Food - literally - for thought

Here's something to chew on.

Researchers have recently found that people may be able to live longer by doing two things - significantly restricting the calories they eat or by being slightly overweight.

If it seems like these contradict one another, I guess that's because they do.

The Portland Oregonian newspaper reported recently that "researchers there have confirmed a popular 2005 study that found that slightly overweight people tend to live longer than normal-weight people, and far longer than the obese or overly skinny.

But before you grab the Haagen-Dazs, be warned: No one knows why this happens, and it doesn't necessarily mean bigger is better."


At the same time, the New York Times reported that "a long-awaited study of aging in rhesus monkeys suggests, with some reservations, that people could in principle fend off the usual diseases of old age and considerably extend their life span by following a special diet.

Known as caloric restriction, the diet has all the normal healthy ingredients but contains 30 percent fewer calories than usual. Mice kept on such a diet from birth have long been known to live up to 40 percent longer than comparison mice fed normally."

Of course, the latter story is pretty speculative. In other words, I wouldn't start starving yourself just yet. Besides, scientists are attempting to see if the "healthy" ingredient in red wine, reservatrol, may be able to help people eat normally AND live longer.

Personally, eating a little too much and living longer sounds good to me. I've heard that people on starvation-type diets tend to be depressed.

On Becoming "Comfortably Numb"

NORTH CONWAY, NH - I'm blogging on location here, a first for me (I don't get out much), although I suppose I've had the opportunity. Toting the laptop around while staying overnight hasn't been necessary, and even if it were, I wouldn't have the time, anyway.

This time, however, I knew we'd have wireless access, and so the laptop came along.

Anyway, traveling is not the theme of this post, although traveling has helped me to characterize my thoughts. I think travel can do that. If you stay in one place, it limits your perspective about a lot of things.

Today, being here, in North Conway, NH, I was able to articulate something about being a parent that I hadn't previously.

So we're at a park. Actually, let me backtrack. We're here to go to Storyland, a kiddie amusement park. We arrived in North Conway today, after a five-plus hour ride. We found a hotel and after checking in, went right out to the main street where there are assorted tourist trap shops selling tshirts, hats, copper plated antiques, and a "five and dime" store.

We eventually got to the park in the center of town, where there are two playscapes and a water fountain feature that kids run through. By default, I'm with my daughter, who is almost 2, and my wife is with our son, who is 4. While they're sliding down slides and running around the place at a speed that's excessively dangerous to themselves and others, I notice a guy holding a stuffed animal. He was holding it for his daughter, presumably, and he looked kind of funny, being an adult and holding this stuffed animal in public.

Then I thought how truly ridiculous this was. What's happened to this guy? At one time, he may have been independent and had something going for him. Now, he's been reduced to a stuffed animal carrier.

Just when I'm thinking I'm on to something here, about to articulate a theory about dads who become losers, my mind shifts back to 15 minutes earlier, when I was holding my daughter's stuffed dog in a store. For some reason, when I saw another guy doing that, I got all judgmental. But along the same street, I did the same thing.

Move forward a half hour and my daughter needs a diaper change. Without thinking very much about it, I tell her to lay on the grass where I proceed to change her diaper. I had not decided whether I'd do this. It was out of habit.

What has happened to me?

To borrow the title from a Pink Floyd song, I've become comfortably numb.

Before kids, I would have resisted the idea of carrying their stuffed animals, changing them in public, etc. But now these things happen automatically. I'm their parent. There isn't an option. I may look really stupid, sometimes, and a lot of other parents do, too. But this is how parents look. And when you begin to adopt this mentality, you grow, in effect, comfortably numb.

The change from single person to married person is significant. But the change to parenthood is even greater. Sleeping uninterruptedly, going out to a leisurely dinner, and relaxing are part of history.

You can resist this and fight it, or pretend it's not happening. But I guess another option is to be comfortably numb - being aware of it, but not overthinking it. Because if you do, things could turn ugly. I know. From time to time, this has happened. This is why it becomes necessary to put the kids in front of the TV, at least for a little while, to give yourself a break. It is unrealistic to not use the TV for this purpose when kids are between 2 and 4.

Being comfortably numb toward the challenges and responsibilities of parenthood is not a bad thing. It's an acknowledgment of a parent's limitations. Adults and toddlers and adults and 4 year olds don't think or act the same way. They don't speak the same language, so to speak. Nor should they.

This is why it's best, when a parent feels as if they are more or less losing it, to adopt a more loose mentality, and become comfortably numb.

10 Standards to Assess Your Fitness Level

Yeah, these seem to be a little intense. But maybe it's because I'd fail most of them.

Life lessons from obituary writer

A newspaper's obituary writer is one of the newsroom's least honorable positions - although the job can be incredibly interesting, particularly if you like to learn about people's life stories. There are all sorts of nuggets to learn - the clubs and organizations they were in, the little things they did with their families, their jobs.

The position is rather morbid, though, and the day to day duties get mundane. Unless someone really important dies, it's another day sorting through the most prominent of ordinary people and bringing them "to life" - well, sort of.

The Boston Globe's obit writer wrote these 6 life lessons from his time on the job. Some simple ideas, but worth reading.

Palin won't go away

Barack Obama doesn't have all the answers; I don't think he proclaims to. He, also, is probably trying to tackle too much at once. These are valid criticisms of the president. But there appears to be a genuine, thoughtful effort toward action - about the economy, about war, about recreating a better America.

And then along comes Sarah Palin. Again. She resigns as Alaska's governor to essentially focus on a national run for president in 2012. (Which, I predict, will be ill-fated, unless a nonliving person runs against her in a primary and another nonliving person runs against her in a general election.)

