Signs for the Ages: "Soglin for Mayor; Nixon's a Crook":

If you walked down State Street in Madison in 1970..and gazed to the right, you would have seen two large signs on the buildings....one proclaimed "Soglin for Mayor" and the second sign on a different building...."Nixon's A Crook". This week without fanfare, Paul Soglin had hip surgery...and someone replaced him at the helm. Paul became mayor again recently and addressed the Edgewater...the Library...the Overture..and the budget for the city of Madison....and he did again what the citizens of Madison have COUNTED on him to do....come thru for them.... Best wishes on a speedy recovery, Paul Soglin. After all these years....we are still counting on you...

You're not chunky because you had too many "Olives"

In one presentation on dieting, our instructor went on about the calories in alcohol. Wondering, I raised my hand and asked; " How many olives are there in a serving?" She responded; " Richard, You're not chunky because you have had too many olives. You can have as many as you want. Thus whenever I order a gin martini, shaken not stirred, straight up, I always order "double olives." Then she went on: "When you review liquor, and the calories...what happens when you drink? That's right...you tend to eat MORE. After a drink you might relax and have a second, third or fourth piece of pizza. How true it is. And another thing, when in the drinking scene, pretty soon it gets to the lowest denominator.....Why not light the dinner candles, make the martini with double olives, and then sip it slowly like a special dinner in a castle.....Savor it. And the double olives....

SSS---

Over the past three months, I have plotted what things have contributed to my diet slips......And I have concluded that the term SSS covers it. S is for Stress. Being mild mannered, I have had the tendency to just eat a cheeseberger when faced with challenges I could not solve quickly. I found that holiday stress and kids stress max this out. The second element of stress is work stress...and if one is confined or maybe "caged" is a better term, in a work cubicle, and then stressed with uncontrolled volume of interaction with customers...who might be occasionally unhappy...the result on diet is bad...I am going to change that..... For the second S I have concluded that "Social" or peer presure or whatever one would call it, the types of friends and their attitude toward healthy eating have a profound effect on diet...During football season I need something else but eating, drinking and watching football to do. And it helps to have friends with interests beyond this. And finally, a S can be for structure...On having projects and activities designated so that eating is not my primary hobby. .

The Rise of "Gangsta" Government: Oh the Glories of Little Bohemia

Recently I took a winter pilgrimage of sorts up to Manitowish Waters in Northern Wisconsin to spend a weekend near "Little Bohemia"---the resort where the FBI had that famous gun battle with John Dillinger as depicted in the recent movie. As I approached the lodge in the erie darkness, I was stunned that the very dark display of the film was in fact how it was in real life....we had a wonderful time at dinner there where there are momentos of the Dillenger event and I do recommend everyone to take a trip to see for yourself...but I digress... Those were the days when bold robbers met their fate at the hands of skillfull lawmen of the young FBI....what has happened to those days when bribery and extortion were met with the righteous wrath of the courageous FBI? Take for example the recent event in Madison, Wisconsin where a noted corporation, posing through a middleman, threatened the State of Wisconsin that they would leave for the warm weather of Florida unless they were paid several million dollars to relocate to the nearby Middleton...... How is this different from the famous extortion cons of the wild 1930"s. Very simple. Now we call it Economic Development.

A good kind of DEBT: CALORIC DEBT

America wants to shed debt---but there is a GOOD kind of debt---caloric debt. If one assumes that a human body has a normal burn of 10 times body weight---or that say a person weighing 240 burns about 2400 calories per day to maintain the current weight----then it follows that any consumption of food less than that combined with exercise to burn off calories, will result in a caloric deficit...and if one keeps very good records---you can pretty much calculate how much weight you can lose over time with that deficit---the problem comes in CHANGING ones habits to get that deficit and getting it in a healthy way supervised by health professionals of course. The problem comes in confronting the reality of what one is consuming---it is kind of like confronting accounting...when one puts the budget on the refrigerator and then somehow the ending checkbook balance does not corresponde to the plan. The budget is fiction...ditto for the diet. Diets have to be honest as to what is consumed as well as the amount of exercise and the amounts of calories burned.

Weight Reflections; "There is nothing funny about CHUNKY"

Back in the late sixties---particularly the 69-70 year when in Madison there were the riots and the leadership of Paul Soglin and the anti war leaders---those were the days... And as a side note, the rebel dj's who filled the airwaves with rock, always predicated their broadcast with the note that they were reporting to the station after an all niter of booze and fun, and in fact, over the years, EVERY single day for the past 40 years they have asserted that the were fully loaded from the night before...and to tell the truth from a stricly content based evaluation....that may have been the case...anyway... \ There has been a proud celebration of alcohol abuse and cheap beer that has been legendary, and along with it has been a celebration of cheap and plentiful drive thru food---and the waist lines of America has showed it. Along with the booze binge, has been a food binge, concentrating on pizza, french fries and greasy food that has left America reeling. Employees gathering around the piles of pizza during the Christmas season resemble cattle gathering around the feeding stations of old. One by one, these same folks have entered the health care system for heart related illness...and their families have suffered the consequences..... There is nothing funny about obesity. There is nothing catchy about a well turned phrase about how fashionably clothes cover butt cracks.....the problem results from not solving the problem of obesity..the killer.

"This isn't a WRITING Class": Weight Reflections

Recently at a weight management class, the instructor opened the meeting asking the class whether they had been writing down the foods they ate each day. Some had been religiously writing down and some had not. "Why do we write the foods down?" she asked. " THIS IS NOT A WRITING CLASS" Her words struck me since I thought I had been doing the writing down pretty well, and loving to write an all. "We write the foods down so we can review them, and CHANGE." \ Yes. It's about changing. And more than that it seems a little like budgeting. It is not enough to live the week and then mark down what happened, but to Plan the week so that it comes out with the caloric deficit that was planned. It is kind of like the old pegboard accounting system where the daily cash outflow was posted and the week and month to date was seen instantly----so if one plans a party on Friday night, one has to plan on the austerity the days before to create the caloric deficit for the party.....this is a concept I had never done before. I had just thrown the overeating over my shoulder.....and it showed. So there it it. It is NOT about the WRITING. That is for writers. It is for CHANGING.

"How Much Does Your Cellphone WEIGH?": Weight Reflections

Recently I have been attending a weight management class as part of a diet management program-the class is at 7am in the morning to fit in with folks who work, and I was running a bit late...as I entered the room, the instructor asked me whether I had my cellphone: "yup...right here I replied." "Here is a weight scale," she replied, "how much does it weigh"----quickly placing it on the little scale, I replied " FOUR OUNCES". As I held the cellphone up high, she said: "Thats your PORTION SIZE". When you have an entre of beef or chicken or fish, simply place the cellphone on it to get the proper amount." What a shock!!!!! Portion Size was a concept that I had never mastered. It was covered in not one class I had ever attended. In fact, I had grown accustomed to the notion that if a little is good...a lot is better.....and that was a concept that I had to discard... So I will just ask you..... "How much does YOUR cellphone weigh?"