Over at the DG, I write about stress.

Here's an excerpt:

"When I have a headache, I often tap into the bottle of pain relievers that a colleague of mine keeps on her desk.

Usually the bottle contains ibuprofen, which works well enough.

But when an article in the journal Psychological Science reported that Tylenol has been found to reduce anxiety associated with 'thoughts of existential uncertainty and death,' I suggested we make a switch.

'Let’s get Tylenol,' I said. 'It will make us feel better about life.'

I’m always looking for ways to reduce stress and always feeling stymied in my efforts.

I take vacations. I swim. I walk. I set aside time for leisure and enjoying the company of my friends. I climb mountains. I own pets.

Occasionally, I splurge on a massage. I did this a few weeks ago, partly because I was experiencing some tightness in my neck and shoulders and partly because I thought it would help me relax. Ideally, a good massage contributes to an overall feeling of calm and well being that lasts for a little while.
However, my most recent massage simply did not work.

And it wasn’t the fault of the massage therapist."

Click here to read the whole thing.

Over at the DG, I write about my old friend Jeremy Charron, and how I feel in general about memorials.

Here's an excerpt:

I traveled to my sister’s place last weekend to celebrate my niece’s first birthday, taking my usual route through southern Vermont and New Hampshire. This is a lovely drive, highlighted by winding, rural highways that run alongside rivers and lakes and over rolling hills and small yet impressive mountains.

One of the things I enjoy most about this particular trip are the old haunts it takes me through, such as the small New Hampshire town of Hillsboro, where I lived until I was 14. Driving through Hillsboro always makes me nostalgic, and although sometimes I stop to visit old friends, I often pass through as quickly as possible, on my way to other places.

My sister and her husband live about an hour northeast of Hillsboro. Every time I go there, I pass through a traffic circle in the town of Epsom that I’ve been driving through since I was a child heading to Maine on vacation. On one of my more recent trips, I noticed that the traffic circle had been renamed for two fallen police officers: Jeremy Charron and Michael Briggs. A portion of the highway that runs through Epsom is also named for Jeremy Charron.

I didn’t know Michael Briggs, who was originally from Epsom and was shot and killed in the line of duty in 2006.

But I did know Jeremy Charron.

Click here to read the whole thing.

Over at the DG, I write about my vacation to the Deep South.

Here's an excerpt:

"For my spring vacation, I decided to take a road trip.

It had been about five years since I’d seen my Southern friends, and so I mapped out a route that would take me to Birmingham, Ala., where I lived and worked for several years after graduating from college.

But my first stop was in Virginia, at my friend Heather’s. I met Heather in Albany, when we lived on the same street, and I was excited to see her new house, where she’s putting into practice many of the things she’s long talked of doing: gardening and raising chickens, and building sculptures in a large backyard shed. Before I arrived, she asked whether I’d be willing to attend a mushroom party hosted by a member of her sustainable living group.

'What do you do at a mushroom party?' I asked.

'Cultivate mushrooms,' Heather replied.

She explained that she and her friends were hoping to grow their own shiitake mushrooms, and that this entailed drilling numerous holes in logs, nailing small wooden plugs colonized with mushroom spawn into the holes, and sealing the holes with wax.

I agreed to go, mainly because when I hear the word party, I imagine something fun, with music, drinks, snacks and interesting conversation. Instead, I found myself performing physical labor for about two hours, my ability to converse with people limited by the loud buzzing of drills and pounding of hammers. Once the logs were inoculated, Heather and I began carrying them over to a pickup truck and tossing them onto the flatbed.

'Just like old times, huh?' she said.

'Yup,' I said.

Click here to read the whole thing.

I'm a little late posting my most recent column, as I've just gotten back from my spring vacation.

In any case, here's the link, for posterity's sake.

Over at the DG, I write about why I watch sad, depressing, soul-shattering movies.

Here's an excerpt:

"A couple of weeks ago, I finally got around to watching the 2010 film 'Never Let Me Go.'

An adaptation of a highly acclaimed novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, the movie is a compelling blend of science-fiction and coming-of-age film that depicts a world where medical advances have enabled people to live well past 100, but at a terrible cost: Cloned children are raised in isolation at private schools and facilities, and when they reach adulthood, their organs are harvested and given to nonclones. The film focuses on three friends destined for sacrifice and early death, and though I kept hoping they would find a way to escape their tragic fates, I sensed that a happy ending was not in the cards.

And I was right.

By the time 'Never Let Me Go' reached its devastating conclusion, I felt like I’d been stabbed in the heart. If I was the sort of person who cried at movies, tears would have been streaming down my face. I idly wondered whether the film deserved a spot on my mental list of Movies That Will Ruin Your Night — movies that are so sad and bleak and anguished that they leave you shattered and emotionally drained.

