Leisure Matters from the New York Times

May 5, 2008 Shifting Careers

Why Leisure Matters in a Busy World

By MARCI ALBOHER

A few months ago, I spoke with a Canadian economist, Linda Nazareth, about her prediction that we are entering an age governed by changes in leisure patterns. We talked then about the ways that workplaces and businesses will evolve to accommodate and capitalize on the 77 million baby boomers who will, in increasing numbers, have excess time on their hands.

Suddenly, I started hearing about other aspects of the leisure field, an area I previously knew little about. Recently, I came across the work of Alison Link, whose work with people who are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated was described in a column by Samuel G. Freedman in The New York Times in 2006. Though Ms. Link works primarily with at-risk populations, she says that we can all improve our quality of life by paying more attention to leisure habits. I had a series of telephone calls and e-mail exchanges with Ms. Link, and the following is an edited version of those exchanges:

Q. How do you define leisure?

A. Believe it or not, the field of leisure studies is a big area of academic study. Leisure has many different definitions - some involving time, some relating to an activity being done, some relating to state of mind. Personally, I am most at leisure when I feel free, present and integrated. I like this definition for myself because it allows me to experience leisure at any moment, even in just a few minutes. Leisure can happen when we are in various states: artistic or creative, physical, intellectual, social, spiritual, learning new things, volunteering, active, passive, or as a spectator or participant. One can be emotionally connected and engaged or not. And we can even have leisure at work and be more productive, healthy and creative.

Q. Can you give some examples of positive uses of leisure?

A. I hesitate to be more specific because I prefer to guide people as they figure it out for themselves. I ask people to look at the things that are most fulfilling to them and that make them feel like they are at their best. So I ask questions like, “What would you like to be doing in your life you are not doing now?” or “What would you like to do better or learn more about?” It’s a process, and it’s different for each person. I would never suggest that someone take a course to get started because that might feel like work to them.

Here’s an example of a work situation: one of my clients works in television, and her life is filled with stress during her filming season. In those periods, she works six days a week and has little energy for herself, her boyfriend and others in her life. She came to me in one of those stretches, in which she was so overwhelmed that she was waking up each morning just hoping to get through the day. It was affecting both her workday and the limited time she had outside of work.

Eventually, she said, she might make a big lifestyle change. But until she could do that we worked together on how she could add small bits of leisure into her days during those intense times. We were looking for small changes, the kinds of things she could do in 10 or 15 minutes. She created a list: she could call a friend who would make her laugh, take a walk to get coffee, sit for a few minutes in the park, even walk to and from work. Once she started to add some of these small bits of leisure to her life, she felt more free and happy at work, and she saw changes in her life outside of work, especially in how she interacted with others.

Q. Why should we care about our relationship to leisure?

A. Too often, leisure time that is not used in a satisfying way turns into idle time, or is used to do a single thing to excess (like overeating, or getting into family quarrels). It can even turn negative, which is what happens often in the cases substance use, delinquency and criminal activity. Also, wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t define ourselves by our work? It should be just as valid to define ourselves by our leisure.

Q. A lot of your academic and field work focuses on at-risk, incarcerated and post-incarcerated populations. Why is leisure so significant for these populations?

A. Many people in at-risk populations have a lot of stress, pressures, risk-taking behavior, boredom and/or idle time. They may have, or perceive that they have, limited options or resources.

There is an opportunity to use leisure in a negative way while living on the street but also while in prison. Approximately 95 percent of people who are incarcerated in the United States are released and return to society at some point. This transition from incarceration to a life free from both crime and incarceration is a challenge for the more than 10 million people in the United States returning to society each year. Out of the more than 650,000 people returning from prison annually into the community, two-thirds are rearrested and half are reincarcerated. This affects not only these individuals’ lives but also those of their families, children, communities and society.

So equipping people with the ability to make more positive use of their leisure time while in prison and also once released is a holistic approach that helps empower the whole person, reduce the negative use of leisure and contribute to reducing recidivism.

Q. What does all this have to do with those of us whose lives have nothing to do with correctional facilities or addiction?

A. Whenever I conduct workshops with any group, I ask people how free they feel and to rate themselves on a scale of 0 to 100. The responses are usually about the same whether I am talking to people in a correctional facility or at a workplace. I have learned firsthand that some people feel free while behind bars (and use their time in a positive way), yet others feel “locked up” while living in society.

