Food & Mood

Many of us have probably been fighting the dark days of winter by self-medicating with food 'stressors' such as sugar, caffeine, alcohol, chocolate, wheat-containing foods, additives, dairy, and some saturated fats. Now is the time to kick the sugar and refined carbohydrates. Want to overcome the blah feelings you may be experiencing as winter wanes?

Eat foods high in key amino acids
The two amino acids that matter most and most often affect mood are tryptophan (for serotonin) and tyrosine (for dopamine and its cousin adrenaline).

• Foods high in tryptophan include turkey, milk, oil-rich fish, avocado, pumpkin seeds and bananas.


• Foods high in tyrosine include meat, eggs, fish, milk products, beans, nuts and soy products.

I became interested in the “food/mood” connection when I had the opportunity to hear a presentation by John Bagnulo. With a Ph.D. in Food & Nutrition, Bagnulo says that neurologically we need omega 3s, vitamin D3, and vitamin B12. Study the lists below to figure out how to get them into your diet.

Omega 3 (anti-inflammatory)

• found in plants, walnuts & flax


• eat 4-5 Brazil nuts/day(grown in Bolivia and not in Spain) or ¼ cup of walnuts/day


• take fish oil supplements (arctic cod liver oil 3500-4000 IUs will treat full blown depression)


• eat cold water fatty fish such as Pacific halibut, sardines, or wild salmon 2-3 times a week (haddock & cod do not have omega 3s)
  enjoy those egg yolks or reindeer meat
  

Vitamin D3 (controls rate of cell division and is needed by everyone in northern hemisphere)

• need 5000 IUs/day (except in June/July/August)


• take selenium


• get 3000 from fish oil


• can eat seal liver or Shitake mushrooms dried in the sun


• eat 4-5 Brazil nuts/day


• eat dark green vegetables such as kale & mustard greens


• eat tempeh and tofu
  

Vitamin B12 (affects mood, energy, and outlook)

• need 1000 mg/day (a challenge for strict vegetarians)


• eat spinach, beans, miso, sauerkraut


• if not enough, there is a risk of dementia


• if in doubt, Honocysteine is a helpful test to find out your levels
  

When asked for overall recommendations on staying healthy and having a positive attitude toward life, Bagnulo gave the following tips.

• eat a low protein diet of fruits (apples, grapefruits, dark cherries) and vegetables


• to help prevent arthritis eat watermelon & pineapple


• to get iron: eat oysters (also great for minerals), spinach & beets (enhanced by lemon juice)


• anti-skin cancer: use sun block not sun screen, eat Brazil nuts, take selenium


• don’t overcook pasta or baked potato


• good to eat daily: beans, lentils, humus, tempeh


• eat steel oats, millet, quinea, kasha, wild & brown rice, not boxed cereal


• for help with balance and chronic pain - eat almonds, Black Mission figs, and oranges

In summary, give these food 'supporters' a try: water, vegetables, fruit, oil-rich fish, nuts and seeds, whole-grain foods, fiber, protein, and organic food. (Stressors and supporters lists from PCC Natural Markets.)

E to the 3rd Power: Life Without a Car

“I see that you don’t own a car,” commented a friend visiting from out of town.


“Yes”, I responded. “I haven’t owned one since 1964.”


“Why?” she queried. So I proceeded to tell her about my E to the 3rd power life without a car.


“Well, it started as an economic decision. It costs from $6000 to $12,000 a year to own and operate a car. That has always seemed like a lot of money to me, especially during the years that I was self-employed. If I didn’t have to earn $6,000 to $12,000, that meant I had more time for my passions of writing and painting."


What I didn’t mention was that the cities in which I’ve lived – Brussels, Chicago, Manila, Mumbai, Victoria, Singapore, and Sydney – all had public transit systems that seemed less of a hassle than finding (and paying for) parking. Likewise in the small city where I live now.


