great loss we can still have a great life. We want it so badly, and we love it so much.

At sunset, as we sit on the deck of our house in Rhode Island in our side-by-side chairs — mine Adirondack-style, hers on wheels — we look across the water at Fishers Island and think we are as lucky as two people can be.

We don’t know what will happen tomorrow, or who will live how long. But we were young together. We struggled to make a life. We raised three great sons. We’ve each been the caregiver and the cared-for, and I suspect that we each have a little more of both in our future.

We are two, but we are one. And I love those numbers.

Layng Martine Jr. is a songwriter in Nashville.

the axis of evil supper club goes to uruguay

(Not literally.)

Last night, Leo and I hosted Ash, Holly, Bucky, Ophira, and Maria for an asadito. In the process, we discussed being put in the crappy line at Israel's border crossing, dealing with the Syrian and Jordanian border crossings, how many camels Holly was worth in Egypt, bombings in Lebanon and Israel, why the brown person always gets singled out at the Mexico-US border crossing, me (allegedly) attempting to have Leo deported, sibling rivalry, pregnancy, the scary things in our food chain, when Beagles fly, the relative social tolerance for women who cluster in the center of Kinsey's scale (as opposed to the social pressures for men to end up on the extreme ends of Kinsey's scale), the sexualization of women, Holly and Bucky's impending nuptuals, the difference between church cleavage and WOW cleavage, Prop 8, the Patriot Act, being strip-searched at PHX, executive compensation, how San Diego schools aren't laying off any teachers despite the current budget crisis, the fact that Holly finished the bottle of Chardonnay solo, and many other topics that currently escape me.

Today, I informed Leo that I'm re-forming the Axis of Evil Supper Club. That's because I can't think of a better way to spend three hours than eating great home-cooked food and discussing foreign policy, sexuality, dogs, travel, and social norms (for starters) with good friends whose intellect, experience, and humor leave me feeling stimulated and incredibly satisfied.

menu
starter:
Assorted cheeses (Manchego, Drunken Goat, etc.)
Chianti salami
Tobin James Rock-and-Roll Syrah, Purple Moon Chardonnay, Newcastle Brown Ale

entree:
Choripanes (Argentine chorizo on fresh bolillos with chimichurri)
Entraña (skirt steak)
Organic, locally-grown CSA salad with red butter lettuce, radishes, tomatoes, red bell pepper, and green onion in a white balsamic vinaigrette

dessert:
Twice-dipped chocolate strawberries with vanilla ice cream
Dried figs with pecans and agave nectar
EOS Novella Muscat Canelli

baaaamazing

tramp stamp barbie

I've officially seen it all.

At 50, Barbie's shaking things up. First, there was the awesome cougar Barbie parody. Then, I saw this picture, and thought "there's no way that Mattel would greenlight that -- it must be a parody," but some (undoubtedly now-unemployed) marketing hack did greenlight the Totally Stylin' Tattoo Barbie, complete with a heart-shaped "Ken" license plate. In China, she's getting anime eyes, a rounder face, and a softer (whatever that means) complexion.

TOYS: At 50 years old, Barbie gets tattoos -- and a megastore in China
By Tiffany Hsu and Don Lee
March 6, 2009
Reporting from Shanghai and Los Angeles -- Barbie turns 50 this month, and to shake off a midlife crisis she's getting tattooed and opening the doors to her first megastore in China.

The developments are causing a stir on two continents, not bad for a plaything whose global cachet has been sagging of late.

We begin in Southern California, where, just in time for spring, Mattel Inc. has released Totally Stylin' Tattoos Barbie. The doll comes with a set of more than 40 tiny tattoo stickers that can be placed on her body. Also included is a faux tattoo gun with wash-off tats that kids can use to ink themselves.

A spokeswoman for the El Segundo toy maker said it was a great way for youngsters to be creative with their pint-sized gal pal. But some parents are horrified by this body-art Barbie, labeling her the "tramp stamp" queen of playtime.

