Do you find the horrible funny? Do you find the funny horrible? I believe that funny is just a shade away from the truth. My writing may make you uncomfortable-even I squirm when I read it.
I have been battling with clutter for at least thirty-five years. I don’t fall into the hoarder status, I’m just very messy and I love the thrill of a bargain.
In the 1990s, I used to yearn for simplicity (even though I knew full well that I was the one responsible for the complications in my life) I read mountains of books on the “Voluntary Simplicity” movement popularized by Duane Elgin and Janet Luhrs. I loved to lie on my cluttered bed reading these books as if I was reading about an Antarctic polar expedition or a trip to outer space.
I dreamed of a magic formula that would help me to take concrete action toward getting control over my mess. Was it the perfect storage system? Did I need a bigger house? My perfect storage systems were fun to shop for but always ended up as more clutter. The bigger house thing was something I got to try out. We rented a mansion for a pittance in return for caring for the house. We just ended up with a lot more mess.- In fact we had a ball room full of stuff that other people unloaded on us because we had so much space.
What I needed was a coach who could hang out with me and give me permission to throw things out. I did have a close friend help me a few times but she was so ruthless, I ended up curled in a fetal ball when she left.
Later in my much smaller home, I listened to audio tracks while I would work. Some audio versions of clutter books had me laughing more than decluttering. I turned off anything that asked me to take a complicated quiz to see what category of clutterer I was. Many of the tracks were too “nuts and bolts” to fit into my style. I found that the most helpful were:
Brooks Palmer’s audiobook, Clutter Busting was soothing and spiritual. With Brook’s support, I felt that I could throw out anything and still be OK.
Louise Hay 101 Power Thoughts. This is so soothing that my inner intuition works at full throttle while listening to her.
Space clearing is not just about putting things away or throwing things out. Space clearing is also emotional and spiritual. I decided to make my own short action track to see if I could get closer to what I needed.
The following short track has been years in the making.
I have been doing audio narration for a free public domain site, Librivox, and learning audio software so that one day I could make very my own decluttering playmate.
In the end, I had to ditch my equipment in favor of my I Pad’s Garageband. It’s not as smooth as I would like but I think it will do the trick. The meditation app, Insight Timer just accepted the track and all proceeds will go to charity. I hope to help one fellow clutter-er at a time.
Yesterday, The New York Times published an article entitled, Manifesting, for the Rest of UsA new generation has turned to an eons-old practice of envisioning positive outcomes. Of course, I was interested! I have been using manifestation my whole adult life, however, my millennial children often poo poo my ability to “manifest” despite the fact that I had a big role manifesting them. If you have read some of my other posts, you will notice principles of New Thought throughout (New Thought is basically a Christian philosophical movement which has has strains of Epictetus, 12 step recovery, cognitive psychology, Christianity and Buddhism at its core) … but I need to keep it on the “downlow”. I know that not everyone buys into the ideas of the laws of attraction or even that we may control more of our reality than we think. Manifestation is certainly not just for millennials or lazy, selfish dreamers. What I found particularly offensive in the article was this citation:
Gabriele Oettingen, a scholar and professor of psychology at New York University, underscores the point. “Dreamers are not often doers,” she writes in “Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation,” a study of the sources and perils, of unexamined optimism. “The pleasurable act of dreaming saps our energy to perform the hard work of meeting the challenges in real life.” NYT Jan 20, 2021)
Perhaps I was offended because there is a kernel of truth in this. I certainly would rather dream/visualize a clean home than actually get out of my recliner and wash dishes or vacuum. I would certainly rather visualize my skinny toned body than diet and go to the gym. In most cases, my imagination is almost always better than the reality. I have learned that manifesting is a balance between dreaming and doing.
Just to digress a little, I would like to point out that the world of woo woo management consulting wasn’t always so big on “doing”. My poor husband was branded as a “doer” over fifteen years ago in a week-long management seminar. His billable hours were top in the company, he is fast and efficient but he just wasn’t a “Dreamer” and as a consequence he was treated as a work horse not a visionary. Over those fifteen years, managers, rainmakers and dreamers have come and gone and yet he remains at the company -which is pretty amazing in the field of advertising and the gig economy. My husband refers to me as the “one who pulls us forward” because I am a dreamer but he has also helped us to materialize these dreams.
Let’s face it, how can anyone move forward if they don’t have a picture or map of what the goal is? The value of creative visualization (the name given to manifestation when I started practicing in the 80s.), is that you can refine a vague ambition- a thought- into a material reality. Every thing starts with a thought. Let’s take some very concrete examples of how this has worked for me.
