MY HUSBAND and I need a new refrigerator. Our existing one is nearing 30, which is a fabulous age for a person but a terrible age for an appliance. For example, even when we turned the dial to the lowest setting, it froze our fresh vegetables, the celery and cucumbers taking it the hardest. There were lots of other problems too boring to discuss. Trust me, it was time for it to go.
A few weeks ago we went shopping for one and were surprised to see how far refrigerators have come: Many models are quite beautiful, very streamlined and with special features I can’t remember now but found impressive at the time. Sadly we couldn’t get one of those because none would fit into our allotted refrigerator space, and it seemed outrageous to completely renovate our kitchen just to get a nice fridge. So we bought the only one that would fit, and there it is in my kitchen now, having arrived earlier this morning.
I hate it. It’s huge, but not in a good way like the Goodyear Blimp. No, not at all. It’s clunky and graceless with two doors that sort of puff out. The handles are Paul Bunyan-sized, and the ice-maker doesn’t even work (yet) because the water line broke when the installers took the old one out, so now we need a plumber to come and fix it, making it cost even more. If you keep the door to the fridge open too long, like I did when I was filling it with food, it beeps annoyingly like your car chiding you to put on your seatbelt. And several times an hour it emits a grating sound reminiscent of an approaching Harley-Davidson. (I hope I get used to that.) Still, I know it means well and we need it and will likely embrace it as a congenial member of the family, in due time.
Until then, like I do with most bad experiences I’ll view this as a weight-loss opportunity. Since right now I don’t even want to look at the thing, naturally I’ll steer clear of the kitchen and hopefully drop a few pounds. Honestly, it’s more like ten, since we just returned from a vacation where we had gelato almost every day and when I stepped onto the scale this morning, I’m certain it laughed.
ANYONE WHO ATTENDED school in the United States knows the Ides of March (March 15) is an ominous date. It all started with the assassination of the Roman dictator Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., which happened so long ago I can’t even do the math. Not really buying the whole concept of “B.C.” and not even wholly embracing the existence of “C,” I did, however, study Shakespeare at college and read his play, Julius Caesar, detailing how Brutus led 60 co-conspirators in the bloody mass stabbing. (There was also a 1948 novel by Thornton Wilder called The Ides of March that got far less attentionthan his earlier masterpiece, Our Town, a play in three acts that should be read repeatedly by anyone battling depression or just plain seeking a reason to live.)
But there’s another reason the date is to be rued that is rarely mentioned: On March 15, 1971, the CBS-TV network announced the cancellation of The Ed Sullivan Show after 23 years of making Sunday nights something to be anticipated rather than dreaded by millions of faithful viewers. For me personally it was the impetus to get all my homework done by showtime, so in one sense Ed Sullivan was responsible for me even graduating high school.
The Ed Sullivan Show had it all, and I mean that literally. Anyone who was anyone showed up at one time or another, be they fair-to-middling oddities, one-shot wonders or lifelong superstars: The Beatles made their famous debut, The Rolling Stones appeared six times and Elvis Presley stunned viewers with his gyrating hips. An audience favorite was Senor Wences, a comical Spanish ventriloquist who saved money on dummies by using his own hand with a face painted on it. (I still pull out my lipstick to make one of those if I’ve had too much wine.) Jugglers balancing plates in the air on long sticks, unicycle riders, dancing dogs, entire casts from hit Broadway shows and singers including Tony Bennett, Petula Clark, Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison and The Doors and Diana Ross and The Supremes eventually shared the hour with the Muppets, various lion tamers, families of acrobats from foreign countries and a constant parade of hilarious stand-up comedians, most notably Jackie Mason who famously gave Sullivan the finger on the air.
And of course there was Ed himself, stiffly introducing each act, looking like a walking, talking corpse with a giant bobble-head. I always suspected that after each show he went back inside his coffin where he lay dead until the following Sunday night.
ACCORDING TO THE U.S. Department of Energy, studying which states would provide the best wind power, the five least windy states are Mississippi, Florida, Kentucky, Georgia and Alabama. That being said, having traveled to Florida with my husband to escape the frigid temperatures in Maine, since our arrival incredibly intense winds have made the whole place virtually uninhabitable, with few signs of letting up.
Years ago we were traveling in Europe and visited Provence, that storied land of fragrant lilac fields and abundant sunshine. We arrived during the Mistral, an intense wind that blows unabated for days at a time and is said to make people crazy. Before too long we understood why the French say even murder is forgiven after a week of le Mistral.
This brings up the problem surrounding the concept of “going on vacation” to “have a good time.” It’s a bad idea. Far better to stay home and figure out how to be happy (and remain alive) where you are.
