Fight Obesity, Revive Sadie Hawkins Day

Our current national campaign against obesity  looks backwards to an earlier day when our grandparents kept their weight down by walking everywhere, performing manual labor, avoiding fast foods, and chain smoking several packs of cigarettes a day.

My town, Amesbury, hosts innumerable fitness activities including the annual “mud run,”, so I recently suggested to Mayor Thatcher W. Kezer III that he revive the Sadie Hawkins Day Race.

Sadie was a creation of  Amesbury’s Al Capp, creator of Li’l Abner, in times auld lang syne one of the most popular comic strips in the world. Sadie, the “homeliest gal in the hills,” grew tired of waiting for the fellows to come a courtin’.  Her father was worried about Sadie living at home for the rest of his life, so he decreed the first annual Sadie Hawkins Day, a foot race in which the unmarried gals pursued  Dogpatch’s  bachelors, with matrimony the consequence of capture.

Indeed, some  ideas have consequences.  Beginning in 1937, Sadie Hawkins Day races were held at hundreds of high-school and college campuses, where they were considered a woman empowering rite, long before the modern feminist movement began.

Arnie “Woo Woo” Ginsberg, once Boston’s most popular rock and roll disk jockey, tells me these races were held regularly at Wellesley College, now better known for its distinguished faculty than its fleet-footed students.

Our local race could start at Al Capp’s house in South Hampton, NH, ending at the newly dedicated Al Capp Amphitheatre in downtown Amesbury, where Mayor Kezer could join the new couples in Holy Matrimony.  

Combat obesity! Promote family values! Organize a Sadie Hawkins Day Race in your town!
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As for my walking, working, and non-smoking grandparents, when they were my age three of them were dead, the men for almost two decades. Go figure.     

Backroads of Provence

Our former neighbors in Portsmouth spend much more time in Provence than we can, but are considerate enough to put their experiences into a blog so we can all share them. Please join us.  For a sample, you might read their thoughts on the Sunday Market in Isle-Sur-La-Sorgue; this post is our favorite (because it quotes both Lee-Ann and I).

Alternatively, consider their most recent post, “Tired of white linens, sommeliers, and Michelin stars? Consider lunch at Le Castelas, a working goat farm, for another kind of Provençal dining experience.”

Susan names her blog the “Modern Trobadors, ” described  thusly. “Trobador" comes from langue d'oc, the Old Provençal language. It means "finder or researcher" and is likely the root of "troubadour," a strolling minstrel in Southern France in the 12th c.  The Modern Trobadors research all things Provence: its world-renowned food and wine, its writers and artists, its tremendous tourist appeal…. From the prosaic to the profound, the practical to the quixotic, we provide news, information, advice, opinion, and, we hope, a wee bit of inspiration.

Critics claim that Peter Mayle’s excellent books have overly-popularized Provence. Should you agree, I discovered through the Irish Times a delightful sounding  new place in neighboring Languedoc, Château les Carrasses. “Dubliner Karl Hanlon used to work for Bank of Ireland.    Now he and his family live in Languedoc, where he has just opened a boutique hotel, holiday village and private member's club.” 

Read about it here, and please report back  if you try it. Google maps places it about two hours from Isle-Sur-La-Sorgue.

Can MIT People Really Walk on Water by 2030?

My classmate, Professor Patrick Henry Winston ’65, SM ’67, PhD ’70 identifies a potential problem with the new MIT campus plan in his post "Arrogance" reproduced below.  It appears to me that they also crop  my Dad's old police beat, Union Square in Somerville, off the top of the map. Pourquoi?

 The evolving plan for the campus is newly up on a website, MIT 2030: envisioning our future campus. There are many points of interest, particularly the graphic shown on the Process tab.
The circles indicate where you can go by walking away from the Great Dome for 5, 10, or 15 minutes.

Note that all the circles extend into the Charles River. There are several interpretations.