After I graduated from College in the 80s, I had a job as a corporate paralegal in a large New York Law firm that had a reputation as a sweat shop. It didn’t take long for me to realize that Mergers and Acquisitions law was not for me. I understood and liked the clients: corporate management and investment bankers far more than the attorneys that worked for them. I was miserable soothing temper tantrums and collating large documents. When I did a little “career imagining”, I was led to one of the best tools for career manifesting. I enrolled in a workshop based on Richard Nelson Bolles’ work, “What Color is your parachute?”. The key to this work, is taking an inventory of your skills, what you love and imagining an ideal future job. From that work, I was able to become a headhunter for investment banks.
As my skills and passions changed, my goals for manifestation changed and I have experienced all of the careers that I ever dreamed of. In many cases, I went to job interviews for one job and then I would describe my dream job only to get hired for the new vision. You might even call it sales- which is the overall trajectory of my working life.
Twenty-two years ago my house was acquired by manifestation. Molly, a friend who was starting a new career, offered to help me . We worked on the phone to manifest the perfect house for my family; a home that was close to a train to Manhattan, walking distance to shops and schools. Now that I had a vision for what I wanted, I still had to do the legwork of looking at actual homes but I had a much better blueprint of what my priorities were.
Once I found the perfect home, I remember stressing about the move so much that a large heavy doll house kit in a box fell down on my head in now bankrupt craft store when I was taking my pre schooler in to get supplies for a project. It was very scary and I was quite injured. I joked to Molly, that the “weight” of buying the new house was manifesting on my head.
The Times article continues with fleeting quotes of a need for control during a Pandemic (which might be fueling this manifestation trend) and this particular observation:
Yet the practice of manifesting remains suspect and associated with youthful self-absorption. “It’s all about me,” said Dr. Fournier, whose treats a number of 15, 16 and 17-year-olds in her practice. She points to “a culture of specialness”: the use of spirituality to create this idea of being exceptional, supremely gifted. The thought is: ‘How can I use my spirituality to serve my own person?’” she said…NYT Jan 20, 2021
There are rules for manifesting that I have learned over the last few years. Manifesting is not just a self-obsessed exercise; it is training for controlling the mind and accepting what cannot be changed with graciousness and non-attachment.
Manifesting is not just about what I want. It is about what is for my highest good and the highest good of those around me. I daily manifest inner peace and acceptance when I get rattled by the year long construction next door. My biggest challenge now is circumventing my inner complaining to accept the reality as it happens. Let’s face it, what use is it to complain about the cold? Because the need to control is a very difficult thing in a world that is shifting paradigms daily, I am working to control my reaction to all of outside events. That said, I have also been manifesting a picture of myself in a temperate aging hippie community with good healthcare, no wild fires, earthquakes, and tsunamis for my next phase.
As I sat in the podiatrist office sticking out my foot for my second injection of cortisone, I looked over my toes, met my doctor’s eyes and said, “You know I don’t need orthotics. I brought this on because I willed it.” The doctor and his assistants looked at each other with a twinkle in their eyes. “No really! A very athletic woman in my gym complained about a machine giving her planter fasciitis that was so bad that she had to go to the emergency room. I thought she was a big cry baby. I suppose I needed to get more empathy so I had to experience this pain myself” I did not remember what this pain felt like when I had it 20 years ago and could not have envisioned the three months of excruciating pain that my fluid filled inflamed heel would have. Perhaps on some level; I wanted the challenge because I developed my own fasciitis within weeks. Was I experiencing the “Law of Attraction” in my life?
The concept of the mind being able to manifest reality has been the basis for a genre known as “success-literature”, proselytized by champions of positive thinking such as Norman Vincent Peal, and Napoleon Hill. The concept also is the primary premise of New Age writers such as Carolyn Myss and Louise Hay. The law of attraction is basically “like attracts like”; negative thoughts bring poverty and sickness and positive thoughts manifest health and prosperity Much of the criticism of the law is that it gives the mind too much power over what many perceive to be uncontrollable events for the poor and the unfortunate. Does the curmudgeon deserve to get cancer? But this is an oversimplification of the law which at its core questions the nature of reality and deserves more space than I can give in a short blog post.
My most recent encounter with the “Law of Attraction” was when I happened upon a peculiar book at our town library’s used book sale. The book titled, “The Master Key” was very old and the copyright was for the year 1916. I had never heard of the author, Charles Haanel, but upon closer inspection, I found that the book was published by a St. Louis publishing company and it appeared to be an early form of correspondence course that offered the reader the ability to create, Power, Health and Prosperity. I bought the book with the intention to send it to my bookophile father from St Louis. I ended up buying the public domain book on Kindle for myself with the plan to actually go through the almost 100 year old course.
