“Finding unexpected beauty in the hands of shoe shiners”
This hand: German Orellana, 55, Ecuador.
Photographs by Christopher Griffith.
Don’t miss photos of 15 other NYC shoe shiners in The New York Times Magazine: Shoe Shine Slideshow
Foot Soldiers
April 26, 2015 by 10 Comments
SMWI*: Endured Humiliation. But Never Gave Up.
October 19, 2013 by 25 Comments
- William Howard Taft, (1857-1930) was the 27th President of the United States.
- The only massively obese man ever to be the president of the United States
- He struggled mightily to control his weight
- Endured humiliation from cartoonists who delighted in his corpulent figure
- His weight-loss program was startlingly contemporary
- His difficulties keeping the pounds off would be familiar to many Americans today
- On advice of his doctor, he went on a low-fat, low-calorie diet. He avoided snacks.
- Meals were to be eaten at certain times and meats were to be weighed. Taft was to eat a small portion of lean meat or fish at every meal, cooked vegetables at lunch and dinner (no butter), a plain salad, and stewed or baked fruit (unsweetened). He got a single glass of “unsweetened” wine at lunch.
- He kept a careful diary of what he ate and weight himself daily.
- The tale is strikingly modern…The self-monitoring — weighing himself daily, keeping a food diary — are “the fundamental tenets of changing behavior,” said Dr. Kimberly Gudzune, an obesity researcher at Johns Hopkins. “Keep yourself accountable.”
- He hired a personal trainer and rode a horse to exercise
- Like many dieters today, Taft lost weight and regained it, fluctuating from more than 350 to 255 lbs.
- After he had lost 60 pounds…people told him he looked good, yet he was “continuously hungry.”
- Researchers were struck by Taft’s persistent hunger pangs. Losing a substantial amount of weight and keeping it off amounts to telling the body it is starving…“One of the most important drives we have is to prevent starvation,” Dr. Hirsch said.
- By the time Taft was inaugurated as president in 1909, he had regained all he had lost, and more, weighing 354 pounds. He became the butt of jokes, with many relishing a story that he had gotten stuck in a White House bathtub.
- But Taft never gave up. When he died in 1930, he weighed 280 pounds.
Read full article in the New York Times: In a Struggle With Weight, Taft Used a Modern Diet
- SMWI* = Saturday Morning Workout Inspiration
- Image Source: Natemaas
- Thank you Susan
The Diving Board
September 22, 2013 by 18 Comments
Elton John, 66, is releasing “The Diving Board“, his 31th studio album on Tuesday. Tim Barber is the photographer who took the shot used for the album cover. Barber grew up in Amherst Massachusetts, lived for a few years in the mountains of Northern Vermont, studied photography in Vancouver B.C. and now lives in New York City. Barber’s photos have been used by Vogue, Nike and Levi’s. Barber shares the story of this photograph in the New York Times article titled: How Elton John Chose My Photo For His Album.
“I took this photo about 10 years ago somewhere between Vancouver and Squamish, on the coast of British Columbia. I don’t actually know exactly where. It’s a kind of legendary secret swimming spot where some kids had installed a diving board on the side of a cliff. You had to park really far away and walk through the woods to get there. I was with some friends from Vancouver who knew about it. I think it was October. When I took the picture — literally, while I was pushing the button — I was thinking, “This looks amazing.” It was just a special moment and the light was crazy that day. The air was super clear. Something I strive for in my photos is to imply a greater narrative, to make the viewer wonder what happened before and what happened after. I think this picture is a good example of that. It’s also the photo of mine that people always think is fake — like that it’s been Photoshopped, or shot on a green screen. I like that. Something that was so simple and real ended up so surreal and hard to believe…”
Read more about how Elton John selected Barber’s image at this link.
