It’s that kind of summer, maybe that kind of life we all live in the 21st Century. In any event, I didn’t have time to finish my last blog, CURIOSITY KILLS CATS, about the twists, turns, and quirks that animate my days. Don’t have time now to finish, though I’ll add to it. Anyway it’s the type of blog that has no end.

As a grower of vegetables, I consider rabbits my enemy, especially since one of them ate most of my string bean crop two years ago. Yesterday morning I looked out the window and saw a rabbit. I was ready to run outside to chase him away. Then he glanced around to make sure no one was watching, and he snuck into my garden. He nibbled, stopped, nibbled again, not on my arugula, not on my cherry tomatoes, he nibbled on something unwanted that had sprung up on its own. He was weeding my garden for me!

Later on I walked past the community gardens at the high school to see if the tomato plants there looked as mangy as mine (I do, however, have lots of tomatoes on them). Then something else caught my eye, a familiar plant that reminded me that many of the community gardeners bought the same soil I did, a combination of compost and manure from Certified. When I first saw one of those plants in my garden, I thought it was a cucumber plant, and I staked it. Eventually I realized that it wasn’t cucumber, and I pulled out several that had grown uninvited, but left the one I’d staked, curious to see what kind of flowers its yellow buds would produce. And here was someone who kept them all, a whole bed of yellow flowering “weeds.” Maybe I’ll send my rabbit over.
 

Thank goodness I’m not a cat. Curiosity is the spice of my days. My other favorite spice is humor.

We’ve had a lot of company this summer, and from my freezer’s appearance, no one would ever guess that it’s well organized! So a couple of times guests have rearranged the freezer to make their own additions fit.

Before the collards in my garden had grown, I often sautéed frozen spinach to wrap in a tortilla with feta and tempeh for lunch. I’d put the rest of the spinach back into the freezer, an elastic band around the bag. When we got back from Boston a few days ago, I searched for and finally found an already-open spinach bag in the freezer, poured canola oil into a pan, removed the elastic band, dumped the spinach in. . .oops! It wasn’t spinach. It was blueberries soon to be sautéed! I couldn’t stop laughing!

Decision time. I did leave them in the pan, searched and found actual spinach, mixed it into the blueberry blobs, added tempeh, soy sauce, vinegar, and almond butter, then taco and feta, hmmm, some combinations are hard to imagine ahead of time. I sat down to lunch, anticipating a taco that no one had ever before made, bit in, and couldn’t even taste the blueberries.

When I shopped at Sendik’s later on that day, a friend saw me and asked, “What are you doing without the Fitness Center?”

“Oh, you missed me, huh? Well, I’ve been away.” I kept on walking, then thought, we were gone only five days, no one’s going to notice I’m not at the Fitness Center, turned around and said, “You’re not teasing?”

“It’s closed,” he replied. It was flooded, and won’t reopen till September 1. So what will I do to keep my muscles toned? I can walk, bike, but the weight machines I can’t replace.

The next time I walked to Pick ‘n Save, I bought a little more than I’d usually carry, a gallon of vinegar for one side, a half gallon of milk and one of orange juice for the other, plus bananas, grapes, yogurt. After all, that was less than 35 pounds, which is what I usually lift on the machines. However, I sit on the machines, a bit different from walking a third of a mile carrying weights. I won’t try that again, though I did make it home. I just googled it: the milk plus juice was a bit under 17 pounds, with rest of groceries, about 25, I’d rather use the machines.

My blueberry story reminds me something I wrote in 1993. Here’s an excerpt:

LAST NIGHT, SURE OVERCOOKED BROCCOLI IS SOFT,
I DUMPED A POTLOAD INTO THE TOILET,
THEN DISCOVERED IT WOULDN'T GO
DOWN.

I COULDN'T STOP LAUGHING,
SEEING THAT BOWL FULL,
KNOWING I PUT IT IN,
SO I HAD TO TAKE IT OUT.
I WONDERED IF ANYONE ELSE IN THE
HISTORY OF THE WORLD
HAD STOOD AT A TOILET BOWL WITH TONGS
AND REMOVED PIECE AFTER PIECE OF BROCCOLI.

In the late 50's and early '60's in New York City, my husband Adolph's work was 2-dimensional. Well, not completely. He was applying oil paints to giant canvasses with a palette knife, thick dollops of bright color that captured the energy and excitement of big city life. Finally he gave up the canvas and the oils for wax, then bronze, and then settled on clay.
 

