Dance Your Cares Away

February 11, 2020January 3, 2020 / Susan O. / Leave a comment

Dance is one of man’s oldest forms of art and storytelling, with cave painting depictions going back 30,000 years. Dances occur around the world, in every culture. Some were used for storytelling. Others were used for religious purposes. Some cultures had dances for healing, for appeasing Gods, for weather control, for courting, for festivals and celebrations, and entertaining royalty. Dances were used to teach, as social commentary and rebellion, and sometimes as just plain exercise. Dances can be as low key as the Hokey Pokey, or as tightly regulated and choreographed as grand ballet, or worse, synchronized swimming dances.

Physically, dancing is wonderful for the body.

It burns calories
It improves coordination
It promotes muscle strength and flexibility
It’s a weight-bearing exercise, so it’s good for improving joint function and staving off bone loss.
It’s fantastic as an aerobic exercise to improve cardiovascular function, circulation, and endurance. Tap dance for just 10 minutes. Try it.
As an exercise, it can help improve mood and increase endorphin levels in the body, making you happier.
There is no age limit on dancing – whether you’re one or one hundred, you can do it!
Disability isn’t an deterrent – many forms of dance can be adapted for people who cannot walk.

And dancing isn’t just for women! Plenty of men have been famous dancers – Rudolf Nuryev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelley, Michael Jackson, Gregory Hines, Sammy Davis Jr., John Travolta, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Michael Flatley, and “Gangnam Style’s” Psy, to name just a few. Dance takes tremendous strength and physical training. Football players take ballet to improve coordination and movement. HipHop is a male-dominated dance field. In ethnic dances around the world, men predominate, from Russian squat dancing to the New Zealand Haka and the Northern Plains Indian Grass Dance, to the Aduma dance of the Masai warriors in Kenya. Dancing, by far, is as much a man’s sport as a woman’s.

If you have to be stuck inside in the winter, why not dance! Throw some fast music on and shake out those winter blues! Throw in a ballet DVD and leap (move the furniture out of the way first!). Or join us for some New England Country Dancing at the library later this month! Don’t feel like moving? Grab a blanket and a cup of tea and check out some of these great books and movies filled with dance!

Saturday Night Fever A Chorus Line Dirty Dancing

The Nutcracker All That Jazz Billy Elliot

Step Up West Side Story Oliver!

An American In Paris La La Land Fiddler on the Roof

Swing Time Dancer A Time to Dance

Russian Winter Out Loud Life in Motion

The Girls at 17 Swann Street Dance in America: A Reader’s Anthology

Hope in the Hot Zone

January 14, 2020January 6, 2020 / Susan O. / Leave a comment

No, I won’t bore you with flu information. Let’s talk about something more deadly.

There have been a LOT of deadly epidemics throughout history. AIDS/HIV has killed 36 million people since 1981, a virus with a 99.9% fatality rate, though after billions of dollars we’re down to “only” 1.6 million deaths per year, world-wide. The 1918 flu epidemic (the same flu you get a shot for, H1N1) killed 20-50 million people in less than two years. The Black Death, that 1346 wave of flea-borne bubonic plague, killed 200 million. Plague, carried in the US by squirrels and prairie dogs, still kills 100 people a year. Another mega-epidemic was the Plague of Justinian in 541, which coincided with a major volcanic eruption – some believe it was an earlier explosion of the famous Krakatoa – and a year with crazy weather and an abundance of misery, killed 50 million. It’s also believed to have been Bubonic Plague. The plague of Antonine in 165 AD, brought back by Roman soldiers, killed 25 million people and might have been either Measles or Smallpox. The entire population of New England plus New York State is 30 million.

In the case of viruses – HIV, Smallpox, Measles, Flu – those numbers were due to germs released on a population that had little to no immunity. Measles has been around for millennia, but viruses mutate. Mutations are accidents during reproduction – like the first case of left-handedness, or blue eyes. Viruses can reproduce rapidly inside a cell; if they multiply every 20 minutes, and if you expect one accident every 1,000 generations, that’s 1600 mutations every eight hours. Some mutations can render a virus or bacteria weaker. But sometimes, they become more dangerous.

Like Ebola.

