Author Archives: susanjustwrites

Have You Measured Your Face Lately?

Posted on August 21, 2014 | 1 comment

I always figured that the way people look has something to do with their success. Let’s face it. We’re all constantly being judged by others, and some of those judgments are based on how we look.

How important is appearance? The Wall Street Journal recently highlighted Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s book, Executive Presence. Hewlett asserts that three elements make up one’s “personal presence”—how you behave, how you speak, and how you look. (She also notes that “showing teeth”—being decisive when faced with hard choices—plays an important role.)

Are we short? Tall? In between? Are we slim? Pudgy? Somewhere in the middle? Are we conventionally good-looking? Or would our faces stop a clock (to use a phrase favored by my brother-in-law)?

All these factors come into play when others take a look at us and evaluate our merits. I myself come up short (literally) on at least one of them.

One factor I never took into account is the width of my face. But a recent study has come up with some astounding results, leading researchers to conclude that a wide face is worth more in the business world than a narrow one.

The overall study was run by researchers at the business school at the University of California, Riverside, along with London Business School and Columbia University. The research team, led by a UC management professor named Michael Hasehuhn, conducted a series of studies on business students with different facial-width to facial-height ratios.

According to a July report on this research in the Wall Street Journal, the earliest studies revealed that business students with wide faces were more aggressive, self-interested, and unethical. They were even more likely to lie. The researchers found, for example, that these students were more likely to resort to outright deception to close a sale. They also cheated more in games.

The more recent research focused on how these students fared in negotiations. The researchers found that men with wide faces tend to take a more competitive approach to negotiations than men with narrower faces. When the students engaged in simulated salary negotiations, the men with wider faces entered the negotiations with a more competitive mind-set and wound up negotiating a signing bonus of nearly $2,200 more than the bonus won by men with narrow faces. In simulated real-estate negotiations, a property went for a higher price to a wide-faced seller but a lower price when that same wide-faced guy was the buyer.

According to Hasehuhn, these findings are consistent with earlier research on attributes associated with wide-faced males and may have implications for all men who enter into negotiations. For example, a narrow-faced man can anticipate a more contentious exchange if he knows he will confront someone with a wider face. At the same time, wide-faced guys can “tweak” their own approach to negotiations if they expect to be perceived as more aggressive.

Because these findings struck me as somewhat sketchy, I sought the opinion of a nationally-recognized negotiator, Ron Shapiro. In his over-forty-year career as a negotiator in the worlds of law, sports, business, and politics, Shapiro has conducted successful negotiations on behalf of high-profile clients like Cal Ripken Jr., negotiating more than $1 billion in contracts, even resolving a symphony orchestra strike. He’s also cofounded the Shapiro Negotiations Institute, where he trains people in a variety of professions how to negotiate successfully. His best-selling books include Dare to Prepare and Perfecting Your Pitch.

Shapiro reviewed the findings of the business school researchers. Although he doesn’t question the findings, he has a totally different take on things. He believes that even if physical characteristics are assumed to have an impact on the outcomes of negotiations, “the real difference maker … on outcomes is how systematically the negotiator goes about his or her negotiation efforts.” In other words, negotiators’ skills outweigh a superficial trait like the width of their faces. He’s seen outcomes “shift markedly” after a negotiator has been “empowered” by learning the right kind of skills. He “will take that over these wide/narrow research findings any day.”

If you’ve noticed that the research findings focus entirely on men, you may be wondering: What about women? The Bloomberg Businessweek review of the research noted that women didn’t benefit from “the perks of a wide mug.” Apparently, when men see their faces in the mirror, a wide-faced man gets a rush of power but a wide-faced woman doesn’t. Hasehuhn told Businessweek he thinks biology plays a role. “Men with wider faces tend to have higher circulating rates of testosterone,” and he claims that this higher level has been linked to feeling powerful.

Where is the support for Hesehuhn’s biological theory? I’m not sure. Maybe he’ll reveal it when his paper is published in an upcoming issue of Leadership Weekly.

In the meantime, as a woman, I’m apparently immune to the wide-faced/narrow-faced dichotomy. But if you’re a man, maybe you should think about measuring your face sometime.

On second thought, you’d be wise (if not wide) to take Ron Shapiro’s advice and focus instead on sharpening your negotiating skills. Women should do the same.

And maybe, when appropriate, you should show your teeth—no matter what kind of face they’re in.

