Author Archives: susanjustwrites

John Grisham: Advocating Change via Great Storytelling

Posted on January 30, 2016 | 2 comments

I admit it. I’m a John Grisham fan. Ever since I read The Firm in 1991, I’ve read every one of his law-related novels, and I’ve relished reading all of them.

As a writer, I admire his highly readable writing style and the way his stories—filled with twists and turns–engage readers like me. As an erstwhile lawyer (like Grisham), I’m also in awe of his ability to skillfully weave legal issues into his stories.

Grisham’s latest, Rogue Lawyer, appeared last year, and I just finished reading it. What’s new in this novel is his protagonist, Sebastian Rudd, an extremely unconventional criminal defense lawyer who carries a gun and works out of a bulletproof van. Rudd, whose only friend is a burly paralegal/bodyguard, represents defendants other lawyers won’t. His encounters with a diverse group of atypical clients make up the gripping story lines that intersect in Rogue Lawyer.

What I found especially notable in this novel is Grisham’s focus on several significant issues that currently get some attention—but not nearly enough–in our current political and social climate.

Briefly summarized, here are some of the major issues Grisham highlights in Rogue Lawyer:

  • The corruption of our criminal justice system by some of the prosecutors, police officers, and judges who work within that system. Grisham focuses, for example, on what he sees as the rampant use of lies in court testimony by police and prosecutors. These lies, he makes clear, are aimed at convicting criminal defendants, fairly or not. Grisham unabashedly condemns the wrongful convictions that often result. As lawyer Rudd says at one point, “Getting a conviction is far more important [to these people] than justice.”
  • The use of phony “expert” witnesses in our courts. These witnesses are hired by lawyers to say what the lawyers want them to say. They “roam the country as hired guns testifying for fat fees.” Unfortunately, juries are usually impressed by these experts’ credentials and willing to take their testimony at face value, whether it‘s merited or not. Grisham writes that these experts brag about “their verdicts” (but rarely mention their “losses”).
  •  Human trafficking, which Grisham correctly calls “sexual slavery.” He points out, via one of his characters, that “[m]ost people in this country don’t believe there’s sex trafficking in their cities, but it’s there. It’s everywhere.” The traffickers “prey on runaways, homeless kids, girls from bad families looking for escape. It’s a sick business.” Fortunately, this issue is receiving increased attention. In San Francisco, a collaborative effort is taking aim at human trafficking, mounting an “awareness campaign” focused on reaching vulnerable teens.
  • The incarceration of one million “young black men now warehoused in decaying prisons, idling away the days at taxpayer expense,” the “unintended victims of tough laws passed by tough politicians over the past forty years,” mostly for nonviolent drug offenses. This is another issue that’s garnered more attention in the last few years, giving us some hope for change.

I commend John Grisham for shining light on these issues. His status as a best-selling author gives him a bully pulpit of sorts, a platform for raising the awareness of his readers. He told CBS News in October that he hopes Sebastian Rudd will reappear in more stories, exploring these and other issues he’s concerned about. He’d even like to see Rudd become the lead in a TV series whose episodes could touch on a wide range of important issues.

I hope that happens. And I hope that, via his storytelling, John Grisham’s focus on these kinds of issues has a broad impact on the public consciousness and leads to changes we sorely need.

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Posted in criminal defense lawyers, criminal justice, expert witnesses, human trafficking, incarceration, law, lawyers, police, politics, prosecutors

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Watching the movie “Z”: A tale of two Hoffmans

Posted on January 4, 2016 | 2 comments

January 1st marks an unusual anniversary for me.

On January 1, 1970, I watched the movie “Z”—a film I consider a powerful and enduring classic—under somewhat remarkable circumstances.

The 1969 film was directed by Costa-Gavras, a Greek-born filmmaker who lived in Paris. He based it on a book written in 1966 by Vassilis Vassilikos, who, using official documents, described the 1963 death of a Greek politician, Grigoris Lambrakis.

Lambrakis, an MD who taught at the medical school in Athens, was a leading pacifist and left-wing member of the Greek parliament. Shortly after speaking at an antiwar meeting in Thessaloniki, he was struck on the head by a club wielded by two far-right extremists. He later died of his injuries.

After his death, graffiti with the letter “Z” began to appear in Greek cities. Representing the growing protest against the right-wing government, it stood for the first letter of the Greek word, “Zi,” which means “he lives.”

In a filmed interview in 2009, Costa-Gavras discussed the making of “Z.” (You can watch this interview, as I did, on a DVD of “Z.”)

His focus was clear: political oppression. His cast: Yves Montand as Lambrakis, Irene Pappas as his wife, and Jean-Louis Trintignant as the prosecutor who slowly realizes what happened and is ultimately driven to seek justice against the wrongdoers.

In the film, a key scene takes place in front of the venue where Lambrakis is scheduled to give his speech. Many supporters have gathered to welcome him, but others in the crowd are demonstrators opposed to him and what he stands for. The local police are seen clubbing a few of the demonstrators. But it’s clear that the demonstrators are the bad guys–street toughs paid off by those in power to harm Lambrakis.

So it’s not the police who represent oppression here. Rather, it’s the demonstrators, one of whom strikes Lambrakis in the head. He’s stunned but goes ahead to give his speech. When leaving the venue, he’s struck once again, causing him to die later in the film.

