Author Archives: susanjustwrites

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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There’s No Place Like Nome

Posted on July 17, 2015 | Leave a comment

Although many tourists travel to Alaska every year, very few visit the small city of Nome. After I traveled there with a friend a few years ago, I recorded my impressions of the place. Here’s what it was like.

At the beginning of June, when we visited Nome, the sky never really turned dark. According to statistics, on June 1st the sun sets in Nome at 1:08 a.m. and rises again at 4:50 a.m. But whenever I awoke during the night, the sky was still light, no matter what time it was.

Explanation? In Nome, the sun is so close to the horizon that, from mid-April to mid-August, it seems as though there are 24 hours of daylight. In July, you can expect to have as much as 21 hours and 20 minutes of absolute daylight in Nome, stretching your days to a delicious length that allows you to see and do much more in natural light than you could do almost anywhere else.

So close to the Arctic Circle (only about 100 miles south), Nome sounds forbidding, but it really isn’t. The people living there are warm and friendly, and the air temperature from June through September is pretty warm, too. In July, the warmest month, the average high is 57.3, while the average low is 45.1. A high of 86 was actually recorded in July—once.

It’s hard to imagine, but Nome, now a quiet city of about 3,000 people, was once a rip-roaring frontier town of 20,000. Three men known as the “Three Lucky Swedes” discovered gold in a Nome creek in 1898, and a gold rush began. After gold was also discovered in 1899 in the sands of the beach that runs along the Bering Sea, and steamships from San Francisco and Seattle could finally break through the ice, thousands of gold-seeking miners arrived in the spring of 1900.

During the first decade of the 20th century, Nome actually became the largest city in Alaska, reaching a population of over 12,000 in 1900.

Nome today is a tourist destination, primarily for birdwatchers and those hoping to see native wildlife like musk ox, reindeer, moose, and bears. I tagged along with a “birder,” and we succeeded in seeing a large number of birds he’d never encountered before. For a birder, that’s a genuine triumph. We also encountered reindeer and otters but disappointingly never saw musk ox or moose, or the grizzly bear that had been spotted not far from downtown Nome.

The best way to see birds and other wildlife is to pile into a four-wheel-drive rental car and take off down one of the three roads that lead from Nome, each in a different direction. These roads take you to the even smaller towns on the Seward Peninsula.

The Nome-Council Road goes east for 72 miles, ending in the small town of Council. We followed it as far as Solomon, an abandoned gold-rush town, in search of birds and that elusive grizzly. Stopping at a number of rivers and wetlands, we came across a pond filled with a large gathering of trumpeter swans. It was thrilling to see so many swans, happily swimming in their natural habitat, occasionally taking off into the air as gracefully as…well, swans.

We took the second road, the Nome-Taylor Road, for a while, but we didn’t go as far as reputedly beautiful Salmon Lake, and we couldn’t go as far as Pilgrim Hot Springs (which boasts a wooden hot tub filled with mineral water) because snow still blocked the road.

But our favorite route was the Nome-Teller Road, which runs 73 miles west from Nome and is reportedly the westernmost road in North America. One sunny day, we set out on this route, stopping at the Sunik River, a great place to spot rare birds. We also caught sight of a pair of otters mating on the ice still floating in the river. But because we never got back on the road, we regretfully missed our chance to see the Inupiat native village of Teller.

Nome has appeal beyond the search for wildlife. Perched between the vast Alaskan tundra and the Bering Sea, it’s a haven for anyone seeking a quiet and tranquil spot, far removed from the hustle and bustle of urban America—in short, a genuine throwback to the simpler existence of an earlier time. We caught a glimpse of this earlier era by simply strolling down Front Street, Nome’s main drag. Because of a devastating fire in 1934, none of the buildings date from gold-rush days, but a visit to the local museum gave us a vivid picture of what life was like in the early decades of the 20th century.

The Visitor Center on Front Street was a pleasant place bursting with information about local events and places of interest. The helpful staff cheerfully proffered buttons that say “I ♥ NOME” and offered advice about where to eat, where to stay, and where to track down wildlife. Their helpful handouts included one that provided “gold panning instructions.” Yes, there really are people who still pan for gold on the beach.

