Nancy Davis Kho's Blog, page 7

Ep 61 Tucson Mayoral Candidate Randi Dorman

“Not the typical politician”: Businesswoman, mom, and first-time political candidate Randi Dorman talks about her vision and plans for Tucson, the power in pursuing your passion, and the best rainy-day camp activity ever.

RandiForMayor.com
Randi’s endorsement from Arizona Daily Star
Nancy’s blog posts about Family Camp

One of the shows at Irvine Auditorium where Randi and I were both in the audience…check out Steel Pulse’s Grammy-winning “Babylon The Bandit.”

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here!

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                  Related StoriesEp 60 WomenOnline Founder Morra Aarons-MeleEp 59 Listeners Say: Bring It Back!If You Had a Time Machine… 

Working The Pole

I think it was when our teacher put Peter, Paul, and Mary crooning “Michael Rowed the Boat Ashore” on her boombox with wheelies, and barked at us to make hearts with our shoulder blades there under the redwood canopy, that I first wondered whether I had come to the right place.

Well, that’s not exactly true. When I came around the bend of the trail in the Oakland hills one morning last week, to see a dozen senior citizens in bucket hats and windbreakers all standing around a picnic table covered by hiking polls, my heart (and not my shoulder heart, my real heart) sank. “This is the hiking pole class I signed up for,” I thought, and my whiteknuckled grip on youth slipped by a full digit or two.

What had happened was, I went to see my orthopedist in July about my very very very slowly healing knee, to see if there is anything I can do to speed up the healing process besides all this. My husband and I have planned a multi-day hiking trip in Patagonia next February, to mark the beginning of the Empty Nest Years and the end of the initial flurry of activity around my book launch. I explained to the doctor that I plan to hike some 16-mile days in the Chilean mountains in early 2020, and it would be super great if my knee could come with me.

Initially, he told me that I’ll probably be fine hiking on the flats and uphills, and that it’s really only the downhill that will compound the problem in my knee. “So just ask your guides if they can adjust and maybe give you an option that doesn’t include downhill,” he said. I am pretty sure that’s not how mountains work, even in the southern hemisphere, but I didn’t want to be disrespectful to a man who had the power to say “KNEE REPLACEMENT SURGERY” in his next breath, so I shut up.

Then he brightened. “Do you hike with poles?” he asked.

“Not usually.”

“Do I have the class for YOU!” he said and spun around his stool to grab a photocopy of a registration form.

It turns out there’s a lady in these parts who teaches people how to use hiking poles on order to – and I would soon be chanting these words under some redwoods with my new friends in bucket hats while we marched around in a big flat oval – “increase efficiency on the flats, provide power on the uphills, and reduce strain on joints on the downhill!” She has a video too, but the doctor said the in-person class was a must.

So that’s how I spent $45 and a giant chunk of my dignity last week.

I mean, the worst thing about making fun of something easy is when you can’t even do the thing. Turns out there is a special way to put your hands through the loops: up through and down. Ask me how many times the teacher in the flowered baseball cap accessorized by a jaunty dragonfly pin woman-handled my hands back into the right position in front of my septuagenarian classmates and I will answer: so many times.

I don’t even know how my hands kept changing position, but I suspect it was because I was also practicing the “swagger” walk, the “plant n’ push”, and the “6 Ps” of hiking poles. (You can’t handle the 6 Ps until you’ve been there, man.) Meanwhile, Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” played on the boombox in the clearing in the woods as we swagger-marched back and forth in formation.

After almost four hours of instruction and, according to my Apple Watch, less than one mile hiked, I had the basics down. I can adjust my poles with one click flip of the middle section, I understand the principles of using poles to ascend and descend stairs, and I can keep my hands mostly in the right position, most of the time.

What will take longer to reconcile is the disappointment that I finally got around to taking a pole class, and it wasn’t even the kind that involves high heels.

