The Perfect Summer Drink

     I used to quaff my fair share of soft drinks. Mostly I went for the diet colas, telling myself:  They're diet. Zero calories. They can't hurt me.

     But somehow -- I don't know how -- those diet sodas set me up for padding on the pounds. So a few years ago, as part of a health kick and as part of an effort to lose some weight, I turned to bottled water. I don't know if I'm any healthier, but I did lose about 15 pounds.

     Since then, as I've mentioned before, I've managed to stay comfortably in the just-slightly-overweight category. I'd like to get down to normal, but that's probably not going to happen. At least I have no sign of diabetes, and now that the load on my aging knees has been lightened, I don't have to go back to the orthopedist for a cortisone shot or pay for physical therapy.

     So now I am an enthusiastic proponent of drinking water. I like bottled water, but B wants me to drink water out of the tap. It's just as good, she says, and then you don't fill up the landfills with all those plastic bottles. But I have to say, there's something satisfying about pulling open the refrigerator door, grabbing a cold clear bottle and cracking off the lid. And since I typically refill each bottle a couple of times from the refrigerator water dispenser, I'm not adding all that much to the landfills.

     But lately, I must confess, I've been doing something else -- I've been adding "mud" to that water, meaning I've been making iced coffee for myself. It's a good pick-me-up in the afternoon. And it tastes really good!

To your health!

     I put milk and sugar in the coffee, so it's nowhere close to zero calories. And yet, somehow I feel my iced coffee has less of the bad stuff than a soft drink -- it certainly has less sugar than a nondiet drink.

     I usually down a couple of cups of hot coffee in the morning. I mean, I have to wake up somehow. And I've read (and previously reported in What Do You Drink in the Morning?) that coffee is actually good for you.

     Okay, the research is not unequivocal, and there are come cautions about coffee (mostly in consuming large amounts of caffeinated coffee) -- it can cause stomach upset, migraines, heart arrhythmia, sleep disorders. But the medical consensus is that for most people the benefits of coffee far outweigh the risks. Coffee seems to delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease and decrease the risk of getting Parkinson's. It also lowers your risk of heart failure, of developing Type 2 diabetes, of getting prostate cancer and basal cell carcinoma, the most common form of skin cancer.

     Then yesterday I read that coffee offers yet another benefit. A report from Harvard Medical School -- as posted by the Huffington Post and elsewhere -- says that drinking two or more cups of caffeinated coffee a day may lower your risk of suicide by as much as 50 percent. The study follows other studies showing that drinking coffee also reduces the risk of depression.

     Now, while I've had my share of ups and downs over the years, I don't think I'm at any risk at all of suicide. But suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in America today, and it has plagued America's senior population more than any other group. According to a CBS News report from a couple of years ago, Americans 65 and over account for about 13 percent of the population, but almost a fifth of all suicides. So it's nothing to take lightly.

     Anyway, I'm going to go brew up some more iced coffee. Don't worry, I'm not giving up water. And B is always making iced tea, which I like as well. But iced tea only appeals to me when it gets really hot, like over 85 degrees, which doesn't happen around here all that much.

     When it gets cold I also drink hot tea, and I believe tea is good for us as well, so I'll do a post on the benefits of tea -- just as soon as it gets hot enough, or cold enough. But meanwhile, at least for now, that iced cold muddy water is the perfect summer drink for me!

How You Know Vacation Is Over

     You turn into the driveway and immediately notice that the grass needs to be cut. That's the first sign you're home from vacation.

     In other words, you know your vacation is over not just because you get home, but because you drive back through the gates of reality. That's why B and I always go out to dinner the first night we return from vacation -- to postpone wading into our at-home routine, beginning with the cooking and the washing of dishes. (Although B usually likes to dive right into the pile of laundry ... I don't know why.)

     It also has to do with connecting back to the real world of money, bills, dealing with the difficult people in our lives ... and the news. We were away for eight days, and blissfully did not turn on the TV even once. Didn't listen to the radio either. We missed a lot of the Zimmerman trial. We missed most of the hype leading up to the birth of the royal baby. Don't know what else we missed, because we weren't paying attention. But in fact, we didn't miss any of it.

     After we got home, I did turn on the TV news for a bit. And I checked my facebook news page, where people post pictures of babies or put up vacation photos -- and where others insist on pushing their political views. I have a number of friends who post two or three political messages a day. I've employed the Facebook blocking feature to avoid these unsolicited opinions. But some things still get through, and the messages always seem to come either from rabid liberals or rabid conservatives.

     You can tell right away because they use tell-tale words. If you see the word "insane," it's probably a conservative referring to a liberal. If you see the word "idiot" -- sometimes expanded to "complete idiot" -- then it's likely a liberal referring to a conservative. If you see the word "liar" or "hate" or "racist" it's hard to tell, because both liberals and conservatives throw those words around indiscriminately.

      I myself am a Democrat. I vote Democratic most of the time -- not all the time, because I like to believe that I think for myself and don't just follow the party line. Plus, some of the things liberal Democrats believe in are almost as "crazy" as some of the things far-right Republicans believe in.

     I worry about the "loony fringe" taking over our political parties. At the moment, the Republican party seems more in danger of that than the Democrats (although the Dems certainly have had their moments). But I don't want either party to go too far off the tracks, because then it will lose any reasonable support. I'm a Democrat. But I think the Republicans are necessary. Otherwise, we'll have a one-party system. And we do not want a one party system. That's what they have in North Korea.

     I recall a survey, sometime last year, that showed roughly 25% of Americans supported the Tea Party, and about 30% supported Occupy Wall Street. If that's true, then it leaves 45% of us somewhere in the middle.

      So despite what the media tells you -- that the country is split in two, that there are Red States and Blue States and never the twain shall meet -- in fact, the moderates and independents are the largest political group, and while we don't have the lobbyists in Washington to buy off appeal to the politicians, like the doctors and the bankers and the teachers and all the other special interests do, we are the ones that the political parties need to appeal to if they're going to win an election.

     But how did I get off on that tangent? In my life, politics is nothing more than entertainment on TV. Our local politicians are much more reasonable -- perhaps because we actually know these people and so they can't get away with saying stupid, outrageous things. And as far as vacation goes, I didn't hear one person call anyone else "insane" or a "complete idiot" the whole time we were gone.

     Anyway, politics is not my reality. My reality is ... oh, darn, B picked up the mail yesterday, a box full of stuff that was held at the post office while we were away. The ads, the solicitations, the coupons, all trying to get us to spend more money. I'll ignore them, and just carry them out to recycling. But I can't ignore the bills. The bills are my reality. But wait ... first, I'll go mow the lawn.

     

Maybe College Football Should Take a Hike

     In my town the high-school football team began its summer "workouts" last week. The early morning practices, starting at 6 a.m., will continue three times a week for the rest of the summer. The team plays its first game on Sept. 7.

     I don't live in a big football town -- nothing like what you find in Texas or Georgia. Most of the players on our high-school team will never play in college. The very best of them will play varsity football at low-level Division III schools like Muhlenberg, Kenyon or Middlebury.

     Yet football is ingrained into our culture. The game creates an enormous amount of school spirit. So what are we to make of the anti-football argument made by Malcolm Gladwell?

     On Sunday I saw the popular writer of such science books as The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers, being interviewed on CNN by Fareed Zakaria. Gladwell is on a campaign to ban college football on the premise that the sport is too violent and too often leads to debilitating brain injuries in its young players. In a controversial New Yorker article from a few years ago he compared football to dog fighting.

     Gladwell cites research saying the head injuries football players routinely suffer during practices and games often lead to serious neurological disorders. There have been instances where the repeated head trauma has been linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain disease found in former college and professional football players, as well as former boxers and hockey players.

     He cited the case of Owen Thomas, a University of Pennsylvania football player who committed suicide in 2010. His autopsy showed early stages of CTE -- just as autopsies showed CTE in former professional players like Dave Duerson and Junior Seau who also committed suicide.

     Gladwell did not address the issue of professional football. Perhaps a professional player, as an adult, can make the decision to take on the risk of CTE as the price that has to be paid for the job. After all, police and firefighters and truck drivers and construction workers also risk injury and even death in order to do their jobs.

     What Gladwell questions is why our institutions of higher learning, which are dedicated to developing and improving the minds of our young people, are sponsoring a game that is shown to produce exactly the opposite results. How can a leading university like Penn teach its students advanced science and literature courses in the morning, then send those same kids out to suffer brain injury in the afternoon?

