Mosquito Squad — Hazardous to your health
I believe they use the insecticide permethrin to treat entire yards. Permethrin is a blanket insecticide that kills our imperiled honey bees and every other beneficial insect in your yard, in addition to killing mosquitoes. It has also been shown to adversely affect birds and cats.
In addition, permethrin is an endocrine disrupter that has been linked to cancer as well as reproductive and respiratory problems in humans.
All chemicals applied in yards eventually wash into the watershed, too. And since Greensboro has no natural bodies of water, we drink our own runoff.
Mosquito Squad yard signs are beginning to proliferate in my neighborhood–and I’m not happy about that at all.
If you’re concerned about being bitten, it’s safer to use bug repellant [spray your clothes instead of your skin]. Or grow lavender in your garden, and rub your skin with lavender sprigs and stuff some in your pockets when out in the yard–it’s an excellent, natural bug repellant.
Read this: EPA Tackles Dangerous Bug Bombs, Falls Short on Restriction
Read more about this at my other blog, Eating Up Greensboro.
Being a mom at home with two little kids was the most tedious, emotionally unstable period of my life–but I’m glad I did it. The result was two great human beings I’m proud to be related to.
Any idiot can be a mother. But it takes a lot of work, patience, money and lost sleep to do it right.
Don’t enter into the condition lightly. Fortunately, if you’re not ready, birth control and, yes, abortion are still available in this country–At least for now.
A major challenge to being a good mother is not mindlessly repeating all the mistakes your own parents may have made. I recommend reading parenting books–just not anything by that idiot John Rosemund who advocates using physical violence to control your kids and other stupid, hardass advice. [Of course, if you want your children to develop anger, violence and self-esteem issues, read him.]
Dr. William Sears, on the other hand, offered me invaluable advice, such as how to make sure siblings grow up getting along and liking each other. When they don’t get along, when they fight and quarrel–punish all parties. Don’t set them against each other by scolding one at the other’s expense. They learn not to fight amongst themselves very quickly.
Bad mothers can be like the mom in Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar Hoover biopic–overly controlling, critical and pushing personal agendas and needs onto their kids. Poor Edgar.
Or a bad mother can be overwhelmed and unable to cope with the responsibility, creating no expectations, offering little guidance, leaving children to flounder and never achieving their potential.
I think I found some middle ground.
N.C. moving backwards
You will as easily return women to the kitchen as you will return gay people to the closet, to the days when their sexual orientation was regarded as both a mental disorder and an indictable crime.
Let those who need to do so finally get it through their heads that gay people are not going to go back there — would you? The president has embraced this. By contrast, North Carolina embraces only the stubborn intransigence of those who desperately need to wake up and smell the 21st century.
Sons in silhouette where the sun sets
In no particular order, here are some movies I’ve enjoyed lately on Netflix–some are several years old [um, I guess Colin Firth is my favorite actor]:
- The Savages — My favorite actress Laura Linney–and Philip Seymour-Hoffman–play brother and sister dealing with their difficult, dying dad.
- Lars and the Real Girl — Ryan Gosling dates a blow-up doll.
- Juno — straight-talking pregnant teen played by Ellen Page.
- Walk the Line — a bit sugar-coated, probably, but extremely well-acted Johnny Cash-June Carter Cash bio pic with Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon.
- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly — pretty amazing story of French magazine editor who becomes completely paralyzed and writes a memoir.
- A Single Man — masterpiece, most artfully directed by Tom Ford and starring Colin Firth, who is a stunning actor. A gay man loses his longtime partner and his world is upended.
- An Education — Breakout role for Carey Mulligan as a teen who gets involved with an older man in mod 60s London.
- The Young Victoria — Emily Blunt in a breakout role, too, as the young queen.
- A Summer in Genoa — atmospheric, touching film about a widower–played by Colin Firth–and his two young daughters in the aftermath of wife’s sudden tragic death.
- The King’s Speech — yeah, Colin Firth, again, in a role almost as good as the two above. Didn’t he win the Oscar for this?
Happy Earth Day, Greensboro
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Large black maple in my front yard
Although I’m very happy about the opening of Whole Foods about a block from my house, I do wish they hadn’t cut down a row of mature trees along Friendly Ave. bordering the store’s huge black-topped parking lot. It was the last bit of shade I enjoyed on my walk to the post office. Why remove the trees? So that drivers on Friendly get a full view of the big-box Sears/Whole Foods building? Sad, when you realize how beneficial trees are to all of us–and how long they take to mature.