We brought the early paintings with us when we moved to Milwaukee, but we've never shown them here. Until now. They're featured in the Rosenblatt Gallery's revolving exhibit space, and once you see them you'll understand his body of work a little differently. You might sense the influence of colorist Josef Albers, with whom Adolph studied at Yale. You'll see that sculpting in monochrome couldn't satisfy Adolph for long: he loves color too much. And from these monumental yet intricate paintings, you'll realize that in his life as sculptor, he was destined to to do monumental yet intricate works, like the Oriental Pharmacy Lunch Counter and My Balcony. In fact you can wander back and forth between the room full of paintings and the room full of sculptures and contemplate the relationship, the continuity of color, of images, of interest in how we live our lives.

The details: Rosenblatt Gallery, 181 N Broadway
Reception: Friday, July 23, 6:30-10:00 PM

I thought you might like to have a direct link to the May, 2010, report issued by the President's Cancer Panel. It's on the National Institute of Health's web site, and experts expected it to make a big impact. But it hasn’t received the kind of publicity it deserved.
 

Here are excerpts from the letter to President Obama that accompanied the report:

"The Panel was particularly concerned to find that the true burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated. With nearly 80,000 chemicals on the market in the United States, many of which are used by millions of Americans in their daily lives and are un- or understudied and largely unregulated, exposure to potential environmental carcinogens is widespread."

"All levels of government, from federal to local, must work to protect every American from needless disease through rigorous regulation of environmental pollutants."

"The Panel urges you most strongly to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our Nation’s productivity, and devastate American lives."

Here are excerpts from the report:

"The prevailing regulatory approach in the United States is reactionary rather than precautionary. That is, instead of taking preventive action when uncertainty exists about the potential harm a chemical or other environmental contaminant may cause, a hazard must be incontrovertibly demonstrated before action to ameliorate it is initiated. Moreover, instead of requiring industry or other proponents of specific chemicals, devices, or activities to prove their safety, the public bears the burden of proving that a given environmental exposure is harmful. Only a few hundred of the more than 80,000 chemicals in use in the United States have been tested for safety."

From the section on agricultural chemicals:
"The entire U.S. population is exposed on a daily basis to numerous agricultural chemicals, some of which also are used in residential and commercial landscaping. Many of these chemicals have known or suspected carcinogenic or endocrine- disrupting properties. Pesticides (insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides) approved for use by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) contain nearly 900 active ingredients, many of which are toxic. Many of the solvents, fillers, and other chemicals listed as inert ingredients on pesticide labels also are toxic, but are not required to be tested for their potential to cause chronic diseases such as cancer. In addition to pesticides, agricultural fertilizers and veterinary pharmaceuticals are major contributors to water pollution, both directly and as a result of chemical processes that form toxic by-products when these substances enter the water supply."

Where DO we go from here?
For one thing, to the Cancer Panel’s report, written, by the way, by two George W. Bush appointees.
 

The next good resource could be the Environmental Working Group website which has the latest research on pesticides in produce, on safe cleaners, cosmetics, pots and pans, sunscreens, cell phones, and many other products in our everyday lives. The site also has tips in direct response to the Cancer Panel’s report.

Find other sites with helpful information, and THEN do what you can do to make others aware of all these issues. That’s where we should go, and that’s why I’ve written my last four blogs.

When I was in high school we learned that people form corporations in order to avoid personal responsibility. So if corporations are people, as the supreme court has discovered, then people must be corporations, and have no personal responsibility!

And here I've thought, all these years, that democracy is about responsibility, about citizens taking responsibility for the well-being of their country. And that judges, too, have some sort of responsibility for the fairness of their rulings. Perhaps I was wrong!!!

So let's amend the preamble for our BRAVE NEW WORLD. How does this sound: We the corporations of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense. . . .

Oh, yes, yes, provide for the common defense, take the money and run, at taxpayer expense, Halliburton's hitting on us, and why are we making such a fuss, Blackwater's the world's largest private army so what? Just change the name so they, the corps, can cover their buts, but, but, but...

Promote the general Welfare. . . Welfare???? oh no no no, don't give PEOPLE something for nothing!

And secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. . . .
and who better than corporations, to cover their own posterity, or posteriors, or, ah! that's it: promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Prosperity.

Oh, wait, I'm not finished: The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the Corporations of the several States. . .  How does that sound? It's so much simpler. Corporations make the voting machines anyway. . .