Before he’s struck, Lambrakis asks, “Why do the ideas we stand for incite such violence?” Costa-Gavras’s answer: It’s all about power. Those in power will do anything to stay in power, and here that included the assassination of a political opponent.

Post-1963, Greek politics remained chaotic, and a 1967 coup by the military led to their control of the Greek government until their regime finally collapsed and democratic government was essentially restored in 1973.

I first saw “Z” at the Cinema movie theater in Chicago on New Year’s Day 1970.   The Cinema was an art-film theater located on Chicago Avenue near Michigan Avenue, and I saw many “art flicks” there when I was younger.  It’s long-gone, demolished and replaced by a high-rise building that includes a Neiman Marcus store.

I was a young lawyer working in an office that brought test cases on behalf of the poor.  I’d recently completed a clerkship with Judge Julius J. Hoffman, the judge who presided over “the Chicago 7 trial” (also called “the Chicago conspiracy trial”) that got underway in the fall of 1969 and was still ongoing in early 1970.  The trial stemmed from the turmoil engulfing the Democratic convention held in Chicago in 1968. (Happily, I never had to work on that trial. My clerkship was ending, and my co-clerk was assigned to that task.)

[FYI: I will discuss my tenure with Judge Hoffman in an upcoming post.]

I read about “Z” in Roger Ebert’s review in the Chicago Sun-Times in late December. Ebert was an unusually young and thoughtful movie critic, close to my own age, and I was a great fan of his reviews. This review, which called “Z” the best film of 1969, highlighted the political backdrop of corruption, and I was eager to see it.  I’d just said goodbye to a man I’d been dating—he was a bit too boring to abide any longer—and I set out on a cold and gray New Year’s Day to see the movie by myself. (As luck would have it, I met my adored and never-boring husband when I moved to sunny California a few months later.)

The film more than lived up to my expectations.  But what was especially striking about being in the audience that day was that, in the crowd waiting to enter the theater, was one of the “Chicago 7” defendants, Abbie Hoffman (no relation to Judge Hoffman).  In that era, Abbie Hoffman was a major figure in the protest movement opposing the government. All seven of the Chicago defendants were protesters indicted by “Tricky Dick” Nixon’s administration.

I didn’t agree with everything that Abbie Hoffman and his cohorts stood for, and I didn’t endorse their misconduct during the trial itself.  But I was opposed to the Vietnam War, sympathetic to other elements of the protest movement, and horrified later that year by events like the killings at Kent State.

As I watched “Z,” knowing that Abbie Hoffman was watching it at the very same time, I couldn’t help thinking of the parallels with Chicago.  Fortunately, our government (unlike the powerful right wing in Greece) didn’t promote assassination.

But there were parallels.  The attitude of local officials, including Mayor Richard J. Daley, toward the protesters who came to Chicago led to an overreaction by the Chicago police. Their violent conduct toward the protesters became obvious to everyone watching TV coverage of the Democratic convention. The U.S. Justice Department went on to indict Abbie Hoffman and the other defendants on charges brought under a law many viewed as unconstitutional.

But there was one sharp contrast between Chicago and Greece: the prosecutors.

I’d fallen halfway in love with Jean-Louis Trintignant when he starred in “A Man and a Woman,” a 1967 French film. Now, in “Z,” he portrayed a fair-minded prosecutor who becomes determined to hold the powerful to account. And he succeeds in indicting not only the two toughs who committed the murder but also the high-ranking military officers who supported them.

(The real-life prosecutor, Christos Sartzetakis, was twice arrested and imprisoned but triumphed after democracy was restored and was elected by the Greek parliament to serve as the country’s president from 1985 to 1990.)

By contrast, the prosecutors representing the Nixon administration in Chicago were politically ambitious and far from fair-minded. They were determined to convict the seven defendants, including Abbie Hoffman, whose protests during the convention had been largely peaceful. They secured as the trial judge a man whose usual bent was to rule in favor of the federal prosecutors who appeared before him, and he treated this trial like any other.

No one was killed in Chicago. And although the trial defendants were convicted, they were convicted only of contempt, and these convictions were mostly reversed by other courts. But the parallels between what transpired in Chicago and the story told in “Z” remain.

46 years later, “Z” is still a powerful film. And January 1, 1970, endures in my memory as a day that underscored the ugliness of political oppression both in Greece and in my own country.

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Posted in 1960s, 1969 movies, anniversaries, Chicago, Greece, lawyers, legal assistance to the poor, movie stars, movies, Nixon administration, politics

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Celebrating Love in the City of Light

Posted on December 10, 2015 | 2 comments

Along with the rest of the civilized world, I was horrified to learn of the terrorist attacks that took place in Paris on November 13th. They were followed by an equally–perhaps even more–disturbing attack in San Bernardino.

Both of these have shaken me. San Bernardino? Because it hit so close to home.

Paris? Because Paris has a special place in my heart.

Special indeed. I celebrated my first, tenth, and 26th wedding anniversaries in Paris.

Celebrating anniversaries in Paris…. Romantic, n’est-ce pas?  But here’s what’s more important: Those anniversaries were filled with the kind of love that lasts even longer than spine-tingling heart-pounding romance.

On our first anniversary, Herb and I were in Paris on our very first trip to Europe. We made plans to dine with some old friends (including one of Herb’s Harvard roommates) who were living in Geneva and drove into Paris to see us.  We didn’t tell them it was our anniversary till we visited them in Geneva several days later. (I think Herb didn’t want them to treat us to dinner.)

