spas

Hurleyville, N.Y.
Sanivan Holistic Spa
Sanivan is like a B&B for the soul. In a Catskills town two hours northwest of Manhattan, the spa is owned by Ivan Rivas and Saniye Gungor — a masseur and a shiatsu therapist/shaman, respectively. The husband-and-wife duo offers a smorgasbord of indulgences: personally tailored herbal facials (60 minutes, $80), aromatherapy shiatsu massages (90 minutes, $90), and even 100-percent oxygen treatments for improving blood flow and strengthening the immune system (120 minutes, $225).

With only three bedrooms, the spa promises individualized attention, something Lynne Nordone from Long Island found most rewarding. “You revitalize from the inside out and always learn something you can take home,” says Nordone, who eagerly devoured Gungor's “delicious raw food” (cooked grains, chicken, and fish are also available). Sanivan practices what it preaches: All linens and food are organic, trash is recycled, and even the heated pool is ozonated (translation: minimal chlorine). Guests spend downtime walking the outdoor meditation labyrinth and curling up with one of five Angora cats, the spa's “spiritual guides.”




Neversink, N.Y.
New Age Health Spa
On 280 acres near Catskill Park, New Age Health Spa hardly feels like it's only two hours from Manhattan. The spa complex is made up of nine newly renovated buildings, each with a Native American moniker; outdoor paths lined with flower beds connect the guest lodges. New Age lives up to its name with treatments such as a Native Sun Purification (50 minutes, $95), which incorporates herbs that many tribes use in cleansing rituals. (The herbs are grown in the spa's greenhouses.) Roberta Springer, a New York City resident, has been a regular since New Age opened 20 years ago. “I've been at least 50 times,” she says. “I was hooked the first weekend.” Nature lovers sign up for eco-adventure programs (bald-eagle watching or the Alpine Tower climb), and spiritual seekers try anything from tarot-card readings to silent reflection in the spa's state-of-the-art Cayuga Yoga and Meditation Center. It's decked out with heated floors, walls lined with 10,000 feet of redwood, and an enormous stone fireplace.


Shandaken, N.Y.
Copperhood Inn & Spa
Step into the Copperhood Inn & Spa and you might think you're in 18th-century Europe, not the Catskills. The wingback chairs, pin-striped or cream-colored linens, gilded frames, and marble galore reflect the Old World style of owner Elizabeth Winograd, a Warsaw native who migrated to New York for college in the '70s. Mud wraps (60 minutes, $115), yoga and meditation classes (five students at most, no extra charge), and the signature European Body Treatment — a two-hour almond scrub/hot herbal wrap/Swedish massage combo ($200) — are a nice alternative to more active pursuits like mountain biking, snowshoeing, and fencing. “We took glorious hikes deep into the mountains,” says New Yorker Brenda Szulman-Poje, who has visited Copperhood twice with a girlfriend. “My friend Karen had never been to a destination spa, so it was quite an adventure. On one of our hikes, the soles of both her hiking boots fell off and she had to hike down in her socks, which was no easy task!” Adirondack chairs on the wraparound deck overlook grazing pet goats and a burbling river, and afternoon tea is served in front of a fireplace (there are two).



East Stroudsburg, Pa.
Deerfield Spa
If Laura Ashley and Richard Simmons had a child, Deerfield would be it. In a sprawling former Victorian inn in the Poconos, the spa is all wicker, white linens, and soft florals throughout its 22 cozy bedrooms and three lounge areas. That country comfort stops, though, once you step into one of two 24-hour gyms, join an aquatic karate session in the heated pool, or sit down to a calorie-conscious meal of cumin- and feta-infused lentil loaf (no red meat here). Deerfield has regular lectures, guided two-hour Appalachian Trail hikes, 61 different weekly aerobics and fitness classes, and best of all, a staff-to-guest ratio of about two to one. First-time visitor Lola West of New York City, who stayed in the two-person cottage annex, found the intimacy refreshing: “The owner [Joan Wolff] has a great disposition that's reflected in the staff. Everyone is so friendly.” Overextended muscles get relief in classic treatments like seaweed wraps (50 minutes, $85) and Swedish massages (50 minutes, $65); more uncommon treats include Nuat Thai, an ancient Buddhist floor massage dubbed “lazy man's yoga;” and the newly added LumiLift, a light-therapy facial that uses a small current to stimulate sagging muscles.

