Ayurveda, Liz and the Nazis

Spending time reading my books and listening to my pod-casts on Ayurveda.  Ayurveda is the oldest and still practiced medical science.  It's thousands of years old with roots in Hinduism and Buddhism.   There are a number of things I like about it.  Primarily, that we are each of us our own physician.
The basics:    
There are 5 great elements: earth, water, fire, air, and space.
Those 5 condense to 3 doshas: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha.   
We are either one of the three doshas or a combination of them.
There are 6 tastes: sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, and astringent.
I am primarily Kapha, a combination of earth and water.
Some indications that you are Kapha: body frame in balance is medium to broad.  Off balance it is obese.  Personality in balance is calm, quiet, and steady.  Off balance it is passive, possessive, and greedy.
Kapha people need motivation and stimulation. 
Disease is imbalance of your doshas.  There are 4 components to being healthy: yoga, meditation, exercise, and diet.  
Diet is an important but a complicated factor in Ayurvedic medicine.  You need one of their cookbooks to do it justice.
Some day my Kapha self will get around to it.
Today's NY Times had an photo of Liz Taylor's shrine at the Abbey.  It was right beneath the plaque that read "the Abbey is my Pub".  You probably thought it was that other kind of Abbey, not for Ms. Liz.  The Abbey is a Gay bar in West Hollywood.  "She was a once-a-week regular in recent years" [after the brain tumor?] "sipping tequila shots, downing watermelon and apple martinis or simply waving merrily from her wheelchair".  Hey guys if you're looking for a replacement, I'm available, and if I'm going to be drinking like Liz and Dick drank don't throw away that wheelchair!
"Ugly Betty" by Ruth Brandon is reviewed this week by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker.  The book is about Helena Rubinstein and Eugene Schueller who founded L'Oreal.  The interesting story is what happened during the Second World War.
After the Nazi invasion of France, Schueller was one of the biggest financial supporters of the fascist anti-Semitic M.S.R.  In October, 1941 they blew up 7 synagogues in Paris.  The argument of the book is that Schueller wasn't a Nazi or anti-Semite.  He was a pragmatist.  Collaboration insured delivery of raw materials.  An obsessive entrepreneur like Schueller "is too much of an opportunist to risk engaging himself absolutely in favor of anyone."
Oscar Schindler was a very different entrepreneur.  He made a lot of money "taking over" a Jewish owned factory.  When the Nazi's decided to close the factory and ship his workers to gas chambers he used that money as bribes to save as many as he could.  He spent his entire personal fortune saving lives. 
When Rubinstein died, the chairman of L'Oreal in the U.S., Jacques Correze acquired it.  Who is Jacques Correze?  He was the former chief lieutenant in M. S. R.
"The uncomfortable lesson of the triumph of Eugene Schueller over Helena Rubinstein is that sometimes it's just business."
Meditation, yoga and tequila shots.

apartment living

I don't own a snow shovel.  I don't own a lawn mower.  I have lovely flowers in the garden that I never tend.
A leak, I call the office; they send someone.  It's all good, most of the time.
I'm on the 18th floor.  On another floor are 2 pit bulls.  I've shared the elevator with them and their 'handler', a seven year old girl.  Sometimes the elevator doesn't work.  Sometimes, after coming home from the gym, late, and needing to get ready for the theater, I may not have water.
My neighbors had a leak.  They called the office, and it was fixed.  Leak over.  So was "Macbeth" and my night at the theater.  Now I'm sitting at this computer smelling my neighbors marijuana, which is not my thing.  I like a martini.  This is apartment living.
But the view is nice:

 

Arcadia has opened

Arcadia has opened and been reviewed.  In the NY Times, Ben Brantley wrote "entirely terrific", "propelled by genuine, panting passion," and in the New Yorker, Hilton Als: "there is no emotional truth at stake because there are no true characters", "there is no passion; people screw, but less to connect than to generate even more witty material".  Maybe they saw it on different nights?
Interesting American Masters piece on Zora Neale Hirston.  She wrote a number of novels that are well respected but more interestingly she recorded folk tales, music and the culture of southern African American life.  One film clip was of young children playing games.  That got me to thinking of all the games we played as children that you don't see anymore.  At least I don't see today's kids playing: stoop ball, stick ball, ringaleevio, hide and seek, red light-green light, jump rope, pick up sticks, hop-scotch and all the others that I have probably forgotten.  These were all group games.  In many you needed six or more players and there was a hierarchy that came from these games.  Janis Ian has a great song about being an outsider in the culture and being picked last for a game.  But you got picked.  You had a role to play.  They needed you and maybe this time you could shine, perhaps be the Alli-Alli in free guy and free all your captured team mates. 
From Zora Neale Hirston, "Yes I've experienced segregation, but I was never angry about it, only perplexed.  Why would someone deny themselves the pleasure of my company?"    
She grew up in an all black community in Florida, where her father was Mayor 3 times.

Podcasts

I listened to Carl Sandberg at the Schubert theater in Chicago.  He read two poems; sang a couple of songs, and accompanied himself on the guitar.  His conversation was about modern life, circa 1956.  He said we are a nation of media addicts.  TV, radio and movies are irreparably changing the country, and the loss of solitude is a crisis.  He quoted Paganini when he was asked what "The Secret" to his great work was.  He said just three things: "toil, solitude, and prayer."
Sandberg had recently watched the world series on TV and got the impression: "there were millions of men running around, wondering what to shave with."
Another memorable quote;  "What you can explain is not poetry"
He warned of the military of the military/industrial complex.  He said that the Military is not just in politics but also in Business.  "MacArthur has left the army and now works for the Rand Corporation.  He's not a business man he's a military man."
Also heard a Robert Pinsky pod-cast.  He talks about memory, poetry & music.  He loves Keats' line:  "You were not born for death, no hungry generation tread thee down.", from "Ode to a Nightingale".  Not born for death means to him that man has a need and a purpose to create memories for the next generation.  He also loves a sentence said by a Zulu "Zu go-mo", a Zulu fortune teller, who communicates with the ancestors.  The Zu go-mo quote that impressed him:  "We do not worship our Zulu ancestors, we consult them."
From Ezra Pound:
"Music atrophies when it grows too far away from dance, and poetry atrophies when it grows too far away from music."