GALFROMDOWNUNDER UPOVER

Namaste! Today I received 6 yoga blocks and 6 blankets thanks to the kind donation by Bike Friday Customer Glenn Martin  (pictured mid-Vasisthasana on Arizona Camp 2010 ) and a kind price break by YogaDirect.com. (As I said in my last yoga post, the ex-studio mats were donated by Laughing Lotus and my training was by Joschi Yoga Institute). It's gratifying to know that a dot com with a word like "direct" in it still has some human intervention to do special things for special people. Thank you Yoga Direct. The special people I'm referring to are the seniors at the Hudson Guild Community Center where I am volunteering a weekly yoga class. So far I've done 2 classes. Abilities range from belly dancers to someone in a wheelchair. It's really making me think about what really works for different bodily limitations. A lady with problematic feet could n ot do Downdog. We did Navasana (boat poses) instead - like a Down Dog upside down - no pressure on her feet a...

   A picture paints a thousand gripes. Can you tell what I'm about to rant about on FastCompany.com ? Stand by ... OK, here's the rant: Packaging Design 101: Follow through ... with decent glue .  

A little video of me tramping through the icy streets of NYC for my mother and father (who are sweltering in the heat of high summer Downunder). Ever wondered what it's like to walk through an icebox? Assuming you could shrink yourself down and do just that - this comes close. One thing you gotta do - buy the right boots . This year I blew $100+ on a pair of Steve Maddens that had absolutely, positively, NO zip up the side. Why so? Step in curbside puddle wearing boots with a side zip and you'll soon know - you'll be ankle deep in water. I believe I was on my way to a talk by übernaut Joe Kittinger (first man in space, jumped out of a balloon at 102K feet etc) hosted by Forbes Adventurer Jim Clash .  Joe appears far left, Jim's in the fawn jacket. The jump has been called, "Joe's Giant Step." I tell you, the weather on the way over to the Madison Ave location soon became a blizzard - I felt like Scott in the Antarctic. Jim interviewed me in 2005 ...

  Strolling past this building in Chelsea, NYC, I looked up to see a rolled tube containing a rose fall from a high window. It landed with a phtttht in the branches of a tree, as you can see.  What's the story behind this fallen rose, here on Valentine's Day?  Was it a "To heck with you!" moment? I paused a moment, waiting for an armful of men's clothing to swiftly follow, but it never came.  Thankfully. 

"Lynette, tell them about your yoga class. LYNETTE'S GOING TO TELL YOU ABOUT YOGA!" Yehudit is gathering people around one of the giant round tables in the cavernous community dining room. Some people aren't moving, so I won't get their attention. Most are already walking out the door. There's at least two generations of a Chinese family with a translator in front of me. Someone asks if I can speak Spanish. "Sufficiente para sobrevivir," I answer. I start to describe some simple movements and talk about Ujayi or "Darth Vadar" breathing. "Slower," says Yehudit as we raise our arms above our heads. I announce that we will be doing standing yoga in my class. I catch a glimpse of a Chinese gentleman in a wheelchair just as Yehudit says, "what about people who can't stand?" "We'll be doing sitting postures as well," I say. Thus began my induction to volunteering yoga at the Hudson Guild S...

Joy Ohara, Susan Lee , me (with Damien's bracelet), and pals form university days Lye Kok (back) and Damien Dernoncourt outside the Maritime Hotel, Chelsea, Manhattan On Saturday I had the pleasure of meeting Damien Dernoncourt, CEO and principal of John Hardy , makers of extremely fine silver jewelry in the Balinese tradition.  Apart from a mutual friendship with Bike Friday customers Lye and Joy, Damien had something in common: a handmade product with a story. In Damien's case, a stunning range of high-end silver jewelry made in Bali, where his company is the tiny country's biggest employer.  In my case, my little Traffic Cone Bag that's made in America (and of course, Bike Fridays , made in Eugene, Oregon).  When you see Damien's jewelry displayed in chic 5th Ave store windows, seemingly untouchable unless you're dressed well enough to hit the buzzer and enter, you'd never imagine the human and inspiring story behind it. First, the Balinese have th...

