Blackstrap Molasses

Blackstrap Tea

I’ve heard the adage that if you kiss a toad at the start of your day nothing worse will happen that day. Or is it “lick” a toad? It may be a distinction without a difference.

Apple Cider Vinegar

I thought of saying in a jocular way that if you drink a cup of blackstrap tea in the morning, nothing worse will happen that day. But it’s an exaggeration. Drinking a tablespoon of blackstrap molasses mixed with a tablespoon of apple vinegar in warm water isn’t as bad as kissing a toad, and likely more beneficial.

People who ask more questions are better liked by their converesation partners, researchers say. Vincent Tullo for The New York Times.

“Want to Seem More Likable? Try This” (“It’s easier than you think!”)

That’s the headline and subhead in the NYTimes of an article by Tim Herrera. I’ve skimmed by it several times this week without reading the article because I get a wry twitch of satisfaction from the notion of “seeming” more likable. I say to myself, “Naw, I think I seem just about right. In fact, I may already seem more likable than I am.”

Title: Classical ballet dancers performing on stage in theatre. There is a fog on the stage.

“In a Rehearsal Room” (YouTube)

A fellow blogger features the marvelous ballet video of the title. The dancers are Cynthia Gregory and Ivan Nagy. I have far too little direct experience of the wonderful art form of classical ballet. The closest I came was vicariously, when following for several years Arlene Croce’s writings on dance in The New Yorker.

In several watchings of the “Rehearsal Room” video my mind takes an unseemly detour that surely betrays my lowbrow roots. The ballerina’s “romantic” tutu, the longer version of tutus, cloaks her modestly, whereas the ballerino’s tights render him exuberantly apparent anatomically. There’s more in the male to shelter with a tutu than there is in the female, if “sheltering” were the point.

A fashion journalist commented recently on the persistence of the vestigial “skirt” in female tennis attire on the professional circuit when it makes no practical sense for the women players, who train in shorts just like men until the big tournaments foist costume on them. The thesis was that the tennis skirt is an archaic gender marker of sorts, a genteel throwback in dress code that has outlived its purpose. I wonder if the classical ballet tutu comes from a similar tradition, one requiring a certain draping of the female figure, even if symbolic? I take no position on the matter — just a passing thought caught in the blog-net.

(c) 2018 JMN.