*
TO MY VERY OWN BRUNO SCHULZ IN MY OLD AGE
I conjure up your father — double of Kafka’s father — looming
on his bed
in his nightshirt and stocking cap, considering, shrieking,
flailing his arms,
his body staggering on the wavering mattress, sentencing you to
his anger,
irrationally cursing his son for having abandoned the Yiddish
world —
which his father himself abandoned years ago, though now
cursing the son for the same defection,
the father’s contempt for his son steaming out of his own
contradictions—
this phantasmagoria, Bruno, your lead me to in the midst of the
night.
*
Oh, Bruno, my brother, master guide to the night’s swarthy
pavilion,
your mind — that dedication you gave to what you imagined
there.
It’s not too late for you to renew yourself in me as you sit in my
chair,
you who have suddenly reappeared, summoning me from my
bed to see you
there opposite me at the other end of the living room, you there,
near the window and the warm radiator, your presence in these
small hours
while I scribble my notes and stare again at you, you resider
somewhere in these fragments,
I, in my bathrobe, scribbling toward a poem I must work out,
turning you into my own speech.
No one, Bruno, describes the metamorphosis of the sky, or the
deceits of Spring, like you,
you also showing me how the abrupt shifts of signs and stores
and wares aggravate Drohobych.
*
And your childhood compels me to recognize my own —
like playing in the fenced-in backyard behind my father’s
shoe store —
whipping my spauldine against a brick wall , with imagined batter
and internal umpire,
that wall made up of each brick surrounded by a frame of mortar
as I played my pitcher-batter game, fenced-in behind my father’s
store,
the wall and I making a battery of an invisible team on
invisible field.
Oh, Bruno, free me back into my own childhood, you the
enhancer,
you who once said you want to “mature” into childhood —
like the time my fingertips compulsively grazed the mortar
frame of the bricks, and then
grazed those bricks themselves — sometimes nicked, a
sometime-smooth —
those bricks that made up the wall I threw my ball against,
the ball that quickly bounced back or slowly rolled back to my
hands.
And my fingers regrouped the ball, throwing it again and again,
as if I were in training on some field of play as well as in the yard
back of my father’s store.
*
One afternoon in old age I took a walk with my daughter,
my cane helping me to keep the pace as she and I crossed
a street and found a brick wall a block long along our left
as we were making our way back home, along the edge of a large
stage.
She observed how long it kept on going and how laborious
it must have been to build a long brick wall like that,
all of it having to be done by hand, one brick at a time.
Her remarks as we kept walking along the wall transported
me
back to the time of my imagined baseball game as a child
in that backyard behind my father’s shoe store, and now
my fingertips grazed the mortar and back once again
and it seemed I was both here and back there and elsewhere —
I in my backyard, in this walk, both boy and man and yet
another.
~Richard Fein, Shirim, 2024
Oriana:
This must be the first time when I’ve posted a poem because of my delight in the mystery of the last line.
Bruno Schulz, self-portrait
*
In these exclusive BBC Archive interviews, Francis Ford Coppola describes how with his masterpiece The Godfather he visualized the intricate web of influence, manipulation and violence that underpinned the world of organized crime – and showed how it reflected the US.
On 14 March 1972, the iconic crime epic The Godfather premiered in New York. With its haunting score, its subtle, evocative cinematography, its endlessly quotable dialogue and its powerhouse performances – which served to revive Marlon Brando's career and make a star of a young Al Pacino – it is now widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time.
Accused of glamorizing crime and the Mafia before it was even released, it went on to be seen by many as the definitive gangster film. But not by its director. "I've always felt The Godfather was really less about gangsters, than about power and powerful families, and the succession of power, and the Machiavellian way that real power works in the world," Francis Ford Coppola told the BBC's Barry Norman in 1991.
Coppola was just 29 years old when he was first offered the chance to direct an adaptation of Mario Puzo's bestselling 1969 novel. The story centered on a fictional New York Mafia family in the post-World War Two years, led by patriarch Don Vito Corleone (the eponymous Godfather of the title), as they try to ensure their survival in the brutal and treacherous world of organized crime. When the Don is betrayed, his youngest son Michael, who had hoped for a life away from the Mob, gets pulled into the family business, as a war between the different crime families breaks out and they fight for control.
Coppola initially did not warm to the book. He wasn't much interested in the Mafia, and when he first read it, he was put off by some of its more lurid aspects.
"To me originally, and anyone who remembers the original Godfather book, it had a lot of sleazy aspects to it, which of course were cut out for the movie, and I didn't like it very much for those reasons," he told Sir Christopher Frayling in a 1985 BBC interview.
But being from an Italian-American background like its author Puzo, he did understand the culture, tradition and family rituals the story was steeped in. And, as he reread the book, he saw there was much more to it than just a potboiler about crime, sex and revenge. The story had themes that were classical in their nature, a powerful father and family bonds, a son yearning to escape his fate, old-world values clashing with a changing society, honor and betrayal, and how power corrupts the souls of those who wield it.
"Obviously I was more interested in those themes but those themes could apply to a Shakespeare play, or any piece that deals, you know, Greek drama even really, that deals with those bigger themes, and that's more where I had my attention on," Coppola told Barry Norman.
He and Puzo drew out these themes as they worked together on the screenplay. Coppola told the BBC that at the heart of the film lies an examination of power dynamics, the corrupting influence of powerful families and a commentary on the way the US operates on the world stage.
Parallels with the US
In the film, Don Corleone (played by Marlon Brando) will, depending on the situation, negotiate, bribe, intimidate or resort to savage violence to ensure that his family's interests and power are maintained. Likewise, the US, faced with what it saw as the threat of the Soviet Union, was being accused of using clandestine operations or bribery to destabilize rival countries, forming alliances with other nations, promising them its protection and fighting proxy wars in other countries, to ensure US interests prevailed.
Michael (Al Pacino) explicitly makes this parallel to his girlfriend Kay Adams (Diane Keaton) when he tells her he is going to work for his father, saying to her "My father is no different than any other powerful man, any man who's responsible for other people, like a senator or a president."
"Do you know how naïve you sound," Kay says. "Senators and presidents don't have men killed." To which Michael, ever the realist, replies: "Who's being naïve, Kay?"
Don Corleone, who had fled Europe following the murder of his family, like many immigrants is rooted in the traditions of the culture he came from, while his son Michael who has grown up in the US, is more assimilated into the changing, post-war world.
A good college student who has come back from fighting for his country, initially Michael comes across as an idealist, and appears to be clear-sighted as to what his family does and how he is different from them. When he tells Kay the story of how his father got his godson, the singer Johnny Fontane, out of his contract – by having a gun held to the head of his bandleader – Michael reassures her saying "That's my family Kay, that's not me."
"It seemed to me that Michael Corleone in the first Godfather, like America, started really with some ideals, freshness, and although he came from Europe, as America really was born out of Europe, there were these new ideals and new directions which was so inspiring," Coppola told Barry Norman in 1991.
Vito Corleone, and Michael after him, are not mere criminals but power brokers who understand that influence is as essential as violence to manipulate and control situations in their favor. Vito understands that the essence of power is the ability to compel others to act against their own best interests, and he distills this idea down to a line which became synonymous with the film: "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse."
A cultural touchstone
As the film progresses, Michael slowly assumes his father's role. He begins to exercise power through coercion, blackmail or violence. Yet he, like his father, still clings to the trappings of respectability, often seen through his relationships to the Catholic Church, businesses or politicians, to provide a cover of legitimacy for his behavior.
When Michael ruthlessly consolidates his power and deals out what he sees as justice to his enemies, this veneer of respectability is brought into sharp focus. Scenes of him renouncing the devil at his nephew's Christening are intercut with a jarring montage of brutal murders he has ordered of people he sees as threats.
Coppola felt that the betrayal of ideals – that Michael seemed to represent at the beginning of the film – act as a metaphor for America's own conduct on the world stage. "As [Michael] grew older, as illustrated by the second movie, like America, as it really began to function in the world and deal in the responsibilities and manipulations of power, he began to construct, I feel, almost a hypocrisy. Which is to say 'I'm doing this for good, I'm doing this for the family, I'm doing this for good things,'" said Coppola.
Michael justifies his actions with the supposedly "good ends" of protecting his family, which he conflates with his own strategic criminal goals and, as the film saga shows, ultimately fails to keep his family safe. At the time he was working on the Godfather, pictures of the brutality and anarchy of the war the US was conducting in Vietnam and its horrific human cost were filtering back, leading people to question what the US was doing there.
Coppola draws this parallel with Michael's dubious claims for his own motivation and the US's stated aims of fighting for freedom and democracy overseas, while relentlessly pursuing its own foreign policy objectives. "His actions were certainly like America, saying we want democracy, we want freedom, all these good things but much of the behind-the-scenes actions, necessitated by politics meant we were in a way staining ourselves, like Michael Corleone, like the soul of Dorian Gray was being stained.”
After its release, The Godfather became a huge critical and commercial success. It won three Oscars, including for best picture and best adapted screenplay, and its success prompted an equally lauded sequel two years later, The Godfather: Part II, which went on to win another six Oscars.
The film has become an abiding cultural touchstone that can be seen through many different lenses, a metaphor for US capitalism, a commentary on the American Dream and even a critique of the motion picture industry itself. Indeed, in a sign of how rich the story is for possible interpretations, John Hulsman and Wess Mitchell's 2009 book, The Godfather Doctrine, argues that the film is really a parable for precisely the pragmatic foreign policy approach that US should adopt in a post 9/11 world.
However you view it, the film is, among other things, a story about power, how to gain it, how to keep it and how the pursuit of it will inevitably come at a cost to yourself and those you love.
Coppola was writing the screenplay at a period when the US emerged as a superpower, and felt that the country was increasingly justifying using any means to shape global events in its favor.
The first film ends on a sombre note with a shot of the door closing on Kay as Michael, who has just lied to his wife about his murderous actions, is crowned the new Don. Coppola seems to be offering a stark warning – just as Michael's actions corrupt the person he once believed he was and come at a terrible price for those he loves and wants to protect, so this behavior could do the same to the US.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240312-in-history-the-godfather-was-really-about-the-us
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TRUMP’S CIVIL WAR — TIMOTHY SNYDER, JUNE 12, 2025
Earlier this week Donald Trump called for a second civil war at a US military base. This scenario can be resisted and prevented, if we have the courage to listen, interpret, and act. And this Saturday we will have the occasion to act ["No Kings" marches].
The listening is important. The speech was given at the base now known again as Ft. Bragg. The fort was named for a confederate general. It was renamed Ft. Liberty. Under this administration, it was renamed Fort Bragg, now ostensibly to honor another American serviceman, not the confederate general. It is a dishonest pretense that dishonors everyone.
The fort is now named again after a confederate general, as Trump made clear. The tradition that is now in fact being honored, that of oathbreakers and traitors.
In Trump's speech, the existence of the United States is placed in doubt. We are not a country but a divided society in which some of us deserve punishment by others. He made no mention of the world today, nor of any common American interest that might necessitate national defense. There was no concern about threats from China or Russia. Middle Eastern dictatorships, the only countries that Trump singled out, garnered great praise because their leaders gave Trump money. There was no mention of any wars that are actually underway, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Trump invoked of battlefields across the decades to create a sense of individual heroism, in which of course the history the the US Army is very rich. But that individual heroism is usually cited by commanders in chief as evidence of a nation that is worthy of defense. No such America figured in Trump's speech. America did not exist Trump's speech, except as a cult to him personally.
In the actual history of the United States, one war is central: the Civil War. Trump, who has never seen the point of the Union Army defending the republic, now seems now to have moved on to the position that the Confederacy should have won. He promised to rename Fort Gregg-Adams, the first base named for African-Americans, to Fort Robert E. Lee. The base in question hasn't been known by the full name of the confederate commander since 1950. Lee was a traitor, an oathbreaker, a defender of slavery and the commander of a force whose mission was to break up the United States of America.
In his speech, Trump claimed that seizing undocumented migrants in 2025 shows the same courage as fighting in the Revolutionary War, or the First World War, or the Second World War, or Korea or Vietnam. It would have been news to the soldiers at the time that charging a trench or jumping from a plane is no different than ganging up on a graduate student or bullying a middle-aged seamstress.
But here we see the magic of Trump's rhetoric: he seeks to transform the courage of the past into the cowardice of the future. He is preparing American soldiers to see themselves as heroes when they undertake operations inside the United States against unarmed people, including their fellow citizens.