So on our anniversary we dined at a typical French restaurant near our hotel on the Boulevard Saint-Germain instead of a pricey and far more elegant one. When we finally confided that we’d spent our first wedding anniversary with them, Herb’s roommate said, “You should have told us! We could have blown our wad and gone to the Tour d’Argent.”

But I hadn’t minded our modest dinner on the Left Bank. Just being with Herb, along with our friends, was more than enough. The evening had been filled with laughter and love. And there was plenty of time for romance later when we were alone.

Our tenth anniversary was very different. Herb was on a sabbatical from the university in Chicago where he taught math.  During our month in Paris, Herb spent most days at the University of Paris, where he communed with other mathematicians while I shepherded our two small daughters (ages 4 and 7) around the city.

We ate dinner together every night, and our anniversary dinner was no exception. We dined with our daughters at a small and inexpensive bistro on the Left Bank, very near our apartment in the 5th arrondisement. Our modest apartment was on the Rue Tournefort, one street over from the better-known Rue Mouffetard, and the area, just off the Place de la Contrescarpe, was filled with bistros like this one.

We were preoccupied with our daughters, making sure we ordered food they would cheerfully eat (no fancy French sauces for them!), and reprimanding them if their behavior became too rambunctious. So as an anniversary dinner, it wasn’t glamorous, and it certainly wasn’t romantic. But the love all of us felt for each other turned the evening into a memorable one I’ll never forget.

Our 26th anniversary was even better. By this time, our daughters were no longer children, and our older daughter, Meredith, was spending all year in Paris on a graduate fellowship at the Ecole Normale Superieure. Herb and I, along with our younger daughter, Leslie, traveled to Paris to meet Meredith and spend some time there, after which the four of us traveled together in France for another ten days.

Our anniversary fell on our third day in Paris, and Herb asked me to choose a place for dinner. I picked a small restaurant on the Ile St.-Louis, one of my favorite places in all of Paris.

We walked there from our Left Bank hotel, strolling along the Seine, crossing the bridge that leads to Notre-Dame, then crossing the bridge to the Ile. The weather was sunny and warm, and we laughed and chatted as we walked.

We arrived on the island and enjoyed perusing menus posted outside the restaurants on the Rue St.-Louis-en-Ile as we approached our destination. Then we shared a delightful dinner at the restaurant I’d chosen, where our charming waiter took photos of us laughing and eating and reveling in just being together.  After dinner, we strolled to Berthillon, famed for its glaces and their unique flavors, and we devoured our ice cream on the spot. That evening was one of the most blissful I’ve ever spent.

I’ve been to Paris on five other trips (I wrote about one of them in a blog post last November, “Down and Hot in Paris and London”). I recently returned for the eighth time, and Paris was just as beautiful as I remembered.

But Paris without Herb? It’s never been quite the same.

When Herb died, he left me with years of memories filled with the extraordinary love and happiness we shared.  The three anniversaries we celebrated in Paris are at the top of my list.

 

 

 

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Posted in anniversaries, City of Light, French restaurants, Left Bank, love, mathematicians, Paris, romance, Uncategorized, University of Paris, wedding anniversaries

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P.S. re Sugar

Posted on December 7, 2015 | 1 comment

Sugar has been the focus of two of my previous posts, the October 2015 post on chewing sugar-free gum to avoid tooth decay (“Chew on This”) and a more general indictment of sugar in October 2014 (“Gimme a Little Sugar”).

I now have a P.S. to add to those.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), the FDA has endorsed a proposed revision to the Nutrition Facts label that appears on about 700,000 packaged food items. The new label will give consumers more information about the sugar hidden in their food.

Here’s the proposed change: labels will specify the amount of “added sugars” in a product. In other words, it will highlight the sugar that doesn’t naturally occur in the product’s other ingredients. It will also include the percentage of an adult’s recommended daily intake of sugar this added sugar represents. Significantly, it will caution consumers to “AVOID TOO MUCH” of these added sugars.

The US calls this “a win for science” because it validates the strong scientific evidence that consuming too much sugar contributes to diseases affecting millions of Americans. It’s a major win because scientists were up against both the sugar lobby and the powerful packaged-food industry’s lobbyists, all of whom fought against the proposed change.

It’s also a win for public health because “Americans remain remarkably uninformed about the health dangers of excessive sugar intake” and even about how much sugar they’re already consuming. The average is more than 19 teaspoons of sugar every day! And an estimated 74 percent of all packaged foods—including many presumably non-sweet products like soups, salad dressings, and crackers—contain added sugar.

The UCS will continue to fight for the proposed change in hopes that the new label is finalized soon.

This info appears in the Fall 2015 issue of Catalyst, a UCS publication.

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Posted in health, lobby, lobbyists, nutrition, science, sugar, sugar consumption, sugar industry, Uncategorized

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Chew on this

Posted on November 30, 2015 | 3 comments

During the holiday season–spanning Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the December holidays–most of us worry about our consumption of sugary candy and desserts.

We should worry. Sugar not only adds calories but it also can lead to other health problems. For one thing, sugar clearly leads to problems with our teeth. It’s well established that the bacteria in our mouths combines with sugar to create an acid that causes tooth decay.

There’s a useful remedy for the tooth problem. No, not the one that immediately comes to mind.

