A Memorable Mass Transit Story

New York City Subway R Train

I was on the N train going to work early on Saturday morning. This was in New York. The subway car had maybe 10 people, including myself. As a group, we were still half asleep, this African-American woman with with long straight black

hair was walking back and forth in the car mumbling to herself at first. Being New Yorkers, no one paid much attention to her. I guess that annoyed her because she started talking loudly and complaining about stuff, I don't remember what, but since we were still ignoring her, she got slightly more annoyed. She then whipped her shirt off and walked up and down holding her big breasts and yelling "these are real!". That still didn't get her the attention she wanted because she felt the need to up the ante by whipping off her wig and throwing it on the floor. By this time some of us started to laugh, in shock by this time, I think. What happened after that I don't know because it was finally my stop and I got off the magical mystery tour.

What is your favorite way to get exercise?

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postday2011

Being a recovering anorexic, I have done many different types of exercise, bordering on the obsessive, to find the best way to burn those evil calories. Thank goodness those days are behind me. It was mentally exhausting to be focused on two things at all cost, how to eat as little calories as possible and how to burn those calories as quickly as possible. It has been 4 years of living with trying to reconcile eating normally and in a healthy way with exercising to keep my body and mind healthy and all the while not obsessing with pounds and inches gained or lost. I have, depending on the days, come to an arrangement with myself about food and exercise. No matter what, I try not to beat myself up if I indulge in ice cream or a chocolate shake. Tomorrow is another day of healthy eating and it’s okay. One day of more calories does not signal the end of all good things. It is amazing the hatchet job you can unleash on yourself when you are feeling down. Same thing with the exercise, it’s okay to miss a day or two if you’re not feeling up to it. Your body will even appreciate the exercise more after a day or two respite. The exercise will be even more powerful for calorie burning. I really don’t know if any of that is true, but it’s what I tell myself, and it works for the most part.

My favorite form of exercise and that suits my routine the best is walking, I used to do yoga and I really liked it, once I got there, but that was the issue, I had to get there. There, means the yoga studio and it’s twenty minutes by car from the house, which translates into an easy excuse not to have to go. So, eventually one day I’ll get back to yoga but for now and ever I will stick to walking. In the morning for 50 minutes, as soon as I get up and I’m still half asleep I walk up the mountain to the top of North street and proceed to Huntington road and turn around and walk back home. It’s about 4 miles and since it’s become my routine, I have my “posse”, my friends who wave at me while they are on their way to work. It’s nice to see them wave, I wave back and often in town, if they haven’t seen me in a few days, they make a point to ask me if I’m feeling okay, if my health is giving me a problem. They are very kind. With them, I have almost a built in support group and in my head that keeps me going because I kind of feel that not only am I letting myself down when I don’t walk but I’m letting them down as well. Have a little bit of an ego, don’t we? Not really, but it works, and that is what counts.

Keep walking, it does wonders for whatever ails you.

Money Is a Concept: Pain, Hip-Hop, and Economic Soul-Sickness

I have a lot of respect for Mr. Eskow and his insights, as I do for Mr. Wendall Potter. These are two men who have been in the business, know of what they are talking about and are courageous enough to share the mindset from within the correspond­ing lairs of Wall Street and the health insurance companies. I am of the mind and have always been that full frontal capitalism does not work for society at large and that there is no such thing as the “free market”. The free market is a GOP myth and it only applies in their eyes to those less fortunate. The oil companies, Wall Street, corporatio­ns at large do not live in a free market world. The GOP has them on “corporate welfare” and we see this every day. So I can’t understand why the GOP and Tea Party base can’t open their eyes and see the huge hypocrisy that the GOP peddles. Honestly, I prefer my capitalism to be warm and fuzzy, not cut throat or kill or be killed. Can’t we just hug it out?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