I’M THINKING of changing the name of this blog to The Daily Zen Master. Or maybe Daily Zen, or Zendroid, or Mindful Droidness or Droidfulness. (Feel free to weigh in.)
Being mindful, as opposed to mindless, is very popular these days, and after all my studying I know pretty much the same stuff as all the people claiming to be Zen masters, and there is a boatload of them, believe me. Just about anyone with time on their hands is now a “mindfulness expert.” I’ve checked many of them out, and the sad truth is thatthey all say the exact same things because there are only a very few things to say. Yet each one claims to have The Answer to your anxiety, unhappiness, distress, panic, insomnia or whatever may ail you. Hey, I can do that! Here is my very first lesson, which is actually the only lesson. If you follow my instructions carefully you can save tons of money on books and tapes and candles and little statues of the Buddha.
1. Sit comfortably, either on a cushion on the floor with your legs crossed or upright on a chair with both feet on the floor. (That’s a good tip, because otherwise you might have twisted yourself into an uncomfortable position that you would try to hold for like 15 minutes, hoping to relax.)
2. Close your eyes, or keep them open. (Again, good advice, otherwise some folks might have kept one open and one closed, which would likely be distracting.)
3. Focus your attention on your breathing. Breathe in, and then breathe out. Breathe normally, and think about the breath as it enters your body through the nostrils and exits through the mouth, or however you do it. Don’t force yourself to breathe in a special way. Keep doing it. (By the way, this is also necessary to stay alive so it’s not a complete waste of time.)
4. If a thought comes into your head, which one or two are likely to do, just acknowledge it as a thought and tell it you’ll think it later. Then go back to focusing on your breathing. If anything external arises to distract you, just recognize it as a distraction and keep thinking about your breathing. (One exception: If you smell smoke, get out of the house immediately.)
5. Do this breathing thing for as long as you can possibly stand it or until people start banging on your door. The longer you do it the better, since it means less time spent worrying about the future or regretting the past, which is what most people do most of the time.
Congratulations, you are meditating! Now do it some more later today, and then again tomorrow morning, and the day after that and the day after that. Then you can write your own book about how to be a Zen master. (But don’t think about that yet.)
IF YOU’RE JUST starting out and looking for a career, consider the fact that meteorologists get away with murder. Unlike doctors who must carry tons of malpractice insurance, or pharmacists who must live with guilt if they kill someone with the wrong prescription, or plumbers who get called back to fix a mistake, weather forecasters can screw up, which they do all the time, and nobody says a peep. They don’t get sued, or fired, or for all we know even chided by their bosses. Their mistakes are never mentioned. Nobody says, “Hey, sorry you all had to evacuate your homes, that tornado (or avalanche or mudslide or hurricane or blizzard or thunderstorm or even just a rainy afternoon) never showed up. My bad.”
Despite evidence to the contrary, we all believe the application of science and technology to predict the state of the atmosphere for a given location is virtually foolproof, and certainly reason enough to cancel the company picnic or move a wedding party indoors. Ha!
Case in point: Last night as I was drifting off to sleep, comfy under my covers and one blink away from dreamland, I remembered the evening forecast that promised it would begin raining in the middle of the night and that rain would turn to sleet and freezing rain, encasing my car in ice by morning. So I hauled myself out of bed at one in the morning, groped my way downstairs, dragged on a pair of boots and trekked outside into the cold night in my bathrobe to pull my car into the garage. I was not happy, but I was thankful to have dodged an ice bullet the next morning. Only the next morning showed up dry as a bone and sunny, with nary a cloud or a raindrop in sight.
MY HUSBAND and I are both smart, which is nice. You don’t get scammed when you’re smart, and I’ve always thought scams sounded lame and avoidable, yet mysterious. So last week, when we got a postcard inviting us to be scammed, we thought we’d go forward just to see how it feels. Last Saturday evening we attended a 90-minute sales presentation by TOURICO VACATIONS, the prerequisite for getting two free airplane tickets on JetBlue to anywhere in the United States, and a free two-night stay at a Hilton wherever we wanted to go. We bit. Hey, it was either that or a movie and nothing good was playing. And besides, who doesn’t want free stuff? We called the number on the card and made our reservation.
The lady on the phone said to “Come early, so you can get a good seat.” We arrived at the small hotel in Brunswick, Maine, at the appointed hour and made our way to the conference room, where we were greeted by the telephone lady. She asked if we had come ready to buy something. “Did you bring your checkbook?” she asked, sort of laughing. We said no, not laughing, confessing we had mainly come for the free airplane tickets. She stopped laughing. Eventually nobody else showed up and the Pitch Guy came in, straight from Central Casting and sporting a comically large pot belly and an inky black toupee. He looked like a stand-up comic from the late 1970s, spitting out the same bad jokes. He got started since apparently we were the entire audience. (We had the best seats in the house.)
