Anne Marie Upstate

YOUR HEALTH MONTHLY MAGAZINE, Tallahassee Democrat

2011-11-02T08:27:00.000-07:00

5 Natural Fixes to Relieve Restless Leg Syndrome
Youknow those antsy, electric feeling in your legs that can last for hours on end beforeyou’re finally able to sit still or fall asleep? And, because of this you dreadscenarios like sitting on a plane, going to the movies, dining at a restaurant,even going to bed!
Goodnews is you are not in a Stephen King novel. What you have is called RestlessLeg Syndrome (RLS). It’s been characterized by the Restless Leg SyndromeFoundation as a neurological disease. However, scientists and neurologists allover the world haven’t been able to find a cure, which is why RLS sufferers doanything to get rid of their dancing legs from sleep with a bar of soap betweentheir feet to jump on a trampoline in the middle of the night.
Thekey to getting out of the RLS labyrinth is to find treatments that work bestfor your symptoms, but you have to act a little like Sherlock Holmes and dosome serious “undercover” work. As Holmes would say, “Any truth is better thanindefinite doubt!”

1.                  Streeeeeeetch During RLS the muscles in the legs not only need tomove, but they feel tight. Stretching loosens the muscles and increases oxygenand circulation in the legs. Brittani Dezeeuw, director of Hot Yoga Tallahassee,suggests warming up the body with five sun salutations while doing deeppranayama breathing. She then suggests: Seated separate leg stretching, seatedlegs together stretching, and a spinal twist.
2.                  Medical Marijuana Dr. Sean Breen, ofMedical Cannabis of Southern California, has prescribed medical marijuana to twodozen patients diagnosed with RLS. “They fall asleep faster, don’t wake up inthe middle of the night, and they wake up feeling rested,” he says, adding thatcannabinoids have a very relaxing affect on the musculature and act bothcentrally and peripherally in the nervous system. “How much cannabinoids target the dopaminergic system,which is what Science believes is the root cause of RLS, is yet to be fullyunderstood,” he concluded.
3.                  Avoid Stimulants Fact: Chocolate, caffeine, andalcohol hook consumers into regular consumption and exacerbate RLS. If you’reserious about relief give these cravings up! Janet Kinosian, Los Angeles sleep counselor and author of The Well-Rested Woman, says these, alongwith nicotine, stimulate brain chemicals that agitate and invigorate. “It’shealthy to reduce and/or eliminate these items for anyone who has troublesleeping,” she said. Words of wisdom indeed!
4.                  Heat & Massage Casey Newman, massagetherapist at Athena Salon and Spa, in Tallahassee, says heat calms the nerves,muscles, and spasms in the legs, as well as the overall anxiety RLS produces.Newman suggests massaging the legs with warm jojoba oil using light-to-mediumback-and-forth strokes or friction motions. For gentle strokes use the palms ofboth hands and for deep strokes use the forearms, fists, or black volcanicstones warmed in the microwave for 20 seconds.
5.                  Dopamine Rush A team of researchers, at the Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil, recently wrote a report, published inthe online journal, Sleep Medicine.They theorize that the release of orgasm-related dopamine plays a role in thealleviation of RLS symptoms. “Since orgasms provide for us one of the largestnon-chemical blasts of dopamine, indulge your pleasure senses,” says Kinosian.“You don’t need a doctor to give you a scientific explanation on anythingnatural that relieves you of distressing physical symptoms. If it works, doit!”

The Prescription Medication Route
Dr. David Huang, medical director of the TallahasseeMemorial Sleep Center, says he first conducts blood work on his patients to seeif he can find a cause for their RLS. If he can’t find a cause Huang looksclosely at ferritin levels, the measure of the bodies iron stores.
If ferritin levels are less than 50, iron supplementsare recommended. If above 50, Huang prescribesdopamine stimulants such as requip and mirapex (FDA approved). If those are ineffectivehe then prescribes the anti-epileptic drug called horizant (FDA approved). Lastresorts are either a benzodiazepine such as klonopin (not FDA approved for RLS),or an opiate such as percocet (also not FDA approved for RLS).
For the patient with intermittent RLS, Huang says sinemet(carbidopa-levodopa), an over-the-countermedication, works beautifully. “It’s also very important to know that a lot ofmedications make RLS symptoms worse,” he said. “An anti-depressant, like paxil,is top on the list.” Huang’s advice: Stop the medication and find a suitable substitute.

Monthly Column in the Tallahassee Democrat.

YOUR HEALTH MONTHLY MAGAZINE, Tallahassee Democrat

2011-10-05T11:44:00.000-07:00

Mostwomen know that drinking cranberry juice helps to prevent and treat urinarytract infections. The reason is because the consumption of cranberries has ameaningful impact on preventing bacterial adhesion to bladder cells, theinitial step in the infection process. Nowwomen will be tickled pink to learn that one of their favorite festive drinks preventsbacterial adhesion in other parts of the body as well. Even though it’s still amystery as to what the responsible agent in cranberries is, which inhibits theadhesion of certain pathogenic bacteria to human cells, here are exciting newfindings about the tangy antioxidant-rich red berry…

Skin Infections

Staphylococcus Aureus (S. aureus), is a group of bacteria thatcan cause a number of infections from minor skin rashes to serious bloodstreaminfections.TerriCamesano, Ph.D., professor of engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI),in Massachusetts, conducted a 2010 study which included a group of graduate andundergraduate females from WPI. Weeks one and three they drank a 16 oz. dose ofcranberry juice cocktail or the placebo drink. Week two they drank what theynormally drink (excluding cranberry juice). Each time they provided urinesamples 8, 24, and 48 hours later. Urinesamples were collected and incubated with strains of S. aureus. Camesano’s team tested to see if there were compoundsthat would show up in the urine that would prevent S. aureus from multiplying. “We found that anywhere between fifty-to-eightypercent of the time it completely inhibited biofilm formation (thin surfacesupon which bacteria can multiply and thrive),” said Camesano. “In almost allcases, infections were gone in 48 hours.” SinceCamesano discovered that the effects of cranberry juice wears off 24-to-48hours after drinking it, she says, “It’s best to drink cranberry juice everyday in order to have the protective benefits.” Camesano also says that OceanSpray’s “Light” cranberry juice cocktail (with less sugar) is equallyeffective.

Stomach Ulcers

HelicobacterPylori (H. pylori), is the bacteria responsiblefor stomach ulcers, in turn a leading cause for stomach cancer. A team of researchers in Israel, led by Dr. Itzhak Ofek, werefunded independently and supported by The Cranberry Institute in Massachusetts.In a series of research projects, conducted over the lastdecade at their laboratories in Tel Aviv, they discovered that components incranberry could interfere with the activity of H. pylori in thegut. They concluded that cranberry consumption could help maintain gut healthand reduce the development of stomach ulcers.“This research base, including clinical trials and supportedby additional findings in other laboratories, provides strong scientificsupport", said Martin Starr, Ph.D., Science Advisor of The CranberryInstitute. “Hopefully this information helpspeople who are looking to maintain their health." While cranberry juice cocktail (at 25-30% cranberry content) is one of the most popular cranberry products, Star says that 1/3 cup of sweetened dried cranberries, 1/4 cup of cranberry sauce, and 1/4 cup of cranberries (fresh or frozen), deliver the same cranberry content.

Heart Diseases

Atherosclerosisis a condition in which fatty materials collect along the walls of heartarteries resulting in a stroke or heart attack. In 2009, Joe Vinson, professor ofchemistry at the University of Scranton, conducted a 10-to-12 week study ofatherosclerosis in hamsters since the lipid profiles in their plasma matchesthat of human beings. They fed the first group of hamsters a normal diet, thesecond group of hamsters coconut oil and cholesterol, and the third group coconutoil and cholesterol with cranberry juice (the human equivalent of 3 or 4glasses a day). Vinsonand his team discovered that the hamsters given the fatty diet with cranberryjuice had significantly less atherosclerosis. Vinson’s advice is that people whoare prone to any kinds of heart disease should consume at least three glassesof cranberry juice daily. “Cranberry juice does the same thing as aerobicexercise and some drugs like niacin,” he said.

Monthly Column in the Tallahassee Democrat.