Yesterday's column in the New York Times by Frank Rich articulates why Palin continues to generate interest. (Alarmingly, 71 percent of surveyed Republicans said they would vote for her.)

Says Rich: "...[Palin] stands for a genuine movement: a dwindling white nonurban America that is aflame with grievances and awash in self-pity as the country hurtles into the 21st century and leaves it behind."

Ouch.

He continues to rail into Palin when he reminds us when Palin said that Alaska is a "microcosm of America" and that she stands for a "real America" even though Alaska's NOT like the rest of America. ("Her state’s tiny black and Hispanic populations are unrepresentative of her nation," Rich points out with much obviousness.)


For the rest of Rich's column, the most emailed article on the New York Times website, click here.

Casey Kasem signs off

I didn't listen to it, and maybe this is the reason why after almost 40 years, Casey Kasem finished his run broadcasting "American/Casey's Top 20" radio show yesterday. I don't mean to imply that I, personally, had anything to do with Casey ending his 39-year run. But perhaps, ratings-wise, people just aren't listening or care very much about what the top 20 "songs in the land" are.


It could also be that Casey is 77 years old, and he just can't generate the enthusiasm for the show anymore.

Kasem said he wants to move on to other projects, but after nearly 40 years of doing anything, even something as seemingly easy as being a DJ for Top 20 show, it can get kind of tiresome.

Whatever the reason, the fact that Kasem has ended his weekend morning radio show is significant in American culture. Despite the numbers of radio listeners who may have tuned in for each show, you have to think that Kasem (who was also the voice of Shaggy on Scobby Doo - Zoinks, Scoob!) had a huge influence on pop music during his lifetime. He was passionate about it, or at least his voice seemed to indicate that, and he was truly an entertainer and understood the concept of timing when speaking publicly. (Ever listened to a "Long Distance Dedication?" Dear Casey, my girlfriend of two months just left me... so can you please play...)

I first remember Casey Kasem doing his weekly TV show, America's Top Ten and waiting to see if my favorite band at the time, Hall and Oates (this was like 1983) would have one of the top ten hits. Back then, musicians' videos were featured prominently - people actually talked about them. Hall and Oates' "Private Eyes", my favorite song at the time, was nothing more than the band playing the song/lip-syncing in a black-walled room.

Casey's voice became synonymous with Sunday mornings, and though I don't really listen to Sunday morning radio (when I do, I tune into "Car Talk" on NPR), I will miss hearing Casey introduce the Number One Song in the Land on those few occasions that I do happen to catch the weekly countdown.

Remnants of tornado hit (our) home

Seventeen trees. The storm that delivered a tornado to Wethersfield crossed the Connecticut River, skipped over Route 2, and ended up tearing up our yard, knocking down 17 trees - in just our front yard. There are a bunch more - huge trees, uprooted, some of them - in the side yard and way out back in the woods.

This happened on Friday, another in a long stretch of dreary, rainy summer days. But a warm front met a cold front, resulting in the perfect cocktail for a severe storm.

We, of course, watched this develop on TV, and I, for one, thought little of it. I mean, how many times do weather forecasters hype weather events in Connecticut? When we were watching on Friday, even, one of the channels had a reporter in a car somewhere in West Hartford and he reported that the "storm drains were overflowing."

We laughed.

But the storm cell on TV was eeriely red, angrily red, and it was headed toward East Glastonbury. We are right over the line. Still, I thought it would be heavy thunder, maybe some lightning, and more rain, which we had become used to.

Then the hail started to come down in torrents. The ice pellets bounced off our skylight and deck. The storm was serious. We quickly lost power. The skies darkened.

My wife asked, "Should we go downstairs?"

And I'm thinking no, why would we need to do that. I usually like to watch these storms from the doorway, or outside under the roof of our entryway. I would stay outside until the last minute if I didn't have a family...

But something about this one made me think otherwise. The wind, specifically, was picking up in the backyard at a rate that I hadn't seen. Leaves started shedding frm the trees in the backyard. They swirled violently. So we grabbed the kids, took a candle and headed into the dark basement.

A minute or two later, when the winds seemed to die down, I returned upstairs to see a huge tree dropped over my wife's car, another 70-foot maple laying rather stoically on the front walkway, toppling the hemlocks along our driveway. It was still windy, at this point, so I went back downstairs and said, "There are some trees down out there. Big ones." I tried to be calm about it, but ended up being too simple and vague.

When my wife came up to see, she kind of freaked.

Within five minutes, we all came up from the basement and surveyed our devastated yard from inside. Our power line dropped to the ground, the utility pole on the street crashed near our driveway. We would soon learn that our street had been wracked by what was left of the tornado - maybe it was still a tornado, but possibly not. Wethersfield seemed to get it worse. (At least it got most of the media attention.) Still, the guys with Connecticut Light and Power estimated winds here to be between 80 and 90 miles per hour.

In the end, there was no serious property damage - just to our gutters and existing trees. But the number of trees that had fallen was enormous. The tree guy billed us for $5,000 worth of tree removal in the front yard alone (paid for, kindly, by our insurance company, thankfully). More trees fell in the back and side yards, but they did not damage property, which is a huge limitation when trees come down during a storm. The insurance companies usually only pay when the trees fall on something.

But we were OK, a bit jarred from it all, though.

But not jarred enough to miss Opening Night at Tanglewood to see Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion for the fourth straight year. The show on Saturday was great -Steve Martin, Martin Sheen, and Arlo Guthrie were all there. It just sucked coming home, facing reality - a yard full of damaged trees and property, not knowing exactly where to start cleaning up, or whether to start, feeling overwhelmed by the destruction.