There was a film showing beautiful beaches with palm trees and cruise ships and Italy and Rome and lots of other destinations. It lasted maybe two minutes, then the TOURICO VACATIONS logo came up and the film ended. Pitch Guy (P.G.) started jabbering about how much money we could save, and that this is not a time share deal, and we would make our money back in two trips and they had 250,000 satisfied customers saving millions of dollars on travel because of their membership in the club. I repeatedly asked the price, but P.G. just skirted the issue and made more bad jokes. Eventually we got some numbers out of him, like $8,995 which quickly dropped to $5,995, then $4,995 and finally $3,995, depending either on this or that variable or the incredulous looks on our faces whenever he mentioned an amount. Plus a $200 annual service fee.
We said we’d like to sleep on it, even though P.G. swore up and down that he was “only able to make my very best offer on this one night only.” We said we’d take our chances and come by the next day with our best offer. We went home and got on our computers and did some research and found almost nothing about TOURICO VACATIONS. I said almost; we found an ABC News video saying the company worked under different names and was a scam, and described our experience perfectly. (Since then the company has hastily thrown up some links to their “website,” and a few falsehoods have appeared on the Better Business Bureau website.)
We decided to go back the next day to claim our free airline tickets and hotel voucher and not join the travel club. Only there was no free anything. We were given cards from TOURICO VACATIONS explaining that the free gifts were from another company, not them, and we would have to register for them and include $75 for the registration fee. Then we would receive information in the mail with instructions on how to get the “free” gifts, but there would be another $150 in additional fees. It was likely, according to one of the few reviews we did find online, that there would be several more forms to fill out, after which we would learn it was too late, it had all taken too long and the offer had expired.
On the way out I stole a chocolate-covered peanut butter ball from the unmanned hotel lobby snack bar. By then I figured I deserved something for free. (BTW, it was to die for.)
AS I RECALL growing up in the 1950s, it was idyllic. This was not just because I was a kid and childhood is superior to adulthood, although that helps. It was more because of a lack of striving to be the happiest, the smartest, the coolest and the trendiest. There was no “cutting-edge,” and if there were you were likely nowhere near it. There was far less inanity; specifically there was no Twitter, which has surely got to signify the lowest point in the evolution of our species.
Most of our food came from a small grocery within walking distance to our modest home. A dozen eggs were delivered to our back door once a week by Artie, the Egg Man. There was no club soda or sparkling Pellegrino; instead we received a case of seltzer (in those glass bottles with the spigots) once a month, brought by Phil, the Seltzer Guy. We had a party line on the phone and when you dialed “O,” a real lady answered and asked how she could help you. There were no talking robots calling our house; when the phone rang you were confident it would be a close friend or relative on the other end. Drinking water came out of the kitchen sink faucet or, in summer, the backyard hose. I could go on, but why bother—it’s all just nostalgia now, replaced by modern social media making everyone, regardless of who they are or how much they’ve got, feel like crap.
The latest tool by which to judge people is their water consumption. Despite the growing belief that using plastic bottles means you are a disciple of the Devil bent on world destruction by choking every fish in the sea, killing all the dolphins and whales and filling the planet with mountains of detritus, still those mega-corporations, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, are continuing to duke it out for world dominance as they seemingly have since the Dawn of Man. Only now it’s without the added sugar.
An impending battle between the two companies is set to begin on Super Bowl Sunday, when competing TV commercials will present their new products to the public. Apparently Americans have finally tired of drinking artificially colored, sugar-laden carbonated chemicals with no nutritional value and in fact only bad results (i.e., soda drinkers have a higher risk of cancer and obesity), so Coke and Pepsi are diving head-first into the bottled water business with smartwater (one word, all lower case) and LIFEWTR (misspelled in all caps).
Because the recipe for water is pretty much a done deal, they’re spending zillions on packaging with fancy labels designed by emerging artists. According to PepsiCo’s marketing chief Seth Kaufman, “There is demand for water that says something about the consumer as they’re walking around with it.” I guess Seth grew up drinking lots of soda, the poor guy.
FACE IT: Life is hard. And these days that’s true even for the kids, who grow up much faster than they did back in my youth. (I can still hear Lynn Rosenblatt asking in 8th grade health class if it were true that you got pregnant when a boy and a girl both took a bite from the opposite ends of the same banana at the same time.) So it seems to me that every bit of respite from the anxieties of modern life is to be treasured, making the announcement by Ringling Bros. to shut down their circus in May, after 146 years of delighting families, a total and complete bummer.
