by Terrie Goldstein, Publisher

It is amazing the role sports plays in all our lives. When I was young I only participated in sports during the summers. No school sports for me. It was all head games and getting good grades.

In my thirties my best buddies dragged me along on their leisurely runs. It turned out to be a great outlet for me. Three miles every weekday and five or six miles early Saturday mornings. I even participated in the Orange Classic 10K twice. But, sadly my knees finally said no more.

New friends asked me about brisk walking. Who, me? I’m a runner who just can’t run. Finally I grudgingly agreed to give it a try. I liked walking because I was still able to just put on my shorts and sneakers and walk right from my front door.

When I reached my early 60s once again my knees said no more. It took me several years to agree to attend a local gym and use weights as an alternative to walking. I even hired a trainer who was a past football player who knew all about bad knees. I was on a roll.

Six months into this gym program I could barely walk without pain. No more gym workouts for me.

I don’t know if you’ve had similar experiences but this was discouraging. I need to exercise to help keep my sugar levels in check as well as to maintain a healthy blood pressure. Although I decided to do nothing for six months, things weren’t going well. What now?

I went to my orthopedist for his professional opinion. He agreed that my knees were not good and suggested everything from orthotics to swimming. Swimming. Swimming. Swimming. That’s all I kept hearing from my husband, my friends and my doctor. I haven’t really done any long-distance swimming since my teenage summer days. And, after all, it is not as easy as putting on those shorts and sneakers and going out the front door. But I finally decided it was worth a try.

Now I am a Gold’s Gym member. I swim three days, do weight resistance training (with a new trainer) two days, and have started yoga for the first time.

My first few weeks in the pool felt like trial by fire. I could barely reach the other side of the pool without huffing and puffing. I looked at the clock every two minutes to check if my 15-minute workout was over. I do a mean side stroke on my left side, but when I tried it on my right I sunk. (When I told my staff this story they all laughed.)

Based on my experiences I have come up with my four basic rules:

1. Forget no pain no gain. It is true I am tired when I finish my workouts, but my knees

are not screaming “help!” The minute I hear any trainer say I have to work through the pain, I am ready to turn around and walk out.

2. Be open to new exercise options. It’s all about keeping healthy. I used to think that I had to sweat in order to have a great workout. Now with swimming I realize that’s not true.

3. Swimming is a great all-around, unheralded sport. But now that I have been at it for six weeks, I breathe easier, I swim for longer periods and I am covering longer distances. In the pool I see people with different shapes and at all levels of fitness. The water is a great equalizer for the fit and unfit.

I agree with Total Immersion founder Terry Laughlin, “The joy of swimming well is attainable to everyone, rather than a gift reserved for a talented few.”

4. The gym is not just for the young. I hear my friends say that they don’t feel comfortable going to the gym with their flabby bodies. They feel intimated by those good looking, firm-bodied youngsters. Not me. I love watching them work out. They are cute kids doing some great exercise. I wish I had done the same when I was in my twenties.

So if you are like me with screaming knees, find a local gym or maybe a school with a pool and jump in. You’ll find the water’s fine, and the pool offers one of the best all-around exercise workouts.

 by Terrie Goldstein, Publisher

On Sunday night my husband and I were treated to another form of art, the Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea, a flotilla of intricately hand crafted vessels which navigated the stretch of the Hudson River between Troy and the New York harbor from August 15^th to September 7^th.

Imagined as a hybrid between boats and bits of land mass broken off and headed out to sea, the  Switchback vessels made stops in towns long the river bringing performances and music.  The intricately crafted boats were fashioned out of scrap wood and other salvaged materials and powered with alternative energy sources, including bio-fuels and solar power.

In the mid-Hudson Valley, they docked in Saugerties, Kingston, Beacon and Nyack.  Over the course of three weeks they made their way toward their home port – an invented landscape tucked into a niche along the East River in Long Island City, Queens.

On August 24^th, my husband Clay and I viewed the flotilla from the Beacon shoreline.  With a crew of 60 including artists, engineers, musicians and friends they conducted an hour-long performance sharing the imaginary story of how the Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea flotilla was born.  The Beacon Point Park was a perfect setting as the sun set and the grey skies hosted flocks of geese flying in formation.  Then the scene was spot lit with the Hudson River as the backdrop.  It was good old fun with singing, dancing, and jokes flying back and forth.  Clay said it was reminiscent of his days at Provincetown.

Visit switchbacksea.org

by Terrie Goldstein

I have been getting emails from Dr. Tody Rossman about the Hudson Valley Science Café for a number of months now. Each month the group meets in Newburgh and features a guest who discusses a specific scientific topic.

I am not a scientist, although I did get through both chemistry and physics, but some of the topics Dr. Rossman included in her e-mail blasts sounded intriguing. In fact, two months ago I went so far as to put their meeting date in my planner.

Then I received a note that they were going to discuss "From Sherlock Holmes to CSI: Chemistry as a Forensic Science."

