Monthly Archives: May 2002

Spielberg’s Mom and The Milky Way

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By Nicola Pittam

He’s the biggest director in the world and the mastermind such box office hits as ET, Jurassic Park, Jaws and Indiana Jones. But while Steven Spielberg makes movies that pull in hundreds of millions of dollars, his mum still runs the tiny restaurant she began 25 years ago.

Petite Leah Adler, who has just turned 82, could easily have retired years ago and been looked after by her famous son, who is reportedly worth more than $2 billion. But instead she chooses to work up to eight hours a day, seven days a week, greeting customers at her Los Angeles eatery The Milky Way.

The diner has proved such a success that even Spielberg has to put in his daily order for a Tuna Stuffer, which is pita bread stuffed with tuna salad, early to make sure he’s not left out!

Leah said: “Steven loves the food we serve here – whenever he is in town shooting a film I always have to send him over a tuna sandwich to the set. That’s his favorite dish off the menu and he always gets his order in early. But when he’s not shooting, he comes into the restaurant and then he order the cabbage rolls which he also loves. I’m so proud of him, I never dreamed he would be where he is today. I’m still toiling away here and he’s the most famous director in the world.”

“Seriously, I love doing this. I don’t think I could ever give it up – it keeps me young! I’ve just turned 82 but I feel 30 years younger and I know that running this place is what keeps me on my toes.”

Customers entering The Milky Way are immediately struck by the homeliness of the restaurant as Leah is on hand to meet and greet them. But soon their eyes turn the walls which are adorned with mementos of her famous son.

There are movie posters from most of his films, a clapperboard from Jaws and, of course, photos of Spielberg himself, including one with him and Leah at the Academy Awards when he won for Schindler’s List.

And on one counter there are even photos of Leah with Kirk Douglas and even Bill Clinton. Former concert pianist Leah proudly shows diners the pictures and says: “That’s my son, isn’t he wonderful? I don’t know where he got his creativity from! Well maybe he gets a little of it from me!”

“He was always making movies when he was a kid. I think he did his first one when he was eight. Of course then we never had any idea that he would go on to become where he is today. Then he would just spend all day filming the family and making up these wonderful little tales. He has a wonderful imagination and I love all his movies, they are so whimsical and extraordinary. But my favorite must be Schindler’s List. It is such a powerful film and close to all our hearts.”

With Spielberg on his way to success after paving the way for summer blockbusters with his hit movie Jaws in 1975, Leah decided it was time for her own: ‘Action.’

Leah, who has split from Spielberg’s dad and remarried Bernie Adler, decided she wanted to start her own business because she couldn’t find anywhere decent to eat. She wanted somewhere she could get fabulous home style food but without any meat included.

So after searching through Los Angeles and hitting a dead end she decided to open the Milky Way in 1979, the same year that Spielberg hit cinema screens with Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Leah came up with the name Milky Way, not after one of her son’s fantasy sci-fi movies like Close Encounters or ET but because the menu is kosher and made up of dairy-based dishes.

Leah explained: “The reason I called the restaurant The Milky Way has nothing to do with Steven’s science fiction type movies like Close Encounters or ET! The reason is that we only serve dairy products – there is no meat on the menu at all. We have some fish like salmon or snapper but that’s it. However, there is a lot of cheese and egg based dishes as well as vegetarian dishes like eggplant parmesan and spinach crepes.”

Leah has three full time chefs that prepare the meals, which include seven appetizers, six entrees, five specials, five pizzas, five different sandwiches, six light dishes, salads, soups and five deserts.

The petite owner admits she is not allowed in her own kitchen to cook after being barred by the chefs. But does decide what dishes go on the menu which has hardly changed over the years.

She added: “”I have three chefs and they do all the cooking – I’m not allowed in the kitchen! Besides I have far more fun meeting and greeting people as they arrive for lunch of dinner. I love talking to everyone and getting to know them, no matter if they’re famous or just ordinary people.”

“We have people coming in who have been coming here for 20-odd years and often they want to chat as much as they want to eat! I do put the menu together but again I also have people who advise me  – this is a business not just a place where I can hang out. I think the reason it has lasted so long is that I don’t put my favorite dishes on the menu or do the cooking!”

“I’m there’s lots of things that I and Steven like but no-one else would, so early on I realized I had to make the menu varied and not just thing I wanted to eat. Also the menu has not changed that much over the years, I’m a big believer in that once you find something you like, you should stick with it.”

“Occasionally I’ll update the menu and I listen to my customers about what they like but why change a winning formula? But even so I love all the dishes – my favorite is the dreamy cheesecake which is so light I could eat it day after day!”

Leah’s daughter and Spielberg’s sister Sue added: “Mum just loves running this place – we can’t tear her away from it. She doesn’t have to be in here every day but she really enjoys it and the customers all love her. She spends most of her time going from table to table chatting to everyone and making sure they’re having a good time.”

“If the customers are happy then so is she. No-one would ever guess that she is 82, the way she runs around here.”

And Leah says she has no plans to retire any time soon, adding: “I couldn’t ever imagine retiring, I love this too much. Besides what would Steven do without his daily sandwich to keep him going?”

Some examples of the dishes available on the Milky Way menu:

“APPETEASERS”

Freshest Norwegian Smoked Salmon with the fixins

Steamed Veggie Platter with a creamette dressing

Tangy Guacamole Dip with fresh tortilla chips

THE LIGHT FANTASTIC

Marinated Fish & Advocado: Tender fish filled with capers, Chinese peas, artichoke hearts and avocado in a tangy dressing

Spinach Seafood Fettuccine: Pasta sautéed in olive oil with smoked salmon, spinach and plum tomatoes

Oriental Stir Fry: Snowpeas and fresh veggies sauteed in a savoury Oriental dressing on a bed of rice or angel hair pasta

LUNCHEON ENTREES

Salmon Roulades: Baked slices of fresh Norwegian salmon layered with cream cheese and spinach pate. Served with toasted pine nuts and sauce béarnaise.

Cabbage Rolls: A classic. Poached cabbage leaves filled with our secret blend of fresh vegetables, rice and walnut pate. Baked with sauerkraut in tomato and served with potato pancakes and sour cream

Eggplant Parmesan: Delicately sautéed eggplant smothered in a zesty marinara sauce and baked with layers of mozzarella. Accompanied by a fresh green salad and garlic bread.

MILKY WAY SPECIALTIES

Spinach Crepes: A tasty combination of cream spinach accented by friend onions and wrapped in two golden crepes. Topped with melted cheese and served with garlic.

Cajun Blackened Snapper: Red snapper rolled in lively Cajun spices and blackened in a cast iron skillet. Served with rice.

Cheese Blintzes: What would a dairy restaurant be without blintzes? Ours are yummy. Served with sour cream and strawberry preserve.

BETWEEN THE SLICES

Tuna Stuffer: Pita bread stuffed with tasty tuna salad, lettuce and tomatoes.

Seafood Tacos: Two corn tortillas filled with succulent blackened fish, shredded cabbage, lettuce and tomatoes. Topped with tangy salsa and sour cream.

Hot Mushroom Sandwich: Delicate mushroom pate topped with melted Swiss cheese, avocado and sliced tomato. Served on toast.