The S&P Downgrade Market Plunge Myth

How do we fight all this complete misconcept­ion of what constitute­s the source of our economic problems when it seems that historical data from the depression doesn’t matter, the horrendous economic legacy of the Bush years doesn’t matter, and the economic facts coming out of Europe’s failed austerity programs don’t matter either. What are we to do? You attempt to have a rational discourse with these people and show them empirical data and they come back with the same nonsensica­l arguments, social security is bankrupt, taxes are costing us jobs, regulation­s are costing us jobs, unions are job killers, privatize everything and finally government is the problem.Wh­at really gets me is that the GOP policies pushed us into becoming a consumer spending driven society or at least 70% driven, and then when the economy implodes and those consumers do the responsibl­e thing and start paying down their debt instead of doing their previous job and spend to keep the economy rolling, the GOP is left with their pants down because they don’t know what to do now that the only source of spending to fuel the economy is broke. This is what has happened and is happening and by starving the beast they are actually killing the beast.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Can Win by Being Bipartisan and Bold

President Obama on his bus tour needs to be relentless with pushing good ideas for jobs creation. I know that there is the “infrastru­cture bank” idea that is still alive on the hill and Senator Kerry has been keeping it going and President Obama is using that as one of his platforms which is great but he needs to forget about the free trade agreements because if you look at NAFTA and other free trade agreements they cost us jobs and gave corporatio­ns all the benefits at our expense. Free trade does not mean FAIR trade. I think that President Obama should go out on a limb and call for more to be done on the mortgage foreclosur­e crisis and debt forgivenes­s, that alone would put more money back into the economy.Th­ose people would be able to buy again instead of putting all their money in a never-endi­ng money pit designed by the financial industry just for us. I know the banks will suffer but I don’t care. We have bailed them out, they are nothing but a corrupt bunch of thieves who have been using underhande­d means to increase their profits at our expense. No more. I say.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Issues I Like to Debate

Paul Krugman

I enjoy debating about politics, history, religion, but it depends with who. Sometimes religion can get a little dicey. I will debate that we should have listened to Paul Krugman, the economist, when he said that the stimulus package of 2009 was too small and that we should have gone bigger. The sheer devastating impact of the great recession was accurately measured at the time and the stimulus wasn't enough to do long lasting cumulative effects.

Do you blog anonymously or as “yourself”. Why?

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postaday2011

I blog as “myself”. It never occurred to me to do otherwise. I suppose if I had a blog-site that had a purpose such as critiquing food, or giving ideas for recipes or writing a novel and presenting it on the blog, chapter by chapter, weekly, like they did in Edgar Allen Poe’s time, I would give my blog-site a title but I don’t think I would be anonymous about it. I would still give my name as the author.

I’ve never been creative in that way, I’m better at creating a well turned out phrase, but to come up with some clever, witty pseudonym, that isn’t up my alley. For the most part, what you see is what you get. I try to be honest and writing my blog as “myself” keeps me honest and in the moment. There will be an evolution of style, (at least I really hope so) content and even thought processes and I would like the audience to take the journey with me, as they know me.

I belong to the Huffington post community and I therefore can contribute comments on articles and bloggers themselves. I comment as “myself” because it never occurred to me to adopt a screen name. I do have to say that I get a real kick at the screen names I see everyday. There are so many clever ones, some of them are bigfootJesus, Safire and perhaps my favorite, Juicybrisket. They crack me up and put a smile on my face. Sometimes I write something that resonates with someone and they click me as a fan, which is exciting to me because a total stranger liked what I said enough to “fan” me. It makes me feel as good as the comrades in arms I have, who subscribe to my posts. I have to say that postaday2011 is such a great group to be a part of, and I ‘m so glad to have stumbled onto this site and decided to expand my horizons and start writing. I like posting as “me”, I feel like I am sharing with the world at large and it appeals to me. It is cathartic to say the least and I think that I’m getting better at it with the daily exercise of writing. I have just started and I’m curious to see where this leads me, how much further I will go and how many twists and turns I will encounter? I’m good for the ride, are you?