All of this, of course, trivializes actual US military achievements. The actual battles of our history just become a "show," to use one of Trump's keywords. They are deeds performed for the pleasure of a Leader who then invokes them to justify his own permanent power. Denuded of all context, military glory becomes a spectacle into which any meaning can be injected. And he who injects the meaning is he who rules. That is the fascist principle that Trump understands.
There is no politics except struggle, and he who can define the enemy in the struggle can stay in power. But whereas historical fascists had an enemy without and an enemy within, Trump only has an enemy within. The world is too much for him. The army is just for dominating Americans.
In his speech, Trump was trying to transform a legacy of battlefield victory around the world into a future willingness to take illegal orders regarding his own policy on the territory of the United States. The defiance of the law was clear. Trump cannot, for example, legally just rename those bases. The forts were named by an act of Congress. And he cannot legally deploy the Marines to Los Angeles. He has no authority to do so. The president is expressly forbidden by law from using the armed forces to implement domestic policies.
Trump defined himself not as a president but as a permanent Leader. In repeatedly mocking his predecessor, he was summoning soldiers to defy the fundamental idea that their service is to the Constitution and not to a given person. “You think this crowd would have showed up for Biden?” Whether or not it is unprecedented, as I believe it is, such mockery certainly dangerous. It suggests that something besides an election, something like individual charisma, some personal right to rule, is what matters. That soldiers should follow Trump because he is Trump, and not for any other reason.
In general, we imagine that the US Army is here to defend us, not to attack us. But summoning soldiers to heckle their fellow Americans is a sign of something quite different. Trump seized the occasion to summon soldiers to join him in mocking the press. Reporters, of course, as the Founders understood, are a critical check on tyranny. They, like protestors, are protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. Trump was teaching soldiers that society does not matter, and that law does not matter. He "loves" soldiers. He is personally responsible for the pay raises: "I gave you so much money for four years it was crazy." "We're giving you an across-the-board raise" This is the way a dictator speaks to a palace guard, or a fascist to a paramilitary.
Trump is putting himself above the army and the army above the country: "we only have a country because we first had an army, the army was first." That ridiculous: the Continental Army was formed in 1775 from the people, for the very specific and time-limited purpose of ending colonial oppression.Trump wants the armed force to be the end in itself, and freedom to be its enemy. Generally, presidents who speak to soldiers of military glory have had in mind the defense of American freedoms, such as the freedom of expression, including the freedom of the press and the freedom to assemble. Trump said nothing about freedom, except as a "flame" or a "shield." He said nothing about rights. There was not a word about democracy.
We are witnessing an attempt at regime change, rife in perversities. It has a historical component: we are to celebrate the oathbreakers and the traitors. It has a fascist component: we are to embrace the present moment as an exception, in which all things are permitted to the Leader. And of course it has an institutional component: soldiers are meant to be the avant-garde of the end of democracy. Instead of treating the army as defenders or freedom, Trump presented soldiers as his personal armed servants, whose job it was to oppress his chosen enemies -- inside the United States. Trump was trying to instruct soldiers that their mission was to crush fellow Americans who dared to exercise their rights, such as the right to protest.
Referring to migration as an "invasion," as Trump did during the speech, is meant to blur the distinction between his immigration policy and a foreign war. But it is also meant to transform the mission of the US Army. The meaningful border here is that between reality and fantasy. If soldiers and others are willing to accept that migration is an "invasion," then they enter into an alternative reality. Inside that alternative reality, they will see those who do not accept the invasion fantasy as enemies. And this is exactly what Trump called for when he portrayed elected officials in California as collaborators in "an occupation of the city by criminal invaders.”
The US Army, like other American institutions, includes people of various backgrounds. It depends heavily on African-Americans and non-citizens. One can try to transform the army into a cult of the Confederacy and a tool to persecute migrants, but this will cause, at a minimum, great friction. Beyond this, using the Army to enforce domestic policy risks ruining its reputation. Deploying the armed forces in cities risks US soldiers killing US civilians. It also risks that provocateurs, including foreign ones, including allies of Trump, will try to kill an American soldier to provoke a disaster. (Trump’s birthday parade seems practically designed for such an incident, by the way.)
Trump will welcome and exploit such situations, of course. He doesn’t have the courage to say things clearly or start conflict directly, but instead sets up others for situations in which they suffer and he profits. The question is whether civil war is the future Army officers and soldiers want. When Trump promises to celebrate Robert E. Lee, he is telling the Army that oath-breakers and traitors will be celebrated in the future. This is not in his gift. Officers who bring the US armed forces to battle American civilians will be remembered by the heirs of a broken republic and as the people who started a second American civil war.
It is clear what Trump is trying to do. He wants to turn everything around. He wants an army that is not a legal institution but a personal paramilitary. He wants it not to defend Americans but to oppress them. He wishes the shame of our national history to become our pride. He wants to transform a republic into a fascist regime by transforming a history of courage into a future of cowardice.
This can only succeed if it goes unchallenged. All of us can think about his words and their implications. Officers and soldiers can remember that not all orders are legal orders. Those in the media can interpret Trump's speeches clearly rather than just repeating them or seeing them as one side in a partisan dispute. Our courts can name the limits of his authority. And even a Republican Congress can recognize when its powers are being usurped in a way that risks the end of our country.
Though he did not mention the Civil War, Trump did refer to "the sacred soil of Gettysburg." It is worth recalling Lincoln's very different sense of the sacrifice of American soldiers in his Gettysburg Address:
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
In the end, and in the beginning, and at all moments of strife, a government of the people, by the people, for the people depends upon the awareness and the actions of all of us. A democracy only exists if a people exist, and a people only exists in individuals' awareness of one another of itself and of their need to act together. This weekend Trump plans a celebration of American military power as a celebration of himself on his birthday — military dictatorship nonsense. This is a further step towards a different kind of regime. It can be called out, and it can be overwhelmed.
Thousands of Americans across the land, many veterans among them, have worked hard to organize protests this Saturday — against tyranny, for freedom, for government of the people, by the people, for the people.
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?pli=1#inbox/FMfcgzQbffgpDNjNXqFvXmZqBrTjKMQg
*
ARMY PARADE VS ‘NO KINGS’ PROTESTS
The 33-mile trip from one protest in Annapolis to the parade grandstand in front of the White House was like a journey between two different countries.
The crowds in Annapolis gathered in front of the colonial, red-brick Maryland State House around mid-morning. The people who came were largely white, and they held signs reading: "RESISTING THE CROWN SINCE 1776," and "I'M A VETERAN, NOT A SUCKER OR A LOSER," a reference to comments attributed to Trump disparaging American war-dead, which Trump has called "a total lie.”
John Wells, a 76-year-old retired economist statistician with the federal government, said he supported the U.S. Army, but couldn't stand the parade.
"It's outrageous. We're not in Russia or North Korea … or China. That's the thing they do. It's also costing a lot of money and people's resources," Wells said of the price tag for the D.C. parade and surrounding events, estimated at $25 million to $45 million.
Speakers in Annapolis included labor union representatives, the leader of an immigrant advocacy group and a George Washington reenactor who wore a white wig and a blue waistcoat. Randy Goldberg, a 75-year-old retired nurse, played America's first president and delivered the speech Washington gave when he relinquished his military command there in 1783.
"I retire from the great theater of action and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body under whose orders I have so long acted, I hereby offer my commission and leave all the employments of public life," Goldberg said, channeling Washington as the crowd broke into applause.
Randy Goldberg
Protesters contrasted Washington's voluntary decision to give up military power with what they saw as an autocratic-style military parade on the National Mall.
The protesters' point was that Washington voluntarily gave up military power, while they say Trump was trying to accrue more by holding the parade on the National Mall with countless tons of military hardware.
Trump dismissed such criticism Saturday.
"Every other country celebrates their victories," Trump told the crowd in D.C. "It's about time that America did, too.”
In fact, this was not a victory celebration, but a birthday party for the Army. The last time the U.S. held a similar parade was after the First Gulf War, in 1991.
"We have to own the flag. No one can tell us that we're not patriots," said Donna Edwards, president of the Maryland State & DC AFL-CIO, who addressed the Annapolis crowd wearing an American flag dress. "No one should say that because we're here, we hate America. We're fighting for America.”
About 45 minutes to the west, many who attended the Army celebration also wore flag T-shirts, hats and shorts. The crowd was diverse and included military families whose members had immigrated to the U.S. from around the world, including Ecuador, El Salvador and Vietnam.
The event in the nation's capital seemed at times like a cross between a military festival and an Army recruiting video. People lounged on the grass in the shadow of the Washington Monument. Amid the strains of Van Halen over the loudspeakers, tank drivers pumped their fists and revved their engines as they drove past cheering crowds down Constitution Avenue. Along the way, the announcer thanked the various corporate sponsors, including Lockheed Martin and Palantir, the data-mining firm that has a $30 million contract to help Immigration and Customs and Enforcement track migrants in the U.S.
The staging seemed designed to enhance the muscular image Trump likes to project. A pair of tanks sat in front of the grandstand from which the president watched. After his speech, Trump was presented with a traditionally folded U.S. flag — a gift usually reserved for the family members of fallen soldiers.
Some who attended the event — including a few who said they did not vote for Trump — dismissed criticism that the parade had authoritarian overtones.
"I think they've got this whole cloud over their head that Trump's this dictator when he's acting completely [within] the law," said Dennis Connelly, 19, who wore baggy American flag pants and had flown in from Knoxville, Tenn., for the event.
The president, too, took issue ahead of the parade with being described as a king. "I don't feel like a king," Trump said in advance of the parade. "I have to go through hell to get things approved.”
His administration's actions have been mired in hundreds of lawsuits — and the courts have frequently blocked them from being implemented.
Connelly says he hopes to enlist in the Marines and serve in counterintelligence. While No Kings protesters criticized Trump for busting norms, Connelly sees that as a good thing.
"He's powerful, and he's kind of like those high school bullies. … And I just think that's wonderful," said Connelly. "We have to have a powerful president who's willing to push some boundaries.”
Although Connelly is a fan of Trump's, he has doubts about some of the president's policies. He says allowing ICE agents to wear masks provides people the opportunity to impersonate them and commit crimes. He also says he doesn't think Trump has a complete understanding of tariffs.
"I think he's assuming that these companies are willing to pay them and not going to manipulate the public ... and add that on to [the] consumer price," said Connelly, who took his first airplane flight ever to come here.
The parade attracted many Trump voters, who gave the president a warm round of applause when he was introduced. A smattering sported MAGA gear. But most people NPR spoke to said they were there to celebrate the Army and see the tanks.
Well before the parade's end, thousands began heading out. As they exited onto Constitution Avenue, they were met by No Kings protesters.
"Trump is a Tyrant," read one sign. The paradegoers with whom an NPR reporter was walking made their way past the protesters and headed toward the Metro trains.
America's split-screen day had finally merged into a collective image of a divided people a half block from the White House, many unable or unwilling to talk to one another.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/16/nx-s1-5434337/army-military-parade-no-kings-protests-president-trump-divided-america
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BIBLIOTHERAPY: READING FICTION CAN BE HEALING
"Bibliotherapy" has been soaring in popularity as a means of improving people's wellbeing. But getting it right depends on the book, and the person.
In the summer of 2017, Elizabeth Russell was going through a rough patch. It was during a difficult divorce, involving her two young teenagers, while she was still in the throes of a long-term depression. "It was just a really, really stressful time," recalls Russell, a teacher and librarian at an elementary school in Connecticut, US.
But then on the internet she came across something called "creative bibliotherapy", where a tailored recommendation of fiction is offered with the aim of improving mental health. The name Ella Berthoud, a bibliotherapist based in Sussex, UK, who co-wrote the book The Novel Cure about such literary remedies, kept popping up. Russell – an avid reader – immediately wanted to try it out.
After quizzing Russell on her reading habits and interviewing her about her challenges, Berthoud sent her a list of book recommendations relevant to her life, many featuring characters navigating tough marital decisions, like George and Lizzie by Nancy Pearl. "I just was blown away," Russell recalls. Learning from the lessons and mistakes of fictional characters helped her process what she was going through and made her feel less alone. "It opened up something in me that needed to be opened and needed to heal," she says.
In the UK and elsewhere, bibliotherapy – which also includes recommendations for non-fiction and self-help literature – has been soaring in popularity as a means of improving people's wellbeing, help navigate tough life decisions, and even to treat specific mental health conditions. (Read the BBC's book recommendations on homesickness and resilience.)