On her parenting blog, Telling It Like It Is, Texas mother Lin Burress sarcastically predicted that "Totally Pierced Barbie" would be the next to roll off the assembly line. Readers commenting on the blog chimed in with their own fictional "Divorce Barbie," who would take possession of Ken's accessories.

Burress, a 46-year-old mother of six, said she was fed up with companies pushing racy fare to kids to make a profit.

"It's just one more thing being added to the pile of junk, like push-up bras and Bratz dolls, being marketed to these ridiculously young kids," she said. "These so-called toys just create a sense of rebellion."

This isn't the first time Barbie has had some eyebrow-raising accessories. The Butterfly Art Barbie from 1999 had a permanent tattoo on her stomach. In 2002, Mattel released a pregnant doll -- not Barbie but her friend, Midge -- replete with an infant that could be removed from her midsection. Consumer outcry chased the product off shelves.

Mattel said the new tattooed Barbie, priced online at about $20 and up, was selling better than expected. There are no plans to discontinue the doll.

Meanwhile, Mattel this weekend will unveil the House of Barbie in Shanghai.

The six-story retail emporium is the brand's first stand-alone store in China. It's a multimillion-dollar bet that its 11 1/2 -inch plastic toy will appeal to Shanghai's material girls, even in this horrible economy.

"There's no reason why in five to 10 years, China shouldn't be the biggest market in the world for us," said Richard Dickson, Barbie's general manager, sitting on a lattice boudoir bench on the store's fourth floor, where girls can design their own dolls.

The store also contains a salon where moms and daughters can get facials and manicures. There's a restaurant and bar. Naturally it offers thousands of Barbie products, from branded chocolate bars that cost a buck or two to an adult-sized Vera Wang-designed wedding dress for $10,000.

Mattel is one of many Western retailers flocking to China to tap its growing middle class. Apple Inc. and Adidas opened their China superstores in Beijing before the Olympics last summer. Walt Disney Co., Warner Bros. and others have beefed up their investments, even as piracy and tougher local competition have cut into their business.

At the moment, Asia accounts for less than 5% of Barbie's global sales. The doll has been showing its age in recent years; Barbie sales worldwide were off 9% in 2008, hurt by the recession and competition from rivals.

Whether China can give Barbie new life remains to be seen. Mattel's recently opened store in Buenos Aires has been drawing crowds. But there are plenty of doubters who point out that you need only go into a Chinese home. You won't find many girls playing with dolls, let alone dolls with blond hair and blue eyes.

Dickson concedes that China's slowing economy will be a challenge, but to appeal to local sensibilities, Mattel has come up with a Shanghai Barbie -- with bigger eyes, a rounder face and a softer complexion. The price: about $36. The doll has no tattoos.

bella & tara

Holy crap! I've gotta admit that this story about Tara and Bella, an elephant and dog who are BFFs, put a smile on my face.

zoo chimp stockpiles weapons

H: Call me the Great Santino.
L: A chimpanzee that stockpiles weapons. If this doesn't convince those GOP wackos that evolution exists, I give up.

As I read this article today at work, I completely lost it. I was laughing so hard that I was crying at David's desk. And by "crying," I mean that there were tears streaming down my face and I looked like Alice Cooper. David was also giggling and his face rapidly went from red to purple.

Fave lines in the article: "he could be a genius" and "he rarely hit visitors because of his poor aim, and no one was seriously injured in the cases when he did." Someone needs to tell the Onion, stat.

Health & Science | Study: Zoo Chimp Planned Weapons Stockpile
by The Associated Press

NPR.org, March 9, 2009 · A canny chimpanzee who calmly collected a stash of rocks and then hurled them at zoo visitors in fits of rage has confirmed that apes can plan ahead just like humans, a Swedish study said Monday.

Santino the chimpanzee's anti-social behavior stunned both visitors and keepers at the Furuvik Zoo, but fascinated researchers because his behavior was so carefully prepared.