Alternative Tompkins, The Ithaca Journal

2011-10-05T11:36:00.000-07:00

Dr. Richard Schissel sits across from his clients in his office onWest Seneca Street and asks them to count backwards. He tells them how everynumber is going to help them become more relaxed.
“You will begin to feel your arms relax,” he says, whileswinging a pendulum or pocket watch to focus their attention. “Your eyes willfeel heavier.”
Once their eyes close, his clients enter into what Schissel andother hypnotists call a trance. With his client in a trance, Schissel keeps theirconscious mind busy with a visualization of being at a beach, or on a ride in ahot-air balloon, so that he can artfully persuade their subconscious mind tochange.
He might suggest: “Every time you eat a doughnut it’s going totaste like Crisco.” Or: “You will find that a small plate with half portions isenough.”
At its base, hypnosis is a state of focused attention. “Muchlike we experience while being absorbed in a really good book,” said Schissel,adding that the whole point is to move the critical, conscious mind out of theway to free the less picky subconscious mind.
Schissel moved to Ithaca in 1985, and opened his privatepractice in 1998. He specializes in pain and stress management, and occasionallyon smoking cessation. “But they have to want to quit,” he said. “It won’t workotherwise.” Schissel quit smoking in 2004 with the aid of self-hypnosis. “Ieven created a hypnosis CD which was played during my lung cancer surgery.”
Brian Apatoff, a neurologist in NYC, explained hypnotism as a deepstate of relaxation. “It’s akin to a meditative state,” said Apatoff, noting thathypnosis does alter brain wave activities.
For Schissel, who received his hypnosis certification from theNational Guild of Hypnotists in New Hampshire, meditation was the catalyst thatimpelled his study of hypnosis. “That’s when I saw the added value of positivesuggestions during deep states of relaxation,” said the 63-year-old.
Ellen Peterson is a hypnotherapist in Ithaca. She uses hypnosis forpsychotherapeutic purposes. Her favorite guided visualization to put herclients in a trance is to take them on a walk down ten levels of a hillside.
“Ninety percent of the mind is subconscious and ten percent isconscious,” said Peterson. “We only operate from ten percent of our mind. Whenwe’re hypnotized, or even when we meditate, all of that changes.”

Monthly column in The Ithaca Journal.

A Conversation with Photographer Mary Ellen Mark, The Ithaca Journal

2008-09-17T13:40:00.001-07:00

One cannot discern from this series alone that Mary Ellen Mark is one of the greatest American photographers of our time. In order to know that, one must find a quiet corner, open her sixteen books, and enter the many worlds of her subjects who have unabashedly invited her in. Her photographs, from Mother Teresa, to Ahaza Desta in Ethiopia, to the prostitutes of Bombay, to Alexander, a disabled child from Iceland, in her recently published book “Extraordinary Child,” show the continuous dedication that Mark has to depicting some of life’s most fragile, private and intimate moments. Memorable photographs come from exceptional photographers, and Mark has not only been given the opportunities to photograph unique people in remote settings, she has brought the world a close-up view of what we miss, what we cannot imagine because we each are irrevocably closed in our own worlds. Her photographs are educational and transformational. They create compassion and change our perspective of the world we know.

What made you want to photograph high schoolers across the nation for their proms?

I’m really interested in institutions, rituals, and traditions. A lot of my books are about those things. I was always intrigued by proms because I would see the prom photographer lurking around taking photographs. I thought doing this series would be an interesting way to make prom photos more formal. I started to work about twelve years ago with the large-format camera, and so much of how people present themselves in a very particular way is revealed with this kind of camera. Certain ethnic groups were dressed in a particular way, and the camera shows those details.

What is it about this generation of proms that fascinates you the most?

The prom is a ritual that’s gone on for years and years and years. I think that if you were to look at the clothes from my prom, they are very much the same, not that different really. I don’t think this generation is that different from my generation.

How did you want to portray this generation in the Prom Series?

They portray themselves to me. The camera is very formal.

Were there any teens that surprised you by the way they acted?

Nothing surprised me. Everyone wanted to be included. All the young people were happy to be photographed.

There’s one girl, an African American who is standing with one hand on her chest and one hand over her stomach. Had you asked her to pose like that?

She actually happened to be standing that way. She had on a strapless dress and I think that she felt most comfortable like that, holding her dress up.

One thing I thought about when I was looking at your photos was why you didn’t choose to photograph them at their proms when they’re getting into trouble or having excess fun.

I’m somewhere in between a documentary and portrait photographer, and for this series I chose the portrait route because it’s another way of looking at people.

What was the most difficult aspect of the three-year process you took for The Prom Series?

Access to schools. That was the first thing we had to do, and also the hardest. But once I had approval from the Board of Education in New York, everything became easier. After that I was able to show other schools the work I was doing. It all got easier after the first year, and ultimately we figured out that it was easiest for us to go through the photography department of each school.

How did you select the teens you chose to photograph?

I had a lot of interns that walked around and took Polaroid’s, so when I was looking through those Polaroid’s I chose the ones that were more interesting in front of the camera. It had to do with the way they dressed, whether they were punk, very conventional, in the army, glamorous. It had to do with their details. And I was also intentionally looking for diversity in the teens. I also approached schools that were diverse - predominately African American, upper class, upper middle class, Mexican American. Every school I chose was different from all the others. What interests me most are contrasts.

What was your message behind this photo series?

I show things the way they are, that’s what I’m looking to do. I’ve manipulated this series of photos by photographing diversity.

Why didn’t you use a regular camera, why the 235 pound camera with black and white Polaroids?

I hate portraits with a wide angle lens. I don’t mind that on the street, but you have to be careful to do that in a portrait. I wanted these photographs to be clear, completely about the details, not the camera making fun of somebody.

I noticed that in many of the photographs the high schoolers aren’t smiling, can you tell me how you worked with them to get the photos you wanted?

The thing is I don’t like it when people smile for the camera. It looks really fake. A smile can work if it’s real – like the girl I photographed who has the braces – that photo is up at The Herbert Johnson Museum. She just did that and it was natural, very real. It was perfect for her to smile. I knew that because I could feel it. I feel when something is right or wrong.

How involved did you get with the subjects you were photographing?

When you are doing portraits, you’re either an observer or a participant. For the first pictures I took in this series I was an observer, but then I became a participant. I asked people not to smile. I asked people to do specific things.

What’s been your favorite period of time as a photographer?

All periods of time are interesting. Being alive is interesting. For the kind of work I do, photography based in realism, there isn’t the same level of interest from magazines anymore. And I’m not a digital photographer. Polaroid is as far as you can get from digital photography. I’m not manipulating the images. It was more fun for me when I did real documentary stories – things with content, but times have changed. People magazine, and The New Yorker, these are great photography magazines. I ’ve had a couple of amazing assignments from People magazine.

I could see The New Yorker, but People magazine?

You’d be surprised. The closest thing to Life magazine these days is People. They do celebrity stories, but in every issue there’s at least one story that has depth and content. I know a lot of wonderful photographers who shoot for them.

What do you wrestle with as a photographer?

Trying to make a great picture.

What’s a great picture?

It’s hard to define that, but I guess you could say, an image that will last.

I love the celebrity portrait you took of Sean Penn in his dressing room.

That’s funny. I like that one, but it’s not one of my favorites. I think the ones I’ve taken of Fellini, or my photos from the circus in India are some of my favorites.

For many of your photojournalistic photographs, it seems like you’ve put yourself in some really intense situations, maybe even dangerous.

Not so much dangerous. Intense, yes.

Because of the intensity of your situations, have you ever thought of being a Magnum photographer, photographing the devastation of the war?

I have a lot of admiration for people who have the guts to do that, but I never want to take photographs of any war. I don’t work well under those circumstances. I like to be calm, by myself, quietly taking pictures. You have to be a fast runner to take photos of any war, and that’s not part of my nature.

What does your work do for you?

It’s given me my life. It’s still giving me a fantastically interesting life from the people I’m surrounded by because of it. I learn something new every day from photography. When I photographed the circus, or the poor with Mother Teresa, I learned the devastation of poverty. I’ve learned how difficult it is to be mentally disabled. Because of my photographs I’ve been able to enter the world of the disabled, I’ve been able to enter the worlds of everyone I see and photograph. Everything you do and see affects your life, if you care about what you do. That’s why I’m so glad that I made the choice in my life to photograph things that mean something to me. I could have gone the commercial route, and I would have a lot more money had I done that, but I don’t regret the direction I’ve made.

Some of your favorite photographers?

Sally Mann, Irving Penn. They come to mind, but there really are so many that I’m fond of.

At what point did you know that you would be a photographer for the rest of your life?

I knew it immediately, from the moment I was in college and picked up a camera.

The Prom Series is on view until October 26th at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University. http://www.maryellenmark.com/.

High-tech Prostate Surgery Growing in Popularity, The Press & Sun Bulletin

2008-06-08T09:30:00.001-07:00

Chenango County resident Norman Pixley will provide a teaching moment Wednesday for some of the 500 surgeons gathered at an international symposium at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Fla. Pixley’s surgery will be performed at Strong Memorial Hospital, part of the University of Rochester Medical Center, and it will be one of 10 robotic surgeries broadcast live over the Internet to the fourth annual World Robotic Urology Symposium, which runs Monday through Wednesday.

The medical center has been using Webcasts for over five years for lectures, classes, surgeries and conferences. “Having live Webcasts at the Florida symposium is a wonderful opportunity for surgeons to improve their robotic surgery practice,” said David Lambert, senior associate dean for medical student education at the medical center. “It’s in the whole educational spectrum of distance learning which is very big in medicine.”

Rochester is one of the few cities in western New York where the operation, called Robot Assisted Radical Prostatectomy Surgery, is performed. Pixley’s surgeon, Dr. Jean Joseph, head of the section of laparoscopy and robotic surgery at the University of Rochester, said he performs about 500 of the advanced, minimally invasive operations each year.

Like most men diagnosed with prostate cancer, Pixley, 70, of Greene, NY, wasn’t even aware he had it. It’s the most common type of cancer in American men, with about 186,000 new cases detected each year, according to the American Cancer Society. The prostate gland, walnut-sized and part of a man’s reproductive system, releases prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, into a man’s blood. Healthy men have low amounts of PSA. Pixley said his reading was high when he had the test done in October 2008.

