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Posts Tagged ‘health’

Wanna Nosh?

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on February 17, 2026| Leave a Comment »

What a weekend!

Bob and I went glamping; we drove for two hours to Fall Creek Falls State Park in the easternmost corner of TN to meet up with our Germantown friends. We filled two cabins with great food, laughter and two new puppies. The meals we would create were pre-planned – Yoko and I got Valentine’s Day! February may be a short month, but it’s chock full of meaning. The Rocker and Aunt Kiki celebrated their ninth wedding anniversary, and their Twins are about to turn ONE! So it seems fitting that a holiday about love should be nestled in the middle.

I told Yoko I wanted to recreate the Bride’s wedding dinner under a tent on Thomas Jefferson’s mountain. I’d found an interesting take on shrimp and grits in the NYTimes Cooking App. This was also Grandma’s Ada favorite meal to order once she moved South. Yoko volunteered to make a chocolate cake with strawberries and whipped cream for dessert. Perfect. She would bake bread, and I would do a cheese plate as an appetizer. Also known as a nosh in Yiddish circles.

“Did you eat?“

There are certain cultures where that question is moot, since food will be presented whether you are hungry or not. When Bob and I landed at our cousin Peggy’s house during the deep freeze, she laid out a beautiful loaf of banana bread, followed by a pot of tea complete with lemons. I never felt so completely cared for in my life. It wasn’t just that our house was encased in ice and the temperature was plummeting, it was an all encompassing feeling of sanctuary. We had landed in a safe place with loved ones who didn’t ask anything of us except our attention to the snack on the table. She was nourishing our souls.

So of course I had to tell my glamping girlfriends about an article I’d read in the NYTimes about snacks. They all pulled out their phones to follow Snaxshot on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/snaxshot/?hl=en. Andrea Hernandez is not a dietician, but she was into marketing and noticed something about food during the pandemic. She is akin to a cultural anthropologist, comparing the fascination with “Fiber” in the 50s and 60s to today’s fixation on Protein and prebiotic sodas like Olipop – designed with 9 grams of plant-based fiber to enhance digestive health! I was actually shocked when I was asked for my ID in order to buy cans of a non-alcoholic sparkling raspberry rose for our Valentine dinner. What’s up with that?

Hernandez has become “… a kind of snacking Nostradamus. ‘When Andrea covers a product or a shift, it tends to ripple within the industry,’ said Melanie Masarin, the founder of the nonalcoholic aperitif brand Ghia, in an email, noting that Ms. Hernández’s observations have a way of showing up in group chats, brand conversations and beyond.… According to data from the consumer research firm NIQ, the (snack) market was worth $213 billion in the latest 52-week period. “It used to be like, I would go to the grocery store, I could choose between Kraft or Annie’s or homemade macaroni and cheese,” said Oren John, a branding and marketing creator based in Orange County, Calif., and one of Snaxshot’s early fans. ‘Now I have 45 macaroni and cheese options.’” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/dining/andrea-hernandez-snaxshot.html?searchResultPosition=5

If you’re lucky enough to live as long as I have, you’ve probably noticed this shift in snack food. Our mothers would put out nuts and maybe some Chex mix when company was coming. Today there’s an entire industry devoted to charcuterie boards. Dr Jim gifted us an incredible board for the holidays, complete with bowls and tiny forks and knives! Thanks big brother. Remember when a potato chip was simply a potato chip? Now they can be baked, flavored and shaped to hold a cupful of guacamole. In fact, chips can take up an entire aisle in the grocery store, and sold out faster than wings before the Benito Bowl.

In a world where MAHA has tipped the food triangle on its side, it’s up to us to decide what to put on our family’s table, and what kind of a nosh might be healthy and not just trendy. When we were in Mexico, the Twins were introduced to some of the last remaining food allergens for babies. It helps to have a few doctors nearby when they took their first bite of shellfish! Thankfully, they happen to love peanut butter, a uniquely American spread!

What do you snack on while watching the Winter Olympics? That’s Yoko on the left, and Bob is standing with the ladies. I’m third from the right with my hiking stick. I guess I really am shrinking!