1 Comment

Posted in opinion pieces

Tagged , , , , ,

It’s Gonna Be a Bright, Bright, Bright, Sunshiny Day

Posted on July 18, 2014 | 1 comment

Summer has arrived, and with it, lots and lots of sunshine. Americans love sunshine and flock to it whenever we can.
But sunshine isn’t an unmitigated benefit. Dangers lurk in those rays. Most of us know by now that harmful UV (ultraviolet) light can be toxic, and we use sunscreen (more or less religiously) to deter the most harmful effects. The CDC (the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) recommends avoiding prolonged exposure to the sun and wearing sunscreen with a minimum of 15 SPF.
So what else is new? Well, a raft of recent studies has in fact produced some brand-new information about sunshine.
First, researchers at Harvard have turned up startling evidence that may explain why some people don’t restrict their time in the sun even though they’re aware of the dangers. It seems that basking in those UV rays can be addictive. According to a new study from Harvard Medical School, investigators at Mass General Hospital have found that chronic UV exposure raises “circulating levels of beta-endorphin” in mice, and that mice who become accustomed to those levels exhibit “withdrawal symptoms” when the beta-endorphin activity is blocked.
What is beta-endorphin? Most of us have heard of endorphins, powerful neurotransmitters that originate in the human body, controlling emotions and often blocking pain. A “beta-endorphin” is one kind of endorphin, considered to be not only stronger than morphine as a pain-blocker but also producing feelings of pleasure. Beta-endorphin is much like an opioid, a/k/a an opiate, a drug used by the medical profession to treat pain. Opioids/opiates impact the brain, leading to feelings of intense pleasure, and addiction—both physical and mental—can develop very quickly.
According to lead researcher David E. Fisher, the Wigglesworth Professor and Chair of Dermatology at HMS and Mass General, the Harvard study found that UV radiation produced “opiate-like effects, including addictive behavior.” The study, reported in the June 19 issue of Cell, may explain what Fisher calls “the ‘sun-seeking’ behavior that may underlie the relentless rise in most forms of skin cancer.”
The study uncovered mounting evidence of addictive behavior among humans as well as mice. Several studies have noted addiction-like behavior in people using indoor tanning facilities. Other studies found that an “opioid blocker” produced withdrawal-like symptoms in these frequent tanners.
Let’s look at what the Harvard researchers did. For six weeks, they delivered a daily dose of UV light—equal to the exposure of fair-skinned humans to 20 or 30 minutes of midday Florida sun—on the shaved backs of a group of mice. Within a week, levels of beta-endorphin in their blood rose significantly. The levels remained elevated during the study period, gradually returning to normal only after UV exposure ended. When the researchers administered naloxone, an “opioid blocker” known to block opioid-pathway activity, the mice had such classic symptoms of opioid withdrawal as trembling, shaking, and teeth-chattering.
Fisher concluded that humans might react the same way, noting that “a natural mechanism reinforcing UV-seeking behavior may have developed during mammalian evolution.” Why? Probably because we synthesize vitamin D (increasingly viewed as an essential nutrient) from the UV light in sunshine. Low blood levels of vitamin D can lead to a host of ailments. But sun-seeking behavior, Fisher warned, carries with it “the carcinogenic risk of UV light.” Other sources of vitamin D, like cheap oral supplements, more safely and accurately maintain healthy vitamin D levels.
Fisher concluded that because persistent UV- seeking appears to be addictive, reducing skin-cancer risks may require “actively confronting” hazardous behavior like indoor tanning. Although both the CDC and the FDA have indicted indoor tanning as highly dangerous, Fisher fears the “passive risk-messages” we’re using aren’t good enough. In other words, we need to use much scarier warnings to let addicted sun-lovers know how destructive their behavior is.
At the same time, there’s new information that not enough sun exposure can also be risky. The July issue of the Journal of Internal Medicine reported on a study conducted in Sweden suggesting that the CDC guidelines may be too restrictive in regions with limited sunshine. The Swedes tracked sun exposure in 30,000 light-skinned Swedish women ages 25 to 64 from 1990 to 1992, gathering a wealth of information, including time spent sunbathing and the use of tanning beds. When national statistics were later reviewed in 2011, it appeared that women who got the most sun had the greatest risk of developing skin cancer. No big surprise there. But it was surprising that women who avoided the sun were twice as likely to die from any cause, including skin cancer. The risk of dying from all causes was twice as great among the sun-avoiders and 40 percent higher in those with moderate sun exposure. The study didn’t include information on blood levels of vitamin D or the use of vitamin D supplements, but its results may actually support the Harvard conclusions. If exposure to sunshine leads to better health overall, maybe that’s because sunshine leads to higher vitamin D levels. If so, our focus should probably shift to ensuring that everyone gets enough vitamin D, regardless of sun exposure.
Finally, if you’re a confirmed sun-lover, you might want to know about another study, this one conducted at Northwestern Medical School. Researchers found that people who are exposed to even moderately bright morning light have a significantly lower body mass index (BMI, based on height and weight) than those who had their first exposure later in the day. According to lead author Kathryn Reid, the earlier the light exposure, the lower one’s BMI. Senior author Phyllis Zee, director of the school’s Sleep and Circadian Rhythms Research Program, noted that light is the “most potent agent to synchronize your internal body clock,” regulating circadian rhythms, which in turn “regulate energy balance.” In short, if you want to lower your BMI, you might want to get outside between 8 a.m. and noon (20 to 30 minutes should do it).
Summing up, “I can see clearly now….”
For people like me (a redhead with extremely light skin), the less sun exposure the better. Although I love being outside on a sunny day, I use lots of sunscreen and stay in the shade as much I can. I make up the vitamin D deficit by taking an inexpensive supplement every morning.
For everyone else, the studies pretty much reinforce what we already knew. They suggest keeping your sun exposure within bounds. Some time in the sun is fine, so long as you use some sunscreen. Avoid overdoing your exposure via indoor tanning, and otherwise avoid addictive sun-seeking behavior. But one way or another, don’t forget to get some vitamin D.

1 Comment

Posted in addictive behavior, health, indoor tanning, medical research, skin cancer, sunshine, vitamin D

Tagged , , , , , , ,

What’ll You Have? A Brewed Awakening in 2014

Posted on June 21, 2014 | 1 comment

When a local pub ran an ad touting PBR for the special price of $1, I was puzzled. What was PBR? Peanut butter and raisins? Unlikely.

I turned to my 30-something daughter for help. She immediately knew what it meant: Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.

Was Pabst Blue Ribbon still around? Really?

Growing up in the ’50s, I remember Pabst Blue Ribbon thanks to its incessant TV commercials and their memorable jingle: “What’ll you have? Pabst Blue Ribbon…Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer.” I associated it with a bunch of other blue-collar beers brewed in Milwaukee, and I even have a dim memory of touring a Milwaukee brewery with my family–either Pabst or Blatz—when I was a kid.

It seems that PBR’s sales slumped badly between their peak of 18 million barrels in 1977 and less than one million about 20 years later. But after this two-decade slump, sales began to revive in the early 2000s, largely because of its increasing popularity among “urban hipsters.” Who knew?

My re-encounter with Pabst Blue Ribbon inspired a host of other beer-related memories to emerge from my subconscious.

First, I remember watching my father occasionally drink beer. I once asked to taste it, and when he obliged, I was shocked to find that it tasted awful. Tasting Daddy’s beer is stashed among many treasured memories of my father, who died when I was 12. Among them: His singing “Peg o’ My Heart” or “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” to help me fall asleep. His leaning back on his favorite olive-green upholstered chair, leaving a Brylcreem mark that must have infuriated my scrupulous-housekeeper mother. His impromptu soft-shoe dance across our living room floor when he was in a particularly ebullient mood. His fondness for smoking a pipe–although he usually smoked cigars (probably why I’m a rarity among women; I don’t mind the smell of a cigar).

I didn’t learn to drink beer till my law school years, when I happily joined my male classmates in convivial gatherings over steins of beer. Suddenly I found it palatable. It must have been the testosterone-laden atmosphere that induced me to change my opinion. I’m pretty sure my taste buds hadn’t changed.

One male classmate took me out for a beer in the basement of The Wursthaus, a Harvard Square institution…until it wasn’t. (It closed in 1996.) Before the beer arrived, he told me it would taste like raspberries, and indeed it did. I’ve since learned that it was a German beer called a “Berliner Weisse,” a lightly carbonated white beer infused with raspberry juice. Although I could have drunk much more raspberry-flavored beer, which was vaguely reminiscent of soda pop, for some reason I never did.

After leaving school, I usually preferred a different beverage, but I occasionally quaffed a beer or two on dates. And when I met and married my husband, we often had a beer together, especially with pizza or Mexican food. But even before the PBR slump began around 1977, we chose brands like Michelob, Heineken, and Dos Equis, never Pabst Blue Ribbon.