Even though I haven’t attended the circus in years, during my childhood it was a much-anticipated annual event not to be missed. I have so many circus memories from so many years, starting at about age four. One special memory was my very first fainting experience, which happened inside the side show (a.k.a. “freak show”) full of oddities where patrons wandered before entering the Big Top for the “Greatest Show on Earth.” I passed out right in front of the Elephant Lady, finding the grey, wrinkled skin on her enormous body a tad too freaky, and hoping I hadn’t hurt her feelings on my way down.
And speaking of elephants, they pretty much brought about the demise of the circus after animal rights activists sued over alleged mistreatment by their handlers. Hey, I am a huge proponent of not hurting or abusing or exploiting animals, but still, was it really so terrible to have them walk in a parade with pretty girls sitting on top of them, wearing fancy hats (the girls and the elephants), or balance themselves on those little striped stands and twirl around gracefully, or maybe link trunks in a line Rockette-style and curtsy towards their adoring fans? It’s not like they were getting whipped or beaten or starved, unless of course that’s what they did to make them do all those things.
Anyway, all the elephants left in May of last year and retired to Florida. (No kidding.) Kenneth Feld, the owner of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, explained in a recent interview that their longest act is currently twelve minutes, and you can’t get kids to sit through a 12-minute act, even if it is performing tigers. Funny, isn’t it, how they can sit for hours watching virtual creatures on those dumb video games.
So now the real circus is gone, and the only one left is in Washington, D.C., and that’s no fun at all. God help the children.
Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers
I HATE ADVERTISING. Despise it, abhor it, detest it and all the rest of the words that mean the same thing. This may stem from my earliest days as a graphic designer when I actually worked in one of those windowless cubbies in an advertising agency in Washington, DC, selling can’t-remember-what to God-knows-who. Regardless of the origin of my dislike, I now mute all ads on TV and pay not the slightest attention to them in print. Naturally they don’t work on me. Except for one.
I should be embarrassed to admit it but I switched from Tropicana, after switching from Florida’s Best, to Simply Orange juice, all because of Donald Sutherland’s voice. As a longtime fan of the actor, I saw every film he ever made until those Hunger Games in 2014 and 2015—after all, I have my standards: I want him young and handsome and sweet, not a malevolent old tyrant orchestrating death. Without Young Donald I was bereft! His son Kiefer only poured salt in the wound, looking like his father but not nearly as special, and so I never watched his hit TV show about 24 hours or something like that.
Basically my life was totally and sadly Sutherland-less, until one day I suddenly realized, hearing a commercial I hadn’t muted in time, that Donald was doing the talking! And he sounded so honest, so pure, so un-commercial-sellouty, that I ran right out and bought some of that juice and found out Donald was right: It really is simply orange juice, no additives or preservatives and not from concentrate, and it tastes like you are on a beach in Florida! Now I am a permanent customer, and I turn up the volume on those OJ ads.
Young Donald was the greatest! Here are some of his most memorable movies; if you haven’t seen them, get started:
Klute Don’t Look Now M*A*S*H Invasion of the Body Snatchers Ordinary People Six Degrees of Separation Max Dugan Returns The Day of the Locust The Dirty Dozen
WE JEWS ARE a lonely lot on Christmas: While our Christian friends are snuggled in front of a cozy fire, opening gifts and scarfing down plum pudding (I once dated an Episcopalian, so I know), we sit huddled together on wooden benches, eating gefilte fish and reading aloud from the Torah.
Okay, not really, but that’s how it feels to me. Despite the growing commercialization of Hanukkah, Christmas will always be Numero Uno. And despite my own participation in the festivities, baking sugar cookies and mailing cards to distant friends, December 25 finds me bereft from dawn till dusk. There’s little to do but wait it out. Everything is closed except for the 7-11, and believe me, after the coffee and donuts and an hour or two scanning magazines, that’s pretty much played. As for TV, how many times can you watch Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed discover that “It’s a Wonderful Life” after all?
Growing up in the New York City suburbs in the late fifties, in the shadow of St. Agnes Cathedral, ours was one of only two Jewish families living on a street full of hardened Catholics. Holidays of any sort ignited full-blown block parties involving anyone who owned a Tupperware container. Naturally in such an environment, Christmas was a big deal, spawning blinking colored lights, glowing rooftop reindeer and giant candy canes worthy of a Fellini dream sequence. Amid all the holiday glitz, two houses remained dark: ours and the Shreibmans’ across the street.