References:
- New York Times Photo Essay: How Elton John Chose My Photo For His Album
- Elton John’s new Album on iTunes: The Diving Board
- Check out Tim Barber’s web site for other great photos: TimBarber.com
Criteria for Husband: Must Love Dogs
August 25, 2013 by 24 Comments
“I never would have thought it necessary to establish criteria for boyfriends or husbands, especially one as seemingly unimportant as: Must love dogs. As in:
- You must be able to share your waking hours and living space and a good amount of your disposable income on a four-footed companion that is basically a child in fur for 12 to 15 years.
- You must plan every vacation around its needs.
- You will trip over toys and pigs’ ears and chew hooves splayed across your best Persian carpet.
- You will be forced to walk it every day, rain or shine, or risk having your favorite shoes sacrificed to the god of canine frustration.
- If everything goes well and it lives to a ripe old age, you may have to decide to end its suffering, and you will have to be strong enough to stay with it those last moments, stroking its silky ears.
In my life, dogs have always been a part of that equation, a way to find the small, grounding moments in life — the grass, sunlight and sweet bite of plums — that we commonly call happiness. After 20 years of marriage, on our fourth dog, my husband and I are best friends, which must be at least as rare as soul mates.”
Read the rest of this article by Tatjana Soli @ Picking Up The Scent On The Road to Bliss
Related Post: Guess who graduated? With a fancy badge and diploma too…
Credits:
- Photograph: Pink Blue & You – the winner of the Cute Close-ups Competition was Gemma Buttery’s dog Neo
- Thank you Susan for sharing the article.
Swimming in so much hate
June 20, 2013 by 21 Comments
In a softer voice, she said her initial reaction to reading it had been “Really?” and then, she said, “Why would someone O.K. that?” Without mentioning the name of its author, Ms. McCarthy said: “I felt really bad for someone who is swimming in so much hate. I just thought, that’s someone who’s in a really bad spot, and I am in such a happy spot. I laugh my head off every day with my husband and my kids who are mooning me and singing me songs.” Had this occurred when she was 20, Ms. McCarthy said, “it may have crushed me.” But now, as a mother raising two young daughters in “a strange epidemic of body image and body dysmorphia,” she said articles like that “just add to all those younger girls, that are not in a place in their life where they can say, ‘That doesn’t reflect on me.’”
~ Melissa McCarthy responding to a reporter about Rex Reed’s review of her performance in “Identity Thief.” He described Ms. McCarthy as “tractor-sized” and called her “a gimmick comedian who has devoted her short career to being obese and obnoxious with equal success.” (Read more…)
Melissa Ann McCarthy, 42, is an American film and television actress, comedian, writer and producer. She was born in Plainfield, Illinois and currently lives in Los Angeles. McCarthy first gained recognition for her role as Sookie St. James on the television series Gilmore Girls, where she starred from 2000 to 2007. From 2007 to 2009, she portrayed Dena on the ABC sitcom Samantha Who? McCarthy was then cast as Molly Flynn-Biggs on the CBS sitcom Mike & Molly, a role that earned her an Emmy Award win. McCarthy was also nominated for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her work as host on Saturday Night Live. McCarthy achieved major success and fame for her breakthrough role in the 2011 comedy hit Bridesmaids, which garnered her numerous award nominations including an Academy Award nomination, a BAFTA nomination and a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She also appeared in the films The Nines, The Back-up Plan, and Life as We Know It, and her 2013 roles include Identity Thief, The Heat, and The Hangover Part III. (Source: Wiki)
Source: New York Times – Melissa McCarthy Goes Over The Top. Photo: fansshare.com
We are, in other words, one another’s virtual enablers
June 17, 2013 by 47 Comments
NY Times, Sunday, June 16, 2013: Facebook Made Me Do It (Excerpts)
…That feedback loop of positive reinforcement is the most addictive element of social media. All those retweets, likes and favorites give us a little jolt, a little boost that pushes us to keep coming back for more. It works whether or not we post the typical social media fodder of lush vacation pictures and engagement announcements or venture into realms that showcase our most daredevilish antics and risqué behavior.
