I kept, and just got around to reading “The Purpose of Spectacular Wealth, According to a Spectacularly Wealthy Guy,” subtitled "Are the Rich Worth a Damn?"  This article was in the May 1 New York Times Magzaine: the “money issue.”

         The spectacularly wealthy guy is Edward Conard: “His wealth is most likely in the hundreds of millions; he lives in an Upper East Side town house just off Fifth Avenue; and he is one of the largest donors to his old boss and friend, Mitt Romney.”

         Conard’s argument is that we are all much richer because of innovations financed by super wealthy investors trying to make even more money.  The trickle-down benefits are cheap, accessible food, wonderfully useful internet, delightful entertainment, etc, etc.

         This argument is similar to the one in favor of supporting all kinds of scientific research even if no “desired” end is in sight, because we cannot predict what wonderfully useful discoveries might result.  For instance, NASA's space exploration has resulted in beneficial technologies in health science, transportation, agriculture, just to name a few.  Or the Human Genome Project has resulted in vastly expanded understanding of how genes and epigenetic molecules work, leading to amazing therapeutic techniques spawning futuristic medicines to fight off viruses and anti-biotic-resistant bacteria and scourges like AIDS.

         But there are problems with spectacular wealth that are dissimilar from those in scientific research.  These have to do with frightening political power and influence that are the exact opposite of universally beneficial.  Science has its power plays, but they’re nothing like banks gambling with our money, or the super-rich running our elections.


My last two posts have been about the power of staying in the present.  Just before those posts, I was writing about how healthy it is for us to stay in motion.  Now I’m trying to combine the two in my life.  Whenever I am waiting around for something, I try to be in motion.

         In the elevator, I march in place.  In line at the supermarket, I rock or dance in place, in my desk chair, I stretch, or stand up and sit down again when I’m contemplating what to write next.

         This is a hard habit to make and an easy one to break, especially if I’m lost in thought.  I’m trying to train myself to move and think at the same time.

         On the telephone, I remember more and more often to walk about while talking. (Modern phones, either cell or cordless, are a big boon here.)  Waiting for the bus, instead of sitting in the bus shelter, I walk circles around it.

         Any suggestions for more?  Please let me know. 

Speaking of staying in the present (my post for May 10), it occurred to me that animals other than ourselves have no trouble living in the present.

         Years ago, my family owned an apricot standard poodle named Doc.  He was a brilliant, spontaneous comedian and performer.  If you rolled a tennis ball down the long hall in our apartment, he would give chase, and just before grabbing the ball in his jaws, he’d do a theatrical little “Ah-ha!” move, just for show.  Or he’d lie with his blanket between his forelegs, and look away as if to hint, “Say, this would be a good time for you to swipe my blanket.”  If you took the hint, he’d have the other end of the blanket before you could even begin to pull, and the tug of war was on!

         As far as I could tell, Doc never strayed into the past, and he had only the most immediate possible sense of the future.  Sometimes he would sit in front of the cupboard that contained the doggy treats, straightening his paws and his haunches in an attempt to sit as neatly as possible in hopes of a reward that might come in 30 seconds or less.  Other times he would hear us approaching our building, rise up at the window, and then rush to the door, anticipating our immediate arrival. 

         The farthest Doc saw into the future was on occasions when we were going on a trip, suitcases packed and already trundled to the car.  Someone would have to walk him: 1) prior to putting him in the car, or  2) prior to putting him back in the house, because he wasn’t going with us, and our neighbor was going to be walking and feeding him for a couple of days.

         This walk was almost impossible to accomplish, because Doc, knowing the trip was about to start, knowing he might or might not be going, refused to go anywhere except as close as he could to the car.  Now that I recall this, I wonder why we didn’t just move the car around the block temporarily, but it never occurred to us then.

         On trips when Doc was going, and finally got walked and finally got into the car, the future simply disappeared.  And there was that smiling dog in the rear view mirror, totally in the glorious present.



After reading the first 125 pages of Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, I started trying to escape from negative thoughts by moving sharply into the present.  I would look at a tree, gaze at the sky, take a deep breath, listen to a tape, and immediately my mood improved.  I felt connected to the universe and a higher power, and whatever I’d been fretting about grew proportionately much less important.

         This morning I woke from a really terrible dream, and just couldn’t shake it off.  What a negative waste of time and energy.  Then I realized I hadn’t yet done anything to replace the dream, instead I had dragged it out of the night and into the day.  So it was occupying not only the immediate past, but the present as well. 