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Health vs Wellness

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on January 13, 2026| Leave a Comment »

This morning I had an appointment with a new physical therapist. Bob calls him a magic man, because he has mapped out what muscles fire and where to create strength. And as I was giving him a short history of my osteoporosis journey, Bob felt compelled to point one thing out…

“She fell last year and broke her neck.”

I had forgotten to mention it. The day before the election of Donald Trump I nearly killed myself. Oops. Did I subconsciously know what was about to happen? Have I blocked it so completely from my mind that all I could talk about was cleaning out the bird bath, keeling over and breaking my clavicle?

The smart bird feeder has been installed on the side of the garage. So far we have two house finches and a Carolina chickadee in residence. It’s actually a godsend. I pick up my phone to a notification that my Birdbuddy had a visitor, and I promptly forget what I was going to do. Instead I watch a video of a bird chowing down, on guard for any other visitors.

I guess this is how we are now, on guard, distilled to a primal fear of being gunned down in the street by masked men. First our president kidnaps Maduro, and then an ICE agent shoots a woman three times in the head for making good trouble.

How can I talk about my fear of falling again, when people I know and love are risking their lives simply by peacefully protesting this totalitarian government? The last time I was protesting at the TN State House, I actually thanked the state troopers for keeping us safe. I looked into their eyes.

But this is different.

We need more Republicans to wake up. When Mr T tells us that only his own sense of morality can stop him, we need to listen. Because he thinks he can get away with anything. He can slap his name on the Kennedy Center. He can demolish the East Wing of the White House. He can buy a country!

Well I’m not for sale. And there are millions of us who will fight for our constitution. We know the difference between a healthy separation of powers and a grifter selling wellness to a fearful citizenry.

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Confounding

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on September 23, 2025| 2 Comments »

Last night the Pumpkin lit the candles and the Love Bug said the blessing over the round, braided challah that Bob had baked that very afternoon. In Jewish families around the world a New Year has begun; we take stock of our lives, we dip apples in honey. I tried some Sephardic recipes for a change along with an apple cider Bundt cake that miraculously slid out of its fluted pan! Lately my cakes have clung to the sides of my cake pans, so much so that Bob actually lined the bottom of a cake I made for a visiting/Parisian/doctor/friend of the Groom… and then buttered the parchment paper!

It’s rather confounding since I never used to have this problem with my carrot cakes.

And naturally the discussion at the Rosh Hashanah table veered into the ever more confounding and comical – had anyone watched the presser on Tylenol and autism? Our cousin Paul brought us all (including two ER docs and an Attending ICU Intensivist at Vanderbilt) up to date – Mr T couldn’t even pronounce acetaminophen, and he told pregnant women to “tough it out” if they had a fever. Never mind that a high fever in pregnancy increases the risk of birth defects. Never mind that scientists for years have not found any causal link between acetaminophen and autism which is a multifactorial disease with known genetic factors.

“Many of the studies included in the new review “did not necessarily go to the greatest lengths to account for possible confounders,” Dr. Brian Lee, a professor of epidemiology at Drexel University, said, referring to other factors that might explain a potential link. “And the biggest elephant in the room here,” he added, “is genetic confounding, because we know autism, A.D.H.D. and other neurodevelopmental disorders are highly heritable.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/health/kennedy-autism-tylenol-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.oE8.mzwn.aB4TzcsT3X6l&smid=url-share

Confounding variables may be my favorite phrase for the new year. We have a government touting pseudo-science; so do we have an actual increase in autism, or have we just expanded the definition so much that we have more autism diagnoses – or are we just reporting more as our population increases? It would be unethical to conduct double-blind studies on pregnant women, and so we must try and collect postpartum data which may have a host of differing variables including but not limited to medication, nutrition, addictive substances, living near a Superfund site, and genetic predispositions. Not to mention unintentional selection bias!

Today our President will speak to the United Nations. I would not trust anything that came out of his mouth, I am disillusioned and disheartened with Israel and I’m afraid our country is standing on a precipice. Will we be on the wrong side of history? Today God opens the book:  “…each year on this day “all inhabitants of the world pass before G‑d like a flock of sheep,” and it is decreed in the heavenly court “who shall live, and who shall die … who shall be impoverished and who shall be enriched; who shall fall and who shall rise.”