According to a report in the journal Current Biology, the 31-year-old alpha male started building his weapons cache in the morning before the zoo opened, collecting rocks and knocking out disks from concrete boulders inside his enclosure. He waited until around midday before he unleashed a "hailstorm" of rocks against visitors, the study said.

"These observations convincingly show that our fellow apes do consider the future in a very complex way," said the author of the report, Lund University Ph.D. student Mathias Osvath. "It implies that they have a highly developed consciousness, including lifelike mental simulations of potential events."

Osvath's findings were based on his own observations of Santino and interviews with three senior caretakers who had followed the chimpanzee's behavior for 10 years at the zoo in Furuvik, about 93 miles north of Stockholm.

Seemingly at ease with his position as leader of the group, Santino didn't attack the other chimpanzees, Osvath told The Associated Press. The attacks were only directed at humans viewing the apes across the moat surrounding the island compound where they were held.

However, he rarely hit visitors because of his poor aim, and no one was seriously injured in the cases when he did, Osvath said.

The observations confirmed the result of a staged laboratory experiment reported in 2006 by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. In that case, orangutans and bonobos were able to figure out which tool would work in an effort to retrieve grapes, and were able to remember to bring that tool along hours later.

"Every time you can combine experimental and observational data and you get a consistent result, that is very powerful," said an author of the 2006 study, Joseph Call. "This is an important observation."

He noted that there are big individual differences among chimpanzees, so the observation might not mean all chimpanzees are capable of the same planning.

"It could be that he is a genius. Only more research will tell. On the other hand, our research showed the same in orangutans and bonobos, so he is not alone," Call said.

Osvath said the chimpanzee had also been observed tapping on concrete boulders in the park to identify weak parts and then knocking out a piece. If it was too big for throwing, he broke it into smaller pieces, before adding them to his arsenal.

"It is very special that he first realizes that he can make these and then plans on how to use them," Osvath said. "This is more complex than what has been showed before."

The fact that the ape stayed calm while preparing his weapons but used them when he was extremely agitated proves that the planning behavior was not based on an immediate emotional drive, Osvath said.

For a while, zookeepers tried locking Santino up in the morning so he couldn't collect ammunition for his assaults, but he remained aggressive. They ultimately decided to castrate him last autumn, but will have to wait until the summer to see if that helps. The chimpanzees are only kept outdoors between April and October, and Santino's special behavior usually occurs in June and July.

"It is normal behavior for alpha males to want to influence their surroundings ... It is extremely frustrating for him that there are people out of his reach who are pointing at him and laughing," Osvath said. "It cannot be good to be so furious all the time."

In Connecticut last month, a 200-pound pet chimpanzee once seen in TV commercials mauled a woman trying to help its owner lure it inside and cornered a police officer in his cruiser before the officer shot and killed it, authorities said

The owner has speculated that the chimp was trying to protect her and attacked the woman because she had changed her hairstyle, was driving a different car and was holding a stuffed toy in front of her face to get the chimp's attention.

el cuarteto de nos

El Cuarteto de Nos is in heavy rotation chez H&L. They're a band that Leo "discovered" a few years after his cousin Javier recommended them.

Cuarteto is the oldest active Uruguayan band and has gained praise by transcending local culture through universal themes and engaging everyday pathos in a humorous light.

Here are some of our favorite songs ...

Ya No Sé Qué Hacer Conmigo

Ya tuve que ir obligado a misa, ya toque en el piano "Para Elisa"
ya aprendí a falsear mi sonrisa, ya caminé por la cornisa.
Ya cambié de lugar mi cama, ya hice comedia ya hice drama
fui concreto y me fui por las ramas, ya me hice el bueno y tuve mala fama.

Ya fui ético, y fui errático, ya fui escéptico y fui fanático
ya fui abúlico, fui metódico, ya fui impúdico y fui caótico.
Ya leí Arthur Conan Doyle, ya me pasé de nafta a gas oil.
Ya leí a Bretón y a Moliere, ya dormí en colchon y en somier.
Ya me cambié el pelo de color, ya estuve en contra y estuve a favor
lo que me daba placer ahora me da dolor, ya estuve al otro lado del mostrador.