Well, we'll work this all out. In the meantime, or do I mean mean time, very mean times, as a reminder of these newly-discovered people, I'll repost COLLATERAL DAMAGE, the last blog I wrote:

After a dinner that included puns, poems, and good food, five of us settled into the car for the ride back to Shorewood. Gloria couldn’t find her seat belt, and our designated driver said, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll drive carefully.”
“Didn’t you drive carefully coming here, even though everyone was belted?”
“Yes, but I’ll drive extra slowly now.”
“Oh, if I’d known I could get you to drive slowly, I’d have made sure you knew that Adolph wasn’t actually wearing his belt.”
And so it went, light-hearted repartee ruffling the night, the mid-night, to be exact. Until someone mentioned that one of the other guests at dinner was a breast-cancer survivor.
“I have three young friends going through chemo for that at the moment,” I commented. I didn’t mention that two women on Julie’s block also have breast cancers, nor did I mention our friends with ovarian, prostate, blood, stomach, and intestinal cancer who live here now or grew up here. Instead I added, “There seems to be an epidemic.”
“My doctor thinks it’s all the plastics, in baby bottles, water bottles, storage containers. It’s leaching into our food. All those soft plastics, they’re made from petroleum, and it’s toxic,” said Gloria.
“Yes, and it’s also the lawn pesticides. That’s how I met Susan Mudd, Mayor Norquist’s wife. She used to travel around the state lecturing about the connection. She had maps showing the overlap between areas of high lawn pesticide use and areas with high breast cancer rates.”
“I’d have to see more proof,” said Gloria. No point prolonging this, I thought, laughter gone. It’s the plastics, lawns, pots, produce, water, everything unnatural in our lives. I too have asked doctors. One replied, “I’m afraid we’re poisoning ourselves.” Another said, “I have a lot of young patients with cancer, and they’re not doing well.” Two of the said I should see their grass, full of dandelions.
As for lawn pesticides, I googled lawn pesticide bans and got thousands of results. Someone thinks there’s proof.
We’re the collateral damage, the corpses left behind, in the corporate search for a higher bottom line.
 

After a dinner that included puns, poems, and good food, five of us settled into the car for the ride back to Shorewood. Gloria couldn’t find her seat belt, and our designated driver said, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll drive carefully.”

“Didn’t you drive carefully coming here, even though everyone was belted?”
“Yes, but I’ll drive extra slowly now.”
“Oh, if I’d known I could get you to drive slowly, I’d have made sure you knew that Adolph wasn’t actually wearing his belt.”

And so it went, light-hearted repartee ruffling the night, the mid-night, to be exact. Until someone mentioned that one of the other guests at dinner was a breast-cancer survivor.

“I have three young friends going through chemo for that at the moment,” I commented. I didn’t mention that two women on Julie’s block also have breast cancer, nor did I mention our friends with ovarian, prostate, blood, stomach, and intestinal cancer who live here now or grew up here. Instead I added, “There seems to be an epidemic.”

“My doctor thinks it’s all the plastics, in baby bottles, water bottles, storage containers. It’s leaching into our food. All those soft plastics, they’re made from petroleum, and it’s toxic,” said Gloria.

“Yes, and it’s also the lawn pesticides. That’s how I met Susan Mudd, Mayor Norquist’s wife. She used to travel around the state lecturing about the connection. She had maps showing the overlap between areas of high lawn pesticide use and areas with high breast cancer rates.”

“I’d have to see more proof,” said Gloria. No point prolonging this, I thought, laughter gone. It’s the plastics, lawns, pots, produce, water, everything unnatural in our lives. I too have asked doctors. One replied, “I’m afraid we’re poisoning ourselves.” Another said, “I have a lot of young patients with cancer, and they’re not doing well.” Two of the said I should see their grass, full of dandelions.

As for lawn pesticides, I googled lawn pesticide bans and got thousands of results. Someone thinks there’s proof.

We’re the collateral damage, the corpses left behind, in the corporate search for a higher bottom line.

Kids love dandelions. When the flowers bloom they gather bouquets, and later on in the season they blow feathery spores and watch them float away. Fifty years ago no one questioned this. Things have changed, not for kids, they still love their bouquets, but for adults, some adults. I heard one recently rave, “I hate dandelions, I hate dandelions, I HATE dandelions!”