Sure, you can brush your teeth right after consuming sugar-loaded food and drink. But how many of us do it?

Until something else comes along (and it inevitably will, thanks to researchers like the ones I noted in my blog post “Beavers? Seriously?” last March), here’s one thing you can try: chewing sugar-free gum.

In October, The Wall Street Journal highlighted how chewing gum can help reduce tooth decay. It quoted a spokeswoman for the American Dental Association–a family dentist in Fremont, California, Dr. Ruchi Sahota–on the virtues of sugar-free gum. According to Dr. Sahota, chewing gum after eating stimulates saliva, and that can prevent cavities.

Why? Naturally occurring saliva helps to neutralize the mouth by reducing the acids produced by bacteria in food, and those acids are what ultimately cause cavities. Chewing sugar-free gum can reduce the amount of the bacteria-happy acid. In 2007, the ADA began including chewing gum in its Seal of Approval program. But only sugarless gums can qualify (other gums contain the kinds of sugars used as food by bacteria).

Sugar-free gums typically use artificial sweeteners, most of which are created in a lab, and there’s been some discussion of whether they are safe. But concerns about their being carcinogenic have been dismissed by the FDA for lack of clear evidence.

Some dentists promote chewing gum sweetened with xylitol, a sugar alcohol that usually derives from wood fiber. Studies have shown that it adds mineral to tooth enamel, and one study showed that it can inhibit the growth of bacteria that stick to teeth.

But recent analysis concluded that there was insufficient evidence that xylitol can help prevent cavities. So Dr. Sahota told the Journal that the research “isn’t conclusive enough” to promote gums with xylitol over other sugar-free gums.

Although some dentists recommend chewing sugarless gum for at least 20 minutes to get the full anti-bacterial effect, Dr. Sahota disagrees. She advises moderation, cautioning people “not to overchew,” which can be hard on the jaw and tooth enamel.

Regarding candy, Dr. S. recommends avoiding sticky or hard candies because they’re the worst cavity-causing villains. Chocolate is much better for your teeth because it washes away more easily than other candies. Yay, chocolate!

As an inveterate gum-chewer, I’m happy to learn that all those sticks of sugar-free gum I chew can help me avoid tooth decay.

But “candy is candy.” So although chewing gum may help forestall the worst effects of coating our teeth with sugar, we need to remember that a toothbrush will do an even better job of scouring all that sugar off our teeth.

Enjoy those sugary holiday treats. But don’t forget to keep some sugar-free gum handy to pop in your mouth when you’re done. Even rinsing your mouth with water ought to help. And at bedtime, if not before, head for your trusty Sonicare or Oral-B.

Once your teeth are properly scoured, you can drift off to sleep, those visions of sugar plums dancing in your head.

 

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Posted in chewing gum, chocolate, health, holidays, sugar, sugar consumption, sugar-free gum, sugarless gum, teeth, tooth decay, Uncategorized

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Laissez les bons temps rouler! (Let the good times roll in New Orleans!)

Posted on October 29, 2015 | 2 comments

Let the good times roll! This joyous credo of New Orleans has inspired me to write about the city, now frequently called NOLA (for New Orleans, LA).

I’ll begin with the fabulous food.

Any visit to the Big Easy simply has to include eating at some of the city’s famed restaurants. During our recent trip, my companion and I reveled in the food offered at a handful of the best. Although some highly praised restaurants exist outside the French Quarter, most of the time we chose spots within the very colorful F.Q.

One of our first stops was Antoine’s, which claims to be the oldest continuously operating restaurant in NOLA. It traces its founding to Antoine Alciatore, who arrived from Marseilles, France, in 1840. Using the bounty of locally available seafood, he developed a cuisine featuring sauces never used before, creating such dishes as crawfish etouffeé and shrimp rémoulade. Today Antoine’s occupies several high-ceilinged dining rooms in which its servers treat you to astounding food. Much of it still features locally caught seafood. I chose the three-course $20.15 Fall Lunch Special, which included an appetizer (oysters, salad, or sweet potato bisque), an entrée of seafood or meat, and dessert. My companion chose a bowl of delicious crawfish bisque from the a la carte menu (and shared my ice-cream-sundae dessert). We both took advantage of the black-cherry martinis for a mere 25 cents each.

Another venerable NOLA restaurant is Galatoire’s, which has featured classic Creole cuisine for over 100 years. In its charming dining room on Bourbon Street, diners noisily celebrate birthdays and other happy occasions, creating a din that only slightly detracts from the excellent food and outstanding service. I savored my crawfish salad and shrimp etouffeé, while my companion enjoyed grilled redfish and a specialty, crabmeat Yvonne.

Somewhat uncertain, we dined at a restaurant on Decatur Street with the odd name of Tujague’s. We discovered that the name is pronounced “two-jacks,” and the place (the second oldest in NOLA) has a fascinating history. Guillaume and Marie Tujague arrived from France and opened their restaurant across from the French Market in 1856. It’s now famous for its own version of shrimp rémoulade and—surprisingly—a succulent beef brisket boiled with veggies in a creole sauce. We ordered blackened fish and had no regrets.