One thing I learned from working with incarcerated populations is that having a good understanding of leisure and implementing it can be a coping skill, especially through transitions. Prison re-entry to society is a major transition in one’s life. However, we all experience transitions whether big or small. Sometimes we have control of them and other times we don’t.

Waking up every day is a new transition. Every minute is a transition. Taking a new job, retiring, going to school, finishing school, relocating, recovering from an illness, bereavement, having a new baby are just some of the transitions we encounter and there is an unknown associated with them. A satisfying leisure life can help an individual take control of part of that unknown. It also gives the opportunity for choice, which is often limited in other aspects of our lives, like during our work.

Improving our relationship with leisure can also reduce job stress, improve work-related skills, increase tolerance and understanding and enhance decision-making

Q. So how do you explain all those people who don’t feel free in their lives?

A. Few of us really think about or plan for leisure. We think we should just go with the flow, but too often we end up feeling stressed, overwhelmed and unfulfilled. We need to plan for leisure - perhaps by doing one small thing every day, identifying long- and short-term leisure goals, putting enjoyable activities on the calendar - like we do other aspects of life. But before people start moving up leisure on the priority list, they need to appreciate and recognize the value and benefits of leisure, even when they have constraints (that may be internal or external). We all have obligations and other constraints that inhibit us from engaging in leisure that range from guilt to time or financial constraints. Yet the personal benefits and collective benefits short term and long term are worthwhile.

Q. So what happens when an individual goes for an extended period of time without leisure?

A. You tell me. Have you ever been burned out, depressed or overwhelmed, had stress manifest physically? Mind and body connect you know. And then think of the effect on not only you but how it affects others.

The Quest for Simple Inexpensive & Local Organic Salad Greens–YUM

May 10, 2007 : In the Garden: from the New York Times

It Takes a Hammer to Grow This Salad

By ANNE RAVER

IF you love fresh greens, there is no reason not to grow them yourself, even if you have only a tiny terrace or handkerchief lawn.

When Jon Traunfeld, a regional specialist for the University of Maryland Cooperative Extension, showed me his homemade salad table, I wanted one, and I wanted to put it right outside my kitchen door. It has a whole different appeal - less work! proximity! - than my big vegetable garden.

Essentially, it is a garden on wheels that you can move around, into sun or shade, a big benefit when the sun gets too hot for spinach. It’s waist-high, so people with creaky knees or bad backs can just stand there and pick a few leaves for dinner. And it’s a cinch to water and weed (not like that jungle I call my kitchen garden.)

“It also means the groundhogs and the rabbits aren’t going to bother you,” Mr. Traunfeld said, standing by his leafy table, which sits on a terrace at the extension service’s Home and Garden Information Center in Ellicott City, Md. “Though, we have two deer trapped inside our fence. If they find this, we’re sunk.”

The salad table is basically a 3-inch-deep, 11-square-foot planting box on legs. It has a hardware-cloth bottom, lined with window screening, so that water can drain but soil mix stays put. The table can be lifted by two people; better yet, if you put casters on the legs it can be rolled.

Mr. Traunfeld invented his table about a year and a half ago, after seeing something similar at an organic farm in Virginia. He has long understood the joys of fresh greens: when it’s too cold outside, he grows them under fluorescent lights in his basement.

He has been taking his salad table on the road to schools and community groups to show how easy it is to grow nutritious food right outside the door.

Last year he grew greens in full sunlight during spring and fall. In the heat of the summer he pulled the tables back into the shade. Try doing that with your vegetable garden.

“Shade isn’t a bad thing for greens, especially in the summer,” Mr. Traunfeld said. “They don’t really need direct sunlight.” In fact, in the heat of August you can grow lettuces and other salad greens in full shade. Just push that table back into the light come September.

Lettuces, arugula, bok choy, mustards and many other greens are all shallow-rooted vegetables that can thrive, believe it or not, in three inches of potting soil, especially if it’s enriched with compost. Mr. Traunfeld plants seeds of Russian kale, mizuna (a tangy Japanese green) and colorful lettuces like speckled trout, whose chartreuse leaves are splotched with maroon, and merlot, a ruffled red. Heat-resistant varieties, like oakleaf, deer tongue and Jericho, a romaine developed in Israel, are especially suited to a shallow box.