…Our growing collective compulsion to document our lives and share them online, combined with the instant gratification that comes from seeing something you are doing or experiencing get near-immediate approval from your online peers, could be giving us more reason to act out online, for better or for worse.
…We are, in other words, one another’s virtual enablers.
…the vast amplification of the potential audience a single person can reach has raised the stakes for all online activity.
…“It’s performative.”
Source: The New York Times: Facebook Made Me Do It by Jenna Wortham, Technology reporter
Silence on this Day
May 27, 2013 by 18 Comments
I found today’s editorial message in the NY Times to poignantly yet beautifully capture the spirit of today.
“If you listen carefully, you can almost hear the silence at the heart of Memorial Day — the inward turn that thoughts take on a day set aside to honor the men and women who have died in the service of this country.
It is the silence of soldiers who have not yet been, and may never be, able to talk about what they learned in war, the silence of grief so familiar that it feels like a second heartbeat. This is a day for acknowledging, publicly, the private memorial days that lie scattered throughout the year, a day when all the military graves are tended to, even the ones that someone tends to regularly as a way of remembering.
It always seems strange the way the fond, sober gestures of memory coincide with the last flush of spring, while the trees are still lit from within by their chartreuse leaves. The year is still rising, just. And yet it is something you often see recorded in the books and diaries of men and women at war — the sharp interruption of beauty, the moments, hours even, when the vivid tenacity of life itself feels most tangible, even in the midst of death. On a bright, beautiful Memorial Day, you feel, as clearly as you may ever feel, the profound separation between the living and the dead. This is the strangeness of the day, because that separation is a source of both joy and loss. [Read more…]
Give. And give. And give more.
April 4, 2013 by 23 Comments
I read this NY Times article a week ago: Is Giving The Secret to Getting Ahead. And synchronicity has been working it’s magic ever since. I’m seeing giving everywhere. Yesterday alone with three examples: My post and One Good Deed. Entering a bone chilling cabin, a flight attendant see an elderly woman shivering and gives her a cardigan. Last night a quote by Sam Levenson: “Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, it’s at the end of your arm, as you get older, remember you have another hand: The first is to help yourself, the second is to help others.”
Adam Grant, 31, is the youngest-tenured and highest rated professor at Wharton. He has published more papers in his field than colleagues who have won lifetime-acheivement awards. He is the author of a new book titled “Give and Take – A Revolutionary Approach to Success” which will be released later this month. The man lives his personal and professional life as a GIVER. (Miraculously so.) The story (long) is worth the time to understand what he does and why he does it. Grant’s research divides us into three categories: [Read more…]
Cannavale
April 1, 2013 by 15 Comments
“I can also be stubborn,” he went on. “I’m an idealist. I used to say to Sidney, ‘Pop, your movies are always about people fighting against something, the system or corruption,’ and he said, ‘That’s what life is about.’ I loved that. I’m fighting complacency. Most people think good enough is good enough. I go to the theater a lot, and communion doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it’s indescribable.” He met my eye. “I don’t come from anywhere, man, but I am always on the search for excellence.”
~ Bobby Cannavale, Actor
Robert M. “Bobby” Cannavale (43) “is an American actor known for his leading role as Bobby Caffey in the first two seasons of the television series Third Watch. He also had a recurring role on the comedy series Will & Grace as Officer Vince D’Angelo, Will’s long-term boyfriend. He portrayed Gyp Rosetti on the third season of the HBO drama Boardwalk Empire. Bobby Cannavale was born in Union City, New Jersey, to an Italian American father and a Cuban mother, and grew up in Margate, Florida. He was raised Catholic and attended St. Michael’s Catholic School, where he participated in a number of extracurricular activities, including being an altar boy and member of the chorus. When he was eight, Cannavale secured the plum role of the lisping boy, Winthrop, in his school’s production of The Music Man, and later as a gangster in Guys and Dolls, which cemented his love for performing. Cannavale’s parents divorced when he was 13 and his mother moved the family to Puerto Rico. After two years in Latin America, they settled in Margate. Cannavale returned to New Jersey after barely eking out a high school diploma in the late 1980s, in order to be closer to New York to launch his acting career. Cannavale began his acting career in the theater – with no acting training.”