While the benefits of self-help literature are well documented, advocates of fiction-based or "creative bibliotherapy" claim similar advantages. They argue that immersing oneself in rich, simulated worlds – often reflective of real-life experiences – can help readers process emotions, discover coping strategies, or simply provide momentary escape from their everyday woes.
As two researchers wrote in a 2016 paper in The Lancet, immersion in great literature can "help relieve, restore, and reinvigorate the troubled mind – and can play a part in relieving stress and anxiety, as well as other troubled states of mind". Considering the shortage of affordable mental health services in many countries, the idea that fiction can offer support is appealing.
As anyone who has ever read and loved a work of drama, poetry or fiction can attest, stories have powerful effects on our minds and emotions. But that doesn't mean that any kind of fiction boosts mental health for everyone. Several experts interviewed for this article worry about what they see as an overhyped promise of creative bibliotherapy in treating specific mental health conditions, where they say the scientific evidence is still rather thin. In fact, research suggests that certain books can even be harmful.
Rather, the existing research paints a more nuanced picture, suggesting that fiction can help boost general wellbeing, but it depends a lot on the person, the book and how they engage with it, says James Carney, a computational cognitive scientist at the London Interdisciplinary School.
"There's this idea that books are this cultic object that are going to make everything better," Carney says. "I think for a certain number of conditions and for a certain type of personality, it can be the case, but the idea that they're a universal medicine is just simply false.”
Some trace the origins of bibliotherapy to World War One, when fiction and non-fiction books were used to ease soldiers' suffering and trauma. But the idea made a return in the 1990s, Carney says. Today it takes many forms – from bibliotherapists like Berthoud who offer tailored recommendations for £100 ($130) per session, to some GPs who point some of their patients to fiction, like Andrew Schuman. He's an NHS physician who advises the bibliotherapy charity ReLit and co-wrote the 2016 Lancet paper about the benefits of bibliotherapy.
While fiction bibliotherapy isn't a substitute for other treatments, "in conjunction with other therapies, it can be a massively powerful, boosting therapy", Schuman says. A benefit compared with other therapy types, Russell adds, is that people can do it on their own time, approaching their books when they feel emotionally ready and putting them down if they're overwhelmed.
Since 2013, the UK non-profit The Reading Agency's Reading Well program has been curating book lists for people with conditions like dementia or depression. These lists are hand-picked and reviewed by experts and people with lived experiences of those conditions, says Gemma Jolly, the organisation's head of health and wellbeing.
Jolly says the goal is to guide people to genuinely helpful titles, especially given the overwhelming number of books about mental health and what she perceives as widespread snobbery around what qualifies as "good" literature. By partnering with local libraries in England and Wales, the program has facilitated loans of over 3.9 million books since its inception, she says.
Even some UK health agencies have taken note of bibliotherapy: in certain cases, such as eating disorders, self-help books are recognized as a therapeutic tool in clinical guidelines. It's worth noting that, like fiction recommendations, not all self-help books tailored to a condition or life stage are going to be beneficial and effective for all patients – and you should consult your GP if you have specific health concerns.
Yet the evidence that reading helps mental health is complicated. Scientists have observed that, compared with non-readers, people who read regularly for pleasure tend to be less stressed, depressed and lonely, more socially connected and confident, and perhaps even live longer, as the psychological scientist Giulia Poerio of the University of Sussex in the UK summarized in a 2020 article. But, Poerio asks, "is it actually that reading fiction is improving wellbeing, or is it just the case that people with better wellbeing tend to be people who read fiction?"
For many self-help books – which some experts describe as essentially self-guided therapy – the benefits are clear, Poerio says. One 2004 study, for instance, found that self-help books can help people with anxiety and depression, while a 2006 study on patients with eating disorders found that self-help was similarly effective as other psychological therapies in reducing binging, purging and symptoms of depression.
But the benefits of fiction are more complicated. Studies suggest that reading boosts empathy, make people less likely to stigmatize marginalized groups, behave more kindly to others and boost self-confidence. For children, it modestly improves behavior, including reducing aggressive behaviors in boys. It has been found to help children with certain health and developmental conditions to express themselves.
But the evidence is shaky when it comes to treating specific mental health conditions. Some experts have theorized that reading about characters with our own lived experiences allows us to identify with them and experience a cathartic moment when the characters overcome challenges, which we can then emulate in our own lives, explains Emily Troscianko, a literary scientist at the University of Oxford.
But there is little research on whether this actually happens, she says. In her view, "I think [it's] so simplistic and clearly not what's happening a lot of the time when people are reading about difficult experiences that have some similarity to their own," she says.
Anecdotally, many people say they feel that fiction has helped with their mental states; 81% of people who took part in The Reading Agency's 2022 annual survey said their Reading Well book helped them better understand their health needs. "Making me realize I'm not alone, … knowing how I can help myself: those kinds of things come out most often from the surveys," Jolly says.
But proving that creative bibliotherapy can help treat mental health disorders would require large studies for each condition, where participants reading a novel are compared with those given a placebo, Carney says. The existing research doesn't meet that standard, he says. In the case of post-traumatic stress disorder, for instance – a condition where some experts believe that fictional worlds could be especially useful in allowing patients to process emotions that may otherwise feel threatening – one 2017 review concluded that there weren't any high-quality studies to prove beneficial effects.
And, worryingly, some research has found that certain types of fiction can cause harm. In a 2018 study, Troskianko collaborated with the UK eating disorder charity Beat to survey almost 900 people, most of whom had experienced an eating disorder. They were asked how reading fiction books had affected their mood, self-esteem, diets and exercise habits and how they felt about their bodies. Surprisingly to Troscianko, when people recalled reading books featuring characters with eating disorders, it tended to worsen their symptoms. "If you've got an eating disorder, you're likely to at least perceive that the effects of reading that stuff for yourself were negative," she says. Worryingly, about a dozen participants said they even actively sought out such books, she adds.
Troscianko speculates that these books trigger the same ill feelings that drive eating disorders, such as competitiveness around each other's bodies and eating habits. Other research she's done suggests that people with eating disorders struggle to focus on texts that are not relevant to their condition. Ultimately, "the only stuff that you can focus on is actually just drawing you further into that obsessive world of narrow obsessions," she says. "This is one reason why I get frustrated with the quite blithe attitude of, 'reading books about stuff must always be helpful' because, well, it just depends on the books. Literature is complicated. Human beings are complicated, and so why wouldn't you expect the effects also to be complex and nuanced?"
Carney suspects that people with addiction may be similarly triggered by novels featuring characters with substance abuse habits, which often tend to glamorize addiction, Carney says. Meanwhile, Schuman, the NHS doctor, stresses that he only discusses fiction with patients he knows well, and that he'd never recommend it for people in the grip of a psychotic illness or who are having suicidal thoughts – which he says could be harmful but also inappropriate and unhelpful, possibly undermining patients' trust in doctors.
The Reading Well program is mindful of these kinds of nuances, Jolly says. For example, in light of the research that fictionalized accounts of certain conditions could be detrimental, The Reading Agency developed a list of generally mood-boosting, uplifting books for people who want to escape from any condition or experience they’re going through. The Reading Well recommendations for adults with eating disorders only include books that offer practical support and not fictionalized accounts relating to eating habits and body image (although the reading lists for teens do include such books, based on feedback from health professionals and young people who wanted more personal stories, Jolly says).
The Reading Well program has also removed fictionalized stories about dementia after feedback from patients who said they prefer real-world accounts that better capture the nuances of the condition. Jolly acknowledges that books aren't the solution for everyone. "We always say it's not a one size fits all," she says. "It's about having an additional tool that might work for some people.”
None of this is to say that fiction can't help improve certain conditions. One small study tracking two groups of up to eight people with depression reported better mental health over a year in which they attended group readings of poetry and fiction. Carney suspects that certain kinds of fiction could be helpful for people with anxiety which, at its core, is driven by unpredictability. He suggests that reading fiction featuring predictable character types – like a lot of 19th-Century, Sherlock-Holmes-type stories – could be helpful, "because you're essentially flooding the world with evidence that the world is predictable."
Outside the context of treating specific conditions, reading fiction, drama or poetry could help boost general mental wellbeing. For instance, people with chronic pain who took part in a reading-aloud program hosted by the UK charity The Reader Organization reported they felt a sense of shared community, improvements in mood and quality of life.
Such wellbeing boosts may depend on how people engage with books. In one of Poerio's studies, she and her colleagues had 94 senior-aged people listen to audiobooks that they had selected from a list of popular fiction and non-fiction books. Remarkably, even two weeks after the program, participants reported an improvement in their wellbeing and felt their lives to be more meaningful – but only those people who said they had engaged deeply with, and appreciated, their book.
"When people were emotionally engaged with the content of the book – it was transporting them, they were feeling absorbed, it resonated with them, it had a lasting impression on them – that's where we saw benefits to wellbeing," Poerio says.
Carney agrees that merely giving people a novel won't have much effect; his research suggests that reflecting on books afterwards – especially together with other people – provides a much bigger wellbeing boost. Discussing literature gives people a way to think about distressing things that doesn't impinge on their wellbeing, Carney says.
"When you're reading fiction, you're not bothered by Heathcliff or what Heathcliff's going to do, because Heathcliff is insulated from you by the fact that he's not real. Fiction gives you a way to rehearese all these difficult, challenging scenarios," Carney says. "And if you can do that with other people, it makes it more real, it makes it more impactful."
For people wanting to try out bibliotherapy for themselves, Carney recommends trying to find a club for group discussions. Jolly recommends public libraries, where you can try lots of books for free – and if a book isn't resonating with you, pick up another one instead, try something shorter, or a different genre like poetry. And if reading isn't for you, Poerio adds, maybe there are other ways to improve wellbeing, like music or visual art. "If you feel it's helping you, if you're feeling the benefit… you'll want to carry on," Schuman says. "But if it feels unhelpful or intrusive, then [you] should feel completely at liberty to stop at any point."
As for Russell, she's convinced that bibliotherapy offers a path to better mental health and has done a session with Berthoud several times since her first appointment. She's even bought her friends bibliotherapy vouchers, and is using it to help her students, too, selecting books that discuss immigrant experiences, themes of loss, or other hardships. "I think the biggest point of it is so you don't feel so alone," she says. "You can take a deep breath and say, I'm not on this journey by myself."
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THE BENEFITS OF READING PRINT
These days more and more people read exclusively on screen. That’s too bad, because reading print — it doesn’t have to be classic novels by master writers — just the simple act of reading print has powerful benefits.
Reading print helps you sleep better
Reading has been shown to reduce stress before bedtime, which helps you fall asleep faster. In one study, reading for just six minutes before bedtime lowered participants’ stress levels by 68%.
Reading distracts your mind from all the stress, worries, and anxiety of the day. It also puts your mind in an altered state of consciousness, which helps your mind and body relax. Reading also can help prepare you for sleep because it becomes part of your bedtime routine, which signals your brain and body that it’s time to wind down for the day.
To get the maximum benefit of reading at bedtime, it’s best not to read from a screen, since this exposes your retinas to bright light high in the blue wave frequencies that can suppress the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin. (Red and orange light are melatonin friendly -- think of the colors of sunset)
Reading can improve cardiovascular health
When you start reading, your blood pressure drops, and your heart rate and respiratory rate slow down. These effects combine to reduce the strain placed on your heart and blood vessels.
While reading is not a substitute for other healthy habits like eating well, exercising, and avoiding smoking and excessive alcohol consumption, reading can be another practice to include in your daily routine to help you stay healthy.
Reading supports healthy brain function
Nearly all brain growth occurs in the first five years of life. By the time a child turns three, approximately 85% of their brain’s structure has formed. Reading to a child for 20 minutes a day has been shown to have a positive, powerful impact on their brain during this crucial time of brain development.
Children whose caregivers read to them every day have better cognitive function, language skills, and memory than children whose caregivers don’t read to them. In addition to its benefits, reading also provides an alternative to screen time, which can have a detrimental effect on young children’s brain development. And it gives children an opportunity to engage and bond with their caregivers.
Later in life, reading can lower the risk of age-related cognitive decline and improve short-term memory. Multiple studies have shown that patients who engage in daily cognitive activities -- including solving math problems, doing crossword puzzles, and reading -- have fewer age-related brain changes that can lead to multiple forms of dementia. Another study found that people who did not engage in these mentally stimulating activities tended to decline 48% faster than their counterparts.