DELIGHTFUL DESSERTS

* Dreamy Cheesecake
* Fresh Fruit Stir Fry
* Luscious Carrot Cake
* Devilishly Rich Chocolate Mousse Pie
* Tangy Lemon Tart

Nicola Pittam is a British journalist who has worked for Splash News in Los Angeles for four years. She reports daily on the latest from Tinsel Town for the British newspapers

Hotel Home

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Hotel Home – Peter Greenberg’s Unique Odyssey
By Nicola Pittam

Traveler Peter Greenberg has transformed his house into a real holiday home. Peter was so impressed with his stay in hotels around the world, that he immediately turned to them when he wanted to decorate his home.

Now the travel writer has decked out his Los Angeles house with  furnishings from 47 different hotels. From the wooden floor and kitchen appliances through to his bed and toilet, all the items can be found in a number of famous hotels. He has even gone as far as modeling his swimming pool on one at a tropical paradise hotel.

Peter, who lives in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, said: “My home really is decorated from 47 hotels from around the world. Everything  here from the wooden floor down to the door locks has been bought from a hotel somewhere. Each furnishing is something that I fell in love with while I was staying at the hotel. I just wanted to recreate that feeling in my home and after a lot of phone calls, I did it.”

But is doesn’t come cheap to keep your holiday memories with you all the time – so far Peter has spent close to $200,000 decorating his house. The most expensive single item, apart from the wooden floor from Sweden, is the bathroom window.

Peter first spotted the window at the Princeville Resort on the island of Kauai in Hawaii. The window looks like any ordinary window at first but at the push of a button it instantly becomes frosted so people cannot see through it.

Peter, who has been a travel writer for 20 years, has now installed one of the windows next to his bathtub, which came from the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong.

He added: “I was fascinated with the window the moment I saw it in the hotel. I had great fun playing with it. I would go into the toilet and just stand there until someone came in and looked at me oddly. As soon as they did that, I would press the button and the window would get frosted. I’m still amazed I never broke the thing, because I took great delight from that moment on in constantly running to the bathroom.

“The window was tricky to get because the hotel at first had no record of where they got it. But after two months of tracing, we found the company and got one.”

Another quirky item in Peter’s bathroom is a toilet from the Park Hyatt Hotel in Tokyo. It is the only toilet Peter has ever seen that comes with an owner’s manual to operate the heater, bidet and fan.

But one of the cheapest pieces is also in Peter’s bathroom and comes from the Savoy Hotel in London. The 15 inch diameter showerheads looks impressive but cost him just $200.

Peter added: “I just had to have the shower head. I could never forget the feeling of standing under the shower at the Savoy. It is the reason I stay there when I travel to London, it was one luxury I could not do without!”

But Peter came up with the idea of decorating his home from hotels purely by accident. His original home in Sherman Oaks, a suburb of Los Angeles, had been destroyed in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The house had to be razed to the ground and Peter spent more than two years fighting with the insurance company before he could start rebuilding.

He brought in architect Garth Sheriff who asked him what style he would like the house. Peter started listing a number of items that had caught his eye over the years during his world-wide travels.

Garth was making detailed notes but after 20 minutes stopped Peter telling him: “You’ve given me a list of all your favorite hotels furnishings.” And Peter quickly had the brainwave of calling round the hotels to see if the items he loved were available.

He quickly hit the phones and found out that in most cases the hotels were happy to sell him the things he wanted. And if they didn’t sell it themselves, they soon put him onto the manufacturers.

Peter said: “It was time to my house rebuild from scratch. When Garth first met me with contractor Matt Matheson, nothing was left of my house except a huge dirt pit. They both sat me down and told me to make a list of what I wanted in the new house and to decide what style I wanted.

“I had no clear idea but Garth said: ‘Ok just go room-by-room and give me a wish list of what you’d like in each of them’. So I went from room to room telling Garth what I wanted but ten minutes later he interrupted me. He laughed as he showed me that what I had given them were about 47 separate, fabulous, individually great hotel experiences I had had around the world.”

“In the bathroom, if I could just get the showerhead from the Savoy hotel in London, the bathtub from the Peninsula in Hong Kong. I had carried on with the tiles from the Four Seasons in Hawaii and I saw this great sink at Caesars Palace, and then there was this incredible toilet from the Park Hyatt in Tokyo.”

Peter’s list went on for four pages and he soon realized that he wanted to live like he worked. With his schedule as travel correspondent for NBC, Peter traveled all over the world to hundreds of destinations. And he finally realized that not only did he stay in the hotels that he had written on the list but had had great experiences at them.

“With my travel schedule, I had not only stayed in all the hotels I mentioned, but had experienced that showerhead at the Savoy in London, and had been intrigued by the unusual toilet at the Park Hyatt in Tokyo. In fact, it was arguable that I spend more time in hotels than I do at home, so I thought wouldn’t it be logical to want to incorporate the best hotel creature comforts in my house?”

As soon as Peter finished his list he started hitting the telephones and calling every hotel. He asked if he could buy the king-size bed from the Four Seasons in New York and the pillows from the Athenium in London. Peter also wanted to get made from the same wood used by the Regent Hotel in Bangkok and some lights from the Park Hyatt in Sydney.

Finally after many phone calls to hotels and manufacturers, Peter had his complete home. He said: “I hit the phones and started calling the hotels in the United States and around the world where I had those great experiences. Within three weeks, I had made the decision – to build my house around the great hotel experiences of the world.”

After furnishing the bedroom and bathroom, Peter decided he didn’t want to stop there. Soon he had the wooden flooring from the presidential suite at the Sheraton in Stockholm and the granite tiles he had seen from the Hyatt in Jakarta. The Regent in Bangkok put him in touch with their furniture maker, Peter Joghrat, who has his own workshop and showroom directly behind the hotel.

Peter loved the wood from the hotel so much, he flew architect Garth to the hotel to talk to Joghrat. He then had several items made including doors, cabinets and bookcases.

Peter then moved on to the detail work like the lights, looks and the kitchen. He bought lamps and bathroom sinks from the Europa Regina in Venice and for his kitchen appliances he went to one of his favorite hotels, the Mark in New York. Peter said: “I also wanted the appliances from the Mark Hotel which were Viking Stoves and Sub Zero refrigerators.

“For the sinks and the bathtubs, I went to the folks at Kohler, in Wisconsin, then stopped by the factory in Madison, to watch them make my refrigerator at the sub-zero plant. I even flew the architect out to Bangkok because I loved the furniture so much at the Regent Hotel. And not only did I get the built in counter tops and cabinets but also the doors and window moldings.”

Peter has also bought table lamps from the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, a dresser from the Dorchester in London, the master closet from the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, a huge clock from the Hilton Hotel in Akron, Ohio and a Karastan Carpet from the Regent Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills where they filmed the Julia Roberts movie Pretty Woman.

He also has an antique phone from a different hotel from such countries as Albania, Denmark, Argentina, France, and Greece, twenty in total.

But Peter didn’t keep the hotel designs to inside the house, he even got his swimming pool from a hotel. He said: “Even my pool comes from a hotel. I copied the design from the Westin Hotel in St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands. And what distinguishes this pool is not just the structural design, but the lighting and engineering. At night, a tube of fiber optics ringing the underside of the pool coping produces a seductive, subdued light that also slowly changes colors.

