Why do “Ice” signs always depict icicles hanging from them? Like we don’t get it.
Why is baseball the only major sport in which the manager and coaches wear the uniform of the sport? Can you imagine a football coach standing on the sidelines in shoulder pads and a helmet? Or Pat Riley pacing the sidelines in basketball shorts? Conversely, how would Joe Torre look going out to the mound in a suit and tie? One of life’s interesting ironies. (A thank you to my friend Gene McKenna for inspiring this one.)
Why do people annoyingly set their fax machines, on a dedicated fax line, to answer after several rings? Why not on the first ring? Does the fax machine need time to get to the phone?
Why, in over half a century, has there been no signifcant improvement in the vacuum cleaner? Is it not still the noisiest, most clumsy appliance you’ve ever used? Why hasn’t anything been done to deal with the inveitable tangle and twists of hoses and electrical wires? Despite phenomenal gains in every other technology, the vacuum cleaner is still an exasperating mess of pipes separating, clunky attachments to constantly put on and take off, an inability to get at the nooks and corners that most need it, and numerous other irritating shortcomings. Somebody, work on this. Please?
(I’ll be adding other questions like these from time to time. Feel free to offer your own.)
People are always surprised when I tell them I grew up in Manhattan; like there’s only a rare few of us who have ever done that. I’m amused by this, but I admit I enjoy the notoriety it confers on me, however dubious.
The follow-up question is usually “What was it like?” Quite extraordinary, to tell the truth, if you compare it to the hovering protectiveness of bringing up children today. Kids back in the 50’s and 60’s traveled all over the city, without their parents, by foot, bus, subway, even an occasional taxi.
When I was a first grader we lived on East 50th St. between 1st and 2nd Aves. I would walk with my siblings up to St. John the Evangelist grammar school on East 56th St. Weather — be it bitter cold, driving rain, wind, snow — was never a deterrent, unless a rare blizzard paralyzed the city.
When I was eight, we moved up to 79th and York Ave. (Yorkville), where we deposited ourselves on the 79th St. cross-town and Madison Ave. buses to get to our schools on 84th St. (St. Ignatius and St. Lawrence Academy). Kids traveling alone were typical. The only perceived danger was running into other more pugnacious kids. We had bus passes and cheap subway tokens that allowed us to go anywhere, and we did.
Remember, this was the era when mothers would leave babies in carriages outside stores while going in and shopping. If you did that today you’d be arrested for endangering the welfare of a child. But back then kids were never taken. This was the height of the baby boom. Who wanted more kids?
There was no such thing as play dates. If you wanted to play you just went out into the street, where you’d always find a bunch of other kids. Sidewalks and streets weren’t ideal playgrounds, but the dozens of games that were either handed down to us or we made up were expertly adapted to the physical layout. I remember once bolting between two parked cars after a ball and a cabbie screeching to a stop within inches of me. It frightened the hell out of me. The cabbie jumping out and screaming was just as terrifying. Only years later did I realize what I put him through.
We moved over to the West Side when I was ten, to a comparatively inexpensive six-room apartment on 96th St. between Columbus Ave. and Central Park West. It was a nice block, but an enclave in a mixed Irish/Hispanic neighborhood with street gangs, run-down tenements and sporadic crime. Since our schools and friends were still over on the East Side, we bussed through the park every day, the one-minute ride through the transverse like a brief spin in the country.
We often took the subway downtown to 34th St. and Herald Square to visit my mother who was a buyer at Macy’s. We loved that store. You could while away an entire day in the toys and games departments, which took up almost a complete floor. There was a magician who never failed to mesmerize us the many times we saw him, demonstrating and selling magic tricks, most of which we ended up buying over the years.
One time I took the train down to visit my great aunt who still lived in the crumbling brownstone on 50th St. Thinking I had another stop to go on the “E” train, I unwittingly ended up in Queens, a confused and scared ten-year-old wandering unknown streets, working my way toward the Chrysler Building, which I could see, but not realizing there was a body of water between us. A man came to my rescue and put me back on the train to Manhattan, convincing the token attendant I was lost and to let me back in.
