Category Archives: Baby Boomer

N if for The New Normal – The Alphabet Series

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A New Normal

Aging & Attitude

O56C0464Canada Calgary Zoo – Lee Tickett

New Thoughts On Words

Toes that no longer wiggle, giggle or dance when asleep

But cry, some sudden leg syndrome is attacking our feet

Hands that can’t twist to open a door

Or flip pages any more

Kitchen tops decorated with items to not forget

A part of our brain we haven’t used yet

Ridge in thought

Like stiff knees reluctant to bend

Our grey cells will not receive or send

Exhausted and depleted

We long for comfort food

Meatloaf and mash-potatoes

But for the cerebellum it is repeated conversations

So what if we forget to lock a door, a date, the place, a score

We are old, invisible and small

Don’t pester and pest

Let’s explore!

Close your eyes, envision youth and come with me…. please,

To places we have never been

                                                               ….just saying

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L is for Limericks and Lobbyists – The Alphabet Series

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New Thoughts on Words

shannon

Aging & Attitude

The words limerick and lobbyist make me laugh.  A limerick is a nonsense poem that follows a strict rhyme scheme (AABBA). The intent is to be humorous and obscene, many consider a clean limerick an oxymoron. Edward Lear is credited with popularizing the amphibrachic meter.

A limerick needs to be bawdy if not dirty.  This video Grandma Sis’s dirty limerick  captures the art form wonderfully. Please note the yellow sectional couch wrapped in plastic they are sitting on.

Competing with Grandma Sis is not easy, but I hope my first attempt (using L words) will bring you a chuckle.

There once was a lady who worked in Londonderry

She was lazy, lascivious and ordinary

She dressed in the nude

And was extremely rude

But somehow was paid anyway

    Lobbying is the practice of trying to influence decisions made by government officials. President Ulysses S. Grant’s  frequent visits to the Willard Hotel lobby to enjoy a cigar and brandy popularized the term. The hotel is a short walk from the White House. Washington wheelers and dealers knew where to find him and  pay for his drinks.

I have come up with this ditty.

There once was a President who had a hobby

He liked to hang out in the Willard Hotel lobby

When he was there he’d collapse in a chair

Light up a cigar and blow smoke into the air

And listen to political folly

My next limerick hopefully captures more recent shenanigans.

In 1995 Congress strengthened lobby laws

Although compromised, registration still has flaws

With a flick of a pen, Super PAC’s are in

Lobbyist’s spend a fifth of their time drinking gin

We still hear politicians clapping their paws

If you would like to try writing  a limerick click here limerick poem.

Please share your efforts in the comments section. It was fun but harder than I thought.

….just saying

K is for Kaleidoscope – The Alphabet Series

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Aging & Attitude

New Thoughts on Words

Remember looking through a kaleidoscope as a child, the view filled with wonder and excitement.

For me, it was like going to Lowe’s Paradise Theater on Fordham road in the Bronx. There was a hole in the ceiling that allowed patrons to peak at the moon and stars while enjoying a movie. I did not know it was pretend until a teen, and stepped outside to daylight after the show.

As with a kaleidoscope, once the device met my eye, I traveled to an exotic place where imagined shapes and colors lived.

The kaleidoscope, invented by David Brewster; a scientist experimenting with light polarization around 1815, quickly became a popular toy with sales reaching two hundred thousand in three months time.

Webster’s dictionary defines a kaleidoscope as an “optical instrument which by an arrangement of reflective surfaces exhibits an infinite variety of beautiful colors and symmetrical forms of its content.” The effect achieved by angling mirrors towards each other to create multiple reflections.  Usually bits of glass or paper are put in the cylinder’s “object chamber” to be reflected, although it could be anything, including liquid.

Paul Dewa explains how a kaleidoscope works in his you/tube video.

We are familiar with the inexpensive cardboard and wood cylinder type but there are many others resembling art forms.