Reading can improve mental health
Reading has several mental health benefits as well. It offers a distraction from negative thoughts and feelings. It lowers levels of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. It helps lonely people feel connected to others as they engage with a story’s characters. And reading stimulates the brain’s pleasure centers, which causes the release of mood-enhancing neurotransmitters. Feel even better when reading outside in the sunshine to increase your brain's release of serotonin.
Reading can extend your life expectancy
All these benefits combine for an overall, lifetime benefit: a longer life expectancy.
When the University of Michigan conducted a study examining the reading habits of 3600 participants over age 50, they found that people who spent 30 minutes or more reading every day lived an average of two years longer than people who read less (or didn’t read at all).
https://www.gohealthuc.com/library/surprising-reasons-reading-is-good-for-your-health
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THE EXTINCTION OF THE DINOSAURS: NOT JUST THE ASTEROID, BUT ITS EXTENDED AFTERMATH
A small asteroid hit the shoreline at a shallow angle in soft rock, causing debris to spray up into the atmosphere, and also setting off massive tsunamis. The shockwave also triggered an eruption by a supervolcano in the Deccan Traps in India. That initial debris combined with volcanic ash and the smoke from the firestorm it set off cut out the sun’s light for several years, killing the forests and leading to ecological collapse. Insects who could eat dead plant matter, and small vertebrates who could eat insects, did OK, but nothing bigger than a cat survived on land.
It was the loss of sunlight, more than the initial collision, that wiped out the ecosystem of the day. That’s what’s so scary about it — a comparatively trivial event was able to cause near-total ecological collapse. ~ Claire Jordan, Quora
Paul Taylor:
The rock where the asteroid struck had a high sulphur content, so there was a great deal of highly acidic fall out.
Which wouldn't have helped….
Antony T Curtis:
Also spread enough iridium into the atmosphere to create a noticeable geographic layer around many parts of the world.
Marcus Streets:
Whether it triggered the Deccan Traps or if they were already erupting is debated. Traps eruptions — which eject basalt on a subcontinental scale, the Deccan deposits cover most of India — are associated with most of the mass extinctions.
But the impact would have put a lot of dust into the atmosphere -- which would have had significant climate effects. There is a distinctive iridium layer that can be found at sites worldwide.
SColeman:
Hitting Sulphur containing rocks on the sea bottom certainly didn't help. That atomized Sulphur shielded the Earth from a large spectra of light, thus leading to a long long winters weather. The temperature dropped making it so that any living things needed to either hibernate or generate their own internal warmth, which required even more food/energy.
That energy requirement really turned the knobs on what kind of life forms could actually survive, like very small mammals and birds. Most all larger life forms required way too much food to be able to survive an extended winter with so little food available.
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SHOULD WE USE HEBREW NAMES FOR BIBLICAL CHARACTERS?
Yehoshua — the ancient Hebrew (Aramaic?) name of Jesus
Why on earth do people keep obsessing over this, when literally every OTHER name in the Bible is similarly altered?
How about Solomon, who is REALLY Shlomo? Or Isaac, who is REALLY Yitzhak? Or Matthew who is REALLY Matityahu? ~ Gold Hunter Retired, Quora
Oriana:
My favorite is Eliyahu, the Hebrew version of Elijah. English seems to be a language that is in a hurry and doesn't care to acknowledge all the vowels. But there is a calming music when we slow down and say Yehoshua or Eliyahu -- or, for that matter, "Elohim."
Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve et ha-aretz -- "In the beginning (bereshit) the gods created the heavens and the earth." This is the first sentence of Hebrew bible, the book of Genesis. The Big Bang is our modern lingo, but how ugly and crude it sounds next to "Bereshit bara Elohim. . .."
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BANKSY’S PHILOSOPHY
Banksy's new mural in Marseille is not the first image he has connected to the history of ideas. From Plato to Foucault, a Banksy expert reveals the philosophy behind these popular artworks.
Which is the real you, the person you are now or the one you are capable of becoming? It's a heady question, to be sure, and not one you would expect to be confronted with while strolling down a street in Marseille in the waning days of May. Yet it's precisely the existential dilemma that Banksy, who once asserted "being yourself is overrated" – has surreptitiously installed in a cloistered stretch of the quiet Rue Félix Fregier, the site of a new work – the latest installment in the elusive artist's decades-long career as a provocative philosophical prankster.
On 29 May, Banksy posted on Instagram a photo of his first new piece in more than five months, piquing the internet's interest by withholding its precise location. Discovered shortly thereafter in the major port city in southern France, Marseille, the mural is, at first glance, deceptively simple: a tall silhouette of a lighthouse spray-painted on to a blank beige urban wall; a rusting street bollard positioned nearby; and a painted shadow stretching across the pavement, joining the real-world object to its augmented, if two-dimensional, echo. Stenciled across the black lighthouse are the words: "I want to be what you saw in me."
Anyone keen to find a source for the ideas that inform Banksy's new work needs merely to flip open any history of philosophy to Plato's seminal allegory of the cave (from the Fourth-Century BC treatise The Republic), then flip the ancient metaphor on its head. In Plato's parable, prisoners chained inside a cave mistake shadows on the wall for reality, unaware of the truer forms that cast them outside. But here, Banksy, being Banksy, baits us by switching the set-up, reversing the relationship between essence and shadow. In Banksy's mural, the drab bollard casts not a diminished imitation of itself, but something far grander – a lighthouse, a symbol of illumination and guidance. Here, it's the silhouette, not reality, that's true.
Banksy's inversion urges us to ask where reality really resides: in what is, or in what might be? His poignant phrase – "I want to be what you saw in me" – is alluringly elastic. Is this the bollard dreaming of being more than it appears? Or the shadow wishing to become light? Or is it all of us – Banksy included – struggling to live up to the better versions imagined by those who believe in us? The answer is surely yes to all of the above. And it's a yes too to the question: 'is this new work a lamp capable of shining light on further levels of meaning in Banksy?' What follows is a brief look back at some of the artist's best-known works and how they too are invigorated by, and often upend, many of the most important philosophical tenets – both social and intellectual – that underwrite who we are and who we might be.
Girl with Balloon, 2002
Banksy's new mural in Marseille is not the first to be accompanied by an affecting caption connecting the piece to the history of ideas. Among his most famous murals, Girl with Balloon, which portrays a child reaching towards a heart-shaped balloon drifting away from her, first appeared in 2002 in various locations in London, including on the South Bank, alongside the consoling assertion, "there is always hope." That conviction, which fuels the ceaseless striving for an ideal that is seemingly unobtainable in the mural (there's no way that balloon is coming back) rhymes richly with aspects of 19th-Century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's ideas concerning an unquenchable and irrational "Will" as a fundamental force that drives humanity. When, years later, Banksy mischievously concealed a remote-controlled shredder in the frame of a version of Girl with Balloon that came up for auction in 2018, and sensationally destroyed the work before the eyes of aghast auction-goers, he succeeded in upping the ante on Schopenhauer's belief in the futility of desire by boldly manifesting it himself. Where there's a will there's a fray.
Banksy: Flower Thrower (or Love is in the Air), 2003
Banksy's famous mural of a masked man frozen forever in the instant before he unleashes not a brick or a bomb but a bouquet of flowers may seem, at first blush, to exemplify a pacifist's commitment to peaceful disobedience. The work appears to echo the precepts of Mahatma Gandhi's Satyagraha – a philosophy of non-violence that the Indian ethicist coined in 1919. Banksy's fully flexed figure, incongruously armed with a fistful of beauty, appears to epitomize Gandhi's insistence on wielding moral, not physical, strength. Doesn't it? Or has Banksy slyly subverted the philosophical assertion of pacifistic force by portraying his hero as an enraged rioter? The figure's anger has not been tempered by an appeal to the higher ideals of beauty and truth. Instead, those ideals have been weaponized by Banksy. Here, beauty and truth are not disarming, they are devastatingly explosive.
Banksy's mural in Marseille employs a tried-and-true technique to ensure the work protrudes into the urban space in which we'll encounter it – elevating its philosophical potential from something flimsy and flat to something undeniably urgent. It's a tactic he used in a 2007 work that appeared near London's Oxford Street in which he depicts a boy atop a precariously high ladder, spray-painting the penetrating observation that we are "One Nation Under CCTV" in outlandishly outsized letters.
Also portrayed within the mural is a uniformed officer and his obedient police dog who surveil the young vandal, while above them all an actual CCTV camera, presumably recording everything, juts out from the wall. The endless layers of surveillance-within-surveillance to which the work attests – as we watch the state watch an officer watch the boy – captures with uncanny precision the philosophical contours of the vast and all-encompassing prison machine in which the French poststructural philosopher Michel Foucault believed everyone in society was now irredeemably enmeshed.
In Foucault's study Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, he resuscitates a blueprint for a prison proposed by the British utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham at the end of the 18th Century, "The Panopticon" (meaning "all seeing"), and uses it as a menacing metaphor for how no one can escape the perniciously penetrating eye of the panoptical state.
Banksy's witty 2014 work Mobile Lovers shines a chilling light on the state of contemporary relationships. The mural depicts a couple whose almost affectionate embrace is interrupted by the deeper fondness they have for the warm glow of their smartphones. The French existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, who died in 1986, may not have lived long enough to witness the emergence of mobiles. Yet her profoundly influential 1947 book The Ethics of Ambiguity – published exactly 60 years before the iPhone was launched in 2007 – with its exploration of the devastation that detachment and disconnection can wreak on the realization of our truest selves, is profoundly proleptic of our modern predicament. To be free, de Beauvoir insisted, requires a deep attentiveness to each other. She believed in the authenticity of human encounters, without which life is a futile performance, dimly lit by disposable devices, rather than something profound and meaningful.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250602-five-works-that-reveal-the-philosophy-of-banksy
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AMERICA’S “DOLLAR PRINCESSES” WHO MARRIED INTO BRITISH ARISTOCRACY
The rich, glamorous American women of the gilded age who married into the English aristocracy faced some challenges – but they were resilient, formidable characters. As TV's The Buccaneers season two begins, and an exhibition in London is devoted to them, we explore the lives of the women who inspired writers and artists.
Can the new Duchess of Tintagel steer clear of scandal? Will her fugitive sister, Jinny, keep her baby from the clutches of her husband, the monstrous Lord Seadown? Can Mabel and Honoria's forbidden love flourish?
The TV drama series The Buccaneers is based on the novel by Edith Wharton
The Buccaneers, Apple TV+'s hit period drama, is back for a second season, and its legions of fans expect answers to all of the above. The show charts the romantic adventures of a group of young American women – two pairs of sisters and their friend – who, looked down upon as nouveau riche by older, grander New York families, come to England in the 1870s and cut a swathe through high society. Fast-moving, fun and visually sumptuous, it looks as though the costume budget alone could dwarf the entire expenditure of lesser shows. It is lavish, colorful escapism – yet the unfinished Edith Wharton novel of 1938 upon which it is based was inspired by a real phenomenon.
Between 1870 and 1914, 102 American women – 50 of them from New York – married British peers or the younger sons of peers, and many more married into the upper classes. They were dubbed "dollar princesses" and the popular view was that these were purely transactional marriages – cash for class. The women gained a title and status; the often cash-strapped aristocrats got a welcome injection of money to help them fix the leaking roof of the crumbling family seat.
"The decline in landed income during the Great Agricultural Depression, beginning in the 1870s, necessitated numerous male aristocrats to seek marital alliances outside the inner social network of the British aristocracy," explains Maureen Montgomery, a historian and Wharton scholar who is currently editing The Buccaneers for the Oxford University Press's The Complete Works of Edith Wharton.
"Another factor was the openness of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, to wealthy businessmen being part of his inner social circle and his penchant for the beautiful and entertaining daughters of the American bourgeois elite who were traveling in ever larger numbers, after the Civil War, to Europe."
The first inklings of a novel to be called The Buccaneers appear in Wharton's notebook for 1924-1928. There she set out the plot, revolving around the "conquest of England by American adventurers & adventuresses/families".
"In the summer of 1928, during one of her many annual trips to England in her later years, she visited Tintagel in Cornwall and stayed with her close friend Lady Wemyss at her Cotswold estate, Stanway," Montgomery tells the BBC. "Both of these places became significant settings for the novel.”
The exhibition, Heiress: Sargent's American Portraits, features Cora Countess of Strafford (1908) among other "dollar princesses”
However, Montgomery doesn't believe that there is any one particular story or person that the writer drew upon.