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                  Related StoriesLove Island: Midlife EditionYou Might Have to Put on a Red LightConcert Review: Tedeschi Trucks Band 

Ep 60 WomenOnline Founder Morra Aarons-Mele

“That’s not for me”: Self-proclaimed “hermit entrepreneur” Morra Aarons-Mele talks about how her award-winning social impact agency leverages the power of women’s connections, midlife boundary maintenance, and her book “Hiding in the Bathroom.”

WomenOnline
Morra’s book “Hiding in the Bathroom: An Introvert’s Guide to Getting Out There (When You’d Rather Stay Home)

Hiding in the Bathroom – the Podcast
Cyndi Lauper/Eddie Money at Madison Square Garden – who opened? Well, I did some research and the show was December 19, 1986…and this article would suggest that the opener was Eddie. And hey, here’s a ticket stub! Only $19!
Amaze.org Sex Ed videos
Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition Amazon wishlist
Jill Krause’s blog
Ep 19 “Maxed Out” author Katrina Alcorn

One of the American Cancer Society “Happy Birthday” videos we talked about on the show, from really the best person would could ever sing you happy birthday.

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here! ***Pre-order Nancy’s book THE THANK-YOU PROJECT: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time (Running Press, December 2019)Sign up for book news at DavisKho.com and find out when the book’s Spotify playlists are released! 

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                  Related StoriesEp 59 Listeners Say: Bring It Back!If You Had a Time Machine…Ep 58 Transnational Writer Xu Xi   

Love Island: Midlife Edition

So there we were last weekend on a family getaway to the rural surf town of Bolinas, a little hippie enclave hidden in the side of a lagoon in Marin County. We had hiked, we had stuck our toes in the sand, we had napped and read our books, we had eaten at both cafes in town, one of them thrice. What else could we do to stay out of the way of the local population, who are notoriously unhappy with outside visitors?

Binge watch the British version of Love Island, obviously.

The rental had Hulu, which we don’t at home, and a wraparound couch big enough for four tall Khos, and if you think that my husband and I will voluntarily bypass any situation in which our almost-all-the-way grown children will snuggle with us under cozy blankets then you are very wrong. So, Love Island, which is leading the downward race in reality television programming by a country kilometer.

TL;DR version: Five men and five women hailing from various corners of the British Isles who share an affinity for skimpy bathing suits and eyebrow waxing are thrown together in a giant Spanish villa decorated like a 15-year-old-girl’s idea of “SO-Phisticated!

Ep 59 Listeners Say: Bring It Back!

“I miss monotasking”: Listeners respond to the question “What do you wish you could bring back from your ‘70s/’80s/90’s childhood?” From Marathon Bars to mall lunches to Martha on MTV, we take a summer dive deep into GenX nostalgia.

Kraft Cheese Kisses – read all about ‘em!
Midlife Mixtape Podcast Ep 33 – Original MTV VJ Martha Quinn
Nancy’s ‘80s Alternative Dance Playlists – available @daviskho on Spotify
Dugout – new graphic novel for 7-11 year old readers, from Midlife Mixtape Podcast Ep 7 guest Pixar Storyteller Scott Morse
Grown & Flown: The Book – co-written by Midlife Mixtape Podcast Ep 51 guest Mary Dell Harrington. Pub date Sept 3 but available now for pre-order!
MJForTexas.com – learn more and support Midlife Mixtape Podcast Ep 12 guest Major MJ Hegar’s run for the Texas Senate!
Headcount.org – sign up for a shift registering voters at concerts via this wonderful organization founded by Midlife Mixtape Podcast Ep 40 guest Andy Bernstein

 

Pre-order Nancy’s book THE THANK-YOU PROJECT: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time (Running Press, December 2019)
Sign up for book news at DavisKho.com and find out when the book’s Spotify playlists are released!

Thanks for the music pairing suggestion for today’s episode, Otto. Riddle me this: what do we call the bass player’s hairstyle?

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here!