I woke this morning to a welcoming rain. I thought of my beautiful Granddaughter reciting the prayer over the bread, and I can be grateful to have lived through this last year. To witness her BatMitzvah. To light the Yahrzeit candle for my Mother-in-Law and my Brother-in-Law. To welcome twin baby Granddaughters into the world. To set the table with the good china.

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Quackery

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 26, 2025| 4 Comments »

There’s a chill in the air! My neighbor Les has moved, the Bat Mitzvah is fast approaching, and the Twins have turned six months. I’m never very good with change, but the cooler temperatures are certainly welcome. I’ve packed away my swimsuits and Bob and I are ready for our Fall jabs – you know, the annual Influenza and Covid vaccines. We wanted to get them a little early since the Love Bug’s big day will be full of friends and family fresh off airplanes. But guess what?

No such luck.

The 2025 Covid booster has been approved and manufactured in the US, except for some odd reason (RFK Jr) they have NOT been distributed yet! The Covid booster is nowhere to be found. Oh well, but if you search around, you might be able to find last year’s Covid vaccine… I hear the new flu shot is available though, which is great news since the L’il Pumpkin just found out the friend he played soccer with after school yesterday has the flu. Yep, flu and Covid are ramping up in Nashville.

And then I bumped into this article: “As Trump Weighs IVF, Republicans Back ‘New Natural’ Approach to Infertility.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/us/politics/trump-ivf-restorative-reproductive-medicine.html?unlocked_article_code=1.hE8.b_ok.-tvmuQ3oUKjI&smid=url-share

Just when you think the MAHA movement can’t get any wonkier, when you realize that the Kennedy name has lost its lustre, the GOP decides to push “restorative reproductive medicine.” After Mr T promised to make IVF available for everyone on the campaign trail, Christian Conservatives are having trouble dealing with those pesky, left-over embryos. It all started with Alabama’s Supreme Court Decision last year calling embryos “unborn children located outside of a biological uterus.” So they’ve come up with an alternative – they believe couples should look at the ‘root causes’ of infertility, like endometriosis or say environmental factors.

Hey, Catholics have been pushing a “natural” method of birth control for centuries. Why not return to the 19th Century, where charlatans in traveling caravans sold snake oil? Where polio and measles and flu killed thousands upon thousands of children each year. I’ve stopped making jokes about RFK Jr’s parasitic brain worm, but I still think that making him Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was a cringe-worthy, dirty trick. Here are just a few of his baseless views:

 “Wi-Fi causes cancer and “leaky brain”; that school shootings are attributable to antidepressants; that chemicals in water can lead to children becoming transgender; and that AIDS may not be caused by HIV. He’s also long said that vaccines cause autism and fail to protect people from diseases.”

And speaking of school shootings, our Grands had a bomb threat at their school the first week back, complete with FBI agents and bomb-sniffing dogs. It turned out to be nothing, but is terrifying none-theless. I remembered waiting for the all clear from a lockdown at the Twins’ NICU in the spring. The Twins are currently loving solid food! And thanks to the miracle of IVF and our iPhones, we can watch them in happy baby pose and rolling over, trying to crawl. After their measles vaccine, they will be able to travel on a plane!

That is, if our country can manage to stay in the 21st Century.


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Vertigo

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 19, 2025| 2 Comments »

The nurse asked me yesterday if I’d broken any bones in the last few months. I had to think…. We were at Vandy. I was hooked up to a machine delivering my annual “life-saving” bone-building medicine Reclast. Bob was sitting next to me, on his iPad and we’d been puzzling over Connections in the New York Times. We were settling in for over an hour’s wait as this miraculous infusion worked its way through my veins. It should have been an easy question, Bob immediately said “No.”

