New Books On Aging: “Elderhood – Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life” By Louise Aronson

From Louise Aronson’s website:

Elderhood coverNoted Harvard-trained geriatrician Louise Aronson uses stories from her quarter century of caring for patients and draws from history, science, literature, popular culture, and her own life to weave a vision of old age that’s neither nightmare nor utopian fantasy—a vision full of joy, wonder, frustration, outrage, and hope about aging, medicine, and life itself.

For more than 5,000 years, “old” has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. Now that humans are living longer than ever before, many people alive today will be elders for 30 years or more. Yet at the very moment that most of us will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, we’ve made old age into a disease, a condition to be dreaded, disparaged, neglected, and denied.

To read more: https://louisearonson.com/books/elderhood/

Health Technology: Digital Therapeutics Startup “Kaia” Targets Chronic Pain With AI-Guided Exercise

From a VentureBeat.com online review:

Kaia Digital ExerciseKaia’s iOS and Android apps were developed with the help of physiotherapists, pain management physicians, orthopedic surgeons, and clinical psychologists, the company claims, and are registered as Class 1 medical devices with the Food and Drug Administration. They serve up video clips covering basic back and COPD pain information and step-by-step physiotherapy exercises, in addition to psychological strategies, such as mindfulness and muscle relaxation.

During each of the over 120 15-minute exercises, in-app computer vision models track connective points on the body through a device’s front-facing camera while an on-screen wireframe model illustrates the steps. Audio feedback informs users whether they’re performing exercises correctly and how they might improve, and a built-in chat tool allows them to consult with a physiotherapist or sports scientist on questions related to specific moves.

To read more: https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/17/kaia-raises-8-million-to-treat-chronic-pain-with-ai-guided-exercise/

Museum Exhibitions: “Beyond Midnight – Paul Revere” At The New York Historical Society

From an New York Times online review:

Grant Wood (1892−1942), Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, 1931. Oil on Masonite. Metropolitan Museum of ArtRevere’s place in history was cemented by the Longfellow poem, published in 1861, more than 40 years after Revere’s death. Longfellow “was flexible about the historical details,” said Debra Schmidt Bach, who coordinated the exhibition for the New-York Historical Society. “I mean, it was a fictionalized poem,” she said. “It was not intended as a detailed examination of the ride.”

NY Historical Society.JPGThe exhibition was organized by the American Antiquarian Society, of which Ms. Hewes is the curator of graphic arts. Nan Wolverton, the show’s other curator, is the director of fellowships at the antiquarian society, and of its Center for Historic American Visual Culture. The display includes more than 140 objects from the antiquarian society’s extensive Revere holdings; the New-York Historical Society’s own collection; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Massachusetts Historical Society, among others.

To read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/arts/design/paul-revere-beyond-midnight.html

New Books On Aging: “Lifespan: Why We Age — and Why We Don’t Have To” By David A. Sinclair And Matthew D. LaPlante (2019)

From a Nature.com online review:

Lifespan-cover-imageLifespan, by geneticist David Sinclair and journalist Matthew LaPlante, provides a vision of a not-too-distant future in which living beyond 120 will be commonplace. For Sinclair and LaPlante, the answer lies in understanding and leveraging why we age…

Lifespan is entertaining and fast-paced — a whirlwind tour of the recent past and a near future that will see 90 become the new 70. In a succession of colourfully titled chapters (‘The demented pianist’, ‘A better pill to swallow’), Sinclair and LaPlante weave a masterful narrative of how we arrived at this crucial inflection point. Among the historical figures evoked are a sixteenth-century Venetian proponent of caloric restriction, Luigi Cornaro, and the twentieth-century ‘father of information theory’, Claude Shannon.

To read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02667-5?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20190912&utm_source=nature_etoc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20190912&sap-outbound-id=34E4EBDF3E516F09DA62FA13A7FD9F1CDB19356F&utm_source=hybris-campaign&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=000_AGN6567_0000014844_41586-Nature-20190912-EAlert&utm_content=EN_internal_32879_20190912&mkt-key=005056B0331B1EE88A92FE6D6D25F179

Destination Travel: Captain Whidbey Inn In Washington, “Gateway To Beautiful, Rugged Wild”

From the Captain Whidbey website:

Captain Whidbey Inn Washington sceneryThe presence of the inn itself demands this kind of myth-making. Its hulking imperfections, hidden staircases and infinite doorways, narrow pathways and intricate stonework, call to mind an honest, handmade world, where times were slower and things made to last. Rumors of its past are worn proudly on its proverbial sleeve — stripped wood where there once was a second floor balcony, prominently displayed plaques of historic register, mismatched sediments of historic photos, the speckled outline of a dart board and creaking floorboards. The front door was originally the back door because most guests arrived by boat.

