Season's Tweetings

The Night Before Christmas 

for 

Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis/St.Paul

'Twas soon to be #Christmas

#SMBMSP

And tweeters were tweeting

Like @NicoleDeB

Plus @AlbertMaruggi

@keithprivette @rickmahn

@sborsch @mitchellhislop

And @arikhanson

@MegCanada tweets @MrChristopherL

@bstemmler keeps filming

@stremcha rings a bell

@chrisnulty and @philson

@leeodden @gregswan

@quick13 @bradwellman

The tweets just go on:

@mnheadhunter @ThreeDeep

And @desaraeV

And @amysbryant and @davidtc

@timbursch @donmball

Tweet @myklroventine

Who RT's @Kayloire 

And @audiencemachine

This tweeting could go on

'Til 2010

So unhand your handhelds

And #MacBooks and then

Eat #bacon and celebrate all that you can

'Til #SMBMSP happens again.  

Playing catchup with reality

Despite the title of this blog, I have rarely jumped to the heart, but a humbling 24 hours has pushed me.

I look in the mirror and see:  Susan.
Others look at me, and see a senior citizen.
It's not just the last 24 hours.  There was the woman at the gym who didn't understand why I hadn't considered Silver Sneakers exercise classes. The aqua aerobics instructor who asked if I was going to the luncheon at the Senior Center.
Then, yesterday, the eye doctor who said my blurry vision was caused by cataracts.  
Cataracts?! I gasped.  People my age get cataracts???
Yes, he nodded, scanning my chart for my age, 50% of people over 62 have cataracts.*
I'm 58; but to him, I am appropriately aged for cataracts.
Today at the coop, the cashier cautiously wondered if I'd be using the Tuesday discount.
What discount?
For seniors, she explained, over 62.
My perception of myself has clearly not caught up with reality.
Reality gallops apace, while I remain: Susan.

*FWIW: I checked the NIH statistics. Only 15.54% of 62-year-olds have cataracts.  Among white people my age, the rate is 8.84%.

Dance to the music of time

When Alison Young asked me to bring my musical bucket list to her MPR feature, Music With Minnesotans, I was at a loss.  I had none.
Instead, I looked back at my life through the lens of classical music, and this was the result.



It was a delight.

Neither shallow nor deep

Image via WikipediaWhile I did reserve The Shallows, the much-touted book about what the internet is doing to our brains, I did not read it.

I have, however, experienced it.

Sunday, just for the old-fashioned heck of it, I shelled out $6 for a New York Times.  What a pleasure to spread out in bed with it.  Lounge on the couch with it. Read it on the treadmill.  Section after section, reading all day and into Monday, when my beloved New Yorker arrived.   It's the last magazine to which I subscribe, and I've been reading it less and less.

But so quickly had I returned to the reading-on-paper habit, that I sat down and read The New Yorker.

This morning I dialed up (!) the New York Times and ordered Sunday home delivery, then proceeded to sit down and begin reading Julie Salomon's Wendy Wasserstein biography, "Wendy and The Lost Boys."

Aren't I literary!

Not really.  This is Standard Operating Procedure for the pre-internet me, 

And I like it.

Related articles

• Wendy and the Lost Boys (nochargebookbunch.com)
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• Author brings Wendy Wasserstein's complexities, gifts to light (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Pick your poison

Image via Wikipedia
Fairview/UofM vs Tria/Park Nicollet.
Back in July, I had an idiotic fall that smashed my wrist.
Treament and surgery were done at Tria, an orthopedic clinic affiliated with Park Nicollet.  The surgeon was good, the day surgery team a marvel of efficiency, and the hand therapists hard-working and resourceful.  They tried every therapeutic trick and torture device to fix the wrist, but four months later, it is painful and almost immobile.   Each department was good at its single mission-but too narrowly focused.  "When do you see the doctor?" my hand therapist would ask, shaking her head at my lack of progress.
I sought a second opinion at Fairview/UofM, a teaching facility, where a Professor of Orthopedics quickly diagnosed the problem:  two tears in the soft tissue.  Loved the way the diagnostic team worked there.  But systemically, what a mess.  Bad followup.  Calls are not returned.  Appoinsments scheduled in the wrong department.  Just plain sloppy, systemically.
So, what to do?  I need a working right hand.  

Pyramid of Egregiousness | Name It. Change It.