Image & Quote Source: Broadway’s Hottest Outsider – NYTimes.com. Cannavale Bio: Wiki
Big Things
March 13, 2013 by 8 Comments
“I remember reading a review that Pauline Kael wrote about some director’s big epic, and she said: Now, look, it might seem unfair to judge a talented man more harshly when he tries to do something big than a less talented person who’s doing something easier. But when you try big things, you take big risks, and if you’re trying to do something that is maybe above you and you can’t quite pull off, then whereas before we only saw your gifts, now we see your failings.
I’ve always been pushing that envelope. I want to risk hitting my head on the ceiling of my talent. I want to really test it out and say: O.K., you’re not that good. You just reached the level here. I don’t ever want to fail, but I want to risk failure every time out of the gate.”
~ Quentin Tarantino
“Quentin Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1963. In junior high he attended drama classes and he actually dropped out of High School at age 15 to attend acting classes full-time at the James Best theater company. After he left the acting school he became an employee at the Video Archives, a now-defunct movie rental store in Manhattan. It was there that he began to truly think about and discuss cinema as he worked with customers to find the best movie for them. He actually credits that store as providing the inspiration for him to become a director by saying that ‘When people ask me if I went to film school, I tell them, ‘no, I went to films.’ Tarantino is the famed director of classics ‘Pulp Fiction’, ‘Kill Bill’ and ‘Inglorious Basterds.'” (Source: ID Poster)
Sources: Image and bio – ID Poster. Quote: 99u.com via New York Times story: Quentin’s World
I should have stayed out there…
March 7, 2013 by 20 Comments
“I learned that when the going gets tough, I’ve got to stick in there a bit more and I’ve got to grind it out. There’s no excuse for quitting, and it doesn’t set a good example for the kids watching me, trying to emulate what I do. It wasn’t good for a whole lot of reasons, for the tournament, the people coming out to watch me. I feel like I let a lot of people down with what I did last week and you know, for that I am very sorry.”
~ Rory McIlroy, 23, is the world’s No. 1 golfer.
He was seven over par after eight holes and looking at another potential bogey or worse after his second shot on the par-5 18th landed in the water. He withdrew without finishing his ninth hole. An hour later, he released a statement saying a sore wisdom tooth had made it impossible for him to continue.
Good for you young man. Good for you to own up…
Source: New York Times
Related Posts:
See
March 5, 2013 by 24 Comments
Start your day with anxiety. First thing. Every morning for last month. Sharp pain for 75 seconds. Then poof. Gone. Until the next morning. I google it. Up pops Just Answer. Eye with a customer question describing the identical experience:
I wake up every morning with a sharp pain in what I believe is my optic nerve. The pain is so bad that it sometimes makes my eye water when I try to open it wide. It is also painful to press on my eye when closed. The pain is always in my left eye and there are some days that I wake up without pain. My eye does not seem to be more red or bloodshot than normal. The pain does subside as the day goes on and I haven’t experienced any vision problems.
I quickly close my eye and pain subsides. Water fills the vacuum. (The human body is. All on its own. Repairing. Soothing. A miracle.)
I open and close several times. Blinking. (The body is a miracle. The mind, my mind, on the other hand, can be a torture chamber. I need to see. I need to read. Heart begins to race. Relax pal. Just Answer Doc said it’s just dry eyes. Yes, that was the first line. And the rest? What about the rest? This will right itself by itself.)
What if?
Mind quickly shifts gears to Sunday’s paper.
You are four years old. You run to answer the door bell. Life from that moment on changes. For you. For your family. Forever.
Josh Miel, you define courage. You define perseverance. You are an inspiration.
