Important exercises for older adults

While any movement is always better than none, there are certain foundational exercises that need to be performed on more than designated workout days, says Ann Phelps, D.P.T., a physical therapist at Athletico Physical Therapy in Chicago.

Why? Because that’s how you’ll get the results you want, from improving strength and mobility to building better balance to staying independent longer.

Below, Phelps shares the four most important exercises to add to your daily routine.

4 Exercises Older Adults Should Do Every Day (silversneakers.com)

Reminders of Lakeside

Yesterday I bought some long stem sunflowers at Kroger, but when I looked in our cabinets, I didn't like the choices of vases. Instead I cut the stems and selected a small blue bowl made by our Lakeside friend, Ed Day, who died in 2020. I think Ed and Happy had a sale when they moved from Dayton to Lakeside after retirement. That's probably how I happened to have it. It's inscribed on the bottom with his name and date. Then I added some lovely hand painted Blue Ridge China (Mountain Ivy pattern) from the Southern Potteries company (1916-1957) Erwin, TN. I bought these from the Lakeside Archives in 2020 when they had a little store (for just one season) of donated items where the Archives is now located on Walnut St.

  

  

Biden calls out GOP MAGA as fascist

It's nothing new to point out how the Democrats accuse the Republicans of doing what they themselves are doing. Like smearing all Trump voters as fascists because they question the tricks and travesties of the 2020 election, when Hillary Clinton, Stacy Abrams, Al Gore, etc. have all done it earlier, longer and louder. But they have "science" to back them up. Well, social science. There was a pseudo-scientific study done in the 1950s , "The Authoritarian Personality" by Theodor Adorno and others. It was massaged a bit for American academe and was popular in the 1980s with all sorts of levels of personality traits to explain the Germans of WWII and the right wing Americans. And of course, they could then pin it on anyone not buying into the Democrats' left party line from pronouns to polar bears. It's now used to explain any form of patriotism, flag display, devotion to western family structure including traditional marriage, and common civil qualities like merit, hard work and duty. It fit right into the whole BLM fight created by 3 over-educated Marxist lesbians who needed a scam to make money. They may hate capitalism, but they LUV money.

Just 2 of the qualities on the scale of fascism show how silly it is, since they most perfectly describe the horrors of today's Leftist in government and academe--concern that the world is going to end (anyone heard of ramping up fear of climate change?) and obsession with sex (whoa! 50+ genders and boys can be girls by just imagining it and famous universities with medical departments to remove healthy breasts and implant penises in little confused girls?) There's more, but you get my drift. Crying fascist while pointing one finger with four pointing back at the accuser is just typical Democrat sign language.

 
But if you ever doubted, take a look at the slavish devotion to chaos commands of the BLM/Antifa movement and the mindless Democrats who rushed to cry "defund police," but now deny they ever said it during the George Floyd riots. The travesty of the J-6 trial and their obsession with destroying Donald Trump are perfect examples of the authoritarian scale they love to use on others.

 
Warning: I know nothing about this author (a British Jazz saxophonist and political writer whom the left calls racist and anti-Semitic, of course) or platform, and the site is censored by FB, so that's something. But on this topic, they are right. Our own media shows it every day in every way. Like Biden's last speech. When you have nothing to say and are an empty suit, accuse half the country of being fascist.

https://www.newsfromtheperimeter.com/home/2020/12/27/the-fascist-scale-revisited

Laying siege to the Institutions--Christopher Rufo

Christopher Rufo is the new "hate on him" guy that the Left loves to ridicule and demean. Why? Because he exposes Wokeism, CRT, trans-agenda, queer theory, intersectionality, etc. with the Sword of Truth, and a clear explanation of their own Leftist/Marxist history and direction. What looks like chaos to you, is well planned."The leftist dream of a working-class rebellion in America fizzled after the ’60s. By the mid-1970s, radical groups like the Black Liberation Army and the Weather Underground had faded from prominence. But the leftist dreamers didn’t give up. Abandoning hope of a Russian-style revolution, they settled on a more sophisticated strategy—waging a revolution not of the proletariat, but of the elites, and specifically of the knowledge elites. It would proceed not by taking over the means of production, but by taking control of education and culture—a strategy that German Marxist Rudi Dutschke, a student activist in the 1960s, called “the long march through the institutions.”

