I keep thinking about the evening of Dec. 31st, the day our out-of-town company left. My husband and I had planned to go on our usual outing to the Denver Botanic Gardens “Blossoms of Light” exhibition. We’ve done this now for several years running, and as we pace down the pathways lined with beautiful lights strung imaginatively over the plants we try to talk about what we want to accomplish in the upcoming year. I wrote about this outing last year, for example, when we left it until the very last minute on the very last day, having to drive around for awhile searching for a place to park.
Debi Simons
What the Peanut Allergy Controversy Says about Human Nature.
Here’s what seems to have happened:
1. In the normal course of things, some children developed severe peanut allergies.
2. Awareness of this problem grew. It’s not clear whether the actual incidents grew or not, but almost certainly not. It was probably more a matter of growing access to information.
Don’t Let Real Life Get Derailed.
On Wednesdays I look forward to listening to Happier with Gretchen Rubin, the podcast that she does with her sister Liz Craft. I know I’ve mentioned this program many times and will continue to do so as long as they keep putting it out, because so many of the ideas ring true to me.
So this week Gretchen gave herself a demerit for getting so involved in a particular task (in her case, doing the edits for her new book) that she neglected her other work and fell way behind. (Her description of this issue starts at minute 37:00.) This type of thing has certainly happened to me. I get involved in some big project and just don’t want to do anything else. The housework suffers. I don’t get out on my walk. I fail to get the grocery shopping done and we end up eating out or getting takeout. (Yes, I do sometimes say to my husband and son, “I’m leaving dinner up to you guys.” That’s fine. On the whole, though, things run more smoothly around here if I’m at least nominally in charge of meal planning.)
The Low-Sugar Lifestyle–Rules of the Game
I’ve written quite a bit about my periodic attempts to cut out sugar from my diet and have also posted reviews of several books about the dangers of sugar. The most recent material I posted was of an interview that Gretchen Rubin did with Gary Taubes, who has now written yet a third book on this dangerous aspect of the Western diet, The Case Against Sugar. I’m including the link again here; be advised that you have to give up your e-mail address in order to gain access to the PDF. It’s about 23 pages and very worthwhile reading.
Other than the annual chocolate tasting that my sister-in-law leads each year (well, this was the second year), a few sips of pink eggnog and some cookies,, mostly barely-sweet biscotti, I stayed off sweets for the holidays. Sometime in the next couple of weeks I’ll go in and get my A1C checked—a reading that gives a three-month average of your blood sugar load.
Do You Need a Nudge?
I’m pretty sure that I’ve already posted the following quotation, but I’m going to do it again anyway. I’ve read Anne Ortlund’s Disciplines of the Beautiful Woman multiple times and talked about before. She was a writer and pastor’s wife who died several years ago. I think I ran across DOTBW in the bookstore of my old church. I remember reading it while on early-morning duty at the school where I taught and a high-school boy making a snide remark about the title.
Two Great Cookbooks from My Two Great Guys.
Image from Amazon.com |
Image from Amazon.com |
We had a great Christmas at our house. How about you? I wanted to make my book(s) of the week the two cookbooks I received as gifts, one from my husband Jim and the other from my son Gideon. I love both, but they’re very different from each other. I thought it would be fun to do a comparison review for my weekly book post.
In Which I Wimp Out About Trevor Noah’s Memoir.
Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah, available in multiple formats from multiple outlets. Visit the author’s website at trevornoah.com.
I have never watched The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, so it made no blip my on my radar screen when he left the show and Trevor Noah, a South African comic, was installed as his replacement. I had heard Noah being interviewed on NPR about his memoir; he sounded funny (good for a comedy show, I guess) and self-deprecating, with a lovely, lilting British-sounding accent.
At some point I needed to get an audio book to take advantage of a freebie from Audible.com; by that time we had watched a number of video clips from TDS featuring Noah and thoroughly enjoyed his eviscerations of Donald Trump and American voters in general.
Memories of an Auschwitz Survivor.
This morning I was driving across town listening to the radio and heard an interview with a Boulder man who survived Auschwitz. He was quite a character. No trace of self-pity at all. Flashes of very dry humor. Matter-of-fact accounting of incredibly horrible events, such as seeing his father beaten to death with a shovel for insulting a guard. Walter Plywaski was nine when Nazi soldiers came into his father’s pharmacy in Poland and told the Jewish family they had half an hour to leave.
Some Small Resolutions.
Since our out-of-town company arrives this evening for a stay of a week, I may not be posting much over the next few days and figure that I’ll get something written about the resolutions I’m making as of RIGHT NOW. (Why should I wait until Jan. 1?) These resolutions are in the area of small, consistent actions, the kind of thing that I hate doing. I mean, like, DESPISE. My kitchen has been a disaster zone for the past week, for example, because I never got it completely cleaned up after last week’s big baking extravaganza for our church’s Christmas party and then haven’t been very consistent about cleaning up after meals since then.Did You Miss the Winter Solstice?
I wrote about Garry Kasparov’s book on Vladimir Putin yesterday, and what he said about winners and losers also applies, in a sense, to the idea of the solstice. The minute you win, you start losing. The minute you lose, you start working to win. So it is with the two solstices: the summer solstice, June 21, is the longest day of the year, so where do you go from there? Only towards the darkness of winter. In the midst of winter, though, you hit that longest, darkest day–and there’s no place to go but up, nowhere to go but spring.
And isn’t the illustration for today’s post seriously cool? I get my images for the most part from a site called Pixabay. Their images are totally free. (You do have to be sure you don’t click on the images marked “sponsored images,” which are from a company named Shutterstock, I’m guessing a parent company. You do have to pay for those. I got the image for this website’s header from Shutterstock.) If you need images for a website or other application, give them a try.
And pay attention to the seasons!