Y oigo una voz que dice sin razón
"Vos siempre cambiando, ya no cambiás más"
y yo estoy cada vez más igual
Ya no se que hacer conmigo.

Ya me ahogué en un vaso de agua , ya planté café en Nicaragua
ya me fui a probar suerte a USA, ya jugué a la ruleta rusa.
Ya creí en los marcianos, ya fui ovo lacto vegetariano.
Sano, fui quieto y fui gitano, ya estuve tranqui y estuve hasta las manos.
Hice el curso de mitología pero de mi los dioses se reían.
orfebrería lo salvé raspando y ritmología aqui la estoy aplicando.

Ya probé, ya fumé, ya tomé, ya dejé, ya firmé, ya viajé, ya pegé.
Ya sufrí, ya eludí, ya huí, ya asumí, ya me fuí, ya volví, ya fingí, ya mentí.
Y entre tantas falsedades muchas de mis mentiras ya son verdades
hice fácil adversidades, y me compliqué en las nimiedades.

Y oigo una voz que dice con razón
"Vos siempre cambiando, ya no cambiás más"
y yo estoy cada vez más igual
Ya no se que hacer conmigo.

Ya me hice un lifting me puse un piercing, fui a ver al Dream Team y no hubo feeling
me tatué al Che en una nalga, arriba de mami para que no se salga.
Ya me reí y me importó un bledo de cosas y gente que ahora me dan miedo.
Ayuné por causas al pedo, ya me empaché con pollo al spiedo.

Ya fui psicólogo, fui al teólogo, fui al astrólogo, fui al enólogo
ya fui alcoholico y fui lambeta, ya fui anonimo y ya hice dieta.
Ya lancé piedras y escupitajos, al lugar donde ahora trabajo
y mi legajo cuenta a destajo, que me porté bien y que armé relajo.

Y oigo una voz que dice sin razón
"Vos siempre cambiando, ya no cambiás más"
y yo estoy cada vez más igual
Ya no se que hacer conmigo. (bis)

Nada Es Gratis En La Vida (Note: Not a music video, it's a series of Argentine photos laced with social commentary and futbol, but the song quality is pretty decent.)

Mamá compró y se le rompió
El forro del que naci yo
La plata no pudo juntar
Y el embarazo cancelar

Ella invirtió en mi educación
Pero con una condición
Porque le tuve que jurar
Que de vieja no la iba a internar

Dificil de creer
Dificil de explicar
Dijo un troyano ojo con un griego que trae regalos
Sea con dinero o no
Siempre se paga un favor
Y si veo que algo es facil
Yo dudo enseguida

Pague antes o despues
La cuenta va a aparecer
Y esta claro de que nada es gratis en la vida

Papá pago una mina en un bar
Cuando me llevo a debutar
Y por curarme se endeudó
De la peste que me contagió

Sí sí ya se
Esperma done
Pero pobrecito el destinatario
Yo tengo alzheimer hereditario

Y como el jefe comento
Despues que mi sueldo aumento
Si la limosna es de cuatía
Hasta el santo desconfía

Sea con dinero o no
Siempre se paga un favor
Y si veo que algo es facil
Yo dudo enseguida

Pague antes o despues
La cuenta va a aparecer
Y esta claro de que nada es gratis en la vida

Si sera asi que lo jodi
Al diablo cuando le vendi
Mi alma que no vale un billete
Se la canjee por un clarete

Ni honorario ni voluntario
Soy un sicario y cobro salario
Y no pidan solidaridad
Que yo no hago caridad

No es gratis mi salud
Ni gratis sera mi ataud
Si es que no pide su tajada
Es que no vale nada

Sea con dinero o no
Siempre se paga un favor
Y si veo que algo es facil
Yo dudo enseguida

Pague antes o despues
La cuenta va a aparecer
Y esta claro de que nada es gratis en la vida

... nada es gratis en la vida
... nada es gratis en la vida
... nada es gratis en la vida
... nada es gratis en la vida

Hoy Estoy Raro

Hoy estoy raro, y no entiendo por qué,
Si nada extraño me tuvo a maltraer.
Hoy estoy raro, no sé lo que hacer.