While looking for birds, we met one such character, a friendly fellow named Ray. He confided that he spent one entire summer panning for gold on Nome’s beach, calling it “the best gold beach on the planet earth.” Ray said the gold runs down from the surrounding mountains via the local rivers, then enters the Bering Sea and lands on the ocean floor. In a storm, the ocean “coughs up” the gold and deposits it in the sand. Ray told us he collected five ounces of gold, reaping $5000 by the end of the summer.

The Carrie M. McClain Memorial Museum, also on Front Street, is named for its founder, who began collecting Nome memorabilia in the 1940s. One display case featured the “mounted” (preserved by taxidermy) figure of Fritz, a sled dog who’s credited with saving the children of Nome during an outbreak of diphtheria in 1925 (he was one of the lead dogs that brought lifesaving serum to Nome). Other exhibits included gold-rush-era photos and examples of Eskimo culture.

Nome’s Front Street is also the official finish line for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, which begins in Anchorage and ends 1,049 miles later in Nome. This now-famous race commemorates the delivery of serum by the dog team led by Fritz in 1925. As we traveled around Nome, we saw lots of Alaskan huskies like those that pull sleds in the Iditarod. Local residents told us they like to “mush” in the winter because dog-sledding is an easy way to get around in the snow, often easier than driving an SUV.

Would I return to Nome? Probably not. There’s a host of other places I’d like to see first.

But accompanying my friend to Nome and seeing the wildlife surrounding us in all-day-long sunlight was truly memorable.

There really is no place like Nome.

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Posted in Alaska, birdwatching, Nome, panning for gold, travel, wildlife

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You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry

Posted on June 30, 2015 | 2 comments

We see anger all around us. And it’s worse than ever. As The New York Times recently noted, rudeness and bad behavior “have grown over the last decades.” The Times focused on rudeness and incivility by “mean bosses” who cause stress in the workplace, but the phenomenon is widespread, appearing almost everywhere.

Along with mean bosses, we’ve all witnessed incidents of “road rage.” These sometimes lead to fatal results. I can understand road rage because I’m susceptible to it myself, but I strive to keep it under control. (I’m usually satisfied by hurling vicious insults at other drivers that they fortunately can’t hear.)

As a pedestrian, I’m often angered by rude and careless drivers who nearly mow me down as I walk through a crosswalk. Fortunately, my rage is usually tempered by my silent riposte, “I’m walkin’ here,” Ratso Rizzo’s enduring phrase.

Other common examples of anger include parents’ frustration with their children’s behavior. You’ve probably seen parents going so far as to hit their children in public, unable to restrain their anger even when others are watching.

Can we deal with anger by seeking revenge? That tactic, unwisely adopted by the two enraged drivers in the Argentinian film “Wild Tales,” may be tempting, but it’s clearly not the answer. Why? Because being angry simply isn’t good for your health.

Although anger can be useful—helping the body prepare to fight or flee from danger–strong anger releases hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, into the bloodstream. These can trigger an increase in heart rate and blood pressure and problems metabolizing sugar (leading to still other problems).

According to the Times article, Robert M. Sapolsky, a Stanford professor and author of “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers,” argues that when people experience even intermittent stressors like incivility for too long or too often, their immune systems pay the price. Major health problems, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and ulcers may result.

A host of medical researchers are not at all upset to tell you the results of their studies. “Anger is bad for just about everything we have going on physically,” according to Duke researcher Redford Williams, co-author of “Anger Kills: Seventeen Strategies for Controlling the Hostility That Can Harm Your Health.” Over time, he adds, chronic anger can cause long-term damage to the heart.

For example, new evidence suggests that people increase their risk for a heart attack more than eight times after an extremely angry episode. A study published in March 2015 revealed that patients who’d experienced intense anger had an 8.5 times greater risk of suffering a heart attack in the two hours after an outburst of intense anger than they would normally.

