my exercise ROUTINE

6:30 a.m.

flat on back: 

swing hips left, right 30-40 times

lift pelvis up 30-40 times

lift bent knees left, right 30 times

swing extended legs left, right 120 times

bring knees to chest 30 times reps one leg at a time

sit on edge of bed, lean down with feet on floor 3 minutes

sit on bed, bring feet flat together

arms straight lift body 30 times, then do it fast

stand and lift toes, heels 30 reps

march in place for 100 plus steps

squeeze hand grips 40-50 times

lift 8 pound weights, up, up reversed, out, forward 30 times each

stand lean  pushups, 80-85 times.

lay on swiss ball on stomach for count of 100, legs extended, toes touching floor

sit on ball, move forward and do bridge 50 times, hold for count of 25

Put on 2 pound ankle weights, hold pole and swing legs each way for 15 , dresser 25 lifts for each leg.

Hang from horizontal bar for count of 100

Sit on chair, lift feet 150 times with ankle weights

same position swing legs back and forth 150 times

At counter, do 40 more standing pushups

Standing, lift 10 pound weights 25-30 times

Do crunches hands on 3 positions 15-30 times

Do ski pole lunge 25-30 times or stand on one leg for balance count of 30

Back against door frame bend knees to parallel with floor for two counts of 25, then one count of 50-100.

On back deep breathing 10 counts

On Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday 15-20 minutes on treadmill, bike. Sometimes couple of minutes on stair stepper.

sam col oct. 27 pls tell me you got it and  add blog at end as in the past

When is too much exercise too much exercise?

by sam

I’ve often mentioned my exercise program in the past, especially when I thought it might inspire other seniors to remain active. But now the two-hour daily stint is getting boring, particularly on the three days when I add aerobics on treadmill and bike.

My routine was something I had created from many sources over the years, starting when I was teaching skiing at Big Bear Mountain in Southern California.  

When I moved to Tahoe and began teaching at Heavenly’s Boulder Base, I enlarged the workout to about and hour, figuring that daily class work would keep me fit. (I never aimed at making myself bigger and better, just staying where I was and not declining.) The exercise was designed to keep me skiing as I aged.

But the long gaily workouts were demanding and eating into my mornings. I sought advice from some PTs I knew, but they of little help in examining what I was doing.

So after meeting Stephen Yasmer, manager of physical therapy for Carson Tahoe Health, I decided to talk with him about my fitness program. I did so and brought with me a printout with me that read something like this:

“Flat on back, lift knees on at a time to the chest for 30 reps.

“Using 8 -pound weights lift up, out, frontwards, over head each 30 times.” And so on.

The list was more than two pages long, and we went over it together. At the end he said if it wasn’t causing me pain, it sounded good but was way too long.

“Make some of the actions tougher and shorter,” he said. “Instead of 120 leaning pushups, do 10 or 15 traditional ones. And wherever possible make the action more demanding and with less reps.”

I said I was considering reducing my present routine to include tai chi once a week. (I had added some tai chi moves to the routine over the years.)

“Yes, that might add variety, but don’t cut back on your present routine except as I’ve suggested,” he said. And meanwhile sign up for some therapy now.”

So I did.

Meanwhile, I showed him my left knee, which had become painful a few days ago. No reason, I hadn’t bumped it or fallen on it. I had taken the inexpensive version of Aleve (naproxen) to ease the pain. (When I had my right knee replaced I took painkillers and vowed not to do so again.)

He checked and diagnosed inflammation. “Just use cold compresses for 20 minutes at a time. Take the naproxen for a day or so.”

I used the cold compresses every couple of hours and the hot knee cooled down, and the pain ebbed away and hasn’t come back.

Yammer also checked my flexibility and muscular strength  and suggested a series of physical therapy sesions to reduce my ever-present back pain, the result of too many falls on the ski trails.

I’ve had the back pain for years and many therapists have tried to help with little success. I ever tried at TV-ad therapy in Reno, but all he did was stretch my back with an elaborate device. I knew from experience that I could do that at home by hanging from a fixed horizontal bar in a doorway. Palliative, yes, but I simply hang from it for at  count of 25 and the back pain subsides.

I’ve got a schedule for therapy that stretches to ski season with a very professional therapist named Isabel, who worked me over in prep for the sessions. I’ll report on how those go in the future.

And I’m lucky that the apartment building I live in on Russell Way has an exercise room couple with stationary bike, treadmill and stair steppers. I’m apparently the only resident to use it, as well as the outdoor hot tub a couple of hundred feet from the exercise room.

While I use the treadmill regularly, I’m happy to enjoy the nearby bike and hike trail along highway I-580. And before the Big Mac multiuse athletic facility began to rise, there was a nice field of sagebrush where one could walk.