Será que hoy me puse a recordar
los días de mi infancia cuando siempre estaba mal
hijo único de la casualidad
mi padre era hippie y mi madre era punk

Ah, capaz...fue por esa niñera
que para que no llorara ponía en mi mamadera
valium, y salio un día con sus amigos
y volvió con esa manga de drogados,
y acelerados, en un rito satánico
después de torturar a mi hamster cocinaron.
Fue un infierno, me lo hicieron probar.
¡Y no era tierno!

Depende, ahí yo era un jopende,
como dijo mi tío que es un tipo que me entiende:
el que no sufre no aprende,
y ahí me bajó un diente de una patada
y me robó la plata que el ratón dejó bajo mi almohada.
Todos se reían cuando arrastraba la erre.
Mi abuela me pedía que si moría no la entierre
y que subiera más:
"Quizás, quizás, quizás"

Hoy estoy raro, y no entiendo por qué
si nada extraño me tuvo a maltraer
Hoy estoy raro no se lo que hacer.
Sentarme a esperar, que se me pase y chau

Y ta, capaz, fue que quede marcado
por ser hijo de padres divorciados.
¡Qué tarado!, no lo había pensado,
pero si fuera así todos seriamos traumados.

Y yo a media luz, ponía un blues
y la abuela a Jesús le pedía que Gardel
no fuera de Toulousse.
Yo pinchaba con su cruz, los granos de pus
por mi alergia al mousse.

Achus!!! Será que fui a cenar
con la novia de mi padre,
que me invitó pero me hizo lavar las cacerolas,
y al ver que mi hermana desfilaba medio en bolas
me dijo: Mirá, las modelos son todas trolas.

Y se enfurece,
¡justo ella!, que cuando toma se emputece.
Me tuve que rajar cuando después del cuarto vino
me empezó a toquetear
y se rió y le vino...hipo

Y me contó como anticipo
que va a dejar al viejo por el tipo
que le pagó la lipo.
Será por eso que estoy sensible,
la vida es impredecible.

Hoy estoy raro, y no entiendo por qué,
si nada extraño me tuvo a maltraer.
Hoy estoy raro no se lo que hacer.
Sentarme a esperar, que se me pase y chau

Capaz que no le hizo gracia
al de la farmacia
cuando dije que yo defiendo a muerte a la eutanasia.
Decía que si todos se morían se fundía,
y me tiró con un frasco de homeopatía.

O en una de esas,
como decía el peyote estoy mal de la cabeza.
Pero no, el doctor que me curó me juró
que la herida del frascazo en la nuca ya cicatrizó.

Será ese copetín que tomé en el cafetín,
picando un salamín, escuchando led zepellin
o fue esa moza, con pinta de viciosa
que de babosa echó en mi vaso alguna cosa

¡Qué pedazo de guaso!
Si rompió el vaso
cuando mi faso
le quemó el brazo,
y por mi torpeza
dejó el barril gigante de cerveza mal cerrado
y el bar quedó inundado.
Qué acertado,
pensar que yo me quise levantar a la nami
hablando del tsunami,
y baldeando me dijo: "¿Viste? Volvé por donde viniste,
el cielo no existe".

Hoy estoy raro, y no entiendo por qué
si nada extraño me tuvo a maltraer.
Hoy estoy raro no se lo que hacer.
Sentarme a esperar, que se me pase y chau.