After a disappointing Sunday “jazz brunch” at a spot in the F.Q., we headed the next day for the Garden District. We loved taking the St. Charles streetcar, strolling around the neighborhood, and admiring its historic houses. But the real highlight of our visit was lunch at Commander’s Palace. The food, service, and ambiance were all spectacular. CP is rightly famous for its turtle soup (which my companion ordered), while I indulged in the 3-soup offering, which included not only turtle but also seafood gumbo and shrimp bisque, each of which was superb. My companion and I both had blackened fish—yum!–plus 25-cent cocktails (cosmopolitans and martinis). We ran out of room for dessert and gingerly walked our very full selves back to the St. Charles streetcar.

If you’re hankering for oysters, and the line in front of the Acme Oyster House is forbidding, try Felix’s just across the street. We arrived there near its closing time of 10 p.m., but we were graciously served great food despite the late hour. The shrimp po’boy was very good and the crawfish etouffeé excellent. Although the ambiance is bare-bones, the place is clean and well run, patronized by a wide range of colorful locals. We thoroughly enjoyed our late-night experience there.

Café du Monde is justly famous around the world. Perched on Decatur Street across from beautiful Jackson Square, it welcomes long lines of visitors seeking its beignets and café au lait every morning. We avoided the long lines and headed for the café after dinner one night. It was the perfect nightcap. The warm beignets, fresh from the oven and coated in powdered sugar, were just as wonderful as you’ve always heard, and the café au lait (regular or decaf) is terrific. By the way, the world-famed café now has a location outside the French Quarter. The large Hilton Riverside hotel is linked to an outlet mall called Riverwalk, and Café du Monde has established a small outpost there. The ambiance isn’t quite the same, but the beignets and hot coffee are.

On our last day in NOLA, we lunched at the venerable Palace Café. Located on the fringes of the French Quarter, where busy Canal Street meets Chartres Street, the two-story café features contemporary Creole dishes. We couldn’t resist another opportunity to imbibe turtle soup (almost as good as the one at Commander’s Palace), followed by one more helping of delicious grilled fish. But the real lure for us was Bananas Foster. As our server, Matt, prepared it tableside, he related its history: the dessert originated in New Orleans in the early 1950s, when NOLA was the major port of entry for bananas shipped from Central and South America. Restauranteur Owen Brennan asked his chef to prepare a new dessert that included bananas. Bananas Flambé later became Bananas Foster as a tribute to Brennan’s friend and dessert enthusiast, Richard Foster. It features not only bananas but also rum, banana liqueur, and vanilla ice cream, and it’s great fun to watch it cooking, especially when the rum ignites. The Palace Café’s version was sublime.

Needless to say, NOLA offers much more than world-class food. Its not-quite-complete recovery from Hurricane Katrina has been remarkable. (You can trace the recovery in an exhibit at the Presbytère museum, where you’ll also find a colorful exhibit related to Mardi Gras.)

NOLA offers museums, an aquarium, a zoo, and other big-city delights. But don’t forget the music. Harry Connick Jr. calls NOLA the only city he knows that has “a constant backdrop of music,” a backdrop you can witness for yourself. Musicians seem to pop up everywhere, sometimes creating what appear to be impromptu musical performances. This musical backdrop includes jazz, of course. The city’s legacy of great jazz survives in polished nightspots like Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse as well as unique settings like Preservation Hall.

Finally, let’s not forget NOLA’s literary connections. If you’ve ever seen the stunning film, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” or the play that inspired it, you can view the wrought-iron balcony where Tennessee Williams wrote the original play. (I envision him typing away on a cheap typewriter while he sat on that lovely balcony.) It’s on St. Peter Street, not far from Jackson Square. Other literary luminaries include William Faulkner, who lived on nearby Pirate’s Alley in 1925, working on his early novels while he wrote for the Times-Picayune newspaper. You’ll find a busy bookstore on the ground floor of the house he lived in. Another notable but troubled writer, John Kennedy Toole, wrote “A Confederacy of Dunces,” set in NOLA during the 1960s. Finally published in 1980, years after Toole’s suicide, his book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1981.

“Laissez les bons temps rouler!” I carried home a shiny coffee mug inscribed with this Cajun expression (no, it’s not classic French). Sitting on a shelf in plain view, it will unfailingly remind me of the great food and good times my companion and I relished during our astonishing visit to New Orleans.

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Posted in food, French Quarter, jazz, literature, Mardi Gras, museums, music, New Orleans, NOLA, restaurants, travel

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How Young/Old Do You Feel?

Posted on October 22, 2015 | Leave a comment

Do you feel much younger than your real age?

A recent study, published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and reported in the Wall Street Journal, suggests that those who feel younger than their real age probably have a better memory and better cognitive function than those who feel older.

The study, conducted by researchers in France, analyzed data from over 1,300 men and women, ages 50 to 75. They’d originally been part of a U.S. study in the mid-1990s.

The respondents were asked how old they felt most of the time. They were also asked for their medical info and how often they engaged in moderate or vigorous exercise.

Following these people for 10 years allowed the researchers to assess how well they later did on tests of memory and executive function (defined as the capacity to plan and the ability to carry out complex tasks). The study found that the participants, on average, felt 19% younger than their chronological age.

Overall, 89% of the group felt younger than their actual age. But 11% felt older, and these individuals scored 25% lower on memory and cognitive tests than those who felt younger.

Factors like gender, education, marital status, and chronic diseases were ruled out.

The researchers concluded that people who feel older than their real age should probably be closely monitored because this may be an early marker of impaired cognition, leading to dementia.

