I just found this: a video of a 10-year-olds reaction to finding out his uncle is married to a man. I’m just going to copy and paste the copy direct from gayamericablog.com because the video has been made private. I just love how the kid is blown away, but doesn’t have any urge to believe … Read more
This week was surreal and round-abouty. I interviewed Mitch Albom and Deepak Chopra and was contacted via my blog by Dan Buettner who did the Blue Zones study about how to live longer that I wrote about recently.
Mitch Albom and I...he asked me to not tell you I was actually bending my knees in the shot and doing my best to look smaller. MY GOD I LOOK HUGE...!!!
The interaction started off stand-offishly (him giving me a ribbing for a comment I’d made about his study) and ended with our becoming e-mates, connected by shared mountain bike travels, a love of Spain and a general wariness of being corralled into living a life by numbers. I like meeting people who question the conveyor-belt and step off it to get a better look every now and then. I’ve done this all my life. Every few years I throw things in and wander for a bit…So does Dan. When he’s not being a National Geographic explorer.
I’ve noticed lately the frothing forth of a bunch of blogs that simply observe humanity going about its quirky, often banal thing. They generally make – or imply – gross generalisations. Which can make me balk.
But generalisations exist for us to better understand the world. They don’t have to come with judgment. In fact, when we strike with a generalisation, without hesitation or apology, without critical voice, we are celebrating beautiful patterns of humaness. Our need for patterns, to adhere to patterns, is so vulnerable. At this point we connect and like each other.
I like these ones:
1. Coverspy: This cute site (above) posts observations about New Yorkers on the subway. The site describes the person, where they’re heading (and presumably live) and what they’re reading. The picture painted (or implied) so often perfectly confirms a generalisation you might hold about people who read Dan Brown or wear Doc Martens or both. I like how the girl reading Flow is wearing a white skirt.
Mitch wrote Tuesdays with Morrie, the most successful memoir every published in the world. He’s in Australia this week and I’m meeting with him tomorrow to talk about, well, I’m hoping you might be able to help me out with what I ask him because I’m not in the most insightful mood today. Suggestions? UPDATE: … Read more
Sundays are sad. So says a Swedish study just out. It found the Sabbath the most depressing day of the week because (and I just love how big, important studies have an uncanny knack for pointing out the bleeding obvious) it’s the day before school and work starts. It also found the mood plunge is particularly profound among married couples and East Germans. (I could venture a theory on this, but I fear it’d only make things bleaker.)
Me, I’ve often found Sundays mood-sinky. When I was a kid, they were Dickensian-grim. As the sun set and the dam snap-froze over for the night, Dad would haul me and my brothers out to the back paddocks to chop wood for the week. Then Mum would line us up on the verandah to scrub knees and cut toenails. We’d catch the last bit of The Wonderful World of Disney before dinner. Then bed, the dread of first period clinging to us, prickly and restrictive like a Fair-Isle jumper in the rain.
As adults, you’d think we’d find a way to address this. To make Sundays sunnier. I know some people head to the pub on Sunday nights by way of a final hoorah to the weekend. This was a fad for a while and I hear it put off the inevitable quite effectively.
But I’ve noticed more recently that Sundays have taken on a panicky, catch-up quality. There’s not enough time in the week to get everything done. Certain tasks – wading through long emails, finishing that advisory report, filling out health insurance forms – can’t get done in the Monday-Friday flurry. So we set aside “just a few hours” on Sunday afternoon to “get on top of things”.
…and creating things that involve so much spirit and give-a-fuck-ness. And that you don’t seem to be motivated by a desire to be proportionally rewarded for your grand efforts via T-shirt sales at sell-out mega-concerts. From Sarah. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w[/youtube] (Dear Reader, I’m referring to the above Youtube clip of This Too Shall Pass. I posted their … Read more
I’m not about to venture into the food bloggosphere, but I’ve been asked to share the recipe for the muffins I took to this morning’s brunch. I’ve kind of made it up. Apologies to all home economists everywhere…I know this might horrify you. So, five bodgy steps: 1. turn oven to 180 or so (my … Read more
It’s the first Friday of Autumn. So let’s mix this up a bit. Starting from today, each Friday I’ll post a rundown of random things that make life sweeter as you roll into your weekend. This weekend I’m meeting up with two journos I met on Twitter – journo Caroline Overington and blogger Kerri Sackville. … Read more
Another week, another installment. A month or so ago I posted my musings on my not-so-amusing journey with hashimoto’s.
This week, I’ve invited Melbourne personal trainer, BioSignature practitioner and blogger Kat Eden to give her comic – or otherwise – input.
thyroid disease can feel like you’re hovering in a pool of sludge
I came across Kat on the site Dumb Little Men and loved her tips on living life better. I contacted her cold (it’s one of my favourite things to do – contact someone I find interesting and just start talking) and found her advice very sound, especially in regards to hormones and digestion.
Over to Kat:
What causes this whole caper?
From my way of thinking, and based on clinical experience I’d say stress has to be one of the biggest players in sparking auto-immune disease. In particular chronic stress. It doesn’t really matter where the stress comes from, or even if it’s a whole bunch of little stressors rather than one great big life-changing event. Your body doesn’t separate one type of stress from another in terms of the way your nervous system and hormones respond, so the accumulation of stress can be (often quite suddenly) very toxic.
A couple of new UK studies out today have boiled down relationship success to a few simple stats. Totally fascinating, albeit overly generalised, stuff! (Anyone love relationship generalisations as much as me?)
a woman to aspire to !
The spurious figures:
* Women should be 27 per cent more intelligent: Of the 1,074 couples looked at aged between 19 and 75, the report concluded that the wife should be 27 per cent more intelligent than her husband, hold a degree while he should not.
Hello, the “I just want to marry a plumber” call of just about every smart woman I know has backing! I’m not sure what the evolutionary rationale is to this factoid. And I don’t know whether 40 years ago it was the same. I suspect not.
Perhaps it’s a new quirk in adaptive relating – succesful relationships these days require a lot of smart juggling and emotional awareness. It’s more complex than 40 years ago to run a relationship. Women tend to steer relationships more than men. So smart, emotionally aware women make better relationship partners.
