Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Significance of names

Don't ask why this occurred to me just now, but it's amazing how some people use the same name all their lives, while others (like me) are constantly changing them. I had a baby name, a girl name, my real name, my new real name, and my latest name. (Not publishing the names for privacy reasons.) Is this something to hide or, on the contrary, is it about growth and wanting to move on with a new feeling by being called something slightly different. Okay...as you see this is my excuse for updating the blog. You wouldn't know that I feel like I have so much to express and little time to do it in, would you?

Saturday, July 03, 2010

Inner Mirrors and Outdoor Drama

A useful thing about blogging is how it reflects the author back to themself.
Not just in the writing--style, word choices, mistakes--but in character: how often entries are made, choice of topics, sophistry or not, meaningfulness on a personal level, or not, and how they relate to the outside world. It says a lot about a person and, like most forms of writing, can serve as a mirror unto oneself.

That's the reflection for today and a meager attempt to distance myself from what I simply can't imagine: Who would bother to read all this? As far as I know, no one reads this (or owns up to reading it). I've learned in recent years that this sort of self-assessment is quite common among artist and not to be paid attention to. Funny thing is, I often sense that there are people watching and just waiting for one more thing to pick on me about. This, supposedly, is another hallmark of artistry and is the reason so many writers go into seclusion when they write, to evade those feelings. Does this make anyone question the process of creation?

Okay, enough on that stuff. Now the sharing of the goods...

Just found out about an outdoor musical drama in the southwest Virginia mountains: Trail of the Lonesopme Pine. This romantic true story about June Tolliver and Jack Hale--a kind of Hello Dolly meets Romeo and Juliet wrapped up in one--was penned by author John Fox (with whom I am not familiar, at all!). Fantastics move over! This one has been running for 46 years! Somewhere off of I-81, just north or south of state boarder town Bristol, one can drive on a four-land highway all the way to Big Stone Gap, VA. So, as soon as I get the specifics, I'll pass these along.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

LEVERAGING—A WOMAN’S SKILL?

Never mind asking why this country isn’t ready for a woman to be president, when it’s rare someone will ask why it was so difficult for women to achieve the right to vote in the U.S., a self-described land of the free, and how they managed to overcome that resistance.

One theory that started to burble in my brain while conducting research in 2006 for a reference book, Global Issue: Women’s Rights, was that women, overall, were perceived as conservatives. The women’s suffrage movement, which quickened in the late 1840s in the U.S., was largely made up of advocates left over from the 19th/early 20th century temperance movement. Men did not want to see their lifestyles—namely centered around work, family, sports, and pubs—dictated to. Many women didn’t either, but they were, of course, the discrete minority on that one.

What I just read in the May issue of the Smithsonian magazine presents yet another set of angles on this.
The mover and shaker behind the Anti-Saloon League, whose cause evolved into what became legislated and known as the Prohibition amendment to the U.S. Constitution, was, in fact, a man—Wayne B. Wheeler. (Read the article for more information about him.) One of the ways he gained momentum for this unpopular gesture for change was to recruit women.

Here we encounter a series of ironies. Renown suffragette Susan B. Anthony was originally rooted in the temperance movement. Being denied the right to speak at a temperance convention in Albany, New York in 1852, because of her gender, launched Anthony on the long road of the suffrage movement. By 1899, she leveraged the two causes for one another, while speaking with an ASL official: “The only hope of the Anti-Saloon Leagues’ success lies in putting the ballot into the hands of women.” The few women who could vote in any of the 16 U.S. states in 1917, helped to push through the 18th Amendment, which banned the right to manufacture and sell alcohol in the United States, through both houses of Congress. Another irony: Senate hearings, which began on September 27, 1918, after fulfilling the three-quarter requirement of state ratification, were heavily influenced by anti-German sentiment—ultimately silencing consumers of Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz and Miller beer (and we can imagine who they were).

Prohibition went into effect January 17, 1920. The women’s vote became possible on August 26, 1920 when the 19th Amendment was ratified. Two wins, two causes, after very, very long hauls. That’s not a bad record. Anthony can come back to be my president any day, even if I don’t agree with her.