(On the other hand, you pal, have dry eyes.)
The Addiction of Our Times
February 28, 2013 by 41 Comments
“I believe this is a very special moment in history, a kind of perfect storm. There is a growing recognition — to borrow language from AA — that our world has become unmanageable…The addiction of our times is digital connection, instant gratification, and the cheap adrenalin high of constant busyness. The heartening news is that more and more are beginning to recognize the insidious costs of moving so relentlessly and at such high speeds. Just below the surface of our shared compulsion to do ever more, ever faster, is a deep hunger to do less, more slowly. I saw proof of that a couple of weeks ago, when I wrote an article for The New York Times titled “Relax! You’ll Be More Productive.” It focused on the growing scientific evidence that when we build in more time for sleep, naps, breaks, and vacations, we become not just healthier and happier, but also more productive. The piece prompted an avalanche of response, much of it poignantly describing the sense of overwhelm people are feeling at work…Speed, distraction, and instant gratification are the enemies of nearly everything that matters most in our lives. Creating long-term value — for ourselves and for others — requires more authentic connection, reflection, and the courage to delay immediate gratification. That’s wisdom in action.”
– Tony Schwartz, How To Be Mindful in An “Unmanageable World”
No irony here whatsoever, as I sit at 3:57 am rifling through emails and reading posts…
Related Posts:
- Our Fantasies With Technology Have Cost Us (via davidkanigan.com)
- Technology, Addiction & Our Obsession (via James660L)
Help others. Part of our obligation.
December 2, 2012 by 25 Comments
Q. Are there days where you wake up and think: “Nothing good has come to me in a little while. I’d better prime the pump”?
A. Well, who hasn’t woken up thinking, “God, nothing good has come to me in a while,” right? When I feel like I’m stuck, I do something — not like I’m Mother Teresa or anything, but there’s someone that’s forgotten about in your life, all the time. Someone that could use an “Attaboy” or a “How you doin’ out there.” It’s that sort of scene, that remembering that we die alone. We’re born alone. We do need each other. It’s lonely to really effectively live your life, and anyone you can get help from or give help to, that’s part of your obligation.
~ Dave Itzkoff interviewing Bill Murray, Sunday, December 2, 2012, New York Times: With Bill Murray, Just Take the Trip
Volume has risen. The imbecilic din encroaching everywhere…
November 19, 2012 by 37 Comments
This article by Tim Kreider, Quiet Ones, struck a cord with me. A few excerpts:
…it seems significant that we don’t want things to be quiet, ever, anymore. Stores and restaurants have their ubiquitous Muzak or satellite radio; bars have anywhere between 1 and 17 TVs blaring…ads and 30-second news cycles play on screens in cabs, elevators and restrooms. Even some libraries, whose professional shushers were once celebrated in cartoon and sitcom, now have music and special segregated areas designated for “quiet study,” which is what a library used to be.
…People are louder, too. They complain at length and in detail about their divorces or gallbladders a foot away from you in restaurants. A dreaded Amtrak type is the passenger who commences prattling on her cellphone the instant she sits down and doesn’t hang up until she gets to her stop, unable to bear an undistracted instant in her own company. People practice rap lyrics on the bus or the subway, barking doggerel along with their iPods as though they were alone in the shower. Respecting shared public space is becoming as quaintly archaic as tipping your hat to a lady, now that the concept of public space is as nearly extinct as hats, and ladies. [Read more…]
You regret nothing?
November 12, 2012 by 32 Comments
“If you have no sadness or remorse, you are a liar or a denier, or worse still, you haven’t lived. No one makes it through life without words better left unsaid, poor judgments or thoughtless omissions. I can barely make it through the day without all three.”
