Tag Archives: Michael Pollan

No New Year Resolutions, but more of the same things that worked.

Monday, January 3. Is anybody else having a difficult time focusing? I imagine you are, too, and I pity (and envy) those of you in corporate America who are sitting through post-break meetings with visions of Christmas trees, parties, skiing trips, late mornings snuggled in flannel and all the rest of the nice things from the holidays still fresh in your feverish minds.

A quick word about New Year’s resolutions: they usually don’t work. At least for me, with one very major exception.

Instead, I think it makes more sense to keep working on those things in life you wanted to change, where you had already made a decent start and were beginning to get some traction.

You get to a certain point in life and it’s pretty much the same stuff year after year – yeah, we’d like to exercise more or differently, we’d like to lose a few pounds, we’d like to finally get that right employment or better our economic circumstances.

For me, today, a couple things come to mind that I’d like more of: fresh, local food, and stretching.

Farmers Market

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Farmers Market

After reading much of Michael Pollan, I’ve seen the benefits of buying fresh, organic, locally grown produce. I started by going to the Hollywood and Los Feliz farmers markets in LA, and continued with our local versions in Palm Springs after I moved here. One of the local farms I usually buy from is Sage Mountain Farm in Aguanga, CA.

Since I get stuff in season only, it’s a challenge to figure out how to eat it or cook it. So, my facility in culinary skill also benefits from farmers market shopping. I mean, really, how does it make sense to buy and apple or grapes from Chile or New Zealand when they’re grown on a mountainside I can see from my back yard (thank you, S. “The Quitter” Palin).

Stretching

all wrapped up (not me)

More precisely, yoga. I’ve made a number of forays into the world of yoga over the years, and am just currently waiting for a shoulder impingement syndrome to either end or be intervened on before I start back. Also, a New Year’s plug for Yummy Yoga in L.A. I started going there because I could walk from my place there, always a plus. But I loved their classes and teachers. It’s also owned by an insanely beautiful Irishwoman by the name of Ducky Punch.

HBO’s Temple Grandin, an Emmy-winning biopic

Claire Danes as Temple Grandin

Watched the DVD of Temple Grandin over the weekend. A biopic, it reminded me initially of A Beautiful Mind, Ron Howard’s bio movie of John Nash starring Russell Crowe. It seemed, however, more heartfelt? Perhaps having something to do with the focus on a young person trying to find herself in the world – so it is a rising up rather than a falling apart (of someone who had already made it) as in the case of A Beautiful Mind.

Filmmakers using the medium to really tell the story, with mathematical animations (I think Beautiful Mind had these too) and stills montages of thinking processes were helpful in understanding autism – as explained in the movie, understanding the world from pictures, not from language.

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One thing I would have loved seen explored is the whole idea of whether or not raising beef for food is a good idea at all – it’s taken as a given by the characters in the movie, which is a period piece (although a recent period). As a near vegetarian and avid reader of Michael Pollan, it’s hard not to think of this when watching all these cows.

Go rent the movie or watch it on HBO. It’s pretty wonderful.

The Butch Factor, and where the hell do I fit in?

Hey, don’t answer that!

I’ve never thought I was very butch, but then again, it’s not something I think about often, if at all. Maybe if I did, I’d be more studly, but I digress…. I really enjoyed Christopher Hines’ documentary The Butch Factor, which profiles a wide variety of gay men (and one – at least – transman) and their feelings about masculinity and what all goes into it, etc. Most importantly, how earlier life situations shaped expectations – or didn’t.

There were a number of Bay Area interviewees and locations, and I recognized one fellow from the Gold’s Gym SOMA – next to Dolby – where I used to work out when I lived there. There was a nice selection of guys on gay athletic teams – for me at least, a group I don’t hear much from in the gay press or otherwise. Also, a great section on black gay athletes, something I don’t believe I’ve ever seen.

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A thought-provoking and well-made documentary. It’s on netflix. He’s working on something called The Adonis Factor, which is scheduled for this summer. Can’t wait.