The retiree from B.F. Goodrich Aerospace in Norwich, NY, said a biopsy detected cancerous cells. He said he then explored his options for treatment: seed radiation; chemotherapy; hormone treatment; watchful waiting, and open or laparoscopic surgery. With encouragement from his daughter, a physician at Greene Family Medical, he chose the robotic form of surgery.

“I wanted the least invasive surgery possible, the least amount of negative side-effects, and the quickest recovery,” said Pixley, a Binghamton native, married and the father of seven. “What helped to seal the deal was that my nurse practitioner, Donna Gallagher, at the Syracuse VA Medical Center, said Dr. Joseph was a real guru in his field.”

In 2003, the Haitian-born Joseph, 43, was one of the first in upstate New York to do this operation, a procedure he said runs 90 minutes to three hours. He uses a million-dollar robotic device called the da Vinci Surgical System, named after Leonardo da Vinci, credited with drawings of a robot in the 1490s. The system breaks down into three units: a surgeon’s console placed a few feet away from the operating table, a high-definition 3-D vision system of the operating area in the body and a patient-side cart that has four interactive robotic arms that move the surgical instruments.

Prostate surgery is done in a tightly confined area of the body where the targeted gland is surrounded by nerves affecting sexual function and urinary control. The company and the medical center tout a long list of advantages to this form of surgery: smaller incisions; less pain, scarring, blood loss and chance of infection; lower incidence of impotence and urinary incontinence; improved cancer control and quicker return to normal activities.

Approved for use by the government in 2001 for prostate surgery, the system was used in about 72,000 prostate procedures worldwide in 2008, said Nora Distefano, market development specialist for da Vinci Systems. The surgical device is also used in such operations as hysterectomies and mitral valve repair.

At the Rochester medical center, Joseph said he has helped train a number of gynecologists on staff in using the da Vinci Surgical System. “The machine was originally designed for cardiac surgery,” said Joseph. “Some surgeons around the world use it for that, but at (University of Rochester Medical Center) it’s used mainly for urology, gynecology, kidney, and bladder surgery.”

Joseph said learning how to use the da Vinci Surgical System was relatively easy for him because of additional training he had in laparoscopic surgery at the Institute of Urology in London. Laparoscopic surgery uses smaller incisions and a laparoscope, a medical device used to look inside the body. “Laparoscopic surgery is similar to robot-assisted surgery, but without the robot,” Joseph said. “For a surgeon who hasn’t studied laparoscopy, it can take anywhere between 20 to 30 practice surgeries before they fully understand how it works.”

Joseph said the robotic prostatectomy is growing in popularity and so is the da Vinci Surgical System, of which there were 111,000 installed as of 2008 in hospitals, academic institutions and training labs, according to Distefano.

One advantage is obvious. “For the robotic surgery, the average length of stay is a day and a half or less,” said Leslie White, a spokesperson for the Rochester medical center. “Some patients are hospitalized for as long as eight days following an open surgery for prostate cancer.”

Police Beat, The Ithaca Times

2008-06-08T09:30:00.000-07:00

The stark gray entrance to the Police Station was quiet except for me, and two tall fidgety guys talking to the officer on duty behind the bullet resistant window at the front desk. The scruffy men were sorting out dollar bills from thick wads of cash in their pockets. It seemed they were there to post bail for someone. While they mumbled to one another, I perused some pamphlets stashed in a corner on the wall. “Stress on the Job,” “OxyContin,” a pamphlet from the National Drug Intelligence Center, and “Drug-Facilitated Sexual Assault: Fast Facts.”
I still wasn’t comfortable waiting at the Police Department for the rookie to pick me up. He had arrested four individuals in an armed robbery and was running late. It was “The Mission Statement of the Ithaca Police Department,” framed on the wall that reminded me I was safe, even though safety was taking on a more complex meaning for me these days. The mission statement read: To enhance the quality of life in our community by working cooperatively with the public, within the framework of the U.S. Constitution. To enforce the law, preserve the peace, reduce fear and provide a safe environment for all. One of the fidgety guys in the waiting area dropped some change from the pocket of his baggy pants. I bent down to pick up a quarter which landed on my boot and handed it to the anxious stickler wearing brown shades in the dead of night.
While gazing at a pamphlet from the Suicide Prevention Center, I noticed several large screens through the bullet resistant window displaying various parts of the building where security cameras are hidden: the intake garage, the patrol room, the investigators’ offices, jail cells, the armory. I had been given a tour, so I knew what was behind the steel door to my left.
By the time the rookie picked me up it was 20:30, eighteen degrees with biting, gritty winds. Between us in the patrol car was a pack of mint chewing gum, some Tylenol, and a cold green tea drink. A few miles west, along the outskirts of Ithaca, we rode along Car Beat 202. Driving along melancholy streets the rookie talked after putting a stick of orange-flavored gum in his mouth.
“It was different being the son of a cop. Everybody knew my dad. Because they knew him, they knew me. That’s how it was growing up in a small town. Everyone knew my every move, at least that’s how it felt. If a rumor started, it seemed like everyone talked. A lot of people didn’t want to be associated with me in high school because they knew my dad was a cop. They thought because he was a cop I was gonna be one. But I was like any other kid. I went to parties. I wasn’t a saint. I just knew who to avoid. I knew what would happen if I got in trouble. There were always consequences. But it wasn’t until I was a junior in college that I decided I’d be a cop. I was the last person in my family to do it. My father was proud that’s for sure.”
The dispatcher’s voice issued from the car radio, “There’s a fight, two guys, gas station at . . .” As the dispatcher continued to provide further details, and the rookie sped past cars pulling over to the side of the road, I wondered what kind of scene was taking place at the gas station. A location where there’s usually a few people around, plenty of bright lights and obviously potential explosives.
Once we got there I stayed in the patrol car. There were several cops and an avalanche of querulous people who looked like they were ready to punch their fists through something, maybe someone. As I watched and listened to the noisy recriminations and slurs through the rolled up window, I noticed how calm the cops were. They backed each other up, then convened in a huddle and patted each other on the back when all was said and done.
The rookie took a deep breath as he got back in the patrol car and drove away from the scene. “By the time I get home it’s real late you know? Sometimes I don’t fall asleep until three, four in the morning. Some nights I can’t even sleep.” That didn’t come as a surprise. After just a few nights riding along with him my dreams had already been disrupted. He continued his train of thought, “I remember the first time I saw a dead body. A woman had called the station, said she hadn’t seen her neighbor for a while. So I went over to the house. The front door was locked. I went around back, looked through a window, and saw this guy lying on the floor, face down. The smell was something I’ll never forget.”
Before I knew what was happening, the rookie had pulled a woman over, “She was on her cell phone. We’ve had so many people get hit by cars because someone was on their cell phone. We take this very seriously.” He called in her license plate number and said, “No one likes to get pulled over. Some people think they’re automatically gonna get arrested. They do all sorts of things. Cry, yell, scream. The best way to avoid making a situation worse is by ignoring any negative behavior. If I can’t handle someone yelling and screaming in my face, then I can’t handle my job. There’s no training, not even from the Police Academy, that’s gonna help me deal with the way people treat me.” He said it so matter-of-factly that I was sure it ran much deeper than that.
Later, after issuing the cell phone user a ticket, we drove along motionless streets. It was 22:30, the radio serenaded country music. It was dark out there. Lonely. I couldn’t imagine being a cop day in, day out, but some people are drawn to it – like this rookie, or the next, or some veteran who’s been around for a long time – on call, and just like the mission statement says, providing a safe environment for all. That was something I was beginning to feel sure of, certainly in this town.

Police Beat was created by Anne Marie Cummings who rode regularly with Ithaca police in their cars during the night police beat.

Scene from India Awaiting, Off-Broadway Play, Samuel Beckett Theatre, NYC, 2005

2008-06-08T09:23:00.000-07:00

LIGHT SHIFT. The men’s locker room. Nikhil polishes his cricket before playing his cricket game. ANURAG, a close friend from high school in India enters smoking a cigarette. Their white clothes seem formal and other worldly.

Anurag: Oh my god! I think I need to get my eyes checked! Is that Nikhil? Nikhil who I haven’t seen for decades?

Nikhil: You’re full of it! It hasn’t been decades. Three weeks man.

Anurag: JP has you working too hard man! Are you going to Ashish’s this Saturday, to watch the games?

Nikhil: Can’t make it.

Anurag: What? Abe saleh, what could be more important than the Indian cricket games? (translation in English: You shmuck.)

Nikhil: My girlfriend.

Anurag/Nikhil: Ahhhhh!

Anurag: Well, well, well….that explains everything! I knew something was up.

(beat)

Hey, aren’t you gonna tell me who she is?

Nikhil: What do you want to know?

Anurag: Well, have you…(he indicates having sex)

Nikhil: Next question, mere bhai. (translation in Enlgish: bro)

Anurag: Ah, come on! I’d expect you to do it in three weeks dude!

Nikhil smiles and continues to polish his cricket bat.

Anurag: Who does she look like?

Nikhil: Cindy Crawford.

Anurag: Be serious yaar. (translation in English: buddy.)

Nikhil: I am serious.

Anurag: Oh really, Indian Cindy Crawford, nice one!

