Carbquik

• Check out this product on Amazon, also found in most groceries. A mysteriously low-carb biscuit mix that almost tastes like the real thing. Not going to pretend it is a whole, unprocessed food. They do use wheat flour but remove much of the carbohydrate. Compatible with ketogenic or low carb diet. 
• You can throw some cheddar and jalapeño in the mix, put butter and jelly on them, make chicken and dumplings. Any recipe that calls for Bisquick. 

Daryl Davis

• Check out the story of Daryl Davis, a talented Blues musician who has played with Chuck Berry, BB King, and many others. Mr. Davis is a Black man who carries out his mission to convert KKK members. As of 2016, he reported collecting 25 or 26 robes. 
• Not sure why his story isn’t more popular; a 2016 documentary covers his activism. He has a book and a podcast as well, all linked on the Wikipedia page. What an impressive dude. 

Superwoman

• Check out this story from 2016 about a then 19-year-old woman who noticed a fire in her garage, lifted a truck off of her father, jumped in and drove the truck out of the garage on 3 wheels, closed the garage door behind her to contain the fire, and then evacuated other family members from the house. People can be amazing. 

Probiotics

• The magic of Kefir has shown up on prior newsletters, and hopefully you all have tried it. This new article compared subjects eating high fiber (prebiotic) foods with those eating fermented (probiotic/live) foods. The winner: the probiotic group, who had less inflammation and more microbial diversity: “Fermented foods may be valuable in countering the decreased microbiome diversity and increased inflammation pervasive in industrialized society.”
• If you want a low sugar version, but don’t love the Plain Lifeway or other brand of Kefir (Trader Joe’s is good), check out Pillars (mixed berry or chocolate). Very low sugar and tastes excellent, I have only seen it at Whole Foods. 

Plank for the legs

• Something dawned on me a few months ago. As mentioned in other newsletters, planks represent an easy, low cost, time-efficient, low-injury risk exercise that hits the upper body and core. But how could you involve the legs in a plank? Should have realized that wall sits are basically planks for the legs. Try it right now, just go sit up against a wall with your back straight and your knees at 90 degrees. Hold it as long as you can. Do it every hour at work. 

Transcend Catastrophe

• This essay was written to explain the plot of the author’s book, but read it instead for the beautiful description of a ‘eucatastrophe.’ 
• “J. R. R. Tolkien in his famous essay “On Fairy-Stories,” where he talks about the “eucatastrophe”: that is, the good catastrophe, the good destruction… While The Lord of the Rings could perhaps be described as an averted tragedy, the exemplar of the Gospel narratives indicates that the eucatastrophe is more properly the reversal of a tragic ending.” 
• “So the tragedy actually takes place, with all the attendant suffering and grief that implies, and then it is undone, but not—as with, say, the fake version of this in the Avengers Endgame movie—by simply erasing the prior outcome (though even in Endgame, those who were not “snapped” still remember the years-long absence of those that were), but rather by transcending it: folding it within a larger narrative movement that changes its meaning.” Thanks Jacob for the recommendation.

Quotes

“I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.”
– Bob Dylan

On Children
(Khalil Gibran)

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.”