FEAST OR FAMINE

  Today’s event was the 10-kilometre fun run,  Odyssea , the 23 rd  annual event to raise money for breast cancer research, starting at the Vincennes Castle in Paris and meandering through the Vincennes Woods.

  In Australia, people may have forgotten the man called Christmas. One of Australia’s 31 Prime Ministers from 1901 to the present day was called Christmas. The 27 th  Prime Minister was a woman but Julia Gillard was not called Christmas. Earle Christmas Grafton Page became Australia’s 11 th  Prime Minister in 1939. He was PM for a brief 19 days. That’s not the shortest premiership in Australian political history – that honour goes to Francis Michael Forde, who served for 8 days from 6-13 July 1945 after the death of John Curtin in office. Earle Christmas Grafton Page (1880-1961) was from the Country Party and served from 7-26 April 1939, the second shortest premiership. When PM Joseph Lyons died suddenly in 1939, Governor-General Lord Gowrie (Queen Elizabeth’s representative in Australia) appointed Page as the caretaker Prime Minister while the government, the United Australia Party (UAP), chose a new leader – the former deputy leader Robert Menzies.  Page refused t...

    Grow a New Body: How Spirit and Power Plant Nutrients Can Transform Your Health (2019) is a book about healing your body with food and eating: what you eat and when you eat.   Drawing upon ancestral wisdom and his years as a medical anthropologist, Villoldo  presents ‘a plant-based diet, low in protein, high in fats, and supported by superfood and brain nutrients.’ He provides information on how to increase metabolism, lower insulin levels, and eat food for the brain. He describes how to upgrade your brain with neuronutrients and explains that what you eat results in what you feel and think: mind, emotions, and relationships with food.    The book contains some interesting and scary chapter titles, such as ‘What Happens in the Gut Doesn’t Stay in the Gut’ and ‘Perils of a Leaky Gut.’    Villoldo gives anecdotes, lessons, examples, and homework exercises, as well as recipes and a 10-day meal plan. To date, I’ve only made the walnut tapena...

  Rue de L'École de Médecine – School of Medicine Street – is located in the Odéon and Monnaie districts of the 6th arrondissement of Paris. It meets at Rue Dupuytren and ends at the Boulevard Saint Germain.  American Sylvia Beach established the Shakespeare and Company English-language bookstore at 8 Rue Dupuytren in 1919 before moving it to larger premises at 12 Rue de L’Odéon in 1922.    The area was once the site of two vineyards: Clos de Laas to the north and Clos Gibard to the south. At the end of the 12 th  century, a chapel located in the vineyards was converted into the church of Saint-Côme-Saint-Damien, and in 1255 the brotherhood of surgeons was established in the church.    At the beginning of the French Revolution in 1790, the street took the name Rue de L'École de Médecine for the first time.   Today, the main long building at No. 12, formerly the College of Surgery, is the headquarters of the University of Paris-Cité, the Inter-Univ...

      There has been many research articles about the health benefits of listening to music. Recent research has again mentioned the benefits – for brain health, better physical coordination, improved sleep, pain relief, and dementia benefits.   Neurologic music therapist Brian Harris from the Harvard Medical School says that listening to calming music stimulates the part of the brain stem that controls heartbeat and respiration. So, music may lower the heart rate and blood pressure.   Neuroscientist Julia Jones (Dr Rock and founder of The Music Diet) says the foot-tapping, dancing, and playing an instrument – even air guitar – activates the motor cortex and sensory cortex of the brain. This can lead to better brain-to-body coordination and synchronisation.   Listening to relaxing music can trigger the body to mimic sleeping patterns by regulating the heart rate and breathing to reduce anxiety and improve sleep. This seems to be especially if music is heard...

  French Prime Minister, Mr Jean Castex, announced yesterday, 10 December 2020, that the government will delay lifting some Covid-19 lockdown restrictions next week until the number of cases reaches its target of 5,000 per day.   It was expected that lockdown restrictions would lift on 15 December 2020, enabling museums and cinemas to open, but this is now delayed.   The government will lift a restriction on people's movement from 15 December, but replace it with an 8:00pm curfew, including on New Year's Eve. Jean Castex said that museums, art galleries, theatres, and cinemas will remain closed for an extra three weeks to 5 January 2021 as the number of new Covid-19 infections begins to slowly rise again. Bars and restaurants are expected to re-open from mid-January 2021.   Castex said families would be allowed to travel to celebrate Christmas together on 25 December. An exception to the nighttime curfew of 8:00pm will be made for Christmas Eve.   The ...

Night Theatre (2020) is set in rural India in a health clinic. This book is also called The Wounds of the Dead.   Doctor Saheb is a former surgeon, working for almost three years in a rural health clinic, with a female pharmacist. Her husband helps out with repairs.    A family arrive at the clinic: a male teacher, his pregnant wife, and 8-year-old son, but they are not there to receive a polio vaccine, nor assistance with the pregnancy. They have an unusual request. They need help. They all have unspeakable injuries after four men attacked them with knives, so severe that no-one could possibly survive.     The clinic has no anaesthesia, few instruments and equipment, and limited medicine. With fear and fatigue, Doctor Saheb must perform miracles. He begins with the boy.    This is the valley between life and death, the difference between knowing and understanding, a question of fate, guilt, and the atonement of past sins.    This is a b...

MARTINA NICOLLS Website Martinasblogs Publications Facebook Paris Website Animal Website SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES    MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author   of:  The Paris Residences of James Joyce   (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).