(beat)

Nikhil: She’s not Indian.

(beat)

Anurag: She’s not Indian dude?

Nikhil: No.

Anurag: Gandu, don’t tell me you’re dating a white girl. (translation in English: You shit.)

Nikhil: Yeah. What’s the problem?

Anurag: Nothing, nothing’s the problem. I just don’t know what you would see in a white girl?

Nikhil: (playing and having fun) What are you talking about? The same thing you see in them stupid.

Anurag: Ah, wait a minute, I like Indian women and you know it.

Nikhil: Oh yeah yeah yeah, I guess you’ve forgotten about Lisa.

Anurag: Lisa? Lisa who?

Nikhil: Debate studies.

Anurag: Ohhhh, Lisa, meri Lisa, Lisa ah ha a ah ha. (translation in English: Lisa oh my Lisa).

Nikhil: Yeah the one you talked my head off about for two years, "Oh god, I wish I could touch her ass…and did you see her tits…it’s killing me, hai mein mar jaoon. I can’t take it. I can’t take it anymore." (translation in English: Oh, I could just die.)

Anurag: (overlapping a bit) Thik hai, thik hai, that was just talk, you know me, talk. (translation in English: All right, all right).

Nikhil: Yeah yeah, right, talk for two years.

Anurag: You know what they say about a man in love? It weakens his game. Fifty
bucks my team wins.

Nikhil: First of all, my team always wins and second of all, who the hell says I’m in love?

Anurag: It’s written all over your face Nikhil, you look sick with it! Sick!

Nikhil: All right then, make it a hundred!

Anurag: Two hundred!

Nikhil: Fine!

Anurag: But just tell me then, okay, did you….(indicates sex).

Nikhil: Three hundred you bastard!

Anurag: You’ll be sorry you did that!

Nikhil: Don’t forget I never am!

INDIA AWAITING was written by Anne Marie Cummings and starred Maulik Pancholy of TV shows 30 Rock and Weeds. Directed by Tyler Marchant. Produced by Madhur Jaffrey, Aroon Shivdasani, and Sudhir Vaishnav. Original music was created by Deep Singh. Reviewed by The New York Times and Time Out New York.

My Pashley & Me - www.pedalpushers.com

2008-04-19T12:14:00.000-07:00

I was on assignment in England. Oxford to be precise. I was to capture the people, their faces, their expressions against Oxford’s lush green gardens and crowded watering holes. I thought about hiring a driver for the day, perhaps hopping into a cabby, but I decided I would be boldly adventurous. After all, I was in England, it was summer time, and I was alone, sans boss, sans the office, sans my Blackberry which I intentionally left on my living room ottoman before leaving my SoHo apartment in Manhattan.
I decided I would make a special inquiry where I was staying, Pickwicks, a bed & breakfast on London Road. At breakfast in the café, I asked a gentleman seated next to me, piling marmite on his warm and flaky croissant, if he knew if Pickwicks rented bicycles. “Oh yes, of course they do! I rented one yesterday,” he said, “I went as far as Kinglington in fact.”
Kinglington? I thought. Kinglington was another town away and this gentleman was rather portly, yet from where I was seated I could view his legs past his baggy shorts. They were sturdy and strong, obviously well-exercised when he wasn’t indulging his culinary senses.
I ordered two poached eggs, and another portion of Nutella for my toast. I considered the hash browns, but figured I would stop somewhere later that afternoon to fill up on energy.
“Have a jolly time!” shouted the gentleman as he sipped his tea and waved goodbye to me. Jolly time indeed. Yes, I would.
I went around back, past the rose garden, and found several bicycles lined up in succession, one after the other, as if they were horses ready to be taken down the trodden path of England’s damp and dewy soil. There was a small sign that read “Five Pounds.”
But since no one was around, and of course I looked in every direction to make sure, I took one of the traditional Pashley bicycles with an ivory-colored frame and charming woven basket, and walked it to the front of Pickwicks. The concierge waved and said something about riding on the left side of the road.
There was hardly any traffic, and I hadn’t a map on me, but of course I had my Canon over my shoulder and my Pashley bicycle leading the way. I got on and headed downtown passing young collegiate types drinking pints of bitter, parks where nannies tended to flocks of children chasing quacking ducks, and boisterous soccer players dribbling a soccer ball to and fro. After noticing my perspiration, I pulled off the side of the road, and was taken by the sight of a narrow path along a quiet canal filled with empty rowboats.
I got off my Pashley and walked with it until I found a patch of dry grass. I laid the Pashley onto its side and lay down next to it. As I began to drift off I heard a man’s voice which startled me at first.
“Excuse me. Where did you get that Pashley?”
I opened my eyes, and at first couldn’t see the face of the man gazing at me because of the sun’s bright glare.
He continued, while admiring my Pashley, “It’s quite dashing. I had one just like it when I was about fifteen years old.”
Before he finished his sentence I realized it was Jeremy Irons, the actor, or at least I thought so. If he wasn’t, he certainly was the spitting image of the English icon.
“May I ride it?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said. “Just don’t steal it. It belongs to my bed & breakfast.”
He chuckled, and with that he got on my Pashley and circled around me. “I’d forgotten how much I love bicycles like these.”
I couldn’t resist asking. I had to. “Are you the actor, Jeremy Irons?”
But he ignored me completely. He was in his own little world. “In fact, my brother and sister had bikes like this too,” he said.
I got dizzy as I watched “Jeremy” continue to circle me, and it was then that he did the unthinkable.
“Do you mind if I take it down this path?” he asked.
“No,” I said rather hesitantly.
I watched him and my Pashley get smaller and smaller before they quickly disappeared. I felt like I was in a Fellini film. In the middle of nowhere, with no one to be seen, while some man who may have been Jeremy Irons had taken my Pashley, well, Pickwicks’ Pashley.
I waited. I stood there and waited at least twenty minutes. “Sir Jeremy” never returned.
Oh well, at least I had a story for Pickwicks, whether they’d believe it or not.

Invocation to the Sun, The Ithaca Journal

2008-03-07T15:06:00.000-08:00

Art Review

There is an intense excitement to Helena Cooper’s new art work showing until the end of this month at Moosewood Restaurant. To move from the Chagall-like brightness in her watercolors, to the bold abstract expressionistic spirit evident in her oil paintings, and now to her reenergized pixilated and optimistic photoart comes as no surprise since all of them remarkably confront color. The 28 saturated images that make up Invocation to the Sun capture what I believe our subconscious minds long for: an escape into the perfect synchronicity of nature as we imagine it to be. The movement, undoubtedly visible in each image, provides an attitude of daring to dream and connect with that which is outside of ourselves, ultimately grounding us if we allow it.
The giclee prints, giclee being a term used to describe images that are generated from high-resolution scans printed with quality inks onto canvas, profoundly unveil colors of the Northeast. No one would believe these magical moments stopped and captured on film are not from the artist’s childhood visions of Brazil; although Ithacans might expect the preferred sentiment of a satisfying warmer climate willing us outdoors over a melancholic winter forcing us inside.
A perfect introduction to Cooper’s photoart is “Seventh Chakra”– an image taken right outside her home. The only image in her show using purple as a backdrop is articulated with a blur of off-white, the central focus of the photo, which in reality could be seen as an isolated cloud, but given the title reminds us that nature unintentionally provokes us towards contemplation.
“Fractals,” a close-up of Ontario Lake, is awash with greens bathed in more greens creating a photo appearing like one of Cooper’s watercolors; abstract, yes, the only difference being that since we know the image is of Ontario Lake, we associate its lyricism with rushing waters as opposed to a sublime composition by the artist.
One of my favorites is “Dancing Cloud,” not because it is nonfigurative, but because of its realistic simplicity: a clear welcoming blue sky shaped by clouds pulling the viewer inside a beautiful day that could be anywhere in the world. And it is this notion which gives it more meaning than the artist may have intended. Regardless, the warmth of “Dancing Cloud” will be universally felt and possibly understood as if waking up and looking out of one’s window into utopia.
But how do I explain the shades of light that Cooper mysteriously notices appearing in a creek, or in the sky? It must be the photographer’s plea that each of us meditate on these moments so that we effortlessly seek them in our own lives.
What strikes me is that though Cooper’s roots originate in Brazil, her unique portrayal of Ithaca, whether intended or not, comes across as a brilliant memory of colors.