He also said “No” when I opened my iPad to the NYTimes and announced that we could watch Mr T’s meeting LIVE with President Zelensky and European leaders at the White House. My husband is well on his way to becoming an official curmudgeon! He wasn’t always like this. Over the years, people would tell me that Bob wasn’t like most physicians; after all, he translated medical speak into normal language, and he was so laid-back and easy-going.

I mean, how many doctors do you know who drove an old school bus to Woodstock? He was the exact opposite of a curmudgeon, “a bad-tempered, difficult, cantankerous (old man) person.”

“What about my clavicle?” I said. My last broken bone was my right clavicle which I never mentioned before dear reader because after the Big Fall last year, preceding the second election of a disgraced, twice impeached, indicted president, that resulted in a broken neck and hands, I was too embarrassed. It hardly seemed relevant. We’d returned from LA in May after the twins were born, and I went to see the dentist. After putting my chair back, positional vertigo took hold resulting in my tipping over later that day and BANG. Broken clavicle.

Coupled with osteoporosis, vertigo is my enemy.

On occasion, the ceiling would spin when laying down after a severe cold. I learned not to pay much attention to that because in a family of doctors These. Things. Happen; a virus can linger and it’s best to just ignore such symptoms. Which I did because they always went away. Until the vertigo continued that day, after the dentist visit. My sister Kay has had  Meniere’s disease for most of her life, and I wondered if this was it. Am I doomed to a chronic disease of the inner ear that will make my world spin out of control at the drop of a hat?

Since the last presidential election, I’ve been caught up in this healing journey. After all, my personal scaffolding was collapsing and I had to concentrate on building strength and resilience. But the fact is, this administration is intent on carving away many of our cultural and social norms, on deconstructing our civil rights. Political theatre captures our imagination; the GOP courts Russia on Friday and the EU on Monday. Hypocrisy much? There is nothing to see here, Mr T didn’t “rape” his victim – he was convicted of sexual abuse and defaming E Jean Carroll. We have a president who sues anyone and everyone, a despot. Academic institutions, main stream media, and large corporate law firms are bending their knees.

This country is experiencing communal vertigo, deluged by a slew of alternative facts and fear. Russia DID invade Ukraine! The BBC’s headline – “Ukraine’s President Zelensky managed to avoid another disastrous Oval Office meeting with Donald Trump,” says it all. The Epstein case retreats as more shiny objects are thrown into the mix. We are trying to find a life line, a way to keep this fledgling Democracy from toppling over. And I am hoping that positional vertigo is simply a phase, and my bones will continue to heal.

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Saving Souls

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »

It’s rainy and thundering this morning in Nashville. Can I just say again, I HATE tornado season. But dogs must be walked, so my Grand Dogs just came for a visit.

A little rain never stopped me from strolling Ms Bean, all I needed was an umbrella and my old sneakers! And speaking of weather-aware footwear, I’m happy to report the Love Bug has chosen her Bat Mitzvah project; she’s asking her family and friends to donate gently used shoes (or money if you prefer) to the non-profit, Nashville Soles4Souls. I’ll have to look through my shoe rack since my options have been limited to flats and sneakers, I’m sure I’ve got a few fancy heels I’ve hardly worn.

The Bug was surprised to learn that I wore Weejun loafers all the time and ‘kitten’ sling-back heels to dress up in college. Back in the 60s, we had to wear a skirt on the streets of Boston – no pants for us. And one pair of Keds was essential for dressing down. Not sure I ever wore high heels. I was happy to read that Kristen Stewart changed the rules for female footwear on the red carpet a few years ago by throwing off her stilettos! Supercilious symbols of sex appeal!

Tweens of today have the right idea. Most wear sneakers with anything and everything. I mean, if a retro pair of Converse was good enough for our almost Madame President… I’ve been wearing Asics for decades; through tennis, paddle ball, dance aerobics, and even a try at pickle ball, my gel-cushioned Asics have stood the test of time. Sneaker brand loyalty is definitely a thing. I once tried wearing a pair of HOKA sneaks I found on sale, and was nearly crippled! In fact, that pair can be donated if I didn’t already give them to the Bride – we wear the same size!

