Like the rest of the world, the Library of Congress was very saddened to hear of the passing of Jimmy Buffett this past weekend. His passing was, to us, all the more poignant as Mr. Buffett’s iconic recording, “Margaritaville,” was added to the Library’s National Recording Registry just earlier this year.
From article…
At the time, Mr. Buffett expressed his great pleasure at having his song selected, providing to us not only a wonderful interview on the song and his career but also generously sharing his memories of its making.
At the time of its induction, esteemed music writer (and Buffett fan) Scott Atwell wrote for the Library the following essay. We share it below.
Editor’s Note: Read more, see link below for original item…
When Christopher Mazurek realizes he’s dreaming, it’s always the small stuff that tips him off.
The first time it happened, Mazurek was a freshman at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. In the dream, he found himself in a campus dining hall. It was winter, but Mazurek wasn’t wearing his favorite coat.“I realized that, OK, if I don’t have the coat, I must be dreaming,” Mazurek says. That epiphany rocked the dream like an earthquake. “Gravity shifted, and I was flung down a hallway that seemed to go on for miles,” he says. “My left arm disappeared, and then I woke up.”
Most people rarely if ever realize that they’re dreaming while it’s happening, what’s known as lucid dreaming. But some enthusiasts have cultivated techniques to become self-aware in their sleep and even wrest some control over their dream selves and settings. Mazurek, 24, says that he’s gotten better at molding his lucid dreams since that first whirlwind experience, sometimes taking them as opportunities to try flying or say hi to deceased family members.
Other lucid dreamers have used their personal virtual realities to plumb their subconscious minds for insights or feast on junk food without real-world consequences. But now, scientists have a new job for lucid dreamers: to explore their dreamscapes and report out in real time.
“We like the idea of being happy,” the head of the Jimmy Buffett-branded communities said of the residents’ attitude.Illustration by Nada Hayek
The first person I met at the Bar & Chill was a bald guy in a black T-shirt, black drawstring shorts, and flip-flops, with a Harley-Davidson tattoo on his right arm and a claddagh ring on his left hand. He was drinking and laughing with a few friends. He gestured to the empty stool next to him and said, “We don’t bite.”
I offered an expression of if-you-insist, and he said, “Bring it.” His tone was cheerful, as you might expect at the Bar & Chill, the principal drinking-and-dining establishment that looks out on the town center of Latitude Margaritaville, an active-living community for Jimmy Buffett enthusiasts, aged “55 and better,” in Daytona Beach, Florida.
The Bar & Chill was open to the evening. A gentle breeze fanned the lanai. On a flat-screen, the Providence Friars led the Vermont Catamounts by a few buckets. A bartender brought a Perfect Margarita in a plastic cup.
The bald man, drinking a vodka soda, said his name was Phil. Phil Murphy, from Arlington, Massachusetts, aged sixty-four. Formerly a research director at Forrester, retired since 2015. “I was in the air for twenty years,” he said. He looked and sounded less like my idea of a Parrothead, as Jimmy Buffett’s diehard fans are called, than like Mike Ehrmantraut, the melancholic fixer in “Breaking Bad.”
Standing off his left shoulder, his wife, Betty, red hair cut short, added a dash of urbanity, a spritz of Allison Janney. Phil and Betty had organized an emergency fund for the restaurant’s staff during its Covid shutdown. One of their friends declared them “the king and queen of the Bar & Chill.”
A recent collaborative study from La Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has found that people in the UK who closely follow a Mediterranean lifestyle are at a decreased risk of death from all causes and specific diseases.
The Mediterranean lifestyle, often praised for its health benefits, goes beyond just the diet. While the diet forms a substantial component, the lifestyle as a whole encompasses a range of habits and practices traditionally found among people living in countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea.
Overall, the Mediterranean lifestyle emphasizes a diet that is high in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and low in added salts and sugars. It is also focused on sufficient rest, physical activity, and social interactions.
My month-long social experiment was both challenging and gratifying
Perspective by Leonard Felson, July 28, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. EDT
(Elizabeth von Oehsen/The Washington Post)
Out of the blue last fall, an acquaintance emailed me. “I want to start jogging, but I need someone to run with,” he wrote. I hadn’t run in years, but the possibility that jogging might lead to a friendship was enough for me to say yes.
Even before the pandemic frayed our social lives, Americans had fewer close friends than 30 years ago, a KFF study in 2018 showed. Another survey found adults were talking and relying on each other for support less often than in the past and feeling more left out. And men in particular tend to face a harder time than women making and maintaining friendships, research suggests, and it appears to only be getting worse.