"Wharton had close friends among the British aristocracy, and went to weekend country house parties. She personally knew a number of titled Americans. She would have been familiar with various scenarios for these marriages, how they were received, the different motives for marrying," she says.
Some historians have suggested Consuelo Vanderbilt as one of the possible models for The Buccaneers' Conchita Closson. Considered a great beauty, Consuelo was a "dollar princess" whose father made a fortune in railroads. Her dowry was worth tens of millions in today's money. She was more or less bullied by her mother into marrying Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, and was said to have wept behind her veil at the altar on her wedding day in 1895 (one of nine US heiresses to marry English aristocrats that year).
The marriage was deeply unhappy. "Sunny", as the Duke was known, wasted little time in telling her he'd only married her for her money and in order to save Blenheim Palace, the ducal seat. In her memoir, The Glitter and the Gold, Conseulo wrote of a Blenheim Palace butler who had drowned himself: "As one gloomy day succeeded another I began to feel a deep sympathy for him." Her marriage produced two children but both Consuelo and her husband had lovers.
Consuelo had been preceded into the aristocracy by the godmother after whom she was named. The Cuban-American heiress Consuelo Yznaga Montagu, another model for Conchita, married George Montagu, Viscount Mandeville, in 1876 and became the Duchess of Manchester when he inherited the title. The profligate duke burned through his wife's money and had numerous affairs. Consuelo, who is mentioned in Wharton's notebook, was reportedly very close to the Prince of Wales.
'Swashbuckling beauties'
Both Consuelos feature in Heiress: Sargent's American Portraits, an exhibition of 18 works by John Singer Sargent at Kenwood House on London's Hampstead Heath. The show has been curated by Wendy Monkhouse, English Heritage Senior Curator (South), and is the result of two years' work.
"There was a real gutsiness about these heiresses," Monkhouse tells the BBC. "They were brave. They had a hard time entering British society as foreigners, and foreigners of whom everybody was envious and resentful and wanted to take down a peg or two because of this 'buccaneer' trope."
Margaret Howard, Countess of Suffolk was a well-known American heiress and married into one of the wealthiest families in Britain
They were, supposedly, swashbuckling beauties who leapt aboard the good ship Britannia and, with piratical ruthlessness, bagged themselves a baron or an earl or maybe even a duke. The English newspaper editor WT Stead used the expression "gilded prostitution" when writing about these transatlantic marriages.
There was opposition from the US too, at the highest level. President Theodore Roosevelt wrote to his ambassador to the UK Whitelaw Reid in 1906, "I thoroly [sic]… dislike these international marriages… which are based upon the sale of the girl for her money and the purchase of the man for his title." And plenty of ordinary Americans hated the idea of all that wealth leaving the country and being squandered on wastrel British aristocrats. This wasn't what they'd fought a war of independence for.
But Monkhouse argues that the moniker "dollar princesses" does the women a disservice. "I think it's a term that has been tossed around for a hundred years without very much thought, apart from in academic circles," she says. "The more that you delve into it, the more it falls apart. I think Consuelo Vanderbilt, though she doesn't call herself a dollar princess, sort of defined the genre in that she was a very rich American who was, not by her own choice, married for a title and then was unhappy."
However, other women whose images are featured in the exhibition had very different stories. Daisy Leiter, glamorous and independent-minded daughter of a Chicago real estate magnate, was considered quite the catch and not just for her money, as Sargent's magnificent portrait shows. She was bombarded with proposals but married Henry Howard, the 19th Earl of Suffolk. It seems to have been a very happy love match and produced three sons. In later life, Daisy further exemplified the adventurous spirit of many of these women by becoming a helicopter pilot.
Another of Sargent's subjects was Cora, Countess of Strafford. Her name is echoed by that of a famous fictional "dollar princess", Cora, Countess of Grantham, in Downton Abbey. Julian Fellowes has said that one of the inspirations for the series was a book about American heiresses called To Marry an English Lord. The real Cora was a Southern belle who married the 4th Earl of Strafford after the death of her first husband, toothpaste baron Samuel Colgate. The Earl died just five months after the wedding when he fell on to railway tracks at Potter's Bar. The incident prompted much gossip, as did the fact that Cora wore her coronet sideways at Edward VII's coronation.
One of the best known of the women in the Heiress exhibition, represented in both an oil portrait and a charcoal drawing, is Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor, the daughter of a Virginian railway tycoon and the first woman to take her seat as an MP in the House of Commons. She had regular clashes with Winston Churchill, whose own mother, Jennie Jerome, was the daughter of a wealthy New York speculator and financier.
There's a splash of politics in the new season of The Buccaneers that sees Nan realizing that her elevated social status gives her power and influence, and beginning to wield it. Buccaneers showrunner Katherine Jakeways read extensively on the "dollar princesses" before writing began on the series, and she draws on their stories, as well as the Wharton text.
"You imagine that the girls who came over were interesting to the men because (a) they were beautiful, (b) they were American and (c) they were rich, but actually what's really interesting is that (d) they were much better educated and much more encouraged to be confidently involved in society [than their English counterparts]," she tells the BBC. "In New York their opinions were sought whereas girls in England, as we show with Honoria in Season one, were asked not to speak or have an opinion.”
Viscountess Astor became the first woman to sit in Parliament – she held her seat for 25 years
Like their real-life counterparts, the women in the show don't conform to reductive stereotypes. "Our characters are complicated and have depth, and we try to make all the relationships have some kind of resonance for a contemporary audience," says Jakeways. "And hopefully it's just really good fun.”
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250609-how-dollar-princesses-brought-us-flair-to-the-uk
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WHY SIX HOURS OF SLEEP IS AS BAD FOR PRODUCTIVITY AS NO SLEEP AT ALL 
Not
getting enough sleep is detrimental to both your health and
productivity. Yawn. We’ve heard it all before. But results from one
study impress just how bad a cumulative lack of sleep can be on
performance. Subjects in a lab-based sleep study who were allowed to get
only six hours of sleep a night for two weeks straight functioned as
poorly as those who were forced to stay awake for two days straight. The
kicker is the people who slept six hours per night thought they were
doing just fine.
This sleep deprivation study, published in the
journal Sleep, took 48 adults and restricted their sleep to a maximum of
four, six, or eight hours a night for two weeks; one unlucky subset was
deprived of sleep for three days straight.
During their time in
the lab, the participants were tested every two hours (unless they were
asleep, of course) on their cognitive performance as well as their
reaction time. They also answered questions about their mood and any
symptoms they were experiencing, basically, “How sleepy do you feel?”
Why Six Hours of Sleep Isn’t Enough
As
you can imagine, the subjects who were allowed to sleep eight hours per
night had the highest performance on average. Subjects who got only
four hours a night did worse each day. The group who got six hours of
sleep seemed to be holding their own, until around day 10 of the study.
In
the last few days of the experiment, the subjects who were restricted
to a maximum of six hours of sleep per night showed cognitive
performance that was as bad as the people who weren’t allowed to sleep
at all. Getting only six hours of shut-eye was as bad as not sleeping
for two days straight. The group who got only four hours of sleep each
night performed just as poorly, but they hit their low sooner.
One
of the most alarming results from the sleep study is that the six-hour
sleep group didn’t rate their sleepiness as being all that bad, even as
their cognitive performance was going downhill. The no-sleep group
progressively rated their sleepiness level higher and higher. By the end
of the experiment, their sleepiness had jumped by two levels. But the
six-hour group only jumped one level. Those findings raise the question
about how people cope when they get insufficient sleep, perhaps
suggesting that they’re in denial (willful or otherwise) about their
present state.
We Have No Idea How Much We Sleep
Complicating matters is the fact that people are terrible at knowing how much time they actually spend asleep.
According to the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey, as reported by the CDC, more than 35% of Americans sleep less than seven hours in a typical day. That’s one out of every three people. However, those who suffer from sleep problems don’t accurately estimate how much they sleep each night.
Research
from University of Chicago, for instance, shows that people are as
likely to overestimate how much they sleep as underestimate it. Another
sleep study published in Epidemiology, indicates people generally
overestimate their nightly sleep by around 0.8 hours. The same study
also estimates that for every hour beyond six that people sleep, they
overestimate sleep by about half an hour. If you think you sleep seven
hours a night, as one out of every three Americans does, it’s entirely
possible you’re only getting six.
So no one knows how much or
little they’re sleeping, and when they don’t sleep enough, they believe
they’re doing better than they are.
Even just a little bit of sleep deprivation, in this case, six rather than eight hours of sleep across two weeks, accumulates to jaw-dropping results. Cumulative sleep deprivation isn’t a new concept by any means, but it’s rare to find research results that are so clear about the effects.
Fixing Sleep: Easier Said Than Done
Figuring out how to get enough sleep, consistently, is a tough nut to crack. The same advice experts have batted around for decades is probably a good place to start: Have a consistent bedtime; don’t look at electronic screens at least 30 minutes before bed; limit alcohol intake (alcohol makes many people sleepy, but it can also decrease the quality and duration of sleep); and get enough exercise.
Other advice that you’ll hear less often, but which is equally valid, is to lose excess weight. Sleep apnea and obesity have a very high correlation, according to the National Sleep Foundation. What’s more, obese workers already suffer from more lost productive time than normal weight and overweight workers.
Other
causes of sleep problems include physical, neurological, and
psychological issues. Even stress and worry can negatively affect sleep.
The CDC has called lack of sleep a health problem, and for good reason.
Diet, exercise, mental health, and physical health all affect our
ability to sleep, and in return, our ability to perform to our best.
Fixing
bad sleep habits to get enough sleep is easier said than done. But if
you’re functioning as if you hadn’t slept for two days straight, isn’t
it worthwhile?
https://www.fastcompany.com/3057465/why-six-hours-of-sleep-is-as-bad-as-none-at-all
*
VIENNA: A CITY ADAPTED TO CLIMATE CONTROL
At the edge of a wide, grassy park in Vienna, there's a modern building with lots of windows and a sleek wood facade. For the past six years, Sebastian Schublach has lived here with his family in a light-filled four-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor.
Up on the roof, where Schublach can relax in the communal library with a view of the city and park, there are solar panels to reduce climate pollution. There's a rooftop garden full of rosemary — the greenery helps keep the building cool in summer. Thick, insulated walls reduce the need for heating and cooling — Schublach's apartment doesn't even need an air conditioner. "It's not cold in winter times. It's not hot in summer times," Schublach says. "It's very comfortable."
In the United States, high-quality, climate-friendly apartments like this are mostly rare and unaffordable, says Daniel Aldana Cohen, professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley and co-director of the think tank the Climate and Community Institute. But in Vienna, sustainable buildings like Schublach's aren't just affordable, they're widespread. Schublach's apartment is what the Viennese call "social housing" — housing that's built or supported by the government. Now this social housing is a key driver of Vienna's ambitious climate action.'
About half of Vienna's 2 million residents live in social housing. Average social housing rents are about $700 for a large one-bedroom apartment, says Gerald Kössl, researcher at the Austrian Federation of Limited-Profit Housing Associations. Schublach pays more for his four-bedroom — with utilities, it's around $1,700 per month. "Which is not 'cheap, cheap,' but it's definitely affordable," he says.
In the U.S., the number of households officially "burdened by rent" has hit another record high. As of 2023, more than 22 million renting households are spending more than 30% of their incomes on rent and utilities, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. Meanwhile, climate change-fueled wildfires, floods, heat waves and sea-level rise are making it harder to find safe, affordable dwellings. And the energy used to heat and cool the nation's housing stock contributes to climate pollution.
The lack of affordable housing and the growing threat of global warming used to be thought of as two distinct problems. Now that's changing, and politicians in U.S. cities like Chicago and Denver are looking to tackle the housing crisis while simultaneously combating climate change. They see Vienna's green social housing as a roadmap.
Vienna council member Nina Abrahamczik, who heads the climate and environment committee, says as the city transitions all of its buildings off planet-heating fossil fuels, they're starting with the roughly 420,000 housing units they already own or subsidize. "If you have these buildings, you can make choices regarding those buildings, " Abrahamczik says. " One of the biggest advantages is that we have a bigger lever.”
Using social housing as a lever for climate goals
Just like the United States, the federal government of Austria has recently been backtracking on climate action. But Vienna is forging ahead. This spring the Austrian capital passed a historic climate law, outlining a plan to get its climate pollution down to zero by 2040. Vienna's leaders see the city's vast social housing program as a critical tool.