Frank and Janet Higgins worked with stain glass for years and called their studio “Kaleidoscope”  but did not design and build kaleidoscopes until the mid-90′s. Their aim is “to make high-quality playthings for grown-ups, concentrating equally on innovative design, the internal images and the external presentation.”  That means, they strive to be the best.  You can view the slide show at Picture Trail.

What makes a kaleidoscope fascinating is perception. We reflect differently on the same thought or memory, and the hope that change will make life better.

….just saying

    

    

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H is for Hanky Panky

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The Alphabet Series

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New Thoughts on Words

H is for hanky panky, two words joined by alliteration, not meaning. We hear the lyrics of Tommy James and the Shondells, “My baby does the hanky panky”, and picture a couple making out in a 1966 Mustang convertible. There is a mischievous fooling around atmosphere and know the girl is easy.

But what is hanky panky?

Webster’s (Standard Reference Works Publishing Co. 1956) definition; The meaningless professional talk of a juggler or magician, jugglery or legerdemain.

Sounds like politicians talking about the sequestration.

The term hanky panky is sighted in the first edition of ‘Punch‘ magazine Volume 1 September 1841. In London court, a con-man said to the judge,

“Only a little hanky-panky, my lud. The people likes it; they loves to be cheated before their faces. One, two, three-presto-begone. I’ll show your ludship as pretty a trick of putting a piece of money in your eye and taking it from your elbow, as you ever beheld.”

A later reference is from George Bernhard Shaw’s Geneva, 1939:

She: No hanky panky. I am respectable; and I mean to keep respectable.
He: I pledge you my word that my intentions are completely honorable.

Hanky panky defined as unethical, and referenced as Hocus Pocus or Hokey Pokey, grew in popularity when sexy and illicit acts were included.

It was playful and I recall teaching kindergartners the hokey pokey to practice eye hand coordination skills.

The closest we can get to that ridiculous fun for all is the Harlem Shake.

Google Hanky Panky and you will discover many companies sell lingerie and naughty items, but only one company makes the lace.

599290_10151373267023315_1455748430_nKlauber Brothers is a sixth generation family business and creators of an exclusive Signature Lace for Hanky Panky, a leader in intimate apparel.

The Klauber family was lucky to escape the treacherous trickery that forced them to surrender their business and never considered they would be in the  hanky panky business. They fled Nazis Germany on the SS Manhattan. It was the last boat to America in 1939.

Their story and craftmanship adds sobering thoughts to hanky panky, but I still hear lyrics in my head and think about a randition of the Harlem Shake, me mouthing the words…My baby does the hanky panky. I saw her walkin’ on down the line You know I saw her for the very first time A pretty little girl standin’ all alone “Hey pretty baby, can I take you home?”

…just saying

 

G is for Gaudy

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Aging & Attitude

The Alphabet Series – New Thoughts on Words

Gaudy is a word I heard as a child. My mother used the adjective to describe styles not to her liking. Designs she considered garish, ornate, flashy, kitschy, tasteless, vulgar, and extravagant. Our neighbor’s orange velvet sectional is a good example. The French Provincial Couch covered in plastic stuck to the back of your thighs in the summer and cracked when you sat in the winter. The iridescent fluted fruit bowl filled with shiny fake red apples and ornate oranges that decorated their dining room table was in my mother’s words, “poor taste.”

She told me “Gaudy is derived from an eccentric architect, famous for constructing some God-awful cathedral in Spain.”

The true impact of the word is captured by a visual of the works of Antoni Gaudi, the architect. As an adult I was fortunate to visit Barcelona and view the site she talked about.

Gaudi, born in 1852, is famous for his elaborate ornate architectural style. The Sagrada Familia  has been under construction since 1882 and expected to be completed in 2024. That is a 142 year project funded by private donations.

My mother knew about Gaudi but learned her sense of style from her father, Achilles DeSalvo, Pop-Pop to me.

Called Charlie, and never trendy, faddish or snazzy, he knew how to dress.  His family owned a tailor shop in Manhattan called DeSalvo & DeSalvo.

I loved him dearly.

