Cancer Survivor, writing about Health and Fitness as you age

First post of 2018 Making the leap into 2018 The year in review This will be a short post. Nothing earth-shattering in this post except to say that 2017 has been quite a year. As a Muslim immigrant woman of colour it was an emotionally disturbing, frustrating and stressful year, and continues to be. I have learned many things about people, attitudes and the political system in America. To be sure I feel much wiser than I did before, in the vein of "the scales have fallen from my eyes." There has been so much human suffering from natural disasters and mass shootings;  war; international tensions; weather extremes and increasing schisms in American society and worldwide. I  am very glad to leave 2017 behind and I worry about what I am leaving for the children of the world. What will 2018 bring? I don't make New Year's resolutions, at best I may have an idea of big swathes of what I would like to accomplish but usually nothing specific. This year, I cou...

Today is Earth Day, so what am I doing about it? Well, now that it is getting warmer and sunnier here in Austin, I decided I needed to get me a clothes line. I now have that, but the forecast is rain for the next few days and not really any good clothes-drying weather.  But anyway, it got me to thinking about all the hype about the ability of an individual to effect change. I got seriously afraid that this whole effort is akin to how my husband views our budget: "Honey, it's not the $15 we spent on McDonalds that's the problem - it's the big things."  Ok, I may have ahem...underestimated the spending on those particular food items, but the point is the same.  Can I, as a person, really make a change in the overall prognosis for Earth? Are the small changes I am making good and beneficial, but at the end of the day not significant enough, because it is the bigger fish (whole industries, companies, governments), that would truly make an impact? I was listeni...