“As Soles4Souls, we give goods a second life—and people a second chance. Whether you’re donating, fundraising, or volunteering, your support reaches people near and far—helping those in crisis, empowering entrepreneurs, and reducing waste.” https://soles4souls.org/volunteer

This feels like my second chance at life, a do-over. Ever since the dreaded erev election fall, I’ve sworn off lug soles and slip-on mules. Did I ever tell you, after our Year of Living Dangerously, the Flapper could only wear chunky, two inch heels? The car’s engine had crushed her legs, and after months of immobility, when she was finally allowed to walk, one leg had healed two inches shorter than the other. My Mother simply adjusted her gait rather than limp.

My heart goes out to President Joe Biden and his family after his cancer diagnosis. Two Catholic kids from Scranton, PA, our stories are strangely similar. Only my Father died before the car accident that changed the trajectory of my family’s life. His wife and daughter were killed when a truck hit her car just weeks before Biden was sworn into the Senate. How does one go on after the unthinkable happens? Of course I was too young to understand. My foster parents were my guardian angels.

I wish Joe well on this next chapter. It is an opportunity to be honest with the American people, to let down his guard. As for me, I’ll put on my pink penny loafers and soldier on.

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Cheerio!

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on February 4, 2025| 6 Comments »

Today’s the day. It’s been three months since my family room fall. Today I see the spine doctor for X-rays of my neck – extension and flexion or tilting my head up and down. My fracture at C2, sometimes called a hangman’s fracture, has not exactly healed. It’s difficult if not impossible for older people to grow new bone, but the doctor tells me that fibrous tissue has bridged the gap, like a spider’s web of scar tissue. “No more roller coasters for you,” he tells me.

“And no bumper cars!”

I should feel lucky, if not downright jubilant that I’ll be free of the cervical Aspen collar. Goodbye, Ciao, Cheerio! So why do I feel conflicted?

Yesterday I shared a table for lunch with a widow. Her opening question, “What happened to you?” wasn’t new. Most people assume it was surgery that resulted in this head immobilization. But Bob had to leave to take a call, and before long the young widow and I were immersed in a deep conversation about life, our daughters, the choices we make, and her fall (totally alone and without her phone) off a ladder in the small storage unit of her high-rise condo in the Gulch.

INTERMISSION FOR 9 AM DOCTOR APPOINTMENT

I’ve just returned from the doctor collar-free. I had a rendezvous with death, but I tricked the grim reaper. My head is sitting on its axis just fine. Here’s a little anatomy lesson:

“The axis, also known as the epistropheus, is the second cervical vertebra (C2) that has some similarities to a typical cervical vertebra but is categorized as an atypical vertebra because of its unique features. Its most characteristic feature is the prominent superior projection known as the dens axis, or odontoid process. The dens axis plays an important function for the movement of the head, acting as a stable pivot around which the atlas and head rotate.“

It figures that I broke an atypical vertebra. Last week was my last hand therapy appointment, so now what do I do? I’m not allowed to drive for a few months, or play football…. “tackle” football. I started a book in California, “The Last Lecture,” by Randy Pausch, that I’d like to finish. He received a terminal cancer diagnosis and his book is a look back at his exceptional life. If you’ve never heard of him, check this out:

I guess my joy at being cut-loose from doctors and therapy is being blunted by the daily assaults on our democratic process by a president who would be king. The Groom’s critical care funding from NIH may be in jeopardy. One of their friends who works for the government has been asked to sign a “loyalty” pledge. This is real, Mr T’s crazy missives, his crazier “special government employee” Elon’s directives are all engineered to foment fear. Do not lose faith. It’s time to pull out those old pink pussy hats and resist dear readers.

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Disingenuous

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 4, 2025| 4 Comments »

I’d like to propose a word for last year: “Disingenuous.” It’s a word that’s stuck in my head, like a piece of music can get stuck in your ear.

Maybe it’s just aging – the way one word slips out of your mind every time you try to recall it, while another word decides to stay awhile. Does this happen to you? I can never remember the name of my favorite drug for instance, it’s an anti-inflammatory like Advil or Aleve but it doesn’t start with an “A.” I can’t won’t take opioids for pain, but this little pill does the trick. And as you know, 2024 has brought me a lot of pain. Its brand name is “Celebrex!”

