Tea at Trianon: Health Risks for Writers

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, February 9, 2018

Health Risks for Writers

From Always Write:

If you’ve been hiding under a rock recently, you might have missed the most trendy health risk that has just been “discovered”. Sitting for too many hours in a day, particularly for too many consecutive hours is slowly killing us all off. The ill effects of too much sitting include some of the worst health villains of our day – obesity, cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, “all-cause mortality” (another term for death by whatever means). A meta study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine earlier this year concluded that: “Prolonged sedentary time was independently associated with deleterious health outcomes regardless of physical activity.” In other words, you can’t spend ten hours writing and then make up for the sedentary time by going to the gym for an hour. You should be moving over the course of the day.

Sports medicine specialist Jason Matuszak, M.D., offers similar advice: “People who don’t exercise can be healthier even if all they do is reduce the amount of time they sit. People who do exercise can be healthier by decreasing the time they spend sitting, too.” He likes to ask his patients: “What fits your busy schedule better: exercising an hour a day or being dead 24 hours a day?”

The often-reported solution for this problem is to get a stand-up desk. Journalist Sydney Trent describes why he opted for a stand-up desk: “Over the years, I had concluded that sitting all day made me sluggish, less focused. On top of that, my neck and shoulders were routinely tight, and sometimes the pain interfered with my sleep.” (Read more.)