Pobre Papá

Papito tiene que ir a trabajar
no quiere
papá no quiere ir
pero tiene que ir igual
papito dice si es lo q papi adora
papito no nació para las 8 horas

Papá no quiere trabajar
pero lo obligan
papito prefiere quedarse panza arriba
papito quiere una vida mas relajada
papá quiere quedarse en casa
y no hacer nada

Pobre papá (Pobre papá)
Pobre papá (Pobre papá)
a él no le gusta trabajar
Pobre papito (pobre papito)
pobrecito papa (Pobre papá)
nunca lo dejan descansar

Papito no quiere trabajar tan seguido
papá preferiría ser un mantenido
papá piensa que un día manda todo al carajo
pero no encara eso porque es mucho trabajo

Pobre papá (Pobre papá)
Pobre papá (Pobre papá)
A él no le gusta trabajar
Pobre papito (pobre papito)
Pobrecito papa (Pobre papá)
nunca lo dejan descansar

Siempre pensé que trabajar
no era moderno
si el trabajo es salud,
que trabajen los enfermos
si el trabajo es salud,
que trabajen los enfermos.

mr. clean, meet mr. electrolyzed tap water

I love science. This seems like such a no-brainer that it would be great if consumers like me could purchase it for home use.

Simple elixir called a 'miracle liquid'
Electrolyzed water cleans, degreases -- and treats athlete's foot. The solution is replacing toxic chemicals.
By Marla Dickerson

February 23, 2009

It's a kitchen degreaser. It's a window cleaner. It kills athlete's foot. Oh, and you can drink it.

Sounds like the old "Saturday Night Live" gag for Shimmer, the faux floor polish plugged by Gilda Radner. But the elixir is real. It has been approved by U.S. regulators. And it's starting to replace the toxic chemicals Americans use at home and on the job.

The stuff is a simple mixture of table salt and tap water whose ions have been scrambled with an electric current. Researchers have dubbed it electrolyzed water -- hardly as catchy as Mr. Clean. But at the Sheraton Delfina in Santa Monica, some hotel workers are calling it el liquido milagroso -- the miracle liquid.

That's as good a name as any for a substance that scientists say is powerful enough to kill anthrax spores without harming people or the environment.

Used as a sanitizer for decades in Russia and Japan, it's slowly winning acceptance in the United States. A New York poultry processor uses it to kill salmonella on chicken carcasses. Minnesota grocery clerks spray sticky conveyors in the checkout lanes. Michigan jailers mop with electrolyzed water to keep potentially lethal cleaners out of the hands of inmates.

In Santa Monica, the once-skeptical Sheraton housekeeping staff has ditched skin-chapping bleach and pungent ammonia for spray bottles filled with electrolyzed water to clean toilets and sinks.

"I didn't believe in it at first because it didn't have foam or any scent," said housekeeper Flor Corona. "But I can tell you it works. My rooms are clean."

Management likes it too. The mixture costs less than a penny a gallon. It cuts down on employee injuries from chemicals. It reduces shipping costs and waste because hotel staffers prepare the elixir on site. And it's helping the Sheraton Delfina tout its environmental credentials to guests.

The hotel's kitchen staff recently began disinfecting produce with electrolyzed water. They say the lettuce lasts longer. They're hoping to replace detergent in the dishwasher. Management figures the payback time for the $10,000 electrolysis machine will be less than a year.

"It's green. It saves money. And it's the right thing to do," said Glenn Epstein, executive assistant at the Sheraton Delfina. "It's almost like fantasy."

Actually, it's chemistry. For more than two centuries, scientists have tinkered with electrolysis, the use of an electric current to bring about a chemical reaction (not the hair-removal technique of the same name that's popular in Beverly Hills). That's how we got metal electroplating and large-scale production of chlorine, used to bleach and sanitize.

It turns out that zapping salt water with low-voltage electricity creates a couple of powerful yet nontoxic cleaning agents. Sodium ions are converted into sodium hydroxide, an alkaline liquid that cleans and degreases like detergent, but without the scrubbing bubbles. Chloride ions become hypochlorous acid, a potent disinfectant known as acid water.

"It's 10 times more effective than bleach in killing bacteria," said Yen-Con Hung, a professor of food science at the University of Georgia-Griffin, who has been researching electrolyzed water for more than a decade. "And it's safe."