“Then,” I continued, “over the years, as I learned more and more about global warming and issues of environmental degradation, my economic decision became an ethical choice. I saw that not owning a car was a personal way that I could limit my impact on the environment.”


Again, I didn’t mention that on the occasions that I’ve borrowed or rented a vehicle to accomplish some task that was difficult on public transportation, I felt intensely separated both from nature and other human beings. I find that public transportation puts me in touch with a diverse population that I, as an educated professional, would otherwise not encounter – the poor, youth, immigrants, single parents, and the disabled.


Not that all of the characters I encounter on buses or trains are pleasant and agreeable. I’ve been known to avoid certain times and routes noted for having loud and belligerent passengers. But the truth is, my fellow passengers keep me connected to reality and to our common human suffering. They force me out of my comfort zone and challenge my limited perceptions.


“And now,” I concluded, “not owning a car is a major component of my exercise program. I take routes that force me to walk at least part of the way to and from work or to and from the grocery store. I’m the kind of person who has to build exercise into my everyday routine to make it happen. Not owning a car saves me a gym membership and gets me moving whether I feel like it or not.”


Of course, I didn’t tell her I also do Pilates and Yoga because walking and weight-bearing are just the beginning of what it takes to keep the whole body flexible and resilient. Or that my morning and afternoon walks keep me in touch with nature’s rhythms even as I curse the rain, snow, or blazing sun!


So there you have it: my life without a car makes good economic sense, delivers a low impact on the environment, and gives me ongoing physical exercise - with connections to society and nature thrown in for good measure.


In fact, I have so much invested in not owning a car, that it’s hard for me to see why anyone would want one of those clunkers – except, of course, when I need to lug a forty-pound bag of dirt or pebbles for the garden. Thank you to everyone who’s come to my rescue at such inopportune moments.

The Translator

The Translator is Daoud Hari’s story of individuals who risked everything to get the truth of Darfur out to the world. His principal character is the place, Darfur, a desert area of Sudan that is home to indigenous farming and herding peoples who are being systematically wiped out because they occupy oil-rich lands. There are spaces in Darfur where: “Mirages make birds sitting on distant dunes – birds no bigger than your fist – look like camels. Mirages make dry flatlands look like distant lakes … make the bones of a single human skeleton look like the buildings of a city far ahead.”

For Hari, his older brother Ahmed epitomizes the Zaghawa tribesmen of Darfur. As a teenager, the author planned to go fight with a charismatic commander in Chad. Ahmed found his younger brother and told him to use his brain, not a gun, to make life better. “Shooting people doesn’t make you a man, Daoud,” he said. “Doing the right thing for who you are makes you a man.” Hari returned to school where he learned English, a skill that would later afford him a means to assist his tribesmen.

After years of working abroad to support his family in Sudan, Hari returned home. He arrived as Ahmed was preparing their village to escape an anticipated attack by the Janjaweed. Moments before the assault villagers began walking to Chad. For the next three months, Hari and six of his friends scouted ahead on camels to find water for their desperate tribesmen. The seven men brought food from Chad; helped people find one another and safe routes; and buried men, women, and children who could not finish the trip.

Seeing the flood of refugees pouring into Chad, Hari began serving as a translator, leading dangerous forays back into Darfur. While accompanying Paul Salopek from National Geographic, the two men and their driver were captured, imprisoned, and tortured. Salopek gives a journalist’s report of that ordeal in the March 2008 issue of National Geographic. In The Translator you will receive a more graphic and gripping picture through the storytelling voice of Daoud Hari.

The Translator is a character-driven narrative. Into this ancient land of familial alliances come strange new characters: cell phones that save lives, friendships that survive under torture, and international journalism as a vehicle of truth. The characters exist in a surreal environment: “All trails are erased with each wind. … mountains are not to be trusted … the crunching sound under your camel’s hooves are usually human bones, hidden and revealed as the wind pleases.”