The study, published in the European Heart Journal: Acute Cardiovascular Care, focused on patients in a Sydney, Australia, hospital who’d been “very angry, body tense, maybe fists clenched, ready to burst,” or “enraged, out of control, throwing objects, hurting [themselves] or others.” Although those are instances of extreme anger, not a typical angry episode, the finding is useful nonetheless.

A review of nine other studies, including a combined 6,400 patients, found a higher rate of problems like strokes as well as heart attacks and irregular heartbeat.

According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, most doctors believe smoking and obesity pose greater heart risks than anger does. But someone with risk factors for heart trouble or a history of heart attack or stroke who is “frequently angry” has “a much higher absolute excess risk accumulated over time,” according to Elizabeth Mostofsky at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, who help lead the nine-study review.

As the Journal article noted, some older studies have suggested that anger may be linked to other unfavorable results: increased alcohol consumption, increased smoking, and greater caloric intake. One study also found that high levels of anger were associated with serious sleep disturbances.

How do we deal with all of this anger? Anger-management counselors like Joe Pereira, cited by the Journal, recommend ways to curb hostility. First, avoid assuming others are deliberately trying to harm or annoy you. Also learn to tolerate unfairness, and avoid having rigid rules about how others should behave. “The more rules we have, the more people are going to break them. And that makes us angry,” Pereira says.

Experts also advise taking a timeout when one is gripped by anger. Karina Davidson, director of the Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health at Columbia University Medical Center, advises those who are prone to shouting to tell others “I’m very [hotheaded and] say things that don’t help the situation. It would help me if I could have 10 minutes and then maybe we could work together to resolve the situation.”

Lawyers are people who deal with anger all the time. As long ago as ancient Rome, the poet Horace wrote that lawyers are “men who hire out their words and anger.” Today, lawyers not only confront angry clients but also have to manage anger stemming from their opponents and themselves.

An article in the June 2014 issue of California Lawyer noted that lawyers currently face “an epidemic of incivility contaminating…the profession.” The authors, Boston lawyer Russell E. Haddleton and Joseph A. Shrand , M.D. (author of “Outsmarting Anger”), noted that the California Supreme Court had just approved a revised oath of admission requiring that new lawyers commit to conducting themselves “at all times with dignity, courtesy, and integrity.”

Acknowledging that incivility will continue to crop up, the authors maintain that an angry lawyer is an ineffective advocate. They suggest a number of things lawyers can do to stay calm. Tips like these can help all of us.

Among their suggestions: Begin by recognizing the physical signs of anger, and think of ways to change the situation. Next, try to avoid being jealous of a talented adversary. Jealousy can cloud one’s vision and ignite anger. Finally, to defuse anger “in yourself, your opponent, the judge, jurors, or a witness,” they advise lawyers to aim for a calm demeanor that displays empathy, communicates clearly, and above all, shows respect for others.

“Respect” is the key watchword here. The authors argue that it gives lawyers an advantage by allowing them to use reason and common sense instead of rashly reacting to what goes on in a courtroom. Lawyers who reject angry responses and choose a respectful approach are better advocates. This approach can clearly help non-lawyers as well.

In the current Pixar film, “Inside Out,” an 11-year-old girl struggles with her emotions. The emotion of Anger (voiced by Lewis Black) sometimes tries to dominate, but the emotion of Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler) seeks to keep it under control, not letting it take over. This may be the answer for all of us. If we try to find the joy in our lives—the good things that make us happy–we can triumph over anger and all of the dangerous consequences that flow from it.

We don’t have to turn into a large green Hulk every time something angers us. Let’s try instead to emulate the non-angry side of the Hulk.

I plan to do just that. You’ll like me much better that way.

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Posted in Anger, anger-management, health, heart attacks, high blood pressure, lawyers, respect, revenge, strokes

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Let’s Lobby Congress to Pass the Paycheck Fairness Act

Posted on May 12, 2015 | 1 comment

When U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski recently announced her decision not to run for a sixth term, she noted that one of the issues she cares about “most deeply” is the issue of fair pay.

Mikulski, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986 as the only Democratic woman and one of only two women in the Senate (the other was Kansas’s Nancy Kassebaum), has a long record of promoting issues that loom large in the lives of American women and families.