This idea is traceable to Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, who wrote in the 1930s of “capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”

This march through our institutions, begun a half-century ago, has now proved largely successful. Over the past two years, I’ve looked at the federal bureaucracy, the universities, K-12 schools, and big corporations. And what I’ve found is that the revolutionary ideas of the ’60s have been repackaged, repurposed, and injected into American life at the institutional level." https://christopherrufo.com/laying-siege-to-the-institutions/

Controlling K-12 of public and private education is essential. Why else have the DoJ attack parents? The younger the better. Perhaps the only Biblical principal the Left has learned well, is Proverbs 22:6--"Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it." In my opinion, the Leftists are the losers with old, tired ideas in contrast to our U.S. Constitution (which they hate) has the fresh, recent and revolutionary ideas. The only similarity might be that the 60s Weather Underground and the 2011 Occupy Movement were the white, young, wealthy and best educated; our Founders were also white, young, wealthy and well educated. The difference is the radicals of the 1960s and 21st century were spoiled brats and guilt ridden by their own abundance. Their only desire was/is to create chaos--and the plan now begins in the schools--even pre-K. To create confusion about family, marriage, sex, religion, purpose, meaning, ambition, merit, etc.

Tracking down an artist, Julia Crainer

We brought all our artwork to Columbus on Saturday from our recently sold Lakeside home.  One I had always enjoyed, but didn't have the provenance, had defeated my internet searches. From the signature on the original painting of hot peppers I bought at Cottage Accessories, a little resale store in Lakeside in 2008, I was looking for Julia Grawer. I did find other paintings by that signature, at an Minnesota auction site of radishes, garlic and lettuce.  It had been sold but it did have an enlargement feature for the signature.  When I clicked on that, I could see that the name was Crainer, not Grawer.  The i and the n looked like a w without enlargement.  So I kept looking, and finally found an auction site where someone had left a comment about her:

"Julia Crainer is a lovely artist from Texas who has taught at Coastal Bend College and Concan Porcelain Art School. I have been lucky enough to take a watercolor class with her 3 times. Loved EVERY minute of learning from her. She painted this watercolor of corn which she either grew or bought at the market. Her signature style in some of her prints... is to watercolor...and when finished....add fine ball point pen marks on top in black ink." :D

Once I'd tracked her to Texas I looked for an obituary that mentioned "art teacher," and I found one, very lovingly written by a son. She died November 19, 2015 at 90.

"Julia was born in Bay City, Texas to MacMillan and Gladys Ballard Arrington on November 29, 1924. In Passing, She was undoubtedly greeted after hugging her Soulmate husband Everett, by many of the family, friends, and students that she loved, taught, mentored and inspired in her long, productive, and inspiring life that crossed over previously.

Julia’s life was centered on family and art. When at three she was given paints, her natural gift for art was discovered and encouraged by her gifted parents. Later her talent was recognized by several artists who mentored her. A short autobiography written for a 2010 gallery display of Crainer’s multi-media artwork states,

“…. My life has been too long and full for me to include everyone who has been significant in my life and career, but I must mention Everett Mac and Jim, my dear sons who, along with my Everett, have been the center of my adult life. I thank my family, teachers, students, and friends for all they have done to enrich my life.

I also want to thank God for giving me my gift and a family that encouraged me to use it. As a two time cancer survivor, I also thank God for restoring my health. I believe God gives each one of us gifts that he expects us to use for others and for Him. I was put here to have two sons. As a teacher, I try to help others develop their gifts as many helped me develop mine. I hope to teach as long as God grants me health and life.”

The Lord gave mom over 70 years as a Teacher, 56 Yrs as a wife, 70 yrs as a Loving Mother and almost 92 years of living Life making so many new loving friends along the way.

Crainer’s joy was creating special Art works for her family, but her Artwork is known far beyond her family, friends, and state. Many of her paintings reside in foreign countries and other states. 

More here.  https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/202953990/julia-ballard-crainer

She makes a great pork tenderloin

 So I asked her.  How do you do this?  She told me, but I was on my walk at Lakeside, and had stopped by her house (she was sitting outside reading), so then she texted  me.