As you can see I'm hard at work, and practicing my yoga routine  ... (Photos below from the YogaJournal.com site) This picture was taken during my recent, oh-so-brief 5-day stay in the Bahamas, thanks to Bike Friday customer Hilge Hurford for generously inviting me to her timeshare.   My take on the Bahamas . I got caught up on plenty of reading, including fully digesting the current issue (as opposed to being 3 issues behind) of Yoga Journal, a nice, tight publication with a very long history.  I've been doing regular practice ever since putting my back out in November  at the end of my Japan trip, and it's really paid off. After some emergency chiropractic, then letting the pain subside, I went to a yoga class after 3 weeks and was amazed that 75% of the pain and stiffness had disappeared by the end of the class. Wow! Sacro-iliac joint pain is so utterly common, than when it hits we seriously worry if we've done something drastic. It just needs some rest ...

Avoiding banana lounge butt (except when typing this blog) and stingy things like these ... Story on the Wayback machine here .

I'm still waiting for i-Pearl Inc to say "I got it" and refund my $29.95 for the damaged laptop case. Or at least tell me to go to hell. The year has begun well. My best friend Julie from waaaaaaaaaay back in kindergarten, had the top of her lung removed a couple of days ago and has been given the all-clear. This, despite a very informed friend (head of a pulmonary critical care unit) telling me lung cancer is a tough one. I'd sent her a hamper of goodies but the internet hamper company didn't acknowledge right away for some reason. During that gap I had ample time to start wondering if my money had disappeared off to Nicaragua (a country I love, but you can disappear - voluntarily - pretty easily there). When I finally got an acknowledgement, it still left a lingering mistrust. I asked my friend to tell me what was in the hamper - just to see if the stated goods matched the actual. I thus declare 2010 to be the year of "I Got It". I assert...

Today I went shoe shopping  (no I didn't buy the above boots, despite turning Japanese )

I got an interesting letter from someone today: Hi, Seeing that the Cubans are so poor and that dear old man has worked so hard everyday did you, will you or have you given him any money for using his picture?I was back to Cuba this past March and gave him a picture I took of HIM!!! I wonder what he would do if he saw himself on your book? I'm thinking there is something wrong with this ... Sandra It's a reasonable question: should I give the man on the cover of my book money? More to the point - just how much? This reader feels I am somehow taking advantage of this man - profiting from by having his face on my book. Here's my reply: Thanks for writing. I appreciate your thinking on this - though you're making a baseline assumption that he is poorer than me. In many ways, he's probably better off. He charges $1 for 2 little photos he processes in that bucket in a prime tourist location. He makes more money in a day than many Cubans do in a month. He...

New York never fails to redeem itself. A clinically certified New Yorker keeps quoting "either  E.B. White , ('Here is New York') or Joan Didion ('Goodbye to all that'). Actually, he now claims can't locate that passage anywhere in the above two writings, and I suspect in his rabidity about his domicile of 25 years, he made it up himself. No matter - how this blow in from Downunder spent New Year's Eve upover in 2009, is a testament to it. And I was nowhere near the mirrored ball in Times Square. Instead, I spent most of the day sheltering from the snow, working on a newsletter for Bike Friday. At 4pm I  wrapped myself up in everything Smartwool I own , pulled rubber rainboots, unfolded the Speeding tikit and pedaled uptown. The snow and ice were thick, with mirror-slick patches requiring careful negotiation in the icy bike lane. First, I arrived at Caroline Fu's office to take delivery of more Traffic Cone Bags to fulfil the orders th...

