Thinking of Florence and missing the magic...
Have you ever been to a place that does more than get under your skin? Have you ever woken up to the morning bells of a dozen churches and been able to honestly tell yourself "I am happier here than I have been, would be or could be anywhere else?" That is what Florence, Italy means to me. Of all the places I have been, it is the one where I felt least like a stranger. To the contrary, I felt a part of it from the moment I arrived. The people I met, the places I visited and the monumental relics of art and history to which I stood witness all beckoned me forward instead of pushing me away.
It has been just over two years since I was in Florence. I've wanted to go back ever since, but can just never get the time and funds to align to make a proper trip there possible.
But I still have my memories.
Locking my camera away in an effort to literally avoid putting anything between myself and the city.
Clambering up campanile steps in a blind zeal to see the city by morning's light.
Botticelli's Venus hanging in the Uffizi; bigger than I thought it would be.
Being taught how to properly pronounce nocciola (hazelnut) at the Gelato Festival.
Walking across the Arno on one of the city's many bridges to watch the sun set from the Piazzale Michelangelo.
Getting lost on the way back from the sunset and seeing the southwest neighborhoods come to magical life in a manner rivaling scenes from Midnight in Paris.
That beautiful girl behind the counter at the pizza shop.
Michele, the hilarious shop owner near the duomo who always demanded a kiss, like a blustery Southern aunt.
Mirko, the architecture student who moonlighted as a waiter. He emailed me a year later to that I photograph his wedding...I wish it had worked out.
Michelangelo's David, tall and proud in the Galeria dell'Academia. I swear he was breathing.
Kissing the cold marble of the duomo when it was time to leave.
Myself. Alone and quiet, entirely at peace and completely content to move through the city on booted feet, and simply bear witness to it.
Florence is magical.
Christians, Christianity and the Paleo Diet. Compatible or Not?
For your weekend consumption, I encourage you to read a rather unique article which I wrote on HubPages:
Christians, Christianity and the Paleo Diet: Are they Compatible?
You have to click through to HubPages to read the article, but I would like to provide some background on it here.
I have made my position as an advocate for the paleolithic style of eating and exercise very clear. I have researched the subject for the past year and have seen remarkable results in my own life from adopting it as a complete lifestyle. Simultaneously, I also do not shy away from letting people know that I am a Christian.
People are fond of reminding me that grains are in the Bible. Fair point. Furthermore, the science behind the Paleo diet is almost entirely based on evolutionary biology, so aren't I compromising? How can I live the way that I do without compromising my beliefs or subjecting myself to ongoing cognitive dissonance?
These were questions which, after a long enough period, I had to ask myself in a structured manner. So I poured myself a cup of strong coffee, settled in with my Bible and my old friend, Google, and did as I always do when I want to educate myself on a subject: I read, researched, assimilated and typed out my findings.
This article was the result. I would appreciate your reading the full story, but here is the CliffsNotes abridgment if you are pressed for time.
- Nutritionally, the Bible and the paleo diet give the same advice. (Genesis 1:28-29, 9:1-3).
- Christ used grains and bread as a metaphor because that is what his audiences understood when he spoke to them, 2,000 years ago. The grains of today are much different than the grains spoken of in the Bible, and now contain many harmful anti-nutrients.
- The paleo diet's reliance on an evolutionary model is rooted in its desire to express why a pre-agricultural diet is most beneficial for the human body. Evolutionists in the paleo community state that we evolved to our physical and mental apex through a diet free of grains and other products of agriculture. However, this fits in very well with the Biblical model as well, only in this paradigm, it simply means accepting that an Intelligent Designer created us to eat this way, and we messed it up.
When an author shares your book review...
In case you missed it, author Richard Nikoley was kind enough to acknowledge my review of his book Free the Animal: How to Lose Weight and Fat on the Paleo Diet on his own blog. He also shared the review on his Facebook page. I knew there was a possibility that Nikoley might share my review (I went out of my way to make him aware of it, tagging him on Twitter so he would at least see it), so I made sure to proofread and ensure my review was polished before posting; just as I always do. However, when Nikoley shared the review on Facebook, it hit home that my lowly blog had been shared on a site with a huge regular readership and over 3,000 likes on Facebook.
Cue mental crisis!
I immediately scanned back over my post and made a couple of minor wording and punctation adjustments. There were no glaring errors or major misprints, but the idea of easy readability takes on new significance when the audience of a blog and the writer's reputation is suddenly put before a much larger group of people for a short time.
An identical crisis of confidence occurred last year when I reviewed J. Stanton's The Gnoll Credo on HubPages. Eventually, I will learn to let my copy rest for a day or two before proofreading and finally publishing it to the web. It would help me to avoid this crippling state of mind.
Crippling? Yes. The following visual aid should communicate it fairly succinctly.
Andrew McGee: You Can't Sell a Song in Nashville
Sometimes, I really don't know the reason that I blog at all. Originally, it was to promote my photography, but at this point it is simply a constructive outlet for me to flesh out ideas and communicate the things which keep me awake at night. I probably do myself a disservice by writing so much about health and culture instead of specializing in marketable photographic content. But, it's my blog and I'll do what I want.
