YAY FOR MARTHA STEWART?

On Twitter, Martha Stewart says about herself, "Curious, inquisitive, experimental entrepreneur who cares about the world we live in."

Back in our "Shenandoah" days when my husband, John Cullum, and I began to have money for renovations, I started decorating our home. I was very aware of Martha Stewart's thoughtful, practical, always neat, gracious taste.

Nevertheless, I went with what appealed to me, and ignored the Martha Stewart recommendations for furniture, floor coverings, curtains, silverware, dinnerware, as well as glasses, wine goblets. The ultra fancy stuff that lyricist Alan Lerner bestowed upon us (8 huge, Baccarat crystal beer mugs), and other expensive treasures from other famous pals, sit on the high shelves above our uniquely orange and black kitchen. (Not colors that M.S recommends.)

No doubt about it, Martha Stewart is a towering authority, a living encyclopedia on ways to handle one's life style. Before writing this, I browsed Wikipedia. Under "career" you'll see her domain -- Living Omnimedia Inc. You name it, and she is planning to do it, or has already done it, and written a book about it. She's 74. She started writing at age 41 in 1982. She has published 141 books.

Okay, I am not a fan. I have never bought a Martha Stewart book, though I admire her queenly, confident, courageous dealing with the good and bad things that came her way, especially the way she handled being in jail, back in 2004 and 2005. For lying to federal investigators about a stock sale that the IRS deemed, "inside information," Stewart received the minimum sentence: 5 months in prison, 5 months of home confinement, 19 months probation,  a $30,000 fine and all court fees.

Since then, aided by guesting on television shows, and the press coverage of her many, many appearances at openings, celebrity gatherings, and award ceremonies, Stewart's been expanding her name and her domain.

Her latest venture is Martha and Marley Spoon. She is now offering and promoting what quite a few companies have been offering since 2014 -- meals in a box. Dinner arrives in a box filled with all the raw material (ingredients and seasoning), and a beautifully printed, easy-to-follow routine. Follow it and in about a half hour you can be a gourmet cook.

My opinion: Meals in a box is not what the younger generation -- generation that's younger than Martha, or younger than me (whatever age you think I am) -- wants or needs. I think that youngers want to be IN with other people -- they want to go out, be out, do things their own way, try different things, even exhaust themselves doing whatever they feel like doing.

Hey, I bow respectfully to Martha Stewart, but now seems to be a time for fun -- pleasuring, amusing oneself, and being bravely outrageous.

How do I know?

I see it, feel it, sense it, have been  studying, researching, talk-writing about it, while functioning creatively in the real world. I am in the real, real world, much more than Martha Stewart. 


The look of Martha in this photo could be her reply.

Me?

This is me.

BIGIFY YOUR BRAIN!!!

 Can you increase your IQ?  Yes!

Back in 2012, a nine page Newsweek cover story confirmed this, and gave us information on the research that proves that you can.

Recovering from more than a year of politics, today is good day to Bigify Yourself.

Remember when everyone was taking Ginko Bilova, and Ginseng?  I tried it, but didn't  feel any different. So of course, I read every word on the nine pages and learned about exercises for the brain,  and "tricks" that help you learn faster.

I got information on neurobiology, plasticity, cognitive science, and the proof -- details on studies and tests that showed how "gray matter"(neurons) increase with use, and decrease when they're not used. I learned about stimulants, pills, and "aerobic" exercise for the brain that will improve your short term and long term memory, enhance your ability to retain information, and increase your attention span.

The piece de resistance of the article was  31 WAYS TO GET SMARTER IN 2012 -- an illustrated list with comments, oddly facetious  comments. I Googled, and found an explosion of Websites, bloggers, and radio stations, who were sharing the Newsweek article with their readers. Clicking next, and next until my thumb got tired, I saw 89 versions of the 31 WAYS, that added their own sort of ha-ha (not funny) comments.

Anyhow, 31 ways to better your brain became a hot topic. After I re-read the nine pages, I boiled it down to the 14 things that sort of made sense to me:

 (1) Play Word Games with Friends; (2) Eat Turmeric [Indian spice that can reduce dementia]; (3) Taekwondo [Martial arts]; (4) Toss Your Smartphone; (5) Get a lot of Sleep [Harvard researchers proved it helps]; Build A ‘Memory Palace [associate things with vivid images]; (7) Learn A Language; (8) Eat Dark Chocolate; (9) Play Violent Video Games [it quicken reactions]; (10) Eat Yogurt; (11) See A Shakespeare Play; (12) Play A Musical Instrument; (13) Write By Hand; (14) Drink Coffee. (You can read about the 17 other things at the end of this blog.)   

In my opinion, Newsweek was saying  if you want to be smarter and there's something, anything that you like to do, love to do, and aren't doing -- DO IT.

In the meantime, I say EAT BLUEBERRIES -- they stimulate brain activity, according to researchers at the University of Cincinnati. (They are especially tasty when you eat them with cottage cheese and a small sprinkle of Sweet'N Lo to add sweetness.)

