Clippings

Music is good for you at any age - latimes.com

With age, the "plasticity" that allows experience to mold the brain so easily declines. But it doesn't disappear. At any age, learning a challenging new set of skills such as instrumental music is likely to return cognitive dividends, says Harvard University neurologist Gottfried Schlaug. And for adults, he added, the prospect of making music can be a far more effective motivator to practice than nagging parents are to younger musicians.

"Music is sort of the perfect activity that people can engage in from young to older years. It affects how the brain develops and affects how the brain changes in structure" at any age, Schlaug says.

For the mature brain, even listening to beloved music may have what scientists call a "neuroprotective" effect.

 

Here's something that ties in with a theme that shows up here from time to time, usually involving singing. Makes me glad I'm remembering Chopin's birthday and listening to his music. Noticed on Twitter via @alonzofretwell and @dontgetcaught.

More from the LA Times, this time on the Mozart effect, and time via @NewsHourArtBeat. Loved the introduction

Five months after we are conceived, music begins to capture our attention and wire our brains for a lifetime of aural experience. At the other end of life, musical memories can be imprinted on the brain so indelibly that they can be retrieved, perfectly intact, from the depths of a mind ravaged by Alzheimer's disease.

In between, music can puncture stress, dissipate anger and comfort us in sadness.

What's Important...

L'Amour! These ladies come and dance and excite themselves and want love and think it is happiness. And they tell me about their sorrows--me--and they have no sorrows at all, only that they are silly and selfish and lazy. Their husbands are unfaithful and their lovers run away and what do they say? Do they say, I have two hands, two feet, all my faculties, I will make a life for myself? No. They say, Give me cocaine, give me the cocktail, give me the thrill, give me the gigolo, give me l'amo-o-ur. likke a mouton bleating in a field. If they knew.

Should subtitle this Why I Love British Mysteries from the '30s. This is from Have His Carcase by Dorothy Sayers. A mystery story is not the first place you would expect to find a well expressed and an important thought, but here it is.

Fishegg # 83 - Einstein - Fisheggs

Yes, I know Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist, philosopher and author who is widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists and intellectuals of all time.  But what strikes me the most is that he is an icon of distractedness.  Once when Einstein slept at a friend's house he forgot to bring his suitcase home.  The parents of the other boy said to Einstein's parents, "He would never amount to anything because he can't remember anything."  Einstein single-handedly changed the assumption that distractedness=dumb.  Thanks Albert! The Association of Distracted People

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*The consequences of distractedness are challenging and if distractedness is seriously interfering with a constructive life there is help for the varying degrees of distractedness via diet, exercise, meditation, therapy and medications. Google it!

via fisheggs.typepad.com

Will have to track this site for a while. At first glance, this puts me in mind of the Right Brain Workouts at Peter Lloyd's ste.

'Making Toast' Author Mixes Grief, Family Over Breakfast

JEFFREY BROWN: "Making Toast," that title characterizes so much of what you're recounting here, the life that really must go on.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Just that. It started out simply as my activity. I get up very early in the morning, and I get the kids' breakfast ready. And then I make toast. And some kids like it in one way, and some of the kids like it another way. And I like it yet another way.

And I found that, over the course of the last couple of years, it became a metaphor for our continuing and our survival. It's a simple act. A friend of mine said, is it like the bread of life, the staff of life?

And I would like to think that I had meant that, but I didn't. I just meant that it was getting on with it.

via pbs.org

From another recent NewsHour interview that really grabbed me, this time between Jeffrey Brown and Roger Rosenblatt, author of Making Toast. Rosenblatt uses that "making toast" to describe how life goes on for him and his wife, his son-in-law, and his grandchildren after his daughter has died. What struck me about him was his directness and openness, humanity and civility. Quite a bit to come through in a short interview.