The Journal also noted other research showing that a younger self-image is more common in physically active people with a lower body-mass index.

The findings in the French study coincide with a large body of data emerging from a recent AARP survey of 1,800 Americans, ages 40 to 90. AARP Magazine set forth the data in an article called “You’re Old, I’m Not: How Americans “really feel about aging.”

Although the respondents acknowledged facing challenges, they also revealed “some surprisingly rosy attitudes.” For example, 85% said they weren’t “old” yet.

When asked at which age is a person “old,” respondents’ answers depended on their age. People in their 40s said 63, those in their 50s said 68, those in their 60s said 73, while those in their 70s said 75. (One 90-year-old woman said that a woman isn’t “old” until she hits 95.)

The older people were, the “less hampered” they appeared to feel by their aging bodies. They were asked whether they agreed with the following statements:

1. Problems with my physical health do not hold me back from doing what I want.

2. I have more energy now than I expected for my age.

The physical-health answers were somewhat surprising. While 58% of people in their 40s agreed with the first statement, the rates of agreement went up with each age group. Those in their 60s and 70s agreed (that their physical-health problems didn’t hold them back) at the rate of 69%.

On the energy question, the results were also illuminating. Only 24% of those in their 40s expected to have more energy at their age (they probably expected to be pretty energetic), but 55% of people in their 70s said they had more energy than they’d expected to have at their age.

One new bit of information: According to the Centers for Disease Control, about 69 million Americans are not as “young at heart”—literally—as they think they are. The CDC just found that more than 40% of Americans had hearts that were five or more years older than their actual ages. Wow! Does this contradict the research on how young we feel?

Not really. CDC Director Tom Frieden said its “heart risk calculator” was just an easy way to reveal someone’s risk of heart attack or stroke. Frieden added that learning one’s heart age can be “a clear call to take charge of your health.” Let’s therefore keep this finding in perspective: all it really does is underscore the importance of your overall health.

So…how old do you feel? Staying active and avoiding excessive weight-gain no doubt improve your odds of feeling younger. But here’s the most important thing to keep in mind: Forget about numbers!

Don’t obsess about your chronological age. Don’t think in terms of “young” and “old.” If your physical health is reasonably good, and your overall life-situation is likewise, keep living an active and rewarding life.

Jonathan Swift wrote, “No wise [person] ever wished to be younger.” Maybe not. But as someone else once said, “We are all getting older, but we don’t have to GET OLD.”

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Our Trip West: A Memoir

Posted on September 17, 2015 | 2 comments

One summer during the 1950s, the thing I cared about most was our family’s long-anticipated “Trip West,” the road trip we’d mapped out for the last two weeks of summer.

Departing from our apartment in Chicago one hot August morning, we crossed the Mississippi River and entered Iowa, the first state west of Illinois. As our eyes drank in the not-yet-boring sameness of the Iowa cornfields, my mother suddenly had an urgent question. Where was the garment bag, filled with four brand-new outfits, that she’d left hanging on the bedroom door? She didn’t remember putting it in the car.

Sure enough, when we stopped for the night, the garment bag was nowhere to be found. My parents, in their haste to leave, had forgotten to take Mom’s bag. The result? Mom had one dress to wear for the entire two-week trip.

Imagine. Two weeks in August in one brown-and-white hound’s-tooth-checked rayon dress. We scoured store racks from Sioux City to Sioux Falls searching for another summer dress for Mom. But by the last two weeks of August, even the least trendy stores in the least trendy parts of America had NO SUMMER DRESSES left.

By Salt Lake City, Mom was resigned to one more week of the hound’s-tooth-checked number and finally stopped looking. We were all happy to end the search, enthusiastically thanking Providence for Mom’s underactive sweat glands.

Our trip included adventures in the Badlands, the Black Hills, and Yellowstone National Park. But the highlight for me happened when we arrived at the town of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The town was not yet the “in” resort it has since become, but its mountains were already attracting skiers. And that summer I rode the Snow King Mountain chair-lift 4,000 feet to the top. By myself.

Driving through Jackson Hole, we’d noticed a sign promoting the chair-lift ride to the top of Snow King Mountain. Daddy stopped the car and got out to take a look. The rest of us followed, watching chairs whizzing up the mountain from where we stood at the bottom.

Somehow our signals got crossed because I hopped on one of the chairs thinking that Daddy was going to hop on the very next one. As I blithely began to go up the mountain, I suddenly heard loud voices. I turned around to see my parents, still at the bottom of the mountain, waving their arms and shouting. I couldn’t make out what they were shouting, but I got the idea: Daddy had decided not to ride the chair lift after all, and I’d made a big mistake to hop on when I did.

I faced forward again, realizing that it was too late to get off. The chair was moving fast, and if I tried to dismount, disaster might ensue. So I sat back and feasted my eyes on the spectacular scenery. Chicago never looked like this.

When I reached the top of the mountain, I was startled by a man who emerged from a small structure, took my photo, then pulled me off the still-moving chair. Shouting “YOUR MOTHER WANTS TO TALK TO YOU,” he thrust a telephone receiver into my hand. Calling from the bottom of the mountain, my mother frantically demanded to know if I was all right. After assuring her that I was fine, I hung up, and the top-of-the-mountain man helped me mount a chair going downhill.