And yet I was impressed by what I’d seen.

Just as I was impressed with 'The Deer Hunter' and 'Requiem for a Dream' and 'The Ice Storm' — other films on my list of Movies That Will Ruin Your Night. None of these movies were fun to watch, but they were riveting — well-acted, well-written, expertly filmed, insightful and provocative. And yet I can understand why people might balk at the idea of watching them. After all, not everyone wants to have their night ruined by relentlessly depressing cinema.

In fact, most people go to the movies to be entertained."

Click here to read the whole thing.

Over at the DG, I write about how reading and looking at art make me feel like traveling.

Here's an excerpt:

"Last weekend my parents were in town, and so I took them to the Albany Institute of History & Art to see the Currier & Ives and Hudson River School exhibits.

Both exhibits are quite good and well worth seeing. But I think the Hudson River School exhibit is of particular interest to people who live in upstate New York, as it features numerous paintings and prints of the Adirondacks and Catskills and other Northeastern attractions, such as New Hampshire’s White Mountains.

I’ve visited many of the places depicted in the Hudson River School exhibit, and I enjoyed seeing familiar places transformed by an artist’s eye and imagination.

As I wandered through the galleries, I reminisced about hiking in the Catskills and Adirondacks, and marveled at Albany’s heyday as a bustling port city with a vibrant riverfront teeming with boats. I remembered my awestruck first trip to Niagara Falls and was reminded of my newfound appreciation for communities to the south of the Capital Region, such as Hudson and Woodstock. And when I stopped to gaze upon a depiction of the Cohoes Falls, my first thought was that my parents and I should drive out to Cohoes and look at it. After all, my mother is wild about waterfalls.

Why not take a little drive, and see the real thing?"

Click here to read the whole thing.

Over at the DG, I write how photographs help keep my memory of people and places sharp.

Here's an excerpt:

'Last weekend I visited friends from college in Burlington, Vt., and eventually we got to reminiscing about our undergraduate days.

We recalled the good times we had eating together in the dining hall, at the round table over by the window, and working at the school newspaper. Each year, my friend Zach and I stayed on campus following the end of exams to put out the commencement issue of the newspaper, and when I mentioned the week we spent together at the conclusion of my sophomore year, Zach nodded.

'That was one of the most fun weeks I had in college,' he said.

Me too,' I said.

Zach and I are obviously different people, with different memories, but our memories of that special week were very similar. They involved working hard and listening to music (mainly Prince), filling up the office water coolor with beer (which is not something I’d recommend) and going out at night to parties. Of course, pictures help: One of the photographs I took that week features an upside-down Zach hanging from the exposed pipes in the newspaper office. Would I remember that moment without the photograph? Or would it have disappeared into the ether, like so many other moments from the past?"

Click here to read the whole thing.

I loved this Ta-Nehisi Coates post about the jerks who talk and act rowdy on the Amtrak quiet car - it reminded me of my recent column about people who go to the movies and gab and play on their phones.

Why do people act this way? 

Probably, Coates suggests, because they're assholes.

It is not unlike what I've noticed here when commenters arrive and complain about the prohibition against threadjacking, the deleting, or moderation as a whole. The Internet is filled with comment spaces, most of them only barely regulated. But that is not enough. One must have the right to talk however one wants, here, specifically.

I think what we have here is a working definition of an asshole -- a person who demands that all social interaction happen on their terms. Assholes fill our various worlds. But the banhammer only works in one of them.

Over at the DG, I write about how sometimes paying more money for stuff is worth it.

Here's an excerpt:

"When I was a kid, a candy bar was something special, often enjoyed on a long drive.

My dad would purchase a Snickers or a Milky Way, cut it into thirds, and distribute the pieces to me and my sisters.

At the time, this was a wonderful treat.

But now, as adults, we make fun of my father’s frugality. When he asks whether we need anything from the store, we often reply, 'Could you buy us a candy bar and cut it into three pieces?' Then we laugh uproariously. Sometimes we follow it up by requesting a single can of soda, which we can all share.

Anyway, I think this little story illustrates where my reluctance to spend money on basic necessities might come from.

My parents were always looking for good deals on groceries, clothing, cars and toys, and tended to be slow to adopt new technology. I still remember the magical day my father brought home a VCR, and my glee when we finally got a Nintendo. Though it’s probably worth noting that a family friend gave us the Nintendo and that without this act of generosity it’s unlikely video games ever would have entered our home.

For the most part, I didn’t care about having the best.