Vienna has two main types of social housing: city-owned and city-subsidized. Vienna owns and operates about 220,000 apartment units. Some date back to the period from 1919 to 1934 when, amid a postwar housing crisis, the newly elected left-wing Social Democratic Party built more than 60,000 brand-new, high-quality apartments for its citizens, says Eve Blau, architecture and urban history professor at Harvard. Today the city also subsidizes about 200,000 apartment units.
As Vienna makes an aggressive push to completely move away from climate-polluting natural gas by 2040, it's starting with much of this social housing, says Jürgen Czernohorszky, executive city councilor responsible for climate and environment. City-owned buildings are now switching from gas to massive electric heat pumps, and to geothermal, which involves probing into the ground to heat homes. Another massive geothermal project that drills even deeper into the earth to heat homes is also underway.
Vienna social housing
About half of Vienna's 2 million residents live in social housing. Here, at Biotope City, the social housing has solar panels. Vienna is using social housing to cut greenhouse gases and help adapt to climate change.
The city is also powering housing with solar energy. As of a year and a half ago, Vienna mandates all new buildings and building extensions to have rooftop solar. And Vienna's older apartment buildings are getting climate retrofits, says Veronika Iwanowski, spokesperson for Vienna's municipal housing company, Wiener Wohnen. That includes new insulation, doors and windows to prevent the city's wind from getting in the cracks.
The increase in energy efficiency and switching from gas to renewables doesn't just have climate benefits from cutting fossil fuel use. It also means housing residents are paying less on electric bills, Czernohorszky says. "The sun," he says, "doesn't send an energy bill."
THE "LAKE TOWN"
The Seestadt development in eastern Vienna includes both city-built and city-subsidized housing. The landscaping is designed to help protect from floods and heat in a warming world.
On an old airfield with a large lake, Vienna is building a new social housing development with a special emphasis on decreasing risks from climate change, like heat and flooding. This development, called Seestadt, has a mix of city-built housing and city-subsidized housing.
Hofstetter, a landscaper by training who helped design Seestadt, says the development has elements of something called a "sponge city." On a street near some social housing, Hofstetter points to a sunken planter full of gravel, sand and the beginnings of daffodils. It's about the size of the bed of a flatbed truck. It turns out the sunken planter helps prevent floods.
"You can see here, this is where the water comes in when it's really a lot," he says.
In intense rainstorms, instead of massive amounts of rainwater all rushing into the sewer at once, the sunken planters can absorb excess stormwater so it doesn't overpower the sewer system. With permeable landscaping like this, he says, " the sewer system can be much smaller.”
"You can see here, this is where the water comes in when it's really a lot," he says.
In intense rainstorms, instead of massive amounts of rainwater all rushing into the sewer at once, the sunken planters can absorb excess stormwater so it doesn't overpower the sewer system. With permeable landscaping like this, he says, " the sewer system can be much smaller.”
For Hofstetter, the climate resiliency of green social housing isn't just about the housing itself — it's also about everything that surrounds it. "Sponge city" landscaping helps protect residents from floods. The trees cool residents down in heat waves. The bike lanes and car-free streets reduce climate and noise pollution and keep children safe.
"The idea of creating spaces and areas for people to live in a dignified way — that's the main focus," Hofstetter says.
Much of the social housing is built with easy access to public transport and bike lanes, which reduce climate pollution and noise pollution.
As the U.S. federal government pulls back, local governments take the lead
In the U.S. today, much of the public housing and subsidized affordable housing has a connection to the federal government. Some of it was funded or built by the federal government or with some combination of federal tax credits and money from other sources.
Under the Biden administration, the U.S. federal government tried to tackle climate pollution through federally assisted housing with a $1 billion program to make older housing more energy efficient and climate resilient. Now that President Trump has returned to office his administration has taken steps to eliminate the program, although it's still unclear what will happen to it. Many other federally funded housing assistance programs are also on the chopping block.
Last September Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. introduced the Homes Act, which would support the construction of climate-friendly affordable housing. Smith tells NPR she was inspired to learn more about social housing after visiting Vienna, and from her work on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. But the legislation remains stalled in Congress.
While federal efforts for green social housing have slowed, there's momentum on the local level, says Ruthy Gourevitch, housing and communities director at the Climate and Community Institute, which just released a new report on lessons from Viennese green social housing for the U.S.
Politicians from the U.S. have been inspired by visits to Vienna's climate-friendly social housing. Many American politicians have visited Seestadt, the development pictured above.
Gourevitch says that, like Vienna, America's green social housing doesn't have to rely on federal funding. Some money to finance Vienna's social housing comes from a tax on people's salaries — the employee pays part and the employer pays part, Kössl says. Most of the city's funding is provided in the form of low-interest loans, he adds. And in city-subsidized housing, also called "limited profit" housing, developers must invest profits back into maintaining housing or building more housing.
U.S. cities are also finding local funds to build green housing. Chicago is using $135 million of a larger city bond as a "seed fund" for climate-friendly affordable housing. A new "Green Social Housing" ordinance passed this spring creates a nonprofit that will administer the funds and have an ownership stake in the development of new apartment buildings. The plan is for 30% of the apartments to be affordable and for the buildings to reduce energy use and climate pollution.
This new housing, as well as retrofits of old housing, could play an important role in Chicago's goal of reducing emissions 62% in the next 15 years, says Jung Yoon, chief of policy for the Chicago mayor's office. She notes that around 70% of Chicago's emissions come from buildings. "We can't reduce emissions without building much more sustainable housing," Yoon says. "These things are intricately tied together.”
While climate investments can sometimes have high up-front costs, local governments are realizing that making housing more resilient to heat, flooding and storms could pay off as the world warms, says Sara McTarnaghan, principal research associate at the Urban Institute. "These things are not cheap, but inaction in our housing sector in terms of climate retrofits is gonna be really costly down the road," McTarnaghan says.
Last year alone, there were 27 confirmed billion-dollar disasters in the U.S., totaling at least $182 billion.
Yoon went to Vienna last spring and visited green social housing, including Schublach's building. On Yoon's Vienna trip there were city representatives from Nashville, Denver, Seattle and Philadelphia. "We've all been Vienna-pilled," says Emily Gallagher, New York state representative who went to Vienna in 2022.
Balconies and increased airflow help residents keep cool during heat waves and reduce reliance on air conditioning. A new report from the Climate and Community Institute finds that affordable housing and reducing climate pollution can go hand in hand.
Mixed-income housing is "integral to success"
At a construction site on the East River in Greenpoint in Brooklyn, a 37-story gleaming white building will soon offer apartments with views of Manhattan.Gallagher, who represents this district, looks out over the river in black sunglasses. "You can see the Chrysler Building," she says, pointing. "You can see all of the East Village."
The building, now called The Riverie, will soon be the largest geothermal-powered building in the state. Thirty percent of the building's housing will be designated as affordable, according to a release on the developer's website.
In Vienna, much of the long-term popularity of social housing comes down to the fact that residents of different social classes have access to the same high quality amenities, Cohen at UC Berkeley says.
This is on full view in Biotope City, a development in Vienna's south where the majority of the apartments are city-subsidized. For resident Hasret Iscen, who pays about $1,015 a month for her three-bedroom flat, her rent includes access to her building's rooftop pool, a communal sauna and multiple communal gardens. Her apartment balcony is nestled in the trees of the nearby park. " It feels like living in a jungle because we hear all the voices from birds in our flat," Iscen says. "It's wonderful."
Most of Vienna's new social housing is city-subsidized, like Iscen's apartment building. While rents vary, city-subsidized rents tend to be higher than in city-built housing and sometimes require a down payment. It "tends to be more oriented toward people in the middle income kind of section of society, rather than those with lowest incomes," Cohen at UC Berkeley says.
Vienna's system works, Cohen says, because lower-income residents can still find homes in city-built housing, "which is a bit more of a safety net."
Ultimately, Cohen says a key lesson from Vienna for the U.S. is the need for balance. "You don't want to just pull one part of the model," he says. "You wanna make sure that you are providing really good quality housing from the very lowest incomes all the way up."
Schublach says people in the U.S. may look at Vienna's climate-friendly affordable housing and feel daunted, thinking the U.S. is too far behind. But he's optimistic.
"If it can be done in a city like Vienna with 2 million inhabitants, I see no reason why this cannot be done in any major or smaller U.S. city," Schublach says. "This is something we can shape. It's not given, it's something we shape."
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/15/nx-s1-5400642/affordable-housing-environment-vienna-climate-change
*
THE SUMERIAN GARDEN OF DILMUN
apparently the model for the Garden of Eden
Dilmun, or Telmun, was an ancient East Semitic–speaking civilization in Eastern Arabia mentioned from the 3rd millennium BC onwards.
Based on contextual evidence, it was located in the Persian Gulf, on a trade route between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley civilization, close to the sea and to artesian springs. Dilmun encompassed Bahrain, Kuwait, and eastern Saudi Arabia.
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Bull's head, made of copper in the early period of Dilmun (c. 2000 BC), discovered by Danish archeologists under Barbar Temple, Bahrain
The great commercial and trading connections between Mesopotamia and Dilmun were strong and profound to the point where Dilmun was a central figure to the Sumerian creation myth. Dilmun was described in the saga of Enki and Ninhursag as pre-existing in paradise state, where predators do not kill, pain and diseases are absent, and people do not get old.
Dilmun was an important trading center. At the height of its power, it controlled the Persian Gulf trading routes. According to some modern theories, the Sumerians regarded Dilmun as a sacred place, but that is never stated in any known ancient text. Dilmun was mentioned by the Mesopotamians as a trade partner, a source of copper, and a trade entrepôt.
The Sumerian tale of the garden paradise of Dilmun may have been an inspiration for the Garden of Eden story.
*
THE LOST YEARS OF JESUS
It is sobering to think how little we know about Jesus’ early life. Only two of the four canonical gospels – Luke and Matthew – say anything at all about it; and even they leave much unsaid or unclear. Apart from mentioning that Jesus was born during the reign of Augustus and Herod the Great, they give no clue as to the exact date of his birth; they cannot agree whether he was visited by shepherds or Magi; and only one of them mentions the flight into Egypt.
Most strikingly, nothing at all is said about Jesus’ youth. Apart from a brief story in Luke about the 12-year-old Jesus being found deep in discussion with the elders in the Temple in Jerusalem, we hear nothing more about him until the beginning of his ministry, ‘when he was about thirty years of age’. His childhood, his adolescence, even his early manhood are passed over in silence.
Here the teaser from History Today ends.
I think it’s most likely that during those “missing years” Jesus lived with the Essenes, absorbing their teachings.
Who were the Essenes?
The Dead Sea Scrolls are usually thought to have been produced by a group known as the Essenes. And the Essenes are a group that literally abandoned Jerusalem, it seems, in protest against the way the Temple was being run. So here's a group that went out in the desert to prepare the way of the Lord, following the commands, as they saw it, of the prophet Isaiah. And they go to the desert to get away from what they see to be the worldliness of Jerusalem and the worldliness of the Temple.
Now the Essenes aren't a new group in Jesus' day. They too, had been around for a hundred years at that point in time. But it would appear that the reign of Herod, and probably even more so, the reign of his sons and the Roman Procurators, probably stimulated a new phase of life of the Essene community, rising as a growing protest against Roman rule and worldliness.
You said they were preparing the way for the Lord. What exactly were the Essenes preparing for in their mind?
The Essenes are what we might best call an apocalyptic sect of Judaism. An apocalyptic sect is one that thinks of itself as, first of all, the true form of their religion. In fact, that's part of their terminology. Again, using the prophet Isaiah, they think of themselves as the righteous remnant ... the chosen ones ... the elect. But they're also standing over against the mainstream — most of Jewish life, and especially everything going on at Jerusalem. So they're sectarian. They're separatists. They're people who move away.
The basis for that understanding is their reading of Scripture. They interpret Scripture, especially the prophets, Isaiah, the Torah itself, to suggest that the course of Judaism is going through a profound change. "Far too many people are becoming worldly," they would have said. The end, as they understood it, of the present evil age is moving upon them inexorably. And they want to be on the right side when it comes. In their understanding, there will come a day when the Lord revisits the Earth with power. And in the process establishes a new kingdom for Judaism. It will be like the kingdom of David and Solomon. A return to the golden age mentality. And this is part of that apocalyptic mind set.
The Dead Sea Scrolls show us a lot about the beliefs of the Essenes. Now, we typically think of this language of the coming kingdom as reflecting a belief in the end of the world — as somehow coming upon them or us soon. But in fact, that's not exactly what they thought. They use language like "the end" or "the last things" or "the last days", but what they mean is the present evil age is coming to an end. Now this "end time" language is what we typically call "the eschaton" or "eschatology" — thinking about the end. But in Jewish eschatology of this period, what they usually seem to be talking about is an end of a present evil age and a coming new glorious age — a new kingdom.