Tonight, as I continue to work obsessively over my upcoming ebook (unofficially announced several times now, the "official" word is forthcoming), I want to take a break and highlight the work of my friend and colleague, Andrew McGee. Andrew has a pretty remarkable story. After a brush with death that should have sent him on to the great hereafter, Andrew decided to quite stalling and do what he really wanted to do with his life. He moved to Nashville and has created a new life for himself as a singer and songwriter.
Andrew and I met under interesting circumstances. My creative specialty is photography, but I also moonlight as a videographer from time to time. I was most heavily involved in this line of work a few of years ago, and I was introduced to Andrew on a “friend of a friend" basis. Our association was originally pretty simple; another fellow was engaged to write and direct the video for a wonderful song Andrew wrote about the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. My job was to operate the camera.
Long story short, the other guy flaked on the project and I took up the slack from start to finish. As a result, my video and my name were incorporated into the marketing for Andrew's debut album, These Beautiful Hideous Things. That was 2009, and since that fateful day we met on Pensacola Beach, with BP oil cleanup equipment rumbling about us on all sides, Andrew and I have continued to collaborate on videos for his songs. Our greatest accomplishment so far is the weekend last year when I (along with a group of other creative and reliable people who would go on to found The Dream Factory) traveled to Nashville and shot four music videos for Andrew in four days. I don't know about the rest of the team, but that weekend still ranks as my personal best.
Most performers have a blog or social feed of some sort, but Andrew's stands out. Prior to moving to Nashville, he wasn't a stereotypical neighborhood busker; He didn't and doesn’t pass off blurry iPhone photos of random drunks as his "awesome fans" to build up a web presence. Andrew is an FSU graduate with an MBA in marketing, and his blog has some serious substance. His latest entry, You Can't Sell a Song in Nashville, is stellar. Seriously, if more people recognized the realities of whichever industries they attempted to be part of, instead of delaying their own steps toward action in hopes of “getting discovered,” more dreams would see the light of day.
Read Andrew's blog. And listen to his music. Listening to his album is like listening to a good story, and he has another one coming soon.
You Can't Sell a Song in Nashville
http://youtu.be/8bSEZmoPxvo
The M&M's website is not safe for kids!
I told them I was eleven.
While researching material for the fitness ebook I am currently writing for Kindle, I pulled up the M&M's company website a minute ago to check some nutrition information. To my surprise, it has an age lock!
On a hunch, I screencapped the page. Then I put in my date of birth, but changed the year. According to the Mars Corporation, I was an eleven year-old boy. As such, I was too young to be a participant in their "responsible marketing" of sugar-coated sugar to American youth via "toys and games."
Between HBO's Weight of the Nation ringing its bell and Mayor Bloomberg capitalizing on the publicity with the NYC ban on large sodas, the entire snack food industry is on edge right now.
Heck, even Alec Baldwin is weighing in on the fun,
I didn't intend to post a second entry today, but I just found this little tidbit way too entertaining not to share. I don't generally follow the news, but I am writing about health and fitness a lot these days and the fact that it took a well-publicized documentary to kickstart this sudden hysteria interests me greatly.
I had a film teacher in college who talked about working for the California Department of Transportation in the 1960s (yeah, he was old). His job was to assist in filming informational shorts about automobile safety.
Every film included elaborately staged crash tests in which dummies were mercilessly hurled through windshields and slammed into steering wheels. The air was thick with statistics and numbers, chosen specifically for their capacity to frighten viewers into wearing seat belts and stopping completely at every intersection.
"But," Dr. Karimi said, with an air of disbelief which had not waned in fifty years, "no matter how much damn information we threw at them, the statistics never changed! People still got into accidents and acted stupid all over the highway." He took a deep breath and looked up at the class again. "I learned...one thing...from that experience. You can't sell safety. You can tell people how bad something is and show them exactly what will happen, but people will still do whatever they want to do."
You can't sell safety. And you can't sell health. Government initiatives can throw as much money as they want at the issues of obesity and public health consciousness, but people will continue to eat whatever makes them feel good. And, to stir the pot even more, America is built on the ideals of free enterprise. What happens to other laws when a mayor can ban something as insignificant as a soda cup? I don't want to veer into a slippery slope fallacy, but laws do set legal precedents...
If people want it, companies will make it. If companies make it before the people think of it, people want it all the more. It's an interesting cycle that is very telling about our culture.
On that note, there are some excellent blog entries which I would like to recommend. I don't know if the moon is full or not, but today was a great day for paleo bloggers.
I wrote a few lines ago that people will eat what they want to eat. J. Stanton's latest post on Gnolls.org, beautifully titled Why Are We Here, And What Are We Looking For? Food Associations And The Pitfalls Of The Search For Novelty helps illuminate exactly why we become so attached to certain foods, good for us or not.
Concluding our contemplation of the government's attempting a nationwide stomach-stapling through "reform," Richard NIkoley (whose book I recently reviewed) just blogged about how the government is not great hope for our nation's health--healthy people are. He also included a superb video. Check it out at Free the Animal: Paleos & Primals: YOU are the Key, not Disney or Michelle Obama
Be healthy. Be blessed.