Summertime, Saturday morning, Pop-Pop would take the Long Island Railroad to the Westbury station. He arrived wearing a blue seersucker suit, straw hat and spectator shoes, an afternoon addition of the Herald Tribune under his arm.

He wore cuff-links and his nails were polished.

We waited with great expectation for him to remove his suit jacket, and get comfortable in a chair. Surrounded by his four grandchildren he would unwrap one Mounds Bar and divide each half,  in half  for us to share.

But the best was yet to come.

Concealed in a breast pocket was a cigar.  The  cigar ban was presented to one of us and worn as a ring, for the day or week…depending on how long we made it last.

We never moaned or complained. We stood with hope and felt his love.

My grandfather got me my first real job at the Plaza Hotel.

Occasionally he would say, “Meet me on the northwest corner of 55th street and Madison on Tuesday at noon, and we’ll go to lunch”.

I did.

There was nothing ornate, flashy, gaudy or extravagant about his love. It was genuine. His style memorable.

 ….just saying

D is For Disappear /The Alphabet Series

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New Thoughts on Words

D is for disappear as in the New York Times Best Seller novel, “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn.

Nick and Amy Dunne, two out of work New York City writers, move to Nick’s childhood home in North Carthage, Missouri when they learn Nick’s mother is fatally ill.

Nick is a journalist.

Amy writes surveys or opinion questionnaires.

Example; which of the following will lead to personal happiness.

A.  Caring more about others  than yourself

B.  Discovering a passion

C.  Exercising and eating well daily

D.  All of the above

E.  Other_________________________________

Nick persuades Amy to invest the last of her Trust Fund in a business for him and his twin sister, Margo. They name the bar, “The Bar” and Nick appears a loser when Amy disappears on their wedding anniversary.

The reader knows it is a matter of time for the husband to become the prime suspect.

Gillian Flynn has written a plot driven novel that I read quickly and was reviewed favorably, but I could have put the book down easily.

“As The Washington Post proclaimed, her work ‘draws you in and keeps you reading with the force of a pure but nasty addiction.’ Gone Girl’s toxic mix of sharp-edged wit with deliciously chilling prose creates a nerve-fraying thriller that confounds you at every turn.”

Amy’s disappearance is not as in vanish, perish or cease to exist. Her vanishing act is one of revenge and dysfunction, concocted when she discovers Nick’s infidelity. Victimized and  bamboozled Amy plans to get even and does.

On the other line of a happiness survey she would write all the below;

A.  If you can’t have the one you love make sure no one else can either.

B.  Make everyone who hurts or disappoints you suffer for the rest of their lives.

C.  Inflicting pain on others is key to personal happiness.

Gillian says “she was not a nice little girl,” and “Libraries are filled with stories on generations of brutal men, trapped in a cycle of aggression. I wanted to write about the violence of women”

“The point is, women have spent so many years girl-powering ourselves — to the point of almost parodic encouragement — we’ve left no room to acknowledge our dark side. Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids.”

Isn’t disappearing better?

…Just saying

B is for Bootylicious Bouillabaisse, The Alphabet Series

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220px-Julia_Child_at_KUHT

New Thoughts On Words

B is For Bootylicious Bouillabaisse

    Bootylicious is on my mind. It happens to writers. Words jump into our minds and refuse to leave. I could blame Beyonce` Knowles and the Super Bowl; but the truth is I like the word. Its rhythm somehow attaches itself to bouillabaisse and bingo, becomes an onomatopoeia dancing around my head.

The American language evolves quickly and popularity is why Webster includes a word in the dictionary. Merriam Webster has a paid staff that scans publications and records the frequency of a new word or expression before deciding.

The Webster dictionary defines booty as spoil taken from an enemy in war or loot. In the real world Bootylicious is slang and a compound word joining booty or buttock with delicious. The song “Bootylicious” made the term well-known.

Words are added yearly. Recent additions are cougar, helicopter parent, soccer- mom and EEVO an original by Rachael Raye.  A few of the words for 2012 are: man cave, coperniciu, energy drink, game changer, gastropub, mash-up.