“Celecoxib is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) used to treat mild to moderate pain and help relieve symptoms of arthritis (eg, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, or juvenile rheumatoid arthritis), such as inflammation, swelling, stiffness, and joint pain.”  https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/celecoxib-oral-route/description/drg-20068925

I call this my wonder drug, and yet its name still eludes me. Celebrex lasts for twenty-four hours and doesn’t upset the stomach as much as other NSAIDs, but you do need an Rx. OTOH, I just watched an ad on TV of a young guy falling down, injuring his back, and calling AMAZON to Facetime a doctor and have his prescription delivered right to his door – all while lying flat on his back on the kitchen floor. Doctor and pharmacy visit avoided.

I wondered if the MD or NP on the phone was an AI for a second.

Which leads me right to the next word – the one that is stuck in my head – Disingenuous. To be disingenuous is to be untrustworthy, dishonest, deceitful. You can tell I HATE AI. It’s enough to make me a Luddite. Last year’s election, and the time before that when another exceptional woman wasn’t elected President, has left me bereft. My physical ailments notwithstanding, I feel as if our country has lost its way. Maybe it started with “alternative truth.” Bob has a problem with putting a possessive pronoun in front of truth to begin with… so this is MY truth? Listen to ME! For me, a fact… is a fact… is a fact.

And aging is a part of this circle of life. I’m not injecting toxic chemicals in my body to “fight” aging, because aging always wins. As I enter the last quarter century of my time here on earth, I am determined to slow down and simplify my life. In a Buddhist sense, I want 2025 to be my “aimless” year – no more running after happiness, simply cherish the present moment. I – you – we are enough. In that mood, I don’t need another dog. After Ms Bean died, I started questioning that decision, thinking maybe a lap dog would be fun. But no, it would also create chaos.

And no more disingenuous people please. No more two-faced politicians, like that Republican Senator from Louisiana with an unlikely name, John Kennedy, who stood disdainfully near the podium at a news conference after the New Year’s NOLA terrorist attack. He ridiculed an NBC reporter, and suggested there was some conspiracy the federal government was hiding, and that pure “evil” exists in the world. Old fire and brimstone, just another old white guy giving us all a scolding in an affected voice like Foghorn Leghorn.

The word for the New Year in our family is Twins! Congratulations to Aunt Kiki and the Rocker, their double feature is due in the spring. I’ve got a few weeks left of hand therapy and another baby blanket to knit, but I cannot wait to meet them.

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Hands Free

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on December 17, 2024| 4 Comments »

Yesterday my wrist splint came off so I’m hands free! Still doing PT but feeling lighter, like a bobble head doll stuck in a cage and not so much a soft shell crab.

To celebrate, I made the mistake of watching Rachel Maddow last night with Bob. It was either that or the Menendez Brothers’ story on Netflix. She was all about the OLIGARCHS, a word I thought was Russian; but actually Aristotle first used the term in relation to a coercive, oppressive rule by the rich, as opposed to an aristocracy. Its modern day usage centers on the corrupt control of government after the fall of the Soviet Union by extremely wealthy citizens.

“…one of a small group of powerful people who control a country or an industry.”

And what Maddow was saying last night was wake up and smell what’s happening right now in our country. We saw Elon Musk attached at the hip to Mr T, basically buying his way into political influence at a time when legislators are about to pass a bill about collecting (or NOT collecting) data on driverless cars, mostly Teslas. Maddow showed footage of a full self-driving (FSD) Tesla that stopped short in a tunnel causing a nine car pile-up. One FSD Tesla went around a stopped school bus and plowed into a child. There have been at least 13 fatal accidents since this hands-free feature debuted on Thanksgiving Day 2022.

I was reminded of the ability of gun lobbyists to keep the NIH from collecting data on gun deaths.

But for my own sanity, I prefer to think of all the things I can do now with my own two hands: I can knit, I can wash my own hair, I can open some bottles, and brushing my teeth is a lot easier! Maybe I should try flossing? I won’t be able to drive for six months but that’s because of my neck – another month in the C collar with no sudden twists or turns for me.