But I should have paid attention to Haanel’s warning that “modern psychology tells us that if we start something and do not complete it, or make a resolution and do not keep it we are forming the habit of failure; absolute ignominious failure. If you do not intend to do a thing, do not start; see it through even if heavens fall…” because my efforts -so far -have not gone past week three:
Week One: required tremendous effort because my exercise was to sit erectly in a chair for 20-25 minutes and not lounge. Week one actually took me two weeks to complete. If I could have lounged, I’m sure it would have been easier.
Week Two: required me to sit in chair and think of nothing. Haanel admits that this is difficult. The problem is that he does not suggest a thought or word to replace the “non thoughts” such as OM or I AM, so I spent time trying to channel Haanel’s spirit to see if he might have any ideas for me. He did’nt.
Week Three: required me to sit erectly, inhibit all thought and relax. It was very hard to relax because my thoughts were now busy concentrating on not lounging and falling asleep. At the end of week three, Haanel says that I should have very strong “Solar Plexus energy” –which is the sun of the body and source of great personal magnetism.
Haanel writes that we must first learn to control our physical selves before we can control our minds So far this process sounds like meditation and Chakra opening. Haanel seems to have been very influenced by eastern thought. I do believe that he is on to something; after all he was a self-made millionaire. From what I have read of Haanel, Napoleon Hill acknowledged a tremendous debt to Haanel’s ideas in his own “Master Key System to Riches” other contributors to Hill’s “Master Key System” were Andre Carnegie, Ford and Edison –more self- made men. This hardly seems to have been main stream thinking for the day. As I became more curious to learn about Haanel and where he might have come up with this course, I learned that he was in correspondence with woman, Elizabeth Towne, who founded her own publishing company.
Towne was at the center of a movement in the United States called, New Thought, which drew its philosophy from many influences of the last two centuries such as Mesmerism and Transcendentalism. Towne’s self-improvement writings are much more accessible to me and quite frankly her Solar Plexus strengthening exercises are much easier since they just require lying down and taking deep abdominal breaths. I am sure that I am getting more and more magnetism every day.
Since these New Thought author’s books are now public domain, you too can have access to the Master Key System! You will find that these old ideas are embedded in almost every self- help book you pick up today.
Portrait of Martha Washington-Hollow-cut silhouette on linen CA 1798. Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art
The brouhaha which surrounds the David Barton book, Jefferson Lies, has made me wonder what is it that makes one history book more popular than another? Moreover, why do we persist on wanting to believe that our founding fathers (and their wives) were impervious to self-serving inclinations? Today’s politicians lead us into a grey area of morality yet we persistently raise up our founding fathers as examples of moral and religious superiority. To the historians, who dare to question this premise, we call them leftist revisionists – and in some of the rarer cases of explorations on these founding women, we call these historians:” feminists”. Coincidentally, I have just finished two biographies of Martha Washington; the first book was: Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty by Helen Bryan written in 2002 and the second: Martha Washington: An American Life by Patricia Brady written in 2005. The first 50 pages of both of the books are so similar that I wondered why Brady’s was not considered a copyright infringement on the earlier book. However, Brady’s seemed to be the more popular of the two
Brady’s book made it into paperback, and had a nice blurb from Cokie Roberts, additionally, even NPR picked up an interview over the sexy age regression-ed photo of Martha Washington that adorns the cover. Did Brady have a better editor or publisher? What exactly was cut out of those 100 pages? In Bryan’s book there are many anecdotes about the gossip, lore and the technicalities of the laws of inheritance and slavery system which contained the essence for the perpetuation of the Washington’s large fortune.
A composite image of portraits of Martha Washington Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis and Michael J Deas
To read Bryan, one might see Martha as a much more calculating being than the love smitten Martha of Brady. It is the missing hundred pages which build a case for a very complicated Martha. In Bryan’s Martha, we see a rich widowed woman who chose George because she knew that her and her two children’s money would be better protected with him than many other suitors. Bryan maintains that it was essential that she remarry to sustain and manage the large plantations that she had just inherited from her first husband. Bryan’s Martha was a “clothes horse” who continued to buy imported English goods well after her patriot sisters turned to home spun in the northern states. Both George and Martha had very friendly relationships with the British appointed Governors during the turbulent late 60s and even attended a ball to honor Governor and Lady Dunmore as late as May 1774. In fact, early in the war, there were rumors that she and George had separated because she was actually a Loyalist (Many of the southern planters were slow to join the liberty movement). Martha made a calculated journey to winter headquarters to improve her image. Bryan refers to her trip in her homespun as an act of “spin doctoring”.