Fashion was of little interest. I was fine with clothes purchased on sale and hand-me-downs. I wasn’t into shoes — I wore my sneakers until they wore out, then got another pair. I was happy with the inexpensive CD player I purchased with earnings from my first job — I saw little need to spend a bundle on a state-of-the-art stereo system. And I was perfectly content to drive around in my parents’ old Ford Escort. I didn’t care that it wasn’t mine, or that it wasn’t a newer, more attractive vehicle — I was grateful that I had access to a vehicle and that I was allowed to drive my friends around in it.

Over the years, my attitude toward money has evolved."

Click here to read the whole thing.

Over at the DG, I rant about people who talk and use cell phones at the movies.

Here's an excerpt:

"I’ve never been particularly concerned with etiquette.

Using the proper fork, keeping elbows off the table, not wearing white after Labor Day — these are not the sort of things that matter to me, and I don’t see why they should.

But there’s a certain type of rudeness that really gets on my nerves.

And because I’ve been going to the movies a lot lately, I’ve been encountering this type of rudeness quite frequently. In fact, I’ve experienced it at each of the three movies I’ve seen in the past week-and-a-half. At every screening, there’s been a moment when I’ve looked around, trying to figure out who’s responsible for the asinine chatter distracting me from the film.

In one case, it wasn’t asinine chatter that distracted me — it was a man with a cellphone that beeped repeatedly and kept lighting up. Decent people are embarrassed when their phone goes off in the theater. Not this guy. His phone beeped again and again, and flashed nearly a dozen times. I was sitting next to this guy at a screening of “Amour,” and I finally decided that I couldn’t allow him to ruin my filmgoing experience."

Click here to read the whole thing.

Related: Here's a piece from Earth Island Journal about how noise is bad for your health

Over at the DG, I write about one of my bad habits, procrastination.

Here's an excerpt: 

"Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been running behind.

It all started when I was sent to readiness — an extra grade between kindergarten and first grade. Officially, I ended up in readiness because I was socially withdrawn and had poor motor skills; unofficially, because I was young for my age. While my better-adjusted peers from kindergarten went marching off to first grade, I joined the immature kids who had trouble tying their shoes and remembering their phone numbers.

I spent the next several years trying to get to where I thought I should be.

My reading and writing skills were quite good; my penmanship and coloring, not so much. So I spent a great deal of time learning to color within lines, instead of just scribbling wildly all over the place, and to write neatly. After spending second grade in a lower-performing math group, I acquired flashcards and got my mom to teach me the multiplication tables over the summer. I vowed never to be assigned to a lower-performing math group again.

And I wasn’t.

But this gradual transformation into a good student was accompanied by the development of a bad habit: procrastination.

When I fell behind, it wasn’t because I was struggling to master my work, but because I had chosen not to do it until the last possible second. Occasionally, my tendency to push deadlines as far as I could got me into trouble. But as the years passed, I became pretty adept at gauging just how long I could avoid doing something and still get everything done.

Occasionally, someone would suggest that there was another way to do things — a saner and healthier way."

Click here to read the whole thing.

I'm not big on name calling, but I do make exceptions, some of which I describe in my column this week at the DG.

Here's an excerpt:

"I’m not a big fan of name-calling, at least in a public forum.

My opposition stems not so much from the fact that it’s rude, but a belief that it’s bad strategy. When you call someone a wingnut or a fascist or some other derisive name, they are going to be less inclined to listen to you and more inclined to call you names, leading to a vicious cycle of name-calling. You see this all the time in the media or on the Internet — incensed people, screaming past each other.

I’m not sure how to solve this problem, but the least I can do is not participate in it.

However, I’m only human and occasionally a situation arises where name-calling seems not only appropriate, but imperative.

Like the emergence, last week, of the so-called Sandy Hook 'truthers.'

Perhaps you’ve heard of them — the people who think the Sandy Hook shooting was an elaborate hoax engineered by the media, government and a large cast of duplicitous actors, as part of a strategy to drum up support for gun control.

One of the truthers’ main targets is Gene Rosen, the Newtown man who took in six scared schoolchildren on the morning of the shooting and is now receiving phone calls and emails accusing him of lying and asking him how much money he is being paid.

The Sandy Hook truthers get my blood boiling.

They are insane. And stupid. And hurtful. And bad.

I see no need to listen to them, or try to understand them or learn about their crazy conspiracy theory. I’m sorry, but these aren’t people you can have a meaningful dialogue with and I don’t want to nod politely while some unhinged lunatic explains how the deaths and funerals of 20 first-graders and six adults were faked. The only thing I want to do when it comes to the Sandy Hook truthers is call them names. In fact, I can’t think of enough names to call them."

Click here to read more.