When my daughters were born, I took up the challenge of feeding them the old-fashioned way, via my breasts. Folklore had it that imbibing beer was a good way to speed things along. Although I may have sipped on a beer or two, I found I didn’t need any help and abandoned the idea pretty fast. Luckily, as it turns out. Medical experts now advise against even a small amount of alcohol for breast-feeding moms.

Thanks to my travels, I’ve sampled unusual beers found in distant corners of the world. In Cardiff, Wales, for example, I tried a local beer called Brains. It tasted just fine, but above all, I loved its slogan: “it’s Brains you want!”

More recently, I’ve encountered a whole new world of beer. When I traveled to Alaska with a beer-loving friend, he introduced me to a hefeweizen in Anchorage, and we shared an Alaskan Amber and an Alaskan White in a small pizza joint in Nome (yes, Nome). On another trip, this time to Denver, we sought out Wynkoop Brewing Company, a brewpub founded in 1988 by Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper and friends, where we sampled deliciously spicy pumpkin beer.

Now my son-in-law has taken up beer-brewing. A techie with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford, he brews beer at home, then bottles it with his own labels. It works for him because it combines his interest in science with a complicated recipe that requires a dedicated focus to the task at hand. He finds it a welcome departure from his demanding computer-science work. And, like a chef who prepares fine food using a cookbook like Julia Child’s, he enjoys sharing the result with his family and friends.

I don’t follow the trends in beer-brewing very closely. But almost every day I read about new varieties of beer, from winter IPAs to nitros. All these new varieties had surely shoved aside the old blue-collar beers like PBR. Or so I thought.

But here comes PBR, rearing its foamy head among the new guys.

“What’ll you have?” Whatever you choose, bottoms up!

1 Comment

Posted in beer, breast-feeding, family, health, nostalgia

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

If You’re Getting Older, You May Be Getting Nicer

Posted on May 30, 2014 | Leave a comment

We tend to encounter four images of “old people”—two for women, two for men.

The first female image? A kindly grandmother, rather plump, with gray hair pulled back in a bun and a sweet smile on her face. She’s often wearing an apron, as though she just stepped away from baking a batch of cookies. Just look at a display of Hallmark Mother’s Day cards to see some examples. But I don’t see any women resembling this image in my own life. The older women I know tend to be energetic, not very plump, and rarely sporting kitchen aprons.

The second female image is an emaciated crone, with spiky too-dark hair and an angry look on her face. This image turns up as a witch in fairy tales, often borrowed by Hollywood films and omnipresent on Halloween.

The first male image? A sweet old duffer, kind-hearted, not too sharp mentally, hovering over his kids and grandkids whether they want him to or not. Are there men like this out there? Maybe, but I don’t know any. My older male friends are vigorous, sharp as a tack, and involved with their kids sans hovering.

The second male image is a fierce, belligerent guy, his face contorted by rage and/or confusion. To others, he may appear to be well on the road to dementia, imagined or real.

I take issue with these images, especially the angry ones. The truth is that we get nicer as we get older. According to a story in the Wall Street Journal in April 2014, several large research studies have recently shown that a person’s personality naturally changes during adulthood in response to life events. And positive events, like entering a committed relationship, can lead to positive personality changes.

In one study, people reported noticing increases in their positive traits between the ages of 20 and 65. Significantly, they became more agreeable. This study backed up other research by psychologists, who refer to it as “the maturity principle.” Brent W. Roberts, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has pulled together some of this research. One finding he’s highlighted is that personality traits continue to change in middle and old age. Specifically, people become more conscientious and emotionally stable as they age.

It’s no secret that friendly, outgoing, responsible people tend to be happier than shy, irresponsible, unsociable people. That’s been known for years. But here’s a new twist, described in the Journal of Personality in January 2014: people who start out being happy tend to become even more so.

Researchers think that “personality” (characteristic ways of thinking feeling and behaving) is about 50% innate and 50% learned. So while many of us may start out being happy and some may become even more so, others can learn to be happier.

Now let’s go back to those angry images. Looking angry doesn’t always relate to feeling angry. Believe it or not, gravity plays a role. If you peruse a bunch of older faces, you’ll notice that the mouth, pulled downward by gravity, can make a person look angry or, at the very least, bored. But guess what. Smiling can erase the effects of gravity. A cheerful smile can transform an older person’s face. By smiling, he or she can suddenly look less angry and, well, younger.

Like the maturity principle, the “facial feedback hypothesis” has been around for a while. It’s a psychological theory that facial expressions can directly influence emotions. In other words, if you’re forced to smile during a social event, the theory holds that you’ll find the event more enjoyable. Charles Darwin was among the first to suggest that physiological changes (such as a smile caused by feeling happy) was not merely the consequence of being happy but also could intensify the feeling of happiness.

Recent studies by psychologists validate this notion and actually go even further. Forcing participants to smile, even when they weren’t feeling especially happy when they began the study, made them feel happier once they smiled.

The “mouth-down” phenomenon may account for the popularity of Botox and fillers injected into the faces of oldsters who want to look younger. A dermatologist in Maryland has in fact studied Botox as a treatment for clinical depression. After looking through 19th-century photos of stony-faced women institutionalized in a French hospital, Dr. Eric Finzi wondered whether the facial feedback hypothesis applied to patients who were depressed. He funded and oversaw two clinical trials studying Botox in people with depression. In the most recent study, he found that six weeks after treatment, 50% of the patients receiving Botox had their depressive symptoms reduced by half or more, compared to only 15% who were injected with a placebo. This remarkable finding demonstrates the power of a smiley face.

Life can be tough. We may face obstacles in our careers, financial challenges, rough patches in our relationships, serious illness, and worst of all, the loss of loved ones. But even though you might not always feel like smiling, you needn’t resort to Botox. The latest research leads to some simple advice: Try smiling. It just might make you feel better.

So…whether you’ve always been a basically happy personality, or you’re working on getting there, a smile on your face can lead to both feeling and looking happier. As a bonus, you’ll probably look younger, too.

In his 1936 film, Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin introduced a song later known as “Smile. “ The lyrics include this insight: “You’ll find that life is still worthwhile, if you just smile.”

Smile, anyone?

Leave a comment

Posted in aging, getting older, health

Tagged , , , , ,

What Shall We Do About Plastic Bags?

Posted on April 30, 2014 | 1 comment

The fate of plastic bags is up in the air. While we ponder their future, they’re accumulating by the millions in countless landfills (or worse, in our oceans).

Before plastic bags existed, people wrapped things in paper bags (generally brown ones). My mother stuffed our sandwiches into waxed paper bags (which didn’t work very well to keep them fresh). Retail stores offered their own paper bags featuring stores’ logos. And the paper shopping bag eventually made its appearance.