I highly recommend that you read this book, even though it will break your heart. Maybe your broken heart will lead you to participate in stopping the genocide in Darfur.

PILGRIMAGE

I’ve been working over the last couple of months on how to position my village series for presentation. My current thinking is to have an exhibition called Pilgrimage that would include all of the village paintings, but also others related to similar experiences. The paintings would be accompanied by stories that relay the encounters that led to the paintings. Below is a draft of my artist statement for this exhibition.

Artist Statement for Pilgrimage

To go on a long journey … to confront obstacles …to be grateful for kindnesses
What places in the world have beckoned to you?

To do penance … to pay homage … to find meaning
How have “off the beaten path” experiences transformed you?

To seek answers to one’s deepest questions … to find one’s self through testing
In what ways have personal quests shaped your identity?

To see the world … to know the world … to become the world
When have people from other cultures deepened your humanity?

The paintings in Pilgrimage are the product of forty years of wanderlust – a passion that arose at the age of seventeen when I left my blue-collar home in Midwestern United States and embarked upon a quest that took me to remote sites around the world.

Paintings began emerging sporadically, as various meaningful experiences bubbled to the surface of my memory. In 2006 I began intentionally developing a body of work around human and cultural encounters that have shaped my identity. Many of these pieces are based upon an aerial view of a specific village where I lived and worked. In addition to colors, symbols, architecture and/or fabric patterns indicative of the culture of each location, I have embedded my own personal symbols to express the impact the people of that place had upon me.

I hope the narratives that accompany the paintings will not only deepen the viewing of the exhibition but also elicit the viewer's reflection upon her/his own personal quests.

Sticky Ideas

What do "Where's the beef?" and "It's the economy, stupid!" have in common? They have both passed Chip and Dan Heath's test for ideas that stick. The two brothers credit Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, with giving them the concept of stickiness.

If you're like me, you've generated a lot of ideas that haven't gone beyond your best friend's, "Hey that's a great idea!" Yet other persons with "less great" ideas get published, splashed all over the news and celebrated in major galleries. Have you ever fretted about this injustice? If so, then, I recommend that you read Made to Stick, Why Some Ideas Survive and Other Die.

The Heath formula for a "sticky" idea is SUCCESs: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories. I hope my summary below intrigues you to read the book.

Simple means getting to the campact core of the idea. Similar to the militray term, Commander's Intent, it means determining the single most important thing. An example from Southwest Airline: We are THE low-fare airline.

Unexpected means using the surprise factor to get people's attention. It requires creating a mystery to hold their attention. Nora Ephron tells about her first journalism class. The instructor gave them all sorts of information about a conference teachers would be attending and then had the students write "the lead" for the story. After he'd seen their drafts, he said, "The lead is: There will be no school next Thursday." Ephron says that she suddenly realized journalism wasn't about information; it was about getting underneath the facts to their importance. And for the rest of the year, every assignment had a secret - a hidden point the students had to figure out to produce a good story.

Concrete means using people and specifics that help others understand and remember your idea. James Grant, a former director of UNICEF, always carried a packet that contained one teaspoon of salt and eight teaspoons of sugar. When added to a liter of water, these ingredients constitute Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT). As he met with ministers of developing countries, he would pull out his packet and say, "Do you know that this costs less than a cup of tea and it can save hundreds of thousands of children's lives in your country?" Very few people would forget this encounter with ORT.

Credible means helping people believe in the idea. This can be through offering authority (or antiauthority) and/or passing the Frank Sinatra test: "If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere." During a mandatory orientation session for basketball rookies, several players went to the hotel bar on the first night. They were pleased that some female fans paid them a lot of attention and made plans to meet up with them later. The next day these female fans were in the front of the classroom. Each introduced herself. "Hi, I'm Donna and I'm HIV positive." "Hi, I'm Sheila and I'm HIV positive." Suddenly all the talk about AIDS was concrete. And the antiauthority of Donna and Sheila made it credible. The rookies became believers in safe sex.