So what does Bootylicious Bouillabaisse bring to my mind?

Picture Beyonce` dressed in a black corset and spike high heels joining  Julia Child in the kitchen for a cooking lesson.

We will need something like the time machine in “Back to the Future” to transport Beyonce` to Marseille to learn from the American chef and food writer.

Close your eyes and imagine  Meryl Streep as Julia Child in Julie and Julia if you have to.

Julia opens the conversation with,  “to me the telling flavor of bouillabaisse comes from two things: the Provençal soup base — garlic, onions, tomatoes, olive oil, fennel, saffron, thyme, bay, and usually a bit of dried orange peel — and, of course, the fish — lean, firm-fleshed, soft-fleshed, gelatinous, and shellfish.”[3] Wikipedia

Beyonce`  questions the chef, “Lean and firm, that part girl I know what you talkin bout. Gelatinous…I know you gotta work your jelly. Gelationous? Got to text Jay Z. He’ll know bout that.”

Julia emphasises the B saying, “bouillabaisse is a fish stew. You combine two actions, blhir (French to boil) and abaissar (to reduce).

Beyonce` says with an attitude and one hand on her hip,  “I can boil fine, real fine. She shakes her booty to mimic Julie’s stirring

Julia’s voice crescendos saying,  “Not a hard boil, a slow steady bubbling.” And purses her lips saying ” Then turn it real low and slow.”

Beyonce` says “I gotcha, girl”

Bon  Appetite

                       ….just saying

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Laughter Clubs

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Aging & Attitude

Laughter Club

In the dark, the digital clock with extra-large numbers taunts me with the time, 1:54AM.

I typically wake at this hour and according to Roger Ekirch, it is not that I cannot sleep, simply the end of the “first sleep”. Time to get up and check for comments on my blog post.

A faithful reader has written, “I miss your humorous side.”

No kidding, I am currently writing about Smart Thermostats and worrying about water waste.

I miss my humor too and thinking of joining a Laughter Club.

What is a Laughter Club?

They are fully independent, not-for-profit, non-political, non-religious and non-competitive community-based associations of diverse people who choose to be happy. In other words, Baby Boomers who believe laughing about nothing can ward off aging.

In the sixties, students were sent to detention.  Now these “Breakfast Club Scoundrels” have convinced others to join them in acting and looking ridiculous, claiming 100 chuckles is equal to a ten minute cardiovascular workout.

I read about Laughter Clubs in “Health, Fitness and More”. Linda Marlow a certified Laughter Leader was interviewed about  laughter workshops. The back of her red T-shirt reads, “Laugh Til it Helps” and to call 1-800-Now-Laff, for help.

A list of 25 yoga exercises that included, Air Kiss and Ear-wiggle Laughter Greetings can be found on-line. Intrigued I played the YouTube video, however I needed to rewind the tape several times to decipher the instructor’s plea to “Imagine your feet have roots” and there was no laughter only deep breathing.

There are other ways to benefit from a Laughter Club without leaving your home.

  • The  Phone Laughter Club
  • Electric Shock Laughter
  • Laughter Finger Racing

Phone laughter is free. Electric Shock Laughter is touted as the easy way, but no, I did not ask for details. You can finger race on your own and not only laugh but improve your brain function, a  BOGO.

However, a Smart Thermostat can save you up to $200 a year.

… just saying

P.S. Thank you, Marsha.

Is Lying A Crime?

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“Not only did I lie about lying, but I lied about lying about lying. And you’d better believe that’s the truth. 
”
― Jarod Kintz

By a lie, a man…annihilates his dignity as a man.
Immanuel Kantike_and_dick-620x412

Aging & Attitude

There is a conversation going on in my head, not a monologue – talking to yourself.

It is a dialogue. Something like this:

“Is it a crime to lie?”

“Depends. If you’re asked, ‘Does this dress make me look fat?’ It would be a death sentence or life without parole, and just stupid, to say anything but no.”