I don’t know why, but I’ve read almost every book by anyone who’s worked on Ebola. The Hot Zone is one of my favorites. So of course, along comes Richard Preston and writes another book on the most recent outbreak of Ebola, a disease that, untreated, has a 90% fatality rate, and a 40% rate if treated with supportive care (let’s not forget, Smallpox had a 30% fatality rate. Yeah, maybe before your time, but that’s why there was such a forced vaccine campaign to eradicate it.) Ebola is extremely contagious – just one particle, out of the billions spewed by each victim, can be deadly.

In his new book, Crisis in the Red Zone, Preston begins with the 1976 outbreak, then covers the 2014 outbreak, so you can see just how far medicine has come in those 40 years, from reusing the same needle without sterilizing it to PCR breakdown of the genetic code of Ebola. Six strains have been identified; the new one, Ebola Makona, is four times more deadly, the result of just one mutation swapping one single amino acid.

Why should Ebola bother you? As Preston reiterates time and time again, if the countries where Ebola is endemic cannot handle an outbreak, imagine Ebola getting loose on a subway in New York, by a person who gets off in Grand Central, and then walks to a play on Broadway, even though they’re feeling a bit feverish and coughing. They’ve now infected several thousand people, who will infect several thousand people, who will get on planes and fly around the world, spreading the virus very rapidly, to major cities with crowded airports. The risk is entirely too real, on medical systems not the least bit prepared to handle it – there are barely 400 Level-4 isolation beds in the ENTIRE US. (And yes, in the last epidemic, Ebola DID make it to the US, all the way to Texas, where it killed two people. )

However, there is now hope – ZMapp was the first antibody-driven treatment for Ebola, taking a victim literally in the process of their last breaths to walking around *in one hour*. And yet, two new drugs with the unimaginative names of REGN-EB3 and mAB114 were found to be better – bringing a death rate of 90% to a survival rate of 90%. There has also been the creation of an Ebola vaccine, which is 97% effective. Preston chronicles the moral and ethical dilemma of these developments – you cannot have trials in people because of the fatality rate of the disease, and in giving an unknown treatment to people who already have a 50% chance of living, you may kill them with the “cure”. How do you give informed consent when no one knows what the drug will do? And who do you choose to give a possible cure to?

Read the book. It’s got all the angst of a good murder mystery, the joys of survival, and medical miracles on top. If you live on Earth or do business here, you really need to be aware of these things.

Wash your hands and check out some of these other awesome books on viruses!

Scourge : the once and future threat of smallpox by Jonathan B. Tucker
Flu : the story of the great influenza pandemic of 1918 and the search for the virus that caused it by Gina Kolata
The Great Mortality : an intimate history of the Black Death, the most devastating plague of all time by John Kelly
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

The Great Influenza : the epic story of the deadliest plague in history by John M. Barry
Beating Back the Devil : on the front lines with the disease detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service by Maryn McKenna
Panic in Level 4 : cannibals, killer viruses, and other journeys to the edge of science by Richard Preston
Pandemic : tracking contagions, from cholera to Ebola and beyond by Sonia Shah

Susan’s Best Reads of 2019

December 3, 2019November 22, 2019 / Susan O. / Leave a comment

I don’t read as much as I wish I could; I just don’t have time at the moment. It doesn’t help that I wind up with sometimes 600 page books in my hands, and those take longer. I never know what I’ll read next, and I read a bunch of good ones last year. Here are some of my favorites:

One of the two best books I read this year, I’ve already blogged about: Creativity, Inc, by Ed Catmull, was amazing. Not just a history of Pixar films, it’s also the best darned, most entertaining book on business and employee management you will read. Pixar is a 5-star company for a reason.

The second of my Best Reads this year is The Man from the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery by Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James. From approximately 1898 to 1912, a serial killer traversed the US by train – coming through New Haven’s Union Station on the way – with an MO of bludgeoning his victims with the back of an axe. Because of communications at the time, few people were able to connect the murders. James painstakingly, with the utmost detail, traces the dozens of murders and examines them, deciding if they were likely by the same killer or not, and why. He traces the paths through the states and the seasons, chasing the trail to a man who was most likely the killer. By the time he’s done, you are convinced and amazed. I could not stop reading this book. I read it while waiting for the school bus. I read it while cooking. I would have read it in the shower if I could have. If you love a mystery, if you love history, if you love crime stories, this book is a must.