One, final irony: Utah—now a territory for non-drinking Mormons— became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment, which ended Prohibition on December 5, 1933.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

How can a new town be new 50 years later?

Just attended a Founder's Day celebration in Reston, Virginia.

It was interesting to see there weren't too many people my (middle) age around... most of my peers have also left this "new town" of the 1960s when we graduated from school.

Many of the parents of my peers from these pioneering families--now in their 70s and 80s, as well as founder and visionary Bob Simon, who turned 96 today, whom I had the pleasure of sitting next to--were wondering how to kickstart growth of the place, which is centered not around one but five (originally seven) villages.

I only recently learned that Reston is neither a city or town, but a community in Fairfax County, Virginia, which apparently is also a hot topic that thankfully wasn't raised here. (One of the issues is deciding what kind of government "fits" this community.)

What interested me--for personal reasons, as an associate member of a newer community in East Tennessee, the Template Homestead--was what the guest speaker (Alex Garvin, urban planner, Yale educator, and author) offered as a strategy for moving forward:

(1) Decide who you want to attract (people)
(2) Put aside the money to do that (secure finances)
(3) Identify what they will need (transit within and outside the community, coffee places, street life, find the best form of government, a good map to find the place
(4) Start putting those things in place for when the economy gets better and be ready to receive (1)

But most importantly, he said there is no "correct" way to do this.

For me, Bob Simon's quiet comment was apropos and simple: "He's good."

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

With so much security prevention, thieves are developing prevention-resistance!

Recently, an email from my client came through with something for everyone:

Be careful about how you park (with the passenger side doors facing away from the rest of the lot, etc.) and how thieves can now manage to break in without you noticing. (I'm not passing along the step-by-step on how they do that.) The point was that they took one small item but left the GPS system alone, which shocked a colleague: "Oh no, he said, they want the break-in to be so subtle that you don't even realize it."

What we got from this was they look at your GPS to see where "home" is. Now they know what you drive, go to your home, and if your vehicle isn't there they assume you aren't and break in your home." Another subtlety is to leave a purse or wallet and only take one or two credit cards, or checks from the middle section of a check book. By the time you realize there has been a theft, they may have already had a couple days or more to use them. This is another reason they want the break-in to go unnoticed.

The take-home message: remove from the GPS unit home address as "home." Put in a local Wal-Mart address or somewhere else. Park the vehicle in a highly visible place, and keep valuables with you. Most importantly, it may keep the thieves from showing up at home.

Oh, and it may help to periodically walk around your car and check for holes near the door handle. (You can also imagine a blue gas that envelopes the car and repels all harm-doers. That seemed to work for me in New Haven, Conn.--the car-theft capitol of the world.)

________________________________

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Still more of the white stuff....

"Snow has become a four-letter word."
--Chattanooga, Tenn NPR radio station this morning.

Friday, February 26, 2010

I Am Where The Snow is Not!

In cold, but dry, no-snow, Tennessee...(really, am not missing the shoveling.)
Watching the new Ricky Gervais show on HBO. Hilarious, but maybe just a tad crude. A 30-minute live action talk show literally turns into an animation talk show--British accents and all. 9 pm Friday night.
Is this part of the graphic-ing of reality TV?

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Are Plans Possible in an Age of Global Connectedness?

Is really possible for a country to make an economic plan projecting out, let's say, 5 or 10 years, when we are living in an increasingly interconnected global economy?

This question turned up in my head this morning while watching a Sunday talk show segment. Govs. Rendell (PA) and Schwartzeneggar (CA) were discussing the health of the US economy--Is it getting better or worse?
Both saw indicators at the state level that would suggest it's on the mend--just be optimistic and not overly enthusiastic, as much work is still needed.
Forming better infrastructures to maintain the economy came up, and Washington needs to get better at making plans.

As far as I know, even the best, well thought-out plans don't always pan out, largely due to the change in culture in which they are made. In this case, make that plural--cultures--with economies appearing over the past 5 year that make headlines now, but were developing countries 15 years ago.

