Introspective Magazine
Viewed from the ancient pavers on Calle Recreo, one of San Miguel de Allende’s best-preserved streets, the facade of Casa Acanto is plain and unassuming. But when Jeffry Weisman flings open the double doors, he reveals a patio and courtyard of heart-stopping beauty. Towering over us, just beyond the outdoor living room’s invitingly arranged seating, are three 125-year-old jacaranda trees. With winter approaching, their foliage is chartreuse, but in the spring, their blossoms are so brilliantly lavender that visitors think they’re fake.
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Introspective Magazine
In the triangle that lies between Chapultepec Park and the stately boulevards and Art Nouveau mansions of La Condesa, Joel (pronounced “Ho-el”) Escalona has his studio. Reaching it means climbing a quivering spiral staircase to the fourth floor. As Escalona answers the door, he runs a hand through hair that looks as if it had already seen a long day. Then he opens his fist to reveal, fresh out of his new 3-D printer, a tiny maquette of a tiered glass bowl that the Libbey Glass Company will soon manufacture by the thousands.
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Aura
For the 30 years of our marriage, my husband has asked me to manage a task that has traumatized him since childhood. I am in charge of buying gifts for his mother.
As a newlywed, I embraced this challenge. I picked out designer handbags, belts and scarves from the best stores, seeing to it that they were wrapped beautifully, and delivered in prestigious shopping bags.
My mother-in-law loved the shopping bags, but the gifts themselves were always returned, within days and sometimes within hours.
Towards the end of the first decade, I suggested that we stick to Hallmark cards and flowers. But my husband, a dutiful and loving only child, made it clear that he was not going to take that guilt trip.
And so it was, last summer, when our cruise ship docked in Denmark, that two of our eight precious hours on shore were dedicated to selecting a blue-and-white salad bowl in his mother’s Royal Copenhagen china pattern.
I thought we’d nailed it, but — no. The bowl was too fancy. Since it was impractical to return this purchase to Denmark, it was dispatched to a closet, one filled with other rejects, and stacks of classy shopping bags.
In response, I announced my retirement from this spousal duty. But when the holidays came around, the question arose once more: What to get the woman who returns everything?
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fully
Finally, it’s gone. My big, state-of-the-art chair – the one with all the levers and sliders and knobs that was supposed to banish my back pain? I fired it. I replaced it with something small, sleek and Scandinavian, called an Iloa. It’s a stool, on wheels. I’m not saying that it’s magic, but it might be.
I should back up. The chair that I just made redundant wasn’t my first. If I remember correctly, it was my fifth, each purchase meticulously researched and custom-ordered, with a single goal: To sit comfortably for hours in front of my computer monitor, and not be miserable afterward.
With the help of some really smart people at Fully, a furniture company that is dedicated to the principles of active sitting, I realized that I had the whole thing wrong. I’d been searching for a chair that did the work for me. I wanted it to hold my body upright, with plenty of lumbar support, so I could ignore my skeleton. It had to cushion my tush in high-density foam, so that I couldn’t feel my sitting bones. But my body never wanted that. All along, it wanted freedom and movement, and I refused to listen.
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fully
In 2014, endocrinologist Dr. James Levine published his anti-sitting manifesto, “Get Up: Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It.” He coined the term “sitting disease” and explained that no amount of exercise could counteract the effects of sitting for eight hours a day.
Studies backed him up, showing intensive sitting slowed the metabolism, reduced healthy cholesterol by 20 percent, increased the risk of cardiovascular problems, and doubled the chance of developing type-2 diabetes. Levine recommended a treadmill desk, to walk at a slow pace of one to two mph, for most of the day.
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fully
In the course of researching and writing my book, Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery, I met scores of people who told me that they liked—or even loved—their jobs and their colleagues. Still, they dreaded going to work, because it was hard to think about anything except how much their backs hurt.
More than once they’d ordered expensive new equipment, hoping to find a way to get out of pain. They’d raised their desktops to standing height, only to realize that being stuck on their feet all day made for cranky knees, hips and ankles. Many jumped on “the medical merry-go-round,” seeing chiropractors, physical therapists, pain management doctors and surgeons, desperate to find someone who could fix them.
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