Pyramid of Egregiousness | Name It. Change It.

Apropos of nothing

Image via WikipediaWhich must be something like east of the sun.
My son came home from camp with a duffel full of mysteries.
Like where were his fins?
How did his soap return unscathed for the second year running?
And what happened to the other 19 socks?
This kid went to camp with ten pairs and came home with a single sock
"I have issues with socks," he explained.
There was some childhood trauma I was unaware of?
The sock industry gave money to Tom Emmer's campaign?
Who knows?  Who cares?
He came home tall, happy, handsome, 16 pounds lighter, he learned to water ski, and I've got a bar of soap he can use for the third year in a row. 

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Back in the MacSaddle again

Ze cast? She is off.
Seventeen days ago, I tripped and fell, hard; skinning lip, nose, knees, and breaking nose and wrist.
Fourteen days ago, I had surgery on the wrist, which I gather was really broken.

I didn't track the details; not day of fall, day or surgery, or at today's post-op appointment, as I've gotten "vagelly", as one nurse described it.  (Which makes me feel weak, stupid, and worried about an old-lady-falling-down future.)  (I think about how much one injury affected me and marvel at people who recover from multiple insults.)
The good news is the big cast is off and I am typing with two hands.  For someone as attached as I am to keyboarding, my inability to type was harder than my inability to tie, zip, slice, or drive.
So onward, to tai chi and other balance/coordination enhancements.

Noticed - The New Power of Petite Women - NYTimes.com

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Noticed - The New Power of Petite Women - NYTimes.com

Petite -

Pronunciation: \pə-ˈtēt\

Function: adjective

Etymology: French, feminine of petit

Date: 1784: having a small trim figure —usually used of a woman

Por quoi? We never hear of a petite man. Mai, non.

Only petite women. Because for a woman, the most important attribute is appearance.

Her definition, her value, the content of her character; all secondary.

reBlog from Susan Berkson: Teen Clean Your Room

Image by Adam UXB Smith via Flickr

I found this fascinating quote today:

In a house with a teenager. In other words, at wit's ends. The stepping-on-legos years were tolerable But this is ridiculous. You're not going in there anymore so the kid is going to have to take care of it. June 11.  That's the day we rise up and force those kids to clean their rooms.Susan Berkson, Teen Clean Your Room, Jun 2010

You should read the whole article.

Reduce. Reuse. Rethink.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Tuesday is recycling day in my neck of the woods.
Every household puts out a blue bin for recycling and therein lie a million stories.
If my neighbors knew what can be gleaned from their recycling bins:
Where they shop. What they eat. How they spend.
They'd stop. Dead men tell no tales but recycling bins speak volumes.
Here's the family that drinks non-BgH milk from plastic bottles.
The couple who eat organic beans from cans lined with BPA.
The beer drinkers.
The drinker who stopped.
The self-proclaimed sustainable eater whose bin overflows with packaging from processed foods.
The health-minded young family whose bin sits next to their "Warning. Chemically treated" yard sign.
Who still gets a newspaper. Or two.
Who contributes to the Jewish home for the elderly.
Who clips "Boxtops for education". Who doesn't.
Most remarkable, how the new Trader Joe's has colonized our neighborhood.
From now on, my junk mail is going into a brown paper bag before it hits the bin. The rest of my recyclables -- frankly, I feel smug, although to someone else, no doubt, its a whole different story.

Now they tell us

Image via Wikipedia

In 1998, I wrote:
Kids & Pesticides = 700% more leukemia

We can't print this," said my editor at the Star Tribune, "There are jobs at stake in the lawn care industry."

There were lives at stake.
How many have been hurt in the last 12 years? How many lost? The article ran in CityPages. And the pesticides went on.
Pesticides are just one of tens of thousands of toxic chemicals doing us harm. Poisoning us.
Tomorrow the President's Cancer Panel ("The Mount Everest of medical mainstream" releases a report singing that same tune.
Who will listen? Will anything change?
Of course, industry and their mouthpieces like the American Council on Science and Health will throw everything they've got at this.
But the evidence is in.
Babies are polluted in the womb.

Not enough privacy settings

Image via CrunchBase

Not to keep your info away from Facebook.

Why I don’t like Facebook ‘Likes’ — Global Neighbourhoods

So give something a "thumbs up" on Facebook and you've given away valuable info about yourself.
So if you like this, don't tell Facebook. Doesn't matter how many privacy settings you choose. If you are on Facebook, they own you.