Then there was the slavery. Although Brady gives this incident a mention, she does not give it the treatment that Bryan does. While George and Martha lived in Philadelphia during Washington’s term as president in 1791, a new law was passed in Pennsylvania which allowed slaves to claim their freedom after six months of residency in that state. George and Martha prepared a plan to send their servants back to Mount Vernon on small errands to ensure that those slaves would not be eligible to meet the residency requirements. It is here that Bryan notes: “Although George Washington is often held up as a model of enlightenment who freed his slaves on his death, the truth is more complex and less comfortable. His response to the new Pennsylvania law shows one side of his ambivalent attitude about slavery…while George was happy to go on using slaves, he had to be careful about how he was perceived by the public.” A letter that Bryan cites from George to his secretary Tobias Lear substantiates his awareness of image as he made arrangements for the transportation of Martha’s dower slaves back to Virginia while they were both traveling.
…in case I shall be found that any of my slaves may, or any of them shall attempt their freedom at the expiration of six months, it is my wish and desire that you send the whole, or such part of them as Mrs Washington may not chuse to keep home-for although I do not think they may be benefited by the change, yet the idea of freedom might be too great a temptation for them to resist. At any rate it might, if they conceived a right to it make them more insolent in a State of Slavery. As all except Hercules and Paris are dower Negroes, it behoves me to prevent the emancipation of them, otherwise I shall not only lose them, but may have them to pay for (under the law, George had use of Martha money and use of dower slaves) If…it is found expedient to take them back to Virginia I wish to have it accomplished under pretext that I may deceive both them and the Public…
Bryan is not a historian; she is a lawyer (a London barrister) who grew up in Virginia. Brady is a “real” historian (well… she has a PhD in History). I was shocked that Brady did not even acknowledge Bryan as a source except to make note in the afterword that Bryan accepted “post-Civil war family mythology… disregarding Martha Washington’s moral and religious character…” Moreover, interestingly many of the reader comments in Amazon regarding the book, refer to Bryan as a “feminist, liberal” suffering from Slave guilt. Read them for your self. Perhaps together we will come up with the conclusion that although the 18th century America was a different time with a different economic system etc., politicians are really not so different in many ways – and we still want to believe that our heroes are perfect.
Previously Publish on Open Salon August 17 2012 under Snarkychaser (What Can Martha Teach Us About Today’s Politicians?)
This week I had a conversation with a historian about the possibility of George Washington’s homosexual inclinations (my theory not his). Who are the historians who address this? I am still searching. Washington had some very close relationships with his aides. In snippets of Washington’s letters to Joseph Reed there is almost the longing of a lover. Is it safe to assume that in times of war, men may turn to each other to fulfill needs when women are scarce? Many historians that I read – even historical fiction writers- have such sterile references to colonial sex. Since I intend to write a “trashy historical” novel set in colonial New Jersey, I am obsessed with getting an accurate feeling for what colonial sex was like.
It would take a book to discuss the regional, economic, religious and social distinctions which would have had an impact of sexual relations in the colonies, so I will outline the universal. Of course you may think that sex is sex and I realize that we could have endless discussions on sexual orientation, fetishes etc. What can we speculate that may differentiate 18th century colonial sex from ANY variety of modern world sex? If I were having sex with George Washington what would I experience? If I were in a room with George…..
Smell– People smell here. Body odors are so pervasive that the perfume industry is thriving. George’s body odor has an overlap of Caswell and Massey’s “Number Six” (a cologne introduced in 1750 s and a favorite of George Washington). Sometimes I wear the Floris “Rose Geranium” that I had been able to order it from London before British products became difficult and expensive to purchase (Or I might just use George’s Six since there is little gender differentiation for perfume). In addition to my own everyday body odor, my stench sometimes includes a trace of dried blood from my period that I had in the prior week. I use a sponge bath everyday but you know how hard it is to clean blood when it is allowed to Stream down your legs for so long. Of course George and I both have a lingering smell of feces. I know that the myth is that colonials used corn cobs to wipe our bowel movements -but I know George, he likes his luxuries and often uses devalued Continental currency. To wipe my filth, I have a reusable piece of muslin that I wash and use when I know that George will be visiting me. Of course if I were Martha I would have a slave lady’s maid do it for me. George might also have the smell of horse sweat on him.
Taste – George has very “bad breath”. His teeth are rotten but so are mine. In fact, most ladies have rotting teeth by 18. George is not much of a kisser since he is so self-conscious. He does like to bite with his gums but I think that is just to keep me in my place. There is always a hint of pus and infection when he breathes on me. He has a chronic sinus problem and since we don’t have antibiotics, he just lives with a general malaise.
