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...

Three years ago my book club chose The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson as one of our selections.   It is a non-fiction book about the search for the source of the cholera epidemic in London in 1854.   It is a very good book, and, like most good authors, Johnson gives us not just the historical facts, buy relevance to our modern world and lots to think about.   In the last chapter of the book he talks about why workers in the poultry industry in Asia are given flu shots.   The shots don’t keep them from getting avian flu, they keep them from getting the basic, human influenza.   Why?   Because doctors and scientists want to make sure that there is no way for the deadly avian flu to mutate into human influenza because human flu, while not so deadly as avian, is airborne—easy to transmit.   Avian flu, while extremely lethal to humans can only be passed from host to victim through physical contact and is rare in humans.   We now learn that the H5N1 vi...

Two days before Christmas my husband and I were making a few last minute shopping stops before heading home to settle into uninterrupted enjoyment of the holiday.   It included the hardware store, because that makes Tom happy, and the liquor store, because that makes me happy.   We picked up some bourbon (also for Tom), some scotch (for me) and a bottle of champagne for New Year’s Eve and joined the line at the cash register.   That is where I go a short lesson in voting equality.   In the long line in that south Texas liquor store there were both men and women.   There were lots of Latinos, a few blacks, at least one Asian and my husband and I, along with a few other, “Winter Texans” who all look as white and mid-western as a ‘50’s sitcom.    Here is the instructive part:   person after person who came up to the two working cash registers handed over a credit card to pay for their purchases, and every one of them was asked to show a photo I. D....

If, on December 25, we are celebrating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, then we are off on both the day and the year.   The consensus of most theologians and historians is that Christ was probably born around 4 B.C.   That means this year should actually be 2015 instead of 2011.   [This means that all of you nuts who are fretting about what will happen when the Mayan calendar gets to 2012 can ease up and find a new conspiracy to concentrate your paranoia on, 2012 has come and gone.]   We have a pretty good fix on the year because, while we don’t know when Jesus was born, we do know when Herod lived and died.   We also have that pesky reference to shepherds watching their flocks by night.   Usually this would be something done during lambing time, which indicates a spring birth for Jesus, not December 25.    So, we have Christmas being a rather arbitrary date, set to celebrate the birth of a poor, lowly born carpenter’s son, who became the pivotal c...

My default setting for a good book is a biography, add a penchant for American history and you have someone who reads a lot of Presidential biographies.   I am up to 13 so far, and plan on covering every President before I die, God willing.   Naturally, it caught my attention when President Obama said he would put his administration up with the top four Presidents.                 President Obama was clearly one of those children who were constantly told by his parents and grandparents that he was, “special.”   He was a special person; his parents were special people and everybody else, particularly people who didn’t think he was special, were wrong, jealous and possibly evil.   Such children grow up with an exaggerated sense of self.   We usually only see this syndrome in athletes or Hollywood stars, because politicians have to come up the hard way and there are lots of people to let them know ju...

Thank whatever Gods may be that our national conscience, our fair land, the very planet we live on, and even—dare I say it—Christmas itself (!!!) has been saved by the U. S. government.   Yes, in the midst of concern over unemployment, an economy in transition, unresolved wars and intransigent, undisciplined citizens our governmental guardians have found time to save us all by ending the use of chimpanzees in medical and scientific research.   Having seen the original movie, Planet of the Apes , and been totally frightened off by the sinister trailers for, Rise of the Planet of the Apes , I can tell you that this little wide-eyed blond will be sleeping better tonight.                Here is how the saving of the planet from rampaging primates on horseback came down.   [By the way, is it just me, or do chimps charging into the fray on horses sound too much like bringing a knife to a gun fight?   But I ...

When I was a principal, my desk was covered with paperweights.   One of the most unusual was a mass of coprolite.   Coprolite is fossilized dinosaur dung—yup, a rock of crap.   When I had to deal with a particularly obnoxious person, knowing I had to be tactful as well as effective, I would casually pick up the coprolite and pass it from hand to hand as I talked.   I could be smiling, quiet and professional all the time I was thinking about what was in my hand, and what I really thought of the conversation.               I am retired now.   While I consider it important to be honest, kind and helpful, I no longer feel the need to be tactful.   My goal here is to be straight forward, not even handed.   I don’t want to show both sides, I want to show the truth.   The Palestinians have been trying to create themselves since the 1993 Oslo peace accord was signed by the Palestine Liberation...

Part of being a Cardinals’ baseball fan is feeling like you should set a place at the dinner table for our players.   Over the past 11 years, Albert Pujols has certainly become part of that, “family” of Cardinals.   So it was, with genuine sadness, that I learned that the three-time, National League MVP has agreed to a 10 year contract with the Los Angeles Angels for a cool $254 million.   St. Louis is the best baseball town in the United States and we loved Pujols.   Unfortunately, St. Louis is also well known for making good teams on the cheap.   They parley their good well (and a pretty good scouting and farm system) into competitive teams; but when individual players want top dollar, St. Louis sends to send them on their way with the best of all good wishes.   So Pujols is going to finish his spectacular career in Los Angeles .   Well, the weather is better there than in St. Louis; but they won’t love him like we do.   I think Albert know...