Now six years after his first home was destroyed, Peter has his dream home featuring all his favorite comforts. But, as he explains, anyone could furnish their homes with items they see in hotels.

Peter said: “This idea is totally accessible to anyone staying at any hotel. For example, the Four Seasons in New York sells a few hundred of their beds a year to guests. The Savoy is doing a brisk business in showerheads while the The W hotel chain sells its ‘heavenly bed’. Literally dozens of hotels throughout the world place their logo on ashtrays or bathrobes but it is essentially meaningless. But if a guest likes their armoire, sink or even the toilet, what better advertisement for the hotel than for that item to be installed in the guest’s own house!”

Here is a list of some of the furnishings that Peter Greenberg has bought from hotels to furnish his home.

KITCHEN

Lights – Europe Regina Hotel in Venice

Wooden floor – Sheraton Hotel in Sweden

Appliances – Mark Hotel in New York

Granite tiles – Hyatt Hotel in Jakarta

Built in wooden counters and cabinets – Regent Hotel in Bangkok

SMALL BATHROOM

Lights and sink – Europa Regina Hotel in Venice

BACK OFFICE

Wooden book cases and cabinets – Regent Hotel in Bangkok

LIVING ROOM

Granite tiles – Hyatt Hotel in Jakarta

Door locks – St Regis Hotel in New York

Chairs – Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles

Lights – Park Hyatt Hotel in Sydney

High backed chair – Manila Hotel in the Philippines

OFFICE

Clock – Hilton Hotel in Akron, Ohio

Key Cabinet/dresser – Dorchester Hotel in London

Phone system – Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas (although antique phones in other rooms from various hotels)

BEDROOM

King size bed – Four Seasons Hotel in New York

Bedding – Shutters Hotel in Los Angeles

Pillows – Athenium Hotel in London

Lamp – Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles

Slate – Four Seasons Hotel in Mauii, Hawaii

Carpet – Greenbriar Hotel in Virginia

Master closet – Oriental Hotel in Bangkok

Coat hangers – Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong

BATHROOM

Sink – Europa Regina Hotel in Venice

Frosted window – Principal Hotel in Kauai, Hawaii

Bathtub – Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong

Shower head – Savoy Hotel in London

Toilet – Park Hyatt Hotel in Tokyo

GARDENS

Swimming pool – Westin Hotel in St John’s, Virgin Islands

Photography by Leigh Green of Splash News.
Writer Nicola Pittam is a British journalist who has worked for Splash News in Los Angeles for four years. She reports daily on the latest from Tinsel Town for the British newspapers

Nature’s Healer: The Sun

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By Robert M. Oliva, CSW

The sun has always been seen as the source of life and healing. We must not forget the many benefits the sun bestows on us. It is nature’s healer.

Sunlight

Throughout history there has been no better and more common symbol of happiness and well being than the sun. The ancient Egyptians, the Aztecs, Romans and Greeks all worshipped the sun and thought of it as the source of life and health. Regardless of the historical time that comes to mind, you will find people cheered and uplifted by the life-giving rays of the sun.

Whether it was in the form of the god Helios or establishing Sun-day as the first day of the week, the sun always has played an important role in people’s lives.

The great Greek physician Hippocrates wrote extensively about the sun’s healing powers. Herodotus, the father of Heliotherapy, made frequent statements about the healing properties of the sun in his medical practice. In our own time, we see a reflection of these ancient sentiments in songs, poems and movies. And who of us could deny the feeling we have when the sun breaks through the darkened clouds: our mood lifts; our eyes turn upward; our energy and zest for life returns.

Although there have been many serious medical warnings about overexposure to the sun in recent years, we must not neglect the positive role sunlight plays in our mental and physical health. There is good news coming from scientific research telling us why we look and feel better from the sun.

The Blues

Sunlight is an important part of our daily lives. Ever notice how much time is spent at the office worrying about who gets the office with the window. And what about all that energy you feel when spring and summer come around. Everyone seems to be outdoors, planning hikes, barbecues and pool parties. You name it and it’s happening.

Tom Wehr, M.D., a research psychiatrist at the National Institutes of Health, is an expert in mood disorders and feels that our elevation in mood during the spring and summer can be directly linked to the amount of sunlight we are exposed to. Researchers have found the exposure to natural light increases the production of serotonin, a chemical that stimulates the brain’s pleasure center, thereby perking up your mood while warding off anxiety and depression.

In contrast, look at what happens to people in the long winter months, especially those living in the Northeast and Northwest. Over 11 million people suffer from what is called Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD, and another 25 million suffer from a milder form of “winter blues.”

The symptoms of SAD and the “winter blues” can include fatigue, craving carbohydrates, irritability, sleeping more and a change of personality from your summer self to your winter self. It’s not exactly known what causes SAD, but according to health writer Francis FitzGerald, “SAD occurs year after year during a specific season,  usually the winter, and vanishes when spring ushers in longer days and more sunshine.”

Medical Researchers think that our depressed moods during the winter may be the result of a chemical imbalance between serotonin and melatonin. With too little sunlight, melatonin makes us drowsy, and disrupts our internal clock.

Our Bodies

Besides just making us feel better and more energetic, exposure to sunlight plays an important role in helping us create vitamin D in our bodies. What makes this so important? Vitamin D has been shown to help prevent and treat serious medical conditions, including: breast cancer, osteoporosis, prostate cancer, psoriasis, acne, etc.

Though many people aren’t aware of it, most of our physiological requirements for vitamin D are provided for by casual exposure to sunlight. It is easy to see how important sunlight is for our physical and mental health.

Breast Cancer

Over 180,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year. It is a major concern for women of all ages. But there is hope. According to Judy Gaillard and Donald Smith of Sun Wellness magazine, a study by researcher Ester M. John at the Northern California Cancer Center, entitled “Vitamin D and Breast Cancer Risk”, casual exposure to sunlight, along with other factors, can help reduce the risk of breast cancer.

The scientists concluded “high exposure to sunlight was associated with a 25 percent to 65 percent reduction in breast cancer risk among women whose longest residence was in a state of high solar radiation.” A 25 percent reduction in the number of breast cancer cases would mean approximately 44,000 women would not have to suffer the trauma of this disease. Since vitamin D and sunlight exposure are life-style behaviors, this is good news for women wishing to reduce their risk of breast cancer.

Osteoporosis

Sometimes called “the silent disease,” osteoporosis is the loss of bone mass due to the malabsorption of calcium into the bone. Bone fragility results in increased risk of bone fracture in many parts of the body, including the hips, spinal vertebrae, and ribs. According to James F. Balch, M.D., author of Prescription for Nutritional Healing, fully “half of all women between the ages 45 and 75 show signs of osteoporosis.” Although osteoporosis is mostly an issue for post-menopausal women, both sexes and all age groups suffer from this disease.

“If vitamin D is absent, calcium, which is vital for normal bone growth and development, will not be absorbed from the intestinal tract and the bones become deformed,” says Zane Kime, M.D., M.S. in his book Sunlight. One of the best ways to get adequate vitamin D is moderate exposure to the sun. The World Health Organization Task-Force for Osteoporosis recently recommended sunlight as a part of the treatment and management of this disease.

Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer is the second most common cause of death from cancer in men over age 75. In a recent study by Hanchette and Schwartz of the University of North Carolina and published in the journal Cancer, the researchers a 20 to 40 percent lower incidence of prostate cancer among men in southern climates. Because of findings like this some researcher are suggesting that vitamin D may be an effective preventive agent against prostate cancer. The importance of sunlight cannot be underestimated in maintaining prostate health. If the incidence of prostate cancer is reduced by 20 percent nearly 37,000 men would not suffer the anguish of this disease.

Athletic Achievement

Most of us believe that sunlight gives us extra pep and energy. During the summer months, we tend to sleep less, play more and just have more get up and go. To back up this idea scientifically, Bylle Dopps and Scott Hoover of Sun Wellness magazine looked at research from the Sports Medicine Department of the German National Olympic Team Training Center. The results of their research showed that routine exposure to the sun optimized performance capabilities and reduced the incidence and recovery time of athletes from minor injuries.

If simple sunlight can help world class athletes recover from the stresses of training and competition, it seems reasonable to conclude that we can all benefit from the stress busting affects of sunlight.

Conclusion

Recent scientific studies have demonstrated what humans have suspected all along: natural sunlight promotes feelings of well-being, improves immune function, promotes natural healing and optimizes athletic performance. Don’t neglect these positive benefits of sunlight. Include moderate exposure to the sun in your overall health regimen.

To learn more about health and healing go to my HealingAction web site at http://healingaction.com.

Robert M. Oliva, CSW is a certified New York State social worker with over twenty years experience in psychotherapy, stress management and wellness. Bob is an internationally known health writer and is the founder and editor-in-chief of the health site HealingAction.com. Presently, Bob is a doctoral candidate in naturopathy at Clayton College. He lives with his wife Mary and his two sons David and Chris on Long Island, New York. Bob also spends a few hours a week playing with his grandson Jonathan.

An American Diary from Mexico – Episode 5

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Not All Mariachis and Margaritas
By Cherie Magnus

Many people come to San Miguel de Allende for a vacation and end up buying a house. Folks fall in love with this place, ardently, illogically, hopelessly. It’s that kind of town.

I decided to move to San Miguel, a colonial city of 50,000 in the heart of Mexico, with my head and not my heart, and maybe that’s why I’m often reminded that life for me here isn’t quite the paradise I had hoped for, or thought to find. From the mundane and profane to the urbane, it’s not exactly what I expected.

I came south where the living was supposed to be easier, cheaper, and more romantically beautiful. But after four months I have to say, maybe, maybe not. Easy things are more difficult, prices are about the same as in the States (at least here, the costliest town in Mexico), but it sure is more romantic, sometimes unbearably so. (People with plenty of money, of course, only have to worry about finding the romance.)

So as petty as it may sound, the little annoyances of daily life can add up to maddening frustration for those of us who can’t hire things done. Errands take an inordinate amount of time and trudging about the steep stony streets under the hot sun, schlepping laundry, groceries, shoes to be repaired, packages and mail. Everyone is carrying something in San Miguel, and the gringos are also carrying cash.

All bills must be paid in person with cash. There is the regular need to change dollars into pesos and so constant attention to the handwritten exchange rate posted at the Cambios is a part of life.

Because fresh fruits and vegetables must be disinfected before using and gringos have to be extra careful about water, shopping and food preparation is more complicated. Few convenience foods and pre-prepared items are available, and absolutely no frozen entrees or TV dinners. What’s in the frozen section of the supermarket? Ice cream, bags of vegetables, shrimp, and ice.

It’s also harder to stay clean and well-groomed. There are no self-service laundromats, but lots of fluff ‘n fold type establishments, which, after a few times through their machines, tend to gray and dinge your clothes.

On the sidewalk, large birds and cascades from roof runoff pipes assault you from above. If the dog poop and water puddles don’t get you from below, smoke-belching vehicles splash your white pants or bare legs while they foul the air of the narrow streets.

The constant dust gets all over your clothes, skin, hair and in your nose, lungs and pores. Almost no one has a bathtub or enough hot water to fill one, and showers are always short. The huge U.S. selection of beauty aids and products just isn’t available here, and so one makes do with generics.

Walking the streets can be dangerous as well. If you don’t watch your feet instead of the local color and the historic buildings, you can easily slip or trip on the undulating, uneven sidewalks of slippery stones. Gringas soon learn to wear only shoes with rubber treads, or they easily fall. Newcomers with scabs and ankle bandages abound.

If you don’t watch your head, especially if you are tall like I am, you can bang it into a protruding stone windowsill with iron bars, or a bus or truck’s side-view mirrors can take you out.

In Mexico it isn’t respectable for women to wander around alone in the dark, which makes it difficult to go anywhere in the evening without an escort, and especially to return. Taxis are not easy to find at night, and sometimes the drivers come on to women unaccompanied by a man. In a macho country, every woman by herself is assumed to be looking for a man – isn’t it only natural? This can be daunting for independent women used to going solo wherever they wish.

It’s also almost impossible to get in or out of town, which has a lot of charm in a Brigadoon sort of way. It’s tough to get here, and hard to leave. Leaving the country includes many taxis, buses, and planes (no trains), and it’s not so great for people like me who travel frequently.

As someone who enjoys the passion in the culture of latin countries such as France, Cuba, Argentina, I don’t see the same joie de vivre in Mexico. Joy here is not a moving, pulsing force, but something to relax in. Good food, fun and peppy music, lots of beer and tequila, family togetherness and church. The only ecstasy I witness is in the many fervent religious activities. I miss the zest and energy on the street and in the music that I have found so compelling elsewhere. Or maybe I just haven’t found it yet in Mexico.

And dance, well I’ve tried everything dance-wise in San Miguel with no satisfaction. I’ve searched it out in studios, schools, clubs, theaters, parties, and discos. I’ve tried Sweat Your Prayers on Sunday mornings, folk dance at the Bellas Artes, contact improvisation, Mexican folklorico, salsa in classes and clubs, and gone as far as Mexico City in search of Argentine Tango. Who knew?

I can live without much hot water, a car, or a telephone. But I can’t live without dancing.

San Miguel is famous for its many fiestas, but in lieu of dancing in the streets, there are fireworks and church bells at all hours of the night, and related non-stop barking of the ubiquitous roofdogs. The many roosters crow all day and all night.

In addition to this festival of sound is the incessant noise of construction going on six days a week next door to no matter where you live: the chink chink pound pound sounds of one- and two-man teams of workers laboriously either tearing down or building up.

In every country where there is tremendous poverty, tourists are looked upon as rich. The attitude in San Miguel is perhaps even more so due to the large percentage of gringos whose presence has inflated the local economy. And so sometimes foreigners are taken advantage of, shortchanged, pickpocketed, and objects often just seem to disappear. San Miguel de Allende is very safe with little violent crime, but the small stuff is constant and usually unreported. Well maybe I really didn’t have as much money as I thought. Or it’s possible I left my watch at home. Or didn’t bring those pretty gold earrings after all.

There are two very distinct cultures in San Miguel: the Mexican and the gringo. For that reason many norteamericanos find it easier to live here than in perhaps more “Mexican” towns. Most businesses with services and products appealing to gringos speak English, the tourist restaurants serve disinfected food, the lectures and movies at the library are in English or have English subtitles, and the plays at the Teatro Angela Peralta are in English. There are norteamericanos who have lived here for thirty years and don’t speak Spanish; they don’t have to.