I’m only 30 years late in reading Neuromancer, the Hugo-winning cyberpunk novel by William Gibson. I can see why it is held as one of the greatest novels of our time. Gibson predicts and writes about today’s modern computers and internet and gaming – long before they existed. The scenarios he describes are both familiar and futuristic at the same time. While not only visionary, it’s written in a flawless style and with realistic, interesting characters. If you loved Ready Player One or The Matrix (which has to have been influenced by this book), you will love Neuromancer.

If you’re aware of social and racial issues, I strongly recommend Survival Math, by Mitchell S. Jackson. A professor of writing, in achingly beautiful prose worthy of Martin Luther King Jr., with the voice of a preacher without being preachy, Johnson breaks down the issues faced in his own family, examining how he came to where he is, how racism played into it without even being visible, and how despite all the odds, it’s possible to thrive. He covers harsh topics without flinching. The book is brilliant, spellbinding, and a superb read from a voice that soars with truth.

Far more than I expected, I loved Total Recall, an older door-stop of a biography on Arnold Schwarzenegger. From his birth in a tiny town in Austria (which still has only 2500 people) to his divorce from Maria Shriver, Arnold is witty and candid and down to Earth. No matter what you think of his politics or his movies or his personal life, this book may be older, but it was highly entertaining. His best friend just died in September of this year.

Not my favorite, but worth mentioning because of its local importance, is Frog Hollow by Susan Campbell. Campbell, a former reporter with the Hartford Courant, digs into the history of the notorious Frog Hollow section of Hartford, and through tireless research shows the former glory of the neighborhood as not only an important area in Colonial times, but once a major manufacturing center (in 1898, Pope automotive made half the cars in the US). I was hoping for a deep sociologic dissection of the issues, but instead Campbell gives us an upbeat view from street level about the good aspects of Hartford and the people who live there, not just the doom and gloom of ad-selling news clips.

Last but not least, I’ll throw in a kid’s series you probably missed; with 18 years between my last two kids, I certainly did, but my youngest is so hooked on the British easy reader series Urgency Emergency! by Dosh Archer, I wound up buying most of them. The series is so witty and enjoyable you don’t mind reading them over and over again. Doctor Glenda, Nurse Percy, and the Pengamedics, in predictable melodrama, assist the maladies of Humpty Dumpty, The Big Bad Wolf, the Itsy Bitsy Spider, and many more. They are a delight. The library has several of the stories; be sure to read them all!

NaNo Boosters

November 5, 2019September 13, 2019 / Susan O. / Leave a comment

November is NaNoWriMo month!

If you’ve never heard of it, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, a time when thousands of hopeful writers spend every possible minute banging out the novel they’ve always wanted to write. Those who finish a 50,000 word novel in thirty days receive a certificate of completion, and little booster badges to keep going.

NaNo started back in 1999 as a support group for a bunch of friends. Today, it’s grown into a massive non-profit organization with more than 150,000 participants. More than 400,000 people finished their novels.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? More than 250 NaNo novels have been picked up by publishers.

Two hundred fifty, out of hundreds of thousands. And that’s part of the problem. NaNo focuses on speed and word count, not quality. They encourage you to write schlock – don’t think too long, don’t get locked up, let the ideas flow. Git’r done. People finish their novel and can’t wait to send it off to a publisher. And the publisher will see the line “I just finished my novel for NaNoWriMo…” and immediately the manuscript will hit the trash can.

Why? Because in many ways, NaNo is a pat on the back, nothing more. A writer – someone who is dead-set on writing, knows the craft – doesn’t need a dedicated month to write or stickers to keep them going. Writers write. That’s what they do. Nothing stops them. NaNo makes it a game for those who wish to be writers, but often don’t know what to do. There is no accountability for content – you could type “This is my novel” 13,000 times. Finishing a manuscript, typing The End, is only the start of a writer’s job. It’s shaping the clay before the sculpting, putting the pencil sketch onto your canvas before the paint. Every manuscript – every, save a very few elite writers (and I’m not talking rich or popular ones) – is garbage at the rough draft.

Every. One.

Every novel must be edited, rewritten, checked, rechecked, spellchecked, polished, and inconsistencies and logic errors ironed out. Plot holes must be sewn shut. Grammar – please, oh please – must be fixed. No manuscript goes to an agent or publisher on the rough draft. Most writers doesn’t even let their beta readers – those friends whose opinions they trust – read their rough draft. You might slap that story together in 30 days, but the editing and rewrites are more likely to take months. And even when you’ve edited it twelve times, made the corrections of six beta readers, run it through grammar and spell check, there will still be some error that everything has still missed.