Visual-I have been pregnant twelve times. I have stretched out skin around my lower belly but George never sees this since I always wear some clothes when we have sex. My sister has had twenty-one pregnancies but only two of her children have survived to adulthood. I never look at George without clothes. It is very dark when we have sex since candles are a luxury and George does not really seem to want to look at me anyway. I have touched his “manhood” through his breeches. They are so tight I think it may rip the silk.
Touch– Sex with George hurts. He never waits until I am moist enough to accommodate his “manhood”. I have an itching that I can’t quite get rid myself of. It feels as though my insides are rusty. I have had some watery discharge from my woman’s parts for some time now -it has a smell of a dead dog but George does not stay long enough to notice.
Yes.. this shot was taken of my my passenger seat in 2015.
Society has a place for obsessive people. I believe that artists, scientists, lawyers, writers and countless others would never create or solve major problems were it not for their inherent obsessiveness but nothing is more boring that to be on the outside while someone is else is obsessive. Even if I might share an obsession (I did say might) like finding the perfect shoes, purse or spouse, listening to the endless and often nonsensical loops of others’ mental tapes in their quest for perfection can be an act of unselfish devotion. Give me the summary please…unless of course you want to listen to me.
In any event, once I am off a subject, substance or person, I am usually done and find it hard to recreate why I wanted it in the first place. There has only been one substance for me, however, that keeps me hanging on and that is Diet Coke (or its aspartame sweetened caffeinated soda counterparts). What is it about Diet Coke that is so addictive? I last blogged in 2010 about my week of detox only to find myself back on it and trying to dry out in 2013. How did it happen? I am a smart, high functioning individual yet I have been swilling chemicals down my throat for over forty years. I have been letting myself be ruled by an addiction to the point where it dictates when I shop and where I will go on vacation depending on the accessibility of my drug. Do I have a secret death wish?
Maybe I would have given it up years ago if only one doctor had said that it could be the source of some of my strange health issues :wacky erratic heart beat, fainting, aches and pains, weight gain despite low calorie diet and failure to get into Atkins inspired ketosis while drinking aspartame and a genetic immune deficiency disorder, but when I told many doctors over the years of my very bad habit of drinking 15-20, 20 oz bottles of the stuff every day, most said that Diet Coke was completely safe and that I only needed to watch my caffeine intake. In fact my immunologist is a Diet Coke addict herself. I never lied or was in denial (so often hallmark of an addict) in fact; I often came to appointments defiantly swilling a bottle in my hand just –in case.
When I was pregnant with my first child, my obstetrician even berated me for having switched to real coke for the sake of baby. He suggested that Aspartame was preferable to weight gain. I did not believe him and stayed off Diet Coke for my pregnancy. At that time, my only experience with Diet Coke withdrawal had been in my 20s and my short lived attempt to be free from addiction had precipitated a weight loss of ten pounds within the first two weeks. The flu-ish (low grade fever, sore throat and body aches,) feeling that I got after all of my attempts at detox, I either attributed to caffeine withdrawal or the state of pregnancy.
I dared to believe that Diet Coke might be a player in my inability to lose weight. For the past two years, I would chart my calories and show my doctors that I was exercising and eating at a rate that would place me well below my current weight using the calories in and calories out model. I suspect that some of these doctors did not believe that I was telling the truth. I mean let’s face it overweight people are just food addicts right? Addicts are inherently dishonest? One kinder doctor suggested that my weight gain (yes weight gain on 1500 calories, 30 minutes of weight lifting and30- 50 minutes of cardio a day) might be a result of my approaching menopause but suggested that I consult an endocrinologist. Three months ago, for the first time, a doctor, an endocrinologist actually told me that there was enough evidence to link artificial sweeteners to weight gain. But I wasn’t quite ready to give it up yet. I needed to mull this over…yes obsessively.
There seems to be widespread knowledge that studies show that people who drink diet soda are more likely to be fatter than those who don’t. The key is the studies do not differentiate between artificial sweeteners, however, it is very difficult to find a diet soda without some small amount of Aspartame.
The mechanism is not understood. It is widely believed that the artificial sweeteners create a sense of false security and that people tend to eat more. It is also theorized that people develop a sweet palate and eat more. It wasn’t until I heard an interview with Robert Lustig speaking about the poisonous nature of sugar on the radio, when it hit me that perhaps my body was reacting to Diet Coke in much the same way that many people (according to Lustig) react to sugar— my body may be using calories differently because it perceived that sugar was actually being consumed. No longer calories in and calories out …perhaps my body was storing calories right away as fat because of some kind of insulin fluctuation. More research will have to be done and I hope that there will be funding available for it.