He is also growing purslane and amaranth, as well as basil and parsley; anything, in other words, that grows fast and easily in shallow soil. The greens sprout quickly in such loose soil, and will no doubt need to be thinned, in which case those little leaves may just be rinsed and tossed into a salad. As leaves mature, Mr. Traunfeld cuts them low to the base, then lets them grow again for a second cutting - the cut-and-come-again method - in a few weeks.

“You can only do that twice though, and it’s time to take them out,” Mr. Traunfeld said. “All of these plants have a life cycle, so after 60 or 70 days, they’re just going to get bitter.”

He fertilizes every two weeks with a liquid fertilizer, or relies on a slow-release fertilizer like Osmocote in the planting mix.

Although his planting box is large, a small one could be placed just about anywhere, including a narrow apartment balcony.

When I commented on how beautifully simple all this was, and wondered why no one had thought of this before, Mr. Traunfeld just laughed.

“Every time I teach this workshop, somebody says, my grandmother used to take old drawers out of chests that were going to get junked, and she grew plants, either spring onions or salad greens, in a drawer,” he said. “So it’s nothing new. We’re just re-packaging it.”

Mr. Traunfeld is also recycling another ubiquitous item: the five-gallon white plastic bucket used for bulk food, which bakeries, delis and restaurants are happy to give away. Instead of just drilling holes in the bottom and filling with compost and potting soil - perfect for tomato plants with deep roots - Mr. Traunfeld turns them into self-watering containers.

It’s not complicated; just a series of trimming this, and sawing that, and drilling holes here and there. Directions for the self-watering container can be found at hgic.umd.edu, under online publications, on container vegetable gardening.

For those who want to try his movable garden, the table and trays are simple to make out of untreated framing lumber, a bit of wire mesh and window screening, and some nails, wood screws and staples. Find a handsaw, hammer and drill and you’re all set. Directions can be found at hgic.umd.edu, under online publications, on growing greens with salad tables and salad boxes. The table costs about $35 to make; the tray, $8.

Mr. Traunfeld is finding that these tables are not only inspiring people to grow fresh food; they are also generating an interest in basic carpentry skills.

Since soil is too heavy and dense for these salad tables, it’s better to use a lightweight, fertile mix, in which seeds can easily germinate. Mr. Traunfeld suggested half compost, half soilless mix. But make sure both are of a good quality. You could also use pure compost, if you make it yourself, or have a reliable source. Soilless mix dries quickly in the sun; you may have to water as often as twice a day.

If you want more texture in your salad, space plants about three to four inches apart, he advised. This is a good method for mustard greens, collards and chard.

“Then the mid-ribs develop and you get a little more crunch in your salad,” he said. And you can just pick individual leaves, rather than cutting little soft ones with scissors.

These crunchy, bigger leaves are also less likely to wilt when tossed with an acid dressing made with vinegar or lemon.

Hand me the olive oil, please. Or a hammer, so that I can start on one of these tables.

Mildred had “a Dream”

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Mildred and Richard Loving were indicted and pleaded guilty to violating Virginia’s 1924 Racial Integrity Act.

Mildred Loving’s case made interracial marriage legal

By Jocelyn Y. Stewart

Los Angeles Times

For marrying the only man she ever loved, Mildred Loving was arrested, convicted and banished from her home state.

The Commonwealth of Virginia handed down such punishments in the 1950s to couples whose love the state did not sanction: She was black; her husband, Richard, was white; and their union was prohibited by law.

The marriage could have collapsed under the hammer of Jim Crow. Instead, the Lovings’ challenge of the law led to a Supreme Court ruling in 1967 that toppled bans on interracial marriages nationwide.

For Mrs. Loving, the issue was always simple: “I think marrying who you want is a right no man should have anything to do with,” she said in a 1967 segment of “ABC News.” “It’s a God-given right.”

Mrs. Loving, 68, died of pneumonia May 2 at her home in Central Point, Va., said her daughter, Peggy Fortune.

In 1958, when the Lovings were arrested, laws supporting segregation were falling, but half of the states still had anti-miscegenation laws, said Peter Wallenstein, a professor of history at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va. Those laws deprived Americans of the most intimate of decisions: who could be their spouse.