Salt, pepper, olive oil, bacon grease/ however you choose to season

> Braise to brown on stovetop
> 400* oven, do not cover
> 20-25 min.
> Done when 145* internal temp./I use a meat thermometer
> Let rest 5-10 min. before slicing.
> Serve & enjoy!

She's a vegan.  But remembers when she wasn't, so she still does a great dinner party. She had put bacon in the coleslaw, so that's how she happened to have the bacon grease. It was yummy too.

If you leave the gate open -- author unknown

This is making the rounds. I don't know the writer/source.

"If You Leave the Gate Open"

If you leave the gate open, the cow will wander off. So, if you intentionally leave the gate open, you want the cow to wander off. You can't blame stupidity or laziness. It was intentional.

If you cut police budgets, you will get more crime on the streets. So, if you intentionally cut police budgets, you wanted more crime on the streets.

If you cut back the supply of oil, gas prices will go up. So if you intentionally cut back the supply of oil, you wanted gas prices to go up.

If you print trillions of dollars without increasing the supply of goods, inflation will hit hard. So if you intentionally print trillions of dollars without more goods you wanted inflation to hit hard.

If you leave the southern border wide open, you get more drug trafficking and human trafficking. So if you intentionally leave the border wide open, you wanted more drug trafficking and human trafficking.

If you shut down 40% of the supply of baby formula in February, you'll get a huge shortage. When you KNOW a huge baby formula shortage is coming because of the FDAs actions, and you purposefully do nothing to prevent it, month after month, until the crisis finally hits hard, you INTENDED this crisis.

It is time to recognize the evil people behind Joe Biden. They want crisis. They want chaos. They want riots. They want conflicts in your town.

 
Their stated purpose years ago with Obama was to "take the US down a few notches on the world stage." You can feel the quality of your life going down with the country.

These are not foolish or misguided people. They are taking our country somewhere we don't want to go...

https://www.nationalreview.com/2014/04/taking-us-down-notch-thomas-sowell/

The Purple Martin, Robin and Hummingbird

On my morning walk today I was thinking about some of the common birds I see--the purple martin, the robin, and the hummingbird. In central Ohio, the robin sticks around, but here near Lake Erie they migrate to get away from our bitter winters. The purple martins come in the spring and are gone by August 1--they eat thousands of mosquitoes while they are here and then fly 5,000 miles to South America. The hummingbirds are around for about 3 seasons, but they also migrate. They also eat a lot of bugs, but too many people try to "help" with sugary mixes to attract them--sort of like welfare, good intentions but bad results. Robins are omnivores--bugs and berries, but they are also a food source for predator birds.

So what if there were a government program for equity among the birds. What would that do to diversity if there were a D.I.E. department that tried to force the robins to fly the wind currents of the swallow family (purple martins are swallows) to South America.

 
Or what if Biden passed an executive order that purple martins had to sacrifice their lake habitat to become a food source for the hawks in my back yard in Columbus?

 
What if the hummingbirds had to be inclusive and share that bottle of sugary mix with the robins who then would stop eating bugs because the goo tastes better?

 
And what if the robins decided they needed the longer wings of the swallow so they could eat on the fly instead of toiling to dig the worms out of the ground? Would we have surgery clinics for bird wings?

 
How hard could it be to convince a female purple martin she'd look more sexy and be more successful if she only had longer wing feathers of the male purple martin? Maybe the female purple martin could apply to the government for the longer feathers transplant of the male (a sexual attractions feature).

 
Silly you say. So are the equity demands being foisted on us in the laws and regulations of a power hungry government--federal, state, local, and the lily livered, go along to get along woke corporations, non-profits and churches.

Climate change narrative of Big Tech

 Facebook wants to tell me how climate is changing in my area each time I post research that goes against its power agenda. It sends a message about temperatures in my geographic area even though temperature isn't climate. Every morning I walk where there use to be a glacier retreating to what is now Canada as the Great Lakes were being formed. I think I know the climate has changed. Now, go and harass elsewhere Oh mighty Meta (Facebook's new name).

What is an existential threat?