Since 1907, Captain Whidbey has been a locus of natural beauty, community gathering and quiet, exalted delight. A place where locals and visitors do things together — even if those things are simply eating, drinking, appreciating nature, looking out across the water, feeling alive, feeling grateful.

Captain Whidbey is the Unofficial Official Lodge of Ebey’s Landing National Historic Reserve. The gateway to beautiful and rugged wild, Captain Whidbey fosters a sense of romance, a longing for adventure and a communion with the natural world.

To read more: https://www.captainwhidbey.com/

Top New Music Videos: “Sacred Ground” Featuring Cellist Shaun Diaz By Shawn Reeder

Filmed, Edited and Directed by: Shawn Reeder

Cellist and Composer: Shaun Diaz

Sacred Ground Music Video by Shawn Reeder 2019

Every so often life brings a magical opportunity to collaborate with a fellow artist with whom you share deep resonance. This summer I got to share in that experience with my dear friend and phenomenal cellist & composer, Shaun Diaz. Here’s a film we created together from one of Shaun’s most powerful pieces of music that he remastered & renamed this summer, “Sacred Ground”. To see more of our work, please check out our sites and social media!

Sacred Ground Music Video by Shawn Reeder 2019

Health Studies: Epidemic Of Physical Inactivity, Processed Foods Results In “Stiffer Hearts” Which Compromises Endurance

From Phys.org online article:

Echocardiogram wikipedia“As a result, today’s epidemic of physical inactivity in conjunction with highly processed, high-sodium diets contributes to thicker, stiffer hearts that compromise the heart’s ability to cope with endurance physical activity, and importantly this may start to occur prior to increases in resting blood pressure,” explains Shave.

The landmark study analyzed 160 humans, 43 chimpanzees and five gorillas to gain an understanding of how the heart responds to different types of physical activity. In collaboration with Harvard University’s Daniel Lieberman and Aaron Baggish, UBC Professor Robert Shave and colleagues compared left ventricle structure and function in chimpanzees and a variety of people, including some who were sedentary but disease-free, highly active Native American subsistence farmers, resistance-trained football linemen and -trained long-distance runners.

To read more: https://phys.org/news/2019-09-evolution-heart.html

Future Of Hotel Design: “Modular AC Hotel Nomad” From Danny Forster & Architecture

From a RadicalInnovationAward.com release:

Danny Forster & Architects Nomad Design SideThis Volumetric High-Rise Modular Hotel will be the world’s tallest modular hotel and one of the most stylish, combining modular efficiency with architectural flair. AC by Marriott at 842 6th Avenue, New York City, will be the tallest modular hotel in the world when it opens in early 2020. But it won’t just be a step up for modular design, it will be a step forward. The building leverages the advantages of modular construction, uses cutting-edge proprietary technology to address potential drawbacks, and, most importantly, put to rest the idea that a modular building can only be the sum of its factory-made parts.

It’s stylish and architecturally expressive. The perfect marriage of modular construction and inventive architectural design, this Manhattan AC points the way to the future by using accelerated design processes through VR software and off-site quality control to streamline the building process for builders anywhere in the world. DF&A and its tech partner patented a “Time Machine” technology that trains 3D cameras on each module at five different points in the construction process, so that clients, contractors, and architects can keep an eye on what’s being built.

Documentary Photography: Robert Frank Chronicled Post World War II America

From a New York Times online article:

Mr. and Mrs. Feiertag, Late Afternoon, 1951.CreditRobert Frank; National Gallery of Art, WashingtonRigorously unsentimental in his attitude to the world around him, Mr. Frank deviated from form in 1950, taking what was arguably his most romantic picture. He had his reasons. He was in love. The year before he had met artist Mary Lockspeiser, who became his first wife. In “Tulip/Paris,” he photographed a young man who is holding behind his back a tulip — presumably intended for the woman standing in the background. An old man, at the other end of life’s arc, approaches the viewer. It is a classic romantic Paris street photograph.

Robert Frank kicked documentary photography into the present with a loud clang. In place of the detached formalism of Walker Evans and the poetic lyricism of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Andre Kertesz, he brought a moody, cool intensity that stamped his pictures with a readily identifiable hallmark. Using a 35-millimeter Leica, he could compose images as elegantly framed as if he’d set up a tripod, or as blurry and off-center as an amateur snapshot. He took whatever means he needed to express a vision that was alternately empathetic and obstreperous, as contradictory as the man himself.

To read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/arts/design/robert-frank-photographs.html?module=inline