“This was the last piece - and it was a big piece - in the whole structure of Jim Crow,” Wallenstein said.

In Virginia’s Caroline County, where Mildred Jeter was born July 22, 1939, a 1691 statute outlawed marriage between whites and nonwhites. An 1878 law introduced a penalty of up to five years in prison and a clause: Those who married out of state, then returned to Virginia, would be treated the same as those who had married in the state.

The Lovings had done just that. The couple drove to Washington, D.C., married on June 2, 1958, then returned to Caroline County, where they moved in with Mrs. Loving’s parents.

The Lovings woke up about 2 a.m. one July night to see the sheriff and deputies surrounding their bed, shining flashlights.

Richard Loving rushed to show the men their marriage license. The sheriff was not moved. “That’s no good here,” he said.

“They told us to get up, get dressed. I couldn’t believe they were taking us to jail,” Mrs. Loving said.

The Lovings were indicted and pleaded guilty to violating the 1924 Racial Integrity Act, another version of the state’s anti-miscegenation law. Judge Leon Bazile sentenced the couple to a year in jail but suspended the sentence for 25 years on the condition they leave the state and not return together during that time.

The Lovings moved to Washington, D.C. In 1963, Mrs. Loving wrote to then-Attorney General Robert F. Kenney and asked for his help. The Justice Department referred the couple to the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Lovings’ case landed at the Supreme Court. On June 12, 1967, the court ruled 9-0 that Virginia’s laws were aimed at white supremacy, were unconstitutional and violated the 14th Amendment.

The couple moved back to Virginia. In 1975, Richard Loving was killed by a drunken driver in a car accident. Mildred Loving, who never remarried, died one month shy of what would have been her 50th wedding anniversary.

In addition to her daughter, she is survived by a son, Sidney Loving, of Tappahannock, Va.; eight grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. A son, Donald, died in 2000.

Timeless Quotations

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

President Dwight D. Eisenhower
April 16, 1953

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it? ~Eleanor Roosevelt

Why should I give them my mind as well? -Dalai Lama, when asked if he wasn’t angry at the Chinese for taking over his country. (1935- )

Curious Phrases

THREE SHEETS TO THE WIND

Meaning

Very drunk.

Origin

Our colleagues at CANOE, the Committee to Ascribe a Nautical Origin to Everything, have been hard at work and, to their great pleasure, they can add this phrase to their list. ‘Three sheets to the wind’ is indeed a seafaring expression.

To understand this phrase we need to enter the arcane world of nautical terminology. Sailors’ language is, unsurprisingly, all at sea and many supposed derivations have to go by the board. Don’t be taken aback to hear that sheets aren’t sails, as landlubbers might expect, but ropes (or occasionally, chains). These are fixed to the lower corners of sails, to hold them in place. If three sheets are loose and blowing about in the wind then the sails will flap and the boat will lurch about like a drunken sailor.

The phrase is these days more often given as ‘three sheets to the wind’, rather than the original ‘three sheets in the wind’. The earliest printed citation that I can find is in Pierce Egan’s Real Life in London, 1821:

“Old Wax and Bristles is about three sheets in the wind.”

Sailors at that time had a sliding scale of drunkenness; three sheets was the falling over stage; tipsy was just ‘one sheet in the wind’, or ‘a sheet in the wind’s eye’. An example appears in the novel The Fisher’s Daughter, by Catherine Ward, 1824:

“Wolf replenished his glass at the request of Mr. Blust, who, instead of being one sheet in the wind, was likely to get to three before he took his departure.”

Robert Louis Stevenson was as instrumental in inventing the imagery of ‘yo ho ho and a bottle of rum’ piracy as his countryman and contemporary Sir Walter Scott was in inventing the tartan and shortbread ‘Bonnie Scotland’. Stevenson used the ‘tipsy’ version of the phrase in Treasure Island, 1883 - the book that gave us ‘X marks the spot’, ’shiver me timbers’ and the archetypal one-legged, parrot-carrying pirate, Long John Silver. He gave Silver the line:

“Maybe you think we were all a sheet in the wind’s eye. But I’ll tell you I was sober; “

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/three-sheets-to-the-wind.html