After World War II corporations wanted to find a new use for the chemical weapons they had developed and decided dandelions were excellent enemies. So these entities called corporations taught everyone who would watch their ads that enemies, called dandyLIONS, CRAB grass and QUACK grass, LAMBS quarter, creepy Charlie, purple clover, lurked on their lawns. They didn't mention that clover hosts bacteria that take free nitrogen from the air and make it available to plants. And they didn't mention that weapons of war, even weapons of a war on weeds, cause collateral damage.
 

Researchers keep discovering more and more of that damage: unexpected diseases and deaths. And now there's more surprising fallout. Gil Walter has been telling me for years that today's dandelions are survivors, survivors of pesticides, hardier and more abundant than ever before. On May 5 the New York Times confirmed this thesis in an article, The Rise of Superweeds. The front page blurb says: Widespread use of the herbicide Roundup has given rise to weeds resistant to it. That could lead to higher food prices, lower crop yields, rising farm costs, and more pollution.

Ahah! One more demonstration that we can't predict results when we tinker too much, when we are taught to hate aspects of nature we might otherwise love. So I was delighted this afternoon when I heard a mother say to her little girl, who had a bouquet of dandelions in their spore stage, "Blow twice and make a wish!"

You don't like your dandelions? Take a scissors, take a mower, cut off their heads! It's a lot safer than poisoning them.

For whatever poisons the dandelions, does the same thing to you, your kids, pets, neighbors, water supply, air supply...

Yes, even air. Try inhaling during lilac time, and you'll no longer get that heaven-sent scent; you'll breathe in untested toxins that might send you in the other direction.

Lawn pesticides are the 21st century equivalent of cigarettes. More and more people, villages, provinces, counties, countries realize this, and enlightened governments all over the world have banned
or limited pesticide use.

The Village of Shorewood is no longer using pesticides on public land. Congratulations to all of us who live here! Thank you, Village Board, for a few less pollutants entering our lungs, and probably for a few less cases of breast cancer, which has reached the epidemic stage.

So if your neighbors complain about your violets and dandelions, tell them dandelions show you care about all living creatures, and about the environment. Tell them dandelions are your badge of honor.
 

One June night in 1977 I awakened in the middle of an intense dream and wrote it down. That's how I started writing short stories, a sudden, unexpected step into my future. My short stories became longer ones, then I began to write travel journals after trips, then memoirs in the third person and personal journals in the first person.
 

Poet Christina Zawadiwsky invited me to read my stories with her at Woodland Pattern, and that's how I started performing, one more step on my bridge to nowhere in particular, which is where I like to go.
 

Tybie Taglin invited me to put together a series of performances at the Jewish Community Center, so I asked William Harrold, our daughter Sarah's poetry professor, to read with me and suggest other poets for the series I was orchestrating.
 

In 1984 I saw Clyde Morgan, guest artist at UW-Milwaukee, dance and wanted to see those magical moves of his again and again! So I asked him if he'd dance in the performance series at the JCC. He said he would dance only if I wrote something for him to dance to. So there I was, taking another step on that bridge into the unknown.
 

I met with Clyde every Wednesday just to talk. I intended to write a danceable story, yet somehow wrote a poem, YORUBA PYGMIES, based on Clyde's description of his life. In fact I somehow wrote my first REAL poem, with a drumbeat in my head that still hasn't stopped, that sends me dancing across that bridge!
 

Jeff Poniewaz heard me perform that poem and invited me to read in the first Earth Poets event in 1988. And here we are, in 2010, at our 23rd ANNUAL EARTH POETS and MUSICIANS PERFORMANCES, and I've never missed a gig. I figure I might as well keep crossing the bridge till I fall into the river.

23rd ANNUAL EARTH POETS and MUSICIANS PERFORMANCES, April 23 and 24, 2010
Featured Performers: Jahmes Finlayson, Louisa Loveridge-Gallas, Holly Haebig,
Jeff Poniewaz, Suzanne Rosenblatt, and Harvey Taylor
SPECIAL GUEST: SUSAN FIRER, Milwaukee Poet Laureate 2008-2010

FRIDAY, APRIL 23, 2010
7 P.M. Interactive Poetry and Music for the Whole Family
8 PM Earth Poets and Musicians with special guest, Susan Firer
URBAN ECOLOGY CENTER
1500 E. Park Place
$5.00 Per Person, $10.00 Per Family, UEC Members Free

SATURDAY, APRIL 24, 2010, 8 P.M.
THE COFFEE HOUSE
631 N. 19th Street (Just South of Wisconsin Ave)
Donation: $5.00, benefit for Walnut Way

"I'm not getting older, I'm getting busier." That should be the twenty-first century mantra.
Does busier make us age faster?
Maybe that's why so many people dye their hair;
they want to hide the gray, as if gray matters.
It's gray matter that matters, the substance of our overworked brains.
The more matter the better, as the gray blur of whirring remains.
Does busyness kill us or help us survive? make us dumber or smarter?
And where do we place the blame For all this Busyness?