The Essenes had an apocalyptic point of view, and they believed in a new kingdom of some kind coming; would this necessarily bring a new Messiah with it?
The idea that the coming kingdom is always to be accompanied by a Messianic figure is not entirely accurate for Judaism in this period. We hear of some groups, for example, who expect the coming change, but never mention a Messiah, or a Messianic figure at all, either as a deliverer figure, or as some sort of heavenly agent. So some forms of Judaism in this period don't ever talk about a Messiah. At Qumran, on the other hand, among the Dead Sea Scrolls, we hear not of just one Messiah, but at least two Messiahs. Some of their writings talk about a Messiah of David that is a kind of kingly figure who will come to lead the war. But there's also a Messiah of Aaron, a priestly figure, who will come to restore the Temple at Jerusalem to its proper purity and worship of God. In addition to these two major Messianic figures, we also hear of a prophet figure.
And in terms of the quest for the historical Jesus, what does the story of the Essenes tell us? What light does it cast on his life and times?
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and our growing knowledge of the Essene community that produced them, gives us one of the most important pieces of evidence for the diversity of Jewish life and thought in the time of Jesus. Now, it has sometimes been suggested that Jesus, himself, or maybe even John the Baptist, were members of this group. And that can't be proven at all. But what the Essenes and the Qumran scrolls do show us is the kind of challenges that could be brought against some of the traditional lines of Jewish thought, and even the operation of the Temple itself. So if one of our perspectives is that there is this growing tension in Jerusalem, the Essenes are probably the best example of how radical that questioning of Temple life might become.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/portrait/essenes.html
*
THE ENIGMA OF TERMINAL LUCIDITY
People who are close to death sometimes experience a surge of energy and regain clarity.
In some cases, people who suffer from dementia or are have been unresponsive speak normally and regain memory.
Terminal lucidity suggests a potential alternative view of consciousness.
Last year, I received a phone call telling me that my mother was seriously ill and would probably pass away in the next few hours. I rushed to the hospital and found my mum deeply unconscious, in a seemingly comatose state, completely unresponsive. I was told that she had dangerously low sodium levels and that her liver and kidneys were failing.
I sat with her for a few hours. Her condition seemed stable so I went home for some sleep, returning the next morning. Throughout the day, there was no seeming improvement or deterioration. It didn’t surprise me that my mum was proving more resilient than the doctors expected, as she had always been physically tough.
But the second morning, when I arrived back at the hospital, something had changed. The nurse told me with a look of surprise, “Your mum is getting better.” I found her sitting up with her eyes open, breathing more strongly. I asked her how she was and she shrugged her shoulders and replied, “Not great, Steven.”
I played some of her favorite songs on my computer, and to my surprise, she started singing along softly. She moved her legs and feet in rhythm to the songs. She drank some water and had some soup, for the first time since she had been in hospital.
The doctor told me, “It doesn’t seem possible—your mother is dangerously ill but somehow she seems to be getting better. We’ll wait a few hours and if she’s still like this, she can return to the nursing home.”
My mum remained alert for the next two hours or so. Then she fell asleep and didn’t wake up again. She returned to a comatose state and died early the next morning.
Terminal Lucidity
It’s by no means uncommon for people who are close to death to experience a brief surge of mental clarity and energy. In 2009, Michael Nahm and Bruce Greyson coined the term “terminal lucidity” for the phenomenon, although other terms have been used, such as “end-of-life rallying” or “pre-mortem surge.”
Most strikingly, terminal lucidity may happen to people who have suffered severe cognitive impairment for many years, perhaps due to dementia, a stroke, or meningitis. People who have long been immobile and unresponsive may become agile and alert. People with dementia may regain their memory and other mental faculties, surprising their relatives by recognizing them, remembering details, and speaking coherently. According to Nahm and Greyson, 43 percent of people who experience this brief lucidity die within a day, while 84 percent pass away within a week.
Recorded cases of terminal lucidity date back to ancient times. As Michael Nahm has noted in another article, “Hippocrates, Plutarch, Cicero, Galen, Avicenna, and other scholars of classical times noted that symptoms of mental disorders decrease as death approaches.” Nahm also cites a case reported by an early 19th-century physician, of a man who had been a catatonic invalid for 28 years but regained his awareness and the power of speech during the day before his death.
The same physician describes the case of a man who was deaf-mute and never learned to speak coherently. However, shortly before his death, he began to talk clearly.
In a similar but more recent example, Nahm cites the case of a 91-year-old woman who had suffered from Alzheimer's for 15 years. For the last five years, she had been unresponsive, showing no sign of recognizing anyone. But one evening, she became more alert and started talking normally to her daughter, discussing her fear of death and her relationships with other members of the family. A few hours later, she died.
The above cases are more dramatic than my mum’s, but they demonstrate the same essential phenomenon: a strange surge of vitality shortly before death which restores mental faculties and physical strength. Then the vitality and clarity disappear, as mysteriously as they arose.
Explaining Terminal Lucidity
There is no explanation for terminal lucidity, at least as yet. From a medical point of view, it seems to make little sense. How can people whose brains are badly damaged become fully conscious again, demonstrating a level of alertness that they only possessed before their illness or injury? How can people who are so severely ill that they are close to biological death experience a powerful surge of energy, regaining physical agility and strength?
These questions must remain open. However, one intriguing aspect of terminal lucidity is what it suggests about human consciousness. Although many people assume that consciousness is produced by the brain, terminal lucidity seems to contradict this. If this were the case, how would it be possible for severely damaged brains to produce normal consciousness? That would be like a broken television producing clear images.
Along with other anomalous phenomena such as near-death experiences, terminal lucidity suggests that human consciousness may have a more complex and mysterious source. According to the philosophical approach that I term “panspiritism,” consciousness exists beyond the human brain, as a fundamental and universal quality. [Oriana: A more common term is "panpsychism."]
According to panspiritism, the brain’s role is not to produce consciousness, but to transmit it, so that universal consciousness becomes our own internal consciousness. In these terms, terminal lucidity is equivalent to a last powerful surge in the transmission of consciousness, before the brain ceases to function as a transmitter, as physical death occurs.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-of-the-darkness/202406/terminal-lucidity
Other attempts to explain terminal lucidity:
Medical experts don’t know what causes terminal lucidity, but it may involve changes in the brain. Research studying brain activity during death shows that oxygen-deprived brains get more active. They change in ways that may help someone access cognitive abilities they once lost. Some studies show a spike in gamma wave brain activity during near-death experiences, like cardiac arrest. Gamma waves are associated with alertness and memory.
But this work is still in the early stages. There are more unknowns than knowns when it comes to terminal lucidity. It is generally a sign that death is near.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/terminal-lucidity
*
A FLAVONOID FOUND IN COCOA, TEA, APPLES AND GRAPES HAS BEEN LINKED TO LOWER BLOOD PRESSURE
A new meta-study suggests that the flavan-3-ols, which are a type of plant-derived compound found in cocoa, tea (both black and green tea), apples, and grapes, may be useful in managing high blood pressure.
The authors of the meta-study suggest that flavan-3-ols may be considered as an addition to lifestyle changes and medication in treating hypertension.
The flavan-3-ols in cocoa, tea, and some popular foods are so effective at improving endothelial function that they are worth considering in the management of high blood pressure, according to a new meta-study.
Currently, lifestyle modification is the first method physicians recommend for patients who have high blood pressure. If this does not resolve the issue, the doctor will prescribe hypertension medications.
In some of the 145 randomized controlled studies included in the meta-study’s analysis, improvements in endothelial function were comparable to those achieved with hypertension medications.
Flavan-3-ols are found in coffee, tea, dark chocolate, cocoa powder, apples, and grapes. Participants in the studies consumed cocoa, tea, apples, or grape extracts.
The authors of the study are not suggesting that flavan-3-ols could replace medication. However, they do note that the ready availability and palatability of such foods may offer welcome additional support for a person hoping to manage hypertension, reducing the need for additional medication.
The analysis found that the compounds successfully decreased blood pressure and improved endothelial functioning in healthy individuals and in people who had hypertension.
Benefits to endothelial function were more consistently observed than reductions in blood pressure.
Blood pressure reduction was most often achieved in individuals who had high blood pressure at the beginning of the studies in which they participated.
The study is published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/type-flavonoid-found-tea-chocolate-may-help-lower-blood-pressure
*
SWOLLEN ANKLES? CRAMPS IN LEGS AND FEET? THIAMINE (VITAMIN B1) TO THE RESCUE
"A potential cause of leg cramps is a vitamin deficiency, though research into this is ongoing. Vitamins B1, B12, and D may help relieve them, along with potassium and magnesium."
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/vitamin-for-leg-cramps#vitamin-b-12
Oriana:
For several years now I’ve been bothered by cramps in my feet and toes, especially at night. I hate to think how often I wake up in pain, and how long it often took to undo a cramp — by rubbing, then trying to “walk it out.” And this started happening more and more often, sometimes when I was driving.
I tried several kinds of magnesium. None helped with the legs cramps.
Then I saw the title of a youtube video in Polish: “the vitamin that prevents foot swelling.” My feet weren’t swollen, but I remembered how terribly swollen they became when I had my strange pneumonia that put me in a hospital for twelve days, back in September 2019. So I was curious about which vitamin could prevent leg swelling. And the fact that this youtube was being presenting by two identical male twins, with egg-shaped shaved heads, also meant that I couldn’t resist watching.
I no longer remember if one of the twins said that Vitamin B1 prevented cramps in legs and feet and toes, or was it all about swelling, and I read about the cramp prevention as I followed up the presentation. I still credit the bald egghead twins with the “cramp cure.” Vitamin B1 (or B Complex, which usually contains an ample dose of thiamine) — who knew it could be so easy and inexpensive — and free from the side effects of toxic and expensive drugs that barely work at all?
One wonderful thing about B1 is that it can be taken at bedtime and not interfere with sleep. Vitamin B Complex is energizing and best taken in the morning.
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COUGHING
Michael Shiloh had been studying tuberculosis for about two decades when he started wondering about a seemingly basic question: What makes people with TB cough? This is the disease’s hallmark symptom and a main mode of transmission, but despite training as an infectious disease physician and many years of probing the pathogen as a researcher, Shiloh realized that he didn’t know. A quick search of the literature suggested that “essentially nothing had been studied about it, at least not at the molecular level,” he says.
Elucidating the role of cough in illness means first appreciating its role in health. “Cough is one of these critical defensive processes that we have to clear the respiratory system,” says Stuart Mazzone, a neuroscientist at the University of Melbourne. But it also contributes to disease spread, as research by Shiloh, now at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and others has described. And dysfunctional control of coughing — resulting in too much coughing or not enough — can cause serious health problems. Here’s a look at how and why we cough, and some of the ways that coughing can go wrong.
What is the cough reflex, and how does it work?
On a recent morning, researcher Karen Hegland literally inhaled part of her breakfast. “I aspirated my coffee, coughed like crazy, but was able to clear my lungs,” says Hegland, a speech-language pathologist who studies coughing and swallowing function at the University of Florida.
A common experience, such coughing is a potent reminder of the importance of the reflex Hegland studies. Without her thinking about it, that reflex sprang into action, potentially preventing airway inflammation and infection that can result from breathing in food or drink.
The cough reflex can also be triggered by a range of chemicals, like those contained in cigarette or wildfire smoke, as well as toxic gases and the stomach juice that can sometimes backtrack into the respiratory tract during an episode of acid reflux. When you cough, “your airway, because it’s so important to you, is protecting itself against the damage associated with aspiration of oral gastric contents or noxious materials,” says Shiloh.
Receptors on one of several types of neurons that snake through the lining of the respiratory tract trigger the cough reflex. Some neurons detect chemical stimuli and others are mechanosensory, detecting pressure from something like a bit of food, another foreign object or a liquid like Hegland’s coffee.
When activated, the neurons send signals to the base of the brain — the brainstem — to initiate a cough, which briefly rejiggers normal breathing activity into three quick, coordinated phases. First, a sharp inhale. Then, closing of the space between the vocal cords, called the glottis, and contraction of abdominal and ribcage muscles to build pressure in the chest. Finally, opening of the glottis to release a sudden burst of compressed air.