Weekly News Journalist, Tompkins Weekly

2008-02-25T12:40:00.000-08:00

DR. MAYA ANGELOU ASKS GRADUATES NOT TO USE RACIAL PEJORATIVES

“By and by, I lay down this heavy load,” sang the deep Southern voice of the formidable author, poet, and civil-rights activist Dr. Maya Angelou. Even her introduction had a phenomenal impact on a stadium full of Cornell graduates at Cornell University’s class of 2008 Convocation on a windy, but warm afternoon on Saturday, May 24th. There was nothing obscure to grapple with while she continued to speak eloquently, openly, like a friend who has known you your whole life sitting down to have a truthful talk before a long journey that lay ahead.
Her slow, jazzy tempo and articulate voice wavered with a degree of importance, encouraging and uplifting her listeners. “Are you all hearing me?” she asked, to make sure that her words would not lose their relevance, to make certain that the mass of people listening to her would understand, deeply connect, and become engaged enough to consider what she posed. And how fortunate for the graduates of Cornell to celebrate their new beginning with a woman who is no stranger to life’s sometimes stormy demands. Perhaps it would be difficult to recognize oneself in a woman such as Dr. Maya Angelou, but as she poignantly affirmed, “Human beings are more alike than we are unalike. This is why you’ve really entered this institution of higher education, so you could see each other, so that you could be able to claim that ‘I am a human being, that nothing human can be alien to me.’” The quote comes from a playwright of the Roman Republic named Publius Terentius Afer, better known as Terence. His words translated into Latin, “Homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto" – affirm that all human beings are interdependent and responsible to one another.
“When you say that, and start to believe it, it means that if somebody commits a heinous crime you can never say, ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that,’– you have to say if a human being did it, I have it in myself, all the components to do it. I intend however to use my energy constructively as opposed to destructively. If you can do that about the wrong, the cruel things, just imagine what you can do about the good things, the positive things. If a human being dares to dream a great dream, if a human being has the gall to love someone and accept love in return, it means you can do it.”
Celebrating her 80th birthday this year, April 4th, the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s death, the author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, lives a life defined by principles. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2000 she stated, “I think it is wise to look in yourself, and see what your principles are. That is to say, if you are in love with life, you will live at any cost. So somebody can say, ‘if you don’t take this Mack truck and run over forty little babies in the street, I’ll take your life.’ At some point, you have to say, ‘uh, that’s your next job. I will not live at any cost.’ Well, if you decide that, then your principle about what you will do starts to clarify so that you can see it. And then you say, ‘Oh I can’t do that because it hurts. I won’t do that because I hate myself when I do that.’”
A woman who has developed courage speaks of this great virtue daring Cornell graduates to do the same. “This is the moment. Now you begin to show courage, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can be anything you want to be. You can be kind, and true, and fair, and generous, and just, and even merciful occasionally, but to be that thing time after time, you have to really have courage, because even friends will try to tease you away or shame you away from what you know to be right, but if you know it to be right, if you feel it to be right – you must try.”
The uncompromising notion of courage echoed amid a motionless crowd. “And that thing about courage…I would like to ask you try to not use any racial pejoratives all week. I won’t stay in any area, any room where racial pejoratives or sexual bashing is used. I will not. I know that it is poison. I know that the words were created not to illuminate that person, not to enliven, not to encourage, or to improve, the words were created to dehumanize. And so if you’re black, try not to use the N word. If you’re white try not to use any racial pejoratives about anybody all week. Try not to do any sexual bashing for a week. Try hard not to laugh at anybody for a week. Just one week. You will like yourself much more.”
Maya then reeled the crowd in towards her even more by expressing her sorrow about the world that is left to them, which would explain the lyrics “By and By. I lay down this heavy load.” And with the same sentiment from her poem “Still I Rise,” “You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I’ll rise,” Maya ignited the graduates towards change. “I know that I and the people of my generation and even the younger generation are ashamed of the world we are leaving you. I am. I just wish we weren’t leaving you a world full of blood thirst, and ignorance, and hatred, and war hunger. I wish not, but here it is. This is your world. The chore upon you is to make this country better than it is today…it’s no small matter.”
And finally, after suggesting an attitude of gratitude, Dr. Angelou did what everyone imagined and hoped for: she recited the words from a poem, first to be presented to a graduating class, some of which went like this: When you see them on the freeway hitching rides with their dogs and their guitars by their sides, you need to ask what’s all the lying and the dying and the killing and the thrilling all about. Take time out. When you see him with a band around his head and an army surplus bump that makes his bed you need to ask what’s all the selling, and the yelling and the beating and the cheating all about. Take time out.
Even in her glorious eightieth year, there’s no mistaking that Dr. Maya Angelou has her finger on the pulse.

Ohashi on Ohashiatsu Massage, for www.rasaspa.com

2007-12-11T12:11:00.000-08:00

Part of the English word “massage” is derived from the Arabic word, massa, “to touch.” When it comes to massage, everyone needs to be touched in precisely the right way. But, precisely the right way is different for everyone; each of us seeks the right touch, especially when paying for a massage. But who would have thought that in order to receive the best massage, the one massaging you must be happy, and most important, comfortable.
There are very few clients who ask their massage therapist before entering their hour-long state of bliss, “Oh, and by the way, are you comfortable?” This is the furthest thing from most clients’ minds, but perhaps a conversation with Ohashi, originator of Ohashiatsu and founder of the Ohashi Institute, will help receivers of massage understand that the right touch comes from someone at peace with themselves.
This is the way it is with Ohashi. He studied traditional Shiatsu massage in Japan, but realized that the receiver shouldn’t be the only one benefiting from massage. Ohashi trains his students to use their bodies in such a way so that they don’t have to work. Imagine that! His style of massage is nurturing for both giver and receiver, it is effortless, graceful, an energizing dance. I’ll never forget the response I got from Ohashi when I asked him, “What do you do physically, and mentally to prepare for each massage that you give?” “Well,” he responded, “I am always happy. I enjoy what I do - that’s how I prepare.”
So, the next time you get a massage ask your massage therapist, “By the way, are you happy? Do you enjoy what you do?” If he or she says “Yes,” then you may be about to receive the right touch.

