thinking thursday.
Well, well, well. My "Aha!" moment, filmed in an Airstream that visited Asheville earlier this year, is one of 75 semi-finalists nationwide. Would you take a moment and vote for it and ask others in your network to? (very simple, no registration, takes 5 seconds). Otherwise my mother may hunt you down and feed you jellied orange slices and Werther's hard candies until you vote.
mind :: my brain and yours
For women, it pays to be very thin: "…A new study goes a step further by showing that employers seem to treat women exactly the way the fashion industry does – by rewarding very thin women with higher pay, while penalizing average-weight women with smaller paychecks. Very thin men, on the other hand, tend to get paid less than male workers of average weight. Men earn more as they pack on the pounds – all the way to the point where they become obese, when the pay trend reverses."
body :: my place and yours
Lavender and lemons make me very happy.
Do YOU know how to capture wild yeast? I thought not. Five things your grandparents knew how to do. (Thanks to Lindsay Fields)
I may or may not have gone online last night and bought myself a pair of red boots to wear on my book tour starting next Friday. And I may or may not have included a gift card to myself: "Congratulations on your new book! Love, Patti"
What about your signature, your personal mark?: "Buying baby wipes and ointment at the drugstore chain CVS, I signed, very legibly, 'Cher.' Another day, 'Kim Jong-il.' I thought signing the name of a North Korean dictator — whose name clearly didn’t jibe with my Caucasian features — would stir some sign of life in the checkout clerk. Nothing. On other days, on other terminals, all over New York City and Long Island, I was 'Benjamin Franklin,' 'Hillary Clinton,' 'Steve Wozniak,' '‘Zsa Zsa Gabor,' 'Angelina Jolie.' In an appeal to the young clerks at my local drugstore chain I tried 'Kid Cudi' and 'Justin Bieber' in swirling, swooping letters. Nothing. And every time my charge was processed without a hitch. I don’t look at all like Lady Gaga, but if I sign her name, my credit card is charged. Finally, I even wrote in block letters, this is not my signature. It all worked. What a miraculous little glitch of technology! The philosophical idea of the personal mark has evaporated. For all the developments in artificial intelligence, issues of individuality and personal aesthetic are beside the point."
The Proper Care & Feeding of Your Homosexual is a must-read: "LGBT teens are 2 to 3 times more likely to kill themselves each year than their straight peers. In raw numbers, that means 150,000 gay teens will try to kill themselves this year and 1,500 will succeed. That’s about four kids a day. Suicide is a rising epidemic among teens regardless of sexuality, but for LGBT teens it’s a crisis. And chances are most of you are horrified by these statistics. Most people aren’t bigots and don’t want to see teenagers, regardless of their sexuality, killing themselves. But what can you do? It’s pretty simple actually: You have to speak up. If you’re upset over the four gay teens who have committed suicide in the last three weeks, speak up! Your silence is killing us."
A climate-friendly diet. Imagine that! Here are some of the reasons why putting plants in the center of your plate makes eco-sense:
• Half of all corn and 90 percent of soy is diverted to feed animals on factory farms;
• A Cornell study found that meeting the annual dietary needs of a typical meat eater requires as much as 2.1 acres of farmland, compared with a just half an acre for a plant-centered eater;
• Fossil fuel use can be from 2.5- to as much as 50-times higher to produce meat protein than vegetable-based proteins.
soul :: my heart and yours
And this is why I adore him. Among some other things.
Caring for the soul in difficult times: leaning into darkness
A final thought :: "There are four questions of value in life… What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love." -Johnny Depp