I can only say anecdotally that I after my first week of detox from aspartame in 2010, I was finally able to induce ketosis (which I had been absolutely unable to do on Diet Coke). In three weeks I lost five pounds eating more food than my usual 1500 calories. My face looked less puffy and I did not crave sweets. Aches and pains disappeared. My heart beat was no longer erratic when I exercised. (My cardiologist was convinced that I had developed a sudden rhythm problem these last months but I knew that it was my Diet Coke intake that had increased). I believe that something in Aspartame may also affect the autonomous nervous system in some individuals. I have long noticed a correlation to Diet Coke and symptoms of vasovagal response in myself. I have heard that many parents of epileptics are told not to give their children aspartame. Moreover, In 2016, when I switched to Diet Pepsi after they announced that they would stop using Aspartame, I was fine for months, until I started getting major dizzy spells again. Would you believe it? Pepsi had put the Aspartame back after only ten months-without any media.
I will not cite the numerous books and studies that I have read on Aspartame. Since GD Searle and Monsanto held the patents to Aspartame (which were subsequently sold to The Holland Sweetener Company and Anjinomoto or shared by a few companies after expiration of patent), many studies were just not done on its safety. It may very well be that ALL artificial sweeteners cause some of the same results. However, I dare you to go out and find a diet soda without Aspartame! In any event, for years many main stream publications were very careful not to say anything against Nutrasweet. For instance in 2013, I looked at every old Atkins book that I could find for the passage that I recalled that mentioned that Nutrasweet was not as effective for inducing ketosis. All I could find were veiled references to artificial sweeteners with notes that Atkins products only use sucralose. This has changed a little since the popularity of Keto diets which seem to be very clear about not using Aspartame—remember Monsanto does not own the patent anymore.
For my conspiracy minded friends who are convinced that Ajinomoto might hire assassins to get me, I will just say that I hope they will consider its public relations and put as much money into developing new product. I hope that we will seeing more unbiased and multi funded studies of Nutrasweet or Aspartame specifically.
This post first ran on Open Salon under the name of Snarkychaser May 4th 2013. When Salon announced that the site would shut down, I transferred this in case any Diet Coke addicts needed a positive story. with updates from the last 11 years.
I lie in bed and worry. Am I doing as much as I can for them? How has my husband influenced them? Who has joined them today? They only have life spans of twenty minutes or so and keeping tabs on them is a never ending battle. For the past two months, I have even gone on a special diet hoping to improve the chances that the good ones will increase and the bad ones will dwindle. Unfortunately, science is still only learning which bacteria are the best to have in one’s gut. For now, it might be the best policy to foster diversity.
When I first read that obese people have a higher ratio of Firmicutes and Bacterioidetes (classifications of bacteria) in their digestive tract than thinner people, I finally felt vindicated. Now when people smugly tell me that weight gain is simply “calories in and calories out and I must be eating too many calories if I am not losing weight”, I calmly reply, “The Firmicutes phyla of bacteria that convert calories more efficiently into fat. I must have way too many! Don’t you realize my bacteria are sabotaging my efforts? I am not in denial about my calorie intake; I really do have a slow metabolism!”
I started my quest to rid myself of any Firmicutes lounging in my colon. I tried to learn more about the kind of bacteria that I would need to ingest to be a thin healthy person (so far I can only tell you that Lactobacillus Gasseri is one strain that is linked with thin people)* Lots of research shows that a diet high in fruits and vegetables may change the composition of our gut flora-or a composition that might be found in thinner people- but not much is understood about permanent changes to this composition. We acquire a signature bacterial mix early in life which continues to evolve and though we may change the mix through things such as antibiotic use, we also may revert back to the old one just as quickly. Two months ago, I also learned that my Diet Coke addiction was wreaking serious havoc on my balance of Firmicutes and Bacterioidetes.For the first time, I was able to see every 20 oz bottle of non-caloric, sweet, fizzy, comfort for the poison that it was.
Getting in touch with my inner bacteria is new for me. I have always had a scorched earth policy when it came to microbes. When my teen-aged daughter worked in a lab over the summers experimenting with E. coli, it took all the willpower that I had not to douse her with Lysol every time she walked into the house exclaiming that she could not get the smell of E. coli out of her nose.
We are only just learning how bacteria play a starring roll in helping our bodies adapt to the world around us. Only this week, I read an article that said that new research has shown that the antioxidants in dark chocolate only work because the microbes in our gut ferment the chemicals thereby making them accessible to the human body. Martin Blaser M.D. writes,” without microbes, we could not eat or breathe. Without us, nearly all microbes would do just fine….bacterial cells substantially out number you own human cells. Seventy to ninety percent of all of the cells in you body are nonhuman.”** So what is the optimal composition of bacteria for me?