The post Ep 59 Listeners Say: Bring It Back! appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

                   
CommentsUm…did the designers of that product hail from the adult film ... by Nancy Davis KhoBless you. xoxox by Nancy Davis KhoTickle deodorant, with the “big wide ball” ... by AHVPre-order: ✅. by Alison MayRelated StoriesEp 56 Midlife Mixtape LIVE at Betabrand Podcast TheaterEp 53 SavvyAuntie.com Founder Melanie NotkinEp 50 Listeners’ Advice to Younger People 

If You Had a Time Machine…

…and could go back to the ’70s, ’80s, or ’90s of your youth, what would you bring back to 2019?

I’m doing another special “Listener-Contributed” podcast episode and I’d love to know…what do you miss from that era? Can be physical or metaphysical – think Jolt Cola, or the jolt you used to get waking up to yet another unstructured day of summer vacation.

(The theme for this episode is 100% induced by my family’s binge-watching of Stranger Things Season 3 over the holiday weekend, by the way – just seeing the mall full of shoppers, the Sam Goody store, the Regis Hair Salon had me in my Gen X feels. Also the deserted downtown that was only missing a tumbleweed to be complete. No one is saying the good old days were all good.)

But let’s allow ourselves to wallow just a bit. Let me know what you miss! Leave a comment below, email me dj@midlifemixtape.com, or (pretty please) press that blue button you see on the right hand side of MidlifeMixtape.com and record your answer. I’ll smoosh all the responses together in to Episode 59, to air next week.

And that means you have to move fast – I’m hoping to get everyone’s responses in by Thursday 7/9, 5 pm PT. So let me know what you think!

Is it wrong to wish we could go rescue the young, innocent MJ?

***

Wanted to hip you to a fun summer read – BOOZE AND VINYL: A Spirited Guide to Great Music and Mixed Drinks, by André and Tenaya Darlington. It’s a coffee table book that pairs up classic vinyl with two cocktails each – one for Side A and one for Side B, duh. Liner notes about the album, suggested food pairings, and drinks that pair perfectly with the album in question (for instance, for Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, Keef’s signature drink during its recording: a bottle of Jim Beam, a can of Coke, and a can of Coors, lined up and sipped from in turn.) And it didn’t go unnoticed that it’s from Running Press, which is publishing my book in December…thrilled to be in such good company between the pages. (Not to be confused with the Between the Sheets cocktail that pairs with Madonna’s Like a Virgin.) Cheers!

 

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Ep 58 Transnational Writer Xu Xi

 

“You’re not alone”: Hong Kong-raised writer Xu Xi reflects on being betwixt and between cultures, languages, and life stages, and channels Confucian wisdom to understand the desire to make a stand at midlife.

Xu Xi’s website
This Fish is Fowl: Essays of Being (American Lives Series – University of  Nebraska Press, 2019)
International MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Vermont College of Fine Arts
@xuxiwriter on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter

What happens when a globetrotter discovers Chuck Berry?

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the Midlife Mixtape podcast – check him out here!

The post Ep 58 Transnational Writer Xu Xi   appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

                   
CommentsFantastic! I want to hear some childhood stories from those ... by Helen KhoRelated StoriesEp 55 The Hard Times Founder Matt SaincomeEp 57 Leadership Coach Karen WalrondEp 56 Midlife Mixtape LIVE at Betabrand Podcast Theater 

Putting the Story in Family History

Three cousins in Yorkshire circa 1918. The one on the right is my mom’s mom.

I have a love/hate relationship to these genetic testing services like 23AndMe. On the one hand, it’s certainly interesting to learn that you had forebears in parts of the world you didn’t expect, or that you are statistically significantly Neanderthal. (Your Neanderthal ancestors’ swag brought all the Homo Sapiens to the block. I imagine Early Woman thinking to herself, “Those SHOULDERS! Besides, I think I can evolve him!”)

But many of us grew up in A Time Before Google hearing stories of our family history that we have integrated into our identities. Maybe your reticence or your fiery temper or your inability to cook aren’t personal failings: they’re GENETICS.  I mean, EVERYONE in our family is like that. That’s our story and a lot of us were perfectly happy to stick with it.

Here, in the parlance of Brené Brown, is the story I tell myself: I am 100% British (Welsh on one side, English on the other) going all the way back to the acorn that started my family tree. My maternal grandparents emigrated from Yorkshire, and on my dad’s side, we can trace our genealogy back to the 1600s in England and Wales. There’s a reason I have eaten an entire tube of McVities Digestives in one sitting and am always game for a long stop at a dark pub and am currently transfixed by Outlander. It’s GENETICS.

So when these DNA-testing kits started coming out a few years back, I kept my distance. My husband had his tested as a favor to one of our daughters who wasn’t old enough to do her own but is very interested in the genetic stew of Asian influences in her bloodstream, so she figured she could look at his results, divide by two, and mix with British to figure out her specific recipe.

Meanwhile, time passed, and it seemed like everyone I know was spitting in a tube and sending in the kits to get tested. At one of my Cat Club Dance Parties, I spied my friend Charles huddled with my husband in a corner, hunched over the brightly graphics of Charles’ African ancestry on his phone, while Depeche Mode throbbed in the background.

Even my 91-year-old aunt Noonie wanted to try it, so my sister helped her send in her kit back in January. I didn’t see the point, what with her (and my) British forebearers, but whatever makes Noonie happy. As soon as I heard the results were in, I called her. “I’m part GREEK!” Noonie said to me on the phone. “That’s why I like lamb so much!” She also learned she was Irish, Scottish, Danish, and German.

What she was not, except for a very small 2% of her very small being, was British. And if my mom’s sister isn’t British, that must mean my mom isn’t British, which means that I am not British.

“That’s fascinating, Noonie,” I said to her. “But I rebuke those results and will do everything in my power to forget you ever told me about them.” I am 100% British and that is facts. You couldn’t pay me enough to spit in a tube now.

The evolving science of genetics means that people who have their DNA on file at these companies can get increasingly precise analyses of their bloodlines, too. My husband, for instance, recently got an email with this exciting news: “You have a new Trait report available: Fear of Public Speaking.” Weird flex for a guy who regularly addresses ballrooms full of renewable energy professionals and delivers all the family eulogies, but ok.

The same week, I received an email from a woman in Scotland whose great-grandfather and mine were brothers, and who has extensively researched our family tree and offered to share it with me. She’s done a ton of work and very kindly emailed me stories of soldiers and day laborers and workhouse stints. (My people were definitely on the “Downstairs” end of the “Upstairs Downstairs” scenario. A few of them were “Crawl Space.”) It’s been fascinating to receive and read the research she conducted the old-fashioned way, through obituaries and birth notices and substantiated family lore.

In fact, one of the emails she sent me was titled “Scandal with the Vicar.”

And in the end, that’s why I’m never getting my DNA tested. Because I ask you:  if you had a choice of genetics-informed Fear of Public Speaking or oral-tradition Scandal with the Vicar, which family story would you rather hear?

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Ep 57 Leadership Coach Karen Walrond

“Follow your curiosity”: Coach, speaker, author, and host of the Make Light podcast Karen Walrond on the benefits of taking ownership of your career, why diversity and inclusion aren’t the same thing, and rest as a radical act.

Karen’s website, Chookaloonks
Karen’s book, The Beauty of Different: Observations of a Confident Misfit
The Make Light Show
Mira Jacobs’ book, Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations
Ep 43 guest R. Eric Thomas on Democratic POTUS candidates’ walk-up music

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the Midlife Mixtape podcast – check him out here!

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You Might Have to Put on a Red Light

It’s come to this. I’m shining fancy lightbulbs at my knees, and that’s not a euphemism.

Last fall I was hiking on my regular uneven Oakland Hills trail, a 4.5-mile out and back walk I do a few times each week (sadly, no longer with my canine companion, but I do like to imagine his spirit cavorting alongside.) About ¾ of the way through the walk, something in my knee felt funny. Not painful, but not right either. “That’s weird,” I thought to myself. “I’ll ice it when I get home,” which I didn’t do.

Eight months later, I wrap an infrared light pad around my knee three times a day and microwave the still-swollen kneecap for 20 minutes at a go, praying for a miracle, or at least a fraction of the miracles promised by its overseas manufacturer. The theory is that the red light boosts collagen or gooses mitochondria or increases healing bloodflow or some such. I’m just here for the anti-inflammatory action, but it sounds like it does everything from clearing up wrinkles to cleaning out the gutters. I’ll test all that out later.

When I talked about my knee with a real live orthopedist back in February, he looked at the X-rays, sighed, and said, “Yup. That’s what 52-year-old knees look like. You’ll probably need them replaced at some point.” He went on to say that I could still do all the hiking I want; it just needs to be on flat, smooth surfaces. (Is that hiking? I thought that was called Mall Walking. Side note: what will Gen X’s version of Mall Walking be? At the rate they’re closing, there won’t be any malls left soon; do we all just wear Virtual Reality headsets on treadmills? Where are you supposed to get the Cinnabon reward?)

Over on my podcast I proselytize that being over 40 is a good thing, on so many levels, and I really do believe it. It’s just this one level – the one in which these mortal vessels we call our bodies operate – where it’s not so fun. And I know I’m not alone in searching for miracle cures for the weird chronic aches and pains that make us grunt when we stand up, or interrupt cocktail party conversations for a real quick quad stretch in the corner, the better to remain upright until the party ends.

So I pretend I never talked to that orthopedist and continue to pursue alternative approaches.

The other night I had a looooong phone call with one of my favorite people, my husband’s grad school roommate and the best man at our wedding, Joe. We caught each other up on family and work and whatnot. Then we compared notes on our physical decline, with me advocating intermittent fasting and a processed-food-free diet, Joe talking up red light therapy and keto. I would like to say I was horrified by it – after all, Joe and I used to be part of a group of youngsters who went to JazzFest in New Orleans every year, sleeping 93 people to a hotel room and kicking off our 19-hour days there with breakfast beer and a nice light fried oyster Po’ boy. The evils of processed food and benefits of standing desks were not part of our conversation back in the early ‘90s.

But I was too busy scribbling down “red lite? Paleo? Do I have to give up BEER?:( “ onto a piece of paper to take notice, and releasing all qualms about taking medical advice from a guy whose advanced degree focused not so much on medicine as on cross-cultural marketing and international accounting standards.

The red-light therapy band, applied for 20 minutes three times a day, has done nothing so far, but the packaging and my buddy Dr. Master of International Management says it takes a few months to work.

Another friend recommended sports massage, so I have a treatment booked this week with a woman I’ve seen once before. She is tiny and has two parallel bars installed in the ceiling of her treatment room, the better to hold onto while she walks on your back. When she did this to me the first time, I issued a noise the likes of which has never emanated from my body before. I think it was the unfamiliar sound of excess air being squeezed out of my spleen. When I give her permission to do whatever is necessary to release my knee from its stiffened state this week, I may be booking myself a one-way ticket to Relaxation, but with an extended layover at Staggering Discomfort. Hope my spleen is ready for the adventure.

You know what? Roxanne may not have needed to put on the red light in 1978 when the song came out.

But by now, she’s probably strapping them to her lumbar, both thighs, and a shoulder. And that’s not a euphemism.

***Hey Bay Area Peeps: Come out and hear my dear friend Mary Laura Philpott discuss her wonderful memoir-in-essays I MISS YOU WHEN I BLINK next Thursday, June 20th at 7 pm at A Great Good Place for Books in Oakland. It says I’m going to be “In Conversation” with her, but between us, I’m planning to say “Heeeeeeeeere’s Mary Laura” and then join you in the seats. Hope to see you there!

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