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Not to seem too “cup half empty”, but it is the season for family, excessive shopping, stress and sickness. Everyone in my office has been sick — twice. Less light, less exercise, less outdoors make for weakened immune systems and more chance of illness. I make sure to stock up on good food, good tea and get enough rest. In addition, I make sure I have the following:
1) Manuka Honey — I use it whenever I feel a cold coming on. I put a spoonfull in a cup of hot water or spread a little on toast. I also use it during allergy season to stave off attacks. Manuka honey has been used topically for minor and more serious wounds. I cannot give you a first hand account of this however. More information about the honey is here, but be forewarned, the research was funded by the honey industry . Don’t take their word, take mine. It works. It is also not the price of your run of the mill honey, budget $25 per jar.
2) Umcka from Nature’s Way — This is tincture made from a South African medicinal plant, pelargonium sidoides. There have been double blind studies and clinical trials, etc. Bottom line is that I found it helpful is not curing a cold (does anything?) but it relieves symptoms and in my opinion shortens the duration. I use it like the honey, if I suspect a cold coming on, I take a few drops several times a day. I give it to Aidan as well.
3) Kold Kare — This is actually andrographis paniculata. I basically took this one year on blind faith and now always have it around. It is an herbal supplement of sorts. I do not give this to Aidan.
Who knows what really works when we are sick. A little extra attention, good movies, bedside care and comfort go along way for me. And, a good old fashioned Coca-Cola with ice and a straw.
There are a few readers (you know who you are) who know a lot more about this stuff than me. I hope to hear from you in the comments section.
Tim and I are delighted to have a guest blogger. We hope to have more. Look for some on guest posts relating to music and art in the coming weeks.
Cathy’s post, Why I Run, is about more than running. It is about community and having a sense of place. It is about loving where you are, no matter where you might be. Enjoy. Cathy is a librarian and resident of Somerville.
Shepard Fairey mural in Union Square photo by Jonathan O'Toole owner of Grand
In my teens it seemed as if I would forever be stepping on Andre the Giant’s head. Clearly it was graffiti; the ubiquitous sticker or stencil of this man’s gigantic head spared no lamppost or street corner in Harvard Square. But I was too caught up in buying Depeche Mode CDs to fully understand what I was really seeing: a massive graffiti art campaign of the ’80s.
Shepard Fairey, the artist responsible for branding Andre’s head into my memory, well beyond when I stopped watching him wrestle on Saturday mornings, is about to have an exhibit at the ICA in February. In the meantime, he is spreading his street art around the area once again and recently installed a mural on the building that houses Grand, a great gift and home furnishings shop in Union Square. It is now the latest bit of eye candy I pass by on my Rocky Run – the 5K loop of my life in Somerville.
The run usually begins in front of my new home on Beacon Street, a place I still pinch myself for living in after almost two years, after a lifetime of drifting around the city of my birth wondering if I’d ever be able to drop anchor. I usually start running up Beacon to Porter Square, past the smell of burgers wafting from O’Sullivan’s and the guy I often notice sitting on the bench in front of Petsi’s Pies with a coffee. I thump sidewalk grates that seem out of place, this being Somerville, not Manhattan. This is the time, these first few minutes, when I’m usually dreading the endeavor. My muscles are fighting my will, the tree roots are tripping my rhythm, and my joints could use a squirt of oil.
When I reach the top of the street I turn right onto Somerville Avenue, glad for gentle slope in the pavement. I’m beginning to warm up and hoping to hear one of the few hip-hop songs on my Shuffle, specifically Missy Elliott, explaining to me, yet again, why she’s a smooth chick. Off to the left, just two traffic lights away, is my gym, Healthworks. My gym. The place that helped me lessen the burden of an incredible amount of weight I had been carrying. How much, you might wonder? A lot. More than you could reasonably conceive. A shitload, essentially. It’s a place that’s broken me down and made me mighty. Even after eight years I can still be brought to tears when I think about what’s been left behind on spin bikes and treadmills. Heavy bags and hand wraps. Dumbbells and jump ropes. Sometimes my run starts here, after a spinning class, when I really want to feel invincible. I love that I have the option.
Somerville Ave. is still the Somerville Ave. of my childhood: gritty. I run around soapy sidewalks from the car wash, broken glass, and litter. At the moment, construction paraphernalia guides me along my run, reminding me that change is coming, as if I needed it.
I run by Conway Park, where I tried out for little league as a fat 8 year-old tomboy who only knew she liked Fred Lynn because he was a lefty (I didn’t make the team), and the ice skating rink beside the park, where I used to skate not-very-well. An eternity ago, my brother and I walked home from the rink on a cold-ass, slushy, winter afternoon fighting about something that eventually had us flinging our skates at one another, until someone pulled over and told us to stop.
It’s 42 paces across Milk Row Cemetery and I’m just hitting my stride at the Ellis Island of supermarkets: Market Basket, with it’s perpetually jammed parking lot and sawdusted floors. For many years my Saturdays involved mandatory trips to Market Basket with my mother, where I would be instantly separated from her, the woman who blew past everyone on a mission to get the fuck out of there as fast as she could. An ocean of aisles between us, I would eventually call out, “Ma?!?,” only to have a bunch of ladies looking up from their shopping carts to see if I was their kid.