Mikulski noted that every year, on average, women who work full-time lose more than $10,800 in income because of the wage gap between what women and men earn. She plans to spend every day of the two years remaining in her term fighting for critical legislation like the Paycheck Fairness Act.

I’m joining Senator Mikulski in her campaign to enact the Paycheck Fairness Act (the PFA). I first wrote about this issue in an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 23, 2010, “Unequal pay harms U.S. women.” (It appeared on this blog in October 2012.)

In the five years since my SF Chronicle op-ed appeared, nothing has happened. When the House of Representatives still had a Democratic majority, the House passed the PFA. But because it never passed in the Senate, it never became law.

Now, post-2014, when the Republicans hold a majority in both the Senate and the House, passage of the PFA seems impossible. But let’s not throw in the towel just yet. Because it’s such a vital issue, affecting millions of American workers and their families, I, like Senator Mikulski, am once again climbing on my soapbox and doing what I can to promote its passage.

I’ll begin by asking this question: How many working women think they’re paid fairly for the work they do? Right now, with the economy improving but still struggling to provide good-paying jobs for all of those who want them, some women may be happy just to be employed.

But women are still paid only 78 cents for every dollar men receive, making unequal pay a continuing problem for American women and the families who depend on their wages.

Did you know that women are now the primary breadwinners in 40 percent of American households? This fact makes closing the wage gap a crucial issue for all of these families, not merely for working women alone.

Why is the PFA so important? Because it would level the playing field for working women.

It would amend the Equal Pay Act (the EPA), which was enacted over 50 years ago in 1963 but hasn’t gone far enough to do what it was supposed to.

The EPA made it illegal for employers to pay unequal wages to those who perform substantially equal work. That sounds great, doesn’t it? So why hasn’t it made a real difference? Because of a startling failure in enforcement.

Enforcement by the EEOC during the past five decades has narrowed the wage gap to some degree. But the gap still exists because the EPA’s enforcement tools are outdated, making the gender-disparity in pay almost impossible to eradicate.

While other federal civil rights statutes have been amended numerous times, the EPA has never been amended. That’s why passing the PFA can make a real difference.

Let’s understand something right off the bat: The PFA doesn’t give employers a lot to complain about. It wouldn’t create an onerous burden because it wouldn’t give their employees any new rights. Employers are already required to comply with the EPA. The only difference is that under the PFA, women would be better able to ENFORCE those rights.

Many of the bill’s provisions make no demands on employers whatsoever. One provision would merely create a grant program that would help women and girls develop better skills at salary negotiation. Another would improve the way the government collects information from federal contractors.

Other provisions focus on the role of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. For example, it would give EEOC staff additional training to do a better job identifying and handling wage disputes.

Of course, some provisions do directly affect employers. Most significantly, the PFA would give women the same remedies as those available to employees discriminated against on the basis of race or national origin. Currently women can get only limited awards like back pay. The PFA would allow women to get compensatory and punitive damages for pay discrimination. These are the kinds of damages those suffering from racial and national-origin bias already get.

The PFA would also prohibit employers from retaliating against women who share salary information with their coworkers. This kind of information-sharing helps employees get vital information about wage disparities and discrimination at their workplace. But right now employers can retaliate against women who share such information. Women can be fired or suffer other repercussions for sharing the kind of salary info they need if they’re going to discover how much less they’re earning. This has to change.

Under the PFA, an EPA lawsuit could also proceed as a class action under the rules that apply to other federal lawsuits, instead of the restrictive 1963 rules that have never been amended.

Finally, a significant loophole now keeps women from winning cases brought under the EPA. Employers who are paying women less than men for equal work can claim that the difference in pay is based on a “factor other than sex.” This language is far too broad. It allows employers to make claims that have little or no merit. For example, this language has been used to argue that male workers have stronger negotiation skills and for that reason can negotiate higher salaries. Does that sound right to you? Should arguments like that allow men to earn more than a woman doing the same work? I don’t think so.

That result is NOT what Congress intended when it passed the EPA. The PFA would alter this language and allow different pay for men and women only when an employer can show that the difference relates to job performance and business necessity.

