Malinda's TableOh, to be as adventurous as Claire, who designed this amazing van in order to live her life on the road. I have made a few attempts to drive across country but the fates always intervened with a financial, health, or otherwise problem. I love Claire's van and great spirit.
Many of my friends have traveled to China, but I never want to step foot in a country that eats dogs and cats for dinner. Imagine a place that has a dog meat festival, like the city if Yulin. OK, call me a hypocrite. I don't eat pork or lamb but I have to confess that on occasion I enjoy my son's amazing kobe burgers and spare ribs - and feel guilty with every bite. I"m working on this and give money to PETA to make up for this transgression. But dalmatians and golden retrievers in open markets? Come on. Maybe the coronavirus pandemic will change Chinese minds about the consumption of companion animals, and there is evidence of small changes as middle class Chinese take in poodles and Border collies as pets. But change is slow. And human behavior is consistent. So in this lifetime, I'm staying out of China. For the record, Vietnam and other countries are equality guilty of such horror. I'm not going there either.
Many years ago, my best friend Howard and I rented an apartment in Martha's Vineyard. When we got there and entered the place, it was empty of all furniture. Apparently there was a murder involved and we might have been homeless for the week. The realtor offered us a lovely home on the bay as compensation for our inconvenience. I sat on the porch of this beautiful house and listened to my favorite song over and over: Van Morrison and the Chieftains singing, "Oh, Shenandoah. Howard died twenty-five years ago. Every time I hear this song, tears form in my eyes. There is something about it ...
If you are stuck in the house until Dr. Fauci says it's safe to come out, read The Great Alone, by Kristin Hannah. You'll want to take off to the Pacific Northwest territories immediately after you get a coronavirus vaccine.
Friends of mine ask me, as a psychologist, to explain why 35% of the people in the country still admire a sociopathic, immoral, imbecile who happens to be president of the United States. The Trumpsters know he lies, has cheated on his wife, and betrayed the country by making deals with dictators. So what's going on here? There are two answers:
One select group of Trumpsters care only about their finances. They believe it is in their self-interest to accept as president a man they know is lacking in basic traits of humanity, such as caring about others less fortunate than themselves. Some of them have contempt for the president but are concerned mostly about their own pocketbooks, even if they have enough money for two lifetimes. They are almost as bad as Trump is. This is probably 5% of the population. It is certainly most of the top 1% who control 99% of the wealth in the country and want to keep it that way.
To understand the remaining 30% I direct them to the research of David Dunning and Justin Kruger, Cornell University social psychologists whose 1999 research answered this question. The Dunning-Kruger effect refers to the cognitive bias in which people of low ability at a task overestimate their ability. In other words, while smart people often recognize what they don't know, dumb people are ignorant of their dumbness. To put it in nicer terms, incompetent people don't know they are incompetent, because they don't have the skills they need to recognize what a correct thought is. Some of these people suffer from "anosognosia," which is a neurological disorder leading to a deficit of self-awareness, a condition in which a person with a disability is unaware of having it. Anosognosia results from brain damage, usually to the parietal lobe, sometimes to the front--temporal-parietal area of the right hemisphere.
In a number of their experiment, Professors Dunning and Kruger tested undergraduate psychology students by giving them tests of logical reasoning. They then examined the students' self-assessments of the results of these tests. After learning their scores, students were asked to estimate their ranks in the class. The competent students underestimated their class rank and the incompetent students overestimated theirs. In fact, students who scored as lost as in the 12th percentile in tests of their sense of humor, knowledge of grammar and logical reasoning, thought that they had scored as high as 62%. This explains who many of my students who get low scores in their tests or papers argue that they have done better than they did. Even when I give back papers for a do-over and better grade, they don't change a word.
So from now on, when you are wondering about why people still follow the cretin who is our president say to yourself, are they rich or do they suffer from the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
Occasionally, I have a day where too many things go wrong. Once it was a flat tire on a dark road in Maryland at midnight, after which I got lost and was stopped for weaving on the highway by a state trooper, who helped me find my way. On another day, I dropped one of my hearing aids in my house and pulled my back out trying to find it, which I didn't. No matter what happens, I never curse myself for being stupid, or lament what happened, or even complain about my unfortunate fate. What I do is take a long breath and say, "Now what?" It is really all a person can do. I learned this from Jon Kabat-Zinn, known for his research on stress reduction and mindfulness.