Ohashi is a Japanese word. What does it mean?
Big Bridge; it’s my family name.
What made you call your method Ohashiatsu?
Because I wanted to differentiate it from Shiatsu.
As a child, you had a weak constitution that made you vulnerable to illness. What did your family do to help you then?
I was born in 1944, near Hiroshima, Japan during the war. My parents did whatever they could do. It was a very difficult time.
Where did you study massage?
I learned this technique in Japan, before I came to this country. But mainly I taught myself, I was self taught. I was very curious, so I created my own style, and that’s the reason I called it Ohashiatsu.
Why didn’t you just study Shiatsu? What made you create the Ohashiatsu method?
I learned Shiatsu, but through my practice I studied more on my own, and this is when I created my own style to suite the needs of my clients. They were the ones who influenced my technique. Here in America I worked on such different people that I had to adapt, study, and train more.
Some of your own clients when you first moved to the United States were George Balanchine, Martha Graham, Michael York, Dr. Henry Kissinger, and Ralph Lauren for example. How did you get them as clients?
Word-of-mouth. I didn’t do any particular advertisement.
What’s the difference between Shiatsu and Ohashiatsu?
The first big difference is that Ohashiatsu is better for the therapist. We teach this technique so that the therapists receive benefits for themselves. This is very unique.
The giver, or therapist receives what kind of benefits?
We don’t use our muscles. We don’t work. In the movement we are touching people. When we are giving to others we are exercising ourselves.
What’s an Ohashiatsu session like? How is it different from most forms of massage?
Our work is bodywork. It’s a wonderful movement the therapist is offering to himself, therefore the receiver enjoys it more because the giver is so comfortable.
What’s wrong with other types of massage?
I have read that the average survival for a licensed massage therapist is three and a half years. This means that they are damaging their own bodies to give wonderful massages to their clients. Ohashiatsu is, first of all, very comfortable and very natural. The giver can be very successful. They can heal more people without damaging themselves.
Why do you suggest your clients keep their clothing on during an Ohashiatsu session?
We don’t use oil and lotion, and it’s more comfortable for the clients that we work through their clothes. And of course the clothing they wear has to be loose and stretch a bit.
What are the benefits of having your clients lie down on the floor as opposed to resting on a massage table?
Number one, the floor is always there no matter where you go. Number two, you save four hundred dollars and you don’t need to carry a heavy massage table. Number three, if you use the floor, the massage therapist can use gravity without damaging his or her body. When a massage therapist uses a massage table, it’s more the fingers and shoulders doing all the work, and that’s not deep enough.
Can you tell me a little bit about how you train your students to become Ohashiatsu therapists? What are the focuses of their studies?
Body movement. We are teaching how to let their bodies move, how to let the giver’s body work. That’s what we emphasize.
Do your students practice meditation?
The practice of Ohashiatsu is itself a meditation, but of course we have a special program in the monastery that is Zen meditation.
When do you think people should receive an Ohashiatsu session?
It’s up to them. I don’t have any guidelines. If someone wants it every day, then that’s entirely up to them. Sometimes it depends if an individual wants to be healed for medical reasons. Once they are healed they may not need to receive my sessions often, maybe once a month, or once a year. Again it all depends on what the need is.
Is there something specific that the receiver needs to do to benefit fully from an Ohashiatsu session?
Everyone has a different need. They want to be healed, they want psychological relief, or they have spiritual reasons. Clients should look for the right therapist according to their own goals in receiving this kind of service. Clients need to find out for themselves who the right massage therapist is for them.
Is an Ohashiatsu session done in silence? Do you talk to your clients while working on them?
I don’t encourage either way. If the receiver wants to talk, that’s fine. The client dictates. The therapist doesn’t dictate because the receiver is paying.
Eastern medicine concentrates on maintaining Ki (pronounced Ch-ee) – in your own words, what is Ki?
Life happiness.
What does it feel like to you when someone’s Ki moves where it was once blocked?
I don’t know. I ask them.
Can you talk to me more about the importance of understanding Ki in our own bodies?
Happiness deeply depends on the person’s mind, their physical age, and their spiritual stage. It’s about the commitments in their life. I always ask my clients if they’re happy or not, if they are enjoying their life or not.
So if someone is unhappy do you consider that to be a block of Ki in the body?
People are either too happy, or too unhappy. We must be happy, and sometimes we must be sad. There’s nothing wrong with being sad. My job is to balance the two, but before I try to do that, I must be happy myself, otherwise I cannot make another person happy. And this is the point in Ohashiatsu: the first benefit is happiness, joy, and excitement to the giver.
How can the therapist generate the movement of Ki in their own bodies when giving an Ohashiastu session?
The therapist must pick the right clients to make him or herself happy. I don’t make any appointments with people I don’t like. These people are wasting my time and money. I make appointments with people who make me happy first, especially people who make me excited.
I believe that your role is to smooth out the Ki or energies within the body that are blocked. How do you do this?
I use my gravity. I don’t use muscle pressure, only my own gravity that touches an area to move my client’s energy.
Do you ever walk on people’s backs?
No, I don’t do that, my body is one-hundred-twenty-one pounds. This is too heavy. Some massage practitioners do walk on backs, and this is fine; I don’t’ deny that.
According to Eastern medicine, a headache is not just a headache, it’s an obstruction of Ki – is this the same if someone has cancer – it’s an obstruction of Ki in their body?
There are sixty-five different reasons why someone has a headache so we don’t know what is causing a headache. If the energy is stagnated then it can cause discomfort. Cancer is stagnated energy, either too much, or too little. I work with so many people recovering from cancer, but I’ve never cured them from it. I help them to cure cancer when they are curing themselves.
When does illness manifest? Is it only when there is disharmony in the body or mind?
First illness manifests physically in the body, and then the physical manifestation can become deeper by affecting a persons psychological makeup. After this it can get much worse, a cycle is created: emotional distress affecting the physical body, the physical body affecting the emotions, and so on. Massage breaks this pattern.
How can our society make changes so that instead of grabbing aspirin, we meditate, get a massage, go for a walk, or do yoga instead?
There’s nothing wrong with taking aspirin, this is human nature. The issue is education, and how we educate, teach ourselves through our own experiences. This is the point.
Can people learn Ohashiatsu on their own – say from one of your books?
Sure.
What is your opinion of Western medicine?
Western medicine tends to ignore the person who has the symptoms. In order to cure the symptom, the medicine may destroy the person. That is much worse than the medicine.
One traditional Oriental diagnosis of a patient’s well-being is facial diagnosis. Do you do this when meeting with your clients? If so, what do you look for?
I see everything, not only their faces, but their bodies, their smells, especially their movements. And most important is the state of being happy.
What is your definition of happiness?
Excitement in the life. Excitement to the future.
What makes the Ohashiatsu therapist have sensitive hands?
Every body needs a different touch. In other words, this is a strange business, like a love affair, like a chemical click. Without any particular reason, you come across the right combination between giver and receiver. Say I give a terrible treatment, but if the receiver loves what I’ve done, this terrible treatment is fantastic for him or her. Because I’ve given thousands of people treatment, half of them have hated my treatment, and they never came back, but the other half, no matter how terrible the treatment is, keep coming back. Clients should look for the best therapist to suite their vibrations, and a therapist should shop around for the right clients.
I’m sure you’ve worked on people with depression – how does your technique help those individuals?
There’s nothing wrong with being depressed, sad, or angry. So for example, when you’re sad, or depressed, this is when you should receive the Ohashiatsu treatment. This is encouraging your own happiness, this is turning around your anger. It’s very difficult to do this for ourselves; we need the external stimulation of others.
How does internalizing emotions affect our muscles?
Humans are very complicated animals. We are so smart, so sensitive, so advanced, and so strong – so the emotions do change the physical body, and the simple physical changes in the body change our emotions. We need to educate ourselves. This is difficult to do, so this is why education is needed from books, from teachers, from our families, and from our own studies.
If you could tell the public anything about Ohashiatsu treatment and its benefits, what would you say to them?
For thirty-three years I have used the logo “Touch for Peace.” This means peace for your body, and peace for your mind.
What do you believe are the keys to staying healthy?
Be happy.

How I Left New York City: Diary of an Escapee, my memoir, or maybe its fiction

2007-11-20T09:56:00.000-08:00

To read go to www.howileftnyc.blogspot.com

Wood and Soul, GoodLife Magazine

2007-10-23T10:09:00.000-07:00

Leah Houghtaling’s new, self-made, 400-square-foot woodshop, of rough cut pine and barn wood, in Trumansburg, New York, is now the starting and finishing point for her high-quality commissioned pieces. Even though the shed is only thirty feet high, it appears grandiose and is reminiscent of a solitary barn where artists have broken the ice and developed memorable and provocative art. An artist that comes to mind is in fact a favorite of Houghtaling’s, Jackson Pollack, who turned his wooden barn on Long Island into an art studio where his masterpieces came to life.

With a serious appreciation for architecture and anything visual, this self-taught wood worker left Massachussetts, where she grew up, and moved to New York in 2000, right around the time she was picking up every woodworking book she could get her hands on. As the daughter of blue collar parents, who admits to being a bit of a loner and very independent, Houghtaling found great solace as a young girl hiding in trees. Naturally. Yet to this day she still can’t believe the tree trunks she climbed would be material nourishing her creative spirit for as long as it has.

Many of Houghtaling’s clients are interested in something other than what upstate New Yorkers are exposed to: thick and clunky cedar decor, often referred to as Adirondack furniture. Houghtaling’s custom pieces, made with American Walnut, Sycamore, highly figured Cherry, Birdseye Maple, Butternut, Ash, or Hackberry, innately capture a design that’s somewhat modern Danish in style. The look amounts to clean and simple lines that defy anything too ornate while simultaneously retaining the natural hues of wood surfaced with a glossy or satin finish made from mineral spirits.

Today, at age 42, Houghtaling not only loves spending her spare time outdoors watching birds, and playing a wooden-top banjo (one she made from Maple, Walnut, and Rosewood), but she’s also the owner of a popular lounge in Ithaca, Felicia’s Atomic Lounge, where she originates specialty drinks using unusual flavors such as figs, lychees, onions, and garlic. She even experiments with coffee beans and beets, not only in her cocktails, but also to color the wood she works with. “I’m all about using and reusing, and when you think about food, so many foods have beautiful colors that look gorgeous on wood,” she says, like a true believer in sustainability.
While keeping the pace of a lounge owner, Houghtaling gets called to work on voluminous furniture projects. She has a waiting list of two months for her one-of-a-kind pieces that range anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a couple thousand. Nevertheless, upstate New Yorkers in cities such as Syracuse, Buffalo, and Rochester, and even Manhattanittes, are willing to wait for their dining room table, their desk, bathroom cabinets, benches with storage space, or bed frames. Whatever someone wants, Houghtaling tackles.

Adamant about using local wood, Houghtaling makes regular trips to Danby Hardwoods in Ithaca; she also makes regular calls to tree surgeons in the Finger Lakes region to see what might be available from the distressed trees they often cut down. “I’m drawn to the imperfection of wood. Wood with cracks and holes is its true nature. That’s what I love to work with. I’m always asking myself, ‘How can I make this more beautiful than it already is?’” One tree surgeon Houghtaling called invited her to take fifteen pieces of maple, each twenty feet long. “It’s an amazing part of the process for me to see exactly where my wood is coming from – it’s like going to the butcher and back in one day.”

Face-to-face is an approach that Houghtaling prefers with her clients, even if she has to fly across country. “There’s too much room for error if I don’t have a chance to talk to people and see where they want their piece,” she says. “And there’s a lot of trust that has to get built up between me and a client.” It’s when Houghtaling is in someone’s home, taking pictures and measurements, drawing sketches and making notes, that she knows if she’ll be able to turn out exactly what’s envisioned in someone else’s mind.

But before Houghtaling cuts into wood and wraps her hands around her favorite tools, the chisel and hand plane, she looks for the most prominent wood she’ll be working with. Once that’s established she sits with it and spends time starring at its arabesque patterns, waves, and curves. She arranges different pieces of wood next to one another, and then, similar to Pollock’s drip-painting approach, she dives in and allows some other part of her brain to take over, transforming pieces of wood that many might reject into captivatingly fresh figures for someone’s room.

Scene from the Musical Play Touché! Stage Readings at The Cherry Lane Theatre and Classic Stage Company, NYC, 2004

2007-09-12T19:49:00.000-07:00

(Everyone enters for party scene)

Group: A party, a party, // we always love a party! A party, a party, // we always love a party!
Women: Fredira, Fredira…
Men: …a bang bang bang in the pantry!
Women: Fredira, Fredira…
Men: ….a bang bang bang in the pantry!
Group: The kitchen, the bedroom // the kitchen, the bedroom, the pantry!
Women: A bang bang bang…
Men: …a bump bump bump.
Women: Bang bang
Men: Bump bump
Women: Bang… (beat)
Men: Bump… (beat) Bump…
Women: (beat) Bang…
Group: (beat) bangbump (beat, beat) bangbump! Bang!

Loud drunken laughter!
Albert and Augustus: (drunken & overlapping) A toast to more bang bangs!