invisibility

New Steps Towards A Real Invisibility Cloak
Invisibility technology: no longer just for rarefied parts of the spectrum
By Rebecca Boyle Posted 05.11.2009 at 9:30 am 24 Comments

Cloaked Bump courtesy Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Ouch, Harry Potter. Your new movie doesn't premiere for two months, yet real scientists are already one-upping you

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Cornell University both said last week they've designed invisibility cloaks that work in the visible-light spectrum. OK, so they're not big enough to cover a budding young wizard sneaking around at night, but hey, it's a step.

Two teams, led by Michal Lipson at Cornell University and Xiang Zhang at the University of California Berkeley, said their nano-scale invisibility cloaks allow light to flow around a hidden object as water flows around a rock. The cloaks contain a mirrored edge with a bulge that appears as though it's flat.

The feat solves an age-old problem faced by children huddling under blankets: You'd still see the cloak, but now you would have no idea what lies beneath.

Previous work on invisibility cloaks, including at Duke and UC Berkeley, only worked for light that human eyes can't see, like radio and microwaves. But new research shows silicon nanoparticles, as opposed to aluminum or other meta-materials, can work at shorter wavelengths -- even in visible light.

"Our optical cloak not only suggests that true invisibility materials are within reach, it also represents a major step toward transformation optics, opening the door to manipulating light at will," said Xiang Zhang, director of UC Berkeley's Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the U.S. Army provided some of the funding.

Related Articles
The Physics of Invisibility
Update: The World's First Invisibility Cloak
Invisibility Cloak Swirls Closer to Reality
Tags
Science, Rebecca Boyle, invisibility, light, optics, physics, science news, very cool science experiments
The cloaks reflect and bend light in a way that fools the observer into perceiving a flat surface. The cloaks' nanometer-size silicon materials are spaced apart at varying densities, so light flows around the bulge without distorting the view. A person looking head-on at the bulge would see only a flat plane mirror.

The main problem is scale -- both cloaks are wee things that might obscure little more than the eye of a needle. The Cornell cloak works for light that's just barely visible to humans; the Berkeley cloak only works for wavelengths barely outside what humans can see.

Zhang said it was easy to make and should be easy to scale up into visible light, however.

"Our next goal is to realize a cloak for all three dimensions, extending the transformation optics into potential applications," he said. Applications like sneaking around where one is not allowed, perhaps?

heart cliches

wear your heart on your sleeve
my heart bleeds for you
a man after my own heart
heart-to-heart talk
to your heart's content
he has a heart of gold
a heart as big as all outdoors
from the bottom of my heart
find it in your heart
eat your heart out
does my heart good
an ice cold heart
change of heart
broken heart
absence makes the heart grow fonder
Follow your heart
faint heart never won fair maiden
a broken heart is hard to mend
Go ahead, just tear my heart right out of my chest.
you gotta have heart
Home is where the heart is
A good heart is hard to find.
colder than a bad girl's heart
home is where the heart is
Absence makes the heart grow fonder
eat your heart out
had love in his eyes and lust in his heart
Home is where the heart is
distance makes the heart grow fonder
Heart of stone
be still my beating heart
Eat to your heart’s content.
chicken hearted

father-daughter problem

"one critical time a daughter needs her father --during adolescence, when she is changing physically and is beginning to question who she is as an adult--often is the time the father begins to show less affection. "Ironically, just as a teenaged girl is entering adolescence and going through the outward and often awkward change that goes along with puberty, her father pulls away from her because he isn't comfortable with his daughter's new sexuality. So just at the point when she needs approving hugs from her dad the most, he's less likely to give them to her, and she may not understand why he's pulling away; she may think he approves of her less."

facts on fathers and daughters

Fathers and Daughters: Eye Opening Facts


By Linda Nielsen, Ed.D.
Author of Embracing Your Father: Building the Relationship You Want with Your Dad


Healthy Lunchbox


As the parent of a daughter or as someone whose spouse has a daughter, we strengthen father-daughter relationships in our families by being able to separate “fact from fiction”. Despite what we see in many movies, TV shows, advertisements, and children’s books, recent national statistics and recent research from leading experts in psychology and sociology, show several facts to consider:

* Fathers generally have as much or more impact as mothers do in the following areas of their daughters’ lives: (1) achieving academic and career success—especially in math and science (2) creating a loving, trusting relationship with a man (3) dealing well with people in authority—especially men (4) Being self-confident and self-reliant (5) Being willing to try new things and to accept challenges (6) Maintaining good mental health (no clinical depression, eating disorders, or chronic anxiety) (7) Expressing anger comfortably and appropriately—especially with men

* Mothers and daughters generally know each other better and spend more time together throughout their lives than fathers and daughters.