         I turned on WFMT and started listening to music, and the dream faded.  By the time I came in after my powerwalking hour outdoors, the dream had become just one of those nighttime oddities.  Out of “sight” out of mind.

         My goal is to get as close as possible to 100% of my time in the present.  That way I actually have a life!



I’ve been musing in my last couple of blogs about the healthy necessity for humans to stay in motion, and the deleterious effects of spending long periods seated.  (See my May 1 post.)  In my quest for more information I found a Scientific American article about dance, and how much humans like to play music and dance to it.

         During the evolution of our species, if we needed to stay in motion for our very survival, it makes sense that our brains would evolve to promote motion.  One way our brains promote life-sustaining activities is by making them pleasurable and making us want to repeat them.  This is why we love salty, fatty, and sweet foods.  Tens of thousands of years ago, such foods were exceedingly scarce, so we needed to love them and eat as much of them as we could on the rare occasions when they were available.

         Our brains make things pleasurable and worth repeating by sending out dopamine, a neurotransmitter behind lots of learning and, alas, addiction.

         So here’s a wonderful clue to some of the greatest artistic accomplishments of our species.  Perhaps rhythm, music, and dance arose out of repeated spurts of dopamine, urging our bodies and minds to keep us in motion.  Then, as musical skills developed, perhaps musical activities became pleasurable in their own right.  Perhaps we just wanted to engage in them because we enjoyed them so much.

         To steal a line from Shakespeare: “If music be the food of love, play on!”



In my last post, I spoke of how important it is for our health that we move about frequently during the day.  Why might this be so? 

         No one has an exact answer, but according to what Gretchen Reynolds found out, we quickly lose muscle tone and muscle mass if we don’t.  And I imagine that since we evolved to support ourselves by hunting and gathering, we must have needed to stay in excellent physical shape for these life-supporting activities. 

         Even unborn and newborn human babies stay in constant motion when they’re awake.  They weave and arch their torsos, wave their arms and legs, clench and unclench their fists and feet, and rotate their heads and even their eyes.  This way their muscles grow and stay strong.  Then their increased muscle tone prepares them for self-starting practice in hand-eye coordination, for pushing up, crawling, and walking.

         All this muscle building and toning makes them ready for a life in which constant motion will be necessary for survival. 

         Our bodies evolved for a very different life from the current one.  Our new ways of supporting ourselves, via sit-down jobs and sit-down job searches, are foreign to our health.



Last Sunday’s New York Times carried Gretchen Reynolds' summary of new research showing we stay healthier and burn significantly more calories, when we move around all day.  (In fact, I’ve begun marching in place when I’m riding in an elevator, but only if I'm alone.)

         Curiously, Reynolds reports that regular exercisers remain more sedentary throughout the day, after exercising, than non-exercisers.  I can’t help wondering why this latter finding should be true.

         I am a regular exerciser.  Weekday mornings I rise around 5:00, brush my teeth, make my bed, limber up, and climb many flights of stairs inside my apartment building.  Then I head outside to walk briskly anywhere from 3 to 4 miles.  I'm fortunate to be able to walk along a bike path that threads the generous park hugging Chicago’s Lake Michigan shore.  The limbering, climbing and walking take about an hour and fifteen minutes, and I return home feeling energetic and alive.

         Part of the energy must come from moving aerobically.  But part of the energy is spiritual.  Outside among the trees and shrubs and grass, under the dark or dawning sky, my muse visits me.  I am enlivened with ideas for what to write or what to add to what I’m writing.  The ideas seem to come from a Higher Power, along with spring’s blossoms, mating ducks, newly arrived robins, and Frisbee chasing dogs.  My walk makes me available to inspiration from the cosmos.

         Yet, I’ll stay healthy longer, stay available to inspiration longer, if I get up from my desk, interrupting my writing over and over, to move around.  What a strange contradiction!



In my last post, I reported on Rev. Corey Brooks, the pastor of New Beginnings Church on the south side of Chicago.  I told you about his spending the winter camped out on the roof of an abandoned motel, a crime magnet that blighted the neighborhood around the Church.  His doing that attracted nearly half a million dollars to buy the motel and tear it down.

         That was phase one of Brooks’s vision.  Now he is launching phase two, Project HOOD.