Lord Ha Ha drags Sir Edmund into a private chamber and quickly shuts the door.

Lord Ha Ha: What is the matter Edmund? Thou hast lost weight, thy clothing is no longer of an artistic fashion that most becomes thee and thy smile is ever so faint…could it be thou art unhappy returning to Lady Suzette?
Sir Edmund: Shhhh…keep thy voice within these walls.

Lord Ha Ha: Hath none other else commented on these changes in thy appearance?

Sir Edmund: Are they so obvious?
Lord Ha Ha: Why yes! I am privy, am I not? Tell me what Lady Suzette hath done.

The door flings open.
Men: Bang bump! Bang bump!
Women: (overlapping) Loud drunken laughter!
Opera Singer: Oh, I’m sorry, (overlapping with group and sung) wrooooong doooooor!
Sir Edmund slams the door shut!
Sir Edmund: I insist you keep thy voice to a whisper, please.
Lord Ha Ha: Edmund, I have known thee for almost ten years, therefore, thou canst trust me, I promise thee, for I may be the only one who will hide thy confessions as if I were a cardinal priest.
Sir Edmund: Very well then, prepare thyself. I am in love, yes, I am in the pits of despair, double yes and my life is in ruins, triple yes.
Lord Ha Ha: Actually Edmund, I am more like the pope of Rome. To none but god do I speak what others do confide.
Sir Edmund: Very well then………I am in love with Fredira…
Lord Ha Ha: Fredira!

Sir Edmund: Shhhh.

The door flies open!

Group (alternating men & women & overlapping) start Men: bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang…(continuing & drunken laughter if it slips up)
Opera Singer: (sung) Have you seen Frediiiiira?
Group: (continuing) bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang…(continuing)
Sir Edmund: (overlapping) No!
Sir Edmund shuts the door!
Sir Edmund: (to Lord Ha Ha) Yes, the beautiful poetess Fredira. She hath won my heart at a most vulnerable time and I am an adulterer! A foolish adulterer!
Lord Ha Ha: Let me assure thee, tis not unusual – the list of illicit royal affairs our monarch hath entertained hath made the entanglement of more than one woman seem quite fashionable.
Sir Edmund: Tis no matter, I have lost the one I love and am a prisoner, my wife holding the key.
The door flings open again! Outrageous drunken laughter from the Group.
Opera Singer: (overlapping the group and sung) Fredira, Fredira, Frediiiiiira!!! (written out for opera singer)
Sir Edmund: Would you mind!
Sir Edmund shuts the door!
Lord Ha Ha: Edmund, I do not understand. Didst thy wife find out about thy love for Fredira and insist you return to her?
Sir Edmund: Why no, while everything was beautiful with Fredira one day I woke from a horrible nightmare, that divorcing Suzette would spell the destruction of my life’s work – so I broke it off with Fredira and went back to Suzette on my own.
The door flings open yet again!

Tristan/Albert: (sung fully and out to the moon) We are in love gentlemen, in looooooo….!
Sir Edmund shuts the door midst their singing.

Lord Ha Ha: And how did Fredira react?

Sir Edmund: She hates me; says I’ve ruined her life.
Lord Ha Ha: And how is it now, back with thy wife?
Sir Edmund: It couldn’t be worse with a threat of divorce and ruin hanging over my head, as now it is she who threatens to divorce me.

Lord Ha Ha: If thou loves, thou cannot escape from love. Remember this bit of counsel. Thou must see to the other side. Tis better my friend than martyrs and trickery to win thy heart’s sweet passions.
Sir Edmund: Tis too late I am afraid…
Sir Edmund breaks down crying.
Lord Ha Ha: Come come Edmund, gather thyself. Thou must be careful with thy wife. She doth love, but doth not want what’s best for thee. She seems to seek to save herself for she is in great need of you, not you of her.
Sir Edmund: For now I cannot act rationally. I will wail like hounds before they go to hunt. For until I reach the very scent of Fredira, I cannot be still.
Sir Edmund wails loudly. The door opens again.
Group: (in a whisper) Huh!
Women: He’s wailing like a dog!
Men: (a bit later) He’s wailing like a dog!
Women: A dog a dog a dog!
Group: A dog a dog a dog!
Sir Edmund wails loudly again.
Lady Suzette: (in a fury) What wails do I hear? And why is thy head on Lord Ha Ha’s lap? Lord Ha Ha?
Group: (in a whisper) Lord Ha Ha?
Lord Ha Ha: I…I…I…broke with the news of the fire!
Group: (in a whisper) The fire?
Lady Suzette: What fire?
Tristan and Albert: We never heard of a fire?
Lord Ha Ha: The fire in the woods of Woodbury!

Pause for Lady Suzette to think.
Lady Suzette: You are a liar!
Group: Huh!
Lady Suzette: I am a woman and I doth know!
Sir Edmund: He said nothing of nothing!
Lord Ha Ha: That’s right! I said nothing!
Group: Nothing?
Lady Suzette: (starting to have asthma and ends up choking) Tis something, not nothing! Another mistake you’ve made! Another mistake Sir Edmund! And you Lord Ha Ha, I will get you soon enough!
Lady Suzette exits.
Lord Ha Ha: You can not frighten me Lady Suzette! You peevish, fat cow!
Women: (in a whisper) Peevish fat cow?
Men: More like portly, peevish, pig!
Lord Ha Ha: Who’s put on more pounds!

Group lets out a loud burst of laughter!!
Lady Suzette: Here you are, one for you! (to Lord Ha Ha) And two for you!

Lady Suzette dumps the plum cakes over their heads and exits.

Women: One for you and two for you!
Men: One for you and two for you!
Group: But she is the one that deserves it!
Women: One for you…
Men: And two for you!
Group: But she is the one that deserves it! (whispering and underneath the opera singers) Plum-cakes, chocolate torte, marmalade, cheese-cakes // plum-cakes, chocolate torte, marmalade, cheese-cakes // plum-cakes, chocolate torte, marmalade, cheese-cakes,cheesecakes, cheesecakes, cheesecakes, cheesecakes, cheesecakes, cheesecakes, cheesecakes, cheesecakes, cheesecakes, cheesecakes….(Everyone begins to fade along with the Opera Singer)
Opera Singer: (coming in on plum-cakes - choral like) To bed Suzette, to bed, tis time for you to go to bed…to bed, to bed Suzette!
Cast: Eric Altheide, Geno Carr, Anne Marie Cummings, Jeff Farber, Celia Howard, Gerry Lehane, Caroline Luft, Sonia Perez, Mark Petra, Baz Snider. All Members of Actors Equity Association.

Gail Blanke & Living the Life You Want, www.rasaspa.com

2007-04-28T14:41:00.000-07:00

It’s one thing to be noted as a celebrity, but it’s something entirely different if you hold the key to empower men and women to live the lives they want. And that’s what this best-selling author, renowned personal and executive life coach and motivational speaker has. I read her book, Between Trapezes: Flying Into a New Life with the Greatest of Ease (Rodale), in one night almost a year ago and haven’t forgotten many of the valuable messages she effortlessly passes along. Sitting across from the founder, president and chief executive of Lifedesigns, Gail Blanke, I feel a nervous kind of excitement. After all, she has advised everyone from CEOs and presidential candidates to working mothers, career changers, empty nesters, job seekers and people who are just plain stuck and want to reinvent their lives. She’s the author of two other books: In my Wildest Dreams: Living the Life You Long For (Simon & Schuster) and Taking Control of Your Life: The Secrets of Successful Enterprising Women (Mastermedia). Gail has a most amazing presence, a petite figure and charm which makes you think of Audrey Hepburn.