“So, a white lie, something small and insignificant is okay? Not like Lance Armstrong, Casey Anthony or that woman in Phoenix, Arizona, well she lied but decided to tell the truth, not really the truth, a different lie about the truth.”

“Lying under oath, perjury, is a crime, however Anthony worked briefly for a company that worked for Universal Studios and wasn’t being investigated when she lied. Armstrong told Oprah he didn’t believe he was cheating or committing a crime and considered doping necessary to level the playing field and lying was the right choice.”

“So it’s okay to lie.”

“Well, kind of, the Supreme Court recently ruled on the subject of lying ­­­­­­– Xavier Alvarez sued saying it was a violation of American’s First Amendment, our freedom of speech for him not to be able to say he was a Medal of Honor recipient. He won.

“Lying to the public was a crime, look at Nixon and Watergate”

“Clinton, too – they were presidents, held to a higher standard.”

“Although it’s a lie, Xavier Alvarez can say he won a Medal of Honor, but Casey Anthony can’t say she worked at Universal Studies during an investigation, if she was read her rights.”

“What about Manti Te’o, can he lie about having a girlfriend.

“Well Manti Te’o wasn’t lying, he didn’t know the truth.” 220px-Lars_real_girl

“But had he known the truth it would be his First Amendment right to lie. Remember that indie movie, “Lars and the Real Girl”.

“Blame Voltaire, he said, “I may not agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.”

“I thought that meant the individual’s right to express an opinion and question others. Voltaire didn’t say I will defend your right to lie.”

“The actual quote is, ‘We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard‘. ~Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique, 1764- consequences were included.”

It may be a  First Amendment right to lie, but it is still wrong.
…. just saying

Polar Bear Plunge

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540px-Two_brave_girls_-_Polar_Bear_Plunge_2009

                                                                               Aging & Attitude

The flyer left at my door invites me to join the General Manager of Hammock Beach Club Resort, as he welcomes in 2013 with a charge into the Atlantic. The invitation continues to say, courage is a must – cool costumes a plus and after “the Plunge”, festive beverages are served.

Coney Island is famous for this crazy New Year’s Day ritual of jumping nearly naked into the Atlantic Ocean and I am thinking of taking the plunge to cleanse the damage of this year and start anew. Since  I would be “Freezin for a Reason”, I researched experience.

Did you know Coney Island is a former barrier island joined to Brooklyn by land fill?

Coney Island Polar Bear Club was founded by Bernarr Macfadden MacFadden_pose2in 1903. While virtually unknown today, Bernarr Macfadden (1868-1955) was called the “Father of Physical Culture.” An early advocate of physical fitness, natural foods and physical exercise, he believed that “our bodies are our most glorious possessions, that health-wealth is our greatest asset . . . that weakness is truly a crime . . . that every man can be a vigorous vital specimen of masculinity: that every woman can be a splendidly strong, well poised specimen of femininity.”

Who can argue.

There is a similar event in St. Augustine sponsored by the Life Saving Association, although the purpose is life guard training and experiencing  various ocean conditions, not a social event.

Plunges are now held across the United States. Annual events are held in Seattle (since 1993),[9] New York’s Coney Island Polar Bear Club,[10] Lake George NY,[11] Boston (since 1904),[12] and New Jersey.[13]

The Plungapalooza event in Maryland, the largest polar bear plunge in the United States, held annually at Sandy Point State Park, and sponsored by the Maryland State Police  raises funds for the Special Olympics. In 2007, Plungapalooza raised $2.2 million and had 7,400 participants.[16] In 2008, an estimated 12,000 people participated.[15]

In the Netherlands around 10,000 people dive into the icy cold sea water at Scheveningen, The Netherlands’  on New Year’s day.

Canadians reference the activity as  “Polar Bear Swims”, or “Dips”, when they rush into arctic waters on New Years Day.

I am thinking of taking the plunge. The flyer states, “You can join in – or simply watch and cheer!”

After the year we have had, maybe I will watch and cheer.

Happy New Year    …just saying