* Too many daughters regret not having gotten to know their father very well while he was still alive.

* Our society emphasizes the importance of mother-daughter relationships more than father-daughter relationships.

* Most children’s books, TV programs, and movies send the message that fathers and daughters are not supposed to know each other as well or spend as much time together as mothers and daughters.

* Daughters who are raised by single fathers are just as well adjusted and as happy as daughters raised by single mothers.

* Fathers and daughters are usually closer when the mother works full time outside the home while the children are growing up.
* The more hours a mother works and the higher her income, the more time the father spends with their children.

* Most fathers want to spend more time with their children, but can’t because of their jobs. Realities: (1) Eighty percent of the fathers in our country earn most of the money for their families. (2) Counting the time spent commuting, working, doing house and yard work, and being with the kids, the average father has 5 hours less free time each week than the average employed mother. (3)On average, employed fathers work 10 more hours a week than employed mothers.

* Many fathers believe that their wives and daughters’ feelings for them are partly—or sometimes largely—based on money.

* A father usually has a closer relationship with his kids when the mother lets everyone in the family know how much she appreciates his ways of parenting—especially if his way of relating to the kids isn’t exactly like hers.

* A daughter has a better relationship with her father when her mother does not rely on her for advice or comfort on adult issues—especially issues involving the parents’ relationship with each other.

* When parents are unhappily married, most children side with their mother against their father.

* Sadly, there are mothers who feel uncomfortable or jealous with the idea that their daughter might share as much time or as much personal information with her father as she does with her mother.

Angln

Modern Angeln, also known as Anglia (German and English: Angeln, Danish: Angel, Latin: Anglia), is a peninsula in Southern Schleswig in the northern Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, protruding into the Bay of Kiel. It is separated from the neighbouring peninsula of Schwansen (Danish: Svans or Svansø) by the Schlei inlet, and from the Danish island of Als by the Flensburger Förde ("Firth of Flensburg"). Whether ancient Angeln conformed to these borders is uncertain. It may have been somewhat larger; however, the ancient sources mainly concur that it included the territory of modern Angeln.

Angeln has a significance far beyond its current small area and country terrain, in that it is believed to have been the original home of the Angles, Germanic immigrants to central and northern England, and East Anglia. This migration led to their new homeland being named after them, from which the name "England" derives. Both England and the English language thus ultimately derive their names from the Angles and Angeln.

Name

In one theory the name of the Angles came from Germanic words for "narrow" (compare German eng = "narrow"), and meant "the people who live beside the Narrow [Water]", i.e. beside the Schlei estuary. The root would be *angh-, "tight".

The word Engel in German means "Angles", but is used as a way to designate the area they occupied (Anglia). The most common theory is that the name Angeln itself etymologically means "hook", as in angling for fish. Many reputable etymological dictionaries are silent on its root. Julius Pokorny, a major Indo-European linguist, derives it from *ang-, "bend". The meaning would be Anwohner der Holsteiner Bucht, "residents at the Bay of Holstein". The problem with this derivation is that Grimm's Law does not appear to apply to it. The theory that "Angeln" refers to a landform resembling a hook would have required advanced mapmaking abilities by its people, and is thus misleading.^{[citation needed]}

The town of Schleswig on the Schlei

Angeln is situated on the large bight linking the Baltic coast to Jutland, which is mainly the Bay of Kiel (Kieler Bucht), but might be seen as Holsteiner Bucht.

The Angles were part of the Federation of the Ingaevones, with their mythyical ancestor and god of fertility Yngvi, and both terms might well share the same root (inglish -> anglish), say as the origin of the federation. Pokorny points out the possible use of this etymological root in other ancient names, such as Hardanger and Angrivarii.