You want to write? Write. A writer burns with passion. A writer wants their work to be the best it possibly can, not rush production for a certificate of completion. Quality is the key that will open doors. Read everything that you can lay your eyes on. Learn format. Learn editing. If you have a question, check it on the internet. Check your facts – if you aren’t sure an African Swallow can carry a coconut, look it up. Cross-reference to make sure your source is correct. Author Naomi Wolf – a respected writer with several influential best-sellers to her name – was caught red-handed when she realized in the middle of a radio interview that her interpretation of relevant material was completely wrong. The publisher then pulled the published book. ALWAYS do your research. Anyone who has the seen the movie My Cousin Vinny is well aware that a 1964 Buick Skylark was not available with positraction, a tiny fact that would escape most people but proved hugely important in the legal case of the film. Facts matter.

And when you do finish your manuscript, with or without NaNoWriMo to keep you focused, and you think you’ve got something good, check out these books on writing to help you polish it into a sure-fire winner!

Strunk and White: The Elements of Style
The Writers Digest Writing Clinic
From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction
Writing and Publishing Your Book
Writing the Blockbuster Novel
The Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells
How to Self Publish Your Book
Just Write: Creating Unforgettable Fiction
Sol Stein’s Reference Book for Writers

Cheshire Library also has a Writer’s Group that meets monthly (run by yours truly), check our Events Calendar for Cat Tales Writers Group and join us!

Book Review: Creativity, Inc

October 15, 2019August 5, 2019 / Susan O. / Leave a comment

Every once in a while you come across a book you would never attempt to read but for some stupid reason you do, and you are so thankful you did. This is one of those times.

While researching material on writing, I came across a recommendation for a book, and I kind of scratched my head. This was a book on business, and there was just no way I would read a book on business – my eyes would glaze in the first page, the same way they do if someone is talking actuarial tables or student loan forms. What could such a book have to do with writing? It just so happened the library had a copy I was able to grab. And that book, despite being a couple of years old (2014), is the best book I have read so far this year.

Creativity, Inc. is written by Ed Catmull, who was part of the driving force behind Pixar Studios, the film company known for making ground-breaking and award-winning (and record-breaking, with more than 14 Billion dollars in revenue) animated films, such as Toy Story, Monsters,Inc, A Bug’s Life, and more. When Pixar and Disney merged in 2006, he applied his same priciples to the flagging animation department at Disney, who hadn’t had a hit in 16 years. Disney shot right back up with films like Wall-E, Cars, Incredibles, Coco, Brave, etc. To read this book is to relive the last 30 years of animated film making. If it’s not a walk down memory lane for your childhood, it is a reminder of all the wonderful films you saw with your children. If you haven’t enjoyed any of them, run and grab one today.

What is Catmull’s secret? Of course a strong bottom line is what investors want, and Catmull agrees, but he refuses to allow the creativity of the artists to be stymied in any way. There are no superstars – not even preferred parking. Everyone from the janitor to the lunch lady to the writer is allowed equal – respected – input. Employees are encouraged to do what it takes to keep happy and relaxed, because happy employees are productive employees. They are encouraged to take time for classes offered at work – art, archery, whatever. If they are producing a film in Africa, a team of writers and artists will take a field trip to Africa and experience what they are trying to portray. Films, from first idea pitch to final cut – are brought up for constant, honest review, where the ensemble team toss ideas off each other about the work, good or bad, and the film may take a twist for the better from it. Every artist is respected every step of the way. Written into the contracts is a proviso that if a film reaches a certain amount of return, a portion of that is given to the employees as a bonus.

Needless to say, Pixar and Disney Animation staff are happy to go to work.

So, how did that all relate to writing?

Remember that movies start as stories. Someone has to write them before they can be filmed. By keeping an atmosphere that encourages creativity, no matter how odd (come on – talking cars? Emotions? Bugs? A rat who likes to cook? ), by immersing yourself in a creative environment, by learning to take constructive criticism without imploding, you become a better writer. A writer needs feedback as they develop ideas, as they write the ideas, as they polish their ideas into a final copy.

This book was a joy to read. Grab it, read it, whether you’re looking for a business model to follow, as a manager looking to improve productivity, as an artist looking for appreciation, as a movie person wanting to know more about Pixar and Disney films. It’s all there.