Frankly, I want to go read a book and worry about it later. Anyway, if I'm still around in a couple of years, I'll figure that being busy helps me to survive.
So here's my busyness for the next few days:

Friday, APRIL 16 is Gallery Night: Eli has an opening at Soups On Gallery, 221 N. Water St, 6-10 PM. He's been painting a blue streak (not literally), and has a lot of his recent work posted on his home page.

Friday, APRIL 16: Adolph and I will be at Rosenblatt Gallery, 181 N Broadway, and the Guest Artist is TINGHONGINNIE LEE, reception 7-11 PM.

Thursday, APRIL 22: I'm performing my Water poem next to Lake Michigan's waters for the Sierra Club's Earth Day Celebration at the Coast Guard Pavillion, 5-7 PM.

Friday, APRIL 23, 7 PM, at the Urban Ecology Center, and Saturday, APRIL 24, 8 PM, at the Coffee House, it's the 23rd Annual Earth Poets & Musician Performances.
FRIDAY, APRIL 23, 2010
7 PM Interactive Poetry and Music for the Whole Family
8 PM Earth Poets and Musicians with SPECIAL GUEST: SUSAN FIRER, Milwaukee Poet Laureate 2008–2010 Featured Performers: Jahmes Finlayson, Louisa Loveridge-Gallas, Holly Haebig, Jeff Poniewaz, Suzanne Rosenblatt, and Harvey Taylor
URBAN ECOLOGY CENTER, 1500 E. Park Place
$5.00 Per Person, $10.00 Per Family, UEC Members Free

SATURDAY, APRIL 24, 2010, 8 P.M.
Earth Poets and Musicians with SPECIAL GUEST: SUSAN FIRER, Milwaukee Poet Laureate 2008–2010
Featured Performers: Jahmes Finlayson, Louisa Loveridge-Gallas, Holly Haebig, Jeff Poniewaz, Suzanne Rosenblatt, and Harvey Taylor
THE COFFEE HOUSE, 631 N. 19th Street (Just South of Wisconsin Ave)
Donation: $5.00, benefit for Walnut Way
 

Here's a portrait of Adolph by Eli:

Benji of deli fame, two students in China, New Berlin cows, a woman in her rainbow-colored pantsuit, a knitter, Jack Waldheim relaxing, Bill Nichols’ head, all sit on tables while our son Joshua plays chess day and night on the floor. They’re part of Adolph Rosenblatt’s sculptural world on display this month at Open Book Co-op, 4093 N Oakland Ave in Shorewood.

And my world’s there, too, in ink and acrylics. My dancers leap, gull shadows threaten my pizza, other gulls observe me, one eye at a time, lovers embrace, and the sun rises on both the east and west end of the wall.

If you feel like saying hello to us in our visual milieu, please come to our meet-the-artists reception on Thursday, April 8, between 6 and 8 PM.
         

In 2008 Louisa Loveridge-Gallas, Bill Murtaugh, & I sat stymied. Nothing sounded right. Finally the title for our performance at Schwartz Bookshop popped into our minds: MUD, SWEAT, AND TEARS. Mud is Earth, sweat is work, tears are emotions, and then there's the wordplay. The title described what we're all about!

After our performance Betty Salamun asked if she could steal the title for DanceCircus. Sure, I told her, if you dance to our poems. So in 2009 we used the title a second time!

Now it's 2010, and the three of us will perform together on Wednesday, March 31, 7 PM, at Open Book Co-op. We didn't want to give up the title, so Bill, his partner, and I played around with it: THE THIRD MUD, SWEAT, TEARS, or MUD, SWEAT, TEARS, THREE. We tried other ideas, no, no, and no! Then Bill blurted THE THREE MUDSWEATTEARS, and we couldn't stop laughing. Our poster would be the three of us dueling, maybe brooms instead of swords. Three of us, that's not a du-el, would it be a tri-al? And would anyone get it? THE THREE MUDSWEATTEARS, you have to say it quickly.

We settled on MORE MUD, SWEAT, AND TEARS, nice alliteration, but no Aramis, Porthos, and Athos. Just us.