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Not snarky

Image by bsryan via Flickr

Scarey. Read this:
Appleseed - Why Should I Come?
I get the appeal of shooting a rifle. My kid shoots clay pigeons.
But these folks want to "save America".
To be with "real Americans".
To "defend their liberties" and "take back their country."
From whom?
We live in a nation of laws; not a single law, the second amendment.
That in itself is an "amendment"; an addition to a body of laws, and is only one of many amendments. You don't get to worship at the altar of your favorite law, forsaking all others. You don't get to "reload" and "take out" those you don't agree with, Sarah Palin.
This is democracy where the majority rules. The majority elected this government, Michelle Bachman. Legally. According to the constitution you claim to love so dearly.
I may loathe what you say and do. But I don't shoot you. Any of you.
You threaten those with whom you disagree. And you kill them; flying planes into IRS offices, bombing reproductive health centers, murdering physicians.
There is a word for that, and it's not liberty.
It's terrorism.

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Locavore's Seder

Monday at sundown marks the start of the Jewish festival of Passover, when Jews the world over celebrate the exodus from Egypt. The centerpiece of the celebration is a ceremonial meal know as Seder, during which the Passover story is told.
While food customs vary regionally, the ceremonial foods on the central Seder plate are the same. Traditionally, four questions are asked at the Seder meal. I'm adding a fifth: How can we localize this meal?

On the Seder plate:
Zeroah, a lamb's shankbone symbolizing the ancient Passover sacrifice. Easy. Minnesota growers like Blue Gentian Farm raise lamb.
Beitzah, a roasted egg symbolizing the temple sacrifice and the continuing cycle of life. Also easy, via local farms like Sleeping Cat Farm and Bar 5.
Haroset, a paste of fruit and nuts symbolizing the mortar used to build the pyramid of the pharaohs. If you preserved any Minnesota apples last fall, easy. The nuts -- not so easy. Sweetened with Ames Farm honey, delicious.
Mar'or, a bitter herb (like horseradish) to represent the bitterness of slavery. Sara Rice, who writes the Noshin' column at TCJewFolk, reminds us that while horseradish is the most potent, any bitter herb will do. Dehn's Garden Arugula, perhaps?
Karpas, a green vegetable (usually parsley) representing spring. Any green vegetable will do. Romaine, endive, asparagus; or watercress from Dehn's Garden
A bowl of salt water. With 10,000 lakes, water we've got.

Four cups of wine are drunk through the meal, and while Minnesota does have wineries, none produce wine that is Kosher for Passover. And as for matzo, the unleavened bread eaten during the entire week of Passover, you could make your own using Minnesota flour.

So tell us. What are you doing to localize your Seder?

Cloak of Invisibility

More is less

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I'm a long-time subscriber to More magazine, which tells me it is "for women of style & substance"

So why is Dana Delany on the cover, shirt unbuttoned, bra showing, kneeling on what looks to be a bed?
That's style and substance?
It's bad enough that every issue tells me to reinvent myself. Apparently I'm not ok as I am.
But everyone in every issue is now indistinguishable from everyone in every other women's magazine.
More is supposed to be for women over 40. Who are 50, even. Or -- dare I say it -- 60.
In fact, the More website says they celebrate women over 40. So why do they all look 30? Smooth brows. Unwrinkled cheeks. Botox, restylane, whatever it takes not to look 40. That's what's celebrated in these pages

I'm not renewing, my face or my subscription.

Just like Texas

From Reuters:

SOMALI REBELS BAN
SCIENCE CLASSES

If NBC Covered all News like the Olympics.....

Image by Jeffrey723 via Flickr

Brian Williams:

"Spoiler alert. It was a violent day in Afghanistan as U.S. troops encountered fierce combat. We'll play some music while we run the body count at the bottom of the screen so you may want to turn away."

Show a little leg, eh?

So, I'm watching a chunk of the Opening Ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics and I notice that the women carrying the country signs identifying each delegation are wearing.....
Shorts? Mini skirts? Whatever it is, they are showing a lot of leg.
While the men carrying country signs - same job - are wearing pants.
Trousers. Legs completely covered.
Because?????? If cold air touches their private parts they can't carry their sign?
Because they refuse to be treated as sex objects?
You tell me.