Author Jim Robbins of Helena, Mont., in the NY Times opinion piece “Why Trees Matter,” offers excellent information about the benefits of trees and how imperiled they are. Key benefits:
- Trees are the planet’s heat shield. They keep the concrete and asphalt of cities and suburbs 10 or more degrees cooler and protect our skin from the sun’s harsh UV rays
- When tree leaves decompose, they leach acids into the ocean that help fertilize plankton.
- Trees are nature’s water filters, capable of cleaning up the most toxic wastes.
- Tree leaves also filter air pollution–more trees in urban neighborhoods correlate with a lower incidence of asthma.
- A walk in the woods, they say, reduces the level of stress chemicals in the body.
- Trees also release vast clouds of beneficial chemicals.
- In Africa, millions of acres of parched land have been reclaimed through strategic tree growth.
Birthday
When cake, stickers and blow-up dinosaurs were all that mattered.
I love Obamacare
My sister, when she was young and well
I have a sibling with severe mental illness [1 out of 100 Americans will be diagnosed with schizophrenia in their lifetimes]. She has been unable to hold down a job since her early 20s.
She has health care coverage only because she is a veteran. If she weren’t, she’d have none. It’s why you see so many severely mentally ill wandering the streets of U.S. cities. Health care for the mentally ill is especially broken in this country.
But so is health care for millions of others. It is out of reach for those who lose their jobs and have a chronic illness or a “bad” health history, or those who have a job that does not offer insurance. And heaven forbid you have a child who develops chronic illness or cancer–and lose your job. What then? Only the wealthy can afford private coverage in those circumstances.
Headlines from Google Alert “sleep research”
Not sleeping? Probably eating:
-
The Atlantic: “Today in Research: Sleep Is the Best Diet Ever”
WebMD: “Sleep Less, Eat More?”
Boston.com: “New Study: Sleep More, Eat Less”
HuffPost: “Sleeping Less Means More Calories?”
Telegraph.co.uk: “Sleep skimpers eat a Big Mac more a day”
ABC News: “Sleep Less, Eat More, Gain Weight”
MarketWatch press release: “Lack of Sleep May Increase Calorie Consumption”
ISPA EXPO in Indianapolis
Walkway to the convention center from my hotel
The International Sleep Products Association, also known as ISPA, staged its biennial mattress industry show ISPA EXPO at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis last week.
It was the second ISPA Expo I’ve attended. Exhibitors and attendees I chatted with were in a great mood and very complimentary about the show.
Right now, I and the other editors on the ISPA publications staff are writing up show coverage for the May issue of BedTimes magazine. I’ll be creating a show video, too. And a professional videographer hired by ISPA has already produced and posted several show videos that you can watch at ISPA’s YouTube channel.
There were interesting innovations in machinery, foams, springs and textiles at Expo, and believe it or not, lots of pretty things to see–from vividly colored foams to gorgeous fabrics and tapes. I think the mattress industry has lots of creative members and they are getting the chance to really express themselves.
Women of Lava--old friends and new
It was great seeing old mattress industry friends and seeing folks I may have interviewed but never met in person. There were some fun parties that allowed me to dance till my knees said “stop!”–my pogo days are over, and that’s a good thing.
Special thanks to the “Women of Lava” — “ladies” would be alliterative, but not feminist — for letting me hang with them one evening. Some of us go way back, we won’t say how far.
Don’t forget to read BedTimes magazine in May for complete coverage of the ISPA EXPO show in Indianapolis.
From the editors of BedTimes and Sleep Savvy magazines …
Holocaust as movie genre
This New York Times A.O. Scott movie review expresses exactly the problem I have watching movies about the extermination of European Jewry, aka the holocaust. 
As Scott concludes:
… it is not a bad movie: it is touching, warm and dramatically satisfying. But that, given the subject matter, is exactly the problem.
A primary goal of any press release should be to make it easy for a reporter–I’m talking about me–to write your story.
So–all you mattress industry folks–include this information and these items in your email or your press release:
Tell…
1) Who — The principal players and their titles
2) What — What exactly is new or has taken place?