[edit] Early history

The region was home to the Germanic people, the Angles, who, together with Saxons and Jutes, left their home to migrate to Britain in the 5th-6th centuries. For the years 449-455, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ca. 890 A.D., describes how King Vortigern (a British tribal king) invited the Angles to come and receive land in return for helping him defend against marauding Picts. Those successful Angles sent word back that good land was available and that the British were worthless (presumably as soldiers). A wholesale emigration of Angles and kindred German peoples followed.

The Chronicle, commissioned by King Alfred the Great, drew on earlier oral traditions and on the few written fragments available. The best of these, written around 730 A.D., was by the monk Bede whose history of English Christianity had the following brief account of Anglo origins:

"...from the Angles, that is, the country which is called Anglia, and which is said, from that time, to remain desert to this day, between the provinces of the Jutes and the Saxons, are descended the East Angles, the Midland Angles, Mercians, all the race of the Northumbrians, that is, of those nations that dwell on the north side of the river Humber, and the other nations of the English." (Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, Book I, Chapter XV, 731 A.D.)

The phrase "north of the Humber" refers to the northern kingdom of Northumbria which includes what is now north and north-eastern England and part of southern Scotland. Mercia was located in central England and broadly corresponds to what is now known as the English Midlands.

It had long been suspected from all the Germanic sources that this report is too simple, a suspicion confirmed by the archaeology; namely, the fibulae, or brooches, worn by the women. There are essentially two kinds, the saucer brooch and the cruciform brooch. East coastal and northern Britain were settled by women wearing cruciform brooches, which came from coastal Scandinavia, all of Denmark, and Schleswig-Holstein all the way south to the lower Elbe and all the way east to the Oder, as well as a pocket in coastal Friesland, the embarkation point.

South central Britain was settled by women wearing the saucer brooch, which came from Lower Saxony, the south side of the lower Elbe, and pockets among the then Franks up the Rhine and along the coast to the mouth of the Seine.

Eastern Sweden, except in the far north, did not use either brooch, which may indicate that they were not as close culturally to the westward-looking population; i.e., they formed a conservative subculture of their own, the nucleus of a future Sweden. They would have looked adventurously rather to the east, where the Goths had gone and where the Vikings who would found Russia were to go.

The most logical conclusion is that the "Angles" were the people who populated all of Schleswig-Holstein and Western Pomerania south to the first big bend in the Elbe. They must have included identities mentioned under other names in the more ancient sources, just as the Angles themselves must have had other names. A more complete presentation is given under Angles.

[edit] Later history

The Isted Lion, Berlin copy.

After the Angles departed from Anglia, by the 8th century the region was occupied by Danish Vikings. This is reflected in the large number of place names ending in -by (meaning -village) in the region today. In the Viking period, the chronicler Æthelweard reports that the most important town in Angeln was Hedeby.

Later Angeln's history is subsumed in that of the larger surrounding region, which came to be known as Southern Jutland or Schleswig (Danish: Slesvig). Until the 19th century, the area primarily belonged to Denmark. But ethnically and linguistically a mixed German/Danish population evolved. Denmark lost Schleswig to Austria and Prussia in 1864 as a result of the second war of Schleswig. In 1920, following Germany's defeat in World War I, a plebiscite was held to determine which areas should return to Danish control. As a result of the plebiscite, much of Schleswig returned to Denmark, but Angeln remained in Germany. See Schleswig-Holstein Question for a detailed history.

[edit] See also

• Angles


• List of Germanic peoples


• Anglo-Saxons


• Thorsberg moor

[edit] References

• Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, Book I, Bede, ca. 731 A.D.,


• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Translated and collated by Anne Savage, Dorset Press, 1983, ISBN 0-88029-061-7


• Malcom Falkus and John Gillingham, Historical Atlas of Britain, Crescent Books, 1987, ISBN 0-517-63382-5

[edit] External links

• Bede, ca 731 A.D., Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation


• Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ca 890 A.D.


• Angeln cattle


• Tourism in Angeln


• Cinarchea (Archaeological films of Schleswig-Holstein)


• County and Municipal Flags (Schleswig-Holstein, Germany)


• Genealogy in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany