Sunday, June 4, 2017

Photos from Spooky Doings 6/3/17 performance at Triple Crown













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Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Updates for April & May 2017


Link to my ongoing updates blog  This blog serves as an index to my performance related blogs and other materials


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2016 Updates

This was deleted from my ongoing updates blog and moved to its own blog.  The Ongoing updates is a sort of index to my activities and can be found here: Ongoing Updates


News from 2016

past performances

Completed performance related courses/events


Some travel pix


Law related courses:

  • 11/17/18 NYIPLA One-day Program, Princeton Club, NYC
  • 10/28/16 Cybersecurity: What Lawyers and Business Leaders Need to Know, Columbia Law School
  • 10/25/16 IIPS Meeting -- talks by Hetal Kushwaha of Marks & Clerk, Canada and Roosevelt V Segarra of Myers Wolin, NYC -- both on the topioc of patentability of computer software
  • 10/18/16 ENYIPLA Dinner Meeting -- talk by Mel Garner of  Leason Ellis LLP on the topic of Trade Secret Practice and Advice for the Practitioner
  • Ethical Considerations in Patent and Trademark Practice, IIPS 9/20/16
  • PTAB tips and tricks, sponsored by NYIPLA 6/8/16 at https://www.skadden.com/ NYC
  • JPPCLE, NYC 4/21/16
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Saturday, May 27, 2017

Misguided officials advocating against family bed

So it's happening again.  Misguided government officials in Middletown, PA are concluding that, because a mom rolled over on her baby and suffocated the baby, when the mom was high (alcohol and marijuana), that no moms should sleep with their babies.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/mother-charged-involuntary-manslaughter-accidentally-220454550.html

I saw something similar in New York City back in 2015, which I blogged about then.

http://annebarschall.blogspot.com/2015/05/nyc-public-health-campaign-to-stop-moms.html


If a mom kills her kids when driving drunk, should we conclude that no moms should ever drive their kids? NO!

Similarly, if a mom kills her kid in bed, when high that doesn't mean that no moms should sleep with their kids? No.

I am a fervent believer in the family bed.  The family bed facilitates breast feeding, which dramatically improves the health of moms and babies both.  The family bed reduces or eliminates SIDS, probably because proximity to mom helps babies synchronize their breathing.

I once read an article about a family in the jungle in Indonesia.  They lived in a rude hut in primitive conditions.  They slept on the floor with the baby between them.  They woke up one night, hearing the baby crying and found the baby's arm down the gullet of a brown snake.

They were able to save the baby because they were right there at the time.

This is the kind of environment we evolved in -- on rife with predators.  Children instinctively need to sleep with their parents at night, because sleeping alone in the wild is dangerous.  Children instinctively fear monsters at night, because of ancestral memories of living where there were in fact monsters who ate children everywhere.

Given children's instinctive fear of monsters and sleeping alone, it is cruel and inhuman to make them sleep alone.

Let's not punish all moms and children because this one was drinking and using marijuana.

Also, please read Dr. William Sears' Book Nighttime Parenting for more information.

*******

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Sunday, May 14, 2017

stills from Villain Song video shoot

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Friday, April 28, 2017

back remedies

I used to have disabling back pain.  Now it's under control.  I attribute this to several things I've done that help my back.

1. Caltrate + Minerals.  This supplement has been really amazing.   I can't really use other mineral combinations, because either they aren't absorbed well enough, or they have too much magnesium, which gives me diarrhea. When the absorption isn't good, I still get back pain, or, alternatively muscle restlessness throughout my body

2. Shower, as recommended by a chiropractor: 5 minutes on my back as hot as I can stand, followed by 1 minute as cold as a I can stand.  I also do the yoga six motions of the spine under the hot water, every time I take a shower.  These are the cat & dog stretches, the puppy dog stretches, and twisting.  I've got to do a video of this, so people who don't know what I am taking about will understand.

3. Use of ice for the first 2 days after an acute episode of pain.  Again, as recommended by the chiropractor, it's 15 minutes of ice every hour, as needed.

4 Sleeping on my side with pillows between arms and legs — though recently I’ve dropped the pillows and added transfer to a lounge chair if lying down gets painful

5. Daily yoga, exercise and/or weight routines, many of which are geared around the six motions of the spine, as well as strengthening abdominal muscles and back leg lifts.  I keep meaning to do youtube videos of my routines.  I have six different routines, which i keep rotating through.  I haven't got round to posting videos.  As my ex used to say, there is a shortage of round to-its.  As of 2024, I’m doing yoga or sometimes weights twice a day plus the movements in the shower, which seems like a lot but, given that I’m not in pain, seems worth it. My morning routine, which is specifically aimed at sciatica includes, child pose, forward pigeon with introductory rocking, downward dog, the back twisting T posture, my chiropractors exercises (below), the back roller, and the yoga wheel. 

6. Loose clothing.  I find tight clothing tends to send my muscles into painful spasms.  This includes waistlines and underwear elastic.  I am most comfortable in loose dresses. If I were a guy, who might not feel comfortable with dresses, I would wear loose pants with suspenders.

7. Staying regular.  Constipation causes back pain.

8. Inversion.  See my headstand stool video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UymDzN4U3U

9. Avoiding long uninterrupted periods of sitting

10. Doing the child pose for at least 30s followed by the rotation pose on my back on both sides in response to low back pain.  Also useful: locust. 

11. Cultivating an attitude of insouciance regarding back pain. Anxiety worsens spasms. 

12. Chiropractic adjustment. My parents had fear and loathing of chiropractors. They always had horrendous back problems. When my back was in spasm, shortly after childbirth, the UPS driver told me That all the UPS drivers went to this one chiropractor. I decided to reject my parents’ attitude. However, recently, with all these things I’m doing I seldom have to go. Then, of course, I’m not carrying children either, but then they weren’t either after we got older and they continued to have back problems.

I should say, too, that carrying kids was a challenge.  I was in the chiropractor's office much more often when I was carrying pre-schoolers.

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I am now using several devices for adaptive yoga. The back roller seems to be particularly good for back pain
  1. headstand stool
  2. garden kneeling pad for postures that involve putting knees on the ground
  3. back roller, first thing in the morning
  4. yoga wheel to improve stretches in the fish, the wheel, the plow, and side stretches
  5. elastic loops for 
    • side pidgeon (one end around foot, the other end around hand near head);
    •  sitting twist (to connect hands under upward pointing knee); 
    • cow-face pose (Gomukhasana)
    • an exercise that my chiropractor recommended (to be done in repetitions of 10): Sitting down, put the elastic around the lower legs below the knees.  Then separate the lower legs, while moving the elbows backwards and arching the back.  Then relax the legs, while moving the arms forward around the body and curving the back forward
    • Another exercise he recently gave me to combat scoliosis is repeatedly pressing a soft object into the wall with my left hip, to combat my right hip sticking out


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Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Apple update interfering with Microsoft Word for Mac 2011

This is very frustrating.  When Apple updates its operating system, suddenly old third party software doesn't work.  It makes me worry that Apple and the other software companies are in cahoots to force users to buy new software.  Unfortunately, I don't know if the government still cares about or enforces anti-trust laws.

In the present case, my Microsoft Word for Mac 2011 has developed a bug since an operating system update.  This is a screen shot of a "save as" function.


You will note that the "save as" window now extends past the bottom of the screen.  This prevents me from accessing the security options, such as adding passwords or removing identifying information from a document.

I had this problem earlier, because I was forced to buy Quickbooks 2016 and replace Quickbooks 2011, because of an operating system update.

This type of arrogance towards forcing the consumer to buy new software is infuriating.


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