THE DETAILS: Poets and iconoclasts Louisa Loveridge Gallas, Bill Murtaugh, and Suzanne Rosenblatt
revel in the new life that emerges after winter's long grasp and take a few digs at humanity.
Breathe in deeply and inhale their words as they perform their poetry at Open Book Co-op Bookstore, 4093 North Oakland, Shorewood, on Wednesday, March 31st, at 7:00 P.M.

Adolph loves to turn the life around him into more permanent forms. In New York City he watched pedestrians on rainy city streets, eaters at Horn and Hardart’s Automat, the chaos of Herald Square, and created works of art.

In Milwaukee since 1966, he’s continued to document daily life, at the Oriental Pharmacy Lunch Counter
and Benjy’s Kosher Deli, in movie houses, in back yards. He’s sculpted family, friends, students, strangers, dogs, ducks, cows, whoever inspires him.

And from art school graduation in 1956 to the present, there’s another form of life he often paints, draws, or sculpts: trees. In fact his earliest series of paintings was of branches and leaves that sometimes morphed into humans.

This past summer and fall he sat on a stool with his Craypas and archival black cardboard and captured the mysterious lives of trees. If winter came late, it was probably his fault, for he hated the idea of going inside. Until mid-June eleven of these trees are hanging inside, inside Beans and Barley. Take a look next time you’re there, 1901 East North Avenue. Or make a special trip to see this indoor forest. You may even see Adolph sitting on the bench under his trees. Or across from them, at the counter drinking coffee.
                               

When I was diagnosed with osteopenia a few years ago, I said to my doctor, "What is THAT?' and she told me my bones were getting thinner, but I didn't yet have osteoporosis.

This seemed strange. With all those years of biking and swimming and more recently taking walks as exercise, how could I be verging towards osteoporosis? My mother had never broken a bone, and my only fractured bones were in my foot when it was crushed between my bicycle wheel and cement. I suddenly felt very fragile, was nervous about biking and all the other activities that might be bone-breakers.

Then I noticed that almost anyone I mentioned my diagnosis to also had osteopenia, which also seemed strange. I refused to take any drugs, which is typical of me. I'm a do-it-yourselfer. Instead I started to lift weights at the Shorewood Fitness Center and to take longer walks. Although all those weight machine look like the accoutrements of a torture chamber, I actually enjoyed working out on them. And I discovered how nice it is to feel strong!

I had a follow-up bone scan once, though I couldn't see the point: I wasn't going to take Fosomax, no matter what!

A few months ago, while listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, I found out why all this not only SEEMED  strange, it IS strange, in fact is scarier than mere fragility: How A Bone Disease Grew To Fit The Prescription!

I have to wonder how many other diseases have been developed for the corporate bottom line.

I posted this blog on my FaceBook page, and thought readers might like to see the discussion!

Scott: I remember that story. A made-up disease or pre-disease just to sell drugs. Drugs are a last resort for me, too.
Mon at 11:00pm ·

Kathy: Read up on the statin drugs and the cholesterol "epidemic" too.
Mon at 11:10pm ·

Suzanne Rosenblatt: Yes, I prefer, niacin, turmeric (but I never think to use it), and pistachio nuts.
Mon at 11:26pm ·

Ray: I've been using Turmeric in rice as poor man's saffron for years. Who knew it was rich in pharma nutrients?
Mon at 11:53pm ·

Suzanne Rosenblatt: Probably someone did and didn't tell you! I think it's delicious and I've read in numerous places that it helps lower cholesterol.
Mon at 11:56pm ·

Keith: There was a report on one of the evening network news shows just today about people taking Merck to court for catastrophic upper femur breaks in women who took fosamax in their 50s. They have a warning in the packaging now, but it's section 6.8, one vaguely worded sentence fragment on a large sheet of tiny print. Oh, and the FDA all this time......
Tue at 12:09am ·

Amy: I won't give up totally on Western medicine, but I certainly use "complementary therapies" whenever possible. Save the big guns, if they seem safe, for the last resort.
Tue at 9:34am ·

Suzanne Rosenblatt Ditto.
Tue at 9:47am ·

Keith: Fosomax long-term bone-strengthening drugs linked to fractures, check ABC News.

Kathy  I looked up the mechanism of how the various drugs to prevent osteoporosis worked on Pub Med several years ago, decided against Fosamax. Glad I did, thanks for posting the link.

