Health & Happiness

Life on Two Wheels

Joyful Bike-Riding Benefits for Heart, Soul & Spirit AOC Health & Happiness

The reasons for biking are overwhelmingly positive for body and soul — as long as riding lanes are generally safe from car driving road warriors. We’ll be tracking life on two wheels when Lisa moves into her new loft in a couple weeks.

In a massive life makeover, Lisa and her husband Colon are creating a new life for themselves — loving everyone around them but also deciding to carve out a lifestyle space for THEM, on their terms. The move comes in just two weeks, and Lisa will be hitting the road on her new bike as part of her new life.

If you are an AOC friend anywhere in the world, and you who ride bike to work or around your town, I would love to hear from you. Photos please. Drop me a note in Contact Anne and we’ll get going on your story. Love, Anne

Longest Living Cities in America, from San Jose to Honolulu to Los Angeles The Daily Beast

People

Happy Birthday #93 Nelson Mandela

Desmond Tutu: Young South Africans Don’t Know What Mandela Did for Us Huffington Post

Reporter Elisabeth Braw says that most people know two South Africans: Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. On this special day for Nelson Mandela, Braw interviews Desmond Tutu about contemporary South Africa: the good, the bad, the ugly and the glorious.

RedTracker

Rachida Dati

In France, a political star seems ready to rise again LA Times

France’s glamorous former Justice Minister Rachida Dati is now mayor of Paris’ posh 7th arrondissement. The child of illiterate North African immigrants was a superstar rising fast in the Sarkozy limelight, when the bottom fell out.

Calling France’s first Muslim Cabinet member ma beurette (“my little Arab girl”), Sarkozy banished Dati to the European Parliament for becoming pregnant as a single mother and refusing to name the father.

Two years after being accused of spreading rumors that the Sarkozy marriage was in trouble, Dati’s star is rising. She has written a memoir to counter the “lies and insults” of her critics. She will be campaigning again for Sarkozy and intends to become mayor of all Paris in 2014, an established launch pad for moving into the Elysee Palace.

“She manages to be political, powerful, authoritarian and intelligent, and at the same time beautiful, interesting and a star,” says French journalist Valerie Domain, a former editor at Gala, one of the glossy magazines that have closely chronicled Dati’s career.

Complimenting Rachida Dati for having Smart Sensuality style and brains would prickle our friends at Jezebel. Writing about The Observer’s profile on Christine Lagarde, Jezebel asked if we would write these words about new Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel:

If his teeth are gritted, it’s impossible to tell. What lovely teeth he has – straight and white, they gleam out of a permanently, almost alarmingly, tanned face. Not very tall, but well-built nonetheless – and musclebound, the 51-year-old Emanuel dresses with the casual élan of a Chicagoan, patriotically attired in Brooks Brothers suits and Hugo Boss ties, along with jazzy shoes and fur-lined ponchos. Emanuel softens his rather severe black-and-white outfits with silk pocket squares, pearl cufflinks, or a Rolex watch. He has widely spaced green eyes framed by a silver mane. He still dances, but not in ballet.

The answer may be: it depends. For a profile in GQ or Esquire, just maybe. Nevertheless, Erin Gloria Ryan makes a valid point, even if it’s one with no current solution. We refuse to cry foul when The Observer writes:

Christine Lagarde

Is this the world’s sexiest woman (and the most powerful?) The Observer

Madame Chairman: Christine Lagarde, now head of the IMF, stands on the heliport of the finance ministry in Paris. Photograph: Martin Bureau/Getty Images

“She’s unusual among French female politicians in that there’s nothing coquettish about her,” says Andrew Hussey, a professor at the University of London Institute in Paris. “A lot of the others – such as Ségolène Royal – play on a kind of French feminine elegance.”

The tables can easily turn on these women, who “sometimes have a way of undermining themselves”, writes The Observer. Writer Molly Guinness shares new facts about Lagarde, or at least we haven’t read them presented in this way.

After twice failing the exams to get into the French civil service and being told she would never make partner in a French law firm as a woman, she joined the international firm Baker & McKenzie, where she rose to chairman of the board. She used the same title she’s taking at the IMF: Madame Chairman. Syntax, she explained at the time, is not the battleground on which the feminist cause will be gained or lost: “I didn’t want to find a feminine equivalent to chairman. Insisting on marking femininity by the gender of words is ridiculous.”