How do you define success?
One of the problems with this is that we buy into other people’s ideas of success. I highly encourage people to define success for themselves and then follow through with that. Many people have given a good part of their lives doing what others view as success to later discover their unhappiness because they’ve been living someone else’s dream.
What does success mean for you?
Success for me is making a difference in other people’s lives. When I was a young girl I figured I would be an entertainer, but interestingly enough, I always had the feeling that I was supposed to make a difference somehow. I was brought up and taught that I could do anything if I worked hard enough and tried. So my job is to pay it forward and give back. That’s my mission.
As a mother what advice would you give parents raising children?
The greatest gift parents can give their children is to encourage them to live their dreams. Once they do that, they give their children the permission to do the same. How will they know if we don’t do it?
My parents generation and still to a large degree, this generation, believes in security – landing that job that you know will give you and your family benefits for the next twenty years. As a motivational speaker and a personal and executive life coach, what are your thoughts about security?We need to learn to thrive on the insecurity of security. Suppose you take a job that offers security only to find that if you loose that job for no fault of your own, where will you be? We have to learn to be entrepreneurs, even within a company. The security is not the job, it’s in the playing of the game. If security is your goal, then you’ll undoubtedly be unhappy. Change and unpredictability are good. Charles Darwin was right when he said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
Is there a particular culture that you feel views life and change the way you teach?
The changes that have taken place in our country are stunning. We are the entrepreneurs and the inventors. Think of the great things we’ve created in the last two hundred years. We’ve had to thrive on change and people come here with that spirit in mind. It’s all possible here. That’s the American dream.
Since so much of what you do is inspirational, how do you handle watching the news which obviously can be very depressing?We have to be brilliant editors of the visual input in our lives. I don’t watch every news segment and I don’t want everything out there cluttering my mind. We have to remember the saying, “We are what we think.” Within our thoughts we create our vision of the world. You get to choose what you envisage. On the other hand, I do consider myself to be very well informed, but there are times when I turn it off. This is very important. I don’t want to have certain impressions in my psyche. We forget that we get to choose. This is part of designing your own life.
You have worked with, and continue to work with politicians…if President Bush called you for guidance, what would your advice to him be?I work with politicians on their presentations, yes, and I may not necessarily agree with all of their persuasions. I don’t think however that I could work with someone who’s fundamental beliefs are antithetical to what I believe in, so I wouldn’t be able to work with President Bush; I don’t believe we should have gone to war.
Who influenced you the most?
My father, with my mother right up there! He taught me what charisma was about. He also taught me to appreciate how good I already was. He taught me to stand for something and trust my instincts and that absolutely anyone could be motivated and inspired. He was the motivator in my life.
And that’s where you got the name for your column in Real Simple magazine?The Motivator, yes, no question about it.
While you guide individuals primarily through career changes and presentations, do you work with individuals having relationship issues? Is your approach any different?Work and life are intricately intertwined. With everyone I meet, we touch upon both. One woman I happen to be working with right now is reinventing herself after a divorce. She’s coming up with a whole new view about herself. I also work with people who are going through career changes and figuring out what they want.
Bodywork such as massage is extremely important to those going through changes in their lives and even when they’re not. When you treat yourself to a massage or any kind of bodywork, what do you do to get the most out of it?I give myself up to it. I want to let go and I think of this time as a healing mechanism. This actually helps me breath differently. I happen to also love fragrance and find that scented candles can really change my mood, so I light them often.
What activity or non-activity do you recommend for someone going through a major shift in their life?I really think that people should do whatever their favorite version is of working out. We need to aerate our bodies and our minds. We need to do more physical aerobic exercise, everyday. It’s import to also lift weights for our bones. In general working out is what clears your mind and it’s where I get my best column ideas - on the treadmill.
What is your opinion of therapy?I think therapy is very worthy as long as it focuses on the future and what’s possible, not just the past and what’s happened.
There are many road blocks we overcome when we are going through life changes. Sometimes we overcome certain things with ease and then we hit a wall along the way. What walls are the most difficult for the majority of your clients to get past?

I think that people with anxiety take more time to get to the place of answering the question, “if you could do anything with your life, what would that be?” Also, the idea of “letting go.” This seems to be very difficult for many people, especially letting go of that first trapeze and moving on to the next. In the movie, "A Beautiful Mind," I love that scene towards the end where John Nash, the brilliant mathematician, but at the same time a troubled person who suffered from schizophrenia, and who often was accompanied by people who existed only in his mind, is in the dining hall with a gentleman who just informed him he is being considered for the Nobel Peace Prize. During their conversation John Nash says to him, “I still see things that are not here, I just choose not to acknowledge them. Like a diet of the mind, I choose not to indulge certain appetites.” And as John Nash often did, there are many times we need to tell ourselves this same thing. When these negative voices flood our minds; voices that drag us back or weigh us down – old resentments, regrets, anger, the fear of failing – we can, at any given moment, choose not to acknowledge them; not to feed those fears. It’s hard and it takes practice, but it can be done.

If you had to sum up what the key to creating your own life is in one or two sentences, what would you say?The key is you get to decide how good it’s going to be. That it isn’t written until you write it and you’re in charge. It’s absolutely yours to design and you don’t need to wait for permission as to when you can start. You can step forward now. So many people are waiting for the planets to align or the starts to connect before they do what they want. What they don’t know is the time is now.

To schedule a session with Gail Blanke and to learn more go to her website: www.lifedesigns.com. Gail is a popular and frequent speaker at corporations, professional women’s organizations and educational institutions. Also, read Gail’s column, The Motivator, in Real Simple magazine. Gail also offers career advice on the AOL Coaches channel.

Photo by: Jeff Fasano

Something About Kristin McGee

2007-03-23T08:31:00.000-07:00

In the cozy atmosphere of the hip SoHo Equinox gym in New York City, I met up with the bright Idaho born renowned yoga instructor, Kristin McGee. Former MTV's yoga and pilate's girl, Kristin has hit newsstands regularly on the cover of Fit Yoga and Pilates Style. She's also appeared on fun TV shows like Sex and the City and has been interviewed on the CBS Morning Show, CNN News and works with celebrity clients such as Steve Martin, Jeff Goldblum and country singer LeAnn Rimes.

Is there bodywork you like to tie-in or partner with yoga?

I'd definitely say Thai massage. I do a lot of that already with my private clients. It's not something I've studied, but I stretch clients in a way that's a lot like Thai massage. I do this in between some of the yoga poses and at the end of some of the workouts. It's really intense and the stretch is more than what my clients can do by themselves.

What's your personal pamper treatment package you give to yourself?

There's this lady back in Idaho that gives me a great pedicure and manicure with a facial. I love that sort of thing and I really love anything that helps my dry skin, like a good hot bath with clay mud. Also anything with jets for my feet!

How often do you treat yourself?

I don't treat myself nearly as much as I should, but in many ways, my yoga workout is my own self massage. And when I do get a massage, I look for someone who goes deep enough. It's really hard to find someone who understands a yoga body. I'm small, but I have a really high pain threshold.

Who inspires you the most - in general?

Wow, that's a tough question, but I would have to say my good friend Lisa Landphair. She's an amazing massage therapist and yoga teacher. She's able to live in this city and stay true to herself and when I say true to herself I mean, she listens and processes things without conforming to what others think or see or feel. She practices what she preaches and she's never there for the outcome or the end result. Lisa lives differently than anyone I know. She doesn't even own a cell phone!

And you're true to yourself too, right?

Yeah, I would say that I'm becoming more and more true to myself. Yoga certainly brings me to that place. Yoga is about being connected and becoming more aware of your own inner thoughts and staying with your breath. The big shift for me started to happen at the beginning of this year when I began to embrace the mindset of letting go. I've always tried to control things and now I'm leading more with my heart and giving more freely. Also I'm letting more people in and not being so result oriented. Just staying open. If I don't do this, there won't be that necessary shift in me.

And how does this shift in you translate into yoga classes and your own yoga practice?

There's less structure. Sometimes I'll throw in a new pose here and there just because it feels good. The workouts don't always have to be hardcore. It's less about perfecting a pose, but just letting things be natural and easy. Yoga can be fun. I have a great time with my clients and the students in my classes.

What do you say to people who say they don't want to do yoga or pilate's or even get body work done on them?

I say to them, walk. People need to move and walking can be very mindful. One of my older clients who's in his 70's told me his secret is the walking he does to and from work.

How do you start and end your day?

I used to start my day so early and I would jump out of bed, have my coffee and run, but now I actually stand up on my bed, take a moment and stretch my arms up over my head and make this gesture like I'm celebrating my life. After that I have my coffee.

And at night?

Every night I go over my gratitude check list of all the things I'm lucky to have and for all the people in my life.

The other day someone asked me, "so how do you live your life?" What's your response to that?

This is why the whole shift in me has occurred. My attitude used to be, make your dreams come true, be productive. Now it's, be delighted, no more struggles are necessary, turn overwork to overjoy. Now I'm always learning something new.

And if you could find more delight in your life, what would you do?

Treat myself to more massages, sleep in on Sunday's, wear sundresses, go to the beach more. I also want to do more childlike things. And, thinking work and career feels really masculine. Thinking about giving over and letting go feels more feminine. I want more feminine in my life!

Photograph by Clay Enos

Check out Kristin's website at www.kristinmcgee.com

Why Take Time Out

2007-03-15T10:06:00.000-07:00

Everyone needs a day off, even if our bodies may not tell us. We become accustomed to being on the go until we become sick with a high fever and body aches all over. That's when we say to ourselves, "I really need a massage," or "I need a vacation." But if you make massage and pampering a regular part of your personal routine, you may find yourself less tired and much more grounded to deal with life's many challenges.

Wherever I have lived I have actively sought out that special place I could go to be pampered. I remember finding a spa in Seattle hidden between one of the back alleys of Pike Place Market. As soon as I stepped off the cobble stone street, I knew I would be taken care of. Everything was done with attention and thought out by someone who's intent was clearly to heal distress and bring ease. Everything was there to let the tension go.

Every spa is designed to offer it's clients something unique. I once went to a spa in Checkoslovakia that had a strict daily regime. I began the morning with spring water followed by hydrotherapy treatments, massage, a light lunch, an hour mud wrap, nap time and after dinner, a stroll around the small town of Karlovivary before drinking another round of this town's spring water that miraculously cleansed the system. This program was designed to address the needs of the body, but the daily routine trained the mind to relax and let go of all stress. Before I knew it, I had forgotten how long I'd been there and what day of the week it was. As odd a place as Karlovivary was, its program did the trick that any great spa should do.

So when I found RasaSpa before moving to Ithaca from New York City, I found exactly what I hoped for. You see Rasa has many meanings, but my favorite is "the taste of enlightenment." By the time I left after my first visit, I would say I most definitely had my taste of Rasa.

Fine print by by Ivo Stoyanov