It may sound ordinary, but what set Willow Street apart was that Santa Claus, in the flesh, visited every house on Christmas Eve. (Apparently our street was the rest stop on his round-the-world tour.) He did the whole milk-and-cookies bit, leaving behind a gift for every child. He even came to our house, he being an all-inclusive, non-denominational Santa.
One snowy Christmas when I was six, as I was hurrying home after a spirited snowball fight, I noticed something odd at Joanne Rooney’s house. There was a light on in the garage, and there was a man dressed only in his long underwear! Boy, he must be cold, I thought. Then I noticed, hey, he looks like Mr. Rooney, but when did he get so fat? He was stuffing a pillow into his suit, and wait a minute, that suit looks familiar. The sack of toys, the white beard, the black boots–Jew or no Jew, I knew Santa when I saw him. Joanne Rooney’s father was Santa Claus!
Still reeling from the recent shock of learning that my mother was the “Tooth Fairy,” I plopped down into a snowdrift to catch my breath, all the while watching Mr. Rooney complete his transformation into Old Saint Nick.
Bursting with the news, I raced home and confronted my parents, demanding some fast answers about a certain Irishman and a red velvet suit. After some preliminary stalling, they caved, explaining that Mr. Rooney was “helping” Santa. “Promise you won’t tell any of the other kids,” my mother begged, a haunted look of terror in her eyes. “Do you promise?”
“Yeah, sure, I promise,” I said, but that promise didn’t apply to my very best friend who lived right next door! Suzanne was French, and certainly could be trusted: Since returning from a Thanksgiving visit to her grandparents in France, she had all but forgotten English anyway. Unfortunately her bilingual older sister overheard me, and before you could say “Anderson Cooper” the story hit the street.
Of course there were the usual skeptics who assumed I was just bitter about the Holocaust, but most of the kids conducted their own research, pulling at Santa’s beard and asking if Joanne could come out and play. The jig was definitely up.
Things were tense on Willow Street for many months. The Shreibmans fled to friendlier waters in Boca Raton, and I took to playing with the kids from my Hebrew school class. Eventually I was forgiven, mostly because there were no applicants for my position as “permanent ender” in jump rope, and Santa Rooney kept his appointed rounds the next year. But he never stopped at our house again, leaving a void I experience anew every Christmas Eve. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t say a word.
I ALWAYS wanted to be one of those special people who read Virginia Woolf, although I’m a little frightened of her because she was quite insane and ended up drowning herself in a river, fully clothed and with a big rock in her coat pocket to weigh her down, a method of suicide that seems really unpleasant and pretty boring; at least in the ocean there are waves and currents to keep you interested until the end. But that’s another subject altogether. Anyway, my friend Greg in Pittsburghis one of those special people, for other reasons as well, and his favorite book is Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. Solely on Greg’s recommendation I have tried and tried to read it but have never gotten anywhere near the lighthouse, in fact I’ve barely arrived at page three.
I have danced around Virginia Woolf for most of my life. Naturally I saw the 1966 film adaptation starring Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, and several stage productions of the play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee. AndI’ve done quite well reading books about books by Virginia Woolf. Right now I immersed again in an old favorite, The Hours by Michael Cunningham. It won the Pulitzer Prize back in 1998 and became an Oscar-winning movie in 2002. It’s all about Mrs. Dalloway, a novel by Virginia Woolf, and it makes me want to try to read the real thing. (Again.)
So this morning I went to my bookshelves and found a copy of Mrs. Dalloway, my third I think because I loaned the others over the years and never asked for them back. I am determined to read it all the way through this time, and then read To The Lighthouse, and then read all her other books; I already own two more I have tried and failed at, and I read in college that I hardly remember. This is my early New Year’s resolution, and it’s a relief to have that decided, at least: In 2017 I will be one of those special people who reads Virginia Woolf. Plus I might lose a few pounds and meditate daily and eliminate all red meat and a couple of other things. But Virginia Woolf is for sure.
— Andrea Rouda Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid. MyLittleBird will be celebrating the holidays this weekend. See you right back here on Tuesday, Dec. 27.
IF YOU ASK me you can take your fancy trips around the world and your cruises to foreign lands and your winter holidays to warmer climes and flush them all down the toilet. None of them work because wherever you go, there you are: You aren’t any thinner or healthier or younger, you haven’t gotten better siblings or had your book published or sold any paintings. The dead people you once loved are still dead. All you’ve done is changed the scenery. Now if there were some magic land where when you arrive you are somebody else entirely, with a different set of memories and maybe even a new phone number, I’d be down for that. Otherwise, all the arranging and packing and schlepping and flying and car rentals and checking in and checking out and room service is just busy work.