The easiest way to do this (given how little we know) might be to find a skinny person and do a homemade fecal transplant (For those of you interested in the digestive process, I recommend Mary Roach’s book,Gulp. She has a whole chapter on this procedure.) A fecal transplant could establish whole colonies of skinny person’s bacteria but I could also find myself with a case of something worse than a little excess weight. I recently took a Harvard Business School edX class called, Innovations in Healthcare Technology, I shyly suggested to my classmates that a “weight loss oriented fecal do it your self kit” might be a money-maker but the students were much more interested in saving lives. I may consider doing this on my own. I have just given to the American Gut Project and for a $99 contribution; I will get a kit that I can send for a stool analysis.-which is a good start. Meanwhile I will be ever alert to not becoming that Fletcher disciple who is obsessed with his/her digestive system (and if you read any of the internet forums on digestive disorders, you will find many).
*Lactobacillus Gasseri …(as per The Microbiome Diet by Raphael Kellman, MD).
Growing up in New York City I learned that it is easy to pick a fight with random strangers. In a dispute over a cut in a long line or who should get the lone taxi cab after waiting in the rain, one can be remarkably rude and mean because we will never see these people again. It’s easy to burn lots of bridges in an anonymous city but now that I live in a suburb, I need to watch my interactions when confronted by rude behavior because chances are I will have to see these people again and again.
Do I tell the woman at the gym on the elliptical next to me who is speaking loudly on her cell phone -in a voice that sounds like Fran Drescher in the Nanny- to keep her volume down? Should I point out that there are rules for cell phone use? Do I ask her if she is hearing impaired? If I make a meaningful loud cough, I might swallow some saliva and really have a big cough and then she may tell me to get off the machine because I am too sick to be in the gym. I may then have to tell her that she may be too germaphobic to be in a gym.
If I do find that I see her day after day and it has become awkward, I might apologize to smooth things over with her and tell her that I knew that she had a very good reason to stay on her phone because I could tell that she had had a relapse. After all I could hear the whole conversation even with my headphones on. “Clearly”, I may continue that she “is in some kind of exercise addicts’ 12 step recovery group and was not able to leave her place on her machine to speak in a more private location”. So why does this woman seem to be afraid of me every time I see her now? I gave her good advice on her germphobia, exercise addiction and hearing problem?
Even when there are clear-cut rules- as in my local traffic circle, the gym, the Penn Station restroom, and the NJ transit quiet car- we often are not aware of them and risk violating them. Are these people just selfish? Assholes? Pathetic? From Brooklyn? How many times do I try to put a label on a relatively anonymous person that leaves me with bad taste in my mouth? Have I unwittingly been rude to others?
Perhaps another way to view this might be: When people are being rude to us, they are just so self-absorbed in their own problems and we in return are self-absorbed in ourselves by thinking that their behavior has anything to do with their feelings about us or how we fit into their world.
A psychology study was done at Princeton Seminary School. (I will link to better explanations than mine) revealed that situations may have a bigger impact on some behavior than personality. Seminary students were told that they needed to give a lecture on The Good Samaritan in the next building. Unknown to the students, a disheveled coughing man had been placed between the two buildings. Of those students who had been told to hurry to the next building, only 10 percent stopped to help the ailing man. Of those students who were told to take their time getting to the next building, 60 percent stopped to help the man. The conclusion was that being in a hurry was a predominant factor in whether one person would stop to help another.
I might also add that anxiety might be a factor. I might even conclude that anxious people might be so wrapped up in their own stuff, that they may not be in a position to be particularly caring. Does that mean that people are always that way? Is it possible that many people in the New York Metropolitan area are anxious balls of mess and in a hurry? Wouldn’t it be better to let the rude actions of others glance off our impervious amour of calm? We can now look pityingly at that man that calls us “Stupid Lady” in the parking lot when our efforts to place the cart back in the corral for a second time fail and go colliding into his car. Perhaps we can muse that he is really just nervous about the prospect of a Memorial Day spent with his mother in- law or can I still claim that people who drive BMWs are rude drivers?
Special thanks to edX UQxThink 101 The Science of Everyday Thinking
The Scientific American article sat there every time we used the bathroom. I really didn’t have a chance to read it but it involved MOOCs (massive online courses) bringing first rate education to Rwanda. That same summer as we drove all over California to visit colleges for my teen aged daughter, she struggled to find internet access to take her tests from the University of Melbourne MOOC on Epigenetics. My husband and I were fascinated by her dedication to learn and I became sold on the idea of MOOCs.