When I was in high school, I took the #1 Broadway local from 96 St. up to 242 St. in the Riverdale section of the Bronx to Manhattan Prep, on the campus of Manhattan College. It was another welcome rustic break from city life. The train was a virtual school bus on rails, hauling kids up to the Prep, George Washington H.S., Fieldston, Riverdale and Horace Mann. The latter three were academically superior private schools and I wonder how many of today’s moguls, celebrities, poohbahs, and politicians shared that train ride with me in those crammed subway cars. (One time I sat across from Lew Alcindor, now known as Kareem Abdul Jabbar, whose knees protruded so far into the aisle they almost touched mine.)
It wasn’t until the final days of my senior year, when I procured my driver’s license at age 17, that I was able to drive our new family car, a Corvair, to school. Cruising up the Henry Hudson Parkway along the river by myself, listening to “Help Me Rhonda” on the radio, dragging on a cigarette, gave me an inexpressible sense of freedom and possibility I can still feel today. (I have long since given up the cigarettes.)
It’s a different world now. I shudder to think of my kids trying to make their way around Manhattan at the age I did, unprotected, by themselves. But I’m glad I had the opportunity to freely explore without fear a fascinating city in a more innocent time.
Serendipity, coincidence, who knows? But right on the heels of my recent ”white” paper against refined sugar (see below), comes some solid, indeed damning evidence that maybe I wasn’t just overreacting in my indictment of the sweet stuff.
While at the CamExpo health show in New York on Friday, I ran into Connie Bennett, a fellow ASJA member (American Society of Journalists & Authors), who was promoting her new book Sugar Shock! How Sweets And Simple Carbs Can Derail Your Life — And How You Can Get Back On Track. Not since Sugar Blues, written decades ago, has a book so forcefully presented the argument that our addiction to sugar may be responsible for many of the ills we experience in our lives today. The book, with a forward by Nicholas Perricone, M.D., implicates refined sugar and over-processed “quickie carbs” like white rice and white flour, used in breads, pasta and desserts, as the culprits, which are stripped of nutrients and fiber, causing an immediate surge in blood sugar followed by an energy-depleting crash. Long-term effects are even more disturbing.
Connie, whose medical consultant on the book is Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D., quotes numerous studies showing how a sweet tooth can trash your health, contributing to, among other things, obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, mood swings, depression, memory impairment, poor sexual performance, infertility, pimples, wrinkles…the list goes on.
But the book is not all doom and gloom. There’s an entire section on “Pulling the Plug on Sugar Shock! for a Happier, Healthier, Life” including Connie’s top 21 sugar-free success secrets and strategies.
And a couple of things I failed to mention in my last post. For many years I suffered from GERD, Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease, better know as heartburn. I used to pop Tums and Pepcid like a druggie pops bennies. Since giving up refined sugars, I rarely get heartburn, only after a very spicy meal, and then only mildly. The Tums sit dormant on my bathroom shelf.
The other thing is, I can taste the natural (slow-digesting) sugars in vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, peas, spinach, and others much more keenly than I ever have. I actually look forward to eating them now, if you can believe that.
That’s it. Lecture over. I don’t want to sound like one of those health crackpots. But I think it well worth your while to read Connie’s book and at least decide for yourself. The title again (click it to find at amazon.com) is Sugar Shock!
In Today’s Stress Tip, I talk about waking up with fear, especially when there’s no real basis for it, an angst you experience even when things are going well.
Let me tell you a personal story. I used to wake up like this fairly often. Sometimes I could attribute it to a bad dream, but mostly there was no explaining it. I’d open my eyes with a presentiment that something bad would happen. Activity would soon shake it off, and reality would take hold, but it was unsettling.
The feeling is what Holly Golightly, played by Audrey Hepburn, describes in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s: “Listen…you know those days when you get the mean reds? The blues are because you’re getting fat or because it’s been raining too long. You’re just sad, that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid and you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?”
Yes, I do! The mean reds. The expression has stuck with me since I first heard it years ago, because I knew exactly what she was talking about.
Then a year and a half ago when I was getting my annual physical, my doctor, a rarity these days who actually spends time chatting with you in his office, asked me if I had any concerns, either physical or mental. I told him about my rude awakenings. Immediately, he asked: “Do you eat anything sweet before you go to bed?”