If something dire happens in one country, how likely will it impact other countries around the world? For instance, how about all the mortgage-backed securities failing in this country, troubling both European banks and the Chinese? Or Greece and Portugal putting a hiccup into the world stock markets with their debt declarations, until the European Union stepped in to catch out these newest member nations? Or the U.S. ability to recall loans after lending so much money to South American nations back in the 80s and 90s? California is considered to be among the top 8 economies IN THE WORLD. What happens in California could be a harbinger of what's to come to the rest of the U.S., good or bad.

I have been shorted by thousands of dollars by non-paying tenants in rent money in the past 2 years. My only recourse is to find a job so I can pay for what they couldn't... my mortgage. Apart from one hand feeding another, what other plan exists? (There's that interconnectedness thing, again.)

Maybe we should take it up a notch:
Will going global in economic planning make a difference?
Maybe we should think bigger, now that we are all connected.

Musings for the day.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Nutrition that supports sleep....

Nutrients in salmon, beans, yogurt, and spinach, can be forerunners to a restful sleep, according to RealAge.com (A Web site run by Oprah's physician consultant, Dr. Emhet Oz), which is citing Eat Your Way to Happiness by Elizabeth Somer, RD as its reference.

And courtesy whitehouse.gov....
Help for Haiti: Learn What You Can Do

The ladies of The View, blew out any warped reasonings about why Haiti's experiencing this tragedy. On their Thursday 1/14/2010 show, they discussed the country's misfortune and the significance of helping Haiti to rebuild itself.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Did You Notice?

Haiti: Go to WhiteHouse.gov and CNN.com/impact, for ways to help. Donations, from $10 to $100, will go a long way in these early days.

Martin Luther King's Birthday: Declared a day of service.

Foreign accents: What's the deal with TV audiences being treated to folks with accents (Easy-Off is one example) or foreign actors coached in American accents. (Two cast members on Brothers & Sisters; 1 on The Mentalist; 1 on now-defunct Eli Stone; and 1 on Gray's Anatomy, are just a
few that spring to mind.) What does it say about people and their semi-conscious or unconscious objectifying of others? My thinking at the moment is world citizenship is more at play than any one nation will ever admit, but nationality and ethnicity tend to polarize people around physical appearance and language. Onwards with the diversity movement!

Well-armed body: More tips for strong-body nutrition (not "diet," which suggests weight loss)... Freeze-dried black raspberries contain even more cancer-fighting anthocyanins than fresh berries do. And freeze-dried fruit can keep for over a year. Freeze-drying the berries concentrates the nutrition, but attenuates it as well. Check this out...

Objectifying women discussion on The View, on Wed. 1/13/2010. Catch up on ABC.com.

Signing off,

Tasha

Saturday, January 09, 2010

More Strong Body/Strong Mind, Better Able

More good info for the health- & body-strengthening nutrition department, which ultimately has its consequences in our mind- and spirit-health. (You need to have a body to be spiritual with!)

Please note the deliberate steps to avoid the word "anti-cancer." For moi, it implies you have to have cancer in order to want to take steps to avoid it. Nutrition and life style strengthen our ability to resist and/or better manage our lives, which are exposed to a host of diseases and stresses.

Enough spiel... so curry, tumeric, black pepper folks... add it in your cooking and eating programs.

Interesting as lately, I'm craving lettuce, olive oil, and black pepper combinations. Hmm...

Check out: Health Discovery: Curry, Black Pepper May Help Prevent Breast Cancer.

Friday, January 08, 2010

Armed body, Stronger body & Broccoli-cheese soup

You can see I'm more planetary-bound today...

While watching ABC's GMA on TV this morning, I was struck by a physician's personal account about using nutrition to help his body better fight a recurring brain cancer.

Largely plant- and grain-based, the life-style Dr. David Servan-Schreiber is espousing specifically includes the powerful effects of tumeric and certain fats (olive oil). He suggested reducing meat consumption, too. While stress doesn't necessarily cause cancer, he observed first-hand how it weakens the body's ability to fight cancer. Go to an excerpt of his book.

While you're there, check out this easy recipe for
broccoli and cheese soup.

Ciao for now.

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

We enter a new decade... or are we what's new?

As we embark on a new year, in a new decade, one has to wonder about the nature of change.
Is there anything we will see happen differently this year? Or, will we be seeing things happening--now, as before--differently? Nothing like a good conundrum with which to start the year.
~Tasha