I can't figure out why the left thinks Trump was/is an "existential" threat. What does that even mean? That he might run out on our allies and Americans in the middle east? That he might increase our taxes? That he might hire enough IRS agents to populate a small city? That he might drive the economy into inflation and recession at the same time? That he might lead the charge against freedom of speech? That he might collude with the press? That he might encourage the FBI to attack his political enemies? That he might worsen the relationship with China? That he might destroy the fossil fuel industry condemning us to a return to the pre-industrial age? That he might encourage WWIII?

Who exactly is a threat to the United States? I think he's living in the White House, not in Trump Towers.

Jennifer Sey, former gymnast, fired for speaking out for children

Jennifer Sey lost her dream job with Levi Strauss for speaking out against the crusade against children, forcing them to wear masks and lose 2 years of education. Earlier she was (belatedly) considered a hero for exposing the underbelly of the gymnastics Olympics. But when she used that toxic mix to speak up for the voiceless, she was "cancelled."

 
"More broadly, emotional and physical abuse was actually the norm and we were all so beaten down by that and made so obedient that when we knew there was a sexual abuser in our midst, we would never say anything," Sey recalled to Indianapolis Star reporters in a scene captured by the documentary.

 
"The standard methodology of coaching in elite gymnastics was cruelty," she told the documentary." But when she said the school lockdown and masking were cruel, no one listened. In fact, her woke corporation sent this life-time Democrat packing.

https://www.oxygen.com/true-crime-buzz/netflixs-athlete-a-who-is-former-gymnast-jennifer-sey

https://summit.news/2022/02/16/levis-brand-president-says-she-was-offered-1-million-to-shut-up-about-being-fired-over-criticizing-covid-restrictions/

“This didn’t seem at all controversial to me. I felt—and still do—that the draconian policies would cause the most harm to those least at risk, and the burden would fall heaviest on disadvantaged kids in public schools, who need the safety and routine of school the most.”
“In the summer of 2020, I finally got the call.”

“‘You know when you speak, you speak on behalf of the company,’ our head of corporate communications told me, urging me to pipe down.”

Despite pleading that she was merely speaking in a personal capacity as “a public school mom of four kids,” Sey said the final straw was when she appeared on Fox News with Laura Ingraham and criticized further school closures.

Levi Strauss & Co. subsequently released a false statement claiming Sey had “resigned from the company.”

The colleges' role in the student loan crisis

"Here is how the education industrial complex works.

 The universities spent $130 million lobbying to get this loan forgiveness done. The university needs money to pay for the vast overhead created by all the costs of the DEI staffs and the high operating overhead of all the amenities they now offer. 

So, they raise tuition, and then convince students to take out loans to cover the tuition which is really to cover their inflated operating budget. The student wants to attend, so they borrow, not understanding the economics of what they are doing. 

The government makes the loan with no assessment of ability to repay, or if the course of study is one that will provide a job paying enough to cover repayment. The school gets its operating costs covered by getting the students to borrow the needed working capital to operate the school. They then can put donations from rich guys who want their kid admitted, into their huge endowment which is just a giant investment portfolio. 

So now the university has gotten the student and the government to cover their operating costs, with zero liability to the university for the borrowed funds. It is magic. It is a total scam.

Meantime they have courses like gender studies, or others that have nil value to the student or employers when they graduate. So now the kid has no way to earn enough to pay the loan that financed the university operating budget. That is the reality of student loans. Universities are a corrupt cabal now destroying a whole generation with nonsense courses, and no free thought allowed. This will harm the nation for many years. This is one more example of why we are fighting the Amy Wax war. Between teachers’ unions and university corruption and ideology, we are in real trouble educationally."

(The Ross Rant, 8/27/22)

Comments on Amy Wax mentioned above: "On Dec. 20, Wax in an interview with Glenn Loury, a professor at Brown University, said that since “most” Asian Americans support the Democratic Party, “the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration.”

After backlash to those remarks, the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School’s Dean Ted Ruger announced on Jan. 14 that he had initiated a faculty review process that could result in sanctions imposed on Wax." (Daily Princetonian, Jan. 27, 2022)

The National Archives and Republican Presidents

The National Archives is somewhere in the mess at the raid on Mar a Lago. Seems to be some history there. In July 2004 I blogged about the selection of anti-Bush titles the Archives had in its on site government book store. Jonathan V. Last had written about it in the Wall St. Journal. As deep swamp staffers, they don't seem to like Republican presidents. Ever.