This winter, when my twitter feed posted an article in the Atlantic Monthly about the edX, collaboration with Harvardx and MITx and their MOOC platform, I jumped right in to sign up. Because this was a very cold winter, I was not mobile due to an injury, and I am a compulsive person, I decided that three MOOC classes would be much better than one – and they are all free- so I enrolled in:
BerkeleyX:ColWri2.2x Principles of Written English (a basic college essay writing class) taught by Dr. Maggie Sokulik, professor at UC Berkeley.
BerkleeX:BCM-MB110x Introduction to the Music Business taught by John P. Kellogg, Esq. Assistant Chair of Music Business Management, Berklee College of Music.
McGillX:CHEM181x Food for Thought, (it is actually a chemistry class for non- chemists taught by three of chemistry professors at McGill). The course describes itself as ‘A course that offers a scientific framework for understanding food and its impact on health and society from past to present’.
Each of the course descriptions estimate the amount of time that the student will need to allocate for the course. In my case, each of these courses listed five hours a week and that was accurate. The format differs slightly from course to course but there are usually lectures and suggested reading combined with interactive quizzes at the end of a segment. Often there is a forum for discussion on a topic with the other classmates. In some cases, the open discussions have student moderators from the universities, who comment .Some people may be put off by the lack of teacher to student interaction, however, that is not the point of a MOOC. When we refer to Massive is it just that. In my writing class, the instructor noted that 46,000 students were enrolled in the class.
The experience taught me that my children will have international competition and opportunities never experienced by my husband or myself. The courses provided me with a way to get to know some of my classmates and get a feeling for their worlds. Often a Facebook page or Google chat is established for each course and I started a LinkedIn group for my Music classmates. The Music class Facebook page has been a blast as we all muse about the future of the music industry and possibility of UBIQUITOUS WI FI and how in the future musicians will be able to have jam sessions from different parts of the globe with out a glitch. MOOCs may change the world.
I have posted some of my classmate’s music from the Intro to Music Business Course
My relationship with Genspace first began three years ago when I accompanied my fifteen year old daughter from New Jersey to downtown Brooklyn to interview for an internship with the United States’ first community biotech lab, Genspace. The lab is located in an old seven story building on Nevins Street that houses artists, architects, a tea company and many start-ups that are part of Brooklyn’s Tech Triangle. Over the years my daughter has put in hours of research in ongoing projects, such as making a chair from bacteria, and has fallen in love with Brooklyn, the lab and the building. Genspace has been such a positive force that I suggested that I go with her to one of the many lectures or courses that are offered to the public. Last week, we decided to take the Molecular Gastronomy Class which would require less specific biology experience and the least commitment.
The quarters are small and we piled ourselves in front of the projected images on the wall while our instructor, Ann Yonetani, PhD. explained that molecular gastronomy is an art that alters food’s appearance, taste and texture using scientific technologies. Dr. Yonetani explained that as science is getting more involved with the principles of food preparation, the discoveries are myth busting generations of the folk-lore of cooking: such as how to most efficiently sear meat to minimize moisture loss (best done at the end after flipping every 30-50 seconds to keep a steady internal heat -not by an initial searing).
During this three-hour class, we would be making three basic structures that are standard in the genre known as molecular gastronomy: edible spheres, soil and foam . We would break up into groups of five to experience for hands on experimentation. I am not a scientist by training so I relied heavily on my daughter to translate for me the processes that were to occur. I am also not very good at following recipes and hate to measure. So I was happy to have her do our part in the group while I could take my pictures.
While the group prepped by washing our hands, my daughter noted that the safety measures for a food project were not at the level that most of the lab’s community would use if they were working with bacteria. This was in essence a cooking class. I will try to describe the sphere project in the pictures that I took.
This is the set up for the spheres project. Spheres are liquids that are contained by a gel- in this case, the gel will be formed from the contact of Sodium Alginate with a Calcium Chloride solution.
Sodium Alginate
Calcium Chloride
We combined mango juice with an equal part of the Sodium Alginate solution. The combined mango/alginate solution needed to be tested for its Ph -it should be above 3.5 (we did not have to modify with sodium citrate).
Ph Strip
The Mango/ Alginate solution would be drawn by a pipette and ‘popped’ into the Calcium Chloride Solution. Upon contact with the solution, spheres form . The longer they are in the Calcium Chloride solution, the harder they get. We then we bathed them in a water solution to remove the flavor of the Calcium Chloride.
We ate all of our Mango spheres so we made pineapple ones.
These are beet juice spheres from another group
One of my classmates had once eaten a salad topped with balsamic vinaigrette spheres. I am already planning the way that I can utilize spheres in my home cooked meals….maybe hot sauce spheres or lime juice and simple syrup spheres dropped into a glass of Tequila. I just bought a kit on Amazon and hope to get started soon.
Laura Stinchcomb 