A Few Web Sites You Want to Know about

Government DO NOT CALL LIST: https://www.donotcall.gov/

Rid your mailbox of unwanted catalogs: http://www.catalogchoice.org/

Get off the junk mail lists including getting off the credit card offer lists: https://www.dmachoice.org/MPS/proto1.php

How to find a human on a customer service call: http://www.nophonetrees.com/

Is that famous person dead or alive? http://www.deadoraliveinfo.com/

To believe or not believe that urban legend sent via the internet no doubt: http://www.snopes.com/

A “This I Believe” Essay

This was written by a young high school student in Florida. There are some powerful lessons to heed in her essay: http://www.thisibelieve.org/dsp_ShowEssay.php?uid=43395&topessays=2&start=0

To Buy Organic or Non-organic?

If you have access to local foods and the money to pay for organic consider yourself fortunate. If you watch your grocery dollars and want to know what should be absolutely bought organic I offer this list:

• PEACHES
• APPLES
• CELERY
• NECTARINES
• STRAWBERRIES
• CHERRIES
• LETTUCE
• GRAPES
• PEARS
• SPINACH
• POTATOES
• BELL PEPPERS

http://www.foodnews.org/walletguide.php

Stunning Poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay

The courage that my mother had

Went with her, and is with her still:

Rock from New England quarried;

Now granite in a granite hill.

The golden brooch my mother wore

She left behind for me to wear;

I have no thing I treasure more:

Yet, it is something I could spare.

Oh, if instead she’d left to me

The thing she took into the grave!–

That courage like a rock, which she

Has no more need of, and I have.

-Edna St Vincent Millay

One Last Kindness: Organ and Body Donation

Death provides many of us with a one-time chance to make a valuable gift to humanity. All major religions approve of body and organ donation for medical and dental teaching, research, and transplants. According to public opinion polls, most people believe that such donations are desirable.

Organ Donation

With the advances in medical science in the last decade, organ transplants have become fairly common. Organ donation at a time of death is a gift of life or sight to the recipient. Circumstances surrounding death may limit this option, yet the corneas of even elderly donors will be grateful accepted. If your wish is to aid the living with an organ donation, make sure your next-of-kin and your physician know your preference. This intent should be noted on any medical or hospital records, too. A body from which organs have been removed will not be accepted for medical study.

Body Donation

Medical schools have an ongoing need of bodies for teaching and research. The need may be especially urgent at osteopathic and chiropractic schools. No medical school buys bodies, but there is usually little or no expense for the family when death occurs. Therefore, if you live in an area where low-cost funeral options do not exist, body donation may be an economical as well as thoughtful and generous choice.

Most medical schools pay for nearby transportation as well as embalming and final disposition. The School may have a contract with a particular firm for transporting bodies, so it is important to inquire about the specific arrangements to be used at the time of death in order to avoid added costs. After medical study, the body is usually cremated, with burial or scattering in a university plot. Often the cremains or remains can be returned to the family for burial within a year or two. This request should be made known at the time of donation. Some medical schools require that a donor register before death. However, in many cases, next-of-kin may make the bequest without prior arrangement.

Funeral Plans

Because it is important for the medical school to start preservation as soon after death as possible, a memorial service is most appropriate for those planning on body donation. Alternative plans for body disposition should be discussed with your family. A few schools take care of disposition regardless of condition at the time of death, in fulfillment of their contract with a donor. Most medical schools, however, follow guidelines in the acceptance of a body. If death occurs at the time of surgery, for example, the body would not be accepted for study. Certain diseases, as well as obesity, make a body unsuitable. Some medical schools may not have an immediate need and have no provision for storage or for sharing with another university.

Provisions When Traveling

There will be special considerations if death occurs while you are traveling and you planned on body donation. If you are a great distance from the medical school of your choice, should your family bear the cost of transporting your body there, or may the nearest university be contacted? The need for cadavers in some foreign countries is even greater than in the U.S. For example, in Argentina 200 medical students must share a cadaver. A private individual’s body may be shipped to another country if placed in a hermetically sealed container. If death were to occur abroad, do you wish your survivors to inquire about the local need for bodies or organs to fulfill the intent of your anatomical bequest? Be sure to note your preference on the Uniform Donor Card you carry.

from:http://www.funerals.org/