When plastic bags first came on the scene in a big way in the 1960s, they were a revelation. They were lightweight and could be folded inside your purse or briefcase, allowing you to reuse them. They kept wet things from getting everything else wet. They were useful for wrapping smelly garbage (and, eventually, smelly diapers).

Once I discovered the virtues of plastic bags, I began saving them, and saving them, and saving them. I still do. My deplorable status as a “saver” has led to a huge stash of colorful plastic bags. I justify it by constantly reusing them.

Despite their many virtues, plastic bags have become a menace, and the movement to ban plastic bags is gaining steam. San Francisco led the way in 2007 as the first city to ban them. Initially banning them at chain grocery stores and drugstores, SF extended the ban to all retail stores and restaurants in 2012.

Since 2007, plastic bags have been banned in nearly 100 municipalities in the state of California, and right now Los Angeles is the largest city in the country to enforce the ban. According a recent article in The New York Times, more than 150 communities across the U.S. have embraced some sort of bag ordinance. These include cities like Honolulu, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.

Even New York City is moving—slowly–towards a ban. In March the city council introduced legislation that would charge customers a fee for both plastic and paper bags at most city stores.

Wherever plastic bags are currently banned, paper bags are available for a small fee. (Most retailers in San Francisco now charge 10 cents.) So here in SF, we rely more and more on paper bags. And that’s OK. They tend to be biodegradable and recyclable, and many San Franciscans use them to store items destined for recycling until we can get to a bin.

We also use even sturdier reusable tote bags in bright patterns and colors. My favorites are large tote bags made from recycled plastic bottles, like those featuring color reproductions of classic Audubon prints, available for a donation to the National Audubon Society.

But plastic bags still offer some distinct advantages. They’re great repositories of smelly wet garbage, they don’t fall apart in the rain, and they can be repurposed as trash-can liners and lunch bags. Banning them completely would mean saying goodbye to all that.

But the winds of social change are blowing through California, where some legislators are now vigorously proposing a total ban on single-use plastic bags throughout the state. A similar statewide ban has been proposed before. But the plastics industry, with millions of dollars to spend on lobbying lawmakers, has so far succeeded in quashing these efforts.

The Times reports that one of the largest manufacturers of plastic bags, Hilex Poly, spent more than $1 million in California lobbying against a 2010 effort that, not surprisingly, failed. According to The Times, this South Carolina firm later donated to every Democrat in the California Senate who joined Republicans to defeat another bill proposed in 2013.

This year support for a statewide ban has new momentum. The Los Angeles Times has endorsed it, and several legislators who opposed the bill last year have made a U-turn and announced their support.

Another manufacturer has even jumped on the bandwagon. Command Packaging has started increasing its production of heavy-duty reusable bags, made from recycled agricultural plastic, and now supports the current bill. The California bill would allow stores to offer these more durable plastic bags—for a fee–alongside paper ones.

Not surprisingly, environmental groups are in hot pursuit of the ban. The California League of Conservation Voters recently recited the grim statistics: Californians still use an astonishing 20 billion plastic bags every year. Because they aren’t usually recycled, they contribute to marine pollution as well as urban pollution. California has a long coastline, and many of its rivers and streams lead right into bays like San Francisco Bay and the ocean. CLCV estimates that most plastic bags ultimately end up in the ocean, where 60 to 80% of all marine debris is plastic. Captain Paul Watson, executive director of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, estimates that 7 million tons of plastic are currently floating in our oceans.

The result is horrific. Birds, fish, and animals like sea otters drown, suffocate, or are strangled by plastic bags. Sea turtles, whose diet is largely made of up jellyfish, frequently mistake plastic bags for their favorite food and die when they consume them.

The long-term solution to plastic bags may lie in composting. In San Francisco, where composting of food scraps and items like food-soiled paper plates and cups has been mandatory since 2009, we can purchase biodegradable plastic bags in which to stuff our compost. As the rest of the country moves toward composting, this kind of bag will become more readily available, and the problem of non-biodegradable plastic bags will largely disappear. Unfortunately, the increasing use of composting won’t happen very soon.

I strongly support the proposed statewide ban in California–although I admit it’s easy for me to support it, thanks to the immense supply of plastic bags lurking in my closet. Because of the new momentum favoring a ban, plastic bags appear to be on the endangered list, at least in California. And let’s face it, once it happens in California, it will begin to happen elsewhere in the U.S. Someday our great-grandchildren will gaze in wonder at the colorful plastic bags displayed for their amusement in the museums of the future.

But in the meantime, are there are any new uses for plastic bags that would justify their continued existence?

A Nigerian artist has come up with one. Ifeoma Anyeaji, a Nigerian artist visiting at the Godown Art Centre in Nairobi, Kenya, was the focus of a profile in the Daily Nation last September. (The Daily Nation is an independent and influential Kenyan newspaper headquartered in Nairobi.) According to a Lonely Planet publication on Kenya, the Godown Art Centre is “a hub for Nairobi’s burgeoning arts scene.”

Once she arrived there, Anyeaji (known as Ify) began collecting discarded plastic bags. As a visual artist, she could use commonly used media like oil and acrylic. But she chose to work with plastic bags and bottles to promote the reusability of discarded materials. She sees plastic bags as “a global issue,” polluting the environment, “and so I thought of a way to make use of them.” Her technique? Threading and weaving the bags, ultimately creating colorful structures. This technique resembles the traditional hair-braiding and fabric warp-weft weaving popular in Nigeria. As a little girl, Ify was good at threading, the art of weaving hair with threads, “and this is the technique I wanted to incorporate into my work.”

Preparing the bags isn’t simple. After collecting the bags, Ify cleans and shreds them. Then she wraps them into strings, like ropes, and works them into intricate patterns. The patterns are then shaped into structures, including furniture, some of which is functional as well as works of art.

Ify sees herself in a broader context, noting that the world is mainly composed of recycled ideas, where one concept is borrowed and then embellished to be used elsewhere. Her view of the art world, and of herself as part of it, may have been influenced by her time studying in the U.S. After receiving her degree in painting at the University of Benin in Nigeria, she studied art at Washington University in St. Louis, receiving a graduate degree in environmental sculpture.

So…until we see the total demise of the single-use plastic bag, we can treasure creative people like Ify and hope that these bags will be repurposed, becoming useful and perhaps even beautiful objects. Unfortunately, Ify will almost certainly have an ample supply for many years to come.