I’m guessing the reason they say “travel is broadening” is because one tends to overeat on trips, seeing as how little else there is to do unless you zip line, which I don’t, preferring not to lose a leg or in fact any limb at all to gangrene, or hot air balloon, which I won’t, not wanting to burn to death after getting tangled up in electric wires. As for snorkeling or deep sea diving, I have not immersed myself in the ocean since I saw “Jaws” and no, I’m not kidding. So here I am at the beach with the luscious Atlantic just steps away and it does me little good, although it is fun to watch and hike alongside.
Anyway, there’s a decent-sized pool at this hotel and I can swim, so I guess I’ll do that today since tomorrow I will be stuck inside a little tube hurtling across the sky (not wholly unlike Sandra Bullock in “Gravity”) which could come crashing down and end it all — not to be a bummer but it could — and if it doesn’t, well then I’ll land in Boston where it’s cold and still have a two-hour drive back to Maine where it snowed yesterday.
But at least my cat will be there (if he survived five days without me) and I can paint, which somehow seems a better use of time than driving through downtown Palm Beach and gawking at the outrageous displays of wealth that make you, or at least me, flash on those malnourished children running barefoot around Haiti and India with distended tummies and skinny legs while these rich women with their toned arms and strappy, high-heeled wedge sandals they can hardly walk in, forget running, rid themselves of their excess cash up and down Worth Avenue (see photo), their Mercedes and Jaguars and Rolls Royces lining the street as they add yet another thousand-dollar pair of Jimmy Choo shoes to their already hideously bloated collection, making you wonder where’s Bernie Sanders when you need him.
PITY THOSE POOR executives over at Phillip Morris USA. They have a “millennial problem,” because 85% of young adults these days don’t smoke. What to do, what to do? First, they’ve got to ignore the following facts from the American Lung Association:
The main cause of small cell and non-small cell lung cancer is cigarette smoking, which accounts for 80 to 90% of lung cancer deaths in women and men, respectively.
From 2005 to 2010, an average of 130,659 Americans died of smoking-attributable lung cancer each year. An estimated 158,080 more will die from it by the end of 2016.
Nonsmokers have a 20 to 30% greater chance of developing lung cancer when exposed to secondhand smoke. Such exposure causes approximately 7,330 deaths annually.
Done! In fact, a recent article in TheWall Street Journal celebrates the fact that Marlboro cigarettes are on the rise again, after a long decline. Because most of the smoking baby boomers are either already dead or on the way, dragging those oxygen tanks around airports and train stations as punishment for years of self-abuse, the target audience is millennials and they have finally been reached! The problem was that young people couldn’t relate to that old cowboy image of the Marlboro Reds, so some brilliant marketing execs came up with a “bold, modern take” on the packaging (of the poison). They switched the color of the box to black and voila! — the new kids ate it up. Marlboro Blacks are now that generation’s top choice in coffin nails, responding to the trendy images of tattoos, black jeans and motorcycles in all advertising and direct mail pieces.
Whew, that’s a relief, because God forbid a million times the makers of Marlboros should go out of business. Quite the contrary, the new branding has helped Marlboro reach an all-time high of the market share. Marketing executives eager to make money off of the addiction abound: For example, in the city of Atlanta they are pushing the product by dispensing coupons for $1 packs at popular underground dance clubs and neighborhood taverns frequented by their target audience. “It’s making Marlboro relevant again,” said one elated business analyst who apparently lacks a soul.
The ubiquitous tobacco company suffered a setback years ago when several of their top spokesmen, handsome models like Wayne McLaren who appeared as the hunky, sexy, tough “Marlboro Man” living out on the range, wild and free, began suffering from lung disease and making commercials about the dangers of smoking. According to Wikipedia, “In one such TV spot, images of the handsome young Wayne McLaren in a Stetson hat are juxtaposed with shots of his withered form in a hospital bed just prior to his death.” And as recently as 2014, Eric Lawson, another television actor who appeared in Marlboro advertisements between 1978 to 1981, died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) at the age of 72. Like McLaren, Lawson had started smoking early and then later publicized the dangers of smoking in an anti-smoking commercial, which apparently impacted lots of potential smokers but no cigarette producers or tobacco farmers.
So now all those fresh-faced millennials who think the new Marlboro Black box is “cool” are slowly destroying their still-pink and healthy young lungs, unaware or simply uncaring that another, entirely different kind of black box awaits them years from now.