     Of course, anyone who plays any sport takes on a risk of injury. But track or tennis, or swimming or soccer or baseball, are not violent contact sports that involve repeated trauma to the head. They may result in a torn ligament or stress injury -- or there can always be a terrible accident -- but they don't require the constant violent contact that predictably brings on a debilitating and perhaps fatal brain disease.

     Like I said, I don't know what to make of Gladwell's argument. I don't know if Division III football carries the same risk of injury that goes along with football in the Big Ten or the Pac 12. And as far as the big state schools go, can you imagine Penn State or Notre Dame or Florida or Oklahoma giving up its football program? The alumni would go crazy!

     Big-time college football serves as a minor league for professional football. It brings in big money to the big schools. Some would argue that football scholarships give underprivileged kids an educational opportunity they otherwise would never have. But is the college football team really a part of the academic program of a state university, or are these football players essentially hired guns who major in physical education, rarely show up in class, and have nothing to do with the rest of the student body?

     I don't pretend to know the answers. I do know that there are a number of top schools that manage without a football team:  Boston University, New York University, George Washington University, as well as small colleges like Swarthmore and Haverford.

     Anyway, as the college football season soon swings into action, perhaps we should ask ourselves the obvious questions: Should universities really be in the business of producing football players? And are those bulked-up 300-pound kids being given an opportunity, or are they being exploited?

    

Where Are We?

     B and I have been away for the past week. Someone told me at home the temperature reached 100 degrees. I can't verify that. But I did see a photo of a digital thermometer posted on Facebook by a friend of mine. It read 99 degrees.

     It's been hot where we are, too, but nowhere near 100. It's a little cooler not because we're in the mountains (as guessed last week by DJan), but because we're at the seashore. We've had to deal with the humidity, with no air conditioning, but we've enjoyed a constant sea breeze, and we've made daily trips to the sandy beach, where the water is 70 degrees, or else pedaled four miles along the bike trail to the lake, where the water is 75 degrees.

     So how long will it take you to figure out where we are?

Here's the quaint village home we rented

We didn't dine at The Port (too expensive) or the Oyster Bar (too oystery)

   

We didn't go to the Sea Grille either (way too expensive)

But we did get our share of Bonatt's famous "meltaway" sticky buns

B wanted jewelry and frozen yogurt (there, that's a hint -- cranberry)

But I wanted candy and a beach toy

   

We were in the bluest of the Blue states. But they are very patriotic

Flags everywhere. This person is far from home ... that's a California bear on the flag on the left

But not everyone here is rich

By now you must know we're in Red Sox Nation

A place with lots of art galleries -- see my my self-portrait in the window?

You can't see it, but down the coast of Nantucket Sound is the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport

     So we have been happy in our little town on Cape Cod, Harwichport, Mass., where we've been enjoying the sand and the water and the sea breezes. But, alas, now it's back to the 100-degree weather that awaits us in the real world.

Best of Summer Blogs

     What's going on at some of the best Boomer blogs this week? 

photo: J. Star

     In a recent post on The Generation Above Me, Karen Austin reminds us that as our parents age, they are at greater risk for falls, especially falls in the bathroom. She summarizes the results of a study about emergency room visits due to bathroom falls, and provides a list of home improvements for reducing risks. 

    Meanwhile, I can tell you from my own first-hand experience -- as recounted in my post Two Thumbs Up -- that falling in the bathroom doesn't just affect our aged parents. It can happen to anyone -- even me.

     Meanwhile, did you ever wonder why your inkjet printer's cartridges aren't lasting as long? On the Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide Rita R. Robinson, consumer journalist, writes about the Consumer Reports tests that show many inkjet printers use more than $100 of ink a year just for their maintenance cycles. Consumer Reports offers several simple suggestions on how to save ink by doing some obvious things like printing in draft mode for less critical jobs, as well as some counterintuitive things like leaving the power on for the printer.

     John Agno offers some words of wisdom regarding what aging men need -- regardless of what they might want. If you journey over to So Baby Boomer, you'll also find out where the word mentor comes from -- and discover that you no longer have to travel alone.

     Finally, Laura Lee wanted to know some of the major differences between Boomers and their parents. She researched the question and came up with some pretty interesting answers regarding health, shopping, stress, and personal appearance. Go take a look. Then go have fun in the sun . . . but don't forget the suntan lotion!