"The author, Jonathan V. Last, says there is not one neutral or admiring book on President Bush, just the anti-Bush, anybody-but-Bush, bashes. I've seen these political tables at Barnes and Noble Bookstores, but they at least make an effort to present a variety of views. Mr. Last said something to the clerk, who apparently assumed he was approving of the staff choices, and he responded, "We tell [the people who complain about the titles] that they're not anti-Bush. They're just correcting the facts." The accompanying cartoon shows a puzzled customer at book tables labeled: Harangues, Screeds, Conspiracy Theories, and Rants. Last's final paragraph is priceless:

"It's possible that George W. Bush is an illegitimately installed fascist monster leading America's military-industrial complex on a nuclear crusade for world domination. But what kind of dime-store dictator can't even crush dissent at his own bookstore?"

Surprise visitors today

 I heard some commotion outside and heard voices.  It turns out our good friends Tom and Natalie, their daughters and sons-in-law, and three grandchildren were renting a cottage just a few doors away.  A good reunion. Tom helped us in 1989 when we had carpet installed, and he and Bob's Cursillo group came up here during the winter one year.

How the Left manipulates our language, and thus our thought, to shut us up

On my walk along the peaceful, quite Lake Erie this morning, I was listening to Molly Hemingway, "You're wrong" podcast, of The Federalist Radio Hour, and she commented on the use of the word denier and denial by Democrats. From that is the origin of this blog entry. I haven't done much with my Smart Phone, but it is useful for podcasts and radio archives.

Take the smear, "denier." It works with the holocaust. Not with Climate, not with Election. I know this comes as a shock to those who've accepted a cartoon version of history, climatology, weather, and science, but those the Democrats and "scientists" demean as "climate deniers" do not deny that there are changes--we question your research on the speed, the causes, the events, and the politicization, etc.--all of our theories and ideas are also backed up by sound research. Plus, some like me, are old enough to remember Paul Ehrlich's scam, "The Population Bomb."

And we also don't deny the election. We question the results, those entrusted with the counting, the changed rules even by Republican governors which were never lawful, the drop boxes, the incredible turn around in just key states in the middle of the night, etc. Every political party, voter and candidate can question the results of an election. Hillary Clinton and Al Gore, for example. It's a built in part of our system. Democrats invented the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax so we would question and impeach a lawfully elected president who threatened (but didn't succeed) to drain the swamp.

By appending the word "denier" to Climate and to Election, the Democrats actually want you to associate it with a terrible time in the 20th century which resulted in the deaths of millions of Jews. (This resulted in the new state of Israel, which Democrats are also conflicted over.) They want to view changes in climate as requiring that I be tried in a court of phony research. If I were employed, they'd take my job. They want us to believe that the J-6 protestors were more dangerous than the Civil War, the U.S. war that killed more Americans than all others combined. 

That word DENIER is part of their plot to diminish us, to insult us, and to bully. And that's not a conspiracy theory. That's basic Democrat 101.

H

Wednesday night picnic August 24

 The last family picnic of the season--we're sitting at a picnic table with Bob and Pat Borean in the foreground and a few others enjoying hot dogs, baked beans, macaroni salad, chips, watermelon, cookies and lemon-ade. You can see us in the second photo too, Bob in the navy shirt on the white chair.  Games for the kids, always fun to watch.

  

Harder than it looks--shoulder exercises--Silver Sneakers

 https://youtu.be/cTE_pEtQmV0

It can be challenging to get through daily activities when your shoulders don't move the way they once did. Here are six daily exercises that can help improve your shoulder range of motion.

I found these challenging, so did fewer than she suggested. 

Why did Ezra tell the Jews to send away their foreign wives and children?

The command by Ezra to divorce the foreign wives certainly sounds cruel and not inclusive by our modern values.  We're reading Ezra today in our Women's Bible Study at the Lakeside Women's Club.  I'm not sure I ever read it, but it was very interesting.  I even did some deep diving into Bible commentaries on the internet.  Would you believe there are some Christian authors who treat Ezra-Nehemiah as leadership guides or building programs for churches!  Whoa. But to our modern values, separating families sounds very harsh. Read what this commentator on the Hebrew Bible has to say:  https://elwynshebrewbiblepage.weebly.com/the-inter-marriage-crisis-in-ezra-and-nehemiah.html

"Ezra 9 blames the intermingling of the races as the cause for his people’s woe, and why it should be forbidden[2]. This “intermarriage crisis”, as Ezit is commonly referred to, is therefore very important. For Ezra, the problem with foreigners and other non-returnees is that they were associated with “abominations and uncleanliness”, and intermarrying with them threatened Israel’s stability and its prosperity, as represented by land ownership, since God required the people to be clean and free of abominations in order to possess it.

