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The Lantern Books Blog
Welcome to the Lantern Books Blog! This web log will
feature an ongoing parade of musings, updates, and announcements from
Lantern's staff, authors, and friends. Please register and post your comments. We encourage you to check back often, or subscribe via RSS or email.
September 1, 2010 6:00am
Ruth Heidrich: Ready for a run
After being diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of forty-seven and not getting answers from her physicians, Ruth Heidrich began her journey to fitness and over two decades without a recurrence of symptoms—a story she writes about in her extraordinary and inspirational A Race for Life.
"[I learned] I was responsible for my own health care," she reports. Heidrich went on to receive her PhD in Health Management. Affectionately known as "the other Dr. Ruth," Heidrich is sharing what she has learned and changing the way people view their senior years. In Senior Fitness, Ruth shows how to maintain and even increase physical and sexual fitness at any age, as well as how to reduce the risks of prostate cancer, varicose veins, osteoporosis, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, Alzheimer's, and a host of other ailments associated with aging. Since her diagnoses of cancer, Ruth Heidrich has gone on to win more than nine hundred athletic trophies and metals. She has been cancer-free for more than twenty years.
Two other books that talk about getting fit are The Joy of Weight Loss and The Love-Powered Diet, both of which encourage you to lose weight by feeling good about yourself rather than forcing yourself onto a restrictive diet and demanding that you suffer for your sins. In the former, Norris Chumley lost over 180 pounds, and kept it off, by learning to love himself and enjoy movement, and this is his secret to shedding the pounds. In the latter, Victoria learned that her dieting was only leading her to binge, and that a crucial step to a healthy body was to nurture a healthy attitude toward food.
August 31, 2010 1:50pm A nice mix of essays and poetry! It's good to know that there's more to the vegan movement than snobby little white ladies like me.
—Karen from North Carolina August 30, 2010 7:10pm
A Practical Peacemaker Ponders . . .
TIME magazine recently proclaimed some heartening news in "Where's the Beet?: How Big-Name Chefs Are Shrinking Their Customers' Carnivore Quota." Six top chefs were interviewed, all saying they are preparing less meat in their restaurants. Two of them, Mario Batali and Jose Andres, say that meat is boring. "After four bites of a big steak, I'm tired of it," says Batali, who plans to open his sixteenth restaurant soon, this one in New York City and entirely vegetarian. Andres, with six restaurants in Los Angeles and Washington, describes a combination of fruits and vegetables as "a rainbow of possibilities. It's more interesting than any meat."
August 30, 2010 12:09pm
Kim Stallwood, editor of A Primer on Animal Rights and Speaking Out for Animals, is working on a new book called Animal Dharma.
He's sharing small bits of the book-in-progress via podcast at kimstallwood.com. The first recording is about a woman he remembers from childhood who took care of the neighborhood stray dogs: Camberly Kate Ward.
Besides enjoying Kim's soothing voice and old photos, I realized while listening that I'm yawning a bit from my own late night stray cat care. Wait, I'm that lady! Now I just need a painted cart to make it official.
More Animal Dharma, please!
August 30, 2010 10:19am Diane Lefer, co-author of The Blessing Next to the Wound, writes about Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, Hector Aristizábal performing in Colombia, and why nonviolent mass movements pose a threat in LA Progressive. Hector Aristizábal lay on a table in Medellín, Colombia, his head covered with a black cloth. Twenty-eight years had passed since he was taken from his home by the US-trained military, secretly detained and tortured. Now he had returned to his birthplace after years in exile in the US to spend a month working with peace and justice groups and this night he was not in custody but onstage.
August 25, 2010 9:27am
Vegan by choice, grumpy by necessity
In a world that values sunshine over the saturnine and hope over harrumphing, it's hard to be a professional curmudgeon. In the animal rights community (where the competition for Chief Grouch is fierce), that vital role was ably handled by the late Cleveland Amory, whose dyspepsia was a key component of the barbs he so effectively aimed at hunters and other animal exploiters. The banner of bile is now waved by Kim Stallwood, a.k.a. the grumpy vegan, who first refined discontent and dysphoria into an art form in his editing of The Animals' Agenda magazine, and then in two books he edited for Lantern: Speaking Out for Animals and The Primer on Animal Rights.
Actually, I'm kidding. Those two books are inspiring and thoughtful examinations of how one can help animals in distress and through policy changes rather than belly-aching about how awful everything is. Plus, Kim is distressingly sweet-tempered when you get to know him (which, of course, you are thoroughly discouraged from doing), and now that he is back in his native England after doing time in the U.S. for many years, he's distressed to find unwelcome shafts of sunlight brightening the winter of his discontent.
Fortunately, this being the world we live in and our exploitation of other animals showing no sign of stopping any time soon, Kim retains a measure of grouchy glory, blogging and helping to run the excellent Animals and Society Institute. In all these and other endeavors, of course, Lantern wishes him luck, and hope that we don't see him around.
August 24, 2010 8:43am
Dr. John McKinnon is the author of An Unchanged Mind, a book about delayed maturity, as well as the forthcoming To Change a Mind, which discusses how parents can help nudge kids along to mature functioning.
He (and we) have noted the Times' ongoing series about the psychology of teens, and this week, that has been extended to our society's child-like twenty somethings. Here's what Dr. McKinnon had to say, a bit more insightful than my grumblings about the undependable, drifting "adults" I often bump into in my own life:
Have you seen the piece about delayed psychological development in the NY Times Magazine?
From where I sit, of course, this reframing of the 20's as a new "stage of emerging adulthood" strikes me as a cheerful re-packaging of "stuck" adolescence and delayed arrival of adult character structure and responsibility.
This account seems filled with the benign possibilities provided by yet another decade of self-preoccupation and delayed maturity. The implicit message is that maybe this is somehow really a great thing. I must say, however, that few of our parents, who are fed up with academic and economic fecklessness, the persistence of inconsiderate arrogance, goal-lessness and selfish, childish moral reasoning (oddly soft-pedaled in the NYT account) share this optimistic viewpoint.
I'll be intrigued to hear what people think about the piece. Surely it marks the arrival of "maturity" as a major issue in the sophisticated lay press, even if contemporary psychiatry has not yet recognized the problem.
August 23, 2010 9:22pm
A nice place to relax, read and reflect
I can hear the sounds of the Hudson River behind me as I jot down my thoughts in my bright red spiral notebook. I purposely picked red because the color symbolizes passion and power – two emotions I hope to feel as I start putting my thoughts onto paper (and screen). The warm summer air lingers, and there are moments where the wind feels like a faint whisper, gently encouraging me to continue to write.
I look around and breathe in the greenery. The bench is uncomfortable beneath me, but I don’t mind. Joggers pass by with ease; dogs bark and play while their “parents” chat about their most recent adventures.
August 20, 2010 12:19pm The following article by Sr. Mary Margaret Funk and Dr. Shahid Athar was just submitted to National Catholic Reporter. Let's hope they reprint it.
A Place for Dialogue
By Shahid Athar, M.D., and Sr. Mary Margaret Funk
The controversy regarding the site of Cordoba House, the Islamic community center, in Lower Manhattan has brought forth many opinions, snap judgments, and outright prejudice. But it also provides all Americans with a “teachable moment”: an opportunity to engage in dialogue.
For several years, the two of us—a Muslim doctor and a Catholic nun—engaged in respectful interreligious dialogue. Our aim wasn’t to compare our religious traditions to see which one was more authentically American or more tolerant. We didn’t want to share sermons and try to convince the other of whose religion was superior. We weren’t competing to see who was more religious or truer to our faith’s origins.
August 16, 2010 4:24pm
Students are getting on with living and learning at VA Tech
Lantern has published two books that do well when things in the world are going badly: No Easy Answers and Bird Flu.
The Bird Flu phenomenon is self-explanatory. Every time a flock is culled or the flu transmits to a human, people's interest in the subject tends to grow. And every time there is a school shooting, people want to read about the Columbine killings in No Easy Answers. In the office we talk about this response, and cringe a little. But the reality is that people need this book. They need to understand what can turn angst into murder. When unfathomable events happen, it is natural to want to dissect them, to study them, and to take steps to avoid the disaster happening again. The book doesn't let anyone off easy, instead calling for people to examine their own behavior, and the behavior that they endorse or excuse.
One Political Science professor at Virginia Tech took preventative measures, and 300 students read No Easy Answers in their introductory course. When this sort of non-violence education is made formal (especially in wounded atmospheres like VA Tech), we feel quite good about it. No cringing this time.
Finally, another book that's a kind of antidote. Violence can take other forms—the kind that's meted out upon you when you resist violence and the kind you see every day on television and on dinner plates. That's why Aftershock is an excellent, even necessary, book for those contemplating direct action to stop violence.
August 16, 2010 8:34am
The subject of Hector Aristizábal's book, The Blessing Next to the Wound, is the dangerous life he lived and escaped from in Medellín, Colombia.
Hector was back in Medellín this month to perform his play, Nightwind, and in Colombia Reports offers some insight about the changes the city has seen since he left.
The article is written by Diane Lefer, Aristizábal's co-author.
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