It’s time to shake things up and put women on a level playing field with their male co-workers. Women and men need to speak out and demand passage of the PFA. If we don’t speak out, we have to ask ourselves: When will Congress make pay equity a reality for America’s working women? And what did I do to try to make it happen?

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Posted in class actions, fair pay, gender equality, gender-equity, House of Representatives, US Congress, US Senate, women workers

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Take a hike

Posted on April 21, 2015 | 2 comments

The lure of “the gym” has always escaped me. I’ve joined a few fitness centers in my day, but I consistently end up abandoning the gym and resorting to my preferred route to fitness: walking. Whenever possible, I walk and hike in the great outdoors.

A host of recent studies has validated my faith in the benefits of walking. And some of these benefits may surprise you.

First, being active is better for your health. Duh. We’ve all suspected that for a long time. But here’s a new finding: sitting may be the real problem. Studies show that the more you sit, the greater your risk for health problems. In a study of more than two thousand adults ages 60 and older, every additional hour a day spent sitting was linked to a 50 percent greater risk of disability. Even those who got some exercise but were sitting too much were more likely to get dumped in the pool of disabled people.

Dorothy Dunlop and her colleagues at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science concluded that sitting seems to be a separate risk factor. Getting enough exercise is important, but it’s equally important not to be a couch potato the rest of the time. Their study appeared in the Journal of Physical Activity & Health in 2014.

Another study, published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, noted something else about prolonged sitting: taking “short walking breaks” at least once an hour may lessen or even prevent some of the adverse effects, especially on the cardiovascular system. When healthy young men sat for 3 hours without moving their legs, endothelial function—the ability of blood vessels to expand and contract—dropped significantly from the very beginning. But when they broke up their sitting time with slow 5-minute walks every 30 or 60 minutes, endothelial function did not decline.

Here’s another benefit: Exercise, including walking, can keep you from feeling depressed. A British study, reported in JAMA Psychiatry, followed over 11,000 people (initially in their early 20s) for more than 25 years. It found that the more physically active they were, the less likely they were to have symptoms of depression. For example, sedentary people who started exercising 3 times a week reduced their risk of depression 5 years later by almost 20 percent. The researchers concluded that being active “can prevent and alleviate depressive symptoms in adulthood.”

Ready for one more reason to walk? A study described in The Wall Street Journal in 2014 found that walking can significantly increase creativity. This is a brand new finding. In the past, studies have shown that after exercise, people usually perform better on tests of memory and the ability to make decisions and organize thoughts. Exercise has also been linked anecdotally to creativity: writers and artists have said for centuries that their best ideas have come during a walk. But now science supports that link.

Researchers at Stanford University, led by Dr. Marily Oppezzo, decided to test the notion that walking can inspire creativity. They gathered a group of students in a deliberately unadorned room equipped with nothing more than a desk and a treadmill. The students were asked to sit and complete “tests of creativity,” like quickly coming up with alternative uses for common objects, e.g., a button. Facing a blank wall, the students then walked on the treadmill at an easy pace, repeating the creativity tests as they walked. Result: creativity increased when the students walked. Most came up with about 60 percent more “novel and appropriate” uses for the objects.

Dr. Oppezzo then tested whether these effects lingered. The students repeated the test when they sat down after their walk on the treadmill. Again, walking markedly improved their ability to generate creative ideas, even when they had stopped walking. They continued to produce more and better ideas than they had before their walk.

When Dr. Oppezzo moved the experiment outdoors, the findings surprised her. The students who walked outside did come up with more creative ideas than when they sat, either inside or outside, but walking outside did not lead to more creativity than walking inside on the treadmill. She concluded that “it’s the walking that matters.”

So a brief stroll apparently leads to greater creativity. But the reasons for it are unclear. According to Dr. Oppezzo, “It may be that walking improves mood,” and creativity blooms more easily when one is happier. The study appeared in The Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition in 2014.

In truth, I don’t need these studies to convince me to keep walking. It helps that I live in San Francisco, where the climate allows me to walk outside almost every day. Walking is much more challenging when you confront the snow and ice that used to accompany my walks in and around Chicago. So I’m not surprised that walkers in colder climes often resort to exercising indoors.

