OK, remember that I blogged about spotting Marliu Henner? The same day I went for sushi with my own posse to discuss the latest in a series of chick dramas when I literally stumble upon Barbara Walters. We can’t find a parking space for dinner (I swear, I do do other things beside eat which might not be always apparent) and so we park in front of Vroman’s Bookstore where the line is so long it looks like an American Idol audition. We try and figure out what’s up only to find out that Barbara Walters is signing her new book, Audition. What???! Are you kidding me? A couple of spicy tuna rolls later I rush into Vromans, buy the book (I was going to rant last week about why the need to bag on the married senator who is still alive and then holy karma, I run into Barbara) which I of course had no intention of doing and get the fricker signed. Barbara BTW is VERY small, VERY skinny and has unbelievably beautiful skin. Impossible. Thanks to the whole Marilu thing and now this, I am officially going on a diet. Enough said.
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.org
Barbara Walter’s life was influenced greatly by her older sister and she’s written a beautiful memoir about her life. I read another memoir of a life influence by a sibling that I recommend highly – I actually liked it even more. The memoir is “”My Stroke of Insight”” by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. Dr Taylor became a Harvard brain scientist to find the cause and cure for schizophrenia because her older brother was a sufferer. Then, crazy as life can be, Dr. Taylor had a stroke at age 37. What was amazing was that her left brain was shut down by the stroke – where language and thinking occur – but her right brain was fully functioning. She experienced bliss and nirvana and the way she writes about it (or talks about it in her now famous TED talk) is incredible.
What I took away from Dr. Taylor’s book above all, and why I recommend it so highly, is that you don’t have to have a stroke or take drugs to find the deep inner peace that she talks about. Her book explains how. “”I want what she’s having””, and thanks to this wonderful book, I can!