“Yes,” I blurted. “I have a bowl of ice cream every night around 10 pm.” He told me to try cutting out sweets before bedtime and see what would happen. I did better. I cut out virtually all refined sugar, honey, even fruit juices from my diet. At first it was difficult since I’ve always loved sweets and had to overcome some intense cravings. But after a couple of weeks those urges diminished. I had always suspected that sugar is addictive in some way, what we euphemistically call a sweet tooth, and after going through my “withdrawal,” I’m convinced.
In lieu of sugary treats, I eat all manner of fruits, whole-grain snacks and nuts. It’s amazing how naturally delicious an apple, banana, cantaloupe, or grape tomatos (which I eat like grapes) can taste when they don’t have to compete with cloyingly sweet concoctions for your attention.
Yes, on special occasions like holidays or parties I’ll indulge in a piece of cake, a slice of pie, perhaps a dollop of ice cream. (You don’t want to diss your host.) But on the whole, these permitted exceptions help me to enforce the rule.
And you know what? Not only don’t I wake up with the mean reds anymore, I have a higher, steadier level of energy day and night, fewer mood swings and low points, and can handle a stressful situation with a lot more equanimity and poise. I’ve noticed also, but don’t have an explanation for this, that my skin dries out less during the winter months and a persistent patch of eczema on my hand has cleared up. It feeds my suspicion that sugar causes dehydration, too; when I was a kid we drank voluminous quantities of soft drinks on hot summer days but they never really quenched our thirst, and I swear made us even thirstier.
Maybe all this is why advertisers spend billions of dollars each year to convince us we should consume their sugar-saturated products. Where’s the balance? Who’s advising us to limit our intake of refined sugars? The current diabetes epidemic alone should be enough to get health officials off the dime. But I don’t see it.
I don’t know what effect cutting out refined sugar will have on you. But the way I’m feeling now, I’m not going back to being a sweet tooth anytime soon.
I’d be interested to hear your comments on this. And please pass along this page’s link to anyone you feel it might help.
You may recall this now legendary question asked by Mick Jagger in the movie Gimme Shelter, a documentary of the Rolling Stones in concert at Altamont Speedway on December 6, 1969. The event turned violent when The Hell’s Angels decided they were in charge, and under their guidance and protection 850 people were injured and an 18-year-old boy beaten and stabbed to death in the front row, while the Stones played.
That question – ”Who’s fighting and what for?” – was brought to mind when George Bush, in his State of the Union address, said of Iraq: “Yet it would not be like us to leave our promises unkept, our friends abandoned, and our own security at risk.”
Friends? In Iraq? Who exactly are our friends in Iraq? Certainly not the terrorists or “thugs” we’ve let in and now made our prime reason for being there. How about the Shiites? Are they our friends? I don’t know. Even the Shiite-led government is becoming more hostile to our interventions, and defiant of our wishes. Not what you would consider friendly. Maybe to Iran they’re friends, but…
What about the Sunnis? Do they consider us their friends? Given that we disbanded their army, refused to involve them in the reconstruction, effectively shut them out of the governmental process, all stoking the anger that fueled their growing insurgency, I don’t think so.
In truth, according to a September study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, 71% of Iraquis say they would like the Iraqi government to ask for US-led forces to be withdrawn. Even though their country is being ripped apart by uncontrollable brutality. With friends like these…
The point is, The US really has no friends in Iraq, to abandon or otherwise. Which brings us to that larger question: Who’s fighting and what for? Iraq is reminiscent of those classic Western barroom brawl scenes, where, after the initial punch, everyone starts fighting everyone else indiscriminately, breaking chairs and bottles over one another’s heads. Only, in this case it’s not funny, an orgy of violence in which the US military is tragically caught in the middle, not quite sure how to break it up. If only they could.
More questions nag. Every day I hear or read about people being blown up in Iraq, including Americans, by car bombs, IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and suicide bombers. But the reporting rarely goes beyond that. Does anyone ever investigate these crimes? Are suspects brought in for questioning? Are the perpetrators ever brought to justice? Or is it all just written off as “war will be war”?
There’s a lot not to understand about Iraq. What disturbs most is that people can be made to live in harmony, albeit fearfully, in the grip of a dictatorship, but can’t exist without destroying themselves in a so-called democracy.
It doesn’t seem things are going to get much better soon, until we can answer that perplexing question Mick Jagger so desperately posed at Altamont, just a few months after Woodstock but a world removed from it: “Who’s fighting and what for?”
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