It also helps that San Francisco has recently been voted the second most walkable city in America. According to Walk Score, an organization that ranks the “walkability” of 2,500 cities in the U.S., SF placed just behind New York City as the most walkable major American city.

SF’s high score is especially impressive in light of the city’s hills. Although I avoid the steepest routes, I actually welcome a slight incline because it adds to my aerobic workout. Why use a Stairmaster in a gloomy gym when I can climb uphill enveloped in sunshine and cool ocean breezes?

But whether you walk indoors or out, do remember to walk! You’ll assuredly benefit health-wise. And you just may enhance your creativity quotient. Someday you may even find yourself writing a blog like this one.

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Posted in "the gym", Chicago, creativity, depression, exercise, fitness centers, health benefits of exercise, hiking, New York City, San Francisco, sitting, walking

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Beavers? Seriously?

Posted on March 16, 2015 | 4 comments

Here’s a piece of news to chew on. A recent study of beavers’ teeth may lead to decay-resistant teeth for humans.

Although beavers never brush their teeth, and they certainly don’t drink fluoridated water, their teeth are protected from tooth decay by the iron that’s part of the tooth’s chemical structure.

If you looked at a beaver’s teeth, you’d notice that their iron-rich coating gives the teeth a reddish-brown or orange color. Apparently orange is the new white.

Researchers found that the pigmented enamel on beavers’ teeth is both harder and more resistant to acid than human tooth enamel, even when treated with fluoride. This discovery could lead to a better understanding of human tooth decay, as well as improvements in current fluoride treatment.

Tooth decay in humans is a major public health problem, even in this era of fluoride treatments. The American Dental Association estimates that dental care in this country costs $111 billion a year, and much of it is spent on cavities and other tooth-decay issues. According to the World Health Organization, up to 90 percent of children and nearly 100 percent of adults worldwide have or have had cavities.

The research team, led by Derk Joester, an engineering and materials science professor at Northwestern University, discovered that small amounts of an “amorphous solid” rich in iron and magnesium are what make rodent teeth resistant to acid. “[We’ve made a] big step forward in understanding the composition and structure of enamel—the tooth’s protective outer layer…,” said Joester.

Researchers included Jill D. Pasteris, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. She calls their findings a great example of “the structural-chemical novelty [we’re] still discovering in natural, biomineralized materials” like teeth and bone.

Looking at the teeth of beavers and other rodents, the researchers used powerful technology to map the enamel’s structure, atom by atom. They subjected the teeth to acid and took images before and after. The journal Science published this unprecedented imaging study of tooth enamel in February.

Some of the details of the research are pretty technical, but you really should give a dam about the results. Although a beaver’s teeth are chemically different from our teeth, they’re not structurally different, and the results of the study may lead to stronger tooth enamel and better fluoride treatments.

This news is especially encouraging in light of what we’ve just learned about the sugar industry. The industry has for years covered up proof that reducing sugar-consumption prevents tooth decay. The San Francisco Examiner reports that researchers at UC San Francisco have found documents revealing how the industry worked with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to avoid condemning sugar, trying instead to develop alternatives (like a vaccine to prevent tooth decay).

Buried in an archive of industry documents discovered at the University of Illinois was a startling document. It showed that a sugar-industry group acknowledged as early as 1950 that sugar causes tooth decay. But, according to the UCSF researchers, Dr. Cristin Kearns and Laura Schmidt, the sugar industry influenced NIH to steer scientists toward developing alternative approaches to tooth decay instead of focusing on the damage done by sugar consumption. (The study is published this month in the scientific journal PLOS Medicine.)

Does this remind you of the tobacco industry and its efforts to suppress scientific evidence that smoking leads to cancer and other illnesses?

The damage caused by sugar is finally getting attention from scientists, and efforts to cut back on its consumption are gaining ground. Last November, voters in Berkeley imposed a tax on sugary drinks, and a majority of San Francisco voters approved a soda tax (it didn’t become law because it required two-thirds to pass). [My blog post, “Gimme a Little Sugar,” published on 10/2/14, focuses on the damage done by sugary drinks and by sugar in general.]