Occasionally it's nice to get an unsolicited gift in the mail - even if only snailspam. In this case, a rather cool cardboard "Eiffel Tower party hat" from  St Germain , maker of the classy elderflower liqueur of the same name. I stumbled across this addictive concoction at a Dr Ruth Westheimer book launch at BottleRocket  and must have tipsily given them the GPS coordinate of my bunker. The enclosed classy instruction sheet, resembling a menu from one of these places , asks recipients to take a shot of themselves with it - presumeably expecting overexposed snaps of the tower teetering atop boozy, high-fiving party animals @ some velvet roped club or midwestern garage BBQ or other predictable composition. No such luck from the Galfromdownunder, who, with no such luck of a St Germain-fueled party invite, came up with this: a  David Weekes Hanno climbing the St Germain Eiffel Tower with Manhattan's London Terrace in the background! Now setting up such...

6 years after my Cuba book was published, I still get nice emails from people who've found it in a library, on a shelf in a backpacker's hostel in Nepal (thanks Sarad),  or got it for 99 cent plus $10 shipping on Amazon. It's technically only published in the USA, Canada, Australia, NZ and now Germany, but has found its way around the globe. It's even in Iraq ... Here's are some from this week: Hi Lynette, We've never met; I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your Cuba book!I finished it last eve, in preparation for a 3-month trip there next month, & I could barely put it down!  I loved your great honesty, modesty, insights, philosophy, humor, descriptions, etc (& this was the first book I've finished in 10-20+yrs)! If you're ever in the Phoenix area you're welcome to stay in my guest bedroom. Best wishes! Dave Foster, AZ Lynette, I have to agree with Peter Sutherland about the reviews of your book. I did have to put it ...

The Pink Panther demonstrates camel side plank and bow poses. You don't have to be this bendy to benefit from a little yoga!   I have proof: Yoga works. It really works. Remember how I put my back out in Tokyo last month? I was crawling around like a ninety-something, unable to even put my socks on, and having to get out of bed on all fours. As you will read, it is likely I suffered sacro-iliac joint pain, that is, the spot that joins the sacrum to the pelvis got locked up from walking by favoring my right side, and the muscles on the left lower back started spasming, trying to yank my pelvis back into alignment. Here's a very good article about the sacro iliac joint pain . After some chiropractic treatment then three weeks of making excuses so I didn't have to do anything, I gingerly took myself off to a yoga class. To cut a long story short: 90 percent of the stiffness and pain miraculously vanished after that class. In my Yelp Review of the studio where I...

I just loitered across the most ludicrous piece of advertising copywriting since leaving the land of Truth Entertainingly Told. In fact, I even made a video of me badly acting this $100-an-hour piece of unintentional Saturday Nite Live satire. Have a perve (3 Mb Quicktime movie) , as we say downunder. For those ill-equipped with the technology to see my C-grade performance, I reproduce the copy below. Put on your best Platoon garb, grab a whistle, strap on your Smith & Wesson and read with the trepidation of someone about to pull a big fat trigger on some Donalds and Daisy's out minding their own business ... As long as you're looking up, a little prayer couldn't hurt. You called. Begged. Pleaded. You did whatever it took to get them back, and now there's a whistling of wings coming your way fast. Though it might be your last chance, it's the only one you'll need now you're loaded three-deep with new UltraShok TM. It's from Federal Premium,...

Pictured above: With author and Japanophile Harris Salat and his book "Japanese Hotpots: Comforting One-Pot Meals" - music to a busy bachelorette's ears A month after returning from Japan , my obsession with it continues. Not only did I spend a good 60 New York minutes (= 10 outer-borough minutes?) browsing a book about Geishas in  Takashimaya , pleaded a Japanese friend to bring over some  cute cat-shaped dust-collectors , trekked across town in driving rain to eat  okonomiyaki  at Otafuku, and indulged in a few other things I'd rather not mention ...  I invested $22 to attend the Japan Society Hotpot lecture . I say "invested" because any casual Googling of the words 'japanese hotpot' or 'nabe' will reveal a ton of easy recipes and how-to you really don't have to pay for. Basically, cut up whatever you want, heat stock in a large casserole pot - preferably iron or clay - put the two together, and close the lid. $22 ...

I'm just back from rolling out the recycled green carpet for David Kroodsma, the winning Huffington Post Hopenhagen Ambassador. What's that all about? ' avaread ...