1 Comment

Posted in environment, opinion pieces, politics, San Francisco

Tagged , , , , ,

Italy Was Amazing, and So Were We

Posted on March 24, 2014 | 2 comments

Have you ever watched the TV reality game show, “The Amazing Race”? It features a fast-paced race to destinations around the world.
Competitors are teams of two people who share the tension and the mishaps they encounter along the way, hoping to be the first team to reach the final destination. The teams must be in some sort of relationship, including friends and relatives, and almost every season includes one team composed of a parent and an adult child. The competition is tough, but the reward is great: the winning team shares one million dollars.
I never considered competing on the show myself, but my daughter Leslie and I lived our own version of “The Amazing Race” during our recent trip to Italy. Time and again, we went zooming from one place to another in an attempt to reach our destination on time. Hair flying, clothes flapping, our wheelies spinning behind us at a furious pace, we always got where we needed to go…but it wasn’t always clear that we would.
It all started when we arrived in Rome early on a Monday morning in October. We’d reserved online (with Trenitalia) two seats on the fast train between Rome and Florence scheduled to depart Termini, Rome’s central train station, at 2:30 p.m. Worried that our flight might be delayed, we allowed a long layover between our arriving flight and the train reservation. An Italian friend also warned us that the fast train would be packed with business travelers going to Florence from Rome on a Monday. Hence the reservation.
As things turned out, our flight arrived on time at Fiumicino, the Rome airport, around 8:30 a.m., leaving us six hours to connect with our train. We weren’t upset about the six hours—yet—because we weren’t sure how long it would take to get from the airport to Termini. A taxi would be expensive. Luckily, one of our guidebooks mentioned a new shuttle bus between Fiumicino and Termini, and hustling past passport control, we ran to find the shuttle. It was still boarding, with only a few minutes to spare, and out of breath and sweaty, we found seats across the aisle from each other.
The shuttle bus moved slowly through rush-hour traffic and stopped outside Termini at about 10 a.m. We retrieved our suitcases and entered through the door closest to the shuttle bus drop-off. We knew we had loads of time to kill, and we didn’t want to waste any of our precious hours in Italy sitting around Termini. So, hoping to learn how to get on an earlier train to Florence, we searched for a helpful employee. The first employee we encountered—in a surprisingly uncrowded part of the station–was rude and dismissive, making clear we had to keep our reservation because we had a special price we got online.
Disheartened, we envisioned a long wait at Termini, and the two of us set off in search of food and a restroom.
We walked down a narrow hallway and discovered a small snack shop, where we took turns using the few euros we’d brought from home to get something to eat. While Leslie ate, I headed for a nearby restroom. Employing the very useful phrase “Dov’è …?”, I followed the route described by a friendly clerk and was startled to discover an enormous and busy part of the station we hadn’t known existed. Hundreds of travelers were milling around, eyes focused on a huge arrivals-departures board on the wall above some ticket windows.
I went back for Leslie, and we quickly saw that several trains would be leaving Rome for Florence well before 2:30. But how to exchange our reserved tickets for tickets on one of those? Hopeful travelers like us were grabbing numbers to talk to a ticket agent, and we grabbed a number, too. But the numbers being served were hundreds away from new numbers like ours.
Even more disheartened, we resigned ourselves to hours in Termini, probably never getting on any train earlier than the 2:30 we’d reserved. Just then, an older Italian man suddenly appeared at my elbow. “Can I help you?” he asked.
Who was this stranger offering help? My first thought was that he was a con man hoping to take advantage of a pair of vulnerable American tourists. He seemed to focus especially on me, a woman of a certain age, rather than my attractive younger daughter. Hmmm…was he hoping to be Rossano Brazzi to my Katharine Hepburn?
I must have looked dubious, but I quickly explained our situation, and his English was good enough to grasp the problem. He instantly offered us real help, escorting us out of the enormous room to a Trenitalia office where a clerk immediately exchanged our tickets (for a fee I was happy to pay) and reserved seats for us on the 11:30 fast train to Florence.
But by this time it was nearly 11:25! We had to RUN. So moving even faster than we did to catch the shuttle from Fiumicino, we began running to the platform where the train was about to leave. The kind stranger grabbed one of my wheelies, and the three of us set off. Our wheelies spinning, our hearts racing, Leslie and I boarded the train just in time.
In return for his help, our kind Italian stranger asked only that I look for him at Termini when I returned from Florence and have a drink with him. I’d have gladly done that had I returned to Termini at a time when that might have worked. But I never did, and I departed Termini hoping he knew how very grateful we were for his help.
Our seats on the train were excellent, and our arrival in Florence went smoothly. A taxi took us to our hotel, where we settled in for four wonderful days and nights in that extraordinary city. On our last day, we were hoping to travel by bus to Siena. The weather forecast the night before predicted heavy rain, so we figured we’d stay in Florence instead and hit some museums we’d so far missed.
We left our hotel at nearly 11 a.m., prepared for rain, and were instead greeted by sunshine and wet pavements. The rain had come and gone. We instantly decided to head for Siena and set out on foot for the bus station. We knew it was very close to the train station, so, consulting our map, we aimed for the train station, assuming we could find the bus station from there.
We made tracks and quickly arrived at the train station. But where exactly was the bus station? Its location was NOT obvious, and we frantically searched the area till we found it. We then rushed to the ticket window and somehow managed to explain what we wanted. Cash was required. Did we have it? Rummaging through our wallets, we came up with enough cash to buy the tickets.
The next bus was scheduled to leave within a few minutes, so we tracked down the right bus and clambered on, finding seats just in time. If we’d missed this bus, we’d have been stuck at the bus station for over an hour, losing all that time in Siena. Once again, we barely made our connection. Once again, I felt like the parent in an Amazing Race parent-child team.
The hours we spent in Siena were joyful. Lunch outside, on the terrace of a restaurant facing Il Campo (where the famed horse race, the Palio, takes place every summer), was delightful, and our trek uphill to see Siena’s cathedral was worth every arduous step. But when we checked the bus schedule, hoping to get back to Florence before dark, we found we had to get to our bus stop within minutes. Quickly making our way downhill, relishing the Siena street-scene as we went, we arrived at the bus stop and discovered we had to buy tickets at an underground location beneath it. Down the stairs we went, and again cash was required. I’d used an ATM so cash was no longer a problem. But the adjoining restroom, which we both needed by this time, required not merely cash but correct change! More rummaging, more frantic glances at our watches, till we came up with the right coins and made our triumphal entrance into the restroom. Finally we emerged into the sunlight and climbed onto the bus just in time for our ride back to Florence.
The next morning we were off to the Amalfi Coast by way of Naples. We’d planned to take a fast train from Florence to Naples, then get to the port in Naples to catch a ferry to our destination, Sorrento. The fast train arrived late, but we weren’t worried about making our connection in Naples. Surely there would be more than one ferry going from the port of Naples to Sorrento. Or would there?
Arriving at the Naples train station, we tracked down a tourist office where we were assured that ferries would leave from the port to Sorrento that afternoon. So off we went in a taxi through the chaotic streets of Naples, arriving at the port and eventually finding a ticket window to purchase tickets for the ferry to Sorrento. This time we were actually early and found ourselves waiting outside on the dock. The weather was beautiful, so we didn’t mind a bit. When the ferry arrived, however, we were disappointed to find that we had to sit inside instead of outside on a deck. So we sat inside, defeating the real purpose of taking the ferry instead of the more convenient, and cheaper, train from Naples to Sorrento. Oh well….
The ferry arrived at the port of Sorrento, and we emerged to discover another setback. We had to drag our suitcases uphill to get to the taxi stand. But we made it, and our taxi deposited us at our hotel, a delightful place where we spent four wonderful nights before taking off for Rome.
We ran two fairly frantic “races” before leaving Sorrento. First, we left our hotel early one morning and walked downhill to the port to catch a ferry to Capri. The ferries didn’t leave very often, and we wanted to get an early start. Down by the water, a crowd had gathered, waiting in a long line to board the ferry. We got in line and patiently began to wait. But we soon noticed that everyone else in line was already clutching a ticket for the ferry. We queried others and learned that the ticket booth was a long distance behind us, near the stairs we’d descended a long time before. I stayed in line while Leslie ran back to buy our tickets. Nervously, I watched for her till just about everyone else had boarded the ferry and departure time was only a few minutes away. At last I saw Leslie running toward me, waving our tickets, and at the last possible moment, we boarded the ferry. It left the dock a minute later. An Amazing-Race minute? You bet!
We arrived at Capri and looked around the port for a short time, then purchased tickets (for cash) for a boat trip around the entire island. If weather conditions permitted, we would be able to visit “the blue grotto,” a remarkable spot where small rowboats take four people at a time into the grotto to see the astonishingly “blue” water, a natural phenomenon. So off we went on our tour around Capri. Luckily, conditions allowed us (lying perfectly flat in the rowboat) to enter the blue grotto, our rower singing “Volare” at the top of his lungs while we surveyed the very blue water surrounding us. One of the other passengers in our rowboat was quite hefty, weighing maybe 300 pounds, and I worried about capsizing, but nothing untoward happened, and we made it safely back to the larger boat for the rest of the trip around the island.
Back on the island, we spent the afternoon strolling around its sites, relishing beautiful vistas from various perches above the water. As evening approached, we decided to head back to Sorrento. That meant descending to the level of the port and taking a ferry that would return in time for dinner. As we made our way to where the ferries departed, we saw we had only a few minutes to make the next ferry. Missing it would leave us in Capri for another hour, and we’d seen all we wanted to see. So another race began, and we ran as fast as we could to catch the next ferry. No wheelies spinning behind us, but the race was frantic just the same. We made the ferry with no time to spare and got to Sorrento just as the sun was setting. We trekked back uphill to our hotel, changed for dinner, and selected a charming restaurant, followed by a stroll up and down the busy shopping streets nearby.
No other frenzied races happened during the rest of our time in Sorrento. Our boat trip to and from Amalfi went well, and we easily got to Pompeii and back on the circumvesuviana train (a local line that goes around Mt. Vesuvius on its way to Naples). We left Sorrento on the same train line, leaving lots of time to get good seats on the train (which originated in Sorrento) so we could stash all of our suitcases before anyone else could grab those seats. Arriving in Naples, we again had plenty of time to await our fast train to Rome. The train got to Termini as it was getting dark. We emerged from the train and immediately hopped into a taxi to get to our hotel.
I’ll skip the nightmarish arrival at our hotel in Rome (it’ll appear soon on TripAdvisor). Once we settled into our room, we wandered around the surrounding streets till we were hijacked into eating at a mediocre place for dinner, but we were too tired to find somewhere else. We soon felt energized enough to go elsewhere for gelato. The rest of our stay in Rome, including gelato at least once every single day, was wonderful.
We had only one “race” in Rome, but it was memorable. On our last morning, we had a reservation for the Galleria Borghese, the fabulous art museum in the Borghese Gardens. Patrons are warned that they must arrive on time and are allowed exactly two hours to see the museum before being compelled to leave. Relying on my memory (from a trip 12 years earlier), I optimistically thought we’d have enough time to walk to the museum…but we didn’t start early enough. We set out after breakfast for the Spanish Steps, a relatively short walk from our hotel, planning to make our way to the Galleria from there. But we didn’t walk as fast as we thought we would, and we kept checking the time on our watches as we approached the Spanish Steps. We climbed the seemingly endless stairs to get to the top, but by the time we arrived there, out of breath, the chances of getting to the museum on time seemed unlikely. Suspecting that we might need a taxi, we darted into the posh hotel at the very top, the Hassler, to ask for advice. A charming doorman who spoke English (of course– it was the Hassler) checked his watch and the time on our reservation, and he confirmed our suspicions. If we continued on foot, we’d never get to the museum on time. He led us, looking mighty shabby for patrons of the Hassler, to a waiting taxi, and off we went to the Borghese Gardens, arriving at the museum with only a few minutes to spare before our entry time.
The museum was worth the anguish it took to get there, and the rest of our day was filled with a multitude of wonderful sights and sounds in Rome, ending with dinner outside at a delightful restaurant in the Campo de’ Fiori. We staggered back to our hotel and headed for bed, knowing we had to be up early for our flight home. You can be sure we allowed plenty of time to get to Fiumicino without needing to race there! And we did.