Three SF supervisors have just renewed their efforts to restrict the consumption of sugary drinks in San Francisco. But even if efforts like these succeed, we’ll still face the problem of tooth decay for years to come. So paying attention to beavers’ teeth may prove helpful.

Let’s snatch victory from the jaws of tooth decay. If we start by Leaving it to Beavers, our descendants may someday sport decay-resistant teeth just like theirs.

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Posted in beavers, sugar, sugar consumption, sugar industry, teeth, tooth decay

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Caesar Reigned Supreme

Posted on February 5, 2015 | 2 comments

When Sid Caesar died a year ago, his death evoked a cavalcade of memories. He, along with his notable co-stars, made every Saturday night during the early 1950s a night filled with laughter for millions of Americans.

I was still a little girl when Caesar’s show, “Your Show of Shows,” debuted in 1950. My family had purchased its first TV set in the fall of 1949, largely because everyone in America seemed to be watching Milton Berle’s Texaco Star Theatre. Berle, a star in vaudeville, had become a sensation on the tiny black-and-white sets that prevailed in my North Side Chicago neighborhood. Before we got our own TV, I would run down two flights in my apartment building and up three flights in the twin building next door to watch Berle’s antics at my best friend Helene’s apartment.

My parents finally relented and purchased a TV at the Mandel Brothers department store in the nearby suburb of Evanston. At last we were able to watch Uncle Milty, introduced by the Men of Texaco, every Tuesday night. All of us kids knew the lyrics to their catchy song: “We are the men of Texaco, we work from Maine to Mexico…”

Berle’s show dominated Tuesday nights, and we didn’t stop watching “Mr. Television” until the show began its decline several years later, but the wonders of Saturday night soon eclipsed the craziness of Milton Berle. From 1950 to 1954, “The Show of Shows,” headlined by Sid Caesar, had families glued to their TV screens every Saturday.

My family never missed a single show. We were addicted to Sid and his cohorts, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, and Howard Morris. The slapstick humor of Milton Berle looked silly compared to the more sophisticated and clever comedy offered by Sid’s crew.

Among Sid’s multitude of characters, I have a long list of favorites:
• his opera star, spouting make-believe foreign languages in operas like “Pagliacci”;
• his jazz saxophone player, Progress Hornsby (Sid really knew how to play the saxophone, and it was the sax that was his entrée into show business);
• his wacky mittel-European professor in a battered top hat and frumpy frock coat, usually interviewed as an “expert” by Carl Reiner;
• his leader of a rock-and-roll trio called The Haircuts, complete with gigantic wig topped by an enormous pompadour;
• his irritated husband (the perfect foil for Imogene Coca);
• his military hero, wearing a uniform adorned with medals, who turned out to be an apartment-building doorman; and (perhaps best of all)
• his roles as a leading character in movies that were popular at the time. I still remember watching his hilarious portrayal of Montgomery Clift in a rowboat, based on a scene in “A Place in the Sun” (a film I didn’t see until years later), as well as Monty in a scene from “From Here to Eternity” (a film I first saw–but didn’t really understand–when I was 12).

Even my pre-teen persona apparently recognized comic genius because the memories of these characters remain vivid decades later.

Sid’s brilliance must be attributed in part to the cast of writers he recruited. They included other comic geniuses like Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Neil Simon, Carl Reiner, and Larry Gelbart. As Frank Rich once wrote in The New York Times, “If you want to find the ur-texts of ‘The Producers’ and ‘Blazing Saddles,’ of ‘Sleeper’ and ‘Annie Hall,’ of “All in the Family’ and ‘M*A*S*H’ and ‘Saturday Night Live,’ check out the old kinescopes of Sid Caesar.”

When “The Show of Shows” ended, Sid went on to star in “Caesar’s Hour” for three more years, still lampooning everyday life, movies, and operas. Sid’s talents continued to amaze.