However all of this convenience comes at a price.

There is even a kind of gringo ghetto, the Jardin, where the tall pale visitors in shorts and jogging suits sit in front of the Parroquia and meet their friends in the bright sunlight. The Mexicans sit on the opposite side of the Jardin, in front of the police station and in the shade.

Despite the myths, living in Mexico isn’t much cheaper than in Los Angeles, except for apartment rentals and food shopping, which are somewhat less. When planning on moving to Mexico, many people such as I don’t think about hidden costs like computer/internet access, storage fees in the hometown, transportation costs (all those taxis and buses), medical/dental care without insurance, high telephone bills, Spanish classes. Just like at home, there are cover charges to listen to music, and you won’t hear any mariachis unless someone is paying them $6.00 per song.

If you don’t want to be a part of the ghettoized, and are not fluent in Spanish, you might also feel a bit on the fringe. Being a small town, anything you do is noticed in San Miguel, any visitor you receive, every companion on a bench in the Jardin. But because the population is so transitory, when you do meet people you like and want to be friends with, they often leave.

And if someone doesn’t happen to have a romantic partner, it can be painful to live in one of the most romantically beautiful places on earth. As there are thirteen women to every man in San Miguel, probably many women are home alone tonight as I’m writing this, looking out their windows with longing at the gorgeous sky and the lights of the Churrigueresque skyline of San Miguel de Allende twinkling below.

About this author: With degrees in English, Dance, and Library Science from UCLA, Cherie has published many articles in professional journals and magazines. Her solo travels to Europe and Latin America have inspired several pieces published in Skirt!, PassionFruit, Moxie, JourneyWoman, Dancing USA, GoNomad, Open Spaces, Porthole, The Cusco Weekly, the-vu, and various online magazines. She was the dance critic for the Cerritos News in Orange County, California before moving to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She is currently at work on a novel situated in France, when she’s not out dancing. Follow her blog at http://tangocherie.blogspot.com/

Riding the Range

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Riding the Range – Stress, Success and Failure at the School for Street Motorcyclists
By Jeffrey the Barak

It may be a cliché to call this a mid-life identity crisis, but at the ripe old age of 45 I suddenly find myself with an overwhelming desire to put an amusement park between my legs.

What kind of amusement park? The wet kind with killer whales or the kind with G-forces, twists, turns and acceleration? Of course! I suddenly want to ride a motorcycle.

Thirty years of car driving have not delivered banking, leaning and acceleration comparable to the forces available to a motorcyclist. The bike is the ultimate thrill ride that can go anywhere and deliver a tilting picture of the world flashing by. To ride is to become intimate with the air around you. The air becomes your aura, something that doesn’t happen when you simply roll down the window in your Ford.

And then there is self-image! There’s the image of spluttering around on an old Italian two-stroke scooter with a fifties style Italian beauty sitting sidesaddle on the back seat. There’s the image of a racing styled street bike with a rear mono-shock, dipping into the curves and prancing out into the straights. And of course there’s the fat and noisy giant cruiser, gleaming in the sun and setting off all those useless car alarms.

Why now? Why at 45? Well every boy likes his toys, and a quarter of a century ago I came pretty close to becoming a motorcyclist. But a deadly meeting between a close friend’s head and the asphalt and a visit to the motorcycle ward of the local hospital inspired me to retire to the metal shell of the motorcar for the rest of the century.

But lately I’ve been standing in the wind upon a 15MPH electric scooter, obeying bicycle laws and diligently calculating battery range and distances between two points. It occurs to me that with the proper training, the chances of getting injured in a motorcycle accident are no greater than the chances of being wiped out in the bike lane. It’s time for a calculated and managed risk.

With this in mind, I part with $200 and sign up for a 16 hour Basic Rider Course at the Motorcycle Training Center in North Hollywood, California, otherwise known as 1-800-CC-RIDER. Eight hours in a classroom and Eight hours on a small motorcycle in a huge college parking lot, guaranteed to greatly increase your chances of survival in the traffic, and also a way to waive the riding part of the DMV test that adds that magic letter M to your driver’s license.

They provide the bikes and the helmets; I bring the gloves, boots and eyewear. The instructions are clear. Boots must cover the anklebones; leather gloves must cover the wrists and there should be no bare skin showing on the legs or arms.

Easy you say, just wear jeans and a leather jacket! Well it’s not that simple, 90-degree April temperatures in North Hollywood have led to the rules relaxing as far as upper body clothing goes. They let you ride the range in a sweatshirt.

The Classroom

My first morning in a sweltering and stuffy classroom under the supervision of an instructor named Cary, is fun, aside from the heat. North Valley College is air conditioned, but apparently not on this day. On the way in I see the earlier students riding the range in their first and second on-bike classes. The bikes look reasonably new and everything looks like a fun game.

In the classroom for the first of two four-hour sessions, I am relieved to note a slow pace of learning. The information exchanged in over four hours is the equivalent of say four minutes in an advanced physics lecture room.

We are shown slow and amusing videos depicting talking bikes and bad actors, but it’s not all bad. There is a fairly well produced video section explaining leaning and controlling the machine. This first four-hour classroom session is really to prepare us for the written test the second week and also to prepare us for our bike time on the range early the second morning. The characters that make up my fellow students vary greatly in age, appearance and attitude. A young girl named Linda arrived late this first morning and having heeded the warning in our mailed reservations, proceeds to beg for forgiveness and permission to join. The instructor has clearly already decided to give her a break but she begs in such a lovely manner that watching this is a pleasure.

Our teacher teaches in the friendliest way possible and introduces us to basic principles such as the most critical differences between riding and car driving.

The words stability and vulnerability sum it all up. We know riding motorcycles is potentially dangerous. It’s about managing the risk to make it as safe as possible. That’s why we are here on the range instead of learning the hard way out there on the streets and highways.

We learn that in the event of a mishap, which is a nice way of describing a potentially lethal and certainly painful accident, the proper gear can often prevent injury. We learn that knowing when and how to corner, swerve and brake can often help us to avoid collisions.

From time to time Cary repeats something. He had pre-warned us at the start of the class that when he did this, it was a tip that we would be tested on the answer. From time to time a key point would be repeated three times, a sure clue that it would be on the test the following week.

And then we get to ride our invisible bikes. In the classroom we are instructed on types of bikes, types of helmets, types of clothes and pre-ride checks of the motorcycles. We are taught to mount and dismount our invisible steeds and act it out en masse in the class. We are taught about braking, stopping, shifting up, shifting down, and the “friction zone” which is the point when the clutch begins to engage during the easing out of the left lever.

We are told where we will usually find all the controls, levers, buttons, taps and stands on the average bike and what to do with them. Finally, Cary demonstrates the hand signals that our instructors will use to communicate with us tomorrow morning. And all this in 90 degree heat and no air.

The Range

And then it’s the cool dark fog of the next morning. Sunday at 06:00 for an 06:30 start. The first thing that happens is they put you on sport bike and have you traverse a canyon at 100MPH. No really, after an inspection of your clothing to make sure you listened in class the day before, each student is assigned to a motorcycle according to size. The tallest guys got the dual-purpose trail bikes and the tiny Asian and Latina girls get the mini-cruisers with the low seats. I got a plain vanilla extra boring Honda 250. This was okay for my nervous reintroduction to riding after a 24-year gap since my last experimental attempt but I have to say that the handlebars were a bit low and it was later going to prove difficult to maintain the knuckles higher than wrist position that prevents the over-use of throttle. But then I’ve always had wrists that don’t bend up very far; I have to do push-ups with my fists because I can’t put my palms flat on the floor.