GROWING UP, my parents always referred to me as “The Princess and the Pea.” This was due to my extreme sensitivity which they found exasperating. The nickname came from a story by Hans Christian Andersen in which a princess was unable to fall asleep on a pile of 20 mattresses with just a tiny pea underneath the bottom one. While I was never that bad I was close enough, and my ultra-sensitivity was apparently enough to drive my mother crazy; she developed early-onset Alzheimer’s at age 57 and died at 62.
As an adult I am currently engaged in driving my husband crazy, although let’s face it, he was halfway there when we met. Still, I walk around the house turning off all the lights because of the glare, complain that cashmere blankets are scratchy, insist that the furnace is making an odd hum that’s not right, dump out a new bottle of wine that tastes “off” or declare that something in the refrigerator smells “funny,” none of which he can detect.
I always thought I was nuts because seeing a dog locked inside a parked car brings tears to my eyes, making a simple trip to the supermarket fraught with danger. Ditto reading the newspaper. But recently I have come to find out I am not crazy, I am simply hyper-empathic, or an “empath.” Sort of a human sponge, I feel too much and there’s nothing I can do about it. Following are the most common traits of an empath; who knows, you might be one too.
Sole survivor Feels less stressed when alone.
Leave me alone In close relationships, requires distance and periods of solitude.
Ouch! Highly sensitive to sounds, smells, bright lights and the feel of certain fabrics.
I’m so tired Regularly suffers with fatigue and feels drained following social interactions.
Whatever you want Suffers in relationships or friendships, feeling that the needs of others trump their own. Agrees to things they don’t want to do to please others.
What was your name again? Connects with total strangers on a deep level very quickly.
Let me help Drawn to people who are suffering, wanting to heal them or make their world better. Thus they rush to the aid of those who are ill or have been victimized in some way.
Liar, liar, pants on fire Instinctively knows when someone is not being truthful.
What’s really going on? Unable to take things at face value, they are constantly searching for or philosophizing about answers that might explain the situation.
That poor doggie! Connects strongly to the animal kingdom and identifies with their emotional and physical pains.
Let me out Are most at peace when spending time in nature.
Did you say something? Easily distractible when doing things they don’t enjoy, they will quickly zone out in situations where their mind is not stimulated.
I’m got going there Crowded places like sports arenas, large concert venues and shopping malls cause anxiety and require downtime following excursions to such venues.
Not a party animal Struggle to relax and have fun in groups unless they are extremely comfortable with those surrounding them.
Artsy-fartsy Creative and highly imaginative. Writing, art, music, dance, building and design are pastimes they are passionate about and happiest doing.
Neat freak Prefers living space to be clutter free and minimalistic, believing that chaotic surroundings make for chaotic minds.
Tell me everything Often used as a sounding board or dumping ground by people seeking to unload their problems.
PORTLAND, MAINE, surely the most interesting and culturally advanced city in what is rightly called “America’s Vacationland,” has a big drug problem. It’s heroin addiction, and it’s growing. This fact directly contradicts the state motto, “The Way Life Should Be.” Young people stand on just about every street corner of the city’s major thoroughfares wearing glazed expressions and holding cardboard signs declaring their particular plight: Homeless, hungry, this is the best I can do, no job, kids need food, Iraqi war vet, etc. How did things get this bad here?
It’s a long story and you don’t need me to tell it, just look it up online. But one thing I can add is a personal anecdote, which exemplifies how a bad situation keeps getting worse. My hip surgery last August caused me to be hospitalized for 36 hours, after which I was released in my own care. The doctors sent me home with narcotic painkillers, despite the fact that I swore up and down I would never take one: I hate that stuff. But they insisted, warning that I could find myself in a lot of pain on a Saturday night and be helpless to do anything about it. Duly scared I said okay, fine, I’ll take a couple of them just in case. They sent me home with a little jar of 40 Oxycontin pills. Forty! Not two or three or four or five, but 40!
I stored them with the ten Oxycontins I got from my dentist two years ago after a tooth extraction when I told him I didn’t want any. That makes 50. And my husband has quite a few he never wanted leftover from his last surgery, bringing the total to about 70 pills. I have since learned that the street value of all those pills is roughly $20 per pill, or $1,400. (I could turn them in to the police department, but since I have no children living at home I’m saving them in case the armies of ISIS make their way to Freeport, at which point I will swallow them all.)
As for the city’s heroin problem, which allegedly starts with an Oxycontin addiction, I wonder what gives. What’s with all the prescriptions? Are the physicians getting a kickback from the drug companies? Are the pharmacies also in on it?
MARLA MAPLES, the second of Donald Trump’s ex-wives and mother of their daughter Tiffany (who looks exactly like a Barbie Doll but is actually human), has launched what is described as “a new lifestyle website.” This is of course very exciting news for all of us average people who need instructions on how to live, and in fact may even lack a lifestyle altogether. I took a quick peek at it and saw that in the “About” section, Marla describes herself as a “vegan” and a “carnivore (lol).” Right away I knew she had tons of useful tips, like how the addition of “lol” right after something makes whatever you said right before it acceptable.
Mostly I am excited to finally learn the difference between a “life” and a “lifestyle.” I’m pretty sure I just have the former, but I would not mind having the latter as it seems to make people happy. I looked it up and found out that a lifestyle is “a particular way a person lives.” Developing one will be a stretch for me as up until now I have lived willy-nilly; I’m not a big planner. For example, one day I might sit around and do absolutely nothing, and the next I might be quite active and may even get something done.
Clearly my problem until now has been my lack of a lifestyle. But it’s never too late, and perhaps if I spend some time reading Marla’s website I’ll figure out how to get one (lol).
IT’S BEEN THREE years since I took control of anything, least of all my life, instead allowing myself to be buffeted about by the winds of change. But enough is enough as the saying goes, and so half an hour ago I embarked once again on The Whole 30, a healthy eating program that promises to slim me down, rev me up and uncover my best self. If this all happens in a month just by giving up sugar, dairy, grains, wheat, oats, cereal, alcohol and legumes, and not weighing myself daily, I say it’s a small price to pay.
This decision comes after four days of eating mindlessly while out of town visiting dear friends who fed us very well, and a few restaurant meals high on the salt/butter content. And flying First Class round-trip didn’t help, what with the flight attendant coming by every fifteen minutes with a variety of ultra-fattening goodies I grabbed by the handful, hoping their consumption would make me forget I was locked inside a tube hurtling across the sky. (Yes, I have heard that flying is the safest form of travel, but still I find it disconcerting when the seat in front of me is emblazoned with the words, YOUR SEAT CUSHION CAN BE USED AS A FLOTATION DEVICE. You almost never see that in a car or a bus or train.) So sure, I’ll have another bag of that salty-sweet spicy popcorn, and a couple of those chocolate-chip cookies and some nuts too, thanks.
While there are plenty of nay-sayers out there who debunk this program as, well, bunk, I have five pairs of jeans, two of them never worn, waiting patiently in my closet cheering me on. I’m doing it for them. And of course to meet my best self; that sounds good too.
ON SOME DAYS I wish I were a cow. Not a big fat lady but a real cow. There is a tribe of Belted Galloways living in our neighborhood just about one mile from my house, and I drive by them daily. Seeing them always brightens my mood, especially on gloomy afternoons when their broad white middles exude a festive DayGlo quality.
There are about 25 of them, give or take a few, and they are always hanging out together, eating or sleeping in the sun. When it rains they congregate under the nearby trees. Recently they welcomed about seven or eight babies, who are of course too cute for words. Tourists, and even the local residents, are forever pulling over to the side of the road to take their picture.
Sadly we must assume they are not all that bright, which is why most of them end up as hamburgers. I try not to think of this, but according to Wikipedia, “Belted Galloways are primarily raised for their quality marbled beef, although they are sometimes milked and purchased to adorn pastures due to their striking appearance.”
I’m hoping my neighbors fall into the last category.
ANYONE WHO ATTENDED school in the United States knows the Ides of March (March 15) is an ominous date. It all started with the assassination of the Roman dictator Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., which happened so long ago I can’t even do the math. Not really buying the whole concept of “B.C.” and not even wholly embracing the existence of “C,” I did, however, study Shakespeare at college and read his play, Julius Caesar, detailing how Brutus led 60 co-conspirators in the bloody mass stabbing. (There was also a 1948 novel by Thornton Wilder called The Ides of March that got far less attention than his earlier masterpiece, Our Town, a play in three acts that should be read repeatedly by anyone battling depression or just plain seeking a reason to live.)
I ALWAYS wanted to be one of those special people who read Virginia Woolf, although I’m a little frightened of her because she was quite insane and ended up drowning herself in a river, fully clothed and with a big rock in her coat pocket to weigh her down, a method of suicide that seems really unpleasant and pretty boring; at least in the ocean there are waves and currents to keep you interested until the end. But that’s another subject altogether. Anyway, my friend Greg in Pittsburgh is one of those special people, for other reasons as well, and his favorite book is Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. Solely on Greg’s recommendation I have tried and tried to read it but have never gotten anywhere near the lighthouse, in fact I’ve barely arrived at page three.
MARLA MAPLES, the second of Donald Trump’s ex-wives and mother of their daughter Tiffany (who looks exactly like a Barbie Doll but is actually human), has launched what is described as “a new lifestyle 