But seven years of an exhausting schedule, six days and nights every week, led Sid to become an alcoholic and dependent on drugs. Years later he admitted that he’d been tormented by guilt because he didn’t think he deserved the acclaim he received. He struggled through the ‘60s and ‘70s, making occasional appearances on Broadway and in movies. But when he finally chose sobriety and a healthier lifestyle in the ‘80s, he began to do great comedic work again.

I had the great good fortune to see Sid in the fall of 1990, when he and Imogene Coca toured in a live show called “Together Again.” The Chicago Tribune’s theater critic noted that the affection displayed by their audiences at the Briar Street Theatre was “palpable.” Sitting with me in the audience one matinee was my 80-year-old mother and my two daughters, who were then 16 and 13. Although we all loved the show, which included some of their classic shtick from “The Show of Shows,” I was ecstatic, reliving the show I’d adored when I was even younger than my daughters.

If you’ve never had a chance to see Sid Caesar at his best, as I have, seek out the 90-minute film, “Ten from Your Show of Shows,” available on DVD. The film, put together in 1973, includes ten comedy sketches from the 1950s’ TV show. You’ll relish the brilliance of its comedy, still fresh in 2015.

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Posted in 1950s televsion, comedy, Sid Caesar, TV comedy

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Be(a)ware of Vampires!

Posted on January 12, 2015 | 1 comment

Vampires are roaming our landscape. Movies, TV, books, the Internet…it’s been hard to avoid the sight of those pasty-faced creatures baring their hideous fangs. But oh, how I’ve tried. The national obsession with vampires has simply never sunk its teeth into me.

I’ve always lumped vampires in with other imaginary creatures, like zombies, angels, and fairies. They don’t really exist, so why waste my time thinking about them?

I’m not opposed to the idea of magic. There genuinely seem to be times in our lives when magic, or–more accurately–good luck, rains down on us, and our lives are happier as a result.

But vampires? Forget it.

Now comes word of another kind of vampire. And this kind really demands our attention, even mine. The term “vampire” is now applied to what the Environmental Defense Fund calls “energy suckers” (as opposed to bloodsuckers). New devices like cable boxes and game consoles are so power-thirsty that, whether or not you’re using them, they consume enormous amounts of energy. One estimate is that each year they consume as much energy nationally as the entire state of Maryland.

Are you surprised to learn that we’re also sucking up power when we keep our chargers, DVRs, laptops, and microwaves on standby? EDF notes a study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory of suburban homes in California. The study found that these devices account for as much as 10 percent of a home’s energy consumption.

Shall we plunge a stake into the hearts of these vampires? We can do it by adopting a bunch of new approaches to our electronic devices. Some may sound inconvenient at first, but so did brushing my teeth with my (battery-powered) electric toothbrush till I got used to it. So let’s try at least a few of these.

First, we can do something as simple as unplugging our smartphone chargers. Unbeknownst to many of us, leaving those chargers plugged in uses energy. A more significant step? Turn off the power strips that supply energy to powerful devices we’re not using every minute. You can start by flipping the switch on the power strip behind your TV.

Even less inconvenient: Simply look for the Energy Star logo when you buy new appliances. The products that receive this stamp of approval can cut standby use by 30 percent.

But wait, there’s more. You can return to those thrilling days of yesteryear and use old-school methods that conserve energy. Dry your clothes on a clothesline instead of a dryer. And when you do use your dryer or dishwasher, make sure you’ve put in a full load. Try opening curtains, shades, and blinds during the day so natural light can brighten your home.

Two more things to consider: investing in a programmable thermostat like Google’s Nest, which won’t waste energy when you’re not home, and switching to an on-demand water heater (or insulating your old one).

Finally, look into apps that can reduce your energy bill. New smartphone apps allow you to turn on or off any device that’s plugged into an outlet, even when you’re away from home.

The ultimate goal, of course, is renewable energy. We’re moving slowly but inevitably toward the adoption of more and more ways to switch to renewable energy. In the meantime, you needn’t be a disciple of Al Gore to acknowledge this inconvenient truth: We don’t have to let modern-day vampires suck energy the way Dracula sucked the blood of his victims. Be(a)ware of these vampires, and save energy when you can.

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Posted in energy consumption, renewable energy, smartphones, vampires

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