         Over the coming summer, Pastor Brooks is going to walk across the U.S. from New York City to Los Angeles in an effort to raise $1.5 million to put up a community center on the location where the abandoned motel once stood.

         Meanwhile, back at New Beginnings Church, the congregation will engage in “Take It Back Summer 2012,” or “HOODvision 2012.”  There will be neighborhood watches and patrols to keep the streets safe.  There will be HOODfest, a weekly Saturday barbecue for everyone in the neighborhood from noon until 8:00 PM.  And there will be day camp for kids every day (Rev. Brooks believes the money to run this camp will somehow appear.  So here’s a really worthy cause we can all support!)

         Last Sunday when I listened to Rev. Brooks describe all this, I truly believed he and his congregation will be successful.  I’m certainly going to support them as much as I can! 

Sunday morning I had a heavenly experience at New Beginnings Church on the south side of Chicago. What was this Jewish girl doing there?

         Last fall, the pastor of New Beginnings, Rev. Corey Brooks reached his limit: He kept officiating at funerals for young, healthy men shot dead in gang violence, and adding to the pain, across the street from his church stood an empty, dilapidated motel where drug deals, murders, and prostitution going down daily. 

         Rev. Brooks found he would need $450,000 to buy and tear down the motel.  So he climbed to the motel roof and camped out for 94 days, throughout the winter.  When his vigil had brought in $350,000, Tyler Perry heard about the campaign, and donated the rest.  Success!

         While Rev. Brooks was living on the roof, a member of Anshe Emet Synagogue on the north side (my synagogue) was mentoring a teenage girl at New Beginnings.  The girl invited her mentor to hear her sing at a New Beginnings Sunday service.  At that service, the mentor learned of Rev. Brooks.  She urged Anshe Emet’s Rabbi Michael Siegel to meet Rev. Brooks.  So Rabbi Siegel drove down to the south side, took a cherry picker to the motel roof, and the two religious leaders studied together and became friends.

         The first morning of Passover, Rev. Brooks gave a stupendous sermon at Anshe Emet about acting in faith.  And this past Sunday, Rabbi Siegel preached at New Beginnings to help Rev. Brooks kick off Project Hood (more about this wonderful project in my next post).

         A friend and I drove to the south side for the service at New Beginnings, as did many Anshe Emet congregants.  I have never felt so WELCOME anywhere in my life.

         From the moment we got out of the car, people opened doors and said, “Hello!  Welcome to New Beginnings!”  They smiled, shook our hands, and hugged us.  At the doors to the church, in the lobby, at the doors to the chapel, down the aisles, into our seats, beside us: we were greeted and celebrated, until we couldn’t doubt for a moment that we were welcome at New Beginnings. 

         To one of the greeters I exclaimed, “You make us feel so welcome!”  And she smiled broadly and replied, “It’s Jesus!”

         Soon the music began and we were up on our feet, dancing, singing, and praising God.  And I had no doubt I was in divine hands.

           It’s Jesus! 

In Judaism, the number eighteen is a felicitous number.  Numbers in Hebrew are represented by letters, and the number eighteen, if read as a word, is chai, meaning life, as in L’chaim!  When making donations, or  giving bar- or bat-mitzvah gifts, Jews customarily write checks that are multiples of eighteen.

         Yesterday was my birthday, and it started well when my son called early in the morning to wish me a happy day and to point out that my age this year is a multiple of eighteen.  No wonder the day had actually become special the night before when a dear cousin had called with good wishes.  Now, the auspicious numerology gave me a sense of being afloat on the wings of good fortune. 

         I thought back to the last time I was a multiple of eighteen, and realized that year had ushered in a delightful period:  I fell madly in love and enjoyed a sustained period of spiritual depth and uplift.  That spiritual change became an integral part of me, in spite of the relationship’s recent end.

         Then I realized that this week, even before I realized I was headed for a multiple of eighteen, I was already moving toward a happy birthday.  I had rescheduled a dentist appointment for a non-birthday-day.  I had just finished and mailed invitations to an open house I am throwing next month, with the result that lots of people began telling me how happy they were to be invited.  With the dentist out of the way, I had time to have a fun lunch with some fellow writers.  Next came a phone call from my college roommate, with whom I celebrate almost simultaneous birthdays; so I shared the good news about chai with her.  And soon after that, my daughter called with birthday greetings. 

         By the time the day ended, I was fully in the swing of being a multiple of eighteen—it’s a buoyant swing to be in.