 

2 Comments

Posted in family, television, travel, weather

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hey There, Handsome!

Posted on February 27, 2014 | 1 comment

Hey, handsome!  You know who you are.  You’re a charitable donor to at least one worthy cause you support.

Say what? 

In a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, Arthur C. Brooks, the head of a nonprofit organization, accumulated a wealth of data to support the conclusion that giving to charity makes us happier, healthier, and yes, even better-looking.

First, according to one study cited by Brooks, happiness and giving are strongly correlated.  A survey by the University of Chicago showed that charitable givers are 43% more likely to say they are “very happy” than non-givers.  By contrast, non-givers are 3.5 times more likely to say they are “not happy at all.”  Wow!

But is it really charitable giving that makes us happier, or is it the reverse?  Another study provided one answer.  Researchers from Harvard and the University of British Columbia found that the amount of money subjects spent on themselves was “inconsequential for happiness,” but spending on others resulted in significant gains in happiness. 

In another study, University of Oregon researchers asked people to divide $100 between a food pantry and their own wallets.  The researchers used a brain-scanner to see what happened.  It turned out that choosing the charitable option lighted up the brain’s center of pleasure and reward, the same center that lights up because of pleasurable music, addictive drugs, and a mother’s bond with her children.

Are we also healthier when we act in a charitable way?  Brooks cited several studies that say we are.  A University of Buffalo psychologist recently studied more than 800 residents of Detroit and found that volunteering for a charity significantly lowered the association between stressful life-events and death. 

Two studies conducted in California lent further support to this notion.  When researchers at Stanford and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging tracked nearly 2000 older Americans over a nine-year period, they found that the dedicated volunteers in the group were 56% more likely to have survived all nine years than non-volunteers who started out in identical health.  A study of teenagers yielded even more support.  In 2008, the University of California reported that altruistic teenagers were physically and mentally healthier later in their lives than their less generous peers.

And now we get to our most intriguing question:  Does being charitable do anything for the way you look?  Dutch and British researchers recently showed women college students one of three videos featuring the same good-looking actor.  In the first video, he gave generously to a man begging on the street.  In the second, he appeared to give only a little money.  In the third, the actor gave nothing to the panhandler.  The result? The more he gave, the more handsome he appeared to the women in the study.

Brooks concluded that this finding explains why men loosen their wallets in an attempt to impress women.  And he uncovered one more study to support his conclusion.  A 1999 experiment conducted by the University of Liverpool showed that “eager men” on first dates gave significantly more to a panhandler than men who were already in comfortable long-term relationships.

In short, giving generously to the causes we support really does appear to boost our well-being and our esteem—even our appearance–in the eyes of others.  Although I have reservations about some of the techniques used by charities to pry money from us (see “Why Am I Suddenly a Member?” found elsewhere on this blog), I wholeheartedly support charitable giving and volunteering on behalf of worthy causes. 

The charitable men in my life have always looked good to me, and as I’ve gotten older, I find they’re looking better and better.

As for me, in addition to my feeling good about giving, I now know that it helps me look good, too.

That reminds me…where’s my checkbook?

 

 

1 Comment

Posted in charities, health, medical research, morale-boosters, opinion pieces

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

The Demise of the Granada

Posted on December 22, 2013 | 2 comments

When they tore down the Granada movie theater, a large chunk of me crumbled with it.

As the wreckers began dismantling the magnificent old movie palace on Chicago’s Far North Side, other moviegoers must have felt the same sense of loss.  For those of us who came of age in the ’50s and ’60s, it was a wrenching reminder of the idyllic world we inhabited back then.

I grew up at the Nortown Theater, two or three miles west of the Granada.  It was the theater we could walk to, and nearly every Saturday afternoon we made our way to the Nortown to sit beneath its dark-sky ceiling filled with scores of glittering stars, our eyes glued to the larger-than-life stars who glittered on the screen.

Saturday afternoons at the Nortown expanded my otherwise limited horizons.  I learned about the Wild West from John Wayne, criminal pursuits from Bogart and Mitchum, romance from Taylor, Monroe, and Bacall, song and dance from Garland, Kelly, and Astaire.  But when our parents finally consented to our taking the Devon Avenue bus alone, a whole new world opened up:  the world of the Granada Theater.

Life became more complicated on the screen of the Granada.  At one remarkable double-feature in 1956, I encountered both the happiness and the sorrow of a woman’s search for love.  Katharine Hepburn’s spunky heroine, in love with a very-married Rossano Brazzi in “Summertime,” and Jennifer Jones’s strong woman doctor, in love with war journalist William Holden in “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing,” bravely returned to their careers when their doomed love affairs ended.  An early portent of women’s liberation?  Judging from the masses of wet Kleenex we produced, I doubt it.

“The Man Who Knew Too Much” introduced me to the heart-pounding suspense stirred up by Hitchcock.  I watched “Anastasia” aware of the firestorm Ingrid Bergman’s scandalous love affair had ignited in Hollywood.   And a powerful statement about the criminal justice system, “12 Angry Men,” forced me to think about the possibility of injustice in America and whether I might someday do something about it.

As I grew older, the Granada became a place to go on dates.  Teenaged boys in that era liked taking dates to movies, where their eager sweaty hands would reach out in the dark in hopes of touching something soft, warm, and female.  They had limited success, at least with me.  My date and I once watched a shockingly bad movie with Tab Hunter and Natalie Wood, “The Burning Hills.”  It was so awful that we laughed too hard to do anything else.

In the ’60s, I rarely patronized the Granada.  I left Chicago for college and grad school, and when I returned, I lived in another part of the city.  On my last visit, just before leaving Chicago once again in 1970, the theater seemed rundown and much dirtier than I remembered.  Was the Granada on the skids?

Five years later, I returned to Chicago with a husband and a baby.  Living in a suburb north of the Granada, we passed it now and then, but my busy new life left no time to seek out old haunts.  Then one day it suddenly closed.  No warning, no notice announced in the newspapers, allowed its former patrons one last chance to see it.  The doors were locked, and entry barred.

Repeated efforts to save the Granada failed, and the wrecking ball finally arrived.  As I drove by the theater on my way to teach a law-school class, I saw the wall behind the screen fall to pieces and the two-story terra cotta columns crash to the floor.  The balcony seats were exposed to view, then destroyed.  At the end, a sodden ugly mass of tangled beams and columns, entwined with an array of aging construction materials, became a hideous pile awaiting disposal.

An era had ended.  TV, VCRs, and the proliferation of movie theaters in the suburbs all played their part.  Most of the opulent movie palaces that once thrived in American cities had become dinosaurs.  And so, in 1990, the Granada died.

But like the best of the movies that appeared on its screen for more than 50 wonderful years, the memories it created have never died.

An earlier version of this piece appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times.

 

2 Comments

Posted in Chicago, movie stars, movies, nostalgia, opinion pieces

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Go p(nuts)! PB is actually good for you

Posted on October 15, 2013 | Leave a comment

Peanut-butter lovers of the world, rejoice!  This humble legume, in the form of an easy-to-eat spread, has recently earned some noteworthy praise.

First, one of the food industry’s harshest critics, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), has just celebrated the virtues of peanut butter.  In the October 2013 issue of its publication, Nutrition Action, CSPI notes that peanut butter–a lunchbox classic and a staple in 90 percent of U.S. households–is loaded with unsaturated fat, vitamin E, and magnesium, and it supplies some copper, fiber, and zinc as well.  (Some must steer clear of PB because of peanut-related allergies, but most of us can eat it with abandon.)

True, CSPI acknowledges that there’s one small problem with peanut butter:  it’s also loaded with calories. Most people probably eat about 250 calories’ worth in the typical sandwich.  According to CSPI, that’s much more than the 50 to 80 calories in the equivalent amount (roughly 2 ounces) of turkey, ham, or a quarter cup of tuna.  These alternatives also offer more protein:  10 to 12 grams as compared with the 7 or 8 grams in peanut butter.