As I descended, I realized how very high I’d climbed. I could see all the way down the mountain to the tiny town below, and it finally sunk in just how far I could fall if I slipped out of the chair. Luckily, the rest of the ride went smoothly.

When I landed safely at the bottom of the mountain, my parents rushed to greet me, my mother smothering me with kisses. I wondered why they’d been so worried. Now, a mother (and grandmother) myself, I no longer wonder. Seeing one of my young children whisked up a 7,808-foot mountain, all alone, I would have panicked too.

With the Jackson Hole episode behind us, our family explored Colorado and Utah before heading home. By the time we got to North Platte, Nebraska, we were sure our Western adventures were over. But we were wrong.

We dined at a local steakhouse, figuring on an uneventful walk back to our motel. But when we left the steakhouse, the air was swarming with hundreds of enormous locusts. Unaccustomed to seeing any insect larger than a horsefly, we were shocked to see hordes of gigantic bugs zooming through the air.

We ducked and began running, collapsing in the bug-free atmosphere of our motel room. But it was too early to proclaim victory over the insect world. As Mom began to undress (yes, the brown-and-white hound’s-tooth-checked number), a locust emerged from the vicinity of her bra and began to fly around the room. We all screamed till Daddy did what was expected of 1950s-era Daddies and got rid of the thing. It took us a while to settle down to sleep that night.

We returned to Chicago and our routine existence. But the memories of our Trip West never faded. A reminder arrived in our mailbox a few weeks later: the photo of me, in the chair-lift, at the top of Snow King Mountain.

Among my favorite memories are those of my travels, starting with those I took with my parents so long ago. I’ve gone on to travel to many parts of the world, and I plan to keep on going. Inside me is a little girl on a chair-lift, eager to be transported up the mountain one more time.

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Posted in 1950s, family road trips, Jackson Hole Wyoming, ski chair-lifts, Snow King Mountain, summertime travel, travel, Western U.S.

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Put some spice into your (longer) life

Posted on August 18, 2015 | 2 comments

Do you like spicy food? I do! So I was happy to learn about the mounting evidence that eating spicy food is linked to a longer life.

The New York Times, CNN, and Time magazine recently reported on a Chinese study of nearly half a million people (487,375, to be exact). The mass of data collected in that study showed an association between eating spicy food and a reduced risk of death.

The study, reported in the medical journal BMJ, included Chinese men and women enrolled between 2004 and 2008 and followed for an average of more than seven years. Using self-reported questionnaires, the researchers analyzed the spicy food consumption of people aged 30 to 70 across 10 regions in China, excluding those with cancer, heart disease, and stroke. The researchers controlled for family medical history, age, education, diabetes, smoking, and a host of other variables.

They found that those eating spicy food, mainly food containing chili peppers, once or twice a week had a 10 percent reduced overall risk for death, compared with those eating spicy food less than once a week. Further, they found that consuming spicy food six to seven times a week reduced the risk even more–14 percent.

Spicy food eaters had lower rates of ischemic heart disease, respiratory diseases, and cancers. (Ischemic heart disease, a common cause of death, arises from a reduced blood supply to the heart, usually caused by atherosclerosis.)

Although the researchers drew no conclusions about cause and effect, they pointed out that capsaicin, the main ingredient in chili peppers, had been found in other studies to have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects.

“There is accumulating evidence from mostly experimental research to show the benefit of spices or their active components on human health,” said Lu Qi, an associate professor of nutrition at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health and a co-author of the study. But, he added, “we need more evidence, especially from clinical trials, to further verify these findings, and we are looking forward to seeing data from other populations.”

What’s different about spicy foods? The study highlights the benefits of capsaicin, a bioactive ingredient in chili peppers, which has previously been linked to health perks like increased fat-burning.

But most experts emphasize the need for more research. One such expert is Daphne Miller, associate clinical professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of “The Jungle Effect: The Healthiest Diets from Around the World, Why They Work and How to Make Them Work for You.”

Miller told CNN that many variables associated with eating spicy food haven’t been addressed in the study. The study itself notes that it lacks information about other dietary and lifestyle habits and how the spicy food was cooked or prepared. “It’s an observational study within a single culture,” she said.

In addition, the researchers note that although chili pepper was the most commonly used spice, the use of other spices tends to increase as the use of chili pepper increases. Consuming these other spices may also result in health benefits.

But Miller said the findings are still plausible, given the fact that spicy foods also have high levels of phenolic content, which are chemicals with nutritional and anti-inflammatory values.

Bio-psychologist John E. Hayes agrees. Hayes, an associate professor of food science and director of the Sensory Evaluation Center at Penn State University, has previously studied spicy food and personality association. According to CNN, he notes that chili intake has an overall protective effect. But why? “Is it a biological mechanism or a behavioral mechanism?”

Eating spicy food might work biologically to increase the basil metabolic rate, says Hayes. But it might also slow food intake, causing a person to eat fewer calories.

Although Lu Qi believes the protective effect associated with spicy foods would translate across cultures, Hayes isn’t sure. When we talk about spicy food, “we can mean vastly different things, with different health implications,” Hayes says. “That spicy food could be…vegetables, like kimchee. Or it could be…barbecued spare ribs.”

“This isn’t an excuse to go out and eat 24 wings and then rationalize it by claiming they are going to make you live longer,” Hayes adds.