Now it is plain to see at this point of the course why the graduating students are able to reduce their chance of an accident by 90%. We are gradually introduced to safe control of a basic motorcycle, one slow step at a time.

We go from finding the controls to walking the bike forwards and backwards to mounting and dismounting and then straddle walking the bike. The latter technique definitely puts the pressure on the men in the class and there is quite a lot of standing and adjusting of pants following each extended straddle walk. Next, each half of the class pushes the other half and releases them so that they coast across the range and brake to a stop.

Almost riding now, we are taught to find the friction zone, that place in the release of the clutch where the engine begins to engage the drive train. Everything is introduced to us a step at a time and under full supervision for our own protection.

Gradually, as the morning progresses, we get to ride the course in first gear and we get to stop many, many times. It’s repetition that we need and better here than out on the street. It slowly begins to be second nature to start, shut down, mount, dismount, take off, stop and corner. Then we swerve through cones and ride in progressively smaller ovals, both clockwise and counter-clockwise, all accompanied by full explanations.

Now I have to be honest, I run into some problems. It takes me a while to learn to apply my brakes smoothly. My Phat Flyer Electric Scooter is to blame for this. Braking on the Flyer requires a very hard and fast squeeze to have any effect. That’s not a good idea on a motorcycle! But the hardest thing for me is to get my right arm low enough to get it below the level of my knuckles. Consequently I tend to have a little too much throttle from time to time. Other than that, I am able to control my little bike very well. My biggest screw up is during an exercise towards the end of the day that involves stopping with the rear brake only and shifting down to first at the same time. My stopping distance is triple the expected and my revs are embarrassingly high. I get it right on the second attempt though.

Some of my classmates are not doing so well. One of the charming tiny Asian girls falls off the bike a couple of times and eventually leaves the course to return for a second attempt at a future date. Another gentleman who is rather portly keeps stalling his bike. This is a guy who has already purchased a new Harley Davidson and is just dying to be able to ride the thing.

On a slow tight turn that involves downshifting, braking, turning tightly with the clutch in, and then easing out the clutch and applying throttle to power out of the curve, I actually get a “perfect” comment from the strict military style instructor called John. This pleases me immensely.

After four hours we have gone from being unable to hold up a machine to being in fairly good control of the same machine. The sun is out, it is beginning to get very hot, and we are all physically drained. The afternoon class is about to do what we had just done, in sweltering heat. Driving home in the insane flow of the busy freeway at 80MPH in my car I try to imagine myself being in the same spot on a motorcycle. No way man, I am not ready for that yet!

Back to the Classroom

A week later and we are back in the classroom. The air conditioning works today and there is yet another different instructor. Throughout the classroom portion of this course we follow the same format as the previous week but deal with more advanced topics in order to prepare us for the second day of riding. The videos seem a little less corny and the written test at the end seems very easy. I didn’t stick around for the results but I’m sure I scored close to 100%.

Riding the Range

The following morning we are back on the range for our second and last riding class, with our fifth and sixth new teachers. Today’s class is very challenging. We stop straight with locked rear wheels, we weave through cones, and weave and steer through widely split cones. We straighten up and come to a short stop from a banked curve, and we swerve past an imaginary truck and stop alongside on command. We even ride a figure eight, calculating the gap in the traffic that is our fellow students. I had been allowed to ride a different bike on this day, thereby solving the too-low handlebars problem.

Linda, the girl who arrived late for the first class, expressed trepidation at every stage, but then succeeded in executing each stage without a problem. Towards the end of the session, we are involved in exercises, which require us to go one at a time through the range. So here we are in traffic, in a long stationary line of bikes in the increasing valley heat, with our engines running and sickly exhaust gas filling our lungs and clothing. I am getting a headache.

We take a break to fill out a customer satisfaction questionnaire. We rate our six instructors on various aspects of the job they have done and fill in suggestion boxes. I suggest repainting the lines and cleaning the cones for better contrast. I can barely see either.

And then it’s test time. The instructors take off their nice friendly hats and put on their DMV strict hats. They tell us not to be nervous because we have to completely screw up and lose more than 20 points to fail the test. Linda says she is nervous and I feel nervous myself, even though at this point in the game, I have already made the decision that motorcycling is just not for me. There are just too many outside risks. We may have been taught control of the machine, we may have been taught how to scan, interpret, predict, decide and execute, and we may have increased our odds by being here for sixteen hours, but I have made this decision without even realizing it, until now.

Test time. We line up in a line of eleven bikes. For the test we repeat a handful of the exercises we have done in the class. We have been told to relax. We know it will take a royal screw up to lose enough points to fail the test. Here we go.

Weaving through cones. I did this before without a problem but now I’m off course. I can’t possibly turn enough to get to the left of the next cone so I slow. Too much! My foot goes down – automatic points loss. I still can’t get back on the right line through so I just pass the cones and head for the corner. Exiting the corner, still bewildered, I cross the outside yellow line. I make a complete screw up of the test. There are two more tests, but it’s too late. We return our bikes to the grid for the second class to use and power off for the last time.

The instructor calls me over. “Jeffrey”, he says. “Twenty-one points deducted.” I tell him I know. I completely messed up the first part. “You can take the test again.” He says. “Just call the office and come down at the end of a four hour class and see if you can get in to retake the test”.

At this stage I really wish I had lost a couple less points so I could be done with it all, but I decide to wait for Monday morning to make a decision. I follow him over to the rest of the group. He tells them they all passed. I realize I’m the only one who failed. Linda runs over and hugs the instructor and we all laugh at her display of exuberance.

Two weeks later, my ten classmates will receive their certificates. They are to go and get their full licenses and practice what they have learned in as little traffic as possible until their confidence rises.

I drive my car home and then go for a short ride on my electric scooter. Standing up in the breeze at 15MPH in the back alley it actually feels pretty fast, and quiet, and it doesn’t smell. I shower, take a nap, go to my dance class and six hours after the rider course, my nostrils are still giving me carbon monoxide. No wonder I couldn’t find those cones!

The Week After

Do I rebook the final test and get a letter M on my license or just walk away with sixteen hours of life’s experience under my belt? I still can’t decide. I don’t want to become a CC Rider, but it seems a shame to waste those sixteen hours.

Jeffrey the Barak is the publisher, editor and designer of the-vu. He’s very good at driving a car.

Dairy for Health?

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By Dan Hall

Old myths tend to die hard in the medical profession. The status quo explanation for heart disease appears to be one of these. For over a decade, various studies have demonstrated a very plausible link between increased blood levels of the amino acid homocysteine and damaged or clogged arteries. Research into the decrease of homocysteine levels in the blood has made promising headway in showing that the B vitamin, folic acid, lowers homocysteine levels, thus lowering incidents of clogged arteries, regardless of the amount of bad cholesterol within the blood. The correlation between high levels of cholesterol consumed and cholesterol housed within the bloodstream has yet to be dismissed by the medical community, but there is good cause to believe that unregulated levels of homocysteine better explains incidents of heart disease than does over-consumption of cholesterol.