For the 90 percent of us who relish eating peanut butter, CSPI suggests some new ways to trim the calories.  For starters, there’s powdered PB.  It’s made by slow-roasting and pressing peanuts to remove 85 percent of the oil.  You just mix the powder with water and stir.  According to CSPI, the result is a creamy texture and rich peanut taste for just 50 calories per serving (with roughly the same amount of protein as regular PB).

Two other new products are whipped PB (fewer calories but less protein) and Better ‘n Peanut Butter (defatted peanut flour, mixed with PB and sugars, also cuts both calories and protein).

Traditionalists might want to stick with “natural” PB or even oldies like Jif and Peter Pan.  Happily, none of them have trans fat any more.  Just watch out for the new “artisan” varieties that add chocolate and other sweet ingredients, upping the usual 1 or 2 grams of sugar all the way to 9 grams.  Who needs it?  If you crave PB infused with chocolate, go for broke and have a candy bar instead.

But wait, there’s more good news for peanut-butter lovers!  In addition to CSPI’s focus on PB as a healthy sandwich-filler, the medical community has just declared an even more significant finding.  A study announced in September by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis (along with Harvard Medical School) revealed that girls ages 9 to 15 who regularly ate peanut butter or nuts were 39 percent less likely to develop benign breast disease by age 30.  Although benign breast disease is noncancerous, it increases the risk of breast cancer later in life.

Over 9,000 U.S. girls were part of the study, which began in 1996.  The researchers followed the girls until they were 18 to 30 years old.  This study is significant because it’s the first one that actually recorded what the girls were eating during their adolescent years (instead of relying on their recalling later what they had eaten years before).

The senior author of the study is Graham Colditz, M.D., a disease-prevention expert at Washington University’s School of Medicine.  Professor Colditz is an epidemiologist with a longstanding interest in cancer prevention, particularly among women.

According to Colditz, the findings in the recent study “suggest that peanut butter could help reduce the risk of breast cancer in women.”  He recommends that girls snack on peanut butter or nuts instead of reaching for high-calorie junk food and sugary beverages.

Wow!  Lots of great news about peanut butter!  I feel totally vindicated.  My instincts were right all along.

All those mornings making countless peanut-butter sandwiches for my daughters may have actually led to their staying healthy longer.  My choice to eschew fillings like bologna and head cheese (what was that stuff anyway?) probably didn’t hurt either.

A personal reminiscence about PB:  When my husband had a month-long sabbatical in Paris during the 1980s, we brought a jumbo jar of peanut butter from home because we knew it wasn’t readily available in France.  We wanted our small daughters to have a familiar food to eat while we otherwise attempted to live like Parisians.  I can still see myself in our tiny Paris apartment, spreading peanut butter on scores of French biscotti so our unfamiliar surroundings would feel a little more like home.

Like almost everything I’ve done (and still do) for my daughters, it was worth it.

Thinking about peanut butter has, not surprisingly, made me want some.  I’m ready to munch on a PB sandwich right this minute.  Want to join me?

Leave a comment

Posted in breast cancer, family, food, health, medical research, peanut butter, travel

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

“Paper or…?” Drying your hands has unexpected consequences

Posted on October 8, 2013 | Leave a comment

We’re all familiar with the following question:  Paper or plastic?

For decades, every purchase in a supermarket or drugstore has led to this question.  And for decades, many of us have wondered:  Is it better—for the environment, for my pocketbook, for my overall well-being—to request paper or plastic?  The answer hasn’t always been clear.

Never mind.  Today, in San Francisco and an increasing number of other cities, the question is moot.  Local ordinances ban plastic bags and require customers to pay for paper ones, thus encouraging shoppers to carry their own reusable bags.  The “paper or plastic” question is fast disappearing.

But now we’re confronted with a new but even more troubling question:  When we use a restroom in a public place and we wash our hands (as we’re repeatedly urged to do), should we use paper towels or an air blower?

In this case, we usually don’t have a choice.  Restaurants, stores, theaters, museums, and other institutions with restrooms for their patrons generally confront us with only one way to dry our hands:  paper towels OR air blowers.  A few establishments offer both, thereby giving us a choice, but most do not.

I’m a strong proponent of paper towels, and my position recently garnered support from an epidemiologist at the Mayo Clinic, Rodney Lee Thompson.

According to a story in the Wall Street Journal last December, the Mayo Clinic has published a comprehensive study of every known hand-washing study done since 1970.  The conclusion?  Drying one’s skin is essential to staving off bacteria, and paper towels are better at doing that than air blowers.

Why?  According to this study, paper towels are more efficient, they don’t splatter germs, they won’t dry out your skin, and most people prefer them (and therefore are more likely to wash their hands in the first place).

Thompson’s own study was one of those included in the overall study, and he concurs with its conclusions.  He observed people washing their hands at places like sports stadiums.  “The trouble with blowers,” he says, is that “they take so long.”  Most people dry their hands for a short time, then “wipe them on their dirty jeans, or open the door with their still-wet hands.”

Besides being time-consuming, most blowers are extremely noisy.  Their decibel level often strikes me as deafening.  Like Thompson, I think these noisy and inefficient blowers “turn people off.”

But, he adds, there’s “no downside to the paper towel,” either psychologically or environmentally.  Thompson states that electric blowers use more energy than producing a paper towel, so they don’t appear to benefit the environment either.

The air-blower industry argues that blowers reduce bacterial transmission, but studies show that the opposite is true.  Much to my surprise, these studies found that blowers tend to spread bacteria from 3 to 6 feet.  To keep bacteria from spreading, Thompson urges using a paper towel to dry your hands, opening the restroom door with it, then throwing it into the trash.

A recent episode of the popular TV series “Mythbusters” has provided new evidence to support Thompson’s conclusions.  The results of tests conducted on this program, aired in June 2013, demonstrated that paper towels are more effective at removing bacteria from one’s hands and that air blowers spread more bacteria around the blower area.

In San Francisco, many restrooms have posted signs stating that they’re composting paper towels to reduce waste.  Because San Francisco has embarked on an ambitious composting scheme, we’re not even adding paper towels to our landfills or recycling bins.  Other cities may already be doing the same, and still others (like New York City, where composting has already been proposed) will undoubtedly follow.

I strongly advocate replacing air blowers with paper towels in public restrooms.  Political leaders, including those who’ve already compelled their constituents to abandon plastic bags for the sake of the environment, should carefully review this issue as well.  If they conclude, as overwhelming evidence suggests, that paper towels are better both for our health and for the environment, they should enact local ordinances requiring that public restrooms use paper towels.

Paper or…?  The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.  The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

Leave a comment

Posted in environment, health, opinion pieces, politics, San Francisco

Tagged , , , , , ,