So I hope that this report encourages activity among seniors. As Yasner said, ”Not how good or bad the routine was but that I was active.” That’s what counts. Pant, pant.

“Bridge of Spies” Spielberg as his best, with Tom Hanks stolid and sure

by Sam

 “Bridge of Spies” is movie making at its heights with Steven Spielberg directing and Tom Hanks as the leading actor. It’s a tense Cold War thriller about the exchange of a Soviet spy caught in America for a U.S. Air Force U-2 pilot shot down on an aerial spy mission over the East Germany. It’s rich in Cold War Incidents as well as solid characterization.

As expected, Hanks delivers a terse portrait of an insurance salesman dragooned in defending Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance, who creates a marvelous picture of a captured spy who will never surrender; he may well be the best actor in the film. PBS TV fans may remember him for his brilliant performance in “Wolf Hall,” whee he played Thomas Cromwell.).

Film starts out with a long sequence during which Abel paints a picture, receives a phone call during which he does not speak. He goes to a park and retrieves a nickel which contains a secret message for him. 

The FBI raids his dingy apartment then but he covers up the secret message depriving the court of direct evidence of his spying, but he is taken prisoner anyhow.

Meanwhile, a insurance lawyer named Donovan (Tom Hanks) is pressured by his law firm to take over as Abel’s defense at that to 30 years so that Abel can be used later in a switch with the Soviets.

Meanwhile, four pilots are selected as those to fly the mystery U-2 spy plane over the Soviet bloc. In the only computer generated scene in the film, the U-2 is shot down, and the pilot Francis Gary Powers despite instructions to take poison lives. (Personal note: I worked on the U-2 missions long ago while in the Air Force as a photo-recon officer. We just looked at the 9-by18-inch pictures. Just following orders.)

Hanks talks Abel into going along with the prisoner swap (although he says when the East bloc takes him “they will shoot me).

Many complications as Hanks waits around for all the pieces to be put together for the exchange, including an East German official in casual clothes takes him for a ride in a fancy Volvo P1800 sports car. That was status supreme in East Germany and it was back in the days before Volvo switched to puffy sedans.

Things get murky as tine for the exchange on a snowy bridge with both sides lined up with snipers ready in case anything goes wrong. The swap is made and Hanks goes home to collapse on a bed before talking to his family.

Director Spielberg is a master at creating doubts about who is right and who is lying. He also inserts enough scenes from Cold War days to send chills down the back, including a nuke bomb test towering mushroom cloud, something  most of us have buried in the past. Spielberg seems to be telling us that it wasn’t all black and white in  those Cold War horrors. And a treat: Alan Alda shows up as a CIA type. Nice to see him again and a reminder of “M*A*S*H” days.

Director Stephen Spielberg

Writers

Matt Charman

 Ethan Coen

Joel Coen

Cast 

                TomHanks as James B. Donovan

  • Mark Rylance as Rudolf Abel

• Amy Ryan as Mary McKenna Donovan 

• Alan Alda as Thomas Watters

• Austin Stowell as Francis Gary Powersel

• Scott Shepherd as Hoffman

• Jesse Plemons as Murphy

• Domenick Lombardozzi as Agent Blasct

        • Eve Hewson as Carol Donovan

• Michael Gaston as Williams

• Peter McRobbie as Allen Dulles

• Stephen Kunken as William Tompkins

• Joshua Harto as Bates

• Billy Magnussen as Doug Forrester

• Mark Zak as Soviet Judge

• Edward James Hyland as Chief Justice Earl Warren

• Marko Caka as Reporter

• John Ohkuma as FBI Agent

•

books

Three books you might enjoy

Two are crime novels, one a political treatise you might find amusing. Another is a crime thriller.

The best crime novel is John Sandford’s “Night Prey.” Sandford is a best-selling writer, a fugitive from the newsroom of the Star-Trib in Minneapolis. This one dates from 1994 but still is fresh and fun. It’s all about a lurking psychopath who is fixated on a female target, watching her from a close rooftop. Lucas, a wealthy computer game designer, likes the cops’s life and he is a good one. No need to go into plot —- that’s Sandford’s job and he does it well. You’re rooting for the target woman all the way and Sandford makes the trip fun.

Less original is Sue Grafton’s “K is for Killer,” one of her alphabet series keyed by the title letter. This is not Sandford-level but entertaining as Kinsey searches for a missing person as a private eye. She knows the local crime scene, and becomes involved with a teen prostitute as a source. The writing i nimble and fun and the plot nicely complex. It’s good enough to make you keep and eye out for her next one, keyed to the letter L.

 A very different book is Patrick J. Buchanan’s 2007 “Day of Reckoning” of 2007. I got steered to it by a mention of it in a political column as worth a read, despite Buchanan’s lack of political action of late. Funny thing is, he suggests a solution to the Iran nuclear crisis very much like the one cobbled together by the U.S. and others.

