{"id":2790,"date":"2022-05-16T16:51:24","date_gmt":"2022-05-16T23:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/?p=2790"},"modified":"2022-05-17T21:47:55","modified_gmt":"2022-05-18T04:47:55","slug":"mind-exercises-among-the-flowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/?p=2790","title":{"rendered":"MIND EXERCISES AMONG THE FLOWERS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our monthly fitness charge was to frolic among a chart of flowers<\/strong> by tallying our week\u2019s exercise, self-assessing the results and assigning our tokens to \u201cappropriate\u201d flowers. To the Physical Exercises suggested, e.g. walking, climbing stairs, I suggested including Mind Exercises because, as an exercise, my tepid, left-handed wave was, well, tepid, and I wanted to move among the flowers.\u00a0 Once Mind Exercises were included,\u00a0 I had to figure out what a Mind Exercise was, beyond the daily routine of Wordle, NYT crossword puzzle, Sudoku, Spelling Bee, and jigsaw puzzles [color analysis].\u00a0 Three “exercises” come to mind<\/p>\n

\"\"

\u201cBegone rain! Come Spring sun! \u201d says Seattle’s moving body bag that talks.<\/p><\/div>\n

I cracked a very funny joke.<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

During a Poetry Club reading of poems, Steve admitted to being ill-prepared, but he brought his new book of Amanda Gorman\u2019s poetry [Remember her at the Biden Inauguration?] and had already read one poem.\u00a0 So, as he readies himself to read a second one and looks AND LOOKS at one page in the book,, I begin to laugh inappropriately hard, and convulsively ask<\/span>, \u201cIs her poem named \u2018Silence,\u2019 and are you to say nothing for 3 minutes?\u201d<\/b>\u00a0 Steve looks up at me chortling, maybe crying a bit, and says, \u201cWhat?\u201d, pauses,\u00a0 and begins laughing, too.\u00a0 No one else was laughing or even paying attention.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I\u00a0 cracked a joke for sure, but is it even a joke if only the teller laughs? I was saved from this dilemma because Steve laughed with me.\u00a0 Then he said that he wasn’t laughing at my joke; he was laughing at me laughing at my joke. So problem or no, I cracked a very funny joke, and I’m laughing even as I write this.\u00a0 I award myself an equivalent challenge of a\u00a0Statue of Liberty up and down climb of 324 stairs.\u00a0<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

I had a really good idea<\/b>.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t find the NYT article about traits of a resilient person [Jane Brody\u2019s interview with Pauline Boss<\/a> is good, too.], but I can recall thinking, <\/span>\u201cAha! These are the traits of an adapter, who, by adapting, demonstrates resilience!.<\/b>\u201d\u00a0 This good idea expands my earlier thinking about \u201cadapting as a way of life and living longer\u201d which I explained to my fellow Oldies, but Goodies here at the Landmark.\u00a0 I\u00a0 made up three stages of becoming an adapter \u2013 accepting, accommodating, adapting \u2013 which, if adopted, should lead to living longer.\u00a0 And, as we here are all of an age, we are obviously master adapters.\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Now, how exciting would it be if adapting were considered a creative act?<\/b>\u00a0Every combo of person, need and situation calls for a singular solution which, when implemented, is a creative act of adaptation.\u00a0 Become one with the\u00a0 adaptations and, Voila! you are resilient.\u00a0 Good ideas happen in an \u201cAha! Moment\u201d, but they happen only to prepared minds and Zoom calls, visits with friends, constant alertness to possibilities which your son pretends to ignore, reading wisely and, apparently, subliminally, and so on.\u00a0 For the year- long interspersion of maybe significant thoughts, I award myself a tough, but worthy climb of Ireland’s Michael Skellig 1200 rocky steps.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Gleeful evil Oldie plotting? Or Adapter moving oatmeal?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

I thought of the right book for the right person at the right time<\/b>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Call it the teacher \/ librarian \/ Roseledge Books soothsayer in me, but I love being able to think of reasons why a certain book might be just right for someone else, but it is is a joy and challenge and friendship cementer that requires perpetual attention.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0For their wedding, Dazzle, who works with New York water, gets <\/span>Peter Wheelwright\u2019s The Doorman,<\/b> a mix of fact and fiction about three generations of intertwined families who saw \u201ctheir\u201d river in the Catskills be turned into a faucet for NYC users, and Andrew, who works with photography, gets<\/span> Errol Morris\u2019 Believing is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography<\/b> which the <\/span>NYT reviewer<\/b> writes \u201cis an attempt <\/span>to make sense of the relationship between the documentarian, the documented and the truth.\u201d\u00a0 Actually,\u00a0the whole review is worth a read.<\/a>\u00a0 For me, the Wheelwright book addresses the nature and nurture of families which is helpful for my family album project [a coming attraction], and the Morris book is among my very few favorite \u201csearch books\u201d.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For their exchange trip to Sweden, the Minneapolis naturalist \/ educators might enjoy <\/span>Frederick Sjoberg\u2019s The Fly Trap<\/b>, about which\u00a0<\/span>The Guardian reviewer says,<\/b> \u201c<\/span>Perhaps the only thing crazier than a hoverfly obsessive would be to write a genre-defying memoir about it and expect to find a publisher and readers. This, of course, is exactly what the writer, translator and biologist has done with <\/span>The Fly Trap<\/span><\/i><\/a>, and a small book about an obscure branch of entomology has become unexpectedly big\u201d\u00a0 Again, the whole review is worth a read<\/a>.\u00a0 The book is one of my favorite memoirs.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For the perpetual awareness this brain exercise requires, I\u00a0 think an equivalent challenge might be admiring or hiking the 272 steps up and\/or down at Golden Gardens<\/a> with a ride to and\/ or from the park, but for sure with time out for a a latte \/ book break and lots of ocean ponderings.<\/span><\/p>\n

And just for the physical exercise record<\/strong>:\u00a0 I do get a flower for “swimming\u201d each week, during which I walk in, not on, water and with noodle, flutter kick my way to exhaustion.\u00a0 It’s not exactly swimming, and Charlie helps, but I love it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I see a lavish bouquet forming.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our monthly fitness charge was to frolic among a chart of flowers by tallying our week\u2019s exercise, self-assessing the results and assigning our tokens to \u201cappropriate\u201d flowers. To the Physical Exercises suggested, e.g. walking, climbing stairs, I suggested including Mind … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2790"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2790"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2803,"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2790\/revisions\/2803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}