Tue at 11:36am ·

Suzanne Rosenblatt And thanks to you, Kathy, for posting the original link to NPR. I'd been meaning to find it, You made it easy!
Tue at 12:52pm ·

Gloria Very informative article . I too refused to take Fosamax but more instinctively than backed by good information. Glad to have the back-up.
Tue at 12:56pm ·

Suzanne Rosenblatt: Hey, Gloria, so you're another osteopenia diagnosis. I wonder how many there have been.
Tue at 1:16pm ·

Suzy: Me too
Tue at 5:19pm ·
 

Last Wednesday my bed woke me up just before 4 AM. It's really moving, isn't it! The weather report was for wind and snow overnight. Maybe it's the wind.

But I don't hear the wind. Maybe it's my ears.

I thought about Haiti and how lucky we are, how sure we are that our walls aren't about to crumble.
Then I thought about Taiwan. The first time the ground swayed when we were there, I suspected it was the truck rumbling past at that particular moment. It wasn't. The next time we visited Taiwan, our bed swayed and the wardrobe door opened and closed by itself. I couldn't offer any excuses for Earth, I knew she was quaking.

And even last Wednesday, I really knew. The scenario was familiar. I didn't have to check later on in the morning, though I did check: it was a 3.8 magnitude earthquake near DeKalb.

No excuses. Except that if I were Earth and had human inhabitants who transformed my climate and killed off whole ecosystems, I too would quake.
 

Not long after I started writing short stories in 1977, I realized our teenage daughter, Sarah, was a natural poet. Almost 33 years later, we're both still writing.

Carnegie Mellon University Press published Sarah's first two poetry books. Now she's working on her third book and will read some of her new poems, and some of her old, at a Pantry Benefit at The Coffee House this Friday.

Here are the details and one of her poems.  You can read more of her work on her home page and in a lyrical column written by Crocker Stephenson in the JournalSentinel. 
 

WHERE: The Coffee House: 631 N. 19th St., Milwaukee, (414) 299-9598
WHEN: Friday, Feb. 5, 2010, 8 PM
WHAT: Poetry Pantry Benefit featuring Barbara Chudnow, Sarah Rosenblatt, Karina Schafer, and Sandy Weisto. Admission: $4 donation and two cans of food.

OLD ENOUGH

I had been the age of the woman
pushing the double stroller.
Now, approaching menopause--

(My children old enough
to know better.)

Our dreams, held to the light,
are forgetful, we move through them.

The days relieve themselves on our porch.

The trees are picturesque
but also seethe with an edge
they hadn't had since last winter

Darkness fumbles through our text messages.

Those we buried
are no longer in the loop.

“What’s happening?” The Pick ‘N Save checker wasn’t asking me; she was asking the air as she watched a frantic woman gesticulating on the other side of plate glass.

Everyone in the check-out area migrated towards the front. The woman in the window was trying to get help for someone.
“...fell...”
“...nosebleed.”
“...9-1-1-?”
“...on the way...”

I checked out, grabbed my bags, left, and walked over to see if I could help in any way. A kneeling woman bent forward as blood flowed profusely from her nose onto the snow between the visible portion of sidewalk and her parked car. A Pick ‘N Save employee handed her paper towel.

I identified with her much more than I wanted to. That could easily be me. Winter’s worst curse for senior citizens is ice. But it wasn’t icy, and she wasn’t a senior. How did she injure only her nose? She must have fallen flat on her face, or hit it on something, must have fallen so fast that her hands didn’t involuntarily pop up to protect her.

The ambulance arrived. “Someone told me to lean my head back,” she said. “No, you don’t want to do that,” replied the medical technician, and I wanted to hang around and hear what other advice he offered. But I couldn’t, for he asked for her medical history, which I did not want to overhear. I started to walk away. Then I noticed something lying on the sidewalk: glasses, probably hers. I handed them to the EMT: maybe I was a help after all. I left, shaken, afraid of ice though I didn’t see any.

Two days later as I walked past the spot where the stranger had fallen, I glanced at it to see if they had managed to get rid of all that blood. Yes, they had, not a drop left, just a big indentation in the snow where the blood had been.

The area had been covered with snow when she fell. But what I saw underneath when the snow was cleared made me gasp.

It was the corner of one of those omnipresent concrete frames, and the path from the street lead right into it. I don't know for sure if that's what she fell on. I do know that all the frames along Oakland were covered when the woman was bent over and bleeding, that every driver or passenger stepping out of a car and into snow on Oakland is at risk. In fact one of the friends I mentioned this to said she almost fell. So these frames are not aesthetically pleasing (euphemism!), they make wide sidewalks narrow, prevent car doors from opening, and are dangerous. Perhaps they should be removed?