Wherever You Go There You Are
Guess What? When it comes right down to it, wherever you go, there you are. Whatever you wind up doing, that’s what you’ve would up doing. Whatever you are thinking right now, That’s what’s on your mind. Where has happened to you, it has already happened. The important question is, how are you going to handle it? In other words, “Now what?” Like it or not, this moment is all we really have to work with. Yet we all too easily conduct our lives as if forgetting momentarily that we are here, where we already are, and that we are in what we are already in. In every moment, we find ourselves at the crossroad of here and now. But when the cloud of forgetfulness over where we are now sets, in, in that very moment we get lost. “Now what?” becomes a real problem. To allow ourselves to be truly in touch with where we already are, no matter where that is, we have got to pause in our experience long enough to let the present moment sink in: long enough to actually feel the present moment, to see it in its fullness, to hold it in awareness and thereby come to know and understand it better. Only then can we accept the truth of this moment of our life, learn from it, and move on.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
CNN reporter Anderson Cooper was the son of Gloria Vanderbilt, an heiress to a fortune at 18 months of age (75 million in today's terms). Instead of coasting through life on her money, Gloria became an artist, actress, and designer. She was married four times and had four sons, one of whom committed suicide by jumping out the window of her apartment while she was there. She lived to be 95, and to the end was a devoted mother. “The last few weeks, every time I kissed her goodbye, I’d say, ‘I love you, Mom,’” Anderson said, after her death. “She would look at me and say, ‘I love you, too. You know that.’ And she was right – I did know that. I knew it from the moment I was born, and I’ll know it for the rest of my life, said Anderson Cooper, what greater gift can a mother give to her son?” I hope my son is sure of the same.
Who among us remembers the Ladies Menu, when upscale restaurants only listed the prices for men since it was assumed they paid the dinner bill when out with a woman. I loved it, but as the Buddhists tell us, everything changes and ends. This custom ended in mid-July, 1980, when a lady named Kathleen Bick wanted to treat her business partner, Larry Becker, to dinner. She took him to an elegant French restaurant called L'Orangerie in LA, where she was handed a white menu to Mr. Becher's green one. The veal medallion was 28 dollars, which today would be about 82 dollars. The pair were so outraged by this quaint habit that they left the restaurant without eating. They immediately called a lawyer, Gloria Allred, a well-known feminist attorney. The restaurant was charged with discrimination and they demanded an injunction to end the dual menu practice. They also wanted the state to revoke the restaurant's liquor license. Ms. Bick said the restaurant experience made her feel "humiliated and incensed." To make her point, Ms. Allred and her clients set up a table outside L'Orangerie, laid with a linen tablecloth, gold plates, silverware, and a vase with a rose in it. The restaurant of course caved in to the litigation and ended their wicked ways. The suit against L'Orangerie was dropped. What troubles me most about the story is that there are so few elegant French restaurants around today. My favorite when I was a young woman was LaPanetiere and later Le Bec-Fin. I got the price-free menu. Which means I had great boyfriends.
Have you ever notice how often people make life more difficult for themselves by complicating uncomplicated things? How often you embellish a problem or situation, making it worse than it really is? How often do you "read" things into an interaction? Here is one of my favorite antidotes. It's from Buddhist writer Silvia Boorstein's Don't Just Do Something: Sit There. Silvia once called a monastery to arrange a retreat. The person who answered the phone said, 'You need to talk to Robert." Sylvia left a message for Robert. The next day Robert returned Sylvia's call but Sylvia wasn't home. A day later, Sylvia called Robert again. He wasn't there. She explained the back and forth calls with Robert to the person who answered the phone that third day. She added, "Maybe this is a sign that I"m not supposed to do my retreat," complicating the situation. The response was, "I think it's a sign that Robert isn't here."
I must admit that I never particularly liked Ricky Gervais' brand of humor, but I do love his British comic/tragedy After Life on Netflix. Great characters, great dog. I think I'll leave videos for my family giving them advice after I'm dead, as his late wife does in the show. I'm sure they will appreciate it.
I remember the Watts riots in Los Angeles in August of 1965, triggered when a white California Highway Patrolman pulled over and arrested, a Marquette Frye, a young African American motorist on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. The riots led to 34 deaths, more than 1,000 injuries, and more than $40 million in property damage. In the course of six days, about 30,000 adults participated in the riots. Is this what we have in store for us this summer? Along with the coronavirus?
Everyone I know has gained weight - up to fifteen pounds - during the coronavirus lock-down. Here's the main culprit in my house: Rachel Ray's Chocolate Chip Banana Bread. So easy to make, so quick to eat.
Ingredients
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, lightly beaten
3 bananas, mashed (1 cup mashed banana)
1 cup chocolate chips
Preparation
Pre-heat the oven to 350°F.
Grease and flour a 8 1/2-inch x 4 1/2-inch loaf pan (or use baking spray).
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Mix in the oil, bananas, and eggs. Stir in the chocolate chips (do not over-mix!) and pour into the prepared pan. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 60-80 minutes. Cool the loaf in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out and cool completely, right side up.
https://www.rachaelray.com/recipes/chocolate-chip-banana-bread/
A relationship made in the stars. This couple, Carol Kiparsky and Ian Irwin, both in their 70's, decided to go for a hike in the dense California woods without their cell phones or cold-weather clothing. They were lost for two weeks. A cadaver dog found before they turned into cadavers themselves.