There are drawbacks.

Electrolyzed water loses its potency fairly quickly, so it can't be stored long. Machines are pricey and geared mainly for industrial use. The process also needs to be monitored frequently for the right strength.

Then there's the "magic water" hype that has accompanied electrolyzed drinking water. A number of companies sell so-called ionizers for home use that can range from about $600 to more than $3,000. The alkaline water, proponents say, provides health benefits.

But Richard Wullaert, a Santa Barbara consultant, said consumers should be careful.

"Some of these people are making claims that will get everybody in trouble," said Wullaert, whose nonprofit Functional Water Society is spreading the word about electrolyzed water. "It's time for some serious conferences with serious scientists to give this credibility."

Most of the growth has happened outside the United States.

Russians are putting electrolyzed water down oil wells to kill pesky microbes. Europeans use it to treat burn victims. Electrolyzing equipment is helping to sanitize drinking water in parts of Latin American and Africa.

It's big in Japan. People there spray it on sushi to kill bacteria and fill their swimming pools with it, eliminating the need for harsh chlorine. Doctors use it to sterilize equipment and treat foot fungus and bedsores. It's the secret weapon in Sanyo Electric Corp.'s "soap-less" washing machine.

Now Sanyo is bent on cleaning up Japan's taxis with a tiny air purifier that fits into a car's cup holder. The device uses electrolyzed water to shield passengers from an unwelcome byproduct of Japan's binge-drinking business culture: vomit.

"There was some concern about the spreading of viruses and bacteria via the taxi, not to mention the . . . stinky smells," Sanyo spokesman Aaron Fowles said.

Sanyo's taxi air washer isn't yet available in the U.S.; commuters will have to hold their noses for now. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency have approved electrolyzed water for a variety of uses.

PuriCore of Malvern, Pa., and Oculus Innovative Sciences of Petaluma, Calif., have developed treatments for chronic wounds. Albuquerque, N.M.-based MIOX Corp. sells municipal water-purifying systems. EAU Technologies Inc. of Kennesaw, Ga., caters to both ends of a dairy cow, with alkaline water to aid the animal's digestion and acid water to clean up its manure.

Integrated Environmental Technologies Inc. of Little River, S.C., is working with oil companies to keep wells free of bacteria and with high schools to sanitize sweaty wrestling mats and grungy football equipment that spread skin infections.

Electrolyzer Corp. of Woburn, Mass., is going after the hospitality market. The Sheraton Delfina purchased one of its machines. So has the Hyatt Regency Chicago and the Trump International Beach Resort near Miami.

Patrick Lucci, Electrolyzer's vice president of marketing, likes to bombard prospects with scientific studies, then give 'em the old razzle-dazzle. He'll swig the processed salt water before he mops the floor with it.

"Try that with bleach," he said.

The unit in Santa Monica looks a little like an oversized water heater, with two tanks side by side -- one for making the hypochlorous acid sanitizer, the other for the sodium hydroxide cleanser.

Rebecca Jimenez, director of housekeeping, heard grumbling from the cleaning staff when the hotel brought the machine in last fall. Housekeepers doubted that the flat, virtually odorless liquids were really doing the job. Some poured the guest shampoos into their bottles to work up a lather.

"If it doesn't suds up, it doesn't work," Jimenez said. "That's the mentality."

Still, she said, most have come around and are enjoying working without fumes and peeling skin.

Minnesota food scientist Joellen Feirtag said she was similarly skeptical. So she installed an electrolysis unit in her laboratory and began researching the technology. She found that the acid water killed E. coli, salmonella, listeria and other nasty pathogens. Yet it was gentle enough to soothe her children's sunburns and acne.

She's now encouraging food processors to take a look at electrolyzed water to help combat the disease outbreaks that have roiled the industry. Most are dubious.

"This sounds too good to be true, which is really the biggest problem," said Feirtag, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota. "But it's only a matter of time before this becomes mainstream."