As a surgeon, writer, and amateur woodworker, I have had many opportunities to use my head, heart, and hands, which are the basis for much of my creation. Then I ran across this.
“My dad and stepmom were both 4-H agents, so I grew up saying the 4-H pledge:
“’I pledge my head to clearer thinking,
My heart to greater loyalty,
My hands to larger service,
and my health to better living,
for my club, my community, my country, and my world.’”
Austin Kleon takes that quote and runs with it in an excellent discussion of how those three Head, Heart, Hands, form the basis for creativity.
My wife is very wise, especially about relationships between humans. She taught me that to have friends, real friends, not just acquaintances, you have to expend effort. You need to take the time to engage with them. That engagement seems to have been replaced by a false simulacra.
“My advice to them is simple: forget those who view your Instagram Story but never ask how you are feeling. Forget those who use you like a prop to look popular on Instagram but otherwise can’t be bothered to come over. And if someone wouldn’t remember you if you deleted your Snapchat account—so be it.”
From After Babel, Aren’t You Lonely?
I know that it was a movie released directly to cable and is primarily for the Boomers who lived the times and appreciate the humor; however, Frosted, the story of Pop-Tarts, is not alone in bringing up the food culture of the 60s. Consider this:
“The Italian-American food cultural moment had no single origin story or inventor. But there was one name I kept finding in my research on SpaghettiOs, a woman who was an important innovator in canned pasta before Goerke got there, but whose name has been lost to history.
Honestly, there’s not much more to say about SpaghettiOs. But there’s lots you should know about Betty Ossola.”
A tale of innovation and a sexism that had no name. From Snack Stack, Uh-Oh: A story of SpaghettiOs and forgotten history
“In 1980, North Carolina’s Democratic Governor Jim Hunt famously declared, “In this state, tobacco is still king. And we intend to keep it king.” This is how we talk about tobacco here in North Carolina: with metaphors and symbols that describe something unconquerable, essential, even gifted by God; grown by modest, hardworking people whose toils funded the Colonies, saved the American Revolution, and built states, North Carolina included. We talk about the colleges it bankrolled, such as Duke University; how it paid for the educations of farmers’ children; how it fueled so many towns around rural North Carolina; and how the money tobacco generates is still key to the survival of our economy. Tobacco built kingdoms and titans of industry, the story goes; tobacco is freedom…”
Tobacco, in the form of cigarettes, is a well-recognized risk to your health. While we may quibble about the role of sugar, meat or processed foods, you will have to look far and wide for someone advocating the smoking of that particular weed. So why does the government continue to have tobacco subsidies? Good question. From the New Republic, Resolved: The U.S. Should Stop Growing Tobacco
Chuck Dinerstein, MD, MBA
Director of Medicine
Dr. Charles Dinerstein, M.D., MBA, FACS is Director of Medicine at the American Council on Science and Health. He has over 25 years of experience as a vascular surgeon.