We may slosh through snow, and grouse
Avoid the blowing wind, by staying in the house
Wish we were down south, to skip winter time
in a climate, where each primate, is an artist of some kind
a scribbler or a fiddler, or a closet singer
a dancer or an actor, or a comic with a zinger
especially when we’re touched by, the Arctic’s icy finger...
So whither shall we flee?
From gallery to gallery
on the 15th of January
I think I’ve got it right, Friday the 15th is Gallery Night!

Again! I’ll sit at a table with our show, Adolph likes the couch in front of his balcony, Eli will be somewhere near his exhibit at the back of Artasia, and Joe Boblick, our guest artist, will host his reception in the revolving gallery.

I first met Joe Boblick about 25 years ago. Adolph was sick, so I taught his class at UWM, and one student’s painting startled me so, I remember it today. The subject was mundane, a kitchen sink (rather than everything but). The subject makes no difference, it’s how it was painted that counts. Joe used a few lines and forms and the white of the paper to create a three-dimensional world. He had a sharp eye for form, relationships, depth, for what’s going on visually. He’s still got that same eye. So slosh over to Rosenblatt Gallery with me to take a look!

ROSENBLATT GALLERY, 181 North Broadway, 2nd floor, 414-220-4292
Joe Boblick, Small Fresco Paintings, Still Life and Portrait
January 15 to February 28, 2010
Opening reception Friday, January 15, 7:00-10:00 PM
 

Funny Face by Joe Boblich

I always get a kick out of the buzz at the Fitness Center right after January 1st. Many more feet on treadmills, many more arms lifting weights than in December. People work out with their resolutions fresh in their minds. Fresh faces, fresh resolutions, and by February most of them have faded.

I’ve never made a New Year’s resolution. It feels like procrastinating. Once I know I have to change my exercise routine, or change my diet, I do it. I see no point in putting it off till a new year comes around. I recognize that when the number of the year changes, people reevaluate their lives. I’d prefer to reevaluate on an ongoing basis and make changes whenever I realize they’re needed. If I can manage it. If, if, if!

There’s a lot that must be done NOW, in our own lives, and in the life of the planet. It’s hard to pinpoint the tipping point, hard to know at what point all that off-putting putting off will turn out to be fatal. Will this trans-fat dose or cigarette puff or cell phone conversation while driving be your last? It definitely won’t be if you skip it altogether!

The young man was seated opposite me near the front of the bus. I knew and liked his parents; I try to avoid their son. He always asks me for money; I always refuse to donate to his alcohol fund.

“Mrs. Rosenblatt, how are you?” he yells across the aisle. He slurs the words.

“Okay. How are you?”

“Mrs. Rosenblatt, I’m lonely. I miss my father.” His father was a special man, generous, warm.

“I miss him too.”

“He was a wonderful man. He said he’d come back, but he hasn’t.” He means come back from the dead. His father died several years ago. “There was only one problem with my father, he liked all the girls I went out with.”

“Better than having him hate all the girls you went out with,” I replied, then turned to look out the window.

A man sitting next to me called across the aisle to him. “Are you on the way to an AA meeting?”

“They’re not there anymore,” came the slurred reply, and they continued the conversation about AA, then coffee houses. Good, I thought, I’m glad he has someone to talk to. I’m sorry it can’t be me. I don’t want to hear him rant against his mother, or his father. He doesn’t want to hear me tell him to get help. Alcohol is not the right medication for mental illness. I got off the bus feeling sad.

Last week an older acquaintance, well, a little older than I am, noticed me as she was about to get off the bus and said, “Oh, hello, let me give you a hug.” She bent over and did just that, then disappeared out the door, and I thought, how sweet of her. I got off the bus feeling glad.

A few days ago the number 15 had to wait as fire engines wailed down Brady Street. The woman seated behind me said to her husband, “Did I leave anything on the stove?” I smiled, for I was asking myself a similar question. Made me wonder how many of the passengers had the same reaction, made me think about how alike we all are.

When we’re in a foreign country sometimes Adolph and I get on a bus, any bus, and take it to the end of the line, get an unplanned view of wherever we are. Every bus ride is an adventure.

When I board the bus on Oakland Avenue, I know what buildings we’ll pass. That’s all I can predict. The sky, the traffic, the people, all make the ride what it is, a conglomeration of unplanned views.