SLlinky Thursday

Easter Greetings:  Sixty-five years ago, Fred Astaire came out of retirement to replace Gene Kelly and team up with the inimitable Judy Garland in the now classic Easter Parade.  Hear them sing.

  

   

                Forget Easter bonnets:  how about

                some trend-on multicolor pastel 

                shoes :

  

  

  First poems: from 10 famous poets including Proust, Plath and 

  Dickenson at Flavorwire.  Although he published his first poem at 

  age 18 in The Harvard Monthly, little Edward Estin Cummings--e

  e to all of us-- recorded this one when he was only three:

            My First Poem, (1897)
   
            Oh little birdie
oh
oh
oh,
            With your
toe
toe
toe.

Jane and Julia--two women our age going after the bad guys:  Film director Jane Campion's current HBO series, Top of the Lake, has a female detective confronting the criminals who have violated a teenage girl.  Julia Pierson, the first female Director of the Secret Service, was sworn in this week to fight off counterfeiters, cyber-attackers and anyone else thinking of messing with the First Family and other dignitaries.  

Second Life Gone Horribly Wrong:  

He was heading towards 60, his last kid had gone to college, his wife was teaching abroad.  His life felt empty until he found online shopping.  Buzz Bissinger, Pulitzer Prize winner and acclaimed writer of Friday Night Lights, describes "My Gucci Addiction" in this sad and disturbing piece at GQ. 

Buen Viaje, as they say in Spanish:  Travel consultants predict a rise in South American tourism now that the newly-elected Pope hails from Argentina.  As if you need another reason to go to Buenos Aires.

Joyce Carol Oates: Love, Loss and Just Saying Yes

Joyce Carol Oates, the prolific American author and feminist, whose new book The Accursed, which Stephen King praised as the "perhaps the world's first post-modern gothic novel", sat down with Caryl early this year for her first pre-publication interview. The conversation veered from vampires, demons and zombies to love, loss and the importance of saying yes to life. In February, 2008, after the death of her husband, the woman whose first collection of short stories came out a half century ago and whose canon includes more than 100 books and articles, found her self blocked, unable to write a single word of fiction. Raymond J. Smith, her soulmate of 35 years and her publishing partner in The Ontario Review, had died suddenly of complications from pneumonia two days after a routine visit to the ER. Oates found herself paralyzed, depressed, unable to sleep, shut down by the “ontological shock” of widowhood. What saved her was not turning her experience into a memoir –which she did eventually in A Widow’s Story but rather a simple coping strategy that could help all of us who are stalled, stunted or scared, all of us who want to move forward towards a second life, one that is not shaped by loss but informed by it, one we live fully with our eyes—and hearts-- wide open.

Marsha Haygood: How to move from a corporate job to being an entrepreneur

Second Life Profile:  Marsha Haygood

In her first life, Marsha Haygood, currently of StepWise Associates, spent more than 25 years as a corporate executive most recently as VP of human resources and administration for New Line Cinema, a division of Time Warner.  She developed a talent for listening to employees, understanding their needs and offering them solutions and a plan for pursuing a more fulfilling work life.  But then Marsha starting listening to herself and realized that she wanted to work with less senior people and minorities, a segment where there was a serious lack of mentorship.  So Marsha came up with her own second lives plan that was much more detailed and thought out than a simple everyday “to do” list….. 

Tina Turner: Vogue Cover Girl at 73

"Simply The Best" album, 1991                                           German Vogue cover, 2013

Second Look:  Tina Turner

Tina Turner has shattered the glass ceiling, at least in publishing terms.  This April, German Vogue has put the rock and roll legend on its cover with some splashy fashion spreads inside.  To date, the oldest cover ‘girl’ was Meryl Streep featured on the American edition in January 2012 when she was 62.  Even More magazine favors celebs in their 40s and 50s as its cover subjects.

Print & Save Shopping List for the Menopausal Diet

 (Illustration by Sandy Haight)

Diet for a second life:  What foods to buy to keep weight off after menopause

Ruth Gantman, our trusted nutrition counselor, has put together a list of the foods that are not only healthy but will keep the weight gain at bay.  A monthly contributor to Second Lives Club and a graduate of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, Ruth sorts through all the health and diet news, latest research studies, and alternative medicines to come up with a diet--or as she prefers eating plan--that helps women our age maintain their weight and well-being. Be sure to read some of her older posts and check in the first week of every month for Ruth's Diet For A Second Life, a sensible eating plan that fits our life stage and lifestyle.  Continue reading for that shopping list...