Let’s not forget that eating spicy foods also has some risks. Spicy food can create problems for people with incontinence or overactive bladders, according to Kristen Burns, an adult urology nurse-practitioner at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. And some believe that spicy foods can aggravate colds or sinus infections.

Another risk is “heartburn.” Does spicy food trigger heartburn in some people? Yes, but not always. According to Lauren Gerson, a gastroenterologist at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, a lot of her patients with heartburn (more precisely acid reflux disease, or GERD), were told by other doctors to stop eating everything on a list of 10 trigger foods. The list included favorite foods like chocolate and spicy food.

Gerson told Nutrition Action that these patients were “miserable because their heartburn wasn’t much better” even when they gave up all of those foods. Gerson and her then-colleagues at Stanford University screened more than 2,000 studies, looking for evidence that avoiding trigger foods helps curb acid reflux systems. They found that there wasn’t “any data out there that if you stop these foods…, GERD would get any better.”

So when the American College of Gastroenterology updated its treatment guidelines for GERD in 2013, it concluded that there wasn’t enough evidence for doctors to advise cutting out a whole list of foods. Instead, patients are advised to avoid certain foods only if that lessens their symptoms. The key seems to be “individualized trigger avoidance,” allowing many heartburn sufferers to enjoy spicy food, so long as it doesn’t make their symptoms worse.

The bottom line? If you like the taste of spicy food, and it doesn’t trigger any adverse effects (like heartburn or weight-gain from too many calories), you should enthusiastically munch on the spicy foods you love. According to the latest research, you just might prolong your life.

Bon appetit!

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Posted in capsaicin, disease, health, long life, spices, spicy food

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The Summer of ’69

Posted on August 7, 2015 | 6 comments

This is all about movies (one of my favorite topics), but first I need to set the scene.

In August 1969, I was immersed in a training session for idealistic young lawyers, part of the highly respected Reggie Program, which trained us to go out into the world to fight for justice for the underprivileged.

The program got its official name, the Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Fellowship Program, from a Boston lawyer with that name. In an article he wrote in 1919, Smith shamed the legal profession into providing legal assistance to the poor.

By the middle of the 20th century, every city in the U.S. had some kind of legal aid program. The Reggie fellowships were aimed at adding to the ranks of lawyers devoted to helping the poor, and I was one of them.

Held on the leafy campus of Haverford College just outside Philadelphia, the Reggie program housed us in undergraduate dorms whose rooms, during that summer’s brutal heat wave, were insanely hot.

Many of my fellow Reggies and I resorted to seeking out whatever movies were playing at nearby theaters. It was so hot that we were willing to see anything in an air-conditioned theater.

We were lucky that summer. The summer of ‘69 turned out to offer a wealth of excellent films, along with a few that were just OK. And one was exceedingly, shockingly bad.

Among the outstanding films that summer were two that stood out: “Midnight Cowboy” and “Easy Rider.” Each, in its own way, shook my movie-going world. Maybe you remember them, too.

1969 later saw the appearance of some other notable films, including “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (my husband resembled Robert Redford in that film so much I liked to call him the Sundance Kid), Woody Allen’s debut “Take the Money and Run,” and the classic “Z,” which I hope to write about in one of my future posts.

But the worst movie I saw that summer—not only that summer but possibly ever–was, to my amazement, praised in a recent newspaper review of its DVD. The reviewer wasn’t around in 1969 but foolishly put himself back in that era as though he had been.

According to the reviewer (I’ll call him Mike), this film, “The Maltese Bippy,” tried “to cash in on” the success of Dan Rowan & Dick Martin, who starred in a popular TV show called “Laugh-In.” Mike called the show “hands-down the swingingest, most happening thing on TV in the late 60s.”

Referring to the movie’s idiotic title, Mike wrote, “Believe it or not, some 46 years ago, if someone said, ‘You bet your bippy,’ people would fall over themselves laughing, amid speculation as to what a ‘bippy’ might be.”

Well, Mike, I was there, and no one I knew “fell over themselves laughing” when they heard that phrase. My friends and I watched “Laugh-In” because it featured some engaging performers and some innovative approaches to humor. Lily Tomlin became famous portraying the telephone operator Ernestine, and Goldie Hawn used the show to make her own leap to stardom.

But “You bet your bippy”? It was a silly phrase repeated ad nauseum by Dick Martin. Because the show was a phenomenon during that era, the producers were presumably trying to capitalize on its popularity when they made this film. But nobody in my circles laughed at Dick Martin’s constant repetition of that phrase.

Mike must have thought he was being funny when he added, “If the young people today truly understood this [stupid reference to a ‘bippy’], they’d appreciate what Baby Boomers had to go through, growing up with an older generation like this.”

Mike, I was in my 20s, not a member of what you called “the older generation.” My friends and I more properly fell into the Baby Boomer generation. Folks older than us didn’t watch “Laugh-In,” or if they did, they didn’t get most of the jokes.

Dick Martin was barely tolerable on the TV show and even worse on the big screen. In my view, he was far from Mike’s description of him as “enormously appealing.” His persona was smarmy, constantly smirking as he spouted one sexual innuendo after another.

What is laughable is Mike’s opinion that “if he were around today, he might have been a film star along the lines of Owen Wilson.” I’ve seen lots of films featuring Owen Wilson, and Dick Martin was nothing like him.

Sorry, Mike! I guess you had to be there.

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Posted in 1960s, 1960s television, 1969 movies, legal assistance to the poor, movies

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