Maddow introduced a Yale Professor of History last night, Timothy Snyder, to discuss our current state of affairs. His current book, “On Freedom,” follows a seminal work about oligarchs titled, “On Tyranny,” and attempts to deliver strategies for democracies to avoid authoritarianism. He told us we must not keep looking back, but instead hold the GOP accountable each and every day for their twisted policies; you know like separation of families at the border.

“…he identifies five key determinants of a truly free society – and it seems highly appropriate that those tenets can be counted on the fingers of one definitely raised fist. Each one leads to the next. The foundation is sovereignty (not the resolve of narrow nationalists but the creation of political conditions in which individuals are safe and enabled to make meaningful choices about their lives, underwritten by empathy). That in turn leads to “unpredictability”, the freedom to behave in ways that authority (and algorithms) cannot control; and mobility (the possibility for young people, in particular, to “break free of the structures (and people) that allowed them to become [sovereign]”. That is only possible with the freedom of “factuality” (“the grip on the world that allows us to challenge it” – Snyder makes a particularly impassioned argument about the devastating effect of local news deserts on democracy); and finally, “solidarity”, the recognition that these freedoms are not just for the privileged 0.1%, but for everyone.” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/sep/23/on-freedom-by-timothy-snyder-review-an-essential-manifesto-for-change

So I am 2/3 free at the moment with just an Aspen aka Cervical Collar on my neck. I want to stay optimistic, I’m determined to keep typing, to keep you informed of my family foibles and all the while shine a light on our paradoxical politics. Merry Everything Everyone!

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Another Distraction

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , on December 10, 2024| 2 Comments »

We are a distracted world. Look around you, wherever you go, people are looking down at their phones. In France, most everyone walks around tethered to their phones by a lariat around the neck, all ages and genders – exactly like Grandma Ada and her assisted-living cohorts.

Not me. I lose my phone on a regular basis. For awhile I liked the whole Millennial, ‘shove it into your back jean’s pocket’ approach; but after a near drowning in the toilet and the switch to yoga pants I’ve just given up. The worst is when I’ve switched off the ringer, which i do on a regular basis, then all bets are off. I might find it poised on the toaster in the kitchen, or buried in the bedsheets! Bob, the Saint of Lost Things, usually saves the day.

The Groom thinks losing my cell is a good sign, it means I’m not so attached to a screen. I thought it meant early onset dementia.

This morning I got a bit of bad news at the spine doctor’s office. He pulled up the CT scan from the day of my injury over a month ago and compared it to the one taken yesterday. It looks like the odontoid fracture of my neck (C2), isn’t healing as well as we all hoped. He wants me to wear my cervical (C) collar for another month and then we can reevaluate – surgery is still a possibility. Living in a state of flux, not knowing if I’m one wrong step away from disaster, is not what I wanted to hear.

“I don’t like the distraction,” the doctor said.

In orthopedic speak, a distraction is the separation of the odontoid via the longitudinal axis. It was a small chasm on the computer screen between the fulcrum that allows my head to turn. My eyes could see it, but my brain wasn’t processing his words. He was explaining the types of surgery he might attempt on my balsa bones and I’m sure Bob was listening but I’d tuned out. The holidays would go on without me.

Like Scarlett O’Hara, I’ll deal with that next year.

It’s warming up again here in Nashville, from 17 degrees to 57 in a few days, so I can walk outside which is my best therapy. We all walked to the Farmers Market on Saturday after a quick breakfast of Nutella crepes at the Bride’s house. It was a beautiful, sunny crisp day. She whipped her scarf around my neck to hide the dreaded C collar and we laughed to think I could look semi-normal. The good news is I can sleep with a soft collar now.

Have you heard that Australia is banning social media for children under the age of 16? That high schools that ban cell phones are happier places – less disciplinary calls and more student achievement? I think I’ll keep my phone on silent for a few days, let Bob turn his notifications on. Also, I’m less likely to be scammed. Let me know what you’re streaming since I’m all about distracting myself this holiday season.

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