It's even smarter to eat pomegranates. Aside from their sweet and tart taste, their juice contains Punicalagins -- they do more for you than red wine, grape juice, cranberry juice, green tea or Acai juice. As a super-antioxidant, they provide protection against heart disease, cancer and cognitive impairment. Tests show individuals drinking pomegranate juice daily performed better on a memory task than non drinkers.

Guys, you can get Pomegranates from October through February, and you can always get some frozen blueberries -- be smart, not dumb, and yum your way back from our exhausting election into a deliciously bigified brain.

If you're brave with plenty of time on your hands, here's the link to my blog in 2012 that lists and briefly explains the 31 ways.

(VIDEO) JOHN CULLUM & EM'S SONG

Election 2016 inspires John Cullum and wife Emily Frankel to sing.

Here's they are, singing away, inviting you to join in.

RIGGED ELECTION ???

I subscribe to Time Magazine. It's a reliable source of what's going on in the world that often inspires me to write about it. Speculating on on whether the election could be rigged, the magazine detailed six ways it could be done. Using small ballot-box pictures (like temperature gauges), Time indicated how concerned we should be.

1. HACKING VOTING MACHINES.
"They’re ridiculously easy to get into,” says "White Scope" a leading provider of cybersecurity. "Forty-two states have old voting machines with out-of-date software, and have virtually no security protections." The top guy of "Center for Election Systems" (at Kennesaw, Georgia University), said the likelihood of someone changing the outcome of the national election is "very, very low," because voting machines are not connected to the Internet. A hacker would need a huge team to make physical contact with every machine. Also, electronic voting machines print out a paper copy of each vote cast, so if a machine was re-programmed to count more votes for one candidate, discrepancies could be identified by an audit of the paper receipts.
       Time listed nine states with old machines that do not produce paper receipts, and said, "30% of voters go to polling places that use paper ballots -- it's a modern age irony -- the best defense against high-tech election cheating is paper."
 (Yay -- thanks for the "ha ha," dear magazine.)

2. STEALING FROM CAMPAIGNS AND CANDIDATES

Hackers hacked several Democratic organizations this year. It probably affected the 2016 electoral process. Leaked emails suggested that Democratic Party officials favored Hillary. Bernie and his supporters staged protests, and caused the ouster of the DNC's chairwoman. Trump used this to attack Hillary, who claimed that Trump, with hacker pals linked to Russian intelligence, hacked the DNC's files. Time said, "It's hard to know if this scandal will affect the outcome of the election. " (...yii...the magazine's very worried, worries me...)

3. CHANGING VOTER REGISTRATION DATA
Federal officials confirmed that Russian hackers broke into voter-registration databases in Arizona and Illinois. The "Election Assistance Commission" met with the "Department of Homeland Security," the Justice Department, and the FBI. They concluded that even though a state’s voter-registration database could be changed, current laws allow voters to cast provisional ballots that can be checked against the state’s voter rolls -- therefore, a registered voter's ballot would be counted, therefore, this illegal stuff would not change the outcome of the election.  (...it wouldn't? hmmm...)

4. LIMITING POLLING PLACES

When Arizona, in a primary, reduced the number of polling places from 200 to 60, thousands of Latino voters stood in line for five hours; many gave up without casting a ballot. Lawyers for Democrats called foul, arguing that Arizona had disenfranchised minority voters. Arizona agreed to have more polling places available, but access to them -- location and hours -- are still  problems. Democrats are lobbying to add polling places and early voting days.
(...that's not a big worry...?)


5. NEW VOTER RESTRICTIONS

New requirements in 14 states restrict early voting, limit when you can register, and require proof of citizenship. Lawyers from the non-partisan "Brennan Center for Justice" are challenging these laws. A state court overturned North Carolina's voter-ID law on the grounds that it discriminated against African Americans. Lawyers are using this precedent to challenge related measures in Virginia, Texas, Alabama, South Carolina and Indiana.   
(.... another "not big" worry? ....hmmmmm....) 

6. PLAYING DIRTY

Some Virginia voters received letters warning that they were not properly registered, though they were. Last January, Iowa voters received citations saying they would commit a “voting violation” if they failed to show up to caucus. The FBI is currently investigating the various nefarious ways to keep certain populations from the polls --  including calling in a bomb threat, hacking into news sites, posting fake election results.

Hey guys, these six ways to rig the election, these not precise gauges -- they seem like a nice way for guesstimating, and reassuring us that illegal doings won't change the outcome of this election. I hmmed and Googled. The Boston Globe, in a much shorter article, also said, "A rigged election won't affect the outcome."

Does this put to rest our concerns -- our fears -- about a rigged election?

YIII!!! In my opinion the big deal about rigged elections is another one of the Trump-trumped up attacks, like undermining the legitimacy of a sitting president with birther conspiracies and wild-eyed claims about founding Isis. Meanwhile, Trump's treading water to keep from drowning in a mucky puddle of words he taped about how to get babes, but he'll trumpet himself out of that with repeated apologies. 

YIII!!! Bloomberg poll says 34 percent of likely voters from both parties think the election will be rigged; among Trump supporters, that number soars to 56 percent. I am very VERY concerned that the morning after the election, we'll have what we had when Al Gore actually won the election that put George W Bush in the Oval Office. Once burned, twice shy!!

I'm skeptical.

I'm scared.