I am a mystery nut and have followed female sleuths like Kay Scarpetta, and Kathy Riechs' character Temperance Brennan. I have been fascinated with Swedish authors like Helene Tursten with her character Detective Inspector Irene Huss. My husband and I don't have cable or regular television, but we do enjoy the mystery DVD series like Wire in the Blood, with psychologist and profiler Dr. Tony Hill.

So this science café presentation really tantalized me. I wasn't sure who would be there. Where they all going to be scientists who would ask technical questions that would go right over my head?

It was worth a try. The presentation was only a half-hour and it was close to home. How bad could it be?

The group meets at It's All Good, a restaurant on Washington Avenue, across the street from the City of Newburgh park and ball stadium. Parking was plentiful and the small crowd welcoming.

The speaker, James Spencer, is a professor of chemistry at Syracuse University, and he offered a lighthearted and thoroughly interesting presentation.

Did you know that techniques introduced in the Sherlock Holmes series foreshadowed methods currently in use? For example, Holmes talked about testing blood to see if they could identify the culprit before this method was even viable. 

How about the burning of witches?

The story goes that a number of women in a small town in Massachusetts suffered from fevers and then severe shaking which then led to wild dance-like movements. These movements would subside and then begin again. Many of these women were drowned, burned at the stake and some were imprisoned. Where the townspeople were generally very calm, they became irrational. These episodes lasted for about a year. All of a sudden the women in prison were miraculously healed. They no longer had fevers or shakes. The townspeople returned to their original calm demeanor. Life went on as usual.

Many years later scientists revisited these incidents to uncover the causes for these strange behaviors. Apparently, the women who worked in the wheat fields were most susceptible. But why?

That year was unusually wet and the harvested wheat was host to a fungus called wheat ergot. When ingested it affects the central nervous system, causing uncontrolled behaviors.  Once the weather returned to normal the wheat fungus was no longer present and both the "witches" and the townspeople returned to normal.

Now I am hooked and can't wait to see what other wonders the Hudson Valley Science Café uncovers. Why don't you join us? The group usually meets on the 4th Tuesday of each month at 7pm.

E-mail Dr. Rossman at toby.rossman@nyumc.org and ask to receive her monthly newsletter. You can also view upcoming topics at cafescientifique.org/hudsonvalley.htm

Upcoming sessions include:

August 26th

            Turning genes off and on

September 16th

            Inflammation and the

            downfall of Vioxx

October 28th

            Why people believe in

            pseudoscientific and

            paranormal claims

November 18th

            The astronomic search for

            the origins of life on Mars

December 16th

            The future of drug discovery

 by Terrie Goldstein

If you read the May magazine of Hudson Valley Life you have followed the saga of the installation of my pocket garden. I own a brownstone four-floor walk-up in the City of Newburgh and although I have periodically cleared the brush from the backyard I never conquered the ever-emerging poison ivy and encroaching weeds.

It's not that I am not used to gardening because I built brick patios and grew vegetable gardens in my last home, but even though my Newburgh garden lot is small nothing I did made it a livable space.

So I hired Tom McGowan from Montgomery who owns the Twin Ponds Nursery (http://www.twinpondsgreenhouses.com/). His calm manner and great solutions to my gardening queries gave me confidence that he would do a good job.

Within a week he cleared and graded the area. When he laid the patio stone it immediately changed the look of this very small space. He built two walls in order to maintain the level grade for the patio while creating space for a small garden.

My one requirement: The garden should be filled with perennials which require little maintenance.

Tom planted a great selection of flowering plants and greens. I love the three varieties of hostas he chose. Some are tall growing. Others are smaller with variegated leaves. And the third group shows off deep velvety green leaves. Myrtle and ajuga were chosen for ground cover. The myrtle is doing great. The ajuga did not fare as well and needs to be replanted. The boxwoods will be green all year while the hydrangeas offer flowers all summer. The only planting that has not fared well are the ostrich ferns. Tom replanted them but they are still not standing tall. Tom feels that some animals may be breaking the stems but we are not sure.

The pocket garden has become an extended room where I can finally use the grill we bought two years ago. Simple furniture complements the space. Now it's fun to relax in my backyard garden with iced coffee and a book. My own Walden Pond in the middle of a city of 25,000 people.

My husband and I went to dinner last Sunday night at Sukhothai Restaurant on Main Street in Beacon. (By the way, it was great food.) And much to our surprise some great things were going on. Artists were busy completing murals. Workers operated a crane to fit the new installations into place. People gathered to watch this creation taking shape, while cars stopped in the middle of the road to see what all the excitement was about.

Twenty-four street artists converged on Beacon from May 16th through May 18th to create live artwork and have it installed on the exterior of the 19th century factory building that has been abandoned to the animals and birds that have claimed it as their home.

Under the direction of Open Space, an art gallery in Beacon, with support from the city and other groups, the large industrial windows of the former electric blanket factory were used as frames for each artist's work. Artists came from all over the country to participate in this display called Electric Windows. What was once an eyesore is now a wonderful destination. It will be on display for one year and is worth a drive from wherever you live, even with the outlandish price of gas.

For directions go to www.electricwindowsbeacon.com.