Most of the book is an attack on George W. Bush for invading Iraq with phony weapons claim. George W. gets no praise here, which maybe why GOP has pretty much abandoned Buchanan.

Lots to contemplate here as Buchanan ticks off recent history of where the U.S. went wrong. But it’s all George W.’s fault.

Lee Child is a very popular thriller writer, with one major character, Jack Reacher, former Army MP major  now a wanderer carrying only a folding toothbrush and a couple of thousands in cash.

His comes to the aid of a embattled innocent. Child’s prose is clean and neat and his bad guy foes always tough in the final sequence. 

Child’s “Echo Burning” from 2001 follows the formula well, in this case helping a battered wife after she picks him on as a hitchhiker and tells him of her abuse. She’s caught with a young daughter with the family of her jailed husband who detests her as a “beaner.”

The husband is released from jail but murdered and the wife is accused. How Reacher works it out is of course the novel. It reads well, the plot is messy but fun. 

Child is a Brit, but he captures America’s flavor well. A fun read, not literary stuff but action enough.

A collection of book reviews for the casual reader

by sam

I read a book on Islam and America recently that castigated reporter Bob Woodward for revealing so much about the George W.Bush White House in the 100 days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. I figured I better belatedly catch up so I got Woodward's "Bush at War" published in 2002. 

I'm glad I did because it is an excellent job of journalistic reporting. Woodward combines secret memos, copies of security meetings among the Cabinet, Vice President Chaney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, CIA Director George Tenet and National Security Adviser Condi Rice.

It's a vivid portrait of how decision making took place slowly in the Bush White House. Some players come out strong, some weak, some wobbly.  

Bush comes off as a "gut" player, acting on what he felt rather than what he knew. He's religious, sure of his decisions and confident that he knows best. 

Chaney comes across as a hard-nosed fighter for what he believes, a constant spur for action---often blustery and forceful. The CIA's Tenet appears as something of a tody, always ready with a new way out of a problem. Rice is a moderator, intelligent and helping Bush through the maze of  security problems. Powell is strong and not about to be rushed into action.

Perhaps the surprise is Rumsfeld, who is informed, intelligent and capable. He emerges as probably the most grounded of the players. Woodward gives him credit for heading off  many ill-advised programs.

Bush comes off as not well informed as he should of been, but always sure that his "gut" is steering him right.

Woodward is a real journalist, weaving all the inside info he had access to in a thought-provoking story. He had unique access to the Bush crew and he makes it read like a thriller novel. 

Popular novelist Phillip Margolin's "Burning Man" has nothing to do with our Nevada Burning Man out on the Black Rock Desert near Gerlach, but rather about how a big-time lawyer fouls up a case and gets fired from his father's law firm and banished to a small town in Oregon. He walks into a case of a mentally retarded client and knows this is his chance to get back to the big time.

This is a tricky novel of suspense with a solid plot and deft writing. Enjoyable and the ideal read for the shores of Lake Tahoe. Paperback.

 John Le Carré’ has long ruled as the master of spycraft novels, ever since his excellent "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold." His 2003 paperback "Absolute Friends" is still about spies and espionage but it's mixed in with the ties of friendship, in this case the odd East Bloc spy Sasha and the Brit Mundy who survives by giving lectures to English-speaking tourists as Heidelberg. Of course, nothing is what is appears to be as the story jumps from Berlin to London, all in le Carré’s impeccable  writing. This is not for the action-demanding thriller reader but more for those who like a well-told story moving along at its own pace.

Frederick Forsyth has a  long record as well in the thriller world dating back to "The Day of the Jackal." In "Avenger" he's out to do in a master plotter who made a fortune  out of the Bosnian wars.

Skipping out of the Balkans where he looted just about everyone and everything, Zilic has holed up in a seacoast palace, secure from the world and enjoying private luxury. He's safe until Dexter decides he shouldn't be and decides to play Avenger.

This is an intricate treatise on how to do the impossible using wit and patience to achieve a goal. There is violence but modest by thriller standards. This again is for the more thoughtful  of thriller readers.

I saw the movie "Memoirs of a Geisha" and as a former Japan resident enjoyed to muchly, although I had little contact with real geisha, mingling with was called "apres guerre" geisha.

But I missed the book by Arthur Golden. I made up for that with the paperback 1997 version, and I'm glad I did. It is authentic Japan, from Osaka to Kyoto and to Gion, the geisha quarter of Kyoto.

The tale follows two young girls who live in a "tipsy" house with their father until they are taken away and one goes into a lower life environment and the other to a classy geisha house.

Not being familiar with real geisha, I was impressed by the details of geisha training and cultural mores. And I was made aware of the side on Japan that Westerners never know; that side of Japan is something we gaijin never know.