~ Erica Brown (NY Times – A Nice Opportunity for Regret)
Image Source: Tigran
Hard to discern where his talent ends and his work ethic begins…
September 4, 2012 by 22 Comments
Andy Roddick is retiring this season after being “the face of men’s tennis in the U.S. for more than a decade.” What wasn’t obvious to me until reading this article from the NY Times, was the depth of his character, his integrity and his drive. With so many bad actors in professional sports, this story was inspiring. Here’s a few excerpts:
“He’s a study in contradictions: a born entertainer who doesn’t like to leave home; a team player in an individual sport; a deep feeler who is quick to give you a piece of his mind or the shirt off his back; a lunch-pail prodigy.”
“He was precocious, yes, but his defining characteristic has been his persistence. Roddick never had the luxury of coasting, of taking his gifts for granted. How else but through grit and guts does a player with a balky backhand and a butcher’s touch at the net finish in the top 10 in the world for eight consecutive years?”
“Roddick’s serve is such a blur, people have a hard time discerning where his talent ends and his work ethic begins. He’s a classic overachiever who was cast as the suave leading man of American men’s tennis, a role that, true to his nature, he worked earnestly and endlessly to wholly inhabit.” [Read more…]
Where do sentences come from?
August 15, 2012 by 19 Comments
“Sift the debris of a young writer’s education, and you find dreadful things — strictures, prohibitions, dos, don’ts, an unnatural and nearly neurotic obsession with style, argument and transition. Yet in that debris you find no traces of a fundamental question: where do sentences come from? This is a philosophical question, as valuable in the asking as in the answering. But it’s a practical question, too. Think about it long enough, and you begin to realize that many, if not most, of the things we believe about writing are false…”
Running. With a bad jet.
August 5, 2012 by 24 Comments
6:15am. 77°F and 89% relative humidity. I walk out the door and air is thick and soupy. (Hmmmm. Maybe this sauna will accelerate the decomposition of the Oreo cookie intake yesterday. Count: 16. Yep. Strapped on the feedbag and ravenously wolfed ‘em down. But lets be balanced here. This was spread over lunch and dinner – not so bad when looking at it this way – a modest amount actually. I don’t think this even adds up to a full row.)
0.5 miles: I feel a pinch in my right knee. The pinch advances to bite. I grimace. (D*mn weekend warrior. I slow the pace but don’t stop. “Run through it.” I recall the 2007 NY Times article – ‘We want you to keep moving…injured tissue heals quicker if it’s under stress…moderate exercise aids the healing.’ 5 year old article and its stuck with me.)
1 mile: It’s not going away. Limp-running now. Slow pace further. (So, where’s the d*mn moderate exercise will heal part. Healing can show up anytime now. I’m almost walking know. Sweat is raining down…and tastes a bit creamy. (Oreos?) You would think this humidity would be lubing my knee. Odd, my right shoulder is stiff now. Oh, yea. Re-started my push-up routine yesterday. Man, my entire carriage is coming apart! Another 1/2 mile and we’ll need to call 911. As long as I don’t keel over into all of this Goose dung and avoid rolling into the cove…I should be ok.)
It’s all coming my way…
July 14, 2012 by 19 Comments
I’m off and running. (Tipped the scales at new 12-month record. Quite a bingeing week. Proud of yourself Pal? How far are you going to take this up?)
Humid morning, but not overly so for this time of the year. (Yet, you are sweating profusely. Ahhhhh, yes. Thai food last night. Equivalent of 1/8 lb intravenous injection of NaCl. And yes, that accounts for the weight jump. Water retention. Wave of relief – weight gain should be erased by morning. Will just slug back 3 quarts of water today. And Voila – back to sleek, fighting weight.)
Endomondo says that I’m 1/2 mile and 4 minutes ahead of what Garmin is recording. (Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Third run in a row and Endomondo has been wildly encouraging. And wildly wrong. I retract my prior glowing review. Yellow lights are flashing on this app. My trusty Garmin soldiers on.)
Two Miles. Sweat continues to roll. Rub my forehead with my forearm. Taste the Thai food salt now. (For as much as I’m secreting here, or is it excreting, I should bottle it like Worcestershire…)
Live & Learn 