Harvard Medical School released a report in the April 2002 edition of JAMA that suggested a correlation between the consumption of dairy products and lower risks for diabetes and heart disease in overweight persons. The longitudinal study involved approximately 3,000 volunteers from a variety of lifestyles. Some of them consumed upwards of five servings of dairy products (milk, cheese, yogurt, etc.) per day while others consumed very few dairy products. The Harvard researchers concluded that dairy products quite possibly, the nutrients within dairy, such as calcium and animal protein are capable of lowering the body’s resistance to insulin, a condition that can lead to diabetes and is believed to lead to heart disease. It was argued that five or more servings of dairy products per day could also reduce the risk of dyslipidemia (a disease marked by the increase of LDL or bad cholesterol and decrease of HDL or good cholesterol), which supposedly increases risk factors for heart disease. This study and others like it are prime examples of how some scientists refuse to update their procedures in light of new evidence.

As aforementioned, quite a bit of evidence exists to link unregulated homocysteine levels with high levels of bad cholesterol within the blood. Homocysteine damages the walls of blood vessels, and the body produces cholesterol to patch these damaged areas. The more patches that exist, the thicker the blood vessel walls become, and this is the true cause of clogged arteries. A well-balanced diet high in the proper nutrients (including folic acid) is responsible for lowering levels of homocysteine, reducing bad cholesterol and saturated fats, and keeping the arteries from becoming or remaining congested.

The current Harvard study correlating the consumption of dairy products with decreased risk for certain diseases has left many researchers slapping their knees and chuckling. This study seems to contradict numerous others that have correlated the increased consumption of dairy products with diseases such as diabetes. Many of these studies also downplay the need for dairy products in large quantities, if at all. In fact, another Harvard study, which followed 75,000 women over a 12-year period, showed that the consumption of dairy products not only had no effect on the disease of osteoporosis but could also lead to osteoporosis due to the high inassimilable calcium content. Other research into the damaging effects of dairy products shows that they can cause diabetes due to their ability to harm the pancreas, they can cause obesity due to their high saturated fat content, and they can lead to many other adult and childhood diseases such as earaches, Chrone’s disease, and even sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) or crib death.

So, why did the Harvard researchers correlate the increased consumption of dairy products with increased resistance to diabetes and heart disease? One explanation could simply be that they didn’t correlate the increased consumption of dairy products with increased resistance to diabetes and heart disease. Typically in science, longitudinal studies such as this one are only able to show correlations within the test subjects. So, the only true correlation that can be made is that the people studied over the 10-year period who consumed more dairy products benefited from this consumption. Another explanation is that this study was merely poor science; chances are, lifestyle choices, consumption of other foods, nutritional supplementation, specific brands and types of dairy products, and numerous other variables were not considered. Thus, something else altogether could have contributed to the decrease in diseases such as diabetes.

Of course, the best explanation is that overweight people are typically unhealthy due to their diets. The increased consumption of dairy products might have provided increased levels of certain vitamins and minerals. Ordinarily, dairy products are not the best sources of nutrients as a foodstuff, but for people who are otherwise nutritionally deficient, dairy products could contain certain ingredients necessary for health. People who are normally eating diets low in nutrition might benefit from increased dairy products for a time, thus reducing the short-term risks for diabetes and heart disease; however, long-term dairy consumption will increase saturated fats within the bloodstream, decrease nutrients, harm the cellular structure of the pancreas, and increase risks for diabetes and high blood levels of homocysteine. The Harvard study failed to include this information, and the media failed to report the scientific facts as they should have been reported.

Dan Hall is a freelance writer based in Atlanta, GA, the author of You Can’t Catch a Cold and other books on disease-free living and longevity, and an accomplished musician and Webmaster. For more information, visit his official site at http://www.endlesspath.com

Pole Dancing 101

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Pole Dancing 101
Sheila Kelley’s School for Bedroom Strippers
See below for writer credit

Sheila Kelley

Sheila Kelley

Sexy actress Sheila Kelley once wrapped them up in legal jargon on the 80s hit courtroom drama LA Law, these days she’s more likely to be found wrapping her legs around a pole like a stripper. And what’s more she’s teaching others how to do it. In her back garden studio of her plush Hollywood home, Kelley, 37, twists and spins around the pole like a professional, teaching her mixed age group of female students how to copy her elegant, yet erotic moves.

Kelley first became interested in stripping while studying for film roles. This fascination eventually evolved into the gritty stripper movie ‘Dancing at the Blue Iguana’, which Kelley produced and starred in along side Daryl Hannah and Jennifer Tilly. During the filming, Kelley immersed herself into the seedy life of strip clubs during which she learnt dancing techniques and tricks from real strippers. “Having had the dancer background, I took to it very easily and very well. Never in my life have I been in better shape.”

Daryl Hannah at the Blue Iguana

Daryl Hannah at the Blue Iguana

“Women come to the class terrified, like I did, but also compelled. There was just something, from the very first time I saw a stripper in a strip club I was hooked.” Kelley says who during the making of ‘Dancing at the Blue Iguana’ paid strippers to teach her their sexy dance moves.

Kelley certainly doesn’t look like a stripper sat in comfortable sweats, her look is more that of a slim and attractive Hollywood mum-next-door. When performing elaborate tricks on the pole, twisting and spinning like a topsy-turvy ice-skater, Kelley adds a touch of class that makes her act seem almost wholesome.

The thought of teaching it to others came to her while stripping for her husband, Richard Schiff, who plays Toby Ziegler, a sharp tongued Communications Director on award winning series about life in the White House – West Wing, Kelley and Schiff have two children, ages 7 and 1 and a half. “It struck me how unbelievably empowering it was for me to dance for my husband alone,” she says. “Simultaneously, you become your most open, your most vulnerable and your most powerful.”

Schiff says men are bug-eyed with envy when they find out his pretty wife, likes to strip for him. He says he has also discerned a difference in female friends who have taken her classes. “It has changed their marriages, and it’s changed the way they walk through life. There’s a centered kind of sensuality in them that might have been fighting to get through before,” he says. “Then there’s just the fun they have. They’re always howling and screaming back here. I’m playing with the kids, and then I hear this hooting and hollering, and I think, ‘Man, I want to be back there. What am I doing changing diapers?

“I probably got pregnant after a lap dance,” Kelley adds, “There’s a way to spice up your marriage.” Now Kelley teaches four 90 minute classes of her ‘Stripping for Everyday Women class’ a week. Yet the lessons aren’t designed to turn her students who are mostly upper-middle class actresses / friends ranging in age from 24 to 57, into strippers to take the stages of the seedy strip clubs on Sunset. Kelley wants stripping out of the clubs and into the master bedroom. “What I am doing is taking that beautiful art form of erotica out of a decadent place and bringing it to women as an empowering tool,” explains Kelley. One student, who preferred to stay anonymous, claimed the classes give married women a renewed sense of sex appeal. “Women my age, housewives and mothers, aren’t prepared to say, ‘Look at me, aren’t I gorgeous?’ It’s embarrassing,” said the actress and mother, who is in her 50s. “The class is incredibly embarrassing and brings out all of your insecurities. And yet, you’re dying to do it.”