Three phases of cough
A cough, whether initiated reflexively by sensory neurons in the airway or volitionally, requires three steps. It begins with a quick inhale. That’s immediately followed by closing the glottis at the back of the throat, which allows pressure to build in the lungs. Finally, the glottis opens and releases a high-speed burst of air, along with any particles caught up in the action.
In addition to this reflexive activity between neurons in the airway and the brainstem, higher-order brain processes add more complexity to the control of coughing; they allow us to cough on purpose, for example, or to sense an urge to cough and at least temporarily suppress it, avoiding an untimely outburst during a key moment in a movie theater.
Does coughing when you’re sick serve a purpose?
During a respiratory infection, coughing helps to clear accumulating mucus and other secretions, which can prolong infection and, if long-lasting, increase the odds of airway damage. “Cough is a protective thing in those circumstances,” says Anne Chang, a pediatric pulmonologist at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.
But beyond the physical removal of respiratory secretions, it’s still unclear whether coughing helps us fight an infection, and thus whether cough-suppressant medications might slow recovery. It hasn’t been well studied, Shiloh says. Certainly, suppressing the cough might block transmission to other people in your midst and also help you sleep, he says. But, he adds, “maybe you’re keeping the infectious material and inflammatory material in your lung and it’s creating a breeding ground for more organisms. No one knows.
” Whether it’s a good idea to take cough suppressant medications likely depends on whether you have a wet or dry cough. “Blocking a highly productive cough is probably not a wise thing,” says Mazzone. But “a dry, hacking cough is not really serving the purpose of clearance.” Suppressing this type of cough does not seem to be harmful, he says. (Because of the risk of serious side effects, over-the-counter cough suppressants and other cold medicines are not recommended for children under 4 years old. )
How do pathogens trigger a cough?
When Shiloh started pondering the root cause of the cough that accompanies a TB infection, he had an inkling that the bacterium that causes it, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, might make molecules that trigger cough sensory neurons. Together with a determined research assistant and other collaborators, he set to work searching for candidates.
After a few dead ends, they identified a molecule called sulfolipid-1, found in the outer membrane and cell wall of the bacterium. When they exposed healthy guinea pigs to aerosolized sulfolipid-1, the animals coughed. But when they were infected with a strain of M. tuberculosis lacking sulfolipid-1, the guinea pigs hardly coughed at all, the team reported in the journal Cell in 2020.
Making sulfolipid-1 may be a strategy on the part of M. tuberculosis to enhance its own transmission to new hosts by airborne spread, Shiloh says. To look at this, he and his colleagues are now testing how easily M. tuberculosis strains with and without sulfolipid-1 are transmitted from infected guinea pigs to healthy ones. Understanding these pathways could pave the way to the development of targeted cough medicines that could help to prevent the spread of TB, he says.
Coughing is a symptom of many other contagious bacterial and viral infections, and how they may directly or indirectly stimulate cough probably varies to some extent, Shiloh says. Other members of the Mycobacterium genus, which can cause chronic cough in people with conditions such as HIV or cystic fibrosis, don’t make sulfolipid-1, so Shiloh is interested in finding out if these bacteria make their own, unique cough-triggering molecules.
Research on Bordetella pertussis, which causes whooping cough, has begun to reveal a complex mechanism involving several molecules that work cooperatively to cause cough, but pathways for many other bacterial pathogens remain unclear.
How pathogens induce coughing
Researchers are just beginning to investigate how disease-causing microbes might directly cause a cough. Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, produces a molecule called sulfolipid-1 that activates cough-triggering neurons. Bordetella pertussis, the pathogen responsible for whooping cough, seems to make several molecules that work together to bring on a cough. Whether other bacteria and fungi also make cough-triggering molecules is unknown. Several respiratory viruses have been shown to increase the production of receptors that activate coughing and up animals’ sensitivity to cough stimuli.
Compared with bacteria, viruses have a very pared down genome, so they’re less likely to have the capacity to make specific molecules to cause cough and probably use other strategies, Shiloh says. Several respiratory viruses have been shown in animals and cell culture experiments to increase the production of receptors that trigger the cough reflex and boost infected animals’ sensitivity to cough stimuli.
Not all the signals to cough come directly from invaders. The body’s immune cells respond to respiratory infections — whether viral, bacterial or fungal — by secreting inflammatory molecules such as cytokines, prostaglandins and leukotrienes. These can cause cough by tweaking the receptors on airway sensory neurons, says Shiloh, who with Mazzone and coauthor Kubra Naqvi summarized the current understanding of how respiratory infections cause cough in the 2023 Annual Review of Physiology.
Why does a cough sometimes stick around for so long?
Even after viral infections are cleared from the airways, a cough can sometimes linger for weeks or even months, long after other symptoms have resolved. That’s likely in part because of residual low-grade inflammation in the respiratory system, Mazzone says. But there’s also growing evidence from animal studies that viral infections, particularly when they’re more severe, can cause inflammation not just in the lungs but also in the long vagus nerve that runs between vital organs and the brain, carrying bundles of nerve fibers that regulate many basic functions, including the cough reflex.
“That is thought to be a contributing factor to why some people have this persistent neuro-hypersensitivity that lasts much longer than the viral infection itself. It’s because those nerves remain inflamed, and that takes time to clear,” Mazzone says.
Airway inflammation can also fire up the cough reflex. In response to respiratory infections, the body’s immune cells secrete inflammatory molecules (including peptide and lipid mediators and cytokines), which then cause cough via various receptors on airway sensory neurons. Some viruses, including influenza, have also been shown to directly infect sensory neurons and cause inflammation within the nervous system, which may contribute to a cough that lingers long after the infection has cleared.
What happens if the cough reflex doesn’t function properly?
Just as an overactive cough reflex can be problematic, so can an underactive one. The reflex is immature in young children — and that, combined with their propensity to put small objects in their mouths, puts them at greater risk of choking and aspirating things into their lungs, says pediatric pulmonologist Chang.
Foreign bodies can sometimes sit undetected in kids’ lungs for years, causing obstruction, inflammation and, incidentally, a chronic cough. Chang has removed nuts, beads and bits of sticky tape from children’s airways, and one time extracted a seashell that had been stuck in a teenager’s lungs for 14 years, causing a mysterious cough and airway damage. This is one reason it’s important not to ignore chronic cough, particularly in children, she says.
At the other end of the lifespan, the cough reflex can weaken in older adults, especially those with neurologic conditions like Parkinson’s disease. “They tend to have both a blunted sensation of the need to cough, and then also sort of discoordinated and weak cough air flows,” says Hegland, the speech-language pathologist. The dysfunctional cough reflex can contribute to the development of aspiration pneumonia, which is the leading cause of death in people with Parkinson’s.
So far, therapy for a weakened coughing function has focused on strengthening the muscles that contract to build air pressure and produce the forceful expiration of a cough, and this training has been shown to be helpful to an extent. But Hegland and collaborator Michelle Troche at Columbia University have also developed and tested a therapy that targets patients’ sensing of and response to a cough stimulus, with the goal of improving the cough reflex.
In a recent randomized controlled trial, Parkinson’s patients used either expiratory muscle training or the new sensorimotor therapy. Sensorimotor participants breathed through a face mask, through which they were given small amounts of aerosolized capsaicin, the same chemical that makes hot peppers spicy. Capsaicin also stimulates cough sensory neurons, and at the low doses used in the trial, causes a tickle at the back of the throat.
Upon feeling that tickle, participants were asked to produce a cough strong enough to reach a target airflow shown on a computer screen. The therapy allowed patients to practice noticing and responding appropriately to the sensory signals pinging from neurons in the respiratory tract.
In a 2022 study published in the journal Movement Disorders, Hegland, Troche and colleagues reported that both types of training improved Parkinson’s patients’ coughing abilities, but the sensorimotor training resulted in a greater urge to cough in response to the capsaicin stimulus and a stronger cough reflex. Hegland hopes that the therapy can help Parkinson’s patients keep their airways safe and find the Goldilocks of cough function: not too much, not too little — just right.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/new-views-of-a-cough-from-tb-and-chronic-cough-to-hope-for-parkinson-s?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
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UV LIGHT EXPOSURE AND CANCER
Research suggests that the risk of developing lung, prostate, breast, colorectal and pancreatic cancer may be decreased by sun exposure. This protective effect against cancer is most pronounced in sunny countries. While smaller studies of colorectal and prostate cancer have conflicted with this finding, many studies support a beneficial relationship between sun exposure and internal cancers, and it has been suggested that the risks associated with sun exposure may be outweighed by its ability to prevent certain types of internal cancers.
Sunlight may also improve cancer outcomes. The prognosis for patients diagnosed in summer and fall is better than those diagnosed in winter, and total sun exposure prior to diagnosis is a predictor of survival.
Given the relationship between sun exposure and vitamin D production, it was initially thought that vitamin D was the underlying cause for improved cancer outcomes. Unfortunately, data to support this are still lacking. Initial trials of vitamin D supplementation have failed to demonstrate a benefit on cancer prevention, which has led researchers to believe that this benefit is from the effects of UV radiation.
UV light decreases blood pressure and inflammation
UV exposure positively affects blood pressure as well. People living in countries in higher latitudes with less UV exposure have higher blood pressures at baseline than countries receiving more sunlight. This effect is also seasonal, as more UV exposure in summer results in lower blood pressure.
And clinical trials have proven UVB radiation effectively treats patients with mild hypertension. It was thought that vitamin D was the cause for decreased blood pressure, but follow-up trials proved this effect was due to UVB exposure alone.
Some chemical reactions caused by UV light are known to have anti-inflammatory effects in the skin. Immune cells living in the skin can stop functioning, migrate out of the skin or undergo cell death following exposure to UV radiation. Due to its anti-inflammatory effects, UV light can be used to effectively treat inflammatory skin conditions like psoriasis and eczema.
Protection against autoimmune conditions
On a larger scale, certain autoimmune conditions are more common in countries with less UV exposure. For instance, there is a higher prevalence of multiple sclerosis (MS) in Scandinavian countries.
In MS, immune cells attack the insulation around nerve cells in the brain, ultimately leading to nerve damage. While lack of vitamin D is a leading hypothesis for how MS develops, studies have also shown that lack of sun exposure may be an independent risk factor for nerve damage.
The Dark Side of Sunshine
In addition to skin cancer, UV radiation also causes photoaging. UVA radiation penetrates deep into the skin, destroying collagen, which leads to wrinkles and skin thinning. Also, some autoimmune diseases, such as lupus, flare in response to UV radiation. UV radiation can also affect the eye, causing cataracts.
So, how can you maximize the benefits of sun exposure while minimizing your risk of skin cancer and aging? The key is to practice safe sun habits, which means using sunscreen and avoiding sunburns. This will decrease photoaging, and more importantly, your risk of skin cancer. Also, vitamin D is most effectively synthesized at UV radiation doses below those causing sunburn.
Several factors, including your skin type, latitude, longitude and weather, play into your overall UV exposure. This means different amounts of time in the sun for different people. People living in California may need only brief sun exposure on a cloudless day for adequate vitamin D production. This differs for places like Boston, where there aren’t adequate amounts of UV radiation from November to February. Skin type becomes important because melanin, which gives skin its pigment, effectively blocks UV radiation. This means darker-skinned people need more UV exposure for adequate vitamin D production than lighter-skinned people.
There are online tools that let you calculate how much time you should spend in the sun to achieve adequate levels of vitamin D without causing sunburn. If you think you aren’t getting enough sun exposure, or you live somewhere with long winters, check with your doctor to see if you are vitamin D deficient.
Oriana:
In older age, we lose our ability to synthesize Vitamin D in the skin, and have to rely on diet and supplements. There is no need for anyone to suffer from Vitamin D deficiency. But then so much of human suffering is avoidable. As an old physician told me, the most common cause of death is ignorance — inexcusable in our “Information Age.”
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ending on beauty:
MY GRANDMOTHER’S HAIRNETS
Other grandmothers knitted.
Mine only crocheted.
And exclusively hairnets.
Ever since I was a toddler,
I remember her that way,
with a little silver hook,
spiraling around and around
the nothing at the top.
Endless hairnets!
She kept her hair short.
Even after eighty,
she was only beginning to gray.
Her hairnets were brown
or black, the yarn so fine
the hairnet hardly showed.
It was not about need.
It was about that spiraling
around empty space,
the eye of wisdom that opens
when you come to know
how in one moment
you can lose all except
your very
soul. Everything else
is a ball of yarn.
It’s about the flight
of the hook.
~ Oriana
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