A code in Ezra specifies who could marry who. A Jew could only marry another Jew who had experienced the Exile. Those who had remained in the land during the Exile were unacceptable. Ezra provided a genealogy distinguishing between those who were considered acceptable and those who were not, but it is suspect. Those who had married “other” women were commanded to divorce them. This was motivated by a fear of pollution of the Holy Seed and uncleanliness.

A Holiness code is also described in Ezra Ch 17, holiness being the antithesis of impurity. Ezra’s command was not to mix the Holy Seed. This was a means of consolidating a new identity. On the other hand, Nehemiah offered other, potentially more concrete, reasons for the denunciation of mixed marriages: such marriages produced children who could not speak the Judean language (Neh.13:24), and Solomon’s experience showed that foreign wives can cause a man to sin (Neh. 13:26). Solomon tolerated the worship of gods other than Yahweh, and did so because his foreign wives gave him the opportunity to do so (1 Kings 11).

Related factors include concern about the influence women have on their families. Children would likely learn the language of a foreign mother, and within the household a woman’s religious practices could influence the beliefs and practices of her children and her husband. The culture and religion of the father and the family’s feelings of connection and deference to them could conceivably then be threatened. Marriage also affected property ownership and inheritance, geared as they were in order to protect land tenure. If the wife or the children had strong connections to a community other than that of the husband/father, the land could effectively leave the community’s sphere of influence. In certain circumstances, Jewish women could possess and inherit land[3] and this may also have been the case in Judah. During the post-Exilic period, there was an attempt to reconstitute a new tradition: that the land has been polluted by the intermarriage of those who stayed behind during the exile, so the returnees had to distance ourselves from that.

The consequence was that the local residents - Samaritans who thought of themselves as the direct descendants of the original Northern Kingdom - were without any right to the land, and those who had been deported and gone into Exile, or rather their descendants, those of pure blood, came back with the message that the land belongs to us and we are going to seize it and settle there[4]."

Maajid Nawaz, British activist and radio presenter

 https://youtu.be/zJX3byjYSMc

Interview with Joe Rogan. But not full.  You'll remember Rogan was "cancelled" because he wouldn't toe the line about Covid. He is available on subscription on other channels. Most sites I check say, Not available. 

Podcast notes: #1780 - Maajid Nawaz | Joe Rogan Experience • Podcast Notes

  Comments from other listeners.

"I normally want to leave people to discover on their own but i cannot recommend this episode enough, the most succinct 3+ hr (with ALL the proof) explanation for the current state of world affairs and our potential future that I've heard."

"Joe gets canceled by the media then comes out with an interview no media would even dare to report on. Good way to shut down the negative hype around Rogan right now!!"

"Terribly important interview. Joe is the greatest he has ever been. Obviously challenged by all this, but who wouldn't be. Maajid is obviously a true man of faith, it is amazing what he has accomplished despite so much opposition. Much support to both of them!"

"I've listened to just about every JRE, and started listening 10 years ago. Maajid is one of the most interesting and articulate person I've ever listened to on the podcast. So glad he's out there."

Putting my smart phone to use

Since I received a smart phone, I've rarely made a call, but I listen to lots of podcasts. Lately, one of my go-to sites has been Dark Horse. Bret Weinstein was cancelled by Evergreen University in 2017, so he and his wife now earn a living making life hard for the pompous, the woke, the bureaucrats, Big Tech, the vicious virtuous, and powerful players and he gives space to the disappeared and cancelled. He is a biologist so has interesting things to say about the medical system and medical statistics. Definitely not a Republican or a Trump supporter, but if you are one, you'll enjoy this one. He just uses bigger words.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bret-weinstein-darkhorse-podcast/id1471581521 More than one platform, but I don't know how these work.