The Blaisdell Blog

Tomorrow morning I will grab a cup of coffee, pull on a leotard and wrap a jeweled, jingly skirt around my hips, hop on my bicycle and head to the pavilion at the South Texas resort which I call home.   At the pavilion I will join 35 other ladies and some (brave) gentlemen for our thrice weekly ZUMBA class.   Do you do ZUMBA?   It is the latest aerobic and strength training program that is set to Latin rhythms and music.   For 50 minutes we will dance our way through one spicy routine after another.   Those jingly skirts will make a joyful noise while we laugh, sweat and push through the steps.               We come in all shapes and sizes.   We are not the hard bodied, flat stomached, firmed, groomed and frequently augmented girls that you see in the ZUMBA commercials on television.   We are real women, all, “of an age” and proudly fighting a private battle with age, attitude and infirmity....

I do believe that there is such a thing as women’s intuition.   I am not talking about a psychic ability to read others’ minds, connect with spirits from the beyond, or divine the future.   I am talking about the learned ability to read body language, facial expression and tone of voice.   Women have survived for thousands of years by figuring out what men mean despite what they say.   Since I understand how evolution works, it is not surprising that the women who were best at deciphering the real meaning behind masculine behavior lived longer, were healthier, stronger, and produced lots of smart baby girls who had the same ability.   Research proves that women are, as a group, more sensitive to the emotional content of conversations than are men.   As a result, women are better at picking up on subtle, but real, messages.   That is why, when Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona , says President Obama is thin skinned and treats her with condescension, she is pro...

I met Isaac Asimov once.   The writer and scientist was speaking (along with Carl Sagan) at a National Science Teachers’ Convention in Washington , D.C.   By a stroke of luck, I ended up in conversation with both of them.   Wanting to say something other than the typical, “I love your books.”   I turned all of my attention to Isaac Asimov and said, “You have no idea how many hours of pleasure you’ve given me.”   Asimov looked me up and down with unabashed lasciviousness and said, “If only I could remember them.”               Besides being a quick wit, Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) was a trained scientist, prolific writer, and prescient intellect.     Born in Russia to Orthodox Jewish parents, he immigrated to the United States at the age of three.   Here he became an American success story.   Raised on hard work and education, he became an author of hundreds of books; invented th...

This planet’s petroleum resources are both finite and running out.   I will always trust the judgment of scientists over politicians and experts over paranoid conspiracy theorists.   Neither do I let ideology trump intelligence.   With that in mind, let me state as strongly as I possibly can, that there is no doubt that petroleum, laid down when the earth was warmer, wetter, and with land masses concentrated much closer to the equator than they are now, is limited.   We are sucking down this liquid gold like it was iced tea at a Jackson , Mississippi book club.   And it will be gone, probably within the next half century.               In 1956, geophysicist, Marion King Hubbert, a University of Chicago trained scientist for Shell Oil, developed mathematical models showing that the United States oil production would peak in the 1970’s and decline thereafter.   It did.   He predicted that wo...

I am no football fan.   Football, even at the high school level is too violent a sport for me to watch without trepidation.   My typical involvement in any football contest is to decide which team has the best logo on their helmets (the Rams are great, the Dolphins aren’t), or how I feel about the color combinations on the uniforms (the 49er’s are good, the Bear’s aren’t).    With this casual attitude toward the sport I had to ask my niece what she meant when she said her two year old son was, “Tebowing.”             Between my niece’s boy and the popular interest in this football player who has the temerity to pray in the open I have become interested in Mr. Tebow, his team and the intense controversy surrounding him.    Tim Tebow is the quarterback for the Denver Broncos.   He is also a Heisman Trophy winner from the University of Florida .   He is tough.   His junior year in high sc...

I am no football fan.   Football, even at the high school level is too violent a sport for me to watch without trepidation.   My typical involvement in any football contest is to decide which team has the best logo on their helmets (the Rams are great, the Dolphins aren’t), or how I feel about the color combinations on the uniforms (the 49er’s are good, the Bear’s aren’t).    With this casual attitude toward the sport I had to ask my niece what she meant when she said her two year old son was, “Tebowing.”             Between my niece’s boy and the popular interest in this football player who has the temerity to pray in the open I have become interested in Mr. Tebow, his team and the intense controversy surrounding him.    Tim Tebow is the quarterback for the Denver Broncos.   He is also a Heisman Trophy winner from the University of Florida .   He is tough.   His junior year in high sc...

How was your day?   Mine was pretty good, but busy.   We live in a retirement community in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas .   Most of us who live here have purchased our homes from the same mobile home retailer.   Each year this man holds a customer appreciation dinner at a local hall.   There’s food, beer and soda, door prizes and a great band.   While we were visiting with friends, enjoying the music and dancing around a crowded floor I couldn’t stop thinking of how happy everyone looked.   We were whooping it up.   By, “we” I mean a room of over 500 old, gray, paunchy, wrinkled, and remarkably spry retirees.   We are people you never see pictured in ads or on television drama.   We are not sculpted, nipped, tucked or liposucked.    We are ordinary people, having a good time and loving life.    And that doesn’t even include the great band.   The saxophonist used to play back up for Elvis Presley.   The s...

Just when I thought that unions and Maxine Waters were the only people who could make my teeth itch, here come the idiots that keep saying, “the Fed prints money.”   First of all, anyone who says this is either ignorant or nefarious.   Now ignorance is a simple condition reflecting a lack of knowledge.   We are all ignorant of one thing or another.   I recently had to ask my Facebook friends who or what these, “angry birds” were that I kept seeing references to.    I am so notoriously ignorant of, “techno” things that I assumed for years that you could play both sides of a CD.    Ignorance is a constant condition, remedied by knowledge, which is why we should all be learning new things every day.   [ The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who can not.   Benjamin Franklin ]               If you are misstating facts you might be ignorant, but if you know the trut...

While many columnists like to reminisce about the old year, I choose to present a morality lesson instead.   Several years ago, my husband and I were in Southwestern Minnesota and spent a day searching the streets of Luverne for the home I lived in for barely two years of ultimate childhood bliss.               My time in Luverne gave me a small town’s view of the world; the kind of view that can only belong to an eight year old with the run of a whole town.   My mother’s only rule was that we couldn’t go to the dump.   Mom would emphasize her point with a wagging finger.   “There are rats in that dump with teeth longer than your legs!”    I’m not sure what she meant by this statement, but we went to the dump any way.   My father gave me full access to the creamery where he worked.   We lived in a company owned house across the parking lot from the creamery and I was always poking my n...