3) Where — Your company headquarters and the location of your news.
4) When — The date your news occurred, your product was/will be released.
5) Why — Why is this news important to your company/the industry. why this event took place [perhaps relayed in a quote from a company principal].
6) How — Delve into details about the event, how it came about. Or how a new product works or what it looks like.
Add…
7) A human voice — Include a quote or two from a company principal about the product or event or new hire. Here you can feel free to boast, make value statements or get emotional.
8) Hyperlinks to additional information available elsewhere online
Attach…
9) Artwork [jpeg files] to illustrate your story. If the files are above 3-4 megabytes, sign up for Dropbox and share the file in the cloud. BTW, don’t send pdf files as graphics–the resolution is too low. [IMO, including artwork with your release increases your chance of getting coverage.]
PS: Write simply and clearly. Don’t lard your prose with superlatives or big words when small ones will do. The ‘unbiased media’ is going to edit those phrases out anyway. If you want to say you’re better than competitors or make other value statements, best to do that in direct quotes from company principals.
Connect with Barbara at Google+
And Nancy Butler offers great PR tips in this 2003 BedTimes article.
What Evernote is, and why I love it
This cloud app lets you save everything in one place, file it and search it all easily. It’s like having your own personal Google for all your own personal stuff.
Excerpt from Inc magazine, “Say hello to your new brain”:
Libin began to think about what a better electronic memory would be like. You could put in information in any form, be it a typed document, a handwritten note, a photo, a webpage, a spoken conversation. And you could instantly get the information into any of your devices on the fly without worrying about how to organize it. “When people want to capture a thought, they don’t want to stop what they’re doing,” he says.
More important, you would be able to find whatever it is whenever you need it, as effortlessly and intuitively as we now dig up stuff via Google.
Marc graduated today
Congratulations, Marc!
Pearl Harbor 70th Anniversary~Dec. 7, 1941
Pearl Harbor Survivors march in 1995 Veterans Day Parade | New York
The attack precipitated U.S. entry into World War II, “the deadliest conflict in human history.”
The United States suffered 2,459 casualties during the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. More than 50 million people are believed to have perished during World War II, the deadliest conflict in human history.
San Jose Mercury News: “Pearl Harbor attack, 70 years ago, still fresh in the memories of old sailors“
Reindeer sightings in Greensboro, N.C.
Daisy reindeer hound
Scott reindeer Jew
Did you know that today’s youth is so adept at texting, they do it in their sleep, involuntarily? Read the BedPost blog at Typepad for all the latest news on ‘sleep texting’…
He’s a second generation American of 100% Armenian stock–and true to the Armenian archetype has a really superior mechanical aptitude. He was born in Upstate New York in 1922 to parents who had narrowly escaped the 20th century’s first genocide. In the U.S., they owned a farm and were doing well till illness and the Depression took it all away. 
As the sole support of his widowed mother and siblings, my dad didn’t sign up for duty till a couple of years after December 7, 1941.
When he did, it was into the Army Air Corps [precursor to the Air Force], where he was stationed in Hawaii. To this day he can’t stand the taste of coconut or pineapple.
As a sergeant in charge of a repair crew, he was tasked with maintaining and repairing the newest aircraft in the American arsenal, the B-29 “Superfortress,” which was built for high-altitude, long-distance bombing missions in the Pacific Theater.
My father’s B-29 repair training consisted of being handed a product manual “the size of a phonebook.” He figured it out.
His crew didn’t do a maintenance check on the Enola Gay the day in 1945 it landed at the base. “No one was allowed near” the bomber, which was closely guarded on a distant part of the airfield, and the crew sequestered–till the day it took off to drop its cargo hold of atom bombs on Japan.
When the war ended, my dad got married, moved to the suburbs and had four daughters.
We never had much money. But he was and still is a master of mechanical invention. He fixed everything at the house himself–or it didn’t get fixed. He drove a succession of beater cars, always secondhand. The ones he took long distances to work at a factory job in central New Jersey came to resemble battered tin cans before he was done with them. But he kept them running for 250,000 to 300,000 miles each.
Long may you run, dad, as you drive your latest “beater” to deliver Meals on Wheels each week to the old folks.
Love you, dad, happy Veterans Day!
–Barbara
Marc interviews grandpa–transcript