In my column at the DG, I write about how I finally decided to get a flu shot.

Here's an excerpt:

"My flu shot record is sporadic.

Sometimes I get one, and sometimes I don’t.

This lackadaisical attitude can probably be explained by the fact that I’ve never had the flu. And the fact that when I’m not sick I find it difficult to imagine being sick. The flu has been picking off colleagues left and right, but I rarely get sick, which gives me a feeling of invincibility. My thinking goes something like this: 'I don’t need a flu shot, because I feel great!'

I didn’t always think his way.

When I was a kid, I got sick frequently, coming down with colds and more serious ailments, such as pneumonia and bronchitis, every winter. Unhealthiness was the norm rather than the exception, and unless I was very, very ill, I went off to school and about my business as if nothing was wrong. Who knows how many kids I infected?

But that was a long time ago, and on days like today, when I’m healthy and functional, I find it difficult to remember what it’s like to be really sick. I can remember that I was sick, but not how it felt. In fact, sometimes when I’m feeling tired and in need of a change of pace, I find myself wishing I would come down with something. Not something super serious (like the flu).

However, the ominous news reports about this year’s flu outbreak have officially freaked me out.

Clearly, this was not the year to skip getting a flu shot.
When The Gazette made flu shots available last fall, I should have gotten one. Or I should have thought to make an appointment at my clinic and gotten one there. But I did neither of these things. And now I want a flu shot."

Click here to read the whole thing.

Over at the DG, I write about the New Year's resolutions I've made, for myself and others.

Here's an excerpt:

"I usually make a few New Year’s resolutions, and I’ve found that the key to being successful is keeping my goals simple and realistic. I also try to make several resolutions, because partial accomplishment is better than none at all — if I keep one-third of my resolutions, I generally feel pretty good about myself.

However, this year I’ve had trouble coming up with a list of resolutions.

Instead, I’ve been thinking of resolutions for others.

Like my cat Clem.

Lately he’s gotten into the habit of waking me up exactly 30 minutes before my alarm goes off. He does this by meowing piteously, and swatting me in the face with his paw. I have no idea why he acts this way. My theory is that he wants attention and figures I’ve slept enough. Which is a bit rich, considering how much he sleeps.

In any case, I found myself penning Clem’s New Year’s resolution early one morning after his crying snapped me out of a very pleasant slumber: 'I, Clem, will resolve to let my owner sleep as late as she wants for all of 2013.'

I’ve also got a list of resolutions for Congress that I began developing when I realized that the new year was shaping up to be very much like the old one, dominated by battles over the debt ceiling and taxes.

My desire for a clean slate has never been quite as intense as it was on Jan. 1, when I realized that the federal government is operating on some kind of nightmarish, Groundhog Day-like loop, with the same debates and arguments reoccurring every three to five months, with little to no resolution. When I heard about the stalled relief bill for Hurricane Sandy victims, my reaction was not so much outrage as déjà vu. So perhaps Congress could do us all a favor and resolve to become a functional branch of government again. At the very least, they could retire the term 'fiscal cliff,' which I never want to hear again in my life."

Click here to read more.

Over at the DG, I write about Christmas cookies, gifts and traditions.

Here's an excerpt:

"Because Christmas is a time of tradition, any change to my holiday routine tends to throw me for a loop.

For instance: As soon as I arrived at my parents’ house in Maine, I headed to the refrigerator to grab a handfull of buckeye balls, my favorite Christmas cookie. Buckeye balls are small, chocolate covered balls of peanut butter and sugar, and they are divine. I was actually considering making some this year, but one thing led to another, and I never quite got around to it. Which didn’t strike me as a huge problem, because my mother makes buckeye balls every year, and always gives me some to take home.

But this year, I couldn’t find the buckeye balls.

'Where are the buckeye balls?' I asked, after a search of the refrigerator proved fruitless.

'I decided not to make them this year,' my mother said.

'But they’re my favorite cookie!' I said.

'I warned her,' my father said, as if to imply that this exact conversation was something he had foretold.

'It’s fine,' I said. 'I don’t need buckeye balls. There are plenty of other cookies.'

When my sister Rebecca arrived, she, too, expressed shock at the lack of buckeye balls.

'No buckeye balls!' she gasped. 'Everyone knows that buckeye balls are your favorite cookie!'

'It is a widely known fact,' I agreed.

'Enough,' my mother said. 'I will make buckeye balls. But only half a batch.'

I insisted that this was unnecessary, but of course I was delighted. And when the buckeye balls finally made their appearance, I grabbed several and stuffed them in my mouth. Every time I ate one, it was a reminder of how much my mother loves me."

Click here to read the whole thing.