Things begin to change at this point and my run starts to mean something more than the distant past. Behind the cemetery and beside Market Basket is the building that, until recently, was home to the Somerville Boxing Club. The boxing club uses an historic ring, supposedly the oldest active ring in the world, that has the memories of Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Rocky Marciano, and Marvin Hagler reinforcing it’s aluminum frame. I was standing in this ring when Papa Ray, a former professional boxer-turned trainer told me I had a beautiful jab. It’s also the ring where I bloodied someone’s nose for the first time in my life and hugged it off at the end of the round.
The past is wicking away and the present is right in front of me as I run by the new mural, enjoying the flat path and breath of fresh air it affords me. Union Square. I look to the left and can see the space where the farmers’ market is held on Saturdays. I think about how my guy and I go every week and how much we love the routine. But I’m turning right, onto Washington Street, past one of my favorite cafes, Sherman. Some days I might be tired enough to run in and get a sip of water if it’s a particularly hot day, or I might be thinking about how just hours before my run I was sitting inside, with a latte and a book, enjoying a much needed hour of peace for lunch.
Before I know it, I’m up and over the hill by the brand new Argenziano School, which use to be the old Lincoln Park Community School my friend Ellie went to, wishing the run was over but still having to reach the Wine & Cheese Cask, where I am rounding third and heading for home. Past the used car lot that haunted me as a child, the clown-like creepiness embedded in its dirty white paint and soiled, rainbow-colored plastic flags. I’m panting now, running faster, telling myself to run as fast as I can until the sidewalk turns from old, chewed-up concrete to new.
One of my favorite gifts in life came in a box and was from John Evans of Lemuria Bookstore. Possibly, I’d sent him some rare gems I knew he valued; I cannot recall exactly what prompted his sending it. I do recall it was soon after selling my bookstore, and I also recall that the box was filled with his favorite books for the mind and soul.
Though I’ve read and finished several, many still wait for me. On John’s advice, I decided to read one of them daily and enjoy each morning as a way to start my day. It is Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China (published by New Directions). Selected and translated by David Hinton, the book explains the rivers-and-mountains tradition of Chinese poetry through the works of nineteen poets spanning from the 5th century through the 13th century. What has struck me most about the poems thus far is how they remind me that the experience of living is—or should be—an integrated part of the natural world around us. Reading one is for me an act of being quiet, being still, being thoughtful and being present. Finishing one offers a wonderful moment of feeling awake and aware as opposed to consumed by what there is to do and worry about. I thought I would begin sharing my favorites with you on occasion. I hope you enjoy them.
Wandering at Oblique Creek
By T’ao Ch’ien (365-427)
This new year makes it fifty suddenly
gone. Thinking of life’s steady return
to rest cuts deep, driving me to spend
all morning wandering. Skies clear,
air’s breath fresh, I sit with friends
beside this stream flowing far away.
Striped bream weave gentle currents;
calling gulls drift above idle valleys.
Eyes roaming distant waters, I find
ridge above ridge: it’s nothing like
majestic nine-fold immortality peaks,
but to reverent eyes it’s incomparable.
Taking the winejar, I pour a round,
and we start offering brimful toasts:
who knows where today might lead
or if all this will ever come true again.
After a few cups, my heart’s far away,
and I forget thousand-year sorrows:
ranging to the limit of this morning’s
joy, it isn’t tomorrow I’m looking for.
I just recently finished An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, a memoir by Elizabeth McCracken. The book is part tragedy, part travelogue, part love story. The tragedy is present front and center throughout the book and is the death of Ms. McCracken’s first child (nicknamed Pudding) late in her pregnancy. The story is not linear. You start the book knowing what happened. Because of this, the story is not overly dramatic or somber. It is sad but not maudlin.
When reflecting on a dinner party she attended after losing Pudding, Ms. McCracken shares how difficult it is to be present to grief and how she has failed others who have grieved, “I’ve done it myself, when meeting the grief-struck. It’s as though the sad news Rumpelstiltskin in reverse. To mention it by name is to conjure it up, not the grief but the experience itself; the mother’s suicide, the brother’s overdose, the multiple miscarriages. The sadder the news, the less likely people are to mention it. The moment I lost my innocence about such things, I saw how careless I’d been myself.”
Ms. McCracken is brutally honest, funny and self-deprecating. When, during her second pregnancy, Ms. McCracken is in the doctor’s waiting room, she reflects, “I wanted a separate waiting room for people like me, with different magazines. No Parenting, or Wondertime or Pregnancy, no ads with pink or tawny or pearly smiling infants. I wanted Hold Your Horses Magazine, Don’t Count Your Chickens For Women. Pregnant for the Time Being Monthly.”
The memoir is the appropriate length. Ms. McCraken is an accomplished novelist and at this point an accomplished traveler. Her story could have been longer and full of self importance, but it is isn’t. At 184 pages, it is tight and focused. My congratulations to Elizabeth McCracken on the extraordinary accomplishment of writing such an honest and loving memoir. More importantly, my congratulations to her for getting to the other side of a tragedy without bitterness or hatred. You can read more about Ms. McCracken here.