Emotional means making people care about your idea. Mother Teresa said that if she looked at the mass of human suffering, she felt paralyzed; but, if she looked at one person, she was moved to act. Anyone who has ever made a charitable donation knows that the story of one woman whose life was improved by receiving a cow or chicken has caused them to feel generous while tales of mass genocide in Darfur have left them immobilized. We care about the individual because we can identify with him or her. We may also get people to care about our idea by associating it with persons with whom they identify.

Stories mean moving people to act. Jared was a 425 pound college student who lost over 200 pounds by eating Subway sandwiches. Does that get your attention? Does that pique interest in your local Subway shop? It seems that when we hear a story we simulate it in our own life. Anyone who has ever done visualizations about success in a particular area of life, will be fascinated by the research done on event simulations. I'll give away the punch line: Visualizing how a problem arose, going over in detail the incidents that occurred step by step and the actions you took, what you said, the environment, who was there, etc. is more effective than visualizing the outcome you want and the feelings you will have when you achieve it.

May you have many sticky ideas!

Transition Time

Obama won and now it's transition time. After spending all fall working on Obama's campaign, at long last I'm getting back to my creative work. I'm focused for now on my painting. I've figured out that the "village series" is really something a little bigger in scope. These pieces, along with a few done earlier and a few yet to be painted, make up a set of paintings that might better be called "Human Encounters of the Transformative Kind," or something like that.

As often happens in my creative life, my mind had me heading in one direction - the villages - while in reality my heart was singing an unconscious song. As I see the paintings that have been produced and listen to the songs that they are singing, I realize this work isn't about "the villages." It's about how people and places around the world have made me who I am. Each painting in this global series is like an artifact in a museum; it encapsulates a story of how I was changed.

Stay tuned while I try to figure out what those changes were.

An Engaged, Informed Electorate

Recently Michelle Obama was on Larry King Live. What impacted me was that despite the ongoing hostile and trumped up attacks made by the McCain campaign on her husband, Michelle was without rancor. Instead she demonstrated calm composure.

I realized that during the nearly two years that Barack Obama has been running for President, I have never seen either him or Michelle project fear, anger or disrespect. Instead, their emphasis has been on engaging people - normal everyday people, middle-income people, ordinary Jacks and Jills who work hard, pay their taxes, and dream of being surpassed by their children - people who have felt disrespected and ignored throughout the gilded age of Wall Street high finance.

In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama said that across America "something is stirring." That something is a quiet revolution in which those "insignificant Jacks and Jills" have been coming out of the ground and claiming their citizenship by standing up to the political machines of the past. They have been snatching our democracy back from the special interest groups that have for too long determined both the agenda and the policies generated in Washington.

While other Democrats mocked Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy, the Obamas embraced and moved it forward. Whether or not Barack wins the election, the Obama campaign will leave a legacy of citizen participation the likes of which has not been seen for a very long time. When asked about all the voter registration efforts, early voting drives and plans to get out the vote, Michelle said every bit of it is necessary. She was absolutely clear that when Barack takes office in January, he will need an engaged and informed electorate in order to make the changes that are necessary.

An engaged and informed electorate - how novel!

Imagine ordinary people actually understanding the difference between the health care plans of Obama and McCain. Wrap you mind around having neighbors who grasp how McCain's $300 billion mortgage purchase plan would rip them off. Consider the impact of masses of people believing again in public education. Think about an American public that supports bringing our troops home from Iraq and sending fresh troops to Afghanistan where our security demands that they be. Envision a United States that moves vigorously toward energy independence. Picture a nation united in the same way that the Democratic party has become united in this election.

All of this is possible. It is possible because Barack and Michelle do not hold grudges. Even as John McCain and the Republican Party slander Barack, Michelle says, "We must all come together. We will need John and Cindy to help us rebuild this country we love."

You rock, Michelle!