“I’ve taken the best elements from all the different types of dance I have studied over the years, and created my own movement technique. It’s a 40 minute warm up flow, getting the body moving in a more feminine way, in a more curvaceous way, and after that we do pole work and each person does a routine.”

“I’ve never been able to act sexy in a movie. I was playing romantic parts and everything, but that was an area where I just felt foolish, totally foolish,” another student says. “Sheila’s very supportive and wonderful. She eggs you on and keeps saying, ‘Oh, powerful move, powerful move,’ and screaming out how beautiful everyone is. And she means it.”

The classes aren’t designed to titillate the women’s partners, that’s a bonus factor, the classes are to help women feel sexy and confident in themselves without relying on men or anyone else to make them feel that way. These sisters are doing it for themselves!

“It’s a really beautiful bonding experience. The women move from beginners, to intermediate to advanced together, so they develop this incredible bond and trust. There is just this unspoken camaraderie” says Kelley, “If you are scared, I’ll get up there and do it with you. I’ll be right next to you talking in your ear.”

“Allowing your body to move the way it wants to move naturally, being overtly sexual without apology, gives these women and myself an enormous sense of satisfaction,” Kelley continues to explain.

Kelley claims the classes not only make women feel more confident about themselves sexually but also about their bodies. “It helps them own their body no matter what. One woman thought she had a big butt and as she turned around from the last third of the dance, she had to walk back, she went ‘oh no they are going to see my big butt’ and then she claimed it, she went ‘yeah! They are looking at my big ass’. You could see it in her moves! It was a beautiful moment. She didn’t give a damn!”

“The most erotic dancer I ever saw was a 250 pound Jewish girl wearing braces who as she got up to dance, she just floated. She was a real stripper. I was awestruck, dumbfounded by her beauty. This is when I realized that it doesn’t matter what you look like it’s about how you move your body. She was a big girl, but when those hips moved the men were riveted. She was beautiful for those few moments,” explains Kelley.

“Women have such erotic power. We don’t use it because we are scared. We are told ‘bad girls do that’. ‘It’s nasty to move your hips like that’, ‘you’re a slut’ ‘you’re a whore’. I want to blow those days out of the water.” Kelley says.

Judging by the popularity of her program since it started in May, last year women want to blow that image out of the water as well. Kelley teaches lap and pole dancing to classes of 6 – 10 women of ‘all shapes and sizes’ a week each paying $50 for a 90 minute class. The waiting list is growing so fast that Kelley is looking for rented space to accommodate bigger classes and there is talk of doing a video to reach others.

Kelley’s classes may indicate that in the new millennium another sexual tabbo is being brought into the mainstream. Hollywood has recently made strippers the theme of films like Showgirls and Demi Moore’s Striptease. Crunch gyms in Los Angeles started cardio striptease classes as favored by ex-Baywatch beauty Carmen Electra. The classes proved so successful that sessions are now being offered at Crunch clubs in New York and Miami. Sexy actress/model Pamela Anderson, who has a stripper pole in her bedroom, recently announced she might give up acting to strip onstage during her boyfriend Kid Rock’s rock concerts.
Kelley has no plans to return to acting in the immediate future and won’t be staring in a movie reunion for L.A Law, which is being planned for the American network NBC’s 75th anniversary. Kelley won’t be starring in the special one off reunion show of the groundbreaking drama about the lives loves and courtroom battles of Los Angeles lawyers as it will only star first season cast members, Kelley joined in the third.

“I had an opportunity to do a pilot this year and I just wasn’t into it. I don’t get the incredibly satisfaction of giving something to somebody when I am acting these days that I get from what I am doing. This is so rewarding. I feel like it really transforms people, it really changes people’s lives for the better. I’ve got the most touching phone calls in the middle of the night from women genuinely choked up with emotion, saying ‘how can I thank you? I am a different human being, I walk through the world like a different person’. I don’t get that from acting. But I do think I will eventually get back to acting, I love to act.”

“I did not say I wanted to become a stripping teacher. This all just happened,” Kelley says. “I know how powerful I feel when I do it. I know how sexy I feel. I know how beautiful I look to me and to my husband, and that’s all that matters.”

Five ways to bring out the pole dancer in you!

1. Invest in some sassy outfits that would be fit to grace the stages of Stringfellows – if you look sexy you’ll feel sexy too! With the Internet you can shop from the privacy of your own home at discreet sites like: www.annsummers.com

2. Set the mood with some appropriate music. Kelley uses everything from Kid Rock to Jah Rule.

3. Keep eye contact with your partner as you dance. Looking at the floor is another of Kelley’s tips.

4. Learn in the comfort and security of your own home with a video on exotic dancing by Fawina a former exotic dancer from: www.exoticdanceschool.com

5. Create yourself an alter ego – swap your Mary Poppins prudishness’ for a more daring persona – developing a steamy new you will help you shed your inhibitions and leave you free to do anything you want.

Sheila Kelley can be found and contacted via her website at http://www.sfactor.com

The writer of this article comes to the-vu courtesy of the Splash News and Picture Agency. Due to too many weird emails, we have removed her name.

Zesty Salad Elona

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By Raymond J G Wells

In these health conscious times salads are increasingly becoming a more prominent part of the average household’s  diet. “Conventional” side salads, of course, have long been a feature of many cuisines but throwing our conservative instincts to one side and not being squeamish, can result in some delectable salad offerings, which are tasty, healthy and very colorful. Gastronomy, the science of good eating, is all about balance, taste, color and texture and salads can certainly help meet those requirements as well as being as great accompaniment to a savory course.

Soft-fruits such as strawberries, for which the British Isles  are renowned, are traditionally eagerly devoured with a smattering of caster sugar and a whirl of whipped cream. However, strawberries can also be part of a salad and will certainly add color to your creations. How about a nice cucumber and strawberry salad called Salad Elona?

Salad Elona

Here is a recipe, Salad Elona, a cucumber and strawberry salad, which might be considered a tad different and unusual and even an odd combination but it really  works! Throw caution to the wind for this yummy salad goes very well with the likes of cold chicken as well as delicately flavored fish such as  salmon and turbot. It is simplicity itself to prepare!

Ingredients:

1 small cucumber

12 large fresh strawberries

2 teaspoons dry white wine or white wine vinegar

Salt and black pepper to taste

Pinch of parsley

Method:

First peel the cucumber and slice very thinly. Hull and wash the strawberries and cut them into wafer thin even slices. Arrange in a decorative pattern on a shallow serving dish, so that the colors contrast. Then season lightly with the salt and freshly ground black pepper and sprinkle with the white wine or vinegar. Chill for about one hour before serving and add a pinch of parsley.

There you have it. A zesty, tangy, colorful salad which goes extraordinary well with slices of cold chicken breast or as a accompaniment to Pan Fried Salmon or Grilled Turbot. For vegetarians it could also be a suitable accompaniment to a vegetarian main meal. Finally, open up bottle of chilled white wine and enjoy !

Bon Appetite!

Writer: Raymond Wells is a British born economist and writer currently living and working in Malaysia. He has writing credits in print magazines such as Frequent Traveller, Home & Country,Townswoman and International Living and in on line publications such as Mad Dogs Breakfast, the-vu, Zinos.com, Word Archive.com and Scribe and Quill.