How Not To Gain Weight After Menopause

Illustration by Joe Harris

Diet for a Second Life: What foods to always avoid

As we age, our hormone levels drop which means that our ability to create new healthy cells diminishes. This reflects on us inside and out. That means we see the change in our skin, and feel the change in our bodies.  We need estrogen to process insulin and when that diminishes; we are at greater risk for weight gain, and diabetes.

We don’t have to gain weight as we age. But, you need to know that it’s easy to put on weight with the onset of menopause. Our bodies are now more sensitive to sugar. You may find yourself eating the same as you did before, and gaining weight. When a particular hormone system breaks down as with the loss of estrogen from the ovaries, it affects all the other processes in the entire physiological system because the systems of the body are interconnected. Your body breaks down more than it builds up and the end result is aging.  We have to change our relationship to food in order to fight the aging process.  We need a menopausal diet.

Gloria Steinem Comes Out: What's Her Next Frontier

(Photo:  Ms. Foundation)

Yes, that’s Gloria Steinem at work at Ms., the feminist magazine she and a dedicated crew (see picture below) founded more than 40 years ago.  Hers was one of the stories featured in Makers: Women Who Make America, the PBS documentary on the last 50 years of the women’s movement that aired earlier this week.  (If you missed it you can watch it online; here’s the PBS link.)  The New York Times review dubbed Gloria the star.  But now she's off to the next frontier. 

The Best Exercise for Strengthening Knees

The most fallible joint (photo from New York Times)

Caryl perfects: The Squat ( You Can Too!)

I’ve always had trouble with my knees. The knee is the most fallible joint in the human body. I read that in Sports Illustrated decades ago—and it stuck with me. Many factors contribute to aching knees, and not all of them have to do with age. My own knee problems began in my teens with a cheerleading accident. Think splits gone horribly wrong. In my 20s, while downhill skiing (or was it tennis??) I tore ligaments in my knee that resulted in a knee brace (hard to wear with the high boots of that era). With exercise, I managed to avoid surgery. As an aside, I am convinced one of the reasons I married my husband is that he carried me up to my third-floor walk-up apartment in Greenwich Village during my six weeks of physical therapy.

What is Evernote.

Maryl answers:  The 3 ways Evernote helped me get a memory like an elephant

“To help the world remember everything, communicate effectively and get things done”.  Now that’s a corporate mission statement I can support.  So in my ongoing effort to do less, be more efficient and productive (especially online) and save time, I’m mastering Evernote.  This is a suite of software tools that organizes my ideas and projects together in one place regardless of their format or original source. I’ve already found three ways I can clean up my clutter and stop losing files, photos, bookmarked web pages, emails, video, audio…easily got another hour back to my day!

Caryl toasts: Wine--A Love Story, Part 2

And, Our Romantic Heroine is A Feminist!

Norma Ratcliffe, the African Queen of Wines

I think you’re going to like this second-life profile; it’s a story of travel and romance, family and fulfillment, of transforming a corner of your world into a global platform. It’s a real woman’s story, one that’s inspiring and instructive. At the end you’ll get a buying tip from the woman herself for one of the most delicious red wines you’ve probably never heard of. Remember red wines are good for you--and your memory.

Maryl toasts: Why Women Love Wine

Women buy and drink more wine than men do. Despite this, if you should find yourself dining out this Valentine’s Day, don’t expect to be handed the wine list if your companion is a male.  Interested in some new suggestions?  Continue reading and check out the Second Lives Club list of ten reasonably-priced (around $20) and highly-recommended choices that are equally enjoyable alone or with a special someone.

We interrupt this blog post to bring you The Continuous LIfe

Painting by Mark Strand

Does it sometime feel like life is repeating itself? You load the dishwasher; you unload the dishwasher. You put your makeup on in the morning; you wash it off at night. You lose your keys, your glasses, your phone; you find your keys, your glasses, your phone. You write a blog post; you write another blog post . . . Sometimes the continuous life feels like numbing monotony, other times reassuring predictability. One thing we know at Second Lives Club, it is important every so often to stop and appreciate what we have as well as figure out what we can do better. So, after a GenFab dinner with other midlife bloggers tonight –(website launching soon, bookmark this link)—Maryl and I are going to take a few days off and a hard look at what we’re doing here. How’s that for a cosmic question? But first a favorite poem from Mark Strand to sustain you while we're away.