Off to visit two daughters in Texas as of '07. Dallas was one of the three cities (along with Houston and NYC) to gain in population last year.
How to Train a Husband is a top 10 article on Newsweek reviewing a just-released book, What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love and Marriage
and I bet it becomes a top gift for brides-to-be! In 2006 Amy
Sutherland wrote an article for the NYTimes which became the most
e-mailed story of the year. I may go out w/ my newlywed daughter in Dallas to pick this up.
Feminism All Mixed Up? I ran a story on Fashion and High Heels that got a lot of traffic (high heels equate to Chinese foot binding, imo) at the same time that a study came out in Italy that high heels promoted good pelvic muscles (for women, it said) at the same time that Boing Boing highlighted an article about how high heels were not good. I read the comments on the articles and these ways that women are dressing for men at risk to their own (foot) health made me go over to check out Morton's Neuroma, one side effect of heels, from which I suffer from time-to-time. My NYC podiatrist, foot doctor to the big sports teams, had articles all over his walls quoting him regarding damage women in heels suffer from, foot-health wise. Then there is the trend to waifish, anorexic-looking androngynous male models. My husband and I have had discussions about these trends. Seems things are mixed up in ways that aren't good for women? Or men? I don't think a book would ever come out by a man on How To Train a Wife. That was so 50's, wasn't it? Matthew Kahn brings up lastest research about how love puts blinders on people. This truism is why we should work to keep romance alive. Being in love increases the ability to resist temptation. Romance. Right. Young kids don't date anymore.
Final thoughts: Republicans are happier than Democrats (link via Jill); "after 40, it's just patch, patch, patch," says Allison's mother; feeling lonely can make you sick by desensitizing glucocorticoid receptors, cutting off the immune control and anti-inflammatory effects of cortisol, a stress-related hormone that also helps regulate the conversion of carbohydrates to energy; and additives in food products really do make children hyperactive.
And, to conclude my long ramble, if I could go back and work harder to change some things as mom, I'd work for more recess and art, music and language studies in lower grades and later school beginnings (10:00 - 6:00) for high school students with mandatory sports and healthy food and media studies courses available. I wouldn't have had such conniption fits about the decline of cursive handwriting.
There. That is what I think is important to ramble about. Today. Texas, Here I Come. Yee Haw Cheers.
It seems to me the pendulum has swung too far the other way from the 50's in making men look like incompetent idiots in commercials. Maybe I married an anomaly, but men can take care of children and cook!
Also just heard about Dee Dee Myers' new book "Why Women Should Rule the World". I would like to read this book, see if I still agree with that idea!! :) Thanks for the nod to my mom! Have a mighty good time in Texas with your gals!
Posted by: allison | February 25, 2008 at 09:01 AM
I hearken back to the days of Chinese foot-binding as a good analogy for society's fascination with women in their high heels. We look back on foot-binding as barbaric today; think of what folks 300 years from now will think of high heels?
Posted by: That Foot Guy | April 15, 2008 at 12:01 AM