At least not until this excellent novel came out. The movie was fun and distorted things a bit, but the novel takes us deep into Japanese culture and eventually to New York City in a wry and moving ending.

Most enjoyable.

Here’s a couple of more recent reads.

I used to read and enjoy just about every thriller John D. MacDonald turned out, and he wrote dozens of them. He died in 1968 but Random House decided his works were to good to die so they brought out “A Deadly Shade of Gold,” with a forward by the high popular Lee Child of “Jack Reacher” fame.

“Gold” puts good guy Travis McGee up against slayers of his friend Sam, who came back after three years away. He came back with an ugly gold statue and wasn’t in Florida 24 hours before being knifed and the statue missing.

McGee along with Sam’s deserted sweetheart embark on a trail to fine out who and why they did away with Sam.

That’s all the plot you need. MacDonald carries the story along neatly, dispensing a lot of moral questions and some answers along the way.

“Gold” is a Carson library book, which I will return before the end of the month.

Then there’s the smooth and reliable John Sandford’s “Gathering Prey,” part of his ongoing series of “Prey” thrillers.

Lucas Davenport is the cop involved, along with his would-be cop daughter Letty. She receives a call asking for help to find her missing partner, and Letty jumps into action. 

Lucas is a Minnesota detective with a history of designing computer-based games. He drives a Porsche and is moderately wealthy but when Letty gets involved in the missing man case he steps  in to protect her. And he does it very well, despite the police department’s unease.

Sandford is a very dependable cop story writer (he came up through the newspaper world in Minneapolis) and knows the territory. He’s every club reporters’ dream, doing the newspaper job but going forth in  well-described Minnesota world.

Also a library book.

book reviews

Shape up, KNPB, stop promos during programming.

by sam

Our public broadcasting station KNPB in Reno has the routine of blasting promos on screen during programming. Such lunacy, seniors may feel, occurs after having a tense scene intruded upon with a promo for "Antiques Road" show.

This happened again and again during the showing of "Wolf's Hall" Sunday night. Here the queen is about to be beheaded after Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's hired gun, has rigged her death.

As the chilling preparations for the execution of the queen goes  on, out pops a promo for "Antiques Road" show.

How better to ruin a crucial moment of the show? Obviously, no one at  KNPB cares about programs content. All that is sought is donation to pay for the CEO and VPs salaries from seniors. Programs are seen as just interruptions in asking for donations,

Doesn't any of the executives so anxious get air time pay attention to KNPB's programs? Obviously not, or they would not allow promos to intrude in a beautiful program at thoughtless will.

Seniors can be forgiven for being upset by such stupidity. But then, who says executives have to watch their own programming?

Anyhow, the six parts of "Wolf" were better than many $8 movies, despite the meddling with actual history.

ruth ozeki novel

book review

by sam\\

Ruth Ozeki's widely acclaimed novel "A Tale for the Time Being" is not for the rigid readers unwilling to look at the world in a different light. It presumes that humans are "time being" things existing in one kind of hyper way. Yes, there are Zen thoughts here, and they are most intriguing. There is two beings at widely separated times and places interlocked in serious and amusing life stories.

One is a Japanese teen, born in in Japan who spent a couple of year in Silicon Valley where her father delved into computer programs before losing his work and returning to Japan, where his daughter Nao lives a painful life as an outsider.

The other is Ruth, a writer who lives on an island in British Columbia with Oliver and a pet cat named Pesto. She finds a "Hello Kitty" lunchbox on the beach which contains Nao's diary, sort of in progress.

The book, both witty and wise, trundles back and forth between the two woman as Nao undergoes torture and bullying from Japanese classmates. But Nao (or Naoko formally) can't be put down and fights back while her distraught father attempts suicide among other mad moments.

Nao goes to visit her grear grandmother who lives in a Zen temple in the mountains. She's 104 years old but Jiko is wise and loving to Nao. Nao finds letters from an uncle who died as a Kamikaze pilot but has a pacifiicist philosophy.

Nao falls into prostitution but escapes to home and grandma. She emerges as a counterweight to Ruth in a shared kind of life.

The book skips back and forth between the two women in an often puzzling manner. But it is always absorbing, particularly if the reader can let conflicting ideas meet. 

In appendixes Ozeki offers chapters on quantum mechanics and theory which helps explain some of the mystery of the novel --- how to persons can go around time and space. These only make the novel that much more interesting.

The line between fact and fiction is never explained except by quantum thought, and readers agile enough to follow theory of how the same particle can be two places at the same time will enjoy this delightful book. 

Scattered throughout the book at Japanese words and sayings that also explain the duality of the work. Despite my years in Japan and struggle with the language, her explanations are enlightening and increase the joy of this imaginative novel, by a Zen womanpriest who knows the words of Dogen Zenji. She has two other books which I am trying to dig up.